{"id":10248,"date":"2024-04-02T20:04:41","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T18:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/?p=10248"},"modified":"2025-10-17T21:10:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T19:10:24","slug":"huan-tan-kill-give-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/huan-tan-kill-give-life\/","title":{"rendered":"ATC Plants Kill, Give Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n

ATC<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Opposite terms presuppose each other
\n\u201cIf Heaven produces drugs which kill man,
\nit must certainly produce drugs which give man life<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Huan T’an\u00a0 43 bce – 28ce
\n1\u2014 I told Liu Tzu-ch\u00fcn that cultivating one’s nature does not help (postpone old age).
\n2\u2014 His elder brother’s son Po-y\u00fc said \u201cIf Heaven produces drugs which kill man, it must certainly produce drugs which gives man life<\/em>.\u201d
\n3\u2014I said, \u201cThe plant ourouparia rhynchophylla<\/em> does not agree with man, so eating it causes death. But it is not produced for the purpose of killing man. Similarly, Szechwan beans poison fish, arsenic kills rats, cassis injures otters, and apricot stones kill dogs. But these are not made by Heaven for this purpose.
\n<\/strong>Fragment 66, p. 80-81.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Huan T’an (-43, +28) Hsin-lun (New Treatise) and other Writings.<\/strong>
\nAn annotated translation with index by Timoteus Pokora. Michigan Paper in Chinese studies, The University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies. (our numbering<\/span><\/p>\n

1 \u2014 The discussion focuses on the length of human life, the possibility of prolonging or even making it eternal.<\/span>
\n\u00ab\u00a0Cultivating one’s nature\u00a0\u00bb is a key Confucean imperative for living a better life, but it is rejected here as a mean of extending life.<\/span><\/p>\n

2 \u2014 Po-y\u00fc implicitly agrees with this negative conclusion and proposes another theoretical posibility, using the topos of the opposites:<\/span>
\nSome plants cause death, so there must be plants which give life
\nThe search is not about medicinal plants, known by the Chinese since the Divine Farmer told Human about them, but about plants giving eternal life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since there are toxic plants, so there must be healing plants, The reasoning is, since the opposite<\/a>\u00a0 tems are mutually\u00a0 defined (nice<\/em> presupposes disagreeable<\/em>, positive<\/em>\/negative<\/em>, etc.). Speaking of toxic plants presupposes the existence of curative plants.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Paragraph 3 refutes Po-y\u00fc’s belief in Heaven’s benevolent intentions toward humanity. <\/span>
\nThe issue is the teleological structure and providential organization of the world. Oranges are naturally divided into segments, but it It would be absurd to interpret this as a suggestion by Goddess Nature that the fruit should be shared between the members of the group.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/h2>\n

<\/i>\u201cIf Heaven produces drugs which kill man, it must certainly produce drugs which gives man life.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ATC Opposite terms presuppose each other \u201cIf Heaven produces drugs which kill man, it must certainly produce drugs which give man life\u201d Huan T’an\u00a0 43 bce – 28ce 1\u2014 I told Liu Tzu-ch\u00fcn that cultivating one’s nature does not help (postpone old age). 2\u2014 His elder brother’s son Po-y\u00fc said \u201cIf Heaven produces drugs which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10248"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15101,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10248\/revisions\/15101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}