Extract
A critique of A.C. Graham's reconstruction of the 'neo-Mohist canons.'.
The Neo-Mohist Canons are commonly thought to be the closest thing to logic in ancient China. A. C. Graham's reconstruction of this almost unintelligible text has been hailed as "the single most important study on Chinese logic ever published."(1) Graham suggests that the Canons also contain the germs of Chinese science, destined to be undeveloped due to poor preservation of this text. Sinologists have used Graham's reconstruction not only to understand Neo-Mohist logic and science, but also to elucidate methods of argumentation and technical terminology throughout ancient China. This article questions whether we can in fact rely on Graham's reconstruction. According to Graham, an "organizing principle must be identified if the items [in the Canons] are to be read in context."(2) But the organizing principle Graham selects for reconstructing the text is questionable. The organizing principle determines the order and the themes that provide the context for interpretation. If it is called into question, we lack the necessary context for interpreting the Canons. Given the countless questions about line-breaks and emendations of characters in the Canons, it is by no means easy to determine, on a case-by-case basis for each Canon, whether it is possible to reject Graham's organizing principle for the Canons as a whole but still to retain his translation (or even, in many cases, his decision about what counts as the beginning and ending of a "Canon" and an "Explanation"). Although Graham's reconstruction is a monumental achievement and we may have nothing better to use in its place, I fear that we do not yet have a reliable source of Neo-Mohist thought.
In what follows I shall first identify two general problems with Graham's proposed restructuring of the Canons: the fact that there are two apparently similar sections that Graham believes refer to distinctly different disciplines, and the fact that there are gaps in his construction of the Canons into supposedly parallel halves. Next, I shall question Graham's contention (fundamental to his restructuring of the Canons) that the Mohist divides the world into an eternally necessary realm and a transient, non-necessary realm. Graham contends that in the eternal realm knowledge is necessary, whereas in the transient realm procedures for knowledge are merely consistent, and that neither realm spawns epistemological questions. This separation of a necessary, atemporal realm from a non-necessa...See the full content of this document
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