CHAPTER FIVE

MOU’S MORAL METAPHYSICS AND KANT: NOUMENAL KNOWLEDGE AND ONTOLOGY

The previous chapter discussed Mou’s use of the “two-door mind” paradigm to bolster his assertion of human beings’ inner sageliness, his affirmation of the central Lu-Wang metaphysical thesis of “mind is principle” and his refutation of Kant’s negation of human intellec- tual intuition. This chapter continues the presentation of Mou’s moral metaphysics with the focus shifted first to the Chinese thinker’s vigor- ous critique of Kant’s transcendental distinction between phenomena and noumena and then to his noumenal ontology. On Mou’s view, even though the transcendental distinction between phenomena and noumena represented the most profound and fundamental insight of Kant, it was underdeveloped because Kant had a merely negative con- ception of noumena—that they lie absolutely beyond human reach. I begin with a discussion of the significance to Mou of Kant’s transcen- dental distinction between phenomena and noumena. I then examine Mou’s critique of Kant’s transcendental distinction and his proposal to cure Kant’s deficiency by giving noumena a positive content with a strong implicature of value. This leads to a discussion of Mou’s advancement of two types of knowledge and truth. Because the addi- tional type of knowledge and truth advanced by Mou is of a subjective nature not amenable to objective proof, I discuss the difficulty this presents. I then present Mou’s “two-tiered” ontology, which consists of a phenomenal tier and a noumenal tier, the latter being the main concern of his moral metaphysics. The chapter ends with a discussion of Mou’s conception of moral creation, which is at the centre of his noumenal ontology. In the concluding remarks, I bring up a common criticism of Mou’s moral metaphysics and explore why Mou sought to propagate Ruxue from a high moral metaphysical ground.

Kant’s Problematic Negative Conception of Noumena

As mentioned, Kant theorised that only God has intellectual intuition and that God creates and knows noumena by intellectual intuition. 160 chapter five

Kant also stated that God creates only noumena—not appearances.1 Mou noted that Kant’s transcendental distinction between phenom- ena and noumena2 is a key premise underlying Kant’s entire system of thought, and he applauded it as a great insight of Kant, one that involves the most profound and ultimate metaphysical questions. Mou, however, frowned on Kant’s merely negative conception of noumenon. Given that intellectual intuition intuits only noumena, Mou’s assertion of human intellectual intuition—understood by the Chinese thinker to be the spiritual function of the moral mind (the site of inner sageliness)—is meaningful only to the extent that nou- mena have a positive content and clear meaning. Kant’s transcenden- tal distinction between phenomena and noumena is highly significant to Mou’s moral metaphysics. It was where Mou focused his syncre- tising effort. According to Mou’s analysis, if noumena were given a positive content and clear meaning as he proposed, then Kant’s tran- scendental distinction between phenomena (what sensible intuition of the cognitive mind intuits) and noumena (what intellectual intuition of the moral mind intuits according to Mou) would rest on firm ground and become compatible with the Lu-Wang “two-door” understanding of the mind and the accompanying assertion of human beings’ inner sageliness. The transcendental distinction thus substantiated would in turn lend theoretical vigour and clarity to what Mou’s moral meta- physics tries to establish—the transcendental distinction between the moral mind and the ordinary cognitive mind. In other words, Kant’s transcendental distinction, when substantiated and applied to the Lu- Wang understanding of the mind, would distinguish clearly between the noumenal moral mind and the phenomenal cognitive mind. A major problem with Kant’s phenomena-noumena distinction, Mou pointed out, is that Kant failed to explain clearly what he meant by a thing in itself (a noumenon) and, as a result, invited scepticism regarding the distinction.3 Kant defined noumenon in merely negative terms, and this, on Mou’s view, is inadequate and highly problematic:

1 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 222. 2 Note that Kant did not specifically describe the distinction between phenomena and noumena as “transcendental” (rendered by Mou as chaoyue 超越), though he described the distinction between sensibility (which pertains to phenomena) and the intellectual (which pertains to noumena) as “transcendental” to mean that it is not empirical—that it cannot be established empirically from experience. See his Critique of Pure Reason, p. 186. 3 Mou, Xianxiang yu wu zishen, preface, pp. 1–2. Refeng Tang relates that the unintelligibility of the distinction prompted the suggestion by some critics to ignore it