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Does the Word Exhaust Meaning?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
In order to control language Chinese philosophy discovered methods other than the ‘rectification of names’. On one hand there is the total annihilation of language, and on the other a greater clarification of language than the one performed by the ‘rectification of language’. To understand this situation better it is necessary to go backwards in the genealogy from the controversy over the theory that ‘language exhausts meaning’ and the one that maintains ‘language does not exhaust meaning’, which took place in the period of the six dynasties (second half of the third century of the Christian era). We shall look at the controversy between the argument of Ouyang Jian and that of Xun Can. Then we reach the theory of Wang Bi, who synthesizes the controversy and invents another idea about language. This idea is a ‘forgotten language’ that tries to annihilate completely the alterity of language. What is aimed at in the annihilation of language is a world of pure meaning which increases profit, which is governed magnificently: it is a world where everything is reduced to the One.
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