ANCIENT CHINESE AND GREEK THOUGHT.   Term Paper ID:29549 Click to get this paper

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Paper Abstract: Worldviews of each culture. Difference in language, systems of logic, linguistic practice. Chinese language and philosophy. Confucius and Laotse. Western linguistic structure. Early system of free inquiry; Plato and Ideal Forms. Taoist thought; yin and yang. Taoist view of reality, change, relativism. Paper Introduction: This research examines fundamental differences between the thought of the Chinese and the thought of the Greeks. The research will discuss the structure of Chinese and Greek discourse as well as ways in which the respective worldviews of the cultures overlap, converge, and diverge. Much of what is different between Chinese and Greek thought begins with the medium of expression in each culture: language. Making use of what she terms "contrastive rhetoric," Matalene (789), identifies different systems of logic contained in Chinese and Greek (Western) language. Because of conventions established in ancient Greece, in the West, linguistic practice in Western languages such as English is governed by specific rules and conventions that determine correct expression or writing. Matalene cites the view that rhetorical standards "are expre Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. It is as difficult to capture Taoist thought for analysis andexplication as it is to capture the Platonic Ideal Forms, and for the samereason. . Works CitedCapra, Fritjof. The Western linguistic structure that originated in Greece did notspring forth fully formed. G. invented paper andprinting, rockets, clocks, silk, porcelain, and ocean-going navies . For a long time the human instinct to understand wasthwarted [because] . New York: Random House, 198 .Wells, H. 2 .Laotse. New York: Bantam New Age, 1976.Cowgill, Warren, and Jasanoff, Jay H. What is therefore the most authentic reality of being,is the "core," or what cannot be experienced palpably. "Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China." College_English 47 (December 1985): 789-8 8.Sagan, Carl. By many words is wit exhausted. Lin Yutang. . The Chinese alphabet is not properly so called but an ideogramcollection of "thousands of different characters" (Matalene 791). [Taoism] is a philosophy of the essential unity of the universe (monism), of reversion, polarization (yin and yang), and eternal cycles, of the leveling of all differences, the relativity of all standards, and the return of all to the Primeval One, the divine intelligence, the source of all things (Yutang 14). Sagan cites the view (175) that although in 5 BC China had "anastronomical tradition millennia old [and] . Yutang's view is that Laotse's recourse to "mystic phraseology" wasnot really mystical because "it is exactly this quality of 'elusiveness' oflife processes that confronts the thinking scientist in his laboratory"(Yutang 16). Laotse, says Wells (49 ),"was much more mystical and vague and elusive" than Confucius. The interplay of yin and yang, the primordial pair ofopposites, appears thus as the principle that guides all the movements ofthe Tao" (Capra, 96-98). Trans. A Short History of the World. This research examines fundamental differences between the thought ofthe Chinese and the thought of the Greeks. New York: Modern Library, 1947.Matalene, Carolyn. . New York: Modern Library, 1947. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922.Whitehead, Alfred North. The research will discuss thestructure of Chinese and Greek discourse as well as ways in which therespective worldviews of the cultures overlap, converge, and diverge. "Indo-European Languages." Britannica 2 1 Deluxe Edition CD-ROM. . Hisobjective was never achieved, but his Analects survive as a cornerstone oftraditional Chinese moral and civic philosophy. At about 5 BC, however, in the Greek colonial islands ofIonia, there began a systematic demythologization of the cosmos that was"one of the great ideas of the human species." Sagan continues: The universe is knowable, the ancients argued, because it exhibits an internal order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be uncovered. . a reigning commonplace of Greek thought." That much of Aristotle'shard science was just plain wrong and that it took more than 1,5 yearsand Newton to discriminate the facts of gravity take nothing away from theprinciple of curiosity that originated in and for the West with Greekcosmology--and by the way, Newton was nothing if not Aristotle'sintellectual heir. Cosmos. Making use of whatshe terms "contrastive rhetoric," Matalene (789), identifies differentsystems of logic contained in Chinese and Greek (Western) language. As Capra explains: "The originalmeaning of the words yin and yang was that of the shady and sunny sides ofa mountain, a meaning which gives a good idea of the relativity of the twoconcepts. However, in Tao cosmology, the moral fuses with thematerial, more exactly interpenetrates it. . . Trans. 3-22. In Chinese thoughtone seems therefore inclined to yield to the poetry of theincomprehensible. It evolved "from people who responded to thedangers of existence by inventing stories about unpredictable ordisgruntled deities. Much of what is different between Chinese and Greek thought beginswith the medium of expression in each culture: language. The Ionian revolution "made Cosmos out of Chaos" (Sagan 175). But it turned out that his pupil Aristotle could not doenough to systematize ways of dealing with facts. Adventures of Ideas. Laotse suggests that the spiritual/moral/philosophical realm issuperior to the material/scientific one: "The Tao that can be told of / Isnot the Absolute Tao; / The Names that can be given / Are not AbsoluteNames" (Laotse 41). Inthe West, arguments are meant to be "cohesive, coherent, and explicitlyunified" (Matalene 79 ). . . Laotse's relativism,meanwhile, is radical: How the universe is like a bellows! Whitehead cites Aristotle's "lawthat there is a tendency for material bodes to seek the center of the Earth. Introduction. Plato's dialogues, comments Whitehead, "do not bear the aspect ofpatient induction from the facts. . What survived vis-à-vis superstition was what Whitehead callscuriosity, or "the craving of reason that the facts discriminated inexperience be understood" (Whitehead 141). For aChinese to be literate, he or she must memorize a large set ofnonrepetitive characters, which implies an obligation to memorize "theculture itself" (792). Lin Yutang. Thus"free inquiry"--plus refinement of the Phoenician alphabet--emerged, thoughby no means did it dispose of superstition (Socrates was condemned as anatheist). The Western alphabetand the raft of what are referred to as Indo-European languages (e.g., byCowgill and Jasanoff) are governed by a set number of letters memorized,then used and reused pursuant to specific rules or conventions to makemeanings. The Wisdom of Laotse. They are dominated by speculation anddialectics" (136). The Wisdom of Laotse. Rather, therefore, hold to the core (Laotse, 63-4).The Taoist view of reality is that what changes and cannot be trusted isexactly what seems the most real: the palpable, physical universe orsentient experience. itwas nevertheless too traditionalist a society, too unwilling to adoptinnovations." But the thought of Confucius and Laotse, who lived about 1 years before Plato, suggest serious Chinese engagement with the cosmos.Confucius, who had a more practical approach than Laotse, "conceived anideal of a better government and a better life" by way of education ofnoble and disinterested public servants toward wisdom (Wells 489). By Laotse. Nature is not entirely unpredictable; there are rules even she must obey (Sagan 175). Indeed,Laotse's discourse of the atom as a particle of matter does not aim atexplanation in the manner of the Greek Democritus but at articulation of animponderable: "We have chased the solid substance from the continuous liquid to the atom, from the atom to the electron, and there we have lost it." What the electron is doing inside the atom is summarized in the following line: "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." Somewhere in the quantum of light, the corpuscular and the non-corpuscular meet and confuse and exasperate the investigator of truth (Yutang 16). . Matalenecites the view that rhetorical standards "are expressions of Westernculture" (789), where writers "subscribe to Aristotle's [logical] dictum,'State your case and prove it,' and we expect to be provided with premisesand conclusions connected by inductive or deductive reasoning" (79 ). Becauseof conventions established in ancient Greece, in the West, linguisticpractice in Western languages such as English is governed by specific rulesand conventions that determine correct expression or writing. Chinese language and philosophy are as logically constructed andexpressed, but the "hierarchy of culture, language, and rhetoric" (Matalene79 ) is logical differently in China than the West. New York: Free P, 1967.Yutang, Lin. The Tao of Physics. Empty, yet it gives a supply that never fails; The more it is worked, the more it brings forth. every tree and meadow had its dryad and maenad"(Sagan 173-4). In Greek thought, one seems rather more inclined tofigure out a good way of thinking about it. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.