Why, After Two Thousand Years of Debate, Do the Classics Still Resist Agreement on Their Basic Meaning?

Why, After Two Thousand Years of Debate, Do the Classics Still Resist Agreement on Their Basic Meaning?
Interpretive Disagreements over the Analects and How We Discuss Traditional Culture

Why is it that, after more than two thousand years of reading, commentary and discussion, people can still offer substantially different, even conflicting interpretations of some basic passages in a classic such as the Analects? If we repeatedly have to establish what the object of discussion means, what has all that discussion accumulated? And what practical value do these classics hold for people today?

In raising this question, I am not demanding that philosophy arrive at a single agreed answer. Philosophy develops precisely because people can ask questions from different positions and formulate competing theories. From Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, Kant and the various modern schools, disagreement has always been part of Western philosophy, sometimes to the point of irreconcilability. Yet disagreement does not prevent us from identifying the main questions each thinker addresses, how their concepts are used and where their arguments begin. Even theories that reject one another can be studied, criticised and developed as distinct bodies of thought with recognisable identities.

Of course, this does not mean that the basic concepts of Western philosophy are free from dispute. Consider Kant’s ‘thing in itself’. Scholars continue to disagree significantly about its relationship to appearances and its place within his philosophical framework. But such debates generally require a return to the questions, distinctions and arguments in Kant’s own writings, and an explanation of exactly where interpretations diverge. The works themselves provide a substantial part of the boundaries of discussion. Readers can propose new interpretations, but they cannot readily claim to represent Kant’s thought on the strength of a single sentence taken out of context.

The situation with traditional Chinese classics is sometimes markedly different. The Analects chiefly preserves sayings and conversations, rather than presenting a systematic philosophical treatise composed by a single author in the modern sense. Its formation and transmission have a complex history. Many passages are brief, and their context is incomplete. Interpreters in different periods have often approached the same passage with different political, ethical and intellectual concerns. Han dynasty classical scholarship, Song–Ming Neo-Confucianism and modern academic research have different priorities and may consequently arrive at different readings. The authority of the classics has endured, while the interpretive frameworks built around them have continued to change.

This produces a distinction that is easy to overlook. In some systematic works of Western philosophy, authors have already supplied considerable constraints on later discussion through their definitions, questions and arguments. In discussions of many traditional Chinese classics, scholars often first have to reconstruct the circumstances of composition, the meanings of words, the commentary tradition, the historical context and their own interpretive position, to avoid talking about different things altogether. These constraints are not simply invented: serious textual scholarship and interpretation have documentary foundations. Nevertheless, a substantial portion comes from later scholarly work rather than from explicit statements in the original passages. The additional cost this imposes on discussion deserves attention.

The expression gewu zhizhi in the Great Learning, conventionally rendered as ‘investigating things and extending knowledge’, illustrates the problem. Zhu Xi understood gewu as investigating the principles of things. Wang Yangming rejected that understanding and emphasised a practice of rectifying one’s intentions and the affairs towards which they are directed. Both interpretations were supported by substantial philosophical thinking, and both became influential. The question is not whether either thinker should have been allowed to interpret the text. It is that, through reinterpretation, the same classical expression came to carry different theories. Discussion can proceed in depth if we specify whether we mean Zhu Xi’s account of gewu or Wang Yangming’s. If we refer vaguely to an unchanging body of ‘traditional wisdom’, those important theoretical distinctions disappear.

None of this can simply be attributed to an absence of logic in ancient China. The argumentation and analysis of names and things found among the early Mohists, the systematic constructions of Song–Ming thinkers, and the textual scholarship of Qing dynasty scholars all demonstrate serious traditions of reasoning and research. The problem is that these methods did not establish equally stable, explicit and continuously transmitted standards for concepts and arguments across all major fields of knowledge. Another relevant historical condition is that the education of traditional scholars long brought together classical learning, history, political ethics and literary composition. Philosophy, literature, history and empirical science were not divided into disciplines as they are today.

Literary expression has value. Metaphors, fables, maxims and evocative language can help us grasp an aspect of lived experience quickly. But their reach has limits. A metaphor can stimulate thought without replacing factual evidence. A maxim can express an attitude without automatically constituting a rigorous philosophical theory. When we become accustomed to interpreting all knowledge as we would a literary text, and take verbal elegance as a reason to accept a judgement, we risk confusing expression, argument and fact.

That confusion also has practical consequences. The classics possess considerable cultural authority, while some of their passages allow substantial interpretive flexibility. Different people can therefore invoke the classics to support their own claims. Assertions lacking clear concepts and reliable evidence, including occult doctrines and fortune-telling packaged as ‘ancestral wisdom’, or purported secrets of sudden enlightenment that cannot be tested, may also gain a hearing by drawing on that authority. Their popularity has other causes, of course, including psychological needs, commercial interests and social conditions. Comparable phenomena exist in Western societies too, so responsibility cannot all be assigned to traditional Chinese culture. Still, if public discussion does not habitually ask what a concept means, where the evidence lies and what would show a claim to be wrong, such assertions become harder to subject to effective scrutiny.

My concern, then, is not to make everyone arrive at the one correct interpretation of a classic. Historical scholarship can accommodate several interpretations supported by evidence, and ethical or philosophical questions may have no universally accepted answers. What we need are reasonably clear rules of discussion. Claims about an ancient thinker’s original meaning should respect the documents and their historical context. New philosophical positions should explain their concepts and reasoning. Claims that a method produces practical results should be open to empirical testing. Allowing disagreement is different from allowing every interpretation to escape the responsibility to justify itself.

We should also recognise that traditional Chinese culture took shape in connection with the social institutions, ways of life, educational arrangements and political orders of its time. China today has undergone enormous changes in social structure, systems of knowledge, individual life and exchanges with the wider world. It is neither realistic nor necessarily desirable to expect ideas from different periods, already internally diverse, to become once again a completely unified source of authority that can directly guide modern life.

We can certainly draw inspiration from the classics and reinterpret them in the light of modern knowledge. But we need to distinguish honestly between historical interpretation and contemporary creation. If, to establish an idea we need today, we deliberately give an ancient text a meaning it cannot support, and then proclaim that interpretation to be the author’s definite original intention, we are using the authority of tradition to express a new idea. The new idea may have value, but that does not exempt it from independent explanation and scrutiny.

Returning to the opening question, more than two thousand years of research on the Analects have certainly produced a rich body of documentation, historical knowledge and intellectual resources. Interpretive disagreement is no reason to dismiss those achievements. Yet long-standing reverence for a classic does not mean that every concept within it has acquired a stable definition. Nor does an ever-growing body of commentary mean that every discussion has produced knowledge that can be clearly passed on and developed. We should understand the historical circumstances in which traditional thought emerged, while recognising its limitations in modern intellectual discussion. Perhaps the most meaningful respect we can show tradition is to place it where it can be understood, discussed and criticised, rather than requiring people today to continue accepting an absolute authority whose meaning remains unsettled.

References for checking the historical points discussed
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Confucius’ (the textual transmission and historical interpretation of the Analects, and Zhu Xi’s influence): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/confucius/
2. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Wang Yangming’ (Zhu Xi’s and Wang Yangming’s differing interpretations of the Great Learning and gewu): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wang-yangming/
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Logic and Language in Early Chinese Philosophy’ (the early Mohists and Chinese traditions of logic and argumentation): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-logic-language/