On the "Logic" of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic 9004110003

Citation preview

KUANG-MING WU

.

“Logic” e Bthe

of Togetherness À Cultural

。

Hermeneutic .

BRILL

Building bridges between Asian and Western philosophies, Kuang-ming Wu provides a novel approach to the “selt-other issue, casting it in terms of togetherness. On the “Lo-

gic” of Togetherness is a natural sequel to On Chinese Body Thinking (Brill, 1997). It is an essay on a cultural hermeneutics of togetherness, and of the homo-ecological community of differences,

cultural

havior.

sections,

and

otherwise.

‘‘To-

getherness is the concrete primal “that by which we explain and analyze concrete things and situations: an intrinsic interactive principle of integrity, growth, reflection, and beIn

five

this

book

describes

cultural, personal, argumentative, religious and philosophical situations of togetherness, thus providing an imaginative examination of Its varieties.

Kuang-ming

Wu

(Ph.D.,

Yale)

is

multicul-

turally at home in Asia and the West. He has

written extensively on their interactions and on Chang Tzu's poetic philosophy. His On

Chinese Body Thinking (Brill, 1997) won the National Distinguished Award in Philosophy (Taiwan)

ΟΝ THE

“LOGIC”

OF TOGETHERNESS

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

AND

CULTURE

Series Editor

Michael Krausz, Bryn Mawr College Advisory Board

Annette BAIER (University of Pittsburgh), Cora DIAMOND (University of Virginia), William Dray (University of Ottawa), Nancy FRASER (Northwestern University), Patrick GARDINER (Magdalen College, Oxford), Clifford GEERTZ (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), Peter HACKER (St. John’s College, Oxford), Rom Harré (Linacre College, Oxford), Bernard Harrison (University of Utah), Martha NUSSBAUM (University of Chicago), Leon ΡΟΜΡΑ (University of Birmingham), Joseph Raz (Balliol College, Oxford), Amélie OKSENBERG RORTY (Brandeis University), Georg Henrik Von WRIGHT (University of Helsinki) VOLUME

20

ON THE “LOGIC” OF TOGETHERNESS À Cultural Hermeneutic

BY

KUANG-MING

BRILL LEIDEN : BOSTON 1998

WU

: KOLN

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wu, Kuang-ming. On the “logic” of togetherness : a cultural hermeneutic / by Kuang -ming Wu. p. cm. 一 (Philosophy of History and culture, ISSN 0922-6001 ; v. 20) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9004110003 (αἰκ- paper) 1. Community—Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series.

B105.C46W8 306'.01—dc21

1998

98-9775 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Wu, Kuang-ming: On the “logic” of togetherness : a cultural hermeneutic ming Wu. — Leiden ; Boston ; Köln : Brill,1998 (Philosophy of history and culture ; Vol. 20)

/ by Kuang-

ISBN 90-04- 1 1000-3

ISSN ISBN © Copyright

0922-6001 90 04 11000 3

1998 by Koninklyke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use 1s granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drwe, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED

IN THE

NETHERLANDS

To my Ruth, who initiated Togetherness and nourishes it

CONTENTS Foreword

Ne

Preface RM 1. Cultural hermeneutic Re 2. The ttle iii 3. Togetherness ,. १

ΧΙ ] ] ] 3

Prologue: Togetherness: the Priority RN P.O. Exigencies τν P.l. The priority mixup RN 1.2. Analytical units-thinking 0 P.3. Communal togetherness-thinking .................................... P.4. Togetherness as concrete, primal ..................................

9 9 11 18 2] 25

Section 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 1.6.

1: Cultural Togetherness: Cultural Inside, Outside ... Thinking as cultural RN Culture and universality ......................----ιεειεεενεννοννννννοννς Insiders and outsiders of culture .................................. The “logic” of cultural togetherness ............................ Political togetherness =... Intercultural traffic

27 27 46 60 69 73 82

Section 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6. 2.7.

2: Personal Togetherness: the Other .......................... The Other as being, relation, mode of thinking ........ The Other as the self ,.... Reversibility .................................... nen Understanding the Other .............................................. Face and the Other RN Face and the transversal RN Definitional configuration of the Other, togetherness, and differences ,. esee Time-lag as identity-creative dynamism (growth) ........ Identity-growth as play with arguments ...................... Radical Other-thinking as togetherness-thinking Existential co-making: the ontology of literature ........

88 88 102 104 106 109 122

2.8. 2.9. 2.10. 2.11.

128 129 130 131 136

vill

CONTENTS

Section 3: Argumentative Togetherness: Playing With Arguments RN 3.1. What: to argue, to play ......................... eese 3.2. What: to play, to metaphor 3.3. How (1): flying like the bird 3.4. How (2): flopping like the clown 3.9. Result: truths of co-responses ..................... sse 3.0. New meaning and understanding 3.7. Three implications ....................... eese 3.8. Playing with meanings of “argument” 3.9. The playful and the actual 3.10. Play and game .........................ιιιιιεεεενενοννννννονοοοὀνὀνὀνὀνννννος 3.11. “Use” and playing with arguments 3.12. Quest and playing with arguments 3.13. Music and playing with arguments .............................. 3.14. Relativism, deconstructionism, and playing with arguments esse 3.15. Play and life (有 3.10. Play and this Section 3.17. Play and life (2) ........................-ιοιενενννννννννονοννννννννννὀνὀνονον. 3.18. Religion and playing with arguments Section 4: Religious Togetherness: Taoism within Christianity RM 4.0. The Problem क eres 4.1. Their coming together .............ιιιινενεννννννννννννονενονννννννοννν. 4.2. Miracles: the Christian *koans" 4.3. Zen Christianity 4.4. Temptations 4.5. Jonah the only sign for us 4.6. Why not conflicts among religions 4.7. Reason and religion 4.8. What is not “this circle” Section 5: Inner Touch—World Philosophy in the Making 5.1. Inner touch with Sartre 5.2. Symbiosis— philosophical inner touch 5.3. The “self” in Descartes, Confucius, and Chuang Tzu ... 5.4. The spirit of pragmatism and the pragmatic spirit .... 5.5.

“Time”

in China

CONTENTS

1X

Epilogue: We Learn Together =... E.l. Review ee E.2. Concrete fivefold way .................... esee E.3. Togetherness ......................ι.ιιιεεενεεενενενννννννοννννννενοννννὀνεενος E.4. No arrangement of threads 4 Ε.Ο. Negativities ० E.6. The future of togetherness RN E.7. Play and togetherness ....................ιιεεεοοοονοονονενενονννννονοννοι E.8. The "logic" of togetherness ......................... esee

387 387 388 389 390 395 397 399 400

Appendixes

405

RN

Indices 1. Index of Names बब II. Index of Subjects

459

FOREWORD If only Wu Kuang-ming were in the tradition of the besotted Sages of the Bamboo Grove, he would appreciate my reflection that like good wine he becomes subtler and more exquisite with careful aging. But he's not. He's as close to being a teetotaler as a Chinese-American Lutheran can be. He would object to my simile on the grounds that Jesus served the best wine when it was only minutes old. But let me defend the simile. When

I wrote

a foreword

for his first book in English,

in

1982,

his philosophy was a retrieval of classic Chinese thinkers for roles in contemporary world philosophy; the title of that book 15 Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play. That book was an important contribution because, although thinkers such as Herbert Fingarette and Tu Weiming had retrieved Confucius for such roles, the Daoists were still popularly viewed as spiritually inspiring but philosophically obscure. And instead of showing that Chuang Tzu could be made to look like a modern Western philosopher, Wu argued that his ironic playfulness is a way around the conundrums of philosophical foundational'sm. Then, lest Western readers would think that Chuang Tzu can be defended only for his genre and for the problems that avoids, Wu next, in 1990, published The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu, a truly heavy duty (long) scholarly work that interwove historical analysis with philosophical reflections that integrated Chinese and Western thought. In 1997 Wu published On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, the first of two systematic volumes involving comparative ChineseEuropean philosophy, and setting forth a distinct philosophical position. The second systematic volume 1s the present one, On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic, and 1 am proud to have been asked to present a foreword for each of these books mentioned. There is a double irony in this. First, Wu 15 dead-set against systems in philosophy, arguing here as in the earlier books that it requires life-killing abstractions. Yet here he is with a systematic philosophy. Second, I am sure Wu has no more systematic a philosophical friend than myself, his Foreworder, a Confucian of the most prosaic namerectifying kind and one of the few practitioners of Western philosophy

X11

FOREWORD

“in the grand tradition.” I wonder what Wu's ironic flirtation with system might mean. One of the things his systematic comparisons does not mean 15 the construction of plain categories according to which things can be compared, although that 15 what I try to do. Wu quite to the contrary represents comparison as a dialogical togetherness, a mutual engagement in which the parties, East and West, ancient and modern, ana-

lytic and imaginative, philosophical and religious, become more themselves and other than each other as the dialogue progresses. For all the haste to honor Otherness in postmodern discourse, no one has pursued that topic with the sensitivity and thoroughness of Wu in this volume. In the Foreword to On Chinese Body Thinking I claimed that Wu had 1η fact brought Chinese philosophy into the conversation of world philosophy previously dominated by Western thinking. That point is exemplified again here. But now the balance has shifted, I think. In the present volume, Wu brings the Western hermeneutical tradition into the problematic of world philosophy shaped by Chinese sensitivities, philosophy as more play than work (Plato would have appreciated this point). All this is to say that Western and Chinese philosophy do not function much here as two opposing traditions in dialogue but as both contributing together a vast host of philosophic impulses and instincts, as well as carefully developed arguments, each other to the others, East, West, and back again. That so few philoso-

phers today have the culture to engage Wu as a peer is a mark of the primitiveness of academic philosophy. But that we have him as an exemplar shows the way forward. With the benefit of very little if any wine, Wu Kuang-ming has intoxicated himself with two profound traditions, mastered their subtleties, and pushed them ecstatically to do things neither could do on their own. There 15 no rush to imaginative judgment in this book (though the Sages of the Bamboo Grove were themselves a bit hasty), but a massive, cumulative creative effort to create an original dialogue which answers the “main problems of philosophy,” as William James would say. Starting with the retrieval of Chuang Tzu, this 15 mature wine indeed. No careful reader can fall to be transformed by the thinking in this book. Robert Cummings Boston University October,

1997

Neville

PREFACE

1.

Cultural

hermeneutic

As 15 evident from the title, this book-essay 15 on a cultural hermeneutics of togetherness, of homo-ecological community of differences, cultural and otherwise, and is a companion and sequel to my previous volume, On Chinese Body Thinking —A Cultural Hermeneutic.' ‘The relation between the two volumes is clear enough—the previous volume exemplifies this one in a particular area of Chinese thinking; this one applies that one to a general case of world-cultural togetherness. Both constitute a cultural hermeneutic much called for in our contemporary Global Village of togetherness. We can even say that our homo-cosmic survival depends on an apt hermeneutics of worldcultural togetherness. This is an urgently timely theme, for which this volume is much hoped to do some justice.

2.

The

title

This book-essay is conspicuously titled “on the ‘logic’ of togetherness". Five points can be noted. First, it is obviously on the logic of togetherness, which is too concrete to define, but can only be presented, both by way of telling what it is not (as in Prologue), and by imaginatively presenting five imaginative life-situations of being together —culturally, personally, argumentatively, religiously, and philosophically. For as long as togetherness is something concrete (hence, cannot be defined) that 1s yet to obtain (hence, non-existent), togetherness can only be imagined concretely. Enough has been said and argued, in general, by so many thinking luminaries, both in the East and in the West, for the necessity in general of cultural togetherness.

। Published by Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997 (earned Distinguished Award for Excellence in Philosophical Writings, of National Science Council in Taiwan, ROC, 1995).

2

PREFACE

For a sampling of those volces see Hwa Yol Jung’s long essay, “Phenomenology, the Question of Rationality and the Basic Grammar

of Intercultural Texts".^ The text itself is studded with attractive quo-

tations and eye-catching phrases, skillfully woven to make a coherent case for the desirability of cultural togetherness of radical equality. Also, see an interesting anthology on this theme from an interesting Afro-Asian perspective, H. Odera Oruka and D.A. Masolo, eds., Philosophy and Cultures? One can go on like this and quote from wise Indians

R. Tagore,

M.K.

Gandhi,

etc. and

Chinese

T'ang

Chün-i,

Hsüng Shih-li, etc., and make an anthology-book of quotations on

this important general point. But theoretically to argue (and interweave quotables) for the general desirability of such togetherness is one thing; concretely to explore its specific traversing pattern(s) (so-called "transversals")* of togetherness 1s quite another. The present book-essay aims at filling a serious lacuna of the latter sort. Furthermore, the present exploration is done in a shameless display of its ineptitude by publishing it; its ineptitude invites the reader’s participation in its exploration. Here, our exploration of togetherness itself practices togetherness. We learn togetherness, together, by practicing it. Togetherness 1s exhibited here, evoked by the volume’s clumsiness.” Secondly, this essay does not directly describe or effect togetherness as such, but presents or rather hints at its reasonable pattern,° by imaginatively presenting what happens when togetherness obtains in five concrete situations. It is the “logic” of togetherness that this essay lets appear. The “logic” here is less a chain of argument, deductive, syllogistic, or purely theoretical and general, than pattern, frame, rule of a process of reasoning, and more widely, reasonable pattern of things, including argument and its chain. But then why not say “pattern”? We chose “logic” instead to indicate that what is presented here is more than just a pattern; it is also productive of terms of understanding, terms of expression, of * Analecta Husserhana, Vol. XLVI, pp. 169-240, which has no less than 188 endnotes. 3 This is Proceedings of 2nd Afro-Asian Philosophy Conference, Nairobi, October/ November, 1981, Nairobi, Kenya: Bookwise Limited, 1983. * “Transversal” will be considered in 1.2.3. > Cf. Epilogue, especially E.2., E.7. 6 Cf. E.4. below.

PREFACE

4

togetherness. And we chose “logic” also to indicate something less than a pattern; here 15 nothing normatively paradigmatic, ready to be adopted, as “pattern” seems to convey. We want to merely explore and understand here the threads that crisscross actual situations (we picked five) of togetherness, making togetherness what ıt is. These “threads” we call “logic.” Therefore, the word “logic” 15 bracketed

with quotation marks.’

Third, this essay does not present, much less directly describe, the “logic” itself but, by describing five concrete situations of togetherness, lets the reader come up with the most appropriate pattern and frame of togetherness. Since togetherness 15 yet to appear, by presenting imaginative concrete cases, this essay lets the readers hopefully discern their pattern, the most ideal and appropriate “logic,” of togetherness. This explains “on the ‘logic’ of togetherness,” for the essay does not quite describe the logic itself. Thus, fourth, both the readers and the essay jointly produce the “logic” of togetherness. It is not here yet, but 15 to be constructed by a joint undertaking. The “logic” of togetherness must itself be produced together. This why the title has the notion, the “logic of togetherness”; the logic of togetherness must come out of togetherness itself. And, fifth, the joint undertaking most naturally and inevitably involves reciprocal attempts at cultural understanding. In fact, togetherness of a most radical and comprehensive sort and its "logic" inevitably implicates and involves mutual cultural understanding. This ıs why this essay on the "logic" of togetherness 15 “a cultural hermeneutic.”

3. Togetherness In the above the word “togetherness” 1s left untouched. We now see what ıt is. We have seven points. First, togetherness 15 that by which we explain things, for things are togetherness, because things are concrete, and "concrete" is “concresced," grown-together. Everything is a brute fact of being, what is-made concrete and complex, a concrete mani-fold, a togetherness of being-there. We start here.

` Cf. 3.2.1. for why our book-essay is not titled “critique of communal

reason."

4

PREFACE

Secondly, to explain togetherness, and not to start at togetherness the explainer, 15 to tear lt apart, to analyze and thereby to leave the concrete for a Platonic Somewhere-else, which is a nowhere.

To see

things from nowhere? is an impossibility, or at least a concocted artificiality, no longer true to actuality. We leave truth if we take something else than the concrete to be primary. Togetherness is what explains, not what is to be explained. This is not to say that analysis 15 wrong, but to say that it is crucial to realize that analysis is a derivative, not a primal, operation. Analysis assumes togetherness, not the other way around. Otherwise, we leave the concrete world of togetherness and our explanation is no longer true to the world. The more we explain togetherness—analytically—the less true we become to togetherness. Then, thırdly, what can we do? How else can we do without becom-

ing circular? How can we avoid explaining togetherness the unknown with togetherness the unknown? The answer is simple: As long as togetherness just is, we just go there. That is, we just present it typically, that is, let it come to be-before us.? Concretely, we must present some paradigmatic situations of togetherness, and learn how things actually are, how the actuality of togetherness is, and how we should behave accordingly and likewise, so as to become as we are. Fourth, the word “togetherness” 15 chosen for the following reason. It is a transversal, traversing the concrete and the theoretical. It is theoretical because it has a “-ness” ending; we cannot avoid being theoretical in our general discussion of actuality. It is concrete because it is commonly used to evoke the warmth of a family, a community, a friendship. The point in this book-essay is that it has demonstrated how the theoretical imbues the concrete when we discern concrete togetherness. fifth, we will in the Prologue bemoan analytical abstraction. Do concrete thinking and abstract thinking so opposed that they cannot ht into the mold of togetherness? By “togetherness” we mean an

δ As Thomas Nagel did in his book by that name, published by Oxford University Press, 1989. ? This is after all what has been routinely practiced in the West since Socrates in the Republic gave a blown-up picture of human threefold psyche. Later thinkers followed suit, Aristotle in the Politics, Descartes in the Meditations, Hobbes in the Leviathan, and then Locke, Hume, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Ayer, Ryle, Rawls, Ricoeur, etc. We call the practice thought-experiments on paradigm cases; we practice it whenever we think something new and basic.

PREFACE

5

active mutuality, cohabitation of differences, which means opposition in enhancement and enhancement in opposition. The relation between the concrete and the abstract should be likewise: concrete vs. abstract,

thereby abstract enhancing concrete, and vice versa. In the Prologue, we elaborate on their mutual opposition; in what follows, we go into their enhancement. For example, we will note how the abstract both

loosens” the tie of a notion to the concrete and enhances its notional

power of free application. It is important to note that there is such a thing as togetherness of contrary notions. The abstract per se 15 not blameworthy, but our emphasis on the abstract ls, 1f it is emphasized to the extent of replacing the concrete with it, of being guilty of what Whitehead called the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, that 1s, taking the abstract as the concrete, so much so that the concrete simply disappears from our orbit of thinking. Incidentally, I owe this point, the togetherness of the concrete and the abstract, to the prodding of Ruth my allembracing psychologist. The pair of the abstract and the concrete is just one of many pairs of two extremes that are to be mutually balanced off. It is always the reciprocal, integrative, and interactive togetherness, without collapsing each of the two together into the other, that 1s important. And so, what sort of togetherness the two should have 15 the crucial problem. The present book-essay ponders on their relation

whenever occasions arise.

Sixth, as for the dialectical meaning and the dynamic implication of togetherness. Togetherness is a mutuality which by nature 1s something interactive, an active co-partaking in ontological co-resonance. This simple statement has incredibly rich implications. Chuang Tzu the ancient Chinese Taoist's story of dreaming to be a butterfly may help us here." Having been awakened from dreaming to be a butterfly, Chuang Tzu 15 now not sure whether he 15 he having dreamt to be the butterfly, or he is the butterfly currently ^ Mind you, “loosens” but not “severs.” It is the severing of the notional tie and moorage to the concrete that is the crime of abstraction. II For instance, see Preface here and the end of 3.12.; P.2.4. and 3.12.; 1.1.2. and 1.2.1.1.; 1.3. (with 1.3.2., 1.4.1.2.) and 1.5.2.; 3.7.2. and 3.8.4; 3.8.4. and 3.10.; 5.1. and Appendix to 4.3.1. '? We will have many occasions to consider this simple and rich story that concluded Chapter Two of the Chuang Tzu. Cf. e.g., 3.6.1.2.b., 3.8.d., 3.8.5., 3.11., 5.3.3., and Appendix to 5.3.1.

6

PREFACE

dreaming to be he. Then he spontaneously (and perhaps joyously, too) concludes that the world 15 like this, that things are mutually distinctive and interchanging. Now, this story, we say, 15 a paradigm of dynamic togetherness. À paradigm needs and bears free extrapolation. We develop the story in our own way as follows. In a way, dream and actuality are both inter-opposed and interdependent, for we dream day and night. On the one hand, dream is opposed to actuality which is a sober world. But they are, on the other hand, surprisingly interdependent. They have to be together to enliven each other. How could we bring together dream the not-actual and actuality the not-dream? lo begin with, to borrow from Kant the most “awakened” and

chastened thinker, dream without its actualization is as wildly empty

as actuality without dream is mere blindly stodgy. The exciting fullness of life-actuality lies in the fulfillment of its dreams; no unreal dreams,

no real excitement at their realizations. Thus the exhilarat-

ing fullness of life hes precisely in the inter-stimulation between dreaming dreams and their actualization, each one plunging into the other, dreams enlivening and enhancing actuality, and actuality inspiring (when life is smooth) and provoking (when life is rough) more dreams. This dynamic situation bespeaks the real excitement of being alive. This is togetherness, as self-recursively dialectical and mutually dynamic as the ongoings of life itself. This point, needless to say, was created by a series of conversations, quarrelsomely enjoyable, with Ruth my dialectical psychologist. The meaning of togetherness came to pass through an incarnation of dynamic togetherness, our conversations. Now, let us go a step further extrapolating from what is described above. We have just done, and that quite spontaneously, two different things: one, describing how togetherness comes about, and then, two, identifying that “how” as what togetherness is. The first point describes the route and the bridge towards togetherness; the second identifies that route-and-bndge as itself togetherness. Thus the route is the thing, as the medium 15 the message. That bridge of interactions that brings us to togetherness, that route of mutual interaction towards togetherness, 15 togetherness itself, since we've defined togetherness as an inter-partaking of interaction. The ^ We wish that Kant were as awakened to the dream as Chuang Tzu was, and

not as Socrates who was awakened from the dream of pretending to know.

PREFACE

7

bridge to togetherness is togetherness itself. This is the dynamism of togetherness. This bridge-and-route can be language (Foucault), communicative reason (Habermas), storytelling (Chuang Tzu), pedagogy that brings up/out briliant minds (Confucius), and/or projects on the go (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty). Seventh and finally, by operating in the mode of concrete presentation of togetherness, we at the same time inspire scrutiny and analysıs of the situations of togetherness (perhaps not togethernessitself, which is a mere empty abstraction). Analysis now operates within the frame and clime of holisüc togetherness-situation, which is not to be analyzed away. This is what is meant by togethernesspriority operation, as opposed to analysis-prionty one. This bookessay follows this operational principle. This explains our title, “On the ‘logic’ of togetherness.” This book-essay is structured simply; it has Prologue, five Sections, and Epilogue. After urging ourselves to take note of the urgent priority—in thinking. and in practice—of togetherness in Prologue, we plunge into an imaginative construction of five concrete situations of togetherness in five Sections. Brief Epilogue ties up what has been going on, urging the reader to carry on, together, this symbiotic cultural hermeneutics that discerns the “logic” of togetherness.

PROLOGUE

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

This essay is born of the exigencies of two facts, one easier to understand than the other; the first is factual exigency, which points to the second methodological one, no less actual. P.0. Exigencies First, the world today is dominated by an analytical unit-thinking. It loves to separate

and isolate units, elements,

and individuals

out of

the whole concrete situation, e.g., isolating molecules from things, then going to atoms, then on to subatomic particles, and then either synthesizes these elementary units back into the “original” or “better than original” wholes (in technology, management) or revolts against totalization over individuals (in the name of democracy). The synthesis-tendency is seen in industry and technology—an assemblyline mentality, which now extends to personnel management, treating individuals as cogs in the machine of society, as mere faceless “members of a company." The revolt-tendency 15 seen in democratic governance, where individual claims are pitted against the organizational totality, and social chaos and disorder is barely prevented by precarious “social contracts" of all sorts struck among individuals as well as between them and their governing bodies, national governments or multi-national corporations. Moreover,

it 15 thus that totalism, on the one hand, and atomism,

on the other, dominate the very mode of our thinking, resulting in totalistically damaging the lived dignity of personal integrity (consisting in togetherness), on the one hand, and in atomistically manipulating everything, on the other, with serious socio-ecological repercussions. All these phenomena come from a simple tendency, a mode of thinking called analytical, atomistic thinking, thinking that disassembles things into unitary elements before assembling them back into their supposedly original wholes, that is, thinking that always regards things in terms of these elementary atomistic units,

10

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS.

THE

PRIORITY

a unit-priority, partpriority, element-priority thinking. This ls the first exigent fact out of which the present essay is born. The exigency can be understood by understanding the sharp dichotomy effected by the so-called “scientific thinking.” On the one hand, there is this thinking of analysis-synthesis mentality. It extension 1s technics, whose glory lies in manufacturing synthesized totalities, such as gadgets, computers, automobiles, highways, high-rises, etc. Here the key notion is “synthesis,” which assumes the technical operations of (a) analysis, cutting apart original wholes ("raw materials,” “things”) into pieces called “units,” (b) then assemblage of those units into a totality, then another totality, in a controlled identical fashion. (c) It is all technics, ingenious contrivance to tear apart and then assemble; artificial manipulation of units is uppermost here. (d) Unit-thinking is an exclusive one; this unit 15 not that, one is not two. This leads to digital thinking; one, then two, then three, and

one differs from two by one unit, two from three by one more identical unit, etc.

On the other hand, this scientific-technological thinking results in its contrast, 1f not opposition, to the thinking tuned to original, organic, concrete wholes. Here “organic” means “inter-involved,” inclusive, as opposed to exclusivity; “concrete” means “concresced,” naturally grown-together, as opposed to artificial, contrived, and manufactured.

The

natural,

organic,

and

concrete

wholes

can

be

biological organisms which are a symbol to communal solidarity, and both can be called “spontaneous togetherness,” “natural wholes,” where “natural” means “by nature,” “essential,” not contrived or manufactured. Thus the scientific-technical thinking is exclusive, digital or corpuscular, and above all takes parts and units as prior, out of which it manufactures, synthesizes, artificial totalities. The natural-togetherness thinking is organic, inclusive, inter-involved, wave-like, and above all, takes natural wholes as prior; this thinking 15 ecological, promoting homo-cosmic symbiosis. ‘The contrast 15 clear. Now, where is the exigency? Here it is. What is cut to pieces cannot be put together back again into the original condition, no matter how ingeniously they are synthesized. What the Heaven (Nature) joins, let no man (technicity) put asunder. No royal forces of scientific analysis-synthesis can put Humpty-Dumpty, that pristine childlikeness of that existence (that morning greenness of the leaf), back together again, once it had a great fall into the hand of technical

THE

PRIORITY

MIXUP

11

contrivance; what is synthesized is a technical totality. The new totality may, at best, function better (more chlorophyll) than the original whole (leaf), but still remains its dead replica—at best. And all too often, technical best is a rarity. P.1.

The priority mixup

This book-essay is born of the exigency of a priority-mixup (P.1.1.) that resulted in homo-ecological devastation (P.1.2.) today. The essay is written to set right our priority both in thinking and in doing— the priority of togetherness. This essay proposes a mode of thinking that reverses and balances off a technical one; it is a togetherness-thinking, a thinking that begins at things’ natural wholeness, pristine togetherness, and concrete nexus of things, then proceeds to individual units or elements, which

we

understand

in terms

of their communal

wholes,

inclusive

inter-involved togetherness. Mind you, we must distinguish natural whole and communal togetherness from artificial synthetic totality, totalism, or totalization, whether technological or political. ‘This sort of holistic thinking (not a totalistic one) is based on concrete observation of what actually is (and should be) the case: Actuality 15 first organic togetherness (not totalism) before being analyzed into units and individuals.

P.1.1.: The exigency of priority-mixup A commonest composition of things that commonly exist is their part-whole relationship. Seldom do we note, however, that this relation can be of two kinds. Parodying Keats, we can describe the two kinds of this relation this way: (a) Parts are whole and whole, parts, and the twain forever inter-indwell. (b) Units are units and totality, total, and the twain shall never mix. The (a)-relation is a natural one (P.1.1.1.); the (b)-relation is a technical one (P.1.1.2.). ‘The (a)-relation is to be taken as primary in our thinking and operation, and the (b)-priority thinking and operation, as opposed to the (a)-pnority, 1s a “priority-mixup” (P.1.1.3.) P.1.1.1.: The (a)-relation: part-whole unity: This is a natural relation, a mutual indwelling. “Indwelling” means two things, one being in the other, without destroying the integrity of each but, on the contrary, mutually enhancing each thereby. It describes two

12

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

(one in the other) being one (one in the other), yet remaining two. Here the whole depends on its parts to exist as this particular whole, while its parts are those of the whole, infused by the whole. At the same time, parts remain parts, not identical with their whole, in order to be infused by the whole. Consider a tree. It depends on its branches to be “tree”; branches on their part die and cease to be, once cut off from the tree. “I write” while my hand performs wnting; a handless person 15 a different one from before when he had hands, which on their part ceased to exist once cut off from the person. Thus the whole and its parts mutually

indwell

and infuse.

The

whole

is colored

by the qualities

of its parts; the parts are pervaded by the qualities of the whole. Thus “the twain” osmotcally interpenetrate, mutually infuse, while keeping intact their respective integrities. We note that the word “infuse” 15 a liquid-word. Things are ontological waves of thing-conatus. Corpuscles are latecomers; solidity describes a semi-stable state of a particular wave-situation. Thus solidity 15 to be defined by liquidity, not liquidity by solidity. From this perspective, we can understand those traditional sayings, mystifying yet mystically important, such as "All is water" (Thales), (Cosmic) flood-hke Breath" (Mencius, 2A2), “Sharing the same Flow, above and below, as the skies and the fields” (Mencius, 7A13), “Myriad things are one with me” (Chuang Tzu, 2/53-54),' and the like. The integrity of the whole and of the parts ontologically interflow, interfuse, interdepend, inter-support. This is a whole-priority thinking, describing the togetherness-priority situation of whatever naturally exist, and originating togetherness-mentality. P.1.1.2.: The (b)-relation—Unit-total diversity: The second relation among things is a units-totality one. A “totality” is an aggregate of individual “units,” mutually separate and exclusive. A totalıty such as an automobile is a mere aggregate of units of things such as nuts and bolts, plates, rods and wires. And “aggregation,” called "synthesis," makes sense in terms of the individual separate units (monads); "separate" is the key here hid in the term "aggregate." Aggregate assumes "units," which we must get at via separation. This technical operation of separation is called “analysis.” We cut into things and isolate molecules, then divide and separate molecules apart into atoms,

। Cf. Mencius, 744.

then atoms

into subatomic

particles; then we

try

THE

PRIORITY

MIXUP

] 3

and assemble back those particles into “things” again, and we get technical “synthetic materials” which boast being “better” than natural things. This all too familiar operation of physics-and-chemistry engineering typifies all "scientific. thinking" and technological performances—divide, separate, and assemble, analysis and synthesis— where individual, analytical, and exclusively separate units are primary in thinking and operation, deriving therefrom technical synthetic totalities. This is a unit-priority thinking, opposed to a whole-priority

thinking described in 卫 .1.1.1.

P.1.1.3.: Priority-mixup: In order to understand the worldexigency today, we must begin at the beginning and consider the relationship among things, two of which have been mentioned above— the whole-part, the unit-totality. The world 1s made up of these two types of relationships. And the latter relation 15 naturally an aspect of the former, subsumed thereunder, for without the whole it would have been impossible to have analytical cutting-operation to “get at the bottom of things,” their “basic units.” their “atoms.” We

should follow this natural trend

of things, always taking things in the light of the communal whole and of togetherness, respecting the integrities of both the parts and the whole, both interdependent and inter-supportive. This 15 called togetherness-priority. But since the holistic, interfusing whole-part relation 1s less manageable and calculable than the unit-totality relation, we came to take the latter relation as basic perspective in thinking and in performing. We now take simple separate units as "basic," as the "bottom" of things, as what constitute things. We say we really don't know that something is until we tear it apart to examine its individual units called “parts.” Cutting and “part”-units are uppermost in our mind, and the “whole” thing is a mere aggregate; this is an analysismentality. A thing is always an assemblage of its individual constituents, each exclusive of others; this 15 an assembly-line-mentality. A thing 1s a totality resulted from synthesizing individual units obtained by analysis. Analysis, (individual exclusive) units, synthesis, totality—they are the buzz words, as opposed to the cluster of words, together, whole, ? I have treated this split-thinking elsewhere. See my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei, Taiwan: Academia Sinica, 1991, pp. 15, 134-35, 176-78, et passim; On Chinese Body Thinking—A Cultural Hermeneutic, EJ. Brill, 1996, “A Prehminary Remark," et passim.

14

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

interfusion, nature. We characterize the former mode of thinking and acting as analysis-priority, unit-priority. It is an awesomely and horrendously effective operation. So much for the mixup. Now as to the exigency. The exigency came about because of our mixup on the priority of these two relationships. As a result, two worlds came into being— that of technology, that of democracy-totalization. First, the units analyzed out of natural things are now busily synthesized into aggregates. The operation is an assembly-line manufacturing, an industrial production. This brings in the world of technology. Then the units of human individuals lead to their revolts against societal totality, creating atomistic individualism called “democracy.” In reaction thereto, there arises “totalization” (societal, political, cor-

porational) that effectively dictates and manages. Admittedly democracy and totalization are mutually exclusive, yet one cannot exist without the other, both in being and in meaning. This brings in the world of democracy-totalization over the interhuman relationship. In human community totalitarianism 1s both the result of and results in the revolts of atomistic individualism in the name of "democracy." In the natural world of symbiosis totalization both 15 a result of analysis-synthesis operation and results in ecological devastation. In fact, to look at things digitally (say, in measuring things in mathematical grades and units) is already to digitalize things, which is to cut them into units, then assemble

them

in calculation and in

synthetic operation, first in thinking, then in doing. It is to take the sheep, roaming around in the field, as mutton moving about on its way to cooking, to look at the lush mountain with an eye for grazing and timber. It 15 a veritable way to devastation. 了 .1.2.: Homo-ecological devastation Let us retract ourselves a bit and consider again the situation of natural priority of togetherness. We forget that togetherness 15 ontologically prior, not just methodologically necessary. We see this point when we remember Mencius. Mencius was to Confucius what Plato was to Socrates. Both Plato and Mencius were passionate and powerful exponents of their masters. Mencius’ beautiful provocative sketch of the Ox Mount (6A8) 15 poignantly apt today. The originally lush Mount, its trees once felled,

THE PRIORITY

MIXUP

15

its grass grazed, is now a sandy wasteland. The devastated Mount can be replenished solely by slow patient re-seeding and re-planting, not by high-tech turfed golf course, least of all by high-rises. Mencius’ story was meant to answer the charge that we are moral monsters and cannot be originally good. The story clearly, though obliquely, told us that ecological disasters are our doing, and they spread inside us. Our technical hands, by senselessly denuding the lush Mount, devastate our inner "green" of primordial innocence and vitality. Our ecological devastation devastates us. Immorality and ecological disaster go together to destroy nature, both outer and inner; we are the moral wasteland now, not by nature but by our own doing. The magnificence and convenience of analytic-synthetic technics (gadgets, computers, automobiles, high-rises, medicines, war industries, atomic energy) cannot moisten, nourish and nestle our souls as green pasture and verdant forests do. Digital, exclusive, and unit-pnority thinking must be replaced by appreciative cultivation of natural and holistic togetherness. Only in the perspective of natural holism-thinking, can analytic-synthetic technicalities render us their effective services in the right direction. We are restored by patient nurture alone—conscientiously following nature— back

to nature, because we

are natural. Nurture

to whole-

ness comes about solely in natural togetherness-thinking, under whose guidance technologies can be used, for the sake of ecological ethics. But beware. Remember the tragicomic story Mencius told? Be not the seedlings in "lm tired; and found

[proverbial] “man from Sung," [so stupid as to] pull at his anxiety about their growth. Blank, gone home, he said, I’ve helped seedlings grow.” His son rushed [to the field] seedlings [all] withered.

Our inner “seedlings” of vitality cannot be calculatively “helped” to "grow," which 15 typically effected in exclusive unit-priority thinking, analysis-synthesis thinking. The persecuted dissident-writer turned president of Czechoslovakia and a laureate of samuzdat (the 1986 Erasmus Prize winner), Václav Havel’s heart-rending words recur:* 3 Mencius, 242. Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of the Chinese original texts are mine. I strove less after felicity than fidelity to the onginal literary punch in its parsimony. t Václav Havel, Lwing in Truth, ed. Jan Vladislav, London & Boston: Faber and

16

PROLOGUE.

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

As a boy, I lived... in the country and I clearly remember the experience ... I used to walk to school in a nearby village along a cart track through the fields and on the way, see a huge smokestack of some hurriedly built factory... in the service of war. Each time... I had an intense sense of something profoundly wrong, of humans soiling the heavens... [which] offended me spontaneously. It seemed to me that, in it, humans are guilty of something, that they destroy something important, arbitranly disrupting the natural order of things, and that such things cannot go unpunished. . . . If a medieval man were to see something like that suddenly on the horizon... he would probably think it the work of the Devil and would fall on the knees and pray that he and his kin be saved. What 15 it, actually, that the world of the medieval peasant and that of a small boy have in common? Something substantive, I think. Both... are far more intensely rooted in... “the natural world,” or Lebenswelt, than most modern adults. . . . That is the realm of our induplicable, inalienable and non-transferable joy and pain, a world in which, through which and for which we are somehow answerable, a world of personal responsibility... and which we can only quietly respect.

[T]he smokestack soiling the heavens is not just a a technology that failed to include "the ecological lation. ... It is a symbol of an epoch which denies tance of personal experience... of mystery and and displaces [11] with a new, man-made absolute, free of the “whims”

regrettable lapse of factor" in its calcuthe binding imporof the absolute... devoid of mystery,

of subjectivity and, as such, impersonal and inhu-

man. It is the absolute of so-called objectivity: the objective, rational cognition of the scientific model of the world.

It is uncanny how Havel in contemporary Europe shares with Mencius in ancient China (during the fourth century B.C.) exactly the same gut-level feeling of homo-cosmic reverence. The fact of the matter is, this book-essay claims, both Mencius’ story of the Ox Mount (denuded by technical axings and grazings) and Havel's story above make some profound homo-cosmic sense, some gut-level sense. Here "argument" to prove pros or cons on the matter 15 futile. For straight "argumentation" as conceived in the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition? is itself digitally operative, of mathematical unit-assembly type. The argument itself assumes analysis and unit-priority. Faber, had to ”We middle

1986, 1989, pp. 136-38. I could have gone on indefinitely quoting him. I stop somewhere; I hope the sentiment is conveyed. will elaborate on this point by explaining culture-boundness of the excluded (in 1.1.1.1. and on) and explore another style of “arguing” in Section 3.

THE

PRIORITY

MIXUP

] 7

Once Humpty Dumpty has had a great fall into technical contrived analysis, no amount of royal forces of sciences can put the pieces together again into the original hved whole. What we get 1s a technical totality instead. Parts are obtained by smashing the whole, and parts can only be assembled into an artificial totality, not the original whole. Its pristine life 15 lost. The newly assembled totality may even function better than the original whole, but 15 still not the original whole, with its pristine vitality and spontaneity. To repeat. The primordial lush mountain, once destroyed, must be restored slowly by patient re-planting. Ecological disasters by technical hands penetrate to moral devastation of our inner “green.” Primordial togetherness-thinking is methodologically therapeutic to modern technical devastation of natural wholes, because togetherness is actually primal, and naturally, ontologically prior to mutually exclusive, individual units obtained by technical analysis. And we ourselves are communal first before being individuated into isolate units. Our individual integrity is communal by nature; to take us as lone insular individuals destroys our personal individuality. In fact, it 1s unnatural (against our grain, against nature) for us to first think of units, then add those units to make up a totality. Synthesis-thinking is a later story in actual situation, derived from analysis-thinking, atomistic thinking. To analytical-synthetic thinking, “water,” for instance, 1s nothing but

“H,O,”

which

implies

that water

is not water

but a chemical

collection (“compound,” they call it) of previously split elements, hydrogen molecules and oxygen molecules. But “H,O” is just a chemical “recipe” of how to compose water, which itself cannot be known as a simple addition of characters and qualities of hydrogen and oxygen. The

chemists

know,

of course,

that

“water”-qualities

(soft and

softening, strong and strengthening, tranquil and torrential) are not equivalent to a simple mathematical addition of its chemical ingredients’ qualities (hydrogen-qualities and oxygen-qualities). Qualities cannot be mathematically added, any way. To say, “Mathematical addition symbolizes chemical one," does not help, for the latter 15

precisely what needs to be explained, not inexplicably symbolized.°

6 We forego discussing the distinction between water chemically made in the laboratory, on the one hand, and spring, river, ocean, rain, much less fruit juice, blood, etc., on the other.

18

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

Besides, chemical addition—whatever it 1s—does not describe what the thing thus inexplicably explained is. lhe crisp exquisite color, taste, and aroma of "pressed Peking duck," say, are not described by its recipe, an analytic-synthetic formula for (not “of”) that Peking duck. What that “duck” is 1s not described by how it is made. But no chemical formula (“recipe”) can explain why not; nor, so far, has any chemical answer been forthcoming as to why there exists this simple basic problem in chemistry, a science of analytical-synthetic thinking, taking a list of chemical recipes of how to make things for knowing what these things are. The problem 1s not in chemistry itself but in our misunderstanding, perhaps. We lack a warning against identifying (confusing) the how with the what, knowing how to make a thing with making it, having it, appropriating it, and knowing what it is. To have “H,O” Is not to make

water

or know

what

it is, much

drink it. Water as a unique natural whole—with tious, healing,

or torrential, soothing,

magnificent,

less to have

it or

all its cool, nutrietc., qualities—is

gone. Here the integral whole 15 lost 1η analytical unit-thinking. Furthermore, the same human beings with the “same disease” manifest different symptoms and syndromes; the "same drugs" often do not work identically and must be adjusted carefully to fit the different situation of different chents. The same brand of automobiles or computers with the same components and compositions exhibit different “characters.” Here even the assembled totalities exhibit differences similar to those among natural wholes, beyond the expectations of analytical thinking. P.2. Analytical units-thinking Yet we are so accustomed to this analytical thinking, this pulverizing units-thinking, that to claim priority for. natural togetherness makes us feel odd,

uneasy,

uncomfortable,

thinking precisely enough, or worse, this book-essay 1s written, urging us all, above all, and as the perspective We do not need here to consider spective of togetherness, or thinking breathing (performative togetherness, Just to think about togetherness is,

and foreign,

as if we were

not

not thinking at all. This 1s why to think of togetherness first of for all thinking. thinking in the mode and perin the same rhythmic swing as thinking and breathing, in time). in fact, as difficult as thinking

ANALYTICAL

UNITS-THINKING

19

about breathing. For togetherness is as basic to life as breathing is; other things are thought in terms of them. Without breathing we cannot even live, much less think; yet we cannot usually notice our own breathing. Similarly, without togetherness we cannot even be isolated, much less think about isolation; yet all we note is analysis, isolation. And so we come actually to take insular, atomistic thinking as basic, in terms of which to think of togetherness. Yet such a thinking 1s derivative in nature. Forgetting this fact turns our thinking unnatural and lands us in all sorts of unnecessary complexities and false conundrums, with which the history of Western philosophy 15 littered. How 15 it that togetherness-thinking is basic? Because togetherness is actually and ontologically prior. How so? We understand it in four points: part-whole (in P.2.1.), whole-together (P.2.2.), and then their comparison (P.2.3.), and finally the priority of whole-togetherness mutuality (P.2.4.). P.2.1. We cannot think of parts without the whole, for parts are no parts unless they are those of a whole of which they are parts. But the reverse does not hold; we can think of the whole without thinking of its parts.’ And so the whole is prior to its parts; we understand the parts by their whole more than we do the whole by its parts. For things are integral wholes of which their parts are components. This 15 an easy point to understand. P.2.2. A less easy point comes when we think of communal togetherness as prior to those integral wholes (e.g., human individuals) which make up togetherness. Is this make-up of the community of togetherness by wholes the same as the make-up of wholes by its parts? No, and this 1s the difference. Parts are just parts of their whole, depending on the whole to be parts, while the whole does not depend on the parts to be whole, for, as we say, "Ihe whole is greater than the sum of its parts." But togetherness does as much depend on wholes to be this community of togetherness? as wholes do on this togetherness to be such wholes. " We could say, “This is the whole of those particular parts," but it sounds awkward and contrived. ° Although we may admit that we could say, “Togetherness is greater than the sum of its component wholes."

20

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

P.2.3. And—and this is an important point—all this consideration so far has been made possible in the perspective of togetherness. It is togetherness which

1s basic, for it enables

us to understand

the entire situ-

ation, understand both the priority of the whole to the parts, and the reciprocity (of priorities) between togetherness and wholes. The part-whole relation describes an organism; the whole-togetherness mutuality characterizes a community. Thus organism can be understood as a subspecies of community, but not the other around.

P.2.4. Lastly, a no less important point. From P.2.3 above follows that the organismic part-whole relation should be understood in terms of the communal whole-togetherness mutuality, and not the other around. But organism 15 observable, and manageable by way of analysisthinking, while wholes are less easy to perceive and manage, much less communal togetherness. And so we tend to go the easier way; we tend to think the whole-togetherness mutuality in terms of the part-whole relationship. And totalization results; politico-ecological disasters ensue. Sadly, we want precision in thinking, and precision requires analysis which 15 isolation of a particular item in question out of a collection of things. And so we become so used, for precision's sake, to analytical separation and unit-isolation that it 1s now difficult, 1f not impossible, to think about togetherness, much less to think things in terms of it. We now have to engage in a philosophical archeology, to dig ourselves back to our pristine origin of holistic togetherness which constitutes what we are. The digging can go somewhat as follows. It 1s our accustomed analytical thinking that leads to atom-thinking, thinking in terms of units. This habit of analytical, atom-thinking produces abstractive totalization of one overarching principle, composing a vertical centralizing hierarchy by which things are understood; things are squeezed into this comprehensive hierarchy, classified therein, and understood in terms of faceless universalism. Within this frame, things are pulverized, analyzed, into units of elements,

that

is, faceless

atoms,

fragmented

individuals,

being

in

chaos, which provokes—provides materials for—centralized regimentation from the ideal Top, that One overarching principle. This disintegrative-synthetic style of thinking has some horrendous political connotations, for after all “principle” and awesome “principality” are not far apart.

COMMUNAL TOGETHERNESS-THINKING

21

Let us, at the risk οἱ slight repetition, look into how all this happens. Analysis results in atom-thinking, which goes as follows. Analysis produces singularities of “individuals,” units which cannot (“in-”) be "divided" further. We christen them "individual integrities," implicating “autonomy,” “independence,” even “interdependence.”” All this describes how analysis reduces the world of natural togetherness into a chaotic situation. We now have to produce the One (the principle of preestablished harmony?) up there to oversee the intelligibility, and manage orderliness, of random monadic things of the world down here (as seen in structuralist modernism). But then this One overarching principle is now exposed as a sham by deconstructionism. The result is quite confusing; this 15 the “postmodernity” predicament. As applied to political realm, uncontrolled haphazard individuals either submit or oppose totalization of the centralized government. As applied to cognitive, cultural, historical, psychic, and natural realms, the situation spell anarchic chaos of relativism, positivism, historicism, psychologism, physicalism." P.3.

Gommunal

togetherness-thinking

This essay proposes, for this predicament today, a new mode of thinking in terms of a physiognomy of togetherness, a community-thinking. Physiognomy replaces "universal," family-communal solidarity" supersedes "autonomy," and physiognomic web, nexus, or network dissipates chaotic relativism. Four objections to the proposal can be seen to which we respond as follows.

? Interdependence is mutual dependence among individuals, and so assumes individual units. 19 To balance off this bemoaning of abstraction, I have put the glories of abstracΠΟΠ in terms of the musical form. See 3.10. I suppose the above woes of abstracΠΟΠ comes not from abstraction itself but from abstraction-induced totalization. In other words, all depends on how we apply abstraction in practice, e.g., whether as a principle or as a means. !! Calvin O. Schrag proposed “transversal” to replace “universal.” See his The Resources of Rationality: À Response to the Postmodern Challenge, 1995, p. 170, et passim. I think "physiognomy," through "family resemblance," includes the notion of “transversal," as we will see in 2.5. et passim.

2 Family solidarity includes sensitive concern and responsibility, as will be explained

in Sections 2 and 5.

22

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

P.3.1. To begin with, “how about the benefit of analytic thinking, precision, which may well disappear in togetherness-thinking?” We have three responses as follows. First, we note that precision produced by analytic, unit-thinking often falsifies reality, as Whitehead the mathe-

matician declared, “The precision is a fake." Togetherness-thinking

in its stead produces apiness appropriate in actuality. In fact (secondly), precision is often a subspecies and ingredient of aptness. Aptness often implicates precision. Thirdly, aptness can imply precision but precision rarely implies aptness. On the contrary, obsession with precision often obstructs as much aptness as, to take an old-fashioned imagery, coherence does correspondence. How so? In the following manner. To have a beautifully cut gem of theory often does injustice to the actual situation which is never neat. Actuality is scraggy as a coastline, not precise as a Euclidean line, and no clean and coherent theory about it can be formulated. Concepts are like babies. Babies are not supposed to be cleaned too much. Ultra-clean babies die. Concepts or rather notions are not supposed to be too clean, either. Ultra-clean notions are dead concepts, which are, moreover, deadlier than dead babies. Cleanest concept tends to sting actuality, proudly impose itself on actuality, which 15 thus distorted and destroyed eventually. It is not without reason that both the British and the Chinese peoples often look askance at too beautiful a theory. “For it simply cannot be true of the situation and must be a smokescreen for something else,” they would say. This is why we need experiments to test theories; we propose theories for nature to dispose them aptly and appropriately, not precisely." P.3.2. "But when we meet one another, don't we need a common ground of discourse, a prior agreement on some basics, to communicate at all We even need an agreement on what counts as "insult" before 3 Section 3 elaborates on this theme.

'* [n fact, “precise” is unintelligible and out of context here. Cf. 3.3., 4.2.2., and 4.2.3. below. On “precision” see my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, pp. 37-38. On concrete actuality as incapable of precise literalistic expression (“ambiguous”) see my On Chinese Body Thinking-A Cultural Hermeneutic, op. cit., 2.3., et passim.

COMMUNAL

TOGETHERNESS-THINKING

23

we can quarrel.” Now, this reaction bespeaks the specter of the a priori One, understanding “meeting” in terms of the one common universe of discourse, under one predetermined common bunch of presuppositions which happen to be quite abstract. For instance, Socrates’ hunger for common ground (presupposition) led him into looking for the origin of knowledge; for how do we recognize our discovery unless we know what it 1s to find beforehand? But for Socrates, this "ground" happens to be something abstract, quite beyond the actual knowledge we have. This search led to assuming the myth (because it 1s liteally out of this world) of Recollection (mnemosyne). The move amounts to replacing something inexplicable (presupposition) with another (Recollecaon). “Eureka!” the radical beginning is a tough aporia for unit-thinking, hankering after the One overarching principle to shield us from “unruly surprises” from the concrete world. The myth is not needed if we discard the Socratic hunger. Our community-thinking responds with two points. First, it is in meeting the other that we together produce our common ground, which may shift as our relation grows. Quarrels just erupt, even among peoples of entirely different cultures; there need no prior discussion about agreement on "insult." It is not that we must have a common

ground

first, then

communicate;

rather,

the fact of the

matter 15 that we together create our common meeting point or room by meeting. Our meeting naturally generates our shared room of communication. This 15 what makes Habermas’ “communicative

reason” justly famous." The

reason

ideal common

for all this mundane

frame

communicative

happening

of

ıs not at all far to seek; and this is our second

response. Our meeting produces our common universe of discourse because each of us is already social. We are born in sociality;'? we

exist as social." We are first of all social before being individuals

within a society. And so the following three characteristics of individuality are social. “Autonomy” is that of the self existing vis-à-vis its other; “independence” makes sense only by denying dependence; “interdependence” is mutuality of dependence, and dependence is 5 Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The Past as Future, Lincoln Nebraska Press, 1994, pp. 101-102.

० Section 5 explains this fact. 7 Sections 2 and 5 explain this fact.

& London:

University

of

24

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS.

THE

PRIORITY

social. In other words, all social intercourses are original in our natural makeup; no need for creating a new common ground. In fact, togetherness 15 at the base of our thinking, "logic," which

is just a pattern of togetherness.? We must be familiar with wholes

first before understanding and engaging ourselves in exploring patterns of wholes. For logic 15 pattern of togetherness of meanings, and “pattern” and “meaning” are synonymous with “coherence that makes sense," 1η short, togetherness. We tend to take the relation of togetherness with its logic as that between football and its game-rule, and talk about the logic of togetherness to understand togetherness, as if logic were basic to togetherness, as if we could use logic to understand and deal with togetherness— as if we could deal with the game by its rule. We don't realize that actually the reverse is the case; the rule is evolved out of playing the game, not the play out of the rule. The game-play makes sense of its rule, not the rule, the game; togetherness makes sense of logic,

not logic, togetherness.

P.3.3. "But analysis already has in it, by its provocation, synthesis, why propose ‘togetherness’"? We answer, synthesis is mixture; togetherness 1s not mixture any more than natural community is regimentaton. “Mixture” 15 a late-comer, a synthesis made out of unitary elements analyzed out of a natural whole. Units are separated and isolated from

an original,

communal,

concrete situation.

And

a con-

crete situation is what 1s concresced, a grown-together of whatever there

are. The

concrete

situation 15 what

the Taoist

a natural con-fusion, a primal abundance-together. °

called Aun tun,

P.3.4. "But togetherness-thinking is hard to define; it tends to lack in the precision of “definition.’” We answer, “definition,” of which thinkers are so fond, ıs a typical unitary element isolated out of characteristic 8 “Logos” itself came from “legein,” “logos,” meaning “to gather, to glean,” then “to collect, to catalogue,” then “to count, to narrate, to reflect,” then “mathematics, reasoning, reason inherent in the cosmos.” See H. Kleinknecht, “Logos,” in Gerhard Kittel, ed., The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1967, IV: 71-91. 9 Cf. Chuang Tzu, 7/33-35, 11/55, 12/67, 69. Also see my meditations on Hun Tun in The Butterfly as Companion, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1990. See its Index, p. 462, on “Hun Tun.”

TOGETHERNESS AS CONCRETE, PRIMAL features,

separated

out of the concrete

situation, a primal,

25 commu-

nal, abundant con-fusion, such as in the traditional food market of any traditional community, and as in the modern Common Market in today’s Community of Europe. Definition is a derivative; concrete situation 1s the original. So much for possible objections and our responses. Ρ.4.

Togetherness

as concrete, primal

“What can we do, then?” We wont be here to define togetherness and legislate its logic, but instead to pick some ordinary situations of togetherness and look into what concrete network-of-togetherness each of them has, then note their generic physiognomic features.” Wittgenstein's "family resemblance" unwittingly strikes a note of odd tune in the Western chorus of Socratic quests for clear-cut “definition” as an individual essence analyzed out of many examples of the same sort, in revolt against Euthyphro's descriptive definition by enumeration of (social) examples, saying “something lıke these is what is called ‘such-and-such.’” Wittgenstein is a modern Euthyphro, away from whom the Socratic tradition of the West diverged. Ihe present book-essay follows Euthyphro and Wittgenstein, and enumerates five usual concrete situations of togetherness, then see how togetherness as "something like these" could mean. "Logic of togetherness" in this essay then becomes, instead of metaphysical or cosmological structure of sociality, a perceptible, intelligible, and flexuous network of being together, of communal coexisting. Five Sections are devoted to five such concrete situational networks?! of togetherness: 1. cultural (Chinese vs. Western cultures); 2. personal (the Other); 3. argumentative (playing with arguments); 4. religious (Taoism in Christianity); 5. philosophical (inner touch).

` 2 Emmanuel Levinas’ “face” seems to concentrate too much on the interhuman sphere of ethics, however wide the term "ethical" is interpreted to mean. Cf. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, tr. Richard A. Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1982, p. 95, et passim. I use "physiognomy" to broadly interface with Wittgenstein's “family resemblance." * Lao Tzu, the primal Taoist, casually tossed out a phrase, “Heaven’s net" (tien wang), saying, "Ihe Heaven's net is vast, vast; sparsely-meshed, it loses nothing.” (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 73)

20

PROLOGUE:

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

PRIORITY

Finally, in the Epilogue, we will see what we can learn, from these five situations, about a generic physiognomy of togetherness. Those life situations are concrete, transversally applicable, and long-lasting. All the great love songs of the world have been written for their respective “one person's," and they throb with life forever for the whole humankind. Immediate situations breed abiding physiognomy of things. Togetherness is the pristine “face” of things and situations; we want in this essay to capture its enduring unmistakable face-features by pondering its five concrete situations —cultural, personal, argumentative, rehgious, philosophical. Now, what 15 peculiar about the above described methodology 15 clear enough. It takes the community of togetherness as prior and primal, a primitive concept with which to initiate explaining unitary persons. For this route goes contrary to the predominant trend of the Western mode of thinking: to first divide things (“analyze,” they say) until we reach the “individuals,” what cannot be further divided,

and then, begin there to explain the "concrete," what is concresced "synthesize," they say) out of individual units.^ Yet effortlessly being concrete has nothing to do with contriving to execute Platonic division, then synthesis; this analytic-synthetic method gets us nowhere near the natural concrete situation. Therefore, to repeat, we in this book-essay steadfastly stay on 1η concrete actuality, observing 115 palpable manifestations (five, we will see) to discern its pattern, network, or rather, physiognomy, of togetherness.

2 See Appendix to P.4.: “Individual-priority vs. other-centrism.”

SECTION

CULTURAL CULTURAL

1

TOGETHERNESS: INSIDE, OUTSIDE

1.1. Thinking as cultural On hearing human togetherness, one of the first notions that comes to mind is “culture.” Most if not all of our problems today, whether personal, familial, institutional, national, or international, can be traced back to cultural differences that breed widespread separation and anlmosity among people. Given the present situation of the world shrinking into a global village, cultural togetherness 15 one of the most pressing and difficult of all our immediate tasks facing the world today. Unfortunately, “culture” is not an easy theme to consider. Traditionally (1.1.a.), philosophers tended to shy away from this theme, while in modern times (1.1.b.), every thinking 1s taken to be cultural. Neither one 15 a correct approach. 1.1.a. Philosophical thinkers traditionally shun the epithet, “cultural.” They tend to think that whatever truths they pursue should be universally applicable; after all, logical and argumentative validity is by definition universally binding, “true of all possıble worlds.” Talkıng of cultural diversity is as irrelevant to philosophical thinking as discussing such themes as Russian geography, Chinese medicine, or Egyptian mathematcs, all of which are significant only among quaint (cultural) historians of sciences. Two possible causes for this smug cultural shunning may be noted. One (1.1.a.1.) is a simple ıgnorance about what “culture" means; another (1. 1.2.11.) is that they don't want to know what culture really means. 1.1.a.1. Traditionally, thinkers in the West did not know that culture is not an entity out there to be reckoned with objectively, a special self-contained field to be scientifically investigated. Culture is rather something logically “indexical” to our life,! the very way and ' On what logically “indexical” means, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1990.

see Palle Yourgrau,

ed., Demonstratwes,

28

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I:

CULTURAL

TOGETHERNESS

style of living exhibited spontaneously in our life, the morphology of nerves of our thinking and taking things, our existential “demonstrative” showing what we are.? Language, which supposedly pervades all our thinking and doing, 15 one of many manifestations of culture. Culture, as language, 15 something made by humans, the human

achievements,

in which we live, move,

and have

our being,

or rather, the very physiognomy, which we ourselves shape, of what we are and do. As language is a sort of performative,’ so culture is our lived performative. This our description of "culture" as indexical to our life not only roughly agrees with all definitions proposed so far that this writer knows of*—human self-made “web of significance," “a system of the meaning of acts,” “a context, something within which they can be intelligibly described,"? the “total way of life, storehouse of pooled learning, a set of standardized orientation, etc.” (Kluckhohn). Our definition goes further in describing what relation human persons have to their definitions of culture. That culture is indexical, invisible to the “frontal analytical eye,”’ is shown by Geertz who was too busy expounding what culture 15 not (not acts themselves, not physical anatomy of acts,? not formal schema, not learned behavior, not psychologism,? to pack into the definition of “culture” the deep human significance that is definitionally essential to culture. When later he supposedly shows his deep appreciation of how essential

to the

essence

of man

culture

15. he

shows

it not in this

context of defining culture but in that of the quest for human essence."

? Cf. 5.5.1.1., 5.5.1.2., 5.5.1.3. below. * Not just confined to a specific sort of expression, as John Austin claimed. This point 15 argued for in general in my “Chinese Body "Thinking." t See W.L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, Inc., 1980, p. 115. Bunka [Culture] as Tetsugaku [Philosophy] Volume XIII in /wanamı Koza |Iwanami senes], eds., Tsurumi Shunsuke and Ikimatsu Keizo, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1968, pp. 1-102. ? Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, N.Y.: Basic Books, Inc., 1973, p. 9. ° Ibid., p. 14.

’ This phrase appears in 4.3.

8 Ibid., p. 12.

? [bid., p. 17, etc.

Ὁ Ibid., pp. 45-54. See Geertz’s interesting but unnecessarily convoluted treatment of the definition of culture in Clifford Geertz, ibid., pp. 3-32. On Kluckhohn, see Clyde Klukhohn and W.H. Kelly, "The Concept of Culture," in R. Linton,

THINKING

AS

CULTURAL

29

Incidentally, again perhaps because of the indexically difficult nature of culture, despite advertised disagreement with Klukhohn, Geertz ended up producing essentially the same definitions of culture." 1.1.8.11. The second cause for the Western thinkers’ negligence of cultural slant (if not bias) in one's own thinking 15 that they don't want to notice it, for to notice it comes

to our home

base too close

for comfort. Cultural thinking 1s something ad hominem, undermining the very base and manner of our thinking. They don't want to know what Collingwood clearly saw, that!“

All Kant could show was that eighteen-century scientists did think in terms of that category; the question why they so thought can be answered by investigating the history of the idea of causation. If more than this 1s required; if a. proof 1s needed that the ldea 15 true, that people are right to think in that way; then a demand is being made which in the nature of things can never be satisfied. How can we ever satisfy ourselves that the principles on which we think are true, except by going on thinking according to these principles, . . .?

This aversion to culture has a lot to do with general aversion to relativism. As relativism gets under our skin, we don't know how to deal with it, and we

are irritated; after all, dealing with. something

is possible only when that something 15 out there, capable of being handled. Traditional philosophers tend to shy away from cultural problems not without their reasons, justified or not. 1.1.b. Today's thinkers, in contrast, wallow themselves in culture-language; everything is culture-based. Everything 15 due to human interpretation and interpretation upon interpretation, and even hermeneutics 15 politicized, culture-enmeshed. But since culture-in-general 15 nowhere to be found, “culture” is inherently many, and such culture-interpretation of everything results in pluralistic cultural relativism of a most pervasive ed., The Science of Man in the World Crisis, New York, 1945, p. 97, and his 11 more or less interrelated definitions of culture quoted from his Mirror of Man in Geertz, ΟΡ. cit., 4-5.

'' Geertz, ibid., pp. 4-5.

He

Ε.Ο. may

Collingwood,

not have

The Idea of History, Oxford University Press,

realized,

however,

that what

as we are going to show in 1.1.1. by showing of excluded middle," which is at the base of so by a cultural comparison, as Collingwood comparison is a critical way of togetherness. and chauvinism.

1956, p. 230.

he said 1s true of a// our

thinking,

the cultural side of Anstotle's “law our thinking. We are enabled to do realized so by a historical one, and logetherness heals cultural myopia

30

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TOGETHERNESS

sort. Postmodernists are currently busy demolishing traditional “ide-

alism" everywhere, and put nothing solid in its place."

Whether their overall morose atmosphere in their convoluted negativities betrays their secret nostalgia for the idealistic security they demolish, or their insecurity in not having put, in the place of “false” idealistic bedrock, something secure and solid amidst the quicksand of cultural pluralism, it 15 hard to say. One thing is clear. In revolting against the mistake of taking our old accustomed mode of thinking as culture-free, true of even all possible worlds, telling us that every thinking is in fact culture-bound, postmodernism has gone to the other extreme of being drunk in culturalism. Everything is cultural, wanderingly cultural. Ihe problem is how not to go to either extreme, either the Platonic obsession with. pure. universal forms, or blind endorsement of cultural relativism, but to combine the two together without endorsing the mistakes of either extreme. Again, togetherness is the key term. But to urge togetherness is a tricky business indeed. One must always be on the alert on where one stands; the risk of existential contradiction, such as one's act of saying contradicting the contents of what one says, is always present. Let us take an example. As early as 1η 1968, a prophetic voice was quietly heard from the second Edward Gibbon, this time in the person of a Japanese philosopher, Umehara Takeshi, about the decline and fall of the European culture. The doom, Umehara said, is assured by its loss of potentials for theoretical leadership of the world, because of its lack of humility to regard itself as just one culture among many others within the worldprinciple it (the European culture) establishes for the world. The European culture, this Japanese Gibbon continues, sorely needs a drastic thorough going critique of its own foundation on which its cultural principle is built. It is clear that beginning with the Cartesian radicality of doubt, every human ideal built in Europe on “man as rational” is itself full of dubious duplicities. For this rational animal of the West is a ruthless unscrupulous killer, and its ruthlessness 1s only radicalized by its rationality which designs and produces for it the most sophisticated weapons of homicide of which only rationality is capable. 5 Cf. Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1987. The book is full of clever manipulations of middle term fallacy to demolish our established mode of thinking, “philosophy” as the West has come to call it.

THINKING

Then

Umehara

AS

CULTURAL

31

pointedly cites several essential desiderata for a

radical reform of the European culture."

The steady gaze at human desires is needed. We cannot just engage in an analysis of rationality after announcing humans to be rational, as the European philosophy has been consistently doing. Thoroughgoing analyses of irrational desires and tendencies of feeling are sorely needed. Without these analyses of the dark sides of humanity all analyses are sheer castles 1η the air. What is the human? What really is this uncontrollable rational homicidal animal? How can we tame and live with this dangerous animal? Philosophy should seriously consider problems such as these. Japanese philosophers should be liberated philosophy. Stop senseless yearnings after desirables in Europe. Go straight ahead we all need today thinking and thoughts peace and concord. And such thoughts Japanese philosophers to come about.

from slavery under European and pickings-up of attractive with what we believe in. For that make possible worldwide have much to look to the

Surely the rational demands to Europe for radical self-humility and self-scrutiny are prophetically well taken. Perhaps they are being unwittingly responded to today by deconstructionism and postmodernism which are actively engaging in radical self-critique of European culture and philosophy with a dialogue with the Orient. ‘Thus there is every sign of Western self-revival out of the ashes of brutality this magnificent homicidal animal has imposed upon mankind. At the same time, we must ask Umehara on where his own scathing cultural critique stands, however appropriate it 15 in itself. No one is without culture; cultural critique is done only from and within a particular culture. Umehara is a Japanese, and Japanese culture, although not up to the prideful position of world leadership yet, 1s not without its own violent records of horrendous homicidal devastation. Umehara’s hand is as bloody. One who lives in a “glass house” made vulnerable by habitual brutality should not pick another stone of violence. Umehara has much to ponder on and apply to his own culture his own slashing criticisms hurled at Europe. Cultural togetherness /^ Umehara Takeshi, “Bunka no naka no sei to shi—bunka no [जाप to tetsugaku (Life and death in culture—cultural interflow and philosophy),” in Tsurumi Shunsuke and Ichimatsu Keizo, eds., Bunka (culture) (Iwanami Koza, Tetsugaku XIII [Iwanami philosophy lecture series]), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1968, pp. 27-71, esp. 69-71. My translation.

32

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TOGETHERNESS

is a tricky business indeed. What it is that we propose, and how we are going to propose it and put it into effect, are the problems we have on hand. But before we go into how to do so (as we will do in 1.3. and 1.4.) we must appreciate how deep-seated culture is at the base of our thinking (1.1.1.) and being (1.2.1.) and its problem, loss of coherence and goal in cultural relativism (1.2.2.). 1.1.1. Thinking 15 a shuttle back and forth of “significant symbols" (G.H. Mead), weaving themselves into a coherent system of ideas and worldview.” And as these significant symbols are cultural products, two implications follow: one, thinking is cultural, and two, the more widely intercultural these symbols are, the richer and more diverse thinking becomes. Thus was born the phrase, "Chinese philosophy" in distinction from usual philosophy in the West. Yet to talk about “Chinese philosophy" seems as odd as talking about “Slovenian medicine" or “Greek mathematics.” Here seems to exist a confusion of geography (which concerns concrete particularity) with thinking (which concerns universal necessity). But the fact is that not to do so is odd. Imagine someone saying, “Human faces are all made up of the same elements, mouth,

nose, ears, eyes, eyebrows, cheeks; hence, the

absurdity of physiognomy, especially in relation to geography and history. To speak of ‘Slovenian faces’ and ‘Chinese ones’ is to confuse geography with faces. Besides, which period of ‘Chinese faces’ are you talking about?" The oddity of such a comment 15 obviously due to the commenter's negligence of physiognomic features, the peculiar proportions— which have much to do with their respective geographical origins—of facial elements that go to make up the typically Chinese and Caucasian faces, respectively. And the differences between Yang Kui Fers face (719-756, A.D.) and today's Chinese actresses’ are less pronounced

than those between theirs and Marilyn Monroe's."

^ And to explore and experiment on many possible novel systems, many “shutdes," we must play many kinds of "shuttlecocks" of many kinds of symbols—I call them "playing with arguments," to be considered in Section 3. 6 This “confusion” of geography with thinking is considered in Chapters IV and V of my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Monograph Series Νο. 7, Taipei: Académia Sinica, 1991. Introduction to my On Chinese Body "Thinking (E.J. Brill, 1997) begins with this point. '’ This dialogue inadvertently exhibits two complementary features of our faces—

THINKING

AS

CULTURAL

33

Thus, to take “mathematics” or “sciences” as indifferently uniform amounts to expressing a typically Western thinking. The “Chinese medicine" differs as much from the Western as Euclidian (ancient Greek) mathematics does from Riemannian (modern German). Faces, sciences, mathematics—they all say, “Same elements, different features." All this shows that the different physiognomies of Chinese thinking

and Western are a matter of course, and that significantly so."

Immanuel Kant was a great thinker for many reasons, but this surely must be one, that his Copernican Revolution amounts to turning our taken-for-granted “objectivity” of experience into a sham, telling us that our own categorial framework ineluctably colors what we take to be neutral and objective, our "experience," which is really

more of a subjective matter than we wish to admit. Sadly, it 15 Kant himself who at the same time believed that his own critical philoso-

phy, “transcendental deduction," is universally valid, free of all biases,

true of all possible worlds. Perhaps Kant was saddled also with the first cause of cultural ignorance above mentioned, which in turn 1s due to the second cause of aversion to getting too personal. In any case, the so-called “eurocentrism” 15 so much a matter of course among the European thinkers that it took a Korean scholar to unearth it. Hwa Yol Jung launched a scathing attack on Hume's,

Kant’s, Hegel's, Marx's, and Husserl’s Eurocentric racism."

Collingwood was perhaps an exception; he also said that what Hume and Kant took to be the universal frame of human mind 15 really an “experience of an eighteenth century European" mind; Plato and Aristotle presented the ancient Greek ideals, as Hobbes did the 17th century English ones and Kant, the Newtonian ones, the best in their respective days.” Since logical validity is usually taken to be sacrosanct, immune from cultural quicksand underneath thinking, we will devote some universality and uniqueness; all faces are recognizable as human faces, yet each face differs from the other. These twin features, among others, entitle the "face" to be a transversal, to replace the traditional universals. See 2.4. and 2.5. (inclusive).

8 And that of the axial pre-Ch'in period could be taken as most expressive.

? Hwa Yol Jung, “The Tao of transversality as a global approach to truth: À metacmmentary on Calvin O. Schrag," in Man and World, 1995, p. 12 and “PHENOMENOLOGY, THE QUESTION OF RATIONALITY, AND BASIC GRAMMAR OF INTERCULTURAL TEXTS,” Analecta Husserhana, 1995, pp. 170— 174, 177.

^? See R.G. Collingwood,

pp. 224, 229.

The Idea of History, Oxford University Press,

1956,

44

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CULTURAL

TOGETHERNESS

space to showing how cultural “logic” itself is. What is to be noted is the following. Logical validity 15 applicable to all possible worlds only as long as defined and used in the way the Western thinkers did; arguments can be valid for all possible worlds only when operated according to the canons of logic as defined in the West. For what "validity" means depends on the mode, the direcaon, and the contents of premises chosen, all of which turn on who 1η what culture does the arguing and for what purpose, which is again cultur-

ally colored. What does all this mean, however? 1.1.1.1. Let us take a pretty basic point.” Aristotle argued for the law of excluded middle, “A is not not-A,” by a reductio ad absurdum. He

said that, without this "exclusion,"

nothing would be itself,

everything would be something else than itself, and nothing could be asserted or stated; all would be in fluid confusion.? Well and good. Aristotle can be called the Greek Father of those in the know, and to "know" here 1s synonymous with eager wonderment to know,” which requires clarity and precision. And clarity and precision begins at demarcating the identity, the ipseity, of a thing, whatever it is as 1t 1s and no other, as indicated

and defended

by the law of excluded middle. Thus this law 1s a necessary first step toward our knowledge. From now on, as we embark on the pursuit of knowledge, this law should be followed first of all, and above all; this law serves as our Greek guardian angel on our cognitive epistemological way. This is a distinguished contribution of the Greek culture to human thinking. Western philosophy flourished on this basis. Our problem here, which Aristotle did not seem to have realized, is what “A is A" could mean, whose negative expression “A is not not-A" 1s. We see at least four possible meanings that can be assigned to it—epistemological, performative, nihilative, and disfigurative.^ These are, to be sure, performative significance, functional meanings;

the law means differently in First, “A is A" can serve Aristotle showed above. "A experiential knowledge. secondly, it can express ^ our ^ ^ ^ ^

their different functions. as an epistemological presupposition, as is A" undergirds the integrity of our

our performance of onto-ethico-political

We will go even further and say, in 5.4.4., that logic itself reflects and expresses specific cultural mode of living. Cf. 3.2.1. Cf. 3.8.3., 4.8. (end), 5.4.3.2.1. Metaphysics, Book T. This is how Aristotle began his Metaphysics. Cf. 32.1.

THINKING

AS

CULTURAL

35

establishment of something as something, our integrity included. This theme will be elaborated in connection with various pragmatisms culturally compared—the American spirit of pragmatism with the Chinese pragmatic spirit (5.4.). Thirdly, “A is A” can be defined nihilatwely to elucidate the Ps annihilative and symbiotic relationships with the Other. Sartre did it annıhilatively under the formula of consciousness, “it is not what it is and 15 what it 15 not," to express his discovery, "Other people are Πε]].25 To dispel a suspicion that Sartre may then be an anti-Anistotelian, we see how solidly he is within this Greek tradition in the following fact. Such vital ontological shimmers of things 15 sadly described by

Sartre as nauseatingly “viscose.””’ Perhaps Sartre was so trained in

a vision-mentality (“look” prominently figures in Being and Nothingness), that detached and precise mode of thinking, that the actuality of a tree,

say,

that

is not

amenable

to the

clear-cut

excluded

middle

appears cognitively dizzy, because it 15 obnoxiously unwieldy. Describing Being(-in-itself) as something “slimy” and shapeless, without hard and clear-cut boundary, the entire Being and Nothingness courageously tackles it in the style of sightly logic operating on the excluded middle. This is one reason why Being and Nothingness is as convoluted and complex as the geometer's description of a shoreline. In any case, this shows how vision, precision, and excluded middle

imply one another to constitute the Aristotelian tradition of the West, to which Sartre solidly belongs. But Sartre's same formula can also express symbiotic Othering and kenotic enablement. This theme will be elaborated 1η connection with philosophical symbiosis— "inner touch” as a way to the coming world philosophy (Section 5), and with the Other as constitutive of the I (Section 2). This is 1η fact what this entire book-essay IS concerned. Finally, “A is A" can Picasso-esquely disfigure itself to show actuality. To this theme we now turn. We must note that it 1s one thing to argue for the necessity of the law of excluded middle; it is quite another to be bewitched by its necessity into always slavishly and exclusively following it at all cost, as if it were self-sufficient in itself. Blind mechanical adherence 2° Cf. the next note.

^ See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel Barnes, N.Y.: Philosophical

Library,

1956, and Nausea, tr. Lloyd Alexander, N.Y.: New Directions,

1964.

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TOGETHERNESS

to it deadens and staticizes things’ shimmering”? changing vitality. In this context, 1 must quote myself on Aristotle's view of motion. said,”

I

Aristotle's criticism of Zeno is instructive.” He accused Zeno of mistaking motion to be already completed at each stage of infinitely divisible junctions in the ‘process of motion. But completed motion is no longer motion; motion is by definition “incomplete,” always moving toward its completion of no-motion. Arıstotle’s impressive battery of technical terms (energeia, entelechaa, and the like) is designed to explain this completing process motion to its goal. But of course the unmoved goal, telos, is important; static actuality, not moving potentiality, is what counts. Things as they are, already complete, manifesting their maturity ın their motion, simply have no place in Aristotle’s system. Motion is a subordinate notion in him, always derived from its goal, the immobile completeness. Acorn is for the sake of an oak tree, and has no value in itself. Aristotle has the visual logic of stationary perfection, not the logic of life, logic on the move. “All men ... desire to know. An indication of this 15 the delight we take in our senses... above all... the sense of sight”; so begins his Metaphysics.

When

we are confronted with such a necessary but not sufficient

truth as this law, we must carefully consider, first, how we take this

excluded middle to mean and, secondly, how we use it. And this latter pragmatic performative aspect of the Law of excluded middle is what 4 culture other than the Greek, such as the Chinese culture,

noted.”

First, our problem is what we should take this excluded middle to mean. Let us look at life’s ontological “correlations,” its Yin-Yang relationship. Yin and Yang are supposed to be a pair of opposites, to which our Aristotelian reaction is: We must first fix the meaning of the one, and then define its opposite in terms of it. Nothing of the sort is meant in the Chinese Yin-Yang reciprocity. Yin cannot exist, nor can it mean anythıng, without Yang, any more than can Yang without Yin. Their very beings co-happen, and ^? See Appendix B to 1.1.1.: “Ontological shimmers as viscose, slimy.” ? Butterfly, op. cit., p. 260. 9» Physics, VI-VIII.

3! Cf. 3.2.1. below. Incidentally, Wittgenstein is blunt on the excluded middle.

He said, in essence, that we don't know how to apply it in how to do with it, it is useless. See Philosophical Investigations, tr. N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1953, 1958, 1966, 1968, p. 1125; cf. No. 426, p. 127*. Our following pages amount to it is used differently in different cultures.

life, we don't know G.E.M. Anscombe, Remark No. 352, a reply to him that

THINKING

AS

CULTURAL

37

are co-incidental in meaning each to the other. They are both one (not one without the other) and two (each 15 a contrary to the other); they are two (distinct) in one (co-incident) and one (mutually dependent for existence) in two (mutually opposed). Even the subject who asserts and argues 15 constituted by mutuality. As Martın Buber put it, “There 15 no 7 taken in itself, but only the / of the primary word -Thou and the J of the primary word ]-It." The I must be the I of either “I-Thou” or “I-It.”°? Emmanuel Levinas chimes in, saying, "It is my inescapable and incontrovertible answerability to the Other [the not-I] that makes me an individual 1’. Is there any excluded middle here? Yes, indeed, but it is so much disfigured and embedded in mutuality in being, in mutuality in meaning, that some ingenuity is required to somehow find it somewhere there. Both the Thou and the I are two vaneties of the Other. Why was Buber able to find this crucial I-Thou category and the Thou-It distinction? We note that Buber was a Jew, not a Greek. Sadly, however, Buber neglected to stress categorically (though took it for granted throughout his life) that the Thou is prior to the It, that the I-It is to be understood in terms of the I-Ihou, and not the other way around. For this point is crucial 1η understanding the wherefroms and wherefores of the ecological disasters scientific technology wrought. Perhaps Buber is too much of a Westerner to note this (although he did note the humanisüc disaster the I-It atatude wrought). Pathetically, our natural sciences today understand the Thou in terms of the It. This 1s perhaps because science 1s knowledge pursued in the Greek ideal of precision, which implicates analysis, which in turn 15 made possible by entifying (object-ifying, It-ifying) things, events, and issues under investigation, for only objects can be cut apart in analysis. The problem 15 that the Thou can be neither objectified nor analyzed. Instead, everything lives in the light of the Thou. This is another way of saying that the Thou-perspective is prior to the It-perspective.”* ? Martin Buber, 7 and Thou, tr., Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd ed., N.Y.: Scribner's, 1958, p. 4. 5 Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney, “Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas,” in Face to Face with Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1986, p. 27. Section 2 below elaborates on. the theme of the Other. * How the It is derived from the Thou is described in 2.1.3.

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1.1.1.2. And so, furthermore, the point of the excluded middle is not to fix the identity of a thing and stay there at all cost, but for us to use it as a convenient vehicle to facilitate understanding, interaction,

inter-fusion, inter-influence,

interdependence,

and inter-

change among beings. In order to do so, we do well, to put it bluntly, to disfigure Picasso-esquely the “A is not not-A," to use the law of excluded middle nonexcluswely. 1.1.1.2.1. In Anstotle’s mind, the purpose of the law of excluded middle 15 to defend the bastion of the identity of a thing against the encroachment of others. But in the Yin-Yang interrelation that is being-wise and meaning-wise? internecine and inter-nascent, the very idenüty is dependent on its contrary other, not exclusive of it. This 15 to express less the simple identity than the interchanging, shimmering vitality, the dynamic integrity, of things. Thus Yin and Yang are a pair of contrary reciprocals, where there is no question of the “bastion” of identity. And “identity” can mean

not just the identity of a thing, but also the identity of the principium?

and the telos” of the changing vitality, that is, the “history” (of the Yin-Yang) that unites everything.” This is because the ontologically interpenetrative togetherness of Yin and Yang zs things’ dynamic integrity, its own Alpha and its own Omega. That is, “identity” is something self-reflective, a logical “demonstrative” within togetherness, and cannot be entified, objectified. In short, identity, as ontological

vitality of a thing being what it 15, is something “non-exclusive.” That is One non-exclusive—both exclusive and inclusive—understanding, a disfigurative understanding,” of the law of excluded middle. We have spent some time on the Yin-Yang interrelation because it is a paradigm for actuality. For neither subatomic particles, interhuman relations, nor history itself* are intelligible from the perspective of an exclusively “excluded middle.” Metaphor and irony 3 Semantically? Semiotically? Perhaps both.

It means both the principle and the beginning. It means the completion, the ideal, and the ending.

3 See Appendix to 1.1.1.2.1.: “Hwa Yol Jung and multiplicity."

“Disfigurative” the “non-exclusive.” * For in Chinese ually, with the future Here the past is the in meaning. See my Cf. 5.5.2.5. below.

because

"A is not not-A" 15 defied, without being denied, by

historical thinking the past (ideals) at the provocation future at the present, and elaboration on this point

is fused critically, often counterfactof the present constraining situation. yet these three are clearly distinct in my History, op. cit., pp. 39-42.

THINKING

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39

are supposed to capture and express this strange" phenomenon in hfe, and neither metaphor nor irony can be straightforwardly handled by the law of excluded middle.” 1.1.1.2.2. First, as to metaphor. To be engaged in metaphoring 15 to understand something unknown in terms of something known, and amounts to an interfusion of two contraries, A as like not-A, an illicit

category mix of the new with the old, a "category mistake," a disfigurement of the excluded middle. And since we know things always In terms of what we know already, our advance in experiential knowledge is by nature metaphorical, logically improper if logic 15 a strict exclusive use of the law of excluded middle, rigid adherence to which reduces our knowledge to a bunch of empty tautologies.

In other words, the law of excluded middle is the traffic law in knowledge, and is useful only when "creatively used," that is, often

ignored in the traffic. In the thick traffic of a big city, strict adherence to the traffic law means a kiss of death; in the thick knowledgetraffic of our big world, exclusive loyalty to the law of excluded middle—defending the bastion of the identity of a thing against other's encroachment—kills the traffic in empty tautologies. But then, the law of excluded middle haunts us so ubiquitously, even in the metaphoric way of knowledge, that we tend to understand the new and strange merely in the light of the old familiar--as we are wont to do—threatens to trap and suffocate the new in the old. “O, that bothersome novel thing 1s just this old familiar thing dressed up" stops, no, prevents the advance of knowledge. David Hume. for all his sensitivity to surprising nuances of our taken-for-granteds (e.g., on causality), effectively destroyed our wonderment when he killed the possibility of miracles" with exactly this one-way traffic of metaphor—any "knowledge" is suspect which remains unintelligible despite extrapolation from our experience."

4 “Strange” in the sense of unmanageable by our accustomed mode of thinking, according to the law of excluded middle. # Cf. 3.7.1., 3.7.2., 4.3.1., 4.7.2.1., 4.7.2.2.1.1, 4.7.2.1. iv., 4.7.2.1.v., 4.7.2.1.vi., 5.5.2.4. I have devoted some pages elsewhere in other contexts to “metaphor” and “irony.” See my Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., 2.1., 2.1.2., 3.3., et passim; History, op. cit., pp. 184-197, et passim; and Butterfly, op. cit., Index, pp. 499 (on “Irony 301 (on “metaphor”). 5 E.g., “Chinese philosophy is just a vague American pragmatism,” “Taoism 15 just a vague Stoicism and Buddhism," "computer is just an expensive pen." * *Miracle" means wonderment. Sec 4.2. below for further details on miracles.

5 Cf. 4.1.3.4.1., 4.1.3.4.2., 4.1.3.4.3. below.

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Metaphor 15 really a two-way traffic: The new, having been rendered inteligible by the old, enriches the old. The old is now “warmed up" by the new, the old having “known the new” by “warming” itself. And then, in this two-way traffic the true metahoric way of increasing our knowledge doubly defies the logic of excluded middle, once to go from the old known to understand the new unknown, then to go back from the newly understood knowledge to enrich the old. 1.1.1.2.3. We now consider irony. By our knowing process being metaphorical, we come to understand that actuality 1s ironic. If we know by way of “A 1s like not-A," which 15 a metaphor, then we come to know that actuality often manifests itself as “A is not-A," “A and not-A,"

and/or

“A of not-A,”

all of which

are ironies.

Some examples can be cited. Revolution 15 of little “use” because "use" 15 meaningful only in a set context, and revolution serves to smash that context. But if the context 15 constrictive, harmful, or lethal, it is to our benefit—useful for us—that it be overhauled. And

so revolution 15 something of “use of no use," a favorite ironic phrase of Chuang Tzu’s. Here “use” and “no use” are joined in a manner that requires some maneuver to apply the law of excluded middle, and the maneuver amounts to a non-exclusive, disfiguring application of the excluded middle. Nor do simple mundane biology and physiology have anything to do with the exclusive middle in an exclusive sense, either, as Wiliam

James" and Merleau-Ponty* have argued throughout their lives. Let us take a simple example: my toothache accompanied by headache. My tooth was treated and both aches were gone; now, did the toothhead-ache belong to the tooth, or did it not? The answer 15, “Both.”

It belonged to my tooth because treatment of the tooth made the ache go away. My toothache-headache belonged not to my tooth (alone) because my head ached and was healed with the acting-up and healing of my toothache.” All this 15 because my head and my tooth are both distinct and inseparable, interpenetrative, and corporeally one. They are bodily # Confucius said, “Warming up the old, and know the new.” (Analects, 2/11) Y Cf. his Principles of Psychology, two volumes, among others. #8 Cf. his The Structure of Behavior, Phenomenology of Perception, The Visible and the Invisible, The Prose of the World, among others. * Someone may respond, “‘Your tooth-head-ache both belonged and did not belong to your tooth’ can be explained, as not in violation of the law of excluded

THINKING

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4]

one in two and two in one, identical and different, co-belonging and distinct, non-exclusively distinct. And all this is an ironic depiction of our bodily togetherness; my head and my tooth are logically “gnarled” in irony. The law of excluded middle is gnarled, disfigured, in irony not only in biology but also everywhere in actual life, such as psychology (reveries, feelings, dreams, ideals; they interfuse, inter-interfere, inter-

enhance), hologram (figures moving, changing, one flowing into the other), change and motion (Zeno was logically honest), literature (metaphor and irony interface and interfuse different or contradictory statements), traffic (“rolling stop,” traffic laws are needed which few obey),

marriage (“the family that fights together stays together,” “happy marriage is a contradiction”), ecology (living beings in nature and nature in them), even “grading” at school (same high grades for two students do not mean that they are equally good), and so on. Life’s law is irony, excluded middle non-exclusively gnarled, disfigured.

1.1.2. What shall we say on this phenomenon? Analysis 15 an operation of cutting things into units to facilitate digital calculation, which is manipulation of numbers based on excluded middle; “2” is not “2.1,” much less “3.” But all examples above operate on inter-fusion?? analogous to “2” in “3” and “3” in "2," or negation in affirmation and vice versa. Thus would the Chinese people assert. Speaking of 2 + 2 = 4, we note that even the so-called “analytcal truth" or "logic" is cultural. David Hume thought that causality belongs to our subjective custom. We say that, gwen Hume's frame, what he said 15 true. How so? Hume divided truth into that of logical, analytical, and tautological necessity and that of subjective convention or custom or habit. If we assume that “logical necessity" as defined in the West is objectively universal, valid for all possible worlds, then Hume is justified in saying that causality expresses our subjective habit. But can't we apply Kant's transcendental deduction to this logical "necessity" as well? Can't we say that the "necessity" within logical category is transcendentally analogous to the "necessity" of our experiential categories? middle, by noting that the reason for your toothache 'belonging' (to the tooth) differs from the reason for ‘not belonging." But this is one more “maneuver,” as mentioned above, to dissolve the law's “gnarl” to make it work.

? This is synonymous with "influence,"

११

“in-flow.”

ες:

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Within the logical frame invented in the West, modus ponens is of course “true of all possible worlds” because, shall we say, modus ponens is derived transcendentally from experience. This is to put Kant upside down. Now let us go a step further. In retrospect, we see some critical implications on the whole Humean picture of “logic” as objective “connection of ideas” valid for all possible worlds, and laws of “experience” as subjective “expectation, habit, convention.” We now know that this picture came out of Hume’s (who only followed his cultural bias) firm belief in “logic” in whose perspective he tried to explain everything, even our experience. And he was honest enough to admit the failure of such logicism. Isn’t it odd, after all, that the

“logic” which is supposedly valid for “all possible worlds” does not work in our actual commonplace world, and that in such a common universal phenomenon as causality? Hume did say that our experience operates on the principle of metaphor, “As in the past, so in the future.” Hume calls our “subjective custom, expectation,” because our logic cannot explain it. But from the fact that something does happen that our logic cannot explain does not necessarily follow that therefore whatever beyond logical explanation belongs to our subjective expectation, which Hume

in turn equated with something haphazard, arbitrary, illogical.?! This

inference is warranted only with an additional premise that only what is logically explainable 1s reasonable, necessary, and universally valid. And this premise describes ethnocentrism. Even the supposedly haphazard reverie has its own “logic,” as Freud discovered; causality has its own “logic” as well, called physical necessity, to be discovered by experience. Sadly, Kant admitted to having been joyously converted to Hume’s explanatory frame, saying that Hume awakened him from his “dogmatic slumber.” We now know that in fact Hume “awakened” him into their common “cultural slumber.” For Kant also agreed that experiential necessity is due to our subjective “connection,” and went further to formalize this view by saying that this subjective connection belongs to the Transcendental Ego who imposes transcendental logic; ”To say that Hume did not think that our experience is arbitrary if it is logically unexplainable is a quibble. Else, we would be hard put to understand why he worried so much about the logicality of our experience. For “logically unexplainable” is “illogical” or at least “not logical,” and “not logical” does not square too well with “not arbitrary.”

THINKING AS CULTURAL

43

“transcendental” is of course a fancy code name for subjectivity. It is called “transcendental” rather than “subjective” merely because ıt is subjectivity formalized, that is, subjectivity described by the honorable”* terms of logic. Kant therefore glorified this logicing, formalizing procedure as “Copernican revolution.” That this is anything but a revolution, much less a Copernican one, is seen in the fact that his “concepts” and “categories” are imported from the terms of Aristotelian logic. This importation bespeaks two things: Kant’s revolution is no revolution of perspective but a mere extension of Hume’s (and Western culture’s) subjective” logicism, that is, seeing everything from the point of view of logic we posit; two, if it is a revolution, it is that for the worse, plunging our thinking and understanding deeper into the transcendental realm, a camel digging deeper into the subjective sand (as opposed to hitherto “naive realism’’).** . All this describes a specific (if not culturally biased) procedure of first taking "logic" as sacrosanct, valid for all worlds, and then in this logical light trying to explain experienced laws such as causal nexus. If we reject this Hume-and-Kant’s frame, the reverse may well be true. Logic is our cultural convention, the frame we subjectively posit (as in geometrical axioms), perhaps suggested by the objective universal regularity of experienced Nature.” This “logic” is cultural, subjective, and limited because causality was, as Hume admitted, outside the Western frame of "logic." For he could not find any "logical necessity" 1η causal nexus, which yet is what 1s actually the case, different from, prior to, and suggestive of our subjective expectation called “logic.” Actual necessity such as causal "law," in contrast, has been experienced at all times and by all peoples; it is then objective and universal. ? “Honorable” in the sense of being honored by a cultural prejudice that honors

logic, that is. We see in the immediate following that Kant imported time-honored Aristotelian terms of logic to formally describe our "subjective" experience. Hume could not logically explain experience; Kant did, hence, the "revolution." Kant did not correct Hume but followed him. » “Logicism” is “subjective” because logic is what we subjectively posit (and legislate), not something actually out there.

* We will balance off this critique with our agreement with Kant in 1.2.1.1. Cf.

the fifth description of “togetherness”

in Preface above

5 We don’t know about the “possible world” which is by definition what is not

experienced

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And so, we learn to see that causality is inevitable and necessary in terms of our logical expectation. We have always experienced that given an event E, E’ invanably happens, as Hume himself admitted. We have naturally come to expect that the future will be as the past was. This expectation 1s not arbitrary because it resulted from our having been confronted, everywhere and always, with actual happening;” it is experientially compelling. Yet we cannot explain this pragmatic-actual necessity (or inevitability) by our logical expectation. Experiential inevitability is then. universal and. compellingly valid, beyond logic which is now seen to be limited, unable to explain causality as invariably, experientially, actually regular. In other words, “inevitability” or "necessity" has several species besides a logical one. One is environmental necessity, which can be meteorological, physiological, historical, cultural, causal, etc. Another

is psychological inevitability, which can be communal, political, on the one hand, and individual, emotional, “a slip of the tongue (or pen),” on the other. Each case has "its own logic," its own causal nexus. And the logical necessity itself can be used in ways directed by

literary,

cultural,

or interhuman

exigencies

(or necessities),

as, say,

reasonable living, rule of thumb, rule of “law and order," and the

like. Thus,

in short, we

necessity 1s objective assumption.

can say that Hume's

and

universal"

assertion that "logical

expresses

a Western

cultural

1.1.3. All this amounts to saying that the mode of argumentation 1s culturally influenced and situationally determined. Aristotle defended "difference" in terms of sameness (identity, exclusion of difference); we can explain difference by way of (non-exclusion of) difference, letting different things be different, using the law of excluded middle non-exclusively. From the latter mode of using the law, we can understand that understandings of the following phenomena of life are all cultural.

”To doubt the reality of our experience would shut us in an idealistic prison, as Plato was. To doubt experiential reality destroys the entire problematics of Hume and Kant; we would not have to worry about the logicality and explanation of experience any more.

” I have explicated this point in my Chinese Body Thinking—A Cultural Hermeneutic,

Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997, “A Preliminary Appendixes 1, 5, 8, 12, 14, 28, 30.

Remark,"

4.3., 9.2., 9.3.,

10.2.,

14.2.,

THINKING

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45

1.1.3.1. First, often calculation (divide things into the profitable and the not-profitable, then exclude the latter) does not work in actual nitty-gritty of living—buying automobiles (as many Europeans and Asians do) instead of relying on cabs, hankering after a deadly dish of fugu (globefish) (as some Japanese do), chewing psychedelic plants and carcinogenic fruits (as many Asians do). laste, desire, feeling, friendship, and morality are often worlds apart from profit-calculation. They either pursue the not-profitable, join the profitable and the not-profitable, or ignore the problem of profit altogether. And the considerations of profit or. nonprofit, taste, friendship, etc., even their meanings,

are themselves culturally

determined. 1.1.3.2. Furthermore, things often interfuse; usual mathematics does not work. Some people quipped that in Chinese politics (and in politics in general, as well) 2 + 2 may equal 5, or 50, or even 500, depending

on

who

does

the

calculation

how,

when,

where,

why,

whence, and wherefore. And they continue, saying, “2 1- 2 equals 4^ Is a peculiar Anglo-European invention, and can be used in commercial negotiations with customers, in managerial negotiations with employees of an organization, as well as in scientific and techno-

logical “negotiations” with nature.” The formula “2 + 2 = 4" is, in

other words, thoroughly culture-bound and area-bound.” 1.1.3.3. Likewise, objectivity, facticity, positivism, as well as the law of *excluded middle," are cultural categories, European cultural myths for their own “reality”-hermeneutics. This is not to minimize the importance of excluded middle but to raise other conventional rules to the same serious level in their respective realms. These cultural myths are, for all their being myths, cannot be mocked. “Do in Rome as the Romans do" cannot be trifled with as a mere cultural rule of thumb without courting disaster. Witch hunts are not confined to medieval Europe; opposing political violation of the law of excluded middle can be as perilous as defying the law itself in physical nature. Those perished soon afterward who honestly denied that “that [buck] 15 a horse," as claimed by a powerful eunuch Chao Kao in Emperor Ch'in IPs audience; a brilliant scholar Chin Sheng-t'an (?-1661) was cut in half at the city square for playing 58 On this last "negotiation" see my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, pp. 143-146. ? By “area” 15 meant areas of life such as science, commerce, literature.

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with political conventions of the day; Socrates in ancient Athens need hardly be mentioned. 1.1.3.4.

And

so, finally, if, as a recent adage goes, “hermeneutics

is politics"? then every cultural phenomenon is certainly hermeneutical. Today’s so-called "logic," "science" (Anglo-European inventions) and "philosophy" (a Greek invention) are hermeneutical as well, because

the latter three

are as much

a cultural version

of

actuality-hermeneutics as politics 15 humanity-hermeneutics worldwide, albeit an American politics differs as much from an Indian one as an Indian one does from a Japanese. And since culture and hermeneutics are entwined one with the other, hermeneutics

in all areas, science

and technology included,°'

is cultural through and through. Such things as "Russian geography," “Chinese medicine," and “Egyptian mathematics" make sense if we admit that today's so-called "scientific researches" are guided by a specific mode of thinking, a specific perspective and procedure of operation, a specific sense of importance, and a specific choice of objectives, themes,

areas, and topics, whose

specificities are culture-

bound—arranged, specified, directed, and determined by specific cultures. All in all, we see that not even "logic" is immune from being cultural. All sorts of thinking, including logical, analytical ones, are historically and culturally colored. 1.2. Culture and universality Does it mean that all hopes for attaining some propositions securely admitted by all as true are lost? That all the agreed-upon universality, or rather, transferability, transversality, and translatabihty of "truths," whatever they may mean, 15 swept away by the cyclones of relativism, historical and cultural?

In order to consider these important problems, we will observe how human trials at understanding one another as well as nature 9 Cf. e.g., Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1987.

5! For science is our theoretical hermeneutics of nature, and technology is its

pragmatic one. And both are cultural hermeneutics because technology developed nowhere else than in the West.

modern

science and

CULTURE

AND

UNIVERSALITY

47

fared over the years, first across the ages, then across cultures, and we will see how the first inevitably fuses with the second. We will treat historical relativism in the context of hermeneutics first (in 1.2.1), then cultural relativism (in 1.2.2. We will see a concrete example of cultural outsiders vs. insiders (1.3.), and draw implications of transversality therefrom (1.4.). 1.2.1.

First, let us consider

historical relativism which

means

in our con-

text the problem of understanding across time, the problem of hermeneutics. This subsection has three sub-headings: how significant— scientifically, culturally—hermeneutics is (in 1.2.1.1.), how hermeneutics in China and in the West differ (in 1.2.1.2.), and finally why and how they should come together (1.2.1.3.). 1.2.1.1. Attempts at understanding are usually called "interpretaton.” Trials at interpreting ancient texts are traditionally termed “hermeneutics.” This is more than a straight art of decoding and deciphering unintelligible signs scribbled on papyn, slabs of stone, bamboo tablets, or silk scrolls. This is a trial at interpreting, lived empathic understanding, of ancient people and their intentions. Such a lived interpretive investigation goes deeper and more pervasive than, say, Sherlock Holmes' task, which was simply to find out what actually happened, and facticity 15 a relatively straightforward scientific matter. This is not to say that Holmes’ fact-finding mission Is easy. On the contrary, the task requires so much marshaling and complex organic integration of sensitive human psychology with shrewd causal deductions from factual clues skillfully obtained from various, often unsuspected sources, that Sherlock Holmes was quite justly admired and still continues to be much praised as a genius detective. But if Holmes’ relatively straight fact-discovery is already fraught with such formidable complexity, we can see how much more sympathetic ingenuity 1s required at the historical level of hfe-understanding that 15 the task of textual hermeneutics.

Even after, in a Holmes-like

fashion, the writings are successfully decoded and the sentences translated (as the Egyptian written language began to be understood via studies of the Rosetta stone), there remains a further difficult task of what those messages meant to the original writer(s) (if any!) and to the original reader(s). That is, not only are the surface meaningequivalents to be decoded, but also the import, impact, sentiment,

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significance, of what was said is to be feelingly ascertained (as in

understanding the ancient Egyptians’ [mes).9

What makes this historical understanding doubly difficult is that simple “objectivity” taken for granted on the factual level is here shaken to the core. The problem 15 not just the subtlety and inscrutability of the aim of our interpretive investigation. Life-understanding of ancient peoples requires the sympathetic resonance of the very investigator with them; subjectivity is involved in the so-called “objective” accuracy of hfe-understanding. Dilthey's re-living and Collingwood’s reenactment of the investigator 1s required. Here the investigator’s preconceived frame of reference, without which investigation is impossible, has to be adjusted 如 be in line with,

that

is, most

conducive

to,

a faithful

understanding

of the

ancient text. Since the preconceived frame came from our takenfor-granted life-purview, we must examine our presuppositions, even often “bracket” them, put them in abeyance (this is Husserl’s epoche), so as to be absolutely open to whatever the text says, or at least seems to say.

lhis our adjustment to the text is most apparently manifested in the way we ask questions. Even at the level of fact-finding, we must put appropriate question(s) to the clues on hand, and, besides, the way we ask questions crucially determines the success or failure of our task of understanding. Kant's so-called "Copernican Revolution,” that we put questions to nature to experience and know, that the supposedly objective experiential knowledge is fraught with our subjective categories, is not without reason.‘ And so, "When did you stop beating your wife?" is more than a dispensable joke. What questions we ask and how we ask them are at the center of hermeneutical concerns; critical studies of questions are the key to successful interpretation. Hermeneutics is thus an aporetics. 1.2.1.2. Two types of hermeneutical questions, among others, can be seen: an objective type in the West (1.2.1.2.1.) and a subjective one in China (1.2.1.2.2.). 1.2.1.2.1. Hermeneutics in the West was developed out of interpretations of the Bible, and typically asks three questions: one, “What ” Collapse these two different levels of understanding, and we get historical positivism, against which Dilthey and Husserl fought. 6 This is to balance off our criticism of Kant in 1.1.2. above.

CULTURE

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UNIVERSALITY

does the text say?," two, "Is what is said valid?” does it mean to ask thus, at all?”

49

and three, “What

The first question, “What does the text say?," is asked to exclude any subjective “interpretations” of the interpreter, whose sole aim should be to faithfully understand what is truly said in the text. This hermeneutical quest was prompted by the Christian zeal for orthodoxy in the early church to ascertain the “true” meaning of the biblical text. This religious zeal continues today. And 5ο, the Dead Sea scrolls have supposedly helped the issuances of more standard, more “accurate" editions (1.e., translations, which are muffled interpretations) of

the Bible.°* This zeal for accurate orthodoxy, as it is secularized, continues to express itself in: endless debates over what the great thinkers

(e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Locke,

Hume,

Kant,

Hegel,

Husserl,

Heidegger) really meant and how much they are misunderstood; issuances of the “Corrected Edition" of Whitehead's Process and Reality and “definitive” translations of Soren Kierkegaard’s works; and incessant pourings-out of “definitive” editions of the great thinkers’ collected

works

such

as those

of Plato,

Arıstotle,

Descartes,

Kant,

Nietzsche, etc. And frankly, the example of Sherlock Holmes’ scientific fact-finding, and the “‘objective’ accuracy of life-understanding” of what 15 really the case, that occupied much of our attention 1η the previous subsection,

1.2.1.1., are accommodative

of this “scientific” hermeneuti-

cal bent, which was after all what gave birth to the now fashionable “hermeneutics” in the West. In contrast, the closest the hermeneutical tradition in China came

to objective accuracy of what is said was (and stll 15 to a large extent) textual criticism and analysis, which has httle to do with. what is expressed in the text, much less what the ideas ın the text meant in the original communicative situation at the time when these 1deas were expressed. We will go into this aspect soon. The second hermeneutical question, "Is what 1s said in the text valid?," requires not only an exclusion of subjectivity of the interpreter but also objective critical evaluation. This question has at least two characteristics; it is meant to be both objective and critical. First, ”They are new translations, which are interpretations in the reverent garb of “translations” for devotional uses of the common Christians.

9 Philosophical thinkers were cited because philosophy is supposedly where crit-

ical exchanges of ideas take place, where main concern.

“who

really said what" is not at all the

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the interpreter should not only be faithful but critical, passing a fair

judgment on the merits and demerits of what is said “from an objective point of view.”

Here, secondly, personal likes and dislikes of the interpreter are out,

so as to attain an evaluation that is universally valid. When a thinker said she is “faithful” to the tradition of such and such, she usually means that she evaluates what 15 proposed in the tradition so as to bring out what is objectively valuable, the “essence,” as it were, in the tradition. When Whitehead quipped that the Western philosophy is “a series of footnotes to Plato," he must have meant it in this critical hermeneutical sense. Heidegger's writings on Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche are perhaps in the same critico-hermeneutical thrust. In contrast, Chinese thinkers usually classify their critical writings in the genre of “commentary.” The commentanal tradition in China thrives

because

ancient

texts;

of the

reverence

to, and

for the

sake

of enhance-

ment of, the Great Master. Consciously or unconsciously, those commentators sought to advance the true spirit and meaning of the Great Master, sifting “wrong” interpretations to “bring out the true meaning” of the original Great Writers. And these Great Writers shift as the “orthodox traditions” change. Witness the recent vogue towards "Neo-Confucianism." Neo-Confucianism used to refer to Chu Hsi, Wang Yang-ming, Lu Hsiang-shan in the Sung and Ming dynasties. Now, the “modern Neo-Confucians” are eight: four in mainland China, four more m Taiwan. The “contemporary Neo-Confucians" are supposedly Liu Shu-hsien, Tu Wei-ming, Theodore de Bary, Robert Neville, and so on. It would not be long before commentaries appear on these Great Writers’ writings. The final question in Western hermeneutics 15 “What does it mean to ask as above at all?” For it is indeed strange, to the point of seemingly fruitless, to ask, not about any concrete informative matters but about the quest for information itself. And it turns out to be quite fruitful to ask this third question. The harvest is twofold. First, it made us realize that all our understanding throughout our life is a matter of interpretation. Thus hermeneutics is not just about it describes

our

entire

human

life.

Hermeneutics

is

what it means to be human. This 15 a surprising discovery of the modern phenomenologists, such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Gadamar,

Habermas.

Secondly, hermeneutics as pursued in the direction of the above two questions, what is really the case and how objectively valid it 1s, is found to be a useless project doomed to failure. This 15 another

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surprise harvest, that of the contemporary deconstructionists and postmodernists. We are now back to the sentiment similar to the sociology of knowledge and cultural relativism of the late 19th and early 20th century, with a sober difference that we know we cannot stay in this simple relativistic rut. Thus the objective type of hermeneutics in the West seems to have reached bankruptcy in a relativism of historical and cultural sorts. History does repeat itself, with a proviso that those latecomers who repeat the early trend know that they are repeating it. What should they do? Perhaps they may want to look at a different hermeneutical tradition,

such

as that in China.

1.2.1.2.2. This is our second type of hermeneutics, a subjective one, in China. Practically developed in isolation, this tradition has been dominated mainly by three hermeneutical questions: one, “How does this ancient text support the current political ideology?,” two, “How does this textual thought oppose other tradition(s)?,” and three,

“How does the textual idea-milieu cultivate my life?”

The first question, “How does this Classical text support the current Dynasty?," was prompted by a twofold devotion, admiration of the ideals of (especially) Confucian orthodoxy coupled with admiration of the current government. Since the Confucian 1deals 15 customarily viewed to be concretized 1η politics, these two admirations are collapsed into one. Originally, as with Mencius, those scholar-officials reverently hoped that by idenüfying the current regime with the Classical 1deals, the rulers would be admonished to conform their governance to Confucian populism, a humane government. They identified politics with the Confucian Classics for the sake of Confucianization of politics. In no time, however, this pious hope was twisted into politicization of Confucianism by harsh Realpolitik. Scholarly accolade was now polit-

ical legitimation of rulership;°’ Confucianism was institutionalized into

a powerful means of (en)forcing unquestioned allegiance. Scholarofficials were hired mainly for the purpose of inventing ingenious “official” interpretations to “prove” that current rulership was indeed the dream of Confucian Classics come true. The first major hermeneutical motivation was a political one.

6° I owe this insight on Chinese hermeneutics to Professor Chün-chieh Huang of National Taiwan University. I developed it in my own way which perhaps will raise his eyebrows. ° Now practically equivalent to royal license to do anything.

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Political hermeneutics is not without representations in the West. We remember reinterpretations of the Bible to legitimize the institutions of papacy and then slavery, defense of the American Constitution by the authority of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, opposing evolutionism by biblical creationism, biblical defense of (and attacks on) divorce, abortion, the Vietnam War, etc. The second hermeneutical question in China 15 apologetic, “How does this textual thought oppose (or conform to) other tradition(s)?" The Buddhist missionaries, for instance, expediently (in the name of upaya, expedience) “reinterpreted” the Buddhist scriptures, and someümes even invented new scriptures, to show how true practitioners the Buddhists are of Confucian fihality and loyalty. The Confucians were not too far behind. Besides “ko 17 (matching meanings) which served the same purpose, the entre Neo-Confucianism of Sung and Ming dynasties could be taken as an apologetic movement under the challenge of Buddhism. Confucians at the time thereby gave systematic rigor and metaphysical depths to the pristine vigor of Confucian texts. And both the Buddhists and the Confucians gave all sorts of their own interpretations of the texts of other traditions, the Buddhists reinterpreting the Confucian texts (many Buddhists during Sung and Ming dynasties) and the Taoist ones (Han Shan, Ou-yang Ching-wu), the Confucians reinterpreting the Buddhist texts (Wang Yang-ming) and the Taoist ones (Fung Yulan). Thus this apologetic hermeneutics was practiced overtly and covertly by both the Confucians and the Buddhists. And the ‘Taoists such as Chuang Tzu often used the name of “Confucius” in his writings, now to castigate him, now to portray him as advocating a Taoist stance. This 15 a covert apologetics. This is in sharp contrast to the Western critical hermeneutics where validity is allegedly non-partisan, strictly universal. The Western “apologetics” 1s hidden under the cover of universal impersonal principle. The third question in Chinese hermeneutics is devotional, “How does the textual 1dea-milieu cultivate my life?” Personal ideals, political and/or private, were cloaked in scholarly interpretations of the Classics. A plethora of spiritual gymnastics were concocted out of simple texts of Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu, ostensively in the form of “commentaries: by the religious Taoists and the Buddhists. Wang Yang-ming was the foremost exponent of spiritual devotional read-

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ings of the Confucian texts, but other Neo-Confucians were not too far behind, such as Lu Hsiang-shan and Chu Hsi. Their debates were not on whether devotional uses of the Confucian texts were legiamate but on how the devotional uses of the Confucian texts were to be discerned, interpreted, and implemented. And all these debates were conducted in the milieu of textual scrutinies and interpretations,

that 15, in

a commentarial

atmosphere.

In all these hermeneutical directions, political, apologetic, devotonal, what is shown 15 unmistakably historical, situational, personal. This subjective stance overshadows minute textual criticisms, which were not non-existent but made subservient to this overall subjective-situational trend. This has been so, that is, until the recent

Ch ing period when, influenced by the scientific positivistic West (via its importations by Chinese scholars returned from studies abroad, such as Hu Shih), pure textual and historico-verificational matters came to the fore (cf. the multi-volume Au Shih Pien). This is a halfway position between the Western objective quest for what 15 said and Chinese subjective situationism. 1.2.1.3. And thus, in order to explore the possibility of finding truths in the quicksand of our cultural and historical diversity, we considered how our very understanding fared 1η human history. And we found, to our discomfiture, that the seemingly simple notion of “understanding” turned out to be a much messier and more unmanageable affair than it first looked. Our understanding of “understanding” makes us sober. We ended up surveying the history of hermeneutics, both in the West and in China. For hermeneutics 15 a project of understanding our projects of understanding texts, a methodology of interpretation, a study of directions of understanding. Since all sciences investigate to understand, and investigation is determined by its direction indicated in the questions asked ın interpretation, the question determines the direction of investigation, hermeneutics as a study of questions is the basic comprehensive Sclence of all sciences, and inevitably leads to comparative intercultural studies of hermeneutical questions, “culture” being an assumptive direction of understanding. Looking back, we realize that® those six hermeneutical questions we have just considered do not belong to the realm of studies of

68 As was

also mentioned

toward

the end

of 1.2.1.2.1.

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ancient texts alone. They really belong to our understanding in general, whose subspecies textual interpretation 15. And this is not a surprise. If all human sciences are devoted to knowing and understanding, and if hermeneutics is the science of understanding, then hermeneutics 15 the science of all sciences, whose

tasks and difficulties concentrate thereon. In addition, since interpretation and understanding involves questions, and questions involve presuppositions which are cultural, hermeneutcs inevitably implicates cultural comparison. And that 1s what has been done in 1.2.1.2. (inclusive). lhe comparison suggests a moral for us in this radically pluralistic world of ours, even at the basic level of “understanding”; the moral is, we ought to learn one from another. We do well to suspend our “(final) judgment" and “compare notes" on things hermeneutical. How? Since

these

two

hermeneutical

traditions,

Western

and

Chinese,

have their respective strengths and weaknesses, they should join to complement and strengthen each other. The Chinese subjectivesituational and applicative historicity should join with the Western objective-timeless and self-critical universality. Then Western irrelevance and Chinese relativism shall disappear; validity shall have situational anchorage and historicity would gain universality. We should become familiar with the hermeneutical questions of the other tradition, and be sensitized to its manner of investigation. We should critically and sympathetically discern the strengths and weaknesses of both our hermeneutical approach and theirs, thereby mutually learn, each from

the other.

These considerations lead us to the problem of shifting cultural diversity, which not only still remains but is now rendered more acutely felt than ever. For the quest for objectivity in Western hermeneutics has just deconstructed itself into postmodernist situationism; the political-apologetic-personal hermeneutics of China has been firmly glued to the situation that shifts historically. And “situation” is where the quicksand of cultural-historical relativism is. How do we compare bewilderingly and radically diverse cultural presuppositions? How do we deal with the problem of forever shifting historicalcultural relativism? 1.2.2. And so, our understanding of understanding brings us now to the tough problem of cultural relativism. We consider first a negative

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side to the problem (in 1.2.2.1.) and a positive one (1.2.2.2.), then draw an overall conclusion, that communication is an essential prerequisite for attaining truth (1.2.3.) 1.2.2.1. Let us first look closer into the problem of cultural relativism.

It was

a familiar battle, in the

1930s,

the

1940s,

and

again

1η the 1960s, against cultural relativism proposed by Herskovits, Benedict, and Mead. But our fights then were idealistically tinged with “cultural universals” (Klukhohn) as exhibited in, say, W.T. Stace’s classical attack on relativism. Let us see how we can steer away both idealism and relativism, and straightly go to the pragmatıc sıde of the matter. How do we draw a line between cultural diversity and panculturalism, between a pragmatic view of truth (what is true 15 what is relevant) and cultural relativism (what is proposed 15 always shaped by culture)? Is correctness to be adjudicated and determined culturally, that 15, sociopolitically, socio-economically, even historically and causally, as the Frankfurt school and the sociologists of knowledge seem to insist? A contemporary version of cultural pragmatism, titled, "Aesthetics and Cultural Identity,” is lustily advocated by Professor Joseph Margolis at the XIIth International Congress of Aesthetics, “Aesthetics

in Practice.”

My response to him was as follows: “(a) Fully agreeing on the ments of your powerful neo-pragmatism, my commonsense hesitation is twofold. First, correctness (truth) might be made to serve, if not become synonymous with, brute power of causal efficacy, majority opinion, psychic push, culture. Truth has its own inherent authenticity; it ıs not at the beck of power. Truth should guide power; power should not bully truth. ‘Truth is powerful’ is not ‘power defines “true”, any more than ‘powerful vs. weak’ (or ‘majority vs. minority’) 15 ‘true vs. false.” Nor, secondly, is truth praxis—what works is not always what is true; powers can work, too, and some powers are illicit. “Truth makes

differences’ is not ‘what makes differences is true’; what makes practical differences can be brute power of money, politics, culture, fashion. “Culture-relevant’ is not 'culture-relative'; should the library buy books people read, or books people should read? Praxis, being part of truth, is not truth or its norm. ^ August

1-5,

1995,

in Lahti,

Finland.

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But how do we draw the line between truth and power-cumpraxis (while keeping their intimacies)? For draw we must, on pain of dissolving truth's intrinsic integrity in relativism while defending truth's powerful, pragmatic relevance to actuality. (b) More significantly, the cause for having to fight a relativistic mistake as we succeed in fighting an idealistic one—as an idealist fights in a reverse manner—is that we fight, pitting one mistake of relativism against another of idealism. We must instead join valid claims

hid in the two

mistakes,

truth-relevance

in relativism,

truth-

integrity 1η idealism, and all their mistakes dissolve themselves. But, again, how do we join them? (c) The above two points, (a) and (b), share one pragmatic problem in common, how. In my humble opinion, neo-pragmatism, beyond the classical American one, consists in this ‘how.’ The former joins; the latter takes sides. The former is meta-performative; the latter 15 an ism on the pragmatic bite of truth.” Professor Margolis’s kind reply was revealing: “It may be that my own philosophical convictions will dismay you. I am of course a relativist. I don’t believe we can define truth cniterially, in the sense in which we suppose truth is changeless. We work primarily with the assignment of truth-values (in the name of truth and knowledge— even if we give up at times bivalence, as I am prepared to do). And then, truth-value assignments and ‘power’ (in something hke Foucault’s sense) seem to be inseparable. The upshot 15 that what counts as ‘true’ (as an assignment) is an artifact of our historical reflection— and may well change (even though, as we say, Truth 15 changeless). But I mention these things only to be open about my own views,

not to call yours into question."

My response 15 that the so-called “historical reflection” cannot just

be

“reflection

without

criteria

of correctness,”

a contradiction

in

terms, nor can “criteria” be simply identical with the trends of power and times. Trends of power as criteria cannot serve “reflection” in a proper sense of the term. It is one thing to note that Socrates and Jeremiah had to communicate their messages in their respective languages of Greek and Hebrew, even shape their arguments in the thought-categories and assumptions of their respective societies, as Socrates freely admitted, e.g., 1η the Crito. It is quite another to say that their messages them” Professor Margolis’s faxed reply dated, 9/18/95.

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selves are the products of their cultures, that their cultures completely determined the ideals and contents of their messages. Their respective sufferings clearly tell us that they were socio-cultural gadfhes and nuisances, posing fundamental threats to what were taken for granted as societal basics, as the very cultural milieu, in which people hved and had their beings. There then had to be some sort of independence and dignity to correctness, some inherent integrity to truth, worthy of recognition for its own sake, even though this does not imply that truth does not change. Can we have such integrity and independent value of truth 1η the context of cultural change, diversity, and equality, even at the basic level of thinking (for “truth”, and mode of thinking (“logic”)? Can we get through our own cultural assumptive tangles to really be in critical touch with the actuality of things which change historically? 1.2.2.2. I think it is possible to get at the truth and actuality of things, for the fact that we can communicate, as we have been doing here, shows that we have something to rely on for a sure real cognitive handling of things, even if understanding is misunderstanding, as those deconstructionists say. For to talk about “misunderstanding”

gets us into that quest for the possibility of mistakes Socrates" and

Josiah Royce” pursued;? and “quest” is possible only when every place is not cognitive-cultural quicksand,’ as cultural relativism described above suggests. Furthermore, on a positive side, misunderstandings themselves can

sometimes harvest useful fruits. A humorous etymology of has it that the name came from the Indians’ reply, “nic athan,” ing “We don't know what you're saying,” to the Spaniards’ for the name of the land." A French lady complained to

Yucatan meanquery a cab

"In the Theaetetus. In his Relgwus Aspects of Philosophy. * We acknowledge and admire Socrates’ and Royce's wisdom of tackling this important problem. We leave out discussion of their mode of quest, much less their harvests. And we note that this fact of our acknowledgement and admiration 15 itself our common hope of some real intellectual engagement, while we fully admit that the Chinese thinkers, for instance, handle this theme of “mistakes” in thoroughly different manners; the Confucian manner differs as much from the Taoist as they both do from the Western. ‘ [n fact, we can claim here that to admit that our thinking is culture-bound does not deny that it is culture-ınspired, much less that it 15 not valid. To equate cultural origin with non-validity is to commit a blatant cultural version of genetic fallacy.

'* Greenblatt, Marvelous Possession, p. 104, quoted by Hwa Yol Jung in his “The

Tao of transverality, etc.,” op. cit., p. 20.

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driver in New York City on her first arrival there, saying, "You're dearer to me than we were first engaged." She meant, of course, "You charge more for the fare than you quoted before when I took your cab.” The story has it that the cab driver smiled and let her go. Stories of misunderstanding such as these tend to be humorous, perhaps because they are delightfully serendipitous; we tend to be pleasantly surprised with. unexpected. boons. This fact shows that human thinking and communication are historical happenings, open-textured, unexpected, and often serendipitous, for what else do we expect from communication (which 1s quite alive in our thinking)? And so thinking (if not to be reduced to an exercise in tautologies) and communication (if not to be reduced to a preprogrammed monologue) are more than—richer than— what the so-called “logic” can handle, for usual logic is an operation of strict expectation. In fact, expectation exclusively concentrates itself on something expected, and so 1s related to exclusion; usual logic, after

all, operates on the exclusive use of the law of excluded middle.”

In any case, if unexpected positive results cannot a prion be ruled out of misunderstanding, misunderstanding cannot always be branded an "unfortunate aberration” in communication and thinking. For "open-textured" and “unexpected” are often synonymous, and “being unexpected" characterizes both thinking and communication, on the one hand, and misunderstanding, on the other. 1.2.3. Al this amounts to the following, surprising truth. First, revelation of novelty is a prerequisite for the significance, the value, the truth, to emerge; triviality rarely so fascinates us as to yield something worthwhile. But then the performing of communication and its possible attendant of misunderstanding are a prerequisite to. revelation. of novelty; who after all would want to communicate what is trivial?” And communication succeeds in taking place when a call succeeds in evoking responses. Therefore, communication is a “universal,” or rather,

means

a transversal,"

for the emergence

of truth,

and

what

truth

is revealed situationally in the very process of communica-

7? We will treat this theme of “expectation” in Section 4. 77 Cf. 1.1.1.2.1. above.

78 Tronic communication of triviality communicates not triviality but novelty via triviality. | 7 This is perhaps an apter word than “universal”; a transversal traverses the call and the response.

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on. “Novelty” brings us out of cultural determinism; “processive” description of truth shields us from idealistic determinism. This point supplements Habermas’ insistence such as this:” As opposed to... Rawls and Nozick, I’ve never had... sketch[ed] out a normative political theory. ... I don't design the basic norms of a “well-ordered society”... [but reconstruct] actual conditions, under the premise that in everyday communicative practice, sociated individuals cannot avoid also employing everyday speech . . . oriented toward reaching understanding. For this, they have to proceed from ... pragmatic presuppositions, in which... communicative reason emerges. It’s quite simple: whenever we mean what we say, we... claim that [it] is true... [and] a small bit of ideality breaks into our everyday lives, because such validity claims can... be resolved only with arguments. At the same time,... arguments that appear valid to us today can prove to be false tomorrow. ... My point is that my... idealizations have nothing to do with ideals that the solitary theorist sets up in opposition to reality; I am referring only to the normative contents that are encountered in practice, which we cannot do without, since language, together with the idealizations it demands of speakers, 1s simply constitutive for socio-cultural forms of life. But, then, how do we handle "cultural diversity" shaking, at the bot-

tom, the universal validity of our thinking which we've just claimed to be possible? Our answer could go as follows. Culture 15 that 1η which we have our beings. So perhaps we can consider the problem of cultural thinking by looking into the dialectic of “cultural inside" and “outside.” Then we can see that what we call “universal validity" is a reciprocal transversal. Describing "transversal" hopefully brings out what the last statement above means. Proposed by Calvin Schrag, “transversal” is a contemporary improvement over traditional "universal." Its strength lies in its ambiguity, in the original sense of driving around between shared communicability (in a wide sense) across ( trans- ) cultural and disciplinary boundaries, and the overarching principle of assumptive "common ground" ( -versal'). Its weakness lies also in its ambiguity, this time in the conventional sense of being vague, vaguely keeping the implication of superficially

60 Jürgen Habermas, The Past as Future, tr. & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994, pp. 8! Calvin O. Schrag, The Resources of Rationality: A 1995, and Philosophical Papers, Albany, N.Y.: State 1994.

ed. by Max Pensky, Lincoln ἃ 101-102 Response to the Postmodern Challenge University of New York Press

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going-across boundaries without deep inter-influences among different assumptive grounds, on the one hand, and constrictive one totalizing umbrella of the traditional “universal,” on the other. We adopt this term “transversal” whenever appropriate, sometimes adding “reciprocal" to underline its dynamic two-way traffic character, sometimes combining it with *generalization"*^ and “inter-”-words, e.g., intercultural, interactive, inter-involvement, internecine and inter-nascent.

“Generalization” goes through things; “abstraction” goes over them. Confucius tried to generalize when he asked for “one” Tao "going

through" his teaching;? so did Euthyphro when he cited many practices to characterize what piety is.** Socrates in contrast? wanted to

capture or abstract one essence of piety out of all concrete pious acts, making all pious acts pious. And so, when we said above that “universal validity” is really a reciprocal transversal, we mean that the notion of validity is “unlversal,” universally intelligible, to the extent that everyone uses it, but understands it in different cultural senses; and those are in the know

of this “validity” of things who are outsiders of a culture but very interested ın it. To this theme we now turn.

1.3.

Insiders

and

outsiders

of culture

The important notion of the "inside" of event is justly made famous by R.G. Collingwood, and applied to our acts in the less known phrase, "thick interpretation" by Gilbert Ryle. There is no problem agreeing with the truths these notions advocate; we wish more people paid more attention to their importance. Then various problems, the brain-mind relation, computing vs. thinking, mind-body identity, and the like, which are plaguing modern philosophy of mind and

science, will be dissolved. What is to be added in the following

pages 15 about the importance must explain.

of looking in from outside. But we

δ “Generalization” will be described below in 5.5.2.2., inclusive. "3 Analects, 4/15. ^ In the Dialogue of Euthyphro (8D). 5 Ibid. δ The mind may be said to be of the same dimension as the brain. this sort of thinking for Collingwood would be to look at "thinking" from outside point of view, as dissoluble in water as sugar, as calculable as Thinking calculates and uses hands to put sugar in water, but cannot be culated or dissolved.

But then a purely numbers. itself cal-

INSIDERS

AND

OUTSIDERS

ΟΕ

CULTURE

6l

For R.G. Collingwood, investigations of human events differ from those of natural happenings, primarily in that the human events consist of outward happenings signifying human acts which manifest human thoughts and intentions inside, whereas natural happenings are mere brute happenings without the “inside.” And so, historians look through the event into the human thought behind it, whereas natural scientists merely classify natural happenings under a certain

order.

Similarly, Gilbert Ryle as significantly noted by Clifford Geertz in the latter's definition of ethnography, produced an example of a series of eye-twitching acts, themselves "photographically" indistinguishable one from another, yet respectively different in nature and meaning: eye-twitches, winks, false winks, parodies, rehearsals of par-

odies. The motion of twitches must differ from other “phenomenalistically” identical motions, but cannot be so deciphered until interpreted

and explained in a “thick description." Here “photographically”

and "phenomenalistically" are obviously synonymous with “outside.” Then, we know that Collingwood went off into a false bedrock of rationalism, identifying the "inside" as "thought." Geertz, on his part, went off into a molasses of "thick interpretation," joining himself with the fashionable hermeneutical interpretation of interpretations. For Geertz, the phenomenalistic twitches must differ importantly from all other eye-twitching acts, but only interpretation can distinguish the former motion from all others. ‘This is to enter the inside, for staying outside never makes us understand the distinction, and this entering perform ance is what is called “interpretation.” Such an interpretation yields “thick description,” which is what ethnography and

anthropology amount to.”

What these two thinkers agree is that we must enter the inside of the situation before we can get at the true story. In doing so, they seem to assume the importance of the inside over the outside. We do not disagree with their observation; we merely want to question their unstated assumption and nudge their attention to the importance of the outside. To look in from outside can be a refreshing act, never to be made light of, and is perhaps more important than 8” R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, 1956, pp. 213ff. 55 Importantly quoted at the very beginning of the entire book, Ryle’s description (identified only as in two essays, “Thinking and Reflecting,” and “The Thinking and Thoughts,” in the second volume of Gilbert Ryle’s Collected Papers) appears in Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1973, pp. 6-7.

89 Geertz, op. cit., pp. 6-30.

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staying inside.” It is the dynamics of inside-outside interactions, rather than the specific positions, inside or outside, that counts. How this is so on a socio-cultural plane, and how this point can help us toward cultural togetherness, can now be explained. “All Chinese people are bad; all those non-Chinese interested in things Chinese are good.” This rule of thumb, which seems obviously false, nonetheless refuses to leave us. For it carries with it a grain of truth worth exploring. Pondering on the point of the statement, we come to see why. It amounts to saying that those completely at home, buried, in a culture of their own are bad; those cultural outsiders, fascinated and absorbed,

looking in, are good.” Why? The reasons are not far to seek. On

the one hand,

no matter how

much

our own

our culture 15.

once dragged on in time within oneself, taken for granted by others, being at-home in our culture loses the culture's “inside” flavor to us, and both our culture and ourselves become blasé, “bad.” that 15. the

culture and our pride lose their incisive characteristics, their “genius” that shouts at others for attention. Familiarity with the treasure of “culture” breeds mute smug contempt, which rots both the treasure and those familar with the treasure. This is nothing strange; our experience with sex activity, occupation, and “our” house testify to it. This 15 why a vacation 15 needed to vacate ourselves from familiarity, to "get away from it all" to get inside what we are accustomed to, which

now

On

becomes

"fresh"; we meet it for the first time in life.

the other hand,

those interested outsiders are diffident, sin-

cere in their search, free of cultural chauvinism, full of adventurous

pioneering spirit, always

at the cutüng edge of the new

territory,

and so on. In a word, they are forever fresh, pure, and curious. And

so, strangely, this group of outsider-people are culturally “good,” that is, the true insiders of the culture they dream about. Love describes this “inside,” so do learning and writing, and even getting sick; they are activities of getting toward something new, something we yearn after. Love gets us to that dreamland of what we want; learning and ”To

balance off this outside-inside dynamism,

we are

going

to consider in 1.5.2.

the political importance of coming out from within. ° This fact shows how “good” and “bad” are situation-dependent, li

terms.

e

There

.

9

is no

no

B good-as-such This 3

or bad-as-such

of value

How

"blind" to the situation.

the existential nature treated in 1.1.4.

y

e

?

9

8

in Platonic

8

heaven.

Ὡς

situational

Justice is not

b

This 15 not to propose cultural relativism but to insist on terms.

to draw

the line between

the

two

was

INSIDERS

AND

OUTSIDERS

OF

CULTURE

63

writing get us to “truths” we see “for the first time in the entire history of the universe”; getting sick gets us to appreciating our health, our ability to savor the fresh morning air. This 15 also why children are precious, precious in every culture, in every religion, “the greatest in the kingdom” of life. For, first of all, being the first-comers in life, they are forever insiders to things they meet; any thing they touch they touch it for the first time in life, and even life itself is something new that they live, and even their touch 15 new. Another reason 15 this. Children are clumsy in things they first encounter, and their clumsiness interests them in them. Whatever things they touch sparkle with the freshness of the “first time," with the real “inside” to those things. No wonder children are 50 eager to savor things to the full. “The Great Person 15 one who does not lose the heart of one's child-in-oneself," says Mencius (4 ] 4). Those interested in things Chinese are “children” in Chinese culture; they the eager China-observers are great China-

insiders.”° 1.3.1.

But why are the outsider as the insider, the child, and freshness, all

mentioned together? Do they share anything valuable, or point at anything worthwhile? Let us take “essence,” first. Essence is something constitutive of an existence, to keep it existing on and on. Thus the essential is powerful and creative of an existence, to make an existence continue existing fully as it is, keeping it fresh and “alive on and on.” Thus something essential must be something creatively alive, at the cutting edge of existing. Furthermore, to be alive is to be vibrant, to be at the raw threshold of existing, to be the child at the frontiers of things, the refresh-

ing start of life. Thus the child is the essence to the person; “The child 15 father to the man” is truer and richer than Freud first imagined.^ The child is then an “outsider,” forever fresh, clumsily yearning forward towards grownups, the mature personhood; and we the adults, in turn, yearn back towards such a pristine child-eagerness ” Since Taoism is well known for treasuring childhood, we remind ourselves of only one passage from the Tao Te Ching, in Chapter 10. We can see how Lao Tzu chimes in with Mencius there.

3 Cf. 5.4.4. which complements this point. ** What Freud had in mind was that the qualities one used to have when one

was a child remain with one when grown up.

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that constitutes what it means to be “human person.” One who attains and keeps one's own child-heart is indeed the Great One, as Mencius said. The essential is the tender shoot of life, the fresh frontier of existence, and so the worthwhile, the precious. Can we find the child in everyday life, in our world? Yes, and to this theme we now

turn.

1.3.2. There is in our world today one strange culture embodied in the United States of America. The "American culture" is young, they say, for USA 15 a world experiment, for the first tme 1η world history, on cosmopolitan togetherness that has operated effectively, though

falteringly, for more than 200 years.”

And, if we think of why, we find what is important— within this experiment of cosmopolitan togetherness, there is no smug stale "insider." Everyone in this culture 15 an outsider to “one’s own culture"; for in America,

one looks back at “one’s own"

cultural her-

itage from an "outside" nostalgic point of view. USA 15 a culture of no culture, a collection of fresh cultural “insiders” because

the cul-

ture is composed of many yearning cultural “outsiders.”” One thus lives in the midst (the center, the inside) of the “cutting edges" of cultures when one lives in the American community. This community has the culture whose inside 1s made up of the outside, a culture which can afford to be examined, or rather, positively demands to be evaluated from outside, and 15 prepared to look into any culture from outside, yearning. Such a cultural “outside” of the American culture is the nerve of hberalism, which thus accommodates even its own criticism to the point of self-mockery or -demise. This self-objectifying, self-externalizing thrust of hberalism is the genius of democracy, which includes its own renovation and rejuvenation (if only in the form of fluid, slow, manipulative, and ineffective popular elections every so often), to the ? Just think of how Mr. Richard M. Nixon fared. For all American people's respect for the President, for all their allegiance to the Flag, and for all their belief in individualism, neither totalitarianism nor sociopolitical chaos resulted when they so revolted against President Nixon that he had to resign. As they say in America, "Ihe system has worked," the American "system" of politics, that is. And since politics is part of culture, this fact says much for the American culture. ? This fact reminds us of another. A Taiwan aborigines, Mr. Sun, Ta-ch’uan, was allegedly jeered at by a Chinese friend of his, saying, "You are just a barbarian." He replied, *One day I shall grow up being more Chinese than China." (Sun, la-ch'uan, “Chiu Chiu Chiu I-tzw [One drink in a long long while], Taipei, 1993).

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point of possibly voting itself away. This “Paradox of Democracy” is possible only in democracy;”’ one seldom hears about the “paradox" of centralizing totalızation. The paradox of democracy bespeaks the freshness of the outside-inside that breeds democracy, the spirit of self-critical populism. We will see how USA concretely grapples with the problems of democracy, negatively by public exposure of racism (in 1.3.2.1.), positively by public appreciations of different cultural heritages (in 1.3.2.1), and being daunted by the Dilemma of Democracy (in 1.3.2.3.) 1.3.2.1. This 1s not to deny the USA its various crimes, imperfections; exactly the opposite 1s the case. But how the USA handles its negative elements is just where the genius of the liberal outsidementality manifests itself as cosmopolitan togetherness. Instead of flaunting a list of unmentionable vices and violence rife in the USA, let us take its one fatal flaw that 1s alive and widespread there, "fatal" because it 15 deadly opposed to the liberal spirit energizing USA; it tears to pieces the fabric of the nation woven out of many and varied races. We mean "racial prejudice," which, being the opposite of cultural togetherness, threatens to undermine the American culture at the base; the USA 15 built on cosmopolitan togetherness, against the background of which racism stands out blatantly vile and mean. “There is no racial prejudice in the world except for USA!" we even come to say. In contrast, only sometimes do we hear about racism in other places. It is not that other nations have no racism as much as that they do not take racism as a major issue, and so they neither publicize it nor deal with it head-on. In the USA in contrast we almost constantly hear about the ills of racism. Moreover, and this 15 important, we hear often about not only how bad it is, but also how bad the fight against it 1s, there. The news media expose it all, down to the last bits of its detail. And, in fact, news exposure of racism is one powerful bombardment upon racism. Constant publicizing of it to public sensibility has sanitized the public “common sense.” Now the American people no longer take racial prejudice as acceptable, much less defensible, as they used to on grounds of evolution, genetics, cultural heritage, even biblical doctrines. Instead, they now regard it silly to evaluate people, much less discriminate them, on the sole basis of skin pigmentation. ? In itself.

1.3.2.3. we will see one concrete explication of this Paradox in the USA

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“Racist” is as rancid a term of opprobrium as “anti-Semite.” Racist diatribes have almost disappeared from the public scene, and anyone who inadvertently produced them are obliged to make public apologies if not amends, on pain of virtual sociopolitical excommunication. And in this shift of public sentiment 15 now secured the bulwark for fight against racism. The American people are now proud to display how many minority personnel in key positions they have in their corporations, schools, public offices. Someone may say it is not much

or, worse, a mere window-dressing;

it remains nonetheless

“a

first step ln the right direction,” as they say. For now racism is on the defensive; the onus of proof, apology, and/or justification is now on those who practice it. No KKK, no slightest racist showing, are

regarded as decent and mentionable, much less legal.”

“There is no racial prejudice in the world except for USA” now really means there 15 no official, serious, and all-out fight against it anywhere except in the USA. The statement says in effect: Nowhere is racial prejudice so visible a target of attack as in the USA. How 15 this basic decisive American “D-day” in wars against racism won? By relentless persistent public exposure, via news media, TV shows, cartoons and lampoons. Public exposure kills the legitimacy of racism, 1f not shady racism itself, as surely as sun-exposure kills germs and molds. And “public exposure” is a practice of liberal “outside,” the nerve of “American culture,” a world experiment in cosmopolitan togetherness. Publicity—a characteristic of the American culture—is a form of togetherness, in which that culture consists. But the story of American fight against racism does not end here. 1.3.2.2. We have just looked at the negative treatment of racism. The American people have another sort of treatment, a positive one, which 15 this. Racism 15 zeal for one's own culture expressed in the mode of resentment of other culture(s) and cultural differences. But pride of oneself need not be expressed in the language of rejection of the Other, the not-I, and its difference; it is this illicit expression that makes up the peculiarıty of racism. Destroying the Other 15 an illicit way of enhancing oneself because this way is self-defeating, for destroying the Other destroys one's difference from the Other, thereby destroys one's uniqueness in contrast to others. 8 We must note, however, that there are a few people who flaunt their being racists and anti-Semites, taking advantage of the freedom of opinions guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And a new Nazism 15 on the rise among some young whites.

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We can and should, then, go an opposite way. We should promote our own dignity amid and through the fun of appreciating differences

of others.” For “difference” brings out the uniqueness of each per-

son and each person’s favorite culture, as the postmodernist thinkers, including liberal feminist thinkers, have been insisting. Appreciation of differences redounds to celebration of one's uniqueness. Being interested in others and celebrating their differences from oneself enhances one's own self-pride. Three ways of celebrating differences are possible and they have been visibly realized. First, cultural integrity can be promoted by intensely learning and cultivaüng its language, hterature, arts (musical, culinary, dress), housing, etc., the so-called "indigenous folk arts"

and styles of living. Then exhibits of many cultures on various aspects can be regularly set up and attended. Mixed living with other cultural heritages can be tried (interracial living quarters or compounds). Interracial

dealings—artistic,

commercial,

academic,

social—can

be

encouraged. Finally, as we live with other cultural heritages, strangeness is gone, and we gradually come to have fun with them as our usual neighbors, taking them into our lives as some enriching (because different) parts of our lives. Our human “garden” in our home country 15 now made up of various human "flowers." All this has happened and is continually happening today in various American communities, decisively dissolving xenophobia and racism, powerfully promoting cultural integrity through celebrating cultural variety, living with peoples of “Other” racial, cultural hentages. 1.3.2.3. In this politico-cultural context, in the shadow of the above exuberance over USA's handling of racism, there lurks a “thorn in the flesh” of American cosmopolitan togetherness.!” Its democratic “thorn”'®' is this: Should the United States government admit aliens from abroad seeking refuge in that “Land of the Free,” or should it not? Either an afhrmative answer or a negative one bumps into the wall in the house of Americanism.

Ῥ Cf. my Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., 17.1.3. 100 Abuse of terms exists in the American institutions such as the “Humane Society” and “Old Folks’ Homes”; they generate horror stories. The problems there are more technical, managerial ones than philosophical ones of principle; we don’t consider them here. 10! Cosmopolitanism implicates democracy, a populist government, of course.

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On the one hand, its founding Constitution of cosmopolitanism'”

urges itself to welcome them as a matter of course; USA both serves as their haven,

their new

home,

and benefits from varieties of cul-

tures and talents they would bring in. Not to follow Constitution of the United States destroys the USA qua USA. On the other hand, as flooding aliens into the job market squeeze out American citizens, so flooding peoples indiscriminately into the U.S. Continent, with its fixed space and limited resources, destroy the land and endangers its people. Indiscriminate invitation of racists, terrorists, drug addicts, and subversive elements makes for the sack of U.S. The USA is thus caught between the sheer necessity of self-preservation and its founding principle of cosmopolitan welcome. Both obligations clamor to be fulfilled, but fulfillment of one violates the other, and violation of either simply destroys the USA. This is the unpleasant Dilemma of Democracy similar to the self-destructive Paradox of Democracy mentioned earlier in 1.3.2.; in fact, it can be said that the two co-imply. Sadly, USA is now playing a modern Esau, satisfying its instinct for the “porridge” of self-preservation at the price of its “heritage” of soul-principle. We must now deal with this horn of the Dilemma. "Don't we have the nght to invite to our home only those guests we like?” Yes, but "those guests we like" have been decided in advance, in principle, to be those in need of shelter and home. Selective admissions, on principle(s) other than U.S. Constitution, only open floodgates to prejudices of all sorts, ideological, medical, occupational,

political, racial, religious,

socioeconomic,

etc. Limited

democracy is synonymous with selective one, as much of a selfmockery as “discriminatory democracy," for “selection” involves “discrimination" which is deadly opposed by “democracy.” “Discriminatory democracy"

then is an oxymoron,

a monster,

a smokescreen for the

above described prejudices and discriminations. Here we must note that this problem is not USA's alone. The USA, founded on the principle of democracy, merely serves as a mirror to manifest to us the basic problem that is ours in diverse forms. This our problem, in a general form, is this: Should we give ourselves away to/for Others, or get things just for ourselves, and keep Others out to keep ourselves intact?

^“ The USA is supposed to be itself the Statue of Liberty and Haven to all

sufferers in the world. It 15 constituted by this vision, as its Constitution clearly shows.

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In all our struggles to meet the challenge of this dilemma, we must not forget that the dilemma 15 generated by a point we have agreed on in principle, that cultural togetherness 15 symbiosis, an absolute must for the survival of all of us. Furthermore, the dilemma is a practical difficulty, not a flat contradiction, its two horns are

not logically exclusive of each other, as 15 shown not in loyalty to friendship, parental devotion, and loving Others “as oneself.” The dilemma is less of a problem of principle than of a technical, managerial one of how to maneuver ourselves out of the dilemma to obtain both of the mutually conflicting desiderata, self-survival and selflessness. We will try and meet the problem in two contexts. In the ultimate context of religious togetherness (especially in 4.1.3.4. and 4.5.), it will be advocated that in self-emptying accommodaton to differences, self-fulhllment obtains of itself. In the playful context (in 3.12.), it will be claimed that utilitarianism that is not all out 1s indeed fatally self-stunüng, yet the joy of playing can be regionally obtained and can slowly but surely spread to enjoyment together among us all. This is what Martin Luther King claims to be “a dream” that he has, and is also Jessie Jackson's “rainbow coalition” of us all. 1.4. The

“logic” of cultural togetherness

In the above examples of various American dealings with racism and peoples, we see that it 15 thus that the "logic" of cultural togetherness manifests itself; it £ the logic of lived variety of cultures. It is thus that various cultural outsiders are incorporated into a coherent unity—an inside made up of many outsides. Such 15 the "logic" of cosmopolitanism. Now, some space has been devoted to one concrete example of cultural togetherness that has falteringly worked, the American culture. This is because nothing 15 more powerful and convincing an answer to the practicability and modus operandi of togetherness than an actual example of what has worked and 15 still working. This American culture answers our two uncertainties about cultural togetherness, as to how it can znclude a variety of radical cultural differences, and as to how it can facilitate interactions among such differences. We see in the following on how our American example answers them one by one, first on

the inclusiveness

(in. 1.4.1.), then

(in 1.4.2.), of cultural togetherness.

on the transversality

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1.4.1. Inclusiveness All above description also amounts to a description of inclusion of contraries, from which we can extrapolate the “logic” of radical inclusion. Comprehensively, absolutely, and unconditionally to “include” involves even “exclusion of things.” That 15, in the world of total inclusion, “exclusion” is also included," not in the sense that it (“inclusion”) practices exclusion of anything different from itself (if not opposed to itself), but in the sense that it accommodates even its own enemy; it literally “loves its enemy.” Such an inclusion amounts to abolishing xenophobia, enmity, and exclusion as an activity, though not as a point of view. That is, true hberalism includes and accommodates everything (e.g., conservatism, even the KKK), learning from them whatever is worth learning (e.g., hfe-or-death zeal for purity and integrity), yet without endorsing their actual views, much less their actual practices, simply because liberalism 1s an "outside." Voltaire's famous dictum, *I will fight to death for the right to express the view I despise," makes sense here; the "logic" of inclusion, of togetherness, is as radically various, and daringly diverse and interactive, as this. 1.4.1.1. We can see the peculiar contents of this logic. Being together with everyone, including the ones who disagree among us, involves (a) learning from them (being inside them) (b) without practicing their practices and endorsing their views (being outside them). (a) Learning from them includes understanding them, absorbing their valuable intentions, and sometimes even being stimulated by their sheer differences into realizing something valuable on our own. (b) Not endorsing their views and their practices amounts to drawing the line between our integrity and theirs. After all, we are outsiders look-

ing in, fascinated, while disagreeing with them.'*

Al this description 1s but an elaboration of that statement at the beginning of 1.2., about the “bad” cultural insiders and the “good” cultural outsiders, and of our familiar interrelationship between the Yin and the Yang, at once internecine and inter-nascent. 1.4.1.2. Four cross-cultural exemplifications of this outside-as-inside dynamic inclusion come to mind; these examples anyone can understand and

use, no matter what

culture one 15 11 or from.

1% Cf. a similar «argument that clinched the entire Section 4 toward the end of

that Section.

/ We are going to demonstrate and instantiate how such a project can be imple-

mented in religious togetherness, the toughest project in togetherness, in Section 4.

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First, I both am (inside) and have (outside) my body. First, in my body I am an insider; ıt 15 myself. Then, to my body I am an outsider; it is my object. My body is then both the standpoint on which my investigation proceeds, and an object to be investigated by anyone, including myself. This insight 1s shared by both the phenome-

nologists and the Chinese mind.!?

Then, we think of Plato. His genius was to see that any ordinary thing 1s a unity of the matter inside and the form outside, and that the form is an "outside" inside a thing to make up a thing. Parmenides in Plato's dialogue by that name wondered aloud how such a “participation” in the form is possible. This critique amounts to looking at this form-matter unity from outside; Socrates’ defense there amounts to looking at this unity from inside the unity. This interpretation of the Socratic conversation shows how the outside-inside dynamism of critical inclusion applies everywhere, even the kind of thinking pecuharly Western. Thirdly, the Socratic daimon, from the viewpoint of our logic of inclusion, can be seen as integral to his life task of self-examination that constitutes life as worth living. The daimon is a part of him, and he a part of it, both composing a gadfly of self-examination that forever lives ın us to sting us from outside. Socrates’ early dialogues record such a dynamics of inner criticism (the inside that works from outside) in the midst of our commonsense living. If Socratic gadfly is at the base of Western philosophy, and if the gadfly can be understood in terms of this logic of radical cultural inclusion, then this

logic is seen as inclusive of self-critical Socratism.'”

Lastly, we now understand how sensible our initial saying 15, after all: “All Chinese people are bad; all those non-Chinese interested in things Chinese are good." Socrates said that an unexamined life 15 not worth living. An unexamined life is life lacking 1η the above described dynamics of the "outside" within a thing, the dynamics of a thinking, or of a perspective-on-a-thing which is internal to that thing; a life lacking in this internal criticism is not worth living, and so it is "bad." Thus “all Chinese are bad" who lack this cultural "outside" inside the culture in which they make their home. “All 105 My On Chinese Body Thinking is devoted to this theme. 1% A relatively recent study of criticism shows a continuation of this Socratic tradition of self-criticism in William W. Bartley, II's The Retreat to Commitment, La Salle,

Ill.: Open Court Publication Co., 1984. Bartley terms it the unconquerable "belief

in criticism," for to criticize this belief is itself to join it.

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non-Chinese interested in things Chinese are good” because these non-Chinese people are outsiders sympathetically interested 1η things Chinese. 1.4.2. Transversality We are now in a position to see how, in the light of the American culture, cultural togetherness can promote, if not produce, transitivity, communicability, and positive interactions among the radically different cultures. This 15 to answer the question of how to obtain a universal common ground (of cultural discourse) in the teeth of different cultural presuppositions. Our answer 15: dynamic reciprocal transversality. We can ask here: How does the “good” work of “non-Chinese people" go? What 15 the structure of the mentality of cultural outsiders inside a culture? What does it mean to accommodate an enemy? And we see that a twofold answer 1s already suggested a few paragraphs back. 1.4.2.1. Positively and from the insider's point of view, such a critical inclusive togetherness perceives further than what the actual views and policies, with. which. one 15 confronted, explicitly claim: cultural togetherness finds the real intention implied in the “wrong” claims and deeds, and works for the growth of such an implied cor-

rect intention.!°

|

Such is what Mencius, for instance, did when he first drew an im-

portant insight, the “the heart unbearable [at seeing] people [suffer]" (pu jen jen chh hsin), out of the not-so-good ruler Hsüan of (115 casual act of releasing a trembling ox being led to sacrificial slaughter; then Mencius urged the ruler to “extend” that heart to his own people, to com-passionate governance. Ít was not that Mencius liked the ruler. But he did his best to urge the ruler to become a likable ruler by becoming what the ruler unwittingly showed himself to be, a person who could “not bear" to see “Others” in pain.’ 1.4.2.2. Negatively and from the outsider's viewpoint from within, such a togetherness urges us to criticize ourselves, thereby to serve as inner critics one to another; one cannot clean a speck in the

Other’s eye until one pulls out a log in one's own.'? But seeing

07 Cf. 5.1. and 5.2. for actual implementation of this critical symbiosis—at the

most critical level of philosophy.

09 Mencius, 1A7.' ' Cf. Matthew 7:3.

POLITICAL

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73

else's speck can also provoke us to pull our own log out.

In fact,

Other-critic

initiates inner criticism both

"touch"

15 considered in the last section,

of oneself and

of

Others, and such inner:critics are the ones enabling us to truly, selfcritically grow into our true selves. This 15 what 15 implied in defining education as an outsider from inside “drawing” us “out” of our status quo, by a cultivation of our sense of dissatisfaction with our status quo, becoming our own outsider. Cultural togetherness involves its logic of insider’s outside (selfexamination), and outsider's inside (the fresh yearning look). And cultural togetherness involves our mutual self-education thereto. Now, this inside-outside dialectic is typified and exemplified in the Other and in the touch. The first theme of the “Other” 15 explicated in what immediately follows, Section 2. The last theme of Section 5.

1.5. Political togetherness Before going into the next Section 2 on the Other, we must consider political togetherness, as implied in the above wavering descripton of “American culture" and “USA.” Although not synonymous, discussion of culture often leads to that of politics. After all, culture is an accumulation of human achievements, one of which is political institutions, the conscious management of communal togetherness which is part of human nature. Politics as much influences culture as culture shapes politics. This politico-cultural relation is so intimate and spontaneous that it is a natural understandable mistake to call culture a politcal achievement. 1.5.1. Unfortunately politics is more of a breeding ground of social problems, if not a problem itself, than a solution to anything. And we cannot avoid taxes any more than can we death. We can do neither with nor without politics, which 15 a problem of techniques, not of principle or of the “logic” of togetherness. People's lives and integrities are routinely crushed under its tyrannical brutality, so much so that “good government" 15 as much of a contradiction as “military intelligence" is. After all, the latter phrase 15 a political invention. Lord Acton's trivial but important adage, "Power corrupts," although true enough, must be meditated upon. Wherefrom does it? Must

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it? The seemingly inevitable corruption seems to have come about this way. Being social by nature, humans require social management to survive, as Aristotle, among others, showed us. And social management

is politics. But political management called "government" requires the consent of the governed, and the political right to govern as endorsed by the consent of the governed breeds power over the people. Power here 1s synonymous with dominance, and leads to domination over the governed. And such political domination inevitably turns around to extract by force the popular consent which 15 here equivalent to submission. Since political "check" on power amounts to a nuisance and hindrance of free political management at all cost, the government tends to ensure that there be without a check on its power and domination; thus power tends to grow, and powergrowth unchecked corrupts. Such is a likely scenario of how power came to corrupt itself. Under the corrupt power, the government, the governed, and its milieu, the whole situation 15 nothing short of a disaster. Originally the government was set up for the purpose of stamping out violence (Hobbes, Locke); now it 1s itself the very hellish seedbeds of violence, a systematic means of radical brutality that rends the people's ldentities away from themselves, often causing their deaths, both personal and physical. As a result, it 15 hardly an overstatement to claim that there has scarcely been a single government in history truly designed, constituted, and administered for the sake of the people; there have only been more or less intolerable governments. In fact, we shudder to remember tragic mistrials of Socrates and Jesus, and Nero's execution of his own mother for no legitimate reason. Countless such cases have been so widespread, known and unknown, that a Japanese friend of my father’s grimly and solemnly warned me, “My dea: friend, whatever you do, never get involved with the law and the government." “Government” is another word meaning sugar-coated “horror.”''” We cannot help but ask, *Is this deadly chain inevitable? Are there any breakable links?" Surprisingly, our answer 15, "Almost every hnk here 15, in principle." "Nothing is strictly necessary and indis10 On a spirited. attack of “national government,” see John Hospers, “The Nature

of the State," in The Personalist, Vol. 59, No. 4 (October, cal information

therein.

1978), and bibliographi-

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pensable in the human world,” we are almost tempted to say. Except for the link between populist government and the right to do so, the government needs no dominance, much less power, to govern; the society can be managed by some unobtrusive caring commoners, those “nobodies,” with commonsense measures, more or less ingenious. For management can be done as “service” to the people. In fact, Christianity has deftly linked “management” to "service," “ruler” to “servant.”"" The governor is “public servant.” And then, the link between popular consent and submission 15 broken; consent may implicate obedience but not necessarily submission. Much less does power need to force the people into submission, allegiance, loyalty. Domination, desire to have power over people, demanding their submission, is now seen to exhibit one’s power-hunger, not the necessity of sociopolitical management, “for the sake of the people.” Thus, in other words, good government is no government (Thoreau,

Chuang Tzu

“since no government is good. After all, the word

"politics" in common parlance—although connected with nationstates—has little to do with culture but with barbarism of selfish maneuver for power. “Politics” is often a dirty word. The verbal ignominy perhaps came from one of at least two meanings of the word. “Politics” indicating management of communal affairs of a family, a club, an association, and the like, 1s one thing.

Such communal management belongs to an intrinsic matter of humanness. “Politics” related to the nation-state with a distinct national constitution, rulership, soldiers, police force, national flag, national anthem, and the like, is quite another thing. Such "national governance" belongs to a factual mode of communal management. And it is “politics” as national governance that bred the unsavory connotation. Worse, people pledge their absolute allegiance to contingent, replaceable, and often ignoble governmental politics. Politics in the former sense 15 essential to human nature; politics in the latter sense came to be an accidental Leviathan, an inveterate ui Cf. Mathew 20:25-28, Mark 9:35, 10:43-45, Luke 22:24-27, John 13:4-5, 13-14. 112 Cf. Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849), Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854); Chuang Tzu's “Age of Ultimate Virtue" in Chuang Tzu, 9/7, 9/9,

19/29,

12/80, 29//30, et passim, and my Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play,

Ν.Υ.: The Crossroad pp. 115-138.

Publishing

Company

and

Scholars

Press,

1982,

Aria

III,

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social cancer. Tragically, since the time of Plato and Aristotle the important distinction between these two quite different meanings of politics has been disregarded. Government and even people often resort to essential communal politics to defend contingent governmental politics, and come to urge and practice absolute allegiance to the fortuitous politics, to the point of apotheosizing the Leviathan and sacrificing their lives to it, in order to "fulfill" human nature, in the name of the essential politics. The Orientals, especially the Japanese, the Korean, and the Chinese, are particularly vulnerable, if not prone, to this fatal confusion." Pathetically also, those astute postmodernist critiques of philosophy, otherwise often brillant, end up in cultural relativism that is prone to be drawn centripetally to “power,” which in turn is quite often idenüfied as "political" that 1s national-governmental. And since such a national political power is contingent and has been historically brutal, such politicization of cultural iconoclasm not only sounds contingent and unconvincing, but is also colored with apocalyptic gloom. All this stems from confusing politics as communal with politics as national. But we must consciously make, and conscientiously, zealously, watch over, the distinction between essential communal politics and accidental governmental politics. And then we would be able to expose that typically Oriental sanctification of political loyalty (allegiance imbued with passionate respect-love toward their ruler), even to the level of utmost cosmic-moral duty (second only to the supreme one of filiality), to be what it really is, that is, a fantastic, fatalistic,

and fatal 1dolatry of a mere expedient, circumstantial, and replaceable mode of managing communal affairs— government, dynasty, regime, nation. And then we would realize how entirely and fatally unrelated “managing dominance," if there should be any dominance, of a servicegovernment is to "absolute domination," to which the dictators have customarily thought that they have “right” to claim the people's total and absolute allegiance. 1.5.2. With the above clearance of the meanings of “politics” in mind, we can now start all over again to consider what "government" 15 as 3 Mencius was a rare exception. See 186, 188, 4B3, et passim. These sections were so scathing, threatening, and subversive that many rulers of later dynasties had them expurgated.

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it should be. If, because no government 15 good, good government is no government, What “no government” actually means must be considered. The human being-born (= nature) is a social affair, not as gregarious animals but as conscious solicitude, decision, design, contrivance,

and cooperation, not only at the time of birth (sexual, medical) but throughout human life. I am right now being born by the Other into the Other, becoming the “Other” to the Other. This is what Section

2 will elaborate.

I am of, in, with,

and

to the Other.

The

human person 15 by nature spontaneously social. Mother serves her baby’s needs without noticing her service; she just loves her baby. Conversely, the mother just intently serves the baby; she 15 not aware that she loves him. Politics is this social aspect of human nature made conscious and exercised forth. No wonder Michael Polanyi characterizes our political life as a tacit dimension of human life as such. For Polanyi, the phenomenal structure of tacit knowing is that “we are aware of that from which we are attending to another thing, in the appearance of that thing." Now, one of the physiognomic features of humanness is its sociality. As we recognize a face by attending to it in terms of its features from which we attend, so an 1deal human sociality is that from which we attend so as to attend to our exercise of humanness. We attend from our sociality to attend to

our humanity, which yet appears in terms of sociality. And con-

versely, we add, sociality is our conscious and contrived externalizing of our moral exercise, our spontaneous performance of humanness. Thus we attend to our humanness in terms of spontaneously implementing the business of communal management, and attend to communal management by way of practicing spontaneous humanness. Both are indeed spontaneous exercises, yet both can remain neither tacit nor conscious at once; while one is being implemented the other remains tacit away from our conscious attention. Thus we cannot implement one without implementing the other, yet we can do so only by unconsciously implementing one by consciously performing the other. Now, Polanyi's tacitness, our spontaneity, amounts to our dynamic inside, and consciousness to our performing outside. Our external performance amounts to an internalizing of whatever givens there

''* Michael

15-16, 86.

Polanyi,

The

Tacit Dimension,

N.Y.:

Anchor

Books,

1967,

pp.

11,

78

SECTION

1:

CULTURAL

TOGETHERNESS

are 1η the outside world so as to spontaneously “configure” them into an organic whole of a thing's “face” to which we attend. Besides, the preposition “to” here denotes the reciprocity, the sociality, of the face; I have my face only by virtue of my Other

recognizing it.'!'” Thus, this tacit political dimension describes, by

externalizing in terms of social organization and management, the innate human political nature; politics 1s our inborn expressive "face" of sociality. And since innateness bespeaks internality, politics must spontaneously arise from inside us.''® This 15, ultimately speaking, what justifies our claim that political exercise is our innate right, that we were born equally entitled, and each endowed with equal legal right, to political participation. This 15 why when a person 15 of age, say, 18 years old, one has the right, privilege, and responsibility to decide on one's nationality. But this political provision 15 not enough. One must be given the right not only to choose a specific nation, adopt and join in a specific nationality, but also to propose to adjust, modify, and renovate the mode of government of the nation one adopts as one's own, as one sees appropriate and necessary. Of course, every citizen is told that one has the legal right (and responsibility to partake in the democratic process of government together with all other citizens, and one of the democratic processes is to have a channel via which one's opinions are heard, deliberated, decided on, and implemented accordingly. But actually one has to belabor oneself through the backbreaking, mindboggling bureaucratic machinery before one can have one's view heard, if at all, and that after much modification of the original proposal. To have one's views heard, considered, and implemented upon is the citizen’s right only in name and on paper. lhe government owes it to the people to streamline and simplify itself to make it convenient for any citizen at any time to propose any view to change their government for the better. Namely, the government owes it to its people to become an administration which is more flexible, efficient, ingenious, and responsive to popular needs

15 Cf. 2.5.1. et passim in Section 2 on “face.” ΠΡ We remember considering the cultural desirability of the outside looking in

(1.3., 1.3.2., 1.4.1.2). Now, we reverse the direction and consider the political desirability of coming out from within. This 15 of course to complete the inside-outside dynamism. Cf. also the fifth description of "togetherness" in Preface above.

POLITICAL

TOGETHERNESS

79

and aspirations, to become truly a service bureau of, for, and by the people. 1.5.2.1. This 15 not a mere pious hope but a proposal which 1s vitally, urgently, necessitated by the very nature of political institution, strictly an outgrowth of inner communal need to manage itself and nothing else (such as a means for some officials to amassing their own private fortunes). It thus behooves the government to pay close attention to each person’s need. For, to borrow Leibniz in our own way, each monadic person 15 no mere individual but reflects the soclahty of one’s community from one’s own peculiar perspective and in one’s own peculiar manner, and a particular community is an organic composition of all these personal socialities; there is no community apart from its constituent individual persons. The government only betrays its own genius, that is, destroys itself, if it takes a statistical average of many individual proposals, or discounts one proposal in the light of other, perhaps socially more powerful, proposal(s). The unwieldy and bewildering bureaucratic machinery, supposedly meant as a travel-channel for people’s proposals to the appropriate governmental department, 15 really a noose that strangles citizens, thereby strangling the community and the people’s government to death. And so the lethal nature of political bureaucracy les in, among others, its unwieldy size—it 15 too big, that is, too big for the individual citizens to approach and appropriate for their individual social needs. Because of its enormous size, the government is unconquerably powerful in imposing on its people their political responsibility, and is powerless to fulfill its own responsibility, being too big to be sensitive to the individual citizens’ respective needs. The government is so big as to be too quick to take from its people and too slow to give anything to them, if at all; and no citizen, single or corporate, is powerful enough to challenge it, much less modify it. And so a radical reduction of the size of our government is of paramount importance. Here, more than anywhere else, “Small 15 beautiful”; political smallness makes the government effective and sensitive, rendering itself more capable of fulfilling the onginal purpose for which it is set up. This argues for the importance of a check on governmental aggrandizement. Reduction of size can turn political dominance into pervasive communal service. Here caring service leads to dominance of

80

SECTION

I:

CULTURAL

TOGETHERNESS

no domination, that 15, governing dominance in accommodation to popular needs. This political caring, in turn, can be an internal check on the corruption of its power. People, on their part, can contribute to ıt by contractually agreeing to follow, if not obey, the manager14] unit, the “public servant,” and trying their best to improve on it to enhance its governing serving power. 1.5.2.2. For such a check to work, small political units are required— neighborhood “states,” village “states,” city-states, must be instituted. These small "states" are states made up of coordinating myself and my Others; then these small states should coordinate themselves into a loose world federation of small regional states. After all, politics as regionalism is not without historical precedent; “politics” is management of polis, which was a small city-state in early Greece. The rationale, in any case, for world federation of small regional states. is as follows. While human autonomy requires sociality to grow, sociality should not be allowed to stifle autonomy. The first requirement 15 failed by anarchism, whose alleged answer, nationalism, has failed both requirements. For nationalism 15 both too small to respond to universal social needs and too large to be personally relevant to the growth of autonomy. And nationalism monopolizes power and calls anyone who interferes with its operation one who "usurps" power, and so "subversive," worthy of punishment; it does not share power with its people, nor does it hold power in trust from 115 people. It serves merely to stunt personal autonomy and suffocate its growth. Besides, crisscrossing international webs of non-political interests cut across traditional national boundaries, which are now more hin-

drance than help to human needs, as dramatically borne out today by the dramatic but spontaneous formation of “European Community" in blatant disregard of national regulations, monetary and otherwise, if not sovereignty. Something similar 1s International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement, organized in Japan in 1972 to serve farmers throughout the world, totally bypassing national politics and boundanes. That "notorious" General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) tends to get out of national governments’ hands. Academic, banking, industrial, medical, sports, arts, fashion, and entertainment communities

7

Here I agree with Rawls and Nozick.

POLITICAL

TOGETHERNESS

8l

are doing the same, with substantial harvests for homo-cosmic welfare and harmony. Politics 15 to serve, not to hinder, their traffic. National politics, 1n fact, simply must facilitate their promotion, on pain of becoming outdated and then being ignored out of existence. Authority 15 needed to enforce world coordination as well as regional governments to be coordinated worldwide. Such authority 15 a power not to crush but to serve regional and personal autonomies. We need authority not of external coercion but of service born of internal needs of the situation itself. Enough authority can be relegated to world federation, comprising coordinate divisions of equally small governments, only to fulfill the twin needs of humanness: the growth of human autonomy needs social coexistence, which in turn needs coordination to thrive. Feder-

ated authority is an international traffic control officer, whom we hire and whose coordination we obey, for we disobey to our peril. Voluntary compliance to a world service agency is the only way to safe uninterrupted world traffic of human co-thriving. Two wornes can now be answered. World federalism may either grow so powerful as to destroy humanity, or become an ineffective luxury, the worner says. The latter worry is assuaged by the fact that the authority comes from our voluntary compliance necessitated by human interdependence; the former worry ceases when we realize that the authority depends on our voluntary compliance. This loose world federalism is as firm as our decision to relegate the authority to control world trafhic. In other words, such a loose but firm world federalism 15 necessi-

tated both by human nature and by empirical facts today. First, human nature is both social and autonomous. Sociality 15 complementary reciprocity, which bespeaks communal togetherness; autonomy points us to democratic regionalism. This amounts to a universality of political regionalism, world federation among small social institutions. Secondly, empirically speaking, worldwide human interdependence is shown in international webs of transactions and coalitions of all sorts—cultural,

commercial,

industrial;

one

mistaken

transactional

step throws the world into chaos. Human independence, on its part, is clearly shown both in historic tragedies born of dictatorship and in today’s rise of regionalisms throughout the world. This world situation both of human independence and interdependence points at a strong historical trend toward a world agency to coordinate small sociopolitical organizations worldwide.

82

SECTION

1.6.

Intercultural

I: CULTURAL

TOGETHERNESS

traffic

It is in some such manner as above that our consideration of cultural togetherness has naturally led us to considering politics. And politics, in turn, conveniently transfers us to the theme of the Other, which will be treated in the next Section 2. But how does the connection between the healing of political violence and a radical rethinking of the otherhood obtain? Václav Havel said poignantly that "post-totalitarian system," “auto29

totality," works

today because

we let it work,

no, "support"

ες

it, and

we support its work because we are capable of hving a lie to ourselves. And we are rent from ourselves by the political power because we have a rift within ourselves, allowing ourselves to be swayed away from our true selves by trivials of consumer-oriented modernity and superficialities of mass indifference.!'? Now if this Havel’s analysis of our status quo is valid, our inevitable problem 15 twofold: first, whether human togetherness 15 possible at all; second, how we could achieve it. ‘The second problem we have pondered, on how the toughest sort of togetherness, a cultural one,

can be achieved—by way of internal criticism. But the derivative and immediate form of cultural togetherness, a political one, is beset with that nasty difficulty of mass indifference due to our internal rift. This raises that most basic problem, as to whether human togetherness is possible at all, and why. What we need, then, is to think through again our human nature of sociality, our existential category of the “Other” that 15 within us, constituting us. For quite possibly, both the rift within our essential inside and the sway toward superficial outside originates in our very constitution. Perhaps what Havel saw 15 a corrupt internal ΓΙ which originally constitutes our very personhood. Our critical “Other” inside ceases to be critical, and sold out to the political system, our Big Brother outside us; it is thus that collusion and duplicity originates in the corruption of the Other within me. 1.6.1. After all, thinking does not happen “in the head” but between and among heads of those caught in the trafic in significant symbols, such as words,

gestures,

drawings,

"8 Havel, op. cit., pp. 53-54.

music,

artifacts, buildings,

cut natural

INTERCULTURAL

TRAFFIC

83

objects like jewels. For thinking zs this cultural symbolic traffic; thinking generates cultural artifacts. And we human beings need such a traffic to grow and find our bearings in the world, on pain of death, both physical and cultural. And culture is the resultant product of this traffic; here, Sir Edward Tylor’s classical definition of culture makes sense: “knowledge, belief, law, morals, custom,”

and all that. Such culture is a product of the

Culture

shapes

traffic of thinking, of symbols, and then serves in its turn as an environment of this very traffic. Culture and thinking form the humanity's feedback system in which each shapes the progress of the other. patterns

and

our

acts,

comportment,

and

beings,

enabling us to think more deeply and widely, enabling us to survive and thrive on in the world. Thus culture 15 a big conglomerate without neat systematic genealogy. It 15 instead bulging with things de trop, ever exploding, extravagant; it 15 those things—too much for systematic thinking, always confusing, always demanding compromises, and always without efficiency, without people's concentrated allegiance—that describe what culture as such is. And we must go a step further. If a cultural feedback system shapes the people within that system, and if no one culture—being an imperfect product of imperfect human beings in a specific ambience—is perfectly satisfactory and self-sufficient, the cultural traffic that shapes us should not be limited within one culture alone, but should be extended to various traffics among many cultural systems. This is particularly urgent today when cultural clashes are one major cause and “rationale” for worldwide Armageddon. Moreover, cultural traffic and feedback system should be extended to include our dealings with Nature. Nature 15 today compellingly cultural, now that our technological “traffics” with Nature have turned urgently ecologically significant. Natural sciences and their technological behaviors, being themselves cultural products, should not merely tinker with specifics here and there in nature, but should themselves be seriously examined, directed, and dealt with as an issue of “intercultural” nature, in a vitally ecological and pervasively homo-cosmic sense. 1.6.2.

These our ecological, intercultural “traffics” and their various cosmopolitan “feedback systems” bespeak interactive “togetherness.”

84

SECTION

I: CULTURAL

TOGETHERNESS

Becoming human 15 to grow into a true individual, that 15, to grow from having one’s scattered genetic potentialities into possessing a specific cultural style of performances and comportment, and that via dynamic cultural and intercultural togetherness. Quite literally, togetherness of interactive cultural sort creates and shapes us. But how do we understand and characterize cultural togetherness? Cultures are so many, so varied, so radically constitutive of presupposition for human interaction. We have here two problems: (1.6.3.) how to characterize cultures in their respective unique features, and (1.6.4.) how to understand within unique features their common overall characteristics as “human culture.” 1.6.3. This is the problem of “cultural universals” proposed by such anthropological luminaries as Clark Wissler, B. Malinowski, G.P. Murdock, C. Kluckhohn, all of whom tried valiantly to ferret about for customs common to all local variants and connect coherently with some determinate reference points, to form what can be called universal cultural types and patterns such as “religion,” “marriage,” “property,” which were instituted and developed for the civilizing progress of humankınd. All societes must reproduce, punish antisocial behav22

ior, and

allocate goods

to survive,

hence, the

८८

cultural universals

of

marriage, religion, and property. All local variants are indifferently squeezed and classified into those universal slots. Immediately a two-layer system 15 set up: bloodless empty classes up there, bewildering cultural details down here. This is a familiar Platonic project. Geertz rightly complains that the relation between the local and the universal is too “loose and indeterminate"! ? to be of any aid to our detailed, concrete, and inner understanding of culture. ^Once culture... have been converted into separate scientific

‘levels, ... it is very hard to bring them back together again.”

Another mistaken method for finding cultural characteristics 1s a typological approach based upon statistical treatment of frequent occurrences of a specific phenomenon to factor out commonalities, “archetypes,” of which concrete individuals are mere accidental variations and approximations. This is again a Platonic project. Geertz

has a good attack on this approach:"?! '' Geertz, Interpretation, op. cit., pp. 42-43. 20 Ibid., p. 41. Ἢ 2! Ibid., pp. 51, then 44.

POLITICAL

TOGETHERNESS

85

[T]he differences among individuals and among groups of individuals are rendered secondary. Individuality comes to be seen as eccentricity, distinctiveness as accidental deviation from ... the underlying, unchanging, normative type. In such an approach, ... living detail is drowned in dead stereotype. [But] [t]here is no opposition between general theoretical understanding and circumstantial understanding, between synoptic vision and a fine eye for detail. The notion that unless a cultural phenomenon 15 empirically universal it cannot reflect anything about the nature of man 15 about as logical as the notion that sickle-cell anemia

1s, fortunately,

not universal,

it cannot tell us anything about human genetic processes. Ít 15 not whether phenomena are empirically common that is critical in Sclence一 else why should Becquerel have been so interested in the pecuhar behavior of uranium?—but whether they can be made to reveal the enduring natural processes. . . . Seeing heaven in a grain of sand is not a trick only poets can accomplish.

But it takes the poet 1η a scientist to discern the enduring and general essence of things in the trivial particular, the specific “grain of sand" the poet-scientist finds to be significant. In such manner, Geertz Is instructive in regarding individual distinctiveness rather than generalization of frequent occurrences as crucial for our discernment of the uniquely typical in culture. It 1s not the generally common but the uniquely typical that is revealing. It is a selective concrete particular that most reveal the generally human. Scientists and anthropologists are those "poets" who point out for us those crucial, critical, nodal specifics, those odd revealing “grains of sand," rather than "show-

ing us how to find them,” as Geertz said.'”

Another point on which we depart from Geertz 1s an important one, about what these revealing significant features are. Geertz said that they are “variables within unitary systems of analysis."'^ That, however, would be a Platonic project all over again, not one single grain of sand revealing the general heavenly feature of humanness. We say, instead, it 15 like recognizing a typical face of a family. lhe face-type has to be individually recognized in several specific faces of an identical family, and perhaps recognized in a specific face as a typical one. This “recognition” happens, again, in a poetic synthetic moment, not via statistical averaging of the common similars, for “face”

2 Thid., p. 43.

33 Ibid., p. 44.

is an individual

concentrate

of all facial elements,

86

SECTION

I: CULTURAL

TOGETHERNESS

and an individual cannot be dealt with statistically. Family facial resemblance can be discerned via a specific face in the family, or else via family differences. Likewise, typical physiognomic feature(s) of a cultural situation can be shown best by citing one (or several) revealing, concrete, anecdotal, and exemplary event(s), biographical, historical, or situational.

But how can poet-scientists pick up the typical exemplars to reveal the physiognomic feature(s) of a cultural situation? It all depends on their sensitivity to the situational nuances. This is not dissimilar to the historian’s selection of relevant evidence out of a whole host of historical documents. It was that perceptive poet of the historians, Collingwood, who says,'** Everything is evidence which the historian can use.... And of all the things perceptible to him there is not one which he might not conceivably use as evidence on some question, if he came to it with the right question in mind. The enlargement of historical knowledge came about mainly through finding how to use as evidence this or that kind of perceived fact which historians have hitherto have thought useless to them. The whole perceptible world, then, is potentially and in principle evidence to the historian. It becomes actual evidence in so far he can use it.... Every present has a past of its own,... as here and now perceived. In principle the aim of any such act is to use the entire perceptible here-and-now as evidence for the entire past through whose process it has come into being.

Translated into our context, the capable scientist 15 one who dnscerns in all concrete cultural details of all human cultures some physiognomic features of human culture in general. Cultural scientists are With historians something of a poet to discern in the concrete particular grains of human cultural sand the physiognomic heaven of humanity. And these "sands" are potentially every sand in the universe. It is up to our poetical perceptiveness to pick from them relevant features to compose peculiar characteristics of culture in general, or humanness in general. 1.6.4.

Moreover

(and this is the second problem

cited above,

understand within unique features their common

1.e., how

to

overall character-

7* R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, London: Oxford University Press, 1946, 1956, pp. 246-47.

POLITICAL

TOGETHERNESS

87

istics as “human culture”), it 15 the poet in these thinkers who sees that the universal, the general, the physiognomy, and the transversal, are in the

end

one

and

the

same.

This

is an

alternative

to a

Platonic view of universals. Here, “face” is the key term; face lights up the meanings in the

universal

and

the general;

we

call them

“transversal.”

It is not an

accident that each culture has its specific “face” among those people of that culture. And, mind you, my face is not for me to see; it 15 for my Other to see. The cultural features of my face are clearly recognized only by “foreigners,” outsiders to my culture, my cultural Others. “My face” is myself which yet I cannot see myself from inside, but can only be recognized by my Other outside me. And the inside-outside reciprocity and dialectic is where culture originates. Here again, “culture” is intimately connected with “outside” and “inside.” Al this implies that human beings are in their individual selves born unfinished and incomplete; we all need the Other, my outside inside me, in more senses than one of the word, “Other,” to have

traffic therewith, to grow into ourselves. And so, what the Other is becomes our key ontological question. Sociopolitical lie (“inauthenücity," we call it) mentioned above, among others, has an ontological root 1η us called the Other within. Various aspects of all this will be considered in the next Section 2 on the Other, "personal togetherness" within and. without.

SECTION

PERSONAL 2.1. The

2

TOGETHERNESS:

THE

Other as being, relation, mode

OTHER

of thinking,

“face?”

The inside-outside dialectic in the meeting of cultures is concretely typified in the Other, though not abstract otherness, “alterity,” or "altarity," a curious concept in vogue today. Far from being an abstract notion, the Other is the all too concrete not-T of two sorts,

the Thou and the It. And the It is to be Thou, and not the other way around. typified in the concrete notion? of the being; it 15 also a relation and a mode of togetherness. I'ypification of the Other, in the concrete

understood in terms of the The Thou and the It are Other, which is not just a thinking. Otherhood typifies in turn, concentrates itself

notion of the “face,” a transversal, to be treated in

2.6. below. lo "typify" combines our three thinking performances, to generalze, to summarize, and thereby to characterize. These activities replace the traditional philosophical (or rather, Socratic) activity of theoretical abstraction from concrete actuality. In considering the "Other" as a typification of togetherness, the dialectic of the meeting of the inner with the outer among cultures, we generalize, summarize,

concentrate,

crystallize,

and

thereby

characterize

what

we

considered in the last Section, and ready ourselves for three typical worlds—argumentative, religious, philosophical—of togetherness in the following. ' Cf. e.g., Mark C. Taylor, Altanty, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987; Galen A. Johnson and Michael B. Smith, eds. Ontology and Altenty in MerleauPonty, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990. ? Strangely, this not-subject the other is a constitutive aspect of the subject, as will be seen soon. + “Concrete notion" can be an oxymoron if “notion” is taken to mean abstract concept. But notion can also mean something like a common noun, a typification of things of the same sort. The legitimacy of "concrete notion" hangs on what “typification” should be taken to mean. Hence, its explication here. Cf. 2.6.1., 4.7.2.1., 5.4.3.1., 5.4.3.2.1., 5.5.1.3., 5.5.2.2.2., E.3.

ΤΗΕ

OTHER

AS BEING

89

a. Before considering this hved notion of the Other, we may pause to notice two things. First, we have just engaged in a peculiar Othermode of thinking. This is peculiar in that we have since Plato engaged in the egocentric I-mode of thinking. With objectivity as our ideal, and with external observation and survey of anything we study as our method, we came to rely on them as the standard cognitive procedures 一 the “scientific” research. We did not realize that this our “common sense” of the method of knowing came as a result of the egological I-mode of thinking, where knowledge means nothing but the I watching its object at an arm's length. It 1s in this type of thinking that Descartes looked for the indubitability of the Ego's knowledge and Kant went through the transcendental deduction to disclose the conditions for the possibility of experience, that is, the I’s experience, and reached the tran-

scendental Ego as the postulate of all experience and thinking. Secondly, we should note that this our egocentric mode of thinking has led us to some pretty serious blind alleys, two of which claim our attention. First, the subject I is now forever separated from its object of knowledge out there, giving rise to both a bottomless doubt concerning the certainty about our knowledge (Descartes), and endless verificational headaches (cognitive and linguistic analyses). As a result, we are eternally locked up in our own scientific knowledge, and cannot help imposing our technological management—analysis, synthesis—on our environment, which we take to be our object to know, conquer, and tame. We have come now not only to suffer from horrendous ecological nightmares; we are at the rock-bottom of uncertainty, losing both our objects and our own identity. First, egocentrism implies objective observation that loses the inside of things. For only things observable are real, and since there is no observable inside, observability bespeaks outside objectivity. Everything now consists only in the “outside” to be observed. Everything is outside; the inside, if any, is forever opaque, opaquely nowhere. Thus,

secondly, even the self, which 15 now

real only from exter-

nal observation, becomes impossible to know; the transcendental Ego is coupled with its impenetrable opaque background, forever unknown, forever breeding the Freudian external explication, the Cartesian external doubt. * Cf. 了 .1.1.

90

SECTION

2: PERSONAL

TOGETHERNESS

And then there comes an analytical cut, an empirical knife that cuts this Gordian knot, this Cartesian aporia, and declares that man is nothing but “outside”; not even the self is required to cognitively “understand” man, who is now a mere complex computer. Interestingly and pathetically, it is “man” that is declared to be so by man-ly external objectivity. The “woman” who listens to her inner body language, and lives in her intimate body-scape, is nowhere to be seen, or rather, felt. The self is abysmally, uselessly “opaque” to this external computer-intelligence; therefore, no self 15 required. Functonalism, operational "pragmatism," has the day; there is no more intimate night whose tender integrity, that inner beauty of the nightly abyss, the woman embodies. Need I confess that this entire passage is evoked by conversation with my Ruth the literary psychologist? It 15 thus that the egological perspective has led us into a hopeless cul-de-sac of the "outside," philosophical and therefore technological, where both the subject and its object are gone; all is lost. b. Ihe situation is hopeless unless we radically examine where we went wrong. We went wrong at the very start of our thinking; we think in an egocentric manner. We must start all over from scratch, at the basic level of our very mode of thinking, switching ourselves from ego-thinking to Other-thinking. The correlative notion of the "Other" consists in intersubjective mutuality, for without the I there would not be (the Ps) Other, and without the Other there would not be the I, the (Other's) Other. Concretely, the Ps living morphology, or rather, living physiognomy, stands out as it 15 and no other, only by facing the Other. lhe peculiarity and integrity of the I depends on the Other's recognition. The I stands out against the background (the face) of the Other. The Other 5 of two sorts, the Thou and the It, distinct from the I; it is such "Other" that goes to constitute the “essence,” the ipseity and identity, of the I. And the Other as this intersubjective sociality, communal togetherness, constitutes the so-called Lebenswelt, our Life-World, in which we all live and have our beings.’ > Cf. 1.3. ° Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourses of Modernity, tr. Frederick G. Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993, pp. 294-98. The above is clearer in argument and less convoluted in terminology, operating as it does on the level of commonsense reality. Postmodernist deconstructionism contributes much in this direction, however.

THE

OTHER

AS BEING

9]

Furthermore, within this hfe-world the person is now shaped up as one integral person, thanks to the Other-thinking therein. Plato almost operated on this Other-thinking when in his Republic, among others, he took the human “soul”—psyche, personal integrity—to be on a par with a community of three aspects of the self, desire, will, and reason, analogous to artisans, soldiers, and the ruling class in a

community. Sadly, however, Plato was not engaged in the Other-thinking any further, because he took the true personal unity to be that under the rulership of reason alone. The communal unity of the self 1s not a truly communal, democratic one of mutual consultation and cooperation among all the three on an equal basis. In fact, democracy is the lowest sort of government, equivalent to a mob-rule, for Plato. And since then, everyone takes the person to be “one dimensional" (Marcuse);’ man is rational. Even Freud the discoverer of the inside,

the other-than-reason, followed suit when Freud took insanity to be something “irrational,” a loss of rational control under reality-principle (a cipher for reason) to some dark forces inside, which are regarded as something libidinal and sinister; the inside is irrational. c. Thus,

we

sadly note,

the radically communal

Other-thinking,

where desire, will and reason mutually consult and cooperate, interinfluencing, and symbiotic, 15 still to come. We sorely need the communal Other-thinking applied to the self. That desire and will have their own respective "reasons," or rather,

reasonablenesses that make sense out of jumble of things, inside and out,

and

that

these

reasonablenesses

are

other

than,

and

often

“wiser” than, reason in our ordinary sense, is to be taken with utmost seriousness. This is because only thus can symbiosis in the inner and true sense takes place. For "desire" is the person's sensibility that picks and prioritizes (1.e., makes coherent) the desirables in the world, and this sensibility is the reason of the desire; “will” is that intentionality that gives a directive under which, and a direction in which, rea-

son proceeds, and this intentionality 15 the reason of the will. Sensibility and intentionality are the self's inner reasons, the reason of the living and toward living, which gives reason coherence

^ We

use

“one

dimensional”

that gives rise to Marcuse's.

not

in Herbert

Marcuse's

sense

but

in

the

sense

92

SECTION

2:

PERSONAL

TOGETHERNESS

and direction(s) to proceed.? Desire and will are thus reasons of reason. Reason then ceases to be a “whore” (Luther) without integrity (reason-and-direction of its own), serving everything (including both immoral and moral acts, among others) and so serving none (serving one canceling off serving an opposite one). Now, we have just considered desire and will from the perspective of reason, and found that reason penetrates all of our inner constitutive aspects— desire, will. This pan-reasoning process in our total living can be called “communicative reason," to extend Habermas’ phrase beyond its original social sense. The Chinese thinkers have long used the phrase, “heavenly (natural) LZ" or just “Li,” usually rendered as "principle." By the same token, we can see how the pan-willing phenomenon throughout the self's reason and desire, as well as 1η all things and Nature itself, 15 expressed by Spinoza's ubiquitous "conatus" of things (their ontological thrust to be as they are), by the person's “intentonality” (Brentano, Husserl), and by the ontocosmic “breath” energy (ch?) (Mencius, Chuang Tzu, among other Chinese thinkers). Likewise, there 1s a pan-desiring, synesthetic sensibility in the self. It 1s as wrong to denigrate sight (as among the feminists) as it is to glorify it (as in the traditional Western philosophy). After all, the human body has sight integrated into the community of touch (taste) and hearing (smell). One cannot tickle, caress, and kiss oneself. Tactility 15 communal, where to touch zs to be touched, activity zs

passivity. Similarly with our vision, hearing, smelling, and tasting; we see (in the mirror), hear, smell, and taste ourselves as the Other does us. And we must learn how to see in inter-coordination with hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting, and from our holistic interconnected body. Synesthesia 1s the word; this is the “logic” of somatic sensibility, the structure of somatic community imbued with sensory desires and sensibility.” The pan-desiring sensibility, synesthesia in the original sense, imbuing the reason and the will, is rendered as “divine (pervasive) desire”

* And also not to proceed. This explains why Wang Yang-ming proposed the "unity of knowledge and action” as a life-ideal, and “the weakness of the will” that plagued Aristotle and St. Paul. I owe this insight to my Ruth the psychologist. But to pursue this line further would take us too far afield from our main theme.

? Cf. my Butterfly, pp. 188-89, 257, 320, note 174 in p. 429.

THE

OTHER

AS ΒΕΙ͂ΝΟ

93

(shen yü) (Chuang Tzu), within which all our life-activities are profoundly satisfactory in terms of our personal desires, social morals, and heavenly reason. We can dance through the inner recesses of

things with gusto (Chuang Tzu;

we can “follow what the heart

desires without trespassing regulations" (Confucius). We can do and enjoy things to our hearts’ content, and be great in the universe as Nietzsche's Superman in his amor fati. The entire person 15 now shaped up as “one integral person" with one's holistic and autonomous

directive, thrust, and desire, all totally

inter-penetrative. The person 15 as all-reason as one is all-will and all-desire, that 1s, one's reason 15 as much willing and desirous, as one's will is reasonable

and desirous, and one's desire 15 reasonable

and willing. The person is now that

fits and

cosmic.!*

extends

the

one interconnected integral sanity

natural

universal

As-is,

both

d. As a result, within this hfe-world of otherhood

Other-thinking,

the twofold

egocentric predicament

social

and

and the self of

(2.1.a.) disap-

pears. There is neither separation of the I from its object, the Other,

for it is the Other in whose face the I stands out (existing) as such, nor hopeless recoil into the opaque abyss at the bottom of the transcendental Ego, whose background is now seen to be the true self inter-constitutive of/with the concrete Other. And we now cease to treat our environment as our object; we instead recognize the worldenvironment to be what it really is, our environment (not manageable object) in which we move and have our beings. It 15 therefore eminently worthwhile, no, imperative by virtue of our very living which is as symbiotic as it 15 social-cosmic, to turn from ego-thinking to Other-thinking. It 15 time now, then, to consider this lived notion of the Other as being, relation, and mode of thinking. 2.1.1.

The

How

Other

the I meets the Thou-Other,

has

two

kinds:

the

Thou-Other

know the It but we can only meet the Thou.

the It-Other

and

the

It-Other.

We

10 Chuang Tzu’s kitchen-fellow, with his cleaver, following “divine desire," dances

through the inner recesses of an ox as if a nothing (no-thickness) going through a nothing (interstices). See Chuang Tzu, 3/2-4, 6. See my Butterfly, pp. 316-24. I The Analects, 2/4. “Two of the Confucian Four Books, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean, are devoted to this theme.

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2.1.1.1. Let us begin with our meeting with the infinite Thou,

from whom is derived our usual finite personal Γποι.' Chuang Tzu

the Taoist mystic said that although the amount of ground our soles tread 1s small, we need much of untrod wasted ground to walk at all.” “Likewise,” he continued, “we can know heaven only by our [useless] ignorance.”'° This cryptic saying is unwittingly explained by

Levinas when he said, explaining Descartes,

In thinking the Infinite, the I from the first thinks more than it thinks. The Infinite does not enter into the zdea of the infinite, 1s not grasped; this idea is not a concept. The Infinite is the radically, absolutely, other.... The idea of the infinite is then... the... one that teaches what we are ignorant of. It has been put into us. It is not a reminiscence. Here,

otherness,

ignorance,

and

Thou

the Infinite overwhelms

the Infinite are skillfully combined

to explain one another.” Our problem is, however, what all these mutual meaning-referrals mean. Levinas thought, expanding on Descartes, that our ultimate

us; our dea of the infinite cannot be

grasped (hence, not our concept) but 15 put and given to us. In such our “knowledge” of the absolute Thou—which both Levinas and Chuang Tzu said amounts to our “ignorance”—many of our basic epistemological tools, tools for knowing things, are unified, crystallized, in the following way. Our knowledge of the Infinite Thou-Other amounts to “ignorance” because it totally depends on that Other. This epistemological dependence can be described with four key-terms: ostensive, demonstrative, metaphorical,

and objective.

5 Cf. 4.7.2.2.11., 4.7.2.2.iv., for our dynamic opening to the Ultimate.

ignorance

as an active evocative

^ Chuang Tzu was active in ancient China, during the third century B.C., much

as George B. Shaw and Henry L. Mencken were in the modern English-speaking world. > Life has much such “waste.” A can-opener has “wasted space” for grip; music is a “necessary luxury" (Y. Menuhin). Eight hours of our 24 must be "wasted" in sleep for homecoming to ourselves. Cf. my “A Philosophy of Sleep—A ‘Taoist Ideal,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Values in Chinese Societies: Retrospect and Prospect, the National Central Library, Taipei, May, 1991. This significant “waste,” the use of the useless, 15 a Taoist contnbution. 16 Chuang Tzu, 24/105. '7 Emmanuel Levinas, “Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” tr. by Alfonso Lingis, revised by Adriaan Peperzak, in the latter's To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1993, p. 107. 8 Cf. 5.3.6.

THE OTHER AS BEING

95

First, since the infinite Thou can never be understood in terms of the 15 inner inventory of knowledge, the only way in which the I can even recognize the Thou 15 by pointing to the Thou, as we point to the sun without being able to look at it directly. Pointing is, after all, the most basic mode of knowing; all knowing originates here. The I's knowledge of the infinite Thou can only be ostensive. Secondly, ostensive definition bespeaks demonstratives, for pointing operation is impossible without the I standing here pointing the Thou there, and “here” and “there” assumed here are situation-dependent demonstratives. “Here” changes its meaning-content as the situation shifts, and so does “there”; hence, they are demonstratives.'” Similarly, the Thou is revealed and recognized as such by the I here pointing thereto. Thus the I-Thou reciprocity is situation-dependent, understandable by demonstratives which, to think of it, originate in this personal reciprocal relation. Thirdly, now that we realize that we recognize the Infinite Thou situationally, ostensively, and demonstratively, we realize also that these manners of knowing are the way of metaphor. “Metaphor” 15 a ferry-over of the I from the shore of the known to that of the unknown by way of pointing the novel there toward the familiar here, i.e., knowing the strange in terms of the familiar. “Ihat monkey is like people." Here the monkey we don't know is understood by way of poinüng to the “people” whom we know. David Hume

said that all our knowledge of experience 15 obtained by metaphors.^

We must be careful, however. If metaphor 15 taken as a one-way traffic, only to know the unknown in terms of the known, we will end up being imprisoned in the known, forever unable to learn the new. If we only take monkeys as like people, we will end up taking monkeys as another sort of “people” whom we know already. Nothing is new under the sun; everything is what we know already, only in

diverse contexts. We are thus locked in frog-in-the-well dogmatism.?

We must then take metaphor as a two-way traffic. After knowing the strange in terms of the familiar, we must reverse the process— reshuffle our familiar priorities, renovate and deepen our knowledge of the familiar, in terms of the new knowledge of the strange. After knowing monkeys to be like people, we must revise and expand our 9 On the importance of “demonstratives,” see my On Chinese Body Thinking, 1.1.

20 That basic “paradigmatic generalization” mentioned in 5.5.2.2.2. by metaphor. Metaphor therefore 15 our basic mode of knowing.

?! Cf. 4.2.2. below, and On Chinese Body Thinking, 2.1.

is achieved

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knowledge of people in terms of the new knowledge of monkeys, such as the animal side of human nature. Conversely, and more radically, knowing the infinite God of Christianity in terms of human affection, we are in a position to rectify and deepen human affection in terms of divine love. This brings us to our final point: Our “knowledge” of the infinite Thou is object-ive. It is not purely objective, merely object-centered, but object-ive, correlatively in the mode of Other-thinking, where there are both the I and the reciprocal Thou. Our knowledge goes from the I-here ostensively to the Thou-there, and metaphorically back to the I-here, as if reaching home for the first time. And all this knowledge is renewed every time the here differs, demonstrativelike. Our “knowledge” of the infinite Thou 15 thus object-ive, radically correlative. To sum up. To meet my Thou ls to meet my Infinite. To acquaint with my Thou ls to point to my Thou demonstratively, to metaphor to my Thou object-ively, and realize that I am ignorant of my Thou except for what my Thou reveals Thou-self to me. Thus to repeat. My basic tools of knowing are mobilized to explain how I come to “know” my infinite Thou. 1 am, after recognizing my Thou ostensively in demonstrative and metaphoric way, still “ignorant” about my Thou. Only by the Thou’s own self-revealing, even just the fact that there zs (in whatever sense) the infinite Thou, do I come to recognize my Thou. This 15 the paradigm that explains what 1! means to meet the finite Thou, for that Thou 1s my Other.

Every Thou of mine is “infinite.””

2.1.1.2. And by extrapolation and derivation, we can now understand our knowledge of the It-Other. The above structure of my Thou-recognition explains our knowledge of the It-Other. We remember we kept insisting that my "knowledge" of the infinite Thou is “ignorance.” We "know" the Thou by realizing our ignorance, since we cannot place the Thou anywhere in our inventory of knowledge, seeing that the infinite overflows the finite which we are. Our Thou"knowledge" lies in noting our inability to locate the Thou in our ^ Apropos of this, we remember nary activity of walking and a most to reach high to the no-knowledge everywhere within the lowliest of low of the mode of togetherness among

that Chuang Tzu started with our most ordibasic lowly place, the trodden ground, so as of Heaven. This shows that the high Thou 15 Thou’s and It's. Cf. 4.1.3.1. This remains true the others and the I.

ΤΗΕ

OTHER

AS BEING

97

finite inventory of knowledge—our “ignorance”—that constitutes my very “knowledge” of my infinite. Now, this our ignorance has been explained by the infinity meeting our finitude. But by definition the Thou, infinite or finite, can not-place its Thouhood at the disposal of the I, for the simple fact that my Thou is my co-subject, and only a no-subject, an object, can be at my disposal. Thus Levinas may have confused subjecthood (of the Thou, co-subjecthood) with infinitude. This is a significant confusion; my Thou is my Infinite, hence, my ignorance. I can only “know” my co-subject in (recognizing) my ignorance. But, of the It-Other we are no longer ignorant. For our cognitive inventory can handle it, as Kant noted. Our inventory is that of cognition, and cognition is usually that of object, the It-Other. Bertrand Russell’s celebrated distinction between knowledge by description applies to the It-Other, since we can know it, while knowledge by acquaintance applies to the Thou-Other, whom we can only meet, and meeting is part of acquainting. And description is that of qualities, of which an object is made, and as a crystallization of which an object is known. This is why we can “grasp” an object and form a concept of it, for a concept is what 15 grasped. Thus it 15 that we "know" the It-Other. But the It-Other, as a derivation of the Thou-Other (in the above manner,

for instance), does retain the otherness of the Thou-Other;

we say an object has its objectivity. The objectivity of the It-Other is shown, among others, in the following three aspects. First, the ItOther has its recalcitrant inviolability as this particular object, about which we can do nothing (short of destroying it as "this particular object"). Secondly, it happens unintelligibly, out of nowhere. We see no rhyme or reason for the sheer factuality of the It-Other being there. We can ask, “Why is there anything rather than nothing?” and get no answer. The ontological shock stays. Thirdly, it has to reveal

itself to us for us to know

it as such

and

such;

we

cannot

legislate, nor can we spin out of ourselves, its "such and such." We must respond to its “beckoning” to investigate it and do research on it; we must be objective about its objectivity. Our knowledge of the It-Other has its own non-arbitrariness about it. 2.1.2. Now that the nature of the I’s no-knowledge of the Thou-Other and

knowledge

of the It-Other are described, both of which thereby

98

SECTION

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TOGETHERNESS

bespeak what the Other (in 105 two modes) 15, we can rehearse the otherhood of the Other more or less conventionally as follows. The Other can be of two sorts, the Other of which I can think, and another one of which I cannot. The first Other, typified by the It, the I can think of as a category of the Ps thought, makes of its theme

and

contents,

thereby integrates it into the I, who

now

has

it as the I's concept. The I contains the It. The second Other, typified by the Thou, originates in what is symbolized to the I as the "infinite," which is the wholly Other. Thus the I cannot think of the Thou whose ideation surpasses the I's idea. The Thou is as it is in itself, separate from and beyond the Ps comprehension. Naturally the presence of the Thou can be realized only through the 15 (noticing of its) ignorance. Instead of containing the wholly Other, Thou, the I can only confront that Other, meeting the radical not-I to constitute a subject-to-subject mutuality of co-reciprocals. This ls encounter with the infinite Thou, the wholly Other, is the

primal paradigm which explains its derivatives of the finite subjectsubject reciprocity, and the communal togetherness is born in our understanding. Togetherness is the community of our “Others.” Here ethics is born, forbidding the subject to objectify other subjects, that is, to identify, think of, contain, integrate, and manipulate other subjects as the Ps objects, the It-Other under the ls management. Instead, the I must meet, respect, and treat the Thou's as the

other Ps, as Ps alter egos, as the I treats itself; 1 must love my neighborThou as myself. This means that the I cannot and should not legislate the other Is; the I must let the other Ps appear of their own accord. The phenomenon of the I-hood, in the singular or in the plural, 15 its free epiphany as itself, at its own pleasure; hence, the ethical law.^ Besides, the epiphany can take time. and we call it “growth.” The I has its onto-ethical obligation to let be, help, care for, and nour-

ish all Ps (including oneself) so as for them to grow into themselves. This describes the true ecology, the logic of “home” everywhere, of communal togetherness. Thus the ecological logic of togetherness has much to do with that of my Other; the community of togetherness 15 composed of many “Others.” The 15 Other is the "essence" of community. ?3 Cf.

4.3.2.

below.

THE OTHER

AS BEING

99

Two points must be noted, however. On the one hand, the Other has little to do with simple plurality, as long as the Other 15 the Thou, a co-subject with the I. Many (impersonal) people are not many Others; only “many Others” constitute a community. The mere many is a contiguous alignment of faceless entities, all indifferently and identically called “numbers”; the Other is a unity in difference between the subject and the Other, the co-subject. The subject is the subject self, the familiar, initial reference point, the “home”;

the Other is a correlative term, my Other, a personal co-relation between the subject and its reciprocal, its co-subject, its Thou. On the other. hand, the Other implies the many, for it is takes at least two, me and my reciprocal Thou, and “two” 15 the many, to make up the mutuality of the Other-relation; many-ness has the rich various implications of the Other. The I is related to the ThouOther in personal sentiment; mere numbers neutrally refer one to another. The I can love and care for the Other,” or hate and fight the Other” mere numbers only make digital distinctions among them—the

number, “one,” is “one” to the number, “two.” The many

is a subspecies of the Other, an enervated, conceptualized, and abstract version of our full-blooded Other-mutuality, as literalism 1s a deadened metaphor.^? 2.1.3. The so-called interrelation of mutual epiphany (Levinas), or free uncontrollable appearances to each other, and meeting, without reducing one subject into another's sphere of cognition, describes the otherhood of the Other, and characterizes the experience of the Other in a true sense— genuine experience, as when we say, "He 15 an experience." This experience must be Other-ly, heteronomous, objective, originating in the subject-subject encounter, neither subject reducible to a projection (or derivation) of the Other subject. Genuineness of our experience hinges on the Other of which we experience. It is

^ “Can” 15 put here because the other can be the It-other or my Thou-other. Mere pileup of It-others makes no community, no neighbors. 5 It is a good question as to whether “indifference” can be classified as one of the other-relations. We would have said no, since indifference is not a sentiment that cements interrelatedness, were it not for the curious modern phenomenon of a faceless crowd or "lonely crowd." This is one of the border-line cases which are as difficult to classify as artificial intelligence or humanoids.

? See Appendix to 2.1.4.: “Schutz and the I-Thou."

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thus that the It-objectivity of exerpeience is derived from the Thoudignity of the Other-subject.”’ Three further characteristics of the Other may be noted. First, the Other is a reciprocity between the subject and the not-subject. The subject may be a human being, a familiar notion or item of information, an initial reference point of the here-and-now. The not-subject may be other human being(s), novel, unfamiliar item(s) of knowledge, things, Nature (a collection of things, an environment of the subject, what there 15), Being as distinct from beings, even God the eternal Thou face to face with and within the human subject. And the subject and the not-subject may be and often are reversed. For instance, a physical thing as the subject can confront a human person as its other not-subject. A novel item of knowledge can serve as a calling subject to summon a scientist, a not-subject, towards a research on it, or evoke a painter or a poet, ἃ not-subject, toward an artistic production. Furthermore, the not-subject can often be an entified object, but not always. When the I calls to the Other as the Thou, the Thou is a co-subject called forth by the caller-subject. A community is an intersubjective network of interactive reciprocations among the cosubjects, the I and its reciprocaüng Other(s). And so on. Secondly,

in all the

above

examples,

the

Other

does

not just in-

differently co-exist with the subject. The Other and myself tend to acüvely interrelate; reciprocity implies interactions, which produces existence. The existence, identity, and integrity of the subject depends on the impact of the Other,

and vice versa; the Other both shapes

the subject and 15 shaped by the subject as respectively such and such and no other. We can characterize this ontological interactions as reciprocative "call and response." Call and response can be of all sorts, including the call of a tree to a painter to bring forth what the tree manifests to the painter; in bringing about this event, both the tree and the painter stand

out, ex-isting, fulfilled.” The mutual activity may be among things of different sorts, such as cognitive metaphoring that knows the novel Other in terms of the already familiar; we can say that the novel Other calls for the already familiar to come over to “digest” and 7 See Appendix to 2.1.3.: “My relation to Levinas.”

28 M. Merleau-Ponty has a magnificent essay on this point, “Eye and Mind,” in

his The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. James Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp. 159-190.

E. Edie,

Evanston,

Ill.:

THE

OTHER

AS BEING

101

“enrich” the novel, thereby to enrich the already familiar in turn. But reversibility is not always equal in weight, as we will soon consider in the case of unrequited love; the Other's need may initially call for the subject's care, but may not (or cannot) reciprocate it with even a smile. So much for the second aspect of the Other-relation, reciprocal inter-activities. Thirdly, reciprocities of the Other-relationship, however varied, are

usually (and if not, should be) patterned after the paradigmatic interactivity among human persons. This is so and should be so for a simple reason that the human Other 15 the fullest, most natural, and richest Other we have, in terms of which we can and do extrapolate and interpret other Other-relationships. The call of the tree to the painter 1s understood in terms of the human call of and to a frend. The impersonal Other is understood by abrıdging the personal one; the mechanical Other 1s the machine-aspect of the personal Other. “Can machines think?" is understood in terms of human thinking; “We are mere complex machines," which is supposed to challenge the uniqueness of thinking as something humanly personal, is in fact understood as such by first abstracüng the mechanical aspect of the human Other, then imposing that mechanical pattern of understanding onto a// aspects of human living, its cognitive aspect included. The Thou is thus prior to the It. And so, 1η order to understand the Other, we will from now on primarily have in mind the human Other, and explicate what the human Other involves. 2.1.4. The Other is thus less a concept, a category, than a dynamics of life, a performative personal dialectic. In this Other is seen I, you, he, she, it, they, all interrelated to respectively exist as such. I am, I

exist as I, only as an "Other" to you, she, they; so are they to me. This means that the Other is both separation and solidarity. For,

in the first place, the Other 15 obviously not I, who

refers 如 some-

one other than myself as the Other. The Other then signifies a separation from myself. At the same time, however, the word “to” bespeaks solidarity, for without the I who points to the Other, the Other cannot exist as such. The very being of the Other qua Other depends on myself; without me the pointer the Other would not have come about. And, as will be seen in 2.5., the I cannot exist without the Other, either. The Other zs, then, both one and cor-

relative two; we call such a strange "sociality," namely, togetherness.

ontological

unity in diversity

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This unity in diversity that ls the Other can be understood as follows. First, without the Other I cannot exist (cf. 2.5.); and conversely, I am

as I am,

for, thanks

to my

existence,

the Other

exists as the

in the same

manner

as the Other

Other (than myself). In this sense, the Other and myself are one, in the umty of interdependence, to become our respective distinct selves 一 the self, the Other. Secondly, we note that this unity 15 that of difference, of dwersity. For I exist by virtue of my being not the Other,

as other than the Other,

exists as other than myself. lhe

ontological

phrase,

"other

than,"

is shared

by both

myself

and the Other (hence, unity), yet the phrase signifies difference (hence, diversity; 1 and my Other both ontologically unite in difference. That 15, we can only exist in togetherness, but we exist together as mutually different, each from the other. Thus the Other, difference, and togetherness—all co-implicate to constitute existents. Hence, the above explanation of the structure of the Other produces a strange unity in diversity, crystalhzed in the "Other." It is thanks to the Other, by the modus operandi of the Other explained above, that both the sıngularıty of an individual (I, she, etc.) and the rich diversity of “they”-community come about. The Other is a fecund womb,

2.2.

The

the social primal,

Other

of togetherness.

as the self

This phenomenon cuts into “myself as another"; I am what I am not, a unity in diverse polarity, so that I can talk to myself, reflect on

myself,

be

ashamed

or proud

of myself,

or dress,

wash,

accuse, praise myself. ΑΙ] these self-to-self relations can be regarded as manifestations of the basic ontological one-in-diversity dialectic of an existent, the self. I am my emotional self, perceptive self, cogniüve self, agonizing, agonal, thrusting self, uncertain hesitating self, doubting forlorn self, anxious awaiting self, sensitive guilty self, and so on. This list of plurality of Other-selves goes on indefinitely, while

I remain my identical self, the one and only selfsame self.” I am my one-in-many dialectic; I am my own Other, my alter ego.”

” Plato's tripartite division of the self is but an elementary and hesitant attempt

at making sense out of this bewildering unity in diversity within the self. 9 See Appendix to 2.1.4.: “Sartre’s negative self-dialectic.”

THE

OTHER

AS THE

SELF

103

Self-reflexive activities above come out (stand out, exist) naturally. So do reverie, memory, history, storytelling, literature, drama, research, future project, religious yearning, community of kindred (or not-so-

kindred) spirits.”' When the unity aspect of this self-dialectic is lost,

we get a multiple-personality syndrome. of this self-dialectic 1s neglected, we get complex machine" syndrome. And then not quite our natural and fully dialectical

When the diversity aspect a "man 15 nothing but a we are "beside ourselves," self; the “scientific function-

alism" and “objective pragmatism” of Donald Davidson and others?

bespeak a collective mania of postmodernism. Then, whatever implications there are in this self-as-another? are a later story, elaborated by, e.g., Paul Ricoeur, who followed Socrates' (in the Theaetetus, the Symposium, the Phaedrus, etc.) explication of "thinking" in terms of a dialogue between oneself and oneself. But all this 1s an extrapolation out of the primal sociality—togetherness— of the Other within myself. What is interesting here, we note before we go on to the next point, is that such a structure of the mutual Others requires no prior "common ground" to obtain. We often say that even a violent disagreement as quarrel needs an agreement as to what constitutes insult; this agreement 15 a necessary common ground on which quarrel obtains. But in fact the existence of mutual Others needs nothing of the

sort; when

two

beings

meet,

one

15 the

Other

to one's

Other. And not even “meeting” is needed to explain the happening of the Other. When the Other is seen to appear, meeting can be inferred; we say, “There must have been a meeting of the two beings

we

see here, because

we

have

here the self and the Other."

All this amounts to saying, again, that the Other is a primal, primitive notion like the law of excluded middle. We cannot "prove" the law of excluded middle because the law 1s one on whose basis proof proceeds. Similarly, we cannot explain the existence of the Other

3! *Body politic" is not as casual and haphazard a phrase as it may seem at first. 3? Cf. Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. Richard Rorty can be counted a member of this group. See also Daniel C. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical. Essays on Mind and Psychology, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1978, 1981, 1990, etc. and Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, eds., The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, N.Y.: Bantam Books, 1981, etc.

33 Wrongly termed “self-alienation,” “self-transcendence.”

104

because the obtains. And must instead in 1.1.2. and

SECTION

Other even follow all its

2.

PERSONAL

TOGETHERNESS

15 that on whose basis any existence whatever this law itself is no the law of togetherness but the actual goings-on of togetherness, as explained subsections above.

What those 1.1.2., etc., insisted amounts to this. From the point of view of the Other as a not-I, Aristotle did include in the law of

excluded middle the category of the Other as an ingredient 1η the constitution of the identity of an entity, saying “...and [A] 15 not not-A." The law does specify how constitutively significant the Other is for the I. What 1s disputed 1s that this Other 1s not a subordinate point, derived out of the ipseity of “A is A,” but is quite the reverse, that 15, the very ipseity of "A is A" 15 derived from the Other, in the sense that Α 15 the Other of the Other, the not no-A, that A de-

pends on not-A for its existence as not-A does on A (as not not-A) for zts existence. In all these relations of interdependence, the category of the Other, the “not-A,” is primal, not the “A is A."** 2.3. Reversibility

Now we can go on to the next point about the Other, its reversibility. Three points can be noted. First, we note that the Other is my reciprocal. And so, the Other implicates difference and interaction, but not always reversibihty. Reciprocity sometimes does bespeak reversibility, which 15 yet not logically symmetrical such as one with the biconditional; reciprocal reversibility is one with a difference.” My touch of the Other involves, indeed, my being touched by the Other,” but my touch is not quite the same as my being touched. My relation to my dog differs from

+ Incidentally, for all Sartre’s critiques of traditonal Aristotelian philosophy, his “nihilation” points at this “not” of the not-A. In doing so, he missed the “not-A,” which he affirmed as not “A.” He looked at the not-A as a negation (nihilation) of À. This amounts to taking not-A not as not-A but as A that is negated, looking at not-A from the A-perspective, not from the not-A perspective. Sartre thus missed togetherness as a radical primal ontological category 5 This point was forcibly brought out by Galen A. Johnson in Galen A. Johnson and Michael B. Smith, eds., Ontology and Altenty in Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., p. xxvi This point supposedly reduces the force of attacks by Lefort and Levinas (in 1bid pp. 50. and 53.) on Merleau-Ponty. * A favorite example of M. Merleau-Ponty's.

REVERSIBILITY

105

its relation to me; my relation to the tree I am painting” differs from its relation to me.

Furthermore, reciprocity 15 just a happening or co-happening of one or many reciprocal relations; depending on the situation, the relatons may not implicate reversibility, much less symmetry. For, obviously, what I give and how I give it may or may not be matched by what I receive and how I receive it. Sometimes I receive nothing in return and am still not unsatished, much less trying to retaliate

with violence.?

We are reminded of the unrequited love of the mother of a child unable, congenitally or otherwise, to respond to her love. She is “satisfied" with her pouring of love on him. We think of Jesus’ many feedings and healings. We think of his parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25—37) and that of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). They are all instances of unrequited love not turned sour. Unrequited love often goes hand and glove with responsibihty. And responsibility (an essential element in personal dignity) 15 the self-made-vulnerable by the self's hurting sensitivity to the Other’s suffering; this sensitivity is what Mencius so treasured as the essence of humanity.” And Levinas correctly points out that subjectivity is manifested in the asymmetry and unidirection of the self ’s gratuitous concern for the Other, without (expecting) reciprocity. It 1s the gratuity, asymmetry, and unidirection of concern that is constitutive of

both the Other and the dignity of the self.“

Finally, my relation to the same Other can differ with differing occasions. The relation of subatomic particles to me is sometimes corpuscular, some other times wave-like. I can be my wife's friend,

husband, son, father, teacher, student, financier, financed, benefactor,

beneficiary, protector, protected, playmate, and so on, depending on the situation. I am to my body as inhabitant to a house, possessor of an asset, a burden, manipulator of an instrument, of its speclal activity, or simply 1dentical with it, all again depending on the ? Another of Merleau-Ponty's favorites. 38 To stress the preponderance of the direction of the lover to the beloved over the reverse relation (the beloved's response to the lover), the above description simply ignores the initial “call” of the need of the beloved which triggered the lover's care. We simply consider here a lack of reversibility. 33 Mencius, 1A7, 246, 6A6. * Cf. Robert Bernasconi and David Wood, eds., The Provocation of Levinas, N.Y.: Routledge, 1988, p. 165.

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situation. Each of these relations has its own “logic,” one that differs from all others, since each situation is unique, differing from others. And so, my relation to my Other is multi-dimensional, multiperspectival, multi-logical, since my selfsame Other 15 In differing situations. Reciprocity 15 vibrantly many-colored, various, and varying with times and circumstances. And they may or may not be reversible at all. For reversibility bespeaks symmetry, which categorizes things in a set pattern, sameness, of mutuality. Things, events, and situations are too rich and varied to be handled by symmetrical reversibility. 2.4. Understanding the Other But, then, how

do we understand

such a multifarious protean phe-

nomenon as the Other? The difficulty of understanding the face“ demonstrates the confusing variety of the expressions of the Other.

2.4.1. Shall we start with the self and set it face to face with the Other? But then within the very self is its reciprocal, the alter ego.*^ The self has difference built into itself, as explored in 2.2. above. Since the Other founds the self, and not the self the Other, we must start with the Other to understand the self, and not the self the Other. It 1s

not by accident that “Love thy neighbor? as thyself” is pronounced, where the affective relation with someone else near the self (“love thy neighbor") is mentioned first. In. short, no matter where and what we look, things are thus infused with the Other. When things get tangled up, the thing to do 1s to retract ourselves and examine where we went wrong. We got ourselves into this mess because we thought we can zsolate what the Other is. But there is no "what"

of the Other;

the Other just 1s. Or rather, the Other is

always there, having its dynamic dialectical weight felt, to make myself what I am as a self-reciprocal (that 1s, the Other) to the self as the Other. It 15 the self that 1s to be interpreted in terms of the * The difficulty will be examined in 2.5.6. soon.

* See Appendix to 2.4.1.: “Ricoeur begins at the self”

5 *Neighbor" is someone “near” ( plesion, adv., related to the verb “love”) the self, namely, the reciprocal to the self, the other; “thyself” (se-auton) is “thy self" in accusative case, a reflective pronoun, a self-as-its-own-reciprocal. See Nax Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, À Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1988, p. 149.

UNDERSTANDING

THE

OTHER

107

Other, not the Other in terms of myself. Both subjectivity and intersubjectivity are the Other in action throughout their existences. 2.4.2. But how do we think of the Other? Can we characterize the Other as something indexical and token-reflexive, then? Let us try this route. “Now” and other time-related terms are often regarded as indexical or token-reflective. “Now” in a statement refers back to the statement, meaning “simultaneous with this utterance."^ The “now” in a statement is exclusively bound up in meaning with this particular statement in which “now” occurs to color this entire statement as happening “now.” And the "now" itself (in a statement) has no fixed meaning, which must be referred to the time when the statement 1s uttered. "Now" has no objective meaning in itself but belongs to the statement, that is, it 15 part of the entire quality, as 1t were, of the state-

ment, never to be separately treated apart therefrom. Thus the “nows” of several statements differ as much among themselves as these statements differ respectively one from another. The peculianty of subjective, token-reflexive nature of the "now" can be seen when we compare these two sentences: A: “This build-

ing 15 going to explode in five minutes from now." B: *The public

hbrary is to explode at 4 p.m., September and B differ in existential import, although identical. We may quickly leave the building but not on hearing sentence-B, for we may

5, 1994." Sentences A they can be objectively on hearing sentence-A, think that the alleged

date and time is not five minutes from “now.””

Now, is the now synonymous with the Other? Or at least don't they carry the same connotative structure? Both the now and the Other depend in meaning on the situations to which they refer; they are both subjective and indexical in import. The meaning of the Other,

as that of the now,

cannot

be determined

until we

look at

the sentence-(assertive-)sztuation in which the words occur. And the Other, as the now, 15 incurably subject-related; the Other, as the now, expresses the situational condition of the subject. What the Other differs from the now 15 that while the now passively depends on the sentence-situation for its meaning, the Other actively defines the situation for the subject in which it occurs. This * See Appendix A to 2.4.2.: “Names for indexical time.”

# See Appendix B to 2.4.2.: “Existential import of a statement."

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is because the Other defines the subject—its ontological status—to which it is related. From this angle, it may be claimed that the existential indexical import of the now is derived from that of the Other. Again,

the Other 15 a primal notion by which

all words,

even such

a basic one as the now, can determine their imports. But, then, by appealing to the notion of subjective indexicality, and realizing that the Other is indexical in more basic a sense than even that of the now, we have not advanced a single step toward understanding the Other. We merely reaffirmed our initial intuition, that the Other is the primal to explain everything else, never for a moment something to be explained by anything other than itself. For in saying, "explained by anything other,” the Other is already included. 2.4.3. I am as much an Other to you, as you are to me. The Other is ubiquitous by virtue of the active preposition of difference and mutuahty,

“to.” The

Other,

by virtue

of its inherent

“to,”

thus

consists

in mutual difference, another primal notion. The difference of mutuality includes subject qua object, object qua agent, subject-object unity, responsiveness, responsibility, touch. So we say, anyway. But this explanatory route of "difference" does not cut the ice, either. For when we are confronted with the Other, we

are not dealing with "difference in mutuality”; we deal with the Other. It 1s the Other that implicates mutual difference, not difference the Other. And always confronted we are with the Other. Again, it 15 the Other that makes us what we are, as the Other to the Other,

not the other way around.

2.4.4. All these explanatory failures, we suddenly realize, have come from the. fact that we tried to isolate the Other as a category, and try to explain it with something specified as other than the Other. And we begged the entire question. Yet our accustomed mode of thinking, isolation-thinking, unit-priority thinking, dies hard. One simple example can be cited. Recent intellectual feminism, being eager to celebrate its unique feminist standpoint different from the masculine one, tends to denigrate sight which has been traditionally glonfied by male philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and the subsequent thinkers. The feminists exalt touch and hearing, instead.* * See, e.g., Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trs. Catherine Porter, Carolyn

FACE

AND

THE

OTHER

109

But it is as wrong to disparage sight as it is to glorify it; this is isolation-thinking. After all, the human body has sight integrated into the community of touch (and taste) and hearing (and smell); our natural body 15 a natural community of senses mutually living together as Ofhers one to another. We must learn from our own body on how to live with sight and other senses, and live with many senses together.

Synesthesia is the word, in all senses of this word,

as befit

our community-thinking, Other-thinking, thinking together. The logic of community naturally comes out of the logic of togetherness of senses, each being the Other to all Others.

2.5. Face

and

the

Other

Togetherness of senses, synesthesia, has two meanings. First, it 15 a concentrate of senses and sensibilities in one’s self-expressions, especially their crystallized concentrate, “face.”* Secondly, what is face? It is the Other-mutuality of perceivings we call “synesthesia.” Let us consider this synesthetic physiognomic aspect of the Other, the “face.” 2.9.1. Several times in the above “face” is described as a “concentrate” or “crystallization” of our characteristic features. How so and what results therefrom are what we are going to explore now. 2.5.1.1. Face is—lives and has its being in—face-ing, a creative web of reciprocity. Face-ing brings about face, face recognizer, and their mutual

differences, their otherhood

to each other. Conversely,

face brings about a further face-ing; the face-recognizer herself must have her own face in order to recognize her Other’s face. And this face-ing and recognition is not confined to the face of a human; it holds true of the face of a situation as well. To recognize a face in a broader sense is to creatively discern, assess, and accept the physiognomy of the Other-situation as her “Other,” to con-figure the physiognomic configuration and thrust of the happenings (shzhevent shih), the vectorial physiognomy of the times (shzh-time shzh).* Burke, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985; An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trs. Carolyn Burke, Gillian C. Gill, same press, 1993; Craig, Owens, Beyond Recognition, eds. Scott Bryson, et al., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

5 See Appendix to 2.5.: “Levinas on ‘face.’”

5 The first shih shih is the situational thrust of events; the second is that of the times.

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To be capable of doing so makes the discerner-assessor-acceptor a heroine of the times. She shapes the vectorial physiognomy of the bmes as it shapes her. This heroine 15 myself. I shape my Other— personal or situational— as I am shaped unawares by my Other. Such is the activity of faceing, a face-mutuality. Mutuality creates face as face creates mutuality. Face 1s a face-ing, a verb, an onto-physiognomic verb. Face is a verbal noun, an interactive transversal that traverses me and my Other, to create the Other and the Other of the Other, myself, and then the Other of the Other of the Other, and so on. Togetherness transpires here. Face-ing, otherhood, and togetherness, they mutually define and implicate. sometimes 1 am daunted by the prospect of Other-ing and faceing, however. For difference typifies the Other; the Other is Other than myself because she/it differs from me. And difference scrapes me,

makes

me

uncomfortable,

even

makes

me

different,

reducing

myself to other than my previous self. This Other-than-myself can be less than my previous self. And Sartre's entification of consciousness by the Other appears. The Other fixates me into an object. I want to be left alone. Yet I cannot hide. I must courageously face up to the face-ing of the Other, personal or situational. Fortunately the Other-than-myself into which the Other changes me can also be my self-enhancement. "Knowing it is not [as good] as liking it; liking it is not [as good] as enjoying it,” says Confucius." “It” here, whatever else it is, is surely the Other?! I come to know my Other objectively, then to liking, desiring, even fondling it appreciatively, and then finally come to enjoy it. To enjoy it is to enjoy myself zn it— “Abide in me, as I am in you." “The wise enjoy water; the humane enjoy mountains," says Confucius.? The wise person is one with the water and becomes vastly wise as water; the humane person 15 one with the mountain and becomes quietly accommodating as the mountain. That is “en-joyment.” Thus, fortunately, the Other often stands ready to encourage me ^ Jean-Paul Sartre’s massive Being and Nothingness is full of such unkind examples. See 5.1. below. Emmanuel Levinas also describes the threat of the other to the self. Cf. its summary in Adriaan Peperzak, To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993, pp. 20-21. 0 The Analects, 6/20. `l It is significant that Confucius did not specify what “it (hih)? is; to take it as lao is later commentators’ arbitrary addition. ?? The Analects, 6/23.

FACE

AND

THE

OTHER

111

toward face-ing, Other-ing. Face 15 a call from my Other for me to respond, her evoking and my metaphoring that transmit and traverse, in Co-resonance, 1n the ripples of the communal pond of beings. For a stone of evocation has been thrown 1n, a stone that is a face, an Other, an existence. And we come to nod one to another—a

togetherness. We call this communal nodding understanding "friends,"

“environment,” “neighborhood.””

Face, the Other, and togetherness imply one another in the following way. Face 15 not eyes, mouth, etc. Face 15 all of them put together into a configuration. Face ıs an activity of face-ing that con-figures eyes, mouth, etc. into a “figure” called “face.” The con-figuring ıs done by the Other who faces me and figures my face out of my eyes, mouth, etc. Face is a mirror-verb of Other-ing, of Other-creation. A complex situation obtains thus between my mirror-Other and myself. When I look at myself in the mirror, it reflects back on me as a “something” called my face. I the Other of the mirror con-figure my face with the mirror, acknowledging what the mirror con-figures those bits into, a something; I call it “face.” Since it 15 I who recognize and acknowledge that face as “mine,” I call ıt “my face.” Thus a face is an interactive figuring-figured togetherness. Without those peculiar bits and protrusions in my face area, and without the mirror-Other who con-figures into my face out of those bits and protrusions of those features, there cannot be any face. “This my face” 15 a con-figuring, a co-creation, among these physiognomic features, this mirroring Other, and myself who recognize it as “my face.” And this little drama of com-posing and con-figuring my face 15 in fact no less than the story of a creation of myself. This facedrama is actually a cosmic creation in a nutshell. For such my facecreation continues to face-create my Other, and the Other of that Other, and so on, throughout whatever I see, then whatever my Other sees, and so on. The face-drama is a creative transversal. How does the Other recognize my face? Mysteriously, in the twinkle of an eye. “Thats Mom. Mom! We are here!” Children shout at their mother at the station. Thats face-recognition. Face-creation ΟΕ a beautiful description of ontological friendship in Chuang Tzu, 6/45-66, 94-97. See also the Analects, 4/1, 25. * How I do it is a mystery. A dog cannot do so. It takes a human baby long time to learn, to suddenly recognize-acknowledge it as her face.

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TOGETHERNESS

takes no time; responding to it, achieving it, does. For when I see a face, I must live up to it, act out my responses, achieve my reacton. Personal relationship is thus formed, the "face" of a situation (shth-event shih) is shaped, by my responses, which are my subsequent labors and struggles. This 1s a face-creation both spontaneous and time-consuming. This is "history," to be considered soon. Face is an Other to an Other; I am (represented by) my face; and so I am an Other to an Other. I am an Other. 2.5.1.2. My self: But am I just an Other to an Other? Don't I have my own integrity as myself? Yes, but then the structure of this self-integrity is a compound, a unity-in-polanty, a unity of reciprocations. ^Myself" is the feel for the unity-pole that comes into play; it 15 the reciprocity-pole that appears in my acts of self-pity, caring for myself, dressing myself. And I switch from one pole to another without problem because I am one in two, two in one, both of which

interpenetrate and inter-constitute. For I am my face, my face-ing, my Other, constituting a “postural schema" (Merleau-Ponty) that 15 myself. How do we understand my being bland and blank, doing nothing and just being myself, as when I am just awake, being self-less? In this situation, being self-less is being without face. But “face-less” is not "faceless," any more than being "self-ish" (being un-selfconscious) is being either selfish or selfless, both of which are self-conscious. Being face-less 15 a situation of vague ontological con-fusion, an ambiguous pre-face situation ready to take on a face, a fresh beginning of my morning life. Do I at the time have a self without the Other? What I am then 15 a self-less self, a room ready for my self to occur,

a face-ready non-face.?

For this my face 15 a curious one. We can only see God's back (as we considered in 2.3.1.5.), if we are fortunate. So also with the face of ours the "image of God." We cannot see our own face any more than we can our back.” This fact reveals something peculiar about our “Other” within ourselves. If we go over our five senses, » Cf. 3.8.2.

» “Our face is our back," a paradoxical discovery, can apply time-wise. Our

"face" 1s our concentrate showing our true self and integrity, and our "face" in tme is "history," my look-back at myself having been. Retrospective formation of "history," 1.e., historical "understanding of my back," is explored in 2.5.1.4., 2.5.3. Also, cf. 5.5. ““Time’ in China" below, and my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., Part One.

FACE

our means

AND

THE

OTHER

113

of contacting the Other, we realize that we cannot see

ourselves (our face), although we can touch, smell, and lick parts of

ourselves." We can contact an objects totality —albeit its surface totality, by turning it slowly around—only via sight; we can contact our totality only via our back-look, time-wise. We understand ourselves only historically, retrospectively. But obviously we can as much see Others outside us, as we can touch, lick, hear Others

out there. Our

Other-inside

cannot be de-

tached and sensed as our Other-outside can. Does this fact mean that, since the Other-inside 1s the primal paradigm of other Others, the Other as a transversal 1s originally my non-objectifiable non detachable reciprocal, the Thou, but that vision, one of our sense-organs, and vision-treatment, one mode of performance, turn the ThouOther into the It-Other, as Sartre so expertly described? And since

the West treasures vision, as both Plato and Aristotle did,” as a sight-

culture the West is prone to the It-risks attending sight-treatment? 2.9.1.3. Spatially sensing the Other: What is a vision-operaton? Made possible by the subject detached, distanced, from the object, vision-operation 15 survey, observation, analysis, and control or manipulation, all can be done with precision. These operations kill Thou’s spontaneity, the Other's naturalness, who 1s turned thereby into an It. Senses other than vision are contact-senses, without distance, except for hearing. Hearing is peculiar; it pervades to invite co-vibration and co-resonance with the Other. My response is evoked by hearing your call, which can be a simple talk or a mumble. Hearing contacts Others without contacting them, a call-and-response sense; it 15 a Thou-sense. What distinguishes these two groups of senses, vision on the one hand and non-vision ones on the other, is distance, then. We see and attack; we hear and obey. Without distance, vision 1s rendered

inoperative; with distance, other senses are. We may not, then, be able to resist classifying our five senses, in a vision-survey manner, according to distance and influence. Thus we could line up the five senses according to our distance-and-proximity ? Can we hear ourselves? Yes and no. Yes, we can hear ourselves talking, but no, we cannot hear ourselves. * On how Plato treasured sight, see The Republic, VI: 507 and Phaedrus, 250. On Aristotle on sight, see the beginning of his Metaphysics. Cf. my Butterfly, pp. 260, 429 (174).

114

to the

SECTION

Other— vision,

2: PERSONAL

hearing,

TOGETHERNESS

smell,

touch,

then

taste.

It is best

instead, however, to take our five senses as our five modes of responding to the coming and calling of the Other, or rather, five expressions of our responses, vision, taking advantage of distance, guides our other responses by surveying and investigating the situation in advance. Vision-response is an It-operation; contact-response is a Thou-operation. And

of course, Thou-response

can be combined with It-handling,

as in the mother's dealing with her child (It under Thou), or in an entanglement of friendship in espionage (Thou under It). We can do vision-operation and Thou-response mixed with It-handlıng, either feelingly (in a Thou-manner) or sightingly (in an It-manner). So much for a list of various situations of togetherness. 2.5.1.4. The time-ly Other: The Other-relation obtains not only

spatially as has been considered above but also time-wise as well.”

We call this time-ly Other, and time-operation of Other-ing, “history." History can be of three sorts: my history, yours, and ours. And the I is the I of three pair-words: I-my history, I-your history, and Tour history. And the I becomes "I" by being the I of these three histories. Let us consider them one by one. I don't detach myself from my history which 1s yet my Other. My history shapes me, influences me, composes my style of living. At the same

time,

I reflect on my

history,

examine

it, revise it, resist

it, make it, re-shape it again and again. In fact, I am this process of reciprocity. That is, I am what I shape, my history, and what I am 15 shaped by my history. And my history is this process of I becoming myself by shaping and being-shaped in time. My history and I co-resonate, co-create; we are reciprocals without separation.” Ι am a sympathetic, empathic Other to your history. 1 am so much of your listener to feel the impact of your history shaping you and being shaped by you, as to ask, suggest, thereby co-shape your history in you with you. And indeed in this manner I am 2 participant in that making of your history, of yourself. I am part of your history. Your history is no longer just yours alone. Consideration of this fact brings us to the third kind of history, our history. Ihe second kind of history, your history, is already a budding of the third kind, our history, because of the participation of the I in ΟΕ

2.5.3.

°° For more of “my past” as my other who is myself, see 4.3.2.

FACE

AND

THE

OTHER

115

the making of “your history.” Your history is a dawning of ours. The “you” is really a community, then. You and I make up a “you,” a community of our history. Together we reminisce, co-shape, cocreate, and at the same time we are respectively shaped and created by, our history. This is the case even with our communal history of infamy. The Day of Infamy, the person of infamy, we co-examine, co-commemorate, even in our communal reticence. No German person has the surname of “Hitler” any longer, not even the first name of “Adolf.” They are there in their minds, in forms of shunning, silence, shadow, shame.

The

Bible

records

shameful

acts, individual

ones,

collective

ones. We are there with shadows of their shame, and read them silently in our devotions. The story recorded in Judges 19-20, for instance, 15 seldom heard on the Sunday pulpit.

Let us now consider “my future."?' It is often said® that the self

contains the not-self, the Other, one of whom 15 undoubtedly “my future." First, I am conscious of my future, toward which, in the shape of which, and for the sake of which, I daily plan my life and live on. Life lives on, which

means

to live on toward the future. No

future,

no life. My future is so much a part of myself that it 1s the stuff of which my consciousness 15 made. But consciousness means the existence of consciousness. To be conscious is for consciousness to exist as such. Thus my future exists as surely as my self-awareness, in fact, as the essence of my life. My future exists as I, 1n my consciousness. Secondly, however, my future I don't know, for it 1s not (yet), literally meaning something *yet to come" both in English? and in

Chinese.“ In this sense, my future is my Other, my not-me. And

yet, paradoxically, I will recognize my future as mine, no, as myself, albeit in retrospect, after ıt has come to pass and lost its futurity. In retrospect today, I come to know that the future of mine, from the perspective of the yesterday when my future was yet to come, had to come to pass that way and no other. In this necessity, seen now, consists my future as mine. My retrospective realization gives me my otherhood of my future. In short, I am my Other in time, in my ° “Your future” and “our future” can be extrapolated from “my future,”

history," and “our history."

9? Cf. 2.2. above.

55 Futurus means “about to be (or become)." ^ Wei lai means “yet to come"; chiang lai means

“about to come."

35

66

“your

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TOGETHERNESS

future as well as in my past, in my history, your history, our history. Now,

in various

manners

as above,

we

have

considered

various

modes in which the Other 15 constitutive of myself. To oppose and exclude the Other for my sake 15 thus to reject myself for my sake, an existential contradiction. This strange suicidal contradiction 15 what constitutes the “atrocities” of Nazism, genocide, racism, KKK, nationalism, monopoly, nepotism, “closed society,” small “village”mentality, and the like. We either thrive together, mutually treasuring otherhood, or, by rejecting difference, perish in isolation. There is no third alternative. Later, the story of Jonah in 4.5.5. tells us this point. 2.5.2. God's face We have been through considering various faces— mine, Other's, things’. We now consider God's face. Since God 15 our Original of which we are “images,” let us briefly engage ourselves in a bit of our own archeological exegesis.? “In the beginning, when God created" humans, the Bible inadvertently put God in an Other-mutuality, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.”°® Then followed the creation, the blessing, the multiplying, the dominion,

all in the image of God. Two points can be noted: One, these activities are also part of the “image of God," since God is the Acts of those sort. Two, these acts are those of creative Other-ing reciprocity. The first point describes how dynamic and active the Other-ing 15, which 1s the second point, to which we must turn. Genesis 1 mentions God's “let us," imaging, and creation of the Other; the Original of our existence 15 typified by these above four Acts of Other-ing—creation, blessing, multiplying, dominion. John 1 repeats these four acts and adds one more: God's Word is with God,

^ Mark C. Taylor begins his book, Altanty (op. cit., 1987, p. xxi), by lamenting the “questions,” “issue” and "problem" of “difference and otherness." We prefer to have its problems end the consideration of otherhood. The problems of otherhood, we think, are derivatives and corruptions of otherhood-as-constitutive-of-selfhood, not its origin. We have more occasions later (2.5.3., 2.5.4.) to consider the same tragedies in connection with facelessness. ^ Although “image” can be easily replaced by “face,” they are kept separate for clarity’s sake. We hesitate to facilely take ourselves as "God's face.” 97 “Our own” in the sense that the following exegesis has little to do with any orthodoxy of any religion. Perhaps we can say that our "exegesis" 1s a quoting of the Bible to our purpose—of self-understanding.

” Genesis 1:26.

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the original “us.” Then, having created all things as the Other, God's imaging takes on an active, tragic turn of being made flesh among us to be crucified for us; the entire Gospel of John tells us the story of this redemptive imaging —re-creation, blessing, dominion of love. Imaging is not just imaging forth in creation, but also in redemption, an imaging back into God. The Bible calls the latter imaging the love-creation of the Kingdom-community of God (love-“dominion”). This Divine Community 15 the togetherness of mutual Other-ings. All this divine drama of Other-ing in imaging forth originates in one simple word, “The Word was with God,” literally “towards” ( pros). “And the Word was God.” God zs the original one-towardsthe-Other. What does the “towards” mean? Being "toward" someone 15 to face that someone. What does this facing mean, however? To answer, we must go to another primordial place in the Bible, this time Exodus 33:17-23. The entire passage 15 worth quoting: The Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and 1 know you by name." The Lord turned toward Moses, faces Moses with such a tender intimate Other-ing. God knows the “name,” the true identity, the face,

of Moses;

in God's knowing

and reconfirmed as Moses. “said to," a Word-toward.

Moses’

And

name,

the mode

Moses

was established

of turning, the facing, 1s

Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray." And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." In other words, Moses

said, "I want to know your face, God,

what

you are. What is your face, your name? Let me face you and know your face, your name, your glory." "Glory" and "goodness" are God's “name,” the identity of God, called “The Lord" (YHWH, unutterable mystery). Who or what 15 this? The sovereignty of the freedom of being gracious, that 1s, showing mercy, to anyone with whom God 15 pleased. Grace and mercy ("blessing") means creation of the Other, as typified in the conversation here going on which establishes the identity of Moses. In His Acts of grace and mercy 15 he known as he is—that 15 his name, his face, his lordship. And then comes what we want:

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“But,” he said, “you cannot see me and live. . . See, you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you... until I have passed by; ... and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen." The face-to-face conversation, the mutual toward-relation, cannot be

penetrated further into the "face" as such. "Standing on the rock" may be related to standing-out of nowhere, to exist. In our existing, the face is hidden to us; the "glory" of my being “alive” means "cannot see my face." Here “my” is equivocated over God and myself because God 15 my Onginal. The Other-ing relation has a blind spot, my face, and the crystallization (“name”) of my very self, myself.

This is the “cleft of the rock" of my “standing,” my existence.

The glory of myself, my face, / myself cannot see. That 15 the predicament of my existence. In my existence I come out as myself, showing myself to myself, and this showing I cannot see. This 1s for the simple reason that to see 15 to see an object, and I am, I exist as, not-an-object.

But to exist 15 to come

out, stand out as an exist-

ence, and to stand out at all is to be objectified in some sense, that 15, to become an Other; myself 15 indeed an Other. This "Other" that 15 myself-existing, however, cannot be perceived by myself, which zs not-other-than-myself. In short, I must, by the very nature of myself (since I cannot face myself), be hid from myself; my “face” being my concentrate, I cannot see my face. And I express myself,

that 1s, my

"face"

irradiates itself all around,

my

face 1s a

dynamic acting out of myself, therefore my dress, comportment, and “How do I look?," are themselves all my face, as it were, and these expressions,

faces of my

face, make

sense,

an existential sense,

the

sense that makes me alive, only as being the Other to another Other. A Robinson Crusoe needs none of them. The Other z myself in more than one sense. and I do not exist without the Other.

I cannot see my face; it is seen only by the Other.? This fact

amounts to saying that I exist as myself only by the Other seeing me. Seeing means here not just physiological vision but perceiving in all senses of the word. I express myself, I press myself out as existing, in my face, and I cannot perceive it as my face; I must infer the image-object in the mirror as “my face" in it. And the mirror is the Other, whether as a smooth glass surface or as another person. I hide myself to no one except to myself. I cannot face my ^ See Appendix to 2.5.2.: “Merleau-Ponty on perceiving and the other.”

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119

face.” My face irradiates itself as “my face,” my self-expression, in

all my accent and gait of my behavior, all solely for the Other to perceive and accept. “Thy accent betrays thee.””! Of course I see parts of myself, although not too many, and that

as something other than myself." Many other parts of mine I feel,

but cannot perceive them, much less perceive them as mine. Perceiving myself is an existential impossibility if not contradiction; perception is a word for the Other. I cannot perceive my face the concentrate of myself; only the Other does. Face is then a mirror-terms; face is a “facing toward” the Other. Face and the Other form a set of my intimate nature. Thus my face spontaneously expresses my existence, appears toward the Other for the Other’s perception and approval. 2.9.3.

Face

Face and music

is like music;

after all, music

is the

face-in-time

of actuality.

And as with free reversibility,” so with ambiguous relation between expressiveness and expression. The same face, as the same music, can be read and interpreted to show and express many different expressions. Face and its expression are not 1η an exact one-to-one correspondence, then. | Face 15 expressive, as music 15. As music 15 always expressive, even

in silence (musical pause), in its impact, so face is always expressive, even in sleep, in death. But what is expressed is ambiguous,

music and in face.

both In

2.5.4. Genuine face Facial expression 15 indeed sometimes clear, as in a toothached face. But it is sometimes vague; “Madonna’s Smile” is a faithful portrait of actuality. Sometimes we don't know what to make of a face, smiling at an insult, for instance. And facial expression often comes out unexpected even to the subject, who wanted to have it come across as this, and they interpret it as that. It takes an experienced physlognomist to correctly decipher a facial expression; sometimes the mother alone understand what her baby's expression means. Similarly the “face-expressions” of our It-Others and our environment require 70 Cf. “Peter went out, broke down, and wept bitterly.” (Matthew 26:75, Mark

14:72) 11 Matthew 26:73. 7? The baby often looks at, touches, and plays with her hands, fingers, and feets, as if they were not hers. 73 But we have no exact correlation between the face and its converse.

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experienced physiognomists such as scientists, as well as poets, novelists, painters, musicians, sculptors. But always the expressive facial features of nature and things evoke our various face-hermeneutics. Jesus even urged us to do so; it is important for our living. He said,”* When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain"; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat"; and it happens. ... You know how to interpret the appearance [“face” in the original, as in King James Version] of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

But, then, this physiognomy of the situation 15 so difficult that mistakes are fairly common. How do we deal with them? "Looks are deceiving,” they say. And, indeed, the first impression 15 often unreliable. "Looks are deceiving" properly warns us that anything truthful and valuable 15 not easy to come by. To meet the face and appropriately respond to it 1s an art. Misunderstandings are everywhere. But then if a face deceives, it shows a deceiver's face. The face 1s deceptive not because the face 15 by nature deceptive, but because our perception of it, as of anything else, 15 prone to misperception. Yet we cannot discard perception because it can deceive any more

than we can strip a person of his face? because it can deceive us,

or has deceived us. On the contrary, as we check our perception by more subsequent perceivings, so we correct our initial "reading of the face" by more readings. As the proof of perception is in more perception, so the true knowledge of a face is in the face familiarized. How? By living before and with that face—that person's living expressions concretized’°—persistently, perceptively, day after day, month after month. As “sincerity” 15 a historical notion, so is “face.” We only histoncally, experientially, “come to" truly understand a person; we cannot argue, calculate, plot, contrive, or even intuit, into convincingly knowing a face. History 15 then a veritable experience, a self-validating living-with, a true *face."" History is a spontaneous ^ Luke 12:54. Cf. Matthew 16:2, 3. > We can kill a person but cannot take away his face, as Tennessee Williams showed us with a scene of a dead black man's face looking back at the white lynchers, in his novel, Darkness at .Noon, as quoted by Sartre at the end of that massive Being and Nothingness. . 7% “Concretized” has much to do with concresced, grown-together. ” Cf. 2.5.1.4.

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notion as a river is; one cannot push or contrive history, the spontaneous river of time, any more than can one the river of water. As existence cannot be contrived, so the face 15 experientially spontaneous. History 15 the true face of a face, to show us the true faces of things and situations. And it is here that we have salvation from deception. Somewhere, somehow,

sometime,

the

truth

of the

“face”

of the

situation

will

finally come through to us, as long as we are sincere and patent. 2.5.5. Face and the Other are both distinct myself, not the Other, any more than which shows myself I myself cannot myself, in the mirror of the Other. As do I look?",

knowledge

so I must

I have.

ask the

Other

and inseparable. My face 1s I am the Other. Yet my face see; I must see my face, see I must ask the Other, "How how

good

I am,

For a solitary straight self-evaluation

assertion, face Socrates,

simply won't work;

how

and

much

self-

else what 1s the teacher

for??? In fact, I must ask the Other even how I feel, if only in the

way I bounce my feelings on to the Other; without the Other I often cannot express my feeling, and unexpressed feelings simply disappear in a morning fog. And so, faceless-ness is a terrible thing. Being faceless amounts to being Other-less, being deprived of interactions with the Other. And given the above description of my face (as myself) as Other-dependent, being Other-less means being without myself, a death of myself. This explains how awful solitary confinement in a prison cell 15, which is not not confined to the matter of an imposition by the political powers that be. Solitary faceless crowd 15 an imposition by the cultural powers that be, which do so because they are themselves faceless. In fact, the tragedy of civilization lies here, that the faceless "they"

render me faceless. Karl Marx’s “self-alienation” among the factory workers refers really to this face-deprived crowd of workers. ‘The tragedy of the prostitutes (a peculiar ill of the civilized world) hes here,

too;

they don’t have

faces of their own.

And

the aftereffects

of all these are equally fatal. Thus cultural faceless-ness is a death of myself. Those morose shouts of existentialists, despair as “sickness unto death,” life as “absurdity,”

78 To be fair to Socrates, he did implicate a dialectic, i.e., dialogal maieutics into self-evaluation. But he only showed this other-dialectic; he did not tell us that selfexamination 15 social.

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ennui, and de-centeredness (“eccentricity”), “differance,”’” death of culture and philosophy, and all other ugly neologisms of such like, of deconstructionists and postmodernists—they are no mere melancholic hyperboles; they honestly describe cultural faceless-ness. The borderline cases are actors and actresses whose business 15 to sell their faces, irrespective of whether those “faces” are truly theirs or not. Perhaps Plato's aversion to theatrical mimicry can be explained from this angle. Plato wanted us to have our genuine faces that cannot be sold or exchanged lightly. Why 15 the genuineness of the face important? Α man, asking for a boy's pet dog, offered a price for it. The boy refused. The man offered a higher price, to which the boy replied, “Mister, this dog is not for sale." The boy lives and sleeps with the dog; the dog 1s the boy's "face." Second Samuel 12:1-6 in the Bible describes the seriousness of violating Uriah's "face." The seriousness required the mirror of Samuel to bring home to King David, face to face, in the ensuing verses, 7 through 14. All these cases are what we usually call “identity crises," various violations of the dignity of persons, what persons respectively are; sadly, they leave that "what" undefined, unspecified. Or they are called crises in "authenticity," what persons genuinely are in themselves, which 15 again left undesignated. Even “identity” and “authenticity” are supposedly improvements on "essence," "form," "universal," “Idea,” for the former notions add flesh and blood— personal dignity—to the pale formal latter. But “identity” and “authenticity” are still without content. Now we know what they are— "faces," genuine faces.

2.6. Face

and

the transversal

We are now in a position to see how "face" and "Other" describe the "transversal" of persons, things and situations.

2.6.1.

All above seemingly random” observations about the face constitute the physiognomy of persons and things. These features cohere into 7 Heidegger's Untershied, Derrida’s différance, Lyotard's différend, etc., they are variations on the same theme, the personal dignity of one's distinctive uniqueness, that “personal identity.” 38 That is, coherent but unsystematic, by the very nature of the case.

FACE

AND

THE

TRANSVERSAL

the face that cohere into, and means,

123

what I am. All other expres-

sions of things, events, and situations can be explained by this my personal self-expression called “my face.” For

all self-expressions—personal,

things’,

notional,

situational—

are gathered up, typified, crystallized, in “face.” Facial expression 15 the concentrate of self-expression. Physiognomic features of a thing or a situation are the “essence” of that thing, that situation. An example readily comes to mind. A greeting card says, “Relax!” across two nonchalant farmers, painted sitting vis-à-vis at a chess-board on a broad stone, playing chess under an afternoon tree, with a hoe casually laid there beside them. The picture is a “facial expression" of the notion,

to "relax."

Why do we think of relaxation when we see that picture of casual chess-playing under an afternoon tree? Because that 1s one situation of relaxation

as another

situation of relaxation,

as yet another,

εἰς.

Those situations share a common family resemblance of relaxation; they bear “family-faces,” as it were, of relaxation. Since we have been through several situations of relaxation, in this one situation of casual chess under a casual tree we see a familiar "face" features of "relaxation." And this 15 after all how we learn a name or a common which is really a collective noun, “relaxation,” for instance,

names a collection of situations of relaxation. A common

family-“face” of a “family” of situations.

noun, which

noun 15 a

And this sort of thinking 15 a naive natural way of defining something, as Euthyphro enumerated many acts of a pious sort as a "definiuon" of piety in reply to Socrates. Thus definition by a familyface 15 a perfectly natural and legitimate one. A cognitive psychologist Robert M. Gagné said that we don't effectively learn a concept (“triangle”) by abstract verbal definition “a simple closed plane figure having three line segments as sides"); a “triangle” must be shown. Any” learnings will be... sheer verbalizations unless the learner first knows the concept by reference to a class of concrete situations. . . . [T']his observation about concepts has profound implications for educational practice. For example, the fundamental reason for laboratory work in science instruction is to give ^ Cf. 2.1., 4.7.2.1., 5.4.3.1., 5.4.3.2.1., 5.5.1.3., 5.5.2.22., E.3. ^

Robert

M.

Gagné,

Rinehart and Winston,

The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction, N.Y.:

1985, pp.

101-2.

Holt,

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TOGETHERNESS

such concrete examples. . . . [1 |० be accurate tools for thinking about and dealing with the real world, concepts must be referable to actual stimulus situations. These provide concepts with an ‘operational’ meaning that can come in no other way." [emphasis original] We add the following. When learning a concept by being referred to "a class of concrete situations," this "class" 1s a "family" of situations clustering around a concept, or rather, being crystallized in 1t; “con-

cept" 1s thus not an abstraction from situations but a situational concentrate. Therefore "this observation about concept" has “profound implications" not just "for educational practice." The "show and tell" learning of concept is not just for practical possession of “accurate tools for... dealing with the real world,” giving us an "operational" meaning of a concept. Such concrete conceptual learning shows us the very nature of concept—a "face" of a "family" of situations. "Family resemblance" proposed by Wittgenstein is really a cluster of family-faces, an alternative manner of defining things, a trans-

versal.” And those clusters of family-resemblances co-resonate and co-respond among themselves to compose a community of transversals, an inteligible togetherness that is our world. 2.6.2. Face, the *^universal," existence All this describes the “name,” the form, the Idea, the essence, even

the universal, of myself as my face for the Other. But, then, in the light of all this consideration of my self, the very traditional meaning of the essence, the form, the universal, etc., must be overhauled. What we customarily call “universal,” “Form,” “Idea,” "essence,"

and the like, of existence are supposedly names for what makes things what they are, in the most general sense of simply existing as things ("being qua being"). Unfortunately, these names are so empty of contents that they do not tell us what 1t 15 which makes what things are as they are. These names fail to fulfill what names are supposed to do, to inform us of what they promise to inform. We must try from scratch to see what "existence" amounts to. First, things exist, literally stand-out as things out of nowhere, by way of their characteristics as different from what they are not. Such a characteristic as showing their being-there is their self-expression, that 15, pressing themselves out as such, in this case as other than not-existing, as standing-out of not-exisüng. To stand-out of nowhere 83 See Appendix to 2.6.2.: *Wittgenstein's ‘family resemblance’ and transversal."

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AND

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TRANSVERSAL

125

is itself to press-out itself as existing, which is to express itself. Thus existence 1s synonymous with expression, not only in meaning but in existential reality. Things exist in their expressiveness (“faces”). Furthermore, to perceive their self-expression 1s to capture their existence. And to capture z to understand, which is here to percewe. We are reminded of “phenomenology” of our days which 15 supposed to replace the traditional ontology and metaphysics. Phenomenology 15 as much a study of being qua being as Anstotehan metaphysics is, but the former considers-perceives things as they appear. Here two undeclared assumptions of phenomenology, both instructive, can be seen. One, being is none other than a showing of existence, an appearance (“face”) as not no-being. Two, appearance is always appearance to someone, always haunted by that someone to whom it (being, existence) appears as other than no-existence. A phenomenon 15 senseless unless it appears to someone who notices-perceives It as something phenomenal out there. Appearance is then a correlative term, a co-responsive term. Appearance is expression, accompanied by someone who notices, perceives, and studies it, by someone who is its necessary ontological reciprocal "Other." Thus, inadvertently, we bump into Berkeley's saying, “To be is to be perceived." Berkeley meant to define existence as being perceived. This saying is a derivative of “To exist is to express oneself,” but Berkeley's saying expresses more explicitly the correlative “Other”-nature of existence qua expression, for perception is reciprocal. In any case, it is thus that expression and perception co-implicate, showing us that existence is co-existence, co-recognition, co-sensing, co-Other-ing. Let us go a step further. Kant says, "Concept without percept 1s empty; percept without concept is blind." We can say, expression without perception is futile and blind, and perception without. expression, senseless, empty; the one assumes the other to make up existence. Juxtaposing these two parallel expressions, Kant's and ours, we see that expression is the concept of a thing, what it means to be a thing, and to capture (perceive) an expression of a thing, is to understand the concept of that thing —after all, a “concept” 1s what 15 captured.?* Expression is the concept, the Idea, the Form, of existence. And expression ise self-expression, crystallized in "face." Thus st “Concept”

is etymologically what is captured (con-capere, to take).

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face is the concept, the essence, the universal, the Form and Idea, of existence.

While

the concept,

essence,

universal,

Form

and

Idea

are empty forms of existence, “face” 15 the form with concrete con-

tent—of existence. “Face” replaces “concept,” “universal,” and so on. “Face” 15 a transversal over existence.

2.6.3. Faces and families These transversals are “families” with a shght difference. Usually a family 15 a set and fixed blood-relationship. But this notional familyresemblance indicates transversals, traversing different cultural historical territories, various changes of “uses” by many communities, cultures, experiences, histories. This 1s unwittingly borne out by Baker and Hacker who extrapolated three characteristics out of Wittgenstein's

“family resemblance":*?

(1) Different explanations of a single concept-word may be legitimate; a single concept may correspond to explanations by different sets of paradigms. (1) The justifications of subsuming different objects under a single concept need not be uniform; different similarities or similarities with different paradigms may be appealed to in justifying different applications of "game," “number,” etc. (11) Assigning meanings to concept-words, hence the classification of things as falling under concepts, can be justified or criticized only in respect of usefulness in facilitating achievement of the purposes for which we use these words. lhings are not given to us ranged into natural kinds whose boundaries are fixed by congeries of metaphysically simple properties. Hence our classifications cannot get into conflict with the truth, though they may be more or less expedient.

"Difference," “paradigms,” and “usefulness” come out to claim our attention. “Families” of concepts are formed out of paradigmatic examples, that 15, what we take as noteworthy, as seminal in developing and surveying things—e.g., playing chess under a casual afternoon tree (“Relax!”), letting go of an ox tremblingly dragged to sacrificial slaughter because one cannot bear to see its trembles (Mencius called such feeling “unbearable heartmind" of sympathy | pu jen jen chih hsın]) These are distinctive family faces, noteworthy for evoking in us metaphorical development of perspectives—notions, definitions— 9

85 Ibid., p. 329.

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AND

THE

TRANSVERSAL

127

with which we understand things of particular sorts. And these our evocative-metaphorical operations, via families of faces, are in response to a particular call from a particular situation. These faces and perspectives are transversals. Since we ourselves change, and a situational call ls different each time it 15 issued, our responses vary accordingly. But the variation is as coherently communal, cultural, and historical as are the faces we recognize and the language(s) we use to record our discoveries and experience of their family resemblances; their variations, vicissitudes, are unexpected yet reasonable, fresh and compelling. Transversals are the familiar (sensible, reasonable), changing, concrete; they are physiognomic paradigms for our understanding of things in the world, and of the world. Their three characteristics can be noted. First, both paradigms and usefulness change with the change of time and place. Second, they sensibly interweave to compose our network of transversals. And, third, these transversals constantly but steadily shift in sentiment, color, content, and range, for us to understand changing things in the world. Faces, expressions, family ressemblances —they are everywhere to claim our notice, and every time we look, we see them shift kaleido-

scopically—experientially, evocatively, metaphorically, historically. Their existences and metamorphoses are inextricably entwined with

our experience to evoke our metaphorical understanding of them.”

And so, it is in this way that we have now reached a point where we see how “expression” and “face” replace concepts such as “essence,”

“form,” “universal,” “Idea.” Facial expression is more concrete, sensible, accurate, versatile, alive, real, than those defining concepts to

which we are accustomed, whose sentiment “face” captures without residue. And “face” presupposes its perception by the perceiver, the attentive Other. Face is a reciprocal correlative notion. Face 15 not a universal, for it cannot be defined. Face 1s instead a “transversal,”

for it can be perceived and understood in all things, events, and situations of the like sort. It is in this sense that “face,” especially human

face which

is the face

of all faces, is the transversal

of all

things within and throughout the skies and fields. And remember, face is inherently Other-relational. In the face the Other is implcated; in the Other the face 15 manifested. Face is the essence, the transversal, of togetherness. % See Appendix to 2.6.3.: “History and Wittgenstein.”

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2.7. Definitional configuration of the Other, togetherness, and differences The Other, togetherness, and difference can be easily seen as a family of concrete notions, all “blood-related” as follows: They overlap in meaning—with some differences —to form a trinity. The “Other” and “togetherness” co-assume and co-imply. The connotations of the "Other" implying togetherness differ from those of “togetherness” implying the Other, however. They co-complement. “Difference” serves as their mediator, middle term, explainer, giving them dynamism. And importantly, these reciprocal relationships are not external ones like those among billiard balls. They are internally related. “Difference” 15 implicated in the Other, togetherness, and their mutuality. The “Other” (otherhood) constitutes the very integrity of the self, both a reciprocal to the self, and a constituent of the self. Thus “togetherness” is that of the Other with the self, constituting the self as social, while the “Other” constitutes togetherness as “togetherness” 1s the Other compounded and “difference” constitutes togetherness, the Other, and the self, enabling

the Other to constitute the self, saying “I am την alter ego.” ΑἹ] this constitutes both the communal self and the community of selves (of my Others), making all of them alwe. Three points can be mentioned before going on to the next theme. First, these concrete notions, plus play with argument in the next Section 3, typify all other Sections on togetherness, cultural (in Secton l), religious (in Section 4), philosophical (in Section 5). Al these other Sections are a concrete workout and work-out of these pivotal notions —the Other (and face and difference), play with arguments. Secondly, thus these Sections 2 and 3 dealing with the “Other” and "play with arguments" would have been placed at the beginning, as is usually the case, forming Sections 1 and 2. They are instead placed after the Section on cultural togetherness, however, because we don't realize the matters treated 1η these two Sections until we have undergone the concrete theme of Section 1, cultural togetherness. We follow here a natural order of concretely coming to understand things. Thirdly, this raises an interesting question. Does the very mode of thinking of this entire essay belong to the formal sort of thinking, or the concrete sort? Resisting the temptation to answer either, we must say it is neither because it has bits of both. In it we argue with both sorts of elements both theoretically and concretely. It is neither because it is not quite palatable either to the Western theoretical

TIME-LAG

AS

IDENTITY-CREATIVE

DYNAMISM

(GROWTH)

129

philosophers or to the Chinese concrete thinkers-writers. We claim that this portamento-like mixed physiognomy 15 the strength of this essay. The essay has enough distance from both to see both, yet carries enough characteristics of both sympathetically to understand both, express both, and communicate with both, thus effecting togetherness lt considers, no, explores with the reader. Now, we can go to the theme of growth, the otherhood in time in the self. 2.8. Time-lag as identity-creative dynamism

(growth)

So far, we have considered the Other spatially, as another existence (person or object) besides the self. What about the Other in time, specifically within the self? What 15 described so far can be regarded negatively as radioactive deterioration of the ontological law of my identity, “I am my self.” And radioactivity here is time-activity, time-lag." For every time I go back to myself, I am not exactly my accustomed self with whom I can identify, affirm, and own. I am not what I am. Yet of this fact I must admit to be what I indeed am. And so this fact I must affirm: I am what I am not.

Let us go slower. To begin with, I am not what I am. I am my

Other; I am

social; I am different from my self;

I am

together with

the Other, whom I thought 15 myself. This is what I used to call “self-referential inconsistency.” I thought I can come back home to myself. But I cannot. My "home" 15 really a foreign land. Every time I return “home,” it is another self, other than myself. That is why I can talk to myself, question and answer myself. I am always together with someone Other-than-myself, whom I call “myself.” The key to all this strange otherhood in me 15 the time-lag. Neither Heraclitus nor myself can put our feet twice into the same river, and I say that this river we usually think is time 15 really myself. For

this 15 where

time,

or rather,

my

awareness

of time,

1s. The

“river” of time, at whose bank both Confucius and Mencius sighed,”

is really myself on the go. Time 15 the flow-change of myself. I differ 57 This 5.5., time 8 I am from the 5.2.—the 89 The

subsection, then, can be seen as a concrete existential instantiation of as experience. of course developing— putting in order—Sartre’s insight in my manner, viewpoint of the other as myself. Another development is in 5.1. and other as my home and hell. Analects, 9/17, the Mencius, 4B18.

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every time I check on "it," where “it” is both time and myself. I cannot grasp my identity. 1 am a self-referential inconsistency. But, secondly, this ontological self-inconsistency is, pace Sartre, not (Just) the self-projective explosive but (also) the nerve of self-growth. I explode into the future which is my growth and life. Life does not stay. Life is a living-on. Self-identity is not grasped ready-made but grasped created. Or rather, such creative grasp, the process of grasping of my future, constitutes my identity. I am what I am not. I am my ontological move. What I am 15 how I be-come, come-to-be. I am my "unfinished journey" (Y. Menuhin) into myself. The law of my identity is not there, ready-made to be understood and presupposed, but to be created anew each time I meet myself and communicate with myself. The law of my identity is not a logical principle but my ontological task. And this idenüty-as-task is also what makes the I, the Other,

the difference,

and being together.

2.9. Identity-growth as play with arguments Furthermore, this temporal flow of self-growth is not irrational. On the contrary, this 15 what makes logical moves, “argument,” possible. This self-flow and self-growth 15 at the base of argumentation. For argumentation is my process of arguing, with which I grow in understanding. And, being rational, my self-flow and -growth is enjoyable. It 1s fun founding my identity on grasping my different Others as all my different alter egos, for such a grasping is my ontological (not 1llogical) self-creation, which 15 my joy, logical and sensible. And this dynamic logical joy can be paraphrased as “play with arguments." My ontological constitution of many Others into my selfhood exhibits itself in playing with arguments, symbolic of my joy of identifying self-recursive inconsistency as rational growth in self-identity, myself. This 15 the true meaning of "oneself as another" (P. Ricoeur). This is "I am not what 1 am" making itself into “I am what I am not." Playing with arguments 15 an expression of myself as an Other, who, as "Other," 15 not myself. To put it inversely, the Other is my alter ego. 1 and my Other are together, both internally (as myself) and externally (as neighborliness, togetherness). Now, to think on all this in a reasonable way as above makes an argument, which 15 enjoyed, and so we have just played with an (ontological, self-recursive) argument.

RADICAL

2.10.

OTHER-THINKING

AS TOGETHERNESS-THINKING

131

Radical Other-thinking as togetherness-thinking

All in all, the Other is our existentially primal notion, an existential a prion, which

explains

“faces,” the mutual

“differences”

among

the

selves, and their inter-influences—the ontological, ecological, political, ethical, cultural—to communally co-constitute "togetherness." What we can do is to concretely watch, perceive, and realize this Otherthinking, living, and thinking together, in our bone of bones in our daily ongoings. How radical this notion of the Other is can be realized in our dialogue with Levinas. For him, "face" 15 the straightforward apparition and epiphany that reveals through speaking beyond me, over

from the other side, that the Other is the Other and ποί me, that I

can never contain him within my cognition, much manage him. These negative terms, “beyond,” “not,”

११

८८

less control and

“never,” express an absolute

prohibition, not as the physically overpowering Gestapo but as the categorical imperative of “Thou shalt not." It is absolutely wrong for me

to contain,

much

less control,

him,

for it amounts

to radically

destroying him, his very otherhood beyond me, his dignity and integrity as himself, his claim of “territorial sovereignty" to be the Other outside of me. And such an ethical absoluteness of self-sovereignty thus revealed bespeaks the otherhood as the exterionty of the infinite, with which Levinas perhaps describes absoluteness of the Other's transcendence over me. Ethics understands the (ontological structure of) otherhood as the Other-than-me. This summarizes that extraordinary section, at once rhapsodic and potent, “the Idea of the Infinite and the Face of the Other," in Levinas’ onto-theologico-ethical essay, “Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite"? Peperzak aptly brought out Levinas’ contribution here:” Levinas initiates a radical Other-centered philosophy over against the traditional ego-centered one in the West. Since knowledge amounts to my autonomous appropriation of things, I can never know the Other. On the contrary, relation 15 everything. My confrontation with the Other initiates myself; I must submit myself to the Other, who instills 9 Peperzak, op. cit., pp. 108-12. Cf. pp. 61-65, Peperzak’s more coherent meditations on this section. ?! Ibid., pp. 61-65, 68-72.

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in me the sense of respect for the Other. I do not constitute the world; rather, only in relating myself to the Other I am what I am,

the “Other” to the Other. Peperzak says,”

[T]here can be no autonomy or certitude preceding the transcendence that orients the one towards the Other. The dimension of certitude . . . or of knowledge in general, can arise only on the foundation of the primordial relation that supports them. In Husserlian language, it is not possible that a transcendental ego “constitutes” from an unengaged point of view a noema called "face," "word," or “apparition of the other." Rather, . . . the . . . ego finds itself constituted as already related to the Other. . . . Nor [is it] that the I “knows” the Other by “anticipated comprehension" (Vorverständms), as Heidegger thinks. The face (or the word, or the Other) is the most immediate revelation there 13. . . . [T]he principle of principles, the first arché [Aristotle] preceding all principles, [15] the face of the Other awakening me to the meaning of my life....

Thus there seems to be an over-correction of egocentric predicament in Western tradition by Other-centrism. The Other 15, in fact, not just some primordial one beyond who defines me, but also my reciprocal defined by me. The reciprocity—the Other and I as the Other to the Other, the two perspectives combined, is /he "force that

goes"? to make the world go around. It is the force of reciprocity,

the Other-priority which founds the Other, existing by virtue of being beside me. The significance of all this cannot be overestimated. Descartes, Berkeley, and Kant said that without the I-autonomy the world cannot exist as my experience. This is the first Copernican revolution. Levinas says that without the Other-heteronomy not even the I can exist; this 15 the second Copernican revolution. Few realize that the very otherhood of the Other bespeaks reciprocity, for the Other 1s obviously as much of the Other to me as I am the Other to the Other. Thinking is a dialogue, as Socrates said, because I and Thou

the co-thinkers exist as reciprocals; existence is co-existence. This togetherness-priority constitutes the third Copernican revolution. But, then, how does this mutuality-thinking work? What difference(s) does this thinking together, togetherness-thinking, make to previous two types of thinking, I-thinking and Other-thinking in the narrow 7 Ibid., p. 72. ° The phrase is supposedly often quoted by Levinas from Victor Hugo.

p. 69, esp. note 71.

See ibid.,

RADICAL

OTHER-THINKING

AS

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133

sense?” The answer is again obvious. We remember that egological

thinking unfolds itself from within the ego; heterological thinking develops under the ego's submission to the Other forever beyond, conferring freedom and stamina to the ego to go on. In contrast, togetherness-thinking is an interactive process. No unfoldment from within the self, no development originated in the exteriority of the Other, togetherness is a dynamic process which neither the I nor the Other anticipates. Rather, it is a. participatory process of interaction among many parties, an exciting unpredictable dynamism of togetherness, a dialectic without the conclusive identity of any Hegelian synthesis at the end. The reason is simple. Existence as co-existence 15 life, and life 1s always an unfinished journey; finished journey 15 no longer life but life that has been,

the death of existence, where

there is no dialec-

tic. Togetherness-dialectic is life-dialectic which has either playful endlessness or entire cessation.” Togetherness-thinking is thinking— whether physically alone when thinking or thinking in brainstorming together —onginated in, in terms and atmosphere of, and always aiming at, mutuality and togetherness. To put it positively, ego-istic unfoldment and alter-istic development are expressible in an “argument”-form, drawing on many points as many premises to clinch and close off with a single conclusion. Both styles of thinking argue in one-way traffic. In contrast, mutual thinking together does not argue but play with arguments, back and forth, brainstorming together, reciprocally provoking new ideas and standpoints, and having fun doing so. It 1s this process of playing with arguments, among others, that typifies thinking together. Such togetherness-thinking is a sort of music-making. Music 1s created by three parties, the composer, the performer(s), and the audience, mutually dependent. Composer, performer(s), and audience always act and behave in terms of the music and for nothing else. Lacking in either one, there would be no music. For it is of course true that without the composer, the performer(s) can play no music; without the performer(s) and the composer, the

^ Other-thinking in a wide sense zs togetherness-thinking. Other-thinking in a

narrow sense is equivalent to I-thinking or egological one, only the I here is the other in front of me. 5 I owe this entire paragraph, as well as many others, to my Ruth, interacting with whom evoked forth our joint creation.

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audience can enjoy nothing. Αἱ the same time, music is heard to have this particular feeling, intensity, and integrity as “such and such,” only by the audience, played out as “such and such” a music by the performer(s) and neither of these “such and such” no composer can anticipate, to whom, however, these “such and such" owe their origination. Thus the audience and the performer(s) are co-composers of the music composed by the composer; all of them are mutually evocative co-creators of this particular music at this particular performance of this composition by this composer. In the same manner, play with argument is a music played out by togetherness. Mutuality produces a music, extempore and impromptu, by spontaneously playing with arguments, whose logic, the rule of the game, changes with the corporate whims of playing together. And we have fun getting lost in the play. Togetherness is thus to have fun interacting in thinking in a radical way, playing even with the arguments and their rules, their logic. The radical equality of contributions in making music exists not only among the composer, the performer(s), and the audience, but among the musical notes themselves which are performed by the performer(s). À cellist Terry King once said, "In music, every note 15 special.” Perhaps he meant that every note 15 unique and important, no note is subordinate to any other, much less dispensable. Thus “accompaniment” is a misnomer. It 15 the so-called piano “accompaniment” to, say, Schuberts song-cycles—die Winterreise, die Schöne Müllerin —which really carries the song forward; the song is dead without the “accompaniment,” as Gerald Moore the unconquerable

Accompanist was never tired of insisting.” His graceful slender volume,

British understatement,

The Unashamed Accompanıst, a typical

is devoted

to an important

theme,

1e., not

only the indispensable but essential baseline role of the “accompanist” without whom the entire music simply vanishes into thin air. This is true of almost every music, particularly typified by Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata” and the Tenth One for Piano and Violin; any composition that belittles the role of accompaniment (e.g., Sarasate’s % “Accompaniment” reminds us of the master-slave reciprocity. We desist from applying Hegel’s sarcastic master-slave relation to Nietzsche’s Master Race and Slave-Morality. Hegel’s idea against Nietzsche the Anti-Christ must have been inspired by Christ’s insistence that the ruler must serve. See 4.1.3.3.

RADICAL

“Spanish

OTHER-THINKING

Dances”)

AS

TOGETHERNESS-THINKING

15 to that extent musically unworthy.

strictly the business of “Partnership.”

135

Music

15

And not only the composition itself but its actual performance depends on the “accompanist” to pull through. The trembling singer or instrumentalist is put at ease by her composed and self-assured accompanist. Their performance depends for its success on their mutual inner understanding and silent communication, so much so that the accompanist often tacitly (and sometimes not so tacitly) “pull a singer through" by helping the singer remember the forgotten tunes and passages, smoothing up what is skipped, reminding the singer of when, where, and how much to pick up the tempo, to put on the emphasis, etc. Thanks to their close cooperation of this sort,

the audience seldom hear major mishaps on the stage.”

This radical equality among notes, melodies, and performer(s) 18 beautifully executed in J.S. Bach's compositions where various interwoven strands resonate one another in equal weight, constituting more of choruses than solos with accompaniments. Even his "Violin Concerto No. 2," especially its Second Movement, 15 made up of the major melody softly played by an orchestra and “accompanied” by violin *descant" so sonorous that the latter can be easily taken as the major melody. This amounts to saying that the two parts— orchestra and violin—both play major melodies to “accompany” each other. Likewise,

Bach’s

two

sets of “Sonatas

and Partitas,”

one for solo

violin and another for solo cello, play double stops “chorally,” each part and note with equal weight blending into each other, as do his “Well-Tempered Clavier" and many choral works. And later, both Mozart and Beethoven composed Sonatas for piano and violin where both instruments take turns "accompanying" each other. “Accompaniment,” if any, plays an indispensable symbiotic role, equal in importance and weight with the major melody, to compose the integrity of musical beauty. In other words, in playing music we play as we listen to others playing with us, trying to blend in with them, to make music that 15 togetherness incarnate. Thinking 15 this music-making with Others, this Other-thinking, togetherness-thinking, ” This is the title to the first section of Gerald Moore, London: Asherberg, Hopwood, & Crew, Ltd., 1943.

The Unashamed Accompanist,

3? Another important title to a section by that phrase. ? The rest of the volume is about technical matters on how best to do such

essential accompaniment.

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which is nothing but playing musical arguments that depends tially on playing together with. radical equality and blending-in notes, melodies, parts, and players. We see why we have dwelt on “accompaniment” as we hear one claiming that a piece of classical music can enhance one's ing, writing, studying, planning, preparing for the exam; one easily tired, keeps to the task at hand longer, and be more tive, resourceful, and flexible, when accompanied by classic

essenamong somethink15 less invenmusic.

In the end, one might claim that we live as music to accompany? the "music"

of one another's lives, to live longer, livelier, and with

more vigor and variety. of togetherness lies in an accompaniment as Other does to myself accompaniment. 2.11.

That is symbiosis, living-together. The essence accompanying the Other, playing the role of much to the Other who is my Other, as the who am the Other's Other. Togetherness 15

Existential co-making:

the ontology of literature

several times in the above it 15 stated that existence 15 co-existence. Now it must be stated that “co-” here 15 a co-creative dynamics. Existence 15 a transitive co-existing act, that 1s, an act of co-making the Other to stand-out as existing. And this existential co-making comes about by an extension of our sense of tactility, an impact; the "Other" consists in this act of co-touching and co-impacting. Left alone, vision kills. Medusa's gaze freezes, while Jesus’ touch quickens. Touch and impact gives rise to reality. Literature mediates the creative touch. And hterature 15 to be read-and-seen. Thus vision mediates touch which creates. It 15 time to look into the ontology of literature via touch-and-impact of the Other. But we must be careful. lo exist 1s not always to be real. Some things exist but are not real, such as those oblivious to our attention;

some

things

are

real

but

not

existent,

such

as those

which

influence us. When things influence or impact us, they become real

‘© This approach is echoed by Jesus when he told us to serve one another, accept and care for the smallest little ones because they are the greatest in Kingdom of the Greatest, God's family. Cf. 4.1.3.3., especially a note toward end of that subsection. Serving, accepting, caring—they are our accompaniment the Other.

to the the to

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137

to us. The function of literature (storytelling 1η 4 wide sense) lies in creating impacts on us, making things real to us, so as for us to render them existent in addition to being real. This 1s the active and transitive ontology of literature. The ontology of literature is then a description of how literature makes things real, things that include ourselves and the world. “Making real" having been defined as making impacts, the reality of hterature is seen to be in its power of impacting us to create ourselves

and the world.'?!

This 1s because our human storytelling creates (real-1zes) ourselves by making us realize ourselves, and then lets us create the world by making us realize the world. This is in turn because of the existential necessities both of ourselves and of literature. (2.11.1.) What literature 15 in the self-world relation explicates how literature. creates (2.11.2.) the self and (2.11.3.) the world. 2.11.1. Literature Few would be more manifest and appropriate an exemplification of co-creation of reality and existence than literature, which 15 a concentrate of creative Other-ing reciprocity among the writer, the reader, the impact, and the world. 'Thus considering literature, from the angle of ontological togetherness and Other-thinking, culminates our consideration of the concrete multifaceted notion of the Other. 2.11.1.1. Definitions: The “ontology of literature” has two key terms, "ontology" and “literature,” together with a crucial connective, “of.” We must first explicate their relation in the word “of.” Ontology, as a study of the structure of all that 1s, considers what is real. Reality manifests itself in its impact. Literature creates impact. The ontology of literature, then, considers literary creation of reality by studying the literary impact on us, so as for us to impact on things into reality, as we are impacted, 1.e., influenced, changed, directed, by literature.

This simple paragraph captures the whole sentiment of this subsection. For this description to be fully intelligible, however, the key words here must be explained. First, what 1s "real" 1s what impacts us. And so mere existence is not always what 15 real. For existence can be not-real, as neighbors in the city apartments, a road sign in the familiar neighborhood,

01 Cf. 5.5.1.1.

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persons beside us in a bus, and the like. We can thus be quite indifferent to what or who exist around us; they would then be unreal. Conversely, something not existent can be threateningly real. Augustine talked about “evil” as a lack, a no-existence; the Taoists harp on the power of “emptiness” (hsü, wu); the existentialists note

the inner eerie “abyss.”10

Then, "objects" are what are real, confronting us. And the “world” is

what confronts and surrounds us, making its impacts felt. “Literature” makes real objects out of what do not exist, and makes unreal what do. Literature also makes real objects out of things of doubtful existence, such as mirror-image, by telling stories about 1t. Literature, "story," and "history" are inter-related 1η meaning if not in actuality. For “literature” is, as its etymology says, a coherent collection of words, which are ideas represented if not incarnate. Similarly,

“story” is a coherent (or purposely incoherent, as in Franz Kafka)!”

string of words and ideas. Stories can be "argument" in words of logic and reason, “science” in words of mathematics and experiments,

and “novel” in words of historical or quasi-historical consecution.!”®

"History" is a series of stories spread in meaningful time, infusing coherence into brute happenings. Now that our key words are described, 1t makes sense to say that

12 The Buddhists’ talk about illusions, such as “self,” “desire,” and the very “existence" itself, makes our distinction complex, however. What we take as real are made not-existing, which are then made threateningly real. Perhaps the Buddhists urge us to render unreal what impact us (1.e., 15 real), by being enlightened about their non-existence. And such rendering paves the way of salvation out of suffering from impacts of the non-existent. 1% A little girl asked me, “Am I really in the mirror when I look into it?” In her asking, the mirror-image came alive. And by wriüng it down, and by her seeing it written down and reading on it, its reality is assured. And soon we will consider literature itself as our mirror of the self and of the world. '% Richard Swinburne has a long section on what “coherence” is in his The Coherence of Theism, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977, pp. 11-49. Sadly, it smacks of begging the question, for he needs (an unexplainable sense of) coherence to explain what "coherence" means. We don't need that sort of thing. All we need is an intuitive sense of meaning, a sense of "sense." Making sense is seeing coherence, meaning. On “meaning,” see my Butterfly, pp. 364—72, et passim. 1% And as long as this narrative incoherence is executed on purpose, the incoherence is a meaningful one. Since we must be coherent to be intelligible, that is, meaningful, meaningful incoherence is as much a part of coherence as dissonance 15 a component of musical harmony; this 15 the case even in such harmonious composers as Schubert and Mozart.

‘© On the structure and significance of “story,” see my Butterfly, pp. 67-69,

102-04, et passim (see Index

[p. 506] on “story”).

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139

the ontology of literature concerns what is real as manifested in lts impacts created by literature. To put it another way, the ontology of literature studies how we create literature so it creates an impact on us, for us in turn to have an impact on the world, thereby shape and create ourselves with the world. 2.11.1.2. Literary Impact as Literary Reality: In all this interimpacting relation among reality, ourselves, and literature, two points claim our attention, impact and the creative reality of literature. First, as to “impact.” Impact 15 a word of relation, calling our attention to two pairs of mutuality—the impactor and the impacted, the subject and the object. Here the same entity can be either the impactor or the impacted; we the subject can make an impact on what confronts us (our object), and we can be impacted by that object. And literature uniquely facilitates this mutuality of impact. And so, secondly, the so-called “literary reality” hes in its function; what it 15 1s how it works. Literature becomes

real as it makes

real objects; it creates itself as it creates reality. “Good literature” 15 one that is full of such reality, that 1s, one that 1s most effective in its function of evoking reality-impact. In the world of hterature, we can say that, à la Berkeley, the impact we feel 1s not Just the impactor impinging on us but is itself the impactor. As the medium 15 the message, so the impact 15 the impactor. The medium 15 the message which 15 the real conveyed, and hterature 15 the message and the conveyance. For “to be 15 to be perceived" 15, after all, a subspecies of “to be is to impact and to be impacted.” We first notice what it is by what it does, and then we come to know that this doing 15 itself what it is, where

“it”

can

be

ourselves

as well

as what

confronts

us,

and

what confronts us 15 the world of objects which includes literature. And literature 15 a strange object that confronts us. [15 reality exclusively and peculiarly depends on how effectively it moves, impacts, us; unless we are moved, a book of novel 15 just a pile of paper, not literature. Literature that moves us is what 15 called a “good story.” But a good story moves only us the reader, making not a dent on the outside. Instead, a good story makes us move to make a dent on reality. Reality 15 what makes a difference and what is made different, and making a difference 15 to make an impact. A good story makes us different from before, and makes us go out to make a difference 1η the objective world that confronts and surrounds us.

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2.11.1.3. Storytelling as creation: All this comes from the fact

that we cannot help but writing out a story-in-life that is ourselves.

We become ourselves by making “hterature” or “story” of ourselves. Literature is the stuff of which we are made. And we re-create the world by both creating new literature and being created anew by literature. Thus we see here a creative mutuality: we are created by literature as we create it, which in turn moves us to create the world

in which we are shaped. Such 15 the ontology of hterature. And

so there

remain

we,

the world,

and

literature,

these

three,

and the central among them 15 literature. We and reality revolve around literature. In this sense, we can say, "In the beginning 15 hiterature, and literature 1s made flesh—we and the world. This is how

things and the world are created." For literature 1s where the action 1s, and

act creates both

ourselves

and

our world.

Goethe's

dictum,

"In the beginning 15 act" 1s concretely translatable into “In the beginning 1s literature." Al this redounds to the importance of looking into how hterature functions. To repeat. Collecang words in a certain coherent way to make a story, literature 1s a story come alive towards us, impacting us to impact the world—reflecting and reshaping the world by redirecting and reshaping us. Literature as literary agent-patient is no less than the world agent. We ourselves are as we are by being impacted by literature. Literature shapes the way we are made aware of the world (which includes us). It is time to look into how literature works out all this mutuality of the self (in 2.11.2.) and the world (11 2.11.3.). 2.11.2. Ourselves 2.11.2.1. History as ourselves: Let us begin at the beginning and consider how we ourselves came to be through literature. One cardinal feature of literature 15 "story," and one essential aspect of story is "history." History 15 a story of my past and ours, the past that is recollected—re-collected—into a coherent story, a coherent string of meanings. Literature as historical 15 what constitutes us; it is ourselves in our essence, our past coherently collected at present for our future, because 1t is after all we ourselves who constitute his-

torical literature,

07 I argued extensively on this point in the context of history in my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 1-123. On this point and how significant it is, see 2.11.2. below.

108 See my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit.

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And history 15 not just a matter of dead past. In history we see a twofold intimate relationship between the past and the future: history as the context for our future-in-the-making, and history itself as the beginning of our future. First, history 1s the material for our future, what we digest to begin anew. And history 15 the matrix of our growth. By “matrix” here we mean that history 15 the context, the world, that by which we are shaped, that in terms of which we walk our first step in life into the future. History suggests the manner, the shape, the direction of our first step. But, secondly, the past 15 not just the material by which, and matrix in which, the present initiates the future. The old place, when we come back to it via literature, is the place where we first come,

as T.S. Eliot also felt:!” We And Will And

shall not cease from the end of all our be to arrıve where know the place for

exploration exploring we started the first time.

And then, we continue, “to arrıve” and to “know the place for the first time” amount to having begun another new exploration, starting at the place “where we started.” “We shall not cease from exploration,” indeed. And this ontological shuttle is history. Let us elaborate on it this way. To dp into the past is itself to initiate self-innovation of the present, 1.e., to begin our future. Dipping into the past can be done feelingly through literature; ıt ıs to warm

up the old. And, to put Confucius’ dictum!!” our way, to “warm up

the old" zs itself to “know the new." For to warm up the old past is to dwell in it, which 15 to ponder on it appreciatively and critically, thereby to steer our future by learning from its mistakes as well as its wisdom. And history comes about—all this warming up of the old comes about—only when we tell stories about the old, what we have gone through. In fact, to tell is to warm up, and we just love to tell the story of what has been, and what has been is what we believe to have been so (or wish to have been so). And then something else happens. By warming up the old, literature integrates it into, thereby brings 09 T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Little Gidding,” N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

Inc., 1943, 1971, lines 239-42. 110 The Analects, 2/11.

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TOGETHERNESS

forth, the new. Whatever story we tell about what happened, it comes out new, sometimes in factual details, almost always from a new perspective. Thus literature, our historical storytelling, is our innovation, our new beginning, our future. History (our literature) 15 an initiaton of innovation, the beginning of our future. No wonder Santayana said, “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it," for they think they refuse history in order to start anew, but in refusing history, things cannot get started. And so history is impossible without hterature, a literary (imaginative) re-enactment; in fact, literature 15 a storytelling which is historical—factually, non-factually, counterfactually.!!! 2.11.2.2. Literature as “self”-creation: Let us consider literature

as related to ourselves.

First, as to our creation

of literature,

then as to its creation of us. Let us apply our above story of "history" to ourselves. To live as human 1s tantamount to stringing together bits of my recollections, re-collect my recollections, into a coherent constitutive whole, “myself.”

Myself zs “my story" of life. I always have a story on hand, ready to tell others as well as to myself. For I am a story-in-the-making of a particular life. I am the storyteller of myself which is a "story" of life, in the making. Thus collectively, we live as storytellers; we are the stories we tell. We make literature, without which we lose

our lives as human, our personal integnty. Blending stories of lives each into the other, a community is thus born. The community of selves can be seen in the following manner as well. We hold our story to ourselves as a mirror to aid us in our self-shaping called self-reflection,

which

15 self-examination.

In fact,

to hold our story-mirror up to ourselves is already to begin to selfreflect and -examine. This self-performance is the self 's “Other”-ing, sociality within the self, “self-alienation” on which both Marx and Sartre pondered but, sadly, in an exclusively negative manner. Self-mirroring 15 really an often painful but wholesome self-examination, “wholesome” in an active performative sense of makingwhole. Self-examination 1s aroused by a wholesome story, as Socrates vividly told us both with his own life and in his Apology, and exhibited it in his noble death that clinches, completes, his life-story. Lit''' Cf. my “Counterfactuals, Universals, and Chinese Thinking," in Tsing-hua Hsüeh-pao (Ysing-Hwa Journal of Chinese Studies), 1989, pp. 1-46. We will look, in 2.11.3.2. below, into storytelling—history—as counterfactual.

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erature is then a wholesome creation of our “self” for self-examination,

catharsis, and growth, transcending into the future of personal integrity. For to describe—write-down—something 15 to hold it up in front of us to look at, to objectify it for us the subject to become aware of it, to observe

it and think about it. To

become

aware

of some-

thing 15 to realize it, and to realize it 15 to begin to bring it about, to real-ize it, to objectify it as an Other which confronts us the subject. At the same time, we become self-aware by being confronted with the object. Here to become self-aware is to real-ize ourselves; in the world of the self, in being self-conscious self-consciousness exists as such.

To

realize oneself is to real-ize the self, which

15 to

begin to shape the self and to live it. In all this ontological performance, literature is at work, first by exhibiting whatever the subject described to the wnter-subject, then bringing it to the awareness of the reader-subject, thus provoking

the subjects (writer and reader) to objectify it and shape it, where

the “it” is the literary object evoking the subject-creation mentioned above. And these different subjects can be the same self. ‘This is also the literary performance of establishing subjectivity via narrative objectification. Literature creates the self as another by creating a coherent story of something which may be the self, or (things of) the world in which the self finds itself. The doorkeeper of the Law whispered to the dying visitor from the country, who had been begging for admittance for all his hfe, “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you....”''? The story, the literature, is both the door and the doorkeeper

to Law

and order, that 15, to Meaning;

the story 15

made by us to be made for us. Yet this is only half of the story. As we are hemmed in by the Colony of coherent story of our life, our Colony we can and do continually remake and rebuild. It is the castle of our ideas and ideals. That is the great free power of literature, imaginative novel. We live there freely, beside our present selves. In

other

words,

literature

creates

us,

the

self, in the

following

twofold manner. First, I am my story in the making. We are all storytellers. To demonstrate this fact we can just go and sit with any old

ΠΣ The concluding words of Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law,” in The Penal Colony,

N.Y.: Shocken Books, Inc.,

1958.

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lady, and she will soon enough pour herself out in a story after story of her days. To lose my story 15 to lose my self, as any psychother-

apist can tesüfy.'? This storytelling brings my past together into a

coherent present of myself. Secondly, if we ask what my story is, we can say that it 15 a narrative objectification of myself, my mirror. lhis my mirror of myself does me two things. First, it makes me self-aware by impacting me, making me realize myself, thereby realize myself. Then, by becoming self-aware, I now re-shape myself into existing as I realize myself to be, shaping myself into my future self. We are thus shaped, by the literature we shape, into the Other which is a truer “we” than we are now. This is the beginning of co-responding with the world, shaping what confronts and surrounds us while we are being shaped by it, beginning at its part, the literary mirror we shaped. And we find, as we co-respond with the world, that it is more than what we first thought it is. It has horizons after horizons, via mutual blending of stories, mutual literary mirrorings of the self, stretching far and wide as we grow forward and outward, thanks to the provocation of literature we shape and read. And this 15 our world. To this we now turn. 2.11.3. The world 2.11.3.1. Literary creation: from self to world: We have seen that literature, as a stringing together of bits of our past, is a history of the self, and this history of the self, by being thus narratively objectified (put down in writing and held up as a mirror) provokes the self's re-shaping into the future self. We then find that the story that we are 15 more than what we thought we were, and more objective, independent, than initially expected. As the world 15 shaped by us via our story, we are in turn shaped up as the world specifically and peculiarly confronts us. Let us look into how all this works. First, literature 15 a mirror shaped by our words that describe the situation. Reading it amounts to setting the mirror-of-literature up in front of us, making us self-aware. Then as the situation 15 coherently objectified into a mirror-story, so it coherently shapes us into our true selves; we have shaped the literary mirror for it to shape us. Then we realize that we have just co-responded with a part of Π Cf., among others, Dr. Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, N.Y.: Summit Books, 1985, and my reflections on it in History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, pp. 11-15.

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the world, the literary mirror. As we reflect on the mirror to reflect back onto ourselves, we see in it the world of which it is a part. We realize that we now have become coherently ourselves, coresponded with the world, and thereby created the world.'!* It 15 thus that literature stands at the crucial crossroads of interactions, making possible mutual impactings between ourselves and the world. To

look into literature, then, 15 to look into the creative

mutuality between ourselves and the world, and this mutuality constitutes reality, because reality consists in impact, and mutuality 15 that of impacts between ourselves and the world. The genius of literature hes in that it can and does create something real, something both non-existent and incapable of not-existing, because of the necessity both of literature itself and of our irresistible ontological nisus bursting, bubbling forth, into future reality. At once we see two necessities—literary, ourselves—of creating something real in the future beyond existence now. First, literature is of necessity creative of somewhere else some-time else than here now. For what literature 15 not about what is not here now? Whatever is described is not here; it was then, it is to be, soon, or forever out there—somewhere else than here, some-

time else than now——staring at us. That is what fascinates us in hterature.

Secondly,

for ourselves, to live 1s to live on, and living on 15

to live into what 15 coming, the future. To live on self-consciously, thanks

to the literature we

come; what is coming,

create and

read, 1s to create what

15 to

the future, 15 what we live on into. Life is

fact-creative and counterfactual,

a futuristic élan.

And so, literature creates the world via its impacts on us in the following threefold way. First, I realize that my story of myself, as a mirror, a narrative objectification of my self, is just a part of the world.

The

mirror is (a) more than myself,

for 1t 1s somewhere

else,

some-time else, than myself, and (b) pointing at something more than

itself, the world. When

I realize so, I realize that world of which my

mirror-story is Just a part. secondly, the story of myself makes sense only in the context of the environment of things and events, as they happened and are happening around me, making up my world. In other words, the

''* The so-called correspondence theory of truth originates in this literary coresponding that we initiate. The former is a checkup, a retrospective verification, of the latter.

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story of myself 15 at the same time the story of my world. My story makes a coherent unity out of haphazard happenings. And this unity is the world. Finally, in the story of myself and the world, many things are not factual. Every time a new story is told一 a different set of details, in a dfierent perspective. We create them in literature as real for us to create them into existence. It 15 thus that literature creates the world via its creative impacts on us. In order to describe our world which we create, then, the best way 15 to describe literature while letting literature describe everything. For to describe literature is to describe its action, its impacting function upon and among us; we function accordingly to shape the world, that is, in our respective ways according as we are variously influenced by literature. In other words, we don’t create the world slavıshly according as we are patterned by literature, but we create the world creatively as we are evoked by literature into acting on our own, in our own manner. Yet “our own manner” is produced only by having been impacted by literature in a certain way. And so we see here two points. On the one hand, without having read that novel, I would not have acted in that way. And yet, on the other hand, that way is peculiarly my way, no one else would have done so, even after having read that novel. Someone else would have acted in some other way after reading that story, that novel. And so, to repeat. Literature is more than history. Literature creates something real that is non-existent and cannot but be real, which is our future directive, an existential imperative. This is what makes literature so impingingly essential to our life and our world, because it 15 normatively future-creative as well as constitutively ontological at present.!? This is why and how literature impacts us to freely impact the world. But world-impact amounts to world-creation. We are now to consider this theme. 2.11.3.2. Literary self-transcendence as world-creation: Sartre said that any storytelling is telling a lie, because facts do not have a sensible sequence; facts have no reason, no climax, no excitement, and a fortiori no morals, no meaning. But man by nature, he

said, loves to tell stories. And stones describe coherent meaning of the sequence of events. Hence, stories are lies to facts as they happen,

ID As has been described in 2.11.2.

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147

without rhyme or reason.16 Story is a retelling of events, a retro-

spective recounting, 4 history of 4 special kind, a history that 15 pseudo-factual by narrating facts, even counterfactual in infusing sequential meaning into haphazard happenings, both factual and

imaginative. And we live such storytelling.''’ This is because we can-

not live without meaning, that is, a sense of coherence-integrity both of ourselves and of things. Sartre’s literary “he” to the now belies its impact towards our future. Sartre's “lie” of storytelling which betrays the actuality-now betrays to us our future which had better be as narrated. Literature 1s thus counterfactual, provoking us, impacting us, towards what 15 yet to be via our imaginative storytelling of events.

Or

rather,

since

the

élan

of self-transcendence

is what

we

really are, literature directs our future creation. We are always somewhere else and some-when else than here now. Call it ontological project, “nothingness” (Sartre), a fall from, therefore Eros towards, the original paradise of being-itself (Plato), “anxiety” (Heidegger), geo-ontological "fault" (Ricoeur), “différance” (Derrida), or onto-historical self-transcendence,

it 15 we ourselves on

examine

ourselves,

the run, always being here in being somewhere else. To facilitate the working-out of this élan of self-alienation, of becoming “oneself as another" (Ricoeur),''® nothing is more fitting and natural than storytelling, literature. It 15 our self-made mirror we hold to ourselves, to the

Other-in-the-mirror

to examine

so we

can

make history that is a story deserving to be claimed as ours, so that we can make the world deserving to be claimed as our paradise Colony!'? (regained). Literature is thus our hand-made looking glass, creatively ontological. A final question must be asked. How do we judge whether the future we envision in our home-made literature deserves to be made our home? The answer can only be: By writing literature on ıt! Stories judge stories as history judges history, in the same manner as a perception 15 to be judged by more perceivings, as an argument is by more arguments. That—literature—is how history and literature are made and judged. Literature 15 how we are brought Π6 Jean-Paul

pp. 56-59.

Sartre, Nausea,

tr. Lloyd Alexander,

N.Y.:

New

Directions,

!7 Cf. 2.11.2.1. above. 8 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, Chicago: The University of Chicago 1992. !? Cf. Kafka's story mentioned towards the end of 2.11.2.2.

1964, Press,

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back to our creative selves, continually, historically. All in all, all this is how literature 15 creatively, historically, ontological. 2.11.4. So far we have considered literature as touch-via-vision of the Other that brings about reality, then existence. We must now consider how the touch as that of the Other configures and impacts into existence a person, that 1s, the ethical aspect of the Other’s touch-and-impact. This 15 interpersonal philosophy or reasoning under the rubric of “touch.” For touch is a paradigm of action wherein the subject is the object, the object 15 the subject, because here to touch 15 to be touched, both in a physical sense and a feeling sense—sensitivity and sensibility 15 radically reciprocal. But to elaborate this radical reciprocity in the direction of feeling and sensitivity 15 to bring us into the realm of the ethical. To touch 15 to respond to the appearance of the Other on the horizon of the I, and responsiveness bespeaks responsibility in which the subject and the object are united into one interpersonal community; community is now synonymous with coresponsibility. What 15 responsibility? We can learn from touch. To touch 15 to be touched. When responding to my personal Other, I am touched by the Other's situation, respond to it, and become responsible for it. lo be responsible means to become available to the Other in service of her needs. At the same time, the self-become-available-inservice 15 tantamount to the self-become-sensitized, therefore self-

become-vulnerable by the self's hurting sensitivity to the Other's predicament. lo touch the Other's situation 15 to be touched by it. That 15 humanity, what constitutes the human, brought out by the touchas-being-touched in relation to the Other. This 15 what Mencius saw, and what Levinas’ philosophy made of. ‘Touched and provoked by the Other’s situation, human subjectivity is manifested in the asymmetry and unidirectionality of the self’s gratuitous concern for the Other, without expecting reciprocation; the gratuity, asymmetry, unidirection, of concern, that is the fullness, integrity, and dignity of

humanity, of human

subjectivity.'*? Mencius extrapolated from all

this an ideal government of populism that inheres in the vast cosmic 7 Cf. Robert Bernasconi Routledge, 1988, p. 165.

& David Wood,

eds.,

The Provocation of Levinas, N.Y.:

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togetherness.'?! This is the cosmically and creatively ethico-political dimension brought about by the self-Other interaction, in the paradigm of human touch. 2.11.5. All this explicates how seriously important Other-thinking 1s when considered in its existential dimension, showing how Other-thinking is a touch, impacting, via literature, something into reality; after all,

literature 15 Other-thinking in touch with the Other and with things. In this light, we now realize that in all cognitive investigations we have been engaged so far, what has proved detrimental to our understanding of the Other is our very isolation-mode of solo-thinking, a denial of Other-thinking itself. We try so hard straightly to "argue."

We should not have. An alternative to linear arguing is to diversely'”

and perceptively play with it, a playful performance of Other-thinking. Playing 1s one way to understand the Other, by practicing togethernessthinking, Other-thinking, as explained in 2.9 and in this subsection. In playing with arguments we see and understand the Other, or rather, live with the Other, think Other-ly, realize the Other, enjoy the differences, thereby realize myself, and thus realize an enjoyable community of diferences in togetherness. To this development of hved Other-thinking we now turn, first by explicating play, dialectically back and forth, with arguments, In Section 3, then by applying Other-thinking to the toughest conflict of all, religious togetherness, in Section 4. and finally by practicing this Other-thinking in the realm of the most comprehensive thinking of all, philosophy, in Section 5.

121 Mencius,

147,

2A6.

See

further in 5.1.,

5.4.3.,

'22 For “diversity” is synonymous with mutual

73 Cf. especially 4.1.2.2. inclusive.

5.4.4., below.

“difference.”

SECTION

3

ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS: PLAYING WITH ARGUMENTS! We summarize here what we will consider. Three points will be raised. One (A), in 3.1. through 3.7. we observe how arguments can be played with rather than seriously engaged. Then, two (B), in 3.8.1. through 3.8.4., we will see how life itself is a play, which contains its own argumentation, and where arguments are played with. Finally, three (C), we are going to (in 3.9. to the end) elaborate on the last point, that play 15 not actuality but the two are interfused. A. Argument

can be played with

3.1. What: to argue, to play There are at least two ways of treating arguments—to argue and to play with. arguments. Aristotle argued, while Nietzsche played with arguments.^ And it is crucial to realize that arguing is not playing.” Ihe act of attacking an argument, perfectly legitimate 1η the realm of arguing, completely misses the point in playing with. arguments, even becomes nonsensical. We can demolish an argument, but can never “demolish” a playing with an argument. We will be laughed off—and laughed over—if we try to demolish a playing. In the world of play, all we can do 15 either to play with those who play, or to refuse to play and leave. For play has a function and a purpose different from those of argument. Playing evokes and opens out; arguing wins and clinches a point. In the following, we will see that । My deep appreciation is expressed herewith to Professor Paul D. Eisenberg of Indiana University for his sagacious critiques on 3.1. through 3.7. These critiques have so alerted me as to reshape my sentences, qualify, tighten, and/or modify my views, thus saved me from many embarrassments. Whatever mistakes due to my stubborn obtuseness remain mine.

? Cf. 3.7. below. + See Appendix A

to 3.1.: “Playing and arguing.”

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151

playing with an argument 15 our freedom riding on logic, our freedom to stumble logically, and that such a stumble 15 a peculiar strumming that produces sympathetic symphonic co-vibrations to discern truths together. In order to understand what playing with arguments 15, we must understand what an argument 15. An argument typically goes from the premises and supporting evidence to the drawing of a conclusion. An argument consists, then, of reasons, a logical chain which links those reasons 1η seriatim, and a specific point deduced from those reasons. It has a definite direction and a definite conclusion.‘ In contrast, playing with arguments 15 not arguing but playing to open out in novel directions. It ls by nature metaphorical. By metaphor, I mean understanding of a less familiar experience in terms of a more familiar and concrete experience. Metaphor 15 a linkage and a ferry. It links us in the familiar to the strange, thereby ferries us to the strangely novel. Playing with arguments 15 metaphorical in two manners. First, a playing 15 not arbitrary and meaningless, but a linkup that is structurally intelligible and persuasive, if not seen as convincingly inevitable, in the light of the similarity, between the known and the strange, now revealed by the metaphor spanning between them. Secondly, playing with arguments 15 thus a sort of reasoning, after all. It uses arguments intelligibly to open our eyes to the unexpected. But using arguments does not argue any more than playing with arguments does. Playing does not go on a definite argumentative track to deduce—to close in on 一 a definite. point, the conclusion. Instead, a playing with arguments opens us to the novel, and is itself metaphorically open-ended. For the purpose of the metaphorical linkup in the playing is to ferry us to an unexpected territory, and whatever unexpected 15 open to wonder, to novelty. Thus,

often,

what

is said or asserted

1s not what

is meant.

For

what 15 said 1s only one side of the link, to connect us to somewhere else we neither knew nor expected to know. Here, literal understanding is ἃ misunderstanding. Playing with arguments 15 a metaphor, ferrying us to somewhere novel via a reasoning that resonates in us with a new vibration. It is a reasoning that links us persuasively * This description holds for both deduction and induction. Soon in 3.2.1. we will consider how similar metaphor is to induction, an inference different in kind from deduction.

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though surprisingly; it is ἃ ferry-reasoning from the expected to the unexpected, ferrying us from the hteral to the novel via the metaphoric. Playing with arguments, then, 15 a link-ferry sort of reasoning. It links us to the unfamiliar with the familiar and the reasonable, as a

bird 15 linked via its wings in the surrounding beyond expectation, for the “destination” here surrounding itself, full of unknowns. And play ferries us to the unknown and the unnoticed,

us into a laughter in which we gain insight.” 3.2. What:

air to the destination 15, among others, the with arguments also as a clown surprises

to play, to metaphor

Examining the scheme of such a linkup, we admit that it is more experiential and configurative than strictly logical. Thus 1f meaningful move 15 taken as logical move, all metaphorical moves should belong to that renowned “categorial mistake," an inadmissible changeover of categories, a logically illicit mixing of types, in short, a meaning-

less move, as some logical analysts insist. To this objection we have four replies:

3.2.1. To begin with, a rather extreme point can be raised. Zeno’s first argument against motion says that the moving object must reach an infinite number of midway points in a finite period of time before reaching its destination, and so motion 1s logically impossible. Zeno’s logical sensitivity has a crucial implication for any argument.’ For every “perfectly logical” move from proposition A to proposition B, various people, with good logical conscience, could yet—due to their varied sensitivities to logical “tightness,” alternate sentiments of “coherence,” incongruous senses for the “decency” of logical layout, due to disparate logical levels and academic fields they operate ? See Appendix B to 3.1.: “Playing, arguing, and conclusion." ° Cf. Edward Erwin, The Concept of Meaninglessness, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970, pp. 107-125. Such logical stricture has been loosened since the heyday of the 1970s by the deconstructionist cntique. But this analytic stance has the merit of clarity to which deconstructionism 15 still groping. It 1s yet worth our while to operate somewhat in this mold. ’ The sentence, Zeno’s argument “has a crucial implication for any argument,” is stated not in a necessary deductive sense but as a metaphorical description. For “deduction” itself is here examined; to ask whether the sentence and the entire paragraph here are duductively valid is to beg the question.

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on 一 ask for reasons which justify the move.? To answer their request,

we must supply at least one proposition, C.'? But between proposi-

tions À and C one could again ask for a justificatory proposition, D. And the process of requesting justificatory propositions could go on indefinitely. Let us consider this fascinating-frustrating situation in four points (and two further points in the next subsection). First, different fields require diferent sorts of logic. Collingwood's

vivid description recurs:'?

I was still a young man when a very distinguished visitor addressed an academic society on an archaeological subject that came within my special field of studies. The point he made was new and revolutionary, and it was easy for me to see that he had proved it up to the hilt. I imagined . . . that so lucid and cogent a piece of reasoning must convince any hearer, even one who previously knew nothing about its subject-matter. I was at first much disconcerted, but in the long run greatly instructed, by finding that the demonstration had quite failed to convince the (very learned and acute) logicians in the audience.

Collingwood's

conclusion

was

that "different kinds of science

characterized by different kinds of inference." He continued,"

are

The way in which knowledge is related to the grounds upon which it Is based is in fact not one and the same for all kinds of knowledge. That this 15 so, and that therefore a person who has studied the nature of inference as such—let us call him a logician—can correctly judge the validity of an inference purely by attending to its form, although he has no special knowledge of its subject-matter, is a doctrine of Aristotle; but it 15 a delusion, although it 15 still believed by many very able persons who have been trained too exclusively in the Aristotelian logic and the logics that depend upon it for their chief doctrines.

Collingwood was thinking of the "new" logic, “inductive reasoning" without logical compulsion, different from the deductive one with it. And importantly, it 15 uncanny to see how similar Collingwood's 8 And all this, in turn, due to their diverse interpretive otherwise. Cf. 1.1.1. ? See Appendix A to 3.2.1.: “‘Logical lacunas’ and the debates." Ὁ Or revise or replace the entire argument. Although the same point is nonetheless made, to wit, no “perfrect” is possible. !! Cf. 1.1.1. (end), 5.4.4. '2 Idea of History, op. cit., p. 253, note 1. This book is pose. The metaphysician Collingwood touches actuality in of History. 5 Ibid.

perspectives, cultural or history of philosophical this is a different story, argument to “everyone” important for our purthe form of Philosophy

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description of induction is to our understanding of metaphorical move. Both proceed “from the known to the unknown,” and both logically compel less than invite discovery and extrapolation in a certan way—although metaphor proceeds “from the particular to the

universal" much less often than induction usually does.'*

And so, secondly, we have many different sorts of logic. Besides

these

two

kinds

of logic,

deductive

and

inductive,

we

have

many

others. Aristotle ın his Mcomachaean Ethics reminded us of the “logic” in the ethical realm, “practical wisdom,” being “looser” than the “logic” in a “proper” sense explicated in his Organon and others, “theoretical wisdom.” Here the word, “looser,” makes sense only in terms of difference of realms; lived pragmatic “logic” is the “logic” that logic does not know." For lived logic is as inevitable, ineluctable, and “compulsive” (Collingwood) as deductive logic; a man with a dagger gone through his heart must die in “lived logic,” but not deductively; “A dagger went into his heart, and he lived on" leads to no logical contradiction. Novels display such a lived logicality (historical intelligibility) by depicting it, so much so that Collingwood terms it "a pron.” He thinks that novels and history share in common this necessity that 15 “internal to themselves," “autonomous or self-authorizing,” different from usual logical necessity:!^ Characters and incidents are all alike imaginary; yet the whole aim of the novelist 1s to show the character acüng and the incidents developing in a manner determined by a necessity internal to themselves... . The resemblance between the historian and the novelist . . . here reaches its culmination. ... Each aims at making his picture a coherent whole, where every character and every situation 15 so. bound up with the rest that this character in this situation. cannot but act in this way, and we cannot imagine him as acting otherwise. The novel and the history must both of them make sense; nothing 1s admissible in either except what is necessary, . . . Both the novel and the history are selfexplanatory, self-justifying, the product of an autonomous or selfauthorizing activity; and in both cases this activity is the a priori imagination.

Conversely, we can write up a consecutive coherent narration somewhat like Alice in Wonderland, completely deductively tight and valid yet inadmissible in our commonsense parlance. Similarly, perhaps # Ibid., pp. 254-55. 5 Cf. 3.8.1. below. 16 Collingwood, The Idea of History, op. cit., pp. 242, 245.

WHAT:

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many of us find Walden Two objectionable from the same viewpoint of experiential, commonsense “necessity,” which is not deductively “compulsive” yet actually ineluctable. Collingwood terms this inevitability “a priori" and the non-deductive character, “imagination”; we usually call it “rhetoric.” None

15 com-

pletely appropriate for our purpose here. For “a prion” reminds us as much of deduction as do "imagination" and "rhetoric" of arbitrariness. Perhaps we can call this experiential necessity of our commonsense

reasonableness,

"lived logic," which

15 neither. deductively

necessary (so, logicians find fault with it)" nor completely random (otherwise, novelists would rebel).'? Lived thinking and logical thinking live in two rooms in the same mansion of thinking—we suspect that the logical thinking originates in the lived one.” This explains why Kant had to write more than one “Critique,” each of which can be taken as a sort of "logic." And so, the word “logic” in our overall title of this book could have been called “critique," and our title, “critique of communal

reason," were it not for

its theoretical, Kantian and Habermas-esque overtone.” Moreover, he apparently explicated in several Critiques several sorts of logic—

transcendental, practical, aesthetic, and religious—with the same sort of logic, which he yet failed to explicate. And, worse yet, the

explication, in which were he to have been engaged, may well have caught him in an infinite. regress, building Chinese boxes of interpretations. Robert C. Neville’s pungent observation 15 apt in this context:?! One

the

of the faster transformations of the current intellectual scene 15

fad

for deconstructionism.

A

text does

not fix a state

of affairs,

deconstructionism points out, but is a processive interpretation of it, in turn requiring interpretation so that nothing is fixed and every interpretive “take” transforms the experiential perspective.

7 J.S. Mill's “inductive logic” as basic to deduction was a trial in this direction. E. Husserl had to fight with "psychologism" as he tried to put our experience (Lebenswelt) into reasonableness. 18 Existentialist novels (like “Waiting for Godot”) use nonsense in a certain manner that appeals to our common sense on the reasonableness of actuality; they use nonsense to make actual sense. ,? M. Merleau-Ponty lustily argued for this point in his The Phenomenology of Perception. I did so in my Chinese Body Thnking.

Ὁ Cf. Preface

^ The quotation is from Neville's Foreword to my The Butterfly as Companion Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1990, p. xi

156

SECTION

3:

ARGUMENTATIVE

TOGETHERNESS

Thirdly, different sorts of logic come from different sorts and levels of living. Pascal discerned that the heart has reason that reason does

not know. A father asked his daughter, “Why do you love David?” She

answered,

“Because

I love

him.”

He

was

dumbfounded.

A

moment later, having recovered from bafflement, he asked, “Then, when do you plan to marry him?" And back came "Daddy! You don't understand!," to his further consternation. Poetry is the realm typically chock-full of such “non sequiturs,” some famous poems with so many jumps that commentators are sent scurrying for logical steps, and then more steps, then some more, to fill in and smooth out our road to understanding by one ingenious commentator after another, generation after generation. And religion also some has far-out “reasons” of its own which

reason does not know, either.^ Isaiah gave King Ahaz a "sign" of

stupendous Immanuel (God-with-us) 1n a commonplace young woman with her baby. Incredible as it was, it was so important a sign that the angels picked 1t up when announcing Jesus' birth. Jeremiah saw an almond branch (shaged) which meant God is watching (shoged), and a boiling pot tilted southward which meant the north disaster coming.?? All Jesus’ “miracles” are supposedly such “signs.”** Many “convincing" signs in religion such as these are not logically so at all.” And there are “commands” of God which are completely unintelligible to our reason, though perhaps perfectly "logical" to God. Abraham was a typical person beset by those commands; he was told by God, *Get out of your country, your kindred, and your father's house to the land I will show you," without specifying why or where;

then

he was

told, when

far advanced

1η years,

that he

was going to have a son, Isaac, then he was told to offer that son of promise on Mount Moriah, and then at the last moment to leave that son alone—he got him back alive. St. Paul and the writer of Hebrews were so impressed that they both took Abraham to be the paradigm of faith. Soren Kierkegaard was so impressed with Abraham's offering of Isaac as to write ἃ book (Fear and Trembling) on it, an exemplification of “faith” defined ^ Cf. towards the end of 3.7.

23 Isaiah 7:14, Luke 2:12, Jeremiah 1:11-14. ^ John 2:11. # Some philosophers and theologians take “arguments for God’s existence" as belonging to this category of “religious” reasoning. Cf. 4.3.2., 4.3.3., 4.7., etc. in the following.

WHAT:

TO

PLAY,

TO

METAPHOR

197

as staking one’s life (“jump”) on logical “absurdity,” to explication

of which he devoted all his life and writings.”

Al in all, pragmatic logics, logics of living, love, poetry, and religion, conspire to tell us that we have no way of making logical moves which are convincing to everyone, at all logical levels, in all academic

fields, in all areas of life.

Furthermore, fourthly, A.C. Ewing in his /dealism^' said that extra-

logical intuition 15 needed to proceed from one logical step to another, on pain of an infinite regress of step-intercalations between two steps. We say that this intuition 15 derived from experiential coherence.

After all, logical validity cannot be proven logically; Aristotle? had

to appeal to our experience of things being as they are, instead of something other than what they are, in order to experience them and argue about them at all, to “prove” the necessity of assuming the principles of excluded middle in arguments. And even this principle is not without cultural and situational variations of interpretation.^ In short, to put it in an extreme fashion, if we persist in applying logical demand univocally and universally on all logical moves, we cannot even get the argument started. Argumentation, far from being the final court of appeal to settle points at issue, is a logical quagmire, demanding insatiably an indefinite number of logical steps between two logical steps. In this predicament, we must choose one of two roads: Either we strictly adhere to the logical mandate (and demand) and end up never being able to move at all, or we must move at the cost of logicality, that 1s, we must have an "experien-

tial jump" between the steps.”

Three pragmatic points follow. One, logical lacunas in argument are no longer something of a defect but, on the contrary, an essential factor that makes thinking possible, simply because thinking is activated by critique which is provoked by logical lacunas. Two, experience is not to be excluded from argument but 15 an essential factor in argument whose physiognomy, 1.e., style, direction, characteristics,

density,

etc., are

determined

thereby.

Three,

the

above

^? Genesis 12:1; 15:4, 6; 22; Romans 4:1-3; Hebrews 11:8-12. Our next Section 4 is entirely devoted to this theme of understanding the illogical realm of religion. That Section, then, can be seen as applying "playing with argument" in this Section. ? A.C. Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey, N.Y.: The Humanities Press, 1933. ^ In his Metaphysics, Book T.

? Cf. 1.1.1. (inclusive). Ὁ “Experiential jump" is a move experientially convincing (“experiential”) but

not logically justifiable ("jump").

158

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

two points are what renders argument relevant to experience so as for argument, in its turn, to depict, or rather, manifest experience as reasonable. And so, in the meantime, if we want to make logical moves at all, we must move intuitively, extra-logically, that 1s, make logical jumps whenever necessary. Such jumps are justified not logically but in terms of intuitive experiential”! coherence.” Thus the so-called “categorial mistake"— meaning, in this case, mixing the logical with the extra-logical—is inevitable, to be justified extra-logically, that 1s, experientially, which means both intuitively-prospectively (idealists) and historically-culturally (postmodernists). 3.2.2. We have two further points here. First, logical arguments themselves are in fact structured in terms of experiential framework. For instance, we usually proceed to argue in terms of war. The process of argu-

ment is usually patterned by the metaphor,

“Argument is war.”*

We can of course stop patterning our argumentation in terms of war. We can follow Socrates and practice maieutics instead of eristics. But then we are patterning our argument, our logical moves, in terms of midwifery, which is another experiential framework. Thus we must structure our logical argument in terms of one experiential metaphor or another. For otherwise, we cannot understand what it means to argue. And yet, secondly, the connection between argument and war, the metaphor, "Argument is war," is itself logically unintelligible, for there is no logically necessary connection between argument and war. It 15 not logically necessary for an argument to be conducted as if we conduct warfare. We can practice maieutics when we argue. But

then

again

there

15 no

necessary

logical

connection,

either,

between argument and maieutics; for one can pracüce dance when one argues. But in fact, in the Western world, arguments are usu? We

may agree that being “intuitive” derives its persuasiveness from having

"expenenced" things in life. ? See Appendix B to 3.2.1.: “On

‘coherence’ as assumed, not explained.”

3 See an interesting theory on this point in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,

Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: 63—64, 78-86, 87-88, 97-105.

The

University of Chicago

Press,

1980, pp. 4-5,

”As Lakoff and Johnson suggested in op. cit., p. 5. And we suggest that argu-

ment can be conducted playfully, given the fact that metaphor is a free—playful— linkage of things usually taken to be dissimilar and unrelated. Cf. 3.9. below.

WHAT.

TO

PLAY,

ΤΟ

METAPHOR

159

ally understood in terms of our experience of war, not in that of midwifery or dance. And there 15 no logically persuasive justification for this choice of war-metaphor,

or, for that matter, a choice of any

metaphor from experience, which 15 yet required to pattern our argument after. Al this goes to showing that to understand an argument 15 itself to understand it in an experiential framework,” that is, metaphorically. 3.2.3. We see in the above two points —logical steps move extra-logically, experientially, and an argument is operated in an experiential framework, metaphorically. We see that reasoning 15 based on understanding bound in experience, which is metaphorically meaningful. This is quite natural in view of the fact we experience something, and understand it metaphorically, before we know it—cognitively and logically. Therefore, our understanding 15 metaphorical. 3.2.4. Thus, although metaphorical linkup that facilitates our understanding is not, and indeed cannot be, strictly logical in character, the linkup is yet “meaningful,” that is, experientially intelligible and significant. In other words, the structure of metaphorical linkage 15 experientially meaningful, and is patterned after our experiential framework. Our logical experience is, after all, one sort of experience alongside others, such as aesthetic, maieutic,

and

religious experiences.”

But, and here comes the crunch, to recommend experientialmetaphorical linkup is to give our thinking a blank check of justification with an endorsement of only one party, that 1s, experience. To have a metaphorical linkup 15 to link up different experiences freely as we experience them. Ít is a playing. This metaphorical playing (1) opens up a new vista of freedom which is itself (2) open-ended.? The images of a bird flying and a clown flopping come to mind. To play with arguments 15 to hve metaphoncally, and to live metaphorically is to live like a bird and a clown. We shall now consider the bird (in 3.3), and then the clown (in 3.4.), so as to understand the dual characteristics of the metaphorical playing with arguments. 5 This experiential framework is culturally determined, perhaps.

3 This point is the basis on which I built my On Chinese Body Thinking —A Cultural

Hermeneutic, E.J.

Brill, 1997.

? See “Appendix to 3.2.4.: Induction, analogy, and metaphor."

160 3.3. How

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS (1): flying like the bird

First, as to living like a bird. Interestingly, three thinkers, otherwise different, agree on what the bird is and does. Kierkegaard mentioned a big bird and indeed rode on it, in his romping description of irony, which 15 a special mode of metaphor. Nietzsche relished a big bird when he immersed himself in the freedom of the Superman. An ancient Taoist in China, Chuang Tzu, opened his entire book with the story of a big mysterious bird, devoting one third of the

First Chapter to it.”

Small birds flutter among twlgs while big birds soar far into the horizon. Big or small, birds fly with the help of their wings and the air. Ihe float ın the air 15 obtained only by fluttering the wings to produce air current, so as to soar high against it. In all this flight, it is by exercising the wings that the birds find the supportive air surrounding them. Playing wıth arguments is flyıng around ın thıs world, and must also depend on the wings of logical necessity and rational inevitability. Arguments sometimes must be spread wide to ride on the current of experience of nature, and they sometimes must be fluttered this way and that. The flight of playing can never take off and proceed without such spreading and fluttering of the wings of logic and argument. Precision ıs a fake in the realm of experience, as both Arıstotle and Whitehead realized.” Straight lines and perfect circles do not exist in this world, as both Plato and Nietzsche proclaimed. Plato said, therefore they exist in the other real world. Nietzsche said, there-

fore, they are lies and phantoms. Both are wrong. They are neither real nor not real. They are our manufactured wings to aid us to fly and flutter in the alr currents of nature. 38 Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, tr. Lee M. Capel, N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1966, p. 411, note 42. A Nietzsche Reader, tr. R.J. Hollingdale, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1977, p. 45 (taken from HA, Preface 3-6 [1886] and D575, p. 205). The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, tr. Burton Watson, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1968, pp. 29-31. See also my translation and philosophical meditations on the bird in Chuang Tzu in my The Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 43-46, 57-59, 69-76, 86-90, et passım. 3 “The precision is a fake,” is Whitehead’s last sentence in one of his two essays towards the end of Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, N.Y.: Tudor Publishing Company, 1941. Aristotle in his Nicomachaean Ethics repeatedly warned us that in the realm of practical sciences it is foolish to expect strict logical precision. See 1094b13-1095a5, 1098a20-1098b7, 1103b27-1104all, etc. Cf. P.3.1., 4.2.2. and 4.2.3. in our present essay.

HOW

(2): FLOPPING

LIKE THE CLOWN

161

A bird fles only by spreading its wings and fluttering them. Without exercising its Wings, it can never find the surrounding air as both its obstacle and its support. We are like the bird in our need to exercise our wings of logic. We are not entirely like the bird in that we must grow our wings by the power of the love of truth, as Socrates suggested in Phaedrus, although the power 15 induced not by the Real above, but by the surrounding real. And we grow our wings by exercising them. There is playfulness and delight among the noisy chitchats of small birds as they flutter, and there is magnificent toil and excitement in the unhurried journey of the big bird to the limits of the unknown. In the former, we find new insights in the familiar, while in the lat-

ter we hold our breath at the mysterious recesses of the real. Only playfully flying with arguments, in all its freedom of spreading and fluttering of logic in arguments, can give us such novelties of varıous kinds. The arguments must be there, as rational and inevitable as they are carefree. Birds fly only by exercising their wings; playing with arguments is effective only in its playfully flying in the air of nature with wings of logic and arguments that are intelligible. In all this our dependence on the wings 15 essential. Yet dependence on wings is dependence on our air, not on our aim. The wings are otiose without the surrounding air. Nor can the wings find the surrounding air without exercising them. We must spread and flutter our wings of logic and argument before we can playfully fly in the surrounding real. We cannot merely follow our arguments, for “following the wings” does not even make sense. The wings of arguments

are our vehicle, not our aim.

3.4. How

(2): flopping like the clown

Free enjoyment of playing with arguments and discoveries of novel truths made thereby are further understood by turning our attention to the clown.” Three points can be noted. First, a clown 15 funny not because she 15 inexperienced but because she is mature. A toddler cannot stumble like a clown. It takes an 40 For the significance of the clown, see a profound though rather scattered book by William Willeford, The Fool and His Scepter, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1969, 1979. Cf. my meditations on the clown in Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 383-384.

162

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

adult to practice for some time to stumble as casually as a clown does. Only maturity breeds the freedom of mock yet spontaneous “failure” to evoke laughter and awakening. Only maturity, in experienced famihanty with logical handling of things, can use logic to flop logically, thereby laugh at staled experience. Only a person of profound sensibility can produce nonsense to bring us back to our senses, and perhaps thereby to deepen the clown's own sensibility. Playing with arguments 15 to play logic as a clown does with her body. Such a play 15 neither purely illogical nor purely logical. It 15 logical freedom in and out of logic. It is to play, toddle, and fall like a clown who 15 not a toddler. Playing with arguments is logically, experientially, clowning with logic. It is logos alogoi.*' Secondly, when the clown stumbles and plays antics, she stumbles casually as her whim, situation, and theme require. There is a wonderful mysterious rapport between consciousness and purposiveness, on the one hand, and self-abandoned enjoyment in the thematic performance of the clown, on the other.* And when playing with arguments, consistency may sometimes be sacrificed, not intentionally, perhaps, but merely in the spontaneous process of inspired playing. Socrates must have asked those inspired soothsayers not only about the meanings of their poetic utterances, but also about mutual consistency among their sayings, as well as their internal consistency. And those poets must have just stared in silence at Socrates. The provocative nature of playing with arguments lies partly in such jagged inconsistencies. They lampoon our sacred horses and cows; they raise our critical eyebrows. They stumble and flop, and invite our ridicule. And in this manner they accomplish their purpose. This 1s what we mean by "funny" when we say

a clown 15 funny.“

Thirdly, a clown 15 not funny, no matter how often she flops, when

she 15 alone. She 15 funny only with her audience, with whom comes the significance of a clown. Playing with arguments is significant, its meaning manifests itself, only in the context of interaction with a +! “Logos” originally means to “gather.” See Thorlief Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, tr. Jules L. Moreau, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960, p. 67. The clown gathers his audience by attracting them with his gathering of reasonable acts without usual “reason.” Cf. 5.4.4. below. *^ On understanding spontaneity and its paradoxical expressions, see my meditations on them in History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 153-156.

5 Cf. “flap,” “flip-flop,” “fluttering,” and “fun” in my Butterfly, op. cit., Index

pp. 496-497.

RESULT:

TRUTHS

OF

CO-RESPONSES

163

partner with whom arguments are played out. In other words, meaning is not an inherent quality but interactional. Meaning 15 born in togetherness, a community of players, who are at once participants and audience. This leads us to another characteristic of playing with arguments. Playing with arguments, by fluttering and flying with the wings of arguments and flopping and clowning with logic in front of an audience, brings out the truth not of correspondence but of co-responses and co-reverberation. To this theme we now turn. 3.5. Result: truths of co-responses We have seen two characteristics of the modus operandi of playing with arguments. First, in play we are freely and logically linked to the strange and the novel, by exercising the argumentative wings to meet the supportive currents of wind of nature. Secondly, playing with arguments awakens us to the novel in our world by those wonderful and spontaneous inconsistencies among various arguments with which we play, much as the clown flopping zestfully to evoke our laughter and enlightenment. We are now to see what it 15 to which we are awakened by such a play with arguments. It is the novel truth of the situation, and such truth is that of communal co-reverberation, not of cognitive information. Aristotle began the third book of his Rhetoric by reminding us that our speechmaking has three elements—the speaker, the subject, and the persons addressed—and

that it is the last one, the audience, that

determines the speaker's end and object. We will follow his clue in developing our notion of what we find in our playing with arguments. Since both arguments and playing with arguments are forms of speechmaking, the handiest way 15 to rearrange an ordinary sentence that captures the elements of speechmaking, “I tell you something,” into forms appropriate respectively to both argument and playing with

arguments.”

The sentence that sums up an argument is "Something I tell you,”

* We are reminded of the supreme partnership between Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu, his logician-friend. Cf. 5.2. below. Their partnership produced superb and funny dialogues scattered throughout the book of Chuang Tzu. Later, Chuang Tzu sorely missed Hui Tzu at his grave. See Chuang Tzu, 24/48-5].

* Cf. my elaboration on all this in Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 366-368.

Here the

164

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

that is, there 15 something I must tell you, arranged 1η the order of importance, first, "something," then, "I" the teller, and lastly, “you” the audience. Here, it 15 the conclusion, the “something,” that is the

most important. Once the point being made 15 convincingly proven and accurately conveyed, the purpose of an argument 15 fulfilled. And there is the proud authoritarian subject, the "L" that stands behind the “something” that is conveyed. Here the audience, “you,” is entirely insignificant; anyone is welcome to have the point and the information, the “something” that 15 all important. And this 15 the way it goes in the scientific world. Cognitive information (“something”) 15 to be distributed by the authorities, those in the know ("I"), to anyone (“you”) who cares to listen. Such is the typical pattern of cognitive argument, which can be characterized as "Something I tell you." In contrast, playing with argument says, in effect, “You are gong to be told something by me,” where “you” 15 the most important, “something” comes next, and “me” the teller is entirely insignificant. lt 15 you who are to be told who are all important, and either what is to be told ("something") or by whom (“I”) is negligible in importance. The purpose 15 not to make a point or convey information, but to evoke “you” into living on your own. You are to be awakened to your own zestful hfe by our playing with arguments. A player of arguments 15 a sower who goes out sowing and scattering logor spermatikot, yielding thirty-fold, sixty-fold, one hundred fold. What are these /ogo?? Playful arguments. Mysteriously, they yield manifold (many-fold) yields, of what? Of growth and invigoration of the hearer, zest and thrust for the novel in the hearer's life and the

player's hfe, the enhancement of our hves, all effected by playing with argument. What is this "zestful life"? It is something started by playing ("sowing," "scattering") with arguments, a reverberation, a new networking of entailments of our past experiences into a new configuration, a new signification, a new life-onientation. This activity results in a new understanding of our respective lives, initiating new connections and configurations among old experiences hitherto regarded as mutually irrelevant. All this evokes a new meaning, and challenges old values. All this ıs performed and accomplished not by the authoritative "I" who tells you, but by “you” and “I” purpose is slightly different, to highlight the difference between arguing and playing with arguments.

NEW

MEANING

AND

UNDERSTANDING

165

participating together in our communal play with arguments. Here we have no war, no authority, no definitive point to be conveyed. Or if we do have war in argument to convey a specific point,“ this is done to jab the other party into thinking his own ground which we think is unjustifiable. But then we are perfectly willing to continue the dialogue, and in this continuance lies the life of mutuality of

“playing,” a perfectly serious affair." Here is thus our communal

exploration into a new territory called ourselves, continually being born through our brainstorming, our play with arguments. 3.6. New

meaning

and understanding

Such a productive performance of life-arguing, which is playing with arguments, assumes the following view of meaning and understanding. First, meaning 15 no longer something ready-made, trapped in “boxes” of cognitive statements. Instead, meaning 1s situational configuration to be read out, or rather, discovered-and-created by the brainstorming of playing with arguments. Meaning is configurational reverberation, coming, going, and coming again, going again, between the situation and the persons, who are thereby astonished and awakened into creative insights through such co-resonating, co-playing with arguments.“ Situational meaning is a unity of constancy and challenge. The sun rises everyday ln the east, but the wind blows wherever 1t pleases. I used to admire my father who said that he loved electronics because nature never cheats us; only humans cheat one another. This nature,

I later learned, admired for its trustworthiness, produces unpredictable shifts of wind and weather, constantly challenging human brains to find meaningful configuration in it. “Controlled” experiments relied on for their repeatability in chemical, physical realms can neither be controlled nor repeated in virtually

all others,

cultural,

demographic,

anthropological,

historical,

subatomic, geological, astronomical, so much so that our “controlled experiments” are an aberration in vast Nature. Nature is “trustworthy” in constantly challenging us to figure out meanings in it. Human ”As Nietzsche did in Part I of Zarathustra, and " On play-seriousness *5 For further, see my

a section titled, “On War and Warrior” in a section in the subtitle, “Polemic” to The Genealogy of Morals. see 3.8.1., 3.8.5., 3.8.6., and 3.9. Butterfly, pp. 364-66.

160

SECTION 93: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

brainstorming is one way to explore and find meanings; playing with arguments is one way to brainstorm. So, playing with arguments 15 one way to creatively find meaning in nature. Secondly, understanding 1s no longer exclusively cognitive, either. To understand 15 now to “stand under” the situational changes and undergo the experience of such changes, to find situational configuration of such changes, the situational meaning which constantly comes and goes, to sympathetically resonate with vibrations of situational configuration. And such resonance 15 “strummed

out,” that 15,

aroused, during our mutual playing with arguments. Truth 15 a coreverberating forth of situational coherence. And the resonance 15 ἃ sympathetic symphonic one, which may or may not be mutually confirmative among participants in the play with arguments. Sympathetic resonance could be conflictual. Yet disagreements remain a sort of coreverberation as long as I vibrate while you strum your logical cords, that 15, also vibrate logically. In our mutual vibration we mutually agree or disagree. What is needed is to be interested? in what is being said among us. Then co-response happens, and coherence with the other with the world obtains. There 15 a co-hearing of, and co-tuning in with, the cosmic tune of reverberation and configuration. What this sort of truth is can be felt when ıt fails to obtain. When one cannot stand the kind of vibration emitted by our kind of play with arguments, then one ceases to vibrate sympathetically with it. When this happens, we say “He does not understand.” When one ceases to laugh at the clown, one simply leaves the scene. When one ceases to be interested in the kind of play with arguments, one simply leaves the scene.” “Truth” simply disappears. 3.6.1. Chuang Tzu the supreme player with arguments Chuang Tzu the ancient Chinese Taoist (in the third century before Christ) 15 the player with arguments par excellence. He does so to play out radical hfe-truths. He typically does so in the vivid concrete forms of dialogues and storytelling. Let us see how he playfully

“argues” for playing with arguments.”

3.6.1.1. Arguments as reversible: First, Chuang Tzu notes that in this world argumentation 1s reversible. He shrewdly notices * “Interest” is “inter-esse,” an “inter”-reverberation among

“beings.”

50 Cf. 3.8c. >»! See Appendix to 3.6.1.: “Different route, same sentiment.”

NEW

MEANING

AND

UNDERSTANDING

167

the contour of a shadow of something, the shadow of a shadow— which he calls “Mr. Double-Nothing (hang wang),” 1.e., Mr. Neither (shadow)-Nor (substance), the penumbra, and has him ask Mr. Shadow,

saying,"

Before, sir, you walked; now, you stop. Before, you sat; now, you rise. Why have you no unique independence? Mr. Shadow said, “Am I so because I have what I depend on? Is what I depend on so because it in turn has what it depends on? Is my dependence as snake's on his skin, cicada's on his wings?"

This conversation offends our common sense; we regard it an arrogation for Penumbra, that (in our opinion) as Shadow's contour that depends on Shadow to exist, to ask Shadow about what Shadow depends on. But Shadow wisely answered, “Am I like Snake depending on his skin and Cicada on his wings?" Snake and Cicada as much depend on their skin and wings to exist as their skin and wings do

on

them;

likewise,

Shadow

as much

depends

on

Penumbra—

Shadow's contour—to exist (Shadow's contour defines Shadow) as Penumbra does on Shadow (no Shadow, no Penumbra 1ts contour). This point justifies Penumbra's demand and corrects our common sense. Our commonsense argumentation tends to go one-way, from reasons and grounds to a conclusion, yet existence is a co-existence and existential arguments go in a mutually reverse way, a two-way traffic, a “double walk" (hang hsing as Chuang Tzu calls it.” On another occasion, Chuang Tzu grabbed the sophist Hui Shih by the collar, when Hui Shih said, “Myriads of things are one with me." Chuang Tzu responded that, “If you go (by whatever route) from the many to the one, then I can go from one to the many. For saying ‘one’ amounts to saying ‘two, 1.e., the saying-act and the said-content,

and then, to think of it, to ‘three, 1.e., the saying, the

said, and the referent. Thus I have gone from one to And so we can as much argumentatively go from the one as we can from one to many.” Reversibility of then the rule of the day and of this usual world. This world indeed.

two to three. many to the arguments is is a strange

? Chuang Tzu, 2/93-94. See my Butterfly, pp. 172, 215-17. 3 Ibid., 2/40.

* Ibid., 2/52-54. Cf. Butterfly, pp. 202-204. Interestingly, Mozart often seems to

have played with such a reversal of melody, beat, rhythm, in, e.g., his Symphony No. 32 (KV 318), "Overture," his Symphony No. 35 (KV 385), "the Hafner,” especially its fourth movement, etc.

168

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

But reversible dering on being it purposely, no in us an insight

arguments are no longer argumentation proper, borfallacious, a circularity. Yet Chuang Tzu engaged in longer arguing but playing with arguments, to evoke that existence 1s a co-existence, an interdependence.

3.6.1.2. Judgmental

criteria and

subject

changeable:

Furthermore, the matter cuts much deeper than at the level of playful circularıty of argumentahon. Arguments can go two ways, back and forth, because (3.6.1.2.a) the very fulcrum of argumentation, the criteria. of judgment, are interchangeable, and this is legitimate because (b) the very arguer-subject 1s interchangeable. 3.6.1.2.a. First, let us consider the mutability of the criteria of judgment. For a Judgment to be universally valid, we need a set of criteria of what counts as proper that are universally valid. Chuang lzu goes quite concretely to show us how impossible it 1s to obtain such a set of universal criteria.” People sleep moist, then loins pain, die paralyzed; are eels so? People live on trees, and tremble goose-fleshed, pull back frightened; are monkeys so? Who of these three understands the "right" dwelling-place? People eat vegetable, meat; deer eat tender-grass; centipedes relish snakes; owls-crows savor mice. Who of these four understands the “right” taste? Gibbons, taken by baboons, make mates; bucks with does accompany; eels with fish roam. Mao Chiang, Lady Li are those-whom people admire-as-beauties. Fish, seeing them, plunge deep; birds, seeing them,

fly high; bucks, does, seeing them,

leap, run. Who

stands the "right" beauty under the skies?

of the four under-

The “rightness” of "right" place, taste, and beauty carries with it no universal agreement; it depends on who 15 doing the judgment in what situation. Yet we must argue from a definite rightness; there is no other choice. 50, we must argue from various places and situations, all at once. This logical performance 15 no longer an argument but playing with several. This Chuang Tzu calls, again, quite playfully and concretely, “double walk" in response to “morning, three": Uncle Monkey gave nuts, saying, "Morning, three and evening, four." Those monkeys were all angry. [He] said, “If-so, then, morning, four and evening, three." Those monkeys were all pleased. » Ibid., sense that rights” or * [bid.,

2/67-70.. Cf. Butterfly, pp. 174, 207. “Universal criteria” is used in the these criteria are applicable to everything, such as principles in "animal "ecological ethics." 2/38-40. Cf. Butterfly, pp. 195-96.

NEW

MEANING

AND

UNDERSTANDING

109

Uncle Monkey adjusted his policy of the order to give away nuts from “morning, three” to “morning, four,” in line both with the monkeys (pleasing them) and with his original plan (still giving out the identical number of nuts). Such argumentation simultaneously from both perspectives of the situation, Uncle Monkey's and the monkeys', amounts to "double walking" 1η the situation. This 15 to cease the performance of argumentation, which typically goes according to one criterion, from one perspective, and in one direction. As a result, no one knows who 15 in the right, even after winning

an argument. Chuang Tzu poignantly said,”

Now, suppose I with you dispute. You having beaten me, [are you sure] I did not beat you? Are you really right; am I really not-nght? I having beaten you, [are you sure] you did not beat me, I am really right, [and] you really not-right? Or one-of-us is right, or one notright? Or both are right, or both not-right? Neither of us could know [of our] mutual [situation], much less others, who would be in our darkness.

Whom should we let correct us? Suppose [we] let one agreeing with you correct us; already agreeing with you, how could [he] correct us? Suppose we let one agreeing with me correct us; already agreeing with me, how could [he] correct us? [The same situation holds if he disagrees with either or both of us.] If-so, then, neither of us—you, I, he—cannot know about [our true situation].

3.6.1.2.b. Such playful double-walk in argumentation 1s legitimate because the very arguer-subject 15 (inter)changeable and (inter)changing. Let us go into this point. First, worse than the situation-(a), the subject changes its mind without notice. Lady Beautiful, on being captured and obtained by the king of Chin, wailed bitterly; having shared with the King his royal bed and his sumptuous meals, she came to relent her initial

tears.” This means that the subject's standpoint changes always,

sometimes even to the point of reversing its standpoint as Lady Beautiful did, and the subjects arguments change accordingly. secondly, not only does the mind of a subject changes. The hopelessness (about straight argumentation) cuts even deeper; the very identity of a subject changes. For right after the above claim for the impossibility of knowing who 15 1η the nght after having won the argument, and the claim for Lady Beautiful changing her mind, are >’ Ibid., 2/84-89. ° [bid., 2/79-80.

170

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

made, comes a surprising announcement. “Both Ch'iu and you are dreams; I, who say you [both] are, am also a dream."?? Now, in order to make an assertion, the subject must be sober and sane, that 1s, awake; at the same time, in order to assert that the subject is a "dream," the subject must be actually dreaming. These two conditions combined, we must say that, in order to assert, “I am

a dream,”

the I must be awakened

to a dream.

And

that 15

exactly the situation in which the real I 15, or rather, should be, says Chuang Tzu. lo bring out this point, he tells that famous story of his butterfly dream.9 Having awakened from dreaming to be a butterfly, Chuang Tzu is now not sure whether he is he having awakened from the butterfly dream, or he 15 the butterfly currently dreaming to be he. Of course, the strange world of dreams vis-à-vis our waking world has been noted by Western philosophers. For instance, 1n Nietzsche's "On Truth and Falsehood in the Extra-Moral Sense," he quoted Pascal on the dream and added his own observation, as follows.°'

Of course, waking man 15, in himself, only clear that he 15 awake by the rigid and orderly web of concepts, and consequently comes to the belief, now and then, that conceptual web has once been rent by art. Pascal 15 right when he asserts [in Pensées, No. 386] that, if the same dream came to us every night, we would be just as engaged by it as by the things which we see every day: “if an artisan were certain to dream every night a full twelve hours straight that he was a king, I believe," says Pascal, "that he would be just as happy as a king who, during twelve hours of every night, dreams that he 15 an artisan." On

careful

reading,

above quotation the mutability of ing power of the threatens to take

however,

one

notes

that

its emphasis

of the

lies not on waking up to a dream, much less on the subject itself, but merely on the strange bewitchdream which, if repeated or persisted long enough, over the waking world.” In any case, this situa-

* Ibid., 2/83.

9 Ibid., 2/94-96, which ends the Chapter. Cf. 5.3.3. below for an elucidation

of the ever-changing self. 8! “On Truth and Falsehood in the Extra-Moral Sense" (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinn), by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in 1973, translated by J. Ellis MacDonald, 1980, pp. 12-13. Daniel Breazeale, tr., Truth and Method (Nietzsche’s Unpublished Philosophical Papers), also has this essay titled “Truth and Falsehood.”

9? We remember a. story told by Lieh Tzu (in the “Chou Mu Wang" Chapter),

another later Taoist, as to how a cruel master dreamed every night to be a slave groaning under the taskmaster who was his “slave” during waking hours, and vice

NEW

MEANING

AND

UNDERSTANDING

171

tion of having been awakened to as uncertain a state as “dream” 15 the situation of every subject now. Since argumentation must be conducted by the fully awakened subject, this situation effectively demol-

ishes the possibility of arguing at all.

All this mutability and mutuality of both the criteria of judgment and the very subject itself effectively lead us out of one-track argumentation into playing with arguments, in line with the actual situation. 3.6.1.3.: Five mini-conclusions: Five points follow from all above explanation in 3.6.1.1. and 3.6.1.2. One, the above two subsections argued against argumentation, which 15 self-recursively incoherent. These expositions must not be “argument” in a proper sense, then, but amount to "playing" with. arguments. Two, apropos of the above point, Chuang Tzu describes this playfulness by a striking sentence, "I just-try on you some-abandoned

words; you with abandon listen-to them, OK?"** What does “aban-

don" here imply, translated from a character, “wang”? Being made up of “with-no” (wang) and “you” (ju), the character could well mean "without you the listener" or “without you the speaker" (so perhaps "with self-abandon"), depending on to whom “you” in the character “without-you (wang),” is referred. Three, this is then an I-talking “without you” (wang) my listenerpartner and a you-listening “without your” talker-partner, I, in short, a dialogue of no dialogue. It is a dialogue because the statement 15 addressed to a dialogue partner. It 15 not a dialogue because I speak not to you my listening partner, who listens but not to your “you,” l.e., to me your speaking partner. And this is a veritable description of playing with argument, for arguing 15 meaningless “without you” the addressee. And, four, all this argumentative abandonment is not unreasonable recklessness but originated in the concrete necessity of living itself; this point is unwittingly shown by Chuang Tzu’s mode of playing—argumentative playing via storytelling. And finally, fwe, he enjoys himself playing with arguments; after all, whoever does not enjoy oneself playing? In short, Chuang Tzu has just playfully argued for playing with arguments, and it was fun. versa with his “slave’s” dreaming, until one day a fortuneteller told him that he be kinder to his “slave.” He did, and his dreams stopped. See The Book of Lieh-tzu, tr. by A.C. Graham, London: John Murray, 1960, pp. 68-69. And cf. my Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., Appendix 5. | $$ See Appendix to 3.6.1.2.b.: “The Great Sage of Great Awakening.” ” Ibid., 2/76-77.

172

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

All in all, it 15 thus that we have in this subsection instantiated playing with arguments by exhibiting Chuang Tzu’s argumentative playfulness, describing how it transpires, how necessary such a play is to life, and how much fun it is to pursue it. And, mind you, our very manner of describing and explaining all this playfulness (in 3.6.1. here) has itself been tinged with playfulness. It was a bit clownish. 3.7. Three implications It remains for us to notice three implications of such play with arguments. First, the clown stumbles, and he does not. “How clever you are!” literally means “you are clever,” and it often does not. When we are confronted with such a play (in reading, say, Nietzsche), we would miss him by understanding him literally. Nietzsche extolled the Aryan race and its self-afhrmation with many arguments, to the point of oppressing other "slave races." It literally extols and endorses racism, Nazism, and white supremacy. Crudity of such a reading is exposed by noting the complex elegance of Nietzsche's literary architectonic, his habit of saying things 1η extravagance (too much, too strongly) and "with his tongue in his cheek," and the poignant suggestiveness of his provocative aphorisms. The reading of racism 15 a literal one, and is a tragic misreading. In short, in the world of playing with arguments, the first road we are forbidden to take is that of literalism, for what 1s said 1s not at all what 1s meant. Secondly, we cannot attack a play with arguments; no one seriously wishes to attack a playful bantering among friends. They are using various (kinds of) arguments, not to make a points but playfully to arouse one another to see things differently, arousing everyone out of an accustomed perspective. Attack 15 appropriate only in the war of eristics. When the very attack is lhghtheartedly played with, a serious, long-faced attack mocks

itself; it must leave.

Finally, the point of playing with arguments 1s not to make a point or to claim a particular truth, but lightheartedly to open our percepton and, thus relaxed, we would be sensitized to the cosmic tone-color

and tune-atmosphere of reverberation. The "truth," 1f any, of metaphorical play lies in its fruitfulness of harvest—thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. If a play generates a significant “discoveries of new truths,” each of which is alive with suggestiveness for further probes, this

THREE

IMPLICATIONS

173

particular metaphorical play 1s fertile, pregnant with potential truths, evocative of fresh perspectives. It is “fun” to play it. If it is otherwise, it is futile (“no fun”), and is to be discarded. In short, evocativeness and enthused resonance are the criteria, not cognitive literal truths. This is true not only of the poetic aesthetic world. Many theologians and philosophers agree that religious language and the so-called "arguments" for the existence of God neither argue nor prove-convey cognitive truth about God, but serve to evoke and open the atmos-

phere of religious awe.° And, mutatis mutandis, our world of daily ongoings resonates with evocative truths to be discovered-created with our mutual plays with arguments.

3.7.1. Is such an argumentative play philosophical? It all depends on what “philosophical” means. Such a play is philosophical in a sense sımilar to medicine being “healthy.” Both a person and a medicine can be called “healthy” for different reasons; the person 15 healthy while the medicine makes us healthy, said Aristotle. Likewise, a writing can be philosophical either because it zs thoughtful (thoughtiull, thoughtfully written), or because it makes us think, or both. What makes us think may not look thoughtful in itself but 1s thoughtprovoking, and is in this sense "philosophical." Much of what Nietzsche wrote shocks and provokes thinking, arousing in us such questions as: how we can tell the sane wise shockers in his writings from those which are insane and senseless; how we know when those wise shockers fall into the right hands and when into the wrong ones; in what sense Nietzsche is a “philosopher”; how we can make of his contradictions, lack of careful

sustained arguments, and sarcastic excesses and bombastic ironies.°°

These are thought-provoking questions. As long as they make us think, and as long as Nietzsche provokes them, he is a philosopher in a most serious and genuine sense. And perhaps, after prevoking them, Nietzsche on his part would say, *Forget it! No fidgeting with such clever little questions!” It is in this smashing response that the force and the rightness of the answer 15 felt, not told. For the mistake lurks precisely within and behind worrying about those © E.g., Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1960. Cf. John Hick, Philosophy of Religion, Fourth Edition, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990, p. 19. Cf. also 3.2.1. above. 6 Cf. 1.1.1.2.1., 1.1.1.2.2., 1.1.1.2.3., 4.3.1., 4.7.2.1., 4.7.2.2. (inclusive), 5.5.2.4.

174

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

possible “mistakes.” Were Nietzsche to have answers, he would not be Nietzsche. Soaring freedom of the Eagle has nothing to do with sheepish kowtowing to the bars of decency, and these questions do kowtow at the bar of academic caution and validity, in quest for the lawful security and “peace of a trusty in a well-managed penitentiary,” to quote from Mencken's wonderfully caustic phrase." The questions are too timid to fit in with Nietzsche; they are snares to trap us in spineless caution and lose our vitality. “No entering the tiger’s den, no capturing of its cubs,” as the Orientals say. Life consists 1η taking risks, and philosophy captures life. Philosophy then must take risks, which those questions take away, thereby take away hfe and philosophy. And life 15 full of conflicts and tensions, thus is “made of contradictions”; take them away, and life is gone. After all, life lives

on and moves, and movement 15 “here and not here" (Aristotle), a contradiction.

No

wonder

Nietzsche

thrives

on

contradictions,

for

Nietzsche wants to ex-press life as it 15 lived. Thus his bombastic excesses, outright contradictions, and scattered argument-bits faithfully reflect raw rugged lived reality;? his shockers, non-sequiturs, and ironic sarcasms sting us into life worth living. This explains why "Everyone seems to have his own Nietzsche." He has something to say to everyone, either as our favorite “whipping boy” or as our versatile “mentor.”’” He appeals to everyone who is different one from another. This is because Nietzsche’s philosophy is built on contradictions, without which it collapses; with all his contradictions, Nietzsche is relevant to internally conflictual actuality, including “everyone” who mutually differs. This is “philosophy” truly so called, being forever with everyone of us—as long as to be human is to be rational—to provoke at least questions without answering them. Philosophy is called “aporetics” not without reason; after all, what else is that “gadfly” for? And life

9/ The phrase occurs somewhere in the section, “Will to Peace,” in H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926, 1954. $ Cf. P.3.1.

” Thus begins Joan Stambaugh’s “The Other Nietzsche,” in Graham Parkes,

ed., Nietzsche and Asian Thought, Chicago: The University of Chicago p. 20. ? Many major thinkers since Nietzsche (psychologists, theologians, critics and essayists, musicologists, Buddhologists, Sinologists, as well as have written articles, monographs, and often substantial volumes on

Press,

1991,

poets, literary philosophers) Nietzsche.

THREE

IMPLICATIONS

175

without thinking, brave honest thinking, is not worth living. Socrates devoted his entire life to such a mission of pricking this indolent cow, ourselves, into thinking, sometimes via straight arguing, some other times by playing with arguments; Nietzsche did so not by a thoughtful discourse but by a thought-provoking one; he still clowns today with excesses, sarcasms, shockers, pseudo-arguments and contradictory argument-bits. A small hermeneutical caveat could be entered here before we leave this subsection. Brand Blanchard’! used to say, “Nietzsche needs

a lot of help!" Professor Paul D. Eisenberg”? went further and offered

help, saying that Nietzsche’s paradoxes are really no contradictions but “multi-perspective” descriptions squeezed together, amounting to juxtapositions of descriptions from different perspectives of the same subject-matter.” Our description above can be seen by Eisenberg as an elaboration of this simple point. Nietzsche’s bombastic excesses full of colorful contradictions are thus seen to be a mere icing to entice people to consume the cake of wholesome reality, an appetizing advertisement-rhetoric, replaceable by sober logical propositions. But then something essential 15 evaporated, hollowed out, from Nietzsche; is this “something essential” the punch, that literary thrust that moves with life, that literary vivacity that 15 the spontaneous effulgence of life? Jokes explained are no jokes; their explanations kills them; their explanations are never their replacements. So 1s poetry; so is Nietzsche. Once we explain him, we miss him. Such an explanation betrays the hubristic Arthur Danto” and the confident Brand Blanchard who know better than Nietzsche, offering to say what Nietzsche wanted to but could not. But then, what can we do? Nietzsche on his part may not need help, but we ourselves do to understand and appreciate him. Is there any non-explanatory help that does not miss him? An answer could be that we do not translate him but transpose him to our understanding in our own way, capturing the live fish of what he wanted with our flexuous net which itself follows closely, no, moves with, the ’! He was Sterling Professor of philosophy at Yale University, representing the last bastion of American idealism.

” He is of Indiana University. The claim was made, 11/21/95, during the first

of his lecture series on Nietzsche at Philosophy Department, National Chung-cheng University, Chia-1, Taiwan. ~ We remember Pablo Picasso’s misshaped multi-perspectivism. ^ Cf. e.g., Arthur Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, N.Y.: Macmillan Company, 1963, p. 13. This is a place where his hubris 1s most apparent.

170

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

sinuous unexpected—therefore movement of the fish's life.” Chuang Tzu, Kierkegaard, voke us into thinking on our

seemingly incalculable if not irrational— After all, Nietzsche came with Socrates, Picasso, and others like them, to proown, with their lively bombastic para-

doxes. Chuang Tzu's celebrated musings recur:”®

Trap is where fish are, with its-wherefores; getting the-fish and weforget the-trap. Snare 15 where rabbits are, with its-wherefores; getting the-rabbit and we forget the-snare. How-can we get someone who-has forgotten words, and with him have-a-word?

3.7.2. But why should we be provoked into thinking, into in order to get at the truth (whatever it is)? And with argument have to do with thought-provoking tons and sarcasms? Answers to these questions are

self-examination, what does play with contradicrevealing.

Everyone desires freshness; fresh fruits, foods, ideas, clothes, houses,

projects, everything fresh. Few people like something new, however, because the new 15 unfamiliar, unyielding, and so unmanageable; we are unsettled and uncomfortable in a new environment. We are jet-lagged and culture-shocked in the new unfamiliar world. We have to be goaded and prodded into it. But our life lives on, always going into the new world of today toward tomorrow different from yesterday; life ıs new or it is no life, dead. Likewise with reality and actuality, always moving. Things are moving, changing, and vibrating, and Gadamer calls such a vibra-

tion "play."

If we examine how the word “play” is used and concentrate on its so-called metaphorical senses, we find talk of the play of light, the play of the waves, the play of gears or parts of machinery, the interplay of limbs, the play of forces, the play of gnats, even a play on words. In case, what 1s intended 1s to-and-fro movement that is not tied to any goal that would bring it to an end. Correlatively, the word “Spiel” onginally meant “dance,” and is still found in many word forms (e.g.,

ˆ This is what I tried in my two books on Chuang Tzu who also tried his literary hand of bombastic sayings some twenty-three thousand years ago in China. Cf. my Chuang Tzu— World Philosopher at Play, N.Y.: Scholars Press & Crossroad Publications, 1982, and The Butterfly as Companion, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1990.

76 Chuang Tzu, 26/48.

"7 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, tr. revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, N.Y.: Crossroad, 1989, p. 103.

THREE

IMPLICATIONS

177

in Spielmann, jongleur). The movement of play has no goal that brings it to an end; rather, it renews itself in constant repetition. The movement backward and forward is obviously so central to the definition of play that it makes no difference who or what performs this movement. The movement of play as such has, as it were, to substrate. Ít is the game that is played—it is irrelevant whether or not there is a subject who plays it. The play 15 the occurrence of the movement as such. Thus we speak of the play of colors and do not mean only that one color plays against another, but that there 1s one process or sight displaying a changing variety of colors.

Although Gadamer provokes our disagreement on some points in sentences above, we learn from him an important point: Things are on the move, at "play." We add and say, this 1s because actuality is alive. Truth is truth of life, and so is forever alive and playing, new and fresh; therefore truth pricks us into life. In a wonderfully primal response to this playful life-full-ness of actuality, children wonderfully play. In fact, the child zs play, and only children play. Those who do not play are no longer children; they are dead, not alive to living reality. Adults who heartily play are really the children who grow; they are as eager for life, open to reality, and always all too ready for surprises, ready to be pricked into hfe and hving reahty, as children are. Sadly, argument systematizes things to close off the issue. Things put in the frame of an argument are organized into coherence and are settled. Argument tends towards a dead conclusion. Play with arguments, in contrast, are unsettled, on the move, full of incoherencies—contradictions, shockers, ironies—to jolt our “common” sense,

the sentiment that 1s unproblematic and commonly agreed upon. Play with arguments opens out, as incoherent as "here and not here,” to things on the move, things 1η play. It 1s this argument-play that transforms the daunting new into the inviting fresh; after all, things played with are no longer threatening, if not familiar. lhus

freshness,

actuahty,

hfe,

incoherence,

play,

and

play

with

arguments, they are all in one family. Nietzsche the wonderful incoherence-juggler says, tongue in cheek, that whatever comes to him

threatens to be deadened into “truth.”

78 See 3.8.4. below. 7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Sec. 296 (the last section), tr. Walter Kaufmann.

178

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS Alas, what are you after all, my written and painted thoughts! It was not long ago that you were still so colorful, young, and malicious, full of thorns and secret spices—you made me sneeze and laugh—and now? You have already taken off your novelty, and some of you are ready,

I fear,

to become

truths:

they

already

look

so

immortal,

so

pathetically decent, so dull! . . . [W]hat are the only things we are able to paint? Alas, always only what 15 on the verge of withering and losing its fragrance! Alas, always only storms that are passing, exhausted, and feelings that are autumnal and yellow! Alas, always only birds that grew weary of flying and flew astray and now can be caught by hand— by our hand!

He then has to juggle with contradictions to keep alive what comes storming in, for it “comes”

because

it is alive and moves;

it comes

with the contradictions such as “here and not here" of the move-

ment, and movement 15 a move into the new, which comes with the

contradictions of the new against the familiar. And this “againstness” is what pricks us into life. To bring our life in line with such living actuality, then, we must stop arguing that closes off and start playing with arguments that opens out into the unexpected; we must romp in the rough ride of the “logic” of living reality, the jagged logic of the new-and-fresh, the logic of the incoherent, of play. Joan Stambaugh said, "Nietzsche was perhaps closest to Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi with his rejection of metaphysical backworlds and his understanding of the world as play.”® We don't know about Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu rejecting metaphysics nor do we know about Lao Tzu understanding the world as play. But we do know that this "play" includes, for both Nietzsche and Chuang Tzu (but perhaps less with Lao Tzu), play even with arguments, so as to do justice to the world as play, the world that includes life. We can now move on to linking life to play with arguments.

3.8.

Playing

with

meanings

of “argument”

Play with arguments has two aspects: play with. arguments (3.1. through 3.7.) and play with arguments (from 3.8. on). The word "argument" in the former aspect 15 a usual deductive or inductive chain of propositions. In the latter aspect, "argument" itself 1s played with and

99 Thus is her essay concluded.

See Stambaugh,

op. cit., p. 30.

PLAYING

WITH

MEANINGS

OF

“ARGUMENT”

179

extended?! in an unexpected direction; it is taken in a broad sense to mean an intelligible or understandable—whether sensible and reasonable or not— series of points and ideas, a chain which leads us in some

indefinite direction, now

this way,

now

that, to somewhere

new, turning it into somewhere fresh. The former aspect has been playfully systemized, concentrating on "playing," as to how the usual argument can be variously played. Consideration on the latter shall concentrate on how we can play “with arguments" in such a broad sense that our argumentative plays amount to playing lfe freely and understandably. In the following (3.8. through 3.18.), the latter life-aspect of playing with arguments will be considered. But before we go into it, we must consider afresh what "argument" could mean, or more specifically, what ramifications and significance our extended meaning of "argument" can have. 3.8.a. From our extended meaning of "argument," we can see how many disparate commonsense definitions, mutually incongruous, of “argument" are more related one to another than are usually taken to be. For instance, some of the following wide assortment of definitions of "argument" offered in the Random House Dictionary of English Language are commonly taken to be entirely separate one from another (3 and 4 vs. l or 5): “1. contention, altercation [quarrel]; 2. debate among differing views; 3. a process of reasoning; series of reasons; 4. a statement,

reason, or fact for or against a point; 5. persuasive discourse

bribery,

threat, violence,

mystification,

But suppose we expand

that an argument is

and the like |."

on a description of argument,

[by

and say

a movement from grounds to a claim, and claim,

as above said, that an argument 1s an understandable (reasonable or not) chain of points that leads somewhere new. This “movement” can be engaged in seriously and rationally, and we are said to be "arguing"; or else we can playfully banter with such understandable movement and have fun, and our banter amounts to "playing with argument." We can see here two kinds of moves: a logical kind developed in the

West

since

Aristotle

formulated

them,

and

an

understandable

kind since Freud found it in insanity, dreams, and “slips” of pen or ^ This “extension” is quite important selves, as will be considered later in 3.9.

for our growth

of knowledge

and

our

180

SECTION 9: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

tongue. “Understandable” then can be said of the so-called “irrational” moves as well as "logical" ones, and non-verbal moves as well as verbal ones. Both kinds of moves— "arguments"—can be either complete 1η themselves when proposed (as 1η debate, quarrel) or not complete but inviting the other to continue (as in brainstorming, banter, play). And, mind you, argument 15 always proposed, and proposal implicates communality. Hence, “argument” as quarrel and banter. Interestingly, from this perspective, we see that metaphoring 15 a sort of argument that 1s complete in itself, leading us from the known to the hitherto unknown;

“that unknown one 15 like this known one."

And evocation (as in aphorism) is a sort of incomplete argument, provoking us by the said known to go to where we think the point of the saying 15. It 15 thus that “argument” can include all its five definitions mentioned above. “Play with argument” then can take place, and even “play” itself can be seen as a sort of “argument,” understandable and shared.” 3.8.b. Thus “argument,” taken as an understandable series of points to lead somewhere, includes banter and quarrel, logical deduction and bribery. The United Nations is a delightful place where we can watch and enjoy this sort of “arguments.” A handy example is the following banter, delightfully irritating:® (Knock, knock) Mr. Vibrating [V]: Come in. Man [M]: (entering) Is this the right room for an argument? V: Pve told you once. M: No you haven't. V: Yes I have. M: When? V: Just now! M: No you didn't. V: Yes I did! M: Didn't! V: Pm telling you I did... M: Look, this isn’t an argument. V: Yes it 15. M: No it isn’t, it’s just a contradiction. ?? And,

we

must

remember,

the self is the

Other;

see 2.2.

55 The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus: All the Words, N.Y.: Pantheon 1989, 2:86-89.

Books,

PLAYING

WITH

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V: No it isn't. M: Yes it 15. V: It 1s not. M: It is. You just contradicted me. V: No I didn't! ... M: Oh look, this is futile. V: No it isn’t. M: I came here for a good argument. V: No you didn’t, you came here for an argument. M: Well an argument’s not the same as contradiction. V: I can be. M: No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition. V: No it isn’t. M: Yes it 15. It isn’t just contradiction. V: Look, if I argue with you I must take up a contrary position. M: But it is not just saying “No it isn’t.” V: Yes it 15. M: No it isn’t! An argument is an intellectual process and contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says. V: No it isn’t... M: I've had enough of this! V: No you haven't! M: Oh shut up! (exiting)

This long conversation was quoted in its entirety to show how the whole "crazy thing" 1s nonetheless an understandable interconnected series. This verbal and not-so-verbal encounter 15 a veritable. “argument" in a broad sense, since it 1s a connected series of points understandably leading somewhere, that is, an irritating deadlock. The encounter is interesting?^ precisely because of its irritating. atmosphere, where two people confront each other with supposedly incongruous definitions of "argument," argument as contention-quarrel "contradictions" back and forth for V), vs. argument as a process of reasoning (“a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition" for M) Here the incongruity and the quarrel give rise to a connected series, an understandable chain, of give-and-takes leading to an understandable deadlock. By taking this chain to be an “argument,” the supposed incongruity of two definitions of "argument" is dissolved; these two definitions are seen to be included as two sub-definitions within one broad sense of "argument." δ: This is why the conversation is recorded in a book in the first place.

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3.8.c. Let us expand on this sort of "argument" a bit. An argument can be complete in itself before hurling itself on to the arguing partner, but it can also be unfinished, awaiting and depending on the partner's response to continue, taking a surprising direction and unexpected turns. Playing with arguments can typically be of the latter sort—incomplete, Other-dependent, continuing, and often unexpected-surprising. This is because the play itself is often Other-dependent,? continuing in a surprising manner. And a play has its own integrity and identity—this play, that play. Besides, since play is a connected series of understandable points acted out, play itself can be taken as one big complex argument that 15 evolving in mutuality. Heidegger once said that a thinker 1s a poet with one unutterable

poem out of which and of which all other poems speak. We can

interpret this seminal idea this way. Since the poem is a senes of points connected to lead us somewhere, a poem is an argument in a broad sense. And this argument-poem is “unutterable.” Does “unutterable” mean unformulated, or formulated but waiting to be expressed fully? Perhaps both. It 1s formulated as “one poem," with all its peculiar sentiment and thrust. It 1s unformulated and perhaps impossible to completely formulate, because it depends on interested readers and play-partners to feel and play out its integral implications and expressions, often 1η unexpected directions. Every thinker has such an unutterable poem-argument, forever unfinished, of which all her small arguments speak out, hurled at her interested arguing partner(s). Some

poets,

unfortunately,

cannot

find

interested

play-partners,

and their unuttered poem-arguments come out “stillborn,” as Hume called it. Santayana,

C.I.

Lewis,

H.D.

Lewis,

Marcel,

Ortega,

C.J.

Ducasse, W.T. Stace, and perhaps Camus and S. Langer, too, have sadly been neglected. We don't even argue against them; we just leave, leaving them alone.” Some are more mentioned, respectfully rehearsed, than seriously engaged and argued with, such as Buber, » Even “solitaire” is a play with oneself as one's partner. We here disagree with Wittgenstein. ^ Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language N.Y.: Harper, 1971, p. 160. Cf. 5.3.6. below, where a concrete execution of the play with various arguments concerning the self is summarized. 87 Cf. 5.3.6. δ᾽ Cf. the end of 3.6.

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Bergson, Spencer, Aurelius. The world of thoughts is strewn by the wayside with those ignored poets, “minor thinkers” we unfairly call them—lay dormant, always waiting to be picked up, vigorously argued with, pondered on, and played with. But once a poet is picked up, a series of play(s) with arguments is generated and carried on by interested thinkers. This 15 what happened to Kant when he was awakened from his “dogmatic slumber” by Hume and criticized Descartes, and was to be ceaselessly engaged with ever since. This was what transpired 1η Heidegger who was “influenced” by Husserl, and was in turn criticized by Sartre, MerleauPonty, Derrida, Levinas, and many others. This is an implication among others of Whitehead's famous adage, that the history of Western philosophy is “a series of footnotes to Plato," Whitehead's own included. Every thinker in the West jumps in the play— pros and cons—with argument(s) and the style of argumentation Plato initiated. Likewise, Confucius revolutionized the traditional, conventional notions (chün tzu, jen, and many others) without meaning to do so; Chuang Tzu poked fun at traditional strenuous striving for moral ideals; Hsün Tzu opposed traditionalism; the Neo-Confucians criticized and developed the revered legacies of thinking and thoughts, in response to the impacts of laoism and Buddhism. Thus it 15 hardly an overstatement to claim that human thinking, by nature, is a series of plays with arguments—unfinished, Other-dependent, continuous, unexpected, and above all, fun.” 3.8.d. All in all, then, our suggestion both to the above quoted conversation between argument-as-quarrel and argument-as-reasoning, and to the United Nations where everyone talks with one another at cross purposes, 15 that all of them had better "play with" their "arguments," as all thinkers do to constitute our common history of ideas.” 89 Cf. Appendix A to 3.2.1.: “‘Logical lacunas’ and the history of philosophical

debates." ” An extreme case is the following conversation in a noisy train: “Say, is this Wembledon?" “No, it is Thursday." "I am, too." Whether this “conversation” is still communication or even argument in a wide sense is very difficult to answer. Perhaps one can say it is communication via (creative) misunderstanding, that this "argument" is a series of (misunderstood points led to an atmosphere of increased togetherness if not conviviality. Incidentally, although seemingly “extreme,” doesn't this example remind us of the United Nations? Our only suggestion to the UN is that they had better follow this example and enjoy the “crazy” conversation as well.

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The point is to see threads of sanity-arguments within the insanely intertwined multiple meaning-chains of modernity and postmodernity, and play with and within them. For we are now in the world where we not only play ball halfway and stop, as Wittgenstein described.” We now simultaneously play many

different balls—baseballs,

footballs,

volley balls,

basket

balls.

Often we play them halfway, then go on to another “play,” and all this while playing many other plays at the same time; look at the confusing plethora of boyfriends and girlfriends a teenager has, how information explosion explodes our rational sanity, and how many different jobs a week a city person holds. With so many dimensions of living clamoring into life, we are no longer who or what we are. Our life is a replay over and over again of Chuang Tzu’s butterfly-dreamings and -awakenings. The dream-

talk reminds us of the following musing:” When

dream

Freud speaks of the dream,

he is referring not to the actual

itself, but to its reconstruction,

to the elements

that constitute

the space of memory in the present. What 15 important is not so much what happened—1n the dream, in childhood—as the particular account or the narrative that the patient presents to the analyst. It is that material which is interpreted... the infinite language of the double.... It is not the dream but the dream-talk, what we take the dream

as,

that is at stake. The “take... as” is the hermeneutical connection of meaning, the argument in a broad sense. And this “argument” is so multiple, so intertwined, that we cannot help but play with them; otherwise we would drown in them. So far postmodern deconstructionists seem to have been bemoaning over a lack of anything substantial behind our masks of expression and interpretation. Everything is a signifier of signifiers of, and so on, ad infinitum,

an interpreter of interpretation

of, and

so on,

ad infinitum, as Lacan and Derrida solemnly declare. The world 1s all masks, all infinite double-language; there is nothing real, nothing substantial. There 15 nothing behind the masks, no “elsewhere” where “truth” can be located as our final destination, metaphysical guarantee, and ultimate anchorage. But this bemoaning makes sense only on the presupposition of our ° L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., Remark No. 83, p. 39°. Cf. 3.8.6. below.

? Jan Chambers, Border Dialogues: Journeys in Postmodernity, London:

1990, p. 4.

Routledge,

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lingering Platonic nostalgia for the Real distinct from its copies. If

my dreamed butterfly may be the real, dreaming itself to be me,” then things can of interpretation my head on the ing to be awake,

be infinitely signifying one another, and the route can be reversed at a drop of my hat, or a drop of pillow (whatever I am), eternally dreaming, dreamdreaming to be in a dream, ad infinitum. And this

is the fact of the world,

no more,

no less.

Here in this world of dynamic ontological kinetics, the signifiers are of course the signified, the interpreted the interpreters, where this equation-word “are” is not a static stipulation but an expression of a dynamic, exchanging, dialectic of things without destination, without ceasing. Our interpreted “things” and our interpretations, and even ourselves, are themselves as much things among changing things, as dream and awakening, butterfly and its dreamer, are exchangeable and being constantly exchanged. All this expresses the play of various ontological modes of argument and argumentation, infinite plays with the double, the dreamerdreamed, the signifier-signified, the interpreter-interpreted. Then there is no reason why we ourselves cannot enjoy (instead of bemoaning) playing with the constant reversal, the unceasing ontological coreverberation, of the perspectival changes and chains of things, which the

chains,

after

all,

are.

And

this

double,

reversal,

partner,

co-

reverberation, they signify togetherness of an ontological and logicalargumentative kind. We must press ahead one step further; not only can we play but must. In this world of infinite plays with the double, of infinite meanings and infinite mutations in perspective, where circuits move, are shorted and re-connected in many unexpected ways, we must see that they are "arguments" in a broad sense to keep our sanity, and we must “play” with them to enjoy nding in and on them. This 1ς our only way to survive the constant short-circuitings of connections, and unceasing confusings of chains, and go further to thrive in them, to improve on them, and to grow them and ourselves grow in them. There is no time for morose self-pity or world-pity. William Blake's

words recur:”

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mock on, mock on, ‘tis all in vain! 5 | am of course extending the implications of Chuang Tzu's butterfly-dream.

See 5.3.3. ^ William Blake, Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau.

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SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again. And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back, they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel's path they shine. The Atoms of Democritus And Newton's Particles of Light Are sands upon the Read Sea shore, Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

The "wind" is that of the interchange of things; what makes the wind of changing things glisten is our play with arguments, entangled, opalescing, evocative, inspiring, and invigoraüng, a veritable playful togetherness. Thus, all this 1s why we all do well to play, and this 1s what 15 to be elaborated in the rest of this Section. B. Life itself 1s a play 3.8.1. Play is admittedly enjoyable and proceeds understandably, with or without reasonableness. And this understandable process is called "argument" in a broad sense; hence, play with arguments. How could play be with arguments? Children can get serious, angry, and shout at their playmate(s), “You can't do that!” or "I hat's not far!” Here “can’t” and “not fair" are significant. "Can't" means “ought not," and that is because

“that’s not fair," that is, the "fairness" of

the play has been violated. This shows that play has its own "logic," “fair play," an appropriateness of what to do in what sequence. To violate ıt 15 to destroy the play itself, and the fun is gone. Adults are more barbarous. Professional players sometimes grab at and pound on one another in the middle or toward the end of a game. The cause 15 the same, the "rule" of the game was (at least thought to be) violated. And the game-rule evolved out of the play itself. Two points must be noted: the evolving of the rule, and the fight about the play. Both are possible because play has its inherent “logic”

of which the usual logic does not know.” And the rule and the fight, 35 Cf.

3.2.1.

above.

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both are themselves play. War is a play, a deadly serious one, because the “rule” here 15 life or death. War “argues” with the “logic” of life and death, a deadly play with a serious argument. Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations noted that play cannot be understood by a traditional logic. I noted in Butterfly, as Gadamar did in Truth and Method, that play itself has an “argument”? according to its own “logic.” 3.8.2. In the phrase, “play with argument,” the two nouns seem to be disparate. That the two are much more closely involved than that can be seen by considering “play” afresh; we will see how “playing with arguments” comes with play (in 3.8.3.). “Play”

is a term

for life-dynamics,

an

action-word,

a verb,

and

that a comprehensively co-responsive verb.” First, the word “play” is inherently a verb; its noun form designates the sphere of actwity, as in “giving free play to one’s ability.” There exists no play without activity. Then, “play” is an activity of autonomous freedom which legislates its own rule; Kant’s “law of freedom” originates here. Thirdly, “play” is an activity of free mutuality, a free co-vibration among all parties concerned. Play is a collective coinvolvement, and cannot obtain without playing with some pal(s).”’ Play is inherently an activity of togetherness. Lastly, such playful mutuality tends to be comprehenswe. My pal and co-player can be myself, Other person(s), plant(s), animal(s), natural occurrence(s), and/or environment. And they finally merge nto one— lost in play where, paradoxically, each becomes itself.?? To begin with, my play-partner can be myself. I play “solitaire” as a game or as in a drama. Thinking, as reverie (cf. 2.5.1.2.), is a free play, a thought-experiment, an imaginative roaming around in the realm of possibilities. Only thus is thinking creative, fruitful, and significant. And this free maieutic play in/of thinking is carried on by initiating it 11 my conversation with myself. My thinking, as Socrates said, is my talk to myself, a soliloquy that is anything but solitary, as exemplified in Descartes’ discovery of the indubitable Cogito. % See Appendix to 3.8.1.: “On yu and play.”

7 Can't I just be myself, playfully lost in reverie and/or enjoy roaming around? That even here I am with an other called “myself” will be considered in the next paragraph. 8 Cf. 2.5.1.2.

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Then, thinking is vigorously conducted among my “pals.” In this process is at work our mutual grasp of the mode of thinking of each from the other, critically learning therefrom, mutually respecting, reciprocally complementing, so much so that you are as much my “substance” (Chuang Tzu) as I am yours.” Moreover, my play with Other(s) is not confined to what usually is called “game.” “Fair (or foul) play” extends to our social dealings, where we can “play into each others hands” or “play both ends against the middle.” Thirdly,

artists,

such

as painters,

sculptors,

novelists,

musicians,

often play with plants and animals, co-responding with them to play forth their magnificent artistic insights. Fourthly, as for natural occurrences, scientists constantly and playfully live with them to yield “scientific discoveries” and “natural laws.” The scientists would have understood Alexander Pope were they to overhear as he mumbled, “The sun-beams trembling on the floating waves”; they are there obviously entranced, celebrating together their entrancement—1n their “scientific experiments” 一 im nature. And Einstein was said to have played, with a little school girl, with nat-

ural fact:

[A] man, standing before a fountain, watching the falling water and tilting his head from side to side... rapidly moving the fingers of his ... hand up and down in front of his face... [; he] was Albert Einstein. Then he... asked, “Can you do it? Can you see the individual drops?” Copying him, I spread my fingers and moved them up and down before my eyes. Suddenly the fountain's stream seemed to freeze into individual droplets. For some time, the two of us stood there perfecting our strobe technique. Then,... he looked me in the eye and said, “Never forget that science 15 that kind of exploring and fun.” . . . [S]cience zs exploring, and exploring is fun.

Ihere is in fact something mysterious about a sheer fact, just there. Need we repeat Pope's line, “The sun-beams trembling on the floating ? Chuang Tzu passed by the grave of Hui Tzu his very good logician friend, whom he called his "substance" (chıh, 24/50, 51). What Chuang Tzu's nature was to his birth. (23/70; cf. 11/31, 16/10, 24/4,5)—"substance"—Hui Tzu was to Chuang Tzu; Chuang Tzu sorely missed him. During Hui Tzu's lifeüme, they seemed to have done nothing but quarrels which bred many a pungent and beautiful story (1/35-48, 5/55-60, 17/84-91, 18/15-19, 24/39-41, et passim). 1% This story begins a fascinating short article by Mary Budd Rowe (a professor of science education at Stanford University and a science adviser for two children’s television programs in the United States) in Reader's. Digest, October 1995, pp. 57-60.

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waves”?0! The mystery of the fact lies in its evocative power, inviting us to partake of the factuality of the fact; we call it “exploring,” and it is fun. This mute powerful beckoning of factuality is what draws the responses of historians and scientists as well artists. Were this fact-participatory fascination not part of real “play,” we would have been be at a loss as to what else to call it. What is important, (a) these co-resonances take more than one party (even with oneself) to obtain, and yet (b) in this active communal togetherness all players are lost in one, one great activity called “a play.” And furthermore, (c) within this communal unity each becomes oneself. This actwe dialectic, (a), (b), and (c), of unity with diversity, describes “play.” And all this “play” so spreads throughout the entire life that whatever implications there are in Shakespeare’s “Life is a stage,” the statement is perhaps truer and more comprehensive than what Shakespeare originally took it to be. Togetherness is playful as play is fun-together.

3.8.3. Play is free activity, an activity of co-freedom; as such, it is not insane randomness. While being played, play comes to have its own law and criteria of “decency” and “legitimacy,” ready to be defended and argued for. It 15 here that “play with arguments” makes sense. If life is a play, then living is a performative art of playing with arguments, sometimes casually playful, sometimes playful and deadly. Usual logic is a handle with which we play our life. “Logic” 15 the “rule” played out to be playfully and flexıbly adhered to, a yardstick flexuously used to understand whats going on. Living is playing with arguments. And the sorts of arguments that are played can be quite varıous, in fact, as various as life 15. What

in 1.1.1.1. we

saw concern-

ing how the law of excluded middle is used can be seen as a casual, playful if you wish, survey of the variety of usage the excluded middle can be put to to constitute a wide variety of “arguments.” It was shown there how culture-bound the usage of the excluded middle— arguments—is. Thus playing with arguments is as diverse as cultures are. Since cultures are modes of life and thinking, freely (playfully?) lived out in various histories and demographic environments, playing the

10! This Alexander Pope’s line was quoted by Friedrich Waismann evocative

power

of "fact,"

in

"Verifiability,"

Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1:140.

in

Antony

Flew,

to point out

ed.,

Logic

and

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with arguments reflects a variety of ways we live out our lives. Again, living is playing with arguments. 3.8.4. Not every play is a game.'”” We play a game by following its definite rules; we can play with the rules themselves. “Games are... rule-

governed." Rule-less game is a contradiction, while rule-less play

is natural, if not tautological. It 1s both being rule-free (though not rule-exclusive) and being reasonable (or understandable) that characterize play.

Wittgenstein confused play with game. What Wittgenstein saw,

after taking language as game, is language as use, as our customary practice; from this viewpoint follow the notions of training, context, purpose, function, all about “rule-following.”'” In short, what he saw was the rule—softening up, as he does, the rigidity and universality of language-rules (grammar, logical syntax, axioms in a linguistic calculus system, its formation- and transformation-rules). But he went no more

beyond

that, that 1s, beyond a

revision of the rule-bound

situation of our view of language. He has game and considers the flexuous game-rule, as to how different game-rules are from logical ones, but has no "play,""? much less the playful rule-less nonarbitrariness of life. We have had to go our own way exploring "play" for life, what new coherence and light this play-perspective brings us. We can communicate our ideas by playing a language-game with its particular game-rules, e.g., English grammar, syntax, expressive convention,

context—linguistic,

sentential,

or otherwise.

But

if we

play with. English grammar and syntax themselves, few will understand us. "Socrates 1s green" (Wallace Stevens) is hard to understand, even granting that it is a poetic sentence. But it is by playing with rules of a game that we can improve on a game. Likewise, taking liberty with grammar here and there, we enrich the English language; poets and advertisers often do. That 15 play, more than playing a game; it 15 playing with rules and arguments in language. 0? game. ,3 0t 1%

To balance

off this subsection, see 3.10. below where

Baker & Hacker, op. cit., p. 93. See Appendix A to 3.8.4.: “On German Baker & Hacker, op. cit., p. 97.

play naturally begets

‘Spiele’ as play and game.”

09 See Appendix B to 3.8.4.: “Wittgenstein and Baker & Hacker.”

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Perhaps more ambiguous about play and game than Wittgenstein, and mistaken in an opposite direction, is Hans-Georg Gadamer. For if the former erred in one extreme of understanding play in terms of rule-governed

game,

then the latter did in the other extreme,

as ıt

were, of wandering aimlessly in describing play, even to the point of cutting off the player from play. Gadamer begins his description of play by shocking us with an elimination of the player from play, the essence of which is supposedly sheer movement of to-and-fro repetition, supposedly demonstrated by our'" talk of the play of light, the play of the waves, the play of gears or parts of machinery, the interplay of limbs, the play of forces, the play of gnats, even a play on words. ... [I]t is irrelevant whether or not there is a subject who plays it. The play is the occurrence of the movement [backward and forward] as such.... [T]he play of colors... mean[s] ... one color plays against another [and]... there is one process or sight displaying a changing variety of colors.

Our first reaction is a surprised disbelief. How could the “play” of self-forgetful enjoyment—and enjoyment implies someone who enjoys— be without someone to enjoy oneself in? At least epistemologically speaking, all those examples given above are extensions of, and derive

their anthropomorphic sense! from, this original meaning of human

play (homo ludens, as Johann Huizinga puts it), rather than equal, much less original, in the weight of significance. To take impersonal to-and-fro movement as the essence of play is an overstatement if not a mistake. As the phrase “homo ludens" shows, the homo and the ludere co-implicate, co-define, and co-describe. To know one, we must

refer ourselves to the Other. This does "play" in nature; this 15 to oppose the What Gadamer cited from Huizinga that the player 1s dispensable in play, claim, “the primacy of play over ... the

not doubt the legitimacy of primacy of it. to support Gadamer's claim actually supports a weaker player," as Gadamer himself

1 Gadamer, Truth and Method, ορ. cit., p. 103. This is to balance off our agreement with Gadamer on “play” in 3.7.2. See for further, Appendix C to 3.8.4.: “Gadamer on play." 06 This is not to falsely impose a subjective anthropomorphism, but to say that we can understand “plays” in nature only in terms of our play. Nature is personal as we are, because we are part of nature. We derive our understanding of nature from ourselves, and such our understanding is not a false one because we are part of nature.

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admits." Moreover, all that Huizinga claimed in that quotation is merely that the “savage” has no distinction "between belief and pre-

tense." Here are Huizinga's sentences Gadamer quoted:'"

The savage himself knows no conceptual disunction between being and playing; he knows nothing of identity, of image or symbol. And that is why it may be asked whether the mental condıuon of the savage in his sacred observances is not best understood by retaining play as the primary term. In our concept of play the difference between belief and pretense 1s dissolved.

Furthermore, Gadamer's profound announcement,

to wit,

It is... not correct to say that animals (0० play... [or] that, metaphorically speaking, water and light play as well. Rather. on the contrary, we can say that man too plays. His playing too is a natural process. The meaning of his play, too, precisely because . . . he is part of nature. is a pure self-presentation. Thus in this sphere it becomes finally meaningless to distinguish between literal and metaphorical usage.

also nullifies his excessive claim that player is dispensable in play. Perhaps what he really meant is that “The real subject of the game...

is not the player but instead the game itself."!"*

This reminds us of Gadamer's wandering into the subject of "game"; in fact, he also tends to explain play in terms of game.'^ What he identifies as characteristics of play— play something, choice, determination of mode of comportment, purpose, task, :transformation into a) structure, setting off the playing field—describe game more than play. By the same token, only identifying play with drama allows us to extend our identification of play with self-presentaton to that with representation, then to that ॥ the audience (a show’. All plays are not shows; Gadamer himself admits it.''*

Gadamer,

op. cit., p. 104.

no Ibid, p. 104.

!! [bid., p. 105. Emphases original. Ibid., p. 106. We remember that German Spiele can mean either plav or game.

''* Ibid., pp. 106-110.

Ibid., p. 109. In general, it is sad to see how Gadamer wanders. He is "ambiguous" in the etymological sense (walk about’ as well as in a conventional one equvocal). Player is now dispensable in play abid., pp. 103. 111, now a part of ρίαν (108-110). Play is game ,106!, and is not game ,110'. Game 15 a representation tor audience (110), and is for no one :109, 111‘. And so on.

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3.8.5. We play with argument not as we play with a ball. For here our arguing is our playing, and we play in arguing.'' First, our arguing as our playing is exemplified in a little incident over a sunny bridge 2,500 years or so ago:''® Two “stooges” were there, Chuang Tzu the supreme lampoonist and a friend of his, Hui Tzu the supreme logician, jostling playfully over how Chuang Tzu could ever have known and enjoyed the minnows under the bridge enjoying themselves playing around. Then, our playing in arguing is embodied in Chuang Tzu's butterflydream story:''’ Having awakened from dreaming that he was a butterfly, he now was not sure whether he was he who had dreamed to be a butterfly, or he was the butterfly currently dreaming to be he. And now, after going over these two sorts of playing with arguments, we understand what it means to play with a ball. The ball i; nothing but the play, and the play is nothing but the bouncing ball, whose parts are the players playing in the bouncing of the ball. Was the ball playful, or the ballplayers? The question 15 now moot; there is a ball-play going on. A variety of playing with arguments, simply within our ordinary life yet beyond language, can now be sampled. First, let us observe children. They play, to the hilt of their lives,

their every thought, every act, and every move; they feed on play, and grow on playing with arguments, with their own reasonableness which itself grows by being played. Without play, children simply die out. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and a dull boy is a dead one. For them, play is everything in which they learn, live, grow,

and have

their whole

beings.

From this angle, we can understand when someone says, "Both age and scholarship are perishable commodities, although the former is more treasured by common folks than the latter. Both are God-given, and we must make the best of both while they are available." For here the word “must” 1s not a simple logical necessity, yet if we insist, asking, "Must we?," we would be taken as silly. The “must” here belongs more to ludic necessity, in the category of “play with argument," than to that 1n usual logic. 15 The third obvious kind of playing with argument would be word-games logico-mathematical puzzles.

116 Tt was recorded to end Chapter 17 of the Chuang Tzu.

111 This is the story that ends Chapter 2 in the Chuang Tzu.

and

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Play in the sense of "room" to move around, as in the play of gears or parts of machinery, is significant. It 15, when applied to hfe, the room between what we are and what we are not (yet); it makes for freedom, creativity, change, history. And the “room” here is itself the ludic activities of creativity. Sadly, as we grow, we lose that playzest, that play-room for life-reverberation. When we finally cease to play, we are called “dead,” if not physically, then life-wise. Of course such play can be and often 1s abused into a foul play. And the “best” that we make of life we can do only by playing our life to the hilt, as children do theirs.

For the criterion to judge the abuse of play is play itself; “You can't do that!” and “That’s not fair!” are said in the heat of play. And the cure of abuse of play lies in further playing; as we say, “History (the process of play) judges, justifies.” In contrast, seriousness locks up things. One cannot say, “Become more serious to remedy serious mistakes." For play makes room for change; seriousness kills such room. But making room for change must not be for random change,

but

for some

reason,

for having

fun-together,

that is, for

the world besides the serious one, the former sometimes

taken from

play. This 15 why arguing back and forth 15 needed. Hence, the importance of playing with arguments in play, a sine qua non for living. “But isn’t ‘play’ too light and frivolous a category to do justice to the serious business of living?" Our answer is twofold. One, play can be serious indeed— breaking bones in a ball game, the deadly play of war and gang-violence. Two, the assumption hid in the question is important. Play is supposed to be "light," non-serious.''® And hfe ought to be lived so. Life 15 a matter of playing a role; when we retire (from playing), we head for death. “Playing a role" 15 an interesting expression. We can play serious social, moral and managerial roles; we can also play these roles in the world of make-believe. The make-believe world 1s the latter, some other times put into the latter. Both artists and inventors do both, and their deeds describe creativity. Both require play with arguments, arguing back and forth between fancies and reality, theories and experiments, what is made and what is the case. All this playing with arguments— play, pretension, make-believe, thought-experiments on actuality, and experiments on thoughts—is 118 *Non-serious" is not “not serious," however. The latter is frivolous, the former is not; the former is relaxed, the latter is laxed.

PLAYING

WITH

MEANINGS

OF

“ARGUMENT”

195

the stuff of which our life is made. And mind you, there is thus nothing unreal and faked in the world of fancies, pretensions, playacts, and make-believe. They are the dynamo that pushes the socalled “real” world ahead; no dynamo that really pushes 15 unreal. How do fancy and playact push us ahead? They are playings. Play is connected with make-believe which is often said to be our constituent. Besides playing a role considered above, “despair” (Kierkegaard) ”and “nihilation” (Sartre) indicate the connection. And both the make-believe and the actual often interfuse. Children’s makebelieves grow into adults’ “real life.” Sartre In fact insisted that playing roles is to playact, to pretend.'^? Without going with him into any ontological extrapolation, we can simply note that the makebelieve creativity is what makes any serious enterprise succeed; imaginative management always gets ahead. Play is the sine qua non of entrepreneurial success. All these are playing living, and 1η all these we play with arguments. 3.8.6. We have played with the relation between play and seriousness. First, they are contrasted; seriousness locks up things (in 3.8.5.). Then play can be serious (3.8.1.); some players break their bones playing. Now we must say, all real plays are serious, as serious as children at play (as 3.8.1. also said). Gadamer begins his section on play, in his Truth and Method, by identifying play with seriousness without explaining

how they are related, then goes on to other themes on play.”

Agreeing with Gadamer, we should nonetheless carefully consider what is involved in this identification— what it means and implies. The seriousness of play 15 not a usual kind—oppressive and gloomy, for such usual senousness 1s heteronomously bound by the demand of the object of concern. Rather, play-seriousness is open, enjoyable, voluntary, self-respectful; 1t 1s the seriousness of self-respect—liberating, intensive, autonomous, self-imposed which 15 not at all 1mposing. For the “object” of concern here is concern itself. The burden of the subject to the obligation of playful creativity 1s both the subject (myself) and the subject-matter (my future potentials) itself, both of which are at one here. Play-seriousness is the seriousness of the respect for autonomy. Ít 1s synonymous with responsibility for oneself. 9 See Soren Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death. 120 See the first few pages of his Being and Nothingness. ” Gadamer, op. cit., pp. 101-102.

196

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

The respect for autonomy (“self-respect” for short) is so enjoyable and self-satisfying, seriously playful and playfully serious, that it is synonymous with play. This realization thus infuses Kant's theoretical rigorism in moral autonomy with color, interest, vibrancy, and life. Self-respect is indeed synonymous with the very freedom of life, of every living entity. The proud dignity of a cock, a frog, a child, is thus ontologically (not just logically) justified. And it is proudly

powerful as well; a tree sapling breaks up a slab of stone into pieces.'” lhat's the essence of play. Wittgenstein is enthralled,

could anyone have helped it?!”

too; how

We can easily imagine people amusing themselves in a field by playing with a ball... playing many [games] without finishing them and in between throwing the ball aimlessly into the air, chasing one another with the ball and bombarding one another for a joke and so on.... And is there not also the case when we play and—make up the rules as we go along? And there is even one where we alter them—as we go along.

Play is here exhibited as synonymous with the integrity of a single living being, free, proud,

inviolable, magnificent,

royally command-

ing our respect. This being-integrity at play has its own logic, which life freely plays, repeats and self-renews—we say, “The boy 15 growing." This is playing with logic, and this reasonable play-process is called “argument." Play 15 here "argument," the logic played out, renewed, grown. Play has to be play with argument. The logicality of the play keeps play going reasonable, and the playfulness of the argument keeps logic alive, free of the prison of tautology. That 15 the true meaning of playing with arguments, for that 15 life, which grows by playing with. arguments.

77 A boy of five, Bobby, once told me, “I can do anything. Look!” And he jumped and he ran. I clapped my hands to celebrate his powerful integrity. How could I have helped it? He was beautifully proud, awesome, quite a sight, marvelous to behold.

73 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., Remark Νο. 83, p. 39°.

Wittgenstein definite rules up the rules quoted here

meant that sort of acts to be "game." But game is play "following at every play," while play can be with the rule itself. Play can “make as we go along... even... alter them—as we go along." What is is on play, not on game. See 3.8.6. below.

THE PLAYFUL AND THE ACTUAL

197

C. Play and actuality are interfused 3.9. The playful and the actual How

do the playful and the actual intermingle in life? Let us first

quote

from Wittgenstein,

then extend them

in our own

manner:'”*

I describe a psychological experiment: the apparatus, the questions of the experimenter, the actions and replies of the subject—and then I

say that it is a scene in a play.—Now everything 15 different.'”

We ask, “What does ‘I am frightened’ really mean... ἢ"... What 15 fear? What does "being afraid" mean? If I wanted to define it at a single showing —1 should play-act fear. [emphases original]

The first quotation shows vividly how decisively "different" playing is from being actual. The second quotation shows how important 1t 15 to playact to define and know actuality. Putüng these two points together, we see how essential playacting 15 in definition and knowledge. This point goes further than what 1s indicated in 3.8., that play is essential to science and management, as well as in artwork and invention. Here we see that the playful and the actual are mutually involved in a more basic, constant, pervasive, and mundane

manner

than initially suspected. All descriptions and definitions, which are needed in thinking and communicating, which in turn are needed for all human hving to go on, are playacts. And playacting 15 playing, and in this context, playing with arguments. Euthyphro's enumeration of actual cases to “define” piety, to think of it, amounts to a re-enactment of cases of piety; his definition was a performative series of playacts. In other words, all definitions are shorthand descriptions, all descriptions are extended pointings (ostensive definitions), which are pretension and playacts. This 1s so for the simple reason that we know something new in terms of, that 15, by pointing at, something familiar.

2} Ludwig

The

Wittgenstein,

Macmillan

Company,

Philosophical Investigations, Tr. 1953,

1958,

1966,

1968,

pp.

G.E.M. 180,

Anscombe,

188.

Sadly,

N.Y.:

he

did

not see how crucial and decisive a role “play” plays in our knowing acts, despite the striking insights packed in his coinage, "language game.” "Game" is, however, a less free notion—more regimented by rule, more contrived—than “play.”

25 Cf. Kierkegaard once described (in his Zither-Or) a man putting his dirty clothes

under a sign, saying, “Put your clothes from the store, asking, “What are you laundered here.” Back came an angry I know, Kierkegaard never developed

here for laundering.” Another man doing?” He replied, “I am having retort, “No, this sign is for sale!” the rich implications in this story,

came out my stuff As far as however.

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SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

We call this an act of metaphor, “That strange thing is lke this familiar thing.” Here is a playful mixing of categories, a simulation of similarity between two dissimilar things, in short, a playact of metaphor. Hume also said that all our experiential knowledge 15

metaphorical.'”°

In freely, playfully, mixing categories and extending ourselves to the hitherto unknown via the already known, there is nothing fake, unreal, about either this extending act or this new knowledge resulted therefrom. There is indeed some playfulness about such an extending of oneself forward—lhterally pre-tending, indicating this extending is after all something out of our common

wits; otherwise, there would

have been no new knowledge. But such a hitherto unheard of selfextension has nothing unreal about it; both the hitherto known and the now newly known are as real as is our metaphorical self-extension. It is this unexpected and playful ontological shift that constitutes the essence of our knowing, acting, living, and being. This is our play, an absolutely serious and enjoyable play with argument in things, in the process among things, and in our very being, acting, knowing, all our rational ontological process that we are. To play 15 as much to playact as to think is to engage in thoughtexperiment. To repeat: there 15 no fakery and unreality about play-

acting, any more than there is in experimenting on thinking." To

“play a role,” say, is not to playact behind an unreal mask, from where the real I is always ready to appear." For one’s role is one’s real self in that particular process of acting out that role, that mode of being oneself. One of the points of Chuang Tzu’s butterfly-dream story must be this. In doubting, upon awakening from dreaming oneself to be a butterfly, whether I am I having dreamed to be a butterfly, or I am the butterfly currently dreaming to be “I,” what is sure is that I am constantly undergoing the transformation of identities (wu hua), all of which are real and being played with, being undergone playfully. 26 See 1.1.1.2.2., 1.1.2., 4.2.2. 127 If every act and everything is real, how are faking acts and fakes possible? Well, they are real in their faking mode. They are really faking (acts) and faked (things). They are genuine fakes, in the sense as that when we say, “mistake” is not not-taking but real taking, only taking-amiss. 128 This is a major presupposition that makes almost every thinker in the West (from Shakespeare ta Sartre) despair about the reality of human life, once it is defined as a series of playacting, taking playacting to be a faking act, pretending to be someone else than what oneself really 15.

THE

PLAYFUL

AND

THE

ACTUAL

199

Here “pretending” is literally to pre-tend, to extend oneself before oneself, to play out another identity than the present one. We usually say that the role of a “father” is biological, that of a “lover,” intimate,

“teacher,”

functional,

and

“Hamlet,”

dramatic.

Instead of

criticizing such our common sense (for one can be a born teacher, a born Hamlet; the supposedly least “intimate” role of “Hamlet” has to be intimately played out to become really dramatic and real), we can say that the more (kinds of) roles one playacts and pre-tends, the ncher and more experienced one becomes. One must as seriously assume and identify oneself with the role as one would any enterprise. And that is the only way one can enrich one's knowledge (by metaphoring) and oneself (by pre-tending). Here only one thing is required: one must be so interested 1η the role that one wants to do it. The necessity must come from oneself, and must not be imposed upon heteronomously. For coming “from oneself" may not be coming "from inside.” The necessity from oneself does not mean that the necessity comes from inside; hunger, say, is an internal necessity and a heteronomous one. One may not want to be hungry, although one 15 hungry, and may even be forced by it to assume a job of not one's preference; one may want instead to defy hunger to do something one wants to do, such as playing “Hamlet.” And this necessity from oneself may be evoked by external stimuli, say, reading Shakespeare's book-description of Hamlet, hearing an exciting lecture on him, being drawn to a deeply moving dramatic performance of the tragedy. Now, one becomes so interested in. Hamlet that one becomes an actor. People eventually call one a "born (actor of) Hamlet," even though one 15 still hungry often. Similarly, hunger can attend a “born lover," “born teacher,"

“born

scientist," "born sculptor," “born father," not clumsy and strenuous but ingenious, sensible, spontaneous, and thoroughly enthused. This doing-from-one's-interest, doing out of the necessity from oneself, 1s called “play.” The one thing necessary 15 that one must play out the role one wants, for interested 1maginative performance is the key to the success of playacting, and playing 15 the only access to imaginative performance; they are synonymous. There is nothing faked, much less unreal, about all this. Furthermore, playacting is to follow through with the inherent logic of the role; “Hamlet” zs his life-pattern, which is dictated by his dramatic nature, a tragic hero, and cannot have a life of the

200

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

happy-go-lucky, dictating another life-pattern. And “lıfe-pattern” 1s a pattern of things sensibly strung together, an “argument.” Therefore, to play is to play act, and to playact is to play with arguments in various role-situations—dramatic,

functional, intimate,

as well as biological.

That all our knowledge 15 such a creative playact (thought experiment in imaginative instantiation) 1s vividly portrayed in every Chinese "concept" which 15 really a paradigmatic scene, a compressed story of

a typical situation.” This is not peculiar to Chinese thinking, which

just portrays what 15 1η fact always happening in a concept, as Lakoff and Johnson also noted.!” By the same token, metaphorical acts are our mental play of arguments, playfully linking the unknown to the known, thus "arguing" from the known to the unknown, by playfully shuffling categories to relate hitherto unrelated things. This playful metaphoring is exemplified, among others, in Hsün Tzu, a supposedly austere Confucian of a relatvely late period in Chinese history of Classical Ages (c. 315-265 B.C.).'”' He argued in a magnificent architectonic of metaphors. Each Chapter goes like this. First, a surprising, fresh, and convincing series of concrete tersely descriptive definitions strike us. They are hierarchically presented to promise further elaborations. Then elaborations (again, in a concrete factual manner) follow, peppered with penetratingly appropriate apothegms as support. This portion of elaborations goes long, occupying a major part of the Chapter. Finally, the entire concrete metaphorical expositions are clinched with a pithy quotation, also a metaphoric expression, either from the Classics or from a scholarly saying. It is thus that metaphors are the way the entire Collected Works of Hsün Tzu is constituted. Hsün Tzu argued metaphorically. Now, what does all this mean in our context? Being surprising, playful, and engaging in “illicit” connections of dissimilars, metaphors amount to playing with arguments (understandable connections of ideas). Therefore, Hsün Tzu played with arguments when he argued in nothing but metaphors. Again, Hsiin Tzu is just an explicit case of what we are in fact doing all the time when we explicate factual knowledge or, by extrapolation, any knowledge. We argue in free playful metaphors, if we /

See 5.5.2.2.2. below, and my On Chinese Body Thinking—A

Cultural Hermeneutic,

EJ. Brill, 1997, 1.2.. ” George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

1980.

5! See 5.4.3. below, and my Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., 2.1.

PLAY AND

GAME

20]

are to be creative and informative, not going around in circles of

tautologies and deadened platitudes.'** Our knowledge and its con-

veyance are all plays with arguments. 3.10.

Play and game

In order to counterbalance 3.8.4. where game and play are sharply distinguished, we will here consider how play naturally begets game. Our consideration will answer what play with arguments means and why it is important to life. Play is not rational but not irratonal,

either, we

say. Play is our free roaming

as we

fancy,

as we

like. So it is not self-consciously orderly; it 15 “silly,” not rational. Yet play 15 "silly and crazy" but not insane or irrational. For it has its own "logic," its own order, purpose, spontaneous directive. Play is "Cautotelic,"? self-purposive, self-responsive, self-responsible. And such play keeps the self intact and invigorated. For, after all, the self exists, and anything that exists must be self-coherent; otherwise, inner

conflict (self-contradiction) cracks the existence of the self into pieces. This ontological coherence is what is usually called “spontaneity” which invigorates life. Play makes us feel at home in ourselves, and such playful at-homeness refreshes us. We can breathe again, stand up, and raise our heads to the vast skies above, and find ourselves looking up to ourselves. This spontaneous coherence of play develops soon enough into game; play becomes playing a game. Spontaneous coherence of a play bespeaks its own rule of being-itself. Play has 115 own rule. Rule means that an act, a notion, in a play must follow another particular one, and no other. This “rule” gives a meaning, a meaningful coherence to a play, and makes a play into a game. Thus play's internal coherent meaning comes to turn explicit in the game rule. Coherence is an appropriate connection of one thing after another, and this connection 1s the meaning and integrity of the play. Game 15 play with a definitive (though changeable) connection, meaning."* 5? Even platitudes are deadened metaphors.

133 See C.J. Ducasse, “Creative Work, Art, and Play," in Vincent Tomas, ed., Creatwity in Art, Englewood Cliff, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964, pp. 71-83, reprinted from Ducasse, The Philosophy of Art, N.Y.: Dial Press, 1929. ” Coherence, connection, combination, meaning and togetherness are of course mutually synonymous. I have argued that "meaning" and intelligible “connection” are synonymous in Butterfly, pp. 364-73.

202

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

Now, “argument” is a name and a label put on this meaningful processive connection of propositions which are meaningful connections of notions, with a special characteristic called “rational necessity” among these various connections. À list of these necessary connections came to be called “logic.” “Argument” is a game that follows logic, a logical game. In order for a logical game, argument, not to fall into a self-devouring tautology that kills meaning in triviality, we must have an argument that gives non-trivial meanings, argument that produces—evokes—our discovery of new meaning.'” To discover this meaningful argument we must play with various arguments. And we live on meaning, non-trivial, novel ones. Hence, the indispensability of playing with arguments for rich meaningful life. We are going to transpose the world of things on to the world of musical sound in 3.13. We see in advance now as to why this is not as far-fetched as it would seem at first sight. Logical validity—appropriateness, meaningfulness, of logical connection—is surveyed, seen in space. In contrast, argument proceeds in time. Nor 1s sensibility—meaning in a broad sense—confined to space, either. By transposing meaning to the time-world of sound, meaning is released from the restriction of “logic,” becomes sensible, making sense as the intelligible-connection-of-things (meaning) proceeds as it is changed and played forth. Since life is a time-series of meaning-progression, it 15 appropriate, no, necessary, that we play the connections of things (togetherness) to grow in sensibility and meaningfulness."^? 3.11.

“Use”

and playing with arguments

Is playing with arguments answer, because play is by stated, play invigorates us. uselessly useful. Five points First, play 15 trivially, by

useful, then? The question 15 difficult to definition opposed to utility, yet as above We will say that play with arguments 15 on this assertion can be raised. definition, opposed to usefulness. Use 15

for efficiency, 1.6., to attain maximum effect with minimum consumption of resources, the “funds” of time, energy, fuel, in order to ' It is not that argument discovers new meaning, but that the former evokes the latter. 6 That such play-with-argument (though I did not use this phrase then) 15 important for us to go through life’s tragedies is argued for (explicated) in my Butterfly, pp. 385-87. Also see further on this point in 3.15. below.

“USE”

AND

PLAYING

WITH

ARGUMENTS

203

produce the intended “fruits.” Such efficiency requires strenuous scheming and effort. There is no room for play, which is a waste, effortlessness, plan-lessness, and purposelessness. Thus play is a sheer waste of time and resources, usually shunned as a plague by industrialists and economists, two major representatives of modernity and perhaps postmodernity. Yet, secondly, industry and economy produce poverty and heart attacks with their intended products. Insecticide is a homicide; modern efficiency murders humans. Besides, play 15 surprisingly popular today. People instinctively and spontaneously throng to ball games and have balls. No one makes more income (the dream of industry) than “professional players" (what contradiction!) and “movie stars" (what tautology!), the very opposite of industrialists. Why? Simple. Play makes ourselves alive; few of us die of heart attacks by playing. For play makes us. We can breathe freely here. For "here" has a lot of wasted spaces for us to freely roam, shout, run, and soar, and we

come alive, become ourselves. Use uses us to death; play makes us, or rather, allows us to be-come

ourselves.

Thirdly, thus mutually opposed, play and use are yet inter-constitutive. Industrialists are now planning vacations and recreations (another contradiction!) for themselves and for their employee-workers, because useless play is the humus of spontaneity out of which the usefulness of artificiality grows, in the same manner as wasted spaces on the natural ground render our walk possible, as Chuang Tzu noted." Besides, skilled (contrived) players play better; planned vacations, as planned obsolescence and retirement, invigorate us. Play and use are thus mutually both contrastive and constitutive. Now, fourth, argument aims at being effective, efficient and powerful with the least words, effecting the clearest, most pungent conclusion. Argument 15 for efficient use. In contrast, play with argument rambles and enjoys. We call it "research," savoring unexpected "results" called unplanned "mistakes." Play with argument 15 the humus out of which (good) argument grows, which is a constituent of play with argument. Playful argumentative roaming prepares for a takeoff, jet-soaring up to the Platonic skies of blueprint efficiency (argument). Fifth, and finally, children again teach us here; their vitality owes to their entire lives being made of plays with arguments, and sometimes 5

Chuang Tzu, 24/105.

204

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

play“not-play”with argument. Look how often they say, “Its fun because... .," its equivalent, “We do A because it's fun,” and “Nothing to do; [so] no fun." In Professor Mary Budd Rowe's fascinating short article, its mistitled “Teach Your Child to Wonder”! is corrected by its subtitle, "Kids are natural scientists—to stimulate their interest, just share their curiosity.”!” Here, “their curiosity” plays; “natural scientist” bespeaks argument; to “show” is to play together; playing together with arguments “stimulates” further their play (in nature) with arguments. The entire article is about “explor[ing] what interests them most ; to “explore” here is to play (in nature) systematically, to play with arguments. “Flying a kite,” one of kids’ “everyday activities,” teaches us and

kids much

“about physics,” aeronautics,

meteorology,

“and

engineering." Professor Rowe ends the article with these words:!*?

Choose toys with working parts. . . . Even better, ... toys that kids can safely take apart and put back together again. By sharing your children’s curiosity you can [have] a valuable lesson that extends far beyond... science. They will learn that it pays to persist, to experiment, in face of difficulties. And they will clearly see that learning is not drudgery or... happens only in school. Learning is... to be enjoyed everyday—for a lifetime.

Here, "learning" is science, which 15 play with arguments, and “children," who

"are natural scientists," teach us how; "science is explor-

ing, and exploring is fun,”'*' where “fun” comes out of “exploring,” which is to play with arguments.

What makes a child a child is growth; what kid does not grow? She grows by playing her exploration, playing in nature with arguments. Playing with arguments makes us "kids" to grow together with them. Children are as useless as their play; and we grow with them, by learning from them on how to play, in the world, with arguments and have fun.

58 For how can we “teach... wonder"? More incredibly, how can we “teach...

child to wonder"? The child is made of wonder and nothing else.

9 The article appears in Reader Digest, October,

1995, pp. 57-60. Mary B.

Rowe is a professor of science education at Stanford University and a science adviser for two children's television programs in the USA.

/ Ibid., p. 60. /^' Ibid., p. 58.

QUEST AND PLAYING WITH ARGUMENTS 3.12.

205

Quest and playing with arguments

Play with arguments 15 as much of a process of quest without questing as it is uselessly useful.'** It is a quest because arguing is a chain of reasoning, and a chain must have a direction toward which it 15 groping, hence, a quest. It is not quest because it enjoys the process itself; ıt ıs a music of reasoning, and music is process toward a destination without paying much attention to destination. The hunt for an Easter egg is hunt without hunting; not even children particularly enjoy a plain hardboiled egg. But it 15 fun to hunt for an Easter egg, nonetheless. The same goes with fishing; “Gone fishin’” 15 synonymous with “Drink tea” on the door of Chinese restaurant. These expressions have little to do with fish or tea, and much to do with relaxed unhurriedness in the ludic acts connected with fish or tea. But a quest must have a frame with which to make sense. Here, however,

the “frame”

is no definitive frame, for otherwise

the quest

would be hardened stiff, rendered impossible. What the quest needs is a frame

of no frame, a flexuous scaffold,

a makeshift

“paradigm”

(Kuhn), ready to set up, tailored to the situational need, then ready to “deconstruct,” again as demanded by the situation and the inspired whims of the player(s). This is what 1s indicated in “play with arguments,” where “arguments” are a frame on the move, in quest for the music bang played now. Here, again, music helps us make sense. Jaques Lory’s words recur:'* [T]he piano... attained... perfection... a quarter of century after Bach's death. . . . [H]ow can one justify performing his work on [it]? Bach loved transcriptions... and had his own keyboard concertos played on the violin or vice versa.... [H]is “theoretical” works, such as the Art of Fugue or the Well-Tempered Clavier (... not “harpsichord”) were not written for a specific instrument... without reference to the actual instruments which would bring them to life... [Bach was] more interested in musical texture than in sonorities. So playing Bach on the piano [is] justified... it sheds a different light. . . . Bach is outside time and the piano brings to his works... rich... sonores... [showing Bach's| universal character.

12 Cf. my Butterfly, pp. 381-85.

#3 Jacques Lory, tr. Christopher Whyte, “Bach on the Piano: Wilhelm Kempff,”

an insert essay accompanying Wilhelm Kempf joue Bach: Transcriptions pour Piano, Deutsche Grammophon, (2 CD edition, 1993).

206

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

Bach gives the argumentative form; musicians of various instruments played with this Bach-“argument” to play out the various glories of music which are theirs-in-Bach. This 15 the splendor of abstract arguments'**—to be played with at will and shown its various musical glories in surprising directions beyond the original composer's imagination. And the splendor of “abstract music" lies in its power to fascinate and invite both the composer and the performers to meet and join in. The music (the score) 15 the locus of creative match, the ground for the game-play, the playground and the play-rule for a communal game called “music,” the event of actualization of music. In our daily life, musical notes and tunes are “concepts.” Concepts free us, unglue us, from the specificities of the concrete world, so as for us to freely roam and play with possibilities the daily humdrum chores have never dreamed of. As the contemporary poet Yang Mu puts it in his “Poem on Poetry,”'® Following, exploring, this way and that, all over the Earth, Even

to the Water

Country,

the Vast

Spaces,

for the sensitive

Heart-soul to point to tone-colors changing moment by moment. Thus 15 the inner landscape determined, and inner and outer Realms, complementing, melt into one—eternity Is what you exquisitely cut and crafted out of time....

That “eternity” is what we call “abstraction,” crafted with our playful imagination —cognitive or otherwise—out of the space-time of this world. It 15 imaginative plays that rule the concrete world, enrich our mundane habitat, not the other way around. And for this imagnative freedom to play with arguments we need abstract concepts as tools free from the encumbrances of daily concrete specificities. They are the necessary wings of the Big Bird soaring up in the concrete skies. A small but important caveat must be entered here, however. The word "abstract" used here must be taken with caution. Whitehead's "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness," taking abstract notions for concrete reality, and just flirting with them in the subjective abstract world, is an anathema, for this move impoverishes us in our illu2

The Chinese people can be dubbed composers of music called the “future,” the music made out of the tune called the "past," perhaps the Chinese equivalent of "abstract music." See 5.5.2.5. # This is to balance off my bemoaning of abstraction in P.2.4. + Yang Mu, "Lun Shih Shih,” in Zien-ho Wen-hsüeh (UNITAS), Taipei, January, 1996, pp. 60-62; the quotation 15 from p. 61. My translation.

MUSIC

AND

PLAYING

WITH

ARGUMENTS

207

sion. There is nothing wrong with playing within abstraction as long as we are aware of the difference, that it is not concrete world but a

preparation for entering the concrete. Once this point 15 firmly kept in mind, concepts can only enhance, expand, and deepen our realms of playing with arguments. On this point, a concrete thinker like a psychologist has much to tell us. For example, Dr. Gagné pointedly reminds us that,'*? In addition to having concrete references, concepts possess the additional property of freeing thought and expression from the dominaton of the physical environment. ... [Cloncepts in this generalized form may be linked together in various ways to... learn... knowledge that 1s virtually without limit.

Here, concepts must have "concrete references" before "freeing thought," and then being "linked together in various ways" for us to acquire "knowledge that is virtually without. limit^; here. linking them “in various ways" to form arguments requires that we freely

play with these concepts which free us from concrete specificities.'*’ And both having "concrete references" and “freeing thought... from the domination of the physical environment," those two seemingly contrary properties are twin absolute desiderata for our playing with arguments in the fields and the slaes. 3.13.

Music

and playing with arguments

Let us once more transport ourselves to the world of beautiful sound, music, to learn about the uniqueness of this play with. arguments. Here we are released from the world of meaning confined only to logic and concepts. Here the coherent connection of the sounds— their “meaning”—1s less "true, valid or false" (“sonic [logical] falsehood" makes no sense) than more or less senseless or sensible, 1.e., the connection makes more or less sense. Such a world must be what Susanne Langer meant when she said that music 15 expressive without expression. Musical phrases are meaningful, make sense, 4 Robert M. Gagné, The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction, Fourth Edition, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985, p. 109. I owe this reference to my psychologist Ruth.

5 Sadly, Gagné arguments.

did not mention this point, i.e., playing with concepts and

208

SECTION

3:

ARGUMENTATIVE

TOGETHERNESS

by the sheer mode of combination (connection, togetherness) among sounds, and nothing else. And how much sense these musical phrases make depends on how well they are played (as well as how well they are put together on sheet

music,

1.6.,

how

“decently”

musical

they

will

sound

when

decently played). Thus in the world of sounds, to “mean” is to “connect well," that is, to compose and play, which is to “argue” in a musical sense. And these sounds must be “played out” to the full to “argue” (connect themselves) for a musical “meaning.” Arguing here depends on playing musically, which means "connected well," which in turn comes about only in being "argued" (played) well. An "argument" 15 made of combination (connection) among things. lhe same "music" of argument can be made more meaningful by being performed forth feelingly, “played” well, better this time than

that." 5 Playing, arguing, putting together well, meaning—they

all

intertwine, inter-depend, inter-imply, to compose the coherent beauty of the sonic world. We call all this *play with arguments" for short, which 15 now seen to be the sz qua non of making sense among things—which were transposed into composing and playing music for us to understand. lo

make

"sense"

out

of this combination,

this

argument,

is to

compose and play this argument sensibly. Since to make sense 15 to become meaningful, play with argument renders the world and our hfe meaningful. How meaningful life becomes depends on how well we play out the "argument" in/of life, and as we play it we even change the tune to fit things as they happen. And “fitting” is synonymous with "coherence." Our life grows more coherent and makes more sense by playing forth more coherently and sensibly the organic connections and compositions of its elements. This explanation also indicates how play is a hermeneutic quest for lived understanding with argumentative antennae dangling and groping forward—all this playfully. The Mr. Five Willows (named after the willows at the backyard of his house), the Chinese poet-

writer T’ao Ch'ien's (365-427) imaginatively reports, enjoys wine

and reading but seeks no meticulous understanding; every time he

18 For instance, Clara Haskil, I think, played (Philips recorded it) Chopin's “second argument" (the Second Piano Concerto) better—more sensibly, meaningfully— than Artur Rubinstein did (RCA recorded it). +° This is from a Taoist poet, T'ao Ch’ien’s “A Biography of Mr. Five Willows,” a delightful imaginative sketch.

RELATIVISM，DECONSTRUCTIONISM

209

hits the spot drinking in what is meant，he 15 so elated as to forget meals. This is also a perfect extension of children putting in their souls playing. Here, “arguments” played with are not just a frame, or base, or logic, but all these 1η process forward, nor 15 “play” just being on the way toward a destination, but forever on the way, in process enjoyed. Play with arguments 15 forever in the process of self-metamorphosis to ride on the crests of event-waves. 3.14.

Relativism,

deconstructionism,

and playing with

arguments

À comparison with relativism 15 revealing. Relativism 15 usually suspect because it gives up our rational autonomous quest, confessing capitulation to what goes on around. No vision forward outside, no integrity reposed inside, relativism floats in the blowing winds of cultures and convention like a dead leaf. In contrast, play with. arguments changes itself with the trend of the times, changes the pattern, mode,

base, assumptions,

everything rational that it has, of rational

process, adjusting them to the swings of things, so as to play hfe and play in life. Play with arguments does not float; lt rides and roams. It does not seriously argue; it plays. And thus it finds things interesting, and it enjoys its serendipity. It enjoys itself. Perhaps the present-day deconstructionism and postmodernism aim at such a play with. arguments. Sadly, they flaunt arguments; and ostentatiously wallow in neologism and non-sequiturs. They side themselves with sociology of knowledge, and position themselves in the quicksand of “power” and “politics.” They are intellectual psychedelics, mimicking the Flower Children of the late 60s and early 70s, with this difference, namely, they are, unlike those Flower

Children, morose nay-sayers to the present and on the future. They

cannot play as Flower Children did."

Perhaps their thinking wants are too heavy, thick and sticky to play with arguments. Their roundabout to be recognized

to play. Unfortunately their sentences to dance and play. Perhaps they want "arguments" are too contorted and as rational arguments. They are too

|? Flower Children did not play with arguments, but merely with abandon. This

15 another extreme opposed to the extreme of deconstructionists and postmodernists.

210

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

sulky, clever, bellicose, morose, and awesome to be children at play. And they seem to have poured out all their cognitive wares showing off displeasure at their own past and hopelessness of the future— all exhausted 11 their froths of pomposity. We have described deconstructionism and postmodernism (what contortions of names!) to show how there are argumentative plays and there are such plays. All “plays” are not created alike, or even nghtly, that 1s, lightly. The point 15 to play, to argue lightheartedly and enjoy it. 3.15.

Play and life (1)

lo play in hfe is to play as life wants it, to play with the arguments lfe proposes. To play in life is to play the game of life, then. We must therefore watch the game-rule of life. Two types of playing hfe-game can be seen: playing during ordinary life and that during suffering. In both cases we must play life-argument, life-game. lo begin with, ordinarily, we must play with arguments so as for arguments to be relevant and powerful—the fault of deconstructionism and postmodernism lies here, that their way of arguing 15 irrelevant to life and so weak.

Then,

what

does it mean

to be relevant

to ordinary life? To play the game (the arguments) life sets for us. What 1s the game-rule of hfe (the life-argument)? First, one of the signs of irrelevance in life is contrivance, an effort at being useful. We cannot play with arguments for the sake of punching sarcasms. For serious poignancy won't come out of serious poignancy; spontaneous powerful lampoons come out of just fooling around, for the sake of which playing with arguments are engaged in, after all. Play "argues" to us that, in life, everything 1s for fooling around, for fun. Utility is for useless roaming and enjoying ourselves, not the other way around. Enjoyment lies in playful frivolity and playacting dispensability; we can drop dead at any moment as we can our pants anywhere, as young children do. But, secondly, it remains our necessity and obligation, as long as we live, to pay bills on time, to work decently at office, to live ordinarily and responsibly. Thus the fun lies in combining our serious immersion in this no-nonsense world, and remaining humorous, as we drive our automobiles (self-movers), neither panicky nor lax, but

PLAY

relaxed observantly.

AND

THIS

SECTION

211

There lies the fullness of life, the fun of auto-

driving (self-moving) through ordinary life. We have in life suffering, however; what is life without suffering? In suffering, can we still play the game life offers (play with the arguments life brings)? Surely, not only we can but we must, as long as we do not take play and bloodletting as mutually incompatible, as wars and violence show. The basic procedure still holds here. We must watch and learn the rule of the “game” suffering plays to us, the “argument” suffering puts to us. However unfair, irrational, or unpleasant the game seems to us—that is why we sufler—we should play with the arguments of suffering. We rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, play tyranny-game with the tyrannical regime, and suffer with

(the game of) suffering and sufferers.'”'

And mind you, we play with the suffering-game, not follow it. Such a playing along with disaster-arguments shall by and by resolve (not solve) life-tragedies. This is what saints, mystics, and religions in their varied manners show us—meditation, nirvana, the cross.!” Relax and play along the logic-argument-game disasters set to us. They shall resolve themselves. Who says that play with arguments 15 useless? 3.16.

Play and this Section

Someone may say that this whole Section 1s, after all, an argument for playing with arguments. This 1s partly true, in that there 1s an aspect of argument to the Section. But an argument form is more loosely related to playing with arguments than to straight argument, as explained ln the Section. Arguments here are only used to present “playing with arguments” playfully and plausibly, not syllogistically argued to deduce it. Moreover, while an argument typically leads to a definite conclusion that eliminates many alternative propositions, an “argument” for playing with arguments “concludes” with an elimination of such ” Chuang Tzu has Chapters Three, Four, Five, and Six of his Chuang Tzu

devoted passim.

to this theme

of playing in suffering.

See

my

5? Cf. 4.1.3.3. and my Butterfly, pp. 301-59, 385-87.

Butterfly, pp.

281-359,

et

212

SECTION 9: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

elimination of alternatives. Argument narrows down to clinch a specific point; play with arguments opens out and puts the burden of finding conclusions on the shoulders of participants in the play. This Section has played more than argued, then. How did we play? First, we played with arguments, from 3.1. to 3.7. “Argument” our plaything was sometimes single, some other times many. Then, from 3.8. on, with argument(s) our plaything(s), we in our imagination played whatever we do 1η life, and we played life itself, and the things we played became a series of things reasonable—they became “arguments.” With life we playfully “argued” for enjoyment together. After all, look at how things proceeded in this Section, in anything but a systematic manner, which shows that we played in this Section, and our play itself shifted its character. In our thoughtexperiment (which 15 play with arguments) we played with arguments, then we played life with arguments, and then life our play became a series of arguments. Yet our play did not change, after all, for if play 1s argument and argument, play, as are shown in this Section, then the dialectic of play with arguments exhibits the life-dynamics of enjoyment together. Play is an ultimate joy-term for life-dynamics together, enjoying play-with-arguments together forever. 3.17.

Play and life (2)

And we claimed that that 1s what hfe should be. If hfe 15 de trop, as those old existentalists used to claim, then life is something to be played with, for “de trop" shows something we can drop anytime, and if life 1s such, we are put at ease; here 15 our breathing space, here we can feel at ease, and we can be at home playing. Thus we can play lfe when life is de trop. Life is de trop, something to be played, and then something not de trop appears amidst our play—enjoyment together. And that is our ultimate purpose of life, as the most practical of all our ethical theories, utilitarianism, claims, “We ought so to act as to result in the greatest amount of happiness, enjoyment, among the greatest number of people." And we won't quit—we play to the hilt of our life together—until “the greatest number of people" is literally “all -peo-

ple," ? and the supposedly fatal blemish of utilitarianism, that the 55 “The greatest number of people" is synonymous with “all people" anyway.

PLAY AND

LIFE (2)

213

majority-people's happiness sometimes unjustly requires the minoritypeople’s unhappiness to obtain, disappears, for there exist no more minority. Injustice has no more room to exist in enjoyment together, when such our ultimate purpose of hfe 15 fulfilled. To the objection that fulfillment is far away in the future, and so the supposedly practical utilitarianism 15 impracticable, our response would be that the fulfillment is much closer at hand than we think. For here “all people” means “all parties concerned.” It is “all people” in “this” particular situation that we are concerned with, with whom we share “utiity”—practice utilitarianism. And “utility” here means "fun." To "maximize utility, happiness," is to have “all people” join in the fun. To fulfill the requirement of utilitananism, we only invite in “all parties concerned," asking them all this while, "Isn't it more fun having fun together than confining fun to oneself? Isn't having fun together, all of us, the best way to maximize any private fun confined to itself? Isn't the ultimate of egoism, to have fun to oneself, a shar-

ing of fun together?”

If sharing of happiness is to have fun together, it 1s as difficult to imagine how anyone could stand not having fun together as 1t 1s to imagine how any child would hoard the fun of play to oneself. A typical request of a child is always, "Can we play?" The child is sulky when nobody joins in, not when being together playing. And regional “all parties concerned” in a particular play—called “game”— can be extended to join with other games in other regions, and gradually but surely the play spreads, the “all parties concerned” gain ground in scope, variety, and number of people and regions, until we get everyone join in and form a universal “rainbow coalition” Jessie Jackson advocates, to fulfill the “dream” that Martin Luther King has. And isn’t this the ultimate purpose of our life? And isn’t this purpose already being fulfilled, albeit only partially and totteringly at present, in a most mundane way, such as in a “merging” of corporations that goes across many nations? Think also of the Four MiniDragons in Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) joining hands in business, the European Community unifying their monetary system, the United Nations managing world affairs together. To share profits together increases each one’s share of profits. To have fun together maximizes the happiness of all people, redounding to each one of them. The “arguments for fun” are an irresistible

214

SECTION 3: ARGUMENTATIVE TOGETHERNESS

chain that grows on its own, from all parties concerned in this particular situation, to those in this and that situations put together, and so on, until in the end it spreads to literally “all people” throughout the world all through the ages, all this by the irresistible charm of having fun together. And that is the ultimate of our 11.14 3.18.

Religion and playing with arguments

Now that the ultimate purpose of hfe 1s reached in our discussion, we are reminded of Calvin. He said that the ultimate purpose of life is to “enjoy God forever.” We say, if so, the purpose of life at any moment is to enjoy life together forever, and Calvin must agree, for the Kingdom of God 15 joy together, always, forever. Look at Revelation 21 that clinches Romans 8. There God’s “glories” are replaceable with life-enjoyment together in Love, for “Love is God” (P.T. Forsyth), and the divine kingdom is joy-forever-in-love-together. It is in this hght that Jesus was angry at the Pharisees who could not play and prevented people from playing.'” That was the greatest sin against the coming.of the Kingdom of God. He came for joy together, as Luke 15 lustily and elatedly told us. The Kingdom he brought was nothing but wedding-like, home-like family-joy together.* In fact, he himself is the Joy of Love in whom all of us are one Body." It 1s thus that, surprisingly, play with arguments is shown to be something religious, synonymous with religious togetherness. And so, it is time to go into religious togetherness. lt could go this way. Play 1s having fun together which, albeit indefinable, has at least two ingredients: differences and pro-attitude toward them, that is, an interest in the togetherness of differences."

,* This is the line of persuasive “argument” Mencius adopted in passionately "lobbying" the rulers of the times toward the humane government (2A2, 2Α7). Mencius' argument typifies the Confucian one summed up in the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. See our 5.1. and 5.2. below. ,Í(: Cf. Matthew 11:16-17, 23:13-14. 56 Cf. Matthew 22:1-14, Luke 8:19-21, Revelation 21:1-7. 57 We notice how | Corinthians 12 (we are one body in Christ) and 13 (a description of Christ our Love) are a seamless whole.

SE To think of it, real togetherness is a conspicuous one, which consists in together-

ness of differences, of which togetherness of similarities is a. derivative.

RELIGION

AND

PLAYING

WITH

ARGUMENTS

215

But not every difference makes for a play-full togetherness. Such togetherness cannot be insane and irrational, intolerable and irritating; the differences therein would be a killjoy, a source of aloofness or division if not contention, anything but play. The differences toward fun together have to be a cluster that is playful, fun to have, sensible, interesting. Here “interesting” and “sensible” are mutually explicative if not synonymous, and “sensible” is “perceived that it makes

sense,”

a variation

on

“reasonable.”

Such

a sensible

cluster

of differences is, then, a series of differences that are put together reasonably, and a reasonable series to make a point, whatever point we are interested in, including a playful one, “It’s fun," is an “argument.” Play is, again, play with argument(s) of a playful sort. Thus, without such a cluster of differences play won’t get started, and without interest, there is no fun in savoring differences which is play. Now, nothing is more radically different than differences among the ultimates, and the ultimate is the religious. How would we deal with religious differences to enjoy ourselves in religious togetherness?

A minimal"? way is to appreciatively!° learn one from the Other

to deepen and enrich oneself, that is, to learn from another religion

to deepen and enrich one’s own. How, concretely, do we do so? To this theme we now turn, elaborating on the concrete specific case of Christianity learning from philosophical Taoism.

59 That is, necessary but not sufficient. 160 “Appreciation” may well be related to “playfulness,” because play opens up

oneself to meet and enjoy oneself merging into the other in play, and positive selfmerging as in play is also shared by appreciation.

SECTION

4

RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS: TAOISM WITHIN CHRISTIANITY 4.0. The

Problem

To begin with, we must settle some definitional matters concerning religion. Here “religion” is thought of as something stable, universal, and ultimate, as distinguished from frankly local ephemeral gods and goddesses of limited purposes; their name is Legion, forming the bulky “telephone directory of a large city" of divinities.! Then, within religion there is a distinction between the Transcendent Ultimate,’ on the one hand, and human considerations thereof, such as human routes thereto, on the other; the latter is a means towards

the former, which 15 what distinguishes religion as typically religion. jn this Section "religion" 15 taken as the former in these two sets of distinctions, something stable-universal-ultimate rather than localephemeral-limited, primarily revealing to us the Ultimate- TranscendentAbsolute, not (just) the human routes thereto. Togetherness among religions in this strict sense is one of the toughest problems in hte. Let us consider what the problem 1s, then how sadly inadequate the proposed solutions so far are. First, as to how problematic religious togetherness is. It is not something it should have been— something joyously amicable—but always manifesung itself as an inveterate problem of most ferocious conflicts. This 1s a paradox because religion 1s supposed to promote ultimate harmony. "Religious conflict" 1s due to a problem within religion itself. Supposed to be a matter of ultımacy, implicating oneness, religion 15 saddled with a strange historical fact that there have ` John Hick has conveniently summarized the polytheistic situation in his An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989, pp. 233-34. The quotation is from p. 234. * Pace Hick (ibid., pp. 11, 236), we avoid using “the Real" for the Ultimate, because they are different 1η connotation, and because "the Real" can bewitch us away from our sense of awe before, and distance from, the unapproachable Ultimate into taking "knowing" the Ultimate to be the same as knowing things-ordinary, both being “real.” Hick succumbed to this bewitchment.

THE

PROBLEM

217

always been many religions; “one religion” has never existed in history any more than one single face has. But, for all its paradoxical ring, religious conflict is a natural outcome from the notion of the ultimate. How could something ultimate be many? For the ultimate is both absolute, literally without relation, and thus unique—once the Other comes, ultimacy is gone. And so religion that is ultimate-absolute denies and rejects anything other to/than itself. Or 15 it rather that ultimacy and absoluteness 15 beyond one and many,” but that we human beings think that it is incompatible with plurality as shown just now, and so each religion in its ultimacy naturally breeds “me only" attitude? It 1s thus that each religion inevitably has come over the centuries to regard itself the others, seeing them either as lying outside or as earlier stages in an evolution of which as less full and authentic versions of itself. But on impartial grounds.

as uniquely superior to the sphere of salvation, it 15 the culmination, or this cannot be sustained

On the contrary, far from being unable to "be sustained," this phenomenon 15 a natural outcome of the plurality of absolutes; it 1s a spontaneous reaction among religious devotees. And then what 1s supposed to advocate amicable human togetherness 15 ἃ rich breeding ground of one of the most bigoted and atrocious rivalries among human beings, “civilized” and “uncivilized” alike, and that always with a perfectly good conscience. ‘Thus in religion, togetherness imphcates conflict. Now, let us consider its solutions proposed thus far. In 4.1.1. we will go into them in some detail, and so we can for now briefly sum up what the problem is to the proposed solutions. There has been no dearth of “solutions” to the “problem,” all in terms of subsuming the plurality of religions under one definitional principle. In other words, they are all so many varied walks of a theoretical approach, and that a Platonic one. And here, sadly, abstract logicizing 15 a dead end; how can the religious absolute be plural? And so, having said all this, we realize that the one logically and completely satisfactory solution 15 still far away from us yet. We must leave the from-top-down theoretical solution, and start at frombottom-up piecemeal way; we must consider this problem concretely. ? See 4.6. where we will consider this important question.

* John Hick, op. cit., p. 2.

218

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

We will reflect on how things mutually incompatible in our common sense can religiously come together, by considering things Christian, including problems of living, from both a Christian point of view and from a Taoist point of view, both at once, namely, how the Christian faith is deepened with the help of understanding of philosophical Taoism. First, in 4.1., we see how philosophical Taoism comes together with Chnistianity, specifically enriching the Christian faith and deepening its self-understanding. Then, concretely how such enrichments occur are considered. In 4.2., we consider the problem of “miracles," the problem of how our common sense on natural events and Christianity can come together, by learning from a Taoist perspective. Thirdly, in 4.3., we consider “Zen Christianity,” particularly ZenChristian theophany,

on how we meet the Christian God, fourth, in

4.4., Christian “temptation” is considered, and finally, in 4.5., Prophet Jonah is considered; all being enriched from a ‘Taoist viewpoint. Having thus deeply learned about our own Christian faith via learning from philosophical ‘Taoism, we consider the general undergirding of the above entire project. First (in 4.6.) we consider why conflict is a religious anathema, define what religious conflict amounts to, a strange dilemma, and, (in 4.7.) after showing how cognitive trials at solving it are bound to fail, offer our own understanding of this “dilemma,” thereby dissolving it. But there remains (in 4.8.) the “stumbling block” inherent in the Christian faith. 4.1. Their coming together We are going to think about one of the toughest tasks for Christianity as the religion of unique ultimacy. It is the theme of comparative religion, what to do with other religions of “equal ultimacy.” Three points are raised: 4.1.1.: We shall consider how problematic this theme is for Christianity, and propose a solution, “comparison.” 4.1.2.: In our response to an obvious objection as to whether the Christian uniqueness would not be compromised in comparison, the crucial meaning of “comparison” shall be further elucidated. 4.1.3.: Actual comparison on the three central themes of the Incarnation, salvation by faith alone, and sanctification in the life of playful joy, will be made.

THEIR

COMING

TOGETHER

219

4.1.1. The proposal of the problem and its solution Whatever else it is, “religion” can be characterized with two traits: ultimacy and universality. At this high divine level, the two U's imply each other. Local ultimacy, ultimate parochialism, universal provincialism—they are all contradictions in terms. And we have here a thicket of problems, both in terms of religions themselves, and in that of human attitude. First, in terms of religions themselves, “religion” is both ultimate (above us) and so many (among us). On the one hand, leaning on the former, some (e.g., Karl Barth) take one religion to be above many, and fall into the oddity of having so many “one above many"'s, for this approach opens the way for many religions to do the same. Yet, on the other hand, to recognize the plurahty of religions and take any religion to be one among many is not night, either, for relativism has no place in the realm of ultimacy. Besides, this view surreptitiously inserts a view, “All religions are alike in prodding people to becoming good,” subjugating religious ultimacy under one higher principle of (per impossibile) moralism. This 1s an impasse produced by abstract objective thinking on this problem. Trying to accommodate both the one and the many, another approach falls into the pitfalls of both above approaches, many “one above many”’s and “one among many” ultimates. For example, Wilfred Cantwell Smith proposed a program as? to interpret intellectually all human faith, one’s own and others’; comprehensively and justly. Seeing one’s own group and its history thus far as making up one complex strand in the total history of religion until now, a total history that one is endeavouring to understand from within, one may essay a theory that aspires to be part of a movement towards the truth. Seeing one's own group as a component in the total community of humankind, a total community whose corporate critical self-consciousness in this matter has yet to be articulated, again one may endeavour to contribute to its formulation. A Christian, no more but no less than any other member of that human community, may and must think in these realms.

Unfortunately, “these realms” are no longer the realm of religion, but that of “community of humankind” and “history,” in which religion is one of human “strands.” ' Wilfred Cantwell Press, 1981, p. 152.

Smith,

Towards a World

Theology,

Philadelphia:

Westminster

220

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

It is in this way that the twin problems of many unique “one above many"'s and “one among many" absolutes are manifested and dissolved, thus dissolving religion itself, without being noticed. He did not realize the obvious fact that the religion one holds to 15 something ultimate, differing from oneself who is only “a component,” a “strand” in the history of human community. To identify the former as a mere component of the latter justifies the above statement, and effectively bypasses religion as religion, as the sacred. This goes

against Mircea Eliade's injunction that?

a religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it 1s grasped at its own level, that 1s to say, 1f it is studied as something religious. lo try to grasp the essence of such a phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study 1s false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it— the element of the sacred

The cure Smith proposed is thus worse than the disease; it chops off the head to heal headache. John

Hick,

on his part, agreed with

Smith

and went

about

call-

ing “religions” as so many human “traditions” and "historical channels.” Then he defined religion as an “ultimate concern" (agreeing with Tillich) treating the religious phenomena as those of "family resemblance" (extrapolating from Wittgenstein). The problem of religious conflicts 15 then dismissed as merely a "historical" matter, adhering to which is dubbed “anachronistic.”’ Of course, if we start our consideration

at one overall character-

istic of religion, the rest 1s easy; the rest comes subsumed under it. Hick's book is an elaboration of this subsumption, and anything else

contained

therein

is additional

side-matters.

First,

the

term,

“Transcendent” is somehow switched to the “Real”; he said, ““The lranscendent is possible, but on balance I prefer to speak of ‘the Real.’”® This identification enables Hick to take our experience of the Real as manageable by our usual perceptual, cognitive, and cultural machineries that manage anything real that 15 not transcendent

at all. He significantly said,”

° Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, tr. Rosemary American Library, 1958, p. xi John Hick, op. cit., pp. 2-9

8 Ibid.,

? Ibid.,

p. 11 p.

14

Sheed, N.Y.: New

THEIR

COMING

TOGETHER

221

Experience of the transcendent 1s structured either by the concept of deity [in] the theistic traditions, or by the concept of the absolute [in] the non-theistic traditions. Each of these is schematized [Kant's term for our usual non-transcendent experience] ... to produce the experienced divine personae (such as Jahweh, the heavenly Father, Allah, Vishnu, Shiva) and metaphysical impersonae (such as Brahman, the Tao, the Dharmakaya, Sunyata). . . . The basic criterion [for assessing religion] is soteriological; and the salvific transformation is... observed by its moral fruits, . . . identified by... the ethical ideal, common to all the great traditions, of agape/ karuna (love/compassion) (Chapters 17-18).

Religion is thus “culture-relative” (p. 19). Religious affiliation, devotion, and contents are determined by the environment in which one was born (p. 2) and lives (p. 7), as well as by “a particular kind of perceptual machinery" and “a particular system of interpretive concepts" geared to experiencing ordinary experience (p. 14). The rehgious “salvific transformation" 15 judged by the usual ethical criterion of moral fruits” (p. 14). It is as simple as that. In short, the “fascinating variations” of religions are accounted for by our different religious cultures, the human contributions (p. 8). It may not have occurred to Hick that the differences among religions are just that, different religions, irreducible (Ehade) to different human contributions (cultural, perceptual, cognitive), that the different religious Transcendents may be just that, different ‘Transcendents, irreducible to different human conceptions thereof, and that our perceptual machinery and conceptual system for understanding and embracing religions may have been themselves created and shaped by the religious Ultimates and Transcendents, so much so that religious experience is often, if not usually, called “mystical” by the outsiders,

rather than the reverse, 1.e., the human-cultural machinery shaping

if not creating religious traditions, which are religions for Hick."

If this 15 the case, what 15 it that distinguishes Hick from Marxist and other sociological interpretations of religions? Or to put it differently, how would Hick differentiate himself from the Hindus’ favorite image of “the same Mount, different human paths”? In fact, Hick quoted with approval two sayings, one from Islamic mystic Rumi,

another from Rig-Veda:

0 This is, of course, not to deny “human contribution” (Hick, op. cit., p. 8) to

religious experience Hick so often stresses, yet to contribute to religious experience is not to shape religious experience, much less to replace it with human one.

'' Hick, op. cit., pp. 233, 252.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS The lamps are different, but the light is the same. ( Jalalu'l-din Rumi) The Real is one—sages name it variously. (Rig-Veda, 1:164:46)

But then, this time, ticular religion but “culture, sociology," cultural-experiential

the Mount-light-Real is not any concrete parHick's “the Real" describable by Randall-like and those insipid philosophical concept—Kantian categories, Wittgensteinian family-resemblances,

and the Transcendent, or rather, Elhade-like sacred, and Hick's con-

cept of the Real itself. Thus now neither the ultimacy (sacredness) nor the uniqueness (specificity) of any particular concrete religion 1s to be seen anywhere. The problem 15 that this inteligible “one” principle and contextual explanation described above 15 so bloodlessly ordinary that no single concrete religion would take it seriously (worthy of total lifedevotion), nor would anyone recognize it as one's own religion. It 15 not the ultimate concern or perceptual-conceptual categories that 1s at issue in Buddhism; it is a specific world-view (Sunyata) and a specific salvation route (Nirvana) which it proposes that is Buddhism. So with Christianity;

“Jesus Christ and him

crucified,”

as Paul an-

claim, for these views, however valuable in themselves,

are all irrel-

nounced, is the heart of the Gospel, not the ultimate concern or cultural-experiential categories. The fundamental problem in this universal definition-approach 1s that Hick here assumes that there exists religion-in-general, as if he thought that there exists face-in-general, despite recognizing the fact of "family resemblances." Besides, family resemblance approach 15 irrelevant to the problem of religious pluralism. For, obviously, neither face-plurality nor gameplurality constitutes a problem; no one asserts, much less adamantly, that this game one plays or this face one wears is the true absolute One, in the light of which other games or faces should be interpreted as derived of "this true One." We have no conflicts of faces or games as we do among religions. The same point holds against taking religion as attitude (Smith) or as the sacred (Eliade) and others like them, and trying to subsume many religions under one such evant to the problem of religious plurality and conflicts. Reahzing that purely abstract, objective, and theoretical approach won't work, some proposed two sorts of subjective understandings 2

1 Corinthians

2:2.

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of religion: the infinite leap of faith (Kierkegaard), the feeling of absolute dependence (Schleiermacher),? the ultimate concern (Tillich), on the one hand, and the sacred (Eliade), family resemblance (Hick), salvation from the status quo (John E. Smith), on the other. Each of them may have captured an important aspect of religions. Sadly, they have nothing to do with the problem of the plurality of ultimates. Secondly, within this subjective approach, we see another problem cropping up. Transposed into human terms, ulümacy implies that the devotees be ultimately committed, and universality entails open-mindedness

to Others. Few realize, however, that commitment

and openness do not go together very well. Commitment to ultimacy easily translates into uniqueness of what 1s committed, breeding an absolute claim to one's beliefs, and absoluteness 1s synonymous with exclusive claim to truth. Then we have problems. Exclusiveness militates against openness, for fear that openness dilutes one's “absolute truth." Besides, a denial of openness naturally breeds bigotry. Thus the zeal of commitment strangely breeds the sin of exclusive pride, a contempt of Others. When Jesus was so adamant against the Pharisees, he was targeting this subtle sin against the universality of the Gospel, the sin against the First Commandment that claims the ubiquitous sovereignty of God throughout his creation. Thus there seems to be no way out of this dilemma. On one hand, ultimacy and universality are two indispensable traits of any religion worthy of its name, and Christianity 15 ΠΟ exception. On the other hand, ultimacy militates against universality when translated into our human terms of commitment and openness. Thus the so-called one coherent science of comparative religion, such as “transcendentology” (W.C. Smith, J. Hick)'* is nowhere to be seen, at least not now yet. We still have to work our way up from the factual scandal of religious particularity and plurality, the fact of many religious ultimates as they stand today. For all its factual incoherence and existential contradiction, this 15 the historic fact

out of which there is no way. The dilemma seems insoluble unless one changes one's perspective. “If one cannot win them, join them,” they say, and here is no exception. One can turn the problem into

5 Wilfred Cantwell Smith can be classified here. See his The Meaning and End of Religion, N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1978, and Faith and Belef, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.

'* Smith, op. cit, p. 183; Hick, op. cit., p. 6.

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an advantage; direct brave inter-dialogues among religions in a sympathetic, mutually beneficial manner. How? Our universal openness can then be turned into an enhancement toward unique ultimacy. For universal openness means mutuality, which

in turn

includes

comparison.

After

all, the

essence

of

comparative religion lies in comparison. And “comparison” means being sensitized to both similarities and differences between things compared. Such comparison can rediscover, deepen, enrich and invigorate one’s uniqueness. This amounts to saying that we stop playing the role of a platonic god to objectively survey and try to solve the problem of “many religious ultimates." We will instead consider the immediate problem on hand, on how one religion can coexist with another, not only without compromising the uniqueness of each religion but on the contrary enhancing it thereby. The Bible 1s itself a creative synthesis and extrapolation out of myths and world views prevalent in its surrounding world, learning and adapting their religious insights and thoughtpatterns, using them to express the unique ultimate biblical faith. Al this sounds like a last-ditch stopgap method to save us from our predicament, a sort of deus ex machina having nothing to do with the fundamental problem of “many religions"; we will later in 4.6. and 4.7. show how this 1s really a direct outcome of what naturally 15 the case with religion. We will here, however, actually proceed on this route to see how abundant a harvest we will reap. We will now consider a concrete case of juxtaposing two worldviews which seem diametrically contrary each to the other. We are going to compare Christianity and philosophical Taoism; we can hardly imagine a pair of "religions" more mutually different than these two. Christianity has divinity, “morality,” and doctrines; philosophical Taoism has none of these.” We shall consider similarities and differences between them. Such an exercise is far from being exotic and nonessental. On the contrary, given the nature of Christianity as a missionary movement, Christian contacts with other religions are not only inevitable but an absolute must both for its own deeper self-understanding and for its insights into the lives and peoples of other faiths. If we want to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we simply must compare the Gospel with other reli-

5 Religious Taoism has divinities, doctrines and rituals; philosophical Taoism has

none of these.

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gions. There 15 no getting around this imperative. Furthermore, religious comparison prepares the way toward benefiting from other religions. 4.1.2. An elucidation of “comparison” via response to doubt But does not such a comparison compromise the purity of our Christian faith? Our response is that lack of religious communication sufiocates our own faith. and full mutuality invigorates all. Let us (4.1.2.1.) first negatively come down rather harshly on the attıtude of orthodoxy, (4.1.2.2.) then positively explain how comparison with Others deepens and nourishes our faith. 4.1.2.1. To begin with, orthodox Christians have traditionally embraced either one of the following attitudes to other religions: (a) other religions manifest the sin of idolatry, to be redeemed by Christ “the Lord of religions”; (b) they are human pursuits of the Christian truth, to be rightly understood only in terms of the Christian faith; (c) they represent partial truths, to be fulfilled by Christ the complete Truth. Only on these grounds can Christians enter into dialogues with other religions. Such is the attitude of Christian orthodoxy. Redemption, understanding, fulfillment, they all express our self-confidence of being safely tucked away in our “final truth,” completely cutting us off from genuine communication, sincere inter-mingling, with Others. The orthodoxy 15 so sure of its own riches that it securely imprisons itself in the doctrinal mansion with wires, fences, guards and dogs, exactly like imprisoning criminals. In fact, the situation 18 more tragic. The criminals know that they should not be imprisoned; wealthy people imprison themselves without knowing they should not do so. This airtight self-imprisonment of orthodoxy suffocates our common humanity. Those who want to save their rich lives of orthodoxy shall lose them. Only those who risk them for the sake of truth, wherever it 1s, shall find them, yes, find them afresh. We propose therefore a new way of relating the Christian faith to other faiths. It 1s to understand Christianity afresh with the help of Chuang Tzu the Taoist mystic, to learn what Jesus said and what he is from Chuang Tzu’s point of view." If this approach sounds ° How about the reverse, i.e., understanding Chuang Tzu better by the Christian faith? We will do it in the form of understanding the Chinese lived notion of “time”

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heretical (and it does indeed), then remember how indignant Jesus was at those orthodox Pharisees. For they thought they knew all about God, and refused to learn from harlots and publicans. In their bigotry they missed Jesus, and thereby the religious Truth, altogether. Recall also how much Jesus praised the Roman centurians, who were after all oppressors of God’s people at the time, and how freely Jesus mingled himself with those “hopeless sinners.” When the orthodox synagogue people were shocked, Jesus retorted— ^ Truly, I tell you一 that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom

of God ahead of them."

Thus Jesus’ fight was not so much against heresies as against the so-called “orthodoxy” which, satisfied with whatever truths possessed, proudly turns its deaf ears to whatever new truths that come daily from every quarter of God's creation. Their self-serving piety subtly sins against the First Commandment, for their pious zeal ignores the divine universal sovereignty and presence all over his creation. Sadly, this attitude still pervades today. How many Christians are genuinely willing to deepen their faith in the divine creative aura in the world by reading Rıg Veda, as Mahatma Gandhi deepened his faith in nonviolence by reading the Sermon on the Mount? Having gone so far as to summon us to love our enemies, it 1s difficult to see how Jesus would scold us for learning about ourselves and about him from our so-called “religious rivals," who are after all our neighbors and brethren in the cosmic family of God." 4.1.2.2. But how about the unique finality of Christianity? Would not the uniqueness of the Gospel be lost in sanguine open-minded, open-ended comparisons? Those strange cults may dilute and divert us and finally destroy our pure, complete faith, for they are so different from ours! To this natural fear three rather obvious points may be raised in response. 4.1.2.2.1. First, the fear is as silly as someone averse to marrying a person of opposite sex for fear that marriage may “dilute, divert, and finally destroy" one's sexual integnty. For sexual differences are pretty radical, extending to one's way of thinking and even one's skin. The

commercial

on *Skin So Soft" makes

no sense to a man;

with the help of Western meticulous care, sensitivity, and discernment. See “5.5. "Iime' in China." This reversal of perspectives in general, another implication of "togetherness," will be explicitly considered in Section 5.

7 Soon we will see how not to do so zs heretical. * Matthew 21:31. ° See further on this point in 4.5.

THEIR

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COMING

his girlfriend attends

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to it, it is charming

to him,

i.e., it

charms him. We celebrate marriage because we celebrate the companionship of differences. Far from endangering sexual differences, such a companionship deepens and invigorates them. Without the lady, where 15 the man? Without the man, where 15 the lady? Similarly, the togetherness of differences stimulate and enrich respective uniquenesses of each party. The Other, the “better half," enhances and enriches my pecuhar self. 4.1.2.2.2. Secondly, differences of the Other deepens my selfunderstanding. The Other teaches me about myself. We have two very pleasant and precious words, "holiday" and “vacation.” They are supposed to be synonyms. No one dislikes them. But they mean going out of our offices and homes to ofher places. We love to go to other places—Austraha, England, Japan, Taiwan —because they are different. We love to go to other places, taste their exotic differences, forget ourselves in the differences, “vacate” our old routines, our worn-out way of life. And then we come back home to ourselves, and taste “home, sweet home,"? office, sweet office. Our own homes and offices are "sweet" because we come back to them with a fresh perspective, thanks to having tasted the differences. Such appreciation of differences and otherhood 15 what makes us call the vacation time "holidays," namely, holy days. And then we can treat Others fairly and learn from them. Just imagine a husband upset over his wife shedding tears at Romeo in the theater. His jealousy cuts him off from understanding how his wife's appreciation of Romeo deepens her love to him. Respectng and appreciating other religions sharpens our sensitivity to them and deepens our devotion to ours. All this amounts to letbng the divine love incarnate in Others to us, and in us to Others. 4.1.2.2.3. Thirdly and finally, let us take Jonah the only “sign” Christ gave to our generation.” First, Jonah thought he was protecting the purity of his God when he refused to go to that cruel city of Nineveh and soil his soul and his God. He was above preaching to them, above even preaching the nasty message that they were going to be destroyed soon. This misplaced purity spells arrogant bigotry which almost cost his life in the whale belly (the bottom of the ocean).

2 John Howard Payne wrote “Home, Sweet Home’ ” This theme will be developed in 4.5.

9

away from home.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

Then, secondly, unexpectedly, after he reluctantly told them that they were going to be destroyed soon, one and all, the people of Nineveh did repent, to Jonah's sheer surprise. One can imagine how irritated and exasperatedly angry he was, especially in view of the fact that he had waited for days to see how they were to be destroyed and turned out they were not. His anger, again, almost cost his life protected under that "vine," that silly little hangup of his. Thirdly, in other words, he was forced (on pain of death) to learn

what he was supposed to preach, from those to whom he was supposed to preach. Note how the Book of Jonah ended. God told

Jonah gently:”

You have been concerned about this it or make it grow.... But Nineveh twenty thousand people who cannot left, and many cattle as well. Should great city?

vine, though you did not tend has more than a hundred and tell their right hand from their I not be concerned about that

That “concern 一 that 15 love. In other words, Jonah learned from the cruel Assyrian people of Nineveh that his salvation 15 bound up with those barbaric infidels. And it 15 love to be bound up with those whom we despise. This means that there is a vital interdependence between Christians and other people. We must either thrive together or die isolated; our salvation depends on theirs. That 15 the Gospel of love. All this should be enough to convince us that comparison between Taoism and Christianity is perfectly in line with the Gospel (in 4.1.3.) Comparison refreshes our familiar faith, and prepares us to deepen it by learning from 4.1.3.

The

Others

comparisons:

(in 4.2., 4.3., 4.4., and 4.5.) the Incarnation,

sola fide, life-joy

Three themes can be presented around which to have such a comparison: the Incarnation, salvation by faith. alone, and life-enjoyment in sanctification. This roughly covers the entire gamut of the Christian doctrines. And “comparison” means going into both the differences and the similarities of two things compared. 4.1.3.1. The Incarnation: Now that Jesus Christ came and died and came alive for the world, his Shining Light divinely embraces everything, and everything now takes a strangely new significance; everything ordinary is consecrated as sacred. Paul says that 22 Jonah 4:11.

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he considers all things as “rubbish,” “trash,” and even “dung” (as one translation has 1t) (Phil. 3:8). Jesus Christ would have said, “Don’t,” for all things are now sacred abodes of God. No wonder Paul had to be exulted, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:

everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new!”

Chuang Tzu also took everything to be where the Tao is.^* Asked

where

Tao

15, he answered

that 1t 1s among

ants. Pressed, he cited,

grass, shards and tiles, and finally “piss, dung." Then he continued, “Do you know how to test how fat a pig is? The lower down on the pig you press, the nearer you come to the truth. There 1s nowhere that escapes the presence of Tao." Doctors pore over urine and stool specimens, a very precious piece of evidence for your true “you”; whatever comes out from you expresses the essence, the Tao, of "you." Tao 15 everywhere. So, inspired by Chuang Tzu, we look again into the Bible. We then find that, as Tao is everywhere, so is God's love incarnate in the world. The most underhanded mistrial in human history is now the seat of divine glory. We can let the tares grow with the wheat,? learning from the “tares” of the unjust steward,” the godless judge,"

the prostitutes? and tax collectors,” the ruthless Roman centurians who knew what it means to be under authority, and discerned the

Son of God in the wretched agonies of the cross with the criminals.?' This reminds us of Chuang Tzu who learns from the convicts on how to shed “decencies” and be themselves, who are neither happy when praised nor sad when despised, who can wear anything, scale

heights without fear, for they are in touch with themselves.” And

tigers and wolves teach us true love (or humanness, jen) as they care for their cubs.? Both are bombshells to our common sense. By (Confucian) definition convicts are condemned for them to learn from us, and Chuang Tzu 5 2 Corinthians 5:17. (NRSV)

^ Chuang Tzu, 22/44—47. Chinese passages are mine.

^ Matthew 13:24-30. ? Luke

16:1-9.

5 Ibid,

14/6.

7 8 ? * * 32

Luke 18:1-8. Cf. Matthew 21:32. Cf. Luke 15:1-2. Matthew 8:5-13. Matthew 27:54. Chuang Tzu, 23/76-79.

Unless

otherwise

noted,

all English

translations

of

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

wants us to precisely learn from them; our common sense 15 packed

in a Confucian saying, “The humane is the human,””* what distin-

guishes us from animals, and Chuang Tzu wants us to learn about it precisely from animals. How could we learn genuineness from convicts, humanness from beasts? Chuang Tzu was purposely playing with paradoxes to provoke our discerning that they are, to think of it, indeed as he says after all; his bombshells shatter away our common sense, uncovering those truths. And each religion differs from the other. Christianity has the unique historical Event

called the Incarnation,

because

it has

God

who

1s

“infinitely and qualitatively different from the world” (as Kierkegaard said), who yet creates the world and loves the world so much that

he came to the world, and is still continually coming to the world in love. Chuang Tzu has no god, much less divine love, and 15 nelther historical nor anti-historical. He is non-historical, for not even

he himself do we know much about, nor do we know which parts or even how much of “his” writings is genuinely his. He is just spontaneously sensitive in the world, and simply lets God and history be as they are. 4.1.3.2. Salvation by faith alone: This is the most peculiar and profound feature shared by both Christians and Chuang Tzu. For usually moral rigorism prevails as an ideal in this world. Both the Christian and Chuang Tzu share two things—one positive, another negative. And they differ on one point, on how such a morality beyond morals is fulfilled. First, negatively, both of them agree that morals are counterproductive, self-defeating. Of one who brags about how moral he is we feel rather suspicious; “Look how humble I am” is unsavory and self-contradictory. They say that, with a lit candle in broad daylight, Diogenes looked all over for a single self-admitted bad person, seeing that everyone claims to be “good.” Jesus was impressed with the hollowness of the self-congratulating Pharisee and the solidity of the self-deprecating tax-collector.? To that dying criminal on the cross who pleaded with him just to remember that there was such a bad guy who died with him, Jesus said, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”*® When Jesus told not to let the ^ The Chung-yung (the Doctrine of the Mean), 5 Luke 18:9-14. | °° Luke 23:40, 42.

20; Mencius, 7B16.

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left hand know whatever good the right hand does," he must have

meant that whatever good we do we should not know about it. And Paul was profoundly honest in lamenting that the more he tries, the more he fails; he penetratingly observed that Law incites sin.” Chuang Tzu agrees. He devoted no less than three chapters (8, 9, 10) showing us how Confucian morality chains, maims and cripples us, Our pristine nature. “The saints not deceased, great thievery won't cease!," he quipped,? probably because those saints are themselves thieves of our nature. So much for their agreement on the negative point, that morality kills itself. Secondly, and positively, their positive agreement lies in that morality, or rightness, is not in external artificial action but in personal relation, in our self-immersion in it. Paul calls this self-1mmersion, "faith," a total reliance on the One who loves me so much that he

died and lives for me. Such a love is itself right, therefore ıt fulfills morality; it “justifies” us. This must be what Jesus meant when he said that he came to fulfill the Law and the prophets.* To accept this rightness means "faith," and therefore faith makes me righteous in him. To us Paul's technical language, Jesus Christ and his acts are just, and so he justifies us. This our acceptance— "faith," Paul calls it—is no less than self-immersion in our relation with him. This self-immersion Chuang Tzu calls, significantly, “forgetting,” forgetting oneself, forgetting morality. For morality resides in the high plane where morality is naturally dispensed with, "forgotten." He said,*! Stepping-on someone's-foot, to-a-market person [stranger] you-apologize profusely; to-your-elder-brother, a-smile [settles it]; to-great intimatepersons [your parents, it 15] already-settled.

Thus, in the end, high morality forgets morality. There,“ To respects parents 1s easier than to love them; to love them 15 easier than to forget them; to forget them 15 easier than to let them forget us; to let them forget us 1s easier than to forget the world; to forget the world is easier than to let the world forget us. 7 3 33 *9 +

Matthew 6:1-6. Romans 7:8-11. Cf. Romans 4:15. Galatians 3:10-13. Chuang Tzu, 1/16. Matthew 5:17-18. Chuang Tzu, 23/66.

* Ibid.,

14/9-11.

I am paraphrasing the passage.

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Here, without morality, morahty is fulfilled. For the purpose of being moral 15 to have harmony, and so when everything fits with everything else, morality can be forgotten. To forget (morality) is the sign

of (human) harmony.”

lo forget my-feet shows the-fitting of my-sandals. To-forget my-waist shows the-fitting of my-belt. To-forget knowing right, wrong, shows the-fitting of my-heartmind. No change inside, no following outside, shows the-fitting of events meeting [come together]. To-be-never without fitting [since] fitting began, shows the-fitting of forgetting fitting.

Thus both Chuang Tzu and Christians strongly endorse (a) freedom from self-striving moralism, (b) to immerse oneself in the 1mmediacies of relationship, whether trustingly (Christian) or self-forgetfully (Chuang Tzu). It is in their proposals on how to accomplish fulfillment of morality by dispensing with it that they differ. Christ proposed the way of our self-immersion in that bloody redemptive cross; Chuang Tzu proposed the way of our self-immersion in that natural aesthetic spontaneity. But from where did the difference in their proposals come? The Christians have the living God who infinitely and qualitatively differs from the world, and who creates and recreates the world. Chuang lzu has none of these. This difference has been covered under the first theme of the Incarnation. This point links the two themes together. One interesting spin-off from this. Both Christians and Chuang Tzu firmly root themselves in personalness of the relation in which they immerse themselves, and both thought such a personal selfimmersion to be the height of harmony—“I in you, you in me,” “forgetting the fit.” This is the purpose for which morality vainly strives. But they understand personalness differently. The Christians understand God as trans-personal, modeling their understanding of the personal divine after human relations, based on their belief 1η the Incarnation, God-become-human. Chuang Tzu understands relation as personal, modeling his understanding of the personal after an appreciative relation with everything whatever. This 15 why Jesus had to warn Mary not to "cling to" him, while Chuang Tzu had to point to “tigers, wolves" with cubs as a model for true love.“ 9 Ibid., 19/62-64. ++ John 20:17; Chuang Tzu, 14/5-6.

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4.1.3.3. Life’s joy in sanctification: The above two points— the this-worldliness of the sacred, the transcendence οἵ morality— culminate naturally in joy. The Christian joy is a strangely composed one. It cuts two ways: First, it goes against legalism, goes beyond legalism, and fulfills it. Paul mentions “joy” as one of the ninefold “fruit” of the Holy Spirit that goes beyond law; no law forbids it.” The austerity of ascetic do-goodism has no place among the Chnistians. They rejoice with an exceeding spontaneous joy in Christ. And yet, secondly, this joy is anything but sentimental emotion. When Jesus was resurrected, he prevented Mary Magdalene from “clinging” to him.* The climax of Jesus’ exalted joy was described in a hushed understatement, as was his followers’ ultimate joy.” The atmosphere of the Bible is thus the heavenly joy that 1s strangely calm and poised. This is the great joy that lasts in the holy Presence, not at all an ephemeral emotion. Thus this joy 15 stable, reflecting that ultimate eternal conviction mentioned in Romans 8, so cosmic and futuristic. As a result, the joy can be felt in sorrow, in suffering. In other words, one can and should be joyous always.” The same sort of joy goes with Chuang Tzu. Against Confucian moralism, filled with humor and joy, Chuang Tzu yet warns us of too much joy. The “ultimate joy is-no joy.”” Happiness is casual natural meandering as the river, to be dwelt in quietly?'—even in suffering.” Not without reason, Chapters | and 2 are full of stories from nature. For nature 15 the epitome of quiet joy. What is this resultant joy in which both Christians and Chuang Tzu come together? It consists of playful irony. Irony is defined as a coming-together of opposites. Among the patristic writings, Jesus was portrayed as being sent to the world to trick the Devil. Jesus Christ’s death was Devil’s pyrrhic victory; death was mocked and Christ was raised.” Since then, things are always not as they seem. The sinners are saved,” the good Pharisees condemned; enemies 9 Galatians 5:22-23. * John 20:16-17. * Luke 10:20-21.

4 Philippians 4:4-5, 1 Peter + 1 Thessalonians 5:16.

50 Chuang Tzu, 18/11. *! Chapters 17, 19. ? Chapter 3.

Go -

ὧν +

53 Gustav Aulen, Mark 2:17. Matthew 23.

1:8.

Christus Victor, S.P.C.K.

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are to be loved, family to be watched over;” camels go through the

needle’s eye;” the widow gives more to God than the pious rich;” suffering (for Christ) is a cause for joy;” the Kingdom

belongs to

children,” and the greatest are the servants.°' And the list goes on, to “turn the world upside down.” The Lord of life, that Vitality

now fills the entire world, including all its darkest hours. This 15 because the infalhble Word of God comes to us through the fallible words of men;® and this is the originative miracle of Joy, the Incarnation of the Word of God. This brings this third point to the first point of comparison, the Incarnation. 4.1.3.4. This completes our threefold comparison of Christianity and Chuang Tzu the philosophical Taoist under the Christian themes of the Incarnation, salvation by faith. alone, and the spontaneous Joy of sanctification. Many points of disputes can be raised. The point of the comparison, however, is less in presenting an exhaustive and absolutely accurate description of Christianity and Chuang Tzu than in giving an example of how, in such manner as this, both Christianity and laoism can be nourished and understood more deeply from a fresh perspectve of the Other. Both of them are ennched by such a sympathetic comparison, a companionship of differences. We call it human symbiosis. And there 15 no limit to this interchange. because 1! amounts to an inter-support, the support of different uniquenesses. The more symbiosis there 15, the more each religion stands out as 1t uniquely 15, different from others. Professor J.S. Kruger®* questioned as to whether there is not a hmiüng point at which intermingling ceases and the uniqueness of Christianity stands out.° This reminds us of Jesus’ refusal to answer

o

Cn

* Matthew 5:44. 10:21. ˆ Mark 10:25. * Mark 12:41-44. ? Matthew 5:11-12. 9 Luke 18:16. ! Luke 22:24-27. Cf. on the importance of “accompaniment” in music in 2.10., especially a note toward the end of that subsection, relating it to service to the littlest.

9? Acts 17:6.

$$ Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/ 2: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Edinburgh: T. ἃ T. Clark, 1956, 1963, pp. 529-30. ^ He is Vice Dean, The Faculty of Theology, and Chairman, Religious Studies Department, University of South Africa, Pretoria. 9 We will come back to this question again in 4.8.

THEIR

COMING

our question whether the Kingdom

TOGETHER

arrives now,

235

whether Judas

Iscariot can be saved,” or perhaps even whether the Devil can be saved.® We do not know the limit to the imperative of Love, the

Gospel imperative, to intermingle and interdependently interact with Others, even with other religions. This is analogous to saying that we cannot—legally or otherwise— arrange in advance for divorce when we are about to enter our marnage vow. [his means less that divorce is out of the question than that worrying about divorce arrangements on the day of marriage effectively dooms that marriage. In other words, all we are charged is not the day of Christ's coming” or the fate of the Devil but the imperative to spread the Gospel of love by unconditionally, limitlessly, intermingle with and Interdepend on Others, other religions. For to love is to mingle; to love unconditionally is to mingle unconditionally. Such a limitlessness of loving intermingling and inter-learning about Others and oneself, as long as done in the Divine Love in Christ, shall enhance the Gospel exactly in our selfless Christian enhancing of Others. In short, two points have been raised: (a) The oneness of the community of religious differences promotes differences. (b) Love (which is the essence of Christianity) fulfills itself by devoting itself to fulfilling Others. Devotion means self-emptying. Therefore, love fulfills itself by emptying itself on Others." In love, kenosis (self-emptying) is the way to plerosis (self-fulfillment)." And these two points are two aspects of the same thing—symbiotc love. And that is actually the

law of life, to which Chuang Tzu would entirely agree.”

To put it another way. There may well be a line somewhere that tells Others apart from ourselves. For us, however, to objectively

know

that line 1s as much

to cease to love, as that to know

condi-

tions of divorce is equivalent to dissolving marriage now. For us, the line of otherness is the manifestation of differences that exists nowhere else except 2 the community of togetherness. It 1s when we are together, in our inter-learning, that our unique differences stand out. 9 Acts

1:6.

^ Cf. Mark 14:21. John 21:21-22. 2 Corinthians 12:5-6.

°° Cf. Matthew 8:31-33, Luke 10:17-18, 11:24-26. 9 Acts 1:6-8. 2.1. and 5.2. elaborate on this theme in dialogue with Sartre.

" Philippians 2:7, 9.

7? See, e.g., Chuang Tzu, 6/45-47, and its sequal, 6/48-66, 94-97, beautiful and profound passages on the four "friends."

236 And

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS thıs ıs as ıt should

be

ın “love.”

When

one

loves,

one

loves

someone else than oneself, never thinking of oneself. And strangely,

in such selfless love, the self comes

to fulfill itself.

As openness to Others thus promotes uniqueness, learning from another religion about one’s own, and learning about another relıgion from one’s own, universality comes to bespeak universal, or rather, universally traversing, ultimacy once again, this time in the realm of human religious togetherness. Thus does the historical miracle of the Christian Incarnation take place in the human -community of religious differences. Concretely,”” how shall we understand Christianity, after our comparison (in 4.1.), in the light of Taoist sentiment? It could go in such a way as follows, in four installments—(4.2.) miracles, (4.3.) Christian theophany in Zen, (4.4.) temptation, and (4.5.) Jonah the only sign for us. À conversational style is sometimes adopted to stress the giveand-take in inter-thinking and inter-meditating together.

4.2. Miracles

the

Christian

*koans^"

4.2.1. In the world of miracles, why they occur 15 identical with are. For only about miracles do we ask the why-question. tual occurrences just happen, without rhyme or reason. happens 1s later summarized into “history” where we ask

what they Usual facWhatever about “So,

then?," to "learn a (historical) lesson" from, so as to discern some sort of a “law”; in other words, we are now accustomed to the way

things usually happen. An expression of our accustomed thinking about natural-historical occurrence 15, as Hume correctly said, “causality,” systematized in the so-called “natural law." Thus, having been accustomed to the way—called “natural law 一 in which events occur, we just accept how facts happen, and understand and interpret occurrences according to this "law"; we naturally do not ask why events happen as they do. But miracles happen contrary to the natural law; they are contrafactual facts,

a contradiction.

Naturally

we

ask,

“Why

do

miracles

which defy this ‘law’ happen?" Learning from Chuang Tzu, we say

~ For we are always in danger of flirting with empty abstractions.

MIRACLES

THE

CHRISTIAN

“KOANS”

237

that miracles are like koans;” they are koan-events. That 1s, as koans, they happen to jolt and displace our accustomed manner of thinking. They happen so as to (a) call our attention to the unusualness of the happening (whether seemingly ordinary or extraordinary), thereby (b) call us to come near God, who ls the Unusual, with caution and reverence. The burning bush and Moses, Ehjah and the storm, one 15 an extraordinary event, another an ordinary one; but

both are miracles. The bush burning but never burnt out called Moses’ attention,” leading him in contact with God who told him that he will “be

with" him,” then that he is the “I am."" The physical miracle of burning bush leads to the spiritual miracle of the identity of “being with" the "I am." The revealed identity (“I am") amounts to God coming into us (“with you”); Moses is here "en-thused" with the power of the Being-itself, revealing to us that Being-itself ¢ beingwith. And that 1s a miracle. Eljah met a storm, and so hid himself in a cave. This is an ordinary event. Then he heard a “still, small voice," or "gentle whisper."? It was the voice of stillness. Here we see two miracles: the identity of the storm and stillness, and the voice-and-stillness that Eljah “heard.” Both miracles amount to the sound of no sound and hearing things when there is nothing to hear, seeing things extraordinary (divine) where there 1s nothing strange to see. 4.2.2. But how about what was intimated at the beginning of 4.2.1. the usual notion

of miracles

as violations of natural law, made

famous

by David Hume's treatment of miracles as violation of natural causality, the law of nature?” Our view, having learnt from philosophical laoism, that the natural 15 the extraordinary, 15 as follows.

^ “Koan” is a notion in Zen Buddhism, which is a “child” of Taoism and Buddhism, and owes much to Chuang Tzu who has many suchlike conversations. We will explain “koan” soon. And since "Chuang Tzu" is a bit clumsy, we will use "Zen" to express the Taoist sentiment represented by Chuang Tzu.

” Exodus 3:1-4. 76 [bid., 3:12. 7 Ibid., 3:14.

? 1 Kings 19:11-12, cf. Job 4:16.

See David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 10, first published in 1748. Cf. Richard Swinburne, ed., Miracles, N.Y.: Macmillan Co., 1989, pp. 23-40.

238

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

If “natural law” is taken to mean a formulated description of our accumulated past experiences, then there 15 nothing wrong in breaking natural laws. For natural law, as an inductive generalization of past experience, can be broken by a single counter example. “All swans are white” has been conclusively proven false by one black swan

found in Australia.? This explanation of the nature of natural law

makes Hume's point moot if not irrelevant and irrational, when he said that the more past incidents we have that support a certain natural law, the less credible 15 the miracle that goes against that law. Thus, to talk of the “problem of miracles" in terms of violation of inviolable natural law 1s both to mistake on the nature of the "Jaw of nature," and to sidestep the main concern of the miracles. lhe main concern of miracles is as follows. Miracle 15 a koan-event, a combination of incompatbles in nature, “incompatible” from the viewpoint οἵ our knowledge of nature. Koan is a verbal irony, and miracle a factual one, in revolt against our sense of logic and our common sense on natural factuality. Take "What 15 the sound of one hand clapping?," for instance. Our understanding of "sound" is that it comes from two hands clapping. Our notion of “clapping”? implies “two hands," and "sound" implies two hands clapping. Our notions then imply that there 15 no sound out of one hand, because one hand cannot and does not clap. But the question assumes something contrary—one hand clapping, one hand clapping producing sound. The question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?," 15 not to raise the issue of "violation of natural law" but directly to question the law itself, that 1s, to challenge our commonsense views about things and events. Likewise with the miracle. The miracle is a “fact” claimed to have taken place, which yet challenges our commonsense expectation of what a “fact” is supposed to be. Jesus walking on the water challenges our expectation of a man walking into water. Why the koan? The koan has the purpose of provoking us, turning our attention away from our accustomed common sense toward some truth beyond what we usually know, and yet doing so within what we live and know.” The sound of one hand clapping provokes us to turn our attention to the silence that speaks. Similarly with the miracle. The miracle has the purpose of provoking our attention to 90 Then

we

found

manv y black swans

81 Cf. P.3.1. and 3.3. above.

in Africa, , then

in Taiwan.

MIRACLES

THE

CHRISTIAN

"KOANS"

239

some truth beyond what we know, within this world of fact as we know it. Ihe miracle of Jesus walking on water provokes us, turning our attention to Jesus and gaining Jesus-like freedom within nature. This combination of “beyond” and “within” is the essence (and paradox) of the Incarnation, the supreme Miracle to which all miracles point." 4.2.3. Seen this way, then, miracles can be called divine "signs" (as St. John told us), that 1s, pointers to God. These koan-pointers can be extraordinary or ordinary. Extraordinary pointers are "miracles"; ordinary pointers charged with unexpect ed extra-meanings are called “parables.” Thus miracles are extraordinary parables and parables, ordinary miracles; both are Christian koans to point us toward extramundane God within this mundane world of ours. This worldly otherworldly God is Jesus Christ. In Jesus both the pointer and the

pointed are merged into one. In him, what he performs? are “mir-

acles”; what he says?* are “parables,” and the “I am" is their joint. If literature is a mirror of society, then miracles are a divine hterature among the human society; they are a mirror of God mirroring himself in us, among us. Miracle is a literature (“words”) of God, a divine mirror of the society per-formed forth within the gathering of God and humans. This central unique Gathering is Jesus Christ the mirror-miracle

of the God-man,

from whom

all miracles

receive their sense and significance, and to whom all miracles point as koans to him. Thus, to repeat. The point of miracles hes not in raising the 155116 of “the breach of natural laws" (which 15 contrary to the aim and nature of “natural law" anyway), but rather through such koan-like shockers to provoke our self-reflective thinking. To confront “Napoleon was a hero of 10 feet tall" with “Thats historically false; he was a short man" misses the point of the saying. Likewise, to respond “Love your enemies" by saying that it 1s logically contradictory (as Kant 7" Thus, if gullible people, “ignorant and barbarous” (Hume, cf. Swinburne, ibid., pp. 31-38), were to believe in “miracle” as easily as they do in their own experience, then the "miracle" 1s miraculous no more, precisely because the tension between experience and the contra-experience (miraculous) is gone. Pace Hume, miracles are destroyed, not established, by gullibility.

8 John 10:37-38. ** [bid.,

10:25.

240

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

did) misses the whole point.® Similarly, to confront “Jesus walked

on the water" with That's scientifically impossible” (as Hume did) misses the point of the miracle. Chuang Tzu would entirely agree to the above, though for a different reason: for Chuang Tzu those above statements are true, not because God 15 the loving Creator present everywhere, but because life prevails in the empty roomy places, where life allows and follows along. But both Christ and Chuang Tzu proclaim to us, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear the hard sayings; those who have eyes to see, let them see the miracles, which are, literally, 'amazements' that make us ‘wonder, and understand."

4.3. Zen Christianity We will here understand Christianity in the perspective of Chuang Tzu the philosophical Taoist as described in 4.1. We first delineate (in 4.3.1.) the entire sentiment of Christianity as we live it. This is done with Chuang Tzu’s existential help, and so is called “The Gospel according to Chuang Tzu." Then we appreciate (in 4.3.2.) how the trans-mundane God appears in this mundane world in a mundane manner, again with the Taoist appreciation, and so 15 called “Zen-Christian theophany." Finally, (in 4.3.3.) we describe what "logic" of indirection all such expressive maneuvers amount to. 4.3.1. The Gospel according to Taoism St. Luke reported, “They left everything and followed him.”” This was after they, the professional fishermen, toiled all night in vain for fish, and then, following Jesus’ words, caught so many fish that their nets began to break and their boats began to sink. Then Peter, overwhelmed with awe at the sight, fell down at Jesus’ knees and said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinner, O Lord." Just leave me alone,

Jesus, you are too awesome. Jesus in his typical warm voice (we can almost

hear

it) said,

“Don’t

be

scared;

from

now

on, you

will be

3 One of later developments of Chuang Tzu's ideas, Zen Buddhism, took advantage of this ploy in their Koans, such as “What 15 the sound of one hand clapping?" (as explained above) or "What does your face before birth look like?" (as will be explained later in Appendix C to 5.5.1.2.: “On the existential import of time.”). Their challenges to scientific veracity point to extra-objective truths of life and subJectivity. |

δ Luke 5:11.

ZEN

CHRISTIANITY

24]

catching men."9 And then “they left everything and followed him,”

just like that, no fuss, no hesitation. They decided so; they thought they did, anyway. And they too, as far as they thought. But did they actually? Did they change their profession? “Don’t be scared; from now on, you be catching men,” said Jesus. This is the same as “I will make

did, even will you

fishers of men,” as reported by Mark and Matthew.” And so they

stayed being fishermen throughout their lives, after all, both before and after "they left everything and followed him." We thought we left our petty concerns and professions to follow Jesus’ way. And our "petty concerns" become useful for the big things Jesus wants us to do—as theirs did, from catching fish to fishing people. But where 15 Jesus today? In his way of being and doing. What is his way? His way 15 to make for us the new big global atmosphere “in which we do and move and have our beings," as St. Paul

said.” This global atmosphere, cultural mindset, manners of doing and being, this universe of discourse and performance,

talk about,

because it is that in terms

for which everything comes

of which,

to life, moves,

we cannot

that in which

and

and has its being. But

in order to understand it, we must talk about this untalkability, ineffa-

bility, of this global atmosphere, our very world itself, which Jesus made for us. How? Let us detour into Wittgenstein a bit, who 1s a thinker close to the Zen-Taoist sentiment. Ludwig Wittgenstein cited several items that lie “outside the world" and

cannot

be said."

They

are: the sense

of the world,

value,

the

whole sphere of what happens and 15 the case, ethics, aesthetics, will, change, death, solution to nddle, riddle, fhat the world exists, the world as a limited. whole, doubt, life as a problem, things and their

manifestations. lo cite such items lying outside the world immediately generates a series of levels for us to climb out of—and into— the world. Let us enumerate them. Level 1: (a) We can only say what/how whatever 15 1s what it is and as it 15. (b) Anything beyond (4) 1s meaningless. Level 2: Now to say (a) and (b) is to say something holistic, metaphysical, and to say (a) 1s to reach (b) that 15 unsayable. But to say 8 Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17, Luke 5:10. 89 Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17. 9? Acts 17:28. ? Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trs., D:F. Pears McGuinness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961, pp. 144—51.

ἃ

B.F.

242

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

things metaphysical as (a) and (b) belongs to the realm of the unsayable, the realm between (a) and (b), and the between 15 also (b). But we have just said ıt anyway. Level 3: For what purpose? We say the unsayable—Levels 1, 2— in order not to be understood (since it 15 meaningless) but to be used as steps “to chmb up beyond them.” They are steps of the “ladder” to be "throw[n| away" after we have “climb[ed] up." But climb up to where? We climb up out of (a) into (b), so as to enter (a) afresh,

i.e., to gain “the sense of life" that cannot be said.

Let us put all this another way, to sum up the above. To draw a line is to manifest a thing—making sense of it—by distinguishing its inside from its outside, thereby connecting (contrasting) the two. lo say so 15 to draw a line and to ferry us outside. Since one can draw such a line only from outside, which 1s unspeakable,

to say so

15 to (not to say but to) act, not to describe but silently to ferry. Metaphor ferries us out of our familiar realm to the other shore of meaning. To say so, then, is silently to metaphor.? One who draws such a line to draw us out 1s one who is out when we are in. In order to make sense of life—the outside—silently, the Outside One says all this, without saying, to metaphor us out. The Outside One is the First-Awakened awakening us, beckoning us out, with words

of no words.”

Wittgenstein said that fhat the world exists, feeling the world as a hmited whole, 15 mystical; even all possible scientific questions on how living things are have been answered, the problems of life itself, which cannot be said, remain completely untouched. After the sense of life becomes clear to us, we cannot say what constitutes that sense; it only makes itself manifest, it 15 what 15 ineffable, mystical. All we say about it is nonsensical. To recognize it as nonsensical is the job of metaphysics. And, we continue, to recognize it as mystical and live by it, that is, to leave everything in this world and follow him that constitutes this cosmic sense, 1s religion. Now we have just paraphrased Wittgenstein, of course, as he concluded his 7ractatus Logico-Philosophicus, from 6.44 to 6.54. Wittgenstein says, in effect, that that the world 1s we cannot know or see; we say,

because fhat the world 15 shapes what and how we know and see, we cannot know or see fhat the world 15. This 15 in the same sense ?? Tractatus, 6.521. ° ]1.1.1.2.1., 1.1.1.2.2.,

1.1.1.2.3., 3.7.1., 3.7.2., 5.5.2.4.

* On how “words of no words" can happen, see 4.3.3.

ZEN

CHRISTIANITY

243

in which Aristotle realized? that the logical principles such as the

law of identity (΄Α 15 A") cannot be logically proved, because "A 15 A" 15 that in terms of which logical proof proceeds. We say, this 1s so because "A is A" 15 what logic 15 all about, that 15, to trace out the integrity of things as they are. “A is A" manifests that things are as they are, and thus cannot be manifest in the same manner as things are. This is why logic itself cannot be “proved,” i.e., logically be made manifest to our rational eyes. But Aristotle continues to say that we can “prove” that “A 1s A" exists, come to realize it at our rational base, by way of reducho ad absurdum,

by way

of “What

if?" That

15, we

can become

aware

of

its necessity by surveying our sorry state wherein we get all confused if we let go of *A 1s A." A ship will be a table, a table will be an animal, and so on, and we cannot even begin to say anything, much less argue about anything. We will be completely reduced to muddled silence. Now the same situation happens if we ask what if we do not have Jesus’ way, that is the way of love. Love lets things come to life, allows things to become as they are, serving as a womb to give birth to things. The opposite of love 15 hatred, the drive to destroy things. Kant would say that hatred cannot be universalized without destroying itself. What if we let go of love and embrace hatred? We will pick up a sword, and "All who take the sword perish by the sword," said Jesus just before he allowed himself to be taken by a group of sword-people.? Mind you, this is Love who said so before the sword. Love 1s unconquerable indeed. Love lets Others be, wherein and in thus doing, we also come to exist; love 15 that unspeakable atmosphere in which things are, and can be universalized in symbiosis, even with the sword.? Love lets the sword destroy love, radically living through dying with the sword. That must be one of the meanings of the death of love on the cross.

And somehow” love survives even with hatred. That must be one of the meanings of love's resurrection.” If the core and the ground, the Be-all and End-all, > ? °? δ

of all things were

not the thrust that lets

See the Third Book of Metaphysics. Matthew 26:52. Cf. Appendix to 4.3.1.: “On love.” This “somehow” is the mystery of Love. Hatred has nothing to do with it, for

it does not understand what symbiosis means.

” Matthew 27:11-15 could symbolically be taken to mean a co-existence of this

sort.

244. things words, we w that is

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS be, things could not have come alive as they do now. In other if we “leave everything and follow him,” the Power of Love, also let people come alive, and we together with them. And one of the meanings of “fishers of men.”

Fishermen

catch fish to eat them

and live. In contrast, fishers of

people catch people to let them come alive in Jesus the power of love. They catch people into Jesus’ mode of performance to let people come alive. Fishermen leave their fishing net of eating to follow the love-net that catches people to let them eat and thrive. To follow Jesus is to be caught by him to catch people, to be caught in the network of living together. The fisherman lets fish die to live himself; fishers of people let people live to live together in Jesus, the Way to True Life. Following Jesus, they caught so many fish that the boat began to sink. Following Jesus, they will catch so many people that the world will turn upside down into the Kingdom of God the Life-giver.'™ But where 15 he, that power of love, so we can follow him? This is a well-nigh impossible question to answer, given our survey of Aristotle and Wittgenstein. We know that the global atmosphere, the world as such, the basic principle, the absolute presupposition (Collingwood), cannot be directly seen, known, or caught. It is he the cosmic Love, he in whom,

for whom,

and by whom

we see, know,

catch, live and die. We can only feel his presence as we breathe in the morning air as we stroll in the morning mist. lhe next 4.3.2. concerns this point—to see God from the corner of our eyes. Extrapolating from the appearance of one's past self in the corner of one's vision, an interbreed

of Zen with the Christian

faith is effected. Here onto-theophany takes place in a non-expectation of lateral vision outside of conscious analytic cognition.

4.3.2. Zen-Christian theophany The Christian faith is often illuminated. by things unexpected and seemingly irrelevant. One such instance 1s Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where a strange incident is described. It

goes like this.'?!

00 Isaiah 24:1, 29:16, Acts 17:6. 61 Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, N.Y.: Bantam Books, 1976, p. 62. Despite the word "Zen" in the title, this book has no Zen Buddhisac flavor, or terminology of any religious sort. It has much Taoistic depth and nonchalance, which is after all one ingredient in Zen. To see in this book Christian theophany is to deepen the Christian faith with Taoistic sentiment, it is part of explicating Taoism in Christianity.

ZEN

CHRISTIANITY

245

And in the fog there appears an intimation of a figure. It disappears when I look at it directly, but then reappears in the corner of my vision when I turn my glance. I am about to say something, to call to it, to recognize it, but then do not, knowing that to recognize it by any gesture or action is to give it a reality which it must not have. But it is a figure I recognize even though I do not let on. It is Phaedrus. Evil spint. Insane. From a world without hfe or death. The figure fades and I hold panic down... tight... not rushing it... just letting it sink in... not believing... not disbelieving it... but the hair crawls slowly in the back of my skull... he is calling Chris, is that i? ... Yes? ...

The eerie Other that appears in the fog 15 later identified as Pirsig's own past. His past is here for the first time named Phaedrus. A thing with a name means that the thing 1s somewhat independent of the namer. And yet one's past, named as such, 15 peculiar. The past 15 part of one's life because one is made up of one's past. It 15, nonetheless, what independently exists, because one 1s no longer one's past. Because the past 1s both independent of us and at the same time part of us, it has a peculiar relation to us. Being independent, our past has power

over us; it haunts

us, influences

us, and

molds

us.

And yet, because it 1s after all part of us, when it haunts us, it really sinks in, invading us from inside. It pulls us 1η the deep innermost recesses of our being, in the realm of our subliminal preintellectual awareness. It comes unannounced, and when it comes it penetrates like a ghostly fog. No wonder Pirsig confessed that “the hair slowly crawled in the back of my skull." This, then, 15 the poignant nature of our past. It 1s because the Other 15 part of us that the past's advent

on us 15 to irresistible, and so eerie.

So much for what our past 15. As to how we recognize it. To recognize such a strange reality it 1s impossible directly to look αἱ it. For a direct frontal gaze 15 effective only when the object 15 entirely separate from the subject, and thus available for inspection at an arm's length. But because the past comes from inside us and yet 1s somehow Other than us, it seeps and pervades in us at the deep inner level where our objectifying intellect, our analytic look, is ineffective. We cannot look at it; we can only recognize it from "the corner of" our eye. For the opposite of seeing out of the eye's corner 15 a frontal gaze, an analytic knife that dissects and inspects. When Pirsig looked at the intimation of a figure directly, it disappeared. When we put up a frontal look at something, it takes on an unnatural, distorted look

240

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

of a fake, much like that unreal setting of a national park on a lake artificially preserved to contrive a situation before the white man came. 102 The quality of the lake is smothered by the fact that it is so pointed to. You point to something as having quality, and the quality tends to go away. Quality is what you see out of the corner of your eye.

That direct pointing and that artificiality block the way to understanding quality, the reality of the real. No wonder when Pirsig looked at the intimation of a figure directly, it disappeared. The quality, the reality, of his own past disappeared at the analytical inspection of his objective frontal gaze. It is clear,

then,

as to how

relevant

to our relation with

God is

the above description of Pirsig’s encounter with his past. God is our creator, as our past 15. God pervades everywhere, including our subliminal depths, as our past pervades our total outlook on the world. God,

then, 15 the Other

in us, as our past 15. When

he comes,

he

comes on that level where it is no longer possible to use analytic inspection, a frontal gaze. He comes in a fog, in silence, when we least expect him to. But if we meet him when we least expect to, then it follows that we seldom see him when we expect to. We miss him when we try consciously to look for him and look at him. When we try to name God, we always name him in vain; we worship an idol of our own whenever we call upon the “name” of the Lord. Woes of orthodoxy he here. Creeds and doctrines systematize our relation to God, cognitively fence up the orthodox faith. from heresies, and then our faith eludes us. With this objective look, either the object in the fog dis-

appears, or one dies,* or both—as was the case on Calvary when

we died with the God-man, crucifying both him and ourselves with our orthodoxies. And yet, as Pirsig turned his glance, that intimation of a figure reappeared in the corner of his vision. Moses was covered by the

Lord and then saw the Lord in his back.'® Elijah could not find 12 Ibid., p. 335.

03 This is why the name “God” is left blank in the Jewish writings. But of course,

such a “blank” in the meantime becomes another name, a name for God, and the wonderful orthodox tradition goes on, in a manner parallel to frontal gaze.

14 Cf. Exodus 33:20. 5 Exodus 33:17-23.

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in the usual places of theophany,

247

the earthquake,

the fire, and

the wind. And then he was confronted with the “voice of a soft stillness.”

There

he

had

to cover

his face

and

come

out of the cave,

standing tremblingly.'” As that intimation of a figure reappeared in the corner of Pirsig’s vision, the hair crawled slowly on the back of his skull. God is that mystery which no eye has seen; the only way in which we recognize him is out of the corner of our eye. Ít is only in this oblique way that we get to our Phaedrus, and are confronted

with the Ποὶγ. It is a “lateral knowledge" (not a straight one) that

comes from a wholly unexpected direction, from a direction that 1s not even understood as a direction until the knowledge forces itself upon us.'” [t is the way to see a wild rosebush in the desert.'” And

this is, after all, how

the holy men

of the Bible

met

God.

Besides the theophanic experiences of Moses and Elijah mentioned above, Jeremiah saw a rod of almond and a boiling pot, the ordinary things in daily life, and there and then he heard the message of God. Jesus saw the lilies, the sparrows and the grass around him, and there he saw the divine care. Both Isaiah and Matthew saw a young expecting mother, and there both saw no less than the Incarnation of God.''” It is understandable that King Herod missed the Son of God. Lacking in a drifting lateral vision, he could not have recognized theophany in the ordinary carpenter’s shop, much less in the smelly manger beside the crowded hotel. Let us go a step further. We need not only the ordinary ongoings of life, but the usual orthodoxies (and the intellect) that go inescapably with daily living, so as to occasion the lateral seeing. It takes both the orthodox Pharisees and the ordinary publicans to see Jesus unexpectedly. Such a seeing requires for its explication no less than four points. 4.3.2.1. First of all, we cannot stay in orthodoxy to see God. The Pharisees were shocked to find Jesus mingling with publicans and

"^ 1 Kings

19:11-13. NRSV

Pirsig, op. cit, p. 77. ` Ibid., pp. 114-115.

has “a sound of sheer silence.” (verse

12)

"^" Ibid., p. 295. ^" Jeremiah 1:11-14, Matthew 6:26-30, 1:18-23, Isaiah 7:14. The list can be extended: Noah saw God in the rainbow (Genesis 9:13-17), Jacob in the night’s sojourn on the desert stone ‘Genesis 28:10-17), Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2-4,,

|

etc.

Matthew

2:4-8,

13-16.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

harlots who, he said, will go to heaven before they do.''* Jesus was

a fighter against orthodoxy, against that self-assured frontal gaze, that safe depository of divine knowledge. Such orthodoxy 15 one sure way to miss God. It 1s small wonder that some theologians had to proclaim the death of “God.” God is one who hides himself in the

ordinary that he created,!? the weal and the woe, the light and the

darkness.'* God always surprises us, because he is he and not ourselves. He appears just when we do not know, in the mldst of disasters; as "they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away,

so will be the coming of the Son of man."'? He lives and dies with

criminals and the oppressed,''® so much so that when we spontaneously deal with the least of our brethren we deal with him. And as we treat the least of our brethren, so shall we be treated. For God does not discriminate among persons.''® Isaiah was surprised— God's rod of anger was the cruel Assyrians, the avowed enemies of God's people; the godless people against whom Assyria was sent were paradoxically the very people of God.'? God comes like a thief, and is crucified with thieves. God thus always catches us by surprises,'”' and the Bible 15 the book of such divine surprises to our straight vision. Not without reason, then, that Rudolf Bultmann protested against an allegorical interpretation of the Bible. For this method has our own axe to grind, a spiritualizing of the Bible into our favorite preconceived perspective, whether theological, moral, or conventional (e.g., “scientific,” “objective”). The method suffocates the arena of theophany, the fresh rough sweep and openings of real hfe that the Bible describes, effectively blocking our natural immersing in things wherein we see God from the corner of our eye. 4.3.2.1.

At the same

time, however

(and this is our second point),

Bultmann’s method of “demythologization” is itself no less suspect.'”” 2 Matthew 21:31. Cf. 12:42. Π Cf. Isaiah 45:15. ΠΕ Cf. Isaiah 45:7; Amos 3:6; Matthew 5:45. । Matthew 24:39. 18 Luke 23:33. 7 Matthew 25:40, 45. "5 Deuteronomy 10:17, Job 34:19, II Chronicles 19:7, Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11, etc. 9 Isaiah 10:5, cf. 45:1, Jeremiah 29:5. The Assyrians were of course ignorant of this. This is the height of God's incognito. 120 Matthew 24:43-44, 27:38. 21 Cf. Luke 5:49.

122 Rudolf Bultmann, “The New Testament and Mythology (1941)," in The New

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249

For the method denigrates and knifes away what he called “myth,” those non-theological thought-forms and historical perspectives of the ancients which, Bultmann

was so sure, have nothing to do with the

central message of the Bible. Yet those cosmological-historical perspectives, familiar to the ancients, constituted exactly that world in which they saw God in Jesus. When Bultmann cuts that world away, we are left without that mundane environment wherein they saw God out of their eye’s corner. We are cut off from avenues and atmosphere via which to revive their excitement, or at least sympathetically to understand it. The

fact of the matter is, we need all of our clutters of life, those

all-too-mundane actualities, in which to move and live. Eljah needed the usual thunder, fire and wind to suddenly hear (or overhear) the divine Silence which spoke. As Pirsig needed the fog to see Phaedrus, as Jacob needed the casual stop 1n his tedious and scary trek across the desert to confront the Eternal, even so do we need the daily hustle and bustle, within our twentieth. century myths and hangups, to see God from the corner of our eye. And this is to include the usual means and places, those wornout rituals and institutions explicitly set up to meet God. We need those Pharisees to see Jesus among the sinners. We need the temple to see that widow with two copper coins.'** We cannot discard what Bultmann impatiently cut. On the contrary, we need to be absorbed totally in the ongoings of daily life, tormented by our own Phaedrus

in the fog, and meet God there, from the corner of our eye.!^

Thus to point out the subliminal and nonintellectual realm and stress its importance for theophany in no way denigrates the conscious and the intellectual in life. Rather, it 1s exactly to stress the conscious. For the subliminal and the conscious are correlative realms. The subliminal appears as subliminal only against the background of the luminous and the conscious. The nonintellectual 1s operative as such only in relation to the intellectual. This 15 another way of saying that the secular 15 sacred, for a// the mundane realines and activities are the potential loci for the appearance of the extraordinary. The mundane 15 the environment of the subliminal in which Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed., Schubert M. Ogden, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

23 Genesis 28:10-22.

2: Mark 12:41-44. 5 We know Paul struggled with his own Phaedrus (his past) in Romans

7:15ff.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

to see the sublime. To immerse oneself in the world fully and zestfully, even to the point of sinning and despairing boldly, is exactly to watch for the advent of the sacred. For to stress the usual is to be attentive to the unusual. To live in the expected is to prepare for the unexpected. 4.3.2.111. We must, however (and this is the third point), elucidate cautiously what has just been

stated. It is correct, as far as it goes,

to say that to stress the expected and the conscious is to be attentive to the unexpected and the subliminal. And yet, strictly speaking, we cannot attend consciously to the subliminal, away from which,

by definition, our attentiveness diverts us. We cannot literally expect the unexpected. When we bring the unexpected under our expect-

ant inspection, such expectation evaporates the unexpected.'” The

subliminal is the unexpected, which is just that, what cannot be expected. Thus it 15 a tricky business indeed to watch and prepare the way for the Lord, who 15 the Unexpected. Expectation diverts ourselves from the unexpected in two ways: that of the orthodox who is sure of safely residing ın the realm of the expected “divine,” and that of the pious who expects the divine to come always miraculously. The orthodox expects as much the expected as the pious does the unexpected, and the one misses the divine no less than the other, since both expect. The orthodox way has been considered above. It remains here to caution ourselves against the pious way. For the surprise is gone for him who expects theophany always to happen in the extraordinary miraculous realm, expecting Jesus to prove his divinity by turning stones into bread, by coming in time to heal Lazarus, expecting the Lord to come for a rescue as surely as burning the sacrificial cattle soaked in water, as raining on the droughted land. And we are sure to become as despondent as Elijah was in the cave, or Mary

and Martha at home."

Strangely, an argument against God's existence is of this pious type. If God 15 good and almighty, one expects a miraculous disappearance of evil from this world, or rather, no eruption of evil in the first place. Yet there exists an abundance of evil, therefore God 29 There is to find, seeing 27 Matthew in Jonah 1:3,

some truth in saying that the scientists only find what they expect that their "discoveries" are theory-guided and expectation-ridden. 4:3-4, 1 Kings 18:38, 45; 19:9, John 11:21, 32. Compare also Jonah 4:1f. Cf. John 2:3-9, 11.

ZEN

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251

is either not-good or not-almighty or both, and therefore, there cannot be such a God. QED. But logic is a supreme instance of expectation. God the Unexpected disappears in such an Indra's net of logic, such a Medusa's direct expectant gaze. God the almighty Good comes as a thief, as the Assyrians. And he also appears in the lilies and the birds, in the waiting father of the prodigal son and the Roman centurian.'” God rains on both the righteous and the wicked,

and also rains disasters on both.'*? God is everywhere and nowhere,

everywhere unexpected and nowhere expected, for God appears in both the expected and the unexpected places unexpectedly. To be “prepared" for such theophany we must be prepared to see him 1η the subliminal, the nonintellectual. We can only “be still and see that

he is God," out of the corner of our frontal gaze.

4.3.2.1v. The above consideration brings us to the fourth and final point. We must not expect God to appear only when we least expect him to. This attitude tips the scale of expectation on one side, and we expect the unexpected. This is after all an expectation, a direct seeing and looking. What is needed 15 neither expecting nor not expecting the unexpected, but being concerned and involved in daily lives in an alert non-expecting manner. We must be involved in what we are doing, without analyzing it, as Pirsig counsels us, just fixing a motorcycle, just fishing and just living along.” It is at this point that God appears. It 1s here that the Bible speaks. Here unexpectedly is the point where Zen and the Christian faith. converse and co-respond. This point is the daily art of actual ordinary living, expressed in, among others, "the art of motorcycle maintenance." All in all, by stressing this way the unexpected we do two things: We stress the importance of both the expected as expected, and the unexpected as unexpected, both af once. They are correlative and disünct;

each

15 what

it 15. different

from

the

Other,

because

of the

Other. And in such a happy situation of the casual, meandering mingling of non-expectation and subliminal awareness, God appears out of the corner of our eye. “And in the fog there appears an intimation of a figure. It disappears when I look at it directly, but then reappears in the corner of my vision when I turn my glance." 128 Matthew 6:26, 28; Luke 15:20; Matthew 8:5-13. 129 Matthew 5:45, cf. Isaiah 45:7. 130 Psalm 46:10.

5! See Appendix to 4.3.2.: “Just living’ and Zen.”

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TOGETHERNESS

4.3.3. Its expression Now, to express this side-vision of theophany constitutes a problem, for expression is a direct delivery of its intended contents; for our implicit indirect lateral vision we need expressive indirection. For this purpose, we often have to construct an indirect intimation by having the (non-conscious) situational matrix of the saying negate the (conscious) saying itself. This ploy is a favorite of Taoists. The very saying (some "being") of “non-being” (wu), the Socratic knowledge of “non-knowing” (wu chih), as well as the conscious mentioning of being “natural, spontaneous” (tzu jan) which is non-self-conscious, abound in Taoists's writings. And through their such self-recursive inconsistency the theophanic Way of things comes to be intimated, and thereby comes to be. To understand how theophany happens through our self-inflicted inconsistency, let us look into the two sentences which initiate. Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. The first 15 in vigorous parsimony, saying, “Tao can tao, not always lao," that is, "Ihe Tao [way] tao-able is not the Always-Tao.”'” This is to say that the Tao that is identified as 工 ao 一 by naming it as such, by telling us about it, for instance— misses the real Tao that 15 always around. lo say so, however, offends us on two fronts. First, it 1s usually the case that identifying something as something brings out that thing; a little boy said that the watch he was supposed to bring to his dad was not on the desk, until he was pointed to “that thing" as the watch." But Lao Tzu tells us that to point to and tell of the lao is to lose it. Perhaps it 1s because the Tao is not one of usual things but the way things go spontaneously, and spontaneity evaporates as soon as it is pointed out.'** Secondly, if what Lao Tzu says is true, the rest of his book is itself a “not the Always-Tao,” amount-

ing to an exercise in missing the mark. lhen why say it at all? But he did say it 1n. 5000 or so characters. He must have then exercised this futility on purpose. Perhaps 3? Chuang Tzu has a compact sentence of the same import: “The Great Tao declares not." (2/59) 33 I asked my boy of five, “Peter, bring me a watch on my desk.” “OK, Dad. . . . Its not there, Dad." “That’s funny. I just put it on the desk. Go find it." “ΟΚ, Dad... I cannot find it, Dad." “That’s funny.” I went into the house with Peter. “Here it is, Peter!” “O, I didn't know that that was a watch."

‘# Soren Kierkegaard tells us, as he begins his Zither-Or, of a sandwich man car-

rying boards, saying, "I am normal." Normalcy evaporates by its display.

TEMPTATIONS

253

Lao Tzu was not saying anything at all but evoking and arousing our attention to this situation —the concrete ineffable Way of things— by using such a situationally and self-recursively contradictory utterance as this, “Tao can tao, not always Tao”; here the saying contradicts both the usual situation of things and “what” 15 said. “I know,” Lao Tzu must have responded, perhaps not in words but in gesture, in the propositional gesture of these sayıngs.'” “You are right; and so in my saying I said nothing. I just exploited— used—this saying to remind you of that truth, that the Tao tao-able is not the Always Tao. And so, after the reminding, you can and should throw away the reminder-saying. That is to say, I did not mean what I said. I merely used the saying to point at what 1s not said; I pointed at the unsayable not-a when I said the sayable a." lhis 15 what irony amounts to—a spontaneous unity of opposites, saying for not-saying, not-saying in saying. Such route of irony, self-recursive, self-negating, contradicting the usual

situation, was

what

was

taken

in 4.3.2., when

we

talked

about the "side-vision." For vision in our common sense is usually a frontal gaze. Likewise, “non-expectation” in 4.3.2. negates both expectation and not-expectation, both of which exhaust our commonsense category of "expectation." This is similar to Hegel's dialectic, except 1η a negative manner, not-expecting going through not-not-expecting to reach neither not-expecting nor not-not-expecting, not-not-not-expecting, that is, “non-expecting.” But if anything, this explanation concerns our order of understanding. What is intimated 15 not a (negative) dialectic but something ineffably dynamic. In any case, that 15 a way of conveying something beyond words, a way of telling something that cannot be told, an indirection.

4.4, Temptations Shall we apply from a negative of “temptation.” of temptation as

this ineffability to the Christian Gospel, this time angle? We have in mind the subtle slippery notion Take Jesus’ being “led by the Spirit” into the desert he was “filled with the Holy Spirit.”'* The “eye”

/ Is this a performative utterance of a propositional sort? ।* Luke 4:1-13.

254.

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

of this otherwise bewildering story, the literary Eye that opens our eyes, 15 Jesus’ final response that repulsed the devil, “You shall not

tempt the Lord your God.”'”’ This verse has a warning (definition)

and a promise (salvation). The warming here is a definition of “temptation.” Temptation is everywhere, in everything originally good in itself, whether in the

form of hunger for satiation!” or for security,” in the form of glories of this world!? or beyond.'* What sours good things into temp-

tations 15 that they are so good that we want to obtain them by whatever means, including God who 15 never a means; they are so good that we want to use God to obtain them. And to “use God” is to “tempt the Lord your God.” Unfortunately, since those things are good in themselves, we do not see the bad side, the evil, in doing so. It 15 one thing to use our

needs to magnify Gods Lordship. “I am sick, Mom!” expresses a boy’s absolute trust in Mom with his needs. It is quite another thing to use God, thereby denying his Lordship, to satisfy our needs. The proposal, “1 you are the Son of God’ and are hungry, ‘command this stone to become bread’,” clearly attends to changing stones into bread (to satisfy hunger), rather than to God. And more subtly, our desirables, and our legitimate needs for them, can play a negative, sinister role in instigating unceasing torment. To let the instigation work into our torment amounts to succumbing to temptation. An example shows it. Suppose a believer (temptation occurs only to believer) loves Jesus Christ. He asks God for job, foods, and shelter (the “bread”) for the sake of preaching his love, and worries about those needs. He does not know that these two things do not go together—to love God enough to preach his love, to pray for what 1s needed to preach, and to worry about those needs. And there lies the temptation. For worrying militates against accepting and preaching his love; if he worries, he had better stop intending to preach. If he beheves in the divine love in Jesus Christ, that love is the support and content of his preaching; worry wipes it off. Temptation 15 what throws us into such a fusion of incompatibles and resultant torment.

37 Ibid., 4:12. 138 Thid., 4:2-3. MO Ibid. 4:5-7. 4

Genesis

3:5.

TEMPTATIONS

955

The tragedy is that the legitimacy and goodness of our needs blind our eyes to this crucial difference—between using our needs for God and using God for our needs, between magnifying the Lordship of our God (with our needs) and magnifying the lordship of our needs (with God). To confuse the two 15 so fatally easy, and to confuse the two constitutes temptation. In fact, our very blindness here is the temptation. Thus, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God" warns and defines, that is, opens our eyes to, that inscrutable “temptation.” Ihis 15 why everything good 1s a potential source of temptation, and we do not know it, and our ignorance 15 another source of temptation. This 1s why we are daily everywhere confronted with the evil of temptations. By the same token, the reverse 1s the powerful fool-proof weapon against the evil of temptation, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God." This explains how Jesus overcame all temptations. In “Man shall not live by bread alone," the phrase "not... alone" demolishes the lordship of bread. In “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve," the word “only” demolishes the lordship of wealth and glones. In “You shall not tempt the Lord your God," the word "not" demolishes the lordship of security. This is why also the antidote against sinister worries 15 Jesus’ ringing conclusion after describing them, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (lordship).”'* In all this the lordship of the Lord of love is upheld. Thus “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” 1s also his promise of our salvation. It was spoken by him; it was he who went through the temptation with us for us. It amounts to saying that (4.2.4.1.) every time we are tempted God 15 also, and that (4.2.4.2.) since he overcame temptation for us, we can, too, as long as we are in him. In him we can potently pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” 4.4.1. “You shall not tempt... your God.” Temptation is bad, both for God and for us. And no one is exempt, not even God, from being tempted. For when we are tempted, so is God, because, for us, “to be tempted” means to tempt God to do our bidding, even our bidding to do good ourselves, using God. To do good without acknowledging God as the Lord is evil, because God is good, and doing 142 Matthew

6:33.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

good without God (i.e., not acknowledging God as Lord but using

God for our project of doing good) is pride, to “be like God"!*

ourselves. But when evil gets as far gone into the marrow of the good as this, temptation becomes hard to resist; temptation defies definition. We cannot even say of temptation as did Judge Stewart of pornography, that he cannot define it but he can recognize it when he sees it. For when we meet temptation, we usually cannot see that it 1s temptation. And this our inability is just what makes temptation so insidious. We have nowhere to hide from temptation as long as we desire things "good." 4.4.2. Everyday we are confronted with temptations, but we should not be in them; we cannot even grow in temptations. “Lead us not into temptation,"

because

it 15 evil, "but deliver us from

evil."

Fortunately, Jesus Christ, full of the Spirit, overcame temptation for us. Being in Jesus enables us to discern temptation whenever it comes, and with Jesus’ sensitivity and dexterity we can overcome it every time it comes. That is the promise of "You shall not tempt the Lord your God,” for it was spoken by Jesus who overcame the devil of temptation with it. Temptation hidden from us can be overcome by being in Jesus, who 15 hidden among things in our ordinary occupation— “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing. But at your word I will let down the πεῖς.“ We obey him daily in our usual occupation and preoccupations, and he appears at the corner of our eye, and we will come to be in him. This is what it means, when the Bible says, “And they left everything,” everything good, “and followed him."!? They were completely spontaneous, in him. Let us ask again, “Where do we find him 1η this world?" In the "they" who followed and are following him. Thus this "they" ıs quite important in Christianity. For the Christian God is a tacit unity of absolute manifestation and absolute hiddenness.

And

the Christians,

the “they”

in the above

quotation,

bridge this antithesis and bring out its unity; they “magnify” him (as hidden in them). In them 15 God both manifest and hidden.

15 Genesis 3:5. 4 Luke 5:5. 5 Luke 5:11.

TEMPTATIONS

257

On the one hand, the divine Self is forcefully manifest in the Bible since God's assertion of “I am what/who I am” to Moses.'* The phrase emphasizes the “T am” more than the colorless “am,” existence. This divine exclusive claim 15 expressed in the Ten Commandments and Deuteronomy,'*’ “I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me... I... I... I..." God is the Subject who never becomes an object, and before whom all reality and events are objects. He is infinitely dynamic in himself and to the world. And mind you, this awesome holiness of God is powerfully conveyed through Moses, then the prophets, then Jesus' disciples and apostles. He manifests himself through his chosen human agents. On the other hand, God is so glorious that he has to hide himself to avoid destroying us. As God appears to Moses, Moses had to take off his sandals and hide his face. In Exodus 33:20-22, the divine glory came in the hiding of human face and the showing of divine back. As Blaise Pascal said,1 It was not... right that He should appear... manifestly divine, and completely . . convincing all men; ...it was also not right that He should come in so hidden a manner that He could not be known by those who... sincerely seek Him. ... He so regulates the knowledge of Himself that He has given signs of Himself, visible to those who seek Him,

and

not to those who

seek Him

This divine polarity of the manifest and the Christians through their side vision mon in Christ, himself the divine glory glorified in the misery of the cross. It is everything, and followed him." In thar

not.

the hidden 15 mediated by of theophany in the comclad in common flesh, and thus crucial that "they left following him we see him,

and we also follow them following him." Now,

besides those who

follow him, another place to find him 15,

surprisingly, among those our "neighbors" whom we are supposed to bring to him. To this fascinating theme we now turn.

146 Exodus 3:14. 15 Deuteronomy 32:309ff. 48 Ethelbert Stauffer, in “ego,” in Gerhard Kittel, ed., tr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964, 1982, etc., II: 344—45, 348-49. 5 Blaise Pascal, Pensees, tr. W.F. Trotter, N.Y.: E.P. Dutton, 1932, No. 430, p. 118. 150 ] Corinthians 11:1.

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4.5. Jonah the only sign for us 4.5.1. Matthew 12:38-39 Here, very good and decent people asked Jesus for a sign. What is a sign? À sign 1s what we can see, for us to realize what we cannot see. The baby, for 1η stance, gives us a smile as a sign for us to realize that she 1s happy. Jesus gives us signs for us to realize something important. Jesus said, “No other sign than Jonah will be given.” But he gave us many sions; John listed seven. Perhaps he meant that Jonah 15 the most important sign that represents and summarizes all other signs. Here what we can 566 15 the story of Jonah; what we cannot see is a deep, simple, indispensable truth. Without embracing this truth we die. What is this truth? 4.5.2. Jonah 1:1-2 Here is a very good and decent man, Jonah, and here are very brutal and atrocious people of Nineveh, the Assyrians, the notorious ancient gangs and Mafia of Nineveh. As expected, God told good Jonah to go tell the bad Assyrians that they are going to die in 40 days. On hearing this, however, good Jonah fled. Why? Perhaps because good people don’t mix with bad ones. Listen to Luke 18:11. Similarly, Jonah must have thought, “How should I, a pious good man, go to the bad people whom I fear, despise, and avoid, to share my most precious treasure—God’s words? I don’t want to tell them what God told me, not even that they are going to die. For they deserve to die, anyway! Who cares!” So good Jonah ran away. But then Jonah was soon caught, and got almost killed—1in the ocean, in the whale.

And so Jonah simply had to go to those whom he feared, despised, avoided, and told them what God told him, that they were going to be destroyed in 40 days. To our surprise, those bad brutal people repented. And so God relented, too.'”' They were not destroyed. They survived. But, then, good man Jonah got so angry at all this. He told God, “God, you make no sense. You said you will do it, and you did not. Why?” And he continued, “Never mind. I will answer it for you.” And then Jonah did his best to give God the best explanation he >! Jonah

3:10.

JONAH THE ONLY SIGN FOR US

259

could find. And this explanation made him even more angry. “God, you played tricks on me, on such a good man, in the name of your love! It’s not fair!” His anger perhaps resembles our favorite problem, “Why do good people suffer and bad ones prosper?" To his anger, God softly answered, "Jonah, you don't understand." 4.5.3. What doesn't Jonah understand? Let's look the story of the prodigal son all over again Here is the situation. God has two sons, a bad son Ninevite. God told the good son to because

at the story again. It 1s in the Old Testament. good son Jonah and a tell against the bad one

he, the bad son, 15 so bad.

And here is what happened. Good Jonah despised bad Ninevite; bad Ninevite did not despise Jonah. Good Jonah was proud and could

not care

less about

Ninevite;

bad

Ninevite

humbled

himself

“in the dust," and cared about Jonah's word. Good Jonah did not listen to God, fled from God, and was angry at God; bad Ninevite listened to God,

turned to God,

and pleaded with God.

All this is very strange, isn’t it? Good Jonah behaved so badly; bad Ninevite behaved so well. Why? Simple. Jonah 15 good; Ninevite is bad. Jonah is good and knows it; Ninevite is bad and knows it, too. And so Jonah's goodness made him callous, proud, uncaring; Ninevite's badness made hım turn to Jonah and to God— where else can he turn to? And, to think of it, the truth of the matter 1s, “Only sick people

need the doctor; only bad people need God.”… Jonah is good, so

he does not need God who lives among bad people,'” as the doctor lives among sick people. And so Jonah's goodness cuts himself off from bad Ninevite, thereby cuts himself off from God who is with them. Thus the message, the truth, in the sign of Jonah 15 a simple sharp twofold truth: We all need each other, and we all need God. First, Jonah had to learn, on pain of death, what he had to preach, from those to whom

Jonah

he had to preach, that 1s, we all need God. Secondly,

had to learn, again, on pain of death, how

to learn, from

5? Luke 5:31-32. 53 That God who is good lives among bad people defies logic, of course. The good and the bad are mixed by love, the force that unites contraries; good God lives among bad people because God is love (I John 4:8), which renders intelligible all strange sayings of the rest of this subsection.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

those who were learning from him, that is, they need him, and he needs them. In short, good Jonah's salvation depends on bad Ninevites’ salvation. That 15 the message of the sign of Jonah: We all need one another to need God. 4.5.4. Now, this message of the sign of Jonah 15 so rich, deep, and provocative that we cannot exhaust its many implications. Three stand out for now. But before explaining those three implications (in 4.5.5.) let me confess about myself. I admit and confess that 7 am that Jonah. I am that decent good Pharisee, that “good guy" proudly demanding signs, separating myself from all others. Everyone else has an accent except me. All people other than myself are disagreeably different in smell, in eating habits, in talking, in walking, in thinking. I am small, and "small is beautiful”; I hate tall people. I am a Chinese, and Chinese people are the most cultured and historical of all peoples. I had better separate myself from other people, then. I had better not talk with them, but had better build fences, barbed wires, around myself and my residence. Thus I have a xenophobia, a phobia of differences.” I hate different peoples of different colors, cultures, and ways of thinking. I used to hate chilly sour orange juice, especially in the morning; I hated that awful smelling, awful looking, awful tasting Coca Cola, when I went to USA. I hated the smells of foods when I went to Thailand,

to Holland,

to Germany,

because they were so different.

to Japan.

They

were

so awful,

And, of course, my xenophobia, dislike of differences, breeds Jonah-

hke phobia at “bad brutal people,” because dislike of differences turns the “difference” into “bad.” For “bad” is different from “good,” a self-approval term. This is not to condone “bad” (after all, God did want to destroy bad brutal Ninevites), but to note how the antipathetic connotation of “bad” spreads beyond “being immoral” to become a convenient whip in the hands of “good” people. By the same token, “good” here also means more than moral goodness; “good” connotes self-congratulatory approval, a synonym for selfrighteousness, which is exactly the vice of pride.

54 Cf. £...

JONAH THE ONLY SIGN FOR US

261

4.5.5. Now, first of all, 1 never knew, and I never wanted to know, that differences may hurt, but they enrich me—they are wholesome. God blesses us with differences, beginning at sexual ones, then differences in thinking, feeling, living, colors, cultures. Just imagine how much poorer the world would be without peoples of black, yellow, red,

and white colors. And so this is the first point: Differences mutually enrich. We should not be xenophobic; we should treasure differences. Furthermore, contrary to my aversions to differences, all sciences conspire to tell me that it takes different peoples to make up the

world, and that to exist is to co-exist with differences. We cannot, day in and day out, eat the same foods, read the same books, marry

to our own family members, buy from and sell things to our own people—and still live on. We hterally eat "differences" to survive; we live on differences. Sociology, business, history, anthropology, politics, psychology, and even physiology, all tell us that cutting ourselves off from others, who

We

are different, cuts ourselves off from life.

simply die without differences. And so it is not just hfe-enriching but a life-necessity to live with Others who are different in colors and cultures. We either thrive together in differences or we die in isolation, imprisoned in the barbed wires of sameness. The slogan of that fascinating nation troubled with racial differences, “South Africa, a World in one Community" of differences, 15 more than just a slogan. To live among differences is a command of our very lives; symbiosis 1s a. divine imperative of our life. We need differences to live. This 1s the second implication of Jonah's story. But the sign of Jonah tells us that the matter cuts even deeper than that. The story of Jonah tells us that it 1s not just different people that we must need for our surviving and thriving together. It is also the bad people that we good people must need. The surprising truth 1s that we the good people need even the bad people, to learn how to need God, thereby learn how to become really good. This last point 15 the truth that 15 extremely hard to swallow. This is more shocking than that shocker that we need people of different colors and cultures to be ourselves.

But these double

shockers,

that

we need both different peoples and bad peoples to survive as good people, are divinely true. We call this mutual need “interdependence.” %

This

is to put the point

in Section

2 in a nutshell.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

Jesus calls it simply, “love.” “Love thy neighbor,” whoever it is, even the bad one, “as thyself.” This is the thd and real implication of Jonah's story. 4.5.6. So, the sign of Jonah tells us that we need one another, including the bad people whom we avoid and despise. For God is among them; God is speaking to us through them; and God is speaking to them through us. We need the bad people to remind us how much we good people need God, and how much God needs us to go to them about God. No wonder that Parable of the Prodigal Son tells us that the delinquent person is our "brother" for whose “homecoming” we must wait to celebrate, because, Paul continues, he 15 a bod-

ily part of our Body of Christ of which all of us are indispensable and essential parts, constitutive not only of the whole Body but of one another.^^ Thus we can clinch the entire matter by putüng it in a negative imperative: Never, never let our goodness stand in the way of our needing bad people to need God. That is the message of the sign of Jonah. Let us learn from Jonah. Let us pray to God to save us from our own goodness, to make us need him by needing our brothers who

are bad and are different in colors, in cultures. No wonder

no

other signs will be given us except that of that prophet of failure, that prophet of no prophet, Jonah. This brings us back to a final consideration of Jonah.

4.5.7. Failing both to prophesy and to fulfill prophecy singles out Jonah as a very special prophet, a prophet of no prophet. It 1s the significance of this twofold failure that makes Jonah the unique sign for Jesus who came to point to Jonah, so as to point to the significance of Jesus’ own unique work of salvation. For Jonah's twofold failure is the real meaning of “three days and three nights inside the fish," and it 1s the Jonah-like failure that brought Jesus—the “savior” who failed people's expectations—to the cross, a dramatic expression of which "three days in the fish belly" 1s. This explains why the above pages went straight to the failure. One must note an ironic relation between Jonah's failure ("sign") © Luke 15:11-32. 97 Jonah 1:17.

1 Corinthians 12:12-30.

WHY

NOT

CONFLICTS

AMONG

RELIGIONS

263

and Jesus’. Jesus failed neither to carry out his task nor to fulfill his words. Yet Jonah's failure points to the reason why Jesus had to die; Jesus’ explanation turned Jonah's life into a “prophetic” failure that fulfills and succeeds. For Jonah's failure expresses Pharisaic pride and indignation, which explains Jesus’ failure of (good) people's expectation, which in turn leads Jesus to the cross, the “failure” that accomplishes Jesus’ mission of love to save the world, including Jonah and the Pharisees. That their salvation was urged is expressed in the inconclusive endings of the story of Jonah"? and of the story of the prodigal son.'”” A final note is in order. All this is authentically, radically Christian. And all this 1s found and expressed, thanks to the evocation of philosophical Taoism expressed in Chuang Tzu, who wanted nothing but acceptance of life's negativities—the crippled, the convicts, the selfforgetting, the non-striving, the non-moral. And he thus gave us an accepting hollow, a wombing mindheart, an Other-accommodation. Negativities are, with proper handling, extremely nourishing and powerful. This 1s the approach we took when we read the Bible. And the result was as above. Chuang Tzu sensitized our insights into the core of the Christian faith. 4.6. Why

not conflicts among

religions

But why mutual learning and enriching among religions, why not conflict instead? Our answer to this question depends on answering what religion is. Is religious plurality really a contradiction? Is reli-

gion one or many?!9

lo tackle these problems amounts to justifying what has been done so far, to give a rationale jusüfying our project of deepening the Christian faith by learning about Chuang Tzu's philosophical laoism. An answer to the last question above 15 that religion 15 beyond the disünction between one and many, therefore one's own religion 15 not straightforwardly uniquely ultimate. This point can serve as a premise to demonstrate that militant conflict among religions 15 unjustified. 58 Jonah 4:11. 3 Luke 15:32. 50 Cf. E.5. where negative elements of togetherness are treated for the last time.

264

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

And we have another point, amounting to another premise, that all world religions agree on one ideal of agape or karuna, sheer altruistic love or compassion. For historically, the gods of war, brutality, and belligerence had always existed only within the world of polytheism, and they have now all died away (Mars, Moloch, etc.). Thus brutality and conflict 15 out; compassion and mutuality 15 in. Hence, the legitimacy of our project above, 1.e., for one religion to deepen and enrich itself by sympathetically learning from another. Thus the “argument,” as it were, for our religious togetherness as mutual learnıng, not mutual rejection, goes as follows. First, religion is by definition beyond the distinction of one and many, therefore ıt 15 both neither one nor many and both one and many. This point refutes the claim that ultimacy implicates oneness, and defuses this point-as-an-assumption justifying rejection of religions other than one’s own. Secondly, all world religions agree that altruism and compassion deserves embracing as a cardinal religious virtue. This point supports religious togetherness as one of solicitous mutuality, not of either-or militancy. And, to think of it, our project above of deepening one’s own faith by learning sympathetically from another religion most approximates

this

situation—

neither

one

nor

many,

therefore,

both

one

and many 一 thereby manifests the dynamic togetherness of interlearning, inter-benefiting. But this all-too-schematic description needs elaboration and application to our concrete world of many religions, to which we now turn. An important reminder. The following consideration is made in a sentiment informed by both Taoism and Christianity; this is still a project in the spint of “Taoism within Christianity.” This is believed to be a most natural and reasonable way to go, the way of interpenetrative mutuality, of religious togetherness, to ponder on the problem of “many religions.” 4.7. Reason

and religion

Let us begin at the beginning.'®! Religion cannot be known “within the limits of reason alone” (Kant); it 15 a dead-end street that ends ς

161 This

is a retrieval method,

to be used

again

in 4.7.2.

and

5.2.

REASON

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205

up missing religion, yet this route 15 what philosophers of religion have been taking. Emil Brunner had a war cry, “Through God alone can God be known." If it is too trans-mundane to know God through God, we can more legitimately say, “Through (my and other) religions (alone?) can (my) religion be known.” Then we see how natural, though seemingly paradoxical, the world situation of many Ultimates is, and how inevitable learning about one’s own faith by learning (from) other religion 15. We are today dwelling in a small Global Village, within shouting distance one from another via telephones, fax machines, and an E-mail system. Now, as never before in history, we are puzzled over a plethora of absolute ultimate values being advocated by many world religions, many religious systems. These religions are “systems” in so far as each of them is a coherent body of nites, institutions, understanding of ultimate matters, approaches to life, salvific solutions to life-problems, and the like. These systems are “coherent” intra-religiously, but may or may not be logically coherent; witness such notions as the Trinity and the Incarnation, both of which are religiously coherent within the Christian system without necessarily being logically coherent. Much of religious philosophy of atheistic persuasion consists in showing how logically incoherent such religious notions ("beliefs") as God, Nirvana, retribution, salvation, enlightenment, and the like, are. And Richard Swinburne, for instance, endeavors to show the coherence,

both religious and logical, of Christian theism.'™

Our problem begins here, the immensely difficult problem of the fact of many such religious systems 1η the world. As religious “systems,” these religions are each independently self-enclosed, coherently complete in itself; as “religious” systems, they all claim their respective visions and revelations as ultimate, unique, universal. ‘They are all thus both inviolably coherent and uniquely universal; in this context, plurality is a monkey wrench thrown in to wreck the entire situation, for unique ultimate universality is incompatible with plurality; to have both is to be many and one, relative-transient and absolute-ultimate, parochial and universal, all at once. The co-existence of these (pairs of) opposites cries out for resolution.

162 Richard 1986, etc.

Swinburne,

The Coherence of Theism, Clarendon

Press, Oxford,

1977,

266

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

We are going to claim in the following that (4.7.1.) various cognitive attempts at “solving” this problem manifest no solution but instances of three fallacies, because (4.7.2.) this puzzlement is a natural human situation as human beings meet the Ultimate, being less a conundrum demanding intellectual resolution than an occasıon to deepen our understanding of human religiosity. Exercising intellection misses the point and falls into fallacies of various sorts (we see three) that exhibit the paradox nature of our religiosity, from which we do well to learn. Thus claim-in-4.7.1. leads to claim-in-4.7.2. We will now, in 4.7.1., examine these three fallacies, then go on in 4.7.2. to learn from this intellectual impasse. 4.7.1. Fallacies When the curious situation of many lectual

dilemma,

various

trials

religions is taken as an intel-

at its “solutions.”

What dilemma? What "solutions"? What fallacies? First, as to the intellectual

dilemma

at issue. As

exhibit

fallacies.

said above,

we

“A religion,"

as

now realize ln this shrunken world that the religion we embrace 15 Just a religion among others. And this seemingly innocuous phrase, "a religion," turns out to be an incoherent

notion.

one religious system, one specific vision and way of life, is uniquely and coherently itself, different from Others. Yet “a religion" refers to the ulümate and universal. Thus the ultimate-universal 15 here mixed with the unique-particular. lhe paradox indicates three tensions between the Ultimate and many religions as (1) many "paths" thereto, (2) many "expressions," and (3) many "parts" and "aspects," thereof. These tensions breed, in turn, three fallacies of (4.7.1.1.) totality: “Many paths to the same mountain top" (ie. to one's particular religion, or to some extrareligious Archimedean point, taken as the Ultimate); (4.7.1.2.) translatability: Pivotal notions in one religion is translatable into, if not equivalent to, key terms in another; and (4.7.1.3.) integration: So many religions are our so many blind, groping, and partial understandings of one ineffable “Elephant,” the Ultimate. 4.7.1.1. The fallacy of totality: Attacks on religion(s) can be from another specific religion or from a rational standpoint. A specific religious group's attack on other religions assumes that their religious system is by definition infallible, absolute, standing outside both the universe and the.target of their attack. This is a classical case of exclusivism, if not religious bigotry. A supposedly liberal, enlightened, and rational judgment such as Bertrand Russell's, curiously

REASON AND

RELIGION

267

shares this exclusivist stance. In his pungent style Russell challenges God to stand either above or under the natural law: If above it, then God interrupts the universality of the law he created; if under

it, then God is a mere intermediary, not a creator. Again, in the

standard argument from evil against God, the existence of evil discredits God's omnipotence or goodness or both, since evil is “by definition” against the God of this sort. These arguments reflect a presumption to stand outside of the total Ultimate and judge it from above the Above. Here, significantly, we see three assumptions in every attack on religion(s), both religious and rational. First, the attack assumes one cherished | comprehensive ideal or perspective on the world—religious or rational. And secondly, the attacker-subject stands outside the universe and the religious tradition to be attacked, which nonetheless claims to refer to the Ultimate and the totality of things. Thirdly, behind this the attacked objects (religions) are taken to be mere indifferently many talks about the same Reality, so many paths to the same destined Mountain. If this path 15 no good, we have another one—-our own, so the attacker thinks. We, then, attack this one that

is no good with ours which 1s valid. Such a stance with the threefold assumption above is misguided for three simple reasons against the above three characteristics of the attack. (a Rational attacks amount to setting up "the religion of pure

reason” * with which to judge other religions. The celebrated Indian

"virtue" of “tolerance” 15 based on this assumption of “many paths, one mountain top." The top 15 usually Indian. But this 1s to violate the very nature of religion qua religion. Al religions (as initially defined at the beginning of this Section) respectively claim that they have been “revealed” as the indispensable media through which to initiate us to the Ultimate which is by definition beyond anyone's (the devotees’ included) complete understanding. It follows that claiming a knowledge of the Ultimate without these religions misses those religions altogether. Yet to take religions as so "many (dispensable) paths to the same Mount" is an assumption 05 Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, N.Y.: Simon and Shuster, 1967, pp. 3ff.

16% Notice how curiously religious Kant’s “Religion Within the Limits of Reason

Alone" sounds, no matter how much Kant meant it to be rational and open-minded. After all, belief in reason is behind rational attack.

208

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

behind those attacks on religions, and such a stance precisely bypasses these religions. This point 15 about the above third characteristic of the attack. (b) Again, the Ultimate is by definition a totality covering everything, allowing no “outside.” Similarly, “religion,” which is supposedly a system that covers (explains) everything, again, allows no “outside.” Yet to criticize something requires precisely to stand outside of that something. This point is about the above second characteristic of the attack. (c) Finally, it is curious how incoherent the religious attack amounts to, after all, given the fact that each of the attacked religion and the

attack on it assumes “one comprehensive” ideal or perspective. For this assumption destroys the possibility of standing “outside” the attacked object, yet the attack also assumes precisely this outsidestance. [These two necessary assumptions of religious attacks, comprehensiveness and outside-stance, are mutually incompatible. This is about the above first characteristic of the attack on religion. Therefore, to intellectually criticize religion(s) and the Ultimate misses both of them. In short, “outside” stance is the culprit in religious attack. An

extra-religious,

extra-cosmic,

extra-Ultimate

Archi-

medean fulcrum needed for attack is denied to the human subject, by the definitions of religion and of the Ultimate. Το insist on having such an external point of reference amounts to either destroying the very religious systems to be compared and judged, or to setüng up another religion (of one's own) with which to judge others, hardly a fair treatment of religion. Ihus the paradox remains. If totality (implied by the Ultimate) is by definition the comprehensive All, then it must be One, one seam-

less whole, and religion that serves it is impervious to attack. In the meantime, we must again underscore the point that the very phrase, many religions," is incoherent. If any religion can be attacked, rehgiously or rationally, then “any” implies “many,” and many religions must be many expressions of “many totalities,” a contradiction; if "religion" concerns Totality, then the notion of “many religions" denies it. 4.7.1.2. The fallacy of translatability: It is natural that a religious system is proverbially uncompromising. For each religion, as a system, must be unique, integral, and coherent in itself, such as clearly visible in historical religions like Islam and Christianity. To laugh at the Islamic or Christian “scandal of particularity,” the scandal

REASON AND

RELIGION

209

of bigotry, fares scarcely better for those Oriental “mystical religions of tolerance,”

however,

for they

cannot

tolerate

intolerance.

Both

the historical and the mystical religions are quite conscious of themselves, having “heresies” to combat. Thus the universal validity claimed by any of the world religions merely reinforces their uncompromising character. For one’s own “universality” excludes any “Other,” i.e., any other “strange gods.” When one’s “tolerance” is cosmically universalized, no intolerance whatever can be tolerated any more. And, ironically, the religion which welcomes any and all religions ends up becoming another religion alongside others, repudiating them (as being intolerant), as 15 the case with Unitarianism and Baha’ religion. We have a strange way out here—translation. It can be (a) interreligious (other religions into mine) or (b) intra-religious (the Ineffable into the understandable) translation. 4.7.1.2.a. First, we consider inter-religious translation. Since my own religion 15 one sole true universal one (never mind the contradiction, for this is the problem from which the solution of translation comes about to begin with), other religions can and should be translated into my own. Shall we call such a translation a sort of intellectual conversion in religion? Hence, the dilemma and the fallacy. Here is the dilemma. Any religion translated into another is no longer “religion” with its own "territorial sovereignty"; yet religious universality calls for precisely such translation, explanation, and conversion of “other religions” into

one’s own “true” religion. And here is the fallacy, an exclusive one and an inclusive one. An exclusive mode of translatability consists in untranslatability of one’s religion and translatability of all others; its inclusive mode consists in translatability of all into one another in the name of the unlversality of the Ultimate. First, translatability can be seen as another form of excluswism; "other" religions are illustrations of “mine.” The common ground on which translation is made possible is “my own religion.” ‘This is religious bigotry. Secondly, translatability can be an expression of incluswism. If the common ground is not my religion but shared by all religions, then they are indifferently translatable one into another. This sentiment expresses religious relativism, saying, “all religions are indifferently the same.” This is the fallacy of inclusivism, for it 15 either a veiled expression of atheism, or another “religion of intolerance,” intolerant

270

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

of the view, “every religion has its own unique integrity.” Neither of them hardly expresses religious integrity. The problem of translatability stems from the offense of particularity, which 15 inevitable given the universal character of the Ultimate and parochial historical nature of human beings. The revelation of the universal Ultimate to a specific historical individual or tradition starts rivalries among religions. This problem is not confined to historical religions alone, where the oddity 15 frankly acknowledged; the Word was made flesh, and “How odd of God to choose a Jew!" For this problem of particularity plagues the mystical religion as well. Take Buddhism, for instance. To the question, “Why Gautama Buddha

under

a Bo

tree

in ancient

India?”

we

have

an

answer,

"Everyone 15 basically and potentially a buddha, every tree a Bo tree; Gautama was only the first among many." Then we continue to ask, "Why was Gautama the first and not me? Why is everyone a buddha and not a Taoist True Man (chen jen) or a forgiven Christian? Why 15 Buddha's teaching fhe right one and not other gurus' or savlors?" And there is no answer. Another example is Zen Buddhism. Rivalries are rife among different Zen masters both in the same sect and among different ones. Each master claims to be the only one who 1s truly universal and non-partisan. And there has been no compromise. 4.7.1.2.b. This scandal of particularity exists not only among religions but within each of them as well. This is the problem of intrareligious translation. Let us take the problem of religious language within Christianity; religious language demands translation, indispensable in religion as its language-expression, as much of a dilemma as the problem of translatabihty. It 1s analogical for Aquinas, symbolic for Tillich.'9 Both doctrines are designed to explain how human language functions in relation to the religious ultimate. Tillich’s symbolism explains how symbol is related to the symbolized; the former participates in the latter. Thus symbols cannot be replaced at will, because of their intrinsic. necessary relation to the symbolized reality. Aquinas’ analogy 15 supposed to solve the dilemma of univocity versus equivocity, as symbolism does that of biblical hteralism, a form of bibliolatry, on the one hand, and irresponsible allegorism, on the other. Sadly, both solutions fail in their own hands. Analogy gets caught, '

See Appendix

to 4.7.1.2.: “Aquinas on analogy, Tillich on symbolism.”

REASON

AND

RELIGION

27]

sooner than later, in an infinite regress of continuous self-analogization. Or else, analogy is rendered intelligible only by a univocal reference point, which renders analogy superfluous; once a univocal meaning is had, analogy is dispensable. Religious language dies the death of equivocity through one thousand univocal qualifications. Tillich's symbolism has similar problems. For it must either go the route of pan-symbolism,

a euphemism

at least one literal statement

for obscurantism,

at its core, such as “God

or else has

is Being-

itself," which is either unintelligible (because of lack of specific ref-

erence) or itself another symbolic statement which expresses such notions as the “ultimate concern," “the ground of being," which in turn contain at least one symbohc element, such as "ground." Thus both a Catholic solution of analogy and a Protestant solution of symbolism are aground on the hermeneutic reefs from which they are supposed to extricate adequate expressions of Christian theophany, the Incarnation. À Zen koan captures the predicament well: "What 15 this? Say it and I will give you thirty blows; be silent, and I will give your thirty blows." One can neither open one's mouth and die on the rack either of univo-equivocity or of symbolicoliteralism, nor can one shut one's mouth to keep alive unintelhgibility which renders unavailable the Incarnation (or Revelation). Thus the dilemma and the fallacy of translatability starts right at the core of each religion itself, the very historical expression of the transhistorical. Ultimate that 1s religion. Religion demands and resists translation. 4.7.1.3. The fallacy of integration: Foremost in modern thinking about religions 15 the phenomenology of religion, a typology of religious phenomena. It first detaches various religious expressions from their respective historico-cultural contexts, which are regarded as inconsequential. Then the "similar" forms of cultic behaviors and relgious institutions are coordinated into a structure of the "phenomenon” of religious life as such. The structure distinguishes many types of religious activities and representations. Mircea Eliade, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and others have a rich variety of their respective typologies to offer us. In criticizing this typologizing, Wolhart Pannenberg sald, 22

ες

166 The Theology of Paul Tillich (cited in Appendix to 4.7.1.2.), p. 334. 16° Wolhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, Volume Two, Phila.: Fortress Press, 1971, pp. 74—75, Note 19.

272

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS À criterion is needed to distinguish deeper mutualities, which point to an inner kinship between the phenomena involved, from superficial similarities that are beside the point or else utterly fruitless when it comes to grasping the peculiar character of the phenomenon being used as an example, and which only too easily shift one’s attention away from deep-going contradictions among apparently common properties. A fundamental defect in the method of the phenomenology of religion may be seen at this point. The more it abstracts from the historical particularity of the material, the less it 1s able empincally to distinguish between superficial and essential mutualities.

To make

the matter worse, such “criterion” cannot be derived from

typological comparison which presupposes this criterion. For religion itself (the “phenomeno” to be studied) claims to provide the criterion; its revealed contents make up the criterion, and many religions provide many criteria which cannot be mutually compared, much less classified, typologized, by those of secular rationality or cultural mores. By the same token, Joachim Wach and Wilhelm Dilthey are criticized in their typological efforts at understanding history, whose unique unrepeatability is sacrificed in their efforts. Human life itself changes in the historical process of life’s self-expression. No criterion thus can be found in life whereby to identify religious aspects of life, and identify these aspects with various actual religions. For such comprehensive criterion is again to be provided for by each religion which insists, qua religious system, to be a totalultimate map of the world. Otherwise it would be no religion but science or art which claims to treat the world only partially and provisionally. Furthermore, in the meantime, the problem is revealed to be more complex than initially suspected. No less than three competing points are at stake: 4.7.1.3.a. To say that “religion says everything” about the Ultimate 15 not accurate enough, someone may say. For we human beings can understand only some parts of the Revelation from Beyond, or the Enlightenment of the Master, and our understanding itself may change historically. But what is revealed or conveyed in the religious experience is unchanging, complete in itself. The Revelation or Enlıghtenment itself 1s not subject to further revision; it 1s final. And that is the core of religion. One must therefore distinguish faith in what 15 claimed by religion and beliefs that are its cultural expressions. Those blind men groping around the Elephant should not be confused with the Elephant itself.

REASON

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273

Yet how are we, who can discern the Elephant (the what) only through our gropings (the how of our religious experience), to find the Elephant at all, when our very experience 15 to be subjected to scrutiny? Scrutiny by what means? 4.7.1.3.b. And so, unfortunately, this obviously valid insight is a seedbed for errors. We see four. i. The distinction between what religion says and our understanding of it, or what it conveys and whatever formulations thereof we produce (doctrines), has been used by theological positivists (Karl Barth, Hendrik Kraemer) to defend the Object of their faith as “Revelation,” against all religious traditions (including their own) as mere “religions.” In this manner, the distinction is effectively used to defend exclusivism, worsening the already bloody battlefield of religious bigotry. Every religion can now use the same tactic against all others. ii. The same point has also been used for precisely the opposites purpose; extremes meet. And this time, it has: 2 strange twist—the how is now the real what, and the “what” of doctrines is the human husk. For instance, Raymond Panikkar, an Indian Christan, pro-

moted a sort of mystical monism to which the humanity grows progressively, with distinctions between faith (personal commitment) and beliefs (orthodoxies), and between religious message and reality by it. Previously, in 1962, Wilfred Cantwell Smith published his view that “faith” (personal total hfe-orientation) 15 at the core of the husks of various historical traditions called “religions.” According to Smith, faith is!” an orientation of the personality, to oneself, to one’s neighbour, to the universe; a total response; a way of seeing whatever one sees and of handling whatever one handles; a capacity to live at a more than mun-

dane level; to see, to feel, to act in terms of, a transcendent dimension.

And John Hick, admitting himself that “I have been deeply influenced

by the work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith," goes the similar way.

168 Raymond Panikkar, The Interreligious Dialogue, N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1978, pp. 12, 57, 69ff., 79ff. 169 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Faith and Belief, Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1979, p. 12. This is an elaboration of his influential seminal work, End of Religion, N.Y.: Harper & Rose, 1962, 1978.

The Meaning and

70 John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

Press,

1989, pp. xiii-xiv.

274 Religions the Real. the same of human

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS for him are “the different ways of thinking-and-experiencing . . . [T]hese represent different phenomenal awarenesses of noumenal reality and evoke parallel salvific transformations life.”!”!

All this is no

news,

however.

Panikkar,

Smith

and

Hick

are

in

good company with Friedrich. Schleiermacher (the feeling of absolute dependence), Ludwig Feuerbach (theology as anthropology), Rudolf Otto (the sense of the Nouminous), Paul Tillich (ultimate concern), among others, all of whom emphasized the human experiential dimension of religion as the common core of all religions. The uniqueness, and the paradox of unique unviersality, of religion 15 thus smoothed away. This leads us to the third point spun out of the distinction between the human dimension and the Ultimate. iii. Admittedly actual religions are cultural embodiment; they are experiential formulations of human faith. Yet to sever this human pole of actual religion from the utmost pole of comprehensive religious Ultimate, effectively destroys religion altogether. For religions (intend to) say everything about the comprehensive Ultimate, part of which is its cultural expression in the form of “religion.” In religion, the essence (the intended Ultimate) and the husk (cultural expression) form a delicately intertwined tissue, such that to take one away fatally injures the other.^ iv. Thus the severance of the comprehensive faith. from actual beliefs, or the revelation from religious traditions, destroys the very problem such severance was meant to solve. The initial problem was how to live a comprehensive-ultimate life in actual contingencies, or how to reconcile the comprehensive “one” with the actual “many.” The severance of the Ultimate from the actual dissolves the problem itself. 4.7.1.3.c. Let us shift a bit our focus. Let us this time take the human dimension of rehgion to be the historical (doctrinal) expressions of its revelation, human reception of which 15 religious experience. We usually call religion, "faith," and its historical expressive dimension, religious tradition, or “beliefs” for short. Let us consider how the core of religion ("faith") 15 related to its expressions (“beliefs”). Of course, religious faith is not identical with actual beliefs that VI John Hick, ibid., p. 15. 7? Rudolf Bultmann’s demythologization was criticized above (in 4.3.2.) for this reason.

REASON AND

RELIGION

275

express it. That is part of the complexity of the Incarnation, or actual self-expression of the Ultimate. The Incarnation assumes that there are two elements mutually distinct and inseparable—the Ultimate and the actual—stemmed from the Christian God as the Creator of the actual world. The one can neither be cut off from, nor collapsed into, the other. On the one hand, without faith, actual belief ceases to point beyond

itself; it becomes fanaticism. Without actual belief, faith becomes disembodied; it disappears in a mist of ineffability. On the other hand, when faith 1s collapsed into actual behef, the religious Ultimate loses its ultimacy, and deteriorates into mere potency vulnerable to manipulation; when actual belief is collapsed into faith, belief becomes authoritarian orthodoxy, an idolatrous, demonic elevation of the relative and the human. 人 All in all, one is left with an unlivable dilemma.

One

can neither

distinguish cultural embodiments of the religious Ultimate from the Ultimate itself, nor identify both. One cannot even use the image of blind men groping after the Elephant, for two reasons. First, the image simply severs actual religious traditions (blind men) from the comprehensive Ultimate (the Elephant). Secondly, the men are pre-judged to be many, the Elephant to be one, none of which is always the case. For the religious Ultimate may or may not be the Elephant, which may or may not be one; the Elephant may be itself one of those groping blind men, being one of their hidden vital forces. Ihe Heavenly piping(s) to borrow Chuang Tzu to our purpose, may be present only in vanous human

pipings, or earthly ones.“

4.7.1.4. This completes our description of three fallacies.'”” All of them are valiant intellectual attempts at saving the oneness of the universal-Ultimate at the cost of the many actual individualities of religions. Let us take stock. The fallacy of totality warns that religious traditions are neither synonymous with dispensable preparations for the paths to the Ultimate- Total, nor can they be criticized at will from extra-religious 73 This was part of what the subsection (4.3.2.) on “Zen-Christian theophany”

was meant to convey. /* Cf. 4.7.2.4., 5.4.4.

3 Panikkar's interesting “three attitudes" and “three modes” are entirely different from my three fallacies, though they are not unrelated. I have adopted some of his terms—exclusivism, inclusivism, faith, belief, growth.

270

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

perspectives, because each religion 15 itself the complete revelation of the Total. The fallacy of translatability warns that religions are not translatable indifferently one into another, any more than they themselves are translatable into something else that is literal, prosaic, and mundanely rational. And the fallacy of integration warns that those religions are no mere parts of the Whole, for each religion says everything about the Whole, and cannot be woven into a mosaic of typology of religion, which dehydrates the historical particulars for the sake of abstract Truth or empty types. Thus manipulation of religious systems in these three directions destroys the integrity of each religion. On the one hand, ultimacy and universality should not hurt historical particularity. On the other, each actual religious tradition claims to encompass and express the whole of the Ultimate. Such total expression is so intrinsic to the Ultimate that every religion claims that it is the self-expression (revelation) of the Ultimate itself, that 1s, the essential part of the Ultimate itself. It follows, then,

that to hurt historical particularity of religions is to hurt the Ultimate itself. Each of the world religions 15 in itself a concrete-universal; to hurt the concrete particularity of each religion is to hurt the universal and the ultimate 1η it. The above fallacies, originally intended for solving the initial problem, exacerbate it by hurting both the religious Ultimate and the actualities of world religions. The paradox remains, as insoluble as religions are religions. 4.7.2.

Retrieve and “solution”

What

can we

do,

then?

Well,

it 1s salutary

watch

the route itself, as to what 1t amounts

at this time

to retrace

back our routes to the above fallacies."* Each route to fallacy was really that to a dead end. To get out of the blind alley we must to. The

routes to mis-

takes clue us in to the “solution” of the paradox. We have four ways

of proceeding on our retrieve, described in 4.7.2.1., 4.7.2.2., 4.7.2.3.,

and 4.7.2.4. 4.7.2.1. Surveying how we have tried “answers” to the challenge of the "problem" of religious One-and-many, yet have fallen into fallacies, we notce that we lacked neither in ingenuity nor in sincerity. Instead, the fallacies stemmed from our cognitive literalistic attitude, which 15 out of the question in the ultimate realm of reli76 We will use the same retrieval method, used once in 4.7. above, again in 5.2.

REASON AND

RELIGION

277

gion that involves a totality of human life, shaking its very normative foundation. Here a categorial mistake 15 committed several times over. First, a world religion is taken as a cultural entity, a system of culüc behavior, institution, a body of doctrines. Then such concrete particular 15 taken as an entity that denotes the ultimate reality, taken as an abstract universal totality, a One. We then puzzle over how many such concrete cultic-cultural particulars can denote one abstract universal, how they can come together to define the religious sphere. The sphere of religion 15 now Alice's Wonderland of abstract-concretes and universal-particulars, a mess of congeries of logical incompatibles. This 15 the situation wherein the problem was defined. Along the same line of cognitivism, our answers were another set of logical contradictions. “Many” religions require some judicious adjudication among them, yet such rational critique assumes an extrareligious Archimedean point that defies the ultimacy represented by religion. This 15 the fallacy of totahty. Religions should be mutually translatable

in so far they are universal;

they should not, in so far

as they are unique. This is the fallacy of translatability. One can neither distinguish religion as cultural embodiment of the Ultimate from the Ultimate itself, nor can one identify one with the other. This 15 the fallacy of integration. Thus the answers are themselves logical insolubles; they turn out to be as much a cognitive dead ends as the problem 15 an intellectual dilemma. Yet such mental calisthenics, with all its. frustrating. exercises in cognitive futility, is not without its religious significance, as long as lt 15 recognized, no, realized as the futility due to cognitivist stance. Let us see how and where our self-realization leads us. Cognitivism has much to do with a misplaced view of nouns. Nouns are no mere (names or) abstract ciphers that refer and denote (such meaning-function comes much later), but primarily characterizations, crystllizations, and thereby lived allusions and metaphorical evocations, to concrete experience. Each religion is a collecaon of spontaneous characterizations—made into varied systems of nouns— of both the Universal Ultimate and its concrete experiences, ever

relevant to historical actualities and today's situations.

Conceptualizing such spontaneous crystallizations (called “religions’’) heads straight to contradictions. For instance, religion can be said to

7! Cf. 2.1., 2.6.1., 5.4.3.1., 5.4.3.2., 5.5.1.3., 5.5.2.2.2., E.3.

278

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

be the Ultimate concretized, and can be dubbed a“concrete ultimate.” But “concrete” implies “historically conditioned” and “ultimate,” “unconditioned”; combined, a concrete-ultimate 15 a “conditioned uncon-

ditional.” Similarly, “ultimate” connotes "absolute," absolved from particulars, and so implies “one” in a sense; but “one” in a numerical sense conflicts with “many” religions in the actual world. One here forgets that human lived experience is always concrete, serious, and universal. Poets wonder at it; philosophers ponder on it. Yet in considering religion and its problem (“many religions”), one manages to forget it. When such intellectual conundrums as “condiditoned unconditional” and “one-many” are taken seriously, one attempts at “solving” them by indiscriminately using logical buildozers to clear away congitive rubbish and excavate an entity called “religion,” which such conundrums are taken to represent. But the notion of “concrete universal” does not represent. It is a “mute metaphor” (to borrow Whitehead's felicitous phrase) that haunts and evokes concrete religious experience. Nor is a “religion” an entity, but pervasive ultimacy relevant to every moment of daily experience, the ultimacy concretely within, beyond, and beneath each ongoing actuality. After all, human experience itself is, unlike cognition of an object, always concretely unique and universally relevant. Romeo-and-Juliet constitutues a unique historical experience, or rather, a concentrate thereof (sadly, referred to as “fictitious invention”), repeated many times over in history. When its metphorical evocative power faded, “The Westside Story” came up, and then “The Love Story.” Or was the fact rather that the evocative power of Romeo-and-Juliet becomes so unbearably strong today that ıt has to create both these Stories? In any case, each of these Stories is unique, each charged with unique powerful relevance to a unique life-situation, yet repeatedly and irresistibly similar one to another, repeatedly and power-

fully evoking that single concentrate, “love.”'”°

It (or they?) 1s a concrete universal, an actual transversal, a one (and absolute— *lonight is eternal" and a many (Juliet, Maria, etc.).? There is no entity, single or otherwise, to be perceived, named

// On a sad side, the tragedy of Tchaikovsky, first conducted-expressed (just over a week before suicide) in his Symphony No. 6, Op. 74 in B Minor, the "Symphonie pathétique,” and that of Hamlet, were both intensely unique-personal and eternally communal-reverberative. 19 Cf. 2.5., 2.6. on “face” as a transversal.

REASON

AND

RELIGION

279

and reckoned with. It is out of the question to investigate whether “it” is single or not, actual or not, absolute or not. For to understand these stories 15 to understand what 15 all too casually dubbed as "love," as “human

passion." It 15 to understand ourselves, to under-

stand hfe in all its insane intensity, as "systematically elusive" as the self 1s (Gilbert Ryle, Ian T. Ramsey). “Systematic” here means “logical, continual." In other words, what 1s evoked by those Stories continually and logically eludes conceptual clarification and classification (typologization). When one insists on a conceptual understanding of elusive human life, one harvests only dilemmas and fallacies. But our story does not end here. It 15 important to notice that these

human

misconstruals,

fallacies and

failures are themselves

an

experience of such elusiveness. And sensitively to go through this elusiveness 15 to undergo a religious experience. “Universal concrete” is a road map of religious pilgrimage, a station on the way to enlightenment and salvation. “Universal concrete,’ when take not cognitively but evocatively, 15 a religious performative; to go into the phrase attentively is to go through self-transforming self-transcendence. Failures,

after all, are one integral stage in life’s way

to success, in

salvation toward lfe-discernment. Thus in this situation, the standing plurality of religious traditions, each opposing the other, each claiming its own pervasive relevance to life, can be used to understand one religious tradition better by understanding others. The Christian theophany is understood better by grasping “Zen” experience “in motorcycle maintenance.” This is an offshoot of evocative reciprocity so often alluded to by Chuang Tzu. To understand “Maria” is to understand “Juliet,” and to understand both 15 to understand “my fair lady”; to understand Others 15

to understand oneself, and vice versa. The subsections previous to

4.7. did precisely this. This is the friendly way of mutual fecundation through mutual stimulations by differences, a religious togetherness more in line with the noble sentiment of each religion than a con-

tentious spirit that mars, divides, and slashes one’s religious tradition, no, oneself, as well as other’s traditions and Others themselves.

4.7.2.2. What does this amounts to? What can one learn from the paradoxes of may absolutes, the one and the many together at once? Are there insights to be gained from pondering on the absolute 180 Tt is thus

that this Section

4 is a continuation

of Section

2 on

the

Other.

280

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

that 15 concrete, the universal that 15 particular? Perhaps six points at least can be raised, 4.7.2.2.1. through 4.7.2.2.vi. 4.7.2.2.3. To begin with, if so many incompatible views exist on our familiar world of actual human lives, there should be no surprise in finding so many incompatible revelations on the world beyond ours that impinges on us. This is not to say that the religious Ultimate (to which religions point) is or is not plural,δ᾽ but to say that human religious traditions are bound to be plural. And since we know more about human condition (which tends to be many and vaned) than about the transcendent world of religious ultimacy, and literalism is applicable only where we are familiar, literalism is applicable only to the world familiar to us, (2८101570 1s out of place in the religious world. The religious world is that of metaphorical evocation, not of scientific literalism.5^ The above described failures to answer the wrong question and wrong answers thereto are all produced in literalısm, that 1s, a quest for cognitive literal truth, which is out of place in the ultiamte realm of religion. If death and evil are ontological mysteries (as Marcel put it) where objective hteralsm only falsihes the issue at stake, then religion is more so which is an ultimate enrivonment for death and evil to appear. Such world of ultimacy cannot be taken lightly. To say that the Ultimate (and the Beyond) 1s numerical one, is as much an hasty arrogance, as it 1s off the mark to say we know absolutely nothing about the Ultimate. We intimate that our world 1s finite. (Descartes, Royce, Marcel, Jaspers, Heidegger), which makes sense only if it is supported by the Infinite and Ultimate, in terms of which this world is this world. Thus we “know” enough about the Beyond to mumble about 1t through

death and evil, if nothing else. We

know

and

we do not—1in the religious world that is beyond ours which 15 yet included in it. 4.7.2.2.11. Secondly, as Kant claimed, human reasoning is perpetually bankrupt ın antinomies on metaphysical matters of hfe. After tasting humanity Sisyphus must roll his rock endlessly up the mountain to face the futility of its roll-down. And Camus pronounced him 8! It is a mistake to say that the Ultimate is one, but our experiences of it are

many, as so many “tolerant” religions and thinkers (W.C. Smith, J. Hick, others) insist. For how do we human beings know that this is the case? 18 Cf. Luke 8:10-11; 1 Corinthians 1:18-29; 2:6-16.

and

REASON

"happy."

AND

RELIGION

28]

Similarly, the lot of humanity consists in the continual

rolling of its metaphysical speculation on many hills of religious systems. And it is in this incessant rolling that we will be judged blesed and happy. At the crıtical eschatological moment, the Ultimate appears itself to be different from the particular concrete, saying, “The poor

you have always,”'** implying, “so give it to me.” At the same time,

that difference shall be embraced and absorbed in the Ultimate which is the parücular concrete, saying, "Whatever you do the least among you, you do it to me."!? There is no respite, rational or otherwise, for us here; we can only roll continually. 4.7.2.2.111. ‘Thirdly, Socrates’ statement, “You don’t know what you said you do,” implies his own ignorance combined with his awareness of it. This crucial self-awareness of ignorance opens the self to the infinite Ultimate, which by definition is more than the finite humanity can grasp. As Chuang Tu said, “Human life 15 limited, but knowledge 15 limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless 15 fatal; and to presume that one really knows 15 fatal indeed!”'® The problem of many religious absolutes is an occasion for one’s exercise of Socratic-Chuangtzu-esque ignorance which opens one’s being to the Ultimate. 4.7.2.2.iv. Fourthly, the above being-open is an extremely active and dynamic one. Let us consider an example. Ninian Smart {001 the statement, “God 1s utterly incomprehensible,” literally interpreted,

to be “a contradiction.” For it means nothing could be known about

him,

not even a basis for referring to him

as God

which,

however,

this statement just did. We are reminded of St. Anselm’s definition of God that he claimed Gaunilo, an atheist friend of his, must share

with him, for otherwise Gaunilo would not be able even to deny God. Then Anselm showed, as is well known, how contradictory it is to deny God's existence, given his definition. Thus, on Anselm’s showing, Gaunilo could neither reject the definition of God that Anselm proposed (on pain of being unable to deny God) nor accept it (again, 83 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, N.Y.: 1959. This is his last concluding word of the essay. 5: John 12:8.

Random

House,

15 Matthew 25:40. 186 Chuang Tzu, 3/1, with which the Chapter begins. This is Lin Yutang’s trans-

lation in The Wisdom of Laotse, N.Y.: The Modern Library, 1946, p. 174. 187 Cf. 2.1.1.1. where our ignorance in front of the Infinite is considered.

'88 See Appendix to 4.7.2.2.iv.: "Smart's ‘performative transcendence’ and mine."

282

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

on pain of being unable to deny God, given the validity of Anselm's argument). This is a religious use of cognitive inconsistency. What is noted is that such an impasse is a natural outcome of cognitive fixation on notions. When used religiously, such neithernor (neti-nett) can be stripped of its theoretical import in a conceptual heaven, and used as a ladder for “performative transcendence” (to borrow Smart to our purpose), a chart for processive emancipaton

from intellectual fixation, as Zen

koans

are meant

to be used.

The goal 15 to have freedom to move in and out of any position, the liberty of neither-nor. There is a twilight here that leads us out of the maze of religious plurality. It goes as follows. An

impasse

of the fallacy of translatability,

for instance,

can

be

"solved" as follows. If one can neither say nor not-say about the Ultimate, then one can treat those cryptic religious utterances (Koans, incantations, the Incarnation, the Sermon on the Mount) as a neithernor; what 15 meant is expressed neither by speech nor by silence. Rather, the meaning resides in the speech that 15 known to be notthe-meaning. What is meant is what is not-said suggested by what is. This 15 a metaphorical use of "saying." Meta-phors are ferries that bring us from the shore of literal falsehoods to that of evocative truth. Naturally, there always exists the danger of missing what is really meant behind those false or contradictory sayings. Nothing is immune from dangers even in the realm of hteralism, but especially in the unfamiliar territory of the Beyond. The chances of missing the point, however, can be reduced (not eliminated) this way. Someone will, sooner or later, grasp with inner conviction at the alluded meaning with the help of those ambiguous and contradictory sayings meant as metaphor, non-analogically (not univocally), non-symbolically (not literally). Then, the “message” shall be conveyed to the sympathetic audience, again evocatively, but this time with more relevance and flexibility. This is why religion is “tradition,” a personal handingdown of the hidden “message.” This is an experiential referring, normative and religious, not a logical or a locutionary one. This is the “speech that 15 not said," the “Tao that 15 not-taoed." Ihis 15 the pinnacle of religious expression, to which only one who is within the universal-Ulümate can aspire to understand. This beingin 15 a total existential non-symbolic non-analogical point, to which one is-open in one’s i-gnorance, and from which one understands

REASON AND

RELIGION

283

the religious language to be both false (literally) and, as serious, revealed, inspired, and true (analogically, symbolically). Only one who has open ears hears. 4.7.2.2.v. Fifthly, if the infinite Ultimate must be intimated in a negative, performative, and metaphorical manner, the infinite Ultimate itself must

not be fixed in one position,

either. For instance,

“tran-

scendence" is now seen as an incarnated immancence (in religion). The Infinite must be so transcendent (transcending the confinement of being only in the realm of transcendence) that it incarnates itself in the familiar-historical-unique (Buddha, Jesus), and then reincarnates itself in the least among us everywhere. Only Gautama Buddha was the first to be enlightened and the first to teach the Eightfold Noble

Truth,

but,

after Buddha,

we

realize

that, of course,

every-

one in the street is a buddha. Ihus “The poor you have always; therefore, give to me" at the eschatological moment coincides with. "Whatever you do to the least among you, you do it to me; therefore, be helpful among yourselves," without collapsing anyone or any injunction into the Other. The stricture expressed in “He who is not with me is against me"!?? goes with the cosmopolitan “He who is not against us is for us.”'” The unique absolute Home 15 (not “has”) the many mansions of various religions, without translating the Home into many mansions, nor vice versa. All this must be understood in the interflow of living experience, where nothing can be fxated.” For to take all the above pairs as straightforward cognitive conundrums leads to many fixated fallacies, three of which have been considered. 4.7.2.2.vi. Finally, to put all this differently. The contrast of the absolute-holv with the relative-secular does not coincide with a mathematical incompatibility between one and many, nor 15 it interpretable in the mode of a physical billiard ball bumping and excluding another. Rather, religious contrasts express the freedom of “being unstuck" (pu chh-choh), as a Buddhist would say, of being “cut loose" (Asüan 75 9 ” ments

itself

Matthew 12:30. Mark 9:40. We remember Socrates puzzled over how unfastenable definitions and arguare, in his meditative Meno ‘cf. 86b, and Euthyphro ‘11d;. Socratic inquiry is a movement,

187b, 201a, 210b.

as in

“Let

us

move

forward"

in

Theaetetus,

148d,

152b,

179d,

284

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

chieh), as Chuang Tzu would say, of one's universal flexibility within

and among actual particulars.'”

Fixation in this context now serves as an evocative symbol and metaphor— breeding koans 一 for flexibility, via the very contradictions one wishes to avoid when within cognitive realm. The holy and ulümate 15 "the one and in the many"; the relative is "the one against the many." Rivalries among religions, and those between the religious and the irreligious, are matters for relative-finite zrreligious human beings. For those who are religious, the matter of “many religions" belongs to a neither-nor in the mode of both-and, a free combination of “He who 15 not against us 15 with us” (universality) with “He who 15 not with me 15 against me" (uniqueness). To this truly religious realm we must enter through the long winding road of misconstruals, fallacies, and failures of understanding. Such road is that of self-catharsis, which happens unawares during those frustrating cognitive exercises: "What 15 the sound of one hand clapping?” During the exercises our proud rational analyticity 15 cleansed away. Our mind-fasting (Asin chat) prepares us for a faceto-face total encounter, in the depths of our being, with the Ultimate,

whatever that may literally mean. Chuang Tzu sighed,'™

Ah! How I pity those who destroy themselves! Then again, I pitied those who pity others; and again, I pitied those who pity those who pity others. But all that was long ago.

And in this sigh he revealed, quite casually, the road he trod towards his enlightenment. Now, we can approach an answer to our original question of "many religions." We do it in two installments, 4.7.2.3. and 4.7.2.4. 4.7.2.3. Those three fallacies of totality, translatability, and integration are fallacies partly because of their destruction of the problem which they are originally designed to solve. They are fallacies because they are, in one way or another, a betrayal and destruction of the very concrete incarnation of the Ultimate, that is, “religion.” 77 Contrast this free stance with Socrates’. Freely strolling in the marketplace

and among the commoners, the politicians, the artisans and the poets, Socrates' purpose was yet to "fasten the opinion by the tie of the causes" (Meno 984). Such cognitive search for fixed causes and reasons may not be appropriate in daily experience, much less in the realm of ultimacy.

,55 Chuang Tzu, 4/26. ?* Chuang Tzu, 24/64—65. This is Burton Watson's translation in his The Complete

Works of Chuang Tzu, op. cit., p. 271.

REASON AND

RELIGION

285

The orginal problem of “many religions” was twofold: (a) How 15 the blend of the universal and the concrete possible? (b) Can the Ultimate be many? Having learned from those fallacies, our “answer” to question-(a) is as follows. It is not the possibility but the authenticity of such blend that 1s the problem, for human hfe as 1t 1s lived would have been impossible without the blend of the universal and the concrete. In fact, to be human :s to be a concrete universal (by virtue of human capability to project, to universalize, and to understand). The problem 15 rather, Which universal? or What sort of blend? Or more accurately, the "problem" is neither the blend's possibility. nor its contents, for they are none of our human business to probe. The problem 15 rather how to be faithful to such a blend that 15 our life, and how to keep it on the right authentic track, which we call “living.” And our "answer" to question-(b) is as follows. The concept of "many," and with it, the dichotomy of one from many, are applicable in the realm of the concrete actual, not in that of the Ultimate,

much less in a casual blend of the two. For religion 15 by definition the locus, that 1s, the ground,

the source,

and the regulative princi-

ple of an actual blend. Religion 1s rather the original Embodiment itself (usually called the Unity) that enables one-many distinction to

arise in the first place.'” This is that by which and in which all the

many-one considerations are made and made possible. It is therefore logically inappropriate (and irrelevant) to apply the distinction back to its own matrix, to which the distinction does not apply at all. When one wonders whether religion 1s one or many, one considers religion as one item among many within our mundane world, which is by definition made by/for what religions point to. Such con sideration takes away the very essence of religion, the cosmic ultimacy and normativity. Let us take a simple example. Numbers are calculated a prion (logically, before being applied to actuality. Yet we merely instinctively apply our a pron calculation to the actual world; we usually don't ask why such calculation 15 applicable to things at all. We just do it, because we are at the juncture of the interplay between a priori calculation and concrete affairs of the world. We are the juncture, the rational-existential blend of the universe; such our lives extended '

See Appendix

to 4.7.2.3.: "The one-many mutual embodiment."

286

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

long enough, we see that history 15 a concrete universal. To ask any further is illegitimately and unintelligibly to apply categories to their matrix of human life. And religion is the matrix of all these experiential matrices. It is thus clearly absurd to apply cognitive consideration to religion. In the final analysis, it may be said that to ask such question as the possibility of a concrete-particular incarnation of the Ultimateuniversal, or of reconciling the one absolute with many actual faiths, is already to depart from the very authenticity of the blend, the lived world of concrete universals, of absolute actuals, that 15. actuals with

ultimate depths. And conversely, to be aware of this, and to go through the agonies of realizing how insoluble such questions are, as going through Zen koans, is itself to go back to the authenticity of the blend. It is a dynamics of faith. deepening itself. For faith is the connection that “binds”'” us (in the historical concrete) to the Beyond (of religious Ultimate). To grapple with the nature of the bond is itself to deepen it. 4.7.2.4. Let us now try out what is considered above with two concrete

concentrates,

“music”

and

"circle," and mix them.

Let us first take music. Music was once said to be a presence of non-presence. When the world is surveyed, however, music 15 found to be the midpoint of all things under and above heaven that are presences of non-presence. lo understand this, we must retrack ourselves and consider what "presence of non-presence" means. Personalities in novels, for example, are presences of non-presence. Whether Karamazov or Romeo or Maria, they do not actually walk down the street to be greeted; they are fictitious non-presence. Yet as fictional personae, as concentrate-persons, they are more powerful than actual ambiguous persons. Their presence moves us profoundly, decisively. They are potent personal presences of non-presence. Now we can go a step further. Music 1s an ulümate presence of non-presence. Not even historical actualities can be found in it, nor can it be referred to as fictional characters can. This is true especially of the absolute music, but even the program music, such as an opera, 1s in the final analysis nameless because the main point in it lies elsewhere than to mimic and describe an operatic story. Instead, through such a story an opera presents the impact of the ontological rhythm of the universe, or at least various aspects thereof. “Religare” that is religion is to bind.

REASON AND

Music

is a rhythmic presence

RELIGION

of non-presence,

without concrete historical presence.'!”

287

rhythmic presence

Now let us go another step. We have religion. Here we have not even a definite theme such as personalistic impacts or rhythmic presence. Ít is a pure non-Presence, and as such it pervades everywhere, and 15 felt as Presence more intimate than myself (Augustine). In fact it grips every entity from beyond, within and beneath that enüty; it is the creative power that molds the beginning of things and guides them to their ends, the ultimate significance and intimate. structure (or structuring power) of the entire universe. It 1s Presence far excellence. Yet because of its non-presence religion leaves everything as it 15. It is not a power that imposes itself but a presence that is a nonpresence. Let us take another image, circle. Religion is a circle (to borrow Nicholas of Cusa) of an everywhere center and an in-finite circumference,

that 1s, nowhere.

Its center

is everywhere,

so pervasive

a

reference point, at the core of every being. But a pervasive point 1s no point. And so a circle with its circumference nowhere and its center everywhere is no circle. Thus religion is a no-circle circle, a no-presence presence. Furthermore, its non-presencing reinforces its presence. Religion’s haunting power 15 enhanced infinitely because of its in-definite character, without even fictional personalism or a definite musical pulsation. For any de-finite character delimits its presencing power. At the same time, being the Ultimate of all presences that are non-present, religion includes them all. In its pure non-presence, the religious presence has profound personal potency and rhythmic life pulsation. Or rather, religious presence non-presencingly begets them

and sings in them. It is the “heavenly piping" (tien lai)” that incessantly pipes forth Silence through all the earthly and human pipings.'”

Now, let us apply all this to our problem at hand. Religious tensions between presence and non-presence are felt concretely in the plurality of world religions. Perhaps it can be said that what Buddhism adumbrates like absolute music, Christianity presents like an opera. But in the end, as both absolute music and program music

7 My History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. appreciated “music” as an essence of history.

11-123,

18 Chuang Tzu, 2/4. 9 Cf. 1 Kings 19:12, that voice of Silence that Elijah the despaired victor over-

heard. See also 4.7.1.3.c., 5.4.4.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

present the cosmic rhythm, so both Buddhism and Christianity intimate the cosmic presence that 15 so powerful as to be non-presencingly pervasive and transparent. It is everywhere and it lets things be themselves, their deep authentic selves. Ultimately, the Infinite manifests its powerful presence in its free coming and free dying, historically and ontologically. Religion haunts and

nurses,

directs and

destroys,

unmistakably

present,

always

and

everywhere, in all its non-presence. To participate in it 15 to blissfully meander in the world, freely coming, freely dying. And so, all in all, we see that the Ultimate transcends all; It tran-

scends even transcendence and expresses-reveals-presents-incarnates itself in the non-ultimate world such as ours, and “many religions" are born. Here, uniqueness goes as much with ubiquity as the one with the many. Thus we “can eat the cake" of other religions’ Ulümate(s) and “have it" (the uniqueness of our own faith), too. In fact, precisely because of this, we should do so, on pain of enfeebling our faith. Let us put it this way. The Ultimate transcends everything, including transcendence itself that goes beyond relative actuals, sounds, and numbers,

so much

so that it expresses itself within the relative,

particularistic mundane of actuals, of sounds, of numbers. The transcendent Ultimate now expresses immanently in the “here, not there; this, not that; now, not then." Thus the Ultimate is now transcendent and immanent, a tran-

scendent immanence.”” It is the Heavenly Piping that pipes forth the earthly and the human pipings, the Silence that speaks beyond one and many, through one and many. This is the Realm of “πο realm

and all realms,"

where

we with. Moses

take off our shoes of

conventional logic and approach it, then dwell therein on our knees of open receptive understanding.” And then we understand right there that this 15 the sacred Circle, with its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere. This Circle of “πο circle in every circle" 15 the more understood the more we wander around, savor, and understand its many “everywhere”-centers (many other religions) to understand its one “nowhere”-circumference (one's universal unique faith). Thus, far from being a problem, “many

^9 Cf. a similar argument in 1.4.1. where radical inclusion is said to include— accommodate—exclusion. 20! The Exodus in the Bible uses “fire” to bring out what we did with “music” and “circle.” ‘These three share a common characteristic of no-presence presence.

WHAT

religions"

is legitimate,

IS NOT

THIS

no, inevitable.

“CIRCLE”

289

It 15 our singular, invaluable,

“God-given” access to the Ultimate. In addition, the matter does not stay here but goes further. Now that the “problem of ‘many religions’” ceases to be problematic but is, on the contrary, something priceless, necessitated by the nature of the Ultimate for us to understand It, religious cross- and interfertilization—religious togetherness—is what 15 incumbent upon us. In this situation, we not only can but should so gratefully learn as much

as we

can

from

other

religions,

as to cherish,

enrich,

and

deepen our own faith, thereby strengthen our appreciation of its unique universal glories. In short, this is how we human beings stand: Either we thrive together in appreciative cross-religious reciprocal learning, or we shrivel away and die in proud “orthodox” isolation; we have no third alternative. Religious togetherness is inter-religious togetherness, and it 15 a dynamic traffic, back and forth. “Taoism within Christianity” we have tried instantiates this our jointly enhancing life-zmperatwe in the ultimate no-Realm of the Ultimate.

4.8.

What

1s not

“this

circle’’

But the scar of particularity is still there. If there is no “limit” (as Dr. Kruger puts it) to the “circle” called religion, since its circumference 15 nowhere,

there should be what 15 not “this” circle called a

particular religion of, say, Christianity. What is this “not-Christianity”? Dr. Kruger's question in this form still haunts us.”

In other words, how should the “unbelievers” be dealt with? It 1s

all good to say we should “learn from them.” What about them? ‘The “unbelievers” were divided into two groups, the insiders and the outsiders, and the inside unbelievers were typically harsh with the Chnist and the believers. We remember it was Judas and the Pharisees, not Romans or Greeks, who had Jesus crucified. Similarly, it was the Jews and the Christians who were harsh with Paul. But how about those outsiders who refuse to believe? Are the Christ and the Christians (to be) harsh with them? What is not Christianity? A reasonable answer extrapolated from what has been said would be that anyone or any attitude 1s not Chnistian that refuses to “learn 202 See 4.1.3.4. above.

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SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

from outside one’s own religion,” to “love one’s enemy” or “one’s nelghbor 一 refuses to mix with the Other but 1s pharisaically insulated

within oneself.” How about those who simply refuse to accept Christ,

that particular person, that God-man, and his group? But this group means those who accept and learn from their “outsiders." This point probably helps us understand that both "those who don't oppose us are with us" (they learn from us) and "those who are not with us oppose us" (they refuse to learn from us) are correct. To the latter group Jesus has some harsh words for them.?”

But those words are rare indeed.*” More typical is Jesus’ attitude expressed in such passage as this:Ὁ

On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans . . .; but they did not receive him. . . . [H]is disciples James and John . . . said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them, saying, "You do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them." Then they went on to another village.

lhe same holds for Paul who accuses the Gentiles rarely, as in Romans 1:18-32, and even then immediately comes back in Romans 2 to warn us against judging people. More typical 15 his attitude described in Romans 12 on piling our "fire" of kindness on those

who mistreat us, leaving “vengeance” to God.^" The Christian fight is always with evil spirits, not with infidels.””

Yet "preaching the Gospel” is not preaching "learning from the Other," not even preaching “loving your enemy."?? It is announcing the coming of that historical Savior Jesus Christ who came to love the enemy, accepted his enemies’ hatred till death on the cross,

thereby offered to receive us into his Fold called “God’s Kingdom." Now that is a scandal of particulanty. Our proposal of learning from the Other seems to dilute if not to embarrass and stunt the Christian

25 In his Parable Jesus strongly implies 24 Luke 10:10-12, 2% And they were Gentile towns.

of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) told to *a lawyer," that he must learn from the outsider “Samaritan.” 18, for instance. pronounced more to those Jewish towns, still praising the

206 Luke 9:51—50. 27 Romans 12:13-21. This attitude is repeated everywhere in his Epistles. 28 E.g., Ephesians 6:11-13.

209 Mahatma Gandhi accepted “loving the enemy” without accepting Christ Jesus.

WHAT

IS NOT THIS “CIRCLE”

29]

mission with such specific historical contents. This seems to be a stumbling block to the Christian missiology. But rejecting this Offer amounts to “going into hell,” not because of an external tyrannıcal Power consigning us to hellish fire and brimstone, but simply because to reject the Offer is to reject the Ongin—called divine Love—of the life-imperative of accepting into oneself the Other, that imperative of symbiosıs. We either thrive together (Other-ly attitude) or die in isolation (pharisaic insulation), and there is no third alternative—and this "and"-clause constitutes the fire of hell. The so-called “other false gods and goddesses” are those “divine” principles of this “other alternative,” the contrary to this Other-ly attttude—solation, insulation, hatred, cruelty, or debauchery which 1s a desire-form of selfish insulanon. And this “contrary” amounts to a nonentity. The Chnstian Circle is the Circle of no circumference, that is, no “No trespassing,” no “ofl-lımit”; it is the religion for the Other. Since there is no other survival-alternative to togetherness, and since the Christan Circle is this togetherness Incarnate, what 15 “not” this religious Circle of no circumference is a nonentity. Yet we do have a final rock-bottom aporia, however. Can we, as Gandhi did, accept this Other-principle without accepting Jesus Christ? But how is it possible, seeing that Jesus is one of our Others? And yet this is not right, either; Jesus 15 not just one of many others we must accept and from whom we must learn. He is the unique Lord of otherhood, the unique historical Incarnation of this principle of life, and this particularity remains the stumbling block of this religion qua religion. For the particularity here is inherent within this particular religion itself “God 15 love," which unites the Ultimate with the conungently particular), and cannot be solved by the general solution above based on a general consideration of the religiousness of religion, namely, (a) the Ultimate as such which transcends the very transcendence, and (b) the impinging revelation of the Ultimate implicating its incarnation. But the Chnstian Incarnation happened in history because “God 1s love,” “how odd of God to choose a Jew,” and

that the

Lord

died

on

the

cross

for his enemies

and

sinners;

now all this 15 peculiar to the Christian faith, impossible for human reason to puzzle out. And then our previous strictures come back, criticizing this line of thinking as “cognitive.” We assumed, so these strictures tell us,

292

SECTION 4: RELIGIOUS TOGETHERNESS

the dichotomy of general vs. concrete, one vs. many, ultimate vs. contingent, and illicitly took this dichotomy to be unbndgeable. Then we

wondered

how

the Christian faith could be on both

sides, tak-

ing for granted that our own consideration so far stays on the side of the general, the one, and the ultimate; we wondered

about how

such our cognitive consideration could ever understand their unity to obtain in the Christian faith. But the dichotomy should not have been made unbridgeable, although it should firmly stand as long as religion is religion. And

then we

are back to where

we

started, on how

to make

of

this dichotomy in which things are both inseparable and distinctive. In short, we unwittingly trod the road of stringent cognitive dichotomy trod by G.E. Lessing when he criticized the Christian faith as illicitly jumping over the “ugly ditch” separating logical necessity from factual contingency. No wonder we bumped into blind alleys wherever we turn. The “stumbling block” remains, this time on a meta-level. Let us think about this our very inability. We recall that previously, in pursuing the nature of historical necessity which is neither physical necessity nor logical one, this religious critique was used as our “whipping boy,” a negative critical catalyst.*'° At that time Lessing’s religious critique was used to consider a this-worldly problem. Here the reverse route was taken; the religious one-many dilemma, a trans-

worldly problem, has been considered with the help of the concrete situation, the particular (e.g., Romeo and Juliet) as a concentrate of

the universal (“passion,” *love").*!!

And perhaps such route of mutual illumination between the thisworldly and the trans-worldly has been made possible by the fact that religion is the primordial unity of correlative contraries which we are accustomed to regarding as always separate. Religious unityin-diversity is that by which questions and answering efforts came about. We cannot, then, exert thinking to understand this pivotal point around which thinking revolves, any more than we can prove “A is A" which makes possible the very proof”? No wonder we could not completely figure out this Christian scandal of particularity. Sadly, we note that this unintelligibility makes the Christian mission an irrelevance if not a futility or an impossibility. For why hurl 219 See my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 52-73. “1! See especially 4.7.2.1. above. 22 Cf. 1.1.1.1.

WHAT

IS NOT

THIS

“CIRCLE”

293

an unintelligible monster at those innocent “infidels”? Why exclude all other gods and religions 1η the name of the Christian Love which includes all? Thus missiology 15 a thorn in the flesh of the Christian faith-and-love. We commit this thorn to Jesus Christ’s loving fold. "Now we see in a mirror, dimly,” especially in the context of love, of togetherness.^^ But we do see, however dimly, that togetherness does describe the primal unity, in the Ultimate, of transcendence and immanence, universality and particularity, necessity and contingency, many and one. What we don't see is how this unity obtains. In any case, failing to solve all problems, we yet have thus managed to think worldwide about world religions. And we see that our focus remains togetherness, in the sense of deeply learning about oneself (one's own religion) by learning from the Other. Can such a thing, what we have just undergone, be called world-thinking, world philosophy? What sort of thing is “world philosophy"? This will be our last theme on worldwide togetherness— world philosophy in the making." It consists In "inner touch," another implicaton of togetherness. To this fascinating and significant theme we now turn.

213 We know that this sentence is from Paul's “hymn of love,"

13:12, just before his concluding statement.

1 Corinthians

SECTION

INNER

5

TOUCH—WORLD PHILOSOPHY IN THE MAKING

There is no such thing as world philosophy, at least not yet. The Chinese philosophy, if there be such, has its “better half,” as it were,

in the West, and so does the Western philosophy.' The world philosophy comes about only in the process of symbiosis, such as that of these two. From now on, in order to concretely consider philosophical symbiosis, we will ponder on the coming together of two philosophical traditions, one in China, another in the West. We will 1η the following pages envision such a process by way of first (in “5.1. inner touch with Sartre”), a small instance of what would happen when two philosophical traditions critically but caringly come together, and then (in “5.2. symbiosis—philosophical inner touch”) look into what we can learn from this illustration. Finally, we conclude with two performative exemplifications (5.2. the self in Descartes, Confucius, and Chuang Tzu,"

“5.4. the spirit of Western

pragmatism vs. the Chinese pragmatic spirit”) of such philosophical symbiosis on the “self” and “pragmatism,” both from the viewpoints of two traditions.

5.1.

Inner touch

with

Sartre

Here we utilize Sartre’s insights on nihilation in a positive manner. Sartre discovered that “hell is other people” and pursued its structure. Other people are hell because my consciousness both “is what it is not, and is not what it is.” This “not”—nihilation—constitutes me as a person. I am a lack; I exist as nihilation, executed by the Other. He "founds" me, for whom I remain responsible. Thus Sartre grasps nihilation solely as annihilation by the Other. The Other’s ' ing Cf. Body

By (Chinese or Western) “philosophy” here I mean the style and mode of thinkdeeply, comprehensively, coherently, and thoroughly, in China or in the West. my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., and On Chinese Thinking, op. cit.

INNER TOUCH

WITH

SARTRE

295

look shapes me by shaming me; I exist as the Others annihilation (of my being human). This is one ontological possibility often actualized; the Other is often my hell. This is Sartre’s discovery. But this is a one-sided view οἱ self-nihilation, which can be positive as well. That is, my nihilation can also be my becoming mhil to enable the Other to be, and thereby becoming myself. And the Other can, by his self-emptying, shape me by letting me be myself, acknowledging me as I am, without shaming me into a thing. The Other, exactly in Sartre's ontological description, can be my home to womb me forth as I am, who can likewise womb forth the Other. "He became poor for your sakes, so that you by his poverty might

become rich.”?

Sadly, this possibility has often been actualized to turn into a Sartrian hell, then again to turn around to become a home. I am being born 1η my home, the Other, only to be killed in my hell, the Other, only to be born again in the Other my home, and so on. The Sartrian dynamic nothingness can become my hell as well as my home. The hell-possibility Sartre has explored; we are here to consider the home-possibility of personal nihilation. How can "home" obtain? It cannot obtain in one person, but in at least two persons. “I am at home" means "I am at home in you (singular or plural)" Being at home means that you accept me (as I am), I accept your acceptance of me, and I am born in this reciprocal acceptance. Mutual acceptance describes three factors (or facts). First, you accommodate and acknowledge me as a person; you nihilate yourself into rooming me to be myself. Then, / myself in turn accommodate your acceptance of me. I also become a chamber to accommodate you. Finally, I resonate with your (mode of) acceptance. Our mutual acceptance gives room wherein I freely chime in with your acceptance; our ontological resonance lets you become—come to be 一 yourself, and thereby enables me to become myselt. lo begin with, you objectively acknowledge me as I am, and cannot dispose of me as a chattel. Your acceptance bespeaks an emptiness in you as an environment wherein I can breathe and have my being as a person. You make yourself a home for me to be me. ? This is St. Paul's description of Christ's kenosis for our plerosis in 2 Corinthians 8:9. And all this has been explicated in Section 2, especially 2.2. and 2.5. But also cf. Appendix to 4.3.1.: “On love,” to balance off this self-emptying aspect of love; there, love is a ruthless taking and ruthless depending.

290

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

Then, for a “home”—being-at-home—to obtain, / myself must not be self-imposing, either, but must also sensitively accommodate your approach and your acceptance. I must become an empty chamber, self-less, before I can respect you, allow you to be you to freely accept me.

lo accept you 15 to be roomy enough for you to disturb me with your suffering. Mencius observed our felt jitters at an ox's frightened Jitters on its way to sacrificial slaughter (1A7), and again at seeing a baby about to crawl into well (2A6). Here Mencius saw 1η the "self" “human(e)ness (jen),” in which is our “home”; to discard this jen-home is to discard oneself (4A11), and to dwell in humane neighborhood, beautiful (2A7)? Sartre’s nihilation is not discarded, but seen in its positive function.* Finally, I have to so care about you that I accept your acceptance of me and respond appropriately, in my own manner. This is how 1 come to un-selfconsciously dress "appropriately," comb my hair, follow social etiquette, and behave in a socially “acceptable” manner.? The way I dress I myself do not see; without caring about Others’ acceptance of me I should not have had to care at all. Yet I expend

time, effort, and money

on how

I “look”; otherwise I am

uncomfortable. “How I look" means “how I look to you"; my concern about it 15 due to my internalization of your acceptance of me. But whence is this internalization? It comes from my need of your acceptance to be myself. We are social; we are at home in the society. This possibility of Others being my home has often been actualized because my birth through my parental Others makes myself. Home is where I both was born and am being continually born, within that womb called Other people, in their being ποί me. Thus my being includes a "not," a nothing. Sartre's formula of my being is now "It is what it 15 not (I room the Other) and it is not what it is (I self-nihilate for the Other)."* * Here Mencius accommodates Confucius’ saying (in the Analects, 4/1) which Arthur Waley renders "It is Goodness [humaneness, jen] that gives to a neighborhood its beauty." The Analects of Confucius, N.Y.: Vintage Books, George Allen and Unwin, 1938, p. 102. t Michael Polanyi's “tacit dimension," ingrained in our knowing something, has its social root here. Cognitive tacit dimension is an aspect of social self-nihilation applied in the realm of knowledge. > For an interesting explanation of “someone” embedded in social roles and norms and “no one" the non-comformist, see Kenelm Burridge, Someone, No One: An Essay on Indwiduality, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. ° All this has been considered in Section 2 on the Other. 3

INNER

TOUCH

WITH

SARTRE

297

But how does the Other's self-nihilation “womb” me forth? And how does my nihilation in the Other positively found me? A twofold point can be raised. First, the Other’s self-nihilation can “womb”

me forth. The

womb

is an enablement and letting-become, an all pervasive metaphor for the formative ontological power. Such cosmic creativity so impressed Lao Tzu that he said,’ The spirit of the valley never dies./ It is called the subtle and profound female./ The gate of the subtle and profound female/ is the root of Heaven and Earth./ It is continuous, and seems to be always existing./ Use it and you will never wear 1t out.

A void serves an empty chamber, enables life. This “womb” is a selfnihilation, continuously letting a person self-create. The womb-power can be seen unobtrusively everywhere—in water,? in roots,’ in val-

leys. And this wombing motherliness continues throughout life—in

the teacher who draws forth (“educates”) the best in the students," among friends who teach and learn from one another,” and in serving one's parents.'” Every human relation worthy of its name 15 a mothering and wombing—your being vacuous draws me forth, lets me become as I am. In fact, the empty room between Heaven and Earth is a motherly bellows, vacuous,

ting forth [things].

inexhaustible,

continually let-

Furthermore, let us consider the other side of self-mhilation: how my self-nihilation in the Other founds me. Chuang Tzu’s "self-losing" (2/1-3) and “self-forgetting” (12/45)? help us understand how. I become truly myself as I lose myself in that (Other) on which I am intent. Self-nihilation as open arms and receptive heart entails "being lost in" the Other and in the situation. A girl is absorbed in her playful gaze at her pet; a musician forgets herself 1η her music-making. As I lose myself—my self-consciousness—in a hearty ’ Tao Te Ching, 6; cf. 25, 28, 52.

8 2 Ὁ ''

tive !? 13 /^

Tbid., 8. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 28. Analects, 1:15; cf. 7:8. See Appendix C to 5.1.: “Confucius” ‘wombing’ by educa-

dialogue.” Analects, 7:22, cf. 4:17. Analects, 2:7, 4:18. Tao Te Ching, 5.

^ Cf. 4/42, 14/10, 19/62-64. See my Butterfly as Companion, op. cit., p. 505, et

passim.

298

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

conversation with you, I come home to myself. In un-selfconscious self-dissolution in the Other I fulfill myself. Now both above relations —the Other's self-nihilation that wombs me forth, my self-nihilation in the Other that founds me (and the Other)—amount to two sides of our mutual self-nihilation interlocked into an ontological becoming. I am an active actualizing relation to the Other, which may be a person or a situation. A situation touches me from inside, and a poem, a painting, a novel, is born, and I am fulfilled. Two persons are in touch—both touch and are touched— and they become husband and wife, parents and children, friends. Personal self-nihilation allows, accommodates, and lets create, all

through mutual touch. Self-nihilation intimately makes touch from inside. Human

me

into a void that enables

a

touch has two features: First, to touch is

to be touched, to influence you 15 to be influenced by your being influenced by me, more intimately and profoundly than balls col-

liding into an external impact." Then, to touch is to be touched

inside, personal touch seeps, pervades." A baby's touch moves his mother to tears, and the mother's touch eases the baby, now being at home, into himself.'® lhe inner personal touch fills the void in me and in you, making us one. Yet we remain two, for two-ness enables touch. We are thus two in one, and

one in two, thanks

to our personal void and

touch inside. All this describes mutual fulfillment. Personal void generates love —inner touch—that mothers us to grow into ourselves. Let us consider in more detail how this happens. Let us consider how a person begins to be.'? When you and I are in intimate touch— in innermost love—your egg and my seed touch from inside; your egg rooms my seed, wherein my seed 1s lost to let it fructify, and our mutual entrance wombs forth a new growth. This is the primal structure of internal touch—an intimacy called parenting. You-andl-as-parents comes into being as our child comes to be. All three of us are fulfilled as ourselves, thanks to each of us touching the Other ' “Touch” has been considered by Lucretius (in his On Nature), Hume (billiards balls), and Russell (“external relation” in his logical atomism). They all concern external touch. See my Butterfly as Companion, pp. 251-54. Cf. Stanley Rosen’s “Thought and Touch: A Note on Aristotle’s De Anima,” in Palle Yourgrau, ed., Demonstratwes, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 185-94.

7 See Appendix A to 5.1.: “The inner vs. the outer.” '8 See Appendix B to 5.1.: “Love and touch.” Cf. 5.3.2.

ΙΝΝΕΚ

TOUCH

WITH

SARTRE

299

from inside. And as parents are one in two, so their child both is and 15 not her/his parents. And the process continues, in growth. The parents are a cradle (chamber-void) wherein the baby, completely helpless (self-void), comes to be a person. “I abide in you, and you in me." This zs home; this is family. All inümacies, whether friendly, educative, political, extend such a familial home-relation, that mutual, intimate family-touch. The genius of Confucianism 15 here. The Great Learning has the development of world concord in eight stages, from establishing— wombing forth—oneself, through family harmony, on to government, and finally to world concord. The progression is ontological, an ontological growth. The home-family wombing relationship lets me become human,

then

initiates,

develops,

and judges

the

ideal

sociality,

in

educative development of persons, political welfare, and finally, cosmic concord.” First, Confucius says “Filiality, brotherliness—are[n't they not the] root of being-human?"? I become myself only within family interdependence. To go back home un-selfconsciously to my relationships with my parents and my brothers-sisters, zs to go back home nourishing

and becoming myself—and Others.”

Furthermore, such familal and educative acceptance should be expanded into an ideal government. How? I first “‘age’ my aged folks,” that is, I let my old folks be as they are in comfort and integrity. Then I "extend" my respect "toward others's old folks." Similarly, I “‘young’ my young folks,” letting my young folks be as they are in their growing integrity, and then "extend" my enablement "toward others’ young folks." Thus my wombing family expands toward many others, family-izing the community. This describes Mencius's ideal government of human(e) rightness, spreading to cos-

mic concord.” The Great Learning clinches the whole progression by saying that the ideal ruler rules with the mother's anxious solicitous

care of her infant.”

20 See my *Homo-Cosmic Continuum: Normativity and Its Difficulties in Ancient China” (co-authored with Huang Chün-chieh), Journal of National Chung Cheng University, October, 1992, and in Norms and the State in China, eds., Chün-chieh Huang & Erik Zürcher, Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1993, Chapter 1. 2! The Analects, 1:2. ^? Furthermore, this wombing-family relationship continues in education. See Appendix C to 5.1.: “Confucius’ wombing by educative dialogue." 23 ]A7.

+ Section 10.

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All this describes how we mutually fulfill our personal selves in our accommodating self-mhilation, in the manner of personal inner touch, as in the parent-infant relation, as in the relation between lovers, as in the relation between the trembling ox being led to sacrificial slaughter and the unbearable feeling of “O, no!" spontaneously aroused in King Hsüan's heart, as Mencius movingly pointed out.? Thus Confucianism grades the development of personhood from self-becoming, through the family, the state, to the world concord, with the one thread running through all—the inner personal touch. We must be cautious here, however. To take this "eightfold path" as that of our ontological development is one thing; to reduce it into a fixated social hierarchy 15 quite another. The former 15 a map, as it were, of spontaneous and so unplanned personal growth; the latter bespeaks managerial social-engineering, many a person-stunting shackle of bureaucracy.” To slip all too easily from the former mode of stages of growth to the latter, external social classes and strata, tells the tragic story of institutional Confucianism. The cure is twofold: to realize that insütutionalization itself is not logically incompatible with spontaneous growth, and that the former can be engineered to facilitate the latter. 1ο cultivate our innate unbearable feel for the suffering of Others 1s not an impossibility, and constitutes the Heaven-conferred task of true populist government, as Mencius repeatedly, passionately, urged us. But perhaps Mencius did not realize that Chuang Tzus (Taoistic) spontaneity which the true government is committed to foster is itself the unconquerable budding toward the true good government. How does Chuang Tzu do it? He is more direct. He says that our inner touch zs our cosmic touch, with one important condition: it must be spontaneous. It should be as uncontrived, free and natural as breathing, for it 15 as necessary and inevitable. But since spontaneity cannot be commanded, the whole injunction amounts to telling us to forget the injunction. We must go into ourselves in our natural inner self-touch where we forget ourselves, and the world obtains all by itself in which we find ourselves intact, together, darting back and forth with minnows in the brook and the lake of the world.” That’s the inner touch that quickens us together, and brings back 2 See Appendix D to 5.1.: “Social hierarchy vs. personal growth." 26 | owe this point to Professor Robert C. Neville. "7 Chuang Tzu, 17/88; 6/23, 73; 14/60.

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ourselves, together with the world, to ourselves. No government is the best one. And

so we see a dilemma here. On

the one hand, the Confucian

development from the self via the famıly to world concord involves institutionalization, which tends to kill spontaneity that generates and nourishes growth of personal mutuality. The Taoist spontaneity that directly unifies the world to the individual and the individual to the world, on the other hand, tends to be haphazard and unpredictable. The Chinese writings, as Martin Buber's philosophical poetry, / and Thou, tend to be rhapsodically unsystematic. What can we do? Again, “inner touch” 15 the answer. Their mutual inner touch infuses Confucianism in all its institutionalization with Taoist spontaneity, which in turn 15 in-formed with Confucian social stratification. For the Taoist spontaneous inner touch occurs best in a conducive

frame,

one

of which

can be an institutional

one—the

cores of individuals, the mutuality of persons, the families, the government—up and down, back and forth. And as the Confucian institution comes to be shot through with warm enough inner touches, the frame becomes thoroughly humanized—the "governmental" milieu of *not-bearing" to see “people” suffer. Both the institutional frame and irrepressible spontaneity are thus unified into one steady, dynamic, and self-critical vitality. 5.2. We

Symbiosis—philosophical

inner touch

are now in a position to look back and observe how the above

consideration proceeded.”

We observe first the origin of our Chinese critique. It was due to the difference in the two philosophical tendencies: Sartre has lurking behind him an idealistic, agonistic, and diremptive separatism, a thinly veiled Platonism, Cartesianism.? This was picked out by the 25 This is my best translation of that celebrated Mencian phrase, “pu jen jen chıh cheng.” > Cf. 1.4.2.1. and 1.4.2.2. for the same point on a cultural level. Also, we used the same retrieval method in 4.7., 4.7.2.

3 Sartre was used as an example of Western style of thinking, because he is an

uncompromisingly clearest example of it. Some Western thinkers may quarrel with my opinion, but then the quarrel indicates the Western diremptive tendency. This is not to say that the Chinese thinkers never quarrel, but to say that Western thinkers typically quarrel, divide, and each tries to strike out in a new direction. Chinese thinkers typically “comment” on the classics.

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Chinese confluent, unitive, and concrete mentality, though perhaps a no less idealistic one. Then, we critically added on to Sartre's view something positive, in his own frame, from the Chinese side. Without Sartre, it would have been impossible for the Chinese mind to be so clear and incisive in analyzing Sartre’s incredible complexity of human interdependence, albeit in the negative mode. Only then could Confucian and Taoist insights go on to defy Sartre’ tragic side of human coexistence, and expand, helped by the very Sartrian insights, toward world symbiosis, family-ing the entire cosmos in terms of human inner touch. Thus in the world of thinking and ideas, my "seeds" of incomplete insights— half-baked ldeas 一 are as gently and critically home-ed in your “womb” of "egg," fructify, and mature, as your “seeds” of yetto-grow insights are in my "womb" and "egg" to do the same. We mutually father and mother our children of ideas by proposing, observing, criticizing, complementing. Here the Socratic maieutics is radicalized (Socrates was “barren”) and radically mutualized (no one practiced maieutics on Socrates). This 15 "symbiosis" of ideas by mutual inner touch. To observe, propose, criticize, and add—that is the way of symbiotic philosophical inner touch. In this process 1s at work our mutual grasp of the mode of thinking of each from the other, critically learning therefrom, mutually respecting, reciprocally complementing, so much so that you are as much my “substance” (Chuang Tzu)! as I am yours. That 15 the way, perhaps the only way, toward a world philosophy; in fact, it can be claimed tshat this is world philosophy in the making. A final comment is in order. Although the inspiration for above is derived from the Yin-Yang complementarity of Chinese culture and thinking, this is not to wallow in ethnocentrism, the greatest crime in this context. This ideal of intimate mutuality 15 also shared by the Western mind. Plato's (in the dialogues of Symposium and Phaedrus) beautiful portrayals of sexual dialogal progress in cognition ? Chuang Tzu passed by the grave of Hui Tzu his very good logician friend

whom he called his *substance" (chih, 24/50, 51). What his nature was to his birth— "substance" (23/70; cf. 11/31, 16/10, 24/4, 5)—Hui Tzu was to him; he sorely missed Hui Tzu. During Hui Tzu's hfetime, they seemed to have done nothing but quarrels which bred many a pungent and beautiful story (1/35-48, 5/55-60, 17/84—91, 18/15-19, 24/39-41, et passim).

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come to mind. And Wittgenstein's vision can also be quoted. He said, “I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written as a poetic composition.” To this apt statement we cannot help but add our own poetic interpretaton. We take "poetic composition" to mean a putting-together of contraries and reciprocals (“composition”) in a “poetic” manner, that is, creative, caring and joyous manner, in the manner of an inner

touch. We surely hope Wittgenstein would agree.?

In sum, the logic of togetherness 1s that of symbiosis as spontaneous as mutual inner touch of two people caring for each other, as they come together to enrich each other into one new better whole. When China and the West come together, China in its concrete thinking can shed its tendency to minute practical gadgetry and trivial textualism; theoretical thinking of the West can be immune from the risk of impersonal irrelevance and management. China becomes precise and logical; the West becomes perceptive and relevant.” Both come together to make for a coming world philosophy. Nothing further can be said; it must be done.

In the following it is done, performatively exemplified, in three China-West conversations: first, three-pronged, on what the “self” (as formulated in 5.1. and 5.2.) is (in 5.3), then two-pronged, on the mode of “doing” itself, that is, on “pragmatism,” by way of our Chinese reactions to Professor John E. Smith's American pragmatsm (in 5.4.). Finally, we consider (in 5.5.) how we, in considering the self and the doing, live in time, by way of fructifying the Chinese "seed" of “time in China” in the “egg” of Western mode of thinking, that 1s, describing the Chinese lived time with a Western sensitivity and clanty. 5.3. The

“self” in Descartes,

Confucius,

and Chuang Tzu

Here we consider, as an actual example of performing philosophical symbiosis, the human “self” as treated by Western and Chinese thinkers. But why the self? And why Chinese philosophy? ? Emphasis original. This statement of Wittgenstein's is quoted by Ray Monk in his Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, N.Y.: The Free Press, 1990, p. 291. °° The reader may note that I practiced here a mutual inner touch with Sartre and Wittgenstein; I have practiced what I preached. # Cf. 5.4.4.

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To begin with, why the self? The self always starts, ends, and supports our thinking, no matter what we think. No wonder both the Delphic oracle and Socrates told us to know ourselves. Thinking about the self is a central task of philosophy. Since the self exists not just in the West, the topic inevitably leads to a comprehensive look at philosophy both in the West and in the Orient. But why philosophy? And why Oriental philosophy? First, why philosophy? The handiest and clearest way of understanding a way of life of a civilized people is to look not just at their art, history, and psychology but at their philosophy, and that not only its contents but how it handles its contents. The Oriental way of life is understood by looking into the Oriental philosophy. Why do we have to understand Oriental philosophy? We have two answers to this question. The first answer will be given now; the second one finishes this subsection. The first answer is that in order to know oneself, one must know someone else, for a thing stands out by its contrast with something else.? But why do we consider only Chinese philosophy, not Indian or Japanese philosophy? Because both these philosophies are too comprehensive to be typical of the Oriental sentiment. Let me explain. Charles Hartshorne said that Japan 15 the “country of experts." We name any topic, and they have experts on it. The whole Japanese academia 15 wrapped in an austere thoroughness of expertise. And schools of Indian philosophy have an almost one-to-one correspondence with schools of Western philosophy, with an added mystical darshana, the cosmic intuition of and yoking up with the One, the All, constituting the Brahman-Atman. Thus the comprehensiveness of both the Indian and the Japanese philosophies ranges from abstract logic to mystical ecstasy. Only the Chinese philosophy expresses the Oriental sentiment most nakedly and characteristically, so much so that Arthur Wright the sinologist said that the Chinese people have no philosophy.” Arthur Wright would have asked us, "Why Chinese philosophy?", and would have answered it himself for us, “There is no Chinese philosophy." Of course, we respond, if man 1s defined as white-pigmented biped, then there exists no man in China, and if philosophy is defined as 3 I did not take Confucius seriously until I went to Yale University and studied Western philosophy; an American thinker will take Jefferson seriously when he goes to China.

Ὁ See Appendix to 5.3.: “‘China has no philosophy."

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“the white man’s thinking,” then there exists no philosophy in China. In short, this pronouncement of Arthur Wrights beautifully begs the question, as another sinologist, H.G. Creel said.” But then, Arthur Wright's impression clearly shows how the Chinese philosophy 15 so different from the Western philosophy, that if the Western philosophy 15 “philosophy,” then the Chinese philosophy 15 not and, we may add, if China has philosophy, then the Western philosophy 15 not properly to be called “philosophy.” This indicates either that the. Chinese people are too stupid to philosophize, or else their philosophy is at least something peculiarly Oriental, if not possessing some distinct insights to make us think. The high historical and hterary culture of the Chinese people shows us that they are not stupid. And so the only conclusion 15 that the Chinese people have a peculiarly Oriental philosophy worth looking into. To look at the Oriental mind, therefore, we must look into the Chinese philosophy. In order not to thin out into hopeless generality, let us gather for tea three of our heroes, René Descartes, Confucius, and Chuang Izu, and listen to what they would say on the “self.” We shall here ignore chronology, and follow only a logical order. 9.3.1. Let us have Descartes speak first. He 15 the father of modern Western philosophy. Whitehead said that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, because of Plato's many provocative ideas. We can say that modern Western philosophy 15 a series of footnotes to Descartes, who established the judging subject, and that by his rigorous argumentation. Descartes stands at the beginning of the Renaissance; he 1s the favorite of almost every modern philosopher, either to agree with or to attack on. To know him ls to know the dominant trend of modern Western philosophy. He is famous for wanting to have the absolutely indubitable, what can never be doubted. For this purpose, he throws out all that can be doubted. First, the outside world should be thrown away, because the so-called “world” is just what we experience through our senses. We meet not the world out there but our own sensory experience, and such subjective experience can easily be deceived. And then, even purely logical thinking such as mathematical calculation can be ?7 H.G. Creel, ed., Chinese Civilization in Liberal Education, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959, pp. 135, 141, 154, 159.

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doubted and so should be thrown out, because every time I say “2 + 2" a little devil over my shoulder may whisper to me “4” when in fact “2 + 27 may well be 5. And so, there seemed to be no hope of finding anything indubitable, when he suddenly realized, “Wait a minute, what have 7 been doing here? I have been thinking and doubting. To think is to doubt and to realize that I may have been deceived. And to be deceived I must

exist. In short, I think, therefore I am!”

"But then," he continued, "hat sort of thing am I? I exist as long as I think, and so I must be something that thinks, a thinking substance. And so I have found something absolutely indubitable, that

is, I myself, as long as I think.”

9.3.2. Confucius then ponderingly comes in. He is the father, as it were, of Chinese mentality, determining the pace, the scope, and the atmosphere of the Chinese way of life. In fact, to mention his name 15 to touch the very soul of the Japanese, the Korean, and the Chinese peoples. He 15 the air 1η which those peoples breathe, the environment in which they dream and strive. This father Confucius would have said, “What do you mean by ‘what cannot be doubted’? Isn't it what cannot be doubted by me? But, then, doesn't it amount to this, that you started with yourself, and ended with. yourself? You have not gone anywhere at all, then. We must go beyond your ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and ask where this

T came from.””

"In other words," Confucius would continue, “the search for some-

thing indubitable would not have happened if there were no self. Now how did the self come into being in the first place? I was born, that's how. And so 1f you say, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ I would say, ‘I was born, therefore I am.’ Didn't you know that? Nothing is more obvious than this. How could you have missed 1t?" Now, "I was born" is not just an English idiom; this 15 the ıdıom of any human being! It is our common sense, absolutely trite, and therefore worth looking into; in this idiom at least three things are implied: 9.3.2.1. The sentence says “I was born”; I was passively born, not % Cf. Appendix to 5.3.1.: “A Conversation among Hume, Descartes, and Chuang

Tzu on the Self.”

κ

3 Cf. Appendix to 5.3.2.: “A Sartre-Confucius Conversation on the Self.” # Cf. 5.1.

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self-born. I owe my very existence to some Other people than myself, that is, my parents; I owe them my debts of gratitude and responsibility. To respect them is to respect myself and my roots —religion starts here. I must pay them my debts of gratitude by fulfilling my obligations to them—moralıty starts here. 9.3.2.2. Then the sentence says "I was born," in the past. To know myself, I need to know history and tradition, because I belong there.

Furthermore,

to know

history I must

study it; to study

his-

tory and the tradition is to study myself. Education and historical tradition are inevitably intertwined. 9.3.2.3. Finally, the sentence says "I was-born," not by myself but through Others, my parents, who are at least two in number. If I was born through genetic engineering, by a host of medical personnel, then I owe my existence to more than two people. In any case, my very existence is social through and through; my very existence belongs to the society. In short, I was born, therefore, I am, with an important implication that society, history, tradition, education, religion, and morality,

guarantee my existence.

9.3.3. Then Chuang Tzu saunters in. Chuang Tzu hved around fourth century B.C., and is the most beautiful and articulate proponent of philosophical Taoism. Every Confucian is a Taoist at heart. His view constitutes the entire background of serene relaxed strength of the Chinese people, and the main inspiration of Chinese aesthetics; Buddhism and Japanese appreciation of nature are the other two. His prose 15 supposed to be the most exquisite of Chinese literature. He would have smiled, if he were to have been listening to the conversation so far. He would have said, “Both of you are glued to your fixed self, taking the self to be something final and stable." He would say, "Let me tell you a story (he always tells stories): Once I dreamt"; and who, incidentally, has not dreamt? Everyone sometimes dreams, even in the daytime. Dreaming is one of our most common experiences. In any case, he said, "Once [1] Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly; Flitting, fluttering, [he] was a butterfly, Going on as [he] pleased; [he] did not know “Chou.” Suddenly, [he] awoke. There—thoroughly, thoroughly, [he] was Chou.

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SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH But now [he] did not know— Did Chou's dream make the butterfly? Did the butterfly's dream make Chou? Chou and a butterfly—there must be a division, then. This it is which people call ‘things changing."

And then he took a smiling bow and left the room.* Now, what does all this imply? At least three sets of things or 1mplications: 9.3.3.1. In the first place, I am like a butterfly flittering-fluttering between two identities: a man and a butterfly. When I am awakened, I know that I am not a butterfly. When I am awakened from that awakening, 1 am not sure that I am not a butterfly. Now what does this mean? Doubt is a negative notion. The dream world 15 where things (subject, objects) dissolve into one another. In this respect, dream functions like doubt, and perhaps more radical than ordinary doubt, because this oneric doubt radically cuts into the base of doubt itself. In short, since “Z dream,” (that 1s, I doubt), I exist; since "I dream," 1 may now be dreaming to have been awakened, and I may be just a butterfly, not myself. Let me put all this 1η a Cartesian threefold point: (i) I can say that the butterfly does not exist because it does not doubt; only I do. (n) And yet, who knows, perhaps the situation may turn out to be as I suspected; perhaps I am really the butterfly dreaming and thinking. And then, because I doubt, I the butterfly exists. And yet, for all I know, all this may be a dream, in fact, my dream. I exist, then, not the butterfly. And

now

I am

back to (1)

(111) But, after all, no one knows which 15 true, (1) or (1). As soon as I think (1), I think (11); while I think (1), I am led to (1). This going back and forth 15 itself a butterfly-like flittering and fluttering! So much for the first set of intertwined implications. 9.3.3.2. The second set of implications are these: Since I am puzzled at myself, I am two in one and one in two. First of all, I am wandering between two identities—I am two, a man

and a

butterfly.

But then,

I am

one, because

I am

“puzzled.”

*! The story is told in the Chuang Tzu, 2/94—96 to conclude his justly famous Chapter Two. Further explications of this story can be found in my Butterfly —see "butterfly" in Index, p. 493. Cf. 3.8.d. for a radical playful implication of this dream-story.

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“I am puzzled at myself” means that there has been the same I throughout who 15 same enough to compare two self-identities and be puzzled at “them.” I have to be the same self to be puzzled at my different selves! What does this mean? It means that in such puzzlings I am one in two and two in one. 3.3.3.3. In other words, in such puzzlings we have two activities in one—differentiation and interchange. This is the third set of puzzling implications. Puzzling means that I differentiate two selfidenüties in me, and experience the one sliding in and out of the other, constantly interchanging. Such puzzling 15 itself very puzzling indeed. Let us take stock. When

Descartes said “Wait a minute," and then

found the “I think, therefore I am," Descartes was engaged in a logic of straight awakening." When Chuang Tzu told us the story of the butterfly dream, he showed us a logic of awakening from awakening. If the logic of Western philosophy 15 in a straight line, an awakening logic (since Socrates the gadfly>stung us into self-reflection), then Chuang Tzu has the logic of a dream, moving in a circle, the opposites assuming each other, the logic of roaming back and forth. Western philosophy 15 awakened from dreams; Chuang Tzu 15 awakened 加 dreams. In other words, Chuang Tzu seems to be saying that to think that we can leave our dream

is another dogmatism,

1.e., another dream-

talk. For to have the Great Awakening 1s to be awakened from both the uncritical dreaming and the uncritical awakening, to know that it is impossible to check on whether I am dreaming (or being awakened) or not. And so, to make a long story short, Chuang Tzu said that the very Cartesian judging-doubting self, and the Confucian growingrevering self, 15 changing its very identity, neither just growing into itself, as Confucius would have us do, nor just judging into itself, as Descartes would have us do. If both Descartes and Confucius are engaged in an egology, then Chuang Tzu is engaged in a nonegology.*

*2 We remember Buddha also existence of the self. To make the Awakened One. 5 Actually this is one possible of conversation. Cf. Appendix to

told us to be awakened, but this time to the nonmatter more complex, the Buddha is himself the conversation. We can easily imagine other sorts 5.3.3.: "A Conversation with Zennist on the Self”

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9.3.4. Mind you; we kept saying that 7f Confucius and Chuang Tzu were to be listening to Descartes, they would have argued such and such. For neither argued as Descartes did. Descartes argued to himself; he sat alone in front of the fireplace, thought rigorously, and pushed his points. In contrast, Confucius and Chuang Tzu talked with their companions (disciples, friends); they did not argue (as we had them do above) but talked with a hint here and another one there. This difference has some far-reaching consequences. One of the consequences 15 that we realize the ambiguous freshness of Chinese thinkers. We summed up Descartes more or less in a standard manner; there has been nothing new in what we said about him; what we said about him can be found in any standard textbook. In contrast, we had to extrapolate from Confucius and Chuang Tzu; we had to participate in their conversation, which can take an unexpected turn. No textbook has what 1s described above. Their conversation is structured as follows. (1) They always call our attention to something trivial and ordinary, some daily happenings— birth, dream. (1) Then in dwelling on the trivial and obvious, they evoke 1n us something profound. Confucius evoked reverence (to history and society, morality and religion; Chuang Tzu evoked roaming (in different identities without losing them). (1) Finally, whatever they evoke 15 always something new and exciting. We cannot routinely report standard summaries of Confucius and Chuang Tzu, but have to say something nobody has said before, in order to bring out what they really want to say. This brings up some 5.3.5.

Peculiarities

of the

Chinese

world

view,

the

Chinese ways of thinking, as compared with the Chinese peculiarities are of two kinds: the Confucian and 5.3.5.1. First, as to the Confucian peculiarities. The collection of Confucius the teacher's conversations with in reverence to the tradition. Now this statement contains lhanties:

reverence

to the

tradition,

a stress on

Western the Taoist. Analects is a his disciples three pecu-

education,

and

the

conversational style of the Analects. First, reverence to the tradition 15 expressed in our conversation with excellences in the past, and in such conversation novelties come out. Confucius explicitly tells us that he only transmits, and does not innovate (7/1). But in such warming up of the old tradition he comes

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to know the new (2/11), as when he cited the Classic of History,

“clever words and pleasing looks,” he spontaneously added, “such men are rarely humane” (1/3). He followed the traditional notion of “superior man,” meaning nobleman, and changed the notion into man of ethical nobility, of integrity, true gentleman worthy of the ütle. In such a manner as this, Confucius followed the tradition, and in following it he revolutionized it. This is in line with the spirit of tradition, for what is worthy of being transmitted is something noteworthy, different from the old, and revolution 15 for something radically new. And 5ο to follow tradition is to revolutionize it.” Secondly, Confucius was a teacher, not merely a meditative person. He had many disciples (72 were the most famous), all of whom his personal apprentices learning with him how to lwe the gentleman’s hfe. How? By conversation. It 1s a personal give-and-take between the teacher and the students, among the friends, with the tradition (religious, classical), with the society, and with the heaven and earth.” And so Confucianism is traditional-creative, educative-conversational.

So much for the Confucian peculiarities. 9.3.5.2. As for the Taoist peculiarities. Chuang Tzu offered storybits and argument-bits for us to think about. These bits are literary gems, evocatively open-ended, and bear digging for layer after layer of meanings. In such diggings we go back and forth between ourselves and our environment, our daily ongoings and our meditations, and realize their mutual intertwinings. In the meantime, we ourselves are relaxed, become ourselves, delightfully roaming among things. This is a different mode of philosophizing from Descartes’. 5.3.9.3. Western philosophy tries to utter everything systematically—in metaphysics and in the ruthless pushing of our argument— assuming that the logical is the universal. Western philosophy has a tendency, if not an ideal, of creating an explicit (not allusive), comprehensive (not partial), system (not thought fragments) for everything (not here a bit, there a bit). Western philosophy 1s like a huge

4 Martin Buber’s saying comes to mind: “To be old is a wonderful thing when a man has not yet forgotten what it means to begin,” as quoted by Jean Wahl to conclude his essay on Buber, in Paul A. Schilpp & Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967, p. 510. * I argued for this point in my Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 9-10. # See Appendix C to 5.1.: “Confucius’ wombing by educative dialogue” as an example of how Confucius’ education went.

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logical maze—and we debate on whether the maze is objectively real or merely subjective—in which we wander as we figure out how to get from here to there. In our long painstaking investigations we go out of what we live in (at least so we think), only to realize that we have not gone very far at all. But thanks to our wanderings back and

forth in the maze,

we

are made

more

tory, and are able to do something about it.

familiar with the terri-

9.3.6. Heidegger says that every thinker is a poet who has only one poem, itself uncomposed, out of which and of which all other poems speak.*’ We say that this unique unuttered poem is uncluttered with utterances; In fact, it 15 unutterable, simply because it says everything and we cannot, because we are finite, and only the infinite is synonymous with everything, and everything concrete. Chinese philosophy is aware of the inexpressibleness of this one poem, and keeps all expressions to their specific occasions. These expressions reflect a lake of ordinariness whose bottom can be seen clearly; yet as we go into the lake, the bottom recedes from us. Chinese philosophy reflects a clear common lake of actuality. It is clear and common because whatever it says we know already, nothing surprising. And yet we are surprised to find that it is bottomless, for we are led by Confucius digging into our ordinary births, and by Chuang Tzu digging into our ordinary dreams, to keep finding extraordinary implications. In the meantime, as we go deeper into it, we find ourselves refreshed; that bottom, we find out, is our-

selves, ourselves in the world. Steeped in the “lake” of our conversation about the self, we find ourselves.

We cited two of our favorite Western thinkers—Descartes and Heidegger, and two of our favorite Chinese thinkers—Confucius and Chuang Tzu. We had them talk to one another, and this talk—this subsection—and its coherent “argument” on the self came about. And our understanding of what the self is came about—a chastened non-understanding of the self in view of so many radically diverse opinions of the self.

* Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, N.Y.: Harper, 1971, p. 160. Cf. 3.8.c. above where this seminal idea 15 viewed from the perspective of playing with arguments. Also cf. 2.1.1.1. above.

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How about the conversation itself? It is a delightful mutuality of enrichment. Without Descartes we would not have had the “problem” of the self; without Heidegger we would not have thought of the “one poem" that cannot be said. Without having gone through the Western training in philosophizing, we would not have been logically and analytically sensitive enough to extrapolate argumentative exposition from Confucius and Chuang Tzu, to manifest the implicit systematic intervolvements among their evocative sayings. By the same token, without Confucius the problem would have not come down to the depths of this ordinary historical-societal world; without Chuang Tzu the poem would not have come down home to the depths of the ordinary lake of ourselves interchanging in the world, digging deep in them, and learning from them. And the above exposition is also in a conversational atmosphere, much in the spirit of Chinese philosophy. In this way we need one another to make up the human community of differences. This book-essay envisions that coming-together of different traditions, each thriving in the differences it enjoys from the other. Ultimately, this 1s the only feasible route toward integral unification of the human person, one of the dominant themes of philosophy. In the milieu of philosophical togetherness, we have considered what the self 1s. Now,

in the same milieu, we consider what

it means to "do." To keep our consideration solidly on a concrete level, we tackle the interface between the spirit of pragmatism proposed by Professor John E. Smith and the pragmatic spirit embodied in Chinese thinking we commonly call “Chinese philosophy,” especially in the pre-Ch'in period.

5.4. The spirit of pragmatism and the pragmatic spirit? Professor John Edwin Smith? is indisputably a major reference point

in American

pragmatic

philosophy,

which

“reconstructs”

Western

5 I acknowledge a meticulous critique and assistance of Professors John R. Burr, Marshall Missner, and Garrett Thomson, who thereby saved me from many a blunder, although I alone am responsible for the remaining defects in this subsection. * Among my many professors since the sixties, Mr. Smith remains my paradigm of wit and wisdom, my fortress of parental grace. Whatever is said in these pages is a mere extension of his pedagogical Socratism. All my blunders here, however, belong to my failure to implement his advice and instruction.

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philosophy by grounding thinking in the experiential matrix.” Such a pragmatism is often equated with the pragmatic thrust of Chinese

philosophy. Moreover, as a philosopher in open pluralistic?’ America,

Professor Smith is an ardent champion of communication across boundanes, both philosophical and cultural. His frequent lectures. in conferences on Chinese philosophy benefit all participants, Chinese and non-Chinese alike. This subsection takes “pragmatism” in a broad sense” and follows what Smith began: interpreting pragmatism across cultural boundaries between American and Chinese thinking. Both share something pragmatic, yet they are somewhat different and they do well to mutually communicate. For, as Smith said, American pragmatists were all “devoted to the need for philosophical conversation cutting across party lines.”” For Smith, communication involves comparative interpretation in three areas: inquiries into (1) same problems with same answers, (2) same problems with different answers, and (3) different problems with different answers. This subsection adds one more area: (4) Seeing that even the same answers are produced in different contexts (philosophical, cultural), all the above amount to investigations of differences, which can only benefit all parties compared—complementng each other and deepening respective selfunderstandings.” Hence, comparative communication manifests “differences” so as to comprise a symbiotic community of differences.” Thus the following pages concern four points: 5.4.1. Classical Amencan philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy share Humanism of a pragmatic sort. 5.4.2. However, family resemblance bespeaks family difference. American pragmatic humanism 15 scientific, instrumental, aggressive, problem-oriented, critical, and philosophizes about philosophizing. Chinese pragmatic humanism 15 harmonious, natural, cosmic,

and

concrete.

5.4.3. These

differences

come

from

different

styles of reasoning. The Western spirit of pragmatism 15 a theoretical movement that coheres fragmentary experiences; the Chinese

°° PT 8-9. For a list of abbreviations of cited works see the end of this subsection, 5.4., just before 5.5. begins.

3! See Appendix A to 5.4.: “Openness, otherness, truth.”

? See Appendix B to 5.4.: “Pragmatism in a broad sense." 5 SAP 225. Recently Smith devoted an entire chapter to “Interpreting Across [cultural] Boundaries”. This chapter begins UCM. * UCM 30. 5 Cf. UCM 35, 38, 41, 45. * Cf. SAP 84ff., 224, 242.

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pragmatic spirit 15 a metaphorical storytelling that goes from a typical situation to situational universals. 5.4.4. These two styles of reasoning should come together to form a humanistic community of differences. 5.4.1. Both the classical American philosophy and the classical Chinese philosophy are broadly humanistic and pragmatic. M.R. Konvitz and Gail Kennedy said that "the word ‘pragmatism’ 15 a misnomer— because ıt is a noun. Ihe pragmatists . . are not adherents to a doctrine but proponents of a method." One must go further. “Pragmatism" is not just method but a temper, a "sentiment of rationality” (James). Such a sentiment is a “spirit” that uses the method in a certain existential manner. Smith characterized the spirit as “a style, a stance" "deeply rooted in... people," an “unwritten philo-

sophy," the “muscle” within our “formulated belefs.

Smith defines the spirit of American philosophy as having “a baslcally humanistic outlook." Wing-tsit Chan characterized Chinese philosophy “with one word... humanism.”® This humanism is deeply pragmatic, for American philosophy 15 as much dipped in experience as Chinese philosophy is full of reverence of nature (human and cosmic). That the pragmatic thinking in both America and China 15 humanistic is important. For our life activity can run idle and become false to life. As Smith said, when we do epistemology we tend to forget that “we do not know with epistemology."?!' Living that is disengaged from life becomes false. Only an engaged life is true, and only true life is worth living. An engaged life makes a difference to thought and action. Engaged thinking is part of, and indeed part and parcel of, true life, “pragmatism” broadly so called; here thinking 15 doing, praxis with a tangible difference to actual life and actual world. This was true even of Royce; in his later years, Royce called his Absolute Idealism "Absolute Pragmatism." John Smith enables us to see how crucial it 1s to be engaged in pragmatic thinking, and how central such thinking 15 1η both American 21 N.Y.: ὃ ?

Foreword to The American Pragmatists, eds., Milton R. Konvitz & Gail Kennedy, Meridian Books, 1960. SAP 187, EEL 303. SAP 188.

°° SBCP 3. This statement begins the entire book.

^! SAP 230, 232-33. ° SAP 85-86.

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and Chinese philosophies. He said, “I could not help but be struck by the parallels” between them. In a fehcitous style remimscent of the pragmatists themselves (both American and Chinese), Smith summarized the common undercurrent of pragmatic humanism in both American and Chinese thinking when he compared Wang Yangming with American pragmatists on three counts. First, there 1s a connection between purpose and thought; all acuvity 1s teleological (biological, evolutionary), all thought 15 activity, and so all thought 15 teleological. Knowledge leads and guides us in our inquiry toward becoming truly human; purpose directs and gives meaning to conduct. Secondly, ideas have a transformatory power; to know kindness is to act kindly; thinking changes ourselves and the world. To think is to adjust means to ends so as to change reality and harmonize feelings with reality, with our situation; otherwise thinking 15 not true thinking Thirdly, action leads to knowledge, and to believe in something Is to act it out truthfully, thereby confirming the person and his sincerity. And so, belief is tested in its being carried out in life; belief in equality should issue in equal treatment of other people." The common pragmatic manner of the flowing of this undercurrent—within both American and Chinese arenas—can be conveniently dubbed a family “spirit” that is pragmatism. 9.4.2. This sharing of the humanistic outlook of pragmatism 15 ἃ famalvlike shanng, with family resemblances as above described. But family resemblance entails family differences, that 1s, to slightly shift the image, the common undercurrent of pragmatism flows one wav among American philosophers and another way among the Chinese. Mencius is not quite a Chinese Dewey any more than James is an American Wang Yang-ming. This subsection claims that the Amencan spirit of pragmatism differs from the Chinese pragmatic spint. The American spirit of pragmatism insists, for Smith," that thinking 1s an activity of solving problems; ideas must make a difference to human life; the earth can be civilized through scientific technology. Chan described the pragmatic spint of Chinese humanism as “not the humanism that denies or slights a Supreme Power, but one that ° UCM 30-33. ^ SAP 188, CAP

13-14.

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professes the unity of man and Heaven. 76 We see at once three aspects of difference between them. First, In American humanism all human activities aim at changing a situation. As Peirce puts it, the quality of a thing, the idea of that

object, is obtained as follows:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

An ıdea’s conceivable effects are its meaning. Similarly, for James, ideas reveal their meaning when we know the conduct to which they lead.” An idea is what makes practical difference to us through our acting on it, to let it guide our actions.” This is an intervening “aggressive enterprise" (Santayana). Man is an external objective sovereign over the empire of instrumental intelligence (Dewey) that handles practical problems with scientific experimental method,” so as to deliberately transform real dissonances into real harmonies. A shift of wind 15 felt in Chinese humanism. Here all human endeavors are dipped in regardful harmony with nature, vernerated as "Heaven"; Chinese allusions to natural phenomena are often references to human affairs. In response to Confucius's sighing, “Filial and fraternal [love]—are they not [the] roots of human|[e]ness?,"" Mencius mused," Originative spring [keeps] bubbling, bubbling [forth], not stopping day [or] night, filling-up [every] crevasse and then flow-forward, going-allthe-way into the Four Seas. Whatever has orgin-and-root [is] like this. . . . If [it is] without origin... its drying-up [we] can stand and wait [to see]. Therefore, [having one's] reputation exceed [true] conditions— [the] gentleman [is] ashamed [of] it. Whoever has four buds [of human nature] in “myself” [and] knows [how to] expand all [of them] and fulfill them, ls like [having the] fire starting to burn, [the] spring starting to reach-out. 5 SBCP 3. 66 Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, eds. Hartshorne, Charles ὅς Weiss, Paul, Harvard University Press, 1931-35, Vol. 5, Paragraph 402. Cf. EEL 909-10. 97 SAP 194. ^ SAP 189. 9 SAP 195. 70 SAP 193, 195, 196, TAP 130-31. 7 The Analects, 1/2. Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of Chinese quotations are mine. 7? Mencius, 4B18 (cf. 7A24) and 246.

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Mencius's contemporary Chuang Tzu nonchalantly said, “People never mirror [themselves] in streaming water, but mirror in still[ed]

water.” Although opposed in sentiment (water welling up, water

stopping still), all these references to nature refer to the self. Chinese people love to appeal to authority to make a point; they appeal to natural phenomena to make a point in human affairs. Chinese reverence of nature 15 unmistakable. Furthermore, American classical philosophers are serious about how to tackle problems, serious about means. By solving the questions of means, those of ends solve themselves. Science and technology are highly prized." Dewey said that “means and ends are two names for the same reality.” ” The spirit of pragmatism is thus technical, future-oriented, and always in the process of accomplishing some-

thing to actively shape the future now.”

In contrast, echoing Chan, Smith said," Chinese spirituality 15... a Humanism... not of a reductive sort, that sees no place for a Supreme Power, but rather [that in] which human nature and Heaven are in essential unity. This harmony 15 both the Ideal and measure of knowledge and action.

In China a human act has cosmic significance.” Praxis is part of Na-

ture, pervaded by the Breath of vitality. Thus in Mo Tzu's pragma-

tism, fen-human|[e ness is the will of Heaven, and religious asceticism is combined with political utilitananism. Han Fei Tzu’s totalitanan statecraft is an explication and application of Lao Tzu’s cosmopolitical non-doing; the law should be applied—in the manner of “non-doing”—-according to the situation and its natural tendencies. Finally, American pragmatism often practices a critical philosophizing about philosophy. It warns that we do not see with geometry nor do we know with epistemology;? it lays down the theory of truth (and the conditions of recovery of philosophy) as experiential, as a critical weighing of alternative means, in short, as pragmatic. Thus to claim that philosophy is not mere thinking but acting, is 7? Chuang Tzu, 579-10.

™ SAP 143. ”Quoted in SAP 130. ° SAP 66. 7 UCM 35.

78 As stressed in the J Ching and the Yin-Yang school. 7 Mencius, 2A2.

$9 SAP 230.

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itself to think about thinking. Not surprisingly, Peirce the pragmaticist has a theory of signs and interpretation, and Whitehead the organicist had a grand process metaphysics. They are possible only in a reflective objective perspective. In contrast, in China,

to think zs to meditate,

to live and to act;

to teach is to reform the man and the society; to argue is both to persuade the rulers and ministers to create benevolent government and to exhort the people to cultivate themselves for an authentic life. Even in the seemingly abstruse controversies over original human nature, there lurks political factional strife.?! And, as Lau said,” One great difference between moral philosophers in the Chinese dition and those in the Western tradition 15 that the latter do not upon it as their concern to help people to become sages while the mer assume that that 15 their main concern. Western philosophers only with the problem of what morality 1s.

tralook fordeal

In other words, the Chinese pragmatic spirit—distinct from pragmatism as an ism—not only stresses the means (as in Western pragmatism). ‘The means should not only be appropriate to the ends, but also appropriately used; how the means should be used 15 as important as what means should be used. In sum, we have noted some differences between American pragmatism and Chinese pragmatic philosophy—acting on things versus living in/with nature revered as Heaven, problem-solving versus praxis as cosmic, philosophizing about philosophy versus thinking as itself being engaged in living. 5.4.3. The above differences ultimately stem from their different styles of argumentation. And the different styles are due to different spirts— the Western spirit of pragmatism versus the Chinese pragmatc spirit. Their differences are as follows. 9.4.3.1. First, perhaps except for James, all classical American philosophers (Peirce, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, Santayana) wrote about logic. Royce agonized over the relation between the immediately practical and the timelessly eternal,” and over how to join concrete particulars with rational universals. Whitehead saw how the 8! On the political factional implications of metaphysical debates in China,

see PM.

9? M xxii.

5 SAP 83.

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many enter into a one; an actual entity is a concrescence of prehensions. In contrast, Chinese philosophy sees a concrete particular situation as significant for many other concrete occasions. Each actual situation radiates concrete implications for our generic concern; it 15 up to us to discern them by undergoing the situation. Each concrete

particular is (pregnant with) a focussed fecund generality.?*

Smith observed that Dewey's stress on specific questions led modern philosophy to fall within the scope of special sciences.” Since a specific question as bespeaks a specific universal as does a specific Sclence a specific sort of concrete particulars, Smith's observation indicates the Western trend of thinking that goes from the universal to the concrete particulars. In China a reverse trend holds; particulars beam with an aura of generality, so much so that an empincal pursuit is threatened to be swallowed in cosmology. / Ching correlates our daily activities with cosmic. movements. Medicine, martial arts, government, poetry, and culinary arts are full of metaphysical significance, the 4-principle, the “vein of similarities” that runs through everything. Second, the above contrast makes sense if we see how different the

style of reasoning in the West 15 from that in China. Let us first look into American pragmatists. Despite the moving earthy style, concrete exposition, and vivid examples, their treatises on logic?? are abstruse in tone and conceptual in content, exhibiting their stance of external observation. Dewey stands off to watch

“how we think."*' Despite

claiming for experience

the entirety of our living and

undergoing,” experiential qualities flowing into and succeeding each other in various purposeful patterns,” we

must

still imaginatively

reconstruct our experience ( James)” so as to organize, criticize, and

regulate it logically in our inquiry (Dewey). Experience itself has no critical cognitive function.” Then the dualism (or dualism as “problem”) between thought and experience is denied and their continuity is called "inquiry." And δ Cf. 2.1., 2.6.1., 4.7.2.1., 5.4.3.2., 5.5.1.3., 5.5.2.2.2., E.3. 8 SAP 199. Even Dewey's. Remember Dewey wrote HWT. 8$ RE 50. 5 RE 48. ” RE 49. TAP 51. Conversely, knowing 15 only one kind of experiencing among other kinds. 7 TAP 131.

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it is here that the purposeful human treatment of experiential materials is apparent. Dewey's inquiry becomes our deliberate control of change toward desired outcomes— building a better mousetrap, developing a vaccine—that would not occur without human intervention. This is thinking or inquiry which is art, craft, skill, techne. Inquiry is the synthesis of theory and practice, a logic of practice or practical logic. Logic is the method of inquiry— not timeless truths—invented by the human subject to process the experiential given. This is a far cry from a Chinese responsive mirronng that flexuously follows and reflects what 15 the case. In Western pragmatism, thinking is “a movement [inductively] 加 and [deductively] from a meaning"? because the situational data are brute meaning-less (though meaning-amenable) facts, which are “isolated, fragmentary, and discrepant," “partial and confused." Their “lack of coherence perplexes and stimulates to reflection." They

await “an idea [i.e., “principle, universal”]” . . . to connect these with

one another."? Such is the task of thinking that is the “double movement" of induction and deduction. This double movement fits perfectly with Whitehead's characterization of thinking as "the flight of

an aeroplane."?!

It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

This aeroplane-hke movement

is later identified by Dewey

as

“in-

८८०

qulry.”” All this is allegedly derived from Peirce’s logical insights;

Dewey's logic owes much to Peirce.” Peirce, Royce, and Whitehead

are also formal logicians.

Even for Dewey there 1s a distinctness in abstract logical derivation that is set apart from derivation by "suggestion . . . from existential

material.” Dewey quoted Peirce, saying,

° ° > Ὁ ? 2 ? 100 ० 102

HWT 80. HWT 79. HWT 80. HWT 79. PR 7 [1929], 5 [1978]. LTI 8, 115 LTI 9n., 13-14, 14n. SAP 189-90. LTI 468. LTI 469, 470; cf. PT 33.

322

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and only "application of the [logical] method must correct the error,” for “material... [is] ordered by methods." The word,

“application” above, is crucial. The American

spirit of

pragmatism applies autonomous logical methods /o the demands (for

order and meaning) of the meaning-less situation.'””

9.4.3.2. The Chinese pragmatic spirit, in contrast, "argues" from one specific (typical) situation to many other (common) situations; here the very logical move itself is situational and pragmatic. For there 15 a vein of similarities (“universals,” if you will) in actuality. lo find this “vein” (4) and to co-respond with it—following it—is to argue rationally. Such a concrete argumentation 1s usually dubbed (somewhat condescendingly) “analogical.” This is an innocent flow of concrete metaphorical thinking. There 15 no room for the sort of paradox of American pragmatism perceived by Smith, saying,'”* On the one hand stands the reluctance of pragmatists to engage in theorizing about the relation between perception and the external world and their hesitancy in specifying any general relation between thought and reality at large, and on the other hand... there is elaborated a theory concerning the nature and status of logical forms and their relation to the world of nature.

In China there is no consciousness of the instrumentality of intelligence (Dewey), no theoretical elaboration of empiricism as an ism, radical (James) or absolute (Royce), no thoughtful stress on experience, sensory or inclusive. The child does not harp on childhood; he zs. Pragmatism (as an ism) is not being pragmatic; only the sick person eagerly talks about fitness, in terms of which he 15 sick. Chuang

Tzu's words recur:'”

Forgetting [the] foot is [the] fit of shoe; forgetting [the] waist 15 [the] fit of belt. [Similarly,] knowing [how to] forget right [and] wrong 15 [the] fit{ness] of mindheart. No inside change, no outside compliance— is [the] fit of events meeting. Starting at [the] fit and never without fit—is [the] fit[ness] of forgetting [the] fit.

03 PT 102-03, 116-17, 128-29. 104 TAP 130-31. 105 The Chuang Tzu, 19/62—64.

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This self-forgetful “fit” is where the pragmatic spirit operates. In American pragmatism, one thinks to solve problems. When things mutually adapt and fit well together, there 15 no problem, and 50 no thinking arises. But obviously it also makes sense to discern the structure of such a situational fit, which 15 to be engaged in “logic”

in a pragmatic sense.’

In Chinese philosophy logic is more than a middle stage (“mid-

dle term”)"”—in Whitehead’s high “thin air’—in our progress from

initial data brute data more than solution is maneuver. Pascal, the

(and problem) to its solution, that is, the organization of into a logically coherent whole. For the factual data are non-logical; this move from a problematic situation to its possible only if the situation is amenable to our logical The situation itself must somehow be rational. To adapt percept has a reason of whose kinship theoretical reason

may not be aware. This is prudence (Aristotle) or “informal logic.”10 It is the visceral reason uncanny in its quick aptness.’” It is the

reason of life (Ortega) that cannot be mocked but can only be sung: “Day after day utters speech, and night after night shows knowledge.” ° This is the un-/ao-able Tao, the vein-of-actuality (4), as natural and rhythmical as the Breathing of cosmic Life (ch?) that pervades the human self. Here is a logic that is not Imposed on but discernible in the way we talk (language),''' stringing together whatever connections are sensed in things and events. The speech thus strungtogether tells a story. This story-logic moves from concrete specifics to concrete universals. Thus in the story of a sudden unbearable surge of alarm, completely uncalculated, at seeing a baby about to crawl into a well, Mencius sees a primal budding-forth (tuan) of human|[e]ness (jen).''” This surge of unbearable mindheart (Asin) of human|[e]ness is as irresistible as the unstoppable wellspring. The force of felt moral sentiment 16 EEL 177, 178. 0 HWT 79.

108 Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas, Cambridge University Press, 1964, pp. 115-29. 10 Max Black acknowledged it as “basic reason using” although, sadly, he termed

it “primitive,” “minimal,” and only “quasi-rational.” See his The Prevalence of Humbug and Other Essays, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983, 33-36. See my comments in BC 269-72. 10 Psalm 19:2. ''' HISP 80, cf. EEL 174-76. Π2 Mencius, 2A6, 6A6.

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is as natural and inevitable as the force of nature, which 15 the basis,

explanation, and justification of morality. The story of Ox Mount “一

as the originally lush Mount was denuded by man's daily choppings of trees, so the original human goodness 1s now denatured by man's daily deprivings of nourishment—intimates, in a compelling parsimony, that morality is as naturally ecological as ecological concerns are intrinsically moral. This sort of “argument” from the concrete specific to the concrete universal often packs itself into single terms, which are however routinely (mis)taken to be mere theoretical concepts.' In order to understand how different the two spirits in. pragmatism are, we must see, this time closely, how Chinese reasoning goes. Let us consider, then, (5.4.3.2.1.) the Chinese affirmative notions,

then (9.4.3.2.2.) the Chinese negative notions, and then (5.4.3.2.3.) the Chinese argumentation that is built on them.'? 9.4.3.2.1.: First, as to the Chinese affirmative notions. A Chinese "concept" 15 a scene, a compressed story; for all "theoretical concepts” in China are generalized concretes. “Tao is the road walked

out"! by things, by us; ¢ is the vein!" of things's similarity, the

grain of the wood of things; ch’? is the Breathing!'? of life of things and of us; te (virtue) is what is obtained (ie)? by nature; jen is what is (truly human(e);'^? hsing (nature) is what we are born-with;"! shen (divine, spirit) is what spreads" dynamically in the world; wu (things)

is the oxen!? of things (as precious and powerful as the ox); tzu-jan (naturalness, Nature) is the self-so'** of things.

113 3 ‘5 Body 110

Mencius, GAS. Cf. 2.1., 2.6.1., 4.7.2.1., 5.4.3.1., 5.4.3.2., 5.5.1.3., 5.5.2.2.2., E.3. I have covered the same territory as this, slightly differently, in my On Chinese Thinking, op. cit., 1.1., 1.2., 1.3., 2.1., 2.2., 2.3. Chuang Tzu, 2/33. See my BC 244-40, 284, et passim.

111 See my BC 293. n8 See my BC 426-27, cf. 472, et passim.

In Chinese language, “to obtain” and “virtue” pronounce the same, though differently written. See my BC 162, 165. ”In Chinese, “human” and “humane” (or “benevolent”) are two meanings packed into the same character. ” In Chinese, part of the character, “nature,” is “birth” (or being born). This compares instructively with the Western “nature” and “nascence.” 77 In Chinese, part of the character, “spirit,” means “to spread" (or “extend”). See my BC 319-20. 75 In Chinese, the character “thing” is made up of “ox” and “knife.” This symbolizes how things appear as precious oxen and such, “cut? out of non-separated Con-fusion, the primal Chaos. See my BC 170. 4 This is a literal translation of two Chinese characters meaning “nature” or “naturalness.” See my BC 184.

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Often a four-character phrase sums up a short story that makes a point. The phrase then comes to be a “concept” to circulate. Two examples will suffice. “Cite one, infer three” (chu 1, fan san) comes

from Confucius's description of his manner of teaching:!”

No resolution, no revelation; no vexation, no evocation. Having raised one corner, [if] three [other] corners [were] not returned, then [1 do] no more.

Thus “cite one, infer three" came to represent the concept of “education." Again, “Clothes off, legs apart" (chieh i pan po) sums up “noncha-

lant naturalness” in Chuang Tzu's pungent story:'”

Duke Yuan of Sung was-about-to [have some] picture painted. Crowds [of] artists all came. Receiving orders and standing, [they] licked brushes and [mixed] ink, [while a] half [of] them stayed outside. Therewas one artist who came late; leisurely, leisurely, [he did] not rush. Receiving orders [he did] not stand [but] went straight to [the assigned] studio. Duke sent [a] man [to] observe him, who [was found] clothes off, legs apart, naked. Duke said, “Good. This is [a] true painter." Thus,

instead

of the

abstract

notion

of “nonchalance,”

China

has

"clothes off, legs apart." We see now how compressed phrases —often of four characters— are equivalents of affirmative notions telling of concrete specifics logically (analogically, metaphorically) spread to concrete universals. The affirmation of notions (names) takes on an existential significance in the famous “rectification of names (cheng ming),”'*’ righting of the wronged names back to what they ought to mean. That this has a far-reaching political significance 15 vividly put by Confucius, when he said,'^ Names [being] not right, then words [would] not accord [with actuality]; words not [in] accord [with actuality], then affairs [would] not accomplish; affairs not accomplished, then rites, music, [would] not flourish; rites, music, not flourish, then punishments [would] not hitright [the crimes]; punishments not hit-rıght, then people have nowhere to put [their] hands, feet.

75 The Analects, 7/8.

126 Chuang Tzu, 21/45-47. 27 Cf. 1.1.1.1. 128 See Appendix A to 5.4.3.: “Feminism and rectification of names.”

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This dynamic

af-firmation

(“rectification,”

cheng) of names

is what

“government” (cheng) is all about, says Confucius.'” Hsün Tzu expanded

this theme into a full-fledged moral epistemology (Chapter 22); The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean expanded the theme into a political cosmology; the book of Mencius can be taken as an elaboration of this theme on two fronts: becoming human[e]— which we

are—in all aspects of life,” on one hand, and ruling humanfe]ly always,?! which it means, on the other.

All this comes down to becoming human as we are, and humanity (jen) means humaneness (jen). This dynamic attainment of humaneness 15 what the name of humanity means; to affirm and mean a notion is to achieve it in 116.’ In general, to understand an affirmative notion is to explore its meaning, as coherent as a picture, to affirm it in life. To af-firm a notion means to confirm its self-identity—that is, to confirm, to firm up, to establish and let stand (ἢ), that a 15 indeed

a-—throughout

life, “[letting the]

father

[be

a] father,

son,

son, εἰς.” Affirmative notion is a performative, accomplishing its

meaning contents in life. 9.4.3.2.2.: How about Chinese negatives? Friedrich Waismann, after the manner of Wittgenstein, sensitively enumerated experiential variations of connotations in a simple negation: graded “more or less,” “not quite”; directional “not yet,” “no longer”; hollow and empty phrases ringing false; “not only... but also...” against the completeness of a statement; weakened negation in “hardly”; or even vagueness and indeterminate impressions in “roughly like that," and so on.'” These are all varied shades of experiential meaning of "negation." Chinese thinking includes all the above and more. Chinese negations affirm, even emphasize affirmation; ? Chinese argumentative thinking (especially Taoism) takes full advantage of these positive connotations in negative propositions. In Chinese philosophy negative statements have at least four features:

73 Analects, 12:11, 17, 19. Cf. 16:2, 3; 18:5; 20:2. In Chinese, “rectification” and “government” are mutually homophonous. 30 Cf. 1A7. 1 Cf. 1B8, 485. 132 See Appendix B to 5.4.3.: “What one is and how one talks." 13 The Analects, 12:11. 34 HISP 78-82. This is why the Golden Rule is mentioned always in a negative form. See the Analects, 5/11, 12/2, 15/24. We remember that the three exclamatives with which the Analects begins are all couched in double negatives.

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First, negation indicates meticulous total coverage, such as the careful maintenance of an engagement in “day [and] night without slackening” (ssu yeh fei hsieh)."* Secondly, negation directs our attention to all areas other than the one negated. “Without worries” (wu lu), “without limit” (wu οἰνἴμης, wu hsien), “regardless” (wu lun), etc., readily come to mind. “Wu shang” or “wu fang” means “no harm" and so “quite all right,” “wu t'a (no other)" is “nothing else," and “wu ti (no enemy)" is “matchless.”了 Thirdly, because of positive affirmative thrust in negation, double negatives have an emphatic concentratiuon of affirmation. “Wu pu” (nothing not) is “without exception.” Confucius cited “people not know [you] and [you] not [प्रा^ (transcending over what is denied) as a sign of the gentleman. Mencius used the phrase, “pu... we..."— e.g., “It is impossible for their prince not to be a true king” *—as a powerful conclusion after a long persuasive series of arguments from metaphor. Chuang Tzu’s “what [I] see is nothing but (wu ja) oxen"!*? is stronger than “all oxen.” Finally, we see a subtle play on distinct nuances of negation in Chinese philosophical exposition. That famous “wu we" (non-doing), different from “pu we” (not-doing), has enamored Confucius^~ and Taoists'** alike.'* “Forgetting” (wang)"* and “losing” (sang) 147 re Chuang Tzu's constant favorites. The mindheart that (can)not bear

Others (to suffer) (pu jen jen chih hsin) is the heart of morality. In

136 Shih Ching, 260/4, 261/1. This phrase is so famous as to be adopted in the national anthem of the Republic of China. 137 Mencius, 147, 7819. 138 Mencius, 1A5, 2A5, 4A8, 783. 33 The Analects, 1/8, 4/14, 7/24, 10/5, 11/4, 12/7, 17/13, 20/3; Menaus, 7 A4; Tao Te Ching, 3; Chuang Tzu, 5/26, 6/42. 140 The Analects, 1/1. This phrase is one of those that begin The Analects.

4! Mencius,

argument soon

147; D.C. Lau’s translation, M 23. We are going to examine this

*? Chuang Tzu, 3/5 5 "The Analectes, 15/5.

^

Tao Te Ching, 2, 43, 48; Chuang Tzu, 6/29, et passim.

45 Roger T. Ames has a whole chapter on wu wet in his The Art of Rulership

Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought, Honolulu: The University of Hawan Press 1983, pp. 28-64. On a philosophical exposition of wu and wu wei in Chuang Tzu see Aria l, Aria 2 in my Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play, N.Y.: The Crossroad Publishing Company & Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982, pp. 61-114 6 Chuang Tzu, 2/92, et passim.

#7 Ibid., 1/35, et passim.

48 Mencius, 1A7, 2A6, 4A1, 7B31. As we saw before, this phrase is a compression

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Taoism, “wu ch’ing” (feeling-less, beyond feeling) is not unfeeling; “wu yen” (wordless) is not blank silence; “pu jen” (ruth-less)'* is not “ruthless”; “wu chih” (i-gnorant, without knowledge) is not stupidity; “wu yü” (desire-less) is not desiring nothing; “wu yung” (use-less)'”' is not “useless.”"* One of the most complex and subtle Chinese notions is “wu chi" (self-less) that is not “no self.” There 1s Chuang Tzu’s “sang wo” (self-losing)? (different from “sang chi [losing oneself |)?* and “wang chi, > “wang shen,"^9 “wang wo" (self-forgetting). In mind-fasting (Asin chat) oneself away, in this active self-losing, the true self manifests itself.^? These examples show that in China thinking 15 not formal abstract theorizing, but a sensitive discernment of the many-layered meanings of a concrete experience—of affirmation, of negation. Such a sensitive discernment of experiential meanings differs from Dewey's (definition of) logic as a formulated rule—or principle of habit, way, manner—of action that has been successful in inferential inquiry, or a recognition of relations of interdependence between considerations previously disconnected, this recognition being brought about by discovery of new facts. In contrast, all the above examples of Chinese concrete thinking come from our ordinary experience of the commonly human in daily living; Chinese logic is no formulated rule but experiential understanding. 9.4.3.2.3.: How does such a concrete thinking proceeds; how does Chinese concrete thinking argues? We have seen how negation directs, spreads,

concentrates,

transcends,

and

affirms,

and

how

affirmation

leads us through a concrete understanding to af-firming things according to their nature. We discern concepts in the compressed stories of experience, being led to notions through the “argument” by storytelling, of the story into a well. 49 Tao Te 50 Tao Te >! Chuang 5? One is 2:25) falling

of our unbearably

empathic

alarm

at seeing a baby

about to crawl

Ching, 5. Ching, 3, 34. Tzu, 4/73, 9/2. reminded of Adam and Eve’s shame-less (wu ἄπει) innocence (Genesis into Cain's shameless (wu chh) fratricide (Genesis 4:9).

93 Chuang Tzu, 2/3.

™ > 56 57

Ibid., 16/21. Ibid., 12/45. Ibid., 4/43. Ibid., 14/10.,

79 On self-losing see the Index under “self,” “loss of self” in my BC.

59 LTI 13-14. 160 HWT 81.

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and catapulted into an expansive novelty through subtle negations. All this amounts to an extending of our familar framework of understanding to reach a new hitherto-unknown actuality; and then we change our old framework to accommodate that novelty. How? By discerning a new vein of similarity betwen the familiar and the novel, reaching to the novel as a new familiar. Thus the familiar is our metaphor toward the novel; the novel zs now the new familiar

though it is not the familiar. It is thus that we live by metaphor.'°' Metaphor says the that is both what the this is and 15 ποῖ,δ" moving us from the familiar to the novel, because movement

15 what 15 and

is not. This going is—through metaphor—from the typical concrete to the novel concrete. Learning is a movement of understanding that goes from the known this to (expand to) the unknown that. We formulate—formalize—this going as “proof.” Proof is a transition (movement) within a calculus (Waismann,'? Dewey)'™ that is decided by our practical purposes. This transition is a bisociation!® to produce recombinant ideas.'° Judgment is our decision at the end of this transinon—move, story, proof—to settle on a specific understanding, a conclusion. Thus “the sudden alarm on seeing a baby crawling into a well" brings us toward (transition) an understanding of “our true human(e)ness" (Mencius). This transition toward experien-

tial understanding constitutes what Waismann calls “natural logic."

Let us follow the reasoning—situational, metaphorical—in the Dialogues of Mencius, 1A7,' a typical example of how Mencius—and 161 Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Press, 1980, elaborates on this theme. On metaphor ed., Philosophical Perspectwes on Metaphor, Minneapolis: 1981. On argument by metaphor in China, see my Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., esp. Chapter VI.

Live By, University of Chicago in general, see Johnson, Mark, University of Minnesota Press, History, Thnking, and Literature in

162 As Ricoeur and McFague insisted. See Ricoeur, Paul, The Rule of Metaphor,

trs. Robert Czerny, et al., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 224, 248-49, and McFague, Sallie, Metaphorical Theology, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, pp. 13, 19. 165 HISP 69-70. ० HWT 80. 15 The phrase is Arthur Koestler’s in his The Act of Creation, N.Y.; The Macmillan Company, 1964, pp. 35, et seq. 06 The phrase is Douglas R. Hofstadter's, somewhere in his Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, N.Y.: Basic Books, Inc., 1985. Also cf. Margolis, Howard, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition: A Theory of Judgment, The University of Chicago Press, 1987. 67 HISP 68. 88 The perceptive reader, comparing my phraseology here and D.C. Lau's excellent translation in M, may note my occasional departures from him.

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all Chinese thinkers— "argue." We see four points in Mencius's argument here. Point 1: King Hsüan of (ΠῚ asked about two despotic dukes, Huan and Wen. The King was obviously interested only in brutal statecraft ( pa). Mencius gently proposed to talk about our royal legacy,

princely rulership.? Thus this polite exchange correctly identified

an urgent topic the King ought to pursue. Point 2: Mencius mentioned a recent court incident. King could not bear an ox shrinking with frightened innocence— being led to blood-consecration of a new bell—and ordered to let it go. Asked if the consecration should cease, the King ordered to exchange the ox with a lamb. This incident indicates to Mencius not the King's grudging an ox but a princely gentleman in the King who, seeing an animal alive, cannot bear its death fright, and so keeps his distance from the slaughterhouse and kitchen. This mindheart (Asin) of human(e)ness 1s enough to enable his princely rule. Here the King's princely capability in his spontaneous feeling (“unbearing heartmind") was discerned, again in a concrete dialogue. Point 2’: It is impossible to be indifferent (without visceral reaction) to people's suffering while being unable to bear animal's suffering. Yet the King's gracious-solicitude reaches animals, while his people are not benefiting from his grace. This curious fact is due to the King's refusal to act on his visceral humaneness, not to his inability. To deny his ability 1η this case 15 as incredible as denying the ability to lift a feather while being capable of lifting 100 chün (about 7 kilograms), or denying the sight of a cartload of wood while capable of seeing the fine tip of an autumnal feather. This negative point reinforces point 2 above. Point 3: Then Mencius urged the King to apply (chia) and extend (ui) this spontaneous practice of the root-feeling (unable to bear Others's suffering) from one's immediate family to other families. To properly-treat one's own aged folks as aged (literally, “το ‘age’ one's aged”), thereby to extend (such a treatment) to others’ aged folks and, similarly, to properly-treat one's own young (“to ‘young’ one's young") thereby to extend (such a treatment) to others’ young—this is a spontaneous inevitable application of our natural practice, an

09 In China, princely rulership (wang) of humane ily contrasted with Machievellian autocracy ( pa).

(jen) government is customar-

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extension of our root-sensitivity. This 15 a pragmatic expression of our original nature. Point 3’: Extending such a princely favor-bounty the King shall be able freely to turn in his palm all under Heaven (as the turn of Fate), as he cares for and protects all. Merely striving after universal rulership, without extending his root-empathy, 1s worse than climbing a tree for a fish; the King shall have nothing with which to protect even his own family. Once discarded, the natural spontaneity of root-empathy (in its defective mode) entails the inevitability of distasters. This point negatively reinforces point 3 above. Point 4: To extend the ruler's root-feeling 1η practice 15 tantamount to—means—leaving his people with enough secure resources so as to secure their constant heartmind to properly serve their parents and provide for their families. Such a benevolent rule is an expression of the King's return to his own human root—inevitable, necessary —1f he is human at all. This concludes Mencius's argument. Now, we see here a three-stage argument: a situational problem (point 1), a metaphorical movement (points 2, 3), and a judgment (point 4). First, we see that a concrete situation provides a problem. The King inquires about statecraft, asking for a clever scheme to further his autocratic ambition. Mencius tactfully steers him into the basic problem of how best to rule spontaneously from the depths of his own humanity. The discussion 15 all too concrete, all too human and urgent, yet involves deep reflections on the fundamentals of things. Then, we see a two-staged argumentative move: metaphorical discernment, metaphorical extension. À casual spontaneous incident of the King's empathy for the trembling ox clues Mencius, and the King, into the discernment of our deep human(e) feeling, a discovery of our heartmind unable to bear Others' suffering. Mencius identifies this feeling for Others as the King's "root" of being human. lhis 15 a metaphorical move from a concrete incident toward discovering the concrete principle of human(e)ness. And then the King is urged to put this “root” principle in practice, extending it to all people. This is a metaphorical move from a concrete principle to its pragmatic application. Let us look into one phrase to observe such a concrete argumentative move: “[we had better] age our [own] aged [folks], with [which to] extend-to aged [folks] of [other] people (lau wu lau, 1 ch: Jen chih lau).” We see here three metaphorical extensions.

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(1) In “our [own] aged [folks],” “aged” as an adjective is extended to become “aged folks worthy of respect as such,” a noun. (2) In “to ‘age’ our aged [folks]," "age" is extended into a deserved treatment (verb) of such persons as such. This is the Golden Rule— "Do to Others as you would have Others do to you"—turned “Do-as-Others to Others" or even “‘Other’ Others." In the duplication of the same word—extended into different parts of speech—we see a powerful metaphorical parsimony in an af-firmation of "A 15 A." (3) In "extend to aged [folks] of [other] people," we reach out—in our practice of root humanness—metaphorically, appropriately, toward Others; as we do to our own aged folks, so we do to others's aged folks. Finally, there 15 a conclusive metaphorical judgment: This 1s the royal road, the fool-proof Way, to princely—and universal—rulership (wang tao). As we "age" our aged folks and thereby "age" people's aged folks, princely rulership in universal concord shall obtain all by itself. Mencius’ rhetorical negative statement clinches all. “The aged wear silk, eat meat, and the common people are not hungry, not cold, yet without (fu) princely [rule]—[we have] yet (we) [to] have such.”人 Mencius elsewhere said succinctly, “The Way hes here, and then seek-to-apply-to the far. Person [to] person, [each] ‘parents’ [the] parents, ‘elderly’ [the] elderly, and [all] under Heaven [is at] peace." The judgment enlightens the situation, and we say, “Aha! There we have it.” And

so, as with

1A7

above,

so with the entire Book

of Mencius,

a dynamic montage of arguments by metaphor, “extending (pushing, tui) what we practice." Besides, those vibrant stories tossed out in the conversation were later compressed into pungent fourcharactered phrases, vivid and unforgettable— "trace tree [to] seek fish (yüan mu chu yi),” “heartmind of un-bearable [feeling for Others] (pu jen chih hsın), and so on. They are habitually used later—as "technical notions"—1n further extended arguments.

o Lau rendered the final phrase as “it is impossible for their prince not to be

a true King" (M 23), as mentioned a while ago above. 111 Mencius, 4A11. '? This exposition hopefully puts coherence into D.C. Lau’s excellent though fragmentary essay, “On Mencius’ Use of Analogy in Argument” in M 334-56. Cf. also my “Mencius’ Concrete Thinking,” (co-authord with a Mencius scholar, Professor Huang Chün-chieh) in my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., Chapter VI. 3 Mencius, 1 A7.

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In sum, Chinese thinking is not applied to concrete situation; it is itself concretely situated and situationally (metaphorically) extended. Chinese argumentation shifts our paradigm of reality to change our pattern of behavior. The argumentation is the active moving of the situation itself—to move us into a new discernment to create a new situation. Our everyday language 15 used to give us new insights, a felt change of reality, and a change of life itself. Chinese pragmatic argumentation renews us, thereby changes the situation. The renewal of ourselves is accomplished by argument by metaphorical extension. To cite the ox-incident 15 to point to the heartmind of empathy of unbearable intensity which 1s to point to the humane government. The ox, the heartmind, the government, they are different yet they come systematically connected by being pointed at serially, metaphorically—in a story, a conversation—thereby pointing at us to renew us. Thus "[things within] Heaven [and] earth are one

finger-pointer," and “myriads of things are one horse-marker.”'’* For

‘ox’ illustrates... an object... while ‘horse’ is the typical class name.”7” To cite and point to is to call. “Tao [we] walk (Asing) it and [it is] formed; thing [we] call them and [they are] so."'? To call is to walk which is to form the way things go as they do. Things, names, they are ways of walking-forth the formation of the world. Naming is a way of thinking which is a way of life. As Graham noted, in Chinese philosophy to apply a name to an object is to use it for all similar objects, and such usage establishes a road we “walk” or “proceed” (Asing) to all objects to form a configuration, called “of the same kind" (lei). All this proceeds by “metaphor.”'’’ And all this is to impress on us that we and the sage are “of the same kind.” Strive

after sagehood.'” How?

By arguing, for arguing for a humanistic

point persuades and urges us to act on 1t. Here Chinese philosophers see eye to eye with American pragmatists who take the "meaning" of a thing to be the possible consequences of acting on it; to call a thing "hard" is to say that 1t 4

Chuang Tzu, 2/33.

' Graham LMLES 217-18. “Finger-pointer (chih)? and “horse-marker (ma)” are

coupled in Chuang Tzu's reflections on things (2/32). “Horse” is used to argue for things in general in the last section of Chapter Twenty-Five (from 25/60 on).

US Chuang Tzu, 2/33.

77 LMLES 227-28. 78 Mencius, 242, 6A7.

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would not be scratched. As we cited earlier, Peirce told us to “con-

sider what eflects [and] practical bearings we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects 15 the whole of our conception of the objects.” To conceive a thing zs to conceive its effects, and vice versa. This 1s a far cry, however, from Peirce's later metaphysical debates

over the meanings of quality, fact, and law,!’”” leading him to formulate cosmological systems in his pragmaticism, such as an "elaborate categorial scheme for expressing the generic structure of reality."9? The same could be said of Whitehead's organic processive cosmology, Royce's "social infinite," Dewey's naturalistic metaphysics, James's pluralistic universe, and so on. All of these are foreign to Chinese philosophy. 9.4.4. Logic 15 usually taken as formal calculus system, having httle to do with actual hving. But as its etymology shows, “logic” (logos) originally meant collecting, gleaning, or gathering, which later came to mean counting, on the one hand, and accounting and taking into account, on the other. “Counting” came to dominate the meaning of logic in the West—logic 15 now primarily formal calculus system. “Taking account of” something, however, is no less rational—a gathering in of something hitherto unfamiliar, leading us from the “ground” (another meaning of “logos”) of what 15 familiar toward what is not. And language is a vehicle of gathering-in.'® All above makes ıt sensible for Waismann to say that our logic is molded on the structure of language, which reflects experience. It would not be surprising if an exotic language reveals another variety of logical structure." “The structure of logic reflects . . . characteristic ^ PT 180 PT

130-31. 140.

8! Cf. 3.4. above. On the origin of the word “logos” see A. Debrunner and

H. Klienknecht's articles in Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, IV: 71-91, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.E. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1967. Thorlief Boman agrees. See his Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, tr. Jules L. Moreau, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, p. 67. 82 This is the well-known theme that occupied later Heidegger. J. Glenn Gray said that Heidegger's versammlen was translated with Heidegger's approval as “to gather" which came from the old German gattem (to couple, to espouse or join in marriage), itself derived from the Greek 如 agathon (the good). See “Heidegger in Remembering and Remembering Heidegger," Man and World 10 (1977), pp. 62-63. 55 FISIP 68.

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attitudes of our life" and “social substructure,”'®* which 15 our culture. To decide in favor of one system of logic 15 to achieve a definite style of thinking and pattern of life; different cultures (types of behavior

and langauge) make for different types of logic.!®

In light of this general observation we see here at least two kinds of thinking. One unfolds formally in an argumentation of a coercive

logic.'® The other enfolds the subject who is in a situation where

points are arranged and interfused in configurative self-referential circles, be they concentric, co-implicative, epicyclic, or otherwise. What is an enfolding thinking? When one 15 soaked in a warm bath, or when

one

15 rapt in music,

the whole

person

15 sensibly fit, en-

folded—as the baby in the womb—and one 15 dipped in “Of course, I am here." It 15 this “of course" that makes sense. And this making of sense is the rational aspect of the situation. This rationality 15 less coercive than inevitable, less deductive

than concrete.

And so we have two sorts of rationality. The first rationality 15 describable by an external logic and the second one, by an inner "logic." Existence comprises an inside and an outside; a complete rationality of existence 15 a unity of an objective, schematic, unfolding logic with an intimate, situational, enfolding logic. This all-round reason of existence fulfills humanity. Dewey's words recur: “ We have discriminated logic in its wider sense— concerned with the sequence of characteristic functions and attitudes in experience—from logic in its stricter meaning, concerned with the function of reflective thought. We must avoid yielding to the temptation of identifying logic with either of these to the exclusion of the other; or of supposing that it 15 possible to isolate one finally from the other. The more detailed treatment of the organs and methods of reflection cannot be carried on with security save as we have a correct idea of the position of reflection amid the typical functions of experience. Yet it is impossible to determine this larger placing, save as we have a defined and analytic, as distinct from a merely vague and gross, view of what we mean by reflection—what is its actual constitution. It is necessary to work back and forth between the larger and the narrower fields, transforming every increment upon one side into a method of work upon the other, and thereby testing it. 54 HISP 89-90. '8 HISP 90. All this is relevant to Section 1, esp. 1.1.1. (end), et passim. 36 On the “coercive” nature of usual “philosophy” see Nozick, Robert, Philosophical

Explanations, Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 4-8. Collingwood deduction as “compulsive” in contrast to induction. See 3.2.1.

°` EEL 103.

also described

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Let us apply Dewey's above insight to the community of differences. With these two sorts of logic, Dewey here describes well the composition of the community of the spirit of pragmatism and the pragmatic spirit, the community of spirited pragmatism. We yearn for the dawning of such a community of differences, where we understand the outside through the inside and become genuine, thereby understanding the inside through the outside, and become all of a piece, experientially wise; we need here both the spirit of pragma-

üsm and the pragmatic Spirit1

Already we see germs of such a coming-together. For both James and Dewey, thinking is dipped in desire and emotion, and truth 15 what satisfies in the long run and on the whole.' What constitutes a situation what it is, distinct from other situations, 18 its unique per-

vasive quality: unease, joy, foreboding, etc. All thinking, however abstract, is guided by the situation's distinctive pervasive quality, which provides the connective tissue for all elements of thought; logic as the study of connecüves is based on situational quahty. All this strikes a sympathetic cord with Chinese concrete thinking by metaphor, by situational similarities. John Smith in his presidential address at the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) 1η 1981 proclaimed that American pragmatists were "above all" "devoted to the need for philosophical conversation cutting across party lines." This philosophical duty should be extended and implemented across cultural hnes as well, as Smith himself did."! This subsection has followed his lead. It is important to see the why and the how of our doing so. We have two ways of thinking. The first 15 theoretical. When applied, it becomes experimental reasoning. It 15 visual, objective, analytical, controlling, and tends to be formal, ıf not strictly deduc-

tive. The second style of thinking is experiential. It 1s auditory, echoing actuality, co-responding with the mighty current and undercurrent of the situation. It 1s responsive, visceral, metaphorical, configuratve,

situational, if not straight storytelling. The former thinking 15 a tool of the spirit of pragmatism; the latter 1s the pragmatic spirit In action.

88 This point complement what is proposed in 1.3. about the cultural outsiders being the true cultural insiders.

99 See Appendix A to 5.4.4.: “Thinking on pragmatism and practicing it.” "Ὁ SAP 225. 51 In the first essay of UCM.

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Each need to communicate with the other. For a mere application of theoretical reasoning risks becoming sterile; experiential sensibility alone tends to get lost in concrete particulars. Each needs the other to become a lived pragmatism. First of all, how does the pragmatic spirit get lost without the spirit of pragmatism? We have seen Mencius advancing his argument by metahpor from our heartmind that cannot bear the sight of a sacrificial ox in jitters, ॥ "aging" one's aged folks, then extending to "aging" others’ aged folks, and finally to a universal rule of human(e)ness. Now, it 15 symmetrical to argue—also by metaphor—

from our natural propensity to “fight [for] drinks [and] foods,” then on to the necessity of training-shaping (wet) oneself in the

reverence-for-decency (4), and further on to the rulership of universal imposition of such a compulsory character-education. This 1s what Hsün Tzu in fact did. Here we note three points. First, such a Chinese debate between Mencius and Hsün Tzu is couched in the same pattern of concrete argumentation by metaphor.” Secondly, to adjudicate between them the Chinese thinker can only resort to another concrete argument by metaphor, to find another concrete incident perhaps inclusive of the initial ones cited by both Mencius and Hsün Tzu, and metaphorically push to a new conclusion, either for or against either one.'”

This is in fact what happened among the later Neo-Confucians.'”

Thirdly, in concrete argumentation the conclusive solution to this problem is impossible." The most one could do is to observe how the history of debates on this issue (whether human nature 15 originally

good or bad) somehow rallies itself on Mencius.'^ Why Hsün Tzu

came to be neglected in Chinese history of ideas 1s unclear. This 15

an example of losing one's way in the thicket of concrete particulars.'?? 192 Hsün Tzu, 4/17, 23/18. 13 Hsün Tzu, 23/25. ,"?* Another notorious example may well be the debates—reciprocal pilings-up of non-sequiters against each other 一 between Mencius and Kao Tzu on whether or not human nature is innately good, as reported in Mencius, 6A1—5.

5 Mencius's argument from the story of Ox Mount

(in 6A8) is presumably

designed to explain man's behavior that seems to run counter to his theory of the "onginal goodness of human nature."

56 See PM.

7 This point perhaps justifies “play with arguments" proposed in Section 3. 38 See PM.

99 This is similar to what Thomas Kuhn noted as “scientific revolution" by a

paradigm

shift; revolution in science happens,

all too concretely, when

extrapola-

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Besides, such metaphorical application, extension, and explication of a notion (or an argument) render it elusive, requiring some special discernment on what it should mean in each specific context. This makes it difficult to understand, much less discuss, all matters concerned. In short, to be concretely situational 1η understanding 15 the business of the pragmatic spirit. To survey and analyze concrete reasoning can help spot its dangers, and analysis and survey is performed by the spirit of pragmatism. The Chinese pragmatic spirit does well

to embrace the American spirit of pragmatism.*” We

must be careful here, however; and this brings us to the other

danger 一 of the spirit of pragmatism—to turn sterile. “Pragmatism 15 that life experience from which, for which, and in which our reasoning moves and has its being," says the spirit of pragmatism. And it is this “saying” that is the source of the problem. Let me explain. To begin with, the spirit of pragmatism rightly says that thinking that 15 not pragmatism-that-we-are at work, but merely thinking about how thinking ought to be pragmatic, is as crippled as the other extreme, sheer animal vitality not conscious of its being alive. The former is a pretension to disembodied rationality in thin. Platonic air; the latter 1s brute intelligence merely instinctual, non-verbal. The former

can

deteriorate

worse

than

the latter,

however,

for animal

vitality can bud forth human intelligence (as Charles Darwin observed), while a mere formal scruüny gets trapped in its own pedantic satisfaction ("Look how beautifully self-coherent and universal our reasoning 1s", running idle, referring to nothing. And yet, this correct warning breeds a problem for the spirit of pragmatism. The pragmatic spirit may discern that this very concern with pragmatism ls as odd as 1s a paradox noted by Smith in Dewey's handling of logic. Having denied any general relation between thought and reality at large, Dewey went ahead to elaborate a theory about the general nature of logic and its general relation to nature.” There walked—in Kierkegaard's wry irony—a man with a sand-

wich board, saying, “I am normal."*? He is abnormal; to be normal

tions from an initial concrete model get unwieldy (see his The Structure of Scientific Revolution, The University of Chicago Press, 1962, and “Metaphor in Science," ed., Ortony, A., Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 409-19). But in China not even such an explanation by the principle of simplicity has been forthcoming. 200 Cf. 5.2. 4! TAP 130-31. 4? The story begins Soren Kierkegaard's two-volume Either-Or.

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339

is to be silently natural. “Don’t say; show it.” One’s experience breathes off its expression as a flower breathes forth its fragrance. Nothing is odd about our being normal; saying that we are 15. What the American pragmatists said may well be what is the case; that they claimed so makes them Kierkegaard’s sandwich man. Not surprisingly, Gabriel Marcel feared that Martin Buber’s very explication. of

our nature as “I-Ihou” may have denatured the Thou into an It.”

Fortunately, the sandwich man has a cure. He can be a therapeutic Diogenes with a lit candle—the sandwich board—roaming in broad daylight. Such a therapeutic sandwich man requires a sense of Diogenes, however. That sense can be given by the forthrightness of the pragmatic spirit of Chinese philosophy. For the absurdity of the sandwich man (with or without an ulterior motive) 15 due to violation of a simple truth that what nature has Joined, man (for only “man” splits) should not—and cannot— put asunder. The exhibitionism of the sandwich man splits that unity of spontaneity. Thus a mere spirit of pragmüsm 15 as odd as a pragmatic spirit alone. We need to combine the two spirits to do justice to the real situation—the concrete unity—of our thinking in living, and our hving in thinking. We must follow the two spirits as they are, the two sides of our integral original nature, and appreciate the mystery of their communal unity which we are. We must be unconcernedly concerned with pragmatic thinking, in order to let our concern

breathe forth a lived pragmatism.”*

But how? We must realize that “Diogenes the sandwich man" requires three stages to produce: (a) the sandwich man unknowingly displaying his abnormality by announcing his "normality"; (b) the Diogenes knowingly displaying his therapeutic abnormality by playing the sandwich man; (c) our awareness that the complex structure of this Diogenes displays therapeutic sanity by displaying insanity by displaying "sanity." To understand this complex composition of Diogenes the sandwich man and to play it spontaneously, that is true pragmatism. Chinese philosophy has two delightful counterparts to Diogenes the sandwich man, one negative, one positive. Both are stories circu-

lating in four-charactered phrases— "pulling seedlings, helping [them]

grow" (ya miau chu chang), and “clothes off, legs apart" (chieh 1 pan 23 See Appendix B to 5.4.4.: “G. Marcel and M. Buber.” + Cf. 5.2., 4.3. 205 Mencius, 2A2.

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ῥο).“5 The second story has been mentioned above. The first one goes as follows: There-was a-man from-Sung who worried grow, and pulled them. He came-back tired his folks [at home], “[1] am-tired today! grow!” His son rushed and went to-observe

all] wilted.

[that] his seedlings did-not [with a] tired [look], telling I [have] helped seedlings them, and seedlings [were

We have three points of comparison between Diogenes the sandwich man and his Chinese counterparts. First, they are dramatic rehearsals (Dewey) of concrete situations, compressed stories laden with significance. Secondly, however, Diogenes the sandwich man 15 my new coinage, a clumsy unnatural one. The Chinese counterparts are not, and have long been circulating as common

notions.

Thirdly,

in all these cases, cultural activities (candle, sandwich board, agriculture, painting, clothes) are so naturalized as to be unnoticeable. They are all our natural activities. All these examples—in the West, in China—can be said to be various ways of tao-ing the un-tao-able Tao (Lao Tzu), in the elemental Breathing of life (Mencius) that bloweth where it listeth. Genuine pragmatism is the Piping of Heaven—of Nature—which we

overhear and (in) which we pipe." What is a human piping in rela-

tion to the heavenly one? The piping of Nature 15 presented glories—that 1s, with all its primal man whisper—yet through human appears as contrivance disappears;

in musıc and in poetry in all its rustles and silence, without a huartistry. Natural Vitality steadily the zenith of rational effort lies

in its disappearance into the muscle of actuality.””® Pragmatism should

be so pragmatic that it perfects its self-oblivion within historical situations. We understand an action by watching how its agents intention interacts with and within his situation. This “logic” of existential how—the logic of the sztuatton—can be understood by its history. The rationality of action is natural, historical, and narrative-oriented.??

206 Chuang Ὁ) Chuang above. 28 This is 29 This is Dame Press,

Tzu, 21/45-47. Tzu, 2/3-9. See my BC 503 under "pipings." Cf. 4.7.1.3.c. and 4.7.2.4. another expression of non-doing (wu wet). what' Alasdair MacIntyre tried in his After Virtue, University of Notre 1981.

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To argue is to tell stories, “pulling seedlings, helping [them] grow,”

“clothes off, legs apart.”*!® This is in the pragmatic spirit. But we

must argue for such a peculiar argumentation, in the way of Diogenes the sandwich man. This is in the spirit of pragmatism. Al this— combined—1s the true philosophy of “experience,” pragmatic philosophy truly so called. This is the symbiotic community of famıly differences where the American spirit of pragmatism lives in the Chinese pragmatic spirit, and the latter spirit in the former. 211

List of Abbreviations

of Works

Cited

(Works cited without abbreviations are not listed here) Wu, Kuang-ming, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations of the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New

York

Press,

1990.

Smith, John E., ed., Contemporary American. Philosophy: Second Senes,

London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970.

Dewey, John, Essays in Experimental Logic, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1916. Waismann, F., How I See Philosophy, ed. Harre, R., London: Macmillan,

1968.

Dewey, John, How We Think, Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1910. Graham, A.C., Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press & London: University of London, 1978. Dewey, John, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, 1938. Lau, D.C., tr., Mencius, Two Volumes, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1984. Huang, Chün-chieh, Praxis and Metaphysics: A History of Mencius Scholarship, in preparation.

Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Realty, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1929, The Free Press, 1978.

Smith, John E., Purpose and Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978. Smith, John E., Religion and Empiricism, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1967. Smith, John E., The Spirit of American Philosophy, Revised Edition,

SBCP

Albany,

N.Y.:

State University

of New

York

Press,

Chan, Wing-tsit, À Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963.

210 As well as all examples

of Chinese

"arguments"

in stories ánd

1983.

Princeton:

metaphors.

?! See Appendix C to 5.4.4.: "Saying of a story vs. telling a story."

342 TAP UCM

5.5.

SECTION 5; INNER TOUCH Smith, John E., Themes in American Philosophy: Purpose, Experience and Community, N.Y.: Harper Torchbooks, 1970. Allinson, Robert E., Understanding the Chinese Mind, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989.

“Time”

in China

What is oneself (in 5.3.) and how we do our togetherness-thinking (in 5.4.) have themselves been considered in the milieu of togetherness. Now we will see how we lwe in time. And living in time is not only concretely but also tangibly demonstrated among the Chinese people. Therefore we consider “time” in China in order to see how we live in time. Furthermore, nothing is more able and clear in description than via the mode of thinking in the West. Therefore we consider “time” in China via a Western philosophical description. Thus here the Western mode of thinking has served as "egg" and fructify the “seed”?'* of Chinese “time” into this subsection, 5.5., for which the Chinese people owe a debt of gratitude to the Western mode of thinking. In this subsection we try and understand the Chinese lived understanding of time. That 1s, we not only report how the Chinese people understand time, but also try to make sense of how they take time to be, or rather, how they live their time. We will be engaged less in an anthropological information on Chinese practices on time than in a life-archeological digging, a life-hermeneutics, of their myths of time, etymologies of characters related to time, and time-correlated

behaviors of morality, politics, agriculture, and the like."

Before going into “time” in China, we must (in 5.5.1.) be clear about two different ways of understanding time—formally objective and concretely lived. 'Then (in 5.5.2.) we describe how the Chinese people understand time—humanistically, historically, futuristically. Finally, we sum up (in 5.5.3.) the Chinese lived and pragmatic understanding of time as “time-understanding.”

?? On the notions of *egg" and “seed” and how they come together in the philosophical world, see 5.1. and 5.2. above. ^3 See Appendix 5.5.: “Acknowledgements.”

“TIME”

IN CHINA

343

5.5.1. Two understandings of time—objective and lived 9.9.1.1. “Time” is one of those indefinably basic, primitive or primary concepts’ ἢ such as “length,” “A is A,” and the like. “Time” as a concept 15 particularly difficult to handle, however, because time,

its referent, 1s. For while we can usually understand most primary concepts by pointing to their referents, as we define "length" by an ostensive portrayal of something long (perhaps in contrast to something short), we cannot point to time; it 15 not there. Nor can we undergo time, either; we undergo experience, not time. Nonetheless, time 15 such a pervasive “quality” of life and things that it has been our favorite topic of discussion in life, in religion, and especially in philosophy. One could hardly open a systematic philosophical treatise of any persuasion without finding a discussion or two of time. And the Western world 15 full of treatises and monographs exclusively devoted to time.^? In the face of all this plethora of technical thinking about time in the West, how do we as humans understand time? It 15 possible to regard time as a pecuhar object of our experience; in fact bme has been treated objectively, and often quite abstrusely, by most schools in the West (and by some schools of India), with magnificent results in modern days. Time has also been treated differently, that 15, non-objectively, however. This subsection attempts a reasonable understanding of one such non-objective treatment— "time" in China— without arguing for its merits or demerits in comparison with its objective approach, such as in the West. Arguments for a nonobjective approach to non-objectfiable time could go like this. Our lived world has things entirely concrete and yet imperceptible by senses, such as human rights, feeling, words, meaning, number, and collective nouns like school, nation, attitude, approach, style. They are neither perceivable nor dissoluble in water. Yet they have

their impacts unmistakably felt.?'®

214 “Time” is our notion of time, which is not a notion. Time can be understood by a sort of retrospection over our experience, from which “time” is extrapolated. But this distinction between "time" and time would so needlessly complicate our description of the Chinese understanding of time that we will omit it in the following pages. 713 See extensive bibliographies towards the ends of two articles on time, one by JJ-C. Smart, titled “Time,” another by C.W.K. Mundle, titled “Time, Consciousness of," in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, N.Y.: The Macmillan Co., 1967, 8:126-34, 134—39, respectively. Also see Robin LePoidevin and Murray

MacBeath, eds., The Philosophy of Time, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 223-28. 716 Cf. 2.11.

1993, pp.

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Time is one great instance of such concrete reality. It cannot be handled or perceived by our five senses, yet nothing 15 not touched by its impact. Time is incurably concrete, universally influential, and impenetrably imperceivable. We could indeed try to know time by abstractive entification; we can thing-ize time, purposely committing what Whitehead called the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, into an a priori concept, or at least a “proper noun," “a single concrete

being."^" Yet the price we pay is not small; we end up alienating

ourselves from the flesh and blood of concrete tme. 9.9.1.2. This brings us to reflecting on our experience. We can divide our experience into two sorts: what 1s survey-able and what is undergo-able. otars in the sky can only be surveyed from here on earth; music can only be undergone. What 1s objectvely survey-able is in space; what 15 being subjectively undergone is in time. It follows that to talk about time, to explain time, amounts to describing the manner of our undergoing experience, how we live our life, our way and style of living. The so-called "flow of time," true 1η itself or not, expresses our awareness, our experience, of things changing.” Let us note a significant recent trend in Western philosophy to treat objectively the lived character of time: “Now” and other timerelated terms are regarded as indexical or token-reflective. “Now” in a statement refers back to the statement, meaning "simultaneous with this utterance."^? The “now” in a statement is exclusively bound up in meaning with this particular statement in which "now" occurs; "now" in a statement has no fixed meaning, which must be referred to the time when the statement is uttered. "Now" has no objective meaning in itself but belongs to the statement, never to be separately treated apart therefrom. 1 hus the “nows” of several statements differ as much among themselves as these statements differ respecüvely one from another. The peculiarity of subjective, token-reflexive nature of the “now” can be seen when we compare these two sentences: A: “This building 1s going to explode in five minutes from now." B: “The pubhc library is to explode at 4 p.m., September 5, 1994." Sentences ^! These two phrases are Μ᾽ Merleau-Ponty's in his description of time in

Phenomenology of Perception, London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul,

218 See Appendix A to 5.5.1.2.: “On surveying time.”

1962, p. 421.

?? See Appendix B to 5.5.1.2.: “Other names for demonstratives.”

“TIME”

IN CHINA

345

A and B differ in existential import, although they can be objectively identical. For we may quickly leave the building on hearing sentence-A,

but not on hearing

sentence-B,

for we

may

think that

the alleged date and time is not five minutes from “now.”

Furthermore, this way of treating “now” packs “now” into the statement, and “time” disappears ın the statement and its analysıs, not to be noted as such. Analysis 15 conducted in a surveying objectivity, performed in space. And so to pack “now” indexically, tokenreflexively, into sentential analysis, amounts to a spatializing of üme.*! Ihe tendency to spatialize time 15 more prevalent in the Englıshspeaking world than we usually think. For instance, a Chinese character, chu which has no spatial implication whatever, 15 invariably translated as “long time."^^ In the West, the spatializing tendency Is so strong that there exists no word to express “long time" without appealing to a spatial category, “long.” Although we do have English

"ancient,"

“archaic,”

23

ες

“age-old,” “old, old story,"

9

exclusively

for long time in the past, Chinese “chu” can also be connected with long time indifferently stretching far into the future. In such manner as this, Western philosophy (and its mode of thinking) typically shows an objectifying, spatializing tendency. At the same

time, in discovering the indexical,

token-reflexive

character of

time, this thinking shows us another way of understanding time besides a spatializing, objective, surveying way, that is, an undergoing, experiential, historical way. 9.9.1.3. The token-reflexive character of time also indicates that time 1s adverbial. We cannot run fastness any more than can fastness itself exist independently; we simply run, and fastness is manifested

79 See Appendix C to 5.5.1.2.: “Existential import of time.”

“1 The word “spatializing” significantly occurred in a similar context, albeit without explanation, in Encyclopedia, op. cit., 8:138. The West has the tendency to understand things by spatializing them. Even the word “opportune,” a time-notion, originally came from being near (*op-") the “port”—spatial image— and so “convenient," and then it came to be transferred to the realm of time and mean convenient time.

222 This is the case in every Chinese-English dictionary I have checked, includ-

ing the classical Lin Yutang Chinese-English Dictionary, Hong Kong University Press, 1973, and its revised version, Lai Ming and Lin Tai-yi, eds., The New Lin Yutang Chinese-English Dictionary, Hong Kong: Panorama Press, Ltd., 1987. Only the historic Saıto’s fapanese- English. Dictionary, by Saito Hidesaburo, Tokyo: Meicho-Fukyu Kai, 1928, 1979, p. 242, has under “hisashi-buride,” “hisashu,” “hisashiku”—all Japanese equivalents to Chinese chu—“old” besides “long before,” etc.

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within the running. Time 15 also adjectival. We cannot paint the freshness of an apple, nor can freshness exist independently. We faith-

fully paint an apple, and its freshness shines forth therein.^? Freshness

is as much of a üme-related notion as newness or novelty. No wonder many descriptions of “tme in A (or Mr. A)" end up describing not time but A. Describing time in Chuang Tzu describes Chuang Tzu's thinking; describing tme in Hsün Tzu describes Hsün Tzu.^* All “theories of time” are the theories those writers espouse by ostensibly using “time”-words. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of time, say, differs considerably from J.J.C. Smarts because their modes of philosophizing differ considerably. Their arguments typically go like "Look at time in the way my philosophy says, and your problem of time, generated by looking at time your way, dissolves itself—my way." Perhaps we have no other way of describing time than this, time being token-reflexive, adjectivally and adverbially going with theories those particular writers promote. lime is that mode in which, that in terms of which, we express and experience, thereby colors experience as peculiarly human, and if we look further, colors our experience as peculiarly Chinese, Indian, Western, etc. Thus time can be called one of our basic cultural uni-

versals. Since to understand Chinese understanding of time or "time" in China

1s thus to notice characteristics of Chinese

time is one of Chinese cultural universals.^?

ethos, Chinese

The Chinese people are incorngibly concrete, pragmatic people.

They

understand

time

non-theoretically,

non-abstractly,

in a lived,

pragmatic, experiential manner. They regard time as unique at each concrete period. They often say, “This time is not that time,” “Now is one

time; then is another,"

or “Now

15 the time, not then.”

No

wonder Chinese people are said to be historically conscious, though they do not philosophize about history as such. Being historically conscious expands itself into regarding the cosmos cosmogonically; they tend to be cosmogonic when they speculate on cosmology. The world is born, and is always being born, in China (sheng sheng pu hsi). If to generalize at all, the Chinese people generalize their situational, seasonal, epochal experiences into “time”; time 15 now a collective

223 Cf. my “Chinese Universals" in History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy,

op. cit., pp.

175-210.

24 See Appendix D to 5.5.1.2.: "Time, thinker, and Professor Tateno." 25 Cf. ].].

“TIME” IN CHINA

347

noun,^? as it were, signifying their historical experiences in life—

season, opportunity, destiny, happening. And they concretely express time with life-situations, that is, lived space. Time 15 the rhythm, the pulsating quality, of the lived world. We have repeatable seasons and irrevocable events; lived atmosphere temporalizes itself; space is animated by time. It is thus that, experientially, Chinese people become temporal, always temporahzing objects. They ask of a thing "How old?” more often than “How big?” 5.5.2. Time in China The daily matter-of-fact understanding in China of adjectival-adverbial

time goes quite concretely as follows.^" First (in 5.5.2.1.), we see

probable situational origins of the Chinese understanding of time, then (in 5.5.2.2.) the pragmatic generalization of those seasonal temporalized situations into "time," then thirdly (in 5.5.2.3), the historical humanistic

interconnections

of homo-cosmic

time,

and

then

fourth

(in 5.5.2.4.), three modes of time-expressions in Chinese writings (metaphoric, compact, ironic), and finally (in 5.5.2.5.) how they design and express the future by the concrete then and the lived now. 5.5.2.1. Experiential origins of Chinese understanding of time: Perhaps the Chinese language is the only surviving pictographic one in the world today. To trace some common time-notions through examining the corresponding characters helps us understand the fas-

cinatingly concrete understanding in China of intangible time.”

The Chinese understanding of time perhaps began with a daynight distinction.*” “Day” (jih) is written with a character showing the sun (jh), the sun being as much an experience as an object in itself; similarly “night” (yeh) is written with one that has a “moon”character ( yüeh) in it. Thus day is the sun-situation and night, the moon-situation. As the Chinese people usually say, “The sun rises and [we] work; the sun sets and [we] rest The regular rounds of "one day" regulate people's lives. As for longer periods of time, we see how they are understood in terms of our life-situations. First, the abstruse-sounding “time” (shih)

26 Cf. 2.1., 2.6.1., 4.7.2.1., 5.4.3.1., 5.4.3.2., 5.5.2.2.2., E.3

#7 Cf. Appendix to 5.5.2.: “On theoreticity in China.” #8 Cf. Appendix A to 5.5.2.1.: “On ideographic Chinese characters.” 29 Cf. Appendix B to 5.5.2.1.: “The relevance of history to contemporary China.”

lhese two meanings are contained in the same character, an 1deogram for the sun. 5! Cf. Appendix C to 5.5.2.1.: “On etymological explanations as multiple."

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is a shortened expression for “four seasons” (ssu shih). And this notion of “season” is not an innocent one. We feel its complexity in the

following conversation between Confucius and his disciple.” The Master said, “T would prefer not Master did not talk, what would we about him?” The Master said, “Does seasons (shih) move along by it; the Does Heaven talk at all?!"

to talk.” Tzu-kung little ones have to Heaven talk at all? hundred things are

said, “Tf our hand down Yet the four born by it.

The Four Seasons under Heaven (in Nature) have a lot to do with things being born, which in turn are closely bound up with our behavior. We must pattern our behavior after Heaven— not (only) talk but act in a timely fashion, 1.6., according to seasonal changes, and have our effect felt as Heavenly, 1.e., coming from nature, part of nature. Thus “time” (shih) also came to mean something like an opportune "tme" (karos) as in the Bible, as in Paul's injunction to young Timothy, “[P]roclaım the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable."^? The Chinese Union Version has “shih”; loday's Chinese Version has “shih chi.” Then we have "year" (men). The character has the ho-crop radical, which depicts (in ancient bone inscriptions) ripened crops drooping, accompanied by a “person” beside it. It means the period of time—season—for the ripening of rice and/or wheat. Another character for "year," pronounced “su,” pictures harvesting with sickle. The “spring” (ch’un) pictures buddings-forth of grass and plants as well as wrigglings-forth of things and lives, struggling against the lingering chill of the dying winter, under the warmth of the spring sun. The “autumn” (chu) has three possible etymological connotations: an onomatopoeia of crickets’ singing, harvest of crops, and dryingbinding-storing of harvested crops. ‘These two seasons, spring and autumn, compose

a year, and so the first “annals of dynastic events”

are called Chun Chu (Spring and Autumn). The summer and the winter were relatively late in coming into characters, to make up the four seasons. The “summer” (Asza) is made up of three components signifying neck-and-face, two hands, and 232 The Analects, 17/19. Arthur Waley’s translation in The Analects of Confucius, N.Y.:

Vintage Books (reprint of the 1938 edition published by London: Unwin, Ltd.), p. 214. Modified.

George Allen &

73 2 Timothy 4:2, New Revised Standard Version. The King James Version has

“in or out of season.” kairos, the nght time.

In Greek,

they are eukairos and akairos, having to do with

“TIME”

IN CHINA

349

two legs, respectively. The character originally indicated big or noble (person) as compared with surrounding “barbarians,” in other words, the “tall handsome Chinese” people. From thence came the meaning of the season during which myriad things are grown tall and husky, “summer.”** The “winter” (tung) is the time for storage of things, depicüng stockpilings of hung dried meat and fruits. The winter may have also pictured "freezing" and "end," meaning the final season of the year when things begin to freeze. Thus, in the preliterate ages, the Chinese people measured days by the movements of the sun, months by the moon's waxes and wanes, years by the spring seeding and moving and autumnal harvests, deciphered the equinox by the coming of swallows and made calendars by the stars’ movements. The “calendar” (i) 1s written as "twice crops," for it was to be used to plan the harvests of this year and the next. Calendars express people's desires to pattern their lifeactivities after Nature's time-movements (seasonal cycles, movements of heavenly bodies). The invention of calendars means that mannature harmony 15 effected through such "time"-regulations. Two points can be seen in all these etymological meanings of common

time-related

characters.

Day

and

night

are, first, under-

stood in terms of concrete situations of the sun’s movements and the

movements

of things around us, which in turn are, secondly, under-

stood in connection with human life-activities —agricultural, ethical and, as we will mention later, political. Thus all Chinese time-notions with ostensibly objective appearances have a humanistic axe to grind. But before exploring these concrete ethico-political implications of Chinese time-notions (in 5.5.2.3.), we must pause here and consider (in 5.5.2.2.) how Chinese people generalize many seasonal situations into a particular time-notion, instead of abstracting from those situations to make an independent concept or abstruse category of “time.” 5.5.2.2. Paradigmatic generalization of time in China: Seldom is noticed a subtle but clear-cut distinction between two different notional constructions—abstracting “concepts,” on the one hand, and generalizing “notions,” on the other, out of concrete 1mpressions. The first route, abstraction, is a familiar one often trod

by the Western philosophers and many Indian scholars.*” The second

2: The character for summer, “Asia,” may have originally described a dancer with bg mask, says Akiyasu Todo in his Καπ]! Gogen fiten (Etymological Dictionary of Chinese Characters), Tokyo: Gakutosha, 1965, Item 100-8, p. 384.

^95 On the Western scholarship on time, see 5.5.1. On the Indian scholarship,

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route, generalization, is also a familiar one, albeit not too often noted, and is commonly practiced matter-of-factly by common folks and religious people. This route is sublimated into a procedure of producing beauty of literature and. depths of history by the Chinese thinkers and writers. The first 1s an abstractive way of formal theorization; the second is a common practice of concrete crystallization. Let us first consider abstract formalistic theorization (in 5.5.2.2.1.), then concrete paradigmatic generalization (in 5.5.2.2.2.). 9.9.2.2.1. To begin with, abstraction produces concepts. Theoretical

concepts are grasped^? by way of abstraction of empty universal

forms from concrete situations. Such theoretical abstraction (a) leaves the concrete particulars to produce (b) an empty universal form, which (c) defines the concrete world. (a) First, theoretical abstraction leaves the concrete particulars. When Socrates, who was accused of impiety, met at the courthouse Euthyphro who was accusing his father of impiety,^ Socrates never inquired further into Euthyphro’s concrete case. Instead, Socrates used this occasion as a springboard to ask him for the theoretical definition—the form, the idea, the essence—of “piety,” that is, what

makes any (whatever it 15) pious act pious at all, specifically insisting that his quest differs in kind from Euthyphro’s way, that is, enumeration of concrete pious acts. Socrates’ quest for the “concept” (or “form”) of piety must detach itself from concrete details and particulars. This is what is usually called the “universal,” the really real—abstract,

formal,

out of this concrete world.

(b) Secondly, in view of the universal applicability as above described, the concept that is thus found or produced is something formal, empty of concrete contents. This form can typically take a logical format such as “If P is true, then Qis; P 15; so, Q is,” or “All Ps are M; S is P; so, S is M,” where "P," “Q,” “P is M," “S is Ρ “S is M,” are all blanks for any propositions, irrespective of their being themselves true or false. (c) Thirdly, the concrete world has to partake in such formal universals in order to become

of meaning,

“real.” And so, the universal is the norm

determining the meaning and reality of the situations

see a fascinatingly clear and succinct summary of the entire gamut of Indian philosophies on time by Anindita Niyogi Balslev, À Study of Time in Indian Philosophy, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983.

59 “Concept” literally means a grasp.

#7 This is the story of Plato’s famous terse Dialogue of Euthyphro (5Df.).

“TIME”

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351

to which it applies. Universals are essences of things, defining and rendering them “real”; the essence of piety, say, 15 what makes all pious acts plous.

5.5.2.2.2. In contrast, an operation of generalization produces a

“notion” (1 men, literally, intention) which 15 a collective noun of many concrete situations of (similar or) same sort. A notion is understood in China by way of generalization of many concrete situations into a collective noun. Such concrete generalization (a’) goes through particular situations to (Ὁ produce a typical paradigmatic notion which (c’) is in turn crucially determined by concrete particulars. (d) And the meeting of such timely situations (chi) 15 the opportune moment,

the

chi hu,

the karos,

for which

we

look out, and

in the

light of which we behave. (e) This meeting of many chz's is dynamic and vectorial, a “destiny,” (f) destined rhythmically, (g) inexorably, and exclusively. The last two points, (f) and (g), help stabilize our

generalizations into notions."^59

(a?) First, concrete generalization never leaves, that is, abstracts from, the concrete particulars but goes through them to produce a notion which 15 a collective noun that pervades those concretes to give them meaning. This day 15 pervaded by the sunlight, and so does another day, and then another. Going through the experiences of this sort, the Chinese people finally generalize them into a collective term (notion) written in the character, “jh,” meaning “day,” which is identical in character with the sun. The sun 15 the sun-experiences, which are generalized

into

a collective

notion,

“day.”

So

did

the

character,

“yeh,” meaning "evening," come forth which contains the character of "moon," indicating that this notion of “night” is a generalized collective notion out of our many concrete moon-experiences. Similarly with “yüeh” meaning “month,” literally meaning “moon”

also, showing that a month is a collective generalization of our

many moon-experiences, that is, our month-long experiences of the moon’s waxings and wanings. Likewise with the spring and the autumn, generalizing our many annual spring-experiences of life’s buddings-forth and wrigglings-forth, generalizing our many annual autumn-experiences of insects-singing, harvesting, and storing up our harvests. 28 Cf. 2.1., 2.6.1., 3.9., 4.7.2.1., 5.4.3.1., 5.4.3.2., 5.5.1.3., E.3. 239 “Month” (in English) is also a “moon-th,” that is, moon-measured

time.

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An explicit enunciation of generalization was finally made of “time”

when the Mo Ching?" declared, “Chiu is a pervading (mi) of different

times.” “Different times” are different üme-situations; “chiu” 1s a “pervading," what covers all those situations. “Chiu” is usually translated as “long-time,” but the Chinese people managed to avoid using the spatial notion, “long,” in that character which depicts a person being dragged from behind. Perhaps it can be translated as “being draggedon,” or "dragging-out." In any case, the universals in China are thus common nouns, collective nouns (or names) generalized over—pervading—many concrete situations of a similar or same sort. (b?) Such a collective noun—a “transversal” if we wish to call it that—is really descriptive of a paradigmatic situation to represent all situations of “this” type. À “sun-experience” (paradigmatic) is now a "day" (general); a “moon-experience” (paradigmatic) is now ἃ "month" (general) “Time” (shih) is a contraction of paradigmatic times, the four seasons. A year or years are expressed by “springautumn (ch'un chu)” two paradigmatic situations combined into a

collective noun, a “year.”?*!

(c) Since a collective noun is made of generalization of concrete cases, over which the Chinese universal traverses, it crucially depends on concrete situation for its meaning and implications. This 15 contrary to the Western universal which normatively legislates the meaning of the situation. For instance, when Duke of Yeh praised a Mr. "Straight Body" who testified to his father's sheep thievery, Confucius poignantly replied, "Straight bodies in my group differ from that. Fathers and sons cover each other; herein lies ‘straightness.” "*^* In other words, “straightness” means nothing until the situation is ascertained. And to make the matter “worse,” such a situation is incurably time-space-sensitive. 14ο Ch'ien (365-427) was asked as to why he can not-hear the clanging buggies while living in their midst, and answered in his celebrated poem, Plucking mums beneath East fence, Leisurely looking to the South Mount, #0 Or, strictly, the “Ching Shang P'ien" in the Mo Tzu. ^! Cf. Appendix A to 5.5.2.2.2.: “Key terms as paradigmatic concretes.”

^? Analects, 13/18. All English translations from the Chinese texts are mine unless noted otherwise. I tried for more fidelity than felicity.

“TIME”

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353

Mount mist, the West sun— beautiful, Birds flying home in pairs; Herein is true meaning, Desiring to explain, already forgot words.

His explanation 15 to describe a situation. His reason 15 a. concrete concentrate, a situation, or perhaps something unnameable that this situation points to. But it 1s there, all too concrete for words to name-describe. This "something" is situational, space-sensitive. And those spatial explanations—fence in the east, Mount in the south,

the sun in the West^*—all serve to bring out the tme of the day—

the dusk. Thus the Chinese people tend to sum up the whole situation in terms of, and by pointing to, “time.” We recall the following conversation recorded in the Book of Mencius:** When Mencius left Chi, on the way Ch’ung Yü asked, “Master, you look not pleased. I heard from you the other day, that a gentleman resents no heaven, blames no man." “This is one time; that was another time. Every 500 years a princely king should arise, during which there must be one famous for generations. Since Chou, it has been 700 odd years; we have passed 500-year mark. Time-wise, it is ripe. Heaven must not yet desire to bring peace to all under heaven. If it did wish so, who is in the present generation except myself? Why shouldn't I be not pleased?"

The conversation shows us that, for Chinese people, the essence of a situation 15 time-sensitive. That 15, opportuneness is an essential ingredient in the situation. which 15 either timely or untimely; we must always on the lookout for its timeliness. Mencius did look out for the time when an 1deal ruler should appear, and so he was edgy when no sign of such ideal ruler's appearance was forthcoming. Thus in the West a concept 15 a universal (a) abstracted from, and (b) empty of, concrete particulars, (c) whose meaning and reality it determines.

In China,

in contrast,

a notion

15 a collective

noun

(a) generalized out of (b’) concrete particulars, which (c’) determine its meaning and reality. Now, in addition to these three contrasts with abstraction, generalization has the following four further characteristics (d), (e), (f), and (g) #3 Chuang Tzu dared to use “north” to begin writing his book.

^^ Mencus, 2B13. D.C. Lau's translation (in Mencius, Hong Kong: University Press, 1979, 1984, I: 91) modified.

The Chinese

394

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

(d) The last point above on timeliness nudges us to look into the notion of timeliness itself. “Synchronicity,” made famous by Carl G. Jung," is equivalent to the Chinese chi hui (usually translated as “opportunity”), a specific moment of the meeting (Au) of many cs, an opportune time. “(Οι here means “time” as vectorial (directional) dynamis, the subtle budding tendency, the budding forth of a specific situation. When these vectorial dynamisms meet at a focal moment, they make up the moment of timeliness (shih) of the seasonal. Its seasonableness (or seasonalness) renders it reasonable to act (or not to act) in a certain manner (and not others) at that moment. This chi hui is what the J Ching the Classic of Changes seeks to ascertain for each person who asks about it, and suggests to the inquirer (no one else) appropriate ways to meet it. How does one consult the 1 Ching to find one’s timely advice at a particular moment in one’s life? First, one manipulates milfoil stalks to find a particular combination of six lines—broken (for Yin) and unbroken (for Yang). This combination corresponds with a particular hexagram in the 1 Ching. Then one opens that Classic and finds the explanation and advice on that particular hexagram; then one interprets it. Is there any rationale to this seemingly arbitrary and superstitious coincidence of one’s specific milfoil manipulation with a specific oracular instruction in the Classic and one’s specific interpretation at a specific time? The notion of ci and chi hui (a gathering of many chi's, Jung’s “synchronicity,” as mentioned above) may help us here. A particular situation is a gathering of many chs. One throws into that situation one’s finding of a particular hexagram, one chi at the moment,

then introduces the Classic, another chi at this moment.

Both these chs come together with other situational chı’s at the moment to constitute this particular moment pregnant with meanings, an intimation of which can be found in the Classic. The inquirer then comes in to interpret that intimation, another chi in the light of all others, to lead and guide the inquirer's life into the future. This 15 thus a science of the present with a future-nisus, where things are going to gather in a certain manner, open-ended yet not without reason.

^9 Cf. Appendix B to 5.5.2.2.2.: “Jung and Tateno.”

“TIME”

IN CHINA

355

This operation and perspective differs from the usual “natural science”? in the West, which can be called the science of the past. The science of the past 1s a fixed one. We first repeat under our

control" some experiences of the “same sort”; we call them “εχρετ-

iments." Then we take a statistical average of our experiments which are now gone and over, derive therefrom a "law" (called appropriately in China “tng lü,” fixed rule) that shall govern all experiences of the same sort 1η the future. This entire "scientific" operation re-

quires our assumption that our past experience? governs the future.

This assumption expresses, as Hume also told us, our habit of thinking, our belief, "as the past, so shall be the future," 1.e., the future

is the past. And since the past is fixed, the future is also; hence the possibility of scientific “prediction” based on natural "laws." It is thus that the "natural science" in the West 1s the science of the past. In contrast, what the 7 Ching handles is the future, where nothing is fixed, although not arbitrary. Non-randomness derives from situational synchronicity as above described, hence the possibility of reasonable extrapolation from a past paradigmatic situation intimated in one of the hexagrams in the / Ching. The future is yet not-fixed because in the future the vectorial chi’s are forever dynamically, unpredictably (though not unexpectedly) gathering and dispersing, and to their undulations we human beings contribute. Hence, the possibility of discerning the future through our divinatory maneuver now of manipulating milfoil stalks and consulting the Z Ching, for our appropriate behavior now. The Z Ching is a book of the science of the now vectorially moving toward the future. The 7 Ching thus not only finds for us our key moment of the c: hu at the time we ask of it, but also gives us suggestions on what to do and be. For although all of us must walk the same road of birth, youth, senescence, and death, each of us can and should choose what to do, how and when to do it, and then our road of life

becomes different and many, as the same road from Jerusalem to Jericho walked by four different kinds of people. The victim’s road differs as much from the robbers’ as the robbers’ road is from the priest’s and the Levite’s, which in turn differs from the good

^9 Especially natural science of a theoretical sort. Applied science derives itself

therefrom.

247 Our control is in our pre-assumed, pre-fixed perspective, our theoretical hypothesis.

^5 This our past experience is summed

up as “natural law” in natural science.

356 Samaritan’s.””

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH The

one

identical

road

is now

four

different

ones,

having been walked out in four different ways. “The road is made

by being walked," said Chuang Tzu.^? And since this my walk leads

to my specific destination, my walk (different from yours) makes for my destiny (different from yours), as intimated by the Z Ching. (e) This itinerary of time, our destiny, has a destination, a direction; it is vectorial. But we must note a distinction here. To

follow

time is to be destined (ming yün), which is a time-ly notion; to be fated (ming ting), in contrast, 15 a spatial one, fixed. “Destiny” is our time-itinerary toward a timely moment; it is a time-notion, an arriving. This is in contrast to "fate," a spatial program which, once initiated and released, unfolds itself as pre-designed. No wonder few call our growth “fated”; our growing-up is destined, in that we tend towards growing. As birds are born to sing without restriction, so we are born to grow without restriction. Thus to be “destined” moves; to be “fated” does not. “Destined” Is a time-notion; time moves, moves things, or symbolizes things

moving. Space does not, and abstraction and formalization typically spatialize and render things static.”' In contrast, time describes, or rather, bodies forth and represents actuality, by “movement.” The Chinese people see actuality as always on the move, and inevitably come to use their notions in a time-ly manner.” (f) What sort of movement is this? Typically the Chinese people say it is the movement of life in cyclical repetitive rhythm.?? The Greeks and the Buddhists do conceive reality as cyclical, whether this cyclism itself 15 a moving one or not. Here we only consider the Chinese notion of cyclism. The Chinese people view reality in time-ly rhythmical manner, patterned after the heartbeat of life. Actuality is “birthing, birthing, without ceasing (sheng sheng pu hsi).” Actuality throbs in the rhythm of hfe, a repetition of days which, when taken as a whole, consists of cycles of life-activities—birthing, eating, growing, “senescing,” dying,^* ?? The story is told by Jesus in Luke 10:30-35. 2350 Chuang Tzu, 2/33. #1 This is seen in some Western philosophers (e.g., J.J.C. Smart) who want to stop the flow of time. They take such "flow" as an “illusion” and, using logical formal maneuvers, “staticize” time in sentences, as seen in 5.5.1. above.

2? Subsection 5.5.2.4. elaborates on this theme.

53 Cf. Appendix C to 5.5.2.2.2.: “On rhythm and recurrence in China.”

ˆ For the Chinese people death is for the sake of living again anew, not the

other way around. This notional thrust is expressed by the character, hua, usually translated as "transformation" or “metamorphosis” of things’ vitality and integrity.

“TIME” IN CHINA

397

and birthing again.^? Hence, the cyclical view of time. But here rep-

etitions, cycles, and rhythm are synonymous, all expressive of births and re-births of hfe. The Chinese people are like children who thrive on rhythm, repetition, and cyclical activities; in China, rhythm and cyclism is anything but boring. Life thrives with children in this cycli-

cal life-rhythm of repetütion.^??

What are the characteristics of such cyclical rhythm of life? Watch children and we will see their joyous abandon 1η following the rules of the game.””’ In them we see how this life-repetition and -cycle is both free and inevitable; they freely enjoy repetitions of their rulegoverned game-activities which constitute their life-activities. But how do freedom and inevitability cohere into one life process? To answer it, we must understand (in (d) that immediately follows) time's open inevitability so as to understand (in the next section, 5.5.2.3.) how Chinese people maneuver themselves ın it. (g) The inevitability of lived time has two characteristics: time is both [1] inexorable and [1] exclusive. [i] First, time is inexorable wherein we are free. We can choose to take this bus or that; time allows and indeed makes possible such our freedom of choice. But choose we must, on pain of not taking the bus at all. And once we choose this bus, we must go on this particular bus on this particular route and schedule toward that particular destination. Time does not wait. It is against this time's “scandal of particularity” that the Chinese people revolt when they do two things: bume as home, and futurism beyond now. The first ploy is what Chuang Tzu proposed—to take time, what comes, as our home. “Take it, and take it easy." Far from getting out—which is impossible, anyway—of time's inexorable goings, we do well to freely roam in them. We reside-repose (an) in the inevitable as our home.”” Being at home in time, we now can take those who ^9 Does this mean that the Chinese people also have “transmigration” of life in their view of reality? Yes, they do have something of the sort, but not as law-like mechanical predetermination of things.

56 Music, for instance, symbolizes all this. Cf. my History, ορ. cit., pp. 45-47, et

passim. But it is too far afield to go into Chinese music. Suffice it here to say that in Chinese

life music,

politics, metaphysics,

are dynamicaly bound together.

and

all our ordinary

activiües of living

? On the natural unity of roaming freedom and rule-inevitability in “play,” see

my Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 377-389, and various loci in the Index, p. 503. 38 The entire Chapter Four in the Chuang Tzu is devoted to this theme. chracter “an” depicts a lady under roof, snugly at home.

The

398

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

died young on a par with those who lived long.^? “Going with time-

trend” dissolves the environmental inevitability of “what cannot be helped" (pu te 1) into our freedom of “what we cannot help but be" (the same pu te 1). We now can follow the butcher's (time's?) "knife" that feeds us as it dances through the “ox” of our life. Now the very

cutting pain in life feeds life.”

lhe second ploy 15 to freely use our yesteryears and our todays, extrapolate therefrom, to envision our Golden Future in the stories of the Golden Ages of our glorious fast. Thus our future 15 as sohdly assured as being in our past; we go back to our tomorrow as secure as our yesterday. We will consider this point later (in 5.5.2.5.) in our treatment of the Chinese future as the "Golden Ages of the past." [11] Next, time is not only inexorable but exclusive as well. Chin Shih Huang (the First Emperor of Ch'in, 246-214 B.C.) could not possibly have fallen in love with Yang Kui Fei (719-756 Α.Ο.) the femme fatale of Emperor Hsüan of T’ang Dynasty, any more than could Julius Caesar with Marilyn Monroe. Each of us is locked in one's own time-frame. This locked-in situation is called “ming” (decree of Nature or Heaven) or “ming yün” (Destiny). Time 15 thus “picky,” as "particular" about our concrete particulars as our faces are each different from all others. Ihus the so-called “science of particulars” cannot be set up around universal laws, for there cannot be one. We can have no single law to cover and explain each new situation in time any more than do we have universal physiognomic law(s) to explain variations of faces.?9! But these new situations can be generalized, thanks to their definiteness (inevitable, inexorable and exclusive nature), into definite “notions” for us to discern and understand the world. Thanks

furthermore

to the

situational

definiteness,

the

Chinese

ingenuity also invented a moving frame of meaning (not fixed universals). The threefold dynamic frame consists of “double” primordial “poles” (hang ch), the Yin and the Yang, “five” elementary things "going" (wu hsing), and “sixty-four hexagrams" (hu-shıh ssu kua) symbolizing sixty-four paradigmatic situations. We extrapolate therefrom ^? Chuang Tzu, 2/52. | ^? Chuang Tzu, 3/2-12. On all these themes please æl Incidentally, the name of Chinese physiognomists ular that Hsün Tzu had to devote a special Chapter nomy. The Chinese people just love to discern, or particulars.

see my Butterfly. is Legion. They are so pop(Chapter 5) against physiogat least decipher, concrete

“TIME”

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359

to understand the chi hui (the opportune time) of our life, coupled with some suggestions on how to behave fittingly therein. Our freedom consists in this time-understanding and this advice on how to behave appropriately, 1.e., opportunely. They are the basic features of things’ dynamic physiognomy, the moving faces of our life and life-situations, moving with the Heaven and earth. They are, besides, our moving patterns of explanation of the moving universe, which is closely interwoven with human destinies. Now we can sum up the contrast between formal abstraction and paradigmatic generalization. Aristotle said in his Poetics that, although neither poetry nor history is philosophical, poetry ıs more so than history. For history is a mere collection of empirical facts, while poetry extracts from facts a universal judgment. History says Croesus and Polycrates fell; poetry makes a universal judgment, saying that very rich men,

as such,

fall. Poetry

is thus

the distilled essence

of

the lessons of history, more compendious, more useful.?° We can here further Arnstotle's explanation. We can agree with him that, if we define philosophy as formal abstraction of universals, history 1s indeed less philosophical than poetry, for thinking, of which poetry 15 full, requires for its operation universality of judgments or notions. But we recognize another way of obtaining another sort of universality, and this “another way" constitutes another mode— concrete one—of thinking. It is as Euthyphro did which Socrates denied as philosophical; hence, another sort of thinking. It 1s to hold on to paradigmatic situation(s) as typical of a specific universal notion. lo typify this situation 15 to "cover" many situations as a specific suchlike type which is obtained by “going through” the entire gamut of (“this” type of) situations.” The sentence sounds circular only after we have obtained the specific paradigmatic situation; before then, we have to go through as many situations as we know and encounter, to discern one specific paradigmatic situation that covers and goes through all suchlike situations (and no other). These goings-through and coverings are a universal undergoing, hence, an understanding, of these situations. Quoting for our own purpose Aristotle's notion of poetry as a generalization (not abstraction) of concrete historical situations, we can say that this concrete mode of understanding is a “poetic philosophizing.” 262 Poetics, 1451" ΠΗ͂. 63 Cf. Analects, 2/2, 4/15.

360

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

Such our conversation with Aristotle recapitulates our conslderation of "thinking" as at least of two sorts —theoretical formalization and paradigmatic generalization. The former 15 abstract and the latter, concrete.

And

1f “concrete”?

is taken

as “concresced”

in the

organic physiological sense (making up an organic concentrate?), then this concrete understanding is a living, concrescing, con-figuring, physiognomic understanding of many different situations as tissues organically concrescing into a “suchlike” kind, a suchlike family. As "kind" is related to “kin,” so paradigmatic understanding is a recognition of specific physiognomic features of a family relations among many situations, which are understood as instantiations, no, exemplifi-

cations and typifications of this paradigm, various "tissues" crisscrossed to organically compose this concrete notion. Let us go a step further. What makes possible all this dynamic and lived explanatory scheme 15 the notion of harmony with Nature, to which we now turn (5.5.2.3.), before going into (in 5.5.2.5.) the

futuristic thrust of the Chinese people's understanding of time.”™

5.5.2.3. Humanistic historical time in China 9.9.2.3.1. In China time is always concretely understood as inveterately related to humanity. In other words, Chinese time 15 always

historical, that 1s, related to human living in a most comprehensive manner, having much to do with moral behavior, social intercourse,

political maneuver, and the hke.^? This is to say that the Chinese

living in all aspects cannot be comprehended without taking “time”

into account, nor can Chinese time be understood without understanding, if not living, the Chinese life. Besides, importantly, time is not

exhausted 1η the human world in China as well; time pervades all throughout the Heaven

and earth, the skies and the fields. In time,

then, the Chinese people find themselves in harmony with Nature. No wonder our standard view of Chinese philosophy is that it is humanism,

not in the Western

sense

of conquering

nature,

but

in the sentiment of becoming one and harmonious with nature. This true enough claim deserves to be clarified out of its ambiguity. Chinese philosophy 1s humanistic, harmonizing with the natural not as something ineluctably alien, either to be tamed or to be adjusted ^* We have another intervening subsection, 5.5.2.4. on Chinese time-expressions,

before going into 5.5.2.5.

^» Cf. Appendix A to 5.5.2.3.1.: “Chinese aesthetics." %6 Cf. Appendix B to 5.5.2.3.1.: “Chinese humanism as harmonious.”

“TIME”

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361

to, but as an originative background that makes the human truly human, a spontaneous ambience in which the human moves and has its being, and with which the human interrelates as its natal background and ambience, that is, “home.”?°’ In other words, Chinese people look at nature in a humanistic hght; they take nature as an indispensable dimension of humanism,

as the vastness, the natural, within the human nature,‘ rendering

the human vast and natural, and thereby making the natural not at all brutally factual but truly meaningful as Nature, our natural abode. We

must be as vast, inclusive, and natural as Nature 15. in order to

become truly human; by the same token, Nature must be treated with deference as Nature, never to be manipulated, much less violated, without violating ourselves. From this network of intimate symbiosis between the natural and the human follows that to be human is to be natural, because

Nature

is the human

“home.”

an attitude

which includes and enfolds things in an organic, that is, orderly, devout manner, a sort of Kant's attitude toward the “starry heaven above" spread throughout everything under Heaven.” This cosmic inclusiveness bespeaks the “Great Man (ta jen)”-morality, in conflict with which 15 self-centeredness that excludes anything extra-self. This petty concern with oneself leads us astray out of the natural, and become “immoral” within the network of sociality that includes the human society and the society between the natural and the interhuman. And this twofold sociahty is temporal; to be in tune with natural timeliness 15 inclusively to be in harmony with nature. Cosmic-human timeliness 15 the essence of becoming natural; that is what the / Ching advocates. What 15 to be noted is that the above line of thinking 15 expenential through and through. It 1s quite probable that the so-called table of virtues (of which the Confucians are so fond), being supposedly the Warp of the Heaven and Earth (tien tt chıh ching), may well have resulted from our long years and generations of experiences in whatever behaviors we have performed that are fitting, harmonious, in our dealings with and within the universe. "Virtue" is thus a collective noun for historical accumulation of #7 See Appendix C to 5.5.2.3.1.: “On the Chinese people as ‘agricultural people.” ”

28 Cf. “The Heaven is within." (lien tsai πεῖ, Chuang Tzu, 17/50); the vast “breath” of Heaven-Nature "floods" throughout ours (hau jan chih ch, Mencius, 2A2).

^? Perhaps we can say that the two things that stirred Kant's heart—the starry

heaven above, our conscience within—become

interfused, one, in China.

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our dealings with, and within, the natural-social network. This can be seen in the Chinese characters expressing "virtue"— "(ao te,” the way nature and ourselves go (tao) with our innate power (te). Virtues

are our “common sense”

systemized— not systematized—in time,

our now accustomed, common and sensible ways of relating ourselves to the natural and the social, what 1s around and before us, as we live on. Virtues are our social common sense specified and crystalhzed, the legacy of what we know to be most appropriate at the right occasions for both our wholesome living and the prosperity of nature. Virtues express our timely behaviors, various proper acts at various proper times in nature and in society. 9.9.2.3.2.

Thus

nature,

time,

and

the

human

(or interhuman),

these three intervolve and revolve one around the other. Time is the joint at which nature and the human interweave. This is the

"harmony" of cosmic humanism we so often talk about.?^? The fol-

lowing paragraphs concretely demonstrate and document this theme

in China.

At least five interrelated points can be discerned on how the Chinese people take time to be and live it. (5.5.2.3.2.a.) The humanNature harmony can be concretely seen in how it is possible for us human beings to "know heaven" through knowing (heavenly) time. (5.5.2.3.2.b.) This heavenly time is natural “seasons,” on which our livelihood depends (in agriculture). To promote such agri-time is the top priority of good government. (5.5.2.3.2.c.) After all, point-(b) is the base and essence of our human morality. (5.5.2.3.2.d.) Going along with heavenly times 1s one paradigmatc instance that can and should be generalized as acting rightly at the right time in order to succeed in anything at all. (5.5.2.3.2.e.) And history is the story of actions written from such perspective of timeliness. Thus we can 70 We remember Arthur Waley’s apt and felicitous translation of Tao Τε Ching

as "the Way

and its Power." And the “way” connotes time-trek.

211 “Common sense" in the double senses of our accustomed ways and our “com-

mon

and sensible" ways.

77? Cf. Appendix A to 5.5.2.3.2.: “Presupposition vs. proof." “Kin,” “family,”

"concresced," “physiognomy,” "social," “harmony,” etc., variously describe "togetherness" our main theme. Besides, we are here understanding the Chinese understanding of time with Western hermeneutical sensitivity. This is togetherness at work on togetherness.

75 Cf. Kurita Naomi, “Jodai Shina Shiso ni Okeru ‘Tok? to Jikan” (“Time” in

the Early Chinese Thinking), Bungaku Kenkyubu Κιγο, Waseda 227—239.

University,

1965, pp.

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change laws, look forward to the future, by learning from historical precedents. 5.5.2.3.2.a. Harmony between the human world and the heavenly implies as a matter of course that there be some communication, some give-and-take, between them. How does the Heaven communicate itself to us? Chinese common sense answers, “By time,” that is,

by timely manifestations of things’ changing. And so Confucius says," Heaven has its words—four birthing.

annual-times

(shih) going, myriad

things

Lü Shih Chun Ch" also says,“ People have no [other] way of knowing Heaven; they know Heaven by the goings of four annual-times (shih), winter-chill, summer-heat, sun, moon, stars.

Hsün Tzu says," Winter-chill and summer-heat come with harmonious regularity, five crops ripe according to time—they are matters of Heaven. And?”

Heaven has its time; Earth has its riches; the human

management.

have their politcal-

Heaven expresses itself by the “words” of timeliness, to which humans should respond with proper-timed politics. And so, how do we communicate ourselves to Heaven? By behaving ourselves 1η accordance with the homo-cosmic principle that the Heaven is our Father and the Earth our Mother. The Hsiao Ching (the Classic of Fihality) advocates to us the cardinal virtue of fihality on this metaphysical basis. Concretely, our expression of filiality is manifested in our timely behavior. Thus Zi Chi (Ihe Classic of Ritual-

Propriety) can say,””

We fell trees at their proper time, we kill birds, beasts, at their proper time; to fell a single tree out of its time, to kill a single animal out of its time,

274 Analects,

15 not filial.

17/17.

75 Lü Shih Chun Chiu, Pu Kou Chapter. 276 Hsin

Tzu,

27 Ibid., 17/7.

10/45.

78 Cf. Appendix B to 5.5.2.3.2.: “An argument in the Lz Chu.”

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5.3.2.3.2.b. Ihe words of Heaven—heavenly time—are of course “four seasons,” on which our livelihood depends; they are our agricultural time. To manage well such our all-important agri-time, taking care not to interfere with it, is the top priority in government services; this business 15 the sine qua non of social and state prosperity. Thus Confucius in his typical pungent parsimony, says, “Employ people with ümeliness."^? Hsün Tzu elaborates on it by equating the timing of farming and cattle-farming with that of political order-

ing; he talks about them in one breath, saying,°°

Bred and tended at the proper time, six domestic animals will grow; planted and cut at the proper time, plants will flourish. Government regulations implemented at the proper time, common folks will be unified, the worthy and the good will obey. These are how the sagely king regulates.

This is of course what Mencius was so eager repeatedly to advocate.?'! Not interfered with agri-time, crops will be abundant beyond our consumption . . -; hatchets,

axes,

allowed

into

mountain

forests

only

at

proper time, timber will be abundant beyond our use. . . . Then parental support and burial will not be matters of people’s concern.... This is the beginning of the Kingly way.

In other words, only the time-sensitive, season-considerate rulers are the nghtful, Heaven-appointed ones. This is because times and seasons are Heaven’s business to support people’s very lives. Politics and Heavenly Decree are thus connected by the bond of time that is vitally concerned with popular welfare.” 9.9.2.3.2.c. All this is the ontological rationale, as it were, for morality. We must behave in humane manner—as in the Five Relations— because behaving humanly comes from the “moral” operations of Nature (Heaven). What does it mean? Kuan Tzu does not hesitate to propose just and humane legislature because Nature is such: “The state designs the laws... according 2» Analects, 1/5. 28° Astin Tzu, 9/76. Burton Watson, tr., Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1963, pp. 46-47, much modified. 281 Mencius, 143. ^? And the reverse holds also. If going along with the natural timing and seasons of people’s agri-business is to prosper the people-centered government, then to go against such taming is a bad government that impoverishes the entire country, and leads to deadly disasters of both natural and political kinds.

255 Kuan Tzu, jen Fa Chapter.

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to the expected-timing (ch?) of the sun and the moon, according to the fidelity of the Four Seasons (shith) ...” And again,” “The going of the Four Seasons (shih) is faithful; [this fidelity] inevitably manifests itself clearly. The sages [the rulers] pattern themselves after this.” Law, order, and morality derive themselves from the regularity of the timely operation of the Four Seasons. In sum, Heaven-time (Nature timeliness), politics, and morality, these three remain significantly entwined, and the greatest of these is time.” 9.9.2.3.2.d. Generalizing from the above close co-resonance of natural time with agri-timing, and agri-üming with politics-cum-morality, it 15 natural to insist on the appropriate timing of any human behavior. Every success depends on right timing; “well begun, half done,” we say, and “well begun" zs for Chinese people a well-timed, opportune beginning. This 15 true of any behavior, whether it be political policy-making, communal collective performance, or individual pmvate comportment. People talked about Kung-shu Wen-tzu's timeliness: “Ihe Master talks after his time comes [to talk]; people are not sick of his words.” What persuaded Confucius to go out actively seeking for office, was timeliness:^" "Wishing to be engaged in [public] affairs yet often missing the [right] time—can it be called ‘wise’?” “It cannot." “Days, months, have gone; years don't accompany us [forever]." Master K'ung said, “Yes. I will go serve, then."

Apropos of this, Han Fei Tzu discernfully says, "Observe the times, then initiate things; one launch, and the state is yours."^? Again, “What make a briliant ruler what he is—accomplishing much, becom-

ing famous—are four: the first is heavenly time... .,"*?? that is, the

nght opportune moment in the situation. The great ruler 15 one who knows how to seize it to do things. When his time comes and he knows it, things get done. 9.9.2.5.2.e. Finally, accumulation of these timely (and not so timely) activities, public and private, constitutes "history," not in the ?* Ibid., Pan Fa Chapter. ^5 We don’t need the notion of homo-cosmic co-resonance to understand all this (as Kurita seems to refer to it to understand time). Or rather, this notion of coresonance is synonymous with, if not derivative of, homo-cosmic “time.” 286 Analects, 14/13. 287 Ibid., 17/1. 55 Han Fei Tzu, Shuo I Chapter.

^? Ibid., Kung Ming Chapter.

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sense of dead past but in that of events lined up to show us the mighty irresistible trends of the times. In this perspective, history 15 an indispensable dynamic and all-too-pragmatic indicator of how and where things are heading. History is an accurate guide to the future, and it only takes someone who knows how to look into it to benefit from it. “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana), perhaps for others wiser than they to learn, from their mistaken refusal to learn from (their) history.” It is in this light that we can understand Han Fei Tzu (though we may not agree) as he accused Confucian moralism of anachronism. For, in Han Fei Tzu's words, the trend of history 15 that “The ancients often tended toward virtues; the medievals treasured knowl-

edge; today people fight for power."?' Clearly, Han Fei Tzu was arguing from historical timeliness. Similarly, Lü Shih Chun Chu argues for changing laws according to the times (yin shih pien fa) with two reasons: the world changes with time, and laws of the ancient rulers were designed to respond to the needs of their then "current times." As time changes, one generation 15 replaced by another. Therefore we should not blindly adhere to the ancient rulers’ customary laws. We should rather follow our ancestors’ principle of legislation, that 1s, to respond to the current human situation; we must know the old times by extrapolating from today's situation. What we note here, interestingly, 15 that they had to appeal to tradition (history, accumulation of times) in order even to oppose traditionalism. In sum, it 15 from the all too obvious fact that natural time supports agriculture which supports people; time links Nature to human community. Therefore, time becomes an all important basis for us to pattern ourselves in our politics, legislation, morality, comportment, management of the world. Time 15 thus a pervasively centrally lived one in China. But how do the Chinese people express their lived time, time being so imperceptible? To this topic we now turn. 9.9.2.4. Time-expressions in China: To consider Chinese expressions of time, we must understand a dynamic temporal character of Chinese writings themselves. Then, our understanding of the Chinese expressions as time-infused shall facilitate, among others, our

#0 Cf. Appendix C to 5.5.2.3.2.: “History in China and in Greece." 7! Ibid., Pa Shuo Chapter. 22 “Ch’a Chin P'ien" in the LZ Shih. Ch'un-ch'u.

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understanding of the Chinese treatment of the future (in the next 9.9.2.9.). Because time expresses movement, and both time and movement express actuality as historical, words that express actuality must be dynamically mobile enough to adequately evoke in the hearer time, history, and movement. Such Chinese elocutionary dynamism operates at least in three ways: metaphoric, compact, and ironic.^? They evoke our understanding of movement by indicating things’ movement, by being structured as a unity of contraries to reflect move-

ment as such—being both here and not here.”

Let us consider metaphor first. Metaphor uses something familiar to point us to something unfamiliar and unknown, and then uses the new now-known to bring us back to our previously known things to enrich them. If Confucius is right in enjoining us to “warm up the old to know the new,””” then he would have had us to continue the process by warming up the newly known to know anew (enrich) the old. And these two movements make up the way of metaphor. The metaphoric mode of thinking 15 conspicuous in Mencius and Hsun Tzu—spanning far and unexpected in time. What we note here is that metaphor 1s the movement of unifying the contraries—the known and the hitherto unknown, the new and the old. Movement and time are evoked and expressed in this metaphoric unity of contraries. Now all expressions in China, being con-

crete, are metaphoric.^? And they are always time-ly. Hence

all

Chinese writings are metaphoric and time-ly in nature. Next, let us consider compactness. Chinese writings have a penchant for parsimony, sometimes apothegmic, sometimes unpretentiously descriptive and unexpectedly pregnant. They always express a concrete general point by a concrete paradigmatic exemplification. We then extrapolate therefrom some unsuspected implications, and apply them to our own situations in our own manner. Such are Confucius’ scattered delineations of filiality (or humanness, or any other key Confucian notions) in the Analects. "[Our] trip must cover [only] places [where we told our parents ^5 Cf.

1.1.1.2.2.,

1.1.1.2.3., 3.7.1., 3.7.2., 4.3.1., 4.7.2.1., 4.7.2.2.1., 4.7.2.2.iv,

4.7.2.2.v., 4.7.2.2.vi., Appendix À to 5.5.2.4.: “Three modes of thinking in China."

^* Cf. Honda Wataru, Eki Gaku (The Science of the “I,” Changes), Kyoto:

Heirakuji Shoten, 1960, 1987, pp. 303-317, where this Chinese mode is mentioned incisively but in a scattered manner. 295 Analects, 2/11.

^9 Cf. Appendix B to 5.5.2.4.: “All understandings are metaphoric.”

of thinking

908

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

we are going],"^" for instance, is not just a specific enjoining on a

specific behavior in a specific situation. This small normative tip on our relation to parents exemplifies filial considerateness toward a parental concern. Such fihal considerateness can go unimaginably far and varied. This “going” 15 ours, evoked by Confucius’ single casual jotting of a compact four-character saying, which initiates our voluntary application ("going") of this small considerateness to our parents. Such an application is a unity of differences, sometimes even contraries, since our various extrapolations and applications inevitably become different from, sometimes even contrary to, the surface meaning of the original saying. For instance, sometimes we may not want to inform our parents about our destinations on our sensitive journey, for fear that they may be over-worried. Such Confucius’ compact saying is an invitation to our concrete workout of another saying of his, “cite one, return with three corners”

of (the “square,”

as it

were, of) actuality,^? that is, throwing to us “one” perceptive obser-

vation for us to “metaphorize,” extrapolate and apply further afıeld. This concrete workout can also take a different form of unpacking what 1s compacted 1η an ostensibly simple story of a conversation, a situation, etc. Again, our workout differs from the original compact expression, and so this 15 a prospective unity of differences awaiting to be achieved by the hearer. Those who have ears to hear, hear and work out. Compact expressions are less performatives than time-ly dynamic let-performatives. Finally, as to zrony. This is the clearest expression of the unity of contraries. Being more clearly unstable than both metaphor and compactness are, irony 15 a clearest expression of the movement of historical time, and 15 sure to evoke our reactions to become timely. Irony can take the form of “a of not-a,” or a simple false statement,

or a simple contradiction to our common sense. That famous “nondoing (wu wet)” is a simple self-contradiction which enamored both

Confucius and the Taoists.”” Chuang Tzu’s “Sages decease not, great robbers cease not"?? defies our common sense; we would have thought that sages come to stop robbery. Mencius’ “helping” things “grow (chu chang)” 1s com pact, subtle, and existentially timely. The phrase 27 See Appendix C to 5.5.2.4.: “On the Analects as evocative.” 38 The Analects, 7/8.

39 Cf. Appendix D to 5.5.2.4.: “On ‘non-doing’.” 39 Chuang Tzu, 10/16.

“TIME”

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combines to “help” and to “grow,” both of which are good and commendable when taken separately yet, combined, they here make up a phrase on something bad, a murderous bungling of our lived

time. The phrase is taken from Mencius’ following story:*

[Y]ou must not forcibly help it grow, either. You must not be like the man from Sung. There was a man from Sung who pulled at his seedlings because he was worried about their failure to grow. Havıng done so, he went on his way home, not realizing what he had done. “I am worn out today,” said he to his family. “I have been helping the seedlings to grow.” His son rushed out to take a look and there the seedlings were, all shriveled up. There are few ın the world who can resist the urge to help their seedlings to grow.... Not only do they fail to help them but they do the seedlings positive harm.

By way of summing up these descriptions of Chinese time-expressions, let us consider their relationship to paradigmatic generalization mentioned in 5.5.2.2.2. as typical Chinese formalızation, a concrete one, in contrast to Western abstractive one. We

remember

that paradigmatization

of concrete

cases,

that 15,

citing one concrete incident as typical and representative of all suchlike cases in the world, is a peculiar Chinese manner of using metaphor to express and think things. Now this sort of metaphoring reminds us of two literary techniques in the West, “synecdoche” and “metonomy." Usually the former is understood as representing the whole with its part and vice versa, and the latter as indicating something with its characteristic. Thus "crown" expresses “kingship” as "bread" does “food” and “cradle,” “babyhood.” Following this understanding, we can say that the Chinese metaphoric genius lies in pointing to an intrinsic (essential) connection between things which are usually taken as completely unrelated. For instance, Mencius pointed at the not-so-good ruler King Hsüan's casual incident of releasing a trembling ox because he could not bear to see its mortal jitters, and told him that such unbearing heart is the essence of “good”

kingship. Here, at one stroke, Mencius

has

a casual incident (showing the unbearable heart) put together—crystallize—ethics, politics, and metaphysics (human nature connected to cosmic one).°” I Mencius, 2A2. D.C. Lau's translation in his Mencius, Hong Kong: The Chinese

University Press, 1979, 1984, I: 57-58. 3? Cf. Mencius, 147, 2^6, 744.

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SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

Yet somehow such an explanation seems not to exhaust all the implications contained in metaphor, synecdoche, and metonomy, leaving something to be desired. Another explanation 15 possible. Looking closely, we realize that the above explanation comes from a Western abstractive formalization. The so-called “whole” supposedly expressed 1η the part or characteristic 15 obtained by abstracton—“food,” “kingship,” "babyhood," to be explained by concrete particulars as these wholes’ “parts” or "characterisücs"— "bread," "crown," "cradle." The West tends to look at these hterary techniques as an inchoate middle stage toward full-fledged abstractive formalization.

In contrast,

Mencius’

notions

are

concrete

ones;

he

never used “ethics,” “politics,” “metaphysics,” or “babyhood,” “kingship"—those abstract concepts. From the Chinese point of view, synecdoche and metonomy (metaphors) are literary techniques, perfect in their own right, as vivid, powerful literary expressions of this world with concrete ideas. Synecdoche and metonomy are really metaphoric ways of what we called paradigmatic generalzation. They are metaphorical paradigmatizaton. They are vivid and powerful because they are combination of concrete a and concrete ποῖ-α, dynamically time-ly. And the other ११

ες

two expressive techniques cited above, compact, ironic, are purposely

truncated metonomy (compact) or made explicit (ironic), two family members of metaphor, of paradigmatic generalization that 15 dynamically time-ly, vivid and powerful, evoking our own thinking. In any case, the above described three modes—metaphoric, compact, ironic—and their many examples go to showing that Chinese people have literary ways of manipulating words to manifest the dynamism of the concrete hved world of time. They are all timeexpressions. In short, since the Chinese people are historical, their expressions are time-infused. No wonder two literary genres are commonly cited to characterize Chinese writings, literary and historical (wen shih). Chinese historical writings are infused with literary integrity as above cited, for metaphor, compactness, and irony are literary categories. And conversely, Chinese literature are historical in sentiment, factual (imaginary, real), non-factual, counterfactual. The last sort is interesting— being a literary ploy to express the future—to which we now turn. 9.9.2.5. “Future” in China: lime is moving into the future, and so is open; time also moves in the way we can understand,

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371

and so is textured. Thus time is open-textured.”” The yesterday is characterized by time’s texturedness; both the today and the tomorrow

are “open.””'*

9.9.2.5.1. It is instructive here to consider what “things are in China. Things are impregnated with a sort of time-conatus, their nisus and thrust, from their past through the present into the future; such a temporal thrust constitutes what they are. The Yin-Yang polarity and the Five Elementary Goings are representatives of these nisus; they are literally thing-powers, things’ vectorial temporal thrusts that constitute them. In China, ontology zs time-kinetics. The Chinese people universalize and routinely live in the perspective of what Merleau-Ponty, at the high moment of ontological insight late in his life, said: 9

lo designate it [flesh, body] we should need the old term “element,” in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of general thing, midway between the spatiotemporal individual and idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being... the inauguration of the where and the when... what makes a fact a fact... what makes the fact have meaning.

This point was borne out by E.F. Aristotle's stoicheia, said:*®

Peters who,

when

explaining

the stowhea [elements] as the ultimate irreducible bodies out of which all things are made ... the stoicheia do change into one another in a never-ending circle (de gen. εἰ corr., 11. 331a, 337a, etc.)

lhe mysterious air surrounding both these quotations would dissipate once we take this elementary power of things as time-infused vectorial thing-powers that conatively constitute things. The “Asing” in the wu hsing (metal, wood, fire, water and earth), haltingly translated as “(five) elementary goings,” captures this ontological-temporal nisus of things.”

33 On facts as “open-textured,” which originally came from Friedrich Waismann, see my comment in History, op. cit., pp. 60-71.

304 Cf. 1.1.1.2.1. above.

35 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, tr. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1968, pp. 139-40. Emphases mine. 306 E.F. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1967, p. 70.

37 Cf. my musings over all this in On Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., Sections

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SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

Our problem now 15 how to understand these temporal vectorial thing-powers, especially how different the Chinese understanding of them are from the West. In contrast to Spinozistic conatus whose vectorial thrust seems to be straightforwardly unidirectional, “things” in China are less accurately said to occupy places than to temporalize, that is, to pulsate in a Yin-Yang recurswe rhythm. This Yin-Yang bipolanty is usually symbolized by an ever turn-

ing clrcle. Inside it are two interlocked circles, one white, the other colored (black or red), trailing meteor-hke one on the others heels. Furthermore, at the center of each meteor-circle is a small dot— a colored one in the white meteor-circle, a white one in the colored

meteor-circle. As the entire circle turns, the center-dots grow bigger untl they respectively pervade the entire meteor-circles, each of whose colors 15 now

turned into that of the Other;

each thus becomes

the

Other. Now, the white represents the Yin, the colored the Yang (or the other way around); they turn one into the other in circular, that is, harmonious,

motion

of time.

This circle of bipolarity 15 always on the move, whose insides dynamically changing from the Yin to the Yang, and then back, yet the entire circle of actuality remains as it 15, moving without moving. This is the primordial Yin-Yang bipolarity of actuality—the two contraries, inter-contrastive, inter-constitutive, each disappearing into the Other,

each re-birthing into, then from,

the Other.

In order to show an important fact, that this circle of harmonious time-motion of actuality 1s not abstract but thoroughly concrete and actual, the Chinese people from time immemorial furnish us with the so-called Five Element-Goings (wu hsıng). We can understand what they are if we were to take each of the five cosmic elements to be functioning as Aristotelian four causes: as matter, as meaning (aim), as force, and as form. These Five Elements have homo-cosmic implications. They represent almost every common noun imaginable in life, such as directions, colors, seasons, heavenly stem-numbers (tren ch), climates, planets, musical notes, virtues, emotions, animals, flavors, emperors.

These elements are in two orders of dynamic mutuality: the Yang

inter-nascent

order,

the

Yin

internecine

order.

In

the

first order,

4.3.1., 7.1., and Appendixes 18, 26. I thought then of ch’ and shen as befitting in this context. But the “flow” of chr could well be that of time, and the “stretch” of shen could be that of history, or of meaningful time.

*8 The national flag of South Korea contains this emblem.

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373

Wood gives birth to Fire, Fire to Earth, Earth to Metal, and Metal to Water, and the cycle starts over again after Water giving birth to Wood. This order typifies the first half of the year, spring (chun), when nature blossoms forth. In the second order of mutuality, Water overcomes Fire, Fire subdues Metal, Metal conquers Wood, and Wood wins over Earth, and the cycle starts again after Earth overcomes Water. This order symbolizes the autumnal (chu) second half of the year. Two characteristics of these “elements” and their “goings” can be noted. One, the “elements” are things, elementary thing-powers, and their activities. They are both the materials of wood, fire, earth, and so on, and Wood-activity, Fire-function, Earth-performance, and the

like; and within their thing-appearance and their thing-activities their thing-powers are manifested. As for what these material, these activities, and their powers actually are, we must see them within a specific concrete situation to determine. One point 15 certain; their powers are both internecine (in their Yin-act) and inter-nascent (in their Yang-act), both agonal and harmonious (hsiang-k’e hsiang-sheng). Two, we can see that these Five Element-Goings are five paradigmatic thing-situations serving as a fivefold paradigm of explanation, via extrapolation therefrom, of things. The paradigm 15 broadly set; specific extrapolation depends on specific situations, as to how they transpire. Thus situational extrapolation is temporal “metaphorization” in accordance with homo-cosmic changes. 5.5.2.5.2. But how do we understand this "change" both in the universe and in/among ourselves? The / Ching came to answer it. Sensitive metaphoric transpositions and extrapolations out of paradigmatic situations are heavily at work in the Classic, following the situational changes of time, to give us both an understanding of the situation-trend now and an advice on how to behave at this moment. I Ching has 64 paradigmatic situations for us, coupled with 64 hexagrams (kua). A hexagram is a six-lined cipher made up of combination of broken lines (Yin) and unbroken lines (Yang), to symbolize the interchange-dynamics of things, the Yin and the Yang, the quiet and the moving, the shady and the sunny, mutually succeeding one upon another. Each hexagram indicates a concrete situation that symbolizes one pattern of things’ hidden incipient dynamics for interchange. Each of the Z Chings sixty-four hexagrams is accompanied by an explanation that 1s concretely situational, vague In meaning, provocative of metaphoric extrapolation.

3 74

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

The first hexagram has all unbroken lines, signifying the “heavenly creativity” (chien). Ihe last hexagram consists of three pairs of Yin-Yang lines, signifying the “yet to complete" (we ch), and pointing toward the renewing of the time-cycle of things going agam in sixty-four variations. A specific hexagram (pattern of about-to-change), together with its explanation, comes alive and becomes relevant to the “here and now” in explanation and advice, when an inquirer obtains it by a divinatory manipulation of milfoil stalks. Thus the Z Ching becomes effective only at the time of its meeting (chi hut) and interaction with the inquirer and her personal interpretation in her specific juncture in life. The Classic is alive to the extent that we are. We call it “synchronicity," a profoundly timely matter. lt is thus that these schemes of the mutuality of Five ElementGoings and homo-cosmic changes described by the 7 Ching apply to the macrocosmic universe and the microcosmic persons.” We have just described our dynamic temporal diagram of the world and ourselves to facilitate our appropriate living. This bmemetaphysics and -metaphorics deeply pervades the way we conduct business,

operate

medicine,

politics, arts, martial

arts, consider

his-

tory, and go through daily chores—when to build a house, how and

where; how to arrange furniture, what and when; what to wear and

when; when to take a tnp and how; when to start a business negotiations and how; when to plant seeds, harvest crops; when to execute a campaign, a criminal; when and how to conduct a ceremony of graduation, marriage rites, funeral rites, and so on. Since the right timing is essential for our right living, an elaborate Chinese calendar was developed. Linked to the four seasons, the length of the month 15 determined by the moon cycle-movement. The calendar has sixty years as one cycle, formed as the least common multiple of twelve Earthly Branches (t chih) and ten Heaven Stems (tren kan). The sixty-year cycle is equivalent to our century of years. Ihıs lunar calendar is closely related to stars and planets. lhus the Yin-Yang bipolanty, the Five Elementary Goings (wu hsing, and the / Ching are open in meaning to make sense out of today and tomorrow; one meaning assigned to one "Going" (hsing) 309 significantly, China has no systematic treatise specifically devoted to this theme of homo-cosmic co-respondences and co-rhythmic agonal harmony. Perhaps this is too personal, comprehensive, and basic a matter to be talked about.

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in one situational context may have to differ from the meaning assigned to the same “Going” in another situational context. We sometimes don't quite see time’s texturedness in such meaning change; the texturedness—the rationality—is there, nonetheless. As to what this time-texture is, is the business of religion to interpret. But whatever it 1s, it 1s important to note that the openness, room for our freedom,

makes

sense only in the context of this time-texture, flexuous

and inevitable.”'”

Let us consider Chinese medicine. To prognosticate the today and the tomorrow on their peculiar textures is the job of both the / Ching and Chinese medicine. The 7 Ching concerns the Heaven and earth as related to us; this Classic interprets the ways things under Heaven go, the natural landscape of things, and advises us on how we should behave to steer our own destiny which is bound up in unity with the Ways of things under Heaven. Chinese medicine, on its part, concerns

us ourselves as correlated with the Heaven

and earth; our

body-scape (our inner landscape) and our environmental landscape reciprocate by mutually interpreting, involving, reflecting, resonating, even constitut ing each other.°!' There 15 this distinctness, however. Our inner bodily landscape 15

a predominantly time-ly one.?'^ As things are thing-ly vectorial dyna-

misms that persist through time, so our so-called “heart,” "lungs," and “intestines” are not entities so much as dynamic functions. The heart 1: the heart-function of blood-pumping as the lungs are the lung-function of air-breathing and the intestines, the intestine-function of food-digesting. They (organ-functions) go together in time to constitute the harmonious wholeness called "health," and their “goings” 310 Cf. for further details on all these themes—the 7 Ching, the Five Elements, the Chinese medicine, and so on, my "Chinese Mysticism" in Donald H. Bishop, ed., Mysticism and the Mystical Experience—East and West, Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1995, pp. 230-259. See Notes there (pp. 257—259) for bibliography.

Ἢ Ch’en Hua, Chung-i ti K’e-hsüeh Yüan-li (Scientific principles of Chinese medi-

cine), Taiwan: Shang-wu Yin-shu Kuan, 1991, 1992, 1994. Ishida Hidemi, Chugoku Igaku Shisosht: Mo Hitotsu no I-gaku (Intellectual history of Chinese medicine: another medicine), Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan Kai, 1992. Cf. also my review, in Philosophy East and West, January, 1986, of Ted J. Kaptchuk's The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, N.Y.: Congdon and Weed, 1983.

312 It is interesting to note that the Chinese doctor would rather, and customar-

ity does, transmit his (female doctors are rare) secret prescriptions to his own son(s) than propagate them publicly. The Chinese doctor entrusts his treasured prescriptions more to time than to space. Here, too, we see how more time-ly Chinese people are than spatial.

370

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

are called the Ch’i (breaths) of our bodily health, circulating through the Ching-Luo (breath circulatory route-network)

First, time-ed body-scape 15 breath-holistic. Glaucoma gives high

pressure in the eyes, as does blood pressure in the body. Is there any causal nexus between the two? The medicine man in the West says, No; the one in China says, Perhaps, for everything in the human body is connected to everything else in it, and both pressures can be healed by the same herb-medicine at the same time “in the same breath." And "causal nexus" is nexus-in-time. Our body is one single interconnected whole, nexus, in time.

"Diseases"

are not

“attacked”; seldom 15 medical violence done to our somatic organic dynamism. For disease-disharmony can be healed not by attackdisharmony on disharmony but only by intenser healing-harmony to restore, no, promote, harmony.?"* Besides, as we adjust ourselves 如 our outer time-ly landscape, the weather (say, by wearing clothes, carrying an umbrella), so the Chinese doctor gently adjusts such our inner body-scape to restore our “health,” our inner-outer homo-cosmic harmony.?'* It is natural, in any case, that the Chinese doctor diagnoses and adjusts our health conditions, or rather, helps us adjust our own Chi of circulatory, performative body-scape, in the cosmic-historic terms of the Yin, the Yang, the Five Elementary Goings, and terms of natural weather.”'” Thus the 7 Ching looks at the cosmos and its patterns of movement (and the patterns themselves are constantly changing), then normatively apply them to our lives. Chinese medicine, on its part, looks at our bodily conditions as those of the microcosmic equilibrium and adjusts them within the macrocosmic one, to let our body get itself out of its disharmony,

illness, to attain its primal-natural,

cosmic-historical,

homo-cosmic co-respondence, body-nature “harmony,” health. But this harmony 15 a natural-historical one, and Mother Nature goes “too slow” by our standard of harned and hurried civilization; what the Western medicine can do in 30 minutes, we would think, 313 Cf. Appendix to 5.5.2.5.2.: “Healing and religion.”

3^ So, Chinese doctors feel our whole body's pulse; some claim no specialties.

Western ones instrumentally probe bodily parts as independent units. The former claim to herbal-ly heal diseases which the latter violently (surgically) cure (hernia, hemorrhoid) or think “incurable” (hypertension, Parkinson's disease). The former perform what is not the latter's business (adjusüng stool frequency, stamina level, pulse strength, menstruation rate). 35 Cf. 5.5.2.3., 5.4.2., et passim.

“TIME”

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377

the Chinese medicine takes 3 months to accomplish. And slowness can serve as a convenient facade behind which quack Chinese doctors, whose

name

15 Legion,

elminated.

Full vibrant

hide themselves.

Slowness

is now

syn-

onymous with infinite postponement of healing; the entire medical operation 15 an exercise in farce and futility. Furthermore, Chinese prognosis 15 on the open texturedness of homo-cosmic time, and so 15 open to hazy interpretations and even straight errors, for the open movement of time 1s free and ambiguous. Openness provides room for free play, which 15 also room for error. But such an open room for medical free play 15 room also for success, and when the Chinese medicine does, nothing succeeds like 115 success. Chinese medicine notices what Western medicine fails to 一 some subtle lethal tendency, some untestable disposition, some holistic configuration and physiological-physicalistic physiognomy. Unwanted deleterious side-effects typical in the “ruthless” Western medicine are harmony,

inside

and

out,

is restored,

no,

promoted, and that without unexpected damages. The Western medicine is now talking about prevention beyond restoration; the Chinese medicine, from time immemorial, has been intent on promotion of our primordial robust vitality, resonating with and partaking of the primal pulsation, vigorous goings, of Heaven and earth, weather and various things in the fields. In sum, the Chinese medicine is open to the future, and “takes time” to operate as nature does; it 15 "gentler," more sinuous and

holistic than the straight, direct, and localized operations”'® of the

Western medicine, with. more room for ambiguity and error. But the dynamic holistic openness of Chinese medicine also accommodates chances of its success; when it does, nothing succeeds and heals beautifully as it does. 9.9.2.5.3. We have seen that Chinese ontology is time-kinetics; things are charged with vectorial time-power. Naturally, the Classic of Changes is the science of the future, and Chinese medicine is healIng in time's open texture. But how about the future itself? How do the Chinese people, in all their concrete thinking, understand and manage what 15 yet to come, something that is imperceptible? We are going to see in this subsection that the Chinese people treat the future by using the past 316 Their euphemism is “specialization.” Besides, it is no accident that “operation” also means surgery in Western medicine, which 15 surgically, intrusively, decisive.

378

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

in a counterfactual manner; future 15 a counter-actual togetherness, made up of a gathering of the past in the present, against-factuality. Counterfactuality is a literary activity that counters the fact—what has transpired in the past—as it manipulates the past to envision and create what 1s to come (the future). In China, counterfactuality

of the past expresses the future.

People in the West say, “If we were to do it (the past) over again

in the future, we would

do it in such

and

such a manner,"

where

"such and such” is a revised version of what “we have done" in the past. People in China just do it, that is, just revise what has transpired in the past to suit what they desire (would have done if they were to do it over), take this revised past as “the Golden Past," and project it into the future as "returning to the Golden Past." That's counterfactuality in China. People in China envision the future in terms of the revised past. After all, as long as the ideal 1s not identical with the present world, the future always haunts the present. The Never Land of ideal Utopia?? is much alive at the core of all Chinese writings, especially in the so-called "historical documents." Our future-vision Is a pervasive dynamo toward creation of magnificent literature everywhere, especially in China, provoked by their dissatisfaction with the past. Chinese writers do so counterfactually, in two ways: describing the future in the images of the present-day world, idealized (as in the Taoist writings and imaginative novels like Hsi Yu Chi, Shui Hu Chuan) and in terms of the yesterday's world, idealized (as in Tso Chuan,

Chan-kuo

Ts’e, Shih Chi, and

historical novels).

The

past and

the present are the languages in which stories of the future are told. The Chinese people describe the future—the world they are yet to experience—in terms of their actual experiences. lo sum up. This sort of time-dynamism shows two characteristics of the Chinese mode of thinking. One, the Chinese people think in incorrigibly concrete terms. 'The future is an unknown blank, and they must think it 1η terms of something tangible, which is their past; the Chinese future is their revised past projected in front of them. They are concrete, all too concrete people, especially in the 37 Cf. my “Counterfactuals, Universals, and Chinese Thinking,” Hsüeh-bao (Tsing-Hwa Journal of Chinese Studies), 1989, 1-45.

in

Tsing-hua

38 Just looking into the Chuang Tzu alone, we see the following glowing passages

on the Utopia of the great future, often couched in terms of the past:

16; 10/29; 12/80-83; 16/5-7; 20/6-9, 15-17; 28/80-82; 29/27-30.

1/46; 9/7,

“TIME”

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379

dynamism of hved time. The tomorrow is made up of counterfactual historization of todays and yesterdays, as certain as they, and better than they. Two, all this amounts to saying that the Chinese time is cyclic like an ocean tide, a processive rhythm that undulates and swings between the past and the future, and the present is their pulsating nodal point. The present 15 the point at which the past 15 processed to unite with the future. The now 15 the togetherness-point of the past and

the

future.

The

present

chooses,

revises,

idealizes,

and

subli-

mates the past to become the future; this sifting, idealizing process

15 a back (to the past) and forth (to the future) rhythm of time, occurring at the present.’ To “return” to the future through a revised past 15 thus to anchor the future in the past that comes alive in a new integrat ed present. The future is the dressed up ideal-past now. This view gives the concrete-thinking people stability and tangibility, with a maneuverable handle onto the future, the unknown self that is yet to come. And this “handle” is called counterfactuality, a word that sums up the processing of todays and yesterdays above described to obtain tomorrows which suit our dreams. This means that our todays and yesterdays are as much full of ideal tomorrows as tomorrows are full of the reality of yesterdays and todays. The past and the present can be changed to suit us, soothing our dissatisfaction at the status quo; the future 15 as tough, real, and responsible as the present which 15 grown out of the past. And at the center of all this 15 that forever flexible "time," in which we live, move and have our being. Or rather, our lives are time, both personal and public, both human and cosmic, both normative and descriptive. This 15 how the Chinese people live time, all too humanistically, historically, strategically (1.e., politically, manipulatively, morally), as well as discernfully, deferentially, futuristically—in a word, concretely. 5.9.3. The Chinese understanding of time 5.5.3.1. It is time now for us to reflect on what this Chinese subjective understanding of time means. Besides asking what time is, which is to take "time" as an objective entity to be asked about, we have another mode of understanding time, a subjective, lived one. What does subjective understanding mean? 319 Cf. Appendix A to 5.5.2.5.3.: “Hsün Tzu and the ‘later’ rulers.”

320 Cf. Appendix B to 5.5.2.5.9.: “On the ‘futuring’ power of the now.”

380

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

À cup of tea makes its weight felt when carried, but the weight disappears after drinking. Does the tea, now consumed, exist somewhere? Yes, but as a part of myself the drinker; I am now “tea-ed me,” refreshed, tuned-up. To talk about the tea-weight after consumption, we must talk about myself tea-changed. The same goes with romantic love which burns until turned wedded love. Where 15 the burning now? It has turned a quiet intense intimacy (as part) of the family, the home. Where the tea and its weight is after consumption, and where the burning and the romantic love is after marnage, remain koan-like conundrums if an objective perspective is kept up throughout. Similarly, music can be played by taking it in, becoming it, living it, then ex-pressing it. Or else, the music can be played by meticulously ingeniously following the notations on the music-sheet. What is the difference? We

“know”

it in our bones

until asked, and then

we no longer know. That is the mystery of subjectivity.?! Augustine knew time until asked what it 15, because “what”-question objectifies. For to ask of something what it 1s, we must feel its objective weight as "something," and we must objectify it to feel its weight—and time cannot be objectified. Time, worse than tea, cannot be objectively carried in a cup our hand carnes. Here we are the “cup,” and our hand cannot carry “it,” a part of which our hand is; nothing can carry itself. lime 15 an incurably subjective notion. We pass and change, and we know such our passage of change as “time” only after it is finished. It is nowhere until the process is passed, waiting to be objectified later as "story" or "history" for us to feel its weight as “time.” “Time is consciousness of time" (Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger) is then only half-true. For time cannot be felt until it is passed. What we feel 15 time already gone, passed, time dead in the past and become a potential object of knowledge. This sort of subjective understanding (of time) has been practiced by the Chinese people for thousands of years. For them, understanding of time bespeaks time-understanding. This is to say that 321 One of the differences between computer-“thinking” and human-thinking is

that the computer has no "inside" when it "thinks," if we define thinking as something happening “inside,” which cannot be objectively defined; it must be subjecüvely felt. Computer cannot indicate the loss of tea-weight after drinking. But subjectivity is not a mystery; it can be sympathetically described, as was done just now, because it is incorrigibly indefinably concrete.

“TIME”

IN CHINA

381

their very mode and manner of understanding is—ınstead of a surveying, abstract, analytical, timelessly descriptive, mapping, controlhng sort—a time-ly one, that 1s, a dynamic, moving, undergoing sort of understanding. Instead of taking time as (an objective) noun, they take time as their (subjective-adjective-adverbial mode of) living. Time is their own day-and-night experience, their annual season, situational tendency, lived historical rhythm, timeliness, destiny. All of these time-ly experiences are those of which the Chinese people themselves are made. And time as lived shapes understanding into a time-ly mode. Now that we have undergone an hermeneutical experience of making sense of this Chinese undergoing of time-experience, we realize that our understanding can be two in kind: spatial and objective, treating time as one of the objects, or time-ly and lived, ourselves undergoing experience. In the former, we survey and map, classify

and analyze what is there, passed, the past.” In the latter, under-

standing of time is time-understanding; we undergo, experience, and “historize” toward the future. In the former, we statically perform causal analysis; as 1n the past, so 1η the future. In the latter, we historically undergo change; as the future, so the past. That 15, as the future 15 in our hand to shape, so the past we shape to envision this future. Also, the past 1s as open and mysterious as the future 15, as will be explained soon, toward the end of next 5.5.3.2. Thus

how we treat time redounds to how we think. Two

sorts of

treatment of time reflect two sorts of thinking— spatial vs. tme-ly, objective

vs.

subjective,

abstract

vs.

lived,

theoretical

vs.

concrete,

formal vs. historical. The daily matter-of-fact understanding in China of hved time goes quite concretely, we saw. First (in 5.5.2.1.) we saw probable situational orıgins of the Chinese understanding of time, then (in 5.5.2.2.) the pragmatic generalization of those seasonal situations into “time,” thirdly (in 5.5.2.3.), the historical humanistic interconnections of homocosmic time, fourth (in 5.5.2.4), three modes of time-expressions in Chinese writings (metaphoric, compact, ironic), and finally (in 5.5.2.5.) how the Chinese people design and express the future by the concrete then and the lived now. 37? One must get out of and look back on something before one can know what

it is. “What”-question or investigation, knowledge, and the past thus seem to coimplicate phenomenologically and experientially, though perhaps not logically, for we can find no logical synonymity among them.

382

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

From the foregoing pages we understand how the Chinese people thus literally live their tme—privately, publicly, cosmically, politically, managerially, morally, religiously, historically, and futuristically. And, what 15 important, each of these aspects of their life inter-penetrates all others; to live 1η the past 15 to design the future; to hve morally is to live managerially and politically. To live cosmically is to live morally. And vice versa. 5.5.3.2.

To think of it, this is the special twofold feature of time,

both that things interfuse and change, and that the fusion and the change 15 inevitable and understandable. Things are history that moves toward the future in a specific manner, according as we live it, and here “it” can mean time, history, things moving and tending toward. lending toward where? The “where,” although a spatial misnomer, 15 appropriate, because it is a shorthand expression for “whereto.” The whereto is inevitable and open-ended; it is open-textured, to be deciphered by the science of the future intimated in the 7 Chung, for us to live and act rightly. The uncertain future 15 textured with our past, our dream, and our activities now. As textured, time “futurizes” itself, pushing, moving and changing we-don’t-know-whereto;

we

do our rational best to steer ourselves,

and our "best" can be guided by the Z Ching, not without mistakes and misinterpretations, perhaps, but at the same time not without

its historical wisdom, cosmic rationale, mysterious “numbers,” sensible

draw, kinship to life-understanding. And yet, the future is textured to impress on us its radical openness. Nothing is guaranteed; nothing is certain.

Ihe

future

has

no

mechanism;

what

is to come

comes

from nowhere we know. Anything ıs possible, although we know that what comes to us is textured with the past. The future is open yet textured with the past, and textured in all its open uncertainty. And as in the future, so in the past. The past is as mysterious and plain, as fascinating and uncontrollable, as inevitable and understandable yet as open, as our future 15, to various ways in which we make of the past, and make use out of it, to shape our present and our future. And the past ıs part of us to make up ourselves, and so it 15 easier to grasp and handle than our invisible intangible future. This is why we look into our past to know, no, make, our future. Warming up the past, we come to know the new future. 9.9.3.3. In China, time in-forms thinking as thinking performs history. The Chinese thinkers and writers do so in four ways: (a) Stories of past actuality (history) are told to intimate the novel

“TIME”

IN CHINA

383

present. In the West, since Aristotle despised history,?^ history is history and philosophy, philosophy, and the philosophy of history is always engaged with some discomfort, as if touching the untouchable. In China, wnters think in terms of history, appealing to past events and personage as paradigms to advance their arguments and embody their persuasions. The so-called historiography, e.g., the Ch’un Ch^u, the Shih Chi, is no objective factic chronicling of events, but a more or less explicit argument, in terms of the past, for a moral. (b) Many aphorisms are a compressed history, our past experience in a nutshell—idealized—to allude to the novel present, that 15, the present that had better be shaped in its light. Once the Classics express their experiences of those times, later writings compress them into aphorisms, which abound in every Chinese essay, every Chinese volume. (c) Those "past events," told in writings and transmitted by words of mouth, are counterfactuals, extrapolated and sublimated from past actualities. They are here to admonish us, especially our present powers that be; the rulers had better shape themselves up accordingly. Practically all writings, from the great Classics down to the most recent essays and journals, are constituted by them. (d) Generalized (not abstracted) summaries of the past ways of life are enumerated to define worthy notions; and all metaphysical notions thus made are moral ones. The Classic of Changes is the book of instantiations of the Yin-Yang principle and the Five Elementary Goings; the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius are studded with concrete paradigmatic stories embodying Jen-benevolence, I-righteousness, Hsiao-filiality, with homo-cosmic-historical implications. Thus it 15 that in Chinese writings the past, the present, and the future inter-allude to lead us on. Their writings are lived time-writings. And,

it is in this way that, as we live on, we live between

times,

an interim period called “now.” We are always on our way, unsettled, moving somewhere, forever changing; we feel helpless in bme's flow, yet we see, before our eyes, ourselves shaping time as we are being shaped by it. And we constantly learn from it, consciously (in our studies of history), unconsciously (in our daily adjusting to whatever comes out of nowhere). And to thus learn from the past 1s already to begin shaping the future. In the present, the past mixes with the “future” we envision to shape the future. That 1s to live time, which is to live. That is Chinese, all too Chinese. 33 See Poetics, 1451° 58

384

SECTION 5: INNER TOUCH

A final twofold comment 15 in order. First, we must express our Chinese gratitude, as mentioned at the beginning of this 5.5., to the people in the West for their mode of thinking which served as an “egg to fructify the above reflection on “time” in China. By the same token (secondly), what is offered here may be of some help towards deepening the Western interest in lived time, In at least one concrete mode of understanding lived time, as well as in things Oriental, going further than learning languages and manners for business in Asia or cultic (or tourist) quest for Oriental exotics. In this way our homo-ecological symbiosis will finally happen, and we will truly enjoy together our global cultural togetherness. In any case, it 15 thus that in this final Section, we practiced cultural togetherness. First (in 5.1. and 5.2.) we thought about why and what thinking-together is, a mutual wombing to let each Other grow into oneself. Then (in 5.5.) we eavesdropped on the thinkingtogether—conversations —among the great Dead, both in the East and in the West. Then (in 5.4.) we entered the conversation ourselves, considering with Professor John E. Smith on the styles of pragmatism in America and in China. Finally (in 5.5.) we demonstrated the fruit harvested by such a dialogal togetherness—a coherent understanding of the Chinese understanding of time in the hermeneutic style and language of the West. What we have been through in this Section is no less significant. First (in 5.1. and 5.2.) we considered what philosophical inner touch can be. Then (in 5.3.) we heard an East-West round-table consultation on the self, followed by (in 5.4.) personal conversation on what “doing” can be, what the American spirit of pragmatism 15 as compared with the Chinese pragmatic spirit. And of course, in 5.5. the style and process of our very living itself, called “time,” must be considered, which we did on the Chinese sort, made explicit by a Western hermeneutic. In short, this Section has presented the togetherness of philosophical inner touch (5.1., 5.2.) that gives birth to the self (5.3.) who acts (5.4.) and lives (5.5.) 一 together. It is togetherness that begets and keeps human lives together; togetherness is the sine qua non of everything alive. 324 Cf. 5.1., 5.2.

“TIME”

IN CHINA

385

Thus both in practice and in content, we showed what philosophical togetherness can be, within our showing and performing of how it can and does happen, in a broad context of world cultures. The inner touch in thinking is perhaps the ultimate in togetherness, which is the royal road to happy symbiosis of humanity. Again, nothing further can be said. It must be further done.

EPILOGUE

WE

E.1.

LEARN

TOGETHER

Review

We have gone through a natural way of learning what it means to be together and how. First (Section 1) we considered what we are confronted with—many cultural ways that he at the base of our thinking and living. We realized that even the law of excluded middle 15 cultural, that to be together 15 to learn from one another how to learn from Others, that 15, learn from Other people with cultural background different from ours, on how to be interested in, and come to be appreciative of, what and how Others think and act. Naturally, in Section 2, we considered the Other. We

discovered

that the Other is the “transversal” traversing all boundaries—cultural, historical, ontological, even personal—to constitute integrities and enrich one another’s identities. Togetherness 15 interdependence in being and in meaning; my self is as constituted by my Other as my face is. Then we proceeded, in Section 3, to consider how this Otherconsütution of myself obtains ln the very argument one to another. A closing-in on one theme (conclusion) in argument should be turned into a playful brainstorming, to have an explosion of half-baked ideas, to evoke and enjoy in novelties, 1.e., discoveries of hitherto unsuspected ideas and their unsuspected connections. We ourselves come home to ourselves in playfully confronting the Other in playfully arguing, which is thinking together on the playful move. But how about life at its deepest and uncompromising—religious togetherness? And so in Section 4 we considered a most radical case, a coming-together of philosophical Taoism and Christianity, as to how the former deepens the latter’s self-understanding in various themes—its constitutive doctrines, miracles, theophany (meeting with Christian God), temptation, Jonah, rationale. Finally, we considered thinking itself in which we have been engaged. How can we come together at this basic level of thinking, which is notoriously antagonistic. Here we seem logically necessitated

388

EPILOGUE:

WE

LEARN

TOGETHER

to disagree! Section 5 proposed a way to philosophical togetherness, an “inner touch," learning from its physiological and psychological manifestations in life. How this intimate touch-mutuality obtains in philosophy is not only considered but exemplified and executed in intercultural considerations of the “self,” “pragmatism,” and a Western hermeneutic of the “Chinese understanding of ‘time.’" E.2.

Concrete

fivefold way

Looking back, we see we have trod quite a concrete fivefold way in finding the "logic" of togetherness, to avoid the all too common pitfall of wallowing in generaliües.! We considered five concrete and fundamental ways to/of togetherness—cultural, ontological, argumentative, religious, and philosophical. We are now to pull together what we have found. Being cultural through and through, the Other within, argumentatve play, deepening self-understanding via other religion, inner touch— what 15 it that they describe? Five Sections give five answers. First, we are each many in one and one in many; second, we confirm-enrich

one another; third, we enjoy one another; four, we deepen ourselves by the Other; fifth, we touch inside one another. The Other is myself. I must be radically open. To come back within myself, I must open out to my Other. And this situation must be presented, performed, and lived at every level, cultural-presuppositional, self-ontological, thought-argumentative, radical-religious, physio-philosophical. Culture was shown to be the demonstrative assumptive ambience, as the Other was to be its constitutive one. It is true to say in togetherness that, as medium is the message, so ambience 15 the entity. And so, play was considered as logical a togetherness as religion was its ultimate, and philosophy its holistic, consideration. Thus ın understanding togetherness, each of these situations described in five Sections has been used as an assumptive ambience of togetherness, or as a means of expression of togetherness. Or else, some notions that appeared in the meantime, less obvious yet no less nodal and

concrete,

could

be

used

as assumptions,

descriptions,

and/or

language to coherently understand togetherness; “face,” “transversal” ' See “Appendix A to Preface" where wallowing in abstract arguments for the general desirability of togetherness 15 mentioned, documented, and bemoaned.

TOGETHERNESS

389

“inner touch," “symbiosis,” “whole,” and/or “play” come to mind. At the same time, in all such considerations nothing is added to what is there as 1t 1s, togetherness itself, which 15 merely reaffirmed,

understood, and practiced in all its rich variety.

E.3.

Togetherness

Togetherness is then the verbal noun? of “culture,” “play,” “religion,” and "thinking" with the “Other” that goes with our lives as their meteorological atmosphere and sunshine; the interactive adjective of the “Other” that goes with my living in all these aspects; that vibrant adverb called “play” that oozes our character of being-together in all these areas; that directive verb of “philosophy” that radically performs our living-on culturally, playfully, and religiously with the Other; and the preposition and conjunction of our physiognomic 22

transversal

that links, surrounds,

positions,

and

shows

ες

2»

what we

८८

are

and how things are together. It is in these ways that togetherness expresses and typifies our style of living, doing, being. Togetherness typifies our interactive, interconstitutive mode of being, enabling us to express ourselves in a dynamic cross-cultural, cross-communal, and so cross-personal manner. Togetherness traverses and constitutes every move, everything; 1t 15 an ontological constitutive traffic, an interactive universal transversal. Thus togetherness 15 a shuttle that shuttles back and forth among many threads (acts, styles, and situations) and varied looms (I, you, they), to weave out one piece after another of cloth called the world. And

the world, the looms, the threads, and the shuttle, they are all

called “togetherness.” Togetherness 15 that performance that performs forth the situation of togetherness, and that from the material called togetherness. Togetherness 15 a vibrant self-creative transversal. Togetherness is thus the eight expressive parts of speech, the four

Aristotelian

Causes,

the twelve

Kantian

Categories,

the two primal

Yin and Yang, the five performative Elements, the sixty-four situatonal Hexagrams—in short, the “logic” of togetherness of things and of the world. Anyone who opposes the logic perishes in isolation, and every opposing, every perishing, every isolation, they all join to weave out in the end a piece of cloth of togetherness in time; we ˆ Cf. 2.1., 2.6.1., 4.7.2.1., 5.4.3.1., 5.4.3.2., 5.5.1.3., 5.5.2.2.2.

390

EPILOGUE:

WE

LEARN

TOGETHER

call it "history." Togetherness 1s everywhere, every-time, everything; it 15 and 1s 1η everything, the what, the why, the when, and the how of all things. Togetherness is a universal transversal. E.4.

No arrangement

of threads

The world is made up of everything which 15 related to everything else, because everything is somehow either similar or contrary to everything else in some sense. The exciting problem is what these “somehow”’s and "some"'s are on which the world turns. And these "some"'s and “somehow”’s in turn depend on who is thinking in what perspective. And the “who” and the “perspective” belong, again, to "everything" which depends on everything else, somehow, in some sense. There 15 no end to all these interdependences; this is what 15 called “togetherness.” This is why no arrangement of specific threads is attempted here. Let us be specific. 29}

If interested

“outsiders”

of a culture are the true insiders, in the

know of the core of that culture, and the Other is constitutively within oneself, then of course we must play with arguments in communication with Others to make sense out of everywhere, “here” and other than "here," savor the Ultimate in all its universal depths by learning from specific religions, other religions, and grow in our thinking with our inner critics, our beloved alter egos, in brainstorming together. Again, “the Other in/as myself” can be seen to justify, explain, and constitute those seemingly strange life-phenomena as the cultural outsiders being the true insiders, brainstorming by playing arguments back and forth, freely metaphoring, turning the strange into the new

familar,

which

then

turns

the

old known

into fresh

one,

Taoism being found within Christianity to enrich. Christianity, the inner touch of the Other within my thinking to fertilize my thoughts, and T’ao Ch'ien's unhurried aloneness amidst the clanging buggies.” It 15 thus that the reciprocal otherhood of the Other typically, coherently, normatively justihes and inter-weave the multifarious aspects of togetherness. * As mentioned in (c’) of 5.5.2.2.2. We also remember the ease with which Jesus switched back and forth between being alone with God and being with the crowds, as described in, say, Luke 9.

ΝΟ

ARRANGEMENT

OF

THREADS

391

And we could easily go further, and pull out and inter-weave various threads running through these five Sections. For instance, we could pull out the implication of togetherness in our key terms, such as “logic” as a gathering, "metaphoring" as pulling together of hitherto unrelated matters, “playing” as co-enriching symbiosis, “concrete” as concresced concentrate, and “face” as such concreted physiognomy of things, now taken as ontologically social. We could use those notions and others to rearrange the entire range of five paradigmatic situations, and further beyond. Likewise, Section 2, on the Other, can be seen as the pivotal point

around which all other Sections come to revolve, apply, and develop— culturally (Section 1), argumentatively (Section 3), religiously (Section 4), and philosophically (Section 5). And the Other can be taken as the contrary. As cited in “Appendix B to Preface: Togetherness of contrary notions,” various notions are balanced with their respective contraries. They come together to mutually enrich, as elucidated in all Sections, depicting togetherness in the making. Again, we could see those five “Sections” in other light than as five situations illustrative of togetherness. For instance, Prologue (on the priority of togetherness-thinking) and Section | (on culture as our hfe-ambience) could be seen as introductory background, Sections 2 (on the Other) and 3 (on argumentative play) as modus operandi, and the final two long Sections 4 and 5 (on religious and philosophical togetherness) as paradigmatic exemplifications, of togetherness. And in doing so, we shall begin to systematize the hidden patterns of togetherness, and ossify if not destroy the subtly free and flexuous coherence of this book-essay that reflects the rich wilderness nature of concrete togetherness. This our activity threatens to bulge the size of this Epilogue, overwhelming those Sections. We ourselves must, then, resist the temptation to go on doing it. Instead, cross-references provided here and there hopefully whet the readers’ appetite to pull out and tie together whatever threads they think they see running through these Sections. Just tracing phrases such 25 “cf.”’s and “to balance off” ’s would lead any sensitive reader to come up with, that is, discover and/or create, interesting crisscrossing threads in the varied situations of togetherness.* ‘This bookessay 1s a potential route, an invitation, if not a challenge, for some * Cf. again, Appendix B to Preface, where togetherness of the concrete and the abstract.

enough

references

were

made

to

392

EPILOGUE.

WE

LEARN

TOGETHER

transversals to come out in this manner, and this approach 15 itself one of the ways of togetherness. For a book-essay on togetherness such as this one should itself be an evocative initiation. of togetherness. So, no systematizing, no pontificating here. This is the first reason against systemization here. Another important reason why we don't systematize here 15 because we cannot, simply because there is no "standard," “official,” or “orthodox” way to do so. Any point, any theme, any idea, can be picked up around which to "systematize" the entire book-essay. Just take “music,” which came up occasionally in this book-essay, for instance.

As

we

listen

to Anton

Dvorak's

simple,

folksy,

and

shghly bucolic Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88 conducted by Yehudi Menuhin,’ we notice that it has no complete melodies; it is filled with half-baked melody-bits, now appearing, now disappearing. Without melodies of any substantial kind, the whole Symphony yet flows fully melodious, forming a great coherent work. Another strange thing 1s that the Symphony has no tragedy, for it has no dissonance. How could anyone compose without dissonance, without tragedy? Things simply go soothingly, anticipating something good in the offing. And Menuhin on his part not only brings out the above two features, melody-less melody-whole, dissonance-less soothing warmth. Menuhin renders alive every note, phrase, theme. Everywhere it is bouncy, smiling. No violence, only soft dwelling-in. Here every spontaneous melody-bit 15 thrown 1η casually, hghtly, and they make sense together, as various flowers put in a vase, as 1f they were not arranged but of themselves come together at the beckoning of spontaneous beauty, as disheveled hair on handsome Leonard Bernstein's head, or as an unkempt garden of some unknown poet. This 15 the beauty, if you wish, of unrehearsed togetherness. That 15 the genius of Menuhin who "followed" the genius of Dvorak. We sigh, as we muse, that one who can live among random noises of history, of this world, and live in them as 1 living in an unhurried mountainside, is a sage. 14ο Ch'ien sang such a sagehood when he sang the buggy noises with the following lines, which were quoted before, but this time we quote them in full:

> The Royal Philharmonic Collection, TRPO19, Tring International PLC, 1994. This CD has, with Dvorak's Symphony No. 8, another of his compositions, “Serenade for Strings," Op. 22.

NO

ARRANGEMENT

OF

THREADS

Residing among people, Not hear buggies, horses, noises, Asked, “Sir, how could [you be] thus?” Heartmind [being] distant, the-place of-itself [becomes] Plucking mums beneath eastern fences, Leisurely look-far-to south mountains, Mountain mist, sun west—beautiful, Flying birds, paired, homecoming, Herein is true meaning, Desiring-to explain, already forgotten words.

393

faraway

These are mere random throwaways of rural situations, we say. Are we sure, though? Is all this a metaphor? An evocation? Via situatonal physiognomy? Dvorak's music in the flower arrangement of the garden of Bernstein? No single element in them makes sense individually, yet, together,

the entire thing somehow does.’ This “somehow” shows that all this is an argument,

because

"argument"

is a togetherness

of points, of

meanings, that brings out the sense to be concluded. If argument is a coherent gathering of points, then "playing" with arguments 15 a coherent togetherness of gatherings. And there each argument 15 "played," arranged with other arguments as in the flower arrangement of Dvorak's music in Menuhin's hand, as in the garden of an unknown sage in l'ao Ch'ien's poetic arrangement; togetherness makes sense,’ then, as in poetic music. There we are; “music” has just sang togetherness, following Beethoven's “Ode to Joy" together, and to togetherness, in the great Ninth Symphony. Nor 15 this the end of our musings over "music." In “music” we understand many themes about togetherness exphcated in the present book-essay. We cite only four. (a) Bach went to the zenlth of the whole music and captured the whole essence, we say. But so did Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Enesco, Kreisler, Menuhin, Furtwängler, Kulenkampff, Bartok; here is no

inconsistency. So are the many historic sages, each "the greatest in the world."

In music we finally understand,

with the musicians,

the

non-exclusive all-inclusive ultimate. (b) And as in music, so in religion. Buddhism is fhe religion of all religions, so we say; so are Islam, 5 “Argument” is a string of ideas which transitively-makes sense, that is, brings out a new sense. Is this then a play with argument? 7 In the sense both of the usual “making sense" and composing, creating sense. Also, “sense” unifies sensibility and significance, perception and perceptiveness.

394

EPILOGUE:

WE

LEARN

TOGETHER

Hinduism, Christianity. (c) So are various plays in arguments as in many wars, each claiming to be “the War that end all wars.” Freedom joins with inevitability here. (d) Then, in music, together are the essence (the “music”) and the actuality (performances), the abstract and the concrete,® the various communities (composers, performers, audience)” the various instruments (orchestra, and the solo wherein reside all instruments); they are Joined into an organic lively whole, a togetherness. Anton Bruckner saw the magnificence of God's temple in the scraggy risky actuality; so he portrayed it on the canvas of music, one symphony after another. And Eugen Jochum brought it out for us. Ihrough Bruckner-Jochum space and time are joined in music. In music uniqueness and multiplicity, sublimity and soiled souls, are all happily joined, and in their joining, in music, the integrity of each 1s brought out, justified, and shiningly perfected. They exist in Bruckner's music which was inspired by them. In the end, we can say that those things, people, and realms are all great “music” of the world. And those things, people, and realms can be said to live and exist for the sake of this music of togetherness. In music, we understand multifarious togetherness. “Music” 15 thus one of the threads running through our present book-essay. Or take such a casual theme as “accompaniment” tossed out in casual relation to “music.”'' We see how related it is to other themes and things in life as well. And “related” is a togetherness-word. A lip balm like Longs’ “Lip Treatment: Petroleum Jelly Protectant” recently on the market is an accompaniment to our lips. It costs $2 or more; it contains only 10 grams of petroleum jelly, which costs $2 a jar. Why does petroleum jelly in the Longs’ hp balm cost so much? Longs’ container-tube, an accompaniment to petroleum jelly that actually does the job of soothing our lips. Why is the container so costly? Its ease of application, of use—easy to carry, easy to use, a light, roll-on, flow-on tube. But these ease, application, use, light-

ness, roll-on, flow-on, etc., do not soothe lips; the jelly does. ‘These ease of application, etc., are again accompaniments (A) to the jelly, then. A is costly. 8 See 3.12.

? See 2.10. on how these three parties together “compose”

० See 2.10., again, this time on “accompaniment.” !! See 2.10.

music.

NEGATIVITIES

395

The cost is in the tube, an accompaniment to the jelly, which as much accompanies our lips as they do our face, as ıt does our personality. Lip balm soothes; soothing 15 medical. Medicine 15 an accompaniment (À) to our body, which 15 À to our soul; medicine 15 costly, soul 15 not. It is easy to go on like this. Politics is as much an A to agriculture as agriculture is to foods, which is A to hfe. Clothing is A to body as face and body are to soul, to life. In fact everything cultural, civilization itself, is À to life as life is to God,

and

God

is in

Christ our Servant, which means A to us. “Accompaniment” is an outside which is 111510८,1“ intrinsic and essential, to life and to God. Everything 1s an accompaniment; human beings creatively accompany nature to reproduce fellow humans and produce (“manufacture") things called "culture" and industrial products, so much so that the Chinese people call ourselves one of the Three cosmic Geniuses, the Heavenly, the Earthly, and the Human. And accompaniment, which seems casual, 1s togetherness; things casual are not

so casual any more. Everything makes sense as togetherness, thanks to “accompaniment.” “Accompaniment” is a thread through our present book-essay. Now, we have done some illustrations of “arranging threads" to deny arranging them here. This procedure shows less our inconsistency than a simple objective matter of fact that "arranging" and "threads" are everywhere in this book-essay, because it reflects the simple matter of fact that "arranging" and "threads" are everywhere at any time to be found, or rather, always eagerly calling us to find them. That 15 the power of metaphorical evocation, in various ontological callings—deafeningly silent Heavenly Pipings—of/to togetherness. We have to merely open our eyes and ears to heed them, by beckoning to one another to heed them. This book-essay 15 the clumsiest of those beckonings. E.5. Negativities But one thing must be mentioned which the foregoing pages did not explicitly do. In those pages we were too busy explicating what

”As

considered

in

1.3.

396

EPILOGUE:

WE

LEARN

TOGETHER

togetherness is and should be to consider its negative side, threats to togetherness, such as xenophobia, conflicts, selfishness, that would

have nothing to do with togetherness, and their solutions." But the

foregoing pages are not irrelevant to negativities and their solution. For 1 togetherness is as has been portrayed, that 15, as something that constitutes one’s very dignity, identity, and integrity, then to expel the Other 15 to destroy oneself. Expelling the Other stems from one’s instinct for self-defense, however, and so Other-expulsion amounts to an existential contradiction, a suicide. Hitlerism ls only one recent example 1η the historical series of tyrannies, all of which stemmed from desire for self-aggrandizement at the cost of Others,

and

ended

in self-demise with

Others.

“The

only good Indians are the dead ones” amounts to dying with those “good Indians”; we are eternally together, either to die together or to thrive together. This quoted statement was a war-cry in those early pioneer days of the United States of America which 15 supposedly built on togetherness. The fact that the statement has now gone out of fashion is a tribute to Americanism that won over Hitlerism. Since togetherness constitutes the integrity of oneself, a solution to the tendency to expel Others lies in cultivating inner stamina fed by discerning resoluteness steadfastly to refuse violence, to rise above immediate hatred and benefit-debit calculation, and to devise ways stubbornly, sinuously, to maintain and promote togetherness with our so-called “enemies.” Thus the lesson 15 imminently and eminently clear: We should learn from such tragic history of wars and atrocities, decide never to repeat it, and always vigilantly scheme how not to. Togetherness 15 the ineluctable fact of our existence and the “categorical imperative” of our shared survival long into our future together. “But isn't conflict a form of togetherness( T)?” Yes, but that 1s T that destroys T, which therefore "conflict" must assume to obtain at all. T 15 omnipresent, irrepressible, yet mysteriously we do often try to destroy it with conflict. We must turn destructive conflict into conflict that destroys conflict, a critical T that weeds out destructive T. How? Well, we have been actually practicing it, say in “regula13 We did touch on negativities in “Eurocentrism” (1.1.1.), self-survival vs. selflessness (1.3.2.3.), politics as always "bad" (1.5., inclusive), literalism (3.7.), orthodoxy (4.1.2.2., 4.5.4.), "frontal analytical gaze" (4.3.2.), temptation (4.4.), religious conflicts (4.6.), cognitivism (4.7.2.1.), Sartre's negative nihilation (5.1.), etc.

THE

FUTURE

OF

TOGETHERNESS

397

tions,” in “discussion,” in “police force.” We cannot help it, since any “thing” (as our “common nouns” indicate) 15 a T, anything against it we instinctively want to stamp out. And so we just watch over those institutions we set up, such as “police force,” so that their misuse does not come about. That's all. "But isn't conflict a form of togetherness?" The question persists; we then realize that positive aspects of negativities do exist. Turbulent actuality is not just organic, its negativities not just amicable differences, complementary contraries, but often unexpected contradictions, unpleasant surprises, randomness, and accidents, mutations in evolution,

villains in history. They are not always bad. Chaos shakes into pieces our tendency to take “concreteness” as organic concrescence, making for totalizing Leviathan—social, cultural, as well as political. Disastrous disturbances indicate our sober reality to be inter-nascent by being internecine, our metaphor-process to be self-reversing, revolutionizing the known matrix from which the process is initiated, putting Confucius’ dictum upside down, waving the novel at the familiar to renovate it after warming up the old to recognize that uncomfortable new. We must, quoting Jesus to our purpose, love our enemies and be wary of our family, to initiate the internal revolt. This is the use of death; all things, good and bad alike, must perish to give way to the new from their ashes. As the bad 15 death to the good, so the good chokes the elan of hfe striking out afresh. “Revolution is not a tea party," says Mao Tse-tong; we say, togetherness is not, either. Kill Buddha when we meet him, says a Zen master;

so did we

Socrates

and Jesus with

thieves hke

Hitler.

For,

follow our teachers now

that

Chuang Tzu says, “Sages not deceased, great thieveries never cease.” Pan-iconoclasm is not always bad. But note the above

“so,”

“as.” We

they are dead (Kierkegaard). Iconoclasm follows the dead great; negativities follow the tradition of anti-traditionalism. That is togetherness in time, an epic drama of negativities, constructively destructive, discontinuously continuous. E.6.

The future of togetherness

Let us, then, sneakily preview the future of togetherness. Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945) was a modern Descartes in Japan who had his

398

EPILOGUE:

WE

root in Shintoism and Buddhism,

LEARN

TOGETHER

and was drenched in German ide-

alism. Late in his hfe he mused over our future world-togetherness,

somewhat ramblingly this way:

[Clultures may be said to be the realized content of the historical world, which is individual-qua-universal and universal-qua-individual determination. Cultures, of course, are plural. They cannot be reduced to unity, for when they lose their specificity they cease to be cultures. But the process of development of a unique culture from the standpoint of unique culture cannot be a merely abstract advance in an individual direction. That would amount to the negation of culture. A true world culture will be formed only by various cultures preserving their own respective viewpoints, but simultaneously developing themselves through the mediation of the world. In that respect, first deeply considering the individual ground of each culture, we must clanfy on what basis and what relation to other cultures each individual culture stands. How do Eastern and Western cultures differ in their roots? What significance does Japanese culture have in Eastern culture? Its strong points are at once its weak points. We can learn the path along which we should truly advance only as we both deeply fathom our own depths and attain to a profound understanding of other cultures.

Those five points—individuality as universality, unity as no uniformity, no self-development without the Other, self-development via world-mediation, and Other-knowledge on self-basis—may compose interactive aspects of cultural togetherness. Somehow, we see how each of our five portraits of togetherness-situations concretizes, or rather, explicates, embodies, and exemplifies all of those five aspects Nishida threw out without. explanation in this quotation. lo go into more details than saying so threatens to needlessly clutter, if not confound, us. For example, the last item, Other-knowledge on self-basis, was considered in Sectons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (the

cultural outsider's enthusiasm as precious, Other-thinking as radically reciprocal, playing with arguments together, enriching one's religion by learning from another, and thinking that 15 self-knowledge on Other-basis, and Other-understanding on self-basis).'” In such manner as this, Nishida's five proposals are all concretely affirmed in this book-essay in five directions. But affirmation 15 not theorization, and one who expects a full+ Kitaro Nishida, Fundamental Problems of Philosophy (1933-34), tr. David A. Dilworth, Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1970, p. 254.

5 And concretely tried out in my previous On Chinese Body Thinkang—A Cultural

Hermeneutic, Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J.

Brill, 1997.

PLAY

AND

TOGETHERNESS

409

blown theory of the logic of togetherness shall be disappointed. For togetherness 15 an open situation-word, a verb whose accomplishment 15 always in the open future. A teacher asked, “Tommy, what are you drawing?” Tommy answered matter-of-factly, “How do I know? I haven't finished yet." Tommy was drawing and playing; his teacher was not. We are playing, together drawing a painting of togetherness; we don't know what's going to happen yet. What 15 painted here in this book-essay 15 five scenario-portraits barely and faintly intimating a “rule of play" of togetherness. The game of togetherness happens according to this natural "rule" which is itself derived from the play of togetherness. With one difference. Usual rule of game is not the game itself, not the play. Here we played out our rule; our rule delineates how we have played. We played the rule, which was the play itself. The rule and the play are at one here, a performative tautology, as hfe 1s. Whatever we say, think, and act must now be played, and togetherness shall happen all by itself. E.7.

Play and togetherness

Play is a verb even in its noun form; it 15 a transitive verb in two senses: playing something or with something, and enjoyed best when playing with someone. Play, joy, and togetherness are co-implicative in a performative transformative sense. And since Joy 1s nutritious, joy feeds our growth. Thus play and togetherness are the sıne qua non for growth in/and symbiosis. We live to play together, and playing together, we live better. This fact supports ethics. We ought to act so as to enhance joys-in/and-growth-together, and our acts of joy-together is play. Playful togetherness is our imperative of life. For there is no third alternative: Either we play our lives together in homo-cosmic symbiosis or we die in isolation of ethnocentrism, of tyranny over “Others” who are really our better halves, our better alter egos. And already we have played the first stage of togetherness 1η this book-essay. We have played seriously 1η presenting this exploration of traversing threads ("traversals") of togetherness. Play is after all a play-together or it is nothing. And however clumsily we have played, we have played, and offered our play to beckon the readers to join. Our play and exploration of togetherness will be thereby

400

EPILOGUE:

WE

LEARN

TOGETHER

much bettered. We in fact have explored and learned together, and in doing so, togetherness 1s shown, presented. Togetherness appears in learning it together. Our only hope and appeal is that it may so continue, forever, as to continue developing our learning- and growing-together, our homo-cosmic symbiosis, our togetherness. E.8. The

“logic” of togetherness

So far we have considered togetherness (1) for what T 15, and found T zs everywhere, every-time, everything, every-doing, and every-me, every-you, and this book-essay plus every-reader, so much so that we stopped systematizing, even systemizing, and called on our reader to carry on the investigation further. It was messy. How about the “logic” (L) of T? What is it? The same holds. Every thread-running-through 15 the L. L is a gathering, a T. Music is T and/of L; the Other is, too, and all our five Section-themes are, too. T 15 L, which is demonstrative, play, music, etc.

The point here is that the “What is X?" type of questioning 15 a meta-level activity. “What 15 physics?" 15 not a question within physics, for questions in physics concern mass, subatomic particles, entropy, cosmology, and suchlike topics, and “physics” is not one like "subatomic particles." We usually claim that philosophy 1s special; lt 25 one of the themes within philosophy. But neither. L nor T is thus privileged, any more than the excluded middle is. Aristotle considered excluded middle via the road of abduction (Peirce); our execution shows

another route—evocative

presentation,

that is, a presentation

(via considering culture) which ended up calling to the Other to play-together our T, and explore-together its L, a show-and-tell, a show-and-call. We note that T and L are repeated even in this above description of our meta-level talk about T and L, the route of explanationabout T and L. We could not help it; here our meta-talk about L and T gets under our skin, for meta-talk is our skin, and L and T are our skin. This is not to deny the distinction between the skin and the inside, but to deny making light of the skin, to deny the

synonymity of skin with superficiality,'” to see the futility of Platonically saving the inside by letting go of the skin, to stress the importance 16 Skin is not just superficies, which is not superficial.

THE

“LOGIC”

OF

TOGETHERNESS

40]

of saving the skin which is to save the face (the “skin” of one’s personality), to keep one’s integrity; skin is important, for the outsider is sometimes more inside than the insider, as was considered in 1.3. In any case, every word used here (as well as anywhere else), even “consider” and “word,” is L and T. To use that by now hackneyed expression again, every “word” shows a consideration, and every “consideration”

is

a demonstrative.

that we

talk about

We

see here, further, that every

“demonstrative” is a side-vision, a seeing “in the corner of our a L and a T. We cannot raise a "What is X?"-question on l, because "What is X" gets us out of X, and we cannot L and T. Or rather, since we did talk about L and T negatively, cannot

L and

T, we

did consider

eye," L and get out

“What

saying is L

and I?” and “L” and “I” negatively, saying that all raisings, considerings, and talkings-about, including this one of ours, are L and T. What we have done, therefore, is again a Wittgensteinian (W) show-and-tell (in a kindergarten of lfe), and a meta-W show-andcall (less than a kindergarten), showing the ladder, its kicking, to call to the reader to do likewise, for every showing, ladder, kicking, calling, is L and T. It is again messy. We are together to live, for we live together to T, we live T, we are. It is about time to stop talking. Nothing further can be said; it must be further done—together.

The

L, the T, and the “L”

are to do and live T together further. For we are.

”As considered in 4.5.

of T,

8 The New Cultural History, edited with an introduction by Lynn Hunt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, less thoroughly understands contemporary scholarship than conveniently catalogs it. It reports that history, anthropology, sociology, and textualism are now intertwined in an intercultural manner, that parts (localites) and wholes (cultures) are 1η an historical dialectic of mutual integrations and transformations. This book-essay has deliberately bypassed its Babel of jargon and key terms, so as to coherently think through our dynamic diverse “togetherness” at a basic level. Hunt's edited book reporting today's researches on humankind amount to a concrete instantiation of what is proposed here. We are happy.

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX

TO

上 .4.

Individual-priority vs. Other-centrism If sometimes

a Western philosopher begins his thinking process at

the whole, he would take the whole as the One, the only really Real,

in which all individuals disappear; Parmenides and Spinoza come to mind. And this sort of holism paves the road to totalitarianism, against which the individualism of democratic “social contract,” which takes individuals as supreme and inviolable, each endowed with inalienable “integrity,” is supposed to revolt. “Democracy” and “socialism” are individualisms with a vengeance. Kierkegaard’s thinking epitomizes this tendency to a fault; Heidegger followed suit. Kierkegaard confused the concrete with the individual; so did Heidegger also, perhaps. And we think of Russell's logical atomism, following Leibniz’. In short, the West seems never to have begun at the concrete complex, the together, to explain the monadic, the individual. Martin Buber's category of “the Interhuman,” “the Between,” 1s thus a revolution within the very mode of Western thinking. Deconstructionism and postmodernism today are an intuitive expression of the feeling that this individual-pnonty thinking does not work. Intellectual feminism proposes Other-centrism, chiming in with the recent vogue on the Other as a crucial category. The Other is of course individualism within social ambience, assuming two individuals—1, not-I—1in an inextricable interrelationship. Such seismic disturbances in the Western mode of thinking is made possible by the very Western tendency toward individual-priority. APPENDIX Hwa

TO

1.1.1.2.1.

Yol Jung and multiplicity

A similar point was made by Hwa Yol Jung in his PHENOMENOLOGY, THE QUESTION OF RATIONALITY AND THE BASIC GRAMMAR OF INTERCULTURAL TEXTS, op. cit., pp. 180-181. The point there was not related to Anstotle’s defense of the law of excluded middle, however; moreover, Jung was arguing there for “multplicity” and “dialectic without synthesis," not for the

400

APPENDIXES

possibility and mode of togetherness. Later on, however, Jung went into a briliant application of Dernda's “differance” to his logic of difference, another version of our logic of togetherness which we pursue in our fashion.

APPENDIX Schutz

and

TO

2.1.2.

the I-Thou

Actually, the Other has many shades, as Alfred Schutz has shown us in his classification of the blanket term, “fellow-men,” into “prede-

cessors," “contemporaries,” “consociates,” and "associates." See Alfred Schutz, The Problem of Social Reality: Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson, (The Hague, 1962). (Clifford Geertz has a convenient summary of this classification in his The Interpretation of Cultures, op. cit., pp. 364-67.) These many kinds of our fellow-men have various shades of personalness and impersonalness to them. The Other ranges from the intensely personal Thou to the completely objective It, between which there are various shades of “grays.” This whole shading aspect of Thou-It distinction may seem to throw into confusion Buber’s strictly (because clearly) dichotomized categories of relations. The resultant complication has been treated in my Chinese Body Thinking, 7.3.4. Here it suffices to note that despite the shading, the major distinction holds, that the shades between, 29

or mixtures

of, the

two

do

ες

not

abolish

the

TO

2.1.3

distinction.

Or

rather,

the clear-cut distinction of “‘T-Thou’ and ‘I-It’” are more of fluid dynamic characterizations to describe our lived relations than ngid classification to pigeonhole items of things. APPENDIX

My relation to Levinas Here we see some obvious streaks of Levinas. These paragraphs are hoped to infuse structural coherence into his rhapsodic theological deliveries while retaining his excitements lost in A. Peperzak’s rather dull commentary (though his meditations put Levinas in the context of the history of Western philosophy) in To the Other. The Other of two

sorts, Thou

and It, the ls cognitive

relation to them,

and

the

APPENDIXES

primacy

of the Thou (in 2.1.)，are

Levinas,

see 2.10.

APPENDIX

TO

407

mine.

For my

dialogue

with

2.1.4.

Sartre's negative self-dialectic This self-dialectic is misleadingly expressed by Sartre in the confusing formula, “I am what I am not; I am not what I am." Hegel and Marx also misleadingly dubbed this dialectic as "self-ahenation" or "self-transcendence." For the negative connotation of “not,” “alıenation,” "transcendence," makes sense only when the self 15 taken as primally and originally a thick self-ıdentical “in itself," to borrow their own terminology. But, as they themselves insisted, the self 15 not an In-Itself, and so the negativity in those descriptive terms of the self loses their meaning. There is no intrinsic reason why the self 1s essentially nihilative or negative; its negativity can be taken as derivative from something positive, self-kenosis as a modus operandi of self-plerosis, as we explained. 3

APPENDIX

TO

2.4.1.

Ricoeur begins at the self Paul Ricoeur did this experiment, to begin at the self to find the Other, in his book titled, “Oneself as An Other" (Sot-meme comme un autre). The book is on egology; it is the “oneself,” the self-identity, that the book studies. But he finds that in the very word of integrity or identity or sameness there 1s already hidden the Other. And at his dialectic of zdem-identity and :pse-identity, the original starting point, namely, the stubborn intertwining of the-same-within-the-Other stays. No matter how much we try, we cannot disentangle this snarl to get at the Other. See Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Ricoeur’s project is thus a gigantic proof that it 1s an impossibility to try and start at the self, at the question, “Who am I?,” to get to the unadulterated Other, to get at reciprocity by way of selfidentity. Perhaps,

however,

to see in the self this tangle of reciprocity,

all

408

APPENDIXES

in a snarl, ¿s none other than to realize that otherness is radical originative reciprocity, after all. Ricoeur’s project-failure must have been as much of a significant exercise in futility as Lao Tzu’s saying, “Tao tao-able is not the always-Tao,” 15. APPENDIX Names

A TO

for indexical

2.4.2. time

Other names for the indexical character of time (or temporal Index-

icals) are “tensed facts," “subjective beliefs," ११ ες “tensed statements." Cf. Part IV. “Reality and Present,” especially Lawrence Sklar, “Time, Reality, Relativity,” in Palle Yourgrau, ed., Demonstratwes, N.Y.: Oxford

University Press, 1990, pp. 247-00. J.J.C. Smart and C.W.K. Mundle

express the same view in their articles, “Time” and “Time, Consciousness of,” respectively, in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, op. cit. Also see The Philosophy of Time, op. cit., pp. 2-4, 223-24.

APPENDIX

B TO

2.4.2.

Existential import of a statement Roughly the same story 15 given in the editors’ introduction to The Philosophy of Time, op. cit., pp. 2-4, where they say, “The two sentences cannot be mutually translated, though ontologically the same.” I disagree with the description, for “existential import” is part of ontology, and the mutual translation 1s possible if the content indicated by the two sentences is the same. On the “existential import” mentioned here, think of this Zen koan: “What is your face before you were born?” “Face” commonly means face-after-birth, which usually means “how I look,” which in turn means how I look (here face zs myself) to Other people. My face (myself) thus depends on someone else than I; my face is Otherdependent. This koan-question cuts through such my predicament of social self-alienation. Before birth everything about, of, and in me is mine alone. Now what is this “me”? This is the ontological existential import of the koan. And perhaps the koan suggests that I have no face before birth, and so I co-happen with Others at my

APPENDIXES

409

birth, which is also a contingent event. In short, non-substantial.

On

“face”

I am contingent,

see 2.5. and all its subsections,

APPENDIX Levinas

TO

on

below.

2.5.

“face”

It ıs well-known that Levinas has much to say on “face.” See Emmanuel Levinas, 1969. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP; 1982. Ethics and Infinity. same press; 1987. Collected Philosophical Papers. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988. “Useless Suffering" in The Provocation of Levinas, eds., Robert

Bernasconi

Routledge, pp. 156-67: and Richard Kearney. Emmanuel

Levinas,”

in Face

to Face

with

& David Wood.

N.Y.:

1986. “Dialogue with

Levinas.

ed.

Richard

A.

Cohen, Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 13-33. We develop the theme our way. APPENDIX Merleau-Ponty

TO

2.5.2.

on perceiving and the Other

Maurıce Merleau-Ponty has perceptive observations on the relation between perceiving and the Other in The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort, tr. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968, pp. 9-1], et passim. See further discussions on the theme in Galen A. Johnson and Michael B. Smith, eds., Ontology and Alterıty in Merleau-Ponty, op. cit. Cf. Johnson's coherent account of it in his “Introduction: Alterity as a Reversibility,” pp. xvii-xxxlv. As Johnson said also, “reversibility” is neither too apt nor helpful in the discussion of the Other. In any case, we develop this theme our way. APPENDIX Wittgenstein’s

TO

2.6.2.

“family resemblance”

and transversal

On Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (W) “family resemblance,” see Philosophical Investigations, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company,

410

APPENDIXES

1953, $$65-71. See also a careful essay on it in G.P. Baker & P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning: An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

1980, 1:320-343.

This “analytical commentary," precisely because of its exhaustive, exact, and analytcal approach (cf. p. 326 where they depart from an “exhaustive list” view of enumeration of examples as not Wiitgensteinian), reads odd in contrast to W's simple straightforward (“lucid, non-technical... clear... innocuous,” p. 1) exposition. They did say in p. 1 that this W's book is “an exceedingly difficult book to understand." This is perhaps not because the book is difficult but because its approach 1s quite different from our usual analytical one; we make

1t difficult for ourselves. It never occurred to them as

to why W. adopted “lucid” and “non-technical” style; W. wanted to strike out in a fresh direction, unencumbered by old technical terms with old contexts and connotations. The project was for W. genuinely philosophical “investigations,” explorations. I will mention only three points just on “family resemblance (ΕΝ): (a FR describes how we notice notional “lineage” (cf. 328) among different concepts, while analysis is a splitting operation. To use the latter approach to understand the former merely invites unnecessary difficulties (cf. 327-328). (b) I would not stress “properties” when taking issues with W. as those two commentators did. After all, isn’t “family resemblance” about resemblance among —-what, if not of properties? It is resemblance that W. stressed over against analysıs of a thing or notion into its elements; W. was fighting not over the issue of qualities or no qualities but over how to treat them. (c) Mysteriously, the commentators described constructing a “new theory of universals” on the foundation of FR as “new 1dol"-building. They did not say why. They regard W’s FR exclusively as criticism against

definition

as analysıs

(332,

cf. 320),

not

on

universals;

but

definitional issue 15 issue on universals. I feel a whiff of analytical air here; they want no one to fly in a new style with the new wings W. gave us.

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX

TO

411

2.6.5.

History and Wittgenstein On the logic of history, see my History, op. cit., Part One. On the intricate relation between evocation and metaphor, see ibid., Chapter V, “Chinese Universals.” There I considered the Chinese world view, as to how situational, evocative, and metaphorical it is. Here we meet Wittgenstein’s family resemblance which facılitates Baker and Hacker's extrapolation of flexible justifications and different readings of things and paradigms according to concrete uses. We see here a cultural meeting. APPENDIX

A TO

3.1.

Playing and arguing It 15 also crucial to realize that playing can be one way of “arguing,” a reasoning, that differs from straight arguing. What characterizes straight arguing is explained ın the ensuing sentences of our main text. And the main point of this subsection 15 on playing with arguments that can become “arguing for a point,” the point of living together in disagreement, mutually enjoying differences among disputants. This sort of point cannot be argued for, because straight argument aims at inducing, if not compelling, agreement by persuading the opponent of, by clinching, a point argued for—not at enjoying mutual disagreements. APPENDIX

B TO

3.1.

Play, arguing, and conclusion "But doesn't arguing also bring us to a new realm at the 'conclusion?"

Yes

and

no. No,

because,

as Hume

also says, logical

argu-

ment 15 on ideas only, tautological. Only experience brings us new knowledge. And experiential knowledge 15 gained metaphorically, not logically-argumentatively. Yes, because with factual premises an argument can induce some new knowledge for us. In the latter case, new knowledge is gained by argument, while new knowledge obtained by

412

APPENDIXES

playing with argument is, again, via metaphor. And this metaphorical mode can be as the bird’s flight linking us to the surrounding air of the taken-for-granteds (but we did not realize it until evoked by this "argument" to see it); the metaphorical linkage can also be as the clown surprising us into novel truth. See further on the relation of these two modes—argumentative, metaphorical—3.2.2. below. Later in 3.9., we will see that all arguing, in fact, is arguing via metaphors, which are playing with arguments (linkage of ideas), and so all arguments are playful at bottom, in order to be creative and informative. APPENDIX *Logical lacunas"

A TO

3.2.1.

and the history of debates

Three areas in thinking can be cited to show how impossible “logical lacunas" have been to fill—arguments, thinkers, themes. (a) Great debates have been going on on the classical arguments for and against God's existence. What have been thought to be conclusively refuted or presented, such as analogical and cosmological arguments or those from evil, are being repeatedly revived, refuted, and defended, again and again interminably. Witness a recent example of Richard Swinburne's resurrection of a supposedly weakest argument for God's existence, the cosmological one. And noteworthy 1s his complaint that concluded Introduction to his illustrious The Coherence of Theism:' It 1s one of the intellectual tragedies of our age that when philosophy in English-speaking countries has developed high standards of argument and clear thinking, the style of theological thinking has been largely influenced by the continental philosophy Existentialism, which, despite its considerable other merits, has been distinguished by a very loose and sloppy style of argument. If argument has a place in theology, large-scale theology needs clear and rigorous argument.

One who 15 sympathetic to “Existentialism” might wonder if it isn’t a logical insensitivity on Swinburne’s part not to consider carefully “has a place in theology" means. A “place,” by definition, is not ! Richard etc., p. 7.

Swinburne,

The Coherence of Theism,

Clarendon

Press,

Oxford,

1977,

APPENDIXES

413

always synonymous with “large-scale theology” in its entirety but only a set “place” in it. And in this limited sense of “argument,” Existentialism has certainly paid its philosophical due, rendering itself deserving of occupying a "place" in the world of theology and philosophy.

In fact, theology (if not philosophy?) is a big mansion with many

chambers for many styles of argumentation, as are exhibited (albeit somewhat clumsily by Nancy C. Murphy's veritable "Who's Who" (or ^what's what"?) of types of reasoning in her Reasoning and Rhetoric in Religion (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1994). Each type of reasoning is certainly to be deemed logically unsatisfactory by another type. Besides, so the objector might argue, argumentation has nghtly only *a place" in theology, being only a handmaid to religion her Lord. Our entre Section 4 can be regarded as an elaboration on this point, as to what “place” argument in thinking about the Ultimate occupies, and that what sort of argument it is. And the debate goes on, on the very logicahty of "theological argument." (0) Some thinkers are “darlings” of incessant controversies. Nietzsche has been mentioned in 3.7.1. A modern example is Wittgenstein.

Baker and Hacker observed:?

The Philosophical Investigations . . . was hailed by some as the masterpiece of the ‘first philosopher of the age’. Others have viewed it as a haphazard collection of perhaps profound, but at any rate exceedingly obscure,

apergus.

it whatsoever.

Russell, at the other extreme,

could see no merit in

And so on, their description of the controversies goes on for three pages. Baker and Hacker themselves have a definite opinion as to what the most appropriate approach to W. should be, as 1s announced in their title (“An analytical commentary") and their Introduction.* These interminable controversies provide part of our motive in undertaking the task of trying to explain in detail, as well as delineate in general, the argument of the Philosophical Investigations... . This volume and its projected sequel is not a ‘Companion’ or ‘Handbook’... it is an analytical philosophical commentary [on] powerful arguments in Wittgenstein's writings ... the argumentative context... Wittgenstein's * Cf. William James's celebrated comparison of “philosophy” to a big mansion with a common corridor of common sense. * G.P. Baker & P.M.S. Hacker, op. cit., p. 1, the very opening paragraph of the book. t Ibid., pp. 2-3, 5.

4.] 4.

APPENDIXES

painstaking arrangement of his remarks, though often disjointed, involves an intricate weaving together of multiple strands of argument... the over-all arguments. . ..

By “argument” here they mean an analytical-logical sort, the sort not wholly endorsed by W. himself, exhibited by his very style of exposition with “disjointed”? “aperçus,” “remarks,” and mini-stories. And so those who are opposed may well say that they have done so “in total disregard of" (to pay them back with their own coin) W's explicit “peculiar” style. Cf. Appendix to 2.6.2. above. And the debate goes on. (c) The same goes with every well-known theme in philosophy, such as Plato's Forms, Arıstotle’s four Causes, Kant's Categorical Imperative, Descartes

Cogito,

Locke's

Innate

Ideas,

Santayana's

Animal

Faith,

Husserl's Epoche, Wittgenstein's Language Game, and the hist goes on. All these, and many others like these, which together make up the history of thoughts and debates, would have been impossible were arguments to have been made in history, if not to be capable of being made, totally without logical "lacunas" and satisfactory to every sort of logical scrutiny. This fact is what makes possible criticism, and if criticism 15 a form of thoughtful dialogue, what makes thinking possible. Thus, curiously as it may sound, thanks to the impossibility, pragmatic if not theoretical,

of having

no logical lacunas,

we

are what

“rational beings” (Kant), or rather, thinking people. APPENDIX On

“coherence”

B TO

as assumed,

we

are,

3.2.1. not explained

And “coherence” is an experiential category. Richard Swinburne’s long logical explanation of what "coherence" means in his The Coherence of Theism (Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 11-49) smacks of begging the question. For he needs a sense of coherence (which is unexplainable) to explain what “coherence” means. All we need is an intuitive sense of meaning, a sense of "sense." Making sense 15 seeing coherence, meaning. And "sense" and "seeing" in this context are experiential terms. I argued for a similar point in connection with "meaning" in The Butterfly as Companion, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 364—372, et passim.

APPENDIXES APPENDIX

TO

415 3.2.4.

Induction, analogy, and metaphor R.G. Collingwood has an interesting observation about induction. He said that deduction has a logical compulsion to it. Then he said, in his The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, 1946, 1956, 1994, p. 254, In what 15 called “inductive” thinking there 15 no such compulsion. The essence of the process, here, 15 that having put certain observations together, and having found that they make a pattern, we extrapolate this pattern indefinitely, just as a man who has plotted a few points on squared paper and says to himself “the points I have plotted suggest a parabola,” proceeds to draw as much of the parabola as he likes in either direction. This is technically described as “proceeding from the known to the unknown,” or “from the particular to the universal." It 1s essential to “inductive” thinking, though the logicians who have tried to construct a theory of such thinking have not always realized this, that the step so described is never taken under any kind of logical compulsion. The thinker who takes it is logically free to take it or not to take it, just as he pleases. There is nothing in the pattern... to extrapolate in that particular way, or indeed to extrapolate at all. [emphases added]

This 1s a description of induction. The words emphasized add up to remind us of metaphor. Induction expresses "having found" that those "observations together" "suggest" something new, a process "from the known to the unknown." Such an expression in turn merely suggests to the other person that it might be interesting to look at things in this new manner, but leaves that person "logically free" to, or not to, take 1t and further extrapolate therefrom. Metaphor 1s likewise a pointer to something new from something known, and 15 also an invitation to look at things in this new manner without logically compelling anyone to do so. Metaphor and induction thus form a family of the more or less loose “logic” of discovery and invitation. But which of the two ls the looser "logic" than the other? Perhaps metaphor 1s. Induction first logically, however loosely (statistically?), justifies the process from the known to the new, before suggesting this process. Metaphor starts the process, then lets the other person see for oneself how legitimate the process 15. The emphasis on metaphor 15 to start to startle someone with the novel connection of the new with the known; induction continues by justifying the process.

416

APPENDIXES

And so perhaps induction 15 a subspecies of metaphor, a logically neater metaphor. Analogy seems to be between the two. Analogy 1s also a pointer to something novel, but unlike metaphor analogy has something logical with which to express the insight, such as, say, "As A 1s to B, so C is to D.” Yet since these two pairs of comparison ("analogy") has nothing to share, such a logical frame 15 looser than that of inductive generalization. lhus perhaps we see the following order in this family of expressions of novelty: metaphor, then analogy, then induction, and then deduction (which can also express unsuspected novelty), where things finally close off in a tight logical progression. Play with arguments opens all this up for an evocation and revealment of novelty. Play is a logic of excitement and enjoyment, fit to be called a general logic of discovering novelty. APPENDIX Different route,

TO

3.6.1.

same

sentiment

It must be noted here that the argumentative “route” taken in the following differs from Chuang Tzu’s in Chapter Two in the Chuang Tzu (cf. Butterfly, pp. 171-290), although our materials are all from that Chapter, and although our overall sentiment, we believe, agrees with his. That such our approach 15 not only allowed but justified, if not encouraged, by Chuang Tzu's way of thinking is explained in Butterfly, pp. 3-31, 964-90, et passim. That the route taken here also makes sense shows also the fascination of playing with arguments. APPENDIX The

TO

3.6.1.2.B.

Great Sage of Great Awakening

Actually, the situation is slightly more complicated than stated in the main text, which 15 a simplified version of Chuang Tzu’s original vision, as follows. To be awakened to reciprocal dreamings between the butterfly and the person named “Chuang Chou,” there must be a Subject beyond the subject(s) undergoing reciprocal dreamings, that Subject who is “greatly awakened (ta chüeh)” to this dreaming-reciprocity. Chuang Tzu calls that One the “Great Sage (ta sheng)” (2/84). It 1s

APPENDIXES

417

this Subject who describes this dreaming-mutuality and asserts, “You are both dreams; and I am dream, too" (2/81-83). But who/what is this Subject? We can only go to the beginning of the Chapter Two where the Nan Kuo Tzu Ch" said, “I (wu) lost me (wo)” (2/3). That "I" must be the Subject that remains after the objectifiable-subject (wo) is lost. That Subject is described as “as-if withered wood, as-if dead ashes" (2/2), that is, as-if dead, a dead silence. Asked why about this Subject's strangely dead condition, the answer surprisingly refers the questioner to the Heavenly Pipingsforth of things. Thus the Subject has much to do the things and their Beginning. And

indeed,

this must

have

been

what

15 meant

because

of two

reasons. First, the Subject becomes itself, empty as withered wood and dead ashes, by having looked up to heaven and deeply breathed himself empty; breathing oneself out to heaven links oneself to Heaven, Nature-as-a-whole. As one empties one's objectifiable self into realizing oneself as one thing among many in nature, one's true Subject comes to co-resonate—31f not co-idenüfy itself—with Nature itself. Secondly, the phrase, "as-if withered wood, as-if dead ashes," describes not death but the tender baby-beginning of things, for the baby is also described as “as-if withered wood, as-if dead ashes" (23/41)? This describes that Heavenly Piping-forth (tien lai) of things, the soundless

Let-Sound-forth

of things (cf. 4.7.1.3.c., 4.7.2.4.), that

is, the “Yet-to Begin to yet-to begin all things" (Chuang Tzu, 2/49—50), the silent Beginning of all beginnings of things, which is thus intimately connected with the Subject, similar to the creative cosmic “Silence that whispers” to Elijah (1 Kings 19:12). But this Subject is above arguing or, if this One does, it would be as playing, presented in a Chuang Tzu-esque “bombastic” way (cf. Chuang Tzu, 33/64), perhaps because playing is contagiouspervasive while argument conclusively closes in. But all this only complicates our exposition on “playing with arguments."

> In another context, the same phrase is collated with -the “newborn calf” (22/23-24), and in yet another, explicitly with the “beginning of things” (21/25-26).

418

APPENDIXES

ΑΡΡΕΝΡΙΧ

ΤΟ

3.8.1.

On yu and “play” Unfortunately,

the

Chinese

word, yu, has

no

comparable

riches

of

idioms, implications, and connotations as the English “play” does. Perhaps Confucian austerity impoverished Chinese vocabulary. A solitary exception is Chuang Tzu who almost entirely placed the central axis of his thinking on “play.” I did my best to expand on the (Chinese) importance of playing in my Butterfly, pp. 67-112, 377-88, et passim. (Cf. pp. 490, 503, the Index, for references on yu and “play”) My other book, Chuang Tzu— World Philosopher at Play, N.Y.: Crossroad Publishing Co. and Scholars Press, 1982, 1s enürely devoted, albeit obliquely, to the theme of “play.” The following explication of “play” relies heavily on connotations of English “play.” APPENDIX On German

A TO

3.8.4.

Spiele as “play”

and “game”

Cf. ^^. . . [T]he activities characterized as Spiele are a wider and more varied set than those called ‘games.’ ... This does not affect W.’s point." (Baker & Hacker, ibid., p. 346) That German Spiele can mean play or game makes the matter worse. The standard English translation correctly has "language-game," not language-play; W. paid more attention to the "game" of language and its rule than sheer toying and playing with words, ideas, and sounds of language. And Gadamer followed suit (see his wholesale acknowledgement of W.'s language-game in Wahrheit und Methode, 11:5). APPENDIX

B TO

3.8.4.

Wittgenstein and Baker & Hacker This 15 something quite daring to say. But audacious generalization is more significant here than careful documentation on a trivial or well-known point about W. Nor is this the place for timid documentation. All I want to point to for demonstration of the above impression is that W. has much to say about use, and about game

APPENDIXES

419

and its rule, but not much about play as such. A casual perusal of supposedly careful and comprehensive “analytical commentary” of Philosophical Investigations by Baker and Hacker, op. cit., unwittingly supports this point. Baker & Hacker have considerable excitement over “use,” but not

much on “game,” much less on “play.” They even warned, at the conclusion of the section on "Language-Game" (pp. 89-98), "We are moving in the realm of analogy; language 15 not a game, nor typically are the activities into which its use 15 woven." (p. 98) Their exposition on “game” sounds barren, as if "game" were a nuisance, another of W.'s mistakes which we should overcome, anything but W.’s Copernican Revolution. They carefully explain and analyze features of logical atomism and “rules” of language therein; they show how W.’s language-game eliminates the rigidity. of the “rule” of language that logical atomism takes as. They keep explaining logical atomism, and how W. dislocated it, whose language and thinking style they yet adopt—all of these performances show how obsessed they are with logical atomism. Explaining what W. took to be defects of logical atomism, they nevertheless stoutly remain operating on that model; by “analytical” commentary they must have meant this style of thinking and approach. They never describe—in the style and spint of the “game”—the brave new world of language-game, what such game-perspective positively illuminates. In general, despite being ostentatiously exhaustive, comprehensive, careful, thoroughly explanatory of W., their description somehow leaves something to be desired. This 15 another case. APPENDIX Gadamer

C TO

3.8.4.

on play

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, tr. revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, N.Y.: Crossroad Publishing Corp., 1989, p. 103. On the whole, a sad protest must be registered here. Bound by vanous jargon and categories of various schools, enmeshed in debates with other "great thinkers," and obsessed with his own preset program of using "play" as the starting point of his aesthetic architectonic, Gadamer truncated

420

APPENDIXES

into scholastic pieces and aspects the lived integrity—the sheer selfforgetful spontaneity—of play as it is in itself. One is tempted to shout, “Go back to the thing itself! Let play be play!” Whatever great merits Truth and Method has in other respects, its exposition of play is as much of a disaster as is G.P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker's “analytical commentary" on Wittgenstein's view of language as "game."

APPENDIX On Here

are two

sections:

TO

4.3.1.

Love

our love, and

God's

love, which

ours; but we know God's love via love experienced.

establishes

On love experienced a. We begin by taking lovers’ love as that in terms of which we understand other kinds of love. In subsection c we take parental love as a typical one. lo give someone her due 15 not love; it 15 justice. Justice is an appropriate relation between equals and outsiders. Desert and recompense apply here. Even considerateness applies here; here the amount given equals the amount needed. But love 1s not justice. In love, ruthlessness applies. Love ruthlessly robs the beloved of everything, thereby ruthlessly robs oneself of everything. Having taken everything from the beloved, love ruthlessly depends on that beloved. Love totally consumes and totally needs that beloved.

“All I have,

you is mine; you I need you to be ing, that 15 love. virtue that fulfills has equals,

all that I am,

is yours,"

because

“all of

“Cleave

to her,

are mine, me myself. Without you I am nothing; myself.” Total taking in giving, total giving in takConsiderateness 15 not love but a just concern, a the needs of strangers, friends, equals. Love never

only totals, or rather,

one total person.

and become one flesh." Love 15 the take-all in give-all, the grueling master-slave in one. Ít is messy. This total ruthless love 15 shown by Jesus when he offered himself; “Take, eat; this is my body" (Matthew 26:26). He gave his total self for me to "eat" as my personal nutriüon. The ruthlessness of his total self-giving is matched by the ruthlessness of his “commandment" to give myself totally, to present my whole "body as

APPENDIXES

421

sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), to love him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love my neighbor “as myself” (Mark 12:30-31). “Son, you are always with me. ΑΙ] I have is yours.” No condition attached. “But this your brother, he was dead and is now alive, lost and is not regained. We ought to rejoice” (Luke 15:31-32). No condition attached. b. Obviously love described above is a narrowly defined one, in order to bring out its crucial aspect often neglected, love on the selfside, ruthless one-flesh, master-slave

in one, as “myself.”

Descartes said that the mind-body relation is not like the sailorvessel relation.? Nature also teaches me ... that I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am very closely united to it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole. For if that were not the case, when my body is hurt, I, who am merely a thinking thing, should not feel pain, for I should perceive this wound by the understanding only, just as the sailor perceives by sight when something is damaged in his vessel; and when my body has need of drink or food, I should clearly understand the fact without being warned of it by confused feelings of hunger and thirst. For all these sensations of hunger, thirst, pain, etc. are in truth none other than certain confused modes of thought which are produced by the union and apparent intermingling of mind and body.

The pilot or sailor also “loves” his vessel, so much so that he may sink to the ocean with it. But he never feels pain when the vessel is damaged; he just repairs it. We should call such togetherness, considerateness. This is a sort of (retributive) justice in that the “repair” balances the damage up to its original equilibrium, and that objectively; the repair does not concern the repairer. Such is also the relation between the doctor and the patient. The doctor qua doctor is by definition never sick; otherwise he would be unable to cure the patient. Once become sick, he 1s not a doctor but a patient, unable to cure. For to cure 15 to repair from outside. The doctor cures, and so does not intimately “intermingle” with the patient into "one whole." 6 The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trs. by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, Cambndge at the University Press, 1967, Vol. I, p. 192. Cf. Philosophical Essays: Descartes, tr. by Laurence J. Lafleur, Library of Liberal Arts, Indianapolis: The BoobsMerrill Co., 1964, pp. 134-35. _ This passage shows that even the staunch dualist Descartes could not but notice this fact, which Merleau-Ponty also acknowledged in The Primacy of Perception, p. 5.

422

APPENDIXES

Love in a narrow sense is often confused with doctor-like considerateness. But love differs from the doctor’s objective considerateness. Love so becomes one with the beloved Other that the otherness of the

Other

15 lost.

The

husband

is the

head

and

the

wife,

the

One

cannot

dedicate

one's book to oneself, nor can

body, said St. Paul. Put in modern terms, the spouses are mutually head and body, bodily head and mental body; they are one integral "flesh," as Merleau-Ponty often said about the mind-body relationship. Thus between spouses there is no gratitude, no appreciation, no dedication.

one thank one's hand. One merely moves one's hand to write. One can of course rgoice in having a good hand, and be grateful for having-a-hand. One can likewise rejoice 1η one's spouse, and be grateful for having-a-better-half. They can enjoy each other as the mind enjoys health, as the body enjoys discernment. In this natural togetherness there 15 no room for justice, considerateness. They simply take care of each other as their minds do of their bodies; they simply support each other as their bodies do their minds. Deprived of each other they die, as surely as the mind or the body dies without the other. The spouse is sometimes hurt, pressed under exigencies of the situation. The Other spouse then temporarily "doctors" her with care and considerateness. One should take care of one's spouse as one should of oneself (e.g., by not sitting up too late). But ordinarily spouses pay no attention to each other any more than one does to one's hand while writing; the spouses are as unified a flesh as the hand and the writing self are. Thus love has in it a bland healthy ruthlessness. Of course I take everything from you; of course you take everything from me. You are my half; whether or not you are a better half of me than I am of you matters little. You are me, I am you, for better or for worse; we act in concert. If one can think aloud in front of a friend, love

can think-together in the beloved. Not thinking alike, we can think together to "compose one whole" (Descartes) thinking. We mutually "compose,"

constitute, one flesh, which is “one point of view on the

world" (Merleau-Ponty). Mutual composition here means mutual adjustment and complementation, perhaps by mutual discussion, by feeling mutual feelings and expressions. And it 1s in this manner that we grow together. Only in such an intimate—innermost—togetherness do I grow into myself as you do into yourself. This is “home.” But how does it happen? By becom-

APPENDIXES

423

ing oneself by virtue of taking in all of the beloved. How could such a ruthless self-plerosis be possible? Because the beloved allows it to happen by offering the beloved’s total self to be thus taken. This ontological allowing is the nihilative self-emptying aspect of love that wombs forth self-plerosis. c. So far we have taken lovers’ love as a hermeneutical paradigm; now we take parental love as love’s principle. Someone may say that parental love, being the power that begins our lives, is the power that begins lovers’ love, and so should have been treated first. This is true. But since we actually begin understanding—from the bottom of our hearts—what love is only through experiencing lovers’ love, this order—describing lovers’ love first, before considering parental love—1s a more natural one. This 15 like understanding “God is love” through understanding “love 15 God," as mentioned at the end of this Appendix. And

so, we

will here

consider

what

love

thus

described

so far

really is, this time formally and objectively in terms of parental love, and explain what it means. Love can be defined as the parental primal a prion of all a prioris. We (1) first explain what the a prion amounts to, being su: generis (= unique) and the principle (= beginning) of things, (1) then apply these two qualities of the a priori to love; love is the sur generis principle of our life. () To begin with, the a prion means the first, the beginning of things, something-before-experience’ that sets experience in motion, sets the tone, the manner,

the structure, of experience. It 1s like the

head of a train and caravan of trucks, setting the whole caravan in motion, controlling the entire speed and direction of their movement. No truck in the train? controls the head as to when, where, and how the train goes. This head 15 the a prion of the entire train.

ˆ Here the word “before” has two meanings. The mover that moves the moved (1) may or (2) may not be separate from the moved, analogous to the parent being both a part of and separate from the child. We consider parental love in meaning-(2) here; under *God 15 love" we obliquely consider parental love in meaning(1), “obliquely” because the “transcendent” aspect of parental love is manifested in the paradoxical character (something beyond our understanding) of divine love, absoluteness of divine persistence and agonies, and universality of divine partiality. Meaning-(1) bespeaks the fatherly holiness of divine love; meaning-(2) indicates the incarnated love of the Suffering Servant. But all this is to anücipate. ° Is there a “head” outside the train? If there is, it would be something separate, which amounts to “God’s love." But mind you, God's love is both inside and outside the train; this “both... and" is the crux of the Incarnation.

424

APPENDIXES

For truth we have some cognitive a prion: we must have scholastic aptitude to know something, and Kant says we must have some categories to even have "experience." For goodness we have some moral a prior: Mencius said we must have the feeling of intolerance of Others suffering, and Kant said we must have feeling for duty, to act morally. For beauty we have some aesthetic, affective a priori: we must have taste, sensitivity, and sensibility, to be engaged in the activities of artisüc beauty. These a prions have two characteristic: they are all unique, and they are the principles of their respective worlds. First, they are unique; they are as they are, independently in themselves, though they have respectively something to do with other aspects of life. To know truth differs from acting rightly; an intelligent person may be immoral (the relativity theory ended up being used to make atomic bombs), a moral person may be inept (some good persons are incapable of doing business). lo act rightly differs from sensing beauty; a good person may be uncouth (good persons may not be art lovers) a sensible person may be immoral (some gangsters practice beautiful manner of murder). And sensing beauty differs from knowing truth; sensible person may be stupid (many artists don't know what they are doing), nor does one need to know to sense beauty (many persons of low IC) are superb painters and performers). Each realm is unique, though each may have something to do with. other realms. Secondly, these a prions are the principles of their respective realms. They get their respective realms going, determine their respective tones and manners of operation. Without them, those realms cannot get started. No categories, no knowledge of truth; no intolerance of suffering, no good deeds possible; without sensitivity, beauty is dead. (n) Love is the a pron of all a prioris. Love is the thrust to, interest in, and passion for, anything (things true, good, beautiful) in life. Even Spinoza who was farthest from love-language said that there is "conatus" 1η things, making things as they are. And conatus 15 the thrust, the push, the nisus, for things, that is, the love of things to be as they are, their ontological self-love. Again, this love as the a priori of all things implies that love is both uniquely its own, and the principle of things. First, love 1s uniquely on its own. It has nothing to do with external objective qualities, qualifications, conditions. We all feel insulted when we are told that a person wants to marry us because we are good cooks, good bread-winners, beautiful or handsome, young and

APPENDIXES

4:25

healthy, with a good academic standing, wealthy, from a good family, etc. For love 15 not determined by those qualities. If we love someone,

1ΐ 15 because we love that someone,

not because

of some-

thing else. This does not mean that those qualities and conditions can never serve as catalysts to occasion love. But love happens not because of those occasions. We say, rightly, “I love you because I love you, no matter what you are." For love is its own reason for being itself. Love justifies itself. Love 1s "right" only if it 1s love and nothing else, uniquely on its own. secondly, love 15 the principle that begins things. Love creates and shapes our living. We enjoy and our enjoyment creates what we enjoy. Thus love creates with joy. For love unites with what we enjoy, thereby creates what was not here before. Unitive creation, that is how love operates as the principle and beginning of things. This formal description of love covers all sorts of love in hfe, academic

love, love of taste, friendship,

sex, passionate

romance,

mar-

riage, or love of God. The Bible has many beautiful phrases to describe love: "bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh," "become one flesh," "the head or members of a body," “love (neighbors) as oneself," “remain in me,” “(love) with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls, all our strengths." They describe unitive creativity of love. Such love—with the twofold feature of uniqueness, principle—is, in fact, the entire thrust of a person, the life-thrust, the life-principle, the principle of identity of the person, the appetite to be and keep oneself as oneself. Without love persons turn into vegetation and stones, become comatose as the Chinese has it, "πια mu pu jen" (becoming humane-less as a tree). This 15 the constitutive principle of a person that makes a person a person, and not a stone. On

“God 1s love”

Immediately upon reading “God is Love," we see three points: We must think about (a) what God's love 15, (b) how we can receive it, and (c) some sober sides of love. A.

On God's love

When we mention God's love, we also mean love as above described— God loving us uniquely, God creating us by uniting with us in Jesus Christ, who 15 now our head and we are his members. Then, the

426

APPENDIXES

apriority of love 15 now turned into absolute depths, and the beginning principle of love, into unwersal creativity. Absoluteness and unlversality characterize God's love. 1. First, the apriority of love is now the absolute love in God. God's love 15 absolutely intense, persistent, and agonized. First, God’s love is more

intense than the most intense of human

love—mother’s love of her baby, parents’ love of their child. Jesus embodied Isaiah 49:15 when he showed to doubting Thomas those holes in his palms; Thomas has been literally “carved into” Jesus’ palms! After the bind man made capable of seeing was thrown out of the synagogue, shied away even by his parents, Jesus came to him;? there Jesus fulfilled Psalm 27:10. Isaiah 49:15 and Psalm 27:10 are two of many biblical passages which explicitly state this intense love of God. The Bible is steeped in the absolute intensity of God’s love. Secondly, God's love is forever persistent. “I will love you till I die” is the strongest word a person can confess. Jesus did not say so but simply did it, and did more. He loved us to death, and loved us beyond death, to rising up from the dead, to rising from this world up to the nght hand of God, where he is still praying for us, sending us his Spirit of love to be with us, in us, guiding us. He is eternally “courting”

us; “Peter, do you love me

more

than

these?" were his repeated words after having died for Peter the traitor. He pursues us relentlessly with all sorts of things, persons, turns of events, circumstances—at every turn in our daily lives. Our life history 1s the history of his pursuit to win over our hearts and love. God's love is forever persistent. Here lies the absoluteness of His love. Thirdly, God's love is absolutely agonized. For He loves even his traitors. "In the night when

he was betrayed,

he took bread, broke

it, saying, “Take, eat. This is my body, broken for you. Do this often

to think on me.’”'' He, not his heart only but the entire he, was

broken by the betrayal of one of his inside men, then by all of his men. Whereupon he took bread—he being the Bread of Life—and broke it and gave it to his traitors. “There, take it. Go ahead and eat it, take it into you. Think on me. I love you.” १ John 9:35, cf. 22, 34.

0 John 21:15.

II I Corinthians

11:23-24.

APPENDIXES

427

He loved not only Mary Magdalene but also the Pharisees, for his severest diatribes against them broke into tearful “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How 1 wished to have you as a hen would have her

chicks under her wings. But you would ποῖ... .': Why, among the

ugly noises and activities in the Passion passages in the Bible, was Jesus of all men so strangely silent? He must have loved them— Pilate,

the

priests,

the

pharisees,

the

soldiers,

the

bystanders,

jeerers, the criminals on the cross, the indifferent members Sanhedrin,

all those

who

scheme

selfishly for his death,

the

of the

all those

who shamelessly jeered at him. He could have asked for heavenly hosts (armies) to wipe them out in seconds; instead, he kept his silence and did nothing. He silently let them kill him. He loved his enemies! to death; he was agonized thereby to death. He said, those who endured to the end shall be saved'*; he himself endured to the bitter end, so we shall be saved. Love is God's which is agonized to death for us. And so, God's love is absolute because it is absolutely intense, persistent, and agonized. 2. Secondly, love as the principle of everything is now unwersalized in God. Here we see in God's love (a) creativity, and (b) “universal partiahty." a. First, God's universal love as the principle of everything begins everything. Love always begins things. I love this theme, and a book is born; I love this pattern, and a dress or a mechanical device 15 born;

I love this person,

and a family, a home,

15 born.

All these are images of God's act: He loves everything, and everything 15 born. Six times “it was good" was exclaimed as God began

things, in the Bible.'” And then there are "blessed"? and "give"! to

accompany the “good” creation. They are all love-words and creationwords. Things constantly bubble forth (“existing” means “standing forth" [from nothing]), sheng sheng pu hsi, thanks to God’s creative love. A Rabbi said that just to exist 15 holy; God 15 the holy power of existence, any existence, because God 15 love universal which creates existence whatever. 2 3 ^ 5 16 ?

Matthew 23:37-38. Romans 5:8, 10. Matthew 5:44. Mark 13:13. Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31. Ibid., 1:28. Ibid., 1:29.

428

APPENDIXES

And to create 15 to create something not here yet, the future. Love is the creative power of the future, what is yet to be. It is the power toward the invisible future now, the power of conviction that never

fails; it only grows.'® Love exudes faith and hope,” thanks to its cre-

ativity guaranteed by God's universal love. b. God's universal love bespeaks paradoxical “universal partiality.” It has two parts: God's love 15 intensely partial, particular, and such divine partiahty is absolutely universal. First, God's love is intensely partial and particular, for no reason except that God loves this person, no matter what. Jacob who cheated on God, his father, his brother, was dodging his brother an expert hunter's arrow. Α fugitive criminal, full of abject fear, quietly hid himself in the dark of wilderness somewhere, pillowing himself on a stone, dodging the rightful revenge. Then came upon him God's glorious ladder stretching from there to the shining heaven. The promises given were so out of the ordinary that even that tricky, avaricious Jacob would not dare believe. This was ridiculous; why did God do so? There was only one reason, “Because God loved Jacob." And why did God have to forgive those brutal brutish Assyrians in Nineveh? No wonder He courted that “righteous” Jonah’s rightful indignation. Similarly, why did God have to die for undeserving Peter, the Pharisees, the criminals on the cross? Again, there 15 only one answer to all these questions, “Because God loved them, those good-for-nothings." What partiality! The Pharisees were so jealous and astounded at Jesus. "Why do you have to eat with. those despicable tax collectors, those dirty prostitutes?” Jesus then gave them the story of a shepherd "leaving 99 in the field" to go after that one lamb stupid enough to have got

lost in the dark “till he finds 11.70 Doesn't the shepherd know that

99 will be lost, and the one lost may have already been eaten by wild animals? Why be so stupid? Again, because he loves the one

lost. One versus 99-partiality indeed.

But, secondly, this story was told not to the one lost but to those Pharisees, those 99 "safely in the field." It 1s the story of "one versus 99" to everyone who cares to listen. "You are loved, too. I know

8 I Corinthians 13:8, 19 13:13. 2 Luke 15:1-2, 4.

11.

APPENDIXES

429

you hate me; 1 love you still.” Why be so stupid? We repeat: Because he loves them all. This 15 the universality of God's love. How does he go from partial love of the one lost lamb to the universal love of everyone? It goes this way, in two steps. First, he keeps looking all over for me, asking me, “Kuang-ming, do you love me more than these?” And, as has been said above,

He asks this question after I have betrayed him. He loves me to death due to my betrayal, then loves me beyond death, beyond going up to heaven. Why? Because he wants me to love him. For ıf I don't love him, I will die, because love 1s the power to live. And he

so loves me that he wants me not to die but to love him to live abundantly. Then he says, "I want you, I want you to love this my love (partial) so that you can spread this love to everyone (universal).” Partiality 15 the essence of universality in God's love. And so this 15 the absoluteness of God's love, that his love is partiality gone universal. How crucial this divine partiality gone universal 1s can be appreciated against the background of the brutahty of this world. Wholesale infanticides, for instance, must have been routine in old times, such

as Pharaoh's in Moses’ days and Herod's 1η Jesus’. Baby Moses was pulled out^' of the water of Pharaoh's murderous plan; Baby Jesus was saved” from Herod's sword of infanticide. The stories of God's partiality towards those two babies were told precisely in order to save people from such brutalities. This is how particularity of love goes universal. From this point of view, it 1s literally true to say that present suffering (and salvation) of particular people 15 the birth pang of the future joy of universal salvation.” All in all, then, God's love is both absolute in intensity, persistence, and agonies, and partiality gone universal. B. On sober sides of divine love There are four sober sides of love we must consider to balance off our description of God's love. ]. How can we tell that love 15 good? How do we distinguish it from addiction (obsession) or desire? We have two criteria offered by two traits of love: love 1s unique, creative. * “Moses”

sounds like the Hebrew for “draw out.” Cf. Exodus

2:10.

? “Jesus” is the Greek form of Hebrew “Joshua,” meaning “the Lord saves." Cf.

Matthew

1:21.

5 Romans 8:22; John 16:21-22.

430

APPENDIXES

Relative to love's first trait, we can ask ourselves, “Do I love only this and no other, or do 1 love anything of this sort as long as they indifferently satisfy my desire for this sort of thing?” If the answer is the latter, then it is not love but desire, if not addiction. Relative to love's second trait, we can ask ourselves: "Does my love bring forth a future something I can be proud of?" If we hesitate, then it 15 desire or addiction. For desire would not dare to answer yes; addiction cannot answer

at all, for it could not care less.

2. If love justifies itself, and 15 its own reason for its being love, then when love is gone, nothing can be done. If it is gone, it 15 gone, and no external condition, reason or force can restore it. Perhaps this 1s a likely root of the awesome doctrine of “predestination.” Some sad Old Testament stories about God leaving someone, such as the stories of Eli and of Saul, testify to this fact. Perhaps this 15 not because God ceased loving that person; God merely responded in kind to that person's loss of love. (We remember how Jesus loved Judas despite Judas' hopelessness.) But personally I don't know how to reconcile the intense universality of God's love with this aspect of love. I can only surmise that this may be a negative side of that partiality gone universal in God's love, that those evils (and evil people) seemingly abandoned by God may have been put on the side of worldly brutalities out of which people are to be saved via those very brutalities. The hardening of Pharaoh's heart redounded to the glorious miracles of the Exodus, for example. 3. If love intensely loves its beloved, then jealousy, hurt, betrayal, and the like, are not far away. God's “wrath” and “jealousy” can be understood, in this light, as the holiness, the inviolability, of divine love. 4. If love is a person's hfe-thrust, not a mechanical force, then love contains moments

of uncertainty, doubt, indecision, change of mind,

second thoughts, etc. This can tinct from addiction which has “repentance,” Christs agonies the like, can be appreciated in logical character of love comes

also be counted as love's feature disno room for second thoughts. God's in the Garden of Gethsemane, and this light. This 15 also where the diauppermost— prayer can be seen in

this light to be dialogues of love.” ^ Cf. Exodus

32:9-14.

APPENDIXES

431

Al in all, then, this Appendix reports what one person understands to be love, thereby “God 15 love.” We might as well say “Love 15 God” (Peter T. Forsyth), for love 15 the only adequate avenue for us to approach and appreciate God. This Appendix appreciates God in this light. APPENDIX

TO

4.3.2.

“Just living” and Zen Pirsig, op. cit., p. 290. Such a counsel 15, as 15 well known, an application of the famous Zen practice of “just sitting” (shih kan ta za, or chih koan ta tso), a total concentration on whatever one is doing (in this case, just sitting). The divine depths and significance of the ordinary, the mundane and the taken-for-granted 1s the essence of both Zen and the Christian faith. Cf. also Harvey Cox,

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, APPENDIX Aquinas

TO

1969.

The Feast of Fools,

4.7.1.2.

on analogy, Tillich on symbolism

Among many writings by Aquinas and about him on his analogy, see Saint Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra

Gentiles,

Book

One:

God,

N.Y.:

Double

Image

Books,

1955,

Chapters 29f (pp. 138ff.); Robert C. Neville, God the Creator, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968, pp. 16ff; E.L. Mascall, He Who Is, London: Archon Analogy, same press, 1967.

Press,

1966;

same

author,

Existence

and

Among the scattered writings of Paul Tillich on symbolism, see his Systematic Theology, Volume One, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, pp. 238-47, et passim; Dynamics of Faith, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, 1957, pp. 41ff.; Theology of Culture, Oxford University Press, 1959, pp. 53ff.; The Theology of Paul Tilhch, eds., C.W. Kegley and R.W. Bretall, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1961, pp. 333ff.; Religious Experience and Truth, ed., Sydney Hook, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1961, pp. 3-89; Paul Edwards, “Professor Tillich’s Confusions," Mind, Vol. 74, 1965, reprinted in Norbert O. Schedler, Philosophy of Religion, N.Y.: Macmillan Co., 1974, pp. 186-205.

432

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX

TO

4.7.2.2.IV.

Smart's “performative transcendence”

and mine

Ninian Smart, “Understanding Religious Experience,” in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed., Steven T. Katz, Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 10ff., esp., 17-18. However, I use his phrase, “performative transcendence,” in a different sense. Smart means by it: Using a word (and its negation) to indicate how the subject-matter intended transcends the word thus negated. I use the phrase to mean: Using words in a self-contradictory manner to evoke the audience into transcending the conventional range and realm of meaning. APPENDIX The one-many

TO

4.7.2.3.

embodiment

That the one-many distinction itself arises out of the mutual Embodiment (not logical or ontological participation) of the universal and the concrete may require explanation, which, however, is obvious enough. Plato would have said that plurality is meaningful only among the actuals, seeing that the idea of manyness is not many (nor 1s it one), but becomes many only when actualized 1η the actuals. Numbers are occupants of the intermediate status of perfect non-physical embodiments, or else pure numbers are that in which the forms find their perfect embodiment. There is no form of number in Plato. (See I.M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, Volume Two, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, p. 308; A.E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work, N.Y.: Meridian Books, World Book Publish-

ing Company, 1956, pp. 506, 509; E.F. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1967, pp. 26, 80.) Moreover,

the many

connotes

limitation

and finitude, which

are

characteristics of concrete actuals, not of the universal. Chuang Tzu would have nodded to all this by quipping that from the unity of “me” and a “myriad of things” comes its self-expression (“speech”), and so from “one” comes “two” (the unity and its expression), and then “three” (the unity, its expression, and what is meant thereby). (See Chuang Tzu, 2/52—54.) Hence the one-many distinction originates

APPENDIXES

433

in the primal unity of what there 15, from which it gets its expression and actualization. APPENDIX The

inner

A TO vs.

the

5.1. outer

À simple distinction between the inner and the outer can be understood this way. Carrying water, one feels its weight, which disappears after drinking it, although the total weight of the water plus the person stays the same throughout. Weight-disappearance indicates the existence of water inside. (Similarly with carrying vs. wearing shoes, clothing, even cleaning one's own toilet vs. cleaning someone else's.) Love burns before marriage; wedded love ceases to burn. For wedded

love is intimate, inner mutual

APPENDIX Love

touch.

B TO

and

5.1.

touch

Love, especially mutual love (more than one-sided one) entails inner touch. This point holds even in casual sex, which 1s impossible without casual love

such

as curiosity, fun, casual interest,

be difficult to even imagine nauseous

about.

sex with someone

But casualness,

after all, implies

etc. It would

one hates or feels externality;

casual

sex would be an external touch. Casual external touch does sometimes result 1η childbirth. And the “love-child” is now housed in a “broken family," where he will grow up stunted, a perfect symbol for stunted broken love between his parents. Love aborted can result 1η abortion (though all abortions do not connote aborted love). In personal-physical touch there exists an intimate involvement between its physical side and its love-side. The physical side of sex can clinch love; love can result 1η beautiful sex. Although love without sex as well as sex without love do exist, both are truncated relations.

The former is more this fact signify that In any case, these ily touch in human

worthy of respect than the latter, however. Does love is more basic to sex than sex is to love? rambling thoughts show that the complex bodreciprocity is far beyond facile systematization.

434

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX Confucius’ wombing

C TO

5.1.

by educative dialogue

This wombing-family relationship continues in education. Let us consider Analects,

1:15:

Tzu-kung said, ‘Poor and no fawning, rich and no boasting—what about [it]? The-Master said, ‘[It] will-do. [It is] not-yet like those poor and happy, rich and fond-of /-decorum.' Tzu-kung said, ‘Odes has-itsaying, "As cut, as filed, as ground, as polished." Is this referring-to such?’ The-Master said, Ὁ, Tz'u! With [you I] can begin-to talk [about] odes now. [I] tell you-about what-is-gone, and [you] know what comes.'

This seemingly unpretentious conversation 1s packed with an intense fourfold inter-involvement of character-education in joy; the respectful conversation is itself a process of character-buildup, wherein joy, beauty,

effort, and nature

are at one.

Here two senes of progress on human excellence parallel. The first series concerns what 1s talked about, the best poor and the best rich: the second series exhibits how the student actually grows. And these two series are really two sides of the same conversation. Talking about the best humans 15 to undergo the experience of growing better and better into the best human. First, they dialogically admired the best humans— progressively from a negative prudential maxim, through a positive spontaneous joy, to the crowning Odes that chants this joy. And secondly, their admiration seeped into /hem— progressively from a sincere negative proposal, through a turn-around for the positive joy and respect, to a novel application of the beloved Odes to all this. These two series thus involve each other, converging to and constituting one educative Joy 1n respect ८४). Here is the unity of sincere conversation (the what) and life growth (the how); the one involves and constitutes the other. Here is education—drawing-forth of personhood—at its best, constituting proposals in acceptance, growing into oneself by intimately touching and provoking each Other. Education 1s a duplication of wombing-family relationship.

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX

D TO

435

5.1.

Social hierarchy vs. personal

growth

Mencius, 1A7. We must be cautious here. To take this “eightfold path" as that of our ontological development is one thing; to reduce it into a fixated social hierarchy is quite another. The former is a map, as it were, of spontaneous and so unplanned personal growth; the latter lays down a chart of managerial social-engineering. I owe this point to Professor Robert C. Neville. lo slip from the former mode to the latter tells the tragic story of institutional

Confucianism.

The

cure

is twofold,

1.e., to realize

that: institutionalization is not logically incompatible with spontaneous growth, and that the former can be engineered to facihtate the latter. To cultivate our innate unbearable feel for the suffering of Others is not an impossibility, and constitutes the Heaven-conferred task of true populist government, as Mencius repeatedly, passionately, urged us. But perhaps Mencius did not realize that Chuang Tzu’s (Taoistic) spontaneity which the true government is committed to fostering is itself the unconquerable budding toward the true good government. How does Chuang Tzu do it? APPENDIX

TO

5.3.

“China has no philosophy” Arthur Wright said so in H.G. Creel, ed., Chinese Cwilization in Liberal Education, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959, p. 141; David S. Nivison also agrees to the view (p. 144). See also pp. 135, 154,

159. Henry

Rosemont, Jr. said in Honolulu,

summer

of 1983,

that China has no ethics (Aristotle started its studies) and drew fire from Wing-tsit Chan. Wright, Nivison, and Rosemont’s view 15 being adopted in many campuses throughout the USA. Harvard University, for instance, has no course of “Chinese philosophy” 1η its Philosophy Department.

436

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX A Conversation

Actually, Hume,

among

TO

5.5.1.

Hume, Descartes, and Chuang on the self

Tzu

Descartes, and Chuang Tzu could also be engaged

in a no less beautiful and delightful conversation on the self. Hume could

come

in, saying,

“Gentlemen,

in all honesty,

point of our gathering here for a conversation confess

I don’t see the

on the self. For 1

that I've failed to find the self; all I found

is ‘a bundle

of

sensation.” Descartes would have replied, "I disagree, for I did find the self, so long as I keep on thinking." Descartes would then turn to Hume,

“Mr. Hume,

may I presume

to surmise that you've failed to find the self perhaps because you take the self to be one object among others, and look out for it as you would for any other objects. But the self 1s one who

looks, not one

to be looked

at. To

look

for one who looks 15 like looking for eyes, or eye-glasses while they are on, with the eyes. You,

Mr.

Hume,

did not turn around, as one

of the prisoners in Plato’s Myth of the Cave did. I did, and realized (‘found’) that for thinking to obtain (even it be a doubt or a deception), the thinking self (the one who doubts and is deceived) must exist. May I call your failure to turn around a 'transcendental fallacy’? What would you say, Mr. Chuang Tzu?” And Chuang Tzu would softly smile, saying, “I must tell you something far-out. My self was found in a dream, to be changing into

an awakening, and back into a dream. And so, I am not so sure as you, Mr. Descartes. All I am sure of, gentlemen, is that I am not

sure. I had, you see, a dream last night about myself being a butterfly, and since then, the more

I turn around

as you

do, Mr.

Descartes,

the more turnings-around I find myself to be and do. I end up moving in a circle, in which one situation catches the tail of its contrary—awakening and dreaming, knowing and notknowing, the self and butterfly the not-self. This turnings-around I call an ‘interchange.’ I propose, then, gentlemen, that we enjoy such onto-epistemological merry-go-rounds, which amount to *myself.'"

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX A Sartre-Confucius Actually,

one

more

Western

ΤΟ

437

5.3.9.

Conversation

on the

thinker, Jean-Paul

self

Sartre,

in his mas-

sive Beng and Nothingness, also said something similar. I could have let Sartre in; he would have raised his favorite pipe, tilting his crosseyed head shghtly. He represents a radical break with the Cartesian tradition and a beginning of existential deconstructionism. He says, “Where did you get this doubting self from? You, Mr. Descartes, started with the self and ended with the self. Nothing done and nothing gained.” Now, agreeing with Descartes on the forlorn situation of being forever in search for the indubitable, but devoid of even the indubitable

searcher, the world for Sartre 15 reduced to the self-defeating struggle of the For-Itself (the pure consciousness) to assimilate the In-Itself (the non-conscious stuff of matter). The struggle 15 self-defeating, how-

ever,

because

once

the

For-Itself is satiated

with

the

In-Itself,

the

For-itself ceases to be, as hunger satiated disappears as such, or the vacuum cleaner filled up ceases to suck, and 15 no longer a vacuum cleaner. Confucius comes in here with his reverent gait. He in his commonsense

manner

would

ask,

been

born.

“But,

Mr.

Sartre,

where

does

your

very For-Itself (without substance or indubitability) come from? Do you not have to extend your doubt to the For-Itself ? But if you did, then you would have been back to where Descartes started. And if you did not doubt the For-Itself, you are not as radical as Descartes. In either case, doubting the For-Itself or not, you cannot avoid the question of where your very For-Itself, your consciousness, comes from. My answer is, all this mental exercise would not have occurred were

I not to have

you know that?"

I was

APPENDIX À conversation

with

TO

born,

therefore

I am.

Didn't

5.3.3

Zennist

on the

self

After Chuang Tzu’s storytelling, everyone suddenly noted someone unobtrusively sitting there, silently smiling, nodding. "Who or what

438

APPENDIXES

are you?," someone asked. “Name can name, not Always-Name." “That’s Lao Tzu's words." “Thats another name. Well, then, you can call me ‘Zennist.’” “But ‘Zen’ is a mistranslation of Chinese ‘Ch’an,’ another mistranslation of Indian dhyana.” “There you are, again. Name, name, name. What's the matter with you? Just call me Zennist, will you? That's my sobriquet (¢zu)—remember Chapter 25 in the 7ao Te Ching? But if you want me to ‘describe’ myself (that's better, I am a good fnend of Chuang Tzu's, in fact, a winking cousin of his. He and I are another pair of friends, a duplicate pair of “Han Shan and Shih Te." You see, incidentally (everything is incidental, as is this point), our bantering quibbles over my name do have a point. We've really been questing after the I whose essence 15 represented in its name. Being nameless, I am self-less, empty. I am hterally a no-self; I don't beat around Chuang Tzu’s bush, you see. And since I am a nothing, nothing is real, either;

I am merciful to all things." “But this 15

an impossibility; how can you be merciful since empty?" "Well, that's a good question. I am not itate more to get through this Koan." [Pause] may I massage you on back? I remember you about your backache." Whereupon Zennist gently locutor's back. Suddenly,

the

interlocutor

burst

out,

“Ah,

everything is now sure. I must med“But, incidentally, complained to me massaged the inter-

I’ve

got

it! You

are

showing me your answer by massaging my back; you’re answering me in practice. In your practice of (massaging) emptiness and mercy go together!” "You're very discerning, my friend,” Zennist smiled. “Now, having answered you in action, I must answer you in words. I should not dodge the challenge, should I? Your question was that my two basic principles, universal emptiness and no less universal mercy, mutually hinder. For emptiness renders mercy impossible; mercy requires an existence, a something, to be its object of mercy, and emptiness denies existence; now we have nothing to have mercy on. I would answer with the following two points. First, this difficulty arises out of assuming a parity between mercy and aggression (or violence), assuming that both require their targets or objects to exist. But aggression 15 action on something, while mercy 1s non-acting accommodation, and we can accommodate both a something and a nothing. Mercy is quiet, but aggression 15 not, nor can it be. Thus the object of mercy can be a nothing.

APPENDIXES

439

Secondly, mercy as accommodation is a rooming, which presupposes an empty room, and so the merciful subject must become empty to be merciful. And, as long as all is empty, the self-emptying process 15 itself empty also, including emptiness rooming emptiness, and this empty process of emptiness-emptily-rooming-emptiness is called ‘mercy.’ It is thus that mercy and emptiness are shown to be at least compatible.” APPENDIX Openness,

A TO

5.4.

otherness, truth

For the importance of openness and otherness (which implies plurality) for truth (in pragmatic, coherence, and correspondence conceptions), see Carl G. Vaught in Robert C. Neville, ed., New Essays in Metaphysics, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1987, pp. 217-26. He also approximates (in ibid., pp. 226-35) the thesis advanced here on metaphor, with the following caveat. Vaught's “philosophical reconstruction" 15 strangely un-metaphorical, i.e., literalstic and analytical, in all this “complex interplay” and “metaphorical and analogical nexus.” “The purity of heart is to will one thing,” said Kierkegaard. A system of thought is to be so pure as to exhibit and inspire life’s natural integrity and organic simplicity; here exhibition and inspiration are themselves a metaphoric resonance between thinking and things, and thinking and thinking. Between Vaught's “metaphorical thinking" and “metaphorical object," there is a mutuality of metaphoring which has a natural inevitability, sadly bypassed 1f not smothered by his contrived (almost scholastic) analysis, which, however systematized, kills a natural one. Pragmatism is (or should be) another clarion call back to things themselves. This subsection explores two types of such a spirit, the spirit of pragmatism and the pragmatic spirit. APPENDIX Pragmatism

B TO

5.4.

in a broad sense

I said “in a broad sense" advisedly. “Pragmatism”as usually, and condescendingly, interpreted to be, 15 perhaps as Smith described (in

440

APPENDIXES

PT 8), i.e., all thoughts are for action in response to situational

change (no autonomy for thought), that propositions become true by passional willing (no dispassionate objectivity). Not surprisingly, “many American thinkers [Peirce, Royce, Whitehead] who have talked about the function of reason in human life or the intimate connecton between logic and the human will have at the same time refused to accept a place in the ranks of the pragmatists” (SAP 191). Smith insists that “pragmatism” (as usually so interpreted) is “one form only of the general thesis,” that “thinking is an activity performed by man, that it is a means of answering questions and of solving problems” (SAP 190). Thus the classical American philosophers practiced the broad pragmatism, the spirit that “forget[s] preliminaries [such as theory of knowledge, of language], go[es] to direct treatment of problems of the culture" (SAP 226-27), in Peirce's pragmaticism, James's radical empiricism, Royce's absolute pragmatism, Dewey's instrumentalism, and Whitehead's process as itself reality (SAP 5, 40, 55, 66fF., 85-90, 123-24, 134, 176-78). “Pragmatism” in this subsection is this broad “general thesis," also called

“pragmatism”

by Smith

in SAP

x, 40-00,

85-90,

198,

200,

206, 224, TAP 132. In sum, classical American philosophy can be characterized broadly as "American pragmatism" (SAP 226). APPENDIX Feminism

and

A TO

5.4.3.

rectification

of name

The Analects, 13/3. The modern significance of rectification of names is felt in the feminist movement. The feminist insists on treating the lady as the person she 15. This insistence assumes that the true “name” of a lady 15 “person.” The problem with our society today, the feminist says, is that “womanhood” is so twisted as to mean something else than what it zs basically, a person. Hence the militancy of the feminist movement. Actually, we ought to go further and insist on treating the lady as she 1s, that is, the “woman.” We must investigate on what it means to be a woman, before we can right the wronged name of “womanhood," not just personhood. Otherwise, the feminist movement would be committing the kind of wrong Saddam Hussain committed. His wronging of names lies in acts such as claiming to be "his" what

APPENDIXES

44]

does not belong to him (.€.; Kuwait), claiming to “save Palestine” by invading Kuwait, claiming to “love my people" by exploiting them. Such name-wrongings have resulted in innumerable unsuspected sufferings. One only hopes that the Gulf War is shown to have been fought to righting those wronged names, especially by the future behavior of the Coalition Nations. But, then, what would

be equivalent in feminism to the Gulf War (assuming that the War is really fought to righüng the wronging of names)? APPENDIX What

one

1s and

B TO

5.4.3.

how

one

talks

This 15 why a reverse is also true. For Mencius, to “chih yen” (2A2)— "understand words" (Legge) or “have insights into words" (Lau)— is to understand what a person is by the way he talks. Human{e|ness is the home that nestles a person (2A7). And human|[e]ness 1s intimately linked to the unbearing mindheart (to see Others suffer) (2A6; a negative expression of Other-accommodation), on the one hand, and positively to the Flooding Elan of Life-Breath (2A2, 6A8),

on the other. Affirmative

words

are a link connectng

our inner

recesses— secret inclination, intention, attitude—to vast Nature within

and around us.

APPENDIX

A TO

Thinking on pragmatism

5.4.4. and practicing it

See James’s famous essay, "Ihe Sentiment of Rationality” and what he has to say about reasoning in The Principles of Psychology, N.Y.: Henry Holt ἃ Co.,

1890, Two

Volumes.

What he says about “asso-

ciation by similarity" 1η II. 345—48 15 particularly germane to reasoning by metaphor. Also Dewey's (especially “Qualitative Thought and Affective Thought" in) Philosophy and Cwilzation, N.Y.: Minton, Balch & Co., 1931, supplements what he has to say about situations in Logic, the Theory of Inquiry, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, 1938. Furthermore, a work of art 15 Just as much a product of intelligent thought as a scientific theory 1s. Dewey’s aesthetic experience (in his

Art as Experience, N.Y.: Minton, Balch & Co., 1934) is a consummatory

442

APPENDIXES

one, fusing inner and outer, feeling and thought, subjective and objective; toward this consummatory fusion instrumentalism as a method pushes our experience. However, it 15 worth noting that they eloquently pointed out these situational features of thinking, whereas Chinese philosophers mutely practiced lt in their thinking. The significance of this pragmatic difference the following pages will soon consider. APPENDIX Gabriel

Marcel

B TO

5.4.4.

vs. Martin

Buber

Gabriel Marcel's incisive comments appear in Schilpp, Paul Arthur & Friedman, Maurice, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967, p. 44. Buber's answer is equally instructive: "I do not see that this 1s so. If one uses the expression ‘the Thou, which 15 alien to natural speech, one does not at all mean the real man to whom I say Thou, but the word which is used in saying ıt; it 15 not otherwise when one uses the expression ‘the I.’ But if I really say “Thou, then I as httle mean by it a thing as when I say T to myself" (Ibid., p. 706). In other words, how we say about the situation in which we are becomes decisive. APPENDIX

C TO

5.4.4.

Saying of a story vs. telling a story For instance, to say of a story telhng saying, as American pragmatism and do, is one thing; to show it by telling phy tends to do, 15 quite another. The

us that showing differs from Western analytic philosophy a story, as Chinese philosoformer says; the latter shows.

But can we, can't we, have both? Can we have that idyllic kinder-

gartners moment of “show and tell"—showing by telling, telling and showing—1n philosophy? It would be a lived pragmatism that embraces analysis and sensibility. This subsection totteringly attempts it. Cf. a note above at the beginning of this subsection (Appendix A to 5.4.) for my comments on Carl Vaught's insights.

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX

TO

443

5.5.

Acknowledgement And so it would not have been inappropriate to title the present subsection, “a phenomenology of Chinese lived time,” were it not for its pompous academic ring that 15 alien to the concrete mentality of the Chinese people. My grateful acknowledgement must be expressed here, to Professor Chün-chieh Huang of National Taiwan University and Professor Tateno, Masami of Nihon University in Tokyo, of their provisions of materials, and especially the latter's meticulous critiques which prevented me from many oversights, and thoughtful suggestions which enriched the present subsection. Any mistakes and oversights that still remain remain mine. APPENDIX

A TO

5.5.1.2.

On surveying time "Can't we survey our experience in a time-scheme as we experience things moving along a time-series?” We can do so on two counts. First, we can survey spatially, for "survey," "scheme," and "senes" are spatial terms [cf. (c’) in 5.5.2.2.2.], unless by "survey" we mean “describing the manner of undergoing experience” as explained in the main text. Secondly, we can survey an object moving (tram, shooting star) by watching it traversing series of loci in space. We cannot survey ourselves (in a train, say) moving; we can extrapolate our moving forward from things outside moving backward, by surveying their traversals. I owe this observation to Professor Tateno. APPENDIX Other

names

B TO for

5.5.1.2.

demonstratives

See Appendix À to 2.4.2.: "Names for indexical time.”

444

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX

C TO

5.5.1.2.

Existential import of time See Appendix B to 2.4.2.: “Existential import of a statement.” And we note that this sort of subjective ontological reflection 1s couched in concrete time-language, “before you were born.” APPENDIX Time,

thinker,

D TO

and

5.5.1.2.

Professor

Tateno

This is what Tateno Masami did in his careful and cles by those names. See Tateno Masami, “‘Michi’ no ‘Michi’ ni tsuite: ‘Jikan’ no Kanten kara no Ichi and Time—on Chuang Tzu's Tao, A Reflection from of Time)”

Toho

Shukyo,

Nihon

Dokyo

Gakkai,

insightful artito Jikan —Soyi Kosatsu (Tao the Perspective

November

3,

1994,

Nakamura Shohachi on his Seventieth Birthday, Tokyo: Kyuko Shoin,

1996,

pp. 1-16, and "'Rer to ‘Jikan’—Junshi πο Tetsugakuteki Shu ni tsuite: ‘Jikan’ no kanten kara no Ichi Kosatsu (Ritual and Time— on Hsün Tzus Philosophical Thinking, A Reflection from the Perspective of Time)” Aangaku Kenkyu, No. 32, pp. 19-34. This point—that describing a thinker’s view of time amounts to describing that thinker’s philosophy—yibes with Tateno’s view that a thinker’s epistemological view on space-and-time forms the warp and woof of that thinker’s philosophy (or ontology). Another of Tateno’s essays actually follows this clue and explains Hsiin Tzu’s and Chuang lzu's views of space and time to contrast their philosophies. See Tateno, Masami, “Chugoku Kodai ni okeru Jikan to Sonzai—Junshi, Soji, soshite Soji no Kogaku tachi no Sonzai Sekai” (Time-andSpace and Being in Ancient China—the Worlds of Being in Hsiin Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and Chuang Tzu’s Followers), Festschrift to Dr. pp.

1-12.

APPENDIX

TO

5.5.2.

On theoreticity in China I appreciate Professors Anindita N. Balslev and Soren Clausen of Aarhus University, Denmark, when they reminded me of the exist-

APPENDIXES

445

ence of theoretical schools in China. Philosophical Chinese Buddhism 15 not nonexistent,

either.

My response is quite simple: As long as we are all human, whatever one culture has, another has also. The problem 15 not “who has what and not what else,” but what predominant trend (and emphasis) 15 seen in which culture. Somehow the logico-analytical School of Names and Moism have fallen by the Chinese wayside; Aristotle’s logic has prospered vigorously

in the

Western

soil.

Cf.

“IV.

Sound,

Sight,

Sense,”

in my

History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 125-74. Abstruse theoretical Buddhism came to China to give a twofold shock: abstract complex argumentation and an otherworldly meontological perspective. The Chinese reactions to this Buddhist challenge are instructive. First, they kept their journalistic style of reasoning but developed a penetrative, sustaining—but not abstract—discourses on things metaphysical, such as “what came to be” (so 1 jan), “what ought to be” (so tang jan), Tao, Li, Ch, Jen, Hsin, Hsing, Heavens and Earth, and the interrelations among all these. Al this composes what 1s later known as “Neo-Confucianism.” The second reaction 15 that the Chinese people (as people of any culture) chose whatever they like from things from abroad, as clearly seen in the translation of abstruse Buddhist canons and scriptures. And the “manner” of translations and preferences 15 a concrete one; “ke 1" (“matching concepts," cf. Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press,

1963, p. 336) 15 a prac-

tice too well-known for comment. In doing so, they reinterpreted and transformed abstractions—the “eternal” weight of the moment, the “nirvanic” Boddhisatvas for mundane help, “meditative” pantheistic worship,

etc.

In

these

translations,

both

literary

and

substantial,

the Chinese pragmatic temper is manifested. Cf. Kenneth Ch’en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1973.

APPENDIX On ideographic

A TO Chinese

5.5.2.1. characters

I appreciate the eyebrows raised by Professor Soren Clausen of Aarhus University, Denmark, to the effect that Chinese characters

440

APPENDIXES

share with our usual alphabets two features प्रलाः pictorial origins and their current phonetic functions. Fully agreeing with him, I would nudge his attention to the fact that Chinese characters are often more pronounced in their pictor141] capturing of typical situations than in their phonetic functions. Originally a picture of an ox head (in its inverted form), “A” is now a pure phonetic; the Chinese “jh” retains the pictorial meaning of the sun and the sun-experience, the day-time (experience). ‘The English language makes a smooth reading in argumentation; Chinese goes moving in literature. Edgar Allan Poe’s “tintinnabulation” is matched by Wang Wers picture-poetry. Cf. my comments) on James Liu’s castigation of Fenollosa’s romantic etymology, in History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., 1991, pp. 163-64 (Note 19). In general, however, I agree with Professor Clausen that citing etymology is a hazardous enterprise, and requires explanation. As Gadamer said,” They [etymologies] are admittedly far less reliable because they are abstractions achieved not by language but by linguistic science, and can never be wholly verified by language itself: that is, by actual usage. Hence even when etymologies are nght, they are not proofs but achievements preparatory to conceptual analysis, and only 11 such analysis do they obtain a firm foundation.

In other words, citing pictographic etymology of Chinese characters is not to engage in a unilinear proof but to perform a configurative illumination. Chinese characters are a historical crystallization of Chinese people’s concrete and pragmatic attitude to life and their life-experiences. Attending to the former exemplifies the latter, which in turn confirms the former thereby. Etymological proceeding is a showing, not a proof. Cf. Appendix C to 5.5.2.1. below. APPENDIX

B TO

5.5.2.1.

The relevance of history to contemporary

China

1 appreciate Professor Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg of Aarhus University, Denmark, when she nudged me to go contemporary. How about ^ Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, N.Y.: Crossroad, 1989, p. 103.

APPENDIXES

447

China now? Do the Chinese people today still follow their ancient mentality? Admittedly, religious, astrological, and etymological meditations, and those on the Classics, are engagements among the relatively few. Yet the Chinese conventions and ways of living today follow their ancient patterns. Originally agricultural festivities are meticulously observed by the city folks—according to the lunar calendars. Divinatory consultations are routinely practiced on dates, shapes, and manners of executions on new enterprises, new buildings, marriages, anything. Automobiles are driven with much less attention on the most basic traffic regulations than on the immediate situations; those who studiously adhere to traffic laws perish in Taiwan city streets. Conversations and writings (newspapers, letters, essays) are studded with sayings from the ancient Greats. Scratch the thin surface of most modern corporations and business manners, and we see the ancient mentality. This description of Taiwan time-experiences must be counterbalanced by Professor Wedell-Wedellsborg’s penetrating description of the shattered time-experiences among writers of Mainland China in the 1980’s, where familiar themes recur in a tragic form—memories reinvented as “an imaginary nostalgia,” collective memories contra private ones, intenor time wrecked, homecoming a disaster. See her “Confronting Time: Aspects of Temporality in Some Recent Chinese Prose,” in Soren Clausen, Roy Starrs, and Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg,

eds., Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West: Essays Commemorating 25 Years of East Asian Studies at the Unwersity of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark:

Aarhus University Press, 1995, pp. 175-191. But one thing seems to be clear. Whether in a relatively preserved form in Taiwan or in a twisted tragic form in Mainland, the patterns of lived bme described in these pages serve as a veritable frame for our understanding of the Chinese understanding of time. APPENDIX

C TO

5.5.2.1.

On etymological explanations as multiple Cf. Liu Wen-ying, Chung-kuo Κι-ἰαι Shi-k’ung Kuan-nien ti Ch'an-sheng ho Fa-chan (The origin and development of the notions of time and space in ancient China),

Shanghai: Jen-min

Ch’u-pan

she,

1980, as

448

APPENDIXES

translated into Japanese by Horuke Nobuo, et al., Chugoku no Fikuron— Kokotsu Monj kara Sotaise Rıron made, Tokyo: Toho Shoten, 1992, pp. 4—6. I follow the Japanese version because of its clarity, index, and fuller notes. I omit interesting etymological details of other timenotions on the day-round such as “morning” (chao), “dawn” (tan), “dusk” (hun), “evening” (oan). An important caveat must be entered here. All our etymological explanations of the Chinese pictographic characters are, although not arbitrary, far from being the only ones, much less the standard and definitive ones. We have many alternative etymological explanations on every identical character, as a casual glance at Shirakawa Shizuka’s Setsu-Mon Shingi, as well as Shuo-Wen Chieh-Tzu Ku-lin (collected commentaries

on the Shuo

Wen),

and Dai Kanwa fiten, would

convince us. One point can be asserted here for sure, however. No matter how varied and diverse these explanations are, they all point us to the experiential origins of Chinese characters, which are shorthand expressions of our experience. Our explanations here, as one among many of this sort of etymological explanations, illustrate this point. Cf. Appendix A to 5.5.2.1. above. APPENDIX

A TO

5.5.2.2.2.

Key terms as paradigmatic

concretes

Many key terms in Confucius’ Analects, such as filial love, humanness, learning, and the like, are “defined” by various situations that

exemplify, or rather, embody, those key notions. An abstract notion of "compassion" 15 movingly expressed by an unusual striking phrase, “unbearable human heart (pu jen jen chıh hsin),” that crystallizes what Mencius noticed as cosmo-politically important in a casual incident of King Hsüan's release of an ox being dragged to sacrificial slaughter, simply because the King could not bear to see the ox in mortal jitters (in Mencius,

neatly expressed tion, “spearshield story of a vendor shields (in “Nan

1A7).

An

abstruse

notion,

“contradiction,”

is

by a graphic description of its paradigmatic situa(mao tun)," which compactly captures Han Fei Tzu's of both “unstoppable” spears and “impenetrable” I P'ien" of the Han Fa Tzu).

APPENDIXES

449

APPENDIX B TO 5.5.2.2.2. Jung and Tateno Carl G. Jung's “synchronicity” appears in his “Forewords to the I Ching" in Richard Wilhelm, The 7 Ching or Book of Changes, Princeton University Press, 1950; Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé, N.Y.: Random House, 1961; “Richard Wilhelm: in Memoriam,” in Collected Works of C.G. Jung, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, Volume 15; among others. Tateno, Masami's complaint in his subtle “Eki to Kyojisei— Yungu no mita Chugoku Kodaitetsugaku ni okeru Cho-etsu to Shinpi (The I and Synchronicity— Transcendence and Mystery that Jung saw in Ancient Chinese Philosophy),” in Mori, Karita, ed., Cho-etsu to Shinpr:

Chugoku, Indo, Isram no Shiso Sekai (Transcendence and Mystery: The

Thought-Worlds of China, India, and Islam), Tokyo: Daimeido,

1994,

pp. 3-24, to the effect that Jung insensitively took “synchronicity” as a mere alternative theoretical principle on a par with that of causality and replaceable therewith, seems justified, if "theoretical" 15 taken to mean abstract theorization described in these pages of ours. APPENDIX On rhythm

C TO

5.5.2.2.2.

and recurrence in China

Cf. my meditations on Chinese understanding of rhythm and repetition (recurrence) in my The Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 4-5, 80; History, Thinking, etc., op. cit., pp. 45-47, among others. And this subsection itself goes slightly cyclically. For instance, the "LU" “ch hu," etymologies of Chinese characters, etc., come up again and again in different contexts. This 15 natural, in view of the fact that this subsection develops in a Chinese manner our understanding of the Chinese understanding of time, and cyclical understanding 1s our most natural manner of understanding, as described here. I omit mythological cycles of time in religious Taoism and other popular religions, as well as Buddhism, in China. There 15 a vast, almost endless, literature on this matter, as summed up ln the essay, e.g., by Kristofer Schipper & Wang Hsiu-huei, “Progressive and Regressive Time Cycles in Taoist Ritual," in J.T. Fraser, N. Lawrence, & F.C. Haber, eds., Time, Science, and Society in China and the West:

450

APPENDIXES

The Study of Time V, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986, pp. 185-205. I surmise that all these phantasmagoria came out of an amalgamation of the way the Chinese people felt on time, as described 1η our main text, and various religious mythologies.

APPENDIX On

A TO

Chinese

5.5.2.3.1.

aesthetics

I omit here with regret the aesthetic aspect of Chinese life which has much to do with time. Briefly, beauty in China is a Yin-Yang constitutive inter-involvement of many counterpoints (contraries, contrasts) and counterparts (reciprocals, Goings of Double Poles, Five Elements, Sixty-Four Hexagrams) till the one resulted unison becomes concrete-particular and cosmic-universal, in mutual distinction and interchange. Beauty then is not a subject to be separately discussed but a pervasive attitude and atmosphere for various activities of human life— artistic, medical, martial, culinary, political, cosmic. As such, as can

be expected, all Chinese aesthetic expressions —poetry, calligraphy, paintings, ceramics—are musical, time-aesthetic. See my “Chinese Aesthetic,” Chapter 8 in Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots, ed. Robert E. Allinson, Oxford University Press, 1989. I also omit Chinese seasonal festivals—colorful, musical, delicious—

that rhythmically punctuate the hfe of common

folks. It is beyond

dispute that all Chinese festivals are historical, time-related, no, time-

celebrative.

APPENDIX On

Chinese

B TO

humanism

5.5.2.3.1. as

harmonious

In fact, it 1s so taken for granted that Wing-tsit Chan begins his A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963, with this claim, on page 3. We must sadly note, however, that we present here the Chinese sentiment of this cosmic humanism, not its actualization. ‘The Chinese

cosmo-human harmony describes the lived normatwe milieu wherein people’s shameful practices are shown as tragically immoral.

APPENDIXES

451

We share Mencius’ sighs in his story of the Ox Mount (6A8). The now bald and barren Ox Mount is due to our continuous axing and grazing of its originally lush primeval green. The primal goodness of our nature was due to its continuity with the accommodating vastness of Nature. The continuity having been axed away, bald unsightly shamelessness ıs the rule of the Chinese day. The description here delineates the glory and the indictment of the Chinese people. APPENDIX

C TO

5.5.2.5.1.

On the Chinese people as “agricultural people” Ihis 15 why the Chinese people are often called "agricultural people," meaning not just the people who live on agricultural produce (all of us do) but more also the people of agn-culture, cooperating with nature as part and parcel of nature—enriching nature, living on nature, nature—in

by working with nature, working in tune, in time, with short, working as nature, bang at harmonious one with

nature. Being themselves the fruit of the earth, the agricultural people work earthly (not technologically) to live on the produce of the field. Cf. Huang, Chiin-chieh, “Agriculture as Agri-Culture for the 21st Century Taiwan,” unpublished. APPENDIX

A TO

5.5.2.3.2.

Presupposition vs. proof All this serves not to “prove” but to explain what is involved at the basic level of presupposition, perspective, with which the Chinese people understand their cosmic environment. For one cannot “prove” presupposition of proof any more than can one pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. We can only strive to understand, and explain so as for Others to understand, how a group of people understand things. We have just explained what it means to say that the Chinese way of thinking is a harmonious humanism.

452

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX An argument

B TO

5.5.2.3.2.

in the Li Chi

Li Chi, Chi I Chapter. Actually, the argument in this Chapter is less coherent than above stated. It begins with the superior man reverting to the old to begin anew, not forgetüng his origin of birth, by trying his utmost to repay his parents. Then, it goes on to stress the vast importance of his body his parents left him, and so whatever he does with his body should be done so as to deserve his filiality. Loyalty to the ruler, fidelity with friends, etc., express filiality; not to be loyal or faithful amounts

to being unfilial. All his moral behaviors express his filiality. Therefore, and here is the logical jump, fihality fills up the entire Heaven and earth, and felling a single tree out of season, and harvesting a single animal out of season, constitute unfiliality. Here 15 a logical jump because, however comprehensively relevant the body 15 to all our behavior, our bodily behavior is one thing, our natural ambience is quite another. The Classic of Fihality supples this missing link between our body and our natural environment by identifying filiality as something cosmic, as quoted in the main text. APPENDIX

C TO

5.5.2.3.2.

History in China and in Greece History as the trends of things’ üme-thrusts distinguishes the Chinese concrete stance. Besides being (a) a guide to the future undertaking, history also serves as (b) justification of a dynastic rulership, and such justification 1s of course a spinoff from history as the trend of things. Since history is the trends of things well-managed, and since the "present history" has ended up setting up the present dynasty, the present dynasty must be the one that history certifies to have been successful in managing affairs of the people, who therefore are obliged to pledge their allegiance to the present regime. And of course, thirdly, history should be studied to discern and understand (c) our prideful racial (and dynastic) identity. This 1s a concrete meaning of history studied for the sake of concrete human self-understanding. History as guide to the future, to popular loyalty, and to racial-

APPENDIXES

453

cultural identify, in China, radically differs from history as an abstractgeneral way of our self-knowledge for its own sake, in the West.

Collingwood characterized thus the Western view of history:”°

[W]hat is history for? ... [H]istory is ‘for’ human self-knowledge. It is generally thought to be of importance to man that he should know himself: where knowing himself means knowing not his merely personal peculiarities, the things that distinguish him from other men, but his nature as man. Knowing yourself means knowing first, what it is to be human; secondly, knowing what it 15 to be the man you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the man you are and nobody else 15. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what man

can do is what man

has done. The value of history, then, 15 that

it teaches us what man has done and thus what man 15.

The major thrust here 15 clear. Knowing what you specifically are derives from knowing what man ın general is and can do, which knowledge comes from studying history. Such a formal-generic-abstract notion of human self-knowledge typifies the Western purpose of studying history. To be sure, the Greeks did have some probable general laws of history to be followed as the Chinese people do in historical vicis-

situdes:?’

...[I]n the general pattern of these changes certain antecedents normally led to certain consequents. Notably, an excess in any one direction led to a violent change into its own opposites... [P]eople who became extremely rich or extremely powerful were thereby brought into special danger of being reduced to... extreme poverty or weakness.... (T]he person... can use his own will to arrest these rhythms in his life before they reach the danger-point, and check the thirst for power and wealth instead of allowing it to drive him to excess... [T]he history of notable events is worth remembering in order to serve as a basis for prognostic judgements, . . . laying down ... what 15 likely to happen, indicating the points of danger in rhythms now going on. The

similarity 15 striking; the difference

must

still be, however,

that

the Greek lesson of history is a probable generic law while the Chinese one 15 a crystallization of particular notable case for later extrapolation. This is what Chinese literature does for us, as illustrated ? R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, London: Oxford University Press, 1946,

1956, p. 10.

27 Ibid., p. 23.

454

APPENDIXES

in 5.5.1.4. On recur:”°

the Greek attitude to history, Collingwood's words

The... Greek mind tended to harden and narrow itself in its antihistorical tendency. The genius of Herodotus triumphed over that tendency, but after him the search for unchangeable and eternal objects of knowledge gradually stifled the historical consciousness. . . . It is intellectual “substantialism” crete

historical

consciousness.

of the Greeks?

And

it 1s this

which the Chinese people have preserved. APPENDIX Three modes

A TO

that killed their con-

historical

consciousness

5.5.2.4.

of Chinese thinking

I have treated these three modes of Chinese expression in another context in my

On Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., Sections 2.1., 2.1.3.,

2.1.4., as well as in “Modes of Thinking in Classical Confucianism— A Cultural Hermeneutic,” in Han Hsüeh Yen-chiu (The Chinese Studies), The Tenth Anniversary Commemorative Issue, December 1992, pp. 23-98,

and

“Chinese

the same Journal, June,

Concrete

1995, pp. 89-132.

APPENDIX On

Thinking

B TO

“all understandings

in Classical

Taoism,”

in

5.5.2.4. as metaphoric”

This claim seems overly sweeping until we realize how by nature metaphoric all kinds of our understanding are, as indicated also by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Lwe By, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. This thesis extends beyond Hume's, which says that all our “reasonings concerning matter of fact” are metaphorical—in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV, Part II, 28-33. We merely applied here this understanding of all human understanding as metaphorical to the Chinese mode of understanding. Cf. also 5.5.2.5.2.

8. Thid., p. 29. 29 [bid., pp. 20-21, 42-45.

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX On

455

C TO

the Analects

5.5.2.4.

as

evocative

Analects, 4/19. The saying in the original Chinese is compact; it has four characters. Arthur Waley’s translation (op. cit., p. 106) already shows how evocative the statement 15: “...or if he does so [1.., wander far afield], goes only where he has said he was going.” Then Waley added a note, “Particularly in order that if they die he may be able to come back and perform the rites of mourning." I cite Waley's translation and explanation, not to dispute their adequacy or accuracy but to show how evocative Confucius’ compact sayings are. APPENDIX On

D TO

5.5.2.4.

“non-doing (wu wet)”

See the Analects, 15/5, Tao Te Ching, 2, 43, 48, and Chuang Tzu, 6/29, et passim. I have tried a philosophical exposition of wu (“nothing") and wu wei in my Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play, N.Y.: The Crossroad Publishing Company and Scholars Press, 1982, pp. 61-114. *Non-doing (wu wa)” differs from a simple denial of “not doing (pu τυεῖ).᾽ Cf. further, Roger T. Ames's The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought, Honolulu: The University of Hawai

Press,

1983, pp.

28—64.

APPENDIX

TO

5.5.2.5.2.

Healing and religion When

attacked, counterattack 15 our usual reaction, which 15 intenser

*disharmony," not *intenser harmony." But of course what Intenser harmony" consists in 1s the problem. Chinese medicine tries various gentle methods (herbs, massages, gentle exercises, and the like) to induce and intensify natural somatic harmony. The Christian “intenser harmony" is obtained by letting (here is the intensity of the harmony) the attack do its worst and thereby absorb it; that is one of the meaning of the cross. Ihe Buddhist one is to render the attack pointless by nirvanic emptiness;

456

APPENDIXES

the result is harmony beyond harmony, hence, an “intenser harmony.” But the medical rationale mentioned above—disease-disharmony is healed only by intenser harmony—remains valid for most religions. That 15 why many religions are intimately involved with healing. After all, “healing” is to bring about the primal harmony where there is now disharmony, and religion’s business is homo-cosmic harmonization. APPENDIX Hsün

Tzu

on

A TO the

5.5.2.5.3.

“later”

rulers

It was Hsün Tzu who dared to say (5/31) that it is the "later" present "king" of all *under heaven" who assesses the ancient worthies and true kings; “desiring to survey 1000 years, we must count[-on] today." He says "What begins the Heaven and earth 1s today; 100 kings Way ls the Later King's; the superior man examines the Later King's Way and extrapolates (lun) toward the time before 100 kings" (3/36-37); he has a striking phrase, “with the now to support the ancient (2 chin ch’ıh ku)” (8/98). Mencius (in 3A9) unwittingly exhibited this process; by judging his current situation as appalling to the core, Mencius projected his ideals onto the “ideal ages" of legendary kings (in the “good old days”). APPENDIX

B TO

5.5.2.5.3.

On the “futuring” power of the now This is, as 1t were, the present’s "futuring" power; the future is being created now, in terms of the now and the before-now. No wonder, Kurita devoted the final 3 pages out of 23 pages of his essay on Chinese “time” (op. cit.) to vehemently denying that the Chinese people have “future.” For all he sees in their writings is the past (in Confucianism) and the present (in Moism, Legalısm, Taoism). He missed their “futuring” power. So concrete and dynamic 15 the Chinese future.

INDICES

INDEX

Allinson, R.E. 342, 450 Anscombe, G.E.M. 36 n. 31, 197 n. 124, 409 Anselm, St. 173 n. 65, 281, 282 Aquinas, T. 270, 270 n. 165, 431 Aristotle 4 n. 9, 29 n. 12, 33, 34, 36,

38, 44, 49, 74. 87, 99 n. 8, 104, 108, 113, 113 n. 58, 132, 150, 153, 154, 157, 160, 160 n. 39, 163, 173, 174, 179, 243, 244, 298 n. 16, 399, 359, 361, 362, 374, 385, 400, 405, 414, 435, 445

Bach, J.S. 135, 205, 205 n. 143, 206 Baker, G.P. and Hacker, P.M.S. 126, 190 nn. 103, 105-106, 410, 411, 413, 413 n. 3, 418, 419, 420 Balslev, A.N. 350 η. 235, 444 Barth, K. 173 n. 65, 219, 234 n. 63, 273 Bartok, B. 393 Beethoven, L. 134, 135, 393 Benedict, R. 55 Bergson, H. 183, 380 Berkeley, G. 125, 132, 139 Bernstein, L. 392, 393 Bishop, D.H. 375 n. 310 Black, M. 323 n. 109 Blake, W. 185, 185 n. 94 Blanchard, B. 175 Boman, T. 162 n. 41, 334 n. 181 Bruckner, A. 394 Brunner, E. 265 Buber, M. 37, 37 n. 32, 182, 301, 31] n. 44, 339, 339 n. 203, 405, 406, 442 Buddha 270, 283, 309 n. 42, 397 Bultmann, R. 248, 248 n. 122, 249, 274 n. 172 Burridge, K. 296 n. 5 182, 280, 281 n. 183 Camus, A. Chambers, I. 184 n. 92 Chan, W.-t. 315, 316, 318, 341, 435, 445, 450 Ch'en, H. 375 n. 311 Ch'en, K. 445 16, 47, 48, 49, 50, China, Chinese

OF NAMES

51, 52, 53, 54, 63, 64 n. 96, 94 n. 14, 112 n. 56, 160, 176 n. 75, 226 n. 16, 294, 294 n. 1, 299 n. 20, 303, 304, 304 nn. 35-36, 305, 315, 318, 319, 319 n. 81, 320, 322, 324, 325, 327 n. 136, 328, 329 n. 161, 330 n. 169, 338 n. 199, 340, 342, 343, 346, 347, 347 nn. 227, 229, 349, 351, 352, 353, 355, 356 n. 253, 357, 3060, 361 n. 269, 362, 366, 366 n. 290, 367, 370, 371, 372, 374 n. 309, 376, 378, 381, 382, 383, 384, 444, 445, 446, 447, 449, 450, 452, 453 Chu Ha 50, 53 Chuang Tzu 5,5 n. 12, 6 n. 13, 7, 12, 24 n. 19, 40, 52, 75, 75 n. 112, 92. 93, 93 n. 10, 94, 94 nn. 14, 16, 96 n. 22, 111 n. 53, 225, 229, 229 nn. 24, 32, 230, 231, 231 n. 39, 232, 232 n. 44, 233, 233 n. 50, 234, 235, 235 n. 72, 236, 237 n. 74, 240, 240 n. 86, 252 n. 132, 263, 275, 279, 281 n. 186, 284, 284 nn. 193-194, 287 n. 198, 294, 297, 300, 302, 303, 305, 307, 308 n. 41, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 318, 318 n. 73, 322, 322 n. 105, 324 n. 116, 325, 325 n. 126, 327, 327 nn. 139, 142, 144-146, 328, 328 nn. 151, 153, 333 nn. 174-176, 340 nn. 206-207, 341, 346, 353 n. 243, 356, 356 n. 250, 357, 357 n. 258, 358 nn. 259-260, 361 n. 268, 368, 368 n. 300, 378 n. 318, 397, 416, 417, 418, 432, 435, 436, 437, 438, 444, 455 Clausen, S. 444, 445, 446, 447 Collingwood, R.G. 29, 33, 33 n. 20, 48, 60, 60 n. 86, 61, 61 n. 87, 86, 86 n. 124, 153, 153 n. 12, 154, 154 n. 16, 155, 244, 335 n. 186, 415, 453, 454 Confucius 93, 110, 110 n. 51, 129, 141, 294, 296 n. 3, 297 n. 11, 299, 299 n. 22, 303, 304 n. 35, 305, 306, 306 n. 39, 309, 310, 311, 311 n. 46, 312, 313, 317, 325, 326, 327,

400

INDEX

348, 348 n. 232, 352, 363, 364, 365, 367, 368, 383, 397, 434, 437, 448, 455 Cox, H. 431 Creel, H.G. 305, 305 η. 37, 435 Crombie, I.M. 432 Danto, A. 175, 175 n. 74 Darwin, C. 338 Derrida, J. 122 n. 79, 147, 183, 184, 406 Descartes, R. 49, 89, 94, 132, 183, 187, 280, 294, 303, 305, 306 n. 38, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 397, 414, 421, 421 n. 6, 422, 436, 437 Dilthey, W. 48, 48 n. 62, 272 Diogenes 230, 339, 340, 341 Ducasse, C.J. 182, 201 n. 133 Dvorak, A. 392, 392 n. 5, 393 Edwards, P. 343 n. 215, 408, 431 Eisenberg, P.D. 150 n. 1, 175 Eliade, M. 220, 220 n. 6, 221, 222, 223, 271 Elot, T.S. 141, 141 n. 109 Enesco, G. 393 Erwin, E. 152 n. 6 Ewing, A.C. 157, 157 n. 27 Fenollosa, E. 446 Feuerbach, L. 274 Forsyth, P.T. 214, 431 Furtwängler, W. 393 Gadamer, H.-G. 176, 176 n. 77, 177, 191, 191 n. 107, 192, 192 nn. 109, 114, 195, 195 n. 121, 418, 419, 446, 446 n. 25 Gagné, R.M. 123, 123 n. 82, 207, 207 nn. 146-147 Gandhi, M. 2, 226, 290 n. 209, 291 Geertz, C. 28, 28 nn. 5, 10, 29, 29 n. 11, 61, 6] nn. 88-89, 84, 84 n. 119, 85, 406 Graham, A.C. 171 n. 62, 333, 333 n. 175, 341 Gray, J.G. 334 n. 182 Habermas, J. 7, 23, 23 n. 15, 50, 59, 59 n. 80, 90 n. 6, 92, 155 Han Fei Tzu 318, 365, 365 n. 288, 366, 448 Hartshorne, C. 304, 317 n. 66 Haskil, C. 208 n. 148

OF

NAMES

Havel, V. 15, 15 n. 4, 16, 82, 82 n. 118 Heidegger, M. 4 n. 9, 49, 50, 122 n. 79, 132, 147, 182, 182 n. 86, 183, 280, 312, 312 n. 47, 313, 334 n. 182, 380, 405 Herskovits, M. 55 Hick, J. 173 n. 65, 216, 216 nn. l-2, 217 n. 4, 220 n. 7, 221, 221 nn. 10-11, 223 n. 14, 273, 273 n. 170, 274, 274 n. 171, 280 Hobbes, T. 4 n. 9, 33, 74 Hofstadter, D.R. 103 n. 32, 329 n.

166

Holmes, S. 47, 49 Honda, W. 367 n. 294 Hook, S. 431 Hospers, J. 74 n. 110 Hsün Tzu 183, 200, 326, 337, 337 nn. 192-193, 346, 363, 363 n. 276, 364, 364 n. 280, 367, 379 n. 319, 444. 456 Huang, C.-c. 51 η. 66, 299 η. 20, 332 n. 172, 341, 443, 451 Hui, 5. 167 Hui Tzu 163 η. 44, 188 η. 99, 193, 302 n. 31 Huizinga, J. 191, 192 Hume, D. 4, 33, 39, 41, 42, 42 n. 51, 43, 43 n. 52, 44, 44 n. 57, 49, 95, 182, 183, 198, 236, 237, 237 n. 79, 238, 239 n. 82, 240, 298 n. 16, 306 n. 38, 355, 411, 436, 454 Hunt, L. 401 n. 18 Husserl, E. 33, 48, 48 n. 62, 49, 92, 155 n. 17, 183, 380, 414 Ishida, H.

375 η. 31]

James, W. 40, 315, 316, 317, 319, 320, 322, 334, 336, 413 n. 2, 440, 44] Jaspers, K. 280 Jeremiah 56, 156, 156 n. 23, 247, 247 n. 110, 248 n. 119 Jesus Christ 222, 224, 228, 229, 231, 233, 239, 254, 256, 290, 293, 425 Jochum, E. 394 Johnson, G.A. 88 n. 1, 104 n. 35, 409 Jung, C.G. 354, 449 Jung, H.Y. 2, 33, 33 n. 19, 38 n. 38, 57 n. 75, 405

INDEX Kafka, F. n. 119 Kant, I.

138, 6,6

143 n.

n.

13, 29,

112, 147 33, 41, 42,

43, 43 nn. 52, 54, 44 n. 56, 48, 48 n. 63, 49, 50, 89, 97, 125, 132, 155, 183, 187, 196, 221, 239, 243, 264, 267, 280, 361, 361 n. 269, 414, 424 Kaptchuk, TJ. 375 n. 311 Katz, S.T. 432 Kegley, C.W. and Bretall, R.W. 431 Kierkegaard, S. 49, 156, 160, 160 n. 38, 176, 195, 195 n. 119, 197 n. 125, 223, 230, 252 n. 134, 338, 338 n. 202, 339, 397, 405, 439 King Hsüan 330, 369, 448 Kittel, G. 24 n. 18, 257 n. 148, 334 n. 18] Kleinknecht, H. 24 n. 18 Klukhohn, C. 28, 28 n. 10, 29, 55 Koestler, A. 329 η. 165 Konvitz, M.R. and Kennedy, G. 315, 315 n. 57 Kraemer, H. 273 Kruger, J.S. 234, 289 Kuhn, T. 205, 337 n. 199 Kulenkampff, G. 393 Kurita, N. 362 n. 273, 365 n. 285, 456

Lacan, J. 184 Lai, M. and Lin, T.-y. 345 n. 222 Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 158 nn. 33-34, 200, 200 n. 130, 329 n. 161, 454 Langer, S. 182, 207 Lau, D.C. 319, 327 n. 141, 329 n. 168, 332 nn. 170, 172, 341, 353 n. 244, 369 n. 301, 441 Legge, L. 441 Leibniz, G.W. 79, 405 LePoidevin, R. 343 n. 215 Lessing, G.E. 292 Levinas, E. 25 n. 20, 37, 37 n. 33, 94, 94 n. 17, 97, 99, 100 n. 27, 104 n. 35, 105, 105 n. 40, 109 n. 47, 110 n. 49, 131, 132, 132 n. 93, 148, 148 n. 120, 183, 406, 407, 409 Lewis, C.I. 182 Lewis, H.D. 182 Lin, Y. 28] n. 186, 345 n. 222 Liu, W.-y. 447 Locke, J. 4 n. 9, 49, 52, 74, 414 Lu, H.-s. 53

OF

461

NAMES

MacBeath, M. 343 n. 215 MacIntyre, A. 340 n. 209 Marcel, G. 182, 280, 339, 339 n. 203, 442 Margolis, H. 329 η. 166 Margolis, J. 55, 56, 56 n. 70 Mascall, E.L. 431 McFague, 5. 329 n. 162 Mead, G.H. 32, 55 Mencius 51, 63, 63 n. 92, 64, 72, 72 n. 108, 76 n. 113, 296, 296 n. 3, 299, 300, 316, 317, 317 n. 72, 318, 318 n. 79, 323, 323 n. 112, 324 n. 113, 326, 327, 327 nn. 137-139, 141, 148, 329, 330, 331, 332, 332 nn. 171-172, 174, 333 n. 178, 337, 337 nn. 194-195, 339 n. 205, 340, 341, 353, 353 n. 244, 361 n. 268, 364, 364 n. 281, 367, 368, 369, 369 nn. 301-302, 370, 383 Mencken, H.L. 94 n. 14, 174, 174 n. 67 Menuhin, Y. 94 n. 15, 130, 392, 393 Merleau-Ponty, M. 7, 40, 50, 88, 100 n. 28, 104, 105 n. 37, 112, 118 n. 69, 155 n. 19, 183, 344 n. 217, 346, 371, 371 n. 305, 409, 421 n. 6, 422 Mill J.S. 155 n. 17 Monk, R. 303 n. 32 Moses 237, 246, 247, 247 n. 110, 257, 288 . Mozart, W.A. 135, 138 n. 105, 167 n. 54

Mundle, C.W.K. 343 n. 215, 408 Murphy, N.C. 419 Nagel, T. 4n.8 Nero 74 Neville, R.C. 50, 155, 155 n. 21, 300 n. 26, 431, 435, 439 Nicholas of Cusa 287 Nietzsche, F.W. 49, 50, 93, 134, 150, 160, 160 n. 38, 165 n. 46, 170, 170 n. 61, 172, 173, 174, 174 nn. 69-70, 175, 175 nn. 72, 74, 176, 177 n. 79, 178, 413 Nishida, K. 397, 398, 398 n. 14 Nivison, D.S. 435 Nozick, R. 59, 80 n. 117, 335 n. 186 Ortega y G., J Otto, R. 274

182, 325

402

INDEX

Panikkar, R. 279 η. 168, 274, 275 n. 175 Pannenberg, W. 271, 271 n. 167 Parmenides 71, 405 Pascal, B. 156, 170, 257, 257 n. 149, 323 Paul, St. 92 n. 8, 156, 241, 295 n. 2 Payne, J.H. 227 n. 20 Peirce, C. 317, 317 n. 66, 319, 321, 334, 400, 440 Peperzak, A. 94 n. 17, 110 n. 49, 131, 131 n. 90, 132, 406 Peters, E.F. 371, 371 n. 306, 432 Pirsig, R.M. 244, 244 n. 101, 245, 246, 247, 247 n. 107, 249, 251, 431 Plato 14, 16, 33, 44 n. 56, 49, 50, 71, 76, 89, 91, 102 n. 29, 108, 113, 113 n. 58, 122, 147, 160, 183, 301, 305, 350 n. 237, 414, 432, 436 Polanyi, M. 77, 77 n. 114, 296 n. 4 Ramsey, I.T. 279 Rawls, J. 4 n. 9, 59, 80 n. 117 Ricoeur, P. 4 n. 9, 50, 103, 106 n. 42, 130, 147, 147 n. 118, 329 n. 162, 407, 408 Rosemont, H., Jr. 435 Rosen, S. 30 η. 13, 46 n. 60, 298 n.

16

Royce, ]. 57, 57 n. 73, 280, 315, 319, 321, 322, 334, 440 Russell, B. 97, 266, 267, 267 n. 163, 298 n. 16, 405, 413 Ryle, G. 4 n. 9, 60, 61, 61 n. 88, 279, 323 n. 108 Sacks, O. 144 n. 113 Saito, H. 345 n. 222 Santayana, G. 142, 182, 317, 319, 366, 414 Sartre, J.-P. 7, 35, 35 n. 27, 102 n. 30, 104 n. 34, 110, 110 n. 49, 113, 120 n. 75, 129 n. 88, 130, 142, 146, 147, 147 n. 116, 183, 195, 198 n. 128, 235 n. 70, 294, 295, 296, 301, 302, 303 n. 33, 306 n. 39, 396, 407, 437 Schilpp, P.A. 160 n. 39, 311 n. 44, 442 Schipper, K. 449 Schleiermacher, F. 223. 274 Schrag, C.O. 21 n. 11, 33 n. 19, 59, 59 n. 8l

OF

NAMES

Schutz, A. Shirakawa,

Sisyphus

99 n. 26, 406 S. 448

280, 281 n. 183

Smart, J.J.C. 5349 n. 215, 346, 356 n. 251, 408 Smart, N. 281, 432 Smith, J.E. 223, 303, 313, 341, 342, 384 Smith, M.B. 88 n. 1, 104 n. 35, 409 Smith, W.C. 219, 219 n. 5, 223, 223 n. 13, 273, 273 n. 169, 280 n. 181 Socrates 4 n. 9, 6 n. 13, 14, 23, 46, 56, 57, 57 n. 73, 60, 71, 74, 103, 121, 121 n. 78, 123, 132, 142, 158, 161, 162, 175, 176, 187, 190, 281, 283 n. 191, 284 n. 192, 302, 304, 309, 350, 359, 397 Spencer, H. 183 Spinoza, B. 92, 405, 424 Stace, W.T. 55, 182 Stambaugh, J. 174 n. 69, 178, 178 n. 80 Stauffer, E. 257 n. 148 Swinburne, R. 138 n. 104, 237 n. 79, 239 n. 82, 265, 265 n. 162, 412, 412 n. 1, 414 14ο, C. 208, 208 n. 149, 352, 390, 392, 393 Tateno, M. 346 n. 224, 354 n. 245, 443, 444, 449 Taylor, A.E. 432 Thoreau, H.D. 75, 75 n. 112 Tilich, P. 220, 223, 270, 270 n. 165, 271, 274, 431 lodo, A. 349 n. 234 Umehara, T. 30, 31, 31 n. 14 U.S.A., American 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 73, 204 n. 139, 260, 435 van der Leeuw, G. 271 Vaught, C.G. 439, 442 Wach, J. 272 Wahl, J. 311 n. 44 Waismann, F. 189 n. 101, 326, 329, 334, 341, 371 n. 303 Waley, A. 296 n. 3, 348 n. 232, 362 n. 270, 455 Wang, Y.-m. 50, 52, 92 n. 8, 316 Watson, B. 160 n. 38, 284 n. 194, 364 n. 280 Wedell-Wedellsborg, A. 446, 447

INDEX

Whitehead, A.N.

5, 22, 49, 50, 160,

160 n. 39, 183, 206, 278, 305, 319, 321, 323, 334, 341, 344, 440 Wileford, W. 161 n. 40 Wittgenstein, L. 4 n. 9, 25, 25 n. 20, 36 n. 31, 124, 124 n. 83, 126, 127 n. 86, 182 n. 85, 184, 184 n. 95, 187, 190, 190 n. 106, 191, 196, 196 n. 123, 197, 197 n. 124, 220,

OF

463

NAMES

241, 241 n. 91, 242, 244, 303, 303 n. 32, 303 n. 33, 326, 409, 410, 411, 413, 414, 418, 420 Wright, A. 304, 305, 435 Yang, M. 2006, 206 n. 145 Yourgrau, P. 27 n. 1, 298 n. 16, 408 Zeno

36. 41,

152,

152

n. 7

INDEX OF SUBJECTS abstraction, abstract 4, 5, 5 n. 10, 7, 21 n. 143, 23, 60, 88, 88 n. 3, 99, 123, 124, 206, 206 nn. 143-144, 207, 217, 219, 222, 236 n. 73, 272, 276, 277, 278, 304, 321, 325, 328, 338, 349, 350, 352, 353, 356, 359, 360, 370, 374, 383, 388, 391, 394, 398, 445, 446, 448, 449, 453 accompaniment 134, 135, 136, 234 n. 61, 394, 394 n. 10, 395 analysis-synthesis 10, 14, 15 apologetics 52 apron 23, 58, 131, 285, 423, 424 argue, argument |, 2, 28 n. 3, 34, 35, 37, 40, 79, 120, 128, 133, 140 n. 107, 149, 150, 151, 152, 152 n. 7, 153 n. 10, 155 n. 18, 156 n. 25, 157, 157 n. 26, 158, 158 n. 34, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 164 n. 45, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 182 n. 86, 183, 183 n. 90, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 193, 193 n. 115, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 201 n. 134, 202, 202 nn. 135-1936, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 207 n. 147, 208, 208 n. 148, 209, 209 n. 150, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 214 n. 154, 215, 243, 310, 311 n. 45, 319, 322, 328, 330, 333 n. 175, 337, 341, 366, 411, 413, 414 awaken, awakening 5, 6, 6 n. 13, 42, 132, 162, 163, 164, 165, 170, 171, 183, 184, 185, 193, 198, 242, 308, 309, 309 n. 42, 416, 496, 437 Buddhism 439 n. 43, 52, 183, 237 n. 74, 240 n. 86, 393, 398, 445, 449 calendar, Chinese 13 n. 2, 15, 22 n. 14, 28 n. 3, 32, 38 n. 40, 39, 39 n. 43, 44 n. 57, 45 n. 58, 51 n. 66, 64 n. 96, 67 n. 99, 71 n. 105, 94 n. 15, 95, 95 n. 21, 112 n. 56, 140 nn. 107-108, 142 n. 111, 144

n. 113, 155 n. 19, 159 n. 36, 162 n. 42, 171 n. 62, 200 nn. 129, 131, 206 n. 143, 225 n. 16, 229 n. 24, 287 n. 197, 292 n. 210, 294 n. 1, 301 n. 30, 305 n. 37, 317 n. 71, 324 nn. 115, 119-124, 326, 327 n. 145, 329 n. 161, 341, 343 n. 214, 345 n. 222, 346 n. 223, 347 n. 228, 349, 349 n. 234, 352 n. 242, 353 n. 244, 356 n. 254, 357 n. 255, 357 n. 256, 358 n. 261, 360 nn. 264—266, 361 n. 267, 362 nn. 272-273, 367 n. 294, 369 n. 301, 371 n. 307, 374, 375 nn. 310-312, 447 chi 92, 323, 324, 361 n. 268, 365, 371 n. 307 chi hu 351, 354, 355, 359, 374 Christianity 25, 75, 96, 215, 216, 218, 222, 223, 224, 225, 220, 228, 290. 234, 235, 236, 240, 244 n. 101, 256, 264, 268, 270, 287, 288, 289, 387, 390, 394 circle 160, 201, 286, 287, 288, 289, 309, 335, 371, 372, 436 cognitivism 277, 396 n. 13 commentary

50, 406,

410,

413,

419,

420 computer-thinking 380 n. 321 conatus 12, 92, 371, 372, 424 concentrate 25 n. 20, 54, 58, 83, 85, 88, 109, 112 n. 56, 118, 119, 123, 137, 176, 179, 278, 286, 292, 328, 353, 360, 391 concrete notion 88, 128, 360 connective

137,

336

constitute, constitutive l, 13, 20, 35, 35, 59, 63, 84, 88 n. 2, 90, 92, 93, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 112, 116, 122, 128, 130, 131, 132, 140, 142, 145, 148, 183, 184, 189, 198, 200, 262, 357, 571, 372, 387, 388, 389, 390, 422, 425, 450, 452 critique 3 n. 7, 30, 31, 43 n. 54, 71, 152 n. 6, 155, 157, 277, 292. 301, 313 n. 48 culture 16 n. 5, 27, 28, 28 η. 10, 29,

INDEX

OF

30, 31, 31 n. 14, 32, 34, 36, 45, 46, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57 n. 74, 60, 62, 63, 64, 64 n. 95, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 83, 84, 80, 86, 87, 122, 176, 189, 221, 222, 302, 305, 335, 389, 390, 391, 395, 398, 400, 440, 445 cultural relativism 29. 32, 47, 51, 54, 55, 57, 62, 76 cyclic 379 deconstructionism 2]. 31, 90 η. 6, 152, 155, 209, 210, 437 demonstrative 28, 38, 94, 96, 388, 400, 401 demythologization 248 difference 1, 5, 18, 19, 27, 32, 44, 51, 55, 66, 67, 69, 70, 85, 86, 99, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 116, 116 n. 65, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 139, 149, 149 n. 122, 154, 164, 177, 192, 207, 209, 214, 214 n. 158, 215, 221, 224, 226, 227, 228, 232, 234, 235, 236, 255, 260, 261, 279, 281, 301, 310, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 319, 336, 341, 368, 380, 380 n. 321, 397, 399, 406, 411, 442, 453 discern, discernment 3, 4, 7, 26, 53, 54, 85, 86, 109, 151, 226, 229, 236, 256, 273, 279, 320, 323, 328, 331, 333, 338, 358 n. 261, 359, 422, 452 dream, dreaming 5, 6, 6 n. 13, 41, 51, 62, 69, 170, 171, 17] η. 62, 179, 184, 185, 185 n. 93, 193, 198, 203, 206, 213, 306, 307, 308, 308 n. 41, 309, 310, 312, 379, 382, 416, 417, 436 egological I-thinking 89, 133, 133 n. 94 elusıve 279, 338 essence 25, 28, 36 n. 31, 50, 60, 63, 85, 90, 98, 105, 115, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 136, 140, 191, 196, 198, 220, 224, 229, 235, 239, 274, 285, 287 n. 197, 350, 351, 353, 359, 361, 362, 369, 393, 394, 415, 429, 431, 438 ethics, ethical 15, 25 n. 20, 98, 131, 148, 154, 168 n. 55, 212, 221, 241, 311, 349, 369, 370, 399, 435 Eurocentrism 396 η. 13

SUBJECTS

465

evocation, evocative 94 n. 13, 111, 127, 134, 173, 180, 186, 189, 263, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 284, 313, 325, 368 n. 297, 392, 393, 395, 400, 411, 416, 455 existence, existent vs real 10, 37, 63, 64, 81, 100, 102, 103, 104, 111, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 138 n. 102, 145, 146, 148, 156, 156 n. 25, 167, 168, 173, 201, 250, 257, 267, 281, 307, 335, 396, 412, 427, 433, 438, 444 expressive indirection 252 face 32, 32 n. 17, 77, 78, 78 n. 115, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 93, 100, 106, 109, 109 n. 47, 110, 111, 111 n. 54, 112, 112 n. 56, 116, 116 n. 66, 117, 118, 119, 119 n. 73, 120, 120 n. 75, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 131, 132, 217, 222, 240, 247, 257, 278 n. 179, 280, 284, 343, 348, 358, 359, 387, 388, 391, 395, 401, 408 family, family resemblance 4, 21, 21 n. 11, 25, 25 n. 20, 41, 75, 85, 86, 123, 124, 124 n. 83, 126, 127, 136, 177, 214, 220, 222, 223, 226, 234, 299, 299 n. 22, 300, 302, 314, 316, 330, 341, 360, 362 n. 272, 369, 370, 380, 397, 409, 410, 411, 415, 416, 425, 427, 433, 434 fishers of men 241, 244 form 52, 64, 66, 71, 82, 83, 84, 97, 119, 126, 128, 153 n. 12, 187, 207, 211, 213, 225 n. 16, 254, 269, 274, 289, 315, 333, 350, 368, 396, 397, 414, 415, 429 n. 22, 432, 440, 447 fun 67, 130, 133, 134, 162 n. 45, 171, 172, 173, 179, 183, 186, 188, 189, 204, 205, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 433 future 38 n. 40, 42, 44, 103, 115, 115 n. 61, 130, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 195, 206, 209, 210, 213, 318, 345, 347, 354, 355, 358, 363, 366, 367, 370, 371, 377, 378, 378 n. 318, 379, 381, 382, 383, 396, 397, 399, 428, 430, 441, 452, 456 generalization 60, 85, 95 n. 20, 298, 321, 347, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 359, 369, 370, 381, 416, 418

400

INDEX

OF

Heaven, Heavenly 10, 25 η. 21, 96 n. 22, 275, 288, 297, 300, 317, 318, 319, 331, 332, 333, 340, 348, 353, 358, 359, 360, 361, 361 n. 268, 363, 364, 365, 374, 375, 377, 395, 417, 435, 445, 452, 456 hermeneutics 1, 7, 29, 45, 46, 46 n. 61, 47, 49, 50, 51, 51 n. 66, 52, 53, 54, 120, 342 Hinduism 394 history, historical 19, 21, 29, 32, 38, 39 n. 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 48 n. 62, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 63, 64, 74, 80, 81, 86, 103, 112, 112 n. 56, 114, 115, 115 n. 61, 120, 121, 126, 127, 138, 140, 140 n. 107, 141, 142, 142 n. 111, 144, 147, 153 n. 9, 154, 165, 183, 183 n. 89, 194, 200, 216, 217, 219, 220, 229, 230, 236, 249, 260, 261, 265, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 276, 277, 278, 283, 286, 287, 287 n. 197, 290, 291, 292, 304, 305, 307, 310, 313, 337, 340, 345, 346, 347, 347 n. 229, 350, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 370, 371 n. 307, 374, 375 n. 311, 376, 378, 380, 381, 382, 382, 383, 387, 390, 392, 396, 397, 398, 401, 406, 411, 412, 414, 426, 446, 450, 452, 453, 454 Hitlerism 396 homo-cosmic 1, 10, 16, 81, 83, 347, 363, 365 n. 285, 372, 373, 374, 374 n. 309, 376, 377, 381, 383, 399, 400, 456 human(e)nes 296, 329, 330, 331, 337 Idea 29, 33 n. 20, 61 n. 87, 86 n. 124, 94 n. 17, 122, 124, 125. 126, 127, 131, 153 n. 12, 154 n. 16, 453 n. 26 individual 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 21 n. 9, 23, 25, 26, 37, 44, 59, 79, 84, 85, 87, 102, 115, 188, 270, 301, 365, 371, 398, 405 inside, insider 15, 47, 59, 60, 61, 62, 62 n. 90, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 78 η. 116, 82, 87, 88, 89, 91, 113, 199, 209, 232, 242, 245, 262, 289, 298, 299, 322, 335, 336, 336 n. 188, 372, 377, 380 n. 321, 388, 390, 395, 400, 401, 423 n. 8, 426, 433 interest, interesting 2, 28 n. 10, 60,

SUBJECTS

62, 128, 194, 215, 330, 415,

63, 67, 71, 72, 80, 85, 103, 158 n. 33, 166, 181, 182, 183, 196, 199, 204, 205, 209, 214, 232, 275 n. 175, 296 n. 5, 366, 370, 375, 387, 390, 391, 424, 433, 448 internecine and inter-nascent 38, 60, 70 irony 98, 99, 99 η. 42, 40, 41, 160, 233, 238, 253, 338, 368, 370 Islam 268, 393, 449 law of excluded middle 29, 34, 35, 38, 39, 39 n. 41, 40, 41, 44, 45, 58, 103, 104, 189, 387, 405 life-understanding 47, 48, 49, 382 hteralism 99, 172, 270, 271, 280, 282, 396 n. 13 hterature 41, 45 n. 59, 67, 103, 136, 137, 138, 138 n. 103, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 239, 307, 350, 370, 378, 446, 449, 453 logic 1, 3, 24, 25, 98, 109, 134, 138, 151, 153, 154, 155, 155 n. 17, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 163, 178, 186, 187, 189, 193, 196, 202, 207, 211 logos 162, 162 n. 41 love 26, 70, 76, 77, 96, 98, 99, 101, 105, 106 n. 43, 117, 146, 156, 157, 161, 165, 205, 214, 221, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 243, 243 n. 97, 244, 254, 255, 259, 259 n. 153, 262, 263, 264, 278, 279, 290, 291, 292, 293, 293 n. 213, 295 n. 2, 298, 300, 317, 318, 358, 358 n. 261, 380, 397, 420, 421, 422, 423, 423 n. 8, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 433, 44], 448 many world religions 265 mathematics 24 n. 18, 27, 32, 33, 45, 46, 138 medicine, Chinese 15, 27, 33, 46, 173, 374, 375, 376, 377, 395, 455 metaphor 95, 95 n. 20, 99, 151, 152, 153, 155, 158, 158 n. 34, 159, 159 n. 3/, 198, 200, 201 n. 132, 411, 412, 415, 416, 439, 441 metonomy 369, 370 mindheart 263, 322, 323, 327, 330, 441

INDEX

OF

ming, ming yun 11, 12, 50, 52, 92 n. 8, 316, 341, 429 miracles 39, 39 n. 44, 218, 236, 237, 238, 239, 239 n. 82, 240, 387, 430 morality 45, 224, 230, 231, 232, 307, 310, 319, 924. 327, 342, 361, 362, 364, 365, 366 movement 52, 167 n. 54, 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 191, 219, 224, 283 n. 191, 314, 320, 321, 329, 331, 349, 356, 367, 368, 374, 376, 377, 423, 440 music 82, 94 n. 15, 119, 120, 133, 134, 135, 136, 205, 206, 206 n. 143, 207, 208, 234 n. 61, 286, 287, 287 n. 197, 288 n. 201, 297, 325, 335, 340, 344, 380, 392, 393, 394, 394 n. 9, 400 nature, natural 5, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 29, 37, 39, 41, 45, 46, 46 n. 61, 48, 61, 62 n. 91, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 92, 93, 96, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 118, 119, 120, 122 n. 80, 123, 124, 125. 126, 128, 146, 147, 151, 153, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 183, 187, 188, 188 n. 99, 190, 191, 191 n. 108, 192, 199, 203, 204, 217, 218, 224, 226, 231, 232, 233, 236, 237, 238, 239, 245, 248, 252, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 282, 286, 289, 292, 300, 302 n. 31, 307, 314, 315, 317, 318, 319, 322, 323, 324, 324 nn. 121, 124, 328, 329, 330, 331, 335 n. 188, 337, 337 nn. 194-195, 338, 339, 340, 344, 348, 349, 355, 355 nn. 246, 248, 358, 360, 361, 362, 364 n. 282, 365, 367, 369, 373, 375, 376, 377, 387, 391, 395, 399, 417, 422, 423, 434, 439, 442, 449, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455 Neo-Confucianism 50, 52, 445 nihilation 104, 195, 294, 295, 296, 296 n. 4, 297, 298, 300, 396 n. 13 ontology 371, 377 orthodoxy 49, 51, 116, 246, 247, 275, 396 n. Other, the 66, 93, 99, 130, 132, 227 Other-thinking 90, 91,

225, 226, 13 101, 104, 109, 93, 96, 109,

SUBJECTS

467

131, 132, 133 n. 94, 135, 137, 149, 398 outside, outsider 43, 47, 59, 60, 61, 62, 62 n. 90, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 78 n. 116, 82, 87, 205, 209, 217, 232, 241, 242, 244, 266, 267, 268, 290, 336 n. 188, 390, 398, 401, 420 paradigmatic generalization 95 n. 20, 350, 359, 360, 369, 370 perception, perceived 86, 118, 119, 120, 125, 125, 127, 127, 139, 147, 172, 215, 278, 322, 322, 344, 393 n. 7 . performative 18, 28, 34, 36, 56, 101, 142, 189, 197, 253 n. 135, 279, 281 n. 188, 282, 283, 294, 326, 368, 376, 389, 399, 432 philosophy 19, 30 n. 13, 31, 31 n. 14, 32, 33, 34, 35, 39 n. 43, 46, 49 n. 65, 50, 60, 71, 72 n. 107, 76, 92, 104 n. 34, 122, 131, 148, 149, 174, 175 n. 71, 183, 265, 293, 294, 294 n. 1, 302, 303, 304, 304 nn. 35-36, 305, 309, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 319, 320, 323, 333, 334, 335 n. 186, 339, 341, 343, 344, 345, 346, 359, 360, 383, 388, 389, 400, 406, 412, 413 n. 2, 414, 435, 440, 442, 444 physiognomy, physiognomic 2], 21 n. 11, 25, 25 n. 20, 26, 28, 32, 77, 86, 87, 90, 109, 110, 111, 120, 122, 127, 129, 157, 358, 358 n. 261, 359, 360, 362 n. 272, 377, 389, 391, 393 pictographic, ideographic 347, 347 n. 228, 445, 446, 448 play, play with argument 24, 128, 130, 133, 134, 150, 151, 152, 153, 157, 159, 162, 163, 165, 165 n. 47, 166, 172, 173, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 182 nn. 85-86, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 187 n. 96, 188, 189, 190, 190 nn. 102, 104, 191, 191 nn. 107-108, 192, 192 nn. 112, 114, 193, 194, 195, 196, 196 n. 123, 197, 197 n. 124, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 202 n. 136, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 208 n. 148, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 215 n. 160, 337 n. 197, 390, 393 n. 6

408

INDEX

OF

politics 45, 46, 51, 55, 64, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80, 82, 209, 261, 342, 357, 363, 365, 366, 369, 370, 374, 396 n. 13 postmodernity 21, 184, 203 pragmatic, pragmatism 35, 36, 39, 44, 46 n. 61, 55, 56, 59, 90, 103, 154, 157, 294, 303, 313, 314, 315, 316, 318, 319, 322, 323, 324, 336, 336 n. 189, 337, 338, 340, 341, 384, 388, 439, 440, 441, 442 presence, non-present 98, 226, 229, 244, 286, 287, 288, 288 n. 20] pulsate 372 reasonable 2, 42, 44, 93, 127, 130, 152, 158, 162 n. 41, 179, 190, 196, 212, 215, 264, 289, 343, 354, 355 reciprocal 3, 5, 98, 59, 60, 72, 95, 96, 99, 101, 104, 105, 106, 106 n. 43, 113, 125, 127, 128, 132, 148, 289, 337 n. 194, 390, 398, 416, 450 recursive, self-recursive inconsistency 25, 130, 253, 372 relativism 2], 29, 30, 32, 46, 47, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 62, 76, 209, 219, 269 rhythm 167, 286, 288, 347, 356, 356 n. 253, 357, 372, 379, 381, 449, 453 Romeo and Juliet 292 science and technology 46, 46 n. 63 science of the future 377, 382 season, seasonal 346, 347, 348, 349, 352, 354, 362, 364, 372, 374, 381, 450, 452 sensible 71, 127, 130, 146, 179, 199, 202, 207, 215, 334, 362, 362 n. 273, 382, 424 shen, shih 93, 109, 109 n. 48, 112, 324, 328, 346, 347, 348, 352, 354, 358, 363, 365, 366, 371, 416, 431 Shintoism 398 side-vision, lateral vision 244, 247, 252, 253, 401 sign 31, 47, 156, 197 n. 125, 227, 232, 236, 239, 257, 258, 259, 261, 262, 319, 353 spontaneous 10, 73, 77, 80, 112, 120, 162, 163, 175, 199, 201, 210, 217, 233, 234, 252, 253, 256, 277, 300,

SUBJECTS

301, 303, 330, 331, 361, 392, 434, 435 stowhea 371 symbiosis 10, 14, 35, 69, 72 n. 107, 91, 136, 234, 243, 243 n. 98, 261, 291, 294, 302, 303, 361, 384, 385, 389, 391, 399, 400 synchronicity 354, 355, 374, 449 synecdoche 369 tacit 77, 78, 256, 296 n. 4 temptation 128, 253, 255, 335, 387, 391, 396 η. 13 theophany 218, 236, 240, 244, 244 n. 101, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 257, 271, 275 n. 173, 279, 387 "thick interpretation" 60, 61 the infinite Thou 94, 95, 96, 98 thread 3, 184, 300, 389, 390, 391, 393, 394, 395, 399, 400 time, time-ly, ümely 114, 296, 303, 306, 309 n. 42, 324, 342, 343, 343 n. 214, 343 n. 215, 344, 344 n. 217, 345, 345 n. 220, 346, 347, 348, 348 n. 233, 349, 349 n. 235, 351, 351 n. 239, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 356 n. 256, 357, 358, 359, 360, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384 togetherness, togetherness-thinking 11, 15, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 88, 90, 96, 96 n. 22, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104, 104 n. 34, 109, 110, 111, 114, 117, 124, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 133 n. 94, 134, 135, 137, 149, 303, 313, 342, 362 n. 272, 377, 379, 384, 385, 387, 388, 388 n. 1, 389, 390, 391, 391 n. 4, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 406, 421, 422 totality, totalism 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 82, 113, 266, 267, 268, 275, 277, 284 touch, inner, outer 15, 17, 25, 35, 57, 63, 71, 73, 79, 84, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 93 n. 10, 95, 104, 108, 113, 135, 136, 138, 148, 149, 201, 206, 226, 229, 245, 272, 282, 293, 294, 298, 298 nn. 16-18, 300, 301, 302, 303, 303 n. 33, 306, 335, 375, 376, 384, 385, 388, 389, 390, 396, 396 n. 13, 433, 441, 442

INDEX

transversal 58, 58 n. 111, 113, 125, 126, 352, 387, typification

2, 4, 21 n. 11, 79, 59, 60, 87, 122, 123, 124, 127, 278, 278 388, 389, 392, 88, 960

OF

33 n. 17, 88, 110, 124 n. 83, n. 179, 409

understandable, understanding 2, 3, 10, 23, 24, 97, 38, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 48 n. 62, 49, 50, 53, 54, 57, 59, 70, 73, 84, 85, 95, 98, 101, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112 n. 56, 116 n. 67, 127, 130, 135, 149, 151, 156, 157 n. 26, 159, 162 n. 42, 164, 165, 167, 169, 172, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 186, 190, 191, 191 n. 108, 200, 208, 218, 221, 222, 224, 225, 225 n. 16, 227, 232, 238, 246, 247, 253, 265, 266, 267, 269, 272, 273, 279, 284, 288, 304, 328, 336, 342, 343, 343 n. 214, 347, 359, 360, 362 n. 272, 366, 367 n. 296, 369, 379, 380, 381, 382, 384, 387, 388, 398, 421, 423, 447, 449, 454 unit-thinking 9, 18, 22, 23 unity of opposites 253

469

SUBJECTS

universal 30, 33, 43, 44, 52, 55, 72, 80, 84, 85, 224, 226, 236, 275, 276, 277, 285, 288, 289, universal concrete 323, 324, 325 Utopia 378, 378

33 n. 17, 41, 42, 58 η. 79, 59, 60, 87, 216, 219, 222, 265, 266, 269, 270, 278, 280, 282, 284, 292 278, 285, 286, n. 318

“what”-question, “what is X" 380, 381 n. 322, 400, 401 wu hsing (five elementary goings) 358, 372 wu wei 327, 327 n. 145, 340 n. 208, 368, 455 xenophobia

67, 70, 260, 396

Yin-Yang 36, 38, 302, 318 n. 78, 371, 372, 374, 383, 450 Zen 218, 236, 237 n. 74, 240, 240 n. 86, 241, 243, 244, 244 n. 101, 245, 247, 249, 251, 251 n. 130, 270, 271, 275 n. 173, 282, 286, 309 n. 43, 397, 408, 431, 438

Philosophy of History and Culture

. HERTZBERG,

. .

.

.

. . . . . 19. 16.

L. and J. PIETARINEN

(eds.). Perspectives on Human

Conduct. 1988. ISBN 90 04 08937 3 DRAY, W.H. On History and Philosophers of History. 1989. ISBN 90 04 09000 2 ROTENSTREICH, N. Alienation. The Concept and its Reception. 1989. ISBN 90 04 09001 0 ORUKA, H.O. Sage Philosophy. Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy. 1990. ISBN 90 04 09283 8 MERCER, R. Deep Words. Miura Baien’s System of Natural Philosophy. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09351 6 VAN DER DUSSEN, W.J. and L. RUBINOFF (eds. Objectwity, Method and Point of View. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09411 3 DASCAL, M. (ed.). Cultural Relativism and Philosobhy. North and Latin American Perspectives. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09433 4 WHITE, F.C. On Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09543 8 ZEMACH, E.M. Types. Essays in Metaphysics. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09500 4 FLEISCHACKER, S. /ntegrity and Moral Relatwism. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09526 8 VON WRIGHT, G.H. 77e Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays. 1993. ISBN 90 04 09764 3 WU, Kuang-ming. On Chinese Body Thinking. À Cultural Hermeneutic. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10150 0 ANDERSSON, G. Criticism and the History of Science. Kuhn's, Lakatos's and Feyerabend's Criticisms of Critical Rationalism. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10050 4 VADEN HOUSE, D. Without God or His Doubles. Realism, Relativism and Rorty. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10062 8 GOLDSTEIN, L.J. The What and the Why of History. Philosophical Essays. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10308 2 BARRY, D.K. Forms of Life and Following Rules. A Wittgensteinian Defence of Relativism. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10540 9

] 7. VAN DAMME, W. Beauty in Context. Towards an Anthropological Approach to Aesthetics. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10608 1 18. CHATTOPADHYAYA, D.P. Sociology, Ideology and Utopia. SocioPolitical Philosophy of East and West. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10807 6 19. GUPTA, C. and D.P. CHATTOPADHYAYA (eds.). Cultural Otherness and Beyond. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10026 1 20. WU, Kuang-ming. On the "Logic" of Togetherness. A Cultural Hermeneutic. 1998. ISBN 90 04 11000 3

Brill —

P.O. Box 9000 —

2300 PA Leiden —

The Netherlands

ISSN 0922-6001 ISBN 90 04 11000 3

Philosophy of History and Culture This series presents original books broadly concerned with philosophical treatments of ideas of history and culture, with historically and culturally embodied entities, and with methodologies and interpretive strategies pertinent to their explanation and understanding.

Qt

4.

ROTENSTREICH, N. Alienation. The Concept and ISBN 90 04 09001 0

ORUKA,

Its Reception.

Η.Ο. Sage Philosophy. Indigenous Thinkers and Modern

1989.

Debate

on African Philosophy. 1990. ISBN 90 04 09283 8 MERCER, R. Deep Words. Miura Baien's System of Natural Philosophy. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09351 6 VAN DER DUSSEN, W.J. and L. RUBINOFF (eds.). Objectivity, Method and Point of View. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09411 3 DASCAL, M. (ed.). Cultural Relativism and Philosophy. North and Latin American Perspectives. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09433 4

WHITE,

F.C.

On

Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient

Reason. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09543 8 ZEMACH, E.M. Types. Essays in Metaphysics. FLEISCHACRKER,

1992. ISBN 90 04 09500 4

S. /ntegrity and Moral Relativism.

1992.

ISBN 90 04 09526 8 VON

WRIGHT,

G.H.

The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays.

1993.

ISBN 90 04 09764 3

WU, Kuang-ming. On Chinese Body Thinking. À Cultural Hermeneutic. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10150 0

ANDERSSON,

G. Criticism and the History of Science. Kuhn's, Lakatos's and

Feyerabend's Criticisms of Critical Rationalism. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10050 4 VADEN HOUSE, D. Without God or His Doubles. Realism, Relativism and Rorty. 1994. ISBN 90 04 10062 8 GOLDSTEIN, L.J. The What and the Why of History. Philosophical Essays. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10308 2

BARRY, D.K. Forms of Life and Following Rules. ^ Wittgensteinian Defence of Relativism.

1996. ISBN 90 04 10540 9

VAN DAMME, W. Beauty in Context. Towards an Anthropological Approach to Aesthetics. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10608 1 CHATTOPADHYAYA, D.P. Sociology, Ideology

and

Utopia.

Philosophy of East and West. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10807 6 20.

GUPTA, C. and CHATTOPADHYAYA, Beyond. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10026 1

D.P.

(eds.).

WU, Kuang-ming. On the *Logic" of Togetherness. 1998. ISBN 90 04

Socio-Political

Cultural Otherness and

Cultural Hermeneutic.

11000 3 ISBN

90-04-11000-3

BRILL 2300 ΡΑ Leiden The Netherlands

;

9

1789004110007