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Tongdong Bai’s Followers (2)
Tongdong Bai
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Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case (The Princeton-China Series)
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China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom
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published
2012
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8 editions
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* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.
“Generally speaking, the apparent lack of argumentation in some traditional Chinese texts doesn't mean that they don't contain argumentation. Rather, they may have simply skipped many argumentation steps and offered instead an 'argumentation sketch', or the key and most difficult steps in an argumentation. In fact, even in works of physics and mathematics that are known for their rigor, argumentation steps are often skipped, and the failure of a reader to understand them if often not a sign of a lack of rigor of the works in question but the lack of the reader's competence in becoming a good physicist or mathematician. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it in his discussion of the beauty of the aphoristic style, 'In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks - and those who are addressed, tall and lofty' (1954, 40 [ part 1, sec. 7,'On Reading and Writing']).”
― Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case
― Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case
“There are regular news reports in the Western media concerning the suppression of Tibetan culture by the Han Chinese (who constitute the majority of the Chinese people). This alleged suppression is often portrayed in racial or ethnic terms. However, generally speaking, the Western idea of nationality, in the sense of race, was alien to the Chinese throughout much of their history. More importantly, in the first thirty years of Communist rule, the Han Chinese did far more damage to their own culture (e.g. destruction of Confucian temples and of many other cultural heritage sites and institutions) than they did to Tibetan temples. In fact, much of the destruction of Tibetan temples was perpetrated by Tibetan radicals. So, the issue was not really racial or ethnic, but rather about radical modernizers versus traditionalists.”
― China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom
― China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom
“Early Confucian (and Chinese) classics can be read philosophically, if philosophy is understood as I suggested above. This understanding of philosophy then implies certain methods of reading these texts. It requires us to clarify and enrich the argumentation in these texts by making up the missing steps, and to tease out the hidden systems in these texts, always with their contemporary relevance in mind and with a sensibility to their original contexts simultaneously.
To apply these methods to traditional texts, the first thing we need to do is to discover the apparent discrepancies and even contradiction within an argument and among different arguments in the same text or by the same author. After actively making these discoveries, however, we should not do what an analytically minded thinker of classical Chinese texts tends to do, such as claiming that the author failed to see the contradictions, he didn't know logic, and so on. Rather, we should apply the principle of respect and charity to the reading of these texts, for since ancient Greece or pre-Qin China, there haven't been many great thinkers in human history (which is why we call them 'great thinkers'). If we can easily find apparent confusion and contradictions in their works, as reasonable guess is not that they didn't think clearly but that we didn't; that is, we failed to appreciate the depth of these most profound thinkers in human history due to our own limited intellectual capacity or being confined to our own context. In this sense, to respect 'authority' (great thinkers and their texts) is to think critically and to criticize and transcend the authority of today (our own prejudices and close-mindedness). Therefore, after discovering the discrepancies, we should try to see if we can make up the missing steps, or reconstruct hidden coherence between apparently contradictory arguments.”
― Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case
To apply these methods to traditional texts, the first thing we need to do is to discover the apparent discrepancies and even contradiction within an argument and among different arguments in the same text or by the same author. After actively making these discoveries, however, we should not do what an analytically minded thinker of classical Chinese texts tends to do, such as claiming that the author failed to see the contradictions, he didn't know logic, and so on. Rather, we should apply the principle of respect and charity to the reading of these texts, for since ancient Greece or pre-Qin China, there haven't been many great thinkers in human history (which is why we call them 'great thinkers'). If we can easily find apparent confusion and contradictions in their works, as reasonable guess is not that they didn't think clearly but that we didn't; that is, we failed to appreciate the depth of these most profound thinkers in human history due to our own limited intellectual capacity or being confined to our own context. In this sense, to respect 'authority' (great thinkers and their texts) is to think critically and to criticize and transcend the authority of today (our own prejudices and close-mindedness). Therefore, after discovering the discrepancies, we should try to see if we can make up the missing steps, or reconstruct hidden coherence between apparently contradictory arguments.”
― Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case
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