Philosopher Jeremy Goodman calls to my attention this essay by philosopher Harvey Lederman (who does formal work, but also works on Chinese philosophy) on the tasks confronting Chinese philosopy, and suggested it might make a good topic for discussion; an excerpt:
The meat that scholars of Chinese philosophy have in our mouths are these curious, beautiful,
and inspiring texts. As I see it, our job as scholars is to tell the story of these texts: to understand the people who wrote them as well as the people who read them; to bring to life their ideas, regardless of whether they seem familiar or unapproachably strange; and to determine as best we can which of these ideas are plausible and which are not. Our job is to teach students to read these texts with care, with reverence 敬, but also with a critical, skeptical eye. In both our writing and in our teaching, our job, like the impersonator 尸 of the dead at a ritual, is to bring these ideas to life in a very literal sense, to make it possible for others to have a real conversation with them, in the hope that all of us can better understand their authors’ beliefs and the challenges they faced as they sought to live virtuous lives in often quite challenging political circumstances.
I am afraid that this job is not glamorous or easy. It requires humility, patience, and an exacting
discipline. The texts often do not speak to the most exciting recent trends. But our job is still to impersonate them, even when they don’t talk about what we most wish they did. This job can be a lonely one. We wake up in the morning and wonder if we really need to re-read hundreds of pages of challenging, confusing passages again, and the only person who says we need to isourselves. The job is also slow. We watch our colleagues (or perhaps another half of ourselves) produce dozens of papers or books in other areas. But our jobs cannot be done quickly—we cannot write those dozens of books—since we must respect, reread, and rethink, our texts. Our work has only the slow glory that belongs to the miniaturist, a glory realized in details, which appears in long-labored works only to those who are willing to look closely themselves.
This is well-said, and not at all specific to the study of Chinese philosophy it seems to me. Comments are open for reader reactions.
