Mencius's Ideologies Of Hermeneutics

Under the stimulation of the Westem Hermeneutics which has become an important subject,the project to establish "the Sinitic Hermeneutics" are developed widely.The research pertaining to "the Sinitic Hermeneutics" has been prevailing for many years.The most typical productions resulting from these research activities are reflected on these writings of the professor Fu Weixun,the professor Cheng Zhongying, the professor Huang Junjie and the professor Tang Yijie.The professor Fu Weixun's creative-Hermeneutics divides the annotation into five steps,which respectively is "shiwei","yiwei","yunwei","dangwei" and "biwei".The creative-Hermeneutics includes the method of reductive annotation and the method of creative annotation.It is a pity that his remark on "dangwei" and "biwei" isn't transparent,as reduces the maneuverability of his method of annotation.The professor Cheng Zhongying created his Onto-Hermeneutics on the basis of inosculating Chinese philosophy with Western philosophy.Because he devised the interaction between entity and system, Onto-Hermeneutics surpasses the Philosophical Hermeneutics including the limitation of relativism.But his Onto-Hermeneutics still couldn't avoid the censure of relativism because he canceled the entity's determinacy.The professor Huang Junjie's Hermeneutics of Confucian sutra taking Mencius as center points out that the Mencius's academicians could be partitioned off into two camps and three essential styles via the review about the Confucianists' annotations to Mencius.The professor Huang's research resolved many problems of the history of interpretations to Mencius.However,he couldn't relieve the tensity between historicity and transcendency in Mencius.In 1998 the professor Tang Yijie advanced the supposition on establishing "the Chinese Hermeneutics".He thought,for the establishment of "the Chinese Hermeneutics",on one hand,we should base ourselves upon the China's commentarial tradition,on the other hand,we should refer to some contents on Western Hermeneutics.But the professor Tang's project is so enormous that his modus operandi that makes the China's commentarial tradition which has two thousand years' history together maybe isn't feasible.These scholars' grope gathered estimable experiences for us,the most valuable one of which is whether "the Sinitic Hermeneutics" could come into existence lies on whether the scholars could regenerate the orthodox Hermeneutics successfully and we couldn't creat certain theory without foundation.Besides,the systems of these existent "Sinitic Hermeneutics" has uncovered many problems to which we should pay more attention.For example,when we construct "the Sinitic Hermeneutics",we should not only put in time and effort on the methodology's lay,but also illuminate something from ontology's lay,and we should make some choice on the reference to the western Hermeneutics,especially the Philosophical Hermeneutics whose nuclear conception is "perspective amalgamation",otherwise we would tamper the immanent particularity of "the Sinitic Hermeneutics".The summing-up of object lesson could clarify our minds and point out the right direction for the intending development of "the Sinitic Hermeneutics".Whether we could make choice of the typical domain,qua breach or not is the key of whether we could create "the Sinitic Hermeneutics" successfully or not.Mencius's annotations to the sutras such as the Book of Songs and the Book of History and the doctrines of various schools are just the breach undoubtedly.There are plenty of ideologies of Hermeneutics in Mencius.The past exegetes interpreted the methods of annotation such as "Yiyinizhi","Zhirenlunshi","Buyiwenhaici,Buyicihaizhi" and "Zhiyan" in Mencius from different approach.But up to now no one has regarded the Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics as an integral whole to make systematic and thoroughgoing elucidation.From the 90's of last century to now,there appeared unprecedentedly flourishing vision in study of Mencius and large quantities of excellent academical literatures were published one aider the other.It is regrettable that the writings on Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics were quite lacking.Even if there were some scholars treated of it,their literatures lack of original ideas and are very superficial.So it is very necessary to elucidate Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics ulteriorly.In order to elucidate Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics,we should thoroughly dig its abundant ontological content firstly.The Ontological Hermeneutics of Western philosophy is the Existential Hermeneutics in essence,which relates human's comprehension to human's basic existential state substantially.Therefore the Ontological Hermeneutics's meaning of Mencius includes two aspects.First,Mencius's activities of annotation weren't just annotation but involved being.In other words,there were profound human experience in his activities of annotation.Second,Mencius's life course or his being was unfolded by annotation or comprehension.In other words,his gnosis about life was involved in the academical and political activities of his lifetime. In addition,the content of the ontology or the theory about being in Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics involves two aspects,which respectively is the Mencius's digestion to the human being and his definition to the being of other entities.The former is embodied in Mencius's explanation and practice to humanity and righteousness.And the latter is embodied in Mencius's intuition of "everything is here in me".By contrast with the Western Ontological Hermeneutics,Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics avoid the trap of relativism because of the noumenon's criterion or restriction.The noumenon in Mencius's ideologies is a kind of exceptive psychosis.When Mencius described the "noble spirit",he revealed the psychosis's meaning concretely.Though Mencius's noumenon is exceedable,it isn't insular.That is to say,the exceptive psychosis can produce idiographic reasons or moral principles,which are just the content of the ontology we refered to in former.In Mr.Mou Zongsan's words,the idiographic moral principles are "idiographic and universal",which means on one hand these principles derive from transcendental noumenon,on the other hand there are temporal and local ingredients in the principles.In Mencius's wisdom that "if saints or solons change places,they would behave in the same way",the moral principles' character of"idiographic and universal" is exposed to view.From the penetrating judgment of "if saints or solons change places,they would behave in the same way",we may find a sort of method of annotation that relies on intuition,which is brightly exhibited in Mencius's "Yiyinizhi" and "Zhirenlunshi". From the point of view of Hermeneutics,"Yiyinizhi" is an annotation's mode of thinking transpositionally.It requires the interpreter stand with the author and ask himself.Then the interpreter's opinion would be identical with the author's,Mencius thought.Apparently the precondition of "Yiyinizhi" is that the interpreter need master the author's standpoints well and truly."Zhirenlunshi" is just the method of reverting to historical condition.Furthermore,Mencius's "Buyiwenhaici,buyicihaizhi" and "Zhiyan" both could be regarded as methods of annotation."Buyiwenhaici, buyicihaizhi" is the important measure that Mencius unscrambled a writing's original intention,which demands a reader peel off the obstructs of a writing's exterior diction and enter into the writing itself objectively."Zhiyan" is the judgement on the original intention of an author or a writing by a reader's ideas about value.The "Yi" of "Yiyinizhi" is just the reader's ideas about value and the "Zhi" of "Buyiwenhaici, buyicihaizhi" is just the original intention of an author or a writing.It is obvious that there are inherent relationships among Mencius's methods of annotation,which may be conformed and become an organic academic whole.Mencius applied his method of annotation to the sutras such as the Book of Songs and the Book of History and the doctrines of various schools such as Yang Zhu and Mo Di abroad.From the analysis of Mencius's pratices of annotation,we could find that the opposition between Ontological Hermeneutics and Methodological Hermeneutics which Gadamer and others ever alleged doesn't exist.Mencius's activities of annotation always both carried out his annotation's logic and showed the ontological content.By contrast with Zhuang Zi and Xun Zi,the particularities in Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics could be exhibited more fairly.Zhuang Zi partitioned knowledge into "major knowledge" and "minor knowledge". "Minor knowledge" is the temporal knowledge that he excluded and "major knowledge" is the knowledge that relates to Tao.Tao is the content of the ontology and the prejudice of annotation of Zhuang Zi himself in Zhuang Zi's ideologies of Hermeneutics,only Zhuang Zi's content of the ontology is absolutely different from Mencius's content of the ontology which attaches importance to order and morality in character.Zhuang Zi did his utmost to debase the typic language used in daily life and thought this kind of language is inadequate for representing Tao.According to the parlance of Zhuang Zi's disciples,representing Tao only relies to "Yuyan","Chongyan" and "Zhiyan"."Yuyan","Chongyan" and "Zhiyan" are poetic language,while Mencius's language used in the process of annotation is eloquent language.The difference of lingual style influences the ultimate conclusion of annotation directly,as adeguately proves the correctness of Humboldt who said language view is just world view.Mencius's content of the ontology derives from noumenon and Zhuang Zi's content of the ontology also has fountain.The noumenon in Zhuang Zi's ideologies of Hermeneutics is so-called "fasting of the mind" that is also unusual psychic experience, the difference between which and Mencius's "noble spirit" is that "fasting of the mind"'s essential characteristic is "emptiness and awaiting for things",while "noble spirit" "is born of accumulated righteousness".Therefore in the final analysis the dissimilarity of prejudice of annotation between Mencius and Zhuang Zi rests with the dissimilarity of noumenon.Moreover,the dissimilar comprehension of universe and life between Mencius and Zhuang Zi roots in two dissimilar mysterious intuitions. The similarity between Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics and Xun Zi's is that Mencius and Xun Zi treated Tao of Confucianism as the prejudice of annotation in the process of annotation and Tao was their criterion of annotation.In fact,Tao refered to here is also the idiographic moral principles or the content of the ontology refered to in former.The similarity between Mencius and Xun Zi lies in "Zhiyan","Discarding the Book of History rather than trusting it absolutely","Jiebi" and "Learning the Book of Songs and the Book of History in addition to advocating courtesy and righteousness". Xun Zi's "Jiebi" is the method of annotation that accepts or rejects heretical ideas in terms of Tao,which is similar to Mencius's "Zhiyan".Xun Zi's "Learning the Book of Songs and the Book of History in addition to advocating courtesy and righteousness" is the method to interpret the sutras such as the Book of Songs and the Book of History in terms of Tao,which is similar to Mencius's "Discarding the Book of History rather than trusting it absolutely".The dissimilarities between Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics and Xun Zi's are exhibited in three aspects.Firstly,Tao in Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics achieves dialectic unification between historicity and transcendency.On the contrary,historicity of Tao in Xun Zi's ideologies of Hermeneutics is obvious,while transcendency of it isn't obvious.Secondly,their approaches of getting hold of Tao are different,which means Mencius apprehended Tao by the method of"the Intuition of Heart" and Xun Zi apprehended Tao by the method of "Open-minded,Single-minded and Quiet"."The Intuition of Heart" is the epistemic method of syncretism between subject and object."Open-minded,Single-minded and Quiet" is the epistemic method of schism between subject and object.But then there is also common ground between two epistemic methods,which means Mencius and Xun Zi both radicated their prejudice of annotation on the basis of the neutrality of value,as embodies the important difference between China's archaic ideologies of Hermeneutics and Western Philosophical Hermeneutics.Finally,Mencius's "Zhiyan" contains the method of reductive annotation and the method of creative annotation.While Xun Zi's "Jiebi" is a quite pure method of creative annotation.Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics influenced afterworld profoundly.From a macroscopical standpoint,the approach in academic pursuit of the learning of the Han Dynasty is the method of reductive annotation in the rough and the approach in academic pursuit of the learning of the Sung Dynasty is the method of creative annotation in the rough.But Mencius adopted the method of creative annotation and the method of reductive annotation at the same time.From this point of view,Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics influenced the subsequent scholars who studied Confucian classics apparently.From a microcosmic standpoint,many scholars after Mencius respectively refered to certain tache of Mencius's method of annotation to unscramble sutra or make research.For example,Zhao Qi's breakthrough in the field of commentary studies relates to his misregistration and employment to Mencius's "Yiyinizhi" to a great degree.Zhang Zai grasped the genuine purpose of Mencius's "Zhiyan" and applied it to unscramble sutra.Zhu Xi created the reading method of "Xuxinhanyong",as profits from his assimilating Mencius's logic about "Buyiwenhaici, buyicihaizhi".Qian Daxin transformed the theory of Mencius's "Zhirenlunshi" into his critical method about historiography successfully.Xu Fuguan's critical theory about literature called "Zhuitiyan" is succession and innovation to Mencius's "Yiyinizhi" and "Zhirenlunshi"'s methods of annotation.We not only could compare Mencius's ideologies of Hermeneutics with China's philosophers of past dynasties' theories of Hermeneutics lengthways,but also with different type of Western Hermeneutics breadthwise."Whether there is possibility of dialogue between the Western Hermeneutics and the Sinitic Hermeneutics" is the topic that is debated frequently in recent years.By the comparison between the Western Hermeneutics and the Sinitic Hermeneutics,we may try to answer this question.If the Western Hermeneutics is regarded as a reference system,there are two methods of annotation in the philosophy of Mencius.At a word,his "Yiyinizhi" resembles the Hermeneutics of Ast,and "Zhirenlunshi" and "Buyiwenhaici,buyicihaizhi" resemble the Hermeneutics of Schleiermacher.Mencius's "Yiyinizhi" is the method of annotation based on moral intuition.Not come singly but in pairs,the Hermeneutics of Ast also belongs to the theory of annotation relying on intuition,whose logic is the same as Mencius's method of annotation.Moreover,Schleiermacher's grammatical interpretation and the method of annotation of "Buyiwenhaici,buyicihaizhi" belong to the same style radically and there exist more similarities between his psychological interpretation and the method of annotation of "Zhirenlunshi".However,when we compare the Hermeneutics of Mencius with the Hermeneutics of Gadamer,we'll find that both sides are out of the picture and lack the premise of resultful communication, the most typical representation of which is the poignant opposition between the theory of "perspective amalgamation" that was born out of logocentrism and "Yiyinizhi" that came into being in the tradition of intuition.But on balance the cultural background's difference doesn't induce the gulf between Eastern ideologies of Hermeneutics and Western ideologies of Hermeneutics.Whether they could dialogize or not or whether they have comparabilities or not is mainly decided by respective theoretical particularities.