Prof. Michael Puett | How to Read the Past: Philosophy and History in Early China

hello everyone and thank you for being here my name is Paul D Ambrosio and I teach Chinese philosophy at East China Normal University in Shanghai where the

sahai Wayfare Collaborative Learning project is based today we want to welcome everyone to our second lecture

of the 2023 2024 Academic Year we're hosting professor professor Michael peit from Harvard University and we have a very nice lineup of Scholars from different places to

discuss with Professor Pitt our commentators today include IUN from singua University Professor Leed Z Fen from Redman University Professor Trenton

Wilson from Princeton University and we also have Professor Hing who's actually a colleague of mine at East China Normal University serving his chair for this

lecture I want to thank everyone who has been invited and every everyone in the audience for making this event possible the topic of professor's P's lecture is

how to read the past philosophy and history in early China the structure of this event is as follows Professor hooding will introduce Professor Pitt and then Professor Pitt

will give his talk after which the three commentators will discuss uh their comments with Professor PT before opening the floor to comments from the

audience we'll end this event properly promptly at 9:30 or just thereabouts which is a little less than 90 minutes from now before getting things started and

handing everything over to Professor Hing I want to say a few words about Thea Collaborative Learning academic Forum the S wha Collaborative Learning

project hopes to distinguish itself from some of the less productive conventional practices in contemporary Academia as posted on our website we are

not interested in male peacocks in jerks or in any form of egoism and self-promotion we hope to curb all types type of aggressive and look at me I'm

smarter than you or don't I know so much and similar types of attitudes in academic exchanges the sahai was Collaborative Learning project Leeds to accomplish

these shifts in academic in orientation during academic change by encouraging productive communication humble discussions real questions and responses

that are open and honest we hope to Foster environments where people truly learn from and with one another before introducing our chair

Professor Hing I want to let everyone know um a little bit about something a a little bit more about Professor peit um

who's someone I think that really embodies the spirit of the s project so way back when I was a PhD student I sent Professor pewt an email I don't know if

you remember this um this was maybe more than 12 years ago um I had no sort of introduction to him I had no way of knowing him I just sent him an email out

of the blue and I as you know I said I'm just this poor PhD student I would love to send you some notes basically about my um PhD thesis but he didn't really

want to have an email exchange with me instead he invited me to his office and I'm pretty sure we spent more than two hours going over my thesis in detail um

it was really really an amazing experience and I'm so grateful um and I think everybody who knows Professor Pitt knows that

he's super nice guy he's very very honest and he's extremely engaging so I really want to thank you um Professor pewt for sharing your work with us for

sharing your time with us and for whatever it was 12 years ago um some afternoon I think it was in the fall maybe um for those two hours that was

that was really um very special so now I want to hand things over to our chair Professor hooding um when I asked her

because of course that you ask people to write their own bios um when I asked her to send me a bio she sent me this very short sentence ding works in the field

of philosophy and mind and social cognition with a particular focus on Collective intentionality embodiment and we

identity so she only sent me this short sentence but it does very little to describe her achievements um Professor king holds many positions at our

University and in international committees he has been awarded not a small number of very impressive grants and while she claims to focus on on the

philosophy of mind and social cognition she's also an expert in very various aspects of cognitive science and is far more fluent in Chinese philosophy than

she thinks so um thank you very much Professor King for being here and I'll hand things over to you now yeah thank you very much a Paul um good evening

everyone we're privileged to have an extraordinary opportunity for Collaborative Learning when are honored to have a worldclass philosopher with us

tonight Professor Michael puit Professor puit holds the prestigious position of warther claim professor of Chinese philosophy and a chair of the community

on the study of Religion at Harvard University additionally he's a fellow for programs in anthropological and historical science and the languages and

the civilizations of East Asia at the Swedish Collegian for advanced study ubala Professor pu works in the fields

of intellectual history and philosophy with a particular focus on early China he is author of a number of influential monographs including the

ambivalence of creation debates concerning Innovation and artifice in early China and to become a god cosmology sacrifice and self

divinization in China furthermore his recent work the path what Chinese philosophers can teach us about the good life has earned a place on the New York

Times B seller list these three books has been translated into Chinese and published Professor pit is also a co-editor of a significant volume on

ritual and its consequences recognized for his teaching Excellence Professor pit has received multiple Awards including being named

Harvard College professors attachment to his dedication to undergrad education we are really looking forward to his talk

this evening on how to read the past philosophy and history in early China so please join me in extending a warm welcome to Professor

puit great well thank you so much Jean for the much much too nice introduction um but very greatly appreciated and let me also take the moment to thank Paul as well for organizing this Paul this is

such an exciting entire set of of discussions that you've organized here um you are truly the one who embodies the spirit of this you are such an incredibly open engaging person and it's

wonderful that you're bringing that Spirit to this group and I'm very honored to be here and my hope will be today to try to live up to a piece of

your vision Paul which is to say I will be giving less a final complete talk to which you can give statements um but rather a series of thoughts about ways

of thinking about philosophy and intellectual history in terms of some of the early Chinese materials hopefully in a way that will open this up for the conversation which I very very much look

forward so with that being said let me begin with a few words about what I would like to begin this conversation about um you might think from the title

of the talk that I would be talking about philosophies of history in early China and that will certainly play into my discussion but what I'm interested

slightly more in is the question of how we read the past and what are the implications of the ways of doing that

in part I'm also very interested in what this would mean for the role of the Fig figure who is so reading the past and the degree to which their own placement

in an historical process matters to the way they read it now that's a very bizarre and Abstract way of putting it so let me start with some examples not first from the Chinese tradition but

first from some relatively recent meaning past three Century examples in the western tradition to give a sense of what I uh what I'm thinking about here and I'll intentionally choose just some

very well-known examples to give a sense of of my concerns this morning or this evening depending on where you are in the world so let me begin with an

obvious example um Kant so to what degree does kant's historical placement in you Kingsburg in the late

18th century matter to his philosophy as an intellectual historian of course I would say it matters a ton but in terms of his own philosophical claims it does

not matter at all so according to kant's own claims he is simply giving a critique of the possibilities of all

human knowledge and therefore of all of our ways of acting properly within the world and theoretically this could have been done at any point in human history

he just happens to be the one who is doing it because he was awoken from his dogmatic Slumber by reading Hume that woke him up from the silly metaphysical discussions of the western tradition but

all of that is happen stance in terms of his own philosophical claims and accordingly when he works out his arguments his own placement in this

historical process is at least he would claim utterly irrelevant and accordingly the the historical statements that he will make comes out of such a

positioning so does he have a vision of History well the answer is yes but it's largely one of the degree to which people did or did

not understand both the strengths and limitations of possible human knowledge in the world so it so happens that the Western philosophical tradition had had

trapped itself in these metaphysical discussions that went beyond the possibilities of human reason and because of that had fallen into dogmatic

views that restricted human autonomy um none of that had to happen it sadly just did and again he luckily for the world

red Hume was woken up by this and was able to develop this the implications down the road would be according to him were we to follow this we could begin a

period of aarong of of Enlightenment in which we would recognizing human autonomy build a social world based upon autonomy so again there is a crucial

history here here but it is simply one of the degree to which we properly understand human autonomy the limits of human reason as well as the implications

for ethics and sadly we didn't for a long time now hopefully we will so his own historical positioning is irrelevant according to his own arguments

philosophically now let me immediately move to an early critic um of this position

um Hegel to give another obvious example who is by his own positioning almost the exact opposite of everything I've mentioned so sticking with the

phenomenology of spirit hegel's argument here is the phenomenology of spirit could not have been written before right the argument is this is only being

written at the moment when absolute Consciousness is being achieved and P I mean p obiously was not a p human being but at least according to his own claim

he luckily is living at the moment in the development or he would even say the unfolding of the consciousness of spirit when the point has been achieved when

you can finally have absolute knowledge and the phenomenology of spirit presents itself as that absolute Spirit In other words that absolute knowledge

recollecting its own development to that moment so it's not that necessarily Hegel is claiming himself to be more intelligent than Aristotle Al though

again May well have thought that this was not a humble human being but according to his own philosophy the argument was no no no it it took an

extraordinary amount of time for Spirit to unfold that then allows this possible final synthesis so at least according to

hegel's own claim his positioning in the historical process is not only crucial it literally defines the possibility for

him of doing what he would consider true philosophy now do we have examples like this from the early Chinese tradition absolutely um there are many but for

reasons that become obvious when I get further into the discussion let me just give two for each of these positions um very different in all other respects philosophically but comparable in terms

of the claims about one's positioning in an historical process so going back to cot are there figures in early China who make comparable claims that there are

simply philosophical truths that could and should have been worked out at any moment in human history and the philosophers in question are simply the one doing it but it could have been done

any time the answer is of course let me give an obvious example um Mooda so the argument of moods of course is that 10

gives a set of teachings that we should be following we should have always been following them um in Antiquity we did then this was lost for

a period of time now hopefully people will follow them if we do follow them we will create a proper order so as with K there is a history here but the history

is simply one of people properly following these teachings or failing to do so um there's no historical process that is inherent in the argument of the

philosophy itself again the history is simply the result of people following or failing to follow it are there examples like a Hegel um well yes i' I've argued

elsewhere so I'll be brief about it here but I would argue that Quanza is giv an argument very comparable to hegel's phenomenology of spirit so the argument

of the Quanza um is again very similar to Hegel the argument is we are now giving a final synthesis that final synthesis

is being given not because we are greater sages than previous sages in human history although here too like Hegel the H nonza authors are not humble people so they may well have thought

that but at least according to their own claims in the postface they are simply giving this final synthesis because they live at a moment in human history when

it is possible so all previous human history consists of specific responses by sages to specific problems each of

those responses has resulted in more problems that subsequent sages didn't have to respond to as well the result of this over time has led to a loss of an

earlier Harmony where humans lived within nature but essentially were the equivalent of animals by breaking this with sagely

Innovations we have created a world of all of the Innovations we know domesticated grains clothing Warfare the state laws Etc and we have developed

huge amounts of philosophical understandings of how ethically to live in the world each one of these however occurred as specific responses in

specific situations and the growth of all of these over time is what is allowing at this key moment they claim the final synthesis building upon all of

these Innovations creating therefore they claim a final cosmology that will recreate an earlier Harmony but now with Humanity at the center with all of the

innovations that we have developed but now in a way that will cease to break us from the larger Cosmos the claim in other words being the entire historical

process was necessary for our doing what we are doing this could not have been done two centuries before or Millennium before so very much like Hegel the final

synthesis is a direct process of the the progressive accumulation and loss of theal process that makes possible this final

moment now with those as two examples one in which historical positioning is by the own claims of the philosopher irrelevant versus one where it's

everything but everything deemed in terms of the claim of of achieving some kind of final synthesis what I would like to turn to now is a third position

which I for reasons that will become obvious soon will leave undefined for a moment but let me give it first in very broad terms and here again I'll begin

with some Western examples from recent times and then look back to early China so what about that position which is

intrinsically based upon on one's self-perception in terms of the historical process one self-perception of where one stands in an historical

process without however any claim to achieving a final synthesis and the entire philosophical work comes down to

how you read the past how you read the textual tradition of the past and how through that interpretation you are making Arguments for how we should be

acting in the world now my first example is one that only in part fits this description but let me give it because he's been an important figure for for lots of people who I

think do fully fit what I'm talking about so here's an example of someone who again an odd fit for what I'm talking about um Martin heiger so at one

level you could say heiger really belongs in my category one right I mean here's someone who is arguing that that

there is an unconcealment of being and you could argue the history of the Western World consists of the degree to

which humans listened to that opening or failed to listen to it so the presocratic of course had a sense of

Truth as unconcealment from being that of course is lost with Plato the history of metaphysics is the working out of that destruction leading to the final

most extreme example in n and then haider's claim is I am trying once again to listen to the unconcealment of being

itself so pose that way it's You could argue it's a lot like C there is one thing we should be doing in this case listen learning to listen to the

unconcealment from being and the history of the world or the Western tradition consists of the degree to which we do or do not listen to it um and again that's

obviously a key part of heiger but I would argue his entire philosophical work is really aimed at another piece of

this which is given for him that argument what he sees himself as doing is rereading the key philosophical and

literary text from the Western tradition and to some extent as we know the Chinese tradition although we unfortunately don't have his his actual readings of Thea but we know he was

interested in it and through that reading he wants to say he is allowing the possibility of a new opening and the

argument of course is not that he's giving accurate readings of all the key figures um if you've read his readings of kerin um these are very fascinating

readings and very intriguing what he's doing but he's obviously not giving you away close reading of what you know her ferland's intent was just to to argue

it's powerful readings that are based upon the argument that at this historical Moment by reading these key sets of texts the presocratic

kerin as well as key figures even the ones who lost the the notion of being but through a rereading

we can see the hints that even they themselves were not recognizing and through that rereading of the past we

create an opening and put that way of course um you're seeing a mode of reading that would become extremely influential um I'll give an obvious

example someone coming right out of this um Fuko I think Fuko is minus eval to say the claims about being this essentially is what Fuko is arguing for

Fuko his positioning in the historical process is kind of everything like he would not be writing the books he wrote If he lived in a different historical

epic he is writing the books he writes as interventions in the moment he is living in because of that moment he is

working through what it means to live in that moment and to do so it all comes down to how you read the past so in his

earlier work that means I am writing a work at the at the moment when the possibility of the end of humanism is here so in the order of things I am I'm

rewriting now our history to understand and therefore give an opening to a world without hum that is not dominated by humanism in his next stage of course

doing what he calls genealogy it is I will look at current power structures that we are failing to understand and through a genealogical account both

understand them but again for him it's not really understanding it's intervene in a way that will allow us to work and therefore alter the world but without a

sense to put it mildly that there's a final synthesis or even without a sense that I will tell you exactly where this will take us but he clearly thinks it

will give us an opening and of course then that the final set of Works he will take the next step and say it doesn't quite say but I think by implication saying and I will continue this work by

opening up other possibilities that have existed in the western works almost exclusively in the western tradition in the western tradition so Notions of the

self and practices of the self in ancient Greece that he won't say are real possibilities but I think that's clearly the implication um confession which you will see is both the beginning

genealogically of our own endless attempt to look within and find the self but yet by the way he reads it he wants wants to say are there other

possibilities so it all comes down to how one reads the past and how one reads the textual tradition of the past and of

course crucial for this is again like haidar um it's not so much an accurate reading of the past he's out for him he's not making things up but needless

to say he will very happily read texts against the obvious authorial intent he will very happily work through text where a seemingly minor passing comment

by in a text Will suddenly become the dominant way of reading the text and what's at stake there is not is this an accurate reading what is at stake is a philosophical positioning based upon

where he is and therefore how we read now you're probably getting with these last few sentences of sense of where I'm going but now let me lay it

out on the table um I think that this third position which I'm intentionally not giving a a name to yet um plays a very significant role in the Chinese

philosophical tradition and one of the arguments I'd like to make is we should consider the practitioners of this philosophers so when we are doing philosophical analyses um the figures

I'm about to mention and the approaches I'm about to mention really should be part of our conversation as well so let's then jump into as I've done with

the previous two examples um early Chinese examples of this third thus far IL defined position um does this occur

well needless to say um yes and again my sentences have been given hints of where I'm going so here too let me be explicit um I would like to argue that not only

much of the entire commentarial tradition in Chinese history can be read along these lines but that it really begins before for what we Define as

commentaries it begins in the Waring States period goes right through the early Han and then once we move into what we would call actual commentaries

on earlier texts this continues which is to say the following um yes are there commentators in Chinese history who will

claim that they are simply writing a commentary to understand the text they are commenting upon the answer is yes there are um it is intriguing when that

occurs that is usually made as an explicit argument in opposition to most commentarial practice because there is a correct I would say self-consciousness

that this is not the typical way that commentary work works the typical way I would argue that commentary works is on the contrary you're doing kind of the

things I was mentioning Fuko is doing you are rereading the past in the case of a commentary rereading a specific artifact from the past and you are

rereading it in a way based upon your current position and that rereading if it is seen as successful gives an

opening for the current situation now I mentioned this begins before the actual development of what we would call commentaries and I will accordingly begin my own discussion before the

actual emergence of commentaries or rather um putting it differently I'll give examples that perhaps we should consider commentaries um and I'll begin

with the most obvious therefore um confucious so when we think of bringing confucious into our philosophical discussions we will and quite correctly

so focus on for example the analects and the discussions about humaness which are crucially important but needless to say there's a whole another side of of the

sort of response to confucious that comes out of things like the spring and Autumn annals in which the spring and Autumn anals is being read in the

tradition not as confucious telling us what happened in the state of blou the entire spring and Autumn anals of course is carefully giving us a rereading of

the events that happened in the state of Lou to force us to rethink our understandings Of Human Action our understandings of the workings of well depending on which Comon you're you're

talking about but but the understanding of the role of tin the the role that humans should be acting in the world or rethinking of the Heavenly mandate all

of which is being laid out in the spring and autom manal in a way needles to say that we could only understand by our own incredibly careful rereading of the

spring and Autumn anals and since it's not going to be clear what confucious is saying that rereading itself becomes in the tradition part of the key work that

you are doing to bring this teaching into the current moment so the commentaries therefore do that same work at the next level so the commentaries

will present themselves as rereadings of the spring and autom anals and again that rereading yes it's trying to get at the

intent of a confucious but if it's successful it is opening up proper ways of understanding human history according to one's current moment and this is true

not just of the actual commentary say the Goan commentary this is true of the way you work with and read the spring anonym

anal to therefore move to an obvious example as well but an extreme one um needless to say um this is exactly what sonachan presents himself as doing now

we would not call so much in a commentator in the the usual way of thinking about that but in this mode of talking that is exactly

what he is right he is presenting himself as rereading human history via the spring and Autumn ANS he presents

himself over and over again as a figure not of course at the sagely level of a confucious but someone who is trying to

reread the tradition as confucious did that requires an incredible complex positioning of what confucious was trying to do it also requires an

incredibly complex positioning of himself Visa that historical process and he constantly makes reference to the

fact that this work that he is writing requires the same kind of reading that people are giving a spring and autom manal in other words I'm not going to overtly give you everything I'm thinking

I'm going to reread the tradition in a way that will open up new possibilities expecting people to read me as understanding that which would also mean of course they will be reading it in

later period meaning that they will have to read it in different ways than the way that I'm necessarily thinking at the moment I am doing so in essence what you

are doing is seeing s muchan playing the role of a commentator to the spring and automs but not in a literal sense it's a commentary to the historical process

working with the historical process as confucious did in his own time looking back in the state of Lou but the goal is not to give you an accurate historical

account of what happened the goal is to give you if you learn to read it with the care he's wanting us to read it a sense of of not just what happened but

how we should think about it and how we should reread that past Vis by rereading his work this is why to give the example examples that are very well known but

worth worth pausing on um his accounts will chapter by chapter always give you different perspectives of an event than in another chapter he will give one

position that you will wonder is this is this his argument and then he will counter it a few sentences later and the goal of this is clearly to prevent us

from giving an easy reading of what happened and I think he is trying to do the ways that you commentators are trying to do with the spring and Autumn annals it becomes reading this work

becomes a training ground for thinking in a complex way about human history and our actions within it so to give an obvious example I'm I keep sticking in

this talk with obvious examples to to hopefully be able to bring in conversation um when he will discuss someone like Lisa you know the famous prime minister of the state of Chen he

will give an account that's not simply saying oh you know Lisa was an evil bad guy um it's actually a very complex Nuance to count where he takes you

through Moment by moment showing when and how Lisa responded to certain moments some of which clearly s muchen

were thinks were very powerful responses others were horrible responses and S muchin is trying to teach us not simply

to say Lisa was an evil bad guy but trying to both see Lisa as a figure responding to situations giving us a

sense of how you can respond effectively or not and of course at the next level calling on us as a reader to reread that

history and reread all all all PR all all the other aspects of History too to rethink our own actions in the world and yet that the implications of this are

never going to be something you could lay out out the philosophy of somach chin is that we should do the following any more than at least most commentarial readings or usages of the spring and

autom manal will be and yet I would like to argue this is absolutely philosophically based it is not an attempt to give again an accurate reading of what happened it is a

philosophical rereading of the past this of course is being done right after my second example that I mentioned the wanza when I was discing ing that

that second View and this I think is telling too um the Quanza You could argue is also doing commentary but commentary of a very different kind the

Quanza commentary again is not saying we're going to give you an accurate description of what happened it's saying we are going to reread all of previous human history in a way that will give

you an absolute guide that you can follow for all time I mean literally says I'm or we the the Leo clan we are writing this as a guide for the Leo

rulers to rule the Han for all of eternity because it's the final guide that will tell them what to do and you could say samach chin has in some ways a comparable project in terms of it

reading of the past but of course sanin will absolutely reject the idea that this rereading will give you some kind of final synthesis that will guide

future Behavior what he kind of wants is the opposite if the wons is saying we've worked this out now everyone else can simply follow this in a sense what somach is saying is no if you really

followed this you would know there will never be a final synthesis you will have to continue doing this kind of rereading of the past that I am doing following

the way confucious was doing it and that will have to go on constantly then I would like to argue you get the development of what we would

call the commentarial tradition and I would like to argue um this strand will continue now not completely obviously you will certainly get commentaries that

will say on the contrary um let's read confucious as the figure who put together the five Jing the five Classics and let's do commentaries that will

simply explain what confucius's vision and intent was that we should simply follow but you also get lots of work some what we would classify as

commentary others that we I think should properly think of is simply reworkings of this mode of reading history that will completely continue um W Chong I

think is doing precisely this so when one of Wang Chong's key moves precisely against an argument that we should view confucious as the final Sage who gave us

a final vision of knowledge what of w Chong's key move moves is to say well no confucious was a sage but all sages are limited all sages are simply responding

to certain moments and all sages are trying to reread the past according to that moment and we must continue that process which means we must continue to

reread the past as a confucious was rereading the past we follow a confucious not because he is a perfect Sage but because he is a great Sage doing what sages do with limitation s

weading to past and we therefore do the same and I think he is for all the differences between say Wong Chong and aachen I think he is arguing something

very similar to aachen like what we are doing is rereading the past and we need that tradition to continue confucious is

not perfect um no Sage is perfect but it requires this endless work of rereading and I would like to argue this

will continue to a significant degree as a key philosophical position for much of the rest of Chinese history which would

mean the following um when we read commentaries we needle CE will often read them to help us understand the text

being commented upon um that can be a very helpful thing to do I would say um when we do so however most of the commentaries we are

working with were not written with that intent most commentaries are written to be read in their entirety with the question of why is this figure reading

the text that he is Reading in the way that he is reading expecting an audience that will pick up on the strategies in play and the implications and moreover

engag in a debate that includes not just other commentaries but other genres too because almost all the commentators are also writing other texts that we should

read as part of that positioning of oneself VAV the tradition now put this way what I would like to argue is the

following um this entire tradition of reading the past reading the textual tradition and positioning oneself Visa that reading in terms of One's Own

historical moment and expecting later figures to do the same I would like to argue this has been a very significant to put it mildly

position within the Chinese tradition a few such figures have made it into our um sort of Pantheon of figures that we'll call Chinese philosopher so Wang

be um Jui certainly we would certainly read these as being philosophical figures but note we do because they're the ones who are more along the lines of

of giving us a clear philosophical position um bordering on Timeless I'm certainly for Jui not just bordering I mean it absolutely is a Timeless one and

so a Jui will be a commentator but he's really much more along the lines of my position one right he's really one saying like sadly we have lost the way

but that's just because of our bad reading read properly you can understand the way as confucious and just did and therefore a

proper reading will give you access to a proper understanding of the way um we will correctly read that as a philosophical position but we tend not

to think of aachen a wang Chong or the many other commentarial figures as being philosophers and I would like to argue

that we should and let me take that to make a larger comparative Point um my reason for beginning with modern Western examples for each of these three was in

part just because these are ones that that many of us have read and they give us hopeful examples to see the positions I'm talking about however um I'm also

doing it for another reason too if one looks at earlier intellectual traditions in other words precot um are the examples I'm giving from the

Chinese tradition unique and I would argue absolutely not I would argue um strongly I at least not aware of a

commentarial tradition that is not doing the sorts of things I'm talking about but I would also say what is intriguing about the Chinese version of this is the

openness of it um the openness of giving us like seemingly bizarre almost borderline misreadings of earlier texts

but misreadings that again if they work they work because because read this way it opens up other possibilities and it is intriguing the degree to which you are allowed to do that as a

philosophical move within the Chinese tradition which is both intriguing in itself but I also think opens up some intriguing other ways of reading other commentarial Traditions if you look for

example at the Western commentarial Traditions relatively few people will overtly do this and yet I would argue it's being done all the time and so one of the things that's helped by taking

these Chinese moves seriously it allows us to reflect on other commentarial traditions and ask is perhaps some of this going on much more commonly than we

usually see it as going on because it's not done quite as overtly and I would like to argue it is and on that point let me simply note even a heiger when he

is reading the presocratic and hin as clearly figures who he thinks have aent of the UN concealment of being note to his readings of other figures too

including even an aquinus where he'll give these fascinating readings where at least between the lines he seems to be saying aquinus really is doing this

despite aquinas's own claims and if we reread him properly regardless of what aquinus thought he was doing we will see openings that aquinus himself either

didn't see or saw but couldn't tell us and it doesn't even matter which of those it is the key is how will we read

him so let me now pull back and give the larger argument that I would hope would come out of this um if there's anything

to this um I would like for this position um this third position I'm still not giving a definition to but bear with me a couple more minutes um I

would like for us to take this philosophically seriously I think it has clearly played a significant role in 20th century and 21st century

euroamerican philosophy I think it has played an incredibly important role in the Chinese classical tradition and again not just the Chinese classical tradition and it's something I think we

should be actively looking at throughout all the classical Traditions I would like these positions to be brought into our philosophical discussions because they are absolutely fascinating in terms

of the implications of what they're getting at when we so read them and were we to do so I think it would open up

what is really been a dominant mode of philosophical work in most of the intellectual Traditions to which we have

access and on the China side I might add this has not ended so which I'm sure is painfully obvious when I was giving my examples this absolutely continues and I

think often times we risk misreading figures who position themselves as simply giving accurate histories of the past would in fact I think what they're trying to do is

position themselves in exactly the line we've been talking about confucious San and continuing and they're expecting an audience that can see their moves and

understand the implications of doing so and then let me finally get to the issue that I've been putting off for this entire talk um I keep saying I'm not going to give or

have been hesitant to give a name for this by now it's probably becoming obvious I don't think this is a clear um position that can be given a nice

category so what I would like to call this in as ambiguous a way as I can is a mode of doing philosophy based upon how

one reads the past how one reads the earlier textual tradition how one positions oneself Visa that textual tradition and the entire time expecting

or I should say at least hoping for a readership that will read the work along those lines in other words read it not as an account of X what they're

ostensibly talking about but read it as a work of reading which means if we read it we are hopefully training ourselves to do the sorts of work that they are hoping to do as well when they were

doing their work so I can't think of a single word that that that hopefully summarizes this position but in a way I kind of think

that might be a good thing because hopefully if we come to see this as an incredibly significant intellectual position um part of the power of it is

that it's not one that by definition can lead to a kind of easy category because by definition is one that is ored to be Ever Changing based upon one's

historical position and one's constant rereading of the past so I will close by failing to give a nice word to this but

hopefully in a good way I think thinking through our entire textual tradition from this Line opens up a powerful way of looking at the intellectual tradition in China and again not just China um

when I talk to people working in commentarial Traditions of other areas usually they will say oh yeah that's going on all the time in Tradition X

that I'm working on but usually not terribly overt which again is part of why I think it can be powerful to bring this into a larger comparative discussion because these moves coming

from the China side are often so overt that they allow us to bring it into our larger discussions and realize that this is not just a philosophical position

that that occurs in what we call Modern Western philosophy in fact it has been a very significant intellectual move for much of the classical Traditions that

we're able to access and read so with that as an opening statement let us open this up for conversation and My Hope has

been to do this discussion in a way that hopefully will allow that conversation so I very much look forward to thoughts

suggestions concerns other examples other ways of thinking about these sorts of of materials I'm talking about anything so thank you so much and let's open this

up thank you Professor P for the very rich and inspiring talk and which I think inject the Vitality to the past

and the transition so now let's move on to our discussion part um as Paul mentioned before we have three

commentators tonight and our F uh first initial commentator is y I um I is an associal professor in the department of

philosophy at chinua University and she is interested in classical Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy in particular topics such as non-verbal

communication silence laa roral questions luck and responsibility acceptance and courage courage and moral

expertise so welcome I thank you thank you professor H introduction and thank you Michael for this yeah extremely intriguing topic it

it's a lot to think about um I have a lot of question actually but I have three minutes so I'll make it very brief I'm wondering to what extent you are

also thinking uh in parallel with making the argument the philosophical positioning based on where you are uh in

parallel with uh knowledge based on uh where you are and your context I think for a a subjective individual

epistemological history this argument is also equally um uh counterintuitive also um also Scholars have made other efforts

also you talking about ritual to contribute the contextual knowledge to talk about the responsive responsive sensitivity towards situations so this

will be my my my question in terms of philosophy or knowledge yeah and then you talk about you talk about uh where you are which I

I believe is extremely um important but if we think of uh feminist understanding of knowledge in terms of positioning yourself one emphasis is also who you

are and then when talking about who you are if this becomes a difficult to answer in terms of a CH early Chinese commentarial tradition there will be a

person's instead of person a collection of personhood uh Collective effort um like uh client did with the Dron who

Provo act to rethink the coherency that sort of things so this will be another question um and not to mention we might

not exactly know um their facial colors and then yeah and then the third one is that I agree with you that it opens up new possibilities to

interpret uh and construct knowledge but I'm wondering uh you're talking about the practice of comment commentating things itself that opens up the knowledge or

you are talking about the intention of the commentators who tries to open up knowledge because I think commentators trying to lock up a truth and then

because of this irony the opening of the new understanding continue to evolve that's uh my my my very limited understanding of U of A Commentary and

one be will be a different case with other commentaries because they give definitions uh talking about a logic and then give a status to heaven and a final

question is you talk about commentary but I I I'm wondering to what extent you want to include tax such as anecdotal

Tex or parallel text um yeah becomes very complicated but um it's also because Chinese scholarship frequently

talking about copy and paste if they see a tin manuscript talking about a figure like uang and then they will go back to

okay and then there must be something in relation to but it's not necessarily so so commentary seems to have a more clear relationship with commentary and text

but also in existing Chinese scholarship they also assume a close relationship of a a SE timely sequence so that's my my

my my my Wonder wonders and it's really great it got me thinking and then so excited to be here thank you very much great thank you so much your your

questions are absolutely wonderful and let me answer them by mean of some examples um that I think will at least bring up the issues you're asking so

correctly about so let me mention someone I haven't touched on yet um goong so goong will explicitly say he is coming out of a

tradition of Wang Chong um a statement that's often kind of ignored just because like it's not easy offand to think of two

more different people um than say a Gong and a Wong Chong um however I think the reason he's making that comparison is goong is saying no I am doing exactly

what a wang Chong was doing which is exactly what a samin was doing even though the account I'm giving of the historical process is at times utterly

at odds and also bringing in whole tons of materials that that you know Wong Chong would explicitly say are just sort of silly um

and nonetheless the move is to say well that is because to understand what I am doing I am calling on a reader to see

the implications of my now bringing in this body of materials organizing it as I have the same work as a Wong Chong was doing although of course I'm in a different historical moment which means

I'm going to read it radically radically differently and so the reading expectation I would argue is that we

will pick up on why those moves are being made so we would read it not as as here is goh home giving us an encyclopedia of existing practices of

immortality it's rather here is goone rereading the tradition according to sets of categories that are very very surprising in many ways we've come to

take them for granted now but at the time very surprising but we will understand why he's doing so in terms of his larger arguments now let me also

stick with that example to touch on your first question or actually first couple of questions um absolutely now when goong is doing this you know seeing

himself as coming out of this tradition but yet radically rethinking it is he still largely operating in a world of

male sages giving or in this in his case literally writing texts or undertaking practices that are given a textual record and he

is seeing him self as organizing this body of knowledge in a new way I would answer absolutely he is and this is part

of why this process hopefully is not well I would say in terms of China certainly but I would say globally um should not and is not ending because

what if we exactly as you said were to reread these text without that claim of single male authorship and Esther Klein

who's who's joined us I think absolutely I would say is in part doing exactly this so so sorry to put you on the spot Esther but but but but Esther is both

giving an account of the development of the textual tradition in China but Esther is also a philosopher and and I I would read and eser feel free to

disagree strong with what I'm about to say um I think Esther is also saying let us reread the tradition without that Assumption of single authors behind

every single text and how do we reread the tradition if we do so and even how do we read read the tradition if we realize that not everyone reading these texts really did believe in a single

author either that that has become much more of a Trope in more recent scholarship and actually people were very well aware of the complexities of these texts and we need to be aware of

it and we need to be aware of the reception of these texts if we real iiz that fact and realize that we're not the first to realize that fact um we on the contrary are dealing with a modern

period where we've come to buy into this as some kind of historical fact when in fact that was not the dominant youth for all modes of reading in Chinese history

and absolutely could we then bring in all of the issues we you mentioned questioning Notions of the self questioning the issues of gender

absolutely we should do that but also so it raises the Intriguing question um here too would we be the first to do it like are there lots of examples in the tradition that have largely been ignored

because of much more recent preoccupations um to read everything is sort of a male world that in fact was not the way these texts were being

written received and commented and acted upon so I agree I think by continuing this work not only is important for rethinking the tradition I suspect it

will allow us to to find things in the tradition that we've been very very actively ignoring and let me use that to

get to your your final question um I agree completely so so I when I use the word commentary um one of the things I

want to do is to say yes let's let's certainly use the term commentary for a self-proclaimed text that is literally

writing a comment on an earlier text but you're absolutely right I want to expand that dramatically to say let's not restrict ourselves just to commentary in

that sense let's look at all of these other bodies of material hence Zach Wang Chong a goong but let me immediately jump to your example um I think this is

absolutely going on in the Waring States um period and the form it takes is exactly the one you mentioned so we we are misreading the tradition or more importantly we're misreading the

way to read the tradition we're misreading these reading practices if we take a story about say you know Ian as being a story about ien

um a story about Ian is never a story about Ian so a story about Ian is Meaningful because there is an audience out there that will immediately see the

significance of oh in this story Ian is being read as doing X and then he does y and until recently we would sort of read

that and think okay he did X and then y but as we are getting more paleographic examples and therefore more variations of these stories we're getting a you know tiny fraction of what existed but still we're at least getting enough to

get a sense of what's going on and it all comes down to exactly what you said so if a text says it's X and then y that is deeply meaningful but meaningful in a

way that we can only pick up if we begin to see all of these variations and see the significance of ascribing this to or not ascribing it or ascribing X and then

y as opposed to Y and then X and at stake in that is a much larger positioning of oneself be of the past because you're saying oh the proper way

of reading the emergence of the Shan Dynasty is and then you give this rereading of an in story as part of a larger argument that again we would only

be able to understand once we train ourselves to be in the position and luckily now have enough material to begin to train ourselves to be in the position to see the implications of that rereading which getting back to the

heart of your question would also be to say this mode I'm talking about even if it only centuries later will take the physical form of a genre occasionally of

commentary it's a way I would even like to say it's really the dominant way of reading through most of the Waring States tradition so text like them Woods are kind of the odd folks out I mean

they're the ones saying no no no there there is a proper understanding and we don't need to do these endlessly endless rereadings although of course they are giving endless rereadings they claim they're not but they're standing against

a tradition that is based entirely in this it's these endless rereadings of stories endless reinterpretations of lines of poetry endless rereadings of the past all of which are about

arguments about how we should think about the past past how we should situate ourselves and what we should do going forward so thank you a wonderful set of questions I think just cuts the

heart of of all of these issues thank you so much thank you Professor pit and thank you I for uh those very substantial

dialogues now uh let's welcome our second commentator uh Trenton Wilson uh Trenton is an assistant professor of Chinese intellectual history at

Princeton University currently Trenton is working on a book about trust and suspicious in early Chinese intellectual and in uh institutional history he's

also has an abiding interest in the history of Classics and the classical commentary so welcome

Trenton thank you um and thank you um Michael for these um really really um interesting remarks about the how to think about commentary I wanted to um I

I guess I want just put a couple things on table so we get into um s open discussion um and so I don't take everyone's time but I wanted to sort of summarize one of the really great points

I think that you made um and put it in my own words and see if this is what you're actually saying um which is that um sort of a basic move is that you're suggesting is that commentary is

actually a way of making our life more difficult rather than easier in in the way that we approach texts and I think that this is a really important

point to make um in that commentary is not a transparent lens on the text but it's a way of creating productive friction that you know makes these

openings possible I think that you know you you sort of alluded to the fact that commentaries are often read as sort of a I don't know we dip into them when we try to figure out you know what is that

one line and belongs mean and so we'll go toang and then he'll tell us what it means and then you know we've we've we've created this mode of reading which is actually not the mode of reading of commentary which I think you've

helpfully outlined um the other point of the other part of that which is that this is also the commentaries are not meant to bring closure to the text either which I thought was

really important intervention making um so but I wanted to ask a sort of questions that have been on my mind um

in working with especially W and Wang other folks um so we in the sort of comments you're making um in response to

I's question and S bringing Esther into the conversation as well so we have you know we have this whole conversation about the author function um that's sort

of important for the way that we think about text um these days I wonder I wonder if you could say a bit more about the sage fun

function that um that I think does play a role in shaping the way that early thinkers imagine what they're doing with

commentary especially in I I mean there's probably various there various modes that this might appear that certainly w b and Guan have a very I think strong Sage function that helps

them navigate the text so that was this one question um then I want to also ask um sort of a version you know maybe in

two different ways the same question um which is if if we're as I think you're rightfully saying that you know commentary is an important mode of

philosophy and philosophizing in early China I would love to hear you say a bit more about what what that means in terms of how we think about things that we

take for granted in um you know certainly in you know philosophy departments in this country um about what argument is and what

reputation might look like so know like what does it mean to argue against a commentary like are we is is a is a set of tools the same set of tools that you

use when you argue against a proposition and and what does that look like um and and the second way of asking that same question maybe is you I think probably

just for a heuristic um in your comments you alluded to you know you say that San is giving a commentarial or philosophical reading of the past rather

than an accurate representation of the past and I and maybe this is to just sort of push you to say a bit more about that um you know is that

distinction possible to keep that you know this are are we should we arrive at a place where the accurate representation of the past is

no longer what we're interested in is that is that or is that overstating what's going on so those would be my sort of three questions great thank you wonderful set

of of questions and let me actually begin um with your opening comment yes I think that is a beautiful way of of discussing this material I I love that

phrasing um and yeah just let me stick with your examples um when we often read texts literally we are reading them because they've been edited exactly along the lines that you've mentioned so

you we'll have a line of drawinga and then the editors have have picked and selected little bits from the commentarial tradition that help us understand you know an odd character in

that that line but always in the mode of saying this will help us read it more easily and I think you're exactly right and I love the way you're phrasing it that when you actually read the

commentaries they are doing the exact opposite as you said they are trying to p push us out of easy ways of reading these so you know when one takes out of

the the very selective picking and choosing um that that go into modern additions part of what's so powerful about the powerful about these commentarial Traditions is exactly as

you said they are they prevent us from giving easy readings they will give a line that we think we understand and they will give these really bizarre readings that force you to think oh my

gosh have I been reading this entire text not just this line the ire text completely wrong and then you go to the next commentary and Kabam just a completely different one and and I think

you're absolutely right it gives you a hint of kind of what's going on in the tradition that the goal is to take to

prevent us as you said from taking easy readings of these texts um at the same time of course they can't simply give you wild readings that are simply exciting because they're wild because

those are wild but won't really make it the ones that make it the tradition are the ones that will give these surprising counterintuitive readings that open up something either something about the

text something about the current moment but ideally of course both like something that will allow you to see something else in the text that allows you to reread something in the current

moment and oftentimes something about the whole way of thinking about the tradition in a radical and new and surprising way and that's kind of what works in the tradition

um even to go to Jui is the obvious example someone who claims oh no I'm simply trying to recover the way I mean that in practice is what he is doing I mean he infamously of course you know puts in new characters into the text and

rearranges them to give you these surprising readings that no one had ever read before and it's all about him giving this surprising counterintuitive reading not again just because it's surprising and counterintuitive but

because it opens up a completely different way of reading the text and therefore reading the entire tradition so yeah I I love the way you phrase it I think that captures it beautifully um

and let me then turn directly on those lines to the question of the sage function um I agree completely and and I

I say that in two ways um first let me say a few words about when and why the sage function emerges and its implications and also how we should

therefore think about it so going back to I's earlier question about say the chin Kuan Manus scripts um I certainly there Notions of sages

then but but in the examples I was Raising um not the I being I was not not I I was Raising are exactly are ones in

which the sage function isn't really playing a role right I mean well I mean Ian You could argue as a sage but but the rereadings of Ian the author of that

text isn't claiming I am a sage giving a sagely rereading of of these iin stories um it's simply a way of making arguments

that you give a counter reading of iin versus that reading it be in um and it's simply the mode of working and that mode absolutely continues throughout the

tradition but you're also absolutely right at a certain moment the sage function comes in so when Mena says you know confucious was a sage and among the

key things he did was he authored the spring and autom anals and thus creating the the whole set of issues we were mentioning before the sage function becomes absolutely crucial for the hon

of the sage function is crucial for so much in um certainly in terms of his own claims about the past he's claiming confucious to be a sage I think you

could easily argue that he's claiming himself to be a sage um he certainly isn't claiming all the figures he's discussing her sages but he is making a

claim that to sagehood I think he's he literally says him so many so he I think he is claiming that and he does say in so many words I hope a future Sage will see what I'm up to so the sage function

plays an absolutely crucial role throughout all of this so I mention these examples to get back to the heart of your question I think you're absolutely right once that Sage function

starts playing a role it will fundamentally shift how these texts are being read the claims that are being read um and again going back to Esther Klein's work it makes a all the more

intriguing when we then go back into these texts and reread them outside of that function read reread them outside of the author function but even reread

them outside of the sage function and it does raise the Intriguing question of um what I suspect is at the heart of the question so I'll just put it on the

table um explicitly um is the sage function being seen as a function even in the early Chinese classical readings and I think it's a very worthwhile question to ask in other words did they

really think in terms of sages and authors or did they themselves think in terms of sages and authors as functions and I suspect if we really work through the tradition what we would see is

there's a debate about that I think some people really are committed saying no no no you a single sagely author wrote this text um I think others want to give that as a

hermeneutic move for all sorts of reasons without necessarily being committed to the view that it's actually accurate now that of course a perfect

segue to the question of accuracy um you're absolutely right I I was given that as sort of to to highlight where I want to go with this but the implication

would indeed be that accuracy in terms of is text X accurately representing the past or in the early example I just gave

um is this reading an accurate view of what the author really thinks and the reason I was saying no was to push the the interpretive side but I think you're

right the implication of this is this is our mistaken reading of these texts when we are even seeing the claim of accuracy as being something they're pushing

against as you said that's not even no it's not what they're trying to do it's also not what they're pushing against that's really not what's at stake so when we read somach chin I certainly don't think seach chin is making up the

events you know working from the archive and he's obviously building from the archive um but I certainly do not so he's not making things up but I also agree with you he's not making a claim

to give you an accurate portrayal because you know he'll give such radically different perspectives um anymore than than you would read the spring and automat to find out what you

know really happened in in the state of blue so here too it's an intriguing question to ask when and where do you even even get claims of accurate

representation being a move and you certainly get them occasionally and that's an intriguing move but we should read that as an intriguing move not as the default assumption against which say

you know saach or goong are reacting I would say arguably the dominant move is everyone is reading the past and with that let me just touch also very briefly

on the introduction you gave to that that last question um I agree in terms of philosophical departments today um it's intriguing

how we don't do this um and you're absolutely right so we'll if we read a heiger in a philosophy class we'll emphasize the you philosophical claims

which will be the issues of the unconcealment of being Etc but the ways that he will read a hurin is not part of the class unless it's seen as an

exercise to show you his philosophical position on being um what if we actually thought of this philosophically and brought this into our discussion so we

would be philosophically doing the work of trying to understand what is at stake when a heiger will give these very counterintuitive readings of a hland and

if we can get there imagine a future philosophy department where we would do the same thing for reading a seach Chin's rereading of a an earlier text if we're reading to give your example a

Wong be and guan's rereading of the louna and draa respectively where we're seeing we're not simply pulling out and saying well his philosophical position is X Y

and Z about the way rather we are seeing the philosophical work being the actual reading practices and I think part of the difficulty of even giving a name to this third position is that it doesn't

really fit into our philosophical categories and hence as you said is not in our philosophy departments and certainly there are no courses on this and yet I think that it should be I

think this should be a place where intellectual historians and philosophers are working together to work out the complex implications of this mode of

reading so thank you so much a wonderful set of questions both in terms of your rephrasing of the argument and the questions that you've raised which really I think points the the heart of what's at stake here so thank you so

much thank you thank you Professor p and thank you Trenton um may I take the advantage of

my position as a chair and ask a question yeah thank you so I'm wondering if you would consider the practice of ritual uh which may Heritage from early

China as an embodied way of reading the transition which can also maybe open up the proper understanding of the new situation so uh What uh the talk about

the ritual and what jump out of my mind is the ritual of mour and which is very complicated and uh uh very uh sophisticated in early China and how

could that uh uh ritual of morning can inspiring us from our understanding of current situation

yeah yeah thank you wonderful question and yes I think you are absolutely right that I think the way ritual one of the key ways I should say ritual operates in the classical Chinese tradition is

precisely in this mode and going back to Trenton's way of phrasing or rephrasing what I was saying in a way I love um where the work of commentary is to break

us from our easy readings of a text and force us to rethink it in some mode that opens up new possibilities I think countered to the way we often think of ritual today that is exactly or one of

the key things that ritual is doing in the classical Chinese tradition too and I love your example so I will stick with it so in morning rituals yes I think the way morning rituals are trying to

operate is they are trying to break us from the sets of emotional responses that we will go through when we're dealing with a horrible death and the

work of the ritual is to break us from that set of sort of readings of the world all the emotional Investments that that come with that and it forces us to

break out of that to see all of this from different perspectives but see is too limited a word so I'll stick with your word um it forces us to embody different ways of of being in the world

it forces us to to embody a different mode where I'm not simply the person you know devastated in sadness horribly

angry um horrible to those around me who are still alive who aren't you know dealing with this death and Ian this anger don't you realize how horrible the world is and and and the work of the

ritual is it's trying to to help me even kind of force me to embody different modes of being in the world and hence put that way I think you're exactly

right ritual is doing the kind of work that we're being called upon when we do commentary in this broad broadly speaking in other words it's trying to

help us reread the past but again in this in the in the case ritual really embodying that rereading very much as a rereading of a text and a rereading of

an hisor process and a rereading of a is trying to force us to do as well so I love the analogy and I think that is exactly right yes yeah thank you very

much that's very helpful but then I had a have a follow-up question and what kind of intellectual efforts that we should make to you know make this new

opening possible uh from reading the past or it's automat matically happened uh how can we keep the balance you know between the past the here and the now

and the future yes I I think a key thing this needs to do and it goes back to to what Trenton was mentioning too about the way

we we even organize our philosophy departments um and but I would say not just philosophy needles to say all of our departments is yes we need to help

ourselves but but also help train our students to read these textual traditions and read the past in these

modes and to give them a sense of what is at stake in doing so to open up this incredibly both incredibly powerful sets of intellectual Traditions around the

world but also open up the philosophical implications of so training oneself to rethink the world rethink situations break from common understandings that we

fall into that limit our our ways of being and getting to the how question um I would love love it if things that we think of is simply skills um so you know

at my institution we have an opening class that all freshman have to take where they're taught um how to write and and it's it's like a skill like here's how you write you have a

topic sentence you have an example you have a conclusion um imagine if on the contrary we said these skills of how to

read how to write aren't just skills you'll get in that first you freshman year opening SE semester in a very standardized routinized way it's just an

inherent part of the curriculum where we will see reading in this very strong sense as a crucial mode of being in the world where you're not just rereading

texts you're learning to reread the world and you're working with these incredibly powerful moves that have been made throughout the world to help train ourselves to do this and we're trying to

help our students and ourselves hope please we go to begin to do the same and I think the implications of this would be extraordinary and this isn't this is

sort of the sort of thing we do and say you when we read the classical Chinese text with our students but it would never be part of a philosophy Department it would never be part of a standard

curriculum um and if it were like in other words if this mode that was so important through so many the int traditions of the world if this mode

were to be taken seriously it would just open up I think so much for our students in terms of not just opening up those Traditions to them by definition and allowing them to understand the

traditions in powerful ways but also helping train our students too to also read the world and read texts but text meaning everything in ways that would be

incredibly opening so yes I I think a lot of these these intellectual Traditions are on to something and we have much to learn in the ways we think about education um if we begin taking

these practices seriously so thank you point question thank you thank you thank you very much that's so helpful so it's not happen automatically but we have to really put

lots of intellectual efforts into it okay great thank you and I think that um uh it's time flies it's almost 9:30

so I don't know um is there any questions from the audience maybe we can take one or two questions from the audience if there is any um you can type

the question into the chat box or you can just unmute yourself and uh uh uh speak aloud Professor may I have some

questions yes I have two questions to ask and the first is about Chinese Vos for you know one people think Chinese

philosophy doesn't have arguments so it isn't uh philosophy even if you regard commentaries as kind of philosophic creation they really are descriptions

they are not arguments so should we reorganize them logically if so how can we do this you know maybe some test like or they can be reorganized but the

analogs for example it is difficult to do so my other question is about the Chinese philosophy although we can VI Asian test from different

perspectives we might be misunderstanding the test so how can we AO this situation thank you absolutely wonderful set of

questions um and let me say I I agree so if we look at the text from the Chinese philosophical tradition that have kind

of made it into our philosophical discussions um it includes the one on that exactly as you said clearly give arguments that sound philosophical in

the way we usually use that term so um we you know strza for example we can absolutely bring that into a philosophy class I mean in America we still have lots of problems of of getting

philosophers to take Chinese philosophy seriously but but but apart from that very important problem handing a shunza to someone doing philosophy even if they know relatively little about the Chinese

tradition still works I mean they can still read the shunza it is clearly making arguments they can follow and convincing

them to bring it into a philosophy class is a much more doable goal um I think you're exactly right um gringing the

materials we've been discussing so commentaries um rereadings of Ian um

Goen um these are not easy to bring into a philosophy Department because precises as you said they're not making clear arguments where they say I'm going to

give you my philosophy of you X and and here is my philosophy um the only way to get at what they're getting at is to do the complex mode of reading that they

are then TR that they are trying to do a complex mode of reading and calling on us to do the same and even if we look at the figures who are doing this in the

western tradition um right right mentioned Fuko for example even Fuko if Fuko is taught in the philosophy Department it will usually involve ping

out the clear arguments that say in the 1970s he was making about the workings of power so fuko's philosophy of power

is X Y and Z but if you really read you know where that's coming from that the the mid-70s book discipline and punish um yes he's saying that but he's saying

that in the form of a genealogy calling us to rethink our understandings of the way power Works in what we would call a modern liberal society

and the whole argument philosophically doesn't really work if it's pulled out of the way he's trying to read the tradition so even in an example of a figure who would be recognized in a

philosophy Department as a philosopher he's really not being read along the lines that we're discussing so all of this cuts to the heart of your question um how to do this is going to be

incredibly difficult but I think the key opening move is exactly as you were saying we need to realize that that a mode of reading is an argument just not

an argument along the lines that we usually use that that term it's it's the way that you will reread the past you there is an argument there but it's not

an argument saying my position on X is the following I'm disagreeing with this person and that person who had different views on X here's where I think they're

wrong um the only way to really see what's going on is to do the work of hopefully reading with the care that they are reading and seeing the

implications of that now bringing this into our mode of of education is going to be incredibly difficult but again I think incredibly important because this

really is um it's not just that a few people in the Continental tradition have been doing this um I would like to argue it's been really a dominant mode

of intellectual work in most of the intellectual Traditions to which we have access um certainly including the classical Chinese tradition so it's a wonderful question and I don't have an

easy answer as to how we're going to do it and yet I think it is incredibly important to do because it just opens up again not just so much intellectual work

in um literally the past 2500 years but also opens up so many powerful ways of of training ourselves and our students to read and think critically

about the world so thank you it's a wonderful question thank you I know uh many audience may still have questions and comments but uh time is up I'm sorry

that we have to qu a day and thank you again Professor pu for this wonderful talk and thank you I and for the wonderful discussion and for me

it has been a wonderful night so thank you all and uh uh Paul are you still there you want to say something before we close oh okay here you yeah yeah yeah

no just that that was wonderful um thanks Professor Pur and thanks for Ev everyone um it's actually uh we have a a small conference in the works s High wa

here and this is basically exactly the topic um so uh yeah Professor pure not to put you on the spot but I was just goingon to send you an email to ask you if you have five minutes after this um

to talk with you about that because yeah this is basically exactly the topic of the conference so wonderful I do indeed so yes let's do

talk okay great okay great great yeah so um yeah everyone thanks for being here and um as I said this recording will be on the website next week uh on our

YouTube page next week and you can see um our I put in the chat uh uh our calendar of events so um hope to see you

again in a couple weeks thanks everyone and let me also say thanks to all of you Paul this has been wonderful Jan thank you so much Trenton I your questions and comments were fantastic and to all of

you thank you for being here this is such an exciting way to bring people together to talk so thank you all so

much thanks okay thank you pleasure is m soon bye