Encounters.
Comparative
philosophy built on and from differences 2
1. Encountering Other
Before discussing comparative philosophy, let
us think about communication in general. If we start from the fact that I am
who I am, with a certain personal identity, then it might be asked, if it is
ever possible to contact some “other”, because it would seem obvious that this
other appears to me and is hence
determined by the particularities that I have. So that even if I do effectively
come into contact with other things, persons and places, they would seem to be
not real “others”, but only phantom others, others as they appear to me,
fictitious others, whose difference is subservient to my identity. And this
identity cannot really change, i.e. become-other.
And since my person and
my consciousness are the only ones that are accessible to me, then it would
mean the impossibility of a real, transformative dialogue, a real encounter
with an “other”. Like in the famous passage by Zhuangzi (2.12):
“Suppose that you and I have a
dispute. If you beat me and I lose to you, does that mean you’re really right
and I'm really wrong? If I beat you and you lose to me, does that mean I'm
really right and you’re really wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong?
Or are both of us right and both of us wrong? Neither you nor I can know, and
others are even more in the dark. Whom shall we have decide the matter? Shall
we have someone who agrees with you decide it? Since he agrees with you, how
can he decide fairly? Shall we have someone who agrees with me decide it? Since
he agrees with me, how can he decide fairly? Shall we have someone who differs
with both of us decide it? Since he differs with both of us, how can he make a
decision? Shall we have someone who agrees with both of us decide it? Since he
agrees with both of us, how can he make a decision? Given that neither you nor
I, nor another person, can know how to decide, shall we wait for still
another?” (Mair 1994: 23). 既使我與若辯矣，若勝我，我不若勝，若果是也？我果非也邪？我勝若，若不吾勝，我果是也？而果非也邪？其或是也，其或非也邪？其俱是也，其俱非也邪？我與若不能相知也，則人固受其黮闇。吾誰使正之？使同乎若者正之，既與若同矣，惡能正之！使同乎我者正之，既同乎我矣，惡能正之！使異乎我與若者正之，既異乎我與若矣，惡能正之！使同乎我與若者正之，既同乎我與若矣，惡能正之！然則我與若與人俱不能相知也，而待彼也邪？
There would be just atoms of persons, with no
real interaction.
But this kind of reasoning seems artificial, if
we reflect on our experience. We have met and keep meeting with “others” to
whom we seem to have access and that transform us incessantly: new people, new
information, an inspiring landscape or an interesting tree or stone. These others
are surely not things we have invented in our own mind and we do not experience
them as simply an ancillary to our subjectivity.
Encountering other can even be cultivated. Take
Analects 9.8:
The Master said, “Do I possess wisdom? No, I do not. [For example,
recently] a common fellow asked a question of me, and I came up completely
empty. But I discussed the problem with him from beginning to end until we
finally got to the bottom of it.” (9.8, Slingerland
2003: 89)
子曰：「吾有知乎哉？無知也。有鄙夫問於我，空空如也，我叩其兩端而竭焉。」
The epistemological ideal implied here is not
to acquire correct or true ideas (that would be supreme Identities according to
which judge the sensual things as similar or different). First, a correct idea
may be irrelevant: if I say that my computer’s color is black, then this
proposition is true, but it is irrelevant in the vast majority of situations. And,
second, even if they are relevant, my ideas may still be partial – this is even
the most common experience: another person may have true and even relevant
ideas, but we may still deem them to be partial, partisan, one-sided. So, what
one has to do, is not to look at the ideas with the mind’s eye (to contemplate
the transcendent ideas), but on the contrary, to do away with all ideas, not
only everyday opinions, but also philosophical ideas that one claims to be
transcendent. If one makes oneself “empty” in this way, one becomes more
receptive to the other, and is able to more adequately and in more nuanced way
to respond to the other / to the situation. The traditional Chinese metaphor is
that, like a mirror you reflect what is before you, without distortion, or like
a bell you make a sound when you are struck. This is the basic feature of
traditional Chinese epistemology (in the “Record of Music” Yueji 樂記, and also in the excavated Xing Zi Ming Chu 性自命出), that mind is set to move by external things: “The movement of men’s
hearts is made so by [external] things” (Cook 1995: 24; 人心之動，物使之然也); “In general, although human beings have a nature, the mind has no
fixed determination. It depends on things and only then becomes operative” Middendorf
2008: 151; 凡人雖有性，心亡奠志，待物而後作).
Of course, a mirror still just reflects from
one side and the characteristics of the sound is determined both by what
strikes the bell (a wooden or metal stick make different sounds) as well as by
the shape and properties of the bell. That is, my response to the situation is
certainly influenced by my personal history, context, mood etc., but these do
not remain unchanged, but due to this influence they change, transform, become
different. This inherently means that we gain some freedom from certain fixed parts
of our personality and become more able to transform ourselves.
Now, this is the most basic fact of existence
that it never coincides with itself, but always already extends beyond itself
(some existentialist philosophers would limit this to human subjects; but it
can be extended to all living beings, like in biosemiotics, for instance; and,
I would argue, even to more basic chemical and physical entities). In a strict
sense I am never what I am. As Sartre put it (see Sartre 1956: 67, 192, 260): I
am not what I am (I am not the identities I have formed, the structures I have
actualized; all my “present” being), and I am what I am not (i.e. I always
already stretch to other times and spaces). It is not that differences would originate
from identities, but the other way around, identities are formed on the basis
of differentiation, manifesting the power of integration. Instead of a dead
identity, there is a machine of differentiation and integration working at the
heart of every being. It does not coincide with itself, but is already
different; it is just not beside itself, but already more or less integrated
with itself. So, communicating with the other – letting ourselves encounter the
other and be ourselves transformed by this encounter – really brings us to our
very core, to the difference or differentiation that is our very kernel. And by
persisting in this encounter we integrate this difference, and transform.
2. The Other forces to think
We can transpose the previous discussion to the
dialogue between philosophical traditions, where a similar problem arises: how
can I ever understand what a philosopher from another tradition (and perhaps
other era) has said? Either it is something similar to my own tradition – but
then I do not engage with another tradition – or it is different – and I have
no means to arrive what is said there. So, when we start from identities and
similarities, then communication seems to be impossible.
Things change when we take difference itself as
our ground and starting point. For this we can take some cues from Gilles
Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, that is useful also for treating the differences
in philosophical traditions[1].
In the following I shall extract three moments from Deleuze’s philosophy that
might be useful in this regard.
First, in the “Difference and Repetition”
(Deleuze 1994) Deleuze presents a philosophy of differentiation that, as I have
argued elsewhere (Ott 2018), could find fruitful application when brought together
with the common Chinese understanding of development as a process of differentiation
(a dominant understanding since Laozi’s “Dao begets One, One begets two, two
begets three, three begets ten thousand beings” in §42, that usually entails
also an understanding of a complementary process of dedifferentiation, a
“return”, gui 歸, cf.
Laozi §14 “again returns to nothingness / not-thing-ness” 復歸於無物). But I would like to point out
another aspect from that book. In relation to his “differential theory of
faculties”, Deleuze says:
Something
in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition
but of a fundamental encounter.[2]
(Deleuze 1994: 139)
We
saw how the discord between the faculties, which followed from the exclusive
character of the transcendent object apprehended by each, nevertheless implied
a harmony such that each transmits its violence to the other by powder fuse,
but precisely a ‘discordant harmony’ which excludes the forms of identity,
convergence and collaboration which define a common sense. (Deleuze 1994: 193)
Every faculty (sensibility, memory, thought)
have their own object, which is inaccessible in their empirical exercise and is
only accessible in the “transcendental” exercise to which they are compelled by
“violence” received from another faculty, through an igniting gunpowder fuse
(there is something which I cannot sense or remember, but which I can only
sense or remember: the being of the sensible or pure memory). So, we do not
think by ourselves, out of the “good nature” of thought, but something forces us to think.
Different philosophical traditions are not
human faculties, but perhaps there is a similar productive violence in their
encounter[3].
Another tradition forces us to think. How is it possible that the Chinese make
these-and-these distinctions? What on earth is qi 氣, for instance? It does not fit into Western distinctions.
There is a discrepancy, an incongruency, a disparity. And – as Deleuze explains
in a different part of his exposition (1994: 120) – the disparity (dispars) in itself produces a “dark
precursor” for an actualization process, a differentiator of differences, that
initiates actualization[4].
That is, if we persist in this situation of disparity, when encountering an
“other”, and refrain from glossing it over in our own terms (“ah! qi is matter!”), we may be dragged into
a becoming-other, where from between self and other something else is created.
3. Differentiation and integration
A second moment can be extracted from Deleuze’s
“Letter to a Harsh Critic”, where he says that while writing books on other
philosophers, he saw
the history of philosophy as a sort of buggery or (it comes to the same
thing) immaculate conception. I saw myself as taking an author from behind and
giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous. It was
really important for it to be his own child, because the author had to actually
say all I had him saying.[5]
But the child was bound to be monstrous too, because it resulted from all sorts
of shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions that I really
enjoyed. (Deleuze 1995: 6).
This is an important practical advice in doing
history of philosophy in general and comparative philosophy in particular. All
philosophy moves in tension between history of philosophy and “creative”
philosophy: on the one hand, no one thinks on an empty background, but already
uses concepts and ideas formed in the past (and usually it is better to be
aware of them, lest to fall prey to them in a naive fashion), and on the other
hand however “positivist”, “factual” and “neutral” one wants to be while doing
history of philosophy, there are inevitable choices, omissions, focuses, perspectives
for the simple fact that the researcher is a particular human being with her
own interests, tendencies, background etc. (one may make this bias thematic,
but this thematization can never become absolute, it is not possible to
thematize all of one’s facticity,
because this thematizing itself is made on some factical basis).
Deleuze’s advice is twofold: one has to know
the texts and what one says about a philosopher has to have some textual
grounding, i.e. one has to encounter an “other”, another thinker, expressed in
texts, talks, personal interactions. One should not think it out out of thin
air. But on the other hand, one should not be afraid of personal preferences – in
any case, they are always already present, even in a seemingly most dry
historical discussion, and why not pursue and enjoy them? When a thinker forces
us to think, either in another or our “own” tradition[6],
there is something uneasy about it (it is more comfortable not to think), and
at the same time exciting and pleasant. Encountering a philosopher enhances one’s
life force, one’s power of differentiation and integration, the capacity of
affecting and being affected.
4. World philosophy from between traditions
Thirdly, Deleuze’s ontology sees identities and
actualities as secondary, as products of a genetic process that do not exhaust
it. In Deleuze’s ontology, actualization starts from the virtual[7].
There are differential relations and singular points that are unfolded through
intensive processes to form actual structures. Those extensive actual
structures (physical as well as mental) are the outcome of a creative process,
but they also influence subsequent actualizations, channeling them into paths
that have already been formed, and in this sense they limit the creativity of
the process.
Let us take the history of philosophy as an
example. When philosophy in the narrow sense formed, roughly in the 6th
century BC in Greece, India and China, it happened in a certain socio-economic,
cultural and geographic context, which was not the same in the those three
areas, and thus gave a different starting point for the respective
philosophical traditions. And when a new tradition takes shape, it is initially
very sensitive to all kinds of historical chances, and the destiny of those
philosophical traditions was heavily influenced by the founding fathers
(indeed, practically all were male): that there was a Socrates or Confucius or
Buddha (the names of most of the early Indian philosophers remain unknown, but
surely such founding fathers were not absent). As a tradition has a memory
function (by definition, tradition means “to hand over (to the next generation)”,
trans-do in Latin), the distinctions
made earlier and concepts created in the beginning have stronger impact,
because they are being continuously repeated, rehearsed, they define the whole
discourse and fashion the main problems and the way of approaching them; and
even if they are opposed or challenged, they still define the discursive field
by this very opposition. Plato’s “idea”, Confucius’ “humaneness”, early Indian
thinkers’ “atman”, to take just some examples, influence Western, Chinese and
Indian philosophy and culture until today. Of course, a tradition is not static
and immutable, and all kinds of transformations, shifts and differences happen
during those repetitions in the duration of a tradition. It becomes richer, new
ages and new thinkers bring new problems, ideas, concepts. But on the other
hand they still flow inside the same riverbed. The actual forms that a tradition
has taken hide other possibilities, restrict the choice of topics and
approaches. A tradition may be especially good in one field, for example the
analysis of consciousness in the Indian thought, political philosophy in the
West, self-cultivation in China, but at the same time certain other fields stay
underdeveloped, and also certain approaches to those same overdeveloped fields may
remain discarded. So, comparative, or rather inter-traditional philosophy has a
huge potential of thawing up some of those stifled forms, opening new outlets
for the flow of thought, questioning self-evidences and, on the contrary,
showing how something strange can be taken actually as self-evident; relativizing
seeming universals, and showing something more particular to be rather general,
etc. For instance, if one remains exclusively inside the Western tradition, one
might think that the ontological status of numbers and mathematics is something
universal, an “eternal problem”. But taking in other traditions one apprehends
that it is rather something particular. On the other hand, the problem of
theodicy seems to be quite general, independently popping out in different
traditions, in somewhat different wording and content, but with basically the
same structure.
So, encountering another philosophical
tradition, one can behave as Confucius vis-à-vis the “common fellow”: to remain
“empty”, put on hold, as much as possible, the philosophical presuppositions
one has acquired from one’s own tradition (which nowadays, one should remark
again, is already conspicuously syncretistic), so as to move beyond the actual
forms toward intensities and virtualities.
And while in the past one could still be
ignorant about the other traditions because of the sheer lack of information, texts,
translations, interpretations, then today this is no longer an excuse. Huge
amounts of materials are available about different philosophical traditions. Of
course, not everyone can be supposed to become an expert in all of the
different traditions, but today one has to have at least some awareness of
them, and all of the philosophical research and creation takes place on the
scene of a common World Philosophy. We could thus say, contra Deleuze, that not only it is not true that there is
philosophy only in the “Greek tradition”[8],
but, on the contrary, there is philosophy only outside the Greek tradition (or any other particular tradition, for
that matter), between different philosophical
traditions, in encounters between them. Even more, this opens up the supposed
traditions themselves, making them to “breathe” again, pumping some air or
“emptiness” into them, by tearing them loose from old self-evidences and
habits, so that they can transform
better, acquire greater creative potential.
Of course, it can produce also mere mixtures of
different traditions: one concept from here, another from there, cooking a nice
and exotic soup from all this. But this happens when the actualities and
identities are simply retained as such, and when they have not been destroyed
and thawed up, in order to reach for more interpenetrating and intensive levels
of thought and existence. Philosophy is a very conservative field and while there
are some interesting cases of incorporating influences from other traditions
(already Schopenhauer, also Heidegger, or Tan Sitong, or Kyoto school, among
several others[9]),
but we are still waiting for a World Philosopher who would fully be able to
deterritorialize her context and tradition, in contact with other traditions, making
new “monsters” from between them, from and upon their differences.
In Zhuangzi’s terms, it would be philosophical
free roaming, rambling in the realm of infinity, or residing in the “land of
nothingness” (nothingness not as void, but as virtuality). The quotation in the
beginning of this article continues as this:
Whether the alternating voices of disputation are relative to each other
or not, they may be harmonized within the framework of nature and allowed to
follow their own effusive elaboration so they may live out their years. What
does ‘harmonized within the framework of nature’ mean? I would say, ‘Right may
be not right, so may be not so. If right were really right, then right would be
distinct from not right, and there would be no dispute. If so were really so,
then so would be distinct from not so and there would be no dispute. Forget how
many years there are in a lifespan, forget righteousness. If you ramble in the
realm of infinity, you will reside in the realm of infinity. (Mair 1994: 23)
何謂和之以天倪？曰：是不是，然不然。是若果是也，則是之異乎不是也亦無辯；然若果然也，則然之異乎不然也亦無辯。化聲之相待，若其不相待。和之以天倪，因之以曼衍，所以窮年也。忘年忘義，振於無竟，故寓諸無竟。
This is the
necessary starting point, if we want to do some philosophy in our present age.
References
Cook, Scott 1995. „„Yue Ji” 樂記 – Record of Music: Introduction, Translation, Notes,
and Commentary”, Asian Music, 26(2),
pp. 1-96.
Deleuze, Gilles 1994. Difference and Repetition. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles 1995. Negotiations. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari,
Félix 1994. What Is Philosophy? New
York: Columbia University Press.
Mair, Victor 1994. Wandering on the Way. Early Taoist Tales and
Parables of Chuang Tzu. New York: Bantam Books.
Middendorf, Ulrike 2008.
“Again on Qing: With a Translation of
the Guodian Xing zi ming chu.” Oriens Extremus, (47), pp. 97-159.
Ott, Margus 2018. “Deleuze and Zhuangzi: actualization and
counter-actualization.” – Asian Studies, forthcoming.
Sartre, Jean-Paul 1956. Being and Nothingness. London:
Routledge.
Slingerland, Edward 2003. Confucius’Analects
with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis/Cambridge:
Hackett.
Van Norden, Bryan 2017. Taking Back Philosophy. A Multicultural
Manifesto. New York: Columbia University Press.
[1]
Although, unfortunately, Deleuze himself (Deleuze and Guattari 1994) acknowledges
only three philosophical traditions: French, German and English (stemming from
ancient Greece), and explicitly denies the thought of China and India as philosophies.
It is dismaying to see how Deleuze, who can be very thorough and skillful
historian of philosophy, in this case made such sweeping claims on practically
no evidence whatsoever. It seems that he had formed his understanding of
Chinese philosophy only on the basis of François Jullien’s book on the Book of
Changes... (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 92). An author who elsewhere is so apt
in criticizing Western tradition, here simply follows a colonialist and segregational
trend initiated by Kant and Hegel (Van Norden 2017: 21-24; he argues that it
was part of the agenda of post-Kantians to devalue other traditions, so as to
better present Kant as the epitome of philosophy, 2017: 21). I would argue that
an opposite stance would be more true to Deleuze’s general pathos, as during
his whole career he tried to dismantle common sense, existing power structures,
ethnocentrism, and promote the creative power of difference and
differentiation. So, when in “What Is Philosophy?” he makes philosophy
something historically and geographically closed and exclusive, a domain of
creation made accessible only by a Greek „miracle“, he seems simply to have
fallen prey to an Europocentric story invented some 200 years ago (traditionally
the birthplace of philosophy was considered to be either Egypt or India, Van
Norden 2017: 19). This happened perhaps due to his lack of first-hand knowledge
of other philosophical traditions (one cannot say that materials in French,
English and German about Chinese and Indian philosophy would have been absent
in his time, so the blame rests on the philosopher, who in this respect consciously
chose an Europocentric, colonialist and exclusivist approach). Now, Deleuze wrote
some books about other philosophers that in some respects are even more true to
those philosophers than what they themselves said, i.e. he attained the source
of their thought and developed it further in some respect; I think we can do
the same with Deleuze in respect to other philosophical traditions.
[2]
This idea resonates with the common Chinese epistemological idea that external
things move my mind, mentioned above.
[3] From which Deleuze himself shied away, by describing Chinese
thought as „figurative“ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 91-92) and its respective
plane of immanence “not exactly philosophical, but prephilosophical“ (ibid.: 93).
[4]
In an unpublished article „Deleuzian interpretation
of Zhu Xi“ I have related Deleuze’s concept of dark precursor to Zhu
Xi’s concept of taiji 太极.
[5]
Again, unfortunately Deleuze did not apply this principle when he discussed
Chinese philosophy, already for the simple fact that he did not discuss any
Chinese text at all, but only one Western book about the “Book of Changes”.
[6]
Our discussion here should also make problematic the very distinction between
„other“ and „our“ tradition. First, empirically, in today’s globalized world
most of the people are in some contact with the Western civilization, and also
most of the people have some awareness of other traditions: a significant part
of people in the West do yoga, taichi, zen or other meditation, have heard of
Laozi, Confucius and Buddha, etc. Second, more profoundly, I am not my tradition, and if by „my
tradition“ I intend things that I take for granted and am not aware of (like
the originally metaphysical distinctions of body and mind, theory and practice,
etc.), then we could even say that „my tradition“ is the negation of what I am,
in the sense that it does not represent my being in transformation, but simply
some fixed, coagulated „complexes“ external to it; and when I encounter another
culture and thought tradition, I may become more aware of these complexes and come
more to myself, to the particular way of transformation that I embody in my
person. In this sense it is the „other“ tradition that is more „mine“, makes me
more myself.
[7]
In the unpublished article mentioned above, I relate Deleuze’s virtuality to
Zhu Xi’s „principles“ or „veins“ (li 理).
[8]
He actually expelled all other traditions, except Latin, French, German and English,
from this heritage: Jewish, Arab, Byzantine philosophy would all be merely
„figurative“ thought, together with Chinese and Indian tradition (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 93).
[9] I listed some very conspicuous
examples; if we investigate things more closely, we discover that nowhere has
there been any „pure“, immaculate and autochtonous philosophy, but it always
already contains elements from different cultures, regions, eras.
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