Methodological and Historical Inquiry
Before tracing the appearance and development of the discourse on ming and shi as well as addressing its significance and effect, I shall introduce the method I employ to interpret the classical texts related to the topic and the sociopolitical and intell
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Methodological and Historical Inquiry
Before tracing the appearance and development of the discourse on ming and shi as well as addressing its significance and effect, I shall introduce the method I employ to interpret the classical texts related to the topic and the sociopolitical and intellectual background of the discourse.
1.1 Discourse as a Method of Philosophy Following the linguistic turn in twentieth-century Western philosophy, discourse has become an essential concept emerging from contemporary humanities and social sciences. More and more scholars in history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, literature, communications, and so forth have used discourse as a new paradigm to reexamine the basic topics or issues of their discipline. Consequently, discourse studies have turned out to be an interdisciplinary field. It is philosophy, however, that advances the more profound and far-reaching discourse theories. Philosophers specialized in classical studies, for instance, enquire into the relationship of intellectual conversations to truth and knowledge by discussing why Plato writes dialogues. Postmodernist thinkers examine the function of discourse in the interpretation of cultural tradition and in the deconstruction of Platonic philosophy. Based on their common understanding that reason, meaning, and knowledge cannot be isolated from intellectual dialogues, I would suggest that philosophy originates in, lives by, and develops through discourse; hence, discourse is a method not only of doing philosophy but also of interpreting philosophy. “Discourse” refers to written conversations and spoken texts in general and intellectual dialogues in particular; and intellectual dialogues consist of different modes of discourse such as stating, reasoning, and arguing. The relationship between discourse and philosophy can be construed from the fact that both “discourse” and “philosophy” in the Western history of ideas originate from logos; © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Z. Sun, Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-54865-9_1
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1 Methodological and Historical Inquiry
essentially, discourse is the form of philosophy. It can also be construed pragmatically in that discourse shapes and reshapes philosophy. It may not be wrong to say that as Greek philosophy establishes itself, at least in part, as the foundation of Western culture, the Greek word logos paves a way for the originality of Western philosophy. As a noun logos is initially derived from the root found in the verb lego (“I say”) and literally means “speech,” “story,” “argument,” “statement,” “reason,” “principle,” and “doctrine”, it is then changed from a general term into a specific one, referring only to philosophical discourse.1 Heraclitus believes “first and foremost in a Logos” and thinks of it as “both human thought and the governing principle of the Universe.”2 In his view, words, thoughts, meaning, reality, and values cannot be separated from the logos.3 Socrates agrees with Theaetetus that knowledge is true
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