Chinese Characters and Chinese Mode of Thinking: From the Phenomenological Perspective

Chen Hui

Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning ›› 2025, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (4) : 59-65.

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Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning ›› 2025, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (4) : 59-65. DOI: 10.19689/j.cnki.cn10-1361/h.20250406

Chinese Characters and Chinese Mode of Thinking: From the Phenomenological Perspective

  • Chen Hui
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Abstract

In Edmund Husserl’s conception, language and thought are distinct from each other, with language functioning to designate and express what has already been presented in thought. From the perspective of Derridean phenomenology, however, language precedes thought, serving as the foundational frame that structures and fundamentally constructs thinking itself. Derrida critiques phonocentrism—the privileging of speech over writing—and demonstrates that it is the primacy of writing that enables the full realization and radicalization of speech and the entire language system. Based on this insight, the system of Chinese characters constitutes the foundational frame of Chinese mode of thinking, and for Chinese people, functions as a kind of transcendental schema for Chinese cognition. Through the interpretative lens of this schema, our access is not to the things themselves, but to the experience of things which has been mediated and interpreted by this framework. Yet, according to Derrida’s idea of “arche-writing”, the linguistic system, represented and radicalized by writing, possesses an inherent openness. This openness makes it possible to conceive of an alternative reduction by furthering the essence of phenomenological reduction. This alternative reduction involves continuously breaking through existing interpretive frameworks in the open systems of Chinese characters and language, suspending these filters and interpretations, and moving towards new ones. In this process, we edge closer to the things themselves.

Key words

phenomenology / writing / Chinese characters / Chinese mode of thinking / arche-writing

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Chen Hui. Chinese Characters and Chinese Mode of Thinking: From the Phenomenological Perspective[J]. Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning. 2025, 10(4): 59-65 https://doi.org/10.19689/j.cnki.cn10-1361/h.20250406

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