Re-locating Plato: A Chinese Translation and Interpretation of Plato’s Symposium1

Huiyin (Drinking Party)², a Chinese translation of Plato’s Symposium by Liu Xiaofeng (1956- ) came out in 2003. This translation was the loose stone that triggered an avalanche of the interest in Western Hellenic works among Chinese intellectuals in the 2000s. By the end of the decade this wave of interest coalesced into a group of Chinese scholars bound together by their distinctive views on the Greek classics and by the intensity of their abiding fascination with the neo-conservative thinkers Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt.

Owing to the efforts of Chinese scholars inspired by Liu Xiaofeng’s translation, Huiyin’s publication was followed by a succession of translations of Platonic dialogues and commentaries. This body of work is now collectively referred to as “Platonic opera Omnia cum commentariis in Chinese Translations” (Complete works of Plato with commentaries in Chinese Translations) and forms a part of an even more comprehensive translation project entitled “Hermes: classici et commentarii” (Hermes: classics and commentaries) which was started in 2000 and has published approximately 350 books by early 2015.

Liu Xiaofeng received his master degree in philosophy at Peking University in 1980s and Ph. D. in theology in Europe in early 1990s. He established his academic reputation in the 1980s by participating in cultural debates on how to view cultural differences between the East and the West. He is the chief editor of the Hermes series and a major figure in introducing Plato in conjunction with Leo Strauss to China’s intellectual community. Liu’s Huiyin remains influential because it provides succeeding translations and commentaries on Plato and other Western classics with a model for both format and content.

Huiyin is the first translation in the influential translation project known as Hermes, but by no means the first translation of Plato in China. Before Liu’s translations, there were already several other versions of Plato’s Symposium in the Chinese language. Furthermore, even after Liu’s Huiyin, Wang Taiqing introduced another translation of Symposium in 2004.³ However, Huiyin is unique compared to other translations of Plato outside of the Hermes series. Of all the translations of Plato, Huiyin alone has become a foundational text of an intellectual and political campaign. This book is both representative and illustrative of the intellectual outlooks of Liu and his supporters, who stand united around their Straussian political philosophy and Straussian approach to the classics. Additionally, even compared to the other books of Hermes, Huiyin also stands apart as the most thorough piece of work. Huiyin boasts the most comprehensive commentary and notes and is most formidable of all the books in the Hermes series in its demonstration of serious scholarship.

This paper conducts a close study of Huiyin in order to inquire into the important facets of the contemporary Chinese cultural perspective that this book exemplifies. This paper contends that Liu’s Huiyin interacts with modern Chinese theories on translation and constitutes an attempt to conjoin Plato and the Chinese classical tradition by mediating the cultural differences between the two.

This paper starts with an examination of the paratextual features of Huiyin to delineate a general outlook of its physical features and to prepare discussions in later sections. The paper then moves onto an introduction of the modern tradition of translation in China, particularly the principles set by Yan Fu (1854-1920) and C. H. Chen (1902-1992), and examines how Liu’s Huiyin interacts with these principles of translations based on its particular attitude toward the Western and Chinese classics. The third part of this paper focuses on several details in Liu’s translation and commentary to examine how these details reflect Liu’s outlook on classics and the differences between the Western tradition and the Chinese classical canon.

Paratextual Features of Liu’s Huiyin

According to Gérard Genette, the paratext of a book refers to the physical aspects of a book, the material elements that exist more or less beyond the scope of the main content of the book. A paratext may refer to, but is not limited to, the author’s name, the...