Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (review)

Reviews 425© 1996 by University ofHawai'i Press time the texts were forbidden for political reasons. One ofthe main tenets ofthe Ku Wei Shu apocryphal texts is that the Lo-shu and Ho-t'u, identified in chapters by that name as related to the I Ching, demonstrate a far earlier knowledge ofthe binary order ofthe hexagrams than the Sung dynasty. Much recent work is being done in China and Japan on J Chinginterpretation. The detailed studies ofJapanese scholars as well as the earlier studies of eminent Chinese authorities such as Kao Heng will hopefully soon be made available to serious scholars ofthe J Ching. Besides the need for an Asian update, the usefulness of Hacker's work as a reference could also be enhanced by an expanded index (now a brief four pages), to locate the plethora ofinformation gathered from many English sources. Michael Saso Chinese Academy ofSocial Sciences Michael Saso is Director ofthe Institute ofAsian Studies, Beijing Center, and Professor Emeritus, University ofHawai'i. Ii David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames. Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives ofChinese and Western Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. xxiii, 334 pp. Hardcover $59.50, isbn 0-7914-24774 . Paperback $19.95, 1SBN 0-7914-2478-2. This is an ambitious book, a wide-ranging comparison ofChinese and Greek thought. It follows themes already adumbrated in the authors' Thinking Through Confucius, and it looks forward to a third projected volume, provisionally tided ThinkingFrom the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in China and the West. Anticipating China itselfconsists ofthree main parts. In the first, the authors attempt a narrative account ofWestern thought, concentrating especially on its ancient Greek origins. The second part offers a very general essay evaluating alternative methodologies for comparative studies. The third sets out a narrative account of Chinese thought, focusing on the period down to the end ofthe Han but ranging, on occasion, over other periods down to modern times. The study is stronger in its negative, critical remarks than in its own positive recommendations or practice. Chinese culture should not be studied from the perspective ofancient Greek or, more generally, Western preoccupations, nor should the opposite mistake be made. The Chinese are evidentiy not to be treated 426 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 as failed Greeks, nor the Greeks as failed Chinese. We must indeed be self-conscious in our methodology. Hall and Ames reject what they dub transcendental monism and transcendental pluralism in favor of a pragmatic approach that derives from Richard Rorty and owes a good deal to deconstructionism. But rejecting objectivity claims, how do they justify the often severe, indeed moralistic, criticisms that they offer of the likes of Bodde, Schwartz, and Needham, and the more muted ones of Graham, Gernet, and Major? The pragmatists take their stand by responsible reading. So how responsibly is the task carried out? There is, first, an unguarded overconfidence about what can reliably be attributed to heroic figures such as Pythagoras. Hall and Ames are misled by relying too heavily on the uncritical first edition ofKirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers , rather than on the far more cautious second edition, which had the benefit of the work of Malcolm Schofield. A more serious criticism relates to the bias introduced by the heavy concentration on what falls, broadly, under the rubric of "philosophy." The picture ofboth Greek and Chinese thought would have been appreciably modified if more attention had been paid to the extant sources for mathematics, for instance. Nor do the diverse medical traditions ofboth ancient societies receive any sustained analysis, even though they surely deserve such treatment, in particular in connection with the investigation of causal thinking in both. More fundamentally still, questions to do with the institutions within which "philosophers" or "scientists" worked, how they were recruited and trained, how they earned a living, and how they interacted with political authorities are dealt with in only a very cursory fashion. The basic thesis of the book relates to the contrast between what are called first problematic and second problematic thinking—the first associated with correlations , process, the "acosmotic," and the aesthetic notion of order, and the second with...