Language and Logic in the Xunzi Chris Fraser University of Hong Kong 1. Introduction The Xunzi is among our most valuable sources for early Chinese philosophy of language and logic. Xunzi’s views on language and dialectics are of great interest in their own right, but they also form an integral part of his broader ethical, political, epistemological, and metaphysical theories. In some respects, his philosophy of language and logic is a microcosm of his overall philosophical system. He himself implies as much when he says, in one passage, that the proper employment of language and dialectics is “the beginning of the kingly vocation” (HKCS 22/110/4, 147). Xunzi’s semantic and logical theories are largely consistent with those of the path-breaking Mohist “Dialectics,”1 suggesting that their shared features, along with those of relevant discussions in the Confucian Analects and The Annals of Lü Buwei, represent the prevailing, mainstream approach to language and logic in classical China. Xunzi adopts much the same conceptual apparatus as the Mohists but develops and extends it in several respects. His semantic theory in particular complements the Mohist treatment by filling an important explanatory gap concerning the basis for kind distinctions and by helping to resolve certain conceptual puzzles that emerge from Mohist thought. This semantic theory is intertwined with a theory of perception that presents an intriguing counterpart to representational theories familiar from the Western tradition. Xunzi’s views on language and logic present interpretive and justificatory problems of their own, however, which as we will see are in some respects indicative of fundamental difficulties in his ethical and political philosophy. 1.1 Background To understand Xunzi’s philosophy of language and logic, we need to understand several general points about classical Chinese thought. First, most philosophy in Xunzi’s era had a deeply practical orientation, epitomized by a concern with and a conceptual framework centered on the notion of dao 道 (“way”).2 A dao is either an actual or a normatively proper way of doing something. A prevailing concern for most early thinkers was to identify and implement the proper dao by which to govern society and guide personal conduct. The project of formulating an accurate theoretical description of the world—what we might think of as a philosophical orientation centered on truth—was rarely if ever a concern, except insofar as it contributed to identifying the right dao. Second, how we use language is an integral part of our practice of the proper dao, in two respects. One is that the content of the dao includes norms governing the proper 1 The Mohist “Dialectics” (Mo Bian 墨辯) are six books of the Mozi that present an extensive treatment of language and logic, among other topics. For detailed discussions, see Graham (1978), Hansen (1992), or Fraser (2005a). 2 See, for example, Graham (1989: 3) and Hansen (1992: 3–5). Copyright © 2012 2 use of ming 名 (“names”) and yan 言 (“statements”). (For early theorists, including Xunzi, “names” include all words—both nouns and verbs, singular terms and general terms—and “statements” or “sayings” comprise any utterance that conveys a thought, including commands and teachings.) To follow the dao, then, we must use language properly. The other respect is that language is a means of guiding people to perform the dao. Statements convey the dao by giving instructions or presenting teachings. Names guide action through norms of conduct associated with the roles they designate. To borrow a famous example from the Confucian Analects (Lau 1979: 114), calling someone a “jun 君” (“ruler”) or “fu 父” (“father”) places that person in a particular social role, subject to corresponding norms and expectations, much as a job title is associated with a job description. To be denoted by a particular name is to be subject to certain norms; conversely, only those who live up to the norms deserve the name. Names also determine how we should treat their bearers. Naming a person “ruler” or an object “scepter” invokes norms concerning how we are to act toward that person or object. For these reasons, to early Chinese theorists, including Xunzi, the most prominent function of language was not reporting facts or expressing the speaker’s ideas, but guiding action, an aspect of language use that has attracted less attention in the Western philosophical tradition.3 To guide people to follow the dao properly, language must be used properly. A third general point is that the use of language was understood to be based on speakers’ and listeners’ practical ability to distinguish things into different lei 類 (“kinds”) on the basis of their having or lacking similar features and to apply the same name to all things of a kind. This ability to draw distinctions also explains the mechanism by which names guide action. Distinguishing a particular thing as being of one kind or another triggers a norm-governed response to that kind. If we have been trained in the norms of li 禮 (ritual), for example, distinguishing a person walking toward us as an “elder” might induce us to bow to the person as we pass. To perform dao correctly, then, we must distinguish and respond to things in the proper way. Language functions and guides conduct through action-guiding distinctions. A fourth helpful preliminary is that a paramount value in Xunzi’s ethics and politics is zhi 治 (“order,” “control”). The core of Xunzi’s normative ethical and political theory is a system of ritual propriety and role-associated duties that he believed ancient sage-kings introduced to achieve social order and eliminate disorder. Because of the action-guiding functions of language, Xunzi sees regulating language as a crucial part of the overall ethical and political project of achieving social order. To bring about order, everyone in the community must distinguish the referents of the words used in instructions, the code of ritual propriety, the legal code, job titles, and political titles in a unified, consistent way. Otherwise, people may fail to understand their roles and duties and be unable to carry out commands or follow laws. Linguistic anarchy breeds political anarchy. Because of the role of language in practical politics, in Xunzi’s era the issue of zheng ming 正名 (“right names”), or whether people distinguished the referents of words correctly, had become a major concern in mainstream philosophy of language, political philosophy, and moral psychology. A well-known passage in the Confucian Analects gives zheng ming (here a verb phrase, “rectifying names”) a prominent role in governance (Lau 1979: 118). A pair of essays in The Annals of Lü Buwei are devoted to it (Knoblock and Riegel 2001: 400–403, 3 Hansen (1983) particularly emphasizes this interpretive insight, which he credits to Munro (1969). 3 405–409), and passages in texts as diverse as the Guanzi 管子, Shangjunshu 商君書, Liji 禮記, Zuozhuan 左傳, and the Mohist “Dialectics” touch on it. Meanwhile, Daoist texts attack the assumption that language can or should be a means of providing reliable guidance for action. 1.2 Right Names Xunzi frames his chief discussion of language and logic, which forms the bulk of Chapter 22 (“Right Names”), around the issue of a ruler’s need to ensure the right use of names. He contends that a true king regulates names, or words, by fixing their use to distinguish different kinds of things, so that the dao is put into practice, the king’s intentions are communicated, and he can lead the people to unity (HKCS 22/108/4, 140).4 When conventions for the use of names are carefully maintained, people are unified in conducting themselves conscientiously by the proper models. Thus the king’s achievements endure, and enduring achievements and successful accomplishments are “the height of good order” (HKCS 22/108/7–8, 141). The main threat to such orderly regulation of language is miscreants who engage in the “great depravity” of “splitting phrases and recklessly inventing names in order to disrupt right names” (HKCS 22/108/4–5, 140). Xunzi here refers to those who, like Hui Shi 惠施, Deng Xi 鄧析, and Gongsun Long 公孫龍, are known for confusing, paradoxical sayings,5 but also those who advocate ethical or psychological theses he rejects, such as Song Xing 宋鈃 .6 He is in effect claiming that a major factor explaining the mistaken doctrines of his philosophical opponents—whether frivolous, such as Gongsun Long’s logic-chopping claim that a white horse is not a horse, or sincere, such as Song Xing’s pacifist doctrine that a person can be insulted without thereby being disgraced—is that they muddle the proper referents of words. (Notice that Xunzi does not say they garble the meanings of words. Like the Mohists’, his theory does not explicitly treat the meaning or intension of terms, but their reference or extension.) Such incorrect use of words confuses people, generating disputation and litigation concerning what does or does not conform to models or laws. The kings of old treated such “great depravity” as a crime comparable to tampering with tallies and measures, and as a result no one dared employ “strange phrasings” to disorder right names (HKCS 22/108/5–6, 140). Xunzi laments that in his day, with the sage-kings gone, the relations between names and the objects they denote has fallen into disorder, so that the distinctions between what is “this” and “not-this”—or what is right and not right—have become unclear and even law-abiding officials or conscientious Ru 儒 (“erudites,” or Confucians) cannot avoid disorder (HKCS 22/108/8–9, 141). Given the importance of regulating the use of names, were a true king to arise again, he would follow some conventional uses of old names while also creating some new names (presumably to 4 Citations to the Xunzi give the chapter, page, and line numbers in Lau (1996), followed by the page number in Watson (1963).