Jane Geaney

: In response to allegations that China is a "shame culture," scholars of Confucian ethics have made use of new studies in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy that present shame in a more favorable light. These studies contend that shame involves internalization of social moral codes. By adapting these new internal models of shame, Confucian ethicists have attempted to rehabilitate the emphasis on shame in early Confucianism, but in doing so they have inadvertently highlighted the striking absence in early Confucian texts of such prominent shame metaphors as being seen, particularly with genitals exposed. This essay analyzes these visual metaphors for shame, in contrast to contact metaphors, and considers the implications for Confucian ethics that they might be two different types of shame.

For understanding early Chinese "theories of language" and views about the relation of speech to a nonalphabetic script, a thorough analysis of early Chinese metalinguistic terminology is necessary. This article analyzes the function of ming & (name) in early Chinese texts as a first step in that direction. It argues against the regular treatment of this term in early Chinese texts as the equivalent of "word." It examines ming in light of early Chinese ideas about sense perception, the mythology about the origin or music and writing, and changes occurring in the writing system in the third century B.C.E. This lays the groundwork for a more informed response to Derrida's speculation about Chinese logocentrism. It is explained that, in early Chinese texts, certain concepts associated with logocentrism (e.g., reality/appearance, presence/absence) function in a way that is neither the same as, nor exactly the reverse of, the Western philosophical episteme. Thus, attempts to reconstruct attitudes toward "language" in early China should note the importance of sound in interpreting ming. Moreover, interpretations of apparent denigrations of writing in early Chinese texts should, before diagnosing logocentrism, consider the context of the reliability of the visual

A. C. Graham's Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Sciences is the only Western-language translation of the obscure and textually corrupt chapters of the Mozi that purportedly constitute the foundations of ancient Chinese logic. Graham's presentation and interpretation of this difficult material has been largely accepted by scholars. This article questions the soundness of Graham's reconstruction of these chapters . Upon close examination, problems are revealed in both the structure and the content of the framework Graham uses to interpret the Canons. Without a more reliable framework for interpreting the text, it seems best to remain skeptical about claims that the Canons represent evidence for the study of logic in early China

Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the nontranscendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei-Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in terms of the extent to which their representation of Confucian ethics reflects and is consistent with the view that in early China the cosmos was conceived to be organismic, nontranscendent, and nondualistic

Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the non transcendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei‐Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in termsof the extent to which their representation of Confucian ethics reflects and is consistent with the view that in early China the cosmos was conceived to be organismic, nontranscendent, and nondualistic.

Challenges the idea held by many prominent twentieth-century Sinologists that early China experienced a “language crisis.” Jane Geaney argues that early Chinese conceptions of speech and naming cannot be properly understood if viewed through the dominant Western philosophical tradition in which language is framed through dualisms that are based on hierarchies of speech and writing, such as reality/appearance and one/many. Instead, early Chinese texts repeatedly create pairings of sounds and various visible things. This aural/visual polarity suggests that texts from early China treat speech as a bodily practice that is not detachable from its use in everyday experience. Firmly grounded in ideas about bodies from the early texts themselves, Geaney’s interpretation offers new insights into three key themes in these texts: the notion of speakers’ intentions (yi), the physical process of emulating exemplary people, and Confucius’s proposal to rectify names (zhengming). Jane Geaney is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond and the author of On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought.