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ANCIENT CHINA AND ANCIENT GREECE: Copyright Val Dusek Dept.

of Philosophy U of New Hampshire Durham NH 03824 USA V aldusek@aol.com In attempting to understand the peculiarities of the Chinese world-view and its differences from that of the West, the obvious contrast is between China and Greece in the period from 700 B.C.E. to the early centuries C.E. Ancient G reece is often considered the source of Western philosophy and science. In the case of science this may be less the case than was previously the Greeks absorbe d thought as Babylonian, Egyptian and other Middle Eastern knowledge. However i n the development of logic, strict formal demonstration in mathematics (as oppos ed to arithmetical or pre-algebraic problem solving or practical geometry) Greec e was close to unique, as it was in the development of the philosophy of abstrac t, formal entities, and in the idea of an explanatory physical model. Greek log ic, geometry and philosophy influenced all later Western science. Ancient Chine se thought from the period 550 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. or so also set the framework for all later Chinese thought. Not only were the Confucian and Taoist philosop hies were developed in this period, but a number of philosophical schools--"the hundred schools" such as sophists or logicians, Mohists, legalists, and others t hat later disappeared. The fact that ancient Greek thought is the foundation of later Western philosophy and much of its mathematics and science and that ancie nt Chinese thought is the foundation of not only Chinese as but Japanese, Vietna mese, and Korean philosophy and culture makes the comparison of these two source s natural. The chronological parallel is striking. The Axial Age (Karl Jaspers) was t he time between 800 and 200 B.C.E. when Greek, Chinese, and Indian, philosophy a s well Hebrew, and Iranian prophetic religious thought began. In both Greece an d China a large number of philosophical positions are developed between 550 B.C. E. and 200 B.C.E. Confucius in China, Buddha in India, and Pythagoras in Greece were near contemporaries in the sixth century B.C.E.. Soon thereafter the Greek Pre-Socratics develop some eight major metaph ysical worldviews to be followed by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The Chinese hundred schools, notably Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, the logicians or sophists, the legalists, and agrarian utopianism or primitivism. We find similarities be tween the air or unlimited of the Greek Presocratics and the Chi of the Chinese philo sophers. Zeno in Greece and Hui Shih of China develops similar paradoxes of mot ion and space. Both in China and Greece the period concludes with theories of e lements and forces. In Greece there is the theory of the four elements of Emped ocles plus the forces love and strife, the elements being taken over by Aristotl e. In China there is the theory of the five phases and the Yin and Yang. In both Greece and China development iron and new forms of warfare led t o the decline of the aristocratic knight and his replacement by peasant militia, along with continuous conflict between small states. The development of new fo rms of large-scale military organization influenced thinking about social and co smic organization and structure. During this period coined money is introduced and the merchant class developed (more extensively in Greece than in China), lea ding to practical quantitative thinking in social practice that encourages the g eneral rise of abstract thinking. This social and cultural breakdown of the pre vious order and conflict of small states produces the plurality of philosophical schools in both Greece and China. Also in both civilizations the amazingly wide-ranging speculation and de bate of this period is curtailed with the rise of large unifying empires, the Chi n in China around 220 B.C.E., that soon is replaced by the Han, and in the empir e of Alexander the Great, that breaks up with his death 322 B.C.E. but is largel y reunified by the Roman Empire from about 100 B.C.E.. In this later period, on e major school (the Confucian) dominates in China, while in Greece the schools o f Platonism and Aristotelianism and by the ethically oriented Stoics and Epicure ans replace the wide-ranging cosmological speculations of the pre-Socratics. Con ceptual innovation and widespread debate is replaced by a more authoritarian, mo ralistic, and cautious philosophy in both Asian and Western Empires. The curtai ling of the variety of schools accompanies the disappearance of the independent

Greek city-states and the small states and Dukedoms of the Warring States in China . In the first century C.E. the new authoritarian, universal empires, the Han a nd the Roman spawn new salvation religions that answer the need of newly powerle ss individuals for a sense of future escape and contentment. Near Eastern myste ry religions spread in the Roman Empire and are displaced by Christianity. Budd hism enters China from India during the later Han Empire and spreads after the f all of the Han in 220 C.E., and it in turn stimulates the institutionalization o f Taoist religion, a native Chinese popular salvation religion. However differences in modes of thought remain, that may be linked to so cial differences. The Greek city-states developed extensive sea-borne commerce and trade. China remained primarily an inland, agricultural society. Navigatio n among the Greeks may have influenced an emphasis on geometry and mathematical calculation. The agricultural nature of Chinese society may have influenced an interest in seasonal and cosmic cycles and lessened the centrality of mathematic s for the Chinese. In theories of political rule the Greeks used metaphors from both navigation and herding while the Chinese used metaphors from gardening and the tending of crops. G. E. R. Lloyd notes that anthropological studies of Afr ica do not neatly correlate agriculture and herding with specific different type s of political organization. However, this would not abrogate the role of thes e activities in the development of metaphors in political philosophy. In Greece , unlike China, the government did not manage large sectors of the economy. Gove rnment management of the economy may have encouraged the holistic and undifferen tiated conception of reality that dominated all Chinese schools save one (the Mo hists). In contrast, many Greek schools emphasized metaphysically pluralistic t heories in which a variety of separate entities have a role in the structure of reality (Democratic atomism, Pythagoreans, Empedocles). Although in both cases a variety of contending schools accompanied the p lurality of small, warring states, and debate declined as the small states were incorporated in large authoritarian empires, the small states of China and Greec e were different. The Greek city-states were unique on the world scene, while Ch inese small states were similar to those in many other parts of the world. Smal l Chinese states were for the most part similar to each other, while Greek citystates were politically very different from one another, ranging from the extrem e participatory democracy (for adult male citizen non-slaves) in Athens, to the extreme authoritarian and disciplinary military state of Sparta (in whose State Council women could vote), with a variety of oligarchies and aristocracies in be tween. The Greek city states included both the city and its surrounding farmlan d, and a very intense struggle occurred between the farmers and the city landown ers in which the peasants won many of the previous privileges of the aristocracy in terms of access to courts and government. In China, although there were oc casional peasant upheavals, these did not lead to increased rights or status for the peasants. One Chinese state has resemblances to the Greek city-states in t erms of the degree of internal conflict but is not at all typical. The relativ e equality of the citizens in the Greek city-states led to an image of the cosmo s in terms of equidistance and balance. The struggle to deal with social equali ty, isonomia may have influenced the logic of identity and sameness in Greece. In Greece the rise of slavery led to the clear and obvious contrast between sla very and freedom (similar to that in early U S A.) Many writers have noted the very strongly competitive or agonistic nature of Greek culture. This shows up everywhere from competitive sports (and the pr esentations by poets and sophists) at the Olympics, through the competition amon g playwrights at the drama festivals, to philosophical and political modes of di scourse. Greek sports emphasized individual competition, while Chinese sports wer e rarely competitive (many were exercises, such as Tai Chi or Chi Gong, that are done for self-improvement). In the few Chinese competitive sports the competiti on was rarely individual. Sports that did involve individual competition, such as wrestling, died out early in China. Even archery, that would easily allow in dividual competition was performed by row of archers who ceremonially succeeded

one-another and the team not the individual won or lost. The one major competit ive sport, Polo, was introduced later from Iran. From the violent political struggles between peasants and landholders ea rly on in many of the Greek states to those between democrats and aristocrats la ter in the Athens of Socrates, to the contests of drama and athletic contests, t o the debates of citizens and sophists in law courts and assemblies, Greek cultu re took on the character of extreme group and individual struggle. This has bee n linked to the nature of Greek philosophical and scientific argumentation, with its extreme speculative positions, its strong oppositions of being and becoming , abstract and concrete, truth and falsehood, literal and metaphorical language, philosophy and poetry, and the priority of logical justification and reductio a d absurdem arguments, and the logic of non-contradiction. Ancient Chinese cultu re shows a much greater degree of argumentation and dispute than later Chinese c ulture. However, Chinese philosophy never exhibits the sharp oppositions and st rict refutations typical of Greek philosophy and logic. The Chinese Mohists and School of Names (or logicians or sophists) were the only Chinese schools that h ad interest in logic and strict refutation and were precisely the schools that d ied out with the coming of the Empire. The style of criticism of opposing philo sophers or schools by later Chinese figures such as Hsn Tzu and Ssu-ma Tan was no t to say that the opponent was wrong, but that he had a narrow view and that the critic had the wider, more inclusive approach. Opponents were granted a partia l truth, not accused of being entirely wrong. Hsn Tzu, for instance says that th e Mohists understood utility but not culture, that they understood social equali ty but not inequality or hierarchy. Lao Tzu understood contraction but not expa nsion, Chuang Tzu understood heaven but not man, etc. Ssu-ma claims that each o f the schools has a value and a weakness. The agrarians understood the techniqu es of agriculture but wrongly wished the emperor to work with the peasants, the Taoists understood action in context and changing circumstances but mistakenly w ished to do away with ceremony and social conventions. The Greek culture of law courts and debate in political assemblies led t o the development of styles of oral debate involving rhetoric and logic, where r elatively equal opponents debated opposite sides of a case or issue. In China t he philosophers and diviners presented their views in the court of a Duke or Kin g and attempted to get the approval of the ruler. Thus the style of presentatio n and the extent of debate were different, in the one case attempt to convince a popular assembly, in the other attempt to influence a ruler. During the period of warring states there were still a variety of independent rulers that scholar s could attempt to convince, but under the Empire there came to be only one Cour t and ruler that any scholar need convince. To a lesser extent this was true un der the Ptolemaic Greek rulers and later Roman administrators of Alexandria in E gypt, where later Greek scholarship was centered. In the Ptolemaic Alexandria M useum democrats and cynics were banned, and the discussions avoided political to pics. The resident scholars were called pet canaries. Recent studies of the structure of intellectual exchange in Greece and C hina emphasize the role of social structures of communication on types of philos ophy. The debate framework of Greek thought is contrasted with the written for m of Chinese thought as advice to a ruler. In the small assemblies of Greece, th ere was a face-to-face, oral communication among all citizens that was not possi ble in China. Greek sophists presented their views at the Olympic games (Hippia s exhibited his self-sufficiency, having made all his own clothing and equipment , and also his powers of memory.) Sophists displayed their abilities directly o r via their students in law-court and assembly. The phonetic alphabet made liter acy much more widespread in Greece than in China. However, the criticism characteristic of Greek thought is not as evident among the pre-Socratics, in contrast to the Chinese Warring States philosophers , as Nakayama, Lloyd, and Sivin have claimed. Heraclitus does criticize Pythago ras and Hesiod, but only quite briefly. Empedocles refers to Pythagoreans, but these references are not in the form of critiques, but of, at most, indirect a llusions. Zenos arguments against the existence of change or plurality are clea rly in the form of refutations, but would apply to any common-sense view as well

as to philosophical ones. It is only with Plato and Aristotle that we find ext ensive critical analyses of former philosophers. In China Mo Tzu quite explicit ly criticizes the views of Confucians on a number of topics such as fate, spirit s, music and funerals. In Chuang Tzu we find dialogues involving criticism of C onfucians at greater length than any criticism in the pre-Socratics. In Hsn Tzu we find two passages in which his opponents are criticized in one sentence per p hilosopher, as well as passages where other Confucian schools are criticized in terms of morals . The various eclectic surveyors of the schools late in the creati ve period, such as the Below in the Empire chapter added to the end of Chuang Tzu, and the discussion by Ssu-ma Tan (father of Ssu-ma Chien) the grand historian in t he Records of the Historian, include criticisms of the various thinkers and scho ols. Thus the dominant explanation of the contrasts of China and Greece in term s of styles of criticism and debate is not wholly sufficient and needs to be sup plemented by macro-social considerations. In the early philosophy in both China and Greece we find traveling schol ars. In China wandering scholars were either teachers or those hopeful of being political advisors. In Greece there were wandering sophists and physicians. T hese travelers could not carry extensive written documentation, and that they wo uld have to depend on their oratorical abilities and memory, and were not encyclo pedia salesmen. The exposure to different geographical regions and customs as w ell as the intellectual exchange with prospective students, contending scholars, sophists, and nobility interviewing possible advisors must have stimulated thes e wandering scholars. Later, in both civilizations, we have officially supported scholars loca ted at court or in research institutions. These scholars could depend on largescale records and documentation. In very early China there were court astrologe rs and historians (usually in the same person). These specialists could utilize large amounts of written records and their style of presentation was more histo rical and documentary than that of the traveling scholars. In the period of the Warring States in China the wandering scholars with their sayings and disputat ions were in competition with the stationary diviners and historians. Later, th e philosophical scholars were located at the imperial court and were as stationa ry as the court astrologer-historians. The academies of ancient Greece are better known and perhaps were more n umerous than those of China. Platos Academy and Aristotles Lyceum, as well as the later and larger Alexandrian museum and library are famous. In China, we have only the example of the Chi Hsia Academy of which Hsn Tzu was a member and toastm aster. Sivin notes that one description of this academy (that of the Grand Hist orian Ssu-ma Tan in the Shih Chi, Records of the Grand Historian) describes the members writing books rather than debating. However, in the later phase, both Aristotelianism in Greece and Confucianism in China were part of the transition from an oral to a written tradition. In the Greek Museum and Library of Alexand ria the culture of scholarship shifted from a rhetorical culture to a documentar y one. Exegetical efforts replaced critical scholarship in both the empire of the Han in China and in the Greek Ptolemaic and Roman empires. Accounts of similarities and contrasts of philosophical and cosmological views in China and Greece that emphasize the styles of discussion ignore the ro le of money and the market in ancient Greece. G. E. R. Lloyd discusses the issu e of agricultural vs. urban social life as an explanation of contrasting mentali ties, only to dismiss it because agricultural societies produced a variety of co smologies, and the necessary condition of production of wealth that allows some to pursue leisure activities of philosophy and advanced mathematics. But Lloyd does not discuss money and the market (or lack thereof). His immensely learned and comprehensive bibliography (including works of Jrgen Habermas, Michel Foucaul t, and the issues raised by feminist writers, as well as most recent comparative materials on China.) does not cite any of the scholars who pursued issues of th e relation of Greek economy and social structure to Greek thought. Presumably t hese excluded figures, such as such as Karl Polanyi, Georg Thomson, or Benjamin Farrington, because Marxist, are now thought to be pass, licensing ignoring them rather than criticizing their claims. Lloyds theory emphasizes Karl Poppers conce

ption of the Greek approach as critical and emphasizes for features of democracy a nd individualism in ancient Greece that can account for this. The dismissal of Marxism alone does not wholly account for this neglect, for even writers such a s G. E. M. de St. Croix, who is sympathetic to the Marxist account of class stru ggle in the ancient world (although modifying and qualifying it practically out of existence), neglects the issues of money and market in his learned and exten sive survey of issues concerning classes and class conflict in antiquity. One important factor in the rise of abstraction in ancient Greece is the rise of coinage in Greece in the seventh century B.C.E. Coinage arose in the kingdom of Lydia, where gold could be panned in the river near a major city. Lyd ia was in Asia minor, adjacent to the coastal cities such as Miletus, where Gree k philosophy and science arose in the sixth century B.C.E., as well as to the is le of Samos, where Pythagoras appeared. The impact that coined money made on Gr eek thought is to be seen in the myth of Midas, King of Phrygia also in Asia Min or, near both Lydia and the Greece coastal cities, who married a Greek princess. Similarly, King Croesus, who was legendary for his wealth, ruled Lydia at the time that Thales began Greek philosophy and science. Again, the legend of the r ing of Gyges, a ring that allowed the wearer to become invisible, concerns Gyges , king of Lydia. Chinese coinage appears to have begun in 524 B.C.E., over a c entury later than did coinage in Asia Minor. The impact of coinage on philosophical and scientific conceptions of the univers e is suggested by Heraclitus fragment that states that fire transforms into all t hings and all things are transformed by fire as gold for wares and wares for gold . Fire was Heraclitus candidate for the fundamental stuff of the universe that w as conceived by him as process, not as stationary stuff. Heraclitus conceives o f the conservation of the fundamental material, fire, through its transformations by analogy with the transformation of money for goods and goods for money. Many of Heraclitus pessimistic utterances suggest a traditional aristocrat who is sha ken by the overturn of the traditional order of society by the new moneyed upsta rts. The Pythagorean cities of Italy were well known for issuing coinage. Th ese cities were ruled by the secret society that combined religious taboos with veneration for mathematics as the key to ultimate reality, and that probably ins pired several features of the Guardians in Platos utopia in the Republic. The as sociation of a kind veneration for number (as the ultimate constituent of realit y -- things are numbers) with emphasis on extensive issue of coinage is significan t. Metal coinage alone is certainly far from sufficient for a society that understands the world in formal terms. However another social factor arose in A thens that is of significance. According to the economist and anthropologist Ka rl Polanyi, the Agora in Athens had the first genuinely free market in food as w ell as other goods. The great Middle Eastern kingdoms had collected, stored an d redistributed foodstuff, especially grain. The economies of these kingdoms, s uch as of Sumeria and Babylon, were highly centralized. It was only in Athens t hat a genuine market in the modern sense arose. The fact that the Agora is also the public space in which Socrates pursued his questioning of the beliefs of th e citizens and his search for definitions of concepts is immensely suggestive. Athens, location of the world s first market in the full economic sense, became the center of intellectual activity and debate that is generally credited with t he major takeoff of the Western tradition of reason, philosophy and science. Abs tract money could become the medium of exchange and bearer of value of all things allowed the conception of abstract, invisible forms that accounted for the struc ture and value of all metaphysical entities. However, despite the independence and openness of the small Greek city s tates, with their involvement in piracy and commerce, as well as the introductio n of coinage and at least small-scale and geographically limited markets, anothe r social influence was growing that would change the quality of Greek intellectu al activity. This was slavery. Chattel slavery grew greatly during the fifth c entury B.C.E. By the time of Plato and Aristotle slaves accounted for at least a quarter to a third of the population of Athens. Slaves were excluded from cit

izenship. (Indeed, the contrast of slavery and freedom in Greek political though t was based on the very real social situation, as it was in the colonial United States.) Manual labor was performed by slaves, and manual activity and technolo gy came to be looked down upon as the province of slaves. This allowed the elit e to pursue philosophy, astronomy, mathematics and logic (and, of necessity, med icine, for some), but cut the contact between earthy matter-related activities a nd intellectual scientific-philosophical pursuits. Writers such as Benjamin Far rington have emphasized the effect of slavery on the development of Greek techno logy in the later period. (A steam engine was invented but used as a toy, or a mysterious opener of temple doors, for slaves rowed the ships and dug the mines .) While the early pre-Socratics had concerned themselves with the nature of ma tter, the stuffs of the universe, Plato and Aristotle made form prior, whether t otally transcendent as in Plato, or at least more significant (associated with t he male as opposed to the female, as in Aristotle.) Some authors have attempted to discount the significance of slavery in G reece (or in the United States) by noting that most societies have had slaves of some sort. However it has been only in ancient Greece and Rome and in the Amer icas (the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean) that slaves performed a majo r part of the actual economic production of the society. Many societies, in Ch ina and in Africa for instance, have had court slaves, ceremonial or symbolic, in some cases huge numbers of them, but this is different from slavery being the major source of economic production for the society. Ancient China and Greece during the sixth to third century B.C.E. produc ed a wide range of philosophical and scientific speculations. Greece was formed of relatively small city-states, while China was organized into large kingdoms or the Empire, with the exception of a few small (and often highly intellectuall y productive) states. Cities in China lacked autonomy even relative to later Eu ropean cities, while cities in Greece were separate states. Ancient China was a lmost entirely oriented to agriculture, while in ancient Greece piracy and trade played a far more important role. Greece was far more decentralized and varied in the range of forms of government of the city-states, and was also far more i ndividualistic and competitive, whether in sports or intellectual dispute. Gree ce began earlier and went further than China in the development of coined money. Athens, according to some accounts introduced the first true free market in fo od. These economic real abstractions and formalizations may have contributed to the more formal and abstract form taken by Greek thought. Slavery in Greece d eveloped into a significant source of production and labor but did not in China. This may contribute to the lack of exploitation of technological inventions in Greece in contrast to extensive technological developments in China. ENDNOTES: CHINA AND GREECE . G. E. R. Lloyd, Demystifying Mentalities, Cambridge, 1990, p. 131. . See the section by Garnet in Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancie nt Greece, London: Methuen, 1982. . Rubin, Vitaly, Tzu-Chan and the City State of Ancient China, Toung Pao, vol. 52, pp. 8-34., discussed by G. E. R. Lloyd in Demystifying Mentalities, Cambridge: 1990, pp. 125. . Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982, pp. 101, 124, and case made passim. . Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, London: Methuen, 19 74, pp. 81-91. . Derk Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society and Science, Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1991,pp. 284-308. . Hsn Tzu, Ch. 17, A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, op. cit., p. 378. Wing-T sit Chan, A Source Book, op. cit., p. 123. . Shigeru Nakayama, Academic and Scientific Traditions in China, Japan, and th e West, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, p. 34. . Such as those of G. E. R. Lloyd, Shigeru Nakayama, and Nathan Sivin. See "C omparing Greek and Chinese Philosophy and Science," in Nathan Sivin, Medicine, P

hilosophy and Religion in Ancient China, Brookfield Vermont: Variorum, 1995, I, pp. 1-11. Heraclitus, fragments B129, B106, Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, Pe nguin, 1987, p. 111, 124. Empedocles, B120, B115, B141, Barnes, op. cit., pp. 197, 201. . Nakayama, ibid., p. 11. . Sivin, Nathan, Ruminations on the Tao and Its Disputers, Philosophy East and W est, vol. 42, no. 1, Jan. 1992, p. 27. . Nakayama, p. 13. Nathan Sivin casts doubt on the "academy" status of the "C hi-hsia Academy" in "The Myth of the Naturalists," in Medicine, Philosophy and R eligion in Ancient China, Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, 1995, IV pp. 19-27. . G. E. M. de St. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, Ithaca , New York: Cornell University Press, 1981. . George Thomson, The First Philosophers, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955. Heraclitus, B90. Barnes, op. cit., p. 123. . Karl Polanyi, Aristotle Discovers the Economy. in George Dalton, ed., Primitiv e, Archaic, and Modern Economies, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968. . Benjamin Farrington, Greek Science in Antiquity, London: Penguin Books, 1960 , Head and Hand in Ancient Greece, London: Watts, 1947, Science in Antiquity, Lo ndon: Oxford University Press, 1954. . Moses Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, London: Penguin Books, and Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, New York: Viking Press, 1980. A recent work that defends the coinage as source of philosophy is Seabury, Cambr idge University Press, 2003.

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