Classics can help shape proper perspectives today

In a chapter called "In the World of Men" from the Zhuangzi — the Daoist text attributed to the thinker of the same name, who lived more than 2,200 years ago — there is a story about a carpenter called Shih who comes across a massive oak tree at a village shrine.

The tree is so large that thousands can rest under its shade, yet the carpenter ignores it. When his apprentice asks why, Shih explains: "That tree is useless. A boat made from it would sink, a coffin would soon rot, a tool would split, a door would ooze sap, and a beam would have termites. It's worthless timber and is of no use. That is why it has reached such a ripe old age."

In the same vein, the simplest, and yet most cogent, definition of classics could be: "human culture that has been able to reach ripe old age".

One might naturally ask, "But what is the use of classics?" In a strictly utilitarian sense, they have none. For me, classical studies embody what Zhuangzi described as the "useless tree" — a tree spared the axe precisely because it appears to serve no practical purpose. Yet its most profound utility lies in this very "uselessness".

We must recognize that the highest value of knowledge does not reside in superficial gains. As the writer and poet Yang Xiong of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24) observed in his Model Sayings (Fayan): "The noble person learns for the Dao; the petty person learns for personal gain."

History does not repeat itself, but it often "rhymes". Ancient knowledge remains vital because it preserves responses to human problems and conditions that are not fundamentally bound to any particular historical era. Therefore, the answers given throughout the ages — regardless of whether we ultimately accept or reject them — are significant even today. The Colombian thinker Nicolas Gomez Davila captured this sentiment succinctly: "Truth is in history, but history is not the truth."

The pursuit of classical studies also serves as a necessary corrective to our modern temporal parochialism. In his essay On the Reading of Old Books, C. S. Lewis argued that every age is defined by its own particular blind spots and prejudices — biases that those living within that era are often unable to perceive. Our own age is no exception. Crucially, because different eras harbor different prejudices, it is only through engagement with the literature of ages unlike our own that we can recognize the limitations of our own intellectual horizon. Only then can we transcend the constraints of our era and broaden our perspective.

The role of classical studies is not limited to preserving and transmitting literary heritage. It also has to — if not primarily — contextualize it through the use of strict scientific methodology. In doing so, classical studies render the cultural products and literary output of the past "contemporary" again. Would it be pretentious to claim — albeit half-jokingly — that classics fulfill the function of a "time machine"?

However, besides the temporal dimension of the classics, we should not overlook the spatial one. Every civilization possesses its own inherited corpus of cultural patterns and literary canon. The danger of spatial parochialism is no less real than that of the aforementioned temporal parochialism. When one dwells exclusively within one's own heritage, the temptation always lurks to mistake the particular for the universal. This danger — both intellectual and moral — in the case of Western European civilization was clearly identified and sharply criticized by Nikolai Trubetzkoy, who, in his 1920 essay Europe and Mankind, observed: "Romano-Germanic peoples (those of Western European ethnic background) have long naively believed that only they truly represent humanity. Thus, they portray themselves as 'humanity', their culture as 'universal human civilization,' and their chauvinism as 'cosmopolitanism'."

Therefore, one of the principal tasks of classical studies at this historical juncture lies in bringing the different classics of different civilizations into dialogue, holding them opposite one another as mirrors. In this way, classical studies, by overcoming the limitations imposed by one's particular civilizational background, could become an instrument through which we may transcend our spatial limitations in cultural terms.

In the process of translating works from the Chinese intellectual tradition, I have often confronted the conundrum of whether, or to what degree, one is justified in identifying patterns and concepts from one classical tradition in another. Yet the essence of translation itself lies precisely in the ability to identify, within the target language and culture, concepts, approaches and aesthetic principles analogous to those of the source.

We might ask, for instance: Did the Chinese historian Sima Qian and the Greek historian Plutarch share a common historiographical vision, and to what extent do their methodologies converge? Or how do Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi's concepts of li (principle) and qi (material force) diverge from — or converge with — Aristotle's notions of morphe (form) and hyle (matter)?

The space for inquiry in this context is limitless.

The author is a sinologist, chair scholar at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.