Understanding the “I” Through the Chinese Language

By: Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Some ancient Chinese characters (“漢字,” pronounced as Hànzì in Chinese and Kanji in Japanese) reflect deep aspects of human nature, such as humanity’s natural inclination to destroy things (and to destroy itself).

Chinese pronoun for “I” (“我,” pronounced “wǒ”), defined as a conscious thinking subject, is written by combining two characters: “手” (shǒu – “hand”) and “戈” (gē – a dagger-like tool); that is, “I” is depicted as a hand holding a bladed deadly weapon. Hence, the Chinese character for “I” reflects our innate propensity for violence. After all, as American playwright, Robert Ardrey wrote: “We are Cain’s children… Man is a predator whose natural instinct is to kill with a weapon.”

The “Sound of the Heart”

However, for “I” to use a weapon, “willingness” (愿意, “yuànyì”) is necessary. The second character in this word (“意”,yì) is formed by combining the radical “心” (xīn) character (meaning “heart” – indicating that the word relates to emotions and thoughts) with the word “音” (yīn), which means sound. Literally, the Chinese word for “willingness” contains the meaning “sound of the heart.”

On World Communications Day 2022, Pope Francis spoke about the importance of listening. He said:

There is an interior deafness worse than the physical one… Listening concerns the whole person, not just the sense of hearing. The true seat of listening is the heart.

Intention and willingness come from the “sound of the heart” that the “I” is supposed to listen to in order to follow the moral path. “Moral” in Chinese is “德” (dé), and it means “to walk with a straight heart.” It is in this way that Cain’s children can redeem themselves and get closer to Abel, through repentance.

The Good and Evil

So the “I” has the “freedom” (自由, zìyóu, meaning “because of oneself” and due to one’s own decisions rather than external forces) to choose between using the weapon and not using it – that is, to choose between good and evil.

Yet, despite knowing what is good, the “I” very often chooses evil, since our “自由” (zìyóu) freedom has been corrupted by original sin and by personal sins.

In the Epistle to the Romans (7:14–25), Saint Paul described this feeling:

For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

This is why the Chinese depiction of “I” as a hand holding a weapon is one of the best representations of our inner struggle with the temptations of evil. It is worth noting, that in classical Chinese, this interpretation of the word “我” (wǒ) has little usage, as this analysis is more a Catholic-inspired viewpoint on the character, though the debate in China on why the pronoun “I” is represented by a hand holding murder weapon is still open.

The Confrontation Between the Two “I”

However, in classical Chinese, there is also another word for “I”: “吾” (wú), which is composed of the character “五” (wǔ, meaning five) and “口” (kǒu, meaning mouth). According to the renowned Ricci Chinese-French dictionary, the word “吾” (wú), which represents the union of five mouths (openings), derives from the Buddhist idea of the five Skandha (五蘊, wǔ yùn), i.e., the five constituents (form, sensations, perceptions, mental activity, consciousness, as the basic elements of human existence) of the empirical person (a conventional “I” that is not permanent but is the fruit of the daily experience). Interestingly, as a verb, the character “吾” means to resist (and in this case is pronounced as “yù”).

The dictionary explains that there are contrast, confrontations, and struggles between the two types of “I”, represented by the two different Chinese characters, 我 (“wǒ”) and “吾” (wú). The 我 (wǒ) is opposed to the 吾 (wú), as the struggle of the two differs. The “I” that holds a weapon (我, wǒ) is the exterior and ephemeral individual, while the “I” of the five mouths (吾, wú) expresses more the constancy of humanity in the individual.

Anna Mahjar-Barducci is a researcher, living in Jerusalem.