Thaw philosophy
Comparative
philosophy built on and from differences
1.
Philosophy
is not about the world but embodies
and condenses it.
2.
Those
condensations are concepts and their constellations.
3.
A
concept captures a certain singularity
in embodied interaction in the world.
4.
Philosophical
thinking as creating and managing concepts does thus not take place in a
separate realm but moves inside this world itself.
5.
A
concept is different from an abstraction.
The latter is formed by discarding individual and particular variations,
retaining an empty shell of their form. A “horse”: a mere linguistic habit. A
concept, instead, situates itself in an articulation of the world itself, in
the articulation of interaction of the things and events of the world, in their
mutual affections (affecting and being affected) and capacities. It does not
discard anything of the variability, but on the contrary corresponds to a
singularity of the world that is actualized in certain variations.
6.
Concepts
form constellations where they
mutually throw light on or reflect each other in a kind of Indra’s net. In this
way they condense each other. A concept primarily has meaning through this
constellation; separated from it, its meaning remains undetermined. This is
different from scientific terms, where c
has a specific reference on its own: the velocity of light in vacuum. But we
cannot say what is 仁 in a
Confucian philosophy, without taking into account also what is 義、樂、禮、忠、恕 etc. Even if we separately analyze philosophically
one of those terms, this takes place on the background of those other concepts
that throw light on it.
7.
Philosophical
concepts and their constellations are also different from opinions that operate in the mode of habits and abstractions. Even
if some opinions may correspond to a real articulation of the world, they
perform mechanically and in this way can easily become inadequate, unadaptive
and out of date. Like a spider might react when you by hand vibrate its net,
and come to search for food, because usually
this vibration is a sign of a prey struggling in spider’s net. Thus, an opinion
does not really concern the articulations of neither the world nor the person. We
may have strong attachments to certain opinions that we defend fiercely, but which
may still not express what we really are in our articulation of singularities. We
have simply taken our opinions from others, interiorized them, and conform to
them.
8.
A
concept is formed like the “common notions”
in Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza. A common notion (a “second” type of
knowledge) is not an abstraction ( “first” type, lower type of knowledge). It
is not formed “top down” (a “horse” that is superposed to particular horses),
but “bottom up”. For example, learning to swim means that I match the
singularities of my body to the singularities of the water. Usually this doesn’t
happen all at once but requires some experimentation, trying. In the same way I
learn to “match” my body and mind to lots of different things, persons, environments.
And in this way a common notion loses nothing of the variability. On the
contrary, it lives on them, and adapts to them. I can not only swim at my uncle’s
place in a river in Estonia, but also in Xiamen University’s water reservoir.
It is not tied to the metric properties of the counterpart, but to its
singularities, to its articulation or 理. Or to take Merleau-Ponty’s
example: organs, the musical instruments, can be widely different: the number
of keys, placement of registers may differ greatly, but still an organist can
very quickly adapt to a new organ, because she does not play an example of the
abstraction “organ”, but matches her non-metric or intensive articulation to that
of the instrument, and can change the metric expression of her movements according
to the particular instrument. She doesn’t play a metric thing x centimeters long and y centimeters wide, but a more
interpenetrating instrument. Indeed, she does not even play an instrument, but
she plays music, and her symbiosis with the organ is just a conduit or locus
for the actualization of a musical piece. Singularities
denote sensitive regions in the behavior of a system. For instance, a
collection of H2O molecules has two singularities, around 0 and around 100
degrees at sea level, where system abruptly changes: ice melts, water
evaporates. In the course of heating, there are some linear changes (molecules
vibrate more and more), and two abrupt changes (a completely different cohesion
between molecules: solid crystals, liquid, gas). And further singularities in
the water, for example: when a recipient of water is gradually warmed from the
bottom, there are distinct ways it behaves: diffusion of heat (molecules moving
faster at the bottom transmitting energy to those above that are moving slower),
convection cells (large streams that rotate either clockwise or
counterclockwise), turbulence (boiling). This is a very simple example, but
human life in the same way has singularities and “regular points” between them.
Some of them very imposing, like death, for instance, or other persons, or “self”,
etc.
9.
Philosophical
concepts work on this kind of singularities or common notions. They do not
refer to the metrical and fully actualized world, but to the world in a more interpenetrating phase and express the
singular points of it. It means also that one’s body and mind are intimately
involved – and again, not one’s fully actualized (and so to say “metric”) body
and mind, with its habits and opinions, but body and mind in a more
interpenetrating phase, where capacities, tendencies and lines of force express
my map of singularities. These singularities of myself and of the world (of
things, events, persons, environments) cannot be made explicit directly,
because they are what myself am, and I do not have an external fulcrum to
perform this. Rather what I can do, is to form a constellation of concepts that
as a group would express my being-in-the-world and being-with-others. In a
narrowly philosophical sense they are usually embodied in words or expressions,
but these words should not be taken as terms of science or as reified opinions.
A constellation of concepts of a philosopher testifies to an effort of dismantling
or thawing up of bodily, social and linguistic habits, in order to get to the
genetic point of things and events, to their interpenetrating phase. Indeed, a
philosopher’s thought is actualized in words and works, but one should see the
interpenetration and the singularities that gave birth to it. Without this,
philosophy appears utterly meaningless, pretentious, oppressive and perhaps
even depressive. With this, it becomes joyful, because it is an aid for one’s
own difficult process of dismantling, thawing and transforming.
10. Yet this kind of gradual process of forming
common notions and discovering singularities is also misleading. In another
sense, philosophy starts from a leap,
an absolute deterritorialization, estrangement or “forgetting”. Or with an “intellectual
love of God”, as Spinoza termed his third kind of knowledge, that does not
build higher and richer common notions, but starts already from the Other, the
Groundless, a pure cut in my existence. Not simply a skill (shu 術), but a Way (dao 道). A turning point:
not a counter-actualization from the actual towards the virtual, but a free and
easy actualization from the virtual, from the singularities of the world, events,
beings, my own form, energy and mind.
11. Philosopher’s life is not only actualized in philosophical works, of course, but
also in her other activities. They express her singularities and intensities.
The latter never invalidate the former (because philosophy, in general, cannot
be completely invalidated), but they do modify it and perhaps reinterpret it. Take
Heidegger’s involvement with Nazi ideology or Sartre’s infidelity. Heidegger
still remains one of the most important philosophers of the 20th
century, but this involvement does throw a different light on his insistence of
German particularity (philosophy can be done only in German and Greek), and also
his references to the idyllic countryside life become suspicious (Blut und Boden). But it would be stupid to
discard his philosophy for this reason. It simply helps us better to see his
reterritorializing tendencies. And Sartre’s (purportedly consensual) infidelity
is part of his way of life, from which originate also his philosophical works
that stress voluntarism, ungroundedness of existence, etc. And when we denounce
a philosopher’s thought on the ground of his or her other activities, we should
be clear about the character of our attack: is it simply based on opinion (for
instance, a philosopher breaches a social convention); or on concepts (but then
we should create concepts for those other activities, like Mozi did for those who
support war); or on another constellation of concepts (a most common case of disagreement
between philosophers – a question of “taste”, as Nietzsche said –, based on the
fact that you embody different singularities and intensities than that other
philosopher).
12. What is the role of comparative philosophy here? We do not
create concepts out of thin air, but on the basis of an earlier tradition.
Although a philosopher thaws up a world and a heritage, she still scavenges a
lot of her material from former buildings. In this way even in philosophy there
form certain habits – for instance in focus: what is considered important and
what not: Greeks made great effort to incorporate scientific knowledge, but largely
discarded the analysis of consciousness. The Indians made elaborate analysis of
consciousness but discarded “mundane” relations. The Chinese investigated non-linear
interactions between things, persons, environments and came out with a
wonderful conception of embodied knowledge. All of these three perhaps
disregarded our commonality and continuity with other beings, that was an important
topic for so many “indigenous ontologies”, together with the worldview
implicated in such a wonderful personage like trickster, creative and dumb at
the same time, a cultural hero creating cultural artifacts, and obscene at the
same time, etc. Those ontologies may contain things that were wiped under the
rug in the more hierarchical, normalized, “civilized”, oedipalized societies. Now,
an encounter with another tradition can further help the process of dismantling
and thawing, since in different traditions there are differences in focus,
emphasis, methods, approaches, and they help to dissipate false self-evidences,
thought habits. There are different procedures to put the thought into motion
again (one can generate thought on the basis of linguistic similarities or
assonances, like Heidegger’s Ereignis as er-eignen etc., or Chinese 神 and 伸; or one can turn
to art, literature, science, nature, etc., like Deleuze’s account of Proust,
Francis Bacon, Kafka, film, etc.). But turning to other philosophical
traditions is especially important in our day, because it would free the
practice of philosophy from some of its colonialist and racist heritage (see
Van Norden’s book “Taking back philosophy” for that respect) that encumbers its
flowing. Because these days in the whole world the majority of work done under
the label of “philosophy” is in reality restricted to the Western philosophy
(and now even to just one very small branch of it, the Analytic philosophy).
Other traditions are mostly ignored, and it easily brings about an implicit
feeling of superiority, of supremacy toward other traditions. Philosophy seems
to be the last bastion of colonialism. The West has been defeated or rivalled economically
and militarily, but it jealously protects its most internal dungeon, its
thought tradition that it tries to present as the only one worth of the name “philosophy”
(i.e. the label that we find on the philosophy departments’ doors and in the
titles of journals).
13. Comparative philosophy does not take
place on the level of fully actualized forms: in that case there would never be
a true comparison in the sense of a transformative communication, but merely a
forcing of one into the terms of the other, or simple juxtaposition of “facts”;
like in Zhuangzi’s story about the impossibility of judging who is right and who
is wrong in a discussion.[1]
A true comparison takes place more “upstream”
from the actualized forms, on the level of intensities and singularities. It is
there that elements from different thought traditions can resonate and compose with
each other (and not simple “opinions” to arrange one next to another), giving
rise to new becomings. Traditions must first be put in a furnace, so that they
melt and become malleable. They must be thawed, so that what is frozen or
coagulated (ning 凝) start to move according to their energy or capacities (qi 氣), revealing
their virtual articulations, their singularities and differential relations (li 理). Actual
differences between traditions may inflict an initial shock that puts thought into
motion; intensive differences enable creative couplings, and virtual
differences reconfigure the whole world we live in.
[1] In 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？
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