Contents
丛书序 i
前言 iii
Chapter One Introduction 1
1.1 Research Background 1
1.2 Research Topic and Research Questions 5
1.3 The Significance of the Research 7
1.4 Methodological Considerations 9
1.5 Creation as the Primary Object of Study 16
1.6 Procedural Considerations 19
Chapter Two From “Extending” to “Extending the
Familiar” 28
2.1 Deriving a Methodology from the Zhongyong 28
2.1.1 The Relationship Between Philosophy and Translation
Studies 28
2.1.2 Differences Between Western Philosophy and Classical
Confucian Philosophy 30
2.1.3 The Three Features of Classical Confucian Philosophy 31
2.2 An Introduction to the Zhongyong 34
2.2.1 The Reasons for Choosing the Zhongyong 34
2.2.2 The Context of the Zhongyong 36
2.2.3 The Text of the Zhongyong 38
2.3 The Way to Read the Zhongyong 41
2.3.1 Learning from the Zhongyong 41
2.3.2 Accessing the Zhongyong from the Analects 43
2.4 Taking the Way from the Analects to the Zhongyong 44
2.4.1 “Extending” in the Analects 44
2.4.2 “Extending the Familiar” in the Zhongyong 55
2.5 “Extending the Familiar” and the Study of Translation 72
2.5.1 The Trouble with Translation Studies 72
2.5.2 “Extending the Familiar”: A Subject-Oriented Approach 75
2.6 Summary 77
Chapter Three Extending Christian Monotheism 90
3.1 James Legge: the Missionary and Scholar 90
3.2 Discovering God in Confucianism 94
3.3 Extending Christian Monotheism in Legge’s Translations 101
3.3.1 Extending Christian Monotheism Aggressively 101
3.3.2 Extending Christian Monotheism Sympathetically 118
3.4 Gu Hongming’s Response 122
3.4.1 Gu Hongming as a Cultural Amphibian 123
3.4.2 Extending the Religion of Good-Citizenship Proudly 126
3.5 Summary 130
Chapter Four Extending the Two-Wheel Pattern 139
4.1 Two Predecessors 139
4.1.1 Lyall and King’s The Centre, The Common 140
4.1.2 Hughes’s The Mean-in-Action 145
4.2 Wing-tsit Chan and His Translation of the Zhongyong 155
4.2.1 Wing-tsit Chan and A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy 156
4.2.2 Discovering the Two-Wheel Pattern in the Confucian
Tradition 161
4.2.3 Extending the Two-Wheel Pattern Objectively 168
4.2.4 The Zhongyong as a Metaphysical Work 179
4.3 Summary 181
Chapter Five Extending Process-Relational Thought 187
5.1 Ames and Hall’s Collaborative Work 188
5.2 Discovering Process-Relational Thought in Classical
Chinese Philosophy 190
5.2.1 Hall’s Critiques of the Dominant Tradition in Western
Philosophy 190
5.2.2 Hall and Ames’s Studies in Comparative Philosophy 194
5.3 Extending Process-Relational Thought Responsibly 199
5.3.1 From the Language of Substance to the Language of Focus
and Field 200
5.3.2 The Central Argument 203
5.3.3 Shendu 慎独 207
5.3.4 Zhongyong 中庸 211
5.3.5 Cheng 诚 214
5.4 The Chinese Way of Transcendence 219
5.5 Andrew Plaks’s Translation of the Zhongyong 221
5.6 Summary 227
Chapter Six The TranslationCreation of the
Zhongyong 232
6.1 The Zhongyong: Translatable or Untranslatable? 233
6.2 Translation as Phenomenological and Historical
Creation 237
6.2.1 The Phenomenological Creation 238
6.2.2 The Historical Creation 243
6.3 Cheng 诚 as the Translation Criterion 246
6.4 Summary 252
Chapter Seven Conclusion 255
References 258
內容試閱:
Extending the Familiar: The Creation of the Zhongyong in English-Speaking Cultures
Contents
Introduction
This book is an attempt to study the translation of the Zhongyong 中庸 with a methodology derived from the Zhongyong. The methodology in question is known as “extending the familiar”, which means, simply stated, “extending the familiar to the unfamiliar”. As far as the translation of the Zhongyong is concerned, extending the familiar means extending oneself to the cultural other, using familiar religious and philosophical theories in Western culture to apprehend and translate strange Chinese cultural concepts. In this book, several translations of the Zhongyong are selected, probed and illustrated to demonstrate how “extending the familiar” works and to clarify how a Chinese classic is translated, or rather, created in the English-speaking world. These translations include James Legge’s 1815—1897 The Doctrine of the Mean, Gu Hongming’s 辜鸿铭 1857—1928 The Universal Order or Conduct of Life, Leonard A. Lyall and King Chien-Kun’s The Centre, The Common, E. R. Hughes’s The Mean-in-Action, Wing-tsit Chan’s 1901—1994 The Doctrine of the Mean, Roger T. Ames 1947— and David L. Hall’s 1937—2001 Focusing the Familiar, and Andrew Plaks’s 1945— On the Practice of the Mean. These works will be studied roughly chronologically and with a focus on each translator’s choice of analogy made between what is most familiar to them and what can be found in the Zhongyong. The research is expected to bring theoretical and practical benefits by shedding more light on the translation of the Zhongyong in particular and on translation in general. Hopefully, it will contribute, in some small way, to the philosophical study of the Zhongyong.
1.1 Research Background
The Zhongyong is one of the most important works in Confucian literature1. It first appeared in the Book of Rites Liji礼记, and its profound thought gradually attracted people’s attention.2 In the Song Dynasty, it was singled out with the Great Learning Daxue大学, the Analects Lunyu论语, and the Mencius Mengzi孟子 to form a new Confucian canon known as the “Four Books”3. Since then, they have been given scriptural authority and invested with fundamental importance. For example, they were officially recognized as the basic texts for civil service examinations in 1313 and remained so until the early years of the 20th century when the examination system was brought to an end. For more than six centuries, the Zhongyong has dominated China’s cultural life. There is little doubt that it has exerted enormous influence on the hearts and minds of Chinese people and it is no exaggeration to say that the Zhongyong is a gold mine of Chinese wisdom. The concept epitomizes Confucianism and even Cultural China4.
Given its central place in Chinese culture, the Zhongyong has figured as a crucial text in the communication and even competition between Chinese culture and foreign cultures. Moreover, the Zhongyong deals with the subject of man and the world, which has a close bearing on Western religion and philosophy, hence giving the book the privilege of entering into a series of cross-cultural dialogues. In fact, the canonization of the Zhongyong in the Song Dynasty is a result of cultural confrontation, as the Song Confucian scholars, by tapping this source of Confucian literature, sought to meet the Buddhist religious and metaphysical challenge. In this first encounter with Indian Buddhism, Chinese culture was generally on the receiving side, absorbing Buddhist doctrines by recourse to local Taoist or Confucian ideas, and developing them into a new system of thought. It is, in general, a one-way communication, with few Chinese cultural classics translated into Sanskrit or other languages.
The real cultural exchange flourished in the second major encounter between China and the West. It began in the late Ming Dynasty 1580—1644, when Jesuits, Catholic priests belonging to a Christian organization called the Society of Jesus, came to China for Christian mission work.5 These men who were specially selected and trained for the task were, as E. R. Hughes describes, “besides being evangelists, also scientists, historians, students of politics and manners and customs, explorers and map makers, and, above all, men who gave themselves to the study of Chinese literature and the sympathetic understanding of Chinese way of thinking.”6 In the study of Chinese literature, they found Confucianism compatible with Christianity and conducive to their missionary work7, so they began to translate Confucian classics into Western languages and proffered their commentaries on the classics. However, these translations were done with heavy resort to Christian categories and in a sense favorable to Christianity. The Zhongyong is no exception. It was first translated into Latin by the Jesuits.8 Later the first English version, which was an abridged translation from French, appeare