Characteristics of Chinese Hermeneutics Exhibited in the History of Mencius Exegesis

This paper explicates the characteristics of Chinese hermeneutics and its distinctively Chinese cultural characteristics as illuminated and instantiated by its long historical tradition of Confucian exegesis on the Mencian Classics.This essay has explained Chinese hermeneutics as having three types: hermeneutics as personal cultivation, as political pragmatics, and as apologetics. Since hermeneutics originated in the breakdown of communication between the contemporary reading subject and the ancient text, the first type of hermeneutics as personal cultivation is primary in origin and importance. For hermeneutics bridges our gap-linguistic, contextual-with the ancient sages, so as for us to befriend them, be in dialogue with them, in order to cultivate and fulfill ourselves. In this respect, hermeneutics as political pragmatics and as apologetics are two directions in which the subjectivity of the exegete stretches to express himself. Faced with the risky complex political situation of the times, the exegete has no option but to propose his view through the route of his ostensibly objective textual research, reinterpretations of the classics. Faced with the bewildering plethora of competing schools and views, one has to return to, to dig into, the original classics, to bring out, to demonstrate ”truths” to which he is committed, thereby to refute ”heresies.” The above three types share in common the writing commentaries on the Classics, so as to poetically evoke (hsing 興) the reader to metaphorically (pi 比) grasp what is truly there from time immemorial, by way of longing aspiration towards the sages and their views expressed in the classics, of advising the powers that be with the immutable political views of the classical ancients, of redressing mistaken views in various divergent schools.