Taoism Essay Research Paper Classical Chinese theory — страница 5

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there would be neither choosing nor objects of choice. Like Hume, he argued that while we have these inputs and feel there must be some organizing "true ruler," we get no input (qing) from any such ruler. We simply have the inputs themselves (happiness, anger, sorrow, joy, fear). We cannot suppose that the physical heart is such a ruler, because it is no more natural than the other organs and joints of the body. Training and history condition a heart?s judgments. Ultimately, even Mencius? shi-fei (this-not this) are input to the xin. Our experience introduces them relative to our position and past assumptions. They are not objective or neutral judgments. XUNZI also concentrated on issues related to philosophy of mind though in the context of moral and linguistic issues.

He initiated some important and historically influential developments in the classical theory. His most famous (and textually suspect) doctrine is "human nature is evil." While he clearly wanted to distance himself from Mencius, the slogan at best obscures the deep affinity between their respective views of human nature and mind. Xunzi seems to have drawn both from the tradition advocating cultivating heart-mind and from the focused theory of language. This produced a tense hybrid theory that filled out the original Confucian picture on how conventions and language program the heart-mind. Xunzi made the naturalism explicit. Human guiding discourse takes place in the context of a three-tier universe?tian (heaven-nature) di (earth-sustenance) and ren (the social realm).

He gave humans a special place in the ?chain of nature,’ but not based on reason. Animals shared the capacity for zhi (knowledge). What distinguishes humans is their yi (morality) which is grounded on the ability to bian (distinguish). Presumably, the latter ability is unique among animals with knowledge because it is short-hand for the ability to construct and abide by conventions?conventional distinctions or language. One of Xunzi?s naturalistic justifications for Confucian conventional rituals is economic. Ritual distinctions guide people?s desires so that society can manage scarcity. Only those with high status will learn to seek scarce goods. His departure from Mencius thus seems to lie in seeing human morality as more informed or "filled-out" by historical

conventional distinctions. These are the products of reflection and artifice, not nature. However, in other ways Xunzi seems to edge closer to Mencius. He also presents ritual as part of the structure of the world?implicit in the heaven-earth natural context. One natural line of explanation is this: while thought creates the correct conventions, nature sets the concrete conditions of scarcity and human traits that determine what conventions will be best for human flourishing. Return to Outline Historical Developments: Han Cosmology The onset of the philosophical dark age, brought on by Qin Dynasty repression followed by Han dynasty policies resulted in a bureaucratic, obscurant Confucian orthodoxy. The Qin thus buried the technical ideas informing philosophy of mind along with

the active thinkers who understood them. The ontology of the eclectic scholasticism that emerged was essentially religious and superstitious. It was, however, overtly materialist (assuming Qi (ether, matter) is material). So the implicit philosophy of mind of the few philosophically inclined thinkers during the period tended toward a vague materialism. The Han further developed the five-element (five phases) version of materialism. They postulated a correlative pentalogy linking virtually every system of classification that occurred to them. The scheme included the organs of the body and the virtues. Interpretation and analysis of "correlative" reasoning is a controversial subject. From here, the mental correlations look more like a frequency selection from the

psychological lexicon than a product of philosophical reflection, observation or causal theory. The Yin-yang analysis also had mental correlates. Following Xunzi, Orthodox Han Confucians tended to treat qing (reality:desires) as yin (typically negative). The yang (value positive) counterpart was xing (human moral nature). The most important development of the period was the emergence a compromise Confucian view of mind?s role in morality. It eventually informed and dominated the scholastic Neo-Confucianism of the much later Sung to Qing dynasties. The small book known as the Doctrine of the Mean gave it an influential formulation. It presents the heart-mind as a homeostasis-preserving input output device. The heart-mind starts in a state of tranquillity. The account leaves open