François Jullien and the Methodological Viewpoint Presented in his Detour and Access. Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece. Hermeneutical Perspective

Abstract

François Jullien’s Detour and Access. Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece may be interpreted as an interesting example of the methodological challenge that arises around the question: to what extent does a specific strategy of meaning (stratégie du sens) taken as the subject of research influences the form and content of the results of this research? In addition, this may be viewed backward as well: to what extent a specific assumption regarding the form and content of research may affect its results? From this point of view, it is worth noting two fundamental tasks that constitute almost continuously double-intertwined obstacles in the narrative attempts of the Chinese cultural area. On the one hand, frequently observable chains of different proposals of translations of words and sentences. On the other hand, the presence of different strategies of meaning, which, in a way that is often not easy to grasp, influence the shape of “what” and “how” had been said, suggested, or maintained unexpressed at all. In this context, Jullien emphasizes the difference between “the word as definition” (la parole de définition) characteristic of the mainstream of Western culture and “the word as indication” (la parole indicielle), which the French philosopher attributes to articulations frequently occurring in the space of Chinese culture. Thus, there is a difference here within strategies that articulate meaning, which extends between what is general, and therefore abstract or abstracted, and what is holistic, and therefore constituting an inseparable unity. So, on the one hand, we are dealing with “knowing”, on the other hand, with “realizing”. This distinction underlines an extremely important challenge in the field of methodology, which should direct our attention to issues related solely to the scientific and philosophical thought devoted to human beings, and which is particularly clearly present with such attempts of interpretations at cross-cultural and multilingual insights.