Zhongyong as grand harmony: An alternative reading to Ames and Hall’s Focusing the familiar

摘要

Roger Ames and David Hall's translation and interpretation of the Confucianrnclassic text Zhongyong~ Focusing the Familiar (Ames & Hall), is the most ambitious,rnmost innovative, and most significant work in the study of thernZhon~ong in recent years. In this work, Ames and Hall make a processualrnreading of the Zhongyong. Processual readings of Chinese classics can bernfound in the works of numerous Chinese philosophers in the 20 th centuryrn(see FANG Dongrnei in Li, 2002, Cheng, and Tang). What is most impressivernin Ames and Hall's book is their Herculean undertaking of applying theirrn"focus and field" language in the interpretation and translation, the extent ofrntheir effort to generate a coherent process account, and their illuminatingrninsights into the nuances of this most philosophical of all Confucian classics.rnWhile I am sympathetic to the general non-substantialist and non-essentialistrntone of Ames and Hall's work, I disagree with their interpretation of therncentral theme and central argument of the Zhongyong. My thesis is that thernZhongyong's central theme is the ideal of grand harmony in the cosmos andrnhow human beings can participate in and promote such an ideal, and thatrnAmes and Hall have missed this central theme in their reading and have failedrnto highlight this ideal in their interpretation of the Zhongyong