Warring States Project Philology

 

Philology involves being careful with the texts - detecting errors and interpolations, and noticing signs of growth over time - before using them as sources for history. Text philology is the foundation work on which the Project's historical interpretations are erected.

Among the various additions to texts with which philology deals, the interpolation is the easiest to understand and illustrate. The classic tests of an interpolation are three: (1) its content is inconsistent or anomalous in context, and (2) if it is removed, the surrounding text closes up to make a coherent and consecutive whole. We here give the example of Analects 13:3.

(1). In this passage, the headstrong disciple Dz-lu is arguing with Confucius:

Dz-lu said, If the Ruler of Wei were waiting for the Master to run his government, what would the Master do first? The Master said, It would certainly be to rectify names, would it not? Dz-lu said, Is there such a thing? The Master is off the track. What is this about rectifying? The Master said, Boorish indeed is You [Dz-lu]. The gentleman, with respect to what he does not understand, will maintain an abashed silence. If names are not rectified, speech will not be representative. If speech is not representative, things will not get done. If things do not get done, rites and music will not flourish. If rites and music do not flourish, punishments and penalties will not be just. And if punishments and penalties are not just, the people will have nowhere to put hand or foot. Therefore, as to the gentleman: if he names something, it must be sayable, and if he says something, it must be doable. The gentleman's relation to words is to leave nothing whatever to chance.

Dz-lu's puzzled response suggests that "the rectification of names" is a novel idea. It certainly is. Nothing of the kind occurs elsewhere in the Analects. Its picture of a society structured so that orders from above are carried out is in opposition with the picture, elsewhere in the same chapter, of a society which rests above all on the confidence of its people. On the other hand, the top-down society is the guiding concept of the 04th century Legalist statecraft texts, and the specific doctrine of rectification of names is identified with the hardnosed 03rd century philosopher Sywndz, who wrote a whole essay with that title, an essay whose genuineness no one has ever doubted. The removal of Analects 13:3 removes an anomaly from the Analects.

(2) We now apply the second test. The surrounding passages may be summarized this way:

13:1. Dz-lu asks about government
13:2. Ran Yung asks about government

13:3. Dz-lu is baffled by the concept of rectification of names

13:4. The peasant skill of husbandry is not needed by ministers
13:5. The elegant accomplishment of memorizing poetry is worthless if not practical

It is obvious that apart from 13:3, we have a texture of successive pairs of sayings. Such a texture can be shown to be present in the rest of Analects 13, and (sometimes much obscured by later interpolations) in nearly all the other Analects chapters. This form emerges only when the interruptive 13:3, which violates that pattern, is removed. Similarly, the Analects as a whole assumes its original form when other interpolations of this kind are identified and removed in the same way.

This process of close formal examination, repeated thousands of times, is the necessary prerequisite to forming an opinion about the classical texts, or estimating their value as a historical source. The Project's conclusions about texts rest on this kind of systematic philological scrutiny.

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