Scholarship, Value, Method, and Hermeneutics in Kaozheng: Some Reflections on Cui Shu (1740-1816) and the Confucian Classics

Abstract

The first part considers a possible indigenous line of descent for modern Chinese historical scholarship. It argues that further research on late imperial kaozheng-studies is needed that should concentrate on the question of the relationship between scholarship and Confucian values in kaozheng-discourse. The second part uses the case of the late traditional scholar Cui Shu (1740-1816) to exemplify the hypothesis that in kaozheng-studies scholarship and value were still highly integrated and that this falls into line with the general position of history in the Confucian context. This hypothesis is further elaborated in the third part of the article which contrasts Cui Shu's heuristic approach with some of the basic ideas on method as they were developed within the historicist tradition. The author comes to the conclusion that the dissimilarities prevail. In the fourth part analogies between the heuristic discourse in kaozheng and in the European hermeneutic tradition are briefly discussed. It argues that analogies indeed exist but that these analogies are to be sought in the premodern or early modern stages of the development of European hermeneutics rather than in contemporary philosophical hermeneutics.