Hsiung Shih-li’s Hermeneutics of Self：Making a Confucian Identity in Buddhist Words

Abstract

This essay attempts to explore through discourse analysis the making of Hsiung Shih-li’s identity as a Neo-Confucianist. Four levels of hermeneutical analysis, i.e., historical-narrative, semantic, philosophical, and existential, are taken as a methodical guide. My analysis leads to the following conclusions: (1) On the existential level, as Tu Wei-ming points out, Hsiung considered as his own ultimate concern “the quest for true self” or “the search for the truth in which life can abide”. (2) On the philosophical level, such existential quest resulted in a holistic, creative, and dynamic ontology of transformation. (3) On the semantic level, a chain of metonymic replacement can clearly be seen in Hsiung’s usages of “transformation” and “mind-volition-consciousness”, based on the various seman¬tic contexts of the Indian and Chinese Yogàcàra, Mādhyamika, Hua-yen, Ch’an, Taoism, Neo-Confucianism, and The Book of Changes. Like Indra’s net, these multivocal meanings were woven into a seemingly consistent discourse. (4) On the his-torical-narrative level, Hsiung’s autobiographi¬cal self-portrait in the genre of “recorded sayings” can be regarded as the most sig-nificant element in his hermeneutics of self, as it serves as a guide in reading Hsiung’s philoso¬phy as directed toward the searching for self. In this essay, I emphasize the last two levels of analysis in order to demon¬strate that there is no such thing as “identity” per se in a Confu¬cian philosopher and his philosophy. In the case of Hsi-ung Shih-li, we found that his Confucian identity is con¬structed through mirrors of language among which Buddhist language plays the most significant role..

本文以熊十力(1885-1968)的個案來探討現代儒家如何從其他的思想與宗教傳統尋找其形構自我身分的資源。熊氏儒家身分的形成和佛學有密切的關係，此不獨同時代的梁漱溟，稍後的唐君毅、牟宗三如此，宋明以降的新儒學皆是如此。本文除了重建思想史的脈絡，指陳熊氏在其哲學與宗教轉向時所遭遇的實存危機之外，著重分析其哲學論述，特別是從《唯識學概論》到《新唯識論》的階段，如何藉由語意的轉換達到哲學立場的轉向與宗教信仰的改宗。本文追溯熊氏哲學的核心概念「轉變」如何在歷經世親的《唯識三十頌》意識哲學的用法、玄奘漢譯的唯心論傾向，到華嚴「交光相網，圓滿無礙」的玄義，最後歸宗大易「翕闢成變」的語意遞變過程。本文也分析熊氏將佛教的「心、意、識」概念重置於儒家心性論的脈絡來詮釋的效應。最後，本文呼應呂格爾的觀點，指出儒家的自我並非基於某種超越的同一性，而是與他者不斷辯證的結果。