All of these laudable consequences of the comparative approach notwithstanding, there is another way to interrogate Chinese texts which merits attention because it is equally capable of illuminating them. This latter approach places the Western tradition more in the background while engaged in research, interpretive and translation efforts. That is to say, the translating philosopher must be open to the text as it is, not within the contexts determined by the nature of the questions addressed to it in the vocabulary of Western philosophy. This critical stance is not urging philosophers to approach a text as a tabula rasa, for such cannot be done. It is to urge that philosophers attend very carefully to the lexicon for translating Chinese into English, for that lexicon may be construed as a theory of sorts, and an increasingly poor one; it is a theory that Chinese philosophy is pretty much like Western philosophy, and consequently the vocabulary of the one can be carried over to the other without undue distortion (Hansen 1992: 17).