Reaction to Professor Chen Lai's "‘Way’ and ‘Principle’"

Abstract

Basically, I agree with Chen Lai's views on the difficulties of translating ancient Chinese thinking into modern Western idioms. The problem is not only due to the dependence of the meaning of terms upon their use in a specific context (another ancient cultural setting). The problem is already there for Chinese scholars themselves: It is the translation of words or concepts from a traditional learned context related to specific questions (i.e., Chinese philosophical questions) into modern Chinese language. In order to succeed, one has to realize, first, that modern colloquial Chinese is divorced from classical Chinese categories and, secondly, that philosophical vocabulary in modern Chinese is contaminated by Western philosophical categories.