Jenco APSA draft 2005
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Kang attempts to build proper communion with other like-minded persons
perfect truth.
Similarly, Wang’s interaction with the classics only makes sense because he assumes that
the truth they contain, especially with respect to moral value, is actually comprehensive, is Truth.
Whereas in the West the will of God is held to be inscrutable to human intellect, the words of
sages – who themselves are human beings – recorded in the classics are assumed to be ultimately
accessible, however difficult may be the process of attainment, which creates the expectation that
the educated gentleman will apply all his labors toward this lofty goal. These classical texts do not
themselves overtly present theories or complete expositions of understanding; they do not “speak.”
Rather, their interpreters read them rather as records of exemplary acts and as repositories of
images and metaphor to which they supply their own theory of coherence often expressed
extratextually. As stated in the “Great Commentary” on the Classic of Changes, “Writing cannot
express words completely; and words cannot express thought completely.” Confucius himself
expressed a wish to do without speech: after all, “What does Heaven ever say? Yet the four
seasons run their course and the myriad things flourish. What does Heaven ever say?” (Analects
XVII: 19.)
This suggests that distortion may occur when applying the dialogic model either to these
texts or to the work of their interpreters because it necessarily translates into words and reasoning
what is meant to be exemplary, action-oriented, and impressionistic.
It is not an accident that
Western hermeneutics often takes a cue from Ricoeur (1981) and reads all of life as a text: in order
to be intelligible, something must be articulated and recorded. But this forces articulation of that
which cannot be articulated (in Wang’s case, both because too sublime and because only
25
I say “persons” rather than the more traditionally Confucian “men” since Kang displayed an admirably progressive
sensibility with respect to the potential and education of women, especially his own daughter.
26
One modern scholar argues for the use of a dialogic technique to understand the Confucian classics because in doing
so Chinese philosophy can achieve a greater degree of logical organization like that found in Western philosophy
(Wang Junyun 2003, 149). This may very well be true, and in fact indicates the extent to which the Confucian
classics can be done violence by the imposition of re-organizing, alien methodology.
Convention