Constraint and li, work and qi: Deacon and Zhu Xi
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Margus Ott
Abstract
In this article, I bring together the famous American semiotician Terrence Deacon and the most famous proponent of Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200). I focus on two of Deacon’s central concepts, constraints and work. All systems are constrained in some way, i.e. they behave in certain ways, but not in all ways. And “work” means that in their existence they make some difference: a gas in thermal equilibrium does not produce work. I bring these notions together with Zhu Xi’s concepts of li 理 and qi 氣. Li can be understood as internal articulation of a system or an event, its “veins.” And qi is the power of existence of a system or an event, its “energy.” In this light, I discuss the topics of the priority of li, the coagulation of qi, the normativity implied in the li, and self-cultivation. A connection to Deacon can give us new tools to make sense of those ancient topics of Chinese philosophy, and a connection to Zhu Xi can give semiotics in general and Deacon’s theory in particular an extension to certain fields that have been underdeveloped in Western thought, for instance self-cultivation.
Funding source: Estonian Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: PRG319
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Terrence Deacon and Kalevi Kull for their moral support. All mistakes are my own responsibility.
Funding: This work was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant number PRG319.
References
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Part One: Cultural Signs and Sign Theories
- Conceptual metaphor and media bias: a critical metaphor analysis of British and American mainstream media reports on the Hong Kong riots
- Signs of music, intertextuality, and narrative strategy
- Part Two: Bridging Chinese and Western Semiotics
- Constraint and li, work and qi: Deacon and Zhu Xi
- Zhuangzi, Peirce, and the butterfly dreamscape: concentric meaning in the Qiwulun 齊物論
- Part Three: Cultural Signs in Translation and Discourse Analysis
- Where irony goes: routinization and the collapse of viewpoint configurations
- Pragmatic failures in public-sign translation: an eco-pragma-translatology analysis of environmental signage in Quanzhou
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Part One: Cultural Signs and Sign Theories
- Conceptual metaphor and media bias: a critical metaphor analysis of British and American mainstream media reports on the Hong Kong riots
- Signs of music, intertextuality, and narrative strategy
- Part Two: Bridging Chinese and Western Semiotics
- Constraint and li, work and qi: Deacon and Zhu Xi
- Zhuangzi, Peirce, and the butterfly dreamscape: concentric meaning in the Qiwulun 齊物論
- Part Three: Cultural Signs in Translation and Discourse Analysis
- Where irony goes: routinization and the collapse of viewpoint configurations
- Pragmatic failures in public-sign translation: an eco-pragma-translatology analysis of environmental signage in Quanzhou
