Contenu du sommaire : Disposer pour dire, placer pour penser, situer pour agir : Pratiques de la position en Chine

This paper aims to show that conveying political ideas in spatial terms is an important and distinctive feature of ancient Chinese political thought. After a brief survey of the fundamental principles of ancient Chinese concepts of terrestrial space, the author examines two spatial schematic representations of the Seven Mighty Kingdoms of the Warring States period (403-222 B.C.). Comparative analysis provides a good illustration of how representing a set of kingdoms as a combination of cardinally-oriented « positions » served as an instrument to establish a sophisticated system of relationships between these kingdoms. Such a system, and, consequently, the expressed political concept, change dramatically with alterations in the relative « positions » of the kingdoms.

The position of an expression in a text : diagrammatic explorations of meanning. Certain philosophers of the Song- Yuan period inquired into the meaning of passages of the classical canon with the help of diagrams. Hence we can grasp their way of interpreting a given text, and show how they used the positions in it of words, expressions and propositions. Moreover, the comparison between two diagrams competing for the interpretation of the same paragraph of the Zhongyong, and both embodying aspects of Zhu Xi's commentary on it, enables us to analyze the part devoted to positioning an element within such a diagram.

« Position » in state ceremonial in late Imperial China Marked on the ground or recorded in illustrated descriptions, the positions of participants and ritual objects remains even today a crucial element of the state ceremonial in China. The notion helps to define, organize and represent the ceremonial space with respect to the categories, not to the individuals, attending the ritual. The system of positions shows the arrangement at the beginning of the ceremony, representing the global order that the ritual must exhibit rather than its concrete performance. Positions are not localisations, defined by fixed measures, but have relative values within a configuration. Their use places divine and human realities in an oriented space that corresponds to the cosmos. The position of each element shows two things : on the one hand its intrinsic strength, and on the other the forces applied to it in a hierarchical order, reflected by the spatial configuration.

Calendar astrology and the computation of positions in Ancient China The notion of position is first defined in relationship to the three elements characteristic of Chinese calendar astrology : the sexagesimal cycle, a schematic cosmography and the doctrine of the five agents (wuxing). Within this framework, a wei represents a conjunction of space and time, expressed in terms of sexagesimal indices. Positions form networks on the basis of which astronomical or meteorological phenomena can be converted in data for the interpretation of events. Phenomena are located within such networks and granted the properties of their wei. Secondly, the paper shows which part position played in the formation of the main divination systems of the classical period. the interpretation of events. Phenomena are located within such networks and granted the properties of their wei. Secondly, the paper shows which part position played in the formation of the main divination systems of the classical period.

Positions and changes in mathematics on the basis of Chinese texts of the dynasties han up to Song-Yuan. Some remarks The paper aims to account for the frequent occurrence of place-value notations in Chinese mathematical texts. To this end it embeds them within a broader context : the use which Chinese mathematicians made of positions when computing on a surface with counting-rods. A reconstruction of their practice shows that positions are dynamic entities and in fact are the actual objects on which computations bear. As a result, place-value notations appear to involve a specific kind of such dynamic entities : those whose behaviour in a computation present a uniformity. This fact relates their recurrence to the aims pursued in the research about algorithms.

This article explains the philosophy of positions (wei) in the Zhouyi (Yijing) in terms of the underlying ontocosmology of the Zhouyi. It shows how the notion of wei must be understood in relation to a whole system of creative reality on the one hand and in relation to the virtues a person may achieve on the other. Position in the gwa-system of the Zhouyi is also clarified and the logic of yao-lines in the system of gua' s is briefly formulated.

After some methodological considerations on comparative studies and a terminological inquiry into the Greek words for expressing ideas connected with « position », the author discusses two issues : 1) Change as a topic for research, since positions (wei) appear to have served as a tool for such an inquiry in China. 2) The association of place and position with rank, and accordingly with the expression of hierarchies. In this respect, some Greek uses of polarity and their various connections with political life are discussed. This leads him to consider singular positions which received specific attention in classical Antiquity : the middle or the « mean ».