Raising Questions In And Of Language

Humans are rational creatures, whose rationality is embodied in their instinct "toknow". With the equipment of language, the Being of human beings has been in language.And only in language. It is language that enables humans to "know" via "saying" ratherthan merely via "doing", which broadened significantly the path to knowledge, making ourmaterial and spiritual civilization possible. Human civilization grows out of "saying". Theheterogeneous isomorphism of language with the world makes it possible for humans toachieve knowledge about the world, which is universal of all mankind. What they "know"via "saying" could be concrete objects, concepts about objects and language itself and forthis reason the conceptual thinking of humans is embodied in different modes of cognitivelanguage operation, each having its own semantic type and property. These modes are asfollowing:1) the mode of concrete-thing-oriented language operation, its typical question being"What is this", with the focus on what a specific "this" means to the user of language, i.e., toknow the phenomena of things; the verification of the meaning of "this" is rigid, whichmeans the truthfulness of the word meaning can be established by experiences;2) the mode of abstract-concept-oriented language operation, as its typical question is"What is thisness", with a clear emphasis on the understanding of the essence of things; theverification of the meaning of "this" is resilient, which means the truthfulness of the wordmeaning can only be established indirectly and is subject to modifications;3) the mode of purely language-reflective operation, with its typical question of "Whatis 'IS'", in which humans inquire into the pure being as being, i.e., the essence of Being itself. In this mode, the meaning of "Being" simply cannot be verified empirically, but issubject to language-logic examinations.Thus, by virtue of the thing-engagement and the verifiability of the semantic meaningof words, we can identify three modes of language operation on phenomenal meaning,essential meaning and purely linguistic meaning respectively. What humans know from lifeexperiences is the start point of cognition and the basis on which they master the essence ofthings, but it is their metaphysical speculation (as the language operation on language itself)that provides them with universality, necessity and certainty of knowledge, so that humanthinking would not stop at what is empirically true, but proceed on to what is rationally true.As a mode of thinking, the pure language-reflective operation mode is universally human.All nations, whatever languages they speak, are able to enter this mode of thinking, whichmakes it possible for rationalistic ideas to emerge in their thoughts. But because of thetypological differences of languages, all nations do not follow the same language pathtowards the establishment of rationalism.As the thought over thoughts, philosophy inquires into how humans can ensure thetruthfulness of their "knowing" through "saying". This is why philosophy is alwaysconcemed with language issues, which was true with both Chinese and Westernphilosophies in the very beginning. However, the form-centered structural features of thewestern languages have proved highly compatible with the orientation towards trueknowledge in Western philosophy and convenient for westem philosophers to speculate on"to be", "being" and "to be true", issues of both linguistic and philosophical interest. At thevery beginning, this analysis of and in language started Western philosophy on the road ofanalytical rationality.The pre-Qin philosophy of China also attached great importance to language issues,but it failed to enter the mode of pure language speculation, because the classical Chineselanguage at the time simply lacked syntactic forms. Nevertheless, the pre-Qin philosophersdid come to speculations on questions of the certainty of the meaning of "names", as a resultof their debates over issues of "name" and "actuality", "talking" and "doing", and"language" and "meaning" with a focus on the genesis of word meaning and the socialfunction of language. The purely linguistic speculation of the pre-Qin School of Names (SNhereinafter) was indeed bom in the first philosophical debate in the history of traditional Chinese philosophy, a school that focused exclusively on the speculation concerningsemantic certainty and for this reason stepped onto the road of analytical rationality with acharacteristic of the classical Chinese language.In the framework of philosophy of language, this dissertation has given a newexplanation to the propositions of the SN, traditionally regarded as "sophism". Specifically,this research has examined these propositions in the light of the distinction between "use"and "mention". This research highlights the distinction, because it is more than a meretechnique of philosophical analysis, but a wisdom of philosophy of language that is of greatvalue: the distinction of "use" and "mention" of words in propositions makes it clear whichmode the language operation is in, the mode that engages objective entities or linguisticentities. Since this distinction is of great philosophical importance, the pre-Qin SNphilosophers might as well employ it in their philosophical speculations. If this should betrue, this research holds, then the so-called "sophistic" propositions of the SN would containthe "mention" use of words therein, which would constitute a proof of their philosophicalconsciousness about language itself.With this understanding, Chapters 4 and 5 have attempted a new explanation of theso-called "sophisms" of the SN thinkers, specifically, the "Ten Propositions of Hui Shi", the"Twenty-one Paradoxes of the Debaters" and Gongsun Long's propositions, such as'"white-horse is not horse" and "One is not in Two" and so on. As revealed by this research,these propositions of SN are not sophistic at all. Rather, they are ideas rich in analyticalrationality, which have grown out of their serious inquiry into the certainty of meaning of"names". The SN philosophical thought is characterized by 1) a deviation from and achallenge to the traditional and the common-sense ideas; 2) a purely linguistic analysisapproach that is in no way directly involved with things in actuality; and 3) a pursuit afterwhat really "is" in a way characteristic of the classical Chinese language and how the truthof the "is" can be established. Thus the SN philosophy is not one concemed with actuality,nor is it with concrete ideas, but one riveted on the principles governing human thinking asrevealed in language and language use. The SN philosophers are endeavoring to seek afterthe universality, necessity and certainty of the "knowing" via "saying" on the part of humanbeings. Their aim being to find the truthfulness of "names", rather than the correspondencebetween "names" and "actualities", the SN philosophers come to the adoption of analytical approach to study. Their analysis of and in language is no other than the road of the classicalChinese language towards speculative rationality.If the SN had not suffered the vital crash-down from both academic and politicalauthoritarianism, the history of traditional Chinese philosophy could have shown that theSN thinkers did set out on the road toward rationalism with the characteristics of theclassical Chinese languagc analysis. If Western philosophy of language has been born of aphilosophical tradition of ontology and epistemology, traditional Chinese philosophy couldhave, on the basis of its philosophy of language along such a path, developed its ontologyand epistemology, or things of this nature, in the same sense as those in Western philosophy.The rise of speculative rationality were highly possible in classical Chinese philosophy,if, instead of distorting and slandering the SN, the mainstream philosophical schools ofthought of the pre-Qin period had been more understanding and tolerant, adopting the sameanalytical approach to the inquiry into the major philosophical categories such as "Dao" and"Ren"?. What is the essence of "Dao" as "Dao", or of "Ren" as "Ren". Since, as "names","Dao" and "Ren" must refer to something, then what are their referents, or do their referentsreally exist? Such questions might well have given birth to certain ontological andepistemological thoughts in traditional Chinese philosophy. It is true that there was nocopula "to be" in the classical Chinese language, which made it inconvenient for Chinesethinkers to ponder over "being as being", but the propositions of "X is Y" structure could beexpressed with no obstacle in that language, as in the form of "X [subject marker], Y[predicate marker]. The Chinese could have posed questions such as "'Dao' [subjectmarker], what [predicate maker]", to inquire into the metaphysical aspect of languageconcepts. Such inquiries might well lead to the birth of a certain "What-ology", a Chinesephilosophical "ontology" without "to be".Unfortunately, however, the philosophy of language of SN did not force the others ontothe path of logical analysis that would have promoted the appearance of speculativerationality in Chinese philosophy. On the contrary, the ideas of SN had been rejected andthrown into oblivion in a span of over two thousand years, sufferring heavy blows from thesecular minded and socio-moral-practice oriented philosophies and the feudalistic politicaldictatorship. After the SN, no one in Chinese history has ever raised philosophical questionsfrom language analysis and tried to answer the questions in language speculation. As the result, speculative rationality is absent from the realm of traditional Chinese philosophy.This is indeed deplorable for the traditional Chinese thinkers.In its own language framework, this dissertation has given a satisfactory re-explanationto the so-called "sophistic" propositions of SN. However, in view of the difficulty andcomplexity in the research on the SN ideas, this dissertation does not claim to be providingany ultimate resolution, nor does it pretend to have any once-and-for-all conclusion to thestudy of the "sophistic propositions" of SN. What the author hopes to achieve is that thisdissertation can be conducive to a new and illuminative approach to the SN research. Forthe value of philosophical inquiries does not consist in offering final answers, but in thewisdom demonstrated in its original approaches. It is the wisdom of philosophical inquiry,rather than its conclusions, that is long valued.