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8/4/2019 Perlin Thesis
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The Anxiety of Distance:
Alexander of Aphrodisias and Zhu Xias Interventionist Commentators
Ross PerlinCorpus Christi College
June 13, 2006Word Count (incl. footnotes): 11,966
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This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy.
This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is theoutcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.
With special thanks to Joachim Lacrosse, Bruce Rusk, Haroon Ahmed, M.K. Rath,Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, and Robert Wardy.
.........................................................................
In fact the important thing is to recognise the distance in time as a positive andproductive possibility of understanding. It is not a yawning abyss, but is filled with
the continuity of custom and tradition, in the light of which all that is handed downpresents itself to us.-Gadamer, Truth and Method
Towards a Comparative History of Hermeneutics
The history of the major traditions of philosophical commentary has hardly
been written. After years of either dismissal for lack of originality or use primarily for
reconstructing earlier source texts, commentaries are being re-evaluated for their own
intrinsic worth, and their place in the history of thought is being progressively
rehabilitated.1 As John Henderson has written, the time is ripe for a comparative,
cross-cultural history of hermeneutics.2
As a contribution to this effort, the present paper is an examination of two
thinkers from the Greek and Chinese traditions of philosophical commentary:
1 Recent publications and translations are playing a major role. For the purposes ofthis paper, the ongoing series,Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, edited by RichardSorabji, and the work of Wing-tsit Chan and Daniel Gardner in editing, compiling,and translating Zhu Xi have been particularly useful.2 Henderson 1991, 6.
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Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 AD) and Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Juxtaposing the
Greek and Chinese traditions, apart from drawing on the academic background of the
author, keeps us squarely within the bounds of secular thought. It also allows us to
compare two traditions that developed, as it appears, entirely separate from one
another.
Although there are certainly parallels between secular and religious canons
be they Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or Hinduan added aura inevitably
attaches itself to texts whose origin or inspiration is ascribed to a god or gods,
however reverential secular homage to figures such as Aristotle or Confucius may
have been. The control over scriptural canons often wielded by religious authorities
poses a second problem, not insurmountable but enough to deter us from taking on
extra complications in a study perhaps already over-reaching.
The mutual isolation of the Greek andChinese philosophical traditions until
the 16th century arrival of the Jesuits in China presents us with a unique opportunity.
Recently, an increasing number of full-length studiesnot to mention countless
sections within larger works (especially by Sinologists)have compared Greek and
Chinese thinking on medicine3, sagehood4, literary figurations5, techniques of
persuasion6 etc., yet none have explicitly treated the commentarial traditions in
3 Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin (2002.) The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine inEarly China and Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press.4 Stephen Durrant and Steven Shankman (2000.) The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge andWisdom in Greece and China. New York: London: Cassell.5 David Hall and Roger Ames (1997.) Thinking From the Han: Self, Truth, andTranscendence in Chinese and Western Culture. Albany: SUNY Press.6 Lloyd 1996.
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comparison. The focus of all these studies, perhaps inevitably, has been on
convergences and divergences, and attempts to explain them. Discovered
convergences may point out what had to be the case for the intellectual history of
these civilizations; divergences, on the other hand, should provide some hint as to
what developments were contingent variations that could have been otherwise.
Enough of this work, such as that of Saul Levmore in his comparative studies of
ancient law7, may demonstrate the major constraints within which these early
thinkers, or civilizations, had to work. Such constraints may range from strayrealia
(e.g. the use of orpiment and brush by Chinese commentators in amending texts8) to
the major sociological questions of how institutions and the individuals within them
functioned, and how knowledge was gathered, represented, and consumed.
The central question of this essay is as follows:What explains the
emergence of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Zhu Xi as two of the first
commentators in each of their independent philosophical traditions to adopt a
strongly interventionist hermeneutic?
Alexander was Greco-Roman antiquitys most renowned commentator on the
works of Aristotle, and Zhu Xi, by the start of Yuan Dynasty, had become the most
famous Chinese exegete of the Confucian Classics. Each made it their lifes work to
systematize and transform the received canon of their tradition. That they succeeded
in becoming philosophical commentators who went well beyond glossing,
7 For example, see Saul Levmore (1987). Variety and Uniformity in the Treatment ofthe Good-Faith Purchaser,Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 16, pp. 43-65.8 See Cherniack 1994.
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paraphrasis, and textual transmission can be measured both by the richness of their
writings and by their later influence.
Their being primarily philosophical rather than philological in their exegeses is
not sufficient in itself to justify the label interventionist. To do so, I will look at
cases in which Alexander and Zhu employed two strategiesthe supplementation
and interconnection of textsmore radically, quacommentators, than any
predecessors in their received traditions. First, in Alexanders De fato (On Fate) and
Zhu Xis Supplement (buzhuan) to the Daxue (Greater Learning), each
philosopher inserted an original work directly into the canon to supplement it, while
still claiming the mantle of commentator. Second, in their explanations of famously
obscure passages at De anima3.5 andAnalects4.15 respectively, Alexander and Zhu Xi
surmounted interpretive difficulties by boldly connecting these passages with other
parts of the canon, in ways that were far from self-evident.
This paper will argue that Alexander and Zhu Xi were each among the first
Greek and Chinese commentators we can trace to undertake significant and overt9
interventions of this sort, and that in fact such interventions were the most extreme
manifestation of an overall stance that each took in refashioning received traditions.
In the remainder of the paper, I will try to explain the emergence of this
interventionist hermeneutic, characterizing as interventionist any attempt at
interpretation in which the commentator, still actingquacommentator, treats
9 As we will explore later, covert forms of intervention (forgeries, pseudepigraphyetc.) occurred both before and after Alexander and Zhu.
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interpretation of the received source text(s) as dependant upon the addition of expansive, usually
doctrinal, inputand goes on to provide that input. Judging whether input is expansive or
doctrinal is subjective, and whether or not we think such input is justified by the
source text is a separate question. As a general rule of thumb, we might want to call
certain scholastic strategies non-interventionist (e.g. paraphrasis, glossing etc.), while
for other kinds of textual engagementsuch as deletion, rearrangement,
abridgmenta closer look at the given case will be necessary. The supplementation
and interconnection of texts more clearly fits our definition of interventionist, taking
us to the very edge of what most exegetes considered proper. As we shall see, Zhu Xi
at least came in for heavy criticism for having transgressed accepted bounds.10
To explain the interventionist hermeneutics emergence, I will examine the
evidence for Alexander and Zhu Xis sense of historical embeddedness and place
within their traditions. Both commentators shared an anxiety about the temporal gulf
that separated them from their revered masters Aristotle and Confucius, and I will
argue that this anxiety of distance led them to their commentarial interventions.
This anxiety about the hermeneutic difficulties of temporal distance emerged at a
certain point in the Aristotelian and Confucian traditions and led talented
commentators to risk interventions to save the canon for their own time. I am
calling the driving psychological force for these commentators an anxietyless to echo
10 There are generalized critiques of Alexander for inserting his own doctrines into hiscommentaries at Elias In Cat. 123.1-7 and Plutarch of Athens ap. Philoponum, In Deanima21.20-3.
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Dodds age of anxiety (echoing Auden) than Harold Blooms anxiety of
influence.11
Deuteronomic Texts
One more methodological consideration is in order. The very label
philosophical commentary presents the problem of what is meant by philosophy
and commentary. Leaving the first of these to the side12, we would do well to
expand our usual notion of commentary, even if only for the purposes of this study.
Of the texts I will refer to here, for instance, only one (Zhus Sishu Jizhu,
or Commentary on the Four Booksactually a compilation of four separate
commentaries) fits the expected model of interlinear commentary based on clearly
marked lemmas from the source texts. Some of the others include a treatise of
identical title and very similar material to its source text (Alexanders De anima), a
deliberate interpolation into a critical edition of the source text (Zhus supplement to
the Daxue), and a work that incorporated much canonical material although it was
novel in presentation and theme (Alexanders De fato). In all of these works,
interpretation of earlier material is a primary goal, but the forms taken for this
purpose are varied and demand a more general rubric than commentary usually
suggests.
11 See Harold Bloom (1973.) The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York:Oxford University Press. I take only a very general cue from Bloom's framework.12 Unfortunately the debate about whether the Chinese can be said to have developedphilosophy has not entirely gone away. For one possible response to the critics
who would rather speak of Chinese thought, see Reding 2005, especially 25.
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One scholar who has provided a richer typology is Reviel Netz, a historian of
ancient mathematics who advocates the term deuteronomic texts in speaking of
late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This category, according to Netz, includes new
editions, epitomes, encyclopedic collections, translations, scholia, marginalia, and, in
general, any texts depending fundamentally on earlier texts.13 Going on to detail
various scholastic strategies (found in deuteronomic texts), Netz concludes that they
add up, on the part of the commentator, tothe attempt to construct the text as a one-
to-one map of the conceptual world it refers to.14 In other words, deuteronomic
writers tend to assume that their source text got it right, in a comprehensive fashion,
and that the commentators job is simply to make ancient insights explicit.15
Often to these writers, there appears to be an inverse relation between, on the
one hand, how truthful and ancient a text is, and, on the other, how explicitly it
transmits its truths. This study presupposes that Alexander and Zhu Xi fit the
deuteronomic mold and identifies in their work some of the most radical
transformations on Netzs list of strategies, although one can find Alexander and Zhu
practicing nearly all those strategies at one point or another. Netzs list makes for an
instructive comparison with that of Henderson (1991), whose work is much broader
in scope but similar in spirit. Taking in a whole range of Eurasian traditions over
what one might call the deuteronomic longue dure, Henderson links a commentarial
assumption about the canon with each strategy, and we will follow him in speaking of
13 Netz 1998, 261.14 Ibid, 281. Italics in the original.15 For a classic statement of this view, see Plotinus V. 1, 8-9, especially 8.12ff.
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assumptions and strategies. The notion of canon we will not problematize explicitly,
even though it is true that the canons in our period of study were not absolutely fixed
or universally agreed upon. The canons of the deuteronomic era were not monolithic,
changeless entities, but we can usually draw strong inferences, from the commentary
work spawned, for a texts status during any given period.
Explaining more broadly the rise of deuteronomic activity has proven difficult:
Netz turns aside from the question16, and Henderson posits an ill-defined
commentarial mentality.17 The work of Sluiter (1999) and Mansfeld (1994) suggests
at least a local explanation in the Mediterranean world of changed pedagogical
practice and curriculum standardization. By identifying a distinctly interventionist
phase within the deuteronomic longue durein both a Greek and a Chinese
philosophical tradition, we hope to contribute to this discussion indirectly. A sharper
outline of the overall shape of the deuteronomic era will hopefully nudge forward our
understanding, helping us to progress to the point of understanding its origins.
Our segmentation of the deuteronomic era would break up the synchronicity
of Netz and Hendersons schemes. Although the strategies they list were present over
the long periods of time that each marks out, we have no indication of the strategies'
relative prominence in different periods. It is unlikely that the commentarial era of
the great traditions lacked the kind of shape that we typically impart to other periods
16 Netz does allude to two possible historical explanations: the spread of scripturalreligion in this period and the proliferation of books, at 284, but prefers, especially inhis 2004 case study, to trace the unexpected transformations wrought bycommentarial strategies on a canonical problem in mathematics.17 Henderson 1991, 221
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(i.e. with features such as intensive development, retrenchment, paradigm shifts etc.).
It would therefore represent an expansion on the work of Netz and Henderson to
suggest even a loose segmentation, testing whether it can hold up in independent
traditions in China and the Mediterranean.
Model Exegetes
Why compare Alexander of Aphrodisias and Zhu Xi for these substantial
tasks? The comparison undertaken here is not intended to suggest any similarities of
doctrine or of historical context. Nor does this paper, although it juxtaposes the
Peripatetic and Confucian traditions, posit any significant correspondences between
the theories and concepts espoused by those philosophical programs. The temporal
gap between the lives of Alexander and Zhu, who lived a millennium apart, will
already have struck the reader, but I am not endeavoring to make any arguments that
rely on a close one-to-one match of historical periods.
A possibly more significant obstacle is the asymmetrical knowledge we have of
the two commentatorsZhu Xis corpus is vast, nearly intact, and includes a wide
variety of genres; what we have of Alexander, on the other hand, is often fragmentary
(although considerable in comparison to other commentators of the period) and
restricted mostly to interlinear commentaries and original but derivative treatises.18
Moreover, biographical information, as we shall see, is very scarce for the Peripatetic,
but copious in the case of Zhu Xi. This difference will become more problematic
18 For a full catalogue of the Alexandrian corpus, see Sharples 1987, 1182-1199.
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when we try to trace Alexanders attitude towards his philosophical predecessors and
his hermeneutic strategies (seldom discussed explicitly); Zhu Xi, on the other hand,
has left us a massive web of references to earlier Confucians and a general
hermeneutic strategy in his Du shu fa (chapters 10 and 11 ofZhuzi Yulei
, or Collected Conversations of Master Zhu).
Leaving these caveatsaside, there are numerous reasons why comparing these
two figures should be a fruitful enterprise for saying something about the
development of deuteronomic traditions in China and the Mediterranean.
Comparisons of certain other thinkers, as I will explore briefly in the conclusion,
could certainly have their worth as well for our purposes, not to mention
comparisons that are more thematic in nature. Perhaps least promising at this time
are one-to-one doctrinal comparisons (although contrasts may be fascinating on this
level, as the work of Francois Jullien demonstrates19)the examples in this paper are
case studies, only made interesting by their larger context, and the comparison is
essentiallymetaphilosophical, located in ways of doing philosophical commentary,
hermeneutic assumptions and strategies, and the shape taken by traditions.
Alexander and Zhu Xi were considered model exegetes20 whose work was
read by students and philosophers for centuries afterwards, and deeply impacted the
history of interpretation in the study of Aristotle and the Confucian Classics,
19 See for example Franois Jullien (2004.), trans. Paula Varsano., In Praise of Blandness:Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics. Cambridge: MIT Press.20 For a late antique view of the model exegete in the Greek tradition, seeSimplicius on oJ a[xio"ejxeghth;" at In Cat. CAG 8 7.23ff.
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respectively. That their reception has this in common is noteworthyit means that,
either in spite of or at least in part because of their interventions, the two
commentators enjoyed significant authority and renown. One might even posit an
end-point of the interventionist phase in each tradition (about which more in the
conclusion) by asking how long Alexander and Zhu were regarded as models. While
it is certainly the case that they were received this way also for their erudition, their
thoroughness etc. it was not lost on later commentators that Alexander and Zhu had
been bolder than their predecessors and employed strategies that would previously
have been frowned upon, or not even countenanced.
References to Alexander as simplythecommentator (oJ ejxeghth;") are
numerous in the work of the Neoplatonist commentators who wrote in the centuries
after his death.21 One need only look at the frequency with which he was cited, either
by name or implicitly, in the commentaries of Simplicius, Philoponus22, Themistius,
Elias, and many others in a long line that leads through Averroes, Aquinas, and the
Italian humanists. What makes this doubly extraordinary is that, until Averroes in the
12th century, very few of these thinkersThemistius is the main exceptionsaw
themselves as Peripatetics. With the works of Aristotle still consistently studied, but
mostly for logic and psychology as the prelude to a Platonic metaphysical program,
21 Simpl. In Phys. CAG 9 707.33, 10 1170.2, 13 1176.32; Philop. In. Anal. Pr. 159.30,CAG 13.2 136.2022 Fazzo 2004 finds hundreds of direct mentions of Alexander in Simplicius, who alsopreserves large portions of text otherwise lost, and dozens in Philoponus.
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Alexander was often seen as the last word on the Stagirite.23 Extant commentary on
Aristotle from before Alexander is scarce, unfortunately, but this may well be because
his commentaries almost entirely replaced the previous legacy of literature handed
down by the Peripatetic school.24 If that claim is true, and we are not simply facing
the vicissitudes of textual transmission, it may be explained in part by the prestige
attached to Alexander's interventions.
Zhu Xi can also be characterized as a model exegete within his tradition. To
take one example of the many possible, the Ming scholar Xue Xuan wrote that
the Sishu Jizhuis so broad and great, so refined and intimate that it completely
develops the ideas of the ancient sages.25 As an indication of how early on Zhu Xis
particular achievement was recognized, Chen Chun spoke of Zhu (his teacher)
having penetrated the minds of the sages, and looking forward, [he] united the many
schools and synthesized them as one... the gathering of the many Confucians into a
complete concert.26 Zhu's renown grew rapidly after 1313, when the Yuan emperor
Renzong canonized the Sishu Jizhu(extending a certain prestige to at least some
of Zhus other works) by making them the basis of civil service examinations.27 By
the second quarter of the 15th century, the use of Zhus commentaries had become
widespread even outside private academies and imperial schools, making Zhu bothan
23 Another symptom of this is the range of works misattributed to Alexander throughthe Middle Ages, especially in the Islamic philosophical tradition, where Alexandersstature arguably reached its zenith.24 Fazzo 2004, 6.25 Xue Xuan, Du shu lu 1.9. Translation is Henderson's.26 Chen Chun, Lectures at Yanlingin Chan 1986, 181. Translation is Chans.27Yuanshi 81.2019.
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exemplary figure and a major target of attack until the exam systems dismantling in
the early 20th century. By contrast, Alexanders significance was always restricted,
even in the Islamic world, to a small elite who transmitted his work across the
generations.
Case #1Supplementation
Let us turn to how Alexander and Zhu supplementedtheir received canon
with the De fato and the buzhuansection of the Daxue, respectively.
Supplementation, the term we are using to describe the function performed by
these two works vis--vis their canons, is meant in a straightforward sense. I will
argue that Alexander perceived a major lacuna in Aristotelian doctrine on the
question of fate and determinism and sought to fill it with De fato, thus supplementing
the tradition with his own words but averring that this book holds the opinion of
Aristotle concerning fate and what depends on us.28 Zhu Xi perceived a lacuna
within the received text of the Daxuerather than within the canon as a whole, but it
too amounted to a doctrinal gap, on the question ofgewu zhizhi (fully
apprehending the principle of things and extending knowledge29). Both inteventions
are of the strongest sort available to the commentator and represent attempts to
address topics that appear to have hardly even been framed in the time of Confucius
or of Aristotle.
28 Alexander, De fato 164.13-14. Reiterated in the conclusion at 212.5ff and elsewhere.29 This is Gardners translation, with my own slight modification.
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The problems of fate and determinism were already old ones by the time
Alexander took them up, but he claims plausibly to be the first Aristotelian to write
on them at any length.30 Nor is De fato the only place in Alexanders work where he
takes up these issuesSharples (1983) helpfully brings it together withMantissa
XXII-XXV,QuaestionesII.4, II.5, and III.13, and a few short passages from his
commentary on Aristotles Topics. This indicates that a constellation of issues
surrounding fate, responsibility, and what depends on us (ejfhJmi'n) were of interest
to Alexander, particularly in his non-commentarial works.
De fato itself is mostly taken up with polemic against strict determinists, but the
passages from 164.15-171.18 provide our clearest picture of how Alexander
constructed a Peripatetic doctrine of fate. This positive doctrinein essence, that
fate is the individual nature of each thing, admitting exceptions31 is the core of the
supplement Alexander is adding to the canon of Aristotle, providing a definition not
clearly found in previous Aristotelian works but compatible with the schools major
doctrines.
The De fato is Alexanders most notable attempt to supplement the range of
Aristotelian doctrineswhy this choice of topic? Among those who had discoursed,
30 Quaestio 2.21, 70.25. In the same passage, Platonists are also enjoined to see thatAristotle indeed treated the subject of providence. Sharples 1983, 23-25, surveys ourvery fragmentary knowledge of previous Peripatetic positions on fate. That there hadbeen at least some consideration of the issue cannot be denied.31De fato 169.20.tov te ga;r eiJmarmevnon kata; fuvsin kai; to; kata; fuvsineiJmarmevnon.
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but apparently not at sufficient length for Alexander, were Theophrastus32 and the
anonymous commentator onNicomachean EthicsII-IV (possibly Adrastus of
Aphrodisias). Just as significantly, there is some evidence for differingPeripatetic
notions of fate.33 It is probably safe to conjecture that no single, authoritative
position had been established in the Peripatetic tradition before Alexander.
Nor should one be at all surprised at such a gappartisans of Aristotle were
often constrained to show that the philosopher had in fact discoursed upon a given
topic. Why fate remained a pressing philosophical issue for a wide range of writers
into the 2nd century AD, long after the Stoics and Epicureans had first framed it, is
not entirely clear. That Alexanders view was soon taken to be the Peripatetic one is
discernible from the treatises wide-ranging impact34 and the absence of later theories
claiming an Aristotelian imprimatur.
In a short space, Alexander constructs a plausible libertarian notion of fate,
and one moreover that seems compatible with Aristotelian assumptions on voluntary
action and choice (proaivresi") inNicomachean EthicsIII, the theory of four causes in
Physics2.3, and other basic positions in those two works and theMetaphysics. If this is
the birds' eye view of what Alexander is doing in the De fato, what is he up to in the
Peri; eiJmarmevnh" (On Fate) section of theMantissa? It is one of the puzzles of
32 AtMantissa186.39-41, Alexander cites the lost Callisthenesas treating what is inaccordance with fate as being the same as what in accordance with nature. There isevidence for this preserved in Aetius 1.29.4 as well.33 These include the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo (which, according to Sharples,
Alexander knew of and referred to) and a claim by the middle Platonist Atticus, at fr.8.8ff des Places.34 See Sharples 1983, 28-29.
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Alexander's work that, though he treated Aristotle as a systematic thinker, he himself
often seems to espouse multiple, sometimes incompatible, positions. AtMantissa
185.11-14, Alexander (or whoever the author might have been)35, describes fate as
nothing other than the proper nature of each thing (th;n oijkeivan fuvsin
eJkavstou)... not what is universal and common, for example simply [in] living
creatures or man, but in the individuals (ejn toi'" kaq e{kasta), Socrates and
Callias. In De fato we infer that the nature in question is the nature of a species and
not of an individual (169.20-23).
Which position, we might ask, was meant to supplement the ranks of tried and
true Peripatetic doctrines? When we notice similar inconsistencies in Zhu Xi, there is
usually a genetic explanation to hand, since we know that Zhu was constantly revising
and re-publishing his interpretations, and indeed often referred explicitly to past
mistakes that he wished to correct. With Alexander it is harder to know, but it
appears that for both commentators it was more important to demonstrate that no
stone had been left unturned in the process of interpretation than to expound a single
dogmatic view. Supplementation is anything but a process of arbitrary insertion;
done convincingly, it means a gathering up of small proto-theories from the canon
and their elaboration into something that can stand on its own.
35 One difficulty with pairing the De fato with passages fromMantissaorQuaestionesisthat the latter, minor works may come from Alexanders school rather than fromthe hand of Alexander himself. At present, there is not enough evidence to makedefinite attributions; moreover, none of Alexanders students is known by name.
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The supplement added by Zhu Xi to what he considered the fifth section of
Zengzis commentary on the core Confucian Daxueis only 134 characters in
length, but became one of his most controversial moves as a commentatorand is
otherwise without parallel in his uvre. Indeed, Zhu claimed that the Daxueoccupied
his attention more than any other of the Classics, and it is precisely here that his
transformations were most radical. Handed down as the 42nd chapter of the Liji,
a ritual handbook supposedly compiled by Dai Sheng (fl. 51 BC), the Daxuewas
apparently not studied independently until the Song, when it rapidly gained
importance. It was thought by the Cheng brothers and Zhang Zai, on what
evidence it is unclear, to be directly from the school of Confucius (though not
necessarily written by Confucius himself). Zhu Xi asserted that the first 205
characters were the words of Confucius himself and that the rest was commentary on
that core passage, composed by Zengzi, one of the masters key disciples. It was in
addition to this reorganization that Zhu posited, and chose to fill with his own words,
a major lacuna in the fifth section of Zengzis alleged commentary.
The Daxueand its themes of education and self-cultivationlike the topic of
fate and determinism by Alexanders timeappear to have become of such great
interest that it was necessary to project this interest, however recent, far backwards
into the past. The groundwork for Zhu Xis major commentarial moves had been
well laid by Han Yu, Sima Guang, and especially the Cheng brothers,
but in his preface to the Daxue Zhangjuhe felt it necessarily to state his motives for
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composing the buzhuanin particular: The text of the Greater Learningstill [after the
Cheng brothers] contained some errata and lacunae and hence, forgetting my
rusticity, I edited it. At times also I took the liberty of appending my own ideas and
filling in the lacunaethese await superior men of the future. I know full well that I
have overstepped my bounds and that there is no way for me to escape blame.36
This extraordinary, self-conscious passage is not the only case of Zhu being sensitive
to criticism that he was intervening too muchin the Zhuzi Yulei, he says to a
disciple: Whenever I have emended the wording of a classic I had a reason; I never
make emendations lightly. You must look to my reasons for making emendations.37
What Zhu set out to do in his supplement should be sharply distinguished
from an insertion such as the Shijing Daxue (Stone Classics Greater
Learning)38, one of the most famous forgeries of the late Ming, accepted by many for
a long period as an authentic, archaic text. While doubtless the forger of this work
(Feng Fang, a late Ming literatus) was staging a kind of intervention, Zhu was
not setting out to fool anyone deliberately: the style of the buzhuanis distinct from
that of the Daxue(although at first Zhu reportedly did attempt an archaic style39). On
a related note, the frequency with which interpolations found their way into the
Chinese Classics, especially in the period of canon formation during the late Warring
States and early Han, must be linked to the textual medium of easily removed or
36 Daxue ZhangjuPreface,2b-3a. See Gardner 1986, 86.37Zhuzi Yulei105.2626. Both passages translated by Gardner.38 For more on the Shijing Daxue, see Rusk, forthcoming.39Zhuzi Yulei16.326.
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inserted bamboo slips. Such interpolations are perhaps a category unto themselves,
quite unlike the supplements offered by a commentator.40
Zhus reasons for taking so bold a step become evident if one looks at the
content of his supplement. He explainsgewu zhizhiby writing that if we wish to
extend our knowledge to the utmost, we must probe thoroughly the principle (li)
in those things we encounter. Everyone can build gradually from lito understand
that which eludes him. After exerting himself in this way for a long time, he will one
day become enlightened and thoroughly understand [li]; then, the manifest and the
hidden, the subtle and the obvious qualities of all things will all be known, and the
mind, in its whole substance and vast operations, will be completely illuminated.41
Gewu(apprehending things, or Neo-Confucian principle, here) became the first
step, the foundation of the self-cultivation process42 which ends in a kind of
enlightenment almost Buddhist in nature.
This short tour de forceoffers an emphasis on li, a general program of education,
and a novel concept of self-cultivation. Zhu excels at writing such tightly condensed
passages, microcosms for the whole Neo-Confucian enterprise. As with Alexander's
work on fate, we can glimpse some of the proto-theories from whichgewu zhizhi
emerges. Many have noticed that Chan Buddhist influence is important, but not
decisive, since enlightenment is still rooted in external action. At the same time, the
40 A shade closer in spirit to Zhu's supplement is the work of Wang Tong,
disparaged by Zhu, which apparently imitated the Classics.41Daxue Zhangju5. The translations in this paragraph are from Gardner.42 Gardner 1986, 54.
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Daxuein Zhu's hands ceased to be an elite political handbook (the dominant view
from Zheng Xuan on) and was deemed relevant for any adult. The core issue of
self-cultivation and enlightenment came from outside the Confucian tradition, just as
fate and determinism had their origin outside the Peripatetic school, but in each case
the supplement inspired was located firmly within the tradition.
With his supplement, Zhu is at once more anxious for a place in the canon,
and perhaps more brazen than Alexander, as is reflected in the view of Dong Huai
and Wang Bo that the buzhuanwas off the mark and insufficient43 and those
of Yang Shouchen, Wang Shu, and Cai Qing that it was flawed or
unnecessary. In the same period, the Wujing Daquan (Great Compendia on
the Four Books and Five Classics), compiled for students in the early 15th century on
the basis of Zhus works, tried to cover up his interventionism. That Alexander's
work on fate and Zhu's on self-cultivation were created, and viewed, as supplements
to the received tradition is clear.44 In both cases, the commentators managed to make
it seem as if their tradition had something distinctive to say on a topic of major
contemporary importance, and had in some sense been saying it all along.
Case #2Interconnection
43 Rusk forthcoming, 11.44 For a summary ofDe fato's reception, from its influence on Plotinus and Eusebiusthrough the use made of it by Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, see Sharples 1983,28-29.
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Interconnection refers to a strategy perhaps less interventionist than
supplementation but decidedly more specific than intertextuality (which can
encompass a wide range of relations). To narrow the scope of interconnection
further, we should be clear that we are discussing intra-canonical connections,
although by interconnection one could mean a reading ofMiddlemarchthat pairs it
with Das Kapital, for instance. Our examples here will be Alexanders identification of
active intellect and the Unmoved Mover and Zhu Xis theory of Confucius single
thread, both famous attempts to knit the canon closer together precisely where it
may seem weakest.45 By bringing a central doctrine ofMetaphysics to bear on the
difficulties of the active intellect, Alexander enhanced the explanatory power of both
passages while simultaneously pointing to a larger Aristotelian theory of the soul and
nou'".46 AtAnalects4.15, Zhu interprets an ambiguous statement about unity in what
seems its strongest possible sensethat all Confucian doctrine is a single thread
somehow made up ofzhong and shu. Drawing in his discussion on the Shijing
, Zhouyi, and anotherAnalectspassage, Zhu also makes his commentary enact
the interconnection it describes. In both cases, interconnection breathes life into
passages that are obscure but have strong appeal.
The difficulties ofDe anima3.5 (a section that does not exceed 200 words in
length) had been a key node of exegetical interest at least since Theophrastus
45Analects4.15 is now seen by many scholars as a later interpolation into one of theworks earliest sections. De anima3.5 has proved similarly problematic, taken by someas a later addition to the text.46 Another useful text to treat in this context is the discussion of reproduction in
Aristotles De generatione animalium736a24-737a34.
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(preserved in Themistius, De anima107.30-109.4, and elsewhere47). Although some
modern commentators are inclined to see the debate that raged for the next 1500
years as a museum piece48, the distinction drawn in 3.5 between a passive and
active intellect held out too many intriguing theological implications to be ignored.
Although work on the De animawas surely done in the 500-year interim
between Theophrastus and Alexander (for instance, there is the possibility that
Andronicus of Rhodes wrote a commentary), evidence is sparse, leaving us to wonder
what Alexander had to build on. He appears to have been the first to posit that the
active intellect was external (De anima90.21-91.4; Peri;nou' 109.27-28), unique (Peri;
nou' 109.27-28), andmost cruciallythat one could make a definitive connection
between it and the first cause (prw'tonai[tiovn), the Unmoved Mover (De anima89.9-11; Peri;nou'109.24-110.3).
As with his views on fate, Alexander's doctrine of intellect varies in different
texts, so a closer reading would need to distinguish passages in his interlinear
commentary on Aristotle's De anima(preserved in part by Themistius49, Pseudo-
Simplicius, and the Latin and Greek Philoponus commentaries ofDe anima3), the
Peri;nou' (On Intellect) now grouped with theMantissa50, and the material in his own
De animatreatise. For our purposes, we can say that Alexander holds to a single
47 See Theophrastus, 307A-327 FHS&G, where the fragments of his theory ofnou'"are gathered.48 Hugh Lawson-Tancred (1987), trans. De anima, New York: Penguin Classics,Introduction, 92.49 See Themistius, De anima1.1 and 2.7.50 It is worth remembering that the so-calledMantissawas transmitted until Bruns as acommentary on the De anima, perhaps in part because of this section.
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strategy in all three texts, different as the specific treatments may be: to flesh out a
fuller Aristotelian notion ofnou'" by using as much of the relevant material in the
Aristotelian corpus as possible. The capstone of this effort was his connecting two of
the most formidable and influential aspects of this notion.
The termnou'"poihtiko;" (active intellect) is not used in Aristotles textit
may have been abstracted by Alexander from 430a14-15, where Aristotle
distinguishes oJ me;n toiou'to" nou'" tw/' pavnta givnesqai (passive intellect...
calledpaqhtiko;" in Aristotle,uJliko;", or material, in Alexander) from oJ de; tw/'
pavnta poiei'n, wJ" e{xi" ti" (active intellect). Aristotle writes at 430a22-23 that
the active intellect oujc oJte; me;n noei' oJte; d ouj noei'. cwrisqei;" d ejsti;
movnon tou'q o{per ejstiv, kai; tou'to movnon ajqavnaton kai; aji?dion. From this
underspecified notion, Alexander develops the idea ofnou'"poihtiko;" completely
independent of matter (De anima88.25) and yet if this sort of intellect is the first
cause, in that it is cause and source of being for all other things, it should be
poihtiko;" in virtue of this, that it causes the being of all intelligible things (89.9-11).
To drive home this connection, Alexander continues at 89.18-19: It has been
proved by Aristotle, moreover, that the intellect possessing all these properties is the
first cause, and thus truly (kurivw") intellect; for a completely immaterial form is truly
intellect. What Alexander has in mind here are the descriptions following upon
Metaphysics 1072a25-26, where Aristotle speaks of ti o} ouj kinouvmenon kinei',
aji?dion kai; oujsiva kai; ejnevrgeia ou\sa. This Unmoved Mover becomes a kind of
first principle (ajrch;), and because it is the highest and most necessary form of life, its
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activity is purenovhsi" (1072b20-22). For Alexander, the active intellect and the first
cause share the same attributes of independence, eternity, uniqueness; both are
concerned fundamentally withnou'"; both can handle apparent contradictionshow
could they not be one and the same?
Alexander appears to be the unnamed target of Themistius in the latters De
anima, at 102.30-103.19, where he writes of being puzzled at those who believed that
according to Aristotle this active intellect is... the first god, countering them by
pointing to 430a10-15 and by saying that the phrase this alone is immortal (430a23)
must really mean this alone is immortal within the soul because theMetaphysics
contains mention of other immortal forces in the causing of motion.51 In effect,
Themistiusand the many critics of Alexanders theory who came after himis not
denying the appropriateness of bringing theMetaphysicsto bear on the passage but
indicating a different section of canonical text to connect it with.52 So too, we shall
see, Zhu Xi presses any future commentator to readAnalects4.15 globally, in light of
the rest of the Confucian canon: it is only against the backdrop of the full canon that
an interpretation can be upheld or struck down.
Alexander's unmentioned assumption is that Aristotle holds to a single noetic
theory within a single psychology, both of which can be traced through his uvre.
Moreover, whatever this theory ofnou'" is will have implications for Peripatetic
theology and even cosmology. It would be left only to modern interpreters to lookfor
51MetaphysicsBook, 1073a14ff.52 In addition, Themistius himself wrote an influential paraphrase/commentary onMetaphysics.
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inconsistencies, rather than patch them up, leading either to genetic explanations
(however scarce the evidence) or acceptance that the inconsistencies were really
there, even for Aristotle. Only modern Confucians (and certainly not all) would, by a
kind of gestalt flip perhaps, see inconsistencies as an endpoint of interpretation and
not a spur to further work that, by definition, seeks to eliminate them.
Unweaving or reweaving the single thread (yiguan) ofAnalects4.15
has excited almost as long a controversy as De anima3.5, and, similarly, some current
scholars consider the whole discussion an impassioned digression. The textual
problem of how theAnalectscame together poses a particular challenge, since most
scholars have agreed on the relatively antiquity of most of Book 4, with 4.15 the
principal exceptiona passage which comes as something of a non-sequitur even
given the paratactic and abrupt style of the received text.53
The passage is exceedingly brief, a mere 34 characters in length:
The master said, Shen! As for my Way, with one thing it binds it together.Zengzi said, Yes.
The Master left, and the disciples asked, What did he mean?Zengzi said, The Way of the Master is zhongand shuand that is all.54
53 The question of whether or not 4.15 is a later interpolation is not central to theargument here, but for a convincing argument that it is, see Van Norden 2002, whotakes it as having been planted by followers of Master Zeng.54 The translation is from Van Norden 2002, 218.
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Our first recorded gloss on this passage is from the 3rd century AD commentary of
He Yan, who is characteristically spare in his Collected Explanations. This
collected commentary actually includes 8 separate commentaries excerpted and
juxtaposed by 5 editors working under Heand became the paradigm of the old
commentary tradition on theAnalects. As with what we know of the early Peripatetics
(and will discuss later), a great deal of the material in the Collected Explanationsis
philological in nature, involving the glossing of outdated terms or unpacking of
unusual syntax. One recent scholar, noting how close to paraphrasis the work keeps,
goes so far as to call it a performative expression of Confucius claim to have been a
transmitter [atAnalects7.1] rather than a creator.55 Aside from Hes comment, there
is a detailed syntactic discussion on 4.15 from Xing Bing, but we can safely
surmise that the passage achieved its fame thanks to Zhu Xi. The latter devoted over
30 pages of exegesis (in most modern editions of the Zhuzi Yulei ) to these 34
characters, compared to 4 or fewer pages to other topics in Book 4, not to mention
his discussion in the Lunyu Jizhu. At Zhuzi Yulei2:669, Zhu speaks of it as
the foremost zhang [chapter] of the Analects.
It is Zhu moreover who inaugurated the idea of the one thread as the key
to that systematicity56 which many exegetes have sought in Confucian thought, even
down to the present day. Zhus contribution here seems to be twofold: 1) identifying
55 Makeham 2000, 25-26.56 Van Norden 2002, 230.
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yiguanas standing in for the heart-and-mind (xin) of the Sage which is
undifferentiated principle (li) and unites all Confucian doctrine; 2) definingzhong
and shuas mutually entailing ideas and showing how far these terms could extend. As
for the first of these, in the Lunyu Jizhu, Zhu writes: The heart-mind of a sage is one
undifferentiated principle; it responds universally and is appropriate in the minutest
details.... [Zengzi] did not yet realize that its substance is one.57
In the Lunyu Jizhuexplication of 4.15, Zhu Xi unpacks zhongand shuin part
with erudite reference to other works thought to have a close tie to Confucius. It is
not unusual for Zhu to make such abrupt intertextual moves, but his doing so, and
with such a density of references, has a special resonance here (given its theme of
interconnection). Alexander, too, frequently references an array of works in quick
succession, assuming an extensive knowledge of the canon easily drawn upon. Indeed,
Alexander does not usually explicit note his citations of disparate texts, introducing
the Unmoved Mover, for one, without fanfare or footnote.
To sample Zhu's citations here, zhongis said to be not far from the Way (wei
dao bu yuan shi yereferring to Zhongyong chapter 13); the great
root and universal (daben weidao) ofZhongyongchapter 1 is touched upon;
and Gardner (2003) also detects a rapid succession of references to the Shijing, Mao
#267; Zhouyi1; andAnalects14.35. These quick moveswhich one imagines may
have been sensed as much as tracked down by studentswere designed to give an
57Sishu Jizhu2.10b. Zhu takes it thatyi yishould be inverted in the phraseyiyi
guanzhi. The translation is from Van Norden, 231.
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impression of the unity of the earlier Five Classics and the Four Books, and of a
synthesis of Confucian thought, precisely as 4.15 itself enacted a grand
interconnection of the canon. At least Zhu Xi is here foregrounding a theoretical
basis for the assumption of doctrinal unity and consistency which he deploys in so
many other contexts.58 Alexander operates with very much the same assumption,
leading him to parallel strategies of interconnection, but he does not flag the origins
of the assumption.
Zhu's explanation ofzhongand shu, which, like Alexander's discussion ofnou'",
is anything but a straightforward gloss in the vein of previous commentators, begins
from a similarity in the characters themselves, which share the xin(heart) radical, and
preserves it in the shared characterji (oneself) of Zhu's definitions:jinji
(fully realizing oneself) for zhongand tuiji (inferring from oneself) for shu.
The former, Zhu seems to suggest, is an innate disposition that shuexpresses in actual
practice, making the two concepts mutually entailing but zhongtemporally prior. Shu
has generally appeared to be the more straightforward term, thanks in part to its
appearance atAnalects15.24, the famous Chinese golden rule, meaning something
like reciprocity. Zhongoften occurs in theAnalectswith the basic sense of loyalty
(which at least a few modern commentators would like to restore at 4.1559)the
58 A few other sections of theAnalectsare used by Zhu for this claim. See, forinstance, Zhus comment on 7.10, as recorded in Jullien 2003, 32, andAnalects15.3,
which many have connected, for obvious reasons, with 4.15.59 Van Norden 2002, 225. For another noteworthy recent interpretations, see HerbertFingarette 1980, Followign the One Thread of theAnalects,Journal of the AmericanAcademy of Religion Thematic Issue S, pp. 373-405.
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sense is clearly extended by Zhu withjinji, which has what is for Zhu a characteristic
focus on inner growth, education, and character.
The textual interconnections at work in Zhu Xis commentaries on 4.15
operate on so many levels that we tend to forget the immediate context of the
passage and read it globallyeven if we disagree with Zhus specific interpretations. It became
more difficult after Zhu to read a canonical text in isolation, whatever one's
ideological orientation. Similarly, one had to grapple with Alexander's interconnection
of the De animawith the Unmoved Mover doctrine of theMetaphysics, whether one
believed the interpretation or not. Beforehand, it was not taken amiss for He Yan, or
the earlyCategoriescommentators, to restrict their commentary to the single source
text to which it referred; afterwards, a commentator would prove his skill precisely by
employing a wide range of references. Interconnection, in our sense, should reflect
substantive input, and so is usually rare, but the number of citations of all sorts
underwent an explosion during the interventionist phase of deuteronomic activity.
Much can probably be attributed to the growing erudition of an elite, the increased
availability of texts, the accretion of libraries etc. However the change came about, it
filtered down into the work produced by commentators. Morselization of the canon,
though it could operate along other lines, such as Zhus de facto excision of bawdy
verses in the Shijing, could not be appropriate for a passage with the potential
philosophical import of 4.15.
Antecedents Revered and Ignored
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Having laid out our two case studies of the supplementation and
interconnection of texts by Alexander and Zhu Xi, we must proceed with our attempt
to explain the interventionist hermeneutic that these studies substantiate. One
explanation may hardly be sufficient, but here we will gather evidence that Alexander
and Zhu were motivated to intervene in the canon by an anxiety about the temporal
distance separating them from their revered masters. They were thus led to
supplement it with positions on contemporary debates and interconnect its parts
more tightly than ever. Our evidence for their anxiety will come from looking at
the historical embeddedness and hermeneutic position of both figures in relation to
their traditions.
The evidence, plainly, is much stronger for Zhu Xi, who has left us an entire
theory of his predecessors (the daotong transmission, which we shall discuss
below), than for Alexander. For the latter, we will have to draw inferences from the
ways in which he refers to his antecedents and to the textual relationship he
constructs between himself and Aristotle. On this, as on other points, Alexander
simply seems less theoretically oriented than Zhu, and less so than some of the
Neoplatonist and Christian thinkers who followed him.60 Is this because he was
already kept busy enough mastering a canon, and dissecting it, as no one had done
before him, while Zhu Xi could build on the work of others, many of whom had a
mastery similar to his own?
60 Some have traced the West's first general hermeneutic to late Antiquity, in the workof Tyconius or Augustine; late antique pagan Neoplatonists also seem to be castingabout in this direction (to be unabashedly teleological about it).
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Although the works of Theophrastus and other heads of the Lyceum often
drew from the Aristotelian corpus, it is probably reasonable to begin discussion of
Peripatetic commentators with Andronicus of Rhodes, due to the temporary
disappearance of most of Aristotle's works from circulation.61 While evidence for
Andronicus actual commentarial output is scarce (there is strong evidence for a
Categoriescommentary), he most likely produced a crucial edition of Aristotles works,
set in place the order of their study and decided which texts were considered
genuinely the work of Aristotle. This is the crucial pointthe first two centuries of
Peripatetic commentary, as initiated by Andronicus, had a tendency to conservatism,
to glossing and paraphrasis, to basic questions such as the titles and boundaries of
works and their relative place in the canon.
To insist on this too much, however, would be to disregard at least one
follower of Androncius: the commentator Boethus. His Categoriescommentary, as
preserved in Simplicius (In Cat. 348.22, 433.28, 167.22 etc.), probably rested on a
bedrock of textual criticism and basic explication, but also included material from
other Aristotelian works and some in-depth discussions of philosophical problems.
As Gottschalk writes, he tried to keep the discussion within an Aristotelian
framework and saw his main task as explaining the real or apparent discrepancies he
found in Aristotles writings.62
Most intriguing are fragments where he addresses the
categories of Time, Action, and Passion, bringing in his knowledge of the Physicsand
Metaphysicsto supplement the Categoriesmaterial. Perhaps if more of Boethus had been
61 Strabo, GeographyXII 1.54 provides the best-known account.62 Gottschalk 1990, 77.
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preserved, we could gauge whether he is treating interpretation of any passages as
trulydependentupon doctrinal input of his own.
The next generation of Peripatetics for whom we have names, although little
documentation, was the one that preceded Alexander and included his teachers
Herminus, Sosigenes, and possibly the obscure Aristotle of Mytilene. What we know
of Adrastus of Aphrodisias indicates that he was more philologist than philosopher
(e.g. the title of his lost work, On the order of Aristotles writings); as for Aspasius,
the commentary on theNicomachean Ethicsattributed to him is largely a paraphrase,
though with some intriguing suggestions. Although it is apparent in certain places
that Alexander is referring to, or disagreeing with, these thinkers, they are rarely
mentioned by name and can hardly have loomed very large. If any of them had
undertaken major interventionist movessuch as the two mentioned above,
undertaken by Alexanderthen it is likely we would know something about it.63
What is notable in Alexander is precisely the relative absenceof explicit
references to past authorities other than Aristotle. Sharples has found 50 references
to Theophrastus (about half of them in the Prior Analyticscommentary), 11 to
Eudemus (7 of them in In Anal. Pr.), and otherwise only a handful of citations to less
than a dozen other Peripatetics. This is enough to show us that, if Alexander largely
ignored past Peripatetics, it was not from ignorance of their work. Controversies with
Galen and the Middle Platonist philosopher Atticus, anti-Stoic polemic, and citations
63 For useful discussions of this generation of Peripatetics, see Gottschalk 1987,1155-1161, and Sharples 1990, 86-87.
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of Plato (especially where Aristotle himself cites Plato) may also be present, but all
this is dwarfed by the insistent and explicit homage paid to Aristotle.64
Indeed, Aristotle is mentioned by name hundreds of times in Alexanders
corpus, and the degree of intertextuality with Aristotelian writings even in the
Alexanders original works is astonishing and pervasive. Sharples provides an
extensive list of citations to show examples of Alexander ignoring previous
Peripatetics to provide more Aristotelian solutions, especially regarding fatethis
leapfrogging is something Zhu purports to do as well.65 Alexander particularly likes
to cite Aristotle in the opening and closing passages of his works, as for example in
the De animapreface: Just as on other matters, we take the teachings of Aristotle to
be foremost, considering his doctrines to be more truthful than those handed down
by others.66 Also worth noting are admiring interjections, such as that ofIn Metaph.
(CAG I) 564.17ff, where Alexander is particularly impressed by Aristotles
presentation of a pointo{ra dh; to; didaskaliko;n kai; daimovnion tou'de tou'
ajndrov".
Minimizing overt reference to other Peripateticshowever much their
influence may be present, consciously and unconsciously on the part of Alexander
may have had the aim of intensifying this sense of a dialogue outside the ages.
Although Alexander nowhere explicitly lays out a guiding hermeneutic practice, we
can infer that the impulse towards discovering a mens auctoriswas of no small
64 The evidence for Alexanders use of philosophers other than Aristotle is inSharples 1990, 89-95.65 Sharples 1987, 1180 n27.66 Alexander, De anima2.4-6
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importance. While seeking out Aristotles intentions may be justified by claims that
Aristotle had the most sensible opinions on a given topic (as above), one cannot help
but feel that Alexander is constructing a very deliberate relationship to Aristotle and
the canon of his works. One can perhaps attribute traces of this romantic
hermeneutic in Alexander to his position as Peripatetic diavdoco" or to the late
antique expectation (not found much before Alexander) that a commentator must
know the works of their revered master in their entirety67, without displaying undue
bias.68 Perhaps the most appropriate figure to compare with Alexander, in terms of
commentarial style and approach, is his near-contemporary Galenas Mansfeld
points outwho was more self-conscious about his hermeneutic (he even wrote a
lost On Exegesis). While it is well recognized that Galen made Hippocrates (his source
author) into a sort of proto-Galen69, it is less well understood how Alexander made
Aristotle into a sort of proto-Alexander. The nature of the Hippocratic canon (looser
in its genesis than the Peripatetic, closer in this sense to the Confucian) would also be
worth taking into account in such a comparison.
Zhu Xi channeled his anxiety about constructing a relationship with a
Confucius long dead into both a genealogical theory of transmission and also what
many have heralded as the first general hermeneutic in the history of Chinese
67 Mansfeld 1994, 164 lists some quotes from commentators related to thisexpectation.68 The last was a criticism levelled at Iamblichus, for his excessive partisanship ofPlato, presumably at the expense of philosophical truth. Blumenthal 1996, 54-55.69 Mansfeld 1994, 152.
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philosophy. The term daotong (transmission of the Way) appears to have been
coined by Zhu in 1181; it mapped out a tradition of doctrine passed directly from one
sage to the next over generations.70 What Zhus daotongtheory asserted was not
continuous transmission, however, but a serious gap in Confucian tradition from the
time of Mencius to the 11th century emergence of the Song commentators (especially
the Cheng brothers). In this regard, too, Zhus position built on that of the Chengs
and Zhang Zai, whose indifference [to past commentators] spoke more eloquently
of the disrepute into which the tradition had fallen than would the most vociferous
criticism.71
The sentiment that little exegesis of note, and even some grave mistakes, had
taken place during this 1300-year hiatus found expression in many of Zhus works. In
Zhuzi Yulei1:181, Zhu asserts that since the end of the Qin dynasty (221 BC),
interpreters have notpersonallycomprehended the meaning of the sages (Confucius
and others). The task of Zhu Xi, as he asserts in his Zhongyongcommentary, is to clear
away the mistakes of the intermediary exegetes, or ignore them altogether, and renew
the tradition as it existed in the time of Confucius, Zengzi, and Mencius. It is with the
emergence ofdaotongtheory that we can understand the claim of Thomas Wilson:
The most elemental problem in the hermeneutic project of all post-classical
Confucians was overcoming the gaping hiatus separating the ancient sages from their
70 Imagining some sort of genealogical transmission appears to be a common featureof deuteronomic traditions. Post-Quranic preocuppation with isnadis one of thebest-known examples.71 Van Zoeren 1991, 195.
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own day.72 Given the central place of oral teaching in the work of Confucius, it may
not be surprising to see some signs of this anxiety as early as the famous Mencian
distinction betweenjian er zhi zhi (knowing the sage personally) and wen er
zhi zhi (hearing about the sage later).73
This explicit dismissal of the intermediary tradition should not blind us to Zhu
Xis considerable debts to a range of thinkers who fall outside the daotonglineage,
however much he may want us to forget them. Especially when glossing, Zhu clearly
draws on major figures of the Han and Tang. One study by the scholar Otsuki
Nobuyoshi finds 113 commentaries or glosses by Zhu based on Xing Bings Lunyu
Zhushu, 452 commentaries based in some way on Hes Collected
Explanations, and many more relying on Huang Kan, Kong Anguo, and
others.74 As we would expect, references to Confucius are everywhere. Alexander's
enthusiasm is matched by Zhu's tendency to interject terms of admiration for
Confucius' achievement that have no relation to what is at issue philosophically.
Authorities from before Confucius are dimly recognized, but their wisdom is seen as
culminating in his school, just as all references to later figures ineluctably lead back to
the Confucian texta tendency we notice in Alexander with regard to Aristotle as
well.
Daotongtheory expressed Zhus self-image and the way he positioned his own
interpretations vis--vis past ones. In the Du shu fa, Zhu encourages students to read
72 Wilson 2000, 108.73 See Mencius 7B.38.74 In Makeham 2003, 189.
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less and recite until ingrained, turn it over [in your mind] and apply it, do not imagine
things or calculate the gain [to be realized by study].75 Reading (for Zhu too, we
imagine) is described variously as like a fight with staves (10.24) or like the pursuit of
bandits (10.27), with the reader seen as a general (10.25) fighting his way back to
understand the intentions of the sage. The ultimate goal is to enter into direct
conversation with Confucius, to overcome the distance of years by deep
internalization of the text. At Zhuzi Yulei2:432, theAnalectsare described as a place
to encounter Confucius.
Earlier Song commentators are treated by Zhu at times as meriting our respect
almost as much as the ancients. Zhu even corrals some of them into a sort of chorus
in hisJinsilu (Reflections on Things at Hand), an anthology of quotes from
the Cheng brothers, Zhang Zai, and others. Zhus achievement must be viewed in
close connection with theirs, as part of a broadly diffused interventionist movement.
As Peter Bol has suggested, we might add the unexpected name of Wang Anshi
as well. Although Zhu staunchly opposed Wangs outer reforms and the use of
certain Classics to justify them, supporters of the inner reforms (the Cheng
brothers, Zhu etc.) may have taken on the spirit of Wangs interventions just as they
half-consciously absorbed the metaphysics of Buddhism.
75Zhuzi Yulei10:35. Cherniack 1994, 50-51 sees these prescriptions as an attempt toresist some effects of print culture and advocate a nostalgic return to pre-printreading practices. This is an intriguing suggestion, further evidence of an interest inmens auctoris, and ironic given Zhus apparent ownership of a printing business.
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Alexander's (unstated) hermeneutic appears to have shared much less in
common with the previous generation of Peripatetics, and so he seems to stand in
relative isolation. That Zhu was viewed as part of a corporate entity (Cheng-Zhu
orthodoxy) which many later thinkers aimed to attack or embrace, while Alexander
was taken more as an individual exegete (especially after the end of the official
Peripatetic school in Athens) had much to do also with the disparity in their later
reception (more extreme, positive or negative, in Zhu's case).76 A second factor in
this disparity may have been the generally looser nature of the Confucian canon,
which enabled Zhu Xi to offer bolder (to us, often unlikely) interpretations than
Alexander could.
Conclusion
This paper has been an attempt to set out a few textual interventions by two
of the most prominent commentators to emerge during the deuteronomic period of
two very different philosophical traditions (the Aristotelian and Confucian).
Alexander and Zhu Xi, at these their most interventionist moments, displayed a
similar willingness to forcefully update the traditions under their stewardship. This
willingness to supplement the canon, and significantly interconnect some of its
doctrines, we have tried to explain as the result of an anxiety about the gulf of time
separating these commentators from the composition of the Classics. Such an anxiety
is perhaps fundamental to any hermeneutic enterprise, but its character necessarily
76 For this last point, I am grateful to Robert Wardy (conversation, 7/6/06).
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varies with an authors ability to access the past and his or her self-image vis--vis the
received tradition, to name only two factors. Having established the presence of, and
a possible reason for, this interventionist hermeneutic, we now close by suggesting a
trajectory shared by the Aristotelian and Confucian deuteronomic traditions that may
be of use in looking at the lifespan of other Greek and Chinese philosophical schools,
and perhaps of other intellectual traditions as well.
The four examples treated above are far from typicalthe bulk of what
Alexander and Zhu Xi wrote did not supplement the canon with philosophically new
material or deeply interconnect its apparently disparate parts. In the main, they
treated the source texts as requiring explanation, but not dependent upon expansive
doctrinal input. The reason for analyzing these extreme cases is not to claim that
these two commentators were interventionists through and through, but that they
were, in a few instances at least, willing to undertake bold moves to strengthen their
traditions (as they saw it). Many contemporary commentators, and most who
preceded them, treated the canon with much more circumspection. As our brief
survey of earlier Peripatetics and Confucians shows, glossing, organization, and
paraphrasis had been, by and large, the chief activities of exegesis, although
philosophical discussions were not wholly absent in, say, Boethus or Huang Kan.
Much of the evidence may have disappeared with time.
Whatever the nature of their predecessors, the immediate successors of
Alexander and Zhu clearly carried on with something like an interventionist spirit. It
is difficult, for instance, to imagine the work of Wang Yangming without
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Zhu, his philosophical nemesisin his introspective interpretation of the Daxue,
Wang called for a return to the Old Text used by Zheng Xuan. Not yet a choice
grounded in philology, this represented a strong, doctrinal intervention in itself. For
the late antique Mediterranean, it is the Neoplatonist commentators to whom we
should look. One could indicate major interventions between the 3rd and 6th centuries
AD, at leastone need only consider Philoponus attempts to bring Christian and
Neoplatonic thought together or the repeated attempts to reconcile Aristotle and
Plato where they seemed to differ. To label entire periods in the history of the
Peripatetic and Confucian traditions interventionist might be premature, but
something had certainly changeda certain caution had fallen away and given rise to
ambitious systematizing and harmonizing schemes.
The decline of such ambitions, and the return of philology (this time more
historically grounded, with textual criticism at the forefront), is too large a story to
treat seriously here. However blistering the attacks of a Wang Yangming, the kaozheng
scholars of the early Qing inflicted much deeper wounds on Zhu Xis
reputation. Yan Yuan (1635-1704) went so far as to blame the collapse of the
Ming on Zhu Xi and his school, pointing the finger at the Cheng-Zhu engagement
with Buddhism and its self-cultivation doctrine, as well as the casualness of Zhu and
others in inserting their own opinions into the canon. Elman (1984) is a study of this
transition from the philosophical reconstructions (interventionist in spirit) of the late
Ming to the dating tests (using mathematical astronomy) and rigorous philology of
the late 17th and 18th centuries.
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Superficial as this treatment has been, this outline leads us to suggest a
tentative segmentation of the deuteronomic longue dure, something which at least
might prove a spur to further research. We would expect these segments to flow
chronologically after one another, but we should stress that our aim is less to set up a
temporal scheme than an epistemological one capable of fleshing out the rise and
fall of traditions. First, we should expect some phase ofcanon formationduring which
canonical works are assembled (whether this involves their composition, their
ordering, entitling etc.); then aphilologicalphase during which the chief goal is
transmission, paraphrasis, glossing etc. of the texts; third, an interventionistphase, as
exemplified above; and finally, what we might term a historicistphase during which the
tendency emerges to write commentary with an eye to chronology, textual criticism,
and more rigorous philological methods.
Such a scheme raises as many questions as it might answer. I have discussed
the interventionist phase as operating at the unit of a given textual tradition
surrounding a secular canon. Aside from the question of whether such units even
exist as proper objects of study, one might wonder at how closely related textual
traditions fit into the picture. For instance, a commentator such as Wang Bi,
who focused his attention on the Daoist canon but was an avowed Confucian, may
well be shown to be a strong interventionist at times. Yet he was a contemporary
(perhaps frienda and even collaborator, it seems) of He Yan, whom we have held up
as a model of the philological commentator. On the one hand, such synchronicity is
of course a possibility, just as Zhu Xi can be an interventionist at some points, and
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philological at others; on the other, Wang Bi could have been a brilliant commentator
without therefore being interventionist. It is also quite possible, likely even, that a few
individuals of particular talent will operate regardless of any scheme labelling their
work historicist or interventionist or anything elseand are best seen as sui generis. To
label a phase interventionist is to draw attention to cases that are almost always
exceptional (most workaday exegesis is always more banal) but loom large in
intellectual history.
Many hypothetical research plans might emerge from our segmentation of the
deuteronomic period. Ideally, one should find matches for each phase similar to the
one we have drawn between Alexander and Zhu Xi. Staying with the Peripatetic and
Confucian traditions, we might ask, for instance, why the formation of the two
canons occurred so differently, and how this relates to their later reception (including
in particular the relative openness of the Confucian canon). In one case, we have a
single, historical writer (Aristotle) to whom a body of work can be safely attributed; in
the other, we have a shadowy figure (Confucius) to whom much could be (and was)
attributed but rarely with any assurance. The former canon, much as it benefited from
Andronicus and others, might have been recognizable in some respects at the death
of Aristotle; as for the latter, we have little to go on. Given such differences, it is
surprising that these textual traditions came to operate as similarly as they did for later
thinkers. The nature of a canons genesis, we might hypothesize at the outset of such
a study, may determine some crucial bounds for later interpreters (e.g. much wider in
the Confucian case), but the temptation to distill a canon down to a single inspired
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mind, or a few minds at most, is strong. For a time at least, many interpretive
problems are thereby rolled into one: the problem ofmens auctoris.
Another hypothetical research plan could look into what I have labelled the
historicist phase of the deuteronomic longue dure. Leaving the question of possible
Western influence on the kaozhengscholars to the side, it is worth enquiring why the
interventionist, and sometimes remarkably unconstrained, interpretations of the late
Middle Ages and Renaissance (attempting to harmonize pagan classics and
Christianity, largely) gave way to a rebirth of philology and historical and textual
criticism, just as the supposed excesses of the Song and Ming gave way to the
rigorous methods of the kaozhengcommentators. Perhaps the anxiety behind the
interventionist phase should be located in the collision of newly ascendant faiths or
ideologies (Christianity, Buddism etc.) with a desire to preserve the older canon?
In the historicist phase, one might fruitfully compare how Qing scholars such
as Yan Ruoju and Cui Shu used historical criticism on classic works
(the Shujing, or Classic of History, for instance) with how major figures in the
West such as Scaliger and Causabon (the latter most famously on the Corpus
Hermeticum) used tests of chronology and style to debunk long-held assumptions
about revered texts.
There remains a danger in all this of constructing a house of cards from our
characterizationsdeuteronomic, interventionist etc. Yet if we feel at least some
confidence that such terms help us to specify large sweeps of intellectual history, we
can begin to read deuteronomic thinkers in their proper context. We can appreciate
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that the deuteronomic longue durewas not a period of more or less uniform second-
order work occasionally illuminated by the appearance of a star commentator. The
larger cultural enterprise of creating commentaries based on canonical worksone of
the chief intellectual achievements of the medieval period across Eurasiamight
appear to us more and more like He Yans Collected Explanationswrit large, a gigantic
collective effort, or conversation, to which the canon-makers, the philologists, the
interventionists, and the historicists all contributed. The vast traditions thus
constituted may appear to us now to share a certain logic over timeforming and
solidifying and renewing and archaizing, and perhaps finally dissolving back into the
cultural space they helped to define.
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