The Unity of Form and Content. The Philosophical Patterns of the Great Commentary to the Book of Changes

Abstract

This paper focusses on the Xici zhuan 繫辭傳 (Commentary to the Appended Sentences), also called Dazhuan 大傳 (Great Commentary), which is included in the commentarial section attached to the Zhouyi 周易 (Zhou Changes), or Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes), a pre-imperial Chinese divination text. I provide a formal analysis of the text, exploring its argumentative and philosophical patterns: without sidestepping the composite and multi-layered nature of this text, my analysis, conducted both on a micro and macro-level, highlights how the textual structure fundamentally reflects its content. The analysis will also show how structural and lexical elements make the Xici zhuan a kind of argument-based text as the philosophical argumentations are exhausted within the text itself.