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Confucian Insights for Gianni Vattimo's Secularized Religiousness a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Division of the U

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Confucian Insights for Gianni Vattimo's Secularized Religiousness a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Division of the U CONFUCIAN INSIGHTS FOR GIANNI VATTIMO’S SECULARIZED RELIGIOUSNESS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHILOSOPHY DECEMBER 2012 By Richard D. Power Dissertation Committee: Chung-ying Cheng, Chairperson Tamara Albertini Roger T. Ames Ron Bontekoe Poul Andersen ii DEDICATION This modest achievement is lovingly dedicated to my wife, Vicki. From Oklahoma to Honolulu to Beijing to Kansas, she has journeyed with me and never doubted we would reach the goal. The journey and the destination are sweeter because they have been shared with her. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for their encouragement on this project and their constructive comments on the early drafts of the paper. To my chairperson, Cheng Chung-ying, I owe a special debt of gratitude for his patience, guidance and advocacy. It was from Cheng Chung-ying and Roger Ames that I took my first undergraduate courses in Chinese philosophy some thirty years ago. They helped to spark my interest in world philosophy, especially the Chinese milieu. It is my extreme good fortune to have returned to Hawaii to study with them in this doctoral program. To Ron Bontekoe, Graduate Chair, for his timely communication and counsel regarding departmental and graduate division policies. To Renee Kojima-Itagaki, for serving as a helpful liaison with the committee and for demonstrating personal concern and interest in the students of the philosophy department. iv ABSTRACT As an exercise in comparative philosophy, this study seeks to bring early Confucian philosophy into constructive dialogue with the postmodern religious thought of Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo. I interpret classical Confucianism as an immanental worldview that does not appeal to categories of strict transcendence for its meaning, values and religiousness. Confucianism affirms the spirituality of becoming more fully human within the world. Vattimo is a hermeneutical philosopher in the lineage of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. He offers a historicist revision of Christianity that utilizes the metaphor of kenosis to signify the emptying of God’s transcendence onto the plain of human relationships. Vattimo believes secularization is the inevitable outworking of the Christian message in society. Vattimo’s “weak thought” offers a post-metaphysical, nihilistic account of hermeneutics, religious experience and ethical conduct. He seeks a Gadamerian culture of dialogue in which truth is consensus among language users. Religious experience, for Vattimo, is a feeling of dependence upon the chain of messages received within the biblical tradition. In ethics, Christian charity, as the principle that best serves the reduction of violence, is the limit of secularization. Confucianism offers constructive insights for Vattimo’s secularized religiousness. I develop a Confucian “sagely hermeneutics” that focuses on the key role of wise listeners and interpreters in the community. Religiousness is considered under two rubrics: first, the sense of unity with and participation in cosmic order and, second, human interrelatedness and ethical responsibility. I suggest that an ecological sensibility v based on a Confucian/Daoist vision of human-cosmic unity enables one to see the world as enchanted or sacred. For human relationships, I recommend Confucian role ethics that begins in the family with xiao (孝), “family reverence.” In place of charity, I propose shu (恕) “putting oneself in another’s place.” vi CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iii ABSTRACT . iv INTRODUCTION . 1 Catalysts for the Study . 3 Voices in the Conversation . 15 Chapter 1: Hermeneutics . 25 Hermeneutical Character of the Study . 25 Confucian Sagely Hermeneutics . .43 Chapter 2: Transcendence . 56 The Debate Regarding Transcendence in Confucian Texts . 56 Thinking Transcendence in a Post-metaphysical World . .74 Chapter 3: Religiousness—The Experience of the Sacred . 90 Vattimoʻs Secularized Religiousness . 90 Confucian Religiousness: A Sense of Unity With and Participation In Cosmic Order . 105 Chapter 4: Religiousness—Human Interrelatedness and Ethical Responsibility . 137 Vattimoʻs Ethics of Continuity and Charity . 138 Confucian Religiousness: Human Relationships . 157 CONCLUSION . 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 186 INTRODUCTION The postmodern ethos engenders conversation among interlocutors separated by vast temporal and cultural distances. It is an atmosphere in which formerly disrespected (non-Western) and/or discredited (pre-modern) perspectives are valued as important contributions to the global exchange of ideas. This study seeks to allow voices from ancient China to speak into twenty-first century discussions about what it means to be religious. Specifically, I employ insights from the early Confucian canon to critique the thought of Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo. Can Confucians and postmodern European thinkers communicate across the historical and cultural chasms that separate their intellectual milieus? And, if so, what does each have to say to the other? My conviction is that these philosophers share remarkably similar questions and interpretations regarding what it means to be authentically human, regarding the relation of human beings to the cosmos and to what, if anything, lies beyond the natural world. As an exercise in inter-cultural conversation, this study will apply Mencius’ admonition to “look for friends in history.” Mencius said, The best Gentleman in the village is in a position to make friends with the best Gentlemen in other villages; the best Gentleman in a state, with the best Gentlemen in other states; and the best Gentleman in the Empire, with the best Gentlemen in the Empire. And not content with making friends of the best Gentlemen in the Empire, he goes back in time and communes with the ancients. When one reads the poems and writings of the ancients, can it be right not to know something about them as men? Hence one tries to understand the age in which they lived. This can be described as “looking for friends in history.” (Mencius VB.8)1 1 D. C. Lau, trans. Mencius, (London: Penguin Books, 1970), 158. 孟子謂萬章曰 ：一鄉之善士，斯友一鄉之善士；一國之善士，斯友一國之善士；天下之善士，斯友天下 2 Postmodern philosophers like Vattimo, to the extent they are willing to listen to ancient voices, may discover in the early Confucian texts a worldview companionable to their own understandings of life in the world. As a post-metaphysical expression of religiousness, Vattimo’s thought finds significant points of contact with early Confucian spirituality. However, compared to Vattimo’s philosophical context, Confucianism, unencumbered by the weight of the metaphysical categories enshrined in Western modernity, offers an environment more congenial to the ideas of religion and ethics without radical transcendence. Early Confucians and Daoists share an immanental cosmology according to which human religious and ethical experience are explained by reference to a cosmic totality of which human beings are a contributory part. There is no transcendent being or realm that exists independently of the natural world. Yet, there is a sense of transcendence when one reflects upon his or her role as a co-creator among the myriad beings of the universe. The Confucian texts, both in their attentiveness to human self-creativity and their emphasis upon social roles and relationships, portray human existence as deeply spiritual or religious. In its “this-worldly,” human-centered spirituality, Confucianism offers significant insights for Vattimo’s secularized religiousness. Respectful dialogue between Anglo-European postmodern thought and early Confucian philosophy in China contributes to intercultural understanding in a globalized world. As the West struggles to overcome (Überwindung), or, in Vattimo’s words, to 之善士。以友天下之善士為未足，又尚論古之人。頌其詩，讀其書，不知其人，可乎？是 以論其世也。是尚友也。 3 twist, distort or ironically accept (Verwindung),2 its metaphysical inheritance, it stands to benefit from openness to, and dialogue with, non-metaphysical worldviews represented in philosophies of a non-Western provenance. This study is offered as a modest contribution to that conversation. Catalysts for the Study Three philosophical and cultural developments serve as catalysts for this study: first, the so-called “return to religion” in Continental philosophy; second, progress in understanding among Western scholars regarding the nature of Confucian religiousness; and, third, continuing advances in the field of comparative philosophy, East and West. The “Religious Turn” in Continental Philosophy It is difficult to identify precisely the occasion of the theological turn in Continental philosophy. As early as 1980, there began to be serious inquiry into the religious implications of Heidegger’s thought, particularly his later phase.3 Following 2 See Gianni Vattimo, “Philosophy and the Decline of the West,” in Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law, ed. Santiago Zabala, trans. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 27-28. In contrast to Hegel’s dialectical overcoming (Überwindung), Verwindung is the term employed by Heidegger in his treatment of the West’s relation to its metaphysical lineage. Vattimo takes up and elaborates these terms in many texts and articles. 3 See, for example, Richard Kearney & Joseph O’Leary, eds., Heidegger et la Question De Dieu (Paris: Grasset, 1980). This volume features papers presented at a conference
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