Dear readers and subscribers,
Please read my translation of a luminous recent essay, ‘What was traditional culture?’ by a great contemporary thinker, Qin Hui (pron. ‘cheen hwey’). In later posts we’ll be squeezing sparks out of it.
It’s time to move into the edible part of the avocado, fascinating as the glossy-ribbed outer integument may be. ‘New measures of rationality and sincerity in the PRC’ is promised in Beijing Baselines’ subtitle. That’s what we shall explore in all the instalments (‘edge balls’) to come.
Many of us arrange our ideas about China in two, maybe three basic dimensions. Like economics and politics—that’s a popular one. Then there’s geopolitics and trade—also big for many. History and geography.
I started arranging things on X and Y axes of ‘rationality’ and ‘sincerity’ as far back as …I don’t want to tell you.
Rationality is the stuff of philosophy: it has to be boiled down to an essence, otherwise why mess with it? Not sincerity though: not only does not everyone have it, it has a million opposites and secret tribal sauces. Philosophy basically kicks it out the back door to literature, where it reigns. ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’
Basic definition: ‘Sincerity. The disposition not to mislead.’
Chinese thought, including but not only the Confucian brand, has been in love with sincerity very far back, way further than Shakespeare. I call it ‘the Han Stairway to Heaven’.
We’ll start with some iconography of sincerity: the Sincerity Building Group (incorporated in Western Australia).
Unquestionably sincere, as indicated by propping one’s chin on a curled finger. I’ll post a pic of myself in that pose, which will establish my own sincerity. Of course.
Why ‘the Han stairway to Heaven’?
A Confucian classic, the Doctrine of the Mean 中庸, is ecstatic about a quality called chéng 誠 that allows humans to ‘form a triad with Heaven and Earth’
Another Confucian classic, the Great Learning 大学 defines ‘sincerity/chéng of the will’ as ‘non self-deception’
the ancient philosopher Mencius made this beautiful statement:
《诚之天之道也思诚者人之道也》
Roughly,
Sincerity is the Way of the divine, getting to sincerity is the Way of mortals
I'll be translating a good discussion of this in a later post. Finally,I posted the above pic last time. It shows a very iconic monument on the Peking University campus, hard by the Science Lecture Building where I taught an MA course on ‘Contemporary Chinese Society’ 2011-17.
It is a monument to— sincerity (chéng 誠).
Dear Daev. Thanks for sharing. Qin Hui once gave the Keynote to an event we organized for young China researchers back in 2012. He is one of the few liberal thinkers who have not completely gone silent in the ongoing central management aka crackdown ) of University education since 2014. I Looking forward to you translation.
I passed said calligraphy twice a day on my way to the office in the “Old Chemistry Building” (2007-2013).
Cheers