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ON VALUING WHAT IS FITTIN，THE GUIDANG CHAPTER OF THE LUSHI CHUNQIU AND SOLVING MORAL PROBLEMS

James D. Sellmann

Abstract：Are there material and moral connections between wealth and moral values? Do people require a certain level of material well- to be moral? Can people choose freely to abide by moral values when their physical or material well-being are in jeopardy? Can people be expected to follow moral values when their self-interests would be advanced by not adhering to moral values? Does technology create impersonal relationships that make immoral acts easier to perform? Can ethical reasoning be taught? This paper explores insights from ancient , especially the Lüshi Chunqiu, to argue that moral education is an ongoing developmental process that people must constantly cultivate to value the appropriate moral action for the particular context at hand. Some contemporary approaches to the importance of teaching ethical problem solving be reviewed.

Are there material and moral connections between wealth and moral values? Do people require a certain level of material well-being to be moral? Can people choose freely to abide by moral values when their physical or material well-being is in jeopardy? Can people be expected to follow moral values when their self-interests would be advanced by not adhering to moral values? Does technology create impersonal relationships that make immoral acts easier to perform? Can ethical problem solving be taught? This paper explores insights from ancient China, especially the Lüshi Chunqiu吕氏春秋, to argue that moral education is an ongoing developmental process that people must constantly cultivate to value the appropriate moral action for the particular context at hand. Some contemporary approaches to the importance of teaching ethical problem solving will be reviewed. 1 Influenced by the four aims of life from the Upanishads, Abraham Maslow proposed that people=s most basic needs had to be met before they could mature and develop social and moral values. 2 Many deontological, duty based moralities, advance the notion that people can and must adhere to the moral values in the face of immediate personal adversity or future retaliation for doing the right thing. There may

 Dr. JAMES D. SELLMANN, Professor of and Micronesian Studies and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences at the University of Guam, Mangilao. Email: [email protected]. 1 Early drafts of this paper were presented at 18th International Society for Conference on “Chinese Philosophy and the Way of Living,” at Buffalo, New York, from July 21-24, 2013, and at The 10th East West Conference on “Value and Values: Economics and in an Age of Global Interdependence," At Honolulu, Hawaii, May 15-25, 2011. 2 Abraham H. Maslow. 1954. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers. See my application of Maslow to zide (tzu te自得) in “Three Models of Self-Integration (tzu te) in Early China,” Philosophy East and West, 37/4 October, 1987, 372-390.

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be a contextual to both perspectives. On the one hand from a developmental perspective people have to achieve and maintain a degree of physical and material well-being to attain the requisite level of mature understanding required to acquire moral values, and to develop the will power to behave according to those values. After attaining a high level of maturation people are, then, in a position to make sacrifices, to suspend their personal self-interests, to do their duty for its own sake regardless of the consequences or social repercussions. The deontological notion of doing duty for duty’s sake is not unique to Kant. It is found in many warrior cultures such as the Zulu, Vikings, Kshartriya caste and so on; all the warrior cultures understand the need for people but especially the warriors to do their duty, stand their ground and sacrifice for the sake of others. In order to do your duty for duty’s sake, people must achieve a level of maturation to be able to make personal sacrifices, and to override drives and other organic processes tied to survival to do the right thing for the right . They must override; their self-interests, when necessary to do the right thing. If people are not given the material means to sustain a healthy life, then they will be far less likely to be able to perform moral actions or even participate in positive social relationships. The infamous case of the Ik (pronounced ‘eek’) in Uganda Africa is a case in point. After the Ik, a hunting and gathering people, were forced to live on a reservation and the feeble attempts to teach the Ik farming techniques had failed, the Ik were reduced to a very low level of poverty and extreme starvation such that most social and moral relationships had broken down.3 They were no longer able to cooperate with each other, let alone work together for a common good. So, from their we can conclude that without sufficient resources to sustain life, people cannot be expected to override biological, survival drives for the greater good of social and moral purposes. For people to be moral they must have sufficient resources to sustain life and sufficient emotional maturity to create, hold and maintain ethical values; without the resources they cannot be good. For to be put into practice, society must achieve a high level of well-being.

I. Definitions and Two Assumptions: Value and

A few definitions are in order. Absolutists often speak as if there were only one system of morality. In fact there are many moralities or systems that judge human actions to be morally good or bad. is a branch of philosophy that studies moralities. Ethics is an abstract endeavor that passes judgment on the belief systems of morality. Hence the importance of teaching ethical problem solving is that it allows people a means by which they can critique and correct insufficient or irrational moralities. Learning to use ethical problem solving also assists others to decide when to intervene as a witness to immoral acts. Any discussion of ethics and morality is based on the assumption that people believe that some things are more or less valuable than others, and that people believe

3 Colin M. Turnbull. 1972. The Mountain People. New York: Simon and Schuster.

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that they have the ability to choose one course of action over another. I do not have the time or space required to argue that people can and do believe in the relative value of things. The fact that people do believe in the relative value of things should be readily available to most people. People do have values and their moral values are some of the most cherished and respected of values. The question of whether or not people have the freedom of will power to make choices is another hotly debated topic that cannot be resolved here. For the time being, let us assume that most people are able to control their choices. Free will must be a , if any discussion of ethics is going to be meaningful. People must have the free will to choose, and they must be able to choose the moral or good alternative. If people cannot choose to be moral or if people do not have the free will to choose at all, then making moral choices would be impossible.

II. Immoral Acts

The consequences of immoral acts can have and have had far-reaching even global consequences. Immoral acts are performed within a wider context of general social harmony. Immoral people have little or no regard for the negative consequences of their actions and sometimes they intend and celebrate the negative results. Although many times immoral acts are specifically intended to harm a particular person, generally speaking, many immoral acts are not intended to harm anyone particular person nor is the expected result of the action intended to benefit the person performing the action. For example, mass murder, suicide bombings, and violence against ethnic out-groups bring little or no benefit to the perpetrators, and they are directed at a group. After being named by Fortune magazine as the most innovative company for six consecutive years, Enron collapsed, in 2001, under the weight of its immoral accounting practices and fraudulent shell companies. A year later, in 2002, WorldCom improperly accounted for $3.8 billion in operating expenses and filed for bankruptcy. In 2008, we saw the collapse of several large investment firms such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and various other financial institutions that were directly linked to immoral or illegal acts. These financial collapses were correlated with greed and a lack of concern for others in an impersonal, technological environment. The list can be developed further. Most wars in world history were motivated out of excessive self-interest, greed for wealth and power, and a lack of concern for the well-being of other people. The impacts of these wars and the other events have been far-reaching, even global. The impact of what at first appear to be small scale immoral acts, such as one person lying to, or cheating, or hurting another person, have an insidious way of creeping into and tainting the overall social context. Immoral actions occur within the context of interpersonal harmony, trust, and social order. The impact of relatively small scale immoral actions can have far-reaching and even global ramifications, especially when technology can help spread the actions’ influence far, wide and quickly. Ancient China provides a unique literary culture with values and perspectives that differ from our own contemporary points of view that can be employed to inform

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our discussion of ethics and the study of moralities. Can ancient Chinese texts teach us anything about ethical problem solving that we can apply to our circumstances today?

III. The Lüshi chunqiu 吕氏春秋 on Valuing What is Fitting

To study the Lüshi chunqiu (Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu) or The Spring and Autumn [Annals] of Master Lü is to enter into the tumultuous but progressive times of the Warring 4 States period (403-221 before the Common Era, hereafter BCE) in China. This period is commonly referred to as Athe pre-Qin period because of the fundamental changes which occurred after the Qin 秦 unification. The Lüshi chunqiu was probably completed, in 241 BCE, by various scholars at the estate of Lü Buwei (Lü -wei 吕 不韋), also known as Lord Wenxin文信侯, the prime minister of Qin 秦 and tutor to the Qin child King, Zheng.5 It is one of the few pre-Qin texts that dates itself. The date, though not precise, is given in the xuyi 序意 chapter.6 A decade after the

4 John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel. 2000. The Annals of Lü Buwei. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. See Richard Wilhelm, trans. 1979 reprint. Frühling und Herbst des Lü Bu We, with a new introduction by Wolfgang Bauer. Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs Verlag. The first edition of the translation was reviewed by Paul Pelliot, 1930, a review of Richard Wilhelm’s Frühling und Herbst des Lü Bu We, T’oung Pao, XXVII. Also see Eugen Feifel. 1975. “A Review of Frühling und Herbst des Lü Bu We” Philosophy East and West, 25/1. Some of the more significant commentaries among the Chinese editions are: Yang Jialuo. ed. 1977. Lüshi chunqiu jishi deng wushu, contains Xu Weiyu’s commentary. Taibei: Ding Wen Publishing Co. Chen Qiyou, ed. 1984. Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi. Shanghai: Xuelin Publishing Co. Chang Shuangdi, et al., ed. 1986. Lüshi chunqiu shizhu. Gulin: Gulin Wenshi Publishing Co. 5 Lü Buwei sponsored thousands of scholars and compiled them in The Lüshi chunqiu. For an historical background and analysis of the text in general see the following. James D. Sellmann. 1998. “Lüshi chunqiu,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Craig, Routledge, and 1995. “Lü Buwei,” in Great Thinkers of the Eastern World, ed. Ian McGreal, HarperCollins. Michael Carson, and Michael Loewe. 1993. “Lü shih ch’un ch’iu,” in Early Chinese Texts A Bibliographical Guide. ed. Michael Loewe. Early China Monograph Series No. 2, The Society for the Study of Early China, and the Institute of East Asian Studies. Berkeley: University of California. John Louton. 1981. The Lü-shi chun-qiu: An Ancient Chinese Political , University of Washington, unpublished dissertation. For a detailed discussion of Lü Buwei’s sponsorship of the Lüshi chunqiu see the following. Sima Qian. 1975. “Lü Buwei ‘liezhuan’,” in Shiji xuan. Taipei: Wenyi Publishing Co. Qian Mu. 1956. Xian Qin zhuzi xinian. : Hong Kong University Press, pp. 485-489. Guo Moruo. 1962. Shi pipanshu. Peking: Koxue chubanshe, pp. 387-460. Derk Bodde. 1967. China’s First Unifier, A Study in the Ch’in Dynasty as seen in the Life of Ssu. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 1-22. These are all discussed at length by John Louton. The Lü-shi chun-qiu: An Ancient Chinese Political Cosmology. pp. 22 ff. Bodde’s later understanding is detailed in Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe, eds. 1986. The Cambridge History of China, Volume I The Chin and Han Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 40-43, and 95. 6 The Postscript chapter [or xuyi 序意] tells us that the work was completed “in the eighth year of Qin ...”. There is a debate still unresolved as to what year that would be. Hu Shi (Hu Shih) and others use King Zheng’s enthronement to propose that “the eighth year” refers to 238

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completion of the Lüshi chunqiu, King Zheng began the ensuing nine years of fervent warfare that led to his unification of the empire in 221 B.C.E. Before the political unification, the Lüshi chunqiu (LSCQ) created a philosophical consolidation.7 The Lüshi chunqiu (LSCQ) performed an important function in the literary and political education of the young King Zheng. More importantly, it provided a philosophical understanding of and justification for a unified empire which left its mark on the young King, and subsequent Han philosophy. After the unification of the empire, King Zheng took the title Qin shihuangdi (First-generation Emperor of Qin 秦始皇 帝), and he established the insignia of water for the imperial emblems, extinguishing the fire emblems of the Zhou court. He did this by employing concepts from Lüshi chunqiu's yingtong (Responding and Identifying應通) chapter that describes the

BCE. Hu Shi. 1961. “Du Lüshi chunqiu” in Hu Shi wencun. Volume. III, ed. Pu Jialin. Taipei: Far Eastern Book Co. Qian Mu’s argument is more convincing; he uses the year of Lü Buwei’s appointment, 249 BCE, to begin the calculation. So I follow his date of 241. See Qian Mu. 1977. “Lü Buwei zhushukao,” appended to Yang Jialuo’s preface to Lüshi chunqiu jishi deng wushu, no page numbers. Qian Mu’s study is briefly discussed by Kung-chuan Hsiao. 1979. A History of Chinese Political Thought. Translated by F.W. Mote. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 557, n. 19. Also see Michael Carson and Michael Loewe. 1993. “Lü shih ch’un ch’iu,” in Early Chinese Texts A Bibliographical Guide. 7 When I speak of a “philosophical consolidation” or a “syncretic philosophy” the reader should not be under the impression that these were discrete “schools” of philosophy. The different philosophers or masters (zi子) had much to dispute concerning their respective understandings of the way (dao 道). For example, Mengzi () clearly differentiated his alignment with Kongzi () verses Mo Di (Mo ), (Yang Chu), and others. However, the idea that there were discrete “schools” was advanced by later interpreters, such as the author of chapter 32 of the ; Sima Tan and Sima Qian the principal authors of the Shiji, and Liu Xiang and Liu . Certainly the “disputers of the dao” had their differences; see A.C. Graham. 1989. Disputers of the . La Salle, (Illinois): Open Court. However, they were not so much at “war” with each other as later interpreters have led us to believe by imposing the “warring states” model on to the so-called “schools” of philosophy. In the arts of rulership and statesmanship, it was and is pragmatic to amalgamate various diverse positions. The label jia (school 家) was developed by historians and bibliographers primarily to classify the various books. During the Han Dynasty, when imperial policy was being directly configured by conflicting philosophical schools (now commonly referred to as the Modernists and the Reformists) there was an anachronistic tendency to read this kind of contention back into the pre-Qin period. During the pre-Qin period, the rulers either did not take the philosophers seriously (Kongzi is the classic example) or when the rulers or prime ministers did pay attention to academics, they supported a broad spectrum of them which is seen in the ’s compilation of the Guanzi, and Lü Buwei’s Lüshi chunqiu (LSCQ).Therefore, when I utilize expressions like daojia, fajia, Daoist, or Legalist, I am not contending, nor should the reader imply, that there was an organized school or systematic philosophy of “Daoism” or so-called “Legalism.” I merely employ those expressions as convenient labels. For the debate between the Modernists and Reformists during the Han Dynasty, see Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe, eds. 1986. The Cambridge History of China. Volume I The Ch'in and Han Empires, pp. 104-106, 128, 144, and 488-489. Concerning the misleading bibliographical classification system, see pp. 651-52.

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succession of previous dynasties that changed imperial emblems according to the timely cycle of the five phases (wuxing 五行). Qin shihuangdi changed the emblems to justify his new dynasty.8 The Guidang貴當 chapter (Valuing What is Fitting, or Prizing What is Fitting Guidang according to Knoblock’s translation) provides an analysis of the why leaders, that is rulers and ministers, or contemporary managers for that matter, need to follow a moral way or dao 道. If the ancient texts are going to be relevant to modern life, then I suggest that we understand ourselves today to be the leaders or rulers and ministers that can take advantage of LSCQ=s teachings. The examples given in the chapter emphasize the importance of the particular context that people find themselves in, the importance of maintaining healthy friendships, and the need to “plow” or cultivate oneself and others to promote success. The Guidang chapter opens with the following counsel to follow the correct approach or dao. The illustrious reputation cannot be purposefully sought. It must be achieved by following the dao 道. Control of things depends, not on the things, but on men. Control of men depends, not on the men, but on the task. Control of the task depends, not on the task, but on the feudal lord (or the manager). Control of the feudal lord depends, not on them, but on the Son of Heaven (or the executive). Control of the Son of Heaven depends, not on him, but on his desires. Control of the desires depends, not on the desires, but on the developing character (xing, inborn 性). Developing character is the fundamental consideration in the myriad things and can be neither increased nor decreased, for it is what definitively makes each thing the thing that it is. This is a constant principle of Heaven and Earth. (Modifying Knoblock, p. 620) There may be a tendency to want to read the concept of xing (developing character 性) as an innate capacity and Knoblock implies this by translating xing as “inborn nature.” I argue elsewhere that xing is best understood as an ongoing life process. 9 The subsequent arguments and examples given in the Guidang 貴當 chapter emphasize the ongoing, developmental, dynamic and contextual character of moral development and ethical problem solving. The chapter goes on to say that the moral exemplars, such as Kings Tang and Wu practiced self-cultivation, and the world followed their lead. On the other hand immoral tyrants, such as Jie and Zhou Xin were contemptuous, and the people rebelled against them. The paragraph

8 Qin Shihuangdi is supposed to have adopted the symbol of water to show that he had extinguished the Zhou symbol of fire. See Derk Bodde’s discussion of this, and his refutation of the criticisms against the claim that Qin did not adopt the symbol of water in Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe, eds. 1986. The Cambridge History of China, vol. I, pp. 77, and 96-97; for the significance of the water-symbol in the Han dynasty also see, pp. 119, 208, 729-730 and 737. However, as far as I can tell I am the first one who has drawn a connection between this passage in the LSCQ’s yingtong chapter and the First Emperor’s claim to . 9 James Sellmann. 2002. Timing and Rulership in “Master Lü’s . Albany: State University of New York Press. See chapter 2.

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concludes: “The prince of (junzi 君子) pays close attention to what resides within him and to nothing else.” What resides within him is a learned ability to reason morally, not an innate capacity. For example the chapter goes on to relate a story about an expert physiognomist who had an audience with King Zhuang. The physiognomist admits right off that he cannot predict a person=s destiny by his physiological appearance, but rather he does it by examining the person’s friends. When he examines a commoner and discovers that his friends are filial, dutiful and obedient, then he predicts that the person will be prosperous and his family will flourish. Likewise the physiognomist does the same thing when he examines ministers and rulers, he predicts their destiny by studying their friends. Again, the better their friends are the better their destiny is likely to be. This provides the basis for a social for ethical problem solving. Namely, people need to be surrounded by successfully moral people to be moral themselves. This can be called the practice of correct association. People must associate with other people who practice being moral to be moral themselves. Of course this was also recognized by Aristotle who had a lot to say about the importance of proper friendships and how they promote a person=s ethical development and ultimate success for achieving a complete and happy life.10 Therefore, worthy rulers/leaders give timely audiences to people of moral refinement and cultivation, not merely so they will be surrounded by them, but because through them they achieve great things. With them important and minor tasks can be completed (Modifying Knoblock, p. 621). If leaders, executives, managers or even common people are going to be successful they need to work with others who are themselves morally upright and successful. Because aristocrats and rulers, in ancient China, were often fond of losing themselves in hunting and racing events, these activities were typically associated with irresponsible behavior. The next passage in the chapter proposes that morally worthy people can engage in such hunting and racing activities to sharpen their thinking, while incompetent people become confused by engaging in such activities. This is an interesting point. It is not so much what specific activities people engage in that helps them develop, but rather it is the mind- and attitude that they bring with them to engage in the activities that makes a regarding the outcome of the activity. The chapter emphasizes this point with a story about a poor man from who loved to hunt, but he was not successful because his hunting dog was no good. He could not afford to buy a better dog. So he returned to the fields and dedicated himself to plowing. Then he acquired some wealth, could afford to buy a good hunting dog, and he became a very successful hunter. The example serves to show that dedication and hard work or Aplowing@ pave the way to success. It also shows that people

10 Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House. See the Nicomachean Ethics, book 8.

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must have a material base; their basic needs must be met. They are able to act freely and creatively, to plow or to cultivate themselves to improve their lot in life and to better themselves From antiquity to the present, there has never been a case of anyone a lord-protector without first ‘plowing.’ This is what sets the worthy apart from the unworthy. The worthy and unworthy have the same desires as ordinary people. .... Wherein they differed was how they pursued their desires. Thus, when a worthy leader examines a course of action and finds it improper, he will not follow it, and when he considers it proper, he will. Since what he does always follows the dao, nothing can harm him. Thus, his accomplishments surpass those of others ten thousand fold. (Modifying Knoblock, p. 622 The authors of the chapter argue that people have to develop their capacity to engage in ethical problem solving to do the right thing, at the right time, and in the proper manner. When people live in harmony with and according to the moral dao, practice right friendship by associating with ethically good people, and they “plow” or apply themselves to work hard in a rational manner to achieve their objectives and goals, then, people are valuing what is fitting. As the Guidang chapter emphasizes, the importance of building and maintaining proper, ethical friendships cannot be overstated. Humans need social contact with others to become ethical, rational and to develop the skills needed to solve moral problems. Without social and moral contact human will not and cannot develop their personhood as a member of a moral community. To the extent that technology creates an artificial Adistance@ and alienation between people, it would appear that technology makes it easier for some people to engage in immoral and criminal acts because they cannot sense the others’ ; they cannot empathize or sympathize with the unseen, unheard other against whom they are perpetrating the immoral or criminal act. Generally speaking it is becoming clear that the present generation of youth who were raised on the internet seem to have a lack of concern for issues of privacy and personal property, especially when online or on the internet. They seem to live in a “cut and paste” world without property rights. The online social networks are providing a context for people to redefine ownership and sharing, to redefine personal interaction and privacy. With the advent of electronic stock trading and the emerging global economic market place, we have already seen the negative global impact of corrupt, immoral and illegal economic practices. This is my concern for online, distance education, namely, that with the lack of human contact online students, learning at a distance, will not develop sound ethical problem solving skills. So I am concerned that education at a distance may not be the best way to instill the importance of being moral or learning the processes of solving ethical problems.

IV. Solving Ethical Problems

Plato’s dialogue the Meno grapples with the question of whether or not people can

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learn to be moral. In the end Socrates proposes that being moral cannot be learned. It is a gift from the gods or a “… divine dispensation.”11 I hope that is not the case. If the ability to be moral is a gift from the gods, then there is a two-sided negative consequence. On the one hand someone may obtain the moral gift but cannot understand the gift, or worse than that, he cannot perform moral actions. On the other hand, someone who does not obtain the gift has no other way to discover the proper course of action. But people are moral and ethical. People are able to improve their morality and ethics and become better at it. So morality and the ability to solve moral problems cannot be a divine gift or innate capacity, it must be something that people can learn to do. As an educator, a professor and a dean, I believe that people can learn how to engage in moral problem solving. Robert J. Sternberg (2010) has constructed an eight step model of moral behavior that seems to apply to a variety of ethical problems.12 “The model identifies the specific skills students need to reason and then behave ethically. The skills are taught by active learning—by having students solve ethical-reasoning problems, employing the skills they need.” (Sternberg, p. 36) Sternberg=s model is based on bystander intervention research. Sternberg points out that based on family, school and religious training, we expect bystanders to intervene, but this is not the case. In keeping with the above discussion from the Guidang chapter, people need to “plow” or work diligently at being moral. Sternberg proposes that regardless of the amount of formal training a person might have if that person is going to intervene, then she must go through all eight steps in his model to act morally. The eight steps are: 1. Recognize that there is an to which to react. 2. Define the event as having an ethical dimension. 3. Decide that the ethical dimension is significant. 4. Take personal responsibility for generating an ethical solution to the problem. 5. Figure out what abstract ethical rule(s) might apply to the problem. 6. Decide how these abstract rules actually apply to the problem so as to suggest a concrete solution. 7. Prepare to counteract contextual forces that might lead one not to act in an ethical manner. 8. Act (Sternberg, pp. 36-37). To illustrate the model, he employs a simple example of one student, John, observing another student, Bill, cheating on an exam. First, John has to see Bill cheating and he has to decide that he can potentially do something about it. Second, John has to recognize Bill’s actions as immoral. Although many would consider cheating to be immoral, some may consider that it is alright if Bill can get away with it. Third, John has to decide that Bill’s cheating is serious enough that it warrants his attention. Fourth, John has to decide that he is personally responsible for taking action to solve this problem. Many times people will feel that there is an ethical problem but that they are not personally responsible for the solution. Fifth, John has to figure out what rule or rules apply to this problem. He

11 Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds. 1980. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ‘Meno,’ pp. 353-384. Socrates concludes “…whoever has virtue gets it by divine dispensation.” p. 384. 12 Robert J. Sternberg. 2010. “Teaching for Ethical Reasoning in Liberal Education,” Liberal Education, 96/3, Summer, 32-37.

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might decide that the rule to follow is that he should mind his own business. Sixth, John has to decide how to apply the rule to the problem so as to find a concrete solution. Even though John may believe that he should report Bill for cheating, he may not be able to prove that Bill did cheat. Seventh, John has to counteract forces that might lead him to reconsider and not take action. For example, John might fear being shunned by Bill and others for being a snitch. Eighth, the ultimate end of solving ethical problems is not merely about changing what a person thinks but also it is about changing how a person takes action. John has to go from thinking about what to do to actually doing something. Ethical problem solving must lead to moral action. A person requires courage or moral fortitude to do the right thing. A high level of motivation is not only required to intervene as a Good Samaritan but a high level of motivation is also required to initially perform a good moral act, especially moral actions that go against self-interest. Solving ethical problems, it would be hoped, can be taught and more importantly can be learned and put into practice. People are not born innately moral and ethical. Morality is not a gift from the god(s). As Edward Slingerland has pointed out people also have a propensity for seriously violent, harmful emotions and behaviors.13 This is not to say that there are no organic dispositions or propensities that allow for people=s moral and ethical development. The Mammalian disposition to play and to care for their young allows creatures to consider the feelings of others. The organic dispositions are not sufficient in and of themselves to generate moral feelings and behaviors. If we believe that an innate ability does not require further development, then we destroy ourselves (see Mencius 2A:6). People must be instructed in the art of being moral and they must be taught how to engage in critical, ethical problem solving so that they do not become captive to a narrow belief system or a culturally relative belief system. After being born with organic dispositions to behave and choose in certain ways, people need to be raised, trained and educated in a culture and society mostly composed of morally responsible persons. As such moral and ethical development cannot be separated from the project of person-making. Building on the work of Eliot Deutsch, I want to argue that person-making is the process of appropriating our biological, environmental and cultural givens in an articulated or artful manner such that a person manifests personal and cultural potentials, ultimately participating in the achievement of transcultural person-making or personhood.14 I have argued that ritual and the performance of ritual-actions play an important role in our personal development, in our transformative , and

13 “Mencius’ particular picture of this shared taste may be overly rosy: a more extensive, well rounded account of innate human emotions . . . would have to include our propensity for horrific out-group violence; our powerful desires for wealth, power, comfort and sex; and the prevalence for opportunistic selfishness and convenient self-deception.” Edward Slingerland. 2011. “ ‘Of what use are the Odes?’ Cognitive Science, and Early Confucian Ethics,” Philosophy East and West, 61/1, 880-109, p. 98. 14 Eliot Deutsch. 1982. Personhood, Creativity, and Freedom. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, chs. 1, 3, and 5. Eliot Deutsch. 1992. Creative Being: The Crafting of Person and World. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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that ritual allows for the creative achievement of personhood.15 To be moral and ethical as noted above persons must be able to act freely. Ritual actions, and other performance opportunities provide a venue for acting freely. In dealing with a more general question of how an action can be performed such that the action and the actor realize their highest potential, Deutsch gives the following definition of acting freely:16 To act freely means to act skillfully in fulfillment of the natural grace manifest in every action-related process and thereby to attain an effortless power. To act freely is to express the achievement of personhood; it is to be self-expressive in action. Deutsch goes on to give a careful analysis of the terms “skillful,” “natural grace,” and “effortless power.” It is not a coincidence that Deutsch=s analysis of Afreedom@ parallels and has similar phrasing to that of Victor Turner’s analysis of Csikszentmihalyi and MacAloon’s coinage “flowing” which Turner likens to his own description of “communitas.” There is an important link between comparative philosophy and anthropology when Turner compares communitas with D.T. Suzuki’s discussion of wisdom (prajñ). 17 Freedom, flowing, communitas, prajñ, satori, nirvāṇa, moksha, ritual, play, acting-as-if, these terms describe some of the respective processes in the achievement of person-making. The practice of moral actions and the development of ethical problem solving skills require the achievement of person-making. In a world of bipolar, nondual, interpenetrating and interrelated opposites, wealth, material well-being, and moral values are dialectically interlocked. Without material well-being, without some level of wealth, persons cannot afford to be moral or ethical. That is to say that people who are trying to survive, people who are on the brink of starvation or being killed will not be able to override organic drives to survive in order to perform moral or ethical acts. They do not have sufficient freedom to be moral. However, most people who perform immoral acts are not living on the brink of starvation or annihilation. So why are they so easily motivated not to do the right thing? It has been noted by psychologists that people often feel threatened by the challenges of modern life such that they have the impression that their lives are being threatened.18 The “dog eat dog” mentality of today’s capitalism and general business practices leave people feeling as if they are on the brink of starvation or annihilation,

15 James Sellmann. 1997. “Achieving Person Through Ritual,” Asian Culture Quarterly, XXV/2, Summer. 16 Deutsch. 1982. Personhood, Creativity and Freedom, p. 116. 17 Victor Turner. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, pp. 55-58, and Victor Turner. 1976. “Social Drama and Ritual Metaphors,” in Richard Schechner and Mady Schuman, eds., Ritual, Play and Performance. New York: The Seabury Press, pp. 112-116. 18 The idea that peoples’ stress leads or misleads them to believe that their lives are being threatened is made in different ways in various disciplines. For example see, Livia Kohn. 2008. Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 22-23. And see, Robert Kegan and Lisa L. Lahey. 2001. How the Way We Talk Can Chang the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; pp. 2-7.

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12 JAMES D. SELLMANN

when in fact they are living comfortably. A person who is actively engaged in the achievement of person-making becomes aware of the biological, organic “fight or flight” reaction to stress in order to act freely, creatively and ethically. The higher values of moralities and ethics can be and are achieved through the transformative experiences of person-making. Therefore, by valuing what is fitting in the ancient traditions, modern people can learn to improve themselves and their moral actions.

Journal of East-West Thought

NATURALISM AND MORAL EXPERTISE IN THE ZHUANGZI

Christopher C. Kirby

I. AND NORMATIVITY IN THE ZHUANGZI

Although there has been a wide variety of interpretation in the secondary literature on the text known as the Zhuangzi1, three general interpretive themes emerge among Anglophone commentators – , skepticism, and .2 The earliest scholars (perhaps too heavily influenced by the Herbert Giles translation) tended to read Zhuangzi as a mystic concerned with various religious themes. Interpretations of the 1960s and 1970s (Chan 1963; Watson 1968; Creel 1970) helped to continue this mystical line of analysis, although they tended to associate it with personal reflection rather than religious dogma. As Creel saw it, the Zhuangzi addresses how one can improve one’s own life through contemplation. He argued that it was such mystical lines of “contemplative” Daoism that led rulers to seek out Daoist advisors because, “[contemplative practices] gave to the Daoist a calm and poise that contrasted sharply with the hurly-burly of the times” (1970, 44). This, according to Creel, led to the migration towards Daoism among many young, ambitious thinkers, as it could provide them a position in a ruler’s court. However, such devotees were not adopting Daoism in order to contemplate and, thus, directed Daoism into a more normative direction, which Creel referred to as the “purposive” aspects of early Daoism, which is best represented by other Daoist texts. Major scholarship done in the 1980s (Graham 1981) and 1990s (Hansen 1992; Kjellberg and Ivanhoe 1996) helped shift the contemplative focus towards skepticism,

 Dr. CHRISTOPHER C. KIBY, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Eastern Washington University, Spokane, Email: [email protected]. 1 I follow conventions in referring to the purported author of the first seven “Inner” chapters as Zhuangzi, and the text which bears his name as the Zhuangzi (cf. Coutinho 2004; Lin 2003; Roth 1993). 2 Difficulties in interpretation have been attributed to the Zhuangzi’s multiple authorship (Mair 1994; Graham 2001; Ziporyn 2009), its idiosyncratic use of the ancient Chinese (Wu 2006; Ziporyn 2009), and its origins in an oral tradition (Mair 1994). Thus, any effort to situate Zhuangzi’s writings within a western framework will face a number of conceptual, cultural, and historical difficulties which threaten to stultify philosophical consideration. Chief among these are the interpretive troubles which surround the text. The abstrusity of the Zhuangzi has been well documented in recent literature, with numerous explanations offered for interpretive quandaries presented by the text. As Bryan Van Norden describes, “the Zhuangzi acts almost like a Rorschach test: different interpreters see different things in it, and what they see there often reveals more about their own preoccupations than about the Zhuangzi itself” (Van Norden 1996, 247). Others have suggested further that such tendencies might demonstrate a fundamental inaccessibility for the modern reader, as if the content of the Zhuangzi is uniquely impenetrable. However, it seems odd to level such claims toward this text alone, since many other possess many of the same qualities which allegedly make the Zhuangzi so recondite.

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language, , and relativism. Much of the major work done over the last few decades has followed one of these main readings. As Hansen wrote in 2003 in response to some challenges of his reading, “Recent years have witnessed a sea change in Zhuangzi interpretations… Today, it is more common for a work on Zhuangzi to discuss skepticism or relativism than mysticism… [Yet] Traditionalists are loathe to exchange the loveable, comic-strip religious mystic for a skeptical linguistic ” (Hansen 2003, 128). The choice, Hansen suggests, is falsely dichotomized into viewing Zhuangzi as either a guru or a skeptic. Hansen argues for a reconciliation of the contemplative and purposive themes in the text through careful consideration of its “political ,” “relativist theory of language,” and its “skeptical epistemology.” The result, according to Hansen, is a set of practical implications for personal wisdom. This background is significant to those who find ethical motifs in the pages of the Zhuangzi, particularly once the passages considered influenced by are left aside. After all, mystics are often “completely indifferent” (cf. Creel 1970, 4) to moral notions, relativists believe that “discourse is the real authority,” (Hansen 1992, 210), and skepticism is often completely “ethically inadequate” (Eno 1996, 143) when it comes to offering normative prescriptions. So, it seems, such readings are inevitably locked into either an amoral or non-moral view of the text. By contrast, there has recently been an uptick in the number of interpretations which emphasize the normativity and/or the naturalism of the text, especially when the definition of naturalism is loosened in such a way that it is not automatically associated with outright .3 Such a reading might shore-up the Zhuangzi against charges of amoralism and non-moralism, as well as resolve a few long-standing puzzles associated with the text – the most prominent of which is its advice to “forget morality” and “follow nature.” At first blush, such an overt disjunct would seem to run counter to the brand of naturalism I wish to advance – with its commitments to moral cognitivism and . However, something of a natural normativity may yet be found in the Zhuangzi, a normativity which hangs on a kind of pluralism that is too quickly mistaken for vulgar relativism.4 In what follows, I attempt to show how the insight one gleans from a naturalistic and normative reading of the Zhuangzi can be made to support a unique vision of moral expertise. There is a raft of research already exploring the proto-ethical motifs within the

3 This sort of association stems from a particular, and perhaps uncharitable, reading of Quine’s 1968 paper, “Epistemology Naturalized” (cf. Capps 1996). Zhuangzi’s suspicion of method would certainly resist such a methodological naturalism, but resolving this issue is outside the scope of this paper and the naturalism I have in mind is of the ontological & moral varieties. My use of ‘naturalism’ will refer to positions that seek “the source of normativity in the natural realm” (Lee 2005, 2), and sketching the broad strokes which lead to such a position will be the focus of the first part. 4 Hansen’s distinction between normative human dàos and natural dàos that are “constant” echoes the alleged disjunct between forgetting morality and following nature. For examples of the pluralistic natural normativity I have in mind, see Philippa Foot (2001), Martha Nussbaum (1986), and David Wong (2006 and 1984).

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text – motifs such as aporia, attunement, and embodiment. Taken together, I believe these notions provide a leaping off point for a naturalized account of Zhuangzian normativity. It has been said that, “[t]he irritating sayings of Zhuangzi sting us like a gadfly until we awaken and empty our set, pet perspectives. Once we get over the shock, we shall find Zhuangzi, if not easy to understand, at least understandable” (Wu 2006, 63). As such, the text holds up an ethics of “aporetics,” in which, “One acts on the basis of what one does not know, what one cannot control, what one cannot contain, rather than fixed rules, determinate principles, or clear imperatives” (Lusthaus 2003, 164). The aporia of the Socratic elenchus, for instance, is both an epistemic and a normative call to inquiry and Plato’s philosophical exemplar could be characterized as one who frees herself and others from impediments to intellectual . Aporia is a call to philosophize with others and seek to remove delusions in them, and in oneself, dialectically (cf. Broadie 2014). In this way, any ethical action resulting from aporia is always already provisional, as well as contextual. Being “at ease” in any context, however, could require skillful attunement, which is probably the most recognizable theme in the Zhuangzi, especially in its discussions of wúwéi and zìrán. It may be tempting to see this as a non-natural, spiritual moral notion: “It is easy to see how this picture of skillful spontaneity constitutes a spiritual as well as moral ideal: total awareness brings spiritual equanimity by means of perfect attunement between a person and her surroundings” (Barrett 2011, 686; emphasis added). But, it is also possible to see it more naturalistically as a sort of “poetics of normativity,” a view which emphasizes the use of language in the text and “rests on the Daoist understanding of the Way as the ultimate source of normativity” (Lee 2014, 43). Under such a reading, the language of the Zhuangzi is implicitly normative precisely because it is poetic, as in the original sense of Greek poiesis – or “bringing forth” – and the norms described therein are those of attunement with “the workings of the Way itself in Nature” (43).5 As we see in the knack passages of the Zhuangzi, those who possess supremely attuned skill pay deep attention to the body. As Edward Slingerland puts it, “[W]oodshops and kitchens… revealed to [Zhuangzi] artisans and butchers, ferryman and draftsman, whose effortless ease and responsiveness to the world could serve as a model for his disaffected fellow ” (Slingerland 2014, 143).6 Perhaps the trick for Zhuangzi, as Slingerland suggests, involves quieting the reflective mind, or “cool cognition,” in order to let the more automatic “hot-cognition” of the body take over (cf. Slingerland 2003; 2014). It is clear Slingerland sees this as a normative connection with somatic marker theory. Unfortunately, he does not attempt any analysis of the Homeric conception of hormē (impulse), from which somatic marker theory derives its use of the Latin conatus, within a larger discussion of the

5 Lee’s account echoes the Aristotelean assertion that poiesis is an imitation of , however, Lee offers little account of the prescriptions of “attunement.” 6 It could also help in clarify Robert Eno’s position regarding the amoralism of Cook Ding’s “spirit-like impulses” and Lee Yearley’s “transcendent drives” (cf. Eno 1996; Yearley 1996). Likewise, Dewey’s discussion of single-mindedness in and Education (1916) resonates with the Homeric notion of conflicting impulses.

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16 CHRISTOPHER C. KIBY

psychological struggle to act ethically. Doing so would reveal that the early Greeks couched such struggles not in Platonic terms of “reason” versus “desire” (logos vs. thumos), but rather one between rival impulses. Such an insight could assist in demonstrating the “practical intelligence” of impulses within hot cognition (Barnouw 2004). The normative aspects of such an idea seem obvious when one recognizes the reconciliation of bodily impulse with intelligence as a type of “cultivation of the sentient body as a central tool of self-perfection, a key to better , action, virtue, and happiness” (Shusterman 2004, 33). Bringing these ideas – aporia, attunement, and embodiment – together presents several continuities to which naturalism could commit: 1) a continuity between human intelligence and nature’s intelligibility in which intelligence is seen as a metabolic process, 2) an ontological continuity which turns on the concept of organic interaction between human beings and their surroundings, wherein actions and events are part of the same , and 3) a continuity in which there is no sharp division between facts and values. Of course, Chinese thought in general has for some time now been associated naturalistic views, under a variety of names. As F.W. Mote described it in 1971, “the genuine Chinese cosmogony is that of organismic process, meaning that all of the parts of the entire cosmos belong to one organic whole and that they all interact as participants in one spontaneously self-generating life process” (19). Similarly, Roger Ames and David Hall have associated Chinese cosmology with what they call ars contextualis (a contextualizing art) and Daoist cosmology, specifically, with what they call a “focus-field” model (Ames and Hall 2003). Joseph Needham has referred to classical Chinese cosmology as “organic naturalism” (Needham 1954) and Tu Wei-Ming has underscored the importance of motifs such as continuity, wholeness, and dynamism in Chinese organicism, which he described as a vision of “all modalities of being [as] organically connected… integral parts of a continuous process of cosmic transformation” (1989, 75). Understanding this, he explained, is to recognize the normative point that “‘all things are my companions’… that we are consanguineous with nature. But as humans, we must make ourselves worthy of such a relationship,” through our own transformations (75, 78). Such personal transformation, in the Zhuangzi, is tantamount to what one might call self-cultivation through the growth of personal efficacy. However, one might be tempted to see the normative upshot of Chinese naturalism to be something akin to “ask[ing] what might be right about other perspectives because it encourages us to suspend judgment, to accept other moralities on their own terms” (Wong 2006, 110; emphasis added). David Wong has tied this to his own particular brand of pluralistic relativism: What [“forget morality” means] is that we should not make the respect for rules the primary foundation of respect for human beings. We should cultivate the part of us that spontaneously identifies with others, the state of consciousness in which the boundaries between self and others fall away… The idea is that once we are able to suspend looking at people through our evaluative categories, we will be able to accept them for what they are, see them as beings like ourselves, and care for them as we care for ourselves (1984, 208).

Journal of East-West Thought NATURALISM AND MORAL EXPERTISE IN THE ZHUANGZI 17

This has likewise been the overarching goal of David Wong’s work on what he calls “natural moralities” which turns on a specifically irrealist notion of value (2006).7 However, the point Wong seeks to establish about taking others on their own terms seems deficient in reference to the Zhuangzi.8 On the vulgar relativist’s reading, the point might seem to be that all terms are ultimately interchangeable. For the mystical interpretation, the implication would be something like unifying all terms under one “heavenly” perspective. Under the skeptical view, it might mean eliminating terms altogether. However, given the holistic points the text makes about continuity, attunement, the pipings of heaven, earth, and man, and the interpenetration of opposites, what sense would it make to say that any perspective has “its own terms,” cut off and discreet from all others? Although Wong’s gives a nod to such perspectivist concerns, his main aim is to address value conflicts in everyday experience and the moral ambivalence they can precipitate. For him, moral ambivalence – echoing Richard Rorty’s “ironic tolerance” – exists wherever one party recognizes the reasonableness of another’s moral counterclaims.9 However, this does not jibe with much of what one finds in the Zhuangzi. For one thing, ambivalence and tolerance, when carried to their logical conclusions, act as epistemic insulators against alternative points of view, not taking them seriously, which is a stance that may undermine pluralism. As an alternative, one could see the frequency with which the Zhuangzi puts its lessons into the mouths of non-conventional characters – the poor, the physically deformed, and the socially outcast – as stressing the sort of open-mindedness that “actively welcomes suggestions and relevant from all sides” (Dewey 1916, MW 9:174). This sort of habit of thought, comes from a kind of inquiry in everyday practice which is endemic to naturalism – i.e. the process of building up a repertoire of actions that may return one to the “flow of experience.”10 James Behuniak, for one, has connected the sort of inquiry put forth in John Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916) with the story of Cook Ding’s dào in the third chapter [Yăngshēngzhŭ] of the Zhuangzi. As Dewey explained it, responding to the uncertainty of a problematic situation, such as the intricacies of butchering an ox, is brought about by the desire, which all organisms share, to alleviate indeterminacy. This natural way of dealing with the facts which arise in a problematic situation is

7 Jung H. Lee recently has called David Wong’s reference to the Zhuangzi into question for importing “extra-traditional suppositions” that are “highly problematic textually” (Lee 2014, 38). For one thing, the Chinese character he relied upon to make his case [cí, 慈] appears infrequently in the Zhuangzi and never in the sense to which David Wong puts it. Lee attributes this textual imposition to Wong’s commitments to and , which holds water when compared to 7:22, “Even when walking in the company of two other men, I am bound to be able to learn from them. The good points of the one I copy; the bad points of the other I correct in myself” (Lau 1979). 8 There are likewise attempts to unite the upshots of these three readings. (cf. Hansen 2003; Kjellberg and Ivanhoe 1996). 9 Cf. Kwang-Sae Lee’s “Rorty and Chuang Tzu: Anti-representationalism, Pluralism and Conversation” (1996) Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 23 (2). 10 Several authors have associated Zhuangzi’s thought with this view of experience as “flow.” (cf. Fraser 2014; Slingerland 2014; Jochim 1998)

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18 CHRISTOPHER C. KIBY

always in terms of value, i.e. these facts either have positive or negative instrumental value with regard to escaping indeterminacy, by returning one to the flow of experience. According to the naturalist, value is a product of this type of inquiry, and, ipso facto, inquiry is inherently normative.11 In short, the naturalists saw no need to institute a firm distinction between facts and values; instead, they suggested the difference be viewed as one of degree, not of kind. Behuniak, rightly I think, ties this sort of open-mindedness to normativity and the Deweyan notion of “ends-in-view,” but I would suggest that the normative emphasis be placed on the naturalism, not the instrumentalism, in this type of inquiry. This can help answer critics like Eno, who see the “field of flux” presented in the Zhuangzi as an opportunity for a dào practitioner to pursue whatever end they so choose, even “butchering people” instead of oxen (Eno 1996, 142).12 Of course, it is true that Dewey saw ends-in-view as instrumentally valuable, but he also saw them as normative in a second sense insofar as they build up a “fund of experience” that he liked to call “growth” (in a quasi-technical usage). Stating, as Behuniak does, that “Dao-learning must be cultivated in situ and become what it is as it goes along,” does not fully address Eno’s worry because a clever instrumentalist might very well fall into the sort of practices about which Eno worries (Behuniak 2010, 171).13 The sort of activity Dewey had in mind should not be understood linearly, in terms of singular inputs leading to singular outputs (as Behuniak acknowledges), but rather as an emergent property that could stem from various combinations of inputs or lead to a cascading chorus of outputs.14 Growth, then, is a non-linear process. It is not something for which one can shrewdly aim and, thus, is not at all a teleological matter. To illustrate non-teleological types of progress we might consider the following contrasting examples. First, imagine two people who are riding together in a car when one asks the other if progress is being made. The only context in which such a question even makes sense is one in which there is some definite destination in view. If one does not know where one is going, then how can one ascertain if progress is being made? This notion of progress is linear, and hangs on outdated teleological notions. Linear progress is quantifiable only in terms of some desired end-state, of getting “from here to there.” Alternatively, imagine two musicians learning the principles of jazz music for the first time. In this scenario, one could just as easily ask

11 Dewey’s understanding of open-mindedness could also be an answer to the difficulties faced by Wong’s pluralistic relativism. As he wrote, “the elimination of conflict is, I believe, a hopeless and self-contradictory ideal… It is not the sheer amount of conflict, but the conditions under which it occurs that determine its value” (Dewey 1894, EW 4:210-211; quoted in Eldridge). 12 This could likewise be seen as a counterclaim to those who interpret Zhuangzi’s “flow” as intrinsically valuable (Jochim 1998), a position Behuniak seems to lean towards in places: “[Eno’s] critique misfires: for the moment that he criticizes dao-practice as a means only, he is no longer criticizing dao-practice at all” (166). 13 I believe this is one way in which a distinction between Zhuangzi’s praxeology and that of the diplomat school, or Zonghengjia, associated with figures like . 14 Dewey’s brief article “The Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology” is one example of this sort of thinking.

Journal of East-West Thought NATURALISM AND MORAL EXPERTISE IN THE ZHUANGZI 19

the other whether or not progress was being made, but this time any answer in the affirmative would indicate an increase in general aptitude for improvisation, not a quantity measurable against a particular and final end. There are many examples of this sort of non-linear ends-in-view within other disciplines, e.g. nutrition in the health sciences, market stability in economics, bio-diversity in the environmental sciences, etc. Understanding growth non-linearly entails pluralism insofar as one must “learn to listen, speak, and act with others in mutual understanding, a mutual understanding that can recognize and honor genuine differences,” instead of ironically tolerating them in moral ambivalence (Bernstein 1987, 522; quoted in Eldridge). So, when new problematic situations arise, those who have achieved such non-linear growth will be able to play “around” the problem just as a skilled jazz musician could play around the notes on a page. According to the Zhuangzi, this is what a genuine person in their truest natural state would do. And, according to Dewey, growth is a sort of expertise… those who possess it are able to adjust to novel situations, improvising accordingly. In Zhuangzi’s words. A man like this could commit an error and not regret it, could meet with success and not make a show. A man like this could climb the high places and not be frightened, could enter the water and not get wet, could enter the fire and not get burned. His was able to climb all the way up to the Way like this (Watson 1968, 77) It is best to understand this sort of genuineness as a type of authentic resilience, which William Callahan has called an “untrammeled” quality (Callahan 1998, 184-5) and Daniel Coyle has compared to the Nietzschean Übermensch (Coyle 1998, 201). The “knack” for overcoming difficulties would have been a highly valued kind of expertise in Warring States China. And, the moral skill required to thrive in such a context would turn on cultivating a truly pluralistic open-mindedness that might lead one “to treat those who disagree… even profoundly…as those from whom we may learn, and in so far, as friends” (Dewey 1988, 228).

II. MORAL EXPERTISE IN THE ZHUANGZI

The Zhuangzi, of course, is filled with stories of expertise of various stripes. In the very least, the skillful butchers, woodcutters, swimmers, ferrymen, and fishermen the text holds up can be said to offer something of a philosophy of action, if not a full-fledged praxeology.15 This is one reason that the concept zìrán [自然] – often translated as “spontaneity,” “naturalness,” or “just-so-ness” – is so central to getting a handle on its textual themes and continues to challenge readers by presenting something of an aporetic normative imperative to cultivate oneself. As Kuang-Ming Wu has stated, It is most natural to speak as Zhuangzi spoke about naturalness. For naturalness always strangely stings us at our backs. Naturalness pulls us backward, convincing us

15 The difference turns on whether one takes action to be a matter of dào working through the agent, or if the agent is acting intentionally.

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20 CHRISTOPHER C. KIBY

that we must decrease our self-pomposity and become ourselves as we naturally are (Wu 2006, 63). Inspiration for this sort of normative interpretation comes, in part, from Graham’s work on the Zhuangzi, which presented the person of the dào as one who has overcome the rigid, “verbally formulated codes which other philosophical schools present as the ‘Way of the ’ or the ‘Way of the former kings’” – and in any particular situation is able to hi…immediately and with unsullied clarity of vision… on that single course which fits no rules but it is the inevitable one. This course, which meanders, shifting direction with varying conditions like water finding its own channel, is the Tao, the ‘Way,’ from which takes its name; it is what patterns the seeming disorder of change and multiplicity, and all things unerringly follow… How am I to train the Power in me so that I am prompted to act without the aid of reasons, ends, moral and prudential principles? By cultivating the spontaneous energies… (Graham 2001, 6-7). What this passage describes sounds a lot like moral expertise, although not the sort typically presented within western frameworks of virtue ethics or intellectualist ethics (i.e. deontological and consequentialist). On the one hand, the sort of supreme skill (or “knack”), that Graham identifies as fitting inevitably within the situation, cannot be understood as the acme of Aristotelean without significant Greek being made about propositional knowledge and human flourishing – and these are clearly unavailable in the Zhuangzi. More importantly, any phronetic model of moral expertise would necessitate some account of the “unity of the ” – a longstanding theoretical difficulty among contemporary virtue theorists (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 218). On the other hand, it is also obvious that the Zhuangzi presents nothing whatsoever like an intellectualist moral theory from which deontological or consequentialist notions of moral expertise could be derived. The intellectualist model also presents two further shortcomings. First, there is the problem of finding a completely unified moral theory under which moral facts could be subsumed. Second, and particularly relevant to Zhuangzi’s critique of Confucianism and , there is the problem of having to study the philosophical application of moral theories (or disputation) in order to become an expert (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 218). Thus, in order to see how the Zhuangzi could be connected to any consideration of moral expertise, one must look for an alternative to these phronetic and intellectualist models. Because Graham takes the discussion on “shì” and “fēi” (this, not-this) in the Qíwùlùn chapter as the lynchpin for understanding the entire work, it will be useful to start there before turning attention to the knack passages themselves. The Qíwùlùn shows us how to avoid the confusion which arises when “this” and “not-this” dissolve into one by seeking “clarity,” or míng [明]. As Graham puts it, the ideal observer who acts from wúwéi in this manner, […] can do so only at one moment and in one way; by attending to the situation until it moves him, he discovers the move which is ‘inevitable’ (pu te [sic.], the one in which he ‘has no alternative’) like a physical reflex. But he hits on it only if he perceives with perfect clarity, as though in a mirror. (Graham 1983, 9; emphasis added) This position is what the Zhuangzi calls daòshū [道樞], commonly translated as

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the pivot/hinge/axis of dào, a place, “Where neither It nor Other finds its opposite… When once the axis is found at the center of the circle there is no limit to responding with either, on the one hand no limit to what is it, on the other no limit to what is not” (Graham 2001, 53). According to Graham, the axis is the central position from which one can witness distinctions dissolving into an alternating wax and wane of a singular Dao. Only from this position is the kind of effortless action of wúwéi really possible – through spontaneity, or zìrán [自然]. Robin Wang, in her excellent work on the history of yīnyáng (2012), has shown the intimate connection of these two ideas – daòshū and zìrán – with yīnyáng practices. The only necessary explanation [for the Chinese conception of circular cosmic motion] is an account of what happens inside that circle and what sustains that movement. This is what the Zhuangzi called the axis of the Dao in all motions. The explanation for this eternal generation is the fact that the Dao itself contains … The assumption that order and generation are implicit in the fabric of being is most apparent within the concept of … Yinyang is the source and manifestation of ziran (Wang 2012, 52-3). Wang continues by pointing out that spontaneity is not simply an emergent, indeterminate, and natural cosmological continuity, but is likewise a principle of action rooted in “mysterious efficacy” [xuándé 玄德] which imparts a strategy [shù 術] for achieving harmony [hé 和] (Wang 2012, 54-5). With regard to martial arts, she suggests “the central point of this strategy is working with the power of the unseen” in order to “find the pulse of the rhythm of change” (2012, 150). With regard to self-cultivation, she acknowledges, “Thinking develops through bodily refinement” (186) and connects this “holistic process” specifically with the Zhuangzi’s concept of the “genuine” person [zhēnrén 真人]. On Graham’s view of the “dào axis,” the truly illuminated person would respond with the most appropriate strategy among any number of efficacious responses to the “openings” or “closings” (to borrow Watson’s phrasing) of the situation, and would do so without any deliberation. But, the Zhuangzi also offers a variety of titles for such a person, oscillating between [zhìrén 至人] the “ultimate person,” [shénrén 神人] the “holy person,” [shèngrén 聖人] the “sagely person,” and [zhēnrén] the “true/genuine person.” While the common, and commonsensical, belief is that this variety in terms is just a result of multiple-authorship and therefore likely best read synonymously. Yet, it strikes me as odd that other texts, also considered the handiwork of multiple authors, tend to use a singular term consistently – e.g. the ’s use of shèngrén (cf. Lau 1963, 14; Hansen 1992, 201). Perhaps attunement with dào is best understood as multiply realizable? That would certainly jibe with my pluralistic reading. Robin Wang quotes the Huangdi Neijing to distinguish three sorts of ideal person, “by how they deal with yinyang: true people can master yinyang, utmost people can harmonize yinyang, and worthy people know to follow yinyang” (187). Another possibility could involve viewing such notions as what western ethicists refer to as “thick” moral concepts, which could fit nicely with the Zhuangzi’s own take on the “limits of philosophy” (Williams 1985, 140-142, 150-152). As Williams states it,

[One] cannot stand quite outside the evaluative interests of the community he is

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observing, and pick up the concept simply as a device for dividing up in a rather strange way certain neutral features of the world… The sympathetic observer can follow the practice of the people he is observing; he can report, anticipate, and even take part in discussions of the use they make of their [thick] concept. But…he may not be ultimately identified with the use of the concept: it may not really be his…. (142).

The so-called “lodged” [yu] and “goblet” [] words, used by and referenced in the Zhuangzi, are reasonable candidates for such a comparison with [thick] concepts. Moreover, a careful consideration of the importance of these types of concepts for the Zhuangzi’s manner of presentation could support Lee’s “poetics of normativity,” as presented in my opening.16 Addressing such possible anchor points for comparison is where the knack passages become relevant. Despite their differences in occupation, the characters in these passages are each chasing the same thing: dào, which is, as Cook Ding puts it, a “step beyond using one’s hands effectively.” The character used in the Cook Ding story is jì [技], which could also be translated as craft, talent, or ability.17 It is similar in meaning to shù [術], commonly translated as art/strategy. 18 In the Dáshēng chapter, Carver claims not to have any “artistic avenue” (shù) beyond not wasting his vital energies worrying about the outside world and the rewards external to his task.19 Each craftsman claims to follow dào, not possess it. This should be compared with two other stories from the Dáshēng – the cicada catcher and the old swimmer. The former claims to have a dào [yoŭ dào 有道], which turns out to involve forgetting everything else but cicada wings; the latter says he has none [wú dào 無道], but admits to having developed over the many years something of a second nature for swimming in treacherous waters. It seems evident, then that while dào practices are diverse they share a stake in some larger notion of efficacy. Wang draws all such practical wisdom “based on softness, emptiness, nonaction, and spontaneity,” under a general heading: dàoshù, or “dào strategy” [not to be confused with Graham’s dàoshū, or “dào axis”] (Wang 2012, 127). She states, the shu of the Dao is fitting one’s environment so well one forgets that it is even there… From the [dàoshù] point of view…morality is not about the dichotomy of right versus wrong or good versus bad, but rather aligning one’s activities with the force and propensity of the natural world (128-9). This is a much more naturalistic expression of the clarity one finds at the center of the dào axis. As Wang puts it elsewhere, dào strategy emerged from yinyang practices

16 For a discussion of lodged and goblet words see Kuang-ming Wu (1990, 370). 17 Literally, “ability to use one’s knowledge or hands effectively in doing something” ( 2008, 273). 18 “The original meaning was ‘road’ later its meaning was extended to technique” (Ren 2008, 604). In modern Chinese the two are combined to form a compound jìshù, meaning technique/technology. 19 Carver Qing’s statements and Confucius’ remarks about the ferryman in the same chapter bear some resemblance to MacIntyre’s discussion of “internal goods” within a practice. (MacIntyre 1984).

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which saw knowledge, “as closely connected with the body…not just in conscious decisions but also in an embodied responsiveness to the world” (186; emphasis added). I do agree with Graham that the author(s) of the Zhuangzi believed this type of clarity and spontaneity had been leveled down by the disputations and conventions of other “philosophical schools.” However, I would suggest that the best way to recover such clarity is not by achieving some theoretical state of the enlightened ideal observer, but rather through a normativity of attunement with nature – albeit an attunement which always-already includes the human elements in one’s “environing field.”20 Graham’s illuminated actor, as a kind of ideal observer, appears to be the sort of person who could find the inevitable action in every situation, and this would run contra the pluralistic points in the text highlighted above. Such an expert, on Graham’s take, seems to reinstitute the philosophical pronouncements about the efficacy against which the Zhuangzi so vehemently rails. Similarly, both the phronetic and intellectualist models of moral expertise, “share the assumption that expertise is primarily about the capacity reliably to deliver action-guiding verdicts that will settle what we are to do in particular circumstances” (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 219). However, taking the pluralistic points of the Zhuangzi to heart, one need not see moral action/judgment as a tidy, all-or-nothing sort of affair. Rather, it might be seen as a messy, tentative, and inherently incomplete endeavor: Given that the world of value is complex and the capacities needed to navigate in it many and various, it is more realistic to expect that such human moral expertise as exists would take patchwork form rather than the idealized form hypothesized in the simple statement of the two models (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 223). Yet, that need not lead to the conclusion that there is no such thing as moral expertise or that “anything goes” when it comes to moral evaluation. Rather, we might see moral expertise as shared, generalized, and piecemeal in something of “multi-stranded, domain limited” field of experts (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 223).21 Stated differently, moral expertise might best be characterized as a product of crowd-sourcing. When it comes to non-moral expertise, we have become quite comfortable with such an idea. In many complex activities – such as driving an automobile – we not only take for granted a generalized field of competency, but indeed expect a certain level of expertise. Teaching someone to drive for the first time, especially in a crowded city during peak rush hour, can highlight just how much we take for granted expertise in an emergent relationship between commonplace experts. The teacher’s stake in driving expertise is

20 This way of stating the continuity between humans with their environments is employed by Paul Kurtz in expounding on Dewey’s use of the phrase “environing field” found in the latter’s : The Theory of Inquiry (1938, LW 12:152). In the Zhuangzi, this is best illustrated in the beginning of the second chapter, wherein it is explained that the pipings of earth, man, and nature (tīan) resonate from the blowing of the same wind. There is likewise an obvious comparison to be made with Hall’s and Ames’ description of Daoist cosmology as a “focus-field” relationship (Ames and Hall 2003). 21 Comparisons could be made with MacIntyre’s view of practice, as constituted by a tradition of practitioners in a field. The types of virtues which can be found within these practices are “thick” in the sense that they are context dependent (cf. MacIntyre 1984).

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24 CHRISTOPHER C. KIBY

in constant negotiation and co-adjustment with the expertise of the others on the scene. Perhaps this could be another way to make sense of the multiplicity of efficacious exemplars (i.e. ultimate person, holy person, sagely person, and genuine person) presented in the text. Since, a plausible response to the problem of how to identify who has expertise abandons the thought that expertise is shown only or primarily in all-in judgments about rightness and instead looks for more piece-meal context dependent expertise with particular thick moral concepts, such as ‘honest’ and ‘respectful’, rather than with thin concepts such as ‘right’ and ‘ought.’ (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 219) Such a field of commonplace expertise seems to be the point of the knack passages presentation of such a wide variety of efficacious dàoshù. Perhaps the lesson to be gleaned is that artisans like Cook Ding, Wheelwright Bian, and Carver Qing each has tapped into the same broad field of expertise through the perfection of his craft, though none is actually in possession of that broader expertise. In such a way, it could be argued, “knack” is domain limited, but nonetheless able to guide one towards dàoshù. Simply put, “knack” is dào-tracking. This could be the reason the Zhuangzi works so hard to put its lessons into the mouths of the unconventional. 22 The syncretist thirty-third chapter of the Zhuangzi perhaps puts it best: Many are the men in the world who apply themselves to doctrines and policies, and each he has something that cannot be improved upon. What in ancient times was called the “art of the Way” [dàoshù] – where does it exist? I say, there is no place it does not exist (Watson 1968, 362). As I have attempted to show, expertise in the Zhuangzi can be seen as a property of a natural, public field – one in which an actor must constantly learn to adapt to continuous changes in circumstances. As such, the dào practitioner finds herself in a constant state of moral aporia. The means for living well, it seems, involves fully attuning with the rhythms of one’s environment and embodying these in one’s own actions.

References

Ames, Roger T. 1998. Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: SUNY Press. Ames, Roger T., and David L Hall. 2003. Dao : Making This Life Significant; A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003. Barrett, Nathaniel F. 2011 “Wuwei and Flow: Comparative Reflections on Spirituality, Transcendence, and Skill in the Zhuangzi.” Philosophy East and West 61, no. 4: 679-706. Barnouw, Jeffrey. 2004. Odysseus, Hero of Practical Intelligence: Deliberation and Signs in Homer's Odyssey. Lanham: University Press of America. Behuniak, James. 2010. “John Dewey and the Virtue of Cook Ding’s Dao.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9 (2):161-74. Bernstein, Richard J. 1987. “The Varieties of Pluralism.” American Journal of Education 95 (4): 509-25.

22 Throughout the text, there are stories of physically deformed figures, particularly crippled men and crooked trees, which exhibit the highest virtue because they rest at ease within their own nature – e.g., Hui Shi’s tree in Chapter One, the Holy-tree and Sage-tree in Chapter Four, the madman Jie Yu and the numerous instances of criminal amputees in Chapter Five.

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Broadie, S. 2014. “The Theoretical Impulse in Plato and Aristotle.” Lecture presented at the Berkeley Graduate Division, Berkeley, CA. Callahan, William A. 1998. “Cook Ding’s Life of the Whetstone: Contingency, Action, and Inertia in the Zhuangzi.” In Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, edited by Roger T. Ames, 175-96. Albany: SUNY Press. Capps, John. 1996. “Dewey, Quine, and Pragmatic .” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 32 (4): 634-67. Chan, Wing-tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cook, Scott B. Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Confucius. 1979. The Analects. Translated by D. C. Lau. New York: Penguin Books. Coutinho, Steve. 2004. Zhuangzi and Early Chinese Philosophy: Vagueness, Transformation, and Paradox. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate. Coyle, Daniel.1998. “On the Zhenren.” In Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, edited by Roger T. Ames, 197-210. Albany: SUNY Press. Creel, Herrlee Glessner. 1970. What is Taoism? University of Chicago Press. Dewey, John. 1894. Review of The Psychic Factors of Civilization by Lester F. Ward; Social Evolution by Benjamin Kidd; Civilization during the Middle Ages by George B. Adams and History of the by Robert Flint. Retrieved 10 March 2015, from https://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Dewey/Dewey_1894d.html Dewey, John. 1988 (originally 1916). Democracy and Education. Vol. 9: 1916. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, John. 1988 (originally 1938). Logic the Theory of Inquiry. Vol. 12: 1938. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, John. 1988 (originally 1939). The Later Works. Vol. 14: 1939-1941. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Eldridge, Michael. “In Defense of Pragmatic Pluralism.” Retrieved 6 March 2015, from http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/TAMU/P43G.htm Eno, Robert. 1996. “Cook Ding’s Dao and the Limits of Philosophy.” In Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. Edited by Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 127-51. Albany: SUNY Press. Foot, Philippa. 2001. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, Chris. 2014. “Heart-fasting, Forgetting, and Using the Heart Like a Mirror: Applied Emptiness in the Zhuangzi.” In Conceptions of Nothingness in Asian Philosophy. Edited by JeeLoo Liu and Douglas L. Berger, 197-212. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. Graham, A. C. 1983. “Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of ‘Is’ and ‘Ought.’” In Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu. Edited by Victor H. Mair, 3-23. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Graham, A. C. 2001. Chuang-tzŭ. 4th ed. London: Allen & Unwin. Hansen, Chad. 1992. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought. New York: Oxford University Press. Hansen, Chad. 2003. “Guru or Skeptic? Relativistic Skepticism in the Zhuangzi,” In Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi. Edited by Scott Cook Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Jochim, Chris. 1998. “Just Say No to “No Self” in Zhuangzi.” In Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Edited by Roger T. Ames, 35-74. Albany: SUNY Press. Jones, Karen, and François Schroeter. 2012. “Moral Expertise.” Analyse & Kritik 34 (2): 217-30. Kjellberg, Paul, and Philip J. Ivanhoe. 1996. Essays on Skepticism, Relativism and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. New York: SUNY Press. Lau, Tzu. 1963. . Translated by D. C. Lau. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

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Lee, Janghee. 2005. Xunzi and Early Chinese Naturalism. Albany: SUNY Press. Lee, Jung H. 2014. The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism: Zhuangzi’s Unique Moral Vision. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lee, Kwang-Sae. 1996. “Rorty and Chuang Tzu: Anti-representationalism, Pluralism and Conversation.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 23 (2): 175-92. Lin, Shuen-Fu. 2003. “Transforming the Dao: A Critique of A.C. Graham's Translation of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi.” In Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, edited by Scott Cook, 263-90. Albany: SUNY Press. Lusthaus, Dan. 2003. “Aporetics Ethics in the Zhuangzi.” In Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, edited by Scott Cook, 163-206. Albany: SUNY Press. MacIntyre, Alasdair C. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Mair, Victor. 1983. Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Mote, Frederick W. 1971. Intellectual Foundations of China. New York: Knopf. Needham, Joseph, and Ling Wang. 1954. Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge: University Press. Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 2001. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ren, Zhifang. 2008. A Handbook for Analyzing . Freemont, Calif.: Jain Pub. Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roth, Harold D. 1993. “Chuang Tzu.” In Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, edited by Michael Loewe, 56-66. Chicago: University of California, Berkeley. Shusterman, Richard. 2004. and East‐Asian Thought. 35 (1‐2): 13-43. Slingerland, Edward. 2003. Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slingerland, Edward. 2014. Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. New York: Crown. Stewart, Alex, Felissa Lee, and Gregory N.P. Konz, S.J. 2008. “Artisans, Athletes, Entrepreneurs, and Other Skilled Exemplars of the Way.” Journal of Management, Spirituality & 5 (1): 29-55. Tu, Wei-ming. 1989. “The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature.” In Ames and Callicott, Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in , edited by Roger T. Ames and J. Baird Callicott, 67-78. Albany: SUNY Press. Van Norden, Bryan W. 1996. Competing Interpretations of the Inner Chapters of the ‘Zhuangzi.’” Philosophy East and West 46 (2): 247-68. Wang, Robin R. 2012. Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watson, Burton. 1968. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana. Wong, David B. 1984. Moral Relativity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wong, David B. 2006. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wu, Kuang-ming. 1990. The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu. Albany: SUNY Press. Wu, Kuang-ming. 2006. “Hermeneutic Explorations in the Zhuangzi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33 (1): 61-79. Yearley, Lee H. 1996. “Zhuangzi's Understanding of Skillfulness and the Ultimate Spiritual

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State.” In Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, edited by Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 152-82. Albany: SUNY Press. Zhuangzi and Victor Mair. 1998. Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Honolulu: University of Hawai Press. Ziporyn, Brook. 2009. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Journal of East-West Thought

MOU ZONGSAN’S TRANSLATION OF HÖLDERLIN’S “WITHDRAWAL OF GOD” AND HIS POLITICAL UTOPIA

Steven Chang

Abstract: In the essay Lun Shangdi Yintui [On the Withdrawal of God], Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) recontexulized the concept of “withdrawal of God,” a constant theme repeatedly appearing in Hölderlin’s writing, within a set of Confucian literary and cultural parameters, thus inventing for this concept new readers and challenging the long established Confucian tradition of “ ren he yi” [the unity of heaven and man]. This transformation has important bearing on Mou’s . Though recognized by many scholars as a political utopia, Mou’s political philosophy embodies a utopian impulse that goes beyond the realizable and actualizable in order to bring a fantastic power of transgressing limiting boundaries. In this sense, we find Mou’s political philosophy a plausible one and certainly worthy of our reexamination.1

Forewords

During the years of 1949 to 1966, in order to express their dismay towards the Communists-dominated China and the predominant acceptance of Western-style science and philosophy as the only way towards Chinese modernization, which were advocated mainly by May Fourth iconoclasts, the Neo-Confucian intellectuals, such as , Mou Zongsan, and Tang Junyi, published together a biweekly magazine, the Critique of Democracy (Min Zhu Ping Lun民主評論) and vowed to defend and revitalize the value of Confucian heritage. This magazine was considered the best channel at that time employed by these Chinese exiles to express their views and angst against the and to show their desire to integrate both the Chinese and Western traditions. The main subject matter of this magazine lies in its hybrid nature of encompassing not only the comparison of cultures the East and the West but also the translation and transformation of the philosophical ideas imported from the West. At this juncture, this essay intends to discuss the article, “On the Withdrawal of God”2, written by Mou Zongsan in the year of 1953 and his translation and transformation of the ideas of some important figures, such as Hölderlin and Heidegger, and indicates what impact this cross-cultural transformation had been made and to what extent this might be relevant to the later development of

 STEVEN CHANG, PhD student of Translation Studies, National Normal University (NTNU), Taipei. Email: [email protected]. 1 An earlier and much briefer version of this paper was presented at an international symposium on ‘Cross-Cultural Studies’ hosted by Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan in 2014. Subsequently, an expanded version was presented at the Winter Doctoral Workshop in Asian Studies at UC Berkeley in 2016. I am grateful to many distinguished scholars who provided their comments and suggestions. 2 Mou Zongsan, “On the Withdrawal of God” (Lun Shangdi Yintuei), collected in The Complete Works of Mou Zongsan, 2003 a.

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Mou’s philosophy.

I. Mou’s Transformation of Hölderlin’s Withdrawal of God and the Relationship between Heaven and Man

The article “On the Withdrawal of God” was written in 1953, in which Mou focused on the concepts raised up in Heidegger’s influential commentaries on Hölderlin’s poetry. Heidegger’s commentaries were taken from two articles, “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung” (1936), also translated as “Hölderlin and the of Poetry”, and “Heimkunft/An die Verwandten (1944)” which was translated into English as “Remembrance of the Poet.” In the two essays, Heidegger proposed his own views about the relations between God and man. Interestingly, just a year before Mou published this paper, Tang Junyi had published a paper “On Heidegger’s ”3 talking about Heidegger’s philosophy and Hölderlin’s poetry. Since the Neo-Confucian thinkers worked quite closely at the time and tended to draw a comparison between the Western and Chinese cultural traditions, it is reasonable to assume Mou Zongsan may have read Tang’s paper in 1952 from which he had the inspiration to form his argumentation about the issue of God and man in his article. It is also interesting to note that Tang’s understanding towards Heidegger’s commentaries on Hölderlin was from his reading of Werner Brock’s introductory essay on Heidegger in the same book edited by Brock (Tang, 1978, 106). In addition, these two essays discussing Hölderlin’s poetry, Remembrance of the Poet and Hölderlin and the Essence of poetry, were translated by Douglas Scott and commented by Brock in the first half section of this book. Basically, Mou’s renditions of Hölderlin’s writing are the results of the following steps of cross-cultural transmission: Hölderlin wrote the poetry where the theme of Der Fehl des Gottes was expressed, Heidegger wrote the commentaries and argued our world-age is signified by “the lack of God” or “the absence of God,” Douglas Scott translated the German Der Fehl des Gottes into English as “the failure of God,” and then Werner Brock adopted this translation in his introductory book “ and Being,” then Tang Junyi rendered it into Chinese as “shangdi yintuei上帝隱退,” and finally Mou Zongsan adopted Tang’s term but transformed it into “shangdi gueiji上帝歸寂” or “God’s return to silence.” What I am concerned about here is to what extent the Chinese intellectuals might react when they encountered a metaphor as such in the 1950s. Since the first English translation of Heidegger’s essays on Hölderlin appeared in 1949, Tang and Mou’s introduction of ‘the withdrawal of god’ seems to be a new concept at the time. Did most Chinese scholars understand the metaphor and its underlying historical background in the West? Did they know how God can withdraw himself? Did this have anything to do with the revitalization of the Confucian discipline later on in Taiwan and Hong Kong? Mou’s recontextualization of Hölderlin’s metaphor within the Confucian

3 Tang Junyi, “On Heidegger’s Existentialism” (Shu Heidegger zhi Cunzai Zhexue), originally published in New Thoughts (Xin Chao), Vol. 17-18 in 1952, later collected in Introduction of Philosophy, 1978, Vol. 2, pp.648-709.

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context seemed to further complicate the acceptance of the idea in the Chinese community. Now let’s focus on Mou’s transformation of “withdrawal of God” into “God’s return to silence”. In Chinese tradition, God is termed equally as the heavenly di 帝or Shangdi 上帝, or the king in the heaven in contrast with the king on the earth. Shangdi lives in the heaven or tian天in Chinese and is worshipped by people in the rites-and-music ritual tradition. According to the oracle-bone inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, di or shangdi would “give orders to people like the king on the earth” and “he has his own royal court, officials, and messengers who are all at his service.” (Chen, 1956, 572) However, if people wanted to communicate with di or shangdi, they had to rely on the wu-shamans to be the mediators for them to understand the oracles and the orders shangdi gave. In order to monopolize the rights to be the sole mediator between God and man, the earthly king, through the assistance of the wu-shamans, claimed he was endowed with the (tian ming 天命) or the divine right to rule so as to secure the legitimacy of his rule as well as his status as the representative of heaven as well as his people. (Yu, 2014, 42) However, after the axial breakthrough the idea of mandate of heaven had been changed. The individuals could reply on themselves to seek for the knowledge about the universe and life. For example, Confucius claimed himself understood his mandate of heaven at fifty years old. Zhuangzi even made an astonishing remarks that “when I speak of being a coworker with heaven, I know the son of heaven and myself are equally regarded as the sons of heaven.” (ibid. 43) Therefore, the earthly king no longer had the monopoly of the medium of heaven and man, and this had led to the collapse of the wu-shamanism system. Accordingly, the emphasis of the post-axial philosophical thinking was on the ability of “inner transcendence” of each individual rather than on the rituals or rites earthly king or wu-shamans demanded, thus indicating the formulation of a new relationship between heaven and man. It is also because of the new heaven-man relationship we see the continuities as well as the discontinuities in this new formulation. One thing we are sure about is that the issue of heaven and man or shangdi and man has long been rooted in the Chinese tradition and philosophical debates. As Qian Mu aptly says in his last essay published in 1989: “The correspondence between heaven and man is the most fundamental concept in the whole Chinese tradition.” (Qian, 2001, 376-378) In Chinese tradition, the relationship between heaven and man is described by Yu Yingshih as a transformation from the religion-political relation that the king is the divine inheritor of heaven and the ruler of the human world to a philosophical turn that treats of the relation between heaven and man from the spiritual illumination to a philosophical way of seeking for the meaning of life. (Yu, 2014) The time of a tremendous turn occurs in the , or in the Warring periods, that the teachers of different disciplines reacted actively to the world they were living in and tried to express their views in response to the challenges they encountered. This kind of spiritual liberation provided the fertile ground for intellectual development that made the human beings no longer blindly followed the orders of heaven but became more consciously aware of the relation between heaven and man.

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As Burton Watson says, by citing Xunzi, a distinguished disciple of Confucius, “Xunzi interpreted all the ancient sacrificial rites of the Chinese as mere aesthetic exercises intended not for the benefit of the spirits but for the edification of the living.” (Watson, 1985, 15) The idea of “Mandate of Heaven” is to emphasize men’s own social responsibility, not heaven, thereby elevating . The influential Confucian master Dong Zongshu is famous for his advocacy of the theory of “Tianren Ganying” or the “correspondence between heaven and man” which strikes a similar note in this metaphor as that appears in the 17th century English literature where there was a trend of comparing the nature as the macrocosm and the man as the microcosm and there was a direct correspondence between the two. (Tillyard, 1988) However, Dong’s student Sima Qian has quite different views from his teacher. As a matter of fact, Sima Oian’s concept of heaven, as the modern scholar Xu Fuguan notes, regards heaven as an unreliable and mysterious myth compared with Dong’s idea that treats of heaven’s cosmological theories assigning particular influence on men. (Xu, 1980, 88) So it can be seen the idea of heaven and man has been debated and evolved with times in Chinese tradition. It can also be argued that these are all the testimonies of the continuities and discontinuities of the interaction between wu-shamanistic rituals and the development of Chinese spirituality.

II. The Inscription of Withdrawal of God into the Confucian Tradition

Given the abundant influence of Western cultures in the modern times, the contemporary Neo-Confucian thinkers can have a more direct access to the idea of heaven and man from the West and the importation of this idea has been translated, transformed, and reinterpreted into Chinese community, in which the Western idea has been domestically inscribed and been put in a new bottle, thereby producing a highly mixed text that involves the interpretations not only from Chinese readers’ own cultural tradition but also from their understanding towards the Western concepts. As we know that the Neo-Confucianists tended to have influence on each other at that time, we may assume Mou’s use of the term “return to silence” or “guei ji” 歸寂 in Chinese was borrowed from his predecessor of Confucian discipline. Following the line of this reasoning, there seems to be a high possibility that Mou’s use of the term “guei ji” was adopted from Liang Shu-Ming’s idea mentioned in his book Eastern and Western cultures and Their published in 19214. In this book, Liang discusses the idea of Ren仁, or benevolence in Confucianism, and advocates the concept of ‘silence’ as the best means to ‘develop the initial good intuitive impulse through the practices of silence’(靜中養出端倪) and ‘return to silence for one can have a direct connectedness between himself and the world’ (歸寂以通天下之感). (Liang, 2002, 162) Liang also argues that the idea of ‘silence’ (寂/靜) does not purely come from Buddhism but has already existed in the roots of Confucianism itself.

4 Please see the newly published version in 2002. It should also be noted that though there is no direct evidence to prove that Mou got this idea from Liang, Liang’s ideas in his book undoubtedly has profound impact on the new Confucian thinkers.

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Nevertheless, Liang ostensibly borrows this term from Buddhism and Mou uses it as a metaphor to show the sense of alienation frequently felt in the souls of human beings has led to the absence of God and pushes God to return to the state of silence. Mou also uses a parallel analogy to describe the separation of God and man as a separation between “the realm of appearance”(in Chinese, shi, literally ‘events’ or ‘occurrences’ 事法界) and “the realm of reality” (in Chinese, li, literally means ‘reason’ and ‘indicates some kind of underlying law or principle’理法界), or in Mou’s famous terms borrowed from Kant, the divide between ‘the phenomenal world’ and ‘the noumenal world’. What puzzles me in this metaphor is the transformation of the image of the Western deity into a Chinese moral saint who seems to have been practicing “the discipline of silence” (jing de gong fu靜的工夫). Or put it more radically, we may imagine from Mou’s translation that a Western God is wearing a Chinese kāṣāya and practicing the “Zen Gong Fu” ( 禪 工 夫 ). This kind of cross-cultural hybridity undoubtedly has its attraction but may also brings a huge challenge to the Chinese readers if they want to know what the German original really means. This is what James St. André and Peng Hsiao-yen (2011, 11) highlight that translation as a “pivot language” that helps a concept in both Europe and China undergo a cross-cultural transmission and transformation to which more attention should be paid. Indeed, from the Renaissance onwards, the West has been through a series of transformations that human subjectivity has been placed highly that has increased the momentum towards the development of modernization. And yet, as can be seen, the modern society has tainted with all sorts of problems, defects and human-caused disasters. Seeing all the miseries that are so shocking and unbearable, Hölderlin, to his dismay, accordingly points out the “failure of God” in his poetry. Witnessing the decadence of civilization in countless wars and conflicts in modern times, Nietzsche audaciously talks about the “death of God.” Instead of holding such a pessimistic view towards humanism, Mou argues that God’s absence is not as miserable as assumed. On the contrary, it may serve as an incentive for human beings to rethink what humanity really means and what the relation between God and man is supposed to be. Mou argues that we should not talk about the death of god, because there is no anything as such. We had better say he is ‘dang ling’ (當令) or still ‘there’, and his practicing of the ‘silence’ is to maintain the ‘pure subjectivity,’ or in Mou’s metaphor by alluding to Taoism, the idea of “standing alone, undergoing no slight change, and reaching everywhere unceasingly (獨立而不改，始能周行而不殆).” Hölderlin argues that God withholds his presence and the holy names are lacking, so he calls for the return of God. Mou follows it up and says the calling for the return of God is the same as a calling for the return of the pure souls of human beings themselves. So the revelation of God has been withdrawn from man, a godless age. Bewaring of the absence of God, the calling for God’s return does not only recall the memory of the god’s first coming but also admits the distance between god and man is the best means of elevating the souls of man towards the upward transformation himself. So the calling for the return of God is to call the return of man’s own consciousness and his very original integration with the spiritual divine. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost,

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we all know that Adam and Even are dispersed out of the Garden of Eden due to their faulted decision to eat the forbidden fruits. It is not unlike the withdrawal of God and Adam and Eve shall learn more from this punishment. Upon their departure, the Arch-Angel Michael tells them, “To leave this Paradise/but shalt possess/A Paradise within thee/ happier far”. (Milton, 2005, XII. 586) That is because only when God has been withdrawn from man then man can face his own fate without relying on any divine intervention and create his own history. So the ‘felix culpa’ or the ‘happy fall’ strikes a similar note as that of Hölderlin’s idea of the withdrawal of god. Of a great concern to me is to what extent the Chinese intellectuals might react when they encountered a metaphor as such in the 1950s. Since the first English translation of Heidegger’s essays on Hölderlin appeared in 1949, Tang and Mou’s introduction of ‘the withdrawal of god’ seems to be a new concept at the time. Did most Chinese scholars understand the metaphor and its underlying historical background in the West? Did they know how God can withdraw himself? What did they react to Nietzsche’s “death of God”? Given the limited scope of this essay, I don’t attempt to deal with these research questions in such depths. But all in all, we can see Mou was quite sensitive to the latest development of and was quite a rebellious cross-cultural transformer in his specific way of reading. As Mou is well-known for his digestion of Hegel’s in his political philosophy and his transformation of ’s metaphysical philosophy, this article published in 1953 serves to be a preliminary essay for him to explore the relation of heaven and man, phenomenal world and noumenal world. However, in the end of this essay, Mou expresses his dissatisfaction towards Heidegger’s way of reasoning and argues that the Western philosophers cannot touch upon the Confucian concept of “ren” 仁or benevolence and accordingly the calling for the return of God would come to be a total failure. In Mou’s views, the Confucian doctrines are the antidotes for the diseases the human beings have. So the gap between the God and man is not unbridgeable but only can be realized through the practices of ren or the disciplines of Confucianism. By doing so, man would not be kept away from God, or say, the tunnel extending from the phenomenal world to the noumenal world would not be blocked completely. This also seems to repeat the debate between scientism and in the 1920s (ke xuan lun zhan科玄論戰). However, the difference between the two periods is that for the Neo-Confucianists, they were reluctant to witness predominant acceptance of scientism as an all-inclusive system that ironically led to two world wars on the one hand, and they couldn’t tolerate the damage and attack the communists made to the Chinese tradition on the other. That is why Mou emphasized the value of ren in Confucian discipline as a way to escape from the predicament of political turmoil and loss of spirit in life. Through purely theoretical reflections in philosophy, Mou had formulated his own thesis of modern Confucian thinking. This is, of course, very utopian, and Mou’s political philosophy is also full of such utopian impulse.

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III. Mou’s Political Philosophy and his Utopian Impulse

It is argued by Lin Anwu that Mou’s way of reasoning is transcendental and ontological rather than historical and practical in terms of real social and political consideration. While putting what Mou proposes in real social practices, the problems will definitely be ensued. Lin Anwu argues that Western modernization is based on John Lock and Rousseau’s tradition, while Mou’s interpretation of Song-Ming Confucianism is based on the background of the totalitarian rule, the intimacy of familial connectedness and small-scale agricultural economy. (Lin, 1996 a) Therefore, Lin Anwu argues that since the development of Western idea of democracy and science is rooted in its own historical background, Mou’s concern about Chinese modernity should focus on how to learn the Western ideas of democracy and science instead of developing them straightly from the Song-Ming Mind philosophy. If Mou’s philosophy were put into real practice, the emperor-controlled intellectuals would turn slaves and their philosophical thinking would be trapped by the “misplaced Tao,” (Lin, 2003) which means the ignorance of the historical developmental process of a Western concept and the rote application of it into Chinese contemporary sociopolitical development would lead to dire consequences. Lin Anwu proclaims that the correct order of Western sociopolitical concept should be developed in three stages: the historical constitution stage, the theoretical and logic reasoning stage, and the learning and practicing stage. Indeed, “our historical and cultural development is distant from that in the West”, says Lin Yushen, “the concepts, such as ‘democracy’ and ‘science’ that are deeply rooted in and connected with the Western historical and cultural background, are still not familiar to most Chinese people. However, when most Chinese were immersed in the Confucian thoughts and consider morality and self-cultivation as the pillar of political order, the Western democratic countries would take law and social contract as the political order.” (Lin, 1989, 4) Accordingly, Lin Anwu argues that Mou mistook the learning and practicing stage of the Western modernity as the historical constitution stage, thereby the results were in vain while the manifestation of Chinese philosophy was put into real sociopolitical context. (Lin, 1996 b) All in all, Mou’s controversial political philosophy, which is recognized as having the “condition of possibility” but ignoring the “condition of realization” required for modern democracy, is undoubtedly a kind of political utopia. However, being a political utopia may not be as negative as we think. Perhaps some elaborations on the idea of utopia would consolidate my argumentation. I’d also like to show what this utopian impulse can teach us. As a leading scholar in East-West utopian studies, Zhang Longxi’s commentaries may help illustrate this issue. “The desire for utopia is not only universal but perennial,” as Zhang succinctly argues, “as the prospect for a better society lies always ahead, at the end of an ever-receding future in front of us, the end of a new millennium.” (Zhang, 2005, 166) Indeed, “utopia expresses and explores what is desired and the essential element in Utopia is not hope, but desire—the desire for a better way of life”, as Ruth Levitus pointed out, quoted in Zhang’s essay. (ibid. 167) Zhang accordingly expounds his

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views on the utopian vision in the East based on this argument and expands it with Kumar’s viewpoints that “the nature of utopia is in a close relationship to secular thinking”, (ibid., 170) which is compatible with the secularism in , especially the dominant Confucianism in which the focal concern is on the present life and the secular affairs. With this preliminary assumption and analogy, Zhang provides abundant examples to support his argumentation and proves that utopia vision exists in both China and the West. Indeed, Utopia is “first and foremost a work of imaginative fiction in which, unlike other such works, the central subject is the good society,” says Kumar (1991, 27). Depicted as the telling of a story, which explicitly details a fictional society, rather than as a systematic theory, utopia, says Sir Philip Sydney in his Defense of Poetry (1595) by referring to Thomas More’s work, is “an example of the superiority of fiction (poetry) over history in teaching goodness.” (ibid. 24) “The point is clear”, says Kumar, “utopia is primarily a vehicle of social and political speculation rather than an exercise of the literary imagination in and for itself. It meant to engage our sympathies and our desires in the direction favored by the writer.” (ibid. 24) Following this analogy, we may assume there is not a clear cut between a narrative fiction and a systematic social-political theory, such as Marx’s or Rousseau’s. As Kumar points out, “all social theories deals in imaginary worlds where impossibly pure or ideal principles reign,” and in this case, the fictional attribute of “social theory does not in this respect differ much from the fiction of utopia.” (ibid. 31) However, Kumar also highlights the prerequisite as well as the restriction of the utopian theory, for one is its belief that “human is perfectible” and the other is the pessimistic view that utopia can be merely habituated in the “speaking picture” rather than in a realm of social practices. As far as the first notion is concerned, Kumar argues that “utopians do not necessarily believe in the natural goodness of man…but they do believe in his more or less indefinite malleability.” So “there is nothing in man, nature or society”, says Kumar, “that cannot be so ordered as to bring about a more or less permanent state of material plenty, social harmony and individual fulfillment.” (ibid. 29) The second notion is that utopia and formal social theory are separated by a “fundamental difference in their modes of social analysis.” “In utopia we are shown the good society in operation, supposedly the results of certain general principles of social organization; while in conventional social and political theory, we are told that the good society will follow from the application of the relevant general principles.” (ibid. 31) The result is once the abstract social theory is put into practice, it often leads to quite different societies, such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and William Morris’s News from Nowhere. (ibid.) It is also the reason that “human beings will constantly seek, even against their own best interest, to evade laws and institutional norms”, argues Kumar. “Human social order”, says Kumar, “is a constant battle against selfishness and the plunge into anarchy.” (ibid. 29) Accordingly, the utopia or the desire for a better society does not lie in the realization of social-political theory, no matter how well it seems to be. That is why Chang Hao made a critique on the insinuated manifestations of dark consciousness, or one’s consciousness of the darkness within humans, in Confucianism because they are overshadowed by the stress on the achievability of sagehood and the belief that one

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can achieve “the inner sageness and outer kingness” through the practice of Confucian ren discipline. (Chang, 1992)

Conclusion

That also keeps us alert of “the danger of grand ideas, including that of utopia,” says Zhang Longxi, and “we must realize that there should always be a gap between the ideal and the real, between utopia as a concept and the reality of social and political life.” (Zhang, 2005, 213) As Zhang aptly puts, “perhaps it is one of the most cruel ironies or dialectics in history that the hope for a perfect society contains the very seed of its negation, that the belief in human nature as essentially good should have elicited the worst of human greed for power and domination. And yet, humanity cannot give up the hope for a better society. (ibid.) It is quite true that Confucius once complained that “no one understands me” (xiv: 35). One of his disciples observes: “The gentleman takes in office in order to do his duty. As for putting the Way into practice, he knows all along that it is hopeless” (xviii:7). (Confucius, 1979) This unattainable goal of seeking for the realization of his ideal society and the historical and mythical past has created a kind of “utopian distance,” as Douwe Fokkema puts, and there is always a gap between his concept of perfect virtue and its realization. (Fokkema, 2012, 169) Therefore, Confucius always has an urge to create a blueprint for a better future, though he knows it will not guarantee a successful result. So a gatekeeper in the Analects remarks about Confucius that “he keeps working towards a goal the realization of which he knows to be hopeless” (xiv: 38). The spirit of Confucius’s has provided us a good example to reflect on what the contemporary new Confucian scholars are currently conducting, either be it the guarding of Mou Zongsan’s legacy via a continuation of Mou’s ways of philosophizing or an establishment of a new theory as a response to Mou’s theory. Their efforts to sustain the Chinese tradition and a new transformation in face of the Western challenges in the age of globalization should be applauded. However, it is just like what the critique made in utopian thought that although thinkers as Rousseau, Owen, Saint-Simon and Marx all wrote their own “utopian cannon,” says Manuels, “but none of these thinkers wrote a ‘speaking picture utopia,’ a utopian proper, a story of the ideal society.”5 In line of this argument, I would argue that none of the contemporary Chinese philosophers write their own theories in such vivid and telling discourse. In short, they do not have “a speaking utopia” but most of them focus on the construction of theories. In regard to why the preaching of morality and virtue, benevolence and in Chinese philosophical tradition cannot constitute a democratic and modern China, scholars as the following have shown their dismay: Yu Yingshih’s “anti-intellectual orientation in Chinese intellectual tradition,” (Yu, 1976) Fu Weixun’s “single in Chinese tradition,” (Fu, 1986) Lin Yusheng’s “fallacy of Chinese morality,” (Lin, 1989) Zhang Hao’s “a lack of dark consciousness in the

5 Quoted from Kumar, “The Boundaries of Utopia,” from Utopianism (Minnesota, 1991), pp.27.

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Confucian tradition,” (Chang, 1992) Mou Zongsan’s “a lack of rationale function in Chinese philosophy,” (Mou b, 2003) and Lin Anwu’s “misplaced Tao in Chinese philosophy.” (Lin, 2003) All of these arguments were made in response to the crisis the contemporary Chinese intellectuals have faced, for they are wondering why the ideal goals of Confucianism would be alienated into a distorted one, manipulated as a tool by the emperors or the dictators to control or limit one’s free will. Why the Confucian ideals that “disciplining yourself to act according to the rites” (克己復禮) would be degenerated into “the rites that kill people” (以禮殺人) which was grievously argued by Lu Xun and Hu Shih. In response to this issue, a number of Chinese scholars have made an emotional appeal for the restoration of the fundamental spirit in Chinese tradition, such as Liu Shuxian (1989), Cai Renhou (1982), Cheng Chungying (1990), (1989), Wang Bangxiong (1983), ect. Accordingly, both Chinese and the Western intellectuals are all aware of this crisis and the issue that why the vision towards an ideal world seems to be contaminated and downgraded into a distorted one. Why the theories for an ideal society advocated by the ancient saints and many other great thinkers in the modern times, cannot produce a real “paradise” in the real world? Perhaps it only lies in the tension between the ideal and real, theoretical and practical, there appears the utopian desire, a desire for a better world, also an uncompromised desire to keep looking for a better future. In various pronouncements of the ‘end’ or ‘death’ of utopia at the preset times, Mou Zongsan’s idea of philosophizing has reminded us the passion and desire that long have been lost in our generation, the passion for a better society and a desire for a better future. It is only within the pendulum that swings from what is considered unattainable to what is conceptually imaginable, we see the utopian impulse that goes beyond the realizable and actualizable in order to bring a fantastic power of transgressing limiting boundaries. Mou Zongsan’s political philosophy is in this sense a life elixir of culture and certainly worthy of our reexamination.

References

Cai, Renhou. 1982. The Spiritual Direction of (Xing Rujia de Jingshen Fangxiang). Taipei: Xueshe shuju. Chang, Hao. 1992. Dark Consciousness and the Democratic Tradition (Youan Yishi yu Minzhu Chuantong). Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., Ltd. Cheng, Chungying. 1990. A Comprehensive Discussion on the Issues of New Contemporary New Confucians in China (Zonglun Xiandai Zhongguo Xing Rujia Zhexue de Jiedin yu Pingjia Wenti). In Xiao, Jiefu & Guo, Qiyong (eds.), Collected Papers of Learning in Treasured Garden: ’s Lifetime and His Learning. Beijing: Sanlian Shudian. Chen, Meng-jia. 1956. The General Discussion on the Oracle-bone Inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty (Yinxu Buci Zongshu). Beijing: Kexue Publishing House. Confucius. 1979. The Analects (LunYu). Trans. D.C.Lau. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Fokkema, Douwe. 2012. Perfect Worlds: Utopian Fiction in China and the West. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Fu, Weixun. 1986. From Western Philosophy to Zen Buddhism (Cong Xifang ZeXue Dao Chanfou Jiao). Taipei: Dongda Publisher. Heidegger, Martin.1949. Existence and Being. Ed. and Intro. Werner Brock. Indiana: Gateway

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Editions. Kumar, Krishan. 1991. Utopianism. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Liang, Shu-Ming. 2002. Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi Fang Wenhua Jichi Zhexue). Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Bookstore. Lin, Anwu. 1996 a. Contract, Freedom and Historical Thinking (Chiyue Zhiyo Yu Lishixing Siwei). Taipei: Yoshi publisher. Lin, Anwu. 1996 b. A Philosophical Investigation of Ruxue in Traditional Chinese Society (Ruxue yu Zhongguo Chuantong Shehui Zhi Zhexue Xingcha). Taipei: Yoshi Pulisher. Lin, Anwu. 2003. A Misplaced Tao: The Fundamental Problem in Chinese Political Philosophy (Tao de Cuozhi: Zhongguo Zhengzhi Sixiang de Genben Kunjie). Taipei: Xuesheng Bookstore. Lin, Yushe. 1989. Political Order and Pluralistic Society (Zhengzhi Zhixu yu Duoyuan Shehui). Taipei: Lianjing. Liu, Shu-hsien. 1989. Mainland and Overseas: Reflections on Tradition and its Transformation (Dalu yu Haiwai: Chuantong de Fanxing yu Zhuanhua). Taipei: Yunchen Wenhua. Milton, John. 2005. Paradise Lost. New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company. Mou, Zongsan. 2003 a. The Complete Works of Mou Zongsan (Mou Zongsan Xianshen Quanji). Vol. 9. Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., Ltd. Mou, Zongsan. 2003 b. The way of Government and the Way of Rule (Zhengdao yu Zhidao). Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., Ltd. Qian, Mu. 2001. The World Situation and Chinese Culture (Shijie Jushi Han Zhongguo Wenhua). Taipei: Sushulou Publisher. St. André, James and Peng, Hsiao-Yen (Eds.). 2011. China and Its Others: Knowledge Transfer Through Translation, 1829-2010. Amsterdam: Ropodi. Tang, Junyi. 1978. Introduction of Philosophy (Zhexue Gailun). Vol.2. Taipei: Taiwan Student Bookstore. Tillyard, E. M. W. 1988. The Elizabethan World Picture. New York: Vintage Books. Tu, Weiming. 1989. The Problem in the Future for the Third Stage Development of Confucianism (Ruxue Disan Chi Fazhan de Chianjing Wenti). Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., Ltd. Wang, Banxiong. 1983. “To see how Contemporary New Confucianism is developed under China’s Modernization Process” (Cong Zongguo Xiandai Hua Guochen Zhong Kan Dangdai Xing Rujia de Jingshen Kaizhan). Ehu, Vol. 9/4: 2-10. Watson, Burton. 1985. Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China. New York: Columbia University Press. Xu, Fuguan. 1980. On Shiji (Lun Shiji). In Du Weiyun & Chen Jingzhong (Eds.), Essays on the History of Chinese Historiography (Zhongguo Shixueshi Lunwenji). Taipei: Huashi Publisher. Yu, Yingshih.1976. History and Thought (Lishi yu Sixiang).Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., Ltd. Yu, Yingshih. 2014. On Heaven and Man: The Inquiry into the Origin of the Chinese Ancient Thoughts (Lun Tianren Zhiji:Zhongguo Gudai Sixiang Qiyuan Shitan). Taipei: Linking Publishing Co., Ltd. Zhang, Longxi. 2005. Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West. New York: Cornell University Press.

Journal of East-West Thought

CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART AS A PRODUCT AND REFLECTION OF GLOBALISATION IN CULTURE1

Rafał Banka

Abstract: At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, China underwent an important social transformation, which was among others manifested by the renouncement of revolutionary in both art and everyday life. As a result, one can observe the emergence of a new, pluralistic culture, which nowadays appears to combine the unfinished modernist project with postmodernity. The mutual defining of these two factors constitutes also an important aspect of the ongoing Chinese globalisation within the area of culture, where the global is modified by the local, and concurrently the latter invalidates the identity of the former. This article describes the relation between these two factors in the field of contemporary Chinese art. The analysis of selected artworks by Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing, MadeIn, Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei and Wang Qingsong serves as a departure point of assessing whether the new cultural quality constitutes strong distortion of Chinese aesthetic order or is a new challenge it has to confront.1

I. Introduction

Contemporary culture does not constitute a particularly static object of studies. Considering this, reflection upon cultural phenomena requires combining its various stages and parts. A theory by the political philosopher Francis Fukuyama can serve as an example. He shows that the current pessimism resulting from the political and rational crisis in the first half of the 20th century, manifested by previous ideological wars seems to reach its end (Fukuyama 1992: xiii). At this point he refers to Hegel’s vision of history, which he modifies for his needs of presenting a certain direction of development of political systems worldwide. Although Fukuyama concedes that Hegel himself was not an advocate of democracy and liberalism, it is political institutions that he expected to see the embodiment of liberty. Apart from this, his views are reconcilable with civil society as well as economic-political activity of humans beyond the state control (Fukuyama 1992: 60-61). Translating into political philosophy, the direction of changes is characterized by the democratization of the social sphere and liberalization of life. Fukuyama understands liberalism as liberating individuals from unnecessary governmental involvement in the areas of life which are related to their views and being as a particular person. As regards democracy, it has to be conceived of as „the right of all citizens to have a share of political power, that is,

 Dr. RAFAL BANKA, Faculty of Philosophy, Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations, Jagiellonian University, Kradow, Poland. Email: [email protected]. 1 The paper was originally published in Polish under the title: ‘Współczesna sztuka chińska jako produkt i obraz globalizacji w kulturze’, in in Anna I. Wójcik, Piotr Mróz, Małgorzata Ruchel (eds.), Kultury Wschodu w świecie procesów globalizacyjnych (Eastern Cultures in the World of Globalisation Processes), Kraków: Libron, pp. 171-194.

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the right of all citizens to vote and participate in politics “(Fukuyama 1992: 43). Fukuyama holds that the analysis of recent 400 years history leads to the conclusion that the direction and completion of state governments development lies in compounding the above trends, i.e. liberal democracy (Fukuyama 1992: 48). Considering the above, the above views should also apply to China. Following Fukuyama’s interpretation, according to which states pursue liberal democracy, there comes the question: what is China’s current position at this trajectory? A positive answer is certainly supported by the free market policy and China’s entering the global economy circulation. However, it does not constitute the sufficient condition to state that China is a state which pursues liberal democracy, and if this were the case, to what extent it can achieve it. Fukuyama himself notices the counter-argument that states development, irrespective of cultural circle, towards liberal democracy can be accused of ethnocentrism. It can be made more precise by asking why the Euro-American model should enjoy the status of the only correct system, as well as why non-Western countries should necessarily pursue liberalization and democratization (Fukuyama 1992: 69). The criticism seems to be well-grounded in its fundamental meaning that the direction of development and the end of history is merely a product of a regional culture. This argument can also be strengthened with the statement that even if we agree on liberal democracy’s being an attractive regional culture product that could win advocates of applying it in various civilizations, its adaptive potential in the case of a different cultural context with a differently ‘thought’ history remains unknown. If we suspend the assessment of Fukuyama’s historical finale, or a more modest version concerning the direction of political systems development, and concentrate on facts, we can state that China consciously develops free market economy. The situation is also related to the fact that after return in late 1970s the ideological orientation in politics was supplanted with economical one. In Fukuyama’s opinion, China after has undergone a transformation from totalitarian to authoritarian state, which equips it in the potential of becoming a liberal democracy state. 2 Parallelly to the important for political philosophy transformation, it is also a moment when culture has become liberated from totalitarian dictate. Mao’s China was culture-wise obliged to realize Marxist aesthetics, understood at that time as expressing revolutionary . Resigning from the ideological primate naturally entailed the abolishment of centrally planned aesthetics, which was of monumental dimension in the sense of expressing the communist society aims, concurrently erasing the individualist aspect. The 1980s bring a rapid qualitative change, described as ‘aesthetic fever’.3 The beginnings of aesthetics liberated from institutions can be described in a twofold way. Firstly, the monolithic discourse of social realism becomes replaced with aesthetic pluralism. It can be confirmed by, e.g. the activity of various artistic formations which

2 Fukuyama holds that totalitarian systems are “invulnerable to change or reform” (Fukuyama 1992: 9). Contrarily to them, authoritarian states can be transformed into . 3 Chin. meixue re 美學熱.

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identified themselves with chan 禪 aesthetics, were inspired with Western artistic trends, or artists pursuing something completely new.4 This causes the final breakage of great narration of the communist China aesthetics. Aesthetic pluralism in Contemporary China can be characterized by departing from monumentality and shifting interest among others to the workaday life sphere, which makes another important feature of the post-revolutionary aesthetics. It can be caustically stated that aesthetic pluralism has reached the masses. It means that the aesthetic revaluation is not reserved for art and it has encompassed everyday life as well. The pluralization penetrates into the social process dynamics, and we can risk a statement that it has become a more sensitive indicator of Chinese people aesthetic life than it used to be during the revolutionary aesthetics dictate. It needs to be added that the everyday life aesthetics was not a marginal phenomenon comparing to artistic events. Breaking out from the limitations of revolutionary asceticism was followed by expressive diversity of individuality previously suppressed by collectivism (Li 2006: 23-24). Therefore, aesthetic pluralization in everyday life sphere is a result of social reaction, independent from reflection generated in the realm of art. We also have to be aware of the parallel process taking place in post-revolutionary Chinese society. The transmission from central planning to free market economy resulted not only in private enterprise but also consumerist society, whose generic consumerism consists in saturating itself among others with culture. As regards the perception of cultural offer, gradually but concurrently fast the high and low culture border became dissolved, which found outlet in, e.g. commercial film productions based on classical literature. Overcoming the aesthetic monolith dictate as well as commercialization brings the question whether Chinese culture, analogically with Western, has become postmodern. Answers by social and cultural theoreticians are positive on a general level. However, it has to be noticed that there is a difference concerning how postmodernity in Chinese version should be understood or what is decisive in that it can simply be recognized as a counterpart of the Western one. According to Wang Ning, Chinese postmodernity manifests itself on three layers: post-structuralist discourse, contesting modernity and consumerist culture (2000: 25). This could suggest achieving at least a certain stage which qualifies Chinese culture as transcending modern and ideological discourse, as well as commodification of certain cultural areas. Wang confirms the latter by remarking that proceeding to socialist market economy was reflected mostly in the so-called elite culture, which with varied success takes up the challenge of new cultural landscape. On the other hand, the weakening of strongly modernist cultural canon results in , especially in the field of literature and art (Wang 2000: 27). Liu Kang presents a more moderate standpoint than Wang by agreeing that although China is under the postmodern influence, we cannot talk about its being entirely dominated. To justify this diagnosis, he proposes a triple perspective of politics as economy, ideology and post politics (Liu 2000: 126-127). Not only does it

4 The latter ones were described by Gao Minglu as the avant-garde ones (2011: 4-5).

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reveal the inhomogeneous dimension but also the fact that the global-postmodern project has not been entirely completed (if we can assume its purposiveness). As Liu mentions later in the text, the tension between revolutionary ideology and its lack assumes the shape of struggle for establishing its symbolic capital (Liu 2000: 130). However, we have to bear in mind that promoting cultural capital does not necessarily constitute a modernist project. Assuming that the current authorities identify themselves with the ideological option, we reach contradiction which results from the very authorities promoting ideologically foreign free market economy and consumption, or even consumerism. As Leslie Holmes remarks, the Chinese authorities exercise a eudaemonic system (Holmes 1997: 120). It guarantees social stability as well as unshaken governance, regardless of incompatibility with the official doctrine. Considering this, perhaps the ideological debates can be interpreted as a media spectacle hovering above capitalist foundations. Despite this, it still seems impossible to dismiss the fact that the authorities constitute a static dictatorship, in the face of which the status quo cannot be labelled post politics. It is also worth noticing that Chinese postmodern culture is most evident in its irony and experimentalism, which successfully blur not only the traditional Chinese culture narration but also that of the times immediately preceding and concurrently overlapping with contemporaneity. The situation can also be referred to the political realm. Tradition, most strongly represented by Confucian culture, and Marxism being ideologies5 functioning as great narrations not only confront the postmodern ‘alien body’ but also each other. Both options strive to impose their ideological , which in practice however results as their interfusion. We can especially see it as a certain state matrix originating from Confucian political philosophy, which advocates centralized authority and meritocracy. Despite the fact that the polarized political options are merged, it seems that Chinese post politics is still a project in the making rather than status quo. The matured diagnosis of China’s postmodern condition seems to be propounded by Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu in his paper ‘Global Post-Modernization: the Intellectual, the Artist, and China’s Condition’. He observes that Chinese postmodernity makes a different category than its Western counterpart. Firstly, the Chinese variant breaks the Euro-American chronology because of overlapping with the unfinished modernist project. According to Lu, the temporal dislocation should not question the postmodern status; quite the contrary, it makes it a more plentiful variety (Lu 2000: 146) than Western chronological postmodernity. As far as the political sphere is concerned, the ideology diverges from the capitalist free market economy. At the same time, the dichotomy does not apply to the workaday life beyond politics and ideology (Lu 2000: 146). This interpretation allows to explain the coexistence of to

5 It has to be remembered that Confucianism had been institutionalised for ages in imperial China. The official exams can serve as an example. The exam material to be mastered by the examinee included The Four Books (The Analects, The Mencius, The , The ), compiled by the neo-Confucian philosopher (1130-1200). Being part of the administrative-political body in China was necessarily connected with being well-versed in Confucian classics.

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some extent belated sphere and society plunged in mature, verging on the excessive consumption. It can be stated that Lu’s interpretation juxtaposes the unfinished past with beginning future against the background of present reality, by means of which the modernist and ‘chronological’ postmodern projects are nullified by ‘postmodernity with Chinese characteristics’. Comparing Liu and Wang, Lu shows that the current state of affairs already prejudges Chinese postmodernity. Although Lu is aware of the alternative postulated by some contemporary Chinese intellectuals who wish to continue the modernist project, such as one in the spirit of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Lu 2000: 147), it seems very unlikely that options of this sort are capable of redefining the current discourse. The above account of the Chinese postmodern condition enables to put forward hypotheses concerning contemporary Chinese art. Firstly, it is part of the global art circulation thanks to surpassing previous narrations, not only as a result of Western art impact. Secondly, we should be able to discern in it temporal dislocation in the shape of the unfinished modernist project. The simultaneous occurrence of modernity and postmodernity on Chinese grounds can be regarded as a certain variant of the globalization process taking place in the area of culture. The unfinished modernist project in China is ideology, the concretion of which is close to dictatorship, or at least central control of certain spheres of life. Despite supervening on a different social foundation, it can be deemed to be a continuation of previous political narration. This makes the current ideology a sui generis local cultural formation that participates in the dominating globalization process. Following Arjun Appadurai, globalization is not uniformization in a specific cultural paradigm (e.g. Americanization) or cultural neutralization but a localized process (Appadurai 2005: 17). In connection with this, locality is not ultimately erased and becomes an element that influences globalization process. In such a situation the modernist project participation determines the character of globalised China culture tissue. For clarity, it has to be mentioned that the modernist element is described as such because of its history and not its actual status. By becoming an integral element of the postmodern culture tissue, its earlier identity becomes detached from its modernist essence. Thanks to this it functions as locality contribution influencing the globalization process. However, the above mentioned confrontation of the unfinished modernist and postmodernist projects can be explained by intensive (in comparison with Western postmodernity) presence of the former, which gives the impression of its being literally unfinished. Despite this it seems that by functioning within the postmodern globalization ‘order’, the modernist element is something which corresponds to non-veridical perception. In further part of the paper I am going to discuss selected contemporary artworks approach globalization with special concern for the locality element, which allows to assess the character of the process in China. The discussion is intended to, on the one hand, focus on the Chinese characteristics of the process, and, on the other, to attempt at assessing how advanced it is.

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II. Ideological Nivelation: Wang Guangyi’s Political Pop

An example which is worth attention because of combining the modernist project with postmodern art is Political Pop.6 Although the phenomenon was constituted by the end of the 1980s, there had been artists who previously created artworks of a similar kind. Political Pop artists included among others Wang Guangyi 王廣義 (b. 1957), Sheng Qi 盛奇, Ren Jian 任戩 or Li Shan 李山, the most important of whom is regarded the first one. Wang Guangyi determined the trend of Political Pop not only with his artworks. In 1988, at the Modern Art Conference,7 he presented his own artistic manifesto, where he both criticised Marxist art as well as his contemporary avant-garde, which he thought to be utopian. Wang parted with the humanist ethos of art and announced that artistic activity serves financial benefits and winning fame (Gao 2011: 256). Excusing art from spreading humanistic or metaphysical values for the benefit of shifting it to the sphere of consumption shows that by the end of the 1980s there comes a strong revaluation. Not only does it consist in disconnecting art from meanings but also endowing it with a status of game, which makes it even more belong to postmodern . Wang’s most representative and concurrently most recognizable work is the series of oil paintings Great Criticism (1990-2007). The name is an allusion to the critique of what contradicts , present in the PRC until the end of the Cultural Revolution. The works ironically handle the socialist propaganda convention of the period, e.g. Coca Cola (1991) presents workers in a typical not only for Chinese but also Soviet propaganda poster imagery. What introduces the ‘pop’ element is situated in the bottom right-hand corner logo of Coca Cola, a pan-cultural beverage-icon of pop culture. Another painting from the series is Chanel No. 5 (1993), in which the perfume advertisement logo co-occurs with a doubled, saluting pair holding in their hand probably enjoying among the Red Guards Bible status Little Red Book8 with Mao Zedong’s quotations. It is not difficult to guess that the intention consists in showing that both of the strategies, advertisement and political propaganda, manipulate human life. However, what makes the works interesting is their composition combining the conventions of advertisement and propaganda, i.e. commercial and political strategies. Apart from analogical juxtaposition of ideology and consumption it is worth having a look on the works as a confrontation of two orders, in which the winner is postmodern commercial pop culture, which subjects the great ideological narration and turns it into game that analogically to advertising strategy is to result in product purchase. The fact of commercialization can additionally be confirmed by extra-artistic functioning of Wang’s paintings, which are sold at high prices on art market,9 which realizes his manifesto not only in terms of work creation but also its functioning in art

6 Chin. Zhengzhi Bopu 政治波譜. 7 Chin. Xiandai Yishu Yantanhui 現代藝術研討會. 8 Chin. Hongbaoshu 紅寶書. 9 E.g. Campbell Soup (1990), was sold at over 200 thousand dollars. Cf. Ravenel 2014.

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world. Looking at Great Criticism more holistically, its commodification complements the artist’s intention. It shows a new status of works of art, as a result of which the main accent is shifted from the artistic to commercial. Concurrently, Great Criticism is an example of art functioning in global circulation. Wang’s works combine the conventions that are not only present in, e.g. Soviet art’s social realism, but also directly allude to pop art and the very Andy Warhol. It can be testified to by, e.g. Campbell Soup (1990), which is a direct reference to the famous work of the American artist. It shows that Wang remains under the influence of the art beyond the elite-popular division. We should not ignore Wang’s firm position in the world art market, which only confirms his recognition in global, commercial circulation. What identifies Great Criticism with locality is the Chinese propaganda before and after Cultural Revolution. In Wang’s work, it is entirely eradicated from the aesthetics promoting revolutionary values and it is part of a new aesthetics that bases on signs interplay. It seems that in the case of this series of works the signs operate solely on the level of connotation, thanks to which works functioning in a new aesthetic dimension are achieved.

III. Deconstruction of Sign: Xu Bing

Xu Bing’s 徐冰 (b. 1955) art can be characterized with relation complexity of traditional and contemporary traditions. The artist himself in his biography combines several historic periods, if viewing through the prism of aesthetic and artistic transformations. Born to an intellectual background family, sent to the countryside during Cultural Revolution, an active participant of the ‘aesthetic fever’ in the 1980s, having American emigration as well as repatriation experience - all this moulds Xu’s very personal approach to art, the medium of which is script. Since his childhood, Xu has been interested in Chinese characters in terms of expressive and communicative potential. In contrast to most Chinese artists working with script, he creates mainly print works rather than calligraphy. Despite this, his artworks are considerably diverse when viewed from time perspective. New English Calligraphy (1994) is a work which results from the artist’s interest with the English language.10 It combines installation and interactive art. In the exhibition space, Xu creates a classroom, in which the gallery visitors can use special textbooks to learn the new calligraphy writing. They undergo a very similar training to that of Chinese primary school pupils, by filling in the characters stencils. Despite resembling Chinese script, the characters to be mastered are clusters of Roman alphabet letters making up sentences in English. Calligraphy in China is regarded as the most important art genre. The contemporary artist Qiu Zhijie goes even further in his claim that calligraphy is the nucleus of Chinese art and other genres, such as music or painting, are merely a variety of it (Sans 2009: 57). The practice of calligraphy can be generally described as

10 Another work, ABC, uses the English language phonetic stratum.

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transmission at the level of emotions, meaning recording the inner state of the artist at the moment of creating the work. The calligraphy medium is very prone to expression thanks to the free line brushwork, which reaches completeness when combined with the content present in the semantic stratum of the script. Thus harmony is broken in New English Calligraphy, where the typographical aspect is exclusively used by being employed in a different script. It is not the language change that makes the difference. For instance, the sense of calligraphy would be sustained in adapting it to the Japanese language. However, Xu’s work employs the graphic representation calligraphy in the system of abstract speech representation, which additionally distorts the original iconicity of characters. That which is left of Chinese calligraphy functions as an ornament, not a medium of artistic expression. This operation results in the deconstruction of a most traditional art genre, which in New English Calligraphy functions as an ingredient of ‘global’ configuration. Another example of an artwork employing script is Book from the Ground (2003+), which is an ongoing interactive project. It consists mainly of software that enables an internet ‘chat-type’ communication in any language input, which is translated into a language made of iconic signs ruled by the English syntax. The iconicity of signs has deliberately been designed in the way that makes them possibly least saturated with some concrete culture context, thank to which two software users coming from any civilizations and not sharing a common language should effortlessly read the sign language on their computer screens. The work can be interpreted as an intention to establish transcultural communication. However, equally legitimate is the interpretation that Xu’s work is about pancultural communication, which is situated beyond the interactions of local cultures. The new, software-produced target language seems to confirm it because of nullifying the participation of local culture in the stratum of graphic representation. Additionally, the script communication does not involve the phonetic stratum. The pictographic character of signs successfully eliminates all phonetic elements, thank to which syntax can be regarded as the only remnant of locality. Xu conducts linguistic globalization. Analogically with other processes of the same type, the new language does not originate in a linear way of transformations but it is a pansystem resulting from nullifying communication in ethnic languages. The local elements, despite being indispensable in the emergence of the global discourse, have become its material, concurrently losing their identities. Not only does it concern the identity inherent in language. Book from the Ground is an interactive piece, in which communicating people are inseparable. Language quite often stands for cultural distinctiveness manifested by participation in a given language community. However, on the pancultural level, despite inputting in a given language, the pancultural level utterances are no longer labelled linguistic behavior that confirms a ‘local culture’ affiliation. The ethnic languages utterances, on which the global discourse supervenes, are necessarily entangled and jointly constituting utterances which transgress the usual interlinguistic communication. The message, although local on the sender’s side, by its participation in translation into the pancultural script annihilates itself of its original identity, which inevitably results in a ‘post local’ communication.

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IV. CREATIVE PROCESS AS PRODUCTION: MADEIN AND AI WEIWEI

While looking at Wang Du’s 王度 (b. 1956) International Kebab (2008), one has no doubts that it has been inspired and explores globalization. It is an enormously big installation presenting a vertical skewer impaled with decks of various photos. Cutting parallelly to the skewer produces photographical bits and pieces. The content represented by them is mixed and the randomness of new composition does not provide any sense-making key for neither the cut fragments nor the pictures ironically stapled by the kebab rack. The assessment of globalization is made directly within the work in exhibition space. The impact of globalization on art, however, does not necessarily have to mark its presence in the final product, which is an artwork or artistic phenomenon. In many cases, artists create works which do not take up the globalization issue; it is not localized at the very front of the spectator, in the very work, but on the way to it, in the process of creation. An example of art done in this way can be established by Xu Zhen's 徐震 (b. 1977) artistic group-firm MadeIn. The very name ‘MadeIn’ is a most obvious reference to labels present on ‘Made in China’ products. This suggests connotations related to mass production rather than artistic creation, especially the artistic one. However, Xu’s group is active in the area of art, at the same time enjoying the structure of manufacturing company in which an artist is not only a designer but also webpage administrator. As the MadeIn founder himself states, cooperation within company structure was induced among others by the prospects of differentiated production in comparison to individual one, as well as the possibility of development through group work (Sans 2010: 110-111). Interviewed by Jerôme Sans Xu Zhen explains supplanting his own name with that of group-company, which is not too common in the context of artistic activity. The artist does not perceive the danger of losing one’s individuality in this case; quite contrarily, he holds that the group branding provides more freedom, including the opportunity or resorting to what one personally dislikes. In this way, Xu becomes ‘dissolved’ in MadeIn, by which the group products cannot be directly referred to him (Sans 2010: 111). In this case, the creation process does not consist in the realisation of an individual project in the sense of some message or expression of some concrete artist. Thanks to the individual anonymity and name, the artistic process is oriented more at developing a well-selling artistic brand, which in the aspect of internal organisation and image indicates strong the convergence of MadeIn and commercial companies. In this perspective MadeIn, despite dealing with art, moves from its proper area to the sphere of business. The ‘dissolution’ of individual subject creating art in the company structure, and at least partial taking over company work strategy entails the deconstruction of traditionally conceived of creation process and artist as an outstanding individual who is usually unfamiliar with quotidian matters. From a wider perspective, building art on company foundations means accepting market rules above artistic ideas.

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Despite the above, the group’s status cannot be definitely qualified as simply business one. As Xu remarks, establishing MadeIn is an enterprise which combines art with business activity, but does not eliminate the former (Sans 2010: 110). An interesting phenomenon of contemporary Chinese artistic staging in terms of the creative process is the the installation Sunflower Seeds [or Kui Hua Zi] (2010) by Ai Weiwei (b. 1957). The work is composed of 100 million ceramic hand-made to real-scale sunflower seeds. The production of them was commissioned by Ai Weiwei in Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, which has been famous for porcelain production for ages. The work explores the tension between the overwhelming quantity of the seeds.11 which evokes mass production connotations, and the fact that each of them has been hand-made, which in turn evokes individual creativity associations. In this respect Sunflower Seeds shows that what appears itself in experience is a bombarding innumerability, which concurrently eliminates the unique character of the seeds. In this sense we can experience the perishing individual contribution, which irresistibly connotes contemporary Chinese mass production. However, the installation is first and foremost focused upon the creative process and not on the final product. An important aspect of the work is the way in which it came into being. Producing ceramic sunflower seeds involved enormous labour of 1600 artisans in two and half years (Jervis 2014). This makes a conspicuous reference to global economy, in which China participates as a cost-competitive manufacturer. The installation concentrating on its production process highlights the problem of low-paid workers who build global economy. By its entanglement in ‘mass’ production, Jingdezhen functions as locality, which on joining global economy is bereft of its traditional porcelain producer status.

V. Alternative Reality: Cao Fei

Cao Fei 曹斐 (b. 1978) in her artistic activity is mostly concerned with the issue of virtual reality and second life. Her works are usually interactive projects or videos. Despite that the artist focusses mainly on alternative, imagined or constructed cyberspace , the character of her projects is inspired by the real-world, contextualised as contemporary China. In an interview with Jerôme Sans, Fei herself confirms that virtual world architecture is strongly and deliberately saturated with Chinese context. Both Cosplayers (2004) and RMB City (2008-2010) are examples of this perspective. In Cosplayers, Cao concentrates on the issue of contemporary escapism of young people. It can be described in terms of derealization. The video piece, in fact a documentary, in which the main characters are Guangzhou young people clad in costumes of fictional youth pop culture heroes. They are, e.g. Spiderman, the hit production Star Wars characters, or less concrete and more processed at the same time characters from anime or computer games. Cao’s cosplayers do not resort to a given pop culture icons but they can combine and modify them at discretion. The

11 The seeds occupied entire floor surface of the Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern.

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unlimited creation based on the elements of any origin used as identification with the characters causes leaving one’s concretely placed reality and entering the omnipresent global fiction that annihilates, or at least suspends for the time of impersonation fictional character, any locality. Cosplayers shows it not only through the costumes but also contrasting them with the Guangzhou setting. It is also essential that the artist decided to place the characters not in the fashionable and rich districts of the multi-million metropolis but in poor outskirts or devastated concrete buildings. Thanks to this, an aesthetic contrast between the pop culture kitsch intensity and austerity and greyness of the real world is achieved. On the one hand, the young people present themselves well in the contrastive setting, but they first and foremost give an impression of isolated in their own creations. The additional austerity of the setting amplifies the derealization of the persons dressed in the costumes. Interviewed by Weng Xiaoyu, Cao remarks that the cosplayers do not just change clothes; they wish to temporarily detach themselves from their everyday lives through suspending their identities and concurrent identification with the impersonated character (Wang 2013). The identity transformation places the persons in an imagined yet supervening on Guangzhou reality, world. If we refer Cosplayers to cultural globalization in China, we can see that shifting identity to pop culture, which contrasts with reality locality, is conducted not only on the aesthetic level but primarily in terms of disconnecting from local identity and assuming an alternative one. The Spiderman or imagined anime characters constitute a parallel to everyday life. In Cao’s work it mainly functions as a form of breaking out from reality and liberating one’s imagination in constructing a new identity. Its globalised character is most importantly revealed by the freely composed personality based on the elements detached from their cultural, or generally life, localities. As a result, the identity is not a compound of several localities but it transcends them and culturally resides everywhere in its globalised aspect. Escaping locality in Cosplayers can then be treated as a flight into the globalised culture space, which enables assemblages beyond quotidian narrations not only in Guangzhou but any given culture. RMB City is a significantly different artwork. It is an interactive project functioning in the years 2008-2010. It consisted in the common enterprise of creating a city located in virtual reality. As the name of the project clearly suggests, despite its ontic status, RMB City is a parallel reference to Chinese reality12. However, what is intended is not imitating the Chinese socio-political reality but creating an alternative construct, targeting at a variation of ‘hard’ reality. It can be exemplified by the legal prescription that one can own land, while in the PRC it is entirely state-owned. Also some aspects of RMB City, especially the architecture, are deliberately made in ‘Chinese style’ to emphasize its necessary reference that serves building an alternative city. The city dwellers, i.e. project participants should not feel alienated in another dimension. For this purpose, the architecture elements reflect real Chinese cities. It is not only realised as typical Chinese urban architecture but also icon

12 The abbreviation RMB stands for the official name of the PRC currency renminbi 人民幣.

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edifices, such as the Shanghai Oriental TV Tower, the geometrical CCTV headquarters in Beijing, or the Tiananmen gate. The typical and commonly known Chinese architectural landmarks taken to second life are according to Cao’s intention create familiar surrounding for the avatar-residents. However it has to be mentioned that the elements after being transplanted in the virtual space, despite being intended to provide locality, enter an unnatural configuration (e.g. buildings from different cities in the same district), and as a result are no longer ‘local’. It can be said that there are signs of locality which are uprooted from their original references. At the level of sign we can have an impression of familiarity, which however becomes nullified when we fail to go beyond the sign. It turns out that the buildings are not displaced (as, e.g. reality represented on a map), but situated beyond geography. The recognition of the familiar can then take place solely on the sign level, sustained by other signs-elements of traditional and contemporary Chinese architecture. The construction consciously makes an ontic shift, which results in globalised space, merely colored with the local history of signs. If we analyse the phenomenon in terms of Appadurai’s views that localities participate in the globalization dynamics (2005: 18), we can state that the architectural elements mixed into virtual reality, which places them practically everywhere, i.e. alocally. If we treated architecture as the synecdoche of Chineseness, Cao’s project, despite the intentional introduction of Chinese elements, testifies to the perpetuation only on the semiotic level. Concurrently the effect is accentuated by the fact that, e.g. the Tiananmen gate or the Shanghai Oriental TV Tower function as ‘postcard’ Chinese symbols. This brings the question whether we can talk about identification with pop culture icon at all. Both works pay attention seeking identity in a different dimension: imagination or a parallel world. The way in which the aim is achieved in the two cases functions well in the globalization process tissue. Despite that the intention of the works is not a social or political message, they can serve as examples of freedom thinking realised in the field of aesthetics as sensuousness. Especially in the case of RMB City the participants co-creating a cyber-enclave are not restricted with any superior authority. The variation upon China can also be referred to the real state as a tension between the liberal enclave and Fukuyama’s authoritarian society.13

VI. Critical Art: Wang Qingsong

The examples discussed so far show that globalization and its accompanying revalidation are strongly present in contemporary Chinese art. The picture would be incomplete without complementing with a critical standpoint, or at least assessment of globalization in Chinese society. Probably the most interesting works in this area are Wang Qingsong’s 王慶松 (b. 1966) photographs from the turn of the 1990s and 2000s.

13 F. Fukuyama, op. cit., p. 69.

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Wang can be described as an artist who artistically documents cultural transformation processes in China. Photography, the artist’s main medium, is content-wise vivid and aesthetically kitschy presentations of reality that are meant to amplify the spectator’s impression and evoke her critical reflection. This can be exemplified by the series Requesting Buddha (1999), in which the Buddha holds different material goods, such as a mobile phone, gold or money bills. The work primarily criticizes the consumptionist in contemporary Buddhist monasteries. 14 It is also interesting that goods, such as Coca Cola, electronic equipment, or Marlboro cigarettes strongly accentuate the presence of Western goods in consumptionist lifestyle, which is perceived as negative. An even more interesting example is Can I Cooperate with you? (2000). The photograph is an allusion to the Tang painter Yan Liben’s (600-673) Imperial Sedan. The picture presents an event from 641, when Tufan nationality envoys arrive at Emperor Taizong’s court to ask for the hand of Princess Wencheng. The Emperor is presented in sumptuous splendor, surrounded by court ladies, while the envoys address him with proper respect. Can I Cooperate with you? mirrors the situation in contemporary times. The Emperor in his sedan is replaced with a white male clad in a T-shirt, carried in a rickshaw drawn by Chinese person clothed in ragged shorts. He is accompanied by Chinese women dressed in tawdry colorful summer clothes, which evoke the connotation of typical Western presentations of exotic women from primitive societies. The women cool the white man with large fans bearing a McDonald’s logo. The envoys are supplanted with three casually clad Chinese males. Two of them are smaller in size, whereas the third one holds a small Chinese flag in his hand. Wang’s work completely strips away an historic scene of dignity and places it in the realm of kitsch, additionally representing Chinese submissiveness to the West. Can I Cooperate with You? obviously refers to the Chinese fascination with and captivation by Western pop culture. It testifies to the intense impact of the globalizing processes that entail consumerism. It is not an accident that the artist alludes to a painting from the Tang Dynasty, a period when Chinese culture reached its peak. It shows that contemporary Chinese society is ready not only for breaking with tradition but also an enormous aesthetic compromise. The transformation can be understood as the loss of identity: underscored by the simply critical message in Can I Cooperate with You?

VII. Conclusion

The above examples of contemporary Chinese art propose that Chinese society is being reorganized by the two processes: globalization and accompanying it in culture postmodernism. Perhaps the processes have not been saturated to a degree that would entitle us to talk about their total domination. However, it is justifiable to describe the

14 Cf. Miller 2006, pp. 86-90.

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relations within the above discussed artworks as mutual diffusion or interaction of the local within global and the modern within postmodern. Lu’s diagnosis concerning the unfinished modernist project can be regarded as justifiable. However, we cannot ignore the functional interpretation of this element within the determined direction of the postmodern project. Its participation may be labelled more in terms of an element which modifies the deconstructive architecture rather than strongly delineated opposition that confronts postmodernity. This problem is best illustrated by Xu Bing’s works where traditional art’s essence, epitomized by calligraphy, seems unable to preserve its generic identity neither in New English Calligraphy, nor in depersonalizing even at the level of the civilization project Book from the Ground. To a certain extent calligraphy thematically organizes the artworks, but the deconstruction price has to be paid. Thus the participation of tradition appears to be doomed to being bereft of its original essence and assumes a new functionality in a new configuration. We can similarly summarize the fate of locality, which only apparently is concretely placed. The RMB City project clearly shows that nowadays locality cannot exist beyond the global. The above tendency manifests also on the level of creation strategy, which is based on the on the intuition not unfamiliar to commercial and corporate strategies. In such a case we cannot talk about contemporary Chinese art exclusively as artworks in exhibition space but also as products founded on unnecessarily individualized strictly artistic intention. Finally, the tension between the ‘old and new’ manifests itself also in imagination, which enjoys the greatest creative potential in configuring any elements. However, also here, as in Cosplayers, the ‘hard’ individual identity processed and imagined as pop culture content gets disintegrated. The above qualitative change in art, as well as in correspondent aesthetics, can be described as the disturbance of harmony he 和. This traditional, time-transcendent unifying term, which can also be encountered in aesthetics, may seem to be disturbed by the emergence of new ‘order’ in cultural discourse. However, one has to bear in mind that the Chinese harmony evades from unifying identical elements and essentially contains oppositions. Therefore, it is worth rethinking the contemporary condition not in terms of destruction but as a challenge for the Chinese order in miscellany, to which processual dynamics is not foreign.

References

APPADURAI Arjun (2005), Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. WANG Junyi (dir.) (2013), Cao Fei, Kadist Art Foundation, 2013. FUKUYAMA Francis (1992), The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Free Press; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada. GAO Minglu (2011), Total Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art, Cambridge: The MIT Press. HOLMES Leslie (1997), Post-Communism. An Introduction, Durham: Duke University Press.

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JERVIS John (2011), Sunflower Seeds. Ai Weiwei, [online], http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/72/SunflowerSeedsAiWeiwei [viewed: 07.12.2014]. LI Zehou, J. Clauvel (2006), Four Essays on Aesthetics, Lexington: Lexington Books. LIU Kang (2000), ‘Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China’, in Postmodernism & China, A. Dirlik, X. Zhang (eds.), Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 123-144. LU Sheldon Xiaopeng (2000), ‘Global POSTmoderniZATION: the Intellectual, the Artist, and China’s Condition’, in Postmodernism & China, A. Dirlik, X. Zhang (eds.), Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 145-174. MILLER James (2006), Chinese in Contemporary Societies, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. RAVENEL International Art Group, [online] http://www.ravenelart.com/artwork.php?id=1444&lan=en [viewed: 29.11.2014]. SANS Jerôme (2009), “China Talks. Interviews with 32 Contemporary Artists by Jérôme Sans”, Hong Kong: Timezone 8. SANS Jerôme (2010), ‘Interview: Made In Adventures across Boundaries’ in “Breaking Forecast. 8 Key Figures of China’s New Generation Artists,” Hong Kong: Timezone 8, pp. 107-111. WANG Ning, ‘The Mapping of Chinese Postmodernity’, in Postmodernism & China, A. Dirlik, X. Zhang (eds.), Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 21-40.

Artworks Discussed in the Paper

Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds [Kui Hua Zi] (2010). Cao Fei, Cosplayers (2004), RMB City (2008-2010). Wang Du, International Kebab (Guoji Kuaican, 國際快餐, 2008). Wang Guangyi 王廣義, Campbell Soup (1990), Great Criticism (Da Pipan 大 批判 , 1990-2007), Coca Cola (Kekoukele, 可口可樂, 1991), Chanel No. 5 (1993). Wang Qingsong 王慶松, Requesting Buddha (1999), Can I Cooperate with You? (2000). Xu Bing 徐冰, Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy (Xin Yingwen Shufa, 新英文書法, 1994), Book from the Ground (Dishu 地書, 2003). Yan Liben 閻立本, Imperial Sedan (Bunian Tu, 步輦圖, ok. 640).

Journal of East-West Thought

ALIENATED AND PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE: AN ANALYSIS OF SCHOLARLY MODELS

Kanaev Ilya

Abstract: This article considers the idea of knowledge from the basis of Western and Classical Chinese models of knowledge transmission. The transformation of understanding “what is the knowledge” was revealed through emphasizing the milestones in the history of Western philosophy. The result of such analysis is formalized as the concept of “Alienated” knowledge. Advantages, limitations and the effects on the structure of society of this model were reviewed. The alternative approach that used to be found in Oriental cultures was examined on the material of the Classical Chinese system of tuition. Its essence was embodied as the concept of “Personal” knowledge. This paper pays attention to actual questions of human body and mind improvement and transformation, exposes the foundation of this process in the historical development of thought and compares mutually exclusive ways of further evolution of humanity.1

Introduction

Every human has a piece of knowledge. Possessing something, we suppose to be free in its usage, including its transmission to another; also, we pretend to know what we have. But the latter is very similar to seeing objects: observing them tells little about our eyes. Can we give anything except concrete examples of our knowledge? Moreover, is it necessary? Through a special discipline, the Theory of Knowledge was formed not so long ago; the whole history of Western philosophy, in one way or another, deals with the question of knowledge and I will consider this further. Is it the same in Chinese culture? Should we have some concept of knowledge itself, besides a concrete manifestation of what we do know and can do? Should we have some universal standard, as detailed as possible, that can be applied to everyone, or a person should be one of an education system key elements? This article is an attempt to look at these questions. Professor Jiang Shuzhuo and Professor Pu Ruoqian, the supervisors of the author’s postdoc research project, sponsored by Jinan University, Guangzhou, PRC, 2015 – 2017, proposed the theme of current article. The strongest argument in favor of the ‘Western’ answer to the question “What is it to know?” is the achievements of modern science and technology. They construct the

 Dr. KANAEV ILYA, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of and Literature, Jinan University, Guangzhou, PRC. Program Manager, Sinological Development Charitable Foundation Ltd. Associate Professor, Moscow University for Humanities, Russia. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. 1 This article is a part of a Postdoc research project “Investigating the Possibility of Using Essential Principles of Chinese Classical Philosophy in Contemporary Theory of Knowledge” (2015 – 2017) of Ph.D. Kanaev Ilya, sponsored by JINAN University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, PRC.

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global world we live in, give opportunities to everyone, but also may lead to some dreadful perspectives: pollution and destruction of the environment, uncontrolled mutations and diseases, global conflicts and so on. It is worth mentioning the perspective of creating nonhuman forms of life, which is linked with . We increasingly use technology to improve and change our bodies and methods of communication; we can already speak with someone on the other side of the globe, but don’t know the name of our neighbor. It is most likely that these processes will deepen more and more, and may be that their result will be the creation of some creatures that will not be human, but will replace us. If so, will it be the sport of chance or someone’s intention? For example, looking at the book “Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human” by David Roden (Roden 2015) where the actual question is investigated: can we predict the result of scientific progress and recognize technology that may lead our species to extinction, or will we face the changes only when they are irreversible? We can accept it if there is evolution, but what if it is degradation that awaits us? To find out where science and technology lead us, it is worth examining their source.

I. Alienated Knowledge

The source of the modern science and education system that is spread almost worldwide today is based on the Western understanding of knowledge, so I will start with an introduction of its origin. The beginning of Western philosophy is supposed to be from Ancient Greek civilization, and Plato, considered to be the first philosopher who theoretically investigated the question ‘What is it to know?’ Besides his well-known theory of ‘Ideas’ as true reality and objects of knowledge, there is one simple story also attributed to Plato. It was told during the explanation of the essence of Western Philosophical development by a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladislav Lectorsky, the Ph.D. supervisor of the author. Let’s imagine the situation, where we asked someone directions to a city, for example Athens. We supposed that, following the words of this man, we could come to our destination. This is a good motive to say that he had knowledge, because his words correspond to reality. But what if we suppose that this man has neither been to Athens, nor heard about it, he has merely told us something just to end the conversation? In this case, we won’t say that he had knowledge, and the fact that we reached the city is simply luck. The correspondence of some words to reality is not enough on its own. Moreover, we want to find some basis of the words we’ve got: this man passed the road to Athens himself or at least he heard about it from a trusted source. Thus, there are two main criteria for some proposition to be knowledge: to correspond to reality and to have some foundation. In further elaboration, we can ask what does it mean to ‘correspond’ to reality, is it possible to extract proposition from the context and so on. It was discussed in western philosophy for so much time that I cannot pretend to add something prominent here and will just direct interested readers to investigate conceptions of truth in epistemology and truth-false problems in logic. The simplest thing should be emphasized: in western philosophy, all knowledge should have foundation. A remarkable elaboration of this issue was made by Aristotle in “Metaphysics”

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(Aristotle Metaphysics). The text is a in understanding knowledge as some true and not false belief that is verified by logical procedure. But any logic is grounded on certain assumptions that are drawn from our everyday experience. In this attitude Aristotle’s criticism of Empedocles, the pre-Socratic philosopher, is very interesting: “[The light] is certainly not a body, for two bodies cannot be present in the same place. The opposite of light is darkness… Empedocles (and with him all others who used the same forms of expression) was wrong in speaking of light as 'travelling' or being at a given moment between the earth and its envelope, its movement being unobservable by us; that view is contrary both to the clear evidence of argument and to the observed facts; if the distance traversed were short, the movement might have been unobservable, but where the distance is from extreme East to extreme West, the draught upon our powers of belief is too great” (Aristotle On The Soul. Book II. Chapter 7). It is interesting that contemporary physics agrees with the criticized thinker. Of course, only if we understand the ‘light’ of Empedocles, Aristotle and the contemporary notion as equal. We will never know why Empedocles claimed this, but was Aristotle so wrong? In his time, the phenomenon of light movement could not be seen; therefore, there was no reason to acknowledge this judgment as knowledge. It was idle opinion. All knowledge should have foundation. Even the view of Plato and his disciples, that real knowledge may be only about ‘ideas’, not material things, match the concept revealed by Aristotle: to know the ideas we should ‘see’ them (“The Republic” (Plato Republic)) or ‘recollect’ them (theory of ‘anamnesis’ in “Meno” (Plato Meno)). Our mind is used for the perception instead of our body organs, but, in any case, we do perceive ideas and gain knowledge then. Neoplatonic and all other mystic traditions say the same. There may be different ways to obtain experience, which is the foundation of knowledge, but it should be gained by personal effort in any case. Words of another can help us in this, but cannot replace our own perception or insight. Therefore, we can say that personal human experience was the foundation of knowledge throughout all philosophy of Ancient Europe. So it has been for almost two thousand years. Christian culture took a lot from , and the concept of knowledge as well. Platonic Ideas were changed into Divine revelation, but it also had to be obtained by oneself through righteous living and Heaven’s mercy. The foundation in one’s personal experience gave an opportunity for one’s own understanding of the World and its source. However, the desire to cease arguing was natural for adepts of official doctrine. The beginning of it was established by Descartes. In his most popular work, “Meditations on First Philosophy” (Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy), Descartes looked for the ultimate criteria of trustworthy knowledge. His solution is well known: only the thing that we cannot doubt can be the foundation for knowledge. His reasoning was highly praised and criticized, but I want to emphasize one thing – the foundation of knowledge was removed from common human experience, that anyone should get first through experience, to the sphere of that which humans are supposed to have before any experience, because it is that which we cannot doubt, being human. Previously, one could still argue even if one could not gain some experience, just as Aristotle did in the debate mentioned above. After Descartes anyone who claimed that some conventional experience is unavailable

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to him could be convinced of being underdeveloped or corrupted. However, this argument relied on introspection and still could be the matter of dispute that took place as an argument between and . That’s why the next step was predetermined. Another outstanding philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was one of those who made this step. His analysis of cognitive processes revealed the fact that all our experience is not a mere reflection of outer reality, but a constructive process of perception, in which our contribution is substantial (Kant Critique of Pure Reason). In some cases, like mathematics and metaphysics, we fully rely on analysis of our own mind or reason. In natural sciences we also follow principles of our representation. The most well-known example is that we perceive or imagine any material object in three spatial dimensions and no achievement of modern physics has changed that yet. And probably will not, while we talk about humans, not anything else. Nevertheless, Kant considered very abstract and profound ideas and without introduction into everyday life, they had little chance of becoming so influential. However, he was not alone. Even a bit earlier than him, Adam Smith wrote about economics, that it is the foundation of social life, and probably made an even more significant contribution to considering cultural trends. He insisted that the individual doesn’t and shouldn’t know the principles by which society functions. This is his well-known claim: “[an] Individual… neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention” (Smith An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Book IV, Chapter II). The whole economics of the Western world is currently based on this principle. Thus, the structures of mind, reason and human society were claimed to be the foundation of any knowledge. The gap between personal experience and ‘knowledge’ became substantial. The last thing that remained in the sphere of personal responsibility was morality. Eventually it was also replaced by new concepts that derive from a person, even knowledge about himself. It happened with the revelation of the ‘unconsciousness’ by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (Freud 1949). Though in his conception there were certain common principles of originating and functioning of unconsciousness, but each man could have a unique one. Karl Jung made of this theory the same that Immanuel Kant did of Cartesian philosophy: that all humans have common unconsciousness ‘archetypes’ that slightly vary according to one’s experience (Jung 1981). The process was confirmed by the development of ‘Non-classic’ philosophy. One of its key ideas is the complex structure of the cognition agent, it is opaque even to himself (Lectorsky 2000). Some unconscious structure or power dictates how man represents reality, others and even himself. After all, an individual cannot pretend to know anything and should be told what he really thinks, sees and wants. This theme can be discussed more and more and so many examples from modern mass culture can be suggested: advertisements that determine the needs of people, mass media that provides their opinion on everything and so on. The essence is that in contemporary Western culture, the individual, whoever it may be, is separated from knowledge. The one with a high social position has a right to claim something about the world only because of his role in the universal system of market relations. Personal

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achievements and personal knowledge have no value at all. In philosophy and social studies it was manifested in claiming the ‘death of the author’ – the announcement of accomplished fact, in my opinion (Barthes 1967). The modern approach to describing human consciousness is also very demonstrative. Perhaps the most influential tradition of the last century was , which tried to reveal human essence through analyzing the language we use. There can be no doubt that language without the speaker is totally cleaned from any personality – or consciousness. This notion is used in the same sense today. The development of analytic philosophy led to the cognitive science that is popular now. Although many philosophers, like D. Chalmers (Chalmers 1996) and T. Nagel (Nagel 1974), whose arguments are just reiterated again and again, claim that human consciousness cannot be reduced to anything else; from my point of view, they can do nothing against D. Dennett (Dennet 2005). His provocative thesis that any human can be considered a ‘zombie’ is nothing more than sincerely revealing the fact that the way of western science doesn’t require any personality in the object or subject of scientific description. Why should humans be treated any other way? This approach follows the general trend absolutely and is confirmed by achievements of social sciences. How is it possible to show the existence of consciousness or personality, if the whole culture denies it? While the opponents of this view follow the same way of understanding knowledge as separated from man, their arguments will never reach that point. Knowledge became alienated. Alienation presupposes the possibility of taking something from a person and using it without any regard to the previous owner. It is well-known in economic theory (Marx Capital: Critique of Political Economy). In the conception of knowledge, it is based on the idea that all time and space is equal and the same for all agents of activity. This is the only way to establish ‘verification’ as a criterion for being science: anytime and anywhere any agent should come to the same results through the same actions – or demonstrate its complete impossibility (Popper 1959). The source of success or failure is not Reality or the personality of the actor, but formal procedure and its accuracy. Therefore, there may be only one universal theory: the very idea of universal knowledge neglects the attempts to change accepted core principles of the theory or searching for alternative explanation methods and experimental techniques. It is a commonplace in the (Lakatos 1978). Such an approach allows taking the right to make decisions away from the individual and to transfer it to some potentially overarching system that manifests universal knowledge. This system will determine what each individual should be. The responsibility for an action is not held by the one who committed it, but can be appointed to anyone by that system. What are the consequences? Not only natural science originates from the accepted concept of knowledge, but also the social structure almost everywhere in the world is a legacy of the colonial era, and hence of Western culture. To deal with it, let us remember that in the time of ancient Greece, knowledge was grounded in common human experience. Each man could knew something unique and thus comparing of opinions was possible and the need for proof arises – it could be the source for the origin of mathematics and geometry. Moreover, if each citizen possesses knowledge, the system that allows reaching an agreement is required. Not by chance, the democratic structure of society was established then and there.

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Let’s ask ourselves – is democracy possible if members of society have no knowledge? The answer is evident: in each developed society children have rights, they must be protected even more than adults, but they cannot intentionally influence public life. The reason is simple – they don’t know many things yet. But if we face the fact that the right to claim knowledge was taken away from individuals and belongs to some abstract ‘humanity’ – what is the difference of any citizen from the child? We won’t find it. Therefore, society based on alienated knowledge cannot implement ‘democracy’ as true governance of the people. It is a mere phantom that is used like a brand. Every child likes the assurance that his opinion is important. Nevertheless, let us follow Smith and pretend that expression of the unconscious collective will somehow work in the interests of everyone. Here, we will face difficulties at the level of . Alienated knowledge can be only universal, hence, a question of who manifests it better, will inevitable arise. Each group will pretend to implement the truth. The strongest participant will try to dictate how all others should live and think because they are automatically deprived of knowledge. However, this criterion is too unsteady for punitive systems and there will always be an intention to establish differences at the level of physiology to finally justify the distinction. If, along with this, the claims the highest value of democracy and human rights, it can be nothing but a joke. Even acknowledging all that is mentioned above, the most committed follower of alienated knowledge conception may say that this is not important. Someday humanity will face its end, what, except our knowledge, may we leave for the future? On the other hand, adepts of posthumanism may claim that it is the development of our science and technology that will overcome these dangers. Nevertheless, alienating knowledge from people and pretensions of one approach to be universal are not fruitful even from the point of theory. The essence of knowledge alienation is a conversion of personal experience into propositions, or information. It is not accidental that our century is called the information age. Information is an encoded state of some space and time area that may be transmitted without losing its essence to another part of space and time. However, this requires some common structure in the areas of transmitting and receiving. Human interaction is possible because we have many common features. For example, practically everybody will understand emotions in the same way, while more detailed communication needs knowledge of language. Increasing the role the information leads to the decreasing of standards of transmitting and receiving. We already have one standard for communication all over the world. Computers, united into the web, are interchangeable, developing of ‘cloud’ services is dictated by logic. Now it affects only our devices, but when essential enhancement of human body and mind will be available, the same processes of reducing to one standard will take place there too, just because this will be required by the logic of informational streams. In order to reduce the costs of production and distribution of goods, it will lead to standardizing the behavior of agents. One may complain about the fact that everyone will be the same and there will be no individuality. But it doesn’t seem to be the worst thing. We are different in our realization and this is the reason why we have different skills. That is important. If the structure of body and mind will be reduced to one standard, and this is what is required

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by the logic of sharing information, everyone will have the same skills and abilities. Unified society is not flexible and inevitably will face a situation to which it won’t be able adapt. Obviously, it is the degradation of humanity that leads to extinction. A complex system has many foundations and a simple system always has less. First, survive. Second, die. Manifested knowledge will be lost too. Of course, this is not a near future, but if the question is “Where will our current understanding of knowledge lead us?” – This is the answer. Is it what we seek or, maybe the question would more appropriately be “Can we find something else?”

II. Personal knowledge

Forthcoming events are determined by actions in both the past and the present. After considering the historical development of knowledge in Western culture, it is worth analyzing its manifestation in real lives of people. The characteristic feature of humans is that we can preserve some of our experiences and transmit them through ages: the transmission of knowledge is education, where key features are fixed in different scholar models. New members of humanity do not have to start all the way from discovering fire and sharpening stone (Stepin 2011). It may seem that alienation of knowledge is the essence of this process, because even parents and children have different personalities. However, it is not so single-valued. Usually, education is accompanied by a verbal explanation. It is a report about the state of affairs in some area of time and space. We know that the weather is fine, that smoke usually indicates fire and so on. In a conventional division of cognitive processes it is mostly the field of ‘theory’. This type of knowledge can be transmitted without significant loss; it is information and was analyzed above. But we also have a lot of knowledge of other types: we know how to walk, how to ride a bicycle, how to talk (Ryle 2002). We definitely can claim to know it, but we cannot express it in some proposition: after reading the instruction for how to swim, you won’t have this skill. We cannot directly transmit this knowledge to somebody else, because our body and mind are still inalienable part of it. Personal effort is crucial for mastering any skill and we call it ‘practice’. This is well known in common sense and it is obvious that we use both types of knowledge in teaching others. Very often, the formation of skill is most important and we use personal examples for this: this is how we introduce someone to a new activity. We speak to our children, even while they don’t know the meaning of the words – how else could we teach them to talk? In everyday life we act this way, it was considered in Western philosophy during the recent century (Wittgenstein 1953), and even the notion of ‘Personal knowledge’ was introduced into Epistemology (Polani 1958). Moreover, we acknowledge the importance of the knowledge source: in most cases, education starts in the family and its role in constructing one’s personality is doubtless. The ground of man’s personality is formed by the environment during their early years, we appeal to this in our everyday life talking about one’s character and even in the court it can be taken into account. These ideas are not new and can be considered as already established (Harre 1984). This is a doubtless fact that a child will never become human without nurturing, and the youngest years are crucial for the

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formation of such common abilities as speaking, seeing and hearing. Later, personality is constructed through interaction with others: parents, friends, teachers, peers. What will be one’s personality is highly dependent on the society. This is acknowledged in our everyday life and corresponding philosophy. Thus, all humans rely on practice in the tuition of common skills and recognize the role of personality in the transmission of knowledge. Due to deep divisions of labor in modern society, common human abilities should be complemented by special skills that define the professional competence of an individual. But the modern Western cultural approach to them is very different from human common sense. Almost every specialization is acquired in educational facilities that pretend to implement abstract ‘science’. Every idea can become knowledge only by being recognized as ‘scientific’. This clearly follows the process of alienation and constructs the scholar model of universal knowledge. It was considered in the previous part of this text and the consequences were revealed. If we examine not preliminary preparation for being human as acquiring basic skills that can be found in family, we can consider the ways of transmitting cultural knowledge. Is the scholar model based on the process of alienation the only possible solution? I do not believe so. ‘Alienation’ is the key feature of Western culture that causes its advantages and disadvantages. However, other examples can be found in Oriental thought. I will ground my explanation on the basis of the Classical Chinese scholar model, which was an official doctrine for centuries and rejected one hundred years ago, when in 1911 the modern Western educational system was accepted and applied. Nevertheless, even after one hundred years, it is possible to find contemporary and living examples of such a system on Chinese land, whereas in other cases, we can mostly dig in the dust of centuries. Moreover, the Classical scholar system is implemented into practice in some places, it will be very interesting to look at its outcome after half a century. All of this was the reason for me to choose Chinese culture as the foundation of my research, because it is one of the few possibilities to rely not only on some abstract theory, but learn through living practice that is embodied by living people. In Chinese culture, history has kept two basic approaches to construct a scholarly model. The first is Confucianism, which insists on a personal example and following rites from the earliest years. The second is Legalism, which stresses formal regulations and a penalty system. My dear friend, Dr. Elizabeth Woo Li, the chairperson of Sinological Development Charitable Foundation2 explained to me the essence and consequences of applying each model. Legal regulation is something that man faces at some point in life as external obstacle that is coercion over him. As a child, they could do whatever he or she wants, but then suddenly they had to obey some rules. Who will follow them sincerely and respect their source in this case? It will be enough to look at the education of children in modern society, see the mental problems that will inevitable arise, and no questions will remain. The Rites work in completely the other way. Obviously, this is also a regulation, constructed in the interest of the society,

2 Sinological Development Charitable Foundation Limited – www.sinological.org

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which the person is compelled to follow often against their will. But the actions performed during the foundation of personality, became a part of it. All habits of a person are formed this way. Their further realization is not a coercion but a realization of a personality’s inner structure, which brings satisfaction from compliance of manifestation with the essential. Will the formation of habits be spontaneous and uncontrolled, or will they be based on the achievements of culture? The basis of classical education is purposeful development of the human personality’s structure through learning from culture. That was the explanation. It means that students, while learning classical text, first of all, master such skills as reading, writing, and memorization. Also, physical training is regular in the classical system. As in any other case, it is much more fruitful to introduce maintaining bodily health through exercises, than endless and useless treatment upon reaching a certain age. Each human affair requires body activity and simply being healthy, which is why the body is the basis for every human action, and it is natural to pay much attention to it. Each task corresponds to the possibilities of a students’ mind and body and relies on the level of their development; no one will require an understanding of the about State regulation from the child. Memorizing the classics and performing other exercises, students get used to learning and practice. It becomes a part of their personality, and its manifestation will bring them satisfaction in future. Maybe this is what Confucius meant when he said: "To learn and to practice continually, what can be more pleasant?” (Analects lun yu論語. I, 1 – translation, Kanaev). The main aim of the Classical scholarly model organization is the construction of students’ personality (person) on the foundation of the native culture. Each teacher is guided by the principles established in it, but embodies them on the basis of their personal experience, their own thinking and practice, therefore, always in their own way. In his everyday practice he embodies the concrete idea of person, and each student perceives it. Through communication with the teacher, students begin to strive toward the idea manifested by him. Knowledge, preserved in classical culture, is not some abstract proposition, but the idea of person – the learner perceives it through concrete people: father and mother, siblings, friends. In the ancient Chinese dictionary, “educate” is explained as: “People at the lower level model those at the higher level” – from the etymological sense of “jiao 教.” (Xu Shen许慎 2013: 253) – translation, Kanaev). One is recognized as a teacher after achieving required level in a certain skill. The purity and precision of his actions determines how clear his students obtain the knowledge. Eventually, students become able to embody principle on their own. It is important that different learners cannot embody the same idea in the same way. A unique body and mind inevitable leads to the appearance of personal features in the realization of knowledge. That’s why the words of the classics usually claim general principles and just the possibility of certain achievements. One of the Four Confucian Classics, The Doctrine of the Mean, begins with the definition of education as cultivating students’ natural qualities (The Doctrine of the Mean Zhong Yong中庸 1). This principle of the Classical scholar model complements the purposeful construction of a student’s personality, which is the aim of modeling after the teacher. That’s why, the teacher gives different explanations and tasks to

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different students according to their personalities and abilities. Without the real attention to educated persons, the system of constructing personal qualities may fossilize and lead to maximum alienation of knowledge from the person. From my point of view, this is what once happened in Chinese history and was the reason for military defeats in the past and the forbidding of traditional educational system for a century as a result. But if the principle of modeling is balanced with the task of cultivating natural qualities, literally what Classics claim, society is able to progress. Here, the question of differences between personalities of parents and children, teacher and students can be discussed. What is the aim of the difference? The reproduction of family models is well-known. Purposeful formation of diverse professional skills in educational institutions complements personal qualities acquired in the family. This makes individuals more different, and thus increases diversity within the society. Its stableness increases accordingly: three thousand years of succession inspire respect. Special organizations provide education to the masses, including schools, institutes, universities – they are the agents of knowledge transmission. This is the reason why the prestige of the educational facilities is so important, especially in China. It is a natural desire of people to have guarantees of the knowledge that is imparted there. Although the contemporary rating system does not seem to be adequate, because it counts mostly the production of alienated knowledge, the approach to the perception of collective agent deserves attention. The real measure of a teacher’s efficiency is the success of his students; it does not matter whom do we evaluate: individual man or school. If we count not published papers, but achievements of graduates, each group of teachers will try to find the best solutions and develop unique methods. This is equal to the personal abilities and skills of a person, and such practice will lead to the origin of collective personal qualities. It should be noted that in sport and art, teachers are evaluated according to the success of their students. Such models are known and used in Russian sports and arts schools, for example. Not by chance, a lot of them have their own unique style and are well-known worldwide. When a learner encounters real life and starts to perform actions valuable for society, he can investigate the doctrine that he already knows by heart. One of the most influential text, “The Great Learning”, gives the words of Confucius, praising knowledge and tracing governing of one’s own country and regulation of one’s own family to the extension of one’s own knowledge. Knowledge is in the ‘investigation of things’ (The Great Learning da xue大學 1). Two points should be emphasized. First is that it is said about the things, i.e. the real world that one faces during his life and practice. Second, one’s own state, family and knowledge are considered – not some abstract conceptions of how to rule some abstract collective and so on. Personal knowledge is always based on one’s own experience and used for managing it. During the attempts to realize learned ideas, one will inevitable face obstacles. It is impossible that everything will go in the desired and planned way all at once; something will definitely go wrong. Here, the authority of classics arise – it doesn’t allow to throw back that which is not achieved as ‘falsification’ (Popper 1959). The reason for failures is in lack of own skills regarding this aim. Hence, a student has to learn and practice again and again, perfecting their own skills. Moreover, very soon it becomes obvious

Journal of East-West Thought ALIENATED AND PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE 67

that simple repetition of unsuccessful actions is painful, and simple iteration of possible manipulation does not work either. Common sense is more than enough for such conclusions, of course, if actions are carried out in the real world, not some fantasy. Therefore, each man has to think over his practice. Confucius said of this: “To learn but do not think over is to be entangled. To think over but do not learn is to be reckless” (Analects lun yu論語. II, 15 – translation, Kanaev). Thinking over is not a single act. Being investigation in its essence, it presupposes persistent practical embodiment and attempts to find the sense in acquired experience. Learning is continually and inextricable from personal practice. Moreover, the end of learning is not assumed: every person, as long as they live and embody their knowledge, become more conscious of it. Furthermore, on this basis can be given quite simple but easy to be practically ensured definition of consciousness. Being conscious of something is the transformation of memorized alienated proposition into personal knowledge – what person can do by themselves. Everything is committed through efforts of body and mind, thus investigation of things and obtaining experience is grounded in perfecting one’s own body and mind. Knowledge forms the person. A person is an inseparable part of realized knowledge. Hence, consciousness is a process of extending one’s own personal knowledge. Interconnection of person and knowledge does not mean arbitrariness in the manifestations. Persistent practice is necessary because the world is much stronger than humans. Whatever technical heights humanity can reach, they will always be within the limits of our reality. Here are shown the deepest difference between considered concepts of knowledge. Alienated knowledge presupposes that utmost principles of reality can be abundantly manifested within the limits of the space and time available to a human body and their tools. The final aim of Western thought, which is attributed to Aristotle, is discovering the ‘’: a set of propositions which can explain all phenomena of the world. The linked scholar model presupposes distribution of one abstract model of activity over everyone. It causes sameness of individuals and leads to the decreasing of societal adaptability. Personal knowledge infers irreducibility of the world’s utmost principles to certain manifestations of space and time. Each manifestation embodies a certain side of the world, but not the whole of it. Thus, equal rights of knowledge, embodied in different personalities, is possible – but not it’s sameness. Personal knowledge is the realization of the idea or principle, exceeding the capacity of every individual. Its complete realization is possible only during the entire life of culture. Each person that personally embodies it, makes a step in its development. Development is possible only on the basis of one’s own practice and becoming conscious of it. Being conscious can be achieved only through the possibility to convert principle into practice, and continuous perfecting of one’s own body and mind is necessary for it. Consciousness is a process of extending the conscious area or embodying principles in the material world. It can be defined as “Investigation of things”. The scholarly model of personal knowledge is aimed at the formation of a certain idea of the person on the base of natural qualities of the educated one. The transmission of an idea occurs through interaction with one who

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68 KANAEV ILYA

embodies it. Everyone does it in their own way because of unique body, mind and experience. Variety of manifestations makes possible the adaptation of the society to changing circumstances; the transmission of the essential principles of culture allows it to exist and develop through ages. Summarizing can be done through metaphor: the way of alienated knowledge involves a single route for all; the way of personal knowledge allows a variety of routes to reach the goal. The reader can choose for themselves. In this text we appealed only to Confucianism, but traditions of Taoism and Buddhism are no less important for Chinese culture; from each of them we draw a lot for our personal practice. Although representatives of these traditions may fiercely argue with each other, embodying their personal understanding of the World, all three traditions are recognized as a source of Chinese culture. A more recent example is the well-known principle of "One country, two systems"(Dai and Peng戴，彭2013: 84-89) that allowed China to fulfill important geopolitical task peacefully. Sincere recognition of an individual’s right to possess knowledge makes available the uniting of multinational people. Describing of the traditional educational system was possible due to the living examples of it on the territory of modern China. I learned a lot about it at my University, the Jinan3, and at Xianqian School for The Classics in Guangzhou4. For latter opportunity, I am grateful to the head of the school and prominent master – teacher Ma Zi, whose explanations of Chinese classics and Wushu lessons made a great contribution to my personality. Due to such people as teacher Ma, Elizabeth Woo Li and my university patrons professors Jiang Shuzhuo and Pu Ruoqian the Classical system of Personal knowledge transmission is not only the experience of the past, but also for the future.

References

Analects 論語. In Zhu Xi朱熹. 2012 Collected Notes on Four Confucian Classics四书章句集 注. Peking北京: Chinese Publishing House中华书局. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W.D. Ross. 1924. Oxford University Press 1953. Aristotle. On The Soul. Book II. Translated by J. A. Smith. (1931) Oxford University Press 1953. Dai Anna and Peng Bo戴安娜，彭波. 2013. The Historical Origin and Strategic Prospect of “One Country, Two Systems” “一国两制”的历史溯源及战略前景. PRC. People’s Tribune (Frontiers) 人民論壇（學術前沿）#8. P. 84-89. (In Chinese) Barthes Roland. 1967. Death of the Author. Translated by Richard Miller (1974) New York. Chalmers David. 1996. : In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press. Dennett Daniel. 2005. Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness. MIT Press. Descartes Rene. 1641. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by John Cottingham, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996. Freud Sigmund. 1949. The Ego and the Id. London: The Hogarth Press Ltd. 1949. Harre Roman. 1984 Personal being. US. Harvard University Press.

3 Jinan University暨南大学, Guangzhou, Guangdong, PRC – http://english.jnu.edu.cn 4 广州贤谦教育咨询有限公司, 马子 – www.xianqian.cc

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Jung, C. G. 1934–1954. The Archetypes and the . (1981 2nd ed. Collected Works Vol.9 Part 1), Princeton, N.J.: Bollingen. Kant Immanuel. 1781. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge University Press 1991. Lakatos Imre. 1978. The of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge University Press. Lectorsky V.A. 2000. Classical and non-classical Epistemology. Moscow. Canon-Plus Press. Marx Karl. 1867. Capital: Critique of Political Economy. English translation by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1970. Nagel Thomas. 1974. What Is it Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83 No. 4 (Oct). Plato. Meno. Translated by Cathal Woods. SSRN 2011. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Griffith Tom. Cambridge University Press 2000. Polani M. 1958 Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. University of Chicago Press. Popper Karl. 1934. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. English translation 1959. Roden David. 2015. Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. Lonson: Routledge. Ryle Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2002. Smith Adam. 1776. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Book IV, Chapter II. Stepin V.S. 2011. Civilization and Culture. Saint Petersburg: SPbGUP. (In Russian). The Doctrine of the Mean中庸. In Zhu Xi朱熹. 2012. Collected Notes on Four Confucian Classics四书章句集注. Peking北京: Chinese Publishing House中华书局. The Great Learning 大學. In Zhu Xi朱熹. 2012. Collected Notes on Four Confucian Classics 四书章句集注. Peking北京: Chinese Publishing House中华书局. Wittgenstein Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. 1953. Xu Shen许慎. 2013. Shuowen Jiezi說文解字. Peking: Chinese Publishing House北京：中華書 局: 253.

Journal of East-West Thought

THE FIRST WORLD WAR, SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT, AND CHINESE POLITICS IN THE 1920s

Han Han

Abstract: This article researches the effect of The First World War (WWI) on the scientific thought and Chinese political situation in the 1920s, and also analyzes the ways, levels and inner relationship from the perspective of historical data and facts. It considers that WWI separated Science from democracy, and weakened scientific thought. Moreover, from the perspective of the history of ideas, it indicates that WWI had an effect, direct or indirect, on the Chinese political situation in the 1920s, the dispute and cooperation between the different parties and the emergence of workers’ movement, and it had close relationship with populism that is anti-science.1

I

The WWI isn’t only a turning point in modern cultural society of human development, but also is a milestone of the modernity process of Chinese society, culture and politics. Especially, it’s critique of scientism. How to master the advanced science and technology of the west to become rich （求富）and powerful （自強）was a dream of all Chinese social circles since the late-Qing Dynasty. They considered that it was the advanced science and technology that had made the west so rich and powerful. Of course, industrialization and the modernity movement represented by the Westernization Movement had become the most important means for modern China to master modern western science and technology. At the beginning, western science and technology was unwelcome in China. It was even satirized by conservative chancellors as clever contrivance and specious skills which were useless for social regulation.2 “In China, imported goods are useless and nothing but so-called specious skills only”, “Steamboat is clumsy boat and cannon is dull weapon”.3 But in fact, this backward prejudice couldn’t solve the crisis in early globalization process for the empire. The Second Opium War (1856-1960) and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 gradually made the Chinese to know the excellence of western science and technology. When the backward Chinese cold arms met with the

 Dr. HAN HAN, Postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, also a member fellow of the Chinese Writers' Association. 1 I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me and recommended during the writing of this paper, Professor Robin Visser at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dr. Wei Zhaozhou at Guangxi University, Nanning, China. 2 同治六年五月二十二日楊廷熙條[A].中國史學會：洋務運動（二）[M].上海：上海書店 出版社.2000.p43. 3 王闓運：湘綺樓詩文集·第二卷[M].長沙：嶽麓書社.2008.p. 42.

Journal of East-West Thought 72 HAN HAN

modern western weapons, its odds disappeared completely. In this situation, some officer said, “（western） weapons are heavy and skillful, and they can beat Chinese weapon hollow.” 4 And another officer said, “If someone can read characters, and teaches others, to pick up the technique of steamboat controlling and weaponry. It may be helpful for the improving of China to be powerful.”5 By this opportunity, some modern colleges such as Peking Language School（京 師同文館，1862） and Mawei Ship College （馬尾船政學堂，1866）that taught western languages and skills appeared in a national wide scale, they had trained many modern intellectuals who had modern scientific literacy. And foreign concession increased and modern science technology continued to permeate and change the daily living in China. It formed the Sinicized scientism. It included studying abroad, science fiction and science works translating and publishing, science practice become popular and advocating science is all powerful. Scientism is an inevitable outcome of modern scientific thought crashing with traditional Chinese culture. From the viewpoint of intellectual history, the nature of scientism is a kind of belief. Anyone who believes in scientism believes that science is all powerful and could solve all problems. Before and since the Revolution of 1911, this ideological trend had existed and became stronger with the time. At that time, scientific thought was a holy word in China. “Since the Reform Movement of 1898 (戊戌變法) nobody dares to blacken science openly.”6 This kind of scientism lasted since the WWI broke out. As the WWI in human history, it made human beings in times of scientific revolution knows that modern science and globalization brings not only convenience but also suffering. Some discerning Chinese scholars knew this problem deeply, such as Yan Fu（嚴復）, a famous writer who said, “The WWI is an evil war, why these countries sent punitive campaigns against each other? Is modern science only a kind of weapon？” He even said, “Because of modern science, many people were killed in the WWI.”7 The WWI was a worldwide plague from which human beings entered a globalized pattern, and it was too violent to shock this world. Modern industry and electric power were used for advanced weapons in this war. Numerous people fell at the Battle of Verdun, Somme, Cambrai and so on. To the west, science didn’t only bring convenience but also suffering to human. How to reflect on the negative influence of modern science? This became a mainstream of the western ideological field in the beginning of the 20th century. Some western philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Irving Babbitt, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey and Rudorf Eucken perceptively found that science had a harmful effect on human beings and began to reflect on future human development from the perspective of Humanism including human nature, morality and religion.

4 齊思和等主編：籌辦夷務始末（道光朝）·卷三十五[M].北京：中華書局.1964.p1300 5 李鴻章：請設外國語言文字學館折（同治二年二月）[A]. 安樹芬、彭詩琅主編：中華 教育通史·第八卷[M]北京：京華出版社.2003.p1827 6 胡適：科學與人生觀[M]上海：亞東圖書館.1923.p2-3 7 嚴複：嚴複集·第二冊[M].北京：中華書局.1986.p430-404

Journal of East-West Thought THE FIRST WORLD WAR, SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT, AND CHINESE POLITICS 73

Humanism became an important weapon to fight against scientism and was more popular during the 1910-20s in western society, and it also had a positive influence on the . During the , Science was called Mr. Sci（賽先生）in China which guided the Chinese enlightenment. At the same time, democracy also played a very important role, and it was called Mr. De. （德先生）Viewed from a philosophical perspective, democracy could balance the technological elements of modern science. Here, I want to define the concepts of science and democracy. Science includes scientific technology and its derivatives only, but not scientific methods, theories and the broad science system. Of course, democracy likewise isn’t the broad concept of western politics but a view that is continued to be defined, explained and corrected in the Chinese political field since the Revolution of 1911. There was another explanation for democracy in the Chinese ideological field at that time. From the late-Qing Dynasty to the 1920s, science in China meant such technology denied traditional Chinese science and technology. Although the concept of democracy was imported, it implied people’s need. It had many aspects in common with traditional Chinese political views such as “The people is more important than the king” and “The people is the foundation of a country”. Compared with science, democracy was localized and considered interior, and was more easily accepted by the people, even though it had led to cultural and populism. This strengthened the influence of democracy on the Chinese ideological field but the scientific thought had been weakened. Many articles were published in the new magazines such as Orient Journal（東方雜誌）, New Tide（新潮） and New Youth （新青年）. Arthur Ponsonby’s Machine and Life discusses how machine hurts human nature. And Liang Qichao （梁啟超）also said, “Somebody wanted scientific thought to bring about an ideal state, but scientific thought brought a hell to us, we had great harvest in the scientific field, but also had great distresses in our world.”8 which was in his work Travel in Europe published in 1919. After Liang, many famous scholars like Zhang Junmai（張君勱）、Liang Shumin （梁漱溟）and Du Yaquan（杜亞泉） all wrote articles for the critique of "the omnipotence of science,"9 People must reflect on the problems that were brought about by scientism. In fact, it gave pause to Chinese intellectuals who had previously embraced western scientific thought whole-heartedly. However, Chinese intellectuals swung to another extreme and began to devalue scientific thought altogether, which in turn weakened the Chinese modern enlightenment. According to the critique of science, democracy had been more important to the Chinese ideological field, it improved democracy and made it more popular objectively.

8 梁啟超：歐遊心影錄·新大陸遊記[M].北京：東方出版社.2006.p14 9 See some works as 張君勱《科學與人生觀》（載《清華週刊》總第272期，1923年3月）、 梁漱溟《東西文化及其哲學》（上海商務印書館.1921）與杜亞泉《迷亂之現代人心》（《東 方雜誌》15卷4號，1918.4）

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74 HAN HAN

A historical fact shouldn’t be ignored: the effect of modern scientific thought didn’t start since the WWI but the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. Before this war, China had bought the best warship from the west, but was still defeated by Japan whose weapon was much less than Chinese. Since this time, reformation and modernization swept across the country. Although the Reform Movement of 1898 was a failure, democracy never disappeared. From the Reform Movement of 1898 to the New Culture Movement, the concept of democracy always looked for its position in the Chinese intellectual circle, and found the inner power for the Chinese social development. From the popularity of scientism to the appearance of the dualism of “science/democracy” and last to the query and partial negation about Scientism, all these reflected the complexity and the immature form of the modern Chinese ideological circle as affected by globalization. Of course, it affected the political situation of the 1920s.

II

Around of the New Culture Movement, many Chinese scholars had great enthusiasm about science and could realize that the negative effect of science was that it wasn’t the main stream. Of course, science was still accepted by many. And many people who showed doubt on science were just swimming with the tide. The competition faced by the scientific thought was weakening. In 1920s, a famous contention happened in the Chinese ideological field, which was between different supporters of science and metaphysics, with one side advocating that metaphysics could balance science. Undoubtedly, this was an intemperate and reactionary view. When scientific thought met anti-science, scientific thought had the upper hand. But we shouldn’t deny the values of this contention in reflecting modern scientific thought and philosophy, and it demonstrated that Chinese intellects were discussing a question that surpassed the traditional academic history in that it was based on modern scientific thought and philosophy. Of course, it wasn’t only an expression of opposite cultures but also a contribution to the world philosophy. 10 From the viewpoint of the modernity process in culture and politics, scientific thought became to weaken in the 1920s in a special historical background. It was because the criticism of scientific thought and the doubting about it had wakened up the conservative’s enthusiasm, the consequence of which was that democracy went to part from scientific thought and be combined with the Chinese political situation after the WWI, and it even affected the Chinese politics in the 1920s. It’s worthy of reflection. The 1920s was very important in modern Chinese political history. On the one hand, it was a transition period lasting from the Peking Nationalist Government （ controlled by Northern warlords ） to the Nanking Nationalist Government

10 Charlotte Furth: Ting Wen-chiang: Science and China's New Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. p. 118.

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(controlled by Kuomintang). On the other hand, it also was a turning period that went from the Kuomintang-Communist co-operation period to Kuomintang's break away with the Communist Party. This period show not only the complicated aspects of modern Chinese politics, but also the multifarious characters of the Chinese culture, thought and academy at that time. The academic field called this period “the Post-May forth period”. Based on different theories, scholars actively discussed about different issues and formed a lively cultural landscape since the late of late-Qing Dynasty. There are two features in the Chinese politics during this period, one being the different parties interacting between cooperation and confrontation, and the other, the emergence of the workers' movements. The social ideological trend had a close interaction with the political changes in the process of modernity in the Chinese society. It’s very valuable that there are researches on Chinese ideology changes and the Chinese politics as affected by the WWI in this situation. First is cooperation and confrontation among different parties that were active on the Chinese political stage, which was a feature of the Chinese politics in the 1920s. Chinese politics of 1920s were affected by skeptical scientism and scientism indirectly and together, but because the WWI, relationship between both of them became more heated. One of the most important effects was that WWI did not brought about the critique on the capitalist system and the industrial culture only, but also the reform to modern society; Moreover, it even triggered the spread of anarchism, social democracy, Guild Socialism, Fabianism and Marxism in China. 11 Since the late of late-Qing Dynasty, western ideological trends had been introduced by Chinese intellects wholesale and they included politics, science and culture. According to them, “Translation is the most important matter”. But, Chinese intellects came to see the problems that existed in the western society, especially the fact that human race was hurt by modern scientific thought and the maladjustment was the crash between it and the traditional Chinese culture. In this condition, Chinese and west intellects thought about the same problem: how to serve the state governance by reforming the social system and strengthening the citizens’ consciousness of subjectivity. But the enlightenment was another duty for China. During this period, many western social ideological trends were pouring into China. A number of Chinese scholars didn’t only research and translate them, but also establish political parties (or organizations) for political practice. At that time, besides the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the China Youth Party and the Construction Research Association were also influential but split internally. The reason for the split was on the way to reform the Chinese politics. Its root was how to realize the western thought and scientific thought. For example, Zhang Dongsun （張東蓀）, editor of Liberation and Creation, said, “Go back to Kant from Marx”. He didn’t only doubt the western science, but also its philosophy. And Yan

11 Christina K. Gilmartin：Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s. London: University of California Press. 1995. p. 94.

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Yangchu（晏陽初）and Liang Shumin appealed "rural construction" and considered it as the beginning of modernity. Chen Duxiu（陳獨秀）and Zhang Shenfu （張申府） actively critiqued the industrial culture and the modern economic system, and introduced Marxism into China, it deeply affected the Left-wing communist movement in China in the future. In these years, some scholars researched the internal split of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party from the viewpoint of Sino-Soviet relations and the workers’ movement. But there is an important historical fact: as a victory county, China did not gained any actual benefits after the WWI, Japan inherited the control prerogative of Jiaozhou Bay（膠州灣） from Germany, and this was contributing to the outbreak of the May forth Movement. It may also be a direct cause to the fact that Chinese intellects had lost confidence in the west. Of course, there are some historical relationships among the split of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the division in the Chinese ideological field and the interaction in different political parties in the 1920s. Second is the emergence of the workers' movements. The 1920s was the decade that had the most numbers of strikes since the Opium War. Such as the “Feb.7th strike” in 1923, the “Canton-Hong Kong Strike” in 1925, the “Anyuan Railway workers’ and colliers’ strike” and the “Hong Kong Seaman Strike” in 1922 and the “Shanghai Anti-Japanese strike” in 1925 and so on. These were not only simple labor disputes but important affairs that changed the development process of the modern Chinese history, creating important significance in the Chinese history. Some scholars thought that all the strikes were started by such workers’ movement leaders as Peng Pai（彭湃）、Deng Zhongxia（鄧中夏）、Liu Shaoqi（劉少奇）and Li Lisan（李 立三）, all members of the Communist Party. But from a logical point of view, it had a close relationship with the division in the field of Chinese ideology, an influence of the WWI. No doubt, the WWI and the establishment of the Soviet Union gave the Capitalist world a hard hit. With the laws of the capitalist society, the 1920-1921 economic crises engulfed the entire capitalist world. In China, after the division of the Chinese ideology field, governors and intellects did not idolize the western culture, society and science, but enlightened people, developed industry and constructed the rural areas. From "save the nation by science" and "save the nation by education" to “save the nation by industry" （實業救國）in the 1920s, Chinese social elites had no other choices. This social ideology was changed by the WWI. In this situation, the development of Chinese national industry was slow. For example, after 1915, industry in China had changed from unfavorable balance of trade to favorable. In 1920s, the total of private property（included tobacco, textile and flour industry） was 0.58 billion dollar; if nationalized industry and foreign-owned enterprises were added, the number could be much bigger. At the same time, the Western Left-wing ideology trends were introduced into China, and it also was a

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cause of the emergence of workers' movements.12

III

Above all, the WWI did not only weaken the influence of scientific thought, but also had a lot to do with Chinese politics in the 1920s’, which was characterized by the dispute and cooperation between the different parties and the emergence of workers’ movement. But in a broad sense, the WWI also developed Chinese populism that confronted the modern scientific thought. It was combined with parties’ disputes and workers’ movement and improved the Left-wing communist movement in China. In 1920s, some Chinese scholars explained democracy as populism, because of “the doubt on science” and “anti-scientism”. Some populists wanted to reform the society to build a fair social order. It inherited enlighten sprite of the May 4th in critical way. On one hand, populists advisedly evaded and ignored science and made it equal to the western culture. They made an opposition between “populism/elite” that was based on “local/abroad” and even made up a few special concepts such as populace（平民） and plebeian （民眾）that represented most people but were based on populism. One the other hand, populists adapted from the enlightenment thought and tried to separate the context of the western politics, science and culture, and they replaced people’s identity with the national identity, which meant that national independence was equal to social enlightenment. After the WWI, Chinese populism took on the appearance of nationalism, and attracted some enlightened intellects to join. Left-wing activists such as Lu Xun（魯 迅）and Guo Moruo（郭沫若）, members of the “Rural Construction” such as Liang Shuming, Tao Xingzhi（陶行知）and Huang Yanpei（黃炎培）, democratic socialists such as Zhang Ziping and Deng Yanda（鄧演達）, and anarchists as Wu Zhihui（吳 稚暉） and Ba Jin（巴金）, were all affected by populism more or less, and the word of populace was focused on widely. In March, 1920, the “Populace Education Lecturer’s Group” was established in Peking University. This Special context was a hotbed for Marxism to be communicated by Left-wing scholars such as Mao Zedong（毛澤東）and Li Dazhao（李大釗）. They made the concept of populace equal to that of people in their political propaganda. And they called their opponents as “treacherous agents who work for foreigners”. 13 And they established the Communist Party in China that had become the most important mover of the Left-wing communism in China. Now it looks as if the WWI had made communism popular in China and that had its historical reason. But Chinese intellects did not find the relationship between them at that time. Because the scientific thought had become weakened in the 1920s, some scholars mystify this issue. For example, Yan Fu explained it from astrology:

12 Takeshi Hamashita: Trade and Finance in Late Imperial China: Maritime Customs and Open Port Market Zones. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 2009 .p. 70. 13 Maurice J. Meisner: Maurice Meisner, Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.1982. p.72.

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In the 1st of June, a new star appeared in the milk way, it was bright…The hard war lasted for four years, more than 30 billion people were killed or hurt. Missionaries said the world was coming to an end by their theories, and the Savior will be revivification, people wanted millennium. Really? The rule of space is far from us, but the earth and other 7 planets consist in the solar system, certainly they had relation to each other. When Halley's Comet passed by the earth, communism was popular in the world and the WWI broke out. Did these affairs relate to the Halley’s Comet？14

Yan Fu’s view was ridiculous to the modern mind, but it showed that scientific thought was desolate more or less at that time. “Science is democracy’s vassal” was then commonly approved by Chinese politicians. The Chinese enlightenment movement had to be stopped, science was separated from democracy, and the communism movement was developed by populism until now. At this time, when we reflect on the Chinese political ideology of the 1920s, we can still find that democracy at that time had not yet been combined closely with science. Democracy had been a tool for effecting, instigating and wooing people from different parties (such as Going to the people in 1930 and Populace Art Movement). Scientific technology was not only limited in campuses or institutes for discussion, but also improved industry and commerce development and increased the number of working-class rapidly. Yet, all of these were based on the division of scientific thought and democracy. Science did not bring enlightenment into the early democracy movement. It instead made populism grow vigorously; it prevented the development of democracy in China. From an historical point of view, WWI was a result of globalization, and it was also the first world war of human beings. China, as a country which had just ended its feudal time, its ideology, culture and politics were affected in a complicated way by this war. Of course, this is a valuable issue for future research.

14 黃浚：花隨人聖庵摭憶[M].北京：中華書局.2008.p98

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Akiyoshi Shu (秋吉收), Rojin: Yasō to Zassō (『魯迅―野草と雑草』, Lu Xun: Wild Grass and Weed). Fukuoka: Kyushu University Press (Japanese), 2016. 375 pp.

Lu Xun’s (魯迅) prose poetry collection Ye-cao (《野草》, Wild Grass), has been acclaimed his masterpiece in China, and many scholars, including Zhou Jianren (周建 人), Wang Yao (王瑶), Tang Tao (唐弢), Wang Shijing (王士菁), Deng Yizhong (邓 仪中), Qian Liqun (钱理群), Sun Yushi (孙玉石), Chen Shuyu (陈漱渝), Liu Zaifu (刘再复), and (汪晖), have been publishing excellent and important scholarship on the poems. Ye-cao’s reputation in Japan is similar. Many studies of it have been done, and at least thirteen translations of it into Japanese have been published since 1928. The number of studies and publications on Ye-cao shows the great value that has been placed on the collection in Japan and simultaneously that the collection is dense or difficult. The poems in the collection allow for multidimensional readings, as if the texts were made of many-colored lights like the beads in a kaleidoscope. Because of this multiplicity, study of Ye-cao has gradually developed various topics and themes. In the course of this development, Takeuchi Yoshimi, a distinguished Japanese scholar of Sinology, wrote that a new generation of scholars would surely propose innovative perspectives. One such innovate perspective in the long tradition of Japanese research on Ye-cao might be Akiyoshi Shu’s recent work Rojin: Yasō to Zassō (Lu Xun: Ye-cao and Za-cao). Employing meticulous research in primary source materials, including letters, magazines, and newspapers, as well as a detailed examination of socio-cultural reality in China, the monograph proposes the view that Lu Xun’s Ye-cao is a kind of pastiche of other literary texts from East and West, including works by authors who Lu Xun criticized in public and whose works, according to Akiyoshi, have not been noted as compositional elements of Ye-cao. Akiyoshi’s most notable source in his research is the Supplement to the Morning News ( 晨报副刊, Chenbao Fukan). He takes notice of literary works in the supplements from 1919 to 1920, when Lu Xun was preparing to write Ye-cao. Such literary works are as follows: “The New Ghost Association” (<新鬼匯>, “Xinguihui”) by Chen Xi’ (晨曦) (July 30 and 31, 1919), “A Strange Boy” by Alexander Efimovich Izmaylov (May 3, 1920), Poems in Prose by Turgenev (June 12 to October 9, 1920), “Why Do You Love Me?” (<你爲甚麽愛我>, “Ni weishenme ai wo”), a poem written by a Latvian poet in Esperanto and translated by Lu Xun’s younger brother, Zhou Zuoren (周作人) (October 2, 1920), and “Ye-cao” (「野草」, “Wild Grass”) written by Yosano Akiko (与謝野晶子) and translated by Zhou Zuoren (October 16, 1920). With minute analysis and on-target comparison of styles, contents, themes, metaphors, words and phrases, rhythm, and translations, the author found that those texts are surprisingly consistent with the poems in Lu Xun’s Ye-cao: “The Dog’s Retort” (< 狗 的 駁 诘 >, “Goude bojie”) with Chen’s “The New Ghost

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Association,” “On Expressing an Opinion” (<立論>, “Lilun”) with Izmaylov’s “A Strange Boy,” “The Beggars” (<求乞者>, “Qiuqizhe”) with Turgenev’s “The Beggar,” “The Vibration of the Decrepit Line” (<頹敗線的顫動>, “Tuibaixiande chan dong”) with Turgenev’s “The End of the World,” “The Passerby” (<過客>, “Guoke”) with Turgenev’s “Alms” and “The Old Woman,” “The Good Story” (<好的 故事>, “Haode gushi”) with Turgenev’s “The Realm of Azure,” “After Death” (<死 後>, “Shihou”) with Turgenev’s “What Shall I Think?,” “Shadow’s Leave-Taking” (<影的告別> with the Latvian poet’s “Why Do You Love Me?,” and Ye-cao with Yosano’s “Ye-cao.” The original Japanese title of Yosano’s “Ye-cao” is “Zassō” 「雑( 草」, “Za-cao”: “Weed”): Zhou Zuoren translated “Zassō” (“Weed”) into Chinese as “Ye-cao” (“Wild Grass”). Akiyoshi notes the meaning of Ye-cao in Chinese, which is similar to that of zassō (za-cao: weed) in Japanese, and Lu Xun himself elsewhere uses the word Ye-cao to mean the Japanese word zassō in his essays and in translations of literary works by Japanese authors like Kikuchi Kan (菊池寛) and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (芥川龍之介). Furthermore, the image of Ye-cao in the foreword to Lu Xun’s prose poetry collection evokes zassō in Japanese, the way Yosano used it in her poem. Akiyoshi shows, using Lu Xun’s letters, that he read the Supplement to the Morning News and paid close attention to it. He concludes that the Supplement to the Morning News was a quarry for Lu Xun’s Ye-cao. For sources of other compositional elements of Ye-cao, Akiyoshi Shu finds Xu Yunuo (徐玉诺), Akutagawa, Satō Haruo (佐藤春夫), and others. It is further interesting to note that Akiyoshi found in the densest of Lu Xun’s prose poems, “Shadow’s Leave-Taking,” similar images, themes, words, and phrases to those in works by Rabindranath Tagore, Xu Zhimo (徐志摩), and his brother Zhou Zuoren, although Lu Xun criticized these figures in public. He had hostile relations with them, but communicated with them through his literary texts. Akiyoshi states that Lu Xun’s Ye-cao is a pastiche of literary works from East and West, especially those published in the Supplement to the Morning News, but his purpose is not to undermine the value of Ye-cao by disclosing its deficiency of originality. He proposes a fundamental question on the way to approach Lu Xun and his work. Lu Xun respected originality but denied that he was a poet, like Akutagawa did, or a writer of literature. Lu Xun chose to write miscellaneous impressions and thoughts as the best way to proceed, as he noted in the Foreword to And That’s That (《而己集》, Erjiji, 1926), written after he finished writing Ye-cao, and later in other essays as well. He preferred to be a miscellanist. Nonetheless, he has been elevated to the status of a great poet by critics in the East and the West as well. Akiyoshi thus proposes that Lu Xun should be studied from the viewpoint of a miscellanist but not of a poet or an author; otherwise, he thinks, it might be difficult to approach Lu Xun and his works. With this perspective, thanks to his meticulous research, and with the support of the different characters “leave” (《往》) and “stay” (《住》) in different versions of “Shadow’s Leave-Taking,” representing an indecisive shadow, rather than regarding them as a mere corrigendum, he proposes a new

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Japanese translation of Lu Xun’s Ye-cao as his last chapter. Together with this translation, his recent book Rojin: Yasō to Zassō might give Lu Xun studies the breath of fresh air that Takeuchi Yoshimi expected.

Dr. SUZUKI AKIYOSHI (鈴木章能), Professor of American and Comparative Literature, Department of Intercultural Studies, Nagasaki University, Japan. Email: suzu-a＠nagasaki-u.ac.jp.

Brian Bruya (ed.), The Philosophical Challenge from China, MA: The MIT Press,

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2015, Pp. 393.

The philosophical challenge from China is an anthology consisting of 13 interesting essays written by scholars who are working at the interface of classic Chinese philosophy and mainstream analytic philosophy. It represents recently renewed attempt to facilitate communication between the insights of Chinese philosophical thoughts and current philosophical issues in the framework of analytic philosophy. Three distinct features of this volume make it outstanding. First, it draws inspirations from the entire history of Chinese philosophy ranging from pre-Qin thinkers to twentieth-century philosophers. Second, it encompass such analytically meaningful areas as moral psychology, political philosophy and ethics, and metaphysics and epistemology, these being also pertaining to Chinese philosophical tradition. Third, it proposals new, controversial perspectives on current issues that constitute challenges to both western analytical tradition and Chinese tradition. These features afford this volume usefulness in multiple ways—an introduction to frontier issues in the studies of Chinese philosophy, a resource for understanding updated research in comparative philosophy, and a thought provoking text for a graduate seminar in philosophy. Chinese scholars tend to view Chinese thought as philosophically meaningful in its own right. Anglo-American scholars in the study of Chinese philosophy, including many of them who have good command of Chinese languages, tend to visualize Chinese thought through a pair of glasses made up with analytically transformed data. The goal of The Philosophical Challenge from China is to foster a healthy relationship between analytic philosophy and Chinese philosophy. Specifically, it is an attempt to present a pair of newly renovated glasses that enable people to see where Chinese and analytical traditions meet and how they mutually enrich in contemporary philosophical discussions—how they can be resources for each other and how they constitute challenges to each other. The emphasis is placed on how Chinese philosophy may enrich western philosophy. In his introduction, the editor claims Chinese philosophy “would advance the current discussion” by “supporting a minority view with a pervasive new argument, contradicting a prominent position, and problematizing a position or an issue and thereby demonstrating that the issue has a significant dimension that has been neglected or that a distinction is not as clear-cut as has generally been assume” (p. xv). Brief reviews of the essays collected herein suffice to show the extent to which the editor fulfills his goal. Three essays are arranged in the section titled ‘Moral Psychology’. Hagop Sarkissian’s “When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse than You Think: Psychological Bias and the Ethics of Negative Character Assessments” shows that people are morally predisposed to judge others much more harshly than they judge themselves. At the same time, reason steers them to the Confucian viewpoint that being charitable in judging others positively affects self-judgment. David Wong’s essay “Growing Virtue: The Theory and Science of Developing Compassion from a Mencian Perspective” contends that Mencian conception of moral life dissolves the issue over the roles of emotion and reason in virtue ethics as the Mencian view can be counted as both an emotional and a rational account of virtue ethics. Bongrae Seok’s essay “Proto-Empathy and Nociceptive Mirror Emotion: Mencius’ Embodied Moral

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Psychology” brings the insights of Chinese thought to bear on the contemporary theory of embodied mind in cognitive science by showing how Mencius takes the role of the body seriously in explaining empathy. Arranged in the section titled ‘Political Philosophy and Ethics’ are five essays which make direct reference to contemporary authors in western analytical philosophy. In “A Criticism of Later Rawls and a Defense of a Decent (Confucian) People” Tongdong Bai poses the Confucian model of decent consultation hierarchy as an alternative to ’ liberal democracy, which merely tolerates a decent hierarchical society. Donald J. Munro’s essay “Unequal Human Worth” argues that contemporary psychology prefers the Confucian theory of unequal moral to the equal moral worth theory in Western philosophy. Stephen Angle’s essay “Virtue Ethics, The Rule of Law, and the Need for Self-Restriction” attempts to reconcile western virtue ethics exemplified by Aristotle and Hume with the New-Confucianism in Mou Zongsan’s theory of self-restriction. Angle suggests to dissolve the problem that self-cultivation of virtues is particular in character while the laws of states are universal in character. Kwong-loi Shun’s essay “Ethical Self-Commitment and Ethical Self-Indulgence” compares the western idea of ethical self-commitment with the Neo-Confucian idea of ‘yi-commitment’, showing that traditional Confucian ethics is still relevant to contemporary discussion of morality. In their essay “Confucian Moral Sources” Owen Flanagan and Steven Geisz suggest the long-standing, on-going, controversial issue concerning the need of transcendent or superhuman ground for morality is contingent upon historically evolved cultural settings. They contend this is evidenced by Confucian ethics not being grounded in a transcendent or superhuman assumption. Finally, the section titled ‘Metaphysics and Epistemology’ embraces five essays, which compare the differences in root categories between Western and Chinese philosophies. In his essay “Senses and Values of Oneness” Philip Ivanhoe elaborates Neo-Confucian views of oneness, which is largely absent from the analytical tradition in the West. Brook Ziporyn’s essay “What Does the Law of Non-Contradiction Tell Us, If Anything? Paradox, Parameterization, and Truth in Tiantai Buddhism” uses the Tian-Tai sect of Chinese Buddhist as an example. It highlights the law of non-contradiction, which predominates analytical philosophy, is not present in Eastern philosophies. In their essay “Knowing-How and Knowing-To” Stephen Hetherington and Karyn Lai propose that epistemology within the framework of analytical philosophy can be enriched by incorporating the Chinese concept of “knowing-to”—a way of knowing in addition to “knowing that” and “knowing how”. Bo Mou’s essay “Quine's Naturalized Epistemology and Zhuangzi's Daoist Naturalism: How Their Constructive Engagement is Possible” shows both Chinese and Analytical philosophy embraces a naturalism, but their constructive engagement is only possible when both endorse non-physical aspects of nature. Brian Bruya’s essay “Action Without and Natural Human Action: Resolving a Double Paradox,” deals with issues concerning action and responsibility by comparing western reason-based theory with Chinese spontaneity-based theory suggesting these two theories can be reconciled to form a unified theory of human action. Overall, The Philosophical Challenge from China makes significant

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contributions to our understanding of the modern relevancy of Chinese Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. At the very least, this volume helps make people aware that modernity has tolerance, compromise, traditions, and diversity as its essential elements.

Dr. ZHAOLU LU, Professor of Philosophy, Tiffin University. Email: [email protected].

Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times,

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Princeton University Press, August 2014, pp. 256.

After being marred by all kinds of political turmoil in the twentieth century, Confucianism began to experience a steady revival in recent decades. Meanwhile, with the rise of China as an unignorable force in the world, this ancient Chinese philosophy has also received mounting attention from the West. The book represents an attempt to explore Confucianism from a western perspective. It is unique, in the sense that it uses the norms and terminology of western normative philosophy to reconstruct and modernize Confucianism, and simultaneously draws Confucian resources to enrich and revise the western tradition of liberal democracy. It therefore represents an effort to channel the two philosophical traditions with the hope of strengthening and developing both. Despite the author’s modesty about the book’s ambition, it nevertheless takes up a daunting problem which has long obsessed Confucianism. Since its inception, Confucianism has confronted a huge gap between its high ideal and the low reality. It has suffered from a lack of effective means to transform its social and political ideals of the Grand Union (Datong) and Small Tranquility (Xiaokang) into actuality. The traditional Confucian means, such as rites, moral edification, and the Kingly Way of governance, were all found inadequate or unfeasible to restrain people’s behaviors in reality and failed to maintain an ideally harmonious social order in which a public-spirited ethos would prevail. 1 The early Confucian masters, Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi, were however unwilling to abandon those ideal means because their conceptions of social ideals are characterized not just by a prevalent thriving ethical spirit, but also by the ethical nature of the means by which those ideals are achieved. Rites, for example, are an ideal means Confucian masters proposed to tackle the problems arising from unfavorable situations in the Small Tranquility. Confucius’s teaching in the Analects suggests that rites are embedded with ethical values such as harmony, benevolence, righteousness and deference, and therefore would help the lesser ideal of Small Tranquility to keep alive the spirit of the perfect ideal, the Grand Union. But rites and other ideal means were found ineffective in nonideal situations. Other than the ideal means, the early Confucian masters actually did have some alternative means to handle the problems in unfavorable conditions. They could, for example, opt for the Legalist strategy of using rewards and

1 A bit of clarification is perhaps needed here. The Confucian doctrine scrutinized by the author is confined to the classical pre-Qin period, comprising the literatures of Confucius, Mensius and Xunzi. It does not refer to the two thousand years long complicated and multi-faceted tradition of Confucianism which includes many later developments and interpretations. More importantly, the Confucian doctrine discussed in the book should not be conflated with the real political system that existed in China for over two thousand years. Despite the sustaining appeal of such Confucian social and political ideals as the Datong and Xiaokang worlds, what actually was in operation was an autocratic monarchy with some Chinese characteristics. While the Confucian edification did play some role in curbing the arbitrary rule of the centralized monarch, what existed in reality was unquestionably a far cry from the Confucian ideals.

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punishments administered through law to regulate people’s behaviors. But Confucians categorically rejected the Legalist strategy on the grounds it would not guide people to the right motivation for their actions and would hence be detrimental for the cultivation of their moral character. Caught in the impasse of ideal means being ineffective and effective means being nonideal, Confucians resigned to fate as to whether their social ideals would materialize or not. To break this impasse, Joseph Chan, the author of the book, proposes that the political institutions in western liberal democracy can serve as viable means for realizing Confucian ideals. Chan has obviously set aside the debates about whether Confucianism is compatible with Western philosophical tradition, or whether the two traditions are commensurable in terms of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, or methodology. Chan’s focus is directly political, and he adopts a “piecemeal” approach when weaving together Confucianism and Western liberal democracy. The main aim of his book comprises grafting certain liberal democratic institutions into Confucianism, but grounding them in the Confucian ideas rather than the liberal democratic thought. In the process of coupling the two, Chan develops what he calls “Confucian political perfectionism,” or simply, Confucian perfectionism. As the main strategy for the whole project, Confucian perfectionism is intended to be a doctrine which assesses social and political institutions with reference to “the Confucian conception of the good” rather than “the liberal conception of the right.” In Chan’s view, the liberal democratic institutions which have emerged in modern times, such as limited government, separation of powers, democratic elections, two-chamber legislature, human rights and civil liberties, and social justice, have all proved effective in setting things straight in real societies and should therefore be absorbed by Confucianism as good candidates for viable means. But it is Confucianism rather than liberalism which will provide a justificatory foundation for them. Any problem of incompatibility is to be resolved by either revising and modernizing Confucianism, to the extent of abandoning its most uncongenial parts, or by reshaping and re-justifying the liberal democratic institutions, with Confucian ideals as their aspiration. After such reconstruction of both traditions, those institutions would not only deal effectively with the problems arising from unfavorable conditions but also retain the spirit of Confucian ideals. It of course is not easy to do several things at the same time and to unify everything into a single scheme of Confucian perfectionism. Moreover, if Confucian perfectionism is to be established as a new philosophical doctrine, it must be able to answer all the important questions in political philosophy - those normative questions the discussions about which constitute the bulk of the liberal tradition. The book confronts these challenges. The first part of the book deals with such foundational issues as state authority and the political institutions which best serve the ideal conception of authority. The second part moves on to other fundamental issues like human rights, civil liberties, and social justice and welfare. These issues concern both the state-personal and interpersonal relationships, two important categories of relationships normative political philosophy aims to regulate. The book may not have exhausted all important issues in normative political philosophy, but it does offer a new Confucian perspective on the above important issues through sketching an

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outline of Confucian perfectionism. To resurrect Confucianism to the contemporary world, considerable reinterpretive work is needed to render this ancient philosophy compatible with the basic intellectual progresses characterizing modern times. A good example is political authority. In Confucianism, political authority used to be closely associated with an old interpretation which saw the people and territory as properties of the ruler. Authority was therefore justified as an extension of the ruler’s ownership right over his own properties. This ownership-right interpretation of political authority, as such being controversial, is nonetheless unacceptable to any modern society which has come to embrace the idea of popular sovereignty and constitutionalism. Chan rejects it and, by reinterpreting the relevant Confucian texts, replaces it with what he calls a service conception of authority. According to this conception, political authority is justified, instrumentally, by its ability to serve, i.e. to protect and promote, the well-being of the people, and, intrinsically, by its being constitutive of a relationship of mutual commitment between the governing and governed. Political authority justified in this Confucian way differs importantly from authority justified by the theory in western liberalism. Another example of reinterpretation is about the idea of monism of authority. Early Confucian masters believed that the authority of a ‘Sage King,’ a person with perfect virtues and capacities of judgment who possesses a full understanding of the Way, is monistic and supreme and hence needs no limitations. This puts Confucianism at odds with the modern ideas of limited government and separation of powers. Chan reconstructs certain early Confucian arguments for monist authority and argues that they can actually be compatible with the modern ideas. Since it is difficult if not impossible to find a Sage King in reality, Chan argues that we should opt instead for a feasible political system that offers power to people with “flawed but above-average levels of virtue and intelligence”, allowing them to cooperate, complement and check each other to achieve a balanced view of the Way for governance and to prevent their abuse of power. Chan asserts that the notion of monist and supreme authority, regardless of who assumes the position of power, must be abandoned if Confucian political thought is to have any validity today. Reinterpretation is just one way to modernize Confucianism. Being an ancient philosophical tradition, Confucianism remains a rich pool of resources to be tapped for modern use. To be sure, another way to modernize it is to abstract ideas from the raw materials, shod them in modern terms, and develop them into a system of principles. Chan does exactly that when he tries to work out a conception of social justice and welfare for his project of Confucian perfectionism. Rather than grounding justice on equality or individual rights, Chan derives a duty of justice on the part of the ruler from the Confucian core idea of benevolent rule. More importantly, he analyzes relevant texts in Mencius and Xunzi to arrive at the conclusion that their views on resource distribution amount to what we call principles of sufficiency in modern western philosophy. Provision of material resources is aimed to guarantee a secure life for everyone so that they can pursue a higher, ethical life, rather than to achieve equality or fulfill one’s subjective conception of good life. This also means that the Confucian ‘sufficiency’ view has the advantage of setting a rough but

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objective standard for sufficiency threshold. But in Chan’s Confucian perfectionism, social justice is just a part of a larger Confucian social ideal. On basis of the principles from Mencius’s famous well-field system, Chan develops a multilayered system of social provision which gives priority to mutual aid from family or close social ties over assistance from the government. The system allows all possible aid providers to play a role in social welfare, including the family, the village or commune, and the government, and incorporates principles of mutual care, sufficientarian justice, as well as personal merits and responsibility. When it comes to transplanting western political institutions into Confucianism, Chan proposes that Confucianism can satisfactorily provide the justificatory foundations for them. In Chan’s view, the reason why those western institutions can be absorbed by Confucianism is not only that they can tackle real-life problems, but also that they can tackle them in a way that accords with and expresses the spirit of the Confucian ideals. A good example is democratic elections. The dual function of democratic elections is to select virtuous and competent people to run the government (the selection function) and to reward or sanction elected officials by reelecting them or not (the sanction function). By guaranteeing morally and intelligently eligible candidates for positions of power, democratic elections promotes the Confucian political ends, such as the improvement of people’s well-being, and directly embodies an effort to achieve the Confucian ideal political relationship, a virtuous relationship of mutual commitment and trust between the ruler and the ruled. Democratic elections can therefore be justified in Confucian terms. Moreover, Chan argues that Confucianism can actually provide a robust ethical foundation for all institutions of democracy. The well-functioning of democratic institutions relies ultimately on civic virtues or civility of the people, which are mostly the result of education. But the civic education advocated by liberals focuses only on the acquisition of knowledge of public affairs and critical-thinking abilities and does not emphasize the nourishment of ethical character traits. In Chan’s view, Confucianism has a long tradition of stressing the cultivation of human virtues, which are broader and more fundamental than civic virtues. Chan therefore contends that the moral education advocated by Confucianism is more effective than civic education in engendering the virtues necessary for the success of democracy. In formulating his Confucian perfectionism, Chan does not accept western political institutions without hesitation. It is a fact that not all institutions can fit squarely into Confucianism – they were born out of the western tradition and, whether they can be supplied a Confucian justificatory foundation or not, they may still be uncongenial in some way. Chan’s acceptance of them is a critical one. He assesses them, modifying them where necessary so that they can not only be aligned with the Confucian ideals, but also get along well with other existing features of Confucianism. For example, Chan’s Confucian perfectionism absorbs, among other things, the idea of bicameral legislature - composed of a democratic lower chamber and a nondemocratic higher chamber - a common but essential feature in liberal democratic regimes. But different from the legislatures in the West, Chan’s second chamber has Confucian features with regard to its membership and functions. Members of Chan’s second chamber come from seasoned public servants or politicians, whose virtues and

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capacities have stood the test of long-term service in the public sectors. They are selected by their fellow colleagues - people who have worked closely with them in public service for an extended period of time. This colleague-based selection approach is inspired by the Confucian classical texts which tell us that virtue and competence can only be found by close and long-term observation, and Chan believes that this approach is better at finding qualified people than elections which are done through mass media or competitive examinations, like those in traditional China, that only test people’s knowledge on paper. The functions of the second chamber also differ to some extent. In addition to passing bills and balancing the views of the first chamber, it also has an educational function. The way in which the second chamber debates the public affairs will set up a good example for the whole citizenry of what a reasonable, disinterested, and public-spirited debate should be like. This, in Chan’s view, fulfils the Confucian idea that political leaders should set themselves as moral examples for people to emulate. Another institution modified by Confucian perfectionism is human rights. Chan contends that Confucianism, unlike liberalism, does not see human rights as an essential constitutive element of human dignity. In the Confucian ideal society people are engaged in all kinds of virtuous and benevolent relationships which would render human rights useless. But in Confucian perfectionism, human rights remain as a powerful fallback apparatus which would be resorted to in nonideal situations, especially in conflicts when virtuous relationship breaks down and the weak are left with nothing else to protect themselves against the powerful. Moreover, Chan contends that Confucian perfectionism, with its emphasis on virtues and its preference of a shorter list of human rights, would also help prevent the rampant rights-talk which tends to erode social cohesion and wrongly annuls such traditional moral vocabularies as common good, virtues, and duties. In short, though human rights are not part of the Confucian ideal, they are necessary and effective means to tackle real-life problems in nonideal situations and can be modified to fit into Confucian perfectionism. There are of course issues that, despite efforts of reinterpretation or modification respectively on either side, still pose problems for the project of Confucian perfectionism. This of course is not surprising, given that the author is after all trying to combine two distinct philosophical traditions. One of the hard nuts is individual autonomy. As is well-known, Confucianism with its emphasis on submissiveness of individuals in a hierarchical system is often criticized in modern time for not recognizing individual autonomy, that is, autonomy in personal sphere. A son must be submissive to the father and wife to the husband, for example. Is it possible, then, to incorporate individual moral autonomy into Confucianism? Chan’s answer to this challenge is dubious, and therefore open to further debate. On the one hand, according to his reading of the Confucian texts, Chan argues the Confucian moral agent does enjoy individual autonomy, when he voluntarily accepts the demands of morality and reflectively engages in moral life. On the other, he admits that traditional Confucian moral autonomy is compatible with only a narrow range of life choices in study, career, marriage, and other areas of personal life. These two interpretations of Confucian autonomy are however in tension. The first interpretation is, to certain extent, reasonable, for it is in line with the idea of self-cultivation of virtues by

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individuals in Confucian ethics. But Chan seems to have neglected the fact that the Confucian virtues, at least some of them, are precisely the reasons for the limited range of life choices. Filial piety, for example, advocates submissiveness of children to their parents, and the more a Confucian moral agent cultivates and practices this virtue, the less possible he will be able to make his own choice. This is just one example to show how Chan’s two interpretations of the Confucian moral autonomy could curtail each other. Chan seems to have spared little effort in solving this tension. But without a proper handling of the opposition, it would be less convincing to make the proposal that Confucian ethics can incorporate a moderate notion of personal autonomy, one that is compatible with the pluralism of values and lifestyles of modern society and one that can sometimes be outweighed by other ethical values. As is shown, all the above issues have been dealt with in such a way that they contribute to Chan’s scheme of Confucian political perfectionism. Chan works very carefully, hacking off a piece here, suturing on a piece there, until he has arrived at a version which, to him, seems to combine the best elements of both Confucianism and liberalism. This is the most important original contribution made by Chan, and it is what distinguishes the book from other recent literatures on Confucian political philosophy. No doubt, this excitingly new doctrine of Confucian perfectionism will be subject to public discussion and appraisal, with its strengths and weaknesses being examined. But some immediate and coarse responses can be offered here. For example, it is uncertain whether Confucian political philosophy can be interpreted as political perfectionism. Confucianism is a broad and multifaceted tradition, regarded as a comprehensive system of ethics, philosophy, and even theology. While it is true that Confucian ethics has often been interpreted as a kind of perfectionism, it remains a question whether its political philosophy should also be interpreted so, or purely so. Aristotle’s perfectionist ethics also provides a particular conception of good life, but it does not prevent political doctrines such as liberal democracy to be born out of the western tradition of thought. The skepticism about the political perfectionism interpretation is reinforced by the fact that, unlike other perfectionist doctrines, the Confucian good is not, or not just, valued for its own sake. Virtues, for example, are an essential part of the Confucian good. But the Confucian virtues are considered not just intrinsically valuable but also instrumentally valuable, for it is also part of Confucianism that only by cultivating virtues can people achieve real harmony. A related and equally important question for Confucian political perfectionism comes from a familiar quarter. As we all know, political perfectionism has always been criticized by liberals for abandoning state neutrality among different conceptions of the good. The Confucian state would also be challenged for giving up state neutrality in favour of the Confucian conception of the good. Such a challenge would become even more forceful when virtue is part of the Confucian good to be promoted by coercive political institutions and state policies. If Confucian perfectionism is, like Chan says, a moderate one which does not go that far to promote its unique conception of the good, allowing more space for plural conceptions of the good, then the question becomes whether and how it can differ from other forms of political perfectionism. Nonetheless, it is no doubt this book will provoke many interesting discussions, among Confucians and liberals, regarding both these general questions

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and the specific issues mentioned previously. It is undeniable that his book is groundbreaking, for it opens up new spheres for normative philosophical debate in the East as well as the West.

Dr. HAN RUI, Associate Professor, Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou. Email: [email protected].

Wu Guangxing (吴光兴)，The Eighth Century Poetic Manner: On Exploration of the

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“-Song Century”(705-805) in Tang Poetic History八世纪诗风：探索唐诗史上 “沈宋的世纪”（705-805），Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press (社会科学文 献出版社)，2013.

Among many narrations of Tang poetry history, the theory of “Four Periods of Tang Poetry” proposed by Gao Bing高棅 (1350-1423) in early Ming has acquired a very unique commanding position and exerted considerable impact on the interpretative methods and perspectives in the study of Tang poetry. Although continuously faced with numerous scholars’ severe challenges from Ming and Qing to present day, so far it looks like that no other interpretive modes could replace it. In order to shake off this dogmatic interpretive atmosphere, Wu Guangxing’s book, The Eighth Century Poetic Manner: On Exploration of the “Shen-Song Century” (705-805) in Tang Poetic History provides new insights into Tang poetic history from the eighth century. In this important book, Bing argues the eighth century is “Shen-Song Century” in the minds of Tang writers, which, in fact, can be regarded as “regulated verse century”. Within this century, finalized by two early Tang poets Shen Quanqi 沈佺期 (656?-715?) and Song Zhiwen宋之问(656?-715?), and followed by the poets of several generations, the genre norms of regulated verse absolutely dominated the whole world of poetry. Other literary styles, literary trends, and literary movements played complementary and subsidiary roles. In other words, the literary norms of regulated verse established by Shen-Song embodies a pre-eminent influence in Tang literary history, especially before the poetic reform movement during Yuanhe元和 (806-820) period. This book consists of two parts. The first part discusses the influence of regulated verse norms upon the active literary practices of six successive poet-groups and the gradual evolution of poetic styles which is divided into four phases, Kaiyuan开元 (713-741), Tianbao天宝 (742-756), Dali大历(766-779), Zhenyuan贞元 (785-805). The second part should be considered as a comprehensive evaluation, based on Tang poets’ own observations, reviewing and examining the concept foundation and formation of regulated verse genre and exploring how literature model figures crucially were transformed form Shen-Song to Li-Du (李白、杜甫). Surveying this century’ literary phenomenon with compassion and understanding, the author expertly collects scattered and fragmented comments from Tang writers, carefully examines and verifies with extant several editors of “Tang Poetry Anthology Compiled by Tang People” and as many Tang poetry texts as possible. He analyzes Tang writer-communities’ concerns and consensus on contemporary literature, to understand the context of their own literary criticism, and to comprehend their own literary conception. As he observes, his arguments and conclusions in this book are nothing more than modern commentaries and annotations to Tang writers’ poetic views, and what he describes and represents is nothing more than the Tang poetry history seen in Tang writers’ own eyes and from their own lips. More precisely he reveals, in Tang writers’ opinion, Shen-Song style not only dominated the periods of Kaiyuan-Tianbao and Dali, but also extended to and covered

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Zhenyuan. Most importantly, the author points out there is no unbridgeable gap between Kaiyuan-Tianbao and Dali in Tang poetry history. The poets from Kaiyuan-Tianbao to Dali were all fostered by regulated verse norms, the literary conventions and every poet’s practices had shared family resemblance until major changes happened during Zhenyuan-Yuanhe period, when the abuses of regulated verse gradually exposed and widely criticized. Through tracking the replacement of literary model figures, the author discovers that in Tang writers’ opinion, there were three successive generations of model figures, i.e. Shen-Song, Wang-Cui (王维、崔 颢), and Qian-Lang (钱起、郎士元). The reason that Wang-Cui’ role as the model figures of Kaiyuan-Tianbao was completely forgotten in the literary history is because Li-Du was retrospectively built as a much more important and insurmountable authority figures. In Tang writers’ opinion, Li-Du and Shen-Song represented two kinds of poetic norms respectively. Shen-Song style meant being familiar with and mastering the various complicated and normalized rules of regulated verse, especially five-character poetry (in the context of Tang poetics, five-character poetry was in some sense a synonym for poetry, even for literary works). However, Li-Du style meant preferring to non-regulated verse, that is, pre-Tang’ classical poetic forms. As the model of literature archaist movement, Li-Du style ended the leading role of regulated verse norms, but they were both nurtured by the eighth century Shen-Song style and therefore were the products of overwhelming regulated verse norms. The author suggests the transition from Shen-Song to Li-Du should be considered as the key point of literature evolution in the middle and late Tang periods.. With describing the eighth poetry styles as “Shen-Song century”, and from the perspectives of “literary conception—poetic style” and “model figure—poetic style”, The author brings a new serious challenge to the widely adopted theory of “Four Periods of Tang Poetry”, which was initially proposed by Gao Bing in earlier Ming. As mentioned above the Tang poetry history can be divided into four periods: early, high, middle, and late Tang. Throughout these periods the poetry constructed and polished by numerous scholars transwformed from Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing to our present day, esteemed "Li-Du" as the models, "high Tang" as the climax, Regulated verse is well known as the lifeblood of Tang poetry. As a new emerging genre in Tang Dynasty, it connected the past and the future. From the perspective of genre-style, the eighth century marks a new beginning for poetry for over one thousand years, various poetic styles were modernized and baptized by regulated verse’s norms during this Shen-Song century, “regulated verse culture” affected both inside and outside literary world. From the perspective of model-style, the replacement of one model figure by another clearly demonstrated the gradual revolution of the poetic styles during this one hundred years, Shen-Song were the pathfinders, Li-Du were not only the successors but the rebels. In general, trying to understand the Tang literary contexts and explore the evolution of Tang poetry history means focusing on the inner norms of literary genre and the profound influence of the regulated verse norms in the eighth century, The author marks “Shen-Song century” as the core spirit of Tang poetry history, which surely will facilitate and activate future study of Tang literature. Moreover, there are many insightful and valuable accounts about eighth century

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poetic manners found in this book. For example, through analyzing the three successive generations in Kaiyuan-Tianbao, juxtaposing three groups in Dali literary circles, comparing the different standpoints and concerns between different editors of the Tang Poetry Anthology Compiled by Tang People. This bring to light several long neglected poets’ roles in poetic history by digging their social contacts and the travel of their texts and opinions. The author’s work not only fills the Tang poetic picture with new details and new knowledge, but also profoundly represents the inner structure and motivation of the evolution of Tang poetry. His study will allow a better understanding of the Tang poetry world, inspiring and promoting the Tang poetry study. It is particularly worth mentioning that there is a long and detailed appendix named “Chronology of the Eighth Poetic Styles”, which carefully arranges and sorts the poets’ biography, experiences, and literary works, all in line with Du Fu’ life story and integrated with important culture, political and military events. Based on the extant research achievement, this appendix provides many new materials and new analysis, needless to say, which are extremely useful for Tang literary researchers. The author contends the established theoretical of Tang poetry study does not always accord with historic reality. Instead, they cover up the truth, and should differentiate between the Tang writers’ own observations and the successors’ commentaries and interpretation. This perception undoubtedly is enlightening and informative, but as the saying goes “A bystander is always clear-minded”, maybe the reason for the “Four Periods of Tang Poetry” casting a long shadow is because it tells the part of what happened, at least cannot be easily wiped out. As for returning to Tang literary contexts, many original materials have been lost, transmitted texts including Tang poetry anthologies and Tang writers’ own comments are limited, so the attempts to reconstruct the distant past are inevitably limited. Being true to the facts, we have to accept and deal with this limitation. Still, we have many reasons to believe that the author’s excellent work will be revelatory and trigger further discussions on the relevant problems.

Dr. QIAN LIU, Professor, Institute of Literature, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China.

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