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How Confucius Does Things with Words: Two Hermeneutic Paradigms in the Analects and Its Exegeses  In Memoriam: Benjamin Schwartz  YANG XIAO This essay attempts to discover patterns of communicative and hermeneutic  practices in the Analects  , as well as in the commentary tradition, known as  jingxue (classicism). The Analects contains at least two distinctive paradigms  showing different ways of interpreting speech: One is Confucius  s pragmatic approach, which emphasizes the intention and purpose of the speaker, and the other is Gongxi Hua  s approach, which focuses on the literal meaning of the  speech. Examples of each paradigm can be found in the long history of the exeg- eses of the Analects. Commentaries by two groups of scholars are discussed:  th os e wh os e ap pr oa ch is simi lar to th at of Co nf uciu s (S ima Qian , Zhen g  Xuan, Mouzi, Huang Kan, Cheng Yi, and Zhu Xi) and those whose approach  is similar to that of Gongxi Hua (Xianqiu Meng, Han Fei, Wing-tsit Chan, Ya Hanzhang, and Wang Yousan). H OW DID THE CLASSICAL Chinese scholars read the Analects? Zhu Xi (11301200) suggests that when one reads the classical canon, one should look for the Sages intentions, and one should do so as if one were listening to the Sage face to face (Zhu 1986, 162). This essay shows how Confucius empha- sizes the importance of intention and purpose in his own communicative and her- meneutic practice in the Analects and explores how commentators from the Han to the Song dynasty adopted a similar approach in reading the Analects. The basic assumption of this pragmatic approachis that whenever one utters a sentence, this uttera nce is alwa ys an action , or what we call a speech act.Therefore, one has to pay attention not only to the literal meaning of the sentence but also to the intentions of the speaker, as well as the other pragmatic aspects of the utterance. In general, if we closely study the patterns of communicative and hermeneutic practice in the early Chinese philosophical texts, as well as in the commentary tra dit ion, kno wn as jingxue (classicism), we can see that much of the Chinese classical scholarspractice can be articulated in pragmatic terms such as literal meaning,intention, force,and purpose, as well as in classical Chinese scholarly terms such as wenyi (literal meaning), yi or zhi Yang Xiao ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Kenyon College. The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 66, No. 2 (May) 2007: 497 532. © 2007 Asso ciatio n of Asian S tudie s Inc. doi: 10. 1017/ S0021 91180 70008 97

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