Metaphysics has ruined Chinese
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In The Opinion Pages section of today's NYT, Contributing Op-Ed Writer Murong Xuecun has a provocative piece entitled "Corrupting the Chinese Language" (5/26/15).
His basic claim is that "Decades of… party blather have washed through a mighty propaganda machine straight into people’s minds and into the Chinese vernacular." The result is that, because people are conditioned to talk using phrases ready made by the party, they are conditioned to think in ways determined by the highly politicized language in which they have been immersed their entire lives. Even dissidents are reduced to "using the language of our propagandists, and not ironically."
Murong tells one story that had a particularly powerful impact on me:
Two years ago, in a small town in central Shanxi Province, I overheard two old farmers debating whether a bowl of rice or a steamed bun was more satisfying. As the argument became more heated, one farmer accused the other, without irony, of being a “metaphysicist.”
Mao was skeptical of metaphysics and thus, over the years, it became a dubious concept, used in Chinese propaganda as a pejorative term. It’s fair to assume these two farmers didn’t know much about metaphysics, yet they were using the term as an insult, straight out of the party lexicon. Other phrases like “idealist” and “petit bourgeois sentimentalist” have become everyday terms of abuse, even when those who use them clearly have no real idea what they mean.
It struck me as rather incongruous that two central Shanxi farmers would know the word "metaphysicist", even if they didn't understand what it meant. That's a complicated term, and even professional philosophers have to make an effort to grasp its implications. Of course, the farmer who hurled that term of abuse at his fellow villager wasn't using the English (Graeco-Latin) word; instead, he would have called the other farmer a xíng'érshàngxuézhě 形而上学者. That by itself is quite a mouthful!
I've long known that the Chinese word for "metaphysics" is xíng'érshàngxué 形而上学, but it always seemed to me to be a strange concoction to match up with the Western term: "learning of form and above". That always bothered me, but since it's a word for the philosophers to argue over, I just set it aside and didn't worry myself overmuch about it.
Parenthetically, I should note that the Western term "metaphysics" is itself somewhat vexed. Should it be singular or plural? And does it mean "what comes after physics" or "what transcends physics"?
Curious about this formulation, xíng'érshàngxué 形而上学, I did a little digging around, and I soon found that it is yet another of those countless "round-trip words" that the Japanese bequeathed to the Chinese during the modernizing / Westernizing period of the late 19th and early 20th century.
"'And the greatest Japanese export to China is…'" (8/21/12)
Also see Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 34 (October, 1992).
It was the eminent Japanese thinker, Inoue Tetsujirō 井上 哲次郎 (1855-1944), who extracted xíng'érshàng 形而上 ("form and above") from no less than the I ching / Yi jing (Book of Changes) and paired it with "metaphysics" by tacking xué 学 ("learning") on the end: xíng'érshàngxué 形而上学 ("learning of form and above"). In Japanese, this was pronounced keijijōgaku, but it was transported back to China with the pronunciation xíng'érshàngxué
It is worth contemplating what ancient heritage Chinese and Japanese are invoking whenever they refer to xíng'érshàngxué 形而上学 ("learning of form and above"). The phrase xíng'érshàng 形而上 ("form and above") comes from the first part of the "Great Treatise" (Xì cí 系辞) which is appended to the Yi jing: "Xíng'érshàng zhě wèi zhī dào, xíng'érxià zhě wèi zhī qì 形而上者谓之道，形而下者谓之器". James Legge's venerable rendering of this passage reads: "…that which is antecedent to the material form exists, we say, as an ideal method, and that which is subsequent to the material form exists, we say, as a definite thing." A more literal translation would be something like this: "that which is above form is called the Way / Tao; that which is beneath form is called a thing."
It boggles the mind to think what cultural and political baggage lies behind that insult heaped by one Shanxi farmer on another, and all over the relative worth of a bowl of rice versus a steamed bun.
[Thanks to everyone who called this article to my attention]
Michael Watts said,
May 27, 2015 @ 11:22 pm
Frankly, going just by the English word, it doesn't seem at all surprising to me that one party to a debate over whether a bowl of rice or a steamed bun is more satisfying might accuse the other of being a "metaphysicist". The question would appear to be squarely within the realm of metaphysics.
david said,
May 27, 2015 @ 11:25 pm
whilst I'm sure that party language influences wider use, I'm not sure that the rice-vs-bun example is any more unusual than, say, someone in the US calling another an "egghead" if they are likewise too metaphysical – you could correctly point out that the strange word stems from a 1950s political event (the 1952 US presidential election), but the whole point of wider use is that it becomes wider and therefore divorced from its political roots.
julie lee said,
May 27, 2015 @ 11:25 pm
" A more literal translation would be something like this: "that which is above form is called the Way / Tao; that which is beneath form is called a thing."
This translation by Victor Mair of the sentence from the Yi Jing is much better than the translation by James Legge. Legge translates Tao (Dao) as "ideal method" , not a good translation. Mair translates it as "the Way", a far better translation in denotation and connotation.
Calvin said,
May 28, 2015 @ 12:07 am
@Victor Mair wrote:
It struck me as rather incongruous that two central Shanxi farmers would know the word "metaphysicist", even if they didn't understand what it meant.
Well, 形而上学 is a well-known term for the older folks in China who had studied or listened to Mao's writings during cultural revolution. It appeared 16 times in 矛盾论 ("On Contraction", original Chinese text http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64184/64185/66615/4488884.html) and was a rather commonly used term in political writings and speeches. Those two old farmers must have gotten familiar with the term in that bygone era.
January First-of-May said,
May 28, 2015 @ 2:47 am
Parenthetically, I should note that the Western term "metaphysics" is itself somewhat vexed. Should it be singular or plural? And does it mean "what comes after physics" or "what transcends physics"?
IIRC, on the second question, etymologically it's the former; I've even heard an anecdote that the term appeared when some Greek author couldn't think of a decent name for the chapter after his "physics" chapter.
I agree, however, that the latter is what most people using the term are more likely to be thinking of today.
As for the first question, I suspect that it is probably a dialectal difference (much like "mathematics").
Incidentally, it should probably be "somewhat vexing".
John Rohsenow said,
May 28, 2015 @ 3:18 am
If I may digress from metaphysics, the point about the influence of political terminology in common use came clear to me when I was teaching in Hangzhou in 1980. After class I went looking for my driver
(sic) to take me home, and found him with all the other FLgs staff crowded around the dept's only TV set watching what turned out to be the live broadcast of the sentencing (to death) of the the two sons of a local general for "raping" some girls during the Cultural Revolution. Everyone then raced out to the main gate to see them being led off in trucks to the nearby execution ground. — Something got into me and I remarked to my working class (sic) driver (who only had a jr. h.s. education): "If you only kill them two at a time, you'll never resolve China's population problem." Without missing a beat, he jokingly chided me back, saying: 你收到了马尔萨斯 影响太多了! (You have been overly influenced by Malthusian thought!"), which was totally unexpected by me, and stopped me in my tracks.
James said,
May 28, 2015 @ 4:14 am
On the etymology:
In Aristotle's works, the Metaphysics does indeed come directly after the Physics. The ordering and title is due to his editor (always blame the editor), though, not to Aristotle, who never used the term "metaphysics".
Something like the Maoist pejorative usage was also in western philosophy for much of the twentieth century, partly because of logical positivism. Calling someone a metaphysician (much more common than 'metaphysicist') was like saying someone worries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Michael Watts said,
May 28, 2015 @ 5:40 am
John Rohsenow: what do you mean by "(sic)"?
shubert said,
May 28, 2015 @ 6:45 am
@John– That crack down leaded to an execution of a grandson of a top leader, who was number 2 man in 1949. (By the way he is the one my granduncle wanted to see in his last minute.)
MattF said,
May 28, 2015 @ 7:33 am
I've always thought that 'a person who practices metaphysics' is a metaphysician, not a metaphysicist.
Matt McIrvin said,
May 28, 2015 @ 7:51 am
I was distracted by an issue from English: "metaphysician" is the much more common word.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=metaphysicist%2C+metaphysician&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmetaphysicist%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmetaphysician%3B%2Cc0
"Metaphysicist" starts appearing around the mid-19th century, probably under influence from "physicist".
Jerry Friedman said,
May 28, 2015 @ 8:10 am
Michael Watts: I was just thinking metaphysics had absolutely nothing to do with rice versus buns, and here you say the question falls squarely within that domain. So I looked it up. Do you mean the OED's definition 1. d.? "Philos. Used by logical positivists and some other linguistic philosophers for: any proposition or set of propositions of a speculative nature, considered to be meaningless because not empirically verifiable."
Dan Lufkin said,
May 28, 2015 @ 8:11 am
Let's pause a moment and look at our data points. One or both of the old farmers may well have been university professors before the Great Cultural Revolution. The driver may have been a student who found himself underemployed in the turbulent labor market of recent years.
I gave up being surprised at the intellectual accomplishments of the lower classes after my taxi driver in Dominica turned out to be a PhD botanist. I learned that in a tiny economy like Dominica's driving a taxi paid much better than botanizing. I also know a couple of old farmers who prefer farming to faculty because it gives them plenty of time to think while they're doing agreeable work with their hands.
Observation said,
May 28, 2015 @ 8:44 am
I skipped to and read the last paragraph. Would I be wrong in guessing that Orwell seems to have been a fan of Whorf?
flow said,
May 28, 2015 @ 8:56 am
Can someone fill me in on the role of 而 in expressions like 形而上者谓之道，形而下者谓之器? I've always tended to understand 形而上 as "that which is above form", "what is before form" (this bc of the common 上下文, what comes in the text before and after a certain point, hence the context). Yet 形而上 has here also been rendered as "form and above". Is it ambiguous? Does it make any difference in the interpretation of the Chinese term for metaphysics or the understanding of the passage from the 系辞?
Michael Watts said,
May 28, 2015 @ 9:21 am
Jerry Friedman: yes, to me a metaphysical question is one based on something other than reality, and which therefore cannot be addressed objectively. Here's an example of me using the word about a month ago:
Having had my attention drawn to it, I note that merriam-webster and the cambridge dictionary both totally omit this sense of the word, which I find surprising. But that OED gloss is so close that I can't have been just making it up.
Michael Watts said,
May 28, 2015 @ 9:54 am
(This comment was apparently blackholed the first time I submitted it; this text appears at the beginning so it will pass the duplicate-comment filter. I can only hope it also passes the spam filter this time around.)
Jerry Friedman: yes, to me a metaphysical question is one based on something other than reality, and which therefore cannot be addressed objectively. Here's an example of me using the word about a month ago:
Having had my attention drawn to it, I note that merriam-webster and the cambridge dictionary both totally omit this sense of the word, which I find surprising. But that OED gloss is so close that I can't have been just making it up.
Michael Watts said,
May 28, 2015 @ 9:56 am
……or, it's possible that my browser has strange caching behavior.
shubert said,
May 28, 2015 @ 10:26 am
@flow– …is above form, formless, because 上虛下實， 上輕下重，… so上下交泰 forms harmony.
J. F. said,
May 28, 2015 @ 11:14 am
It boggles the mind to think what cultural and political baggage lies behind that insult…
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." What about what lies behind the English word "goodbye"?
julie lee said,
May 28, 2015 @ 12:34 pm
@Calvin, Thanks for identifying the article by Mao in which the term "metaphysics" （形而上學 xing er shang xue "that which is above form") occurs 16 times.
@Michael Watts says,
"To me a metaphysical question is one based on something other than reality, and which therefore cannot be addressed objectively."
I like your use of "metaphysically incorrect" in a previous comment above, but have a problem with the word "reality" here. Instead of "reality" I would say "physical reality", the reality covered by physics. The two farmers' debate about whether a bowl of rice or a steamed bun is more satisfying is about one's feelings, a subjective sphere (love, hate, envy, gratitude, patriotism, etc.) not covered by physics. It would fall under metaphysical reality. Some people hold Dao (Tao) or God to be the ultimate metaphysical reality.
julie lee said,
May 28, 2015 @ 1:20 pm
@flow:
‘Yet 形而上 (xing er shang) has here also been rendered as "form and above". Is it ambiguous?“
I don't think it is ambiguous. Victor Mair translates it as "above form" "Form" means phenomenon, phenomena—things of the physical world. "Above form" is noumena, noumenon–things of the metaphysical world. 而 er is indeed "and" here. 形而上 ， literally "form and above" is an abbreviation for "using FORM as base AND taking everything ABOVE that", which can be compacted to "form and above or "("that which is) above form".
Mark F. said,
May 28, 2015 @ 3:47 pm
If Orwell's essay is ever applicable, it would be to a situation like this, with decades of aggressive single-source propaganda. And yet I am still skeptical that it amounts to anything. The farmer who accused the other of being metaphysical may have been influenced by Communist Party propaganda; he may have known the word only because of propaganda. But how is that a debasement of the language? It's a perfectly reasonable thing to say in that context (and there are perfectly reasonable rebuttals), and I'd count it as a good thing that the farmer had a good way to say it.
Xiao Shi said,
May 28, 2015 @ 3:52 pm
"form and above" is not the same as "that which is above form" – the former is inclusive of "form", the latter is not. The question is whether the 而 implies inclusivity or exclusivity, and the translations are ambiguous on that point.
It's interesting to learn that the referenced use of 坚持 is a Maoist invention! Now the usage shows up in costume dramas set in olden days- didn't realize it was anachronous.
julie lee said,
May 28, 2015 @ 7:50 pm
@Mark F.:
I would say the Chinese language has been spoiled or ruined by Maoist and other doctrinaire Chinese communist writings in the sense that so many words and phrases such as "metaphysical" and "be resolute" now carry a Maoist ring or overtone. The article in the NYT talking about this reminds me of an article in the London Financial Times (sometime around 2003) that talked about the same thing with the German language, that Marxism and Hitler had spoilt it, because ordinary words like "people", "strive", "resolute" and many others carried a Marxist or a Nazi ring. And that because of this, German businessmen preferred to use English at international conferences and even at German conferences with only Germans attending.
JQ said,
May 28, 2015 @ 11:55 pm
The NYT footnote says this was translated from an original article in Chinese. Is this available anywhere?
While Chinese may have been ruined on the mainland, these words don't carry Maoist (etc) connotations in Taiwan and Hong Kong and various overseas Chinese communities. Is this also the case with Hitler and Swiss German?
shubert said,
May 29, 2015 @ 6:42 am
"Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing" , a lecture by Mao Zedong at the cadres meeting in Yan'an in 1942 is somewhat a START of that trend.
Ray said,
May 29, 2015 @ 7:30 am
those two farmers remind me of these guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88tWn26bh3M
shubert said,
May 29, 2015 @ 7:44 am
@Ray– hetero-, 异 is better than 異, is related to heroic.
Jerry Friedman said,
May 29, 2015 @ 9:00 am
Michael Watts: Thanks for the reply. I guess knowing that sense depends on how much one has been has exposed to the logical positivists or people who have been exposed to them.
Is it too late to ask what sense or senses of English "metaphysics" corresponds to what Mao disliked? I imagine it was the logical positivist sense at least.
Oriemo said,
May 29, 2015 @ 10:35 am
Jerry Friedman: http://theredphoenixapl.org/2010/09/16/the-concept-of-method-dialectics-and-metaphysics/
Jerry Friedman said,
May 29, 2015 @ 1:47 pm
Oriemo: Thanks. I had considerable trouble understanding that, so I looked at something Mao said (about a hundred flowers), and that didn't help much either. I think I'll leave it there.
Oriemo said,
May 29, 2015 @ 5:02 pm
Basically, if you think with reified, Platonic concepts instead of in a web of ever-changing circumstances, you engage in the counterrevolutionary philosophy of metaphysics, in contradiction to good Marxist dialectic. Harmful effects of metaphysics notably include a worse acceptance of the hypocritical policy U-turns made by the Party on political expediency.
julie lee said,
May 29, 2015 @ 6:49 pm
@JQ:
" These words don't carry Maoist (etc) connotations in Taiwan and Hong Kong and various overseas Chinese communities. Is this also the case with Hitler and Swiss German?"
i would think so. As you know certain words can carry certain baggage depending on one's education or background. I had this experience: I once wrote the text for a slide show in the 1980s for fund-raising for the new and pioneering robotics program at a midwestern U.S. university. It was shown around the country. Before that, the Media Services of the university reviewed the slide show. One of the producers there made this criticism of the narrative for the slides: "It's fine, except I wouldn't use the word 'people'". I asked why. She said: "It has a 1960s leftist ring to it." And my narrative on robotics didn't even have anything to do with politics or civil rights. (I kept the word 'people'.)
John Swindle said,
May 29, 2015 @ 8:16 pm
Here's the Chinese version of the article:
http://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20150528/c28murong/
shubert said,
May 29, 2015 @ 9:46 pm
@Swindle– I read that web cite. Some opinions about Chinese characters is understandable but not right, please wait and see.
John Swindle said,
May 30, 2015 @ 3:08 am
@shubert: I provided the link to the article as JQ requested. I did not express an opinion about the article. Fortunately I am not in charge of the Chinese language.
shubert said,
May 30, 2015 @ 5:59 am
@Swindle–Apology for I missed to add a thanks due to that I want to save a space. My comment is only a self expression not in aiming to any opining directly here, which shows my lacking of communication skill and practice.
Jerry Friedman said,
May 30, 2015 @ 10:53 am
Oriemo: Thanks again. That meaning should probably be in the OED.
John Swindle said,
May 30, 2015 @ 2:38 pm
@shubert: It's okay. Sorry about the misunderstanding.
MikeA said,
May 31, 2015 @ 12:02 pm
Good thing English speakers are never tainted in this way by U.S. political speech. I mean, who here has _ever_ heard an argument dismissed as "purely semantics"?
enkiv2 said,
June 3, 2015 @ 11:24 am
Possibly vaguely related: I've noted in Japanese shows recently a trend to dismiss ideas by calling them (something translated as) "sophistry". Maybe this is availability bias, but I never noticed shows doing that prior to ~5 years ago.
Calling somebody a metaphysician for their particular defense of a bun over rice, much like calling them a sophist for it, is perfectly reasonable if their defense is something along the lines of "the bun resembles the archetype of the mother, and thus is spiritually as well as physically nourshing" or something similarly abstract and unconvincing. One can definitely make genuinely metaphysical arguments about food, even if one is a farmer!