Analysis of Some Chinese Concepts
作者：靳希平
文章來源：思問
瀏覽：314 次
靳希平
Xiping JIN ，Peking University
I would like to begin by thanking the organizer of this conference for the invitation to join you here and enjoy the wonderful hospitality. On behalf of the Chinese Society of Phenomenology, The Center of Phenomenology at Peking University, The Institute of Foreign Philosophy and The department of philosophy at Peking University, and myself personally, let me at first congratulate you, my colleagues in Hong Kong, on the birth of your Research Center for Phenomenology and Human Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. In the past ten years the phenomenologists in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Society of Phenomenology have in different forms and ways supported the phenomenological movement in mainland China. Today’s flourishing phenomenological research on the mainland cannot be separated from these impressive and selfless contributions. I would like to use this opportunity to express our sincere thankfulness for everything you have done for us and I am looking forward for continuing our cooperation in developing the phenomenological research in the future.
It is a great privilege for me to have the chance to present my paper in this inaugural conference. Originally I wanted to speak on 「The Basic Concepts and Greek Influence in the Theoretical Thinking of Modern Chinese,「 but my friend Chan Fai Chung told me that this had apparently no direct connection with the theme of the conference, i.e. "Phenomenology and Human Pathos". Then I intended to read a previous paper again, namely, 「At the Beginning of Phenomenology in China: Youding SHEN and Husserl，「 which I had read in the conference in Florida on 」「Phenomenology as a Bridge between Asia and the West。」But after I received the program of this conference, I noticed that not a few of the participants here were present at the Florida conference. Therefore I wrote a new paper for this conference with the title of 「Phenomenological Analysis of Usages of Some Chinese Concepts derived from Greek.」 This continues my work on The Basic Concepts and Greek Influence in Theoretical Thinking of Modern Chinese. I put the word phenomenological here in the title because I am taking part in this important meeting. I do not know if my paper is phenomenological enough or not, but Prof. Embree told us in Beijng that phenomenological analysis is reflective analysis fundamentally. I think that my paper is also somewhat reflective, so maybe it is not totally false to say that it is phenomenological.
I
Prof. Held has repeated recommended that Chinese colleagues not repeat what Western colleagues have already done, but instead to strive to make phenomenological research on our own culture, about our own life-world. Just before this conference Prof. Embree held a phenomenological seminar (6 meetings in 2 weeks) at Peking University and discussed his unpublished new book, Reflective Analysis: A First Introduction into Phenomenological Investigation. In the seminar he emphasized the difference between the scholarship on phenomenology and investigation in phenomenology, and told the Chinese youngsters interested in phenomenology, 「People who are phenomenologists may often engage in scholarship, but are not phenomenologists when they only do so. … Being a genuine phenomenologist…requires getting beyond texts and addressing things themselves…. Phenomenologists produce new texts on the basis of their phenomenological investigation of things.」 Professors Embree and Held both emphasize the same idea: strive to do phenomenology or, with Embree’s formulation, to do reflective analysis. Their advice is very important for the development of phenomenology in China.
If we try to fulfill the idea of Prof. Embree and Held, if we try to do reflective analysis, the first problem we encounter is language: should we analyze the things into German or English concepts and categories, or should we do it under the guidance of Chinese language? It seems evident that as Chinese phenomenologist we should work with our mother tongue. But my teacher Wang Taiqing told me that his teacher Jin Yueling, a Chinese scholar of mathematic logic and a philosopher in the strict sense (or in the Greek sense) in China, who studied at Pennsylvania University and at Colombia University from 1914 to 1920 and then worked in England and France until 1925, philosophized only in English even in China until he came to a clear result and then translated his thought into Chinese himself. This was because Jin Yuelin (金岳霖) felt that the Chinese language was not analytical enough for philosophizing. But as a result his philosophical books, On Dao and The Theory of Knowledge, are rarely to read by Chinese scholars. In contrast, his Logic is well known in China and was regard as the standard textbook of logic in very long time.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning how this famous mainland Chinese philosopher interpreted Chinese philosophy. In one of Jin Yuelin’s articles written and mimeographed for limited circulation in 1943 and published in Social Sciences in China ( March 1980) he wrote,「One of the features characteristic of Chinese philosophy is the underdevelopment of what might be called logico-epistemological consciousness」. This does not mean that 「Chinese philosophy is illogical or that it is not based on knowledge.」 What it is really means is that Chinese philosophers did not have 「a developed consciousness of epistemology and logic.」 「As result there isn’t that systematic completeness which is so something to the trained mind.」 Of course the historical fact was 「not that there was no such consciousness. Perhaps inevitably from the nature of the impetus concerned, this consciousness started with what impatient thinkers [they predominated that time. —JIN] are liable to dismiss as mere sophistries. The underlying reality behind the so-called sophistries, however, was only a switch of the muses from the problem of ultimate realities to those of LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND IDEAS [Capitalized by JIN] realizing perhaps that the latter must be tackled before the former could be solved.」 「Such a switch took place in the pre-Qin period [771 B.C.-256 B.C.—added by JIN] when a number of thinkers started to maintain the distinction between the universal and the particular, the relativity of terms, the separation of hardness from whiteness, the doctrine of infinite divisibility of the finite, of the staticity [actionlessness-JIN] of quickly moving arrows, etc., in the midst of speculations which were obviously more directly concerned with the problems of that turbulent age. Students of philosophy will inevitably think of the parallel in Greek thought. It was from similar doctrines arising out of reason itself and the intellectual finesse in Western philosophy was obtained; and it was by them that philosophy was in some sense converted into mental gymnastics. In China, however, the tendency was short-lived; admirable as it was for a beginning, it yet died a precocious death. The logico-epistemological consciousness remained underdeveloped almost to the present day.」 Why did it die a precocious death? Does it have nothing to do with the characteristics of LANGUAGE and its WRITING FORM, and with the thought and ideas which are shaped by such LANGUAGE and its WRITING FORM? This is a very interesting topic for phenomenological investigations of Chinese culture. But what I am interested now is another question: What kind of role do the loan words play in Chinese theoretical language?
In passing, I will mention the viewpoint of a famous Chinese scholar at Bochum University in Germany, the Chinese translator of Husserl’s Idea I , LI Youzheng. In his article On the Semantic Structure of Philosophical Vocabularies of the Chinese Language, he said, 「almost one hundred percent of the abstract ideas of science can be exactly expressed by the system of Chinese words and phrases, and there are very few components of loan word」 。I have made a spot check, in order to test if his assertion is correct of not. I took a Chinese book, 「Fundamental Research in High T c Superconductivity」 as a sample. I closed my eyes and opened one page of it, p.172, and took count of the loan words in it. One third of this page is a chart with all the Chinese text and words on it are loan words. The other two third this page is text consisting of 527 Chinese characters, (17 lines and every line about 31 characters). The non-loan word Chinese words account for 41%, with 215 characters which consist in such words like 「of (的)」，「is (是)」, 「for (對於)」, 「here （這裡）」, 「in （在）」, 「if (若)」，「at the beginning（一開始）」, and so on. All the technical terms, which make this text meaningful, are, without exception, loan words. I have made the same probe with the classic textbook of quantum physics, Quantum Theory by David Bohm and translated into Chinese by Hou Depeng(侯德彭). On page 515, the half it consists in mathematic formulae, the other half consists in 224 Chinese characters. All the physical concepts (58 characters and 26% of the text.) are loan words. My spot check is not extensive. If I have enough time, I will make more statistics. But my example shows at least Li You Zheng’s assertion is incorrect. In contrast with 「almost hundred percent of the abstract idea of science can be exactly expressed」 only by loan words and formulae and symbols written in Latin, it is more accurately to say, 「the abstract ideas of science」 can only be exactly expressed in mathematic formulae and symbols which are totally introduced from Western.
The basic writings of Husserl, Heidegger, Max Scheller, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty are already translated into Chinese. But there is a very embarrassedly situation: on the on hand, my colleagues, friends, and myself have made and still make indescribable great efforts to translate the basic writings of phenomenology into Chinese; on the other hand, we know very clearly that it seems almost to be impossible for one to grasp the main ideas of phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger only through the reading of Chinese translations. According my experience, none of Chinese students in Peking University have understood Husserl and Heidegger only through studying the Chinese translations of their writings and without at least the English translations in hand. Is it a waste of time to translate the phenomenological sources into Chinese? Are our exertions for nothing? Is there any way out of this embarrassed situation?
A famous Chinese scholar in the 19th century, Yan Fu, found a way to overcame such dilemma: at first he read-through a chapter of the book which he wanted to translate, put it away, rendered the content of this book in his own Chinese language, and the published the result under the name of original author. With this method he 「translated」 Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics 《天演論》, A. Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations《國富論》，Herbert Spencer’s Social Statistic《群學肆言》, John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic 《穆勒名學》and On Liberty《群己權界論》，Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws《法意》 and Edward Jenks A History of Politics《社會通詮》。 Because of his wonderful classical style of Chinese his translations had great influence in the history of modernization and westernization of Chinese thought and Chinese society. But his translations were not translation in rigorous sense, but paraphrases. Today if any Chinese wants to quote A. Smith or Herbert Spencer or J.S. Mill, Yan Fu’s translations will not be used. If someone would want to make a translation in Yan Fu’s style today, he would not find a bookmaker to publish it. That means, Yan Fu’s method of translations is not acceptable today. This way is out of date.
The inexact translation had a great influence, but the exact one didn’t! I think one of the important reasons of this strange phenomenon is the difference between Western languages and Chinese. If the translation of Western theoretical and particularly philosophical works into Chinese is so difficult, creative philosophizing in Chinese language has to be more different as in Western language. Therefore, in order to make sure how far is the modern Chinese language is suitable for philosophizing, or how the Chinese language shall shapes the thought of modern Chinese philosophers, specially of Chinese phenomenologists, we should engage in reflective analysis on the modern Chinese language, specially the theoretical Chinese language, before, or at least during our reflective analysis of things. As a first stage of this investigation I have tried to understand the function of loan words derived from Greek in Chinese theoretical language .
It is well known that the modern theoretical language in Chinese is strongly influenced by the Western languages through the translation of Western theoretical works. The first contact of Chinese culture with the Greek heritage began at the end of Ming dynasty, namely, in the 16th century. The ancient Chinese scholars translated Euclid’s Elements of geometry , Aristotle’s On the Heavens, On the Soul and Categories，and some works of Isagoge of Porphyry into classical Chinese. Unfortunately, they did not translate them from the original Greek text, but took the fresh Latin translations and interpretations of Aristotle by that time as the original, which was published anonymously by the Portugal Jesuits in Coimbra. These translations left little trace in Chinese culture so far as I know. The real transport of Western thought into China is in the 19th century at end of Qing dynasty. It began with Yan Fu (although the new words he created in his translations did not leave any trace in modern Chinese ), and is still continuing today.
How far or how strong is the influence of Greek concepts or Western thought on modern Chinese thinking and the theoretical Chinese? I have made a sample statistics. I took a lecture of our Chinese President Jang Ze Min, namely the lecture at celebration fest of Birth of Chinese Communist Party, as an example. Why a lecture by the Chinese President? Do I want to make propaganda here? No! If I would take an article of Prof. Liangkang Ni as an example, my statistic would not perusable enough, because only a few of Chinese who already read Husserl in English or German can understand his language. The Chinese president is not a scholar, he does not support the Westernization of Chinese culture. On the contrary he is opposed to the Westernization of Chinese culture. In his lecture would be expected to do best to avoid using loan words, which could be difficult to understand for his comrades of Chinese Communist Party. His language is popular propaganda, but somehow it is theoretical formula Chinese just like occurs in Chinese magazines or newspapers. If I can find some trace of influence of Geek or Western concepts in his language, the statistics would have more typical meaning. The result my research is that 23% of the words in the Chinese President’s speech are loan words from Greek.
II
Is philosophizing easier through loan words? Yes and no. Of course, just like in natural science, loan words are a great help for translating and understanding the philosophical works of Western classics. But at the same time, because the loan words have no roots in Chinese, or have other etymologic connections in Western languages, this practice can also lead to many serious misunderstanding, especially if the reader does not have the original text in hand, which is unfortunately often the case in mainland China. In following I only want to give few examples to show the problem.
The Chinese word運動is the Japanese free translation for athletics or sport (p. 398-399), but originally 運means from one place to another; so 動has two meanings: doing (poieein) or movement (ki/nhsij). For Chinese understanding 運動means happenings in natural movement, and then we speak of political movements, campaigns against or to stop some evils also 運動 (反腐敗運; in English this includes campaigns against corruption. You can never say in English: 「athletics against corruptions」). Or, positively, one can speak of the drive for technological innovation 技術革新運動. There is nothing to do with athletics here.
The Chinese concept理論is from the Japanese free translation of theory (it occurs 42 times in Jiang’s speech, p.207). qewri/a comes from qewre/w "look at」, 「view」; qew/roj means inspector, one who travels in order to see men or things. (qea/+Voroj ); at any case theoria is dealing with something seen, the content of this concept is determined by the special act of human being, 「seeing」 through which it is found or gained. Therefore the tradition of theoretical treatment of the world is criticized today as visual-centralism. But the Chinese translation of this concept理論 means to argue and to present one’s argument (說理, talk about principles and reason and rules and orderliness. ), and make a thesis (立論). Etymologically Chinese word理 means 「machining jade（治玉）」 or the grain (「order」) of jade. 論means speak or talk or to have something to do with language. Putting the two Characters together we have a new word: 「discourse of orders」, 「systematic speech about rules and principles」. If a Chinese who don’t know any foreign language want to make analysis on this concept, he would ask the questions: 「What kind of character of such rules or orders are there?」 「How do such rules work in the universe?」 「Are there at first the universe or such rules and principles?」 and so on. Only through the analysis of the concept 「理論」, this Chinese could never think about spiritual seeing of the abstract things, or observation of things with thinking. Because in the Chinese translation the perspective of seeing and observing, or intuiting of the theoretical act in qewri/a is disappeared.
With the concepts 存在 (Being) and本質 (essence) the situation is much more complicated and more problematic. 本質is from a Japanese free translation of essence (p.40). The concepts essentia in Latin or the concept ousi/a in Greek are all variations of the copula, esse in Latin and ei)nai= in Greek. Therefore the concept of essence or ousi/a in Greek has a linguistic intrinsic relationship with the copula, and hereby ontology: the questioning about the meaning of Being as Being. But in classical Chinese (先秦古文) there was no such grammatical phenomenon and the copula is new grammatical appearance in Medieval oral Chinese language, but it was rarely used in official and theoretical writing language or the language in literature. Only in fiction can one often encounter the usage of the copula. But at that time fiction was as worthless for the scholars as pornography is for literature professors in the university today. Until 20th century very few scholars wrote a theoretical essay in the oral Chinese. And in the grammar of classical Chinese (先秦古文) there is no place for the copula. Therefore none of Chinese thinkers had tried to pay any attention to this small word. Being (是) had never become a concept . This situation lasted until Western thought began its influence in China. Even today the Being (是) is still not a concept in modern Chinese!
S is P, in Chinese, man can say 「S 是 P」. Prof. 關子尹pointes out a principle of Chinese grammar : phonetic constitution of meaning「語音構義」 , that means, before 4000 years the Chinese had begun to use the pictorial signs as phonetic symbols in order to describe the Chinese language phonetically. According this principle,是and此 (here) is homophonous, because the both are reiterative rhyme, they have the same vowel 「ie」, 是was pronounced 「zjie」, 此 (here) was pronounced 「tsie」, therefore they are etymological synonymous (同音假借), that means the linguistic sign for Being in modern Chinese means etymologically 「this」, 「here」. There are thousands and thousands examples of this usage of 是 in classic Chinese. The function of 是 as copula, as Being, is developed from its original meaning of 「this」 and 「here」 through almost 2000 years.
In corresponding to the copula Being there is not only one or two, but many characters which have the grammatical function of copula in Chinese: the famous and often used of them are在 (zai4)，為 (wei2)，有(you4), but also 猶 (you2)，若 (ruo4)，如 (ru2)，似 (si4)，類 (lei4)，之（zhi1, postposition），然（ran2, postposition），也（ye3, postposition），算 (san)，當 （dang），系（xi4）, and so on and so forth。 I didn’t have the time to examine all the characters for the copula. I can only take a good look at the three important ones在，為，有.
In the Chinese translation of Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik， Being is translated as 有. But 有 (又) etymologically is sign for right hand, means in the inscriptions on the tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty (the documents of c. 16th –11th century B.C.) have (有), again (又), receive (受)，right (右)，blessing (佑)，serve out meat to guests at a meal (侑), and so on. Why did it have so many meanings? They are another evidence for 關子尹』 principle, namely phonetic constitution of meaning 「語音構義」, only because of they are homophonous. Later each meaning have got its own character, but in the new character there always is有 (又) as part in it. In the modern Chinese有 (the character consists in two parts 「hand」 and 「meat」, 「some meat in hand」 means having (something important).
在etymologically means 「something here」, originally looks just like 「+」 means in the inscriptions on the tortoise shells, means someone is setting food in this place , the image caused by this sign 「+」 in the mind of ancient Chinese people
作者：靳希平
文章來源：思問
瀏覽：314 次
靳希平
Xiping JIN ，Peking University
I would like to begin by thanking the organizer of this conference for the invitation to join you here and enjoy the wonderful hospitality. On behalf of the Chinese Society of Phenomenology, The Center of Phenomenology at Peking University, The Institute of Foreign Philosophy and The department of philosophy at Peking University, and myself personally, let me at first congratulate you, my colleagues in Hong Kong, on the birth of your Research Center for Phenomenology and Human Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. In the past ten years the phenomenologists in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Society of Phenomenology have in different forms and ways supported the phenomenological movement in mainland China. Today’s flourishing phenomenological research on the mainland cannot be separated from these impressive and selfless contributions. I would like to use this opportunity to express our sincere thankfulness for everything you have done for us and I am looking forward for continuing our cooperation in developing the phenomenological research in the future.
It is a great privilege for me to have the chance to present my paper in this inaugural conference. Originally I wanted to speak on 「The Basic Concepts and Greek Influence in the Theoretical Thinking of Modern Chinese,「 but my friend Chan Fai Chung told me that this had apparently no direct connection with the theme of the conference, i.e. "Phenomenology and Human Pathos". Then I intended to read a previous paper again, namely, 「At the Beginning of Phenomenology in China: Youding SHEN and Husserl，「 which I had read in the conference in Florida on 」「Phenomenology as a Bridge between Asia and the West。」But after I received the program of this conference, I noticed that not a few of the participants here were present at the Florida conference. Therefore I wrote a new paper for this conference with the title of 「Phenomenological Analysis of Usages of Some Chinese Concepts derived from Greek.」 This continues my work on The Basic Concepts and Greek Influence in Theoretical Thinking of Modern Chinese. I put the word phenomenological here in the title because I am taking part in this important meeting. I do not know if my paper is phenomenological enough or not, but Prof. Embree told us in Beijng that phenomenological analysis is reflective analysis fundamentally. I think that my paper is also somewhat reflective, so maybe it is not totally false to say that it is phenomenological.
I
Prof. Held has repeated recommended that Chinese colleagues not repeat what Western colleagues have already done, but instead to strive to make phenomenological research on our own culture, about our own life-world. Just before this conference Prof. Embree held a phenomenological seminar (6 meetings in 2 weeks) at Peking University and discussed his unpublished new book, Reflective Analysis: A First Introduction into Phenomenological Investigation. In the seminar he emphasized the difference between the scholarship on phenomenology and investigation in phenomenology, and told the Chinese youngsters interested in phenomenology, 「People who are phenomenologists may often engage in scholarship, but are not phenomenologists when they only do so. … Being a genuine phenomenologist…requires getting beyond texts and addressing things themselves…. Phenomenologists produce new texts on the basis of their phenomenological investigation of things.」 Professors Embree and Held both emphasize the same idea: strive to do phenomenology or, with Embree’s formulation, to do reflective analysis. Their advice is very important for the development of phenomenology in China.
If we try to fulfill the idea of Prof. Embree and Held, if we try to do reflective analysis, the first problem we encounter is language: should we analyze the things into German or English concepts and categories, or should we do it under the guidance of Chinese language? It seems evident that as Chinese phenomenologist we should work with our mother tongue. But my teacher Wang Taiqing told me that his teacher Jin Yueling, a Chinese scholar of mathematic logic and a philosopher in the strict sense (or in the Greek sense) in China, who studied at Pennsylvania University and at Colombia University from 1914 to 1920 and then worked in England and France until 1925, philosophized only in English even in China until he came to a clear result and then translated his thought into Chinese himself. This was because Jin Yuelin (金岳霖) felt that the Chinese language was not analytical enough for philosophizing. But as a result his philosophical books, On Dao and The Theory of Knowledge, are rarely to read by Chinese scholars. In contrast, his Logic is well known in China and was regard as the standard textbook of logic in very long time.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning how this famous mainland Chinese philosopher interpreted Chinese philosophy. In one of Jin Yuelin’s articles written and mimeographed for limited circulation in 1943 and published in Social Sciences in China ( March 1980) he wrote,「One of the features characteristic of Chinese philosophy is the underdevelopment of what might be called logico-epistemological consciousness」. This does not mean that 「Chinese philosophy is illogical or that it is not based on knowledge.」 What it is really means is that Chinese philosophers did not have 「a developed consciousness of epistemology and logic.」 「As result there isn’t that systematic completeness which is so something to the trained mind.」 Of course the historical fact was 「not that there was no such consciousness. Perhaps inevitably from the nature of the impetus concerned, this consciousness started with what impatient thinkers [they predominated that time. —JIN] are liable to dismiss as mere sophistries. The underlying reality behind the so-called sophistries, however, was only a switch of the muses from the problem of ultimate realities to those of LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND IDEAS [Capitalized by JIN] realizing perhaps that the latter must be tackled before the former could be solved.」 「Such a switch took place in the pre-Qin period [771 B.C.-256 B.C.—added by JIN] when a number of thinkers started to maintain the distinction between the universal and the particular, the relativity of terms, the separation of hardness from whiteness, the doctrine of infinite divisibility of the finite, of the staticity [actionlessness-JIN] of quickly moving arrows, etc., in the midst of speculations which were obviously more directly concerned with the problems of that turbulent age. Students of philosophy will inevitably think of the parallel in Greek thought. It was from similar doctrines arising out of reason itself and the intellectual finesse in Western philosophy was obtained; and it was by them that philosophy was in some sense converted into mental gymnastics. In China, however, the tendency was short-lived; admirable as it was for a beginning, it yet died a precocious death. The logico-epistemological consciousness remained underdeveloped almost to the present day.」 Why did it die a precocious death? Does it have nothing to do with the characteristics of LANGUAGE and its WRITING FORM, and with the thought and ideas which are shaped by such LANGUAGE and its WRITING FORM? This is a very interesting topic for phenomenological investigations of Chinese culture. But what I am interested now is another question: What kind of role do the loan words play in Chinese theoretical language?
In passing, I will mention the viewpoint of a famous Chinese scholar at Bochum University in Germany, the Chinese translator of Husserl’s Idea I , LI Youzheng. In his article On the Semantic Structure of Philosophical Vocabularies of the Chinese Language, he said, 「almost one hundred percent of the abstract ideas of science can be exactly expressed by the system of Chinese words and phrases, and there are very few components of loan word」 。I have made a spot check, in order to test if his assertion is correct of not. I took a Chinese book, 「Fundamental Research in High T c Superconductivity」 as a sample. I closed my eyes and opened one page of it, p.172, and took count of the loan words in it. One third of this page is a chart with all the Chinese text and words on it are loan words. The other two third this page is text consisting of 527 Chinese characters, (17 lines and every line about 31 characters). The non-loan word Chinese words account for 41%, with 215 characters which consist in such words like 「of (的)」，「is (是)」, 「for (對於)」, 「here （這裡）」, 「in （在）」, 「if (若)」，「at the beginning（一開始）」, and so on. All the technical terms, which make this text meaningful, are, without exception, loan words. I have made the same probe with the classic textbook of quantum physics, Quantum Theory by David Bohm and translated into Chinese by Hou Depeng(侯德彭). On page 515, the half it consists in mathematic formulae, the other half consists in 224 Chinese characters. All the physical concepts (58 characters and 26% of the text.) are loan words. My spot check is not extensive. If I have enough time, I will make more statistics. But my example shows at least Li You Zheng’s assertion is incorrect. In contrast with 「almost hundred percent of the abstract idea of science can be exactly expressed」 only by loan words and formulae and symbols written in Latin, it is more accurately to say, 「the abstract ideas of science」 can only be exactly expressed in mathematic formulae and symbols which are totally introduced from Western.
The basic writings of Husserl, Heidegger, Max Scheller, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty are already translated into Chinese. But there is a very embarrassedly situation: on the on hand, my colleagues, friends, and myself have made and still make indescribable great efforts to translate the basic writings of phenomenology into Chinese; on the other hand, we know very clearly that it seems almost to be impossible for one to grasp the main ideas of phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger only through the reading of Chinese translations. According my experience, none of Chinese students in Peking University have understood Husserl and Heidegger only through studying the Chinese translations of their writings and without at least the English translations in hand. Is it a waste of time to translate the phenomenological sources into Chinese? Are our exertions for nothing? Is there any way out of this embarrassed situation?
A famous Chinese scholar in the 19th century, Yan Fu, found a way to overcame such dilemma: at first he read-through a chapter of the book which he wanted to translate, put it away, rendered the content of this book in his own Chinese language, and the published the result under the name of original author. With this method he 「translated」 Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics 《天演論》, A. Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations《國富論》，Herbert Spencer’s Social Statistic《群學肆言》, John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic 《穆勒名學》and On Liberty《群己權界論》，Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws《法意》 and Edward Jenks A History of Politics《社會通詮》。 Because of his wonderful classical style of Chinese his translations had great influence in the history of modernization and westernization of Chinese thought and Chinese society. But his translations were not translation in rigorous sense, but paraphrases. Today if any Chinese wants to quote A. Smith or Herbert Spencer or J.S. Mill, Yan Fu’s translations will not be used. If someone would want to make a translation in Yan Fu’s style today, he would not find a bookmaker to publish it. That means, Yan Fu’s method of translations is not acceptable today. This way is out of date.
The inexact translation had a great influence, but the exact one didn’t! I think one of the important reasons of this strange phenomenon is the difference between Western languages and Chinese. If the translation of Western theoretical and particularly philosophical works into Chinese is so difficult, creative philosophizing in Chinese language has to be more different as in Western language. Therefore, in order to make sure how far is the modern Chinese language is suitable for philosophizing, or how the Chinese language shall shapes the thought of modern Chinese philosophers, specially of Chinese phenomenologists, we should engage in reflective analysis on the modern Chinese language, specially the theoretical Chinese language, before, or at least during our reflective analysis of things. As a first stage of this investigation I have tried to understand the function of loan words derived from Greek in Chinese theoretical language .
It is well known that the modern theoretical language in Chinese is strongly influenced by the Western languages through the translation of Western theoretical works. The first contact of Chinese culture with the Greek heritage began at the end of Ming dynasty, namely, in the 16th century. The ancient Chinese scholars translated Euclid’s Elements of geometry , Aristotle’s On the Heavens, On the Soul and Categories，and some works of Isagoge of Porphyry into classical Chinese. Unfortunately, they did not translate them from the original Greek text, but took the fresh Latin translations and interpretations of Aristotle by that time as the original, which was published anonymously by the Portugal Jesuits in Coimbra. These translations left little trace in Chinese culture so far as I know. The real transport of Western thought into China is in the 19th century at end of Qing dynasty. It began with Yan Fu (although the new words he created in his translations did not leave any trace in modern Chinese ), and is still continuing today.
How far or how strong is the influence of Greek concepts or Western thought on modern Chinese thinking and the theoretical Chinese? I have made a sample statistics. I took a lecture of our Chinese President Jang Ze Min, namely the lecture at celebration fest of Birth of Chinese Communist Party, as an example. Why a lecture by the Chinese President? Do I want to make propaganda here? No! If I would take an article of Prof. Liangkang Ni as an example, my statistic would not perusable enough, because only a few of Chinese who already read Husserl in English or German can understand his language. The Chinese president is not a scholar, he does not support the Westernization of Chinese culture. On the contrary he is opposed to the Westernization of Chinese culture. In his lecture would be expected to do best to avoid using loan words, which could be difficult to understand for his comrades of Chinese Communist Party. His language is popular propaganda, but somehow it is theoretical formula Chinese just like occurs in Chinese magazines or newspapers. If I can find some trace of influence of Geek or Western concepts in his language, the statistics would have more typical meaning. The result my research is that 23% of the words in the Chinese President’s speech are loan words from Greek.
II
Is philosophizing easier through loan words? Yes and no. Of course, just like in natural science, loan words are a great help for translating and understanding the philosophical works of Western classics. But at the same time, because the loan words have no roots in Chinese, or have other etymologic connections in Western languages, this practice can also lead to many serious misunderstanding, especially if the reader does not have the original text in hand, which is unfortunately often the case in mainland China. In following I only want to give few examples to show the problem.
The Chinese word運動is the Japanese free translation for athletics or sport (p. 398-399), but originally 運means from one place to another; so 動has two meanings: doing (poieein) or movement (ki/nhsij). For Chinese understanding 運動means happenings in natural movement, and then we speak of political movements, campaigns against or to stop some evils also 運動 (反腐敗運; in English this includes campaigns against corruption. You can never say in English: 「athletics against corruptions」). Or, positively, one can speak of the drive for technological innovation 技術革新運動. There is nothing to do with athletics here.
The Chinese concept理論is from the Japanese free translation of theory (it occurs 42 times in Jiang’s speech, p.207). qewri/a comes from qewre/w "look at」, 「view」; qew/roj means inspector, one who travels in order to see men or things. (qea/+Voroj ); at any case theoria is dealing with something seen, the content of this concept is determined by the special act of human being, 「seeing」 through which it is found or gained. Therefore the tradition of theoretical treatment of the world is criticized today as visual-centralism. But the Chinese translation of this concept理論 means to argue and to present one’s argument (說理, talk about principles and reason and rules and orderliness. ), and make a thesis (立論). Etymologically Chinese word理 means 「machining jade（治玉）」 or the grain (「order」) of jade. 論means speak or talk or to have something to do with language. Putting the two Characters together we have a new word: 「discourse of orders」, 「systematic speech about rules and principles」. If a Chinese who don’t know any foreign language want to make analysis on this concept, he would ask the questions: 「What kind of character of such rules or orders are there?」 「How do such rules work in the universe?」 「Are there at first the universe or such rules and principles?」 and so on. Only through the analysis of the concept 「理論」, this Chinese could never think about spiritual seeing of the abstract things, or observation of things with thinking. Because in the Chinese translation the perspective of seeing and observing, or intuiting of the theoretical act in qewri/a is disappeared.
With the concepts 存在 (Being) and本質 (essence) the situation is much more complicated and more problematic. 本質is from a Japanese free translation of essence (p.40). The concepts essentia in Latin or the concept ousi/a in Greek are all variations of the copula, esse in Latin and ei)nai= in Greek. Therefore the concept of essence or ousi/a in Greek has a linguistic intrinsic relationship with the copula, and hereby ontology: the questioning about the meaning of Being as Being. But in classical Chinese (先秦古文) there was no such grammatical phenomenon and the copula is new grammatical appearance in Medieval oral Chinese language, but it was rarely used in official and theoretical writing language or the language in literature. Only in fiction can one often encounter the usage of the copula. But at that time fiction was as worthless for the scholars as pornography is for literature professors in the university today. Until 20th century very few scholars wrote a theoretical essay in the oral Chinese. And in the grammar of classical Chinese (先秦古文) there is no place for the copula. Therefore none of Chinese thinkers had tried to pay any attention to this small word. Being (是) had never become a concept . This situation lasted until Western thought began its influence in China. Even today the Being (是) is still not a concept in modern Chinese!
S is P, in Chinese, man can say 「S 是 P」. Prof. 關子尹pointes out a principle of Chinese grammar : phonetic constitution of meaning「語音構義」 , that means, before 4000 years the Chinese had begun to use the pictorial signs as phonetic symbols in order to describe the Chinese language phonetically. According this principle,是and此 (here) is homophonous, because the both are reiterative rhyme, they have the same vowel 「ie」, 是was pronounced 「zjie」, 此 (here) was pronounced 「tsie」, therefore they are etymological synonymous (同音假借), that means the linguistic sign for Being in modern Chinese means etymologically 「this」, 「here」. There are thousands and thousands examples of this usage of 是 in classic Chinese. The function of 是 as copula, as Being, is developed from its original meaning of 「this」 and 「here」 through almost 2000 years.
In corresponding to the copula Being there is not only one or two, but many characters which have the grammatical function of copula in Chinese: the famous and often used of them are在 (zai4)，為 (wei2)，有(you4), but also 猶 (you2)，若 (ruo4)，如 (ru2)，似 (si4)，類 (lei4)，之（zhi1, postposition），然（ran2, postposition），也（ye3, postposition），算 (san)，當 （dang），系（xi4）, and so on and so forth。 I didn’t have the time to examine all the characters for the copula. I can only take a good look at the three important ones在，為，有.
In the Chinese translation of Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik， Being is translated as 有. But 有 (又) etymologically is sign for right hand, means in the inscriptions on the tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty (the documents of c. 16th –11th century B.C.) have (有), again (又), receive (受)，right (右)，blessing (佑)，serve out meat to guests at a meal (侑), and so on. Why did it have so many meanings? They are another evidence for 關子尹』 principle, namely phonetic constitution of meaning 「語音構義」, only because of they are homophonous. Later each meaning have got its own character, but in the new character there always is有 (又) as part in it. In the modern Chinese有 (the character consists in two parts 「hand」 and 「meat」, 「some meat in hand」 means having (something important).
在etymologically means 「something here」, originally looks just like 「+」 means in the inscriptions on the tortoise shells, means someone is setting food in this place , the image caused by this sign 「+」 in the mind of ancient Chinese people
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