Panel 53: The Reception and Influence of Phonology, Philology, & Philosophy in China, 1700-2000

Full title: New World Encounters: The Reception and Influence of Phonology, Philology, and Philosophy in China, 1700-2000

Chair and Discussant: Lionel Jensen, University of Notre Dame

This panel examines the diverse interactions between China and the New World, including Manchu, Japan, Korea, and the West, from 1700 to 2000. It challenges the monolithic understanding of China’s pre-modern and modern eras by exploring the exchange of language, knowledge, and philosophy. The presentations will address how these encounters shaped Chinese culture and thought across three centuries. Rhonda Huo addresses the early encounter between Chinese phonology and the Manchu language in the Qing dynasty, examining how new phonetic elements of Manchu affected the Chinese language. This will give an insight into the multi-ethnic cultural image of the Qing Empire. Woohui Park will explore how both the presumably scientific attitude (gewu zhizhi) and evidential research of Confucianism (shishi qiushi methodology) intersected with Western natural science during the twentieth century in comparison with diverse understandings in Korea and Japan. Xinting Liu aims to understand and explain the difference in meritocracy between the East and the West with an emphasis on the concept of desert. Liu’s philosophical approach will illuminate how the ideal images of political meritocrats vary from the East and West philosophical traditions and stress the significance of moral virtues in Eastern meritocracy.

Panelists

Rhonda Huo, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, “Manchu Language in Rewriting Chinese Fanqie in the Eighteenth Century”

This paper analyzes how the Qing dynasty’s official projects used the Manchu language to revise Han Chinese fanqie 反切, which uses two Chinese characters to indicate the sound of the target character. It studied how Illustration of Phonology 音韻闡微, compiled by Li Guangdi 李光地 and Wang Lansheng 王蘭生 and published in 1728, used Manchu spelling rules to reform fanqie. Moreover, it also investigated how the tripartite spellings 三合切音 created in the Qianlong period further changed fanqie into three characters phonetic notations that imitated the Manchu spelling rule rather than the Chinese syllables. By analyzing these two methods, this paper evaluated how the official publication influenced Han Chinese phonology, and the role of the Chinese language in the multi-ethnic cultural image that the Qianlong Emperor created in imperial projects.

Woohui Park, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, “Contested Understandings of Chinese Scientific Method in the Twentieth Century East Asia”

As the concept of science is intertwined with the changing understanding of nature, the transition of terminology from Gezhixue/kakuqigaku/ gyeokchihak (格致学) to kexue/ kagaku/ gwahak” (科学), as translated by Nishi Amane (西周,1829-1897), involves evolving thoughts on natural and scientific knowledge, particularly regarding nature. The establishment and the categorization of scientific terms from natural science raise the question: Did China, Japan, and Korea undergo a similar process of embracing science as a facet of modernity in the twentieth century?

The elites in the Qing dynasty comprehend factual knowledge about natural world and moral philosophy regarding the human world, especially within a framework heavily influenced by Confucianism. The diverse approaches of Confucianism to gain knowledge, represented by “investigating things and extending knowledge” (gewu zhizhi) and “seeking truth in actual events” (shishi qiushi), have been acknowledged as the scientific method and at the same time as an the impediment to scientific development.

Grafting two primary questions, this paper will bring attention to how elites in twentieth century East Asia adopted the new notions of science through their existing lens of Confucianism in the Qing dynasty and how they evaluate these seemingly scientific methods in Qing Confucianism, known as evidential research. By illuminating the contested understandings of scientific methods, the paper will aim to discover not only the intellectual exchange but also the connotations of science in modern East Asia.

Xinting Liu, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, “Comparing Eastern and Western Political Meritocrats”

This paper is a comparative study between Eastern and Western political meritocracy. They both oppose liberal democracy in the form of “one person, one vote.” On the eastern side, Tongdong Bai, drawing from Mencius, argues that the government is for the people, of the people, but not by the people; democracy is less legitimate than meritocracy, as the former cannot serve people’s well-being as effectively as the latter. On the western side, Jason Brennan argues against unconditional universal suffrage to prevent ignorant and irrational citizens from influencing political decisions. However, Eastern and Western meritocracy portray different ideal images of political meritocrats. In the Western perspective, political meritocrats are depicted as epistocrats. An epistocrat is fully rational and equipped with specialized political knowledge. Nevertheless, in the Eastern view, political meritocrats not only need to possess professional political knowledge but also are required to be morally virtuous. An Eastern meritocrat is both wise and virtuous.

Given this observation, this paper intends to understand and explain this difference from the perspective of desert, which is the fundamental and justificatory value underlying meritocracy in the sense that political positions are distributed according to desert. Following this, I provide two explanations for these different depictions of political meritocrats. First, according to the notion that a person’s deservingness is determined by the nature of the thing to be distributed, I argue that the East and the West have different understandings of the function and nature of political positions and governance. Second, according to the notion that a person’s deservingness is determined by the goal of the institution, I argue that Eastern meritocracy brings up the requirement of moral virtue in order to mitigate circumstantial luck, given that the meritocratic government aims for good political results.