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Home , Lionel Giles, Perspectivism, Zhuangzi (book)

EPITEMIC PERSPECTIVISM AND LIVING WELL IN THE THOUGHT OF NIETZSCHE AND

Danesh Singh

Abstract: Nietzsche and Zhuangzi offer epistemological views of perspectivism that inform a normative conception of living well. Perspectivism for both thinkers point to the limits of human , in that both thinkers deny the possibility of attaining knowledge traditionally considered important to living well. Both also endorse a notion of the good life that takes the of knowledge to be restricted. Nietzschean perspectivism devalues the pursuit of knowledge that does not pertain to human interests. Zhuangist perspectivism devalues the pursuit of knowledge that does not facilitate attainment of the normative Way. I respond to Berry’s therapeutic reading of Nietzsche in order to argue that Nietzsche rejects knowledge that does not speak to human interests. I also draw upon Ivanhoe and Berkson’s reading of Zhuangzi’s to argue that his perspectivism informs a view of the good life that values intuitive knowledge and its employment of the natural mechanism ( ji), over the pursuit of theoretical knowledge, which includes asking grand questions about the workings and origin of the universe.

Nietzsche and Zhuangzi (莊子) each offer an analysis on the of perspectives in order to answer the epistemological question of how humans know anything. Both thinkers believe perspectives constrain the possibilities of what humans are capable of knowing, and they suggest that the cognitive capacities of humans play an essential role in circumscribing the possibilities for what is knowable. In this sense, each thinker is a skeptic about knowledge concerning the answers to certain questions. The thinkers in this study believe such knowledge is unimportant toward the goal of living well. In their respective views of the good life, they deny the importance of knowledge traditionally considered important to their respective philosophical opponents. The readings of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi presented reveal the epistemological basis which unpins their respective normative commitments to

Dr. DANESH SINGH, , SUNY Cortland. Email：[email protected]

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pursue knowledge relevant to their views of the good life. I will attempt to put my reading of Nietzsche in dialogue with a recent reading by Jessica Berry which identifies the Ancient Greek Skeptical influences on Nietzsche’s thought. Berry’s therapeutic reading understands Nietzsche as indebted to ancient Greek Skepticism. She argues that Nietzschean health, like the Skeptical notion of health, entails ataraxia, or peace of mind, which results from the suspension of judgment. According to Berry, Nietzsche does not assert philosophical views of his own, but rather, makes arguments in order to show their equipollent nature. I will argue Berry overstates the degree to which Nietzsche’s thought is concerned with suspending judgment. A significant component of Nietzsche’s normative project involves his taking a stand against positions that accept the two-world hypothesis. Nietzsche ultimately dissolves knowledge which fails to pertain to the particular interests, goals, and purposes of human beings. I will also draw upon two readings of Zhuangzi’s epistemology in order to elucidate how his perspectivism informs his normative project. Zhuangzi that perspectives which rely on right (shi 是) and wrong (fei 非) are unable to deliver individuals to the . P.J. Ivanhoe and Mark Berkson have pointed out that Zhuangzi is a skeptic insofar as he denies that language and concepts are able to correctly capture the normative Way (dao 道). Given Zhuangzi’s view that language and concepts are unable to deliver individuals to the Way, he also dissolves grand questions about the workings and origin of the universe, such as where the universe comes from, what it is ultimately like, or how it is that organisms operate as they do. Such knowledge about these questions is harmful because its pursuit is counter to his normative goal, which is the pursuit of the path leading to the normative Way. Zhuangzi’s Daoist alternative encourages individuals to orient themselves to an experiential and intuitive knowledge of the Way, which ceases to rely on linguistic-conceptual perspectives.

I. Nietzsche and Perspectivism

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction which posited a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject”: let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as “pure ,” “absolute ,” “knowledge in itself”: these always demand that we should think of an eye which is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which

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alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing, our “,” be (Nietzsche 2000b: 555). If we read Nietzschean perspectivism in terms of an epistemological view (Clark 1990, Nehamas 1985), then we can understand Nietzsche as drawing out an analogy between the bodily act of seeing and the phenomenological act of knowing (Leiter, 1994: 343-344; Leiter, 2002: 271-272). This analogy is important, for it highlights the way in which “seeing” is always from a particular point of view; it is from some particular perspective that individuals know something. In the same way that we always perceive an object from a particular physical standpoint or location—from a certain angle or distance, for instance—we know an object or phenomenon from a particular conceptual perspective, namely from a set of interests, goals, and purposes. In addition, the more visual perspectives from which we have observed the object—for instance, the more angles from which we can see the object—the better our notion of what the object is like, in the same way that the more conceptual perspectives we apply to an object or phenomenon, the better our conception will be of it. Furthermore, just as there are an infinite number of possible visual perspectives, there are also an infinite number of possible conceptual perspectives, since there are a limitless number of interpretive interests which guide human knowing. Finally, just as there are certain factors that can distort the visual perspective of a particular object—such as being far away from the object or there being another object obstructing our view—there are analogous factors which distort perspective, such that certain interpretive interests confuse rather than clarify the nature of the object or phenomenon at hand. Berry has recently offered a reading of Nietzsche’s thought which attempts to explore his view of perspectivism in connection to the Ancient Greek Skeptical tradition (Berry, 2011). She reads perspectivism in terms of an epistemological method which is Skeptical in character. It is not an epistemological theory per se, but rather a model that generates equipollent arguments. She understands the perspectivist position to facilitate the Skeptical method since it “undermines the attempt to secure justification for all theses” (Ibid.: 111). Perspectivism is meant to give support to the Skeptical idea that on any given philosophical position, arguments are equipollent; that is, there are equally persuasive arguments on both

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sides of a given issue, such that there is no proper way to decide which side is superior. This view of perspectivism seems to deepen an understanding of why, on any given issue, there exist equipollent arguments. The basic fact that philosophical arguments are often equally persuasive lends credibility to the view that the appropriate response is to suspend judgment on these questions, as the Skeptics endorse (Ibid.: 37). The Skeptics oppose themselves to the Dogmatists, who take stands on positions, and for this reason, cease to investigate further once they have determined an answer to a given question. Berry’s reading suggests that Nietzsche, like the Skeptic, does not endorse philosophical views, but rather, makes arguments in order to show their equipollent nature. All the while, Skeptics never cease to inquire into questions of philosophical import. In fact, according to Berry, Skeptics are the only ones who continue to inquire into questions, since those who are not Skeptics decide on a position and thereby cease looking into the matter in question any further (Ibid.: 36). Berry’s reading of Nietzsche is pertinent to the present study because she offers a reading in which Nietzsche endorses a normative notion of health that follows from his epistemological view of perspectivism. The Skeptics define health more specifically in terms of peace of mind (ataraxia), a state of calm that results from suspension of judgment (epoche) (Berry, 2011, 33-41). Berry also relates Nietzschean health to Democritus’ related notion of euthymia, a state of balance or symmetry, which Berry in turn associates with Nietzsche’s notion of cheerfulness (Berry, 2011: 156-167). Berry and I agree that Nietzsche’ view perspectivism, as an epistemological view, informs a normative project. Berry characterizes this normative project as a notion of health. The notion of health that Berry describes in terms of ataraxia and euthumia is, to some degree, present in Nietzsche’s thought. However, Berry’s reading of Nietzsche suggests that he asserts no claims of his own; the only critical project Nietzsche has is to remove the dogmatic beliefs of individuals. Nietzsche, on this reading, is not attempting to disabuse individuals of their in the importance of objective or noumenal knowledge, as I argue here. In addition, Berry’s reading implies that there is no positive aspect to Nietzsche’s philosophical project, that is, he does not replace existing moral evaluations with a new set of normative standards. On my reading of Nietzsche’s normative project, Nietzsche advances philosophical positions that are responsive to the cognitive capacities and practical needs of humans. While Berry is correct to think that Nietzsche is concerned with health,

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defined in terms of averting dogmatism, she overstates the degree to which he is advocating ataraxia and euthumia, which result from suspension of judgment. Given that Nietzsche advocates certain philosophical positions, the suspension of judgment endorsed by the ancient Skeptics is incompatible with Nietzsche’s overall view of health. On my view, Nietzsche is only interested in the pursuit of knowledge that is relevant to human concerns. If Nietzsche is only interested in knowledge that serves human purposes, he is closer to a Dogmatist than a Skeptic in his endorsement of certain kinds of knowledge over others. And indeed, Nietzsche appears to be dogmatic in his flat rejection of the “two-world” hypothesis, the metaphysical view there is both an apparent world and a real world. According to Nietzschean perspectivism, interests guide human , and rather than deny their importance, we should become more aware of how they inform our ways of relating to and knowing the world. This belief is in direct contrast to the competing view he attributes to and , that the version of that is most real, the “true world,” must be free from these human interests. In the chapter “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable” from , Nietzsche lays out an historical progression of positions regarding the “two-world” hypothesis. He attributes the first three on the list to Platonism, Christianity, and Kantianism respectively:

1. The true world—attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous. He lives in it; he is it…. 2. The true world—unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man (“for the sinner who repents.”)…. 3. The true world—unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromising; but the very thought of it—a consolation, an obligation, an imperative…. (Nietzsche, 1968: 485). The second set of positions speaks to a distinct change in our high regard for the so-called “true world.” These three stages shed light on how Nietzsche understands his view as different from Kant’s epistemological view in particular. 4. The true world—unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us? .... 5. The “true” world—an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating—an idea which has become useless and superfluous—consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it! ….

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6. The true world we have abolished. What world remains? The apparent world perhaps? But no! With the true world, we have also abolished the apparent one.... (Nietzsche 1968: 485-486).

There is little doubt that Nietzsche understands his own philosophy as belonging to the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages. Nietzsche, like Kant, characterizes noumenal knowledge as “unknown” (stage 4), but unlike Kant, it is on the grounds that noumenal knowledge is unknown that renders it in some sense “refuted” (stage 5) since “it is no longer good for anything.” In placing himself at the sixth and final stage, Nietzsche wishes to abolish what he calls the “true” world, a reality that transcends this one, against which our world is a mere copy, appearance or merely phenomenal (Schacht, 1995, 47-48). He sets his own thought against those philosophers and religious thinkers throughout history who, due to their hostility to certain features of our world, posit the of another reality which is superior and more real than the world revealed to us by the senses. It was only because the true world was set over and against our world that the human world was taken to be merely apparent. With the abolition of a true world that is separable from the actual world, the actual world is no longer seen as apparent, and comes to be recognized as the only reality. Nietzsche writes, “What is ‘appearance’ for me now? Certainly not the opposite of some essence: what could I say about any essence except to name the attributes of its appearance! Certainly not a dead mask that one could place on an unknown x or remove from it!” (Nietzsche, 1974: 116). Insofar as Nietzsche’s “one world” view is opposed to the “two-world” hypothesis, he is not suspending judgment about what he considers to be the true world. Like the Dogmatist, and quite unlike the Skeptic, Nietzsche argues in favor of a “one world” view over its “two-world” counterpart. Berry is right to note that Nietzsche does not rule out the possibility that objects and phenomena could be quite different than how we perceive them through our human filters. Her reading is correct insofar as it suggests that Nietzsche takes a non-dogmatic stand regarding whether humans can know about what the world is like independent of human ways of seeing. Nietzsche believes that “essences” and “things-in-themselves” are inaccessible to humans. It is a world in which any reference to the human is wholly absent; its disconnection to the human renders it useless and therefore of little concern to humans (Poellner, 1995: 83-85; Leiter, 2002: 18-19). Even as Berry is right to think that Nietzsche

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does in fact suspend judgment on the question of whether humans can access “essences” or “things in themselves,” her reading of Nietzsche overlooks the degree to which the epistemological position of perspectivism is incompatible with the “two-world ” hypothesis. In “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable” Nietzsche closes off the possibility and desirability of talking about the essences of things independent of its appearances. If the import of perspectivism is to highlight the value of human interests, purposes and goals, then the world that is inaccessible to humans is reduced to irrelevance. Also contrary to Berry’s reading, I understand Nietzsche’s “one world” view to also be a call to pursue knowledge, an important ingredient in the positive aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophical vision. Rather than pursue knowledge that is independent of human concerns the goal is to expand human forms of knowledge (Schacht 1996; Babich, 1999). Nietzsche’s epistemology is concerned with developing different ways of knowing from different conceptual frames. For any given inquiry, there will be a group of perspectives which yield different but overlapping insights, while there will also be a group of perspectives that are either irrelevant or otherwise unhelpful, and consequently discarded. The practical outcome of perspectivism resembles the process by which the knowledge seeking enterprise establishes and develops a vast web of knowledge. A separate analogy associated with Otto Neurath that Nietzsche himself does not employ—in which the development of knowledge is likened to the construction of a boat out at sea—illustrates the upshot of Nietzschean perspectivism (Leiter 2002: 274-276). We always begin an inquiry from the facts we already know, and we decide which planks to fix and which to stand on, based on specific purposes and practical needs, in the same way that we employ different perspectives in order to achieve different purposes. Importantly, all knowledge is “Neurathian,” in the sense that it is ultimately up for revision in light of new evidence. Those who, like Nietzsche, wish to overturn the “two-world” hypothesis understand that this interpretation of the world has fabricated a transcendent world of its own making in its pursuit of the “good as such,” free from human perspectives. Nietzsche explains in the Preface to :

Let us not be ungrateful to [dogmatic philosophy], although it must certainly be conceded that the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was a dogmatist’s error—namely ’s invention of pure and the good as such. But now that is overcome, now that Europe is breathing freely again after

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this nightmare and at least can enjoy a healthier—sleep, we, whose task is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all that strength which has been fostered by the fight against this error. To be sure, it meant standing truth on her head and denying perspective, the basic condition of all life, when one spoke of spirit and the good as Plato did (Nietzsche 2000a: 193).

Nietzsche likens our current state of affairs to a bad . Those philosophers he refers to as “dogmatic” are not criticized, as Berry’s reading might have it, for taking a stand on a philosophical issue. Nietzsche attacks the dogmatists for failing to realize the conceptual mistake they have made in giving highest value to a noumenal or transcendental world in which human ways of knowing are denied. Nietzsche’s new philosophers, “whose task is wakefulness itself,” will lead individuals along pursue knowledge that meets the practical needs of humanity.

II. Zhuangzi and Perspectivism

Your life has a limit but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! (Watson 1968: 50, Zhuangzi 3/1). Unlike in Nietzsche’s corpus, the word ‘perspective’ does not appear in the Zhuangzi. In his second essay, however, there are passages that when taken together suggest the view that all knowing that employs language and concepts is perspectival knowing. Zhuangzi is ultimately skeptical of all such theoretical knowledge, and he encourages individuals to rely on an experiential and intuitive knowledge that humans can access by harmonizing with nature (tian 天). Regarding the sense in which Zhuangzi is a skeptic, commentators have fallen into one of two broad camps. The first camp offers a reading in which skepticism is used as a purely as a method for the purpose of disorienting individuals, with the that they might be reoriented. Bryan Van Norden (Van Norden 1996), Lisa Raphals (Raphals 1996), and Eric Schwitzgebel (Schwitzgebel 1996) have advanced this reading. According to Van Norden, Zhuangzi employs therapeutic skepticism in order to make the heart-mind of individuals “empty,” so that they can in turn “listen with their (energies 氣)” (Van Norden 1996: 258). Insofar as Van Norden thinks that therapeutic skepticism can disorient and reorient individuals, the method can radically change the way individuals think, feel, and perceive. The therapeutic skeptical reading suggests, then, that the function of Zhuangzi’s

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epistemology is to remove the dogmatic belief of conventional morality in individuals. P.J. Ivanhoe (Ivanhoe 1996) and Mark Berkson (Berkson 1996) belong to the second camp who have argued that Zhuangzi is a skeptic insofar as he denies that language is able to correctly capture the normative Way (dao). Ivanhoe adds that, for Zhuangzi, even conceptual thought cannot represent the Way (Ivanhoe 1996, 196-202; see also Sun 1953, 138). Zhuangzi is a moderate skeptic, in the sense that he believes that individuals are incapable of using perspectives that rely on language and concepts to know the normative Way. A reading of Zhuangzi as a moderate skeptic does not conflict with also believing that Zhuangzi has a normative project, albeit one that is somewhat different than the therapeutic skepticism sketched above that has been ascribed to Zhuangzi. Ivanhoe and Berkson do in fact argue that Zhuangzi’s normative project is therapeutic in the same sense as Van Norden does, namely, that it enables individuals to disabuse themselves of social inculcations in order to allow their natural inclinations to emerge. The difference between the moderate skeptical readings of Ivanhoe and Berkson, and the therapeutic skeptical reading of Van Norden, is that the moderate reading denies that skepticism is being used merely as a method that facilitates Zhuangzi’s normative project. Ivanhoe and Berkson argue that moderate skepticism, as a substantive view, informs Zhuangzi’s normative project. I endorse the moderate skeptical reading over the methodological skeptical reading, since the former can account for the skepticism about language and conceptualization pervasive throughout the Zhuangzi. More recently, Berkson has given an analysis of Zhuangzi’s skepticism toward death in the Zhuangzi, a skepticism that encourages the suspension of judgment about what individuals can know about what happens after death. Berkson argues that “Zhuangzi’s skepticism reminds us that we simply do not, and cannot, know what happens after death” and that this has a therapeutic quality, in that “it helps to break us of certain habits such as acting on the false certitudes of senses, language, and judgments (e.g. those regarding the badness of death)” (Berkson, 2011: 193). Berkson’s recent reading, insofar as it reads Zhuangzi as ultimately dissolving philosophical questions, is a significant component to a moderate reading that takes language and concepts as unable to track the Way. I will argue that as part of his view of perspectivism, Zhuangzi advocates a moderate skepticism in which individuals are encouraged to dissolve grand questions, such as those concerning where the universe comes from, what it is

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ultimately like, or how it is that organisms operate as they do. According to Zhuangzi, it is harmful to pursue such theoretical knowledge, even if individuals could in principle discover it. Such knowledge is harmful because its pursuit is counter to his normative goal, which is the pursuit of the path leading to the normative Way. Zhuangzi’s Daoist alternative encourages individuals to orient themselves to an intuitive knowledge of the Way, by employing what he calls in one passage the natural mechanism. When individuals employ the natural mechanism, they cease to rely on linguistic-conceptual perspectives. Despite that all humans share in the same human perspective (Watson 1968, 45-46; Zhuangzi 2/67-70), different individuals have different perspectives on issues pertaining to “what is so” or “what is not so,” or what is right (shi) or wrong (fei). Zhuangzi believes that engaging in debates cannot settle disputes of right and wrong. In a passage from the chapter “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” Zhuangzi asks his readers to suppose that two people are having an argument. Zhuangzi writes, If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right (shi) and am I necessarily wrong (fei)? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone who agrees with you to decide? But if he already agrees with you, how can he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with the both of us, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone else can decide for each other (Watson 1968: 48; Zhuangzi 2/85-90). In this passage, Zhuangzi denies of the possibility of discovering the truth by engaging in philosophical debates by deploying arguments or by finding the right arbiters (Carr and Ivanhoe 2000; Liu 2006: 40-41). This is due to the fact that perspectives are incommensurable; when two parties engage in argument, it is not clear who is right, since each is employing a different perspective. Suppose, then, that a Confucian and Mohist scholar were arguing over the appropriate length of time a son should mourn over his father’s death (Graham 1983: 4-5). Both sides agree that the relevant concept to answering this question is

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righteousness or duty ( 義). The problem is that that the Confucians and Mohists disagree about the nature of righteousness. While the Confucians define righteousness as appropriate behavior based on status or position, the Mohists define it as what is most beneficial ( 利) to the state. It was according to the Confucian understanding of righteousness that a son should mourn the death of his father into the third year. But given the Mohist understanding, mourning for such a long period is unrighteous, since the Mohists saw mourning as useless that fails to promote a well ordered state. Sons should be growing food during that time, not mourning. Zhuangzi believes that there are no criteria independent of one’s own linguistic-conceptual perspective to determine who is right and who is wrong. If, as a third party, I agree with the Mohist position, I am merely showing that I find the Mohist’s arguments persuasive and the particular perspective that informs it appealing. It does not guarantee, however, that my view is right. In several passages from “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” Zhuangzi employs moral language that relies upon the use of words that are demonstrative pronouns in the (Graham 1969-1970: 142). The Chinese term shi can be a demonstrative pronoun meaning “this,” and it is often paired with bi (彼), which means “that.” Importantly, each of these terms is relative to the speaker. A teacher will naturally refer to “this lectern” she is standing next to, while a student near the back of the room would likely refer to “that lectern” (Van Norden 2011: 145-146). As mentioned earlier, shi can also mean “right,” and it is paired with its opposite, fei, meaning “wrong.” Zhuangzi juxtaposes the two pairs of words involving the word shi in order to suggest that ethical evaluations such as right and wrong are just as dependent on perspective as the distinction between “this” and “that.” If you and I stand at different places and occupy different physical locations, my “here” will be your “there.” In the same way, if two people inhabit different perspectives, arguments are futile, for what is shi, or right, for me may be fei, or wrong, for you. For Zhuangzi, those who believe that discursive knowledge can deliver them to the path leading to the Way are deceived. He likens their delusion to a dream state. Zhuangzi’s deluded man who but does not know that he is dreaming represents the ordinary person with conventional views. Zhuangzi says,

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He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming, he does not know that it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman—how dense! (Watson 1968: 47-48; Zhuangzi 2/81-83)

Zhuangzi thinks that one tendency among the deluded is to think that the pursuit of knowledge can help us with the question of how to lead a life of value. Discursive knowledge of the world—for instance, that this person is a “ruler,” and that person a “shepherd”—shows that they are knowledgeable about the world of human conventions, a world predicated on language and conceptualization (Mollgaard 2007: 19). But Zhuangzi emphasizes that such a world is merely human contrivance. If individuals employ language and concepts to describe what the normative Way is like, they are doomed to fail from the start. Zhuangzi believes that that language and conceptualization are unable to deliver individuals to the Way, and a significant component of his moderate skeptical position commits him to dissolve grand questions. This position is best expressed in a story from “Autumn Floods,” where a conversation between a , millipede and snake illustrate the relative unimportance of having an answer to the question of how animals move the way they do (Watson 1968: 183-184; Zhuangzi 17/53-60). The Kui—a one legged bird in Chinese mythology—is curious as to how the millipede is capable of walking on his ten thousand legs. The millipede then proceeds to ask the snake how it is able to move so fast even though it has no legs at all. Both the millipede and snake reply that their movement simply requires that they employ their natural mechanism (tian ji 天機), which does not involve knowledge of how the apparatus works. The natural mechanism, as a kind of intuitive knowledge, allows individuals to attune themselves to the spontaneous forces that make possible attainment of the normative Way. The story highlights the unimportance of making greater sense of how biological organisms operate and why it is that they are assembled the way they are. Zhuangzi sees the answers to questions such as, “how are humans able to walk so efficiently on two legs?” and “why are people born with two legs?” as

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inconsequential to the pursuit of the normative Way (dao). Zhuangzi suggests here that his Daoist alternative can only be reached when individuals dissolve grand questions and pursue intuitive knowledge that relies on the natural mechanism (tian ji) as its guide. Zhuangzi undermines confidence in the value of asking grand questions. In the opening passage of the “The Turning of Heaven,” for instance, Zhuangzi undermines our confidence that we can know about the workings of the universe (Watson 1968: 154; Zhuangzi 14/1-4). Zhuangzi asks the reader such questions as, “Does Heaven turn? Does the earth sit still? Do sun and moon compete for a place to shine? Who masterminds all this? Who pulls the strings? Who, resting inactive himself, gives the push that makes it go this way?” Zhuangzi asks these questions in order to show that we cannot really know with . Like Nietzsche, Zhuangzi suggests that grand questions about the nature and workings of the universe cannot be answered with much certainty. In his “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” (Watson 1968: 37-38, Zhuangzi 2/13-18), Zhuangzi also expresses uncertainty specifically about the origins of the human emotions as well as the workings of the self as a functioning unit: “Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence—music from empty holes, mushrooms springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us, and no one knows where they sprout from.” He speculates that a True Master (zhen zai真宰) might be “pulling the strings,” in designing and organizing the structure of the universe. But despite the fact that we might be able to infer the existence of a True Master, at the same time, we cannot establish with certainty that it exists, since humans cannot see his form. “He can act—that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity, but no form.” Zhuangzi then goes on to what part of the body is the “True Lord” (zhen jun真 君), that is, which part controls the others in its organic functioning. “The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to?” On this question, Zhuangzi is also uncertain as to the answer. Is it just one part? Is it all the parts? Do they take turns being Lord? At the end of the passage, Zhuangzi asserts that “whether I succeed in discovering his true identity or not, it neither adds nor detracts from his Truth.” We might understand Zhuangzi’s position that we shouldn’t speculate about the origins or workings of the universe broadly, or of the functioning of human and animal forms more specifically, to be related to the point he makes about the

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debates of the Confucians and Mohists. As we saw in the example above, both the Mohist and Confucian employ methods of analysis that attempt to capture what abstract concepts, like righteousness, mean. The different perspectives each school brings to bear on the question of the meaning of righteousness is partial and limited. The attempt to establish the meaning of righteousness is counterproductive to the achievement of the Daoist Way (dao). As an important component of his moderate skepticism, Zhuangzi would say that asking questions about the workings of the universe, or the origins of the human emotions, similarly detracts from the pursuit of the normative Way. The kind of knowledge that is gained by having answers to grand questions is unhelpful and even counterproductive to the Daoist pursuit of the normative Way. In order to attain their goal, aspirants of the Way can employ the natural mechanism (tian ji) to tap into an intuitive knowledge that delivers them to the normative Way. This intuitive knowledge precludes knowledge that derives from linguistic-conceptual perspectives. It is for this reason that Zhuangzi encourages individuals to dissolve questions about why where the universe, and everything in it, comes from and why it operates as it does. While the aim in this study has been to highlight a key structural similarity between perspectivism and normative health in the thought of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi, there is little doubt that at the level of details their respective visions are quite dissimilar. Ivanhoe has already noted what I take to be the fundamental difference in Nietzsche’s and Zhuangzi’s respective versions of perspectivism and health (Ivanhoe 1993: 645). Nietzsche is an ethical antirealist: that is, he denies the objective existence of normative facts. It is his view of antirealism that makes possible his further goal of undermining and clearing away all traditional notions of value. He challenges other free spirits to fashion new values that counter Christian morality and , with its distinctive notions of good and evil. Zhuangzi, on the other hand, is an ethical realist who believes that certain normative properties are built into the structure of the cosmic order. He believes in the existence of these normative facts, in spite of all of his doubt about the possibility of conceiving them in language or even in thought. Zhuangzi, like other ancient Chinese thinkers, sought to answer the question of how individuals find a way or path (dao) that ensures an optimally natural and harmonious way of life. Zhuangzi is no exception in believing that his normative ideal reflects objective features of reality; he believes that his Way, as the absolute truth, is the aim or ideal toward which we ought to strive, but he is also committed to the notion that we can

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have no conceptual knowledge of this absolute truth. Zhuangzi is similar to Nietzsche in believing that we must undermine and clear away traditional modes of thinking, but he differs from Nietzsche because he thinks that that beneath these social forms is an underlying normative pattern that we can access once these conventional ways of thinking and living have been cleared away. Despite the fundamental dissimilarities that exist between them at the level of specific details, it is also interesting to note that both thinkers invoke similar imagery in their respective philosophical accounts. In their accounts of perspectivism, Nietzsche and Zhuangzi both rely on the analogy between physical and conceptual perspectives. Both liken phenomenological seeing to conceptual seeing. This is significant for both thinkers, since both employ the analogy to make light of the radically different ways of knowing that subjects can inhabit, as well as in order to show the surprising degree of incommensurability that can exist across different perspectives. Both thinkers of this study also liken the delusional thinking of the philosophers of their day to a dream state (see Wu 1986), in which they have invented a world of their own human contrivance. Nietzsche views those philosophers who endorse the two-world hypothesis to have fallen into a serious conceptual error, while Zhuangzi regards the Mohists and Confucians who attempt to establish theoretical knowledge as hopelessly deluded. The fabricated worlds of their philosophical opponents ultimately serve as an obstacle to a more optimal way of life. Above all, in addition to the specific similarities, and despite the fundamental differences, we must not overlook the ways in which both Nietzsche and Zhuangzi reveal a similar position with respect to their views on the nature of perspectives. This epistemological position in turn informs a normative vision. Insofar as Nietzsche and Zhuangzi dissolve certain questions that are irrelevant to bringing about a life of value, the thinkers of this study advocate a notion of the good life that preclude the counterproductive pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.

References

Babich, Babette. 1999. “Truth, Art, and Life: Nietzsche, Epistemology, .” In Nietzsche, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, edited by Babette Babich and Robert S. Cohen, 1-14. Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Berkson, Mark. 2011. “Death in the Zhuangzi: Mind, Nature, and the Art of Forgetting.” In

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Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought, edited by Amy Olberding and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 191-224. Albany: State University of New York Press. Berkson, Mark. 1996. “Language: The Guest of Reality—Zhuangzi and Derrida on Language, Reality and Skillfulness.” In on Skepticism, , and in the Zhuangzi, edited by Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 97-126. Albany: State University of New York Press. Berry, Jessica. 2011. Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press. Carr, Karen L. and Philip J. Ivanhoe. 2000. The Sense of Antirationalism: The Religious Thought of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard. New York: Seven Bridges Press. Clark, Maudemarie. 1990. Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Graham, A.C. 1969-1970. “Chuang-tzu’s Essay on Seeing Things as Equal.” History of 9:2/3, 137-159. Graham, A.C. 1983. “Taoist Spontaneity, ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’.” Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, edited by Victor H. Mair, 3-23. Manoa: University of Hawaii Press. Hansen, Chad. 1983. “A of Tao in Chuang-tzu.” In Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, edited by Victor H. Mair, 24-55. Manoa: University of Hawaii Press. Ivanhoe, Philip J. 1993. “Skepticism, Skill and the Ineffable Dao.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61:4: 639-654. Ivanhoe, Philip J. 1996. “Was Zhuangzi a Relativist?” In Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, edited by Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 196-214. Albany: State University of New York Press. Leiter, Brian. 2002. Nietzsche on Morality. New York: Routledge. Leiter, Brian. 1994. “Perspectivism in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals.” In Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality, edited by Richard Schacht, 334-357. Berkeley: University of California Press. Liu, JeeLoo. 2006. “Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu).” In An Introduction to : From to Chinese , 152-181. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Møllgaard, Eske. 2007. Introduction to Daoist Thought: Action, Language, and Ethics in Zhuangzi. New York: Routledge. Nehamas, Alexander. 1985. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2000a. Beyond Good and Evil. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann, 179-436. New York: The Modern Library. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. . Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York:

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Vintage Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2000b. On the Genealogy of Morals. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann, 437-599. New York: The Modern Library. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. Twilight of the Idols. In The Portable Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann, 463-563. New York: The Viking Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1994. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Poellner, Peter. 1995. Nietzsche and . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Raphals, Lisa. 1996. “Skeptical Strategies in the Zhuangzi and Theaetetus.” In Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, edited by Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 26-49. Albany: State University of New York Press. Schacht, Richard. 1995. Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely and Untimely. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Schacht, Richard. 1996. “Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy” in The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Higgins, 151-179. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schwitzgebel, Eric. “Zhuangzi’s Attitude Toward Language and His Skepticism.” In Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, edited by Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 68-96. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sun, Siao-Fang. 1953. “Chuang-tzu’s Theory of Truth.” Philosophy East and West 3:2: 137-146. Van Norden, Bryan. 1996. “Competing Interpretations of the Inner Chapters of the ‘Zhuangzi’.” Philosophy East and West 46:2, 247-268. Van Norden, Bryan. 2011. Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Watson, Burton, trans. 1968. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press. Wu, Kuang-ming. 1986. “Dream in Nietzsche and Chuang Tzu.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy13:4: 371-382. Zhuangzi. 1956. Zhuangzi Yingde 莊 子 引 得 (A Concordance to Chuang Tzu), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, no. 20. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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HEIDEGGER, GANDHI, AND THE PARADOXICAL SEARCH FOR A METAPHYSICS OF

Mark Montesano

Abstract: Mohandas Gandhi’s interpretation of Hinduism was key to his practice of nonviolence. His influence on Western thought is most often represented by Martin Luther King Jr.’s Christian appropriation of Gandhi to support the Civil Rights Movement. American philosopher, Gene Sharp, has written about Gandhi’s influence in terms of political strategies that do not need a metaphysical or religious foundation. This paper contends that Gandhi’s metaphysical foundation for his nonviolent philosophy and practice has striking parallels with the writings of Martin Heidegger. Through these similarities Gandhi’s ideas can be more clearly incorporated into Western, secular thought. Two examples include the paradox that a self-righteous “holding to truth” (satyagraha) itself may be, itself, a source of violence. It is precisely at this point of contradiction that both Gandhi and Heidegger use their respective metaphysics to argue for an active, nonviolent struggle with violence.

Until recently, nonviolence as a serious philosophical idea and political method had long been languishing on the ash heap of history next to Marxism as a hopeful and glorious idea that, in the end, is too out of synch with human nature to be of any lasting use. With the recent spate of radical social movements around the earth—from Arab Spring, to the nonviolent experiments of both Palestinians and Israelis, to the Occupy Movement in the United States, to the controversy over the arrest of members of the rock group, “Pussy Riot” in Russia, to jailed dissidents in China—an awakening of interest in nonviolent political action has surged. Appearing on the horizon along with this renewed interest in nonviolent political action is the towering figure of Mohandas K. Gandhi; the symbol of 20th century nonviolent action in the face of oppression. Gandhi’s approach to nonviolence, as much misunderstood now as in his lifetime, likewise, is easily

Dr. MARK MONTESANO, Faculty Member, CLAS MLS Program, Arizona State University. Email: [email protected].

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dismissed as out of reach for the average person (he was, after all, called Mahatma (Great ) by most), not applicable to a non-Indian society (“nonviolence is a way of life in Hinduism”), and, in the end, not achieving the goals that Gandhi imagined (Muslims and Hindus continued to fight in what resulted in Pakistan’s creation; Dalit/Untouchable leaders resented his patronizing approach to them) and certainly, not applicable in Western culture (the most violent civilization known). Yet, the expressed interest in and active use of the methods and philosophy of Gene Sharp,1 student and interpreter of Gandhi’s methods, has introduced, again, the power of Gandhi’s method to the arena of real political and social change. Sharp demonstrates persuasively in his books, articles and pamphlets that nonviolence is and has been tremendously effective in negotiating change throughout history. Part of what made nonviolence identifiable and acceptable to Indians was Gandhi’s brilliantly developed interpretation of Indian religious metaphysics to support his assumptions that nonviolence, or is the way to Truth and human’s true nature. This metaphysics then becomes the rationale and foundation for satygraha (holding to truth), or nonviolent political action. One of Sharp’s contribution to nonviolent studies, however, is his deliberate separation of nonviolence as a method of political action from nonviolence as a philosophy/religious way of life, or an explicit metaphysics. The need for a metaphysical foundation for Sharp is irrelevant and, in some ways inimical to nonviolent political action. His stance is radically pragmatic: what works and how and when? One need not subscribe to a belief system to engage in effective nonviolent resistance. In spite of the persuasiveness of Sharp’s approach to the practice of nonviolence it has yet to bring forth significant fruit to compare with, say, the work of Gandhi or even Martin Luther King, Jr., the great American disciple of Gandhi. To spread and take hold across culture and time, I submit that, as for Gandhi and King, a metaphysical grounding of nonviolent action is crucial. The

1Gene Sharp, Gandhi Wields the Weapon of Moral Power (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1960); The Politics of Nonviolent Action /; With the Editorial Assistance of Marina Finkelstein (Boston: P. Sargent Publisher, 1973, 1992 printing); Gandhi as a Political Strategist (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1979); Social Power and Political Freedom (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1980); From Dictatorship to Democracy, available through the Albert Einstein Institution. http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html.

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idea that nonviolence is an essential part of being human is, at once, the most promising and the most improbable of hypotheses. I would further assert that it was Gandhi’s ability to ground his method in a metaphysics that was recognizable by masses of people that enabled him to mobilize literally hundreds of thousands of Indians to resist tyranny. Without a grounding in a metaphysics what kind of belief system would motivate people to practice nonviolence except for a distaste for violence? This is a relatively shallow rationale, yet history is full of examples that persuade that humans are nothing if not violent.2 One problem with the assumption that a metaphysics is crucial to the success of nonviolent action is, that for one to subscribe to a particular metaphysics is often to invite violence.3 If I strongly believe that the world and humans have a particular nature, then all views and behaviors that contradict this self-evident nature are violating the order of the universe (often ordained by a ) itself and should be subject to punishment. In light of this paradox, as an insight into Gandhi’s exquisite awareness of the problems with such a metaphysics I want to offer a quotation from him that contains what I consider to be the heart of Gandhi’s understanding of Truth as existence (his metaphysics) as the rationale for nonviolent action: “It (Truth, Satyagraha, or clinging to truth) excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and therefore is not competent to punish.”4 This quotation sets up a metaphysics that both asserts the existence of truth and relativizes human’s ability to know it. The limits of human capacity to know truth, then becomes a part of the metaphysics. In contrast to Gandhi, Martin Heidegger seems an unlikely source for a metaphysics of nonviolence. First, Heidegger’s philosophical project included

2For an alternative view on the pervasive and increasing violent nature of humans, see The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011). 3For a discussion of the relation between metaphysics and violence see Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being: Or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Hague; Boston: M. Nijhoff, 1981). Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas” in idem, Writing and Difference, trans., with an introd. and additional notes by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 79-153. 4The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG); (Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of , 1961) 19:466, March 23, 1921. Mahatma Gandhi: Selected Political Writings, ed. with introd. Dennis Dalton (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1996), 50-51.

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“the destruction of the history of metaphysics” from Plato on.5 Yet I will argue that his philosophy has many parallels with Gandhi’s and may serve as a touchstone on which to conceive as a Western foundation for a philosophy of nonviolence. Heidegger was concerned with what he saw as the ‘forgetting of Being” and its consequences for Western philosophy. In other words, the fact that beings exist at all is something that is not addressed in Western philosophy and that to think about Being is to question the whole Western philosophical tradition. A significant objection to Heidegger being associated with nonviolence is that his clear involvement with and support of the Nazi party especially during his tenure as rector at the University of Freiburg and after aligns him with the antithesis of nonviolence and humane treatment of others. I propose, however, that it is in spite of this, even because of these tendencies in Heidegger’s thought, that there lies a significant contribution to a metaphysics of nonviolence within the Western European tradition. Part of my thesis is that Gandhi’s interpretation of Hinduism is, in many ways, like Heidegger’s thought a deconstruction of all attempts at a metaphysics. For Gandhi in the end, Truth/Nonviolence//Being requires a quality of response to life as it presents itself not from predetermined, codified assumptions about truth. A foundation for nonviolence requires a metaphysical thinking that transcends traditional dualism and recognizes, always, that knowing Absolute Truth is impossible by of the limits of human knowing. Also, part of this view is what I would call an inter-relational ontology. That is, existence for humans is an interconnectedness and relationship which precedes individuality. In spite of this, because each individual cannot see the whole of its relationships or divine its ultimate purposes, the individual’s best response can only be determined from their particular perspective. Violence is the quality of relationship which compels individuals to act on the basis of what they cannot possibly know (i.e., Absolute Truth). This is precisely, however, where the paradox of nonviolence and of nonviolent resistance is most difficult to reconcile. I will show that both thinkers support the idea that part of a foundation for a philosophy of nonviolence is an imperative to confront violence and actually provoke conflict. Only by drawing out the poison of violence against life and thereby making the forces of violence confront the broader consequences of their own destructive behavior toward life,

5Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (BT), trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper San Francisco, 1962), 41-49.

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that nonviolence and life itself is ultimately affirmed. In other words, in the name nonviolence toward others, one must confront others who are violent to make them aware of the problems with their violence and, by doing so, not merely let purveyors of violence be. Satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance, as Gandhi asserted time and again, is not a passive acceptance of all that is. Instead it is an active engagement with the forces of destruction and oppression.6 The saving grace in this, for Gandhi, is the practice of self-suffering, so that the violent consequences of the confrontation between violence and nonviolence are suffered by the votary of nonviolence, even unto death. It is by this extreme practice only that Gandhi sought to dissolve the contradictions inherent in his practice. Heidegger’s philosophy also advocates a certain conflict designed to change structures that inhibit and work against the expression of particular forms of life. He certainly doesn’t advocate nonviolence, as such. I will argue though, that Heidegger’s discussion of the inclusion of Being in thought is essentially opening to possibilities of being as they emerge in relationship in time. This requires a critique of “the they” and a confrontation of the way that humans tend to subject themselves and one another to truncated versions of what it means to be human. These collective opinions are enforced and obscure one’s of authentic being of others and of oneself. The collective acting from these presumptions can also be understood as the maintenance of forms of what has been called structural violence that perpetuate economic, gender and racial injustice. Injustice itself becomes a form of “inauthenticity”.7 In this light nonviolent political action becomes the use of conflict necessary to find particular that might be obscured by structural elements of culture that are maintained by common habits of using language. In this essay, then, I will first attempt an explication of Gandhi’s metaphysical view of nonviolence and its problems. Second, I will discuss Heidegger’s philosophy as offering a perspective and, in some ways a corrective to Gandhi’s interpretation of Hinduism as a metaphysics of nonviolence. Next, I want to show how and why both Gandhi and Heidegger advocate an active

6CWMG 13: 520-26. Also see Gandhi, Selected Political Writings(SPW), 51-55. For Gandhi’s discussion of this issue CWMG 19: 538-41. April 7, 1921. 7Heidegger, Being and Time, 211-214; Singh, Raj, “Ethics, Ontology and Technology: Heidegger and Gandhi,” in Ralf Elberfeld and Günter Wohlfart, ed., Komparative Ethik (Köln: Edition Chora: 2000), 296.

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confrontation with violence as a way to expose its often-hidden reality in what has been called “structural violence”; that is, violence that is inscribed and maintained in social practices which, in turn are supported by language about relationships that is reified and seen as true outside of time. (Fried, 2013: footnote, 7) Finally, toward the end of this essay, I want to suggest that each thinker can serve as a compliment and critique of the limits of the other. Gandhi’s philosophy can be turned back on Heidegger in order to inform and compensate for what I see as Heidegger’s stubborn and somewhat disingenuous, but understandable insistence that his view is not a foundation for a system of morality. I also want to suggest the use of Heidegger as a light shined on Gandhi that both clarifies and illustrates inconsistencies within his thought and suggest an interpretation of Gandhi in a Western context. Heidegger, in some of his later writings, recognized a common realm which both Western and Eastern thought must explore: that realm of existence as it presents itself beyond cultural preconceptions. “This is equally true for both the language of Europe and that of East Asia and is true above all for the realm of possible dialogue between them. Neither is able on its own to open or to found this realm.” (Heidegger, 1998: 321) It is in this spirit that I offer a confluence of Gandhi and Heidegger in search of a metaphysics of nonviolence.

I. Gandhi’s Metaphysics of Nonviolence

After a number of years of exploring various philosophies, religions and spiritual practices—many of them Western—Gandhi returned to the Hinduism of his home and youth. His interpretation, while faithful to the central terms and ideas and traditions and not entirely unprecedented, was highly unorthodox and in a way, an attempt to universalize its precepts beyond the borders of tradition and Hinduism itself. Central to his world view was the assertion of equivalence of God, Truth, and nonviolence. 8 By sorting out this equivalence one can reveal the metaphysical foundations of his dedication to nonviolence. Truth in this context is the word, Sat. Sat is the equivalent of being, or ‘what is.’ This assertion of truth then is a physical as well as a moral reality. (Singh, 1998: 97) To affirm truth is to affirm ‘what is.’ Ideas about Truth are often limited by virtue of the fact that they are socially constructed and given

8Collected Works of Mohandas Gandhi, 21: 472-75, November 20, 1921; 457, November 17, 1921.

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form in a particular time, place and circumstances. Ultimately, then, the truth that humans perceive or work with is relative. As finite humans we may be on our way to truth, but never knowing if we are there because we cannot know the Infinite; we can only know from our limited perspective of our culture, time, place, history and body. It is this insight which caused Gandhi to assert that Truth has precedence over God because God (Dalton, 1928: 36) is subject to culturally conditioned assumptions and therefore, should not be used as a measure of ultimate truth. Likewise, Gandhi’s autobiography was entitled “The Story of my experiments with truth.” (Gandhi, 2010) Because we cannot know truth absolutely at any one point in our lives, a life dedicated to truth must be seen as a humble experiment moving from relative truth to more accurate relative truth. “I am but a seeker after Truth. I claim to have found a way to it. But I admit that I have not found it yet…I only see as through a glass darkly and therefore have to carry convictions by slow and laborious processes, and then, too not always with success.”9 Gandhi tried to live humbly and simply, not to impress others or to follow a model of the , but because he realized how incomplete and little he did know of truth. (Singh, 1990: 36) When one believes one has the Truth, we can actually do violence to what is. We superimpose out assumptions; try to fit the mystery of Being and beings into the Procrustean bed of our limited view of reality. When ‘what is (sat)’ seems to resist our assessment of truth, we judge it as untrue and take measures appropriate to that judgment: stigmatization, rejection, coercion, punishment, captivity, death. This imposition of our assumptions at any level is, for Gandhi, violence. Thoughts, words, social structures and practices which reflect a negative evaluation of a category of being, regardless of how traditional, or ‘time-tested’ is violence (hiṃsā) and untruth (asatya).10 One cannot approach the world with violence and know truth, because violence involves imposing one’s prejudices upon what is and thereby distorting our . Nonviolence is not only a prerequisite to encounter truth, but is truth in that truth isn’t an idea, so much as the manifestation of our coexistence with and participation in Truth as it presents itself. (Singh, 1994: 194) Giving oneself to Truth is to know it. In fact, violence issues from a misconception of truth and quite naturally leads us away from what

9Collected Works of Mohandas Gandhi, 21: 457, November 17, 1921. 10Collected Works of Mohandas Gandhi, 13: 294-95. October 1916; 23: 24-25, 27. March 9, 1922.

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is (satya) and, instead, toward our own limited understanding of it. Gandhi’s fierce opposition to the conflict between Muslims and Hindus and the caste system which righteously mistreated the Dalits (Untouchables) were examples of his innovative interpretations of Hindu teachings, but also sites of his most virulent opposition within Hinduism; leading ultimately to his assassination. He insisted that judgment of others that leads to inequality and nonviolence supersedes all interpretations of tradition, went beyond God and Hinduism itself, as it had been practiced for millennium. In spite of its ‘progressive’ agenda, Gandhi’s Hinduism contains some inner contradictions which challenge its validity and its fittingness for a ‘real world.’ The idea that truth known by humans at any one time is relative would seem to make impossible any kind of judgment even of social inequity. To judge our enemies or those who abuse power seems to presume that we can know that what they are doing is wrong. Even the Bhagavad Gita, one of Gandhi’s favorite books, cites examples where one can be a violent criminal and still achieve the highest spiritual state.11 His judgment of the hostility between the Muslims and the Hindus was not ultimately successful in his goal of unity and, in fact brought hostility down on him. His calling of the Dalits, “children of God,” was seen as insultingly patronizing from B. R. Ambedkar, the political leader of the Dalits. (Lelyveld, 2011) His advocacy of nonviolence as a political tool has been criticized as an unrealistic and dangerous approach to complex human relations in which one or both parties are cruel and violent. Examples include his suggestion that Jews should have voluntarily died resisting Nazi policies12; Malcolm X’s critique of nonviolent action as “criminal” because it is a failure to protect oneself and a capitulation to the White power structure. Though Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence, on the surface, demonstrates

11The Bhagavad-gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War, trans. Barbara Stoler Miller (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 89. Also, Mahatma Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic books, 2009), especially Gandhi’s introduction, xv-xxiv. 12Collected Works of Mohandas Gandhi, 69: 290. Also, see discussion of this topic in Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action/ Columbia University Press; New York, p. 134-37. Gideon Shimoni, Gandhi, Satyagraha and the Jews: A Formative Factor in India’s Policy Towards Israel (Jerusalem Papers on Peace Problems). Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1977. pp. 37-60.

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the contradictions between an unyielding commitment to principles and a tentative approach to truth, it ultimately transcends these contradictions in an active confrontation with structures of violence contained in laws, traditions, and other forms of human relationships. This is the essence of satyagraha, a holding to nonviolence/truth under all circumstances. In bringing nonviolence face to face with violence one draws out and bears witness to the latent violence that is necessary to protect and maintain the oppressive social structures and practices. Nonviolence in response to violence engenders what Gandhi called ‘self-suffering.’ So the seeming contradiction of his ‘judging’ of violence (always the structure and system and never the persons involved) are born by the satyagrahi (literally, one who clings to truth/nonviolence). The practitioner of nonviolence, instead, suffers the violence that is the result of their confrontation. This suffering aims to convert those who see the violence—whether perpetrators or bystanders—by revealing the mindless cruelty behind it and by appealing to the deeper impulse of nonviolence within most humans. Undergirding this strategy is the metaphysical idea that there is no separation, in ultimate reality, between beings; that we are united by Being/Satya/Truth/God. Nonviolent action merely demonstrates this truth for all who may witness it. The perception that there is a subject of violence and its object is a result of finite thinking a lack of what the Bhagavad Gita calls ‘knowledge’ of the true nature of existence. The harm done, whether the confrontation was based on truth or a misunderstanding, results in violence borne by the satyagrahi (the practitioner of holding to nonviolence in active resistance). The bearing of violence by the activist counters the violence that might occur as a result of the self-righteous imposition of one’s tentative truth on others. Nonviolence and violence have an inextricable relationship and nonviolent action is a creative way to take a strong stand against injustice without the violence done to others that often results from such judgments.

II. Heidegger, Metaphysics, and Nonviolence

At the risk of making Martin Heidegger’s philosophy the equivalent of Gandhi’s Hinduism, I will look at some of the parallels between them. Heidegger saw his project, primarily, as both a critique or ‘destruction’ of Western philosophy and a “recovery of metaphysics.” By this, he meant that systems of Western philosophy (metaphysics) since Plato have focused on individual beings and their

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relationships and have ignored what all beings have in common: that they exist. This implies a unity of beings in the reality of Being itself. There are some significant consequences for this oversight. One is that relations between humans and other beings appear as a subject over against an object. This relationship tends to, then, be seen from the perspective of the subject. While Descartes’ metaphysics imagined a place outside of time from which one might examine an object, Heidegger, showed that all perceptions and ways of being and talking about objects were influenced by their radically historical context which included the immediate relationship with the world around us. The idea of an ‘objective’ view of something was a fantasy which ignored the fact that all things were ‘thrown’ into the world together and interrelated in ways that are impossible to discern from one’s limited, finite perspective. (Heidegger, 2010: 276) As a part of this epistemological mistake, second, through an alleged misinterpretation of Plato, Western philosophy, because of the forgetting of Being, we mistake the appearance of things for the thing itself (as in Kant’s distinction between phenomenon and noumenon). Instead, says Heidegger, it is more accurate to see our relationship with other things and beings as emerging co-temporaneously with us. For Heidegger, the “Human essence is hearing” our world. It is therefore more appropriate to see this relationship with other beings as a ‘calling’ by the other. This presence cannot be comprehended in its entirety or essence, but only in its existence in time in relation to our own position in time. By the presence of another being we are challenged (‘called’) by the encounter to think about, or make sense of it beyond our opinions or those of our culture. Because our perspective is necessarily skewed to our particular place in time and space, we are often under the illusion that we can understand another’s essence. Relationship within Being, however, is primary. We are part of it and our understanding is, by necessity, a limited part of the whole; never as object to subject. We can only know from our perspective in time the emerging event of relationship with others. Through the limited language in which we find ourselves we are more accurately “shepherds of being,” says Heidegger. (Ibid.: 1998) Our response, given that we are united with others in Being and the event of our emergence with it in this time and place is such that we cannot know completely, must more accurately be one of letting be, of care, of solicitude. We co-exist in place; we co-emerge in time and to live authentically with this reality, we must recognize

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relationship as primary and enter it with vigilance toward the limits and dangers of our assumptions. (Fried, 2013: 18) This relational way of thinking for Heidegger is the bridge between Being and beings. This is ultimately ungraspable and beyond systematizing. (Heidegger, 1972, 217) Thinking at this level “means two things: (…) first (…) letting come what lies before us.” And second, ‘taking things to heart” “where (...) what lies before us is safeguarded and kept as such (…) not manipulated.” (Ibid.: 211) Because the importance of Being has been ignored in Western philosophy, there is much to be developed in terms of thinking about it, says Heidegger. Western religions, in particular, have attempted to give voice to a relationship with Being, but often devolved into a concomitant metaphysics which ends up focusing on beings or Being as objects; a god; a people; a narrative. This leads to “a damaging influence, obfuscating opinions, distorting concepts and leading entire disciplines in a wrong direction.”13 One might say, echoing Gandhi, that metaphysics does violence to beings because of a mistaken understanding of their relationship in Being. Like Gandhi, Heidegger seeks to talk about this relationship with Being itself in ways that transcend any one tradition and tries to appeal to the experience of being alive. According to Heidegger, Dasein (being human here in the world) is, essentially the process of our interpretation of our relationship to the world around us. This applies to our being-with other beings and so, what makes us Dasein is this process of shepherding beings using our language. Dasein is not an object engaged in a unilateral project with ourselves as subject-in-charge, but of process of interpretation of our being-in-the-world moving through time. Dasein is thereby subject to both reigning opinions and conceptual systems which distort the direct experience of being in that time and place. What specifically does this mean for human’s relationship with the world, especially in terms that may be interpreted as nonviolent? Heidegger’s collection of lectures, entitled “What is Called Thinking” is widely considered one of the most cogent expressions of his later philosophy. In it, he focuses on how thinking itself is a reflection of the nature of relationships with the world. Domination in relationships is not only wrong, but impossible. Humans are essentially “pointers” (Heidegger, 1972: 15) in that there is a recognition of others as they present

13Heidegger quoting Goethe in idem, Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 322.

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themselves quite independent of individual agency. We don’t cause another’s presence, obviously, but they appear to us through our use of language. Dasein, then, must ‘listen.’ (Ibid.: 28) to what this emergence is, as we are connected to others in Being and this connection in Being is always new. Each emergence is unique in its time and place respective to our history. In contrast, the way science looks at objects always must refer them from within conceptual systems. Heidegger’s critique of science is not that it is useless or wrong for what it does, but that it does not ‘think.’ In science this means that preconceptions developed from previous attempts to know the world tends to lead to what he calls, “one-track thinking”; a ‘univocity of concepts” (Ibid.: 35) which ignores the fact that we exist in relation and, instead, privileges the perspective of a subject assessing objects or other beings. Through this kind of representational language presuppositions dominate our ways of thinking and limit the way we can see beings to the point where even “policio-social and moral categories are too narrow.” (Ibid.: 67) This would account for Heidegger’s strict resistance to seeing his philosophy as an ethics; not because he doesn’t at some level value a particular approach to others, but because the very assertion of an ethical view closes off the ability to ‘think’ about a fitting response. (Fried, 2013, 9) True thinking, for Heidegger, “remains open to more than one interpretation.” (Heidegger, 1972: 71) Ethical systems rely, ultimately, on referring to past views, concepts that are destined to become platitudes and empty imperatives. “Ethics as mere doctrine is helpless unless the relation to Being is different. (Ibid.: 89) So, Heidegger’s project for Western thought is to begin to think about Being before we can begin to solve the problems that our narrow thinking about others has gotten us into. He uses Nietzsche’s idea of ‘revenge’ to explore, what I take to be the violent tendency in human life. (Ibid.: 92) His discussion of Nietzsche’s use of the term, “revenge” resembles the concept of structural violence that has emerged out of the study of Gandhi. (Weber, 2004: 191-231) The confusion of representational ideas with reality leads humans to “pursue and set against everything that exists in order to depose, reduce and decompose it.” (Heidegger, 1972: 93) if it does not fit with the preconception. In representational thinking, the common understanding of truth in Western thought is reduced to reason which judges something true when it measures up to an external, past version of what is true rather than of what is emerging in time, in language. Reason assumes dominion over its subject, but ultimately ‘obfuscates’ one’s relationship with it in time. The ‘object’ of thinking is not an object external to us as such, but a unique

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relationship emerging in time that cannot be known from outside the relationship, but only responded to by allowing that relationship to evoke language that is particular and fitting to that particular time and place. This means using language which does not seek to manipulate and deny the “essence’ of other beings with whom we are in relationship, but seeks to safeguard its uniqueness from the inevitable pressures to conform our thinking to the standards of common language and its concomitant practices (i.e., structural violence). (Ibid.: 212) In the attempt to prejudge others, there exists a hostility toward that which resists this need for it to conform to ‘it was.’ “Revenge is the will’s revulsion against time.” (Ibid.: 96) Since time inevitably changes circumstances and the dimensions of all relationships it tends to make concepts and systems ultimately irrelevant, or at least, less exact in its descriptions of reality. Systems of thought cannot contain nor accurately anticipate the outcomes of change. To try to fit life into concepts and systems requires a “violence” in the Gandhian sense of thinking as a negative judging of what is against how things should be. Concepts, in Western thought, first introduced by the Greeks and, according to Heidegger, subsequently misunderstood by the ensuing tradition, attempts to establish an eternal idea of things (while ignoring Being) that is immune to change in time. Life as it presents itself to us in time itself becomes less real than concepts about reality. Resentment arises as the vicissitudes of time challenge the established representations of eternal reality. (Ibid.: 98-99) Revenge that grows out of this resentment wants to subsume everything into the ‘it was,’ losing its particularity. It does not take much to see the connection between this tendency and violence. Each day relationships between governments, individuals and groups demonstrate the violence that issues from resentments over the disparity between preconceived expectations and real people. Using Nietzsche again, Heidegger writes of the ‘deliverance from revenge’ as the overcoming of Nietzsche’s “” (the one who is self-satisfied with collective ideas of reality and not willing to criticize and change) and a movement toward the overman. This requires that humans emerge into a conscious relationship with and a ‘remembering’ of the fact of Being and its implications for our relationships with others that dissolve the object/subject relation and our frustration with our attempts to control the uncontrollable relation of being and time. This insight leads, then to what, I suggest, is Heidegger’s ‘nonviolent’ approach to relationship. Though Heidegger does not use the word itself, he

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claims that ‘thinking’ is a receptivity to others; being called by them to their ‘safe-keeping’ or ‘preserving’ or ‘frees it as a gift’ (Ibid.: 118, 156-57) or a ‘letting be.” (Fried, 2013: 18) He speaks out against customary meanings because they prejudge and obscure the essence of beings by ‘usurping’ its place in our language about relationships.’ In a Gandhian sense, these meanings lead to what we might call “structural violence”; that is, a prejudged evaluation of others that is enforced by language and social practice. (Singh, 1990: 40) Nonviolent thinking of others, then, is a ‘gathering’ of that which is before us and a call from ‘what is’ to make a ‘fitting response…leaving the used thing in its essential nature.” (Heidegger, 1972: 187) Again, as for Gandhi, violence is all forms of language and thought which judges others negatively and wishes them ill. Because this essential nature cannot ultimately be known because it involves our relationship in Being, our response to others cannot be definitive and wholly based on established concepts or systematic thinking. This corresponds with the Gandhi’s idea that Truth/Being must be attained though nonviolent thought and deed. Contrast this with representational thinking which strives to fit the other into a concept predetermined on the basis of collective general definitions (what Heidegger calls, ‘the they’) rather than the particularity of what emerges in a specific time in a specific relationship with the thinker.14 The goal of thinking, which in this sense is a nonviolent approach to others is a move to “release language from the leash of common speech.” (Heidegger, 1972: 192) For Heidegger, to free thinking from common speech and prejudice toward other beings is emblematic of a new way of thinking: An overcoming of the tendency of revenge (violence) that is a result of our frustration that relationships don’t conform to our prejudiced assumptions. Yet the purpose of this way of nonviolent thinking is not just a passive letting be of other beings. Nonviolence, as in the Gandhian tradition, is the active challenging and dissolution of structural violence that contains and maintains violence in relationships. There is an element in Heidegger’s thinking, however subtle, that is an active questioning of the consequences of representational thinking. Along with Nietzsche and Gandhi, he sees the necessity and even the inevitability of moving

14CWMG 54: 416-17. CWMG 22: 176-78. January 12, 1922. CWMG 72: 378-81. August 18, 1940. CWMG 42: 380-81. January 9, 1930. Dalton, CPW, 29, 41, 45, 47. Fried, “Heidegger and Gandhi: A Dialogue on Conflict and Enmity,” 10; 14.

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toward a new kind of human: One that is able to see these tragic faults that contribute to revenge and then go beyond them. The dynamic consequences of these faults may be captured in the word “resentment”; that is, an attitude that reflects a resistance to changes brought on by time that cannot be stemmed by systems of thought and reified concepts. This resentment can also be seen as analogous to the point made in my earlier discussion of violence: that the reification of ideas of the other in favor and instead of coming to terms with the living breathing, ultimately mysterious being before us is the root of all violence toward others. In this sense, Heidegger offers a way of looking at nonviolent action in the face of structural violence contained in common language and practices. He hints at this in his discussion of ‘the crude” and “the pure” in a poem by Hölderlin. What is referred to as ‘the crude’…is useful, that the pure may know itself.” (Ibid.: 194) This is not a dialectical development through the interaction of the crude and pure, but an arising in awareness of the necessity of violence for forms of nonviolence to emerge and “know itself.” To describe this process, Heidegger discusses a poem, Ister River by Friedrich Hölderlin. In it, Hölderlin describes the relationship between the rock and the shaft that runs over it so that the water might run, and the earth and how furrows enable life to spring forth. The nature of a ‘fitting response’ goes beyond a relationship of subject and object. Heidegger quoting Hölderlin continues: “it is useful for the rock to have shafts, and for the earth, furrows. It would be without welcome, without stay.” Heidegger: “ “It is useful” says here: There is an essential community between rock and shaft, between furrow and earth, within that realm of being which opens up when the earth becomes a habitation (…). But its situation is not determined first by the pathless places on earth. It is marked out and opened by something of another order.” (Ibid.: 190-91) The relation of violence and nonviolence is a community of forces which open up places for humans to live as beings together in Being. They are united in Being and in that unity, violence is ‘useful’ to the opening up of a nonviolent place to live. This violence which has been insinuated into the deepest levels of human understanding and behavior is therefore ‘structural’ rather than merely physical.15 It is physical in the sense that it is practiced repeatedly between

15For a discussion of structural violence and Gandhi see Johan Galtung, “Twenty-five Years of Peace Research: Ten Challenges and Some Responses,” Journal of Peace Research 22 (1985):156. “Violence, Peace. and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace

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bodies inscribed with the expectations and objectifications contained in language. It is interwoven with the ways in which people that are objects of this violence see themselves through the lens of the history of these practices. I would claim that this understanding of a struggle is a good description of Gandhi’s view as well as Martin Luther King, Jr’s and other advocates of nonviolent action. In their examples of the practice of nonviolent political action even occasional effectiveness was predicated on a metaphysics and ethics which, again and again, had to challenge the reality of human systems while paradoxically, asserting the truth of their own. In the face of this paradox, struggle becomes part of what it means to be human and nonviolent. We are destined to live out of a truth which is relative, while we struggle to free the evolving truth of our relationships with other beings from violence through purposeful conflict with that which would impede it. An important part of resolving this paradox is the ability to ‘fight’ against violence, without resorting to the very violence which one is fighting. This avoidance of violence in the struggle necessarily includes confronting structural or conceptual violence that results from the reification of others and its ensuing practices. This is the effort to move beyond the subject/object relation toward an understanding of one’s unity with others in Being. Here, I offer a highly controversial paragraph from “Being and Truth” (Heidegger, 2010) which contains the seeds of thinking about nonviolence as a struggle against that which oppresses. Speaking of this ‘fight’ or struggle in a lecture from 1933-34, Heidegger states16:

One word stands great and simple at the beginning of (’) saying: polemos, war. This does not mean the outward occurrence of war and the celebration of what is ‘military,’ but rather what is decisive: standing against the enemy. We have translated this word with “struggle” to hold on to what is essential but on the other hand, it is important to think over that it does not mean agon (Greek: contest), a competition in which two friendly opponents

Research 6 (1969):167-91. “A Structural Theory of Imperialism,” Journal of Peace Research 8 (1971): 81-118. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (London and Oslo: Sage, 1996). Weber, 204-08. 16I want to thank Professor Fried for generously sharing his provocative and insightful article and stimulating my thought about this highly problematic passage.

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measure their strengths, but rather the struggle of polemos, war. This means that the struggle is in earnest; the opponent is not a partner but an enemy. Struggle as standing against the enemy, or more plainly, standing firm in confrontation.

This can be applied to Gandhi’s view of the British (Gandhi, 2009: 66-67) and King’s view of Southern racial segregation in that the British and segregationists, respectively, were enemies and these men chose to “stand against them…in confrontation” not in a military battle.

An enemy is each and every person who poses an essential threat to the Dasein of the people and its individual members. The enemy does not have to be external, and the external enemy is not even always the more dangerous one. And it can seem as if there were no enemy. Then it is a fundamental requirement to find the enemy and to expose the enemy to the light or even first to make the enemy so that this standing against the enemy may happen and so that the Dasen may not lose its edge.

By looking at the strategies involved with Gandhi’s engineering of the Salt March, and the work of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Montgomery and Birmingham, we can see that to many of those whites didn’t see themselves as an enemy. The social forms and customs were insidious, but hidden under ideas of propriety and the natural superiority of white men. Gandhi and King worked to bring the hidden violence to light in a way that they did not ‘lose their edge’ but become more defined as a people with dignity and uniqueness. The goal, ultimately, however is to put an end to the very nature of this relationship which is one of a subject to an object. The enemy can have attached itself to the innermost roots of the Dasein of a people and can set itself against this people’s own essence and act against it. The struggle is all the fiercer and harder and tougher, for the least of it consists in coming to blows with one another; it is often far more difficult and wearisome to catch sight of the enemy as such, to bring the enemy into the open, to harbor not illusions about the enemy, to keep oneself ready for attack, to cultivate and intensity a constant readiness and to prepare the attack looking far ahead with the goal of total annihilation. (Heidegger, 2010) This section emphasizes that the ultimate goal is bringing the enemy out into

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the open and annihilating them totally. Certainly, this doesn’t sound like nonviolent language. The use of military language by nonviolent movements however is clear. Gandhi, in Hind Swaraj shows what sounds like contempt for the British way of life and its effect on his countrymen. (Gandhi, 2009: 33-37; 67-68) Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks of “a marvelous new militancy” in his “I Have a Dream” speech. James Bevel’s work with King in finding the best place to provoke violence from the Birmingham police and the Gandhian strategies of James Lawson that opened up lunch counters to African Americans in Nashville, and others at the frontlines of confronting segregation in the American South during the Civil Rights movement, make no apologies about trying to seek to “bring the enemy into the open” and “annihilate” the social structure of the “the enemy” which “attached itself to the innermost roots of the Dasein of a people and can set itself against this people’s own essence and act against it.”17 Yet in each case, the emphasis is on the social structure as the enemy, not the individuals with whom they were interlocked in this oppressive relationship. This discussion of Heidegger’s has all the flavor of a prelude to an ethical system, but Heidegger assiduously avoids claiming an ethics. He seems to dance around it and does everything but declare it. Why? For the same reason that Gandhi sees his relationship with Truth as an experiment. To claim absolute knowledge of what our relationship is with ultimate Truth; Being; the Good; and so on, is to put an end to the process of interpretation which is the essence of being human (Dasein). It is to act as if we knew something that it is quite impossible for us to know. It is to set the stage for subsequent violence of forcing the emerging relationships in the world into a preset concept and system of thought. This suggests a metaphysical grounding to the nonviolent action initiated by Gandhi (for example, in the Salt March) and King (for example in Montgomery and Birmingham) in which they both consciously and deliberately dramatized the existing relationship in which violence was latent in a traditional system of relationships and by exposing it led to its “annihilation.” Both Gandhi and King insisted that their enemies were a part of them and that to approach

17For insight into the strategic use of nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s-60’s in the U.S. to draw out and confront violence, see David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: W. Morrow, 1986); Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

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them, not as an evil object, but as part and parcel of the ‘habitation’ that was carved out of history. They were united in God/Truth/Being and only by acting out of this metaphysical reality was there any hope of escaping its habitual course, like a river whose course is changed by a mutual and emerging shift in the water and rocks over time. All truths then emerge in relationship through time. To rely on past interpretations of “the they” or collective —especially in the West—is to fall prey to the subject/object fallacy which ignores the primary existence of Being which unites all beings in an unfolding of life. To rely on past interpretations sees the ultimate as situated in beings which separates us according to our superficial differences and leads to the enforcement of that ‘truth’ through violence. From Gandhi’s perspective, we then must approach other beings with humility of not truly understanding, yet a responsibility to confront violence with this truth. Knowing that always and everywhere are relationships that we are in, over which we never have unilateral control. In fact, it is this collapsing of the subject/object relationship which gives us insight into the inextricable relationship of nonviolence with violence. As the presence of the other emerges in time, our relationship with it becomes “unhidden” and we are called to give voice to its ever-changing contours and in doing so expose the existence of violence inscribed in the collective sense of what this relationship is which has more to do with traditional and conceptual ideals than actual, human relationships emerging in time.

III. Afterward: Gandhi and Heidegger in Mutual Critique

One problem with Gandhi’s philosophy might be that as an activist, committed to social change, in spite of cautioning against judging others, he seems bent toward non-acceptance of others if they perpetrate violence. Also, Heidegger’s critique of liberalism could be turned against Gandhi in the sense that Gandhi’s idealized view of humans ignored the historical of being Muslim, or Hindu or Dalit. (Fried, 2013: 13, 17) Thirdly, it could be argued also that history has shown that Gandhi’s attempts at change failed to affect the problems of these peoples. Some would argue that his nonviolent resistance was a subtle coercion, which attempted to impose his unrealistic values onto a political stage. The limits of Heidegger should also be open to examination. His injunction to view unity of humans in Being and letting-be of these beings was compromised by his chauvinistic interpretation of how history influenced the

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direction which Dasein took. His shortsighted view of existence turned his caution toward knowing ultimate Truths into support of a hypocritical and violent nightmare. (Ibid.: 17-18). One might argue that Gandhi solved this problem by adherence, at some level, to a metaphysical/ religious system and tradition and a strict moral system that issued from this. Heidegger has been accused of writing a Christian metaphysics stripped of its moral content or imperative. Both of these men put forth an unorthodox mixture of a humble approach to knowing truth with a quite aggressive approach to living one’s perceived reality. In some ways, this is where they come closest and where, I think, a blending of their insights show the most promise for a metaphysics of nonviolence.

References

The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War. 1986. trans. Barbara Stoler Miller. New York: Bantam Books. Branch, Taylor. 1988. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon and Schuster. Dalton, Dennis. 2012. Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas Pp 79-153 In translation with an introduction and additional notes by Alan Bass, Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fried, Gregory. 2013. Heidegger and Gandhi: A Dialogue on Conflict and Enmity in Allen Speight and Alice MacLachlan, (ed.), The Wake of Conflict: Justice, Responsibility and Reconciliation, New York: Springer. Galtung, Johan. 1985. Twenty-five Years of Peace Research: Ten Challenges and Some Responses. Journal of Peace Research 22:156. Galtung, Johan. 1969. Violence, Peace. and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research 6, 167-91. Galtung, Johan. 1971. A Structural Theory of Imperialism, Journal of Peace Research 8, 81-118. Galtung, Johan. 1996. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization. London and Oslo: Sage. Gandhi, Mohandas. 1961. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India) 19:466, March 23, 1921. November 20, 1921; 457, November 17, 1921.

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Gandhi, Mohandas. 1996. Mahatma Gandhi: Selected Political Writings, ed. with Introd. Dennis Dalton. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co. Gandhi, Mohandas. 2010. An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Ahmedabad: Navajiman Publishing House. Gandhi, Mahatma. 2009. The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books. Gandhi, Mohandas. 2009. Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, Anthony J. Parel (ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garrow, David J. 1986. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: W. Morrow. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco, Calif. Harper. Heidegger, Martin. 1998. “On the Question of Being” in William McNeill (ed.) Pathways. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Heidegger, Martin. 1998. “Letter on Humanism,” in William McNeill (ed.) Pathmarks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1972. What is Called Thinking? With an introduction by J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, Martin. 2010. Being and Truth. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (trans.). Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Lelyveld, Joseph. 2011. Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1981. Otherwise than Being: Or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (trans.) Hague; Boston: M. Nijhoff. Pinker, Stephen. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking. Sharp, Gene. 1960. Gandhi Wields the Weapon of Moral Power. Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1960. Sharp, Gene. 1992. The Politics of Nonviolent Action 1992./; With the Editorial Assistance of Marina Finkelstein. Boston: P. Sargent Publisher. Sharp, Gene. 1979. Gandhi as a Political Strategist. Boston: Porter Sargent. Sharp, Gene. 1980. Social Power and Political Freedom. Boston: Porter Sargent. Sharp, Gene. From Dictatorship to Democracy, available through the Albert Einstein Institution. http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html. Singh, Raj, 2000. Ethics, Ontology and Technology: Heidegger and Gandhi, in Rolf Elberfeld and Günter Wohlfart, (eds.)., Komparative Ethik. Köln: Edition Chora.

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Singh, Raj. 1998. Gandhi and the Fundamentals of World Peace, Peace Research 30. Singh, Raj. 1990. Nonviolence, Gandhi, and Our Times, in International Journal of Applied Philosophy 5: 36. Singh, Raj. 1994.Gandhi and his Original Ontological . Indian Horizons, vol. 43, no. 4: 194. Weber, Thomas. 2004. Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 191-231.

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A COMPARISON BETWEEN HERACLITUS’ LOGOS AND LAO-TZU’S TAO

Elena Butti

Abstract: This paper explores a comparison between Heraclitus’ notion of Logos and Lao-Tzu’s notion of Tao(Dao). Since such comparison is not void of controversy, because of the spatial and cultural distance between the authors and the fragmentary nature of the texts of both authors, a cautious approach is needed, which makes use of multiple translations of the originals and engages in a meticulous textual analysis. Recurrent images used by both authors (the river, the opposition of contraries, the bow and others) suggest a seemingly similar structure in the metaphysical theory of the two authors. First, an analysis of Heraclitus’ Logos and, secondly, one of Lao-Tzu’s Tao will be provided. Four aspects will be looked at in both analyses: the notion of the Principle (common name I will use for Logos and Tao); the contrasting opposites which constitute it; the harmony which underlines it; and, finally, the depth which characterizes it. While this analysis is primarily metaphysical, connections will be drawn to the epistemological and ethical claims of both philosophers. This analysis will reveal that both authors seem to identify a dual structure of reality, comprising an inner, fundamental layer, and a superficial, manifest one. Time and space constraints will limit the scope of this inquiry to the fundamental core layer, only marginally referring to its superficial manifestations.

Introduction

In this paper I wish to draw a comparison between Heraclitus’ notion of Logos and Lao-Tzu’s notion of Tao. Fascinating comparisons between Early Greek and have been drawn in the literature1. Given that these branches of philosophy arose in very different temporal and special contexts, the legitimacy of such a comparison can indeed be questioned. Several authors have,

ELENA BUTTI, University College Utrecht, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] | [email protected]. 1See, for example, West, M. L. (1971), Early Greek philosophy and the Orient, Oxford

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however, attempted to support its validity. West’s (1971) thesis is explicitly “diffusionist”: similarities reflect ideas that Greek thinkers might have borrowed from Eastern philosophy. Kahn (1979) is instead of the opinion that parallels arise from the fact that particular authors, though far away in time and space, might be sufficiently akin to give rise to similar thoughts in similar language. Other thesis reported in Kahn are the idea of a sort of “human universality” underlying different cultures and the presence in different contexts of similar social and religious institutions as a basis for resemblance (Kahn, 1979: 300). While these views are not mutually exclusive, and might in principle justify this comparison, caution is needed when addressing such a topic. Further difficulties are presented by the fact that in the case of both Heraclitus and Lao-Tzu, the texts that reached us are fragmentary and often (maybe willingly) obscure2, reason for which interpretations across the literature diverge widely. Also, the texts are written in Ancient Greek and Chinese, thus imposing a further obstacle to a direct reading. To avoid the risk of forcing the meaning of the texts beyond the intention of their authors, I will adopt a cautious approach: I will pay as much attention to the similarities as to the differences between the authors; I will work with multiple translations 3 of both Heraclitus’ fragments and Lao-Tzu’s ; I will engage in a meticulous textual analysis. At first fascinated by the recurrence of similar images (the river, the opposition of contraries, the bow and others) I have identified a seemingly similar structure in the metaphysical theory of the two authors. I will first analyse Heraclitus’ Logos, then turn to Lao-Tzu’s Tao, and conclude with a comparison which will emphasize similarities and differences. In both authors I will look at 1) the notion of the Principle (common name I will use for Logos and Tao); 2) the contrasting opposites which constitute it; 3) the harmony which underlines it; 4) the depth which characterizes it. While my analysis will be primarily

2As noted, for example, by Cooper (2010, p. 579) in relation to Heraclitus. 3For Heraclitus: Kahn, C. H. (1979). The art and thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge University Press, English translation Diels, H., and Kranz, W. (1934). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Weidmann, 5th ed., English translation by Burnet, John (1920). Early Greek Philosophy. London. For Lao-Tzu: Addiss, S. & Lombardo, S. (2007), Lao-Tzu – Tao Te Ching, Shambhala Boston & London (1904), The Sayings of Lao-Tzu, Kessinger Publisher LLC Loy, D. (1999). Nonduality: a study in comparative philosophy, pp. 113-125. New York: Humanity Books.

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metaphysical, I will draw connections to the epistemological and ethical claims of both philosophers.

I. Heraclitus’ Logos

I-1. The Notion of Logos

Both authors seem to identify a dual structure of reality, made of an inner, fundamental layer, and a superficial, manifest one 4 . For time and space constraints, I will limit the scope of my analysis to the fundamental core layer, only marginally referring to its superficial manifestations. The core of Heraclitus’ metaphysics5 is the notion of Logos, a sort of independent, mysterious and “divine” (Heraclitus, DK 114) natural law which “governs the Universe” (Heraclitus, DK6 72) and the flow of change in reality7. It is difficult (if not impossible) to find an appropriate translation of this key term. Heraclitus himself states, in DK 1, that “it is what it is”, suggesting that no further definition can be provided. However, several characteristics can be identified. In early Greek language, the word logos meant “what is said”, “word”, “story”. In this sense, Logos might simply indicate Heraclitus’ account of reality, as it is used, for example, in DK 1: “this Logos is true evermore”. Fragment DK

4 The characterization of such structure as “dual” unduly simplifies the complex interactions between the two layers in both authors. For the purpose of this claim I mean: in Heraclitus, the fundamental layer is the harmony of contraries; the manifest layer is the fire/river; in Lao-Tzu, the fundamental layer is unnamed Tao; the manifest layer is named Tao. My choice to focus on the inner, less accessible layer is due to the fact that both authors indicate it as the true, ultimate level of reality: “The hidden harmony is better than the apparent.” (Heraclitus, DK 54) “The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao” (Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, ch. 1, L.G.) 5As Cooper (2010, p. 579) notes, in metaphysiscs principally dealt with the discerning of the Archai, ie the basic principles, of reality. 6The notation DK refers to the Diels-Kranz classification of Heraclitus’ fragments. 7With “flow of change” I refer to Heraclitus’ notion of panta rhei, the idea that “everything changes or is in a process of changing” (Cooper, 2010: 579). An illustrative fragment is DK 91: “Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow.” Also DK 49a and DK 6.

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508, however, suggests that, at least in some fragments, Logos is something different from Heraclitus’ theory. In Ancient Greek the word logos was also used to indicate “mathematical ratio”, “proportion”, “calculation”, “right reckoning”, “reasonable proportion”. Indeed, as noted by Long (1999: 91) and Kahn (1979: 22) Heraclitus’ Logos is related to the notions of measure, proportionality, reasonableness. It is a regular law, which, according to Minar (1939: 341) could be connected to the Pythagorean ideas of harmony and rhythm.

Graspings: things whole and not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn apart, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.(Heraclitus, DK 10)

From a metaphysical perspective, Heraclitus describes the Principle through a series of oxymoric expressions. A clear example is fragment DK 109, in which the opposition between the two contrasting sides of the Principle is embodied in a sort of “dynamic tension” (Kahn, 1979: 284) in which one opposite periodically flows into the other. The “positive” side of the principle (“whole”, “harmonious”) is inseparable from the “negative” side (“not whole”, “discordant”)10, in the same way that the total could not exist without its parts and the parts without their total. This interdependence makes all aspects of reality intertwined with each other. Thus, while these sides are opposite to each other, they are nonetheless fundamentally united in virtue of a systematic pattern, a “latent structure” (Long, p. 93) which stands at the basis of the cosmic order of reality. The opposites are not to be thought as repulsing each other, as they often were depicted in Homer or Hesiod, but rather “co-present, interdependent, liable to change into one another, tacitly cooperating” (Long, 1999: 94). This idea becomes clearer if it is understood that, in the antithesis, the negative term assumes a sort of positive role, in that it “functions as a point of contrast by reference to which the

8DK 50: “Listening not to me, but to the Logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.” If Logos and Heraclitus’ theory were ultimately the same thing, the distinction drawn in DK 50 would make little sense. 9Other fragments that display the opposition of contraries are DK 53, 60, 63, 67, 80, 88, 103, 126. 10It is to be noted that negative is here characterized as “not whole” (descriptive statement of absence of positiveness) rather than ugly or wicked (moral evaluation in ethical terms).

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positive contrary is made conceptually definite and distinct” (Kahn, 1979: 209). As Heraclitus makes clear in the second part of fragment DK 10, the opposites are ultimately and fundamentally a unity which manifests itself in different forms and which, as Heraclitus writes in DK 84, “rests by changing”. This unity helps to breach the “apparently unbridgeable opposition of monism [the identification of a single Principle] and pluralism [the manifestation of multiple things in the world]” (Long, 1999: 105).

Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tension (palintropos harmonie), like that of the bow and the lyre. (Heraclitus, DK 51)

Men do not know that the diverging agrees with itself: a structure turning back on itself (palintropos harmonie) such as that of the bow or of the lyre. (Heraclitus, Kahn LXXVIII)

The “diverging” forces which form the Logos ultimately “agree with each other”, i.e. are different manifestations of a single unity, resulting in a harmony (harmonie). The original meaning of the term “palintropos harmonie”, as used by Homer and Herodotus, is that of something that joins or fits together. It could be used in a technical sense to indicate a work of carpentry, but also in a figurative sense to indicate agreements between hostile men and, finally, in a musical sense to indicate the harmonious sound produced when different strings play together (Kahn, 1979: 196). Interestingly, these three levels of understanding the term harmonie deal with three very different aspects of reality: the material one, the human one and the artistic one. In choosing this particular term, Heraclitus seems to suggest that this harmony has a wide range. It is not limited to humankind, but to the whole reality. This generalization is further reinforced by the use, in the Greek text, of the neuter pronoun for “itself” (also used in DK 10 and DK 84). Also the use of the adjective “palintropos” is relevant to the generalization of harmonie to the whole reality. “Palintropos” is an unusual epithet for the term “harmonie”. Kahn (1979: 199) notes that this term contains the same root as the word “tropai” (“turnings”) used in DK 31, with which Heraclitus describes fire (according to Heraclitus, the exterior manifestation of the Logos). The images of the bow and the lyre further reinforce the generalization thesis. The two opposing but connected tensions of the tending and releasing of

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the bow are unified and find actualization in the flight of the arrow. The tense strings of the lyre mirror the image of the bow: only in tending and releasing them the final harmony can be obtained. The images of the bow and the lyre also seem to contrast and complement each other: “the music of Apollo’s favourite instrument and the death-dealing power of his customary weapon must be taken together as an expression of the joining that characterizes the universal pattern of things.” (Kahn, 1979: 197). All in all, it is in the very notion of “palintropos harmonie” that Heraclitus brings together his anthropocentric11 doctrine of opposites with the notion of cosmic Logos (Ibid.: 200). The unity implied in the “palintropos harmonie” seems to be more fundamental than the opposites, in the sense that it underlines them, and yet it could not be such without them, since it is a harmony that has to “turn back on itself” (Kahn), is made of “opposite tension” (DK).

II-2. The Bridge to Epistemology

Traveling on every path, you will not find the boundaries of the soul (psychè) – so deep (bathùs) is its Logos. (Heraclitus, DK 45)

This principle of Logos, a law implying an underlying harmony of contrasting opposites, is defined in fragment DK 45 as “bathùs”. Betegh notes that the expression “bathùs logos” refers in ancient Greek to a doctrine “which expresses some important truth but is difficult to communicate” (p. 408). The depth of the Logos is interesting especially in its connection with the notion of psychè. There is, in this fragment, a bridge between Heraclitus’ metaphysical notion of Logos and his epistemological idea on how (and if) we can know it. The key of this bridge is psychè, the human soul. As Wilamowitz (quoted in Kahn, 1979: 167) notes, Heraclitus is the first to have given “serious thought” to the human soul12. In this fragment, psychè plays the role of a “principle of rational cognition” (Ibid.:

11Kahn sees the doctrine of opposite sas anthropocentric in that the opposites are often seen from a “human” perspective: for example, the oppositions in DK 88 (life/death, awake/asleep, young/old) are a clear illustration of this. This idea is, however, questionable if we turn to other fragments, such as DK67 (day/night, winter/summer). 12In Homer, for example, psychè is simply the flatus vitae, only mentioned when it leaves the body.

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127), the human faculty which is potentially able to inquire into the nature of the cosmic Principle13. New light is shed on the word psychè if it is considered in its association to the word “peirata”. The attribution of “boundaries” to the soul implies that the soul must be of an extended nature. This extension, once again an unusual feature of psychè, relates it to the cosmic principle. Furthermore, the etymology of the word “peirata” recalls Anaximander’s cosmic principle of àpeiron (Ibid.: 127), thus closely tying together human soul with the Principle governing reality. The Logos of the soul, thus, is not, and cannot be, fundamentally different from the Logos governing the world. There is, as Diels (quoted in Kahn, 1979: 21) notes, an “identity of structure between the inner, personal world of psychè and the larger natural order of the universe.” Thus, “an understanding of the human condition” is “inseparable” from an understanding of “the Universe.” In connection with DK 45, Heraclitus’ fragment DK 101 (“I searched myself”) can be interpreted not as an inward turn of the focus of the philosopher on himself, but rather as a starting point in the epistemological process of understanding the cosmic reality. A Logos so deep cannot be limited to the human soul, but also, in turn, the human soul can have such a deep Logos only if it “travels” to seek a comprehensive experience and understanding of the world (Betegh, 2009: 411). Betegh (Ibid.: 402) notes that DK 45 is the only fragment in which Heraclitus uses the second singular person, directly addressing the reader: this search for understanding the ultimate reality, Heraclitus seems to say, must depart precisely from yourself, from the exploration of your inner soul and of its Logos14, ultimately the same Logos that governs reality. Heraclitus writes in DK 215 that “Logos is common (xynos)”. The Principle is shared not only by all humans, but also by all living and non-living beings. It is a law by which everything abides, which “suffices for all things” (DK 114). In DK 113, Heraclitus uses the same adjective “xynos” to connote the faculty of “thinking” (phronèin), common “to all (pasi)”. The interesting ambiguity of “pasi” (which could mean “to all human beings” but also “to all things”) mirrors

13This link between soul and was very unusual for Heraclitus’ contemporaries, as noted by Betegh, p. 409. 14A similar idea to the core Orphic principle “Gnothi Seauton” (“Know yourself”). 15This concept is also repeated in DK 114

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and reverses the bridge from metaphysics to epistemology which was drawn in DK 45. “Phronèin” is not only the epistemological process which conveys the “nous” (“understanding”, DK 40) which all human beings can potentially aim at, but is also the common metaphysical Principle (the Logos) shared by all things, i.e. the whole reality.

II. Lao-Tzu’s Tao: Metaphysics

II-1. The Notion of Tao

Tao called Tao is not Tao. … Nameless: the origin of Heaven and Earth. Naming. The mother of ten thousand things. (Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, ch. 1, AL&AS)

Lao-Tzu’s Tao is also a term difficult to translate. Its original literal meaning is “the way”, but Lao-Tzu makes use of it in a more metaphysical sense, as indicating a cosmic principle. In the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu draws the important distinction between unnamed and named Tao. They ultimately amount to the same thing (“same source, but different names”, ch. 1), but the named Tao is the external manifestation in the plurality of the world (“thousand things”), while the unnamed Tao is the real, core principle of reality which gave origin to the most basic features of the world (“Heaven and Earth”). Everything originates from Tao; however, Tao is not a creator God, being entirely “without substance” (Cooper, 2002: 81) and often described in negative terms (nameless, ineffable, “something unformed and complete … solitary and silent”, ch. 25). Tao is a source and precondition of things, but it is not in any way over, above or outside them. Tao is the way of reality, it constitutes reality, “pervading all things without limit” (ch. 25).

Is and Isn’t produce each other. Hard depends on easy, Long is tested by short, High is determined by low, Sound is harmonized by voice,

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After is followed by before. (Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 2, S.A. & S.L.)

The symbol of offers a visual image of the Principle, a circle in which black and white flow one into the other. The two contrasting sides are named yin (the white, positive, strong, masculine, bright) and yang (the black, negative, weak, feminine dark)16. As noted by Smith, (2011: 274), the two sides are in tension but not in clear opposition; rather, they integrate and balance each other reciprocally: “each invades the hemisphere of the other and … in the end they’re both defined in the circle which surrounds them.” This is supported by a textual analysis of ch. 217, in which the pairs of opposites are not simply juxtaposed and contrasted, but related to each other through verbs like “depends on” and “determined by”.

Heaven’s Tao Is a stretched bow, Pulling down the top, Pulling up the bottom. If it’s too much, cut. If it’s not enough Add on to it: Heaven’s Tao (Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 77, S.A. & S.L.)

Kupperman (2007: 118) calls this opposition of contraries continuously redefining each other the “dynamic order” of the universe. This dynamic order is illustrated once again in the image of the bow. At a first reading, this could look like as a static image (there is no shooting of the arrow like in Heraclitus), but it ultimately involves a sort of movement in potency in the tension of the string. The bow is not dead and still, but full of energy, in continuous movement within

16As in the case of the opposition within the Logos, the negative seems here not to be related to a necessarily unfavourabe, negative evaluation, but rather to a ‘not-this’, a descriptive absence. 17Other chapters that substantiate this point are 22 and 45.

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itself: the top and the bottom are pulled down and up at the same time, maintaining the essential balance of the bow itself. Feng (quoted in Loy, 1999: 345), in fact, notes how also the image of the circle in which complement each other is not a static, but a dynamic one: “when a thing develops to the highest point it changes to the opposite direction which is decline”, and vice versa. The fundamentally polar structure of reality, thus, results in a harmony which resides in the dynamic balance of opposites (Cooper, 2002).

Empty of desire, perceive mystery (miao). Full of desire, perceive manifestations (chiao). These have the same source, but different names. Call them both deep (hsuan) – Deep and again deep: The gateway to all mystery.” (Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 1, S.A. & S.L.)

The ancients who followed Tao: Dark, wondrous (miao), profound (hsuan), penetrating, Deep beyond knowing.” (Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 15, S.A. & S.L.)

Lao-Tzu recognizes the presence of two layers of reality. According to a strict etymological reading miao can be understood as something “too small to be seen”, which “diminishes to the vanishing point” (Boodberg, 1957: 611). It is a concept closely related to spirituality and holiness, and something that is ultimately impossible to fully know. By contrast, chiao denotes the world of the apparent, superficial manifestations. Its etymological reading contains the notion of “make bright”, and it indicates all what we easily perceive in our everyday life. Paralleling unnamed and named Tao, also miao and chiao are not two fundamentally different concepts, but rather two different levels of the same concept. The sameness of miao and chiao is said to be hsuan. Boodberg (Ibid.: 617), relating this concept to its verbal root “to darken”, proposes a translation of hsuan as “reaching from the mystery into the deeper mystery”. As Cooper (Cooper, 2002: 572) notes, “for anything to exist there must be a profound origin or source that cannot itself be conceived as a thing or a being”. That source is the “bottomless”, “never exhausted” Tao (ch. 4). The recurrence of terms like miao

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and hsuan in the description of Tao suggest that, indeed, its true nature is deep “beyond knowing”. The depth of Tao prevents any human being from attaining ultimate knowledge of it. Loy (Loy, 1999: 122) suggests that the unattainability of this knowledge might come from the fact that it is impossible, for men, to objectively observe reality from the outside. Men live in the world, and thus cannot fully grasp it. Left with no possibility of investigating the real nature of reality, to the sage only one option is left: if he cannot understand the Tao, he should do nothing else but follow it. The impossibility of a proper epistemology carries with it ethical implications.

II-2. The Bridge to Ethics

Better to be like water which … does not contend. It pools where humans disdain to dwell, Close to the Tao. (Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 8, S.A. & S.L.)

The idea of a harmonious, dynamic order unifies the two contrasting opposites. In fact, as Loy (Ibid.: 374) notes, the distinctions between such opposites might even be merely logical, only present in our mind and language. If we understand this, we can transcend them, reach the ultimate harmony and eventually “be like water”. Lao-Tzu’s concept of harmony, indeed, is not simply a description of the nature of reality, but also a prescription of how the sage (potentially every man) should behave. Grasping the intrinsic harmony of the world and abandoning oneself to it are, for the sage, one and the same thing. To follow the Tao is “never actively to go against the rhythms of the world”, i.e. to adapt oneself to the natural course of reality, to abandon oneself to its flow18. The way, thus, assumes a three-layered meaning: it is the way of the ultimate,

18This idea of abandonment to the flow of reality is called by Lao-Tzu , an attitude of spontaneous and effortless, non-assertive approach to life. Cooper (2002: 83) comments on this notion: “The manner of our action should be submissive, weak, feminine, yealding. … The water is a symbol od the way itself … water influences without dominating, it is the source and ustainer of life, but does not interfere with it.”

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underlying reality (unnamed Tao), the way of the universe as we perceive it (named Tao), and the way according to which every human being should live (Tao as the way to follow) (Smith, 2011: 253). For Lao-Tzu, it is in the notion of harmony that constitutes the bridge between metaphysics and, this time, ethics (rather than epistemology), is to be found. We, humans, should be this harmony, rather than try to understand it. And, in fact, many of Lao-Tzu’s chapters have a normative rather than descriptive tone. The main message Lao-Tzu wants to convey is not a rational, descriptive explanation of the Principle of reality but, rather a prescriptive rule that every single man, if sage, should abide by: “Live in accordance to the Tao” (ch. 55).

Conclusion

The notions of Logos and Tao display several similarities. For both Heraclitus and Lao-Tzu, the fundamental Principle of Reality is constituted by a set of dynamic oppositions which do not combat but, rather, define and complement each other giving birth to an underlying balanced harmony, the real core of the universal order. In both cases, the harmony seems to be more fundamental than the opposites, but at the same time it seems to depend on them and cannot transcend them. This harmony is also in both cases fundamentally mysterious. The world is composed of two layers, a deep one and a superficial one. Ordinary men only grasp one layer, the superficial one. But it is the deep layer which constitutes the real, fundamental, core feature of reality. Here is where the main difference between the two authors can be identified. For Heraclitus, the task of the sage is to investigate the nature of this deeper layer. His is an intellectual philosophy, the ultimate focus of which is understanding how the world works. There is, indeed, a way to grasp (although maybe not to fully understand) the ultimate nature of the Logos: looking at one’s own Logos, that of the individual soul, and understanding that, in virtue of its depth, it cannot be fundamentally different from the “common” Logos which governs reality. The investigation of the depth of the individual soul is the bridge between metaphysics and epistemology, between the existence of the “palintropos harmonie” and the understanding of it. For Lao-Tzu, instead, the sage is he who abides by Tao, the way, the natural order of the world, without striving to reach an understanding of it, which is ultimately unattainable. His is an [sic] practical philosophy, “a knowing how rather than knowing that” (Kupperman, 2007: 117).

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Understanding the way which governs the world and behaving according to it are one single action. The concept of harmony is the bridge between metaphysics and ethics: once one has realised the harmonious relations which govern the world, he will abide by it, if he is sage. Referring once again, in conclusion, to a textual analysis, the choices of the particular words Logos and Tao to indicate the Principle are very illustrative of this point. It is no coincidence that the authors chose these particular words, which had precise etymological implications and were connected, in the minds of their contemporaries, to use in specific contexts. Logos is a word which has to do with the mind, with the power of understanding, with the notion of measure. Tao, instead, indicates “the way”, a path, a route, a mode of behaviour. 19

References

Addiss, S. & Lombardo, S. 2007. Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching, Shambhala Boston & London Betegh, G. 2009. The limits of the soul: Heraclitus B 45 DK. Its text and interpretation. Central European University, Budapest. Retrieved at: Academia.edu Boodberg, P. A. 1957. Philological Notes on Chapter One of The Lao Tzu. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 20(3/4), pp. 598-618 Burnet, John. 1920. Early Greek Philosophy. London, Cooper, D. 2002. The measure of things: humanity, humility, and mystery. Oxford University Press Cooper, D. E. 2002. World philosophies: a historical introduction. Wiley-Blackwell

19One final note: I would like to emphasize that the analysis and comparison in which I have engaged in this essay is an attempt to identify key similarities and differences between two very distant authors, while trying to stay as close as possible to the original text. Given the fragmentary and obscure nature of the primary sources, a degree of discretion in interpretation is unavoidable if one wants to draw any meaningful conclusion. The beauty and fascination of both texts, however, primarily lies, in my opinion, in their “linguistic density”, i.e. a “meaningful ambiguity” which involves “lexical and syntactic indeterminacy as a device for saying several things at once” (Kahn, p. 92). The “hermeneutical generosity” of both texts thus leaves us with questions that can never fully be answered. And while this could make the interpretative work at times hard or frustrating, it undoubtedly enriches its depth, making it even more absorbing and intriguing.

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Cooper, D. E. & Fosl, P. S. 2010. Philosophy: the classic readings. Wiley-Blackwell Giles, L. 1904. The Sayings of Lao-Tzu, Kessinger Publisher LLC. Kahn, C. H. 1979. The art and thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge University Press. Kupperman, J. 2007. Classic Asian Philosophy: a guide to the essential texts. Oxford University Press. Lau, D. C. 1958. The Treatment of Opposites in “Lao Tzu”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. University of London 21(1/3), pp. 344-360. Long, A. A. 1999. The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. Loy, D. 1999. Nonduality: a study in comparative philosophy., pp. 113-125. New York: Humanity Books. Minar, E. L. 1939. The Logos of Heraclitus. Classical Philology. 34(4), pp. 323-341. Robb, K. 1986. Psyche and Logos in the fragments of Heraclitus: the origins of the concept of soul. The Monist, 69(3). p. 315. Smith, H. 2011. The world’s religions. Harper-Collins. West, M. L. 1971, Early Greek philosophy and the Orient, Oxford. Yang, S. & Sternberg, R. J. 1997. Conceptions of intelligence in Ancient Chinese Philosophy. Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Psychology. 17(2), pp. 101-119.

Journal of East-West Though

NATURE’S SAGE: THE INFLUENCE OF SACRED INDIAN LITERATURE IN HENRY DAVID THOREAU’S WALDEN

Eric Cowan and Lennis G. Echterling

Abstract: Postmodern “Intersubjective” approaches to psychology and psychotherapy observe that a central “myth” that pervades Western culture is the concept of the mind as an isolated entity. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden had a powerful impact on generations of Americans by exploring the intimate relationship between the individual and nature, the embeddedness of self-experience, as well as offering a ringing sermon on living the good life through a vitalized capacity for participation. Unknown to many, Thoreau was deeply influenced by his study of sacred Indian literature, including the Bhagavad Gita and The Upanishads. We explore how Eastern philosophy shaped Thoreau’s thought and his experience of nature, and conclude with on bringing such Eastern perspectives to a richer, more mindful, and self-reflective way of being in nature and with others.

When Henry David Thoreau walked into the woods outside Concord, Massachusetts in the spring of 1845, a borrowed axe resting on his shoulder, his purpose was to build himself a simple dwelling by the banks of Walden Pond where he could "transact some private business with the fewest obstacles." That business involved being the "self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms...surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths...So many autumn, ay, winter days spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it" (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 17). Nice work, if you can get it, and Thoreau’s message is that everyone should. The purpose of this article is to explore his Walden experience as both a literal

Dr. ERIC COWAN, Professor & Psy.D. and Dr. LENNIS G. ECHTERLING, Professor & Ph.D. are both clinical psychologists and psychotherapists in the Department of Graduate Psychology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807. E-mail: [email protected].

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excursion back to nature and a metaphorical journey to a fully realized, self-reflective life. For two years, Thoreau lived in the woods by Walden Pond, translating what he called nature’s higher laws into a code for living significantly and vitally, sticking to essentials and pairing away superficialities. Thoreau's investment of life capital yielded its best dividend for generations of subsequent readers of Walden. The book became a touchstone for generations of future Americans by exploring the transformational potential inherent in a profound relationship between the individual and nature. In doing so, Walden created an image of a man connected to and embedded in a re-enchanted world, and offered a ringing sermon on right living. The purpose of this article is not only to add another voice affirming Thoreau as a literary American sage when writing on the power of a deep and abiding connection to nature, but also to explore how sacred Indian literature illuminated and deepened his experience of nature as enhancing self-awareness and well-being. Postmodern approaches to psychology and psychotherapy, especially those characterized by the term “intersubjectivity,” assert that a central “myth” that pervades Western culture is the concept of the mind as an isolated entity. Seen as a manifestation of Western cultural experience, the myth of the isolated mind symbolizes modern man’s growing alienation from nature, from others, and disconnection from one’s own subjective experience (Stolorow & Atwood, 1992). Though the concept of the isolated mind did not begin with Sigmund Freud, the idea that the ego, or self, emerges from within the bundle of energies contained within a bag of skin became reified. Freud’s maxim “Where Id was Ego shall be,” captures the idea of the self as deriving from internal forces seeking to exploit a separate “external” world (Freud, 1917). From the postmodern perspective this image of the mind as self-contained ascribes to individuals a mode of being in which the person exists separately from the world of nature as well as estranged from others. This myth,

…denies the essential immateriality of human experience by portraying subjective life in reified substantialized terms…This alienation, still so pervasive in our time, has much to do with the culture of technocracy and the associated intellectual heritage of mechanism that have dominated thought about human nature in the twentieth century” (Matson, 1964, Barret, 1979; cited in Stolorow & Atwood, 1992).

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NATURE’S SAGE: THE INFLUENCE OF SACRED INDIAN LITERATURE 57

Thoreau’s Walden creates the image of a man in deep participation with the natural world, where the boundaries between “self” and “other” are permeable and fluid, and where the essential immateriality of self-experience takes shape in a world made present and re-enchanted through an attitude of radical openness.

I. Into the Woods…The Yankee Yogi

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I can to die, discover that I had not lived…. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…” (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 80). One of the most captivating qualities of Walden's vividly written message is its tone of numinous awe, a unique and anti-orthodox religious sensibility springing from Thoreau’s deep communion with nature. As E. B. White wrote in his essay A Slight Sound at Evening, Walden “rings with the power of positive adoration, it contains religious feelings without religious images…Even its pantheistic note is so pure as to be noncorrupting” (White, 1979: 235). Thoreau was a new and vibrantly authentic voice in American letters. What White understood as Thoreau’s pantheistic and adoring tone clearly did not derive from the prevailing New England Protestant ethos of his time: that of humanity and nature as imperfect, in need of , and God in His heaven. Rather, the origins of Thoreau’s were far to the East where the boundaries between people and , and God and nature, were more porous. Pervasive in Walden, and only acknowledged in passing by most of his commentators, is Thoreau's appreciation and reverence for the sacred literature of India. Thoreau, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others in the Transcendental movement in 19th century American letters had read and been deeply influenced by the concepts of divinity and the cosmos expressed in sacred Indian literature, including The Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita (Versluis, 2001). Thoreau first had access to these books, as well as Buddhist texts and commentary, primarily from Emerson’s library and from the library at Harvard, where he had been a student. He studied them deeply and they provided him not only with validation of his contemplative predilections but also with a new language with which to communicate what he found in his inner world. “In the morning,” Thoreau wrote in Walden, “I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhag-vat Geeta, since whose

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composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial…The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges” (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 264). Spiritual treatises, composed between about 800 and 400 B.C., The Upanishads, which translates to “The Lessons,” gave eloquent expression to the essential theme that everything—all nature, including human beings—is infused with a spirit of divinity, expressive of a creative energy that is not far and inaccessible, but just under the surface: “Nearest to all things,” Thoreau wrote, “is that power which fashions their being” (Ibid.: 119). And Thoreau’s Walden expressed a conviction that, since this divine creative impulse is immanent in all nature, deep participation and union with the natural world puts a person in accord with this life sustaining power. Living close to nature provides an essential experience of being. Living intimately with processes of the natural world attunes a person to his or her own true nature. Thoreau, along with other “Transcendental” writers, (sometimes referred to as the “Boston ”) valued direct and immediate experience over traditional religious doctrine and received truths. Like the Humanistic therapies that would eventually follow and reify the idea, they esteemed sensitivity to, and trust in, one's own inner intimations, especially when cultivated in what Emerson referred to as the "cathedral of nature" (Emerson, 1834/1995). Part of the uniqueness of Walden is Thoreau’s deft synthesis of the soaring universal themes of Indian sacred literature with his particular and intimate impressions of nature on the banks of Walden Pond. With Thoreau, the inward looking and contemplative mystical tradition of the East is translated through a Yankee psyche that has rejected the popular religious doctrines of his own culture and is independent of any obligation to embrace any constraining practices of another. Unfettered by imposed by religious leaders or customs made obligatory by social sanctions, Thoreau’s primary reverence was for the spirit he sensed moving in a natural landscape that was still relatively unspoiled. In Walden, Thoreau joyfully recounted how living deeply with nature attuned him to his own deepest self, and the transcendental writers would have agreed with Carl Jung's later observations that religion can often get in the way of one having a spiritual experience (Jung, 1989). For Thoreau, “spiritual” meant being fully awake and responsive to the flow of life contained in the present moment, especially as seen in nature, and in this sense, he advised that one need not look

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beyond one's own purview, both physically and psychologically, for guidance on how to live fully and deeply. Although he maintained contact with the nearby town of Concord, like a sage of the East, Thoreau also retreated to the forest to cultivate his solitude. In marked contrast to the New England Protestant ethic of his time and place that portrayed nature in conflict with the spirit, Thoreau wrote of their fundamental oneness. “I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I the wild not less than the good” (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 187). Even early in his life, big things had been expected from Henry. He had studied at Harvard and his family was not without means. However, both before and after his retreat to the woods, he seemed content to take on only occasional employment teaching or working as a surveyor of the surrounding countryside, preferring to have time instead of wealth. He occasionally worked for his family’s pencil-making business and developed a superior pencil by refining the quality of lead used, an innovation that friends thought he could patent and use to make his fortune. Thoreau rejected the expectations of those around him that would lead to a lucrative career and material success in favor of subtler gratifications. “If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.” (Ibid.: 193). As in other portions of Walden, Thoreau’s celebration of the daily wonders of nature is infused with spiritual references to immortality and to oneself. This delicate quality of Thoreau’s awe was clearly not of the thunderclap of God’s voice booming from above variety. It had little in common with the archetypal image of the apostle Paul, struck to his knees on the road to Damascus. Rather, it spoke to a sense of delight, of unity with the unfolding of his environment, in hearing strains of eternal music in the laughing call of a woodpecker echoing through the pines. He affirmed through his loving participation with the natural world that the God that one seeks dwells within all that surrounds one. In Walden, there is no dualistic split between matter and spirit. One must be open to the flow between the inner world of thoughts, feelings and sensations and the perpetual instilling in which they take their form in immediate and mutual participation. This divinity is always at hand:

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Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us (Thoreau, 1992).

For Thoreau, then, the other world was not some far off, distant realm elsewhere from the Earth, but here and now—if only a person would wake up to it, deeply encounter it with all one’s senses, and participate in it fully as one of its many forms. His was not a philosophy of exile, of being cast out and longing to return to the garden. Thoreau was already in the garden, literally and figuratively. In the Garden of Eden myth, God walks in the cool evening, present and available, man and woman do not seem aware of their differences and are unashamed, the world is not broken into good and evil, light and dark, pain and joy, and all nature is whole and unified. That changes quickly with the introduction of sin into the story; the world shatters and God becomes transcendent and difficult to reach. In the philosophy of The Upanishads, however, there is no fall from grace. Nature is never corrupted and the appearance of opposites in the broken up world of qualities and attributes are regarded as merely manifestations or masks of one divine creative impulse. The sage can see through the masks to the reality in which all apparent contradictions vanish. Thoreau loved this idea and even managed to locate Walden Pond itself in the birth of creation before the mythological shattering of the world into pairs of opposites, of the dualism between good and evil:

Perhaps on that Spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up (from winter ice) in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall…and had obtained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world and a distiller of celestial dews (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 277).

Thoreau alerted us that in joining him at Walden Pond, we are entering a mythological as well as physical space. Charmingly, he had some proprietary

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interest in it being the “only Walden Pond” (Ibid.: 277), the prototype, which is to say that it is all ponds everywhere, precipitated locally because he looks out on it with eyes that see the universal in the particular. That this idea expresses the intent of Eastern contemplative traditions of “enlightenment” through a transformation of is no accident. Thoreau knew all about these ideas, but in Walden gave them a uniquely American voice. The sense of immediacy, of being mindfully present, of hallowing the ordinary and apparent, (nature is never trivial) is Thoreau's constant theme and sermon. Nature is the great communicator of all such mysteries and always does the metaphorical work when Thoreau wishes, like a great teacher, to point the way without resort to being explicit. “In any weather," he wrote, "at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand at the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line” (Ibid.: 15). The Upanishads may not have said, as Thoreau did, that to pierce the illusion of outward appearances, apprehending the oneness of all being behind visible forms, is to go “a-fishing” in eternity, but the intent is the same. “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains” (Ibid.: 87). Thoreau reels us in with such accessible images into non-dual concepts that are mostly unfamiliar in the inheritance of cultural memes that shape Western consciousness. In The Upanishads, the concepts of creation, nature, divinity, and the spirit life of humans are quite different than the cosmos communicated by the Near East Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition. In the dominant Christian tradition that surrounded Thoreau in nineteenth century New England, God is wholly transcendent, apart, and over nature. In the West, religion and religious practice, as the mythologist Joseph Campbell (2003) observed, serves as the method by which the individual can have a relationship to an otherwise inaccessible and transcendent creator. This God is not identified with his physical creation but, rather, rules over it. This concept of the cosmos informs, in turn, the idea of “man over nature,” with the implication that nature is something to be dominated and controlled. Taken to its logical extreme, a -sanctified nature may be exploited without giving offense to the order of the universe. Thoreau was dismissive of the concept of a mediated relationship to remote divinity, for it could not express his joyful participation with the creative, spirited,

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and playful impulse of life to which he was attuned. And when authentic religious awe and spontaneous praise were missing from the form of conventional religious systems he saw around him, Thoreau could be scathing and liked to upset the apple cart, if not the tables of the temple money lenders: “Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the . Our -books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever…There is nowhere recorded a simple an irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, and memorable praise of God” (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 69). The divinity Thoreau found in The Upanishads spoke to his sense of a divine presence that is near, vital, and alive. This divinity was not remote from nature, but rather, apparent and accessible through everything—through everything but not, ultimately the thing itself. The "pantheistic tone" commented upon by White that is prevalent in Walden's descriptions of nature derived from a view of divinity described in The Upanishads as both transcendent, over all, but also immanent. All things, all forms, rise out of the pervasive and creative forces that animate existence. In this system, one must be able to hold the paradox between the two attitudes, transcendent and immanent, in order to express a truth and experience that which cannot be communicated by either concept alone. That is, in the immanent the divinity is all, and wholly present and available, accessible as each seed, plant, flash of lightening, sunset or, in Walden, woodchuck (Thoreau contemplated eating one). However, spilt the seed which contains the tree, said The Upanishads, and you will not find the tree therein. The form of the salt disappears from view when it dissolves in water, but a taste will reveal that it pervades all the fluid. The immanent divinity celebrated in Walden is that each discrete thing is an expression of the universal creative force that pervades all, each part of nature is infused, overflowing, with the creative energy that gives rise to it. God is both over and in nature. Nature is sacred.

For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. (Thoreau, 1992).

All through Walden rang the sentiment that nature contains a life larger than it can itself sustain, a life that overflows and communicates to senses refined enough to apprehend its wonders. And in apprehending these wonders, we

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become part of them, and closer to our own innermost nature. According to The Upanishads, the world is the broken up expression of the One to those who can see it. “He is , the spirit supreme...Concerning whom it is said: He is seen in nature in the wonder of a flash of lightening. He comes to the soul in a flash of vision” (The Upanishads, 1965: 53). And in Walden, we find the following: “Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are” (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 119). Thoreau had made his breakthrough. In the language of the Bhagavad Gita, he saw all nature as an expression of a consciousness that exists in various levels in nature and pervades all forms. Not only nature, but also each person is identified with divinity, and Thoreau had no qualms about admonishing his readers to wake up to that awareness. The big mystic realization of The Upanishads is to truly know, to experience, that the god one seeks is oneself. Not, of course, the puny personality of the individual ego, but the Self (Atman) that is identified with the ground of being from which it arises. This Self is the channel, the hollow reed through which blows the celestial music that Thoreau said he heard sweeping over the hills. This realization is expressed in The Upanishads as the statement: "Thou art That"—you are a manifestation of the indestructible force that gives rise to all things; divine. As a reframing of the that dominates Western cosmology, we might say from the Upanishadic perspective that the universe precipitated consciousness—the capacity to look out upon itself through our own eyes. It is an understatement to say that this would have been a foreign concept to most of Thoreau’s neighbors, with the exception of his “Transcendentalist” friends. Indeed, many would have considered it blasphemous to identify oneself with divinity, especially one divorced from comforting anthropomorphic attributes. But Thoreau certainly read and embraced the concepts expressed in the following in The Upanishads, and it echoes throughout Walden: “I will now speak to you of the mystery of the eternal Brahman...the Spirit of Light, who in truth is called Immortal. All the worlds rest on that Spirit....There is one Ruler, the Spirit that is in all things, who transforms his own form into many” (The Upanishads, 1965: 49). Part of the beauty in Walden is that Thoreau could translate these grand ideas into personal vignettes, to relate their particulars through an individual experience. Things and events that might ordinarily be passed over as

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commonplace or banal become charged with significance because they are seen in their revelatory aspect: This was an airy and unplastered cabin fit to entertain a traveling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 75). Thoreau had read the well, for he never tried to resolve the paradox that communicates the mystery—both it, and not it—both infusing nature and transcending nature. Nor is he hesitant, contrary to the ethos of his culture, to identify his own ecstatic delight with knowing himself “to be Brahme.” In his book A Week on the Merrimack River, Thoreau even seemed to wonder whether the river would rise and fall if he were not there to witness it (1849/1989). One might surmise that Thoreau must have been in the grip of some ecstatic delusion or that it is a statement of extreme narcissism or grandiosity. However, it is the opposite. Thoreau was well aware that when he spoke with this voice he was performing what in The Upanishads would be considered a yogic realization: identifying himself not with his individual ego or "self," but as a “Self” (Atman), a local expression of the One—Thou art That. Nature manifests in myriad forms of time and place, but Thoreau articulates the essential intent of the contemplative traditions: a breakthrough in consciousness in which one is merged with the great unity and where observed and observer are one. There is no barrier between Thoreau and the river. In a letter to his friend H. G. O. Blake, Thoreau wrote about his and the influence of his readings of The Upanishads:

Free in this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who practice gather in Brahma the certain fruits of their works. Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things…. To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi (Miller, 1986: 60).

Even he, indeed. However, for Thoreau, hearing the poem of creation in nature and knowing oneself to be “Brahme” are not the full expressions of the human potential. He did not renounce the world, although in his quest for simplicity and

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purity he did take on some of the austere habits of the mendicant. Rather, in true American fashion, his yogic realization was the beginning of a call to action. He urged us to not be too moral, lest we cheat ourselves of much life, but rather to aim above morality; to not by simply good, but “good for something.” Walden is full of sermon and admonitions for right living, all of which amount to the “cultivation of a few cubic feet of flesh,” to live authentically and deliberately, dismissing, one might say almost distaining, the outward and illusory show of trivial things to honor the significance of life. For, when one realizes that he is the god that he is seeking, how can he or she be deluded into giving unworthy things attention? Rather, we must learn to “reawaken” and to keep ourselves awake. To affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts and every person is tasked to make of life, even in its ordinary details, worthy of the contemplation of his or her “most elevated and critical hour.”

II. Walden’s Waves of Influence Across Time

Thoreau did not ease his austere standards one bit for us, though few of us are made of as stern stuff as he. In Walden Thoreau devoted a whole chapter to his cultivation of his bean field, which is actually a on how to be fully present to one’s actions, no matter how humble or mundane. He wondered whether he had cultivated beans or if beans had cultivated him. And although Thoreau left his cabin in the woods next to Walden Pond after two years, in Walden he distilled the essential spirit of his time there, and it is striking that a person can walk into the woods for the sake of one’s own contemplation, conducting some “private business,” and by doing so influence the course of history. In that light it is notable that although Emerson loved him and greatly admired his character and genius, he thought Thoreau, given his great gifts, a bit of an underachiever. Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life, but with his energy and practical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and for command; and I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party. Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding empires one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it is still only beans! (Emerson, 1862: 5).

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Yet, now it is in the mirror of Thoreau’s prose and thought that we most desire to see ourselves reflected and, although his genius was “only contemplative,” it is Thoreau’s being “good for something” that has exerted enormous influence in the world. In The Upanishads, acts of contemplation and deliberate choice accrue into waves of influence that move across time. When Thoreau refused to pay a tax that supported slavery and violent American military action in Mexico, he was arrested and spent a night in jail before friends, without his blessing, paid the tax on his behalf. He refused the next year and they paid it again. Out of this experience came his essay “Civil Disobedience” (Rosenwald, 2006). Remaining true to one’s own spirit in the society of others was the fruit of contemplation that Thoreau brought with him out of the woods. Thoreau wrote that through his love of the Bhagavad Gita that the sacred waters of the Ganges fed Walden Pond, but there was a return tributary as well, for Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience as influential in his ideas of non-violent resistance, as did Martin Luther King. The great conservationist John Muir acknowledged his debt to Thoreau’s vision of nature as a divine poem, and infused his own writings with the theme that wilderness is sacred. Walden became a classic of American literature, still inspiring artists and contemporary writers like E. B. White, Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and poets like Wendell Berry.

III. Walden as a Wellspring for Well-Being

In particular, Walden endures as a touchstone for anyone in the process of evaluating his or her life and asking the question: Am I living significantly? In this sense, it is not too romantic a notion that Thoreau fits the Buddhist model of the “Bodhisattva,” one who, after achieving great realization, does not just abandon the world for the bliss of ultimate union, but rather returns from the forest to the world of others to share what was realized in contemplation. At the same time, Thoreau offered a sage’s perspective on being detached from one’s works and thoughts that would sound familiar to any student of mindfulness meditation: “By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent” (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 120). In May of 1862, at the age of 44, Thoreau lay dying. A few years before, his chronic tuberculosis had become aggravated by bronchitis contracted while he

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was out counting the rings of tree stumps during a late evening rainstorm, which somehow seems an appropriate and fitting cause of his death. Knowing the end was near, his Aunt Louisa inquired whether he had made his peace with God. Thoreau replied, “I did not know that we had ever quarreled.” His friends were struck by the serenity with which he welcomed death. His last words were, “Now comes good sailing.” Emerson, in his eulogy, remarked that Thoreau was not an easy companion because he had little for the trivial social conventions that lubricate polite conversation: “In any circumstance, it interested all bystanders to know what part Henry would take, and what he would say; and he did not disappoint expectation, but used an original judgment on each emergency” (Emerson, 1862: 1). One can imagine Thoreau, looking steely-eyed, in silence, after someone has offered an utterly conventional and inconsequential remark, or invited him to some social amusement, “as if you could ‘kill time’ without injuring eternity,” he would be thinking. Nevertheless, Walden asserted that to live as “deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails,” is also to participate honestly in the present moment with one's fellow human beings (Thoreau, 1854/1992: 86). For Thoreau, nature expresses pure being; it has no superficialities, it both mirrors and is divine and is therefore the model for what is essential for significance in human relations; to be in true participation, cutting through convention and manners. Because nature is never superficial, Thoreau thought, neither should be human intercourse. Indeed, the one complaint Thoreau had about his hand-hewn house was that it was not large enough to contain the expansiveness of shared thought and the greatness of the conversation when he welcomed visitors. “I would gladly tell all I know, and never paint ‘No Admittance’ on my gate” (Ibid.: 15). In the century and a half since raising those humble walls, he has welcomed millions. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed, and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature (Ibid.: 281). Today, therapists are beginning to realize how the myth of the isolated mind shapes a cultural narrative that estranges persons from each other, and that “We can never have enough of nature.” They have rediscovered the psychological and spiritual benefits of immersion in the natural world and now prescribe this

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experience to reduce anxiety, alleviate stress, and promote personal well-being (Dolgin, 2014, Keniger, et al., 2013, Maller, 2009). However, Walden is both an eloquent ode and a soulful to nature, a mingling of the waters of the Ganges and Walden Pond—and brings into harmony insights into the human condition that both the East and West have offered. It reminds us that going into the woods can be much more than merely a refreshing hike or a relaxing excursion to savor the wonders of the natural world—it can be a mindful journey into the eternal mystery of the present and into the sacred, eternal depths of the self that is one with nature.

References

Bhagavad Gita. 1965. Bhagavad Gita: The Celestial. (E. Arnold, trans.). New York, NY: Heritage Press. Campbell, J. 2003. Myths of light—Eastern metaphors of the eternal. Novato, CA: New World Library. Dolgin, R. 2014. Into the wild: A group wilderness intervention to build coping strategies in high school youth through collaboration and shared experience. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 9(1), 83-98. Emerson, R. W. 1995. Nature. In J. D. Hart and P. W. Leininger (Eds.), The Oxford companion to American literature. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1836) Emerson, R. W. 1862. Emerson's eulogy of Thoreau on May 9th, 1862. Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/08/thoreau/306418/. Freud, S. 1917. Introductory lectures psycho-analysis. The standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 15). Jung, C. G. 1989. Memories, dreams and reflections. New York, NY: Random House. Keniger, L. E., Gaston, K. J., Irvine, K. N., & Fuller, R. A. 2013. What are the benefits of interacting with nature? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 10, 913-935. doi:10.3390/ijerph10030913 Maller, C. J. 2009. Promoting children’s mental, emotional and social health through contact with nature: A model. Health Education, 109, 522–543. DOI: 10.1108/09654280911001185 Miller, B. S. 1986. Why did Henry David Thoreau take the Bhagavad-Gita to Walden Pond? Parabola, 12(1), 58–63.

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Rosenwald, L. T. 2006. The theory, practice and influence of Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. In W. Cain (ed..), A historical guide to Henry David Thoreau. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press. Stolorow, R., & Atwood, G. 1992. Contexts of being: The intersubjective foundations of psychological life. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. The Upanishads. 1965. The Upanishads (J. Mascaro, trans.). New York, NY: Penguin Classics. Thoreau, H. D. 1992. Walden, or life in the woods. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. (Original work published 1854) Thoreau, H. D. 1989. A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers/ Walden / The Maine woods / Cape Cod. Washington, DC: Library of America. (Original work published 1849) Versluis, A. 2001. The esoteric origins of the American Renaissance. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press. White, E. B. 1977. Essays of E. B. White. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

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LEIBNIZ’ THEORY OF PERCEPTION RECONSIDERED

Zhaolu Lu

Abstract：A developmental review of cognitive science and philosophy of cognition reveals that over the sixty years since cognitive science began Leibniz’ theory of perception has been largely ignored. It has been systematically overlooked that Leibniz offers an insightful theory of perception from the rationalist perspective. Although programs and projects in cognitive studies have been conducted primarily in the empiricist framework, rationalist perspective has become increasingly demanding. A review of literature on Leibniz’ theory of perception reveals that there exist significant amount of misinterpretation and misunderstanding of Leibniz’ theory of perception. This paper introduces and clarifies Leibniz’ theory of perception through criticisms against M. Kulstad's claim that Leibniz’ theory of perception is inconsistent with several important doctrines of his philosophical system, which is M. Kulstad’s paper “Some Difficulties in Leibniz’ Definition of Perception” is a salient example and representative work that embodies Leibniz’ theory of perception is entirely ignored.

A developmental review of cognitive science and philosophy of cognition reveals that over the sixty years since cognitive science began Leibniz’ theory of perception has been largely ignored. It has been systematically overlooked that Leibniz offers an insightful theory of perception from the rationalist perspective. Although programs and projects in cognitive studies have been conducted primarily in the empiricist framework, rationalist perspective has become increasingly demanding. A review of literature on Leibniz’ theory of perception reveals that there exist significant amount of misinterpretation and misunderstanding of Leibniz’ theory of perception. This phenomenon is well represented in M. Kulstad’s paper “Some Difficulties in Leibniz’ Definition of Perception.” In what follows I will introduce and clarify Leibniz’ theory of perception through criticisms against M. Kulstad’s claim that Leibniz’ theory of perception creates inconsistency in his philosophical system. I shall develop four

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

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lines of criticism against Kulstad's interpretation of Leibniz’ theory of perception. Accordingly, this paper will be divided into four parts. In the first part, I shall argue that the so-called inconsistency problem is in fact caused by inappropriate deployment of Leibniz’ points and it can be resolved by making a necessary and reasonable adjustment to Kulstad's argument. In the second part, I shall argue that the Kulstad's claim about Leibniz’ inconsistency is misled by his interpretation of Leibniz’ notion of “composite.” In the third part, I shall argue that Kulstad's misjudgement of Leibniz’ consistency is due to his misunderstanding of Leibniz’ theory of perceptual objects. Finally, in part four, I shall argue that even on Kulstad's interpretation Leibniz’ notion of perception would not be inconsistent with his theories of , ethics, and rationality, if the latter are properly construed.

I

In his paper “Some Difficulties in Leibniz’ Definition of Perception” Kulstad claims that Leibniz’ theory of perception is inconsistent with several important doctrines of his philosophical system such as his theories of theology, ethics, and rationality. Kulstad’s argument begins with the following proposition, which he takes to be “Leibniz’ standard definition of perception” (1982, 65). Kulstad claims that it is precisely this definition that causes an inconsistency in Leibniz’ philosophical system. Perception is the representation of the composite in simple. Or perception is nothing other than the expression of many things in one. Kulstad goes on to give the following interpretation of proposition (1), which he takes to be the only possible interpretation. “Simple” means “a simple substance” and “composite” means “an aggregate of simple substances.” From these two propositions, Kulstad derives the following conclusion:

Therefore, perception is the representation of an aggregate of simple substances in a simple substance. Note that proposition (3) would not follow from proposition (1) in the absence of Kulstad’s interpretation, which is proposition (2).

Notwithstanding, Kulstad moves to the following argument:

If something is not an aggregate of simple substances, then there can be no perception of it; Therefore, there can be no perception of a simple substance.

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This new conclusion, then, appears to be inconsistent with Leibniz’ theories that simple substances can perceive one another, that there can be perception of God, and that a rational soul can perceive itself.

This is what Kulstad means by saying that Leibniz’ theory of perception is inconsistent with several important doctrines of his philosophical system. “The problem appears to run even deeper,” claimed Kulstad. As his argument continues, Leibniz’ theory of perception becomes self-inconsistent. The way Kulstad makes the case is to conjoin Leibniz’ standard definition of perception—the proposition (1) above with the following Leibniz’ points:

Every existing simple substance has some perception; If there is perception of something, there is perception of each part of the thing.

According to Kulstad’s argument, the above conjunction entails that

There are no perceptions; There are no simple substances.

Kulstad claims that proposition (5) is crucial to his argument and that “we are forced to (5) only because of interpretation of Leibniz’ standard definition of perception” (1982, 73), i.e., only because of interpretation of the term “composite” in proposition (1). It seems to Kulstad that proposition (2) is the only possible interpretation of (1). Hence, he suggests, the inconsistent consequences in question are inevitable. In next section I shall discuss Kulstad’s interpretation of “composite”. At the present section I argue that given Kulstad’s interpretation of “composite” in proposition (2), there is a way to avoid the alleged difficulty that Kulstad indicates. Of the nine propositions that appear in Kulstad's argument, three are taken from Leibniz. These propositions are propositions (1) “perceptions are the representation of the composite in simple”, proposition (6) “every existing simple substance has some perception”, and proposition (7) “if there is perception of something, there is perception of each part of the thing. The remaining six propositions in Kulstad's argument are either interpretive or derivative. However, insofar as the reconstruction of Leibniz’ theory of perception is concerned, these three propositions are used and arranged in rather a strange manner in Kulstad's argument. It is more like a deliberate plan in which

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Leibniz’ three points are separated and used for different purposes. The proposition (1), i.e., Leibniz’ point that perceptions are the representation of the composite in simple, is used to arrive at the conclusion-proposition (5) “there can be no perception of a simple substance.” Once this conclusion is drawn, propositions (6) and (7), i.e., Leibniz’ points that every existing simple substance has some perception and if there is perception of something, there is perception of each part of the thing,” are brought into the picture to help derive propositions (8) “there are no perceptions and (9) there are no simple substances.” Leibniz’ points so arranged does make his theory appear to be inconsistent. However, if we remove all of Kulstad’s interpretive and derivative propositions and only retain Leibniz’ points, then alleged inconsistency disappears. Here is how we do it.

Perceptions are the representation of composite in simple. (Kulstad’s proposition 1) If there is perception of something, there is perception of each part of the thing. (Kulstad’s proposition 7) Every existing simple substance has some perception. (Kulstad’s proposition 6)

This is a clear picture of Leibniz’ theory of perception. If we don’t chop the theory into pieces and treat each element in isolation, we won’t be able to derive an inconsistent conclusion from it. Therefore, I conclude that the inconsistency that Kulstad claims to exist in Leibniz’ philosophical system is merely caused by the way in which Kulstad reconstructs Leibniz’ theory of perception. In next two sections I shall show that the picture of Leibniz’ theory that I reconstructed is justified and my correction of Kulstad's argument structure is necessary and reasonable.

II

Missing premise is not the only problem with Kulstad's argument. Its problem also lies in his uncharitable interpretation of Leibniz’ term "composite" in the so-called “Leibniz’ standard definition of perception.” It is indeed very difficult to make it clear what the term exactly means in Leibniz’ writings. But a charitable interpretation is harmless. It seems to Kulstad that the term “composite” can only refer to one thing that contains, or that is composed of, many parts. When he uses the phrases such as “a set of simple substance,” “a collection of simple substances,” or “an aggregate of simple substances” to interpret the term “composite,” what in Kulstad’s mind is always one thing that contains many parts.

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Since it is explicitly stated in Leibniz’ Monadology that a monad cannot have parts, Kulstad arrives the conclusion that Leibniz' definition of perception implies that there cannot be perception of monads. I have shown in last section that such a radical conclusion is caused inappropriate arrangement of Leibniz’ points. We shall now show that Kulstad's uncharitable interpretation of Leibniz’ concept of composite makes the proposition (2) a false premise of his argument. The evidence that Kulstad finds in Leibniz’ work is the passage from section 1 of Principles of Nature and Grace, where it says: “A composite substance is a collection of simple substances, or monads...... Composites or bodies are multitudes; and simple substances—lives, , and minds—are unities” (Ariew & Garber, 1989, 207). Kulstad believes that this passage supports his interpretation of Leibniz’ notion of composite for the following . First, Kulstad claims that in section one of Principles of Nature and Grace the term "composite" refers to an aggregate of simple substances, then, in section 2 the term must have the same reference.1 Second, Kulstad claims that Leibniz uses the terms “composites” and “bodies” interchangeably and the latter is used to refer to aggregates of simple substances. Thus, Kulstad claims that Leibniz restricts objects of perception to aggregates of simple substances (Kulstad, 1982: 67). It seems to me that both of these claims are misleading. Kulstad fails to recognize two important distinctions made by Leibniz: the one between “composite substance” and “aggregate,” and the one between “composite substance” and “the composite.”2 Kulstad identifies “composite substance” with “aggregate.” Leibniz, however, explicitly distinguished between two. For example, in a letter to Des Bosses (5 February 1712) Leibniz writes: “Concrete things are either substances or substantiata …… Substances are either simple or composite ...... Composite substances are those which constitute a per se unity, composed of a soul and an organic body, which is a machine of nature resulting from monads. Substantiata are aggregates that are either natural or artificial, connected or unconnected. (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 200). In an undated essay Leibniz explains that by

1Proposition (1) of Kulstad's argument is quoted from section 2 of Leibniz’ Principles of Nature and Grace. 2Note that here the question is not whether “aggregates of simple substances" fall in the extension of "the composite,” but rather, whether the latter is the short version of the former, that is, whether they are co-extensional.

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substantiata he meant aggregates (Ariew & Garber, 1989: Note 249 on page 200). Obviously, composite substances fall in the category of substances, and aggregates are not substances at all but are mere phenomena. In another letter to Des Bosses (29 May 1716) Leibniz further explains: “An aggregate, but not a composite substance, is resolved into parts. A composite substance only needs the coming together of parts, but is not essentially constituted of them; otherwise it would be an aggregate...... And aggregates themselves are nothing but phenomena, since things other than the monads making them up are added by perception alone, by virtue of the very fact that they are perceived at the same time” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 203). It is clear that Leibniz regards composite substance as something different from aggregate of substances. The examples of the former are a man, an animal, etc., and the examples of the latter are an army of men, a flock of birds, etc. Here it is worth noting that to say that a composite substance is different from an aggregate of substances is not to say that it cannot be in any sense an aggregate of simple substances. Indeed, Leibniz sometimes also called a composite substance a collection of simple substances, even an aggregate of simple substances. 3 Moreover, an aggregate of simple substances can be viewed as a collection of simple substances. But according to Leibniz, a composite substance is not merely an aggregate of substances. Leibniz says: “Composite substance does not formally consist in monads and their subordination, for then it would be a mere aggregate or a being per accidents. Rather, it consists in primitive active and passive force, from which arise the qualities and the actions and passions of the composite which are discovered by the sense, if they are assumed to be more than phenomena” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 204). Hence, although composite substance and aggregate of simple substances can both be called collection of simple substance, they are, nevertheless, different. Kulstad also mistakenly identifies “the composite” with “composite substance.” It is true that for Leibniz a composite substance is composite. But as we have just shown, it is composite in a different sense from that in which an aggregate of substances is composite. Since “composite substance” and “aggregate of substances” can both be called composite, “the composite” is not to be identified with any of them. Here let me quote again from Leibniz’ letter to Des Bosses (29 May 1716): “Briefly: my entire view here is derived from these

3See section 1 of Principles of Nature and Grace and section 2 of Monadology.

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two positions, that there is composite substance, endowing the phenomena with reality, and that substance cannot naturally arise or perish, ... the formal distinction between composite substance and the monad and, on the other hand, the distinction between the composite substance and the aggregate, derives from these considerations, and also the independence of the composite substance from the ingredients, by virtue of which it is called composite, even though it is not aggregated from them” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 205). This passage shows how Leibniz distinguished between “composite substance” and “the composite of substances.” Leibniz sometimes referred to the latter by “aggregate”. Hence the distinction is not obscured when he says: “everywhere there are only simple substances whose composites are only aggregate” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 229). Now, it turns out that in Leibniz’ philosophy, both composite substances and aggregates of simple substance fall in the extension of “the composite”. This completes our discussion of Leibniz’ notion of “the composite” and demonstrates that Kulstad has misinterpreted Leibniz’ point that perception is the representation of the composite in simple.

III

I don’t mean to say that the issue with Kulstad’s argument is merely verbal. It may be argued that Leibniz might agree that if something is not composite then there is no perception of it and that if Leibniz does agree with this position then that position would be inconsistent with the entire system of his philosophy. My counter-argument is that this is due to a misunderstanding of Leibniz’ view on the objects of perception. To see this, we need to examine how Leibniz defines perception in various contexts. Here are some statements that may be considered as his definitions of perception:

“perception that is, the representation of the composite, or what is external, in the simple” (Ariew & Garber 1989: 207). “perception, which is the internal state of the monad representing external things” (Ariew & Garber 1989: 208). “The passing state which involves and represents a multitude in the unity or in the simple substance is nothing other than what one call perception” (Ariew & Garber 1989: 214). “In the way in which I define perception and appetite, all monads must necessarily be endowed with them. I hold perception to be the representation

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of plurality in the simple" (Loemaker, 1956: 662).

A careful reading of these passages (definitions) shows that Leibniz’ definition of perception has two dimensions. In one dimension, perception is defined in relation to its subject, a monad; and in this dimension perception is to be construed as an internal state or quality of a monad. In the other dimension, perception is defined in relation to its objects; and in this dimension perception is construed as the representation of the composite, or multitude, or plurality, or external things. Leibniz’ standard definition of perception, if any, should cover both of these two dimensions. If this interpretation is correct, then Kulstad’s formulation of what he takes to be Leibniz standard definition of perception refers only to the second dimension. I think that this one-dimensional interpretation causes some problem with his interpretation of Leibniz’ notion of perception.4 However, let’s follow Kulstad’s one dimensional interpretation and focus on Leibniz’ theory of perceptual object. Let us begin with statement (a). As shown in section one of tis paper, this is the one that Kulstad takes to be Leibniz’ standard definition of perception. It seems to Kulstad that the phrase “or what is external” in this statement is “redundant” (Kulstad, 1982: Note 9). It seems to me, however, that this phrase is just what is crucial to the understanding of Leibniz’ theory. For, it gives an exact expression to Leibniz’ view about what objects of perception are. All of Kulstad's efforts are to limit the object of perception to aggregates, trying to convince us that such a limitation was made by Leibniz himself. However, it is quite obvious that Leibniz’ view is that whatever external to a monad is an object of its perception. To do justice to the dispute, let me quote from Leibniz’ Monadology (section 60): “Because God, in regulating the whole, had regard for each part, and particularly for each monad, and since the nature of the monad is representative, nothing can limit it to represent only a part of things. . . Monads are limited, not as to their objects, but respect to the modifications of their knowledge of them. Monads all go confusedly to infinity, to the whole; but they are limited and differentiated by the degrees of their distinct perceptions.” This passage is conclusive. It explicitly rejects Kulstad's interpretation. Whatever limitation to perception with reference to its object is not a Leibniz’ view at all. If Leibniz’

4Since this problem does not closely relate to my present task, I shall not deal with it in this paper.

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monads were limited as to their objects, then most of his philosophical principles would be problematic, and the inconsistency in his theoretical system would be much more serious than Kulstad finds it to be. There is every reason to believe that Leibniz does hold the point that whatever external to a monad is an object of its perception. According to Leibniz, every monad is a living mirror of the universe. Everything is perceivable in some way or another, and nothing is unperceivable. Evidence for this interpretation is everywhere in Leibniz’ works. This is the right starting point from which we proceed to interpret Leibniz’ view about the nature of perception with reference to its objects. Now, in explaining the fact that Leibniz refers to the object of perception by the term “the composite,” the genuine question is not “Is something that is not composite perceivable?” but rather, “How is something that is not composite perceived?” The question is well answered by Leibniz. This question is in fact a question about proper object of perception. Since everything is perceivable in some way or another, in general everything is an object of perception. But not everything is a proper object of perception. Whether or not something is a proper object of perception depends on the way in which it is perceived. This is probably the reason why Leibniz refers to the object of perception by “the composite” and not simply everything external to a monad. He considers the composite to be the proper object of perception, although he also holds that everything else is also perceivable. And to avoid confusion about this, he adds a phrase "or what is external." We have shown above that "the composite" means either composite substance or aggregate of substances. We may find more specific answer to the present question in Leibniz’ description of these cases of “the composite.” Leibniz says: “a distinct and simple monad makes up the center of a composite substance, e.g. a man, an animal, etc. The central monad is surrounded by a mass. The mass is composed of infinitely many other monads and constitutes a body that belongs to the central monad. The body is called an aggregate of simple substances” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 207). Hence, the spatially immediate object external to a central monad is the composite that belongs to the central monad. From this metaphysical point of view, Leibniz might consider such composite as the proper object of perception of a monad.5 Here, Leibniz’ point is that a monad

5Here I use the phrase “spatially immediate object” in order to distinguish the object we are referring to from what Leibniz called “the immediate external object” (Ariew & Garber

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perceives the impressions that the body under its control receives from other bodies (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 65). The composite could also be considered as proper object of perception for another reason. Though everything is perceivable, not everything is perceived distinctly. Leibniz explains that when we hear the noise of a waterfall or the roar of the sea that strikes us when we are at the shore, we hear the whole, the composite of the noise of each wave. So, we have clear and more distinct perception of the aggregate (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 295-6). We attend to the composite in particular, not to the parts or ingredients of the composite. Yet, “it is impossible for soul to attend to everything in particular” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 65). With normal eyesight we see colors distinctly, but we do not see distinctly the physical properties that constitute the color we see (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 27). When looking around, we see distinctly each of individual persons, animals, cars, buildings, trees and other physical objects, but usually we do not see distinctly the parts or ingredients of these composites. Hence, in general perception is the representation of the composite. In the same sense Leibniz says: “perception is never directed toward an object in which there is not some variety or multitude” (Kulstad, 1982: 69). However, from the fact that only some composites6 are proper objects of perception, it does not follow that things that are not composite are unperceivable. For, as I have argued earlier, Leibniz also holds that when the composite is perceived, at the same time its parts or ingredients are also perceived, they are perceived confusedly or unconsciously. About this point, Leibniz explains: “Since everything is connected because of the plenitude of the world, and since each body acts on every other body, more or less, in proportion to its distance, and itself affected by the other through reaction, it follows that each monad is a living mirror or a mirror endowed with internal action, which represents the universe from its own point of view and is ordered as the universe itself” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 207). Leibniz’ notion of perception is a notion of representation. In the case that a monad perceptually represents the body belonging to it, it also represents all the other external things through this representation. Leibniz says: “And just as this body expresses the whole universe through the interconnection of all matter in the

1989: 59). 6In Leibniz’ term, “those that are the closest” or “those that are the greatest” “with respect to each monad” are distinctly and directly perceived (Ariew & Garber 1989: 220).

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plenum, the soul also represents the whole universe by representing this body, which belongs to it in a particular way” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 221). Furthermore, Leibniz indicates that there are hundred and thousand petite perceptions in the perception of the composite. These tiny perceptions “make up those impressions the surrounding bodies make on us, which involves the infinity, and this connection that each being has with the rest of the universe” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 296). Hence, although a monad perceives particularly the states of the composite belonging to it, it cannot fail to perceive the rest of the world because there is a “transitive relation of successive expression” (McRae, 1976: 29).

IV

My interpretations of Leibniz’ notion of “composite” and of his view on the objects of perception demonstrate that Leibniz’ notion of perception is consistent with his view that monads perceive one another. One of the reasons why Kulstad thinks otherwise is probably that he fails to consider the reason why Leibniz holds such a view. Hence, it is worthwhile reviewing Leibniz’ own explanation. Consider, first, the passage Kulstad quotes from Leibniz’ Fifth Paper in “The Controversy between Leibniz and Clark”: “He (—God) makes them (—things) to be perceive by one another and makes them perceive one another in consequence of the natures which he has given them once for all and which he keeps up only according to the law of every one of them severally, which, though different one from another, yet terminate in an exact correspondence of the results of the whole” (Loemaker, 1956: 711). This passage does not directly say that simple substances perceive each other. However, it does say that everything perceives one another, and in this simple substances are surely included. Kulstad recognizes this fact. But he fails to recognize an important point Leibniz made in this passage, namely, that the mutual perceiving-relation is made case by God and consists in a perfect correspondence relation pre-established by God. This is explicitly stated in Section 56 of Monadology: “This interconnection or accommodation of all created things to each other, and each to all the others, brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others” (emphasis added). Thereafter, in section 59, Leibniz repeats: “This universal harmony” “results in every substance expressing exactly all the others through the relations it has to them” (emphasis added). Now, what exactly are these relations?

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There is “God's intervention” of regulating everything he created; and hence, there is transitive relation of successive expressions. For this reason, there cannot be such an inconsistency in Leibniz’ system as Kulstad claims. Now, let us turn to the question of whether or not Leibniz’ notion of perception is consistent with the other two of his important views, i.e., that there can be perception of God and that a rational soul can perceive itself. Consider, first, Leibniz’ view on perception of God. It seems to Kulstad that this view of Leibniz’ is merely an inferential result from the following argument: We can think of God; thought is a kind of perception; therefore, there is perception of God (Kulstad, 1982: Note 16). The textual evidence Kulstad finds for this interpretation is based on the following passage (in section 30 of Monadology): “In thinking of ourselves, we think of being, of substance, of the simple and of the composite, of the immaterial and of God himself, by conceiving that which is limited in us is limitless in him.” In this passage, however, Leibniz merely states the fact that a rational soul thinks of everything, including God, without particularly specifying the primary reason for which, and the distinct way in which, a rational soul perceives God. The latter is the key to our understanding of the perception of God and is not considered by Kulstad. Why are rational souls capable of, but other substances are not, thinking of God? This is because, Leibniz explains, “God governs them according to laws which differ from those by which he governs the other substances” (Loemaker, 1956: 346). Leibniz says: “God governs the substances of beasts according to the material laws of force or of the transmission of motion. But he governs spirits according to the spiritual laws of justice, of which the others are incapable” (Ibid.). Obviously, Leibniz thinks that rational souls are special creatures of God; they hold a special relation to God; and they are endowed with a special role. The reason why God privileges rational souls is that “he is himself a spirit” (Ibid.). That is to say, with regard to rational souls, not only is God an author, a final cause of them, but he is also himself “the most perfect of all spirits” (Ibid., 326). Since God is the greatest and wisest of spirit, he can enter into spiritual conversation, and communicate his opinions and his wills with rational souls; he can even enter with them into the society. Hence, “for while all the forms of substances express the whole universe, it can be said that the substances of beasts express the world rather than God, but that spirits express God rather than the world” (Ibid.: 346). To say that rational souls perceive God rather than the world is not to say

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that rational souls do not perceive the world at all. According to Leibniz, rational souls’ perception of the world is, in essence, the perception of God; specifically, they perceive all things in God (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 27, 55, 268). “The essence of our soul,” Leibniz says, “is a certain expression, imitation or image of the divine essence, thought, and will, and all the ideas comprised in it” (Ibid.: 59). Rational souls perceive all things in God, because they perceive everything by God; and the latter is the case, because God immediately acts on them, and he is the only immediate object of them (Ibid.: 59, 268). Hence, there is no conflict between rational souls’ perception of the world and their perception of God. Thus, even if Kulstad's interpretation of Leibniz’ definition of perception were correct, the alleged inconsistency would still not follow. Finally, let us examine Kulstad’s claim that Leibniz’ notion of perception is inconsistent with his view that a rational simple substance can perceive itself. Let’s assume that Leibniz does hold the view that a rational simple substance can perceive itself.7 But, in what sense might Leibniz hold this view? Consider the following passage that Kulstad quotes from New Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “It is true that our perception of ideas come either from the external sense or from the internal sense, which may be called reflection; but this reflection is not limited to the operations alone of the mind . . . it reaches even to the mind itself, and it is in the consciousness of self that we perceive substance” (Langley, 1949: 23-24). There are three important points in this passage: (1) perception which comes from internal sense is called reflection, (2) it is the reflective act that enables a rational soul to think of itself and raises it to the knowledge of itself, and (3) in the consciousness of the self, a rational soul thinks of everything. The last two points are also explicitly stated in section 30 of Monadology: “It is also through the knowledge of necessary truths and through their abstraction that we rise to reflective acts, which enable us to think of that which is called ‘I’ and enable us to consider that this or that is in us. And thus, in thinking of ourselves, we think of beings, of substance, of the simple and of the composite, of the immaterial and of God himself, by conceiving that which is limited in us is limitless in him. And these reflective acts furnish the principal objects of our reasoning” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 217). Here the phrase “thinking of self” is not significantly different from

7In fact, it is not entirely clear whether Leibniz hold such a view. If he does, it is not made explicitly.

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“consciousness of self” or “reflection on self”; and “thinking of the things in us” is called “apperception” by Leibniz (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 208); both are reflective acts.8 About “the self” Leibniz says in his A New System of Nature that “by means of the soul or form there is a true unity corresponding to what is called the self in us” (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 142). This view together with his well-known view that in a monad we can find nothing but perceptions and apperception entails that a rational simple substance does not only represent external multitude, but it also involves itself multitude. In Leibniz’ terms, the “true unity in us” consists in “the composition of perceptions” or “the composite tendencies” to go from one perception to another (Ariew & Garber, 1989: 228). Hence, to reflect on our perceptions (i.e., to apperceive) is to reflect on ourselves. In the sense that the true unity in us, or the self, contains “a multitude of modifications and relations all at once” (Ibid.), we can say that to think of the self is to think of such a multitude. This is what Leibniz meant by the self-perception of a rational simple substance. I then conclude that given Kulstad’s interpretation of Leibniz’ definition of perception, Leibniz holds his notion of self-perception consistently.

References

Ariew, Roger. and Daniel Garber. Trans. 1989. G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Hildesheim, G. Olms. ed. Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottried Wilhelm Leibniz, V. II. Kulstad, Mark. 1982. "Some Difficulties in Leibniz’ Definition of Perception" in M. Hooker, ed., Leibniz: Critical and Interpretive Essays. University of Minnesota Press. Langley, Alfred G. trans. & notes. 1949. New Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz). Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. Loemker, Leroy E.. ed. 1956. Philosophical Papers and Letters (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz). Chicago University Press (second edition). McRae, Robert. 1976. Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought. University of Toronto Press.

8McRae made a sharp distinction between these two reflective acts (1976, 30-35). My view in what follows is they are two aspects of the same thing.

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ROYAL FIGURES AS NATION BUILDERS – KING KAMEHAMEHA AND CHARLEMAGNE: MYTH FORMATION IN THE EUROPEAN EARLY MIDDLE AGES AND IN EIGHTEENTH-AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY POLYNESIAN HAWAI’I

Albrecht Classen

Abstract: Historical examples make it possible for us today to understand current issues and phenomena. Kingship has always been associated with charisma and hence with a myth-forming process surrounding the king. The myth of Emperor Charlemagne (d. 814) is well known and was thoroughly examined especially in 2014, the twelfth-hundred anniversary of his death. The myth of King Kamehameha I of Hawai’i (d. 1819) is well present in Hawai’i today, as documented by numerous public sculptures, street and school names, etc. Through a comparative analysis, this paper demonstrates that medieval European history can serve well to explain modern myths and vice versa, especially because Kamehameha’s charisma continues to permeate contemporary Hawaiian society. In this regard, we discover that through a structural-historical and anthropological-political analysis we can identify meaningful and significantly shared elements connecting early medieval Europe even with modern-day Polynesia.

On September 8, 2015, the police of the County of the Big Island of Hawai’i reported that the top section of the royal spear held in the hand of the sculpture depicting King Kamehameha the Great in the Wailoa State Park of Hilo had been stolen. This splendid sculpture shows, in double life size, the figure of the unifier and founder of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, Kamehameha. The following Tuesday, officers found the broken-off piece in the channel behind the statue. It was covered by vegetation along the banks. Soon after, the criminal, 31-year-old William Roy Carroll III, was arrested and charged with this crime. The theft simply occurred because he wanted to enrich himself because the tip of the spear, or ihe, was made of bronze covered with gold leaf. The 18-foot sculpture displays

Dr. ALBRECHT CLASSEN，University Distinguished Professor, Department of German Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson. Email: [email protected].

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the mighty king with helmet, cape, and sandals, all also covered with gold leaf. Ever since that theft, great efforts were made to repair the spear and to reattach it to the sculpture. A national figure of great significance had been publicly shamed, so the public strove hard to remedy this situation. A festive ceremony of placing the restored spear into King Kamehameha’s hand organized by Kamehameha Schools East Hawai’i Alumni Association, Mamalahoa Chapter and presided over by kumu Kahookele Crabbe, took place on December 19, 2015. The re-installation was made possible with the assistance from a Hawai’i County Fire Department ladder truck. Repair work on the 22-foot long ihe weighing more than 100 pounds was performed by the Puna metal artist Wes Hammond.1 While both the theft and the restoration of the ihe, along with the public ceremony, might have been only of local interest in east Hawai’i, we face here a fascinating phenomenon that directly connects the myth of Emperor Charlemagne, or Charles the Great (d. 814), with the myth of this Polynesian ruler, which is very much alive and well in the U.S. state of Hawai’i today. We can draw significant parallels from the modern and admiration of this charismatic figure of King Kamehameha for our analysis of the long-term impact of the Carolingian ruler on those countries that emerged from his empire and thus gain insights into the reasons for and actual working of that myth surrounding the Frankish king and subsequent emperor (since 800).2 Of course, all over the world

1All this belongs to public knowledge and has been culled from various news outlets. 2There is much research on the myth surrounding Charlemagne; see, for instance, Thomas F.X. Noble, “Greatness Contested and Confirmed: The Raw Materials of the Charlemagne Legend,” The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, , and Crusade, ed. Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 3-22; Matthew Gabriele, An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Andrew J. Romig, “Charismatic Art and Biography in the Carolingian World,” Faces of Charisma, ed. Martha Rust and Brigitte Bedos-Rezak (Brill, forthcoming); I thank the author for providing me with a draft of his paper. See also ….. De erfenis van Karel de Grote, 814 - 2014: bij de international tentoonstelling in het Provinciaal Erfgoedcentrum in Ename van 10 mei tot 30 november 2014, ed. Dirk Callebaut and Horst van Cuyck (Gent: Provinciebestuur Oost-Vlaanderen, 2014); Michaël Antoine, Les représentations iconographiques de Charlemagne dans les manuels scolaires

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and throughout time mighty rulers have promoted the creation of their own auratic status or that of their predecessors and in that process relied heavily on the common tools used for the establishment of myths. The case of King Kamehameha, in particular, proves to be so useful for the investigation of the myth surrounding Charlemagne because in modern-day Hawai’i the myth of the founder is very much well and alive, which can be conveniently compared with the efforts by Charles’s posterity to glorify and even canonize that mighty Frankish ruler. In other words, we can draw from the current workings of that Hawai’ian myth for the explanation of the myth surrounding Charlemagne. Every year, the state of Hawai’i celebrates the memory of Kamehameha on June 11 and thus continues to embrace the ideology created by this founding father. The state seal shows an image of Kamehameha at the left-hand bearer on the official seals of the Territory of Hawai’i and the U.S. State of Hawai’i. Twice during the twentieth century, the statue appeared on a postage stamp (1937 and 1959).3 Kamehameha’s accomplishments are particularly noteworthy because he was the only ruler in the entire Pacific to achieve that goal of unifying the various parts of the archipelago of Hawai’i as one kingdom (with the exception of Kauai, which later, however, voluntarily joined the kingdom under his rule). There were numerous external factors that made this possible, but above all we can affirm

belges francophones. Archéobook, 6 (Namur: Institut du Patrimoine Wallon, [2014]); Karl der Große, Charlemagne: Exhibition Guide, commissioned by the city of Aachen, ed. Sarvenaz Ayooghi (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2014); Karl der Große: 1200 Jahre Mythos und Wirklichkeit, ed. Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, prepared by Bernhard Pinsker and Annette Zeeb (Petersberg: Imhof, 2014); De erfenis van Karel de Grote 814 - 2014 (The Inheritance from Charlemagne 814 - 2014), compiled by Dirk Callebaut and Horst van Cuyck (Gent: Provinciebestuur Oost-Vlaanderen, 2014); Karlsbilder in Kunst, Literatur und Wissenschaft: Akten eines interdisziplinären Symposions anlässlich des 1200. Todestages Kaiser Karls des Großen, ed. Franz Fuchs. Rezeptionskulturen in Literatur- und Mediengeschichte, 1 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015); for an entire bibliography with research literature on Charlemagne, though by now somewhat dated, see Susan E. Farrier, The Medieval Charlemagne Legend: An Annotated Bibliography. Garand Medieval Bibliographies, 15 (New York and London: Garland, 1993). 3There is much research on King Kamehameha I, of course. See, for instance, Helen Wong and Ann Rayson, Hawaii’s Royal History. Rev. ed. (Honolulu, HI: Bess Press, 1987), 51-67.

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“that the most important factor of all was the personality of Kamehameha, which completely dominated the period of Hawaiian history….”4 Kamehameha, with his full Hawaiian name Kalani Pai’a Wohi o Kaleikini Keali’ikui Kamehameha o ‘Iolani i Kaiwikapu kau’i Ka Liholiho Kunuiakea, was born ca. 1736 and died on May 8 or 14, 1819. His greatest military and political achievement was, to some extent, quite parallel to Charlemagne, that is, to establish the Hawaiian kingdom in 1810. Developing good working relationships with all other major Pacific powers, he secured the continued independence of his kingdom, although in the relatively near future the kingdom was taken over by the United States in a coup by a group of American sugar planters under Sanford Ballard Dole who overthrew Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, and established a new provincial government with Dole as president.5 One of the founding myths surrounding King Kamehameha was that he was able, at the age of fourteen, to lift and even overturn the famous Naha stone after several attempts (today outside of the Public Library in Hilo, HI), a feat similar to King Arthur’s alleged ability to pull the sword Excalibur out of a rock, thus publicly demonstrating his predetermination as the future king. “The fulfilling of the , by lifting the NAHA Stone, sealed Kamehameha as the fulfiller of the Prophecy, but other ruling Chiefs, Keawe Mauhili, the Mahoe (twins) Keoua and other Chiefs were defiant of the Prophecy of Ka Poukahi and the High Chiefs of Kauai and supported Kiwala`o even after knowing about the Prophecy.”6 According to ancient Hawaii legend, the Naha Stone was originally used to identify who belonged to the ruling Naha clan. After a baby was born, it was placed on top of this stone. If it remained calm, the baby was Naha. If it cried, it wasn’t. That massive, 7000-pound rock was transported by canoe from Kauai to Hawai’i. Without going into numerous historical and biographical details which have

4Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, vol. 1: 1778-1854: Foundation and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1938/1965), 29-60; here 29. He goes so far as to call him “one of the great men of the world” (ibid.). 5Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (Toronto, Ont.: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 29-60; Edward Joesting, Hawaii: An Uncommon History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1972), 41-65; Paul Bailey, Those Kings and Queens of Old Hawaii (Los Angeles, CA: Westernlore Books, 1975), 15-57. 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamehameha_I

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already been discussed by scores of historians, suffice it here to summarize once again that Kamehameha unified all the Hawaiian islands and accomplished thus a feat similar to other founding heroes, such as Charlemagne, irrespective of some slight differences in practical terms. As Paul Bailey underscores, “He held his widespread kingdom together by constant vigilance, and an internal strength that no dissenter dared assault.”7 In his honor, various massive statutes of him were erected, the first in front of the Ali’iolani Hale, the Hawaii State judiciary building, across historic Iolani Palace. in Honolulu, and all other ones modeled after the original bronze created by Thomas R. Gould in 1880 in Paris. This project had been initiated by Walter Gibson, member of the Hawai’i government, who had first proposed the idea of creating a statue of King Kamehameha in 1878 as part of a commemoration of the 100-year arrival of the famous British explorer, Captain Cook, to the Hawaiian Islands. Although King Kamehameha had been a Polynesian, Gould, deeply influenced by his studies in Italy, ignored all the photos sent to him and shaped the sculpture in close semblance with Roman and Greek figures, which underscored, however, the figure’s aura as his people’s leader even further. However, the ship transporting the sculpture was wrecked near the Falkland Island near the tip of South America, so a replica was ordered, which is now standing outside of the Ali’iolani Hale in Honolulu, characterized by a strongly dark skin color. In the meantime, the presumably lost sculpture was recovered by Falkland Islanders, who sold it to the captain, who in turn sold it to Walter M. Gibson. This one was then placed at King Kamehameha’s birthplace in Kapa’au in Kohala in the northwest of the Big Island. A third replica was commissioned in 1959 when Hawai’i gained statehood (49th state of the USA), and was unveiled in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The Princeville Corporation commissioned the fourth copy from R. Sandrin, then working for the Fracaro Foundry in Vicenza, Italy, for their resort hotel in Kauai in 1963. The residents of Kauai, however, rejected that sculpture because Kamehameha had never conquered that island, despite his otherwise glorious military successes in the Hawaiian archipelago. Consequently, that sculpture ended up in the Wailoa State Park of Hilo, where the theft of the spear occurred recently. A fifth sculpture was created by Herb Kawainui Kāne

7Bailey, Those Kings and Queens (see note 4), 59.

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(1928-2011) in 1990 on behalf of the Grand Wailea Resort Hotel & Spa on Maui.8 Finally, on Kamehameha Day, June 11, first established in 1871, all the statues are ceremoniously draped in fresh leis fashioned in Hawai’i. All over the Hawaiian Islands, there are streets, schools, hotels, parks, buildings, and other sites bearing the name of the first King of Hawai’i, so his myth strongly lives on and signals how much this figure represents, for the present population of Hawai’i, irrespective of their ethnic background, today highly mixed and originating from all over the world, a source of strength and identity, if not culture for all residents of that state. Kamehameha song contests are just as much part of modern-day life in Hawai’i as are parades and festivals. The fact that Hawai’i is a democratic state of the United States does not change anything with regard to the mythical admiration and celebration of the unifying founder of the Hawaiian kingdom. As much as King Kamehameha enjoyed enormous charisma and was widely recognized everywhere in the Hawaiian Islands, as much do we also have to recognize the strategic operations by individuals, groups, parties, and the government itself to promote his memory and to elevate him to a mythical status. In a very similar fashion, Charlemagne was a mighty ruler who established the first fully-fledged empire north of the Alps long after the fall of the Roman empire in the West and thus gained the charismatic status which has kept his name and fame alive until today. While Kamehameha the Great is memorialized especially through those five sculptures of him, we know of Charles the Great through Einhard’s biography, the chapel built for the emperor in Aachen, which includes his throne and , and then through countless chronicles and literary narratives in most European languages. Four times Charlemagne was disinterred, first by Emperor Otto III in the year 1000, then by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1165, and by Emperor Frederick II in 1215, all trying their best to associate themselves with that mythical figure, displaying his bones as relics and having him canonized, at least once through Antipope Paschal III. In 1349, Emperor Charles IV had some of the bones brought out again to pass them on to individual reliquaries, thereby expanding the myth surrounding the founder of the

8http://blog.get2hawaii.com/tales-of-the-king-kamehameha-statues/; http://www.publicartinpublicplaces.info/PUBLIC-ART-ARCHIVES-HAWAII (both last accessed on Dec. 28, 2015); there is even a sixth sculpture in Las Vegas, NV, because so many Hawaiian tourists travel there, but this is irrelevant for our topic.

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Carolingian Empire ever more widely. In modern times, the grave was opened again twice, first in 1861, then in 1988 in order to verify that the remains were really those of Charlemagne. On Wednesday, January 28th, 2014, on the 1200th anniversary of Charlemagne’s death, the results of the research were announced, presenting to us an image of the emperor as a strong, tall, yet slim person: At 1.84 meters (six feet), he was unusually tall for his time. The team also estimated his weight at around 78 kilograms, giving him a slim body mass index of around 23. The average height for an adult male in the 9th century was 1.69 meters or 5’6” which put Charlemagne in the 99th percentile. Einhard’s description of him fits the results of the study even in some of the smaller details, like the limp that struck him in his later years. Researchers found that the kneecap and heel bone had deposits consistent with an injury.9 Many of the reasons why Charlemagne has gained such a reputation throughout the centuries thus prove to be the same as in the case of Kamehameha I, also called ‘the Great.’ By analogy, we are thus in an ideal situation studying formation of the myth of Charlemagne by way of analyzing how the myth of the Hawaiian king came about, developed, and spread all over the islands. Most importantly, the myth of Kamehameha I is a living one, being supported and promoted today, bringing together, more or less at least, the entire population of the state of Hawai’i which appears to recognize in him a figure of identification. Little wonder then, that the myth of Charlemagne also continues to function very well all over Europe until the present. Both the mechanisms and strategies making the development and spreading of that royal myth prove to be strikingly similar, although neither myth was related with or predicated on the other.

9 http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/28944 (last accessed on Dec. 28, 2015).

Journal of East-West Thought

BOOK REVIEW

Li Chunqing 李春青, A History of Taste: From Zhou Dynasty Aristocracy to Han and Wei Literati1 趣味的歷史：從兩周貴族到漢魏文人. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company 北京：生活·讀書·新知三聯書店, 2014. Pp. 471.

In “The Progress of Modern European Literature” (1910), Wilhelm Dilthey pointed out: “Firstly, we discover that poetry was determined by the common spirit of a smaller political-military community. It expresses the spirit of the society with the lyric poetry.” (Dilthey, 2005: 1) He also outlined the representation of two spiritual activities—imagination and rationality within modern European literature, and proposed the perspective of spiritual history as a method for doing literary studies. In recent years, some experts of classical have been investigating the generation and evolvement of literary activities, out of discontent with the lack of attention on the relation between historical background and literary activities, and trying to explore this problem from different aspects such as the writer’s mentality, faith, thought, and living condition, etc. With new perspectives, they intend to describe the relation between literary history and spiritual history more meticulously. But since they have not found a notion that is self-explanatory, the research about the relation his new monograph A History of Taste, carries out a thorough discussion on the evolution of the collective taste of the intelligentsia from Zhou dynasty (周代) to Han and Wei dynasties (漢魏) (1046 BC-266 AD), by using the notion “taste ” as a mediator between literature and its producers. This book, which reveals the close linkage between Chinese literary history and spiritual history in the above-mentioned historical period, is significant in suggesting the method of spiritual history in studies of classical Chinese literature. The notion “taste paradigm” is referred to as the universal taste embodied in a specific stratum in different historical periods. When researchers discuss the relation between literary history and spiritual history, the most difficult problem encountered is how to explain the relation between the aesthetic form of the text and the belief system of the authors. Previous studies tend to explore the deep thoughts within literary works or literary theories, and then put them in the

1The Chinese version of the review was published in China Book Review (May, 2015). This English version is translated by Xiao Zhibing and Xue Xuecai.

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context of intellectual history. Obviously, this method show beliefs can be presented in literature, but could not give us a powerful explanation about how belief system influences aesthetic forms of literary works and about the theoretical discourse under the view of spiritual history; also it cannot properly demonstrate how literature is intertwined with the process of spiritual history. In fact, having a concept that could connect sensibility and thoughts in the spiritual world of the subject of literary production is the key to solve the above-mentioned problems. As a spiritual pursuit, “taste” is “the sensational manifestation of ideology, cultural customs, and with ideas of politics, ethics, religion, etc.” In other words, it is “a comprehensive representation of the writer’s emotions, interests and preferences” (p.3), so it could be used as an effective notion to connect literary history and spiritual history. In fact, slightly later than Dilthey, German literary historian Levin Ludwig Schücking had given a thorough exploration of the great value of studying the history of taste in studies of literary history. In “Literary history and taste history: An attempt to a new problem” (1913), Schücking put forward three major tasks in studies on the relation between literary history and the history of taste as the following: “What did the different parts of the people read at a certain time, and why did they read these Works?”, “To investigate the driving force behind that devotes to show the popularity of a certain taste”, “To probe the influence of taste on creating literary works” (Schücking, 1991: 39-45). If we check Li’s book against these three tasks, we may say that the third one, which referred to by Schücking as the most beneficial for studies of literary history, is the main focus of the book, whereas the first and the second ones are also dealt with as the subordinate. Based on revealing the developing process of the taste paradigm of subjects of literary production from Zhou to Han and Wei, Li offers an insightful theoretical interpretation of the logic of the evolution of literary ethos and that of the discourse of literary theories in the period. For a long time, evaluating selected writers and texts chronologically is the typical model on the historical writing of Chinese literature and criticism. The advantage of this model is that it is convenient for arranging historical materials, but it is hard to sort out the inner logic of the evolution of the history. However, Li takes the inner logic as the focus of his research, so that, governed by the notion ‘taste’, how literature and criticism (as spiritual phenomena) derive from traditional intelligentsia’s spiritual world and in turn, play a role in the construction of the spiritual world. The interaction of both ends is analyzed

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profoundly at theoretical level. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote: “to the socially recognized hierarchy of the arts, and within each of them, of genres, schools or periods, corresponds a social hierarchy of the consumers. This predisposes tastes to function as markers of ‘class’.” (Bourdieu, 1984: 1-2) It means that what is behind taste is the identity of the subject that constructs a corresponding taste and also in turn, the identity was created and strengthened by the taste. So describing the evolution of the identity of literary subjects is an important choice for studies on the history of taste taken by Li Chunqing. In his opinion, from Zhou to Han and Wei, three kinds of identities of literary subjects had emerged successively: the earliest one was aristocracy in Western Zhou (1046-771 BC), then was scholar-official from Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu 春秋) to Western Han (770 BC -8 AD), and then literati in Eastern Han, Wei and Jin (晉)(25-420 AD).Correspondingly, the mainstream literary tastes in the above periods had evolved from aristocratic taste to the scholar-official’s taste, then to literati’s taste. It was not a simple process named “replacement”, but a rather complex one that we could call “derivation”. The philosophers of the pre-Qin period, representatives of scholar-officials, were the declined aristocrats who had become plebeians. Although they had lost the hereditary status and salary so that they must rely on knowledge or other skills to take part in social affairs, certain aristocratic spirit was still in their consciousness. Further the literati identity was also different from the identity of scholar-official, and they often coexisted in literary subjects, rather than having one replacing the other. Due to such a complex deriving process of the identities, the development of taste dominated by identity was also a derivative process. We learn that the three literary tastes described in A History of Taste are continuous, opposite but complementary, instead of developing in a linear fashion. Obviously, Li’s creative generalization and refined description provide beneficial enlightenments for us to understand the spiritual world of literary subject and its text representation in ancient China more deeply. In Li’s book, the main part is the generalization and interpretation of the history of taste from Zhou to Han. But what deserves more concern is the description about the symbiotic relations between the literary history and the spiritual history under the perspective of taste history. Western Zhou literature is usually linked with propriety-music civilization. The literary texts conserved at later eras are only the Classic of Poetry (Shijing 詩經) and the Classic of Documents (Shangshu 尚書). However, Western Zhou literature has a profound

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and long-lasting influence on the coming ones, which is difficult to make a satisfactory explanation if we limit our vision in literature. In Zhou dynasty, the word “wen” (文) has multiple meanings including rite, law, institutions, literature, moral, etc. While admired Western Zhou that “Zhou is resplendent in culture (wen), having before it the example of the two previous dynasties (周監于 二代，郁郁乎文哉)” (Confucius, 1992: 23)，wen was regarded as the global feature of Western Zhou culture, whose connotation is not confined to any one enumerated above. In A History of Taste, combining political system and ideological concepts in Zhou, Li analyzes the meaning of wen used in pre-Qin literature in detail, and points out that wen is “a general name of propriety-music system, knowledge system, moral concepts in Zhou dynasty” (p.69). This means that wen becomes the norm of social life for aristocratic stratum at that time. The norm was internalized to the spiritual world of aristocracy and formed the aristocratic taste -- Li names it “the taste of wen” -- which includes the correlative ideas, emotion, experience, etc. This taste strengthens the awareness of identity of Zhou aristocracy. So, although they did not deliberately engage in literary creation that was named “literature” in later ages, all of their lives are “wen”. Li remarks: “In later ages, wen as institutions and moral concepts that was constructed by Zhou aristocracy was abandoned and reformed in the prolonged historical evolution, but the taste of wen was inherited and carried forward by intelligentsia, being a cultural heritage with constant renewal in very long historical times.” (p.70) Therefore, we could understand the inner relationship between orthodox literary thoughts and the spirit of “wen of Zhou dynasty”. Meanwhile, this study will also enlighten us for an in-depth discussion about the origin of Chinese literature. In Li’s book, another impressive finding is his analysis on the relationship between scholar-officials’ spirit and literary thought. Comparable with aristocracy, scholar-officials were rising intelligentsia, “replaced aristocracy to be the creators and inheritors of knowledge and culture” (p.120). In pre-Qin era, they were mainly philosophers who attempted to rebuild the order of the world; in , they were intellectuals who pursued to be officials of the empire. According to the historical background of scholar-officials and their life goals, Li summarizes that the taste of scholar-officials consist of four essential elements: “the evident self-consciousness with certain narcissistic characteristics”, “grand spiritual life goals that are difficult to achieve”, “the role consciousness of a sanctified TEACHER”, “the ultimate value indicated by Dao” (pp.141-152).

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Compared with the general discussion on “carrying Dao” (zaidao 載道) in classical Chinese literature, Li suggests that Dao is the label of taste for scholar-officials, which is a very important finding. Actually, the general discussion about this “carrying Dao” embodied a sense of essentialism; very few studies consider -- with a historical perspective -- why the category “Dao” can emerge in classical literary thoughts. A History of Taste makes it clear that Dao is the spiritual pursuit of scholar-officials, not belongs to Zhou aristocracy, then in the history of Chinese literary thought, “theory of the relationship between literature and Dao” is formed because “in scholar-official’s discourse system, the value of literature always exists in Dao”. This demonstration shows the formation of literature concept combined with Dao closely in classical Chinese literature from the logic level. Following Li’s analysis on the structure of scholar-officials’ taste, it is not difficult to make a further research on the relations between scholar-officials’ literature and the Chinese national spirit. In this book, the major task is to discuss the formation of literati’s identity and taste, and its relation with scholar-officials’ spiritual world and Han-Wei literature. Li holds the view that “literati” was a new identity derived from scholar-officials in Eastern Han dynasty, and emerged as a complete form in late Han to early Wei dynasty. The major cause was that the political corruption appearing in middle Eastern Han led to continuous frustration of scholars’ official promotion. Meanwhile, Classicism (jingxue 經學) had become grotesque and tedious, so the disappointed scholars engaged in creating literary and artistic works for conciliating their inner world. In this process, to pursue individual “leisurely delights” (xianqingyizhi 閒情逸致) became a group selection of some scholar-officials, and there upon the taste of literati was set, which had a far-reaching influence down through the ages. In Li’s opinion, this is the real reason why literature develops rapidly throughout late Han to early Wei period. “Leisurely delights” became a public choice, which is regarded by Li as a symbol of the formation of the taste of literati. He says “the leisurely delights implied scholar-officials’ split and transcendence from the identity of literati. They tried to find another way to achieve self-confirmation and self-fulfillment out of the official system.” (p.227) It discriminates the relations between the tradition of “carrying Dao” and that of “expressing ideal” (yanzhi, 言志) in classical Chinese literature, and reveals the other side of traditional intelligentsia’s spiritual structure. The above review just outlines the “branches” of Li’s A History of Taste, and

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there are a lot of other discussions and thoughts that are insightful and worth further exploration. Certainly, some shortcomings can be detected in the book. For example, Li seldom uses the intuitive and concrete materials to support the characteristic analysis of the three kinds of taste paradigm. Personally speaking, it would be nearly perfect if he can borrow the new findings in the field of archaeological anthropology and art history. To sum up, Li’s book poses a number of important questions to the evolution of the collective taste of the intelligentsia from Zhou to Han, and answers them in a very specific, subtle way. Of course, the most important point of the book is that it puts forward the notion of “taste paradigm”, which means a new approach to the study of relation between classical Chinese literature and spiritual history, though Professor Li does not use the term “spiritual history”.

References

Bourdieu, Pierre, 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Confucius. 1992. The , trans. D.C. Lau, The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong. Dilthey, Wilhelm. 2005. “Gang der Neueren Europäischen Literatur”, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung: Lessing, Goethe, Novalis, Hölderlin. Göttingen, . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Schücking, Levin L. 1991. “Literaturgeschichte und Geschmacksgeschichte. Ein Versuch zu einer neuen Problemstellung”, see Alternative Traditionen Dokumente zur Entwicklung einer empirischen Literaturwissenschaft (Konzeption Empirische Literaturwissenschaft), ed. Reinhold Viehoff, Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Braunschweig.

Dr. XUE XUECAI, Lecturer, Fujian University of Techology. E-mail: [email protected].

Journal of East-West Though

Journal of East-West Thought