The Rectification of Names
15th September 2020
Severian goes Confucian.
One of my personal preoccupations is what Confucius called “the rectification of names.” There was a whole neo-Confucian movement in China as the Celestial Empire was being dragged into the community of nations in the early 18th century. One of their maxims, taken from the Master himself, was that imprecise or outright incorrect nomenclature was at the root of almost every problem. Get the words right, they argued, and the rest will follow.
Note that this is not an early iteration of Our Betters, the Liberals’, magic words. Whereas today’s half-assed Postmodernists seem to believe in the talismanic power of mere words — loudly proclaiming, with tears and suicide threats, that you’re really a woman means you are a woman, dangling whanger be damned — the neo-Confucians had a legit point. An example we’re all familiar with is the endless debate (on our side) over the meanings of the political terms “Left” and “Right.” If those were ever truly useful (except as cheers at pep rallies), they became useless once the collectivists started getting actual power.