Meyer, Dirk, Philosophy on Bamboo: Textand the Production of Meaning in Early ChinaLeiden: Brill, 2012, 10+395 pages

Franklin Perkins

Published online: 9 January 2014# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

In the nearly 20 years since the discovery of the bamboo texts excavated from a tombnear the town of Guodian 郭店 in Hubei 湖北 province, the “Guodian texts” have beenone of the hottest topics among Chinese scholars, and they have gradually started toreshape broader narratives of classical Chinese philosophy. Their impact on Englishlanguage scholarship, though, has remained rather minimal, partly because they haveuntil very recently been accessible only to specialists. That situation is now changing,most of all through the publication of Scott Cook’s heavily annotated translation of theGuodian texts (Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of the Guodian: A Study and CompleteTranslation [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013]), and Dirk Meyer’s Philosophy onBamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China, the book under review.

Philosophy on Bamboo includes the Chinese texts and English translations forseveral of the philosophically most important and interesting Guodian texts: “TheWay of Fidelity and Trustworthiness” (Zhong xin zhi dao 忠信之道), “Failure andSuccess Appear at Their Respective Times” (Qiong da yi shi 窮達以時), “FiveAspects of Virtuous Conduct” (Wu Xing 五行), “Human Nature is Brought Forth byDecree” (Xing zi ming chu 性自命出), and “The Ultimate One Gives Birth to Water”(Tai yi sheng shui 太一生水). The bamboo manuscripts are so ambiguous that no onewill agree with every choice Meyer makes in reconstructing and translating them, butoverall the Chinese texts and the translations are quite reliable, and Meyer includesextensive discussions of the controversial points, justifying his readings and showingwhat other possibilities have been suggested.

In addition to the translations, the first third of the book (31–174) includes detailedanalyses of each text, focused on reconstructing their formal structures. This involvesquoting the text section by section and demonstrating the links between the varioussections (primarily in terms of cantos, subcantos, and pericopes) so as to reveal overallpatterns. These structures are often fairly obvious, but Meyer’s close analysis isparticularly helpful when it comes to more complex texts like the “Wu xing,” and even

Dao (2014) 13:133–136DOI 10.1007/s11712-013-9364-8

F. Perkins (*)Philosophy Department, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614, USAe-mail: FPERKINS@depaul.edu

in shorter texts, Meyer’s argument helps clarify key issues. For example, he appeals toformal structures to show that the “Tai yi sheng shui” should be taken as a coherent textdistinct from the Laozi 老子 C materials that were bundled with it (212–213), and toargue that “tai yi” 太一 (which he translates as “the Ultimate One”) relates to “dao” 道

as the “real name” (ming 名) to the style name (zi 字) (223).Philosophy on Bamboo is worth having for these textual studies alone, but the

structural analysis of the texts is meant to serve a broader argument about the natureof writing and philosophical practices in early China. This is the focus of the middlethird of the book (177–254). Meyer points out that some of the Guodian textsrepresent a new genre, which he labels “argument-based texts.” His focus is ondemonstrating that these texts exhibit a “high degree of (inter-)textual referentiality”(106), employing a variety of strategies and formal patterns, such as “overlappingstructures” in which parallel claims about two terms lead to a shared conclusion,“micro-macrostructure correspondences,” and “principal insertions,” which disruptotherwise parallel structures for the sake of emphasis (177). The tight organization ofthese texts differs from received texts like the Lun yu 論語, the Mengzi 孟子, or theLaozi. Several important observations follow. First, these “argument-based” textsdemand a kind of coherence and intentionality that requires “a high degree ofauthorial self-consciousness” (181). Second, they reveal a level of organization thatwould be unlikely to work orally. That is, they represent a form of thought onlyachievable through writing (249–250). Third, such texts seem to be deliberatelywritten to control the meaning of their own terms and references, making themrelatively independent of context. As Meyer writes, “Meaning becomes accessibleto everyone who is able to read and has access to these texts. It can safely be assumedthat texts of this type were detached from oral contexts and circulated independentlyin writing” (207).

At a time when early Chinese texts are being seen more and more as hybridproducts of different times, authors, and editors, Meyer’s view is comforting—hetakes every detail of these texts as significant and deliberate, reflecting a unifiedauthorial intent. Meyer’s claims become radical, though, when he asserts that onlyargument-based texts can be read this way. Other texts—sometimes defined nega-tively as “nonargumentative” and sometimes positively as “context-dependent”—have meaning only in relation to the oral discourses of now lost “textual commu-nities” (207). Thus, according to Meyer, the attempt to reconstruct a “philosophicaledifice” behind these texts—including the Lun yu, the Laozi, and probably theMengzi—is misguided and futile (232). Meyer unfortunately never explicitly sayswhich received texts fall into this category, but he does mention the Lun yu and theLaozi as context-dependent. I assume the Mengzi and the Zhuangzi 莊子 would alsofall into that category.

There are numerous problems with this conclusion, but the foundation is Meyer’sclaim that such texts lack any coherence:

The idea to be transmitted does not reach beyond the level of the individualbuilding block. Different building blocks are not related to one another on theformal level of the text. Taken together, they do not generate greater meaningfulwholes [. . .] Every new unit reflects a different concern and must be conceived asan individual text in its own right. (184–185)

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While Meyer is, I think, correct to emphasize that the order of passages in these textsis of little importance, order is not the only form of textual coherence. Even in acollection of passages without a set order, the elimination of a passage could change themeaning of the collection as a whole and the meaning of other individual passages.Such forms of coherence are obvious: terms used in some passages get defined orexplained in others, distinct terms appearing in different passages get related in others,the limited concerns of one passage are balanced by passages with different concerns,different passages provide alternate perspectives on the same topics, and so on. This isprecisely how we read such texts—using different passages to clarify and complementeach other. Indeed, if every passage had to be taken as “an individual text in its ownright,” it would be impossible to make sense of such texts, either as a whole or asindividual parts. This is Meyer’s claim—the texts were only understandable through amaster or masters who would explain them. This claim, though, requires demonstratingthat the meaning that seems to emerge from the interplay between different passages intexts like the Lun yu or the Laozi is an illusion, a product of our tendency to projectsense into nonsense. Meyer offers no such arguments, ignoring rather than disputingthese common strategies for constructing meaning.

The second main problem comes in the absolute division between texts that arecontext-dependent and those that are not. No text is fully “self-enclosed” and ourunderstanding of even “argument-based texts” often requires knowledge of the con-cerns of those who wrote them. For example, Meyer takes the “Tai yi sheng shui” as anargument-based text, but the meaning of its key concept—Tai yi—is not contained inthe text itself. On the other side, it is incorrect to say that the meaning of “context-dependent texts” is entirely dependent on context. The “Zi yi” 緇衣 is quite intelligibleon its own, and while the Laozi is open to many interpretations, it would be odd toclaim that it is utterly meaningless in itself. In fairness, Meyer admits that the distinc-tion between the two kinds of texts is not absolute (e.g., 11, 250), but he ignores thispoint when simply dividing texts into those for which we can discover a philosophicalsystem and those for which we cannot. If the division is not absolute, then thepossibility of reconstructing a philosophical system will itself have to lie on a contin-uum—more or less difficult for different kinds of texts, but never fully attainable orfully impossible.

In conclusion, the value of Meyer’s argument lies in the positive analysis of“argument-based texts” as a genre, and in raising broader questions about the relation-ship between philosophy and writing in early China. Two questions are particularlyimportant. First, what were the genres of philosophical writing in early China? Meyerdivides texts into those based on systematic arguments and those that are not, but thelatter form an odd category including texts as different as the Laozi, the Lun yu, and the“Zi yi” chapter of the Li ji 禮記. Those more likely mark three different genres, eachwith distinct characteristics. At one point, Meyer lists “author texts” characterized by“meaningful narrative” as a third type, but this is given no further explanation (19).

Second, what were the main strategies for the use of writing in early China? Meyerraises only two alternatives—texts that took advantage of the mobility of writing andtried to contain their entire meaning, and texts that were not accessible and depended onoral traditions. The latter used writing, but it plays no significant role, serving only,perhaps, as a mnemonic device (247). It is unlikely, though, that the consequences ofthe spread of written manuscripts would have been so widely ignored, particularly by

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those who were indeed putting ideas into written form. A more plausible approachwould be to take the various genres of writing as different strategies for confronting theinevitable mobility of writing. Such questions require further research and discussion,and in Philosophy on Bamboo, Dirk Meyer offers a stimulating starting point.

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