Фигура субъекта в протокатегориальных представлениях Древнего Китая

Abstract

This article is devoted to the analysis of the subject’s place in the proto-categorical language constructions of Ancient China. Fundamental conceptual schemas called basic classifications refer to such constructs. The key schemes include binary, ternary and quinary classifications, which defined the main features and further development of the entire Chinese mentality and civilization. The main methodological technique used in conducting historical and philosophical research is the reliance on text primary sources. The most important and most reliable source of knowledge about the philosophical views of such a remote historical period (we are talking about the Zhou era, approximately 1045 – 221 BC) is the “Book of Changes” or “I-Ching”(易经). Structural analysis is used to identify the elements and numeral schemes in the considered figure of the subject. According to the language picture of the world, reconstructed on the basis of texts from ancient Chinese sources, the position of the subject appears to be initially embedded in the worldview paradigm of archaic China. The main characteristics of a man that reveal themselves in the studied constructions of proto-categorical thinking are centrality and emptiness. These properties appear to be the most essential for understanding the role assigned to the man in the deployed model of the universe. A dual image is formed from the predicates of the subject revealed as a result of the research. Man, from the point of view of the ancient Chinese, occupying a Central position in the vertical of the “three fundamental forces” of the San Cai (Earth-Man-Sky) and possessing, due to its dominant position, the features that are crucial for the successful knowledge of natural laws, appears to be devoid of his own, personal content. The initial emptiness of the subject of knowledge, which is its essential property, entails the absence of its individual content. The author makes a conclusion about the conditionally human position of the individual in the universe. Man turns out to be derived from natural, cosmic principles that form, according to the proto-categorical representations of Ancient China, not only the foundations of the world order, but also the principles of world relations.