Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking

Jean-Paul Reding

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351950053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

This collection of essays, by Reding, in the emergent field of Sino-Hellenic studies, explores the neglected inchoative strains of rational thought in ancient China and compares them to similar themes in ancient Greek thought, right at the beginnings of philosophy in both cultures. Reding develops and defends the bold hypothesis that Greek and Chinese rational thinking are one and the same phenomenon. Rather than stressing the extreme differences between these two cultures - as most other writings on these subjects - Reding looks for the parameters that have to be restored to see the similarities. Reding maintains that philosophy is like an unknown continent discovered simultaneously in both China and Greece, but from different starting-points. The book comprises seven essays moving thematically from conceptual analysis, logic and categories to epistemology and ontology, with an incursion in the field of comparative metaphorology. One of the book's main concerns is a systematic examination of the problem of linguistic relativism through many detailed examples.

Chapter 1
‘Contradiction is Impossible’

Early Greek and Chinese philosophers seem to agree on an axiom that now looks very curious to us, namely that ‘contradiction is impossible’, and with it also debating, refuting and lying.¹ In the Euthydemus, an early Platonic dialogue, two sophists, Dionysodorus and Euthydemus, attempt to persuade their pupil Ctesippus of the validity of this paradox.

Dionysodorus then said: ‘Do you pretend, Ctesippus, that there is such a thing as contradiction?’

‘Perfectly so,’ Ctesippus said, ‘and I am entirely convinced of it. And you, Dionysodorus, do you think that there is no contradiction?’

‘At least,’ he said, ‘you cannot prove that you have ever heard anybody contradicting anybody else.’

‘Is that really so?’ he answered, ‘for just now I am proving to you that Ctesippus contradicts Dionysodorus.’

‘Would you like to hear the explanation of it?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Well then. Is there for each thing a proper way of calling it?’ (eisin hekastôi tôn ontôn logoi)²

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The way the thing is or the way it is not?’ ‘The way the thing is.’ ‘You remember, Ctesippus,’ he said, ‘that we have demonstrated before³ that nobody speaks of things the way they are not. What does not exist, nobody can call it, as we have seen.’

‘What should this mean for the present case? Is it not less true that you and I contradict each other?’

‘Do we contradict each other if both of us call the object by its name? Would we then not say exactly the same?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If, on the contrary, neither of us calls the object by its name, could we then contradict each other? In this case, then, would either of us say anything about this object?’ 17

‘No,’ he said.

‘Do we contradict each other if I name one object and you name some other object? Is it not, then, that I say something about the object at issue and you do not say anything about it at all? How could the one who does not say anything contradict the one who does say something about the object?’

(Plato, Euthydemus 285D–286B)

If two interlocutors speak the truth about one and the same subject matter, then they must also say the same about it. If they do not, then either the object they speak about is not the same, and in this case there is no debate, since everybody speaks about something different, or else, one of them does not speak at all, because his discourse simply does not reach the object. Finally, if neither of them speaks about the object at issue, there is no debate either. Contradiction, hence, is impossible, since each object has one and only one proper and true name by which it can be successfully called. Any other name simply does not hit the object. The sophist Prodicus is said to have justified this argument in the following way.

For if people speak in contradiction of one another, then they both speak.⁴ But it is impossible that they both speak (truly) about the same object. For, he says, he who tells the truth, and reports subject matters as they are (hôs ekhei ta pragmata),⁵ is the only one who is speaking; and the one who opposes him does not say anything at all about the object [ … ].

(Toura papyrus from the sixth century AD; commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes. For the text, see Binder and Liesenborghs 1966; translation Denyer 1991: 26–27, slightly changed.)

To speak about an object means, not only, to say something true about it, but above all to name it correctly. This is why any discourse that does not correctly name the object under discussion simply is not a discourse at all and more resembles meaningless noise than speech, or is about some other object.⁶ Note that the theme of the impossibility of contradiction is discussed here in terms of naming, and not in terms of making statements, for it would of course not be impossible to make different but true statements about one and the same thing. Moreover, statements can be negated, whereas names cannot be negated, or only in a very special way, as we shall see below. The winner of the debate is the one who gives to the object under discussion its correct name; the loser either names another object or does not name at all. If debating is seen as strife between rival ways of naming, the paradox of the impossibility of contradiction is even inevitable. The reason for this is quite obvious. If all the contents of knowledge are concentrated in the names, there is no room for knowledge outside these names. Moreover, the meaning of a name is supposed to be the same for all. Since naming is equated with saying what a thing is, the person who names an object correctly then also says something true about it – more precisely, even, speaks the truth about it. If there is only one possible way to name an object correctly, everybody who speaks truly about this object must say the same about it, since he must use the same name. Since speech is necessarily cast into names, it follows from there that it is impossible for two interlocutors to speak about the same object by using different names. Expressed in modern terms, we might say that meaning and reference are not separated. Moreover, names here also appear to have a propositional value.⁷ Contradictions, then, are only apparent, and can always be explained away by insufficient knowledge of the meaning and reference of names. If two interlocutors believe themselves to be speaking about the same object while using different names, one of them, or even both, does not know the proper meaning of the names he uses.

In ancient China, we find a brief mention of a similar theory in the writings of the Later Mohists, a group of scholars that had tried to reconstruct, more geometrico the basic principles of the philosophy of Master Mo (Mozi^a). In the Mojing,^b the Mohist Canon, there is a short criticism of the axiom of the impossibility of contradiction.

To say that there is no winner in disputation necessarily does not fit the fact. Explained by: disputation.

What something is called, is either the same or different. In a case where it is the same, one man calls it ‘whelp’ and the other ‘dog’. In a case where it is different, one man calls it ‘ox’ and the other ‘horse’. Neither wins the debate, because this is a case of not engaging in disputation. In disputation, the one calls it as it is, the other one, not. The one who fits the fact wins the debate.

(Mohist Canon, B 35; Graham 1978: 402–403; translation slightly changed) ⁸

For the Mohists, a debate can only take place if both interlocutors ‘contradict’ each other, that is, if they make contradictory assertions about one and the same object. As a preliminary, two cases of ‘apparent debate’ are ruled out: both interlocutors make identical assertions about one and the same object, but without being aware of it, since they use different – but equivalent – names, like ‘whelp’ and ‘dog’; or both believe that they speak about the same thing, but in truth speak about two different things, and so debate is not even engaged.⁹ The cases of apparent debate mentioned here belong to the same paradigm as the one delineated by the Greek sophists, because debate is again conceived as strife between names.

There is another, much more subtle text on the impossibility of contradiction in the second chapter of the book Zhuangzi.

Let us suppose that you and I argue. If you beat me, and not I you, are you in the end right and I wrong? If I beat you and not you me, am I then in the end right and you wrong? Or is one of us right, and the other wrong? Or are we both right or both wrong? If you and I cannot together decide about it, then other men too will be in the dark about it. Who shall I employ as arbiter between us? If I employ someone who takes your view to decide, how can he arbitrate between us, since he already sides with you? If I employ someone who takes my view to decide, how can he arbitrate between us, since he already sides with me? If I employ someone who differs with both of us, how can he arbitrate between us, since he differs from both? If I employ someone who agrees with both of us, how can he arbitrate between us, since he already agrees with both? But if you and I and the arbiter cannot decide about it, should we depend on someone still different?

(Zhuangzi, ch. 2, p. 17, Zhuzi jicheng edition)

This time, the problem is envisaged from another angle, namely from the one of the decidability of the debate. Zhuangzi intends to show that a debate cannot be engaged at all, since the logically possible situations of contradiction cannot even be recognized as such, because this would necessitate that the truth be already known before the debate and independently of it. For who knows for sure that the two names ‘whelp’ and ‘dog’ apply to one and the same object? And who decides whether some name rightly applies to a given object or not? At first sight, Zhuangzi’s arguments do not seem to fit quite straightforwardly into the paradigm of the special theory of naming outlined above. What distinguishes Zhuangzi from the Later Mohists is that the latter maintain that each name has an objective cognitive content. For Zhuangzi, on the contrary, names are arbitrary, and always depend on the person who utters them.

What is It is also Other, what is Other is also It. There they say ‘That’s it, that’s not’ from one point of view, here we say ‘That’s it, that’s not’ from another point of view. Are there really It and Other? Or really no It and Other? Where neither It nor Other finds its opposite is called the axis of the Way.

(Zhuangzi, ch. 2, p. 10, Zhuzi jicheng edition; translation Graham 1981: 53)

Names, for Zhuangzi, function like demonstratives. This difference does not appear to influence the general theory of naming that underlies these arguments, because there is still the presupposition of the one-to-one correspondence between names and things: if my ‘this’ becomes your ‘that’, my ‘that’ also becomes your ‘this’. Zhuangzi, however, also rules out the notion of contradiction, because ‘this’ is properly contradicted only by ‘not-this’, and not by ‘that’. ‘This’ and ‘that’ function like names, the only difference being that these names do not have an objective content.¹⁰ Names, under these circumstances, are always private names and hence differ from person to person. Contradiction, or debate in the Mohist sense, simply never can happen.

The sophists have often been accused of having invented the paradox of the impossibility of contradiction only to avoid being contradicted themselves.¹¹

This is a superficial accusa...