“语莹”之辩--对中国古典语言传统及其隐喻的再思考

On“Yu ying”(the Clarity of the Words):A Reflection on Chinese Classical Language Tradition and Its Metaphors

语言既是某种揭示或表达,同时也是某种隐藏或遮蔽。本文借助海德格尔、伽达默尔等哲学家对人类经验、语言本质以及“光照”隐喻的思考,展现出一条切入中国古典语言传统及其喻象的探索路径。“语莹”“心亮”“辞莹似镜”这些中国古代常见而又容易让人忽视的熟语表达,牵涉光喻、镜喻和泉喻等在语言思辨性中的复杂融合。西方近代形而上学知识论对有限性的忽视,也能在对光之喻象的深入探索中得到反思。

The world can be revealed and also concealed in and by language.With the help of Heidegger and Gadder’s thinking about the human experience,the nature of language and the metaphor of“illumination”,this paper presents a new way to explore the Chinese language tradition and its classical metaphors.These Chinese ancient idioms,such as“yu ying(the clarity of the words)”,“xin liang(the bright heart)”and“ci ying si jing(the word is like a mirror)”,which are easy to be ignored,involve the complex fusion of the light metaphor,the mirror metaphor and the spring metaphor.The deep exploration of these Chinese classical metaphors also reveals that the Western modern knowledge theory has ignored the finiteness of the language.