Sino - Platonic Papers

s [of things] are complete and on earth the forms [of things] are complete, then flux and transformation become visible. 38 Zhouyi zhengyi (SSJZS), 7:1b. Translation modified slightly from Didier (1998): 294–5. John C. Didier, “In and Outside the Square,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 192, vol. 3 (September, 2009) 198 Like all of LSCQ, HNZ, and TXJ, the “Commentary” attributes a compartmentalizing, or regionalizing, sectioning, or territorializing (fang), function or quality to a segment of the process of creation and completion, but it doees not attempt to define a cosmographically or topographically defined entity, i.e., an “earth.” Also interesting is the fact that the “Commentary” resembles far less the TXJ than it does particularly the HNZ in its placement of the “sectioning by types” in the midst of what is apparently the initial creation process of the universe, prior apparently even to humanity’s appearance within the universe. Then Yang, it seems, is particularly responsible for having elevated the role of humanity in the completion of the universe far beyond what either of the other Han-period texts, the HNZ or the “Commentary,” proposed. Yang’s approach thus resembles more the pre-Han LSCQ of 239 BC than either of these Former Han texts. At any rate, it is clear that Yang followed a well established tradition of including the “compartmentalizing” of things by type to constitute a critical stage in the process of creation, and it seems readily apparent that in this entire tradition such a compartmentalizing had nothing to do with a square-earth cosmography or topography. In both the political and naturalistic applications of the metaphor in the LSCQ and HNZ, what was clear was that fang adverted not to a square physical shape but a more germane and, ultimately, ethical issue of arranging things by defining them categorically, i.e., sectioning or segmenting them apart by types (or regions). In Yang Xiong the identical meaning of “securing things” to “enable their coalescing by types” is easily apparent. Moreover, his explicit metaphorical comparison of the way of each of heaven and earth to a perfect compass and carpenter’s square, respectively, informs us that his yuan and fang were mere metaphors for the processes in which heaven and earth engaged to create and complete things. Indeed, Yang indicated in another segment that his “compass” metaphorically described the employment of the Mystery to measure internally in the mind the heaven-earth construct: “Employing it as a compass is ‘thought,’” he wrote. Elsewhere Yang further demonstrated that his compass and carpenter’s square were simply metaphors for the way in which the Mystery creates and sustains heaven, earth, and all that exists through and in them: John C. Didier, “In and Outside the Square,” Sino-Platonic Papers, 192, vol. 3 (September, 2009) 199 The Mystery has one compass and one carpenter’s square, one rope and one level, to traverse vertically and horizontally the ways of heaven and earth, to contain the numerological permutations of yin and yang. Yang’s fang of the earth remains, then, a culturally charged metaphorical description of the compartmentalizing function or process of “earth,” indicating merely the manner in which the earth, completing heaven’s initiation of the Mystery’s cyclical life-giving force, (1) creates and nurtures things of differentiable types, and (2) causes, through the perceptible and knowable distinct qualities of things that it creates, their differences to be apparent and delineable, as a carpenter’s square separates things of a type from others by enabling one to draw an encompassing line around them. The compass draws the circle, or the outlines of the cycle, in which all activity can take place; the carpenter’s square measures and sections apart by type all things created within that cyclical process drawn metaphorically as a circle. The only real differences between Yang Xiong’s model as exhibited in the TXJ and the similar passages in the LSCQ and HNZ are that Yang has (1) combined and amplified both the naturalistic and human elements of the trinity of heaven, earth, and humanity such that in Yang it becomes especially clear that the way of heaven, as the first conduit through which the powers of the Mystery work, propels itself throughout the ensuing construct of heaven-earth-humanity such that it remains immanent throughout all things that are born and remains active within the trinity, and (2) exaggerated and intensified the role that the human third of the trinity plays in the completion of the overall umbellate construct of the yu-zhou, the space-time universe. Yang’s TXJ thus completes a trend apparent in late-Warring States and early-Han thought that insists upon the morally significant input of humanity in the completion of the universe, exhibited earlier in texts such as the Xunzi, LSCQ, and HNZ, all of which share a certain intellectual lineage. We thus may conclude that Yang did not intend to promote a real, physical earthly squareness but only endeavored to amplify the role that earth plays in the overall Mystery-borne yu-zhou construct