There will be a conference on Literary Forms of Argument in Pre-Modern China from 16-19 September 2009 at Oxford University. The conference will be convened by Dr Dirk Meyer (Oxford). Professor Joachim Gentz (Edinburgh) and Professor Wim De Reu (NTU) co-organise this event.

The conference is supported by a $25,000 grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, and is supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.




Description of the Project and its Purposes

This conference will address literary patterns in pre-modern Chinese texts and their philosophical functions. By drawing attention to the philosophical relevance of form and thought in early Chinese writings, our aim is to examine the formal characteristics of a written argument in pre-modern Chinese philosophy. By bringing together the leading scholars in the field of literary philosophical communication in pre-modern China from Europe, the Americas, and Asia, together with specialists from different disciplines working on literary theory, metaphor theory, argumentation, and cognition, we aim to further awareness of the intricacies of argument-construction in Chinese written prose. The additional participation of discussants from the fields of Western Philosophy, Literary, Cultural and Biblical Studies as well as Linguistics and Cognitive Science will stimulate the dialogue about broader strategies of meaning-construction between different disciplines. The contributions to the conference will be published in a monograph. The conference will thus make a significant contribution to a highly relevant, but badly neglected area within Chinese Philosophy.

 Methods largely shaped by Western philosophy have had an enormous impact on reading strategies for pre-modern Chinese texts. What are commonly termed philosophical texts in the Chinese context have been analysed in terms of their so-called logical capacity. But literary forms of meaning-construction have not yet become the object of research. As in Western philosophy, language has long been regarded as a deficient mode of the expression of thought. But in contrast to the Western tradition, Chinese thinkers have not attempted to develop a propositional logical-mathematical language based on valid logical forms. Since analytical precision has been connected to Western logical techniques alone, strategies of argumentation in Chinese philosophical texts are generally described as ambiguous and poetic rather than systematic. As a result of this, the written texts from pre-modern China available to us now have long been treated as mere repositories of ideas, and so an important element in the construction of meaning in written thought was largely neglected, namely the literary form of the argument.

This tendency in research was compounded by the fact that Chinese texts are made up of distinct components, building blocks or collected episodes. Fragmentation is thus still conceived of as a common characteristic of early Chinese written philosophy. As a result, the misconception has arisen that pre-modern Chinese texts do not generate homogenous disquisitions in treatises with a coherent outlook in which literary patterns work with argumentative force. This belief, however, fails to acknowledge the empirical evidence of meaning-construction in written thought from pre-modern China. Chinese philosophical texts do not generate meaning by establishing valid logical patterns as their Western counterparts tend to do. Instead, different literary forms of philosophical reasoning are found, such as interlocking parallel style, overlapping structure, double directed propositions, symmetrical rhyme nets, collage strategies, or micro-macro structure correspondences which, however, have largely passed unnoticed by Sinologists both in China and the West. Attempts in recent scholarship to re-address the neglected significance of this aspect of meaning-construction in pre-modern Chinese Philosophy, the literary form of argument, are still few and far between. Our conference, “New Perspectives on Chinese Culture and Society: Literary Forms of Argument in Pre-modern China”, aims to correct this picture. It investigates literary patterns and their philosophical function in pre-modern Chinese texts and analyses the correlation of form and content in Chinese philosophy. Central questions will be: What are the formal characteristics of an argument in pre-modern China? Is there a necessary literary form for conveying thought? Does the formal pattern of a text contribute to the idea transmitted? Are literary patterns reflective of mapping mechanisms between conceptual domains? How do literary form and conceptual mapping shape the way in which concepts are generated?

Answering these questions calls for an empirical approach that requires a close re-reading of pre-modern Chinese texts, including recently excavated manuscripts. The newly excavated texts show more argumentative diversity than previously known, which makes them especially valuable for our purposes. Thus, by reconsidering pre-modern Chinese philosophical texts with a new methodology, we aim to break new ground in our field of research. We also hope to contribute to the still emerging theoretical foundations through broader discussion of literary forms of argumentation. Whilst a number of scholars have emphasized the importance of aspects of literary analysis for textual interpretation, their source material is mostly non-philosophical and often restricted to Western languages. The innovatory character of the planned conference is to be identified in its analysis of the characteristics of the composition of Chinese philosophical texts.

In recent years, the philosophical study of written arguments has gained in importance in Western and Chinese scholarship, as is also reflected in the broader interest in Chinese hermeneutics and the application of metaphor theory. This conference will take this analysis further by bringing together leading researchers in both Western and Chinese Sinology, and thus develop new methods for the analysis of pre-modern Chinese philosophical texts.




Participants

1.    Dr Dirk Meyer (University of Oxford)
2.    Dr Wim De Reu (National Taiwan University)
3.    Professor Dr Joachim Gentz (The University of Edinburgh)

4.    Professor Dr Wolfgang Behr (Zurich University)
5.    Professor Dr Carine Defoort (Leuven University)
6.    Dr Paul van Els (Leiden University)
7.    Professor Dr Christoph Harbsmeier (Oslo University)
8.    Professor Dr Martin Kern (Princeton University)
9.    Dr Hui-chieh Loy, Assistant Professor (National Singapore University)
10.  Professor Dr Michael Nylan (Berkeley)
11.  Professor Dr Andrew H. Plaks (Princeton University/Hebrew University Jerusalem)
12.  Dr Christian Schwermann (Bonn University)
13.  Professor Dr David Schaberg (UCLA)
14.  Professor Dr Edward Slingerland (UBC)
15.  Dr Norman T. Teng (Academia Sinica)
16.  Professor Dr Rudolf G. Wagner (Heidelberg University)




Auditory

If wish to attend the conference or any lectures as a guest, please contact Dr Dirk Meyer
(dirk.meyer@orinst.ox.ac.uk)