Aristotle in China : language, categories, and translation /
Robert Wardy.
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- 1 online resource (x, 170 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
- Needham Research Institute studies ; 2 .
- Needham Research Institute studies ; 2. .
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
The China syndrome: language, logical form, translation -- Guidance and constraint -- On the very idea of translation -- Whorf's hypothesis -- Deflationary philosophical anthropology -- Von Humboldt's legacy -- Case-study 1: conditionals -- Case-study 2: Chinese is a list -- Logical form -- Against 'logical' translation -- Why form might matter -- Procrustean logic -- Case-study 3: being -- Case-study 4: truth -- Case-study 5: nouns and ontology -- Aristotelian whispers -- What's in a name? -- Disputation, discrimination, inference -- The need for logic -- Finite and infinite -- The simple and the complex -- All the things there are -- How many questions? -- Relatively speaking -- Particular and general -- Translating the untranslatable.
In this book, Robert Wardy, a philosopher and classicist, turns his attention to the relation between language and thought. He explores this huge topic in an analysis of linguistic relativism, with specific reference to a reading of the ming li t'an ('The Investigation of the Theory of Names'), a seventeenth-century Chinese translation of Aristotle's Categories. Throughout his investigation, Wardy addresses important questions. Do the basis structures of language shape the major thought-patterns of its native speakers? Could philosophy be guided and constrained by the language in which it is done? What factors, from grammar and logic to cultural and religious expectations, influence translation? And does Aristotle survive rendition into Chinese intact? His answers will fascinate philosphers, Sinologists, classicists, linguists and anthropologists, and will make a major contribution to the existing literature.
9780511483097 (ebook)
Aristotle. Categoriae.
Philosophy, Chinese. Chinese language. Language and languages--Philosophy.