Key Concepts in World Philosophies: A Toolkit for Philosophers 9781350168114, 9781350168121, 9781350168152, 9781350168138

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Key Concepts in World Philosophies

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ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY

A Practical Guide to World Philosophies, edited by Monika KirloskarSteinbach and Leah Kalmanson An Introduction to Indian Philosophy, Christopher Bartley Chinese Philosophy, Ronnie L. Littlejohn Doing Philosophy Comparatively, Tim Connolly Sikh Philosophy, Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair

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Key Concepts in World Philosophies A Toolkit for Philosophers Edited by Sarah Flavel and Chiara Robbiano

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Sarah Flavel, Chiara Robbiano and Contributors 2023 Sarah Flavel and Chiara Robbiano have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xxvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover images © Robert Luzar Cover design by Louise Dugdale

Online resources to accompany this book are available at bloomsbury.pub/key-concepts-world-philosophies. If you experience any problems, please contact Bloomsbury at: [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: PB: ePDF: eBook:

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To our students and our children, May you live in a world that values dialogue across differences.

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Contents

List of Contributors xi Preface xxiii Acknowledgments xxvii

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Introduction: Valuing Diversity 1

6 Epistemic Decolonization of Culture Omar Rivera 57

Part I: How We Acquire Knowledge about Ourselves and Reality 1

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Action and Praxis Jin Y. Park

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Africa Delphine Abadie 21 Ataraxia Frans A.J. de Haas 29

4 Continuous Inquiry Chiara Robbiano 39

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Emptiness Jason M. Wirth 49

Ezumezu Jonathan O. Chimakonam 67

8 Gewu (Investigation of Things) Xiao Ouyang 77 9 “I” as the Absolute Present Yoko Arisaka 85 10 Intellectual NonHarming and Epistemic Friction Anand Vaidya 91 vii

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11 Karma Peter D. Hershock 99 12 Nature Marzenna Jakubczak 109 13 Perspectival Agility Sarah Flavel and Brad Hall 121

18 Shinjin-datsuraku (Dropping the Bodymind) Rein Raud 171 19 Prasaṅga Method Ethan Mills 179

20 Unconditioned Russell Re 14 Relational Knowing Manning 185 Monika KirloskarSteinbach 133 21 Vital Force Pius M. Mosima 193 15 Relegational Arguments 22 Zhi (Knowing) Andrew K. Aaron Creller 203 Whitehead 141 16 Science Fiction in/ as Philosophy Ethan Mills 149 17 Shinjin-gakudō (Studying the Way with Body and Mind) Bret W. Davis 157

Part II: How We Cultivate Ourselves and Relate to Others 23 Double movement Evgenia Ilieva 213 24 Duh.kha (suffering) Stephen E. Harris 221

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25 Equality Hadeer Aboelnagah 229 26 I-Thou Relation Michiko Yusa 237 27 Moral Responsiveness Jay L. Garfield 247 28 Nepantla James Maffie 257

33 Wu wei Yuan Zhang and Douglas L. Berger 309 34 Xin (Heart-mind) Dascha Düring 317

Part III: How We Express Ourselves 35 Concreteness Paul Ziche 327

29 Self-Cultivation and 36 Conversationalism Political Power Aribiah David Leah Kalmanson 265 Attoe 337 30 The Good Life Sebastian Purcell 273 31 Ubuntu/ Botho Michael Onyebuchi Eze 283 32 Ujamaa Edwin Etieyibo 293

37 Creativity Kiene Brillenburg Wurth 38 Diversity in Philosophy Purushottama Bilimoria and Agnieszka Rostalska 355

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39 Dōtoku 43 Noh Theater (Expression) Gereon Mask Mayuko Kopf 365 Uehara 401 40 Embodied Practice John C. Maraldo 377 41 Kata Enrico Fongaro 385 42 Li (Ritual) Geir Sigurðsson 393

44 Okwu Jonathan O Chimakonam 411 45 Tōjisha kenkyū (participant-led research) Saku Hara 423 Index 431

List of Contributors

Delphine Abadie is Research Associate at the Laboratory on Contemporary Logics of Philosophy, Paris VIII University—Vincennes St-Denis. She was involved in the UNESCO project of a Pan African pedagogical use of the General History of Africa. She has published several articles in various academic journals including Philosophiques, Présence Africaine and Théologiques. Her current research interests focus on the decolonization/ reconstruction of philosophy, Frantz Fanon, African gender studies, and social philosophy in Africa. Hadeer Aboelnagah is a professor of English and Translation at the College of Humanities and Sciences, Prince Sultan University in Riyadh. She is the Director of the Translation and Authoring Center. Her research interests include Islam in western philosophy, women in Islam and cross-cultural dialogue. She has authored numerous books and articles. She is actively involved in promoting cross-cultural understanding through lectures and public speaking, and contributes to the TV series Food for Thought. Her most recent book chapter is ‘Beyond Religion; Food, Decoration and Songs of Egyptian Feasts’ in Everyday Life and Leisure in Africa (2019). Yoko Arisaka is a Research Project Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Hildesheim, Germany. Her areas of research include Japanese philosophy, philosophy of race, political philosophy, and phenomenology. She is a co-author of Prophetischer Pragmatismus: Eine Einführung in das Denken von Cornel West (2013), as well as a co-editor of Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitaro (2022) and Kitaro Nishida in der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts (2014). Aribiah David Attoe is a Lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is also a member of the prestigious Conversational School of Philosophy. He has authored several articles, book chapters and a book Groundwork for a New Kind of African Metaphysics: The Idea of Predeterministic Historicity (2022). His major research areas of interest span xi

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African Metaphysics, Neurophilosophy, Ethics, and African Conceptions of Meaning. Douglas L. Berger is Professor of Global and Comparative Philosophy and the Director of the Centre for Intercultural Philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He specializes in several traditions of classical Indian and Chinese thought and intercultural hermeneutics. He is the author, along with dozens of essays and book chapters, of four monographs, including Encounters of Mind: Luminosity and Personhood in Indian and Chinese Thought (2015) and Indian and Intercultural Philosophy: Personhood, Consciousness and Causality (2021). He has also edited several important collections, such as, along with JeeLoo Liu, Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (2014). Purushottama Bilimoria works in Indian and Cross-Cultural philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and Critical Thinking. Named as Lead Scientist of Purushottama Centre for Study of Indian Philosophy and Culture at Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, he is Principal Fellow at University of Melbourne. Co-founder of the Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, he serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sophia and the Journal of Dharma Studies. Recent publications include: History of Indian Philosophy (with A. Rayner) (2019), Religion and Sustainability (with R. D. Sherma) (2021), Contemplative Studies and Hinduism (with R. D. Sherma) (2021); Indian Ethics Vol. 2 (with A. Rayner & R. Sharma) (2022). Kiene Brillenburg Wurth is Professor of Literature and Comparative Media and Head of the Comparative Literature section at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on creativity, aesthetics, intermediality, and experimental writing and art. She is the author of Musically Sublime (2009), The Life of Texts (2019), and editor of numerous collections, such as Mobilizing Creativity (2022), The Material Turn in Comparative Literature (2018), or Book Presence in a Digital Age (with Kári Driscoll and Jessica Pressman) (2018). She has also authored dozens of articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals and volumes. Jonathan O. Chimakonam is Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is also affiliated with the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He is a second-generation member of the famous Calabar School of Philosophy. His research interests focus on African philosophy, Logic, Ethics and

List of Contributors

Decolonial thinking. He aims to break new grounds in African philosophy by formulating a system that unveils new concepts and opens new vistas for thought (Conversational philosophy); a method that can drive theories in African philosophy and beyond (Conversational thinking); and a system of logic that grounds both (Ezumezu). His articles have appeared in several refereed and accredited international journals. He has authored and edited several books on African philosophy. Aaron B. Creller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of North Florida. His research specializations include cross-cultural and comparative approaches to epistemology, hermeneutics, and philosophy of science. His most recent book is Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to Comparative Epistemology (2017). Bret W. Davis is Professor and Higgins Chair in Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, where he teaches classes on Western, Asian, and crosscultural philosophy, and directs the Heart of Zen Meditation Group. He obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy at Vanderbilt University and spent more than a dozen years in Japan, where he studied Buddhist philosophy at Otani University and Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University, while practicing Zen at Shōkokuji monastery. His most recent books are Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism (2022), The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy (2020), and Bipedal Philosophers (2020) (in Japanese). Dascha Düring teaches ethics and scientific integrity at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. She specializes in cross-cultural and Chinese philosophy and has published various articles and book chapters on Confucian ethics. She firmly believes that the ability to think across cultural boundaries is crucial to twenty-first century science and uses her background in crosscultural thought in her work as Ph.D. trainer and policy officer. Edwin E. Etieyibo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He specialises in ethics, social and political philosophy, African philosophy, applied ethics, philosophy for (and with) children, social contract theories, philosophy of disability, history of philosophy, Descartes, philosophy of law, epistemology and critical thinking. He has authored and edited eleven books which include: Disabilities in

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Nigeria: Attitudes, Reactions, and Remediation (2017); Decolonisation, Africanisation and the Philosophy Curriculum (2018); Method, Substance and the Future of African Philosophy (2018); Africa’s Radicalisms and Conservatisms I: Politics, Poverty, Marginalisation and Education (2020/ Brill); African Philosophy in an Intercultural Perspective (2022). Michael Onyebuchi Eze Teaches Philosophy at Leiden University, The Netherlands and is a Research Associate, SA-UK Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, Universities of the Witwatersrand and Cambridge. He works on intercultural philosophies of human reconciliation and has taught at universities in Africa, Europe, and North America. He contributed to the TV series Food for Thought. Most recent publications include: ‘Ubuntu/ Botho: Ideologie order Versprechen?’ Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (2020),‘Beyond Sovereign Reason: Issues and Contestations in Contemporary African Identity’ (2020), ‘Africana Philosophy and the Imperative for Moral Education’ in Essays in Honor of Ifeanyi Menkiti, (2020). Sarah Flavel is Reader in Asian and Comparative Philosophy at Bath Spa University where she teaches on the history of western philosophy and Asian philosophy (Chinese, Japanese and Indian philosophy). Sarah is President of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and an Associate Editor for Comparative and Continental Philosophy. She has published work in journals including Philosophy East and West, Dao and The Journal of Nietzsche Studies as well as editing books and translations for Bloomsbury Academic and Brill. Her research interests are in politics, ethics, and aesthetics in East Asian and comparative philosophy. Enrico Fongaro is Senior Research Fellow at Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan. His research focuses on Japanese philosophy, intercultural philosophy and aesthetics. He is editor of the Italian edition of Nishida Kitarō’s Complete Works. Jay L. Garfield teaches in the Philosophy department at Smith College. He is also visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School, professor of philosophy at Melbourne University and adjunct professor of philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. Academicinfluence.com has identified him as one of the 50 most influential philosophers in the world over the past decade. Garfield’s most recent books include Getting Over Ourselves: How to be a Person Without a Self (2022),

List of Contributors

Knowing Illusion: Bringing a Tibetan Debate into Contemporary Discourse (with the Yakherds) (2021), and Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration (2021). Frans A. J. de Haas is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the Leiden University Institute for Philosophy. He has published widely on Aristotle, the late ancient commentary tradition, and the connections between philosophy and the mathematical sciences. Key publications include John Philoponus’ New Definition of Prime Matter. Aspects of its Background in Neoplatonism and the Ancient Commentary Tradition (1997), “Potentiality in Aristotle’s Psychology and Ethics” (2018), “Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias on Active Intellectual Cognition” (2020), and “Deduction and Common Notions in Alexander’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics A 1–2” (2021). Brad Hall is a Ph.D. candidate in the Joint Doctoral Programme at King’s College London and Humboldt University, Berlin. He is a graduate of the MA Program in Chinese Philosophy and Culture at Fudan University, Shanghai. His research on metaphor and self-cultivation in the Zhuangzi is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. He has published articles on Chinese philosophy in Culture and Dialogue and Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. Saku Hara is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tohoku University in Japan. His research focuses on philosophy of science, science studies, and analytic philosophy. His co-edited volumes include Perspectives on Neuroethics (2008), and Neuroscience Literacy (2010). Stephen Harris is University Lecturer (Universitair Docent) at Leiden University’s Institute for Philosophy. He specializes in Cross-Cultural and Indian philosophy, with a particular interest in Buddhist ethical texts. He has published articles in a number of academic journals, including Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, and Sophia. Peter D. Hershock directs the Asian Studies Development Program and Humane AI Initiative at the East-West Center in Honolulu. His work makes use of Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues. His book publications include: Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to

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the Information Age (1999); Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence (2006); Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future (2012); Public Zen, Personal Zen: A Buddhist Introduction (2014); Human Beings or Human Becomings? A Conversation with Confucianism on the Concept of Person (edited, 2021); and Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future (2021). Evgenia Ilieva is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at Ithaca College. Her current research explores the relevance of philosophical hermeneutics for the study of history with a particular focus on the work of J.L. Mehta. Her other research and teaching interests include social and political theory, the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century political thought (especially Hegel and Marx, and their legacies), as well as philosophies of dialogue and communication. Marzenna Jakubczak is Professor of Philosophy at Pedagogical University of Krakow, Poland. Her research interests focus on the self and mind discussed in terms of classical Indian philosophy, early Buddhism, and contemporary philosophy of mind. She has published three books on Sām . khyayoga tradition (in Polish), and has edited or co-edited several volumes on self-knowledge, critical thinking, and embodied cognition. She has authored numerous papers on comparative philosophy and religion, cross-cultural aesthetics, and gender studies. She is currently working on the book Sām . khya and Classical Indian Philosophy for the Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies series. She is the editor-in-chief of the Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal. Leah Kalmanson is Associate Professor and Bhagwan Adinath Professor of Jain Studies at the University of North Texas. She is the author of Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought (2020) and co-author with Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach of A Practical Guide to World Philosophies: Selves, Worlds, and Ways of Knowing (2021). Her research has appeared in journals including Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Continental Philosophy Review, Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Hypatia, Journal of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition, Journal of World Philosophies, Philosophy East & West, Shofar, and Studies in Chinese Religions. Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach holds the chair “Diversifying Philosophy,” at the VU University, Amsterdam. She has recently co-authored the Practical

List of Contributors

Guide to World Philosophies: Selves, Worlds and Ways of Knowing with Leah Kalmanson (2021). She is the chief editor of the Journal of World Philosophies, the Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies and the Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies Gereon Kopf is affiliated with Luther College. Sponsored by the Japan Foundation and the J.S.P.S., he visited Ōbirin University (1993–1994), Nanzan University (2002–2004), and Tōhoku University 2022). He taught at Hong Kong University (2008–2009), Saitama University (2013, 2015, 2016), and the University of Iceland (2017–2020), authored Beyond Personal Identity (2001), co-edited Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism (2009), edited the Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy (2019), served as P.I. of a grant from the Wabash Center (2020–2022), and is the founding editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. He is currently working on Zen: History, Myth, and Diversity (2023), Philosophy of Mind around the World (2023), and a multi-entry approach to philosophy of religion. James Maffie is Emeritus Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Affiliate, Departments of Philosophy, Latin American Studies, and Religious Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. His research areas include Conquest-era Mexica (Aztec) and Mesoamerican philosophies. He is the author of Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion (2014) and articles in The Nahua Newsletter, Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, Iberoforum: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, American Philosophical Newsletter for Indigenous Philosophy, and Science, Religion and Culture. He is currently finishing a book on Mexica ethics tentatively entitled, Aztec Ethics: Balancing a World in Motion. John C. Maraldo is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, University of North Florida, and is the author of The Saga of Zen History & the Power of Legend (2021) and Japanese Philosophy in the Making, Vols. 1 & 2 (2017 and 2019), and a co-editor of Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (2011). He is currently doing research to reconceptualize human relations with other animals to investigate how some humans have divided themselves from “nature” and others identify themselves with it. Ethan Mills is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA. His research interests include classical Indian philosophy, philosophical skepticism, and popular culture and

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philosophy. He is the author of Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India: Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrī Hars. a (2018) as well as articles in Philosophy East and West, Asian Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, the International Journal of Hindu Studies, and the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy. He co-edited, with Matthew Dasti, a special issue on skepticism in India for the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism. He is thinking about writing another book, but he also enjoys walks, naps, and reading (and occasionally writing) science fiction. Pius Mosima is a Lecturer at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon, and associate editor (French Language) of Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions. His research interests include African/ Intercultural Philosophy, Globalization and Culture, Moral and Political Philosophy. He has published several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and is the author of Philosophic Sagacity and Intercultural Philosophy: Beyond Henry Odera Oruka (2016); and editor of A Transcontinental Career: Essays in Honour of Wim van Binsbergen (2018). Xiao Ouyang is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Peking University, China. He mainly works on comparative philosophy and is interested in various topics in aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy. He has published in journals such as the History of Chinese Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, and Monumenta Serica. He has guest-edited special issues for the journals such as Journal of Global Ethics and Rivista di Estetica. He also works on translation. Besides academic work, he devotes himself to Chinese classical arts such as poetry, calligraphy, painting, and literati music. Jin Y. Park is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy and Religion at American University. She specializes in East Asian Buddhism, intercultural philosophy, modern East Asian philosophy, and Buddhist and comparative ethics. Park works at the intersections of gender, violence, politics of discrimination, and narrative identity. She is the author, translator, or editor of Women and Buddhist Philosophy (2017), Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun (2014), Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (2010), Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism (2010), Buddhism and Postmodernity (2008), and Buddhisms and Deconstructions (2006). Park currently serves as the President of the North American Korean Philosophy Association (2016–present) and is the Vice President of the American Academy of Religion.

List of Contributors

Sebastian Purcell is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Cortland. He researches ethics, political philosophy, and preColumbian philosophy especially centered on the Aztecs. He received the American Philosophical Association’s prize for best essay in Latin American thought for this research and has been sponsored for that and related work by the National Endowment of the Humanities, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Templeton Foundation. He has a forthcoming translation of a key Aztec ethical text, The Discourses of the Elders and a book on Aztec ethics entitled The Rooted Life. Rein Raud is Professor of Asian and Cultural Studies at the School of Humanities, Tallinn University, Estonia. His research interests include various aspects of cultural theory and philosophy, Western and Asian, notably the work of Dōgen. Apart from articles published in journals such as Philosophy East and West, Asian Philosophy and Comparative and Continental Philosophy, he is the author of a number of books, including Asian Worldviews: Religions, Philosophies, Political Theories (2021), Being in Flux: A PostAnthropocentric Ontology of the Self (2021) and Meaning in Action: Outline of an Integral Theory of Culture (2016). He has also written fiction, with three of his novels also translated into English, and has translated literary works from Japanese, Italian, German, Lithuanian and English into his native Estonian. Russell Re Manning is Reader in Religions, Philosophies and Ethics at Bath Spa University, UK. His research interests focus on modern continental philosophy of religion and the intellectual history of natural theology. He is currently co-editing a book with Carlotta Santini on Nietzsche’s Gods and is series editor of The Collected Works of Paul Tillich in English. Recent publications include Mutual Enrichment Between Psychology and Theology (2021) and Differences in Identity in Philosophy and Religion. A CrossCultural Approach (2020), co-edited with Sarah Flavel. Omar Rivera is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on Latin American and Latinx political philosophy and aesthetics. He is the author of two books: Delimitations of Latin American Philosophy: Beyond Redemption (2019) and Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance (2021). Chiara Robbiano is Associate Professor of Philosophy at University College Utrecht, NL. She was a visiting professor of philosophy at Tohoku University

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(Sendai, Japan). Her research focuses on Ancient Greek, Indian, Japanese, and cross-cultural philosophies, with a particular interest in philosophical anthropology and the relation between metaphysics and ethics. She has published articles in edited volumes and academic journals, including Philosophy East and West, Ancient Philosophy, Journal of World Philosophies, Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. She is involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and in projects promoting dialogue and reflection in students, lecturers, and the broader public (TV series Food for Thought). Agnieszka Rostalska is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Ghent University, Belgium, where she pursues a project Cross-cultural Conceptions of the Self: South Asia, Africa, and East Asia. She was Gonda Research Fellow and Lecturer for Theoretical and Comparative Philosophy at Leiden University, The Netherlands. She recently co-edited (with Nathan R. B. Loewen, The University of Alabama) “Diversifying Philosophy of Religion. Critiques, Methods, and Case Studies”, forthcoming 2023, Bloomsbury https://www. bloomsbury.com/uk/diversifying-philosophy-of-religion-9781350264021/. She specializes in Indian and Cross-Cultural Philosophy with a focus on the debates over authority and social justice by philosophers in India and contemporary philosophers in the field of social epistemology. Geir Sigurðsson is professor of Chinese studies and philosophy at University of Iceland, and guest professor at Ningbo University, P.R. China. His research interests focus on Chinese philosophy (primarily classical), cross-cultural philosophical interpretations, hermeneutic theory, philosophy of education, and he is currently exploring the theme of world philosophy of ageing. His most recent books are Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation (2015) and an annotated translation from Chinese into Icelandic of Sunzi‘s Art of War, Hernaðarlist Meistara Sun (2019). Mayuko Uehara has been professor of Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University since 2013. She currently serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Japanese Philosophy. Her recent writings include Philosopher la traduction/ Philosophizing Translation (Uehara ed., 2017), “Trends and Prospects in Japanese Philosophy After 1945: The Contemporary Philosophy of Hiromatsu Wataru”, Contemporary Japanese Philosophy (2019),“Performance Philosophy seen through Nishida’s Acting Intuition’ ” (cowritten with Elisabeth L. Belgrano) (2020),Njᰕᵜଢᆖȃ䙓㏊ᙗnj(The Continuity of Japanese Philosophy) (2020), and “Les femmes savantes hors du système académique du Japon moderne” (2021).

List of Contributors

Anand Jayprakash Vaidya is Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University and occasional Director of the Center for Comparative Philosophy. He primarily works in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and critical thinking from a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary perspective which focuses on the integration of Indian philosophy with Analytic philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience. He also does research on the epistemology of modality (how can we come to know what is possible as opposed to merely actual?) Andrew K. Whitehead is Visiting Professor at the Higher Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven. His research focuses on comparative philosophy, particularly concerning Japanese Buddhist philosophy, the Kyoto School, Chinese Daoism, and the German and French traditions of phenomenology and existentialism. He has published widely in the field of comparative philosophy, and his most recent co-edited volumes include Imagination: Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses (2018), and Critique, Subversion, and Chinese Philosophies: Socio-Political, Conceptual, and Methodological Challenges (2020). Jason M. Wirth is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University and works in the areas of Continental philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, Aesthetics, and Environmental philosophy. Recent books include Nietzsche and Other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy (2019), Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis (2017), Commiserating with Devastated Things: Milan Kundera and the Entitlements of Thinking (2016), and Schelling’s Practice of the Wild (2015). He is completing a book on ecological philosophy called Turtle Island Anarchy. Michiko Yusa, Professor Emerita, Western Washington University, is basking in the freedom of otium cum dignitate after four decades of teaching. Currently, she is engaged in working on a textbook-reader on Nishida Kitarō, as well as catching up with several long-overdue essays. Her recent publications include The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy (editor, 2017) and an essay on sexual desire and spiritual life contained therein; a chapter on Hiratsuka Raichō in The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, edited by B. Davis (2020); and a chapter on Japanese women’s Buddhist spiritualties, and another chapter on D. T. Suzuki’s logic of “sokuhi,” in The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, edited by G. Kopf (2019).

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Yuan Zhang is Professor of Comparative Cultural Studies at Hefei Normal University in Hefei, China. She has also been a Visiting Researcher at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. She specializes in the translation and transmission of Chinese philosophical ideas in the West. She is the author of the monograph Transformations of the Dao De Jing in the West (2021) along with dozens of essays on the varieties of translations of key terms in the Laozi, such as dao, de, wuwei and ziran. Paul Ziche is Professor for the History of Modern Philosophy at Utrecht University; he has also taught as a visiting professor at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and at Renmin University in Beijing, China. His research focuses on the history of philosophy, and in particular the interaction between philosophy and the (other) sciences, around 1800 and 1900; he is interested in the philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling, has an infatuation with unknown authors, with the notions “science” and “realism,” and with the history of science. Recent publications include chapters in the new edition of Ueberweg’s Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie (philosophy of nature; Wilhelm Wundt; monism; philosophy and psychology) and editions of works by Schelling (Texts from 1802–3) (2019).

Preface: A Note on the “KeyConcepts” Approach and Diversification of Philosophical Curricula

[. . .] At long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an “open sea”. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §343

There have been a great many debates over how to encourage the wider uptake of non-canonical, less commonly taught, or (somewhat problematically put) “non-western” materials amid more traditional university curricula in the West (see for further discussion, Van Norden, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, 2017). One of the main problems is that, since there are so few scholars working and teaching in the philosophical academy that possess in-depth knowledge of such diverse traditions, it is considered not feasible—even if it may be desirable—to include such materials more widely in teaching. But this approach becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because students attend degree programs where only western philosophy is taught and then some go on to attend MA postgraduate programs where the same is the case. In turn, this gives rise to the situation where there are few if any who are prepared, from the background of a university education in philosophy, to progress to the more in-depth study of diverse traditions at Ph.D. level in philosophy. This further means that there are very few students graduating with Ph.D.-level research skills in the study of the less commonly taught traditions and so it becomes that there are very few graduating researchers with in-depth capacity in any such traditions who are able to enter the academy xxiii

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as junior faculty and to make up for the general lack of capacity mentioned before. For those of us who have made this journey toward a degree of expertise in any particular “non-western” tradition, often the pathway has involved a movement out of our native disciplines and into other disciplines, such as through area studies. These career transitions are not easy and because we have often had to make sacrifices on the altar of our own intellectual probity, we do not always emerge as fully formed “philosophy” scholars in the ordinary understanding of what this might be assumed to mean, in terms of the background of our academic training. In other words, the capacity building required to provide an adequate background of study in the history of philosophy with respect to a given “non-western” tradition, and perhaps the linguistic resources required to investigate the philosophy of that given tradition, are not naturally occurring phenomena within our current provision in the majority of European and North American philosophy departments. Now, one could say that it is a small-mindedness on the part of established members of the discipline, and their having certain expectations regarding the content of an undergraduate program of study, that work to maintain this very problem. The background politics of divergent views of what philosophy is and how it should be done no doubt largely informs and restricts the reality of how philosophy is taught. But there is a case to be made that a broader background study in a given field is a necessary precursor to specialization. In fact, it is hard to imagine how our students are expected to become engrossed in a sub-field to the level of wanting to specialize in it at postgraduate level, if that area of study is never at first encountered or acknowledged as an integral part of what philosophy actually is. So, we can see that the consequence that develops from our universities not teaching diverse philosophy because of a lack of available scholarly expertise is a continued lack of scholarly expertise. We can only seek to overcome the expertise problem by breaking the chains of transmission in which philosophy scholars teach their philosophy students based solely on western canonical materials. We need, among other changes, a commitment to collective disruption of the pathway that prevents the development of a higher level of general awareness about traditions outside the mainstream of the western canon. This means we need instructors, those who may themselves feel underprepared for such experimentation, to take risks with the unfamiliar. One of the aims of this book, by focusing on “Key Concepts” across varied traditions, is to allow educators who are not well versed in the less commonly taught philosophical

Preface

traditions to feel more confident in bringing elements of diversity into their own teaching. By locating accessible and easily digestible elements of traditions that they are not used to engaging with, we believe that it should become possible to at least provide students with a taster of the diversity of philosophical approaches that deserve a degree of recognition, and that their current curricula are so sorely lacking. For recommending that non-specialists march ahead with introducing materials from the less commonly taught traditions into their courses, we might certainly be criticised for celebrating a degree of dilettantism. But our aim is not to undermine the work of those with specialist knowledge, only to complement and further support such work and its ability to reach wider audiences. We would also like to remind our readers that every one of us is a novice at some stage in our development. Even those of us who are specialists in some regards are always novices in others. The existing contemporary comparative academic thinkers, emerging from the background of the Anglo-North-American and European academy, were each, once upon a time, enticed outside of their comfort zones by what was unfamiliar. Perhaps a degree of romanticism, and even of orientalism might be said to exist in this very notion of an enticement to the “foreign.” But there also may be some degree of merit in romanticizing, in idealizing even, those endeavors that we consider to be valuable, but which are not yet undertaken. In some ways it is always impossible for us to fully assess the value and the dangers of any given journey before embarking on it. We might still like to venture that there is still a value to be had in the venturing itself, irrespective of these risks. It appears that the question we must each ask ourselves, as thinkers and as educators, is what we ought to do with that with which we are unfamiliar but that we intuit may have some degree of philosophical merit? Should we lean into it, should we pay further attention to it, or does doing so imply that we divide our attention from more pressing and immediate matters? Clearly, there are different answers to this question depending on our fundamental motivations and goals. In authoring this book, as a collective of thinkers working across a variety of areas in the sub-field of these less commonly taught traditions, we feel there is no real excuse for permitting the insularity and eurocentrism of contemporary philosophical education to go unchallenged. Doing so is nothing less than an embarrassment to our discipline, wherein the virtue of critically questioning our assumed knowledge about those things we really do not know enough about, is ordinarily heralded as a primary virtue. The implicit assumption that philosophy is a discipline reserved for the white,

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and largely male western world, is one often held on the part of very powerful scholars who make very impactful academic decisions based on such assumptions, almost wholly without any knowledge of the traditions they are excluding from programs and funding. This is at best, a profoundly unphilosophical attitude. At worst, it bespeaks the continuation of racial and xenophobic biases that have been, historically speaking, endemic in the history of western approaches to the diverse and rich worlds of human thought that have existed across the human sphere for many hundreds of years. To those colleagues that claim to find the diversification movement reprehensible or who still think of it as a watering down of the identity of the discipline, I ask earnestly that they might consider examining the sources of their own prejudices against such traditions with some degree of humility. As such, I ask only that they consider the matter with some semblance of a philosophical attitude and perhaps that they endeavor to encounter something of these traditions first hand in order that they might then at least gain an adequate basis for being able to make such dismissive claims in the first place. However, I suspect that having explored the matter in any degree of depth, the weakness of these earlier assumptions about the intellectual justification for exclusion would very swiftly become apparent. Sarah Flavel July 2022

Acknowledgments

A few years ago, Kiene Brillenburg Wurth asked Chiara “Have you considered editing a book about something you are really passionate about, with chapters written by people you admire?” Chiara thought: “I want to make a toolkit. It will be full of concepts from all possible philosophical traditions, to be used by anyone who wants to get equipped for a dialogue with multiple others about fundamental issues that might be regarded as relevant to us in the twenty-first century.” Together with Sarah we started asking our colleagues around the world if they would like to contribute. To our delight, everyone reacted with enthusiasm and joy at the proposal. We soon had an amazing line-up of authors. We are grateful to Bloomsbury’s editor Colleen Colter for embracing the project. We are immensely thankful to all authors who contributed to this journey for their brilliance, and for their endurance during the COVID-19 pandemic. We would also like to thank our research assistants for their amazing assistance in the concluding phases of this project, Ada Harpole and Giulia Martinez Brenner (University College Utrecht) and Fiona Williams (Bath Spa University). We are immensely grateful to our families who, despite having to miss us whenever we were fully immersed in corresponding with our authors and editing the chapters, never stopped supporting us and being proud of us. Finally, we give thanks to our teachers and mentors, many of whom appear in this book, but some of whom, although their work may not appear directly in this volume, have played equally significant a role in shaping its development. Our special thanks go to Professor Roger Ames, Professor Bai Tongdong, Dr Rebecca Bamford, Professor Antonio M. Battegazzore, Professor David Cooper, Professor Paul J D’Ambrosio, Dr. Thomas Hart, Professor David Jones, Professor Anthony A. Long, Professor Hans-Georg Moeller, Dr. Johannes M. van Ophuijsen, Professor Graham Parkes, Professor Peng Feng, Professor Enrica Salvaneschi, Professor C. J. Sicking, Professor Ineke Sluiter, Professor Bryan Van Norden, and Professor Robin Wang.

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Introduction: Valuing Diversity1 Chiara Robbiano

I think I speak for all authors of this book when I say that the ideal world is not divided between a center, occupied by those who know, and the periphery, inhabited by those who need to learn. Our ideal world is a diverse network with no center and where the nodes are in conversation with each other. Many steps need to be taken to make this world a reality. We will explore a few of these steps in this introduction and throughout the book: 1. Decentering, which involves awareness of one’s situatedness; 2. Learning new frameworks and valuing diversity, which involves humility and openness to seeing things in a completely different way and regarding them as real options; 3. Appreciating philosophy as a way of life and practicing it by entering in dialogue across differences, which involves not only the openness to new concepts and frameworks, but also a readiness to “try them on” and to think together with others. After learning how to value our being different from each other and how to respond to precious diversity, we can responsively and responsibly co-create something new.

Decentering One goal of a book that provides the reader with a rich toolkit of concepts embedded in very diverse frameworks and paradigms might well be to help 1

Cf. Peter Hershock (2012).

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the readers “decenter”. Each human may have a tendency to assume that they occupy a central position, one from which reality manifests to them exactly as it is. Sometimes one might assume that they individually occupy the central spot, which provides the objective view and the objective take on what should be done. Sometimes the assumption is that a certain group to which one belongs has objective knowledge: one’s tradition, one’s discipline, one’s religion, one’s social class, one’s country, and that the “others” are wrong. The goal of decentering has been on the agenda of intercultural philosophy for a while. Think, for instance, of the article “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is” published in the New York Times, by Garfield and Van Norden (2016). In it, two of the leading scholars in non-western traditions make a tongue-in-cheek call for departments that study only western philosophy to rename their programs for what they are, namely degrees in “Western” or “European” Philosophy. However, the point that the article is making remains largely overlooked among scholars within the discipline. Of course, the ideas underlying this article are not new ones, and calls for the decolonization of curricula are increasingly vocal across all disciplines in the humanities. Yet most philosophy programs in the western world still do not feel any urgency regarding the challenge to look beyond the western canon. Moreover, the few of us who dare to broaden our students’ horizons by dealing with, say, Indian, Islamic, East Asian, African, and Indigenous philosophical concepts, face significant challenges from our more traditional colleagues. There are those who will argue that exploring other traditions is useless. At best, they may argue that such traditions deal with the same problems that western philosophers have done, but in inferior or unappealing ways, and, at worst, they may still wish to maintain that what thinkers in these traditions do is not recognisable as philosophy. Even for those colleagues who do see the value of the exercise of diversification, some express fears that too much diversity undermines the depth of a philosophy program. In some sense, a fear remains that admitting non-western traditions into the mainstream academic practice of philosophy will pollute or dilute its defining characteristics. For a discipline within which there is so little agreement on how to define itself, these outmoded attitudes are not without a degree of irony. Against such exclusive attitudes, this volume brings together chapters that delve into philosophical concepts from different philosophical traditions and show the direct value of such concepts for expanding philosophical curricula. In doing so, we suggest that such concepts will be useful to the

Introduction: Valuing Diversity

extent that they are transformative, not only for the curriculum itself, but also for those who study it. One of the first aims that the presentation of these concepts will serve is to show that in philosophy there is no center and no periphery. The value of each of these concepts will be assessed by the reader. After studying each chapter, they will have the opportunity to delve deeper into the concept explored by embarking on wider research pointed at by the “Further Reading Suggestions” which can be found on the website bloomsbury.pub/keyconcepts-world-philosophies. Every chapter will reveal a small piece of the conceptual network to which it belongs, including related concepts in its tradition and across traditions. The writers of this book are happy to live in a time when those of us who are European or of European descent are finally reconsidering the pride they previously held, culturally speaking, about their ancestors who had “discovered” new continents, built world-empires and taught others, including those whom they enslaved, about how they should understand reality and live it, and what they should believe. Finally, we are working towards more appropriate degrees of shame about having ancestors who conquered places, colonized peoples and destroyed their ways of knowing and living. What were regarded as undisputed values during the European Enlightenment, are now finally under the critical eye of more widespread sections of the population, such as the supposed understanding of philosophical knowledge as cultivation of an objective view from nowhere, which has often turned out to be the perspective of the white, heterosexual male colonizer. In the name of such assumptions, alternative ways of living and thinking have been disregarded as superstitions and as ignorance, such as different conceptions of time and memory, the relation to one’s land or to non-human others, and to language in Indigenous philosophies.2 And in many cases, these were almost erased from history.

2

See, e.g., “The demise of oral traditions and the institution of a scriptural economy of knowledge comes hand in hand with the erasure of the past as a living experience, with a colonial politics of time” (Vázquez 2009). “The notions of memory (ancestors/memoria), land (tierra) and language (palabra) represent examples of the untranslatable, namely that which is erased by translation and replaced by the modern notions of chronology, space and writing” (Vazquez 2011: 32). See also: “ ‘The epistemological privilege’ granted to modern science . . . was . . . instrumental in suppressing other, non-scientific forms of knowledges and, at the same time, the subaltern social groups whose social practices were informed by such knowledges. In the case of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and of the African slaves, this suppression of knowledge, a form of epistemicide . . ., was the other side of genocide” (Santos, Nunes and Meneses 2007: xix). (Vazquez 2011: 30)

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Now, many of us are more inclined to accept that we all see reality from a certain perspective, influenced by many factors, including our embodiment, our upbringing and our professional or academic background. Those who say that they don’t have any such contextual background to their perspective, or that they can occupy a neutral zone from which objective knowledge is possible might be not explicit about or are unaware of the frameworks through which they look at reality. Sometimes they might even be promoting the view that their framework is the only reasonable or true one to endorse, or that a given dominant or seemingly “intuitive” position is true by virtue of its merely being mainstream. In a world where we acknowledge that every knower is situated and nobody occupies the center, one crucial way that we have to understand reality better is by becoming acquainted with other ways of looking. Such knowledge of different frameworks and value systems is key to becoming resilient in cases in which our local common sense cannot help us face whatever challenges and navigation of uncharted territory the future has in store for us. It is not only a resource for valuable new ways of looking at the world but as a source of creative inspiration for reconsidering our own worldviews.

Learning New Frameworks and Valuing Diversity Decentering—not seeing oneself in the center—might well be engendered by becoming acquainted with other ways of understanding reality and our place in it. Such acquaintance makes one appreciate one’s own situatedness, and the fact that how things look to us depends on many factors, such as our goals, our way of life, language, values, and our hidden assumptions. When learning that there are different ways of being situated, which may involve entirely other ways of life, values, assumptions, paradigms, etc and which might result in other ways of seeing and doing things, one realizes they do not occupy a neutral epistemic spot. Given the relevance of philosophy as a tool in transformation and selfcultivation, for the most part, philosophers throughout history have also been educators (in the widest sense of this term). This means to say that they have been engaged in providing new critical resources for their students or followers to make use of in their own self-development. Counter to mainstream academic tendencies, we suggest that philosophy must take the

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task seriously of creating clarity and awareness of how our (often culturally embedded) assumptions, definitions of words, and uncritical beliefs steer how we think and what we value. Excluding those professional, academic philosophers only interested in studying philosophical arguments for their own sake, in the abstract, philosophers of all times and places have intended to change, or to enable change, in the lives and worlds of their readers (or listeners). In the words of Kwok-ying Lau (2018), Intercultural philosophy [. . .] is [. . .] a to-and-fro movement of philosophical thinking which dares leaving the comfort zone of one’s habitual cultural identity and risks immersing oneself in the heart of cultural otherness instead of remaining at the exterior of the juxtaposed doctrines. This mode of philosophical practice has an aim: to attain self-transformation through possibly losing some parts of the habitual cultural self while gaining new ingredients from cultural alterity, with the effect of grafting upon oneself a new cultural flesh, or at least part of it, to enhance one’s own cultural sensibility [. . .]

As scholars and teachers, we want to focus especially on the role of philosophy in the lives of our students, whose challenge is not only to succeed in their academic endeavors, but also to navigate this fast-changing, increasingly globalized world in a wise way, and to make use of the abstract philosophical notions that they learn about in the practical reality that surrounds them. The worldwide pandemic that began in 2020 has called us to respond to the challenges that our current and former ways of living have presented to us, among others, in terms of deteriorating psychophysical health conditions, loneliness and lack of meaningful interpersonal connections, inability to connect with human and non-human others, lack of resilience in the face of drawbacks and boredom. The difficulty we have in responding to these challenges might be related to the unavailability of a reservoir of diverse frameworks from which we could reassess our values, and re-establish meaningful interaction, respond creatively to our challenges and grow from them. In a positive sense, by learning new ways of thinking, we might come to realize that it is not only those in power who can create a new world top down, but that we need to accept our own portion of responsibility to the extent that we are all at work creating the future by each of our actions. Taking responsibility involves knowledge of different possibilities, which cannot be acquired by merely receiving input (be it from the news or a personal encounter), understanding it in our pre-existing terms and judging it from our own categories. The tendency towards confirmation bias is a real problem for life amid contemporary challenges. We need to learn to

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appreciate alternatives to our own ways of looking at reality. We need to learn to understand what comes from other traditions from the point of view of the perspectives unique to such traditions—rather than quickly subsuming them into our own, often European/North-American (a.k.a. western), categories (Vazquez 2011) and merely judging them from the point of our own unexamined value systems. Being acquainted with different frameworks might well become essential to the survival and flourishing of young people who will face many changes over the course of their lives. Not only in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that was current at the time of completing this volume, but in terms of many other crises on the horizon including climate change, the risks of mass migration, developing tensions between superpowers, and the increasing gap in wealth distribution. We believe that it is the job of philosophy to provide students with the conceptual frameworks to approach these issues with a critical, and hopefully interculturally-sensitive, eye. The solutions to fundamental changes in one’s way of life cannot be expected to come only from advances in technology. Humans need to be resilient and capable of responding wisely and creatively to change—if they are not, they will find themselves unequipped to meet the existential challenges that face them. The biggest challenge to all of us amid these large-scale problems and especially to the younger generations, is that we may well be forced by circumstances into the need to rethink our ways of life from the ground up. We will need to rethink our values (Cf. Parkes 2020, Hershock 2021), and to cultivate our imagination so that we can think of a different way of living and cooperating across all kinds of differences. The acquaintance with very diverse frameworks and concepts is crucial when collaborating across differences to navigate planetary crises. And yet the general understanding of its importance is still very much unripe, as it is reflected in the western orientation of many philosophy programs, to which we referred above. Diversity goes beyond diversification of the philosophy canon to involve all kinds of diversity that should be valued for the perspectives they bring to the table. Dominant groups might well see “diversity” reductively, as a category whose only relevance is to protect weaker groups, to teach tolerance for what is different, or, even worse, as a fashion that will pass. In other words, something irrelevant to them. However, once we appreciate the need to see things through different frameworks, to learn how to talk to each other and to cultivate resilience and creativity in the face of change and challenges, we will really see the importance of all kinds of diversities. This is especially relevant in a time when, on the one hand, the world changes very quickly, and on the

Introduction: Valuing Diversity

other, our tailor-made online experiences are designed to makes us believe that the whole world is like us, by surrounding us with everything we like, agree with, that speaks our language and confirms our views. Diversity is what can help us burst the bubble into which the attention economy (Hershock 2021) has lured us. People spend an increasing amount of time each in their own bubble (North Americans spend on average 12 hours a day using electronic media) (Hershock 2021: 103). Encounters with diversity can liberate us from these confined horizons. The point here is that listening to different people, different explanations, different disciplines and understanding how reality looks from different perspectives is not geared towards a complete conversion from “our” way of thinking to “theirs”, nor from the present to the past, from the West to the East, or from the North to the South for that matter. Rather, we need to get acquainted with different worlds and value systems to be able to listen to them, to have the valuable experience of being destabilized by them, to enter into dialogue with them and, possibly, to explore different ways of living together and learning from them. Recapping so far, no framework—cultural and disciplinary alike— provides insight on how things are in an absolute sense: “when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark” (Dōgen, Genjōkōan, in Tanahashi 1985: 70). If we are on our own, we are bound to leave many aspects in the dark— thus, it is important to develop a deep understanding of different frameworks, by carefully and patiently learning to listen to views that might well contradict what one regards as common sense. This will involve making a lot of effort, that is, the effort of world-travelling (Lugones 1987): of patiently, every time, getting to know the other world, its language, its ontology, its values. This book hopes to facilitate access to many diverse concepts and frameworks that hopefully will also bring about the initiation of dialogues and collaborations across differences.

Appreciating Philosophy as a Way of Life and Practicing It by Entering into Dialogue Across Differences Obviously, we are not the first to stress the transformative value of philosophy. From Ancient Indian epistemologists to Ancient Greek metaphysicians, to

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the Classical Chinese and African philosophers, from Modern European thinkers to philosophers in twentieth-century Japan and Indigenous ones—each of them has introduced concepts meant to shed light on something that has obscured our thoughts and our practices, and through such clarification, to provide a basis for transformation. Philosophy has often been an instrument of self-cultivation, by giving conceptual resources to help remove the ignorance that leads to living an unfilled life or one full of unnecessary suffering. “Philosophy as a way of life” is a phrase that is well known in western Philosophy circles, thanks to the work of Pierre Hadot (1995). However, the characterization of philosophy as a way of life has often been used to refer to traditions that are far removed from the contemporary academy—either in time (Ancient Greece) or in place (e.g., in East Asia). Fortunately, in the last few decades, brilliant contributions have been published that engage in intercultural philosophy by putting traditions in dialogue and showing their relevance in the contemporary world (e.g., Berger 2015; Chakrabarti and Weber 2016; Davis 2018; Lau 2016; KirloskarSteinbach and Kalmanson 2021; Park and Kopf 2009; Van Norden 2017). In line with these efforts, our contributors will present philosophical ideas that are both rigorously grounded in argumentative philosophical texts and that have relevance for our life. With this book, rather than focusing on and engaging in a particular dialogue or on a particular tradition, we want to provide our readers with conceptual tools that will enable them to engage in what one might call intercultural or cross-cultural philosophy, or world philosophies, and to use such tools in the context of self-transformation and transformative pedagogy. Different from existing volumes, this volume offers access to a range of philosophical traditions through a focus on key concepts, with explicit elaboration of the transformative power of these ideas. Some chapters explicitly refer to dialogue or point to how to train the capacity to conduct a dialogue with diverse traditions, while taking into account the different assumptions that might be at work. Our goal is to move towards a time when engaging with concepts as those explored in this book will simply be called “philosophy,” since becoming acquainted with and appreciating different perspectives on an issue and discussing their value in a constructive and transformative dialogue is in line with what has always been the aim of philosophy. Dialogue is one of the most important practices through which philosophy becomes a way of

Introduction: Valuing Diversity

life.3 Dialogue across frameworks does not only happen orally with living persons, but it can also happen when we take seriously the readings and the thoughts of philosophers who lived in very different times and places, when we are prepared to “try on” the concepts and the world view argued for by the philosopher we are reading. This is the spirit in which we recommend reading this book. Each chapter in this book presents a specific conceptual tool designed to challenge the assumptions that lie at the foundation of widely held beliefs and practices. The book is divided into three parts: Part 1: How We Acquire Knowledge about Ourselves and Reality; Part 2: How We Cultivate Ourselves and Relate to Others; Part 3: How We Express Ourselves. What gave us a lot of inspiration in preparing this book is the response of our students when teaching intercultural philosophies. They often report to us that they immensely value learning these new paradigms, new concepts and new perspectives. To learn to appreciate perspectives from the distant past or from elsewhere and to be able to reflect on how such unfamiliar insights can be brought to bear on their critical thinking about their own lives and contexts. It is our hope that our readers, well-equipped with this toolkit of diverse concepts meant to offer insights into new ways of how to approach and live one’s life, will be prepared, by their study of these ideas, to enter into dialogue across differences.4

References Berger, D. L. (2015). Encounters of Mind: Luminosity and Personhood in Indian and Chinese Thought New York: SUNY Press. Chakrabarti, A. and R. Weber, eds. (2016). Comparative Philosophy without Borders. London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing.

3 See, for instance, Hadot 1995: 91: “The intimate connection between dialogue with others and dialogue with oneself is profoundly significant. Only he who is capable of a genuine encounter with the other is capable of an authentic encounter with himself, and the converse is equally true. Dialogue can be genuine only within the framework of presence to others and to oneself . . . The dimension of the interlocutor is, as we can see, of capital importance. It is what prevents the dialogue from becoming a theoretical, dogmatic expose, and forces it to be a concrete, practical exercise. For the point is not to set forth a doctrine, but rather to guide the interlocutor towards a determinate mental attitude. It is a combat, amicable but real.” 4 About real dialogue as call-and-response, rather than a juxtaposition of monologues, see Kopf 2015.

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Davis, G. F., ed. (2018). Ethics without Self, Dharma without Atman. Western and Buddhist Philosophical Traditions in Dialogue. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Dōgen, Genjōkōan, in Tanahashi, K. ed. (1985). Moon in a Dewdrop. Writings of Zen Master Dōgen. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Kirloskar-Steinbach, M. and Kalmanson, L. (2021). A Practical Guide to World Philosophies: Selves, Worlds, and Ways of Knowing. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Hadot, P. (1995). Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Hershock, P.D. (2012). Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future. New York: SUNY Press. Hershock, P.D. (2021). Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Kopf, G. (2015). “Antiphony: A Model of Dialogue” Bulletin of the Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture, 39: 26–35. Lau, K. (2018). review of Nelson, E.S., 2017, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-century German Thought. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Available at: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/chinese-and-buddhist-philosophyin-early-twentieth-century-german-thought. Lau, K. (2016). Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding: Toward a New Cultural Flesh. Heidelberg: Springer. Lugones, M. (1987). “Playfulness, ‘world’-travelling, and loving perception” Hypatia, 2(2): 3–19. Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science, Trans. Kauffmann W. New York: Vintage Books. Park, Jin Y. and Kopf, G, eds. (2009). Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Parkes, G. (2020). How to Think about the Climate Crisis: A Philosophical Guide to Saner Ways of Living. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Santos, B.S., Nunes, J.A. and Meneses, M.P. (2007). “Opening Up the Canon of Knowledge and Recognition of Difference” in Santos, B.S. Another Knowledge is Possible, Beyond Northern Epistemologies, xix–lvii, London: Verso. Van Norden, B. W. (2017). Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, New York: Columbia University Press. Van Norden, B. and Garfield, J. (2016). “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Is”. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes. com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-itreally-is.html. Vázquez, R. (2011). “Translation as Erasure: Thoughts on Modernity’s Epistemic Violence” Journal of Historical Sociology, 24(1): 27–44.

Part I How We Acquire Knowledge about Ourselves and Reality 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Action and Praxis Africa Ataraxia Continuous Inquiry Emptiness Epistemic Decolonization of Culture Ezumezu Gewu (Investigation of Things) “I” as the Absolute Present Intellectual Non-Harming and Epistemic Friction Karma Nature Perspectival Agility Relational Knowing Relegational Arguments Science Fiction in/as Philosophy 11

17 Shinjin Gakudō (Studying the Way with Body and Mind) 18 Shinjin-datsuraku (Dropping the Bodymind) 19 Prasaṅga Method 20 Unconditioned 21 Vital Force 22 Zhi (Knowing)

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1 Action and Praxis Jin Y. Park

What does the act of philosophy involve? Is philosophy fundamentally about ideas or does it occur through action and praxis? This chapter explores the meaning of action and praxis in philosophy through an examination of the work of Pak Ch’iu, a modern Korean philosopher. In that context, we also consider philosophy’s relation to power as well as the association of logic to politics.

The Game Changer Pak Ch’iu (박치우 [ᵤ㠤⾀] 1909–49) was one of the first generations of Korean thinkers to study “philosophy” as an academic discipline newly introduced to Korea from the West during the process of modernization. As is well known, the terms “philosophy” and “religion” did not exist in East Asia until the mid-nineteenth century. The Japanese philosopher Nishi Amane (㾯ઘ1829–1897) is credited with the Japanese neologism for the western expression ‘philosophy,’ and China, Korea, and Japan all adopted the expression with different pronunciations (ଢᆨ; Japanese tetsugaku; Chinese zhéxué; Korean ch’ŏrhak). What does it mean that the term ‘philosophy’ did not exist in East Asia until so recently? It cannot mean that thought traditions didn’t exist there. East Asia had its own ways of doing philosophy, though the format might be different from that of traditional western philosophy. What happened to traditional East Asian thought when western philosophy was introduced to Asia and assumed the position of the only legitimate form of philosophizing? This historical situation is a good case to inform us about the meaning of philosophy and its 13

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relation to existing power structures. Some philosophers have claimed that philosophy is a search for truth, and that truth should be objective and universal. However, the situation of Asian philosophy in the transition from the premodern to the modern period in East Asia, and its current position in academia, reveal the illusion of philosophy’s claims for neutrality in the search for truth. As western culture rushed into Korean society, beginning in the midnineteenth century, Koreans began to study western philosophy instead of traditional Korean thought, such as Confucianism and Buddhism. Once western culture and philosophy became a dominant form of philosophizing, the measuring tools for knowledge and value in Korean society changed. Confucianism and Buddhism, which served as the foundation of intellectual pursuit as well as social, political, and educational structure of pre-modern Korea, began to lose their validity. One can still study or practice Confucianism or Buddhism for personal cultivation, but the legitimacy of knowledge production no longer lies with them (see Park 2017). That being said, in the philosophy of the new generation of Koreans who studied western philosophy, we can see the combination of traditional Korean (and other Asian) thought and the newly introduced western modes of philosophizing. Pak Ch’iu’s philosophy is a good example.

Logic and Reality In a short essay entitled “Walking Away from an Academic Philosophy” (Ak’ademi ch’ŏrhak ŭl naomyŏ 아카데미 철학을 나오며), Pak observes that he majored in philosophy to find an answer to the question “What is philosophy?” and that all he learned as a philosophy major was “what philosophy was about.” Declaring that academic philosophy lacks the capacity to engage with reality, Pak demands that philosophers ask, “Today, here, for us, what should philosophy be?” (2010: 13). Pak’s rejection of purely academic philosophy and his claim that philosophy should actively engage with the reality of its time also appear in his characterization of the nature of philosophy. For Pak, one can learn the nature of philosophy only by understanding the close tie among its three elements: (1) the temporal dimension of philosophy, which is “today”; (2) the spatial dimension of philosophy, which is “in this society”; and (3) their relationship to agency, which is “us” (2010: 14). When we think about action and praxis in the context of philosophy, we tend to think of them in isolation from theories or ideas and postulate their

Action and Praxis

relationship through a linear and temporal scheme. We think that philosophy is about ideas, and that once we have ideas, we may or may not apply them to reality, which is called praxis. Pak defies this sedentary way of thinking and claims that in philosophy, the two sides work simultaneously: action and praxis are not a stage that comes after thinking or philosophizing. According to Pak, philosophizing itself should be action and praxis. Pak also defines a philosopher in this context. A philosopher, for Pak, is not someone special, but someone capable of “hearing with their ‘heart’ the demand of reality, the cry that reality is shouting at us, asking for the resolution of the problems of our time” (2010: 15). A philosopher is also defined by their mode of relating to the reality they encounter. For example, when one sees a shabby house, one might “perceive it as a run-down structure” or “experience it as a place in which a hunger-stricken family sustains their lives” (Pak 2010: 54). Pak calls the former a “positional relationship” (Korean: 태도적 관계 >᝻ᓖⲴ 䰌‫]ײ‬, t’aedojŏk kwan’gye) and the latter a ‘relational relationship’ (Korean: 교섭적 관계>Ӕ⎹Ⲵ䰌 ‫]ײ‬, kyosŏpchŏk kwan’gye). When one understands reality through a relational relationship rather than a positional one, one can see reality as a living situation instead of a dead one. The difference lies in one’s mode of engagement. In a positional relationship, one sees a situation encountered in life as something separate from oneself; in the latter, one ‘experiences’ the situation in the context of existence. A rundown house may not have much of a direct relationship with the subject encountering it. But the capacity to see the hardships of the people who live in the house and further recognize the social injustice that allows such depraved living conditions to its members enables the subject to create a relational relationship with the house and people living in the house, even when the subject does not have a direct relationship with them. One claim behind this proposal is that perception is not a purely mental process. The perception of an event occurs together with the recognition of the context in which it takes place. Perception is the praxis of our relationship with the world. Pak sometimes makes a distinction between action and praxis: “All praxis is action, but not all actions are praxis” (2010: 62). An action, or haeng-dong (행 >㹼]-동 [अ]) in Korean, is not just a movement (Korean:동 >अ], dong), but a movement toward (Korean: 행 [㹼], haeng) a goal (Pak 2010: 63), and this movement should accompany human awareness. Praxis for Pak means “action based on logos, action based on reason, and action based on theory” (2010: 63). Such actions produce constructive results, whereas actions by a violent mob of rioters result in meaningless destruction.

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In “The Partisan Nature of Philosophy: Theoria and Ism” (Ch’ŏrhak ŭi tangp’asŏng: t’eoria wa isŭm 철학의 당파성: 테오리아와 이즘), Pak argues against the perennial claim that philosophy aims for universal and objective understanding of the world and being and asserts that philosophy is a result of a partisan understanding of reality. In that sense, for Pak, philosophy is “first of all an ideology” (Pak 2010: 20). In the history of western philosophy, the concept of ideology changes depending on the philosophers and also on the different stages of the same philosopher. For our purpose, it should be sufficient to understand that Pak defined ideology simply as a “social awareness of reality” (2010: 20). An important aspect of ideology in philosophical discussions and especially for Pak is that ideology can be and has been used to provide legitimacy and justification for the existing power structure. Pak’s concept of philosophy as an ideology emphasizes the situatedness of a philosophy. A philosopher, like anyone else, is a subject who understands the world from his or her own position, which means that the idea of a universal perspective of philosophy is an illusion. Thus, Pak observes, Philosophy is not mere theoria, but ism-istic theoria. It is no coincidence that historically, philosophy has always represented a certain social class and offered services that have inevitably worked to maintain that class, even though philosophy has always pretended it is literally theoria that does not engage with what is happening in reality. 2010: 25

For Pak, theoria is related to contemplation (Korean: 관 [㿰] kwan) as opposed to praxis; ism for him is a more active concept, since “for theoria, consciousness is a decisive factor, whereas for ism in general action is its original goal” (2010: 22). Characterizing philosophy as “ism-istic theoria,” Pak asserts that philosophy is a result of thinking and contemplation about reality, but philosophy should not limit itself to thinking but occur through action and praxis. The relationship between theory and praxis in philosophy is important for Pak because it also explains what went wrong in the foundational premises of democracy and civil society. Pak tells us that the civil society that emerged with the promise of freedom and equality came to create another form of power relationship. In his analysis of the problem of civil society and its failure to keep the promise of freedom and equality for all, Pak points out a limitation of formal logic. The Aristotelian logic of identity, contradiction, and the excluded middle has been the foundation of logical thinking in western philosophy. Pak argues that formal logic is valid only when we understand reality in

Action and Praxis

abstraction, but when applied to reality in context, formal logic cannot sustain itself. Take an example of a rose. When one says, “A rose is a flower,” a roseflower should have an unchanging connotation so that it will not be mixed with a non-rose or a non-flower. For Pak, this definition of a rose-flower is possible only as an abstraction (2010: 226). In reality, what is a rose-flower? Without its leaves, can a rose-flower exist? Without the soil in which the rose sustains itself, or water when a rose-flower is in a vase, a rose-flower cannot survive. But soil is not rose-flower, nor water. A rose-flower is a combination of all of them. A rose-flower as an individual entity is possible in abstraction, but in reality, a rose-flower is a combination of various different elements which we usually do not count as a rose. Hence, in reality, a rose is a flower and at the same time is not a flower, which is a clear violation of formal logic. Pak develops social and political dimensions of this issue and demonstrates why democracy and modern civil society based on formal logic failed to keep its promise of freedom and equality for all. During the emergence of civil society in modern times, citizens—the bourgeoisie—challenged the power of aristocrats. Pak claims that formal logic made a good contribution to this argument. In logic, one is just one, and no power differentiation is involved among different ones. The citizens promoted the idea that one is just one, whether one is a citizen (bourgeois) or an aristocrat, and this one— everyone—is free and equal. The attainment of freedom and equality for the citizens, however, created another layer of power hierarchy, because this freedom and equality did not apply to those who were not ‘citizens’, that is, labourers, factory workers, or women. Pak observes, “the logic that 1 (one) equals 1 (one) makes sense when this equation refers to abstract concepts but when applied to objects in reality, the equation is impotent” (2010: 218).

Logic, Engagement, and Praxis Existence for Pak is “relational,” which means to Pak that one experiences situations in life in the context of a dynamic activity instead of as a static situation to be studied. When one engages with reality, one cannot help but realize the contradictions that exist in the life world. Society is full of contradictions, because different members of society have different interests, different perspectives, and different types of existence. When one realizes the contradictions in a society, such a realization brings forth a dynamic force that can enable the person to attempt to deal with the contradictions in the society. Pak explains the four different stages or modes of one’s engagement with the external world. The first stage is “positional understanding,” in which, as

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mentioned earlier, the subject takes the situation at hand with distance. The second stage is “relational understanding,” in which the subject embraces the context of the situation including the situation’s relation to the subject and society. The third stage is “understanding of the contradiction.” At this stage, the subject sees differing claims about the situation at hand and recognizes conflicting interests in the interpretation of the situation. The final and forth stage is “active understanding of praxis,” a stage in which the subject actively engages in making changes. In this context, Pak declares that “I am plural singular” (2010: 74). To use the earlier example of a rose, a rose is a combination of a flower, soil, leaves, water, and so on. An individual for Pak is both singular and plural, since an individual’s personality or subjectivity is formed through the individual’s responses to the questions of the time in which the individual lives. I have not found any source that indicates that Pak studied Buddhism or Asian philosophy. But his logic is undeniably Buddhist. Modern East Asian Buddhist thinkers, such as Inoue Enryō (Ӆк޶Ҷ1858–1919), Kim Iryŏp (김일엽 [䠁а㩹] 1896–1971), and Paek Sŏnguk (백성욱 [ⲭᙗ䛱] 1897– 1981), all paid special attention to the role of the contradiction in our understanding of the world and being and singular-plural nature of our identity (see Park 2017). In terms of political philosophy, one of the thinkers he was most influenced by is the modern Japanese philosopher Miki Kiyoshi (йᵘ␵ 1897–1945).

Concluding Remarks At the core of Pak’s philosophy lies philosophy as praxis. Pak demands that philosophers walk away from institutionalized philosophy and do philosophy as praxis. Pak argues that human existence in society is always charged with diverse conflicts, and the only way to deal with them is through praxis. He asserts that philosophy is not a privilege of an elite class, nor should philosophy remain as a pure theory. Pak submits that philosophy has a power to make changes in society and that the change can be more radical than people might assume. For Pak, all theoretical philosophy is an inhuman philosophy. Philosophy exists for Pak only through engagement with life, and his call for a philosophy of action and praxis offers us a way to reenvision the role of philosophy in our time when philosophy and the humanities have become increasingly devalued as anxiety deepens in our society.

Action and Praxis

References Pak, C. (2010), Sasang kwa hyŏnsil (Ideas and Reality ᙍᜣ과⨮ሖ), Yun Taesŏk and Yun Miran (eds), Seoul: Inha taehakkyo ch’ulp’anbu. Park, J. (2017), “Philosophizing and Power: East–West Encounter in the Formation of Modern East Asian Philosophy,” Philosophy East and West 67(3): 801–824.

Glossary Academic philosophy (Korean. ak’ademi ch’o˘ rhakk 아카데미 철학) The philosophy that is studied and taught in educational institutions. Pak Ch’iu used the expression pejoratively to refer to philosophy that fails to engage with the reality of the time. Formal logic An abstract study of propositions, statements and assertions and uses deductive argument.

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2 Africa Delphine Abadie

Whether it is mentioned in the media, by international institutions or in scientific publications, the evocation of “Africa” immediately calls to mind a set of familiar representations. Philosophy, as other scientific humanities, share that common sense background conception of Africa. In most classical philosophy curricula, nonetheless, very little attention is devoted to the task of critically reviewing the premises underlying this peculiar conception by looking at what African philosophers themselves have to say about the space, the history, the identity they inhabit. What is Africa? Does Africa necessarily produce a different epistemology from its western counterpart? Is there something like an authentic “African philosophy”? Yet it is not for lack of literature: since the mid20th century, the critical school of African philosophy (P. Hountondji, M. Towa, V.Y. Mudimbe, K. Wiredu, F. Eboussi Boulaga, K. Kavwahirehi, A. Mbembe, S.B. Diagne, etc.), as opposed to “ethnophilosophers,” has given much attention, sometimes polemically, to this issue of defining a concept of “Africa.” Summed up in a singular and arguably reductive notion aimed at depicting the complex reality of a multifarious continent, the concept of “Africa” is torn between a mythical conception and the recognition of cultural pluralism partially inherited from colonization.

The Prehistory of a Concept From the outset, the European conquest was justified by the moral project of converting Africans to European Enlightenment ideals by means of annihilating social hierarchies and institutions. Even though these colonial intentions were met with resistance, it nonetheless largely succeeded in 21

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durably metamorphosing Africa (Mudimbe 1988). The practices of slavery, the slave trade and other colonial enterprises have caused a profound rupture in the path between Africa’s historical past and the direction in which it seemed to be heading. Thus, the colonial encounter not only suspended traditional African value systems for a few centuries, it also fundamentally undermined and permanently challenged them. From an epistemological viewpoint, the process of elucidating the various postulates attached to a conceptual definition of Africa is thus intimately linked to the way in which prior western discourses claimed to describe it. Indeed, “Africa” as a unifying reality only came into existence as a result of colonial conquest. Except for neighboring territories, contacts between the different peoples of precolonial Africa remained tenuous, thus making “Africa” an abstract entity. Named by outsiders, “Africa” is derived from afer in Arabic, whose translation is Black (Diagne 2013). From the beginning of the conquest in the fifteenth century, the continent became the object of intense intellectual concern for Europeans. As contacts between the continents intensified, European frameworks of analysis and ideas about the world revolved around the conviction of the beneficial extension of Europe’s frontiers and the spread of values and virtues of which Europe considered itself to be the repository: those of civility, Christianity, rationality, morality, etc. As Achille Mbembe puts it, “Europe is similar to a philosophical task, its mission was to extend the Enlightenment of reason in the service of freedom” (Mbembe 2013: 73). Over the following several centuries, the increase in relations between different global human groups led to a scientific proliferation of discourses on the Others: explorers, theorists of race, philosophers, colonial administrators, anthropologists, etc. compiled data, elaborated knowledges and proposed interpretations about the signification of Africa. The main purpose of most of those interventions was demonstrating the backwardness of these Others, as well as their obscurantism and their material, political and epistemological dependence on the West. For example, in his introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel offers a brutal synthesis of the way in which the Europe of the Enlightenment prefigured the deployment of the spirit on his own continental space. In contrast to Europe, he typifies Africa as lacking in conceptual, and particularly objective conceptual, development: The peculiarly African character is difficult to comprehend, for the very reason that in reference to it, we must quite give up the principle which naturally accompanies all our ideas—the category of Universality. Hegel 2001: 110

Africa

The Invention of Africa by Colonial Sciences Frequently referred to in African philosophy, Hegel is merely one author among a vast set of Modern philosophers pretending to properly qualify Africa. The immense body of Africanist knowledge is articulated around a prodigious archive that ultimately produces a European episteme and thus imposes its orientations on any subsequent interpretation of the nature and features of Africa. The Congolese philosopher V.Y. Mudimbe (1994) analyzes the multiple ways in which the West has combined different signifiers, symbols and prejudices to depict Africa, using quotations and intertextuality much more often than empirical observations, as far back as Greek antiquity. As a result of this profusion of fantasies, we find the invention of a lasting figure of Africa: Africa as an Idea. Mudimbe uses the term “colonial library” (1988) to designate the colossal archive that made this fabrication possible. The concept of the colonial library accounts for the epistemic dependency between, on the one hand, the constitution of a vast body of representations on Africa presenting the continent as the archetype of difference and, on the other hand, the racist context of their production (Wai 2015). As V.Y. Mudimbe puts this, “certainly, the depth as well as the ambition of the colonial library disseminates the concept of deviation as the best symbol of the idea of Africa” (Mudimbe 1994: xii). This epistemic configuration has been taken up as such in Africanist discourses of the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries, including those produced by the African intellectual elite, as illustrated by the ethnophilosophical tendency that we will address next.

Ethnophilosophy’s Reprise Curiously, the birth of modern African philosophy is considered to have been enacted by Bantu Philosophy (1945), the work of Father Placide Tempels, a Belgian missionary officing in the Belgian Congo, although the negritude movement preceded it (Ogot 2009). At the time of its publication, the essay was acknowledged as a major intellectual event. Tempels’ work is a refutation of Hegel’s evolutionary theses, as restated by the ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl in his work Primitive mentality (1923). Lévy-Bruhl’s essay argues for the existence of a fundamental distinction between the qualities of the European mind and the cognitive modalities of

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all other non-western peoples, including Africans. According to the ethnologist, primitive cognitive capacities are described negatively as failures to meet the requirements of western logic: for example, in the absence of identity and causality principles, or the lack of a notion of time, etc. LévyBruhl consequently qualifies this way of being part of the world as “prelogical”, and as the “primitive mentality.” In doing so he aims to describe an earlier stage in the evolution of human intelligence. For Lévy-Bruhl, the language and thought of primitive peoples evidence his observations, wherein, in order to designate the world, only concrete terms, words and images are used. In contrast, western thought is characterized by a high degree of notional, symbolic and metaphorical abstraction, translating into a language capable of handling all the subtleties of conceptual reasoning. In other words, Lévy-Bruhl draws the conclusion that full rationality is an exclusive prerogative of white humanity (Irele 1983). In contrast, Placide Tempels admits a great complexity in the Baluba’s cultural systems. For Tempels, the Bantu peoples’ indigenous worldview stands as an indigeneous philosophy, even if its non-systematic features are unfamiliar to the western critical discipline that bears the same name. According to Tempels, the Bantu philosophy of Africa would take the form of a “life force ontology” in which human beings are privileged participants of the universe’s great chain of being. Driven by a metaphysical vitalism, forces interact and articulate with each other according to a hierarchy at the top of which sit the gods, beneath them humans (including both the ancestors and the living), and below that, the animal order and the inanimate world. It follows that the Bantu are themselves traversed by the impulse of different life forces and that their philosophy is a “vitalist ontology” (i.e., from the life force), determined in some way by a mechanical law of nature (Diagne 2013). In the years following its publication, Bantu Philosophy established itself as a lasting conceptual framework, method and reference for the construction of subsequent philosophical systems meant to embody the originality of an authentic African philosophy (Alexis Kagamé (1912–1981); Basile-Juléat Fouda (1934–2020), Ignace-Marcel Tshiamalenga-Ntumba (1932–). As Irele writes: “In the event, it can be observed that the terms of reference of modern African thought came to be defined largely by the colonial ideology and its vicissitudes within the discipline of anthropology” (Irele 1983: 18). Léopold Sédar Senghor’s negritude would be another example of a conception that defends the idea of an African philosophy proper, thus reproducing the initial biases of ethnophilosophy. Senghor’s Negritude takes

Africa

the form of a theory of knowledge postulating that emotion (as opposed to reason) would be the African medium of predilection for perceiving and interpreting world phenomena. Black culture draws its strength from its closeness, its communion with nature, rhythm, intuition and ancestors: everything responsible for the decline of western culture would define African genuine cultural identity: “emotion is black as reason is Hellenic” (Senghor 1964: 24). The opponents to Senghor’s negritude will blame his approach for having integrated the culturalist postulates of colonial anthropologists, notably the vitalist emphasis. In other words, taking up the imagination of the primitive mentality, Senghor accepts Lévy-Bruhl’s epistemic binarism premise which advocates that European and African cognitive natures are fundamentally different, even if he charges it with positivity (Towa 1971).

The Critique of Essentialism From the 1970s onwards, the traditionalist and mystical conception of Africa as defended by ethnophilosophers became the principal target of authors such as Paulin Hountondji, Marcien Towa, and Kwasi Wiredu. These authors include, under the name of ethnophilosophy, philosophical contributions as diverse as Senghor’s negritude, Alexis Kagame’s Bantu-Rwandan ontology, Cheikh Anta Diop’s inspired Afrocentrism, John Mbiti’s philosophy of time, or Kwame Nkrumah’s conscientism, etc. The contestation they elaborate is so fundamental that it unravels over several decades of a profound epistemological dispute described as the “African philosophy saga [l’affaire]” (Eboussi 2011). According to Hountondji, the purpose of this long debate on African philosophy was ultimately to demythologize the concept of Africa by bringing it back to its primary meaning and the minimal significance that had been, for years, overloaded by gluttonous ideological speculation” (Hountondji 1983: xi). Marcien Towa, for instance, criticizes Senghor for the epistemic conservatism of negritude’s theory of culture inherent in negritude as following: In Senghor’s view, the essential thing is to establish the biological specificity of the Negro, and then to deduce his conduct and his culture. We are dealing with a rigorously racist theory; racism as a theory, in fact, consists in considering culture as a consequence of the biologically hereditary heritage of a race. Towa 1971: 269

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Unlike Senghor, Towa considers that the violence of the historical experience of colonization was such that it has profoundly transformed the continent, moving it definitively away from what embodied it as a necessary traditional space: [. . .] It is futile to try to immobilize tradition and cultural identity, because the whole universe is subject to change. [. . .] In these conditions, the problem is no longer to know if our tradition will change or not, it changes ineluctably, but which changes affect it, with which speed. Towa 1979: 66

Moreover, the reduction of an entire continent to the negritude’s identity leaves postcolonial Africa lacking the means to cope with the modern world, i.e. the domination provoked by the international division of labor. In African Philosophy, Myth and Reality (1983), Paulin Hountondji criticizes the intellectual alienation inherent to these ways of thinking about Africa. Methodologically, ethnophilosophy adopts colonial science’s presuppositions by presenting Africa as an immutable idea. The pluralism of social systems and their symbolic expressions elaborated in the long course of a several-thousand-years-old history are narrowed to a collection of a few memorial curiosities. Such interpretations, he argues, are not interested in the Africa that ethnophilosophers inhabit, but rather discover and decrypt it through the distorting gaze of the master, who uses his philosophical language and epistemic codes for his wonder and his disciplinary needs. Africans are thus conceived as beings deprived of agency, as mere parties to a whole that is beyond them, as mechanisms in a collective ontology in which they are merely passive agents. In his article “How not to compare African Thought with western Thought” (1997), Kwasi Wiredu also shows that this propension to make African epistemology spontaneously and irrevocably adhere to its traditional nature is based on an exaggeration of the difference between Africa and the West, inherited from colonial ignorance. Unaware of the ubiquitous presence of the gods and the impact of their alleged power on the African social world, settlers and early anthropologists concluded that these worldviews played the systematic role that “philosophy” plays in the West. Wiredu shows that there is genre confusion between this folk thought—a set of assertions shared by a given community that needs no rational justification to be supported—and philosophy. He writes, “African traditional thought should in the first place only be compared with western folk thought” (Wiredu 1997: 326).

Africa

Becoming Africa How, then, can the concept of “Africa” be described theoretically most fruitfully? Informed by this long-term epistemological quarrel, contemporary African philosophers refuse to stick to the narrative of an Africa that necessarily coincides with its cultural past, as if it had not been radically transformed by the traumatic colonial experience. However, they do not claim to dismiss the past, nor do they claim to relegate traditional cultural expressions to the status of outdated curiosities. African philosophy rather chooses to orient its self-reflection on African identity from the assumption of what it has become, choosing new directions for its future, a process including critical scrutiny of some of its tradition. This is the task of authors like Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, Paulin Hountondji, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Achille Mbembe and Kasereka Kavwahirehi. The definition of Africa is an open-ended stake . . .

References Diagne, S. B. (2016). The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa, Dakar: Codesria. Hegel, G.W.F. (2001). The Philosophy of History, vol. 1, Kitchener: Batoche Books. Hountondji, P. (1983). African Philosophy. Myth and Reality (2nd edn) Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Irele, A. (1983). “Introduction” in P. Hountondji (ed.), African Philosophy. Myth and Reality, 7–30. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Lévy-Bruhl, L. (1923). Primitive Mentality, New York: Macmillan. Mbembe, A. (2020). Out of the Dark Night. Essays on Decolonization, New York: Columbia University Press. Mudimbe, V.Y. (1988). The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mudimbe, V.Y. (1994). The Idea of Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ogot, B. A. (2009). “Rereading the History and Historiography of Epistemic Domination and Resistance in Africa,” Africa Studies Review, 52(1): 1–22. Senghor, L.S. (1964). Liberté I, Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Tempels, P. (1945). Bantu Philosophy, Paris: Présence africaine. Towa, M. (1971). Essai sur la problématique philosophique dans l’Afrique actuelle, Yaoundé: Clé. Towa, M. (1979). L’idée d’une philosophie négro-africaine, Yaoundé: Clé.

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Wai, Z. (2015). “On the Predicament of Africanist Knowledge: Mudimbe, Gnosis and the Challenge of the Colonial Library,” International Journal of Francophone Studies, 18(2, 3): 263–290. Wiredu, K. (1997). “How Not to Compare African Traditional Thought with Western Thought. Transition” Transitions, 75–76, 320–327.

Glossary Bantu philosophy According to Placide Tempels, Bantu philosophy (and by extension, philosophy as practiced throughout the entire Africa) is an ontology that defines being as a force, that is, as a dynamic movement. The universe is a hierarchy of forces ordered according to their respective powers, the superior forces being the gods. Bantu wisdom consists in knowing and predicting how the life forces influence each other in a great universal chain of being. Colonial library Following an archaeological method inspired by Foucault, Valentin Yves Mudimbe is interested in the very long history of the progressive constitution of an African order of knowledge for which he identifies a common epistemological configuration. The concept of “colonial library” refers both to the set of discourses of varied formats and periods (philosophical writings, explorers’ chronicles, aesthetics of classical art, colonial anthropology, Greco-Roman paradigm of otherness, etc.) and to the power-knowledge relationship to the context of their elaboration. According to Mudimbe, the resulting epistemology of this long-run western intellectual effort gives the impetus to contemporary Africanist research. It orients it in the direction of a particular representation, an Idea of Africa nourished by a series of fantasies initially imagined to subjugate the continent. Ethnophilosophy A concept coined by Paulin Hountondji and Kwame Nkrumah that designates a set of varied works interested in studying indigenous philosophical systems. For its critics, ethnophilosophy falsely reclaims a radical singularity of African philosophy while lacking a rigorous methodology seldomly rigorous. Advocates and detractors of ethnophilosophy both postulate a necessary relationship between philosophy and anthropology.

3 Ataraxia Frans A. J. de Haas

In ancient Greek philosophy the concept of ataraxia (“absence of disturbance,” “freedom from anxiety,” “tranquility”) rapidly gained importance in the third century BCE during and after the conquests of Alexander the Great († 321 BCE). In this period most of the so-called Hellenistic philosophers—the Epicureans, Stoics, Academic skeptics, and Pyrrhonists—related tranquility to their concept of happiness as a fulfilled life. They considered a fulfilled life impossible without ataraxia, therefore much of their writing was designed as philosophical therapy against everything that jeopardizes ataraxia (Gowans 2010). Their philosophical therapy remained attractive well into the age of the Roman Empire. The Roman Stoic Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) coined tranquillitas as the Latin translation of ataraxia. The most elaborate defense we have of ataraxia as the goal of life was written in the second century CE by the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism and his monumental Against the Professors. In this chapter I shall briefly discuss views of ataraxia in the work of Epicurus, the Stoics Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and the Academic skeptic Cicero. I shall then give more space to the role of ataraxia in the Pyrrhonism defended by Sextus Empiricus because it presents us with an attitude to life that may appear particularly helpful to us in the twenty-first century. More than ever before, we are bombarded with numerous claims to truth that call upon us to destroy all other opinions, or to give up on any truth whatsoever. One way to respond to this bewildering multitude of claims is isolation: to seek comfort in a safe community of like-minded people and ignore everything else. This attitude is facilitated by parts of the internet that have been designed to present us with more of what we have selected before, which leads to the wrong 29

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impression that there is ample supporting evidence for our favorite view (confirmation bias). Another response is exasperation, giving up on anything but personal gain, also to the detriment of others. Neither of these attitudes is beneficial to ourselves in the long run, nor to mankind as a whole. Alternatively, Pyrrhonist philosophy claims to offer a mode of life that is not driven by fear or despair but is characterized by a systematic openness to the study of competing claims1 and the serious option of not identifying with any truth at all. Pyrrhonists have experienced that such an attitude may result in a freedom from anxiety (ataraxia) while nurturing a wholesome openness to honest debate. It is an intriguing question why the concept of ataraxia so rapidly rose to fame in the third century BCE. It is generally agreed that the Greek tradition later traced its origins to the ethics of the atomist Democritus (460–370 BCE): [Democritus] says that being in good spirits (euthymia) is the goal of life— which is not identical with pleasure as some have mistakenly understood, but is the state in which the soul stays as calm as a smooth sea (galēnōs), and wellsettled (eustathōs), disturbed by no fear or superstition or any other affection (pathos). He also calls this well-being (euestō) and many other names. Hicks 1970: vol. 2, 9.45

This state of the soul, Democritus argued, arises in men through moderation in joy and a good balance in life. We can achieve these by disregarding what everyone else envies or marvels at. We should focus on what is possible for us in the present and consider our own life enviable in comparison with those who are worse off. This will remove the sorrows of envy, jealousy and ill-will from our life, as well as the continuous desire for more (Diels and Kranz 1974: B191).2 Wise words, but why would these suddenly have drawn the attention of all Hellenistic philosophers? Was the third-century BCE an age of such anxiety that the philosophers had to offer tranquility to the multitude of disturbed souls? A more plausible suggestion, it seems to me, is the following: the exploits of Alexander the Great increased the traffic between the Mediterranean and Persia, India, and the Far East, thus providing more opportunities than ever before for alternative theories and practices of life to spread, including varieties of Buddhism. These practices had made an impression on Greek thinkers before, e.g. Democritus, so the renewed acquaintance strengthened strains of thought available in Greek philosophy already.

1

See Robbiano, Chapter 4 in this volume. Diels Kranz 1974, henceforth DK. Direct quotations are signaled by a B followed by the number of the quotation, in this case DK B191.

2

Ataraxia

Pyrrho of Elis, the founder of the Pyrrhonist school, is reported to have visited India in the trail of Alexander’s armies. He was particularly impressed by Indian magi and so-called gymnosophists (“naked wise men”) (Diogenes Laertius 9.61).3 Diogenes Laertius reports that Democritus before him also met these men (9.35) who are regarded by some as proto-philosophers (1.1) known for their advice to honor the gods, to do no harm, and to practice courage (1.6), as well as for their contempt of death (9.34). Is this what triggered Pyrrho’s curiosity in the first place? It has been argued, in my view convincingly, that these ideas got a new chance, and gained a new footing after Alexander had put an end to the Greek city states on which Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had focused all their philosophical energy (Garfield 1990; McEvilley 2002; Kuzminski 2008). Unfortunately, the lack of clear and reliable sources makes it hard to ascertain the historical facts. However, Pyrrho’s lifestyle, renouncing commitment to any belief about how the world “really” is, and whether anything is “truly” good or bad, just or unjust, shows remarkable similarities to the life envisaged by the early Mahayana Buddhists of his day, in addition to the lifestyle that struck Democritus before him. In Greek philosophy ataraxia is either derived from certainty about particular philosophical truths (Epicureans and Stoics), or from a refusal to commit to any philosophical truth propounded by the other schools of philosophy (Academic Sceptics and Pyrrhonists). To take the Epicureans first: they follow Democritus in believing that our world—together with many other worlds—consists of chance clusters of atoms falling and colliding in an infinite void. Death is but a re-configuration of atoms, so when you are there, death is not, and vice versa: no need to fear death or the afterlife. Atomism is applied to the gods, too: they are clusters of atoms that reside outside our world, and their divine happiness precludes them from having an interest in us. This insight does away with fear of the gods, and of their judgement after death. The good and happy life that remains, then, is for the Epicureans a life of pleasure, carefully and soberly defined as the absence of pain and distress (trying to obtain more would itself be a cause of distress). A sober life is easy to realize, especially when it is lived among like-minded friends in the seclusion of Epicurus’ Garden in Athens. There is no need to pursue in-depth studies of science and philosophy: a straightforward atomistic (meta)physics and epistemology

3

I use Vogt 2015 for the translation of Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 9.61–116 on Pyrrho and Timon; the numbers refer to the book (9) and section (61) in Diogenes Laërtius. For other parts of Diogenes Laërtius’s work I use the translation by Hicks (1970).

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suffice to live a happy life. So, the happiness that is characterized by ataraxia is reached by a combination of strong convictions about physics and the nature of man, and careful precautions against disturbances and distractions from the outside world. The Stoic approach is in many ways opposite to that of the Epicureans. Stoics reject atomism and chance in the universe. According to them, an allpervading divine Reason regulates every detail of the constitution of the universe, and every event in it. All one can do is live according to nature— that means: to know, accept and follow the design of nature, viz. the universe, and one’s own nature, in which divine reason resides in the form of our cognitive powers. Everything except one’s own inner state of mind is outside of our control and should therefore be regarded with indifference. This applies to health, wealth, and all other so-called external goods that people desperately try to obtain and hold on to. If we regard them as real goods we make wrong judgements, which are for the Stoics identical with strong negative affections (pathos) such as fear of missing out, and despair from failing to obtain what was not in our control to obtain in the first place. These negative affections are supposed to vanish after Stoic rational therapy, which teaches us what we can and cannot do. Hence the Stoic version of tranquility is an “absence of negative affections” (a-patheia), and it is found once we no longer worry about anything that is of no consequence for our happiness. Only a limited number of moderate affections (eu-patheia) contribute to the happy life, such as joy, watchfulness, and wishing, because they include full awareness of the limitations of human action. For instance, you can be fond of a ceramic pot, as long as you remain aware that pots can break, so when they do, you need not be disturbed. If you embrace your child or your partner, be aware they are mortal human beings, so when they die you will not lose yourself in grief. Play your role on the stage of life; you will play it better if you prepare yourself to accept what fate may have in store for you (Seddon 2005: Handbook sections 3, 4 and 17). So, for the Stoics, too, the happiness that is tranquility of mind is reached by strong convictions about (meta)physics and the position of man in the universe. It is coupled with continuous training in the correct rational attitude to meet the vicissitudes of life that may threaten apatheia. Armed with philosophy and the powers of logic and argument, the Stoic can play his or her role in all positions in life, preserving apatheia, without having to avoid anything. The Stoic Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) combined being a successful emperor and general with daily meditations about his own

Ataraxia

conduct and that of the people around him, thus preparing himself for the days ahead (his Meditations is a good read). Let us now move to the other end of the spectrum. While Epicureans and Stoics use distinct dogmatic views to find ataraxia, Academic skeptics and Pyrrhonists take such conflicts between the schools as a clear sign that ataraxia is not to be reached by dogmatism. They do so by denying that we possess any independent criteria to decide between conflicting views. At this point the Academic skeptics and Pyrrhonists part ways. The Academic skeptics reach the conclusion that truth cannot be found: in this sense they are radical skeptics. In practice, their aim is not so much ataraxia anymore. Instead, they devote themselves to critical discussions of conflicting views, in order to choose their own course of action based on plausibility, and trial and error. The philosophical dialogues of the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–63 BCE) are a well-known example of this approach. The Pyrrhonists, on the other hand, draw a different conclusion from the conflicting opinions between the schools. While their goal is still ataraxia, they believe it is to be reached in a different way. They collect the evidence and arguments on both sides of the issue, and then invariably find that the pros and cons have equal force. In the absence of a criterion to break the tie, they are necessarily led to the suspension of judgement. The Pyrrhonists express suspension of judgement by conspicuously non-committal phrases such as “I determine nothing,” or “X no more than Y” (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism 1.14).4 They find that ataraxia follows the suspension of judgement without further effort. In the words of Sextus: [Pyrrhonism] is an ability [dunamis] to set up an opposition of appearances and thoughts, in any way at all, an ability from which we come, through the equal force [isostheneia] of the opposing statements and states of affairs, first into suspension [epoche], and after that into freedom from disturbance [ataraxia]. Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Scepticism 1.8

Sextus defines the notion of equal force as “neither of the contending discourses lies ahead of any other as being more convincing.” Suspension is “a standstill of reason through which we neither deny nor assert anything.” Ataraxia is “the unburdened and tranquil condition of the soul” (Outlines 1.10).

4

Translations of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Scepticism are taken from Annas and Barnes 2000; the numbers refer to the book (1) and section (8) of Sextus’s text.

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The Pyrrhonists practice suspension of judgement only in matters of philosophical belief but live their everyday life by following immediate appearances (phainomena) without committing to their truth or to any explanation of them. Sextus Empiricus lists four types of such appearances that serve as criteria for action (Outlines 1.23–24): [1] the guidance of nature, viz. our natural capacities for perception and thought; [2] necessary affections, which make us eat when hungry, drink when thirsty; [3] the tradition of (religious) customs and laws, which determine what the Pyrrhonist pragmatically accepts as being pious or just when living in a city; and [4] instruction in the crafts, which allows the Pyrrhonist to make a living. In all these cases the Pyrrhonists just follow what immediate appearances and the thoughts they provoke suggest them to do. Let us return to ataraxia. Suspension of judgement somehow ushers in ataraxia, but how? Again, Sextus emphasizes that the aim is not to achieve absence of all kinds of disturbance: [29] Now the Pyrrhonists were hoping to acquire tranquillity by deciding the anomalies in what appears and is thought of, and being unable to do this they suspended judgement. But when they suspended judgement, tranquillity followed as it were fortuitously, as a shadow follows a body. We do not, however, take Pyrrhonists to be undisturbed in every way—we say that they are disturbed by things which are forced upon them; for we agree that at times they shiver and are thirsty and have other feelings of this kind. [30] But in these cases ordinary people are afflicted by two sets of circumstances: by the feelings themselves, and no less by believing that these circumstances are bad by nature. Sceptics, who shed the additional opinion that each of these things is bad in its nature, come off more moderately even in these cases. This, then, is why we say that the aim of Pyrrhonists is tranquillity in matters of belief, and moderation of feeling in matters forced upon us. (Some eminent Pyrrhonists have added as a further aim suspension of judgement in investigations.) Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Scepticism 1.29–30

The first paragraph suggests that the Pyrrhonists started out looking for definitive answers, until they were forced to suspend judgement, and stumbled upon tranquility. Furthermore, tranquility is described as a shadow that follows a body as it were fortuitously (Outlines 1.29), subsequent to the suspension of judgement. But a body in the light necessarily casts a shadow. Does this not cause the Pyrrhonists to jump too easily to suspension of belief, and the equipollence

Ataraxia

of arguments on which it is based, because these are a necessary condition for ataraxia? I believe not. Sextus defines the end of Pyrrhonism as ataraxia, but that does not mean that the Pyrrhonists will force their hand to get there. They may acquiesce in the absence of equipollence and wait for further arguments to present themselves over time (Outlines 1.34). Nor can they affirm that ataraxia is necessarily caused by suspension of judgement, because Pyrrhonists also suspend judgement about the reality of causes and effects (Outlines 3.17–28). Every claim they make is nothing but the verbal expression of how reality appears to them at that moment in time (Outlines 1.15). When suspension of judgement is forced upon them, they tend to experience that the state of ataraxia follows. The third paragraph limits tranquility to matters of belief (doxasta) and explains that some necessities of life will cause disturbance to the Pyrrhonist regardless—when feeling cold or thirsty, moderation of such feelings is the proper aim (which seems to draw them closer to Epicureans and Stoics). But Sextus emphasizes that Pyrrhonists are better off than other people: Pyrrhonists only have to deal with the actual disturbance, not with any additional affections caused by dogmatic beliefs about what they should experience, or what their life should be like. For they do not commit to such additional beliefs altogether. Pyrrhonists are clear that they do not commit to any theory about how the world really is, and they claim they live without beliefs (adoxastōs) in that sense. But is it possible to have perceptions and thoughts, but not beliefs? Many ancient and modern readers of the Pyrrhonists believe it is not. If you eat when hungry you cannot do so without having formed the belief “I am hungry” and committed to it. Here we must be aware of a difference in terminology: in many ancient and modern philosophies a belief (doxa in Greek) is equivalent to “holding something to be true”—but that is exactly what Pyrrhonists avoid. Of course, they have the mental awareness of their feeling hungry, and their philosophy allows them to act on their awareness of that phenomenon. But accepting the phenomenon as a prompt for action does not mean commitment to any view about reality, let alone commitment to a theory that explains how the feeling of hunger comes about, and why it feels good to eat when hungry, etc. Pyrrhonists live by evident perceptual impressions and thoughts and suspend judgement on the truth of all claims that go beyond that to non-evident explanations or hypotheses. This, then, is how the Pyrrhonists were able to live a happy life characterized by tranquility of mind (ataraxia) and moderation of feelings. Among the philosophers that embraced ataraxia the Pyrrhonists promote most of all an

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open-minded and inquisitive attitude to the dogmatic claims of the philosophical schools, and a relaxed way of dealing with the necessities of daily life. If you feel threatened by the aggressive propaganda of scientific, political, or religious dogmatists, and if you do not wish social media to force you into any kind of political correctness or fear of missing out, the Pyrrhonist version of ataraxia may be a wholesome way of life for you to pursue.

References Annas, J. and J. Barnes (2000). Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diels, H. and W. Kranz (1974). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 2 vols, Bonn: Weidmann. Garfield, J.L. (1990). “Epochē and Śūnyatā: Scepticism East and West,” Philosophy East and West, 40(3): 285–307. Gowans, C.W. (2010). “Medical Analogies in Buddhist and Hellenistic Thought: Tranquillity and Anger,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 66: 11–33. Hard, R. and C. Gill (1997). Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: Meditations, Ware: Wordsworth. Hicks, R.D. (1970). Diogenes Laertus. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2 vols, London and Cambridge MA: William Heinemann Ltd./Harvard University Press. Inwood, B. and L.P. Gerson (1994). The Epicurus Reader. Selected Writings and Testimonia, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Kuzminski, A. (2008). Pyrrhonism. How the Greeks Reinvented Buddhism, Lanham MD: Lexington Books. McEvilley, T. (2002). The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies, New York: Allworth. Nussbaum, M.C. (1994). The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton NJ : Princeton University Press. Seddon, K. (2005). Epictetus’ Handbook and the Tablet of Cebes: Guides to Stoic Living, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Vogt, K.M., ed. (2015). Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius. Introduction, Text, Translation, Commentary and Interpretative Essays, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Ataraxia

Glossary ataraxia a Absence of disturbance, viz. the unburdened and tranquil condition of the soul. apatheia a Absence of negative affections and the wrong judgements from which these are believed to arise. Dogmatism Uncritical commitment to philosophical or religious beliefs taken as truths. Skepticism Commitment to open-ended critical research, avoiding dogmatism at all times, leading to suspension of judgement (Pyrrhonism), or outright denial of the possibility to ascertain any truth whatsoever (Academic skepticism).

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4 Continuous Inquiry Chiara Robbiano

Given all the contradictory information available to us, one might be driven to epistemic nihilism: the view that there is nothing to believe, since all beliefs can ultimately be undermined. However, the skeptic philosopher Sextus Empiricus recommends a different response to contradictory information, that is to practice continuous inquiry. His recommendation turns out to be highly relevant to our time.

What is Continuous Inquiry? Skepticism implies the suspension of belief in those certainties that we normally take to be reliable. At face value it might seem to undermine the legitimacy of all views and encourage the skeptic to dismiss them all. However, skepsis means “inquiry,” “investigation,” “research” in Ancient Greek. Sextus Empiricus (2–3 century CE), presents himself as belonging to a group of skeptic philosophers who keep on searching: they value the practice of continuous inquiry, which they practice as a way of life. But what do skeptics investigate? Why is inquiry valuable? Why does it have to be continuous? Sextus critically investigates statements by the “dogmatists,” by which he means those philosophers, scientists, and other experts who present the results of their research as definitive descriptions of ultimate reality. The dogmatists claim to know reality as it is, in itself, independently from the frameworks through which they look at it. But are such purported experts the only dogmatists? Or do we all tend “to dogmatize like infallible popes” (James 1896), without noticing our tendency to do so? Sextus’ method appears to reveal that we all often behave as dogmatists. We do so every time 39

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we take our own account of a certain issue as true and are uninterested in any conflicting account.1 However, what if we find out time and again that all claims seem to be made from a certain perspective (e.g. a disciplinary framework or personal beliefs) and that the supposed “view from nowhere” is not accessible to us? Will we then still be willing to differentiate between a claim to truth—e.g. about how a certain virus spreads—published in a peer-reviewed journal, and one posted on a blog? Or will our continuous examination of claims that present appearance as ultimate truth result in blurring the difference between opinions and science? Luckily, we have no reason to worry. The practice of continuous inquiry consists in continuously assessing what perspective and what kind of arguments led someone to formulate a truthclaim about the reality underlying a phainomenon (i.e. “appearance,” what is apparent to someone, in a certain context). By investigating, we will, for instance, find out how one’s allegedly true explanation needs to be supported in order to be published in a certain journal and that it will be subject to correction by peers—as opposed to being posted on one’s private blog, Twitter or Facebook. Continuous inquiry can be seen as conducive both to a critical attitude and to a humble one. We might well conclude that neither the claim of the blog nor that of the peer-reviewed article should be taken— or presented—as ultimate truth: both will probably be corrected soon, or completed by other findings. Scientists, such as medical doctors, should keep investigating, so that we can rely on their judgements: Sextus explicitly recommends being informed by the “teaching of kinds of expertise (didaskalia technôn)”—which might well include articles in peer-reviewed journals and not include blog posts—in order to live and act among other people, while attending to what appears to us (PH 1. 23),2 i.e. what is apparent to me, in a certain context, at a certain moment, from a certain point of view. If continuous inquiry can provide us with a better attitude towards the onslaught of competing truth-claims we are confronted with, then continuous inquiry, a practice that might encourage critical thinking, thoroughness, and humility when dealing with such truth-claims, and that is offered as a way of life, deserves further exploration.

1

About the value of epistemic friction with conflicting accounts, see Vaidya, Chapter 10 in this volume. 2 The other three points to keep in mind are “guidance by nature,” which refers to our perceptual and cognitive apparatus, “necessitation by feelings,” which refers to hunger and thirst, and “handing down of laws and customs” (I. 23–24).

Continuous Inquiry

Who was Sextus Empiricus? The Greek philosopher and physician Sextus Empiricus writes at the beginning of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH: Pyrrōneioi Hypotypōseis) “in the case of philosophical investigations . . . some have said that they have discovered the truth (to alêthes), some have asserted that it cannot be apprehended, and others are still investigating” (PH 1.2).3 Here he distinguishes between the Dogmatists, the Academics and the Skeptics. The “Dogmatists” at some point stop their inquiry, because they think they have found the truth about concepts such as truth, God, change, or cause (Cf. PH, books 2 and 3). The Academics, in contrast, stop because they are certain that the truth cannot be found. Sextus identifies himself with a third group: the “skeptics,” which means “inquirers,” “researchers,” who keep on searching: (“zêtousi hoi skeptikoi,” PH 1.3). Their method consists of zêtein—searching— and skeptesthai—examining, inquiring—in the tradition of Pyrrho (4th–3rd century BCE) (PH 1.7). Pyrrhonian Skepticism is not a doctrine, but an agôgê: a way of doing research and of living—“this Greek word signifies ‘conduct’ in every sense of the term: the directing of an army, the conduct of political affairs, the manner of conducting one’s life, the manner of conducting a piece of reasoning or intellectual research” (Pellegrin 2010: 124). Skepticism is thus a way of life, a practice that must continually be reenacted. What kind of practice and effort are the skeptics recommending? What kind of goal are they hoping to achieve with their efforts?

Background to the Conduct of the Skeptics Sextus reports the experience of talented men of the past who were troubled by the contradictory accounts that were available to them on the nature of reality. They started their research—hoping to be relieved upon finding the truth (PH 1.12). But on further investigation, they could not find “the external substances” (ta exôthen hupokeimena): the things as they are, the entities that are out there (exôthen) and that are not visible or non-evident (adêla) to us (PH 1.13–15). They were left only with how things appeared to

3

All translations from PH are Annas and Barnes (2000).

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them at the moment. But they came to the realization that these appearances are conditioned by many factors, which can themselves be looked into, discovered, and clarified, but never put aside entirely so as to enable one to see how things ultimately are. Then the unexpected happened. As soon as they suspended judgment about things in themselves, they found that they stopped being troubled. By this method they reached ataraxia:4 “tranquility” (Annas and Barnes 2000) or “undisturbedness” (Woodruff 2010: 212).

Why does letting go of the ultimate truth lead neither to losing one’s discriminatory capacity, nor to stopping the inquiry? We might ask why Sextus takes these people-of-old as role models? In particular, one might worry that once the hope of reaching the absolute truth is gone, one would regard any fake news as indistinguishable from the conclusions of well-respected scientists based on replicable research—in that they would both fail to qualify as “ultimately true.” We might therefore be concerned that such researchers, once “undisturbed,” will have naturally stopped researching and become lazy. However, the contrary was true! Sextus explains that it is those who believe they have found the truth who stop searching; the same happens to those who are certain that ultimate truth cannot be found (the Academic Skeptics from which he distinguishes himself). On the contrary, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics keep on searching, questioning, and investigating.

Interpretations of Sextus’ project Many agree that Sextus’ inquiry is not aimed at finding the truth about what hides behind appearances. However, Machuca (2011: 157) suggests that

4

See Frans de Haas, Chapter 3 in this volume.

Continuous Inquiry

Sextus’ open-mindedness still allows the skeptic to hope to find the truth about things in themselves; and that the project of continuous investigation would not make sense if such hope did not exist. However, continuous inquiry does make sense when understood as an attitude rather than as a method for attaining absolute truth. Palmer (2000: 369) argues that Sextus is not after the truth; rather he: attempts to recover the project of philosophical inquiry from what seems to him a misguided and ultimately unnecessary pursuit of truth. Thus, . . . he describes the Pyrrhonian’s project as applying, in the manner of a physician, various arguments to dogmatic philosophers to cure them of their conceit and rashness. He sets out to relieve the minds of his patients of the belief that they have discovered truth.

But why would one set off to endlessly refute the dogmatist’s rash explanations of the truth? Is Sextus’ life goal to keep confuting other people who did not ask for it? Annas and Barnes (2000) agree with Palmer that Sextus does not look for the truth but for arguments to convince the dogmatists of the contradictoriness of their own reasoning. They also defend Sextus against those who find his arguments against the dogmatists weak and not formally valid: it is the strength of Sextus’ arguments not to be universally valid, they say, but their being designed to convince specific philosophers of the rashness of their conclusions (Annas and Barnes 2000: XXIX). Garfield (2015: 37) refers to Sextus as a western philosopher who would appreciate the “Buddhist idea that our objects of knowledge . . . are dependent on both external and internal conditions and cannot be taken to be independent in any sense.” Garfield (1990: 295) sees Sextus’ project as similar in its therapeutic value to those of the Buddha, Nāgārjuna and Wittgenstein, i.e. “to cure the philosopher” from the misconception that “underlying any reasonable practice must be some set of certain propositions, and that underlying those propositions must be some convention-independent, ontologically given reality.” However, a project that regards the truth about reality as impossible to find is difficult to swallow for some interpreters. Annas and Barnes (2000: XXXI) accept it as therapeutic philosophy but are plainly dismissive about it for preferring happiness to knowledge. Rather than trying to sort out these conflicting interpretations, we now return to the exploration of Sextus’ conception of skepsis, or inquiry, as a practice that needs to always be continued. What, how and why does one— as a researcher and as a human being—need to continue investigating?

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What and How are the Skeptics Investigating? In response to the question of what they are investigating, Palmer (2000: 366–368) argues that the skeptic’s inquiry is a second order inquiry, namely, an examination of the background for statements and theories, and of different views on how things are. But the question of how they are investigating is also important. The skeptics proceed by setting things in opposition (PH 1.31–1.35), looking for opposed or conflicting judgments (antikeimenoi logoi, or makhomenoi logoi, PH 1.10) to any given claim, for contrasting views on a certain phenomenon. Such a method of study often reveals the situatedness of various contenders to the truth, and the impossibility of deciding whose view is closer to reality. Moreover, by studying different explanations, one will discover the internal contradictions of various claims and whether they involve infinite regresses or vicious circles—or whether the conclusions of such arguments are dependent on background assumptions that cannot be accounted for. The Ten Modes (tropoi) are among the various “tools” or arguments given by Sextus against dogmatism. Each mode makes us aware of one of the ten factors on which what appears to us is dependent. What appears to one depends (1) on what kind of animal, or (2) human being one is; (3) on what sense perceives the appearance; (4) on the “condition” or “circumstance” in which one is—this mode is quite striking in arguing (PH 1.100–1.117) that in order to decide who, between two contestants, perceives the things as they are, the judge would need to have “no circumstances”: to be in no conditions whatsoever. “But to say that he is in no condition whatsoever (i.e. neither healthy nor sick, neither moving nor at rest, of no particular age, and free from the other conditions) is perfectly incongruous” (PH 1.112). In fact, there is no person in no condition whatsoever.5 What appears to one also depends (5) on how our senses and the object that appears to us are positioned; (6) on whether anything mediates between them, e.g. air, water, or the mind (“our intellect . . . too produces some admixture of its own to add to what is announced by the senses” PH 1.128); (7) on the form and quantity in which the subject encounters the object that appears to them: 5

Cooper (2002:184–186) takes this reasoning further and shows that a being in no condition and with no way of life, whom he calls “super-spectator,” could not see anything since nothing would show up for them.

Continuous Inquiry

“Wine drunk in moderation fortifies us, but taken in greater quantity enfeebles the body” (PH 1.131); (8) on any other factor to which the appearance is related and therefore depends on; (9) on whether the appearance is rare or common; and (10) on whether one is culturally inclined to mistake it for the truth, that is, if it conforms to one’s laws, customs, beliefs and our scientific conceptions (PH 1.145–1.163) (confirmation bias).

The Status of Modes and Other Tools What is the status of the Ten Modes, and other argumentative tools that Sextus discusses in PH, Book 1, that lead to the suspension of judgment? Is Sextus forsaking his skepticism and accepting all these tools as themselves infallible? Obviously not: his practice consists in using the tool he has reason to think might help in certain circumstances. The value of the tool is in its use. Sextus compares his tools to “purgative drugs” that “do not merely drain the humours from the body but drive themselves out too along with the humours” (PH 1.206). Here Sextus is not admitting that his tools are selfrefuting; rather that, in each case, the skeptic decides to apply a specific tool that might provide a cure from dogmatizing in this specific situation— without having to commit themselves to any underlying reality or a universal method by doing so. In the same way, the skeptic might well infer fire from smoke: their reasoning would be “relying on my past experience, it seems to me that what has struck me as smoke is a sign of what has struck me as fire” (PH 2.102). As Pellegrin explains, such an inference is just meant as being useful to make sense of a specific situation (2010: 133). Woodruff (2010: 210) rightly suggests that a Pyrrhonian skeptic might apply a therapeutic mode to themselves in order: “to strengthen [them] in resisting felt temptations to dogmatize.” Woodruff faults Sextus for stopping his search as soon as he has found two contrasting claims rather than continuing the inquiry (2010: 212). But Woodruff ’s charge is not warranted. By stressing that the skeptics “report descriptively on each item according to how it appears to us at the time (kata to nun: lit. ‘in the now’)” (PH 1.4), Sextus does encourage us to never stop the inquiry. He justifies the effort we must make—over and over again—not to mistake appearances for things as they are and not to start dogmatizing. Let’s dwell on this a little longer: why does one need to continue their inquiry even after finding arguments for the suspension of judgment?

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Sextus Explains Why We Should Continue Investigating Explanations About Appearances and Claims About Things as They Are Sextus’ project needs to be seen against the background of what might well be a human tendency: to fall into dogmatism. Humans do not tend to be proactive in investigating whether what appears to them could appear completely different from a different perspective.6 We often mistake what appears to us for what would appear to anyone else and for what we assume is real. Even if we might be used to applying Sextus’ tools to claims to truth, still we might accept something as real if it has appeared to us in a certain way often enough. For example, we might accept what is expressed by the laws and customs of our community as good and we might accept a recent scientific explanation as reflecting how reality ultimately works, at face value. That is the reason why Sextus believes that we should keep investigating explanations and truth claims. Because if we stop practicing this continuous examination, we might too easily fall back down the slippery slope of dogmatism. It is rather too easy for us to hold on to what appears to us, take it for the truth, and forget to investigate how the same phenomenon would appear from another perspective. So it might well be that, during the course of our lives, we will be offered better and better models of reality for prediction purposes and will come to continually improve our understanding of how things hang together. But it might, then, be wise to remember that any model is based on discipline-specific assumptions and will be subject to constant revision. In this sense, we should always be ready to revise our understanding of things. We should always keep in mind the importance of continuous inquiry and of resistance against the tendency to dogmatize. To conclude, it is worthwhile contemplating the possibility of applying Sextus’ arguments, not only to become more aware and responsible readers of the latest news, but also to tame the dogmatist tendency within ourselves, both as citizens, agents, and researchers within a certain discipline. In this

6 I explore Sextus’ recommendations towards this kind of investigation together with the corresponding recommendations of the Zen Buddhist philosopher Dōgen, in Robbiano 2022.

Continuous Inquiry

light, we can understand the difference between Sextus’ attitude and that of someone who would be happy to claim, once and for all, that truth will never be found. Such a blanket statement regarding the impossibility of knowledge acquisition would neither be coherent with Sextus’ intention not to dogmatize (Palmer 2000: 371–372), nor would it sit well with the project of continuous inquiry, which is meant to be performed over and over again, in every situation where one might take what appears to us to be the truth. The significance of the practice of continuous inquiry is rooted in our natural tendency to get stuck in what appears to us, which we tend to mistake for the truth. Continuous inquiry constantly reminds us that no ultimate truth about reality underlies our actions and our claims. Instead, personal beliefs, societal customs, disciplinary assumptions, and provisional truths are the material one needs to continuously examine and reassess.

References Cooper, D.E. (2002). The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery, Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, William. (1896). “The Will to Believe,” The New World, 5: 327–347. Garfield, Jay L. (2015). Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford: University Press. Garfield, Jay L. (1990). “Epoche and Śūnyatā: Skepticism East and West,” Philosophy East and West: 40(3): 285–307. Machuca, D.E. (2011). “The Pyrrhonian Argument from Possible Disagreement,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 93(2): 148–161. Palmer, J.A. (2000). Skeptical investigation. Ancient Philosophy 20(2): 351–375. Pellegrin, Pierre (2010). “Sextus Empiricus,” The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 120–141, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robbiano, Chiara (2022). “Continuous Decentering—Sextus and Dōgen,” Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, 4, 165–182. Sextus Empiricus (2000). Outlines of Scepticism (Pyrrōneioi Hypotypōseis), Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Referred to here as PH, followed by book number and section number. Sextus Empiricus. ([1933] 1993). Outlines of Pyrrhonism, RG Bury trans, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. Woodruff, P. (2010). “The Pyrrhonian Modes,” The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 208–231, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Glossary appearance (Ancient Greek: phainomenon) What is apparent to someone, in a certain context, at a certain moment, from a certain point of view. ataraxia a (Greek) Undisturbedness or tranquility. Continuous inquiry The practice consisting in never stopping the “inquiry,” “investigation,” “research” on claims presented as the truth: what perspective and what kind of arguments led someone to present a statement about what appears to them as the truth. Dogmatist Someone who takes their account of a certain issue as ultimately true. Epistemic nihilism The view that there is nothing to believe, since all beliefs can ultimately be undermined. Second order inquiry An examination of the positions that inform statements and theories. skepsiss (Greek) Inquiry, investigation, research. Substances (Greek: ta hupokeimena hupokeimena)) Things as they are in themselves Ultimate truth The characteristic of an account that is independent from one’s perceptual apparatus, the goals of one’s inquiry and one’s disciplinary framework, one’s beliefs, one’s perspective and any other circumstances. Undisturbedness or tranquility (Greek ataraxia ataraxia)) one’s state of mind after stopping being troubled

5 Emptiness Jason M. Wirth

As you are reading this short chapter on Buddhist “emptiness,” the implications of the Anthropocene, the current hypothesis that anthropogenic ecological changes are so vast that they constitute a new geological epoch, are becoming clearer, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine that our species can continue “business as usual.” The global economy consists of various market-driven, capital-intensive strategies, which share the collective illusion that they are self-perpetuating, and which logically demand ever-increasing growth. Yet the earth, which seemed incomprehensibly vast to the human imagination a relatively short few centuries ago, now seems diminished. Most ecologies have been compromised and up to a million species of animals and plants are on a path to extinction. Population growth is straining the carrying capacity of the earth. Pollution has compromised our air and water. We have crossed several tipping points (or points of no return) and have consequently locked in some dangerous climate change patterns that the next few generations will have to endure. The seemingly limitless Earth is exposing its limits, limits which cap our capacity for economic growth, population expansion, development, consumption, and resource extraction. Yet global economies are still utterly dependent on the burning of fossil fuels, even though we only have a finite and non-renewable amount of them. The burning of the ones that we have identified will make our bioregions increasingly resistant to life as we currently know it. Who we understand ourselves to be—the values that guide our modes of earth habitation, structure our economies, and direct our politics—is looking increasingly unsustainable. We should nonetheless tread carefully in regard to the Anthropocene, the proposed newly emerging geological epoch in which human lifeways have decisively altered the conditions of the Holocene (the 49

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reigning geological epoch that began with the end of the Ice Age and in which life, including human civilization, flourished). It does not follow that all ways of being human destructively alter the ecological conditions that sustain them. It is the rise of a certain way of being human that is coming into crisis. I consider my key concept, what Mahāyāna Buddhism calls “emptiness” (Sanskrit: śūnyatā), in relation to this increasingly dire and exigent ecological context. I also briefly suggest how it can open appreciative cross-cultural channels of communication with some of the resilient contemporary indigenous cultures. Śūnyatā is a puzzling term when translated as emptiness and left at that. It sounds like the world that we thought we had was an illusion, and that enlightenment somehow wakes us up to see that there is no reality behind the illusion. It is empty, a mere void. Śūnyatā holds not that being is an illusion, but rather that the independent, discrete existence of individual beings is an illusion. This does not mean that the world is deceiving us. When the great Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dōgen (1200–1253) traveled to China to deepen his practice, he realized, as he recounts in the Tenzo Kyōkun (Instructions to the Monastery Cook), “Everywhere, nothing hidden.” The world is not deceiving us. It is we who are deluded, and, in our delusion, we grasp at select things and, because such attachments are often thwarted, we rage against whatever stands in their way. Yet, as Dōgen taught, in our attachment, the petals still fall and, in our aversion, the weeds still grow. We may love the spring flowers, or the charm of our youthful bodies, or the feeling of vigorous health, or the dream of infinite economic growth. Yet the petals fall to the ground and wilt, our bodies grow old, and our health loses its vigor and one day gives out altogether. Our economies will one day deplete the earth. We may hate weeds, but if we do not pull them, they take over the garden. We may hate that we die, but death takes no notice. We may want our economies to grow forever, but the earth will not play along. The historical Buddha called these the three poisons (Sanskrit: trivi.sa): 1. attachment, clinging, lust, greed (Sanskrit: raga), and 2. its concomitant opposite, aversion, and hatred (Sanskrit: dve.sa); and underlying both is 3. our blindness and delusion (Sanskrit: avidyā, and moha). It is our delusory grasp of things that makes us complicitous in our own suffering. We see things abstractly, torn from their dynamic ecologies, and cling to the things we desire and battle the ones that contest those desires. We do this first and foremost with ourselves, obsessing on idealized senses of ourselves, only to be crushingly disappointed. We impose all kinds of conditions on life, but do not see that our very existence is due to underlying conditions. Emptiness is consequently a technique for demonstrating not

Emptiness

that things do not exist, but rather they do not have “self-being” (Sanskrit: svabhāva), that is, independent, self-same, autonomous existence. On a conventional level, we imagine that we are autonomously existing first and foremost as ourselves, but that is an abstraction in which we ignore the underlying causes and conditions that we share dynamically with all other things. If, for example, I am just me, and therefore not water, food, oxygen, education, language, good parenting, then we can just take all those underlying interdependent factors away and I can just be myself. But if that happened, I would disappear, because I am the dynamic interrelation of all these factors. These are the four marks of existence, which is not an aggregate of independently existing things, but more concretely and intimately nonself (Sanskrit: anātman, no discrete, independent self), non-permanence (Sanskrit: anitya), emptiness (Sanskrit: śūnyatā), and dependent coorigination (Sanskrit: pratītyasamutpāda, the interdependence of beings in a web or net of beings rather than a collection of discretely existing beings). The emptiness of a non-permanent non-self does not mean the negation of its existence. It is rather the realization that it cannot account for itself solely through itself. There are no fixed and definitive walls to the self. Rather, it derives its being by sharing it with all the other beings who are originating dependently through each other and through their mutual causes and conditions. Even the latter emerge through dependent co-origination or pratītyasamutpāda. I may not have a fixed self, but I am implicated intimately and dynamically in all beings, now and here. Even emptiness is empty. There is no such thing as emptiness per se. It also only appears relative to the illusion of fixed selfsame existence (Sanskrit: svabhāva). It is a medicinal technique to help cure us of the pain of our delusory fixed views. The master of this was Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE) in his masterpiece, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way. But we must be careful. If we imagine that emptiness is getting rid of all things and replacing them with the vague and nebulous status of emptiness, then we have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. The medicine that sought to cure us of all fixed views (Sanskrit: prapañca) becomes the most toxic prapañca or view of all: “those for whom emptiness is a prapañca have been called incurable” (Nāgārjuna 2013: 145). His great successor, Chandrakīrti, quotes the Buddha’s dialogue with Kāśyapa on this point. If the psychic or purgative to cure a disease is not itself expelled, is the person cured? Kāśyapa responded that the “illness of the person would be more intense” (quoted in Nāgārjuna 2013: 145). Even those who hypostatize the Buddha, Nāgārjuna later argues, are “deceived” and “fail to see the Tathāgata [Buddha]”

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(Nāgārjuna 2013: 250). As the great Tang Dynasty Master Linji Yixuan 㠘☏㗙 ⦴ (d. 866 CE) famously proclaimed, apropos of this critical insight: “On meeting a Buddha slay the Buddha” (Linji 2009: 236). There is no Buddha hidden behind the veil of being. In demonstrating the dependent coorigination of things, now and here, one is becoming more intimately aware of our shared being. We are not annihilating it with an even greater abstraction called emptiness. “Emptiness misunderstood destroys the slow-witted, like a serpent wrongly held or a spell wrongly executed” (Nāgārjuna 2013: 274). An insight into non-self, non-permanence, and emptiness, is therefore an insight into our mutual arising with all things, our dependent co-origination. This is also how an ecology works, although the science of ecology cannot articulate the curative powers of its own insights. Yet ecology demonstrates that, for example, there are no elephants per se. If you take away the causes and conditions of elephants (habitat, water, air, food, freedom from the global ivory trade, etc.), there are no elephants. They mutually arise, along with all the beings with whom they share their being, within the ecology that enables such life. From this perspective, we can see that the abstract mode of human living that has given rise to the Anthropocene is alienated from the ecologies that, at least so far, sustain it. It is here that we can also begin to detect an opening into a consequential and timely intercultural philosophical dialogue with some of the newly resurgent indigenous cultures or First Nations peoples. (All of these terms have their limitations, and the search for more appropriate and respectful names should also be a part of the dialogue and the learning.) For starters, however, as we sober up to the fact that global lifeways are on the verge of being catastrophically unsustainable, we have the opportunity to admit that we have a lot to learn. Such humility, by the way, is necessary if philosophy is going to break out of its cultural isolation and academic obscurantism and strive to speak to, and on behalf of, all humans. (And Buddhists do not stop with humans nor do philosophers like Donna Haraway (2007) who consider our interspecies being.) It should not, therefore, be surprising that the Intergovernmental SciencePolicy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services admits that indigenous peoples are “often better placed than scientists to provide detailed information on local biodiversity and environmental change and are important contributors to the governance of biodiversity from local to global levels.” Yet the same report does not fail to notice that indigenous lands are among the most vulnerable on earth. They tend to be poor and under-resourced in the capitalist sense and are consequently the easiest to exploit without legal repercussions. “They also suffer directly from the

Emptiness

pressures of expanding agriculture frontiers and commodity production, such as mining, logging, and energy.”1 Those who have contributed the least to the Anthropocene, and who have reaped the least from it, are not only the ones who suffer most from it but are also the ones most likely to be on the forefront of doing something significant about it. This was one of the most important conclusions, for example, from Naomi Klein’s groundbreaking, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (2015). So not every anthropos [human] is automatically the anthropos of the Anthropocene. In fact, the trend seems to be the inverse: the less you contribute to the Anthropocene, the more you are likely to bear its brunt. It follows that the only humanity that matters to many of the global power structures is the self-destructive anthropos of the Anthropocene, the abstract anthropos that would be lord and whose political and economic systems render other forms of humanity irrelevant. Yet some of those who live closer to natural systems and the cultures that sustainably emerged from them remember the stories and other transgenerational transmissions necessary for new generations to survive and flourish. In this respect, it is important to remember that all empires and all expansionist cultures that maintain themselves by dominating their lands and the lands of others have been relatively short lived. The only cultures that have been long lived are the indigenous subsistence cultures that learned, often the hard way, to live within the means of their bioregion and to take responsibility for that bioregion. Empires—and perhaps the Anthropocene is the great global empire—have abstract and idealized senses of themselves and, as such, dominate and attempt to control the very conditions that sustain them. They do not cooperate or co-create with them, and eventually collapse. Glen Sean Coulthard of the Yellowknives Dene (in Canada’s Northwest Territories) is an example of the many powerful voices that challenge the spatial alienation of the global Anthropocene. In Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, he argued that indigenous place was experienced as “grounded normativity” that was “deeply informed by what the land as system of reciprocal relations and obligations can teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondominating and nonexploitative terms” (Coulthard 2014: 13). Marx understood that capitalism produced temporal alienation as it stole the time of the proletariat (I have no time to live my own life because I spend all of

1

For the report, see https://ipbes.net.

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my time producing wealth for what we would now call the upper centile). Granting this, Coultard further argues that indigenous peoples, most of whom have had their land stolen, have more deeply lost the place of their being. The “place is a way of knowing, of experiencing and relating to the world and with others.” In his indigenous language, the word for “land” is understood “in relational terms as that which encompasses not only the land (understood here as material), but also people and animals, rocks and trees, lakes and rivers, and so on. Seen in this light, we are as much a part of the land as any other element” (Coulthard 2014: 61) and hence these relations entail ethical responsibilities and obligations. We are where we are, that is, we are the dependent co-origination of the bioregions that sustain us and to which we respond in reciprocity. This reveals another irony of the Anthropocene: we are everywhere, but at home almost nowhere. We extend over the space of the earth at unprecedented levels, but we are also spatially alienated to an unprecedented degree. Cross-cultural philosophy is not just a potentially interesting intellectual exercise. It is to begin to reconsider at a global and intercultural level how we might otherwise live. It is also an invitation to inhabit the space of mutually arising bioregional-being differently. This is what Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann called “reinhabitation,” which: means learning to live-in-place in an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation. It involves becoming native to a place through becoming aware of the particular ecological relationships that operate within and around it. It means undertaking activities and evolving social behavior that will enrich the life of that place, restore its life-supporting systems, and establish an ecologically and socially sustainable pattern of existence within it. Simply stated it involves becoming fully alive in and with a place. It involves applying for membership in a biotic community and ceasing to be its exploiter. Berg and Dasmann 2015: 36

I think it is fair to say that if we do not reinhabit even philosophy itself, that is, reconsider philosophy’s capacity to help us live here and now as native to a place, it may be game over for our species.

References Berg, Peter, and Raymond Dasmann (2015). “Reinhabiting California” in The Biosphere and the Bioregion: Essential Writings of Peter Berg, edited by

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Cheryll Glotfelty and Eve Quesnel, 35–40. London and New York: Routledge. Coulthard, Glen Sean (2014). Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, Donna (2007). When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Klein, Naomi (2015). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. New York: Simon and Schuster. Linji (2009). The Record of Linji. Trans. Ruth Fuller Saski. Ed. Thomas Yūhō Kirchner. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Nāgārjuna (2013). Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā). Translated and edited by Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura. Boston: Wisdom Publications.

Glossary Emptiness (Sanskrit: s´u ´ u¯ nyatta¯ ) One of the Buddhist marks or characteristics of being, along with non-self (Sanskrit: ana¯ tman), non-permanence (Sanskrit: anityaa), and dependent co-origination (Sanskrit: prat¯ı tyasamutpa¯ daa). It indicates the lack of selfsame or intrinsic being (Sanskrit: svabha¯ vaa) of things. Land Place of being understood in relational terms, which encompasses not only the material land, but also people and animals, rocks and trees, lakes and rivers, and so on.

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6 Epistemic Decolonization of Culture Omar Rivera

Focusing on philosophies from the postcolonial Americas, I turn to the epistemic implications of colonial legacies of cultural oppression. Through the interrelated work of María Lugones and Gloria Anzaldúa in particular, I offer a critique of modes of knowing that mobilize the fiction of a universal, objective reason and, thus, marginalize the epistemic role of the body embedded in culture. Through Lugones’ Decolonial Feminism, I trace the way colonially rooted social power represses cultural formations and renders knowledge as neutral, abstract and conceptual, even “postcultural.” This approach reveals epistemic values entangled with colonialism, like selfcertainty, neutrality, and communicability. Through Anzaldúa’s Chicana Feminism, I unpack heterosexualism as a colonially enforced social relation that conditions cultural formations so as to restrict queer, bodily, affective and sensuous epistemic dispositions. I end by suggesting ways in which Lugones and Anzaldúa complement one another, laying the groundwork for a critical epistemology that centers on the effects of social power on culture.

“Culture” and Anticolonial Epistemologies In Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldúa reflects on the relationship between culture and knowledge in a way that guides my discussion. She states: 57

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“Culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through culture” (Anzaldúa 2007: 38). From her perspective, “culture” forms and transmits knowledge without being determined by expectations of universal validity or submitted to the objectifying gaze of an abstract self. Instead, she understands embodied processes of cultural formation to lay out in advance the intelligibility from which the “self ” comes to know. Anticolonial epistemologies, like those developed by Anzaldúa and Lugones, critique philosophical positions that deny the antecedent, epistemic role of embodied culture. In particular, they study the social contexts that enforce this denial, and the colonially rooted power relations that enable renderings of experiences of knowing as objective, abstract and selfreflective. Anticolonial epistemologies attend to culturally determined bodies pre-reflectively enacting epistemic claims about the world (as in the case of gendered behaviors that are oriented by assumed social meanings of masculinity and femininity); to beliefs validated by affective dispositions (like respect for the epistemic authority of fathers, priests, and educators); and to affectively charged, moral responses discerning crises in need of resolution (such as indignation toward political injustices). In other words, they start with the lived experience of knowledge, which in the Americas demands an epistemic decolonization of culture; that is, the dismantling of the ways colonial social formations marginalize the embodied and cultural dimensions of what is experienced and validated as knowledge. This kind of epistemic decolonization is an aspect of multifaceted decolonizing processes that seek to undo the systemic dehumanization of marginalized peoples in contemporary postcolonial societies.

The Epistemic Repression of Culture—On Postcultural Transparency According to María Lugones Lugones shows that colonialist social orders enforce the fiction of a disembodied and “postcultural” rational vantage point that presents culture

Epistemic Decolonization of Culture

as irrational. Related colonial understandings of knowledge based on the transportability of the book and on communicability and alphabetic writing, as well as on scientific and instrumental reasoning, support the repression of the epistemic function of embodied culture. This repression is mostly attained, however, through colonial dynamics of social power. The convergence of race and gender as colonial social categories deems the oppressed person irrational and, thus, subhuman. Their apparent lack of reason is evidenced by their supposed overdetermination by cultural forces, which is perceived as their inability to act and know as autonomous, selfcertain, self-conscious egos. The colonized, colonized women in particular, in their perceived inability to access—or even strive for—the vantage point of reason, are thus culturally marked as subhuman in a way that complements and validates their racial and gendered dehumanization. This results in a colonialist epistemology that affirms transcending of cultural determinants, of the contingency of beliefs, and of habits and affects carried in bodies. In this respect, Lugones, as a woman of color, recalls the statement, “culture is what happens to other people” (2003: 125); the “others,” like her, being the oppressed in their overwhelming irrational and racialized corporeality. Colonialist, and modern, dominant positionalities, on the other hand, supposedly transcend culture in their rationality, and access universal truths. Lugones also points out that there is something “funny” about the statement “culture is what happens to other people.” Those who “other” the oppressed as culturally overdetermined, that is, as lacking reason, forget that their own epistemic forms, even in their apparent neutrality and transcendence of the contingencies of culture are, in fact, also embedded in a culture. This forgetfulness seems “funny,” that is, obviously questionable. Yet it hides something sinister: colonial social power enables this forgetting, specifically through a repression of culture as an epistemic factor, which coincides with the dehumanization of the oppressed. I underscore the visual register of Lugones’ account: “Only the culture of people who are culturally transparent is worth knowing, but it does not count as a culture. The people whose culture it is are postcultural. Their culture is invisible to them and thus nonexistent as such” (2003: 125). In colonial and postcolonial social contexts, the dominant culture is transparent. That is, its constitutive role in the perceiving and knowing of reality cannot be detected by dominant social perspectives. I build on this analysis to posit the contrasting visibility of colonized cultures. They are seen aligned with

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subhuman racial and gendered bodies. They are also seen as objects to be inspected; they are taken to be static, ornamental, limited to specific historical and geographical contexts. The cultures of the oppressed are hyper visible, and their material instantiations are seen as fascinating, but they appear to get in the way of reaching a rational, universal vantage point. In other words, the duality of the transparent/visible captures a colonial/modern epistemology conditioned by social oppression based on the hypervisibility of the race and gender of the colonized, and by the ideal of transparency as the epistemic repression of culture. Lugones maintains that dominant colonialist epistemologies, at the intersection of social power and culture, assume a world split in two. There is a sphere of living in accordance with habits, affects and bodily drives; this is the sphere of “culture.” It encases the colonized as irrational and subhuman, as epistemically irrelevant in their contingent understandings of the world. The second sphere is that of objectivity, of truths, of autonomous selves acting with clear intentions and with moral uprightness, and of the overcoming of the embodiment of culture. The difference between these two is enforced by the colonial difference between the human (the “postcultural”) and the non-human (those overdetermined by culture). For the oppressed, however, the dominant culture is obviously present, and is as visible as their own. From this perspective the dominant culture is not transparent, and there is no such thing as the “postcultural” because the social power that makes this illusion possible does not support (or blind) the oppressed. An aspect of anticolonial epistemologies is to reveal and dismantle the dichotomy between transparency and visibility as it applies to embodied culture, and to show that culture is always at play conditioning all knowing. This involves reconfiguring the visibility of culture so that it ceases to be racialized and, thus, no longer appears to be fixed, objectified and static. The senses need to be freed to sense culture as a living corporeal force that enables knowing, and to start seeing as “funny” (going back to Lugones’ wording above), or as disingenuous, those bodies that disavow their cultural embodiments to elevate reason and repress culture. This kind of freeing of the senses is necessary to reveal that the alleged transparency of “postcultural” bodies, and the vantage point of reason as its correlate, entail the dispensability of indigenous and black bodies, for example. In other words, culturally transparent bodies can be kept, visible ones can be killed. One ought to see this as a colonialist epistemological principle to overcome.

Epistemic Decolonization of Culture

Queer Epistemology Beyond Deviancy—a Note on Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera Anzaldúa’s critical epistemology arises in the postcolonial setting of the US– Mexico border, and draws from lineages of gendered social forms from preColumbian, colonial, and postcolonial cultures. For her, these social forms reflect the social authority and power of men, yet she finds that through colonization and modernity they take on a specifically dehumanizing and homophobic character. In this respect, she states: “Culture is made by those in power—men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them” (2007: 38). In other words, the distribution of epistemic authority, which belongs to the mechanism for the enforcement of “unchallengeable” cultural assumptions, corresponds to the social categorization of gender. Such assumptions are established in the formation of culture through patriarchy (a cultural formation reinforced by colonialism and modernity, even if not unique to them) rather than through a neutral, objective, and rational dialogue. The transmission and securement of the assumptions, however, is the burden of women; they have to embody and give legitimacy to the “unquestionable” aspects of culture that congeal into beliefs. This is part of the biological and social reproductive labor of women, which is definitive in modern/colonial social orders. An extension of this labor is the role of women as enforcers of cultural beliefs and expectations, as responsible for the permanence of cultural assumptions. In this respect, within the modern nuclear family women are expected to discipline bodies in order to nurture in them the right affects, habits and dispositions that correspond to proper beliefs and knowledge claims. In this heterosexual distribution of entangled social/epistemic roles, a particular dynamic of power is operative, one that informs the nexus between gendered identities, knowledge, and culture. In this regard, Anzaldúa’s key statement reads: “The culture expects women to show greater acceptance of and commitment to the value system than men. The culture and the Church insist that women are subservient to men. If a woman rebels, she is a mujer mala” (2007: 39). The transmission of culture depends on a gendered social positioning that involves a subservient stance; that is, it is tangled up with the power men exert over women. This is a specific account of the social power dynamic subtending the cultural

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assumptions that condition knowledge production, and it shows that these assumptions are effective and grounding to the extent that women are controlled in their reproductive social and cultural roles. Anzaldúa states: “Culture (read males) professes to protect women. Actually, it keeps women in rigidly defined roles” (2007: 39). Her analysis, however, does not stop there. She delves into the specific social positionality of women within culture and its epistemic implications. Women transmit culture and embody it while they are oppressed by men. Men make culture but are not committed to the representation and embodiment of its values. This is because men are not destined to reproductive labor and, thus, are not bound to transmit culture. In other words, women are socially positioned to understand the fragility of culture since they see the hypocrisy of men, a fragility that they are socially expected to conceal. As transmitters of culture and as oppressed by men, women are at the margins of culture, able to critique not only the validity of unchallenged beliefs, but also the power dynamics that sustain and give shape to these beliefs as epistemic claims. If one assumes the social positionality of women as Anzaldúa analyzes it, epistemological concerns appear in a different light. In this respect, the critique of knowledge is not only a matter of logic or empirical testing. Attention to the social role of women shows an epistemological critical dimension at stake in affective and practical responses to the fragility of culture manifest in the hypocrisy of men. Thus, women offer an entry point into understanding the plight of the oppressed more generally, for whom the collapse of culture would mean both the possibility of liberation and the loss of assumed meaning and cultural identity, including the disruption of internalized social architectures that condition the possibility of knowing. Anzaldúa’s gendered analysis sheds light on the way the oppressed carry the burden of both resisting and maintaining the culture and socialities that oppress them. The marginal status of women risks their social and cultural standing, so that they do not garner respect. Anzaldúa states: Respeto [respect] carries with it a set of rules so that social categories and hierarchies will be kept in order: respect is reserved for la abuela, papa, el patron, those with power in the community. Women are at the bottom of the ladder one rung above deviants . . . Deviance is whatever is condemned by the community . . . 2007: 40

“Women” are socially positioned at the edge or border of what cultural registers define as normal. Anzaldúa’s point is that this edging, however, is

Epistemic Decolonization of Culture

not reflective of actual proximity to deviancy. It shows, rather, the social and cultural precarity of women. Furthermore, she suggests that this precarity reveals the possibility of diverging from “normalcy,” and of knowing beyond the confines of women’s roles as transmitters and protectors of culture. The social construction of women at the brink of deviancy is one of the ways in which women are controlled and submitted to men as makers of culture. According to Anzaldúa, women, however, are not at the verge of being deviant (perverted, morally, and psychologically questionable). Instead, they are at the threshold of being queer. I call “queer” here the inhabitation of the edgy social positionality of women that exposes men as hypocritical in their social inhabitation of culture and reveals the fragility of culture as resulting from a heterosexual mode of knowledge production. Being queer is, then, an epistemic attitude which disrupts patriarchal organizations of culture, and turns social precarity into social resistance. As Anzaldúa states: “the queer are the mirror reflecting the heterosexual tribe’s fear: being different, being other and therefore lesser, therefore subhuman, in-human, non-human” (2007: 40). That is, through the exposure of the social and epistemic power of men, the queer also reveal a fear that is not necessarily theirs, a colonially induced fear that women’s resistance to their role as transmitters and protectors of culture would lead to the loss of humanity, to bestiality. In this queer disavowal of heterosexual fear, Anzaldúa veers away from the hope that men would cease to be hypocrites (as if the element of social power in culture could be erased). She is, rather, disrupting the duality normalcy/deviancy to find a third modality of inhabiting (bodily and affectively) the borders of culture. For Anzaldúa “queer” does not stand for a gender identity that could become part of the social articulation of culture, but is, rather, a way of being that undergoes the loss of respect and self-respect, of the heterosexual backing of culture and home. Queer knowing does not reenforce the heterosexual transmission of cultural norms. It, returning to the discussion of Lugones above, encounters the body not as univocally transmitting pre-reflective knowledge, but as undergoing conflicts at the level of attachments to inherited cultural meanings. It suspends the universalist, objectifying, instrumental and fixating tendencies of knowing that reflect an obsession with the stasis of cultural meanings and the control of women. It does not react to heterosexual fears. It does not disconnect itself from what is known, engaging instead the linkages between what one knows and what is, exploring them affectively and sensuously—not just “rationally”—and facing the possibility of transformation and loss of self without deviancy.

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Anzaldúa calls this queer epistemic disposition “la facultad.” An aspect of it is being attentive to “. . . anything that breaks into one’s everyday mode of perception, that causes a break in one’s defenses and resistance, anything that takes one from one’s habitual grounding . . . [that] causes a shift in perception . . .” (Anzaldúa 2007: 61). I suggest that through these shifts one can inhabit culture beyond the purview of men and inhabit sites where the tensions within cultural fields lead to fractures, where “border” epistemologies emerge.

Conclusion I suggest that, for Anzaldúa, colonialism is the maximization of the power of heterosexualism in cultural formations, and the systematic and violent annihilation of queerness. Colonialism and its modern legacies entail the extensive fabrication, objectification, and manipulation of defined social identities, race and gender in particular. These processes reduce the space for queer ways of living and knowing and impose social intelligibilities supportive of global forms of power. They also enable a male objectifying epistemic gaze under the illusion of having access to a fixed and absolutely intelligible reality; one that represses the need for, and the precarity of, women as transmitters of culture. In this respect, heterosexualism as a social determinant of culture makes possible the illusion of cultural transparency and of the universal, rational vantage point I discussed in Lugones (who has a critique of heterosexualism that complements Anzaldúa’s in “Toward a Decolonial Feminism”). Through an epistemic decolonization of culture, both Lugones and Anzaldúa critique this modern/colonial rendition of knowledge and open paths for rethinking the relationship between culture, knowledge, and social power. With the notion of cultural transparency, Lugones gives an account of the fiction of an objective and rational vantage point bolstered by the colonial racial differentiation between the human and non-human. This vantage point can also be seen, with Anzaldúa, as the result of a colonial radicalization of heterosexualism as a mechanism for the cultural establishment and transmission of knowledge. That is, both Lugones and Anzaldúa show that modern/colonial reason (as universal, disembodied, neutral, instrumental) is a complex cultural phenomenon shaped by race and gender as colonial categories of difference. They also work out the possibility of anticolonial epistemologies, where knowing is lived as embodied processes with profound affective and

Epistemic Decolonization of Culture

sensual repercussions, where coming to know involves loss of social and cultural intelligibility, being a matter of changing one’s body rather than one’s mind, of being always at the edge of transformation and risk. This discussion is intended as an introduction to this kind of knowing, which could transpire in the borders of cultural formations, but with attentiveness to the social forms of oppression they are submitted to. Perhaps these epistemological reflections lead to a decolonizing intercultural (rather than “postcultural”) philosophy, where culture is the conflicted site of the intersection between knowledge production and social oppression.

References Anzaldúa, Gloria (2007). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books Lugones, María (2003). Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions, New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Glossary Postcultural Describes the belief that one does not have a culture, or has transcended a culture, to become an autonomous and selfcertain knower. Cultural transparency When the epistemic role of the dominant culture is not apparent. Cultural visibility The correlation between a colonized culture’s sensory markings and the racialization of the oppressed. Queer/queerness A way of being that involves challenging both gendered socialities and modalities of knowing beyond the heterosexual transmission and enforcement of cultural norms. Chicana/o A person from Mexico or of Mexican descent who lives in the United States.

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7 Ezumezu Jonathan O. Chimakonam

Introduction In African philosophy, the concept of ezumezu gained currency as a system of logic, specifically, a system of three-valued logic in which the intermediate value is a truth-glut (both/and). But ezumezu as a concept describes more than a system of logic. It also describes a methodology that involves a coming together and separation of seemingly opposed variables, and it presents values as context-dependent. Because in African philosophy, realities are studied primarily in terms of their relationships and contexts rather than their substance, ezumezu entails both a coming together and separation of variables. Ezumezu, therefore, becomes a concept that characterizes two modes that represent two levels of relationship (complementary and contextual). In this chapter, I will provide the etymology of the concept of ezumezu and explain other related concepts. I will show how the concept of ezumezu underpins both the logical and methodological ideas in African philosophy. What can be suggested here is that in African philosophy, intercultural philosophy and at the global level of engagement, ezumezu can be a framework for facilitating human expressions. Some novel concepts have emerged in African philosophy, mostly in the last two decades. Ezumezu is one of them. The etymology of ezumezu can be traced to the Igbo language, spoken by the Igbo people in Eastern Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and the diasporas who number between fifty and sixty million. When spelt with the uppercase letter “E,” it refers to the system of logic, but when spelt with the small letter “e,” it refers to the intermediate value in that logic as well as the literal sense of the word itself. The word can 67

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be broken down into three syllabuses, ezu, m and ezu. One notices that the word ezu occurs twice. In many languages of the Niger-Congo family, syllabuses sometimes occur twice in a word for emphasis. However, the double appearance of “ezu” in ezumezu signals not only emphasis; it also contains an extra layer of meaning. For example, the first occurrence of ezu can be translated roughly as an aggregation of things that is “complete” or “potent” or “powerful” in something. The “m” consonant can be translated as “in me,” “in itself,” “in myself,” etc., as the case may be. But here is the exciting thing: the second occurrence of ezu can be translated somewhat differently from the first as the quality of an aggregation of things to be “more” complete or potent or powerful etc. Put together, ezumezu literally means “a complete, or powerful or potent aggregation of things that becomes more or comprehensively complete, or powerful or potent as a result of their combination.” The efficacy and completeness encapsulated in the notion of ezumezu is easily captured by the Igbo in the saying “ebe ahuru ezumezu, ihe anaghi eri mperi,” which translates to “where there is ezumezu, nothing diminishes or becomes defective.” From the above, we can see that ezumezu has its roots in Igbo spirituality, where it is employed to depict the combination or aggregation of spiritual forces. Nwafor Orizu was the first to use it in this regard in a written text. He describes it as an “aggregate of all medicines and charms” (Orizu 1994: 14), in which power and potency are increased in tremendous proportions by the fact of their combination. This is why I describe ezumezu literally as “the collective, the aggregate or the totality of all that is most viable, most potent and most powerful,” but as a logical concept, I conceive it as “complementarity” (Chimakonam 2019: 94). In framing this word as a concept, one can identify three important notions in it, namely, the notion of completeness, the notion of power or potency and the notion of an aggregate or collective relationship. From these notions, the idea of a complementary relationship of variables as something expressed with the concept of ezumezu in African philosophy emerges. In a complementary relationship, autonomous and powerful variables contribute to a whole that is more powerful and in which their individual potency is increased. The “m” consonant in ezumezu does something special to the word, which becomes magnified in the concept. It allows for the cohabitation or co-existence of seemingly opposed ideas. For example, people of different sexes, races or classes can co-exist despite their differences because each side is self-insufficient and needs the complementation of the other. Thus, ezumezu prioritizes complementarity over the principle of contradiction.

Ezumezu

Notice the translation of “m” as “in me,” “in itself,” “in myself.” In the next section, I will tease out the logical perspective of the concept of ezumezu.

Ezumezu as a Logic Many African philosophers are confronted with what one may call Okonkwo’s problem. This is derived from the character of Obi Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. When the Europeans were zeroing in on his village, he wanted his people to fight the European missionaries and administrators without killing their people who had foolishly joined the foreigners. His main problem was how to fight the missionaries without harming some of his people in the service of the foreigners. Like Okonkwo, most African philosophers want to show that their output is original without losing the philosophy in it. This accounted for a protracted debate that ended with all sides in a state of disillusionment. The Great Debate in African philosophy that began at the end of the Early period (1920s–1960s), as it is called, lingered from the 1960s to the late 1980s, covering much of the Middle and the Later periods in African philosophy. By the Contemporary period that began in the 1990s, a sense of disillusionment had set in. Actors wanted system building and original thinking, but exactly how these were to be pursued without violating the criteria of universality and originality was a big problem. How to pursue a thorough-going system-building in African philosophy that at once highlights the originality of African philosophy without thereby robbing it of the tincture of universality was challenging to many workers in the field of African philosophy. Some, following Meinrad Hebga (1954), proposed a strategy of an African culture-inspired system of logic to ground the new systems of African philosophy (Momoh 2000; Etuk 2002). Others (Osuagwu 1999; Anyanwu 2000), proposed a methodological strategy in which new home-grown methods would be formulated not only to guide discussions in the discipline but to replace imposed western alternatives. But even such methods need a logic to ground them. Thus, the imperative to build a system of logic that captures some of the experiences of reality in African worldviews and beyond, which the Aristotelian system proves inadequate at. The Aristotelian system refers to the two-valued system Aristotle formulated to drive his propositional logic (Groarke IEP: Online). Some of these include various shades of complementary inferences, in addition to the notorious future contingents and even the axiomatization of the new theory of quanta (see Chimakonam 2019: 138).

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The initial attempts at building such a system came from the Calabar School.1 Two prominent members of the school, namely Innocent Asouzu and Chris Ijiomah, formulated the system of complementary logic (2004, 2013) and of harmonious monism (2006, 2014), respectively. These systems rivalled Aristotle’s bivalent system that has two opposed and strict values of true and false. In an Aristotle’s formulation popularly called the classical two-valued system, the law of contradiction set the two polar values strictly apart while the law of excluded middle excluded the possibility of any intermediate value. These make it impossible for some inferences such as the three mentioned above: complementary inferences, future contingents and even the axiomatization of the new theory of quanta, to be covered by Aristotle’s logic. For example, the laws of contradiction and the excluded middle do not allow for the complementation of two opposites to be inferred. Also, Aristotle’s syllogism does not allow us to infer the truth value of future contingent propositions like “it will rain in Pretoria tomorrow at midday.” There is no way of affirming or denying such a proposition within the Aristotelian system. Asouzu and Ijiomah aimed to expose the weaknesses inherent in such a straitjacketed system. However, despite the giant strides that both efforts represented, there were some major problems the two thinkers could not address. First, they could not weaken the three traditional laws of thought (identity, contradiction, and excluded middle) to formulate a system that would account for all three inferences not captured in the Aristotelian system, hence, their truth-glut proposals did not succeed, such that while their systems offered empirical proofs for the three types of propositions, they failed to deliver axiomatic proofs for the same. What is meant in the preceding is that their systems did not contain axioms that could be employed in proving precisely the validity of propositions. They merely contained empirical explanations. For example, the axiom of identity p = q enables us to prove that what is inferred of p can also be inferred of q, since p and q are identical. An empirical proof, however, offers less precision because it relies on what is empirically available or even common sense, for example, certain physical features may be sufficient for us to infer that a certain individual is Robert Mugabe without knowing that he may just be one of his body doubles. Second, they did not formulate additional laws to

1 Following the decline of the schools that wafted tremendous intellectual energy during the Great Debate such as the Ife, Ibadan, Nsukka and Lagos schools, the Calabar school, that is, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calabar, Eastern Nigeria emerged in the new millennium as a dominant center of African philosophical research.

Ezumezu

supplement the traditional laws. Without a new or an additional set of laws, it is hard to establish that a new system of logic has been formulated. The same set of laws cannot underlie two radically different systems of logic. Third, because of the failure to address the first and second issues, they could not effectively address the glut problem of the intermediate value that required axioms. While Asouzu went to one extreme of rejecting the laws of contradiction and excluded middle by his dismissal of disjunctive inference, Ijiomah went to the other extreme of denying the existence of a completely false proposition using his principle of complementarity by which the two polar values are quasi true and false and, as a result, indeterminate. According to this move, only the intermediate value is completely true and determinate, leaving no room for a completely false proposition. Ijiomah, therefore, by his theory, not only rejected the law of contradiction, but also rejected the law of excluded middle. To remedy these weaknesses, the system of Ezumezu logic was formulated. Bearing in mind the etymological analysis of the term ezumezu, the intermediate value of the Ezumezu three-valued system is christened ezumezu with small letter “e,” while the system itself is named Ezumezu with capital letter ‘E’ as clarified earlier. The attempt to resolve the glut-problem of the intermediate value in three-valued logic begins with the formulation of the intermediate value in which two polar values are read as both-and rather than as both-not, or even as the neither-nor of the Jan Lukasiewicz threevalued system (see 1920 in Borkowski 1970: 87–88). It is important to understand how opposites can hold. This means finding a way to go round the theses of determinism and bivalence and doing so means either weakening the laws of contradiction and excluded middle or rejecting them outright. If one weakens the two laws, one would have to formulate supplementary laws to account for the complementarity rather than contradiction of opposed variables. Asouzu and Ijiomah did not choose this option in their programs. They chose the option that amounts to a rejection of the two laws in the end. But one can argue that this is not a correct logical representation of the African worldview because both contradiction and excluded middle are also laws observed in the African thought system. For an intuitive example, people in Africa regularly choose to side with their families against those presumed to be outsiders because, in times of conflict, it is either family or outsiders. In some of such contexts of conflict, if they side with family, they stand opposed to the presumed outsiders, which establishes the presence of the law of contradiction. And while the conflict lingers, both sides are refusing conciliation, which also establishes the presence of the law of excluded

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middle. A system of African logic would then not be a complete formulation if it discounts the traditional laws of thought. However, the various African cultural worldviews also recognize that in our intuitive example, it is not in all cases that choosing to side with one’s family amounts to standing opposed to the presumed outsiders. There are situations in which both family and presumed outsiders can stand for the same cause despite their differences (complementarity or truth-glut, bothand); situations in which one may side with family without actually standing opposed to the presumed outsider (positive contextuality or the inclusive disjunction, weak or); and also situations in which siding with family means standing opposed to the presumed outsider (negative contextuality or truthgap, both-not). In the first, the two sides become equal binaries. In the second, they become non-binaries, and in the third, they become unequal binaries. For example, family A and family B who have contrasting claims of ownership of a parcel of land would complement when family C encroaches on the land. Contradiction might be the order of nature, but complementarity regularly intervenes to upset it because order and disorder co-exist. They define each other. What is meant here is that while contradiction is a “necessary” principle in that seemingly opposed variables naturally negate each other, complementarity is a “contingent” principle in that the selfinsufficiency of the seemingly opposed variables sometimes drives them to seek complementation from their opposite other. Both principles regulate the relationship of realities in the universe. Complementarity proceeds from the relationship of creative struggle, while contextuality proceeds from the relationship of difference. In the former, seemingly opposed variables converge in what is called the complementary mode, where they affirm creative struggle (in the critical sense of oneself as a “we”). In the latter, the variables disintegrate to separate contextual modes where they affirm their individual identities (in the sense of oneself as an I). The Aristotelian system that maintains the supremacy of the traditional laws of thought and the Asouzu/Ijiomah’s systems that reject the viability of at least two of the laws, are on this account, mistaken in their suppositions. The Ezumezu system recognizes the viability and not the absoluteness of the traditional laws of thought. That means that it recognizes the contextual limitation2 of the laws, which warrants the formulation of three additional

2

I have employed what I call the principle of Context-dependence of Value (CdV) to explain the nature of the limitations in the traditional laws of thought. See JO Chimakonam (2019: 119–122; 142–143).

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laws to supplement them. These new laws are njikoka (contextuality, positive), nmekoka (contextuality, negative) and onona-etiti (included-middle, complementarity). I state the three supplementary laws below (Chimakonam 2019; Chimakonam and Chimakonam 2022): ●

●

●

Njikoka: An arumaristic proposition is true if and only if it is true in Relation to its opposite that is false. (T) Ax ̼ [(T) Ax » (F) ~Ax], which reads that “Ax is true if and only if Ax is true in Relation to Not Ax is false.” The notation (») functions as a relationship indicator. Nmekoka: If an arumaristic proposition is true in a given context, then it cannot be false in the same context. (T) Ax  ̹ ~(F) Ax, which reads that if Ax is true in a given context, then Ax cannot be false in the same context. The notation wedged-arrow functions both as a material implication and a context indicator here. O . no.na-etiti: An ohakaristic proposition is both true and false in a complementary mode of thought. [(T) Ax ș (F) Ax] ̼ (C) (Ax ș ~Ax), which reads that Ax is true and Ax is false if and only if Ax and not Ax are complements.

Discussions on the supplementary laws can be found in the literature (see Chimakonam 2018, 2019; Ani 2019; Ofuasia 2019). Through a systematic deployment of the six laws (identity, contradiction, excluded middle, njikoka, nmekoka, and onona-etiti), inferences that include the complementary type can be carried out. The coming together of seemingly opposed variables which, through the laws of nmekoka and onona-etiti leads to complementation rather than contradiction, is characterized as nmeko or relationship. Relationship is another concept that is central to African philosophy, both doctrine and method. Scholars in the areas of personhood, Afro-communitarianism, ubuntu, etc., have employed it in formulating their various theses. The idea of relationship and the methodological dimension of the concept of ezumezu can be found in extant literature but suffice it to say that Ezumezu as a system of logic can serve as a framework for reasoning in diverse areas.

Acknowledgments Jonathan O Chimakonam acknowledges that “this work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Numbers 132057).” Opinions expressed in this research

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are those of the authors; the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.

References Ani, A.E. (2019). “The Methodological Significance of Chimakonam’s Ezumezu Logic,” Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 8(2): 85–95. Anyanwu, KC. (2000). “The Problem of Method in African Philosophy,” in CS. Momoh (ed), 2nd edn, The Substance of African Philosophy, 57–73, Auchi: APP Publications. Asouzu, I.I. (2004). The Method and Principles of Complementary Reflection in and Beyond African Philosophy. Calabar: University of Calabar. Asouzu, I.I. (2013). Ibuanyidanda (Complementary Reflection) and Some Basic Problems in Africa. Zurich: Lit Verlag GmbH and Co. KG Wien. Chimakonam, J.O. (2019). Ezumezu: A System of Logic for African Philosophy and Study. Cham: Springer. Chimakonam, J.O. (2018). “The Philosophy of African Logic: A Consideration of Ezumezu Paradigm,” in J. Horne (ed.), Philosophical Perceptions on Logic and Order, 96–121, Hershey PA: IGI Global. Chimakonam, J.O. and Chimakonam, Amara. E. (2022). “Examining the Logical Argument of the Problem of Evil from an African Perspective,” Religious Studies: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 1–14. Groarke, L.F. (Online). “Aristotle: Logic” in Internet Enclyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/aris-log/ Retrieved, Oct 1, 2021. Etuk, U. (2002). “The Possibility of African Logic” in O. Oladipo (ed.), The Third Way in African Philosophy, 98–116. Ibadan: Hope Publications. Hebga, M. (1958). “Logic in Africa,” Philosophy Today, 4(4): 222–229. Ijiomah, C.O. (2006). “An Excavation of Logic in African Worldview,” African Journal of Religion, Culture and Society, 1(1): 29–35. Ijiomah, C.O. (2014). Harmonious Monism: A Philosophical Logic of Explanation for Ontological Issues in Supernaturalism in African Thought, Calabar: Jochrisam Publishers.

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Łukasiewicz, J. (1970). “On Three-valued Logic,” In L. Borkowski (ed.), Selected Works by Jan Łukasiewicz, 87–88. Amsterdam: North–Holland. Momoh, C.S. (2000). “The Logic Question in African Philosophy” in CS. Momoh (ed.), 2nd edn, The Substance of African Philosophy, 175–192, Auchi: APP Publications. Ofuasia, E. (2019). “Unveiling Ezumezu Logic as a Framework for Process Ontology and Yorùbá Ontology,” Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 8(2): 63–83. Osuagwu, M. (1999). A Contemporary History of African Philosophy, Enugu: Snaap Press.

Glossary Aristotelian system This refers to the two-valued logical system Aristotle formulated in some of his work that includes, the Categories Categories, s, On Interpretation, the Prior Analytics Analytics, s, the Posterior Analytics Analytics, s, the Topics Topics, s, and On Sophistical Refutations Refutations. s. Bivalence This is a thesis in two-valued logic that states that a proposition is either true or false. Complementarity This is the logical quality of a proposition that can be both true and false in Ezumezu u system. Contextuality This is the logical quality of a proposition that can be either true or false in the Ezumezu u system. Determinism This is a thesis in two-valued logic that states that a statement is either necessary or impossible. Ezumezu This is a system of three-valued logic teased out of the African perspective to reality in which the intermediate value is a truth-glut. Traditional laws of thought These are the three classical laws of thought namely; identity, contradiction, and excluded middle. Truth-gap This is the quality of the bivalent or trivalent logic that denies the possibility of an intermediate value or affirms it as both-not. Truth-glut: This is the quality of a trivalent logic that affirms the intermediate value as both-and.

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8 Gewu (Investigation of Things) Xiao Ouyang

Gewu Ṭ⢙, usually translated as “investigating things” (or “the investigation of things”), is the first of the eight goals in the Confucian program offered in the Daxüe (བྷᆖ The Great Learning, hereafter, TGL).1 After the NeoConfucian scholar Zhu Xi’s ᵡ⟩ (1130–1200) editing, this short text was elevated to the status of one of the Sishu (ഋҖ The Four Books). These Four Books have been widely regarded as the foundational texts representing classical Confucianism. The broader notion of gewu2 has been considered to be a doctrine of fundamental methodological importance in the NeoConfucian philosophical enterprise as well as in the Confucian way of life. It also provided the Neo-Confucian school with a solution to cope with what I call a metaphysical crisis in the face of challenges from Daoism and Buddhism. Gewu allowed the Neo-Confucians to redirect their quests for meaning, truth and ultimate value(s) back to everyday matters. Before embarking on our inquiry into gewu, it is worth noting that it would be misleading to assume a single interpretation of this doctrine. Firstly, both philologically and philosophically speaking, the meaning of the term gewu itself has evolved under various interpretive operations in

1

There are multiple translations of TGL. An easy access version, translated by James Legge (1815– 1897), can be found in the online Chinese Text Project (https://ctext.org/). I also recommend Daniel Gardner’s (2007) translation in his work The Four Books: The Basic Teachings of the Later Confucian Tradition. 2 The border notion of gewu consists of gewu zhizhi (Ṭ⢙㠤⸕ to investigate things in order to extend knowledge and wisdom) and gewu qiongli (Ṭ⢙ェ⨶ to investigate things in order to exhaust principle[s]). The former is considered as a primary method for Confucian xiushen (‫؞‬䓛 self-cultivation), which according to Zhu Xi (2005: 13) constitutes “the essentials of understanding shan (ழ good/goodness, right/rightness)”. The latter associates gewu with one of the central NeoConfucian notions, li (⨶ principle, pattern, purposiveness).

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different periods, before reaching its fully-fledged Neo-Confucian philosophical prominence. Secondly, even among the Neo-Confucians, the accounts of gewu are not unified.

What does Gewu Mean? The English rendering as the “investigation of things” indeed helps us quickly grasp the conceptual orientation of gewu. However, with the inherent metaphysical assumptions given in the language itself, this English translation inevitably conceals something crucial about this doctrine. When considered from the standpoint of the English language we may be tempted to assume an unfamiliar substance ontology and dualism in connection with gewu. Therefore, our inquiry needs to start from a philological exploration. Gewu consists of two Chinese characters, namely, ge Ṭ and wu ⢙. According to one of the earliest exegeses, by Zheng Xuan 䜁⦴ (127–200): Ge, means, lai (ᶕ to come); wu, means shi (һ event[s]). If one deeply knows [what is] good, then the good things come; [By the same token,] if one deeply knows [what is] evil, then the evil things come. This is to say that events come in accordance with one’s preference. Zheng 2000: 1859

Zheng’s philological account here – ge as to come and wu as event(s) – agrees with the typical usage of these characters in the ancient texts. Literally, gewu for Zheng Xuan means events coming forth. This becomes a standard philological account, as well as a common ground for successive commentators, and for the development of their diverse interpretations of the notion. But this is radically different from the popular rendering in English as “the investigation of things.”3 Drawing from Zheng’s seminal exegesis, I want to indicate, firstly, that underlying the doctrine of gewu, there is no comparable notion of wu (things) that might be considered comparable to the western concepts of inert or dead/inorganic matter, e.g., “crude matter” or “lifeless material” in Kant’s terms (CJ, 5:419, 5:383). Nor do we recognize any essentialist conception of objects (“things”) in terms of atomism or substance ontology. There is a dimension of spontaneity in the idea of wu that can manifest or 3

For how Zheng Xuan’s seemingly puzzling philosophical account of gewu was transformed via several vital hermeneutic operations to the more active rendering in the Neo-Confucian practice, see Xiao Ouyang (2016: 144–159).

Gewu (Investigation of Things)

come forth. So that when the Neo-Confucians discuss the investigation of things, they do not merely mean an investigation into physical/inorganic reality. Gewu includes the investigation of all manner of things in their dynamic and living complexity. More importantly, wu is used to designate more than just things qua things and incorporates the investigation of even more than natural objects and social events combined – “between Heaven and Earth, all that one confronts are things” (Zhu 2002a: 1839). The Chinese notion of wu should be understood in light of its process cosmology. Secondly, such a dualistic reading – in which an internal subject actively pursues an investigation into the realm of external objects—which is very likely to be suggested by the English language and grammar—should not be taken for granted in the Chinese context.4 In short, we need to suspend our preconceptions in our reflection of the meaning of gewu. Although gewu originates from TGL, the passage within TGL that was considered as its original explanation—namely, the fifth commentary on gewu zhizhi—is long-lost. Claiming to be “employing Master Cheng’s thought,” Zhu Xi (2005: 6) creatively (and in some eyes boldly) reinvented a purported missing fifth commentary in his edited version of TGL, thereby paving the way for the doctrine’s enshrinement into the Neo-Confucian core ideology. In this well-known supplement, Zhu Xi (2005: 6–7) writes: [. . .] If one wants to extend one’s knowledge and wisdom, one must reach into wu (things and events) and probe thoroughly the li (principle[s]) therein. Since everyone’s heart-mind is intelligent and no one is incapable of knowing, while no things under heaven lack li (principle[s]) . . . the primary teaching of The Great Learning requires the students to reach to all the things and events under heaven, and to increase one’s knowledge and wisdom of the principle(s) with the help of what they have already known, so as to extend their knowledge and wisdom to the utmost. Now if one endeavours for a long time, and eventually becomes all penetrating, then all the things – whether the superficial or the deep, whether the subtle or the coarse – will be grasped; at the same time the entire essence and great efficacy of one’s heart-mind will be enlightened. This is the so-called ‘things are investigated (wu ge ⢙Ṭ)’, and this is the so-called ‘extension of the knowledge and wisdom to the utmost (zhi zhi zhi ⸕ѻ㠣)’.

In this passage, Zhu Xi silently smuggles in the Neo-Confucian notion of li (principle), immediately bringing gewu into a Neo-Confucian interpretive 4 This reading has a lot to do with the translation of ge into “investigate.” For a clarification of the meaning of ge, see Xiao Ouyang (2016: 146, 154–155).

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context. There are three key facets of li to be noted here. For the NeoConfucians, firstly, li is universally pervasive in everyday life, and objectively exists in all things. Secondly, unlike the Kantian distinction between the immutable natural laws for the sensible world and the supersensible moral law within us, there is no such discrepancy between the principle of nature and the principle of humans (Zhu 2002a: 723, 2676; Chen 1983: 42). Thirdly, li is understood to provide the rule(s) for how all beings (humans and things alike) ought to be. Zhu Xi’s disciple Chen Chun 䱸␣ (1159–1223) in his Beixi Ziyi ेⓚᆇѹ explains: What the ancients mean by the investigation of things and exhausting principle(s), is to seek for the rule(s) for how [things] ought to be (dangran zhi ze ᖃ❦ѻࡉ). Chen 1983: 42

Earlier, in a related passage, Chen Chun claims: What is meant by “ought to be so (dangran ᖃ❦)” is what is rightly to be done in things, namely, being appropriate (qiahao ᚠྭ), without any excessiveness or deficiency. For example, the ruler rests on the virtue of human-heartedness, since resting on the virtue of human-heartedness is the rule for how the ruler ought to be. ibid.

Underlying the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian notion of gewu is the assumption of the objective reality and moral relevance of the external world. The recognition of the appropriateness in things therefore not only reveals what the Confucians regarded as universal moral facts pervasive in the world and embodied by all things, but also illuminates the assumption of a coherent principle within oneself—the possibility of being appropriate and harmonious within one’s context, much like how boats travel smoothly on water but not on land, and how carriages travel successfully on land but not on water (Zhu 2002a: 189). In Zhu Xi’s eyes, the Confucian notion of the investigation of things bears the critical task of defending Confucian values in the face of challenges from Daoism and Buddhism. The metaphysical strengths of Daoism and Buddhism (especially their respective ontological accounts of ultimate reality)5 often render Confucian proposals of social order and political structure for this earthly world as well as Confucian practices of moral self-cultivation and

For instance, the Neo-Daoist doctrine of dao as wu (ᰐ non-presence, nothingness), and the Buddhist thinking on kong (オ emptiness).

5

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governance superficial, if not groundless or absurd. The Cheng-Zhu school reinvented the doctrine of gewu so as to call for a re-orientation of the metaphysical quests for meaning, truth and ultimate value(s) back to everyday matters – i.e., to the ten thousand things (all things) that we encounter and interact within our living world. This contrasts with both the Neo-Daoist attempt to chase the distant and formless dao beyond the horizon of the human domain, and with the Buddhist attempt to dig deep into the heart-mind for the sake of genuine enlightenment from within (Ouyang 2016: 79–80, 84–85). For Zhu Xi, the notion of dao (the way) spoken by the Daoists and Buddhists “is empty, void, still and dead, and of no use to the people,” instead, within Confucianism, dao is so named—literally, the way— “precisely because it is the natural principle (li) of everyday life, like the road that ought to be travelled by millions of people within the four seas and on the nine continents” (Zhu 2002b: 1690). Zhu Xi (2002a: 469) says: People usually regard principle(s) [li] as something existing in thin air. [The reason that] The Great Learning does not talk about exhausting principle(s) but only about the investigation of things is to urge people to grasp [the principle] by means of [investigating] things. In this way one can see the substantial body (shiti ᇎփ). The so-called substantial body cannot be recognized except by means of [investigating] things. For instance, . . . by recognizing the boat is not [appropriate] for travelling on land, this shows the so-called substantial body.

In this way, the Neo-Confucian notion of gewu responds to Daoist and Buddhist rivals and attempts to build a foundation for normative ethics and the practice of moral cultivation by redirecting metaphysical quests back into our living world—the world full of things and events, which in the eyes of Neo-Confucians, are not merely transient phenomenon concealing the ultimate truth. Principle (li), or “substantial body” (shiti), is non-mysterious and exists in the appropriateness of things and events upon which one can contemplate and relate oneself to, anytime and anywhere; being appropriate and harmonious within one’s context is understood as the coherent principle in all beings, humans and things alike.

The Implications of Gewu Whether the gewu of the Cheng-Zhu school has fulfilled its theoretical tasks might be a matter of debate. However, there is no doubt that this doctrine has shaped the subsequent history of Chinese thought. To conclude this

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chapter, I want to draw out some further implications of gewu. There are four main points which I would like to discuss. Firstly, even though western science was immediately named gezhi xüe or sometimes gewu xüe when it was first introduced to China, gewu, in fact, has little in common with the scientific method as an investigation of things, for it is not an analytic tool or a way of observing and collecting empirical data for generating scientific knowledge about things external to oneself. Gewu appeals more to our intuitive capacity; it encourages correlative thinking instead of reductionist questioning and prompts immersive experience rather than the so-called “objective perspective.” To some extent, gewu seeks meaning—something intrinsic to our very existence—in the world, rather than mind-independent objective natural laws governing the universe. Secondly, the Neo-Confucians often remind us to appreciate “the gliding hawk and the jumping fish” (yuan fei yu yue 呒伎劬䏳), in which we see the harmony and contentment of things in their given contexts, as well as the vital power of generation in the universe.6 Gewu thereby redirects our attention from a self-centric occupation (with either bodily pleasure or spiritual enlightenment) to what is happening around us. Gewu was reinvented as a method for bringing metaphysical quests back to this world, but it is hardly anthropocentric. It encourages empathetic understanding of other beings, awareness of one’s relations and environment. In fact, Neo-Confucian philosophers inspired by their practice of gewu are often less attached to their self-interests and personal fortunes. At the same time, this does not mean that gewu does not involve any self-oriented goals. For Neo-Confucians, gewu is fundamentally a practical method of selfcultivation and it requires “returning to oneself ” (fanshen ৽䓛) to “recover what is original in oneself (yi fu qi chu ԕ༽ަࡍ)” (Zhu 2002a: 3766, 2005: 3). Thirdly, despite the fact that Zhu Xi, in order to allow more philosophical coherence and compatibility, has to theoretically presume the existence of an ultimate universal single principle, which he calls “the one root” (yiben а ᵜ), gewu nonetheless places priority on gradual accumulation of concrete principles and persistent self-cultivation throughout life—as opposed to seeking sudden enlightenment via the recognition of this ultimate truth— which leads to the potential state of being “all-penetrating” that Zhu Xi rarely

6

This classical Neo-Confucian theme is from the Doctrine of the Mean; for more, see Zhu Xi’s (2005: 22–23, 2002a: 2070–2072) elucidations.

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expounds (Ouyang 2019: 111). Zhu Xi (2002a: 3692, 598) regards the sudden enlightenment approach as a false approach that does not lead to ultimate truth but only to hallucinations and derides it merely as a demonstration of human desire. Finally, returning to oneself for self-cultivation is not the end. Confucians believe a great person of virtues can and ought to assist the transforming and nourishing power of Heaven and Earth, forming a triad of Heaven, Earth, and Humans. In the Confucian ideology, “people are my siblings and things are my kind” (min bao wu yu ≁㜎⢙о), (Zhang 2006: 62), and gewu coherently leads to what I call the Confucian cosmological duty, cheng ji cheng wu (ᡀᐡᡀ⢙, literally, to fulfill oneself, and to fulfill things). In other words, we are not only responsible for our own personal growth or the flourishing of the human race, but we are also held accountable for the full development of all things, including both sentient and non-sentient beings alike.7

References Ames, R. (2021). Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics, New York: SUNY Press. Chen, C. 䲣␣ (1983). ेⓚᆇ㗙, ेӜѝ㨟ᴨተ. Chen, L. 䱸ᶕ (2000). ᵡᆀଢᆖ⹄ウ, к⎧ॾьᐸ㤳བྷᆖࠪ⡸⽮. Chen, L. 䱸ᶕ (2011). ᆻ᰾⨶ᆖ, ेӜй㚄ࠪ⡸⽮. Kant, I. (1987). The Critique of Judgment, trans. W. Pluhar, Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. Ouyang, X. (2016). “Reflective Judgment vs. Investigation of Things: A Comparative Study of Kant and Zhu Xi,” PhD diss., University College Cork, Cork. Ouyang, X. (2019). “Towards Moral Teleology—A Comparative Study of Kant and Zhu Xi,” Rivista di estetica, 72: 99–124. Zhang, Z. ᕥ䔹 (2006). ᕥ䔹䳶, ेӜѝ㨟ᴨተ. Zheng, X. 䜁⦴ (2000). ⽬䇠↓ѹ, ेӜेӜབྷᆖࠪ⡸⽮. Zhu, X. ᵡ⟩ (2002a). ᵡᆀ‫ޘ‬ᴨ·ᵡᆀ䃎于, к⎧к⎧ਔ㉽ࠪ⡸⽮. Zhu, X. ᵡ⟩ (2002b). ᵡᆀ‫ޘ‬ᴨ·ᵡᲖᓥ‫⭏ݸ‬ᵡ᮷‫ޜ‬䳶, к⎧к⎧ਔ㉽ࠪ⡸ ⽮. Zhu, X. ᵡ⟩ (2005). ഋᴨㄐਕ䳶⌘, ेӜѝ㨟ᴨተ.

7

This idea is from the Doctrine of the Mean, see Zhu Xi (2005: 32–33).

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Glossary Dangran n ᖃ❦ Literally, ought to be so. Arguably, it is a counterpart of moral imperative in the Chinese language. Dao o 䚃 Literally, the way, arguably the most characteristic philosophical notion in the Chinese language, shared by various schools. Li ⨶ Usually translated into principle, a central notion in the ChengZhu school of Neo-Confucianism. Process cosmology Roger T. Ames’ (2021: 369) rejection of the understanding of things in terms of substance ontology is informative for my inquiry. He argues that ‘[in process cosmology,] objects dissolve into the flux and flow—into the changefulness of their surroundings . . . they are not “objects” as such, but events, continuous with all other events. What are perceived as persistent “things” . . . are in fact horizons of relationships that have relative yet transitory stability within a manifold of constant change.’ Qiaohao o ᚠྭ Appropriate/appropriateness. This phrase is not usually so philosophically oriented, but the idea it conveys is very much Confucian, especially related to Confucian notion of li ⽬ ritual propriety. Sudden enlightenment Usually refers to a practice of selfcultivation which aims to achieve the status of “all-penetrating” by fully grasping the one-and-only ultimate truth. Gewu u is a counter-argument to this approach. Wu u ⢙ things and events, what the doctrine gewu u is dealing with. Xiushen n ‫؞‬䓛 Self-cultivation. It plays a central role in Confucian ideology. The core theme of the classic The Great Learning Learning. g. Zhi ⸕ Know, knowledge and wisdom, be aware of, consciousness. Zhu Xi ᵡ⟩ (1130–1200) Arguably the greatest Neo-Confucian philosopher, achieved a great synthesis of his predecessors and contemporaries. A representative of lixue e or the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism.

9 “I” as the Absolute Present Yoko Arisaka

The notion of the “I” in the history of western philosophy has been largely defined through the notion of “essence,” a certain characteristic which makes a thing what it is, and the “I,” as a certain kind of thing, has a unique essence that is “my being.” This being, like a soul that is “me,” is unlike any other, and it persists through space and time (such as from birth to death, or perhaps for eternity according to some philosophers). In a somewhat different way, there is a more common-sense view of the self, the “I.” We all say, “I am soand-so” and when we do so we refer to a being that was born at a certain time in a certain place, that grew up in a certain place, and has certain characteristics that —even if we don’t identify them with a soul—makes that person unique, and that person lives in the world until death. But it remains unique to that person and essentially distinguished from any other “I.” The philosophical notion of the “I” in modern Japanese philosophy contrasts starkly with this idea. First, it is “anti-essentialist.” This means that the “I” has no substantial essence, it is not a “being.” In other words, there is no “core thing” or main characteristic that is the “I” and that persists through space and time. The “I,” as such, is a form of what I call “emptiness-fullness,” as it will be explained in this chapter. Second, according to the modern Japanese view, time is not a thing that stretches out from the past to the present to the future, nor is a space a certain place that extends into the horizon (through which the I-thing persists), but rather, they are both at all times the “absolute present” that shapes the particular moment of the I-asemptiness-fullness. I am not a “thing,” not a “being,” but I am instead the vast limitless emptiness, like a mirror in which all reality shows up in its fullness, and this “field” encompasses the whole as “absolute present.” Reality is this nowness here and that is the ever-changing “I.” This idea is based on the 85

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Buddhist notion of the no-self (Sanskrit: anātman) and “reality as emptiness” (Sanskrit: śūnyatā). But what does this all mean? To unravel this idea, we follow the philosophical ideas developed by the founder of modern Japanese philosophy, Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945). Nishida was a professor of philosophy at the Kyoto University from 1914– 1929. He and a number of his students came to be known as the “Kyoto School” of philosophy. He was a practitioner of Zen Buddhist meditation, and in contradistinction to the prevalent western philosophical system of “being” at the time, he tried to develop a philosophical system that reflected the Buddhist notion of emptiness, or “nothingness,” at the core. He believed that such a system would be a contribution to the global ways of doing philosophy, which had been dominated by western philosophy up to his time. The philosophies of the subsequent Kyoto School thinkers, such as Keiji Nishitani, share the interest in expressing Buddhist insights of nothingness in western philosophical terms. In his maiden work, An Inquiry into the Good (Japanese: Zen no Kenkyu ழ ȃ⹄ウ, 1911), Nishida developed a theory of “pure experience” (Japanese: junsui-keiken ㍄㊻㍼偃), a term borrowed from William James. Pure experience, as Nishida explains it, is “prior to the subject-object separation,” whereby the “subject” means the perceiving person and the “object” the perceived thing.1 In the ordinary way of thinking about perception, we might think that I am a perceiving entity, and I perceive, for example, this laptop that I am using to type this page. In this case, the “subject” is the I who is perceiving, and the object the laptop. But, Nishida says, following James, we must start philosophy from a standpoint that assumes nothing; categories such as subject and object, perceptions as explained in terms of the self and the world (as if they are separate), are already loaded with philosophical notions, but if we want to start from exactly what we can observe and nothing else, we can start building a philosophical picture that is true to what we experience. So we begin from the simple fact that we act and experience—we must examine our most immediate experience as-is without assuming anything else, and that fact of immediate experience must be the basis of all philosophy. We constantly have this immediate experience as long as we are awake (in fact, strictly speaking, we “are” this experience, or this experience “is” us). So, our immediate experience is the starting point of everything, including philosophical theories about experience. (This position is called “radical

1

See Nishida (1990: 3–4). For a detailed analysis of the notion of pure experience, see Arisaka and Feenberg (1990).

“I” as the Absolute Present

empiricism,” introduced by James.) It is in this sense that pure experience is “before” the theoretical construction of the I as this perceiving self and that there is the perceived thing—at the moment I am perceiving the laptop, in that very moment of perception, there is no “I” that is separate from the laptop. The perceived laptop is the whole reality, sort of “there” and in that moment, there is only that perception of the laptop; there is no “I” in the picture (although we believe it to be there somehow). So where is the “I”? Isn’t it because there is this “I” in the first place that I can have experiences at all? What about my body, my eyes that see the world? Nishida reverses this picture. No, in our immediate experience of the world, there is just that experience of whatever it is that is going on. Only in reflection, in our immediate experience the conception and experience of the I-as-body, I-as-seer “emerge” and we then call this the “I.” Prior to such a reflection, there is only immediate experience, and as the world is simply there, there is no “I” to be perceived apart from it, though we simply assume it must be there. But, in fact, the direct experience itself is the constantly changing flow, and this is what we conventionally call the “I,” but that comes to us as pure experience, not beforehand. Nishida says at the beginning of the Inquiry into the Good: To experience means to know events just as they are. It is to know things without the self ’s operations interfering. What we normally consider experience is filled with thoughts. “Pure” means, however, the state prior to thought. For example, when we see a color or hear a sound, pure experience is prior to thoughts such as “this is an external event,” or “I am feeling such and such,” or even prior to judgements of the color or the sound. Pure experience is thus identical to direct experience. NKZ 1: 9: Abe and Ives, 32

But our experience is not simply mental. It is an embodied, whole experience. Pure experience is therefore simultaneously a body-experience, and bodies have a concrete place and all experiences happen as concrete events. What I experience is different from what you experience, because no one can occupy exactly the same place as I do. Yet, our experiences are “shared” already in pure experience, in that in my immediate experience, others are there as well, and the direct experiences are already common—otherwise we must 2

Nishida’s works are collected in Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (NKZ, Collected Works of Nishida), Volumes 1–19. Here the references are to the 1966 Edition, published by Iwanami Shoten. An Inquiry into the Good is contained in Volume 1 and will be cited as (NKZ 1: page number: Abe and Ives, page number). All the translations from the original are my own, and the page number from the Abe and Ives translation follows, for reference.

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constantly check-in with others but this is not how we interact in the world with others. According to Nishida, in pure experience, “individual experiences” are parts of already shared experience. But this is not to say that we cannot distinguish my experiences from other experiences. My experiences are uniquely mine, in that no one else can ever experience them the way I do. Our individual perspectives are like vector points—the eye that sees and the body that feels, the whole being that I am— this is the “field of experience,” a perspectival unfolding of pure experience, since “my” perspectives are unique to exactly the place and time and history that I occupy. So, it is through the perspectivally given pure experience that the sense of my “I” comes to arise; it is not the other way around (that there is first the “I” and then the I-thing has various experiences). One might say that our bodies must exist prior to our experiences, and since our bodies occupy different places and times, our experiences are different. But Nishida says the only way in which we could even experience our bodies or comprehend other bodies is through our immediate, direct, pure experience. Even an idea or a thought is a pure experience. So, the very experience or conceptions of our bodies arise as a part of pure experience. My body is thus not “prior” to pure experience, but experienced and “enacted” directly as pure experience. Thus, for Nishida, the “I” is not a substance or an essence existing prior to immediate experience. Rather, this idea of the I-thing arises in reflection, which is also a movement in pure experience. The “I,” as pure experience, is nothing other than the immediate, direct experience, the “world” that opens up to us at every moment. In this sense, the “I” and the world are one and the same—the pure experience as it always unfolds. Pure experience is also always immediately in the “here-and-now.” The past and the future are ways of “interpreting” pure experience as they unfold in the present. We normally think that time flows from the past to the present to the future; the past is what has already happened, the present is the now, and the future is what will happen. But, in fact, there is only the now—there exists no “past” and no “future” apart from the ongoing here–now of pure experience. In Nishida’s words: The moment the contents of the eternal present get intuitively determined, there is the I (jiko, the self as the I). The content of the true self is no other than the content of the eternal present; the outside becomes the inside. Our world does not flow from the past to the future. The past flows into the present and the future to the present as well. Our world flows from the present to the present. NKZ 6: 132

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When we say, “but that happened five years ago,” that is our present recollection and allocation of that event in the past from the point of view of the ever-present present. When we talk about historical events, such as when the pyramids were built, we also do so in the present. When we think of events in the future; that, too, is the configuration of the now in its future aspect at the present moment. There is thus only the now even if we think of the events in the past or imagine something in the future; these thinkingabout-it moments are the present now that is unfolding. This is what Nishida means by the “eternal present” (Japanese: eien no ima ≨䚐ȃӺ or “absolute present,” zettai no ima ㎦ሮȃӺ). The absolute present is also always bound to a place and a space—there is no other place than your actual place right now, and in this unfolding of concrete pure experience, time and place, or temporality and spatiality, are one. Think of any past event in your life, for example a vacation you went on with your family when you were a child; it appears “at that time” in a concrete place and time (“Yosemite National Park”), but in fact as you think of it, it is enacted in the here-and-now, as the flow of pure experience that is unfolding in the present. You may think, “oh but my memory of it as I am recalling is in the now, but the actuality of the event was in the past,” but there is no other “actuality of the event” apart from the ongoing here-and-now-that-is-nowthe-recollection-of-the-past-as-it-comes-alive-in-the-present. The self, for Nishida, is not an entity or a pre-determined essence that “has” experiences, but rather, it is nothing other than the flow of pure experience. Three different levels of the “I” are involved here. First, the separate sense of the unique “I” that arises in the flow of pure experience as a reflection; it is the I-as-seen, an object of thought. This is the usual sense in which we think of “ourselves”: as objects of thought, with personal history, characteristics, etc. However, who is producing this reflection? This is the second level of the I, the I as the subject of reflecting, which produces the I-as-object. This I that is doing the reflecting, acting, is grasped as I-assubject that produces the I-as-object; but this is still as an object of thought. So now what we have are the two poles of the I, the subject-I that produces the object-I in the acts of reflection. This “act of reflection” thus constantly posits the “subject,” the “holder” of pure experience as “mine.” But notice how this I-as-subject is yet another kind of an object, however subject-like it is conceived. This is the problem Nishida tried to overcome in his theory of pure experience. The third sense of the “I”, the “I-as-pure-experience,” is the projecting activity itself which cannot ever be grasped as an object of thought in any way, because it is that which is constantly producing that reflection. It

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is sometimes referred to as the “I-as-seer” in Nishida.3 As such, this nonobjectifiable “I-as-the-activity-of-pure-experience” is the “active field” in which the “I” appears as a being in the world, both as subject and as object. The immediate flow of pure experience is the ultimate, non-objectifiable “I,” and this flow is the absolute present.

References Feenberg, Andrew and Yoko Arisaka (1990). “Experiential Ontology : The Origins of the Nishida Philosophy in the Doctrine of Pure Experience,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 30(2): 173–205. Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (The Collected Works of Nishida Kitaro, NKZ, 1965). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nishida, Kitaro (1990). M. Abe and C. Ives, trans. An Inquiry into the Good, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Glossary Nishida, Kitaro The founder of modern Japanese philosophy. Nishida was born in 1870 and died in 1945. He was a professor at the Kyoto University and his students came to be known as the Kyoto School. Kyoto School The major school of modern Japanese philosophy that flourished from the 1920s to 1940s. Representative thinkers include Keiji Nishitani, Iwao Koyama, Masaaki Kosaka, Torataro Shimomura; sometimes wider circle of thinkers who were related to the Kyoto University at that time are also included, such as Tetsuro Watsuji, Kiyoshi Miki, and Jun Tosaka. Pure experience Kitaro Nishida’s theory of concrete immediate experience, as he developed in his maiden work, An Inquiry into the Good ((Zen Zen no Kenkyu Kenkyu, u, ழȃ⹄ウ 1911). Absolute present Kitaro Nishida’s theory that all temporal modes (the past and the future) are simultaneously the expressions of the present.

3

“I-as-seer“ in Japanese may be translated as “miru-mono” (that which sees); one of his well-known books has a title, Hataraku-mono kara Miru-mono e (From That Which Functions to That Which Sees, 1927) “That which sees” cannot itself be seen; it is the field of consciousness that cannot itself become objectified, like the eye that sees can never itself be seen.

10 Intellectual Non-Harming and Epistemic Friction Anand Vaidya

Jainism is one of the heterodox religions of classical India. Like Buddhism, and unlike Hinduism, it does not accept the authority of the Vedas (sacred texts) in developing its worldview. Jain philosophers, such as Umāsvāti (3rd century), debated the legitimate sources of knowledge (pramān·a) with their Hindu and Buddhist counterparts. Jain epistemology advocates a unique theory of epistemic standpoints (Koller 2000: 400–407 and Soni 2000: 367–377). Epistemic standpoints are important in human inquiry because we are limited knowers with sense organs that are perspectival. Humans, to put it simply, are non-omniscient perspectival knowledge acquisition systems. Our epistemic limitations do not prohibit us from improving our epistemic position through dialogue and debate that is guided by an attitude of intellectual non-harming. The concepts of intellectual non-harming (ahim·sā) and epistemic friction1 are important to knowledge generation and transmission. While the former is more explicitly found in Jain philosophy, since it is related to the ethical doctrine of non-violence (ahim · sā), the latter can be motivated through consideration of how intellectual non-harming plays out in dialogue and debate. With respect to the former concept, it is important to understand ahim · sā first as an ethical concept, as opposed to an epistemic concept. Most often

1 Although I am aware of Gila Sher’s work on epistemic friction, I have intentionally not read her work to allow for the development of my own view of the phrase “epistemic friction” based on an engagement with Jain epistemology.

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ahim · sā is translated as non-harmfulness, non-violence, or absence of a desire to harm any creature. There are two important qualifications that need to be kept in mind. First, the doctrine, though stated in negative terms, has a positive component as well. When one lives a life in accordance with non-harming, one cultivates a general attitude of benevolence towards all creatures. Benevolence is the positive attitude or disposition that one operates from. Second, the doctrine should not be understood on consequentialist grounds. For example, ahim·sā does not allow it to be the case that an individual who intends to harm but fails to cause harm and ends up helping someone has thereby acted in accord with non-harmfulness. Rather, non-harming is about intent. One must lack the desire or intent to harm any creature. The concept of ahim · sā is not unique to Jainism, it can be found in the Eightfold Paths of both Buddhism and Yoga. However, the application of it to the realm of inquiry and intellectual virtues is a central contribution of Jain epistemology. Thus, what does it mean to apply non-harming to the realm of inquiry? I offer the following account. Intellectual ahim · sā is a dispositional attitude of open inclusiveness to distinct points of view, which is grounded in (i) an acknowledgement of one’s own epistemic limitations coupled with (ii) a desire for epistemic friction (the active productive engagement with distinct points of view) for the purposes of understanding and knowledge production via correction or completion. Intellectual non-harming is important because when one is aware of their epistemic limitations yet fails to be benevolent and caring towards others who could improve their epistemic situation, they are acting in a way that is neither ethically nor epistemically conducive to knowledge production and transmission. Knowledge is valuable, and because the attitude of intellectual non-harming is an ethical means to knowledge, it is a valuable attitude to cultivate. Intellectual non-harming involves intellectual openness, which is important because new points of view can help one come to a better judgment. It involves intellectual care, which is important because not all agents stand on equal footing with respect to their social status in communicating knowledge or in their ability to do so. Caring about others in inquiry involves empathic listening and caring to understand what others are saying and contributing . It is useful to explore intellectual non-harming and epistemic friction through the ancient Indian parable of the Elephant and the Blind Men. Although the parable is from around the first century B.C., and can be found

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in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist discussions,2 here I will be developing it relative to Jeffery Long’s (2009: 141–173 passim) presentation and clarifications of it. Several blind men are brought before a king and asked to describe an elephant. An elephant is brought to them and they proceed to feel it with their hands. One, who grasps the elephant’s trunk, claims that an elephant is like a snake. Another, grasping a leg, claims it is like a tree. Yet another grasps the tail and says it is like a rope; and another, feeling the elephant’s side, claims it is like a wall. The blind men then argue amongst themselves about the true nature of the elephant. Who is correct? Only one that can see the whole elephant can say who is correct.

While the parable uses “blind men,” no epistemic point flows from the use of blindness or men. The story could be told with sighted women looking at any object that is so big that they can only take in a limited portion of it, from a given standpoint. The main point behind the blindness is that each person has a limited point of view caused by their blindness and the vantage point from which they have access to the elephant. Because the parable is sometimes interpreted by western philosophers as promoting skepticism about knowledge and anti-realism, Long (2009: 141–173 passim) carefully clarifies how the Jain version is not a defense of any of those theses. (a) Anti-realism: the doctrine that there is no truth, or that truth is not ultimately real. However, notice that there is an elephant before them. So, there is some truth about what is actually before the blind men. (b) Anti-absolutism: the doctrine that there is no absolute truth, or that truth is relative and conventional. However, notice that there really is an elephant. It is just that from any standpoint one can only grasp so much, and thus everyone’s conclusion is from a limited standpoint. (c) Anti-knowledge: the doctrine that there is no knowledge, or that truth cannot be known. However, notice that a sighted person can know the truth about what is before the blind men. It is just that the blind cannot know it because their perspectives are limited. From this conception of the parable, especially (c), we can arrive at the concept of epistemic friction by looking at what happens when the blind

2

The parable is mentioned by the Buddha in the text Udana at 6.4. It is also mentioned by the Hindu philosopher Adi Śan˙ kara (8th ce) in his bhā·s ya (commentary) on verse 5.18.1 of the Chāndogya Upanishad. It is mentioned and discussed in two Jain philosophical works: Tattvarthaslokavatika of Vidyanandi (9th ce) and Syādvādamanjari of Ācārya Mallisena (13th ce).

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men are asked to debate what is before them without first sharing their evidence. The blind man who feels the tail of the elephant as a snake, and judges that what is before him is a snake, consequently expects that as he moves his hand down the tail he will continue to feel those things which one expects to feel when one touches a snake. The tail, being sufficiently similar to the snake in many respects, will continue to confirm his belief that he is holding a snake, even though he is not. The blind man who feels the stomach of the elephant as a wall, and judges that what is before him is a wall, consequently expects that as he moves his hand across the stomach he will continue to feel those things which one expects to feel when they touch a wall. The large flat expanse of the elephant’s stomach being sufficiently similar to a wall in many respects will continue to confirm his belief that he is touching a wall, even though he is not. Against this, the two might discuss what is before them as follows: Snake-advocate: There is a snake before us, because the shape of the thing before us is long and tubular. Wall-advocate: There is a wall before us, because the shape of the thing before us is flat, wide, and long.

Now although each is wrong about what is before them, each person is making a reasonable judgment based on their evidence and the similarity between the part of the elephant they have access to and what they judge. Given what they feel, it is not unreasonable for them to judge that what is before them is a snake and a wall, respectively. With respect to error, I note the following. First, an error once made can persist in light of expectation and confirmation bias (interpreting evidence as always confirming one’s hypothesis). For example, the wall-advocate might continue to feel what is before him as a wall, since it is sufficiently similar to what he takes a wall to be like as opposed to feeling what is before him and trying to interpret it differently. In addition, he may come up against something that is not like a wall at all, but because of how he has interpreted things so far, he continues to claim there is a wall. Second, the error, once made, can be corrected either by having an experience of the elephant from a distinct vantage point, such as if the two blind men switched places, or by coming into discussion with someone from a distinct vantage point, such as if the two were to talk to each other. Crucially, in this second case, one must put

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trust and good faith in others and their epistemic methods. Let’s look at this more carefully. Suppose the blind men were to discuss what is before them. There are two stances they can take. They could adopt the stance of positioned inquiry, where each holds fixed their own position, and seeks to refute the other, rather than consider that their evidence is incomplete or that they might be reasoning incorrectly. The parable, as told, ends in mass disagreement because each person has come to the conversation already holding firm to their limited evidence. As long as they continue to dogmatically hold that they have a sufficient amount of evidence, there will be no reason for them to back down in the face of disagreement. However, when one is aware of their epistemic limitations in inquiry, and consequently adopts an attitude of intellectual non-harming, they will often seek epistemic friction. Epistemic friction occurs when inquirers with different viewpoints critically share perspectives to improve their epistemic position through correction, corroboration, or completion. In the parable each blind man has only a partial grasp of the total set of evidence. Given the limitations of their senses (being blind) and what they are allowed to touch (only what is in front of them), none of them can make an accurate judgment about what is before them. Moreover, their evidence can be improved. The man who judges early, upon grabbing the tail, that a rope is before him, will only continue to believe that there is a rope, as opposed to a tail, as long as the experience aligns with his expectations. Thus, in order to have a more complete set of evidence each individual has to rely on the perspectives of the others. In contrast to positioned inquiry, if the blind men adopted the attitude of intellectual non-harming, they could reason as follows. From my limited grasp of the situation I can only make a judgment based on what is before me. However, there appears to be more evidence out there, since we all disagree. This additional evidence I can collect and reason with. Perhaps I should ask: what best accounts for all of our disparate judgments? That is: what has features like a flat surface, a sturdy tree trunk, a snake, and a rope at different locations? Based on this insight, one of the blind men could conclude that it is an elephant whose stomach is like a wall, whose trunk is like a snake, whose feet are like tree trunks, and whose tail is like a rope. Although none of the blind men systematize the evidence from the others, each is in a position to do this by moving away from positioned inquiry and toward intellectual non-harming. The blind men need epistemic friction, which is motivated by the attitude of intellectual non-harming.

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Most often we seek epistemic friction for the purposes of corroboration or correction. Epistemic correction is needed when a particular point of view has been incorrectly produced. Generally, one seeks epistemic corroboration when they are not confident about their own perspective or suspect an error in it. Each of the blind men is subject to epistemic correction, since their judgements are false: it is a tail not a rope, it is an ear, not a fan! None of their claims are corroborated. However, in seeking epistemic friction one might discover that they don’t need correction or corroboration, but instead completion. Epistemic completion requires a point of view to be completed by considering other points of view when the given point of view is evidentially incomplete. For example, were the snake-advocate to take the wall-advocate as providing additional evidence as opposed to opposing evidence, she would be in a position to come to the following insight: perhaps the best explanation of our disparate judgements is that there is an elephant with parts that feel like these other things, ropes, fans, walls, when you cannot consider all the perspectives as being part of a whole thing. Moreover, when one is aware of the need for epistemic correction or completeness and has adopted the dispositional attitude of intellectual nonharming, one should be led to have the appropriately coupled desire to seek epistemic friction—engagement with other points of view for the purposes of discovering whether one’s own perspective requires epistemic correction, corroboration or completion. Intellectual non-harming, and the seeking of epistemic friction that it motivates, are good for almost any kind of inquiry. However, in philosophy, where one might be seeking a comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon in the human condition, such as the nature of the good life, these concepts are especially important. They are so, because they help philosophers exit their echo chambers (communities of co-inquirers) in an epistemically responsible way. One important way in which this materializes is with respect to cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary philosophy. There is simply too much philosophy to study. As a consequence, one might retreat to their community of co-inquirers who work in the same tradition. While there are benefits to this, such as a common paradigm, methodology, and set of problems, it is not productive toward the end of acquiring a philosophically comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon, such as justice, beauty, or knowledge. When seeking such an understanding one must adopt an attitude of intellectual non-harming while seeking epistemic friction.

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References Koller, J. (2000). “Syādvāda as the Epistemological Key to the Jaina Middle Way Metaphysics of Anekāntavāda,” Philosophy East and West, 50(3): 400–407. Long, J. (2013). Jainism: An Introduction. London: I.B. Tauris Publishing. Soni, J. (2000). “Basic Jaina Epistemology,” Philosophy East and West, 50(3): 367–377.

Glossary Intellectual non-harming A dispositional attitude of open inclusiveness to distinct points of view, which is grounded (i) in an acknowledgement of one’s own epistemic limitations coupled with (ii) a desire for epistemic friction for the purposes of understanding and knowledge production via correction or completion. Epistemic friction What happens when two or more inquirers exchange points of view, evidence, or claims, which are in prima facie tension, for the purposes of improving their own epistemic position on a question. Epistemic correction What happens when one inquirer’s position on a question is corrected by another without the use of the other person’s perspective being used. The correction occurs as a consequence of another person pointing out that, from one’s own perspective, they have made a mistake. Epistemic completion What happens when one inquirer’s evidence for answering a question is made more complete by another’s evidence.

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11 Karma Peter D. Hershock

The concept of karma is among the most complex in Asian thought, both historically and philosophically. The earliest known references to karma (Sanskrit: karman; Pali: kamma) are found in Vedic hymns that date back over 3,000 years, in which it had the limited meaning of “ritual action.” It was only in the middle of the first millennium BCE that karma began to acquire a specifically moral valence within a loose community of wandering spiritual seekers (Sanskrit: śraman·a) and came to be variously elaborated in the then-developing traditions of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu thought and practice. As Buddhism spread throughout Asia from roughly 300 BCE to 800 CE, a striking plurality of teachings and practices emerged as it evolved in response to indigenous religious and philosophical traditions—a plurality at least as great and complex as that of climates and cuisines across the continent. Throughout these dramatic changes, the concept of karma remained crucial. Popularly, teachings about karma have most often been used to frame the liberating intent of Buddhist practice and to describe the structural dynamics of the Buddhist cosmos, including the patterning of experiential continuities across lifetimes. As a critical concept in Buddhist soteriology (studies of liberation), however, karma has also been pivotal in developing a theory of value and action that challenges the gap between the space of causes (materiality) and the space of intentions (mind), and that implies a radically enacted, embodied and socially embedded theory of mind that accords philosophical primacy to ethics rather than to either metaphysics or epistemology. As such, it is a valuable contribution to intercultural philosophy 99

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that is important, not only historically, but as a resource for engaging many of our most confounding, contemporary global concerns.

Karmic Causality: Narrative Meaning and Creative Responsibility Karma has commonly been understood as the inescapable operation of a cosmic system of moral deserts—an all-encompassing causal structure within which bad actions are guaranteed to result in bad consequences, while good actions will result in good consequences, regardless of why those actions were performed. Often paired with the concept of an abiding self or soul—as it was in Hindu and Jain traditions—karma has also been widely understood as the primary determinant of the conditions of one’s future births, personality traits, and overall life prospects. Like the English word, drama, which comes from a Greek word meaning “action” (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drama) and is derived from “I do” (Classical Greek: δράω, drao), the Sanskrit word karman (Pali: kamma) originally meant acting or doing, thus implying motivation. In keeping with this, the Buddhist conception of karma stresses the causal centrality of intention and meaning. Karma is not a factor, for example, in the mechanical action of wind breaking a branch off a tree or in the accidental breaking of a window by children at play. Karma is at play only in purposeful, future-configuring action: cutting branches from a tree to build a shelter or throwing a rock through a window as a prejudiced act of vandalism. The Buddhist concept of karma locates moral relevance in the intended effect of action, not in activity in and of itself. Moreover, although Buddhist cosmologies generally have incorporated the broad South Asian imaginaire of a cosmos in which one’s actions determine which of the six realms of life one would be “reborn” into—that of a hell-denizen, a hungry ghost, an animal, a human, a titan or a god—the distinctive and philosophically significant Buddhist innovation was to delink karma from the existence of a transcendent moral or material order, conceiving of the cosmos as self-organizing: a cosmos in which order and increasingly complex kinds of conduct emerge out of interactions informed, initially, by the simple feelings (Sanskrit: vedanā) of pleasure, pain and neutrality. Karma does not deliver us into destinies or fates that we deserve according to predetermined moral order. Karma is rather the narrative

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causal process through which we set up our own experiential possibilities: the dramatically recursive working-out-from-within of emergent moral orders in which intention (cetanā) and values play crucial roles. The liberating efficacy of Buddhist practice is premised on the fact that by paying sufficiently close and sustained attention to the dynamics of our own life experiences, it is possible to see how abiding constellations of values, intentions and actions unfailingly correlate with certain patterns of experiential outcomes and opportunities. Doing so enables us to verify—as the Buddha is said to have done—that although every experienced reality implies responsibility, our lives are not scripted in advance. They are improvised dramas that are always playing out live, expressing our values and changes in them as we respond to the opportunities present in any given moment for either reinforcing or critically redirecting our courses of action. Far from being a deterministically enforced moral order, karma consists in a spiralling process of relational elaboration through which sentient (conscious and feeling) beings express their creative responsibility, either skilfully or unskilfully revising the meaning—that is, the experiential/relational orientation—of their sentient presence.

The Emancipatory Function of Insight into Karma The emancipatory force of becoming aware of how karma operates is central to traditional accounts of the night Siddhartha Gautama realized liberation from conflict, trouble, and suffering (Sanskrit: duh·kha)—the night he became the Buddha or “enlightened one.” In these accounts, he is depicted as first attaining two forms of “super-knowledge” (Pali: abhiññā; Sanskrit: abhijñā) related to karma: a direct perception of his own life as part of a dramatic genealogy stretching back over numberless lifetimes; and a more encompassing perception of how the birth circumstances and life experiences of all sentient beings accord meticulously with their manifest patterns of intention and action (see, e.g., The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Pali: Majjhima Nikāya, no. 19, Ñān·amoli and Bodhi, trans. 1995: 207–210). Unable to find any beginning or limit to the intention-driven, dramatic transformation of sentient becoming, he realized that the cosmos is a beginningless, unimaginably vast symphony of relationally constituted felt presences: a self-ordering relational whole.

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It was only after these meditation-enabled perceptions of karma that he attained liberating insight into the interdependent origins and nature of all things (Sanskrit: pratītyasamutpāda), recognizing that it is not independently existing things or beings that are ontologically basic, with relationships among them amounting to contingent, second order realities. What is most basic is dynamic relationality as such. Supposedly individual things or beings, including our own selves or souls, are abstractions—the results of value-expressing disambiguations of what is, in actuality, empty (Sanskrit: śūnya) of any abiding natures or essences. Sentient experience and conceptual differentiation are not ultimately reality discovering; they are reality conferring. Karmic bondage is the result of acting in ignorance of this— acting as if we are or could be wholly independent of others, as if we are knowing subjects standing apart from known objects, or as if we were capable of effecting changes without being simultaneously affected by them. As narratives of the “prior lives” of the Buddha make evident, his perceptions of the operation of karma, his insight into the ontological primacy of relationality, and his release from the compulsory experiences of duh·kha were the culmination of a journey of learning from and with others that was sustained by his progressive cultivation of enlightening intent (bodhicitta). In later Mahayana Buddhism, the origin of freedom in commitment becomes explicit and dramatically central to the life histories of bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) whose defining characteristic of limitless responsive virtuosity (upāya) is generated by the profundity of their compassionately vowed commitment to assist all beings attain liberation from duh·kha. These affirmations of the enlightening force of intentional action would seem to be contrary to the common, early Buddhist framing of the goal of Buddhist practice as the cessation of karma. But, as is made clear in the Kamma Sūtta (Samyutta Nikāya 35.146), rather than an escape from causality or the curtailing of purposeful action, the “cessation of karma” consists in embarking resolutely on the eight-fold Noble Path of cultivating right or complete and perfect (sammā) view, resolve, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration—a path of explicitly purposeful and values-informed action in socially engaged interdependence with others. Hence, the Buddha’s dual description of himself as a kammavadin (Pali) or teacher of action, and as a viriyavadin (Pali) or one devoted to summoning up in others the energy or effort needed to cultivate virtuosic (Sanskrit: kuśala) conduct and relational dynamics. Those who are wise are “seers of interdependence, skilled in karma and its results” (Majjhima Nikāya, 98.13; Ñān·amoli and Bodhi, trans. 1995: 806–807).

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Karma and the Troubling Presupposition of Independent Existence Most sentient beings are not bodhisattvas, of course, and our relationship with karma is all too often one of entanglement in recurrent experiences of conflict, trouble, and suffering. The Buddhist teaching of karma enjoins seeing that this is not evidence of divine judgement, the inescapable dictate of natural law, or simple chance or bad luck; it is evidence of tensions among our enacted values and intentions that might individually have yielded desirable consequences, but that in combination and under prevailing current circumstances are generating troubling relational and experiential crosstalk. To see our experience karmically is to see that duh·kha is a function of the predicament-laden nature of unenlightened sentient presence, and its persistence is a mark of our failure to resolve conflicts among the values and intentions that inform our conduct. Complete and lasting freedom-from duh·kha depends on resolving those conflicts and cultivating new and differently motivated patterns and qualities of conduct. This is not as simple as it might sound. It is a contemporary “truism,” for example, that the pursuit of our personal happiness entails acting in our own self-interest—doing what will enable us to enjoy the life experiences that we want. But the karma of getting what we want involves generating continual opportunities for getting better at getting what we want, which necessarily involves getting better at wanting or experiencing lack, the crucial condition for which is failing in the end to really want or be satisfied with whatever it is we get. The apparently satisfying (suh·kha) aim of getting better at getting what we want ironically commits us to an experiential spiral of increasingly finegrained and acute dissatisfaction (duh·kha). Similarly, the karma of developing greater capacities for control depends on perceiving our circumstances as in need of ever further control, the result of which is living in increasingly controlled environments wherein we are ironically subject to ever-proliferating threats to and thus opportunities for exercising still further control. In sum, karma’s binding effect can occur whether our experience is pleasant or unpleasant, and freedom from it cannot be realized merely by exercising greater freedom of choice based on existing constellations of values. Ending conflict, trouble and suffering requires putting an end to the mental proliferation of relational blockages (prapañca) by engaging in and sustaining

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conduct that is virtuosic (kuśala) while refraining from conduct that is without-virtuosity (akuśala), thereby realizing superlative relational dynamics (see, e.g., the Sakkapañha Sūtta, Digha Nikāya 26, Walshe 1995: 395–406). The most powerful of these blockages and karmic entanglements result from taking ourselves to be essentially independent individuals, and from framing our actions as evidence, exclusively, of either free will (self-power) or determinism (some form of other power). Escaping the binding effects of karma consists in cultivating progressively responsive and compassionate commitment to enacting liberating insight into the interdependence of all things. Right view (sammā di·t·thi), the first step on the path of the “cessation of karma,” is not one of arriving at some already fixed or discoverable truth; it is the practice of seeing all things as impermanent (anitya) and withoutself (anatman)—that is, as empty (śūnya) of any abiding or essential nature. This positive potential of value-aligned and motivated action is usefully intimated in early Buddhist texts that describe karma metaphorically as the phala or fruit of intention (cetanā), where phala refers to fruit that is ripe to the point of bursting. The metaphor suggests that while our lived experiences and their circumstances have volitional activity as their root cause (hetu), they are not an “effect” or “result” of intention in the way, for example, that flames are the result of rubbing sticks together or that an edible meal results from following a cookbook recipe. Our karma embodies our histories of sentient responsiveness, conserving within it acquired potentials and proclivities for both rehearsing and revising those histories. Just as every mango fruit embodies the evolutionary creativity of a given mango tree as an adaptive nexus of environmental exchanges entwining soil, rain, sunshine and foraging animals and insects, our karma is the generative relational “fruit” of our value- and intention-inflected action within emerging networks of interdependence—the concentrated embodiment of our histories of sentient responsiveness that conserves within it all our acquired potentials and proclivities for both rehearsing and revising those histories.

Karmic Implications: Metaphysical and Ethical Conceiving of the dynamics of sentient presence as karmically ordered has several striking philosophical implications. To begin with, it does not permit assigning ontological primacy to either material or mental existence. It is as

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impossible to choose between materialism and idealism as it is to establish which came first, the fruit or the tree. Much as fruits and trees are aspects of an ongoing pattern of organic/sentient becoming, mind and matter are aspects of an ongoing and seamless process of karmic becoming. Sentient beings (actors) and their environments (things acted upon) are nondual or continuous in much the same way that the two seemingly distinct edges and sides of a Möbius strip are, in fact, a single edge and single side. All action is interaction. Or, as the Chinese Buddhist thinker, Fazang (643–712), put it in his exposition of the emptiness (śūnyatā) and nonduality: interdependence entails interpenetration. The world is a dynamic relational matrix in which each particular (Chinese: shi һ) is at once causing and being caused by the totality of all particulars—a world in which each thing ultimately is what it contributes to the patterning articulation (li ⨶) of the world as a whole (see, e.g., Huayan wujiao zhang, the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō. 45, no. 1866). In short, each thing ultimately is what it means for others. The inverse corollary of this, of course, is that to change what things mean is to change what they are. In the karmic Buddhist cosmos, time is not a qualitatively neutral abstract dimension, the content or container of freestanding, sequentially frozen moments, or a generic unidirectional stream of influence; it is irreducibly animate and qualitative. A dynamically nonlinear relationship obtains among all that is past, present, and future as equally primordial aspects of the ever-evolving simultaneity of horizonless and nondual interdependence. Changes, now, in what we value and intend, affect the material relevance of different aspects of our pasts, establishing novel arcs of significance anticipating and aligning with new patterns of future outcomes and opportunities. What is ultimately most “basic” is value-shaped and value-shaping change—the dramatic or narrative reality of relational maturation and transformation. Taken together, the teachings of interdependence, emptiness, being without-self, and karma point toward the ultimate nonduality of “what matters” and “what is”—the absence of any gap between the space of intentions and the space of causes. Seeing this is to see that every experienced reality implies responsibility and that all responsibilities imply opportunities for new angles of response. Realizing freedom-from conflict, trouble, and suffering is thus exercising our freedom-to change our karma—our freedom to develop new and progressively virtuosic (kuśala) constellations of values, intentions, actions, and relational dynamics. A karmic conception of the human experience thus has the effect of according critical primacy, not to metaphysics or epistemology (as is the

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case in much of Euro-American philosophy), but to ethics. Yet, rooted in teachings of the emptiness and interdependence of all things, and the critical importance of seeing ourselves as without-self, an ethics of karma is not easily placed into one of the standard approaches to ethics in which concerns center fundamentally on either personal character (virtue ethics), duties (deontological ethics) or the consequences of actions (utilitarianism). If acting on others is to simultaneously be acted upon both by them and by oneself, there can be no agents who are not also patients of their own actions. An ethics of karma invites focusing primarily on qualities of relationality and shared agency, rather than on our character as individual agents, or that of our actions and their presumably distinct objective and subjective consequences. Moreover, granted that the proximate aim of Buddhist practice is to cultivate the moral clarity, attentive mastery and wisdom to think, speak and act as needed to realize superlative or virtuosic (kuśala) relational dynamics, while ceasing to think, speak and act in ways that are without-virtuosity (akuśala), the purpose of ethical deliberation cannot be to discover or establish either absolute or universal standards of conduct. Just as virtuosic musical performances set new standards of musicianship, kuśala conduct sets new standards of ethical excellence. An ethics of karma is an ethics of movement beyond what is now deemed bad and mediocre, but also beyond what is currently deemed good—a recursive metaethics of evaluating value systems in creative reflection on and commitment to revising the meaning of and our means to liberating relational virtuosity.

References Bodhi, B. (2003). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha or Sam · yutta Nikāya, trans. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Walshe, M. (1995). The Long Discourses of the Buddha or Digha Nikāya, trans. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Ñān·amoli, Bhikkhu and Bhikkhu Bodhi (1995) The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha or Majjhima Nikāya, trans. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, The Buddhist Canon. Reprint, Taibei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 1983–1984.

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Glossary Intention In Buddhist thought, intention (cetana (cetana¯ ) is an omnipresent characteristic of consciousness and establishes the quality of (sam actions undertaken in response to perceptions (sa · jña) that are (vedana¯ ). toned with positive, negative, or neutral feelings (vedan Interdependence The Buddhist concept of interdependence (prat¯ı tyasamutpa¯da a) affirms the ontological primacy of dynamic relationality and denies the ultimate reality of independently existing things or beings. Relationality Buddhist teachings of interdependence, emptiness, and non-self go against the philosophical grain of commitments to the ontological primacy of individual existents and the secondary ontological status of relations among them. While there are many possible approaches to fleshing out Buddhist metaphysics, the approach taken here is to use “relationality” to refer to that which obtains prior to the operation of discriminative ña¯ naa)—that which is “before thinking.” In keeping cognition (vijña annica with Buddhist teachings about impermanence (Pali: annica: a: Sanskrit: anitya a), relationality is understood as intrinsically dynamic. Responsibility Responsibility is today often understood as the duty of an individual to take care of someone or something, or as the state of being accountable as an agent involved in some course of action and resulting events. In Buddhism, it is more accurate to see responsibility as a structural characteristic of purposeful presence: the inalienable characteristic of being present in ways that afford possibilities for responding to and revising relational dynamics or the quality of interdependencies involved in our sentient presence. Freedom While freedom is often associated with and at times reduced to the exercise of choice, a consistent Buddhist conception of freedom sets a higher standard of acting with the kind of responsive virtuosity needed to realize relational dynamics not characterized by conflict, trouble and suffering. Freedom is, in short, a distinctive relational quality.

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12 Nature Marzenna Jakubczak

Nature, a fascinating and overwhelming power, as nurturing and benevolent as it is hostile, is always stimulating our imagination and seemingly echoing human fears and desires. Indian thinkers and artists have been emphasizing the close relationship between nature and human culture for centuries. The fact that the elements of nature affect all our activities cannot be overlooked in the light of the monsoon climate, under the rhythm of alternating phases of unbearable tropical moisture and nagging drought. This is probably why most Indian conceptions of human nature are based on the holistic premise that we find our identity and meaning of life through connections to the community around us as well as to the wider world of nature with its cyclic rhythm conditioning human fate. A variety of ethical, aesthetic, and symbolic codes implied by these conceptions have been replicated unceasingly since ancient times through commonly adopted cultural norms and through social practices. These codes have developed despite the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic internal diversity of Indian society.

The Ambivalence of Nature The traditional Hindu calendar initially contained three, then twelve or even twenty-four seasons. Currently, six seasons of the year are commonly accepted, namely spring, summer, rainy season, autumn, early winter (or pre-winter), and cold season (or late winter). At least since the fifth century CE, during the time of Kalidasa, an outstanding playwright and poet, the six seasons began to be personified and loaded with rich symbolism and iconography. His long poem R·tusam · hāra is entirely devoted to this topic. 109

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Ritu – the Sanskrit term for season, which literally means “the order” or “course of things” or “the time devoted to a given action,” is derived from ·rta denoting “the order of reality.” The latter then gave way to the concept of dharma understood as the “law,” “righteousness” or “virtue” and “duty.” The extreme climatic conditions typical of South Asia, with prolonged periods of drought followed by torrential monsoon rains, undoubtedly left a mark on the imagination of Indian thinkers. They see man as an integral and interdependent element of ambivalent nature. In this view, nature owes its vitality and fertility to two opposing and complementary qualities—heat and moisture, or sun and river—which intensify alternately, often bringing about a sudden, radical change and activating a powerful force (Gombrich 1975: 110–142). Likewise, humans can fully reveal their creative and spiritual potential when they establish a dynamic balance between conflicting tendencies, such as craving to manifest one’s psychophysical and social nature on the one hand, and on the other, the desire to completely free oneself from all worldly conditions, either innate (bodily and mental) or the acquired ones (habitual, social, moral, etc.). In other words, just as in the dynamics of nature there is perpetual collision of polar qualities, so humanity needs to constantly reconcile satiety with deficiency, exuberance with austerity, lust with disgust, and struggle between a sensual daze and renunciation, etc. The mighty force that may emerge from this conflict is the power of spiritual transformation which leads towards liberation from all suffering. This ultimate spiritual goal is labelled as mok·sa or kaivalya in Hinduism and Jainism respectively, or nirvān·a in Buddhism.

The Spontaneity of Nature The oldest references to a holistic vision of the world, assuming the unity and substantial homogeneity of all forms of life, are found in the R·gveda (circa twelfth-century BCE), one of the four collections of Vedic hymns, of which the Vedas consist. The Vedic hymn 10.90 describes the primal sacrificial ritual that gives rise to the world as we know it; the ritual dismemberment of the cosmic primeval giant Purusha (puru·sa) turns out to be a spontaneous act of self-sacrifice indispensable for the creation of the world. The hymn sanctions the vision of the common beginning of all spheres of existence: divine and natural, including human, both in their biological and their social aspects. From this burnt offering, the gods, then

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heaven and earth, then the four cardinal directions of the world, then animals and men were born. The dismemberment of Purusha also gave rise to the social hierarchy maintained in India in the form of four main classes (varn·as): from his mouth came a priest (brahmin), his arms gave birth to a warrior (k·satriya), from his thighs came a merchant (vaiśya), and from his legs came a worker (śudra). Despite the organic unity of the world, the sacrifice of the figure of a mega-anthropos indicates that the early Indian tradition gives special importance to the human. It is humans who have the duty to imitate this primal act of creation by performing regular sacrifices, thereby maintaining communication between the earthly realm and the realm of the gods, between what the human grows out of and what they grow into, because all three aspects of reality—the earthly realm, the humans, the realm of the gods—not only have a common beginning but also coexist in close interdependence. Thus, early Indian thought assumes a common cosmoand anthropogenesis, claiming that the origin and structure of the universe and the human microcosm are analogous and emerge simultaneously. Those Vedic hymns that discuss the origin of the world unanimously assume basic intuitions, that nature itself is capable of spontaneous creation, growth and movement, and that matter is in some sense unified with life. There are several versions of the cosmogonic myth, but none suggests that the world comes into being out of nothingness or that a creative force is not intrinsic to primordial nature. The idea of a transcendent cause of nature is alien to the early Vedic authors. The Indian ethos allowed at best a transcendent meaning to be assigned to natural phenomena, and at the same time to justify the natural origin of the world created through cosmic evolution, which led to the emergence of all its elements, such as plants, animals and gods (Chatterjee 1989: 85–99). The creative urge, the desire to exist (kama), is inherent within nature itself, as is the ability to give out life and consciousness. The Vedic texts universally accept the idea of natural parenthood; that is, the creation of the world by self-fertilization of the eternal cosmic waters from which the golden embryo emerges (R·gveda 4.3.10; 10.121.1). Self-generation, perpetual regeneration, has its image in the Fire (Agni). Agni, depicted as the fiery bull, milks himself, beginning and ending a self-fertilization and gestation (Kramrisch 1962: 169). At the dawn of the world, as we read in one of the most frequently quoted hymns (R·gveda 10.129; trans. Basham 1968: 250): “At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness. All this was only unillumined cosmic water.

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That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing, arose at last, born of the power of heat.” The cosmic waters sung of in the Vedic hymns are not only identified with the primordial source of life, inexhaustible and the primal impersonal creative power, preceding even the gods themselves, but also with the appearance in the world of the element of movement, light, and of source purity and purification power (cf. R·gveda 10.130 in Griffith 1896– 1897). The symbolic functions of the waters are then taken over by the rivers to which the bards address their invocations, counting on their protection, comparable to maternal care, on the influx of vitality and power to create. Water gives and sustains life, but also cleanses it from all dirt, including moral defilements washed away thanks to the ritual activities.

Upholding Versus Overcoming Nature In the long history of Indian culture, two opposite attitudes towards nature have emerged and seemed to compete as well as complement each other. On the one hand, the orthodox view holds that there are common principles binding both nature and man, or society; in this attitude humanity is assigned a special role in sustaining the rhythms of nature. On the other hand, the main focus is the need to exceed the limits of nature, withdraw from its conditioning and, ultimately, extinguish confusion causing all suffering experienced by sentient beings. The mainstream, or orthodox, view of the relationship between man and nature has been articulated by brahmins, the upper social class, who play the role of priests and householders responsible for performing rituals on behalf of the whole society. Since their special concern is the continuity of Hindu tradition, they have been in charge of accumulating and transmitting, from one generation to the next, the sacred knowledge of the meaning of the rituals. Their duty results from a specific social order through which the law of nature manifests itself, as we read in the Vedic texts mentioned above. When human duties implied by the hierarchical social structure are duly observed, they bring fulfilment and moral merit to those who act accordingly. All elements of this framework are thought of as interrelated and serve to uphold the cosmic order (dharma) set at the time of the creation of the world. That is why the term “dharma” is used to name both one’s duty, the natural law, the social order, and a moral merit as well as the cosmic order.

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Maintaining the natural order is also a concern of many indigenous religious traditions, often labelled as Sarnaism. These non-brahmanical communities worship the mother goddess, identified with the earth, and cultivate their seasonal ceremonies and tribal rituals which aim to uphold regeneration of nature. In contrast to the orthodox Hindu position, members of ascetic traditions (śraman·as) such as Buddhism and Jainism, dating back to the sixth-century BCE, reject the authority of the Vedas and are disinterested in performing rituals to support the status quo or seeking another rebirth. They instead argue for exerting effort in spiritual explorations on the path of renunciation, i.e. asceticism (sam · nyāsa). They reinterpret dharma as striving for liberation from all worldly suffering rather than maintaining the existing order of things. Thus, achieving their spiritual goal ultimately requires breaking all ties with the natural world.

Inner Complexity and the Dynamics of Nature To capture comprehensively the specific Indian take on metaphysical grounding and inner dynamics of natural phenomena let us briefly outline five representative positions developed in various philosophical schools. 1 In the first view, all knowable objects are composed of the irreducible gross elements (mahābhūta), four or five in number: earth, water, fire, air and space. These are the primordial constituents of the world. This conception is accepted both by orthodox philosophical schools and by those who deny the authority of the Vedas. The Vaiśes· ika school puts the five elements into nine kinds of substances alongside time and space, the self (ātman) and mind (manas). The classical Yoga system argues that making the five elements the object of one’s persistent meditation may result in achieving an extra power to control the natural phenomena (Yogasūtra 3.44). The proponents of the heterodox materialist school of Cārvāka assume that, apart from all things and bodies, human consciousness also arises from the combination of the four gross elements (Riepe 1961: 53–78). Moreover, Hindu mythology and Ayurvedic medicine refer to the gross elements when explaining the origin of the world and causes of disease.

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2 Another classical conception developed in the Vaiśes· ika and Nyāya schools claims that nature is composed of indivisible eternal particles, or atoms (paramān·u), that are neither created nor destructible. Any object of experience, or whatever can be cognized and named, is classified into seven categories (padārtha): substance, quality, activity, generality, particularity, inherence, and non-occurrence. There are nine types of substances including four material substances made of numerous atoms (earth, water, fire, air) and five non-material substances. The latter consist of the four all-pervasive substances (ether, space, time, the self) and the mind substance that always appears as a single atom associated with the individual self. The atoms of gross elements combine with each other to form knowable objects, depending on the circumstances. In contrast, non-material atoms remain unassembled and serve as an empty vessel for the combining or separating material atoms. The all-pervasive atoms of space and time define the basic framework of the world. Apparently, it seems unthinkable that space might exist without being filled in with the world, or that the world might exist beyond time. The Vaiśes· ika thinkers also believe that the atomistic view implies a divine designer who alone can put together and compose all perennial atoms in an intelligent, meaningful way. 3 According to the Sām · khya school, nature (prak·rti) is the unconscious but creative and alive realm manifesting itself spontaneously. In the course of nature’s self-transformation, a sequence of entities is revealed out of the unmanifest primordial materiality (mūlaprak·rti). The witness of this evolution is the pure self (puru·sa), passively present and ungraspable, who represents the principle of consciousness. All natural phenomena—impermanent and changeable—are revealed due to the inner dynamics of prak·rti entailed by its three constitutive qualities, or its modes of existence. These are the threads (gun·as) of which reality is spun, including human psychophysical beings (Jakubczak 2015: 25–34). Gun·a sattva, symbolized by a white thread, stands for the ability to reveal and feel; rajas, represented by a red thread, is energy that gives the impulse to change or move; and tamas, visualized as black, is inertness and stability or rigidness. As Sām · khya philosophers explain, people are prone to suffering because we tend to identify ourselves with the ever-changing mental and bodily aspects of our nature, rather than reassert ourselves in our unchanging pure self (puru·sa), the passive witness-consciousness to whom the qualities of nature do not refer.

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4 In the fourth view, as formulated by the Advaita Vedānta school, visible nature—the reality of multiple objects—turns out to be a delusive appearance (māyā) of the real being identified with non-dual consciousness (cit). At the same time, however, nature embedded in the plane of worldly existence is instrumental in revealing the plane of infinite existence (brahman). The worldly existence embraces the finite phenomenal world, the heavenly world, and the plane of mere delusion. Although the domains of worldly existence are a function of māyā, they are not all fictional. They are illusory to a different extent, for example, a well appearing in a dream or mirage is obviously less real than a well belonging to the phenomenal world. Yet the independent existence of a well in a mirage and a physical well ceases once their specific causal conditions change: a dreamt well vanishes when the dreaming person wakes up, a well in a thirsty wanderer’s mirage fades away when the optical conditions change, whereas a physical well may disappear only if some destructive action happens. The illusory status of all individual entities arises from ignorance or confusion (avidyā), inherent in most biological beings. Recognizing the actual causal conditioning of all phenomena is necessary to disclose the powerful force that creates the illusion about the nature of non-dual reality. To overcome confusion, one needs to identify oneself with infinite reality (brahman) that underlies all conditioned and transient objects, including one’s own psychophysical organism. To achieve this spiritual goal, one needs to replace self-ignorance of the individuated self that “I am limited” by the insight that “I am everything.” The knower of brahman recognizes the non-plural blissful reality in everything and can experience it indirectly, usually in the form of a personal God. 5 According to the Madhyamaka Buddhist school, all things—either material objects or sentient selves—are but a stream of changes, a continuous flux with no substantial foundation whatsoever. All objects are empty (śūnya) of their essential nature, or own-being (svabhāva). What we call “an object” is actually a sequence of variability conditioned moment by moment. All things come into being or become what they are in mutual dependence upon one another, for instance becoming a parent is conditioned on the child’s birth, or being big (in size) depends on the existence of smaller items of the same kind, etc. Only through the process of dependent origination does a particular object gain its unique, but conventional or provisional and temporary nature. Buddhist thinkers claim that neither any divine first cause nor the all-

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pervading spiritual substance gives rise to all that comes into being. When something arises, it begins to exist in dependence on something else and as conditioned by other things. Therefore, an absolute beginning is as impossible as a final end of the world, and any attempt to explain nature by a single, a few, or many eternal and ultimately real substances, such as God, primordial matter, gross elements, atoms, etc., is considered futile (Glasenapp 1970: 50). To conclude this concise survey, let us point to three predominant assumptions referring to nature, which are accepted by majority of Indian philosophers: (1) all worldly phenomena, including natural environment (animate and inanimate), human society and individual beings, come from the same natural source and are governed be the same natural laws; (2) both bodily and mental aspects of human nature (like physical actions, cognitions, emotions, volitions, etc.) are causally interdependent and metaphysically homogenous; (3) philosophical or religious doctrines (darśanas, dharmas) are not just intended to serve a satisfactory explanation of the world, but they are to provide inspiration and practical hints about the path towards liberation from suffering caused by natural conditioning.

Creative Power Versus Inert Matter We can also trace some popular ideas of nature in Indian myths, visual arts, literary works and folk symbolism. They provide countless examples of the animalization or personification of nature, with a strong inclination towards feminization. The assumptions implied by the way natural phenomena are depicted reveal the aesthetic codes adopted in the given time, especially the stereotypical image of femininity. Most iconic representations of nature in its various aspects (earth, water, trees, cycles of seasons, etc.) use the image of a woman, or female animal,1 who embodies the primordial female power (śakti), the motherly protection of nature or the Goddess (Pintchman 1994: 97–115). Yet nature can evoke either the active or passive aspect of its vitality: 1

A cow is a symbol of life, identified in the Vedas with Aditi, the mother of all the gods. Sacralization of a cow means that it is commonly perceived in India as a milk-producing generous feeder, a symbolic matrix. In the rural community, a cow has sustained the livelihood of all household members with milk products and manure (used as the kitchen fuel after drying) and is treated as a family member. In addition, five substances derived from the cow are used in religious practices: milk, clarified butter (ghee), curd, urine, and diluted manure. All these products are considered sacred substances with a cleansing effect.

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(1) nature can be associated with a primeval inexhaustible female force, spontaneously creative and self-sufficient producer—māyā, śakti, prak·rti (cf. Jacobsen 1999: 52–53). This idea has its origins in pre-Vedic beliefs and the pantheistic image of the caring Mother Goddess or Mother Earth, which was widespread among agrarian cultures, indigenous tribal communities and, probably, among the population inhabiting in the Indus Valley circa 2,500 BCE. (2) depicting nature as earth and soil (bhūmi, p·rthivī) and gross element (bhūta) can also evoke the realm of passive potentiality: inert matter marked with physical and moral impurity. From this perspective, nature has only the powers of vegetation, reproduction as opposed to production, and definitely not of positive creation. However, nature can manifest its fearful, chaotic, and destructive force and, therefore, requires external interference and control. This way of conceptualizing and depicting nature was typical of the patrifocal and patriarchal Indo-Aryan society which set the tone for the modern Hindu culture.

Conclusion Over the centuries, Indian culture has developed a variety of views capturing the complexity of human experience of nature. Numerous thinkers tried to explain metaphysical grounding of the transient natural phenomena and justify the specific ways recommended for humans when adapting to all circumstances, both external (determined by natural and social environment) and internal (conditioned by one’s own bodily and mental states). The most influential positions emphasize the close relationship between nature and human culture. In the Vedic texts people are included in one class of beings together with domesticated animals (paśu), such as horse, cow, sheep or goat, because all of them are made of the body parts of Prajapati, the Lord of creatures, or demiurge (Śatapatha-brahmana 7.5.2). Yet humans are a distinguished animal because, unlike the others, they can act intentionally, think abstractly, reflectively and, above all, perform sacrificial rituals. Another predominant characteristic of Indian perspective on nature is acknowledging, if not stimulating, the individual human need for complete autonomy; this aspiration, typical of the ascetic movements, implies overcoming natural conditioning and, eventually, withdrawing one’s natural urges. Another crucial ambiguity, very important for modelling Indian mentality, is the tension between two appealing images of nature: spontaneous

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creativity versus inert potentiality. This polarization of the conceptual dimensions of nature implies irremovable ambivalence or even contradiction when it comes to defining the relationship between humankind and the natural environment. The tendency to idealize and personify nature (for instance, Shiva 1988) is slowly giving way to biological and socio-economic arguments that aim at revising gender stereotypes, focus on interdependence of nature and culture, and promote environmental engagement on a wide scale.

References Basham, Arthur L. (1968). The Wonder that Was India, New York: Taplinger Publishing Co. Chatterjee, Margaret (1989). “Man and Nature in the Indian Context,” in Tang Yi-Jie, Li Zhen, George F. Mclean (eds) Man and Nature: The Chinese Tradition and the Future. Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Life, Series III: Asian Philosophical Studies, Vol. 1, 85–99, Lanham, New York, London: University Press of America. Eggeling, Julius (trans.) (1894). “Śatapatha brahmana” in Max Müller (ed.), The Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 41, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Glasenapp, Helmuth von (1979). Buddhism – A Non-Theistic Religion, New York: G. Braziller. Gombrich, Richard (1975). “Ancient Indian Cosmology” in Carmen Blacker and Michael Loewe (eds). Ancient Cosmologies, 110–142. London: Allen and Unwin. Griffith, Ralph T. H. (1896–1897). The Hymns of Rigveda, Benares: E.J. Lazarus (accessible at sacred-texts.com). Jacobsen, Knut A. (1999). Prak·rti in Sām · khya-Yoga. Material Principle, Religious Experience, Ethical Implications, New York: Peter Lang Publ. Jakubczak, Marzenna (2015). “The Problem of Psychophysical Agency in the Classical Sām · khya and Yoga Perspective,” Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal, 5(1): 25–34. Kramrisch, Stella (1962). “The Triple Structure of Creation in the R· g Veda,” History of Religions, 2(1): 140–175. Pintchman, Tracy (1999). The Rise of the Goddess in Hindu Tradition, Albany: SUNY. Riepe, Dale Maurice (1961). Naturalistic Tradition in Indian Thought, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Shiva, Vandana (1988). Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India, New Delhi: Zed Press.

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Glossary atman n The self, the highest personal principle of consciousness and individual life. brahman The Absolute, self-existent impersonal spirit, the essence of reality, or the source of all things with which they are identified and to which they return. Veda¯nta identified with cit Non-dual consciousness, in Advaita Veda brahman. dharma The inherent nature of reality or an aspect of truth or reality; in Hinduism it is regarded as the cosmic law that underlines social order and moral behaviour, so it is often rendered as “righteousness” or “virtue” and “duty”; in Buddhism it refers to the Buddha’s teaching, or a universal truth his teaching reveals. gun · khya and Yoga schools “a strand,” a mode of · a (1) In Sa¯m (prak.r tii), both its physical, or existence, a constituent of nature (prak material as well as psychic phenomena; there are three gun· as (sattva a, rajas s and tamass) that are inseparable and not cognizable directly but known only through their manifestations; (2) in Nya¯ya and Vai s´es·ika schools gun· a is defined as a quality that abides in Vais substance, thus, cannot exist independently; there are twentyfour qualities including those that abide in the objects (color, taste and smell, number, etc.), and those that are unique to selves (desire, cognition, pleasure, pain, and moral merit, etc.). maha¯ bhu¯ta/bhu¯ta A primary gross element of nature or physical substance, defined as a substance which possesses a specific sensible quality: odor, taste, color, touch, or sound. ma¯ ya¯ A delusive appearance of the real being, the source of the visible universe and power of brahman. moks· a Liberation from suffering and rebirth (in Hinduism and Jainism) nirva¯ n · a liberation from suffering, the ultimate extinction of the flame of mundane existence (in Buddhism). prak·r ti Nature, spontaneously creative and unconscious material principle of reality, undergoing continuous change determined by its three constituents ((gu gun· as). purus· a The cosmic primeval giant, the source of reality (in the Vedas); the self, the principle of consciousness, unchangeable and only passively present witness (in Sa Sa¯m · khya school). s´ akti The primordial female power.

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sam · sa¯ ra The cycle of mundane existence, transmigration, or reincarnation. varrn · a:: A social class; there are four main varrn· as distinguished in Indian society since the early Vedic times (top down): priests ((brahmin brahmins), warriors ((k ks·atriya atriyas), as), merchants (vaiis´yaas), and workers (s´udraas).

13 Perspectival Agility Sarah Flavel and Brad Hall

Introduction The Zhuangzi (Classical Chinese: 㦺ᆀ) is widely regarded as one of the two foundational texts in classical Chinese Daoism, alongside the earlier writing the Daodejing (䚃ᗧ㏃). In this chapter, we discuss how the philosophical viewpoint espoused in the Zhuangzi can be described as a form of perspectivism (see, for example, Connolly 2011). Broadly speaking, perspectivism is the idea that all knowledge claims are made from some vantage point. There is no such thing as truly objective knowledge that is not limited by the point of view from which we observe it. Therefore, there is no ultimate perspective from which we can know what or how things truly are. So it is with our knowledge of all objects in the world, from the concrete and mundane to the more abstract and conceptual. Perspectivism is a recurring theme in the Zhuangzi. For example, in the second chapter it says: Something is affirmative because someone affirms it. Something is negative because someone negates it. . . . Each thing necessarily has some place from which it can be affirmed as thus and so, and some place from which it can be affirmed as acceptable. 2009: 13

A core idea of perspectivism, and one that is suggested in the passage above, is that there can be multiple and contradicting perspectives to be had in any given situation and that none of these can be understood to be the absolute truth. The perspectivist viewpoint may be understood to lead to a hard relativism (the idea that any one perspective is just as good as any other) 121

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and/or a hard scepticism (the idea that there can be no certainty in any knowledge whatsoever). This not only applies to knowledge in regard to objects in the world, but also to ethical and value judgments. Although relativism and scepticism do play an important role in the text, we suggest that Zhuangzi does not stop at these conclusions.1 Rather, Zhuangzi seems to say that an awareness of the relativity of truth claims and the perspectival nature of knowledge can allow us to be practically liberated from the arbitrary limits that perspectives impose on things and ourselves. Although not an absolute escape from perspectives altogether, this involves a shift in attitude that allows one to move more freely between different perspectives, and to adopt a wider, more encompassing, more self-aware and freer understanding of things. We might call the skill attained by this method that of perspectival agility.2 In what follows, this idea will be further elaborated by examining key passages to show how perspectivism in the Zhuangzi relates to how we understand and use objects, how we understand ourselves, and to how we might approach debate and engage in discussion with those of differing viewpoints.

Perspectivism in the Zhuangzi For Zhuangzi, all judgments and claims are value-laden and based on the somewhat arbitrary beliefs that we have about the world: “all distinctions of right and wrong are due to opinion” (Fung Yu-Lan 1998: 44). This view is clearly demonstrated in the words of the character Chang Wuzi in Chapter 2. Chang Wuzi suggests that there can be no objective evaluation from outside that will ever adequately resolve a debate between disagreeing parties: Suppose you and I get into a debate. If you win and I lose, does that really mean you are right and I am wrong? If I win and you lose, does that really

1

Although named after its supposed author Zhuang Zhou (c. 369–286 BCE), questions as to how many hands were involved in the writing of the text and over how many years it was compiled are unlikely ever to be resolved. Nonetheless, the presence of differing viewpoints in the text (of its different authors, characters, or passages) can be seen as a demonstration of the key philosophical concept and recurring theme of perspectivism. For ease, we refer to the author Zhuangzi throughout. 2 We are not the first to use the term “agility” to discuss this aspect of the Zhuangzi. For example, see Fraser (2015: 50); Kroll (2019: 52); and Lai (2014: 77). For further expansion on this topic we also recommend the excellent paper by Davis (2019), who discusses related ideas using the term “versatile”.

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mean I’m right and you’re wrong? Must one of us be right and the other wrong? Or could both of us be right, or both of us wrong? If neither you nor I can know, a third person would be even more benighted. Whom should we have straighten out the matter? Someone who agrees with you? But since he already agrees with you, how can he straighten it out? Someone who agrees with me? But since, she [sic] already agrees with me, how can he straighten it out? Someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he straighten it out? Someone who agrees with both of us? But since he already agrees with both of us, how can he straighten it out? So neither you nor I nor any third party can ever know how it is—shall we wait for yet some “other”? Zhuangzi 2009: 19–20

In Zhuangzi’s view, some “other” who is perfectly pure of mind and free of bias does not exist. They would at best be able to step into one of the differing perspectives, attach themselves to one and claim it to be right and the other wrong. Thus, a third perspective only compounds the original reasons for disagreement. Zhuangzi repeatedly highlights the limited nature of each singular perspective and how one can be shaped and indeed limited in one’s thinking by environmental, geographic, temporal and physical conditions. For example, he tells us how the ‘morning mushroom knows nothing of the noontide’ (2009: 4). The morning mushroom is then compared to (among other things) one massive tree whose spring and autumn were each eight thousand years long. The mushroom cannot comprehend such lengths of time and the mushroom’s limitation in this respect can be described as a natural confinement: it is beyond the natural capacity of the mushroom to be able to comprehend such periods of time. Whilst we find stories in the Zhuangzi that suggest that the same natural limitations are at work in human thinking, we also see in many cases that humans tend to impose artificially limited perspectives on themselves, thereby restricting their range of ideas and actions. Such individuals could learn to inhabit a broader and more complex position if they were to recognize this rather than believing in the possibility of an objective judge who could provide final resolutions to debates. A humorous story from the first chapter gives an example of how someone can artificially limit their perspective in regard to how they view objects in the world. Zhuangzi is engaged in a discussion with his friend and intellectual sparring partner Huizi. Huizi had a particularly large gourd (a large fruit, the shell of which was often used to carry liquids) that he found to be too flimsy

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to hold water and too big to be cut in half to make a scoop. Huizi says that he found the gourd to be useless due to its large size and so he destroyed it. Zhuangzi remarks that Huizi is “certainly stupid when it comes to using big things” (Zhuangzi 2009: 7), telling him that instead of worrying that the gourd was too big to use as a scoop, he could have used it as a boat to enjoy floating around the rivers in. Crucially, the different perspectives given here are not statements about what a thing is, but rather how it could be used (⭘ yong), how we interact with the object, and the attitude with which we approach it. Rather than asserting that his own perspective (of using the gourd as a boat) is the “right” one, Zhuangzi is critical of Huizi for his narrow perspective and lack of imagination in this respect. Because of his limited thinking and focus on practicality, it did not occur to Huizi that the gourd could be used for pleasurable, or seemingly ‘useless’ (❑⭘ wu yong), activity. Huizi is ‘tied to conventional thinking’ (Hansen 2017) and only views the object regarding its conventional pragmatic and instrumental utility, worrying that he could not find a use for it as it does not fit within an existing schema (see Connolly 2011: 501). The “usefulness of the useless” is another recurring theme in the Zhuangzi. What may seem useless and a waste of time from one perspective (leisurely floating around in rivers for example), may be seen as useful (in giving pleasure and promoting well-being) when viewed with a different attitude and with a less specific purpose in mind. The gourd passage is not simply about how we come to know external objects in the world. It makes a deeper point, by analogy, about how we limit ourselves by limiting the perspectives from which we are able to approach a given thing and suggests how we might recognize and be able to move towards a broader and freer perspective. The most striking comparison made between a large and small perspective is found in the famous opening story of the first chapter. Here an unfathomably large fish (named Kun) transforms (ॆ hua) into an unfathomably large bird (named Peng). Peng flies out of the Northern Ocean (or oblivion), ascends to a great height, and then ‘begins his journey toward the Southern Oblivion’ (Zhuangzi 2009: 3). Looking down, the great Peng bird has a vast perspective and does not try to discriminate sharply between individual things. Watching him from below, a cicada, a young dove, and quail all laugh disparagingly at Peng. Being unable to imitate his grand journey and unable to understand the point of flying so far and wide, the small creatures mock the giant bird. Some scholars suggest that although Peng has a vast perspective and the little creatures a small perspective, Zhuangzi is nonetheless demonstrating

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that they are both ultimately limited by their own individual perspectives (see, for example, Nylan 2017: 6). In other words, the large consciousness cannot comprehend the small just as the small cannot comprehend the big (Lai 2017: 200). This follows the interpretation of the famous commentator Guo Xiang (c. 252–312 C.E.) who reads Zhuangzi as saying that “all are like the birds enjoying themselves each in its own sphere” (1998: 29). There is some ambiguity in the text in this regard as the reader is not told whether Peng could take on a smaller perspective if he chose to, with such a reading suggesting he is incapable of understanding the smaller goings-on beneath him. On our reading, however, Peng has instead attained an elevated perspective from which he no longer needs to concern himself with the myopic perspectives of the smaller world. It is not that he cannot understand them, he simply does not have any need to worry about them. They have become superfluous for him because his understanding of what is useful has shifted with the breadth of his perspective. A reading that sees Peng as equally limited as the small creatures would be problematic because it does not recognize Zhuangzi’s subsequent criticism of the little creatures. In regard to the cicada and the dove, Zhuangzi says: What do these two little creatures know? A small consciousness cannot keep up with a vast consciousness, short duration cannot keep up with long duration. 2009: 4

The quail who laughs at Peng does so because it believes its own short flights between branches are the perfection of flying. Therefore, he judges Peng’s vast journey to be pointless and superfluous. But, again, it is only because he has set arbitrary limits on his own horizons and activities that the quail sees Peng in this way. Zhuangzi continues to use the image of the self-limiting quail—a bird that notoriously avoids flight where possible—in order to criticize the mindsets of his human contemporaries and their limited philosophical, political and ethical standpoints: And he whose understanding is sufficient to fill some one post, whose deeds meet the needs of some one village, or whose Virtuosity pleases some one ruler, thus winning himself a country to reside over, sees himself in just the same way. 2009: 5

Here we see clearly that Zhuangzi’s arguments about perspectivism are not so much focused on discovering the objective nature of a given phenomenon.

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He is far more interested in the way that we understand ourselves and put our perspectives into action in relation to such phenomena. We might say that Zhuangzi’s perspectivism is pragmatic, in this sense. It means embracing the breadth of multiple perspectives rather than dismissing all of them as relative and therefore illegitimate. Each perspective can be useful in its relevant time and place. Zhuangzi’s ideas here can be seen as an example of his critical attitude to what some scholars have described as a “role ethics” in the Chinese Confucian tradition (Ames 2011). Interpreters have identified this same hostility elsewhere in the text.3 There are many people who believe that fulfilling one’s prescribed role(s) in society to the best of one’s ability is the ideal way of living, and this is often taken to be a core aim in Confucianism. By focusing on this task, a person would attempt to mold themselves to fit what is believed to be the perfect example of whatever role they are supposed to fulfill: the perfect parent, child, partner or teacher perhaps. The critical point Zhuangzi is making here is not just that such people limit their own lives by seeing their own actions in this restrictive way, but further that they project this value system beyond themselves allowing them to judge others accordingly. Thus, our confinement to a given perspective can have negative moral and even political consequences in terms of our judgment of, and interactions with, others. For example, in trying to act as the perfect parent, we might falsely impose our notion of what a perfect parent looks like onto others and even suggest that child rearing should be the end goal for everyone, even for those who have no interest in parenting. Those who do fit into whatever our worldview is, tend to be seen as “right” and “good.” They are seen as propagators of peace. Those that disagree are classified as the inverse. Overall, this leads to the assumption that if everyone were to follow a given regime of ideals and to fulfill their roles dutifully then society would run smoothly and all its members would be content. In contrast, those who do not fit into the worldview become “wrong” and “bad” by definition. They are viewed as those who sow the seeds of destruction in a society and threaten its stability. However, those of limited perspective, who discriminate between the right and wrong ways to live in this simplistic manner, do not understand

3

Moeller and D’Ambrosio develop this interpretation of the Zhuangzi, agreeing with scholars who take “the Confucian view of personhood to be tied to a moral project that requires cultivation in accordance with social roles, relationships, and (relationality-based) virtues” (2017: 42).

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that different perspectives and ways of life can also be just as correct as their own. In rigidly defining themselves by their role in society, attempting to follow a dogmatic regime of morality, and understanding their own success in terms set by their own viewpoint or that of their own culture, they are just like the small creatures who laugh at Peng. They judge harshly those who do not wish to engage whole-heartedly in these same arbitrarily constructed and small-minded frameworks. In contrast to the small creatures, Peng does not abide by the conventional discriminations that these creatures make of the world around them nor adhere to the restricted view of values and aims that society prescribes to him. Kun transforms himself into Peng and flies from one vast ocean to another, with no final aim or destination in sight (he is headed from an oblivion and towards an oblivion). When we pay careful attention to other passages of the text, it becomes clear that it would be going too far to say that Zhuangzi recommends that we retreat entirely from fulfilling mundane roles in society and engaging with those around us in more limited ways. In other words, he does not dismiss the small perspectives as entirely irrelevant but rather suggests that we might benefit from having a different perspective on perspectives. To define ourselves by singular and limited viewpoints and not allow for a constant reimagining and ongoing adaptation would be to impose limitations on ourselves, just as Huizi had applied an arbitrary limitation both to the gourd and to himself by doing so. We might, for example, spend many years using gourds as a drinks receptacle. However, that should not lead us to the mistaken assumption that this is the only thing for which a gourd can be used. The point is that while we may engage at a more everyday level in restricted ways of being in the world, we need to understand such engagement as provisional. It is not the sum total of our possibilities. At various points in the text Zhuangzi draws mocking images of those who take their own viewpoints to be a sufficient basis for the judgments of others. While Zhuangzi does not entirely dismiss discussing possible solutions to the natural conflicts between differing viewpoints and values, he is, nonetheless, concerned about and critical of those who want to make a clear or simplistic distinction between “right” and “wrong” in these cases. Such people believe themselves to have discovered the truth of matters and all too frequently seek to enforce their view upon others. Within such an understanding, there is no room for plurality or individual choice. This approach fails to acknowledge the limited nature of individual perspectives and the arbitrary limits that we tend to place on the range of possible

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perspectives we might entertain. Ironically, this can only lead to what it aims to eradicate: namely dispute, disagreement and potentially even violence. In the second chapter, Zhuangzi directly criticizes two of the most prominent schools of thought of his time (that is, Confucianism and Mohism). These schools notoriously argued against one another, both claiming themselves to be right and the other wrong in regard to their political and ethical standpoints: Hence we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and Mohists, each affirming what the other negates and negating what the other affirms. But if you want to affirm what they negate and negate what they affirm, nothing compares to the Illumination of the Obvious. 2009: 11–12

Zhuangzi is wary of each of the two schools for making purportedly objective and universal claims. Instead, he asks the reader to take a step back and to see the misguided framework through which the debate is taking place. As the commentator Guo Xiang explains: That there is a distinction of right and wrong is what the Confucianists and Mohists affirm. That there is no distinction is what they deny. To affirm what they deny and to deny what they affirm is to show there is no distinction. 1998: 44

In contrast to those who categorize the set of possible right ways of seeing things, Zhuangzi seems to be recommending to his readers a broader, more encompassing attitude, one that accepts a wide array of ways to live life and to understand the world. Such a perspective does not judge others to be right or wrong in any simple sense, because it acknowledges that to do so is to falsely apply one perspective to a different vantage point. These arbitrary limitations that we place on our ways of living, and onto those of others, by means of the adopting of limiting perspectives, are the very restrictions that can give rise to unnecessary and possibly dangerous conflict between differing viewpoints.

Conclusion Some scholars argue that Zhuangzi is pointing towards the possibility of attaining a form of complete spiritual enlightenment and a liberation from the bonds of perspective. For example, Allinson reads the point of view of

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Peng as that of one who has achieved a ‘one-way transformation to transcendent freedom’ (2014: 271). Others have argued for a more humble (yet still radical) conclusion. For example, Chad Hansen argues that: Zhuangzi’s metaperspective does not lead to nonperspectival knowledge of things. It is not a window on the thing in itself, but on the bewildering range of possibilities. 1992: 284–285

In our reading, according to Zhuangzi, the superior perspective entails an attitudinal shift that avoids a mere collapse into relativism. This perspective, crucially, is one that does not try to force itself into a box. Such a perspective can allow us to transform along with the changes in our environment, to act spontaneously and to enjoy doing so. By recognizing the limitation of any one perspective, we can move between a variety of perspectives and blend them without attaching firmly to any given viewpoint. Taking up this attitude implies recognizing that any point of view, interpretation or value judgment is a temporary resting place from which new ways of thinking and acting may grow. We may stay in a perspective for a time, but we can also be open to changing our minds and can move into a differing viewpoint. In this sense, Zhuangzi’s real focus is not on the content of any given perspective nor its truth value. Instead, he is concerned with how our approach to perspectives can be transformed and indeed can become transformative by a movement towards what we can call perspectival agility: the capacity to see and further to move beyond our own perspective and to imagine things otherwise than as we see them. In the words of Fraser, “It is a psychological agility or freedom, produced by power or more specifically by a resilient, open responsiveness to the diversity of values in changing contexts” (2015: 50). Although mastering such a skill is perhaps not a complete spiritual transformation, nonetheless it is a transformation of the individual. In other words, attaining perspectival agility is not simply another perspective among others nor is it a recognition of limitations that does not move any further beyond such recognition. As Parkes puts this, the broader perspective Zhuangzi recommends is another interpretation, but one “so powerful as to be not just any other interpretation” (2020: 72). The broader perspective implied by perspectival agility makes “good sense of what’s going on—but on the understanding that it’s in the nature of interpretations to be superseded” (ibid). Beautifully illustrating this attitude, Parkes goes on to exclaim that: Zhuangzi, wandering freely among diverse perspectives, is foremost among those few well-attuned thinkers who were able to go beyond talking the talk,

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and even walking the walk, to dancing the dance—in the light of the Heavens above and around. 2020: 80; emphasis in the original

Use of the imagery of dancing here is particularly apt, in that it nicely summarizes the playful attitude developed in the Zhuangzi, one that is typified by Parkes through the idea of “trans-perspectival experience” (2020). Such a vantage point does not judge other points of view to be wrong and itself right, but rather allows others their natural way of life. It is the smaller, lesser perspective that takes its own limited understanding and way of life to be the benchmark by which all others should aim to live. It is this attitude of perspectival stasis that really makes differing viewpoints incompatible. If we can take Zhuangzi’s ideas on board then we may be able to learn to listen more carefully to others, to be open to new ideas, to be tolerant of those who are different from us, and to engage in constructive dialogue. As Lai puts this, Zhuangzi gives “a proposal for entering into exchanges with a mind that is not already closed” (2014: 70). We will never be diminished by the consideration that things might be otherwise than we assume or by the development of our capacity for agile movement through perspectives that we would not ordinarily consider feasible.

References Allinson, R. E. (2014). “How to Say What Cannot be Said: Metaphor in the Zhuangzi” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 41(3–4): 268–286. Ames, R.T. (2011). Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Connolly, T. (2011). “Perspectivism as a Way of Knowing in the Zhuangzi” Dao, 10: 487–505. Davis, B.W. (2019). “Knowing Limits: Toward a Versatile Perspectivism with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Zhuangzi and Zen” Research in Phenomenology, 49: 301–334. Fraser, C. (2015). “Zhuangzi and the Heterogeneity of Value” in L. Kohn (ed.), New Visions of the Zhuangzi, 40–58, St. Petersburg: Three Pines Press. Fung Yu-Lan (1998). Chuang-Tzu: A New Selected Translation with an Exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang, trans. Fung Yu-Lan, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Guo Xiang (1998). in Chuang-Tzu: A New Selected Translation with an Exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang, trans. Fung Yu-Lan, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

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Hansen, C. (1992). A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, New York: Oxford University Press. Hansen, C. (2017). “Zhuangzi,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta, E.N., ed. Available online: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/ (accessed May 26, 2020). Kroll, Jörn W. (2019). “Open Sky—Open Society: Zhuangzi and Jaspers on Understanding and Communicating Without Closure” Existenz, 14(2): 49–57. Lai, K. (2014). “Dialogue and Epistemological Humility” in J. Seibt and J. Garsdal (eds), How is Global Dialogue Possible?: Foundational Research on Value Conflicts and Perspectives for Global Policy, 69–84, Berlin: De Gruyter. Lai, K. (2017). An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moeller, H. G. and D’Ambrosio, P. J. (2017) Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi, New York: Columbia University Press. Nylan, M. (2017). “Zhuangzi: Closet Confucian,” European Journal of Political Philosophy, 16(4): 1–19. Parkes, G. (2020) “In the Light of Heaven before Sunrise: Zhuangzi and Nietzsche on Transperspectival Experience” in D. Chai (ed.), Daoist Encounters with Phenomenology: Thinking Interculturally about Human Existence, 61–86, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings. (2009). trans. B. Ziporyn, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Glossary ⭘ yong g Use, employ, apply, operate (❑⭘ wu yong g – useless). ॆ hua Transformation/to change from one thing to another.

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14 Relational Knowing Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach

Introduction We live in highly complex, diverse societies. These are nested in our interdependent world, a world in which regional events impact distant locations. A closer look at the gadgets we use for our social media networks, the clothes we hereby wear and the munchies awaiting us during these sessions of internet exploration are some reliable indications of this interconnection. But do practices in academic philosophy reflect this correlative way of existing? This chapter will argue that this query cannot be affirmed at this point in time. I will draw from relational knowing to ground my position. This body of work draws our attention to the concrete processes through which knowledge is made. Knowers are doers. They are not abstract individuals dealing with discrete conceptual schemes and beliefs. They stand in concrete relations to the specific spatiotemporal contexts they inhabit. One would, arguably, need multiple, local standpoints to tease out the interconnectedness of our world through relational knowing adequately. These perspectives have yet to be adequately developed in academic philosophy. In the section, “The World of Conventional Academic Philosophy,” I will briefly sketch dominant practices in conventional philosophy that tend to rely on past experiences of select white, male, and propertied European philosophers. In the section, “The World of Comparative Philosophy,” I will engage comparative philosophy, a subdiscipline of philosophy. For the purposes of this chapter, the term “comparative philosophy” will refer to that body of work which inadvertently or explicitly uses paradigms in mainstream academic philosophy to 133

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understand world-philosophical traditions. In the section, “Making Sense of our Interconnectedness,” I will sum up the discussion and indicate first steps in changing practices of comparative philosophy.

The World of Conventional Academic Philosophy Knowledge is made through concrete processes. When we seek to understand something, we do not encounter phenomena as entities or facts external to us. Rather, we gather information through relations and know through them too. As Vrinda Dalmiya succinctly says: “Any individual, therefore, has to rely on others to know and sometimes to even count as being a knower in the first place” (Dalmiya 2016: 15, emphasis in original; cf. Kirloskar-Steinbach and Kalmanson 2021: 36). We are deeply intertwined with the world even as we attempt to understand it from our specific locations in space and time. This means that our philosophical inquiry is deeply influenced by social class, gender, ethnicity, age, cultural affiliation, linguistic capacities, etc. These factors intersect in complex ways when we seek to understand the world. Accounts of relational knowing counter the standard view that universal “one-size-fits-all” philosophical concepts can generate knowledge about the general human condition as such. Proponents of the standard view consider the canon to be largely composed of cogent and coherent philosophical justifications that have withstood the ravages of time. Their success is an upshot of their quality and universality. They therefore deny that these social factors could have shaped the canon as we know it today in any significant way. Not all academic philosophers toe this line though. The dissenters would agree with Amy Olberding that such an understanding is “heroic in the acultural, ahistoric freedom it affords its practitioners and invites others to enjoy it” (2017: 1028). They would draw attention to the particular genesis of the canon, which has not been made in neutral space, but within a particular social context. In the words of Linda Martín Alcoff, the canon operates with the “transcendentalist delusion” that only European and/or Euro-American philosophical paradigms can be separated from their “geo-historical source” (Martín Alcoff 2017: 397). Scholars like Martín Alcoff see a direct relation between the free-floating and/or universal endeavors of European (and Euro-American) philosophy and the geo-political (colonial) power Europe

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exercised not so long ago. Piggybacking on this power, it was easy for European thinkers to center the world of philosophy around their own orbit. The long-term consequences of this centering are still with us. “Eurocentrism has a need not to know, a motivation not to learn, in the service of its material and discursive conquests” (Martín Alcoff 2017: 402). A critical study of the history1 of the discipline will illustrate that it was relatively commonplace amongst canonical European philosophers to hold that sophisticated thought could only be developed in Europe.2 By linking up philosophical ability with their own social group, they created, as Naomi Zack points out, a “model of race with normative anti-nonwhite bias” (Zack 2018: 4). Accordingly, philosophical traditions from other geographical regions served in this model, at best, as historical precursors to the full development of philosophical reason in Europe. Hegel’s attempt at placing his own philosophy at the apex of philosophy as such is notorious. Indeed, a blatant Eurocentric philosophy is not accepted across the board today. And yet, philosophy continues to be Eurocentric, even worldwide. Its standardized canon that, curiously, has remained largely unchanged since its inception in the nineteenth century, reinforces “one particular vision of German and European identity” (Park 2013: 151). An uncritical use of the canon reproduces, even if tacitly, the belief that philosophy can only be an activity that is carried out in Europe and subsequently in North America. When the center of philosophy is plotted in Europe (and by some extension to Euro-America) some world philosophical traditions become—whether explicitly or implicitly—at best only feeble forerunners of European philosophical prowess, as the examples of “Chinese philosophy,” “Indian philosophy” and to some extent “Islamic philosophy” (that is associated with the sociohistorical complex of Islam) illustrate.3 Other traditions continue to be cast outside the pale of philosophy (“African philosophy” and “Indigenous philosophy” are some examples). Here, philosophy’s normative anti-non-white bias juts out. The “whole edifice of framing assumptions such as nature/culture, mind/body, civilized/ 1

Michael Beaney, for example, found out that The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, a journal he edits, had published more than half of its articles on the same seven philosophers from 1993–2018 (Beaney 2018: 3). Aristotle and Kant lead the list. Not all publication outlets reveal such data. 2 Peter K. J. Park documents that the purported inability of Asians and Africans to philosophize is a recent development in philosophical historiographies. It is related to the modern positioning of Europe as the sole fount of philosophy in the eighteenth century (Park 2013). 3 Currently, the debate on an appropriate term for a philosophy of the Islamicate world, meaning that which is associated with the sociohistorical complex of Islam, is underway.

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savage, and public/private” that were established during imperial and colonial rule continue to inform philosophical work till today (Martín Alcoff 2017: 399). Arguably, even comparative philosophers continue this problematic Eurocentric legacy, even if inadvertently. The European center continues to hold when they, for example, tack philosophical content from worldphilosophical traditions onto the paradigms currently in place in mainstream philosophy or seek to “scientifically” document and map philosophical activity around the world that speaks to mainstream philosophy. In different ways, both continue to spin the story that philosophy is an activity exclusive to Europe and Euro-America. The former mode is apparently predetermined by the search for positions that can be proven to be demonstrably congruous with those in academic philosophy as we know it today. The latter has led up to distinct niches for “Chinese philosophy,” “Indian philosophy,” “Japanese philosophy,” “Islamic philosophy,” etc. that poorly reflect the trajectories of these philosophies (see below). Both fail to adequately attend to the complexities of comparisons.

The World of Comparative Philosophy Comparisons presuppose that the known suffices to know the unknown. Meaning, we trust that the nets we cast onto the world to know and understand it are apt. Indeed, we may be optimistic about the scope of the frameworks we routinely deploy within the context of our immediate world. To date, they may have a good track record in successfully apprehending at least some of the crevices in the terrain we already know. But can we be equally optimistic when applying these frameworks to unfamiliar contexts? Consider the possibility that the standards of our comparison may be naturalized and concealed so extensively that their relationship to the object of study and to our interpretation thereof may be lost from view (cf. Pollock 2017: 280). For example: We may be happy with the outcomes of our comparisons as they lead us to interesting, and oftentimes “exotic” areas of “Chinese philosophy,” “Indian philosophy,” “Japanese philosophy,” etc. Notice though how the standard that we deploy in these specific cases reflects a methodological nationalism. Meaning, we use a term (the nation-state) that

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has originated only recently in European history for a context which predates the origin of this term. In deploying it, we presume that everything captured by this national qualifier will somehow share properties specific only to that national group. That which we call “Chinese philosophy” will have at least some inextricable “Chinese” properties, its Indian counterpart some inextricable “Indian” properties, etc. But what reason do we have to presume that the properties which make something essentially “Chinese” or “Indian” do not change over centuries? Can these entities be neatly separated through the boundaries we project on them? What about their long histories which suggest the contrary? Moreover, we may, with the continued use of geographical qualifiers that are wedded to nation states, simply miss out on the complex processes of cultural flows within these regions. Equally, the national lens may divert our attention from the dynamic processes through which the geographical designations themselves took shape. And then, there is the asymmetrical dimension of this comparison too. “Chinese philosophy” and “Indian philosophy” are not contrasted with their German, French or English counterparts if you will, but by an entity called the “West.” This latter term is not used as a geographical location, it is not to the West of an East, wherever these are. It changes its location, and its scope. It apparently has the ability to unite certain populations across specific rivers, seas and oceans, while excluding other populations on those very territories. So, while the philosophy of the “West” is routinely associated with Europe and North America, it does not, remarkably, include the philosophies of the Indigenous populations. In Europe, “western” philosophy only pays a quick, historical homage to ancient Greece; its present is undeniably located outside of present Greece, in other European countries, and regions in North America. But there is more. Take “Islamic philosophy.” This philosophy tends to be studied as a well-encapsulated entity of the past, which has somehow not been influenced by the different cultures in which it was developed and cultivated (see El-Bizri 2016). Or take “African philosophy,” which is named after a continent and not a nation state. This term may itself still echo the civilizational rhetoric which informed Eurocentric academic philosophy inasmuch as it lumps together philosophical traditions of the whole continent into one monolithic whole. Borrowing an observation from the philologist Sheldon Pollock, comparisons are like “the crazy uncle in the attic you try not to talk about” (Pollock 2017: 274). While neither all male relatives (like uncles) can be considered to be per se crazy nor that dusty spaces in our houses (like attics) are to be avoided at all costs, the point is that we should attend more carefully to our actual practice of

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comparison. When we simply take for granted that all parts of the world and their philosophies can be compared to our own, we may very well engage in what the philosopher Helen Verran calls “imperialist comparisons.” These presume that “comparisons must be possible, because objective knowledge must be attained” (Verran 2011: 64). So, what is the way forward?

Making Meaning of our Interconnectedness Multiple, local standpoints would be needed to adequately tease out the interconnectedness of our world. Comparative philosophy may be unable to yield these standpoints despite the commitment of many of its practitioners to generate diverse philosophical perspectives from worldphilosophical traditions. Following Dalmiya, one reason for this limitation is that the landscape in this subdiscipline continues to be dominated by a “hegemony in the production of theories” where world-philosophical positions can only “serve as ‘objects’ of study” in discursive systems originating from the Europe (Dalmiya 2016: 302). World philosophies are mined for resources that are in short supply in philosophical debates emanating from Europe and Euro-America. World-philosophical positions are remodeled such that they can serve as commodities in a pop-up store for privileged knowers. The dominance of the European tradition is one reason for this malaise. It has categorically denied philosophical ability to those it located outside its boundaries. However, relational knowing can show the way out of this corner, or dusty attic if you will. To understand how, let us circle back. If knowers are doers who stand in concrete relations to the specific spatiotemporal contexts they inhabit, the current imbalance in knowledge production about interconnectedness may indicate that any changes going forward would have to begin with an assessment of their role in knowing processes. It would have to be ascertained whether the aforementioned imbalance is directly related to their positioning in these processes. Under the current setup, the social capital of comparative philosophers as knowers allows them to serve as conduits—as well as gate-keepers—between world philosophies and academic philosophy as we know it today. They routinely determine which understandings about our interconnectedness warrant further philosophical scrutiny. Our sketch of relational knowing

Relational Knowing

suggests that this imbalance can be rectified by them, and relatively easily at that. If they deliberately seek to bracket their standard European and Euro American framing when they approach relatively unfamiliar worlds of philosophy, they would possibly bring into view hitherto overshadowed non-traditional positions. These positions include those that comparative philosophy had dismissed in the past as purportedly lacking philosophical content either due to lacunae in scholarship or due to their purported association with atypical philosophical knowers, meaning those knowers that have been located outside the boundaries of philosophy through the narrative the discipline sustains about itself. Indeed, the group of atypical philosophical knowers is wide-ranging. It may include those whose social life does not, and probably will not, intersect with the world of academic philosophy.4 It might also encompass academically trained diverse philosophy practitioners who Kristie Dotson calls “concrete flowers” (Dotson 2011). Growing out of the cracks of poured concrete, these flowers strike out of an environment not designed for their growth and cultivation. Social factors like gender, race, ethnicity, linguistic proficiency in non-hegemonic European languages etc., make these philosophers concrete flowers in the relatively monolithic landscape of professional academic philosophy. Non-traditional positions like theirs and those that academic philosophy has dismissed as being unphilosophical have the potential to generate other perspectives on interconnectedness. They may, in the long run, help to facilitate a recalibration of what we claim we know and make meaning of our global interconnectedness. In short, standard academic philosophy is unable to make adequate meaning of today’s world. Its frameworks draw from a select pool of experiences that propertied European white males had. Comparative philosophers fail to sufficiently interrogate whether there is a close fit between the frameworks that emanate from that base and the worldphilosophical traditions they draw from. Their attempts at making meaning of our world remain limited. Current work on relational knowing seeks to increase and diversify the pool of experiences academic philosophy draws from. In the long run, it could generate perspectives that make meaning of our world from diverse standpoints. 4

For a fascinating account of how traditional beliefs about child-rearing, cooking, and herbal medicines are pertinent for good epistemological practices, see Dalmiya and Martín Alcoff (1993).

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References Beaney, M. (2018). “Twenty-five Years of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 26(1), 1–10, doi: 10.1080/09608788.2018.1423735. El-Bizri, N. (2016). “Falsafa. A Labyrinth of Theory and Method,” Synthesis Philosophica, 62(2): 295–311. Dalmiya, V. (2016). Caring to Know: Comparative Care Ethics, Feminist Epistemology and the Mahābhārata, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Dalmiya, V. and L. Martín Alcoff (1993). “Are ‘Old Wives’ Tales’ Justified?” in L. Martín Alcoff and E. Potter (eds), Feminist Epistemologies, 217–244, New York: Routledge. Kirloskar-Steinbach, M. and Kalmanson, L. (2021). A Practical Guide to World Philosophies: Selves, Worlds and Ways of Knowing, London, New York: Bloomsbury. Martín Alcoff, L. (2017). “Philosophy and Philosophical Practice: Eurocentrism as an epistemology of ignorance,” In Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, 397–408, London and New York: Routledge. Olberding, A. (2017). “Philosophical Exclusion and Conversational Practices,” Philosophy East and West, 67(4): 1023–1038. Park, P. K. J. (2013). Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830, Albany : Suny Press. Pollock, S. (2017). “Conundrums of Comparison,” Know: A Journal in the Formation of Knowledge 1(2): 273–294. Verran, H. (2011). “Comparison as Participant,” Common Knowledge 17(1): 64–70.

Glossary World philosophies Term used for all those cultural contexts in which people have sought, and seek, to make sense of their experience by using the concepts available to them. Relational knowing Broad term that refers to knowledge that is generated when people make meaning of being in the world with members of their communities.

15 Relegational Arguments Andrew K. Whitehead

Why do philosophers argue? What are the desired outcomes of philosophical argumentation? How might we define a philosophical argument? Perhaps the most concise definition of an argument is: a group of statements, in which the statement of the conclusion is meant to be supported by the statements of the premises. We could go further and note that a statement consists in the assertion that something is or is not the case. Philosophical arguments, and arguments broadly construed, serve as a means by which to persuade, to convince, and to edify. They work to inform and educate. In fact, one of the first things one learns in undertaking the study of philosophy is the persuasive force and effectiveness of successful argumentation. It is unfortunate, therefore, that in most instances of such study the combative nature of philosophical argumentation is taken for granted as self-evident. One either “wins” or “loses” an argument, and this with the consequence that one of the positions is, at best, abandoned or, at worst, obliterated. Philosophical argumentation thereby acquires the characteristic of being a contest or a competition.1 Philosophers are consequently believed to engage in a type of “death-match” in which the consequence of losing is the untimely demise of ones carefully considered position. It is rare that students of philosophy are exposed to alternative forms of argumentation. And yet, there would seem to be a greater degree of honesty, as well as critical flexibility, afforded by a form of philosophical argumentation that leaves room for the necessary partiality of one’s own position, even if one were to consider it superior to the position of an other in describing the state of affairs at hand.

1

See Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Mattice (2014).

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In this chapter I will discuss this form of argumentation: argument by relegation. You can find it in Japanese philosophies as well as in, for example, the phenomenological tradition of continental Europe. It can be understood as a distinct model of argumentation that affirms rather than rejects the other’s position, if only partially. Rather than fighting an opponent, the one using argument by relegation persuades by showing that both positions are partially valid, while also demonstrating the relative superiority of his or her own position. Owing to a commitment to the necessary partiality of all views, this form of argument also, even if only reflexively, perpetually undermines itself; for it always also concedes its own—perhaps eventual— inadequacy. You can think of the general distinction outlined above, between forms of argumentation that aspire to compliment counter-positions and those which aspire to obliterate counter-positions, as the distinction between arguments by relegation and arguments by refutation. In adopting the refutational form, one aspires to annihilate the position of one’s interlocutor. Unfortunately, in my view, this form of argumentation has come to be associated with philosophical practice more broadly as a practice of establishing the superiority of a given position not only on its own merits, but at least as much on the successful eradication of alternative positions, counterexamples, and so forth. Arguments by relegation, by contrast, which accept opposing positions as partly or partially true, can appear irenic, conciliatory, or simply weak. Its strength, however, lies precisely in its admitting that there is a way in which a counter-position is valid—a “validity,” however, that depends on the position offered in opposition. This admission may also allow for the incorporation of the counter-position in one’s own position, which thus becomes more comprehensive. Having researched instances of argument by relegation, and having documented the contexts in which they arise, it is remarkable to me that I have not yet discovered any examples of argument by relegation in any school of philosophy that does not adopt some form of what I call correlationalism: a view that takes relationality to be primary to any relata and to be originary to discrete existents that are thought to become from it, and this in a way that is specific to the relation that gives way to them. In accordance with correlationalism, discrete existents, be they things or persons, are believed to be correlationally constituted. Looking to continental European philosophies, one can find instances of argument by relegation in the works of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, both of whom also adopt a mode of correlationalism in their

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phenomenological philosophies. In the case of Husserl, we discover, for example, several instances of argument by relegation in his presentation of counter-positions in The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy. Here, the positions of Galileo, Descartes, and Kant are shown to be partial, but also partially right. Husserl articulates these positions with an emphasis on how they came to be developed and in what ways they can be understood as legitimate from their unique vantage points. In the case of Kant, for example, Husserl writes: “Kant . . . has no idea that in his philosophizing he stands on unquestioned presuppositions and that the undoubtedly great discoveries in his theories are there only in concealment” (Husserl 1970: 103). He goes further in this gesture towards the validity of the Kantian project, noting that [. . .]when we proceed, philosophizing with Kant . . . by inquiring back into what was thus taken for granted (that of which Kantian thinking, like everyone’s thinking, makes use as unquestioned and available), when we become conscious of it as “presuppositions” and accord these their own universal and theoretical interest, there opens up to us, to our growing astonishment, an infinity of ever new phenomena belonging to a new dimension, coming to light only through consistent penetration into the meaning- and validity-implications of what was thus taken for granted”. Husserl 1970: 111–112

Having outlined a given counter-position, Husserl is quick to show precisely how such a counter-position requires a turn to his transcendental phenomenology in order to sufficiently ground its fundamental premises and to reveal the full extent of its otherwise unexplored implications. In a similar fashion, throughout the Crisis (and indeed throughout much of Husserl’s oeuvre), Husserl’s position is thereby able to subvert such counterpositions without needing to annihilate them. In highlighting the limits of his interlocutor’s position and the relative superiority of his own, Husserl has no need for combat.2 Looking to Japanese philosophies, one can find instances of argument by relegation in Zen Buddhist texts. Insofar as Zen arguments aspire to show the illusory nature of the conventional world and its truths, and to the extent that Zen philosophies are grounded in correlationalism, the detrimental effects of refutational arguments become all the more apparent. Not only is 2

Husserl’s engagement with other philosophers is similarly characterized by the same relegational attitude. See, for example, his treatment of Descartes in the Cartesian Meditations. Husserl’s interlocutors are always right about something, albeit not entirely so in the end.

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it unnecessary to annihilate counter-positions, it often works against the very purpose of arguing in the first place, at least insofar as it alienates, humiliates, and obliterates the valid life-world of an other. How much more effective is it to adopt a form of argumentation that begins and ends with the position of the other, and this precisely as a way of showing the superiority of one’s own position? Is it not more likely that one will be persuaded, convinced, and edified by a position that is able to account for, if not afford, one’s own position? An empathic and considerate engagement with a counter-position is certain to yield more of the desired outcomes of arguing than base refutation. A number of essays in Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō (Repository of the Eye for Truth) serve to highlight this approach. For example, in his essay “On Teacher and Disciple,” discussing the practice of “cutting entanglement with entanglement,” Dōgen notes how “if there were hundreds or thousands of monks after the second patriarch, there should be hundreds or thousands of interpretations for the monks,” and goes further to note that “student and master personally practice together” (Dōgen 2011: 162). These remarks refer to the teaching of the first Chinese patriarch of Zen, Daruma, and the transmission of the dharma to the second Chinese patriarch, Eka. According to Mark L. Blum, The story is that the Master asks each of his four prime students to express their understanding. To the expression of the first, [Daruma] says, “You have attained me in my skin.” To the second, “you have attained me in my flesh.” To the third, “You have attained me in my bone.” To the fourth, he responds, “You have attained me in my marrow.” The usual interpretation is that each successive student had a deeper insight. Dōgen’s reading, in contrast, is that each student is [entangled] with [Daruma] in a different way and that despite that difference each attains full realization of [Daruma] and his teaching. Dōgen 2011: 162

In a reflexive turn, we come to appreciate the partiality of the interpretations not only of the students, but of those who interpret their interpretations. Dōgen’s interpretation is also necessarily partial. Finding that “there were qualitative differences among the disciple’s views,” we can take pause and reflect on the fact that this is only the case insofar as they are unique to the vantage point of each student. In this sense, in arguing against an interpretation of the story as highlighting a hierarchy of possible interpretations of the dharma, Dōgen reflexively concedes the partiality of his own interpretation. He thus preserves the counter-position by subverting it, and at the same time shows the superiority of his own position. This demonstration requires that Dōgen entangle himself in the unique vantage

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point of an other (a vantage point that is itself an instance of entanglement, insofar as it is ensnared in the conventional world). Here, as in phenomenology, we would do well to appreciate the force of argument by relegation as a general form. The relegational argumentative form invites interlocutors to entertain both their own position, as well as any counter-positions, as correlationally constituted. In this sense, correlationialism reveals a common ground and a world in common, at least insofar as any situation serves to implicate both positions in one and the same lifeworld. This shared lifeworld makes possible the recognition of the mutual entanglement of partial positions owing to intrinsic relatedness, and this mutual entanglement, in turn, evidences the extent to which it is necessary for one to appreciate one’s relation to an other, and consequently to relate to them. This is significant insofar as engaging the other, beyond the typical knee-jerk reaction of an outright and unquestioned defense of one’s own position, can serve as a first step towards constructive dialogue. The relegational form compels both parties to consider alternative positions, and, through critical self-awareness, to consider their own prejudicial biases and how these come to inform the validity of their own position. This is not to say that the other will abandon their position, but, at the very least, they will be compelled to contend with an understanding of their position that is afforded only by virtue of another position, which, in turn may or may not be diametrically at odds with their own. Gradually, this kind of critical and self-reflexive analysis, as it becomes habitual, comes to inform the very position being considered in the first place. In the case of Zen, the means adopted for dispelling the illusions of self and world begin from the premise that these exist, at least in a conventional or illusory or imagined sense. At the same time, however, the Zen position is unable to entertain an understanding of the self (or the conventional world in which it is located) that is not in line with the theories of inter- or codependent origination and correlationalism. The idea of an autonomous, independent, and non-relational existence is incompatible with the Buddhist worldview. This is equally true of all phenomena, including the self. This relational dependence extends in this same fashion to include the partiality and necessary limitation of any given vantage-point or articulation of the state of affairs at hand; and it extends to any given position one might hold or argue for. Any and all arguments are, of necessity, only partial, including arguments concerning the partiality of all arguments. We must remember that, according to Zen Buddhists, conventional worlds consist of relational being, and all distinct discriminations are determined in and by the relational context. Zen arguments are a

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soteriological tool with which to disrupt the conventional worlds and their contexts in order to show no-thing. In this sense, they are methodological tools, but methodological tools not unlike Husserl’s epoché (his demand for a suspension of all beliefs), at least insofar as they serve as a method that reflexively discovers (the grounds of) the validity of its own presumptions. Accordingly, Zen arguments highlight the limitation of the dharma in its linguistic and scriptural form. They also work to show the paradoxical moment at which disagreement agrees. Owing to correlationalism, both phenomenology and Zen philosophies argue from the vantage point of the openness/emptiness undergirding the conventional world. In this sense, they take up relegational practices of showing the superiority of their position. Thus, they attempt to encounter an other on the other’s terms, in accordance with an other’s validity, in order to evidence the inferiority of the other’s argument. We can again consider Daruma, this time emphasizing his own relegational style. In arguing against the position that Zen practice belongs exclusively in the seclusion of the meditation halls, Daruma says that “not thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen” (Red Pine 1987: 49). Zen practice is not dependent on any particular phenomena in the service of realization. Such an understanding would commit itself to an illusory hierarchy of illusory conventional entities. However, there is a way in which the position held by Daruma’s interlocutors is valid. All practice, regardless of the specific phenomena, holds the possibility of insight. This is the case precisely because any phenomenon holds this possibility, including practice in the meditation halls. It therefore follows that one must be equally open to practices occurring outside of the meditation halls. Each position is left intact, accounted for, and yet there is evidentiary consensus on the superiority of one of the positions. In this way, we can better appreciate the relegational style of a number of Zen figures, insofar as they highlight the phenomenal realm—the realm of conventional reality—and its emptiness/openness, so as to better evidence, through a performative showing, that their argument is superior not only on its own merits, but also because it can better account for and afford the counter-position, if only owing to greater breadth. If the goal of philosophical arguments is to persuade, to convince, and to edify; if their goal is to inform and educate, then the refutational argumentative form leaves much to be desired. More often than not, it leads to a stalemate, in which adherents to a counter-position solidify their convictions as they reinforce their defences. A number of studies have conclusively shown that, in

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the face of contrary evidence, individuals dig their heels in and commit twiceover to their position.3 They work to insulate themselves from contrary evidence and discordant arguments. If one’s argumentative position is to succeed in proving persuasive, in drawing the other’s attention to the possibility of alternative points of view, then one must first engage the other in a meaningful argument. In order to do so, it would seem it is also necessary to open oneself up to the possibility of alternative points of view and to maintain a degree of critical flexibility. To this end, one must adopt a form of philosophical argumentation that leaves room for the necessary partiality of one’s own position and acknowledges the at least partial truth of the other’s.

References Ahluwalia, Rohini (2000). “Examination of Psychological Processes Underlying Resistance to Persuasion” Journal of Consumer Research, 27(2): 217–232. Daruma, and Red Pine, trans. (1987). The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. New York: North Point Press. Dōgen, and multiple translators (2011). “Dōgen” in Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, James Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo (eds), Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Husserl, Edmund, and David Carr, trans. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, Edmund, and Dorion Cairns, trans. (1977). Cartesian Meditations. Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Kunda, Ziva (1990). “The Case for Motivated Reasoning” in Psychological Bulletin, 108(3): 480–498. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago University Press. Lord, C.G., L. Ross, and M.R. Lepper (1979). “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11): 2098–2109. Mattice, Sarah (2014), Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play, and Aesthetic Experience. Studies in Comparative Philosophy and Religion Series. Lexington Books. 3

See Ahluwalia (2000), Zuwerink & Devine (2000), Pomeranz, Chaiken, & Tordesillas (1995), Kunda (1990), Lord, Ross, & Lepper (1979), Munro et al. (2002), and Nyhan & Reifer (2010), for but a few examples of such studies.

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Munro, Geoffrey D., Peter H. Ditto, Lisa K. Lockhart, Angela Fagerlin, Mitchell Gready, and Elizabeth Peterson (2010). “Biased Assimilation of Sociopolitical Arguments: Evaluating the 1996 U.S. Presidential Debate” in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24(1): 15–26. Pomerantz, Eva M., Shelly Chaiken, and Rosalind S. Tordesillas (1995). “Attitude Strength and Resistance Processes” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(3): 408–419. Zuwerink Jacks, Julia and Patricia G. Devine (2010). “Attitude Importance, Forewarning of Message Content, and Resistance to Persuasion” in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 22(1): 19–29.

Glossary Argument A group of statements, in which the statement of the conclusion is meant to be supported by the statements of the premises. Correlationalism A view that takes relationality to be primary to any relata and to be originary to discrete existents that are thought to become e from it, and this in a way that is specific to the relation that gives way to them. Refutational argument Form of argument that establishes the superiority of a given position not only on its own merits, but at least as much on the successful eradication of alternative positions, counter-examples, and so forth. Relegational argument Form of argument that concedes the partial validity of an opposing position while highlighting its own relative superiority, often appearing irenic or conciliatory. Statement The assertion that something is or is not the case.

16 Science Fiction in/as Philosophy Ethan Mills

Science fiction is an inherently philosophical genre insofar as it often consists of thought experiments while challenging (and often traversing) the boundaries of existing conceptual schemes. Most scholarship on science fiction and philosophy has been focused on western philosophical traditions, yet there have been some explorations of science fiction’s connections to non-western philosophical traditions (e.g, Cogell 1979, Li 2016, etc.). In this chapter, I continue this exploration of connections between science fiction and non-western philosophical traditions, focusing on Daoist elements in the work of American science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018). Few western science fiction authors have incorporated non-western philosophies into their work as much as Ursula K. Le Guin. The Daoist text Dao De Jing influenced her from childhood (Le Guin 1998: ix; Li 2016: 166–167) and she published her own translation of the text (Laozi 1998). The core of classical Chinese Daoist philosophy is often considered to consist of two texts: Dao De Jing (or Laozi) and Zhuangzi. The possibly legendary author Laozi is said to have lived in the fifth century BCE, but the text reached a stable form in the third century BCE. Zhuangzi was likely a real person in the fourth century BCE, while the text reached its present form around the third or fourth century CE. (For more on dates and authorship of these texts, see Coutinho 2014.) The Daoist concepts of complementary contrasts and non-action (wu wei) each play a role in Le Guin’s fiction. The phrase “complementary contrasts” is used by Steve Coutinho (2014: 40–43) for what is most famously represented in the taiji symbol, sometimes known as the yin-yang: 149

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The Daoist view . . . is that contrasts do not conflict but rather mutually complement each other. . . . each is incomplete without the other, and the momentum of transformation between yin and yang phases is kept going by mutual yielding, not mutual aggression. Lastly, between yin and yang lies not a sharp and precisely defined boundary, but an extended phase of yin-becomingyang and between yang and yin is a phase of yang-becoming-yin. There is no single precise point at which one can be said to begin and the other end; each blends smoothly into the other across a penumbra of vagueness. Coutinho 2014: 42

Yin and yang are mentioned in the Laozi in chapter 42 and a few times in the Zhuangzi, but the general idea of complementary contrasts is pervasive. Here are a few representative examples from the Dao De Jing: The heavy is the root of the light. The still rules over the agitated. Chapter 26, 2001: 175 Turning back is how the Way moves. Weakness is how the Way operates. The world and all its creatures arise from what is there; What is there arises from what is not there. Chapter 40, 2001: 182

Le Guin once chided critics for misunderstanding this aspect of Daoism in her work. These critics read her as presenting an antagonism of opposites to which she offered a safe middle way, which is not an adequate understanding of complementary contrasts. This demonstrates Le Guin’s nuanced understanding of this concept (Le Guin 1976: 45). The complementary contrasts of yin and yang are explicitly mentioned in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin 2010: 287). The novel features a planet called Gethen, where humans are androgynous except during their sexually active phase of kemmer, in which they can take on what most other humans would think of as either male or female reproductive capabilities. A Daoist complementary contrast between light and darkness can be found in the poem that gives the novel its name (Le Guin 2010: 252). The concept of wu wei, literally non-action, does not mean not acting at all. It has more to do with what Paul Kjellberg calls “skillful living” (Kjellberg 1996: 13). Some have translated wu wei as “effortless action” or “action without artifice” (Ivanhoe and Van Norden 2001: 393; Coutinho 2014: 100). The idea is mentioned several times in the Dao De Jing (e.g., chapters 43 and 48), but the famous story of Cook Ding from chapter three

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of the Zhuangzi is a good example. A cook who butchers oxen has not had to sharpen his knife for nineteen years. He is able to find the gaps in the joints to cut skillfully. He explains that sometimes he must overcome troubles: Nonetheless, whenever I come to a clustered triangle, realizing that it is difficult to do anything about it, I instead restrain myself as if terrified, until my seeing comes to a complete halt. My activity slows, and the blade moves ever so slightly. Then all at once, I find the ox already dismembered at my feet like clumps of soil scattered on the ground. I retract the blade and stand there gazing at my work arrayed around me, dawdling over it with satisfaction. Then I wipe off the blade and put it away. Zhuangzi 3.4-3.6, 2009: 23

Le Guin’s novels, The Lathe of Heaven1 and The Left Hand of Darkness, feature protagonists who come to learn that their overt, unskillful efforts at effecting change are ultimately harmful. In The Lathe of Heaven, the protagonist George Orr stops trying to use his power of making his dreams reality to improve the world. In The Left Hand of Darkness, the protagonist Genly Ai learns of the futility of his earlier efforts to force the success of his mission to incorporate the planet Gethen into the galactic confederation of the Ekumen. Something like non-action is also present in the methods of the Ekumen itself. In chapter 18 of The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly explains his mission requires him to spend years alone on a strange planet: Alone, I cannot change your world. But I can be changed by it. Alone, I must listen, as well as speak. Alone, the relationship I finally make, if I make one, is not impersonal and not only political: it is individual, it is personal, it is both more and less than political. Not We and They; not I and It; but I and Thou. Not political, not pragmatic, but mystical. In a certain sense the Ekumen is not a body politic, but a body mystic. It considers beginnings to be extremely important. Beginnings, and means. Its doctrine is just the reverse of the doctrine that the ends justify the means. It proceeds, therefore, by subtle ways, and slow ones, and queer, risky ones; rather as evolution does, which is in a certain sense its model. Le Guin 2010: 279

1

The title of Le Guin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven comes from a line in Zhuangzi: “Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven” (Le Guin 1973: 30). Le Guin later learned that “lathe” is a mistranslation (Le Guin 2012). More recently Brook Ziporyn has translated this line: “If there were anything that deviated from This, it would be destroyed in [the turning of] Heaven the Potter’s wheel” (Zhuangzi 2009: 99).

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Wu wei may have also influenced Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed, particularly in the socialist anarchism of the people who inhabit a moon called Annares (Cogell 1979: 166–174). In the novel Le Guin contrasts Annares with the capitalist state of A-Lo on the planet that the moon orbits by telling the story of an Annaresti physicist, Shevek, visiting A-Lo (Le Guin 1975). While Le Guin was also influenced by anarchists like Emma Goldman, the Dao De Jing contains passages in chapters 57–61 that some scholars such as Roger Ames read as a type of philosophical anarchism. However, it should be noted that, as with almost anything in the Dao De Jing, it is not entirely clear how to best understand the text in contemporary terms and attributing anarchism to the Dao De Jing is a matter of scholarly controversy (e.g., Flavel and Hall 2020 provide worthwhile criticisms of anarchist readings including that of Ames while reading the text as a form of maternalism as opposed to paternalism). All this merely scratches the surface of Le Guin’s Daoist influences. Daoist ideas are embedded in most of Le Guin’s work, which makes her one of the major western science fiction authors most deeply influenced by non-western philosophy. Her work is worthy of philosophers’ attention in its own right as a creative philosophical fusion–or complementary contrast–of classical Daoism and modern feminism. I have argued elsewhere (Mills 2020) that Le Guin’s work can be read as developing “science fictional feminist Daoism.” This is a sense in which her science fiction can be an example of science fiction as philosophy or doing philosophy through science fiction. The juxtaposition of Daoism and feminism has some precedent. Modern scholars have, for instance, looked at philosophical contributions from Daoist women writers such as Yu Xuanji (c. 844–868) and Sun Bu-er (c. 1119–1182) (Bonevac and Phillips 2009: 70–74), and there have been critical feminist philosophical readings of classical Daoist ideas (e.g., Lee 2014, Jiang 2014). Feminist philosophers are often focused, at least in part, on interrogating and rethinking concepts of gender, which Le Guin did early in her career in The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). Recall that this novel takes place on a planet where humans take on what most other humans on other worlds (including that of the protagonist Genly) would think of as either male or female reproductive capabilities only during a sexually active period of kemmer. A field report from an off-world anthropologist visiting this planet includes the following: Consider: Anyone can turn his hand to anything. This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable. The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be . . . “tied down by childbearing,”

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implies that no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be—psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else. Le Guin 2010: 100

Le Guin’s relationship to feminism changed during her career (Lothian 2006). While revolutionary, Le Guin’s early novels still privileged heterosexual and male perspectives. The Left Hand of Darkness never discusses the possibility of anything other than heterosexual pairings during kemmer. The novel uses the male pronoun “he” as an allegedly gender-neutral pronoun. In later works such as Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) and The Telling (2000), Le Guin began decentring men’s perspectives while centering women’s perspectives. Similarly, Daoist texts often challenge the reader to rethink typical perspectives. The Zhuangzi encourages readers to imagine perspectives of different humans and animals (e.g., Zhuangzi 2:38-41, trans. Ziporyn 2009: 17-19; Zhuangzi, Ch. 17, trans. Ziporyn 2009: 76). And science fiction often invites the reader to consider new ideas and perspectives as evidenced by Le Guin’s science fiction. Hence, Le Guin can be read as offering a creative philosophical exercise that draws on classical Daoism, feminism, and science fiction as an intriguing example of science fiction as philosophy. We should not be uncritical in making connections between science fiction and non-western philosophical traditions, especially insofar as science fiction and philosophy currently exist in a global context that tends to centre western cultures while devaluing non-western cultures. Orientalism (Said 1994) can be loosely defined as the tendency to view especially Middle Eastern and Asian cultures as the Other (exotic, mystical, feminine, etc.) in opposition to the West’s presumed Self (familiar, rational, masculine, etc.). Some scholars (e.g., Huang 2008) have argued that non-western cultures have been appropriated in science fiction, including Le Guin’s. The effect may be to exoticise fictional cultures by estranging them from readers’ presumed western cultural orientations—“estrangement” here is taken in Darko Suvin’s (1979) sense of a separation from one’s own world. Betsy Huang criticizes the use of Daoism in Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven as a form of Orientalism because it casts Daoism as the benevolent cure for harmful western philosophies; Le Guin’s picture of Daoism serves western needs (Huang 2008: 26–27). Huang claims that Le Guin presents an “idealization of a Daoist-influenced passive, non-interventionist mode of existence. . .” (Huang 2008: 27).

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While I think Le Guin’s understanding of Daoism was too nuanced to be merely a form of Orientalist appropriation on her part, criticisms such as Huang’s are worth taking seriously and readers ought to take great care to avoid reading Le Guin in an Orientalist fashion. For instance, science fiction should not serve as one’s main source for understanding vast philosophical traditions. Science fiction can be an invitation to further exploration of non-western traditions, not a definitive source in itself. Also, readers should be aware of the ways in which non-western traditions have been harmfully appropriated for western needs to avoid falling into Orientalist understandings. This will also enhance one’s appreciation of the depth and complexity of Le Guin’s challenging work. For Le Guin, Daoist sources could be taken as one of many ingredients in her own creative thinking, similar to Mark Siderits’s (2003) concept of “fusion philosophy.” In an increasingly globalized world, most people will have diverse cultural and philosophical influences although, of course, great care should be taken in how one develops these influences. Through this brief exploration of Le Guin and Daoism, I hope to have provided a model of one way in which philosophers can explore new worlds of ideas, to boldly think where no one has thought before! There are numerous connections between science fiction and philosophy both from the direction of finding philosophical content in science fiction as well as from the direction of science fiction as philosophy. The example in this chapter is in no way meant to be exhaustive. Rather, I hope this chapter will encourage readers to explore connections between science fiction and philosophy for themselves. There are vast multiverses of ideas to explore!

References Bonevac, D. and Phillips, S. (2009). Introduction to World Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cogell, E. C. (1979). “Taoist Configurations: ‘The Dispossessed’ ” in J. De Bolt (ed.) Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyager to Inner Lands and to Outer Space. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press: 153–179. Coutinho, S. (2014). An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies. New York: Columbia University Press. Flavel, S. and Hall, B. (2020). “State Maternalism: Rethinking Anarchist Readings of the Daodejing” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 19: 353–369.

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Huang, B. (2008). “Premodern Orientalist Science Fictions,” MELUS: MultiEthnic Literature of the United States 33(4): 23–43. Ivanhoe, P. J. and Van Norden, B. W. (eds) (2001). Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett. Jiang, X. (2014). “What Would Zhuangzi Say to Harding? A Daoist Critique of Feminist Standpoint Epistemology” in McWeeny, J. and Butnor, A. (eds) Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions, 147–166, New York: Columbia University Press. Laozi (1998). Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and Its Power, A New English Version by Ursula K. Le Guin with the Collaboration of J. P. Seaton. Boston: Shambhala. Lee, K. (2014). “On the Transformative Potential of the ‘Dark Female Animal’ in Daodejing” in McWeeny, J. and Butnor, A. (eds) Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions, 57–77, New York: Columbia University Press. Le Guin, U. K. (1973). The Lathe of Heaven. New York: Avon Books. Le Guin, U. K. (1975). The Dispossessed. New York: Avon Books. Le Guin, U. K. (1989). A Wizard of Earthsea. New York: Bantam Books. Le Guin, U. K. (1998). “Introduction,” In Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and Its Power, A New English Version by Ursula K. Le Guin with the Collaboration of J. P. Seaton. Boston: Shambhala. Le Guin, U. K. (2010). The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books. Le Guin, U. K. (2012). “Bill Moyers Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin,” YouTube. com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1bZe7bdXMw (Accessed Sept. 13, 2021). Li, Q. (2016). “Taoism as Ethics, Science as Background: On The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin,” International Journal of English and Literature 7(11): 167–171. Lothian, A. (2006). “Grinding Axes and Balancing Oppositions: The Transformation of Feminism in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Science Fiction,” Extrapolation 47(3): 380–395. Mills, E. (2020). “Ursula K. Le Guin’s Science Fictional Feminist Daoism,” Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy 3: 1–21. Said, E. W. (1994). Orientalism: 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Vintage Books. Siderits, M. (2003). Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Suvin, D. (1979). Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of of Literary Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Zhuangzi (2009). Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. Ziporyn, B. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

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Glossary Orientalism In the sense popularized by Edward Said (1994), Orientalism can be loosely defined as the tendency to view especially Middle Eastern and Asian cultures as the Other (exotic, mystical, feminine, etc.) in opposition to the West’s presumed Self (familiarity, rationality, masculinity, etc.). Science fiction Much like “philosophy” itself, “science fiction” is difficult to define. One attempt comes from the literary theorist Darko Suvin (1979) who defines science fiction as the “literature of cognitive estrangement.” Unlike fantasy, which is “non-cognitive” estrangement relying on magical explanations, science fiction describes a world that is not precisely our world (the estrangement), but which could be e our world with some attempt at rational/scientific explanation (the cognitive aspect). The lines between fantasy and science fiction are not always clear, but science fiction tends to gesture toward some rational/scientific explanation whether that explanation is explicit or not. Aside from tropes such as extraterrestrials, artificial intelligence, and space travel, general characteristics of science fiction are a future setting and a focus on technology, although these characteristics are neither necessary nor sufficient (e.g., steampunk is science fiction set in the past, James Bond films may not be science fiction but feature technological gadgets, etc.).

17 Shinjin-gakudō (Studying the Way with Body and Mind) Bret W. Davis

Cross-cultural philosophy brings the discourses of western philosophy into dialogue with those of non-western traditions of philosophy. World philosophy can be understood as philosophical inquiry that draws on nonwestern as well as western traditions of philosophy. Yet since “philosophy” is—at least originally—a western term, cross-cultural or world philosophy cannot evade the following kind of meta-philosophical questions: How are we defining philosophy when we engage in it cross-culturally? Are we open to allowing other traditions to redefine our conception of the methods and aims of philosophy? And to begin with: What is it that we find in nonwestern traditions when we look for something to compare and contrast to western philosophy? For example, what do we find that can be called “Buddhist philosophy?” Is it the discourses in the Buddhist tradition that deal with metaphysical, epistemological, logical, and ethical “problems and arguments” that are, to western philosophers, recognizably philosophical? Matthew Kapstein notes that for years Buddhist scholars and cross-cultural philosophers have pursued this approach (Kapstein 2001: 5). They have been motivated in large part by the wish to prove to their more skeptical and Eurocentric colleagues that Buddhist philosophy does indeed exist by showing how Buddhists have long engaged in sophisticated and rigorous forms of rational argumentation about recognizably philosophical problems (prominent recent examples include Siderits 2007; Taber 2013; Garfield 2015). This effort to initiate, after proper vetting, selected Buddhist discourses into the heretofore rather

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exclusive philosophy club of modern western academia has been somewhat successful. However, Kapstein argues that this “problems and arguments” approach to Buddhist philosophy is problematic, insofar as it uproots those Buddhist discourses from their original embeddedness within a more holistic and soteriological path (Sanskrit: mārga) of practice. Rather than decontextualize Buddhist discourses and force them into the mold of modern western academic philosophy, a more fruitful approach, Kapstein and others compellingly contend (Kapstein 2001; McClintock 2010; Kapstein 2013a, 2013b; Fiordalis 2018; Gowans 2018), is to compare “Buddhist philosophy” with the ancient Greek understanding and practice of philosophy as what the French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot calls a “way of life” (Hadot 1995, 2002).

Ancient Western Philosophy as a Way of Life Hadot maintains that if we focus our attention on the “spiritual exercises” (French: exercices spirituels) found at the core of ancient philosophies, philosophy “then appears in its original aspect: not as a theoretical construct, but as a method for training people to live and to look at the world in a new way” (Hadot 1995: 107). Philosophy was “a mode of existing-in-theworld, which had to be practiced at each instant, and the goal was to transform the whole of the individual’s life. . . . For the ancients, the mere word philo-sophia—the love of wisdom—was enough to express this conception of philosophy” (Hadot 1995: 265). Today, however, “philosophy” is for the most part a name for one academic discipline among others within the institution of the university. The discipline of philosophy is thus “no longer directed toward people who were to be educated with a view to becoming fully developed human beings, but to specialists, in order that they might learn how to train other specialists” (Hadot 1995: 270). We have lost the ability to make the crucial distinction, as the ancients had always done, between the techniques of philosophical discourse and the love of wisdom as a way of life; and we no longer see that the former was originally meant to serve as a means to the latter. Philosophical discourse has taken on a life of its own, but it is merely the professional life of an academic philosopher, and not that of the entire existing human being. “In modern university philosophy,” Hadot laments, “philosophy is obviously

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no longer a way of life or form of life—unless it be the form of life of a professor of philosophy” (Hadot 1995: 271).1 When expressing his dim view of modern academic philosophers, Hadot may well have had in the back of his mind the following passage from Thoreau’s Walden: There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. . . . To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts . . . but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates . . .. It is to solve the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. Thoreau 2004: 14

We should note that Thoreau is speaking of “ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek.” Hadot, by contrast, identifies “philosophy” with the “historical phenomenon” that originated with the Greeks. He acknowledges that there is, for example, “Arabic philosophy,” but only because it is an “inheritor of Greek philosophy” (Hadot 1995: 281). Like the majority of western philosophers over the last two centuries, Hadot defines “philosophy” not just Eurocentrically, but indeed Euromonopolistically (Davis 2019). Nevertheless, in the closing pages of his major work, What is Ancient Philosophy? Hadot writes: I was for a long time hostile to comparative philosophy because I thought it could give rise to confusions and arbitrary parallels. Now, however, . . . it seems to me that there really are thought-provoking analogies between the philosophical attitudes of antiquity and those of the Orient. Hadot 2002: 278, as retranslated in Collins 2018, 29

Earlier in that book Hadot recognizes some profound resonances between ancient Greek philosophy and Buddhism in particular (Hadot 2002: 232–233). And yet, elsewhere Hadot mentions in passing a crucial difference between the “spiritual exercises” of ancient western philosophy and the pursuit of liberating wisdom in Buddhism. “Unlike the Buddhist meditation

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Sarah McClintock rightly points out that “Hadot is missing an important opportunity to recognize and assess the particular ideals of wisdom that are in play in the modern university” (McClintock 2018: 97). I concur that even if “the form of life of a philosophy professor” is a less holistic way of pursuing a less existentially transformative type of wisdom, it is still a way of life and a pursuit of wisdom that has its peculiar strengths as well as weaknesses. Despite this caveat, McClintock has been at the forefront of using Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a soteriological way of life as a heuristic for interpreting Buddhist philosophy (see McClintock 2010: 14–22; and McClintock 2018).

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practices of the Far East,” Hadot writes, “Greco-Roman philosophical meditation is not linked to a corporeal attitude but is a purely rational, imaginative, or intuitive exercise” (Hadot 1995: 59). On the one hand, Hadot affirms that what “is interesting about the idea of spiritual exercises is precisely that it is not a matter of purely rational consideration, but the putting into action all kinds of means, intended to act upon oneself,” and he sees a major role to be played here by “imagination and affectivity” (Hadot 1995: 284). On the other hand, for Hadot, incorporating a discipline of embodied practice would evidently cross the line and introduce an element of impurity into the “purely spiritual” practices of ancient philosophy. Hadot echoes here a mind-body or spirit-matter dualism that has pervaded much of the western tradition from Plato through Descartes to our contemporary cerebral conceptions of the practice of philosophy.

The Modern Eclipse of Embodied-Spiritual Practice The twentieth-century Japanese philosopher, Nishitani Keiji, was a pioneer in the attempt to bring the intellectual practice of western philosophy into critical and complementary relation to the embodied-spiritual practice of Zen Buddhism. He maintains that the Cartesian dualism of the modern worldview, along with the reduction of knowledge to a purely cerebral affair, has effected a “personality split” in the West, a split that the Japanese have inadvertently imported underneath the shining surfaces of western modernity (Nishitani 1990: 57–58). Nishitani attributes this split to a falling into oblivion of the connection between knowledge and “embodied-spiritual practice” (Japanese: ߨ, gyō). In western modernity, Nishitani writes, a knowing of “objective matters,” an objective knowing represented by science has become dominant, and the dimension of knowing where the investigation of objects and the self-investigation of the subject are inseparably bound together has been closed off. Nishitani 1990: 542 2

This and the following passages quoted from Nishitani are from texts that have unfortunately not yet been translated, and so translations are my own.

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He goes on to say that a nondualistic knowledge, or wisdom, “can only come about in unison with embodied-spiritual practice, in the manner of a ‘oneness of body and mind’ (Japanese: ਐৼҲ೙, shinjin ichinyo).” In actively engaging with a matter at hand, “one understands it with one’s whole body and mind, and this knowledge at the same time entails a self-knowledge of the whole body and mind.” It is for this reason that philosophers in East Asia have spoken of “the unity of knowledge and practice” (Japanese: எߨ߻Ҳ, chi-gyō gōitsu) (Nishitani 1990: 55). In order to pursue wisdom in this holistic manner, Nishitani argues that it is necessary for philosophy itself to undergo a transformation. One of the ways it can do this, he suggests, is by opening itself, beyond the limits of “theory,” to the embodied-spiritual practice of Zen Buddhism. Theory remains at the level of “a painting of a rice cake” or a “finger pointing at the moon,” while Zen practice aims to bring us into direct contact with the rice cake and the moon themselves. Hence, Nishitani asks, “must not philosophy also take a step forward from its heretofore basic standpoint, and proceed a step in the direction of its connection with Zen?” Theoretical reason must lead beyond itself to experience; for, as Nishitani writes with regard to “the limits of reason”: “Direct embodied experience [Japanese: ର‫ݩ‬, taiken] can encompass the intellectual understanding of reason, but the intellectual understanding of reason cannot substitute for embodied experience” (Nishitani 1990: 13; see also Nishitani 1987: 222–23). Starting with his major work, Religion and Nothingness (Nishitani 1982), and its sequel, The Standpoint of Zen (Nishitani 1984, 1987), Nishitani increasingly brought his practice of Zen Buddhism explicitly to bear on his practice of philosophy. After retiring from Kyoto University, he lectured for ten years at Otani University on the philosophical and religious thought of the thirteenth-century Zen master Dōgen.

Zen Buddhism as a Way of Studying with the Body and Mind The thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master Dōgen called for a holistic “Studying the Way with the Body and Mind” (Japanese: ਐৼָಕ, shinjingakudō),” as the title of one of the fascicles in his major work, Shōbōgenzō, puts it. In that text he writes:

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For the time being let us say that there are two approaches to studying the Buddha Way: to study with mind and to study with body. To study with mind means to study with the various aspects of mind, such as consciousness, emotion, and intellect. . . . Sometimes you study the Way by casting off the mind. Sometimes you study the Way by taking up the mind. Either way, study the Way with thinking, and study the Way not-thinking. To study the Way with the body means to study the way with your own body. It is the study of the Way using this lump of red flesh. Dōgen 1985: 87–88, 913

The two paths of studying with the mind and with the body converge insofar as, on the one hand, one discovers that “mountains and rivers, the great earth, the sun, moon and stars are the mind. . . . walls, tiles, and pebbles are the mind”; and, on the other hand, one realizes that “the whole world in all ten directions is this true human body” (Dōgen 2012: 423–426, translation modified). Dōgen is a nondualist, rather than either an idealist or a materialist. Thus, on the one hand, he says that “the mind-nature . . . embraces the entire universe. . . . All dharmas . . . are alike in being this one Mind” (Dōgen 2002: 22–23). On the other hand, he affirms that “the entire earth is the true human body” (Dōgen 2012: 878). How can we drop off our egocentric body-minds so as to attune ourselves to the “one mind” and “one body” of the universe? Dōgen recommends first and foremost the practice of seated meditation (Japanese: ࠳હ, zazen). He tells us that, in the practice of meditation, “body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest” (Dōgen 2016: 196). That “original face,” our true self, is experienced when we “drop off the bodymind” (Japanese: ਐৼ୦ཚ, shinjin datsuraku) of the self that misapprehends itself as an isolated ego dualistically cut off from the rest of the world. Positively put, it is an experience of “the oneness of body and mind” (Japanese: ਐৼҲ೙, shinjin-ichinyo) (Dōgen 2002: 22–23), and also of the nonduality of self and world.4 Thus, can we understand the most famous passage from Dōgen’s writings: To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by the myriad things [of the world].

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For the sake of clarity, here and below I have capitalized “Way” and “Buddha Way.” For more on Dōgen, Zen and Buddhist practice, see Raud, Chapter 18; Kopf, Chapter 39; and Maraldo, Chapter 40 in this volume. For some ethical and political implications, see Wirth, Chapter 5; Kalmanson, Chapter 29; Yusa, Chapter 26; and Garfield, Chapter 27.

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To be verified by the myriad things [of the world] is to let drop off the bodymind of the self and the body-mind of others. Dōgen 2009: 256–257

To “forget the self ” means to shed the misapprehension of oneself as a mind separated from a body or as a body-mind separated from other body minds. Positively put, it is to awaken to the nondual interconnectivity of the bodyand-mind of self-and-other.

Meditation Among Other Methods of Philosophy Dōgen understands zazen, seated meditation, to be a practice of “just sitting” (Japanese: ୠ؇଩࠳, shikantaza). During this silent and nondiscursive practice of silent meditation, Dōgen says that we should practice “thinking not-thinking,” and that we should do so by means of the open-minded luminous awareness of “nonthinking” (Japanese: ඉࢧྖ, hishiryō) (Davis 2016). Although more than any other Zen master he deftly and prolifically employs the power of language to manifest what he calls “expressive attainments of the Way” (Japanese: ಕಚ dōtoku) (Heine 2020), while engaging in seated meditation Dōgen instructs one to “put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light [of the mind around] and shines it inward” (Dōgen 2016: 195–196).5 Unlike philosophers in other schools of Buddhism, yet like most other Zen masters, Dōgen does not generally employ what are for us recognizably

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On the difference between discursive practices of Buddhist meditation (such as much of Theravada Buddhist Vipassana and Tibetan Buddhist Lojong) that entail a subject-object duality on the one hand and nondiscursive and nondualistic practices of Buddhist meditation (such as Tibetan Buddhist Mahamudra and Dzogchen as well as Zen Buddhist shikantaza), see Dunne 2015. For a contemporary philosophical analysis of a seminal eighth-century debate in Tibet between a Chinese Zen monk, Heshang Moheyan, and an Indian Buddhist scholar, Kamalaśīla, in which the latter severely censures the former’s teaching of a non-discursive and nondualistic practice of meditation and promotes instead discursive forms of meditation understood as extensions of doctrinal study and rational intellection, see Tillemans 2013. Tillemans mainly follows the partisan mainstream Tibetan account of the debate, told from the reportedly victorious side of Kamalaśīla; but he ends by discussing a fourteenth-century Tibetan Dzogchen teacher’s critique of the limits of the “dualistic mind” and its “dichotomizing thought,” and his advocacy instead of a nondualistic “primordial gnosis,” which ironically resemble the teachings of the Chinese Zen monk that have been deemed heretical in Tibetan Buddhism since the notorious debate in the eighth century.

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rational arguments. In fact, in his “Guidelines for Studying the Way,” after instructing his disciples to “practice the Way as though saving your head from fire,” he sternly cautions them against mistaking the embodied-spiritual practice of the Buddha Way with intellectual quibbling (Dōgen 1985: 31, 39). On the other hand, Dōgen chastises monks who claim that the stories of the masters that have become kōans are “beyond logic and unconcerned with thought,” claiming that “the illogical stories mentioned by those bald-headed fellows are only illogical for them, not for buddha ancestors” (Dōgen 1985: 100). Among traditional Zen masters, Dōgen’s writings stand out for their hermeneutical eruditeness and creativity as well as for their phenomenological richness and disclosiveness. His writings on the nature of the self and its relation to the natural world, on what he calls “being-time” (uji ༙࣎), on language, on ethics, and on many other recognizably philosophical topics have struck many modern readers as teeming with philosophical insights and implications (see Watsuji 2011; Abe 1992; Kim 2007; Kasulis 2018: 212–245; Heine 2020; Davis 2020). This once again begs the question: How should we define philosophy? Dealing with this immensely complex and contested question is both necessary for, and enabled by, engaging in cross-cultural philosophical dialogue. Here, in addition to discussing the difference between a “problems and arguments” and a “way of life” understanding of philosophy, I’d like to make one other suggestion, using terms from western philosophy and based on my experience not only with the variety of Asian traditions of philosophy but also with the troubled relations between so-called analytic and continental camps of recent western philosophy. The suggestion is that we should acknowledge that all our ways of practicing philosophy inevitably entail at least some degree and kind of (1) hermeneutical reflection and (2) phenomenological description as well as (3) rational argumentation. (Each of these three methods is itself diverse. For example, rational argumentation can be deductive, inductive, analogical, dialectical, etc.) Different philosophers, schools, and traditions often emphasize one or more of these methods, but every philosophical discourse to some extent engages in interpreting teachings and texts, in describing experiences of phenomena, and in some form of rational argumentation. Many analytic philosophers stress rational argumentation, while many continental philosophers emphasize the importance of hermeneutical reflection and phenomenological description; but neither deserves to be accused by the other of “not doing philosophy.”

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Analogously, different Buddhist philosophers, schools, and traditions can be understood as stressing different aspects of their understanding of the practice of the Buddha Way. Dōgen and the Zen tradition in general tend to be skeptical about the soteriological efficacy of rational argumentation, especially when it is divorced from embodied-spiritual practices such as meditation. One of the main reasons for this is that the analytical intellect operates by dividing up reality into parts, which it then tends to reify as static and isolated entities. With our conceptual grasp of such imagined entities we end up losing a sense for the dynamic interrelationality of phenomena. In Buddhist terms, we lose a sense of their “interdependent origination” (Sanskrit: pratītyasamutpāda) and their “emptiness” (Sanskrit: śūnyatā) of “own-being” (Sanskrit: svabhāva) when we analytically and conceptually grasp them as if they were self-subsisting essences or independent substances. Moreover, as Nishitani points out, the theoretical intellect purports to stand back from reality and view it from the outside, a stance that illegitimately imputes a subject-object split to reality and that causes us to misapprehend ourselves as dualistically separated from the rest of reality. This critique of the analytical intellect is not unique to Zen Buddhism. In fact, it is shared in some manner and to some extent by all Buddhist schools and traditions. And yet, some Buddhist schools and traditions deem there to be a significant role to be played by rational argumentation leading up to the point where it must give way to meditative practice and nonconceptual wisdom. For example, in her study of two of the most rationally argumentative philosophers in the Indian Buddhist tradition, the eighth-century Śāntaraks·ita and his disciple Kamalaśīla, Sarah McClintock explains how, for them, all discourse—including formal rational discourse—is ultimately flawed, as are the concepts it produces. . . . Since the [ultimate] removal of ignorance does not take place at the level of language or concepts, the ultimate goal of the path cannot be achieved by rational analysis. Rather, the removal of ignorance requires a transformation of the very structure of the mind itself, which in turn requires one to engage in a process of meditative cultivation ([Sanskrit:] bhāvanā). Yet rational analysis still plays a critical role, because it allows one to rule out a whole range of incorrect views and replace them with views that while not able to directly encapsulate reality, can nevertheless be ascertained as in accord with reality. On the basis of such views, one then undertakes the meditative cultivation that gradually eliminates the distortions of primordial ignorance (and hence, also, all “views”), such that one’s thought and experience come to be in accord with reality. McClintock 2010: 9, 17

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Received, Intellectual, and Experiential Wisdom The Buddhist tradition has long recognized there to be three levels of wisdom: that which arises from listening and reading, from rational reflection, and from holistic meditative practice (Gethin 1998: 36; Dreyfus 2003: 165–66; Fiordalis 2018b). We can paraphrase these as received wisdom, intellectual wisdom, and experiential wisdom. Received wisdom is acquired through reading traditional texts or listening to a trustworthy teacher and committing those doctrines to memory. Attaining intellectual wisdom requires a more active and critical use of one’s rational faculties, such that one comes to a clear understanding of why a teaching either makes sense or does not. Yet, according to Buddhism, it is only the experiential wisdom attained through practices of meditative cultivation that is truly enlightening and liberating. As an academic philosophy professor, I want my students to start by carefully reading the assigned texts and attentively listening to my lectures. But then I also want them to move from received to intellectual wisdom. That is to say, I don’t just want them to memorize the views of the philosophers we are studying, but also, and even more importantly, to intellectually grasp and critically evaluate their arguments. However, even in the best-case scenario, most of the learning that happens in our colleges and universities stops at the level of intellectual wisdom. At best we prepare students to go out into the “real world” and, through real life experiences, to take the intellectual knowledge they attained in the classroom and turn it into the kind of experiential wisdom that changes their lives and allows them to more positively affect the lives of those around them. To what extent can we enable the attainment of experientially transformative wisdom in the context of academic higher education? In some of my classes I employ “experiential paths” of service-learning and meditation. I am able to do this because my university has a Center for Community Service and Justice that facilitates the students’ engagement in service activities off-campus, and because my outside-of-academia Zen training and authorization enables me to lead a meditation group on campus. Yet, while other colleges and universities may have similar administrative offices and faculty with extracurricular qualifications, most academic philosophers are neither trained nor equipped to offer the kinds of holistic philosophical education practiced in the various Buddhist traditions. Nevertheless, regardless of whether they are personally engaged in such

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practices, philosophy professors should at least inform their students about these holistic Buddhist ways of pursuing wisdom with embodied-spiritual practices alongside intellectual and discursive disciplines.

References Abe, Masao. (1992). A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion. Edited by Steven Heine. Albany: State University of New York. Collins, Steven. (2018). “Some Remarks of Hadot, Foucault, and Comparisons with Buddhism” in Fiordalis (2018a): 21–69. Davis, Bret W. (2016). “The Enlightening Practice of Nonthinking: Unfolding Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi” in Engaging Dōgen’s Zen: The Philosophy of Practice as Awakening, edited by Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, Shūdō Brian Schroeder, and Kanpū Bret W. Davis, 199–224. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Davis, Bret W. (2019). “Beyond Philosophical Euromonopolism: Other Ways of—Not Otherwise than—Philosophy.” Philosophy East and West 69(2): 592–619. Davis, Bret W. (2020). “The Philosophy of Zen Master Dōgen: Egoless Perspectivism” in The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, edited by Bret W. Davis, 201–212. New York: Oxford University Press. Dōgen. (1985). Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen. Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi. New York: Northpoint Press. Dōgen. (2002). The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō. Translated by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe. Albany: SUNY Press. Dōgen. (2009). “The Presencing of Truth: Dōgen’s Genjōkōan.” Translated by Bret W. Davis. In Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, edited by Jay Garfield and William Edelglass, 256–259, Oxford University Press. Dōgen. (2012). Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi. Boston: Shambhala, 2012. Dōgen. (2016). Fukanzazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen). Trans. by Carl Bielefeldt and T. Griffin Foulk, with the Rev. Taigen Leighton and the Rev. Shohaku Okumura. In Engaging Dōgen’s Zen: The Philosophy of Practice as Awakening, edited by Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, Shūdō Brian Schroeder, and Kanpū Bret W. Davis, 195–198, Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Dreyfus, Georges. (2003). The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dunne, John D. (2015).“Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness: A Heuristic Approach” in Handbook of Mindfulness and Self-Regulation, edited by Brian D. Ostafin, 251–270, New York: Springer.

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Fiordalis, David V., ed. (2018a). Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path. Berkeley: Mangalam Press. Fiordalis, David V. (2018b). “Learning, Reasoning, Cultivating: The Practice of Wisdom and the Treasury of Abhidharma” in Fiordalis (2018a): 245–289. Garfield, Jay L. (2015). Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Gethin, Rupert. (1998). The Foundations of Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press. Gowans, Christopher W. (2018). “Buddhist Philosophy as a Way of Life: The Spiritual Exercises of Tsongkhapa” in Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach, edited by Steven M. Emmanuel, 11–28, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Hadot, Pierre. (1995). Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Edited by Arnold I. Davidson. Translated by Michael Chase. Oxford: Blackwell. Hadot, Pierre. (2002). What Is Ancient Philosophy? Translated by Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heine, Steven. (2020). “Dōgen on the Language of Creative Textual Hermeneutics” in The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, edited by Bret W. Davis, 215–229. New York: Oxford University Press. Kapstein, Matthew T. (2001). Reason’s Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Kapstein, Matthew T. (2013a). “ ‘Spiritual Exercise’ and Buddhist Epistemologies in India and Tibet” in A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, edited by Steven Emmanuel, 270–289, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Kapstein, Matthew T. (2013b). “Stoics and Bodhisattvas: Spiritual Exercises and Faith in Two Philosophical Traditions” in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns, Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, edited by Michael Chase, Stephen R. L. Clark, and Michael McGhee, 99–115, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Kasulis, Thomas P. (2018). Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Kim, Hee-Jin. (2007). Dōgen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen. Albany: State University of New York Press. McClintock, Sarah L. (2010). Omniscience and the Rhetoric of Reason: Śāntarak·sita and Kamalaśīla on Rationality, Argumentation, and Religious Authority. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. McClintock, Sarah L. (2018). “Schools, Schools, Schools—Or, Must a Philosopher be Like a Fish?” in Fiordalis (2018a): 71–103. Nishitani, Keiji. (1982). Religion and Nothingness. Translated by Jan Van Bragt. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Nishitani, Keiji. (1984). “The Standpoint of Zen.” Translated by John C. Maraldo. The Eastern Buddhist, 18(1): 1–26. This is a translation of the first chapter of Nishitani (1987). Nishitani, Keiji. (1987). Zen no tachiba [The Standpoint of Zen], Nishitani Keiji chosakushū [Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji], vol. 11. Tokyo: Sōbunsha. Nishitani, Keiji. (1990). Kaze no kokoro [Heart of the Wind], Nishitani Keiji chosakushū [Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji], vol. 20. Tokyo: Sōbunsha. Siderits, Mark. (2007). Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction. Indianapolis: Hackett. Taber, John A. (2013). “On Engaging Philosophically with Indian Philosophical Texts.” Études Asiatiques/Asiatische Studien 67(1): 125–163. Thoreau, Henry D. (2004). Walden. Edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tillemans, Tom J. E. (2013). “Yogic Perception, Meditation, and Enlightenment: The Epistemological Issues in a Key Debate” in A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, edited by Steven M. Emmanuel, 290–306, West Sussex: WileyBlackwell. Watsuji, Tetsurō. (2011). Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsurō’s Shamon Dōgen. Translated and with commentary by Steve Bein. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Glossary Dropping off the body-mind (Japanese: ਐৼ୦ཚ, shinjin datsuraku u) Zen master Do¯gen’s expression for the experience of enlightenment as a shedding of the misapprehension of oneself as a mind dualistically separated from a body and as a body-mind dualistically separated from other body-minds. Embodied-spiritual practice (Japanese: ߨ, gy yo¯ ; also रߨ shugyyo¯ ) This term is sometimes translated as “self-cultivation,” but in Buddhism it entails “self-forgetting” in the sense of wholeheartedly engaging in holistic practices such as meditation that allow us to shed our delusory sense of being an ego separated from the rest of the world. See also “meditative cultivation.” Just sitting (Japanese: ୠ؇଩࠳, shikantazaa) The method of seated meditation (Japanese: ࠳હ, zazen) taught by the thirteenth-century Zen master D o¯gen. Do Meditative cultivation (Sanskrit: bha¯vana¯ ) The embodied-spiritual practices in Buddhism, such as seated meditation, that are meant to bring about a transformation from a state of ignorance and suffering

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to a state of enlightenment and peace. See also “embodied-spiritual practice.” Oneness of body and mind (Japanese: ਐৼҲ೙, shinjin ichinyo ichinyo) o) A phrase used by the thirteenth-century Zen master Do¯gen to describe the ideal state of realizing the nonduality of the mental and physical aspects of our being. Spiritual exercises (French: exercices spirituels s) An expression used by the historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot for the intellectual, emotional, and imaginative practices—such as preparing for death and living fully in the present moment—that he sees as central to the ancient Greek conception of philosophy. Study of the Buddha Way with body and mind (Japanese: ਐৼ ָಕ, shinjin-gakudo¯ ) Zen master Do¯gen’s expression for studying the path of enlightenment with embodied-spiritual practices such as meditation as well as intellectual and discursive activities.

18 Shinjin-datsuraku (Dropping the Bodymind) Rein Raud

Shinjin-datsuraku (䓛ᗳ㝡㩭 “dropping off the bodymind”) is an expression often used by the Japanese Zen thinker Dōgen (䚃‫ݳ‬, 1200–1253) to designate the mental state of enlightenment. Dōgen was an aristocrat by birth, received a good education, and could have embarked on a lucrative court career. But, living in troubled times as he did, Dōgen decided to follow the deathbed advice of his mother and became instead a Buddhist monk in the headquarters of the Tendai school of Buddhism near the capital city of Heian (now Kyōto). As he soon discovered to his dismay, however, the once famous hub of learning was in decline, and earthly concerns prevailed over spiritual ones. Dōgen’s teachers were intellectually no match for him and finally advised him to take his endless questions to another temple, known to propagate the newly imported teachings of Chan/Zen Buddhism. An encounter with a Zen teacher led him to travel to China, where he studied under Rujing (ྲ␘, 1163–1228), a strict disciplinarian emphasizing the practice of seated meditation, which also became the hallmark of Dōgen’s own Zen. It is from Rujing that Dōgen adopted the expression shinjin-datsuraku, and in his essays he indeed reports a conversation between them where this term was used (Dōgen 1972: I 217; Gyōji ge 㹼ᤱл, ‘Maintaining Dynamism II’). Other sources add a more dramatic moment: one day, as the probably fictional story goes, when monks were seated in meditation under Rujing’s supervision, someone sitting near Dōgen had fallen asleep. Rujing noticed this and shouted to the monk: “Drop your bodymind!” For Dōgen this was allegedly the moment when he attained enlightenment and experienced a transformed understanding of reality for the first time after years of practice. 171

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Be it as it may, the phrase became an expression he would use for the experience throughout his writings. One scholar has suggested that Dōgen may have misinterpreted the phrase because, in spoken Chinese, it is rather close to “brush the dust off from your mind” (Takasaki 2013: 64) and “dust” has, in Zen parlance, often been used as a metaphor for worldly entanglements. But this is not really important. In fact, it is very characteristic of Dōgen’s writing to impute logically possible, but unexpected meanings to quotations from old masters and to imbue them with a philosophical meaning of his own. This makes his writing notoriously complicated and ambiguous, which is why even translations of the same text often look like renderings of different originals. Therefore, compared to the rest of Zen thinkers, Dōgen is a very difficult author to analyze. Quite a few scholars accept the traditional sectarian Zen comments on Dōgen’s views, at least to a certain extent, but recently calls have increased not to do so (Tsujiguchi 2012: 23), because these interpretations are often inconsistent with Dōgen’s textual corpus as a whole. My own engagement with Dōgen also follows this advice, which is why some of the readings offered below differ significantly from the positions of many other Dōgen scholars. Sometimes the phrase shinjin-datsuraku has been translated in English as “dropping body and mind,” but this is misleading and reflects the western habit of seeing mind and body as two different things. Indeed, one of the central issues of western philosophy has traditionally been the “mind-body problem,” or the question how consciousness and the body (or the brain) are related to each other. A host of theories have been put forward, from Cartesian dualism to the idea of “supervenience,” or the notion that conscious activity is dependent on, even if not identical to, the biochemical processes of the brain, somewhat like the colors of a painting are dependent on the microphysical properties of the dye and canvas (McLaughlin and Bennett 2018). From the Buddhist point of view, the problem, thus constructed, is meaningless to begin with. The separation of mind and body into two entities is itself perceived to be the result of a mental operation, not an adequate description of reality. This can be seen if we liken the “mind-body problem” to a logically analogous “poetry-book problem” and start to reason whether poetry exists apart from the printed words on a page, is supervenient on them, or is related to them in some other way. For the Buddhist thinker, the poetry cannot be derived from the properties of the ink-dots on the blank page. Sure, we can think of a poem as something repeatedly occurring both in books, in recitals and even in the memories of particular people. But,

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in order to exist, it always has to take place, and it comes into being, so to say, not out of the place in this phrase, but from the taking. There is no selfidentical and continuous thing that would be a “poem” that only materializes in different ways, as Platonic idealism might have it—any such abstraction is a product of our thought that extracts it from the actual placetakings of the poem in reality. To reduce the poetic nature of the text to the properties of the ink-dots or the tremulation of the reciter’s voice would be absurd. What we call “poetry,” and its actual occurrences, are simply inseparable from each other. Similarly, to think of “mind” apart from its placetakings—or of the process of reality as something separate than the “mind” involved in it—is precisely where the problem of the “unenlightened” mind lies. A “bodymind” cannot therefore be thought of as “body and mind” as a pair of entities but should be conceptualized as an integrated whole with inseparable corporeal and mental aspects. Understanding this is the key to understanding anything. But this is not yet the whole story. For mainstream western thought, it is self-evident that human consciousness is essentially different from whatever takes place in the rest of reality. We may be animals in our bodily being, and some other animals may even share certain aspects of our mental activity, but our human consciousness sets us apart from the rest of nature. For Dōgen, as well as most other Buddhists, this distinction is not essential. Humans are privileged only in the level of their ability to comprehend reality, not by the presence of this ability as such. Mind, in other words, is universal, shared by animals, plants, and even mineral life. We should note that “mind” does not equal “consciousness” here—nobody asserts that stones, for example, are conscious in the same way as people are. On the most basic level, “mind” is nothing but the capacity to form persistent relationships, and these do not need to be consciously processed at all. Yet the human consciousness is just the most developed version of this capacity. The Tendai school, in which Dōgen first studied, is particularly famous for theorizing the mind in this way, as well as for equating this mind with “Buddha-nature,” or the capacity of a being to attain enlightenment (Habito 1996). In more recent philosophy, a similar view, called “panpsychism” (Skrbina 2005), “panexperientialism” (Griffin 2007: 58) or “polypsychism” (Harman 2011: 122), has been advocated by several western thinkers, such as the group of “speculative realists,” notably Graham Harman (2011, 2017). However, there is an important difference. Speculative realists insist on an object-oriented ontology, which recognizes the autonomy and self-identity of a multitude of particular objects that collectively form the universe. This claim is incompatible with Dōgen’s point of view, or indeed with Buddhist

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metaphysics in general. The second of the four noble truths of Buddhism states that the way we are in the world is determined by a causal nexus leading from ignorance to desires and clinging to the impermanent reality around us, and from there inevitably to suffering and death. In Dōgen’s times, this idea had long ago evolved into a more wide-reaching doctrine of emptiness: nothing exists on its own, everything is caused, and therefore impermanent. In Dōgen’s own, even more radical metaphysics, every particular thing is basically nothing more than a pattern of organization of primordial dimensionless instances of being, an “instance-configuration” or “arrangement of dharmas” (⌅ս hō’i). Similarly to the influential Indian Buddhist school of Sautrāntika (which arose around the second century BCE), Dōgen holds that any such pattern—in other words, everything that exists—is momentary: what is in the past, is no longer, what is not yet, has not arrived (see Raud 2012 for a more detailed discussion): Firewood becomes ashes and it cannot become firewood again. Although this is so, we should not see ashes as “after” and firewood as “before”. You should know that firewood abides in the instance-configuration of firewood, for which there is a “before” and “after”. But although there is a “before” and an “after”, the difference between them consists in their momentary breaking point. Ashes abide in the instance-configuration of ashes, and there is a “before”, and there is an “after”. Just like this firewood, which will not become firewood again after it has become ashes, a human being will not return to life again after death. [. . .] Life is a momentary configuration, death is a momentary configuration. This is like winter and spring. One does not say that “winter” has become “spring”, one does not say that “spring” has become “summer”. Dōgen 1972: I 36; Genjōkōan ⨮ᡀ‫ޜ‬Ṹ, ‘The Challenge of Immanent Becoming’1

Therefore, everything occurring even partially in the past or in the future can only have this continuity in the mind. Accordingly, whatever relies for its existence on relationships with other existents that build on past occurrences, has a “mind” in which these past occurrences are held. A “bodymind” could thus be most correctly described as a locus where multiple causal processes intersect: So-called “life” can be compared to someone boarding a boat. In this boat, the “I” raises the sail and the “I” seizes the oars. But even though we say it is the

1

All translations of Dōgen’s text are mine throughout the text.

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“I” that has the paddle in their hands, it is actually the boat that has taken the “I” onboard — there is no “I” outside this boat. The “I” has boarded the boat and also thereby made the boat into what it is. [. . .] The sky, the water, the shore are all included in the temporal junction (ᱲㇰ jisetsu) of the boat, and they are not the same as a temporal junction in which there is no boat. This is why “life” becomes the life of the “I”, and the “I” is turned into the I of “life”. What boards the boat are the remote and direct conditioning factors of the bodymind, and they all become the guiding vectors of the boat. The great earth, the boundless sky, they all become the guiding vectors of the boat. The life that is the “I”, the “I” that has come to life, they are just like this. Dōgen 1972: I 276; Zenki ‫ޘ‬₏, ‘The Totality of Connections’.

We are what we retain from what we eat, what we see and hear, what we go through in life. In more contemporary terms, our being in the world is determined by our genes and our experience, constructed biologically and socially. Many of our properties are emergent, that is, irreducible to the qualities of the elements that are constituting us, but they are also dependent on the coming-together of all these heterogeneous causal flows into the vibrant and multilayered process that we are, as bodyminds participating in the world. So why does Dōgen say that enlightenment is the “dropping,” or “letting go of,” or “leaving to fall down” of this bodymind?2 This is precisely because the mind which we all have also provides us with the possibility to surpass the conditioning factors that are determining us. Our biological provenance conditions us to eat meat, but we may decide to become vegetarians. Our society may often try to impose social role models on us, from gender stereotypes to concepts of “success” and so on, but we may decide to ignore these, if they are not in accord with how we see ourselves and our place in the world. What Dōgen recommends is just a more radical level of the same internal disposition. “Dropping the bodymind” can thus be read as an emancipation from any pre-patterned relationships that we have with our environment, and the experiencing of our reality as new and open at any given moment, so that our relationship with the world is not pre-determined by who we are, or who we are accustomed to think we are. This is well expressed in one of the most often quoted passages from Dōgen’s work:

2

Thomas Kasulis has suggested we translate this term as “molting” (1985: 90), which is otherwise a very precise equivalent, except, as Steven Heine has pointed out (1986: 56), that it sounds like something that would occur without effort.

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To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be witnessed by the multitude of existents. To be witnessed by the multitude of existents is to let the bodymind of oneself and the bodymind of others drop off. Dōgen 1972: I 36; Genjōkōan

Dōgen often uses the words “bearing witness” or “testimony” as yet other synonyms for the experience of enlightenment. “Bringing yourself forward and practicing your testimony of the multitude of existents is delusion, letting the multitude of existents advance and practice with their testimony of yourself is enlightenment,” he writes a few lines above those just quoted. What is meant here is that an unprejudiced, formed-on-the-spot relationship with what surrounds oneself is characteristic of the enlightened mind, whereas enforcing one’s own ideas of the world on the actual reality is its opposite. As Abraham Maslow has said, “it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail” (1966: 15–16). If the only tool you have for the conceptualization of reality is a language, it is tempting to treat all things as referents of the words of this language in their dictionary meanings. For example, the absence or presence of certain color terms in different languages is proven to lead people to group multicolored things differently. But if we only perceive things in their functional settings and engage with them in purely functional terms, we remain indifferent to their beauty, and their uniqueness in the multitude of nowmoments that we co-constitute with them. This, however, is what an enlightened gaze can do. Although Dōgen stresses the role of practicing seated meditation just as his teacher Rujing did, in his view it is important primarily as a tool, a way of achieving the mental state where the bodymind has been dropped. Once attained, this mental state can be transferred to any other activity. Therefore, enlightenment can characterize whatever we do, from daily hygiene even to getting drunk (Dōgen 1972: II 208)—it is only the attitude toward reality that counts. But emancipating from pre-ordained constitutive patterns means neither a retreat from reality nor one’s complete dissolution as a particular individual. On the contrary: the totality of being can only take place as a particular process at each of its points. In other words, there is no reason why one could not hammer a nail into a wall—as long as this is done with the bodymind dropped, and you would not think of yourself, the hammer, the nail and the wall as different, self-identical entities whose proper place is outside the event in which you are all together taking place at this very moment.

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References Dōgen. (1972). Dōgen I-II. Nihon shisō taikei vols 12–13. edited by T. Terada and Y. Mizuno. Tōkyō: Iwanami. Griffin, David R. (2007). Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press. Habito, Ruben L. F. (1996). Originary Enlightenment: Tendai Hongaku Doctrine and Japanese Buddhism. Tōkyō: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies. Harman, Graham. (2011). The Quadruple Object. Winchester: Zero Books. Harman, Graham. (2017). Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. London: Pelican. Heine, Steven. (1986). “Dōgen Casts Off ‘What.’ ” The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 9(1): 53–70. Kasulis, Thomas P. (1985). Zen Action, Zen Person. Honolulu: University Press of Hawai’i. Maslow, Abraham Harold. (1966). The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance. New York: Harper & Row. McLaughlin, Brian, and Karen Bennett. (2018). “Supervenience” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. N. Zalta. Palo Alto: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Raud, Rein. (2012). “The Existential Moment: Re-reading Dōgen’s Theory of Time” Philosophy East and West 62(2): 153–173. Skrbina, David. (2005). Panpsychism in the West. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Takasaki, Jikidō. (2013). Kobutsu no manebi. Dōgen. Tōkyō: Kadokawa. Tsujiguchi, Yūichirō. (2012). Shōbōgenzō no shisōteki kenkyū. Tōkyō: Hokuju Shuppan.

Glossary Bodymind A concept to denote the intertwining of bodily and mental processes which makes the separation of the two an intellectually dubious move with possibly misleading consequences. Buddha-nature The capacity of any sentient (in some Buddhist schools, also non-sentient) being to attain enlightenment. dharma A term denoting both the (Buddhist) teaching and the primordial dimensionless instances of being, with additional other meanings in other contexts. Emptiness (Skr. s´ u¯ nyata¯ ) An idea derived from Maha¯yya a¯na sutras and developed into a philosophical concept by Na¯g a¯rjuna, implying ga that no individual has a persistently real self-nature or essence.

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Enlightenment A state of mind in which a person is able to interact with reality as it is, without any disturbances. Instance-configuration (Jp. ho¯’i ’i) i) “Arrangement of dharmas,” the pattern into which primordial dimensionless instances of being arrange themselves which appear to us as individual things. Mind The site of internal processes for any individual of any kind and their capacity to form persistent relationships with others; for human beings, “mind” also includes consciousness. Testimony: In Do¯gen’s vocabulary, a synonym for enlightenment, a rapport with reality which acknowledges its being as it is.

19 Prasan ˙ ga Method Ethan Mills

One of the most powerful and unique methods among classical Indian skeptics, such as Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrī Hars· a, is an argument form known as prasan˙ga, or argument from unwanted consequences, a method in which one shows that an opponent’s view leads either to internal contradictions or contradictions with that opponent’s other beliefs. Prasan˙ga could be translated as “attachment” or “fault,” given the word’s etymology from the verbal root prasan˙j, “to be attached to.” But I prefer to translate prasan˙ga as “unwanted consequence” given the overall structure and purpose of this type of argument. While this method is sometimes compared with the western form of reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity), the two forms of argument are not identical, most obviously because the conclusion of a prasan˙ga argument can be a non-implicative or prasajya negation that does not imply the opposite of the opponent’s view— it is a pure negation without any counterproposal—which makes it an ideal method for skeptical philosophers from differing schools. In philosophy, skepticism is either: (1) a view or theory that humans lack knowledge in some or all domains; or (2) an attitude or therapy meant to reduce or eliminate one’s beliefs in some or all domains. The first sense is more common in modern and contemporary philosophy, while the second is more common among the ancient philosophers that I am discussing here. At the end of this entry, I will suggest that the prasan˙ga form of argument might be used to foster a deeper humility about our knowledge in contemporary philosophical and political discussions. I will describe the fully developed version of a prasan˙ga argument in the next paragraph, but early Indian texts contain two features of the fully developed version: (1) exploiting an internal contradiction; and (2) rejecting 179

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all of several possibilities. The first feature can be found as early as the R·g Veda (around 1400 to 900 BCE). In R·g Veda 10.129 (Jamison and Brereton 2014) the question was raised whether even the overseer of creation knows how and why the universe was created, especially in so far as this overseer is himself part of creation—the prasan˙ga argument goes: how, if he is part of creation as this view itself proclaims, can he know what may have happened before? This question, like later more sophisticated prasan˙ga arguments, exploits an internal contradiction of claiming to know that which the proposed theory itself implies is unknowable. The second feature can be found in early Buddhist texts, which report the teachings of the historical Buddha who lived sometime around 400 BCE (although the texts themselves were composed later). In the Buddha’s famous ten unanswered questions in the Cula Mālun˙kya Sutta, the Buddha refused to answer various questions about the origin of the universe, self and body, and the state of the Buddha after death. In doing so, one possible interpretation is that the Buddha ruled out all possible options (Holder 2006). As is often the case with early Buddhist tests, there is some room for interpretation here. It remains unclear why the Buddha refused to answer (whether it was unhelpful for his specific interlocutor in this passage or for practitioners more generally, or perhaps meant as a stepping stone toward direct realization), but this argumentative structure of setting up and refusing to endorse any of the several possibilities was perhaps an important inspiration for later uses of the prasan˙ga method. The pioneer of the more sophisticated form of prasan˙ga was Nāgārjuna, who lived around 150–200 CE, and is typically considered to be the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy in ancient India, a school that has survived into modern times, especially in Tibetan Buddhism and as an influence for later Mahāyāna traditions.1 Nāgārjuna made extensive use of the prasan˙ga method. In a prasan˙ga argument, an assumption is put forward that implies several possible options for theories or interpretations (sometimes called vikalpas). It is then demonstrated that each vikalpa or option either contains internal contradictions or is inconsistent with the opponent’s other ideas. The arguer then concludes by denying the original assumption. Here is the structure of a prasan˙ga (although there are often fewer or more than three options or vikalpas):

1

See Mills (2018: Ch. 1) for more on early versions of this type of argument. A helpful overview of Nāgārjuna’s argument forms can be found in Nāgārjuna (2013: 7–9).

Prasan ˙ga Method

If A, then x, y, or z. Not x. Not y. Not z. Therefore, A is denied.

While prasan˙ga arguments look like reductio ad absurdum arguments in western logic, there are two major differences. First, in a prasan˙ga, the denials of the options (x, y, and z above) are not always based on logical inconsistency or self-contradiction. They can be based on inconsistency with the opponent’s other ideas. They are problems for the opponent, which is why I translate prasan˙ga as “unwanted consequence.” Second, the conclusion does not constitute the acceptance of an alternative theory; in other words, denying theory A does not imply accepting theory not-A. Instead, the conclusion of a prasan˙ga argument can be what is known as a prasajya negation, or a “commitmentless denial” or “illocutionary negation,” as opposed to a paryudāsa negation or “propositional negation” (Matilal 1986: 66). The stock example of this distinction is this: “this is a non-brahmin” is a paryudāsa negation, but “it is not the case that this is a brahmin” is a prasajya negation. Or to put it another way: “this person is a non-student” versus “it is not the case that this is a student.” The first type of negation implies the presence of a person of a different kind while the second denies the entire sentence and does not imply the presence or absence of any person.2 How did Nāgārjuna use this form of argument? Here I will discuss just two of many, many examples. My first example is found in his text Vigrahavyāvartanī (Overturning the Objections). Here Nāgārjuna used a prasan˙ga form to deny five possible options for establishing the means of knowledge (Nāgārjuna 1994). In verses 31–51, he denied each of the following five options: the means of knowledge are established by other means of knowledge, the means of knowledge are self-established, the means of knowledge are established by the objects of knowledge, the means of knowledge are established by other means of knowledge of the same or different kinds, or the means of knowledge are established for no reason at all (Nāgārjuna 1994). In my second example, Nāgārjuna famously began the first chapter of his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Root Verses on the Middle Way) as follows. Not from itself, nor even from another, nor from both, nor even from no cause, are any arisen beings found anywhere at all. MMK 1.1; my translation 2

For more on prasajya negation, see Matilal (1998: Ch. 2), Chakravarti 1980, and Westerhoff 2006.

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Notice that he begins by presenting four possible options for theories meant to explain cause and effect: a cause is from itself, from another, from both, or from neither (this is another famous argument form called a catu·sko·t i, literally,“four-cornered,” which also appears in early Buddhist texts). Nāgārjuna then proceeded in this chapter to deny all four options (Nāgārjuna 2013). Nāgārjuna’s extensive use of this type of argument may reflect strands of quietism within early Buddhism, according to which the purpose of Buddhism is to avoid having any views at all, perhaps as a way to avoid harmful attachment to one’s views or as a therapy to overcome unnecessary overthinking that can cause suffering. Nāgārjuna somewhat enigmatically ended his Root Verses on the Middle Way by claiming that the Buddha’s teachings are “for the purpose of abandoning all views” (27.30; my translation; see also Nāgārjuna 2013). Remember that these were intended to be problems for Nāgārjuna’s opponents. The conclusions of these prasan˙ga arguments do not in themselves indicate that Nāgārjuna had some other competing theory (various commentators throughout the centuries have speculated that Nāgārjuna does in fact have a theory either implied or stated elsewhere, but such theories are not explicitly found in the conclusions of his prasan˙ga arguments). While Nāgārjuna was the first philosopher to make sophisticated use of prasan˙ga arguments, he was hardly the last. The prasan˙ga method was further developed by non-Buddhist philosophers as well, especially Jayarāśi (eighth or ninth century) and Srī Hars· a (twelfth century). They used this method in incredibly complex and controversial ways that would take us beyond the scope of this entry (see Mills 2018 for more). Prasan˙ga arguments enjoy a long and fascinating history of increasingly sophisticated uses in the classical Indian tradition, but how might they be used today? They might be used to foster greater epistemic humility, or a sense of the limits of one’s capacities for knowing. Here are two examples. First, philosophers might reflect on the common occurrence in which several philosophical proposals have been put forward, each of which has been found to contain serious philosophical flaws. Rather than a reductio ad absurdum conclusion that one must accept the opposite of the original claim that generated the problematic views, a prasan ˙ ga argument would allow one to reject the considered views without thereby accepting some other view. This, in turn, would leave one with an attitude toward new theories that is simultaneously non-dogmatic and critical; non-dogmatic in being open to examining new theories and critical in being willing to subject them to philosophical critique without the baggage of having already accepted some rival theory. This could also give philosophers a greater sense of humility: philosophical questions are

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extremely difficult, and we should be modest about our ability to have definitive knowledge concerning philosophical matters. Second, in other contentious areas of human life, such as politics, prasan ˙ ga arguments might likewise keep one simultaneously non-dogmatic and critical. Skepticism in western philosophy has often been associated with political conservatism. The idea behind this is that in the absence of knowledge about the truth of new innovations concerning political matters, one should adhere to traditional political customs in one’s society. But skepticism based on prasan˙ga arguments need not result in this association between skepticism and conservatism. One could criticize all available political proposals, including traditional political ideals, while remaining open to new ideas. This would also instill a sense of humility regarding the extent to which one can be certain about one’s own political positions. This framework could also encourage further examination of how philosophical sceptics might be non-dogmatically active in social and political realms. To what extent must one’s actions be based on firmly held political ideals? Can one be fiercely critical of all political ideals, including one’s own, while still acting on some ideals? While the answers to such questions may be elusive, the prasan˙ga method of argument may give an interesting framework in which to examine them.

References Chakravarti, S. S. (1980). “The Mādhyamika Catu·sko·t i or Tetralemma” Journal of Indian Philosophy 8: 303–306. Gautama (1999). Nyāya-Sūtras of Gautama with the Bhā·sya of Vātsyāyana and the Vār·t ika of Uddyotakara, Vols 1–4, trans. Jhā, G. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Holder, J. J. (trans.) (2006). Early Buddhist Discourses. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Jamison, S. W. and Brereton, J. P. (trans.) (2014). The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. New York: Oxford. Jayarāśi Bhat· t· a. (2010). Jayarāśi Bha·t ·t a’s Tattvopalavasim ·ha (An Introduction, Sanskrit Text, English Translation & Notes), trans. Solomon, E. Ed. S. Mehta. Delhi: Parimal Publications. Matilal, B. K. (1986). Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Matilal, B. K. (1998). The Character of Logic in India. Ganeri, J. and Tiwari, H. (eds) Albany : SUNY Press. Mills, E. (2018). Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India: Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrī Har·sa. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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Nāgārjuna (1994). Vigrahavyāvartanī. In Nāgārjunian Disputations: A Philosophical Journey Through an Indian Looking-Glass, trans. Wood, T. L., 307–322, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Nāgārjuna (2013). Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, trans. Siderits, M. and Katsura, S. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Śrī Hars·a (1986). The Khan·d· anakhan·d· akhādya of Shri-Har·sa: An English Translation, trans. Jha, G. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Westerhoff, J. (2006). “Nāgārjuna’s Catu·sko·t i” Journal of Indian Philosophy 34: 367–395.

Glossary Prasan˙ ga Unwanted consequences, or literally, “attachment.” An argumentative method in which one shows that an opponent’s view leads either to internal contradictions or contradictions with that opponent’s other beliefs. While this method is sometimes compared with the western form of reductio ad absurdum, the two forms of argument are not identical, because the conclusion of a prasan˙gaa argument can be a non-implicative or prasajya negation that does not imply the opposite of the opponent’s view—it is a pure negation without any counter proposal. Skepticism In philosophy, skepticism is either (1) a view or theory that humans lack knowledge in some or all domains; or (2) an attitude or therapy meant to reduce or eliminate one’s beliefs in some or all domains. The first sense is more common in modern and contemporary philosophy, while the second is more common among ancient philosophers such as Sextus Empiricus, Zhuangzi, Na¯g a¯rjuna, Jayar a¯s´i, and S´rı¯ Har s·a. ga Jayara Hars

20 Unconditioned Russell Re Manning

In this chapter I will discuss “the unconditioned” as a key concept in western continental philosophy. By western continental philosophy I mean the kind of philosophy typically associated with a particular style of European philosophy from the nineteenth century that followed from the revolution in philosophy developed by Immanuel Kant. Key figures here are the German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Tillich, along with the French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jacques Derrida, as well as, more recently, the Americans John D. Caputo and Catherine Keller. These philosophers tend to be described by complicated-sounding titles, such as idealists, phenomenologists, existentialists, and postmodernists; but what really matters about these thinkers is that—amongst other things—they all share a common concern about how to think about what is really real. More specifically, they share a basic insight and an equally basic anxiety about the reality of God. In its most succinct form, the insight about God that these philosophers share is that “God” in the sense of a personal being (as proposed by the three major western monotheistic religions) almost certainly does not exist (Nietzsche 2001, Tillich 1952, Caputo 2013). In fact, they are pretty securely convinced that such a God—the personal God of millions of religious believers—cannot exist; instead they affirm that the reality to which the figure of the personal God points is better understood in terms of the notion of “the unconditioned”—even if they don’t all use this precise term (Schelling 2006). By “unconditioned” they mean simply “that which is not conditioned by anything else”; otherwise put: that which is not subject to anything else whatsoever, including of course the “conditions” of existence 185

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(Tillich 1952). For these western continental philosophers—whether explicitly religious or not—their understanding of the fundamental nature of reality is definitively marked by their shared insight that reality as we experience it is, in some sense or another, dependent upon some other prior reality; but, crucially, that this other priory reality is not best thought of as the personal God of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. The unconditioned, in other words, is what these thinkers identify as “ultimate reality” or “what is really real” without thinking about it as an existing thing or person. The unconditioned is—in as much as it can be said to be at all—that which is most basic to reality, the most fundamental truth of reality. To think like that also, of course, leads these philosophers to an equally important claim about the rest of reality, namely that the rest of reality is what it is only because it is, in some sense, held in being by the unconditioned. These philosophers are not in any straightforward sense atheists, even if they are famously dismissive of the claim that God exists. This is what makes the idea of the unconditioned so interesting: just as Friedrich Nietzsche can proclaim that “God is dead” (Nietzsche 2001), so too he remains haunted by the idea of the unconditioned that the religious figure of God had for too long obscured from humanity’s view. Indeed, Nietzsche is sometimes inaccurately labelled as a “nihilist,” as someone who believes in nothing and has no values because he indulges in the crime of deicide (of killing God); but that is to get matters the wrong way round—Nietzsche sought to get beyond nihilism, portraying himself as one who had “lived into and out of ” nihilism (Nietzsche 2001). For Nietzsche, it is by holding on to the inadequate figure of God that we are prey to nihilism and the comforting embrace of convenient but ignoble consolations; instead, it is by killing God that we are able to face up to what is really real—the unconditioned—or what Nietzsche sometimes calls “the abyss” (Nietzsche 2001). Having noted that the unconditioned, in this strand of western philosophy, is not simply another name for God, we might think that it is rather simply another name for the cosmos. To do so would, however, be another mistake. To identify God and the world is to affirm what is known as “pantheism,” a position most closely associated with the early modern philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s work Ethics (Spinoza 2000). The key insight in pantheism is revealed by the meaning of “pan” from a Greek word for “all”: pantheism states that everything is God and that there is nothing that is outside of, or beyond, God (Levine 1994). However, the idea of the unconditioned takes a different route and again attention to the word itself can be helpful. Unlike the inclusive “pan” in pantheism, the unconditioned affirms a negation, or an

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absence: the “un” element in unconditioned does not state a positive description but a negative one. What is meant by the unconditioned is that it is without or beyond conditions. In German, the term that is often used here is “das Unbedingt,” which helpfully clarifies what is meant by “condition”—namely, ‘Ding’ or ‘thing’ (Tillich 1951). The unconditioned is that which is “not-thinged”: it is, in other words, without or beyond the conditions of being a thing. Being a thing means having a beginning and an end, being located in space and time, having attributes or qualities: existing means being a thing and the unconditioned is not a thing, hence it does not exist. Of course, many in western religious and philosophical traditions prior to the emergence of continental philosophy have agreed precisely with the description of such an ultimate reality without limits or differentiation. For example, one of the earliest pieces of western thought is a great philosophical poem by Parmenides, in which he argues that what he calls “what is” must be wholly singular and without distinction and that the individual “things” we perceive there to be are simply mistaken conventions (Parmenides 2016). In Parmenides’ “monist” reality there is no real change and no conditions (there are no things); for him “what is” simply just is. So far, so good; but those in the tradition of continental philosophy push this thought one step further. In part they are helped in this by Kant. In the course of his epoch-defining “Copernican revolution” in philosophy, in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant made a crucial distinction between what he called “phenomenal” and “noumenal” realities (Kant 1998). The phenomenal reality is the reality of experience; the reality that we experience in the manifest and marvellous ways that we do: phenomenal reality is reality as it is for us. However, Kant suggested a further reality; reality as it is in itself, which he designated as the “noumenal.” The key point here is that noumenal reality is unexperienced reality; it is reality as it is in itself, not as it is experienced as being by us (or anyone else). Hence, by definition, we (as experiencing creatures) can have no knowledge of what noumenal reality is like, or indeed, if it really exists at all. All we can say is that if there is a way that reality is like in itself (if the noumenon exists) then what it is like is inaccessible to us. Hence, we must resist all our understandable temptations to describe this noumenal reality. In other words, what Kant bequeathed to subsequent continental philosophy was an absolute ban on speculation about the nature of ultimate reality; other than that, such ultimate reality must be unconditioned by our experience. It is important to note that Kant did not equate the noumenal with God; the point is that he emphasized an important limit to philosophical

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speculations which subsequent continental philosophers sought to apply to their own thinking about the unconditioned (Kant 1998). It is important to repeat that not all continental philosophers use the language of the unconditioned; indeed, most are more frequently concerned with a wide range of other philosophical themes and innovations. But when they do turn to thinking about God and other religious issues one theme that keeps recurring is a radical dissatisfaction with previous western philosophical and theological accounts of ultimate reality. In this, the notion of the unconditioned is central, even if they might use other terms. One philosopher who did explicitly talk of the unconditioned was Friedrich Schelling, a student friend of Hegel and later one of his fiercest critics (Schelling 2006). Schelling is a difficult philosopher to pin down; he developed a number of different philosophical systems with deep engagements with philosophies of art, nature, and religion, and yet the idea of the unconditioned is a persistent thread, and one that was later taken up by a number of twentieth-century philosophical theologians, notably Paul Tillich (Tillich 1951). For Schelling, as for Tillich, “God” is simply a name that is applied to one particular symbol for ultimate reality. As a symbol, the idea of God points to a further reality that it represents insufficiently. There is, as it were, more to ultimate reality than is captured by the symbolic name “God” and it is precisely that excess that the unconditioned identifies. In contrast to Spinoza, with whom he engages directly, Schelling suggests that the error of pantheism is that it seeks to put all things into God and hence unavoidably retains the thought of God as a thing, albeit the only thing that is (Schelling 2006). In some ways, for Schelling, pantheism is an improvement on the traditional conception of God, such as Anselm, for whom God is the preeminent or most perfect of all things (“that than which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm 1973)). For pantheists God simply is all things; however, for Schelling and Tillich, even the pantheists objectify God. Instead, Schelling and Tillich push beyond any and every theistic conception of God to what Tillich describes as the “God beyond God” with neither existence nor non-existence (Tillich 1952). Such a conception of God goes beyond both the traditional God of theism and the revised God of pantheism (as well as the non-God of scientific naturalism) in pointing towards an excessive otherness that is not part of this experienced reality, but that nonetheless serves as that which “grounds” this reality in its unconditionality. Schelling pushes even further, following suggestions from medieval German mystics, such as Meister Eckhart, and claims that the grounding that the unconditioned performs must not be thought of as a

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kind of foundationalist construction (Eckhart 2009). The unconditioned as the ground of our reality is not akin to a concrete substructure that substantially holds reality up; instead, Schelling uses language of “Ungrund ” and “Abgrund ” to stress that the unconditioned grounds the conditioned by “ungrounding” and “non-grounding” without itself being a further conditioned thing (Schelling 2006). As before, to say that the unconditioned grounds the conditioned, is to say too much, so Schelling seeks to unsay it by referring to the peculiarity of a ground that is not. Schelling’s motive here is clear: he wants above all to avoid the objectification of the unconditioned that seems to sneak back into the idea of the unconditioned through describing it as a ground for reality (after all, we do normally think of the ground as solid terra firma); but a danger is equally apparent here. What, in the end, is the difference between a ground that grounds by non-grounding and a ground that simply is not? In other words, an Abgrund (non-ground) quickly becomes an abyss and as such the claim that ultimate reality is the unconditioned risks lapsing into the claim that there is no ultimate reality whatsoever. That latter position seems closer to naturalism (the claim that empirical reality is all that there is) or nihilism (the claim that there is no substantial reality at all), neither of which Schelling intends. Schelling’s answer here is clear: the unconditioned is both ground and abyss and such a position is neither theism nor atheism but goes beyond them both. As Tillich later put it, it is just as atheistic to say that God exists as it is to deny God’s existence and it is precisely the notion of the unconditioned that offers the possibility of getting beyond the unhelpful debate about the existence or non-existence of God (Tillich 1951). What matters is not to argue for or against the existence of God; but instead to give serious thought about the limits of our existence and its contingency rather than shadow boxing about the ontological status of a particular religious symbol. Which, importantly, is not, of course to say that the symbol of God does not and ought not to matter for religious believers: we live by symbols and we need religious and mythical symbols as much as we do cultural and societal ones; we should just be clearer about the distinction between the symbol and the reality to which it points. For Tillich and Caputo, who remain Christian philosophers, God is a symbol for the unconditioned; for Nietzsche and Sartre, other, better, symbols might be available. In conclusion, the idea of the unconditioned in continental western philosophy is a way of thinking of ultimate reality that goes further than traditional western philosophical and theological accounts of being and God by insisting on the insight that whatever ultimate reality might be it

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cannot be conditioned and hence ought not to be spoken of in terms of existence and non-existence. The idea of the unconditioned is the demand to avoid objectifying ultimate reality without abandoning the original religious/philosophical insight that reality as we experience it is not absolute. Finally, it is worth highlighting that these reflections are not solely concerned with the somewhat arcane theorizing about ultimate reality; but have applied ethical and ecological considerations too. Central to the notion of the unconditioned is precisely the lack of conditions: the thought that ultimate reality, whatever else it may be, is wholly free. This underlies the concerns of so many continental western philosophers with freedom and their persistent rejection of forms of determinism. For Schelling, Nietzsche, and Sartre, freedom is a constituent part of our reality that seems to come to our reality from its very source (Schelling 2006, Nietzsche 2001, Sartre 1958). At the same time, this perception of the reality of freedom also leads us to acknowledge our interdependence and interconnectedness with all aspects of our reality. The restless imperative to look beyond applies not only to metaphysical questions of ultimate reality but also to our ethical and environmental injunctions to live with each other and to resist imposing conditions or objectifying each other. For us, as Shakespeare has it, ‘to be or not to be’ might well be the question; but the thought of the unconditioned holds up an alternative beyond being and non-being, in which what matters is not so much whether God exists or not but that we take reality seriously and that we resist simple answers to complex questions in our pursuit of wisdom.

References Anselm (1973). The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm with The Proslogion, trans. B. Ward, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Caputo, J. D. (2013). The Insistence of God. A Theology of Perhaps, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eckhart (2009). The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, ed. and trans. M. O’C. Walshe, New York: Crossroad. Kant, I. (1998). Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levine, M. (1994). Pantheism. A Non-Theistic Concept of Deity, London: Routledge. Nietzsche, F. (2001). The Gay Science, ed. B. Williams, trans. J. Nauckhoff and A. Del Caro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Parmenides (2016). Early Greek Philosophy. Vol. 5: Western Greek Thinkers, Part 2, ed. and trans. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Loeb Classical Library 528, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sartre, J-P. (1958). Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. H. Barnes, London: Routledge. Schelling, F. (2006). Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. J. Love and J. Schmidt, New York: State University of New York Press. Spinoza, B. (2000). Ethics, ed. and trans. G. H. R. Parkinson, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tillich, P. (1951). Systematic Theology, Volume 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tillich, P. (1952). The Courage to Be, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Glossary Atheism The denial of the claims of theism. Continental philosophy Style of western philosophy associated with continental European thinkers following Immanuel Kant. Nihilism The denial of meaningful existence. Noumenal, the Kant’s term for reality as it is in itself. Pantheism The identification of God and nature. Phenomenal, the Kant’s term for reality as it appears to be for humanity. Unconditioned, the that which is not conditioned by anything else; frequently synonymous with the ultimate.

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21 Vital Force Pius M. Mosima

The concept of vital force was introduced by Belgian missionary Placide Frans Tempels (1906–1977), and debates around it shaped early postcolonial African philosophy. Even though the concept came from an outsider, African philosophers also agree that it gives a fair representation of African thinking about reality (their ontology). Through the notion of vital force Tempels characterized the dynamic understanding of reality within Bantu philosophy (the philosophy of the Bantu-speaking peoples, often generalized to sub-Saharan Africa). Tempels went against the dehumanization theories common in colonialism, arguing that Bantu people are indeed human beings, and that they have an organized system of understanding the world (Tempels 1959: 36). The core of this philosophical system is its ontology. Bantu ontology centers on the notion of force rather than that of being, in contrast with many western ontologies. Bantu ontology could well be seen as a paradigm and reference point for ontologies of what used to be called “primitive people.” Nowadays we would rather speak of indigenous peoples, meaning those who understand themselves in a close relation with nature, and understand nature as spirited. The introduction of the idea of vital force initiated discussions on the ethnophilosophical tendency in the study of African philosophy; meaning that African philosophy has tended to be seen as bound to culture instead of universal. We can accept this ethnophilosophical approach, however, as long as we understand that all philosophical systems are culturalized, including those of the West. Thus, from the African case we can build an intercultural philosophy which acknowledges differences but does not remain enmeshed in them. Vital force could well be a starting point for an intercultural 193

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philosophy that challenges western hegemony and, at the same time, highlights Africa’s contribution to world philosophy. Since its very inception more than half a century ago, philosophy in Africa has been dominated by the discussion of one compound question and further related questions: ● ●

●

●

Is there an African philosophy? If there is, what is it? (Bodunrin 1981: 163) How can we retrieve it? What are the conditions of its possibility? (Mudimbe 1988: ix) What is the best method for African philosophy in a contemporary context marked with a high degree of global interconnectedness? Is there only one philosophical orientation in African philosophy or are there many? Can they be used to jointly help shape the future of the discipline? (Mosima 2016).

In this chapter you will learn that the concept of vital force is a key concept in the development and understanding of early postcolonial twentiethcentury history of African philosophy (that means roughly from 1960 onward). This concept is crucial to our understanding of African philosophy and highly relevant for intercultural philosophy. With the use of western philosophical concepts, Tempels wanted to create an intercultural dialogue between African traditional religion and Christianity; to do this, he initiated the intercultural dialogue between African and western philosophies.

African Philosophy as Counter-hegemonic Practice Kenyan philosopher, Dismas Masolo, depicts the history of modern and contemporary African philosophy from the point of view of two related discourses: the western discourse on Africa and the African response to this discourse (Masolo 1994: 1). The first one relates to the racialist and paternalistic ideology of slavery, colonialism, apartheid, neo-colonialism and imperialism. The second one relates to the African response to this discourse in the post-colonial era, aptly described by Cameroonian historian and political scientist, Achille Mbembe, as “neo-colony”(Mbembe 2001); by Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu as ‘conceptual decolonization’ (Wiredu 1996), and by his fellow countryman Anthony Kwame Appiah as “ideological decolonization” (Appiah 1992).

Vital Force

Philosophical discourse from the Enlightenment on was associated with European ethnocentrism and the exclusion of Africa and Asia (Park 2013). From that time on, the expression ‘primitive philosophies’ (Levy-Bruhl 1910) was used in colonizing the African continent, its inhabitants, and its realities. Hegel, for example, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (Hegel 1975: 190) argued that sub-Saharan Africans did not have a high culture and had made no contribution to world history and civilization. Hegel’s racist assertions concerning the question of philosophy and culture in Africa could be summed up in seven theses: Africa is static; Africa is primitive; Africa is without history; Africa is profligate; Africa is savage; Africa has no proper philosophy; and Africa is a culturally homogenous continent. This ethnocentric tendency influenced major figures in western philosophy such as Kant, Voltaire, Hume, and Rousseau.1 Moreover, Hegel’s radical polarization of Africa/Europe served as an inspiring philosophical base, which was then exploited by Lévy-Bruhl, to belittle non-white races.2 According to Lévy-Bruhl (1910), Africa is the “Dark Continent,” with “primitive” knowledge systems, and a “savage or inferior mentality,” in short: Africa is the home of the “other.” For example, Lévy-Bruhl posits a radical difference between the West, characterized by a history of intellectual and spiritual reasoning, and “primitives,” whose life, Weltanschauung (world view) and thinking were viewed as having nothing in common with the West. These ethnocentric and racialist stereotypes negated any possibility of an African philosophy or culture.

Bantu Ontology as Vital Force Tempels’ axial work, Bantoe-filosofie (Bantu Philosophy, 1945 [1959]) was decisive in giving a philosophical orientation on the emerging discourse on cultural nationalism and African philosophy. He argued that Africans have their own philosophy, a logical and ontological conceptual system that informs their relations to the world. He reconstructed the philosophy of the people he knew, the Baluba, as a “Bantu” philosophy. According to Tempels, 1

For more on Hegel’s racist and Eurocentric concept of philosophy, with particular reference to Africa, see, for example, Masolo 1994 and Kimmerle 2014. 2 For more on this radical polarization between the West and rest of humanity, see, for example, Arthur de Gobineau’s Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (1884), in which de Gobineau established a hierarchy of races, based on the supposed genetic traits and endowments of the different branches of humanity, within which Africa and black races occupied the lowest level.

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the most fundamental and basic concept in Bantu thought is that of vital force (Ntu).3 This is the all-pervading force that gives life or energy to the entire universe. God is perceived as the one “. . . who possesses Force in himself. He is . . . the source of Force in every creature” (Tempels 1959: 46). In fact, as a consequence of God’s creative Force, everything on earth, that is, human, animal, vegetable and mineral, has been endowed, essentially, with a vital force. This systematic exposition of an indigenous African system of philosophical thought was meant to counter European prejudice about the supposed intellectual deficiencies of Africans and also help in encountering and understanding the Africans. Tempels lived among the Luba in the then Belgian Congo, known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo, and ascribed to them a collective philosophy, in which the notions “force” and “being” are intimately and essentially linked: I believe that we should most faithfully render Bantu thought in the European language by saying that the Bantu speak, act, live as if, for them, beings were forces. Force is not for them an adventitious, accidental reality, force is even more than a necessary attribute of beings: Force is the nature of being, force is being, being is force. (Tempels 1959: 51)4

We may summarize Tempels’ conception of a Bantu philosophy in five propositions: 1 Since Bantu are human beings, they have organized systems of principles and references (Mudimbe 1988: 138). These systems constitute a philosophy even if Bantu are not ‘capable of formulating a philosophical treatise, complete with an adequate vocabulary’ (Tempels 1959: 36). Thus, Tempels implies that it is the function of outsiders, like him, to formulate for the Bantu what their philosophy is. In sum, the philosophy is an implicit one, and it is Tempels, who, interpreting Bantu answers to his questions, unveils the organized and systematic character of beliefs and customs.

3

In many Bantu languages, the word Ntu means person in relation to other persons and beings in nature. Ntu entails the concept of vital force which is present in all beings. 4 It is important to note that the concepts “vital force” and “collective representations” by which Tempels sought to characterize Bantu thought may be derivations from French philosopher Henri Bergson’s élan vital (vital force) and French sociologist/anthropologist Emile Durkheim’s réprésentations collectives (collective representations) respectively.

Vital Force

2 This philosophy comprises ideas on ethics, the human person, and other philosophical issues, all based on Bantu ontology. The core ontological concept that Tempels constructed out of his encounters with the Bantu interlocutors is that of vital force. Tempels argues that, in the West, since the Greeks, philosophy has been predominantly concerned with defining and indicating the real in terms of being, through a static perspective accounted for by such expressions as ousia, meaning “what is” or “substance,” used by Plato and Aristotle to refer to what something really is. Tempels characterizes the different orientation of African philosophy, which instead of such a static notion of being is built around vital force, which is inherently dynamic: We can conceive the transcendental notion of “being” by separating it from its attribute, “force”, but the Bantu cannot. “Force” in his thought is a necessary element in “being” and the concept “force” is inseparable from the definition of “being”. There is no idea among Bantu of “being” divorced from the idea of “force”. (Tempels 1959: 50–51)

Even though all forces are interrelated, integrally connected, interact and share an intrinsic relationship (Tempels 1959: 58), the individual attributes of human forces are different from those of objects. So, for example, “muntu,” which refers to humans, signifies “. . . vital force, endowed with intelligence and will. . .” while “bintu,” used to refer to objects or things, are “. . .forces not endowed with reason, not living” (Tempels 1959: 55; Jahn 1961; Apostel 1981). 3 The specific way in which this ontology is elaborated is closely related to a religious orientation, is hierarchical in nature and is situated within this hierarchy of forces according to the strength of their vitality (Tempels 1959: 61). This interpretation was confirmed by Kenyan philosopher John S. Mbiti in African Religions and Philosophy (Mbiti 1990: 74–75). The hierarchical structuring of the universe is founded on God, who exists at the top due to the strength of his force, and filters down through the ancestral, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral realms. From the extreme depths up to the level of God, there is a permanent and dynamic complex interrelation of energies: vital force can be nourished, diminished, or stopped altogether. According to Tempels:

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All force is strengthened or enfeebled. That is to say, all being can become stronger or weaker. (Tempels 1959: 55)

With these uninterrupted exchanges, beings are not bound to themselves but constitute what Tempels calls a “principle of activity” (Tempels 1959: 51) and by their interactions account for the “general laws of vital causality”, namely: ●

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“Man (living or deceased) can directly reinforce or diminish the being of another man.” “The vital human force can directly influence inferior force-beings (animal, vegetable, or mineral) in their being.” “A rational being (spirit, manes, or the living) can act indirectly upon another rational being by communicating his vital force to an inferior force (animal, vegetable, or mineral) through the intermediary of which it influences the rational being” (Tempels 1959: 67–68).

Hence, for Tempels, the vital force points to interacting fluent energy, which makes all things interdependent and in a continuous balancing act. 4 Bantu ontology can be thought of and made explicit through the conceptual frame of western philosophy. By this Tempels argues that the Bantu have an implicit, unconscious philosophy that needs a superior western terminology to be uncovered. He is not only advocating for a Bantu mode of thought but trying to reconcile both Europe and Africa at the level of spirituality and of mind. It is our job to proceed to such systematic development. It is we who will be able to tell them in precise terms, what their inmost concept of being is (Tempels 1959: 36)

5 Bantu ontology could be a guide to the ontologies of all “primitive peoples” in general. In effect, throughout his book, Tempels indistinctly uses the terms “Africans,” “Bantu,” “primitives,” “natives” and “savages,” clearly indicating that although he is presenting the “philosophy” of a small community in the Belgian Congo, his conclusions could be valid for African societies in general. He notes that: Many colonials who are living in contact with Africans have assured me that I have set out nothing new, but merely set out systematically what they had grasped vaguely from their practical knowledge of Africans. (Tempels 1959: 37)

Vital Force

Since the publication of his book, his conception of vital force constitutes one of the main ideas in African philosophy today (Senghor1964; Mbiti 1970; Kagame 1956, 1971; Diagne 2016). This is the case even though Bantu Philosophy initially was critiqued for being part of the colonial framework (Césaire 2000) and for taking African world-interpretation as culturally specific and not as universal philosophy (Towa 1971a, 1971b; Oruka 1991; Hountondji 1996; Eboussi-Boulaga 2011). Odera Oruka refers to Tempels’ notion of vital force as a “mythical and ugly phrase” (Oruka 1997: 30), and Innocent Asouzou considers this theory as one which leaves us with an ontology that has nothing elevating, except magic and superstition (Asouzou 2007: 75). In later works, however, these latter critics softened their position, indicating that Tempels’ reconstruction of an African ontology as such was correct. In recent times, vital force has been adopted as an indigenous African concept in environmental philosophy (Ekwealo 2014; Eze 2017) and has had its impact also through the Ubuntu philosophy of Mogobe Ramose (Ramose 1999). Tempels’ work thus provided a conceptual framework and reference for all future attempts to formulate the constitutive elements of a distinctive African mode of thought, to construct an original African philosophical system.

Situating Tempels in the Field of Intercultural Philosophy Bantu philosophy could be said to be quite relevant to the nascent field of intercultural philosophy. Intercultural philosophy is an invitation to take philosophical traditions in other cultures into consideration in one’s own philosophical thinking, thus creating new perspectives. Intercultural philosophy is a new method applied to all philosophical topics and themes, which understands philosophy as a human endeavor that arises anew in each cultural orientation and time, taking on not only different flavors according to that time and culture, but understanding what it is to know also from the point of view of different conceptual and linguistic frames (Kimmerle 1997a, 1997b; Mall 2000; van Binsbergen 2003; Mosima 2016). It calls for dialogue, foregoing the option that any philosophical position assumes an absolute position. To sum things up, it propounds a more democratic, decolonizing and inclusive approach.

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Tempels succeeds in showing us what an inclusive philosophical approach might entail, by including Bantu reflections on the world and the place of humans in it in philosophy – thus directly negating the predominant orientation in western philosophy to understand itself as universal and exclude other systems of thinking. His culturalized ontology and the study of a distinctive African philosophy consequently has given us reason to question the universality of western-style ontology and has revealed that all philosophy is historically and culturally situated. Thus, although he worked in the context of the colonial system, he helped to “emancipate” African thinking from that same colonial and missionary situation, and to create a dialogue on what western and African philosophies could contribute to our understanding of the world and our place in it.

References Appiah, K.A. (1992). In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Asouzou, I. (2007). Ibuaru: The Heavy Burden of Philosophy beyond African Philosophy, Transaction Publishers: London. Bodunrin, P.O. (1981). “The Question of African Philosophy” Philosophy 56 (216): 161–179. Césaire, A. (2000 [1955]). Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Eboussi-Boulaga, F. (2011). L’Affaire de la philosophie africaine. Au-delà des querelles, Éditions Terroirs – Karthala. Ekwealo, Ch. J. (2014). “African Environmental Values Expressed Through Proverbs” in J. Appleton, Values in Sustainable Development, Abingdon, New York: Routledge: 193–203. Eze, M. O. (2017). “Humanitatis-Eco (Eco Humanism): An African Environmental Ethics” in A. Afolayan and T. Falola (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 621–632. Gobineau, A. and A. Collins, (1967). The Inequality of Human Races, New York, H. Fertig. Hegel, G. (1975). Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hountondji, P. J. (1996). Sur la “philosophie africaine:” Critique de l’ethnophilosophie, Paris: Maspero; translated in English in 1983, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kagame, A. (1956). La Philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l’être, Brussels:Académie royale des Sciences coloniales.

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Kimmerle, H. (1997a). “Philosophy in Gikuyu and in Venda Proverbs (Review),” Quest: Philosophical Discussions 11: 162–168. Kimmerle, H. and Wimmer, F.M. (eds), (1997b). Philosophy and Democracy in Intercultural Perspective, Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi. Kimmerle, H. (2014). “Hegel’s Eurocentric Concept of Philosophy,” Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies 1: 99–117. Lévy-Brühl, L. (1910). Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures, Paris: Alcan; translated into English in 1926, How Natives Think, London: Allen & Unwin. Mall, R.A. (2000). Intercultural Philosophy, Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield. Masolo, D A. (1994). African Philosophy in Search of Identity, Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press/Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mbembe, A, (2001). On the Postcolony, Berkeley: University of California Press. Mbiti, J.S. (1970). African Religions and Philosophy, New York: Anchor. Mosima, P.M. (2016). Philosophic Sagacity and Intercultural Philosophy: Beyond Henry Odera Oruka, Leiden, Netherlands: African Studies Centre. Mudimbe, V.Y. (1988). The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, Bloomington & Indianapolis/London: Indiana University Press/Currey. Oruka, H.O. (1991). Sage Philosophy, Nairobi: Acts Press. Oruka, H.O. (1997). “Mythologies as African Philosophy” in: A. Graness & K. Kresse, (eds), Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in Memoriam, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH. Park, P.K. (2013). Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830. Albany : State University of New York Press. Ramose, M.B. (1999). African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, Avondele Harare: Mond. Tempels, P. (1959). Bantu Philosophy, Paris: Présence Africaine. First published as Tempels, P. (1955). Bantoe-filosofie, Antwerpen: De Sikkel. Towa, M. (1971a). Leopold Sedar Senghor: négritude ou servitude, Yaoundé: Clé. Towa, M. (1971b). Essai sur la problématique philosophique dans l’Afrique actuelle, Yaoundé: Clé. Van Binsbergen, W.M.J. (2003). Intercultural Encounters: African and Anthropological Lessons Towards a Philosophy of Interculturality, Berlin/ Boston/Muenster: LIT. Wiredu, K. (1996). Cultural Universals and Particulars, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Glossary Bantu In this chapter, the term “Bantu” is used as a linguistic category/macrofamily (a division of Niger–Congo or Benue) and hence as an admissible and established scientific term. This is opposed to “Bantu” as an ethnic category in the southern African racialist political system. The early African philosophers took over the ethnic Bantu category, although Tempels and especially Kagame (1956), the linguist, may have actually meant “Bantuspeaking.” Because of the unsavory political antecedents of the term, in southern African scholarly literature the term “Bantu” is no longer used and has been replaced by the uncontentious, conspicuously linguistic “Bantu-speaking.” Ethnophilosophy The study of indigenous philosophical systems. The implicit concept is that a specific culture can have a philosophy that is not applicable and accessible to all peoples and cultures in the world; however, this concept is disputed by universalistic philosophers such as Towa (1971a; 1971b), Bodunrin (1981), Hountondji (1996), and Eboussi-Boulaga (2011). They argue that philosophy is a universal discipline whose meaning and content are independent of racial or regional boundaries and particular disciplines. Intercultural philosophy Intercultural philosophy (also known as philosophy of interculturality, world philosophy, cross-cultural philosophy, or comparative philosophy) is an invitation to take philosophical traditions in other cultures into consideration in one’s own philosophical thinking, thus creating a new perspective. It is a new method applied to all philosophical topics and themes. African traditional religion (African indigenous religion) African traditional (indigenous) religion refers to the indigenous or autochthonous religions of the African people. It deals with their cosmology, ritual practices, symbols, arts, society, and so on. Given that religion is a way of life, it relates to culture and society as they affect the worldview of the African people. Ubuntu The word ubuntu is derived from the coupling of the prefix (ubu-, which in the Nguni languages of southern Africa gives rise to abstract words and concepts) to the general root (-ntu, which stands for “human”). Hence, in general terms, ubuntu u simply means “being human, humanity, the act of being human.” Vital force This is the all-pervading force that gives life or energy to the entire universe.

22 Zhi (Knowing) Aaron Creller

It is not uncommon for contemporary western epistemologists to take for granted certain conceptual commitments. One such commitment is the fact-value distinction, a split that justifies an ordering of metaphysics and epistemology as being logically prior to ethical thinking. However, this assumption comes from the history of western philosophy, especially that of European Enlightenment philosophers. After briefly examining this split and comparing the differences in concept clusters between western accounts of knowledge and early Chinese accounts of ⸕ zhi (Chinese: “knowledge,” “to know”), we see that this split is not the case in early China. In his introductory textbook Epistemology, Richard Feldman describes the distinction between questions of morality and questions about knowledge: the former involves a moral sense of good while the latter involves standards of rational belief (Feldman 2003:49). Like many other contemporary epistemologists, Feldman’s account of knowledge is defined in terms of a subject believing something that is true, plus having a justification that properly supports that belief. Contemporary epistemologists often see this account of knowledge as having roots in ancient Greece.1 While many of these philosophers hold that there is a difference between fact and value, they are still committed to a connection between ethics and epistemology, but a connection in which epistemology comes first: in order to act in a way that is good, you must first know what is good. So, the argument goes, we must first figure out our standards of knowing, and from there we can properly organize our ethical practices. It is no accident that René Descartes called his

1

Ernest Sosa mentions examples of such thinkers in BonJour and Sosa (2003):102.

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epistemological project Meditations on First Philosophy, or that Immanuel Kant’s large epistemological project conducted in the Critique of Pure Reason was written prior to his other works on ethics and aesthetics.2 Knowing that thinkers in a given time and place may share certain concerns can help us to identify what Henry Rosemont Jr. (Rosemont 1988) calls “concept clusters,” or the web of relationships that give important philosophical vocabulary their deep meaning. Attending to these concept clusters can help us to avoid reductive misunderstandings as we move between different cultural and historical locations. For example, here is a passage from the second meditation in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy where he describes his approach to grounding which of his beliefs qualify as knowledge: I will accomplish this by putting aside everything that admits of the least doubt, as if I had discovered it to be completely false. I will stay on this course until I know something certain, or if nothing else, until I at least know for certain that nothing is certain. Descartes 1998:30

The word “knowledge” is not alone in these two sentences, it operates within a cluster of other words. To make sense of “knowledge” in Descartes, one must also understand what he means by “doubt,” by “certainty,” by “falsity.” Throughout the rest of the text, Descartes unpacks some of these related concepts in great detail in an effort to clearly articulate both what the conditions are for someone to know something and that he can fulfil those conditions. This leads him to consider many other concepts, such as “senseexperience,” “ideas,” “mind-substance,” “body-substance,” and “God” as an infinite and perfect being. When you tug on the concept of knowledge, this cluster of terms comes along with it. Examples of very different concept clusters are found in early Chinese uses of the character ⸕ zhi, often translated as “knowledge” or “knowing.” In the Lunyu, often translated as the Analects of Confucius, knowing is clustered with concepts connected to enculturation. In this context, enculturation means using the rituals and exemplars of the well-ordered societies of the past (both ancient and that of our still-living elders) to organize how we should act in the present. On the one hand, this means a continuation of the values and practices

2

There are many counter examples to the claim that “All western philosophy believes that metaphysics and epistemology come before ethics.” The work of Emmanuel Levinas and contemporary feminist epistemologist Sandra Harding both come to mind as thinkers running against this historical current. The point here is one about the dominant trend in the history of western philosophy.

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of the past; on the other, it means adapting these values and practices to the concerns of the now as it stretches into the future. Hall and Ames identify ⸕ zhi as one of four concepts, along with ᆨ xue, (learning), ᙍ si (reflecting), and ؑ xin (trustworthiness) as a cluster for “thinking” in the Confucian context. They argue that “thinking for Confucius is not to be understood as a process of abstract reasoning but is fundamentally performative in that it is an activity whose immediate consequence is the achievement of a practical result” (Hall and Ames 1987). ᆨ Xue, “learning” or “studying,” is the awareness of one’s culture through participation in it, mentally, socially, and physically. For example, consider the activity of writing (Chinese: ᴨ shu): there is a particular mental practice of knowing what the character is supposed to look like, a social practice of knowing what it has meant in past uses by other people, and the physical practice of knowing how to manipulate a writing utensil to artistically brush the character. ᙍ Si, or “reflecting,” is often thought of in its relationship with ᆨ xue (learning) because of passage 2.15 in the Analects: “The Master [Confucius] said, ‘Studying [xue] and not reflecting [si] leads to wasted effort. Reflecting without studying leads to danger.’” In learning while reflecting, one is able to apply the benefits of learning to their own life. In the other direction, reflecting along with learning prevents the reflection from becoming mere self-bound rumination. The practical dimension of learning and reflecting is visibly reflected in ؑ xin, or “trustworthiness,” which always involves the directedness of how one should articulate and determine the world with and in front of others. Putting ⸕ zhi (knowledge) into the context of these four terms, “knowing” gets its meaning from a practical and performative context. Being described as a knower in the Confucian context means absorbing the cultural standards and skills through an education and applying them to live a good life, both privately and publicly. These terms are further situated in a cluster of concepts organized around cultivating persons so that society is well-ordered; the teachings of Confucius provide a 䚃 dao, a “way” or “path,” of organizing and governing oneself and others. Those who successfully embody this 䚃 dao, and thereby serve as cultural and political exemplars, are described through ⿞ li, 㗙 yi, and ӱ ren. ⿞ Li, “ritual propriety,” captures the performative dimension of enculturation by describing success in rituals and etiquette, both in the motions and in the intentions. 㗙 Yi, translated as “appropriate” or “fitting,” is the internalization of cultural values about the correct ways of behaving and acting. It is embodied in acting in a manner appropriate to the uniqueness of a given situation. Lastly, ӱ ren, or “human-heartedness,” is the authoritativeness one embodies by demonstrating the cultural values one

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has cultivated. These three terms are the content of what it means to be encultured. In the socio-political project of organizing a community of encultured persons, ⸕ zhi is the activity of learning (ᆨ xue) in a cultural context that one reflectively (ᙍ si) applies to the concerns of the present in a way that upholds the trust (ؑ xin) that comes along with excellence in one’s roles and relations. In other words, if ⸕ zhi is “knowing,” then someone who knows is doing so through social and political values. The concept of a 䚃 dao is not unique to early Confucians. Another group, following a thinker named Master Mo and thereby called Mohists (without the “h” they are damp), offer a counter point to ritual propriety (li) and the 䚃 dao of the Confucians, leading to a different usage of the term ⸕ zhi. Instead of enculturation of social conventions as the solution to social and political cohesion, Mohists advocate for 䗟 bian, or “disputation,” as a way to establish a 䚃 dao. In particular, they use ⌅ fa, “patterns” or “standards,” as the practical organizing features of their approach to governing and living life. In this case, ⌅ fa can be thought of like using a carpenter’s square to determine if something has a right angle; the tool is both a guide to produce a ninety-degree angle and a comparison point for evaluating whether something already is square. When checking whether or not some particular claim should be assented to, one can appeal to three particular ⌅ fa: ᵜ ben, “root”; ৏ yuan, “source”; and ⭘ yong, “usefulness.” A ben is the root a particular statement has in the actions of the sage kings as exemplary figures. A ৏ yuan is a sourcing of the statement in common experiences if possible. A ⭘ yong is a claim to the utility of a statement for the government or the people. Chris Fraser summarizes how the Mohists use these three categories to argue that the idea of fatalism is problematic: In arguing against fatalism, for example, they contend that (1) Historical examples show that security and order depend on government policy, not fate: the ancient sage kings achieved peace and security under the same social conditions in which the tyrants brought turmoil and danger. (2) No one has ever actually seen or heard fate. (3) Fatalism has detrimental social consequences: If people listen to the fatalists, they will devote no effort to being virtuous or industrious. Fraser 2002

The efforts of the Mohists in these disputations often use ⸕ zhi in the context of the phrase օԕ⸕ heyizhi or “How is it known?” Disputation and tracing the process of knowing is thus connected to meeting standards. This is not unfamiliar to contemporary epistemology. However, even when establishing

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criteria for something like “justification,” these criteria contain practical commitments to successful, pragmatic governing. ⸕ Zhi is intertwined with having or describing a 䚃 dao. Disputation had an impact on the philosophical landscape beyond Mohism. The later Confucian philosopher Mengzi responds to Mohists, at one point saying that anyone who defends Confucian teachings from the arguments of the Mohists is a sage (Mengzi 1995:6.9/35/4–5, 9–10). Even though Mengzi mentions 䗟 bian (“disputation”), and arguably engages in it, he rejects the Mohist’s version of it and the views they arrive at based on it. Instead, Mengzi responds to arguments as he continues the Confucian project of advocating for a 䚃 dao (“way”) based on self-cultivation via cultural education. A famous description of cultivation within the text comes in the form of the four sprouts, (1) being able to commiserate; (2) being able to feel shame and disdain; (3) being modest and deferential; and (4) being able to affirm and deny. These basic human capacities come to fruition, respectively, in the form of ӱ ren (“human-heartedness”), 㗙 yi (“appropriateness”), ⿞ li (“ritual propriety”), and Ც zhi (“wisdom”) (Mengzi 2A.6, or Mengzi 1995: 3.6/18/4–12). Following the agricultural metaphor Mengzi is using, the starting capacity to affirm and deny is the seed that, with care and nurturing, becomes flowers of wisdom. All persons have these sprouts in them from the beginning, but only through being nurtured will they grow; instead, if the individual and the community neglect them, this leads to negative outcomes. The first three of these cultivated dispositions should be familiar by now— they are mentioned above in the description of the Analects of Confucius. The fourth is also very similar to the main concept under investigation: Ც zhi, often translated as “wisdom.” In this case zhi “wisdom” is etymologically connected to ⸕ zhi “knowing” (a visual cue for this is that the latter is the top half of the former character). In describing what it means to have Ცzhi, Mengzi says: Wisdom [Ც zhi] is like a skill; sagacity is like strength. Like shooting an arrow from a hundred paces out, its arrival is a feature of strength, but its ability to find the center is not a feature of strength. Mengzi 5B.10, or Mengzi 1995: 10.1/51/12–13

Contemporary philosopher Kwong-Loi Shun (Shun 1997) unpacks this passage by identifying Ც zhi with the skill of ℺ quan, weighing a situation and acting in relation to its particulars. Wisdom and its integration with the other three can be seen working together in Mengzi’s response to a question about the appropriateness of a man helping his sister-in-law who is drowning by grabbing her hand (Mengzi 1995: 7.17/38/20–30). The complication is that

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ritual propriety states that unrelated men and women should not touch one another. Mengzi states that, in such circumstances, one weighs the situation and acts appropriately: saving a person from drowning, even by touching them, is the humane thing to do. Conceptually, being Ც zhi means you can weigh out the point of a ritual and act in a way that preserves the intentionality and significance of ritual while still acting appropriately (㗙 yi) and in a human-hearted way (ӱ ren). The role of wisdom (Ც zhi), and by some extended connection ⸕ zhi (knowing), points to the achievement of these qualities of a person via concrete practical actions, embodying the qualities and their social significance rather than merely theoretically articulating them. One final approach to ⸕ zhi to consider in thinking about the concepts clustered around it in early China is that of the Zhuangzi. This Daoist text responds to the Confucian-Mohist debates by articulating worries about limitations that come with having a perspective. Rather than fixating only on the concept of ⸕ zhi through a positive account, the Zhuangzi turns the value of knowledge on its head. The real power comes from н⸕ buzhi, or not-knowing. The 䚃 dao of the Confucians and the 䚃 dao of the Mohists both claim to be all-encompassing; each position claims it provides the fullest, best perspective. The н⸕ buzhi (“not-knowing”) of the Zhuangzi is a prompt for the reader to recognize the limitations of any given perspective, especially by jarring the reader into recognizing and traveling between potential perspectives: the contrasting points of view of an enormous mythical bird and a tiny one (chapter one), the paradox of trying to know what you do not know (chapter two), surprising heroes in narratives throughout the text such as a gnarly tree who tells a carpenter what’s what in his dreams (chapter four). In a world that is constantly transforming (ॆ hua), the best perspective is not one that is complete, but one that is flexible and transforms along with the world. In terms of language use, this is connected with what the text refers to in a brief passage as ሃ䀰 yuyan, “lodging words,” words that come from taking up temporary residence in a particular perspective (Zhuangzi, Chapter 27, or Zhuangzi 2000: 27/79/18). Some perspectives have their value, such as claims to impartiality or claims to expertise in a particular domain, but even these perspectives are not exhaustive. Even these perspectives benefit from н⸕ buzhi (“notknowing”), a recognition of the limits of their lodging place. There are shifts in concern and the clusters that give ⸕ zhi its meaning across the four texts analyzed here, but there is a shared feature across this small cross section of early Chinese philosophy. In each of these instances, ⸕ zhi (and the larger project of knowing) is tied up in a lived socio-political

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context. Confucians say that this means social enculturation, Mohists that it means social grounded-ness in common experiences and fair benefits, and Zhuangzi responds with a recognition of the limits of our social perspective. Returning to the separation of fact and value mentioned at the outset, it is not apparent that “fact” and “value” are part of the concept cluster associated with ⸕ zhi. On the other hand, the conceptual context for “knowledge” that western philosophy inherits from Descartes and the Enlightenment rests on a metaphysical claim that fact and value are distinct. Given this, we must be careful not to cut ⸕ zhi out from its Chinese context and distort it by placing it uncritically into a western one. The point of considering these examples is to show that political and social context is primary in China, and this difference in context leads to differences in concept clusters.

References Bonjour, L. and E. Sosa (2003). Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues, Oxford: Blackwell. Confucius (1995). A Concordance to the Lunyu 䄆䃎䙀ᆇ㍒ᕅ , ed. D.C. Lau, H. C. Wah and C. F. Ching, ICS series, Hong Kong: Commercial Press. Descartes, R. (1998). “Meditations on First Philosophy (1641),” trans. D. Cress, in R. Ariew and E. Watkins (eds), Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources, 22–55, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998. Feldman, R. (2003). Epistemology, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Fraser, C. (2002). “Mohism” in Zalta, E. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2015/entries/mohism/. Hall, D. L. and R. T. Ames (1987). Thinking Through Confucius, Albany : State University of New York Press. Mengzi (1995). A Concordance to the Mengzi (ᆏᆀ䙀ᆇ㍒ᕅ), ed. D.C. Lau, H. C. Wah and C. F. Ching, ICS series, Hong Kong: Commercial Press. Mozi (1956). Mozi yinde ໘ᆀᕅᗇ (A Concordance to the Mo Tzu). HarvardYenching Institute Sinological Index Series, No. 21. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rosemont, Jr., H. (1988). “Against Relativism” in G. J. Larson and E. Deutsch (eds) Interpreting Across Boundaries, 36–70, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Shun, K. (1997). Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zhuangzi (2000). A Concordance to the Zhuangzi 㦺ᆀ䙀ᆇ㍒ᕅ , ed. D.C. Lau, H. C. Wah and C. F. Ching, ICS series, Hong Kong: Commercial Press.

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Glossary Concept cluster A group of words that contextually rely on each other for their philosophical meaning. Zhi ⸕ Often translated as “knowledge” or “knowing”—part of a concept cluster for “thinking” along with ᆨ xue e (“learning”), ᙍ si (“reflecting”) and ؑ xin (“trustworthiness”) in the Confucian context.

Part II How We Cultivate Ourselves and Relate to Others 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Double Movement Duh.kha (suffering) Equality I–Thou Relation Moral Responsiveness Nepantla Self-Cultivation and Political Power The Good Life Ubuntu/Botho Ujamaa Wu wei Xin (Heart-mind)

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23 Double Movement Evgenia Ilieva

Pluralism and diversity in all their forms—political, cultural, religious, value, etc.—are an obvious and basic feature of our world. Yet how people and societies respond to, think about, and live with the fact of human diversity leaves much to be desired. In the contemporary world we are increasingly surrounded by discourses that see difference as a form of pollution— something to be feared, resisted, and ultimately expelled from the body politic. An example of this are the various nationalist and populist debates on immigration which, in an effort to assert and consolidate the group identity of their members, argue for the exclusion of everyone who is not “like us.” How did we come to think of difference in this way? Why do we so often view it as a source of conflict, as something to be feared and kept at bay? We can find one answer to these questions by turning to Tzvetan Todorov’s ground-breaking study of the Spanish colonization of the New World, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (1984). In this book, Todorov uses the concept of “double movement” to describe the logic underpinning the polar responses individuals commonly display when they encounter differences for the first time. Briefly, these responses can take one of two forms: (1) either we suppress difference in the name of establishing equality, commonality, sameness or identity between self and other; or (2) we recognize difference, but immediately translate it into a marker of the other’s inferiority, thereby inscribing a hierarchy in the relations between self and other. Both responses support complementary strategies of domination, with the first encouraging policies of assimilation and campaigns of conversion and the second supporting conquest, exploitation, and, in its most extreme form, physical annihilation. 213

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Todorov locates the genesis of the double movement in the early modern era, finding it at work in “the most astonishing encounter” in human history: the sixteenth century confrontation between the Spaniards and the Amerindians (1984: 4). Astonishing because, prior to 1492, the inhabitants of the Americas, and the entire continental landmass itself, did not figure within established European cosmology. The “discovery” shattered Europeans’ pre-existing myths about creation, revealing a populated continent where none should have existed according to the Biblical account of the origins of the world. How to fit a previously unknown people into the interpretive grid established by Christian dogma became the question of the day, giving rise to one of the most consequential debates in the history of western attempts to conceptualize difference—the debate over the humanity of the Amerindians. The challenge the discovery posed for theologians, jurists, moral philosophers, and explorers of the period was at once political, ethical, and epistemological (Wynter 1995). With Todorov as our guide, let us now take a closer look at the double movement as it emerges in one of its clearest and more compelling articulations: Columbus’s earliest encounters with the indigenous populations. In what is undoubtedly one of the first studies to portray the most famous of discoverers as other than a hero, Todorov draws particular attention to the interpretive framework Columbus employed as he attempted to describe and classify the unfamiliar world that stood before him. For Todorov, what took place in the Americas after Columbus’s landfall “was not merely the invasion and progressive subjugation of one group of peoples by another. It was also an encounter between two [radically different] ways of interpreting the world” (Pagden 1984: xi). When Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, he had no choice but to appeal to the medieval system of knowledge that was already in use by his contemporaries. It was this system, and its associated way of thinking about the world, that determined what he “saw.” For Todorov, Columbus’s attitude towards the diversity of peoples and customs he encountered was guided by a “finalist strategy of interpretation” (1984: 17, 19), a hermeneutic approach that involves understanding the world solely in one’s own terms such that empiricism becomes irrelevant. In order to make sense of the uniqueness of the New World, Columbus projects his own culturally specific categories and values onto everything he sees, trying to fit the newfound facts about the Americas into the preconceptions of the Old World: he knows in advance what he is going to encounter and find (1984: 16). This means that any information that challenges his preconceptions is summarily dismissed; instead, all concrete experiences serve only to illustrate and confirm “a truth already possessed, not to be interrogated according to

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preestablished rules in order to seek the truth” (1984: 17). To seek the truth means to accept that we do not know it—a possibility which Columbus cannot admit; so impervious is his “truth” to empirical evidence. A ready illustration of the finalist interpretation is a grotesque scene recorded during Columbus’s second voyage across the Atlantic when he makes his crew members swear an oath that the land they have just reached (Cuba) is part of Asia, and fines those who dare give voice to a contrary view. This despite the fact that the native inhabitants he encounters have already informed him that this landmass is an island (1984: 22). Columbus is so deeply invested in the idea that he will discover a route to the Orient that he cannot consider any other alternatives. Indeed, he goes to his grave convinced that he has discovered islands in proximity to Asia even though all the empirical evidence collected during each of his four voyages contradicted such a conclusion. If the finalist strategy of interpretation is counterbalanced by Columbus’s purely pragmatic interpretation of nature in matters of navigation (he reads the stars without projecting predetermined meanings) and by the suspension of interpretation altogether when it comes to his admiration of nature (he submits to its beauty for its own sake)—the latter two attitudes revealing a momentary openness to learning and growth—Columbus, as we will shortly see, is unable to sustain such complexity in his interactions with the Amerindians (1984:25). His exchanges with them will be simpler and, perhaps because of that, in the end, more deadly. One example will suffice. As Todorov notes, Columbus’s initial image of the Amerindians “obeys the same rules as the description of nature” (1984: 36). At first, he admires their physical beauty and praises their natural goodness. “These are the best people in the world and the most peaceable,” (ibid) Columbus writes. Describing the Amerindians as a good-hearted people, he applauds their generosity and marvels at how they “give everything for nothing” (1984: 38). But even as he praises this aspect of their character, he admits that their overwhelming generosity seems, at times, to border on stupidity: “why do they value a piece of glass quite as much as a coin, and a worthless piece of small change as much as a gold piece?” (ibid). Unable to appreciate that the native populations might have a different system of exchange than the one the Europeans practice, Columbus interprets this difference as a lack, as the absence of a system altogether, from which he then infers that the Indians are more akin to “beasts” and thus less than human. Based on these early observations, and after further contact with the Amerindians, Columbus will be led to make two contradictory assertions. At first, as we have seen, he declares the Indians to be “the most generous people

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in the world” and in this way his initial sympathy for them opens the door to what, in later centuries, would come to be known as the myth of the “noble savage” (1984: 39). After prolonged contact, his perception of the native people gradually worsens such that he now begins to describe them as cowards (they lack weapons), thieves (they lack a conception of private property), and finally as “dirty dogs.” How is it possible that Columbus can be associated with these two contradictory myths, with this double response to alterity? For Todorov the answer is clear: “It is because both [responses] rest on a common basis, which is the failure to recognize the Indians, and the refusal to admit them as a subject having the same rights as oneself, but different” (1984: 49). Columbus’s response to alterity paves the way for two kinds of self-other relations: assimilation and enslavement. Todorov formulates this double movement in the following way: Either he conceives the Indians as human beings altogether, having the same rights as himself; but then he sees them not only as equals but also as identical, and this behavior leads to assimilationism, the projection of his own values on the others. Or else he starts from the difference, but the latter is immediately translated into terms of superiority and inferiority (in his case, obviously, it is the Indians who are inferior). What is denied is the existence of a human substance truly other, something capable of being not merely an imperfect state of oneself. 1984: 42

The important point is that in either case, the encounter is entirely egocentric and consists in a problematic universalization that identifies “our own values with values in general,” resulting in a denial that the other can be a subject both equal to the I but also different from it (1984: 42–43). On the one hand, Columbus wants the Amerindians to be like himself and like the Spaniards. He thus translates his initial sympathy for them into a desire to see them adopt his own customs and religion. Since the Amerindians seem to him to possess qualities and virtues that predispose them to Christianity, the project to convert the native people emerges as a natural extension of the desire to assimilate them to the European way of life. But this image of sameness and equality can be arrived at only at the price of suppressing difference, of rejecting every feature of the Indians that contradicts Columbus’s projections. When, during his second expedition, the Amerindians refuse conversion and quite demonstrably desecrate the holy images of the Christian church by flinging them to the ground, Columbus promptly, and without hesitation, orders these individuals to be

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burned alive in public. He sees no contradiction between what each of his actions entails. “To propagate the faith presupposes that the Indians are considered his equals (before God). But what if they are unwilling [to convert and] to give their wealth? Then they must be subdued, in military and political terms, so that it may be taken from them by force; in other words, they are to be placed, from a human perspective this time, in a position of inequality (inferiority)” (1984: 45). Columbus never offers a justification of this desire to make the Amerindians adopt the Spanish customs and religion. The rightness of this endeavor is taken to be self-evident from the start. It is in this way that by gradual degrees Columbus shifts from an ideology of assimilation which, in principle, implies the equality between participants (the Amerindians are potential Christians), to an ideology of enslavement that rests on an assertion of the Amerindian’s inferiority and a denial of their common humanity (they are potential slaves). Whereas the first move involves the affirmation of identity or commonality between self and other (the other is “just like us”), and thereby leads to the erasure of the other’s difference, the second move highlights differences but immediately translates them into a marker of the other’s inferiority and an affirmation of “our” superiority. Columbus cannot fathom another alternative and, because of this, the fate of the native populations will be tragically sealed. While it is easy to see how the prejudice of superiority can be used to justify oppression, exclusion, and exploitation, we must now also admit that the postulate of equality—the assertion of commonality between self and other— even if it is undeniably more attractive than its opposite, is an even greater obstacle on the road to more just self–other relations (1984: 165). In the case of Columbus, failure to recognize difference results in an interpretation of the other as a temporally and developmentally prior self who, after appropriate tutelage, can become “just like us”: fully Christian, fully civilized, fully human. Because Columbus remains imprisoned within his own point of view, and within the logic of the double movement, he cannot conceive that it is possible to be “human differently” (Levine 2002: 46). Through Columbus we thus witness a way of thinking whereby “human alterity is at once revealed and rejected” (1984: 49). The two parts of the double movement complement each other such that when spiritual and cultural conversion is resisted, sameness must be imposed by force. Columbus’s encounter with the Amerindians teaches us that when our response to difference is confined to either side of the double movement, it becomes difficult to recognize others as both equal and yet different from us. Precluded within the logic of the double movement is the possibility of placing self and other on an equal footing without assimilating or reducing

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one to the other. What is missed is the ability to discover sameness within difference and difference within sameness. Instead, the tendency is to split apart commonalities and differences (or self and other) into mutually exclusive, polarized extremes such that we are only ever able to regard them as two “colliding soliloquies” (Geertz 1986: 120). Although Todorov shows that the double movement is a powerful historical tendency —indeed, we can see examples of it all the way from Columbus and the Spanish Reconquista to current discourses around modernization, development, and universal human rights—he does not mean to suggest that this tendency is inevitable or that it exhausts our responses to difference. In this context, he proposes the model of dialogue as a viable way of resisting the dangerous pull of the double movement. In dialogue participants are placed on an equal footing and the unique identity of each remains affirmed. Instead of projecting my values and visions on my interlocutors (in the dogmatic manner of Columbus) or completely effacing my viewpoint so that others can affirm their uncontested “truth,” in a critical dialogue I recognize others as both equal and yet different from me. Importantly, I engage with my interlocutors by comparing, questioning, and transposing their ideas and cultural practices with mine all the while remaining open to having the prejudices and limitations of my own worldview called into question as well. Through this process both differences and similarities, as well as strengths and weaknesses, are revealed leading “to the reciprocal illumination of one culture [or perspective] by another” (1984: 240). It is only by speaking with the other – not giving orders but engaging in dialogue – that I can acknowledge them as a subject comparable to myself but also different.1 Uncovering this overlap between self and other becomes possible when we draw nearer to other people and endeavor to engage them in their proximity and difference. It is only through such dialogue, Todorov suggests, that we can “discover the other in ourselves [and] realize we are not a homogenous substance” (1984: 3). Rather than a devalued part to be rejected and expelled, the other now comes to be viewed as a resource for critical selfreflection, one that promises to alter not only how the self sees difference, but also how the self perceives itself and its own culture. It is only through a relational dialogue of this kind that we can begin to undo the destructive logic of the double movement. In the end, it is only through such critical dialogue that we can begin to see that difference and diversity need not degenerate into hierarchy, and equality need not entail forced homogeneity. 1

See Yusa, Chapter 26 in this volume and Onyebuchi Eze, Chapter 31 in this volume.

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References Todorov, T. (1984). The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Levine, D. (2002). “Tolerating Difference and Coping with the Infidel” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, 7(1): 43–53. Geertz, C. (1986). “The Uses of Diversity” Michigan Quarterly Review, 21(1): 105–123. Pagden, A. (1984). “Foreword” in Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Wynter, S. (1995). “1492: A New World View” in Race, Discourse, and the Origins of the Americas, 5–57, edited by Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Glossary Double movement The logic whereby difference becomes a marker of the other’s inferiority and the recognition of common humanity comes at the price of assimilation (Todorov 1984: 42– 43). Difference The process or property by which one entity is distinguished from another. In western philosophy, difference is traditionally viewed as being opposed to identity. Alterity The state of being different; otherness. Colonialism The practice of acquiring political and economic control over another country, occupying it with settlers and exploiting its resources. Reconquista A nearly 800-year long period in the history of Spain dominated by successive attempts by Christian states to reconquer territories on the Iberian Peninsula that had been seized by the Moors (Muslims). The year Columbus “discovered” Reconquista the Americas, 1492, also marks the end of the Reconquista: a: the final expulsion from Grenada of Spain’s internal “others”—it’s Jewish and Muslim communities.

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24 Duh.kha (suffering) Stephen E. Harris

Introduction Duh.kha is a multivalent Sanskrit word used in Indian Buddhism to indicate negative well-being value. It can act as a noun, referring to painful experiences, or as an adjective, to characterize an experience as negative. The common translation of duh.kha as “suffering” successfully connotes its harmfulness for its experiencer. Pleasure can also be duh.kha, however; moreover duh.kha can be subtle; we can be experiencing it without consciously recognizing its occurrence. Alternate translations, such as “dissatisfaction” and “stress” can express these features of duh.kha better than “suffering,” but they are not strong enough to capture the deeply negative evaluation intended by the term. I will generally translate duh.kha as “suffering” throughout this chapter, but we should keep in mind that no one word can adequately capture its entire meaning. Buddhists claim that suffering is a universal and almost constant feature of ordinary human experience. They present their teachings as methods of lessening and finally eliminating suffering for oneself and others. Therefore, suffering is one of the central concepts of Buddhist religious and philosophical thought. Buddhist authors emphasize the ubiquity of human suffering not out of pessimism, but to motivate spiritual practice and inspire compassion for ourselves and for others. Although this chapter will only focus on Buddhist conceptions of suffering, a fuller presentation of Indian Buddhism would explain the ways Buddhists respond to suffering once it has been recognized, by developing techniques such as the eight-fold path which eliminate it.1 1

For an excellent introduction to Indian Buddhism, see Gethin 1998.

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The Three Kinds of Suffering Initially, it seems obviously false to claim that suffering is a perennial feature of human life; after all, we are not always in physical pain. Buddhists, however, claim that suffering can be subtle, mentally contaminating experiences that we do not ordinarily recognize as being negative. An early and influential scheme Buddhists use to characterize the various kinds of suffering is the three kinds of suffering, ascribed by the tradition to the Buddha himself. These are: explicit suffering (duh.kha-duh.kha), the suffering of change (viparin.āma-duh.kha), and conditioned suffering (sam . skāra-duh.kha).

Explicit Suffering (duh.kha-duh.kha) The first of the three kinds of suffering referred to in Buddhist texts is indicated by repeating the term duh.kha twice (duh.kha-duh.kha), and so could literally be translated as “the suffering of suffering.” I will translate it as “explicit suffering,” since it is what we ordinarily mean by pain. Explicit suffering can be physical, experienced through any of the five senses such as when we step on a sharp rock, hear a harsh sound, and so on. It can also be mental, such as the painful feeling that accompanies the loss of a loved one. Another important source of explicit suffering is social frustration, such as the pain that arises when we are criticized by others, or feel jealousy towards them (Śāntideva, 1997: 90–93). Explicit suffering requires the least explication of the three kinds of suffering, since every human is already aware of it. Nevertheless, Buddhist texts take great care to emphasize its universality, and its depth. In a striking passage in his verse biography of the Buddha’s life, the poet Aśvaghos.a describes the Buddha as a young man watching a field of farmers. In a sudden epiphany, the Buddha is struck by the suffering of tens of thousands of insects being killed by the farmer’s tilling of the soil, while simultaneously noticing the pain of the workers laboring in the hot sun. Pain, the Buddha realizes, pervades ordinary experiences in countless ways that we do not ordinarily notice. As he contemplates the suffering of the insects and the workers, the Buddha is filled with deep compassion for every living being (Āśvaghos.a 2008, 4:85; 115).2 2 Aśvaghos.a does not explicitly use the language of the three kinds of suffering in his poem. I use them as lucid and accessible examples of the kinds of suffering which are precisely defined elsewhere. See Vasubandhu 1988: 898–908 for an influential, but challenging, explication of the three kinds of suffering.

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Buddhist authors use vivid examples, like the one above, as a way of encouraging us to examine our own experience to see if their claims about the prevalence of suffering are accurate. Imagine, for instance, the number of insects slain by trucks transporting goods, and the weariness and fatigue of the drivers who suffer emotionally from being separated from their families during long trips. Then think about the insects you inadvertently kill while driving, riding a bicycle, or even walking to school each day. Consider as well numerous small physical pains, such as backache and insect bites, and the mental pain from irritation and disappointment, experienced by all humans daily. Through characterizations of explicit suffering, Buddhist authors make us more deeply aware of how physical and mental pain permeates our lives.

The Suffering of Change (viparin.āma duh.kha) In contrast to explicit suffering, the other two kinds of suffering are more subtle, in that they indicate experience that is not ordinarily taken to be negative. The first of these, the suffering (duh.kha) of change (viparin.āma), refers to the pain that impermanence causes, emphasizing, in particular, the dissatisfactory aspects of transient pleasures. Many Buddhist texts define the suffering of change as the pain which arises when a pleasant sensation ends (Asan˙ga 2001). Candy tastes good but eating too much of it causes cavities and the pain of dental care. Romantic relationships are pleasurable, but we experience heartbreak when they end. Buddhist texts analyze many other disadvantages of sensual pleasure, however, emphasizing its tendency to destabilize the mind and its addictive nature. A particularly effective depiction of pleasure’s drawbacks is given by Aśvaghos.a, in his poem of the Buddha’s life, when he describes the Buddha as a young prince contemplating the impermanence of sensual enjoyments. The passage below precedes the Buddha’s decision to renounce the world and dedicate his life to the pursuit of awakening. For pleasures are fleeting, robbing wealth and virtue, They are empty, like phantoms in this world; Even when wished for, They delude the minds of men; How much more when actually possessed? For men overwhelmed by pleasures find no relief In triple heaven, much less in this mortal world;

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For pleasures do not sate a man full of desires, As firewood a fire accompanied by the wind Aśvaghos.a 2008: 304–305

In these two verses, Aśvaghos.a describes several disadvantages of pursuing pleasure. To get a better sense of what he is claiming, it will help if we reflect on one of our own interactions with a common pleasurable experience. I’ll write about my own example, but you should substitute one of your own, and see if my description corresponds to the one you would give. Sometimes when I am working on a lecture for a class, or writing a paper, I start to imagine a pleasant coffee break. Often, I imagine that a rest would help me focus, and I walk to a café, planning to return to work shortly. After taking the initial sip of the coffee, I feel a burst of pleasure, followed by the immediate desire to take another sip. After finishing the first cup, I often find myself wanting a second or a snack like a chocolate muffin. I usually leave the coffee shop in a less balanced state of mind than when I left my desk. Notice that the story I told about the coffee illustrates each of the negative aspects of pleasure referenced by Aśvaghos.a in the quoted verses. Aśvaghos.a claims that pleasure is “fleeting;” in my story, the enjoyment of the coffee lasts only a few seconds. Buddhists generalize this insight to all our experiences of pleasure. Even longer-lasting pleasures, like committed romantic relationships, will eventually dissolve, or be ended by death. Moreover, pursuing pleasures robs “wealth and virtue;” in my example, I waste money on treats like coffee and snacks, and distract myself from the valuable goal of finishing my work. Aśvaghos.a’s reference to pleasures being “empty” and deluding “the minds of men” suggests that gratifying our sensual desires seldom fulfills our expectations. In my story, I imagined the coffee would calm my mind and help me focus; instead it caused distraction. In the second verse, Aśvaghos.a intensifies his critique of pleasure, by describing it as “overwhelming” us, and comparing attempts to satisfy our desires to heaping firewood on fire. In the story of my coffee break, this is captured through the wish for a second cup, or a snack, and the feeling of mental instability that pleasure causes. The example is generalizable to much of our experience of pleasure; achieving a career promotion will feel good for a little while but is replaced by a desire to achieve the next rung of the career ladder, and so on. This is one of the deepest aspects of the suffering of change and explains why it makes sense for Buddhist authors to describe ordinary pleasure as a kind of suffering. The moment in which the heroin addict partakes of their drug, although intensely pleasurable, is the moment of their deepest despair, since it intensifies the desperate insatiable longing which imprisons

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them in a cycle of endless craving. The radical claim of Aśvaghos.a and other Buddhist authors is that this cycle of addiction does not only apply to extreme cases like drug addiction, but in subtle ways pervades ordinary interactions with sensual pleasure. Humans have a totally dysfunctional relationship with pleasure which, if left untreated, will prevent any lasting satisfaction in life. It is important to recognize that Buddhists do not claim all pleasure is negative. Pleasure accompanying virtuous mental states, like the enjoyment we take from being generous (Śāntideva, 2016: 28), or in removing others’ pain (Śāntideva 8: 107–108; 101–102), is conducive to well-being. Buddhists also refer approvingly to several kinds of joy experienced in concentration meditation (The Long Discourses of the Buddha (Dīgha Nikāya), 1995: 349). Moreover, highly realized persons can experience pleasure or pain without negative effects (Śāntideva 1997, 6:12–21; 62–63). Buddhists characterize ordinary sensual pleasure as a kind of suffering, however, because in most people it stimulates negative emotions, like craving, resulting in perennial dissatisfaction and a continually imbalanced state of mind.

Conditioned Suffering (sam . skāra duh.kha) Conditioned suffering (sam . skāra duh.kha) is the most difficult of the three kinds of suffering to understand. Literally, it means the suffering or dissatisfaction which results from being causally dependent. In contrast to the other kinds of suffering, Buddhist descriptions of conditioned suffering tend to be holistic, drawing attention to the instability of human experience as a whole. They stress how negative emotions like anger and craving arise repeatedly, because of our misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of the world. The fourteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist philosopher, Tsongkhapa describes it as follows: Though you have occasional moments when painful feeling is absent, because the aggregates are firmly embedded in the dysfunctional tendencies of suffering and the afflictions, the suffering of conditionality is still present, and therefore myriad sufferings are just on the verge of arising in countless ways. Tsongkhapa 2000: 291 Vol I

Tsongkhapa begins by acknowledging that there are times where we are not experiencing explicit suffering, or the suffering of change. He then explains

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why even apparently peaceful moments are still dissatisfactory, through two technical terms: the “aggregates” and the “dysfunctional tendencies.” The aggregates are five categories used by early Buddhists to classify experience: matter, feelings, concepts, awareness, and mental states such as desires and emotions. Buddhists claim that all human experience fits into one or another of these categories. Referencing the aggregates, therefore, is a way for Tsongkhapa to apply his claims about conditioned suffering to our entire lives. Tsongkhapa then says that the aggregates are “embedded in the dysfunctional tendencies.” The dysfunctional tendencies are the propensities for negative emotions like anger, craving and delusion to arise repeatedly. Tsongkhapa is claiming that, prior to Buddhist training, humans are extremely susceptible to becoming angry when disappointed, jealous when another person is successful, or obsessed with craving when we encounter something pleasant, and so on. Even if we momentarily feel peaceful, human minds are so fragile that all it takes is a minor difficulty to send our minds spinning into new waves of craving and despair. As Tsongkhapa puts it, “myriad sufferings are just on the verge of arising.” An example that can help us understand conditioned suffering, and its relation to the other forms of suffering, is that of a dysfunctional work environment, in which incompetent and cruel supervisors abuse employees repeatedly. The abuse itself corresponds to explicit suffering. Resorting to drugs or overeating as a way of numbing the pain from frequent mistreatment corresponds to the suffering of change. Even in such awful circumstances, however, there might still be periods of calm, when the workers feel reasonably content with their work environment. Nevertheless, even these breaks from abuse would be pervaded by an aura of unease as the employees wait for the abuse to resume. Therefore, they are better off quitting the job. This is what conditioned suffering is meant to indicate. It marks the fact that ordinary experience is deeply impoverished in being bound up with a continual cycle of negative emotions, during which explicit suffering and the suffering of change continually reoccur. As a result, a subtle anxiety and sense of unease contaminates all human experience.

Conclusion It is often claimed that the Buddhist analysis of suffering is pessimistic, as it draws attention to the negative aspects of experience. Buddhists, however,

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see their emphasis on suffering as realistic, and even deeply optimistic, in that recognizing suffering and its causes creates the opportunity to remove it. Virtually all Buddhist practices and training techniques are developed to eliminate suffering. Therefore, deeply understanding suffering is essential to skillfully engage in Buddhist practice. Moreover, Buddhist authors claim that contemplating our own suffering awakens compassion towards other persons, who suffer in similar ways. (Śāntideva 1997, 6:21, 63; 8:90, 99) The eighth-century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva also claims that meditating on our own suffering lessens pride (Śāntideva 1997, 6:21, 63), perhaps through a realization of how little control we have over our experience. Buddhist conceptions of suffering can also contribute to systematic philosophical theorizing in the area of ethics. Many western philosophers, like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, claim that pleasure is the primary element which constitutes human flourishing. Buddhist ideas about both the suffering of change, and conditioned suffering suggest that these authors may be overestimating the value of pleasure for human happiness. For Buddhists, the most important element in one’s happiness is the presence of virtuous mental factors, like compassion, mindfulness, and generosity, and the absence of negative emotions, such as delusion, hatred, and greed. Pleasure and pain frequently stimulate negative emotions, and we must learn to control our mental reactions when we experience them. Ultimately, however, pleasure and pain are neither bad nor good in themselves; their value primarily depends on the overall mental state in which they occur.

References Asan˙ga. (2001). Abhidharmasamuccaya: The Compendium of the Higher Teaching (Philosophy), trans. W. Rahula, and S. Boin-Webb, Fremont, CA: Asian Humanities Press. Aśvaghos.a. (2008). Life of the Buddha (buddhacarita), trans. P. Olivelle, New York, NY: New York University Press. Gethin, R. (1998). The Foundations of Buddhism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. (2015). Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy, Oxford University Press. Śāntideva. (1997). A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, trans. V. Wallace and A. Wallace. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion. Śāntideva. (2016). The Training Anthology of Śāntideva: A Translation of the Śik.sā-samuccaya, trans. C. Goodman, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Tsong-Kha-Pa. (2000). The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment: Lam Rim Chen Mo. Trans. Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion. Vasubandhu. (1988). Abhidharmakośa, trans L. V. Poussin, and L. M. Pruden (English trans.), Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press. Walshe, Maurice. (trans.), The Long Discourses of the Buddha (Dīgha Nikāya). 1995, Boston: Wisdom Publications.

Glossary Conditioned suffering ((sa sam kha) Dissatisfaction . ska¯ ra duh.kha) characterizing the condition of having a causally dependent body and mind which are susceptible to negative emotions and various kinds of suffering. Explicit suffering (du (duh.kha duh.kha) kha) Physical and mental pain. The suffering of change ((vipari viparin. a¯ma duh.kha kha)) Dissatisfaction caused by impermanence, usually associated with pleasure.

25 Equality Hadeer Aboelnagah

One of the names given to the Quran as a book and a doctrine of life is Al Furkan, which means the total unchallenged justice that separates right and wrong (Quran 25: 1–2; 25: 53, 25: 185).1 Equality is one of the foundational pillars of Islamic philosophy as the Quran clearly states that all humans are equal despite differences like gender, race, age, color etc. However, the long history of misreading and ill practices in many societies led to a general misunderstanding of the text and thus the essence of its equitable views to all human beings is habitually overlooked. This chapter presents the concept of Al-Mosawah which means equality in the Quran. It includes equality against all types of discrimination, including gender or any other discriminatory factors. It aims to enhance cross-cultural communication in education by providing the readers with a clearer perspective about gender equality as one of the main Islamic concepts. The Quran2 is the divine code of conduct not only for Muslims but for many others who may regard it as an ideal system of values. As the last divine book revealed to the last prophet Muhammed more than 1,400 years ago and the main source of Islamic legislation, the Quran emphasized some of the main concepts over which a balanced society should be built. Adhering to these fundamental concepts will not only guarantee a peaceful living on Earth but also promises mankind of eternal happiness in the hereafter.

1

Unless otherwise is stated, all quotations from the Quran and translations are quoted from: The Holy Quran, Electronic Quran, https://quran.ksu.edu.sa. 2 The Quran is divided into 114 chapters; each is called Surah in Arabic, each Surah includes a number of verses (Ayah(s) the number indicated first in the parentheses is the number of the Surah and the following number is the number of the Ayah).

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Al-Mosawah, which means “total equality,” is one of these fundamental concepts, it ensures that all human beings are standing on an equal footing regardless of any discriminative agents such as gender, color, figure, wealth, social class, or any other factors. It is derived from a foundational understanding of God (Allah) as being the ultimate just. The word Allah means God in Arabic and is used by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In numerous locations, the Quran directly instructs people to be just to each other and to treat each other with fairness: “Indeed, Allah orders justice and good conduct and giving to relatives and forbids immorality and bad conduct and oppression. He admonishes you that perhaps you will be reminded” (Quran 16: 90). Nonetheless, the unfair treatment and discrimination against women in many Muslim societies can be confused and misunderstood as being part of Islamic practices, and it may lead to a conclusion that it is instructed by the Quran as the main source of Islamic legislation. The result of a long-term misreading was a general misconception that the Quran promotes gender inequality. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to answer the following questions: Is the Quran a discriminative text? Does the Quran endorse unfair treatment against women?

Al-Mosawah between Men and Women The Quran, as a holy book that is revealed from the Creator to mankind, includes numerous answers to the questions that may arise in the human mind. It provides its readers with the foundational concepts based on which they can maintain a just and fair living on Earth. Additionally, it provides the reader with a clearer vision of how to interact with other human beings and with the universe. The first instruction from the Quran to the human beings was “Iqra” to “Read” (Quran 96: 1). Reading is used in the Quran metaphorically in its larger sense, which means to observe, to think and to find meaning not only in the words but also in the world around us (Barlas 2011: xii). Such an order was general to all human beings as a whole and is not limited to certain groups, gender, or people with specific status. Contemplating, thinking about, and understanding the Quran is a right that is given to all, yet was restricted to male scholars for centuries. The assumption made by many people is that the Quran is an oppressive text that dictates and authorizes discriminatory practices against women was

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stipulated from a long lineage of male perspective to the interpretation of the text. This position has recently been challenged by women such as Egyptian scholars Zainab Al Gazali and Aisha Abdalrahman, nicknamed Bent Al Shati, African American Amina Wadud, Pakistani American Asma Barlas, Lebanese American Aziza Al Hibri and the organization Sisters in Islam in Indonesia, to name but a few as the list of women advocates to this cause is continually increasing. A closer reading of the Quran demonstrates its views of equality; in fact, it addresses the readers and both genders indiscriminately. It directs human beings to think, and reason about the creation of mankind. The act of reading also refers to interpreting, or finding meaning, which for centuries was fully occupied/controlled by men, accordingly this led to a single dimensional reading or understanding of the text (Barlas 2011: xiii, Abo El Nagah 2017: 193).3 The reader of the Quran can easily realize its unbiased views and inclusiveness to all mankind. As its words are directed to all, “Oh, mankind” is used as a general call which indicates that it is directed to all human beings.4 In Arabic language the masculine form is used to address both men and women unless a specific regulation is intended to be directed to women. Women are presented in the Quran as being equal in creation, rights and religious obligations and responsibilities: ۡ َ ُ ‫ﺖ ﺑَ ۡﻌ‬ ُ َ‫َﻭ ۡٱﻟ ُﻤ ۡﺆ ِﻣﻨُﻮﻥَ َﻭ ۡٱﻟ ُﻤ ۡﺆ ِﻣ ٰﻨ‬ َ‫ﺼﻠَ ٰﻮﺓ‬ ‫َﺮ َﻭﻳُﻘِﻴ ُﻤﻮﻥَ ٱﻟ ﱠ‬ ِ ‫ﺾ ﻳَ ۡﺄ ُﻣﺮُﻭﻥَ ﺑِ ۡﭑﻟ َﻤ ۡﻌﺮ‬ ِ ‫ُﻭﻑ َﻭﻳَ ۡﻨﻬَ ۡﻮﻥَ ﻋ َِﻦ ٱﻟ ُﻤﻨﻜ‬ ٖ ۚ ‫ﻀﻬُﻢۡ ﺃ ۡﻭﻟِﻴَﺎٓ ُء ﺑَ ۡﻌ‬ َ‫َﻭﻳ ُۡﺆﺗُﻮﻥَ ٱﻟ ﱠﺰﻛ َٰﻮﺓ‬ ٓ ۗ ‫ﺖ‬ َ ِ‫َﻭﻳ ُِﻄﻴﻌُﻮﻥَ ٱ ﱠ َ َﻭ َﺭﺳُﻮﻟَ ۚ ٓۥﻪُ ﺃُﻭْ ٰﻟَﺌ‬ ِ َ‫( َﻭ َﻋ َﺪ ٱ ﱠ ُ ۡٱﻟ ُﻤ ۡﺆ ِﻣﻨِﻴﻦَ َﻭ ۡٱﻟ ُﻤ ۡﺆ ِﻣ ٰﻨ‬71) ‫ﻴﻢ‬ٞ ‫َﺰﻳ ٌﺰ َﺣ ِﻜ‬ ِ ‫ﻚ َﺳﻴَ ۡﺮ َﺣ ُﻤﻬُ ُﻢ ٱ ﱠ ُ ﺇِ ﱠﻥ ٱ ﱠ َ ﻋ‬ ٰ ٰ ۡ ‫ﺖ ﻋ َۡﺪ ۚ ٖﻥ َﻭ ِﺭ‬ ‫ﻚ ﻫُ َﻮ‬ َ ِ‫ﻥ ﱢﻣﻦَ ٱ ﱠ ِ ﺃَ ۡﻛﺒَ ۚ ُﺮ ٰ َﺫﻟ‬ٞ ‫ﺿ ٰ َﻮ‬ ِ ‫ﺖ ﺗ َۡﺠ ِﺮﻱ ِﻣﻦ ﺗ َۡﺤﺘِﻬَﺎ ۡٱﻷَ ۡﻧ ٰﻬَ ُﺮ ٰ َﺧﻠِ ِﺪﻳﻦَ ﻓِﻴﻬَﺎ َﻭ َﻣ ٰ َﺴ ِﻜﻦَ ﻁَﻴﱢﺒَ ٗﺔ ﻓِﻲ َﺟﻨﱠ‬ ٖ ‫َﺟﻨﱠ‬ ۡ ۡ ‫ٱﻟﻔَ ۡﻮ ُﺯ ٱﻟ َﻌ ِﻈﻴ ُﻢ‬ The believing men and believing women are allies of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and establish prayer and give zakah5 and obey Allah and His Messenger. Those - Allah will have mercy upon them. Indeed, Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise. Allah has promised the believing men and believing women gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein they abide eternally, and pleasant dwellings in gardens of perpetual residence; but approval from Allah is greater. It is that which is the great attainment. Quran 9: 71–72

The number of Quranic Ayahs speaking specifically for or about women is numerous which only indicates the inclusive nature of the text. Some whole 3 There is a variation in the spelling of the name of the author due to the transliteration of the Arabic vowels. In earlier publications the last name was spelled Abo El Nagah. 4 See, for example, the Quran (22: 49, 37), (27: 16), (31:33), (35: 3,5,15), (49:13), (62:6), (66:6). 5 Obligatory charity.

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Surahs are totally devoted to women stories or issues, Al Nisaa (4) and Mariam (19) are only two examples out of many others. The Quran clearly defines women status and rights in details that can never be missed by the reader (Tantaway 1995: 32). Women are viewed in the Quran as equals. Male and female are created equally and from the same origin: ‫ﻖ ِﻣ ْﻨﻬَﺎ َﺯﻭْ َﺟﻬَﺎ َﻭﺑَ ﱠ‬ ‫ﺚ ِﻣ ْﻨﻬُ َﻤﺎ ِﺭ َﺟ ًﺎﻻ َﻛﺜِﻴﺮًﺍ َﻭﻧِ َﺴﺎ ًء‬ َ َ‫ﺍﺣ َﺪ ٍﺓ َﻭ َﺧﻠ‬ ِ ‫ﺲ َﻭ‬ ٍ ‫ﻳَﺎ ﺃَﻳﱡﻬَﺎ ﺍﻟﻨﱠﺎﺱُ ﺍﺗﱠﻘُﻮﺍ َﺭﺑﱠ ُﻜ ُﻢ ﺍﻟﱠ ِﺬﻱ َﺧﻠَﻘَ ُﻜﻢ ﱢﻣﻦ ﻧﱠ ْﻔ‬ ْ ‫ﱠ‬ ُ ‫ۚ َﻭﺍﺗﱠﻘُﻮﺍ َ ﱠﷲ ﺍﻟ ِﺬﻱ ﺗَ َﺴﺎ َءﻟﻮﻥَ ﺑِ ِﻪ َﻭ َﺍﻷﺭْ َﺣﺎ َﻡ ۚ ﺇِ ﱠﻥ َ ﱠﷲ َﻛﺎﻥَ َﻋﻠَ ْﻴ ُﻜ ْﻢ َﺭﻗِﻴﺒًﺎ‬ O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah, through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed, Allah is ever, over you, an Observer. Quran 4: 1

The above Aya (verse) is the opening of a long Surah in the Quran titled Al Nisa, “women” in Arabic. It directs the attention of people that we are created from a same soul, that both male and female have the same origin. The Quran then instructs people to have piety (fear Allah to do any wrong action) and to always remember that we are created from the same womb. The chapter is composed of 176 verses devoted to detailing regulations and matters related to women. It emphasizes women rights in different types of relationships within the family and the community. It demonstrates the keenness and care the Quran gives to women as wives, sisters, and mothers; it highlights the specific attention given to women in weak and vulnerable positions when orphaned or impoverished. In that regard, this designated chapter of the Quran demonstrates the Islamic wisdom in expressing equity not just equality, as both genders are equal, yet with biological differences that are to be observed and understood and not to be overlooked by the legislation. The Quran acknowledges the different roles the two genders may have in life and thus devised legislations that prove a deep implementation of equity, such as the exception given to women to pray and to fast during monthly menstruation and the obligation of men (husbands, fathers, or brothers) to provide for women. Numerous examples from Surah Al Nisa can indicate the concepts of both equity and equality (Quran 4: 2, 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 19, 176). All through the Quran, men and women are always reminded of their shared roots, all human beings are equal as they are all from the same origin. The speech in the following Ayah is directed to all mankind regardless of their gender: ‫َﺮ َﻭﺃُﻧﺜَ ٰﻰ َﻭ َﺟ َﻌ ْﻠﻨَﺎ ُﻛ ْﻢ ُﺷﻌُﻮﺑًﺎ َﻭﻗَﺒَﺎﺋِ َﻞ ﻟِﺘَ َﻌﺎ َﺭﻓُﻮﺍ ۚ ﺇِ ﱠﻥ ﺃَ ْﻛ َﺮ َﻣ ُﻜ ْﻢ ِﻋﻨ َﺪ ﱠ‬ ۚ ‫ﷲِ ﺃَ ْﺗﻘَﺎ ُﻛ ْﻢ‬ ٍ ‫ﻳَﺎ ﺃَﻳﱡﻬَﺎ ﺍﻟﻨﱠﺎﺱُ ﺇِﻧﱠﺎ َﺧﻠَ ْﻘﻨَﺎ ُﻛﻢ ﱢﻣﻦ َﺫﻛ‬ ‫ﺇِ ﱠﻥ َ ﱠﷲ َﻋﻠِﻴ ٌﻢ َﺧﺒِﻴ ٌﺮ‬

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O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted. Quran 49: 13

In this Ayah the Quran stresses the origin of the creation of both men and women, and the purpose of their creation as to know each other and to interact with other people, and to communicate with other groups of people “nations.” The duality of the origin here suggests equality and sameness (Wadud 1999: 16). Here, as all through the Quran, human beings, both men and women are shown as autonomous beings who possess full agency and are free from all sorts of limitations. It clearly states that “honor” is tied to righteousness independent from gender biases or any other discriminative agents, a person’s honor solely depends on his/her deeds not based on any other measures (Abo El Nagah 2016: 195). Both men and women are regarded as equal in moral and religious obligations. Women are fully liable for their actions and are expected to be active members of their societies. Gender is not the criteria of discrimination or judgment as both have equal religious responsibilities: َ‫ﺕ َﻭﺍﻟﺼﱠﺎﺑِ ِﺮﻳﻦ‬ ِ ‫ﺕ َﻭﺍﻟﺼﱠﺎ ِﺩﻗِﻴﻦَ َﻭﺍﻟﺼﱠﺎ ِﺩﻗَﺎ‬ ِ ‫ﺕ َﻭ ْﺍﻟﻘَﺎﻧِﺘِﻴﻦَ َﻭ ْﺍﻟﻘَﺎﻧِﺘَﺎ‬ ِ ‫ﺕ َﻭ ْﺍﻟ ُﻤ ْﺆ ِﻣﻨِﻴﻦَ َﻭ ْﺍﻟ ُﻤ ْﺆ ِﻣﻨَﺎ‬ ِ ‫ﺇِ ﱠﻥ ْﺍﻟ ُﻤ ْﺴﻠِ ِﻤﻴﻦَ َﻭ ْﺍﻟ ُﻤ ْﺴﻠِ َﻤﺎ‬ َ‫ﺕ َﻭ ْﺍﻟ َﺤﺎﻓِ ِﻈﻴﻦ‬ َ َ‫ﺼ ﱢﺪﻗِﻴﻦَ َﻭ ْﺍﻟ ُﻤﺘ‬ َ َ‫ﺕ َﻭ ْﺍﻟ ُﻤﺘ‬ ِ ‫ﺕ َﻭﺍﻟﺼﱠﺎﺋِ ِﻤﻴﻦَ َﻭﺍﻟﺼﱠﺎﺋِ َﻤﺎ‬ ِ ‫ﺼ ﱢﺪﻗَﺎ‬ ِ ‫َﺎﺷ َﻌﺎ‬ ِ ‫َﺎﺷ ِﻌﻴﻦَ َﻭ ْﺍﻟﺨ‬ ِ ‫ﺕ َﻭ ْﺍﻟﺨ‬ ِ ‫َﻭﺍﻟﺼﱠﺎﺑِ َﺮﺍ‬ ْ َ َ ‫ﱠ‬ ‫ﱠ‬ ُ ُ‫ﱠ‬ ْ َ ‫ﱠ‬ َ ً َ ‫ﱠ‬ َ ْ‫ﺟ‬ ‫ﻛ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﺬ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺕ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﻈ‬ ‫ﻓ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺤ‬ ‫ﺍﻟ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﻢ‬ ‫ﻬ‬ ‫ﺟ‬ ‫ُﻭ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻓ‬ ‫َﻈﻴ ًﻤﺎ‬ ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ًﺍ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺓ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻔ‬ ‫ﻐ‬ ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ُﻢ‬ ‫ﻬ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﷲ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﺕ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻛ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﺬ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ًﺍ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻴ‬ ‫ﺜ‬ ‫ﻛ‬ ‫ﷲ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ُ َ َ‫ﻳﻦ‬ ِ ِ َ ِ َ ِ َ َِ ‫ﱠ‬ ِ ِ َ ِ ِ َ َ ْ َ For Muslim men and women, for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true men and women, for men and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast (and deny themselves), for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in Allah’s praise, for them has Allah prepared forgiveness and great reward. Quran 33: 35

As stated above, all human beings are responsible for their deeds. Though the masculine form is generally used to address both genders in Arabic, the above verse to imply total equality and fairness of judgment. Both men and women are mentioned in the Quran as equal in creation, obligations, and responsibilities and are therefore equal in terms of reward/punishment and treatment on the Day of Judgment. As we have seen above, the Quran (9: 71–72) makes it clear that all humans are given the choice between obedience and disobedience. Both men and women were mentioned in the Quran as

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equal, not as binary opposites. The idea of binary opposites is discriminative in itself and is far from the image created about women in the Quran: ْ ‫ﻚ ﻳَ ْﺪ ُﺧﻠُﻮﻥَ ْﺍﻟ َﺠﻨﱠﺔَ َﻭﻻَ ﻳ‬ ‫ُﻈﻠَ ُﻤﻮﻥَ ﻧَﻘِﻴﺮًﺍ‬ َ ِ‫َﺮ ﺃَﻭْ ﺃُﻧﺜَ ٰﻰ َﻭﻫُ َﻮ ُﻣ ْﺆ ِﻣ ٌﻦ ﻓَﺄُﻭ ٰﻟَﺌ‬ ِ ‫َﻭ َﻣﻦ ﻳَ ْﻌ َﻤﻞْ ِﻣﻦَ ﺍﻟﺼﱠﺎﻟِ َﺤﺎ‬ ٍ ‫ﺕ ِﻣﻦ َﺫﻛ‬ And whoever does righteous deeds, whether male or female, while being a believer - those will enter Paradise and will not be wronged, [even as much as] the speck on a date seed. (Quran 4: 124). see also Quran 16:97

The Quran is full of examples of women’s lives and the role they played in the lives of their families, societies, and nations. These examples are always presented with respect and appreciation.6 Likewise, the prophetic Sunah emphasizes the concept of equity stressed by the Quran, it demonstrates a clear application of equity towards women in both the personal and the public life of the prophet (Musa: 2008, 7). Opposite to the general perception about women in Islam, women in early Islamic years are represented in the prophetic narratives as educated, strong welled, autonomous beings who have the right to argue and who are in in full control of their lives. A clear example of this mature image of Muslim women is given through the lives of his wife Aisha and his daughter Fatima. A huge number of prophetic sayings (Hadith) are narrated by Aisha which demonstrates the trust and level of education given to her. The prophetic biography exemplifies the autonomy and power given to women during the early years of Islam which opposes the traditional way of treating women not only in the Arab peninsula but also in different parts of the world at the time (Wadud 1999: 23).

Conclusion The Quran is the main source of Islamic legislation. In the Quran, Allah describes Himself as being the ultimate Just who does not allow any form of discrimination based on color, race, gender, or any other factor. However, the unjust practices against women in many Muslim societies may suggest the opposite. Is the Quran a discriminative text? The main objective of this chapter is to answer this question. A closer reading of the text reveals its views on women: it demonstrates Al-Mosawah or equality to all mankind

6

See Wadud 1999.

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regardless of any bias. The Quran clearly states that all people are created from the same origin and that they are equally responsible for their deeds. Women, as demonstrated in the Quran, are autonomous beings who are fully functioning members of their societies. The status of women in Islam should be understood through the unbiased nature of the Quran, despite the fact that historical practices in many societies may have been mired in a long lineage of a single dimensional reading of the text. After centuries of misconceptions against the egalitarian readings of the text, Muslim women are taking remarkable scholarly strands towards unraveling the equitable nature of the text. These steps are in their very early stages; more is expected to emerge in the coming years.

References Abo El Nagah, H. (2017). “Autonomous Histories of Muslim Women Cultural Poetics; A Critical Reading of the Personal/Academic Narratives of Leila Ahmed and Amina Wadud” Australia, International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature (IJALEL) (2): 192–202. Abo El Nagah, H. (2016). “Voices from the Diaspora: Towards a Gender Sensitive Re-reading of the Quran” USA, JENDA: A Journal of Culture and African Women, (28): 38–54. Abo El Nagah, H. (2016). “Muslim Women in Africa and in the Diaspora; Past Present and Future” Editorial, USA, JENDA: A Journal of Culture and African Women, (28): 1–2. Abou El Fadl, K. (2008). Foreword, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam, One World Publishing, USA: vii–xvii. Barlas, A. (2011). Believing Women in Islam, Understanding Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an, University of Texas Press, Austin (seventh reprinting). Al Khadrawy, D. (2004). Dictionary of Islamic Terms. Damascus: Al Yamama Publication. Musa, A. (2008). Hadith as Scripture: Discussion on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in Islam, New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Tantaway, M. (1995). Manifestation of Islam’s Reverence for Women, Egypt, The National Council for Women. The Holy Quran, Electronic Quran, https://quran.ksu.edu.sa (accessed August 2021). Wadud, A. (1999). Qur’an and Woman, Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Glossary List of used transliterated words and their definitions in alphabetical order.7 Al-Mosawah Equality. Ayah Verse in the Quran. Furqan Who distinguishes between truth and falsehood. Iqra Read. Hadith h Prophetic saying. Sunnah A path, way or manner of the prophet Muhammad that becomes a model. Surahss Chapters in the Quran, singular is Surah. Tafsir Interpretation of the Quran.

7

All Islamic terms are defined at Al Khadrawy (2004).

26 I–Thou Relation Michiko Yusa

In March 2020, my university classes were suddenly canceled, and Washington State went into COVID-19 lockdown. Before we knew it, we found ourselves living in a strange new reality of masking, social-distancing, and thorough hand washing. One evening on TV an Irish poet, Dorothy Duffy, shared her poem about her sister, who had recently died of COVID-19 in a London nursing home. This poem, “My Sister Is Not a Statistic,” especially touched me as it laid bare the cold fact that no one was allowed to say goodbye to her sister, because of the highly infectious nature of COVID-19. Her sister died “without the soft touch” of loving hands, or farewell kisses on her forehead (Duffy 2020). In the early days of the pandemic, we were stunned, not knowing what to do. There was too much inhumanity in what should have been a dignified death of someone close. We were also simply overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reported in daily news—how many were infected, how many were hospitalized, and how many were dying. This poem by Ms. Duffy jolted me out of numbness and reminded me of the human dimension of wretched suffering. Numbers don’t die, human beings die. It spoke for the truth that if we depersonalize the dead, we dehumanize ourselves. Can philosophy find a way to address human suffering? In this spirit of searching, I turn to the philosophy of “I and Thou,” which traces its origin to Ludwig Feuerbach and was developed by Martin Buber in Europe, while it also caught the attention of Japanese philosophers, Nishida Kitarō and Nishitani Keiji who developed the philosophy of “I–Thou–It” in their own ways. Moreover, the philosophy of interpersonal relationship allows us to widen the scope of investigation to rethink our relation to the environment, to 237

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nature. Nishida, for instance, commented in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake that “Nature is the root of culture” (Nishida 1923: 129), which reveals Nishida’s worldview that humanity is of nature and in nature. Nishitani brings nature more directly to the center of his philosophical reflection and points out that we do form personal relationships with animals, plants, and even with inanimate objects as “thou” (Nishitani 1966). Certainly, the seed of these ideas is already present in Buber’s thought, but Nishitani, with his Japanese sensitivity to nature, finds much more fluidity between the “I,” the “Thou,” and the “It.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) Feuerbach is credited with having introduced the idea of “I and thou” into philosophy as a communication principle. This formed part of his effort to free philosophy from the long shadows of Christian theological influence. In his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (published in 1843), Feuerbach sketches out this new philosophical direction that goes beyond Hegel, whose idealism, he saw, was still under a Protestant theological influence. He calls for the “transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology” (Feuerbach 1966: 5). This means to start out with the idea of real being as an embodied incarnate living being (Feuerbach 1966: 49 ff ). “Only a sensuous being is a true and real being” (Fuerbach 1966, 51). According to Feuerbach, perception, feelings, and love characterize the sensuous being, as well as the “communality” of such beings. None of us exist in our head as an isolated, abstract being. For Feuerbach, “communication and conversation” thus assume the essential role in the community of “real beings,”—that is, the sensuous “I” and the sensuous “thou” (Feuerbach 1966: 58). Now, we must remember that Feuerbach was writing almost two centuries ago, when the word “man” (der Mensch) stood for the entirety of humanity. (This convention is avoided today, as it is considered to reflect the implicit bias of subsuming the female and non-binary under the male). Feuerbach declared: Only through communication and conversation between man and man do the ideas arise. Not by oneself but only with others, does one reach notions and reason in general. Two human beings are needed for the generation of man—of the spiritual as well as of physical man; the community of man and man is the first principle and criterion of truth and generality. The certainty of the existence of other things apart from me is mediated for me through the certainty of the existence of another human being apart from

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me. That which I alone perceive I doubt; only that which the other also perceives is certain. Feuerbach 1966: 58-59

Feuerbach further maintained that “the natural viewpoint of human being, that of the distinction between I and thou, subject and object, is the true and absolute viewpoint” (Feuerbach 1966: 70). Focus on the reality of “I and thou” respects “community,” which he defined as “the unity of I and thou,” moving away from finite and limited “solitude” (Feuerbach 1966: 71). As a criticism of Hegelian notion of “dialectic,” that sees the world in a dynamic movement, Feuerbach wrote: “The true dialectic is not a monologue of a solitary thinker with himself; it is a dialogue between I and thou” (Feuerbach 1966: 72).

Martin Buber (1878–1965) Buber, acknowledging his indebtedness to Feuerbach’s “discovery of the Thou” in philosophy, observed in 1938: By man, whom he considers as the highest subject of philosophy, Feuerbach does not mean man as an individual, but man with man—the connection of I and Thou . . . “Man’s being is contained only in community, in the unity of man with man—a unity which rests . . . on the reality of the difference between I and Thou.” Feuerbach did not elaborate these words in his later writings. . . . But in those words of Feuerbach, passing beyond Marx, [he] introduced that discovery of the Thou, which has been called “the Copernican revolution” of modern thought . . . I myself in my youth was given a decisive impetus by Feuerbach. Buber 1972: 147–148

Buber’s landmark work, Ich und Du was published in 1923 (and English translation as I and Thou was published in 1937). Describing human presence in the world as “twofold” (zwiefältig), he advances two fundamentally opposing manners in which human beings relate to the world, or two attitudes we bring to the world—as a “person” (die Person), a relational being (of I-Thou, Ich-Du) on the one hand, and as an “individual” (das Eigenwesen), an isolated being (of I-It, Ich-Es) on the other. Buber observes that we “swing between” these two poles, in our “twofold” presence in the world, and that the world presents itself to us in one of these twofold ways, depending on which of the two attitudes the “I” assumes (Buber 1958:3). Buber designates these two modes of relationship that “I” assumes as a “primary word” or “unit” of “I-Thou” and “I-It.” That is, “I-Thou” is considered one word, and “I-It” another word.

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The I of the primary word I-It makes its appearance as individuality and becomes conscious of itself as subject (of experience and using). The I of the primary word I-Thou makes its appearance as person and becomes conscious of itself as subjectivity (without a dependent genitive). Individuality makes its appearance by being differentiated from other individualities. A person makes his appearance by entering into relationship with other persons. Buber 1958: 62

Buber identified three spheres in which “the world of relation” arises: (1) Our life with nature (Natur). (2) Our life with human beings (Menschen). (3) Our life with spiritual beings (geistige Wesenheiten). Buber 1958: 6

Buber specifically talks about his experience with a “tree” and “a cat’s eye” to touch on the first sphere of our “life with nature.” He intimates that we can address a tree or a cat as “thou,” but “our words cling to the threshold of speech,” and are not in the form of speech. In the second sphere the relation is “open and in the form of speech.” In the third sphere, although “we perceive no Thou, we feel we are addressed and we answer”—in the “primary word” (Buber 1958: 6). For me, Buber’s strength lies in his analysis of the “historical” significance of the twofold attitude humanity assumes in the world. The shape of the world depends on which direction we “swing.” The course of history moves, directed by our relationship to others. Buber observes: No man is pure person and no man pure individuality. None is wholly real, and none wholly unreal. Every man lives in the twofold. . . . True history is decided in the file between these poles [of persons and individuals]. The more a man, humanity, is mastered by individuality, the deeper does the “I” sink into unreality. In such times the person in man and in humanity leads a hidden subterranean and as if were cancelled existence—till it is recalled. Buber 1958: 65

In Buber’s language, we could describe how, in the Covid-19-world of social distancing, the “I” was forced to turn into the solitary mode of the “I– It,” as many had to let go of warm human touch and social relationships. Relatives could not even hold the hands of those dying. Basic human everyday activities of eating and drinking together, singing, having a belly laugh with friends—all these had to be suspended, which goes against the

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grain of our humanity, thus creating psychological difficulties for many of us. In other words, the warmth of the “I–Thou” relationship is indispensable to the “I,” to our basic nature as humans.

Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) Nishida Kitarō introduced the language of “I and Thou” in his essay “Watakushi to nanji” (Nishida 1932). What is remarkable is that Nishida did so independently of Buber's work. This wording “I and Thou” came to his attention via the works of German Protestant theologian, Friedrich Gogarten, who was influenced by Buber. Gogarten spoke about the relationship of God and humanity in terms of God’s “calling upon humanity,” and a person “responding to God’s call.” This dynamic event of “calling out and responding to,” gave Nishida food for thought in developing his understanding of how persons are interrelated. It is interesting to note that Buber himself remained rather critical of Gogarten’s approach to history as “God’s work” (Buber 1972: 216–217). Nishida was selective in taking or leaving ideas developed by others as he saw fit. His main interest remained focused on the question of how discrete human beings are socially connected, without compromising their freedom and creativity. He had observed earlier that the principle of consciousness gives rise to the awareness of the self: I see myself in myself (jiko ga jiko ni oite jiko o miru). Nishida 1929, NKZ 5.387 et passim

Nishida is now guided by the reality of “speaking to each other” (hanashiau, katari-au, katari-kakeru), as forming the foundation of interpersonal relationships. He begins his “Watakushi to nanji” with these observations: I know what I presently think and feel; not only that, I can recall right away what I thought and felt yesterday. Yesterday’s I and today’s I are considered to be directly connected. In contrast, I cannot know what the other person is thinking or feeling. I and the other person mutually understand by “expression,” such as [spoken] language or written words. We are considered to be united through the external world; we belong to the world of things by virtue of our physicality, and we mutually understand by means of physical phenomena such as sound, shape, and so on. But what is this world of things? . . .The so-called inner and external worlds are originally but two sides of the one world, and not two opposing worlds. . . . Nishida 1932, NKZ 6.341

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To sidetrack a little, in the Zen/Chan “koan” tradition, the primary importance of “dialogue” (the word “dialogue” is derived from “dia-logos,” or “through-word/speech”) is often couched in terms of the action of “my responding to someone calling my name.” For instance, in the Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate) we read in Case 22, in which Ānanda is posing a complicated doctrinal question to venerable Mahākāshapa. Mahākāshapa, however, calls out to Ānanda, “Ānanda!” and Ānanda responds, “Yes.” QED (quod erat demonstrandum, which was to be demonstrated). In the Zen tradition, the fact that Ānanda had responded to Mahākāshapa’s call is already a living proof that the Buddha’s teaching is dynamically transmitted from generation to generation. (Hirata 1969: 86–89) I find the following kōan (Case 12) especially charming, as it points out the dialogical nature of monologue (Hirata 1969: 55–58). Master Zuigan Shigen (Ch. Ruiyan Shiyan) was in the habit of carrying on the daily conversation with himself. Everyday Master Zuigan Shigen would call out to himself: “Master!” And he would answer his own call: “Yes.” Master says: “Good. Stay awake.” “Yes.” “Don’t you ever be fooled by whatever anyone says.” “Yes. Yes.”

The deeper foundation of these koan cases is that subject and object in our consciousness can freely switch places, and that consciousness is quite “porous” and is not a solid cage that traps us inside. This means that seemingly an ordinary “monologue” stands on the radical dialogical principle of openness of consciousness. I mention these kōan cases not to reduce Nishida to Zen, but rather to make the following remark by Nishida easier to understand. Here, I refer back to the idea Nishida gained from Gogarten’s description on God’s calling and human responding. For Nishida this calling-response forms a cornerstone of his philosophy of “I and thou” (watakushi to nanji), which stands on the dialogical nature of interpersonal consciousness. He thus comes up with these formulations: I see the absolute other in myself, and I see myself in the absolute other. Nishida 1932, NKZ 6.380 et passim I see you deep within me, and I see me deep within you. Nishida 1932, NKZ 6.380 et passim

Also:

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You are in the depth of me, and I am in the depth of you. Nishida 1932, NKZ 6.381; Nishida 1933, NKZ 7.20, et passim

Furthermore, this interpersonal reality is the very source that renders each person authentic, free from the narrow confines of egocentric self-interest. Nishida finds in the I–Thou relationship the “dialectical” (inter-relational) mode of how “I” exist in the socio-historical world—your recognition of me makes me me, and vice versa. In this way, we are all mutually sustained in this socio-historical world, the world characterized by the “encounter” of I and the radical other. Nishida succinctly describes the mode of this inter-relationality in terms of “the continuation of the discontinuous” (hirenzoku no renzoku): The continuation of the discontinuous denotes the interpersonal relationship; it is how the person self-determines him/herself. . . . Today’s “I” regards yesterday’s “I” as the “thou,” and thereby my personal identity is formed. That is, personal identity is established as “the continuation of the discontinuous.” Nishida 1933, NKZ 7.20; 7.38

Nishitani Keiji (1900–1990) Nishitani Keiji turns to Martin Buber’s work, while fully cognizant of his mentor Nishida’s work. Nishitani adopts Buber’s twofold distinction of “I–Thou” and “I–It” to address the contemporary problem of moral deficiency in the face of fast outpacing progresses made in natural science and technology. He gave his New Year Lecture to the Emperor and Empress (“Goshinkō”) in 1969, on the topic of “Ware to nanji to shite no ningen kankei” (The human relationship in terms of I and Thou) (Nishitani 1969). While he introduces Buber as the advocate of the philosophy of “I and Thou,” he takes considerable latitude in elaborating on this idea. I will give a brief account of this talk here below. Nishitani gives numerous examples of how human beings form a personal relationship not only with other human beings, but also with pets, plants, and even inanimate objects. Pet owners “name” their pets and thereby establish a unique bond with them; farmers build a strong mutual trust with their working animals. Accomplished bonsai artists, for instance, intimately know their plants, and treat them with the utmost care. Even with inanimate objects, those who love rocks and stones forge their special relationship with them; so do the connoisseurs of tea bowls and tea utensils. Thus, the I–Thou

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relationship is not just limited to human beings, but includes animals, plants, and inanimate objects. Next, Nishitani elaborates on the experience of a certain man, who owned a persimmon tree. During the war years when food was scarce, the persimmon fruits yielded by the tree helped to tide over the hunger of his entire family members. After the war, the tree died, so he cut it down but left it as a log in his backyard. Someone suggested to him that he could use the wood as firewood and heat up the water for his bathtub. But this man could not bring himself to do that. After all, didn’t the tree keep us alive during hard times? Finally, someone told him that he knew a wood carver, who could carve an image of Kan’non (the Bodhisattva of Mercy) out of the log. The man followed this suggestion and, having securely placed the finished wooden Kan’non statue in his alcove, he finally felt that his feeling was “settled” because he felt he was able to properly respond to the tree with the gratitude the tree deserved. Nishitani now quotes the common everyday Japanese expression, “sumanai,”—“I’m sorry”—to explain what went on in this man’s mind. Nishitani sees two directions to the feeling of “sumanai”: (a) my personal feeling is unsettled in dealing with the situation (jibun no ki ga sumanai), and (b) I own apology to the other (aite ni sumanai), because I am yet to “rise up to meet” the situation which involves the other in a sincere truthful manner—I am yet to do “justice” to the other’s kindness (Nishitani, 1969). Kan’non is a “goddess of mercy,” somewhat equivalent to the Virgin Mary in the Catholic tradition. To have a statue of Kan’non carved out of the log was for this man a “correct” way to “meet” the life-giving compassion of the tree. Thus, when (1) the feeling of the man, (2) the life-giving nature of the tree, and (3) the symbolism of the Kan’non statue all came together (and “met”), this man felt that his sense of “sumanai” was finally dissolved. For Nishitani, this further reveals the deeper reality of “I and Thou,” that touches the very original point of all existence: “I live by being sustained (jibun ga ikasarete ikiru)—sustained by other people, society, things in nature, including food, and ultimately by the earth.” This forms the core of Nishitani’s defense for nature and environment. Life is being “sustained” by the life-giving earth. Nishitani concludes his talk to the Emperor and Empress with the observation that the “I–It” relationship is closely connected with the direction of science and technology, and this aspect is outpacing and eclipsing the meaningful encounter of the “I–Thou,” the relationship that harbors the direction of art and morality. Already in 1969, the authentic “I–Thou” relationship was starting to become harder to form. The implication of the

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twofold I–Thou and I–It for Nishitani is that human beings are progressively being quantified and reduced to numbers, considered as expendable “resources.” The sense of moral principle must be strengthened and kept alive, if we are to remain human beings with warm beating hearts.

To Conclude The dynamic relation of “I–Thou” and “I–It” is fragile. Facing this fact, we are challenged to expand our reflection to ponder on all sorts of relationships we form, not only with fellow human beings, but also with animals, plants, inanimate objects, and our environment. When we think about Nishitani’s description of the feelings of “sumanai,” we become aware that “things” are no longer replaceable throwaways. By conserving and taking good care of “things,” we put into action our awareness of the sanctity of life. Life cannot be ignored or utilized, by political or economic motives. The language of ecological sustainability in fact safeguards our awareness from becoming prey to the language of callous calculations of profit, gain, and power. We have thus the chance to live and cultivate more just relationships all around us.

References Abbreviation: NKZ Nishida Kitarō Zenshū (see Nishida Kitarō. 1978–1980). Buber, Martin. (1938). “What is Man?” [Was ist der Mensch?] in Buber (1972), 118–205. Buber, Martin. (1938). “What is Man?” [Was ist der Mensch?] in Buber (1972), 118–205. Buber, Martin. (1958). I and Thou, 2nd edn, trans. R. G. Smith (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons) [1923] [English first edition 1937]. Buber, Martin. (ca. 1964). “Afterword: The History of the Dialogical Principle” in Buber (1972), 209–224. Buber, Martin. (1972). Between Man and Man, (New York: Macmillan). Duffy, Dorothy. (2020). “My Sister is not a Statistic” The Irish Post (April 16, 2020). www.irishpost.com/news/sister-not-statistic-mayo-coronavirusvictim-remembered-heart-wrenching-poem-183605. Feuerbach, Ludwig. (1957). The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot, Intro. by Karl Barth (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row) [1841].

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Feuerbach, Ludwig. (1966). Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, trans. Manfred Vogel (Indianapolis, New York, Kansas City: Bobbs-Merrill) [1843]. Hirata Takashi (Seikō). (1969). Mumonkan (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō). Nishida Kitarō. (1923). “Daishinsai no ato ni” [In the aftermath of the Great Earthquake], NKZ 13.128–129. Nishida Kitarō. (1929). “Ippansha no jiko gentei,” [The self-determination of the universal], NKZ 5.353–418. Nishida Kitarō. (1932). “Watakushi to nanji” [I and Thou], NKZ 6.341–427. Nishida Kitarō. (1933). “Keijijōgaku joron” (Prolegomena to metaphysics), NKZ 7.5-84. Nishida Kitarō. (1934). “Jo,” Tetsugaku no konpon mondai II: Benshōhōteki sekai (Preface to the Fundamental Problem of Philosophy, II: Dialectical World), NKZ 7.203–211. Nishida Kitarō. (1978–1980). Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [Collected Works of Nishida Kitarō], (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Nishitani Keiji. (1966). “Ware to nanji to shite no ningen kankei” [Human relationship as “I and Thou”], published in Nishitani Keiji (1980), 82–89. Nishitani Keiji. (1980). Kaze no kokoro [The mind of the wind], (Tokyo: Shinchōsha).

Glossary Twofold (zwieffältig g) Martin Buber considered that we live and experience life in a twofold attitude, one interpersonal, the other impersonal. I-Thou (Ich-Du u) In Buber, this is a ‘combined word’ (Wortpaar Wortpaar), r), that designates our attitude in the world in terms of interpersonal relationships. I-It ((Ich-Es Ich-Ess) In Buber, this is another ‘combined word’ that designates our impersonal attitude toward the world. Primary word (Grundwortt) Buber designates the ‘pair of words’ (Wortpaarr), ‘I–Thou,’ and ‘I–It,’ as two fundamental ‘primary words’ that capture the twofold human attitude that we bring to the world to interact with it. Sumanaii Nishitani Keiji sees in this everyday Japanese expression, “I am sorry,” a deeply embedded interpersonal reality. Not only am I not satisfied with my response to the situation, but I also am aware that I have not yet done justice to the other person (or even a thing) involved in the transaction.

27 Moral Responsiveness Jay L. Garfield

The Buddhist approach to ethics rejects the image of an autonomous self that independently produces actions through mysterious free agent-causation. We are physical organisms whose most interesting properties are not our simple physical properties, but the norm-governed properties we acquire by virtue of our participation in a network of discursive and social practices, including those of moral cultivation and criticism. We are constituted as the persons we are in part by the continuum of processes that underlie our experience and behavior, in part by the social complexes in which we figure and which shape us, and in virtue of conventions of individuation and ascription of ownership and responsibility. Who we are emerges not from any individual essence, but from the network of dependencies that constitute our being as persons, as those who occupy roles. We cultivate ourselves and each other on this model in order to improve our efficacy as interdependent members of a common lifeworld, and the practices of cultivation cause us to see the world in a more salutary way and to act in it in a more salutary way. These modes of being or comportments are healthier not because they serve a transcendent value, but because they more accurately reflect the reality of our lifeworld and because they make us more successful both in realizing our own aims or pur.sārthas, and in facilitating others’ realizing their aims. On the Buddhist account, we are expressing a rationally grounded comportment to the world and others based in the recognition of our interdependence, and in the consequent attitudes of impartiality, benevolence, care, and sympathetic joy that emerge naturally from that realization, attitudes that reflect a better understanding of our place in the moral landscape, and that contribute to our own well-being and to that of others. I will discuss three domains of moral reflection in which Buddhist ethics can teach us something: (1) moral cultivation; (2) moral agency; and (3) the 247

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response to egoism. Western ethical theory, however valuable, is dominated by “output ethics,” the view that morality is about what we do. Deontological ethics is concerned with our rights and duties. The deontological framework is enormously influential in contemporary moral theory and politics, underlying most liberal democratic constitutions. But deontology does its work on the output side of the moral project: it concerns what we do, and why we do it; but is silent about how we see the world. Consequentialists take the moral worth of actions to be determined by their consequences. Consequentialist theories have been influential in the formulation of public policy, forcing us to a kind of neutrality between individuals, fairness in outcomes, and a bent towards social welfare. Nonetheless, consequentialism, like deontology, grips on the output side of moral life—concerning what we do, not how we experience the world. The third major theoretical trajectory in western moral thought is the areteic tradition. Theories in this tradition share an Aristotelian understanding of virtue as a disposition to action. Courage is a disposition to stand one’s ground in danger; generosity a disposition to give, etc.1 Areteic theory is influential in moral education: for example, the curriculum is often aimed at developing character. Once again, though, areteic ethics focuses on action, even though it may appear not to do so. This is because even though virtues are states of character, and virtue theories aim most directly at understanding what a good life looks like in terms of personal character, the virtues themselves are understood as dispositions to act, not as dispositions to see, or as modes of experience. So, all three of the major western traditions fall on the output side. Buddhist ethics, on the other hand, is aimed at personal transformation from a state of pervasive suffering to freedom from that suffering; it is about the transformation of our experience of the world. This is why Śāntideva places so much emphasis on the cultivation of habits of mind, including attention and patience. The four noble truths provide the most general map for that transformation. The suffering in question is caused by the fact that our lives and experiences are subject to countless causes and conditions that are beyond our control. To escape from that suffering is not to escape from interdependence—that

1

Now, some (Bommarito 2017) have urged that this tradition can be extended to comprise a set of “inner virtues” concerned not with action, but with perceptual or affective sets. But this is not part of the mainstream tradition and this suggestion is, in fact, motivated by engagement with Buddhist ethics; so, even if we accept it, we do so as a contribution of Buddhist ethical thought, not as a preexisting idea in the western tradition.

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would be impossible—but to transform our affective and cognitive reaction to that web. The cessation of suffering is possible because its causes are internal. As Śāntideva puts it in Bodhicāryāvatāra, there is not enough leather to cover the entire world, but I can protect myself from all the hazards of the road by putting on a pair of sandals (1997: 49, v. 5.13). Pain is not necessarily suffering, as any athlete will tell you; change and aging are only suffering if we are averse to them and committed to remaining “forever 21.” And interdependence is only a source of suffering if one is committed to a fantasy of pure autonomy. So, moral progress consists in the elimination of egocentric attraction and aversion through ceasing to take my own pleasures and pains as the default matters of concern, and by cultivating sensitivity to the interests of others. This is a transformation not of my actions or motives, but of my experience of reality. This is why such aspects as right view, right meditation, and right mindfulness are central to the eightfold path. There are certain advantages to this moral phenomenology. Let me consider two: a greater sense of humanity in ethics development; and an easier naturalization of moral value. Let us begin with the connection between ethics and personal humanity. Recall Bernard Williams’ “one thought too many” problem (Williams 1984): You are in the hospital, and I, your friend, visit. We have a pleasant conversation, and your spirits are lifting. Then you thank me for visiting. I reply, “no need to thank me. Although I didn’t really want to come to see you, I realized that it (a) was my moral duty to do so; or (b) would maximize the amount of happiness in the world were I to do so.” There is even a version of the “one thought to many problem” that we can develop for virtue ethics, although it has a slightly different structure. Suppose I replied to your thanks by thinking (c) “visiting a friend in the hospital is what a friendly person does,” taking pleasure in it, and saying “as your friend, it gives me pleasure to do so.” Everything might seem in order. But it is not, and for several reasons. First of all, as Aristotle points out, in order to manifest this virtue, we need not only the virtue itself and the practical knowledge relevant to manifesting it, but also moral strength. So, for instance, I might make the visit after having sacrificed an afternoon at a cricket match. I really wanted to attend the match but knowing what I had to do for a friend, and being a friend, I did it; had I not done so, I would have felt remorse. There is the one thought too many. What appeared to be a spontaneous act for your sake now merely amounts to an expression of my virtue. This problem is most apparent when temptation enters the picture and moral strength is required, but once we see this, we see that the problem is built into the very structure of virtue theory.

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From the Buddhist standpoint, this problem emerges from cultivating the wrong end of our moral life, focusing on what one ought to do, rather than on how one ought to feel. If one has not cultivated the maitri or benevolence that would lead one simply to want to visit a friend in the hospital simply because she was ill, then any other reason would constitute one thought too many. If, on the other hand, one has cultivated an orientation to the world that is characterized by maitrī and upek.s ā (impartiality), and so has shed egocentricity, the desire to visit a friend in the hospital arises spontaneously. No extra thought is necessary. Naturalism is a great challenge to any moral theory. We are biological organisms who live in concrete societies. Facts about us, including moral facts, should be broadly explicable in the language of the natural or social sciences. But this has been notoriously difficult, giving rise to the so-called is–ought gap or the problem of explaining how non-moral facts about the world give rise to moral obligations. Why, for instance, should a promise to pay back a loan generate an obligation to do so, unless we already recognize an obligation to keep promises? Why should your pain generate my obligation to help you out if we don’t already presuppose obligations to help those in pain? Buddhists take perceptual and affective states, not obligations, to be the primary target of moral development; we can explain how these states arise naturalistically, and we can explain why these states are beneficial to people like us because of their consequences. There is then a possibility of naturalizing ethics without committing any naturalistic fallacy—a derivation of a normative fact from non-normative premises—a matter difficult for those of a deontological or consequentialist bent. Another dimension on which Buddhist ethics differs from virtually every western ethical tradition is that concerning the relation between autonomy and moral responsibility. Whereas virtually every western moral theorist takes human freedom to be presupposed for morality to make sense and takes determinism to be at least a prima facie threat to ethics, no Buddhist moral theorist does; Buddhist ethicists uniformly embrace the deterministic Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination together with a strong moral orientation. In western ethics, freedom is generally taken to be a condition of agency. Agency is typically spelled out in terms of Augustinian free will. Freedom in this sense is the absence of the determination of our action by external causes (Garfield 2014/2017). When we hold somebody responsible for their actions, on this view, we assume that they performed those actions freely. In the law, demonstrating that an act was done under constraint, or even that it was ̛caused by mental illness or trauma, is exculpatory, suggesting that when we are not ill, when we are full agents, our actions are uncaused.

Moral Responsiveness

This emphasis on freedom takes us to an unwelcome conclusion: moral theory can’t be rationally endorsed. It is simply impossible to deny that the physical world is governed by causal laws. It is equally hard to deny that psychological, social, and behavioral facts supervene on the physical. Augustinian freedom is hence a simple metaphysical impossibility. So, any moral theory that takes freedom to be a condition for agency or moral responsibility is hard to take seriously. And it would be unwise to try to save the day by simply accepting that all moral discourse is based on a colossal error. For that is not a theory we can endorse in good conscience, either theoretically or practically. Consider, by analogy, economic discourse. Nobody seriously believes that the relative values of the dollar and the euro have any reality that transcends human discursive practices. Nonetheless, we do not adopt an error theory for economic discourse. Instead, we grant that the grounds of the truth or falsity of economic claims lie in human practices. Similarly, if we think that human social and discursive practices constitute the moral realm, this is not a reason to think that our claims about ethics are false, only to think that their truth conditions are determined by our practices. Moreover, agency is not only compatible with determinism, but it presupposes it. If our behavior were not caused, it could not be caused by our intentions; that would not be freedom, it would be impotence; if our intentions were not caused by our standing beliefs, desires, perceptions, etc., this would not be freedom, but self-alienation. To be free requires not only that we are not constrained by alien forces, but also that we are able to act on our intentions, and that we are able to form intentions that cohere with our values and experience, as well as intentions to revise our values and to become better people. But even these intentions, if they are to be truly ours, and not simply random occurrences in our psychic lives, in turn require that determinism is true even at the psychological level. So, any account of agency and moral responsibility that presupposes the falsity of determinism thereby presupposes the impossibility of the minimal freedom we need in order to be responsible agents in any sense (see Garfield 2014 for more on this). All of this takes us to the core of the metaphysical problems besetting so much western moral theory: the view that the moral agent is an independent self. For all of this talk about agent causation, freedom and autonomy is in the end talk about a subject/agent that stands over and against the world, insulated from the forces that govern the world. This is a self, as opposed to a person; an autonomous, independent entity that can be the subject of the natural world, that can act on the natural world, but which is not itself a part of the natural world.

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The Buddhist approach to ethics rejects this entire image of an autonomous self independently giving rise through free agent causation to actions. The Buddhist account of the person begins with the doctrine of no-self, the view that we are nothing but a continuum of psychophysical processes in an open causal relation with the external world, with no core, no independent basis, and no supernatural existence. This means that ethical thought must proceed on the assumption that our actions are just as much caused as anything else, and that we are just as much a part of the natural world as anything else. Moral assessments will then be assessments of the states and acts of persons in terms of perfectly natural properties. The key to this assessment is a second core commitment of Buddhist philosophy, the universality of dependent origination, that everything that occurs is the effect of a complex network of causes and conditions; that every complex is dependent upon its parts, and every individual phenomenon depends upon the larger context in which it occurs; and that everything depends for its identity and significance on conceptual imputation. A €10 note depends for its existence on printing presses, manufacturers of ink, on an atmosphere that does not corrode paper, and so forth; depends upon all of the particles that constitute it. But it is also dependent upon its role in the banking system and upon those of us who imbue currency with value by accepting it in exchange for goods and services. We are just like those banknotes: physical objects whose most important properties are not physical, but the norm-governed properties that emerge from the contexts and practices in which we are embedded. Our very identities are interdependent, not independent. This is why cultivation and assessment, from a Buddhist perspective, presume not independence and autonomy, but rather interdependence and contextual identity.2 The qualities we cultivate in moral development are those that attune us to that interdependence, and to those with whom we share and constitute our interdependent world. Among the qualities we are urged by Buddhist moralists to cultivate are the four Brahmavihāras, or divine states, including maitrī (benevolence), karun.ā (care), muditā (sympathetic joy) and upek.s ā (impartiality). Each of these, as I emphasized above, is a way of experiencing the world, not, in the first instance, a way of acting. Nonetheless, we can now see that each plays a central role in the development of agency, where agency is seen not in terms of free agent causation, but in terms of the performance of a role, of a persona. 2

See also Onyebuchi Eze, Chapter 31 and Kalmanson, Chapter 29 in this volume.

Moral Responsiveness

By rejecting autonomy, by rejecting a foundational self, and by rejecting independence in favor of an interdependent person with a constructed identity, Buddhism gives us a more easily naturalized account of agency, one that dovetails better with our considered view of the nature of the world in which we live. One important task for ethical discourse is to motivate moral decency. The target of much moral discourse is the egoist, who believes that the rational thing for any individual to do is to pursue his/her own self-interest, and that moral reasons for action are not compelling at all. The egoist is no straw man: contemporary economic theory takes rationality to consist in the pursuit of one’s own narrow self-interest, or individual utility maximization. A great deal of economic policy is built on this foundation. This is bad news because once this premise is granted, it is very hard to argue anyone out of that position. But, we should ask, how do you get egoism to sound prima facie rational? You begin with the idea that the fundamental unit of social analysis is the autonomous individual. You add to that the fact that individuals are mutually independent, with independent utility functions reflecting only the benefits and harms to the individuals themselves. Finally, you add the premise that the only rational driver of action is one’s utility function. From these three premises, it follows that the only rational thing for anyone to do is to follow his/her own narrow self-interest. Since morality is all about putting that narrow self-interest to the side, morality can only be irrational. And if this is where you start dialectically, it is impossible to provide a compelling refutation: any refutation would have to be a rational argument, appealing either to general demands of reason or to one’s own self-interest. In this case, these coincide, and both support egoism. This is another place where the Buddhist philosophical tradition can help. As we have seen, Buddhist reflection on the person begins from the standpoint of no-self; there is no ego standing behind my thoughts, experiences, and actions; there is only the constantly changing, causally interrelated sequence of psychophysical states. But such a sequence is the wrong kind of thing to have narrow self-interests in the first place. Moreover, the idea that individual actors are autonomous and mutually independent— the ground of the mutual disinterest condition on economic rationality—is a non-starter when we take seriously the interdependence of all processes and beings. The very idea that my good or ill is independent of those around me starts sounding simply unmotivated and hard to take seriously in the context of dependent origination.

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So, when a Buddhist position is one of the alternatives, there is a shift in the burden of proof in the dialogue with the egoist: the Buddhist takes the default position to be that we are interdependent selfless persons, with shared interests in living rationally and flourishing as a community. The burden of proof is then on the egoist to explain why the interests of only one individual should be taken seriously (even by that individual), and that will be a burden difficult to shoulder. On the Buddhist account, we are not asking the egoist’s question—what is in my own interest?—rather, we are expressing a rationally grounded comportment to the world and others based in the recognition of our interdependence, and in the consequent attitudes of impartiality, benevolence, care, and sympathetic joy that emerge naturally from that realization. Starting from that position, egoism just looks stupid: irrational, self-defeating, and unmotivated. So, here is a third reason to take Buddhism seriously in moral discourse: it helps us to solve the moralist’s problem, to demonstrate the rationality of moral motivation.

References Bommarito, N. (2017). Inner Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press. Cowherds (2015). Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness. New York: Oxford University Press. Dancy, J. (2006). Ethics Without Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Federman, A. (2010). “What Kind of Free Will did the Buddha Teach” Philosophy East and West 60: 1–19. Garfield, J. (2000/2002). “Temporality and Alterity: Dimensions of Hermeneutic Distance” (in German as “Zeitlichkeit und Andersheit. Dimensionen hermeneutischer Distanz” Polylog 5: 42–61, reprinted in Empty Words (2002) 229–250, New York: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. (2000). “Particularity and Principle: The Structure of Moral Knowledge” in M Little and B Hooker (eds), Moral Particularism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. (2010/2011). “What is it Like to be a Bodhisattva?” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 33(1–2): 327–351. Garfield, J. (2014). Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. (2014/2017). “Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose: Freedom, Agency and Ethics for Mādhyamikas,” M. Dasti and E. Bryant (eds),

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Freedom of the Will in a Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 164–185, reprinted in R Repetti, ed., (2017) Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will and Agency, 45–58, Abingdon: Routledge. Garfield, J. (2019). The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s Treatise from the Inside Out. New York: Oxford University Press. Godman, C. (2002). “Resentment and Reality: Buddhism on Moral Responsibility” American Philosophical Quarterly 39: 359–372. Goodman, C. (2012). Consequences of Compassion. New York: Oxford University Press. Harvey, P. (2007). “Freedom of the Will in Light of Theravāda Buddhist Teachings” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 14: 35–98. Mackie, J.L. (1980). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin Books. Repetti, R. (2015). “Buddhist Meditation and the Possibility of Free Will” Science, Religion and Culture 2: 81–98. Repetti, R. (2017a). “Why There Should be a Buddhist Theory of Free Will” in R. Repetti (ed.), Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will and Agency, 22–33, Abingdon: Routledge. Repetti, R. (2017b). “Agentless Agency” in R. Repetti (ed.), Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will and Agency, 193–206, Abingdon: Routledge. Śāntideva. (2017). A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. (A. Wallace and V. Wallace, trans.) Ithaca: Snow Lion. Williams, B. (1984). “Persons, Character, and Morality” in A. Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons, 187–216, Berkeley : University of California Press.

Glossary Agency The capacity to act Areteic ethics An ethical theory that foregrounds virtue. Consequentialism An ethical theory that foregrounds the consequences of actions, especially the happiness and suffering they produce. Deontological ethics An ethical theory that foregrounds rights and duties. Determinism The thesis that everything that happens has a cause. Egocentrism Taking oneself to be of primary concern and seeing other things in relation to oneself. Egoism Taking one’s own interest to be the primary motivator of action.

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Karun Care, or compassion. . a¯ Care, Maitrı¯ Friendliness or affection. Mudita¯ Joy in the success, accomplishments, or virtues of others. Naturalism The doctrine that everything that happens has a scientific explanation, that there are no supernatural on transcendental phenomena. No-self The Buddhist doctrine that persons do not have core selves. Phenomenology An approach to studying phenomena that takes the structure of experience as primary. S´a¯ntideva 8th century Indian Buddhist philosopher, author of How to Lead an Awakened Life (Bodhica¯ ryya¯ vatta¯ ra)) and A Student’s Anthology (S´ ikks. a¯ samucca¯ yaa). Upeks. a¯ Impartiality or Equanimity. Utility function A scale of preferences.

28 Nepantla James Maffie

The Dominican Fray Diego Durán reports querying an indigenous Nahuatlspeaker—who had survived the 1521 fall of Tenochtitlan (capital city of the Mexica [Aztec] empire)—regarding the checkered progress of native people’s conversion to Christianity. This man, like native peoples generally (according to Durán), appeared incapable of abandoning his foolish, dissolute, and barbaric traditions. Responding to Durán, the man characterized native peoples using the Nahuatl language term, “nepantla”: “Father, do not be astonished; we are still nepantla” (Durán 1971: 410–411). Durán interpreted the man to mean that native peoples were trapped within a liminal, transitional, and anomalous condition between two conflicting religions and cultural lifeways: indigenous pre-contact Mexica and post-contact, colonial Spanish. Durán accordingly translated “nepantla” into Spanish as “en medios” (“in the middle”) and “neutros” (“neither fish nor fowl”). Moreover, Durán understood the condition of being in nepantla negatively as involving anxiety, despair, meaningless, lack of purpose, and loss of self-worth. Durán’s translation and understanding of nepantla is supported by Fray Alonso de Molina whose 1571 Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana glosses “nepantla” as an adverb meaning “en el medio, o en medio, o por medio” (“in the middle”) (Molina 2001; see also Campbell 1985: 212–213). Francis Karttunen’s recent linguistic work significantly enriches and extends our understanding of nepantla beyond the colonial context. Karttunen parses “nepantla” (“nepantlah”) as a compound of “nepan-” and “-tlah.” “Nepan-” occurs only as an element of compounds and derivations. It combines “ne,” meaning “there, that,” and “-pan,” a postposition meaning “on the surface of, for or at a particular time.”“Nepan-,” she contends, thus conveys a sense of mutuality or reciprocity. 257

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“-Tlah,” in turn, is a locative compound conveying a sense of abundance. “-Tlah” compounds include “tetlah” (“abundant with stones”) and “cuauhtlah” (“abundant with trees”). Nepantla, she therefore concludes, conveys a sense of abundant reciprocity or mutuality; or more precisely, reciprocity that consists of a dynamic condition of being abundantly middled, betwixtedand-betweened, and centered (Karttunen 1983: 160, 169, 186, 259). What’s more, nepantla-defined processes produce a tertium quid (Latin: “a third thing related to both yet nevertheless distinct from both”), one that is neither fish nor fowl yet simultaneously both fish and fowl. A brief sampling of Molina’s entries for “nepan-” compounded and derived words (“nepan-” being the linguistic root of “nepantla”) confirms Karttunen’s analysis. Consider the following nouns: “messenger between two people,” “reciprocal greeting,” “agreement or conformity of reasons and opinions,” “copulation or carnal intercourse,” and “love they have for each other.” Consider these verbs: “to love each other,” “to create bonds of friendship between people,” “to get married, or to join hands,” “to agree on what is said,” “to greet one another,” “to shout to one another or for those who are working to hurry one another,” “for things to intersect, unite, join together,” “to join, unite something, to examine something,” and “to have intercourse with a woman or to push into a group of people” (Campbell 1985: 212–213; see also Sahagún, Florentine Codex [1953–1982]). Consider weaving, for example. The activity of weaving—the nepanderived Nahuatl word for which is tlaxinepoa—epitomizes a nepantladefined process: i.e. one that is characterized by abundant mutuality, reciprocal middlingness, conceptual and metaphysical ambiguity, and simultaneous destructive-creative/creative-destructive transformation (Molina [2001]; Campbell [1985: 213]). Weaving middles and betwixt-andbetweens warp and weft fibers, transforming them into a woven fabric, i.e. a tertium quid that is metaphysically ambiguous in that it is simultaneously neither warp nor weft and yet at the same time both warp and weft. Heterosexual intercourse—the nepan-derived Nahuatl words for which include nepanoa and nenepanolizlti—likewise epitomizes nepantla-defined processes (Campbell [1985: 212–213]; Molina [2001].) Codex Vaticanus 3738 A depicts a sexually engaged male-female couple with legs interwoven (Codex Vaticanus 3738 A, Loubat, pl. 12v). The reciprocal commingling of male and female sexual partners is a quintessentially interpersonal process that creates an abundantly middled space betwixt-and-between heterosexual partners: one created and defined by their mutual back-and-forth motion; one that is simultaneously destructive of their individual identities and yet

Nepantla

creative of a new identity; one that is metaphysically ambiguous; one that produces a tertium quid. This newly created, third identity is simultaneously a unified male-female duality and dual male-female unity (that is neither male nor female yet simultaneously both male and female) which is, in turn, reproductively fruitful (see Campbell [1985: 212–213]; Molina [2001], Sahagún, Florentine Codex [1953–1982]). This is typified by the metaphysically ambiguous male-female creator beings, Ometecuhtli-Omecihuatl (“Two Lord-Two Lady”) and Tonacatecuhtli-Tonacacihuatl (“Lord of Our Flesh/ Sustenance”–“Lady of Our Flesh/Sustenance”), whose continuing sexual intercourse with themselves (respectively) engenders and sustains all things in the cosmos (see Sahagún, Florentine Codex [1953–1982], Bk VI: 41, 175; Bk X: 169). Nepantla-defined processes therefore simultaneously interweave both positive and negative elements. As counterintuitive as it may be to our own (western) ways of thinking, the Mexica did not regard creation as unambiguously positive, and did not regard destruction as unambiguously negative. Rather, creation is simultaneously both positive and negative since creation (positive) by necessity emerges from destruction (negative); and destruction is simultaneously both positive and negative since destruction (negative) by necessity engenders new creation (positive). Similarly, consider the inter-relationship between life and death. Death consists of the disintegration of the composite of life-forces (e.g. tonalli, yolia, or ihiyotl) that constitute a specific living being. Upon the disintegration that comes with dying, these life forces go their separate ways, recycle through the cosmos, and eventually form new living beings. Death is thus not equivalent with complete not-being. (See León-Portilla [1963], López Austin [1988], Maffie [2014].) Furthermore, life is both creative and destructive; death, both destructive and creative. Life and death are mutually arising, dependent, complementary, and completing as well as mutually competitive forces interwoven with one another within a single cyclical process. Life struggles against death yet at the same time arises from death. Death struggles against life yet at the same time arises from life. Life constantly flows into death; death constantly flows into life. The two are continually creating, nurturing, and overcoming one another; continually transmuting into one another; and continually enabling and engendering one another. Life completes death, and death completes life. Only together do they constitute completeness and wholeness: a unified duality and dual unity. What’s more, neither life nor death is wholly positive or negative. Life feeds off the death of other living things, and so has a negative aspect. Death makes life possible and so has a

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positive aspect. Each requires the other. Life contains within itself the fatal, disordering germ of death, while death contains within itself the vital, ordering seed of life. There are neither absolute creations (beginnings) nor absolute destructions (endings) (see Sahagún, Florentine Codex [1953– 1982], Leon-Portilla [1963], Lopez Austin [1988]). More generally, Mexica philosophy conceives the entire cosmos as a grand, nepantla-defined weaving in progress. The cosmos is defined essentially by abundant mutuality, betwixt-and-betweenness, reciprocal middlingness, and destructive-creative/creative-destructive transformation and becoming. What’s more, Mexica philosophy also defines the human existential condition itself in terms of nepantla. Human existence, in short, is both in nepantla and of nepantla. It is characterized by ceaseless, ineluctable, and abundant betwixt-and-betweenness and destructive-creative/creative destructive transformation and becoming. Nepantla is therefore the metaphysical norm, not the exception or anomaly—as it would be if it were equivalent to liminality. Not to be equated with the European concept of liminality, nepantla is sui generis; wholly autochthonous to “the land surrounded by water” (Nahuatl: cemanahuac), the Mexica’s term of their place on earth (Sahagún, Florentine Codex [1953–1982]). We are thus now able to see that when Durán’s Nahuatl-speaking informant spoke of his people’s “still” being “nepantla,” he was not, therefore, characterizing the existential condition of post-Conquest and colonial occupation as a unique and exceptional condition, a temporary, transitional condition that would come to an end at some point. Nor was he declaring that he was suffering from despair, meaninglessness, and loss of self-worth. Instead, and much more profoundly, he was characterizing the existential condition of humankind and of the cosmos generally, of which he regarded the post-Conquest condition of indigenous peoples as mere instance. He was invoking a non-European metaphysics that Durán could not imagine, never mind comprehend. Post-conquest existence was not a momentary exception but a predictable continuation of the indigenous Mexica worldview. Indeed, the foregoing discussion exposes the fundamental error of Durán’s European-rooted (and one might add, colonizing) interpretation of nepantla as liminality. Durán’s one-sided interpretation emphasizes the negative, anomic, anomalous, and destructive power of nepantla at the expense of its simultaneous constructive, generative, and creative power. The fundamental nonequivalence of the Mexica concept of nepantla with the European concept of liminality is dramatically illustrated by their differing interpretations of the crossroads. In keeping with European

Nepantla

thinking (past and present), Durán defines the crossroads in terms of liminality and hence in thoroughly negative terms as: an anomalous and illdefined “no-place”; as a terrifying, dangerous, and immoral place of anomie, freefall, uncertainty, destruction, and conflict. By contrast, the Mexica defined the crossroads in terms of nepantla and therefore as simultaneously positive and negative: as a place of creative destruction and destructive creation; as a place of rebirth, regeneration, and renewal engendered by death, degeneration, and expiration. For the Mexica, it is precisely in the crossroads where warp and weft destructively-creatively transform themselves into woven fabric; and precisely in the crossroads where male and female sexual partners destructively-creatively transform themselves into a male-female generative unity. In sum, nepantla is a thoroughly sui generis concept; one autochthonous to “the land surrounded by water” (Nahuatl: cemanahuac), the Mexica’s word for their place on earth. What’s more, the notion of nepantla functions prescriptively (or normatively) in Mexica philosophy. Understanding how nepantla processes work and understanding how to practically enact and participate in these processes in one’s daily activities hold the key to living wisely, morally, and well. Morally upright or good (Nahuatl: cualli) living is defined by nepantla. Sahagún records the following Mexica tlahtlatolli (“adage,” “words of advice”): tlacocualli in monequi (“the middled, the centered good is necessary”) (Sahagún, Florentine Codex 1953-1982: Book VI: 231). Thus, for example, a Mexica noblewoman mother accordingly advises her coming-of-age daughter: “Thou art not to place on thyself finely worked clothing, replete with designs, for it achieveth gaudiness. Nor art thou to take rags. . . . In moderation art thou to clothe thyself. . . . And thy speech is not to come forth hurriedly. As thou art to speak, thou art not to be brutish, not to rush, not to disquiet. Thy speech is to come forth in tranquility, and with gentleness. . . .thou art not to squeak. Thou art not to murmur. Straightforward is thy speech to come forth; in medium voice is it to come froth; nor art thou to make it fanciful”. Sahagún, Florentine Codex 1953–1982: Book VI: 100

The middled, the centered good is obtainable only by means of nepantladefined activities. Nepantla thus not only describes the way the world works, but it also prescribes how humans ought to live in the world. The Mexica reasoned that since reality and human existential condition are ex hypothesi middled, humans must accordingly act and live middlingly. In a cosmos

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defined by nepantla, one must embrace nepantla in order to create a life defined by nepantla. Mexica sage-priests and sage-rulers consequently enjoined people to conduct all aspects of their lives in a nepantla-middling manner. The concept of nepantla figures centrally in their prescriptions concerning how humans ought to treat and interact with their fellow humans as well as with their fellow other-than-humans (such as earth, sun, rain, lakes, wind, and mountains; insects, plants, birds, and animals; and cooking pots, hearth fires, houses, and farm implements). It also figures centrally in their prescriptions concerning how humans ought to walk, speak, eat, drink, dress, bathe, sexually commingle, and learn from others as well as how humans ought to cook, hunt, fish, farm, make artworks, and construct agricultural fields, houses, pyramids, and cities. In one of the many Mexica huehuetlatolli (“words of the elders” or “ancient talks”) recorded by Bernardino de Sahagún in the decades following the 1521 fall of the Mexica empire, a noble mother advises her coming-of-age daughter: Behold the road thou art to follow. On earth it is a time for care, it is a place of caution . . . we live, we travel along a mountain peak. Over here there is an abyss, over there is an abyss. If you goest over here, or if thou goes over there, thou wilt fall. Only in the middle [tlanepantla] doth one go, doth one live. Sahagún Florentine Codex [1953–1982], Book VI: 101

In all activities, humans ought to behave in a middlingly manner, seeking balance dynamically, dialectically, and diachronically by going back and forth between the unavoidable excesses of too much and too little eating, bathing, sleeping, working, etc. In sum, the notion of nepantla is one of the key defining features of the Mexica’s understanding of what western scholars call religion, philosophy, ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, urban planning, environmental ethics, and social-political philosophy. Durán’s interpretation of nepantla continues to influence twentieth century understandings of nepantla. Most notably, Miguel León-Portilla (1974, 1990) conceives nepantla in wholly negative terms while expanding upon it to include the psychic trauma and cultural “woundedness” resulting from the “violent collision of two cultures.” He coins the neologism, “nepantlism,” to refer to this condition. Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) further expands nepantla to include: unresolvable ambiguity; perpetual instability; anomie; psychic restlessness and woundedness; gender, racial, and cultural disorientation and alienation; intellectual crisis; and feeling homeless. However, in contrast to Durán and León-Portilla, and tacking closer to (but

Nepantla

still significantly departing from) its pre-Hispanic meaning, Anzaldúa attempts to reclaim the positive, transformative, and creative component of nepantla. She calls those engaged in nepantla processes “nepantleras.” Together, Durán, León-Portilla, or Anzaldua have influenced numerous contemporary scholars including AnaLouise Keating, Lisbeth Haas, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Pat Mora, Walter Mignolo, and Emilio Uranga.

References Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Campbell, R. J. (1985). A Morphological Dictionary of Classical Nahuatl: A Morpheme Index to the Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana of Fray Alonso de Molina, Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. Codex Vaticanus 3738 A (Codex Ríos) (1900). Loubat www.famsi.org/research/ loubat/Vaticanus%203738/thumbs0.html (accessed 9/5/21). Durán, D. (1971). Book of the Gods and Rites and The Ancient Calendar, trans. and eds. F. Horcasitas and D. Heyden, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Karttunen, F. (1983). An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. León-Portilla, M. (1963). Aztec Thought and Culture, trans. Jack Emory, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. León-Portilla, M. (1974). “Testimonios Nahuas sobre la conquest espiritual,” Estudios de cultura náhuatl 11: 11–36. León-Portilla, M. (1990). Endangered Cultures, trans. J. Goodson-Lawes, Dallas: Southern Methodists University Press. López Austin, A. (1988). The Human Body and Ideology, trans. Thelma Ortiz de Montellano and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, Salt Lake City : University of Utah Press. Maffie, J. (2014). Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion, Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Molina, A. de (2001). [1571], Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 4th edn, Mexico City: Porrúa. Sahagún, B. de (1953–1982). Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Trans. and ed. by Arthur O. Anderson and Charles Dibble. 12 vols. Salt Lake City : University of Utah Press.

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Glossary Liminality An exceptional and temporary transitional, anomic, and structureless condition of becoming that exists “betwixt and between” two permanent, normal, law-governed, and wellstructured states of being. it is typically characterized in negative terms. Nahuatl The language spoken by the Mexica; member of the UtoAztecan linguistic family along with Huichol, Cora, Ute, Paiute, Comanche, and Hopi. Nepantla a A characteristic of specific kinds of processes characterized by abundant mutuality, reciprocal middlingness, conceptual and metaphysical ambiguity, and simultaneous destructive-creative/creative-destructive transformation. Nepantlaa processes are simultaneously negative and positive.

29 Self-Cultivation and Political Power Leah Kalmanson

This chapter aims to (1) introduce several key features of political thought in China, especially in the Song (960–1279) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties, and (2) suggest ways that this political heritage might be relevant today. In particular, the chapter looks at how Chinese thought contributes to an understanding of “consciousness-raising” as a key element of feminist and liberatory politics.

Persons and Politics in (Some) Feminist Thought I interject “some” in the subtitle above to indicate that feminist political thought is diverse and, in many cases, marked by deep disagreements over foundational ideas, issues, means, and ends. Nonetheless, one of the most widely used (and perhaps misused) phrases associated with feminism is the slogan “the personal is political.” Here, the focus is on several prominent uses of this phrase in the so-called second-wave feminism and Black feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. Although I limit my analysis to a few “classic” pieces, as it were, of feminist literature, the material discussed remains widely influential (and, one might say sadly, still relevant). The first published use of the phrase occurs in the title of a 1969 essay by the activist Carol Hanisch, although Hanisch herself does not claim credit for

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originating the slogan (Hanisch 2006: 1).1 In her essay, she discusses the phenomenon of various consciousness-raising groups associated with secondwave women’s liberation movements, which saw women attending regular meetings to support each other in the struggle for gender equality. Some critics of these movements likened the groups to “personal therapy,” or as Hanisch recounts on her website in a 2006 introduction to her original essay: But they belittled us to no end for trying to bring our so-called “personal problems” into the public arena—especially “all those body issues” like sex, appearance, and abortion. Our demands that men share the housework and childcare were likewise deemed a personal problem between a woman and her individual man. The opposition claimed if women would just “stand up for themselves” and take more responsibility for their own lives, they wouldn’t need to have an independent movement for women’s liberation. Hanisch 2006: 1

In other words, as this criticism expresses, an unhappy marriage resulting from women’s invisible labor in the home is a personal problem, not a political one. Similarly, a woman in need of an abortion has a personal issue, a woman receiving unequal pay at her job is just not “standing up for herself,” and so forth. Against such criticism, Hanisch writes in her original essay: “So the reason I participate in these meetings is not to solve any personal problem. One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution” (Hanisch 1969: 4). As this shows—and what likely accounts for the continued popularity of this succinct phrase—people’s personal lives are deeply intertwined with and shaped by larger socio-political structures. The solutions to personal problems do not require individuals to “stand up for themselves,” on a caseby-case basis, rather; the solutions require structural change. This shift to a structure-level analysis of social conditions is one of the defining features of second-wave feminism. A similar dynamic appears in “A Black Feminist Statement,” an influential and frequently cited declaration of purpose by the Combahee River

1 In the citations that follow, Hanisch 1969 and Hanisch 2006 refer to online copyrighted materials hosted at carolhanisch.org. As she explains, her original essay was first composed as a memo to a women’s caucus in 1969, and later appeared in print in a 1970 pamphlet Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation edited by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt (Hanisch 2006: 1). Hanisch recounts her impression that the editors chose the title “The Personal is Political.”

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Collective (CRC) of Black lesbian feminists that met in the Boston area between 1974 and 1980. The statement recounts the origins of Black feminism alongside other second-wave liberation movements: There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual Black women’s lives. . . . The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and still does not allow most Black women, to look more deeply into our own experiences and define those things that make our lives what they are and our oppression specific to us. In the process of consciousness-raising, actually life-sharing, we began to recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression. Combahee River Collective 2015: 211

Here again, the insight arises that personal experience is never simply a private affair, that the injustices that affect people individually require structure-level interventions, and—most importantly for the purposes of this chapter—that consciousness-raising is politically transformative. Both Hanisch and the CRC discuss the phenomenon of consciousnessraising, but what does this mean? In one sense, it can refer to raising awareness—in this case, making women aware of the issues that affect them collectively. In another sense, it can refer to the supportive group dynamic generated at the women’s meetings, which served to energize participants, imbue them with a feeling of solidarity, and fuel their continued commitment to political action. Related to this second sense, consciousness-raising can refer to practices that result in an elevated state of consciousness, different from ordinary or day-to-day modes of awareness. It is precisely on this dimension—the political efficacy of this elevated mode of awareness—that the Chinese tradition has insights to offer.

Chinese Political Thought: Our Place in the Cosmos I begin with the Liji (⿞䁈) or Book of Rites, one of the so-called Five Classics of the scholarly tradition known in the West as “Confucianism.” This term is somewhat misleading, in that it portrays the historical figure of “Confucius”

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(Kongzi ᆄᆀ, 551–479 BCE) as the founder of a philosophical or religious movement. In fact, the tradition known in Chinese as rujia (݂ᇦ) well predates the life of Kongzi, and Kongzi himself denies being an innovator (Lunyu 䄆䃎 2011: 3.14).2 Rather, he was a member of the “lineage” or “family” (jia ᇦ) of the ru (݂), a term better translated as “scholar” or “literati.” The ru were members of China’s educated elite: they were most often employed as educators or government officials, they were versed in the classic philosophical and literary texts of Chinese culture, and they were qualified to preside over various state rites and civic ceremonies as well as the rituals performed at ancestral shrines. Throughout this chapter, I use the alternative English term “Ruism” to refer to this lineage of scholarpractitioners. A chapter of the Liji, the Daxue (བྷᆨ) or “Great Learning,” became a cornerstone political text in the Song dynasty during the philosophical renaissance often referred to in English-language literature as “neoConfucianism.” The famed Ruist scholar Zhu Xi ᵡ⟩(1130–1200) selected the Daxue as one of the four core books covered on the civil service exam, which served as the gatekeeper to political power in China until it was discontinued in 1905 during the last years of the Qing dynasty (1636–1912). The opening passage of the chapter gives a clear account of the intimate relationship between mental transformation and political health in Ruist thought: The way of great learning lies in illuminating luminous power, in renewing the people, and in coming to rest in utmost goodness. When you know where to rest, you can have stability. When you have stability, you can be tranquil. When you are tranquil, you can be at ease. When you are at ease, you can deliberate. When you deliberate, you can attain your aims. Things have their roots and branches; affairs have their end and beginning. When you know what comes first and what comes last, then you are on the way. The ancients, in wishing to illuminate luminous power in the world, first brought good order to their own states. Wanting to bring good order to their states, they first regulated their households. Wanting to regulate their households, they first cultivated themselves. Wanting to cultivate themselves, they first corrected their minds. Wanting to correct their minds, they first made their intentions sincere. Wanting to make their intentions sincere, they first extended their knowledge. Extending knowledge consists in investigating

2

In this passage, Kongzi famously declares himself a follower of the ways of the Zhou dynasty (1046– 256 BCE).

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things. Investigate things, and knowledge is extended. Extend knowledge, and intention becomes sincere. Make intention sincere, and the mind becomes correct. Correct the mind, and the self is cultivated. Cultivate the self, and the household is regulated. Regulate the household, and the state is brought to good order. Bring good order to the state, and the whole world will be at peace. From the ruler down to ordinary people, all must regard the cultivation of the self as the root. Daxue བྷᆨ 20113

This last line bears repeating: “From the ruler down to ordinary people, all must regard the cultivation of the self as the root.” When the root is well tended, the family is happy, the state flourishes, and indeed the whole world is at peace. The well-tended mind or “heart-mind” (xin ᗳ) is described in terms such as stable (ding ᇊ), tranquil (jing 䶌), and peaceful or at ease (an ᆹ). The heart-mind is brought to such a state by various practices that might usefully be thought of as methods of consciousness-raising, including investigating things (zhizhi 㠤⸕), extending knowledge (gewu Ṭ⢙), and ultimately attaining sincerity or integrity (cheng 䃐), as discussed in what follows. In Ruism, the term “investigating things” can connote empirical observation (especially astronomical study), but it most often refers to reading the classical texts, commentaries, and various histories to gain a sense of the “structures” or “patterns” (li ⨶) that characterize human behavior and social life. In the words of Kong Yingda (574–648), author of an influential Daxue commentary, personal cultivation must begin with “studying and learning” (xuexi ᆨ㘂) (Johnston and Wang, trans. 2012: 49). In his own commentary, Zhu Xi associates studying and learning with “extending knowledge” and the desire (yu Ⅲ) to make one’s knowledge inexhaustible (wubujin ❑нⴑ) (ibid. 139). I understand this in conjunction with his comment, in the same section, that thoughts or intentions (yi ᜿) are what the mind “emits” or sends forth (fa Ⲭ), as well as with his comments elsewhere that the extension of knowledge means to “enter into things” (Adler 2004: 133). All this underscores the idea, perhaps counterintuitive or surprising at first, that human thoughts and emotions are here thought of as psychical energies capable of interacting with and affecting the world around us.

3

My translation from the ctext.org version cited in the references. I consulted Johnston and Wang, trans. 2012: 47 and 135.

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Commenting on such spiritual beliefs underlying Zhu Xi’s thought, Joseph Adler explains: “When the mind’s capacity for psycho-physical intercourse with things—its ability to penetrate, enter into, or pervade things, even in some cases the minds of others—is developed to the highest degree, it is called ‘spiritual’ (shen), or ‘spiritual clarity’ (shenming)” (ibid. 134). In fact, Zhu Xi says that human energies and the energies of the cosmos are “constantly interacting” (ibid. 125), but, unlike sages, ordinary people are not always in tune with these energetic flows or capable of managing them harmoniously. The extension of knowledge, then, at its most potent, refers not only to the scope of what I understand but also to the efficacy of the mental energy that I put out into the world. When knowledge is efficacious in this way, then sincerity is attained, the heart-mind is corrected, the self is cultivated, the household regulated, the state well-ordered, and the whole world brought to peace. Another of Zhu Xi’s four core books, the Zhongyong (ѝᓨ), expresses this connection between attaining sincerity or integrity (cheng 䃐) and positively impacting the surrounding world: In the world only someone of perfect cheng 䃐 is considered able to complete his nature. Someone who is able to complete his nature is then able to complete the natures of others. Someone who is able to complete the natures of others is then able to complete the natures of things. Someone who is able to complete the natures of things is then able to assist Heaven and Earth in their transforming [hua ॆ] and creating [yu 㛢]. Someone who can assist Heaven and Earth in their transforming and creating can then join with Heaven and Earth as a triad. Johnston and Wang, trans. 2012: 325

Here the person of perfect cheng is a co-creator, manifesting or realizing shared value in conjunction with the forces of the cosmos. As the Zhongyong explains, sincere action will “combine” or “unify” (he ਸ) the internal and external aspects of dao or the “way” (wai nei zhi dao ཆ‫ޗ‬ѻ䚃), thereby ensuring integrity (ibid. 337).4 This is a key point—integrity is an achievement reflecting a process of integration, bringing together the internal and external, self and other, people and their world. In common English usage, sincerity connotes truthfulness or genuineness, which would seem to imply that a person’s words, attitudes, and feelings conform to a pre-given set of objective facts. Here, cheng can be glossed as “sincerity” not in the sense of being true to a pre-given reality but 4

See also Yusa, Chapter 26 in this volume and Onyebuchi Eze, Chapter 31 in this volume.

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in the sense of making true or bringing forth an as-yet-unrealized world. For this same reason, cheng is described as “ceaseless” (wuxi ❑᚟) (ibid.), indicating the need for constant re-integration to accommodate the evershifting terrain always emerging anew from the combined efforts of human energies, environmental forces, and cosmic powers.

The Practice of ConsciousnessRaising To “raise consciousness” in the Chinese context means to cultivate the self, and to cultivate the self means to develop the mental energies that, at their most potent, aid in bringing about well-ordered people, families, and societies. There are a variety of practices recommended in Ruist thought to help us attain the stability and tranquility of mind that enables consciousness-raising. These include, as mentioned, investigating things and extending knowledge through studying and learning, to attune the mind to harmonious order; also “quiet-sitting” (jingzuo 䶌඀), a meditative practice; and aesthetic activities such as reading poetry and listening to music.5 The Ming dynasty Ruist scholar Gao Panlong (1562–1626) comments that practitioners do not need special equipment (like special meditation cushions) in order to effectively quiet the mind and reap the benefits of mental cultivation. He recommends simply spending time in nature, quietly drinking tea, or sitting calmly while inhaling incense. He concludes: “Some will want to ask about the goal of Ruism—it’s only secret is this: staying centered, ahead of your emotions” (Gao 2018: 15). Though it may sound simple, the Ruists treat such consciousness-raising practices with great seriousness.6 They ask us to take seriously the possibility that our private thoughts and feelings are not so safely contained; that our inner lives manifest outwardly, as well; and that these outward-bound forces may easily defy our control so long as we lack training. But, scholars like Zhu Xi assure us that, with practice and commitment, we can indeed progress toward the elevated consciousness of a sage. As such, this heritage of selfcultivation for political health offers us resources for navigating, and impacting, our world today.

5

See also Davis, Chapter 17 in this volume. I am invoking a technical term from Ruism, jing (ᮜ), which can be translated as “seriousness” or “reverence.” For Zhi Xi, it is the key attitude supporting the efficacy of Ruist practice, both in terms of inner cultivation and outward manifestation. For an in-depth discussion see Angle 1998.

6

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References Adler, Joseph A. (2004). “Varieties of Spiritual Experience: Shen in NeoConfucian Discourse” in Confucian Spirituality Vol. 2, Tu Wei-ming and Mary Evelyn Tucker (eds), 120–148, New York: Crossroad. Angle, Stephen C. (1998). “The Possibility of Sagehood: Reverence and Ethical Perfection in Zhu Xi’s Thought” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 25(3): 281–303. Combahee River Collective (2015). “A Black Feminist Statement” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga (eds), 210–218, Albany : SUNY Press. Daxue བྷᆨ (2011). Chinese Text Project, Donald Sturgeon (ed.). Available online: https://ctext.org/liji/da-xue/zh (accessed March 16, 2020). Gao Panlong (2018). Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong (1562–1626 CE), Bin Song (trans.), Paul Blair (ed.), Boston: Ru Media Company. Hanisch, C. (2006). “Introduction.” Available online: http://www.carolhanisch. org/CHwritings/PersonalIsPol.pdf (accessed March 16, 2020). Hanisch, C. (1969). “The Personal is Political.” Available online: http://www. carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PersonalIsPol.pdf (accessed March 16, 2020). Johnston, Ian and Wang Ping, trans. (2012). Daxue and Zhongyong: Bilingual Edition, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.

Glossary Feminism A political and intellectual movement aimed at women’s liberation and gender equality. Key moments include the Black feminism and second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, which marked a turn to structure-level analysis and calls for collective action and systemic change. Ruism The Chinese “literati” or “scholarly” lineage (rujiaa ݂ᇦ) known in English as “Confucianism.” The rich intellectual period of the Song dynasty (960–1279) is often called “neoConfucianism.” Ruists were often employed as educators or government officials and were qualified to preside over various state rites, civic ceremonies, and rituals performed at ancestral shrines.

30 The Good Life Sebastian Purcell

Is the Good Life a “Happy” Life? The “pursuit of happiness” figures in the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right (Jefferson 1776). When Thomas Jefferson penned the line, he developed a standard and ancient view about the good life in the history of “western” philosophy. The opening line of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, written some 2,100 years earlier, for example, begins as follows: “Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise every action and decision, seems to seek some good; that is why some people were right to describe the good as what everything seeks” (Aristotle 1999: 1094a 1–2). He goes on to call this top good—our main goal in life— happiness. Of course, Aristotle goes on to develop “happiness” in a technical way, rather distant from our colloquial English meaning. Further, Jefferson gives Aristotle’s idea a modern twist by framing the pursuit of happiness as a right. Still, there is something of a tradition visible across the millennia. And today, in public discussions it appears that hardly anyone can conceive of an alternative goal for their lives. If not happiness, then what exactly is it that we should be otherwise pursuing, misery? But what if the conventional wisdom in the “West” about life’s primary goal is wrong? What if we only think of it as a goal because we have lost sight of other alternatives? What if the heart of the problem is a lack of imagination? Aztec philosophers would urge us to reconsider our “western” position (the term “West” is disputed by Latin American philosophers, hence my quotation marks). They ask us to question what has become conventional wisdom in our culture. You are not really after “happiness,” they would tell us, 273

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you just think that you are. What you ought to be seeking is the true life or rootedness—in their language (Nahuatl), neltiliztli. This is a meaningful and worthwhile life, and it takes place at three “levels,” or “domains” of our life’s activities: in your embodied existence, in your psyche, and in society. But it is only by recognizing that this goal isn’t the same as “happiness” that you will be able to achieve it. Since their view may seem counterintuitive for the “West,” let’s begin with some background concepts.

The Slippery Earth The Aztecs held their view about the good life for several reasons. Some of these reasons were metaphysical, which is to say that the rational source for their justification depended on what they thought the universe was made of—they thought it was all a single divine being named teotl—and on how it functioned. Other reasons stemmed from reputable opinions in their society, namely the opinions written in the books of red and black ink (Nahuatl: in tlilli in tlapalli, i.e. a metaphorical phrase referring to written wisdom), which were supported by experience and rational reflection on that experience. Thus, even if we don’t agree that nature and God are a single being called teotl, as the Aztecs did, we should be able to accept their ethical outlook if it makes sense to us in terms of our experience of reality. At the heart of their outlook was a basic claim about the character of human life, or what we in the “West” often call the human condition. They claimed that we lead our lives on the “slippery earth”, and they meant at least three things by this. In volume six of the Florentine Codex, one finds the first of these three points expressed within several sayings. Two of the clearest are the following sayings, indicated below by numbered square brackets, followed by glosses that explain their meaning. They refer to each other, so we need to consider them together. [1] Slippery, slick is the earth [tlalticpac]. [Gloss] Its meaning is the same as the saying just discussed. Perhaps at one time one had a good life, but later fell into some vice, as if one has slipped in the mud. Sahagún 1969, 41.2281

1

All translations from any Nahuatl text are my own.

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The “saying just discussed” is referring to the one that is listed immediately above in the codex, which reads: [2] How’s it going? Be especially prudent you golden fish. [Gloss] It is said in the following circumstances. If someone once lived well, but later fell into something [vicious], [a] perhaps he took a paramour, or [b] he knocked someone down so that he took sick or [c] even died, and for this reason was put in jail, so at that time it is said: “How’s it going? Be especially prudent you golden fish”. Sahagún 1969, 41.228

If those sayings and their glosses seem odd, that may be because we are reading from the perspective of a culture very different from ours. So let us pause to unpack them a bit. Let’s begin with the phrase “golden fish.” Although we cannot be completely confident about the Aztecs’ view, a plausible suggestion is that a “golden fish” is something akin to a divine animal. If that’s approximately right, then calling someone a golden fish is sarcastic. It’s a bit like saying: “How’s it going Mr. Perfect? Be prudent my friend.” With that analysis in mind, then [1] and [2] are pretty close in meaning, as the glosses tell us they should be. Statement [1] means that everyone who lives on the earth (Nahuatl: tlaticpac) is always likely to slip up. This could be either a moral error, resulting from a vice, or just a regular mistake, like physically falling. Statement [2] may mean that even (or especially) those who are perfect (or think of themselves that way) will tend to fall in the mud. What [2] adds in its gloss is the wide range of circumstances in which one can be said to “fall” or “slip up.” You might fall by [a] taking a paramour, that is, an extramarital lover, or [b] knocking someone down (perhaps accidentally) and injuring them, or [c] even killing them accidentally. To our minds [a] looks voluntary, and so would be blameworthy, but [b] and especially the outcome of [c] look to be well beyond what we can control. They are cases of what philosophers call moral luck (Williams 1981: 20–27). But the point of both common sayings is just that: not even the best of us can avoid failing in life, even at the important stuff. This feature of the human condition doesn’t excuse our actions, so you may still have to go to jail if you accidentally kill someone, but this risk is nonetheless a part of all our lives. If the Aztecs are right in making this observation, it suggests a constraint for any plausible conception of the good life: it must be an ideal that we (fallible) human creatures can hope to achieve. Stated in a different way, the best life is one where we manage our errors well, not one where we avoid all errors.

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These reflections lead to a second feature of our lives on tlalticpac, the slippery earth, namely that they are transitory. Perhaps the best spokesperson on this point is Nezahualcoyotl, the philosopher and ruler of Texcoco who lived two generations before the Spanish nobleman Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico (1519). As part of a longer piece of philosophical poetry, attributed to the legend of Nezahualcoyotl, expresses the following. My friends, stand up! And here they are, the princes. I, Nezahualcoyotl, am a singer. Tzontecochatzin, take up your flowers and your fan, and using them go dance! You [i.e. another prince] are my child, you are Yoyontzin. Drink up your chocolate, flower of the cacao tree. Now let them [i.e. the princes] be sent away! There is still dancing, [and] there is still song, [but] this place is not our home. This is not where we live. Even you [hearer] will have to go away. Bierhorst 2009, 3v-4r, 862

To some extent, the view is a little like the Christian Bible’s statement at 1st Corinthians 15:32, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Aland 1966). But the solution on offer for the Aztecs can’t be that one should believe in a saving God (Jesus), since for them God is just the natural environment. The lesson, instead, is that the human condition, life on the slippery earth, is not only one where we err, but where we will die, after lives that seem too short. In fact, the Aztecs thought that our “sun” was the fifth in existence, and that like the previous four it too would perish taking us all with it. Thus, the life of the cosmos itself, at least as we know it, and our human lives are both ephemeral ones. Finally, and as might be expected from the foregoing, it is not at all clear that life on tlalticpac (the earth) will be a happy one. In a genre unique to the Aztecs called the “discourses of the elders/huehuetlatolli,” one finds speeches

2

It is helpful to recall that these philosophical poems were sung and danced, so that the subject of address is likely an audience member hearing and viewing the song.

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and dialogues where elder persons, often fathers and mothers, speak to younger persons, often their sons and daughters, with the goal of educating them about how to live a good life. In one such discourse, a father addresses his daughter as follows. O my daughter, my child, hear well: the slippery earth [tlalticpac] is not a good place. It is not a place of happiness [pacoaia] or satisfaction. “It can only be said that the slippery earth [tlalticpac] is a place of joy-fatigue, joy-pain,” so the elders often say. That we may not go weeping forever, we are in debt to Our Lord, who gave us laughter and sleep, our food and strength, our life and erotic love. Sahagún 1969, 6.18, 93

The father, in this passage, gives two reasons to think that life on the slippery earth is not a happy or pleasant one. The first is one that draws on reasonably informed observations. Now that his daughter is of age, she has learned the truth already: everybody suffers. We may not all suffer through great tragedies, but we will not escape lesser ones. The second reason is that “happiness” comes and goes. To be clear, the term used for happiness in this passage, pacoaia in Nahuatl, is directly related to the term for pleasure, paqui. So, the idea of “happiness” under discussion is close to the colloquial English and means the feeling of elevated emotional states. But of course, you can only ever experience cycles of joy then fatigue, or joy then pain. You can’t just go on feeling the heights of pleasure without coming down at some point. Pursuing “happiness” as one’s life goal, then, just doesn’t make sense. These three points, namely that we are all bound to slip up, that even our cosmic existence is ephemeral, and that happiness comes and goes, form the background for the Aztec view on the good life.3 Any philosophical outlook that ignores these points, they would say, is naïve. But while they seem to constrain our pursuits, they also indicate the way to a solution.

Rootedness is the Solution If life on the earth makes the pursuit of “happiness” a fool’s errand, then what exactly should we be aiming at? In a word, the Aztec answer is that we should aim at “rootedness.” The rhetorical style of the Aztecs, however, proves a stumbling block. 3

See also Harris, Chapter 24 in this volume.

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Quite broadly, Aztec culture resists using one word to designate a notion, especially if it is an important one. Their understanding of the good life, as a result, is expressed in a constellation of metaphors. In written documents, one finds discussion of the good life as: the true life (Bierhorst 1985, 453), learning to stand on one’s feet (Olmos 1991, 300), using prudence not to fall (Sahagún 1997, 295), and taking the role of the great Montezuma cypress and the silk cottonwood trees in society i.e., being firmly rooted and providing shelter to others (Sahagún 1969, 73; Olmos 1991, 386). All the terms in this constellation, except for the true life, seem to involve being firmly planted, growing roots. Let’s look at the one possible exception. What follows is taken from a work of philosophical poetry that was composed and recited before a meeting of philosophers and court officials in the house of Tecayehuatzin (around 1450 CE). The central question at stake in the poem is how to achieve permanence on the slippery earth. To make the context even clearer, lord Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin, who is addressed in the poem, is said to be acquainted with teotl, god, in some of his guises, namely as Life Giver and as the Only Being. As one will read, the solution ventured is that by creating philosophical poetry one can achieve a sort of permanence on the slippery earth. The relevant portion reads as follows. So, this is how the exalted lord [Ayocuan], comes creating them [poems]. With these quetzal-colored bracelet beads [i.e. the poems] he goes on pleasing the Only Being. Is that what pleases the Life Giver? Is that the only truth [nelli] on the slippery earth Bierhorst 1985, 9v, 453?

The author thus suggests that by writing philosophical poetry one is able to find “truth” (nelli) on the slippery earth. When approached in this context, the good life is the true life. Yet, since living is a verb, one way to express the idea is to use the abstract verbal form of nelli, namely neltiliztli. In this sense, neltiliztli is a term for the good life. Interestingly, the term “nelli” may have a linguistic relationship with “nelhuayotl,” which means a root or base. In extended phrases, “nelhuayotl” means “truth” in the sense of “going to the root of something.” The general metaphorical constellation of the good life, then, does seem to turn on the idea of planting firm roots to avoid slipping up. And since there is only one abstract verbal term available for that idea, if we had to pick one—not a very Aztec thing—it would be neltiliztli.

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Finding rootedness, however, is not a simple task, as it involves three dimensions that can be separated only in thought, but never in reality. The Aztecs did not distinguish between minds and bodies. They held, moreover, that each animating center, including our liver, heart, and face, thought in its own way. Organizing and coordinating our centers, then, proved a difficult task. Moreover, the Aztecs thought that human thinking happened best in groups (Sahagún 1959, 9.3, 9–16). When we face a dilemma, after all, we talk to other people. In the ideal case, they held, we would deliberate in good groups. Leading a rooted life, then, involved the proper management of our bodies-psyches in supportive groups. These points explain why the Aztecs thought that, in order to become rooted, one had to undertake practices of three sorts: embodied practices some of which were like yoga, ritual practices for character habituation, and relationship practices to maintain supportive groups in a good society. Rootedness, then, was thought to happen at three logically distinguishable “levels,” namely in one’s body, psyche and society, and that virtuous (Nahuatl: in qualli, in yectli) engagement at each level would be both meaningful and worthwhile.4

Isn’t Happiness Still an Ideal? You might still wonder, though, wouldn’t we really want happiness, even if it’s not a reliable achievement? In a speech to his daughter, a father raises just this concern (Sahagún 1969, 6.14, 73). The answer he develops, roughly, is that of course you want pleasure over pain, but that we just do value other things more than happiness. Interestingly, one finds something similar to the father’s view expressed in Homer’s Odyssey, and it’s worth consideration in light of the Aztecs’ ethical philosophy. There is a scene in book five where Odysseus makes a choice that coincides with the principal outlook of the Aztec philosophers (Homer 1917, V, 77–147). It comes when Odysseus has been shipwrecked and living on the island of Calypso, with the goddess, for seven years. He has been crying and lamenting his inability to return home, and the gods take pity on him. Hermes arrives on the island and informs Calypso of Zeus’ decision. She agrees to let Odysseus go, provided that she may have one last attempt at convincing him to stay. In the next scene, we witness Odysseus seated across

4

See also Davis, Chapter 17 in this volume.

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from Calypso, and she offers him what any mortal would apparently want: immortality, agelessness, and a leisured existence on an island paradise with the romantic company of a goddess. He turns her down. Instead, he goes to build a raft, and then ventures onto the open waters in search of his wife and child. Unlike the Biblical Adam and Eve who are forced from paradise, then, Odysseus chooses to leave. But we can understand his reasons. Who among us is really willing to abandon their family and loved ones for a pleasant time, even an eternally pleasant time? Doesn’t this mean, just as the Aztecs claim, that we only think we want to be happy, but that we value other things much more?

Concluding Thoughts The Aztec ethical outlook urges us to seek rootedness in our bodies, psyches, and societies, since this is the best way to address basic features about our human condition that we recognize to be true: that we fail often, that we lead short lives, that reflection on our circumstances gives us reason to think that good lives are only accidentally pleasurable. These points imply that “happiness” isn’t a suitable goal for one’s life. More importantly, their ancient wisdom also suggests that we don’t care so much about “happiness” anyway. What we want are valuable lives, ones that are an excellent performance on the world’s stage.

References Aland, K., (1966), The Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland, et al., Stuttgart: United Bible Societies. Aristotle, (1999), Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Terence Irwin, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Bierhorst, J. (1985), A Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos with an Analytic Transcription and Grammatical Notes, edited and transcribed by John Bierhorst, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bierhorst, J. (2009), Ballads of the Lords of New Spain: The Codex Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España, transcribed and translated by John Bierhorst. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Homer, (1917), Homeri Opera: Tomus III Odyssaea Libros I-XII Continens, edited by Thomas W. Allen, Oxford: Oxford Classical Texts. Jefferson, T. (1776), “Declaration of Independence.” Available at: https://www. archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript. Last accessed March 14, 2020. Sahagún, B. (1959), Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain: Book 9: The Merchants, edited and translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J.O. Anderson, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Sahagún, B. (1969), Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain: Book 6: Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, edited and translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J.O. Anderson, Salt Lake City : University of Utah Press. Sahagún, B. (1997), Primeros Memoriales: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation, translated by Thelma D. Sullivan, H.B. Nicholson, Arthur J.O. Anderson, Charles E. Dibble, Eloise Quinones Kerber, and Wayne Ruwet, Norman: University of Oklahoma. Williams, Bernard. (1981). Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Glossary In ixtli, in yollotll (Nahuatl) This is a phrase using two main words to express one idea. The first word, ixtlii, literally means “face” or “eye,” and the second, yollotll, literally means a “heart.” Taken together, they mean one’s “person” or “character,” which is a combination of judgment ((ixtli ixtlii) and reasoning desire (yollotl yollotl). l). In qualli, in yectlii (Nahuatl) This is a phrase using two main words to express one idea. The first word, quallii, literally means something “good,” and the second, yectlii, means something “straight” or “right.” Taken together they mean “excellence” or “virtue.” In tlilli in tlapallii (Nahuatl) This is a phrase using two main words to express one idea. The first word, tlillii, literally means “black,” and the second literally means “red.” The terms were used to refer to the colors of the ink in the books of the Aztecs used before the Spaniards arrived. Metaphorically, they indicate the knowledge that was stored in those books, and so meant additionally, “knowledge,” “tradition,” and “reputable thoughts” or “reputable opinions.” Nacayotia a (Nahuatl) Means literally “to fatten up, put on flesh.” In an ethical context, dictionary means “to become accustomed to

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some vice.” Yet, there is reason to think that in good circumstances it might also mean to habituate an embodied virtue. The idea was that one causes (tiaa) one’s body (naca a) to gain an inherent quality ((yo yo o). The Aztecs had certain practices, resembling yoga, to help the body gain qualities of equilibrium. Neltiliztlii (Nahuatl) Means literally make-it-true-ness. In an ethical context it serves as the goal, or highest end, for a human’s life. It is one term in the Aztecs’ metaphorical constellation that concerns rootedness as the top aim. Some linguistic evidence suggests that it is related to the term for “a root,” namely “nel-huayotl,” since in extended phrases this term means “truth” in the sense of “going to the roots” of a matter. Teotll (Nahuatl) God, divine being. The Aztecs thought that there was just one being in existence, teotll, who is all of our world, our natural environment. We ourselves are made of teotl teotl.l. Tlalticpacc (Nahuatl) Earth or land. The component parts of the term suggest a raised-up earth, so that one might fall off onto either side. Since it is paired in Aztec thought with the idea that we humans often fall or slip-up, it is sometimes translated as the “slippery earth.” In its widest ethical sense, then, it indicates the character of the human condition.

31 Ubuntu/Botho Michael Onyebuchi Eze

This chapter will historicize ubuntu/botho as a philosophy and culture of African peoples. It is a philosophy embodied with relevance for conversations on diversity and human reconciliation. In historicization, ubuntu is examined as a hermeneutic philosophy of culture, dialogue, and identity. On this historical bent, ubuntu is understood as an eclecticism of different intellectual traditions that seeks a coherent response to the questions of post-colonial African identity. It also gains new intentionality as a postcolonial African discourse that seeks to restore, reclaim, and reconcile the past, the present and the future sociopolitical imagination of contemporary African societies. As a discourse of humanism, ubuntu is often associated with the Xhosa/Zulu aphorism, a person is a person through other people. Humanism as understood in this context means that our claim to humanity is a disposition for unconditional acceptance of other people. The entry will also examine the embedded contradictions within ubuntu practice. How do we reconcile ubuntu for example, with genocide or corruption? This entry underscores the limitations and dangers imposed upon ubuntu and seeks to examine different ways in which ubuntu has become reinterpreted as a genuine ethical practice and healthy humanism with universal aspirations. Ubuntu (sometimes referred to as ‘botho’) refers to the indigenous ways of referring to a human being in the following Bantu languages; Shona: muntu (singular) and vanhu (plural); Zulu, Xhosa and Ndebele: umntu (singular), abantu and umuntu (plural); Sotho and Tswana: motho (singular), bathu/batho/ abantu (plural). This notion of being a human being is often expressed through the popular zulu/xhosa aphorism, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu/Motho ke motho ka batho babang—a person is a person through other people (Samkange and Samkange 1989, Ramose 1999). What this suggests is that personhood is 283

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not an abstract experience but evolves through what has been termed “positive” relationship with other humans (Metz and Gaie 2010: 275). Herein, personhood is a virtuous practice prescribed through activities like sharing, magnanimity, kindness, altruism, benevolence, generosity, and nobility of character. While ubuntu is often associated with the cultures of bantu-speaking peoples of Africa, in reference to the conceptualization of a human being in African philosophy, it has become appropriated as a pan-African communitarian ideology. Without much critical distinction, ubuntu in academic scholarship has become synonymous with John Mbiti’s (1969: 108–109) famous claim that in Africa, the reality of the community is prior to that of the individual: In traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone except corporately. He owes this existence to other people, including those of past generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole. The community must therefore make, create, or produce the individual; for the individual depends on the corporate group. . . . The individual can only say: “I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am.”

Mbiti is often complemented by the Ghanaian philosopher, Komla Dzobo (1992: 132): “we are, therefore, I am, and since I am, therefore we are.” This understanding, however, has imposed certain limitations on ubuntu as a philosophy of human dialogue. The first problem is that it presupposes that the community takes precedence over the individual. The African subject, it seems, would have no agency and is only human at the whim of the community. The second difficulty is that “I am because we are” recognizes only our own kind of human beings or attributes humanity only to people who are like us or look like us, dress like us, eat like us, or even love like us. Recognizing only our own kind is what fostered the politicization of identities in post-colonial Africa. As will be shown later, this understanding of ubuntu yields a dogmatic infusion of reality, that is, the idea of imposing ideologies that have no meaning to the lived experience of the people. Thus understood, instead of being an idea of sympathetic human relations, ubuntu becomes a destructive ideology that ruptures the harmony even amongst societies which claim to practice ubuntu. These limitations need not be the case with ubuntu philosophy. The virtuous practices of ubuntu are associated with cultural expressions that are tied to African cosmology which includes the living, nature (plants and animals), the unborn and the living dead (ancestors). Alexis Kagame distinguishes this cosmology into four categories of beings: MUntu (being with intelligence i.e., human person, spirits, the living dead or ancestors);

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KIntu (beings without intelligence such as plants, animals and minerals); HAntu (being of time and space): KUntu (being of Modality in term of quality or mode of existence) (Mudimbe 1988: 148). These beings nevertheless do not exist in isolation but in a metaphysical coherence where they inhabit and animate each other. On this view, the human person, as Leopold Senghor (2005: 185) affirms, is “a composition of mobile forces which interlock: a world of solidarities that seek to knit themselves together” with other beings. To care for the community or the other is therefore to care for oneself in a contemporaneous fashion. Community here is not just a community of humans but a universe of beings (plants, animals, spirits, nature, et cetera). Proverbs especially are often used as a point of epistemic reference in accessing the cultural ways of life in these indigenous societies. Among the Akan for example, “if your mother nurses you to grow your teeth, you nurse her to lose hers.” Mother in this context is not limited in the biological sense, but equally a reference to mother earth, land, nature or one’s community. In Yoruba there is the saying, “If a child shoots an arrow that attains the top of a tall palm tree, then it must be that an elderly person carved the arrow for him/her.” Here too, the elder refers to cumulative experience of the community or to the social accumulation of knowledge as symbolized by the elders. In east Africa comes the thought that “it is an unthinking man who achieves prosperity and then finds with time that his body can no longer pass through the door.” Among the Igbo, “when one finger is contaminated with oil, it spreads to other fingers.” What this means, as I have argued elsewhere, is that contrary to the individualist ethics often associated with western societies, morality in Africa has a sociohistorical dimension: partially communitarian, somewhat egalitarian and partly discursive: Good or bad is something that affects all of us, as we learn from the Akan word for sin. The etymology of the Akan word bone (sin) is from the word bon which means bad scent (odour). An odour or scent is usually experienced by an entire group, not just by an individual, so that for the Akans when one commits sins or does something wrong even against oneself, the action extends to the entire community in which he/she lives – the community smells the odour of his/her actions. Eze 2012: 253

Personhood in this context means a relationship beyond human beings as our humanity becomes entwined with nature. In these Africanist societies, nature is divine. The encounter with nature is an encounter with divinity as Mbiti (1969: 79) equally recognized: “The majority of the people hold that spirits

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dwell in the woods, bush, forest, rivers, mountains or just around the villages.” Food, for example, is sacred and according to the east African saying, “Alaye peke hufa peke yake (He who eats alone dies alone)” but who then “remembers others, remembers also his/her creator.” Food is neither wasted nor denied even to the worst of enemies. Amongst the Igbo, for example, it is a cultural taboo for one to just start eating food without inviting those present to join— presence here includes both the living and the dead, gods and goddesses. Eating is a social communion with embedded moral content insofar as morality remains an acquired social practice. Understood in this way, there is no debate on priority between the community or individual since both mutually refashion each other in alliance with other non-human beings.1 In political philosophy specifically, ubuntu is often presented as a heterodoxy of apartheid/colonialist experience and its racialist doctrine of divide and rule. Where apartheid, for example, is an essentialist political practice that thrived through a racialist paradigm of exclusion and domination, ubuntu is a philosophy of human restoration and inclusion of all irrespective of race. Nowhere would this become more institutionalized than during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa where ubuntu offered a narrative for new national memory that would heal and displace the inherited fragmented apartheid memory. In place of the ethnic nationalism of apartheid politics, ubuntu offers a civic national memory which transcends race, blood, or common descent as a criterion for post-apartheid South African citizenship. In the history of ideas, ubuntu is often characterized in two dominant ways (Eze 2010: 114–118). The first is as an essentialist view, which is at the same time ideological by which I mean dogmatic. I use this term to clarify the misunderstandings, ambivalence, and contradictions often associated with ubuntu. The second is as a performative view, which is also historical. By historical, I mean sensitive to the context in which ubuntu is invoked overtime and how it has evolved to changing times and circumstances. This differentiation also helps us to understand contradictory impulses in societies that claim to practice ubuntu such as Rwanda during the genocide in the 1994 or the recurrent xenophobic attacks against black immigrants in South Africa. As an essentialist philosophy, ubuntu is often assumed to be a closed knowledge system with dogmatic orientation: not in dialogue with history

1

See also Garfield and Yusa, Chapters 26 and 27 in this volume.

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but laying claim to a closed African past—a past which belongs to Africans alone. Ubuntu is used or employed as an ideological tool that is timeless for all circumstances. It seems to suggest that if our forefathers or ancestors did it this way, then it must be the same for all times and places. It is not open to change or internal variation typical of cultural philosophy. Essentialist also means that those historical moments like witch-hunting, the killing of old women, or even human sacrifices could fall into this category for it presupposes an unchanging culture. It is static, immobile, and based on ethno-centric bias. According to this view, ubuntu is exclusive as an expression of a tradition which conflates race with cultural practice.2 Herein, race determines the culture or tradition to which one belongs. Non-Africans, it is said, cannot and could not practice ubuntu. Ubuntu thereby becomes something like biological inheritance ascribed to race. It is also commodified as a non-discursive ideological practice. Ubuntu becomes a dogma, a shotgun solution for all crises. Notice, too, that in commodification, the moral virtue of ubuntu is relegated from the domain of ethics to material appropriation as in these commoditizations: ubuntu cola, ubuntu restaurant, ubuntu security, ubuntu Linux, et cetera. This essentialist adaptation is closely related to Mbiti’s “I am because we are” in which we recognize only our kind of persons or beings. Ubuntu as an essentialist philosophy is an echo of tradition; expressive in terms of dogmatism and supposes a homogeneity of historical experiences. As performative philosophy, in contrast, ubuntu is seen as an open knowledge system. Performative also means that ubuntu is historical, that is, sensitive to historical context and to the internal variations of culture. What this means is that ubuntu is understood as a civic culture. It recognizes that culture evolves, and it inspires creative positive change in the community. It also means that it is neither an essentialist nor racialized philosophy. It becomes a philosophy that is open to all races and peoples and cultures. It evolves over time; it is not written in stone. It is this nature of ubuntu as open-ended and discursive that underlies ubuntu as a philosophy of dialogue and human reconciliation. A person is a person through other people—this other people is a reference to those who are not members of my community,

2

Culture is not the same as tradition. As Mahmood Mamdani (1996: 226) has persuasively argued, “culture is seldom as compact and singular . . . [culture] is full of tension, diverse and differentiated.” To impose rigidity on culture is to dehistoricize the subject and deny them human agency. Human beings make culture, but we are also products of culture. Even if we are shaped by culture, we have agency which empowers us to rupture, embrace, or shape our cultural imaginations.

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they could be anyone in their strangeness and oddities or as indicated earlier, animals and non-sentient beings. Accordingly, instead of “I am because we are” we would actually say “I am because you are.” The first is exclusionary and essentialist, and the latter is inclusive and more adaptable to the philosophical temperament of ubuntu as a performative cultural practice that is neither homogeneous nor uniform but dynamic and always changing.

A Philosophy of Dialogue and Human Reconciliation Drawing on the performative credential of ubuntu is an understanding of ubuntu as a philosophy of dialogue and human reconciliation. On this view, a person is a person through other people also suggests “the otherness of the other” (Louw 2001: 23). A celebration of the “Other” in their “Otherness” is not merely for sameness (what we share or have in common—I am because we are), it is a recognition that this “other” is capable of being good, human, inhumane or evil.3 The recognition of this possibly undesired and unpredictable human characteristic is not to reduce one to a “thing” that can be wholly known or knowable. It is instead an acknowledgement of our imperfection or imperfectability, that we are potentially good or evil just as our neighbor. This does not need to put us on a superior moral pedestal but rather encourages us to initiate a dialogue geared towards a deeper understanding of our shared humanity and to give content to our morality. In dialogue, every encounter with another is a recreation of my “self ”; it is a unique moment in which the self is exposed to unique possibilities and experiences. Dialogue humanizes the unknown as we learn to value the unconditional acceptance of others different from us. Thus, the foreigner and barbarian are part of our humanity. Difference is not a threat but a subjective gift and a cause for celebration of our humanity. Our humanity as forged through the presence of other persons, as scholars have suggested, also means to be a witness to the other’s humanity (Gobodo-Madikizela 2008). Witnessing is not a demand that we be Xerox copies of one another. I am because you are is, rather, a call for empathy. I recognize that my humanity is only realizable in the presence of another person. Kindness is not in vain

3

See also Ilieva, Chapter 23 in this volume.

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because without the other person my humanity experiences a poverty of existence. This is not to deny agency, but to show the degree in which the other person is a mirror through which I recognize my own humanity. Difference ceases to be a reason for hatred, animosity, or shame and becomes instead justification for celebration of our co-existence. Desmond Tutu (1999: 35) becomes very instructive here: Ubuntu . . . speaks to the very essence of being human . . . [when] we say “Yu, u nobuntu”; “Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.” Then you are generous, you are hospitable. . . caring and compassionate . . . It is to say, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.” We belong in a bundle of life . . . It is not, “I think therefore I am.” It says rather: “I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.” A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good . . . he or she [is] humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Humanity is not wholly bestowed on one individual but a gift we share, something we bestow on one another. Every encounter is a celebration of humanity, a service, a benediction, a recognition, a gift, an eternal presence. I am because you are! I am not just present to you; you are also present to me in a similar manner. We are each other’s creators and in this process of interaction and dialogue we realize our full humanity. Since we are co-creators of each other, a rule for dialogue is the understanding that the other person is still part of my humanity. As Nelson Mandela (2000) puts it, “our human compassion binds us the one to the other—not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.” The loss of any individual is therefore a loss for humanity—we have lost a unique gift to the world, echoing William James’ (1922: 77) observation: “in every concrete individual, there is a uniqueness that defies formulation. We can feel the touch of it and recognize the taste, so to speak, relishing or disliking, as the case may be, but we can give no ultimate account of it.” Ubuntu dialogue is also an act of revolution, it is an act of rupture, interruption, and revolt against normality. Dialogue unmasks the other’s strangeness and brings them to the realm of familiarity. Familiarity is an act of humanization. In interacting with others different from us, we get to know them. This knowledge demystifies their strangeness. We learn of our differences and sameness. What affects them touches us; when they suffer our humanity diminishes too because they constitute part of our humanity. We are each other’s creators. I create you and you create me. In this process of interaction and dialogue we realize our full humanity.

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As a philosophy of reconciliation, ubuntu as an act of dialogue interrupts what is normal. It says, go and have coffee with someone you do not like! The individual whom I find as most reprehensible still constitute part of my humanity. I am because you are is, thus, a movement from abstract humanity to practical humanism. In ubuntu dialogue, our veil of ignorance is unmasked; in meeting with a different other, we touch, we feel, we experience, we know—activities which helps us to see the other as they truly are and not just a masked other that is perpetually denounced, feared, or antagonized. In meeting this other, the fear of the unknown is subverted, obliterated. This fear is at the root cause of racism and hatred. In encountering the other, our ignorance which is the cause of our anxiety is removed. This encounter is to be understood as a form of education through which the self becomes a mobile subject. Subjective mobility here is an openness to difference, tolerance and ultimately that I am because you are! That is all!

References Dzobo, N.K. (1992). “The Image of Man in Africa” in Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye (eds), Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies. Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 132–145. Eze, M.O. (2010). Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Eze, M.O (2012) “Ubuntu: Ideology of Promise” in Spariosu, M.I. and Rüsen, J. (eds) Exploring Humanity: Intercultural Perspectives on Humanism. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Gobodo-Madikizela, P. (2008). “Trauma, Forgiveness and the Witnessing Dance: Making Public Spaces Intimate” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 53(2): 169–188. James, W. (1922). Herbert Spencer: Autobiography. The North Carolina College for Women Extension Bulletin, 1(2): 77. Louw D. J. (2001). Ubuntu and the Challenges of Multiculturalism in PostApartheid South Africa. Quest, 15(1–2): 15–36. Mamdani, M (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mbiti, J.S. and Mbiti (1990). African Religions & Philosophy. London: Heinemann. Metz, T. and Gaie, J.B.R. (2010). The African Ethic of Ubuntu/Botho: Implications for Research on Morality. Journal of Moral Education, 39(3): 273–290.

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Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nelson Mandela (2000). Speeches—Message by Nelson Mandela at Healing & Reconciliation Service dedicated to HIV/Aids sufferers and “The Healing of our Land,” Johannesburg. [online] Available at: http://www.mandela.gov.za/ mandela_speeches/2000/001206_healing.htm [Accessed Oct. 9, 2020]. Ramose, M.B. (1999). African Philosophy through Ubuntu. Harare: Mond Books. Samkange T.M. and Samkange S. (1980). Hunhuism or Ubuntuism: A Zimbabwe Indigenous Political Philosophy. Salisbury : Graham Publishing. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. (2003). “Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century” in Gaurav Gajanana Desai and Supriya Nair (eds), Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Tutu, D. (2009). No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday.

Glossary Ubuntu/botho A way of referring to a human being in indigenous southern African languages. Ubuntu dialogue A form of dialogue that starts with the unconditional regard of the other person despite their status or condition in life. Performative ubuntu The view of ubuntu as evolving, changing and sensitive to context and history. Essentialist ubuntu Ubuntu is viewed as a timeless or organic reality without changes overtime. African humanism A vision of humanism that considers the human person in their historical and subjective location irrespective of their race, gender, religion, rationality or nationality. It claims that humanity is an unconditional human value embedded in all creatures. Civic culture An idea of culture that is open ended and inclusive.

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32 Ujamaa Edwin Etieyibo

Ujamaa is a Kiswahili or Swahili1 word or concept. Literally, it means “brotherhood,” “familyhood,” or “extended family.” Ujamaa is used to describe “the traditional kinship [relationship and] communalism existing in many rural or traditional communities in Africa” (Boesen, Madsen and Moody 1977: 11). For Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the former President of Tanzania,2 Ujamaa is an African version of socialism, which he developed and popularized in a number of places.3 Regarding Nyerere’s development of Ujamaa, Cornelli notes that Nyerere’s understanding of Ujamaa was not fixed but rather that it evolved with time and experience and that while his views as a young man were idealistic and utopian his views as an adult statesman were more nuanced, pragmatic, and practical (Cornelli 2012: 1). Largely, then, one will say that Nyerere used the concept of Ujamaa to advance part of his social and economic development policies in Tanzania following the country’s independence from Britain in 1961. These policies are partly outlined in Nyerere’s development blueprint, the Arusha Declaration (Swahili: Azimio la Arusha) and TANU’s Policy on Socialism and Self Reliance, which was published in 1967 (and which is hereinafter, referred to as Arusha and TANU). The Arusha and TANU is divided into five parts: the TANU “Creed”; the Policy of Socialism; the Policy of Self Reliance; the

1

Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken in East and Central Africa. Julius Nyerere was born April 13, 1922 in Mwitongo, a village or rural area of Butiama in the Mara Region of Tanganyika and died October 14, 1999 in London, England. He was Prime Minister of Tanganyika (1961–1962), President of Tanganyika (1962–1964), and the first President of Tanzania (October 29, 1964–November 5, 1985). Tanzania was formerly Tanganyika. 3 These works include various articles, policy papers and speeches that Nyerere gave and wrote at various times. Some of these works are referenced in this chapter (See Nyerere 1976, 1977 and 1987). 2

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TANU Membership; and the Arusha Resolution. In the Arusha and TANU, Nyerere pointed out the need for an African model of development grounded on African socialism. In a sense then, one may consider Arusha and TANU as Tanzania’s most prominent political statement of African socialism and Ujamaa (Kaitilla 1990/2007). Nyerere takes Arusha and TANU as the blueprint of social and economic progress for the people of Tanzania and the policy that specifies or points to “the direction of development” (Nyerere 1977: 91). For Ngombale-Mwiru, Arusha and TANU is the party’s chief whip, namely, “a manifesto which launched a fundamental political option of TANU;” and “a declaration of principles, objectives and intentions” (1973: 52). According to Cornelli, both Arusha and TANU and Nyerere’s short essay, Ujamaa: The Basis of African Socialism, provide us with an account of the ideological basis for his understanding of Ujamaa (2012: 8). In this chapter, I will be discussing the sense in which Ujamaa forms part of Nyerere’s version of “African socialism” and his vision for a national development program and agenda. As well, I will be gesturing towards a normative interpretation of Ujamaa, as some sort of hypothetical and linguistic device for honing and teasing out certain economic and sociopolitical realities within an African weltanschauung or worldview.

Defining Ujamaa As indicated, Ujamaa refers to “extended family” or “brotherhood” and is used to denote certain features and realities in many rural and traditional communities in Africa, which are communalistic.4 One place to look for a definition of Ujamaa is Nyerere’s Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism (1977: 1). In this work, Nyerere offers an understanding of Ujamaa as “familyhood” or “brotherhood,” both of which refer to a kinship relationship of Africans as brothers (and of course sisters) and as belonging to the same or one common family who are bound by the common good and service for the family. It was in this work that Nyerere also for the first time explained and systematically argued for Ujamaa as African socialism and what it was in traditional African societies or Africa before colonialism. Ujamaa, Nyerere notes, “describes our socialism” (1977: 12). According to Ibhawoh and Dibua, within traditional African societies, Ujamaa is 4

In the remaining part of this chapter, I shall sometimes use the term “communalism” to refer to “extended family” or “brotherhood,” “familyhood.”

Ujamaa

equivalent to socialism, according to which, emphasis is placed on the communal (2003: 62). Osabu-Kle adds that it (Ujamaa) embraces “the communal concepts of African culture such as mutual respect, common property and common labor” (2000: 171).5 The use of the “our” above refers to what Nyerere calls the “African-ness of the policies” (1976: 2) of Ujamaa. In this sense, one can simply say that Ujamaa is an African philosophy or worldview of a communalistic society, where African communalistic society or communalism expresses virtues such as the idea of solidarity, communal relationships, harmony, caring, sharing and of the community bringing units of “families” together, and fostering cohesion and unity. As I will highlight later, this idea of Ujamaa should also be understood normatively.

Socially and Politically Contextualizing Ujamaa What does it mean to say that Ujamaa means “communalism” and was employed by Nyerere as his version of “African socialism,” and as a basis for a national development program and agenda? First, I must point out that the history of Ujamaa is generally taken to be an important part of the history of Tanzania insofar as what is referred to as Tanzania has historically and traditionally been communalistic (Cornelli 2012:1; see Kimambo and Temu 1969). Further, for a number of historians, “this history goes back centuries and involves the early settlements in the region, early contacts and settlement of Arabs, the slave trade, colonialism, independence and neo-colonialism” (Cornelli 2012: 1; see also Kimambo and Temu 1969). Taking Ujamaa to be tied to the history of Tanzania is to emphasize the historical context of Tanzania or to say simply that Ujamaa is best understood in terms of its origins and traditional settings before foreign influences like colonialism, etc. according to which the Tanzanian society was communal or communalistic. Second, one must note that when Nyerere uses the expression

5

For some of the primary and secondary literature on Ujamaa and Nyerere’s discussion of African socialism and socio-political philosophy not cited/quoted in this essay see Glickman (1967: 195– 223); Mohiddin (1968: 130–143); Nyerere (1973); De la Rue (1973: 40–52); Nyerere (1974); Ruhumbika (1974); Mbilinyi (1974: 59–107); Nsekela (1974: 108–146); Duggan and Civille (1976); Hatch (1976); Boesen (1979/1981:125–144); Mascarenhas (1981: 145–165); Hyden 1982); Green (1995: 80–107); Rugumamu (1997); Nyerere (2000); Haussler (2009); Chachage and Cassam (2010); El Saadawi (2010); Nyerere (2011); Fouéré (2014: 1–24); Lal (2015); Akyeampong (2018: 69–87).

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of African-ness in combination with Ujamaa, he is pointing to the fact that one, he considers Ujamaa to be a unique concept, and two, that, even though Ujamaa is a form of socialism, it is an African version of socialism (i.e. it is a concept that summarizes the African worldview or philosophy in terms of a communalistic society). By socialism, one means a political, social, and economic worldview or philosophy both in theory and in practice, and which is opposed to capitalism. On this view, socialism covers a range of economic and social systems characterized and denominated by social or public or state (governmental) ownership, control, and administration of the means of production or of property and natural resources. Simply put, socialism has a particular worldview about humans and community and refers to a political, social, and economic understanding of a social and economic organization which advocates for public or communal ownership or regulation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of resources by the state.6 However, as an African version of socialism, Ujamaa differs from other forms of socialism. But in what exact way is Ujamaa a version of socialism and in what way is it different from other strands of socialism? Nyerere provides us with answers to both questions. First, he claims that Ujamaa is an African version of socialism because it is “opposed to capitalism” (1977: 12), and it is opposed to capitalism because, while capitalism “seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of man by man” (1977: 12), Ujamaa aims to avoid the exploitation of humans. Second, Ujamaa differs from other forms of socialism such as doctrinaire socialism, scientific socialism, and Marxism.7 It is different from the former (namely, doctrinaire socialism) on the ground that Ujamaa does not seek “to build a happy society on the philosophy of inevitable conflict between man and man” (Nyerere 1977: 12). Ujamaa is also different from the latter (scientific socialism and Marxism) because while scientific socialism and Marxism legitimize class conflicts Ujamaa avoids such conflict and rather seeks to advance harmony

6

For some discussion of socialism that are relevant to the points here see Rappoport (1924); Levine (1988); Harrington (1989); Roemer (1994); Ollman (1998); Gilabert, Pablo (2015: 197–225); Wright, Erik Olin (2016); Gilabert and O’Neill (2019). 7 Doctrinaire socialism is used to describe the kind of socialism that is propagated only in theory and in isolation from its practice or the movements of the working class. Scientific socialism is concerned with predictions of social, economic, and material phenomena and how historical trends and forces are determined by violent means as part of achieving socialist goals. And Marxism, on the one hand, refers to the political and economic ideas relating to the theory and practice of communism of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and ideas developed by their followers, and on the other hand, to historical materialism (i.e. the socioeconomic analysis or materialist interpretation of historical development).

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and cohesion. The notion that Ujamaa avoids class conflict and struggle is expressed in Nyerere’s claim that with Ujamaa or in African communalism in particular, not only is it that the relationship between masters and servants do not exist but also that every worker serves no one but themselves (see Nyerere, 1998: 78). This is partly what he means when he says that “everybody is a worker” (Nyerere 1977: 4) and that “no person exploits another” (Nyerere 1977: 15). One might take Nyerere to be making both a descriptive and normative point when he says that everyone is a worker and that one serves only themselves. First, that one serves only themselves means that they do not answer to anyone, or that there is no class of “masters” that tells one what to do. Second, that everyone is a worker means that if the “masters” have always taken themselves to be “masters” that understanding disappears or ought to in African socialism where the “master” is expected also to be a worker. Third, if everyone including the “master” is a worker, then there is really no class of “masters” that stands above others and barks or gives orders to a class of workers that always has to work. To take Ujamaa as referring to “communalism” or as a version of “African socialism” means that Ujamaa describes the notion, that is uniquely African, according to which a person is a person or becomes a person through other persons or the people or community. This idea embodies aspects of another concept in African philosophy and the worldview of African cultures called Ubuntu; both of which (Ujamaa and Ubuntu) are understood or can be taken to embody the notion of a communalistic society. As an Nguni Bantu term, Ubuntu is concerned with “humanity,” “human-ness” or “personhood” and is associated with the aphorism, “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore, I am.” For some discussion of Ubuntu in the literature, see Tutu (1999); Ramose (2002); Metz (2007); Mkhize (2008); Battle (2009); Etieyibo (2017a); Etieyibo (2017b); Etieyibo (2017c) and Oyowe and Etieyibo (2018).8 The point here is that as a moral and political concept, Ujamaa (like Ubuntu) takes individuals to be part of a larger whole. Both (Ujamaa and Ubuntu) place value on the “we” rather than the “I”; namely, they express a “we-mode of being.” Although both Ujamaa and Ubuntu embody the notion of a communalistic society, the former is used more broadly to capture a state of affairs that is social, economic, and political, while the latter is used in the context of personhood and morality although with obvious

8

See also Onyebuchi Eze, Chapter 31 in this volume.

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implications for social, economic, and political processes and activities. In other words, the two concepts are intimately connected. By using Ujamaa as a basis for a national development program and agenda, we mean that Nyerere postulates Ujamaa as a way of extending certain African traditional values (of a communalistic society) into a modern postcolonial and political setting (1967: 16). As he says: “No underdeveloped country can afford to be anything but socialist” (1967: 2).9

Ujamaa’s Socialism I have mentioned that Nyerere refers to Ujamaa as “our socialism,” namely, he takes it as a version of African socialism. Here, I present and discuss some quotes from Nyerere on his view about socialism and African socialism, both in theory and practice. First, in terms of African socialism as a theoretical perspective, Nyerere says that: “Socialism—like democracy—is an attitude of mind” (1987: 4). By this he means that for the African, African socialism is part and parcel of their nature and character and not just something that they pay lip service to. If African socialism is an integral part of one’s character or the life of the African, then for Nyerere, in a communal African society “people [will] care for each other’s welfare” (Nyerere 1977: 1) and “no person [will work to exploit] another” (Nyerere 1977: 15), and since “everybody is a worker” (Nyerere 1977: 4) “neither capitalism nor feudalism [will exist]” (Nyerere 1977: 5). The notion of the absence of capitalism and feudalism in Ujamaa reinforces the idea of the absence of “two classes of people, a lower class composed of people who work for their living, and an upper class of people who live on the work of others” (Nyerere 1977: 15). Second, as part of highlighting socialism or African socialism in practice (and not just in theory), Nyerere speaks of socialism as essentially being “distributive [and about ensuring] that those who sow reap a fair share of 9

It seems that Nyerere’s claim that a developing society cannot afford to be anything else but be socialist is a claim that a developing society’s path towards development is best enhanced by the adoption of certain socialist principles and ideals and these principles and ideals have always been present in traditional African societies, which were communalistic. Ujamaa expresses those principle and ideals, provides a basis of a development program and agenda and the foundation of Nyerere’s political philosophy and philosophy of development, and has three essential elements: freedom, equality and unity—all of which constitute the essence of the ideal society and as part of the traditional social order (1967: 16). According to Nyerere, it is on the basis of (a) equality, that humans are able to and will work communally and cooperatively as equals; (b) freedom, that the individual is not served by society unless such society is represented as his or hers (i.e. works for his or her benefit); and (c) unity, that the members of society can live and work together in peace, security and wellbeing.

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what they sow” (1987: 5). Nyerere highlights this in his famous claim about the guest and the hospitality of the host in African communal society: Those of us who talk about the African way of life and, quite rightly, take a pride in maintaining the tradition of hospitality which is so great a part of it, might do well to remember the Swahili saying: “Mgeni siku mbili; siku ya tatu mpe jembe” – or in English, “Treat your guest as a guest for two days; on the third day give him a hoe!” In actual fact, the guest was likely to ask for the hoe even before his host had to give him one–for he knew what was expected of him, and would have been ashamed to remain idle any longer. Thus, working was part and parcel, was indeed the very basis and justification of this socialist achievement of which we are so justly proud. 1987: 6

There are at least two ideas that come out of Nyerere’s presentations on socialism and African socialism. The first is that he takes socialism or Ujamaa as discouraging freeriders and freeriding and promoting productivity. The second is that he presents African traditional societies as socialist and the African as a socialist (by nature).10 But as I will now suggest below, that beyond this descriptive presentation and analysis one can also take a normative or prescriptive presentation and analysis, according to which Ujamaa can be presented as some hypothetical and linguistic device for honing and teasing out certain economic and socio-political realities within an African weltanschauung.

Ujamaa as a Hypothetical and Linguistic Device In this section, I want to briefly gesture towards the sense in which Ujamaa may be considered a hypothetical and linguistic device. As I have indicated, Nyerere takes Ujamaa as “communalism” to be “our socialism” or to describe (or be descriptive of) communalistic life in traditional African societies (1977: 12). Although Nyerere takes Ujamaa “as the source of the principles and practices that [he] transferred to the institutions in the new nation”

10 See Etieyibo (2022), “On the One Concept and Many Accounts of African Ethics” for one way of framing this idea of African as a socialist (by nature) in terms of the idea of whether communal values are constitutive of the African or whether communal thinking is realized through the individual only through acculturation.

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(2011:8) one can also discern a normative interpretation of the concept, according to which it is both a hypothetical and linguistic device. To take Ujamaa as a hypothetical device is to suggest that it serves to represent what a hypothetical ideal situation will look like given certain (idealized) conditions or if certain conditions in society and among humans are met. The notion of a hypothetical device takes off from the idea of the hypothetical contract in social contract theory, which crucially employs an Archimedean standpoint and some form of the mechanism of the veil of ignorance. On this idea, Ujamaa is not simply an actual state of affairs, the nature of some being or innate natural inclination of Africans but the state of affairs that Africans will take as rational and moral given certain (idealized) conditions.11 The question here is this: if humans are to live a certain life of social harmony as required by Ujamaa, what sorts of activities would be accepted as rational or moral by every member of the community and for which every person ought to participate in? As an answer to this question, and Ujamaa as a hypothetical device, the point is that it outlines and prescribes the sorts of activities that one ought to engage in if a certain life of social harmony is to be realized or certain conduct that every person would accept from a member of society as rational or moral (and in particular if they are to realize a certain life of social harmony). To take Ujamaa as a linguistic device is to understand it as being given in the way of an expression, where Ujamaa imposes certain duties based on the understanding of its communalistic norms and worldview. That is by a linguistic device one is talking about language, about what a term as used in a language (in this case Ujamaa in Swahili) means and how such meaning imposes certain obligations. So, if Ujamaa means “brotherhood,” or “familyhood,” or “extended family”, then linguistically it opens up a cosmopolitan worldview according to which one ought to treat the other as part of one’s family and one has a duty to them to benefit them. The question here is this: what duty is required of one as a member of society given the demand of Ujamaa’s communalistic norms and worldview? Or simply put,

11 This notion of a hypothetical contract in social contract theory is one that notable social contract theorists like John Rawls (1971/1999) and David Gauthier (1986) have embraced as part of a reconstruction exercise of the social contract accounts of social contract theorists like Thomas Hobbes (1651) and John Locke (1689/1988) that seem to suggest a descriptive and literal interpretation of social contract theory. For discussions of Rawls and Gauthier’s social contract accounts, see Etieyibo (2009) and for the notion of hypothetical contract and consent see the following essays: Fox (2018: 85–107); Oyowe & Etieyibo (2018: 343–365); and Stone (2018: 29–59).

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given that Ujamaa means “brotherhood,” “familyhood,” or “extended family,” what duties does one owe to others? To ask this question and to take Ujamaa then as a linguistic device means that Ujamaa outlines and prescribes certain sorts of activities that one ought to practice or engage in as a member of society; those activities are those that are communal and promote harmony. In this chapter, I have discussed Ujamaa as forming part of Nyerere’s version of “African socialism” and his vision for a national development program and agenda, highlighting along the way a normative understanding of Ujamaa. The idea of a normative interpretation of the concept is one where we take Ujamaa as normatively discouraging freeloaders or prescribing behavior that is freeriding and promoting productive activities. When one moves away from a literal and descriptive interpretation of Ujamaa as describing the features and actual state of affairs of traditional African societies, i.e. African societies as communalistic and presenting the African as a socialist (by nature) to a normative interpretation of Ujamaa, then it is the case that Ujamaa normatively requires every person to endorse and work for a society that is beneficial (i.e. egalitarian and fair) for everyone. Ujamaa thus provides us with both insight into the character of African societies as well as the notion of an ideal for us to work towards. The principle underlying this interpretation is based on the notion of Ujamaa as a form of hypothetical device in which we imagine the ideal scenario for a society. From this we may proceed along with certain assumptions in social contract theory that everyone will accept to be bound by the duty to act in such a way that his or her acts constitute some moral or rational norm for everyone. In the context of Ujamaa, these norms require that we act harmoniously or reciprocate harmonious acts, insofar as doing so denotes what it means to be part of the family that works in service of familyhood, and where acting harmoniously or reciprocating harmonious acts means to act hospitably, kindly, generously, compassionately, caringly, lovingly, etc.

References Akyeampong, E. (2018). “African Socialism; or, the Search for an Indigenous Model of Economic Development?” Economic History of Developing Regions, 33(1): 69–87. Arnold, S. (2016). “Socialism” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Available at: https://www.iep.utm.edu/socialis/. Battle, M. (2009). Ubuntu I in You and You in Me, New York: Seabury Books.

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Boesen, J., Madsen, B.S. and Tony M. (1977). Ujamaa: Socialism from Above, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies: Uppsala. Boesen, J. (1979/1981). “Tanzania: from Ujamaa to Villagisation,” in Bismarck Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt (eds), Towards Socialism in Tanzania, 125–144, Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Chachage, C and Cassam, A. (2010). Africa’s Liberation: The Legacy of Nyerere, Pambazuka Press/Fountain Publishers: Cape Town, Kampala and Dakar. Cornelli, E.M. (2012). A Critical Analysis of Nyerere’s Ujamaa: An Investigation of its Foundations and Values, PhD Thesis, Birmingham: University of Birmingham. De la Rue, A. (1973). “Ujamaa on the March,” in Cliffe Lionel and John Saul S. (eds), Socialism in Tanzania, Vol. 2 Policies: An Interdisciplinary Reader, 40–52, Nairobi: East African Publishing House. Duggan, W., R. and Civille, J.R. (1976). Tanzania and Nyerere: A Study of Ujamaa and Nationhood, New York: Orbis Books. El Saadawi, N. (2010). “President Nyerere Talks to El Musawaar,” in C. Chachage and C. Annar (eds), Africa’s Liberation: The Legacy of Nyerere, 7–18, Cape Town, Kampala and Dakar: Pambazuka Press / Fountain Publishers. The interview was in 1984 but was not published until 2010. Etieyibo, E. (2009). David Gauthier’s Moral Contractarianism and the Problem of Secession, PhD Thesis. Edmonton: University of Alberta. Etieyibo, E. (2017a). “Ubuntu and the Environment,” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, Afolayan, Adeshina and Falola, Toyin (eds), 633–657, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Etieyibo, E. (2017b). “Moral Education, Ubuntu and Ubuntu-inspired Communities,” South African Journal of Philosophy, 36(2): 311–325. Etieyibo, E. (2017c). “Ubuntu, Cosmopolitanism and Distribution of Natural Resources,” Philosophical Papers, 46(1):139–162. Etieyibo, E. (2022). “On the One Concept and Many Accounts of African Ethics,” in Jonathan O. Chimakonam, Edwin Etieyibo and Ike Odimegwu (eds), Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy, 125–143, Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. Fouéré, M. (2014). “Julius Nyerere, Ujamaa, and Political Morality in Contemporary Tanzania,” African Studies Review, 57(1):1–24. Fox, C. (2018). “Hypothetical Consent and the Bindingness of Obligations,” in Edwin Etieyibo (ed.), Perspectives in Social Contract Theory. Council for Research in Values and Philosophy 85–107. Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Gauthier, D. (1986). Moral by Agreement, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilabert, P. (2015). “The Socialist Principle ‘From Each According to Their Abilities, to Each According to Their Needs,’ ” Journal of Social Philosophy, 46(2): 197–225.

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Gilabert, P. and O’Neill, M. (2019). “Socialism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socialism/. Glickman, H. (1967). “Dilemmas of Political Theory in an African Context: The Ideology of Julius Nyerere,” in A. Butler and A. Castagno (eds), Boston University Papers on Africa: Transition in African Politics, 195–223, New York: Praeger Publishers. Green, R. H. (1995). “Vision of Human Centered Development: A Study in Moral Economy,” in C. Legum and G. Mmari (eds), Mwalimu: The Influence of Nyerere, 80–107, London, Dar es Salaam and Trenton: Britain Tanzania Society, James Currey, Mkuki Na Nyota and Africa World Press. Harrington, M. (1989). Socialism: Past and Future. New York: Little, Brown & Co. Hatch, J. (1976). Two African Statesmen: Kaunda of Zambia and Nyerere of Tanzania, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Haussler, P. (2009). The Leadership for Democratic Development in Tanzania: The Perspective of Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere During the First Decade of Independence: A Hermeneutical Dialogue with Mwalimu, Dar es Salaam: Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation. Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan, Tuck, R. (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Hyden, G. (1982). Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry, London: Heinemann. Ibhawo, B. and Dibua, J. I. (2003). “Deconstructing Ujamaa: The Legacy of Julius Nyerere in the Quest for Social and Economic Development in Africa,” African Journal of Political Science, 8(1): 59–83. Kaitilla, S. (1990/2007). “The Struggle for Housing Provision in Tanzania: A Case of Confusing Policies,” Housing Studies, 5(1): 59–67, DOI: 10.1080/02673039008720673 (Published online, April 12, 2007: 59–67). Kimambo, I.N. and Temu, A.J. (eds) (1969/2012). A History of Tanzania. Nairobi: East African Publishing House for Historical Association of Tanzania. Lal, P. (2015). African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/ CBO9781316221679. Levine, A. (1988). Arguing for Socialism. London: Verso. Locke, J. (1689/1988). Two Treatise of Government, Peter Laslett (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mascarenhas, A. (1981). “After Villagisation – What?” in Mascarenhas, Adolpfo, “After Villagisation – What?” in Bismarck Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt (eds), Towards Socialism in Tanzania, 145–165, Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Mbilinyi, S.M. (1974). “Economic Struggle of TANU Government” in G. Ruhumbika (ed.), Towards Ujamaa: Twenty Years of TANU Leadership, 59–107, Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau.

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Metz, T. (2007). “Toward an African Moral Theory,” Journal of Political Philosophy 15(3): 321–341. Mohiddin, A. (1968). “Ujamaa: A Commentary on President Nyerere’s Vision of Tanzanian Society,” African Affairs, 67(267): 130–143. Ngombale-Mwiru, K. (1973).“The Arusha Declaration on Ujamaa na Kujitegemea and the Perspectives for Building Socialism in Tanzania,” in Cliffe Lionel and John Saul S. (eds), Socialism in Tanzania, Vol. 2 Policies: An Interdisciplinary Reader, 52–60, Nairobi: East African Publishing House. Mkhize, N. (2008), “Ubuntu and Harmony: An African Approach to Morality and Ethics,” in Nicolson, R (ed.), Persons in Community: African Ethics in a Global Culture, 35–44, Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Nyerere, J. K. (1967). Freedom and Unity/Uhuru na Umoja: A Selection from Writings and Speeches 1952–1965: Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Nyerere, J.K. (1973). Freedom and Development/Uhuru na Maendeleo, A Selection From Writings and Speeches 1968–1973, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Nyerere, J.K. (1974). Man and Development, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Nyerere, J.K. (1976). Freedom and Socialism/Uhuru na Umoja, A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 1965–1967, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Nyerere, J.K. (1977). Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Nyerere, J.K. (1987). “Ujamma – The Basis of African Socialism,” The Journal of Pan African Studies, 1(1): 4–11. This is an excerpt from Julius K. Nyerere’s (1977), Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Nyerere, J.K. (1998). “Leaders Must not be Masters,” in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), African Philosophy: An Anthology, 77–80, Oxford: Blackwell. Nyerere, J.K. (2000). Africa Today and Tomorrow, 2nd edition, Dar es Salaam: Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation. Nyerere, J.K. (2011). Freedom, Non-Alignment and South-South Co-operation: A Selection From Speeches, 1974–1999, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Nsekela, A.S. (1974). “Public Enterprise as an Instrument of Economic Development in Tanzania,” in G. Ruhumbika (ed), Towards Ujamaa: Twenty Years of TANU Leadership, 108–146, Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau. Ollman, Bertell, ed. (1998). Market Socialism: The Debate among Socialists. New York: Routledge. Osabu-Kle, D. T. (2000). Compatible Cultural Democracy: The Key to Development in Africa, Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Oyowe, A. O. and Etieyibo, E. (2018). “Ubuntu and Social Contract Theory,” in Edwin Etieyibo (ed.), Perspectives in Social Contract Theory, 343–365, Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

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Ramose, R.M. (2002). African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, Harare: Mond Books. Rappoport, A. (1924). Dictionary of Socialism, London: T. Fischer Unwin. Rawls, J. (1971) (Revised in 1999). A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Roemer, J. (1994). A Future for Socialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rugumamu, S. M. (1997). Lethal Aid: The Illusion of Socialism and Self-Reliance in Tanzania, Asmara, Eritrea and Trenton: Africa World Press. Ruhumbika, G. ed. (1974). Towards Ujamaa: Twenty Years of TANU Leadership, Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau. Stone, P. (2018). “Consent, Contract and Autonomy,” in Edwin Etieyibo (ed.), Perspectives in Social Contract Theory, 29–59, Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. TANU, Dar es Salaam (1967). The Arusha Declaration and TANU’s Policy on Socialism and Self Reliance, Dar es Salaam: Published by the Publicity Section, TANU, Dar es Salaam. Tutu, D. (1988). “Sermon in Birmingham Cathedral” April 21, 1988, transcript published by the Committee for Black Affairs, Diocese of Birmingham, 4–5. Wright, E.O. (2016). “How to Think About (And Win) Socialism,” Jacobin, 4.27.16. Available at https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/erik-olinwright-real-utopias-capitalism-socialism/ (Accessed May 5, 2020).

Glossary Archimedean standpointt In general description, this refers to a hypothetical standpoint from which one can objectively perceive or engage with the subject of inquiry. And in moral discourse, this is a point of view that is detached and objective, or a standpoint of objectivity and from where one makes decision that are inclusive or universal. Africa Reference to the geographical space of a continent that is inhabited predominantly by indigenous or dark/darker skin people. African philosophy Philosophy that takes African cultural elements (African culture, values, and worldview) as relevant to philosophical practice and engagement. African socialism This is a brand of socialism that takes on socialist principles and policies, but which are denominated by or reflect African cultural elements (African culture, values, and worldview). Brotherhood This refers to the idea of communal relationship or kinship relationship as brothers (and sisters) and as belonging to

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the same or one common family who are bound by the common good and service for the family. Communal Means collective or something for common use or shared by all members of a community. Communalistic/communalism Concerns the community and places emphasis on communal values or the common good. Descriptive That which is based on fact or real or actual state of affairs; something that is known to have happened or to exist or relating to reality. Doctrinaire socialism Related to the propagation of socialism in theory and in isolation from its practice or movements of the working class. Familyhood This is about the idea of communal relationship or kinship relationship as brothers (and sisters) and as belonging to the same or one common family who are bound by the common good and service for the family. Freerider This is a freeloader or a person who enjoys or takes advantage of some benefit from others or resources or public goods or services of a communal nature but do not pay for them or under-pay for them. Freeloader Refers to a free rider or person who takes advantage of the kindness or generosity of others or takes things from others or is supported by or seeks support from others without paying for them or giving anything in return or adequately paying for them. Hypothetical This refers to something conceptual or imaginary rather than something real or actual state of affairs. Hypothetical device Some form of thought experiment where one does employ some imagination by proposing what some states of affairs will be under some idealized conditions. Ideological This concerns a set of beliefs and values which has to do with a system of ideas and ideals in the context of economic or political theory and policy. Kinship relationship This is about a relationship that is based on blood, marriage, adoption, and social ties. Kiswahili (Swahili) A Bantu language that is spoken predominantly in East and Central Africa. Linguistic Relating to language or the meaning of words, concepts, or expressions in a language. Linguistic device Used in the context of language or the meaning of words, concepts or expressions in a language (i.e. the use of a

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term in a language and what it means and how such meaning imposes certain obligations). Marxism Refers to the political, social and economic principles, and policies advocated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their followers or historical materialism (i.e. the socioeconomic analysis or materialist interpretation of historical development). Normative (normatively) This concerns norms or standards or rules relating to behavior. Or the prescription or prescribing of rules or norms of behavior. Scientific socialism This relates to the predictions of social, economic, and material phenomena and how historical trends and forces are determined by violent means as part of achieving socialist goals. Socialism This describes a political, social, and economic theory of social and economic organization which advocates for the public or communal ownership or regulation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of resources. Tanzania A country in East Africa. Ubuntu A Bantu concept that is associated with the aphorism, “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore, I am” or an African worldview that defines a person through other persons or takes a person to exist through other persons. Ujamaa This is a Kiswahili or Swahili concept that literally means “brotherhood,” “familyhood” or “extended family” and is used as reference for values that relate to the traditional kinship communalism in Africa. Veil of ignorance This is a thought experiment that connects to a moral Archimedean standpoint whereby one or decision makers are denied access to any information that will prevent them from making decisions that are impartial and fair to everyone. Weltanschauung Refers to the worldview or a particular philosophy or view of existence or reality of either an individual or group. We-mode of being This is the notion that takes the community to be important for the individual and as a catalyst for the manifestation or ground for the possibility of the expression of the conception of the good of every member of society. Worldview A set of beliefs and values relating to basic aspects of reality that ground and influence cognition, knowledge, behavior and action; or a comprehensive understanding or view of the world from a particular perspective.

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33 Wu wei Yuan Zhang1and Douglas L. Berger

The Dao De Jing, one of early China’s greatest philosophical works, was slowly composed and compiled between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE, and it eventually became the foundational text of practicing Daoist communities. Daoists are followers of 䚃 dao, the “course,” “path,” or “way” that nature originates and unfolds, and try to emulate dao’s creativity in their physical, social, political, and spiritual lives. Daoism became one of the three major traditions of Chinese religious and philosophical thought and practice, along with Confucianism and Buddhism. Of all the ideas mediated through more than 300 English translations of the Dao De Jing (hereafter DDJ) few have attracted more attention than the notion of ❑⛪ wu wei. Instead of having only one possible translation or definition, we will show that in the text, one finds wu wei given three primary meanings. These meanings are associated with (1) preventing potentially serious problems by handling them in their early stages of development; (2) using discretion and restraint in guiding things toward the flourishing conditions of life; and (3) generating things without claiming dominion over them. Teasing out these interpretations will show why, in our view, wu wei has a range of meanings and practical applications. Sometimes translations render wu wei in its only apparently literal sense as “non-action,” “not doing” or “doing nothing” (Legge 1891, LaFarge 1992, Moeller 2007). This does not entail that the translators take the meaning of

1

Professor Zhang’s contributions to this chapter were supported by her funded project, entitled “On the History and Effective Development of the Dao De Jing’s Dissemination Overseas” Approval No. 19BZS143.

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wu wei to be literally and simplistically “doing nothing.” Sometimes the phrase is said to characterize wu wei as done either by someone who acts “invisibly” like the dao of nature itself or by someone whose mind is “empty” and so does not value prevailing social standards and norms. Other treatments construe wu wei as “actionless activity” (Waley 1958), “acting non-coercively” (Ames and Hall 2003) or “effortless action” (Slingerland 2003). These readings tend to emphasize the internal state of mind or habituated disposition of the one who practices wu wei, someone tranquil, undesiring, and non-coercive. We do agree that these descriptions correspond well to how wu wei is discussed in particular selections of the DDJ. However, wu wei is not treated in a uniform fashion by different Daoist texts, or even within the DDJ itself. The DDJ treats wu wei, in specific passages, as a variety of approaches to doing things, and it focuses more on the practical, political, and cosmic results of wu wei than on the internal states of the Daoist practitioner (Fraser 2007, 101; Creel 1982). To some extent, a focus on wu wei’s lexical meaning in classical Chinese can help. In the expression wu wei, the particle ❑ wu may have originally meant “losing” (ӑ wang) something after it was initially possessed or present (ᴹ you), and eventually came to mean “lacking” something instead of “having” it (Pang 2005: 50–57). Wei ⛪, both as it is defined in the works of the Mohists, another early philosophical school of ethics, language, and logic, and as it is used by the early Confucian thinker Xunzi, meant to act for the purpose of achieving some predetermined end or to “regard” something as possessing a certain function (Graham 2003: 209–210, Hutton 2014: 248– 253). However, a literal philological treatment will not encompass all the things wu wei describes in the DDJ either. We therefore offer throughout this chapter our own translations of selected chapters of the DDJ in order to demonstrate how wu wei is used in specific situations to refer to one of the three possible kinds of action we classify here. In the passages below, we will leave the expression wu wei untranslated, to highlight its specific descriptions by the selected chapters. In taking this approach, we do not mean to suggest that wu wei should always be left untranslated or that previous translations should not be trusted. We do so to identify for the reader where the expression sits in each passage, and then explain what we believe to be its specific and distinct meanings in each instance. The first aspect of wu wei, preventing potentially serious problems by handling them in early stages of development, is revealed in our first group of passages. These passages seem directly addressed to those rulers who

Wu wei

would wish to be wise in the leadership of their states. Specifically, in its historical context, many chapters of the DDJ are addressed to rulers during a 250-year long civil war called the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE), where states were always in danger of attack both from foes and internal rebellion. Possible problems faced rulers at every turn, so they needed advice on how to prevent them from arising. Chapter 63, in part, reads: Enact wu wei, make a task without tasks, taste without tasting . . . Plan for the difficult while it is easy, work at what is large while it is small: all difficult tasks under heaven must start with what is easy; all large tasks under heaven must start with what is small. This is why sages are not deterred from achieving greatness, and thus are able to complete their greatness. Leaders who easily make promises must lack trust, what is taken too lightly must lead to many difficulties. This is why sages plan for the difficult, and thus have no difficulties in the end.

Here, sages are to anticipate problems and solve them before complications arise that can be overwhelming and are not to promise too much before bringing something to fruition. The three directives that open the chapter, (1) enacting wu wei; (2) handling affairs without assigning the people burdensome tasks; and (3) tasting without “savoring” (Ames and Hall 2003: 175), are the means to such prevention. These latter two directives appear to discourage rulers from either imposing unwanted missions upon the populous and from indulging their own desires. Demand too much and people will resist. Spoil too much and people will get carried away. Promise too much and the people will lose trust, a theme strongly echoed by DDJ 17. Create no difficulties for the populace so they will create no difficulties for the realm. This message is reaffirmed by the very next chapter, 64, which we translate only in part. What is at rest is easy to hold. What is not yet an omen is easy to plan for. What is brittle is easily dissolved, what is minute is easily dispersed, Act upon it while it is not yet present, order it while it is not yet disordered . . .

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Those who merely act lose, those who merely obsess over it fail. Because of wu wei, the sage is thus without losses, without obsession, and thus without failure. When taking on tasks, the common people always, just on the verge of completing them, yet lose. With care at the beginning, rather than at the end, their tasks would instead be without loss.

Here, the wu wei of the sage is contrasted with the merely impulsive action (⛪ wei) of the “common people” (≁ min). The idea is that mere action or reaction does not take sufficient account of possible difficulties and dangers at the beginning of a task; this is why people fail before their aims are fulfilled. These chapters then explicitly formulate wu wei as a kind of prophylactic action, in that it prevents disasters from arising due to unanticipated complications. The second variety of wu wei in the DDJ, using discretion and restraint in guiding things toward flourishing circumstances of life, is also required of rulers. It is obvious to the authors of the following stanzas that producing societies free of internal conflict, poverty and manipulation by opportunists is best. The restraint of wu wei is crucial for this in the early lines of chapter 2. All under heaven know, the making beautiful of beauty is itself ugly; all know, the making good of good itself does no good Thus, having and not having generate each other, difficult and easy become each other, long and short give form to each other, high and low subvert each other, tone and sound merge with each other, before and behind follow each other. This is how the sage handles the task of wu wei, and practices the teaching of using no maxims. He initiates the myriad things but they do not depart. He generates but does not possess things, makes but does not dwell in them.

In time, gain and loss alternate; in time, what is easy and difficult alternate; in time, high and low change places; in time, single musical notes blend into harmonies. This fact is precisely what renders the “making” or “regarding”

Wu wei

(⛪ wei) of any putative social ideal like “beauty” or “goodness” so dangerous, for they, in time, become their respective opposites. What is good for one time may be bad for a later time, and what is constructive in one time becomes destructive in another time. This is why the passage contrasts this activity of ideal or norm-creation from the way the sage handles things with the paired “task of wu wei” and the “teaching of using no maxims” (н䀰 bu yan). Here, yan might be considered merely “spoken words,” but more likely connotes a meaning prevalent in Warring States literature, namely a “maxim” for conduct advocated by some philosophical community (Fraser 2014: 87–90). When any ruler defines a social ideal to which everyone must aspire at all times, they create a fixed form in a world of constant change, and when things change, those norms will undermine people rather than help them. The sage ruler must therefore restrain from declaring and mandating fixed norms for a society, and this restraint is here wu wei. It must again be noticed, however, that this kind of wu wei is itself something to be done (һ shi). Chapter 3 of the DDJ extends this advocacy of restraint to the distribution of resources in a society. Not employing worthies keeps commoners from fighting; not having commodities of precious rarity keeps commoners from committing theft. Not seeing what can be desired keeps the heart from chaos. The government of the sage is like this; it empties their hearts and fills their bellies, it weakens their aims and strengthens their bones. It ever keeps commoners without cunning, without desire. It keeps those foremost schemers from daring to act. By enacting wu wei, there will be nothing that is not well governed.

The opening lines of this stanza associate the presence of certain figures or commodities in a society with the arising of competition and conflict over them. The promotion of reputable village leaders (䌒 xian) is associated with contention (⡝ zheng), rare goods are associated with theft, the visibility of desirable things (Ⅲ yu) is associated with impulsive possessiveness. Now, too much competition for status and possessions will lead to their hoarding by the few and their scarcity among the many. Wu wei eliminates not only desires but also “cunning” (⸕ zhi), a pejorative sense of “knowing” found throughout the DDJ. After all, the availability of elevated status, lavish goods, and coveted possessions will create classes of “schemers” (⸕㘵 zhi zhe) who are all-too-willing to initiate “daring actions” (ᮒ⛪ gan wei) to obtain them.

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The ruler who puts wu wei into action (⛪❑⛪ wei wu wei) will prevent these developments by a certain kind of discretion, a discretion that carefully manages the distribution of what people need to survive relative to what people may covet and fight over. The wise ruler does not tell people to live simply, but instead unnoticeably creates the environment, the circumstances within which people will live simply. The third sense of wu wei in the DDJ, which involves generating things without claiming dominion over them, has a distinctly cosmic or natural dimension, beyond the merely practical ends of the first two kinds of wu wei and the cultivation necessary to attain them. Wu wei is how nature itself creates things, completing them, but without wanting to possess them, as in DDJ 37. Dao is constantly wu wei, and yet there is nothing (wu) it does not do (bu wei). If kings and nobles could abide by this, the ten thousand things would transform themselves. If, transforming, they yet take up desires, I would pacify them by using nameless raw material. Nameless raw material is, from the beginning, and always will be without desire. Without desiring, they will become tranquil, and all under heaven will order themselves.

Unlike inferior rulers who try to change things in ways that accord with their desires, the wise ruler emulates dao, which creates things without desiring that they fulfil any purpose assigned to them before they live. Dao uses only the “uncarved wood” (⁨ pu) or raw materials of the world to shape the ten thousand things; after that, dao lets things order themselves (㠚ᇊ zi ding). This theme of creating the world and yet not imposing anything upon it, permitting natural processes to take their course is reiterated in DDJ 43. By not imposing order on the created world, but letting order emerge from its interactions and processes, dao provokes no resistance from the world. The softest thing under heaven can overcome the hardest thing under heaven. What is without substance enters what is without cracks, and from this I know the advantage of wu wei. The teaching of using no maxims the advantage of wu wei are rarely grasped under heaven.

Wu wei

Just as hard substances are eroded by soft ones, and just as things that have no cracks (❑䯃 wu jian) in them can only be penetrated by things not made of concrete matter (❑ᴹ wu you), wu wei can create and pervade the world, but without being noticed by anyone in it. This parallel of dao and the sage setting the world in motion and letting order emerge from it without proclaiming its dominion, are found also in DDJ 2 above, 25, 29, 42 and 48. We believe these passages clearly show that, in the DDJ, wu wei should not be thought of simply as “non-action” or “non-agency.” On the contrary, in every instance, wu wei describes patterns of conduct that accomplish fortunate ends. Perhaps these preventative, discreet and unimposingly creative functions of wu wei in the DDJ make it a kind of deliberate but undomineering ordering of things and provides a way that a sage can emulate how dao makes the world. In the DDJ then, not to mention across a broad swath of Chinese philosophical texts, wu wei does not have one invariant meaning, but a richly abundant range of them.

References Ames, Roger and Hall, David (2003). Daodejing Making This Life Significant—A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine Books. Creel, Harlee (1982). What is Taoism? and Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fraser, Chris (2014). The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists, New York, Columbia University Press. Fraser, Chris (2007). “Review: Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China,” Philosophy East and West, 57(1): 97–106. Graham, A.C. (2003). Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China, La Salle, IL: Open Court. Hutton, Eric (2014). Xunzi: The Complete Text, Princeton: Princeton University Press. LaFarge, Michael (1992). The Tao of the Tao Te Ching, Albany : State University of New York Press. Legge, James (1891). Tao Te King: Sacred Books of the East, Vol.XXXIX [G]. London: Oxford University Press. Moeller, Hans-Georg (2007). Daodejing (Laozi): A Complete Translation and Commentary, Chicago: Open Court. Pang, Pu (2005). “Talking about wu” in One Divided into Three: Pang Pu’s Collected Works, vol. 4. ed. by Liu Yiqun, Shandong, Shandong University Press (ᓎᵤ˖lj䈤❑NJˈ䖭ࡈ䍫㗔㕆ljᓎᵤ᮷䳶NJㅜধ ljа࠶ѪйNJˈኡьབྷᆖࠪ⡸⽮).

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Slingerland, Edward (2003). Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China, New York: Oxford University Press. Waley, Arthur (1958). The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought, New York: Grove Press.

Glossary dao o (䚃) (䚃) Often “the way;” one of the key concepts in the Dao De Jing g, referring to the emergence and unfolding of the whole world and the ways in which one should live in it. (䚃ᗧ㏃) Often The Classic of the Way and its Virtue/ Dao De Jing g (䚃ᗧ㏃) Powerr; a Chinese classic first written between 300–165 BCE that eventually became the premier text of the Daoist tradition. pu ⁨) Often “uncarved block;” here “uncarved wood” or “raw u ((⁨) materials;” the state of things or people before they are shaped and crafted for goals or purposes extrinsic to their natures. sage ((sheng sheng ren;; 㚆Ӫ 㚆Ӫ)) According to the Dao De Jing Jing, g, an ideal practitioner of dao, often also a ruler, who manages affairs by means of wuwei wuwei.i. wu weii ((❑⛪) ❑⛪) Often translated as “non-action;” here (1) preventing potentially serious problems by handling them in the early stages of development; (2) using discretion and restraint in guiding things toward fortunate conclusions; and (3) generating things without claiming dominion over them.

34 Xin (Heart-mind) Dascha Düring

The concept of ᗳ or xin, often translated as “heart-mind,” plays a central and multifaceted role in classical Chinese philosophy. In its most basic sense, xin refers to the heart as a physical organ located in the chest. But xin can also denote the faculty of thought, of perception, and of feeling—in classical Chinese thought these are not, as they are in some prominent strands of western philosophy, considered as categorically separated faculties or abilities. Although, the concept appears across the works of numerous different Chinese philosophers, this chapter will focus on the idea as it appears in the foundational writings of the Confucian thinker, Mengzi (Mencius). In the philosophy of Mengzi1 the concept of xin appears as the nexus in which the different human abilities are brought together. (Mencius 2009) And a pure or healthy xin is one in which these abilities are morally attuned.

Xin as the Seat of Thought, Perception, and Feeling Mengzi describes xin in dialogue with his disciple Gongduzi. The latter asks Mengzi how it is possible that, although all human beings are equally 1

Mengzi, also known as Mencius, was a fourth century BCE Confucian philosopher. He is sometimes called “the Second Sage,” meaning that in the tradition of Confucianism Mengzi was second in importance only to Kongzi (Confucius) himself. Mengzi’s teachings are collected in a bundle of anecdotes and conversations entitled The Mengzi, which was probably drawn up by his disciples in the late fourth century BCE. Mengzi’s teachings were included in the Confucian canon that formed the basic study material for the Imperial Exams as established during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) and have had profound influence on Chinese philosophy and culture.

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persons, some are བྷӪ, da ren or “great persons” whereas others are but ሿӪ, xiao ren or “small persons.” Mengzi had previously noted that the body has different parts—some belonging to བྷ億, da ti or the “great body” and some belonging to ሿ億, xiao ti or the “small body”—and proceeds to answer: Those who follow the part of themselves that is great become great persons, while those who follow the part that is small become small persons . . . The faculties of hearing and sight do not think and are obscured by things. When one thing comes into contact with another, it is led astray. The faculty of [xin] is to think. By thinking, it apprehends; by not thinking, it fails to apprehend. This is what Heaven has given to us. If we first establish the greater part of ourselves, then the smaller part is unable to steal it away. It is simply this that makes the great person. Mencius 2009, sec.: 6A15

The heart-mind, xin, is here introduced as the faculty of thinking. From this perspective, xin is distinct from desires and the senses, both of which human beings share with animals and which can easily be “obscured by things.” Indeed, Mengzi suggests that it is only because of the faculty of xin that, when combined with the senses, we are able to apprehend something clearly. When he states that there is no apprehension without thought, Mengzi portrays xin as the organ that structures and makes comprehensible perceptions that would otherwise have been blind. As such, he suggests that the senses alone cannot account for perception: the data delivered by the latter must be structured and possibly also interpreted by xin—by thought— in order to constitute genuine apprehension. And thus, Mengzi describes xin as the faculty of thinking without which not even perception would be possible. However, Mengzi does not therewith assume that the heart-mind is somehow opposed to the body. As we have seen, he describes xin as a bodily organ—as an organ of the “great body,” to be exact. And in this capacity the heart-mind also appears as the seat of emotion or feeling. In a passage that is often considered the locus classicus for interpreting Mengzi’s ethics and anthropology, the philosopher says: All human beings have a [xin] that cannot bear to see the suffering of others. The ancient kings had such a commiserating mind and, accordingly, a commiserating government. Having a commiserating mind, and effecting a commiserating government, governing the world was like turning something around on the palm of the hand . . . Here is why I say that all human beings have a [xin] that commiserates with others. Now, if anyone were to see a child

Xin (Heart-mind)

about to fall into a well, his [xin] would be filled with alarm, distress, pity, and compassion. That he would react accordingly is not because he would hope to use the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the child’s parents, nor because he would seek commendation with neighbors or friends, nor because he would hate the adverse reputation. From this it may be seen that one who lacks a [xin] that feels shame and aversion would not be human; one who lacks a [xin] that feels modesty and compliance would not be human; and one who lacks a [xin] that knows right from wrong would not be human. Mencius 2009, sec.: 2A6

Here, the heart-mind is introduced not as the faculty of thought but as the faculty of emotion. When we are confronted with a situation in which a human being suffers harm, or faces the threat of suffering harm, we show a natural emotional response—so Mengzi holds. In such situations, we feel “alarm, distress, pity, and compassion”: we feel connected with the human being under threat and experience such awareness of our shared humanity through a set of commiserating or otherwise sympathetic feelings. In this quality, xin appears not as thinking but as “prereflective feeling” in the “spontaneity of reaction prior to any deliberation” (Roetz 1993: 201). In cases like that of the endangered child, it is precisely the spontaneity of our emotional response in which our humanity is housed—if we were to show commiseration only upon deliberation, Mengzi credibly suggests, there would be something fundamentally lacking in the abilities that make us human. As such, it is clear that, for Mengzi, the heart-mind, xin, does not merely denote the faculty of thinking: it also denotes the ability of feeling or emotion, where the latter is unmediated by thought. And in this quality, xin is part of our embodiment in the deepest possible sense.2 Although Mengzi understands xin in this quality to pertain especially to an awareness of shared humanity, the philosopher holds that we can commiserate with animals too—and Mengzi praises the King of Qi when the latter witnesses the trembling of an ox before the slaughter and commands that the latter be spared and replaced by a sheep. Mengzi’s position is that the King has seen the ox and thus feels humaneness towards the latter, whereas he has had no interaction with the sheep and has no emotive connection to the latter. (Mencius 2009, sec.: 1A7). This, of course, raises questions about the scope of morality in Mengzi’s ethics, upon which I will touch in the second part of this contribution. But the important point here is that although

2

See also Garfield, Chapter 27 in this volume.

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Mengzi generally considers the commiserating xin as appealing to a shared humanity, the feeling of commiseration can be prompted by animals as well. In Mengzi’s philosophy, thus, xin appears as the seat of different human abilities: xin denotes the faculty of thinking, and because thought is necessary for perception, it is also the ground of the latter ability. Simultaneously, xin denotes the faculty of feeling: the spontaneous emotional proclivity toward goodness that is prereflective, unmediated by thought. As such, xin has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it refers to thought, to the mind insofar as it is distinct from desires and the senses; on the other hand, it refers to emotion, to our natural emotionality insofar as it is distinct from thought and what can be known by it. That makes “heart-mind” a well-chosen translation: it captures that xin is both a physical organ and an invisible force, that it has both cognitive and affective dimensions. As we shall see, xin is not considered the seat of these differentiated faculties merely in a descriptive sense: xin is, importantly, also a normative concept.

Xin as the Seat of Morality In the above-cited sections, we already find allusions to Mengzi’s view of moral self-cultivation. In section 6A15, Mengzi claims that what distinguishes the great person from the small person is that the former “establishes the greater part of themselves,” that is: their xin. In the quotation from section 2A6, we see that the philosopher connects the emotional response or the feeling of commiseration to ideas of what makes us truly human—in the normative or moral rather than the descriptive or biological sense of the word. This suggests that Mengzi understands self-cultivation in terms of developing the inborn moral feelings that are seated in the heart-mind, xin, which is indeed how he proceeds to flesh this out. Directly following the passage from 2A6 cited above, Mengzi proceeds to say: The [xin]’s feeling of pity and compassion is the sprout of ӱ [ren or “humaneness”]; the [xin]’s feeling of shame and aversion is the sprout of 㗙 [yi or “rightness”]; the [xin]’s feeling of modesty and compliance is the sprout of ⿞ [li or “propriety”]; and [xin]’s sense of right and wrong is the sprout of Ც [zhi or “wisdom”] . . . Human beings have these four sprouts just as they have four limbs. For one to have these four sprouts and yet to say of oneself that one is unable to fulfil them is to injure oneself, while to say that one’s ruler is unable to fulfil them is to injure one’s ruler. When we know how to enlarge and bring to fulfilment these four sprouts that are within us, it will be

Xin (Heart-mind)

like a fire beginning to burn or a spring finding an outlet. If one is able to bring them to fulfilment, they will be sufficient to enable him to protect “all within the four seas”; if one is not, they will be insufficient even to enable him to serve his parents. Mencius 2009, sec.: 2A6

Self-cultivation, Mengzi here explains, entails nourishing the “moral sprouts”—the xin in its aspect as the moral feelings of humaneness, rightness, propriety, and wisdom—that are as natural to human beings as are their limbs. Such nourishing or fulfilment, however, does not come about automatically. Indeed, we must actively seek to cultivate our xin in this manner and this is something, Mengzi laments, that only great or exemplary persons tend to do (Mencius 2009, secs.: 6A6; 6A10). But since our capacity for morality is not external but native or innate and resides within our heartmind, moral self-cultivation is something that all human beings are capable of, in principle. That means that a beggar in the street is just as able to cultivate their moral potential as are Kings and Queens. “All the ten thousand things are complete within [us]” (Mencius 2009, sec.: 7A4)—all we need to do is look inside ourselves and tend to the moral sprouts waiting to be nourished.3 The question is what this entails more concretely. And although Mengzi does not elaborate the practical implications of his idea of moral selfcultivation systematically (and there exists considerable scholarly debate on this issue), he does give us a set of clues that help us take up the latter task. A first clue concerns the idea of extending one’s moral feelings. As we have seen, Mengzi thinks that all human beings have a natural emotional proclivity towards goodness. And his suggestion is that we must nourish this proclivity by extending it to ever-widening contexts: All human beings have that which they cannot bear. Getting this attitude to reach what they can bear is humaneness. All human beings have that which they will not do. Getting this attitude to reach to that which they will do is rightness. When human beings are able to bring to fulfillment the [xin] that desires not to harm others, their humaneness is inexhaustible, and when they are able to bring to fulfillment the [xin] that refuses to break or to jump over a wall, their rightness is inexhaustible. Mencius 2009, sec.: 7B31

Moral self-cultivation, Mengzi suggests, involves taking the moral feelings that we experience in contexts close to home—things that we “cannot bear” 3

See also Kalmanson, Chapter 29 in this volume.

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or things that we “will not do”—and extending these to contexts in which we may not immediately experience these feelings. For example, by “treating the elders in one’s own family as elders should be treated and by extending this to the elders of other families, and by treating the young of one’s own family as the young ought to be treated and by extending this to the young of other people’s families,” in this way do we treat other people as is morally required and cultivate our heart-mind (Mencius 2009, sec. 1A7). Mengzi recurrently stresses that this is not an exercise of teaching an old dog new tricks. Moral self-cultivation as an exercise of extending the feelings of commiseration, compassion, and care to those who are not close to us is a process of training our original, child-like xin (Mencius 2009, secs. 4B12; 7A15)—it is thus not the acquiring of a new capability, but rather the fulfilment of something we innately have (see McRae 2011 for a detailed discussion). Still, the reader may wonder what training moral self-cultivation so conceived asks of them in their everyday lives. Mengzi gives us a second set of clues that may help us make this idea of nourishing our xin still a little more concrete. When discussing how it is possible to grow or nourish something, Mengzi gives the following analogy: Now, chess is one of the minor arts, but without concentrating one’s [xin] and applying one’s will, one cannot succeed in it. Chess Qiu is the finest chess player anywhere in the state; suppose that Chess Qiu is teaching two people to play chess. One of them concentrates his [xin] and applies his will, listening only to Chess Qiu. The other, while listening to him, is actually occupying his whole [xin] with a swan that is approaching. He thinks about bending his bow, fitting his arrow, and shooting the swan. While he is learning alongside the other man, he does not compare with him. Is this because his intelligence is not comparable? I would say that this is not so. Mencius 2009, sec.: 6A9

The point Mengzi makes here is subtle, and concerns focus. What we should do when we set out to cultivate our xin is neither to neglect our moral feelings, nor to try to make them grow by force. Rather, we should carefully train our heart-mind to focus its attention on the morality of situations and persons: to perceive situations in moral terms, undistracted by other thoughts or desires, and allow our heart-mind to emotionally respond as it is naturally inclined to do (see also Sung 2016: 635–636). On this reading, moral selfcultivation is not first and foremost about action. It is about both our focus and perceptions: it asks us to change the way that we look at the world so that we can come to see it in moral terms. So that, for example, when we witness a child about to fall into a well, all we see is the impeding suffering of

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the child and its family (and do not even register the opportunity to ingratiate ourselves with the child’s parents or note the nuisance of having to get our new shoes wet). In this way, when we witness the elderly lady from across the street struggle to carry her groceries, all we perceive is someone to whom we ought to lend a helping hand; just as we would offer help to our grandma. Such spontaneous moral perception, in Mengzi’s view, cannot be enforced. But it can be trained, by softly but continuously guiding our focus to the moral dimensions of the situations we encounter in our daily lives and by teaching ourselves to perceive and respond as moral beings—as beings with a morally attuned xin. Only against this background, Mengzi seems to think, does the question of moral action come into the picture at all.

References McRae, E. (2011). “The Cultivation of Moral Feelings and Mengzi’s Method of Extension,” Philosophy East and West 61(4): 587–608. Mengzi (2009). Mencius, trans. I. Bloom, New York: Columbia University Press. Roetz, H. (1993). Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age: A Reconstruction under the Aspect of the Breakthrough toward Postconventional Thinking, Albany : State University of New York Press. Sung, W. (2016). “Mencius and Xunzi on Xing (Human Nature),” Philosophy Compass 11 (1): 632–641.

Glossary Extension The practice of extending our natural emotional proclivity towards goodness to objects/contexts that do not initially elicit these. Part of Mengzi’s view of moral self-cultivation. Moral perception The activity of training our heart-mind to focus its attention to the morality of situations and persons. Part of Mengzi’s view of moral self-cultivation. Moral sprouts Natural, innate moral feelings of humaneness, rightness, propriety, and wisdom. Starting point of Mengzi’s discussions of moral self-cultivation. Xin (ᗳ) Heart-mind, central concept in Mengzi’s philosophy. Refers to the heart as a physical organ located in the chest, but can also denote the faculty of thought, perception, and feeling. A pure or healthy xin is one in which these abilities are morally attuned.

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Part III How We Express Ourselves 35 Concreteness 36 Conversationalism 37 Creativity 38 Diversity in Philosophy 39 Dōtoku (Expression) 40 Embodied Practice 41 Kata 42 Li (Ritual) 43 Noh Theater Mask 44 Okwu 45 Tōjisha kenkyū (participant-led research)

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35 Concreteness Paul Ziche

“Concreteness” as a Philosophical Virtue Concreteness may easily be, or should at least be, the most important philosophical virtue of all: “Concreteness” translates directly into the imperative to get as closely as possible to reality in its full complexity,1 into the phenomenological maxim “Towards the things themselves” (e.g. Husserl 1901: 10); concreteness requires us to abstain from hasty generalizations and thereby asks us to remain precise, careful, unprejudiced and critical; concreteness encourages the creative use of images, of real-world cases and examples and thus protects philosophy from “mental aridity” (this term in Wahl 2017: 43; on Wahl, see Moore/Schrift 2017). Put yet differently: Concreteness requires us to rejoice in irreducible complexity, and to make irreducible complexity into the very center of philosophy. Given this potential of the concept, it is remarkable that “concreteness” has hardly received proportionate attention in philosophy. This may be explained, at least in part, by the rather curious fact that “concreteness” is a term that is not owned by a particular tradition or field within philosophy. Within modern western philosophy, a preliminary list of the relevant protagonists would have to include Hegel, Husserl, Dilthey and Max Weber, William James, Whitehead, Adorno, Jean Wahl, and Gabriel Marcel. The

1

“Fullness” is a key term in talking about “concreteness”; just a few examples: Wahl refers affirmatively to a cognate term in William James, “thickness” (Wahl 2017: 37); Hegel [1807a]: 14.

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discourse about concreteness, however, ranges yet broader. In the oeuvre of Kitarō Nishida, the towering figure in the Kyoto School and one of the important mediators between Japanese philosophy and western traditions, key notions from the western discourse on concreteness are taken up, and these notions provide Nishida with a terminology that he puts to work in comparing Eastern and western styles of philosophizing (see Wilkinson 2016; Schultz 2012 on Nishida and Hegel). Doing justice to an object of philosophical understanding in an open, complex, unprejudiced way, that is, in a concrete way, is precisely what is needed in comparative philosophy. This chapter, therefore, tries to exploit the fact that the notion of “concreteness” is used prominently on both sides of the Eastern-western divide, and it does so by co-exploiting another, rather surprising notion in these concreteness-discourses, that of a “background,” that features equally prominently in important texts from both western and Eastern discourses.

What “Concreteness” is Not, and What It May Be: Hegel and Others The most powerful statement in favor of concreteness is given by Hegel, in his brief text “Who thinks abstractly?” from 1807 (Hegel [1807b]; on Hegel, see also Christensen 1986). In witty and strongly polemical prose, Hegel denounces philosophy’s predilection for abstraction. Giving in to abstract reasoning is, for Hegel, an indication of intellectual weakness: Abstract reasoning reduces a complex entity or event to just one or a few features. The attitude of abstract reasoning is one of subsumption (viewing a complex being as nothing but a case under a general law) or of explanation (again, the explanation of a special case via a general law). Hegel criticizes this way of reasoning as being simplistic, of failing to grasp what it wants to understand, namely an individual object or event, and also of being unable to arrive at ethically sound judgements. His most prominent example is that of a murderer who is judged, in all of his aspects, based on the single fact of his being a murderer: This person has done something evil, thus he is assumed to be, without presenting further evidence, ugly, unhappy, in short, a person with only negative characteristics. Concrete reasoning is not subsumptive or reductive; it goes beyond the apparent foundational status of immediate perception. Concrete reasoning

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attempts to take into account the full, yet unified and integrated, complexity of an individual. Hegel’s system presents us with a sustained progression towards increasing concreteness (this is what his ‘dialectical method’ wants to achieve). Concreteness, then, cannot be understood via adding ever-new items to a list of properties describing an object or event; a being is concrete if it determines all of its aspects on the basis of its own internal constitution, where this may include its relations to other objects. Hegel’s examples of the state or of the living organism provide the paradigm cases for concrete objects; for a counterexample, look at his analysis of just pointing towards something that is identified as a “this there” – this form of deictic reference is, as he argues in the Phenomenology of Spirit, insufficient to pick out a concrete individual. Today, “concreteness” is discussed most extensively in psychosemantics where words are ascribed an abstract or concrete character, based upon Alan Paivio’s “dual coding” theory (e.g. Brysbaert et al. 2014; Paivio 1971; for abstract objects/terms, see Moltmann 2013). Typical definitions of “abstract” and “concrete” in these discussions fall way short of the level of sophistication that Hegel provides in that they define concreteness in terms of properties that can be identified via the senses or via direct (deictic) reference (Brysbaert et al. 2014: 906). On a more positive note, G.H. Sabine, professor at Cornell and Stanford, argues, in a paper from 1907, for an understanding of thought as a process of “concretion,” “at once the making explicit of what is implicit in naïve thought, and the making implicit in immediate experience of what is explicit in reflective thought” (Sabine 1907: 167). Sabine emphasizes that the relevant processes go both ways, from what, at first sight, looks naïve and direct to a more explicitly elaborated logical structure, and vice versa, from logical structures towards experience. In doing so, he presents results from yet another important discourse on concreteness: William James’ philosophy of “pure experience” or “radical empiricism.” Three important, and typically interrelated, strategies begin to emerge for how we might achieve concreteness, all of which are relevant for a methodology of comparative thinking: A (Hegelian-inspired) progression towards concreteness at the very end of a process of interacting with reality without ever losing contact with the experiential dimension; accepting the idea that the dimensions of feeling and of experiential access are not restricted to simple, immediate, mental episodes, but also apply to complex and abstract states or objects; going for a comprehensive anti-dichotomic mode of reasoning that everywhere emphasizes the interaction between, and thereby the irreducibility of, apparently dichotomic frameworks such as things and relations, background and foreground, the individual and its contexts.

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Concreteness, “Background” and “Bedding” as Metaphor and Method The self-sustaining, complex and spontaneously active organism offers the most important paradigm of concreteness. At first sight, therefore, it is surprising to see that the notion of a “background” becomes central to the discourse about concreteness. This term is used by Jean Wahl (who uses “fond” in the French original; Wahl 1932: 6) and by Kitarō Nishida. William James (to whom both Wahl and Nishida refer extensively; see also Krueger 2006) uses a similar, but more concrete term (James [1904]: 334): That of a “bedding” in the sense of the bedding in which a mosaic is set. The motivation for adopting these terms is pretty obvious: While the term “concrete” seems to refer to an individual that pops out from its context, that can stand on its own, it is clearly too simplistic to think that one can ever grasp an individual in its concreteness when one conceives of it as a stand-alone being. Being concrete means being understood in its full complexity, and this essentially includes the relations in which this individual stands. Note that “popping out” from a background also is a relational property that could not be had were it not by virtue of this background. In both Wahl and James, the role of the background is described in a highly complex fashion. Wahl characterizes the background of concrete reasoning as “nonrelational and yet unifying” (Wahl 2017: 37). He thus intends to capture the very fact of the “thickness” of reality that requires that we do not think in terms of a “primitive datum” to which, in a second step, relations become added. Relations, rather, need to be “included” in this primitive datum, or “they [i.e. the relations] translate something, a background.” What Wahl initiates here is a complex interplay in which none of the ingredients—the datum, relations, the background—is singled out, where traditional dichotomies between the immediate datum and larger contexts collapse. James’ metaphors become yet more complicated. He departs from an everyday understanding of a mosaic as a large number of colorful tiles embedded in a background (that becomes visible in the interstices between the tiles) of colorless and unstructured cement and offers the mosaic as a metaphor for experience. This relates to empiricist notions of isolated data bundled together by some kind of underlying framework, within which the big concepts from traditional philosophy (the Absolute, the transcendental

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Ego, substance) can be located.2 However, he profoundly changes this metaphor to arrive at what he calls a philosophy of “pure experience” or of “radical empiricism” (see James 1912). The standard empiricist picture is too atomistic; James eliminates the two-layered structure of data that are later combined into complex ideas, and removes the dichotomy between a shapeless background and sense data embedded into this background: “In radical empiricism there is no bedding; it is as if the pieces clung together by their edges, the transition experienced between them forming their cement” (James [1904]: 334). Again, in a textile metaphor, James sketches an “experiential tissue” that continuously can be extended. A yet broader discussion of the notion “background” is given in a brief paper by Nishida devoted to “Goethe’s metaphysical background” (“haikei”; Nishida [1931]). On the one hand, Nishida makes the notion of “background” very concrete by applying it to comparative art history. Examples include the important function of the paper carrying a brush drawing in Japanese art: In these drawings, the untouched background itself becomes visible, next to, beyond, behind, and interacting with the traces left by the brush. Nishida contrasts this aesthetic principle with European oil paintings from the high Renaissance in which each and every bit of the painting surface is shaped and colored and no empty spaces remain. On the other hand, Nishida extends the notion of the “background” into covering also temporal relations (the present before the background of the past; the past as making itself visible as the background for the present; past and present in their relation to the future; these ideas clearly are crucial to Zen philosophy). The complex relationship between an (in itself dynamic) background and individual events that stand out from this background he also uses for describing relations between ideas (e.g. the relation between a poet’s poetic writings and the author’s philosophical background ideas—poetry cannot be isolated from these background ideas, but neither of the two exhaust each other) or for metaphysical relations such as that between immanence and transcendence, for example in the relationship between God and a world that is created by God. Clearly, there are various instantiations and perhaps even forms of background-foreground relations. One of Nishida’s key moves is to show that the more concrete and more abstract forms of these relations themselves interrelate. One of his favourite examples, the block of marble from which

2

See also the textile metaphor of a tapestry in Wahl, with the very concretely appealing distinction between the backside of a tapestry (displaying the discrete stabilizing structure) and the colourful top side of the tapestry (Wahl 2017: 35).

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Michelangelo sculpts a statue, shows that the material notion of a background is complex in itself: “Michelangelo’s block of marble is not mere matter; it is, in itself, already an essential part of art. Just as our mind sees itself in itself, the personal is an image of eternity, mirrored in eternity”; “the background of the plastic art of Michelangelo must be called ‘deep’; in his art there is a vigorous force rising from the depth of an abyss” (Nishida [1931], 145; 147). Other than in the example of the brush drawing, for instance, the background matter in a statue is only explicitly present in unfinished works such as Michelangelo’s slaves or Rodin’s hands; but the material quality of the marble is visible in a statue throughout, again other than in paintings or drawings— or in poetry, to which Nishida wants to extend this way of reasoning. With such observations, the notion of the “background” starts to oscillate between concrete cases and larger conceptual implications. Nishida elaborates on this structure, and adopts a number of acoustic and musical metaphors for this oscillatory movement to characterize the interaction between a background and a foreground: That of “vibration” (Nishida [1931]: 146), of the “gentle sound of humanity” that can be related to the concreteness-capturing idea of a “full human life”, and acoustic notions such as “resonance” that he also finds in a poet such as Goethe (Nishida [1931]: 157–158, 149). This richly textured metaphorical field indicates how, for Nishida, the background is both always present and always taking up a subordinated function—this double function is shown here not to be a difficulty, a weakness of the background-foreground construction, but an important phenomenon in its own right that we can experience in a very distinct fashion.3 The fact that Nishida uses metaphors from music shows that he detects a strong potential for unification, for harmony here, together with a concrete experiential domain in which these ideals make themselves felt. In the final paragraph of his paper on the notion of the “background,” Nishida employs these notions in a comparative taxonomy in which he compares Greek, Christian-European, and Eastern styles of thought. Nothing in this taxonomy explicitly suggests an evaluative or hierarchical stance: When history is regarded as extinguished in the eternal past, something like the Greek civilization appears, and it takes everything as a shadow of eternity. On the other hand, when history is regarded as going to, and disappearing in the eternal future, something like the Christian civilization appears, and it takes everything as a road to eternity. When, however, history is thought of as

3 The classical text on pervasive, but frequently no longer visible metaphors, Lakoff and Johnson 1980, illustrates beautifully how very abstract notions and metaphorical strategies can go together.

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determination in the eternal Now, where past and future are extinguished in the present, then everything comes without a whence in its coming, and goes without a whither in its going, and that which is, is eternally what it is. Such a thinking flows in the depth of the civilization of the East, in which we have grown up. Nishida [1931]: 158–159

We can see here how his discussion of the “background” in terms of concreteness manages to turn the very traditional metaphysical notion of the “eternal Now” (in the context of concreteness, see, e.g., Marcel [1940]: 61) into a dynamic process: an eternal now is processual, but without a determinate origin or goal—just as concreteness is never simply given, but remains an inexhaustible task without, however, lapsing back into the unspecific longing for an unspecified fulfilment in the future.

Methodological Implications “Concreteness” indicates a highly ambitious way of referring to an individual object, and goes beyond classical empiricist epistemology in aiming at integrated, anti-dichotomic modes of reasoning. “Concreteness,” life, and interaction belong together (see James [1909]: 270); “concreteness” does not capture an individual as being isolated from its background, but views both as interrelated. It can induce both the precision that is required to get hold of the full richness of reality, and the openness of a non-reductive approach to reality. Crucially, it achieves this openness and generality not via abstraction, via leaving anything out, not by becoming simple or non-committal, but precisely the other way round, by getting ever closer to the full complexity of individual self-determination. Nishida’s emphasis upon the auditory metaphor of vibration can readily be translated, extending from the notion of “background,” into classical terms from hermeneutics: Concreteness is achieved precisely when and where a background becomes a context, and vice versa, and Nishida stresses that these dimensions do, in fact, always interact. The notion of “background” argues in vertical terms, in terms of a foundation that underlies higher surface levels; a “context” induces a horizontal ordering. This can fruitfully be applied in comparative issues: What we need to find, is a level of discourse in which the horizontal mode of non-hierarchical understanding (“context”) and the more clearly directional (“background”) modes of embedding, appropriating, reconstructing, do not simply coincide, but start to oscillate.

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References Brysbaert, M. et al. (2014), “Concreteness ratings for 40 thousand generally known English word lemmas,” Behavior Research Methods 46: 904–911. Christensen, Darrel E. (1986), The Search for Concreteness. Reflections on Hegel and Whitehead, Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press and Associated University Press. Hegel, G.W.F. (1807a/1970), Phänomenologie des Geistes in: G.W.F. Hegel, Werke vol. 3, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Hegel, G.W.F. (1807b/1970), “Wer denkt abstrakt?” in: G.W.F. Hegel, Werke, vol. 2, 575–581, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Husserl, E. (1901/1984), Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. I. Teil in: E. Husserl, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. XIX/1, The Hague: Nijhoff. James, W. (1904/2000), “A World of Pure Experience” in: W. James, Pragmatism and Other Writings, Gilles Gunn (ed.), 314–336, London: Penguin. James, W. (1909/1970), “Abstractionism and ‘Relativismus’ ” in: W. James, The Meaning of Truth. A Sequel to Pragmatism, 246–271, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. James, W. (1912), Essays in Radical Empiricism, London: Longman, Green, and Co. Krueger, J.W. (2006), “The Varieties of Pure Experience: William James and Kitaro Nishida on Concreteness and Embodiment,” William James Studies 1. Available online: https://williamjamesstudies.org/the-varieties-of-pureexperience-william-james-and-kitaro-nishida-on-consciousness-andembodiment/ (accessed September 16, 2021). Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marcel, G. (1940/1964), “An outline of a concrete philosophy” in: G. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, transl. R. Rosthal, 58–81, New York: Noonday Press. Moltmann, F. (2013), Abstract Objects & the Semantics of Natural Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, I.A. and A. D. Schrift (2017), “Existence, Experience, and Transcendence. An Introduction to Jean Wahl” in: J. Wahl, Transcendence and the Concrete. Selected Writings, ed by. I.A. Moore and A.D. Schrift, New York: Fordham University Press: 1–31. Nishida, K. (1931/1958), “Goethe’s metaphysical background” in: K. Nishida, Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness. Three Philosophical Essays, trans. R. Schinzinger, 143–159, Honolulu: East-West Center Press. Nishida, K. (1990), An Inquiry into the Good, trans. by M. Abe and Ch. Ives, New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Paivio, A. (1971), Imagery and Verbal Processes, New York: Holt, Rinchart, and Winston.

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Sabine, G.H. (1907), “The Concreteness of Thought,” The Philosophical Review 16: 154–169. Schinzinger, R. (1958), “Introduction” in: K. Nishida: Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness. Three Philosophical Essays, trans. R. Schinzinger, 1–65, Honolulu: East-West Center Press. Schultz, L. (2012), “Nishida Kitarō, G.W.F. Hegel, and the pursuit of the concrete: A dialectic of dialectics,” Philosophy East and West 62: 319–338. Wahl, J. (1932), Vers le concret. Études d’histoire de la philosophie contemporaine, Paris: Vrin. Wahl, J. (2017), Transcendence and the Concrete. Selected Writings, ed by. I.A. Moore and A.D. Schrift, New York: Fordham University Press. Wilkinson, R. (2016), Nishida and Western Philosophy, Abingdon: Routledge.

Glossary Abstract feelings The experiential qualities that characterize our experience of abstract concepts or states; example: “feeling of substance” (Jean Wahl). Abstraction, abstract reasoning Capturing a phenomenon under selective descriptions, for instance as a case under a general law. Background Authors such as Kitaro¯ Nishida, Jean Wahl, and William James use this term (and some of its cognates) to refer to the foundation of complex phenomena or experiences, without reducing this foundation to an explicitly stated set of first principles, laws, or basic ideas. The connotations of concrete instances of ‘background’ (such as the white paper as the background of drawing or the cement in which a mosaic is set) become crucially important for these authors. Bedding Term used by William James to indicate what is intended by ‘background’ (see there). Concreteness, concrete reasoning Doing justice to a phenomenon (concept, object, event, person, . . .) in terms that are specifically adequate to this phenomenon; capturing a phenomenon as an autonomous phenomenon, with the living organism as the typical paradigm; operating at the intersection between “background” (see there) and context. Deictic reference Identifying a phenomenon via directly pointing at it, and on the basis of properties that can become manifest in directly pointing at the phenomenon. Feeling of substance See abstract feelings. Feelings See abstract feelings.

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Immediacy, immediate perception Identifying and characterizing a phenomenon based on how it appears directly in perception; deictic reference (see there) is closely related to this notion of immediacy Pure experience Term used by, among others, William James and Kitaro¯ Nishida to refer to the way how a phenomenon appears to us without the interference of thought processes, where these modes of appearance can be rich and complex. Radical empiricism William James’ term for a system of philosophy that is built upon pure experience (see there) and that acknowledges the complexity and richness of pure experience in the foundation of philosophy. Vibration Fertile field of acoustic and musical metaphors used by, e.g., Kitaro¯ Nishida to characterize the interaction between a background (see there) and a foreground.

36 Conversationalism Aribiah David Attoe

Introduction The more systematic forms of academic African philosophy, as we know it today, began with the frustration occasioned by the accusation of prelogicality by some prominent western philosophical thinkers (More 1996). Therefore, much of the methods of African philosophy have been excavatory in some way—seeking to dig up pre-colonial traditional African ideas and present them as philosophies that answer to the challenge of those of western philosophers. Ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, philosophic sagacity, etc., are African philosophical methods that all fall into this category (Bell 2002, Chimakonam 2014). Responding to the excavationists, other African philosophers (members of the “professional school,” like Pualin Hountondji) claimed that the excavationist methods were only backwards looking and did not possess the sort of critical rigor needed for those traditional ideas to be taken seriously (Hountondji 1996, Bell 2002). As damaging as their criticisms were, the professional school did not present their own viable method of doing African philosophy that allowed for the rigor they were looking for and, at the same time, allowed for authentic Africa-inspired philosophical ideas. The gap between these two dominant schools has now been bridged in contemporary times by a fast-growing African philosophical tradition—that of conversational philosophy. Conversationalism allows two opposing interlocutors, labelled nwa-nsa (Igbo word: roughly translated to mean “proponent” or “thesis”) and nwanju (Igbo word: roughly translated to mean “opponent,” “questioner,” “anti337

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thesis”) to engage in “conversations” or what is termed arumaristics (arumaristics is etymologically derived from, and is an anglicized form of, the Igbo word arumaru-uka or iruka, which translates to “doubt” or “criticality,” here meaning a complex form of intellectual/creative struggle, in the hope of not achieving a synthesis,1 but of improving the theses of both interlocutors. These interlocutors could be opposing philosophers, schools of thoughts, ideas, institutions, etc. In this chapter, I introduce conversational philosophy—presenting some of its main ideas and methods. It is important to note here that conversational philosophy is not only limited to African philosophy, but its methods are also relevant to cross-cultural/intercultural dialogue.

The Methods and Principles of Conversational Philosophy Conversational philosophy is a product of the Conversational School/ Society of Philosophy, with Jonathan Chimakonam2 as its lead proponent. Conversational philosophy is grounded in “conversational thinking” or arumaristics. To understand what this means, it is best to break down and analyze both terms (conversation and thinking) in the compound word more keenly. When we think about the term “conversation,” what comes to mind is some form of a discussion between two or more individuals—something that is common in our social interactions with others. However, the term is used here in the more technical sense of a (semi) dialectical relationship between a thesis or proponent (Igbo: nwa nsa) and an anti-thesis or opponent (Igbo: nwa nju). It involves a rubbing off of ideas, a constant shuffling of thoughts between

1

To understand what a synthesis is, we must remember Hegelian dialectics. This dialectic describes the evolution of an argument, first beginning with a thesis (which is the idea that is formed and presented); a reaction to that thesis (anti-thesis), which seeks to deconstruct and negate the earlier presented thesis; and the synthesis which emerges as a result of the struggle between the thesis and anti-thesis. The synthesis incorporates viable aspects of the thesis and anti-thesis to produce a more sophisticated viewpoint. The more concrete synthesis is something different from the thesis and anti-thesis, in that the synthesis transcends both, and, presumably, overcomes the inadequacies of both the thesis and anti-thesis. 2 Jonathan Chimakonam is an African Philosopher from Nigeria currently teaching at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is also the president and founder of the Conversational Society of Philosophy (CSP).

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both interlocutors, not with the aim of achieving a synthesis, but with the aim of improving both thesis and anti-thesis. Chimakonam (2018: 144) makes this clear when he states that: [. . .] conversation would mean a formal semi-dialectic relationship of opposed variables involving the reshuffling of theses and anti-theses by skipping the syntheses, each time at a level higher than the preceding one. It is an encounter between philosophers of rival schools of thought; between philosophers and non-philosophers; and between different philosophical traditions.

It is important to take note of two points here. First, conversational encounters are not only between individuals but also between institutions, schools of thoughts, traditions, etc. Second, the avoidance of a synthesis is a deliberate attempt at safeguarding the “identity” of interlocutors. This avoids the tendency for hegemony that synthesizing allows—especially when dominant and not-so-dominant interlocutors are involved. “Conversational thinking,” or “conversationalism,” in this context, involves the process of questioning and answering. It involves deconstruction and then reconstruction of theses through the intellectual struggle between thesis and anti-thesis—between interlocutors. When nwa-nju questions or critiques nwa-nsa, nwa-nju attempts to deconstruct nwa-nsa. By responding, the nwa-nsa reconstructs their ideas, filling up any gaps with new ideas and concepts. The newly formed thesis (by nwa-nsa) then becomes an instant challenge to the questioning nwa-nju, which must then revise their position; it is in this manner that the conversation continues—each time at a higher level of sophistication. Notice that a synthesis of both theses is avoided, yet both positions are made more viable after each conversational encounter. Thus, arumaristics can be understood as both a noun and a gerundive. It is both the act of engaging in conversations and also represents the mechanism for critical conversations (Chimakonam 2017b: 17). It is important that I acknowledge, here, that arumaristics does bear some similarities with the Socratic method. The Socratic method is a method of philosophizing that involves questioning and answering between two or perhaps more interlocutors, in order to either midwife new ideas or eliminate (usually through a reductio ad absurdum) faulty hypothesis. It is based on the method of the historical Socrates, as portrayed in the dialogues written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (5th–4th century BCE). While these similarities are present, they are not the same thing. For one, arumaristics takes its inspiration from the African place—specifically, the communal/

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complementary understanding of reality3—and not necessarily from Socrates. Within the complementary framework, all that exists serves as a missing link of reality—that is, every aspect of reality is an important piece in our understanding of reality as a whole. What this implies is that all aspects of reality, every idea (whether opposing views or not), no matter how remote or dominant, is not only equally important but also mutually dependent. It is only by bringing them together that we get to better understand reality. Also, the Socratic method usually tries to establish—by either refuting the opponent’s claims or through a reductio ad absurdum—that an opponent’s position is untenable. Where there is questioning and answering (as it is used in Socratic dialogue) the aim is not to improve both positions but to refute one’s position. This is not the case with conversationalism where the aim is the constant improvement of opposing views. Thus, conversationalism seeks to allow for “the sustenance of the engagement over the outcome of such engagements” (Chimakonam 2017b: 16).

The Up-Down Movement of Thought in Conversational Thinking If we remember, arumaristics require a reshuffling of ideas through consistent conversational encounters. The up-down movement of thought describes what happens when this reshuffling of ideas occurs. I begin with what is referred to as the “up-movement” (Attoe 2022). This is the upward shuffling/ improvement of a thesis/interlocutor via the mechanism of arumaristics. Through the creative intellectual struggle that the deconstruction and reconstruction of a thesis entails, the thesis is then rebranded in such a way that previous problems and logical lacunas that were initially pointed out are addressed—leading to the development of a better version of the previous

3 In much of African philosophy there is the idea that every aspect of reality is interconnected in a mutually dependent way. This view also trickles down from ontology even to ethics, where morality is undergirded by the need for harmony that is ensured by relationality. Conversationalism emerges from Innocent Asouzu’s version of this relationality (which he calls “complementarism”), where he describes all that exists as serving a missing link of reality (Asouzu 2004: 2007). So, rather than an absolutist/ hegemonic framework, conversationalism is built on a framework that recognizes other viewpoints as potentially viable, with this viability expressing itself in continued interaction that mutually improves varying (opposing) views to higher levels of sophistication through creative struggle/conversation.

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thesis. By addressing any exposed problems, new concepts, ideas, clarifications, etc., are brought to the fore. One would notice here that this sort of improvement is a positive type of improvement and the additions that bolster the newly improved thesis suggests an upward growth. This growth is continuous since absolutism—which would have been the ceiling of this growth—appears impossible. The down-movement, contrasted with the up-movement, suggests a negative improvement. It is inevitable that where there is a shuffling of ideas, there is also a shedding of viewpoints. When conversationalists employ arumaristics there is the possibility that a position or thesis may have within it a viewpoint that is moribund, anachronist, and/or false. When this is identified, what follows is that such viewpoints are discarded. It can also happen that the discarded viewpoints are so many that what is added to the thesis is less—both qualitatively and quantitatively—than what is discarded. In other words, the thesis sheds more than it adds. So, whereas there is an improvement with regards to the thesis—since the thesis sheds the falsities through conversation—the movement is a negative one and downward moving. Furthermore, if the shedding of false beliefs continues to a point where the thesis is shown to be untenable, then the thesis has reached a nil point. At this stage, the interlocutor is obliged and “owe[s] the house of philosophy (especially the African) the duty of creating an alternative episteme replacing the one they demolished” (2018: 145).

The Levels of Conversationalism Here, I describe the various levels on which conversationalism can operate. Indeed, I identify three levels of conversationalism. Namely, the personal (or sub-micro) level, the local (or micro) level and the global (macro) level. Now, what is referred to as the personal (sub-micro) level of conversationalism is conversationalism at the personal level. Recall that I had earlier stated that arumaristics involves two interlocutors or two theses. At the personal level, the nwa nju and the nwa nsa are not necessarily two different individuals, but rather are within the individual. It is an internal struggle within the individual. I shall explain what I mean presently. At the foundation of any hypothesis that springs forth from an individual’s mind, is opinion. Opinions are formed by a coming together of an individual’s intuitions, experiences, prejudices, etc. When opinions are formed, the conversationalist

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subjects them to critique by reasoning. In other words, one’s opinion (taking the position of nwa-nsa) converses with one’s philosophical sense4 (taking the position of nwa-nju). Through the intellectual struggle that ensues, an upward movement of thought is made possible. However, unlike conversationalism at other levels, there is a ceiling—which is really a springboard—i.e., a limit to which the conversation can continue. Because no individual is in sole possession of all knowledge, one can imagine that there must be a point where individuals exhaust their critical reserves and can no longer engage in conversation with their own internal opinions. At this point, the individual would have done everything in their power to refine and reconstruct their opinions. It is at this stage that individuals emerge from the sub-micro level to the micro level. The local level (or micro level) of conversationalism is simply conversations in a particular place and between particular people. In other words, this is conversationalism within one’s own contexts and among one’s own peers. If one is an African philosopher, then conversations at the micro level would be conversations among African philosophers, about African ideas, institutions, etc. It is possible to think of conversationalism at the micro level in two senses – the conceptual level and the institutional level. At the conceptual level, individuals engage and converse with each other about ideas/concepts, theories/thought systems, dogmas, etc. The aim, at the institutional level, is to interrogate the local belief system of the context to which the philosopher belongs; not just ideas or theories but social institutions and policies. These institutions include religious institutions, educational institutions, political institutions etc. The reason for this type of conversation is not far-fetched. As Chimakonam states, “social deconstruction and construction/reconstruction of the interrogatory theory (IT) consists of a radical questioning of social structures of tradition and modernity for futurity in Africa” (Chimakonam 2014: 5). If one is an African philosopher, for instance, the social structures in Africa are deconstructed and reconstructed in order to make them better (Chimakonam 2014: 5). Thus, by questioning social institutions, the philosopher makes his society better via conversations —and is indeed obligated to do so. Finally, conversationalism at the global level (or macro level) involves meaningful conversations between philosophical traditions. It is not

4

I take “philosophical sense” to mean the spirit of doubt and interrogation.

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comparative philosophy i.e., a mere comparison of philosophical traditions or ideas from different philosophical traditions. It is what happens when conversationalists seek to take ideas from a local place to a global space where they would encounter other ideas. This encounter is a horizontal type of encounter as opposed to a vertical one—that is, all views are treated as potentially viable (until they sink to the nil-point described above) and not in terms of superiority vs inferiority, even before engagement. Here the process of arumaristics (described previously) is employed when ideas from different philosophical traditions encounter each other. So, while ideas converse with each other at the global level, they are not lost in any synthesis, and they still get to improve their different theses. How would conversationalism work in the real world? Let us take the example of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this scenario, one can think of two opposing views—those who believe that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous (A) and those who believe them to be essential to global relief (B). In a conversational meeting between both camps (conversation at the global level – since the issue transcends regional lines), the attitude within each camp would not be one of disdain or superiority (as is often common) but one of curiosity and willingness to listen/engage (a horizontal encounter). In the creative struggle that ensues, each camp is forced to revise its thesis in the face of a given criticism. For instance, if we suppose that certain health risks are associated with taking vaccines, and A points that out to B, we would suppose that B would revise its thesis to read: vaccines are essential to relief, but they are not without risk factors that must be acknowledged. In the same vein, one can imagine that B would point out to A that there is sufficient evidence to show that the vaccines are effective to a large effect, in which case A would be forced to revise its thesis to read something like: while vaccines can be dangerous in some instances, they are not dangerous in all instances. And so on. In this crude example, we see how both A and B improve their thesis to higher levels of sophistication. We see a shedding of untenable views, and we can expect the conversation to continue unless a thesis arrives at a nil-point.

Conclusion I have, in this chapter, sought to explain a key concept in African philosophy— Conversational philosophy. I have explained some of its major tenets such as

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arumaristics or conversational thinking, the up-down movement of thought and the three levels of conversationalism. While conversationalism emerges from and is inspired by African views on communalism/complementarity, it is relevant to philosophy at the global level.

References Asouzu, Innocent. (2007). Ibuanyidanda: New Complementary Ontology Beyond World Immanentism, Ethnocentric Reduction and Impositions. Zurich: LIT VERLAG GmbH & Co. KG Wien. Asouzu, Innocent. (2004). Methods and Principles of Complementary Reflection in and Beyond African Philosophy. Calabar: University of Calabar Press. Attoe, Aribiah. (2022). “Examining the Method and Praxis of Conversationalism” in J. Chimakonam, (ed.) Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy. Cham: Springer Nature. Bell, Richard. (2002). Understanding African Philosophy: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Classical and Contemporary Issues. New York: Routledge. Chimakonam, J. (2014). “Interrogatory Theory: Patterns of Social Deconstruction, Reconstruction and the Conversational Order in African Philosophy” Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 3: 1–25. Chimakonam, J. (2017a). “What is Conversational Philosophy? A Prescription of a New Doctrine and Method of Philosophising, In and Beyond African Philosophy” Phronimon, 18: 115–130. Chimakonam, J. (2017b). “Conversationalism as an Emerging Method of Thinking in and Beyond African Philosophy” Acta Academica, 49(2): 11–33. Chimakonam, J. (2018). “The ‘Demise’ of Philosophical Universalism and the Rise of Conversational Thinking in Contemporary African Philosophy” in E. Etieyibo (ed.), Method, Substance, and the Future of African Philosophy, 135–159, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hountondji, Paulin. (1996). African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Indiana: Indiana University Press. More, M. (1996). “African Philosophy Revisited” Alternation, 3(1): 109–129.

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Glossary Anti-thesis An idea or view that appears contraryy to any given thesis. Arumaristics Etymologically derived from, and an anglicized form of, the Igbo word arumaru-uka or iruka, which translates to “doubt” or “criticality.” The term is employed to mean critical conversation. Complementarism An African relational philosophy that denies absolutes in any understanding of reality but considers all that exists (all the actors and factors that constitute reality) as missing links of reality—with every missing link involved in a relationship of mutual interdependence. Deconstruction The process of questioning and critically analyzing an idea—especially in a bid to find loopholes in logic and coherence. Nwa nju From the Igbo language, it is a term used to denote a questioner/anti-thesis/opponent in a conversational encounter. Nwa nsa From the Igbo language, it is a term used to denote a thesis/proponent in a conversational encounter. Reconstruction The process of refining an idea, especially in view of a recent critique or deconstruction. Thesis An idea or view that forms the crux of a position.

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37 Creativity Kiene Brillenburg Wurth

The term “creativity” has different meanings in different cultures. In English, “creativity” was established as a philosophical concept in the writings of Alfred North Whitehead of the later 1920s: Religion in the Making (1926) and Process and Reality (1929). In these works, “creativity” bears no relation to art or any uniquely human ability to create. Whitehead offers the term as a vitalizing power operative in nature: a force that keeps life going and that brings forth constant change. Whitehead’s idea of creativity differs remarkably from how it is commonly understood today: as a capacity in individual, human brains to generate things—be it ideas, views, products, or solutions—that are both novel and useful (Glaveanu 2016). This common understanding of creativity can be traced to the 1950s (Guilford 1967, 1950). American psychologists then became interested in researching when, how, and why humans can come up with innovative solutions to complex problems in business, science, and technology. Guilford’s (and later) research was typically geared towards channeling creativity in education to foster more innovative minds for society. In this chapter, I deviate from this common understanding that is still dominant today in interdisciplinary creativity research (Glaveanu 2016). I propose a return to Whitehead to unravel creativity anew in a comparative analysis with Buddhist philosophy (Jacobson 1976). From this comparative perspective, creativity emerges as a potentiality to participate fully in the momentariness of experience. As I conclude, creativity revolves more around becoming—a process of ongoing change or constant shape-shifting—than betterment or profitability. Significantly, I also conclude, approaching creativity as becoming still allows the new to be thought in the context of creativity, but now as an openness to what happens to enrich experience. 347

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The Creative Individual In European and Anglophone psychological and philosophical thought, creativity is typically seen in terms of achievement. What do people accomplish in art, literature, science, medicine, or technology? What innovations do they bring? Thus, since the early nineteenth century, historiometric research (the historical research of human development) into creativity has been focused on the accomplishments of famous, gifted individuals: when and why they were at their most productive, and what their accomplishments signal for the progress of humanity (Simonton 1990). Such research ties creativity to personality—famous personalities— so as to assess talent development in individual lives. Other researchers have tried to move creativity out of the realm of the gifted and famous, seeking to show that it is an ability all of us need and use every day at the most fundamental level of perception. Responding to and interpreting the life continuum is, indeed, a minimal creative act that we1 are often not even aware of. Still, even as such a basic perceptual act, creativity continues to be thought of as an individual capacity: how we successfully realize ourselves in life, as we sense, assess, and integrate the things we experience in the world (Runco and Pritzker 2020). Creativity, then, is a potentiality (to process sense perceptions into apperceptions; to combine elements into something new) that we, as individuals, in principle can all draw from, yet that some (famous personalities) have developed further than others. Such personalities are typically seen as geniuses—a term that came in fashion in the late eighteenth century, when philosophers started thinking about the power of imagination as a productive, instead of merely imitative, power. A genius is one with exceptional abilities that can change the way we sense and experience things, or may transform an entire field in art, science, technology, or healthcare (Boden 2004) (genius: attending spirit; innate capacity; rare talent). Hence, there is creativity with a “small c” and creativity with a “capital C.” The problem with the idea of creative genius, and the historiometric research that has been built on it, is that it zooms in very narrowly on historically privileged individuals and precisely on the genres, forms, practices, and fields dominated by such individuals. Thus, European and Anglophone notions of creative genius have instituted and perpetuated an

1

I am aware of the problematic nature of the plural (‘we’) in critical texts. However, I here use ‘we’ in a radically inclusive way.

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implicitly raced and gendered model of such genius. Only consider the winners of the Nobel prize for literature. Most of them are white males, most of them authors in the genre of the novel: a written form familiarly traced to Europe in its origins. Why has there never been a winner who is a griot (African oral storyteller) or a rapper? Why is literature so narrowly defined? Why, indeed, is creativity so narrowly defined in terms of individual achievement or even in terms of the potentiality of an individual self? This question is highly relevant today, as philosophical notions of the self as well as our cultural terms of individuation (as regards gender, class, and race) have been deconstructed as random, suppressing, and violent. Process philosophy has sought to make a difference here, but creativity research as it stands continues to be rooted in so-called “western” modes of thought that pivot around ideas of a self which is continuous over time: separate, selfsame, stable and unique through consciousness, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves.2 To understand the true nature of creativity, however, we need to move beyond this strange idea of an individual self in terms of an enduring substance as it has been presupposed since the Hellenic period (Aristotle).

Self as Process In a popular talk entitled “Myth of Myself ” (2019 [1972], from the Tao Philosophy Series), the controversial philosopher and public speaker Alan Watts expressed his amazement at how we, in “western” cultures, tend to speak about ourselves. “Most of us,” he said, “feel ‘I’—ego, myself, my source of consciousness—to be a center of awareness and of a source of action that resides in the middle of a bag of skin.” We typically think of this “I” as a substance located somewhere “behind the eyes and between the ears,” rather than being an integral part of the body-as-process (Watts [1972] 2019: 1.1.7, no page). Hence, Watts continued: We are not accustomed to say, “I am a body.” We rather say, “I have a body.” We do not say, “I beat my heart” in the same way as we say, “I walk, I think, I talk.” We feel that our heart beats itself, and that has nothing very much to do with

2 It would be impossible to explain the complex problems of, and subtle differences between, self, individual, individuation, and personal identity—and its contestations—in European and Anglophone philosophies here. For an easy introduction, see Patricia Kitchner’s excellent The Self. A History (Kitchner 2021).

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“I.” In other words, we do not regard “I, myself ” as identical with our whole physical organism. Watts 2019: 1.1.73

Not only do we—predominantly in “western” discourse—often think of and feel ourselves as being a substance inside a living, changing body that is somehow not us; we also tend to position ourselves as separate beings in relation to the world: “we look upon a world that is foreign to us,” so that we speak of a world out there, or of “confronting reality” (1.1.7). This notion of a separate self has made us hostile to nature. We think, as Immanuel Kant did, that we can transcend nature, and dominate it by means of the supersensible faculty of reason in our minds (Kant 2000).4 We may even think we can “conquer” space (1.1.7). It may not surprise us that the race for space between the USSR and the US in the 1950s was one of the prime incentives for creativity research and laid the ground for our current understanding of the term. This base illustrates how deeply misconceived that term is as an ability to find ever-new and useful solutions to challenges that the world poses to us. Instead of considering ourselves growing out of that world, we are in perpetual conflict with it (1.1.7). What if we turned the tables and considered ourselves natural processes? Writing in the late 1920s, Whitehead saw the idea of the self as an enduring substance as being “exactly the irrelevant answer to the problem which life presents. The problem is, How can there be originality?” (Whitehead 1978: 104). That is to say, how can there be something rather than nothing—or, in Whitehead’s terms, how can there be the continuing becoming of new occasions, that is: event-like entities that actualize or co-materialize? Whitehead’s philosophy is called processual because it starts from the idea of reality in terms of becoming instead of being.5 This reality goes for “the

3

Watts indicates the fallacy in saying “we came into this world.” We did not, he adds, “we came out of it! What do you think you are? Supposing this world is a tree. Are you leaves on its branches or are you a bunch of birds that settled on a dead old tree from somewhere else?” The earth “peoples,” just as an apple tree “apples;” we are expressions or “symptoms” of it (Watts 2019: 1.1.7). 4 Philosophers like Theodor Adorno, however, have argued against this idea of the mind transcending nature. Human subjects, he explained in his Aesthetic Theory (2004), can never transcend nature. In the experience of the sublime, we precisely sense our entanglement with nature, instead of our apartness from it. 5 Other thinkers in Continental European and Anglophone philosophy that can be seen as more or less processual are Johann G. Fichte, Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, Georg W. F. Hegel, Friedrich W. Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Nancy R. Howell, Karen Barad, Carol Christ.

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self ” or “the world” as much as it goes for anything else: it is the effect of an ongoing, complex process of entanglement and interaction of variables of experience arising together and falling apart again. Such a processual view of the self significantly compares to the Abhidharma (ca 400 BCE–200 CE, literally meaning: concerning the teachings or (in another interpretation) higher teachings); the ancient Buddhist texts that offer a theoretical account of perception and experience. Many scholars see these texts as the systematic counterpart to Buddhist practices of meditation, evolved as they did out of a core (mātikās) of doctrinal concepts listed in charts or diagrams (Jacobs 2017: 1–19). Beth Jacobs, accordingly, calls this core a “periodic table of experience” (Jacobs 2017: 5). As Monima Cadha explains, the Abhidharma teachings offer an account of perception and experience that is different from dominant European and Anglophone meditations on the self and consciousness (Cadha 2016). More precisely, Cadha posits, “the Abhidharma-Buddhist writings are replete with attempts to explain the phenomenology of experience in a no-self world,” while non-Buddhist philosophies—and psychologies—precisely start from a self-world (Cadha 2016: 223–224). That is to say, the idea of a self that exists as a nexus of consciousness and an anchor to hold on to in a world full of doubt in nonBuddhist thought, is deconstructed as a delusion and a source of suffering in Buddhist thought. No-self means impermanence, self means delusional control. As there are many different views on (the interpretation of) no-self (anatta) among Buddhist philosophers, the idea (or the misapprehension) of what a self might be, is just as open to discussion (Cadha 2016: 225, Jacobs 2017). I here maintain that self is not a “quality” or “content” but rather the “how of experience,” without there being even a minimal self to be presupposed (Cadha 2016: 225). Now, if the Abhidharma explains the how or presence of experience in a no-self world, then what does consciousness of experience entail? This cannot be consciousness of a thinking “I.” It is neither necessary nor logical to presuppose such an I, conceived of as an entity that is continuous over time. Abhidharma Buddhist philosophies show we do not need to postulate an “I” as an agent of experience because “causal connections between mental states” make such an “I” superfluous: these states will arise and then disappear anyway (Cadha 2016: 238). No need, and no use, to cling to a self that is owning these states as it persists over time (Jacobs 2017: 70). Such a self cannot logically exist because no entity can exist permanently in Abhidharma Buddhist philosophies: things originate and are sustained interdependently. Here, everything materializes only impermanently, the mind included. Experience in Buddhist philosophy,

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then, is not owned by an agent because such ownership implies continuity and control. We have no control over the sensations and mental states that arise in consciousness, let alone over consciousness itself. These sensations and states simply come and go (Naht Hanh 2005). What many European and Anglophone philosophers, psychologists, and cultural critics have therefore taken for an agency that needs healthy reinforcement—the self—is regarded in Abhidharma Buddhist texts as unhealthy identification with the delusion of an internal entity bounded and “separate from the rest of the world” (Cadha 2016: 239). For in the Buddhist universe, nothing can be self-same and apart. Everything originates interdependently, in relation to each other, out of each other, and in contrast to each other (Jacobs 2017: 18).

Processual Creativity If we can no longer presume a self (ownership, control), then what remains of psychological and philosophical notions of creativity based on ideas of genius, individual talent, and personality—or, for that matter, on ideas of perfectible skill? In such a case, creativity must be reconceived as an unpredictable, impersonal, mindless process: a process beyond agency. Human beings do not have creativity (or can learn to control it), they are part of a creative process that “drives the world, in the fullness of the present moment” (Jacobson 1976: 47). Creativity in this perspective is the perpetual and interdependent becoming and un-becoming of physical entities and mental states in the present—what Whitehead called the “aesthetic foundation” of the world (Jacobson 1976: 48). Creativity is what brings forth novelty in the sense of a momentary manifestation: what is now and only now. Things are what they are until the next moment arises. This (i.e. infinite change and the absence of an unconditioned substance) is the connection between process philosophies and Abhidharma Buddhist philosophies, with the latter possibly the more radical of the two in its consistent rejection of the experiential reality or logical necessity of a controlling self. How to approach creativity in this different light, beyond the individual; the self as agency? There is arguably no methodological approach to be cultivated here, except for meditation. Processual creativity is a process beyond form: a force that makes everything shift with the occurrence of every new moment. Becoming aware, moment by moment, is the only possible access to this force. If the individualistic take on creativity is about

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bringing the new (and useful) into being, the processual take on creativity is about presence or deep attentiveness to what comes along. It is about freedom, as much as art can be when it releases us from habitual patterns of thought, experience, and perception. Thus, creativity opens to a full enjoyment of existing. Researching such creativity requires praxis: seeing, doing, feeling, sharing, instead of mere arguing. Creativity, as Jacobson acutely observed, is “an abstruse topic for philosophical debate. It is . . . an issue that faces everyone at every moment” (1976: 60). To change the world, start contemplating your breath, your body and movement: creativity is a freedom from clinging, a potentiality to become, again and again.

References Adorno, Theodor. ([1956–1969] 2004). Aesthetic Theory. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (eds). Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: Continuum. Boden, Margaret. (2004). The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. Abingdon: Routledge. Cadha, Monima. (2016). “The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory” Australian Religion Studies Review 29(3): 223–241. Glaveanu, Vlad, Lene Tanggaard Petersen and Charlotte Wegener (eds) (2016). Creativity. A New Vocabulary. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Guilford, Joy Paul. (1967). The Nature of Human Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. Guilford, Joy Paul. (1950). “Creativity” American Psychologist 5(9): 444–454. Jacobs, Beth. (2017). The Original Buddhist Psychology. What the Abhidharma Tells Us About How We Think, Feel, and Experience Life. Berkeley : North Atlantic Books. Jacobson, Nolan Pliny. (1976). “Creativity in the Buddhist Perspective” in The Eastern Buddhist 9(2): 43–63. Kant, Immanuel. ([1790] 2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Ed. Paul Guyer. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Mathews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kitchner, Patricia. (2021). The Self. A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Runco, Mark and Steve Pritzker, (Eds) (2020). Encyclopedia of Creativity. Cambridge MA, Elsevier Academic Press. Simonton, Dean Keith. (1990). Psychology, Science, and History. An Introduction to Historiometry. New Haven: Yale University Press. Nhat Hanh, Thich. (2005). The Heart of Understanding. Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. Berkley: Parallax.

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Watts, Alan. ([1972] 2019). “Myth of Myself, Part 1” in Tao Philosophy Series. Online transcript of original lecture: https://alanwatts.org/1-1-7-myth-ofmyself-pt-1/. Whitehead, Alfred North. (1926). Religion in the Making. London: Macmillan. Whitehead, Alfred North. (1978 [1929]). Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin and Sherburne, New York: The Free Press.

Glossary Being A potential for becoming. Creativity Force or drive of the perpetual and interdependent becoming and un-becoming of physical elements and mental states in the present, i.e. what brings forth novelty in the sense of a momentary manifestation: what is now w and only now. Interdependent co-arising (dependent origination) Within each being are many beings: all beings are empty of their apparent separate self and full of inter-being. They arise in relation, interaction and contrast with/to each other. Non-duality hence exists between all beings. Meditation Non-judgmental awareness of experience in the momentary present. Reality A process consisting of the becoming of actual entities. Self A delusional (Buddhism) but necessary (western philosophy and psychology) construct that arrests and holds off the plenitude of discontinuous, momentary becoming in terms of continuity, agency, and control.

38 Diversity in Philosophy Purushottama Bilimoria and Agnieszka Rostalska

There are two ways of looking at the strategy for “diversity” in philosophy in a higher institutional setting. The first one entails changing the color and gender of the faculty by appointing scholars of color and ethnically divergent background, but—and here is the rub—expect, indeed demand, of them that they continue to be compliant with the status quo, and therefore in heavily analytic departments do just that and do not stray outside of the Anglophone perimeters or be lured into divergences. Female and non-binary appointees are neither expected nor encouraged to stray into current feminist and deconstructive fads perpetrated by what are seen as mostly French feminist philosophers with a few Australian and North American female philosophers. The second approach takes as its objective the diversification of the curriculum content so that there is increasingly a recognition of the diversity of the contemporary world we live in; this moves away from what in politics might be called “partisan lines.” Here, the philosophical academy recognizes that systems of thinking and reasoning, in short, philosophizing, not the one confined to the alleged roots of Greece and developed in Europe and the West. There might be a third position which combines both approaches and diversifies in terms of both colour, ethnicity, gender as well as the subject matter (drawn from across several globally representative traditions). This is how the journal Sophia has diversified (as will be examined later). Although this case only impacts on the diversification of philosophy journals – still a vital instrument for dissemination of knowledge and for shaping particular disciplines—an exemplary model has been carved out of which the world of 355

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philosophy might just wish to take note. And to consider as a possible response in the face of various threats from without that face philosophy departments in these trying times when questions of application as well as of global relevance are asked.

Comparative Philosophy The objective to diversify philosophy in terms of content is frequently supported by the thesis that philosophizing is not an intellectual practice confined to the alleged roots of the “ancient” philosophy of the Greeks. This is subsequently developed in Europe and the West over the last two millennia— which as Heidegger ([1959] 1982: 15) implied—is linked to the gradual thrust towards “the complete Europeanization of the earth and of man.” Many departments in the Humanities and Social Sciences recognize that our human world presents a much larger tapestry with diverse and varied histories and socio-political systems; the same, one could argue, ought to apply to the systems of thinking and knowledge-making. In philosophy, this diversifying objective was (and continuously is) for nearly 100 years promoted under the umbrella of an enterprise known as comparative philosophy, or recently, cross-cultural (and sometimes “intercultural” or “fusion”) philosophy, as we will see below. The label “comparative philosophy” is frequently used in two ways. First, in a broader sense, it stands for an attempt to make the discipline of philosophy a more universal, and cosmopolitan intellectual inquiry. Ronnie Littlejohn (2005) characterizes this appeal as both an aspiration and challenge “to include all the philosophies of global humanity in its vision of what is constituted by philosophy.” Probably the first influential scholar to use the term “comparative philosophy” was Paul Masson-Oursel (1926: 31): We only plan to extend our knowledge in order that the more we know, the better we may understand; we only peer more distantly in order that we may see more plainly and more clear[ly] (sic). Both ends are secured when we discern fundamental likeness beneath apparent dissimilitude. All judgement is comparison: every comparison an interpretation of diversity by way of identity. ...

Masson-Oursel evokes “comparative philosophy” in the opening words of the first volume of the journal Philosophy East-West (1951: 8): Comparative philosophy can furnish to each nation or people resources that others conceived, the knowledge of which can be humanizing.

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The Methods of Comparative Philosophy One may wonder, how is “comparative philosophy” done? What distinguishes its method from the regular ones applied to the standard philosophical canon? Mark Siderits (2017: 76) characterizes comparative philosophy as an interrelation of two distinct traditions or cultures: (. . .) there is another sort of scholarship, one that proceeds from the assumption that a given Indian text or author is sufficiently well understood that we can bring it into dialogue with something from western philosophy. In the past much of this was done under the banner of something called “comparative philosophy.”

Siderits (ibid.) coins the term “fusion philosophy” understood as a form of a dialogue (related to the terms “engagement” and “confluence”) not restricted to only comparison and contrast of the two distant cultures, but rather stands for deliberate cross-cultural philosophizing: (. . .) when we set out to solve some philosophical problem we should look at how others have approached the issue, regardless of whether they belong to “our” philosophical lineage or not.

A practical consequence of this framework would be to incorporate cognate “non-western” philosophical theories and problems into university curricula, still dominated by “western” thought (Garfield and Van Norden 2016).1 The endeavor of “comparative philosophy” consists in executing a particular comparative methodology in philosophical studies. An original depiction of this approach using a metaphor of “removing borders” was made by Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber (2015: 1–2): A border, literally, is a line, often conventional, seldom natural, that separates two regions of space. Borders connect what is separated and separate what is connected. In principle, borders can be crossed (. . .) Comparative philosophy is all about the erecting, detecting, smudging, and tearing down of borders, borders between philosophical traditions coming from different parts of the world, different time periods, different disciplinary affiliations, and even within a single period and pedigree, between opposite or at least distinguishable persuasions. Philosophical comparisons, more often than not, separate and 1

The exemplary cases of such intercultural programs are: “Global and Comparative Perspectives” (BA, MA) and “Philosophy in World Traditions” (MA) offered at Leiden University, The Netherlands.

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connect at the same time what are very likely or unlikely pairs of, or entire sets of comparanda (that which is set out to compare).

Another and more recent model developed is the Sam . vāda project attributed to Daya Krishna (1991) calling to go beyond mere platitudinal dialogue among contemporary Indian philosophers and modern philosophers and, instead, return to the classical texts (Sanskrit: śāstra), albeit as living traditions, and engage in intense discursive dialogue and debates (Sanskrit: vāda) with (sam-) traditional pandits versed in the ancient and classical texts. In this encounter the parties may have to concede to what might be called “counter-positions,” i.e., confrontational cavil with a view to defeating the opponent’s standpoint and arriving at the truth of the problem at hand. Sam . vāda is further propelled by K.C. Bhattacharyya’s ([1928] 2011) manifesto of “Svarāj in ideas” (echoing Gandhi’s idea of swarāj, selfdetermination, in national politics to disrupt colonial domination), advocating freedom in the spaces of thinking with a preparedness to accept a synthesized outcome or a “reasoned rejection” of the other’s or one’s own position as the case may be. However, this exercise should at the same time lead to expanding the horizons beyond the limited purview of the traditions in dialogue so that the work of conceptual retooling for the benefit of global borderless philosophy—crossing borders, visiting the other as curious stranger (“strangification”)—would be advanced a step further. There is yet one other intervention in this attempt to find the best possible model for engaging the diverse traditions of philosophy. Panikkar in the quote below suggests in this regard that we forego the comparative project for the imparative one (from the nonverb in + parare, to prepare, furnish, provide). Imparative philosophy proposes that, “we may learn by being ready to undergo the different philosophical experiences of other people” (1988: 127–128), even strangers to us. He also calls this diatopical hermeneutics (1988: 130): Diatopical hermeneutics is the required method of interpretation when the distance to overcome, needed for any understanding, is not just a distance within one single culture (morphological hermeneutics), or a temporal one (diachronic hermeneutics), but rather the distance between two (or more) cultures, which have independently developed in different spaces (topoi) their own methods of philosophizing and ways of reaching intelligibility along with their proper categories.

Here diatopical hermeneutics has a functional role of forging a common universe of discourse in the dialogical form taking place in the very

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encounter. Panikkar does seem to echo the methods from “fusion philosophy” but argues for recognition of the distinctiveness of the tradition as well. After this brief description of what comparative philosophy’s endeavor amounts to, we now turn to the staple examples of pursuing comparative philosophy which incorporate western philosophy with Indian philosophy as its counterpart. The important influence on the recent engagements of comparative philosophers specializing in Indian and Indian Buddhist philosophy with the analytical philosophical tradition were the numerous publications of Bimal Krishna Matilal—especially his widely read masterpiece Perception. An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge (1986)— and with the continental philosophy the works of Jitendra Nath Mohanty, especially his widely read Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought (1992). Comparative philosophy with Indian and analytical philosophy as its focus has developed mostly through academic publications. Likewise, and in a parallel pursuit, modern scholars of Chinese philosophy have had similar training within their own contexts and have made sterling strides in reconstructive cross-traditional engagement with modern philosophy (see: Bo Mou 2020, Ames and Rosemont 1999, Ames and Hall 2003, Chung-Ying Cheng 2020, among others). The versions of comparative philosophy discussed so far are problematic for the reasons Bo Mou identifies in the introductory theme to the journal Comparative Philosophy. In his explanation (2010: 3, 16) of “the constructiveengagement goal and methodological strategy”) he elaborates that the constructive-engagement: [. . .] is to inquire into how, via reflective criticism and self-criticism, distinct modes of thinking, methodological approaches, visions, insights, substantial points of view, or conceptual and explanatory resources from different philosophical traditions and/or different styles/orientations of doing philosophy (within one tradition or from different traditions) can learn from each other and jointly contribute to our understanding and treatment of a series of issues, themes or topics of philosophical significance, which can be jointly concerned through appropriate philosophical interpretation and/or from a broader philosophical vantage point [. . .] rather than focus on providing a historical or descriptive account (or on interpreting some ideas historically developed in a certain tradition or account) merely for the sake of being aware of them.

Mou’s aim stands in line with Siderits’ purpose of “deliberate cross-cultural philosophising,” as both encourage conversations between various philosophical orientations. However, with the view to forging a novel hybrid vista, as

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endeavored by fusion philosophers, here the challenge is to embrace multiple viewpoints, while acknowledging their distinctive approaches to common philosophical issues. In other words, Siderits wants to advance philosophy, whereas Mou only wants to know many perspectives but does not want to propose a new concept or build a new framework, but to clarify existing positions. Comparison and contrast are employed not as sole ends in themselves, but rather used explicitly to widen the perspective, improve clarity about philosophical matters and as yet unresolved issues. Engaging more substantively with different traditions, while maintaining acknowledgement of their differences, may not only improve one’s understanding of philosophical problems but also prove useful toward critical examination of the definitions, analysis of philosophical notions and the evaluation of the validity of arguments. As comparative philosophy developed in the later twentieth century, the focus shifted towards the removal of misconceptions, overgeneralizations, and false stereotyping (e.g. “Hegelian echoes” that the “focus of philosophical attention” for the West is concepts, for the Indian intuition, for the Chinese action) and, by the same token, the general ignorance persistent among narrowly specialized researchers and scholars (Chakrabarti and Weber: 8). Consequently, in response to this problem of exclusion they proposed inclusiveness i.e., when investigating a particular philosophical problem— e.g., a focus on knowledge, belief, and our capacities to track these states in ourselves and others—one ought to examine the theories from the history of epistemology broadly understood: both in the western traditions, dating back to the ancient Greeks, and the non-western, drawing from the Classical Indian, Chinese, African, etc.

Journals, Book Series and Associations Dedicated to Comparative Philosophy For the establishment of comparative philosophy as a field, or subdiscipline, a vital role has been played by thematic and general conferences, research journals, associations, and publishing series. The East-West Philosophers’ Conferences (since 1939) has been bringing together comparative philosophers from around the world to a contemporary audience (Shaner 1986). The conference resulted in the founding of the journal Philosophy East and West in 1951, which still remains active today. Other top research journals that ensure

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the continuous development of the comparative enterprise include: Sophia. International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions (since 1962), Asian Philosophy. An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East (from 1991), Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy (since 2001), Comparative and Continental Philosophy (since 2009),2 Comparative Philosophy. An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches towards World Philosophy (from 2010) and Journal of World Philosophies (since 2016, earlier: Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies). An active role in the promotion of comparative thought is played by the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP) established in 1967 and annually gathering philosophers3 specializing in “Non-western” and comparative philosophy. The SACP has collaborated with its counterpart in Oceania-Asia, the Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (ASACP),4 in co-hosting conferences with both the East–West Philosophers’ Conference and Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP). This has included contributions on Indigenous Aboriginal, Māori, Pacific Islander, or “Rainbow Philosophy.” Additionally, SACP has the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP) Monograph Series with the University of Hawai’i Press (launched in 1974) publishing books in the Asia-Comparative field. Books on ‘Non-western’ philosophy that include Indian, Chinese, IndoTibetan Buddhist, Japanese, Korean, African, Persian, Arabic, Native American Philosophy and Latin American philosophy, are published more and more frequently by reputable academic publishers (including Springer, Lexington Books, Routledge, Bloomsbury, De Gruyter, Brill, Blackwell) and recognized university presses (including Oxford University Press, State University of New York Press, Princeton University Press).

Diversity of Journals and the Example of Sophia In October 2018, the American Philosophical Association (APA) working group on Diversity and Philosophy Journals: Practices for Improving Diversity

2

Launched by The Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle (since 1995). The 50th SACP Annual Conference in 2018 in Cracow gathered over 150 participants. 4 Other regional associations are: Iranian Society of Intercultural Philosophy, Society for Intercultural Philosophy (GIP) in Germany, and Vienna Society for Intercultural Philosophy (WIGIP) in Austria. 3

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in Philosophy Journal Publishing made key recommendations for philosophy journals. Perhaps not uncoincidentally, Sophia, under the inspiration of similar mandates towards diversity in philosophy that are entertained in Australasia and supported by AAP and ASACP, has been a pioneer of this trend. In the Diversity and Philosophy Journals: Practices for Improving blog article on “Sophia’s History of Encouraging Diversity,” Bilimoria (2018) reports: This modest-sized journal that began Downunder in 1962 in a cyclostyle format as a discussion point for small group of philosophers interested in the dialogue between philosophy and religion/theology, has become a prominent and poignant platform for philosophers and budding scholars, graduates, and students to engage more intensely in sophisticated areas of the discipline that cross a few borders and boundaries which are of relevance in the current critical age. [Moreover] The success of Sophia in taking this bold direction and blazing a trail is testified by the dramatic growth-rate of submissions, concomitant with the high rejection rate, the exponential increase of global readership and calibrated matrix (e.g. 12,500 articles are downloaded in this year to-date alone). Sophia also sees itself moving towards engagement with issues in ‘mainstream’ Anglo-American philosophy, albeit from the critical perspectives of Cross-cultural, Continental, Feminist, Post-secular Political, Postcolonial and Indigenous traditions of thinking. There is no looking back.

We have drawn for our commentary from a range of approaches: in mainstream, classical comparative, or cross-cultural philosophy, philosophy east and west, imperative hermeneutics, fusion philosophy, and crossing boundaries and borders. The range speaks to the diversity within the comparative platform itself: it is not monolithic (in the words of an Australian analytic philosopher) “eastie-westie” thinking. Without dismissing any one approach, we have been disposed to highlight how as each one undergirds certain insights and makes significant contribution to the unfolding prospectus of what the great cross-culturalist, Ninian Smart (2008), had dubbed “World Philosophy.”

References Ames, Roger T. and Henry Rosemont Jr. (1999). The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. A New Translation Based on the Dingzhou Fragments and Other Recent Archeological Findings. New York: Ballantine Books.

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Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall (2003). Daodejing “Making this Life Significant:” A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine Books. Bhattacharyya, Krishna C. ([1928] 2011). “Svaraj in Ideas,” Bhusan, Nalini and Jay L. Garfield (eds), Indian Philosophy in English. From Renaissance to Independence, 103–111, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Bilimoria, Purushottama (2021). “After Comparative Philosophy: Discussion of ‘Wilhelm Halbfass and the Purposes of Cross-Cultural Dialogue,’ by Dimitry Shevchenko,” Philosophy East & West, 71(3): 815–829. Bilimoria, Purushottama (2018). “Diversity and Philosophy Journals: Sophia’s History of Encouraging Diversity,” Blog of the APA. Diversity and Inclusiveness, September 6. Available online: https://blog.apaonline. org/2018/09/06/diversity-and-philosophy-journals-sophias-history-ofencouraging-diversity (accessed July 15, 2021). Chakrabarti, Arindam and Ralph Weber (eds) (2015). Comparative Philosophy without Borders, London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Cheng, Chung-Ying (2020). The Primary Way. Philosophy of Yijing, New York: State University of New York Press. Garfield, Jay and Bryan W. Van Norden (2016). “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” The New York Times, May 11. Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/ifphilosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html (accessed July 15, 2021). Heidegger, Martin ([1959] 1982). “A Dialogue on Language” in On the Way to Language, New York, Cambridge: Harper and Row, pp. 1–54. (Original: Unterwegs zur Sprache, Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 85–155). Krishna, Daya, M. P. Rege, R. C. Dwivedi, and M. Lath (eds) (1991). Sam . vāda, A Dialogue Between Two Philosophical Traditions, Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Littlejohn, Ronnie (2005). “Comparative Philosophy,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: https://iep.utm.edu/comparat/ (accessed July 15, 2021). Masson-Oursel, Paul (1923). Comparative Philosophy, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. (Originally published as: (1923) La philosophie comparée, Paris: Alcan). Masson-Oursel, Paul and Harold E. McCarthy (1951). “True Philosophy is Comparative Philosophy,” Philosophy East and West 1(1): 6–9. Mohanty, J. N. (1986). An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mohanty, J. N. (1992). Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Mou, Bo (2010). “On Constructive-Engagement Strategy of Comparative Philosophy: A Journal Theme Introduction,” Comparative Philosophy. 1(1): 1–32. Panikkar, Raimondo (1988). “What is Comparative Philosophy Comparing?” in: Gerald J. Larson and Eliot Deutsch (eds), Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, 116–136, New York: Princeton University Press. Siderits, Mark. (2017). “Comparison or Confluence In Philosophy?” in: Jonardon Ganeri (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, 75–92, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shaner, David E. (1986). “Interpreting across Boundaries: A Conference of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy,” Philosophy East and West 3(2), 143–154. Smart, Ninian (2008). World Philosophies, Revised 2nd edn, Oliver Leaman (ed.), Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Glossary Comparative philosophy (i) narrow sense: exploring similarities and dissimilarities between philosophical systems from different traditions; (ii) broad sense: opening up philosophy to be inclusive of different systems of rational and creative thinking. Constructive engagement engaging more substantively with different traditions through critical-constructive interpretations of philosophical problems drawn from a wide range of traditions. Fusion philosophy a form of a dialogical engagement not restricted solely to comparing and contrasting distant cultures; it rather makes for cross-cultural philosophizing to result in solutions to a concrete question. Imparative hermeneutic involves contrasting everything through dialogue while radically criticizing the enterprise during genuine encounters between differing traditions. Allowing to reappraize one’s own convictions. Sam . v a¯ da engages in intense dialogue and debates with traditional exponents of ancient or classical texts so as to expand the horizons beyond the limited purview, and permitting conceptual re-tooling for borderlesss philosophy.

39 Dōtoku (Expression) Gereon Kopf

The concept that I have chosen to contribute to this anthology is “expression” (Japanese: dōtoku 䚃ᗇ), literally, “obtaining the Way/Dao,” developed by the Japanese Zen Master Dōgen (1200–1253).1 To Dōgen, what we call “truth” is not something objective “out there” or something that is subjectively experienced. On the contrary, it is expressed by a multiplicity of subjects who relate to and with each other. I believe that this concept of “expression” is not only one of the more underrated of the concepts Dōgen created or re-interpreted in his writing, but also that it has, if understood the way Dōgen suggests, the potential of changing the motivation for and the method of philosophy for the twenty-first century in general and for the post-COVID-19 era in particular. Dōgen is known in Japan as one of the two originators of Sōtō Zen2 and the founder of the temple Eiheiji. In the anglophone literature, he is popular as the Japanese Zen master who introduced the practice of “sittingonly” (Japanese: shikantaza ਚ㇑ᢃ඀) and is known as one of the key representatives of premodern Japanese philosophy. After WATSUJI (1987) (1889–1960), KIMURA (1937) (1879–1934), and the thinkers of the Kyoto school included Dōgen’s writing in their own works and thereby elevated them to the level of philosophical discourse, his work was translated into English and engaged by a host of comparative philosophers as an example of

1

I would like to thank the providers of the online resources the SAT Daizōkyō Text Database (http://21dzk.l.utokyo.ac.jp/), the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (http://www.acmuller.net) for their invaluable service, and Qianran Yang for checking my translation of the Chinese texts. 2 The common phrase used in this school of Buddhism is “one Buddha, two ancestors” (Japanese: ichibutsu ryōso а֋ё⾆) referring to Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha, ~500 BCE), on the one hand, and Dōgen and Keizan (1268–1325), who founded the temple called Sōjiji, on the other.

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non-dual thought. Hee-Jin Kim (2006) has portrayed Dōgen as a systematic and constructive thinker and Ralf Müller (2013) has analyzed Dōgen’s use of “dōtoku” to trace a philosophical and critical understanding of language and its application in Dōgen’s work. This chapter will present neither a systematic understanding of Dōgen’s thought nor an attempt to argue that Dōgen’s work should qualify as philosophy. Rather, it will explore how a philosophy based on the notion of “expression,” as introduced in Dōgen’s fascicle Shōbōgenzō dōtoku, would or should look like. In particular, I will suggest that such a philosophy of expression will replace the first- and third-person ontologies traditionally advanced by continental and analytical approaches, respectively, with what I call second-and fourth-person ontologies.

What is “Expression”? Dōgen borrowed the sinograph (Chinese character) “䚃ᗇ” (Chinese: daode, Japanese: dōtoku) from the Buddhist canon where it occurrs, e.g., in the fourteenth case of the Wumen’s Barrier (Wumenguan ❑䮰䯒),3 known as “Nanquan’s cat.” According to this encounter dialogue, when Nanquan (~800 CE) walks in on his monks arguing, he says “if anyone can express the Buddha-Way (daode), the cat will be saved” (T 2005.48.294). Because all the monks stay silent, Nanquan cuts the cat in half. Today we are shocked at the violence in this story, and I will have to return to this theme at the end of this chapter. For now, let’s have a look at the use of this phrase “daode” (Japanese dōtoku). In Chinese, “dao” 䚃 (Japanese dō) refers to the Way (Dao) or the principle; in Dōgen, it also functions as an abbreviation of the “Buddha-way” (Chinese: fodao, Japanese: butsudō ӿ䚃). “De” ᗇ (Japanese toku) signifies both “to communicate” and “to obtain.” The teacher challenges the disciples to express their grasp of the “Buddha-way.” In this interaction between teacher and disciple, the disciple not only communicates but also “obtains” the Buddha-way.

The Wumenguan is one of the three major kōan (Chin. gongan‫ޜ‬Ṹ) collections in the Chan/Zen Buddhist tradition compiled in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1276). These collections are organized by short cases, which are typically followed by a short commentary and/or a poem. A famous example is the first case of the Wumenguan: “A monk asked Master Zhaozhou ‘does a dog have buddha-nature or not?’ Zhaozhou responded ‘no’ ” (T 2005.48.292c).

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While Dōgen does not cite this particular text in the fascicle Dōtoku,4 I believe it does illuminate the usage of “daode” in the Buddhist canon quite nicely. First, the phrase is used in an encounter dialogue, i.e., a literary genre that stylizes the conversations between teachers and disciples in the Zen Buddhist tradition. The activity referred to as “daode” (Japanese: dōtoku) reveals a vertical and a horizontal dimension: the student is asked to express the Buddha-Way, the vertical dimension, during an interaction with the teacher, the horizontal dimension. As we see in the following quote taken from his fascicle Dōtoku, Dōgen adopts this usage: All buddhas and all ancestors constitute expression. For this reason, when ancestors select ancestors, they ask whether or not they can express themselves. They ask this question with their heart/mind, they ask this question with their body; they ask this question with the walking staff, they ask this question with the pillar and stone lantern. DZZ 1: 3025

In this passage, the teacher, referred to here as “buddha” or “ancestor,” challenges disciples to “verify” that they constitute buddhas or ancestors. This is important! Being a buddha comprises an activity not an ontological status.6 In his fascicle Shōbōgenzō genjōkōan, Dōgen employs the phrase “to verify” (Japanese: shō suru 䁬ǮȠ) (DZZ 1:7) to indicate the modality of being a buddha. He further identifies “being a buddha” as the activity of “presencing” (Japanese: genjō ⨮ᡀ) (DZZ 1:8) or even “presencing of the dynamic totality” (Japanese: zenkigen ‫ޘ‬₏⨮) (DZZ 1:204). Today, we might call this activity “actualizing the whole universe, past, present, and future, in this present moment.” The term “buddha” refers to someone who “presences the dynamic totality” in an encounter with another buddha. It involves the complete “bodymind” (Japanese: shinjin 䓛ᗳ) of that person as well as accessories such as a “walking staff ” and the environs like “the pillar and stone lantern” or, as Dōgen likes to say quite frequently, “grass, trees, earth, stones, and

4

In his Shōbōgenzō zuimonki, Dōgen cites a version of this encounter dialogue from The Supplemental Records of the Transmission of the Lamp (Chinese: Xu chuandeng lu 㒼ۣ⟸䥢). This version does not include the phrase “daode” 䚃ᗇ even though other passages in this collection attribute this common phrase to Nanquan (T 2077.51.0676). 5 A problematic but eminently accessible translation of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō can be found online at the Zensite (http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Shobogenzo_Complete.html). 6 In fact, one of the lesser-known doctrines in Sōtō Zen is “taking the precepts – becoming a Buddha” (Japanese: jukai jōbutsu ਇᡂᡀӿ).

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walls” (DZZ 1: 258). Expressions that verify the Buddha-way comprise embodied performances and include the “dynamic totality” of the universe. But how can we practice them? Such an expression does not lie in following others, nor does it reside in one’s own power; but if you study and practice the buddha-ancestors from the very beginning, you express the buddha-ancestors. Inside this expression, there was self-cultivation as well as verifying-and-studying in the olden days; even today it is effort and practicing the way. DZZ 1: 302

In this passage, Dōgen identifies two characteristics of “expressing the Buddha-Way.” First, throughout his Shōbōgenzō, Dōgen does not distinguish between practice and attainment as two separate stages but uses his own creative compounds such as “verifying-and-studying” (Japanese: shōkyū 䁬ウ) and “practice-and-realization” (Japanese: shushō ‫؞‬䁬) (DZZ 1:7) to indicate their unity. In addition, any particular moment of practice-andverification or verification-and-studying has to express the “dynamic totality” in a unique way. It is neither an imitation nor a repetition. The opening of this passage of this fascicle discourages imitating the founders and teachers of Zen. It evokes the third case of the Wumenquan, in which Zen master Juzhi (9th century) cuts off the finger of a young attendant who was imitating him. When the attendant was no longer able to imitate Juzhi’s teaching of “raising one finger,” he, so the story goes, attained enlightenment (T 2005.48.0293). In this passage, Dōgen suggests that the expression of the Buddha-Way is beyond what the founder of Japanese True Pure Land Buddhism (Japanese: Shinshū), Shinran (1173–1263), calls “selfpower” (Japanese: jiriki 㠚࣋) and “other-power” (Japanese: tariki Ԇ࣋). Any one expression of the Buddha-Way, what we call “truth,” neither relies on the subjectivity of a transcendental self nor does it imitate the role model of a transcendent other. Since “all buddhas and all ancestors” constitute “expressions of the Buddha-Way,” the Buddha-Way is expressed completely by an infinity of individual moments and activities. Dōgen implies that “expressions” are inherently ambiguous. While each individual expression presences the Buddha-Way fully, to express the Buddha-Way completely an infinite number of such expressions are needed. Dōgen explains this existential predicament as follows: [W]hen we express expression we do not express non-expression. Even when we recognize expression in expression, if we do not verify the depth of nonexpression as the depth of non-expression, we are neither in the face of the

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buddhas-and-ancestors nor in the bones and marrow of the buddha-andancestors. DZZ 1: 303

From this passage, we learn a fourth characteristic of what it means to “express the Buddha-Way.” First, those who express the Buddha-Way are buddhas and ancestors; second, each such expression is contextualized in a dialogue situation typified by the encounter between a teacher and a disciple; third, the Buddha-Way is verified by an infinity of such momentary expressions; fourth, each of these moments expresses the Buddha-Way fully but not completely in the same way in which every human being expresses our common humanity fully but not completely. Dōgen’s language can be taxing since he wrote 800 years ago for lay practitioners and monastics who displayed varying levels of familiarity with the Chinese classics and the culture of the Heian period (794–1185). So let us conduct a thought experiment. Imagine the proverbial Martian visits earth with the intent to study us humans. The examination of any individual would give the alien researcher essential insights into the biology and psychology of human beings. But to understand humanity completely, this Martian would have to study all individual cultures and persons. This thought experiment illustrates what it means for any one individual human being to express humanity fully but not completely. This is why we can say that every one individual moment of being-human expresses the “dynamic totality” of the universe always fully but never completely. Dōgen states elsewhere that “when one aspect is verified, another is obscured” (DZZ 1:7): every expression contains non-expression. To use Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) words, every expression simultaneously “discloses” and “conceals” the Buddha-Way. Therefore, Dōgen uses the phrase “expression-and-non-expression” (DZZ 1: 303). To express the ambiguity articulated by this phrase, I suggest writing it, following Jacques Derrida’s (1930–2004) practice of “writing under erasure,” as “expression.” This reveals two important characteristics: While every moment of expression, be it the practice of zazen, the way of tea, or the participation in a philosophical discourse, expresses the “dynamic totality,” it is neither complete nor final. Dōgen insists that the Buddha-Way must be expressed anew every moment. Only infinite activities express the Buddha-Way completely. This is why Dōgen does not encourage individuals to practice zazen by themselves. Every single human being is always connected to all individual expressions of the cosmos, “dynamic totality,” or, in Dōgen’s lingo, “all buddhas and all ancestors.” Even the dialogue situation involving the teacher and the student does not suffice, although Dōgen assigns the interaction

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between the teacher and the disciple a special role in his writing. But, especially in his fascicle Dōtoku, he indicates that the Buddha-Way is not expressed by a duality but by a multiplicity. He explains as follows: Now, I and the other engage in liberative practices and enter into a teacherstudent dialogue; he and an other engage in liberative practices and enter into a teacher-student dialogue. In me, there is expression and non-expression. In him, there is expression and non-expression. At the bottom of the way, there is self and other; at the bottom of the non-way, there is self and other. DZZ 1: 304

The main purpose of Dōgen’s writing is, of course, the liberative practice of zazen. Yet, it cannot be denied that his writing reveals a consistent worldview. Central to liberative practice, is, as Dōgen emphasizes numerous times in fascicles such as Kattō (Intertwining Vines), Bendōwa (Negotiating the Way), and Sansuikyō (Mountains and Waters Sūtra), the relationship between a teacher and a student. In this passage, Dōgen reminds us that each individual teacher-student relationship is unique and momentary. Thus, Dōgen introduces the trope of a fourth person7 as a symbol of the multiplicity of expressive moments. Throughout his Shōbōgenzō, Dōgen privileges the dialogical teacherdisciple relationship. In Bendōwa, he identifies the encounter with the master as the primary condition of zazen; in Sansuikyō, Decheng becomes himself only after he “catches a person” (DZZ 1: 266); in Dōtoku, “self and other” are within the Way and the non-Way; even though Bodhidharma interacts with four of his disciples in Kattō, he engages them exclusively one-by-one. At the same time, as Dōgen does not tire to state, the “expressions of the BuddhaWay” are momentary and thus numerous.

What Does “Expression” Contribute to Contemporary Philosophy? In the last section of this chapter, I would like to introduce a new philosophical approach based on Dōgen’s concept of “expression.” This may sound odd as 7

Here, Dōgen introduces the “I,” a “he,” and, at least, two “others.” Like English, Japanese language does not have a fourth person pronoun. But the Ainu language (the language of the indigenous people of Hokkaidō, Japan) does. Some Algonqian (Native American) languages and some African languages use so-called “obviative markers.” Fourth person pronouns and obviative markers are designed to distinguish between multiple third persons and thus indicate a plurality of persons.

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some Zen teachers and commentators on the Zen canon assign to Zen Buddhist thought the apophatic belief that ultimate reality, here, the BuddhaWay, cannot be expressed linguistically. However, Dōgen identifies verbal and non-verbal expressions equally as “esoteric words”8 (Japanese: mitsugo ᇶ䃎) (DZZ 1: 392–396).9 This means that, to Dōgen, expressions of the Buddha-Way can be linguistic and discursive. A philosophy that is predicated on the belief that discursive expressions develop in a dialogue I call “philosophy of expression.” It possesses three basic features: (1) the assumption that philosophical approaches and beliefs are formulated in a dialogue, that is, vis-à-vis a perceived or an imagined other; (2) the belief that philosophical positions highlight one aspect of reality while de-emphasizing other ones; (3) the insight that, since every philosophical position is incomplete, one needs to engage numerous other positions. While Dōgen himself did not develop such a philosophy, he provided the insight that constitutes its fundamental paradigm. How does such a philosophy of expression relate to the philosophical discourse today? In some, admittedly generalized, sense, the philosophical approaches studied and taught in the anglophone academe can be categorized as third-person and first-person ontologies. The former attempts to describe reality from a bird’s eye view while the latter postulates the inescapable subjectivity of the philosopher and provides an analysis of the phenomena of consciousness. Dōgen refers to the former as “persons outside” and to the latter as “persons inside the mountains” (DZZ 1: 258). Philosophers who identify themselves in the tradition of Dōgen’s thought such as NISHITANI Keiji (1900–1990) suggest that the third-person approach denies the existence of the subject assuming the bird’s eye perspective while a firstperson approach reduces other epistemic subjects to mere phenomena of the subject’s experience. One approach is formulated vis-à-vis the other. Dōgen’s insight that all positions are formulated in a dialogue situation

As Charles Muller notes in his entry in his Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (DBB), the sinograph “ᇶ 䃎” has been used to translate a range of Sanskrit terms that indicate that “the teaching by the Buddha which contains the truth in a profound way is not readily understandable” or refer to mantras as well as dhāran.ī (http://buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?q=ᇶ䃎). 9 In response to the belief that Shakyamuni’s “flower sermon,” in which Buddha held up a flower and later explained to his disciples that he just transmitted his Dharma to his disciple Mahākāśyapa, indicated a preference of silence over words, Dōgen remarks ironically “[h]earing the way is neither using words nor not using words. If the World-Honored-One would have hated words and loved holding up flowers, he would have held up a flower the second time as well” (DZZ 1: 394). 8

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renders what I call a second-person ontology,10 which constitute the context of both the first-person and third-person ontologies. Dōgen himself seems to suggest such a second-person ontology as an alternative to the more common third- and first-person ontologies in his fascicle Sansuikyō. In this text, he correlates the famous line from The Supplemental Records of the Transmission of the Lamp, which is usually paraphrased as “mountains are mountains, mountains are not mountains, mountains are really mountains,”11 with three stages depicted by him as “people outside the mountains,” “people inside the mountains,” and the encounter between Decheng and his disciple.12 So what does such a secondperson ontology propose? Statements and philosophical positions alike are framed in a context which they express. A first-person ontology suggests that all our perceptions, experiences, and beliefs are the purview of one individual self-conscious agent. A third-person ontology adds that knowledge of personal and shared realities can be communicated among individual agents. Each approach contributes one specific insight to our exploration of how human beings produce their knowledge of reality; both approaches complement each other. And this is where an essay on Dōgen’s Sansuikyō would end: the mutual relationship between self and other. Decheng expresses who he is vis-à-vis his disciple. Buddhas express the Buddha-Way vis-à-vis other buddhas, “I” vis-à-vis “him”, the self vis-à-vis the other. But in his fascicle Dōtoku, Dōgen replaces the intersubjectivity between two buddhas with the encounter among “all buddhas and ancestors” and supplements the encounter between “I” and the “other” with the encounter between “he” and an “other.” He, thus, shifts his focus from a duality to a multiplicity. Why is this shift important? In general, we tend to think in binaries. We envision an encounter to be between a self and an other, between an I and a Thou. In philosophy, we contemplate alternatives between idealism and materialism or between a first-person and a third-person ontology. The grammatical structure of English and conceptual language in general reinforces this worldview. In the

10 Of course, one could argue that the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber (1878–1965) already outlines such as second-person ontology. However, Buber seems to contrast a third-person ontology, his I-It (German: Ich-Es) with a second-person ontology, his I-Thou (Deutsch: Ich-Du) to argue for a monotheism that focuses on the notion of the “absolute Thou” (Deutsch: absolutes Du). 11 The version in The Supplemental Records of the Transmission of the Lamp is a bit longer and more complicated (T 2077.51.614). 12 In Dōgen’s words, “Decheng emerges when the person sees Decheng” and “the person emerges when Decheng encounters the person” (DZZ 1:266).

Dōtoku (Expression)

texts discussed in this chapter, Dōgen systematically challenges this worldview. He breaks open the duality between subject and object or between self and other by introducing a fourth in addition to the other or the seemingly external observer, the so-called third. This trope of the fourth opens the door to what I call fourth-person ontology. This kind of philosophy is only implicit in Dōgen’s work and more visible, e.g., in the philosophy of NISHIDA Kitarō (1870–1945) who integrates the Tiantai phrase “one-and-yet-many” (Japanese: issokuta аণ ཊ) into his philosophical approach. Translated into Dōgen’s phraseology, one could say that the Buddha-Way can be verified completely only by a multitude of individual expressions, discursive as well as non-verbal, that emerge in and are indicative of various dialogical contexts. This means that any philosophical discourse that is interested in deepening our understanding of our common humanity and the shared world that we co-inhabit needs to include a multiplicity of voices. The failure to do so commits violence against those excluded from the discursive table as well as those silenced altogether, as the above-mentioned cases “Nanquan cuts a cat” and “Juzhi raises a finger”13 imply. Like most medieval philosophers, Dōgen neither thematizes power differentials nor addresses what Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) calls the “will to power.” However, his introduction of the fourth envisions a discourse that is inclusive and egalitarian rather than hierarchical and thus political as well as doctrinal. I believe that such a fourth-person ontology implies a new philosophical method, which I call “multi-entry philosophy.”14 It realizes that a big-picture philosophy needs to include a multiplicity of standpoints, each of which highlights one particular phenomenon while de-emphasizing others, to promote a deeper understanding of our common humanity.15 It recognizes that each approach to philosophy contributes one specific insight into the human condition and, at the same time, reveals its own particular discursive context. This, I believe, is one of Dōgen’s central contributions to contemporary philosophy.

13

Park (2008) interprets the story “Nanquan cuts a cat” to illustrate discursive violence. I have developed both a fourth-person ontology and such a multi-entry approach in my forthcoming essay (Kopf 2023). 15 An inclusion of the standpoint/expression of animals, plants, and inanimate objects would equally deepen our understanding of our co-existence in this cosmos. However, I am not yet aware of a method that includes their own expressions meaningfully into philosophy without being constructed by humans. 14

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References DZZ Dōgen zenji zenshū Ǎ䚃‫⾵ݳ‬ᑛ‫ޘ‬䳶ǎ (Complete Works of Zen Master Dōgen), ed. Dōshū Ōkubo བྷѵ‫؍‬䚃㡏 (1969–1970), 2 vols. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Kim, Hee-Jin (2006). Dogen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen. Albany : SUNY Press Kimura, Uno (1937). Dōgen to nihon tetsugaku (Dōgen and Japanese Philosophy). Kyōto: Chōjiya Shoten. Kopf, Gereon (2023). “The Theory and Practice of the Multi-Entry Approach,” in Nathan Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska (eds), Philosophy of Religion Around the World: A Critical Approach. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Müller, Ralf (2013). Dōgen’s Sprachdenken (Dōgen’s Thought on Laguage). München: Verlag Karl Alber. NKZ Nishida kitarō zenshū Ǎ㾯⭠ᒮཊ䛾‫ޘ‬䳶ǎ (Complete Works of Kitarō Nishida), (1988), 20 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Park, Jin Y. (2008). Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics. New York: Lexington Press. T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō Ǎབྷ↓ᯠ㝙བྷ㯿㏃ǎ (Taishō Daizōkyō),16 eds. Junjirō Takakusu and Kaigyoku Watanabe (1961). Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai. Watsuji, Tetsurō (1987). Shamon dōgen Ǎ⋉䮰䚃‫ݳ‬ǎ (The Monk Dōgen). Tokyo: Ryūbunkan.

Glossary do ¯ toku u 䚃ᗇ expression (of the Buddha-Way) The act of simultaneously manifesting, communicating, and obtaining the Buddha-Way. fud fudo do¯ toku u н䚃ᗇ non-expression (of the Buddha-way) All the many expressions that are concealed by one particular expression of the Buddha-Way. genjjo¯ ⨮ᡀ presencing Actualizing and embodying one specific identity, idea, or precept. issokuta аণཊ one-and-yet-many The notion developed in Tiantai and Huayan Buddhism that the oneness of emptiness, buddhahood, or humanity is expressed by a multiplicity of individuals.

16

The Taishō Daizōkyō constitutes the Japanese version of the Buddhist canon.

Dōtoku (Expression)

jirikii 㠚࣋ self-power A term coined by Shinran that indicates selfreliance. shinjin 䓛ᗳ bodymind bodymind This concept indicates that persons are embodied minds and conscious bodies. sho¯ suru 䁬Ǯ to verify Do¯ gen believes that buddahood has to be expressed rather than attained. This activity he refers to as “verification.” shusho¯ ‫؞‬䁬 ‫؞‬䁬 practice-and-verification Practice and attainment do not constitute two stages of one process but occur simultaneously. tariki Ԇ࣋ other-power A term coined by Shinran that indicates reliance on, to paraphrase Martin Buber and Kiyozawa Manshi (1863–1901), the “absolute Thou.” zenkigen ‫ޘ‬₏⨮ presencing of dynamic totality Do¯ gen believed that each of our activities and thoughts expresses the whole cosmos.

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40 Embodied Practice John C. Maraldo

Our teachers often tell us to think before we act. That’s usually good advice, but perhaps there is another side to acting that can teach us how to think better. The kind of action I am talking about is action that takes practice. We need a different perspective on practice, though, to see my point. First, let us draw a contrast with the usual concept of practice. We often hear that practice involves application, the application of a theory. For example, we say that philosophy is a theoretical discipline, and in society today it needs to show that it is worthwhile by demonstrating that it can be put into practice and is applicable to “real world” problems. And in everyday life, we often learn that we must do something using trial and error, because our ideas, no matter how well they fit together, might not work when we try to apply them. We’re told that something might be right in theory, but it won’t necessarily work in practice. These are common assumptions that place theory and practice in opposition to one another. They also separate thinking from acting. The usual opposition between theory and practice is also at work when we refer to social practices—what people acting together actually do, even when they have no explicit theory in mind. As long as we see social practices as goal-oriented or “instrumental,” we tend to separate two sides. The “theory” side is what guides us toward the desired goal. And the “practice” side of the activity is separated from its goal or objective, supposedly the “real reason” for doing something. For example, you take certain courses in your university studies in order to earn a Bachelor’s degree, and you pursue a degree in order to get a good job, and you want a good job in order to earn a living and to live a satisfying life. You engage in one activity in order to achieve a goal that is different in kind from what you do to get there. How often do we disengage what we are now doing from the life we hope to achieve? 377

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Some East Asian philosophies give us a different perspective on practice and action. That perspective offers a fascinating glimpse into East Asian cultures and an important alternative to philosophy as usual. In fact, the contrast helps us rediscover long-ignored insights in western philosophy, too. Most importantly, practice in this alternative mode helps us lead a more fulfilling life.1

Practice as an End-In-Itself The first thing to note concerns what practice in the alternative mode is not: Practicing does not mean applying a previous theory or principle; it is not a matter of application at all. To define practice in a more positive way, let us consider an example. One good example comes from the very philosophy that is often supposed to be the origin of the distinction between theory and practice: ancient Greek philosophy. Aristotle’s account of how we learn to be virtuous subverts this distinction (Aristotle 1941, 952; 1103a15–1103b2). One learns what the virtue of courage means, for example, by practicing courage, by being courageous. This sounds circular: To know what courage is, one must practice courage. But how does one tell whether it is courage that she is practicing? How could she tell the difference between a courageous action and a cowardly or a rash one? It seems that she must already know what courage is. But courage, or any virtue for that matter, is not the sort of thing that can be captured by a general definition that is subsequently applied. Whatever general ideas one has about courage must be tested by actions, by repeated actions that let one get the hang of the thing and perform it excellently, almost as second nature. True, for Aristotle there is a measure to tell whether one is practicing courage rather than cowardice or foolhardiness. But this measure, the “golden mean” between the extremes of excess and deficiency, is again something that must be learned or embodied in concrete situations. The golden mean for a particular situation is not first defined theoretically and then applied to particular situations. Rather, one learns the virtue of courage as a particular disposition by experiencing a range of actions and attitudes and finding the mean. Two features help to determine what distinguishes a virtue for Aristotle: first, “pleasure in doing virtuous acts is a sign that the virtuous disposition has been acquired,” and secondly, the role of perception versus reasoning: “The mean is hard to attain, 1

See also Davis, Chapter 17 in this volume.

Embodied Practice

and is grasped by perception, not by reasoning” (Aristotle 1941: 929). The mean cannot be established by any theory once and for all, since it is relative to the agent and to the specific situation. But we have role models or exemplars to guide us. Now, being courageous, to use our example, may well enable one to move forward in life or to escape a dangerous situation, and any virtuous action can bring fulfilment and happiness. Those results are then an inherent part of what happens when one practices a virtue like courage. The important point is that virtues are practiced for their own sake, not to achieve some objective or goal separate from the activity of being virtuous. To sum up so far, the alternative mode of practice defines an activity which is an end in itself, not a means to an end which is different in kind from the activity. Let us take a more mundane example to better see what this means. Many of us like to practice a musical instrument, a guitar for example. We might practice playing the guitar so we can perform well for an event or concert, or simply for our own pleasure and that of our friends. That would be our goal. But that goal is realized in the very same activity of playing the guitar. The objective of the activity is of the same nature as the activity itself; it consists in performance. In this sense, performing a guitar piece is done for a goal internal to the activity itself, not separable from it.

Practice as Attentive and Repeated Action Of course, the beginning stages of our practicing may differ from an accomplished performance in significant ways. Practicing a difficult piece of music may require a conscious attempt to find the best placement of our fingers, for example, whereas in the more accomplished performance attention to fingering would only impede the flow. The difference here is that practice at the beginning involves a conscious reflection that is later not needed because the movements have been internalized and “remembered” by the body. As the practice becomes proficient, the action becomes less and less goal oriented. An activity initially directed at a goal—reflecting on where the fingers should go in order to perform the piece smoothly—eventually transforms into an action done for its own sake: the performance of the piece. To add to our definition, then: practice in the alternative mode is a matter of training that involves attention and repetition; it is a matter of getting good at something, of performing well.

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This is what we do when we learn to master a foreign language, which provides another example. We learn by putting into practice the vocabulary and grammar we study and remember, by trying out speech patterns and repeating or modeling the speech of native speakers. Whatever our objectives might be in learning the language, when we reach our goal of speaking fluently, we are engaged in the same activity that we had been practicing. Once again, the goal is not separable from the activity needed to reach it. And that activity demands our attention throughout. (Couldn’t someone become good at wrongdoing or causing harm? This normative question points to the need for further discussion, for example, about the need for role models who excel in appropriate actions that fulfill others as well as themselves.)

Practice That Engages Us in a Unity of Body and Mind Let us turn now to two examples from Japanese philosophers that further clarify the alternative mode of practice. The medieval Zen master Dōgen (1200–1254) once gave a talk on “Negotiating the Way” that defined his notion of enlightenment. You are probably familiar with that word as the supposed goal of Zen Buddhist meditation, but Dōgen sees it differently. First, he uses a word better translated as realization, meaning both actualizing and recognizing. Then he speaks of practice, the practice of quiet sitting or zazen for example, as a place (though not the only place) where realization is made manifest. “Now, truth is abundantly present in all of us, but to raise it up we must practice it; to make it our own we must validate it. . . . Realization is practice, so it has no end; practice is realization, so it has no beginning’ (Dōgen 1231: 2, 22. In this translation, I have changed “enlightenment” to “realization,” which is closer to Dōgen’s word shō 䅹 in Japanese). Dōgen’s sense of practice as manifestation explicitly subverts the difference between means and end. The practice is done for its own sake because it already embodies enlightenment. The meditation practice that Dōgen particularly recommends involves both a physical and a mental posture. In fact, it becomes impossible to separate the two sides. One is to practice sitting, ideally in the cross-legged “lotus” posture, while giving full attention to that very activity. This practice does not fit into the category of mental activity as opposed to physical

Embodied Practice

behavior, because it takes bodily form, engages the practitioner bodily, and disengages discursive thought. On the other hand, this meditation practice does not fall onto the opposite side of mere bodily activity in the classical Cartesian distinction, because it requires acute attention. Dōgen’s instructions implicitly undermine any essential difference between mind and body. Although he is talking about the specific Buddhist practice of meditation, what he says in this regard also pertains to other, more familiar, activities. Athletic practices of all kinds involve the unity of mental attention and physical prowess. People often consider Dōgen’s religious practice as an ascetic practice, meaning a practice of strict self-discipline, but we should remember that the ancient Greek word askēsis first described athletic training done for its own sake. We may now expand the definition of the alternative notion of practice: practice engages the practitioner bodily as well as mentally; it engages the practitioner as a whole. That certainly holds true for the practices related to mastering a musical instrument. It also applies to the practice of learning a language, insofar as we must engage bodily and mentally to communicate with other people. This feature also describes much athletic practice.

Practice That Transforms Us and The World We Create The final example of practice in the alternative mode comes from the philosophy of Kitarō Nishida (1870–1945), probably the most important modern Japanese philosopher. Nishida taught that there is a kind of seeing or understanding that emerges from acting. It forms an alternative to the usual sequence of “think and understand first, then act.” Nishida proposed a reciprocity between acting and seeing: attentive acting produces a mode of seeing and knowing, and that seeing, in turn, can guide concurrent action. We can translate Nishida’s notion as “performative seeing” (Japanese: kōiteki chokkan 㹼⛪Ⲵⴤ㿣). Seeing-inaction is not a passive taking-in of objects, and acting in this case does not mean acting on things or merely producing things exterior to oneself. Active seeing and insightful acting reinforce one another. When performative seeing is practiced and becomes embodied in us, we act “intuitively”: we can perform without reflection, as musicians or athletes do when they have mastered an action. It is a way of thinking with the whole body. Nishida coined the expression “enactive intuition” to convey this experience (Nishida 2012).

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One model of this performative seeing or enactive intuition is artistic creation. The usual story is that artists first have ideas and then make something concrete out of them. They create works separate from themselves that have an existence of their own. Nishida saw that as an incomplete picture of what actually happens. We would misunderstand artistic creativity if we saw the produced work only as an end separate from the activity itself. What is “produced,” to use that term, is the artist herself as the embodiment of the activity, along with the cultural world as its inseparable context. The master of calligraphy, Shiryū Morita, influenced by Nishida, actually said that the calligrapher, her brush, and her work co-create each other, making each to be what it actively is in a virtually endless web of relationships called the world (Morita 2011). The artist as one who creates art and the work created arise together. This sense of co-creation adds something to our alternative concept of practice, but still exemplifies a practice in which the end product is internal to the activity. Even if we say that as an artist you pre-exist the work you produce, the activity of your performance becomes visible in the object presented to the world. Morita as calligrapher in action exemplifies the art called “the way of writing” (Japanese: shodō ᴨ䚃), which is one of the many arts and martial arts designated by the word dō (dao 䚃 in Chinese). Other examples you may be familiar with are the “way of tea” or so-called tea-ceremony, the “way of flowers” or ikebana, the “gentle way” or judō, and the ‘way of harmonizing energies’ or aikidō.2 These exemplify practice in the alternative sense. The kind of seeing or knowing involved in these artistic practices is a coming to know by way of interacting with things. What comes to be known is not a world outside oneself. Nishida echoes the fifteenth-century Chinese Neo-Confucian Wang Yang-ming, famous for teaching the “unity of knowledge and action” (Chinese: zhi xing he yi ⸕㹼ਸа). Nishida proposes that knowledge entails action; it does not proceed merely from a mental activity of forming beliefs about the world and then mentally confirming or disconfirming them, which are basically theoretical activities. There is indeed a “theory” side in Nishida: the side of seeing—but it is a kind of seeing accomplished through proficient performance. There is also an “objective” side, or rather a contra-subjective side, to performative seeing: it involves a displacement of the self-centred self which would act upon things rather than interact with them. To use the calligrapher 2

For more on this topic, see Fongaro, Chapter 41 in this volume, discussing the bodily practice of art as intercultural experience.

Embodied Practice

Morita’s example, the person gives up her wilful self in the interaction with the brush, ink, paper, and environment and lets these elements guide her hand. The calligrapher then comes to know a world partially of her own making and comes to know herself as progressively made by that world. This feature completes practice in the alternative mode: practicing embodies selftransformation: the person engaged in the activity interacts with the world in a way that transforms her. In summary, our cross-reading of East Asian and ancient Greek philosophies points to a refreshing, alternative conception of practice which requires attention and repetition and engages one both bodily and mentally, which is done for its own sake or for a goal that is inseparable from the activity, and which transforms practitioners in their interaction with the world. These features may be present in varying degrees in any one action or performance, but, together, they define a singular concept which I call embodied practice for its own sake.

References Aristotle (1941). “Nicomachean Ethics” in The Basic Works of Aristotle, trans. Richard McKeon, New York: Random House. Dōgen (1231). “Dialogue on the Way of Commitment,” [a translation of the Bendōwa], in Bob Myers, First Dogen Book, 5–42, Creative Commons. Available online: http://bob.myers.name/dogen/bendowa.doc (accessed 31 August 2021). Nishida Kitarō (2012). “The Standpoint of Active Intuition” in Nishida Kitarō, Ontology of Production: 3 Essays, trans. with an introduction by William Haver, Durham NC and London: Duke University Press. Morita Shiryū (2011). “Calligraphy” in J. W. Heisig, T. P. Kasulis and J. C. Maraldo (eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 1200–1202, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Glossary Action Something we bodily do, intentionally or not. Aske¯ siss Ancient Greek word for strict bodily training. o¯ (䚃) (䚃) In Japanese, dao do d o in Chinese (from the Chinese philosophy of Daoism): “the Way,” meaning the way to realize and harmonize with all things.

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Intuition Direct apprehension of something, as opposed to inference or discursive, stepwise thinking. Performative seeing: Understanding by way of proficiently learning some action. Practice Usually, the actual application of some idea or ideas; the exercise or performance of an activity, often done in pursuit of a goal or objective. Realization Here, making one’s insight real and manifesting it. Theory A set of ideas that guides behavior or explains facts.

41 Kata Enrico Fongaro

In the West, the system of the fine arts evolved slowly over the centuries. When we think of art in terms of painting, sculpture, music, poetry and so forth, we are actually basing our distinctions on categories created in relatively recent times and first systemized as fine arts towards the middle of the eighteenth century in Charles Batteux’s (1713–1780) Les beaux-arts réduits à un même principe (The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle, 1746), who took the single principle of art to be that of mimesis or imitation. Up until then, the concept of “the fine arts” did not exist; indeed, there was not even a single, unequivocal concept of “art” itself. For centuries, not only was it thought that there was no necessary connection between beauty and art, but music and sculpture, poetry or painting were not considered to be part of the same range of human activity. During both the Greek–Roman period and the Middle Ages, what today we consider to be art was conceived of by means of categories different to our own, or even ignored (Tatarkiewicz 1980). Therefore, it is not in the least surprising that the subject of art appears different from our own concept of art today, especially when we look beyond European borders at traditions that, for centuries, have developed independently from our western aesthetic categories. In Japan, for example, art is called gei ܵ, a term of Chinese origin which originally referred to somebody transplanting a small plant and was then subsequently used to indicate a particular skill or craft (Shirakawa 2014: 114; Shirakawa 2017: 253). More generally, what we today consider to be arts, for example poetry or drama, were considered in Japan as ways of art or geidō ܵ ಕ (dō or michi ಕ means “way” in Japanese). Poetry, for example, appears as the way of poetry, kadō Րಕ in the works of Zeami (੊Ѫ໽, 1363–1443), the theorist and greatest representative of a Japanese form of theater known as nō ೵. He considers, in like manner, his own art as a way, that of the theatre 385

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nō or sarugaku ਅֺ, and ways seem to be for him also these of the so-called martial arts, such as archery, yumiya no michi ‫ٹ‬໾όಕ, which is still practised today as kyūdō ‫ٹ‬ಕ, even outside Japan—and that Batteux would never have accepted within his conception of art as imitation or mimesis. For centuries in Japan, the system of the arts was considered to be a collection of ways, in the sense of “paths” of ascetic practices based on Buddhist principles, leading, under the guidance of a master, to the attainment of mastery in a specific field. The ways were many: in addition to the ways of poetry, archery, and the theatre nō, the most well known outside Japan are probably the way of flowers, kadō ՘ಕ, also known as ikebana ਫ਼՘, the way of tea, sadō ணಕ or cha no yu ண͹౮, the various ways of martial arts or budō ෤ಕ, for example, the way of the sword kendō ‫ݍ‬ಕ and so forth. If one compares these to what in Europe were considered “arts” during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one has the impression that the Japanese ways of art are more numerous, some partly overlapping what we traditionally consider to be western arts, others going beyond, as in the case of the tea ceremony or the so-called “martial arts.” When dealing with the various traditional forms of Japanese art, it is best not to confine oneself within the narrow boundaries of modern western art systems, but to let oneself be guided by the concept of “way,” keeping oneself open to the consideration of other possible models which initially might not coincide with the ideas of modern western art and may, at first, even seem disorientating. In some of these Japanese ways of art the practice or keiko ‫ ݻܦ‬consists entirely or in part of kata, forms or patterns of exercise, the repetition of which under the guidance of a master are considered to be the right method to reach mastery. So, what is kata, what does the practice of kata consist of and what intercultural value can all of this have? In this short chapter, I would like to try to introduce some observations in this regard, and deal with two ways in particular: Zeami’s way of nō and the way of budō, in particular the way of Japanese fencing in two of its forms, namely kendō and iaidō ‫߻ڋ‬ಕ. As Ryōen Minamoto (‫ݱ‬྅ᅷ, 1920–2020) pointed out in his classic work on this subject, entitled Kata (Minamoto 1992), it is precisely in these two ways that reference to the practice of kata assumes centrality. The oldest historical acknowledgement of this, backed up by observations which allow the argument to be addressed on a solid textual basis, is to be found in the theoretical works of Zeami. However, in budō, rather than Zeami’s theoretical observations, one finds the practice of kata elevated to the end of an art itself, especially in some disciplines like iaidō which consist exclusively of the practice of kata.

Kata

What is Kata? Kata is a Japanese term usually written with the ideogram ‫ ܗ‬or ‫ܙ‬, which, in both cases, is usually translated as “form.” Anyone who has practiced any kind of martial art will probably be aware of what it refers to: kendō or iaidō kata, for example, consists of a rigorously codified series of movements that the practitioner has to repeat a number of times until mastered in the best possible way. Kendō or iaidō kata consist of a series of movements executed with a Japanese sword, which serve as an ideal model for certain types of combat situations against one or more adversaries. That is, it can be considered a “canonical model’ of sorts for those who wish to practise swordsmanship. The collection of kata represents the result of generations of masters’ empirical research, which has been perfected, passed on to their pupils and used to monitor and guide the latter’s practice. The original image of the ideogram used to express kata clarifies its meaning: the upper left part of ‫ܗ‬ represents a mould for fusion; the ideogram in the lower part, ౖ, indicates that the mould is plastered by “clay” (tsuchi ౖ), whereas the two lines on the upper right-hand side indicate a bladed tool to put the casting form in good order (Shirakawa 2014: 109–110; Shirakawa 2017: 238). The same mold can be seen on the left of the second ideogram used for writing kata, ‫ܙ‬, whereas the three lines on the right represent glossiness, suggesting the “beauty” of the object created by the mold (Shirakawa 2014: 108; Shirakawa 2017: 236– 237). Kata, is therefore a “model,” a kind of “mold” used to “give a beautiful form” to something. One might, therefore, even try to compare it to a kind of ancient Greek kanon, such as Polykleitos’ kanon (DK40) used in sculpture, or the one used in architecture—even though the comparison does not work completely, since, in the Japanese case, Pythagorean numbers and references to mathematical proportions are not involved. The kata of the Japanese ways of art is not, in fact, an ideal form based on mathematical relationships, but rather a set of gestures. We must not make the mistake of perceiving kata as a sort of platonic idea, eternal, ideal and transcendent. Kata are gestures that do not have a numerical rationality, but a functional one, that is to say, one based on practice, not mathematical principles. Moreover, kata does not exist as such unless incarnated in the individual bodies of those who practise it, coming into being at the very moment it is executed. First and foremost, that is to say, kata as a practice exists in so far as there are numerous kata performed by the bodies of the practitioners, a multitude of gestures which, on close inspection, differ one from another, but at the same time refer back to a kata which is not any one of the bodies incarnating it. Thus, such a kata,

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existing just because and as long as practitioners’ bodies exist, must not be understood as a kind of platonic idea which exists separately from these, but rather as something similar to a stoic “incorporeal” form, which exists together with the bodies of the practitioners even if it does not coincide with them. In this sense, beside the bodies which, during practice, actualize a multitude of fleeting kata, there exists a kata which through practice is transmitted in temporal succession down through the generations of practitioners, thus allowing the fragile formation of a “tradition” known in Japanese as “ancient school” or ླྀഁ ryūha.1

What is Keiko? Kata only exists if it is being practised, and for this reason it has to constantly trans/form itself, that is to say, to pass each and every time through the “forms” incarnated in the bodies of those who practise it, undergoing a metamorphosis which always projects it “trans,” that is “beyond” (which is the original meaning of “trans” in Latin) or “outside” the present of the actualized “form,” nevertheless remaining connected with the past and, as we will see, the future.2 “Practice” in Japanese in the case of kata is keiko ‫ݻܦ‬. The word keiko is formed by two ideograms: the first one, kei ‫ܦ‬, means “think,” kangaeru ‫͓ܦ‬Ζ, whereas the second, ‫ ݻ‬inishie, refers to something “ancient.” Keiko, therefore, literally means “think” of something “ancient,” that is, think of something which comes from the past. It is in this sense that we need to understand the daily “practice” of kata in the Japanese arts: trans/ forming itself through the bodies of its practitioners. Kata allows them to have the bodily experience of connecting to something “ancient,”, “prior,” with which to compare their present situation, the here and now. Keiko in the present moment is therefore always “home” to the past, to the obsessive presence of the ancient masters, to those mythical and unknown founders, who one has to hypothesize as being at the inaccessible outset (inishie) of the chain of transmission between masters and pupils. It is just such a chain that have enabled Kata to be present today, and that might allow Kata to continue to trans/form itself in the future, if anyone still wants to make use of their body in the practise of kata. Otherwise, Kata will simply vanish. 1

See also Sigurðsson, Chapter 42 in this volume. See also Maraldo, Chapter 40 in this volume.

2

Kata

So how does this trans/formative practice of Kata occur? In Zeami’s theoretical works on the nō theatre (Zeami 2008), he describes exactly how the keiko of the basic movements of nō dance should be performed, movements which Zeami does not call kata, but ‫ܙ‬໨ katagi, literally meaning a stamp, kata ‫ܙ‬, made of wood, ki ໨ (here gi), and used for fabric printing. Given that here katagi can certainly be considered a synonym of kata, it is also possible to use Zeami’s instructions on keiko for considering kata practise within other ways, for example in budō. Zeami, indeed, has a precise theory on how keiko of katagi should be addressed, a theory which refers to Buddhist thought and allows us to identify an authentic aesthetics of gesture, or of the performing arts, in Zeami. According to Tadashi Nishihira’s (੤ฑ௜) Zeami’s philosophy of keiko (Nishihira 2009), three specific phases can be identified in Zeami’s works that characterize keiko: “imitate,” “not imitate anymore,” and finally, “to be able to imitate” the kata. In the first phase, the beginner must, first and foremost, “imitate,” ࣇͦΖ niseru, the model. For instance, in the text Transmitting the Flower Through Effects and Attitudesʲ෫ࢡ՘ఽʳZeami writes: “Now, the main point is to present a comprehensive likeness of the object portrayed” (Zeami 2008: 31), i.e. to imitate, niseru. To do so, the beginner must imitate the master’s gestures, analysing them in detail and breaking them down objectively, so as to appropriate them in the most rational and functional way possible. Once this first phase has been completed, it is necessary, in the second phase, to take another step forward, which entails “not imitating” anymore, ࣇͦͷ nisenu, that is to say, to cease relating to the model as an object to be analysed, one placed outside the practitioner. In A Course to Attain the Flowerʲࢺ՘ಕʳZeami writes: Apparently, even in singing and dance, as long as you are still engaged in mimicry [niseru], you will fail to bring the subject into effect [mushufū]. Even though such mimicry may for a time resemble its object, unless you really have made it your own, your expressive power will prove inadequate, and your performance will not improve, since as such an actor, you will be without an effective subject. If, however, you have learned well, imitating [niseru] your teacher, have captured what he teaches with your eyes and fully absorbed it both mentally and physically, and have come to be an accomplished actor of the rank of consummate ease, then that is what it is to be a master. That, surely, is a living performance, Zeami 2008: 132

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The gesture that was objectively imitated in the first keiko phase has been interiorized to the point that kata(gi) no longer exists outside the practitioner, because his/her body has become one with the kata(gi) itself. In a state of “no-mind,” mushin ໃৼ, of fusion with the gesture, music, stage and audience, the actor finally moves and dances naturally and spontaneously. In Transmitting the Flower Through Effects and Attitudes Zeami writes: “In dramatic imitation, there is, surely, a rank of no imitation [nisenu]. Once you have brought dramatic imitation to its limits and have truly entered into [nariiri] the object of imitation, you have no intention of imitating [niseru]” (Zeami 2008: 66). Once the actor arrives at this point in the progression of keiko, he still has not, according to Zeami, reached full mastery: the personal style known as ushufū ༙क෫. This can only be achieved in the third phase of keiko, when the actor also frees himself from the “non-imitation” of kata(gi), reaching a sort of creative freedom in which, in like manner, “one can imitate,” ࣇಚΖ niuru, the model, as well as distance oneself and go beyond it. Consequently, whatever the art one devotes oneself to, when one arrives at this level of mastery, kata not only has been internalized, but the artist can, as the case demands, freely “improvise” on the basis of kata distancing himself from it or, as the Japanese say using the term katayaburi ‫ܗ‬ഃΕ, breaking it (yaburu ഃΖ means “to break” in Japanese). According to a progression that the tea master Fuhaku Kawakami ઔ৏෈പ (1719–1807), founder of the Edosenke ߒ‫ރ‬એՊ school, defines in Fuhaku’s Notes (Kawakami 2008: 164) as गഃ ཯ shu ha ri, “protect” (shu) what is traditionally transmitted by imitating it, introduce spontaneously a “break” (ha) in such a transmission by becoming mushin, “distance oneself ” (ri) from it, the way of art, therefore, reveals itself as a path that leads to creativity, passing through kata, handed down in an incessant creative transmission from master to pupil. A transmission, that is to say, not limited to the “conservation” of an original Kata, immutable and eternal, but one that can only be achieved through the trans/formative becoming in the bodily practice of Kata.

Bodily Experience of Form as Intercultural Experience In conclusion, I would like to point out how this trans/formative becoming of the practice, which, as we have seen, is typical of Japanese arts, is something

Kata

anyone can participate in. Indeed, it is enough to start keiko by making contact with ‘masters’ (in Japanese sensei ઎ਫ਼, literally “someone who is born before you,” i.e. someone who entered in the way before you and consequently should have more experience), and together with other pupils, imitating their gestures, without there being initially any particular need to use language or translation to do so. In other words, it is a question of starting to devote oneself to a bodily practice or, more precisely, to letting Kata realize its process of trans/formation through its incarnation in one’s own body. Accordingly, it is possible for anyone to immerse themselves in a temporal flux that allows their encounter with a past which manifests itself in the gestures of the practice. Not a transmission through words, not the reproduction of quantifiable or mathematical models, but rather the daily and constant effort one makes to adapt a gesture to one’s own body, imitating it, not imitating it, until one manages to imitate it and let metamorphosis occur. Whoever may be interested in this kind of experience could certainly try reading the texts below, but it might be of greater value to try and realize with one’s own body, the transformative encounter that practicing traditional ways of Japanese art can allow us to engage in the present.

References Batteux, C. (2016). The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle, trans. J. O. Young, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diels, H. and W. Kranz, (eds) (2018). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (shorten DK). Kawakami, F. ઔ৏෈പ (2008).ʲ෈പජ‫ى‬ʳ[Fuhaku hikki] Fuhaku’s Notes, Tokyo. Cha no yu kenkyūjo. Minamoto, R. ‫ݱ‬྅ᅷ (1989).ʲ‫ܗ‬ʳ[Kata] Kata, Tokyo: Sōbunsha. Minamoto, R. ‫ݱ‬྅ᅷ, ed. (1992).ʲ‫ͳܗ‬ೖຌชԿʳ[Kata to nihon bunka] Kata and Japanese Culture, Tokyo: Sōbunsha. Nishihira, T. ੤ฑ௜ (2009).ʲ੊Ѫ໽͹‫ݻܦ‬ఫָʳ[Zeami no keiko tetsugaku] Zeami’s Philosophy of Keiko, Tokyo: Tōkyōdaigaku shuppankai. Nishitani, K. ੤୫‫( ࣑ܔ‬1990).ʰߨͳ͏͑͞ͳʱ[Gyō to iu koto] “What is called ‘practice,’ ” in K. Nishitaniʲ੤୫‫࣑ܔ‬ஸࡠॄʳ , [Nishitani Keiji chosakushū] Collected Works of Keiji Nishitani, vol. 20, 54–67, Tokyo: Sōbunsha. Pasqualotto, G. (2011). Filosofia e globalizzazione, Udine-Milano: Mimesis. Shirakawa, S. (2014). The Keys to the Chinese Characters, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

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Shirakawa, S., പઔ੫ (2017).ʲ࣊౹ʳ[Jitō] Etymological Dictionary of Ideograms, Tokyo: Heibonsha. Tatarkiewicz, W. (1980). A History of Six Ideas, The Hague: Nijhoff. Zeami (2008). Zeami: Performance Notes, trans. T. Hare, New York: Columbia University Press.

Glossary Geido Geid o¯ “Way(s) of art”; term indicating the whole of Japanese traditional arts. Kata In this contest “form” or “pattern”: a gesture, the repetition of which constitutes the practise in some Japanese traditional arts. Keiko “Practise” in Japanese arts. Mushin “No-mind”; Buddhist term indicating a particular state of mind in which a sort of non-dualistic experience of “reality as it is” is realized. Shu ha ri “Protect” (shu)) what is traditionally transmitted as the core of an art; introduce a “break” (haa) in such a transmission; “distance yourself” (rii) from the tradition in order to achieve your peculiar originality in artistic creation.

42 Li (Ritual) Geir Sigurðsson

Confucian philosophy offers a normative model for an informed way of life that relies substantially upon tradition and the collective experience of humankind. In the Confucian context, tradition is regarded as an authority or a standard to be respected and emulated, and—in a certain sense and to a certain degree—preserved. Confucius himself is known to have admired cultural heroes of former societies and the“spirit” he identified as characterizing them. He is recorded to have said of himself: “I do not forge new paths; with confidence I cherish the ancients . . .” (The Analects, 7.1).1 All this may sound like a rather familiar case of a conservative, or even reactionary, ideology but, when we look more closely, a somewhat different picture starts to emerge. Li (Chinese: ⿞) is one of the central notions of Confucianism and closely associated with the Confucian understanding of tradition; indeed, li could be described as the embodiment of tradition as customs practised in everyday life. Commonly translated into English as “ritual” or “ceremonies,” the character li originally designated sacred rituals of a religious nature. Later, however, the character came to refer to the extensive range of social or communal behavior that is trained and structured according to established tradition or convention. Li can therefore refer to the simplest of “rituals” such as social greetings, as well as the most elaborate ones, such as weddings, coronations, and harvest blessings. While its earlier sacred connotation was retained, the sacredness gradually came to be attached to tradition itself and more immediately to the society within which it operates. In their manifestation as established performances, li-customs are handed down

1

Translations of Chinese sources are all mine.

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from one generation to another; they receive their authority simply by having been practised for a long time and even more so by being perceived as meaningful to those who partake in them. Considering both that li is based on tradition and that Confucius would like tradition to be preserved, it would seem that Confucius was of the opinion that li should never be changed. However, this is far from being the case. Let us first state that, in many ways, Confucius would, without any doubt, count as a conservative thinker. He would have been unlikely to support a social revolution; in fact, in his own lifetime, he rather attempted to calm down any tendencies to insurgency and unrest. His reasons for this conservative stance, however, are worth exploring, because not only are they food for thought in their own right, but it turns out that Confucius was much more (latently) radical than he may appear at first. In order to fully appreciate the specific traditionalist stance of Confucius, I suggest approaching li from the perspective of education or learning, which, I believe, sheds light on Confucianism both as a social philosophy (perhaps suitable for rulers) and an existential philosophy (for individuals). During human life in its initial stages, learning largely takes place through imitation. As children and young persons, we primarily learn from those who have been around longer than we have and are therefore more experienced. Certainly, we learn much through our own explorations, making full use of the trial-and-error method, but mediated through family members, teachers, and other adults we usually have access to enormously prudent and practical shortcuts. Many a wheel has already been invented such that we need not reinvent them. We can profit from the experience or knowledge of those who have been around longer, who in turn had much of that very knowledge handed down from previous generations, and so on. As time goes by and we mature, we assume more and more responsibility in educating ourselves until we reach adulthood and can, as a rule, make most decisions in our quotidian existence without having to consult others. Confucians expect that by that time we will have gained a profound insight into our own cultural tradition, which will come to serve as a guiding light in our further development and experience. Again, it may seem that this model does not provide much room for change, that tradition will be continuously handed down from one generation to the next with the expectation that it will be meticulously imitated and copied, including li-customs, which function as the performative embodiments of tradition. In this regard, however, the underlying Chinese view of time and change, shared by most if not all schools of thought in

Li (Ritual)

ancient China, must be borne in mind. According to this view, reality is in continuous flux of generative change. Indeed, time is understood as the incessant penetration of all things and events, leading to their perpetual creation, modification, and destruction. This depiction of time is particularly clear in the divinatory Classic of Changes (Yijing), in particular in its “Appended Remarks” (“Yizhuan”), which interprets the prognostications and elaborates on the cosmological nucleus of the divinatory system. While it is most certainly incorrect that the “Yizhuan” was composed by Confucius himself, as has often been claimed, there is no doubt that it expresses Confucian cosmological views (Ren 2001: 30–31). While this view of the transformational nature of reality brings about an awareness that excludes the prospect of a fixed order of things, it nevertheless (or perhaps precisely therefore) attaches a profound value to the ability to both predict the inescapable changes and exert some control over human actions and conduct. It will be taken for granted that in both cases, that of prediction and control, things will not follow precisely according to the model at hand, but that such an effort provides the invaluable opportunity to, respectively, prepare for a likely sequence of events and to have reasonable expectations of other people’s conduct. In any case, when looking for guidelines for behavior and conduct in a reality conceived as being in continuous flux, the early Confucians contended that the only ones accessible to us are the explicit and implicit records of that which has or has not worked in the past. Unsuccessful approaches were abandoned, and those that proved themselves as successful became established practice. In a nutshell, this is what constitutes the cultural tradition. In Confucian writings, what modernity understands as “tradition” seems to be designated by the specifically Confucian dao (Chinese: 䚃), the way, the path. Importantly, however, the path is not only a path from but also a path to. It is, in other words, continuous and cannot end just where we are standing right now but must be extended further into the future. Such extension requires both critical and creative engagement with the cultural tradition.2 For Confucians would contend that a simple imitation or repetition of tradition would be inappropriate and counterproductive, because past and present circumstances can never be identical (cf. Sigurðsson, 2015, 45). In the Zhongyong, one of the canonical Four Books of Confucianism, it says that those who are “born into the present age and yet return to the

2

See also Zhang and Berger, Chapter 33 in this volume.

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ways [or tradition, dao 䚃] of the past will cause themselves misfortunes” (Zhongyong, 29). Let us now consider li more concretely as manifestations or embodiments of cultural tradition in the form of customs. Through this form they have the capacity to transmit to the practitioner an experiential intuition in the implicit system or framework of both meaning and value that is operational within the culture. In the ancient lexicon Shuowen jiezi from the first century AD, which is a kind of etymological dictionary, li is associated with its homophone li (Chinese: ን; also pronounced lü), which means “footwear,” thus to “tread,” “perform,” or “carry out.” Two diverse but still mutually reinforcing interpretations of this association have been suggested: First, David Hall and Roger Ames (1987: 87) focus on the meaning of “performance,” claiming that it indicates “the necessity of enacting and ultimately embodying the cultural tradition that is captured in ritual action.” The French sinologist Léon Vandeermersch (1994: 144–145), on the other hand, draws on the meaning of “footwear,” suggesting that the steps taken on the social arena are no less in need of support than the feet when physically walking. The association of li with footwear, therefore, indicates that they are a protective means preventing one from stumbling when treading in the sphere of social or moral action. In this sense, then, li is a kind of guideline to assist us in the continuous process of developing appropriate conduct. It is here that the educational aspect of li comes to the fore. The practice of li provides us with a bodily sense of how to comport ourselves. It is certainly no coincidence that the Chinese characters for body, ti 億, and li are cognates, as the latter is largely and significantly expressed through the body. We may shed a light on how li works by comparing it with the elementary patterns or forms (ර; Chinese: xing; Japanese: kata) that must be learned in the practice of most, if not all, martial arts. The forms serve both to preserve certain techniques handed down from that specific martial art tradition and to instill or drill an ability in the learner to master the technique. There is no shortcut available to learning the forms; indeed, the forms are the shortcut. The apprentice has no way around repeating, even ad nauseam, the performance of the forms and their choreography in a highly conscious and attentive manner until they have internalized them to such a degree that they can enact them without having to think about their every component or detail. They become, so to speak, their second nature, constituting an inner sense that can be triggered and externalized by the body if it happens to find itself in circumstances where their activation is desirable. Thus, for instance, in a practitioner with a highly developed

Li (Ritual)

sensitivity, the sudden engagement with an opponent in his vicinity will trigger the appropriate sequence of forms in such a way that they serve to come to their defence. Moreover, the forms also serve to create pertinent reactions to novel circumstances. They provide the body with knowledge or sense of how to confront them. The li-customs work pretty much in the same way in the social sphere. As long as the customs have been practised and internalized, a practitioner will have acquired a practicable sense for her tradition’s spectrum of meaning. However, as Theodore Jennings has convincingly argued about the performance of ritual, also applicable to li, that it “teaches one not only how to conduct the ritual itself, but how to conduct oneself outside the ritual space— in the world epitomized by or founded or renewed through the ritual itself ” (Jennings 1982: 119). Li provide one with a sense of what is appropriate with regard to the cultural tradition and therefore also of the most “effective” responses to the situations encountered in daily life, in many cases without having to ponder consciously over these situations and their solutions. Indeed, the third century BCE Confucian thinker Xunzi suggests that “great Confucians” handle affairs as if they were moving like dancing masters to the rhythm in their social surroundings: “They move along with time, bowing or rising with the times; a thousand moves, ten thousand changes, but the tradition they follow is one and the same” (Xunzi, 8.20) Another metaphor closer to modern culture might be the skill of jazz musicians to improvise in harmony with an accompanying band. Such skill is hardly possible unless the musicians in question have acquired, through long and disciplined training, a profound sense for the musical tradition and culture with which they interact. The topic of improvisation is most opportune in this context, as li are not merely embodied expressions of one’s knowledge and understanding of the tradition but can (and should) also function as experimental devices enabling practitioners to “play” with new meanings and interpretations that are necessitated through novel experiences following the ever-changing circumstances as expressed by the cosmology unfolded in the “Yizhuan.” Let us not forget Confucius’s own words, that “one who realizes the new by reviewing the old can be called a proper teacher” (The Analects, 2.11). The emphasis here is on “the new”—the necessity of constantly continuing to forge the path, the tradition (dao 䚃), that has its roots in the past but is capable of growing into branches and boughs in the future if we induce it to do so. We might speak with John Dewey in this regard: “The past is carried into the present so as to expand and deepen the content of the latter” (Dewey 1934: 24). In fact, as Confucius remarks in the saying attributed to him and

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quoted at the beginning of this entry, the forged path is not a new path; it is a continuation. Importantly, only people can make this happen or, as Confucius says, “human beings are able to broaden the tradition (dao 䚃); the tradition does not broaden human beings” (The Analects, 15.29). As embodiments of culture and tradition, li-customs are certainly normative models or frameworks for behavior in the sense that the expectation is that they will be executed according to their prescribed forms. However, the prescription rests upon the value attached to the extent to which human conduct can be anticipated and made sense of. At the same time, it is implicitly understood that the prescribed forms may call for changes in light of the ever-changing circumstances. Such changes, moreover, are initiated by individuals who enact the li-customs. They enact them differently based on their endeavor to critically engage themselves with tradition and its potential match with the always unique here and now. This requires a creative approach to li, wherein the tradition is first and foremost taken as a valuable and resourceful basis for extending oneself into the future rather than an enshrined object of reverence carved in stone for all eternity. As members of our community, we are all expected to contribute to this process: In the beginning we should make use of the immensely useful shortcuts provided by tradition for learning, understanding, and appropriating while we are coming of age, whereas in later years, while certainly continuing our ongoing reliance on tradition in all its broadness, we should adopt a critical and creative attitude by being consistently attentive and alert to the continuously changing situations that demand creative adaptations and modifications to our culture. Such endeavor by the actual people living in the culture is essential if it is to be a living culture. Thus, instead of portraying the Confucian view of tradition and li as merely conservative, a more nuanced vision would see it as respectful, critical, and creative. It is respectful in that it values the wisdom of past generations as the only available foundation we have when attempting to deal with reality. It is critical in the sense that it requires constant awareness of one’s own and other’s conduct for the sake of improving one’s ability to respond appropriately to circumstances. And it is creative in that it makes the demand of individual Confucian practitioners to continuously evaluate and re-evaluate the applicability of our received values, norms, and meanings, and, if needed, come up with novel ones. Indeed, a Confucian would argue that this is precisely what creativity means: to take what we have received from our heritage and imbue it with new meaning by adapting it and making it relevant to the present.

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References The Analects [Lunyu] 䄆䃎 (2006–2020). Chinese Text Project: https://ctext. org/analects. Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience, New York: Perigee Books. Hall, D.L. and Ames, R.T. (1987). Thinking Through Confucius, Albany : State University of New York Press. Jennings, T.W. (1982). “On Ritual Knowledge” The Journal of Religion 26: 111–127. Ren, J. (2001), Yixue yu ruxue ᱃ᆖо݂ᆖ, Beijing: Zhongguo shudian. Sigurðsson, G. (2015), Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation, Albany: State University of New York Press. Vandermeersch, L. (1994). Etudes sinologiques, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Xunzi 㥰ᆀ (2006–2020). Chinese Text Project: https://ctext.org/xunzi. Zhongyong ѝᓨ (2006–2020). Chinese Text Project: https://ctext.org/liji/ zhong-yong.

Glossary dao o 䚃 Way, path, tradition (in Confucianism). li ⿞ Traditional customs, ritual, ceremonies. tii 億 Body.

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43 Noh Theater Mask Mayuko Uehara

The classical Japanese drama of Noh is performed using masks, which are normally devoid of expression. However, as those who have watched a Noh performance will know, the expressions of these initially expressionless masks will, somewhat strangely, change depending on the scene. This phenomenon was noted, for example, by the Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960), in a 1935 short essay titled “Masks and Persona.” As Watsuji states: “the Noh mask, which seems at first to have left all expression behind, actually begins to present an extremely rich expression” (Watsuji 1963a: 292). In this chapter, I outline Nishida Kitarō’s (1870–1945) philosophy of “acting intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 㹼⛪Ⲵⴤ㿣) (Nishida 1979c),1 in order to consider the curious way in which this artistic product works as a medium of expression.

Acting Intuition We ought to begin by clarifying “acting intuition,” in a word, the logic that explains “the making of a thing” (mono o tsukuru ⢙ȧ֌Ƞ) (Nishida 1979c:

1 Nishida uses this term in many of his works. He developed his idea especially in the following reference: The volume 8 of The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō (NKZ, 1979). This Japanese term is translated into English by the author of this article. There is no standard translation for this term since the concept of “kōiteki chokkan” is not diffused outside the Japanese philosophical world. A good reference to learn of the Nishida philosophy is Place & Dialectic Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō, translated by John W. Krummel and Shigenori Nagatomo (2012). Their suggestion is almost the same as my translation: “acting-intuition” (with a small hyphen).

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551). He often explains this concept in relation to works of art and artists’ creations. We usually think of the artist—the subject who creates—as the maker of artistic works. However, in his article “Acting Intuition” (1937), Nishida asserts that, “although the made is independent of the maker, it also makes the maker, for example, as occurs in the act of artistic creation” (Nishida 1979c: 547).2 In other words, a created work (the made) is independent of the artist (the maker, or subject who makes), while the work actually makes the artist. In short, here the relation between subject and object is characterized by mutual formation and creation. Nishida also refers to our body as “expressively working.” This is what Nishida means when he speaks, for example, of “artistic works as an extension of the artist’s body” (Nishida 1979a: 472). Without the body, works of art do not come into the world, nor can things (mono ⢙) be made. Nishida highlights the importance of the body within mutual creation. Here, acting intuition is defined as the manner in which “we see the thing through acting, when it determines us at the same time that we determine it” (Nishida 1979a: 131). It is because we are in the world of things, the act can occur. Put differently, in order for the act to occur there must be things. The thing is what is “seen”; that is, it is what is “intuited,” or “what appears.” It is not what is intellectually thought in the dualistic sense. Nishida has left behind numerous works of calligraphy of his own making. He argued that Japanese calligraphy art was not something which “imitates a certain object” “like paintings or sculptures,” but rather something which “is entirely expressive of the [calligrapher’s] own feelings,” something that “immediately expresses rhythm itself.” In this passage Nishida also writes “Similar to music and architecture,” calligraphy is an “art which is most immediately our own selves” (Nishida 1979d: 150–151). To write calligraphy can be compared to a form of expressing, for example, our reminiscences about our own family, who we lived with in former days, as recalled when we hear the sound of the Buddhist temple bell. It is through the “act” of hearing that “I” intuit the “thing” that is the sound of the bell. The “thing” in turn makes “me” reminisce, and “I” then express it in the form of calligraphy. As I do so, the sound of the bell and “I” mutually “determine” each other; this produces the work that is the calligraphy. We can explain that the

2

In this chapter, all the citations and quotations from Nishida’s works as well as the other Japanese texts are translated into English by the author.

Noh Theater Mask

intuition as an act makes the work appear (here it is in the form of the “calligraphy”). Nishida also states that this mutual creation between “I” and “thing” can be viewed from the perspective of the “world” in which the creation is realized; that is, from the perspective of the total, but not that of the individuals. Both “I” and “thing” are within the “world.” This “I” is endowed with a body, by means of which “I” exist, clearly and undoubtedly, not only in the mental world, but also in the material world. Nishida emphasizes that intuition of the “thing” means “seeing with the body” (Nishida 1979c: 548– 551). Let us take a closer look at what Nishida has to say on this topic. The fact that “I” see or intuit the “thing” is to “become creative; to become a creative element within the creative world [. . .] The world becomes expressive toward the ‘I’ as a creative element who sees corporeally.” Here Nishida is speaking of the point of view of the world itself, but not that of “I” or “thing.” Nishida suggests that the world “is expressively going to form itself,” or that it is going to determine itself. Such a world is said to be a “historical world,” which probably implies the world where the culture and the tradition are formed in time and space. The historical world is expressive, whereas “the world of living things determines itself only morphologically” (Nishida 1979b: 344–346). “Within the world of historical development,”, in other words the “historical world,” “the made is made so that it should make the maker” (Nishida 1979c: 545). That is, within the world of reality, we have a movement that is the mutual influence of the subject and the object; in other words, there is mutuality in the notions of “from the made to the maker” and “from the maker to the made.” Here we can see historical development: a development in time and space within a culture. The body itself is not only the subject, but also a thing, and it develops within this history, moving dialectically. With the help of Watsuji, I will apply this idea of the movement of acting intuition to the creation of the Noh mask as an artistic work. To start our consideration, let us keep in mind that the problem of body expression, that is the “facial expressions” of human beings, is directly concerned with Noh masks. Such masks are made and seen within the mutuality of subject and object. Here, the face is necessarily drawn into our considerations from the viewpoint of mutual embodied subjectivity. So, let us now link the conception of acting intuition to the problem of facial expression, which Nishida himself does not deal with.

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From Nishida’s Theory of the Body Toward the Problem of Facial Expressions Put simply, acting intuition is a logic of the mutual creativity between thing (mono ⢙) and subject. As we have already confirmed, the body is an essential element for considering the reality of the acting intuition. Nishida seems to have conceived of the thing as mainly what is made outside of the body. However, according to his idea, it might be possible to interpret the thing as a form of bodily expression. Let us probe into the problem of facial expression on the basis of this assumption. Nishida mentions the body of the other in the context of dealing with intersubjective expression. That which expressively faces me is the thing [mono ⢙], the body of Thou. [. . .] We can say that, directed towards the individual I, the body of the individual Thou is not a thing as a tool, but the body of Thou. Nishida 1979b: 290

I shall attempt here to examine the problem of the bodily relation between “I” and “You,”, and facial expression, in respect to the “thing” (mono ⢙). The “thing” for Nishida is not only regarded objectively but is a “historical matter-thing” (rekishiteki jibutsu ↤ਢⲴһ⢙) in the above-mentioned historical world. This “matter-thing” (jibutsu) is that which arises in the internal world, yet also must take form and appear in the external world. However, the historical thing must necessarily be expressed in the external world (Nishida 1979b: 284–285). This is the realization of expression through the thing (mono). But the thing is not an objectified thing, which is conceived intellectually; it can be said to be a medium for expression, and this medium might be language, body, or any other expressive sign. If the bodily medium becomes an expressed thing, then the expression is realized via the body. Now, let us examine the matter of the face. According to the above quotation, does not the relation of “I” and “You” begin with two bodies facing each other? First, both faces face each other, and perceive the facial expressions of each other. Human beings identify others through the medium of faces and select words and topics on the basis of facial expressions. It is through the face, as body, that the relation of “I” and “You” is opened up.

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The expression which appears on my face is directed toward “you” who meets it. However, in reality, the circumstances are surely much more complex. This is because expressions have several different occasions: the expression of my face is turned toward you, and you meet my face in turn, reading it and responding with your facial expressions, words, or gestures. Following the acting intuition founded on the idea of “from the made to the maker” (the related and variant expressions including the “made” and the “maker” have been cited above and explained), a facial expression is a historical thing (Nishida 1979c: 544). Yet, it also changes from moment to moment, having no place in which it is able to preserve its form.

The Expressiveness of the Noh Mask—Unnatural Forms The expressiveness of the Noh mask is precisely connected with human facial expression. Finally, let us now focus on the Noh mask in order to examine the problem of how it can achieve a kind of facial expression “without form,” taking into consideration the aspect of the physical expression which is inherent in the logic of acting intuition. When the actor wears the Noh mask upon the stage, the mask is a “thing” in the form of a piece of art. It can be regarded as an extension of the body of the actor. We may say that an actor’s bodily expression is projected onto the mask. It is possible to identify numerous different relations to the Noh mask. In the light of acting intuition, a larger range comes into view: there is the Noh play, the roles to be played, the performers, bodies, things, the audience, the stage, and the theater space, and also the greater environment which envelops all of these, such as Japanese culture or tradition. According to Watsuji, the technique proper to making a Noh mask lies not in “pushing the natural movements of life to the exterior,” but, conversely, in the “killing of expression” or the “negating of the natural expression of life.” This technique follows the manner of Noh’s style, which is based on “removing natural physical movements.” The “organic movements” of the actor’s entire body are transmuted into “machine-like movements.” Yet Watsuji claims that this negation of the natural actually has the effect of “sharply expressing the nature of the human being” (Watsuji 1963b: 296–299).

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What kind of conditions led to the formation of the contradictory expressiveness of Noh, whereby expressions are negated for the sake of expression? The Noh theater researcher, Nogami Toyoichirō (1883–1950) provides an extremely interesting explanation. There are muscles on the human face which cannot be consciously moved. It follows that for even the most well-skilled actor, “the possible range of expressions which they can produce by the power of their will is very narrowly defined.” The division of extremely complex emotions into different types also presents a serious challenge. The performance of this task, as Nogami assures, is “beyond the ability of [intentional] human facial expressions.” It is in response to this difficulty that Noh actors found assistance in the use of the mask. The Noh mask is a “simplified, purified and stylized face” and “the most perfect face.” Noh masks are capable of expressing “strong emotion transiently,” yet the creators made strenuous efforts to make masks which can “stabilize their normal state as almost expressionless.” They accumulate sufficient ability of expression and “can change so as to express both joy and sorrow, cheerfulness and melancholy.” Nogami qualifies this ability as “intermediary expression” (Nogami 2009: 266–271). On the wooden Noh masks, lacking in any specific expression, various clever techniques for their lips, chin or eyes have been used and engraved. The subtlety of their carving allows for the mask, “once given a certain movement from a certain angle . . . to quickly come to life, expressing the emotion which the actor wishes to convey” (Nogami 2009: 285). In summary, the secret to the delicate changes in expression around the mouth and eyes is in part due to the techniques used in the masks’ creation. The Noh actor Kanze Hisao (1925–1978) has stated that the Noh mask is not merely a tool of makeup for the actor. The mask and the actor stand in a relationship whereby the mask is “assimilated into the actor’s body, and moreover each possesses a motive power strong enough to react against each other.” The mask enables the actor to “transform” into someone different from their everyday self, and moreover grants him the ability to summon forth a performance on the stage. However, while the actor is gifted with a higher power of expressivity for performance, the movement and posture of his body are restricted by the costumes and style of Noh. “The free expression of the face,” “the free movement of the body,” even “the free taking of breaths” are not permitted. “The actor is placed in a state where their “feeling for drama as well as their personality are contained and negated.” This restriction leads to an “internal conflict,” whereby the actor seeks to “overcome” the negated flesh. They finally “discard” the “desire to express,” and break away

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from the consciousness which is directed outwards. At this point, Kanze insists, there is something “which comes seeping out.” This is the “Noh performance.” The actor “wishes to reach the state of ‘no-mindedness’, entrusting their self to the mask,” “fighting the mask,” “throwing their energy against the mask, in order to bring forth their performance.” For the actor, Kanze asserts, the Noh mask is in a way akin to a “collaborator” in the performance (Kanze 1981: 255–257). The above explanation that Kanze provides concerns the relation between the performance, the actor, and the mask, from the perspective of the investigation of the actor’s interiority. Yet, he does not forget that, more fundamentally, this is based on the world view of Noh, whereby “the side of the actors and the side of the audience are unified, creating a single world” (Kanze 1981: 257). In other words, this is a joint dramaturgy which, as I mentioned earlier, accompanies “the play of Noh, the roles to be played, the performers, bodies, things, the audience, the stage and the theater’s space, and also the greater environment which envelops all of these.” With respect to the Noh masks’ rich expressions on the stage, Kanze also has the following analysis to add: Along with the images stirred by the poetry and verse sung on stage, there is also musical inspiration such as melodies and rhythms, and the carriage of the moving actor [. . .] These bodily movements and the movements of the mask becoming one, an illusion is produced for the audience. The relation between the angle of the mask and the effect of the light might also take effect here. Yet it is not only this. All the actions taken on stage harmonize. In doing so, they betray their joy or sadness”. Kanze 1981: 259

Furthermore, the Noh mask does not express only by itself, but rather, expresses “by harmonizing with the overall performance on stage”. To put it differently, Kanze claims that Noh masks are created “in order to bring forth the abundant imagination of the audience” (Kanze 1981: 259). Kanze’s perspective on the expression of Noh masks, which realizes through their interaction with the other elements, seemingly corresponds to Nishida’s acting intuition. However, Kanze’s thought is that “illusion is produced for the audience” (Kanze 1981: 259), while I would rather reinterpret it as that the audience, “the one who sees,” is “seeing the form of a momentary facial expression.” This is to say, it is not an illusion but, in fact, the form of the audience’s intuition. I would like to suggest that when the audience also dissolves into a whole alongside the action and the event on

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stage they do, in a sense, see the moving expressions of the mask, while at the same time seeing the moving of their own hearts.

Conclusion From the perspective of acting intuition, the Noh mask is a replacement for the face as a living body. The human face latently possesses all kinds of different expressions. We may interpret the mask as having been created to help play that role. If this is the case, seeing an expression in the Noh mask is the very essence of acting intuition. In a scene where Noh is performed, the actor, and the Noh mask as his companion, may well provoke emotions within the audience. However, it immediately becomes clear that the audience sees on the Noh mask the form, in other words the emotion. The Noh mask can be compared to a screen on which is projected the expressibility of the audience’s heart. These expressions of those who see do not appear in the human face of the actor, but are reflected and appear in a Noh mask, a face engraved on wood.

References Kanze, Hisao (1981). The Collected Works of Kanze Hisao 2, Tokyo: Heibon sha. Nishida, Kitarō (2012). “Logic and Life,” Place & Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō, trans. Krummel and Nagatomo, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nishida, Kitarō (1979a). “The Standpoint of Acting Intuition” (1935), The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō (NKZ) 8, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Nishida, Kitarō (1979b). “Logic and Life” (1936), The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō (NKZ) 8, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Nishida, Kitarō (1979c). “Acting Intuition” (1937), The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō (NKZ) 8, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Nishida, Kitarō (1979d). “The Beauty of Calligraphy” (1930), The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō (NKZ) 12, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Nogami, Toyoichirō (2009). The Completed Critical Essays of Nogami Toyoichirō What is Noh? Vol. I, Tokyo: Shoshi-shinsui. Watsuji, Tetsurō (1963a). “Masks and Persona” (1935), The Collected Works of Watsuji Tetsurō (WTZ) 17, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Watsuji, Tetsurō (1963b). “The Style of Noh” (1936), The Collected Works of Watsuji Tetsurō (WTZ) 17, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.

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Glossary Nishida Kitaro¯ One of the best-known Japanese philosophers, Nishida Kitaro¯ (1870–1945) fundamentally inquired into modern or scientific western thinking, characterized by a dualism of subject and object. The logic of “acting intuition” is founded on his challenge to go beyond the limit of modern dualism. (ko¯ iteki chokkan Acting intuition (ko n 㹼⛪Ⲵⴤ㿣 㹼⛪Ⲵⴤ㿣)) This term can also be translated as “active intuition” or “enactive intuition.” The logic of action where we see the thing through acting, and it determines us as we determine it. The thing ((mono mono ⢙ ⢙)) What is expressed and materially (but not mentally) made in every kind of form. Watsuji Tetsuro¯ Japanese philosopher (1889–1960) specializing in ethics. He proposed a theory of the “milieux” (Fu¯ do o 付൏) which explains that which is constructed through the negotiations between the human relational beings and nature. A first-rate literary essayist, he wrote The Pilgrimage to the Old Buddhist Templess (Koji junere junerei ei ਔሪᐑ⽬)(1919) and A Study of the History of the Japanese Spiritt (Nihon seishin shi kenkyu¯ ᰕᵜ㋮⾎ਢ⹄ウ) (1920), among others. Noh theater The origin of Noh goes back to the Heian period (794 for some 400 years), beginning as a form of dance-play performance conducted to give praise to the virtues of a temple or the Buddha. It was developed to a higher level of art by the Noh player and author, Zeami (1363?–1443?).

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44 Okwu Jonathan O Chimakonam

Introduction Due to its peculiar history, African philosophy for much of the twentieth century thrived as metaphilosophy, debating questions about its existence, method, logic, and content. But following the disillusionment that set in during the later period (1980s–1990s), some of its leading figures like Kwasi Wiredu issued a call for attention to be shifted to substantive concerns. This did not fully take off until the 1990s when philosophers like Campbell Momoh, Pantaleon Iroegbu and Innocent Asouzu began to inaugurate new ideas using the conversational approach, which the present writer later formulated as a school of thought and a method of inquiry (Chimakonam 2015, 2017). This style of philosophizing owes much of its flair and technicality to the adoption and adaptation of linguistic resources in African languages in conceptual and theoretical formulations. The underlying idea was to articulate most of its concepts using the linguistic resources of different African languages even if the discussion of African philosophy is to be continued in widely spoken foreign languages. So, language (both African and foreign) is crucial to the practice of African philosophy. Concepts that are a product of language are also critical and ought to be formulated where possible in African languages. But where are we to begin? This is where okwu comes in to challenge logos not only as the primordial linguistic resource for African philosophy in particular, and philosophy in general, but also as a new framework for rationality.

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The Concept of Okwu Logos comes from the Greek language with multiple meanings such as word, speech, reason, opinion, discourse, etc. Various philosophers have also used it to depict different things from the pre-Socratic to the modern time. Other usages can be found in fields such as religion, theology, psychology and so on. I will not gazette all here without digressing from the focus of the chapter. The meaning I associate with logos in the present work include “word” according to Christian Theologians like Philo of Alexandria, (cited in Stead 1998), and “reason” or “reasoned discourse” for Aristotle, (cited in Aygün 2017: xiv). The connection I will make to the above is as follows: words are the basic units in a language, and reason is a tool (faculty) for doing philosophy that requires language to produce a “reasoned discourse or argument.” Rationality as often used in philosophical texts is the mental capacity to engage in a reasoned discourse following a given logical structure, usually the classical two-valued type (of binary opposition) with its laws of thought. This structure often privileges one side of the binary while repressing the other side (Derrida 1974: 51). It leads to logophilia—love or addiction to this type of reasoning (Foucault 1972: 228), and ultimately to logocentrism—that is, the lopsided ideology of reason in western philosophy (Derrida 1974: 90–99). The ideology of lopsidedness of reason that privileges the approach of one philosophical tradition, say western philosophy, automatically residualizes the approach of other philosophical traditions such as the African, Eastern, etc. If philosophy is to be truly universal in the sense of accommodating diverse particularities (Cesaire [1956] 2010: 152), then, perhaps, logos with its cultural commitment and ideological lopsidedness is not a fitting philosophical centre. If one disputes the concept of logos as a methodological precondition for doing African philosophy, for example, what alternative would be offered? It should be clarified here that some of the scholars like Michel Foucault and Lucius Outlaw, who oppose logos, do so precisely because it disfigures reason into a lopsided tool for marginalization. For example, it is the conviction of Outlaw ([1987]2003: 165–166) that logos is more Eurocentric than philosophical and, as such, promotes epistemic lopsidedness and lacks the merit to occupy the world philosophical point of departure. Logos is then presented by Foucault (1972: 228) as ontologically biased; it is also seen as the possession of a section of humanity or dominant culture which drags reason off course in its journey in philosophy as a universal discipline. In contrast to logos, there is another concept called “okwu” that has been offered in the literature (Okonkwo 2012: 23; Chimakonam 2019: 13–17). The question can

Okwu

be asked, is okwu ontologically and culturally unbiased? We will investigate this question as we unpack the concept here. Okwu is a concept from the Igbo language, which has no cognates among English words. Unlike logos, it cannot be translated as “word,” rather; it is that raw material from which a word can be formed. Its meaning is definite. It does not imply or connote anything else. It carries no figurative interpretation. It can be argued that if there are other languages that have a word for okwu, it can easily be translated without a loss or addition of meaning. This type of definiteness, one can argue, makes the concept of “okwu” to be more stable than the Greek concept of logos which has multiple meanings each of which, in turn, has its own baggage. Take, for example, the English concept “word”; if we colloquially describe word as a unit in a language, it could also in the same English language mean “message” as in send a word; “speech” as in give a word of advice; “to give information” as in take word to them, etc. This is, however, not the case with okwu. Unlike logos which can be translated into the English term “word,” okwu is not a unit in the syntax of a language. The Igbo term for word is, in fact, “mkpuru-okwu” which means “the first fruit of okwu” or that which is derived from okwu. Thus, okwu precedes “word.” It is the very ancestor of word, and it is raw, formless, and shapeless. Logos, in contrast, means “word” among several other things making it a unit in the syntax of a language vulnerable to lopsided, unequal and binary definitions. The suitability of okwu as a primordial philosophical term may be argued further in terms of natural history. For instance, historians of language have reported that, at the beginning of human evolution, there was only one language spoken in the world, in Africa where the first humans lived. In the words of the Columbia University linguist John McWhorther, “Like animals and plants, the world’s languages are the result of a long ‘natural history,’ which began with a single first language spoken in Africa” (2004: iii). The point in the preceding is that okwu can purvey the sort of universal reason that is not inspired by the privileging of the culture from which it originates as logos does for the western culture. Another major inhibition of logos (as a reasoned discourse) is that it is essentialist. It dichotomizes reality into what is acceptable and unacceptable; approvable and unapprovable; superior and inferior along the lines of unequal logical binaries. For this, decolonial thinkers nowadays have mounted a campaign for the decolonization of philosophy and its primary languages of study (see, for example, Wa Thiong’o 1986; Wiredu 1995; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2015; Raju 2017). Bjorn Freter (2020), recently introduced the concept of “desuperiorization” in the field of African philosophy in order

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to challenge the logos-inspired lopsidedness in thinking. The argument in the above is that when a philosophy sets out with a lopsided logical bivalence, it inexorably comes short of producing a true picture of reality (metaphysics); or truth (epistemology); or value (ethics). Some philosophers thus argue that the journey of reason in African philosophy has been severely affected by this western logocentric influence (Serequeberhan 1991; Janz 2009). Indeed, the logocentric posture of reason has been the mainstay of European philosophy (Derrida 1982; Foucault 1972). For example, the underlying logical bivalence that highlights one side of the pair in a binary, marginalizes the other, such as the opposition of men vs women (sexism), European vs African (racism), Christians vs Muslims (religious bigotry), the haves vs the have-nots (classism), etc. The logos-driven system of reasoned discourse, called two-valued logic, leaves no room for an intermediate position or binary complementarity for that matter. For example, an action could be evaluated as right or wrong in western theories of ethics, there is no intermediate position in which the notions of right and wrong could be reconciled without violating the law of contradiction. But my focus here is to unravel the unequal binary established between western and African philosophies when logos is teased out as a notion of “reasoned discourse” with a bivalent structure. This is what makes western philosophy’s conception of logos (as reason) essentialist.1 Unfortunately, the strong influence of Plato and Aristotle in African philosophy today has tended to project African philosophy itself as essentialist, where the so-called universalists claim superiority over the particularists2 and vice versa. For example, in their presentation of the African philosophical canon, the former seeks to impose the western lopsided bivalent perspective, thereby marginalizing the African intellectual formation as inferior, whereas the latter seeks to impose a bivalent version of a local epistemic formation, thereby rejecting every piece of knowledge in the western canon as inferior. In this way, the journey of reason in African philosophy is threatened by logocentrism. Some African philosophers who now follow Lucius Outlaw (1987/2003) to advocate deconstruction, have this menace of essentialism in mind. They caution that such essentialist postures should be abandoned for a more balanced approach. For example, Jay van Hook writes that “. . . African

1

See also Rivera, Chapter 6 in this volume. These are two opposing schools of thought in African philosophy. Other schools include hermeneutical, literary, philosophic sagacity, and the conversationalist schools (see Oruka 1990; Chimakonam 2015).

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philosophy might well cash in its essentialist framework for an existentialist one—not in the sense of mimicking Kierkegaard, Sartre, or Heidegger, but in the basic sense of attending to the existential situation(s) in which African communities find themselves” (2002: 92). This argument is for African philosophers to free themselves and thus the African canon from the spell of Plato and Aristotle, who popularized the lopsidedness of the bivalent structure included in the notion of reasoned discourse. Unlike logos, okwu is not essentialist. As we stated earlier, it has neither the capacity to polarize nor the propensity to dichotomize and to discriminate as logos does. In the hands of a philosopher, okwu is like clay: formless and shapeless. It falls to the philosopher of any persuasion to turn it into thoughts and words. The place of okwu as a philosophical concept with which thoughts could be developed can be appreciated when we observe that it is from okwu that words are formed. A collection of words makes a sentence, and sentences with elementary linguistic (syntactic and semantic) rules make a human language.3 If we press further, we will observe that languages often have cultural bases and that these bases are sometimes geographic. People in these various geographies who own and speak these languages are human beings participating in humanity whose common index is their development of intelligent, rational cultures. Without an intelligent culture, it seems impossible that people can develop a language (Uduma 2015). Thus, language becomes one way of manifesting humanity’s shared rationality—the quality of being logical. In the absence of rationality, language seems impossible. In other words, rationality is not only an attribute standing on its own where one may argue that some philosophical tradition have it and others don’t; or that some philosophers have it and some don’t. It is a quality that human beings can manifest in different ways, one of which is through language. When one utters some words or a speech, they do so in the hope that other humans who share an understanding of that language of communication as a result of the logical laws that govern their universe of discourse would make sense of such utterances. Language and different aspects of culture are some of the ways of manifesting rationality as a human mental capacity. In the end, logic is deemed to be the arbiter of what is rational and what is not. But logics can differ in various cultures (Ganeri 2001). As a result, what is

3

Here, I specifically used the expression “human language” because, unlike several other things humankind has mastered with some authority, the linguistic structure of lower-class animals is not one of them.

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rational in one culture like the need to face the east during prayers for Muslims, might be irrational in another like in the Christian culture. Notwithstanding, it is the same faculty of reason manifesting differently in various cultures. Logos as reasoned discourse is only one of such logical manifestations. If world philosophy is in search of one occurrence of reason that can be universalized, then logos, which is the western manifestation, cannot be suitable due to its essentialist nature. Because philosophers are those who produce thoughts when they structure the world with their mind’s categories, a language, with all its appurtenances and rules, becomes the motor through which they communicate their thoughts. Similarly, any culture that is intelligent enough to develop language is rational since, without logic, we may not meaningfully be able to use language at all. Indeed, the enigmatic nature of human language can only be de-emphasized but never over-emphasized. This is why many linguists place it at the center of some of the greatest evolutionary accomplishments. Tecumseh Fitch, for one, writes that: “Despite intensive searching, it appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. The evolution of human language is thus one of the most significant and interesting evolutionary events that have occurred in the last 5–10 million years, and indeed during the entire history of life on Earth” (2010: 1). It is important to note that Fitch, in the above, is not disputing the linguistic capacity of other classes of animals. He is merely saying that the human language is the most advanced. I am a firm believer in the linguistic capacity of all animals, although this capacity appears more complex in the human species. My definition of language broadly would be a tool for the creation of ideas, communication, and interaction through various channels. In the human species, there are at least five indicators of language, namely, thought, speech, writing, depiction, and action. By careful consideration of a subject’s mannerisms, we can discern when an individual is creating ideas in his mind. By a vocal noise or movement of the lips, we can perceive when an individual is communicating ideas or interacting with someone else. In a written text, we can perceive the communication of ideas and interaction. In various art, gesticulation, and symbolic depictions, we can perceive the communication of ideas. Finally, in action as much as in inaction, we can perceive the communication of ideas and interaction. But we make sense of any form of language through logic. The argument so far is that (the western) logos as “reasoned discourse” yields a bivalent logic that is lopsided in its parameters for evaluation and is thus biased against those drawn up as

Okwu

outsiders or, in other words, non-westerners. Okwu, which is argued to suffer no such biased cultural commitments, is here suggested as a better option. In elevating okwu as the primordial index for rationality which shapes language, and language as the ultimate motor for creating and communicating thought, interaction, depiction, and action; African philosophy and philosophy generally, would be able to rid themselves of what Foucault calls “logophilia”4 and what I describe as “logomania”,5 in order to have a clear picture of reality, knowledge, and value.

From Logocentrism to Okwucentricity The excerpt by Fitch above leaves no one in doubt as to the power of language not only in civilization but also in thought. It can even be argued that thinking in itself is linguistic. Indeed, there is no language that is spoken or written that was not first spoken or written in the mind of the speaker or the writer. In any mind in which language can be formulated, spoken, depicted, and written, in such a mind also can be found rationality. The logos-derived ideas of word, speech, language, reason, and logic that engender unequal binaries and privilege the manifestation of reason in western philosophy and residualize its manifestation in other philosophical traditions like in the African philosophical tradition. Thus, for African philosophy to attain a respectable status, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (1986), advocates decolonization of the African mind that begins with language. Kwasi Wiredu (1995), on his part, advocates conceptual decolonization, while Kwesi Tsri (2016), advocates conceptual liberation. All this talk about the necessity of decolonization boils down to the lopsided bivalent logic that marginalizes reason in its various manifestations in other cultures. Granted that okwu is the primordial material for language, it seems plausible to argue like some African philosophers of language that okwu should be the basic raw material for thought (Okonkwo 2012). Language

4

It was Michel Foucault (1972: 228) who coined the concept “logophilia” to ridicule a sense of over commitment to logos or reason in the history of western philosophy. 5 I coined the concept “logomania” to mean a type of intellectual intoxication and unconscious addiction to logos that characterize western philosophy and all those philosophical traditions it has influenced, which paints a lopsided and divisive picture of what counts as reality, truth, and value (Chimakonam 2019: 5).

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decomposes into a mountain of words. If words are dissolved, they will turn into a linguistic molten material called okwu; and it is from okwu that words are formed. And by okwu, we do not mean any specific terms or concepts, those would be okwu already structured by some sets of linguistic rules. Okwu is in a raw state, formless and shapeless, and like clay only molded into specific words, terms, or concepts from the moment it was created following some linguistic rules as to be continually used to form sentences and languages. It is an eternal reality! For this, the Igbo say proverbially, Okwu danahu. o. nu. , o. nagh.i ekwe ntu. tu. ta. This could be translated as “if okwu escapes from the mouth, it would become impossible to retrieve it” (see also Okonkwo 2012: 1). This is one way to interpret this proverb, that a spoken word is irretrievable. For example, when a woman mocks another for being barren. There is nothing that can be done to unsay the hurtful words that were said. But this interpretation would suit mpku. ru. -okwu or word (the fruit of okwu), and not okwu itself. An interpretation of the proverb that suits okwu as the ancestor of word would be to say that when okwu as a molten or raw material for word is created, it cannot be uncreated. This is because it would become the raw material for the formation of words and languages but not just specific words or languages. Nowadays, linguists talk about languages that are now extinct and those that might soon become extinct, but language as a generic phenomenon can never become extinct insofar as there are human beings left in the universe who are speaking any type of language. So, the moment the human mind created okwu and the mouth voiced it out (which means the moment humans attained the ability for speech or language) okwu became an eternal reality as long as the homo loquens (the speaking human) lives. In its raw form, okwu is not exposed to the weakness of logos as a divisive and lopsided phenomenon. Thus, from logocentrism we might begin to talk about okwucentricity. The latter is not a center which draws a line between itself and the periphery, but a sort of point where all the margins of philosophy can converge. It is thus not a ‘centrism’ (divisive ideology) but a ‘centricity’ (a framework for respectful interaction). In other words, while the former displaces, dichotomizes, bifurcates, marginalizes, and polarizes the world of philosophy and humanity, the latter in replacing the former, seeks to unify the same. So, okwucentricity is not a displacement narrative—it is a unifying narrative. The reason or logic that emerges from it does not discriminate against the other; it recognizes the right of the other. It does not equate a particular manifestation of reason with the universal or treat one as absolute; it confers

Okwu

equality on all, recognizes the validity of their different contexts and awards the character of universal applicability to all as a common attribute. The reason that emerges from okwu is not absolute, and none of its contextual manifestations is capable of being elevated to an absolute instance (Asouzu 2011). In other words, okwu does not engender unequal binaries but complementary binaries. It does not privilege one pair of a binary opposition, rather; it recognizes each. In okwu, opposition does not necessarily translate to contradiction; it can purvey an opportunity for complementation. Similarly, difference does not necessarily translate to inferiority; it can be a framework for variety. There can be disagreement without condemnation. Okwu can yield a logic of conversation that does not ultimately search for agreements or consensus on what is true or false, valid or invalid, but which focuses more on the contributions that various paradigms of reason can make in a polylogue. Perhaps one sterling difference between logos and okwu when construed as reason is that, whereas the voice of logos is a monologue, that of okwu is a polylogue. While logos dictates to what it scornfully regards as the “other,” okwu converses with all “selves.” Okwu leaves equal room for different cocks to crow, logos denies that other cocks can crow. This is the genuine advantage that okwu can have over logos in a multicultural philosophical encounter when understood as reason, reasoned discourse, or logic.

Acknowledgements Jonathan O Chimakonam acknowledges that “this work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Numbers 132057).” Opinions expressed in this research are those of the author; the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.

A small portion of this chapter first appeared as a section in Chimakonam, O. Jonathan. “The Journey of Reason in African Philosophy” in Ka-Osi-SO .-

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Onye: African Philosophy in the Postmodern Era, ed. Jonathan. O. Chimakonam and Edwin Etieyibo (2018), 1–20, Delaware: Vernon Press. The text of this chapter is an extended and a substantially revised content from the portion that appeared in the first source. I hold the copyright and here acknowledge the first source.

References Asouzu, II. (2011). “ ‘Ibuanyidanda’ and the Philosophy of Essence,” Filosofia Theoretica 1(1): 79–118. Aygün, Ö. (2017). The Middle Included: Logos in Aristotle. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press. Cesaire, A. ([1956]2010). “Letter to Maurice Thorez,” trans. Chike Jeffers, Social Text, 103(28): 145–152. https://doi.org/10.1215/016424722009-072. Chimakonam, J.O. (2019). Ezumezu: A System of Logic for African Philosophy and Study, Cham: Springer. Chimakonam, J.O. (2017). “Conversationalism as an Emerging Method of Thinking in and Beyond African Philosophy,” Acta Academica, 49(2): 11–33. Chimakonam, J.O. (2015). “Transforming the African Philosophical Place through Conversations: An Inquiry into the Global Expansion of Thought (GET),” South African Journal of Philosophy, 34(4): 462–479. Derrida, J. (1974). Of Grammatology, trans., Gayatri Spivak, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Freter, B. (2020). “Decolonisation of the West, Desuperiorization of Thought, and Elative Ethics” in Elvis Imafidon (ed.), Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. 106–127. Cham: Springer. Fitch, T. (2010). The Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. (1972). “The Discourse on Language” in The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Harper & Row. Ganeri, J. (2001). ed. Indian Logic: A Reader. Richmond: Curzon Press. Janz, B. (2009). Philosophy in an African Place. Lanham MD: Lexington Books. McWhorther, J. (2004). The Story of Human Language. Part 1. Chantilly : The Teaching Company Limited Partnership. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2015). “Decoloniality as the Future of Africa,” History Compass, 13(10): 485–496. Odera, O. (1990). Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and the Modern Debate on African Philosophy. Leiden: EJ Brill.

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Okonkwo, J. (2012). Okwu danahu onu: The Basic Principle of Igbo Philosophy of Language, Inaugural lecture no. 6 of Imo State University, Owerri: Imo State University Press. Outlaw, L. ([1987] 2003). “African Philosophy: Deconstructive and Reconstructive Challenges” in P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux (eds), The African Philosophy Reader, 2nd edn, 162–191, London: Routledge. Raju, C. K. (2017). “Black Thoughts Matter: Decolonized Math, Academic Censorship, and the ‘Pythagorean’ Proposition” Journal of Black Studies, 48(3): 256–278. Serequeberhan, T. (1991). (ed.) African Philosophy: The Essential Readings. New York: Paragon House. Stead, C. (1998). “Logos,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available online: https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/logos/v-1 (Accessed April 20, 2021). Tsri, K. (2016). Africans are Not Black: The Case for Conceptual Liberation. Abingdon: Routledge. Uduma, O.U. (2015). “The Logic Question in African Philosophy : Between the Horns of Irredentism and Jingoism” in J.O. Chimakonam (ed.), Atuolu Omalu: Some Unanswered Questions in Contemporary African Philosophy, 83–100, Lanham MD: University Press of America. Van Hook, J.M. (2002). “The Universalist Thesis Revisited: What Direction for African Philosophy in the New Millennium?” in G. Presbey, D. Smith, P. Abuya and O. Nyarwath (eds), Thought and Practice in African Philosophy, 87–93, Nairobi: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. wa Thiong” o, N, (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Oxford: James Currey. Wiredu, K, (1995). “The Need for Conceptual Decolonisation” in Olusegun Oladipo (ed.), Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy. Ibadan: Hope Publications.

Glossary Language A tool for creating ideas, communication, and interaction with semantic and syntactic rules. Logic A system or a tool for reasoning in diverse fields and topics along some laid down laws. Logos Greek word that has been employed by different people and across the ages to mean very many things such as word, speech, opinion, reason, reasoned discourse, orderliness, etc. Logocentrism A biased and divisive ideology for elevating the “self” to an absolute instance and residualizing the “other.”

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Okwu An Igbo term for a raw and formless entity from which words (nkpu. ru. -okwu u) are created. Okwu centricity An unbiased framework for multicultural Okwucentricity polylogue. Rationality The mental quality of being logical. Reason The faculty that contains the capacity for rationality. Reasoned discourse A logical argumentation. Figure 41.1

45 Tōjisha kenkyū (participant-led research) Saku Hara

Tōjisha kenkyū (a kind of participant-led research; Japanese: ౲ࣆं‫ )ڂݜ‬is a type of contemporary collaborative research that uses dialogue as the main method of investigation. Participants in a Tōjisha kenkyū event are people who have difficulties in their daily lives and are in some way negatively impacted by a disability. Tōjisha kenkyū was initially conceived for people with mental illnesses, developmental disorders, or other kinds of disabilities. However, today, anyone who is experiencing difficulty in their daily lives may also practice Tōjisha kenkyū. As we will see, Mukaiyachi, a social worker, and Kawamura, a psychiatrist, were among the first to develop this practice. The idea of these events is that the main researchers in a discussion session tell a story about their problems in front of their peers, that is, other people suffering with their own difficulties in daily life; they then listen to the opinions and responses of their peers. Thus, the central researchers try to collaboratively identify the characteristics and causes of their problems to find ways to deal with them. Although carers will often be involved, this is designed to be indirect. In other words, carers will serve as facilitators rather than direct participants in the discussion. The influence of the disability movement is evident in the name “Tōjisha kenkyū.” The word “tōjisha” was originally a generic legal term for plaintiffs and defendants in civil trials. As the social movement for the rights of disabled people grew from the 1970s onwards, people with disabilities became known as “tōjisha,” and the disability movement became known as the “tōjisha movement” (Nakamura, 2013: 173, Ishihara, 2015: 28). Hence, 423

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the word “tōjisha” refers to people who suffer from a disability and are aware that their suffering is deepened by society’s unfair treatment of people with disabilities. Tōjisha are ready to engage in activities to improve social structures so that they are more inclusive and tolerant (Ishihara, 2018: 205). Tōjisha kenkyū is not a social movement, nor is it conducted just for therapeutic purposes: it is a kind of research. Nakamura explains the implications of Tōjisha kenkyū as research in the following way: Kenkyū means research. The grammatical ordering of the phrase makes it clear that it is research done by the affected parties, not research done on the affected parties. The use of formal term research in this context is designed to help the patient separate themselves from their symptoms and emphasise the positive aspects of understanding one’s own condition. Thus, the combination of the two words, tōjisha + kenkyū, means research on yourself-as-part-ofan-affected-class. Nakamura 2013: 173

However, the goal of Tōjisha kenkyū is not simply for people conducting the research to understand their conditions for themselves. These people also need to express their problems so that others who are suffering from similar problems can listen and gain awareness of their own situation. In what follows I will discuss how philosophers can provide insights on how some frameworks (e.g. from linguistics or neuroscience) and their language can contribute to empowering people with disabilities of a certain kind, that might make it difficult for them to deal with frameworks that describe them as free agents provided with a will; who don’t have a clear selfimage and self-confidence. We will look at a specific contribution made by a philosopher of Tokyo university, Koichiro Kokubun.

Disabilities and Everyday Language Some people struggle with social interactions that depend on certain kinds of normalized speech acts. For example, people with developmental disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder, or mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, tend to have this difficulty (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Satsuki Ayaya, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, conducted a Tōjisha kenkyū regarding developmental disabilities together

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with Shinichiro Kumagaya, a paediatrician. Let’s look at one of the communication problems she faced in her daily life. For example, others who were perplexed by her often gave her unhelpful advice, such as “Just act like yourself ” and “Be more confident” (Ayaya 2013: 191). One of her problems was that she sometimes did not form an immediate, clear-cut response to others; as a result, she appeared to be submissive. Others had difficulties in reading intent or purpose in her behavior. Therefore, people would ask her to show her agency and participate in interactions more fully. That agency, which was seen as lacking, was referred to as being “yourself ” and as “confidence.” In response to that advice, Ayaya used to look into herself only to find “a muddled and unclear state of self-image” and became aware that she did not know what pattern of bodily movements would be appropriate to fit a given situation (ibid.). Even though she tried to describe her condition at that moment, she was unable to find “any words that I’ve ever heard that describe the condition” (ibid.). Suppose that there were words that could accurately describe her inner state, facilitate her self-understanding of that state, and allow her to communicate it to others. Then, she could have responded about how outof-touch the above statements were. She could have opened up the possibility of a new dialogue. People with disabilities find it difficult to navigate everyday life. Part of the reason is that everyday language is designed for so-called “normal” people, and it is not meant to help “disabled,” or, in particular, neurodivergent individuals to improve their situations (Kumagaya and Kokubun, 2017: 13). Therefore, one important goal of Tōjisha kenkyū is to find linguistic expressions that can accurately express the problems facing people with disabilities so that they can communicate them to others. This process, and its effectiveness, can be tested in the process of the discussion. Another point deserves discussion over the utterances, “Just act like yourself ” and “Be more confident.” These speakers place all the responsibility on people with disabilities to make themselves understandable. These utterances are part of a responsibility-attribution game often played in everyday life. They call upon people with disabilities to be able to fully grasp their internal states and express them to others, which are daunting tasks. They may feel distressed if they cannot respond properly. However, it is crucial for Tōjisha kenkyū participants to distance themselves from the responsibility-attribution games of everyday life, because they place an excessive burden on people with disabilities.

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Tōjisha kenkyū in the Bethel House Ikuyoshi Mukaiyachi, a social worker, and Toshiaki Kawamura, a psychiatrist, played a major role in the establishment of Tōjisha kenkyū at Bethel House, in Urakawa-cho, Japan, in 2001. Bethel House is a facility for activity and a hub of life for a self-help group of people with mental disorders. Mukaiyachi had been involved in the disability movement since the 1970s and was well aware that disabled people needed to take the lead in any social movement that sought to win their rights. At the same time Kawamura had been familiar with the activities of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a self-help group, and had introduced Tōjisha kenkyū to the town of Urakawa in 1984. Because of these leaders’ involvement, Tōjisha kenkyū is dialogue-centered, like AA, and disabled-led, like the disability movement (Ayaya 2019). The research conducted at Bethel House followed the following procedure. At first, about ten members gather, sit in a circle around a large whiteboard, and each participant talks in front of everyone about their recent situation. Anyone can propose a topic for the meeting, which is often a difficulty they are facing in daily life. The main speaker talks about their problems. The facilitator, whose role is played by other participants, or by social workers, asks the speaker questions and writes the speaker’s comments on the whiteboard. While the speaker is talking, the audience comment and ask questions to the speaker to stimulate the discussion. At the end of the meeting, the speaker shares their findings and understanding of the discussion. The others offer comments, and the facilitator concludes the meeting with summary comments (Ayaya 2017: 75–76, Mukaiyachi, 2009: 107–112). Mukaiyachi lists the following five steps as important to the research at Bethel House. 1. Differentiating between the “problem” and the “person.” 2. Creating a self-diagnosis. 3. Determining the patterns and processes of your problems. 4. Thinking of concrete ways you can help or protect yourself and scenarios where you can practise them. 5. Verifying your results (Urakawa Bethel House, 2005: 4–5. English translation is taken from Nakamura, 2013: 173–174). In everyday situations, people with disabilities are often made responsible for dealing with their troubles. They tend to lose confidence, blame themselves, and feel ashamed of their inability to cope with their problems, and they may withdraw and isolate themselves. Thus, the first step in rescuing people from this predicament is to stop responsibility-attribution games. Then, they can reconsider their difficulties using a descriptive framework they create themselves, rather than one given by others. Steps 1 and 2 are specific methods for achieving such effects. Then, as described in

Tōjisha kenkyū (participant-led research)

steps 3 to 5, people conducting Tōjisha kenkyū can re-describe their problems using their descriptive framework, think about strategies for how to deal with their problems, put those strategies into practice, and verify their effectiveness. This process requires others to participate in the research.

Recent Developments in Tōjisha kenkyū The linguistic resources available for creating descriptive frameworks in Tojisha-Kenkyu are not limited to everyday language. In reality, everyday language can be optimized to guide the lives of the majority who live with it without any particular inconvenience. To extend our linguistic resources, it may therefore be meaningful to introduce technical terms and theories from philosophy and science to Tōjisha kenkyū . The Tojisha-Kenkyu Laboratory of the University of Tokyo, led by Kumagaya, is undertaking this endeavor. This research group is collaborating with the philosopher Koichiro Kokubun to study autism spectrum disorder. Kokubun published a book, The World of Middle Voice, in 2017, which was read by many Tōjisha kenkyū practitioners. Kokubun points out that, in the past, Indo-European languages had a middle voice, which differed from the active and passive voice. He explains that many phenomena in the world are best described by middle voice sentences. A case of addiction appears at the beginning of the book. “Alcoholism and drug addiction cannot be controlled by the person’s will or motivation [. . .] Even if a person with an addiction has a strong will, makes an effort, and thinks, ‘I will never take drugs again,’ that person will not be able to stop taking drugs” (Kokubun 2017: 4). Consuming alcohol is seemingly an active action of alcoholics; however, in reality, hardly any action is actively done. Of course, an addict is not getting drunk passively at the hand of someone else. Alcohol consumption occurs in us. The appropriate form for a sentence describing an addiction is neither the active nor the passive voice, but the middle voice. Kokubun highlights the internal inconsistency of the concept of will and discards that concept. People with disabilities have accepted this philosophy and propose the middle voice sentence form is appropriate for describing their problems. Everyday language such as English and Japanese presents a problem for people with disabilities when they must use active action sentences to

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describe an action. It implicitly assumes that the actors to whom the subjects of these sentences refer have full agency, even though every action is done under the influence of various factors over which actors cannot have full control; in this sense, all human actors have only limited agency. Nevertheless, using active-action sentences with actors’ own names as the subject to describe their behaviors leads to the assumption that they have full agency. In this way, the manner in which we use language means that the subject is caught in the responsibility-attribution game. Descriptive sentences written in the middle voice, instead, are important to people with disabilities because they discourage the implicit attribution of agency. This manner of description is transformative because it means being able to describe without attributing blame. Although it may not be a way of formulating sentences that is native to certain languages, it does help us to conceptually rethink the way that we ascribe agency through the way that we ascribe events. Other approaches are available for describing actions and behaviors to avoid the implicit attribution of agency. A promising way is to use the vocabulary and theories developed in cognitive neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience explains human higher cognitive functions—perceptions, emotions, thoughts, actions, and so forth—from the micro functions of the nervous system as biological underpinnings of those cognitive functions. Human actions can be explained, in causal terms, by the neural activity that controls physical movements. The neurons and nervous system, rather than will, intention, or agency, appear in neuroscientific descriptions. By explaining a person’s behaviour through neuroscientific vocabulary and theory, one can block the attribution of agency to that person. In fact, the Tojisha-Kenkyu Laboratory at the University of Tokyo is conducting Tōjisha kenkyū to introduce the vocabulary and theory of neuroscience on a larger scale (Kumagaya 2015). An example of a description of one’s own actions, using a neuroscientific vocabulary and without reference to an agency, is provided by Ayaya. As mentioned earlier, Ayaya was at a loss when she found herself in “a muddled and unclear state of self-image,” in response to comments like “Just act like yourself” and “Be more confident” (Ayaya 2014: 191). What is “a muddled and unclear state of self-image” like? Ayaya now explains the state using the motor control theory of neuroscience. When a person performs physical movements, motor commands are sent from the brain to the periphery. The body moves according to these motor commands, and information about the bodily movements is returned to the brain through the somatic sensation of muscle movements and the perception of movements in the outside world. This

Tōjisha kenkyū (participant-led research)

cycle of information is called the “sensorimotor loop.” If the sensorimotor loop is unstable, the self-image cannot be established. From her experience, Ayaya discovered that she is hypersensitive. She speculates that this hypersensitivity makes her sensorimotor loop and self-image unstable (Ayaya 2013: 186–187). Neuroscientific explanations of human behavior are a rich linguistic resource to allow people with disabilities to understand their condition, as are descriptions referring to the middle voice. These are two strategies that philosophers have helped introduce into the context of Tōjisha kenkyū . This practice involves a constant quest for new words and frameworks that fit different kinds of experience and of experiencing.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Shinichiro Kumagaya, and the two editors of the book, Sarah Flavel and Chiara Robbiano, for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. This work was supported by two JSPS KAKENHI Grants: Number JP16H06524 and JP16H06530

References The titles of Japanese literature below are translated into English and parenthesized by the author. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fifth edition, Washington, D.C: American Psychiatric Association. Ayaya, S. (2013). “Tōjisha kenkyū to Zikokan” (Tōjisha kenkyū and the sense of self), in K. Ishihara (ed.), Tōjisha kenkyū no Kenkyu (Study on Tōjisha kenkyū), 178–216, Tokyo: Igakusyoin. (Japanese). Ayaya, S. (2017). “Tōjisha kenkyū wo Hazimeyou” (Let’s start doing Tōjisha kenkyū) in S. Kumagaya (ed.), Minna no Tōjisha kenkyū (Tōjisha kenkyū for Everyone), 74–99, Tokyo: Igakusyoin. (Japanese). Ayaya, S. (2019). “Tōjisha kenkyū ga Uketsugubeki Rekishi to Rinen” (The history and ideal that the Tōjisha kenkyū should carry on), in S. Kumagaya (ed.), Tōjisha kenkyū wo Hazimeyou (Let’s Start Doing Tōjisha kenkyū), 6–13, Tokyo: Igakusyoin. (Japanese). Ishihara, K. (2015). “Learning from tojisha kenkyu: mental health ‘patients’ studying their difficulties with their peers” in T. Shakespeare (ed.), Disability

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Research Today—International Perspectives, 27–42, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Ishihara, K. (2018). Seishin Syogai wo Tetugaku suru—Bunrui kara Taiwa he (Philosophizing about Mental Disorders—From Classification to Dialogue), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. (Japanese). Kokubun, K. (2017). Chudotai no Sekai—Ishi to Sekinin no Koukogaku (The World of Middle Voice—Archaeology of Will and Responsibility), Tokyo: Igakusyoin. (Japanese). Kumagaya, S. (2015). “Tojisha-kenkyu of autism spectrum disorders” Advanced Robotics, 29(1): 25–34. Kumagaya, S. and Kokubun, K. (2017). “Kitarubeki Tōjisha kenkyū — Tōjisha kenkyū no Mirai to Chudotai no Sekai” (Tōjisha kenkyū to come—the Future of Tōjisha kenkyū and the World of Middle Voice), in S. Kumagaya (ed.), Minna no Tōjisha kenkyū (Tōjisha kenkyū for Everyone), 12–34, Tokyo: Igakusyoin. (Japanese). Mukaiyachi, I. (2009). Togoshitchosho Wo Motsu Hito Heno Enjoron (Theory of Care for People with Schizophrenia), Tokyo: Kongo Press. (Japanese). Nakamura, K. (2013). A Disability of the Soul—An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Urakawa Beteru no Ie (Urakawa Bethel House) (2005). Beteru no Ie no “Tōjisha kenkyū ” (“Tōjisha kenkyū” at Bethel House), Tokyo: Igakusyoin. (Japanese)

Glossary To¯ jisha kenky yu¯ (Japanese: ౲ࣆं‫ڂݜ‬ ౲ࣆं‫ ))ڂݜ‬A kind of collaborative research with dialogue as the main method. Participants in a To¯ jisha kenkyu¯ are people who have difficulties in their daily lives and are struggling to handle them. The main researchers in talk sessions tell a story about their problems in front of an audience and listen to the audiences’ opinions. They try to identify the characteristics and causes of the problems in order to find ways to deal with them. Bethel House A facility for activity and a hub of life for a self-help group of people with mental disorders, where Ikuyoshi Mukaiyachi, and Toshiaki Kawamura established a To¯ jisha kenkyu¯ in 2001.

Index

Note: References followed by “n” refer to endnotes. Abdalrahman, Aisha 231 “Abgrund” 189 Abhidharma 351–2 abhijñâ 101 abhiññâ 101 absolute present 87, 89 abstract 329 abstract feelings 335 abstraction 17, 24, 51, 52, 102, 173, 328, 335 abstract reasoning 207, 328, 335 academic philosophy 14, 15, 131 Academic skeptics, 29, 33 Achebe, Chinua 69 acting intuition (kôiteki chokkan) 402–4, 409 action 377 defined 384 repeated 379–80 virtuous 379 action and praxis, in philosophy 13–19 logic and engagement 18 logic and reality 14–17 Adam and Eve 280 adêla 42 Adler, Joseph 268 ad nauseam 396 African humanism 291 African philosophy 21–7, 136 conceptualization of human being in 284 as counter-hegemonic practice 194–5 colonial library 23, 28–9 defined 306

ezumezu 67–73 Great Debate in 69 Middle and Later periods in 69 originality of 69 vital force 193–4 African Philosophy, Myth and Reality (Hountondji) 26 African Religions and Philosophy (Mbiti) 197 African socialism 294, 295, 297, 298–9, 306 African traditional religion (African indigenous religion) 194, 202 Against the Professors (Empiricus) 29 agency 250 defined 255 with determinism 251 Agni (fire) 112 agôgê 41–2 ahimsâ 91–6 aikidô 382 akusala 104, 106 alcohol consumption 428 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 426 Al Furkan 229 Al-Mosawah defined 236 between men and women 230–5 Al Nisa 232 Al Nisaa 232 alterity 219 Amane, Nishi 13 American Philosophical Association (APA) 360 431

432

Index

Ames, Roger 152, 396 Analects of Confucius 205 anarchism 152 anâtman 84, 104 anitya 104 Annas, Julia 43, 44 Anthropocene 49, 50, 52–4 anti-absolutism 93 anti-knowledge 93 anti-realism 93 anti-thesis 339, 345 Anzaldua, Gloria 57, 58, 262 Borderlands/La Frontera 61–4 marginal status of women 62–3 on queer 63 social positionality of women 62 apatheia 32, 37 appearance 42, 43, 45 defined 48 explanations about 46–8 as ultimate truth 40 appearance (mâyâ) 115 Appiah, Anthony Kwame 195 appropriateness 78, 80, 82 Archimedean standpoint 300, 305 Arendt, Hannah 185 areteic ethics 248, 255 arguments 141 defined 148 prasanga 179–83 reductio ad absurdum 179, 181, 182 refutational 142, 148 relegational 141–7 Zen 143–4 arguments by relegation. see relegational arguments Aristotelian system 70, 72, 75 Aristotle 31, 70, 378, 379, 412 Nicomachean Ethics 273 “arrangement of dharmas” 174 “art” 385, 386 arumaristics 338, 339, 340, 341, 345 arumaru-uka 338 asceticism (samnyâsa) 113

askêsis 381, 384 Asouzu, Innocent 70, 71, 72, 411 ataraxia 29–36, 37, 42, 48 Academic skeptics 33 Democritus 30–1 Epicureans 31–2 in Pyrrhonism 29 Pyrrhonists 33–6 Stoics 32–3 atheism 189, 191 âtman 113, 119 Atomism 31 atoms (paramânu) 114 Augustinian freedom 251 Aurelius, Marcus 29, 33 avidyâ 50, 115 Ayah 232, 233, 236 Ayaya, S. 425, 429 Aztecs 274, 278, 279 background 331–2, 335 Bantu philosophy 24, 28, 202 reality within 193 Tempels’ conception of 196–9 Bantu Philosophy 24, 25, 27, 195, 199 Barnes, Jonathan 43, 44 Batteux, Charles 385, 386 bedding 336 being 350, 351, 354 Beixi Ziyi 78 belief (doxasta) 35 ben (root.) 206 Bendôwa 370 Berg, Peter 54 Bethel House defined 431 Tôjisha kenkyû in 426–7 Bhattacharyya, K. C. 356 bhûmi 117 bhûta 117, 119 bian (disputation) 206 Bilimoria, Purushottama 360 bivalence 71 Black (Diagne) 22

Index

“A Black Feminist Statement” 265 Blum, Mark L. 144 bodhicitta 102 Bodhidharma 370 body and mind oneness of 161, 163, 170 practice that engages us in unity of 380–1 separation of 172–3 study of Buddha Way with 162–3, 170 Zen Buddhism as way of studying with 162–3 bodymind 175, 178, 368 Book of Rites 266 Boulaga, Fabien Eboussi 27 brahman (infinite reality) 115, 119 Brahmavihâras 253 brahmin 111 brotherhood 293, 294, 295, 301, 306 Buber, Martin 235, 236, 241 I–Thou relationship 237–9 Buddha 44, 101, 368 “prior lives” of 102 “Buddha-nature” 173, 178 Buddha-way 162–3, 170, 367 expression verify 368–70, 371 Buddhism 14, 18, 91, 99–103, 160, 253–4, 309 Eightfold Paths of 92 emptiness 49–55 four noble truths of 174 karma 99–106 (see also karma) Mahâyâna 50, 102, 180 metaphysical crisis 75–6 metaphysical strengths of 79 nirvâna in 110 three poisons 50 Tibetan 180 Buddhist ethics 248, 250, 252 Buddhist philosophy 348 second core commitment of 252 budô 386, 389 butsudô 367 bu yan 313

Cadha, Monima 351 Calabar School 70 Caputo, John D. 185 Cartesian dualism 160, 172 Cârvâka school 114 centrism (divisive ideology) 419 “cessation of karma” 102, 104 cetanâ 101, 104 Chakrabarti, Arindam 356 Chandrakîrti 52 cha no yu 386 Chen Chun 78 cheng 267, 268, 269 cheng ji cheng wu 81 Cheng-Zhu 78 Chicana Feminism 57 Chicana/o 65 chi-gyô gôitsu 161 Chimakonam, Jonathan 338, 339, 342 Chinese political thought 266–9 Cicero 29 cit 115, 119 civic culture 287, 291 classes (varnas) 111 classical Confucianism 75 Classic of Changes (Yijing) 395 Codex Vaticanus 3738 A 258 colonialism 64, 193, 219 colonial library 23, 28–9 Combahee River Collective (CRC) 265 communal 295, 301 African society 299 defined 306 ownership 296 Tanzanian society 296 communalistic/communalism 300, 306 comparative philosophy 132, 354–5 defined 362 journals, book series and associations dedicated to 359–60 methods of 355–8 world of 134–6 Comparative Philosophy 357 complementarism 340n3, 345

433

434

Index

complementarity 68, 69, 71, 72 binary 414 defined 75 “concept clusters” 204, 209, 210 conceptual decolonization 195 concreteness 327–34 background and bedding as metaphor and method 330–3 defined 336 by Hegel and others 328–30 methodological implications 333–4 as philosophical virtue 327–8 concrete reasoning 329, 336 conditioned suffering 225–7 Confucianism 14, 79, 81, 309 classical 75 dao 395 li 393–9 “role ethics” in 126 “thinking” 205 Confucius 394, 398 “Yizhuan” 395 consciousness 173 practice of 269–70 raise 269–70 consciousness-raising groups 264 consequentialism 248, 255 constructive-engagement 357–8, 362 contemporary philosophy 179 expression contribution to 371–4 contextuality 72, 73, 75 continental philosophy 185, 187, 188, 191 continuous inquiry 39–47 and absolute truth 42–3 defined 40–1, 48 interpretations of Sextus’ project 43–4 and Sextus Empiricus 41–2 Sextus explanations on skeptics investigation 46–7 significance of 47 skeptics, background to conduct of 42 skeptics investigation 44–5 status of Ten Modes and other argumentative tools 42–6

conventional philosophy 132 world of 132–4 conversation 339 conversationalism or conversational philosophy 337–45 defined 345 levels of 341–3 methods and principles of 338–40 overview 337–8 up-down movement of thought in 340–1 conversational thinking 339 Copernican revolution 187 Cornelli, E. M. 293, 294 correlationalism 145, 146, 148 Cortes, Hernan 276 Coulthard, Glen Sean 53–4 Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition 53 courage 247 A Course to Attain the Flower (Zeami) 389–90 Coutinho, Steve 150 COVID-19 pandemic 343 creative individual 348–9 creative responsibility 100–1 creativity 347–53 creative individual 348–9 defined 354 overview 347–8 processual 352–3 self as process 349–52 The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy (Husserl) 143 cross-cultural philosophy 54, 157 Cula Mâlunkya Sutta 180 cultural transparency 60, 61, 64, 65 cultural visibility 60, 65 culture and anticolonial epistemologies 58 epistemic decolonization of 64 epistemic repression of 59–61 patriarchy 61

Index

queer epistemology 61–4 transmission of 62 transmit 62 transparent 60 Dalmiya, V. 132, 136 dangran 78, 82 dangran zhi ze 78 dao (the way) 79, 82, 205, 206, 207, 310, 314, 316, 366–7, 395, 398, 399 daode 367 Daodejing 121 Dao De Jing (DDJ) 149, 151, 152, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 316 Daoism 75, 121, 152, 309 classical 153 in The Lathe of Heaven 154 metaphysical strengths of 79 Daoist philosophy 149–50 da ren (great persons) 318 darsanas 116 Daruma 144, 146 Dasmann, Raymond 54 “das Unbedingt” 187 Daxue 266, 267 Daxüe 75 death 31, 259–60 de Beauvoir, Simone 185 decentering 2–4 Decheng 370, 372 Decolonial Feminism 57 decolonization of African mind 418 conceptual 195 deconstruction 339, 341, 345 deictic reference 329, 336 “deliberate crosscultural philosophising” 358 de Molina, Fray Alonso 257 deontological ethics 106, 248, 255 Derrida, Jacques 185, 369 Descartes, Rene 143, 204 descriptive 297 defined 306

interpretation of Ujamaa 301 presentation and analysis 299 desire to exist (kama) 111 desuperiorization 414 determinism 71, 75, 104, 190, 250 agency with 251 defined 75, 256 logical 414 Dewey, John 398 dharma 110, 113, 119, 178 diachronic hermeneutics 357 Diagne, Souleymane Bachir 27 dialogue 8–9 constructive 9 transformative 9 diatopical hermeneutics 357 didaskalia technôn 41 difference 219 ding 267 Diop, Cheikh Anta 25 disabilities 423 and everyday language 425–6 The Dispossessed (Le Guin) 152 Dôgen 144–5, 162–5, 173, 373, 374 adopted expression shinjin-datsuraku 171–2 “bearing witness” or “testimony” used by 176 Dropping the bodymind 175–6 enlightenment 175, 380 “expressing Buddha-Way” 368–70 hô’i 174 as Japanese Zen master 365–6 meditation practice recommend by 381 “Negotiating the Way” 380 practicing seated meditation 176–7 religious practice 381 Sansuikyô 372 shô 381 Sôtô Zen 365 verbal and non-verbal expressions 371 dogmatism 33, 37, 44–8

435

436

Index

dôtoku (expression) 163, 365–74 contribution to contemporary philosophy 371–4 defined 374 meaning of 366–70 overview 375–66 double movement 213–19 defined 219 dropping off the bodymind 170, 171–7 Duffy, Dorothy 235 duhkha (suffering) 101, 102, 103, 221–7 samskâra 225–7 viparinâma 223–5 duhkha-duhkha 222–3 Duran, Fray Diego 257, 260 interpretation of nepantla 260–1, 262–3 translation and understanding of nepantla 257 dvesa 50 dynamic totality 368, 369, 370 Dzobo, Komla 284 Eckhart, Meister 189 Edosenke school 390 egocentric body-minds 162 egocentricity 250 egocentric self-interest 241 egocentrism 241, 249 egoism 248, 253, 256 eien no ima 87 Eihei Dôgen 50 embodied practice 377–83 attentive and repeated action, practice as 379–80 end-in-itself, practice as 378–9 engages in unity of body and mind 380–1 overview 377–8 transforms us and the world we create 381–3 embodied-spiritual practice, of Zen Buddhism 160–2, 170 emergent moral orders 101

Empiricus, Sextus 29, 39, 40, 41–2 ataraxia 31–2 conception of skepsis 44 interpretations of project by 43–4 Outlines of Pyrrhonism 41 Outlines of Scepticism 33, 34 and skeptics investigation 46–7 status of Ten Modes and other argumentative tools 42–6 emptiness 49–55 Anthropocene, implications of 49–50, 52–4 defined 55, 178 and four marks of existence 51 of non-permanent non-self 51–2 prapanca 51 and self-being 51 teachings of 105, 106 “enactive intuition” 382 enlightenment 3, 22, 23, 50, 380 defined 178 mental state of 171 sudden 81, 82 epistemic binarism 25 epistemic correction 95–6, 97 epistemic friction 91–6 for corroboration or correction 95–6 defined 97 Elephant and the Blind Men 93–4 seeking of 95–6 epistemic nihilism 39, 48 Epistemology (Feldman) 203 epoché 146 equality 229–35 esoteric words 371 essentialist ubuntu 291 estrangement 153 Ethics (Spinoza) 187 ethnocentrism, European 195 ethnophilosophers, 21 ethnophilosophy 24–5, 26, 29, 202 exercices spirituels 158 ex hypothesi 262 exôthen 42

Index

experiential wisdom 166 explicit suffering 222–3 expression 163, 365–74 contribution to contemporary philosophy 371–4 verify Buddha-way 368 extension defined 323 of knowledge 268 ezumezu 67–73 “contingent” principle 72 defined 75 etymology of 68, 71 as logic 69–73 “m” consonant in 68, 69 “necessary” principle 72 overview 67–9 roots of 68 fa (patterns) 206 familyhood 293, 295, 301, 306 fanshen 81 Fazang 105 Feldman, Richard 203 feminism 152 “A Black Feminist Statement” 265 Chicana 57 Decolonial 57 defined 270 Guin’s relationship to 153 persons and politics in 263–5 second-wave liberation movements 264, 265 Feuerbach, Ludwig 236–7 fodao 367 formal logic 17 Fouda, Basile-Juleat 25 Four Books 75 Fraser, Chris 129, 206 freedom 102, 104, 106, 107, 250–1 freeloaders 301, 306 freeriders 299, 306 fudôtoku (non-expression) 374 Fuhaku’s Notes (Kawakami) 390

Furqan 236 fusion philosophy 154, 354, 355, 357, 362 Galileo Galilei 143 Gazali, Zainab Al 231 gan wei (daring actions) 314 Garfield, J. 2, 43, 44 gei (art) 386 geidô 386, 392 gender identity 63 genjô (presencing) 374 geo-historical source 133 gewu (investigating things) 75–81 of Cheng-Zhu school 79, 80 implications of 80–1 meaning of 76–80 Neo-Confucian notion of 77–8, 79 originates from The Great Learning 77–8 overview 75–6 gewu qiongli’ 75n2 gewu xüe 80 gewu zhizhi 77 gezhi xüe 80 God 185–6 creative Force 196 existence of 189–90 “God beyond God” 188–9 Goldman, Emma 152 good life 273–80 and happiness 279–80 overview 273–4 rootedness 278–9 “slippery earth” 274–8 The Great Learning 77–8, 79 Guilford, Joy Paul 347 gunas 114–15, 119 Guo Xiang 125, 128 gyô 161 Gyôji ge 172 ha (break) 390 Hadith 234, 236 Hadot, Pierre 8, 158, 159–60

437

438

Index

Hall, David 396 Hanisch, Carol 264, 265 Hansen, Chad 129 happiness 273–4, 279–80 Harman, Graham 174 harmonious monism 70 he 268 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 185 concreteness by 328–30 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History 195 Phenomenology of Spirit 329 Heidegger, Martin 185, 354, 369 Hellenistic philosophers 29 heterosexualism 57, 61, 63, 64 hetu 104 heyizhi 207 Hibri, Aziza Al 231 hikantaza 163 Hinduism 91 karma in 100 moksa and kaivalya 110 traditional Hindu calendar 110 Yoga system 113–14 hishiryô 163 hô’i 174 Holocene 50 Hountondji, Paulin 25, 26, 27 hua 124, 131, 268 Huang, Betsy 154 huehuetlatolli 262 Husserl, Edmund 143, 146, 185 hypothetical 300, 306 hypothetical contract 300 hypothetical device 299 defined 306 Ujamaa as 300–1 iaidô kata 387 “I” as absolute present 83–8 I-asemptiness-fullness 84 I-as-object 87–8 “I-as-pure-experience” 88 I-as-subject 87–8

Ice Age 50 ideological 294, 307 Igbo language 68 Igbo spirituality 68 “I–It” 238, 239, 241, 243, 245 Ijiomah, Chris 70, 71, 72 ikebana 382, 386 immediate perception 329, 336 imperative hermeneutics 360, 363 infinite reality 115 inishie 388, 389 in ixtli, in yollotl (Nahuatl) 281 Inoue Enryô 18 in qualli, in yectli (Nahuatl) 279, 281 instance-configuration 174, 178 intellectual non-harming (ahimsâ) 91–6 defined 97 Elephant and the Blind Men 93–4 intellectual openness 92 intellectual wisdom 166, 167 intention 101, 102, 103, 104, 107 interconnectedness 190 intercultural philosophy 2, 5, 67, 100, 194 defined 202 situating Tempels in field of 199–200 teaching 9 vital force and 194 interdependence defined 107 nondual 105 teachings of 105, 106 values-informed action in 103, 104 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 52 intermediary expression 406 in tlilli in tlapalli (Nahuatl) 274, 281–2 intuition defined 384 enactive 382 Indian 358 “Iqra” 230, 236 Iroegbu, Pantaleon 411 iruka 338

Index

Islamic philosophy 134, 136 issokuta (one-and-yet-many) 373, 374–5 “I–Thou–It” philosophy 236 I–Thou relationship 235–43 defined 244 Ludwig Feuerbach and 236–7 Martin Buber and 237–9 Nishida Kitarô and 239–41 Nishitani Keiji and 241–3 overview 235–6 Jainism 91 karma in 100 moksa and kaivalya 110 James, William 84, 289, 329, 330, 331 Japanese philosophy 134, 135 relegational arguments in 142 Jayarâsi 179 Jefferson, T. 273 Jennings, Theodore 397 jia (family) 266 jibutsu 404 jing 267 jiriki (self-power) 368, 375 Journals dedicated to comparative philosophy 359–60 diversity of 360–1 judô 382 just sitting 163, 170 Juzhi 368 kadô 386 Kagame, Alexis 25, 285 kaivalya 110 Kalidasa 110 kama 111 Kamalasîla 166 Kamma Sûtta 102 kammavadin 103 kangaeru 388 kanon 387 Kant, Immanuel 143, 185, 188, 195 Critique of Pure Reason 187, 204

Kantian project 143 Kanze Hisao 406, 407 Kapstein, Matthew 158 karma 99–106 binding effect 104 emancipatory function of insight into 101–3 ethics of 106 karmic causality 100–1 meditation-enabled perceptions of 102 metaphysical and ethical 105–6 overview 99–100 philosophical implications 105–6 and troubling presupposition of independent existence 103–4 Karttunen, Francis 257 karunâ (care) 253, 256 Kâsyapa 52 kata 385–91 bodily experience of form as intercultural experience 391 defined 387–8, 392 iaidô 387 ideogram for writing 387 original 391 overview 385–7 trans/formative practice of 389 katagi 389, 390 katayaburi 390 Kattô 370 Kavwahirehi, Kasereka 27 Kawakami, Fuhaku 390 Kawamura, Toshiaki 426, 431 kei 388 keiko 388–91, 392 Keller, Catherine 185 kendô 386–7 “killing of expression” 405 Kim, Hee-Jin 366 Kiswahili 293, 307 Kjellberg, Paul 151 Klein, Naomi 53 kôiteki chokkan 382, 401, 402–4, 409

439

440

Index

Kokubun, Koichiro 427 Kong Yingda 267 Krishna, Daya 356 ksatriya 111 Kumagaya, Shinichiro 425, 427 kusala 103, 104, 106 Kwok-ying Lau 5 Kyoto School 84, 88 Laertius, Diogenes 31 The Lathe of Heaven (Le Guin) 151, 154 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (Hegel) 23, 195 The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin) 150, 151, 152 Le Guin, Ursula K. 149 Daoist influences 152 The Dispossessed 152 Four Ways to Forgiveness 153 The Lathe of Heaven 151, 154 The Left Hand of Darkness 150, 151, 152 relationship to feminism 153 The Telling 153 Leon-Portilla, Miguel 262, 263 Les beaux-arts reduits a un meme principe (The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle, Batteux) 385 Levy-Bruhl, Lucien 24, 25, 195 li (principle) 78, 79, 82, 105, 205 li (ritual) 393–9 practice of 396 li-customs 397 life 259–60 Liji 266 liminality 260–1, 264 Linji Yixuan 52 Littlejohn, Ronnie 354 locus classicus 318 logic defined 422 and engagement 18 engagement and praxis 18 ezumezu as 69–73

formal 17 and reality 14–17 logocentrism 419, 422 logos 412–19, 422 Long, Jeffery 93 Lugones, Maria 57, 58, 63 cultural transparency 64 postcultural transparency according to 59–61 Lukasiewicz, Jan 71 Lunyu 205 Machuca, D. E. 43 Madhyamaka Buddhist school 115 mahâbhûta 113, 119 Mahâyâna Buddhism 50, 102, 180 maitrî (benevolence) 253, 256 manas 113 Mandela, Nelson 289 marginal status of women 62–3 Martin Alcoff, Linda 133 Marxism 297, 307 Maslow, Abraham 176 Masolo, Dismas 195 Masson-Oursel, Paul 354–5 Master Mo 206 mâtikâs 351 Matilal, Bimal Krishna 357 matter-thing (jibutsu) 404 mâyâ 115, 117, 119 Mbembe, Achille 22, 27, 195 Mbiti, John 25, 197, 284, 286 McClintock, Sarah 166 meditation 163–6, 351 defined 354 Meditations on First Philosophy (Descartes) 204 meditative cultivation 166, 170 mega-anthropos 111 Mengzi 207, 317, 318–23 merchant (vaisya) 111 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 143 Michelangelo 332 Miki Kiyoshi 18

Index

mimesis 385, 386 min (common people) 312 Minamoto, Ryôen 387 min bao wu yu 81 mind (manas) 113, 173, 178. see also body and mind “mind-body problem” 173 Ming dynasty 263 mitsugo 371 moha 50 Mohanty, Jitendra Nath 357 Mohism 207 moksa 110, 120 Momoh, Campbell 411 mono (thing) 404, 409 moral education 247 moral perception 323 moral phenomenology 249 moral reflection 247 moral responsiveness 247–54 metaphysical problems 251–2 motivate moral decency 253 moral self-cultivation 322 moral sprouts 321, 324 Morita, Shiryû 382 Mou, Bo 357–8 mpkuru-okwu 418 Mudimbe, V. Y. 23 muditâ (sympathetic joy) 253, 256 Mugabe, Robert 71 Mukaiyachi, Ikuyoshi 426 Mûlamadhyamakakârikâ (The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, Nâgârjuna) 51, 182 mûlaprakrti 114 Müller, Ralf 366 mushin 390, 392 nacayotia (Nahuatl) 282 Nâgârjuna 44, 51, 179, 180 Mûlamadhyamakakârikâ 182 Vigrahavyâvartanî (Overturning the Objections) 181 Nahuatl 257, 258, 264

Nakamura, K. 424 naturalism 189, 250, 256 nature 109–18 ambivalence of 110 creative power vs. inert matter 116–17 inner dynamics of, inner complexity and 113–16 overview 109 relationship between man and 112–13 spontaneity of 110–12 upholding vs. overcoming 112–13 neltiliztli (Nahuatl) 274, 279, 282 “neo-colony” 195 Neo-Confucianism 75–81 nepantla 257–63 crossroads in terms of 261 defined 264 Duran’s interpretation of 260–3 Duran’s translation and understanding of 257 functions 261 in Mexica philosophy 260, 261 positive and negative elements 259–60 sui generis 260 nepantlism 262 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 273 Nietzsche, Friedrich 185, 186, 190 “will to power” 373 nihilism 186, 191 nirvâna 110, 119 nisenu 389 Nishida Kitarô 84–8, 330, 331–3, 373, 381–3, 401–3, 409 “absolute present” 87 “Acting Intuition” 402 auditory metaphor of vibration 334 body as “expressively working” 402 “enactive intuition” 382 “eternal present” 87 An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyu) 84, 85 I–Thou relationship 236, 239–41 notion of “background” 331

441

442

Index

“performative seeing” 382 “pure experience” 84, 86–7 theory of body toward problem of facial expressions 404–5 Nishihira, Tadashi 389 Nishitani, Keiji 84, 160–2, 371 and I–Thou relationship 236, 241–3 niuru 390 njikoka (contextuality, positive) 73 Nkrumah, Kwame 25 nmeko 73 nmekoka (contextuality, negative) 73 Nogami Toyoichirô 406 Noh theater mask 401–8 acting intuition for creation of 402–4 expressiveness of 405–8 and Nishida’s theory of body 404–5 overview 401–2 non-dual consciousness (cit) 115, 119 normatively 297, 300 defined 307 interpretation of Ujamaa 294, 301 presentation and analysis 299 no-self 84, 252, 256 noumenal reality 187–8, 191 Ntu. see vital force nwa-nju 339, 342, 345 nwa-nsa 339, 342, 345 Nyâya school 114 Nyerere, Julius Kambarage 297 African socialism 294, 301 Arusha Declaration 294 development of Ujamaa 293 TANU’s Policy on Socialism and Self Reliance 294 Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism 295 Ujamaa as “communalism” 300 Ujamaa as socialism 298–9 object-oriented ontology 174 Odyssey (Homer) 280 okwu 411–19 concept of 412–17 defined 422

logocentrism to okwucentricity 417–19 overview 411–12 as primordial index for rationality 417 okwucentricity 419, 422 Olberding, Amy 132 oneness of body and mind 161, 163, 170 onona-etiti (included-middle, complementarity) 73 Orientalism 153, 154, 156 Orizu, Nwafor 68 Oruka, Odera 199 Osabu-Kle, D. T. 295 ousia 197 Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Empiricus) 29 pacoaia 277 padârtha 114 Paek Sðnguk 18 Paivio, Alan 329 Pak Ch’iu 13, 14–19 action and praxis, distinction between 16 concept of philosophy 16 existence 18 philosophy 14–16 rejection of academic philosophy 14, 15 stages of engagement with external world 18 Palmer, J. A. 43 “panexperientialism” 174 Panikkar, Raimondo 356 “panpsychism” 173–4 pantheism 186–7, 188, 191 paqui 277 paramânu 114 Parkes, G. 129–30 Parmenides 187 “partisan lines” 354 paryudâsa negation 181 pasu (animal) 117 patriarchy 61

Index

Pellegrin, Pierre 46 Perception. An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge (Matilal) 357 performative seeing 382–4 performative ubuntu 291 personality split 160–1 personal therapy 264 personhood 286 perspectival agility 129–30 perspectival stasis 130 perspectivism, in Zhuangzi 121–8 core idea of 122 phainomenon 40 phala 104 phenomenology 145, 146 defined 256 moral 249 Philo of Alexandria 412 philosophical argumentation 141–2 form of 147 goal of 146–7 see also relegational arguments Philosophy East-West 355 philosophy of expression 371 physical objects 252 Placide Tempels, Father 24, 193 Plato 31, 414 Platonic idealism 173 pluralism 26 “poetry-book problem” 173 “polypsychism” 174 postcultural 59, 60 defined 65 transparency of 61 practice 382 as attentive and repeated action 379–80 defined 384 as end-in-itself 378–9 engages us in unity of body and mind 380–1 that transforms us and the world we create 381–3

prakrti 117, 120 prapañca 51, 104 prasajya negation 179, 181 prasanga 179–83 defined 184 Nâgârjuna, used by 180, 181–2 structure of 181 prasanj 179 pratîtyasamutpâda 102, 165 prereflective feeling 319 priest (brahmin) 111 primary word 238, 245 Primitive mentality (Levy-Bruhl) 24 Process and Reality (Whitehead) 347 process cosmology 77, 82 processual creativity 352–3 propositional negation 181 prthivî 117 pu (uncarved wood) 314, 316 “pure experience” 84, 86–7, 89, 329, 331, 336 pursârthas 247 purusa (pure self) 111, 114, 115, 120 Pyrrhonists 29, 30, 33–6 Pyrrho of Elis 31, 41 qiahao 78 qiaohao 78, 82 Qing dynasty 266 queer epistemology 61–4 queer/queerness 63–4, 65 Quran 229–34 16: 90 230 Ayahs 232, 233 Day of Judgment 234 equal religious responsibilities in 233 Surah in 232 women presented in 231–2 radical empiricism 85, 329, 331, 336 raga 50 raise consciousness 269–70 rajas guna 115 Ramose, Mogobe 199

443

444

Index

rationality 412, 415–16 defined 422 okwu as primordial index for 417 reality 84 within Bantu philosophy 193 defined 354 infinite 115 logic and 14–17 noumenal 187–8 phenomenal 187 priory 186 ultimate 186 realization 380–1, 384 reason 419 in African philosophy 414, 415 defined 422 in European philosophy 414 manifestation in western philosophy 417–18 Plato and Aristotle in, influence of 414–15 Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought (Mohanty) 357 reasoned discourse 412, 414–17, 422 received wisdom 166 Reconquista 218, 219 reconstruction 339, 341, 345 Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Coulthard) 53 reductio ad absurdum 179, 181, 182, 340 refutational arguments 142, 148 reinhabitation 54 rekishiteki jibutsu 404 relationality 102, 107 relational knowing 131–8 comparative philosophy, world of 134–6 conventional academic philosophy, world of 132–4 defined 139 interconnectedness 136–8 overview 131–2 relativism 122, 129

relegational arguments 141–7 defined 148 in European philosophies 143 in Japanese philosophies 142, 143–4 phenomenology and 145 philosophical arguments, goal of 146–7 vs. refutational arguments 142 in Zen philosophies 144–6 Religion and Nothingness (Nishitani) 161 Religion in the Making (Whitehead) 347 ren (human-heartedness) 205, 206 ren (humaneness) 320 responsibility 106 creative 100–1 defined 107 Rgveda 110–11, 180 ri (distance oneself) 390 rootedness 278–9 Root Verses on the Middle Way (Nâgârjuna) 182 Rosemont, Henry, Jr. 204 Rtusamhâra 110 ru (scholar) 266 Ruism 266–7, 270 “investigating things” 267–8 rujia 266 Rujing 171–2, 176 ryûha 388 Sabine, G. H. 329 sadô 386 sage (sheng ren) 311, 312, 313, 315, 316 Shati, Bent Al 231 sakti 117, 120 Sâmkhya school 114, 115 sammâ 102 sammâ ditthi 104 samnyâsa 113 samsâra 120 samskâra duhkha 225–7 Samvâda 356, 363 Sansuikyô 370, 372 Sântaraksita 166

Index

Sântideva 248–9, 256 Sarnaism 113 Sartre, Jean-Paul 185, 190 sâstra 356 Satapatha-brahmana 118 sattva guna 114–15 scepticism 122 Schelling, Friedrich 185, 188–9, 190 science fiction defined 156 and non-western philosophical traditions 153 in philosophy 149–54 wu wei, concept of 151–2 scientific socialism 297, 307 second order inquiry 44, 48 self defined 354 as process 349–52 self (âtman) 113 self-power 368 Seneca, Stoic 29, 32–3 Senghor, Leopold Sedar 25, 26, 285 sensei 391 sense of abundance 257 “sensorimotor loop” 429 shan 75n2 Shakespeare, William 190 shi 105 shikantaza 163 shinjin (bodymind) 368, 375 shinjin datsuraku 163, 171–7 shinjingakudô 162 shinjin ichinyo 161, 163 Shinshû 368 shiti (substantial body) 79 shô 381 Shôbôgenz 144 Shôbôgenzô 162 Shôbôgenzô dôtoku 366 Shôbôgenzô genjôkôan 367 shodô 382 shô suru (to verify) 367, 375 shu (protect) 205, 390

shu ha ri 390, 392 Shuowen jiezi 396 shushô (practice-and-verification) 368, 375 si (reflecting) 205, 206 Siddhartha Gautama. see Buddha Siderits, Mark 154, 355, 358 Sishu 75 skepsis 44, 48 skeptesthai 41 skepticism 33, 37, 40, 179 conduct of, background to 42 defined 184 investigation 44–5 Pyrrhonian 41–2, 43, 46 Smart, Ninian 361 social construction of women 63 socialism African 294, 295, 297, 298–9, 306 defined 307 doctrinaire 296, 297n7, 306 scientific 297, 307 Ujamaa’s 298–9 Socrates 31, 340 Song dynasty 263, 266 Sophia 354, 360 space of causes (materiality) 100, 105 space of intentions (mind) 100, 105 Spinoza, Baruch 186–7, 188 spiritual (shen) 268 spiritual clarity (shenming) 268 spiritual exercises 158, 170 sramanas 113 Srî Harsa 179, 182 The Standpoint of Zen (Nishitani) 161 statement 141, 148 study of Buddha Way with body and mind 162–3, 170 sudden enlightenment 81, 82 sudra 111 suffering of change 223–5 conditioned 225–7 explicit 222–3

445

446

Index

overview 221–2 types of 222–7 suhkha 103 Sunnah 234, 236 sûnya 102, 104, 116 Sûnyatâ 50, 84, 105, 165, 178 super-knowledge 101 supervenience 172 The Supplemental Records of the Transmission of the Lamp 372 Surah 232, 236 Suvin, Darko 153, 156 svabhâva 116 Swahili 293, 307 syllogism 70 ta exôthen hupokeimena 42 Tafsir 236 taiji symbol 150 taiken 161 tamas guna 115 Tanzania 293, 294, 295, 296, 307 tariki (other-power) 368, 375 Tempels, Placide 24, 194 Bantoe-filosofie 195–6 conception of Bantu philosophy 196–9 in field of intercultural philosophy 199–200 notion of vital force 193 “principle of activity” 198 Tendai school of Buddhism 171, 173 Tenzo Kyôkun 50 teotl (Nahuatl) 274, 278, 282 tertium quid 257 testimony 176, 178 thesis 341, 343, 345 thing (mono) 404, 409 Things Fall Apart (Achebe) 69 third-person ontology 372, 373 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (Klein) 53 Thoreau, Henry D. 159 ti (body) 399

Tillich, Paul 185, 188, 189 tlacocualli in monequi 357 tlahtlatolli 357 tlalticpac (Nahuatl) 276, 277, 282 Tôjisha kenkyû (participant-led research) 423–9 in Bethel House 426–7 defined 430–1 disabilities and everyday language 425–6 disability movement, influence of 424 overview 423–4 recent developments in 427–9 Tojisha-Kenkyu Laboratory (University of Tokyo) 427, 428 toku 367 Towa, Marcien 25, 26 traditional laws of thought 70, 72, 73, 75 tranquility 42, 48 tranquility of mind 32, 36, 269. see also ataraxia tranquillitas 29 transcendentalist delusion 133 Transmitting the Flower Through Effects and Attitudes (Zeami) 389, 390 trivisa 50 truism 103 Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa 286 truth-gap 72, 75 truth-glut 67, 70, 72, 75 Tshiamalenga-Ntumba, Ignace-Marcel 25 Tsri, Kwesi 418 twofold 238, 241, 244 ubuntu/botho 202, 283–90, 297–8, 307 defined 284, 291 as essentialist philosophy 287 in history of ideas 286–7 as performative philosophy 287–8 philosophy of dialogue and human reconciliation 288–90 in political philosophy 286 virtuous practices of 285

Index

Xhosa/Zulu aphorism, associated with 283, 284 ubuntu dialogue 289–90, 291 Ubuntu philosophy 199 Ujamaa 293–301 contextualization of, socially and politically 295–8 defined 294–5, 307 descriptive interpretation of 301 as discouraging freeriders 299 as freeloaders 301 as hypothetical device 300–1 as linguistic device 300–1 normative interpretation of 301 overview 293–4 socialism 298–9 ultimate reality 186 ultimate truth 40, 41, 43, 47, 48 uncarved wood 314 unconditioned 185–90 defined 191 as ultimate reality 186 undisturbedness 42, 48 “Ungrund” 189 unwanted consequence 179, 181 upâya 102 upeksâ (impartiality) 253, 256 ushufû 390 utilitarianism 106 utility function 253, 256 Vaisesika school 114 vaisya 111 Vandeermersch, Léon 396 Van Norden, B. 2 varnas 111, 120 vedanâ 101 Vedas (sacred texts) 91, 113 Vedic hymns 111, 112 veil of ignorance 290, 300, 307–8 Verran, Helen 136 vibration 332, 334, 336 Vigrahavyâvartanî (Nâgârjuna) 181 viparinâma 223–5

viriyavadin 103 virtue ethics 106 vital force 193–200 African philosophy as counterhegemonic practice 194–5 Bantu ontology as 195–9 defined 202 overview 193–4 Placide Frans Tempels 193 Wahl, Jean 330, 331 wai nei zhi dao 268 Walden (Thoreau) 159 Wang Yang-ming 383 Warring States Period 311 warrior (ksatriya) 111 Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi 418 Watsuji Tetsurô 401, 403, 405–6, 409 Weber, Ralph 356 wei 313 wei wu wei 314 Weltanschauung 195, 294, 299, 308 we-mode of being 298, 308 What is Ancient Philosophy (Hadot) 159–60 Whitehead, Alfred North 347 Wiredu, Kwasi 25, 27, 195, 411, 418 wisdom 166–7 Wittgenstein 44 Woodruff, P. 46 worker (sudra) 111 world philosophies 139 worldview 295, 296, 297, 301, 308 wu 77, 82, 310 wubujin 267 wu ge 78 wu jian 315 Wumenquan 368 Wumen’s Barrier (Wumenguan) 366 wu wei (doing nothing) 151–2, 309–15 in Dao De Jing 309, 310, 311, 312, 313–15 defined 316 lexical meaning 310

447

448

Index

restraint of 312 of sage 312 wuxi 269 wu yong 124 wu you 315 Xhosa/Zulu aphorism 283 xian 313 xiao ren (small persons) 318 xiao ti (small body) 318 xin 267 xin (heart-mind) 317–23 child-like 322 defined 324 overview 317 as seat of morality 320–3 as seat of thought, perception, and feeling 318–20 xin (trust) 206 xin (trustworthiness) 205 xiushen 75n2, 82 xue (learning) 205 xuexi 267 Xunzi 310, 397 yaburu 390 yang 150 yi (appropriate) 205, 206, 267–8, 321 yin 150 yin-yang 150 Yogasûtra 114 Yoga system 113–14 yong (usefulness) 124, 131, 206 you 310 yu 267, 268, 313 yuan (source) 206 yuan fei yu yue 80 yumiya no michi 386

Zack, Naomi 133 zazen 163, 369, 380 liberative practice of 370 Zeami 386, 387, 389–90 Zeami’s philosophy of keiko (Nishihira) 389 Zen Buddhism 84, 171, 371 arguments 143–4 embodied-spiritual practice of 160–2 meditation 380 as way of studying with body and mind 162–3 zenkigen (presencing of dynamic totality) 367, 375 zêtein 41 zêtousi hoi skeptikoi 41 zettai no ima 87 zheng 313 Zheng Xuan 76–7 zhi (cunning) 313 zhi (Knowing) 83, 203–9 defined 210 disputation 207 zhi zhe (schemers) 314 zhizhi 267 Zhongyong 268, 396 Zhuang Zhou 122n1 Zhuangzi 149, 153 story of Cook Ding 151 Zhuangzi, perspectivism in 121–30 Chang Wuzi 123 distinction between “right” and “wrong” 127–8 Huizi 124 natural limitations 123–4 Peng bird in 124–5, 127 Zhu Xi 75, 77–8, 79, 81, 83, 266, 268 zi ding 314

449

450

451

452