There are numerous ways these goals can be achieved individually, and together, depending on the nature of the approach to the texts. First we will examine briefly the interrogation of Chinese texts against the background of the problems, patterns of argument and standards of rational justification in the Western philosophical tradition; its “grammar”, so to speak (Makeham 2012: xii). The governing idea is that although surely different, Chinese thinkers have enough in common with their Western counterparts to make associative and contrastive comparisons between them and/or their ideas a useful method of engagement with the text.