Dissertation Project Federico Beltrame

The Debate on Language During the Warring States

Subject: Chinese Studies

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hans van Ess

During the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.), language and its ability to actually express and represent reality has been a topic discussed by many early Chinese thinkers. Since the famous sentence shu bu jin yan, yan bu jin yi 書不盡言，言不盡意 (writings cannot fully express oral language, oral language cannot fully express ideas) of the Yijing 易經 on, we find different speculations on language in almost every text. In his seminal work Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought, Makeham studies the lively discussion about names (ming 名) and “actuality” (shi 實) or “form” (xing 形) in early China, and theorizes two different schools of thought on naming: the “correlative” and the “nominalist.” In doing so, he picks different passages excerpted from the same text to point out one text’s position on language, ignoring the context surrounding those passages. His methodology is the same one adopted by many scholars who have engaged with this topic: building a consistent philosophical idea on language by putting together excerpts from separate chapters. As a consequence, the position of the master figure to whom the respective text is ascribed is interpreted as a coherent argument, notwithstanding the many problems posed by early Chinese texts’ compilation and transmission processes. This kind of methodology also overlooks the problematic roles of the author figure and other paratextual devices, such as titles.
What my research aims to do is to produce an organic study of the debate over language in early China that does not assume a textual coherence, but that “read[s] each text as a text: not necessarily the manifesto of a school, nor even necessarily as the work of a single brilliant mind” (Goldin, The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them). I will read every excerpt about language in the texts of the “Masters Literature” through a rigorous historical, textual and philological analysis of the chapters the excerpts are in, thus
analysing them within their context. As a result, this approach will highlight the small textual units that surround the different positions on language and will put them back into the smaller context of the chapter, at the same time pulling them out by the broader context of the constructed-philosophical idea of a master figure. Traditional sources and excavated materials will both be taken into consideration. A new, accurate and more consistent perspective over the debate on language in early China will be the result of this research.