Appreciating the Chinese Difference:An Interview with Roger T.Ames

Roger T.Ames

NI Linna Shanghai Normal University

Abstract: In an interview with LIU Yunhua and NI Linna, Roger Ames uses several examples from the Chinese philosophical canons to argue that we must strive with imagination to allow this ancient tradition to speak with its own voice, and on its own terms.There are two major problems in fully appreciating the Chinese difference, insists Ames.From a Western perspective, we are using a vocabulary inherited from the missionaries to understand Chinese philosophy, reducing it from its own status as an important contribution to world philosophy to a marginal Eastern religion.From a contemporary Chinese perspective, we must be aware that we are using the Chinese translation of Western philosophical terms invented in the second half of the nineteenth century to synchronize the Chinese language with Western modernity.A failure to be cognizant of this appropriation of Western modernity leads to a confusion between untoward claims about Chinese “transcendentalism” and “universalism” and the appropriate understanding of Confucianism as offering us common human values.The irony is that within the post-Darwinian internal critique of the Western philosophical narrative, its own strident claims about transcendentalism and universalism have been rejected broadly as a mode of fallacious thinking.

Keywords: Roger T.Ames； the Chinese difference； transcendentalism； universalism

Date：May 18, 2018

Place：Prof.Ames

'

s Home on Weiminghu, Beijing University

Ms.NI: Prof.Ames, from your memoir, we know that you started studying the Chinese classics when you were an exchange student in Hong Kong.At that time, you focused your research on the comparative study of Chinese and Western philosophy.

Prof.Ames: Indeed.My good fortune was to begin to study Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy at the same time.I didn’t first study Western philosophy, and then study Chinese philosophy later on, a familiar model among Western comparative philosophers.

Ms.NI: Oh, I see.

Prof.Ames: And so...I arrived in Hong Kong in 1966 when I was 18 years old, and had the benefit of having the acquaintance of Tang Junyi唐君毅 (1909-1978) and Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909-1995), and of being taught in my classes by Lao Siguang 劳思光 (1927-2012).

Ms.NI: Three famous Chinese philosophers.

Prof.Ames: Very famous Chinese philosophers, but also Chinese philosophers who were equally at home in Western philosophy.So I had the opportunity to study Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy at the same time in a comparative way, but also to be persuaded by Lao Laoshi that we will be much better off when we just think of “philosophy” as one thing, and stop using geographical criteria to make philosophical distinctions.That was really the beginning for me, and I look back to those days with enormous pleasure.

Ms.NI: Having had the opportunity to know these distinguished scholars is really a precious experience.Could you please talk about the turning point in your academic experience which changed your understanding of Chinese and Western philosophy?

Prof.Ames: The important idea for me that I got from studying both with these scholars, and reading their works too, was that, while appreciating the profoundly philosophical nature of the Chinese and Western narratives, we still need to develop a comparative methodology that precludes reading one of them in terms of the other.It is this kind of reductionism—reading Chinese philosophy through Western conceptual patterns—that has diminished the contribution of Chinese philosophy.Hegel in the Introduction to his

Encyclopaedia Logic

says that in any philosophical inquiry, we must ask the question: “Where does it begin?” And so...when we look at the Western philosophical narrative, the beginning is ontology and metaphysics.Ontology is the science of Being that answers Aristotle’s first question: What is about something that is permanent and unchanging, and that we can thus know? And the metaphysical first principles that are determinative and originative answer the second question: Why do we exist? It is this second answer that then becomes the concept of God in the Abrahamic religious traditions.In the Chinese narrative, Hegel’s starting point is life and ceaseless procreation within a process cosmology (

shengsheng buxi

生生不息) that is made explicit in the

Book of Changes

.We translate it as the

Book of Changes

, but what kind of “change?” Guo Moruo郭沫若(1892-1978) has suggested that the

yi

易 of the《易经》is an abbreviation for

ci

赐, which means “gifting, exchanging,” and that gives primacy to the vital relationality among things.This “exchanging” takes place among the “Three Powers” (

san cai

三才) within the relationship among the heavens, the earth, and human beings.And the challenge for human beings is the idea of “harmony” (

he

和), not a simple harmony, but an optimizing harmony (

youhuaxing de hexie

优化性的和谐).Human beings have both the capacity and the responsibility to collaborate with the heavens and the earth in getting the most out of this experience.So it’s a kind of optimizing symbiosis.Thus, the starting point of these two traditions is very different: permanent metaphysical principles versus an appreciation of the creative possibilities of change and process.Ms.NI: Prof.Ames, you have translated a lot of the classical works of Chinese philosophy, such as the

Confucian Analects

,

Sunzi: The Art of Warfare

,

Sun Bin: The Art of Warfare

,

Tracing

Dao to Its Source

,

Doctrine of the Mean

,

Zhongyong, Xiaojing,

etc.In the translation work, you advocate the art of contextualization, emphasizing that the specific context and the situation is really important in the process of generating meaning.Why do you choose this approach to translate and interpret the Chinese classics?Prof.Ames: A.N.Whitehead talks about the fallacy of simple location.The fallacy of simple location means that you isolate something, and then you take it apart in order to understand it.His alternative to this fallacy (

miu wu

谬误) is that if you are going to understand something, you have to know its context, and its narrative.For Aristotle, the first question in the first text of the Aristotelian corpus, the

Categories

, is “What is a man?” He asks the question “What?” because he wants to find the essence of what-it-is-to-be-a-man—the “being” of a human being.This is the fallacy of simple location: if we take a man apart, we can find the essence.

Ms.NI: Yes.The fallacy of simple location is not appropriate for understanding Chinese culture.Chinese people tend to explain something by comparing it with other things.

Prof.Ames: The beginning of Chinese cosmology is not “knowledge” (

zhishi

知识), it’s “knowing the way” (

zhi dao

知道).That is, if you want to know something, you have to know its narrative, you have to know its history, its story.So the fundamental question in Chinese is not “What is something?” but rather “Where does it come from?” and “Where is it going?” For example, if we want to know you, we have to ask “What is your home town?” and “Who are your family members?” and “Who are your teachers?” We need to understand the continuing context of your life experience.Tang Junyi talks about “the inseparability of the one and the many” (

yi duo bu fen

一多不分) as a fundamental postulate of Confucian cosmology.That to understand any one thing (

yi

一), you have to understand the many things (

duo

多) that give it context.

Ms.NI: So the advocate of contextualization is Whitehead, who disagrees with Aristotle’s theory?

Prof.Ames: Yes.Aristotle is about decontextualizing and isolating what is permanent and unchanging about things in order to know them.Whitehead is the opposite.For Aristotle, the way you know something, is to put it in a category.So his idea is to move from genera to species.And so his method of knowing what is real is analysis—to grasp the real essence behind what is only contingent and accidental.Aristotle is about decontextualizing in order to know.The Confucian tradition that uses the epistemic vocabulary of “unravelling” (

lijie

理解), and “seeing clearly” (

liaojie

了解), and “penetrating through” (

datong

达通), is the idea of “knowing something” (

zhidao

知道) by mapping its context.So...the advocate of contextualization is certainly Whitehead who is himself a process thinker who has rejected the substance ontology of Aristotle.He talks about the perils of such abstraction.Whitehead believes that a weakness of the Western philosophical tradition has been its reliance upon abstraction, its belief that what is the most abstract is what is most real.God is what is most abstract and what is most real.If you look at the Chinese tradition, knowing and doing are inseparable (

zhi xing he yi

知行合一) and come together.Ms.NI: As with

zhi xing he yi

知行合一, there are many other examples in Confucian cosmology that should be understood as requiring contextualization: for example,

tian ren he yi

天人合一.But are there any disadvantages of using contextualization to understand something?Prof.Ames: (Laughs) I think there are no disadvantages.The only way that we can understand anything is to understand it within its context.If we pick up a text, the

Daodejing

《道德经》 for example, Arthur Waley translates it as

The Way and Its Power

, reading “

dao

道” as God.If we have a Western religious orientation, such a reading can be creative.But then the

Daodejing

becomes something different, but it’s not the Chinese

Daodejing

.The

Daodejing

has to be understood as a text that is compiled in maybe the fourth or fifth century BCE in a Warring States China that is convulsing from continuous war, and it is trying to answer certain questions within this context.For the

Daodejing

, we have to understand its interpretive context.

Ms.NI: So we need to understand everything by using this method of contextualization.

Prof.Ames: Yes.My own Western philosophical orientation is pragmatism.Unfortunately, Chinese translate pragmatism as

shiyong zhuyi

实用主义.The expression

shiyong

实用 in Chinese sounds terrible, like “Opportunism” or “Expedience.” It’s a bad idea.Pragmatism should be translated as

yujing zhuyi

域境主义 or

yujing zhuyi

语境主义 (contextualism).

Prof.LIU: Yes, it’s better.

Ms.NI: Prof.Ames, you have published a lot of books.Your trilogy of interpretive studies of Chinese and Western philosophy is perhaps the most well-known.

Thinking from the Han

mainly focuses on three key words: self, truth, and transcendence.What’s your source and basis for choosing these three words to explore the source of Chinese thought?Prof.Ames: These three terms are problematic in the comparison.In the Western tradition, when we talk about “self,” we begin from an ideology of individualism (

geren zhuyi de yishi xingtai

个人主义的意识形态).The idea of the discrete individual captured in the contemporary language of “everyone, someone, no one, everybody, somebody, nobody” goes all the way back to the classical Greeks.Pythagoras is the first to talk about the immortal soul, and that each person having an immortal soul, is thus individuated.Plato’s

Phaedo

and Aristotle’s

Di Anima

are about the soul, and then Augustine talks about the individuated will.In order to be a responsible moral agent, we have to have a will.And then Locke talks about property: if I invest my energy in cultivating something, it then belongs to me.And then Freud and Nietzsche introduce the idea of the subconscious.We now have the concept of the hyper-self-conscious individual self.The liberal idea of the discrete individuated self who is autonomous, free, rational, self-choosing, and unencumbered has a long history.

Ms.NI: That is quite opposite to the Confucian concept of “self.”

Prof.Ames: Exactly.When we talk of persons in the Confucian context, they are constituted by their relationships.A person is one and many at the same time (

yi duo bu fen

一多不分).That is because persons cultivate themselves (

xiushen

修身)，

peiyang ziji

培养自己by cultivating their relationships.In Chinese, you don’t say “everyone stand up,” you say “

dajia qing zhan qilai

大家请站起来,” because a person is always located within a particular relational context—we are a human family (

renjia

人家).

Prof.LIU: (Laughs).

Ms.NI: Could you please give us more examples?

Prof.Ames: Of course.Let’s take the teacher-student relationship.You know that the teacher is a great teacher because he or she has a great student.The better the student, the better the teacher.So

ji yu li er li ren

己欲立而立人 (wanting to take one’s own stand, to help others take theirs) expresses the idea of persons being constituted through the cultivation of personal relationships.In the liberal model, you begin as an individual； in the Confucian model, becoming an individual is an achievement.You become distinctive, you even become distinguished, because of the quality of the relationships you’ve been able to cultivate with other people.

Ms.NI: That is quite different from Western individualism.

Prof.Ames: Yes.So the different conceptions of self provides a clear contrast, and it is through contrast that you can really come to understand what is distinctive about these two traditions.

Prof.LIU: Yes.(nodding)

Ms.NI: Exactly.Then how about “truth?”

Prof.Ames: Truth.In the Western tradition, the idea of a quest for certainty, that there is some kind of reality and that the philosophers’ job is to find that reality, to find that truth, is a fundamental assumption.My teacher Angus Graham has said that while Western philosophers are truth-seekers, Chinese philosophers are way-seekers.Confucian philosophers are set on finding a way forward, while Western philosophers want to find the truth.With this notion of truth there is another clear contrast between the idea of some apodictic (unconditional, absolute) truth in classical Greek thinking, and a Confucian notion of trust that has the same root.In the Confucian tradition, trust (

xin

信) in the sense of a true friend—this sense of truth is very important.Ms.NI: Right.In the Confucian culture, truth is not predetermined.It is the value that people pursue when cultivating relations with others.For example, in the

Analects

there is a passage: “Every day I examine myself several times.Am I doing my best in trying to work for others, and in my dealing my friends am I living up to my word?”

Prof.Ames: Yes.So again, if we look at these two traditions in terms of the way they think about truth, you find a very different orientations.

Ms.NI: Then, what is the difference between Chinese transcendence and western transcendence?

Prof.Ames: If there is anyone who is an exemplary person (

junzi

君子), it is Guo Qiyong 郭齐勇 (1947-).He is a wonderful person, and a fine scholar, but he criticizes me.

Prof.LIU: (Laughs).

Prof.Ames: Guo Laoshi says that Roger is wrong； the Confucian tradition has notions of transcendence and of ultimacy.The question is not right or wrong, but whether you are speaking Chinese or speaking Greek.If you are speaking Chinese, you have the idea of “the inseparability of the divine and the human” (

tian ren he yi

天人合一).The kind of contrapuntal, symbiotic, collaborative relationship between

tian

天 and

ren

人 is a very powerful idea that is certainly aspirational, with human beings trying to transcend themselves.But if

chaoyue

超越 is a translation of Western transcendence, which it is...Ms.NI: Then

chaoyue

超越 is not transcendence.Prof.Ames: Yes, Western strict transcendence is something very different.Transcendence is an independent, eternal, absolute, self-sufficient principle that creates and sustains this world, but this world has no effect on it.It is a two-world theory like Plato’s realm of Forms or the Christian idea of the aseity (self-sufficiency) of God.This idea is not present in Chinese philosophy.And in Greek philosophy, ultimacy is this transcendent principle.But in Confucianism, ultimacy is the optimizing symbiosis, a kind of

youhua gongsheng tixi

优化共生体系.Family is the governing cultural metaphor.If the family needs you, you give everything you can to the family.The family is a strategy for getting the most out of people.It is not that Guo Qiyong and I are right or wrong.He’s Chinese and he speaks Chinese, and so for him,

tian ren he yi

天人合一 is

pubian

普遍 (universal).You can talk about

pubian

普遍,

puji

普及,

pushi

普世.If you mean, by that, general, all-encompassing, common, shared, pervasive, that’s all very good.But if by that you are referring to a Chinese translation of the Western notions of transcendence or universal, then that’s not right.The Greek universal and the Confucian notion of

pubian

are two very different ideas.You cannot say the word universal in Chinese because the Chinese tradition has never had that idea.

Ms.NI: I see.

Prof.Ames: But there is a second point.The internal critique Western philosophy in the twentieth century in the wake of Darwin has been trying to get rid of the idea of the universal.The notion of some universal and unchanging principle has been rejected as a fallacy.Phenomenology, hermeneutics, pragmatism, existentialism, postmodernism, all of these movements have attacked this idea of some kind of unchanging foundation.Western philosophy itself has turned away from foundationalism, objectivism, formalism, transcendentalism, and so on.

Ms.NI: Could you please explain how the exploration of these three words helps us understand Confucian philosophy?

Prof.Ames: If we understand the differences on these three points, we can give Chinese philosophy its own identity.My ultimate motivation is to allow this tradition to speak for itself, to have its own voice, to speak on its own terms.That’s all.What has happened is that Confucian philosophy has been introduced into the Western academy by missionaries for whom “

tian

天” is Heaven, “

yi

义” is righteousness, “

ren

仁” is benevolence, “

li

礼” is ritual.Such a vocabulary is Christianity, not Confucian.There is a second problem to China speaking on its own terms.In the second half of the nineteenth century, China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam imported the Western education system wholesale, complete with its entire curricula (

xueke

学科) and its basic vocabulary.And so if you do philosophy at a Chinese university, you may speak Chinese, but when you talk about ontology, metaphysics, ethics, logic, you are using the direct translation of a Western conceptual structure.

Zhexue

哲学 is not Chinese,

benti lun

本体论 is not Chinese,

xing (er) shang xue

形(而)上学 is not Chinese,

lunli xue

伦理学 is not Chinese,

luoji

逻辑 is not Chinese.So the basic vocabulary, the basic conceptual framework that Chinese use to look at their own tradition has now become a Western framework, and a source of distortion.

Ms.NI: The majority of Chinese people are accustomed to use this new Chinese vocabulary to translate these Western concepts because this is what we learned in school.It is not easy for us to be aware of the difference between our translations and the original meaning of the foreign concepts.Where is the basic distortion?

Prof.Ames: In the two-world theory of Greek philosophy, you have a reality behind appearance dualism, what has been translated in Chinese as

linian

理念 and

biaoxiang

表相.To get to the reality behind appearance—the soul behind the body, for example—you need analysis.Hence, the methodology of Greek philosophy privileges analysis.You have to analyze.So the language of knowing in the Western tradition is expressed as “to get,” “to grasp,” “to comprehend.” But the Chinese tradition doesn’t begin from a dualism that privileges analysis.It begins from aspect: the idea of looking at the same phenomenon from different perspectives.For Western philosophy, God and world are two different things, but in Confucianism,

dao

道 and

wanwu

万物 is the same world but looked at from a different perspective.So we can look at the world in its multiplicity as

wanwu

万物, or we can look at the continuity and boundlessness of experience as

dao

道.So when you talk about

ti yong

体用, you cannot analyze something and separate its form from function.You look at the phenomenon from its determinate aspect

ti

体, and you look at it in terms of what it does

yong

用, different perspectives on the same phenomenon.So the Western tradition privileges an analytic method to find truth, while the Chinese privileges an aspectual way, of not finding truth, but instead the most comprehensive and panoramic view of something.Prof.LIU: Reflexive, relational, and holistic is the Chinese relationship between forming and functioning

ti yong guanxi

体用关系.

Prof.Ames: Yes, Exactly.

Prof.LIU: All of the polarities, correlative categories.

Prof.Ames: Yes.Polarities but not dualisms, that’s the point.The categories are fundamentally

yin-yang

阴阳.

Prof.LIU: Yes.

Ms.NI: Prof.Ames, could you please talk about your understanding of correlative thinking?

Prof.Ames: Correlative thinking is making productive associations.It requires imagination.Confucius says that if you want to find what is moral, you have to think through dramatic rehearsals (

shu

恕) you have to apply yourself (

zhong

忠) to making the best choice real.To

shu

恕 is really to have the imagination to do a dramatic rehearsal, to say if I choose to do this with Prof.Liu, what would be the consequence? If I instead do that, what would be the consequence? Such is correlative thinking.It’s correlating my situation and his situation to look for the optimal way forward that will produce the most productive relationship between us.

Ms.NI: What do you think is the source of this idea of correlative thinking?

Prof.Ames: If you think about classical Greek thinking, rationality as the faculty of knowledge, is one thing.Professor Liu’s rationality, my rationality, your rationality, the same thing.And the object of knowledge is something unchanging and universal.Such an epistemology entails a logic of the changeless.A changeless reason engaging a changeless object of knowledge.But in the Confucian tradition, the

Book of Changes

(

shengsheng buxi

生生不息) kind of cosmology, a process cosmology, you have a changing faculty of knowing engaging a changing world.Thus, the only way that you can get knowledge about the world is by making correlations between my situation and somebody else’s situation.And in so doing, to try to find the best way, the most productive way, of growing the relationship.

Ms.NI: Any examples?

Prof.Ames: Lots of examples.If you think persons who are sages (

shengren

圣人) in Confucianism, the two terms

shengren

圣人 and “initiating” (

zuo

作) go together.So Confucius says “

shu er bu zuo

述而不作.” You know that I only transmit, I don’t initiate (

zuo

作).What he is saying is that he is not a sage； he is being very modest.In order to initiate (

zuo

作), you have to be creative, you have to find correlations, you have to find a way to broaden the way (

hong dao

弘道), a new way forward.Terms such as “culture” (

wenhua

文化) we associate with sagacity.To create culture (

wenhua

文化), one must have imagination, one must create something, one must create culture.Think of this.In the Western concept of God,

zhen shan mei

真善美 are all derived from God.In the Confucian tradition, culture (

wenhua

文化) and civilization (

wenming

文明) are a living tradition that is created by human beings over the centuries.In this Confucian tradition,

zhen shan mei

真善美, that is, truth, beauty, and goodness, emerge from cultural transmission, and not from some kind of transcendent source.

Ms.NI: So this kind of correlative thinking is not accepted by the Westerners?

Prof.Ames: Westerners have this idea as well.There is no black and white.But the predominant method in Greek Philosophy is analytic, and the predominant method in the Chinese tradition is correlative.But if we look at Plato, in addition to celebrating reason, he also thinks in terms of metaphor.And metaphor is correlative thinking.The analogy of the cave is correlative thinking.Analogy and metaphor are also ways of knowing in the Western tradition.But they are more emphasized in the Chinese tradition because the Chinese tradition has not been so interested in the outcome of analysis.Everything is real in a Chinese world, without a reality and appearance dualism.And today, in the modern world, there are philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce.In reasoning through deduction as a method, you begin from a hypothesis that has certain premises, and register any inconsistencies.Or through induction, you amplify your premises by including additional instances.But for Peirce, there is no creativity with induction or deduction because you began from a set of premises.Peirce introduces something called abduction.With abduction, Peirce wants reasoning to be creative and to produce new knowledge.Such abduction is a Western example of correlative thinking, but it is not emphasized.We might think of the importance of poetry in the Chinese tradition, where much in poetry is correlation.A poem through allusiveness remembers much that has come before, and correlates with a novel situation.

Ms.NI: But this concept of correlative thinking was first mentioned by Marcel Granet.

Prof.Ames: In Western sinology.But it has been there in the Chinese tradition right back to the Shang Dynasty.Their

yin-yang

阴阳 thinking found on the oracle bones is correlative thinking.Granet is the first Western person to describe the Chinese tradition as correlative thinking.He talks about

La pensée chinoise

:

“Chinese thinking”—correlative thinking as being a distinctively Chinese way of thinking.

Prof.LIU: His Chinese name is 葛兰言 (Granet).

Prof.Ames: Oh, Granet.Yes, he is very famous.

Prof.LIU: Yes, very famous.His

La pensée chinoise

has not yet been translated into Chinese.I don’t know why.

Prof.Ames: I have a colleague who has been working on an English translation that will be coming out shortly.

Prof.LIU: Really?

Prof.Ames: I have worked for maybe ten years in encouraging this scholar to do the translation and it is nearly finished.And it is a solid translation that will appear in our “Translating China” series with the State University of New York Press.Perhaps from the English translation of

La pensée chinoise

, we can have a Chinese translation made.

Prof.LIU: Good.

Ms.NI: So how can we use the concept of correlative thinking appropriately?

Prof.Ames: A good example would be the hermeneutical way in which we read the

Analects

.

Ms.NI: How is that?

Prof.Ames: We look at one passage in the text that says: “Only the wisest and the most obtuse of people do not move (

buyi

不移).” Wise people and stupid people don’t move.Well...how do we understand this passage? That obtuse people don’t move seems very simple.Stupid people don’t know that they are stupid.And so they don’t have any motivation to learn.But wise people are always trying to learn, so how can we understand the claim that wise people don’t move? Well, if we correlate this passage with another passage in the

Analects

where it states that someone who rules with virtuosity (“

de

德”) is like the north star, where the north star stays in one place, and all of the other stars circumambulate around it.Prof.LIU: The

beichen

北辰 (the pole star, or the north star).Prof.Ames: Indeed.At least one interpretation that recommends itself is as follows.“Ah, now I understand the wise person is like the north star (

beichen

北辰), where the north star moves for sure, but from the perspective of other people, it keeps its place in the sky (

buyi

不移) to guide us forward.When we read a text like the

Analects

, and correlate one passage with another, it is an example of correlative thinking.And so textual scholars in reading canonical texts use a correlative methodology.They associate one passage with another until the text becomes an organic whole.

Ms.NI: Prof.Ames, could you please talk about your notion of focus-field holography in understanding the Confucian conception of person?

Prof.Ames: “Focus-field” is the idea of holography (

quanxi

全息)—the idea that in each “graph” is the whole.Mencius says that “the myriad of things are all here in me” (

wan wu jie bei yu wo yi

万物皆备于我矣).If we begin from the idea that all persons are constituted by their relationships, and further observe that relationships don’t end anywhere, then we must conclude that in each person is the whole cosmos.Classical Greek ontology gives us a world full of discrete things with each of them having its own independent identity.Persons are individuals, and each has his or her own integrity.But Chinese process cosmology gives us persons as events, where each event is sponsored by all of the history that has come before it, and is present in all of the history that will follow from it.

Ms.NI: I see.But how does the field correlate with the focus?

Prof.Ames: These are abstract ideas, and are best understood by appealing to a concrete example.Let’s take the person of Confucius himself.One way to think of Confucius is that he was a historical person who lived, and who died more than two thousand years ago.Another way to see him is as a focused event in history that continues in each generation to grow, and to shape a cultural legacy.The intensity and resolution of his focus as a person has been so strong that he has colored not only the living culture of China but the traditions of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam as well.The field of Confucius as an event in the human experience is unbounded, both synchronically across the cosmos, and diachronically reaching back and forward in time.The more intense the focus, the more extensive the reach and influence he continues to have.And the greater the reach and influence, the more intense is the focus.Mencius uses the language of

zhida

至大 for field, and

zhigang

至刚 for focus.

Zhigang

means intensity, and

zhida

means reach and influence.We can also use the language of

dao

道and

de

德 where

dao

道is the field and

de

德 as insistent particularity, is the individual focus.The

Daodejing

as a text is a manual on how each of us in our particularity by cultivating our relationships can get the most out of the human experience.Again with Confucius, the virtuosity of his insistent particularity

de

德 has been so strong that he has shaped the lives of an entire civilization.

Ms.NI: East Asian civilization as the field becomes strongly Confucian when he is considered as a focus.

Prof.Ames: Indeed, the field comes into meaningful focus according to the particular exemplar, and the focus becomes increasingly resolved as it pervades the field.

Ms.NI: And the notion of field is infinitely extended.

Prof.Ames: Yes.There is no boundary.In our own time, Confucianism is becoming a resource for a changing world cultural order.As Western culture engages Confucian values, it is changed by them.And as Confucianism is interpreted through Western categories, it too becomes increasingly meaningful.When Confucianism became Korean, and Japanese, and Vietnamese, it changed these cultures, but these cultures with their own idiosyncratic interpretations of Confucianism also made Confucianism more meaningful and important.We don’t say that Beethoven is music that German people like to listen to.Beethoven belongs to world culture, and is bigger and more important because of it.This is the future for Confucius too.

Ms.NI: Some Chinese scholars have different opinions from you.

Prof.Ames: Lots do.Western scholars as well.

Ms.NI: Some of them criticize comparative philosophy as essentializing cultures, thereby ignoring the complexity and diversity of each of them.It tends to simplify complex notions.What’s your opinion about this kind of comparison?

Prof.Ames: Some scholars think that everything is so complex that you cannot make generalizations.To generalize for them is a bad idea.To say, Confucianism is this...Greek philosophy is that...is to make a kind of distinction that is too simple.Greek becomes one thing, China becomes another.But that’s not my intention at all.First of all, as both Plato and Wittgenstein have said, we cannot think in particularity.We can only think in generalizations, so we need them.Secondly, the only thing more dangerous than generalizations is failing to make them.If I do not try to understand Chinese philosophy on its own terms—that is, by making generalizations about it by appeal to its own interpretive context—then I treat it as having the same assumptions about the world as I do.Such inadvertent redefinition is disrespectful, and a source of cultural humiliation.Again, we might use the language of the

Book of Changes

to understand the relationship between sameness and difference in the evolution of cultures.The

Changes

gives us the idea of

biantong

变通, the idea that everything is always changing, but also that there is a persistent albeit changing identity.Out of the Greeks comes Kant, out of Kant comes Habermas.There is an evolving identity in the Western philosophical narrative.In the Chinese narrative, you have Confucius，you have Mozi 墨子(c.470-c.391 BC) and Zhuangzi 庄子 (c.369-c.286 BC), and you have Han Feizi 韩非子 (c.280-c.233 BC), Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (c.179-c.104 BC) and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), and today you have Tang Junyi.Of course, these are very different voices with very different ideas, but you still have a continuing identity.Even where they disagree, they must have a shared ground in order to make sense to each other.It is certainly a complex cultural identity.But my point is that we can make generalizations.We can say that the tradition following from Confucius are way-seekers, where the tradition following from Plato are truth-seekers.Logic is the major method of finding demonstrable truth in the narrative following from the Greeks, and has very little play in the Chinese narrative.Well, in finding a contrast between these two worlds, we can say that liberal individualism has deep roots in the Greek tradition, while for the Chinese tradition, there is a very important alternative: a relationally-constituted conception of persons.In the world today, if Confucianism has an important contribution to make, it is this alternative conception of person.Individualism is a fiction, and has become a pernicious idea.Individualism gives us a model of self-interested choices, and winners-and-losers.But the Confucian tradition, grounded in the pervasive cultural metaphor of family, is win-win or lose-lose alternative.Mothers and sons, teachers and students—they win together, or lose together.

Prof.LIU: (Laughs).

Prof.Ames: And in order to resolve the human predicament in our own time—global warming, environmental degradation, pandemics, food and water shortage, international terrorism, and so on—we need to turn from individual entities (persons, corporations, sovereign states) seeking their own benefits to a model of cooperation.We need a world community that sees itself as winning together through shared effort, or losing together because we have failed to find common ground.We need a different way of thinking.And the Confucian notions of persons and harmony-in-difference are fundamental.

Ms.NI: You mentioned that the concept of universality does not exist in the Western philosophy, but some scholars say that Confucianism does have universal value.

Prof.LIU: Yes.Other sinologists, both Chinese and Western, argue with you.They say, for example, that in Mencius it says for the human palate, we all have the same desires for taste, for the human ear, we all have the same sense of love of music, and in human affections, we all have the same sense of beauty.For the world over, “righteousness” (

yi

义) and “propriety” (

li

礼) are the same.So they say that in ancient China, in ancient Confucianism, there is also universalism.Prof.Ames: Yes.But such Mencian “universalism” is a claim about commonality and shared values—

pubian

普遍.And it is a fair characterization of Mencius.But the Greek claim about “universalism” is much stronger.It is about pre-existing, absolute standards, determinative and originative principles that stand outside of time and place, and that are identical for all.Such a claim has the same force as the self-sufficiency of a transcendent God.

Prof.LIU: Yes, it’s different from Western universalism.

Prof.Ames: Yes, the difference is this.We translate

yi

义 with the word “righteousness,” but in English “righteousness” means to do what God wants you to do.It is a single standard for everyone.But

yi

义in Chinese means to find the most appropriate thing to do for everyone concerned.What is most appropriate in this situation is not appropriate in another situation.So Mozi says that if you have ten people, you have ten

yi

义.Prof.LIU: Yes,

shi ren you shi yi

十人有十义 (ten people have ten righteousnesses).Prof.Ames: Yes, exactly.So the Western concept of principle is one thing that governs all cases.But in classical Chinese,

yi

义is always a matter of context.In

yi duo bu fen

一多不分, you have the

yi

一, but you also have the

duo

多.This is not universalism in the Greek sense.That’s the point.It’s a generalization about common values that human beings share.This is true.But it’s not a universal in that classical Greek sense.Prof.LIU: In ancient China, perhaps the idea that expresses universalism is

tong

通,

biantong de tong

变通的通.

Prof.Ames: Yes, but it’s persistence, not permanence.Greek universalism comes out of a substance ontology where “being” is permanent and unchanging.

Prof.LIU: Yes,

tong

通 is persistence.It is persistence through the process of change.Prof.Ames: And so

tong

通 is

yi duo bu fen

一多不分.Exactly the point.Prof.LIU:

Tong

通 can never be separated from change.

Prof.Ames: Exactly.Exactly.Exactly.

Prof.LIU: Maybe this is different from Western universalism.

Prof.Ames: If we call it “universalism,” it becomes confusing.Let’s call it

pubian

普遍.Let’s call it

tong

通.This is the point of letting the Chinese tradition speak for itself.Guo Qiyong knows Chinese philosophy much better than I do.

Prof.LIU: (Laughs)

Prof.Ames: Guo’s whole life is Chinese philosophy.I cannot tell Guo Qiyong how to understand Chinese philosophy.All I am saying is that it can be a source of confusion if we collapse the difference between Western universal and

biantong

,

yi duo bu fen xing de pubian, zhege bushi yiyang de dongxi

变通，一多不分性的普遍，这个不是一样的东西.You know, that’s just my point.And it has really to do with

ba Zhongguo wenhua zou chuqu

把中国文化走出去.If we want people to understand China, then China has to be China.And so if we use Western vocabulary to speak China, then we have

gu bu gu, guzai guzai

觚不觚, 觚哉觚哉.

Prof.LIU: Not a real China.

Prof.Ames: Not a real China.

Prof.LIU: It’s a translated China.(Laughs)

Prof.Ames: It’s a China translated by missionaries.It’s a converted China.If we go to the Beida library, and look for the canons of Chinese philosophy

Yijing

《易经》 or

Lunyu

《论语》，we will not find them shelved in the philosophy section, but in a section for Eastern religion.This is because the Western “China” has already be converted into a Chinese Christianity, and so that’s where it is now.If we want to embrace the idea of taking Chinese culture abroad

(

zou chuqu

走出去), I always say let’s not be anxious (

buyao zhaoji

不要着急), but let’s do it properly.The rise of China has happened precipitously in one generation.Let’s take China’s China to the world, not just for China’s sake, but as an important contribution to a changing world cultural order.Confucianism cannot solve all of the world’s problems, but it has assets that are timely and necessary, and should have its place at the table.

Prof.LIU: Today many people are anxious because China has not been understood by Western people.

Prof.Ames: Yes, it’s true.But in our time, Europe is building walls, and America is withdrawing from everything.So whether China likes it or not, it has no choice but to try to provide stability for the next generation.But this has to be done right.To do it right means for China to understand and respect its own values.But if you say

pubian

普遍is universal, then what we are doing is saying China wants to be Christian missionaries.When the Jesuit missionaries brought their universal, One True God to China, they said Chinese people must give up their own values captured in “family reverence” (

xiao

孝) and “propriety” (

li

礼), and embrace the Christian God.This is universalism.If China instead has on offer

yi duo bu fen, gongtong ti, hexie, he er butong

一多不分, 共同体, 和谐, 和而不同, then this is a much better inclusive and accommodating (

pubian

普遍)。Prof.LIU: Yes.This kind of

pubian

普遍is not exclusive of antagonistic.There is room for negotiation.There can be a real cultural dialogue.Prof.Ames: Yes, indeed.The history of Confucianism is hybridic (

hunhexing

混合性).The first wave of Western learning, Buddhism comes into China, and changes China: hybridity.We cannot talk about the neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming 王阳明 (1472-1529) without talking about Buddhism.But China also changes Buddhism to become its own kind of Buddhism:

sanlun

三论,

huayan

华严,

chanzong

禅宗.This is Chinese Buddhism, not Indian Buddhism.The strength of the Confucian tradition is its power of absorption

(

xishou nengli

吸收能力).A value such as

shu

恕 means to grow through deference to difference.The notion of “virtuosity” (

de

德) means “to get” (

de

得): in order to

de

德, you have to

de

得, you have to absorb what comes from the outside, and have to defer to new ideas.

Prof.LIU: Prof.Ames, you studied at the University of London in 1980s?

Prof.Ames: 1970s.I’m really old.

Prof.LIU: (Laughs) Angus Charles Graham (葛瑞汉) was there?

Prof.Ames: Yes, he was one of my teachers.

Prof.LIU: He taught you some courses?

Prof.Ames: In England, to do a PhD you don’t have courses.You just write a dissertation.And so with Angus Graham, we were always close friends.I would spend time talking with him at the university, and having a drink in the bar.For the last two years of his life, I was able to bring him to Hawaii and share him with my own students.

Prof.LIU: Ah, really?

Prof.Ames: Yes, he loved Hawaii.

Prof.LIU: So his doctoral dissertation was about

correlation:

yin-yang

阴阳？Prof.Ames: No,

er Cheng

二程 (the Cheng Brothers) was his doctoral dissertation.But later he did a book on

yin-yang

阴阳.Prof.LIU: Oh...I see.In his doctoral dissertation, did he use the idea of correlation to study

er Cheng

二程?Prof.Ames: Yes.But we all have to move forward.For Nietzsche, the best student is not the student who says the same thing as the teacher.The best students are those who have a mind of their own, and who build upon what they have learned.Confucius too said that if he gives his students one corner, they must come back with the other three, or he will not teach them again.I’m very grateful to Graham.And even more grateful to my dissertation supervisor, Liu Dianjue刘殿爵 (1921-2010).But in order to respect them properly, we have to try to find our own way.Graham was very much a rationalist.For example, grammar and language, for him, follows in the structuralist tradition (

jiegou zhuyi

结构主义) like Saussure.

Prof.LIU: He has used...maybe Jacobson?

Prof.Ames: Yes, he does use Jacobson.Exactly the point.Exactly the point.He uses Jacobson.So if you look at his book,

Disputers of the Tao

, he criticizes David L.Hall (郝大维) and me, because we are not structuralists, we are post-structuralists.We are

ti yong

体用, while structuralists are

ti er bu yong

体而不用.Our argument is that Confucianism isn’t structuralism； it is post-structuralism.

Prof.LIU: So it does not need that kind of “structure.” (Laughs)

Prof.Ames: Right, right, right, exactly the point.Graham is influenced by Jacobson.And there is also Chomsky, Chomsky’s deep-structure.

Prof.LIU:

Shenceng jiegou

深层结构.Transformational, deep-structure.

Prof.Ames: My more recent collaborator, Henry Rosemont (罗思文) was a student of Chomsky.So when we did some collaborative project, he would bring Chomsky in, and I would try to push him out.

Porf.LIU: (Laughs)

Prof.Ames: And with Graham, he brings Jacobson in, and I don’t want Jacobson.

Prof.LIU: And Graham also borrows the idea from Marcel Granet (葛兰言) about the idea of correlation?

Prof.Ames: Yes, Granet.When you look at Joseph Needham, he’s very good, but he is heavily dependent upon Granet.He talks about the “genius” of Granet.Granet is really an important figure.Needham would visit London for our weekly seminars when I was there.When Tu Weiming 杜维明 (1940-) left Harvard, he was replaced in some ways by a younger Michael Puett.In his work, Puett criticizes me and my collaborators—David Hall and Henry Rosemont as being in the same stream as Granet, Needham, and Graham—and he is right.And I am honored to be in that company.The contrast is with Hegel and Jaspers and Weber who were universalists—the ideas of the principle of teleology that can bring logic and history together, Absolute Spirit, a universal history, and one rationality.This I think is really the wrong way to read China.

Prof.LIU: Correlative thinking and open-ended.

Prof.Ames: Look at the

Book of Changes

《易经》.What is the 63th hexagram?Prof.LIU: No.63 is

jiji

既济 and no.64 is

weiji

未济.Prof.Ames: 既济, 未济.So that’s the point.Chinese cosmology is

weiji

未济； it is open-ended.To cross the stream to the other side

jiji

既济.But then the idea of not yet having reached the other side is

weiji

未济.So that’s the point.That’s the power of Chinese cosmology tradition.

Prof.LIU: Yes, unfinished, open to everything.

Prof.Ames: Yes, exactly.

Ms.NI: Prof.Ames, since having joined Beijing University, what’s your future plans in your research?

Prof.Ames: Beida is very good to me.They give me very good students.Next semester, I will teach a course called Research into the English Translation of the Chinese Philosophical Canons中国哲学经典的英译研究.How we go about translating Chinese culture into a Western language.That’s what we have been talking about today.

Ms.NI: And how to avoid the mistakes that you mentioned.

Prof.Ames: Exactly.

Ms.NI: My teacher Prof.Liu, he is very honored to invite you to Shanghai Normal University to give us a lecture.

Prof.LIU: Yes! For a week or so?

Prof.Ames: For sure.

Prof.LIU: Thank you in advance!