Reading Heaven and Earth:
The Rise of Cosmology as a Hermeneutical Strategy in the Late Warring States Period

Michael Puett
Harvard University

The nature of early Chinese correlative thought has been a topic of lengthy discussion in both anthropological and Sinological studies. Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim first proposed the famous thesis that early Chinese correlative thinking developed out of “primitive classification” systems - a thesis that exercised a tremendous influence on Marcel Granet’s important study in La pensee chinoise, as well as more recent anthropological studies of early China. In contrast, A.C. Graham has tried to reject the “primitive classification” hypothesis in terms of a claim that correlativity is simply a universal mode of human thinking.

In this paper, I will attempt to re-examine the origins and nature of correlative thinking in early China by focusing in particular on correlativity as a hermeneutical strategy. I will argue that correlative thinking emerged in the late Warring States period as a hermeneutical strategy in two specific senses: earlier texts came to be read in terms of cosmological claims, and the cosmos itself came to be read as a text. This paper will seek to analyze this emergence from an historical perspective: why did such a hermeneutical strategy arise at this particular time, and what implications did this have for the history of hermeneutics in China? I will argue that the insights of anthropological studies of early Chinese correlative systems can best be utilized only through such a carefully focused historical approach.