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Western words cannot convey Eastern teachings
By Wan Lixin |
April 26, 2012, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
DR Thorsten Pattberg's article on this page today raises several issues so compelling to Chinese that it should be recommended to those Chinese who find English so expressive that they would rather say "bye-bye" than zaijian to their children.
We Chinese used to owe a lot to Daxue, the first of Confucian canon, one of the chief origins of Chinese outlook and attitudes.
Anyone with a rudimentary grounding in classic Chinese knows how inadequate it is to render daxue as Great Learning, or such Confucian concepts as li, yi, and de as ritual, righteousness, and morality.
As linguists point out, human thinking has to be mediated through a language, which consists of discrete concepts. It is hard to find two concepts in two cultures that are of exactly the same value.
But few Chinese would question the appropriateness of the term Peking University versus daxue. Unlike a Westernized university which is deemed a relatively advanced stage of academic inquiry, Confucian Daxue is intended as the primer for the uninitiated.
At first glance daxue is no more than a set of terse precepts, to be chanted and learned by rote, and when imbibed by children in tabula rasa state, it lays the basis of their mental equipment.
Root and branches
As it is observed in the Confucian canon Daxue, "Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning." This art of properly prioritizing is something beyond the ken of most Westerners today. That leads to the difference between a skills-oriented Western and ethics-based Eastern education.
Peking University is another story. It was a product of the Reform Movement of 1898 (Wuxu Bianfa), which aimed at modernizing and strengthening China by introducing Western ideas and technology, after reformists became keenly aware of the inadequacy of Confucian doctrines in confronting Western gunboats.
The imperial edict for the mission of Peking University in 1902 was stated "to excite sentiments of loyalty and charity, to impart knowledge, and to invigorate industries." That's a significant deviation from Daxue, which opens with "What the Great Learning teaches is to illustrate illustrious virtue, to renovate the people, and to rest in the highest excellence."
That occurred after Western education had experienced similar metamorphosis.
In the Middle Ages, European universities were generally under the auspices of the churches and existed for the purpose of glorifying God. Gradually they evolved into a celebration of human intellect, and human power to triumph over the nature. In a sense, both Chinese daxue and the Western university have experienced a sort of amelioration, or decay, depending on your outlook.
Shangdi and God
To interpret alien concepts by using existing terms in another culture has been going on through the ages. Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), an Italian Jesuit priest who founded the Jesuit China Mission, had famously used existing Chinese concepts to explain Christianity.
His familiarity with tianzhu and shangdi in Chinese classics led him to use these terms to translate Christian God. He even observed, "After going through Chinese classics, I conclude that Chinese shangdi is the same as Christian God. They are different only in names." As a matter of fact, translating alien concepts by resorting to existing concepts is the only way to make the concepts intelligible across cultures, as thinking has to be mediated by language, and concept is the unit that builds the language.
In his "A New Edition of History of Chinese Philosophy," Feng Youlan observed that "When introducing Western terms to China, it is essentially the interpretation of the modern [Western] ideas in terms of the [Chinese] ancient."
That Western imperialists have been so consistently eager to use force to liberate other people from the abyss of misery is chiefly due to their inability to understand others' culture (referring to Ji Xianlin's observations in Pattberg's article).
When they have prostrated before the new God of GDP, and believe this is the only true God, how can they know that Daxue, a primer for the uninitiated, observes: "In a state, pecuniary gain is not to be considered to be prosperity, but its prosperity will be found in righteousness."
We Chinese used to owe a lot to Daxue, the first of Confucian canon, one of the chief origins of Chinese outlook and attitudes.
Anyone with a rudimentary grounding in classic Chinese knows how inadequate it is to render daxue as Great Learning, or such Confucian concepts as li, yi, and de as ritual, righteousness, and morality.
As linguists point out, human thinking has to be mediated through a language, which consists of discrete concepts. It is hard to find two concepts in two cultures that are of exactly the same value.
But few Chinese would question the appropriateness of the term Peking University versus daxue. Unlike a Westernized university which is deemed a relatively advanced stage of academic inquiry, Confucian Daxue is intended as the primer for the uninitiated.
At first glance daxue is no more than a set of terse precepts, to be chanted and learned by rote, and when imbibed by children in tabula rasa state, it lays the basis of their mental equipment.
Root and branches
As it is observed in the Confucian canon Daxue, "Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning." This art of properly prioritizing is something beyond the ken of most Westerners today. That leads to the difference between a skills-oriented Western and ethics-based Eastern education.
Peking University is another story. It was a product of the Reform Movement of 1898 (Wuxu Bianfa), which aimed at modernizing and strengthening China by introducing Western ideas and technology, after reformists became keenly aware of the inadequacy of Confucian doctrines in confronting Western gunboats.
The imperial edict for the mission of Peking University in 1902 was stated "to excite sentiments of loyalty and charity, to impart knowledge, and to invigorate industries." That's a significant deviation from Daxue, which opens with "What the Great Learning teaches is to illustrate illustrious virtue, to renovate the people, and to rest in the highest excellence."
That occurred after Western education had experienced similar metamorphosis.
In the Middle Ages, European universities were generally under the auspices of the churches and existed for the purpose of glorifying God. Gradually they evolved into a celebration of human intellect, and human power to triumph over the nature. In a sense, both Chinese daxue and the Western university have experienced a sort of amelioration, or decay, depending on your outlook.
Shangdi and God
To interpret alien concepts by using existing terms in another culture has been going on through the ages. Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), an Italian Jesuit priest who founded the Jesuit China Mission, had famously used existing Chinese concepts to explain Christianity.
His familiarity with tianzhu and shangdi in Chinese classics led him to use these terms to translate Christian God. He even observed, "After going through Chinese classics, I conclude that Chinese shangdi is the same as Christian God. They are different only in names." As a matter of fact, translating alien concepts by resorting to existing concepts is the only way to make the concepts intelligible across cultures, as thinking has to be mediated by language, and concept is the unit that builds the language.
In his "A New Edition of History of Chinese Philosophy," Feng Youlan observed that "When introducing Western terms to China, it is essentially the interpretation of the modern [Western] ideas in terms of the [Chinese] ancient."
That Western imperialists have been so consistently eager to use force to liberate other people from the abyss of misery is chiefly due to their inability to understand others' culture (referring to Ji Xianlin's observations in Pattberg's article).
When they have prostrated before the new God of GDP, and believe this is the only true God, how can they know that Daxue, a primer for the uninitiated, observes: "In a state, pecuniary gain is not to be considered to be prosperity, but its prosperity will be found in righteousness."
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