RATIONALITY IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY

Conrad Shirokauer (Journal of Chinese Philosophy 11 [1984]: 19-29.)

1. Semantic or Etymological Logic. A logic of punning. A logic of entailment of the Chinese characters. ren is ren* = "to be human is to be benevolent." zheng is zheng = to govern is to rectify, or literally "to be over."

Western critique: this confuses rhetoric and logic; poetry and philosophy. Cannot achieve conceptual clarity by this means.

2. Conventional Logic. Mohist (from Mozi [479-438]) logic closest to Western logic, except the Mohists did not use the syllogism that Aristotle discovered.

All humans are mortal

Plato is a human

Therefore, Plato is mortal.

3. Analogical/Parallel Reasoning. Lots of analogies in Mencius' philosophy.  Check here for a reading that will be assigned when we get to Mencius.

4. Correlative or Synchronistic Thinking. This might be seen as a new form of induction, some have called it "inductivity," dealing with the logical relations between two things at the same time in different places as opposed to causal induction of things existing in the same place but at successive times.

Correlative thinking fits an organic universe, while causal induction fits a mechanical universe nicely. Chinese made early discoveries in musical vibration and magnetism because of it.

Michael Myers, WSU: "Causal thinking is discursive, bows to the pressures of fact, aims for accurate prediction, and eschews at least one member of any given pair of opposites. . . . Plato, for example, rejects death in favor of life in his proofs for the immortality of the soul. . . Correlative thinking is holistic, bows to the need for a comprehensible world, tells us of what to approve and disapprove, aims for coherence, and sees opposites as complementary. . . The Huai-nan tzu cosmogony (2nd Centry BCE), for example, explains the cosmos as evolving by division along a chain of binary oppositions. The Clear becomes Heaven; the Muddy becomes Earth. The Yang generates fire; the Yin generates water. Fire rises; water sink. Birds bly upward; fishes swim to the depths." The Journal of Religious Pluralism 4 (1994), p. 22.

5. Metaphysical Reason. Li in the extended of sense of both physical and moral principle. Li as metaphysical reason is not completely abstract but found in concrete things and social relations. Recall the earliest expression of this already in the Book of Odes: "As there are things, there are their specific principles (ze)" (#260).

The neo-Confucians argued about whether li was prior to qi (ch’i) (energy) or not. But neither made li transcendent (separate and beyond the world). It is always immanent, in the world and inseparable from it. Neo-Confucian motto: li is one but its expression is many.

Shirokauer is misleading when he states that Zhuxi’s li are like Plato’s forms, which are entirely transcendent from the world.

Hall & Ames, 13: A transcends B if A can stand without B; in other words, transcendence involves external relations, while immanence involves internal relations.

6. Moral Rationalism. Is Mencius a rationalist (p. 25)? No, he is a voluntarist. Fusion of reason and the moral and affective dimensions of human existence. "A true idea feels good and has good effects." Unity of truth, value, and beauty. Look at passage on the first page of Chang’s article and substitute the word "heart-mind" (xin [hsin]) for Chang’s "mind" and you get a different picture.

The word "rationalism" is very misleading for Chinese philosophy:

1. Not Cartesian: only in logic and math do we find certainty: "methodological" rationalism

2. Not "epistemological" rationalism innate or a priori knowledge. Chinese are more empiricists on this issue. Rationalism vs. empiricism.

3. Not moral rationalism. Here the distinction is between rationalism (reason precedes the will in moral actions) versus voluntarism where the will is priori to reason.

Note: Chinese thinkers would rather not be forced to choose between the dichotomized choices in 2 and 3. But if pushed they would always reject "rationalism."

The world (both human and non-human) is whole, an organic unity of its parts. This contrasts with the mechanistic world-view of western science.

Difference in art forms. Cubism vs. Chinese landscape.