Conference Proposal

Organizers and Financial Contributors

This conference is organized by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures of Rutgers University and co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies of Princeton University and by National Taiwan University. Further financial support is provided by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Rutgers University, Rowan University, and other institutional sponsors.

Organizing Committee

Ching-I Tu, Rutgers Universty, Chair
Chün-fang Yü, Rutgers University
Dietrich Tschanz, Rutgers University
Edward Wang, Rowan University

Background of the Conference

This conference is the third one in a on-going series of conferences on the Chinese hermeneutic tradition. The first conference in this series was held in October of 1996 at Rutgers University. It was entitled "Hermeneutics Traditions in Chinese Culture" and focused on the hermeneutic traditions which grew out of the canonization of select scriptures in the three main systems of thought of traditional China, namely Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. This conference was extremely successful and paved the way for further explorations of the topic of Chinese hermeneutics. The papers of this conference have been most recently published by Transaction Publishers under the title Classics and Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Traditions in Chinese Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000). This volume was edited by one of the organizers of the conference, Professor Ching-I Tu of Rutgers University.

The second conference in this series was held in October of 1999 at the City University of Hong Kong. This conference was more narrowly defined than the first one and focused on the interaction between canonized scriptures and their commentaries. The participants addressed questions such as how ancient texts are canonized, how canon and commentary shape the idea of Chinese culture and its legacy, what interpretative strategies are used to comment on Chinese classics, and how important commentaries on canonical texts become themselves semi-canonical in the transmission of culture. Like in the first conference, most papers centered around the canonical works and commentaries of the three main systems of thought of traditional China; only a few papers addressed these issues for the broader Chinese literary tradition. The organizer of the conference, Professor Zhang Longxi of the City University of Hong Kong, expects to publish a volume of selected conference papers in the near future.

These two conferences have established Chinese hermeneutics as an important field of inquiry in Western sinology. This can be seen from recent publications on this topic such as Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1999), edited by Kai-Wing Chow, On-Cho Ng, and John B. Henderson, all of whom participated in the first two conferences; and Chinese Thought In a Global Context: A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Approaches (Leiden: Brill, 1999), edited by Karl-Heinz Pohl who participated in the second hermeneutics conference. In addition, a planned workshop on "Text and Commentary in Imperial China," organized by the Institute of Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, attests to the importance of this topic.

All of the aforementioned efforts have greatly helped to further our understanding of the various Chinese hermeneutic traditions. In particular, they have defined some of the main issues in the study of Chinese hermeneutics, investigated some of the most important texts and periods in the development of Chinese hermeneutics, and suggested ways in which Chinese hermeneutics could be used to enhance our understanding of Chinese civilization in general. Our conference builds on the findings and insights arrived at in these aforementioned efforts. However, the focus of our conference differs in significant ways from the previous conferences. We feel that, despite the considerable accomplishments of these previous efforts, there are three key areas which have only been touched upon but deserve a more in-depth treatment: 1. The previous efforts have shed light on certain periods of the development of Chinese hermeneutics but have not yielded so far a complete picture of the historical development of Chinese hermeneutics; 2. they have mainly focused on the classics and their interpretations without considering in more depth other Chinese textual traditions; and 3. they have remained largely descriptive of exegetical practices without probing the underlying rules of interpretation that guided these interpretations. In our conference we would like to remedy this situation and propose an approach to Chinese hermeneutics which 1) is historically informed, 2) focuses on the underlying principles of interpretation rather than the actual interpretations themselves, and 3) seeks to extend the inquiry from the classics and their commentaries to other written traditions within Chinese civilization.

Description of the Proposed Conference

While the first two conferences dealt with general questions regarding the canonization of scriptures within the three main Chinese thought systems and explored the interaction between canonical works and their commentaries, this third conference will focus on five historical periods during which the Chinese hermeneutic tradition underwent radical changes. These changes were closely linked to major intellectual shifts that occurred during these periods and have to be seen against the background of these shifts. These periods include the late Zhou period (Spring and Autumn, and Warring Sates), the Wei-Jin period, the Tang/Song transition, late Ming through mid-Qing, and the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. It was during these periods that existing canons were challenged, new canons were formed, the relationship between the transmitted texts and the contemporary cultural situation was redefined, and novel ways of making sense of texts were formulated. The late Zhou period was the formative period of the intellectual development of Chinese hermeneutics. During the Wei-Jin period, Buddhism and Neo-Taoism had a profound influence on Chinese thought and the conceptualization of the world. The Daoxue movement of the Song brought about another major intellectual shift and generated new modes of interpretation. The pragmatism and textualism of the late Ming through mid-Qing generated the basis for a critical hermeneutics. Finally, the confrontation with Japan and the West at the turn of the 20^th century resulted in a radical rethinking of the Chinese tradition and the contemporary models of interpretation. The proposed conference will address the following questions for each of the five periods: (1) How did literati engage with the texts they selected for interpretation? (2) How did they engage with previous exegeses of these texts? (3) How did they engage with the principles of interpretation laid out by earlier scholars and (4)how did they articulate their own hermeneutic stance? And, finally, (5) what texts other than the canonical texts and their commentaries did they bring to bear in this process (e.g. genres such as apocrypha, "random jottings" [biji], etc.) and how did this inform their interpretation? While the canonical scriptures of the three main Chinese thought systems, i.e., Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, will be an important subject of these investigations, the presenters of the proposed conference will also be encouraged to explore these issues for texts from Chinese history, literature, art history, and other areas with a textual tradition. The proposed conference is multidisciplinary in its approach and international in its recruitment of participants.

Significance

The conference will further our knowledge of Chinese hermeneutics in the following ways: (1) It will provide a clear sense of the historical development of Chinese hermeneutics. In particular, it will show how changes in the various hermeneutic traditions are closely linked to overall intellectual paradigm shifts. (2) It will focus on hermeneutics proper, i.e., hermeneutics defined as "a secondary discourse concerning the rules of interpretation" (Paul Ricoeur); exegeses will be discussed only insofar as they address the underlying principles of the interpretative process. This is a major departure from the previous two conferences. It is hoped that this approach will establish Chinese hermeneutics beyond the narrow confines of Chinese studies and that scholars from fields outside of Chinese studies will use the findings of this conference for comparative analysis. (3) It will go beyond the classics and their commentaries and include discussions of hermeneutic traditions in various textual traditions. This extension of the scope of inquiry is hoped to encourage scholars from many different fields to join the discussion and thereby to give the study of Chinese hermeneutics a broader foundation.