Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.51.0302121210300.3468@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Note on Hsun Tzu
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 12:10:40 -0500 (EST)
Note on Hsun Tzu "By saying, 'There are no names necessarily appropriate of themselves,' Hsun Tzu means that at the time when names were first invented, a certain name was used to indicate a certain thing according to the free will of those who made these designations. For example, men agreed with one another that they would call a dog by the word 'dog,' yet at the beginning they might just as conceivably have agreed upon the word 'horse' to designate it. When these designations had once been agreed upon, however, so that people used a certain name to indicate only that certain thing, this became customary. Thereupon names and the things they designated had their necessary appropriateness, one to the other, and could no longer be changed at pleasure. Even when the names were first being made, however, at the time when 'there were no names necessarily appropriate of themselves,' there were nevertheless some that were 'especially felicitous.' Names which could be readily pronounced, for example, would be more felicitous than difficult sounding names." (from A History of Chinese Philosophy, Fung Yu-Lan, 1952) - Saussure two millennia early. But what is missing is the institutionalization of names - for example, who or what declares the 'Axis of Evil'? The distortion of names is the reification of an empathetic magic in which earlier designations resonate with later; the result is a population, ourselves, unsure of any meaning whatsoever, or even if meaning is ever applicable - perhaps it is nothing more than an operator, a function ... ===