Technology And The Road - Traditional Chinese Discourse Research

The main opinion of this paper is that it is very important and urgent to explicate the relation between Ji (Technics) and Dao (Way) in the traditional culture by carefully reading the traditional classics. The modern technology has already become such a gigantic that it shrouds all over the world and influences everything. In our age the technical system of China, at least on its surface, is constituted according to the western metaphysical and anthropocentric view of technics; however, even in the western world the excessive development of techniques has given rise to the vigilance for a long time. After experienced the great impact of modern technology, China has achieved many enormous progresses, but at the same time we pay a higher price for it than the western. Therefore deeply excavating the abundant resources of technical thought in the traditional culture of China and taking a research into the relation and interaction between technics and other social factors will be useful to make the good traditions of Chinese culture avoid the fate of rupture and disorientation and will also make a contribution to the perfection of modern technical system.In the tremendous amount of Chinese traditional classics there exist a great deal of book-phrases about technology, and then the traditional relation between Ji and Dao is implicated in the uses of such technical words. In ancient times the uses of such words are very different from the uses of them in modern times. But it is from these differences that emerges the special meaning and value of the Chinese ancient relation between Ji and Dao in respect to the present relation between them.The origin of technics for the primitive people had some divinity, that is the saints created things. In the ancient technical words the first creators of technics were called the saints and even were lifted to the level of gods. However, since the power of discourse in the ancient times was grasped by the nobility and scholars, the main concern for the social order made the independently technical words hardly apparent and the chief form of expression of technical words was the idea of the priority of Dao to Ji.The doctrine of Five Elements and the thoughts in the Book of Change were essential for the Chinese traditional culture and were regarded by different schools as the central principles. The purpose of this paper is to show the relevance of Ji with Dao in its origin of the former by analyzing the technical origin of the doctrine of Five Elements and the "making utensils according to images" in Copulative Book of Changes.The position of Confucianism in dealing with the relation between Ji and Dao has the foremost influence in the Chinese tradition. "sitting and prattling the general principle" does not mean ignoring and rejecting technics. And the expression that "the nobleman does not concern the utensils" is mainly to emphasize the following aspect, that the nobleman must transcend the operator of concrete technics and take part in worlds affairs with one's talents, and meanwhile get his own cultivation by "setting your heart upon the Way, relying upon Virtue, Leaning upon Ren, and exploring widely in your cultivation of the arts".The relation between Ji and Dao in Daoism occupies nearly the position of ontology. "The appearance of Dao by Ji, and the advancement of Ji by Dao", this phrase shows the identity of Ji and Dao, and "the door of bewilderment" is opened by technics. But at the same time Laozi and Zhuangzi carried out the fierce critiques to technics and indicated that only by transcending the pure technics it is possible to arrive at the approximate circumstances of Dao.By reading and considering as possible as I can the Commentaries on Method and Technics in the classics of pre-Qin dynasty and in the historiography, this paper tries to deal with the questions as following:in the present technical development which goes rapidly, whether can we find the figure of Chinese traditional technology? Whether there was no true correlation between the technics introduced from the western and the Chinese traditional Dao, which seems impossible from the superficial point of view? In the ancient times during which the modern technics did not appear, whether the people has confronted with the two values of Ji and Dao and could not achieved balance between them? Whether Ji and Dao had been existing harmoniously with each other in ancient times? If this was the case, what teaching can we obtain from it? At last it need to be pointed out that this paper is the preparative work for a kind of well-foundedly critical investigation for the Chinese traditional culture.