CONTENTS

PLENARY SESSIONS: SELF

In Search of the I: From Self-consciousness to Becoming a Person 1
NI, Liangkang
Self – A Phenomenological Account: Temporality, Intersubjectivity, Embodiment 21
Sara Heinämaa
The Self 28
Theophilus Okere

PLENARY SESSIONS: COMMUNITY

A Human “Being” or Human “Becomings”? Family as Community in Confucian Role Ethics 48
Roger T. Ames
Toward a Rehabilitation of the Theory of “Conscience Collective” 67
Kunitake Ito
Towards a Global Non-Exclusive Community 73
Herta Nagl-Docekal
Contemporary African Philosophy and the Question of Humanity: A Critical Review 84
J. Obi Oguejiofor

PLENARY SESSIONS: NATURE

Still Life 98
Guillermo Hurtado
The Good – As It is Comprehended in Practical Reasoning 106
Sebastian Rödl
The Moral Status of Animals and the Ethics of Our Treatment of Them 116
Peter Singer
The Shared Beauty of Nature and Human Being: The Twofold Horizon of “The Perspective of
Human Being” and “The Perspective of Nature” 117
Yang, Guorong

PLENARY SESSIONS: SPIRITUALITY

The Challenge of Anatheism 125
Richard Kearney
Can an Appeal to Spirituality Bridge Cultural and Religious Gaps? 130
Hans Julius Schneider

PLENARY SESSIONS: TRADITIONS

Are We Still Learning to be Human? The Problem of Continuity Between Tradition and
Transmission. 137
Anne Cheng
The Human, World and Time in Mayan Thinking 147

i
 Mercedes de la Garza
Return to the Human, the Condition of World Peace to Moralize God? 156
Paulin J. Hountondji
From “Learning to be Human” to “Learning to Change Ourselves” 160
Zhao, Dunhua

SYMPOSIA: REN, UBUNTU, LOVE, AND THE HEART

Familial Affection, the Order of Love, and Community —Commonality and Difference between
Confucianism and Scheler 167
Zhang, Xianglong
Befriending the Things We Use: Beyond Rén and Ubuntu 177
Graham Parkes
Ubu-ntu and Ren: to be a Human Being is to Love Ethically 183
Mogobe B Ramose
Love, the Passions, Relationship: The Contribution of the Medieval Latin Tradition 193
Eileen C. Sweeney

SYMPOSIA: MIND, BRAIN, BODY, CONSCIOUSNESS, EMOTIONS

Mind, Body, Brain, Consciousness, Emotions 202
Evandro Agazzi
To Be a Poetic Free Human 210
Zhang, Shiying
A Naturalist Scheme of Interlinking Mind, Body, Consciousness and Emotions 217
Amita Chatterjee
Neural Reuse and Embodied Cognition 225
Shaun Gallagher

SYMPOSIA: PHILOSOPHY AT THE MARGINS: DOMINATION, FREEDOM, AND

SOLIDARITY
The Question of a Philosophy of Margins, Between Truth, Solidarity and Justice 231
Charles Romain Mbele
Solidarity and Social Risk 237
Sally J. Scholz

SYMPOSIA: RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITY, AND JUSTICE

Systems of Injustice and Sites of Resistance 244
Sally Haslanger
Responsibility in Philosophy and Right 250
Julian Nida-Rümelin
Romancing Extremism? Understanding the violent turn in struggles for rights, responsibility and
justice 258
Chaiwat Satha-Anand

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SYMPOSIA: HUMAN, NON-HUMAN, POST-HUMAN
Transhumanism and Biopolitics of Human Enhancement 269
Sangkyu Shin
Being Human 282
Lars Fr. H. Svendsen

SYMPOSIA: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Science, Technology, and the Ecological Self 289
J. Baird Callicott
Scaling Up, Scaling Down: What’s Missing? 293
Helen Longino

SYMPOSIA: CREATIVITY, SYMBOL, AND AESTHETIC SENSE

Creation, Imagination and Aesthetic Sense 303
Jean Godefroy Bidima
Creativity in Art: A Critical View 312
Bashshar Haydar

SYMPOSIA: REASON, WIDSOM, AND THE GOOD LIFE

If It’s Free, It’s Because You are the Producer: A Modest Proposal for Reason, Wisdom, and the
Good Life 319
Maurizio Ferraris
From Virtue to Happiness: a Neoplatonic Reversal 326
Paul Kalligas
Recognizing the Good in Husserl and Heidegger 335
Thomas J. NENON
Joy, Wealth and Wisdom --An Ethical Paradigm of the Good Life in Early Confucian Texts 346
Yao, Xinzhong

SYMPOSIA: EXPRESSIBILITY, DIALOGUE, TRANSLATABILITY

Expressibility, Dialogue, Translatability: Chinese Whispers and Philosophical Translation 356
Michael Beaney
Culture, Dialogue, and the Good Life: Toward Learning What It is to be Human in an
Interconnected, Globalised World 365
Paul Healy

SYMPOSIA: DIFFERENCES, DIVERSITY, COMMONALITY

“Clarifying Sameness and Difference”: The Language of Diversity, Difference and Communality
within the Classical Linguistic Context of China 375
Wang, Zhongjiang
How to deal with Differences? Logic of Identity, of Difference, and of Overlaps 384
Ram A. Mall
Confucianism in a Multicultural World 393
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 Sor-hoon Tan

ENDOWED: IBN ROSHD LECTURE

Ancient and Modern Practical Ethics of Humanity: Concrete Humanity from Mencius to
Schweitzer 400
Hans Lenk

ENDOWED: MAIMONIDES LECTURE

Insight and Understanding 413
Ernest Sosa

ENDOWED: DASAN LECTURE

Sympathy as the Foundation of Morality: A Confucian Emotive Moral Theory 422
Hee-Sung Keel

ENDOWED: WANG YANGMING LECTURE

Spiritual Humanism: Self, Community, Earth, and Heaven 456
TU, Weiming

ENDOWED: SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR LECTURE

Gender in Translation/ Beyond Monolingualism 475
Judith Butler

ENDOWED: BICENTENARY MARX LECTURE

Marx at the World Congress and in the World 488
William L. McBride

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 In Search of the I: From Self-consciousness to Becoming a Person

NI, Liangkang*

Introduction: The Problem of the Existence of the Ego

I," "self," or "ego"1 -these expressions have always given rise to philosophizing in the course of time.
The ancient Greeks saw "know thyself!" (Γνῶθι σεαυτόν) as the first call of the gods to the people.
And with the saying: "He who knows others is smart, he who knows himself is wise" ("知人者智, 自
知者明", Laozi, chapter 33), Laozi apparently considers self-understanding more difficult than that
of the other. Hume, such a “smart man”, confesses in the appendix to his major work, A Treatise of
Human Nature, with the deliberation and modesty of an empiricist, the error of his earlier
understanding of this problem area and his inability at that time to solve the problem. For as soon as
he touches upon the question of whether the ego exists, he gets into such great and insurmountable
difficulties that he finally has to believe that he cannot solve this problem with his current intellect,
and that he can only hope that somebody will be able to do so in the future when Others or he himself
with "more mature considerations" come up. (Cf. Treatise, pp. 634-6) This hoped-for "mature"
consideration does not even appear later in Kant. Kant probably forgot to include the existence and
non-existence of the ego as the fifth antinomy in his system of philosophy.2
In fact, however, long before and after Hume, we can find many relevant reflections in the
history human thought that, although they could not clarify the problem of the ego to the point of
being finally resolved, they already satisfy Hume's claim by this fact: they already offer “more
mature" solution projects.
Before Hume, for example in the Buddhist tradition, both in Siddhartha Gautama itself, and in
the further development of the Buddhist consciousness theory (Yogācāra), knowledge theory
(Pramana), logic (Hetuvidyā) and Zen school, the existence of a detached being from the flow of
consciousness, independent ego, subject or even an independent soul (Ātman) was decidedly denied;
Also rejected is the existence of objects that are detached from the flow of consciousness,
independently. The only existence here is the life of consciousness, which consists on the one hand
of the perceiving or the intentional act of consciousness (imagining, intuiting), on the other hand the

* Department of Philosophy, Center for Documentation and Research of Phenomenology, Sun Yat-sen University, No.
135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou, 510275, P. R. China, Tel.: 020 84114042 (O); Fax.: 020 84114805, EMail:
hssnlk@mail.sysu.edu.cn, svabhava@foxmail.com.
1 Expressions such as self, self, sva, me, ego, I, me, je, moi, etc. can be used in both Daoist and Confucian prompts of
self-education, such as " 自 知 " (self-understanding), " 克 己 " (self-control), " 修 身 "(Self-cultivation), find their
synonyms. But these expressions are often understood differently in Western and Eastern cultures, as will be seen below.
2 Kant speaks in different senses of "I" and "self," but in both meanings does not go beyond Descartes' sense of the I,
thus continuing within the sense-framework of transcendental philosophy. In Kant, e.g. the talk of the ego or self as the
"mere form of consciousness", as the "consciousness of my thinking" and as the "object of the inner sense" (see KrV,
382, 413, B 156). In general one can say that the ego in Kant corresponds to the "I" of the Cartesian "cogito", ie an
implicit, pronominal "I". This self-understanding is later described by J.-P. Sartre elaborated (Jean-Paul Sartre, La
transcendance de l 'égo, 1937).

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perceived or the intentional correlate (imagined, intuited). Chinese Buddhism, such as "成唯识论"
(Vijñāptimātratāsiddhi-śastra), speaks here of "见分" (seeing) and "相分" (seen). Together they are
called "heart" (Citta).
A view of Edmund Husserl from the first edition of his main work, Logical Investigations
(1900/01), clearly agrees with this tradition: Although he does not know Yogācāra-Buddhism and
therefore cannot refer to it, he also rejects a self independent of consciousness experiences as a
substance and as a "peculiar thing that hovered over the manifold experiences". Where in the first
edition of the work the so-called "phenomenological ego" is mentioned, this means nothing other
than the "stream of consciousness in general" or the "experiencing consciousness". (See LU II / 1, A
330f)
Only in the second edition of the work, published more than a decade later, does Husserl write
that he "learned to find the pure ego, i.e., learned not to let himself be confused by the worries about
the degeneration of the ego-metaphysics in the pure comprehension of the given." (LU II / 1, B1 361)
"The pure ego" in this sense contains nothing empirical in itself and represents a pole or a bank of the
stream of consciousness. According to Husserl, "in no sense can it be a real piece or moment of which
the experiences themselves apply" (Hua III / 1, p. 123), which is why Husserl calls it a "transcendence
in immanence " (Hua III / 1, p. 124). From the point of view of semantics, it is only a personal pronoun,
not a noun, and therefore has no object-related (gegenständlich) or objective meaning. This is why
Husserl writes about the ego: "If we read the Word without knowing who wrote it, we have the word,
if not a meaningless one, at least one which is alienated from its normal meaning." (LU II / 2, A 82 /
B1 82)
But all experience activities are radiated by this "ego". Husserl calls it "pure ego" or "the I of
pure apperception" (cf., LU II / 1, B1 359f). He calls this "ego" as well as the entire flow of
consciousness that emanates from it "ego" in the sense of a Monad (compare Hua I, § 33). The "I" is
then the uniform reference point of the "ego" (the manifold experiences of consciousness). In this
sense, one can also call his later phenomenology “I-less phenomenology"1 or "Phenomenology of
No-Self"2, even “Non-subjective phenomenology"3. Seen in this light, Husserl's phenomenology is
more like a new Yogācāra school of the twentieth century, rather than "offering a new Cartesianism,"
as he claims, "a Cartesianism of the twentieth century." (Hua I, 3).
But there is already a problem here that has been caused by concepts and words: "I", "ego",
"self", etc. - all these expressions are used by different thinkers in different languages and given
different meanings; as a result, terms such as solipsism, egology, egoism, etc., are often
misunderstood because of the unclarity and confusion of meaning. Not only in Husserl, therefore,
does the question of I-ness (Ichlichkeit) and I-less-ness (Ichlosigkeit) arise. We also see in the recent

1 See Aron Gurwitsch, "A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness", Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, Vol. 3 (Mar., 1941), pp. 325-338; Eduard Marbach, "Ichlose Phänomenologie bei Husserl", in: Tijdschrift
voor Filosofie, 35th Jaarg., No. 3 (September 1973), pp. 518-559.
2 Vgl. Gereon Kopf, Beyond Personal Identity: Dogen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self, Routledge; 2015.
3See Jan Patočka, "The subjectivism of Husserlschen and the possibility of an 'asubjective' phenomenology", in:
Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 2, Frankfurt aM 1970, pp. 317-334, especially his remark: "The ego appears here neither
as Reason of objectivity, still as sole producing principle of phenomenal world, but from the outset the word is spoken
of a correlation of appearing and appearing; this correlation, conceived as essential law and looked at in evidence, is the
last expulsion ground of beings in their givens. “

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literature on comparative studies of phenomenology and Zen Buddhism both the aforementioned
speech of "Phenomenology of No-Self" and the speech of "Phenomenology of the Self in Zen
Buddhism,"1 both in a positive sense.

II. The Point-like Ego and the Pronominal Ego

"The pure ego" in the sense of Husserl can be understood as a quasi-geometrical point which contains
no real surface and no real content.2
It is true that, when we reflect upon ourselves, we can grasp nothing but our own experiences of
consciousness. In the language of the Yogācāra school this means "唯有 识" (Consciousness-only).
But consciousness in this sense is nevertheless given a structural unity by the "I". In other words, the
ego or "self" in itself is not a subject or a substance, but because of it, all experiences of consciousness
receive a unified reference, namely they are "mine". Thus, "I" or "self" represents the latent,
unobjectified first-person pronoun in the Cartesian "cogito" and "sum." It does not signify the
substantiality that occasionally adds self-reflection to the stream of consciousness, but rather a self-
evidence of which the stream of consciousness itself is immediately conscious in its execution.
Descartes, in his reply to the sixth objection to his meditations, called this self-consciousness
"immediate conscii" (cf. Principia Philosophiae, I, 9). Because of this immediate awareness, the
"cogito" becomes primarily certain, that is, not doubtful, but self-evident.
This immediate consciousness is just "svabhāva", which the Yogācāra-Buddhists have been
holding since Dignāga (about the 5th-6th centuries), or "the inner consciousness," or "primordial
consciousness," of which Husserl speaks already in the Logical Investigations, and then also in his
other manuscripts from time to time 3 , and finally the "self-consciousness", about which the
Heidelberg School, E. Tugendhat and M. Frank vividly discuss 4 : the consciousness becomes
conscious in its own execution. In other words, as we perceive the objects, we are aware that we are
perceiving them; and while we love and want someone or something, we are aware that we love and
want them.
According to W. Windelband, we can regard this "awareness" or “consciousness” (Bewusstsein)
as the most suitable German translation of the Cartesian "cogito"5. Today one can also say that the

1Vgl. Shizuteru Ueda, Wer und was bin ich? Zur Phänomenologie des Selbst im Zen-Buddhismus, Verlag Karl Alber:
Freiburg 2011.
2 It can also be understood as a mathematical zero, whereby the existence of the ego resembles the existence of zero.
For details see. Liangkang Ni, "Zero and metaphysics: Thoughts about being and nothingness from mathematics,
Buddhism, Daism to phenomenology", in: Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2007, 2 (4): p. 1-10.
3 For details see. Liangkang Ni, "Primal Consciousness and Reflection in Husserl," in Husserl Studies 15: 77-99, 1998,
and "Primal Consciousness and Unconsciousness in Husserl's Understanding of Time," in Husserl Studies 21: 17-33,
2005, and Iso Kern, "Selbstbewußtsein und I at Husserl ", in Husserl Symposium Mainz 1988. Academy of Sciences
and Literature, Stuttgart 1989, pp. 51-63.
4 Cf. above all Dieter Henrich, "Self-confidence. Critical introduction to a theory ", in R. Bubner et al. (Ed.):
Hermeneutics and Dialectics. Festschrift for H.-G. Gadamer, Tübingen 1970, pp. 257-284, ders., "Two Theories for the
Defense of Self-Consciousness", in Grazer Philosophische Studien 7/8 (1979), pp. 77-99; Ulrich Pothast, On Some
Questions of Self-Relation, Frankfurt am Main, 1971; Ernst Tugendhat, self-confidence and self-determination.
Language-analytical interpretations, Suhrkamp Publisher: Frankfurt a.M. 1979; Manfred Frank, "Fragments of a History
of Self-Consciousness Theory from Kant to Sartre", in the. (Hrsg.), Self-consciousness theory of spruce to Sartre,
Suhrkamp Published by: Frankfurt a.M. 1991, pp 527ff.
5 See Wilhelm Windelband, Textbook of the History of Philosophy, ed. by Heinz Heimsoeth, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul

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most appropriate English translation is "mind" instead of "(I) think". A suitable Chinese translation
for it should be "心" (mind/heart) or "意" (consciousness) instead of "思" (thinking).
Of course, we will still see that the problem of I-ness or I-less-ness persists, leading to the
problem of "self-knowledge," "consciousness," and “unconsciousness."

III. Linear and Personal Self

Although the certainty of self-awareness is point-like at every moment of the consciousness-life, it is

not standing and isolated, but flowing and continuous, because consciousness is always in temporal
flow. Seen in this way, the "self" no longer represents a quasi-geometric point, but rather a quasi-
geometric line.
As the consciousness is in a constant flow, the present self-consciousness becomes
simultaneously with the consciousness in the way of the retention to the past, and at any time in the
way of the memory to the re-presented (vergegenwärtigt) self-consciousness. Of course, when
consciousness is interrupted by sleep or fainting and unconsciousness occurs, self-consciousness also
ceases to accompany it. Therefore, in the sense of phenomenology, the "I" is an interrupted imaginary
line. From the point of view of the ontology of the soul, however, this line is necessarily continuous,
only it does not appear in each of its phases. Otherwise, we cannot explain the fact of the continuous
unity of the self: when we awaken from sleep, the reoccurring perception, feeling, and willing are
once again conscious to us as “ours."
On just this fundamental fact, Mahāyāna-Buddhism, unlike Theravada Buddhism, which
recognizes only six modes of consciousness, develops a new doctrine of eight modes of consciousness.
Specifically, Mahāyāna-Buddhism represents over the eye-consciousness (cakşur-vijānaṃ), ear-
consciousness (śrotra-vijānaṃ), nose-consciousness (ghrāņa-vijānaṃ), tongue-consciousness (jihvā-
vijānaṃ), body-consciousness (kāya- vijānaṃ) and mind-consciousness (mano-vijānaṃ), two more,
"deeper" types of consciousness from a genetic perspective: Alaya consciousness (alaya-vijānaṃ) and
Manas consciousness (mana-vijānaṃ). This three-layered structure of Alaya consciousness, Manas
consciousness and, thirdly, the six types of Theravada consciousness can be compared to Husserl's
distinction between "pre-ego", "primal ego" and "ego", or Freud's differentiation between "id", "ego"
and "super-ego". They can all be interpreted in a genetic-phenomenological way.
While the early Husserl (around 1900/01) still has doubts about the coloring of a kind of "ego-
metaphysics" as described above, the early Freud (1896) with "metapsychology" already names the
present state of "selfhood." But in truth, Husserl's later consideration of genetic phenomenology
prepares a phenomenological solution to a non-metaphysical ontology of the "I". Here again
Heidegger's thesis is confirmed: "Ontology is only possible as phenomenology." (SuZ, 35)
In very general terms, the "self" represents a partly patently, partly latently red thread of selfhood.
The word "latent" here denotes hiddenness in the unconscious or subconscious, that is, the hidden

Siebeck): Tübingen 151957, p. 335: "The usual translation of cogitare, cogitation with thinking is not without danger
of misunderstanding, since thinking in German means a special kind of theoretical consciousness. Descartes himself
explains the meaning of the Cogitare (Medit., 3, Princ. Phil, I., 9) by enumerations; he understands it as doubting,
affirming, denying, comprehending, wanting, detesting, imagining, feeling, etc. For the common feature of all these
functions, we have hardly any other word in German than 'consciousness.' "

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part of selfhood. Accordingly, the word "patent" designates the appearance as "self-consciousness,"
that is, the appearing part of selfhood. If we reflect on the "linear ego" in this sense, we no longer
grasp the transverse intentionality relating to the “point-like ego” that we obtain through ordinary
reflection, but that which Husserl called in his lecture on the phenomenology of the inner
consciousness of time "Longitudinal intentionality" in relation to the "linear ego”.1 It consists of self-
presence, self-past and self-future. The "I" in this sense is no longer the "pure ego" as a pole equal to
zero, but the "personal ego" as the "substrate of habitualities" (see Hua I, § 32).
Here one can notice a transition from the point-like, pure I (self) to a linear, personal I. Since the
former represents only an empty but unity-giving pole, Husserl prefers to call it "self" rather than "I."
2
In the case of the latter, however, one can speak of the "I", because it is no longer "abstract and
indefinite", but represents an ego bound with personal contents - the monadic, linear ego: the ego,
which manifests itself in longitudinal intentionality. (Cf., Hua XIV, 48)
This "longitudinal intentionality" extends continuously through the dynamic, partly latent, and
partly patently expiring time, genesis, and history, and can be grasped by our mind's eye through a
certain feature. From now on, this essential view is called "longitudinal essentiality," although Husserl
does not call it in this way3. The longitudinal intentionality thus manifests itself here as the "[e]idetic
form of mental inwardness", but can "receive the full concretion of the ego as a monad" (Hua I, 102).
And so Husserl gets rid of the problem of whether the "pure ego" may be "too formal." (Cf Ms. A VI
30, 37a, Marbach, 1974, 321)

IV. The Longitudinal Essential View as Self-Reflection

Just as we cannot grasp all aspects of a spatial being, such as a tree, in a spatial intuition, we are not
capable of grasping a temporal being at all times, such as the selfhood of a person, in a temporal

1 According to Husserl, "through the river, there is a longitudinal intentionality which, in the course of the river, is in
constant cohesion with itself". (Hua X, 81) In this covering unity with oneself one can see just that "linear self".
2 Cf. here the consideration of Husserl in 1921, quoted in the manuscript: "Instead of 'I', I might always have to say
'self'", and the "self" here is understood as an unfounded unity. "(Hua XIV, 48) ,
3 The term "longitudinal" stands for "length" in the sense of Husserlian "longitudinal intentionality". In his "Lectures
on the Phenomenology of Inner Time Awareness," Husserl takes up the concepts of "longitudinal intentionality" and
"transverse intentionality" in the light of the dual intentionality of retention. They refer to the two directions, which he
refers to in the time diagram with "vertical row" and "row of ordinates". Due to differing understandings of English
translators, "longitudinal intentionality" is translated as "longitudinal intentionality" (J. Churchill) or "horizontal
intentionality" (J. B. Brough). I first used the latter myself (see Ni, L., "Horizontal Intention: Time, Genesis, History -
Husserl's Understanding of their Immanent Relationship", in D. Lohmar and I. Yamaguchi, On Time - New
Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Springer, Dordrecht et al., 2010, pp. 187-211). Today,
however, I consider "longitudinal intentionality" to be more apt, because the "length" referred to here, in view of the
great context of the phenomenology of time to the phenomenology of Genesis and History, means: "through time,
genesis, and History throughout ", ie in this sense" longitudinal ".
In addition, it should be noted that Anthony J. Steinbock in his excellent work Phenomenology & Mysticism
characterizes non-essential religious experiences as "vertical experience" or "vertical givenness" (cf Anthony J.
Steinbock: Phenomenology & Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience , Indiana University Press,
Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2007, p.1). The Chinese translator of this book, Lu Yinghua, also translates Mu
Zongsan's (牟宗三) relevant term "vertical" as "longitudinal" (see the "Introduction" of the book by Anthony J.
Capricorn "Vertical Givenness in Human Experience" translated by Lu Yinghua In The Phenomenological and
Philosophical Research in China - Phenomenology and Chinese Thought, Volume Sixteen, 2015, pp. 181-208). In my
opinion, in the light of religious experience, one should rather speak of a verticality in the original sense of the word.
In any case, there are already three different ways of intentionality as well as essentiality to discover, so not only
"transverse intentionality" and "transversal essence".

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intuition. Most phenomenologists, such as Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, but also some mathematicians
and logicians such as Gödel, insist the possibility of the intuition of essence, intuition of ideas, or the
perception of concepts. They dress them in different names and resort to them to varying extents.
If we transfer this mathematical or physical intuition, already recognized for the knowledge of
the external world, to the cognition and understanding of the immanent experience, then an essential
comprehension of our consciousness, carried out in immanent reflection, can arise. In fact, Kant, who
always denied intellectual intuition as a human faculty, used the method of intellectual intuition itself
in the apprehension of the categories of understanding and forms of intuition. The terms "categorial
intuition" and "formal intuition" (see LU II / 2, 667 / B2 195), which Husserl initially uses, are Kant's
critical legacy. Husserl later abandoned these methodological concepts and instead spoke of "a priori
intuition", "intuition of essence " and "intuition of ideas". Strictly speaking, "intellectual intuition",
which Kant "uses daily without knowing it"1, and the "essence" that Husserl often uses in his works
published during his lifetime, are both part of the transversal intuition of essence: that is, the grasp of
the essence of the elements of consciousness as well as their essential connections. This transversal
intuition of essence is related to the transverse intentionality, much like the longitudinal essentiality
is related to the longitudinal intentionality. Only in the later, often unpublished analysis of
consciousness of genetic phenomenology, of the phenomenology of the person, motivation,
association, etc., Husserl tacitly applied the method of longitudinal intuition of essence.
Transversal as well as longitudinal intuitions of essence represent a direct, idealizing
apprehension of the ideal objects: the transversal grasping of the point-like ego together with the
stable and static essential structure of its consciousness experiences, the longitudinal grasping of the
linear ego together with the streaming and changing essence of its consciousness experiences.2
The longitudinal intuition of essence can be used above all for the grasp of the essence of the
linear ego in its consciousness genesis, i.e., for the phenomenology of the person or the genesis of
personality. This genetic-historical approach not only corresponds to Dilthey’s and Count Yorck’s
"common interest to understand historicity,"3 but realizes this concern as a concrete practice, thus
offering the eagerly sought after "Organon for the grasp of historicity". 4 Dilthey therefore considers
the Logical Investigations to be "epoch-making" (GS VII, 14), because he considers Husserl's
methodical possibility of grasping the "logical connection in the humanities" (GS VII, 323). Like
Dilthey, Husserl later characterized this method with the term "self-reflection" (Selbstbesinnung).
If we now consider the method of longitudinal intuition of essence in the context of Chinese
philosophy, we see that it was already involuntarily and tacitly promoted and used not only in ancient
Chinese philosophy, which is explained in detail elsewhere, but its assertion also found a clear
analogy in modern Chinese philosophy. In Confucianism, a relevant consideration of Mu Zongsan
(牟宗三) comes into consideration. His conception of "longitudinal intuition" (纵贯直觉), based on

1 “日用而不知” [《周易·系辞上传》(Yi Jing, Xici, I. Teil, Kap. 5)]

2 Es sei hier noch bemerkt: Husserl postulierte zwar eine Anschauung des Ideellen, aber keine reine, wie Kants
intellektuelle Anschauung, sondern eine sinnlich fundierte.
3 Vgl. William Dilthey-Paul Yorck, Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm Dilthey und dem Grafen Paul Yorck von
Wartenburg. 1877-1897, Max Niemeyer: Halle (Saale) 1923, S. 185.
4 Vgl. Iring Fetscher, „Einleitung“ in Graf Paul Yorck von Wartenburg, Bewußtseinsstellung und Geschichte. Ein
Fragment aus dem philosophischen Nachlass, hrsg. von I. Fetscher, Max Niemeyer Verlag: Tübingen 1956, S. 27.

6
Kant's concept of "intellectual intuition," has a very similar meaning to "longitudinal intuition of
essence." Although Mu Zongsan, as far as I know his work, did not clearly claim the concept of
"longitudinal intuition," much like Husserl did not use the term "longitudinal intuition of essence,"
Mu Zongsan clearly characterizes the basic feature of this method of understanding the historical
intellectual life. Namely by his statement that Kant's "intellectual intuition must be recognized in the
longitudinal system, not in the transversal system of knowledge"1. Mu Zongsan understands by this
intuition "the 'knowledge' in the longitudinal sense that passes through,"2 as well as the way in which
the subject immediately becomes aware of itself.3 He points out that Confucianism, Daoism, and
Buddhism all belong to the longitudinal system, and all that circulate and pass through "the origins
of our lives, our wisdom, our moral creation.”4
Here an important difference between Mu’s and Husserl's conception of intellectual intuition is
already clear: while Mu emphasizes this view more as a principle of creation than of knowledge, 5
Husserl regards it more as an understanding of historicity, as a method of explaining one's motivation
(Hua VI, 226 f.), or a grasp of the essence of the formation of meaning and the sedimentation of
meaning (Hua VI, 380 f.).
And yet, Mu Zongsan's view has in common with Dilthey and Husserl's understanding of the
historicity of the spiritual life and the method of its detection: It is not a reflexive or transcendental
observation and grasping of the subject-object relationship, but rather a reflexive or transcendental
understanding or comprehending of the historicity of the subjects. It is thus a collection of the
essential moments of the general spiritual life as well as of the essential connections and essential
developments of these essential moments that is carried out in the reflection on the individual,
empirical consciousness and with the method of longitudinal essentials. It is a difficult path from the
phenomenology of consciousness, which has the pure structure of consciousness as its task, to the
phenomenology of the spirit (Geist), which seeks to understand the historicity of the universal spirit.
And if you look at it from Husserl's and Mu Zongsan's considerations, it is also a transcultural way.
Strictly speaking, the differences between Mu and Husserl can be united in the principle of
Dilthey's method of spiritual science: this principle establishes an identity of "creating",
"understanding" and "knowing". For example, in Dilthey we can read: "The spirit understands only
what has created" (VII, 148), "the first condition for the possibility of the science of history is that I
myself am a historical being, that he who explores history, is the same one who makes history. "(VII,
278); "The subject of knowledge is here the same with its object" (VII, 191), and the like.6

1 牟 宗 三 (Mu, Zongsan), Neunzehn Vorlesungen über die chinesische Philosophie – Kurze Darstellung der
chinesischen Philosophie und der darin implizierten Probleme (中国哲学十九讲——中国哲学之简述及其所涵蕴之
问题), Taiwan Students‘ Book Office: Taipei 1983, S. 441.
2 Vgl. 牟宗三(Mu, Zongsan), Vorlesungen über die Lehre von vier Ursachen (四因说讲演录), Shanghai Classics
Publishing House: Shanghai 1998, S. 196.
3 牟宗三(Mu, Zongsan), Intellektuelle Anschauung und die chinesische Philosophie (智的直觉与中国哲学), The
commercial press of Taiwan: Taipei 2000, S. 132, S. 142.
4 Mu, Zongsan, Neunzehn Vorlesungen über die chinesische Philosophie, a.a.O., S. 421-422.
5 Mu, Zongsan, Vorlesungen über die Lehre von vier Ursachen, a.a.O., S. 196.
6 It is, however, also a tradition or continuation of the principle of the new science according to G. Vico, who has
already affirmed that "this political world has certainly been made by men; therefore, their principles can be found (for
they must) within the modifications of our own human mind. [... and thus] from the [world of the peoples or the political
world], because men created them, men can also gain knowledge "(Giambattista Vico, Principi di Scienza Nuova

7
 In general terms, Dilthey, Husserl, and Mu Zongsan are all, in a sense, "Neo-Hegelians" in terms
of the subject of historical self-reflection, but in a sense "Neo-Kantians" in terms of method.

V. The Genetic Logic and the Phenomenology of the Person

The linear ego and its genesis in consciousness represent the history of the psychic life of the
individual. The longitudinal intuition of essence is the reflection on the historicity manifested in it, or
even its understanding. Husserl sees in history "from the outset nothing other than the living
movement of coexistence and intertwining of original formation of meaning and sedimentation of
meaning." (Hua VI, 380f.) The "original meaning formation" mentioned here can be understood as
an activity of consciousness of oneself and its consequences. The "sense sedimentation" then
represents the genetic continuation and historical transmission of this life of consciousness and its
consequences. This is precisely the relationship between the "point-like I" and the "linear I": it
corresponds to the relationship between the "transversal surfaces of the consciousness and ego
problem at all "and the" whole of consciousness ". Already in 1917 Husserl remarked in this regard,
"a transversal surface can only be fully understood if one explores its whole". (Hua XXV, 198)
Even before Husserl, in Dilthey (1890, cf. GS V, 101), and after Husserl, in Heidegger (1920,
see GA 59, 157 f.), Thoughts are given on "transversal surfaces" and "longitudinal surfaces" of the
life of consciousness. Both have hopes of supplementing the immediate apprehension of the execution
of life with the understanding of historicity with the method of historical interpretation. Husserl's
longitudinal intuition of essence can provide a methodological basis for this, as it allows for a direct,
intuitive grasp of the "law of the heart (心有其理)" in the sense of Lu Xiangshan (陆 象山, 1139-
1192) or the "Ordre du cœur ", "Logique de cœur" in the sense of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662).1
"Law of the heart" or "Ordre du cœur" state here that the history of the consciousness life of a
person and also of groups of people can be followed logically, be it in the name of "genetic logic" or
"modal logic", or in the name of the "subjective logic" or "transcendental logic". They agree with the
aforementioned "historicity-understanding" according to Dilthey and Yorck, and represent an attempt
to establish a dual identity of history and logic: the logic is historical, the history is logical.
In the history of human thought similar attempts can be found. The doctrine of "dependent
origination (Pratītyasamutpāda)" in Buddhism, especially the doctrine of "Alaya-Pratītyasamutpāda"
in Yogacara, deals with the genesis and development of consciousness as well as its conditions. They
are moving in the direction of a genetic logic. The Buddhist doctrine of "dependent arising" is
ultimately a doctrine of Genesis.

d'intorno alla commune Natura delle Nazioni, Naples 1744, 331; German translation by Vittorio Hösle and Christoph
Jermann, Principles of a New Science on the Common Nature of Peoples, Felix Meiner: Hamburg 2007).
1 Dieses „Coeur a ses raisons“, „Ordre du coeur“ oder auch „Logique de coeur“ gleicht Collingwoods „Tiger im Gras“,
den nur der Blick der Experten ausmachen kann; “‘Nothing here but trees and grass‘, thinks the traveler, and marches
on. ‘Look’, says the woodsman, ‘there is a tiger in the grass.’” (R. G. Collingwood, cf. Ulrich Voigt, David Hume und
das Problem der Geschichte, Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 1975, S. 7)

8
VI. Person: Nature and Nurture

Back to Hume: Although he is also regarded as a historical philosopher of the 18th century, and also
dealt with the history of mankind under the titles of custom and habit, he still could not enter into the
discussion about the linear, personal ego from the genetic and historical perspective with the method
of understanding the history and the longitudinal intuition of essence, and develop the discussion in
this direction. Because of this, he had to face a dilemma in the face of the ego's problem. It is the
same dilemma that historical philosophers all face on the empirical viewpoint.
The linear personal ego unfolds itself in the genetic essential inquiry in two directions: that of
the natural and that of the habitual self. In his research manuscripts Husserl has systematically dealt
with the problems of the phenomenology of instincts (naturalness) and phenomenology of
habitualities.1 Similarly, the doctrine of the two natures or two Buddha-natures (gotra) - the natural,
innate (本性住种性: prakṛtistha-gotra) and the cultivated, acquired (习所成种性: samudānīta-gotra)
- in the Yogācāra Buddhism2 is also the baseline for what can be called genetic phenomenology or
genetic logic. By "logic" is meant the lawfulness of this double history of the life of consciousness:
the lawfulness of Genesis and the becoming of the species (nature in the sense of gifts) and of the
acquisition (culture in the sense of acquisition).
The phenomenology of naturality (or instincts) and of the culture (or habitualities) are
components of a phenomenology of the person. Because the person or the personality consists mainly
of nature (sensuality, instincts, attachments) and acquisition (education, exercise, reason, judgment).
Here Phenomenologists of Personality can go with Kongzi in the "learning of the heart" (心学) a
common way. Insightful in this regard is Wang Longxi’s (王龙溪, 1498-1583) using the traditional
Chinese conceptual pair "Xiantian" (先天) and "Houtian" (后天) to denote these characteristics of
the person: "What precedes heaven is heart; what follows Heaven is Intention (先天是心, 后天是意).
Further, “To make His heart straight is to learn what precedes heaven (正心, 先天之学也); and to
make his intentions sincere, is the learning of what follows heaven (诚意, 后天之学也) ". 3 By
"Xiantian" is meant the condition before the activity of the heart, with "Houtian" that during and after
the activity of the heart. For cultivating one's own physical person, Confucians demand that they
make an ethical effort both before the emergence of feelings (未 发) and during or after their

1 See as two excellent works on these two topics: Lee, Nam-In, Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of Instincts,
Phaenomenologica 128, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht et al. 1993; Moran, Dermot, "Edmund Husserl's
Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus," in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 1, January 2011,
pp 53-77; "The Ego as Substrate of Habitualities: Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of the Habitual Self," in
Phenomenology and Mind, vol. 6, July 2014, pp. 27-47.
2 Unlike originally in India, where they designate different families or genders, these two essentials in Yogācāra
Buddhism represent, especially in a figurative sense, two self-natures (svabhāva). (For more details, see Ni, Liangkang,
"Zur Doktrin of Two, Gotra 'in Yogācāra Buddhism and Its Genetically Phenomenological Significance ", in Vijnpti-
Matra Studies, China Social Sciences Publishing House, Beijing 2018, pp. 247-260) That's just what Kongzi said in his
quote as" Nature "(性) and" Exercise or Culture "(习) means:" By nature (humans) are close to each other, by exercise
they move away from each other. (性 相近 也, 习 相 远 也.) "(Kongzi, Lunyu, Book XVII, 2)
3 Wang, Longxi (王 龙溪), Wangji (王畿 集) Collected Writings, Jiangsu People's Publishing House: Nanjing 2007, p.
133, p. 445th

9
emergence (已 发). This means nothing more than an effort to learn what is going on in heaven and
also to learn what follows heaven; or in other words, learning the innate and learning the acquired. 1
This Confucian pair of concepts is later used in Chinese cultural space for the translation of the
metaphysical and epistemological conceptual pair in European philosophy: a priori and a posteriori.
They say "given"2 as much as before and after inductive experience, as well as their interrelationships;
Today, "a priori" and "a posteriori" are again used for the Chinese translation of the term pairs "nature"
and "nurture", which then characterizes the concepts of "genes" and "experience" and their
interrelationships.3 However, the translation of "Xiantian" and "Houtian" is not suitable for a priori
and a posteriori. A better one would be "Xianyan" (先验, before experience) and "Houyan" (后 验,
after experience). However, "Xianyan" has long been misleading and misleading for the translation
of "transcendental," which is why this term, used today, would create false associations. There are
many debates in recent time, but we cannot go into that here.
Returning to "Xiantian", i.e., the state before the activity of the heart, and "Houtian", i.e., the
state during and after the activity of the heart, we can explain both states using the example of
sympathy. To point out the sympathy as original knowledge (良知) that cannot be gained through
learning, and original ability (良能) that one does not acquire through practice, Mengzi cites two
examples. First, "When people first see a child about to approach a well, there is fear and compassion
in all hearts." Mengzi concludes: "Every human being has a heart that cannot see other sufferings.
"4As a second example, Mengzi calls King Xuan of Qi. King Xuan cannot watch as an ox, slaughtered
for bells, trembles anxiously, so slaughters a sheep instead. "The educated regards animals like this:
when he has seen them alive, he cannot watch them being killed, and when he hears their scream, he
cannot bring himself to eat their flesh." 5 Here, Mengzi differentiates two types of compassionate
carriers, most likely even intentionally: on the one hand, each human being has the capacity to pity
other people; on the other hand, only the "educated" (君子) has compassion for animals. This means
that compassion for other people is part of man's natural system, i.e., original knowledge and original
ability. Pity for animals, however, comes first through acquisition and education, so it is not original
knowledge and ability.
Both in the current theory of consciousness and in the old Yogācāra research, it is not denied that
these two essences also have a physiological basis outside the consciousness in the organs and their
functions, be it under the titles of the brain and the nerve cells or of the root (indriya). For example,

1 I take over this German translation of the Chinese terms from Iso Kern, cf. Ders., The most important thing in life:
Wang Yangming (1472-1529) and his successors on the "realization of the original knowledge", Schwabe Verlag, Basel
2010, p. 17, p. 252, etc.
2 Cf. Max Scheler, Writings from the estate, Vol. 1: On ethics and epistemology, GW X, Bouvier-Verlag, Bonn 1986,
p. 433.
3 Matt Ridley, Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human, Harper Collins Publishers: New
York 2003; Chinese translation: 先天 · 里德利: "后天 VS 后天: 基因, 经验 及 什么 使 成为 人", 黄菁菁 译, 机械 工
业 出版社: 北京, 2015 年 .- The allegedly one hundred year history of the dispute between Nature and Nurture followers
have actually been through millennia.
4 Mong Dsi, The Doctrinal Disciples of Master Mong Ko, translated by Richard Wilhelm, Book II, Gung Sun Chou, 6.
Compassion ("孟子" 卷三, 公孙丑 章句 上, 六).
5 Mong Dsi, The Doctrinal Discussions of Master Mong Ko, Book I, Liang Hui Wang, 7. The Sacrificial Animal and
World Domination ("孟子" 卷一, 梁惠王 章句 上, 七).

10
mirror neurons may explain the physiological-biological mechanisms of our native sympathy,
empathy, shame, awe, etc., but compassion for animals can only be understood through acquired
abilities and habits. Whether and to what extent the formation of these habits, in turn, has an effect
on the brain and neuronal processes, is an urgent matter to be addressed and clarified. Whether, for
example, possession of power generally leads to limited sympathy and empathy, and even to the loss
of these instincts, or even to brain injuries or nerve damage, is a question that should be considered
and explored from various points of view.
A fundamental collaboration can be observed worldwide here: philosophers and
phenomenologists of consciousness try to use the method of self-reflection to look, describe and
characterize the emotional activities and consequences of their actions; Psychologists try to follow
and confirm the process of change of personality by the observation of the acts and the construction
of the experiments; Neurologists use various tools to observe and describe the internal connections
between the neuronal process and the brain structure in relation to the innate and acquired faculties.
From their point of view, they also develop their own treatment or cure programs.1

VII. "Unperson": Nature and Nurture

The limited number of 30,000 "a priori" or innate genes of humans seems insufficient to explain the
unlimited possibilities of change of the "a posteriori" or acquired behavior of humans. Therefore, the
contribution of the elements of education and culture in the process of evolution of humanity to the
elements of nature seems to require revision.
But here we first have to look at an empirical observation of zoology: entomologists discovered
that the innate genes of ant lions fully determine their ability to dig traps. So no matter how many
times they dig traps in the course of their lives, they do not become more adept. It also means that
there is nothing in their existential abilities of practice and education. With regard to the part that both
abilities, the innate and the acquired, possess, a totality of nature means at the same time a zero
habituality.
Such full natural ability finds some support and inspiration through research, design and
development of artificial intelligence. On October 18, 2017, the British company "DeepMind"
christened their latest and most powerful version of AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence, "AlphaGo
Zero". DeepMind announced that in just three days of in-program training and learning in a so-called
Tabula Rasa, without any interaction with the environment, AlphaGo Zero had completely surpassed

1 According to the Logical Investigations, Husserl developed the notion and method of "phenomenological reduction,"
excluding the "metaphysical" debate on "the physical thing and the 'unknown cause of phenomena' (see Hua III, § 52),
and limited it the view of research exclusively on the field of phenomenology of pure consciousness. This method
represents the consistent continuation of his viewpoint of critique of psychology in his Logical Investigations and also
satisfies his "principle of the unprincipled nature of epistemological investigations" (LU II / 1, A 19ff./B1 19ff). He
believes he has broken through the circular foundations of Awareness Phenomenology, Psychology, Physiology,
Biology, Physics as well as the circularity of their consequences. This belief comes from his idea of philosophy as a
rigorous science, but makes it impossible to interdisciplinary research exchange in the sense of participation in the
empirical research of these subjects in mutual addition. The possibility of such participation is to some extent already
realized in the exploration of types of consciousness within the framework of, for example, the 'feeling philosophy' and
'theory of feelings'. The latter two not only consult psychoanalysis's views and thought processes, such as psychology,
neurology and cerebrology, but also those of sociology, zoology, history and literature.

11
all its predecessors, and with it the level of all human players, each through a posteriori exercise and
learning to acquire and increase their play ability.
Of course my "Zero" or "Tabula Rasa" does not mean that AlphaGo version contains nothing
preprogrammed, but that their algorithms in the difficult area begins from "Zero", namely without
any subsequent, human knowledge and experience, and can learn very quickly a superhuman
intelligence. 1 In addition to the algorithms of the previous versions, AlphaGo Zero also contains
statistics, strategies, five million training games and a computer with four special processors. So all
this is innate or programmed ability, nothing is retrieved from outside or otherwise from others or
acquired. Here the innate says as it were the acquired.
The difference between AlphaGo Zero and its predecessor, AlphaGo Lee, is the difference
between a full a priori nature version and a mixed version with a priori aptitude and a posteriori
acquisition. This example shows how artificial intelligence in principle can do away with acquired
habitualities and how all their abilities can exist in preprogrammed a priori characteristics: basic rules,
search algorithms, combination options, artificial neural networks (ANN), deep neural networks
(DNN) and lightning-fast, faceless learning practice - all of this already realizes the transcendence of
the relevant intelligence as well as the cultural tradition of humanity.
The examples given here, however, all concern the problem of a priori rules and a posteriori
exercises only in the field of animals and artificial intelligence. This does not yet pose the problem
of an artificial consciousness or the problem of an artificial mind, which is why they have no direct
relation to the research of the phenomenology of the person. However, only in the case of artificial
consciousness or "artificial mind" can one speak of the problem of personality, even though only of
an artificial one, namely artificial nature and nurture and their mutual effect on each other. For the
term consciousness or mind already implies self-consciousness, free will and different feelings and
emotional states.
Precisely because elements of free will, feelings and emotional states are contained in the natural
consciousness, all such a posteriori, empirical acquisitions, capacity accumulations, cultural
traditions become possible. The resulting habitualities2 and the innate nature make up the personality,
which today biologists and anthropologists generally recognize. The problem with the previously
posed problem of proportion is therefore only how much importance the inherent nature and the
acquired habits each has. In other words, does the share that has hitherto been attributed to the
elements of education and cultivation in the process of human evolution in opposition to innate,
natural elements require a further correction?

VIII. "A Priori-a posteriori" and “Formal-material"

But here we have to emphasize: From the perspective of philosophical anthropology or the
phenomenology of the person, "a priori" and "a posteriori" should not be in a relationship of

1 For details see. "Mastering the Game of Going without Human Knowledge", in: https: // deepmind. com / documents
/ 119 / agz_unformatted_nature.pdf.
2 Husserl, therefore, distinguishes "three very different habitualities," namely, "the habit of taking the same acts out of
mere association under the same circumstances, the general will to follow certain affections over and over, and the
corresponding acts to realization." to bring, and that of conviction. "(Hua IX, 412, note 2)

12
juxtaposition, not even in a ratio of the respective parts in the sense of biology or physiology, not
even in the relationship of the respective validity. Naturality and habituality, which constitute the
double structure of personality, should rather be characterized by the terms "a priori form" and "a
posteriori matter". In the field of epistemology Kant has formulated "the real task of pure reason" in
the central question: "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" (KrV Einl. VI), and tried to
answer them with transcendental analytics and transcendental aesthetics. If we now raise this real
task or central question in the field of practical reason, what Max Scheler later dealt with and what
he described, we will speak analogously of "synthetic feelings a priori" or "synthetic feelings of value
a priori", provided that these relate to a priori forms of feelings and a posteriori matter of feelings.
An "a priori form" is the original, ability of feeling, such as feelings of sympathy, shame, awe,
etc. given before inductive experience. It is one of the inherent naturalities of personality, that is, the
original knowledge (良知) that is not gained through learning, or the original ability (良能) that one
does not acquire through practice. Also the mental factors (心所: caitta) listed in Yogācāra Buddhism,
such as shame (apatrāpya), lust (rāga), trust (śrāddha), anger (krodha), pride (mada), arrogance
(māna), suspicion (vicikitsā), etc., all belong to this category. The current biological-neurological
research could discover their physiological-physical bases in genes or nerve cells. They could also be
discussed under the title of X-complexes by psychologists. Even the free will, which is considered an
elementary factor of the human mind, can be regarded as a kind of a priori-formal, innate natural
faculty: it contains no empirical content in itself, which could be grasped by reflection, is thus
materially empty. But it can be used for all kinds of experiences, especially the acts of consciousness
that have to do with decision and determination, and therefore forms an important prerequisite for the
spiritual development and a posteriori cultural formation of humanity.
Another component of personality is the broader sense of habituation created by a posteriori
education and care. We can also characterize this relationship between instincts and experiences as
one between innate naturalities and acquired habitualities. There are immanent connections between
them, but not proportional relations or those of the validity weight. Here there is more of a ratio
comparable to the ratio of the four sides of a quadrilateral to the area they enclose.
Taking the moral feeling as an example, the relationship between instinct and acquisition is seen
as the relationship between moral instinct and moral custom. Here, the question makes no sense: how
much does moral instinct versus moral custom have in each of our entire moral consciousness and
act? For between form and matter in this sense there is no quantitative proportionate relationship. In
the case of the forms, such as the sympathy, shame, reverence of Mengzi, the original knowledge (良
知) not acquired through learning and the original faculty (良能) not acquired through practice
constitute the a priori form, which in itself does not have empirical content. But whether the object
of sympathy is a relative or an animal, whether the cause of shame is an inability to speak or to cook,
or whether reverence refers to an ancestor, elder family member, God, or bodhisattva, all these are
consequences of a posteriori experience, education, decision and acquisition. Compared to innate
nature or limited genes, acquired habitualities can be infinitely diverse and unrestricted, and manifest
themselves in the most diverse ways of life of humanity. Thus, when we understand "a priori" and "a
posteriori" in the Confucian sense, as shown above, a fundamental relationship between limited a
priori forms of emotion and unrestricted a posteriori emotional material emerges.
13
 Another example is the speech act. The essential relationship between naturalness and
habituality described above also applies to the relationship between the a priori language sense (W.
Humboldt) and a posteriori language acquisition. From this perspective, Noam Chomsky's idea of a
"generative grammar" leads to a new understanding in the form of thought: there is also a relationship
between aptitude and language syntax, or between language and languages, between a priori form
and a posteriori matter.
Wilhelm Schapp (1884-1965), Husserl's first PhD-trained doctor and an important representative
of the early phenomenological movement, in his late period (1953), in retrospect, remarked that it
was "difficult to say what the phenomenological method actually was. It may be said that it consisted
of a priori tracking synthetic sentences in all areas of knowledge. " He reaffirms this later on: "Finally,
it was then a matter of a priori to develop a theory of synthetic sentences."1 This also supports the
understanding developed here to see the method of the phenomenology of the person in a grasp of a
priori emotional forms and a posteriori emotional matter.

IX. About Ego and Alter Ego

Reflections on the naturalness, habituality and related personal being provide the basis for a
phenomenology of the person. But only if one understands the person not only as the personality of
the monad, but also as the intersubjective personality of the spirit, the inner connection between the
history of the individuals, the community and the history of mankind as a whole is discovered. This
is initially the ego, or the monad, and the others and their relationships to each other. According to
Husserl, the phenomenology of intersubjectivity or interpersonality deals with these questions.
The perception of others takes place in the way of empathy. Husserl's pupil Edith Stein defined
the empathy (Einfühlung or Empathie) right at the beginning of her dissertation "On the problem of
empathy" 2as a special type of experience: the experience of the alien consciousness. (See ESGA V,
§ 2)
Our view is fundamentally or essentially our own. That is undeniable and not to change. We may
ask ourselves to be more involved in others, or to advocate for an ethical claim related to others, such
as the Confucian: "Whatever is undesirable to you, do not add to any other" (Lunyu, XII, 2). But even
that is still a self-imposed call for normative ethics, not a fact of purely descriptive phenomenology.
Husserl's analyzes in his phenomenology of intersubjectivity have been repeatedly criticized by
social philosophers, including Husserl's student Alfred Schütz, who instead assume a community or
communicative reason. To this day, many social phenomenologists still believe that Husserl's
phenomenology offers no valid way of thinking from the ego to the other, from individuality to
sociality.
In truth, the transcendental-phenomenological exploration of the foreign experience does not
begin with pragmatic questions such as, "How to better understand others?", "How to put one's
experience the same way?", etc. Instead, their endeavor is merely to faithfully describe and enlighten

1 Wilhelm Schapp, On the Way of a Philosophy of Stories: Teilband I, a.a.O., p. 59.

2 Edith Stein, The problem of empathy in its historical development and in phenomenological observation, book
printing of the orphanage, Hall 1917.

14
the way others are given to me. In Husserl's more than thirty years of reflection on the problem of
intersubjectivity, his most typical phenomenological description and analysis is a multi-level and
multi-perspective characterization of empathy or alienation as a special kind of perception that is
neither perception of thing, imagination, illusion, nor inference or hunch.
In addition to other ways of thinking, Husserl distinguishes a threefold originality in his
examination of this problem. Already in her dissertation on the problem of foreign experience, Edith
Stein refers to this term. Generally speaking, perception is original awareness. Stein is also of the
opinion that even the essence or ideation is an original consciousness. The word "original" expresses
concretely an original way of givenness of the objects of consciousness, that is, a direct and present
way of givenness in which the given object or circumstance gives itself. The acts of memory,
expectation and fantasy, on the other hand, are not original, because their objects are non-original,
but are given only mediately and through re-presentation. The empathy for others sees stone as a non-
original consciousness, so it counts them to the same class of acts as memory, expectation, fantasy,
"in which self-experienced is given non-originally." (See ESGA V, 15ff.)
However, Husserl later considered this thesis, which was already advocated by Stein in 1916,
several times and in detail under the title of originality. He does not reject Stein's thesis, but rather
develops a more sophisticated understanding of origins, which also includes empathy. As Iso Kern
shows, in a manuscript written in 1934 Husserl elaborates a basic difference between three different
concepts of "original experience" and "originality", namely primary, secondary and tertiary originality.
My present consciousness life is given to me in primary originality, my remembered consciousness
life is given to me in secondary originality, and the consciousness life as a result of empathy with
others is given to me in tertiary originality.1
These reflections and distinctions shed light on the principle of the phenomenology of
intersubjectivity in Husserl and Stein. Through this insight, many questions, such as whether the
knowledge of the alien consciousness is "immediate" or "indirect", including the "solipsism dilemma",
turn out as illusory problems that are raised in philosophical discussions more out of tactical than
serious interest. How could Husserl's I-less phenomenology, which does not even recognize an
empirical ego, fall into a solipsistic dilemma! And so the question, not of the ego point, but of ego
and alter ego, as such, shows itself as merely the difference of the degree of the originality of the way
of givenness in consciousness. The fact that the strange life of consciousness or the strange soul is
never as original as my own life of consciousness or my own soul is a "phenomenological fact" -
which cannot be solved with all hermeneutic means and tricks - to speak with Scheler. So if the
phenomenological sociologists, like the social philosophers, admit that the I is a social construct, it

1 See also Hua XV, p. 641. See also, in addition, a text written between 1925 and 1928 by Husserl (Hua XIV, text nos.
19, 387ff.) In which he also differentiated originality in three ways: primordial, secondary, and tertiary originality. The
first forms the sphere of "primordinal originality (= originality)", i. the original experience "which abstracts from all
empathy, or to make more precise this indistinct expression, does not allow for empathy, for the holdings of the alien
subject to be experienced". The second is the "secondary originality" that "gives us originality to humans and animals".
The third he calls the "tertiary originality" that "gives us cultural objects, which in turn owe their meaning to the
cultivating subjects" (Hua XIV, pp. 386-391). Iso Kern refers to these two divergent distinctions of a threefold
originality in Husserl's various versions of his unpublished manuscript, "Husserl's Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity
and its Phenomenological Philosophy - A Brief Presentation and Some Further Thoughts" (2016-2018).

15
simply means that the others and the society that are originally constructed by the ego construct the
ego as well, similar to the general interchange between Noesis and Noema.
In connection with this, we often hear the statement that Confucianism is basically
communitarianism and not individualism. Confucianism, however, is neither communitarianism nor
individualism, but unites communitarianism and individualism: holiness inside and royalty outside
(内圣外王). The best explanation for this was given by Kongzi himself: "As for the moral, he
strengthens others, since he desires to be firm, and he explains others, since he himself desires to be
enlightened." (Lunyu, VI, 28) That means Confucianism takes individuals as the point of departure
and the community as the goal, step by step: from cultivating one's own person (修身) to organizing
the family (齐家), governing the country (治国), and peacemaking in the world (平天下). The "own
person" (身: physical person) is that ego or self, of which here is the speech. The cultivation of one's
own person unites a number of factual contents: correcting the actions (格 物), realizing the
knowledge (致 知), making the willtrue (诚 意), directing the heart (or mind) (正 心). And so
Confucianism is more of a kind of pedagogy, but in the sense of self-education. Here Confucianism
and Husserl's phenomenology are very close. For both are to be called "transcendental" insofar as
they "in looking and struggling action purely inwardly directed" and practice abilities directed to the
pure subjectivity. This is also the main reason why Husserl views Buddhism as "transcendental". (See
Hua XXVII, 125)

X. "Know thyself" and "Learning to Be Human”

The discussion here began with the question "I-some" or "I-less", then took the course of
epistemological and methodological considerations to the "point-like and linear ego" and the
corresponding types of "transversal and longitudinal intuition of essence", and finally to different
directions of genetic phenomenology to achieve the becoming of the person: naturalness, habituality,
personality, interpersonality, etc.
The 24th World Conference on Philosophy, which will take place in Beijing in August 2018, will
focus on "Learning to Be Human". This already implies a moral challenge to cultivate and practice
on the basis or under the condition of self-knowledge and for the long-term purpose of perfecting
one's own person. On the one hand, the path of thought adopted here corresponds to the demand "to
know thyself" in Socrates and the "knowing oneself" in Laozi, but on the other hand agrees with the
claim "knowledge of the heart" as the first task of the practice of becoming Buddha in Buddhism.
According to a report in the classic of the Yogācāra school, Sandhinirmocana Sūtra, Shakjamuni
himself mentioned the condition of becoming Bodhisattva. In response to the question, "How can one
cultivate to attain the great majesty of a bodhisattva?", Shakjamuni replies, "When the bodhisattvas
become aware of the six supports, they are able to produce that great majesty of a bodhisattva. The
first is that they know well the arising of thought. The second is that they know well the abiding of
thought. The third is that they know well the departure of thought. The fourth is that they know well

16
the increasing of thought. The fifth is that they know well the diminution of thought. The sixth is that
they know well the methods. "1
"Knowing well" (善知) in this sense is also considered in Zen Buddhism as the first task of
gradual self-cultivation for enlightenment. Dōgen (道元, 1200-1253), a teacher of Japanese Zen
Buddhism in the early Kamakura period, writes in his book Shōbōgenzō (The Treasure Chamber of
the Knowledge of the True Dharma), "To experience the Buddha-way means to experience oneself ,
To experience oneself means to forget oneself. To forget oneself means to perceive oneself - in all
things."2 Noteworthy is the second step, "forgetting oneself" or "self-forgetfulness". He is also called
by Zen Buddhists as "heartlessness or non-heart" (无心). In cultivating practice, "self-forgetfulness"
or "I-less-ness" constitutes a mental level attainable only through meditation. The method of this
practice has a very similar function to Husserl's phenomenological method of reduction. 3 What
appears at first glance to be an antinomy between the yogācāra-Buddhist claim to "know well of the
heart" and the Zen-Buddhist to "non-heart" proves to be closer in the order of cultivating practice.
Knowledge about the "non-heart" (无心) is achieved through "knowledge of the heart" (知心), in
other words, through the descriptive determination of the "non-heart" and the normative demand for
"self-forgetfulness".
This process can also be seen as two sides of the same thing. The Zen master Zonggao (宗杲,
1089-1163) in the Southern Song Dynasty mentions in his book of the same title, Shōbōgenzō (The
Treasury of Realization of the True Dharma), two conversations on "Heart Knowledge" and "Heart
Voiding" of Zen. Master Mazu Daoyi: "A monk asks Mazu: how is the Buddha? Answer: One with
heart (即心) is the Buddha. Question: What is the way? Answer: Non-heart (无心) is the way.
Question: How far away are the Buddha and the way? Answer: The Buddha is like opening the hand,
the way is like clenching the fist." Finally: "One with heart and non-heart, this is the Buddha-way
understood.“4
From the point of view of Husserlian phenomenology, the situation also presents itself: By
phenomenological reduction of consciousness one can experience and comprehend the appearance of
the ego and the trueness of the absolute consciousness (of the heart) in the reflective gaze. This implies,
on the one hand, knowledge of the apparent nature of the ego, and of how many human weaknesses
come from holding on to the ego, and on the other hand also knowledge of the truthfulness of the ego.
All this ultimately leads to the establishment of a normative ethic based on the phenomenological
description and conceptualization of the true states of human consciousness. It contains statements

1 Sandhinirmocana Sūtra, Chapter VI, “The Analysis of Centering”: “若诸菩萨善知六处，便能引发菩萨所有广大

威德：一者善知心生，二者善知心住，三者善知心出，四者善知心增，五者善知心减，六者善知方便。”
English translation from The Scripture on the Explication of Underlying Meaning, translated by John P. Keenan, Numata
Center for Buddhist Translation and Research: Berkeley, California 2000, p. 72.
2 道元，《正法眼藏》，宗教文化出版社：北京，2017 年，第 19 页，Deutsche Übersetzung von Manfred
Eckstein, Dōgen Zenji, Shōbōgenzō. Die Schatzkammer der Erkenntnis der wahren Dharma, Werner Kristkeitz Verlag:
Zürich/München/Berlin, S. 116, Hervorhebung von mir.
3 Vgl. Fasching, Wolfgang, Phänomenologische Reduktion und Mushin: Edmund Husserls Bewusstseinstheorie und
der Zen-Buddhismus, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg i.Br. 2003.
4 宗杲：《正法眼藏》，卷第二之上，卷第二之下：“僧问马祖：如何是佛？曰：即心是佛。云：如何是道？
曰：无心是道。云：佛与道相去多少？曰：佛如展手，道如握拳。”因此，“即心无心，是为通达佛道。”
（载：《卍新续藏》，第 67 册，No. 1309 [0582c07], [0601a24]）

17
about self-consciousness and self-being, as well as observations about becoming a person. In this way,
it fulfills the presupposed role of self-knowledge, "knowledge of the heart," and on that basis
formulates assertions and calls for ethical practice, both natural and habitual.
And so "knowing thyself" in Socrates, as "knowing oneself" in Laozi, are in line with a task set
by Zhuxi (朱熹), "only two things: understanding and practicing": thus learning to know oneself, and
letting go of the fake, apparent ego, in order to become a sage (saint) in the sense of Laozi or
enlightened being (bodhisattva) in the sense of Buddha.

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(Translated by Chen Hao)

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 Self – A Phenomenological Account:
Temporality, Intersubjectivity, Embodiment1

Sara Heinämaa
Academy of Finland, University of Jyväskylä

European philosophy is today often criticized and attacked as an outdated form of thinking, unable to
address the problems of today’s world. It is characterized as individualistic, anthropocentric and
Euro-centric and contrasted to supposedly more pluralistic, communitarian and ecological approaches,
put forward and elaborated most vigorously in contemporary political philosophy, philosophy of
nature and ontology.
Post human(istic), new realistic, materialistic and neovitalistic movements of thought aim at
taking on this challenge by creating alternative conceptualizations for the service of global politics of
equality and justice – not just for all human beings and cultures, but also for the animal kingdom and
ultimately for the earth itself. One of the most prevalent arguments put forward in these discussions
is the claim that the philosophical landscape of Europe must and can be remodeled by fresh
conceptual tools offered by pre-Cartesian forms of thinking, on the one hand, and by non-European
traditions of learning, wisdom and political thinking, on the other. A third, growingly popular set of
concepts is found in mathematical and mathematized natural sciences, most importantly in system
theory, quantum physics and set theory.
What is common to all these approaches is the conviction that the main source of the problems
of contemporary European philosophy lie in its inherited Cartesianism. If this holds, then all Cartesian
principles would have to be uprooted from European thinking if it is to revivified, reinvigorated and
re-energized. The dualistic framework that Descartes left for us as a philosophical heritage – the
framework in which thinking is opposed to extension, mind to body, and ego to whatever remains
alien to it – has to be replaced by a monistic ontology, be it that of unprecedented events or of dynamic
forces and processes.
The Cartesian ego cogito – the thinking self – is taken to be reformulated by Kant in his
contention that the ego is a form that accompanies all our representations. In this Kantian
reformulation, the ego is nothing but a formal factor, a mere form of thinking and experiencing, and
thus universally the same for all human subjects, independently of historical, cultural, spatial and
bodily factors.
However, this Kantian version of Cartesianism is not the only possible way of interpreting and
developing Descartes’ arguments about the centrality of the ego. In this talk, I want to question the
dominant Kantian understanding of Cartesianism by arguing that the basic aspiration of Descartes’
philosophy can and has been developed by 20th century phenomenologists and in a direction that
differs from Kantianism. (The two phenomenologists who most innovatively have developed
Descartes’ philosophical insights are the founder of the phenomenological movement Edmund
Husserl and his French critic Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In his late work The Visible and the Invisible,

1 This is a draft. Do not cite this in public. For the final version of the paper, please, contact the author.

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Merleau-Ponty even contends that the debate on Cartesianism is senseless: “The question does not
make much sense, since those who reject this or that in Descartes do so only in terms of reasons which
owe much to Descartes”.
I will here follow Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s expositions and argue that the self that
constitutes the sense of the world is not a solus ipse nor a mere form of representations. Rather than
being a solitary agent or a formal principle, the sense-constituting self is a dynamic formation with
temporal thickness and social embeddedness. Moreover, the phenomenological self is not merely the
subject of the intellectual acts of thinking but also lives in affective sensibility and motility, and in
expression and communication. Thus, the self is not just bound to declare “I think” but is also prone
to state “I sense”, “I suffer”, “I move and I am moved”, “I smile and I am addressed and called”.

1. Temporality

In the fourth of his Cartesian Meditations, Husserl clarifies the account of selfhood by distinguishing
between three different senses: first, the self as an act-pole, second, the personal self (personales Ich,
Person), and finally the self in its full concreteness as a monad. All these distinctions are already in
operation in the second volume of Husserl’s Ideas from the 1910s, but Husserl does not explicate
them fully or clearly until Cartesian Meditations, first published at the end of the 1920s.
In Husserl’s explication, the self as an act-pole is the subject of intentional acts, that is, the self
merely studied as the performer of acts. Husserl argues that every act discernible from the stream of
intentional experiencing radiates or emanates from one identical center; every intentional act is given
to us as such a ray.
The stream of experiencing must thus be conceived as a stream of the egoic acts of intending.
But for Husserl, egoic acts include, not only the theoretical acts of thinking, judging, knowing and
believing, but also the axiological acts of emotion and feeling and the practical acts of willing,
desiring and deciding, and all in their various modes. Moreover, the stream of egoic consciousness
also involves moments in which the ego is passive and operates in the dative form, so to so speak,
rather than in the nominative. “I think” and the “I judge” thus lternate with “I love”, “I hate”, “I
regret”, “I hope”, “I want”, “I decide”, “I enjoy”, “I receive”, and “I am moved and affected”.
So, to begin with, the self, as disclose by phenomenological analyses, is the pole of all the
multiple acts – factual and possible – that stand out from the streaming continuum of consciousness.
It is as if the acts were centered round the self – in a similar manner as they are centered round the
object-poles. However, having made this basic point, Husserl argues that the self is not merely an act-
pole or a common center of transient acts. It also has a temporal structure, and as such refers back to
its own past. Acts are not isolated atom-like units but have internal references to one another and thus
form an integrated continuum.
Husserl uses the terminology of “habits” (Habitus, Habitualität) to describe the temporal
constitution of the self as distinct from the self as the performer of acts. He warns that we should not
take this terminology in the everyday sense of routines and social customs. The reference is to certain
processes in internal time in which intentional acts are established and new acts are layered on earlier
ones thus forming a kind of activity-form or activity-gestalt. This gestalt is unique to the individual,

22
and we can thus say that the self has a specific mode or style of acting.
Husserl calls “transcendental person” (or “personality” of the transcendental self) (Person,
Pesönlichkeit) the gestalt that is formed in the establishment and habituation of acts in internal time.
For him, the self is not a momentary actor, that wills, enjoys and posits being, but the self has always
already willed, has enjoyed and has posited being. The self is not merely the totality of simultaneous
acts but has an immanent “history” of intentional acting, formed in internal time. In other words, the
self has a genesis, an internal past and origin. And more: the self is its own past.
Husserl illuminates the process of the habituation of acts, both in the second volume of Ideas
and in Cartesian Meditations, by studying the case of judgment formation. He explains that always
when we make a judgment, the judgment becomes our own in a specific way: it becomes part of our
transcendental habitus. The judgment remains our own in this way, until we refute it by another act,
and after this it still remains ours as a judgment once held and acted on, and then refuted. This does
not mean that we repeat the judgment in every moment until we refute it, but that we are, from the
very moment of making the judgement, the ones who thus judge and believe.
For example, when my perception of a patter on the roof motivates me to believe that it is raining
outside, I am bound to the reality of rain and the presence of raindrops. My judgment is transient and
passing: after a moment I am back again in my work, absorbed in the texts that I am reading. The
patter of raindrops no longer occupies the center of my attention but has moved into the background
of my experience. But in this process, I have not ceased to “be” the one who believes that it is raining;
I am still bound to the reality of the rain, even though I no longer actively posit the being of the
raindrops.
The permanence of belief manifests itself in my responses: if I were asked about the patter, even
when absorbed in my work, I would answer – without hesitation – that it is due to rain. The conviction
also shows in non-verbal ways in my behavior. When I go out, for example, I take an umbrella and
put on rubber boots. It is (perhaps) only when I open the door and see the clear blue sky and the
neighbor’s children with the watering hose, that I come to abandon my belief. However, I do not thus
return to the earlier moment or to my life as it was before I paid attention to the patter and judged that
it is raining. Instead, now, after the abandonment of the belief, I “am” the person that “was” convinced
of the reality of rain but “is” not anymore.
In a similar way, when my love dies, I do not in any miraculous way get rid of or liberate myself
from this emotion, but continue carrying it in myself, now in the mode of the past. It is not that I think
that I was mistaken about my feelings, that I had confused love with friendship, desire or lust, for
example. I am aware that I really have loved, but at the same time I am aware that I have lived through
and have passed this love, and that the feeling belongs to my past. I do not live anymore as loving –
now I live as having loved.
Husserl emphasizes that we should not confuse the permanence of decision, belief or emotion,
with the experience of remembering or imagining such states. It is of course possible for me to
remember my experience of a recent shower of rain – really and genuinely recall it as past – but only
after I have abandoned my conviction of the presence of raindrops. As long as I hold the belief, or
carry the emotion, as long as I have not refuted it, I can always return to it and I find it unchanged
and as my own, as part of me. According to Husserl, the permanence of the conviction holds even

23
through sleep. He claims:

Likewise (as in judgment) in the case of all kinds of decisions, value-decisions and volitional decisions.
I decide: the act-process vanishes but the decision persists; whether I become passive and sink into heavy
sleep or live through other acts, the decision is continuously in validity and, correlatively, I am so decided
from then on, as long as I do not give the decision up.

So as a summary, we can say that with the concept of transcendental person as defined in the
fourth Cartesian Meditation, Husserl starts a new discussion about the temporality of the
transcendental self: the act-pole is an identical center of acts, but the concrete self, the person, is a
structure formed in internal time by the habituation of experiences, transient as acts but permanent as
accomplishments and layered one upon another. The act-pole and the person are not two separate
parts, levels, or phases of the self but essentially bound together, and only distinguishable by analysis.
This explication helps us to see that Husserl transcendental self is very different from that of
Kant: is not universal but individual, it is not fixed or stable but in constant change, it is not beyond
time but trans-temporal. With this understanding of the self, it also becomes easier to see why and
how Husserl would argue that the constitutive basis of the sense of world is not in the transcendental
self but is in the community of such selves, that is, in transcendental intersubjectivity:

The transcendence of the world consists in its being constituted by means of others, by means of
generatively constituted co-subjectivity. It is through the others that the world acquires its ontic sense as
an infinite world.

2. Intersubjectivity and Generativity

In his manuscripts on intersubjectivity from the 20s, Husserl argues that the full sense of the world is
a constitutive achievement of an open community of transcendental selves. The experiencing ego
does not establish the sense of the world by itself or in solitary activity but constitutes this sense in
community and communication with other egos. “Subjectivity is what it is – an ego functioning
constitutively – only within intersubjectivity”, Husserl famously states in The Crisis of European
Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy.
Focusing on such arguments and reflections, contemporary Husserl scholarship has rectified the
surprisingly persistent and tenacious misconception that classical transcendental phenomenology is a
simple reformulation of Kantianism. Its demonstrates that for Husserl the constitutive source of
worldliness is not in an ego that isolates itself from everything alien nor in a universal principle or
form shared by all egos equally and without distinctions.
If one wants to find a proper philosophical predecessor for Husserl’s transcendentalism one must
take seriously his references to Leibniz’ monadology. This comparison helps to accentuate Husserl’s
argument that the constitutive ground of the objective world is in an endless multiplicity of egos
which harmoniously interact with one another. The monadic harmony is not a pre-established state
for Husserl but is a historical task. The radically historical reformulation of the idea of harmony
becomes possible for Husserl since he conceives subjectivity as essentially and deeply temporal and
as including sensibility and living bodiliness. What we have therefore is not a stable fraternity of pure
24
spirits but a communicative becoming of embodied egos with unique styles of acting and receiving.
In Husserl’s manuscripts on intersubjectivity we read:

Thus subjectivity expands into intersubjectivity, or rather, more precisely, it does not expand, but
transcendental subjectivity understands itself better. It understands itself as a primordial monad that
intentionally carries within itself other monads.

The constituting self is intentionally tied to other constituting selves, and together, in
communicative interaction, these selves establishes the full sense of the world. We find this idea of
transcendental intersubjectivity paraphrased in several different ways by Husserl himself as well as
by his early interpreters. Merleau-Ponty, for example, underscores the operative bodiliness of
transcendental subjects and uses the metaphors of crossroads to illuminate their constitutive
connection:

Transcendental subjectivity is a revealed subjectivity, revealed to itself and to others, and is for that
reason an intersubjectivity.

The phenomenological world is not pure being, but the sense which is revealed where the paths of my
various experiences intersect, and also where my own and other people’s intersect and engage each others
like gears. It is thus inseparable from subjectivity and intersubjectivity, which find their unity when I
either take up my past experiences in those of the present, or other people’s in my own.

Husserl argues that the world, by essence, is shared by all possible egos, actual and possible,
present and future. If this holds, then the world can consciously be intended as such only by those
egos who are aware of their own mortality. The idea of future others – successors and descendants –
does not make sense unless we are able to conceive our own lives as finite formations, delimited by
the interruptive event of death. In other words, an ego who lacks the sense of her own temporal limits
is unable to conceive any future others. More concretely, only those who are able to grasp their own
death as a possibility, can consciously have successor and descendants and share the world, not just
with contemporary others, but also with others to come. Thus, the constituting subject of the world
in its fullness is the open community of egos conscious of their own temporal limits.
In order to get to the core of Husserl’s argument that the full sense of the world is constituted by
a generative community of egos, it is instructive to study two special cases: the infant and the animal.
Both are excluded by Husserl from the collective of world-constitutors and on the same grounds:
neither experiences itself as a member of a generation that is connected to other generations and to
an open totality of generations by the means of narration and writing.
Husserl contends that both the infant and the animal consciously participate and intentionally
live in many different types of communities of contemporaries, and even in communities that use
signs for multiple practical purposes. However, what he considers crucial is that neither the infant nor
the animal experiences itself as a being who is born and who will die, a being who shares a communal
past and future with other similar beings that are not present, and cannot become present, in flesh and
blood.

25
 The others who in our mature human experience are separated from us by (our) birth and (our)
death are not just contingently absent for us but absent in their very essence: some lived before our
birth, and others will live after our death. Neither type of other can be intended by infant and animal
subjects in so far as these subjects lack the sense of themselves as natal and mortal beings.
We mature adults can reach both types of absent other by means of language, and this can be
realized in several different ways. For example, we hear and read stories about our ancestors and we
may address such others in prayer or orison, but we can also capture their very words as repeated by
our older contemporaries and we can read their writing without any mediation of third parties (or any
mediation other than language). Similarly, we can address our successors by our own writing and we
can rehearse our younger contemporaries to repeat our own words for others. This all is senseless for
the infant and the animal in so far as they do not understand themselves as mortal and natal beings
who have generations of others behind and ahead of them in time. Husserl explains:

An animal (…) does not have a unity of time which spans over generations as historical time nor a unity
of the world which continues through time, it does not ‘have’ this consciously. We, we human beings,
are the ones who have the chains, the successions and branching of (animal, originally: ant) generations
etc. in our world as valid for us. The animal itself has no generative world in which it would live
consciously, no conscious existence in an open endlessness of generations and correlatively no existence
in a genuine environing world, which we humans, anthropomorphizing, attribute to it.

Several deprivations or lacks are implied by the fundamental lack of generative time and trans-
generational communication: in so far as the infant and the animal have no conscious membership in
chains of generations, they cannot participate in transgenerational practices and cannot share the
accomplishments of such practices. This deprives them of culture and cultural tradition in a crucial
sense: cultural-historical goals that are shared with multiple generations in an endless openness;
cultural-historical tools and utensils that are retained, maintained and repaired in the view of coming
generations; and ultimately the cultural-historical world with contains all this openness.
Many familiar animals can of course use practical instruments. In Husserl’s analysis, such
objects are given, and can be given, to the animals in question only in a temporally restricted way,
and thus their givenness is crucially different from the givenness of human tools. Animal and infantile
tools are used merely, or at best, for present purposes and they are only shared with contemporaries.
They are not, and cannot be, experienced by animals and infants as objects inherited from
predecessors nor as objects shared with successors, since the experience of permanently absent others
– other that cannot be or become perceivable – is not articulated for these subjects. In other words,
animal and infantile tools do not, in their practical sense, imply asynchronous non-contemporary
others who share goals with present users despite their fundamental separation in time.

Thus, Husserl argues that the senses of culture, tradition and history go hand in hand, and that
all these senses depend on the senses of death and birth. For him, no subject who lacks these
fundamental senses can intend cultural objectivities as such. Moreover, the historicity and the infinity
of the world itself also depends on the fundamental experiential senses of mortality and generativity.
The open endlessness of generations is necessary for our experience of the world as an infinitely open

26
whole. More limited senses of world, that is, the world as an environment or the world as an operative
field are possible for non-generative subjects, but the full sense of the world as an endless openness
is possible only for subjects who consciously connect to one another in an endless and endlessly
branching chain of generations.

27
 The Self

Theophilus Okere
President, Whelan Research Academy, Owerri, Nigeria

At this World Congress of Philosophy, it is proper that the situation of the world, all the world, draw
the attention and solicitude of the world’s philosophers. In these multicultural, global times, it is
urgent that philosophy attend to the situation with realism and see here an opportunity to help
humanity towards achieving its natural finality. Today’s world appears to have a dangerous mix of
growing incompatibilities and contradictions, more vice than virtue, more injustice than justice and
the growing poverty of the many facing helplessly the insolent and almost unlimited power of the
few.
What poet Robert Burns defined classically as “man’s inhumanity to man” has only gotten worse
in the centuries that followed. Philosophy must somehow come to the rescue by becoming a real force
of reconciliation and of restoring the humanity of man. It must undertake seriously its job of teaching
man to be human again. And it is in the light of this that I see the place and purpose of my assigned
title on the self.
The self is at the center of what or who is considered human, but in the context of
multiculturalism and pluralism which this congress must also represent, I see my contribution as
offering to the world an African philosophical version to be taken into account, if philosophy is to be
global and comprehensive and if philosophy is to contribute meaningfully to the mutual
understanding that will really help man to be human again. The self is a primary, simple but complex
concept, not easily definable in other terms. The self is, of course, that which each one of us is, but it
seems susceptible to different colorings and conceptualizations in each culture, language, or
philosophic elaboration.
Let us introduce our discussion of the self by first adumbrating the current or commonsensical
understanding of the term. In general, the self is that, whether it is “myself”, “yourself” or another
“self”, which is the subject or author of action, thought or intention at the human level. He or she is
the ultimate actor or agent as well as the carrier of responsibility. The self is the entity behind all the
complexity and unity of attribution, of remembering, reflection, action and passion. The self is the
complete, embodied consciousness- the “I am” plus the I have been”, the “I was” plus the “I will be”-
in other words, the unity and continuity of the subject in time. The self is the sum total of the biological,
psychological, spiritual, historical and cultural continuous identity which one has carried since ever
one can remember and obviously even since before one can remember. Thus, to qualify to be a “self”,
one must be human, that is to say, a person. To talk of the self of dogs or horses or elephants, nay the
“self” of moral entities, such as the “self” of countries or areas like the USA or Taiwan or Vietnam
or of institutions such as the United Nations, can only be a derivative way of speaking, a metaphor.
Thus the “self” in the expression” myself” is not equivalent to the “self” in “itself”, the sea “itself”
or Nigeria “itself”. While self does not always just mean “self-same” or “idem” as it often does, the
human “self” connotes even more, it carries all the weight of the human personality, with all its
properties of rationality and capability of motion and emotion, of action and passion, agency and

28
responsibility. Human selfhood connotes personhood in the sense that this has been understood
starting from the Christian Church’s definition of the Trinity as three persons in one God in Nicaea,1
to the definitive definition of personhood by the Roman, Christian philosopher/theologian Boethius.2
The Self itself is the core of identity. It has its own properties and activities. The Self is also a
moral entity capable of responsibility. The Self is the “he “or “she” or “I”, but apparently not the
“they” or “the We”. Why? Because the plural is not sufficiently one, substantial, consistent or ultimate.
Thus, the plural as an agglomeration of selves, is itself not a “self”.
The “self” maybe looked at analytically from each of the various perspectives in which the
phenomenon of “self” manifests itself. From this point of view and, granted the stream of
consciousness that seems to suggest unity and continuity, one can legitimately ask: Is there one and
only one individual self or are there several selves perhaps intermittent in time, captured, organized
and unified in the one individual by some mechanism? Are some “selves” fake or false? Are some
forms of the “self” mere epiphenomena? Is there a public “self”, a play-acting “self” a private “self”?
Is there a psychological “self” as distinct from a physical “self”? Is there even a transcendental “self”,
the “self” of our memories, our plans and hopes? Is there an immortal “self” that hopes to survive
into a life with no end, a life after this life? With these questions yet unanswered, one can say that for
all that we think we know about the “self”, it remains an enigmatic entity, vague, and non-descript
like the” soul” which has acquired not only some dualistic associations since Plato but even more
religious association especially since Christianity. Of course, the soul was to be saved from crass
dualism by Aristotle,3 for example in his De Anima, where he made sure to assign this entity as the
principle of life and the form of the body in living things.
But it was with the advice,” man know thyself”, attributed to Socrates,4 after the heavy emphasis
the physiocrats5 laid on nature and the Urstoff of the world, that we have perhaps in the history of
western philosophy, the first serious launch into philosophical anthropology and the first call for the
philosophical search for the “self”. It was a battle-cry that was to rally many of the biggest names in
Western Philosophy6 all through its long history. A “self”- search through introspection led the great
minds through all the branches of philosophy that have to do directly or indirectly with man, notably
epistemology or the philosophy of knowledge, but also psychology or the philosophy of the human
soul or “psyche” and ethics or the philosophy of human behavior, of right and wrong, of good and
evil.
But these notions of the “self” though often generalized for humanity are not necessarily obvious
to everyone; not a priori or per se nota to all of us. Each notion has had a pedigree, a “Herkunft” and
has been or is being absorbed and assimilated into our conceptual apparatus as modern philosophers
or educated contemporaries of the 21st century. But a lot of it is a patrimony we have inherited from
our merging cultures and other interests and especially from the thinkers who have become available
and prominent in the last four hundred years.
And so, over the centuries of the history of philosophy, there have evolved a number of emphases,
colorations or constellations of the self, what one might call types of self, clustering around some
subsection of philosophy. That is how we now have come to have what can be roughly grouped as
follows:

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 The Epistemological “Self”: This is the “self” mainly conceived as homo cognoscens or cogitans,
man as knower or thinker. Here we can group the contributions of Plato,7 Aristotle,8 Aquinas,9
Descartes,10 Hume11 and Kant.12 These authors emphasize and privilege self- consciousness and
knowledge as the distinctive mark of the “self”. Though man is acknowledged here as animal
rationalist, it is the rational rather than the animal element in him that gets disproportionate emphasis.
The self is seen here essentially as the knowing self, the res cogitans of Descartes13 or as Kant14 might
put it, the one able to comprehend the manifold of representations in one consciousness or in the
synthetical unity of apperception.
The Psychological “Self”: Aristotle’s study of the “self” in his DE ANIMA15 is typical. Here the
“self” is an embodied, fully integrated soul, where the soul, thanks to the hylemorphic theory, is the
form of the body and where the soul is the act and the body the potency. Plato has the soul not so
much integrated as imprisoned in the body, while in both Plato and Aristotle, the soul is spiritual,
immaterial and even immortal, though for Plato again, the real “self” would be the soul, able to have
access to the world of ideas and whose presence in the body is likened to an imprisonment: “soma
sema”.16
The Ethical “Self”, Confucius philosophy of the self is nicely summarized by D.C. Lau’s: “there
is no individual, no ‘self’ or ‘soul’- that remains once the layers of social relations are peeled away.
One is one’s roles and relationships.”17 Ren is the process of becoming a person, actually a process
of practicing the social virtues, justly responsible roles in society in a selfless way. 18 The European
Middle Ages and its dominant religion, Christianity19 helped to produce a version of the “self” which
subsists till today, a version marked by a special religious sense of God as the Supreme Being, of
man as creature and sinner and endowed with a conscience and an eternal destiny. Added to this is
the increased modern focus on freewill and, in still more modern philosophy, on freedom in general
and we see the rise of the ethical self. This is the “self” as homo agens - the acting, behaving human
being, man as a responsible agent and as the free actor capable of reward or punishment. The self is
the homo ethicus, capable and condemned to be capable of doing right or wrong and having both
responsibilities and rights.
Some authors, including David Hume seem to interchange the concepts of self and person and
one may presume that Locke’s comprehensive definition of person would also be his concept of self
if he had used that term. “We must consider what person stands for”, says Locke, “which I think is a
thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same
thinking thing, in different times and places…. It is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their
merit and so belongs only to intelligent animals capable of a law and happiness and misery,”20 here
combining the emphases on both the epistemological and the ethical self.

The Tilt to The Epistemological Self in Western Philosophy

Even these various perspectives of the “self” have come to be reduced to that of the homo cogitans-
cognoscens, the thinking-knowing self. This rather partial and arguably biased understanding of the
“self”, though heavily influenced by Christianity, became more dominant in modern, post-medieval
philosophy. David Hume it was, who by his doubts and skepticism about the certainty of knowledge,

30
ironically, unwittingly and perhaps unwillingly enhanced the status of human knowledge and of the
mind as the most noble or typical property of man. Kant himself confessed that Hume woke him up
from his dogmatic slumber and so launched him on his journey of Critique of human knowledge, its
limits and capabilities, in the process continuing to privilege knowledge as the core task of the human
person. We also have clear and distinct ideas of Descartes’ definition of the knowing person as “une
chose pensante, “a thinking thing” and of his clear lines between mind and body21. It is the mind that
knows and the mind alone that defines and represents the “self”. Kant’s idea of the “self” is that of
the subject, who, though he cannot reach the noumenon, has only been equipped to be the keen
observer and master knower of phenomena as well as wielding the transcendental apperception of “I
think”.22 Hegel may take refuge in the Absolute, but the absolute for him is essentially the absolute
mind, the ultimate knower, rather than maker- the absolute is the true and the true is the absolute- and
the whole of history is the phenomenology of the mind.23 Gadamer approvingly quotes Heidegger’s
own verdict that “Understanding (Verstehen) is the original living out form of”, that “ Understanding
is the way of being of Dasein”, and that “Understanding is the original way of being of human life
itself”.24 Grosso modo, there came to reign in western philosophy the assumption that the human self
was essentially the human mind and it can be said that it was this partial grasp of the “self” as the
knowing I, the ultimate knowing subject, that has dictated and dominated the reigning concept that
finally gave idealism the right of city and enhanced rationalism and individualism, while promoting
the Enlightenment as a comprehensive expression of humanism. All these perspectives contributed
to the inordinate cult of the individual which also culminated in the cult of individualism as a universal,
modern ideology. This was enhanced, popularized and even internalized by Christianity in both its
dogma, its morals and in all its catechetical pedagogy until it became incorporated as tradition. The
net result has been an individualist account of morality and indeed of salvation in Christian Theology.
With this, we have today, again, under the impetus of the Protestant Reformation, with its new
ideology of sola scriptura and that of scriptura sui interpres, a near-total privatization of both
morality and Religion. Today we have also a near devaluation of all religion, public opinion polls
only indicating uninformed private opinions and a public opinion devoid of a public moral conscience
and therefore ultimately with no ethics of the collectivity, no responsible communal or corporate
selfhood or personality, and, therefore ultimately, with no responsibility beyond that of the private
individual.25 This Christian tradition has naturally graduated into “the western tradition”. Hence even
in modern international law, unlimited and unbridled national sovereignty is guided and judged only
by the criterion of ‘self-interest”. But such an “individual”, reduced to this private, emaciated version,
shorn of relationships, isolated and severely alone, has never existed and can never exist. It is a pure
abstraction, an artificial creation of the analytical and abstracting mind.
But the “self” remains an elusive subject, and the great philosophers and their modern
commentators in their reflections on the “self”, cannot all be said to be talking of one and the same
concept. Cicero once said that there were as many opinions as there were human beings. Quot
homines, tot sententiae! There are as many opinions as there are human beings and so, the
disquisitions on the “self” in Kant, Descartes and Sartre may amount to no more than each one talking
creatively on a variety of concepts or reconstructions of a presumably univocal concept. Above all,
we should bear in mind that there is bound to be less clarity in the designation of immaterial or

31
abstract entities such as the self; for while the body and its parts may be relatively easy to designate
and name, there is commonly less consensus in defining what is precisely spirit and complex, and to
what extent it is distinct from psyche, the mind, the soul, reason, understanding or, for some today,
the brain. Even the English spirit does not quite translate the French “esprit” and neither is equal or
same with the German “Geist.”
Some may be scandalized that a common concept like the “self” may not be taken for granted
as obvious and per se nota, a universal one, transcending all cultures and times. But it should be clear
today, as the Hermeneutical revolution26 has taught us, that concepts, ideas and philosophies
originating from man are fundamentally infected by an ineluctable historicity and temporality and are
therefore culture-laden and culture-bound and must therefore reflect and bear the imprint of their
origins and formation. Concepts are not merely products of nature like mountains and seas, but rather
products of time and place, of their process of formation and of their cultural environment, in other
words, products of time and history, and we may add, products of the language that expresses them,
that is, also products of the people who produce them. The concept of “self” cannot be an exception.
The question then may be framed thus: What is the nature of the self as perceived, expressed,
suggested or somehow indicated by elements of Igbo/African culture, more specifically, the language
via the names, proverbs, sayings and other elements of African culture?

Etymologically Speaking

The best practice in philosophizing has always been to philosophize in one’s own language. The best
and greatest philosophers have set the example. Martin Heidegger has famously explored and
exploited to great effect, the hidden possibilities of the German language as illustrated in all his
writings but most brilliantly in Sein und Zeit. One only needs to study his ingenious analysis of the
word Fragen, question.27 I wish to be permitted therefore, admittedly on a much more modest level,
to attempt to base the rest of this lecture on the self, relying on and inspired by some close analysis
and use of the resources of the Igbo language, my first language, a language familiar to those who
ever read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.28 I am attaching a generous glossary to the notes to
help interested and keen readers better appreciate our presentation and argument.
To investigate the concept of the “self” in Igbo culture, one starts naturally with the commonest
usages as they occur in the expressions: myself, yourself, himself, etc. In Igbo one refers to oneself,
as Mụ nwa -Myself, Gi nwa-Yourself, Ha nwa- Themselves, where Mụ means” I”, Gị means “you”,
and Ha means “they”. The attached nwa is a demonstrative which means “This here”. Thus, Mụ nwa,
literally “This I” or “I here,” is essentially an emphatic pronoun. But the primitive noun that names
the “self”, the core concept in the structure of the “self” is ONWE as in Onwe m “myself”, onwe gị
“yourself”, onwe ya “himself” or “herself.” Nwe, which seems to be the original root, means to own;
onwe would then mean “he who owns,” an owner. Thus, the above-mentioned expressions would
translate literally: Onwe m- “he who owns me” or “myself,” onwe gị - “he who owns you” or
“yourself,” etc. Onwe is therefore a self-owner, an independent self, unattached to no one else.
Dialectal variations would include ike m and ogwe m, each with rather more obscure etymologies. Ike
could possibly derive from the root -ke meaning division or creation and Ike m could originally be

32
construed as my portion or my own piece of reality. Ogwe is literally a log and in its use as self, is
reminiscent of the expression commonly used by witnesses: anom noshishi m ya emee literally “I was
there in my trunk when it happened,” that is, planted there and solidly present as myself. The nearest
other term is the “Onye,” the “who”, as in English depicting only humans, that is persons, but not the
self.

Onwe, Ike, Ogwe

Onwe or Ike or Ogwe roughly meaning self, is the core subject of identity that perdures and endures
all human experience. It is barely describable and even less definable as it has no name and no
function except as the ultimate author of all the functions of the individual human person and the
carrier of all experience. It is the link between the experiences of yesterday and today, the basis of
that proprietorship by which these fleeting multitudes of experience are connected and are mine. The
onwe or “self” is that part of me (in a manner of speaking, because it is not just, and cannot be just, a
part of me) of which I cannot speak in the third person. The possessive adjective m in Onwe m (my
in myself) is not exactly the same as the m in ahu m (the my in “my body”) which latter does convey
some distance, some alterity, a subject-object relationship. Self is not an object but rather the ultimate
subject. As the saying goes, myself is myself: Onwe m bu onwe m. Here we are talking of identity as
distinct from mere equivalence.
The “self” is the basic unit of autonomy. If the etymology of onwe traces back to the root -nwe,
to own, then one must remark how perfectly this fits in with the Igbo expression for freedom. While
the Greek would say: We are free because we are autonomous,29 that is, we give ourselves our own
laws, the Igbo, instead of using the idea of lawgiving and self-lawgiving, would define their freedom
from the idea of ownership and self-ownership. To say that we are a free people is: Anyi nwe onwe
anyi -, We own ourselves or negatively, Ọdịgh onye nwe anyị nị, i.e., there is no one who owns us.”
Freedom is therefore conceived as self- ownership; a free person is a self-owning “self”. The basic
assumption is that the “self” is not owned by any other. The expression Onye nwem nị - He who owns
me, though occurring mostly as a flattering, endearing invocation, is used to designate the closest
relationship, especially of blood. Ndi nwegị nị-those who own you - designates the most immediate
family, the innermost circle and last line of defense for the individual. It is the utmost insult and
challenge to threaten someone with: Mmechaa gị ihe m echere ndi nwegịnị, i.e., after dealing with
you I will wait to deal with those who own you, that is your most intimate family, those to whom you
are precious and who would be your most reliable defense. But basically, to be free is to be one’s
own owner and not be owned by anyone else.

Muo or Spirit

But around the kernel of Onwe, Ike and Ogwe or “self “, there is a cluster of other elements most
intimately involved with it and somehow contributing to its makeup. Here perhaps lies the very
specificity of the Igbo concept of self as Igbo, since in other cultures a constellation of other elements
might come into play as in the “body and soul” formulas common in some cultures. For that reason,
the concept of self cannot be the same in all cultures and it is the specificity of the Igbo concept that
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I now set out to demonstrate. In Igbo, foremost among the contributive elements is Muo or Spirit.
Muo is a metaphysical concept designating a class of beings, invisible, inaudible, untouchable but
more living and more powerful than man. Although Muo is the principal, generic name for immaterial,
superhuman beings, gods, ancestors, masquerades and ghosts, it is used also to designate the
immaterial but most active constituent element in the human being. This indicates that man is thought
of as sharing, in some way, in the peculiar being of spirit or that there is spirit in man. The Muo or
spirit in man is clearly conceived as the cause or principle of life in the individual because when
someone dies it is often said that his spirit has left, his muo has gone out.
Further usage of the notion of spirit shows that it is regarded as the seat of emotions as when it
is said that “What he said quite killed my spirit, dispirited or demoralized me”30 “What he said
touched me in the spirit, in my inmost depths.”31 And when we say: My spirit refused to accept it (a
suggestion). My spirit rejects it”.32, we are talking of a deliberative power within me, that is identical
with me, that is deciding for or with me. Muo is therefore conceived as the intangible, invisible
element in man, the seat of will and emotions, the principle of life and point of connection, similarity
and sharing with the world of spirits. It is the spirit, the Muo in man that is responsible for the
following activities without which the idea of Onwe/Self could neither emerge nor be sustained:

Thinking, considering, reflecting33 with some anxiety over one’s lot. Thinking out, remembering,
recalling,34 plucking, grasping, understanding.35 Deliberating on something.36 Being wise, clever.37
Imagining.38 Planning.39

These and all such activities derive from the Muo or spirit in man. A dead man cannot perform
them, neither can an animal or any being lacking spirit. They are therefore typical of the “self” of
which Muo is some-how a constituent part and it is from its aspect as Muo that the “self” can do them.
Notice that as many as these activities of muo/spirit are, unlike in other traditions that virtually reduce
the self to the intellect or mind, here the muo is seen as only one of many constituent elements of the
self.

Obi or the Heart

To take care of a whole variety of functions and emotional and moral attitudes that add to the make-
up of the self, the Igbo use the concept of Obi -literally the heart. It is the psychological center of
emotions, sensations, attitudes and sympathy.40 There are distinctions between heart and heart, that
is, between self and self, A heart that is mature or ripe, means a brave heart41. A heart break is the
splitting or cracking of the heart42; onye obi miri (a person of watery heart) means a weakly,
sentimental person43.
Beyond the psychological role it plays, the Obi has also moral relevance and function. 43 (lit. a
heart dry like firewood) means a wicked one.44(lit. a quiet, soft heart) means gentleness and meekness;
45
a strong heart means heartlessness, 46 a bad or ugly heart means wickedness and cruelty47, while a
good or beautiful heart, obi ọma means kindness;48 a heart of pity means a sympathetic, merciful and
pitying heart49. For all practical purposes, Obi is the seat and center of virtue and vice, of conscience
and morality and as such, a significant constituent of the self.

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 The expression Mkpuru obi “the seed of the heart”, the heart of the heart accurately designates
the anatomical heart of an animal or man. But in one of those notorious twists of missionary/colonial
linguistic history by which a foreign concept is foisted rather incommensurably on a native word, it
has acquired a strange but strategic function in Igbo Christian theology and catechesis, as it has been
used to translate the Christian concept of the soul, that spiritual element in man destined eventually
for eternal life and salvation or eternal doom or damnation. Yet the heart (Obi) often is said to know,
to hide or tell information. There is a classic proverb to the effect that the heart will not deny
information to its grandfather.50 Here the grandfather is the Owner, the onwe, the “self”. The
expression is used to extract or extort hidden information from a close relation on the basis of the
assumption that there can be no secrets when relations are so close, just as the heart keeps no secrets
from the “self” to whom it is so close. This shows that the Obi(heart) reveals and confesses to the
“self” whatever it knows, that the Obi is itself not the “self” or Onwe, but relates to the Onwe (self)
as child to grandfather, and that it is the Onwe that is the core of the “self”.

Ahu or the Body

Another key element in the concept of “self” identity is ahu, the body, perhaps derived from hu which
is the verb “to see”, and therefore, perhaps designating the seeable, visible, tangible, sensible part of
the “self”. Generally, it is not spoken of as external to the self or as an object apart. The nearest one
would come to objectifying the body would be in phrases such as anụ ahụ meaning simply the meat
of the body, that is, bodily appearance51. Similarly, the popular greeting: Gi na nwa ahu?52 (lit. You
and your little body) means: How are you? Is your body well? i.e., How is your health?) Also, what
of your body, Ahụ gị kwanụ?53 often rendered by some other groups in Pidgin English by the well-
known “How body? meaning, how are you? In these expressions, Ahụ/Body is thought of as the
indicator of the state of health. - Bad body54 - is the normal expression for illness. In the pet names
“Her husband’s body and Her Father’s body” for a beloved wife and a favorite daughter respectively,
a person is called a body. This could be no more than a bold, though reductive metaphor, but the body
is invoked to depict the utmost endearment, closeness and intimacy as indeed the body is so close,
dear and intimate to the “self” that it is hardly distinguishable from it. Ahụ di ya55 and Ahụnna56
amount to the expression alter ego.
Ahụ is used also to portray and perhaps locate depth of feeling and emotion as in Mmetụ nahụ57
(body touching) for very touching, which is said of chilling news as it shocks someone. What he said
touched me in the body, i.e. moved me deeply. Iri ahụ,58 lit. body-eating, actually means blood-
curdling, disgusting and Ihe na eri ahụ59 is some touching, pitiful, blood-chilling business. Oriela ya
ahụ owuwu60 in the song indicates that it was a blood curdling story. In ḷgbaji ahu,61 literally to shatter
the body, actually meaning to show disrespect to someone, and ono na mmekpa ahụ,62 literally being
constrained in the body, in bodily straights, meaning being in trouble or difficulty, he is in real trouble,
we see that closeness of the body to the “self “by which disrespect, insult and difficulties for the body
symbolize and translate into insult and difficulties for the whole “self”. The same identification of
body and “self”, or the designation of the “self” through the body alone, shows in the phrase: Gbam
na ahụ,63 lit. run away from my body, that is, leave me alone, give me a break. Stop importuning me.

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The Personal Chi

Another important element for constituting the concept of the “self” is the Chi, the enigmatic but
crucial notion or principle with which the Igbo explain their experience of history and religion, their
intimacy with God or the presence of God within them. In Igbo, the name for God is Chiukwu, the
great God, so Chi is the god in man. Percy Amaury Talbot64 terms it the oversoul or the multiplex
ego and compares it to the Roman “genius” and the ancient Egyptian “Kra”. Contemporary West
African peoples such as the Yoruba of Western Nigeria and the Akan of Ghana seem to have the same
or similar concepts, but there is really no Western philosophical or theological equivalent. The Igbo
Chi is the divine double or personal guardian and protector that is variously conceived as part of God
in man, or a divine part of man, intimately indwelling in man, but presiding essentially over the
individual as he or she works out his or her destiny. Considered a personal deity, Chi is distinguishable
from the “self” since the “self” can pray to it, honor and worship it, blame or praise it. He can persuade
his chi, manipulate, coax and negotiate with it. But Chi is not only a religious entity; it is also a
philosophical concept. As such, it is also part of the individual’s identity and is seen as the prime
moving force and principle of individualism in Igbo culture. As such, it is strictly personal and
indivisible, not shared or shareable with others as the proverb says: Same mother but not same Chi,65
that is, a person has the same mother as his siblings but his Chi is strictly his. Thus, Chi combines a
complexity of ideas and has been variously understood as.
A divine force, agent or power unique to the individual, and, as such, dubbed the principle of
individualism. A guardian, resident deity deputizing for the Supreme God Chukwu or Chineke, but
resident within the individual, often called God’s double, God within the individual or an individual
inhabited by God. In either case, it is the principle of destiny as well as of fortune. Every individual
has a distinct destiny, his allotted path in life, a path however, which is so delicately laid out that it
has opportunities, failures and success strewn along it. The individual’s Chi enables, helps and
collaborates with him in manipulating these possibilities for his self-realization. Hence the
paradoxical juxtaposition of both limitation and enablement which connects the Chi idea with destiny
in the sense of fatalism, but also makes it the very agent enabling and prodding the individual towards
success and achievement as he bursts the molds of fatalism.
Chi as a guardian is given credit when the individual exclaims: My Chi is vigilant,66 after
escaping a danger one knows not how. One cannot be greater than his Chi. As the name goes: Who
is greater than his Chi?67 One cannot therefore go beyond that which is within his allotted path. Yet,
to be greater than someone is to be greater than his Chi;68 this means that not even his Chi can bring
someone higher than has been allotted to him. Chi is so identified with the individual that one is rated
as high or low as the other and no more. As Chinua Achebe has famously quoted, neither can one
challenge his Chi to a wrestling match.69 But one’s failure is attributed to his Chi: Wherever one has
fallen, it is his Chi that has pushed him down.70 Great achievements are attributed to one’s Chi, (It is
all due to my good Chi) 71 just as catastrophic failures are blamed on the same Chi, then regarded as
treacherous or weak or ill-fated (My Chi has ruined me).72

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The Name

In this culture more than in most that are known to the author, the Name is identity and power and is
noumenal, just as in the Indo-European cultures73, where name is nomme, is Namen, is Nomen, is
nombre, is Numen, which ancient Latin poetry used to mean a god74. When Christians begin their
prayers “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”, or when Peter in the
Scriptures cures “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth”, they are invoking more than the literal
“name”. They are thereby invoking the power and awful majesty and Holiness of divinity. So also in
Igbo. The name is godly. The name is power. It is part of personality and of the self. Igbo parents,
grandparents or other representatives of the ancestors, during a quasi-religious ceremony, carefully
choose the names they impart on newborns. These names reflect family history and fortunes,
triumphalist declarations against enemies, sarcastic survival prayers against death, exclamations of
joy or other emotions, sentiments or reflections, ideologies or philosophies of life reigning at time of
birth. Whatever these names, their accompanying sentiments are believed to determine or are
manifested in the subsequent dominant character of the subject. People act out their names as they
are governed by their noumena. The Igbo proverb says it bluntly: Aha agụrụ manụ anaghị alagbụ
ya75 -the name conferred on someone at birth never abandons him, literally never misses its target.
Another saying goes to the effect that the name that you call or give to a dog is what he answers to.
Thus, the name is numen. The name is character. The name is determinant. The name is destiny. The
name in Igbo is therefore a constituent and leading element of the self as we more or less live our
lives under the influence of our noumen, our name.

Ilouwa or Reincarnation

Belief in Reincarnation is universal among the Igbos, wrote G.T Basden in 193976 and, I might add,
perhaps is still strong in many contemporary cultures, especially those that never seriously came
under a prolonged influence of Christianity.77 The Igbo theory of reincarnation helps us to see another
dimension of the “self” and we may start by asserting that the Igbo expression for this phenomenon
reveals a different anthropology from that inherited from Plato which has been the foundation of the
dualism that has dogged Western philosophy ever since. Reincarnation is a concept first made
possible in the platonic soul/body context. If literally life is the union of body and soul while death is
the separation of body and soul, then reincarnation is the return of the soul to the body. Re-incarnare
literally means entering again into the flesh. The Igbo concept, ilọ uwa, on the other hand, literally
means returning into the world by the self, whole and entire. Here it is not a question of the body/soul
union, separation, the survival of one or the perishing of the other or the complexities and
contradictions of their reunion. Rather it is the whole of the self who returns to the world. The question,
“Whose world or destiny did he return to?”78 clearly shows that it is not only a question of the physical
universe, but rather of the inner world, the lot or destiny, or perhaps more accurately the life cycle of
the individual, who often would talk of “my next life cycle”79 or “in his first life cycle”80or to use the
well-known expression, “in whatever future life cycle I may return to”.81 However we want to explain
it, what is clear is that the “self” alone subsists in all this process, whether or not it uses one and the
same or one or more souls or faculties. Such a “self” is obviously different from and not reducible to

37
any one or indeed any number of its components, for instance the soul, that might then be said to
reincarnate in the context of a body/soul division.

Ghosts

The same may be said in the case of the Igbo belief in ghosts often reputed to be visible to watch-
dogs, to sick persons in delirium or to visionaries, but not necessarily to others. The ghost, though
having some bodily qualities like shape, sound and motion, remains intangible and may retain other
powers that normally would be attributed to spirits. Think of the ghost of Hamlet’s father.82 But what
is it that appears as a ghost? Who is it behind the ghost? Finally, we have the case of metempsychosis
or a transformation at will into the shape and exhibiting the characteristics of animals such as tigers
or buffalos, often in order to use their physical powers to harm enemies. We also have the widespread
belief in witches who appear in the form of rats and bats at night, roaming around as vampires in
search of prey while simultaneously they are sound asleep at home.

Ultimate Identity

Prescinding however from any judgement of truth or falsehood over these beliefs and inquiring only
what understanding of “the self” enables the Igbo to make these multiple attributions to the one “self”,
one is obliged to think that the concept of “self” is essentially one of ultimate identity. The many and
varied activities of mind and body, of soul and spirit, of emotions and imagination, of intellect and
will, of various categories of soul and oversoul and the forms of existence as ancestor or ghost or
reincarnation, all these are so many masks behind which there is one and only one major operator,
namely: the self” or Onwe. Whether or not the self is simultaneously aware of these multiple
attributions must remain a moot point.
Professor Donatus I. Nwoga made a very perceptive observation in his 1984 Ahiajoku Lecture
which I would like to quote at some length. “The Igbo person is principally an identity. The reflexive
pronouns-Oneself, himself, myself, yourself are not really compliments to emphasize statements. But
they are based on a pronoun “self” which a dictionary goes into great strains to define as “an identical
person, personality, ego, a side of one’s personality, what one is, personality, identity”. When the
Igbo person uses Onwe m, I believe that we are dealing not in imagery but in primary statement of
reality. For the Igbo, it is this identity that is made manifest in the biological, social and religious
activities in which the individual engages or in which he is involved. That identity has a reality of its
own which has characteristics that cohere to it. The biological processes are essential to the person.
He has to eat and drink and keep the body from harm. Religious activities invigorate the person,
supplying him with help from deities and unseen external forces and also protecting the person from
the dangerous activities of spirits. But though the person is dependent on these activities, they do not
define the person. There is still the person whose valour is aided and abetted, but not subsumed under
these activities. That is the identity that sickens/or strengthens to determine the status of the person.
Initiatory rites act on that identity to release it for heightened performance of the person…In
masquerade performance, it is this identity that is transformed.”83 This identity of which Nwoga
speaks is no other than the “self”, the Onwe, the personified bundling together of all these categories.
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The Outer Structure of the Self

But we cannot round off this study of the “self” in Igbo thought without at least a brief mention of
the defining context in which this identity lays itself out. If we have been looking at the inner layers
or structure of the kernel of the “self”, one must immediately add that this hard core is surrounded by
a thicker layer of enveloping relationships. The “self” as so far studied, remains, in a way, only an
abstraction. Even though one can be thought of as a unit and in abstraction from anything else, this
exercise remains strictly a mere abstraction; in reality, the “self” is never alone. It always exists within
something else. The individual is never a pure isolated individual. There is an Igbo saying to the
effect that a human being does not fall like a bolt from the blue, literally no man falls from the sky
like the oil bean cotyledon, that is, by some inexplicable explosive mechanism. There is no big bang
that throws up the human being from nowhere. This is often quoted by parents to children to insist
that everyone has a source, a link, a belongingness, the parents being the source for their children84.
Everyone comes into the world belonging and relating, and like a tree, he has roots, stem, branches,
and leaves. The “self” does not come as an unrelated individual into the world. Foremost British
Metaphysical poet, John Donne, said it all too well in his Meditation 17: “No man is an island, entire
of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the maine; any man’s death diminishes me
because I am involved in mankind.”85 There is therefore an exterior core no less intimately bound to
it, indeed a constitutive dimension of the self.
The human being is conceived as the locus of a web of relationships. He is related first of all to
parents and siblings but gradually to a whole kinship network that widens in concentric circles to
include the entire kindred, village group or town. Parents are an integral part of personal wholeness.
Igbo folklore is replete with the evil and misfortune that is the lot of the orphan, that is, the fatherless
and / or motherless.
Next to the parents are, of course, brothers and sisters, umunne na umunna, and the more of them
there are, the richer and fuller is one’s sense of self. An Olu nwa, an only child, is pitied and thought
somehow incomplete and disadvantaged. And a polygamous household, just by having a houseful of
offspring, of half-brothers and half-sisters, that is a multitude of close relationships, produces a
greater enhancement of the self.86 Beyond the nuclear, but within the extended family, cousins, aunts
and uncles and more distant relations are referred to as brothers and sisters and special rights and
obligations accrue taking care especially of children, widows and orphans and assuming corporate
responsibility on behalf of all members. The individual lives and moves within this orbit of solidarity.
This solidarity continues in diminishing degrees towards the exterior peripheries of consanguinity,
but it remains vibrant within the limits of the village-group or town. The prefix Ụmụ, the children of,
attaching to thousands of place names in Igboland and indicating that every local group is blood-
related: Ụmụonyike Ụmụkabịa, Ụmụchima, Ụmụelemaị and Ụmụleri, demonstrates the important role
of kinship in defining the Igbo person’s self-understanding. It makes a statement of corporate
solidarity based on blood relationship even when some sub-groups are known to be relatively new
immigrants. It also makes this statement of solidarity within the geographical ancestral land shared
by these villages, which is a piece of land consecrated and bequeathed by the ancestors, and ruled
and protected by the earth deity, conferring on this solidarity a quasi-religious character. It is this

39
convergence of blood and soil, “Blut und Boden” without its bloody, fascist associations, which
creates and supports the living space and the network of relationships where the Onwe, the “self” sees
itself as part of, indeed as the center of a living, natural community. And this is why, in this and in
similar cultures, the “self” is a congenitally communitarian “self”, incapable of being, existing and
really unthinkable except in the complex of relations of the community.

Mineness

All these internal and external layers must somehow be tied together to me, to the I, the individual
and cemented into one to produce and sustain the unity and identity by which the self is defined. This
is the quality in me which may be termed, for want of a better name “Mineness”, a quality, unique to
me by which I can claim and categorize people and things and qualities as mine, as relating to me and
as defining me. “Myself” would be different or even non-existent but for the people and things I call
mine. So mineness attaches to me and those elements or rather relates me to them. Subtract them
from me and it would be a different me and so, not my “self”.
Self is something of a bundle, to use David Hume’s favorite word, though not a bundle of mere
sensations or perceptions. As Robert Roth SJ observes in his article “Hume and James on personal
identity”, “Hume omits to ask or answer the question of who or what it is that is aware of a single
perception or that unites the various perceptions into a bundle or collection.87 The Self is therefore
something of a bundle or rather a package, an agglomeration of elements coalescing concomitantly
into a unit that performs or is ultimately responsible for all our sensory, intellectual, social, ethical
and spiritual acts and functions.
This distinction between the various elements of the self- muo, ahu, chi etc, can only be
theoretical, a mental analysis made for the sake of understanding and clarity. In reality, these elements
are all one in the self. But even if the self is so constituted, nothing prevents an analysis that isolates
one or other of its many, individual parts, in order to look at them, one by one, discreetly and staccato
as one might take apart the feet, the eyes, the ears or the tusks of an African elephant. But like the
elephant, the “self” as self must be taken as a whole, as a totum indivisum et indivisibile, an undivided
and indivisible whole. In other words, the self must be somehow unified, otherwise it would have no
identity, since identity means to say: one and the same - through time, through all variety and
experience etc.
We might observe here that the self as we have tried to depict it is doubly composite. It has both
an internal structure, made up of the individual I, the mụọ, its spirit, the obi, the heart, the ahu, its
body, the chi, its god within. But it has as well, as an external, enveloping, outer layer, the social
structure of parents and siblings, kindred and society. When a person refers to himself, he refers to
both his internal structure and make-up as well as to his environing, surrounding, human and other
environment, including place and time. With a web of relationships within and another web of
relationships without, the individual self is already constitutively a complex bundle, internally and
externally. The same individual self, already such a bundle, is born into another bundle of social
relations.

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 Is this a definitive list of the constituent elements of the self? By far not. This list may be termed
rather provisional and principal, for, granted the fluid and shifting nature of culture, the cradle of the
self-idea, some new element might at some place or at some time come to the fore. Being black in
the USA, for instance, cannot but become part of a Black American’s identity and sense of self.
Elements such as race in some countries, nationality in others, may come to become part of the self
at some stage, while other elements such as DNA may lie hidden for ages and later be recognized as
the base of uniqueness, identity and self. And blood relationship that early prohibited incest and today
still determines affinity among individuals and peoples, must be reckoned as a constituent factor of
the self.
If the self is such an onion with its many inner and outer layers, all these dimensions contribute
to its structure- all the experience that the self has ever had forever attaches to it and forms it; all the
history, conscious and unconscious; all the geography, where one has ever been, home or abroad, at
work or at play; all the motivation of all one’s action or reaction; all the influence of all the
environment come into play. What an enigma of a complexity within and around the individual!
The self here, rather than being, as for Descartes, only a res cogitans, a thinking thing, a pure
consciousness, that is, a part rather than a whole, or as for David Hume, a mere bundle of expressions
and feelings, a banquet of experiences and expressions, is rather a well-nit bundle of kin, experience,
environment or world and all the constituting universe. This self is also different from the Buddha
saying that we fashion the self, for when the Buddha says “wise people fashion themselves”, he is
enunciating a correct and sound principle of education, that is, the best way to become wise, but he
is not defining what the self is nor how it is constituted.
How far we are here from that rugged individualism promoted by some philosophies and
ideologies, and despite the evils it has wrought on humanity, being celebrated today in some cultures
as the destination of human civilization! But a mere atomized individual is, as defined long ago,
“indivisum in se et divisum a quolibet alio,” that is: undivided in itself and divided from everything
else. Clearly the emphasis in individualism is on abstraction, division, partition, isolation, subtraction
and separation. What if the emphasis were now reversed to suit the concept of the self we have been
elaborating? It would have to shift to addition, merging, composition, cumulation, complexity and
wholeness? Here lies the difference and the weight of the concept we have tried to depict as against
the self as an isolated individual.
This latter concept of the severely isolated, lone individual has become the ideology of
modernity and in fact has led the modern world to the extremes of that rugged individualism for
which it now stands distinguished. It has given the world its atomized individuals of the lonely crowd;
its ideologies of national interest narrowly defined as self- interest; its savage, ruthless, capitalism;
its failed, unjust system of distributive justice; its aggressive militarism where wars, not laws, have
ruled men’s affairs and where might sits unashamed in the place of right.
Much as the concept of the “person” has been credited with modifying and mollifying human
society and history by promoting a civilization that has given us today a sharp sense of human rights,
so can this Igbo/African concept of the “self” if given serious hearing, help us to engender for our
world, a new and more inclusive awareness of human solidarity, a sharper sense of the concept of a
fellow human as a “co-self” rather than as the “adversarial other”. It can certainly help us to learn to

41
 be human by fostering a spirit of togetherness and greater mutual obligation to a sense of fairness, of
justice and even of love for every fellow human and so redefine society itself. Then man may no
longer be defined as cast away into a lonely exile in a strange wild world, but rather as being thrown
and cast into a bondedness and a belongingness or fellow feeling among fellow humans.

References

1. Nicaea - The First Ecumenical council summoned by the Emperor Constantine to settle the Arian
Heresy by defining the doctrine of the Trinity - three persons in one God.
2. Boethius - Anicius Manlius Severinus, Roman senator, Christian theologian and philosopher
who gave the classic definition of person as “Naturae Rationabilis Individua Substantia- an
individual substance of a rational nature” in his “Contra Euthycen et Nestorium” in Boethius,
Loeb Classics, Theological Tractates. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Not surprisingly, there was a theological purpose for this formulation as is clear in Joseph W.
Koterski, “Boethius and the Theological Origins of the Concept of Person,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 78 (March 1, 2004): 203–24.
3. Aristotle - De Anima, Penguin Classics, Translated by Hugh Lawson Tanqred,1986.
4. Socrates - “Gnothi Seauton, in Latin “Nosce Teipsum” related to the saying “The unexamined
life is not worth living”. The origin of this saying is disputed, variously attributed to Socrates,
Solon, Thales, and even to ancient Egypt. It was first popularized as an inscription on the temple
of Apollo at Delphi and introduced into philosophy by Plato’s Socrates in the Phaedrus.
5. Physiocrats and Urstoff, Aristotle remarks in the Metaphysics that, whereas the Presocratics
concentrated their attention on the question of the material stuff of which the world was made, it
was Socrates who first turned philosophy’s attention to the questions of Ethics and of the
definition of terms. “Socrates, however, was busying himself about ethical matters and
neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters and
fixed thought for the first time on universals.” Aristotle: Metaphysics, Bk 1. Chap 6, 987b.
6. Biggest names in Western Philosophy -Thinkers …prominent in the last 400 years - in one way
or the other, there is explicit or implicit reference to the self from Plato right up to Martin
Heidegger.
7. For Plato, the soul and the soul alone is the human person or the self. It is the soul that acts and
thinks and knows, despite, rather than in union with, encumbered rather than accompanied by
the body. The soul is the person and the person is his soul. This dualistic concept of the human
person marks the beginning of an anthropology and metaphysics tradition that has dogged
western philosophy ever since.
8. Aristotle - Self as Soul/Body in the De Anima where he masterfully uses the hylemorphic theory
to forge a unity that takes care of the puzzling variety of the hierarchy of souls.
9. Aquinas - Aquinas in saying that “man’s ultimate happiness consists in the contemplation of
truth” as much as says that man’s most essential nature consists in knowledge (Summa contra
Gentiles, Chapter 37) This further indicates how heavily the speculative intellect, the mind,

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 weighs on the question of the self and virtually substitutes for it. (Basic Writings of St Thomas
Aquinas. vol 2. Edited by Anthony C. Pegis. New York: Random House, 1945).
10. Descartes “I am therefore precisely nothing but thinking thing, that is a mind or intellect or
understanding or reason...” Meditations in First Philosophy 27 (Hacket Publishing Company),
65.
11. Hume - Hume’s concept of self, that is, his denial of the ‘self” is consequent on the logic of his
initial, if idiosyncratic premise, namely, that every mental act is reducible to fleeting sense
impressions. However self or person is not any one impression. Neither can it be right to speak
as Hume does, of “that succession of perceptions which constitutes our self or person”. “The
Treatise of Human Nature, Bk 1, Part 1V, Section 6, Personal Identity,” in Hume Selections, ed.
Charles W. Hendel, Jr., Charles Scribners Sons (New York, 1955), 83.
12. Kant - Critique of pure Reason Kant showed in his Critique of Pure Reason how much he valued
knowledge and how he wanted to establish for philosophy the solid basis such as Newton had
established for Physics. Man was still for him mostly a knowing subject. The Critique was to
serve only to define the limits of human knowledge.
13. Descartes Op. Citatum
14. Kant - Critique de la raison Pure §16- De l’unité originairement synthétique de l’aperception p.
110, presses universitaires de france.
15. Aristotle - De Anima
16. Plato: Soma Sema; The body is the prison of the soul- The Phaedo.
17. D.C Lau quoted in the article on “Confucius in Tom Butler Bowdon,” in 50 Philosophy Classics,
(London/Boston: Nicholas Brealey), 8 & 81.
18. Ibidem
19. Christianity has influenced philosophy and Western culture for two thousand years. It is to
Christianity that we owe the introduction or at least the enhanced discussion of philosophical
problems such as Creation, Providence. Eternity, Freewill and notions such as person,
immortality, death, conscience, world history and immortality or, most eminently, providing
proofs for the existence of God, all have, thanks to Christianity, become eminent
“philosophemena”.
20. John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” ed. Ridditch (Oxford, 1975).
21. Descartes proving his existence from the fact of his thinking, the famous “I think, therefore I
am”, goes on to ask: But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts,
understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses and that also imagines and senses.” Rene Descartes,
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress
(Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993).
22. Kant- The original synthetical unity of apperception, where he talks of “The transcendental unity
of self -consciousness” or “The unity of apperception is the highest principle of all human
knowledge.” Critique of Pure Reason Par 16, trans. F. Max Müller (New York: Anchor Books,
Doubleday &Co. Inc. Garden City, 1966), 77.
23. Hegel and the absolute - Phenomenology of mind. Philosophy enables consciousness of absolute
knowledge. Science is the discovery of our own minds and of consciousness itself.

43
24. Hans Georg Gadamer: Wahrheit und Methode 2 Auflage, (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1965), 245-
246.
25. Theophilus Okere, quoting John Daly CSSP, in “Religion and Morality: Private or Public in
Okere” in his own words, The Hermeneutics of Culture, Religion and Society p 141-150,
https://www.amazon.com/okere-in-his-own-words-hermeneutics See also Theophilus Okere in “The
poverty of Christian individualist morality and an African alternative in Okere” in his own
words… vol. 1 p 174; Religion and morality: Private or public? Ibidem, vol. 2 p 141,
https://www.amazon,com/okere-in-his-own-words-hermeneutics
26. After Martin Heidegger- (Sein und Zeit) and Hans Georg Gadamer (Wahrheit und Methode) it
has become crystal clear that philosophy is Hermeneutics and Hermeneutics philosophy.
Wahrheit und Methode - the search for truth and meaning in philosophy is accompanied,
coloured and determined by the method. Method is dictated and governed by environment which
is itself governed by history and time.
27. This famous passage in Heidegger’s Sein u Zeit, p 5, brilliantly illustrates what can be suggested
to a philosophical mind by an ordinary, day to day word such as questioning, as the author reads
out the implications of Fragen- to ask, Gefragtes- what is being asked for, Befragtes- who is
being asked, Erfragtes- what results from the asking, Fragen nach- asking after, Anfragen-
inquiring about and Frager- the one who asks.
28. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (William Heinemann Ltd, 1958).
29. Autonomous- the Greek “autonomos” literally translates: self-law giving
30. Ihe okwuru gburu muo m
31. Ihe okwuru metutaram na muo
32. Muom anabataghi ya
33. Chebara ya echiche
34. Ncheta
35. Nghota - Ina aghota ihe m n’agwa gi?
36. Izu/Igba izu
37. Iko Ako
38. Igba ngenge
39. Ituzi na ihazi
40. “The Igbo verb has a peculiarly dynamic structure whereby the ta enclitic confers on the verb
root the notion of bringing forth into existence or into presence (for example, Nku-ta means to
earn or bring in by labour or oku, Nzota to bring home by competitive struggling or izo azo.
Hence, Ncheta is strictly speaking to fetch out from the past by thinking, iche uche. Ncheta is a
crucial function since it is not only useful in storing the memory of events but also accumulates
them and unifies them into a continuity that makes them into a story and thus helps to give the
“self” its unity and identity. Altzheimers, the new disease, is so unsettling and incomprehensible
precisely because by devastating the memory of the patient to the extent of non-recognition or
even non-awareness of the most intimate life-time relations, it virtually destroys the patient’s
very identity and indeed his “self”.
41. Obi kara aka

44
42. Obi mgbawa
43. Obi miri
44. Obi kporo nku
45. Obi nwayo
46. 44.Obi ike
47. Obi ojoo
48. Obi oma
49. Obi izizi
50. Obi anaghi awo nna ya ochie uka
51. Anu ahu - A certain epileptic patient known to this writer and whose arms and shoulders had
been badly charred by fire burns sustained during some of his many fits became famous in the
village for the following aphorism: Provided the inside of my body is good (healthy), it does not
matter how the outside looks. Here (the inside of the body) has a meaning already transcending
the merely material and approaching the idea of a healthy condition that is not visible but still
felt or enjoyed by the individual.
52. Gi na nwa ahu
53. Ahu gi kwanu
54. Ahu ojoo
55. Ahu di ya
56. Ahunna
57. Nmetu na ahu
58. Iri ahu
59. Ihe n’eri ahu
60. Oriela ya ahu owuwu
61. Igbaji ahu
62. Ono na mmekpa ahu
63. Gbam n’ahu
64. Percy Amaury Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria Vol II (London: Frank Cass & Co Ltd,
1926), 279-295.
65. Otu nne na amu mana owughi otu chi na eke
66. Chim mu anya
67. Onyekachi
68. Onye ka mmadu ka chi ya
69. Madu ona ario chi ya mgba
70. Ebe onye dara o wu chi ya kwadara ya
71. O wu chi m oo, chi oma moo
72. Chim; egbuo m oo
73. In the Indo-European culture: The words in English - Name, in French - Nomme, in Latin -
Nomen, in German, Namen and Nombre in Spanish, come obviously from the same root and
correspond with the Latin for deity, numen. Kant’s noumenon, designating the real but
unknowable reality belongs to this family of words.

45
74. Numen, as in Virgil, “Quo numine laeso”. Virgil, Aeneid 1, 8, Loeb Classical library no 63,
(Harvard University Press, 1978).
75. Aha agụrụ manụ anaghị alagbu ya
76. G.T Basden, Niger Igbos, 1939.
77. Perhaps the Missionaries campaigned against nothing more seriously than against the widespread
belief in reincarnation as it seemed so diametrically opposed to their own doctrines of
eschatology, especially the doctrine of heaven and hell, a doctrine that to the Igbo looked so
implausible for taking no account of highly revered ancestors.
78. Oloro uwa onye?
79. Uwam ozo
80. Uwa ya mbu
81. Uwa na uwa m n’alo la
82. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act 1, Scene 1.
83. Nwoga D.I., “Ahiajoku Lecture – 1984,” Ahiajoku Lecture (Owerri: Ministry of Information,
Culture, Youth and Sports), 46.
84. Father and mother, Nne na nna (the Igbo reverse the order) are the sacred source of one’s
existence. An insult to one’s parents is an insult that touches one to the depth of one’s being. The
ultimate curse among young people and which inevitably starts a fight is: May your mother die!
Conversely when one wants to touch someone with a solemn appeal or prayer, he virtually
disarms him with, please may your mother not die: biko nne gi anwuna! and goes on to make the
request.
85. John Donne -Poems, Meditation 17,” For whom the bell tolls”, 错误! 超链接引用无效。>
86. The sibling relationship is particularly valued and nourished by the use of specially reserved
terms of endearment and courtesy which designate the level of kinship, the sex and especially
the age and seniority relationship. An elder brother is addressed as deede, an elder sister as daada,
an aunt as adee and an uncle as opannaa or opaa. In some places Ndaa is the all-purpose term to
cover all genders and age groups but fulfils the same function of asserting intimacy, courtesy and
respect to the addressee as well as corporate belonging.
87. Robert Roth SJ- Hume and James, on personal identity American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 1990, 233-247.

Glossary Igbo / English

Mu - I
Mụnwa - This I, emphatic
Gi - you
Onwe - Self
Ike - Self
Ike m - My Self
Ogwe - Self
Ogwe m - My Self

46
Nwe - Own
Anyị nwe onwe anyị - We own ourselves - We are free
Ọdighị onye nwe anyị - No one owns us
Onye nwem nị - He who owns me - My Lord
Onye nwe gị nị - He who owns you - Your Lord
Muo - Spirit
Uche - thought
Iche Uche - thinking
Ncheputa - Thinking out
Nkuta - To earn by one’s labour
Ncheta - Remembering
Nghọta - To pluck, to catch, to understand.
Izu - Counsel
Ako - Wisdom, Nwaevula akọ - the wise lamb
Ngenge - Imagining
Atụmatụ - Planning
Obi or Heart
Obi karaka - a ripe heart, a hard and cruel heart
Onye - who, a person, a human being, not an animal
Obi kpọrọnkụ - a dried up heart, a cruel, unrelenting heart
Obi ike - a strong heart, a strong headed, heartless
Obi ọjọọ - a bad heart, a person of ill-will, cruel, unforgiving
Obi ọma - a good heart, merciful, well meaning
Obi izizi - a pitiful, sympathetic heart
Mkpụrụ - Seed
Ahụ or Body
Ahụnna - Her father’s body
Ahụ di ya - Her husband’s body
Mmetụ - Touching
Iri - to eat
Chi - The part or double of God within, personal and immanent to the individual
Chukwu - The Great God
Chineke - The Creator God, another name for Chukwu
Aha - Name
ḷlo ụwa - Returning to the world - Reincarnation
Ụmụ - children - The prefixing of Ụmụ- children of, to most place names is the clearest indication
that Igbo social groups and their locations are essentially clusters of patrilineal groups.

47
 A Human “Being” or Human “Becomings”?
Family as Community in Confucian Role Ethics

Roger T. Ames 安乐哲

Berggruen Institute Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Peking University

There are several related claims in this essay. First, there is no “human being” in Confucian
philosophy; there are only human “becomings.” Secondly, family does much of the work of
community for Confucian role ethics. This being the case, “family reverence” (xiao 孝) has been the
governing moral imperative in this tradition, and is thus one important way of saying “Confucian role
ethics.” In the introduction of Chinese philosophy and culture into the Western academy, we have
tended to theorize and conceptualize this antique tradition by appeal to our own familiar categories.
I and my collaborator Henry Rosemont have introduced the notion of “Confucian role ethics” as an
attempt to articulate a sui generis moral philosophy that allows this tradition to speak on its own terms
and to have its own voice. This holistic philosophy is grounded in the primacy of relationality, and is
a challenge to a foundational liberal individualism that has defined persons as discrete, autonomous,
rational, free, and often self-interested agents. Confucian role ethics begins from a relationally
constituted conception of person, takes family roles and community relations as the entry point for
developing moral competence, invokes moral imagination and the growth in relations that it can
inspire as the substance of human morality, and entails a family-centered, a-theistic religiousness that
stands in sharp contrast to the Abrahamic religions.
Of course, the concept of role ethics is not unknown within the Western philosophical narrative.
Moral philosopher Dorothy Emmet in her efforts to reconcile ethics and sociology sees the
contemporary discipline of sociology following this same logic of “internal relations” and the various
implications for personal identity it brings with it:

Some Idealist philosophers have held a doctrine of “internal relations,” according to which the world is
thought of as a system in which everything is so related to everything else, that nothing can be understood
except with reference to its total context, every part of which attributes to making it what it is, so that it
cannot be transposed to another context without becoming something different. It might be said that
sociology is the contemporary refuge of the doctrine of internal relations. This of course gets qualified
in practice, . . . and some things may make a lot of difference, some very little.

48
 1

Emmet far from scoffing at such an organic, ecological reading of the cosmos, worries instead about
how such a focus-field way of looking at the world might compromise our capacities to operate
effectively within it. As she continues:

Indeed, this is probably all quite true; but if we are to talk and act with any effectiveness, we cannot just
say there is one big web of reciprocal and ramifying relationships. . . . It is not necessary, even if we
admit interconnections, only to think of the world as one great system in which everything is related to
everything else.2

And such an interpretation of our world is challenging. The fact of the interpenetration of roles and
relations requires of us a fundamentally different way of thinking about identity and identity
construction. Emmet insists that good sociology is able to discern different kinds of horizons within
the broader organism and discipline this ecological worldview into meaningful patterns of
relationships, patterns “of overlapping ‘fields,’ some of which may be affecting others, but whose
special internal properties can be studied.”3 With specific reference to roles, Emmet can be helpful in
bringing further illumination to how we might want to understand the complex notion of roles and
their social implications. First, for Emmet:

The notion of role refers to such a special relationship, . . . and in any given society there will be certain
ways of enacting a role considered appropriate (as we have already seen, the notion of a role has a
reference to a norm of behavior built into it). . . . Within this, there are constellations of roles, e.g. in
family relations, and in professional relations, and these are not necessarily coherent; in fact their
obligations can and do conflict.4

And Emmet is clearly aware that roles are not fixed or final. Old roles are reauthorized and new roles
emerge as society evolves:

Sometimes changes in circumstances, and sometimes new ways in which some dominant individual plays
a role, will establish a new pattern, and make it necessary to form a concept of a new role type, or give a
different content to the old one.5

1 Emmet, Rules, Roles and Relations, p. 90 Emmet is clearly associating the doctrine of internal relatins with Hegel’s
idealism, but given Hegel’s teleology and thus linear dialectic, there are tensions in Hegel that suggest that he is perhaps
not the best example. On one interpretation of Hegel at least, his commitment to a strong, objective principle of teleology
as an apriori concept provides the explanatory principle needed to discipline our empirical investigations and carry us
beyond the limits of our empirical sciences. Hegel’s strong teleology that is decidedly theological in its cast would bring
logic and history together by conceptualizing both nature and history as having an inherent logical necessity, and such
necessity vitiates the open-ended, emergent, and aesthetic assumptions that come along with a coherent doctrine of
internal relations.
2 Emmet, Rules, Roles and Relations, p. 139.
3 Emmet, Rules, Roles and Relations, p. 140.
4 Emmet, Rules, Roles and Relations, pp. 140-146.
5 Emmet, Rules, Roles and Relations, p. 148.

49
 Emmet herself puzzles over the question of whether in fact all social behavior does not amount
to behavior in a role. Deciding that this is at least partly a terminological question, she herself chooses
to reserve the term role for relationships sufficiently structured to be classified under a common name.
She introduces a distinction between persona and person, where the former term captures the
generalizable roles while the latter corresponds to the proper name:

The notion of persona answers to the impersonal aspects of morality; it stands for the detachment from
“proper names,” the attempt to look objectively at a situation, at rights and obligations and at the
requirements of the job to be done.1

Such a dualistic distinction between persons and their putatively impersonal persona or roles can
certainly be of service as a tool of social analysis, and can also be of functional value in allowing for
a degree of objectivity in, and even detachment from, our roles. Such distance might be needed for
resolving the conflicting demands within our roles, and in giving us the space for self-consciously
cultivating a personal style or image. Still, given the fact of associated living and the irreducibly
social definition of persons, I would argue that such a persona-person distinction can be no more than
a question of terminological convenience. To take it any further in reifying “individuals” as being
discrete and thus somehow separate from their associations, while perhaps at times functional, is still
fallacious thinking of the first order that can come at a high cost.
While certainly having important theoretical implications, what is compelling about the
Confucian project and the process cosmology that grounds it is that it proceeds from a relatively
straightforward account of the actual human experience. Rather than appealing to ontological
assumptions about fixed, essential natures or supernatural speculations about immortal souls and
salvific ends, all of which would take us outside of the world of our empirical experience, the
Confucian project focuses instead on the possibilities for enhancing personal worth available to us
here and now through enchanting the ordinary affairs of the day. In this Confucian ethic, there is a
tacit awareness of what Bernard Williams concluded in his own long career as an ethicist. Williams
in his search for “thick,” “world-guided,” and “action-guiding” ethical concepts is famous for his
reservations about the capacity of any moral theory to tell us what is right, what is wrong, and what
we ought to do. In the preface to Moral Luck, Williams announces:

There cannot be any very interesting, tidy or self-contained theory of what morality is, nor, despite the
vigorous activities of some present practitioners, can there be an ethical theory, in the sense of a
philosophical structure which, together with some degree of empirical fact, will yield a decision
procedure for moral reasoning.2

Williams is saying here that no ethical theory, no ready-made set of rules, no moral system, can in
any particular situation tell us what is the right course of action. The best responses to our moral
quandaries must emerge out of intelligent reflection on the specific conditions of experience, where

1 Emmet, Rules, Roles and Relations, p. 171.

2 Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp.
ix-x.

50
much of human flourishing is dependent upon dexterity in the exercise and application of our moral
imagination. In our search for doing what is most appropriate, the abstract and theoretical can have
at best only an instrumental function in providing direction and some general guidance for such
deliberations.
Confucius by developing his insights around the most basic and enduring aspects of the ordinary
human experience—that is, personal cultivation in family and communal roles, family reverence,
deference to others, propriety achieved in our roles and relations, friendship, a cultivated sense of
shame, moral education, a communicating community, a family-centered religiousness, the
intergeneration transmission of culture, and so on—has guaranteed the continuing relevance of this
accumulating wisdom. In addition to being focused on such perennial issues, one further
characteristic of Confucian philosophy that is certainly present in the words of Confucius himself,
and that has made his teachings so resilient in this living tradition, is the porousness and adaptability
of his philosophy. His enduring contribution was simply to strive to take full ownership of the cultural
legacy available during his time and place, to adapt this compounding wisdom from the past for the
betterment of his own present historical moment, and then to recommend to future generations that
they continue to do the same.1
Indeed, what makes this Confucian tradition more empirical than empiricism—that is, what
makes Confucianism a radical empiricism—is the fact that while grounded in the soil of an antique
culture, it is also prospective and evolutionary in respecting the uniqueness of the omnipresent
particular. Rather than advancing doctrines as universal principles or organizing experience around a
taxonomy of natural kinds grounded in some notion of strict identity, Confucian philosophy proceeds
from analogy with, and always provisional generalizations derived from, those particular historical
instances of successful living. Confucius’s signature neologism, “aspiring to consummate conduct in
my roles and relations” (ren 仁), for example, is not an appeal to some higher order, antecedent
principle or generic virtue, but is rather a vision of the exemplary human life as it is aspired to through
assiduous personal cultivation that in its achievements, can be of service to succeeding generations
as a guiding source of value. Of course, exemplary narratives are nested within and informed by a
continuing confluence of the particular narratives of exemplary persons over time and they produce
the patterns of deference that define the social fabric of ensuing generations.
What we are calling Confucian role ethics begins from the primacy of vital relationality within
our lived roles and relations. Stated simply, it assumes rather than argues for, the bare fact of
associated living. The initial claim here is that nothing and no one does anything by itself. All of our
physical, conscious, and social activity is collaborative and transactional. We walk because we have
the ground, breath because we have the air, see because we have the sun. And we exchange opinions,
share insights, and dismiss rumors because we live in families and communities. But whereas these
transactional associations are merely descriptive, once such associations are identified and stipulated
as occurring within the specific roles we live with others, they become normative. Our different roles
then—the activities of daughters and grandpas, teachers and neighbors, shopkeepers and lovers—are

1 Analects 7.1: 子曰：「述而不作，信而好古，竊比於我老彭。」The Master said, “Following the proper way, I do

not forge new paths; with confidence I cherish the ancients—in these respects I am comparable to Old Peng.”

51
simply specific modes of association that in their specificity take on value and a clear normative cast:
Am I a good daughter? Am I a good teacher? Am I a good grandmother? And while this
grandmother’s love for her grandson is one of the most familiar and ordinary of things we will ever
encounter, in Confucian role ethics it is a profound source of moral education for her grandson, and
has high value as one of the most extraordinary products that the life experience has to offer. After
all, her grandson can only learn to love others by being loved himself, and there can be no higher
value in the human experience than our love for each other.
Confucian role ethics appeals to a “gerundive” understanding of persons in this tradition—that
is, persons are something that we do rather than what we are, and that we do together or not at all.
Such a holistic, focus-field conception of persons as focal identities within continuing personal
narratives resists our seemingly default assumption that discrete individuals as exclusive entities are
concrete existents rather than second-order abstractions from their narratives. It eschews the belief
that persons can be accurately described, analyzed, and evaluated independently of their
contextualizing environments, including first and foremost those environments in which they have
dealings with other human beings. Role ethics begins from the notion that, in any interesting moral
or political or religious sense, persons cannot be understood apart from the other family and
community members with whom they interact. Indeed, persons are best understood and measured in
terms of the specific roles that guide their conduct in their transactions with these specific others.
Simply put, moral conduct itself is nothing more than behavior that conduces to growth and
flourishing in the roles and relations we live together with others, and immoral conduct is the opposite.
Being considerate, listening attentively, acting upon an empathetic imagination, looking for ways of
being helpful, lending encouragement—these very ordinary gestures are the substance of morality.
Being self-absorbed, ignoring the interests of others, being dismissive, failing in our commitments,
being thoughtless or obstructive, being inflexible, lacking resolution—these are negative, immoral
dispositions that lead to diminution in our relations. From this perspective, it is easy to see how the
grandmother’s love for her grandson can be didactic, not only in deepening her grandmotherly
relationship with him, but also in teaching him how to best grow his relations with others. Taking the
irreducibly social nature of persons as our starting point, we have tried to articulate and bring clarity
to Confucian role ethics not as an alternative “ethical theory,” but as a capaciousness, sui generis
vision of the moral life that begins from, and ultimately seeks its warrant in, a relatively
straightforward account of the human experience as we find it described in the Analects and other
early Confucian texts. Indeed, the normativity of role ethics arises from whole persons aspiring to
live whole lives.
My claim in introducing the notion of “Confucian role ethics” has been that I am trying to allow
Confucian philosophy to use its own language to speak for itself in an effort to avoid the familiar
asymmetrical pattern of shoehorning Confucian axiology into Western ethical categories. My good
friend Daniel Bell has pointed out rightly that a prominent theme in this argument for role ethics is
how family and communal relations function as the entry point for developing moral competence.
This being the case, Daniel asks, what is the Chinese term that does the work of “community” in
these canonical texts? Indeed, the Expansive Learning (daxue 大學) is the first of the Four Books
that is credited as being foundational and most succinct statement of the Confucian project. The

52
passage in this text that is often cited as the mantra for the radial and reflexive process of personal
cultivation is:

For the ancients who sought to demonstrate real virtuosity in the world . . . once their persons were
cultivated, their families were set right; once their families were set right, their state was properly ordered;
and once their states were properly ordered, there was peace in the world.1

There is certainly no mention of “community” in this passage, and on reflection, in the canonical
writings broadly. And if there is not an equivalent for “community” in these texts, asks Daniel, am I
not perhaps importing insights from the contemporary Western communitarian tradition to define
Confucian role ethics?
My first point would be that this Confucian project as stated in the Expansive Learning is clearly
holistic, and even though there is no specific mention of “community” per se, the radial, rippling
pattern of cultivation is inclusive of the direct, shared sense of identity and the significant quality of
relationships that we associate with the communal dimension. The central message of this terse yet
comprehensive document is that while personal, familial, social, political, and indeed cosmic
cultivation is ultimately coterminous and mutually entailing, it must always begin from a commitment
to personal cultivation, with the cosmic context providing the resources available for such cultivation.
A second way of arguing that the notion of community is integral to Confucian role ethics is to
derive community from the ubiquitous use of the term “exemplary person” (junzi) in the early
Confucian canons. It is a commonplace that Confucius as depicted in the Analects reinvents this term
junzi, transforming it from denoting nobility of birth and blood (king, ruler, vassals, high ministers)
to nobility of conduct (persons who serve as exemplary models for family and community). This
being the case, junzi still retains a social and political reference in the sense that human beings can
only become exemplary in their conduct through full participation in the social and political life of
their family lineages and communities. Several of the early glosses and texts—the Er Ya, the
Hanshiwaizhuan, the Baihutong, and others—underscore this social dimension when they define the
term jun 君 paranomastically—that is, by semantic and phonetic association—as qun 群 “to gather
around;” that is: 君者群也 “exemplary persons are those to whom the community repairs.” As Daniel
notes, this is the same term used to translate “community” (shequn 社群) in modern Chinese.
Yet another dimension of the argument I would make on behalf of an implicit sense of
community is that, historically, “family” (jia 家) in this same Expansive Learning definition of the
Confucian project is inclusive of community. Zhou Yiqun again cites the late Qing scholar, Yan Fu,
who claims that social and political order in the two millennia of imperial China was from its
beginnings “seventy percent a lineage organization and thirty percent an empire,” that is, a function
of lives lived within family lineage (jiazu 家族 or shizu 氏族)and the social fabric such communities
produced.2

1古之欲明明德於天下者 . . . 身修而後家齊，家齊而後國治，國治而後天下平。
2 Yiqun Zhou, Festival, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece, New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2010, p. 19-55.

53
 Given the centrality of family as the entry point for pursuing moral competence, a key term
appealed to in the Confucian corpus that expresses this notion of role ethics is nothing less than the
prime moral imperative in this tradition, “family reverence” (xiao). Xiao has conventionally been
rendered “filial piety” in English, but Rosemont and I have translated it as “family reverence.” What
recommends “family reverence” as a translation is that it in degree disassociates xiao from the duty
to God implied by “piety” and from the unilateral obedience that is assumed in paterfamilias. “Family
reverence” is collateral, with the elder generation receiving appropriate deference from their younger
members within their family lineages, and the younger generation deriving pleasure from deferring
to those who have given both meaning and substance to their lives. “Family reverence” also retains
the sacred connotations that are certainly at play in the ritualized culture of ancestral sacrifices.
The collaterality of “familial reverence” (xiao 孝) is captured in the character itself, constituted
as it is by the combination of the graph for “elders” (lao 老) and that for “son, daughter, child” (zi
子). Like ren 仁 that resists any formulaic understanding, xiao requires us to access and to build upon
our own existential sense of what it means to optimize our specific roles within family and community.
Xiao has immediate reference to our lived experience within the narrative of succeeding generations
as we remember our own parents and grandparents, and as we attend to our own children and
grandchildren. Xiao quite literally means the roles and relationships that constitute the communities
of elders and youth across successive generations, and the relations that obtain between the present
generation and those generations that have gone before. It references the inseparability of
grandparents and grandchildren, of fathers and daughters, of progenitors and progeny, and how such
roles can only be lived and learned together. In fact, when we examine the earliest form of the
character for “elders” (lao 老) as it is found on the oracle bones, we find that it depicts an old person
with long, disheveled hair, leaning on a walking stick bringing immediately to mind the famous
photograph of Albert Einstein. In the Small Seal script this same graph becomes stylized as ,
1
anticipating its present form 老. In comparing this character for “elders” with the earliest instance of
the character for “family reverence” (xiao) found later on the bronzes , we discover that the image
of a young person has quite literally taken the place of the walking stick as a source of support on
which the elders can lean.2 But importantly, while xiao certainly provides the support that succeeding
older generations can enjoy from the reverential progeny that follow them in their wake, the
complement flows in the other direction as well. That is, xiao is also the vital process whereby the
younger generation is transformed into and becomes a novel yet persistent embodied variant of those
to whom they have deferred. The older generation is a reservoir of culture from whom the younger
generation can draw sustenance and meaning, and in so doing, enable their progenitors themselves to
live on in the bodies and in the lived experience of these generations that follow.
The centrality of xiao in the Confucian project of aspiring to become consummate in one’s roles
and relations (ren 仁) becomes immediately apparent on examining one familiar passage from the
Analects:

1 Kwan, Tze-wan, “Multi-function Character Database:” at http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/

甲骨文合集 CHANT 00394.
2 Kwan, “Database” 西周晚期 CHANT 3937.

54
 Exemplary persons (junzi) concentrate their efforts on the root, for the root having been properly set,
their proper path in life (dao) emerges therefrom. As for family reverence (xiao) and fraternal deference
(ti), these are, I suspect, the root of becoming consummate in one’s roles and relations (ren).1

Two qualifications are needed here. First, we must resist any simplistic equation between family
reverence (xiao) and obedience. Xiao that is focused on the bottom-up deference children owe their
elders must be distinguished clearly from paterfamilias that we associate with Roman law as the juridical
patria potestas or power and privilege of the father. Indeed, there are times when being truly filial within
the family, like being a loyal minister within the court, requires courageous remonstrance (jian 諫) rather
than automatic compliance. And indeed, such remonstrance is not perceived merely as an option or a
possibility, but as a sacred obligation. In the Chinese Classic of Family Reverence, Master Zeng who is
to become the paragon of family reverence in the Confucian tradition, asks Confucius explicitly if strict
obedience is the substance of family reverence:

Master Zeng said, “Parental love (ai), reverence and respect (jing), seeing to the well-being of one’s
parents, and raising one’s name (ming) high for posterity—on these topics I have received your
instructions. I would presume to ask whether children can be deemed filial (xiao) by obeying every
command of their father.”2

Confucius responds impatiently to Master Zeng, making his case that such an easy an attitude of
automatic compliance to one’s elders, far from constituting family reverence, can on the contrary be a
source of gross immorality in conduct:

“What on earth are you saying? What on earth are you saying?” said the Master, “. . . . If confronted by
reprehensible behavior on his father’s part, a son has no choice but to remonstrate with his father, and if
confronted by reprehensible behavior on his ruler’s part, a minister has no choice but to remonstrate with
his ruler. Hence, remonstrance is the only response to immorality. How could simply obeying the
commands of one’s father be deemed filial?”3

Indeed, the Xunzi devotes an entire chapter to stories that provide examples of how blind obedience to
the older generation, far from reflecting family reverence, produces a full range of dire consequences
that offend against this very same value.4
And the second point here in clarifying the meaning of family reverence is that the immediate
family is only the beginning of such deference. It must become a pattern of conduct that, with
unrelenting attention, is extended out from family to include all members of the community, and

1 Analects 1.2: 君子務本，本立而道生。孝弟也者，其為仁之本與.

2 Chinese Classic of Family Reverence 15: 曾子曰：「若夫慈愛、恭敬、安親、揚名，則聞命矣。敢問子從父之
令，可謂孝乎？」Master Zeng is best remembered as a proponent of xiao—the devotion and service that the younger
generation directs to their elders and ancestors, and the pleasure that they derive in doing so. A natural extension of this
affection for one's family is friendship, and Master Zeng is portrayed in the Analects as being able to distinguish between
the sincerity of his fellow student, Yan Hui, and the rashness of another student, Zizhang.
3 Chinese Classic of Family Reverence 15: 子曰：「是何言與！是何言與！. . . 當不義，則子不可以不爭於父，臣
不可以不爭於君。故當不義則爭之。從父之令，又焉得為孝乎！」
4 See Xunzi chapter 29.

55
polity, and even nature itself. Indeed, in the “Three Powers” chapter of the Chinese Classic of Family
Reverence, xiao has cosmic reference, correlating the relationships that obtain among the heavens,
the earth, and the human world within this moral imperative. It is because these three powers are
mutually implicated in each other that such cosmic relations, providing context for the human
experience, have themselves a moral aspect that can serve as a model for the proper accord that can
be achieved within our human institutions:

Master Zeng replied, “Incredible—the profundity of family reverence!” The Master continued, “Indeed,
family reverence is the constancy of the heavenly cycles, the appropriate responsiveness (yi) of the earth,
and the proper conduct of the people. It is the constant workings of the heavens and the earth that the
people model themselves upon. Taking the illumination (ming) of the heavens as their model and making
the most of the earth’s resources, they bring the empire into accord (shun). This is the reason that
education can be effective without being severe, and political administration can maintain proper order
without being harsh.1

Relationally constituted persons are born into the broadest swath of family, community, and
cosmic relations—they do not exist exclusive of them, nor can they grow without them. By locating
the notion of persons within the relational cosmology that serves as interpretive context for these
texts, we can argue that terms such as “root,” “potential,” “cause,” and “source” that are sometimes
taken to be exclusive terms to be associated with a given human nature have to be reconceived as
referencing always collateral, reciprocal, and reflexive processes. In this ongoing transactional
process of associated living, cultivation of one’s unique person within one’s specific and often
changing relations is the root from which a full canopy of interdependent personal bonds grows to
define the various radial spheres of family lineage, neighborhood, community, village, polity, and
ultimately, cosmos, with each mutually implicated dimension making its own contribution to the
prevailing social ethic. As the Expansive Learning (大學 Daxue) enjoins us, in the singularly
important project of becoming consummate persons, personal cultivation in the relations that
constitute us is fundamental, and we must give it our highest priority:

From the emperor down to the common folk, everything is rooted in personal cultivation. There can be
no healthy canopy when the roots are not properly set, and it would never do for priorities to be reversed
between what should be invested with importance and what should be treated more lightly.2

That is, taking “root” as our example here, while the root may be thought to grow the tree, the
tree also in turn grows its roots. The “root” and its flourishing canopy are perceived as aspects of an
interactive and organic whole that grow together symbiotically, or not at all. Continuing this familiar
root and branches metaphor, root and canopy must grow together, with the tree spreading its roots
outward beneath the earth and simultaneously stretching its branches upward towards the sky. In the

1 Chinese Classic of Family Reverence 7: 曾子曰：「甚哉！孝之大也。」子曰：「夫孝、天之經也，地之義也，

民之行也。天地之經而民是則之，則天之明，因地之利，以順天下。是以其教不肅而成，其政不嚴而治。
2 Daxue 1969: 2b: 自天子以至於庶人，壹是皆以修身為本。其本亂而末治者否矣，其所厚者薄，而其所薄者厚，
未之有也！I have borrowed this translation of the title of the Daxue rather than the familiar Great Learning from Jung-
Yeup Kim because it captures the expansive radiality of the Confucian project as it is rehearsed in this foundational text.

56
same way, aspiring to become consummate in our conduct as persons (ren) is the expansive process
of persons becoming increasingly rooted in virtuosic habits of conduct extending themselves outward
in our relations within family, community, and cosmos as something that we do, and that we either
do together, or not at all. Indeed, the Record of Rites (Liji 禮記) version of the Expansive Learning
fascicle concludes the excerpt cited above by declaring that personal cultivation does both: it sets the
root deeply while at the same time growing the social intelligence needed for a flourishing world. In
the words of the text itself:

This commitment to personal cultivation is called both the root and the height of wisdom.1

Here again, personal cultivation as the “root” and its erstwhile product, “wisdom,” are to be
perceived as an organic whole that in growing together are two ways of viewing the same
phenomenon. Said another way, the practice of personal cultivation and the ensuing wisdom that
characterizes our conduct are aspectual abstractions from the concrete narrative of living
consummately within the relations of family and community.
This understanding of the root and the tree as a symbiotic process stands in contrast to thinking
of the root as some independent, single source. Such symbiosis reflects the holistic cosmological
assumptions that require a situated answer to our most fundamental and perennial philosophical
questions: “Where does meaning come from and how is it conveyed?” In the Abrahamic traditions,
the answer is simple: Meaning comes from a Divine source beyond and independent of the individual
person. Yahweh, or God, or Allah provides us with a continuing vision of life’s purpose, and each of
us must return to this source when we lose our way. For the Confucian project, on the other hand,
with no appeal to some independent, external principle, meaning arises pari passu from a vital
network of meaningful relationships in the process of intergenerational transmission of a living
civilization. A personal commitment to achieving relational virtuosity within one’s own family
relationships is both the starting point and the ultimate source of personal, social, and indeed, cosmic
meaning. In cultivating our own persons through aspiring to and extending robust relations in our
families and beyond, we enlarge the cosmos by adding meaning to it, and in turn, this increasingly
meaningful cosmos provides a fertile context for the project of our own personal cultivation.
We must bear these alternative meanings of “root” and “source” in mind when we reflect upon
a passage in which Confucius in the Analects describes his role in the transmission of that living
tradition in the following terms:

The Master said: “Following the proper way, I do not forge new paths; with confidence I cherish the
ancients—in these respects I am comparable to our venerable Old Peng.”2

When Confucius allows that in “following the proper way, I do not forge new paths,” he is
clearly disassociating himself from the term zuo 作. Zuo is conventionally translated as “initiating,”

1 Liji 禮記 (Record of Rites), A Concordance to the Liji, D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching, editors. Hong Kong: Commercial
Press, 1992: 43.1/164/30: 此謂知本，此謂知之至也。
2 Analects 7.1: 子曰：述而不作，信而好古，竊比於我老彭。

57
but wanting to maintain the “path” metaphor here, I have translated it as “forging.” Since this term
throughout the canonical texts is often coupled with “sages” (shengren 聖人) and what they are able
to do, we might assume that Confucius is modestly demurring from such an association here.
But there are commentators across the centuries who have read this passage as a portrait of
Confucius as a cultural fundamentalist. As early as the Mozi, for example, Confucius is taken at his
word as being wholly a transmitter, and is criticized roundly for offering the world a lifeless
conservatism:

Again, the Confucians say: “Exemplary persons follow and do not innovate.” But we would respond by
saying: “In ancient times, Yi introduced the bow, Yu introduced armor, Xizhong introduced the carriage,
and the tradesman Qiu introduced the boat. Such being the case, are today’s tanners, smiths, carriage-
makers, and carpenters all exemplary persons, and are Yi, Yu, Xizhong, and the tradesman Qiu simply
petty persons? Further, since whatever it is the Confucians are following had to be introduced by someone,
doesn’t this mean that what they are in fact following are the ways of petty persons?”1

The logic of this Mohist criticism is impeccable if we take Confucius’s self-description to be

expository rather than being an expression of his profound deference to the cultural tradition, and a
token of his personal modesty. And just such a Mohist criticism of Confucianism is alive and well in
the commentarial tradition as it extends down to the present day. The contemporary political
philosopher, Hsiao Kung-chuan (Xiao Gongquan) 蕭 公 權 , describes this ostensive Confucian
conservatism at length as the project of “emulating the past” (fagu 法古). 2 More recently, Ted
Slingerland, in interpreting this same passage from the Analects, aligns himself with a retrospective
understanding of a Confucianism that harkens back to the Golden Age of the Zhou dynasty.
Slingerland observes:

It is more likely that transmission is all that Confucius countenanced for people in his age, since the
sagely Zhou kings established the ideal set of institutions that perfectly accord with human needs.3

Contra this conservative reading of Confucius—a position that I must disagree with
profoundly—I want to suggest that this passage speaks rather to Confucius’s understanding of the
nature and the dynamics of intergenerational transmission. And in this process of transmission, the
patterns of deference captured in the notion of “family reverence” (xiao) serve as a key factor.
Borrowing the language of the Book of Changes (Yijing), I would argue that Confucius as he is
remembered historically is in fact a particularly good example of the cosmological assumptions that
grounds this canonical text. He, like the Book of Changes, assumes that the unfolding of the natural
and cultural narratives can best be expressed in the language of “continuity and change” (biantong

1 Mozi 63/39/19: 又曰：「君子循而不作。」應之曰：「古者羿作弓，杼作甲，奚仲作車，巧垂作舟，然則今之

鮑函車匠皆君子也，而羿、杼、奚仲、巧垂皆小人邪？且其所循人必或作之，然則其所循皆小人道也？」See
also 81/46/50.
2 Hsiao Kung-chuan, A History of Chinese Political Thought Volume 1, trans. F. W. Mote, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979, pp.79-142.
3 Edward Slingerland (trans.), Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 2003, p. 64.

58
變通) and of “ceaseless procreation” (shengsheng buyi 生生不已). To describe him in these terms is
not to deny that, with Confucius’s reliance upon the core canons of the tradition, he is a most effective
transmitter of a persistent worldview and an abiding commonsense. Indeed, his personal gravitas lies
with the authority he embodies though the traditional assumption that it was he who compiled or at
least edited the canonical Five Classics. At the same time, however, with Confucius’s own
contribution to the development of a specific philosophical vocabulary, he is also a clear exemplar of
creative new insights within a living tradition. Indeed, appreciating his modesty here in demurring at
the suggestion that he has been an innovator, we still have substantial evidence to comfortably assert
that although Confucius was without question an effective transmitter, he was also transitional as
someone who took the tradition in significantly new directions.
In broad strokes, the self-understanding of Confucius is that he self-consciously sees himself as
continuing an antique tradition that reaches back into the second millennia BCE:

The Master said: “The Zhou dynasty looked back to the Xia and Shang dynasties. Such a wealth of culture!
I follow the Zhou.”1

The source of Confucius’s education has been the compounding culture of the generations that
have preceded him as this tradition lives on in the people of his own day. As he says when confronted
by a perilous situation when traveling through the district of Kuang on his way from the state of Wei
to Chen:

With King Wen (literally, King “Culture”) long dead, does not our cultural heritage reside here in us? If
tian were going to destroy this cultural legacy, we latecomers would not have had access to it. If tian is
not going to destroy this culture, what can the people of Kuang do to us!2

At the same time, however, as we have witnessed above, Confucius has been singularly responsible
for introducing, redefining, and elaborating upon a set of key terms as an authorized philosophical
vocabulary for an evolving Confucianism: ren 仁 (aspiring to consummate conduct in one’s roles and
relations), junzi 君子 (exemplary persons), yi 義 (an optimizing appropriateness), and li 禮 (achieving
propriety in one’s roles and relations). Again, it is Confucius who promotes personal cultivation as
defining of the Confucian project, and who grounds Confucian role ethics and the vision of the

1 Analects 3.14: “‘周監於二代，郁郁乎文哉！吾從周。’”See also Analects 8.20:“舜有臣五人而天下治。武王曰：

‘予有亂臣十人。’孔子曰：‘才難，不其然乎？唐虞之際，於斯為盛。有婦人焉，九人而已。三分天下有其二，
以服事殷。周之德，其可謂至德也已矣。’”Shun had only five ministers and the world was properly governed. King
Wu also said, “I have ten ministers who bring proper order to the world.” Confucius said, “As the saying has it: 'Human
talent is hard to come by.' Isn't it indeed the case. And it was at the transition from Yao dynasty to Shun that talented
ministers were in greatest abundance. In King Wu's case with a woman, perhaps his wife, among them, there were really
only nine ministers. The Zhou, with two thirds of the world in its possession, continued to submit to and serve the House
of Yin. The excellence of Zhou can be said to be the highest excellence of all.”
2 Analects 9.5: 文王既沒，文不在茲乎？天之將喪斯文也，後死者不得與於斯文也；天之未喪斯文也，匡人其如
予何？According to the biography of Confucius, Confucius had left Wey and was on route to Chen when he passed
through Kuang. The people of Kuang had recently been ravaged by Yang Huo, also from the state of Lu, and mistook
Confucius for him. See Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Records of the Historian), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959, p. 1919.
See also Analects 11.23.

59
consummate life in “family reverence” (xiao 孝). This being the case, it is not surprising that when
Zhu Xi 朱熹 selects the Four Books as the core texts of the tradition, he describes the Expansive
Learning (Daxue 大學) as the most basic text that sets the Confucian project of personal cultivation.
He then canonizes the Analects and the Mencius as the second and third of the Four Books,
respectively, with the explicit reason that these texts provide the fundamental vocabulary for this
Confucian project, and in addition, offer the tradition a narrative example of such personal cultivation
in the person of Confucius. Again, it is Confucius himself who, in what Zhu Xi celebrates as the
highest and most exuberant statement of the Confucian project we find in the fourth of the Four Books,
Focusing the Familiar (Zhongyong 中庸), is described as the very embodiment of the “massive
transformations” that occur in the evolving cosmic order:

Confucius revered Yao and Shun as his ancestors and carried on their ways; he emulated and made
illustrious the way of Kings Wen and Wu. He modeled himself above on the rhythm of the turning seasons,
and below he was attuned to the patterns of water and earth. He is comparable to the heavens and the
earth, sheltering and supporting everything that is. He is comparable to the progress of the four seasons,
and the alternating brightness of the sun and the moon. All things are nurtured together and do not cause
injury to one another; the various ways are traveled together and are not conflicted. Their lesser virtuosity
is to be seen as flowing streams; their greater virtuosity is to be seen as massive transformations. This is
why the heavens and the earth are so grand.1

There are several corollary entailments that can be drawn from the primacy of lived family
and community relations as the ground of Confucian role ethics, corollaries readily illustrated by
passages from the Analects. There is a fundamental uniqueness of persons as they are defined by
their specific patterns of relations,2 there is an interdependence among persons as they live these
relations,3 there is a correlative, engaging and reflexive nature to all personal activity, 4 and there is
an underlying processive, provisional, and emergent conception of both the natural and the social
order.5 And there are also mutually entailing historical and cosmological implications that follow

1 Focusing the Familiar 30: 仲尼祖述堯、舜，憲章文、武；上律天時，下襲水土。辟如天地之無不持載，無不

覆幬，辟如四時之錯行，如日月之代明。萬物并育而不相害，道并行而不相悖，小德川流，大德敦化，此天地
之所以為大也。
2 Analects 15.36: 子曰：「當仁不讓於師。」 The Master said, “In striving to be consummate in your person, do not
yield even to your teacher.”
3 Analects 6.30: 夫仁者，己欲立而立人，己欲達而達人。能近取譬，可謂仁之方也已。」 “As for consummate
persons, they establish others in seeking to establish themselves; they promote others in seeking to get there themselves.
Correlating one's conduct in those near at hand can be said to be the method of becoming consummate in one’s conduct.”
4 Analects 7.8: 子曰：「不憤不啟，不悱不發，舉一隅不以三隅反，則不復也。」The Master said, “I do not open
the way for students who are not driven with eagerness; I do not supply a vocabulary for students who are not trying
desperately to find the language for their ideas. If on showing students one corner they do not come back to me with the
other three, I will not repeat myself.” And 7.22: 子曰：「三人行，必有我師焉。擇其善者而從之，其不善者而改
之。」The Master said, “In strolling in the company of just two other persons, I am bound to find a teacher in them.
Identifying their strengths, I follow them, and identifying their weaknesses, I reform myself accordingly.”
5 Analects 9.17: 子在川上，曰：「逝者如斯夫！不舍晝夜。」The Master was standing on the riverbank, and
observed, “Isn't life's passing just like this, never ceasing day or night!”; 2.11: 子曰：「溫故而知新，可以為師矣。」
The Master said: “Reviewing the old as a means of realizing the new—such a person can be considered a teacher.” and
15.29: 子曰：「人能弘道，非道弘人。」 The Master said: “It is the person who is able to broaden the way, not the
way that broadens the person.”

60
from this primacy of relations. For example, there is the holistic, unbounded, and nested nature of
relationships, and a holographic conception of person as defined in focus-field rather than part-
whole terms. Further, Confucianism as a philosophical aestheticism, registers all of the relationships
that constitute each person as being relevant in degree to the totality of the effect that is achieved as
someone’s personal identity.
Because many of the most significant personal relationships obtain among and between family
members, much of the totality of the effect will be seen therein. But the relationships must also extend
outward from family lineage to the larger social order. The relationships are also intergenerational,
as noted earlier, and are to be understood in terms of the roles between benefactors and beneficiaries.
And these relations with the ancestors and cultural heroes who have come before, reach beyond the
immediate social and political order to inspire the tradition’s family-centered religiousness. The
Analects consistently seems to be saying that a full and flourishing human life requires that some of
our relations be with those younger than ourselves, others with our peers, and still other relations with
those generations that have preceded us, and who live on in our own persons, and in our progeny.
With this primacy of relationality, if the Latin root of “religious” as religare does in fact mean
“binding tightly” (as in the cognates “ligament,” “obligation,” “league,” and “ally” )—then we can
see that “family reverence” (xiao) so described has a profoundly religious import, referencing those
familial, communal, and ancestral bonds that together constitute a resilient and enduring social
fabric. 1 And it is with this profoundly religious sense of “binding tightly”—that is, with the
strengthening of family and communal bonds—that we would interpret the Master’s autobiographical
response when asked by his disciple Zilu what he would most like to do:

I would like to bring peace and contentment to the aged, share relationships of trust and confidence with
friends, and to love and protect the young.2

In the Chinese Classic of Family Reverence, Confucius declares that this “way of family
reverence” is the very substance of morality and education: “It is family reverence (xiao) that is the
root of moral virtuosity, and whence education (jiao) itself is born.”3 The opening chapter of this
same text goes on to provide us with a familiar radial progression that we find consistently in the
Confucian literature from a primary center to the extremities, beginning from concern for one’s own
person and what is closest at hand, extending to the care for one’s family and kin, and then
culminating in service to the ruler and to posterity. In this passage, King Wen—that is, King “Culture”
(wen)—is once again singled out as the source from which the current generation draws its inspiration
and to whom with the cultural dividends it has accrued, makes appropriate return.

Your physical person with its hair and skin are received from your parents. Vigilance in not allowing
anything to do injury to your person is where family reverence begins; distinguishing yourself and
walking the proper way (dao) in the world; raising your name high for posterity and thereby bringing

1 Sarah F. Hoyt, “The Etymology of Religion,” Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 32, No. 2 (1912), pp. 126-
129 provides some interesting textual evidence for this very old and often disputed etymology.
2 Analects 5.26: 子路曰：「願聞子之志。」子曰：「老者安之，朋友信之，少者懷之。」
3 Henry Rosemont, Jr. and Roger T. Ames, The Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing
孝經, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009, p. 105: 子曰：夫孝，德之本也，教之所由生也。

61
 esteem to your father and mother—it is in these things that family reverence finds its consummation.
This family reverence then begins in service to your parents, continues in service to your lord, and
culminates in distinguishing yourself in the world. In the “Greater Odes” section of the Book of Songs it
says: “How can you not remember your ancestor, King Wen? You must cultivate yourself and extend his
excellence.”1

The charge in this passage to keep the body intact certainly refers to one’s own carnal physicality,
but it also lends itself to a broader, cultural reading: that is, each generation has the responsibility of
keeping the corpus of culture that we come to embody, whole and alive. Without the formal and
determinate dimension provided by embodied living and by the social grammar of meaningful roles
and relations, there is a very real question as to whether the significant refinement achieved in and
through our life forms would even be possible. Put simply, determinate forms in their many different
variations—body, ritual, language, the institutions of family and ancestral reverence, and so on—are
a necessary condition for cultural refinement.
Confucian role ethics in substance is perpetuated through family lineages that have complex
political, economic, and religious functions. There are two cognate characters that are integral to the
dynamics of “family reverence” (xiao) in the intergenerational transmission of the continuities of the
family lineage: ti 體 (“embodying,” “body,” “forming and shaping,” “category,” “class”) and li 禮
(“ritual,” “achieving propriety in one’s roles and relations”). The “living body” (ti 體) and its
“embodied living” (li 禮) is the narrative site of a conveyance of the culture—language, religious
rituals, the aesthetics of cooking, song, and dance, the modeling of mores and values, and so on—
through which a living civilization is perpetuated.
An important dramatis persona in the Analects who in his own conduct underscores this primacy
of relationality is Confucius’ protégée, Master Zeng 曾 子 , whom we have met above as the
paradigmatic figure most closely associated with the fullest expression of “family reverence” (xiao
孝):2

Master Zeng was gravely ill, and when Meng Jingzi asked after him, Master Zeng said to him, “Baleful
is the cry of a dying bird; felicitous are the words of a dying person. There are three habits that exemplary
persons consider of utmost importance in their vision of the moral life. By maintaining a dignified
demeanor, such persons keep violent and rancorous conduct at a distance; by maintaining a proper
countenance, they keep trust and confidence near at hand; by taking care in their choice of language and
their mode of expression, they keep vulgarity and impropriety at a distance. As for the details in the
arrangement of ritual vessels, there are minor functionaries to take care of such things.”3

1 Rosemont and Ames, The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence, p. 105: 身體髮膚，受之父母，不敢毀傷，孝之始
也。立身行道，揚名於後世，以顯父母，孝之終也。夫孝，始於事親，中於事君，終於立身。《大雅》云：
「無念爾祖，聿脩厥德。」 Book of Songs 235.
2 In exploring the meaning and function of the character xiao in the Analects that shed some light on this key philosophical
term, one can complement such an analysis by an appeal to the many references to Master Zeng himself where he appears
as the personal embodiment of xiao.
3 Analects 8.4: 曾子有疾，孟敬子問之。曾子言曰：「鳥之將死，其鳴也哀；人之將死，其言也善。君子所貴乎
道者三：動容貌，斯遠暴慢矣；正顏色，斯近信矣；出辭氣，斯遠鄙倍矣。籩豆之事，則有司存。」

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In this passage, Master Zeng, plainly aware of his own impending demise, begins by exhorting his
listener to pay serious attention to what he is about to say, for Master Zeng believes that his last words
as he will utter them on his deathbed are of consequence.
Master Zeng’s message then is that all three of the habits of deportment considered by exemplary
persons to be vital to the moral life—that is, a dignified demeanor, a proper countenance, and a
commitment to effective communication—are essential to the productive growth of interpersonal
relations. And it is this growth in relations that is the substance of Confucian ethics. On the other
hand, a failure to cultivate such dispositions precipitates vulgarity, impropriety, and violent,
rancorous actions. This kind of behavior is an immediate source of diminution and disintegration in
one’s relations, and as such, is for the Confucian the substance of immoral conduct. By way of
contrast with this vital concern about the quality of personal relations, the formal and material
trappings of a refined life—the example given here is the arrangement of ritual vessels—is of
relatively marginal significance. It is thus that the familial and social roles are seen to have normative
force, serving us as concrete guidelines for how we ought to proceed, and quite felicitously, what we
should do next. Indeed, it is this continuing process of elevating, refining, and deepening our lived
roles and relations to make the most of our associated lives that prompts us to describe Confucian
morality as an ethics of roles, and to claim that Confucian role ethics, in our view, is importantly a
sui generis vision of the moral life.
In Confucian role ethics, the assumption is that the social and political order emerges from and
is dependent upon personal cultivation within the institution of the family and by extension, the family
lineage. The renowned sociologist Fei Xiaotong reflects upon the contemporary configuration of the
Chinese kinship-based sociopolitical model of governance that can be attested to as early as the
canons and the bronze inscriptions of the early Zhou dynasty.1 Fei introduces distinctions that contrast
the Western group of discrete individuals and their rule-governed social organizations functioning
within clearly defined boundaries—what he calls “the organizational mode of association”
(tuantigeju 團體格局)—with the Chinese kinship model that he calls “the differential mode of
association” (差序格局).2 The image Fei uses for the organizational mode is of individual straws
collected to form a haystack—a bundle of discrete, individual entities. This contrasts with Fei’s
analogy for the differential mode of “the concentric circles formed when a stone is thrown into a lake,”
a relational image that is reinforced by the fact that the character for “ripples” or “rippling” (lun 淪)
is cognate and homophonous with the graph for “relational order” (lun 倫). Perhaps the important
implication in Fei’s distinction between these two different modes of association is the presence of a
common organizing principle that makes persons equal in the organizational mode of association
(some variation on the concept of “God” or “law” in the broadest sense) verses the interrelated and
graduated differences in personal roles and relations that are at play in the differential mode. This
implication is evident in different assumptions in the construction of personal identity, that is, a

1 Yiqun Zhou, Festival, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece, p. 147 also argues that “the home,
where one engaged in daily practices of kinship-centered moral precepts and religious ceremonies, was the site for the
most fundamental education in Zhou society.”
2 Fei, Xiaotong, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society, A translation of Xiangtu Zhongguo 鄉土中國 by
Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, p. 63.

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tension between an appeal to one’s perceived rights and entitlements on the one hand, and attention
to the managing of one’s personal connections on the other.
Fei Xiaotong insists that “Confucian ethics cannot be divorced from the idea of discrete centers
fanning out into a weblike network”1 that is “composed of webs woven out of countless personal
relationships.” 2 He would further claim that this predominant pattern of kinship relations in
hierarchically defined roles and relations produces its own distinctive kind of morality in which “no
ethical concepts . . . transcend specific types of human relationships.”3 That is, kinship as the root of
human relations is defined by the values of “family reverence” (xiao 孝) and “fraternal deference” (ti
悌). And friendship as the way of extending this pattern of kinship relations to include non-relatives
is pursued through an ethic of “commitment and resolve” (cheng 誠), “doing one’s utmost” (zhong
忠), and “making good on one’s word” (xin 信).4 All such ethical values are aspired to within the
specific personal relationships of family members and community.
This intimate relationship between ethical values and social roles brings to mind a passage from
the Mencius in which this relation-based vocabulary of role ethics is historicized, taking it back to the
earliest stages of evolution of human civilization that took place in the Xia dynasty. During the reign
of Yao and then Shun, the land was cleared, and Yu drained the waters to make the cultivation of
crops possible.

(The minister of Shun and legendary cultural hero) Houji 后稷 taught the people how to sow and reap
their crops, and how to plant and grow the various grains. When these grains ripened, the people
flourished. But human beings have their proper way, and even when they have full stomachs, warm
clothing, and comfortable housing, without education they are little more than animals. These sage rulers
were much concerned about this situation, and sent Xie as Minister of Education to teach the people by
appealing to propriety in human roles and relations: that is, there is affection to be had in the roles of
father and son, the pursuit of optimal appropriateness to be had in the roles of lord and minister,
appropriate distinctions to be made in the roles of husband and wife, a proper hierarchy to be observed
in the role of elders and juniors, and fidelity to be achieved in the role of friend and friend.5

It is because the entry point for developing moral competence in the Confucian vision of the
moral life is family relations in the broadest sense that xiao 孝 as “family reverence” has its singularly
important place in the Analects. And to better understand the notion of xiao itself, we need to clarify
the nature and the significance of the institution of family within this Confucian context. Again, Fei
Xiaotong, draws a contrast between the nuclear “family” that for anthropologists takes on its major

1 Fei, From the Soil, p. 68.

2 Fei, From the Soil, p. 78.
3 Fei, From the Soil, p. 74.
4 See for example Analects 1.4 and 1.8. There is an ambiguity in the expression “associates and friends” (pengyou 朋友)
as it is used in the documents of the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn period where these texts do not distinguish
non-related friends from agnatic male relatives—that is, paternal relatives such as brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins, and
so on. Some scholars have argued that pengyou becomes a term commonly used to denote non-kin friends specifically
only in the Warring States period. See Yiqun Zhou, Festival, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece,
pp. 110-111 and 137-139.
5 Mencius 3A4: 后稷教民稼穡。樹藝五穀，五穀熟而民人育。人之有道也，飽食、煖衣、逸居而無教，則近於
禽獸。聖人有憂之，使契為司徒，教以人倫：父子有親，君臣有義，夫婦有別，長幼有序，朋友有信。

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significance as the site of reproduction, and the dominant historical pattern of premodern Chinese
families. Such families are lineages of persons with the same surname (shizu 氏族), and by extension,
are clans (jiazu 家族) made up of several lineages who share the same surname. While such lineages
also have the function of reproduction, Fei insists that within the Chinese experience they have the
singularly important institutional role as “a medium through which all activities are organized.”1 That
is, in addition to the perpetuation of the family, such lineages have complex political, economic, and
religious functions that are expressed along the vertical and hierarchical axis of the father-son and
mother-daughter-in-law relationships. Lineage relations are again reinforced socially and religiously
through the institutions of ancestor reverence, a continuing practice that archaeology tells us dates
back at least to the Neolithic Age.2
In the early Shang, the ancestors—at least those of the king and the noble families—were
believed to be directly and significantly responsible for the good or ill fortune in the lives of their
descendants, necessitating a propitiating of these progenitors through sacrifice. This belief died out
only slowly, which helps to explain Confucius’s comment that “sacrificing to ancestral spirits other
than one’s own is being unctuous.”3 A part of the genius of Confucius was to appreciate the fact that
these ritual sacrifices could continue to provide a good deal of meaning for human lives and serve as
a binding force in the family and community overall, even when, at least among the intelligentsia, the
supernatural raison d'être for their performance was no longer credible.
Of course, given the fact that the structure of Chinese family lineages has changed dramatically
over time, such generalizations must be qualified by time and place, and by regional and temporal
variations. Having said this, Yiqun Zhou marshals scholarly consensus behind her claim that
premodern Chinese society was “for several thousand years largely a polity organized by kinship
principles.” 4 In weighing the extent to which social and political order was derived from and
dependent upon family relations, Zhou insists that in contrast with the Greeks, “the Chinese state was
never conceived as a political community that equaled the sum of its citizens,” and that “the
relationship between the rulers and the ruled was considered analogous to the relationship between
parents and children.”5 Confucius himself is making an astute observation when he asserts that within
this cultural tradition, the proper functioning of the institution of family is integral to the production
of the socio-political order of the state:

Someone asked Confucius, “Why are you not employed in government?” The Master replied, “The Book
of Documents says: ‘It all lies in family reverence. Being filial to your parents and finding fraternity with

1 Fei, From the Soil, p. 84.

2 See David N. Keightley, “Shamanism, Death, and the Ancestors: Religious Mediation in Neolithic and Shang China,
ca. 5000-1000 B.C,” Asiatische Studien 52, (1998), pp. 763-828. Yiqun Zhou in her analysis of the dominance of kinship
and the inalienable bond between ancestors and their progeny in early Zhou society points out that “Nearly one-sixth of
the Odes pertain to ancestral sacrifices, including the ceremony proper and the subsequent feast. These pieces demonstrate
the central importance of the ancestral banquet for our understanding of the Zhou discourse of sociability.” And further,
that “ancestor worship entails not only memorial rituals that are regular, systematic, and continuous, but also, more
important, incorporation of the dead into a descent group as permanent members endowed with an essential role in forging
group solidarity.” Yiqun Zhou, Festival, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece, pp. 104 and 112.
3 Analects 2.24: 非其鬼而祭之，諂也。
4 Yiqun Zhou, Festival, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece, p. 19.
5 Yiqun Zhou, Festival, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece, pp. 17-18n51.

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 your brothers is in fact carrying out the work of government.’ In doing these things I am participating in
governing. Why must I be employed in government?”1

Indeed, it is this persistent family-based sociopolitical organization of Chinese society that has
within this antique culture, late and soon, elevated the specific family values and obligations
circumscribed by the term xiao to serve as its governing moral imperative.

1 Analects 2.21: 或謂孔子曰：「子奚不為政？」子曰：「《書》云：『孝乎惟孝、友于兄弟，施於有政。』是

亦為政，奚其為為政？」

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 Toward a Rehabilitation of the Theory of “Conscience Collective”

Kunitake Ito

Résumé

However large or small, a community is not an aggregate of its members. It is an entity sui generis.
What is the unifying and driving force of our community? More than a century ago, in the 4th World
Congress of Philosophy, held in Bologna, 1911, Émile Durkheim answered that it is the “conscience
collective” which is the forming and driving almost all kinds of community. I believe that it is
important to rehabilitate his theory today, because, firstly, his concept of this special consciousness
is much better than any model of social mentality proposed in the 20th century philosophy, for
example, structuralist and post-structuralist analyses of social mentality (Lévi-Strauss and Derrida),
and, secondly, his vocabulary is still under the spell of representationalist understanding of human
mind and, therefore, needs to be renovated by way of the linguistic understanding of human mind
(Peirce and Wittgenstein). I point out the merits of Durkheim ‘s theory and try to reformulate it in an
upgraded form, the theory of collective consciousness fully linguistically interpreted.

In 1911, at the fourth international meeting of our World Philosophy Congress held in Bologna, Émile
Durkheim made an address under the title of “Value judgements and judgments of reality”, which
was soon to be published in the special issue of Revue métaphysique et morale in the same year. Even
though it is more than one hundred years old, his talk is still very important, because its theory of
social mentality, i.e., the theory of so called “collective consciousness”, is the most promising idea
concerning the essential factor of community formation in general, and also because it provides a
very interesting theory of the social values in general.
Durkheim’s theory is, however, needs a sort of rehabilitation because his theory is formulated
in the terms of representational viewpoints of late 19th and early 20th century philosophies. We have
experienced the linguistic turn in 20th century philosophy. So, we need to reformulate his theory in
the style of linguistic philosophy. In this talk, I am, firstly, going to point out the significance of
Durkheim’s ideas and then, am going to present its core ideas in a morel explicitly linguistic scheme.
My talk is basically a lesson in the history of philosophy, but, needless to say, it is not simply that. I
use the theory of Durkheim as a starting point, and hope that from this point grows a new productive
vision of social mentality.

1. A Theory of Social Mentality

We are almost always identifying our existence and characters in terms of our membership in some
communities. The identification is usually not single fold but multifold. I am a member of my family,
my city, my university, my amateur orchestra group, my volunteer working group, etc. etc. We are
members of many overlapping and crisscrossing groups. Aristotle said we are political animals. We

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are communal existence. The communitarian theory of ethics can be considered to be a branch of
much more general communitarian theory of social existence and values.
Now, Durkheim’s theory of collective consciousness in early 2oth century is unique in its
comprehensiveness. It explains both the nature and formation of our communal existence and values.
It is almost forgotten in the domain of current philosophical discussion about human sociality. The
main reason of this lack of interest in his discussion of social mentality is, perhaps, its apparent
similarity to Hegel’s concept of Objective Spirit. But Durkheim’s theory has nothing to do with the
Hegelian theological orientation. His philosophy of religion is deeply imbedded in his theory of
sociality. In his case, a theory of collective consciousness provides with the theoretical foundation of
social religiosity, not vise versa, as is the case of Hegelianism.
Durkheim said that individual minds are able to enter into close relation with and work upon
each other, from their “synthesis” arises a new kind of psychic life. It is clearly distinguished by its
special intensity from mental life led by isolated individual. Sentiments born and developed in the
group have a greater energy than purely individual sentiments. A man who experiences such
sentiments feels himself dominated by outside forces that led sentiments and pervade his milieu. He
feels himself in a world quite distinct from that of his own private existence.
According to Durkheim, this world of collective psychic life is a world not only more intense
but also qualitatively different. Following the collectivity, the individual forgets himself for the
common end and his conduct is oriented in terms of a standard outside himself. At the same time, and
owing to their theoretical nature, those forces are not easily controlled, canalized and adjusted to
closely determined ends. They need to overflow for the sake of overflowing, as in plays without any
particular objective, at one time in the form of stupid destructive violence or, at another, of heroic
folly. It is in a sense a luxurious activity since it is a very “rich” activity. For all these reasons this
activity is qualitatively different from everyday life of the individual, as is the superior from the
inferior, the ideal from the real.
Durkheim’s vision of human mentality is, thus, clearly anti-Cartesian and strongly anti-
individualistic. This is a most distinguished virtue of his theory, because the 20th century philosophy
failed to formulate a thoroughly non-individualistic vision of human being. We are still prone to
search for both an anti-individualistic and anti-Cartesian philosophy of human being, but in vein, as
is clear from the cases of structuralism and post-structuralism. This search is in vein because theories
like Levi-Strauss or Derrida are indeed anti-Cartesian but not an-individualistic. It is an individualism
of other than Cartesian sort. It is a Rousseau type individualism and not a thorough avowal of the
dominance of social mentality over the individual. It is a peculiar individualism of “other than myself”
ego.
Now, how could this kind of mental synthesis be formed by the interactions and communications
between plural individuals? Durkheim explained this possibility of synthesis by means of the model
of linguistic exchange. He developed an original theory about human communication in his major
works on Social Division and other philosophical essays. We can summarize his analysis in the
following three points.
(1) There is nothing in principle in the individual’s mental world which has not been derived
from the social consciousness. Almost all mental states in our personal psychic life are not possible

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in the completely solitary conditions. The forms of our conceptual thinking largely depend on our
social environments. If transformed into different milieu, our styles, forms, meanings, contents of
consciousness become very different.
(2) The channels of the interactions of social consciousness and personal consciousness are
language and symbols. The interactions are reciprocal and the evolutions are mutual. The collective
consciousness develops by the social-personal mental interactions.
(3) The original source of higher rational thinking lies in the domain of social consciousness.
The fundamental categories of exact sciences and highly spiritual morality and religion are derived
from the working of collective consciousness. There are so many kinds of categorical distinctions in
our factual and value judgements, but the most basic conceptual distinction is, perhaps, that of sacred
and profane. This distinction is very much significant not only in the religious thinking but also
theoretical, scientific thinking because there is a sort of analogical resemblance between various kinds
of dichotomous distinctions between, say, space and time, good and evil, past and future, fact and
value etc. etc. The formal logic of social consciousness is therefore summed up to be distinction and
analogical association.
We will think about these points in more detail below, but here we must first give attention to
the fact that this is a unique kind of “Realism” of social mentality. Durkheim treats collective
consciousness as an entity outside of our individual beings, which are energetic and working on us
by itself. He takes this kind of mentality realistically. He take it also as a synthesis of personal
consciousness. There is a mutual formation between individuals and community. How is the mutual
formation possible? The answer is “By way of the linguistic and symbolic communication”. What is
the fundamental logic of this communication? The answer is “The participation into the categorical
distinction and analogical association”. We can characterize this theory as “a communicational
realism of social consciousness”.

2. A General Theory of Social Values

Now, as we have seen in the previous section, Durkheim thought that the collective consciousness
works, in contrast to our individual mental life, as an ideal form of mentality. It means that the very
awareness of his own society forces the individual not only to feel the working of strong energy
coming from outside into himself but also transcend himself and to participate in a higher form of
life. A community cannot be constituted without creating ideals. These ideals are simply the ideas in
terms of which society sees itself and exists at a culminating point in its development.
To see society only as an organized body of vital functions is to diminish it, for this body has a
soul which is the composition of collective ideals. Ideals are not abstractions, intellectual concepts
lacking efficient power. They are dynamic beings, because behind them are the powerful forces of
the collective. They are themselves collective forces, natural and moral at the same time. The reason
why the ideal can partake of reality is that it derives from it while transcending it. The elements that
combine to form the ideal part of reality, but they are combines in a new manner and the originality
of the method of combination produces the originality of the synthesis itself. Left alone, the individual
could never find in himself the material for such a construction. Relying upon his powers, he could

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never have the inclination or the ability to surpass himself. His personal experience might enable him
to distinguish ends already realized from those to be desired, but the ideal is not simply a future goal
to which is lacking and aspires.
The ideal has its own reality and nature. It is to be thought of rather as looming impersonally
above the individual wills that it moves. If it were the product of the individual will, it could not be
impersonal. If we appeal to the impersonal reason of humanity, it will not have its efficient power. If
minds are at one to this degree, it is because they derive their homogeneity from a common source
and in fact participate in a common reason.
Now, it is not difficult to note that here is a clear echo of William James’s emotional theory of
human mentality. Durkheim thought that our mentality has an “action dynamogénique” character. He
admitted that he had learned this aspect of human mentality from The Principles of Psychology of
James. Durkheim’s theory is in this sense a modification of James’s pragmatic philosophy.
However, contrary to James’s rather individualistic understanding of psychic power, Durkheim
lays stress on the social dimension of ideality and transcendence. Our power of aspiration for any
ideal action is deemed to be weak at the level of personal resolution, but can become strong by means
of social association among the members of some community. Our mentality can see their ideal and
transcendental values because our mentality has an ability to be invigorated by common source.
This idea of communitarian value-formation is important in our age, because too much shocking
pictures of all kinds of tragic conflict are deeply implanted in our imagery of present society. There
are indeed too much of political conflict, economic disorder, ideological antagonism, religious
confusion on every corner on earth. But we must keep in mind that it is only from the mental solidarity
of collective beings that any hope for the transcendence of these difficulties for the direction of ideal
conditions can be effective. Durkheim’s theory of social value-formation has a significant practical
value for its reminder of this simple but often forgotten fact.

3. A Reformulation of Durkheim

We picked up the main theses of Durkheim’s concept of the collective consciousness ((1) (2) (3) ) in
the previous section. And we can easily find some theoretical analogues to each of these theses in the
tradition of linguistic philosophy of the 20th century philosophy.
(1)There is nothing in principle in the individual’s mental world which has not been derived
from the social consciousness. Almost all mental states in our personal psychic life are not possible
in the completely solitary conditions.
The most famous modern version of this social conception of “Meaning” is Wittgenstein’s
language game theory. Our mental episode derives its sense, significance, meaning from the shared
“meaning” in our social way of life, rule of game, institution, habit and custom. I and my friend go
together to the voting place of our mayor. I vote for a candidate and he votes for another candidate.
We don’t share opinion about the best candidate, but we are following the same system of voting,
and both my action and his action are getting the same common meaning, which is held by and
sustained by the collective consciousness.

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 (2)The channels of the interactions of social consciousness and personal consciousness are
language and symbols. The interactions are reciprocal and the evolutions are mutual. The collective
consciousness develops by the social-personal mental interactions.
The most prominent model of this communicative interaction between the individual and the
collective is the semiotic theory of Peirce. Our thinking is possible only in the dynamics of doubt and
belief, and this dynamic mental movement is possible in the context of the exchange between
perspectives of personal and communitarian. Persons and the system of signs are educating each other.
The development of consciousness is nothing but the development of this mutual education/
(3) There are so many kinds of categorical distinctions in our factual and value judgements, but
the most basic conceptual distinction is, perhaps, that of sacred and profane. This distinction is very
much significant not only in the religious thinking but also theoretical, scientific thinking because
there is a sort of analogical resemblance between various kinds of dichotomous distinctions between,
say, space and time, good and evil, past and future, fact and value etc. etc.
The similar view about human conceptual thinking is given, most perspicuously, in the paradigm
theory of Kuhn’s scientific revolution. Our scientific thinking is almost always double faced. The one
face is a practice of normal science which is usually doing basically analogical practices according
to the standard exemplary paradigm. The other face is a trial of revolutionary paradigm for the
solution of anomalous problems. Because of this double faced nature, science may be seen as a
practice essentially dominated by the spirit of distinction and association.
We can thus translate the basic creeds of Durkheim into our vocabulary of linguistic philosophy.
The significance and relevance of his theory is now clear because its theoretical message can be easily
conveyed by our own familiar terminology. However, unfortunately, these language philosophical
reformulation of Durkheim’s theory is not enough for the full appreciation of Durkheim’s insight.
We still need to include the value theoretical aspect of this theory into the linguistic model of human
sociality. The theory of collective consciousness seen above insists that our social mental processing
has a highly energetic value-creating function, and that because of this function the collective
consciousness has a power to prompt the individuals to pursue actions for the ideal. How can we
integrate this aspect of value-creating function into our picture of language game
theoretic(Wittgenstein), or semiotic mutual educational (Peirce) , understanding of language and
meaning?
It is my own personal opinion that this question is the most important one which could lead our
linguistic philosophy in this century into more fruitful analysis of human reason and action. How can
we see our linguistic competence and performance as a vehicle for the ethical and religious
transcendence. We have not yet the answer, but we can find some hints somewhere in the history of
philosophy.
Josiah Royce, James’s colleague and rival in the philosophy department of Harvard University,
proposed an ethical theory based on the concept of “Loyalty”. Loyalty is a freely chosen and practical
devotion to a cause or goal. Members of any community tend to feel, more or less, consciously or
unconsciously, the urge to be loyal to the cause of their community. But, of course, a cause can be
good or bad one. Loyalty itself is ethically neutral. We can easily imagine the strong feeling of loyalty
shared by the members of some racketeering association. Loyalty becomes ethical only when it

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becomes a virtue which makes all social life possible. According to Royce, such a virtue is nothing
but the loyalty to loyalty itself. This virtue is both personal and social at the same time, i.e., both
subjective and objective. It is an ethical tie of personal mentality and social mentality.
Thus, if we wish to understand linguistic communication as a site for the ethical and religious
transcendence, we should find the possibility of this virtue in the interaction of personal speech act
and common meaning. Can we think that our linguistic competence and performance have such a
potentiality toward pursuit of loyalty for the sake of loyalty itself Royce thinks so. We are living in
the world of infinite interpretation. We are involved in a number of different communities (political,
legal, economic, moral, religious, etc), each of which is defined by its purpose or the goal for which
it exists. Our understanding and awareness of own existence is always expressed in terms of the
purposes of these overlapping communities. Therefore, our communicative actions always involve
our orientations toward a variety of social goals and purposes. All of us are the virtual members of
this open and infinite communication. Royce’s semiotic theory of sociality is a theoretical twist of
Peirce’s semiotic theory of thinking. We will perhaps make up a more productive reformulation of
Durkheim’s insight of collective consciousness by making use of Royce’s philosophy of loyalty and
the community of infinite interpretation.

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 Towards a Global Non-Exclusive Community

Herta Nagl-Docekal
University of Vienna, Austria

Social Pathologies

Examining the conditions of contemporary life, many authors highlight one problem in particular:
the propensity towards an atomistic isolation of the individual that leads to a disintegration of social
bonds and dwindling solidarity. One crucial finding is that these “social pathologies” 1 are rooted in
the fact that the logic of market economy has intruded into all spheres of life. Jürgen Habermas notes:
“Today, the all-pervasive language of the market puts all interpersonal relations under the constraint
of an egocentric orientation towards one’s preferences.” (Habermas 2003, 110-11) Similarly, Fred
Dallmayr maintains that, today, “competition and agonistic struggle” are causing processes of “social
atomization.” (Dallmayr 1993, 249)
Obviously, many people voicing a general condemnation of “Western ways of life” take aim at
this state of affairs. However, a careful distinction is required here: while a rejection of egocentric
attitudes is certainly needed, any sweeping dismissal of “Western values” fails to consider that such
social deficits do not represent the logical consequence of concepts of justice, morality and social life
that have been elaborated since the era of the Enlightenment. It is important to note, for instance, that
Rousseau, Kant and Hegel presented perspicacious assessments of the exaggerated individualism that
has emerged under the conditions of modernity, and that these authors provide us with well-argued
theories of communal life. The following reflections address ways to employ (elements of) their
complex concepts as we seek to counteract social atomization today.

Four Types of Community

It is a received opinion today that the concepts of community that have been introduced within the
framework of the controversy “communitarianism versus liberalism” (in the late 1970s and the 1980s)
are marked by considerable deficits. Currently, more nuanced approaches prevail that suggest
incorporating legitimate communitarian concerns2 in more comprehensive theories. One case in point
can be found in the approaches elaborated on the basis of Discourse Theory. Rainer Forst, for instance,
contends that – in order to capture fully the social challenges facing contemporary people – we need
to differentiate four “contexts” and their respective normative demands. All individuals, he argues,
find themselves involved simultaneously in four different types of communities. Thus we need to
specify the concepts of (firstly) “the ethical person (as a member of an identity-constituting ethical
community),” (secondly) “the legal person (as a bearer of individual rights and a member of a legal

1 For an explanation of this term see: Honneth (1994).

2 Although theories that are commonly lumped together under the title “communitarianism” vary considerably in many
regards, the term is used here for the sake of focusing on one core line of argument.

73
community,” (thirdly) the citizen (as a member of “a political community” of “politically responsible”
persons), (fourthly) the “moral person” (as a member of the “moral community of all morally
autonomous actors”) (Forst 2002, 4). Let us take up some elements of this distinction, bearing in mind
the question of where further differentiation might be called for.
The concept of “ethical community,” as discussed in the context of Discourse Theory, is based
on the thesis that the legitimate concerns of communitarian claims can be brought to light only by
discarding the exaggerated objections to liberal theories of justice which often constitute an integral
part of these claims. It is, indeed, important to note, for instance, that John Rawls’ concept of the
contract partners “under the veil of ignorance” (Rawls 1971, 136-42) must not be read as an
ontological theory maintaining that human beings are, in fact, isolated subjects. Rawls clearly
explains that his concept rather represents the idea of a hypothetical contract which is intended to
specify the foundation of the constitutional state that protects the equal rights of all citizens. Thus,
critics blaming liberal theories of justice for being “forgetful of context” (Forst 2002, 3), and for
advocating an atomistic concept of society have fallen prey to a misunderstanding. This problem
marks, for instance, Michael Sandel’s thesis that Rawls views the human being primarily as an “un-
encumbered self” (Sandel 1982, 50)1.
Setting aside this exaggerated criticism allows us to focus on reflections addressing the
communal basis of individual identity. Complex studies focusing on this issue have been elaborated
with reference to Hegel’s theory of the “ethical life (Sittlichkeit)” (Hegel 1991, §§ 142-181; Hegel
1970, §§ 513-548), for instance by Charles Taylor (Taylor 1989). Forst summarizes these reflections
in the following way: From the very beginning of our lives we are imbedded in communities that
introduce us into a particular world which is based upon shared values. As members of such an
“ethical community,” we adopt a common view of the world which constitutes a “framework of
strong evaluations” (Forst 2002, 283) that provides us with practical orientation. These shared values
differ from universal moral norms, as they address what is “good for us” (Forst 2002, 283) in terms
of our common self-understanding.2 The family as well as communities defined by ethnicity, religion
or other comprehensive teachings are usually cited as paradigms of this type of communal life, with
a shared language viewed as a common but not necessarily required feature. Since the shared values
are implemented in respective social practices, ethical communities are structured by conventional,
complementary social roles. As one crucial thesis highlights, it is only within the framework of such
a shared communal life that individuals are capable of developing their “unique life history” (Forst
2002, 258). The term “constitutive community” (Forst 2002, 259) signifies that individuals, in order
to understand themselves in terms of their “qualitative identity,” need to be esteemed and recognized
by others who embody the same collective identity. Thus, “one’s ownmost particular individuality is
defined and constituted […] through community with others” (Forst 2002, 285), in a process that is
not without tensions, though, as “the identity of persons is formed in the force field between the ‘I’
and the ‘we’” (Forst 2002, 284).

1 For a well-argued analysis of Sandel’s claim see: Forst 2002, 8-16.

2 Forst notes: “Here no moral ought sentences are formulated that raise a claim to reciprocally and generally nonrejectable
validity” (Forst 2002, 260).

74
 Taking a closer look at this concept of the “ethical community,” we find good reasons for both
affirmative and critical responses. On the one hand, it certainly proves a valid claim that being
imbedded in a particular world, based upon shared values and respective social practices, constitutes
a prerequisite for the first formation of individual identity.This primary socialization remains an
integral part of our identity even when we have fully detached ourselves from the community we
originally belonged to, and from its values. On the other hand, however, we need to consider that, in
real life, conventional ethical communites imply a potential for oppression and discrimination with
regard to internal as well as external relations. For instance, as feminist research has pointed out,
common gender roles have created asymmetrical relations, with women being placed in subordinate
positions in the family as well as in society at large. In more general terms, Kant, in his Doctrine of
Virtue, emphasizes that where “custom, mos, is raised to the dignity of a law […], a tyranny of popular
mores” is likely to result that would be contrary to the duties we have to ourselves (Kant 1991, 256).
Additional problems arise from the fact that conventional ethical communities typically define
their shared identity by operating with the distinction of “we” and “the others.” There is no doubt that
this kind of external delimitation carries with it a propensity for an attitude of superiority and for
humiliating practices of exclusion. 1 Today, tensions of this kind are aggravated by the fact that
practically all countries across the globe embrace a plurality of groups shaped by different
“reasonable comprehensive doctrines” – to cite a term introduced by Rawls (Rawls 1999, 573).
As we face both the internal and external asymmetries that mark traditional communites, it is
obvious that people who suggest that current phenomena of social disintegration ought to be
overcome by adopting, in a wholesale manner, conventional ways of communal life, fail to be
sensitive to the manifold human suffering these forms of life have caused. As is well known, the
liberal constitutional state claims to be capable of curbing both sets of social problems. Of course,
only a brief sketch can be provided here.

The Legal Community

Laws based upon the principles of equality and liberty are intended, on the one hand, to protect
individuals from being oppressed within traditional social arrangements, and to secure their right of
exit, while providing, on the other hand, a forceful framework that allows particular communities to
live according to their shared values, albeit on the basis of respecting the right of all co-existing
groups to do the same. As Rawls emphasizes, it is the crucial achievement of the modern rule of law
to prioritize “the just” over “the good” (as defined by ethical communities). Thus, the protective force
of the liberal state is defined primarily in negative terms, as it aims at warding off attacks on equality
and liberty. On this basis, however, the liberal state is concerned with issues of community in an
affirmative manner in several regards. First of all, it is the very principle of “the ethical neutrality of
law” (Forst 2002, 30) that allows for state support to be granted to diverse particular communities.
Forst explains this implication of the contractual framework as follows: “It is precisely the mode of
reciprocally and generally justifying general norms that makes it possible to do justice to the
communitarian concern for recognizing particular, communal, as well as ‘different’ ethical identities”

1 See, for instance, Chantal Mouffe’s examination of the “constitutive external” (Mouffe 1993, 68).

75
(Forst 2002, 231). Following this line of thought, states may, for instance, consider it a matter of
justice to grant public funds to institutions owned by religious communities, such as schools or
hospitals. Additionally, the general principles of equality and liberty provide a guideline for people
who seek to modify conventional social practices so as to overcome their hierarchical implications.
Efforts to this effect have already been taken up in the context of different cultures – for instance,
with the aim of replacing oppressive gender relations within the family as well as in the spheres of
the economy and politics.
Most importantly, Rawls claims that the citizens, as they lay down the basic principles of the
constitution “under the veil of ignorance,” form a specific kind of community. With recourse to
Hegel’s critique of Hobbes, Rawls explains the crucial difference between his and Hobbes’s
conception of the contract. In the Leviathan, he argues, the citizens follow their “separate happiness
or security,” lacking a shared aim, and therefore the institutions they establish resemble “a private
society,” as they fail to found a public political life (Rawls 2000, 365). In contrast, Rawls contends
that his Theory of Justice follows the approach of Kant, who maintains that “all citizens understand
the social contract as an idea of reason” that implies the shared end “that they politically establish a
social union”. On this doctrine, “citizens have the very same end of securing for other citizens, as
well as for themselves, their basic constitutional rights and liberties” (Rawls 2000, 365). From this
perspective, the term “legal community” (as introduced by Forst) seems justified.
We need to consider, however, that even just institutions cannot prevent the gradual corrosion
of social bonds in both the private and the public sphere. As Habermas notes, this development leads
to “the transformation of the citizens of prosperous and peaceful liberal societies into isolated, self-
interested monads who use their individual liberties exclusively against one another like weapons”
(Habermas 2008, 107). As we face such tendencies, it seems imperative to turn to morality for a
viable way out.

The Moral Community

In the contemporary “postmetaphysical” discourse numerous authors contend, in a way of arguing

commonly termed “Kantian”, that we need to appeal to universal moral norms in order to establish
the ultimate basis for social life. For instance, Rainer Forst, in his distinction of four different
“contexts” (cited above), places universal moral norms at the very top of this architecture, arguing
that they provide the most fundamental yardstick. 1 As he explains, “moral norms do not replace
ethical values or political norms; rather, they enter into competition with them only where these
ethical values or political norms become morally questionable, that is to say, where they deny persons
basic recognition.” (Forst 2002, 237-8)2 Since, in several variations, this perspective has dominated
the discourse-theoretical mainstream, let us take a closer look at the concept of morality maintained
here.

1 It seems legitimate to leave the third context specified by Forst – the “political community” – unconsidered here, since
its concern, although reflecting important issues, is not of prime relevance for the the ultimate thrust of this paper.
2 With regard to systematic architecture, Forst’s approach differs significantly from Honneth’s (in Honneth 2014), since
the latter, following Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, defends the priority of the ethical sphere over the
spheres of formal law and morality to a greater extent.

76
 Significantly, moral justification of our actions is considered a matter of discourse. In fact,
discourse is of double relevance here: first, moral issues are seen as generated by conflicts among
actors; secondly, the universal principles that provide the basis for justification are viewed as having
discursive roots as well. As Habermas states, “moral judgements explain how conflicts among
different actors can be resolved on the basis of a rationally motivated agreement” (Habermas 1991,
11)1. Forst, who also views moral issues as conflict-based, emphasizes the right of persons who are
irritated or offended by the actions of others to “request reasons.” Correspondingly, he claims that
each person must be granted the “right to justification” (Forst 2014). As to the criteria of such a self-
defense, Forst adopts the claim of a “discourse-theoretical transformation of the categorical
imperative” (Forst 1994, 403), in agreement with Habermas’s thesis that “‘correctness’, in the moral
sense of a well-founded norm, means that the respective norm ‘deserves’ to be universally
acknowledged in the light of good reasons.” (Habermas 2016, 818)2 Elaborating this thought, Forst
introduces his concept of the “moral community”. He argues that “action-guiding norms,” in order to
proof their “moral validity,” need to be “justified with reasons that cannot be rejected reciprocally
(by ‘concrete’ individuals) or generally (by all the members of the moral community).” In other words,
“the community of all human beings is the justification community in moral questions” (Forst 2002,
268-269), which is guided by “the criteria of reciprocity and universality.” (Forst 2015, 22)3 Basically,
the demand is “respect for other concrete persons with whom one […] is connected within a common
‘context of being human’.” (Forst 2002, 271)
Let us examine whether this concept of morality provides a sound basis for counteracting social
atomism. First, it is important to note that this concept is shaped by the logic of contract. This logic,
while representing the crucial foundation of the liberal state, generates significant problems where
morality is concerned. In order expose these shortcomings, it proves helpful to examine the ways in
which theories that are commonly termed “Kantian” depart from Kant’s original moral philosophy.
A close reading of Kant’s differentiations brings to light, furthermore, that his concept is congruent,
to a large extent, with our ordinary views on moral issues. Only a few aspects can be addressed here,
though.
Firstly, as Kant emphasizes, contractual agreements are, by definition, incapable of generating
a moral attitude. Agreements on rules of action can only concern the “external” aspect: the action as
an observable process. Kant defines norms based on contract as being “directed merely to external
actions and their conformity to law.” (Kant 1991, 42). As regards the “internal” aspect, however –
that is to say the perspective of the agent – it is obvious that I cannot be bound by contract to making
a certain end “my end.” (Kant 1991,187)
Secondly, a circular argument is at work here. The thesis that moral principles represent a matter
to be decided in an unrestricted public discourse fails to take into consideration that moral principles
are required in the first place to make such a discourse possible. With recourse to Kant, Otfried Höffe
addresses this issue lucidly as he challenges Forst’s approach. Human rights, Höffe contends, are

1 Transl. H. N.-D.
2 Transl. H. N.-D.
3 Tansl. H. N.-D.

77
“precedents, such as the protection of life and limb,which make equal access to the discourse possible
in the first place, and therefore cannot then be suspended in specific discourses” (Höffe 2007, 3)1.
Thirdly, the thesis locating the origin of moral issues in conflicts among actors fails to take
adequately into account what is commonly called “conscience.” It does not reflect, for instance, that
we may view some of our actions as morally wrong, even if no one has observed or contested them.
Significantly, Kant’s approach takes the opposite direction, as he locates the primary source of
morality in the acting subject rather than in discourse. Defining the differentia specifica of humans,
Kant highlights “the original moral disposition in us” (Kant 1998, 69). To explore this shared ability
to distinguish good and evil is the core concern of his theory of the categorical imperative. It is
important to note that the exclusive addressee of this imperative is the subject.2
As regards the others who are affected by our actions, there is a need for differentiation. In order
to implement the moral duty properly, we certainly have to cultivate our sensitivity as to whether
others might be offended or harmed by our actions. In this respect, it is obvious that we need to engage
in discourse wherever possible.3 Critical responses voiced by others can provide invaluable incentives
for our self-examination. The importance of such consultations does not, however, provide evidence
for the claim of a “procedural transformation of the categorical imperative.” On the basis of this
sweeping claim, the moral evaluation of actions would be committed to the public, ultimately denying
the relevance of the agent’s conscience. (We also need to consider the danger of pretence: it is evident
that public pressure on individuals to justify their actions may induce individuals with a talent for
sophistry to hide their actual intentions behind “good reasons” that agree with widely accepted norms,
whereas less sophisticated persons might find it impossible to verbalize adequately their true
motivation.) In general terms, Kant expresses a clear warning, stating that “it is the pure attitude of
the heart that represents true moral value, yet this is never fully perceived by others, very often even
misjudged.”4
Fourthly, the claim that moral norms are relevant only where ethical or political norms deny
certain persons “basic recognition” (Forst, as cited above), suggests that moral norms primarily
concern the negative duty to refrain from actions that disregard the dignity of human beings. In
common understanding, however, to cultivate a moral attitude requires far more than observing this
negative duty. One crucial feature is the commitment to provide unconditional help and support to
others. Kant focuses on this comprehensive understanding in his Doctrine of Virtue (Kant 1991, 243-
254). (This complex edifice cannot be pursued here, though.5)
Fifthly, the concept of “moral community,” as introduced from the perspective of discourse
theory, appears rather vague. Statements referring to “the community of all human beings” as
“justification community in moral questions” clearly do not suggest that people across the globe are,
in fact, united in explicitly sharing this task. Rather, the idea seems to be that of a thought experiment:

1 Transl. H. N.-D.
2 See, for instance, the following formulation of the categorical imperative: “So act that you use humanity, whether in
your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” (Kant 1997,
38)
3 See: Nagl-Docekal 2014a.
4 Kant, Reflexion 6858 (1776-78), in: Bittner & Cramer 1975, 125. Transl. H. N.-D.
5 For an in-depth commentary on Kant’s theory of duties see, for instance: Baron (1995).

78
Facing a concrete conflict, we ought to consider whether a certain norm ‘deserves’ to be universally
acknowledged” (Habermas, as cited above) . Thus, the notion of “community” seems misleading, as
this theory appeals to the equality of all human beings as persons rather than to an actual bond uniting
them.
Kant, however, examines how it might indeed be possible to create a moral community that
includes all human beings. It seems worthwhile to take a look at his reflections, with today’s pressing
issues in mind.

A Global “System of Well-disposed Human Beings”

Kant emphasizes that human beings, while each is familiar with the moral law, do not find themselves
embedded in a moral community. Rather, they encounter what Kant, transferring Hobbes’s concept
of the bellum omnium in omnes from the political sphere to that of morality, terms an “ethical state
of nature” (Kant 1998, 106-8). This term highlights that individuals tend to hinder one another’s
endeavors to abide by the moral law. Kant notes: “Envy, addiction to power, avarice, and the
malignant inclinations associated with these, assail his [the individual’s] nature […] as soon as he is
among human beings. Nor is it necessary to assume that these are sunk in evil and are examples that
lead him astray: it suffices that they are there, that they surround him, and that they are human beings,
and they will mutually corrupt each other’s moral dispositions and make one another evil.” (Kant
1998, 105) Thus, Kant claims that human beings will fail to implement fully the moral law, as long
as they seek their moral improvement only on an individual basis. He argues that “the highest moral
good will not be brought about solely through the striving of one individual person for [his/her] own
moral perfection but requires rather a union of such persons into a whole toward that very end, i.e.
toward a system of well-disposed human beings” (Kant 1998, 109) .
It is important to note that these reflections do not suggest any modification of the concept of
the constitutional state. Kant rather insists on the need to establish both the “political” and the “ethical
state” alongside, yet clearly distinguished from, each another. Examining the relation between these
two types of community, he points out that the ethical state “can exist in the midst of a political
community and even be made up of all the members of the latter […]. It has, however, a special
unifying principle of its own (virtue).” (Kant 1998, 106) (Since the German term Kant uses –
“ethisches Gemeinwesen” – has often been translated as “ethical community,” it is important to note
that this term has a specific meaning in Kant that differs decisively from the way the term is employed
with regard to communities based on a shared identity.)
As Kant emphasizes, it is a specific kind of duty that the moral law imposes in this regard: “In
addition to prescribing laws to each individual human being, morally legislative reason also unfurls
a banner of virtue as rallying point for all those who love the good, that they may congregate under
it.” (Kant 1998, 106) Kant introduces a meta-level here, as the obligation “to become a member of an
ethical community” (Kant 1998, 108) concerns duty as such. We are obligated to contribute to
establishing a society “in accordance with, and for the sake of, the laws of virtue – a society which
reason makes it a task and a duty of the entire human race to establish in its full scope.” (Kant 1998,
106). As this reflection indicates, the ultimate aim is to establish a community of global scope. Kant

79
argues that “since the duties of virtue concern the entire human race, the concept of an ethical
community always refers to the ideal of a totality of human beings.” (Kant 1998, 107) This
inclusiveness means that the “ethical community” clearly differs from any conventional community
defined by a particular shared identity. Moreover, since it abstains from the logic that draws a line
between “we” and “they”, the “ethical community” implies a source of criticism with regard to
practices of exclusion.1
Addressing the question where we might find an “ethical community,” at least in a rudimentary
form, Kant introduces a link between the spheres of moral life and religion, stating that the concept
of an ethical community “cannot be realized (by human organization) except in the form of a church.”
(Kant 1998, 111) With reference to his insight (cited above) that the laws of virtue cannot be taken
as having been laid down by humans, Kant argues that “if the community to be founded is to be a
juridical one, the mass of people joining in a union must itself be the lawgiver (of constitutional laws)
[…], and the universal will thus establish an external legal constraint. If, however, the community is
to be an ethical one, the people, as a people, cannot itself be regarded as legislator. For in such a
community all the laws are exclusively designed to promote the morality of actions (which is
something internal, and hence cannot be subject to public human laws).” (Kant 1998, 109)2 Therefore
Kant notes that, ideally, “an ethical community really has nothing in its principles that resembles a
political constitution.” (Kant 1998, 112)
This thesis presents itself as applicable to all religious communities. Referring to the epochs of
world history, from early on, Kant contends that the great diversity of religious narratives and
practices may be viewed as so many efforts to realize, within the respective particular cultural
contexts, humanity’s most demanding moral task. This thesis is certainly of interest with regard to
current conflicts with religious connotations: Kant’s prime focus is not on addressing the disparities
– or similarities – of religious confessions on the surface level, as it were, but on considering their
shared moral basis. Significantly, from this perspective every creed, since humanity’s earliest
religious ideas, has intrinsic value, and the task is to examine which contribution each of them has
made to creating a community whose members jointly seek to support and improve their moral lives.

The Duty to Make a Beginning

What follows from all this, here and now? It seems that Kant’s theory of the “ethical community”
could induce significant initiatives with both believers and agnostics. (1) Religious people might be
inspired to re-consider the concept of “church” in a way that leads beyond a narrow, parochial
understanding. Re-reading the basic teachings of their respective creeds, they might be able to shed
new light on the inclusive, moral implications of any religion. Such a renewed interpretation might
help to overcome the duality of over-simplified options common today: either to uphold traditional
teachings and practices un-reflectedly, or to reject dealing with this sphere toto genere. Furthermore,
it would become evident that the term “religious community” requires specification: while empirical

1 Kant’s argument clearly supports Dallmayr’s objection to Chantal Mouffe’s claim that communities are defined
unavoidably by their “constitutive external.” (Dallmayr 1996, 522).
2 For a careful reading of Kant’s conception of “church” see: Anderson-Gold (1991) and Langthaler (2018).

80
research that explores the pluralistic condition of contemporary societies tends to focus on distinction
and delimitation, the perspective of the believers is, ideally, rather concerned with universal
responsibility. (There seems to be a misunderstanding when Forst locates the topic of religion
exclusively in the realm of communities defined by shared identity, thus disregarding the universalist
claim which relates religion to the fourth context he distinguishes, namely the context of morality.)
(2) From the agnostic perspective, as adopted by substantial segments of the population in many
parts of the world, it seems obvious that Kant’s concept of “church” is obsolete; this view is even
common among Kant scholars. However, in regard of current atomistic trends, it might prove
inspiring, nevertheless, to re-consider his thesis that all human beings are called to commit themselves
to forming a community under the “banner of virtue.” Taking up this call in a secular context will
require the development of innovative practices.1 In which way Kant questions views that define
morality in terms of reciprocity is of relevance here. He introduces an important distinction:
reciprocity, he argues, is a core element of an ideal moral community – something to hope for in the
long run, but this does not justify the thesis that, from a moral point of view, we ought to make
symmetry a precondition of our present actions. In general, the moral law rather imposes on us a
unilateral duty: I am obliged to respect and treat others as persons, even when I have good reasons to
doubt that they would behave likewise towards me. (Kant1991, 247) 2 Poignantly phrased, Kant
contends that the moral imperative appeals to the subject to make a beginning.
Valuable guidelines may be drawn from Kant’s reflections on the respect (Achtung) we are
obliged to show towards all other human beings, simply because they are humans (Kant 1991, 255).
He explains that, while it is impossible to provide a positive comprehensive definition of this duty,
we need to focus on attitudes that inhibit due respect. Kant specifies the vices of “arrogance”,
“defamation” and “ridicule” (Kant 1991, 257-259)3. Obviously, major efforts are needed today in
order to subdue such attitudes, for instance, in the field of the so-called “social media.” It also seems
worth considering humble first steps towards establishing the community of virtue. Reflecting on
manners such as sociability, courtesy, and gentleness, Kant notes that, although they do not contribute
directly to this end, they may “promote the feeling for virtue itself” by at least “associating the graces
with virtue.” (Kant 1991, 265) Why not heed this thought when, on the staircase of our anonymous
apartment building, we meet neighbours whom we do not know, by showing them our kind
attention?4

1 In fact Kant addresses, in a favorable manner, the issue of establishing an “ethical community” by leaving behind any
traditional churches in a favorable manner, maintaining that the latter only represent historical vehicles toward the united
state of virtue. (Kant 1998, 128)
2 For an in-depth analysis of this issue see Nagl-Docekal 2014b.
3 A detailed comment on this approach is provided in: Sensen (2013).
4 Further inspiration regarding the task of forming a “republic of virtue” can be drawn from Kant’s reflections on moral
education (not only of children). See, for instance, Kant 1991, 266-80.

81
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HÖFFE, Otfried (2007): “Kant ist kein Frankfurter. Rainer Forst begründet das Recht auf
Rechtfertigung, allerdings nicht ganz zureichend.” In: Zeit Online, 1 November 2007, No. 45.
HONNETH, Axel (2014): Freedom’s Right. The Social Foundations of Democratic Life. New York:
Columbia University Press.
KANT, Immanuel (1991): The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge, UK – New
York: Cambridge University Press.
———. (1997): Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge, UK –
New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. (1998): Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, ed. Allen Wood and George di
Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
LANGTHALER, Rudolf (2018): Kant über den Glauben und die “Selbsterhaltung der Vernunft”.
Freiburg – Munich: Alber.
MOUFFE, Chantal (1993): The Return of the Political. London-New York: Verso.

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NAGL-DOCEKAL, Herta (2014a): “Learning to Listen or Why Morality Calls for Liberal Politics.”
In: Guttorm Fløistad (ed.), Ethics or Moral Philosophy: Dordrecht: Springer, 109-30.
———. (2014b): Innere Freiheit. Grenzen der nachmetaphysischen Moralkonzeptionen. Berlin: De
Gruyter.
RAWLS, John (1971): A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. (1999): Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Friedman. Cambridge, MA-London, UK: Harvard
University Press.
———. (2000): Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, MA – London, UK:
Harvard University Press.
SANDEL, Michael (1982): Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
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SENSEN, Oliver (2013): “Duties to Others from Respect.” In: Andreas Trampota et al. (eds), Kants
“Tugendlehre”. Berlin: de Gruyter, 343-63.
TAYLOR, Charles (1989): Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

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 Contemporary African Philosophy and the Question of Humanity:
A Critical Review

J. Obi Oguejiofor
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria

Abstract: Contemporary African philosophy has been marked by the issue of identity, seen directly
in the thought of such thinkers as E. W. Blyden, W. E. B. Dubois, P. Tempels, L. S. Senghor, etc; and
indirectly in such trends as the quest for historical precedence of African philosophy, as well as the
debate on it nature and existence. This paper argues that broadly interpreted the quest for identity is
epiphenomenal of the crisis of humanity in the African context reflected both in the often occluded
views of many Western philosophers and their surreptitious counter by contemporary African
philosophers. Relying on the views of such thinkers as T. Serequeberhan and F. Eboussi Bulaga, it
affirms that right hermeneutics of contemporary African philosophy indicates that the furtive quest
for humanity, being in some sense metaphilosophical, should not constitute the main axe of a
philosophical tradition. Reflecting on Marcien Towa’s view about having philosophy and being
philosophers, and Ben Ramose’s universalism of human rationality, it concludes that contemporary
African philosophy in being today more contextualized than ever is making ground breaking changes
in the right direction.
Key Words: Humanity, Racism, Contemporary African Philosophy, Enlightenment, Philosophy
Born of Struggle.

One of the best descriptions of contemporary African philosophy is that it is “philosophy born of
struggle.” As it is very well known this description originates from Professor Leonard Harris a
foremost African-American thinker. Harris employed this description as the title of his anthology of
African-American philosophers published in 1983.1 The struggle referred to in this title is thus not
exactly the same and not within the same context as the struggle of Africans in the continent, but the
two struggles are fundamentally very similar coming from the conception or misconception of
humanity. It is hence not difficult to see diverse aspects of the struggle that is originative of both
contemporary African and Afro-American philosophy: the struggle for freedom, for the franchise, for
equality, for justice, for respect, for fairness etc. In all the quest for these ideals must be different
being differently situated, but their foundation is in all cases the struggle for the humanity of the
human. Thus expected divergence not withstanding hermeneutical interpretation enables us to go to
its root, to explore the foundation, and review how colonial subjugation, openly given intellectual
and “philosophical” backing by so many Enlightenment thinkers helped in making humanity an issue
in contemporary African philosophy. While avoiding sweeping generalization, this will be done under

1 Leonard Harris ed., Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, Kendall/Hunt,
Dubuque, 1983.

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the background of how contemporary African philosophy has tried to engage the issue by making it
a real centerpiece of its reflections; followed by a critique of the attempt to make philosophy a
measure of humanity.
That the question of humanity is being raised in the context of contemporary African philosophy
indicates that earlier periods of African philosophy did not necessarily have to be engaged with the
issue of humanity. Whereas for many reasons, the area today known as Africa was relatively poor
and comparatively technologically backward, 1 this reality did not in any way create a sense of
inferiority and any questioning of humanity. For all intents and purposes, if the Africans encountered
at the time of partition are representative of the rest, there is evidence that they were naturally imbued
by self-assurance before the invading colonialists. The Izzi people of the present Ebonyi State of
Nigeria were wont to tell the representatives of the colonial government that they differed to the
heavens above and the earth beneath, but after these two cosmic potentates, they were the third force
and could not take orders from any other human beings. This confident attitude is attested to by other
colonial officials with respect to other parts of Igboland.
Frank Snowden’s research on ancient attitude to blacks and African indicated that in general
their image was very positive in the ancient period:

It is important to emphasize that the overall, but especially the more detailed Greco-Roman, view of
blacks was highly positive. Initial, favorable impressions were not altered, in spite of later accounts of
wild tribes in the far south and even after encounters with blacks had become more frequent. There was
clear-cut respect among Mediterranean peoples for Ethiopians and their way of life. And above all, the
ancients did not stereotype all blacks as primitive defective in religion and culture.2

Given the atmosphere described above, it goes without saying that the issue of humanity
embedded in racism would not arise in the ancient times. Snowden pinpoints the turning point in the
conception of blacks as the moment when blacks were taken to be slaves by virtue of their colour. In
ancient times slaves were men and women from all climes, white and black, who happened to fall
under the circumstances in which they were enslaved. In fact there were more white slaves than black
slaves among the ancients but “anti-black racism developed or increased in intensity after black and
slave had become synonymous.”3 In Westerman’s view: “it spelled the death knell of slavery itself
within the European cultural area.”4 The implication is that Africans came to the new world shackled
and heavily disadvantaged by irrational prejudice. The “need” for slaves in the new world meant
economic and social disorder in the African continent as millions of young and able bodied men and
women were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and also to a lesser degree to the
Europe.
As always, practice needs a theoretical support, and the dehumanization of Africans became
backed up with pseudo theories with false and unjustified references to the Bible. Black skin was

1 Cf. John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1987.
2 Frank M. Snowden, Jr., Before Race Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
1983, pp. 58 – 59.
3 Ibid., p. 70
4 W. L. Westermann cited in F. Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizens: The Negro in the Americas, New York, 1947, p. 110

85
taken as punishment from God himself, against the background of black-white symbolism,1 and in
the words of Roger Bastide Christians “invented causes for the malady, intended to justify in their
own eyes a process of production based upon the exploitation of Negro labour.”2
Colonialism followed the abolition of slavery and slave trade by its major world practitioners.
As slavery colonialism needed to be justified by a discourse that was not based on fact and that was
self-serving. In all cases there were dubious conclusions drawn to justify anti-human practices.
Hanneh Arendt points out the role of colonialism in fostering inhumanity in the name of racism in
the following words:

It is highly probable that the thinking in terms of race would have disappeared in due time together with
other irresponsible opinions of the nineteenth century, if the ‘scramble for Africa’ and the new era of
imperialism had not exposed Western humanity to new and shocking experiences. Imperialism would
have necessitated the invention of racism as the only possible ‘explanation’ and excuse for its deeds,
even if no race-thinking had ever existed in the civilised world.3

Thus it was what Aredt named “Western Inhumanity” that in turn gave rise to racism as
justification of imperialism or colonialism. Before colonialism came fully to Africa, philosophers of
the Enlightenment had prepared the ground by fostering negative conceptions and pseudo-
philosophical theories about the continent and its people. It is ironical that the Enlightenment
movement that apparently underscored the importance of reason against prejudice and authority,
against the suffocation of tradition in order to give free reign to human unbiased reflections ended up
being apologist of the “most iniquitous transaction in human history.” 4 Among the most prominent
advocates of the epochal dehumanization were thinkers who still belong to the hall of fame in Western
philosophy: Hegel, Hume, John Locke and Charles de Monstesquieu.
As attested by M. B. Ramose, Locke aided the infamy of dehumanization by foisting
superficialities as the essential characteristics of the human being.5 Shortly precedent to him Chareles
de Montesquieu earned distinction as one of the Western thinkers who directly and clearly stated that
Africans were in fact not human beings. The argument behind this ridiculous conclusion was the flat
nose and the black skin of the African: “il est naturel de penser que c’est la couleur qui constitue
l’essence de l’humanité,” (it is natural to think that it is colour that constitutes the essence of
humanity). Again he contended that God could not create a soul due for salvation and then infuse it
into such ugly body as that of the black person. However these pseudo arguments are like subterfuges.
Montesquieu could not hide the hypocrisy in his philosophizing and was able to open up to the true
reason for denying humanity to people on account of the colour of their skin:

1 Frank M. Snowden, p. 70.

2 See Roger Bastide, “Color, Racism and Christianity,” Daedalus 96 (1967): 312 – 327.
3 V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1988, p. 108.
4 Joseph Anene, “Slavery and Slave Trade,” in African in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, J. C. Anene and G.
Brown eds., Nelson, London, 1966, p. 92.
5 Mogobe B. Ramose, African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, Mond Books, Harare, 2002, pp. 12 – 13.

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 It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men because allowing them to be men, a suspicion
will follow that we ourselves are not Christians.1

This short statement clearly indicates that his denial of humanity to human beings was solely in
order to justify this treatment in order at least to maintain a veneer of Christianity. In this regard, he
country man Voltaire was more direct if more critical or cynical:

We tell them that they are men like ourselves, that they are redeemed by the blood of a God who died for
their sake, and then, they are made to work like beasts of burden; they are worse fed; if they try to escape
they have a leg cut off; they are given a wooden leg and put to the manual labour of turning shaft sugar
mills. And then we have the effrontery to talk about human rights.2

Hegel’s dialectics was a dream-like structure that distributed the excellence of races based on
what amounts to half knowledge, or outright ignorance, of the people about whom he is pontificating.
Of course in Hegel’s system his Prussian folks represented the highest manifestation of human
ingenuity while Africans were placed at the lowest rung, and in fact outside his self-conceived
humanity-grading system. Hegel knew very little or nothing about Africa, but presented a fiction
about Africa that suited the prejudices of his time. Accordingly Egypt because of the evidence of high
civilization was taken out of Africa and considered together with Western and Eastern spirit: “Es ist
nicht dem Afrikanischen Geist zugehörig.” He was talking about “das eigentliche Afrika (the real
Africa!), but he knew nothing about this real Africa. For him it is the “… Fast unbekannte
Hochland.”3 “Thus the greatest philosopher of the “most advanced” section of human species spent
his time describing in detail – and with vacuous confidence – what he confessed was virtually
unknown.”4
The consistency of David Hume in denying humanity to human beings was not better than that
of Hegel. He claimed the superiority of whites over all other races and proclaimed that there was no
invention or claim of civilization among black people. When he was challenged by a counter example,
he reversed his statement5 but again quipped that the mark of invention referred to was like comparing
the sounds of parrots to human words.6
Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze’s Achieving Our Humanity, reads back the racism of David Hume
into the deepest recesses of his philosophy, especially his theory of knowledge. Reasoning, according
to Hume, is nothing but comparison of which there are three levels. ‘In ascending order they are:
when two objects are present, when neither is present or when only one is present.’ Hume names the
first intelligence, the second he calls perception where the mind merely registers what appears before
it without thinking. According to Eze, if all Negroes as a race lack eminence in thought, it means that
the only level of mental activity available (by nature) to them is perception. In other words, they have

1 Charles de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, Benton, Chicago, 1952, p. 110.

2 Cited in A. J. Ayer, Voltair, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986, p. 103.
3 G. W. Hegel, Vorlesungen űber die Philosophie der Geschichter, vol 11, Glockner, Stuttgart, 1928, p. 135
4 J. Obi Oguejiofor,”In Search of Elusive Humanity: Philosophy in 159 Years of Africa’s Independence,” International
Journal of African Renaissance Studies, 2 (2007), pp. 61 – 62.
5 J. Immerwahr, “Hume’s Revised Racism,” Journal of History of Ideas, 52 (1992) pp. 481 – 483.
6 J. Immerwahr and M. Burke, “Race and the Modern Philosophy Course,” Teaching Philosophy, 16 (1993), p. 23.

87
passive not active minds. In the section of his Treatise of Human Nature entitled ‘Of the reason of
animals’ (1978, 327), Hume assigns to mere animals the same level of mental activity that he had
earlier assigned to the ‘inferior’ races, and this level is far removed from the proper operation of the
intellectual faculty.1

If, then, for Hume the mental capacity of Negroes as a race – which is to say the level of their humanity
– is more nearly animal than white, is there any reason why the Negroes could not be sold by the white
like a horse … For Hume, the Negro was, in the language common at the time, a legitimate ‘article of
trade.2

There is ample evidence that not all philosophers of the Enlightenment shared the views
expressed by the foregoing thinkers, Rene Descartes clearly stated that “reason is found whole and
entire in every human.”3 That is why Harry Bracken affirmed that “if one is a Cartesian, a defender
of mind/body dualism, it becomes impossible to state a racist position. Man’s essential properties
reside finally in his spirit. His colour, his language, his biology, even his sex are in the strictest sense
accidental.”4 We have stated the view of Voltaire, and the fact that Hume did have some opponents
to his view. But it is also clear that these anti-human thinkers were sophistic mouthpieces of the
inhumanity of their generation in spite of their pretensions, and so the more balanced and in fact
correct views of some majorly rationalist thinkers were forgotten. It is therefore true that the level of
humanity allotted to blacks among the major Enlightenment thinkers was close to zero.5
It is important to emphasize the fact that the more reasoned and by far true philosophical position
of thinkers of the ilk of Descartes, James Beattie and Spinoza with regard to humanity was virtually
ignored. It all the more emphasizes the influence of the Zeitgeist on philosophers of all ages. In this
regard, there is what we choose to describe as the unfortunate complicity with the racism of the
Enlightenment in subsequent traditions of Western philosophy with regard to what we can confidently
call today the errors of the Enlightenment. Almost all histories of Western philosophy still present
Hume, Hegel and Montesquieu without any reference to their racist views. It means that today it is
still possible to pass through years of philosophical studies in Europe, for example, without hearing
any allusion to the views of Kant, Hume and Hegel on race.
The monumental work of Norman Kemp Smith (1966) on David Hume did not mention his ideas
on the superiority or the inferiority of races. 6 Ram Adhar Mall’s work, Hume’s Concept of Man
(1967), also assiduously avoids acknowledging that Hume advocated the notion of gradations in
humanity. In these two works, James Beattie, Hume’s philosophical opponent, is demonised.
According to Kemp Smith, Beattie did not understand Hume and poured invectives on the empiricist.7

1 David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, ed. A. Selby-Bigge, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978, p. 327
2 Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Achieving our Humanity: The Idea of a Postracial Future, Routledge Publishers, New York,
2002, p. 67.
3 Cited in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, p. 54.
4 Harry Bracken, “Essence, Accident and Race,” Hermathena, 116 (1973), p. 83.
5 J. Obi Oguejiofor, p. 62.
6 Cf. Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume: A Critical Study of its Origin and Central Doctrines,
Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005.
7 Ibid., pp. 544 – 546.

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For Mall, Beattie’s reactions to Hume’s writing are ‘hard, rude, and roughly personal.’ 1 However,
Mall omits to use similar description to describe Hume who described Beattie as a ‘bigoted silly
fellow.’ More telling is Beattie’s optimism that “succeeding ages will be astonished to hear that their
forefathers were deluded or amused by such fooleries (i.e. Hume’s opinions).” However, as Mall
rightly points out in a footnote “the treatment that Hume has got in the hands of posterity is just the
opposite of what Beattie prophesied.”2
If Beattie, the anti-racist professor, eventually turned out to be a false prophet, it is squarely
because the Western tradition of philosophy utterly failed to take account of its inglorious past.
Chukwudi Eze decried the fact that a good reference work on Kant; A Kant’s Dictionary (Caygill
1994), did not mention a word on Kant’s view of race – even though Kant wrote five treatises on the
subject.3 Earlier philosophers who studied Kant’s philosophical anthropology including Max Schiller,
Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer, Michel Foucault, van de Pitte all avoided Kant’s theories on race.
Kurt Steinhauer’s Hegel: Bibliography (1995) which compiled essays on Hegel from the past one
hundred years contains not even one article on his views on Africa. Failure to address such inglorious
moments in any tradition indicates either a lack of concern for truth, or that the attitudes which
underlie such moments are still very much alive. No wonder that as late as 1916, Lord Bertrand
Russell was still insisting that Germany had the right to own colonies:4 a ‘right’ which Adolf Hitler
actualised a few years later by seeking to acquire colonies within Europe.
Sweeping such negative views under the carpet has two notable consequences. The first is on
the West itself: rampaging imperialism was given pseudo theoretical backing by philosophers with
their views based on the perceived barbarity of other races and the refinement of the Caucasian race.
This reading of history was defended intellectually/philosophically, in turn, by the vaunted
uniqueness of Greek philosophy and its development. Philosophy thus becomes a sudden appearance,
once upon a time, on the shoulders of Greek genius, moving North to Europe, supporting marvelous
scientific advancement that proved the higher level of humanity of its bearers. Thus philosophy
becomes a test of the humanity of the human as such. It is not surprising that the nation that is heir to
the greatest philosophers of that tradition ended up also producing Nazism which, for V.Y. Mudimbe,
is the ‘natural product’ of Western philosophy. 5 Nazism is therefore not much more than
universalising (by extending to Europe) the same practice that had been unleashed on the rest of
humanity during the heyday of imperialism, and amply supported by its philosophical tradition as
William Shirer amply demonstrated in his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.6
The second consequence concerns the victims of such inhumanity. The road from being
oppressed to being the oppressor is an easy one. Failure to address inhumanity, and especially failure
to make it as disadvantageous as possible to its perpetrators, leads to its replication in society. The
oppressed hankers for liberation, and this can mean a desire to supplant the master, not in the name

1 Ram Mall Adler, Hume’s Concept of Man: An Essay in Philosophical Anthropology, Allied Press, New York, 1967, p.
26
2 Ibid., p. 26, n. 6.
3 Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, Blackwell Publishers, 1997, p. 3.
4 Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, Allen and Unwin, London, 1916, p. 61.
5 V. Y. Mudimbe, p. 104.
6 William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Fawcet Crest, New York, 1959, especially Chapter 4 and the
section on “The Intellectual Roots of the Third Reich,” pp. 142 – 152.

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of justice, not as an attempt to restore respect for humanity, but in order to reverse positions. The
story of Liberia is a case in point. A few hundred Afro-Americans who settled in the country and
gained independence in 1847 later established a one-party state with the Whig Party, which ruled
Liberia from 1877 to 1980. It retains the record of the longest uninterrupted reign of any single party
in the history of party politics. The models of these American- Liberians were the white settlers in
other parts of Africa. Despite their own experience of oppression, they colonised, denigrated,
subjugated and exploited the rest of the African population in Liberia. In the then Liberia, only
property owners were entitled to vote, and consequently the vast majority of non-property-owning
Africans did not have the franchise.1 This situation lasted until the ascendancy of Samuel Doe to
power in 1980, through the barrels of guns.
Like Western philosophy, much of contemporary philosophy has also in our opinion not been
properly critical of questionable socio-political-economic and intellectual and cultural standards of
their ambience. In Africa South, this is seen in the dominance of the analytic tradition in the country,
and in the so to speak asocial or apolitical attitude of philosophic workers especially in the so-called
English universities. This tendency still reflects the influence of Apartheid in academic circle in South
Africa. There is first the evident neglect of African philosophy. As Ndumiso Ndlala puts it
“philosophy departments in South Africa have remained willfully ignorant of African philosophy.”2.
In the words of Percy More, this “willful ignorance” is theoretically justified with the argument that
philosophy qua philosophy as an analytic engagement as such should shun social and political
engagement. “According to [them] philosophy is a second-order activity concerned mainly with the
logical analysis of concepts and their meaning. Social and political issues are not accordingly the task
of the philosopher qua philosopher but qua active citizen.” 3 Such thinkers thus hide under the
erroneous reading of analytic philosophy as apolitico-social while reaping full benefit of oppression
or of the denial of dignified humanity to others.
Like the analytic tradition in South Africa, it is our view that in generally contemporary African
philosophers did not rise to the level of philosophical challenge demanded by Western inhumanity in
the form of slavery and imperialism, aided by cohorts of major philosophers denigrating the human
person. We can see this by brief critical review of some major figures in the annals of this philosophy:
E. W. Blyden, Placide Tempels and Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Edward Wilmot Blyden was the first contemporary African philosopher to defend the humanity
of the African by his emphasis on African personality. He was also the originator of pan-Africanism.
His pan-Africanism was aimed against “any forms of racial prejudice and social chauvinism and as a
catalyst to a constructive solidarity among Africans.” He holds that pristine African culture provided
the foundation on which African personality will be built. Focusing on Africa’s glorious past, he calls
on Africans to become consciously aware of their obligation and to the specific character of their race.
This was a responsibility which Africans should not check if they were not to earn the disdain of

1 Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: From the Hope of Freedom to the Heart of Despair, Public Affairs, New York,
2005, pp. 545 – 547.
2 Ndumiso Ndlala, “Against an Analytic Conception of Race/ism: An African Philosophic Hermeneutic Perspective,”
(Unpublished MA Thesis, University of South Africa, 2016), 24.
3 P. More, “Philosophy in South Africa: Before and After Apartheid (1994),” cited in Ndumiso Ndlala, “Against an
Analytic Conception,” 41.

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other people. It is a divine mandate the abandonment of which will be tantamount to “the worst type
of suicide.” Blyden can thus pass for a very early precursor of Negritude. He rejected the unreal and
negative image imposed on the Negro by white explorers and missionaries, and scorned the
dehumanizing education the African was receiving at the hand of white teachers:

They sang of their history, which was the history of our degradation. They recited their triumphs, which
contained the records of our humiliation. To our great misfortune, we learned their prejudices and their
passion, and thought we had their aspirations and their power.1

Blyden’s main focus was thus traditional Africa. His reflections written before the scramble of
Africa, initiated in Berlin in 1885, and before the parceling of parts to different colonial overlords,
indicate that psychological denigration of Africans or blacks was virtually operative before direct
colonialism. But Blyden preempted what Snowden was to achieve by his research more than a
hundred years later by hacking back to classical times. i.e., that the contempt of blacks was a modern
invention which was unknown to the classical period. “In Greek and Latin languages and their
literature, there is not, as far as I know, a sentence, a word, or a syllable disparaging to the Negro.”2
However his answer to the problem of denigration of humanity was to appeal to traditional African
culture, pan-Africanism and the African personality. Blyden thus virtually set the pace for the quest
for identity in contemporary African philosophy.
Much later in the 1940s Placide Tempels emphasized this issue of identity and humanity of
Africans by explicit recourse to philosophy. His Bantu Philosophy is a testimony to his conviction
that Africans had a philosophy, “their own philosophy.” His effort was to codify this philosophic
principle which in his paternalism is the duty of the European to do. The principles he wanted to
codify among the Bantu include the unity and interaction of beings; brotherhood of human beings;
familyhood and values of kinship relationship; hospitality; fertility; altruism, etc. The main aim of
Tempels’ effort in codifying Bantu philosophy was in order to testify to the humanity of the subjects
of Bantu philosophy. This aim is backed by the conviction that philosophy was a cultural universal,
and so a mark of humanity. Thus Tempels asserts: Celui qui prétend que les primitive ne possèdent
point de système de pensée, les rejette d’office de la classes des homes (He who claims that primitives
do not possess a system of thought, excludes them automatically from the class of human beings).3
Tempels’ work was unique in its boldness. He was by no means outlining a monolithic
philosophy. It is clearly not “our type of philosophy,” but one specific to the African. The boldness
of his project is evidenced in the reception of his book. While it was given a warm greeting by African
and liberal intellectuals, 4 the then Bishop of Katanga demanded that the book be condemned as
heretical that Tempels be expelled from the Congo. It was completely out of tune to attribute a
philosophy to a people that were primitive and who need the nurturing of colonialists and missionaries.

1 V. Y. Mudimbe, p. 121.
2 Cited in V. Y. Mudimbe, p. 110
3 Placide Tempels, La philosophie Bantue, Présènce Africaine, Paris, 1948, p 15.
4 See for instance L. S. Senghor, Senghor: Prose and Poetry, Heinemann, London, 1965.

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But the main issue was the attribution of philosophy to these primitives. As Mudimbe stated, the work
would have received a less antagonistic reaction if he avoided the word philosophy in his title.1
But Tempels’ project and its title were heavily influenced by the self-image acquired by
philosophy through the ages – the image of being the highest expression of the human intellect or
rationality. This conception was initiated by Aristotle in the first book of his Metaphysics where he
opined that philosophy should not descend to the level of day to day engagement; that philosophy is
not an utilitarian endeavour and should be engaged in only when the basic needs of the human have
been fulfilled. It is thus an activity reserved for the well to do, to the highest rung of humanity, and
even for the gods.2 It is with this conception that philosophy entered modern African intellectual
vocabulary as can be seen from Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy.
It is as well the quest for the humanity of the human that is the hidden inspiration of Leopold
Sedar Senghor’s Negritude. Negritude was a reaction against the historic denigration perpetrated both
by slavery and imperialism. “Negritude represents an African crisis of consciousness.” 3 French
colonialism introduced the policy of assimilation with the intent of creating new French people from
all French colonial subjects. This entailed the complete abandonment and denial of the cultural value
of the subjects, and a pretention that humanity is realized in French culture. Negritude hacks back to
African and Caribbean heritage to counter the pride of French colonialism. Incidentally its method of
doing this is to show the sublimity of the culture or background of its proponents. Senghor himself
clearly stated that each culture must come to the world stage loaded with its contributions, and without
the intent to deliver such value it is not better than a museum piece.4 That is the underlying quest for
specificity. And Senghor only sang with his poetic acumen, the excellence of Africa: its environment,
its culture, its women, it history. He went as far as propagating an epistemology specific to the
African, 5 and thus inadvertently embraced the otherness of the other, the very principle which
inspired Western rampaging denigration of humanity.6
It is fair though to note that Senghor’s philosophy constitutes an implacable quest for pan-
humanity. For him, the only pan that exists is really Pan-humanity. His theory of the civilization of
the universal is thus the ultimate point of his negritude. Inspired by Teilhard de Chardin’s doctrine of
omega point in his book Le phenomene humaine, Senghor sought the positive values and virtues of
each civilization in a symbiosis of giving and receiving.” 7 Civilization of the universal is thus
described by Washington Ba as the “pan-human convergence towards which mankind is tending.”8
But it is clear that in this pan-humanity, what is fundamental is not so much the humanity that each
person or culture comes with but rather the values they purvey. It is therefore a clear pointer that in a

1 V. Y. Mudimbe, p. 141.
2 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 1, 982b 1 – 30.
3 Kamal Salhi, “Rethinking Francophone Culture: Africans and the Carribean between History and Theory,” Research in
African Literature 35 (2004), 13.
4 L. S. Senghor, “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin et la politique Africaine,” in J. Reed and C. Wake (ed.), p.99
5 J. Obi Oguejiofor, “Negritude as Hermeneutics: A Reinterpretation of Leopold Senghor’s Philosophy,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 83 (2009), pp. 88 – 90.
6 Tsenay Serequeberhan, The Hermeneutics of Africa Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse, Routledge, London, 1994, p.
46
7 Sylvia Washington Bă, The Concept of Negritude in the Poetry of Leopld Sedar senghor, Princeton University Press,
New Jersey, 1973, p. 179
8 Ibid., p. 153.

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somewhat hidden way, the logic is that of founding humanity on something not synonymous with
humanity, on something extrinsic to humanity ontologically speaking. Thus his quest for specificity
unwittingly reaffirms the presupposition of historic dehumanization. In seeking for the values of
civilization of the African, he insists that “these values are what characterized the humanity of the
human in Negro-African existence.” 1 The cultivation of such values are indeed natural and thus
“nature has arranged things well in willing that each people, each race, each continent, should
cultivate with special affection certain of the virtues of man; that is precisely where originality lies.”2
This rather brief review of these contemporary African philosophers serves our purpose in
testifying to what Serequeberhan said of the struggle of African-Americans: “there struggles are
directed at reclaiming humanity within the ambient that has neglected it.” 3 While we have
concentrated on some early major figures in contemporary African philosophy, it is very arguable
that the tendency which can loosely be described as the quest for humanity underlies many issues in
African philosophy. This can in a way be seen in the great attention given to the question of being of
the human, seen communally in the elevation of Ubuntu to the ontological level, where “I am because
we are,” becomes what characterizes the African not in any particular circumstance but always and
everywhere. Again, and almost in the same line the debate on personhood throws back to the quest
for humanity. Personhood is interpreted in many ways, in a communalist perspective; 4 in integrative
perspective.5 Sometimes this is done without critical attention to the implication of what is being
projected or argued.
A clear example is the communalist interpretation of African idea of personhood. The basic idea
that the communal conception is what confers personhood appears to have the same foundation that
racist Enlightenment thinkers had in rejecting the humanity of blacks. It is all very easy to foist
communalism on the African philosophic scene for the sake of specificity while not being critical
enough to note that African communalism, like most social behavior, is the creature of particular
circumstances. The pseudo-arguments of the racist Enlightenment thinkers were also what can be
called communalist conceptions about the humanity of the Other. We have described them as
mouthpieces of their contemporaries, devoid of the critical benefit of proper philosophic discernment.
But the quest for humanity in contemporary African philosophy is to a great extent inspired by
what we have called the honorific conception of philosophy, starting as far back as Aristotle’s
Metaphysics. The basis of this conception is the idea that human beings are rational and that
philosophy is the highest expression of their rational endowment. This is what actually gave rise to
the erstwhile debate on the nature and existence of African philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s in
African departments of philosophy. It is like a furtive quest for humanity. It is backed by the really
unexpressed conviction that philosophy is a human universal, i.e., that every human society must also
have its own philosophy. Tempels gave expression to this as we have seen above; ethno-philosophy
that followed his inspiration argued in favour of philosophy mostly not presented for public scrutiny.

1 Tsenay Serequeberhan, The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy, p. 44.

2 L. S. Senghor, “The Spirit of Civilization or the Laws of African Negro Culture,” cited in Tsenay Serequeberhan, p. 45.
3 Tsenay Serequeberhan, Our Heritage: The PAST in the PRESENT of AFRICAN-AMERICAN and AFRICAN
EXPERIENCE, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2000, p. 74
4 See Bernard Matolina, Personhood in African Philosophy, Cluster Publications, Dorpspruit, 2014.
5 See Ike Odimegwu, Intergrative Personhood: A Communalist Metaphysical Anthropology, Lit, Mȕnster, 2008.

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The historical trend in African philosophy sought to do the same by its back to Egypt movement, with
its aim clearly spelt by George G. James: “for all people and races who accept the new philosophy of
African redemption, i.e. the truth that the Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy; but the
people of North Africa; would change their opinion from one of disrespect to one of respect for the
Black people throughout the world and treat them accordingly.”1 The counter-current to this position,
the professional trend sought to limit philosophy to the ivory tower, debunking for the same unstated
reason both the existence of pre-contemporary African philosophy and its distinct non-Eurocentric
nature. The implication of this discourse for humanity is best expressed in the words of Serequeberhan:

The presence or absence of philosophy in some “honorific” sense has been taken thus far by both sides
of the debate as a substantiation or default of the humanity of African existence. In all this, “philosophy”
is tacitly and surreptitiously (i.e., without even the benefit of an argument) privileged as the true measure
and standard of the humanity of the human as such.2

F. Ebousi Boulaga confirms the view expressed by Serequeberhan. In his opinion contemporary
African philosophy that follows the inspiration of Tempels, either in aping or opposing it constitutes
an attempt to measure humanity but from a more foundational point of view an effort to affirm a
contested and if we may add, a rejected humanity. Boulaga poses the question and provides the
answer in the following words:

Que révèle et cashe tout ensemble la prétention africaine de posséder des philosophies? Par la .prise en
considération du lieu et des conditions où se produisent des discours qui revendiquent le “nom”
philosophie, on s’apercoit que l’enjeu réel est le suivant: le désire d’ attester un humanité contesté.3 (What
does the African pretention to possess philosophy reveal and hide? Taking into consideration the place
and the conditions where these discourses which claim the name philosophy are produced, one can see
that the real issue is the following: the desire to attest to a contested humanity.)

The acceptance of philosophy as a test of humanity or as an attempt to attest to a contested

humanity is wholly tantamount to buying into the presuppositions of the denial of the humanity of
the African and other humanity. It should never be forgotten that thinkers of the ill of Hegel, Hume
and Montesquieu drew the conclusion from their supposed view of Africans and other (to them) “sub-
human” human beings by falsely referring to the absence of inventions or productions, and only rarely
to the physical features of the dehumanized. For Hume there is nowhere found any black that has
made any invention, and that for him in his two publications were enough to consign them to the level
of brutes. The fault line in the quest for humanity through philosophy which is a mark of
contemporary African philosophy is that the same logic of basing humanity, not on itself but rather
on some other factors, inventions, ingenuity, or philosophical acumen returns to a vicious circle. It is
after all on account of some presumed lack that they were dehumanized or thrown out of the circle of

1 Geoge G. M. James, Stolen Legacy: Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyption Philosophy, Africa World Press, Trenton,
1992, p. 153.
2 Tsenay Serequeberhan, The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy, p. 4.
3 F. Eboussi Boulaga, La crise du Muntu: Authenticité africaine et philosophie: essai, Présence Africaine, Paris, 1977, p.
7. (The translation is mine.)

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humanity. Whatever that particular factor is taken to be, still amounts to the acceptance of the faulty
logic of the oppressor.
The quest for humanity through philosophy filters into what Wiredu called the fallacy of
uniqueness; 1 it is found in the preponderance of the search for identity which for Masolo also
significantly marks contemporary African philosophy. 2 For Boulaga erecting philosophy as the
ultimate symbol of humanity means that “philosophy is an attribute of power. But it is the West which
habours (and distributes) this power. There is no philosophy except it is associated with power, with
mastery.” (La philosophie est an attribute de pouvoir. Or, c’est l’Occident quie détient (et distribute)
celui-ci. Il n’ya de philosophie qu’associée au pouvoir, à la maiîtrise.)3
Viewing humanity in this manner speaks of many failures. The first is the failure to criticize and
exposed the dismal historic inadequacies of Western philosophy, especially the movement of the
Enlightenment. In our view, this failure owes to the fact that contemporary Western philosophy as
we have seen has remained virtually silent about this aspect of its past. Hardly any history of Western
philosophy contains references to the denial of humanity recorded on the pages of the Enlightenment.
It is possible that if histories of Western philosophy paid adequate attention to this sad failure of it
giants and heroes, a much later philosopher like Martin Heidegger would perhaps not have fallen so
easily into his adventure with Nazism.
On account of the domination of philosophical programs in Africa on Western philosophy,
Western philosophers are still studies in many parts of Africa with complete dependence on such
texts. Consequently it is still possible today to go through philosophical programmes without as much
as being informed about the failure of Western philosophers before the issue of humanity of the other.
This situation also leads to the failure to expose the vacuity of what we choose to call the vaunted
sublimity of philosophy, especially Western philosophy. It is this bloated self-image that led to the
erection of philosophy as the measure of the humanity of the human. It is quite clear that on a realistic
plane, there is little evidence that philosophers are generally known to think beyond the context of
their engagement. This in turn raises the question of hermeneutics as the most appropriate description
of and method in philosophy. It is clear that whether philosophers like or know it or not, the influence
of their ambience is much more consequential than many like to believe.
Our view is that foisting philosophy uncritically as the test of the humanity of the human; in
trying to affirm contested humanity by recourse to philosophy, contemporary African philosophy
failed in its critical function, and gave credence to the false suppositions of earlier thinkers that did
not proclaim the common and share humanity of the human. The right critical stance should have
been to challenge and expose the errors of thinkers of the ilk of Hegel, Hume, Kant and Montesquieu.
Doing so would not only have served as a caveat to future thinkers, but also lead to a better and more
realistic self-conception of philosophy. Against this general failure, one can still single out two
philosophers who were able to see through the pretention of philosophy both Western and African
and tried to properly direct their philosophic concern to the right end.

1 Kwasi Wiredu, “Problems in Africa’s Self-Identification in the Contemporary World,” in Alwin Diemer (ed.), African
and the Problems of its Identity, Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M., 1985, p. 222.
2 See D. A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity, University Press of America, Bloomington, 1994.
3 Ibid., p. 8 (The translation is mine.)

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 Mogobe B. Ramose returns frequently to the issue of the rationality of the human being, and
how this so to say essential feature was denied not only to blacks but also to women, Amerindians,
and Australasians. Ramose takes this error as the basis of racism and colonialism which have left
lasting consequences on the colonized and the dehumanized. He avers that this false assumption,
meant to aid both unjust conquest and subsequent colonization was based on “basic contradiction in
internal logic.”1 Even when such manifestations like scientific racism was completely trumped by the
truth, it was not thereby laid to rest. It is on record that European Christians were debating seriously
whether human beings had a soul and that at a particular point the Supreme Pontiff Paul III, in 1537
had to declare in a Papal bull Sublimis Deus that “all men [and women] are rational animals.” For
Ramose, the ripple effects of these communal errors continue to be felt to the present day:

In our time the struggle for reason is rearing its head again around the globe especially in the West under
the familiar face of resilient racism. Despite the defeat of scientific racism long ago, it is pertinent to note
its current resurgence appositely called the bell curve wars in the United States of America. Similarly the
political ascendency in Western Europe of political parties less accepting of people in many ways unlike
them means that the triumph of science against racism continues to have minimal political effect.2

Ramose was writing the above lines in 1999, and was alluding to the bell curve movement. In
1994 R. J. Herrnstein and C. Murray wrote a book titled The Bell Curve, intended to demonstrate the
superiority of white people to other races of human beings.3 It speaks of the resilience of racism and
the inhumanity that follows on its heels that after all that has been scientifically proven against
scientific racism; such arguments as the bell curve, no matter how obtuse were given attention in
Western media. The rise of ultra-right political parties has since been on the increase. The United
State of America today has a president who finds it difficult to condemn the misdeeds of racist groups;
and in Europe Austria once again made history by having an extreme right party in government
through electoral victory. Victor Urban in Hungary is not in the least doing badly on account of his
racist and intolerant views and in Germany, though the extreme right party is not exactly in
government, its performance in the last election and its large number of parliamentary seats point to
how well this movement is doing in 2018.
While Ramose challenges the irrationality of inhuman and racist attitudes, Marcien Towa
underlines the futility of seeking humanity through a show of philosophy. In his famous words: “that
we have a philosophy does not mean that we are philosophers.”4 This is of course a reference to the
quest for philosophy which Boulaga and Serequeberhan have referred to. Towa’s opinion is that in
fact having had philosophy in the past is not of much use if today we are unable to key into the
positive values of that philosophy. It strikes against philosophy as mere honorific genre. Indirectly
also it strikes against the use of philosophy to affirm humanity and challenges the continual

1 Mogobe B. Ramose, African Philosophy Through Ubuntu, revised edition, Mond Books, Harare, 2002, p.5
2 Ibid., p. 2.
3 R. J. Herrnstein and C. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Free Press, New
York, 1994.
4 For a reflection on this statement see J. Obi Oguejiofor “Reflections on Marcien Towa’s Unique Idea of Contemporary
African Philosophy,” in J. E. Mabe (ed.), Apologie de la raison: Homages a Marcien Towa (1931 – 2014), Verlag
Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen, 2015.

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reaffirmation of any value which philosophy pretends to purvey. Towa’s statements also entails that
being philosophers should also include being able to be critical vis-à-vis the errors of the past whether
it is our own past or the past of others. In being philosophers of the present age we are thereby
challenged to rise about the foibles and insensitivities of the past which as we have seen is not very
much evident in contemporary Western philosophy.
Failure of the Enlightenment to affirm the common humanity of the human, and that of
subsequent European philosophy to learn from this failure, also the failure of much of contemporary
African philosophy to rise to the meta-philosophical level and to accept the common humanity of all
as a given; more so to try to seek humanity through philosophy indicate that right philosophy in our
time needs a new direction. In Africa, philosophy is today challenged to play a role in development;
to be relevant in the life of the subjects, socially, politically, economically and culturally. Philosophy
is being challenged to abandon its cozy ivory tower and to engage in the amelioration of the human
predicament in Africa. That indeed is a step in the right direction.
We have tried to show that the issue of humanity in contemporary African philosophy was
generated by the dehumanization of the Africans by historical events like slavery and imperialism.
These events were as inhuman as they may be judged were amply supported by major figures in
Western philosophy especially though not limited to the Enlightenment period. The surreptitious
reaction of much of contemporary African philosophy was to demonstrate the humanity of the
oppressed by recourse to philosophy, not in terms of criticism of the obtuse logic of defenders of
inhumanity but by showing that Africa has its own philosophy. This is tantamount to keying into the
logic of dehumanization by basing it on incidental, not essential factors. The failure of both Western
and African philosophy before the humanity of the human deflates the exhaulted self-image of
philosophy. And so it is an invitation to continuous and constant such for a better direction by making
philosophy responsive to the demands of humanity in all its dimensions, social, political, economic,
religious, etc. That much of African philosophy is doing this today is bold step in the right direction.

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 Still Life

Guillermo Hurtado
National Autonomous University of Mexico

In still lives, victuals and flowers are portrayed placed in domestic spaces. When they display food,
the paintings often include plates, vessels, cutlery and similar utensils, and when they show floral
arrangements, they incorporate vases, books, clocks and various instruments. In Spain, paintings of
the first kind were called bodegones, and the ones from the second kind were called floreros.1 In
spite of its popularity during the XVI and XVII centuries, the genre was considered as minor:
decorative painting, regardless of the excellence of the artist's technique.2
It was not until the second half of the XVIII century that this genre began to be known as
"naturaleza muerta" (still life). This denomination, shared with French, nature morte, and with
Italian, natura morta, contrasts with the one preserved in Northern Europe, Dutch, stilleven, German,
still-leben, and English, still-life. The terminological difference is not innocuous since it gives way
to two hermeneutics that do not always coincide.3 It is not the same to describe objects as fixed in a
place or moment than to declare them deceased, although they are being portrayed as appealing and
fragrant. However, beyond this discrepancy, it should be noted that both denominations are
suggestive metaphors.
The phrase “naturaleza muerta” is a nominal idiom in the form of noun + adjective, like
“rational animal" or "common sense". The word “naturaleza” (nature) comes from the Latin word
“natura”, which proceeds from “natus”, participle of the verb “nasci”, whose Spanish equivalent is
“nacer” (to be born). Given that "morir" (to die) is the opposite of "nacer", the phrase "naturaleza
muerta”, although not quite an oxymoron, gives off an air of paradox, even of cruelty. Calling a
painting of a harmless fruit bowl “naturaleza muerta” creates an unrest that moves us to reflect on
life and death.
Hans Blumenberg defined absolute metaphors as those that indicate “the certainties, the
conjectures, the fundamental and supportive values that regulate activities, the expectations, the
actions and omissions, the aspirations and illusions, the interests and indifference of a certain time."4
Is the phrase “naturaleza muerta” an absolute metaphor? It is not obvious that it is. However, I
consider that it can be worthwhile to examine it by employing a similar methodology as the one
employed by the German philosopher.5
The metaphor “naturaleza muerta” was adopted in the aesthetic discourse because it reveals
something significant about a set of artworks. Notwithstanding, the hermeneutic relationship
between the metaphor and those canvases is not unidirectional. Those same paintings can help us
unveil the existential key points of the metaphor, this is to say, what it tells us about the meaning of

1 Peter Cherry, Arte y naturaleza. El bodegón español en el Siglo de Oro, Editorial Doce Calles, Aranjuez, 1999.
2 Antonio Palomino, El Parnaso español pintoresco laureado, Tomo Tercero, Madrid, 1724.
3 Omar Calabrese, “Naturaleza muerta”, en ¿Cómo se lee una obra de arte?, Editorial Cátedra, Madrid 1993.
4 Hans Blumenberg, Paradigmas para una metaforología, Madrid, Editorial Trotta, 2003, p. 63.
5 Hans Blumenberg, Salidas de caverna, Madrid, Editorial Antonio Machado, 2004 y Naufragio con espectador, Madrid,
Editorial Antonio Machado, 1995.

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 our lives. This is the assumption I will adopt here. In order to examine the metaphor, I will not only
use literary or philosophical texts, but also a succession of paintings from the Baroque period –not
all of them from the still life genre- and, towards the end, also some pieces of contemporary art. I
will deal with these works as if we were doing a tour through the rooms of an imaginary museum.1
I will warn that this route will not be done using art history or art theory standards, but rather
borrowing from the philosophical history of metaphors or, if one prefers, from the concepts that
comprise it, or even better, from the way in which those concepts have intertwined with each other.
Although the phrase "naturaleza muerta" did not have its current usage when the majority of these
works were made, while analyzing them we will adopt a hermeneutic sequence form of deployments
and retreats from that metaphor. The ultimate purpose of this study is to move forward in the
understanding of the Baroque concept –particularly Spanish, moreover, Catholic- of existence, in
order to compare it with the concept we have nowadays.

1. Flowerpots and Nuns

Portraying a flowerpot is not an innocent task. Flowers are never just flowers. The symbolisms
associated with them throughout history are countless.2 I will not get lost in this semiotic maze. My
first observation will be the confirmation of a biological fact. An artist who portrays a flower vase
cannot delay his task. Although flowers remain still, they invariably rot within a couple of days. This
is why although their paintings are commonly known as “fixed lives”, flamenco masters also painted
true dying lives, that is to say, representations of the expiration of life.
It is often said that a defining characteristic of still lives is the exclusion of any living being,
especially human beings.3 However, some works of the genre convey a subtle message about the
meaning of our existence. Observe the oil painting of Jan Brueghel the Elder, Bouquet of Flowers in
a Ceramic Vase (FIG. 1). A superb flowerpot is placed on a table. Next to the container, as if it was
a mistake from the painter, we find withered petals, coins, rings; in other words, symbols that give
the work a poetic message on top of its merely ornamental value. Brueghel’s painting is more than
just a flowerpot: on its edges, he tells us something about the fugacity of human life. There is nothing
in the world that remains unchanged. The objects portrayed in stilleven paintings are not an exception.
Whoever wishes for his beauty or wealth to remain fixed forever lives in deceit. This lesson has been
recorded in the phrase vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. This is how the sub-genre vanitas separated
from the still life genre -in particular from flowerpots-. In this type of paintings, skulls and similar
objects are portrayed, not only indicating the briefness of life, but also the vanity of human objects.
For example, in an elegant artwork of Adriaen van Utrecht, the timid suggestions of Brueghel
become the core of the work: a skull, clocks, books, withered petals (FIG 2). In the vanitas, flowers
transform into allegories. Still life acquires a philosophical meditation bias, moreover, moral lesson
one. As summarized, in an unforgettable verse, by Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz while referring to the

1 André Malraux, El museo imaginario, Madrid, Cátedra, 2017.

2 Lucia Impelluso, La naturaleza y sus símbolos, Random House Mondadori, 2005.
3 Norman Bryson, Volver a mirar. Cuatro ensayos sobre la pintura de naturalezas muertas, Madrid, Alianza Editorial,
2005.

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 proverbial rose: “With learned death and foolish life, living you deceive and dying you teach”.1 It is
in Spain, with the work of Juan de Valdés Leal, that vanitas achieve their gloomiest condition by
completely eradicating any natural element, with the exception of human skeletons. These are not
the paintings -samples of the darkest Hispanic baroque- that interest me, but others from the same
period that convey a very different message. To examine them we must enter a different room in the
museum.
In Iberoamerican baroque painting, some elements from the still life genre were incorporated
into a sub-genre of portraits: the crowned nuns. In these works, executed in the Viceroyalties of
Perú, Nueva Granada, and Nueva España, novices were represented embellished with magnificent
crowns and flower palms before entering the convent. The nuns’ floral arrangements were so rich
and elaborate as the ones from a flamenco flowerpot. These paintings were made to be hanged in
domestic spaces: the family houses of the novices or the convent cloisters that hosted them. They
are not allegories, but portraits of flesh and blood women, with names and forenames. Let us observe
the Profession Portrait of sor Ana María de la Preciosa Sangre de Cristo (FIG. 3). In this artwork,
there are several elements with symbolic value that are repeated in portraits of this kind: the crown
of virtues triumph, the flowery palm of virginity and the lit up candle of faith.2
The novices left the world of vanity -some of them came from rich and powerful families- to
adopt the austere discipline of the cloister.3 Upon their physical death they left the earthly world and
departed to the grave, with the ornaments of a wife who would finally meet her mystic husband.
This spiritual passage was embodied in the portraits of dead crowned nuns. Let us contemplate Post
Mortem Portrait of Sor Magdalena de Cristo (FIG. 5). This artwork evokes still lives not only
because of the abundance of flowers. The corpse of the old abbess also takes the symbolic place of
the animal corpses that appear in the bodegones. For a greater precision, we might call this a case of
human still life.
The subject of deceit is one of the main topics of Baroque culture: nothing is what it seems.
Still lives of this time are no exception. For example, there have been studies on the close link
between the genres of still lives and trompe-l’œil (optical illusion).4 The ploy is more sophisticated
in the portraits of dead crowned nuns. Here, flowers are symbols of life and death seeking for
redemption. Likewise, nuns die in earthly life and are reborn in eternal life. Portraits of dead crowned
nuns are a naive expression of the supreme paradox of Christianity: human still life is the most alive
one because death is conquered when dying in faith. This paradox is famously phrased by another
nun, Santa Teresa de Ávila, with the sentence “I die because I do not die”.5
The comparison between dead crowned nuns and the vanitas is relevant. In the latter, flowers
represent vanities, while in the former, they represent virtues. A still life of a bouquet, while denoting
the finitude of existence in the vanitas, here it symbolizes resurrection. How did this re-significance

1 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Rosa divina que en gentil cultura”, en Segundo Volumen de las Obras de Sor Juana Inés de
la Cruz, Edición Facsimilar, México, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM, 1995, p. 279.
2 Alma Montero, Monjas coronadas. Profesión y muerte en Hispanoamérica virreinal, México, Museo Nacional del
Virreinato/ Conaculta/INAH/Asociación de Amigos del Museo Nacional del Virreinato/ Plaza y Valdés Editores, 2008.
3 Asunción Lavrin, Las esposas de Cristo. La vida conventual en la Nueva España, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica,
2016.
4 Patrick Mauriès (Dir.), Le Trompe-l'œil: De l'antiquité au XXe siècle, Paris, Gallimard, 1996.
5 Santa Teresa de Jesús, “Vivir sin vivir en mí”, en Obras Completas, Madrid, Editorial Plenitud, 1958, p. 933.

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 come to be? It has been pointed at the iconic influence of the veneration of Santa Rosa de Lima, and
also at the legend of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.1 We could also add the usage of flowers
and food during the celebrations of the day of the dead in Mexico. This is not the right place to study
this fascinating story. What is important to remember is that, although natural elements are the same
in both cases, the portraits of crowned nuns represent the opposite of the vanitas.

2. From Still Life to the Crucifixion

Let us go back to the room of still lives. Since antiquity, a distinction has been drawn between
megalography and ropography.2 The former refers to paintings of objects or important issues, while
the latter refers to paintings of things or trivial events. The bodegones are a typical example of
ropographic painting, that is to say, of scenes that can be found in any kitchen, with disregard for
the abundance or exquisiteness of the delicacies. However, in Spanish Baroque painting, the still life
genre shifts from the humblest ropography to the most sublime megalography.
It has been said that a difference between still lives for Catholics and Protestants lies in that for
the former they are understood as a gift or offering, while the latter they are taken as a mere aggregate
to perishable goods.3 For example, let us observe the conspicuous bodegón of Jan Davisz de Heem,
which shows a table with hams, seafood, and fruits (FIG. 5). We stand in front what Simon Schama
called the “shame of the treasures” of Dutch life in the XVII century.4 Abundance is a sign of success,
but for a side of protestant sensitivity it might come across as excessive, embarrassing, and even
sinful; this is why it is so easy to jump from there to the sub-genre of vanitas. None of this is felt in
the still lives painted by a Spanish Carthusian monk. The bodegones of Juan Sánchez Cotán stand
out for their austerity and humility (FIG. 6). There is no palace food to be seen in them, but rather a
convent of poor monks. Foods are not displayed in the refectory nor in the kitchen, they are instead
stored in a cellar, literally in a dark cellar (bodegón). Framed in a sort of window, we find small
birds, a few crops, and a thistle which stands out for its elliptic whiteness. The most famous bodegón
of Sánchez Cotán minimizes the amount of food in order to testify on the monastic poverty, and also
on its spiritual concentration (FIG. 7). The modest thistle, placed in the same site, acquires a
disturbing individuality. One might say that the artwork is not about a cellar anymore, but a portrait
of that thistle; moreover, this might not even be considered as a portrait, but a religious scene: the
thistle, in its simplicity, is a gift, a link between God and men.
Still life as an offering reaches its ultimate expression with Francisco de Zurbarán. The
Sevillian artist painted several bodegones in which he depicted with sensitivity ceramic cups and
plates in front of a black background. These are not the paintings that I am interested in here, but
rather in others in which he boldly crosses the borders of the genre. Some authors have noted the
passage that Zurbarán makes from still lives to religious painting, for example, in his representations

1 James M.Córdova, The Art of Professing in Bourbon Mexico: Crowned-Nun Portraits and Reform in the Convent, Latin
American and Caribbean Arts and Culture Publication Initiative, 2014.
2 Charles Sterling, La nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, P. Tisné, Paris, 1952 p. 11.
3 Jacques Darriulat, “Vanité de la peinture et peintures de Vanité”, en Pierre Arnaud y Élisabeth Ángel-Pérez, Le regard
dans les arts plastiques et la líttérature, Presses de la Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2003.
4 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches. An interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age, New York, Alfred.
A. Knopf, 1987.

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 of the Verónica canvas. 1 However, it seems to me that the most extraordinary shift is found in
another of his famous paintings. Let us admire his painting Agnus Dei, in which he portrays a lamb
with its feet tied up (FIG. 8). The staging reminds us of the bodegones of Sanchéz Cotán: the kitchen
or storage room of a tavern or convent. The sweet whiteness of the animal is highlighted by the
dramatic darkness of the background. The beast awaiting with resignation for its execution is a
metaphor of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. With this work of Zurbarán, the genre of still life, accused
of ropograph, reaches the genre of religious painting, the ultimate summit of megalography.
The Agnus Dei respects the rule of the genre of still life by not portraying human beings. If we
exit again the room of still lives we find ourselves with a work by Zurbarán that surprises us due to
its intertextual references. Let us compare his Agnus Dei with his San Serapio (FIG. 9). Notice how
some formal characteristics of the bodegón have been transferred to this religious painting. The body
of the Mercedarian martyr, tortured by the Saracens, hangs from the roof as if it was a fruit from a
painting of Sánchez Cotán. The saint also has his wrists tied up with a string, just like the feet of the
lamb in Agnus Dei, while his robe is as white as the fur of the animal.
The most extraordinary trans-generic shift that we can guess from the artwork of Zurbarán is
from still life to crucifixion. There are two types of crucifixion paintings: in some, Jesus Christ is
still alive, while in others he is already dead. Zurbarán painted some crucifixions of the second type
that deserve our attention. The Crucified Christ is made with the same technique as the finest still
lives from the artist: the same contrast between the luminescence of the bodies and the silent dark
background, the same solitude of the objects in the representation cap, the same sculptural density
of the simplified volumes, the same fading out exterior horizon (FIG. 10). In this extreme
crucifixion, everything else has been erased: there are no other characters, no landscape, no
narrative. Jesus Christ has been taken to a mysterious inner space that could be the chapel of a
church, the cell of a monk or the hallucination of an enlightened.
Zurbarán’s Jesus Christ is so defunct that the message of resurrection earns an intense meaning.
To display it, let us use a distinctively baroque rhetoric resource. In a pun, two concepts turn around
each other. Like that, from the phrase “naturaleza muerta” we move to “muerte natural” (natural
death). If the concept of “naturaleza muerta” is artistic, then “muerte natural” a forensic medicine
one. Natural death happens due to illness or age, not due to an accident or crime. Crucifixion is not
a natural death because it is wildly violent. Nevertheless, the death of Jesus Christ in the cross had
nothing natural to it -in the widest sense of the word- because it was the death of a God. In front of
Zurbarán’s painting, we witness the mystery of a God that dies like a human being, and of a human
being who conquers death as a God. The image of the crucifixion is the fundamental chiasmus of
Western culture.
Zurbarán offers a naturalist image -in other words: a realist, objective, reliable one- of the
corpse of Jesus Christ. His style is very different from the stridencies of El Greco or Rubens, and
also from the prosaic naturalism -as labelled by José Ortega y Gasset2- of Velázquez. There is no
horror nor compassion for the crucified in the canvas. The painter even dares to show the first

1 Víctor I. Stoichita, “El bodegón a lo divino”, en El Bodegón, Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg, El círculo de lectores,
2000, pp. 87-106.
2 José Ortega y Gasset, Papeles sobre Velázquez y Goya, Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1950.

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 manifestations of postmortem lividity. Yet, Zurbarán’s naturalism is a baroque ploy. The more dead
appears the nature of Christ, the more powerful will be the announcement of eternal life. Compare
this naturalism with Rembrandt’s one in The Anatomy Lesson from Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (FIG. 11). The
violet corpse portrayed by the Dutchman stands out for of its impassioned anatomic accuracy. But
it is not the corpse, not even the lesson, what matters the most in this work, but rather the portraits
of the surgeons who paid the young painter to be included in the group.1 This is another baroque
ploy, although of another kind. Let us return to the comparison between Zurbarán’s and Rembrandt’s
naturalism. The former does not claim the definitive conquer of death, because in the human being
what is natural -properly organic- is dependent on human freedom and on the action of the Divine
Grace. The latter accepts our mortality as a self-evident fact, or -as Spinoza would say- as a fact of
natura naturata.2 This does not mean that the Dutch painter minimized the human being to his
biological or physical characteristics. As pointed out by Georg Simmel, Rembrandt always portrayed
individuals.3 However, there does not seem to be in his pictorial universe a resource going beyond
the finitude of the immanent. The inner light of the characters in Rembrandt’s portraits ceased to
shine when they made their last breath.

3. The Last Room

We have finished our tour through the room of Baroque painting in our imaginary museum. What
we saw there belongs to the past. By walking through the door, we cannot stop thinking that in the
XXI century the phrase “naturaleza muerta” or “still life” has gained different meanings.
If metaphors are historical, then they are also perishable. Our fear is that the phrase “naturaleza
muerta” ceases to be a metaphor in order to become a death certificate. We imagine a wold in which,
in the worst scenario, nature will not exist because it has extinguished, or in a less catastrophic
scenario, in which some remains are kept in artificial conditions. When the phrase “naturaleza
muerta” finally ceases to be a metaphor, then there will be no more metaphors.
What kind of still life can an artist create once the death of nature has been announced? Let us
enter the last room of our imaginary museum to search for an answer. Compare the Agnus Dei of
Zurbarán with Away from the Flock (FIG. 12) of Damien Hirst. An innocent lamb moves away from
its herd and gets trapped in a formalin tank. Why? Is this evoking a sacrifice?.4 There are no answers
to be found. What in turn seems evident is that we find ourselves in front of the perfect still life: this
animal cannot be more natural, because it is real, and thus, it could not be more dead. Hirst has
reached the last frontier of the genre. As it usually happens with this type of works the title is an
inseparable element from its message. The herd that the label refers to could be the Roman Church,
the Judaeo-Christian tradition, or the Western Society as a whole. Quite a few people feel suspended,
just like Hirst’s lamb, for having departed from their ancestral herd. The most pessimistic would add

1 Alois Reigl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, Los Ángeles, Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the
Humanities, 1999.
2 Baruch Spinoza, Ética, México, UNAM, 1977, proposición 29.
3 Georg Simmel, Rembrandt. Ensayo de filosofía del arte, Buenos Aires, Editorial Nova, 1950.
4 George Bataille, “Esquema de una historia de las religiones”, en La religión surrealista, Buenos Aires, Las cuarenta,
2008.

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 that we should not take for granted the fact that this experience is still able be expressed as a
metaphor. I don’t want, however, to end this tour in such a dark tone.
Counter Reform Baroque reckoned that we human beings could conquer death because, aside
from being people, we are also creatures. The predominant philosophy in secular societies teaches
us something different: people are not creatures, not even individual substances, but evanescent
individuals in constant self-construction. Our nature does not define us anymore. Is there a way to
recover something from the Baroque conception? If Baroque, as declared by Eugenio D’Ors, is a
constant cultural category, there will always be Baroque art whose manifestations await for the
lessons that we can extract from them.1
Hirst is the author of a piece that has been interpreted as a contemporary example of the vanitas
genre. For the Love of God is a platinum skull completely covered in very fine diamonds (FIG. 13).
None other artwork has ever reached a higher price and, yet, we know the day will come -maybe in
a thousand years- where it will end up ruined in a corner as any other contraption. However, this is
not the only interpretation that has been done on this piece.2 Hirst has declared that For the Love of
God is inspired in the skulls garnished in precious stones of the Mesoamerican burials.3 This hint
points in a direction that eventually passes by the original Baroque culture developed in Mexico
since the XVI century.4 In this light, For the Love of God is not a vanitas, on the contrary, it is a
celebration of human life and, in particular, of the effort to escape in a thousand ways -one of them,
through art- not only death’s sentence but something much worse, death into life, what Baltasar
Gracían called the cave of nothing.5 The museum is about to close -which, although imaginary, still
follows a timetable- and we do not have any more time to develop this baroque cosmovision. If you
ask me, I would summarize its message with these words: thanks to God, yes, but also thanks to our
genius, is that death does not absolutely prevail. Have you realized that some skulls are smiling?

References

Jan Brueghel, Bouquet of Flowers in a Ceramic Vase, 1599, oil on canvas, 51 x 40 cm. Art History
Museum, Vienna.
Adriaen van Utrecht, Vanitas, 1642, oil on canvas, 67 x 86 cm., private collection.
Anonymous, Profession portrait of sor Ana María de la Preciosa Sangre de Cristo, 1760, oil on canvas,
no measurements, Denver Art Museum.
Anonymous, Post mortem portrait of sor Magdalena de Cristo, 1732, oil on canvas, no measurements,
Museo de Arte Religioso, Ex convento de Santa Mónica, Puebla.
Jan Davidsz. de Heem, A Still-Life with Lobster, oil on canvas, The Wallace Collection, Londres.

1 Eugenio D’Ors, Lo barroco, Madrid, Tecnos/Alianza, 2002.

2 Rudi Fench, 'Victory over Death', en Damien Hirst, Beyond Belief, Other Criteria/White Cube, 2008.
3 Paul Westheim, La calavera, México, Antigua Librería Robredo, 1953.
4 Francisco López Ruíz, Artefactos de muerte no simulada: Damien Hirst en México, México, Universidad
Iberoamericana, 2009.
5 Baltasar Gracián, El criticón, edición facsímil, Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009, 3 vols.

104
Juan Sánchez Cotán, Bodegón de caza, hortalizas y frutas, 1602, oil on canvas, 69 x 89, Museo del
Prado, Madrid.
Juan Sánchez Cotán, Bodegón con cardo y zanahorias, oil on canvas, 62 x 89, Museo de Bellas Artes,
Granada.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei, oil on canvas, 38 x 62, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Francisco de Zurbarán, San Serapio, oil on canvas, 120 x 103, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Cristo crucificado, oil on canvas, Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, Sevilla.
Rembrandt H. Van Rijn, The anatomy lesson of Nicholas Tulp, 1632, oil on canvas, Mauritshuis, La
Haya.
Damien Hirst, Away from the flock, 1994, lamb suspended in formalin, 96 x 159 x 51, National
Galleries Scotland.
———. For the love of god, 2007, skull of platinum, diamonds and human teeth, White Cube Gallery,
Londres

(Translated by Felipe Barrientos; Proofread by Yu Shiyang)

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 The Good – As It Is Comprehended in Practical Reasoning

Sebastian Rödl

1 Introduction

It has been debated whether practical reasoning concludes in a state of mind – a judgment, an intention
– or whether in concludes in an action. The debate has failed to recognize the form and the
significance of its question.
First, the form: the question is misconstrued as it is thought to address a natural psychic power,
found in human beings and perhaps other animals as well, and to be answered by the study of this
natural reality. Rather, the question asks for an articulation of the understanding of its conclusion that
is internal to practical reasoning. When it is so understood, the answer is clear: the conclusion of
practical reasoning is an action. Second, the significance: the significance of this answer to the
question resides in its being an understanding of nature: in it, nature is understood to be governed by
the good as the supreme principle of all reality. As the understanding in question is internal to
practical reasoning, practical reasoning is ethical knowledge of nature.

2 The Question

One may reason with a view to ascertaining what is the case. And one may reason with a view to
ascertaining what to do. In the latter case, we may say one’s reasoning is practical, in the former,
theoretical.
She who reasons with a view to ascertaining what is the case concludes judging that such-and-
such is the case. The conclusion of theoretical reasoning is a judgment. It has been said that she who
reasons with a view to ascertaining what to do concludes recognizing that such-and-such is good to
do or that she ought to do it. It also has been said that her reasoning concludes in her doing what she
recognizes is good to do. The conclusion of practical reasoning has been said to be a thought, and it
has been said to be an action.
If practical reasoning concludes in doing something, it does not do so to the exclusion of
concluding in the thought that it is good to do. All reasoning concludes in a thought. It may be taken
to conclude in a mere thought, a thought that is not the subject’s doing what she thinks is good to do.
However, as we will see, there is no such thing as thinking that practical reasoning concludes in a
mere thought. For in practical reasoning one understands its conclusion to be one’s doing what one
sees is good to do.
I proceed as follows. I consider, in section 3, Frege’s explanation of what we mean when we
speak of inference. Frege’s topic is inference whose conclusion is a judgment. In section 4, I say how
practical inference shares in the character of inference Frege describes. Section 5 explains why the
conclusion of practical reasoning, in virtue of having this character, cannot be a mere thought. Section
5 remarks on the significance of this result.

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3 Theoretical Reasoning

Frege writes: “Judging, being conscious of other truths as justifying grounds, is called inferring.”
(Gottlob Frege, Logik, p. 3: “Urteilen, indem man sich anderer Wahrheiten als
Rechtfertigungsgründen bewußt ist, heißt schließen.”)1 So this is what we mean when we speak of
inference: inferring something is judging it understanding other things to justify this judgment. I want
to elaborate this understanding of its conclusion that an inference itself is.
A judgment that is such as to be a conclusion of reasoning may be just or not. Only then can
something make it just, justify it. If talk of a judgment’s justice sounds forced, we may speak of its
validity and say that inferring is judging being conscious of other truths as validating one’s judgment.
A judgment’s validity is its truth, and what validates a judgment shows it to be true. As only truths
can show something to be true, Frege speaks of the justifying grounds as truths.
When someone infers something, then not only are there truths that show her judgment to be
valid. She is conscious of these truths, and is conscious of them as justifying grounds, that is, as
establishing the validity of her judgment. Inference is this consciousness: inferring is judging in the
consciousness (“indem man sich bewußt ist”) of other truths as justifying this judgment; the
consciousness of these truths as justifying the judgment is that judgment. So the judgment that
concludes an inference is the thought of other truths as establishing its validity.
Inferring is judging being conscious of other truths as justifying so judging. Therein it is judging
being conscious of other truths as explaining why one so judges. Perhaps something can justify a
judgment without explaining it. Perhaps something can explain a judgment without justifying it. But
when someone infers that such-and-such is the case, when she judges that it is the case understanding
other truths to reveal it to be valid so to judge, then those truths explain why she so judges.
I said, when someone infers something, then what, as she understands, justifies her judgment,
explains why she so judges. This does not report an observed regularity. As though we had found
that, in general, that in the consciousness of which someone judges, being conscious of it as a
justifying ground, explains why she so judges. Then it would make sense to devise experiments to
ascertain whether this finding is robust. This is not the way to understand what I said. What I said
does not report an observation, but articulates the understanding of its conclusion that an inference is.
She who judges, in judging, understands her judgment to be justified by other truths. In so
understanding it, she understands her judgment to be explained by these truths. For, her judgment is
her recognition of its validity; so she understands it. Therefore she cannot think of anything as
explaining her judgment that does not explain how she recognizes its validity; and nothing can explain
how she recognizes the validity of judging that something is the case that does not show that it is the
case. Conversely, understanding something to show that it is the case, she understands herself to
recognize that it is the case, and to recognize that by the very thing that shows it to be the case.

1 Frege says: “Judging ... is inferring.” He identifies an inference with the judgment that is its conclusion. He is right to
do so, for the premises, namely their understanding as justifying the conclusion, are internal to the conclusion. Kant, too,
identifies the inference with its conclusion. Matthew Boyle, in “Making Up One’s Mind”, has recovered this insight. It
appears unknown to all participants in the debate on inference published a few years ago in … This is curious in the light
of the fact that Paul Boghossian, one of the participants, takes his clue from the Frege passage quoted above. However,
he works from a botched translation of the passage, which obscures the internality to the conclusion of the premises and
their understanding as justifying the conclusion.

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 It follows that, as she understands, explaining why she judges that such-and-such is the case is
nothing other than laying out the truths that justify her judgment; she who judges that such-and-such
is the case, being conscious of other truths as justifying grounds, explains her judgment by speaking
this consciousness. There is nothing more familiar than this. Let it be that she judges p, being
conscious of q as justifying her judgment. When she is asked, Why do you think p?, she answers:
because q. She explains why she judges p by the truth that she recognizes to establish the validity of
so judging.
It may be said that this is how she who infers understands her judgment and its explanation. By
contrast, when we think of someone else’s judgment, we can, do, and must distinguish what
establishes the validity of judging as she does from what explains why she so judges. Now, it is
misleading to say that this is wrong. Rather, it cannot be entertained by anyone who partakes of
human discourse. For it excludes the form of exchange we described. He who asks someone why she
judges that such-and-such is the case must be able to receive her answer in the sense in which she
gives it. Then he challenges her answer by questioning whether what she presents as explaining her
judgment shows it to be valid. If he did not take her answer in this way, there would be no common
theme among them: judgment and its explanation. Unless I understand what someone gives me as
justifying her judgment to explain why she so judges, explain it precisely as justifying it, I have no
idea of her judging anything at all, not if this is to be the idea of her doing what I do, judging
something in the consciousness of other truths as justifying grounds of my judgment.
Inferring is judging understanding one’s judgment to be justified by other truths. An inference
is a judgment that understands itself. We express this understanding, the understanding of its
conclusion that an inference is, when we say: what reveals a judgment to be valid explains it. And
not per accidens, as though these were two things that happen to have come together: it justifies the
judgment, and it explains it. No, what justifies the judgment explains it as justifying it.
The ground of the judgment’s validity explains its actuality. Comprehending why a judgment is
requires nothing more and nothing other than recognizing its validity. And since the judgment is itself
the recognition of its validity, it is itself the thought of what explains its actuality. A judgment is not
explained by anything of which it is not itself the recognition. A judgment is itself the recognition of
what explains its actuality. 1 Again, this is understood in judging. And again, while it takes
philosophical language to express this understanding, the understanding so expressed is nothing
esoteric. It is present in any two-year-old who is able to speak and on display in the most elementary
human discourse.
A judgment is and understands itself to be the recognition of what explains its actuality. Nothing
that lies outside what is known in the judgment itself explains its actuality. This is to say that judgment
is absolute: there can be no condition on which the actuality of a judgment depends different from
this very judgment. For if there were such a condition, it would have to be possible for it to obtain
without the judgment’s being actual. And she who judges, in judging, rules out this possibility. Hegel

1 Nagel describes this – what is judged explains its being judged – as reason’s direct relation to truth. And he observes
that this is an obstacle to any form of naturalism that is of a different order altogether from that posed by the purple haze.
See his Mind and Cosmos, (It is unclear how he thinks the natural teleology he imagines in the last chapter of this book
can be held together with this insight.)

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says it is an error to suppose that knowledge and the absolute are distinct. He goes on to say that it is
equally erroneous to suppose that we are something other than knowledge. The latter point will begin
to acquire contour as we consider, in the light of what we said of theoretical reasoning, practical
reasoning and its conclusion.

4 Practical Reasoning

Frege speaks of inference whose conclusion is a judgment. Practical inference exhibits the character
of inference Frege describes. As the conclusion of practical inference is anyway a thought, we first
consider it as such, in order then to inquire whether it is a mere thought.
Practical reasoning aims at ascertaining what to do. Its conclusion answers that question and
thus is a thought of doing something. When we seek to say how such a thought represents doing
something, various words suggest themselves: we may say it represents something as good to do, as
to be done, as right to do, as something one ought to do, etc. Here there is neither the need nor the
possibility to make a choice among these terms. No need, for our reflections will not turn on the word;
it will be possible to rephrase what we say in terms of any of them. No possibility, for we are in no
position to comprehend differences that these terms may mark; such comprehension may spring from
our reflections, but is unavailable at their beginning. I use the term “good”: practical reasoning
concludes in thinking something good to do. I call such a thought a practical thought.
It may be said that a practical thought need not represent doing something as good simpliciter.
It may represent something as good for something, perhaps, me. To this we may say, first, that there
is practical reasoning that concludes in a thought that such-and-such is good to do simpliciter and that
we shall speak exclusively about practical reasoning of that form. This will not detract from the
significance of our findings. We may say, secondly, that no practical reasoning concludes in a thought
that such-and-such is good for A. For practical reasoning answers the question what to do, and a
thought of this form does not answer that question.
Inferring is judging something being conscious of other truths as justifying one’s judgment. Let
q be this truth: one infers p from q, that is, one concludes that p in the consciousness of q as showing
it to be valid so to judge. One does not conclude that p must be true, provided q is. This conditional
judgment may be a premise, but it is not the conclusion of one’s inference. Of course, in order for
one’s inference to conclude in the unconditional judgment, the grounds the consciousness of which
as justifying one’s judgment is called inference must be, and one must understand them to be, truths,
as Frege says. In the practical case, inferring is thinking that such-and-such is good to do being
conscious of things as justifying thinking this. Among the premises of the inference, there may be the
thought that doing such-and-such is good for A. But this is not the conclusion of the inference. For it
is possible to ask whether it is good to do what is good for A. Speaking vaguely, we can say that the
answer to this question will depend on whether A is good, more precisely, whether it is rightly thought
through the very concept of good that would figure in the conclusion of the inference. Just as the
conclusion of a theoretical inference is the consciousness of itself as true on account of other truths,
so the conclusion of practical reasoning may be a consciousness of something as good to do on

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account of other things good. (It need not; a practical inference need not involve a thought to the
effect that doing something is good for something at all.)1
Inferring, when it is practical, is thinking something to be good to do in the consciousness of
things as justifying grounds. Hence a practical thought may be just or not, so that something may
make it just, justify it. Again, instead of a thought’s justice, we may speak of its validity. Concluding
a practical inference is thinking something to be good to do being conscious of certain things as
showing it to be valid to think this. This consciousness is internal to the conclusion of practical
reasoning: the thought that concludes practical reasoning is itself the thought of its validity and what
establishes it.
A practical thought thinks it good to do such-and-such. This is a species of validity: it is valid to
do such-and-such. So in practical reasoning, validity appears twice: a practical thought is the thought
of its own validity as it is a conclusion of inference and thus a consciousness of things as establishing
its validity; and it is the thought of the validity of doing something as it is a practical thought and
answers the question what to do. There is validity of thinking the thought and there is validity of
doing something, which is thought in this thought. Now this is one validity: the validity of a practical
thought is the validity of doing that of doing which it is the thought, and vice versa. First, if one
needed to think anything beyond thinking it good to do such-and-such in order to think it valid to
think that, then the thought of its being valid to do such-and-such would not itself be the thought of
its own validity. Conversely, if one needed to think anything beyond thinking it valid to think the
thought in which practical reasoning concludes in order to think it valid to do such-and-such, then the
grounds that justify that thought would not as such justify doing what it is the thought of doing. And
then one would not, thinking the thought in the consciousness of its grounds know what to do. The
question of the rightness or goodness of doing it would have been left open. So there would be no
such thing as ascertaining what to do through inference. The idea of a practical inference is the idea
of a thought whose validity is the validity of doing something. Using “good” to signify this validity,
we can express what we understand in practical inference in this way: the same goodness is in doing
something and in the recognition that it is good to do.
A valid judgment is true: things are as, in the judgment, they are judged to be. This holds of
practical thought: a valid thought that it is good to do such-and-such is true, that is, it is good to do
what in this thought is thought good to do. Yet, when the validity of a practical thought is its truth,
then truth in a thought that concludes practical reasoning is goodness. For the validity of a practical
thought is the validity of doing what it thinks of doing. As this is but one validity, a valid practical
thought has what the doing has of which it is the thought. So we can say the truth of practical thought
is goodness. Or we can say goodness is the truth of action. What we cannot do, without dissolving
the idea of practical inference, is assign truth to its conclusion and goodness to the doing of which
that conclusion is the thought.

1 Michael Thompson helpfully defines action theory as the discipline that investigates human action without the concept
of an ultimate end or, equivalently, the unconditionally good. When this is action theory, then there can be no mention of
practical reasoning in it. The question whether practical reasoning concludes in an action lies outside the province of
action theory. (That does raise the question whether anything lies inside that province.)

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 Inferring is thinking it good to do such-and-such understanding certain things to show that it is
valid to think this. She who so reasons understand her thought that it is good to do such-and-such to
be her recognition that it is valid to think this on account of the grounds that justify thinking it.
Therefore she cannot conceive anything as explaining why she thinks this that does not provide for
her recognition of the validity of thinking it. She cannot comprehend anything as explaining her
thought that does not show that thought to be valid. Conversely, she explains why she thinks that it
is good to do such-and-such by giving the grounds in the consciousness of which she thinks it. Therein
she understands that which shows it to be valid to think what she thinks to explain why she thinks it.
She understands her thought’s validity to be the ground of its actuality.
Since her thought is practical, we can describe its validity – the validity that grounds its actuality
– in two ways: as goodness and as truth. A valid practical thought is true: it is valid to think it good
to do such-and-such as it is good to do that. So she who concludes her practical reasoning, thinking
it good to do such-and-such, understands its being good to do that to explain why she thinks this. Or
we describe the validity of the thought as its goodness: it is good to think it. Then she who infers
practically understands the goodness of thinking what she thinks to explain why she thinks it. Its
being good to do what she thinks is good to do explains why she thinks this, or its being good to think
this explains why she thinks it. This comes to the same as the goodness of doing something is none
other than the goodness of thinking it good to do.

5 The Conclusion of Practical Reasoning

We ask whether practical reasoning concludes in merely thinking that such-and-such is good to do or
in doing it. Therein we ask whether someone’s doing something, that is, something’s happening, can
be explained in the way in which a conclusion of reasoning is.
Thinking it good to do such-and-such in the consciousness of grounds that justify thinking this,
I explain why I think this by these grounds, grounds that establish that such-and-such is good to do.
I think that such-and-such is good to do, and as I think this in conclusion of practical reasoning, I
understand my thinking it to be explained by what shows it to be good to do that. The goodness of
doing what I think good to do is the ground of the actuality of my thinking it good to do. If practical
reasoning concludes not in a mere thought that such-and-such is good to do, but therewith in an action,
then what we said of my thinking holds of my doing: what explains why I am doing such-and-such
is that which shows that it is good to do it. So the goodness of doing what I am doing explains why I
am doing it; the goodness of my action is the ground of its actuality. By contrast, if the conclusion of
practical reasoning is a mere thought, as opposed to an action, then there is no explaining why I am
doing something by revealing it to be good to do.
Those who say that reasoning does not conclude in action still think that there is, or at least may
be in favorable cases, a connection, something non-accidental in the co-occurrence, of the thought in
which someone’s reasoning concludes and her doing what, in this thought, she thinks is good to do.1

1 If practical reasoning concludes in doing something, then we readily understand why someone would want to think
there is a connection: he would in this ostensible thought give distorted expression of what he knows practical reasoning
to be. How one might explain how one comes by that thought on the supposition that practical reasoning does not conclude
in doing something is obscure. For the assertion that this connection is discovered by experience is baseless.

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But they hold that this connection is not one of reasoning. This means that, however we specify the
connection, it will not be the case that it is in virtue of its being good to do what someone thinks good
that her thinking this gives rise to her doing it. The causality of her thinking it good to do is distinct
from the validity of thinking this; her thought gives rise to her doing what, in this thought, she thinks
is good to do, in a manner that is indifferent to whether it is good to do that thing.
When I hold that practical reasoning concludes in a mere thought, this is what I think. It is not
possible to comprehend why I am doing what I am doing by recognizing that it is good to do. In this
way I comprehend my thinking that it is good to do that. As I think this in conclusion of my practical
reasoning, I understand my thinking it good to do such-and-such to be explained by its being good.
This thought of mine may give rise to my doing such-and-such. But when and where it does, it does
so in a way that is indifferent to the goodness or lack of it of doing what thereby I am doing. My
thought causes my action, but I do not understand how it has this effect by comprehending the
goodness of doing what, in this thought, I think is good to do. My insight into what is good to do,
afforded by my practical reasoning, does not supply me with comprehension of the causality of this
very insight. It does not make it intelligible to me why that is happening: I am doing it.
If the conclusion of practical reasoning is a mere thought, then comprehension of the causality
of the thought in which practical reasoning concludes lies outside ethics. It lies outside the science
that aims at the good. For the representation of its causality, representing practical thought as a
thought to the effect that such-and-such is good to do, while it deploys the notion of goodness, does
so only in quotation marks; the account does not itself use the idea of something’s being good to do.
The account can be valid even if ethics as such is a fraud and there is no such thing as something’s
being good to do.
If practical reasoning concludes in a mere thought, then it is never possible to explain why
something is happening by its being good. The good provides no understanding of what is happening.
This is to say the good is nothing real at all. It enjoys at best an ideal existence in our thinking it good
to do this or that. Conversely, if the conclusion of someone’s practical reasoning is not a mere thought
of hers, distinct from her doing what, in that thought, she thinks good to do, but is her doing it, then
its being good to do what someone is doing may explain why she is doing it. Its being good may
explain why what is good is actual. The good may explain why things are happening that are good.
If practical reasoning concludes in a mere thought, then whether something is good or not is
irrelevant to whether it is actual. Conversely, what is actual as such is indifferent to its goodness of
lack of it. This is an attempt at ethical nihilism. No one ever embraces nor has embraced it
understanding what she thereby thinks. For this thought undermines practical reasoning; it
undermines the very idea of knowledge that it is good to do such-and-such. Conversely, it is rejected
in every practical inference.
Someone’s thought that it is good to do such-and-such is to give rise to things happening in a
manner that is indifferent to whether or not what, in this thought, she thinks good is good. This means
that the efficacy of her thought cannot be comprehended in terms of the goodness of its effect. Its
efficacy must be explained in a manner indifferent to the goodness of what is happening on account
of it. It must be explained in a manner indifferent to whether what in this thought is thought good to
do is good to do. But this is to say that her thinking it good to do what thereupon she is doing is not

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explained by its being good to do that. For nothing can explain something without therein providing
for its efficacy. However, this understanding of one’s thought is (is called, Frege might say) practical
inference.
Conversely, if we concede that her thought that it is good to do such-and-such is explained by
its being good to do that, then we thereby exclude that an explanation of her doing it can be silent on
whether it is good or not to do that. For therein we concede that it is possible to explain someone’s
thinking it good to do such-and-such by its being good to think this. Now her thinking this is
something actual. For while it is not itself something’s happening, it underlies her doing what she
thinks is good to do. And only something actual can underlie something actual. So conceding that her
thinking something good to do is explained by the goodness of thinking this, we concede that the
good is not as such unreal, for we conceive the goodness of thinking the thought as explaining its
actuality. Having conceded this much, we cannot maintain that the good, which we concede is able
to be the ground of someone’s thinking something, is incapable of being the ground of someone’s
doing something. For saying this, we assert a gulf separating thinking and happening that no nexus
of causality could possibly span. But then a thought of the good, precisely on account of being
explained by its being good, is unthinkable as giving rise to someone’s doing something. And then it
is unintelligible as a thought about what to do.
This shows that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action. It shows it in this way: it
shows that the thought of its conclusion as an action is internal to any practical inference; conversely,
the alleged denial of this thought is the dissolution of all practical reasoning and therewith the
dissolution of the topic about which the denial means to deny something.

6 The Absoluteness of the Good

The conclusion of practical reasoning is an action. This means that its being good may explain why
that is which is good. Its goodness may ground the actuality of what is good. This thought, the thought
of the good as a ground of the actuality of what is good, is a thought of the actual as such. Thus
practical reasoning is metaphysical knowledge. We may call this knowledge a metaphysics of morals,
meaning not a special metaphysics, distinguished by its topic, but the general metaphysics that is
afforded by and contained in morality, or knowledge of the good.
It may seem as though the question whether practical reasoning concludes in action as opposed
to mere thought asked whether a certain section of what is, as opposed to what is as such, can be
known in the knowledge that is internal to practical reasoning, namely, actions of those who reason.
It may seem further as though the relevant segment of being were my being, or our being. For the
knowledge of action afforded by practical reasoning is first personal; it is knowledge of my or our
doing such-and-such. Thus we are drawn to say that there is a region within what is actual – a region
within the realm of change and becoming – that we circumscribe by means of the first person pronoun:
we and our actions. This region is metaphysically special, for it is subject to a special form of
explanation: one that explains why something happens by what justifies it, revealing it to be good. In
this region, then, something may be actual in virtue of being good. By contrast, the rest of what is
actual, the rest of the realm of becoming and change, the part of it that is other than us, or not us, is

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indifferent to goodness. If we want a term for this rest, we may call it nature and say that what is
nature, or natural, is not intelligible in this way: one cannot understand why something is happening
in nature by showing it to be good; its goodness is not why it is.
This line of thought expresses the notion that Hegel warns we should not make the basis of our
reflections: the notion that we are something other than the absolute. Equivalently, it expresses the
notion that the first person, singular or plural, refers to a certain element of what is.
That in which practical reasoning concludes is explained by its goodness. If practical reasoning
concludes in my doing something, then my doing it is explained by its being good to do what thus I
am doing. My doing something is something’s happening. And there is no limit to the internal
relations by which something’s happening is joined to other things happening, being joined to them
as to conditions of its actuality. The thought of something’s happening is the thought of a totality of
things’ happening in which alone its comprehension – the understanding of why it is and why it is as
it is – can be complete. Someone’s doing something, insofar as it is something’s happening, cannot
be insulated in explanation and comprehension as a segment of this totality. It cannot be explained
and comprehended in thought insulated from the explanation and comprehension of the rest of what
is actual, the rest of change and becoming. Indeed, thinking the conclusion of practical reasoning to
be so insulated is thinking it to be a mere thought, distinct from anything’s happening.
As its being good is the ground of the actuality of my doing what I recognize to be good to do,
the efficacy of the good is illimitable: it embraces the very totality that is thought in the thought of
something’s happening: the realm of the actual. This thought of the good – its illimitable efficacy in
what is actual – is internal to practical reasoning. And thus it is internal to my doing anything, insofar
as I comprehend my doing it to be such as to be a conclusion of practical reasoning. Human action is
the knowledge of the good as the ultimate ground of what is actual. This is the true definition of
human action, the definition it gives of itself.
It is true that the thought of my doing such-and-such that concludes my practical reasoning is
first personal. For that thought is no mere thought, but is the doing of that of which it is the thought.
It is a thought that is nothing other than that of which it is the thought, and this is the nominal
definition of first person thought. It is also true that, did practical reasoning not conclude in action,
then there would be no such thing as a first person thought of one’s doing something. Consequently
there would not even be the mere thought that allegedly concludes practical reasoning. For even if
this thought is to be a mere thought, it must be a first person thought. For it is internal to practical
reasoning that she who acts on its conclusion is the same as she who embraces this conclusion. So
the idea that the conclusion of practical reasoning is a mere thought does undermine the very thought
of my doing anything. And that is a reductio of this idea in its own right. However, in the absence of
comprehension of the first person, or self-consciousness, its significance is obscure. It may be
misrepresented. It may be represented to reflect an interest that I am to have in some manner to
possess my actions, an interest in their being mine. It may be suggested that it would somehow be
uncomfortable not to own one’s actions, not to see one as their author, and so on. It may be said that
this is a form of estrangement, which is to be something that is somehow bad and to be avoided.
The significance of the reductio of the notion that practical reasoning concludes in a mere
thought that dwells on the conditions of first person thought of action emerges only when it is seen

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to be identical with the reductio above: the first person thought of doing something, the first person
thought of something’s happening, is the recognition of the illimitable efficacy of the good. An action
is mine as I comprehend it to be the conclusion of practical reasoning, and thus understand it to be
grounded in the good. The mineness of my action resides in this: that my doing what I am doing,
precisely as I am doing it, is founded in the absolute. Here we begin to see what Hegel means when
he says it is wrong to suppose that knowledge is something other than the absolute and we something
other than knowledge.
In understanding the conclusion of practical reasoning to be nothing other than my doing what,
in so reasoning, I understand to be good to do, I know the good to govern what is actual as such.
Hence the good is not a power of a certain species of animal, an aspect of a specific life-form. No
such power governs what is actual as such. Thinking the good to be a power of a certain animal
species is the same as thinking the causality of the good, which constitutes practical reasoning, to be
limited to a section of the actual as opposed to governing the realm of change and becoming as such.
It is wrong to think of practical reason as a power to act; it is wrong to think of human action as the
exercise of such a power. The categories through which we think the animal explode around us as we
think ourselves in practical reasoning, thinking the good.
Since its being good explains what is good, there is nothing in the order of change and becoming
that can have any power to stand in the way of the good. It is inconceivable that the good fails to be
actual on account of the work of forces of nature. It is equally inconceivable that it be explained by
moral forces. This holds of the efficacy of the good in what is happening. It also holds of its efficacy
in the will. Here, too, nothing can have the least power to stand in the way of the good. Hence the
thought of myself in practical reasoning is that I am nothing but good, unmixed and unaffectably.
This does not mean that I have a power to act well that cannot be affected by temptation, wrongful
desire, and so on. On the contrary, it shows that there is no such power. If I thought of the good as
my power, then I could not think that it was unmixed and unaffectable. On the contrary, I would see
this alleged power to be frustrated over and over again. Kant’s absurd response to this – his attempt
to hold to the corrupt idea that practical reason is a power – is to postulate an infinite path along which
I may progress toward moral perfection (although I cannot know myself to do so). This repulsive
response is the only one available when practical reason is thought to be a power I possess, a power
to act well. It is precisely the thought that I am good, unmixed and unaffectable in my goodness, that
I recognize that am nothing at all and have no power whatsoever.
To work this out is to work out the idea of the absolute that is internal to practical thought. This
is for another occasion. The point here is that practical reasoning understands its conclusion to be
something happening, and that this understanding is one of the good as absolute.

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 The Moral Status of Animals and the Ethics of Our Treatment of Them

Peter Singer

Abstract

In this talk I shall summarize and defend the ideas presented in my book Animal Liberation, first
published in 1975, and now available in a revised edition in China from Hu’an Publications, Beijing.
I shall briefly trace the development of our thought on this topic, in both the Western tradition and in
Eastern, especially Buddhist, thought. I shall then discuss what I refer to as the “mainstream” view
today, and offer a critique of this view. I will argue that, notwithstanding this progress made over the
past 40 years, our treatment of animals remains wrong because it is “speciesist.” I shall explain the
concept of “speciesism” and indicae why it is not an ethically defensible view. I will argue that we
owe nonhuman animals equal consideration of their interests, and I will explain what the implications
of this equal consideration view are.

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 The Shared Beauty of Nature and Human Being: The Twofold Horizon of
“The Perspective of Human Being” and “The Perspective of Nature”

Yang Guorong
East China Normal University

In the wake of historical development, ecology has gradually become an issue which people have no
choice but to face squarely. From a substantial level, the ecological problems that have arisen are
interrelated with the existence of human being himself. As we all know, human being came from
nature and are intrinsically natural, but also have left nature and resist it. Discussions surrounding the
debate between nature and human being (tianren zhi bian, 天人之辩) within Chinese philosophy
involves this relationship. The original world does not have any ecological problems. It is only when
human being splits away from nature and becomes a separate being from nature that ecological
problems happen. Before human being appeared, nature indeed experienced many changes such as
earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and droughts, but this evolution of nature happened
before human being existed on the earth and did not constitute an ecological problem. After human
being separated themselves from nature as “the other,” not only did human being’s actions create
various kinds of ecological problems, but also natural evolution, which originally did not have
ecological significance, was gradually given ecological significance. Following the emergence and
development of human being, pure natural phenomena such as earthquakes, floods, and droughts
transformed into important aspects of ecological evolution, mainly because these changes had a direct
impact and influence on the existence of human being. Ecological problems are indeed difficult to
separate from human existence and it can be said that ecological problems are primarily human
problems.
Ecological problems arose out of the existence of human being and are interrelated with distinct
features of the existence of human beings themselves. Only human being have the consciousness to
create value and have the ability to create value in this world, and it is only human being that are able
to effect various types of indelible imprints on nature through their own creative actions. In fact,
human’s live in the actual world, different from the original existence, which human being themselves
have formed through their own creative action. What the Confucianism referred to as “supporting the
transforming and nourishing powers of nature” (赞天地之化育) affirms the productive process of
human being participating in the world.
The process of producing value is simultaneously the process of producing meaning, and
meaning itself has many connotations: it can express an active or positive aspect and can also express
a passive or negative aspect. From the perspective of the relationship between nature and human
being, active or positive meaning manifests as a harmonious relationship between nature and human
being, and, conversely, passive or negative meaning manifests as a unilateral relationship between

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nature and human being. In fact, ecological problems stem from a unilateral relationship between
nature and human being, and this implies going from the balanced relationship to an imbalanced one.
An important reason for the imbalance between nature and human being stems from people
pursuing their own value goals and creating their own values while ignoring the laws of nature. The
process of value creation is related to people’s value goals, but this process necessarily originates
from reality and the laws internal to it. If the pursuit of value goals and the creation of values ignores
or even despises the laws of nature, various types of tension between nature and human being will be
formed and this tension will lead to the separation of the two, thus bring about various ecological
problems. This relationship between the process of creating values and the occurrence of ecological
problems in one aspect manifests the correlation between ecological problems and the existence and
activity of human being.
Put it in short way, people leaving nature and resisting it serves as the historical precondition for
the occurrence of ecological problems. Expressing this using Chinese philosophic concepts, this
precondition takes the separation of nature and human being as its content. Using the perspective of
the separation from or relationship with nature and human to understand ecological problems
specifically involves a dual horizon: the view of human and the view of nature The resolution of
ecological problems and the rational construction of an ecological relationship are inseparable from
the specific understanding of this dual horizon.

The horizon of ecological problems is firstly expressed from “the perspective of human being.”
Speaking broadly, “the perspective of human being”is understanding and appraising the world from
the horizon of human being. This type of view includes multiple meanings. It not only involves
rational cognition in the narrow sense, but also concerns values. Rational cognition is specifically
expressed as the grasp on a factual level of nature itself and the relationship between nature and the
world. The concern with values orients the significance of values between nature and human being.
Chinese philosophy had very early on recognized these aspects. Mencius points out “to be
affectionate to ones parents, to be benevolent to people generally, and kind to things” (亲亲而仁民,
仁民而爱物).1 This involves three different objects: parents, the people, and things, and three types
of value positions or attitudes; affection (associated with family love), benevolence (treatment with a
compassionate heart), and kindness (cherishing and protective treatment), the latter of these belonging
to a broad sense of “perspective”, that is, inspecting and grasping objects on the level of values. Not
only should one ascribe value to “parents” (members within the domain of family ethics) and “the
people” (members of general society), but one should have emotional position of cherishing and being
protective towards “things” in a broad sense. On a substantial level, this type of emotion should
permeate value content. The Neo-Confucianism went a step further and said “the people are my
brothers and I share life with all things on earth”2 , this point of view implies understanding all things

1 Mengzi, 7A45.
2 Translator’s note: “The ten thousand things” (wanwu 万物) is a common term in Chinese literature which is otherwise
translated as “all things” or the myriad things.”

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of the world as correlated with people and providing to them a corresponding value signification.
This perspective requires us to show proper value concern to natural objects other than human being,
and this perspective also reflects the view of human value connotations.
Chinese philosophy not only involves value concerns towards nature and other objects, but also
mentions how to carry out the general ideas and principles of these types of value concerns. For this
latter aspect, we can use an important proposition from the Doctrine of the Mean to summarize as
follows: “The all things on earth are nourished together without harming one another.”1 From the
perspective of the treatment of nature, “the all things are nourished together without harming one
another” implies that every individual and every object within nature has its reason for existence and
can exist together without excluding one another. Looking at the relationship between human being
and nature, nature acts as the object coexisting with human being and its existence has equal
significance. From the perspective of the relationship between nature and human being, this reflects
the value orientation of the understanding and treatment of nature.
Extending this further, “the all things on earth are nourished together without harming one
another” does not merely express a theory of understanding nature and the relationship between
human being and nature, but also constitutes a starting point for grasping relationships among human
beings. From a primitive level, different individuals, social classes, groups, ethnicities, and countries
within human society should each have their own living space within the social domain and ought to
exist together without excluding one another. In connection with this, these individuals, social classes,
groups, ethnicities, and countries should have equal rights in enjoying and utilizing natural resources.
In accordance with the principle that “the all things on earth are nourished together without harming
one another,” the rights of different individuals, social classes, groups, ethnicities, and countries
should receive recognition and respect, and the members of one group of humanity should not be
given more power to negate or exclude other members with equal rights. However, in the
development of human history, these principles have never truly been realized, rather, in contrast, we
have seen that often some social class, group, ethnicity, or country will exploit and consume natural
resources in a way that far surpasses or even overwhelms other social classes, groups, ethnicities, and
countries. This sort of phenomenon is undoubtedly related to inequality within human society and if
this sort of inequality is left uninhibited, it will equally lead to ecological problems. When certain
members of society or countries excessively consume natural resources, the lack of equilibrium
between nature and human being will be exacerbated just as the previous generation’s excessive
occupation of nature will lead to ecological disasters for later generations. As the above facts indicate,
there is connection between today’s ecological problems and society’s unbalanced utilization of
natural resources.
As can be seen from the above, relationships among people are contained after the relationship
between nature and human being. In one respect this expresses the perspective which had already
been mentioned, that is, ecological problems are ultimately human problems. Correspondingly,
resolving ecological problems requires investigation and understanding from the human perspective.
As previously expressed, using the human’s “view” involves using a rational method to understand

1 Zhongyong, 31.

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the world, including looking upon the world from a value horizon. Speaking logically, if we
understand the relationship between nature and human as well as interpersonal relationships purely
based on an instrumental level, it will often lead us to a strong utilitarian consciousness and thereby
create an imbalance in people’s relationships and the relationship between nature and human. The
value concerns involved in “the perspective of human being” which aim to restrict these tendencies
towards partiality no doubt have positive significance.
Of course, as will be discussed later, if we merely stop at the horizon or view of human being,
or excessively emphasize this horizon, it will often lead to a narrow anthropocentric worldview.
Narrow anthropocentrism is primarily displayed as taking the immediate benefit of humanity as the
only starting point for investigation of how to deal with the relationship between nature and human
being, and thus directing us to unilaterally taking possession of and obtaining nature. The logical
result of the orientation of values discussed above would lead to many different forms of ecological
imbalance.

Related to the ecological domain and “the perspective of human being” is “the perspective of nature.”
Taking this as a horizon is to reject regarding the world merely from the perspective of value goals
of the human being, but rather emphasizes inspecting nature based on the laws of nature itself, thereby
grasping the actual conditions for the harmonious relationship between human being and nature.
Human being himself are part of nature, and sustaining their existence requires food, water, sunlight,
etc., and thus are also classified as part of the ecological chain. As a member of nature, human being
must obey the laws of the natural order and, as such, the actions and process of development of human
being should be consistent with the circulatory system of nature itself. Looking at the historical
development, when early human being were still in the hunting gathering stage of existence, to a
certain degree human being and nature maintained a cyclical relationship in the primeval sense. “At
sunrise go to work, at sunset rest” in one respect reflects the cyclical relationship between human
being and nature. The circular movement of people going back and forth between “work” and “rest”
and of nature’s “sunrise” and “sunset” present a consistency between human being and nature. During
the agricultural and nomadic periods of civilization, the problem of the relationship between human
being and natural ecological balance began to become much more diversified and complicated. After
industrialization people gradually began removing themselves from the circulatory system of nature,
and as a result of unilateral intervention, conquered nature and brought about various ecological
problems. The system of nature is the fundamental precondition on which people’s survival relies,
and the destruction of nature ultimately threatens human existence, so in a sense we can say that
protecting nature is protecting the human race. Equally significant, the defense of human existence
should extend to the defense of nature itself. From “the perspective of human being”, human being
are often taken as the ultimate end, and extending the protection of human existence to the protection
of nature can be seen as an extension of taking human being as the ultimate end.
From a philosophic horizon, the Daoists have a relatively conscious awareness of the
relationships mentioned above. Daoists take nature as the first principle, demanding to respect the

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laws of nature, presented as “following nature”1. Of course, “following nature” does not simply mean
no action at all, and in fact, the Daoists also affirm human action. However, for the Daoists, the
precondition for human action is for it to be in accordance with natural laws. This includes two aspects:
purposiveness and accordance with natural law. The Daoists emphasize that the purposiveness of
action should not deviate from natural law. Related to this, the Daoists also refer to “act in the way
of no action” (“wei wuwei, 为无为”). Within this horizon, non-action means one unique method of
acting, and the unique characteristics of this type of acting is that it takes accordance with the laws
of nature as its fundamental precondition for action. It can be easily seen that the Daosits provide a
fair amount of concern to the aspect of “the view of nature” within the relationship between nature
and human being.
However, the tendency to idealize nature also exists within the Daoist philosophic school of
thought. For Daoists, primordial nature is the most ideal form of being which one should preserve,
protect, and to which one should return. As a result, Daoists tend to have an equal view of nature and
human being, and regard nature and human being as having equal value significance. This idea
implies to eliminate the differences between human being and nature, and from this view it is difficult
to recognize that human being are beings who have the consciousness and ability to create value. In
fact, once human beings’ capacity of creating value is eliminated, then ecological problems
themselves will be eliminated; it implies a return to the primeval world with no separation between
nature and human being, a time during which, although there were many types of changes in nature
as previously mentioned (e.g. earthquakes, floods, etc.), the changes did not constitute ecological
problems.
Perhaps here we can make a distinction between narrow anthropocentrism and “the perspective
of human.” As described previously, narrow anthropocentrism mainly has its origins in an excessive
exaggeration of “the perspective of human,” which, in its broad sense, is expressed as connecting
human’s value goals to an understanding of the relationship between human being and nature. We
should try to refrain from this sort of bias, however, we are unable to completely break away from
the “the perspective of human being” in broad sense. Regarding ecological problems, the reason why
we strive so hard to establish an ideal and harmonious ecological system is ultimately for the sake of
creating a more perfect and fair environment for human existence. In the same way, the occurrences
of ecological problems and human being are interconnected, we are unable to separate the solving of
ecological problems and the existence of human being. If we completely reject “the perspective of
human being,” then it often easily leads to ecocentrism. The Daoist position of an equal view of nature
and human admittedly does include many implications, but if we inappropriately emphasize this
viewpoint, it seems that we may replace the human horizon with nature’s horizon, thereby leading us
to ecocentrism.

In the next step, I will separately investigate the twofold horizons of “the perspective of human being”
and “the perspective of nature.” From the perspective of resolving ecological problems, a reasonable

1 Daodejing, 25.

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way of proceeding is the blending of this twofold horizon. In other words, “the perspective of human
being” and “the perspective of nature” should not exclude or stand opposite to one another, but rather
should be integrated together. In terms of ecological philosophy, the above mixture of horizons
contains multifaceted significance.
This first thing to deal with is the unification of purposiveness and accordance to natural law.
Purposiveness implies human action and the creation of values in the world, which is the process of
pursuing value goals. This is an important characteristic of a person’s existence and activity. People
are not able to abandon this type of pursuit of value goals and ideals. If they completely give up and
deny the pursuit for value goals and ideals it may lead to the partialities which the Daoists expressed,
the logical result of which is once again returning to the natural form of being in which there is no
distinction between nature and human being, thereby eliminating the ecological problem.
The pursuit of purposiveness should not depart from the laws of nature. This can be understood
from at least two perspectives. In one respect, people’s value goals are based on their own needs and
ideals rooted in reality. This reality includes nature and its intrinsic laws, so in this way value goals,
from the point of their formation, are inseparable from nature and its internal laws. From another
aspect, the realization of value goals is inseparable from practical activity, and within the process of
realizing value goals, human beings' practical activity is equally unable to ignore laws of nature, but
rather must respect and obey these laws in all circumstances. The history of humankind continuously
tells us the following: showing scorn for the laws of nature will inevitably result in nature’s merciless
punishment.
If it is said that denying people’s value goals directs us towards narrow ecocentrism, then
alienation from the laws of nature directs us towards narrow anthropocentrism. Taking the unification
of purposiveness and accordance to natural law as a precondition, narrow ecocentrism should be
transcended and the narrow anthropocentrism should be discarded.
The blending together of the dual horizon of “the perspective of human being” and “the
perspective of nature” simultaneously involves an understanding of the relationship between nature
and human being. The separation of nature and human being serves as the precondition for occurrence
of ecological problems, and correspondingly，the blending of the dual horizon of “the perspective
of human being” and “the perspective of nature” and the question of how to deal with the relationship
of nature and human being are not separated with each other. Generally speaking, the understanding
of the relationship between nature and human being generally now tend towards emphasizing their
unification, however, if we inspect this “unification,” we might find that it includes many different
implications. One of it can be an original, pre-civilized state of affairs. In a primitive world and natural
state of existence, all objects fall under the form of “unified.” Similarly, the early period of human
existence and their activity with nature (such as the hunting-gathering mode of living) displayed a
unified relationship in a primitive sense. If we had stayed at this type of primitive “unification” then
the basic precondition to the historical development of human being would be lost, ecological
problems would not occur, nor would there be any need to investigate and resolve such problems. Of
course, the development of humanity cannot merely take the distinction between nature and human
being as its direction forward because this biased and unbalanced view has led to the origin of
ecological problems. A more reasonable direction we should take is, with nature and human veing

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having already separated, to continuously rebuild this unity within the process of historical
development. In other words, what is truly important here is not to return to a unified primitive form,
but rather to continuously transcend the separation and confrontation between nature and human
being at different historical stages and for both of them to achieve a higher form of unity. In fact,
from a historical perspective, ecological problems are only able to be resolved through continuously
rebuilding the unity between nature and human being. Merely admiring the primitive form of nature
and singing praises of nature and human original unity is only able to achieve a type of abstract and
shallow fulfillment rather than truly resolving ecological problems. The ecological crisis was caused
by human being and can only be overcome by the rational activity of human being. This ecological
predicament was caused purely by human being, but to reject human activity is nothing other than
cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Here, it is through human’s intent and hard work, oriented
with positive meaning, that the unity between nature and human can be continuously rebuilt within
the course of historical evolution. Through this type of rebuilding process, on one hand human beings'
value goals will continue to be realized, and on the other hand, people once again become part of the
circulatory system of nature on a higher level and create the harmonious relationship between human
and nature as well. Circular economy, as a part of economic development, has a similar connotation
as this above concept. Here, the ecological cycle in the sense of purposiveness in the pursuit of values
and reestablishing the unification of nature and human being demonstrates mutual integration and a
parallel relationship.
Looking at this for a more metaphysical level, the above direction is simultaneously manifested
as the unification of the dao of nature and the dao of human. Within the meaning of value sense, this
emerges as the unification of the principles of humanity and principles of nature. The principles of
humanity include “the perspective of human being”, that is, affirming the person’s value goals and
value pursuits. Principles of nature are expressed as “the perspective of nature,” that is, respecting
and affirming the internal laws of nature itself. The internal concepts reflected in the oneness of nature
and human on a historical level is the continuous unification of the dao of nature and the dao of
human being, principles of nature and principles of the humanity. In this also lies the essential
significance of the unification of the dual horizon of “the perspective of human being” and “the
perspective of nature.”
Understanding this from a broader background, investigating the interaction between nature and
human being and the blending of the twofold horizon mentioned above, what follows next involves
the relationship between the ethical and aesthetic horizon. “The perspective of human being” does
not only imply emphasizing people’s value pursuit, but it also implies the demand to assume various
value responsibilities, which include people’s responsibilities to themselves as well as responsibilities
to nature. Responsibility and duty are of an identical sequence and both have inherent significance
and thus awareness of responsibility is founded within the ethical horizon.
Associated with ethic view is aesthetic horizon. Early on, the Daoists recognized “heaven and
earth have great beauty, yet are silent,”1 that is, nature itself has an aesthetic dimension. Fair and
harmonious ecological relationships always present aesthetic significance, and an ecological system

1 Zhuangzi, Zhibei you.

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having been damaged is often unable to provide people with an impression of beauty. In certain
regions of the earth today, polluted rivers, barren wastelands, dusty paths, and smog filled skies are
pervasive. These types of ecological phenomena do not only present negative significance on the
level of values, but also seems to lack a sense of beauty from an aesthetic perspective. Comparing
these types of ecological phenomena to the bright blue skies, clear rivers and streams, and verdant
fields, these equally do not only have positive value significance, but also provide a delightful sense
of beauty: when we take bluer skies and clearer water as ideal goals for ecological systems, it
simultaneously embodies aesthetic pursuits. Speaking in these terms, the unified twofold horizon of
“the perspective of human” and “the perspective of nature” undoubtedly intrinsically involves the
unification of the aesthetic horizon and the ethical horizon. The aesthetic horizon takes beauty as its
subject and the ethical horizon is related to the good. In this sense, the blending of these two
simultaneously manifests the unification of beauty and the good, and this constitutes human beings'
pursuit of value ideals in a wider dimension.
When discussing ecological problems from the perspective of the relationship and interaction
between nature and human being, the ultimate ends is a harmonious human society with sustainable
development. Within this type of course of development, on one hand human being themselves work
towards perfection through the creation of values, and on the other hand the world in which human
being live continuously tends towards perfection on a higher level. It can be seen, then, that the
perfection of human being and the perfection of nature has inherent unity, and this type of unity can
be understood as “the shared beauty of nature and human being.” It is just this ecological concept
towards which the twofold horizon of “the perspective of human” and “perspective view of nature”
points.

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 The Challenge of Anatheism

Richard Kearney

Anatheism means ana- theos – in Greek, after God. It is a way of thinking about God after the death
of God. It means retracing the remnants, revenants and returns of the divine after the disappearance
of the old familiar divinities we thought we possessed like idols of gold. Or to be more precise, after
the deconstruction of the Omni-God of dominion and delusion - famously initiated by Freud, Marx
and Nietzsche - whatever survives is what we could call ana-theism. Anatheism is a spirituality of the
remaindered God: a God who may be if we let it be, a sacred promise always still to come.
“Ana” is a prefix defined in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as: “Up in space or time;
back again, anew.” As in anamnesis, analogy, anagogy, anaphora. So understood, the term supports
the deeper and broader sense of “after” contained in the expression “God after God.” Ana opens a
semantic field involving notions of retrieving, revisiting, reiterating, repeating. But if it repeats the
sacred, it does so forwards not backwards. It is not about regressing to some prelapsarian past, but
rather a question of coming back “afterwards” in order to move forward again. Reculer pour mieux
sauter!
It is in this sense that we use the term ana-theism as a “returning to God after God:” a critical
hermeneutic retrieval of sacred things that have passed but still bear radical potentialities that may be
more fully realised in the future. As such, it gives a future to the aborted or truncated divinities of
history. Ana-theism may be understood accordingly as “after-faith,” which is more than an “after-
thought” or “after-affect.” After-faith is eschatological – something ultimate in the end that was
already there from the beginning. And that is why the “after” of ana is also a “before.” A before that
has been transposed, so to speak, into a second after. As Sophia/Wisdom says when she plays before
the face of the Lord in Proverbs: ‘Before He made the world I was there…constantly at his
side….filled with delight, rejoicing always in his presence’ (Proverbs 8: 26-29). And this Hebraic
sense of ana-chrony is aptly echoed in Jesus’ startling claim: ‘Before Abraham was I am’.
But let me be clear: anatheism is not a dialectical third term which supersedes theism and atheism
in some Hegelian synthesis or final resolution. True, anatheism contains a moment of atheism within
itself as it does a moment of theism. Or to be more precise: anatheism pre-contains both – for it
operates from a space and time before the dichotomy of atheism and theism as well as after. The
double “a” of anatheism holds out the possibility but not the necessity of a second affirmation once
the “death of God” has done its work. But it differs from Hegel’s “negation of the negation” which
sees the return as an ineluctable synthesis or sublation (Aufhebung). In contrast to such a logical
theodicy, anatheism is always a wager – a risk that can go either way. It is a matter of discernment
and decision on our part, responding to the call of the instant. A replay of faith and wisdom, again
and again. The event does not take place behind our backs, irrespective of our agency, like Hegel’s
dialectic of Absolute Spirit. There is no “Ruse of Reason” unfolding through particulars into a Final
Totality. Anatheism is not about Upper Case Divinity dictating a predetermined dialectic. Au

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contraire! Anatheism has nothing to do with Alpha-Gods or Omni-Gods. It is about re-imaging – and
re-living – the sacred in the ‘least of these’. It is lower case from beginning to end.
Anatheism concentrates on unfulfilled or suspended possibilities often experienced in a moment
of a-theist non-knowing; the “a-” here being a gesture of abstention, privation, withdrawal.1 Such a
gesture is less a matter of epistemological argument against God than a pre-reflective lived
experience of ordinary lostness and solitude - a mood of Angst or abandon, an existential “dark night
of the soul” which almost everyone experiences at some moment in their lives. Even Christ on the
Cross declared ‘My god my god why have you forsaken me?). This privative “a” of atheism is
indispensable to anatheism. But in “a-n-a” we have two A’s. And the second “a” is the “not” of the
“not.” The death of the death of God. The yes after the no which repeats the first yes of creation. This
double A-A of anatheism thus signals a reopening to something new, strange and ineffable. A dance
of twelve steps which the AA movement calls yielding to a ‘higher power’ – once one recognizes
one’s radical existential abandonment.
So, I repeat, the ana- is not a guarantee of ineluctable rational progress. If anything one could
say that the end of religion brings us back to its beginning – to a fore-time preceding the division
between theism and atheism. And in this respect, we might think of the poet John Keats’ famous
definition of poetic faith as ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, a returning again to Adam’s experience
on the first day of Creation when everything was fresh and up for grabs, when anything could happen,
for better or for worse. Keats called this originary moment of not-knowing ‘negative capability’ –
‘the ability to experience mystery, uncertainty and doubt, without the irritable reaching after fact and
reason’. And this has echoes, I believe, of Kierkegaard’s famous ‘leap of faith’ in Fear and Trembling.
A sacred repetition – not to be understood as a regression to some original position but as a primal
ontological disposition towards the radical incoming Other.2 Abraham has to lose his son as ‘given’
(someone taken for granted) in order to receive him back as ‘gift’; he has to abandon Isaac as
possession in order to welcome him back as promise. Isaac does not belong to his father Abraham’s
(as filial extension, acquisition, property, projection); Isaac is himself as another, another’s, a gift of
the Other (the return gift of what Kierkegaard calls the “Absolute”).

1 Ricoeur acknowledged the indispensible passage through atheism (at least for us moderns) on the way towards what he
called a new kind of “post-religious faith.” But the drama of atheism at the very heart of anatheism is not a matter of
going from primary religious faith through atheism to a second religious faith, which could be seen as some final
triumphalist summation. A-theism is the move beyond the naïveté of first faith – one’s childish certainties, facile
assumptions, acquired presuppositions or dogmas – into an open space of possibility. An Open which may lead either to
a choice of atheism or a theism after atheism. That is the space or time of anatheism and it is always open – for no atheism
or theism can presume to be certain of itself without falling back into another dogmatism (of belief or anti-belief). So
whether it is a matter of what I call “anatheist atheism” or “anatheist theism” – a second theism or a second atheism – it
is for us to choose: it is a wager, a hermeneutic task. The anatheist moment is the moment before a choice between theism
and atheism in so far as it liberates into wager, action and commitment. And in this sense it comes “after” we abandon
the dogmatic unfreedoms of first theism or first atheism. In moving from religion through atheism to faith, a hermeneutic
moment of “suspension” is indispensible. Or to put it in terms of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic arc, unless one allows the
masters of suspicion – Freud, Marx, Nietzsche (and I would add the mistress of suspicion, De Beavoir) – to unmask the
theological corpus one is less likely to reach a faith worth living, intellectually speaking. Such iconoclastic atheists may
be deemed allies in process of hermeneutic suspicion which may lead in turn (for those who so chose) to a hermeneutic
reaffirmation of the sacred. See P. Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, transl. by E. Buchanan, Beacon Press, Boston 1968
and Id., “Religion, Atheism, Faith” in Id., The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. by D. Ihde, Northwestern University Press,
Evanston 1974, pp. 440-467.
2 Cf. S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, transl. by A. Hannay, Penguin, New York, 1985.

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 In short, anatheist faith is a retrieval of something that been lost. It involves reiterating the former
as latter, the earlier as later – a replay which surpasses the model of linear chronological time, where
one moment succeeds another, in favor of a time out of time: an epiphanic moment (Augenblick or
Jetzzeit) where Grace crosses the instant.1 “Ana” is a prefix that seeks to capture this enigma of past-
as-future, before-as-after.2
To say this is not, however, to deny that ana involves historical time. Far from it. Infinite time
is in-finite, as Levinas reminds us; it traverses finite temporality and cannot exist without it. As such,
ana-theism today consorts with a concrete historical situation that comes after the death of God,
culturally, socially and intellectually. It is, as mentioned, marked by the secular exposés of the
Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the modern critiques of Ideology, Patriarchy, Unconscious
fantasies and unfettered Power. It expresses a deep current concern with what Max Weber termed the
“disenchantment” of the world, the desacralising of society, the general malaise of the abandonment
of God and loss of faith. In this sense anatheism is indeed an historical-cultural phenomenon which
engages with our contemporary humanist culture. But not in any teleological manner, assuming we
were ignorant for millennia and have now finally seen the light – that all faith was delusion and we
are at last free. For anatheism, losing the illusion of God (as sovereign superintendent of the universe)
offers the possibility of re-engaging with the original promise of the sacred Stranger, the absolute
Other who comes as gift, call, summons, as invitation to hospitality and justice in every moment. In
sum, anatheism signals radical openness to a mystery that was lost and forgotten by western
metaphysics3 – and needs to be recalled again and again (ana). And here, I think, we can move from
the historical formulation of the anatheist question – what comes after the disappearance of God? –
to the more existential one: how do we experience this today in our concrete lived existence?
This is why anatheism cares less for speculative theories than for living “testimonies” – vivid
examples of welcoming the Stranger in our everyday actions, and also in the arts (in the broadest
sense of making things anew). This is why anatheism may be said to call for theopoetics: that is,
creative representations of lived abandonment and disillusionment followed by a turning towards
something ‘more’ (what Socrates called periagoge, what Augustine called conversio). The negative

1 In this sense Christ can say “Before Abraham was I am” and “Remember me until I come.”
2 I think that several thinkers after Kierkegaard – such as Benjamin, Derrida or Agamben – are saying something similar
when they talk of “messianic time.” Though I personally prefer the notion of “kairological” or “eschatological” time: the
kingdom already was, is now, and is yet to come. It is always already and is still to come.
3 There is a certain deconstructive moment here of which Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, amongst others, have
much to teach us. Levinas talks about atheism in Totality and Finity as the greatest gift which Judaism has given humanity.
What I think he means is that Judaism is a prophetic prohibition against idols and illusions; its promissory messianism
signals a atheist moment of “separation” from fusion with being, including fusion with God (sacrificial paganism); and
that separation gives the “I,” the self, a freedom and a responsibility to respond to the other, the stranger. If there is no
such “atheistic” separation, there can be no ethical encounter with the stranger, who, Levinas argues, bears the face of the
wounded, the destitute, the naked – “the widow, the orphan, the stranger” – which is itself, for Levinas, the “trace of God.”
Derrida, for his part, talks about a “religion without religio.” And if there is a difference between Derrida and myself here,
it is a difference between “without” (Derrida’s sans) and “after” (ana). I talk about religion after religion where he talks
about religion without religion. But as he himself said in his discussion of my “God-of perhaps” (Peut-être), there is but
the “thinnest of differences” at times between his atheism and my anatheism. Cf. my dialogue with Derrida, entitled
“Terror, Religon and the new Politics” which took place in New York in October, 2001, and was published in R. Kearney,
Debates in Continental Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers, Fordham University Press, New York
2004, pp. 3-15. See also my related essay, “Derrida’s Messianic Atheism” in The Trace of God: Derrida and Religion,
ed. by E. Baring and P. Gordon, Fordham Press, New York 2014.

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moment of letting go is, let me repeat, indispensable to a proper appreciation of anatheism, for without
it we have just cheap grace – God as confidence man, a supernatural joker peddling comforting
illusions, quick fixes, snake oils and opiates for the people. Which is why we need to honor the
moments of abandon and abandonment, as so powerfully witnessed in the mystics’ “dark night of the
soul,” or Dostoyevsky’s sense of faith arising from the ‘crucible of doubt’, or Gerald Manley Hopkins’
dark sonnets (“I wake and feel the fell of dark not day!”). Or, in an exemplary sense, Christ’s
penultimate sense of dereliction on the Cross – an atheist cry preceding his ana-theist leap of faith:
‘Unto thee I commend my spirit’ 1 An atheist cry preceding his ana-theist faith: ‘Unto Thee I
commend my spirit’.
These are all concrete moments of emptying (kenosis) which open the possibility of a return to
the inaugural moment of anatheism: the wager of yes to the Stranger. This primal wager is first and
foremost an existential one – not a purely logical one à la Pascal (which is more a wager of knowledge
than of flesh, epistemological rather than ontological). The primordial anatheist wager – to turn
hostility into hospitality – signals, I believe, the inaugural moment of all great wisdom traditions.
And with respect to the Abrahamic tradition specifically, it invites us to recall certain “primal scenes”
of hospitality in sacred Scripture and religious works of art: for example, Abraham and Sarah
encountering the three strangers at Mamre; Jacob wrestling with his dark angel in the night; Mary
engaging with a stranger called Gabriel in Nazareth; Christ who comes as a stranger (hospes) seeking
bread and water (Matthew 25) - a sacred Stranger who in turn serves as host to the least of these
(elachistos). (The same term hospes means host and guest). Because anatheism is a call and response,
we are free to say yes or no in an endless wagering of hosting and guesting, giving and receiving.
Spirit depends on humans to dwell amongst us, to be made flesh in the world. The invitation is there:
it is up to us in the end.
And let me add one more thing at this World Congress of Philosophy: if the examples I have
have cited of anatheist hospitality derive from the Western Abrahamic tradition, this is because this
happens to be my own hermeneutic heritage, my particular spiritual tradition dependent upon the
cultural time and place in which I was born and bred. But I would insist that anatheist spirituality is
in no way confined to this Western Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition of the Bible. It applies to all
great Wisdom Traditions and world spiritualities - from Buddhism and Hinduism to Taoism and
Confucionism and the many indigenous spiritual cultures of Africa, Austral-Asia and the Americas.

1 Read anatheistically, the Cross is not some cruel expiatory sacrifice by a bloodthirsty, patriarchal God, bent on
ransoming his son for our sins. It is a moment of surmounting such an injurious “theistic” temptation in a moment of
“atheistic” letting go so as to open up an “anatheistic” disposition towards the new, the surprising, the gracious, the gift.
Yet one more radical discovery of God after God. And I say “one more,” for as Christ himself revealed, it has been going
on from the beginning and will never end: “Before Abraham was I am….Now I must go so that the Paraclete can come.”
Christ-here-and-now is always Christ-before-and-after: ana-chronic, ana-Christ. In other words, on the Cross and in all
his human woundedness, Christ abandons the Omnipotent Father God who has abandoned him. His final ultimate lesson
is one of radical kenosis and letting go of lost illusions and attachments, so as to open himself to the new, the other, the
strange. “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” is the atheist moment of negation and negative capability which
opens the space for a releasement and liberation into new life beyond old life – “Unto thee I commend my spirit.” In this
anatheist return, Christ is entrusting himself to the “thee” of each God after God, every stranger who seeks or receives
food and love – his hungry disciples at Gallilee (“come and have breakfast”), Mary Magdalene at the garden tomb
(“Myriam!”), his fellow travellers on the road to Emmaus. Christ keeps coming back (ana) to his followers after (ana) he
has left them, as a hospes they do not recognize – until he hosts them with food and touch. Only as guests again (ana) do
they recognise the divine host.

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A recent volume I edited, Hosting the Stranger: Between Religions (Bloomsbury, 2012), is a study
of the wager and wonder of anatheist hospitality in five major spiritualities of the world. And let me
conclude by saying that I am convinced that interreligious hospitality is not just a luxury for anatheism
but a necessary imperative. To open oneself to another God after the death of the last God is an
endless opportunity not only to rediscover the lost or unexplored possibilities of one’s own spirituality
but also and essentially of others’ spiritualities. Hosting the stranger begins and ends with hosting
religions other than one’s own.

Optional Epilogue:

Gerard Manley Hopkins describes the moment of literary epiphany as an act of “aftering and
seconding” - an “over and overing” of experience which replays the secular as sacred (10). He speaks
of a retrieval of past experience that repeats forward, profering new life to memory, giving a new
future to the past. This poetic retrieval involves a detour of distance and disenchantment after which
we may return to our first experience in a new light, over and over. Or as Freud would say,
nachtraglich (Though Freud is speaking of ‘trauma’, this temporal repeating après coup is equally
true of poetic ‘wonder’: both terms come from ‘wound’ referring to a fright or surprise which breaks
open our normal sense of time and space). A Jesuit poet, Hopkins refers to a sacramental reimagining
of everyday things. But this notion of holy repetition is not confined to the Catholic or any other
particular religion. It extends, I suggest, to any poetic movement of returning to “God after God.”
God again after the loss of God. As in the replay of a child’s game, “gone, back again.” “Fort/Da”.
We learn young that what disappears as literal comes back again as figural – that is, as sign and
symbol, as a second presence in and through absence. And by symbol here we do not mean untrue or
unreal. The return of the lost one – in the case of religion the lost God – may well be the most “real
presence,” theopoetically speaking. It may in fact be a more powerful and moving presence precisely
because of the detour through separation and letting go. This involves a new notion of time -
kairological rather than chronological – a time which traverses and reverses time, as in the Eucharistic
formula: ‘we do this in memory of him until he comes again’. Anatheism is about coming again,
creating again, aftering, time after time. In a word: ana-poiesis. Theopoetics is anapoetics.

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 Can an Appeal to Spirituality Bridge Cultural and Religious Gaps?

Hans Julius Schneider

University of Potsdam, Germany

1. Introduction

The goal of this paper can be stated with help of a slight change in the formulation of its title.1 It then
reads: how can we understand the concept of spiritualty in such a way that it helps in bridging gaps
between religions and cultures? In our age of terrorism the practical side of religious conflicts is
obvious, but they also have a theoretical background. It can be seen when we look at two positions
that influence our view of what can or cannot be done to resolve them: ethnocentrism and relativism.
Ethnocentrism is the view that it is only my own religion (or, more broadly speaking, my own
culture) that tells me what the world is like, what a good human life should be and what expressions
like ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ mean. Some versions of this view even claim that only my own
religion should properly be signified by this term.
Today, however, most educated persons find ethnocentrism inacceptable. But it is worthwhile
noting that it might have developed from an idea that has a grain of truth in it. It is this: The first
apprehensions of what the world is like and what a good life should be grow from the experiences we
have of our closest social environment at a very early age. These experiences are closely connected
to our early emotional life and to the first steps of developing an identity. Therefore one can say that
the first understanding of life is a particular understanding. It is the one that we ourselves have
developed of what it means to be human. It is at first mostly implicit but will soon be articulated in
many different ways, for example stories about living beings of which some scare us while with
others we identify. This first understanding will influence our outlook for the rest of our lives,
regardless of our later contacts with other perspectives. We can see from this that there is a ‘natural’
tendency to ethnocentrism. But to admit this fact does not mean that we cannot or should not later
learn about and from other cultures and religions.
In contradistinction, relativism is a position that is aware of the imperialist, the violent side of
ethnocentrism, and, more generally, is aware of the dangers of refusing to consider as potentially
valuable perspectives that are different from one’s own. Relativism, therefore, can be said to aim at
overcoming the negative sides of clinging to one’s early conceptions. It urges to respect other cultures
by tentatively stepping back from one’s own convictions, by taking serious the dangers of prejudices,
i.e. of the limitations we have without being aware of them.
Characterized in this way, relativism is the more respectable of the two positions because of its
readiness to learn. It is a form of tolerance; it tries to get an unbiased picture. But, as the dubious
position of ethnocentrism may have grown out of an idea that has a positive side, so the

1 A more detailed discussion of some of the views that are sketched in this paper can be found in Schneider 2006, in my
book (Schneider 2008, in German) and in some recent papers: Schneider 2016, 2017a, 2017b.

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philosophically more respectable position of relativism can develop a negative side. This happens
when it is understood as including the claim that it is impossible to seriously discuss the merits and
faults of different views of human life as they are articulated in different religions. Then tolerance
can easily become indifference.
This move towards indifference seems to be supported by the high esteem we today have for the
sciences. It can lead to the conviction that the traditional forms of articulating what life is all about
are outdated, are something to be abandoned. Then it is taken to be a matter of enlightenment to
eliminate the traditional forms of religious articulations from academic as well as political discussions.
This, I think, is a philosophical and also a political mistake.
So the claim of this paper is that both the imperialistic version of ethnocentrism and the
indifference version of relativism are misguided. In this evaluation I am following an argument
developed by Charles Taylor in his discussion about a “language of perspicuous contrast”. 1 He shares
the common critique of ethnocentrism, but, as a defender of a ‘hermeneutic’ or ‘understanding’
approach in the field of social studies, he also criticizes relativism because (as he rightly says) this
position cannot even adequately state what the topics are that are treated in the articulations of a
culture we do not understand.
My aim in this paper is to take one further step and to argue that considerations we find in the
philosophy of language of the later Wittgenstein will strengthen Taylor’s position, namely, that also
in religious studies an understanding approach is necessary as well as possible. Wittgenstein’s
thought will shed some more light on the nature of what this approach involves. In this way it will
also help to understand why intercultural conflicts go so deep and can so easily become irrational and
even violent.

2. The Concepts “Spirituality” and “Religion”

If, for the sake of interreligious dialogue, we have given up ethnocentrism and allow the possibility
of a multitude of different social institutions that despite considerable differences in doctrines and
non-linguistic activities deserve to be called religions, we must be able to say what it is that makes
them all specimens of one phenomenon. The answer cannot be given in terms of one particular
religion. For example we cannot simply say that they all are about one and the same transcendent
being that in Christianity is called God, because we know (firstly) that there are religions (like for
example certain forms of Buddhism) that do not have the idea of such a god and because (secondly)
it is not at all clear what it would mean to say that two different religions refer to the same god
although they are using two different names for this purpose. Moreover and more generally: In the
Philosophy of Religion it is a logical mistake to use the vocabulary of any one particular religion to
define all the others. We need a more neutral term if what we aim at is a truly open intercultural
dialogue about what religion is and in what religions can differ.
In this situation the term spirituality is used to signify a dimension of human life, of which
particular religions with their particular ways of expressing themselves are articulations. In using this
term the speaker tries to avoid all particular forms in which this dimension gets articulated and in

1 Taylor 1981, 205; 2002, 287.

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this way tries to avoid ethnocentrism. But how can we see to it that a very abstract term like
spirituality will not be empty, how can we give to it a meaning that is (one the one hand) sufficiently
clear and that (on the other hand) is not restricted to articulations of just one particular religion?
One type of answer to this question is to name a function that all religions share, instead of
naming an object or a person that is treated by all of them. Sometimes non-theistic names like the
Transcendent or the Numinous are used here, but like the expression the Spiritual they are problematic
because of the danger of emptiness. So it is promising to look for a common function of religions, not
for an entity (concrete or abstract) that they are about. There must be some common human concern
if an attempt to compare different ways in which it is realized is to be meaningful.
So what I am proposing here is a functionalism, but it is of a somewhat special kind. For it
characterizes the function of religion not in terms of a view from outside its own concerns, not in
terms for example of sociology or psychology. Instead, it attempts to speak from the point of view of
a person who herself tries to articulate a spiritual outlook. I will for this reason call it an existential
functionalism.
How this is possible might be seen from two tentative definitions, one of the spiritual dimension
of life, and secondly, building on this, a definition of religion.
(1) The spiritual dimension of human life is what gets into view when an attempt is made to
achieve an understanding of and an attitude towards human life as a whole, an understanding that is
honest and truthful. This includes seeing and accepting those sides of life that are mysterious to us.
Also, such an account must not close its eyes to life’s unpleasant sides, like suffering, sickness, and
death, and the feelings of fear and despair these sides might cause. Last but not least it must also
include what Rudolf Otto 1 has called the ‘fascinating’ side of the sacred.
(2) Religions then can be defined as specific articulations and practices that according to their
own ambitions, articulate, and practically help their followers to achieve and sustain such an
understanding of human life. Religions, moreover, typically entail the promise that to identify with
their understanding of life will be helpful. In the best cases this will bring to their followers a deep
form of peace. What this means can best be explained in the words of William James who
characterizes it as “a superior denomination of happiness, and a steadfastness of soul with which no
other can compare.”2
Let me mention in passing that it is the absence of this practical side of helping their disciples
to lead their personal lives that today most clearly separates philosophies from religions.

3. Articulations vs. Theories

When we now turn to linguistic religious articulations and what we might learn from Wittgenstein’s
philosophy of language, the first important point to be mentioned is that, according to Wittgenstein,
what gets articulated in religious doctrines are not theories or descriptions in a sense as they are at
home in the sciences. When we think of cosmology and evolutionary biology we may well say that
these together try to treat the whole world. But when we make the same claim about a religion, we

1 Otto 1963.
2 James 1982, 369.

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mean something quite different, namely that the whole lives of the people addressed are the subject
matter of its articulations, more exactly, their lives as experienced by themselves. And this is not what
the sciences are about. They aim at giving an objective, detached description. The help they offer is
mostly of the technical, not of the existential kind.
And if indeed what religious teachings articulate are not theories, these articulations can neither
aim at finding an all-encompassing theoretical account of this world, nor can the conflicts between
religious articulations be resolved in the manner in which conflicts between scientific theories are
resolved. For the same reason, religious conflicts cannot have their roots in the fact that their teachings
are incommensurable in the sense discussed in the philosophy of science.1
In the short time provided in our context is not possible to discuss more than just one detail for
substantiating the outlines given so far. My chosen example is an important change in Wittgenstein’s
philosophy of language, namely, a change in his attitude to pictorial ways of speaking. This is a theme
that is clearly of central importance for understanding religious articulations.
In his Lecture on Ethics, a text that in many respects belongs to his early philosophy, we find
the following reasoning. Wittgenstein had imagined that his interlocutor might raise an objection to
his claim that language cannot express what he calls ‘the higher’. These higher things are what
disciplines like Ethics, Aesthetics, and Religion are attempting to treat. As an example of such an
attempt he mentions that in a religious context he himself feels inclined to say something like ‘I feel
absolutely safe’.2 But he has second thoughts about this, and, still using the science-oriented criteria
put up in his Tractatus,3 considers this sentence in is religious meaning to be nonsensical.
Wittgenstein then imagines his interlocutor to object in the following way. The sentence, the
partner would say, should not be taken in a literal sense, but should be taken as a simile; then it might
no longer be nonsensical. But Wittgenstein rejects this objection. At the time when he wrote the
Lecture, he claimed that a simile, if meaningful, must be translatable into a literal expression. And
for this literal expression to be meaningful he demands that it be about a ‘state of affairs’ in the
science-oriented sense he had sketched in the Tractatus. In a next step he correctly observes that a
fulfillment of this requirement would have as a consequence that the sentence in question would no
longer convey the intended ‘higher’ meaning, but instead would say something about a state of mind
as a physical state of affairs.4 So in his Lecture Wittgenstein claimed that there is something we cannot
do with the help of language, namely, to express something higher.5 If this were so, this fact would
strengthen relativism because it puts spiritual contents out of our critical reach.
When we now look at his later work as documented in the Philosophical Investigations we find
that Wittgenstein has changed his mind on these points.6 Now he has something quite different to say
about the workings of pictorial language and the limits of what language can do:

1 Cf. Schneider 2017a.

2 Wittgenstein 1965, 8.
3 Wittgenstein 1922.
4 “But what I mean is that a state of mind, so far as we mean by that a fact which we can describe, is in no ethical sense
good or bad.” (Wittgenstein 1965: 6).
5 In the Tractatus we read: „Propositions cannot express anything higher.” (Wittgenstein 1922: 6.42).
6 Wittgenstein 2009.

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 The great difficulty here is not to present the matter as if there were something one couldn’t do. As if
there really were an object, from which I extract a description, which I am not in a position to show
anyone. – And the best that I can propose is that we yield to the temptation to use this picture, but then
investigate what the application of the picture looks like. (PI § 374)1

So instead of keeping quiet and resisting the temptation to say something he had thought to be
nonsensical, and instead of trying to offer a translation into a language that would be acceptable from
a Tractatus point of view (which he takes his interlocutor to be proposing but which he thinks to be
impossible), but also instead of claiming that there is a special field of mystical objects of which we
might have some kind of private knowledge or even a private description, but about which we just
cannot speak in our shared human language, he now says that we should yield to the mentioned
temptation. We should speak in the way we felt inclined to, and this means that we should trust that
pictorial language can be meaningful, - although its way of having meaning is different from the ways
allowed in the Tractatus: It does not rest on a relation between an object and its name.
So the next step for Wittgenstein is not to look for an object, but to “investigate what the
application of the picture looks like”. Speaking in this way of the application of a picture implies
that in the kind of investigation he now proposes we should not isolate a constituent word from the
place it occupies in a complex pictorial phrase and then try to answer follow-up questions about the
meaning of just this word (for example ‘God’) with the understanding that explaining the meaning
demands that we can point to something that this word names. With this move Wittgenstein points to
the possibility that different pictures that are at home in different cultures and religions may have a
similar use in various attempts that human beings in different parts of the world have made to come
to terms with their condition. And this means, according to the definitions given above: In our human
attempts of articulating the spiritual dimension of life quite different pictorial articulations might
fulfill similar existential functions.

4. Conclusion: Learning to be Human

In conclusion I would like to name the most important consequences that the sketched understanding
of spirituality will have for closing gaps between religions and cultures. We have seen that to
understand the application of pictorial expressions as wholes is a necessary step in those cases of
intercultural communication that are close to religious matters. We have also seen that language
games involving such expressions are acquired in life quite early, when identities are first build and
when the experiences made have strong emotional meanings. Therefore, it is to be expected that the
people who have been brought up by them embrace these pictures with great tenacity. Thirdly we can
understand that in the case of conflicts between competing pictures these cannot be resolved by
putting them together to form one single encompassing picture. Here we might think of the Christian
conception of a last judgment, as compared to the Buddhist conception of a favorable or not so

1 Die große Schwierigkeit ist hier, die Sache nicht so darzustellen, als könne man etwas nicht. Als wäre da wohl ein
Gegenstand, von dem ich die Beschreibung abziehe, aber ich wäre nicht im Stande, ihn jemandem zu zeigen. – Und das
Beste, was ich vorschlagen kann, ist wohl, daß wir der Versuchung, dies Bild zu gebrauchen, nachgeben: aber nun
untersuchen, wie die Anwendung dieses Bildes aussieht.“

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favorable rebirth: These are alternative pictures, they cannot be just added one to the other; they are
not horizons that could be fused (Gadamer). And, fourthly, we have seen that the methods we have
for resolving conflicts between scientific theories are not applicable in cases of religious conflicts.
These points taken together help to understand (but not to justify) the readiness to use force in
religiously inspired conflicts.
What then can we learn from Wittgenstein’s considerations when the goal is to understand the
theoretical questions on the way to avoid violence in religious and cultural matters? The answer
emerging from the considerations presented here is the following: We have to learn to combine two
things: On the one hand we have to be able to use pictorial expressions seriously for the articulation
of our own existential questions and aspirations. This will avoid the indifference-version of relativism.
But on the other hand we should also avoid that the pictures we are using in these attempts of self-
articulation (in Wittgenstein’s words) hold us captive.1 We should not become the slaves of our own
pictorial expressions. If we succeed in this, we avoid ethnocentrism by having gained some freedom
in our relation to these pictures, without giving them up. We then can understand and we can take
seriously perspectives that are articulated in pictorial languages that are foreign to us.
To train this freedom, I propose, is part of what the phrase ‘learning to be human’ means. What
is at stake here can be seen in a remark of Charles Taylor I would like to quote to end my presentation.
Taylor, as you might know, is a Roman Catholic, and the sentence to be quoted is taken from his
discussion of certain cruel rites of sacrifice that the Spaniards were confronted with when they
encountered the Aztec culture:

But that the Mass and Aztec sacrifice belong to rival construals of a dimension of the human condition
for which we have no stable, culture-transcendent name is a thought we cannot let go of, unless we want
to relegate these people to the kind of unintelligibility that members of a different species would have for
us.2

References

James, William: The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1982.

Otto, Rudolf: Das Heilige. Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum
Rationalen, München 1963.
Schneider, Hans Julius: William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Philosophical Approach to
Spirituality; in: J. Moore, C. Purton (eds.), Spirituality and Counselling: Experiential and
Theoretical Perspectives, Ross-on-Wye 2006, 50-64.
Schneider, Hans Julius: Religion. Berlin 2008 (in German).
———. Religiöse und nicht-religiöse Sprachspiele - Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen. In: Rico
Gutschmidt, Thomas Rentsch (Hrsg.), Gott ohne Theismus? Neue Positionen zu einer
zeitlosen Frage, Münster 2016, 149-164.

1 PI § 115.
2 Taylor 2002, 294.

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———. Horizontverschmelzung, Inkommensurabilität und sprachliche Bilder. In: Wittgenstein-
Studien 8/2017a, 211-238.
———. Sacred Values and Interreligious Dialogue; Analyse und Kritik 2017b; 39 (1), 63-83. DOI:
10.15.15/auk-2017-0004.
Taylor, Charles: Understanding and Explanation in the Geisteswissenschaften, in: Steven H.
Holtzman, Christopher M. Leich (Hrsg.): Wittgenstein: to Follow a Rule, London 1981, 191-
210.
———. Understanding the Other: A Gadamerian View on Conceptual Schemes, in: Jeff Malpas,
Ulrich Arnswalt, Jens Kertscher (Eds.): Gadamer’s Century. Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Cambridge Mass. 2002, 279-297.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ed. C.K. Ogden, transl. C.K. Ogden and F.P.
Ramsey, London 1922.
———. A Lecture on Ethics. In: Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics. The Philosophical Review 74
(1965) 3-12.
———. Philosophical Investigations/Philosophische Untersuchungen, ed. P.M.S. Hacker and
Joachim Schulte, transl. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, New York
2009.

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 Are We Still Learning to be Human?
The Problem of Continuity Between Tradition and Transmission.

Anne CHENG
Collège de France, Paris

While we are at the beginning of the third millennium of the common era, after such a long process
of humanization and centuries of philosophical reflection on the question, are we still learning to be
human? Recent history and current events remind us at all times that this learning is far from being
achieved and that it is actually constantly to be renewed if we do not want to switch into brutality and
barbarism forever. Now this is precisely where the heart of Confucian teaching lies, which could be
summed up in the single word xue 學 "to learn", the very first of the Lunyu 論語, interviews attributed
to Master Kong (Kongzi 孔子, 551-479 before the common era), known in the West under the
Latinized name of Confucius. The entire Confucian tradition that has followed for 1,500 years and
still continues today basically speaks only of this: how to learn to become ever more human?
After having been perceived philosophically by the Enlightenment elites informed by Jesuit
missionaries present in China in the 17th-18th centuries, Confucianism was relegated to the status of
religion by the philosophical magister, then by the new science of religions. in nineteenth-century
Europe. Following the disasters of world wars and large-scale genocides of the twentieth century,
Confucianism reappeared as a new humanism with universalist claim. It is therefore for us to seek to
evaluate the universal scope of this Confucian worldview by going back to its origins rooted in the
ritualism characteristic of the ancient Chinese civilization. We note that the latter is underpinned by
a concept that can be described as "anthropo-cosmic" (possible translation of the famous formula tian
ren he yi 天人合一 "Sky and Man together in one whole"), in which the human world is in a relation
of continuity with what exceeds and encompasses it - the natural and cosmic universe, but also the
numinous, invisible world of superhuman powers. At the foundation of this continuity is what
connects the world of the living to that of the ancestors perceived as having been part of the human
community, while having the power to intercede with spirits and divinities, when they are not
themselves deified. The devotion to ancestors is certainly the oldest, the most durable and the most
widespread in the history of Chinese civilization, especially in the privileged forms it has taken the
rites of mourning and filial piety and which still persist today in communities of Chinese descent
around the world. It is this continuum between the human and the supra-human that makes it difficult,
if not impossible, to bring it into the category of "religion" as it has been elaborated in the perspective
of monotheistic religions, without however remove it from its universal character.
If we insist as much on the continuum character of the anthropo-cosmic and ritualistic vision of
ancient China, it is because it is at the heart of the interrogation concerning the Chinese claim to
universality. In fact, on the one hand, this continuum makes it possible to encompass Heaven, Earth
and Man (tian-di-ren 天地人) in one single whole. In this sense, it is even more than a universalism.
And, on the other hand, it also ensures continuity over time. This is affirmed expressly in the ritualistic

137
sources that we have cited and studied: Man (the human world) has its constancy just like Heaven-
Earth, by the continuous transmission of a certain idea of humanity civilized from generation to
generation. Uninterrupted transmission which is translated in ritualistic terms by the perfect
continuity between filial piety (veneration marked to the living parents) and worship to ancestors and
deceased parents (devotion rendered to the dead). Funeral rites and rites of mourning, carefully
described in particular in the Treatise of Rites (Liji 禮記), consist of purification fasts aimed at
visualizing the dead as they were in their lifetime, and sacrificial offerings, which must be done to
the deceased as if they were present, still alive. As summarized by the often quoted formula of the
Confucius Talks (III, 12):

祭如在, 祭神如神在。子曰:「吾不與祭, 如不祭。」

We offer sacrifices [to our deceased parents] as if they were present, just as we sacrifice to the spirits as
if they were indeed there. What makes the Master say: If I do not really participate in the sacrifice, it is
as if there is no sacrifice.

This word ru 如 ("as" or "as if") comes back too frequently, even obsessively, in the ritualistic
sources (see in particular the Treatise of Rites, chapter "Tangong", A § 19, as well as the first sections
from Book X of the Conversations) to not signify anything important: it is probably an answer, or at
least an attempt to answer, to the question raised by Jean Levi about the culture of sacrifice specific
to archaic China and in which Confucius was born, and summed up in these terms by Jean Francois
Billeter:
How much did it take to serve a deceased master [or a father] as he was served in his lifetime?
Could the sacrifices presented to him be effective if the victims were not real? The ritualists who
claim Confucius will defend the idea that to the dead, who are both absent and present, should be
made sacrifices absent and present, that is to say, symbolic. So there has never been a break [it is I
who underlines]. Human sacrifice has never been condemned. It has been overshadowed, it has
become the shameful "primordial scene" hidden in the heart of the Confucian tradition. This idea is
perhaps questionable, it must be discussed. It seems to me capable of illuminating phenomena which
resisted any explanation. I think of the filial piety, the obsessional, even pathological forms that she
sometimes took afterwards.
Jean Levi goes even further by recalling that the practice of human sacrifices to accompany the
deceased to the grave by their entourage (wives or servants) and thus allow them to extend their
lifestyle as they were alive, was still far to be decided in the time of Confucius. In the Treatise on
Rites ("Tangong", A § 74 and B § 155), there are remarks attributed to the Master that refer to a
compromised solution of introducing into the grave of the deceased, no longer the servants or wives
in flesh and bone, but straw figurines. But, says Confucius, it is better that they are not wooden
mannequins that would think too much of real human beings and run the risk of falling back into the
practice of human sacrifices. In the same way, the utensils that are placed in the grave must resemble
the utensils of everyday life, but not be made to really give service, in order to mark well that they
belong to the world of manes and spirits, and not to that of the living. These utensils are called
"mystical utensils" (mingqi 明器), like vessels that resemble those of everyday life, but are not made

138
to be used as containers, or bells and lithophones that cannot emit sounds because they are not hooked
to posts.
Therefore, the importance and recurrence of the "as if" (ru 如 ) in ritualistic texts is
understandable: one must constantly stand on the razor's edge, on the thin line between considering
the dead as really dead and definitively buried (which, as the Treaty of Rites makes it say to Confucius,
would be a lack of humanity) and considering the dead as still an integral part of the world of the
living (which, according to Confucius, would be unreasonable). It is therefore necessary to make "as
if" - but only "as if" - the deceased parents were still there to keep their memory alive and to express
to them the gratitude which is due to them, but at the same time to make it clear that we are in the "
as if "so that the life of the living may continue without being totally burdened by that of the dead.
Marcel Mauss had therefore some reason to observe that in China, "the life of the dead clutters
that of the living". One could even go so far as to say that funerary ritualism means that the life of the
dead threatens at every moment to press that of the living. Similarly, there is a risk of deprivation of
children's lives in the practices of filial piety which are based essentially on the duty to feed the
parents, materially during their lifetime, then symbolically after their death, as the sentence of the
Treaty of Rites ("Ji yi", § 4) summarizes, in a parallel construction underlined by a rhyming effect:

君子生則敬養, 死則敬享。
The good man, during the lifetime of his parents, puts all his respect to feed them and, after their death,
to make them sacrificial offerings.

In traditional Chinese education, the inculcation of filial piety from childhood has sometimes
given rise to what Jean François Billeter has described as "obsessive or even pathological forms". It
is enough to mention the Twenty-four examples of filial piety (Er shi si xiao 二 十 四 孝 ), a
compendium compiled by Guo Jujing 郭居敬 during the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (13th-14th
centuries) to serve for the edification of future generations. With obviously didactic aims, this
collection contains a succession of anecdotes of all times featuring pious sons, ready for the worst
excesses of zeal to provide their old parents their favorite dishes. It has been the subject of many
editions with wide distribution, including illustrated one. In fact, this theme now comes back to one
of the official media, anxious to restore to honor the sense of filial piety that would be part of,
according to them, "cultural genes" unique to all Chinese. In reality, the obligation to offer aids to
elderly parents is barely veiled to overcome the shortcomings of the retirement system, especially in
an aging population as is the case in China today.
It would almost be forgotten that the polarization of the Confucian ritualist culture on filial piety
was one of the main targets of the revolutionary iconoclasm of the modernist intellectuals of the early
twentieth century. Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) who was one of the leaders of the iconoclastic movement
of May 4, 1919 and one of the co-founders of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, is known to
have stated that filial piety is the worst of all and the origin of all vices. The great writer Lu Xun
(1881-1936) devotes a critical text to the Twenty-four examples of filial piety illustrated in his
collection Flowers in the Morning Collected in the Evening, published in 1927.

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 In The Diary of a Madman, published in 1918 in Xin Qingnian ("Youth"), founded by Chen
Duxiu, Lu Xun renders a fierce and hallucinatory vision to Confucian piety: “In the past, humans
were often eaten I remember it, but not very clearly. I opened a history book to check, no
chronological indication, but on all pages, written in all directions, we read the words "Humanity,
Justice, Way, Virtue" (key terms of Confucian morality). Not getting any sleep anyway, I thoroughly
examined it in a good part of the night and finally discerned characters between the lines, the book
was filled with the words "eat man"!
The theme of cannibalism has continued to haunt modern Chinese literature and is reflected in
the recent work of Mo Yan who, in a 1999 interview, long before he was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 2012, explicitly recognized the existence of practices that are similar to cannibalism
in ancient and even contemporary China. If this theme can be perceived as a pure literary
phantasmagoria, it actually joins the words of Jean Levi on funerary practices that pushes the
ritualistic logic of continuity between dead and alive to the human sacrifice that Jean François Billeter
underlines has never been clearly convicted. The embarrassment associated with this "sacred
repressed" gave rise to an intense process of internalization that remained in the submerged part of
the great iceberg of "Confucian humanism".
If the denunciation of the excesses, reverses and perverse effects of continuum has any reason
to be so radical, it is that filial piety has probably been the major and central feature of the Confucian
vision of the world and of society, it is to be understood as main factor of its claim to universality –
Chinese style universality. The textual source that has made filial piety a universal value (in the true
sense of the term) is undoubtedly the canonical book devoted to it, the Xiaojing 孝經. A short work
made of hammered and repetitive formulas, totally devoid of literary quality, it is traditionally
attributed to Zengzi 曾子, a disciple of Confucius, reputed to have been a model of filial piety. Its
dating, like that of most of the ritualistic compendia studied previously, is controversial, but most
historians agree today to situate its compilation in the Han era (2nd century BC). - 2nd century AD).
Some even make it an invention proper to the founding phase of the imperial era and motivated by
purely ideological considerations.
In any case, Xiaojing gives xiao 孝, filial piety, a metaphysical dimension, equivalent to that of
the Dao. In the chapter "San cai 三才" (the three powers), xiao is related to the cosmic triad Sky-
Earth-Man, which is mentioned in the chapter of the Xunzi 荀子 dedicated to Heaven, the "Tian lun
天論":

子曰: 「夫孝, 天之經也, 地之義也, 民之行也。」

The Master says: The filial piety is what makes the constancy of the Sky, the sense of justice of the Earth,
the good behavior of the men.

In addition to the continuum between the cosmos and the human world and between the living
and the dead, we must highlight the one that links the family dimension and the political dimension
more widely. Indeed, the blood relationship between father and son - the organic link above all - is
the archetypal model of the political relationship between the prince and his subjects. Thus, during
the Han Dynasty, a homology was established between, on the one hand, the filial piety (xiao 孝)

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which is supposed to characterize the relation of the son to the father and, on the other hand, loyalty
(zhong 忠) which must ground the ideal relationship of the minister or the subjects to his prince. See
Xiaojing, "Guang yang ming 廣揚名")

子曰: 「君子之事親孝, 故忠可移於君。事兄悌, 故順可移於長。居家理, 故治可移於官。是以

行成於內, 而名立於後世矣。」

The Master says: The filial piety with which the good man serves his parents can be transposed (yi 移)
in the form of loyalty to the prince. The way he serves his older brothers can be transposed as respectful
docility to the older ones. The way in which he orders his family can be transposed in the form of good
government on an administrative charge. Thus the perfection of his conduct in private makes his fame
known to posterity.

Filial piety was not only the exclusive subject of a so-called canonical work, it became the first
cardinal virtue under the Han, covering all aspects of the social, religious, political and institutional
life of the new imperial order. The dynastic annals precede the posthumous names of the Han
emperors by the qualifier xiao 孝, "filial". More generally, a reputation for filial piety could reward
important political and social satisfactions to a person and his family. Throughout the second part of
the dynasty (Han Orientals), the best way to gain an official position was to secure a reputation of a
man "filial and integrity" (xiao lian 孝廉), a title created in 134 BC. J.-C. which allowed obscure
individuals living in outlying areas to stand out and bring on an official career.
The civilized world bordered and limited by rites is therefore made up of a tight web of relations
of continuity that intersect in all directions. One of the main threads that cross all this mesh is filial
piety. It takes on a "cosmo-political" dimension by becoming the very engine of human action placed
in homological relation with the activity of Heaven-Earth, and by founding the political order in a
supposedly "natural" order of things, that of filiation. Filial piety is in fact the organic bond of blood
between son and father, the matrix of the political relationship between the subject / minister and the
prince. Here too there is a continuum that allows the father-son relationship to be passed without
interruption to the relationship between prince and minister, loyalty being the political translation of
filial piety or, if one prefers, the extension of the filial feeling of the father to the prince. This process
of extension is done in a continuum, but it goes through different stages which are in relation of
homology, that is to say that all the stages are on the same model, but on different scales, like what
shows in the chapter "Xiao zhi" 孝治 of Xiaojing:

子曰：「昔者明王之以孝治天下也，不敢遺小國之臣，而況於公、侯、伯、子、男乎？故得
萬國之歡心，以事其先王。」
The Master says: Formerly, it was through filial piety that kings emanating the light of their virtue ruled
the world under Heaven (tianxia 天下), they would never have had the impudence to look down on the
ministers of the small vassalages, and a fortiori the dukes, marquises, counts, and barons! Thus they
assured the enthusiastic adherence of the ten thousand countries in the maintenance of the worship
rendered to their royal ancestors.
治國者, 不敢侮於鰥寡, 而況於士民乎? 故得百姓之歡心, 以事其先君.

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 Those who ruled a country (guo 國) would never have had the arrogance to humiliate widowers or the
forlorn and let alone officers and common people! Thus they ensured the enthusiastic adherence of one
hundred families (of the people) in the maintenance of the worship rendered to their seigniorial
ancestors.
治家者，不敢失於臣妾，而況於妻子乎？故得人之歡心，以事其親。 .
Those who were at the head of a family (jia 家) would never have thought of neglecting their servants
and concubines, let alone their wives and sons. In this way they ensured the enthusiastic adherence of
clan members to the service of their parents.
夫然，故生則親安之，祭則鬼享之。
Under these conditions, in their lifetime, [the parents] lived in the security provided by the members of
their clan, [after their death] their manes accepted the offerings presented to them.
是以天下和平，災害不生，禍亂不作。故明王之以孝治天下也如此。
This is how the world under Heaven (tianxia 天下) was in harmony and in peace, disasters and
calamities did not occur, misfortunes and disorders did not appear. It is thus that the brilliant kings of
their virtue governed the world by filial piety.
《詩》云：「有覺德行，四國順之。」
As it is said in the Odes: To one who has an enlightened and virtuous behavior, all countries at four
directions submit themselves voluntarily.

Many textual sources from the end of antiquity and the beginning of the imperial era bear
witness to the recurrence of the three levels tianxia 天下 (all under Heaven, the world), guo 國 (the
country) and jia 家 (the family). Contrary to appearances, the difference in scale between the three
levels is not so much spatial or geographical order, it is primarily dictated by ritualistic constraints.
This is made clear in this passage in the Treatise on Rites which concerns the duty of revenge of a
pious son whose father or mother has been murdered and who, in the name of filial piety, has the duty
to avenge the deceased parent, to try to kill the murderer. See "Tangong" 檀弓, A § 53:

子夏問於孔子曰: 「居父母之仇如之何?」
Disciple Zixia asks Master Kong: How should a son behave towards the murderer of his father or mother?
夫子曰：「寢苫枕干，不仕，弗與共天下也；遇諸市朝，不反兵而鬥。」
The Master answers: He must sleep on straw and take his shield as a pillow, he must not assume any
office (so as to remain totally available and constantly ready to fulfill his duty of revenge), so as not to
share with the murderer the same world under Heaven (tianxia). If the son meets the murderer at the
market or at the court (where, in principle, one is not armed), he must not have to return to take his
weapon, but must be able to provoke him to fight on the spot.
曰: 「請問居昆弟之仇如之何?」
Question: What is the attitude towards the murderer of his older brother or younger brother?
曰: 「仕弗與共國; 銜君命而使, 雖遇之不鬥。」
Answer: He can assume an office, but not in the same country (guo) as the murderer.
If he is sent (into the country of the murderer) and carries a mission from his prince, even if he encounters
the murderer, he must not provoke him in combat (in other words, as long as the murderer is in an another
country, there is no obligation of revenge.)

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 曰: 「請問居從父昆弟之仇如之何?」
Question: What is the attitude towards the murderer of an uncle or a paternal cousin?
曰: 「不為魁, 主人能, 則執兵而陪其後。」

Answer: He must not take the initiative of revenge. If the person concerned (i.e. the son of the uncle or
cousin) is able to do so, he is content to take his weapon and follow him second.

Here, the three levels (tianxia, guo, jia) are determined by the degree of kinship between a man
and his murdered relative: if it is the father or the mother, he does not share the same Heaven (in other
words, he never ceases to avenge the death of his father or mother by killing the murderer wherever
he may be); if it's the brother, he can let the murderer live, but in another country; if it's a cousin, it's
a simple family affair and it's up to the cousin's son to take the initiative for revenge. So here we have
a practice of what would be called elsewhere vendetta in a ritualized form to the extreme (here we
are capable of noting that ritualism does not exclude violence and bloodshed, quite the contrary). The
ritual treaties agree that vengeance is a moral obligation linked to filial piety, and that the degree of
obligation is directly proportional to the degree of kinship between the victim of the murder and his
avenger, exactly on the model of rites. funerals and mourning, which, significantly, must be continued
until revenge is honored. In this, vengeance is closely associated with the ritualism of mourning to
which it is substituted or conditioned, in that it also determines the degrees of proximity in kinship.
The distinction between three levels (tianxia, guo, jia), which is determined in the case of the
ritual duty of vengeance by the degree of kinship, is found in other passages of the Treatise of Rites,
starting with the chapter "Li yun 禮 運 "(Evolution of rites, § 3):

「故聖人以禮示之, 故天下國家可得而正也. 」
Since the wise made known the rites, the whole world, the countries and the families could be ruled in
righteousness.

See also chapter "Zhongyong 中庸", § 9:

子曰: 「天下國家可均也, 爵祿可辭也, 白刃可蹈也, 中庸不可能也。」

The master says: One can find men wise enough to govern the empire, a principality or a domain of
minister of state; disinterested enough to refuse offices and emoluments, or brave enough to walk on
naked swords; we do not find any that are able to stand in the invariable environment.

This same staging of the socio-political order on three levels grouped in a single expression is
found in the Mencius (Mengzi 孟子, IV A 5):

孟子曰: 「人有恆言, 皆曰「天下國家 」天下之本在國, 國之本在家, 家之本在身。」

Master Meng (Mencius) says: People have this consecrated expression: "World, country, family. The
root of the world is in the country, the root of the country in the family, the root of the family in the
person [of its leader].

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 This stratification (tianxia, guo, jia, shen) is also found in the non-Confucian and even anti-
Confucian source, Laozi 老子, cf. § 54:

善建不拔, 善抱者不脫, 子孫以祭祀不輟。

That which is built (planted) solidly does not let itself be torn off, that which is firmly embraced is not
allowed to be removed, the filiation of the sons and grandsons through the sacrifices (which they offer
to their deceased parents) is not to interrupt.
修之於身, 其德乃真;
Whoever cultivates it in his own person, his virtue will be authentic
修之於家, 其德乃餘;
Whoever cultivates it in his family, his virtue will be superabundant
修之於鄉, 其德乃長;
Whoever cultivates it in his village, his virtue will continue
修之於國, 其德乃豐;
Whoever cultivates it in his country, his virtue will be rich
修之於天下, 其德乃普。
He who cultivates it everywhere under Heaven, his virtue will spread everywhere.
故以身觀身, 以家觀家, 以鄉觀鄉, 以國觀國, 以天下觀天下。
This is how to look at the self from within, the family from the family, the village from the village, the
country from the country, the world from the world.
吾何以知天下然哉? 以此。
And how do I know that this is the case with the world? Like this!

These quotations echo the equally famous beginning of what was originally a chapter of the
Treatise on Rites, but which later acquired the status of a canonical text in its own right, the
Daxue 大學 (The Great Study). In the corpus of the Confucian scriptural canon, the Great Study
is certainly one of the most frequently and widely commented texts, both in time (for more than a
millennium, from the eleventh century until today) and in space (having been the subject of many
important comments in Korea, Japan and Vietnam). The idea that the three levels (world, country,
family) ultimately take root in the person (shen 身) of the ruler / father is explained in the long
development that opens the text of the Great Study and that every Confucian scholar knew by heart:

大學之道, 在明明德, 在親民, 在止於至善。

The Dao of the Great Study consists in making the light of virtue shine forth, be close to the people also
of their family, and stop only in the supreme good.
知止而後有定,定而後能靜,靜而後能安,安而後能慮,慮而後能得。
Knowing where to stop can be fixed; once fixed, the mind can know repose; repose leads to peace, peace
to reflection, reflection helps to reach the goal.
物有本末,事有終始,知所先後,則近道矣。
Everything has a root and branches, all events a beginning and an end. Who knows what comes before
and what comes next, that one is close to the Dao.

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 古之欲明明德於天下者,先治其國;欲治其國者,先齊其家;欲齊其家者,先修其身;欲修其身者,先正
其心;欲正其心者,先誠其意;欲誠其意者,先致其知,致知在格物。
In antiquity, to make the light of virtue shine through the whole universe, one began by ordering one's
own country. To order one's own country, one began by settling one's own house. To settle one's own
home, one began by perfecting oneself. To perfect oneself, one began by making one's heart right. To
make his heart right, one began by making his intention genuine. To make one's intention true, one began
by developing one's knowledge; and one developed one's knowledge by examining things.
物格而後知至,知至而後意誠,意誠而後心正,心正而後身修,身修而後家齊,家齊而後國治,國治而後
天下平。
It is by examining things that knowledge reaches its greatest extension. Once the knowledge is extended,
the intention becomes authentic; once authentic intention, the heart becomes upright. It is by giving
uprightness to the heart that one perfects oneself. It is by perfecting oneself that one's house is regulated;
it is by regulating his house that his country is ordered; and it is when the countries are ordained that the
Great Peace is accomplished by the whole universe.
自天子以至於庶人，壹是皆以修身為本。其本亂而末治者否矣;其所厚者薄，而其所薄者厚，未
之有也！
For the Son of Heaven as for the ordinary man, the essential thing is to perfect oneself. Leave the essential
to the disorder while hoping to control the accessory, that is impossible. Neglecting what is important to
you by attaching importance to what does not, that has never been seen.

The success of the Great Study can be explained, of course, by its conciseness (the integral text
stands on a single printed page), but also, paradoxically, because of the repetitive formulations and
constructions in chains (of the type "Si A, then B, if B, then C, etc. ") of the introductory part:" In
antiquity, one began by ordering one's own country. To order one's own country, one began by settling
one's own house. To regulate one's own home, one began by perfecting oneself, etc., etc. Such a
construction, obviously aimed at mnemonics, helps to create an effect of continuity and orderly
succession. The beginning of the text describes the Way of the Great Study as a gradual, step-by-step
progression of the personal development of the ruler (shen) which spreads in concentric circles at the
level of the family (jia) and then of the country (guo) and finally of the world (tianxia), thus
establishing a relation of continuity between the moral dimension of the culture of self (xiu shen 修
身) and the political dimension of the governance of the world (zhi guo 治國), continuity which
remained the paradigm central to the text. This image of the moral influence of the prince, which
develops and spreads into ever wider circles or concentric waves as the prince himself grows as a
moral being, presents the fiction of a continuity between the moral culture of the elite and the political
control of the social body. The seamless passage from "inner sanctity" (nei sheng 内聖) to "outer
kingship" (wai wang 外 王) evoked at the beginning of the Great Study, illustrates a Confucian
idealism still extolled today by the Sino scholar American Tu Wei-ming 杜維明:

Just as the self must overcome to become authentically human, the family must overcome nepotism to
become authentically human. By analogy, the community must overcome parochialism, the state must
overcome ethnocentrism, and the world must overcome anthropocentrism to become authentically human.

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 In this article, we discuss the concepts of egoism, nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentrism and
anthropocentrism to "form one body with Heaven, Earth, and the Myriad Things".

Tu Wei-ming takes up again here the different stages through which the continuous development
of the sovereign's moral person in concentric circles of ever greater breadth: the self, the family, the
community, the state, the world, and concludes on the all-encompassing, universalist character of
Confucian humanism. The final quote "to be one body with Heaven, Earth and the ten thousand
beings" is an allusion to the formula of the great Ming period thinker, Wang Yangming 王阳明 (1472-
1529), in his Daxue wen 大學問 (Questions about the Great Study):

大人者, 以天地萬物為一體者也, 其視天下猶一家, 中國猶一人焉。

The great man is the one who conceives Heaven-Earth and the ten thousand beings as one body. He
considers the world as one family, and the central country (s) as one man.

However, this sentence of Wang Yangming itself refers to a passage from the already cited
chapter of the Treaty of Rites ("Liyun" § 18):

故聖人耐以天下為一家，以中國為一人…
Thus, the Sage has a mind wide enough to consider the world as one family, and the central country (s)
as one man ...

It is striking that even in the twentieth century, such a canonical formula is more vivid than ever
under the brush of Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868-1940), figurehead of Chinese modernity, in a vibrant
call for resistance against the Japanese invasion appeared in 1936 and entitled 中國為一人, 天下為
一家 ("China is one man, the world one family"). This short text, which remains engraved in the
memories, testifies to the durability, from antiquity to the modern era, of a cosmo-political schema
that makes appear in the same sentence and in an analogical parallelism zhongguo 中國 and tianxia
天下, thus associating the centrality and universality that both China, central nation and "all under
heaven" claim at the same time.

(Translated by Li Dan; Proofread by Feng Li)

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 The Human, World and Time in Mayan Thinking

Mercedes de la Garza

Foreword

Mayan groups settled in a continuous territory covering the current Mexican states of Yucatán,
Campeche, Quintana Roo, and parts of Tabasco and Chiapas, while also including the Central
American countries of Guatemala, Belize, and Western parts of Honduras and El Salvador. The total
extension of the Mayan territory was of almost 400,000 squared kilometers.
Approximately thirty ethnic groups, each one with its own language, inhabit this territory.
Among them we find the Mayan yucateca, chontal, tzotzil, tzeltal, quiché, cakchiquel, tzutuhil mam
and ixil. Mayan languages form a linguistic group of common origin.
The great Mayan area has an extraordinary rich and varied geography. There is warm and humid
weather, jungles of immense trees, high rainfalls, extensive swampy regions, and abundant rivers,
like the Grivalja and Usumacinta, cross through the area. Likewise, there is also cold weather,
mountain ranges of volcanic origin with peaks reaching up to 4,000 meters high, great lakes, and
dense forests, where impressive constructions were built. At the same time, there are plain regions,
almost devoid of rivers or rainfall, with poor vegetation, but with countless water flows and
subterranean water deposits that the Mayans called dzonot (cenotes), which were and continue being,
the main water source for the locals, besides having also a special symbolic meaning as access points
to the underworld.
The animal variety in the area is also striking, as there are diverse species of monkeys, deer,
boars, tapirs, and other mammals. Jungles are populated by innumerable species of insects, reptiles
and birds, where among them stands out the quetzal, considered to be the most beautiful bird, and the
remarkable tropical rattlesnake, both animals being symbols of the heavenly supreme God. Likewise,
it is worth noting the jaguar, whose sole predator is the human being, which was an epiphany of the
Sun in its passage through the underworld.
Mayan culture cannot be understood without considering the extraordinary natural setting where
it developed, given that animal and plant symbols are commonly found in their religion and in the
artistic creations of their culture. Similarly, the natural forces, valleys and mountains, inspired their
understanding of the origin and shaping of the world, as well as the establishment of sacred locations
in the heart of their large cities, which came to be conceived as microcosms.

The Idea of Humans in The Cosmogonic Myth

In the books written by the ancient Mayans during colonial times, employing their own languages
while using the Latin alphabet learnt from the Spanish monks, varied versions of the cosmogonic
myth have been preserved, all of which seem to have been shared by the diverse groups of Mayans
during pre-Hispanic times. With formal differences, tales of the origin were based on the main idea
that the universe was formed by the gods to shelter men, and that it also follows a cyclical process of

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creation and destruction in which the main elements, animals, plants and stars progressively appear,
while human beings, key players in the process, evolve through the different ages that lead them to
become the creature that the gods need in order to be revered and fed, given the fact that they become
the only conscious creature. This expresses the idea that gods are mortal, and that if they are left to
die, the cosmos, which in turn they sustain and feed, also perishes. In this manner, the existence of
the world rests on the hands of humanity, and its care and continued existence are its most radical
responsibilities.
The most complete version of the Mayan cosmogonic myth is found in the Popol Vuh of the
Guatemalan quichés, written in quiche language using the Latin alphabet. The Popol Vuh myth begins
with the decision of the gods to create the cosmos, with the human being as its central creature. The
purpose of the creation of the world is for it to serve as a home for the living being that will be
entrusted with the mission of worshiping and feeding the gods.
The human being’s formation is performed through different stages of creation and destruction,
which correlate to the different cosmic ages. It should be noted the use of plant and animal materials
to shape the human beings, and also the transformation of some creatures into others, which evokes
an idea of co-participation rather than indifference. The division set by Western science between
animals, plants and minerals is foreign to the Mayan natives, since for them the human substance is
not different from the rest of the world’s. For Mayans, everyone has a soul.
The myth tells that gods firstly made humans out of clay. However, given their inability to come
to life, they were destroyed by a water flood, which was depicted (as we can see in the image) in one
of the three codices that survived the Spanish conquest.
Looking for a more solid material, the deities created men out of wood. These, although managed
to speak and reproduce, were not conscious, did not have blood, nor humidity, and were only able to
crawl, thereby not being able to satisfy the needs of the gods to be adored and fed. Thus, men of wood
were transformed into monkeys, and its world disappeared under a flood of hot resin.
By describing the shortcomings of these failed men of wood, the myth reveals, by contrast, what
the quichés considered to be the defining notes of human nature: as said, they did not have any
consciousness, heart, blood, humidity, and they crawled. This signals that human form, existence,
language, and even reproduction, are not sufficient to become a human being. Rather, what makes
men human is their soul, which is conceived here as understanding and memory, and it is radically
linked to the vital principle of blood. Thus, for Mayans, consciousness can only exist in a human
being, with a heart, blood and humidity, as what determines the existence of soul is the type of matter
that constitutes the body. In this sense, the Popol Vuh reveals that body and soul are not absolutely
different and separated substances, while highlighting the fact that an upright posture is also
definitory for the human being.
Finally, with the help of several animals (wildcat, coyote, parrot and crow) the gods found a
sacred matter: maize or corn. With its mass they formed a new man, able to recognize the gods and
to assume its mission on Earth. In the Memorial de Sololá of the cakchiquel ethnic group, where this
myth was also recognized, it is said that tapir and snake blood were added to the corn’s mass, both
being sacred animals associated with water. This indicates that humans are composed of plants and
animals, hence confirming a brotherhood with nature, and the idea of an essential coexistence among

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all the living beings of the world. Therefore, the myth reveals the Mayan idea (expressed also in
multiple artworks, hieroglyphic inscriptions, myths and rites) of a consubstantial unity of man with
nature, which is the basis for the care and respect for the surrounding world.
What is central for this mythological conception is that these new humans recognized and
thanked their creators, for they emerged knowing and seeing everything. Yet, precisely due to this
perfection symbolized by sight, the deities decided to blur the human’s eyes so they could not see
beyond the immediate, as their wisdom would mislead them to not reproduce and not worshipping
the gods. This is how, in the end, men are devised with a specific difference that makes them, on one
hand, bearer of an extraordinary nature, and on the other, contingent and limited creatures, servant to
the deities.
The myth specifies that the first humans to be created were four males. Once their knowledge
was restricted, the gods formed women to provide company and offspring for the males. The
consciousness of the corn-made men enabled them to respect and to take care of the natural world,
which is intrinsically held by the gods; while they should offer, mainly, the vital energy contained in
the blood, the sacred substance that human beings must give them in return. In the Mayan religious
understanding, the gods are invisible and intangible energies, which also manifested themselves with
animal and plant traits. But what is more significant is that gods are insufficient by themselves, and
can even starve to death and thus cease to hold the existence of the world. The human being is
therefore understood as the driving force of the cosmos.
The human being idea expressed mythically in the Popol Vuh was the basis of the ritual, the
main human activity in pre-Hispanic Mayan times. The ritual was present in the entire life of these
peoples, even in their most “mundane” activities, such as commerce and war. Ritual life has been
preserved until today in Mayan communities, which continue to enrich their daily existence by
believing in the infinite spaces of the invisible where the sacred forces reside.

The Idea of Human Being for the Current Mayans

Many current Mayan groups have preserved myths in which the core concepts of the pre-Hispanic
cosmogonic myth are to be found, such as the idea of cyclical cosmical creation and destruction, but
with a new significance, as a result of the Mayan-Christian syncretism. The idea of the human being
as the maintainer of the gods and the world, expressed in the Popol Vuh, has been lost.
Nowadays Mayans preserve another peculiar conception of the world and the human being
which underlies their culture, and that also comes, essentially, from the pre-Hispanic period. One
aspect of this complex cosmovision is the notion of the universe as a reality made of diverse spheres:
the visible and tangible one, which is perceived in everyday experience, and also other co-existent
spaces, inhabited by countless forces and supernatural and immaterial powers which determine the
existence of the cosmos, and that the human being can also access with the immaterial part of his
being.
Both yesterday and today’s Mayans know that animals are the most similar living beings to
humans, so much in their shapes and biological behavior, while in addition, they are expressive
creatures who make possible to keep close communication with. Thus, not only dominance and

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submission ties are to be established with them -that are the outcome, among other things, of a natural
struggle for survival-, but also ties of friendship, love, consubstantiality, and even kinship. Due to
these bonds, animals are also demiurges between the human being and the “other”, is to say, what is
the farthest and strangest: the mysteries of the heavens, the underworld, of life and death.
Here I will only highlight two Mayan insights relating to the human-animal brotherhood, which,
although originated in pre-Hispanic times, are still substantially prevalent nowadays: the idea of an
animal alter ego and the shamanic ability to transform into animals.
Present Mayans believe that the human soul is made up of several visible material parts -like the
body-, but also of other invisible and intangible ones, that is to say, of subtle matters, which live in
different parts of the corporeal. The main ones are the pixán, which inhabits the brain (for the
yucatecos Mayans), or the ch’ulel, a word that means “besides the body” which lives in the heart
(tzeltales). Other subtle and invisible matters are the ol, which is the vital energy of the heart and
blood, and the wayjel or wahy, which resides in the animal alter ego of human beings. What is
important is that this body-soul duality in nowadays Mayan thinking does not correspond, in any way,
to the substantial dualism predominant in Western thought. The human being, for the Mayans, is
essentially a unit, and simultaneously, a multiple being composed of subtle matters which are located
in different parts of the body (the heavy matter), and may be projected outside of it in special states
of consciousness.

The animal alter ego

The wayjel, resides in an animal creature -generally a wild one-, since the birth of the human being.
This animal creature shares the destiny of the human being. The wayjel is mortal: it dies with the
animal and with the human body. Due to residing in a wild animal, the wayjel is alien to the social
life of the human, and it represents the unconscious, irrational and passional aspects of the human
being. Consequently, its place is in the wilderness, where it is guarded and controlled by the ancestral
gods. Therefore, each human being is a one-double creature, human and animal, where the latter
determines his personality. For instance, if the animal is shy, thus the man will be; if it is fierce and
smart, thus the man will be.
The natives believe that in an alternate spiritual world there is a pyramid-shaped secret mountain
with thirteen levels (just as Heaven). In this way, there is a co-presence of souls, both in the natural
and in the supernatural world. This sacred mountain is a spiritual equivalent to the physical world.
There, everything is ch’ul, in other words, devoid of any tangible substance. In the different levels of
the mountain lives the animal alteri ego of human beings, ranging from the most powerful to the most
modest ones. The ancestral gods, who also live there, protect and feed their animal companions in
special farmyards, since they represent the irrational and passional part of the human that must be
controlled. If a human does something mad, like violating social and moral norms, this causes his
animal to be expelled from the farmyard, and to wander lost in the woods at the mercy of other animal
alteri ego who may kill or devour it.
Once this happens, the human becomes seriously ill of “soul loss” and must be cured with
prayers, magic and healing herbs in order for him to seek for his animal and to return it to the
farmyards of the sacred mountain.

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 The notion of an animal alter ego enables humans to exert some sort of control over the unknown
and threatening world which lies beyond their area of influence. The zoomorphic alteri ego
constitutes a bond that ties the human world with the natural world. This is a much deeper link than
any other, given that it is a consubstantial link by which humans integrate nature through creatures
of that kind, while simultaneously incorporating their own souls to the natural world, which is
embodied by these same creatures, that is to say, the wild animals that fulfill this function for being -
among all other natural creatures- the most similar to the human being.

The shamans
The common man’s soul releases itself from the body and enters “other worlds” in a natural way,
through dreams. Meanwhile, the shaman’s soul does so through dreams and ecstasy. Shamans are
born with a “gift”, and they receive from the deities, in one or several dreams, the order to devote
themselves to the different activities of shamanism, such as healing of diseases and fortune telling.
They are able to voluntarily enter other realms of reality, both through ascetical practices such a
fasting, insomnia, abstinence, bloody self-sacrifices, and through the usage of psychoactive
substances.
The supernatural powers of the shaman grow throughout their lifetime. Among them is the
control over dreams, the training to have “lucid dreams”, that is to say, to realize that he is dreaming,
and the ability to transfigure at will into an animal -maybe one of his alteri ego, given that they have
thirteen of them-. This belief, which is held by all current Mayan groups, also comes from the pre-
Hispanic period, as it is stated in multiple visual and sculptural works, as well as in colonial
indigenous texts.

The Idea of Time

The astral time

The Mayan notions about the meaning of life and human nature are part of a complex conception of
temporality developed in pre-Hispanic times. For them, there is a daily reality, ruled by the astral
movements, and also of “other times”, in which the spiritual parts of humans inhabit different realities
and where sacred creatures roam.
In Mayan thinking, time is the movement of space, and not an abstract concept, and it is a
movement that follows a cyclical law. The dynamism of spatial reality -the cosmic change-, is
produced, mainly, by the passage of a sacred being which was the core of Mayan cosmovision: the
Sun (K’in, a word that also means “day” and “time”). The movement of the Sun was understood as a
circular movement around the Earth, including a daily and a yearly cycle, and was measured in 365
days.
The Equinoxes and Solstices, key points of the Sun’s annual cycle, where exactly specified by
the Mayans, as shown in an architectonic complex in the city of Uaxactún, Guatemala, group E. The
apparent trajectory of the Sun, seen from the Earth, determines the changes happening in it (day and
night, fertility and drought, cold and hot). This is why time was conceived as a cyclical movement
which was measured by the sunrises and sunsets of the Sun and of other stars, such as the Moon,
Venus and maybe even Mercury.

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 Likewise, the Solar trajectory determines the quadripartite division of space, an idea shared by
many cultures, as drawn by the Mayans in one of their codices.
Therefore, temporality was for Mayans the evident and eternal dynamism of space, which gives
living beings multiple qualities and meanings, sometimes even contradictory, depending on the sacred
influences that unfold in the world at the different times. But this movement is not arbitrary: it follows
stable laws, as manifested in the regularity of the natural cycles and in human life itself. For Mayans,
time is the mobile order of the cosmos.
These impressive men invented, for the first time in history (around 1,000 b.C.), the use of the
number zero and the positional value of the numerical digits, which were only three: the zero, the
point -with a value of 1-, and the bar -with a value of 5-. Numbering was vigesimal: number 20 was
formed with a point and a zero. Mathematics were an indispensable tool for measuring the astral
cycles.
With mathematical and astronomical knowledge, Mayans developed a complex calendar system
which included a solar cycle (of 365 days) and a ritual cycle (of 260 days), whose combination
constituted the Calendar Round, a cycle of 52 years. Furthermore, they created an “era date” or “day
zero”, the starting point for time counting, in order to specify dates with extraordinary precision. The
“era date” was determined by closing a Baktún 13 in the day 4 Ajaw 8 Cumkú, which is, in the
Gregorian calendar, the 13th of August of 3114 B.C. This date is, obviously, part of the mythological
time which is interlocked with the chronological time, as it registers the beginning of the current
cosmic era according to the religious ideas of the Mayans on the origin of the cosmos, which they
believe follows a cyclical movement of creation and destruction of worlds. The choice of that date is
because of number 13, which is sacred for Mayans for it corresponds mainly to the thirteen layers of
Heaven.
This dating system has been called Long Count or Initial Series Calendar, and is based on periods
that range from one day or K’in, to an Alautun, a period of approximately 64 million years,
multiplying always by 20 in a vigesimal system. In general, the dates registered to list the relevant
historical events in the hundreds of monuments that have been conserved, especially during the
Classical period (300 to 900 a.C), they all begin with the Baktún, a cycle of 400 years, and the day is
set with the Calendar Round, that is to say, the combination of a solar calendar day with a ritual
calendar one.
The great achievement that is the Long Count Calendar gives time a meaning that goes beyond
a simple eternal return to the same starting point, because time, although still cyclical, can be
measured to the past and to the future through a complex spiral of cycles which prevents its repetition,
thanks to the anchoring in the era date. Thus, coexisting a cyclical and a linear idea of time.
With mathematical systematization, humans are able to manage time, transience is controlled,
while the great cycles allow for a periodical ritual return to the origin’s mythical moment to regenerate
the universe and to extend its existence to infinity.
Time is measured forward and backwards from the “era date”, and surprising dates, millions of
years before the existence of humans and of cosmos itself, are set, all of which shows that these great
sages enjoyed the dominance over the future.

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 For Mayans, it was even possible to control infinity, as the concept of time cycles which deploys
to the past and to the future implies the idea of an eternal universe. For them, there will never be an
absolute end of times or an end of all worlds, but rather an eternal recreation.
It is evident that this amazing time-space notion reveals an extraordinary capacity of observation,
intuition, knowledge, from those peoples who, without any devices or technology, but with an unusual
mathematical capability, managed to understand and control the future.

The other times

The Mayans also dealt with other ideas of time, engaging in other temporalities, in other future spaces,
which eluded the systematic course of the astral cycles. These other times were, firstly, the one in
which sacred stories and myths unraveled, and secondly, the temporality of other reality spaces,
where gods and deified ancestors reside and to which humans (like shamans) may access in particular
states of consciousness. In the frame of time, thus, both the time of myths and the time of dreams
participate, ecstasies and death, combined with the chronological world, with the profane time, or
with daily reality.

The time of myths

Sacred stories, which we call myths, take place in a different time, in which players, although
humanized, may live extensive periods that surpass the average life expectancy of a human being.
Also, in the time of myths, just as in the time of dreams, ecstasies and death, there is coexistence of
past, present and future, so that the players can move freely in all these time moments, that is only
one.
The time of myths is “another” time. In the palencano texts, for example, we find records of a
cosmogonic myth that includes dates that provides some of their stories superhuman time frames.
These texts describe the cosmogonic myth of the origin of a new cycle starting from the “era date”.
But they also seem to mention scenes from other previous worlds, dated one million 246 thousand
826 years in the past, where a primal deity, apparently heavenly, rose to power: the “squared-shaped
nose snake”. This is a remarkable example from the time of myths.
Therefore, both times, of myths and of daily life, are juxtaposed, they coexist, and, through the
ritual which brings back the origin of times, they are “lived” simultaneously.
What I have highlighted here about the notion of time confirms that Mayans, by combining a
cyclical elapsing to the cosmic time, the time of myths and the time of other worlds, managed to
channel the future and to face finitude, chaos and death.

Epilogue

My goal here was to address three pillars of Mayan thinking: the idea of the world as a harmonic
unity; the idea of the human being as the creature responsible for the world; and the idea of time as
an infinite path that rules the world and human creatures.
The Mayan notions of the human being, which I have highlighted here, show that Mayans, from
pre-Hispanic times until today, have had an exceptional respect towards nature that we can refer to
as a sort of brotherhood. In particular, the connection of humans with animals and plants is one of the

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most rewarding, with something that is not human nor a human creation. For Mayans, every being,
including objects created by humans, have a similar soul to the human one.
The relation of Mayans with the natural world reveals an exceptional notion of a human-nature
unity that relates to the cosmic unity, which was, and still is, fundamental for their culture. Their
myths and beliefs about humanity and its interactions with natural beings, convey a relation of
brotherhood and even consubstantiality that is not only established with animals, but also with varied
creatures of the plant world.
The understanding of the cosmos as a living unit, to which humans have the obligation to care
and protect, is a distinctive feature of Mayans. Veneration and respect towards the astral, plant, animal
and mineral universes is essential for these peoples who have managed to transcend the mere material
world to find and project deeper and more binding meanings, in search for a true cosmic harmony.
This transcendent unit notion also allows to strengthen community ties between human beings,
increasing the respect towards the existence of “others”. These Mayan concepts may enlighten the
bleak and opaque awareness of the current world, in order to create paths for the conservation of the
planet.
The loss of these links in Western tradition show a lack of wonder, admiration and reverence
towards the natural world, which has lead humanity to assume their place as absolute owners of the
world, using nature for their own benefit, leading it to dreadful destruction.
Respect towards the miracle of life and the recognition of mankind’s place as just another
component of the world -and not its owner-, will lead to the protection and maintenance of nature, as
expressed in the Mayan cosmogonic myth, a remarkable example of self-awareness and human
responsibility for the conservation of the universe.
With the Spanish conquest, which brought decisive religious transformations through the violent
imposition of Christianity, some Mayan myths, beliefs and traditions, far from being lost, were
preserved, but acquiring new meanings, obviously influenced by the historical path and the new
socio-economic situation in which natives where marginalized and subdued in their own territories,
doomed to poverty and humiliation.
The natives were deprived from their best lands, their religion, their ways of living, their
astonishing civilization, but they remain there, speaking their languages, preserving their daily
customs, practicing a syncretic religion, in which we find some of their original beliefs, but where
their ancestors’ great civilization has not been properly preserved. A painful memory of the brilliant
past is manifested in the ceremonies that many of them perform in the ruins of their ancestors.
I would like to conclude with two Mayan texts.
A few years after the Spanish conquest, the Mayans wrote texts such as this one:

Every Moon, every day, every year, every wind… also walks and passes through. Also every blood
reaches a place of stillness, as it reaches its power and its throne… Measured was the time in which
they could meet the goodness of the Sun. Measured was the time in which they could look admire the
starry grid above them, from where, looking after, the gods would contemplate them, gods who were
trapped by the stars… back then, everything was good and then they were dejected…(Ch. B., 58)

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And I will conclude with a passage from a current day shaman, which reveals, with profound
significance, the everlasting link of the Mayans with nature, and also the great tragedy of poverty and
neglect in which current natives live today:

There are trees that grow

There are trees that sprout
There are trees that appear.
Let them be.
How happily they sprout!
Maybe they will become a place for the birds to rest,
Maybe their place for them to rejoice,
Maybe a place for them to nest.
And we chop them off. I chop them off.
I sharpen my machete and chop them off.
But, is it a sin?
The tree is not in sin.
How beautifully it grows!
It is full of desire to grow.
What is its crime then?
It is my inner desire
For food and beverage…
All for the crime of my stomach…
The tree is not in sin.
It is full of desire for growth,
Let it be!
(Colby y Colby, 137)

（Translated by Felipe Barrientos）

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 Return to the Human, the Condition of World Peace to Moralize God?

Paulin J. Hountondji

1) A Huge Problem

The threats to peace are numerous and manifold. Religious extremism is one of those threats, it is one
of the oldest sources of insecurity and a huge problem. In the name of God, it has certainly happened
that we do good things or even very good things. But in the name of God, too, it has happened that
we do very bad things. It has happened that people kill, that people massacre innocents - people who
had absolutely nothing to do with the faith or with the "just cause", which they claimed to be just that
they wanted to defend. For this reason, it seems to me urgent, even extremely urgent, to "moralize
God", that is to say simply to moralize the use that we make of God. There are gods who would
benefit from being truly recycled, rethought, recreated, reinvented, readjusted and brought into
conformity with human morality, simply human. And it is in the name of this rediscovered humanity
that we must learn from each other to put into perspective and, if possible, to relativize our respective
creeds so that our religious options do not prevent us from looking at each other as human beings and
to talk to each other, and that these options do not lead to mental confinement, ideological
imprisonment, or intellectual closure – the kind of blindness pairing with deafness which would result
in a tragic inability to see each other and to hear the other.

2) The Right to Belief

No one can blame anyone for believing in God or believing in his gods. No one can blame anyone
for feeling supported by a superior force that have created him and keep him in order in every instant
of his existence. The feeling of one's own precariousness and dependence on an invisible power, the
sense of the distant, the call of transcendence, are certainly not felt by all, but those who experience
and express them deserve something other than taunts and have the right to be respected. The case is
similar to those who see deities everywhere behind natural phenomena and try to secure their favors
through various rituals. Polytheists, monotheists, real or pretended atheists, all are equal, all are as
helpless as others to the difficulties of life and the hard problems of existence.
That's not all, though. There are several versions of polytheism and monotheism, many forms of
pantheism too. Religions are multiple, and within each religion, sects, denominations, communities
of faithful grouped by affinity are multiple as well. None of them should feel superior to others. None
of them should claim to deny others the right to exist.
The only acceptable attitude is tolerance, acceptance of the other as it is in itself or as he/her in
him/herself, acceptance of difference in the name of deep identity that we must always in all
circumstances learn to find, and in the name of solidarity that this identity inevitably calls for, which
is also solicited together by the common humanity, the shared misery, the challenges that face all
people together.

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3) The Religious Language

So rest assured: our purpose in this presentation is not to know whether God exists or not. Our
question would be rather: if you believe in God, what do you do with this belief? What impact does
it have on your behavior, your relationship to others and to society?
I do not think it is possible, indeed, to prove the existence of God, any more than it seems to me
possible to prove that it does not exist. Every proof of its existence rests, directly or indirectly, on the
ontological argument: the argument to which Kant has done justice simply by recalling in the Critique
of Pure Reason that existence is not a predicate. I also find that this question, from Saint-Anselm to
Descartes, in which we can see the metaphysical question par excellence, arises only in connection
with the God of creation and only has meaning for a monotheistic thinker.
I would like, however, to suggest one thing: a virtuous atheist is infinitely better than an immoral
devotee. A man or a woman who does not believe in God, but who knows that one must not kill, that
one must not lie, that one must not steal or harm one's neighbor, and who does best to make himself
useful to others and to his society according to what his conscience dictates to him, is infinitely better
than a person who would talk all the time of God for singing his praises and preach His word, but
would have no qualms about to lie, steal, kill and injure others in a thousand ways.
Religious language doesn’t absolve any person of responsibility. It does not erase what can be
wrong and objectionable in the actions of an individual. Religious language is often just a
smokescreen. You have to know how to break through this screen to appreciate the real value of each
other. For God is not and cannot be an excuse.
Conversely, when good things happen, when luck smiles on us individually or collectively, when
the effort fulfilled in success or when a happy combination of circumstances makes us escape a
predictable catastrophe, it is certainly not meaningless to see in this favorable situation the
intervention of God, the action of a benevolent power, but it would be an exaggeration to believe
oneself predestined to this favor, as if one had more merit than the others. In the country where I
come from, a complex entanglement of political, economic and social circumstances made it possible,
at the beginning of the 1990s, to move the society smoothly, frictionless and without bloodshed from
a fairly ferocious dictatorship that claimed to be Marxist-Leninist to a regime of pluralist democracy.
Since that time it has been customary to repeat in every tone: "God loves Benin". Nobody, of course,
could say the opposite. But all in all, is there in this vast world a single country that God does not
love? Even countries where the war is raging, or who are helplessly affected by natural disasters such
as the explosion of a volcano or the outbreak of a tsunami, who can pretend that God does not love
them?
It is better in these conditions to face things and try to understand the real mechanism. Better
than gargling words, stick to the facts and try to explain them, try to learn from them to improve the
human condition here below. I would like to draw from this reflection a first precept: the precept of
sobriety. Human beings would gain, if they really want to get along, to talk about God as little as
possible and to minimize, in their communications and discussions, the religious parameter. Saving
God, that would be here in a way, the golden rule.

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4) God: Which God?

The gods are multiple indeed, such is the drama. Monotheism itself is plural. The religions of the
book profess, of course, a unique God, and it is easy to show that even in paganism, the many
recognized deities refer to a single God. But the unique God of one and the other is approached in
many ways, adored in various ways, conceived, imagined, determined under completely dissimilar
faces. The God of the gospel is not that of the Old Testament, the God of the Bible is not that of the
Koran. And each of these sacred books gives place, today as yesterday, to a multitude of
interpretations from which stems, for better or for worse, the infinite variety of sects.
That's not all, though. This God, variously perceived, gives orders. He prescribes behaviors and
actions. He commands and his commandments can be good or bad, just or humanly unacceptable.
The reader of a sacred book will always need a minimum of lucidity to place in their historical, social,
cultural context what, in the divine prescriptions, comes from the contingent context and what can be
on the other hand considered as essential.
But there is worse. Beyond the sacred books and the necessarily limited number of those who
can read them and judge for themselves, the divine commandments are transmitted to the multitude
by a crowd of preachers, interpreters assigned to the divine will, true leaders of men who can,
according to the cases, lead their flock on the right way, or on the contrary on the tortuous paths of
wrongdoing. Priests, pastors and imams can be, as the case may be, honest and virtuous guides or
unscrupulous manipulators. They are the first ones to put before their responsibilities. It is to them
that it is appropriate to say, as much as to their faithful and potential victims: if your god orders you
to do evil, speak to him. If he orders you, for example, to break the twin towers of the World Trade
Center in New York at the risk of your life and that of thousands of innocent people, he is an immoral
god. If he orders you, as he did in the Middle Ages, to go on a crusade against the heretics of the
Middle East, he is hardly better. If your god orders you to bulldoze to ground the mausoleums of
Timbuktu, he surely needs to be recycled.

5) Back to The Human!

We know the famous slogan of HUSSERL: Zurück zu den Sachen selbst! - Back to the things
themselves! The founder of phenomenology thus appealed to our immediate experience of things
beyond the lucubration of philosophers. He invited us, in particular, to return to our immediate
perception of numbers and mathematical idealities in general, to recognize them in their objectivity
and their immediate meaning beyond scholarly explanations of their psychological genesis and their
construction in the human mind.
I am tempted to write, on the same model: "Back to the human! Beyond the diversity of religious
sects and their discordant prescriptions, we must return to the human, to the simple human. Before
belonging to a particular religious denomination, I am man. As such, I stand in solidarity with all
other human beings and submit, like them, to what must be called a natural law dictated by the
demands of our living together, of our collective flourishing, and even more so of our survival. The
religious prescriptions themselves must be appreciated in the light of this natural law. They are good

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or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, moral or immoral, depending on whether they are compatible or
incompatible with this law.
I can only repeat here what I have already said elsewhere. I would like to warn against a
temptation: that of wanting to establish a universal and inclusive dialogue on the basis of faith: The
Christian faith, for example, and the precepts of the Gospel. I believe that in this dialogue that claim
to be universal, we must find a truly secular language, concepts and terms that do not presuppose that
the other necessarily adheres to the same faith and religious convictions as we do. The universal is
beyond our particular religions and confessions. Ethics is likely to be universal only if we do not seek
to enclose it in the discourse of faith. On this point, Kant was certainly right: morality must be able
to support itself without seeking a fulcrum either in heaven or on earth.1
In short, we have an interest in secularizing ethics. We must question our religious practices,
confront our ideas of God with the requirements of elementary morality, that is to say in a certain
way, to moralize God. Beyond our particular religions, beyond the rites and beliefs that they induce,
we must be able to listen to "the voice of conscience" and establish, on this basis, norms and values
acceptable to all, something as a secular Decalogue that everyone can agree to. Only at this price will
we replace in their place the various theocracies, the shariahs of every kind, the norms inspired by
particular religions, which are supposed to be erected in absolute terms.
Let's conclude briefly. Everywhere, in our fledgling democracies, we have become aware of the
need to "moralize public life". On the agenda now is the fight against corruption, against arbitrariness,
injustice and human rights violations, even if these great words still, for the most part, only express
wishful thinking. What we are trying to suggest here is that we must also moralize many other sectors:
political life, economic life, judicial practices, religious practices. In the interests of peace and
reconciliation, all the absolutes must be challenged. Our God will be truly God only if he survives
the test at the level of every believer, if he is another name of the Universal, if, far from leading us to
fanaticism or to lock us into a short-sighted particularism it opens us to the world, and helps us to
understand others.

(Translated by Li Dan)

1 “Now we see here philosophy placed in a critical situation: it is necessary that philosophy finds a stable position without
having neither in the heaven or on the earth, a fulcrum or an attachment point.” I. Kant, Fondements de la métaphysique
des mœurs, 2ème section. Trad. Victor Delbos, Paris, Delagrave, 1966, p. 145

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 From “Learning to be Human” to “Learning to Change Ourselves”

Zhao Dunhua
Peking University

As a professor of Peking University, firstly please allow me to say a welcome message often
expressed at international conferences held in China: "it is a pleasure to have friends coming from
afar." This expression, being derived from the first paragraph of the Analects, is recited by many
Chinese when they were young. Here my quotation is a story about the origins of tradition, which in
accordance with the theme today. Confucius is regarded as the founder of Confucianism. The
Analects is Confucius’ words collected by his disciples, which seems unrelated. However, in my
opinion, the beginning and end of the Analects are classical preface and conclusion that are necessary
for a book about the theory of philosophy.
Chapter “Xue Er” quoted three teachings of Confucius to explain the purpose and causes of this
book. In the first paragraph, the first sentence reads, “isn’t it very delightful to recall and review from
time to time?” 1 This is a description of the joyful life of self-studying at home. The second “isn’t it
very pleased to receive the visit of the con-disciple from afar?” 2 This expressed the happy meeting
with other disciples from distance. The third “isn’t it very virtuous for the gentleman who is not
resentful when is not understood by others?”3 This summarized Confucius’ attitudes towards those
who agree or disagree with his teachings.
Those words all together presented the vivid experience of disciples’ learning, recording and
collecting Confucius’ teachings. We can imagine three steps of editing the Analects. At first, when
the disciples went back home they studied hard alone what having learnt from the Master. Secondly,
they were not only satisfied with the self-learning but enjoying meeting with other disciples to
exchange the knowledge and understanding, as what we do in the academic symposium today. Lastly,
during the meeting, they recorded and collected not only Confucius’ teaching at class and dialogues
among teacher and students, but also brought witness of Confucius’ public virtue during tours of

1 Liu Baonan (Qing Dynasty), The Accurate Meaning of the Analects (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1990), “shi (time) refe
rs to four sessions of spring, summer, autumn and winter”, “xi (learning)” refers to reciting, learning by heart. (vol. 1, p.
3) Huang Kan (Liang Dynasty in the Northern and Southern Dynasties), Meaning and Commentary on the Analects (Be
ijing, Zhonghua Shuju, 2013), “xi” means reviewing what was learnt before. That is to say, learning must reviewing day
and night continuously. “yi (too)” refers “again”, meaning that learning was already delightful, while reviewing is to re
member and repeat the previous delight and therefore is “very delightful”. (p.3)
2 Liu Baonan, op.cit., “peng (friend)” refers to “men (door)”, “tongmen (same door)” to “students taught by the same m
aster” (vol.1, p.3). Huang Kan, op.cit., “peng” refers to the party of students taught be the same master, “you” refers to c
omrades, “pengyou (friend) to members belonging to the same party(dang). This is to say that because of the reputation
of our Master’s virtue, friends from afar join the party. It is pleased to have conversations together, and especially with f
riends from afar, therefore “it is very pleased” (p.3)
3 Liu Baonan, op.cit., “not understood by others” is to mean that rulers of that time didn’t know about the elevating use
of our learning; “yun(resent)” refers to angering. This means that the gentleman is not feel angry at anyone who don’t u
nderstand him (vol.1, p.4). Huang Kan, op.cit., There could be two sort of interpretation. The first says that the ancient s
cholar learn for oneself, and learning the Tao of ancient kings glorifying myself internally this is the virtue of gentlema
n. Furthermore, he doesn’t anger at people who don’t know about him, which is again virtuous, and so the gentleman is
very virtuous. The second interpretation is that the gentleman doesn’t expect things] to be perfect, and therefore tolerate
s and shows no angry at the slow-witted who doesn’t understand his teaching. The ruler should be so too. (p.4)

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some states. These disciples who companied with Confucius at tours saw Confucius’ indifference,
fear and disgrace. Weather he was treated with courteous reception or misunderstood by rulers,
attacked by mobs, and ridiculed from different people, Confucius showed no angry nor complaint,
and did not murmur at Heaven or blame on people, just let his message sent up and reached down,
regarding this to be his mission. All of the sayings and attitudes of the Master were written into the
Analects. Due to the difference in the opportunity of presence as well as in understanding, the
Analects were composed of records from different oral sources. This may explain why this book lacks
a solid framework.
Nevertheless, the Analects still could show the coherence of Confucius’ thought. The last two
volumes of the book were discovered from the old wall of the Confucius Mansion in the middle of
Han Dynasty, more than four hundred years after Confucius’s time. Textual critics have argued for
or against the veracity of them.1 I adopted the last two volumes as a conclusion, for its reactor Zi
Zhang generalized Confucius’ teachings on the virtuous politics in accordance with the traditional
kingship. The last volume began with a brief survey of political virtues of ancient kings Yao, Shun,
Yu and Wen, Wu. Zi Zhang then asked Confucius’ how to rule properly. “The Master replied, honor
five beautiful ways and banish four bad ways”. Please allow me thereby interpose a reference to
Plato’s Republic.2
Through a proper translation and interpretation, it is not difficult to propose a correlation
between Confucius’ five beautiful ways and Plato’s four cardinal virtues of Kallipolis. “Benefiting
people without extra-expenditure” to justice,3 “pursuing the desirable without avarice” to moderate,4

1 Liu Baonan, op.cit., Di Hao’s challenge in The Criticism of Errs in the Four Books isn’t convincible, for the Analects
was not written by one person. The last two volumes were what was expected to record yet didn’t find before. Those tw
o are genuine article discovered in the old wall of the Confucius Mansion. Scholars in Qi and Lu (Confucius’ homeland)
had combined the two volumes into one. Di Hao is especially wrong to consider the last volume as an epilogue written
by somebody in the Han Dynasty. For among the unknown writers of the Analects can one ascertain who the true writer
of this volumes was? At the end of the volume eight Kings Yao, Shun Yun and Wen Wu were already mentioned. Is thi
s also an epilogue? (vol.2, 755)
2 Qutations from the Republic are cited from translations by Desmond Lee (Penguin Books, 1974), checked with transla
tions of G. M. A. Grube (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1992) and Tom Griffith (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Few changes of manner of speaking is of my own.
3 Liu Baonan, op.cit., “ruling for people” means ruling to cultivate people, and thereby to accommodate people’s nature.
People living at five lands are different in advantages. The monarch follows their advantages to appease them and does
n’t alter their advantage. This is to rule for mercy and benefit people without extra-expenditure (vol.2, 767). Cf. Republi
c, “we have different natural aptitudes, which fit us for different jobs” (II. 370b); “justice is the requirement that in our s
tate one man was to do one job, the job was naturally most suited for” (V. 433a); “guardian will work simply for their k
eep and get no extra wages as the others do. Hence, if they want to take a private trip way from the city, they’ll not be ab
le to; they will have nothing to give to their mistresses, nothing to speed in whatever other ways they wish, as people do
who are considered happy.” (V. 420a)
4 Huang Kan, op.cit., Desires are various ways, one is desiring the appetites for money and sex while another desiring f
or humanity and rightness, the former is called avarice. The monarch ought to desire humanity and rightness and advoca
te humane and right things, doing nothing of the avarice for money and sex appetites. This is to mean that “desiring hum
anity obtains humanity, there is no avarice at all.” (p. 522) Cf. Republic, “moderation is surely a kind of order, a control
of certain desires and appetites. So people use ‘being master of oneself’ and similar phrases as indications of it.” (IV. 43
0e)

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“self-composed dignity” to reason, 1 and “powerful without fierce” to brave, 2 all of which are
correlative in a manner that “words are not exhausted with books”.3
By the same token, “four bad ways” can be correlated to four unjust states in the Republic. The
“cruelty” of “killing people in uncultured ways” to the “tyranny”, 4 the “oppression” of full duty of
work on people without instruction to the “timarchy”,5 the “stingy storehouse” of paying people to
the “oligarchy”6, and the “injury” of “idle order and promise in vain” to the unbridled “democracy”,7
are all correlated in a manner that “sense are not exhausted with words”. Analects ended in chapter
“Yao Yue” with Confucius’ saying that the virtuous person knows about the fate and is insightful
into people, while establishes himself on social institution. The last words remind us of the ideal of
the philosopher-king of Plato.8

1 Huang Kan, op.cit., Being capable of multiplying and greatness refers to the dignity of myself, while dare not ignore f
ew and little refers to without arrogance. This is to say of “self-composed dignity without arrogance”. In one’s commen
t, “the gentleman let his mind open and deal people with esteem, he is not affected by the mass or few, nor dare changin
g mind by the big or little, while not ignore anything. This means “self-composed dignity without arrogance.” (p. 522) C
f. Republic, “greatness towards his own fellows and neighbors requires a philosophic disposition and a love of learning”
(II. 376c); “reason ought to rule, having the wisdom and foresight to act for the whole, and the spirit ought to obey and
support it.” (IV. 441e)
2 Huang Kan, op.cit., to be awed by the sight is powerful, while to be warmed through access is not fearful. (p. 523) Cf.
Republic, “guardians ought to be gentle towards their fellow-citizens, and dangerous only to their enemies”, “if we depri
ve them of either quality, they won’t make good guardians” (II. 375c, d).
3 Interpretations that “words are not exhausted with books” in this and “sense are not exhausted with words” in the follo
wing are borrowed from Confucius’s saying in The Book of Change (Xi Ci Zhuan 1: 12.2),
4 Huang Kan, op.cit., The employment of killing prior to the training of education is what cruel and vicious ruler did. (p.
523) Cf. Republic, “there’s nothing, no taboo, no murder, however terrible, from which the tyrant will shrink” (IX. 575
a); “the longer and more extensive a tyrant’s power, the greater and more lasting his unhappiness really is.” (IX. 576e)
5 Huang Kan, op.cit., A monarchy watched people’s doing of no good, and ought to admonish them again and again; if t
hey didn’t obey punishment would be needful. Without admonishing and help, urging people to carry out the present tas
k for a hastily success caused the decline of cultivation, which is what did by a harshly minded monarchy. Harshness is
a bad less than cruelty. (p. 523) Cf. Republic, “the “timarchy has one salient feature, due to its emphasis on the strenuou
s element of ambition and the competitive spirit” (VIII. 548c), “the individual in that society must be more self-willed, a
nd rather less well-educated……He will be hash to his slaves……He will be ambitious to hold office himself, regarding
as qualifications of military achievements and soldierly qualities……there are flaws in his character because he has lost
his best safeguard” (VIII. 548e-549b)
6 Huang Kan, op.cit., A monarchy who is stingy for paying people acts as the storehouse-keeper, and so “is named store
house-keeper”. In one’s comment, “wealthy always get in and go out, if stingy to keep it in and hard to pay out, that is t
he job of storehouse-keeper, but not the rule of monarch. (p. 524) Cf. Republic, “oligarche was a result of lack of restrai
nt in the pursuit of its objective of getting as rich as possible (VIII. 555b)”, “there would be a good deal less shameless
money-making and a good deal less of evils……their young men live in luxury and idleness……they themselves care f
or nothing but making money, and have no greater concern for virtue than the poor” (VIII. 556b).
7 Huang Kan, op.cit., to be trustworthiness to people and to promise a vain expectation, expectation with no discipline a
nd order is indolent goal. If expectation is not realized, the monarch exerts killing and punishing, he is a thief-like injure
r (pp. 523-524). Liu Baonan, op.cit., Indolence of discipline came first and effected in breaking off the expectation and
made people indulged. And then accusing against them with criminal penalty is to crook them. (vol. 2, p. 768. Cf. Repu
blic, “democracy really look down on the high principles we laid down when founding our state” (VIII. 558), “an excess
ive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else is what undermines democracy and leads to the demand for tyrann
y.” (VIII. 562c)
8 Liu Baonan, op.cit., Lightening the fate, one knows oneself as valuable than things, followed by knowing humanity, ri
ghtness, propriety and wisdom, he will be satisfied with good, pleased to follow reason. This man is called gentleman. T
his is what was meant by Confucius’ saying that “there would be no gentleman without knowing the fate”. (vol.2, 769)
Huang Kan, op.cit., Confucius knew the fate and therefore didn’t engaged in ruling. The fate determines weariness or fl
ourishing, premature end or longevity. Man is born with a fate bestowed from the heaven, which has to be known. To de
mand what is unknown can’t be the virtue of a gentleman, so is “not what a gentleman should do”. Propriety leads to rev
erence, simplicity, honest, solemn, such is the basis to make one settled. Without knowing propriety, one could be settle
d oneself in the world.” (p. 524) Cf. Republic, “a man will combine in his nature good memory, readiness to learn, bread
th of vision and grace, and be a friend of truth, justice, courage, and self-control. Grant education and maturity to round

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 I am spending words on interpreting preface and conclusion of the Analects in comparison with
the Republic. It is aimed to illustrate how a tradition was originated with books which were created
jointly by master and disciple. Confucianism and other great traditions walked the same track. Karl
Jaspers raised the question why those great traditions which have transmitted up-to-now all originated
in the “axial period” (ca. 800-200 BC.). He shifted the inquiry of the cause to an explanation of the
meaning. 1 I intend to back to things themselves, considering things themselves as the making of
classic books. This might explain that different traditions originating in the axial period is not
coincidence. It was like this. After the evolution of human civilizations for a long time, some
convenient tools of writing were commonly used in some communities at the same period, which
enabled specialists in writing to record ideas of previous oral traditions, collect old ideas along with
new ideas of the present time, and finally edite those records and collection into books. Classic books
initiated literal traditions in different areas, and provided resources for their further expansions and
integrations. Taking Plato’s dialogues as example, Socrates played the role of the Arche-Philosopher.
Interlocutors of the dialogues included Homer, Hesiod, pre-Socratic philosophers, contemporary
dramatist, writers and mathematicians. Plato’s dialogues represented the past and current situation of
various cultures in Greece and its surrounding areas, thus they became the source of the Greek
rationalism tradition. Alfred North Whitehead even reduced the European philosophical tradition to
“a series of footnotes to Plato”.2In China, Confucius confessed himself only to “pass on the ancient
doctrines and not to create anything new” (Analects 7:1). He evaluated the culture of three dynasties
by saying that “Zhou was safeguarding the previous dynasties and generously civilized and so, I am
following Zhou.” (Ibid. 3:14) He embraced all useful things of the three dynasties, “to follow the
calendar of the Xia dynasty, ride the carriage of the Shang dynasty, wear the ceremonial cap of the
Zhou, and as for music, enjoy the play of Shao.”(Ibid. 15:10) The Six Books which were said to be
edited by Confucius, together with the Analects, Tao De Jing, Zhuangzi and other masterpieces in the
pre-Chin period, formulated the Chinese tradition in general.
Human traditions were numerous. It is regretful for me only to compare the Chinese and the
Greek. As for human traditions in general, I want to pass three judgements. First, all traditions which
are known to us are those written records. Second, all traditions which have been left to date are those
keeping changing. And lastly, all traditions which have important impacts on human civilizations are
those which changed in collaboration with one another. The first concerns the origin of traditions,
and the latter two concern the maintenance and prevalence of traditions. In contrast, the latter two are
more important. It is so important indeed that almost all the historical books have to discuss the
change of traditions, about which I can say a few words.
Let me start with the Chinese classic the Book of Change. Accordion to traditional narrative,
Confucius was the editor of that book. As the title implies, the kernel of the book is change and it

them off, aren’t the only people to whom you would entrust you state?” (VI. 487a) But “the daimonic sign” has kept So
crates out of politics (see Republic 476c, Apology 31c-32a); “it only needs to be one, surely, with a city which is obedie
nt to him, to bring about all the things which are now regarded as impossible. …… After all, if a ruler establishes the la
w and way of life we have described, it is presumably not impossible that citizens will be prepared to follow them.” (VI.
502b)
1 See Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, trans. M. Bullock, Routledge, 2014, pp. 13-21.
2 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ed. D.R. Griffin and D. w. Sherburne, Free Pr
ess, New York, 1978, p. 39.

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consists of some well-known proverbs. For examples, “Tao is predicated of yin and yang” (Xi Ci
Zhuan I, 5:1), “the change is predicated of living life” (Ibid., 5:2), “predicament leads to change,
change to development and development to everlasting.” (Ibid. II, 2:5), “situations up and down are
impermanent, things harden and soften are interchangeable, a cannon is not suitable, only changes
apply.” (Ibid II. 8:1) Those sayings are quoted from the part entitled Xi Ci Zhuan. Feng Youlan said
that this part is especially important for the philosophical system of the Book of Change. 1 But how
could proverbs like those present a philosophical system? Feng Youlan later explained the system at
issue in terms of “universal algebra”, that is, a form which can be fulfilled with every sort of things.2
For our purpose of illustrating the feature and trend of traditions, I would like to combine the form of
change as expressed in proverbs of Xi Ci Zhuan with contents of history, experience and
transformation of traditions as explicated by modern thinkers.
The change of traditions is the development of history. According to the Xi Ci Zhuan, images of
the tradition of divination had already been given in the remote ancient and the book of divination
was not written until the middle ancient. It asked, “did the writer on Change predict the danger and
hardship?” (Xi Ci Zhuan II, 7:1) 3 And it confirmed that “therefore his words were hazarding”, 4 and
that “the Tao of change was predicated of fearing from beginning to end, no damaging is
crucial.”(Ibid., 11:1) 5 As shown throughout the human history, every tradition would encounter
obstruct and crisis and only change could survive it. Otherwise it would decline or even perish. This
trend of history has proved to be the testing touchstone of traditions, those which go with it will
prosper while those which go against it will extinct. In this sense Harold Berman defined tradition as
“an ongoing historical continuity between past and future”. 6 He cited Jaroslav Pelikan who said that
“traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, tradition is the living faith of the dead”. 7 Or, in Edward
Shills’ words, tradition is “not the dead hand of the past but rather the hand of the gardener, which
nourishes and elicits tendencies of judgment which would otherwise not be strong enough to emerge
on their own.” 8 According to the traditional view of history, the prevailing historical traditions were
developed after the origin of the "axis period". Between the 11th and 13th centuries, in order to cope
with crises within and without, the Christian world integrated three different traditions – the Greek

1 Feng Youlan, Complete Works at San Song Tang, Henan People’s Press, 2001, vol. 7, p. 451
2 Ibid., vol. 13, p. 412
3 Li Daoping (Qing Dynasty), A Collection of Commentaries on Book of Change (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1994), Fu
Xi was in the remote ancient, King Wen in the middle ancient, Confucius in the later ancient. Xi Ci Zhuang II said, “Th
e rise of the Change was between the end of Yin Dynasty and the flourishing of virtues of Zhou. That referred facts con
cerning kings Wen and Zhou.” The appendix of Ming Yi (the thirty-sixth Hexagram) said, “King Wen was adopted hims
elf to be civilized internal and meek external to endure the suffering”. “Did the writer on the Change predict the danger
and hardship?” This was referred to King Wen. (p. 660)
4 Li Daoping, op. cit., King Wen was jailed at Youli (a client state of Yin Dynasty), suffering in hardship. Words in the
Change therefore expressed the saving in peril. (p. 678)
5 Li Daoping, op. cit., “fearing from beginning to end” is symbolized in all three hundred eight four images with the con
clusion of no damaging. No damaging was due to good at mending one's ways, The heavenly Tao blesses the modest, an
d so “it makes the fearer easy”, while “the earthly Tao is full of easiness” and “the Tao of man full of evil”, and so “it m
ake the careless hazarded”. (p. 678)
6 Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition,
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2003, p. 3.
7 Footnote given in Harold J. Berman, op. cit., p. 385: See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven,
1984), p. 65.
8 Footnote given in Harold J. Berman, op. cit., p. 385: See Edward Shils, The Virtue of Civility: Selected Esays on Liber
alism, Tradition, and Civil Society (Indianapolis, 1997), p. 107.

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rationalism, the Hebrew spirit of religion and the Roman law – into a new beginning which is called
the western tradition today. In the same period of China, the three traditions of Confucianism,
Buddhism and Taoism were converged and merged into what is now called the grand tradition of
Chinese culture as well.
“Traditio” in Latin was originally used in Roman law to refer to the concept of legal transfer and
inheritance. The change of tradition is not equal to the flowing of history, for it is always founded on
inheritance. Inheritance is both succession and exclusion, and also accumulation. In every dynamic
tradition, people preserve and carry out experience, handing on the process to meet the needs of
survival and development. In this way, the Book of Change spoke about the change of never-ending
living life in terms of “rich possession”, “daily renew”,1 about “creating things and handling affairs”,2
about “the primeval and the essential ending were applied to timing and things”. 3 Those poetic
expressions can be interpreted to mean that historical sediments are creation and accumulation of
living experience. Some metaphors used by modern thinkers portray the mutual complement of
tradition and experience very well. Ludwig Wittgenstein analogizes our language of experience to a
river, includes “the river-bed” to “the inherited background against which I distinguish between true
and false” and “a state of flux”, “though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other”, he
admits. 4 John Dewey says that “experience” is “a double-barreled word”, in that “’experience’
denotes the planted field, the sowed seeds, the reaped harvest, the changes of night and day, spring
and autumn, wet and dry, heat and cold, that are observed, feared, longed for; it also denotes the one
who plants and reaps, who works and rejoices, hopes, fears, plans, invokes magic or chemistry to aid
him, who is downcast or triumphant.”5 We can imagine how our lands were formed by deposited
sands of historical rivers, and what have created through working in the fields. Just as the poem of
Geoffrey Chaucer, “For out of olde feldes, as men sayth, Cometh al this newe corn from yer to yere,
and out of olde bokes, in good feyth, Comes al this new science that men lere.”6

1 Li Daoping, op. cit., Things are provided for all walks of life, so is called “rich possession”. Changing is endless, so is
“daily renew”. “Kun” (the second Hexagram) symbolizes expanding production, by moving and resting, all are assembl
ed together and reproduced abundantly, and so, “things are provided for all walks of life. This is called ““wealthy posse
ssion”. The change between Kun and Qian (the first Hexagram) symbolizes “changing endlessly and daily renew”. (p. 5
61)
2 Ibid., “Creating things” refers to Pao Xi (the primitive King) first introduced eight diagrams, and doubled them to sixt
y-four hexagrams, extending elements of scheming to eleven thousand five hundred and twenty, as the number of the m
yriad creatures, so is called “creating things”. By “handling affairs” it was meant that the sages observed images and acc
ordingly created analogous groups of fishing nets and farming plows to handle affairs of the world, so is called “handlin
g affairs”. (p. 595)
3 Ibid., This means that the Change as a book indicated the primeval of things, as “Qian” at the low situation of yang sa
ys that “the diving dragon is not functioning”, which is the primeval. Besides, it grasps the ending essential. as “Qian” a
t the upper situation of yang says that “the excessive dragon is regressive”, that is the “essential ending”. Again, “the pri
meval and the essential ending” is regarded as substance and essence. The diving dragon and the excessive dragon as ex
emplified at the beginning and ending of one Hexagram, are at all Hexagrams in fact, in which six elements are yin and
yang. Such is “overlapping situations and slipping equilibrium”. “The hard and soft are images of day and night”, this is
way “yang consists of timing yang, and yin of timing yin”; “Qian indicates things of yang, Kun things of yin”, yin and y
ang are overlapped and slipped in timing and things. This means “applied to timing and things” (p. 670)
4 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. D. Paul and G. E. M. Ansco
mbe, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1972, sections, 94, 97, 99, p. 15e.
5 Experience and Nature, in John Dewey, The Later Works, vol. 1, ed. J. A. Boydston, Sourthen Illinois University Pres
s, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1988, p. 18
6 he Riverside Claucer, 3rd., ed., L. D. Benson, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1987, p. 385.

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 The Book of Change, like an elder who had experienced a suffering life, told stories of “bliss”
(Tai, the eleventh Hexagram) comes out of the depth of “misfortune” (Pi, the twelfth Hexagram), the
togetherness of new “reform”(Ge, the fortieth Hexagram) and the old “tripod”(Ding, the thirty-ninth
Hexagram) “the great strong” (Da Zhuang, the thirty-fourth Hexagram) going “before the dawn”
(Ming Yi, the thirty-sixth Hexagram), and “after crossing”(Ji Ji, the sixty-third Hexagram) coming
“not yet crossing”(Wei Ji, the sixty-fourth Hexagram). Traditions were full of such flowing of
transformations. Transformation is characterized with fundamental changes of belief system, view of
values and criteria for truth and falsity. If it’s gradual change, that’s an evolution or improvement; If
it's too rapid and radical, that's a revolution. There were few transformations in history that had a
major impact on the course of human civilization. But over the past few hundred years, the speed of
social and thinking transformation has increased rapidly. Karl Marx declared in 1848, “the
bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal
productive forces than have all preceding generations together.”1 Since then the developed industrial
societies have transformed from the steam engine age to the electrification age and the information
age, and the current age of intelligence. The scientific revolution and high-tech have not only changed
the material world in an all-around way, but also profoundly changed human. Rapid and radical
transformations have bothered traditional humanists very much.
The theme of our Congress is "learning to be human". The human is, however, neither completed
forever nor unchangeable. They change alongside the change of traditions and the world. We are
actually discussing the theme of “learning to change ourselves”. This is to mean that we learn not
only how to change the world, but also how to change ourselves, and learn not only from the tradition
of our own, but also from the others, for instances, from other traditions and cultures, other knowledge.
Isn’t it very happy for lovers of wisdom to learn from each other and to change ourselves?

1 The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd. ed., ed. R. C. Tucker, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1978, p. 477.

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 Familial Affection, the Order of Love, and Community
—Commonality and Difference between Confucianism and Scheler

Zhang Xianglong
Philosophy Department, Zhongshan University at Zhuhai

The Confucians talk about “[being] affectionate toward his (the sage) family is what allows him to
be humane toward the people and loving toward creatures.” 1 Why is there this kind of moral
movement from “being affectionate toward one’s family” to “being humane toward the people,” from
“one family” to “one state”? Is this kind of shift brought about through education or is it a tendency
people are in original possession of and thus is a kind of “innate knowledge” or “innate ability”? The
Confucians have always worked hard to discover, explain and defend this kind of movement, but did
they explain the mechanisms of philosophical transferences of meaning? It is as if there is quite some
space to continue this work. Moreover, this explanation is about the philosophical fate of
contemporary and future Confucianism.
Even though their differences are unavoidable, the phenomenological ethics of Max Scheler can
help us understand and explain the origin and method of this kind of movement in a philosophical
sense. Below let us first briefly go over the parts of Scheler’s thought that can help us understand
Confucianism and then we will go over their differences in regard to the question of community.

Familial Affection Can Have an a Priori Value

Scheler was inspired by the intentional phenomenology of Husserl, he saw that our experience of
consciousness from the beginning already possesses an original structure. This structure, moreover,
is not like that of the empiricists who talked about passively receiving impressions and then through
associations connecting these impressions to concepts. What the theory of intentionality maintains is
that what we see first of all already includes the original possibility of the “things in themselves,” for
example, this cup, this drawer, and this is not simply their presenting to us a reflecting surface. In
other words, our perception of a cup already includes within in the “possibility of seeing” it again
from the perspectives of left, right, inside, etc. When I listen to a musical composition, every moment
that I hear will not be the sound of a physical timestamp, instead, it is bound to be at the same time
the sound previously heard and that which is about to come. From the perspective of physics, it is
only the presence and non-presence of a sound, the coexistence of a real sound and the possibility of
a sound that allows us to hear the melody instead of just noise. Therefore, in looking at this cup, in
listening to this musical composition, what I see and what I hear is not just “this one thing,” instead,

1 Translator: This is passage 45 from Mencius 7A. The translation used above is from P.J. Ivanhoe, see: Mencius:
Columbia University Press, 2009, p. 155. James Legge translates this as “He is affectionate to his parents, and lovingly
disposed to people generally.” (Legge’s translation can be found at ctext.org) Robert Eno simply translates it as “He loves
his parents and treats people with humanity, treats people with humanity and cherishes things.” (refer to
http://www.indiana.edu/~p374/Mengzi.pdf) If we desired to preserve the symmetry of the original qinqin 亲亲 which
Ivanhoe translates as “being affectionate toward his family,” we might translate it as “treating family as family,” “treating
kin intimately,” “treating those close closely,” or as “family-ing family” etc.

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it is a possibility, it includes a “fabrication” of this thing, therefore, there exists within this thing the
possibility of moving to that [one] thing and even to many things. This is where the possibility of
moving from “sensuous intuition” to “categorical intuition” or “intuition of essence” lies.
However, Husserl limited this movement from the particular to the universal (the possible
universal and not the actual universal) to the value-neutral object, therefore it is unrelated to the
emotional experience of being affectionate toward one’s family. According to his theory of the
division of experience, or “phenomenological household division,” there must first be an appearance,
an object provided by judgement or a “proof of residence,” before there can be the possibility of
emotion or other spiritual capabilities being given values. If it is like this, then the value of the
movement of being affectionate toward one’s family cannot be understood. This is because here we
have a tricky problem, that is how is the object which contains value able to transfer this value to
another or multiple (possibly unfamiliar) objects? Every particular has its own uniqueness, why will
it accept and contain the value of another particular? In conclusion, if the object comes first and value
comes second then this makes the transference of value from particulars to generalities exceedingly
difficult and later Husserl discussed the difficulty of how intersubjectivity is possible. Kant’s
formalism or universalism explains the case of moral nature and thus from the very beginning he
excludes the experience of being affectionate toward one’s family.
Scheler used the breakthrough of intentionally in regard to traditional theories on experience to
break through the theory of the priority of the object. Since the position of priority of sensuous
impressions toward objective intuitions cannot stand its ground, why can the position of priority of
objects towards value intuitions stand its ground? The intuitions of value-ness in our feeling (Fühlung)
that we receive are not lesser or later than the sensuous intuition of objects. When we eat a banana,
do we first eat the banana as a physical object and then imbue it with a value of deliciousness, or do
we directly eat the deliciousness of the banana as soon as we put it in our mouths? To use the words
of Wang Yangming, do we first “see a color (a good-looking woman)” before we establish an
intention to like her, or do we have an intention to like her as soon as we see her? “Detesting bad
scents” are also like this. (See the first scroll of Chuanxi Lu). Naturally, Yangming thought that
“seeing a good color” and “liking good colors,” “smelling bad scents” and “detesting bad scents”
happen at the same time. These two are not split into before and after, there is no such thing as a
division between an objective foundation and an upper level of value. Scheler is also like this, and he
even goes farther than Yangming in thinking that value precedes the object. Does not our perception
of the world and objects have at its base an original significance of good and bad meanings? Since
our perceptions are intentional from the start and do not in their entirety passively receive impressions,
then how would they not receive latent guidance and influence of foundational value (i.e. habit,
customs, pop fashion, life goals, etc.)? Intentionality is actually just directionality of intention and
“directionality of intention” is in the end “orientation of meaning,” and value is the shape of meaning
which affects human beings the most. How could it not lead our intentional perception?1

1 Trans: The author is here making a play on words. “Intentionality” in Chinese is 意向性 (yixiangxing) and what I have
translated as “directionality of intention” the author writes as “向意性”, reversing the 意 and 向. 意 (yi), within context,
points to consciousness (意识 yishi) and 向 points of “direction 方向 fangxiang” or “orientation 趋向 quxiang.” Thus I
feel “directionality of intention” is an appropriate translation, perhaps we could also use “directionality of consciousness.”

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 If the relationship between a person and others and the world is as Scheler has described it, if
value is a priori and guides the perception of objects, then the transference of value from “being
affectionate toward one’s family” to “being humane toward the people” and toward even more
external people and even things (“be humane toward the people and have love for things”), then this
makes sense. According to Scheler, the nature of value is dynamic, it is constructed via the directions
of likes and dislikes, loves and hates and are directly felt (fühlen) by us. Therefore, value is different
than the felt-state (Gefühlszustand), it has a very strong non-objective aspect. Hunger is a felt-state
of the body, the desire to eat is constructive value acts. People usually produce the desire to eat when
they are hungry, but Scheler says that in terms of people, there are some times when they do not
desire to eat even though they hunger, for example, anorexia, and sometimes people desire to eat
when they are not hungry leading to obesity.1 Liji – Tangong and Mengzi both have the explanation
of “would rather die from starvation than eat unworthy food.” Obviously, values and value-acts have
a unique power of construction, they can surpass the value object. When we love a person, perhaps
we can still have this love regardless of whether or not that person also loves us, or perhaps we can
keep this love regardless of whether or not that person still exists. Obviously, love only needs genuine
purity, it has a non-objective self-motive power and overflowing capacity. Being affectionate toward
one’s family is the most genuine pure love in all of the world, of course it has a kind of value which
overflows and is self-motive in nature. Therefore, it must not be limited to the objectified person of
one’s love, instead, it has an a priori tendency to flow towards other people. From this, “being
affectionate toward one’s family, being humane toward the people and having love for all things”
obtains a preliminary proof for its philosophical significance.
Scheler’s a priori value does not imply that value is unrelated to a posteriori experience, instead,
it simply implies that this kind of value is not an object of experience nor is it decided by an empirical
state. It has its own unique realm and is related to human beings’ nature. Being affectionate toward
one’s family is naturally empirical, it can be said that it is the most intimate experience, but because
it is most sincere and void of deceit, this kind of intimacy is not contingent on the object of one’s love
and is self-structuring. This is Mengzi’s so-called “innate ability (liangneng).”

The Internal Order of Value, the Person, and Love

If value comes from the differences produced by likes and dislikes and ethical values come from the
differences of love and hate, then the importance of value lies in differences and not in bearers or
objects, therefore all values presuppose differences. How should we then understand this kind of
difference? Where does it originate? Structuralism thinks that the structural differences of linguistic
symbols create linguistic meaning (Saussure), in regard to Scheler, original meaning is value, so then

The author also plays on the homophony between 意 and 义 yi (significance/meaning; Modern Chinese has the word 意
义 yiyi, which itself means “meaning” or “significance.”) and says that “directionality of intention” is the same as 向义
xiangyi, that is the “orientation of meaning” or “oriented meaning.”
1 Scheler, Max: Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die matierale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines
ethischen Personalismus. Original citation from: Lunlixue Zhong de Xingshizhuyi yu Zhiliao de Jiazhi Lunlixue, Ni
Liangkang (trans.), Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2004, pg. 252. (This page number refers to the original German text which
appears in the margin of the Chinese translation.)—this will be referred to as “Ethics” throughout the essay. The translator
requests the reader’s forgiveness for translating from the Chinese translation into English.

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what differences produce value? It appears that Scheler has not explored this question deeply, unlike
Husserl and Heidegger who in phenomenological time and temporality find the original structure of
difference; instead, it is only the “person” who points to this structure. In regard to persons, Scheler
very strongly asserts that persons cannot at all be objectified (naturally!), they are a different kind of
unity of act-essences.1 He already saw that there is fundamental relation between it and difference,
therefore, it cannot be objectified, idealized or substantialized, thus good and bad—they are values
of personality—cannot be grasped as object concepts or value goals. They can only be carried “on
the backs” of ethical actions, otherwise it will create hypocrisy or deceit; however, it appears that he
lacked earnestness and experience in regard to this point, even to the point that he used the “identity
of existence” to summarize it.
This kind of incomplete thought has some consequences, among which is the demarcation of the
different levels of value itself. Value comes from differences, but this does not mean that different
values have a fixed hierarchy. This kind of demarcation goes against the principle of the structure of
difference.
Scheler divided value into four levels: emotional value, life value, spiritual value (includes
aesthetical, ethical, and epistemological ones), and divine values. From these we can see the influence
of Plato and Christianity. Differentiating different values is necessary, but their arrangement into
different castes—having fixed hierarchical differences—thus loses the original meaning of value. For
example, divine values are already the highest, what does it rely on to win for itself the highest value?
Is it only its relationship with lower values? Then it only relies on its substantial self-nature in order
to maintain this difference and it betrays the principle of difference which produces value. When
Scheler says that personalities are the identity of different act-essences, he perhaps intends to
emphasize that all values, including divine values, come out of the structure of difference. However,
when his levels of value become set then it is the same as identifying this structure of difference with
the divine value or the pure personality which Scheler had in mind. In this way, the thought of an
original non-ready-made personality—perhaps it exerted some influenced on Heidegger’s
“Dasein”—began to become the superlative, or in this sense it began to be present-at-hand and
formalized.
Why is it that sensuous values (not felt-states) must be of the lowest order? In Wang Yangming’s
vision, although sensuous value acts of “liking good colors and detesting bad scents” differ from
ethical value acts such as “seeing one’s father and naturally knowing filial reverence,” there is no
determinate difference between them in “the unity of knowledge and action”. If King Xuan of Qi who
“loved good colors is able to share what he loves communally,” that is to say to allow other people
to also satisfy their sensuous value impulses for beautiful women, then this sensuous value act—it
will allow King Xuan of Qi to feel spontaneous value construction—will ascend to become an ethical
value act. Why are life values necessarily lower than spiritual or divine values? The Daoists would
not agree with this determination of values. Can the use of floods or wildfires (Genesis) that annihilate

1 Scheler: “Personalities are particular and self-sufficient existential unities of different value-acts, they are, of themselves
(thus they are not ours, προς ημας), prior to disparities between value-acts (they are especially prior to external and
internal sensations). The existence of personalities “founds” all different kinds of value-acts.” Scheler: Ethics, pp. 382-3.

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life on behalf of a spiritual or divine value or judgement such as God’s judgement of man’s fall and
the promotion of world values really be defended?
However, to say that love has an internal order is correct; then the question is how do we
understand it? The creation of love (or hate) and its creative value relies on the structure of difference,
but this kind of difference is not necessarily one of fixed levels, it can also be a difference in distance
or time. He who is benevolent “loves others.” (Lunyu – 12) This love certainly originates in difference,
it also has a certain internal order. Benevolence necessarily originates in intimate family love. 1 This
is the internal a priori order of benevolence, it takes the differences between kin and non-kin as a
premise; intimacy thus comes from the differences of generational temporality, it takes the lengthy
and profound existence of humans as its premise. Obviously, the order of love talked about by
Scheler—which takes value arrangements as its foundation—is hierarchical, tiered, and essentially
static and takes God or the divine as its peak; however, the Confucians maintain that the order of love
is horizontal having a path to flow on as well as disparity. It has its origin (in the family), but it does
not have a read-made top position, even though benevolent people and sages also cannot surpass this
origin.
Scheler also wanted to reduce the ossification of persons and the order of love, other than the
emphasis mentioned above on the non-objectification of the person, he also maintained that persons
and value acts are complementary. Personality is recreated unceasingly by such acts, and the reason
these acts even have value to speak of is because this kind of person exists. All values are produced
out of the flow of meaning that happens within differences, therefore they all enter into a “a process
of essentially unlimited” “resistance of finality.” 2 This infinite process “in pure satisfaction of
pleasure expresses itself by rapidly changing objects, in the highest particular love, it shows itself by
increasingly and deeply penetrating into the increasing abundance of ‘this one’ God.” 3 Therefore, the
“highest” level, regardless if it is expressed as the highest value, person, or the order of love, take
God as ultimate, and this God is not substantialized, instead it is just love.4 However, love is just an
attempt to bring that which you love “into the perfect direction of one’s own values,” it is a kind of
“building act and constructing act.”5 She cannot, furthermore, possess and monopolize this “perfect
direction.” This direction always carries with it a dimension of origination and cannot be obtained
through a single focal point, because this focal point is without difference. This is the insight of
ancient Chinese, especially pre-Qin, philosophy, thus they talk about “non-polarity and polarity”
(wuji er taiji), “polarity is rooted in non-polarity” (taiji ben wuji); and through yinyang discuss the
principles of the polarity and of love. That is, it is a non-substantial and purely generative
“deconstructive” means to become aware to the ultimate polarity.
According to the research of Husserl and Heidegger, the flow of time which we immediately
experience has meaning in itself, or it produces original difference and meaning. This is an important

1 Translator: “Benevolence” in Chinese is 仁爱 (ren’ai) which is contains the character “ai 爱,” which means “to
love/love.” “Intimacy (亲爱 qin’ai)” is composed of the characters for “(blood) relative, to treat affectionately (亲
qin)”and “love.”
2 Scheler: The Order of Love, in Scheler, Max: The Order of Love. Original citation from Ai de Zhixu, Sun Zhouxing, Lin
Keyi (trans.), Beijing: Beijing Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 2017, p. 108.
3 Ibid. p. 109.
4 Ibid. p. 105.
5 Ibid. p. 103.

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philosophical discovery and is very similar to the Upanishads, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism
of the East. In terms of Scheler’s ethics, it does not matter how pure or how natural the consciousness
of time is, it possesses value and it also produces value. Actually, understanding the personality which
Scheler talks about through this kind of temporal flow is more appropriate than understanding through
a highest God. Accordingly, Scheler later abandoned Catholicism and turned towards pantheism, I
surmise that this is related to the contradiction in his view on God. If he later left phenomenology,
then one of the reasons for that being the case would have been that he did not fully grasp and digest
Husserl’s thought on time and post-Husserlian phenomenology.
Confucianism will completely agree with the insights of Husserl’s, Scheler’s and Heidegger’s
phenomenology because they produced a Confucian orthodoxy explanation of “coincidence” on
behalf of “being affectionate toward one’s family and being humane.” Being affectionate toward
one’s family is the production of meaning cross-generationally or the production of the meaning of
love, moreover, the flow of this meaning of love is not unidirectional, instead, because the “time halo”
(Zeithof) naturally layers up, entangles and reverses on itself sequentially. Therefore, filial love—the
“requited love (Gegenliebe)” 1 in response to parental compassion—is possible, this point
differentiates man from animals. Furthermore, this love of being affectionate toward one’s family,
because of its spontaneity and genuineness will certainly produce value acts which tend toward
goodness and help to form healthy personalities. That filial love is especially so is because it, being
the reversed stream of love and a dynamic happening which is hidden in passivity, is the expression
of the structure of phenomenology’s “time halo,” therefore this most clearly manifests the a priori
ability (innate ability liangneng) of love’s ethical value complex. This is why it was viewed highly
by the Confucians as the “root of virtue” and “that from which education is generated.” (The Classic
of Filial Piety)
In comparison to the love of people for God or that of God for people—divine love—which
Scheler talks about, the special characteristic of intimate love (including parental compassionate love
and filial love) is its closeness to the actual lived experiences of human beings, thus it is most original
and most possesses the intuitive evidence emphasized by Husserl or the ethical insightfulness talked
about by Scheler. Actually, intimate love is still situated within the “temporal horizon” (Zeithorizont)
of the flow of time, two people who have an intimate relationship, such as a mother (or father) and a
baby are not isolated particulars, instead, they are the living holding onto momentary pasts and the
projecting of momentary futures (or the retention and protention) that together participate in the
construction of existential meanings and values-halo. Therefore, Levinas views the family as the
“origin of time.”2 Other kinds of love can all be seen as being derived from intimate love, and these
are already not the original meaning of love (namely, in the sense within the time-halo) that is
constructed and emergent in the present, instead it is re-presented. People know the meaning of love
and its original value from their original knowledge (innate ability, liangneng) of intimate love, and
then they can appropriately love others, for example, relatives, neighbors, fellow townsmen,

1 Scheler: Ethics, pp. 524-525.

2 Levinas: Totality and Infinity. Originally cited as Zongti yu Wuxian, Zhu Gang (trans.), Beijing: Beijing Daxue
Chubanshe, 2016, p. 299. Levinas writes: “As the source of time for human beings, the family allows for the subjectivity
situated underneath scrutiny to at the same time retain speech. It is a kind of an unavoidable metaphysical structure.”
(Translation from the Chinese)

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countrymen, spirits and even God. Scheler’s order of love actually requires that people begin from
loving God or from the feeling of having received God’s love so that true love can be known. “Every
love is a kind of love for God that is yet to be complete, often dormant or a longing for, or as if one
has stopped on the road to take a short rest.”1 This kind of absurdity undoubtably will lead to deceit
(Täushung), that is to bring something which is not present into the current and actual situation,
because people cannot self-evidently and directly experience God’s love and also produce a
corresponding requited love, but this must be experienced through scripture, the explanations of
priests, the church collective and other such things in order to indirectly experience it. This is thus a
great space for the appearance of deceit, manipulation by the church, and the constraints left behind
by the collective. Every theory, school, and society that talks about love faces the threat of deceit and
hypocrisy, Confucianism is no exception, therefore Confucius was extremely aware of the
“hypocritical Confucians” and petty people. The Zhongyong, the Daxue, and the Mengzi all employed
their own methods to “obtain knowledge of things and extend knowledge, make sincere own’s
thoughts and straighten one’s mind,” and the reason why being affectionate toward one’s family
cannot be done away with is because no matter what time or in regard to what person, it is only this
kind of intimate love that possesses the least possibility for hypocrisy and deceit. It is the singular
and most sincere way of the gentleman.

The Other Within and Between Communities

Scheler divides social units (Sozialeinheit) into four levels, that is the masses, life-community
(Lebensgemeinschaft), society and the collective person (Persongemeinschaft). 2 This division
roughly corresponds with the four divisions of values. What must be paid attention to is that they are
not actual social groups, instead they are the social units which make up social groups. Therefore,
there can exist some or even whole social units at the same time within villages or social communities.
These four social units have two “communities,” that is the life-community and the collective person.
Classic examples of the life-community are the “family, clan, and ethnicity,” its form is mainly
“marriage, family and the village collective.” 3 Classic examples of the collective person is the
Christian congregation. He obviously (or I think he obviously) thought the collective person fully
embodies the person, therefore the person is the highest level social unit among these four. Its main
characteristic is that it allows individual persons (Einzelperson) and total persons (Gesamperson) to
exist simultaneously without mutual interference and to even mutually promote each other. If a
community has an experience of communal love and hate that becomes a center for communal
experiences, moreover, if this accords with the definition of person (the unity of different act-
essences), then there is a total person. Society is constructed out of social contracts, there are only
individual persons and no total persons. According to the logic of this way of thinking, the life-
community should have total persons and no individual persons, and the masses have no person to
talk of whatsoever. However, Scheler is even more serious in regard to the life-community and views

1 Scheler: The Order of Love, p. 104.

2 Ethics, Chapter 6 pt. B section 4 point 4, p. 515.
3 Ibid. 535,537

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it as having neither individual or total persons, there is only a kind of solidarity. The masses
sometimes come together but do not have solidarity.
This kind of discrimination against the life-community or the family and kin relations is the
characteristic of Western culture, especially of Plato and Christian theology. But the point in Scheler’s
devaluing the life-community is that he rejects that it has individual persons, therefore their solidarity
is at a discount or is “replaceable.” Thus, one of his criticisms of the life-community is that it “lacks
any distinction between my-experiences (Meinerleben) and your-experiences (Deinerleben).” 1 In
other words, because this kind of community lacks any solitary individual persons therefore it lacks
you and me in an individual sense or the distinction between me and others. Further, in Scheler’s
view, a community that does not have individual persons cannot have total persons, therefore he
rejects the total persons of life-communities. 2 Actually he rejects that life-communities have
personalities.
This criticism cannot hold its ground. First of all, this is because a life-community that is lead at
the front by family relations does not lack individual persons. Let us look at a passage from the
Classic of Filial Reverence:

Zengzi said: “……I dare to ask if a son following his father’s order can be called filial reverence?” The
Master said: “What kind of saying is this! What kind of saying is this!” In the past, there were seven
ministers who weren’t afraid to criticize the Son of Heaven, so even if he was without the Way, he did
not lose all under heaven; …… if a father has a son who is not afraid to criticize him, then his person
will not fall into impropriety. Therefore, if there should be impropriety then the son cannot but criticize
his father and a minister cannot but criticize his ruler. Therefore, when there is impropriety then it must
be corrected through remonstrance. [Blindly] following the orders of one’s father, how could that bring
about filial reverence!” (Classic of Filial Reverence – Remonstrance 15)3

The relationship between parents and children is the most important family relation, these are
not simply composed of orders, education, obedience, and compliance (this kind of “filial compliance”
is often misunderstood as “blind obedience” by contemporary Confucians), instead it is composed of
“appropriateness (义 yi).” “Therefore, if there is impropriety, then a son cannot but criticize his father.”
The traditional character for “appropriateness” (義 yi) has the character for “me” or “I” in it (that is,
wo 我). This clearly shows that proper behavior begins from my own person: “That which is proper
[is that which is] mine…… appropriateness must have things not done and restraint.” (Duan Yucai’s
saying)4 The “appropriateness” in this passage is being used with this precise meaning. Moreover,
Confucius’ words not only require remonstrance with fathers on behalf of propriety, but also at the
same time actually affirms that this kind of filial propriety or proper filiality in undertaking affairs
(can) certainly exist(s) within familial relations. From our own experiences and observations in regard

1 Ibid. p, 515.
2 Ibid. p.517.
3 A similar saying can also be seen in The Record of Rites – Inner Principles. Confucius, in Analects – 4 says: “In serving
one’s father and mother their mistakes should be pointed out. If you see that in their actions they have not listened to your
criticism, then you should still be respectful and not protest while maintaining worry within without begrudging them.”
4 Commentary on the Shuowen Jiezi (Shuowenjiezi zhu) (Han) Xu Shen (compiler), (Qing) Duan Yucai (commentator),
Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 2011 (1988), p. 633.

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to our families, we can also affirm that the deed of filial children—sons and daughters who deeply
love their parents and who communally experience ethical lives together with them— “remonstrance
with one’s father on behalf of propriety” is internally linked with their identity. A person who truly
loves his/her parents is a person of love, what such a person does not wish to see the most is for their
parents to perish in “impropriety,” therefore, when there is impropriety there must be remonstrance,
even if it is extremely subtle and slight. What this promoted was the “goodness” (that is the
connotation of the yang 羊 in the character yi 義) of society and family and not the separation of
family relations. This explains that the filial child situated within the same family relations as their
parents affirms the individual person in Scheler’s sense of the word, it is that it makes this filial child
able to directly feel “propriety,” and because of this want to expend effort so that a parent does not
“fall into impropriety.”
Kongzi also said: “People tend to like those who show them affection and love and avoid those
who show baseness and vulgarity……thus there are few who love a thing yet know where it is not
good and dislike a thing yet know where it is good……this is what we mean by you cannot bring
together your family without cultivating your person.” (Daxue 8) The objectification of people’s love
and hate does not give love and hate uniqueness, freedom, or self-evident clarity; therefore, people
deceive themselves in their partiality for what they love and deceive themselves in the partiality for
what they hate. However, original love and hate imbues likes and dislikes with an objective spiritual
value, that is to know the flaws and insufficiencies of a person at the same time you love that person
or to know the goodness in a person at the same time you hate that person. Through “self-cultivation,”
it is possible to get rid of the tendency to objectify the object of one’s love which causes it to lose its
originality, to also fall into a tendency towards “that which you love,” and to establish the a priori
position of value-acts already contained within intimate love. From this we see the original
appearance of intimate love which can bring families together. The Daxue views “self-cultivation” in
this way, thus it says: “this is what we mean by you cannot bring together your family without
cultivating your person.” The clear possession of an individual person in the “self (shen 身)” in “self-
cultivation (xiushen 修身)”—it is different than particularity—guarantees that the total person of the
family or the family person also guides self-cultivation. This differentiates it from the self-cultivation
of Daoism, Mohism and Christianity.
Clearly, Scheler’s criticism of the life-community as “lacking any distinction between my-
experiences and your-experiences” cannot stand its ground at all when facing this conclusion that
affirms individual persons within family relationships. There is certainly consciousness of the other
within the family community, otherwise, how could there possibly be “sons who point out propriety
to their fathers”? Also, the family is humanity’s method for coherence and this center of coherence
cannot be done without, it manifests as family customs, family education, clan genealogies and
unspoken rules, etc., therefore, this family community which does not lack individual persons affirms
total persons; this is the family person or the household person (家人格 jiarenge and 家庭人格 jiating
renge respectively, the latter focusing on the people in the household as opposed to the house itself).
From this, the saying that “if one family is benevolent then benevolence will flourish throughout the
state” will make sense because the relation between the family and the state is not one of a micro-
community and a macro-community. If things are like this then there is no foundation for the
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benevolence in the family to transfer to benevolence in the state, but if we view the family and the
state as a relationship between family persons and state persons then the transference of value from
the family to the state will be unobstructed because persons are non-objects and possess the power of
value transference.
On the other hand, Scheler’s approval of the collective person which takes the Christian church
as its example— “the collective of love,” “the most perfect expression of personhood”—also might
have been praised too much. As we said above, the distance and remoteness of divine love requires
that it be explained, but the central place in explanation which the church and doctrine occupies lead
to a non-phenomenological situation., that is its believers following blindly because they are not
situated in a self-evident and direct experience of love. Therefore, even though the church or the
collective person possesses a transcendent spirit and an internally condensed love, as soon as it enters
into a doctrinal explanation or the division of church leadership authority, then this condensed love
will turn into condensed hate. For example, the Christian church is harsh and severe to internal
heresies and the appearance of new religions leads to religious war; or, for example, the long-term
animosity, discrimination and bloody conflicts that even persists to this day between the Christian
church and other collective persons (Judaism, Islam). Therefore, Scheler himself in the concluding
part of his Ethics also talks about a kind of “essential tragedy” for collective persons (“between
persons who are most perfect, possess the highest value and a limited good”).1 This explains that
between Scheler’s so-called collective persons there lacks a consciousness of the other and the
construction of a corresponding ethical value that expresses itself as the absence or lack of genuine
tolerance between religions.
However, because the Confucian collective person is rooted into an intimate love that has little
to no deceit and personal relationships, they, therefore, on the contrary have a consciousness of others
between collectives. Historically, other than a few instances of friction, the Confucians have basically
been at peace with other religions. After the Tang and Song dynasties there was even a tendency
toward being mutually complementary between Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. It is not
possible to see this in the history of Western religions, and it cannot also be related to the recent
separation of church and state which lead to some kind of religious tolerance. What we regrettably
see is that the “clash of ‘civilizations’” is still happening. The key point is: from the perspective of
phenomenology, intimate love and divine love have different experiential qualities or structures, that
is, there is no fundamental clash between intimate love and there will be a clash if the divine love
which is related to intimate love is broken away from. From this there appears a problem in need of
our serious consideration: what kind of collectivity does the collectivity of future humanity require:
is it the collectivity of intimate love or is it the collective person which should be taken as our model
for survival?

(Translated by Kevin J. Turner)

1 Ethics, p. 575.

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 Befriending the Things We Use: Beyond Rén and Ubuntu

Graham Parkes

If we are to become fully human or humane, in the sense of the Confucian term rén 仁, one way is to
extend the love that obtains among members of the family to other human beings. This process would
be compatible, as far as I know, with the notion of ubuntu in African philosophy. In view of the savage
and warlike traits in human nature, these are fine ideas. But considering the violence and destruction
we visit upon other living things on the planet, some of which we depend on for our lives, it’s clear
that we’d benefit from a more comprehensive understanding of human flourishing than humanistic
notions like rén or ubuntu provide.
Of course, in order to sustain ourselves we human beings have to be anthropocentric—just as
any species has to be species-centric in order to survive. But if we narrow our concern to the field of
the human too much, anthropocentrism may be our undoing, insofar as we have long been
compromising the integrity of the natural ecosystems on which our survival depends. And if we are
interested in thriving, we do well to get beyond our anthropocentrism and take care not only of
ourselves and our fellow creatures, but also of the things, or ‘inanimate’ entities, we use in our day-
to-day lives.
Indeed our current environmental predicament—global warming, pollution of the air, earth, and
water, deforestation, decimation of fish and wildlife populations—stems to some extent from a deeply
dysfunctional relationship with the things around us. Belongings, possessions, stuff—usually way
more than enough of them. We tend to be especially alienated from natural things, cut off by
urbanisation and the screens of information technology, but our interactions with human-made things
are often similarly impoverished.
An unobtrusive factor in our destruction of other life forms is insidiously effective: plastics.
Plastic production increases relentlessly, and the deadly debris continues to accumulate. There are
microparticles of plastic everywhere, including in the stomachs of whales, fish and sea-birds—and of
most people who eat seafood. Projections of plastic production predict a steady increase, which will
wreak further havoc on ecosystems around the globe.1
Our dependence on plastics is emblematic of our dysfunctional relations with things in general:
we acquire them almost without noticing, accumulate more than we need, end up with many more
than we can take care of—and usually end up throwing them away. Wouldn’t our lives be enhanced
if we paid more attention to things, extended our concern to them, took better care? One thing that
would follow from this would be a halt to producing synthetic things like plastic and anything else
that doesn’t biodegrade and becomes waste that disrupts natural ecosystems.
If we step back to ask about the thinking behind this dismal state of affairs, we find a prime
suspect in the view of the physical world as mostly lifeless. This worldview regards animals as lacking
soul or personality, vegetation such as grass, flowers, and trees as lacking awareness, and ‘inanimate’
things such as rocks or tools as lacking any kind of life. Such things are to be used and manipulated
for our own purposes, and to be cared for only insofar as they’re useful to us. Obvious as it may seem
to us moderns, this is actually an unusual way of viewing things.

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 The first philosopher of the Western tradition, Thales of Miletus, is believed to have said that
‘the whole world is ensouled’, and to have ascribed soul to ‘inanimate’ things—in part because ‘the
Magnesian stone and amber’ are able to move iron.2 And in Plato’s cosmology, as presented in the
Timaeus, the world is regarded as ‘a truly living thing, endowed with soul and intelligence’, and as
animated throughout by what the Neoplatonic tradition would later call the ‘world soul’ (anima
mundi).3
However, some time before Plato a peculiar idea of the human soul had emerged in Greek culture,
deriving from shamanism and what has been called the ‘Orphic-Pythagorean’ tradition. On this view
the human soul exists prior to the body—is even ‘eternal’ and thus infinitely more ‘real’—and the
body is regarded as a ‘tomb’ for the soul, a prison, from which it will be finally released at death. 4
Christian philosophy would later develop a modified version of this dualism, in the light of its
regarding the body as fallen and a site of sin, which eventually resulted in an understanding of the
entire physical world as inanimate.
In the course of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, philosophy took an
extraordinary turn when the Cartesian thinkers deprived the physical world (res extensa) of soul,
denying it even to animals, in spite of their name (anima = psuchē = soul). They affirmed that only
human beings, as thinking things (res cogitans), are ensouled. The physical world became unanimated,
dead matter in motion, machine-like, an enormous mechanism. Dualism taken to the extreme.
This way of thinking had become mainstream by the nineteenth century, when Western
anthropologists studying ‘primitive’ cultures started thinking about the way their subjects appeared
to experience the world. So when the great pioneer of cultural anthropology, E. B. Tylor, introduced
the term ‘animism’ in his monumental classic Primitive Culture, he applied it in a special sense to
‘savages and barbarians’, who are strongly inclined to ‘personify’ things. From Tylor’s postCartesian
scientific perspective, which understands material objects are lifeless, if ‘primitives’ experience the
world as alive with ‘personal souls’ and ‘spiritual beings’ inhabiting natural phenomena, they must
be unconsciously projecting aspects of their own psychic lives onto the inanimate world around
them.5.
This sense of ‘animism’, soul projected onto material things by primitive minds, refers to a
remarkably recent phenomenon (since the seventeenth century). Indeed it’s only when you get the
parochial (northern Europe) and peculiar idea (never occurred to the Chinese) of Cartesian ‘mind-
matter’ dualism that you need a word like ‘animism’ to mean the projection of human feelings and
qualities onto inanimate beings. For most people during most of human history, the world naturally
presents itself as animated, or ensouled, from the start.6
Now that the environmentally devastating consequences of the modern scientific worldview are
becoming obvious, we are retreating from the extreme view that only humans have soul. Nevertheless,
while Western advocates of biophilia and deep ecology extend their concern to all living things, they
tend to get stuck at the stage of ‘biocentrism’ without going all the way to include the mineral realm
of rocks and mountains—and from there inanimate things of use.
Are we really so sure that ‘inanimate’ things are lifeless? And when we shout at a tool that breaks
at the worst possible time (usually due to our carelessness), are we regressing to a primitive belief
system—or is there something to the feeling that a high-tech gadget like a laptop computer can appear

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to pick up on our moods? After all, if we turn to the highly sophisticated philosophical tradition that
developed in China, we find that the distinction between animate and inanimate is relatively irrelevant.
When the Confucians promoted ritual propriety as a way of enhancing social harmony, this
required a careful cultivation of one’s interactions with things as well as persons. Not only must the
garments be appropriate to the occasion, but also how one wears them: you have to pay close attention
to the angle of the hat, the sweep of the sleeve. Special care is required when handling ritual
implements—and by extension all things of use.
The Daoist thinkers recommend we move beyond anthropocentrism by extending the Confucian
practices of reciprocity (shù 恕), putting oneself in the other person’s position, to animals and plants
and the rest of ‘the ten thousand things’ as well. This move is based in an understanding of the world
as a field of qì 氣 energies. The Zhuangzi talks about how ‘all creatures take shape between
Heaven and Earth and receive qi energy from the yin and yang’. Qì energies transform
themselves along a continuum from rarefied and invisible, as in the breath, to condensed and palpable,
as in rock.

The birth of a man is just a convergence of qi. When it converges he lives; when it scatters he dies. …
Hence it is said: ‘Just open yourself into the one qi that is the world.’7

Being all one energy, qì is not just ‘life energy’: it also constitutes rivers and rocks—what we in
the West regard as ‘inanimate’ matter—as well as the animal and vegetal realms. In short: it’s all
things, the whole world.
It so happens that in ancient Greece, shortly before the time of Confucius, the Presocratic thinker
Anaximines came up with a remarkably similar idea. He identified ‘the underlying nature’ of all
things as ‘one and infinite: air’ (aer in Greek), which when ‘rarefied’ by heating becomes fire, and
when ‘condensed’ by cooling becomes ‘wind, then cloud, water, earth, stones’ and so forth.
Anaximines also assimilated aer with psyche, meaning ‘soul’: ‘From air all things come to be, and
into it they are again dissolved. As our soul, being air, holds us together and controls us, so does wind
[breath] enclose the entire cosmos.’ This wind as the one underlying nature is ‘always in motion’,
making the notion even more consonant with Chinese qì philosophy.8
The Chinese thinkers regarded the entire field of qì as conditioned by a process of ‘sympathetic
resonance’ (gănyìng 感 应 ), as when similarly tuned strings on musical instruments vibrate in
sympathy with one another. It’s a matter of interaction among things of similar kinds when they
mutually affect and respond over distance, in the absence of any visible or tangible medium—or,
rather, through the medium of qì energies at their most rarefied or quintessential (jīng 精).9 Even
though the process works most powerfully between things of the same kind, it can also work across
kinds, between us and ‘inanimate’ things. For instance, an expert craftsman’s interaction with tools
and materials can be so intense that the product has an almost supernatural (shén 神) quality to it—
‘daemonic’, as Goethe called it.10
A well-known story in the Zhuangzi ascribes the consummate skill of Butcher Ding to his contact
with the daemonic. After many years of dismembering oxen, he no longer perceives the carcass with
his senses but rather handles it through ‘the daemonic’ or ‘spirit’, at a level beneath conscious

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experience where he can intuit the natural ‘energetic’ structure of the matter at hand. The text doesn’t
mention the term, but it sounds as if he’s carving on the basis of sympathetic resonance with the
inanimate ox carcasses—such that after nineteen years of use, his cleaver is still ‘as sharp as if it had
just come off the whetstone’.
In another story in the Zhuangzi Woodworker Qing is able to carve bell-stands with such skill
that they appear to be ‘the work of spirits’. When asked how he does it, he explains that it’s a matter
of attuning his qì energies and emptying himself of all thoughts and human expectations, so that he
can ‘feel’ the natural structure of the appropriate wood. Then the carving and shaping are a matter of
‘matching up’ the natural energies of his body, honed by long practice, with the natural energies of
the wood which have produced this particular grain.11 Another case of sympathetic resonance:
consummate practitioners using tools as extensions of their bodies, resonating with things through
things they’ve made and then incorporated.
The Zhuangzi was a special influence on the first great Chinese Buddhist thinker, Sengzhao (fifth
century), whose basic philosophy was that ‘the transformations of things … are all one qi’.12 Chinese
Buddhism later came to understand the unity of all things in terms of ‘the same breath’, or energy, of
buddha-nature—the capacity to awaken to a realisation of one’s participation in the whole
interdependently -unfolding world.13
A succession of thinkers from different schools argued for the buddha-nature of all sentient
beings rather than just humans; then for the ‘attainment of buddhahood by plants and trees’; and
finally the buddha-nature of everything that exists—the great earth, soil, and even ‘particles of dust’.14
And if all the things we deal with are buddha-nature, they deserve our attention and respect insofar
as this view makes them close relatives, and companions on the way to enlightenment. Centuries later,
the Neo-Confucian thinker Shao Yong elaborated the Zhuangzi’s non-anthropocentric worldview into
a qì philosophy in which sympathetic resonance with other beings enables us to appreciate their
perspectives.

The sage reflects the universal character of the feelings of all things. The sage can do so because he views
things as things view themselves; that is, not subjectively but from the viewpoint of other things. …
When one can be happy or sad with things as though he were the things themselves, one’s feelings may
be said to have been aroused and to have responded to a proper degree.15

The notion of arousal and response is helpful in highlighting the affective aspects of
understanding: it’s not a matter of knowing things in the framework of an abstract epistemology, but
of getting a feel for them, sympathizing with them.
The last great Neo-Confucian thinker, Wang Yangming, emphasised human interdependence
with things by using the term ‘one body’:

At bottom Heaven, Earth, the myriad things, and the human form one body. … Wind, rain, dew, thunder,
sun and moon, stars, animals and plants, mountains and rivers, earth and stones are essentially of one
body with the human.16

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 This way of thinking—it’s all a field of qì energies, within which the human body is a particular
configuration: all things one body with the human—remained central to Chinese philosophy through
the ensuing centuries and up to the present day.
The idea of qì can’t simply be dismissed as scientifically unverifiable, because it’s more a
philosophical than a scientific notion. Nevertheless it did inform and support the development of an
advanced tradition of natural sciences in China.
Indeed the notion of qì underlies several other key aspects of Chinese culture: statecraft,
traditional Chinese medicine, fengshui, martial arts and exercise regimes, calligraphy, painting,
architecture and garden making. It all hangs together. And to understand oneself as being ‘one body’
with things of nature and things of use transforms our experience of them and thereby our interactions
with them.
If we can make do with fewer things, and more congenial ones, it’s easier to realise we’re one
body with them. We find a philosophy advocating just this in Japan’s Zen Buddhism, which grew out
of the Chan school of Chinese Buddhism and developed a practice of tending things with the utmost
care. The great Zen thinker from the thirteenth-century, Dōgen (道元), encouraged monks who
worked in temple kitchens to use the polite forms of the Japanese language when referring to the
materials of their craft: ‘Use honorific forms of verbs for describing how to handle rice, vegetables,
salt, and soy sauce; do not use plain language for this.’17 He also recommended treating the kitchen
utensils as well as the ingredients with the careful attention.

Put what is suited to a high place in a high place, and what belongs in a low place in a low place. Those
things that are in a high place will be settled there; those that are suited to be in a low place will be settled
there.18

In keeping the kitchen well ordered, the order doesn’t derive from a plan in the head of the cook
but rather from paying attention to suitabilities suggested by the things themselves. This allows us to
situate the utensils so they’re ‘settled’, and thus less likely to fall down or get damaged.
Once we get down to cooking, we find that the creative interplay between activity, utensils, and
ingredients is what Dōgen calls ‘turning things while being turned by things’.19 We need a sense both
for how things are turning so that we can align ourselves aright, and for how our turning is in turn
affecting what is going on. Optimally, beneath it all, there’s an effortless interplay among hands,
implements and ingredients.
If we wanted to make this kind of activity into a chore, we could, simply by framing it in terms
of means-to-ends: I need to keep the kitchen tidy in order to cook and eat efficiently, so as to make
time for the really important stuff— whatever that may be. The way we so often structure our
experience and activities, distinguishing the fulfilling ends we aim for from the burdensome chores
we have to discharge in order to achieve them, condemns us to a great deal of drudgery. Of course
we need some means-ends thinking in order to survive, but beyond that, if we free things from
enslavement to our purposes, we find our engagement with them is much enhanced.
For example: some time ago my wife and I were living in Japan, which meant that every morning
after getting up we had to remove the bedding from the tatami-matted floor and store it for the day on
shelves behind sliding doors along one side of the room. We eventually realised that if we didn’t want
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this first shared task of the day to be a chore, we could make it into something more like a dance. It
had been clear early in our marriage that we would never be the next
Astaire and Rogers, but the field of putting away bedding is far less competitive. In folding the
sheets, once you synchronize your actions with those of your fellow folder, the interplay becomes a
joy to participate in. Attention to efficient body movements lets you avoid unnecessary exertion and
postures that produce strain: that way, the motions flow easily and smoothly, and on a cold morning
the exercise has a pleasantly warming and tonic effect. The enjoyment becomes richer as you learn
to harmonise your movements not only with your partner’s but also with the size and weight and
texture of whatever you’re folding, responding to the sheet or blanket as a third participant in the
early morning dance.
When storing the futons becomes with practice more spontaneous, you lose the sense of
performing the movements and gain a feeling for the unfolding of the activity from a centre that’s
somewhere among the participants. You know where the futons, once folded, belong; and things go
better if, instead of your having to heave them into place, you simply help them get to where they
need to be—again as suggested by the things themselves.
Well, there’s a great deal more to say about this topic, but time is up and so I’ll close with a little
prediction. Namely, if we can celebrate ‘turning things while being turned by things’, we’ll surely
enjoy them more—not as a substitute for, but as an enriching complement to, our social and
interpersonal interactions.

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 Ubu-ntu and Ren: to be a Human Being is to Love Ethically

Mogobe B Ramose
Department of Philosophy, University of South Africa

Abstract: This essay examines two kin concepts in African and Chinese philosophies, namely,
the ubu-ntu and the ren. The philosophical implications of these concepts are varied but share
the common obligation to seek the way of truth in the complexity of life as a wholeness. Truth,
according to these philosophies, is understood as a complex lived practical experience of love
in search of justice and peace with regard to the individual human being and, all other human
beings including all that lives. Love of, with and, for another human being is impossible without
the practical acceptance of another human being as one’s ontological equal. This is doing justice
to oneself by upholding truthfulness. It is to accept the ethical imperative to renounce self-
deception in the practice of daily life. Underlying this renunciation is the recognition that love
for oneself is meaningless unless it accepts relatedness to, with and for others as the context
within which truth, justice and peace may be attained. Accordingly, the fundamental thesis of
ubu-ntu and ren is that to be a human being is to love ethically; it is to have pun jen – a humane
heart (goba le pelo) – through, with and for others in the quest for truth, justice and peace. To
illustrate this, ubu-ntu and ren will be placed in dialogue in this essay.

The finding that the human being originates from Africa is of special interest for many reasons. First
it gives rise to the question why the exodus from Africa to other parts of the world appears to have
promoted the affirmation of identity in terms of differences among human beings. Often, the
concentration on differences led and, still leads, to sometimes deadly conflict among human beings.
This continuing deadly conflict appears to ignore or to be oblivious of the finding in contemporary
science that: “At the DNA level, we are all 99.9 percent identical. That similarity applies regardless
of which two individuals from around the world you choose to compare. Thus, by DNA analysis, we
humans are truly part of one family”. (Collins, 2007: 125-126) It is significant that the author uses
the concept “identical”. This underlines the oneness of humanness.
Second, the doctrine of Discovery (Miller, 2011) emphasised difference among human beings
by inventing a false ontological hierarchy based on the imaginary racial superiority of human beings
with pink skin colour referred to symbolically as whites. As a result, a large segment of humanity
was enslaved and coerced into structural and systemic poverty. This condition is so normalised
through subtle coercion and manipulation that it has now attained surreptitiously the status of being
natural. The dominant economic model today focuses on this condition in the name of “poverty”,
“development” as well as the tension between “employment” and “unemployment”. Despite the
formal abolition of slavery in many parts of the world, epistemic enslavement – a living residue of
the original epistemicide of the doctrine of Discovery – continues to reinforce widespread global
economic and social injustice. Social justice cannot be complete without epistemic justice.

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 Today, the rich countries of the North state that they are faced with the two-faced problem of
“migrants” and “refugees”. Many of them appear to be totally oblivious of their over enthusiastic
attraction and absorption of “migrants” from foreign countries into their own countries especially
after the second world war. The purpose was to have the “migrants” participate as workers in the
reconstruction of their economies destroyed by war. “Migrants” then served as the solution to the
problem of economic reconstruction. The relationship between economic reconstruction and social
welfare speaks for itself. It does not need special pleading. The success in economic reconstruction
turned many of the countries into social welfare states.
A variety of complex reasons combined to urge the rich countries of the North to adopt policies
for the repatriation of “migrants” willing to return to their countries of origin. The heavy and rapid
waves of “refugees” into the rich Northern countries exacerbated the “problem” of sharing wealth
with the “leftovers” (Francis, 2013: paragraph 53) – human beings second to none in their ontological
status as human beings - discarded ruthlessly by the dominant global economic model. This “problem”
arises at a time when most of the rich Northern countries are experiencing a decline in their population.
They have the self-made artificial problem called the shortage of babies. From an ethical standpoint,
this artificial problem can be solved precisely by welcoming “migrants” and “refugees”. But this
solution is hardly contemplated. Instead, they are dealing with this “crisis” primarily from the
perspective that efforts should be intensified to persuade “migrants” to return to their countries of
origin and, to ensure that a controlled minimum of “refugees” is granted asylum.
In the midst of this “crisis” there is complete and total silence about the many economic refugees
from the rich countries of the North living in the many poor countries of the South. These economic
refugees come under the guise of “foreign investment”. They are visible in many forms such as the
Volvo, Ford, Renault, Jaguar, BMW, Rolls Royce, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot, Fiat, Mercedes Benz as
well as other technologies and “services”. The invariable and primary purpose of their presence in
the countries of the South is to make financial profit and thus to increase their wealth. What is the
ethical basis for condoning the presence of these economic refugees in the poor countries of the South
while at the same time unwelcoming “migrants” and “refugees” who are the structural and systemic
product of the dominant global economic model supported unto death by the rich countries of the
North?
The above question must be answered from the premise that it is not the first time that limitless
and immoderate love of money led to moral decay and decadence in the cultural history of the West.
“The Spartans were remarkable for their money. It was made of iron, and was so heavy that a strong
ox could carry only a little of it. We are told that Lycurgus made the money heavy so that no one
would ever be fond of it, for he firmly believed that money is the root of all evil”. (Ogan, 1938: 575)
Aware of the moral decay of the society of his time, Solon - quoted in Seaford - observed that “Of
wealth there is no limit that appears to men. For those who have the most wealth are eager to double
it”. (Seaford, 2004: 165) He advised “moderation” as the remedy to the ensuing moral decay. (Seaford,
2004: 166) But ethics was overcome by moral blindness intensified by eagerness to double one’s
wealth at any cost, (Arnsperger, 1996: 12-13) including the ever-ready strategy of deliberate
collective suicide: the nuclear weapons strategy of annihilation known appropriately as MAD –

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Mutual Assured Destruction. And thus the nascent pecunimania of ancient Greece became a full-
blown disease of our time affecting and infecting every sphere of the life of human beings.
Pecunimania continues to be propelled relentlessly by “competition” understood mistakenly
(The Group of Lisbon, 1995: 90) as seeking against “the other”. It has turned human beings into
preying wolves devouring one another ruthlessly. The wealthy few wield economic power to subdue
the many to ethical paralysis in the service of limitless financial profit-making. So it is that “the
sovereignty of money” (Vandevelde, 1996: 481-483) has overtaken democracy surreptitiously in our
time (Herz, 2001) and replaced it with timocracy. But the world without ethics can never be the home
of human beings.
Third, bounded reasoning underlies the prevailing understanding that physical and cultural
boundaries created by human beings exclude those outside them. Bounded reasoning is the
epistemological imperative to create boundaries in order to derive and attach meaning to whatever
exists around us. That which is encircled within the boundary claims particularity by reference to
being separate from that which lies outside of the boundary. This view also underpins the concept of
state as a political entity. State sovereignty is the axiom and, virtually the dogma of contemporary
international politics. Bounded reasoning is epistemologically necessary for the construction of
individual and collective identity but it may not be ethically decisive in the construction and
constitution of human co-existence. This proviso is exemplified by “the moon treaty”.
Under the United Nations "Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and
other Celestial Bodies, (1979)," colloquially referred to as "the moon treaty", humanity has shown
that the divisiveness of state sovereignty is ethically unnecessary for the construction and constitution
of human co-existence. This was done through the unconditional, total and comprehensive
renunciation of any claim to sovereign jurisdiction insisting upon exclusive ownership of any part of
the Moon, including other “Celestial Bodies”. In this case, humanity opted for communal pluriversal
non-ownership based on the principle of equality. (Westen, 1982: 547-548) It is paradoxical that the
Moon, which is generally associated with madness, should be the inspiration for sane, sober and
solid ethical reasoning about the organization of human relations on the basis of equality for the sake
of justice and peace. President Trump’s recent announcement that the United States of America
intends to have “a space force” is certainly a threat to this ethical condition brought about by sane
lunatic reasoning. (Ramose, 2016: 78-81)
The crucial point about the “moon treaty” is that its ethical dimension should be implemented
into practice in the sphere of human relations here on planet Earth. Mother Earth is the contingent
ontological panarium for all born of her. No single human being is a stranger, a “migrant” or a
“refugee” to mother Earth. Even birds migrate without a visa to any part of the world. After all,
boundaries may be understood as porous intersecting lines forming a fluid and complex wholeness.
This understanding opens the way for humans to pursue an answer to the question of what it means
to be a human being in the world. We now turn to consider this question against the background of
the context we have just described. Our consideration will focus on the African and Chinese
philosophies of ubu-ntu and ren. The appeal to these philosophies is the recognition of intercultural
philosophy as an ethical imperative of our time.

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Intercultural Philosophy

The trade between Africa and China today is not a new phenomenon. It happened in the distant past.
(Needham, 1975: 170-190) One may assume that the trade was not confined only to merchandise.
There was probably a cultural exchange as well. In the light of this, it is not odd to have ubu-ntu and
ren in dialogue. The dialogue between ubu-ntu and ren here is an important advancement of
intercultural philosophy. To understand intercultural philosophy as an ethical imperative of our time
is to acknowledge that reason does not, by ineluctable necessity, lead humans to give identical
answers to the same set of questions. Difference thus arises with regard to the ways of thinking and
doing. This condition of human existence is a challenge to seek the Tao – the way of truth - of living
together in one planet.
Consonant with the philosophies of ubu-ntu and ren, we suggest that “truth” is a complex
construct of multiple experiences crystallised as a specific temporal and changeable perspective on a
particular aspect of reality. Accordingly, “truth” is not a metaphysical immutable timeless datum
subsisting aprioristically and, independently of the concrete existential experience of living human
beings. (Bohm, 1993: 16-17) The Tao of truth is an unrelenting immanent quest for the best ethical
outcome in given existential conditions. To seek the Tao, (Chang, 1958:51) the way of truth, is to
challenge the understanding of boundaries – physical, spiritual and cultural - as impermeable isolated
enclosures subsisting without reference to the other excluded human beings but allowing the inclusion
of the excluded primarily for the well-being of those already enclosed.
One of the conditions necessary for intercultural philosophy or the polylogue of world
philosophies is the presupposition that all human beings do have the power of reason. This is a crucial
point to make since it was not always presupposed, for example, in the Western philosophical
tradition. (Williams, 1990, Isaac, 2004: 35-37, and, Wrenhaven, 2013: 10-21) If this were otherwise
then it would have been unnecessary for Pope Paul III to issue the Bull, Sublimis Deus. (Hanke,
1937:71) It is significant that the opening sentence of the Bull is that: “All men are rational animals”.
Also, women in the Western philosophical tradition have not always been held to be endowed with
the power of reason. (McMillan, 1982:1-15; Spelman, 1983:17-30)
For some the irruption of difference is construed as opposition. The logic of opposition often
follows the path of suppression and, even the destruction of difference in order to sustain one’s
original position. It is, however, the case that the logic of opposition in the face of difference is neither
the necessary nor the only answer that reason must provide. The power of reason also provides that
difference may be construed as an invitation to engage in a dialectical and critical encounter with the
other remaining open to the possibility to learn both about oneself and the other. This is
transformational learning. The indispensable condition for the attainment of transformational learning
is the willingness to listen. (Kimmerle and van Rappard, 2011:12) This must be predicated on the
recognition that one’s ways of thinking and doing are on the same level as those of the other and may
therefore be compared. Comparison proceeding from this premise is non-invidious (Healy, 2000:64-
65) since it is not aimed at establishing a hierarchy of ways of thinking and doing coupled with ethical
evaluation. The fundamental issue here is the validity of making comparison without prior and
coincidental endorsement of either the methods or the purposes of the comparison. The suspension

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of judgement on the methods and purposes of comparison is crucial since it provides the space for
dialectical and critical discussion with the other.
The condition of “comparable validity” (Healy, 2000:65) discussed above must be
complemented by the principle that all human beings are ontologically equal in their status as human
beings. Differences arising from biology, physiology, economic, political or social standing may not
be invoked to invalidate this principle. The principle of ontological equality thus emerges as an
indispensable condition for engagement in the polylogue of world philosophies. Together with the
two conditions mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, this principle makes it possible for dialogue
to proceed on the basis of equality, (“dialogical equality”). (Healy, 2000:65) All the three conditions
mentioned together constitute the ethical basis for intercultural philosophy. (Wimmer, 2002;
Kimmerle, 2002; Kimmerle, 2009; Leezenberg, 2010:38)

Ubu-ntu and Ren

Ubu-ntu is the philosophy (Ramose, 2005: 35-46) of the Bantu-speaking peoples of Africa since time
immemorial. Like Chinese philosophy, it places special emphasis upon the practical, lived experience
of a philosophy. Ubu-ntu is a doing word; a verbal noun that is conceptually linked to umu-ntu or mo-
tho, the human being. As an abstract verbal noun, ubu-ntu finds concrete expression through the
activity and, more specifically, through the ethical conduct of the human being, namely, umu-ntu.
Ubu and umu follow the same logic that they are indefinite abstract concepts signifying the highest
level of both generality and uncertainity. Only when they are combined with the suffix –ntu do they
assume a specific character, namely, a gerundive in the case of ubu-ntu and a concrete noun in the
case of umu-ntu. The uncertainty associated with ubu and umu underlines the ontological
understanding of be-ing as –ness because motion is recognised as the principle of be-ing. On this
reasoning, the multiplicity of beings that manifest the wholeness (Bohm, 1980) of be-ing are
recognised as being subject to change, temporality and evanescence.
Furthermore, the recognition of motion as the principle of be-ing is the ground for the rheomode
language of ubu-ntu; a language attuned to the philosophical conception of be-ing as being in constant
motion in its various concrete manifestations. The rheomode language is incompatible with any –ism
reasoning on the ground that such reasoning tends to claim immutability and eternity by dogmatic
fixation to ideas. Umu-ntu as an embodied percipient produces an epistemology. Epistemology is the
ground – no doubt recognising its contemporaneity with ontology – for the emergence of the ethics
of umu-ntu. This ethics is called ubu-ntu. The ethics of ubu-ntu revolves around umu-ntu for as long
as umu-ntu continues to be the ontological concretisation of be-ing.
According to our explanation in the two preceding paragraphs, human-ness is the core meaning
of ubu-ntu. It is the condition of leading an ethical life through moral acts affirming oneself as a
human being through the affirmative recognition of other human beings as ontological equals of
oneself. Here we note a significant coincidence of insight between ubu-ntu and ren. In the words of
Confucius; “wishing to establish himself, he seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged
himself he seeks also to enlarge others”. To live ethically is to be constantly engaged in learning to
be human by sharing goodness and the necessaries of life with others in pursuit of mutual well-being.

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 Already it is to be noted that ren is described in many texts as “humanness”. We should like to
stress in particular this concept of “humanness” because it agrees with our understanding of ubu-ntu
as humanness. This is an important concept that disallows anterior dogmatic fixation to whatever
ethical principle especially when the living reality of the time may require either a modification of
the existing principle or its total abandonment in preference to a new one better responsive to the
given situation.
“Promote life and avoid killing” (Bujo, 1998: 77) is the point of departure of the ethics of ubu-
ntu. It ramifies into all spheres of being. One of its enduring principles is: mo-tho ke motho ka batho.
This means that every human being is an ethical touchstone of value. Because of this human conduct
ought to be ethical in all spheres of life. Human conduct that is contrary to ethics reduces, in the
metaphorical sense, the individual involved to a non-human status. At this point it is said in one of
the Bantu-language vernaculars, in this case, Northern Sesotho: gase motho selo se; meaning; this
individual has denigrated itself to the level of the non-human. The contempt associated with this
designation speaks to a very strong censure against the immoral act at issue.
The concept of the qi in Chinese philosophy has a close affinity to the elan vitale or “African
vitalogy” in African philosophy. (Nkemnkia, 1995:165-70) In Chinese philosophy, the qi is
understood to consist of the male and female principles, the yin and the yang respectively. The
unceasing interaction between these two principles generates continual changes that challenge the
human being to seek the way of truth. (van der Leeuw, 2010:118) In the present essay, the challenge
is limited to the question of distributive justice. The basis for the challenge is that ren has a political
dimension. The Wang Tao or the Kingly Way in Chinese philosophy will be considered together with
the African philosophy of “life is mutual aid”, letsema in the Northern Sotho Bantu language or, obra
ye nnoboa, in the Akan language of Ghana. (Wiredu, 2002:293) To accept this challenge is to give
the joint response of ren and ubu-ntu philosophies to the context that we have already described above.

The “Unbearing Heart” Illuminates the Dark Road to Justice

According to Mencius, one of the transmitters and transformers of the teachings of Confucius, “All
men have a mind which cannot bear (to see the sufferings of) others. The early kings, having this
‘unbearing’ (pu jen) mind, thereby likewise had an ‘unbearing’ government”. (Fung Yu-lan,
1983:119) Instead of allowing human suffering or being just a passive spectator on it, the “unbearing”
mind would seek ways to prevent, remove or alleviate the suffering. In ubu-ntu philosophy, pu jen is
conveyed as goba le pelo, meaning, to have a humane heart. A human being with a humane heart is
struck by the suffering of other human beings as well as other living beings. To this motho wa pelo
(the human being with a humane heart) responds positively by doing the necessary to promote life
and avoid killing. Our understanding of killing is that it can be a physical act terminating the life of
another human being. It can also be a psychological act, in the form of torture, for example, or the
spiritual destruction of another human being.
Pu jen is an ethical imperative in the realm of interpersonal relations and, also in the wider
domain of politics. It is not only a mere declaration. It is, most importantly, the will to actually die as
a matter of necessity in order to give life to others. To give life to others is to die ultimately in defence

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of truthfulness (Kung, 1968: 36) in the concrete historical struggle for justice. In both the
interpersonal and the political spheres truthfulness and truth are indispensable for the realisation of
justice and the achievement of peace. A government with an “unbearing” mind is the appropriate one
for the administration of distributive justice.
It is significant that the pu jen is rendered as “unbearing”. The point of significance here is the
word jen. Jen is one of the four basic principles constituting “human nature”. The other three are, I,
(justice) Li and Chi. (Chang, 1958:45) Jen is the name of virtue in its entirety. It requires that one
carries five things into practice. The five things are: respect, magnanimity, sincerity, earnestness and
kindness. “With respect you will avoid insult; with magnanimity you will win over everyone; with
sincerity men will trust you; with earnestness you will have achievement; and with kindness you will
be well fitted to command others”. (Fung Yu-lan, 1983:73) Together with these one must have the
five Confucian virtues, namely, benevolence, righteousness, propriety in demeanour, wisdom and
good faith. (Fung Yu-lan, 1983:27) The bearer of this kind of “human nature” is a Sage (Fung Yu-
lan, 1983:117) and deserves to be the ruler.
The understanding of the various aspects of pu jen as constitutive of “human nature” is rendered
in ubu-ntu ethics as: kgosi ke kgosi ka batho; the king attains the status of kingship through and with
the ruled for the purpose of pursuing justice and peace in the kingdom. The king who acts against this
aim is not deemed to be a Sage and deserves to be removed from office. (Davidson, 1973: 195, 197
and 204) From both perspectives of African and Chinese philosophies, the Sage is the one who must
pursue the “Kingly Way” of government.

The Wang Tao or the Kingly Way of Government: Letsema

In ancient China, the ching t’ien or “well-field” system (Fung Yu-lan, 1983:10-11) benefited the
noble class. Mencius converted this into “an economic institution with socialist implications” (Fung
Yu-lan, 1983:118) beneficial to the peasants and the serfs. This conversion reveals a striking
coincidence with Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa. (Nyerere, 1975:512-15) Whereas Fung Yu-lan describes
this as “socialist” it would, from an African philosophy point of view be described as communalist.
In this context, the institution of letsema is the African “Kingly Way” for the administration of
distributive justice. The African philosophical basis of letsema is the thesis that life is mutual aid:
obra ye nnoboa.
Land was indeed allocated to individuals for own use intended to ensure survival. The cultivation
of land was not the exclusive concern of the family. On the contrary, other families participated in
the cultivation of land on the understanding that their land would also be cultivated by other members
of the community. In addition, communal land for cultivation was also the common concern of the
community. The yield from the land was for the people reserved in seshego. The king on the advice
of his councillors dispensed of the yield to the community on the basis of need. Underlying this
institution was and, still is co-operation for the sake of the well-being of all. It was indeed competition
in its original meaning of seeking together. Under those circumstances, the peoples of ancient China
and some of contemporary Africa were able to live so that they may “nourish their living and bury
their dead without dissatisfaction”. (Fung Yu-lan, 1983:119)

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 The situation described in the preceding paragraph is characterised by the primacy placed upon
the well-being of everyone and all. This affirmed yet another of the maxims of ubu-ntu ethics, namely,
feta kgomo o tshware motho. It means that whenever one was to make a choice between preserving
the life of another human being, thereby promoting its well-being and accumulating wealth then the
option ought to be for the preservation of human life. Thus, money, if there was any at all, played an
insignificant role in the respect, protection and promotion of the life and well-being of everyone.
Unlike today, pecunimania then was the remotest possibility.
The constitution of the community was predicated on the understanding that the family was prior
in fact to the gathering together of human beings to form the community, the commonwealth or the
state. These kinds of artificial gatherings of human beings were subject to the achievement of the aim
of establishing optimal conditions to ensure individual and collective well-being. Failure to achieve
this aim was a warrant to repudiate such associations. (Rerum Novarum, paragraph 10) Today the
“moon treaty” is a living example of the peaceful repudiation of the state.

Conclusion

In our time, the Kingly Way is replaced with timocracy in which money is the measure of all things.
The relentless, intensifying march of economic globalisation feeds on the historical trinity of
structural, systemic and systematic impoverishment of the many for the benefit of the few. This
condition is a challenge to distributive justice as understood and practised in ancient China and in
some parts of contemporary Africa. It is the reason for the invocation of ubu-ntu and ren in the quest
for the Tao of the “unbearing mind” under the changed conditions of our time.
The water that mother Earth offers to drink is for everyone and, so is the bread that she offers to
eat. Mother Earth is the panarium of all human beings to share and eat together as one family. This
demands love for one another and not egoistic genuflection at the altar of an economy which insists
upon the coercive exclusion of others and spawns violence. Ogotemmeli the African Sage reminds
us of the wisdom of ethical love through pun jen thus: “As each man gives to all the rest, so he also
receives from all. A perpetual exchange goes on between men, an unceasing movement of invisible
currents. And this must be so if the universal order is to endure. … for it is good to give and to receive
the forces of life”. (Griaule, 1965: 137) And this is the rheomode of ubu-ntu ethics. Ubu-ntu and ren
may best be described separately or jointly as philosophiae amoris.

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 Love, the Passions, Relationship:
The Contribution of the Medieval Latin Tradition

Eileen C. Sweeney
Boston College

In this paper I will attempt to illuminate some of the ways in which the Medieval Christian tradition
makes a distinctive contribution to the understanding of love and the passions. Though influenced by
ancient Western accounts in Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, we find transformations of these ideas in
the Latin Christian tradition within the larger structure of the desire for and union with God as both
transcendent and personal and as the aim of human life in these Christian thinkers. One of the
consequences is that relationship becomes central to what it means to be human, not just to God but
also, ultimately, human relationships. And because the God to whom humans are related absolutely
transcends our understanding, the affective is valued over the cognitive as the only way of being
united to God as the beloved. Union with that which is outside of and transcending the self cannot be
achieved as something we do but something (or someone) we receive, and, thus, the culmination is
in ecstasy rather than self-mastery or self-sufficiency.

1. Augustine and the Centrality of Love

Augustine makes the most important basic claims about the centrality of love in the Christian tradition.
Augustine transforms Stoic principles by placing them into an ethics of love. Augustine accepts the
Stoic principle that one should not love what can be taken against one’s will, even accepting that the
category of what can be taken against one’s will includes not only the material goods of wealth and
one’s own body and its health and well-being, but also other human beings whom we might love.1
This becomes the distinction between uti and frui, what is to be loved for its own sake versus being
loved for its usefulness. As Augustine’s De doctrina christiana makes clear, the only thing that can
be frui, loved for its own sake, is God, all else is merely uti, useful for the end of loving God. As
much as this would seem to discount the world of our passions and our human loves and relationships
(and it is that), it still leaves love and relationship at the center of human life. The relationship that is
defining is with God rather than other human beings, but the ultimate foundation is affective, as
opposed to reason and the self-contained, self-sufficient life of Stoic virtue.
We see very clearly the story of the turning rather than turning off of the affections in
Augustine’s Confessions. The Confessions, of course, is full of emotions and affective attachments –
besides Augustine’s sexual relationships and his friend’s addiction to the violence of the games, there
are Augustine’s intense affections for his friends and his mother, his experiences of love and grief
that are overwhelming and gripping. These relationships and feelings are in principle disapproved of
by the kind of Christianized Stoicism that reserves love for God, but also, clearly, on another level,
Augustine affirms these affective experiences, and not just as stepping stones toward transcendence.

1 Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, Bk. 1, chapters 12-16.

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Scholars have defended Augustine from the charge that he sees human relationships only as a means
rather than an end in itself, citing especially his sermon on the Gospel of John in which Augustine
comments on love, God as love, and the command to love one another. In the sermon, Augustine
makes clear that love of neighbour means loving and acting for their benefit, not our advantage. This
much is found in Aristotle, but it is clear that for Augustine, the language of love has in effect
superseded the language of virtue. Augustine’s critique of pagan virtue paints it as prideful and selfish.
By contrast for Augustine, love, whether for God or neighbor, is focussed on the other rather than
self. It is an ethic in which the affections are both primary and outwardly directed. This is the outline
that will come to filled in in the coming centuries.

2. Friendship and Affection in Anselm

The centrality of the affections finds further expression in the work of Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm
is far ahead of his time in creating an intensely personal and passionate spirituality. Known for his
stated reliance on “reason alone,” Anselm is also the creator of some of the most emotional, personal,
and elaborate prayers of his time, focused not on coolly convincing the intellect but on arousing the
passions and will toward love of God. The prayers exhort not, as philosophers are wont, the calming
of the passions but rather the stirring up of feelings of love, hope, longing, and sorrow. The prayers
ask the reader to join in the sufferings of Christ’s passion and describes the love the sinner seeks from
Jesus, Mary, and the saints in terms of intimate human love – that of lovers, parents and children,
brother and brother, nurse and nursemaid.1
The importance and emphasis on the affective life is also found in Anselm’s letters. Unlike
friendship in both Aristotle and Cassian and to a much greater degree than Cicero, Anselm's letters
express passionate longing and anguished grief at separation, using the language of physical grief and
longing. Strikingly different from the rhetoric in Augustine’s letters, Anselm’s letters express fervent
love for individuals, placing all his bliss in their presence and despair at their absence. 2 Here is a
typical passage: "My eyes long [concupiscunt] to see your face, my most beloved; my arms stretch
out to your embraces. My mouth pants for your kisses; whatever remains of my life desires your
conversation, so that my soul may delight in complete joy with you in the next life." 3 As with later
notions of romantic love, the very intensity of this love explains, at least partly, how it can last forever
regardless of the parties' separation from one another.4 It is not just that Anselm borrows his language
of longing and fervor from physical and sexual love, but also that he uses the language of love of

1 See Eileen C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2012), 13-37.
2 Cf. Augustine’s correspondence with Nebridius as a possible analogue to Anselm’s letters to his fellow monks. However,
the rhetoric of Anselm’s letter is much more extreme than anything between Augustine and Nebridius, which is much
less effusive and is without the kind of appeal of physical longing and grief found so frequently in Anselm. Moreover,
the letters between Augustine and Nebridius move almost immediately after opening greetings of affection into
discussions of philosophical and theological matters; their main topic is not the relationship itself, as it is in so many of
Anselm’s letters. Augustine and Nebridius are engaged in philosophical dialogue. See letters 3-13 of Augustine’s
correspondence, in Augustine, Letters, Roland Teske, trans., John E. Rotelle, ed. The Works of Saint Augustine: A
Translation for the 21st Century, pt. 2, vol. 1, (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2001), 19-43.
3 Anselm, Epist. 120, ed. Schmitt, vol. III, p. 258, ll. 8-12.
4 Anselm, Epist. 75, ed. Schmitt, vol. III, p. 197, ll. 7-10.

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something for its own sake rather than as a means, treating those human relationships as frui rather
than uti.1
In his letters, Anselm ultimately reverts to a more Augustinian model of a love of the other not
as passionate or particular but in God, arguing that the attachment is so perfect the parties need neither
words nor physical presence, and even that this intense and apparently particular love can be
transferred without loss to any monk of the community. To those looking for ever more particular
professions of love, this response was met with disappointment. Nonetheless, what is striking is that
Anselm begins from a model of friendship that looks like the opposite of the Augustinian/Benedictine
model. Like the evocation of the intimate love between mother and child, brother and brother,
nursemaid and baby in his prayers, Anselm’s letters acknowledge and affirm the human desire for
these kinds of intense, physical, and exclusive attachments. While Anselm tells monks to abandon
their families, exhorts them not to leave the cloister to help family members on the outside, urges
husbands and wives to give up their marital relationship to join the cloister, he does not disparage the
desires those relationships are designed to satisfy. Rather he argues that those most intimate, specific,
concrete and physical desires are fulfilled rather than obliterated in the spiritual relationships of the
monastic life.
Anselm has combined elements of earlier forms of classical friendship and sexual love in poets
like Ovid, put together the moral basis and stability of classical friendship with the intensity of longing
and desire in erotic love, to describe a model of human relationship that anticipates the advent of
romantic love in the 12th century. The borrowing of the language of erotic love for a higher love has
precedents, of course, in Plato’s ascent of the soul and, even closer to Anselm, in Christian mysticism,
where longing for union and union itself with God is described in erotic terms. However, Anselm
uses the kind of language mystics use for love of God for his love and longing for his fellow monks.
He takes his language not just ‘up’ from erotic love but also ‘down’ from mystical union to human
relationships. The reapplication of the language of mystical longing and union to human relationships,
even the spiritual relationships of the monastery, places passionate human relationships at the center
of human life; they are neither the optional ornament of virtuous life, nor characterized primarily by
their careful management by reason. What emerges in the 12th century directly influenced by Anselm
is an affective spirituality and the development of the notion of courtly love.

3. 12th century: Affect over Intellect

More than Anselm in the 11th or Aquinas or even Bonaventure in the 13th century, Hugh of St. Victor
(d. 1141) makes some of the most important innovations on the nature and role of love in human life
in the Western Christian tradition. Hugh’s short work, Soliloquoy on the Betrothal Gift of the Soul, is
an internal dialogue between the soul and the self, which explores the soul’s desire to be loved
uniquely, for and as itself, and exclusively. As we saw, Anselm takes that desire and tries to argue
that it is fulfilled in the love of the monastic community, in the love that all monks have for each
other, but for Anselm there is still something general about this love in which each monk is loved the
same as every other. Hugh does not try to redirect or sublimate the desire for particular love, only to

1 Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, I, 3, 3.

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show how it is fulfilled in God’s love. In the dialogue, the soul protests that the gifts of creation are
given to reptiles and worms as well as the sinful and, thus, do not satisfy the desire to be uniquely
loved.1 The “self” attempts to respond that holding some gifts in common is better than having them
all to oneself (it is better, for example, to share the natural world with other human beings than to
possess it exclusively but be alone), but the soul persists in demanding gifts from itself alone.2 The
self’s reply consists in a description of creation and salvation history in terms of the unique love of
God for the individual soul. God’s gifts to the individual come first in the form of existence and then
the beauty of form: “Formerly, when you were not, he loved you and so he made you. Afterwards,
when you were sordid, he loved you and so made you beautiful.” The actions and relationship to
Jesus Christ are also explained in terms of particular love, “Your spouse, your lover, your redeemer,
your God, chose and preferred you. He chose you among all and took you up from all and loved you
in preference to all.”3 Only then is the soul satisfied, replying: “God does nothing else except provide
for my salvation, and he seems to me so completely occupied with guarding me that he forgets all
others and chooses to be occupied with me alone.”4
The little treatise ends with a description of the soul’s experience of something he knows not
what: he has found himself “completely alienated from [it]self and drawn away.” “[I] see myself to
be elsewhere, I do not know where” but have “hold of something in the embraces of love.” 5 Is this
the beloved, soul asks? It is, self replies, the beloved who “comes to touch you, not to be seen by you”
“comes to move you, not to be grasped by you….”6 In his description of the connection with God in
terms of being “touched” and “moved” rather than being “seen” and “grasped,” Hugh points to
another of his important contributions, in the transformation of mystical union in affective rather than
intellectual terms.
The latter is evident in Hugh’s influential commentary on the treatise of Pseudo-Dionysius,
which transform the purely intellectual Neoplatonic ascent in Pseudo-Dionysius into one completed
in love rather than knowledge, as the fiery love of the Seraphim overtakes the intellectual grasp of
the lower order of the Cherubim. In Dionysius’ Mystical Theology Moses ascends to union with God
only by the negation of all his intellectual capacities in an experience so far exceeding knowing as to
be described as “unknowing.” As Paul Rorem’s careful analysis reveals, Dionysius does not explain
the fieriness of the Seraphim in terms of love; this is rather an addition found in Scotus Eriugena’s
commentary on the text, and Hugh, taking over Eriugena’s language of love in the Seraphim and
knowledge in the Cherubim, makes the further important claim that Seraphic love exceeds Cherubic
knowledge.7 Hugh’s long digression on the Seraphim in his commentary weds their fiery love with
the images of conjugal love from the Song of Songs, using the language of mutual penetration to
describe the lover’s union, concluding, “love [dilectio] surpasses knowledge, and is greater than

1 Hugh of St. Victor, Soliloquim de arrha animae, English version: Soliloquoy on the Betrothal Gift of the Soul, in On
Love: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam, Achard, Richard and Godfrey of St. Victor, ed. Hugh Feiss, O.S.B., (New
York: New City Press, 2012), sec. 21, p. 210.
2 Hugh, Soliloquoy, sec. 31, p. 214.
3 Hugh, Soliloquoy, sec. 50, p. 219.
4 Hugh, Soliloquoy, sec. 65, p. 226.
5 Hugh, Soliloquoy, sec. 69, p. 227.
6 Hugh, Soliloquoy, sec. 70, p. 228.
7 Paul Rorem, “The Early Latin Dionysius: Eriugena and Hugh of St. Victor,” Modern Theology 24:4 (Oct. 2008), 609.

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intelligence. He [the beloved] is loved more than understood, and love enters and approaches where
knowledge stays outside.” Boyd Taylor Coolman’s study of Thomas Gallus traces the further
elaboration and transmission of this affective Dionysianism to Bonaventure and the whole Franciscan
tradition. The final ecstasy of union with the beloved requires a shift from the active seeking of the
intellect to the task of enstasis (as opposed to ecstasis), a stretching and hollowing out, so that one
can receive the beloved one cannot actively grasp. 1 This affirmation of passivity and receptivity
stands over against the standard (if not universally held) view in ancient Western thought that
denigrates passivity as feminine. Virtue is much more often cast in masculine tones as activity and
self-sufficiency, and the roles of lover and beloved are set in opposition, lover as male and active,
and beloved as female and passive. But the Victorine account, all human beings are receivers of
divine love, and, even more surprisingly, union is cast in terms of mutual indwelling, as both partners
are received into the other. In this valuing of and reconfiguring of love and affectivity, Hugh and
Gallus are not merely forging an interpretation of Dionysius but are, as Coolman points out,
expressing “a conviction regarding how human beings are most basically constituted and how they
relate most fundamentally to God.”2
In the Franciscan tradition affectivity even confers a kind of ‘understanding’ and a certainty
distinct from that found in science. In the Franciscan Summa fratris alexandri from the 13th century,
theology is described as perfecting the affections rather than the intellect and as truly wisdom
(sapientia), because it is cognition according to taste (sapor) rather than sight. 3 Conceding that
science has greater intellectual certitude, the writers distinguish between affective and intellectual
certitude. The latter is ‘through the mode of vision,” but the former, affective certitude “is through
the mode of adherence, namely through the will or love.”4 The Summa fratris alexandri writers, like
Bonaventure, take the view that this affective understanding is higher both because about higher
things and because oriented toward action to achieve the good, making us good rather than mere
knowers of it.5

4. Thomas Aquinas: The Passions and the Transformation of Aristotle

In Thomas Aquinas, the elements of the Victorine account of affectivity makes it out of mystical
theology, where it had been explicated as the character of love of God, into the treatise on the passions
of the sensitive appetite. While Eleonore Stump (who was originally scheduled to be speaking in this
symposium and for whom I am an inferior substitute) has argued that Aquinas’ ethics deviates from
Aristotle’s in the more important role of the passions and of relationships, she makes that argument
based on elements of Aquinas’ thought that come from the theological notion of the “gifts of the Holy
Spirit” and the theological virtues, I want to maintain that we can find evidence of this shift within
Aquinas’ account of the passions.

1 Boyd Taylor Coolman, “The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition,” Modern Theology 24:4 (Oct. 2008), 623.
2 Coolman, “Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition,” 616.
3 Summa fratris alexandri, q. 1, cap. 1, cor. in Doctor irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales ordinis minorum summa
theologica, ed. Pacific Perantoni, 5 vols. (Quarrachi: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1924-48), vol. 4, p. 2.
4 Summa fratris alexandri, q. 2, M. 3, cap. 5; vol. 4, pp. 35-36.
5 Summa fratris alexandri, q. 1, cap. 1, cor.; vol. 4, p. 2.

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 This happens in two different movements. The first is an understanding of the passions in terms
of natural movement toward fulfillment mapped onto the three stages of motion: first, the inclination
toward an end contained in the nature; second, the movement toward the end, and, third, the rest or
fulfillment in that end. Aquinas takes these three moments and generalizes them; the original
inclination of nature toward the full actualization of its form (the acorn’s movement to become oak
tree) becomes the movement all natures have toward good and away from evil. He then maps 11
major passions on to this basic trajectory. Hence, love is the inclination toward the good; desire is
movement toward it; hope, the movement toward it as an attainable but arduous goal; despair, the
turning away from an unattainable good; joy or pleasure, the resting in the good possessed. So too
hatred is the disinclination to evil; aversion, the movement away from evil; fear, the movement from
the arduous future evil, shunned rather than defeated; daring, the tendency toward evil in order to
defeat rather than be subject to it; sorrow, the resting in subjection to evil; and anger, the movement
toward evil in revenge for an evil done. 1 For Aquinas all passion in some way reducible to the
tendency of things to seek what is suitable to their nature and flee the contrary, all are movements
which presuppose a likeness or aptness to that toward which they tend.2 In this way, he uses the model
of nature and its fulfillment as a way of affirming the passions as naturally good when directed toward
real rather than apparent good.
When Aquinas considers whether the passions themselves are morally good or evil, he argues
against the Stoics and with the Peripatetics that passion is not an evil, not a disturbance of the soul or
nature, unless unchecked by reason.3 But he goes further, citing Augustine, that any passion itself is
good if it turns to what is truly good and tends away from what is truly evil.4 This Augustinian claim
is used time and again as the pivot to shift the orientation of the discussion toward love of the good.5
The centrality of love as the inclination toward good makes possible and animates this schema; in an
important sense love is the cause of all other passions and always that in terms of which they are
analyzed and explained: "The end is the good desired and loved by each one. Hence is it manifest
that every agent of whatever kind does every action whatever from love of some kind."6 Against not
just the Stoic rejection of pleasure as good, but also the Platonic view that no pleasure can be the
greatest good, Aquinas affirms that the greatest good of human being is in the pleasure/joy in the last
end.7
However, alongside the emphasis on the model of nature to understand the passions, an account
of love and the passions begins to emerge which is less contained by the Aristotelian model of moving
toward becoming actually what one already is potentially. There is a subtle shift from movement
toward the fulfillment/completion of a thing’s own nature to movement toward the good, which can
cover not just what is contained in but is beyond nature. The shift becomes seismic in the question
considering the “effects” of love. Merely the title of the articles tell us that we have left Aristotle

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 23, a.1.

2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 25, a. 2; q. 26, a. 1; q. 27, a. 4.
3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 24, a. 1.
4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 24, a. 4, ad 2.
5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 24, aa. 1 & 2, sed contra.
6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 28, a. 6.
7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 34, a. 3.

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behind to join the Victorines: Aquinas asks whether union, "mutual indwelling", the ecstasy of lover
and beloved, the zeal of and wounding of the lover are “effects” of love. Aquinas considers how
‘wounding’ can take the forms of “melting,” “enjoyment,” “languor,” and “fervor” -- all language
that comes from the Song of Songs, and taken as describing the effects of seeking intimate knowledge
and satisfaction, possession and identification of feeling with the beloved.1 The question as a whole
is grounded in two sources, the Song of Songs and Pseudo-Dionysius, the very same sources Hugh
of St. Victor and the Victorines tied to together to forge a new account of affectivity as at the center
of human life.
In these passages, Aristotelian orexis, directedness toward the end in the fulfillment of nature,
is superseded by mystical love, in which the object is outside and exceeding the self, in which the
aim is union with that other, not fulfillment of the self. Love is ecstatic in three ways, Aquinas
explains, first, as the beloved dwells in the lover’s mind, second, in concupiscence, not being satisfied
with the good one has, and seeking a good outside oneself, and, finally, most completely in the love
of friendship where “affection goes out from itself absolutely” wishing and doing good for the friend
for his sake.2 Aquinas also argues that a passive love based in the sensitive appetited for God is more
"godlike" than a rationally grounded dilection: “it is possible,” he explains, “for man to tend to God
by love, being as it were passively drawn by Him, more than he can possibly be drawn to Him by his
reason, which pertains to the nature of dilection.”3 Aquinas, thus, repeats the Victorine claims valuing
the affective over the cognitive, receptivity and passivity over activity, but goes further in expressing
that view not in the context of mystical experience but the passions of the sensitive appetite. While
clearly Aquinas takes the sensitive or bodily appetite to be inferior to the higher/intellectual appetite,
the desire for non-bodily goods (because always needing change and replenishment), but by outlining
the positive character of appetite in general in the account of the sensitive passions, and by elevating
them by association with mystical union, he gives them a value and place in human life beyond what
is found in Aristotle. He even, as in this case, finds aspects of the sensitive appetite, its passivity and
non-rational nature, as being more fitting for the love of God because God as object exceeds our
rational capacities.

5. A Brief Look Forward: Late Medieval and Early Modern Developments

Juan Luis Vives, who carries forward aspects of the Thomistic view into the modern period in his
influential treatise on the passions, reasserts Victorine and Thomistic confidence in love of the good
as the underlying force in our affective lives. Vives, however, understands that while love of the good
might be the root of our affective lives, the branches multiply out in many confusing directions.
Rather than trying to bring back the diversity of objects and reduce the alchemical mixtures of
passions to the simplicity of love of the good and aversion to evil as Aquinas does, Vives seems to
value those affective responses in all their diversity. He belittles the Stoic rejection of mercy and
compassion, not only because we are more ready to help others when we feel for them in their

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 28, aa. 1-3.

2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 28, a. 3.
3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, part I-II, q. 26, a. 3, ad 4.

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suffering but also because “bending your soul to the affliction of others” itself alleviates others’ pain
and suffering. “No help is more welcomed and more efficient,” he concludes.1 Compassion is the
effect of the love and attachment human beings have for each other, and to be without it is inhuman.2
Vives catalogues the varieties and perversities of love, which is the mainspring of the passions, but
most striking of all is his conclusion: “Love created us, perfected us and makes us happy.” He is
referring not only to the love of the divine but also to its many diversions and permutations onto other
objects, and concludes by wondering at “[love’s] incredible and inexhaustible strength and
mysteriousness.”3 He expresses an appreciation of all of it -- funny, petty, perverse and profound, not
a Platonic (or Thomistic) call toward conversion of loves toward the one, true good. The only blanket
condemnation of passion Vives issues is of those that proceed from apparent evil rather than apparent
good; these emotions, he says, “brutalise and degrade.”4 A tendency to value the positive emotions,
no matter the true value of their objects, turns up later in Descartes’s work on the passions, where
Descartes notes that despite the ephemeral or mistaken character of our loves and desires, we are
better off loving than hating, desiring than fearing. Here the defining moral feature of the passions
for Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas drops out: the objects as true goods to be sought or evils to be avoided
is exchanged for a valuing of the passions, at least the positive ones, in themselves regardless of their
objects. Not to love (no matter the object) is to fail to be human.
Though clearly more Stoic than these earlier figures, Descartes’s Les Passions de l’Âme, on the
one hand, constructs a program for managing the passions. But, on the other hand, Descartes still
manages to end in a place of tolerance, noting that since we cannot always avoid being deceived about
the true good or evil of an object, we should seek the positive emotions of love and joy, avoiding
hatred. In the end he finds the passions, even the negative ones, to possess a kind of sweetness,
granting to human life a fullness it would lack without them. 5 Descartes concludes that wisdom
teaches us “to manage [the passions] with such ingenuity, that the evils they cause can be easily borne,
and we even derive joy from them all.”6 As the covers of many women’s magazines and the pages of
many self-help books attest, nothing is more contemporary than such conclusions, but also nothing
more clearly has its roots in the Middle Ages.

6. Conclusion

The medieval account of affectivity, the importance and value of love and particular relationships as
central in human life, comes down to us in the Western ideal of romantic love. My closing suggestion
is that, in the tradition of Charles Taylor, we bring the value of love and relationships back to its
moral and religious sources in the Middle Ages, not to try to go back in any sense, but to deepen our
understanding of it and perhaps deepen the way in which we inhabit it, not just have it live unhappily
and inconsistently beside the Western ideals of individualism and authenticity. As Taylor has shown

1 Juan Luis Vives, The Passions of the Soul: The Third Book of De Anima et Vita, trans., C. G. Noreña, (Lewiston, NY:
Edwin Mellen Press, 1990) Bk. III, 46.
2 Vives, The Passions of the Soul, Bk. III. 46-47.
3 Vives, The Passions of the Soul, Bk. III, 37.
4 Vives, The Passions of the Soul, Bk. III, 60.
5 Descartes, Les Passions de l’Âme, ed., G. Rodis-Lewis, (Paris: Vrin, 1991), Bk. II, 140, 142; Bk. III, 212.
6 Descartes, Les Passions de l’Âme, Bk. III, 212.

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about the Western value of authenticity, it cannot be fulfilled without relationships to others and
connection to shared notions about the human good. Just so, the valuing of love and passion for its
own sake, the utterly unrealistic weight put on the idea of the one, true and eternal romantic love as
the aim and redemption of human life needs some rethinking. These Medieval Christian sources show
us the origins of this ideal, reminding us of its connection to receiving rather than taking, to
vulnerability as inherent in the human condition rather than avoidable by the accumulation of power,
and to desires which transcend our own abilities to achieve. We find in them a model of love is less
polarized and gendered in the roles it assigns than ancient or modern pictures, and reveals and affirms
the depth of our desires for love and union, desires which are so clearly beyond the capacity of any
one person to satisfy. An examination of these sources might move us away from the desire for private
and individual salvation in “true love” toward a broader community of others, both to love and be
loved by.

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 Mind, Body, Brain, Consciousness, Emotions

Evandro Agazzi

Some Ontological Considerations

What kind of entities denotes the words “mind”, “body”, “brain”, “consciousness”, “emotions”? To
answer this question we may resort to well-known traditional ontological notions like those of
substance and accident and, perhaps, be inclined to maintain that body and brain are substances
because they are well individualized concrete things existing in space and time, whereas
consciousness and emotions seem more properly qualifiable as accidents because they do not show a
kind of autonomous existence, but are rather properties or states of some concretely existing entity,
such as an individual person. Despite its commonsensical plausibility, this argument is rather
superficial because it considers the referents of these words as entities subsisting in themselves
independently of any context. But when we consider them ‘jointly’ (that is, in the context of a
discourse where they occur in some kind of correlation) we easily understand that their referents too
are not scattered pieces of reality, or unrelated ‘things’, but are linked by certain relations that directly
concern their way of existing. Therefore, what really has the defining characteristic of a substance
(that is, the fact of existing in se - in itself - and not as something which exists in alio – as a property
or a part or a constituent of something else) is the single individual, while its body, its brain, its hands,
its legs, its consciousness, its emotions have no independent or autonomous existence, but exist only
‘in the individual’: not in a rough spatial sense (that is, in the sense of being ‘inside’ it), but in the
correct ontological sense of being parts of the constitution of the single individual. For this reason
they share the defining characteristic of accidents.
What we have said does not exclude that the same words can denote autonomous referents within
other contexts. For example, “body” is used in physics to denote any entity endowed with mass and
situated in space and time (physical body), and in anatomy also the human body is considered ‘in
itself’ and described disregarding the complex relations it has with other constituents of a living
individual. For similar reasons the brain can be considered sometimes as a physical entity (e.g. when
we measure its mass), or the object of anatomical or physiological inquiry (broadening in such a way
the contexts in which it is considered), and within the approach of the neurosciences also its relations
with consciousness and emotions are today deeply scrutinized. This, however, does not prevent
psychology from investigating as autonomous ‘objects’ the phenomena of cognition, consciousness
and emotions.
The above reflections can be summarized by saying that each of those ‘parts’ reveals itself as a
complex individual entity endowed with an internal structure constituted by correlations among its
own parts. In such a way this individual entity shows certain properties and functions that characterize
it as a whole and are different from the properties and functions of its internal parts. This individual
entity, however, is embedded, in turn, in a complex net of correlations with other individual entities
endowed with a similar internal complex structure and with their specific properties and functions, in

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such a way that they ‘jointly’ constitute a superior complex entity endowed with other properties and
functions different from those of its constitutive parts. It is not difficult to recognize, under this
discourse expressed by using common notions of ordinary language, the description of the ontology
of general system theory: every individual entity is a system, that is, a complex whole consisting of a
structure of subsystems and endowed with specific properties and functions, that in turn is a subsystem
of broader super systems to whose properties and functions brings a specific contribution while
receiving in turn, inputs supporting and directing its own properties and functions. The consideration
of this multilevel hierarchic ontology entails a methodological attitude: when the intended referent
of an investigation or a discourse is a certain system, a rich amount of knowledge can come from
considering its subsystems and super systems, at the condition, however, that this consideration
remains free from reductionism, that is, from the temptation of ‘explaining away’ the specific
properties of the intended referent in terms of the properties and functions of its subsystems or super
systems. This caveat leads us from the ontological to the epistemological focus.

Some Epistemological Remarks: Unity of the Referent, Diversity of the Attributes

Galileo is usually (and correctly) considered as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of modern science not
only for his original contributions to the incipient discipline of mechanics, but also for the explicit
presentation and application of certain fundamental epistemological and methodological criteria. The
most decisive among such criteria was the option to abandon the pivotal principle for the construction
of science that had dominated Western culture from Plato and Aristotle until the late Middle Ages:
the knowledge of a certain kind of substances attains the fullest dignity of being a science if the
scattered true sentences attained through factual ascertainment are justified by a logical deduction
showing that they are the logical necessary consequence of the essence characteristic of that kind of
substances. This essence, in turn, was expected to be grasped by a process of intellectual intuition.
The decisive turning point, explicitly affirmed by Galileo, that marked the birth of modern
natural science is his claim that, in the case of the “natural substances”, the proposal of grasping by
speculation their “intimate essence” is a hopeless enterprise, whereas a reliable knowledge can be
attained if we remain content with the apprehension of “some of their affections”. 1 The affections
were, in the terminology of Scholastic philosophy, a certain kind of accidents, while the essence was
one of the fundamental meanings of “substance”. Therefore, the bold move of Galileo consists in
reversing the classical paradigm: reliable knowledge can be attained regarding the accidents and not
the essence.
A substance, however, has a lot of accidents, i.e. properties, relations, functions, that we shall
call attributes for brevity; and this entails that any choice of a particular set of attributes (which is
always finite and practically small) can allow only for a partial – though perhaps exact and rigorous
– knowledge of the substance. This is what Galileo, Newton and their followers have actually done
and the magnificent building of physics that has been realized by applying that ontological and
epistemological choice, testifies of the fruitfulness of such an approach. We can call that approach

1 See the third letter to Marcus Welser on sunspots, in Galileo Galilei, Opere. vol. 5, eds. Favaro Antonio et al. (Florence:
Barbera, 1895), 187-188.

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the adoption of a particular point of view or particular perspective on reality, and this without any
subjectivist flavour, because this amounts to focusing only on certain real attributes accessible
through a particular methodology. It is obvious, however, that many other sets of attributes can be
selected and investigated by using other suitable methods and instruments of inquiry that will
characterize different ‘points of view’ or ‘perspectives’ on the same substance, many of which may
give rise to genuine different sciences. These different approaches are not mutually ‘at variance, but
rather ‘complementary’, and the intellectual challenge will consist in finding how they can be
correlated in some comprehensive view, in which the partial knowledge offered by different sciences
is considered as the knowledge of different aspects of the same substance.
This approach is particularly fruitful in the effort of understanding such a complex reality as is
the human being, especially because in this endeavour we are still confronted with the difficulty of
suitably correlating the ‘natural sciences’ with the ‘human sciences’. This difficulty is a late
inheritance of the old ‘classical’ way of distinguishing the sciences according to the kind of
substances they are investigating, and not by the kind of attributes that a science intends to study.
Therefore, those scholars who wanted to oppose materialism, to save the reality of spiritual entities,
and also the spiritual dimensions of man, were almost irresistibly led to favor a “dualism of substances”
whose proponent was notoriously Descartes: there exist material substances (on which the natural
sciences have unrestricted competence), and immaterial or spiritual substances (whose investigation
is the exclusive task of metaphysics and theology). A human individual is not a substance, but a
conjunction of two independent substances: the body, that belongs to the class of material substances,
and the spirit, that belongs to the class of the immaterial thinking substances. Hence, total freedom
of investigation was left to the natural sciences in the study of the human body, with the implicit
understanding that the “highest part” of man, that is, his spirit, remained within the competence of
philosophy and theology. Theology was soon marginalized by the trend of secularization that has
characterized modern culture, while philosophy was considered the proper discipline for the
investigation of the spirit.

How Different Sciences Can Investigate the Same Referent

How can different sciences investigate with their different methods and tools one and the same
referent that becomes in such a way the object of each of those different sciences? This issue was not
ignored by traditional epistemology which introduced the distinction between the “material object”
and the “formal object” of a science. The material object is the thing, the subject matter, the topic on
which the investigation is made, while the formal object is the particular point of view or approach
from which this thing is considered (or better said, it is this thing “as far as” it is considered only from
that particular point of view). It is obvious that one and the same material object can become the
formal object of several disciplines, and every discipline determines its formal object by means of its
specific methods of investigation. A kind of refinement of this old doctrine is offered by our previous
discourse in which we have maintained that every discipline considers only certain attributes of reality
and this is its particular ‘point of view’ or perspective (we can say that the specific object of a given
science is the structured set of attributes that are taken into consideration by it).Therefore, if it

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happens that in a certain thing are present the attributes specifically considered in the point of view
of a given discipline, this thing automatically can become the object of this discipline that describes
and studies it under this limited aspect. This last point is very important: the fact that a certain thing
can be a referent of a given science, because it exemplifies the predicates entering in the definition of
the objects of this science, does not entail that the latter is sufficient for offering a total interpretation
and explanation of this thing: the attributes that have been ignored in the process of “objectualization”
which is specific of this science might well be of great significance and be relevant from the point of
view of another science or even from non-scientific points of view. This remark holds indifferently
when the referent is a single individual entity (like the solar system in astronomy or Napoleon in
historiography), or a “natural kind” (like mammals in zoology or parliamentary democracy in political
science).
The discourse that we have developed here in general terms applies in particular to the study of
man, that we consider not as a single individual, but as a “natural kind”, something like an ideal entity
that is exemplified by all the individual human beings. The human being is characterized by a large
display of attributes, that are grouped in some fundamental clusters which characterize certain ‘parts’
or ‘constituents’ of the human being (according to a colloquial way of speaking) like body, mind,
psyche, sentiments, but which we could better consider as aspects of the global constitution of man.
These clusters, in turn, are composed of subclusters of a decreasing order of generality and an
increasing order of specialization, among which at certain points appear those ‘structured sets of
attributes’ which (as we have seen) constitute the objects of scientific disciplines. It is precisely this
variety of structured sets of attributes, to which corresponds a variety of perspectives in the
knowledge of the human being, that is the foundation for the specificity and autonomy of these
approaches, and at the same time the stimulus for looking for a certain ‘unity’ of these approaches in
consideration of the fact that they concern one single referent (or ‘material objet’, to use the traditional
expression).

Reductionism

Looking for a way of attaining the unity of the multiplicity is a fundamental need of the human
intellect and is at the roots of philosophy in its traditional sense. This same need, however, is present
also inside the single sciences, and corresponds to the effort of ‘broadening’, so to speak, the scope
of this science (which is originally partial) up to the point of coinciding with the whole.
“Reductionism” is the denomination usually given to this program, and we must understand both its
motivations and its limits.1
It is very natural and legitimate that every science tries to interpret and explain as much as
possible of reality ‘from its own point of view’, and this often amounts to claiming that a certain
“fundamental” science F is able to interpret and explain “in terms of” its concepts and laws the
attributes and facts that constitute the ‘object’ of a different science S. Such a process is usually called

1 For a more detailed discussion of the theme of reductionism, see Evandro Agazzi, “Reductionism as Negation of the
Scientific Spirit,” in The Problem of Reductionism in Science, ed. Evandro Agazzi (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1991), 1–29.

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reduction and is expressed by saying that science S can be “reduced to” science F. Logical-
epistemological studies have shown that the conditions for its full obtaining are rather demanding and
difficult to obtain. But even ignoring these difficulties we can ask a simpler question: are we really
ready to maintain that astronomy “reduces” to celestial mechanics, that acoustics or optics “reduce”
to chapters of the mechanics of elastic bodies, that thermodynamics “reduces” to kinetic theory of
gases? Probably none would make such a claim, if “reduces to” should mean “is nothing but”, and
this owing to the obvious remark that investigations, discoveries, experiments in the said sciences are
performed by means of specific methods and instrumental devices which are suitable for singling out
certain specific attributes different from the purely mechanical attributes of mass, position in space
and time and force. This means that, in the best of the cases, there are certain “mechanical aspects”
in the phenomena investigated by the other sciences, or, in the less favourable cases, that it is possible
to find out “mechanical analogies” of the phenomena investigated, analogies that do not imply the
ontological identity of the respective objects.
At first sight, one could think that reductionism rests simply on a methodological mistake, that
is, the fact of confusing the formal objet with the material object (to use the traditional terminology
already mentioned), by arbitrarily claiming that the partial perspective characterizing the formal
object actually exhausts the characterization of the material objet. In some way this is true, but
unfortunately it is not merely a question of inadvertence, since it is the consequence of an ontological
view, the view that the only real attributes of the whole are those studied by the “fundamental” science.
Therefore, reductionism is, in the last analysis, a metaphysical position, since it claims that reality as
such, or the essence of reality is constituted only by certain attributes. Defending this position is
legitimate, but with a clear awareness that it is a metaphysical position and, as such, it must be
defended through metaphysical arguments. Moreover, this is contrary to the spirit of modern natural
science inaugurated by the Galilean prescription, as we have seen, according to which science should
not try to grasp the intimate essence of things, but to investigate only delimited attributes. Far from
being a coherent attitude inspired by science, reductionism reveals itself as a dogmatic metaphysical
tenet that works as an a priori limitation of the intellectual freedom of scientific investigation.1

The Unity of the Referent2

The referent, as we have seen, is the entity to which “refer” a though, a discourse, a cognitive act in
general, and its ontological status is linked only with the criteria that allow us to refer to it. A referent
is ‘identified’ through a limited cluster of attributes, which we could call “referential attributes”. They
need not be particularly important or profound. They must simply be sufficient for an unambiguous
identification of the referent within a given community and, for this reason, they are usually rather
simple, descriptive and even ‘superficial’. But this does not prevent one from investigating the

1 For the relevance of systems theory to the problem of reductionism, see Evandro Agazzi, “Systems Theory and the
Problem of Reductionism,” Erkenntnis (1975-) 12, no. 3 (1978): 339–58.
2 A much more extensive development of the following discussion can be found in Evandro Agazzi, “Some
Epistemological Remarks: Unity of the Referent, Diversity of the Attributes, Specificity of the Scientific Approaches,”
In Moral Behavior and Free Will: A Neurobiologial and Philosophical Approach, ed. Juan José Sanguineti, Ariberto
Acerbi, José Ange (Morolo: IF Press, 2011), 25-45.

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referent so identified from other points of view and from discovering or studying other clusters of
attributes the referent may possess, among which also ‘more essential’ attributes can appear.
A referent constitutes a unity in itself, a unity consisting in the being together’ of all its attributes,
a being together that, even from a cognitive point of view, is prior to the recognition of the single
attributes. For example, when I know an orange, I do not say that I perceive a spherical shape, a
particular color, a sweet flavor, an agreeable smell, a certain tactile roughness, and then ‘pack up’
these attributes together and say that I am knowing an orange. On the contrary, I first have a global
apprehension of an individual entity, that I ‘recognize’ as being an orange only if I live in a
community where oranges are rather familiar, and then I can proceed to analyze the attributes of this
entity (actually of this natural kind) and perhaps discover certain ‘hidden’ virtues it has (such as that
of being rich in C vitamin). The progress in the knowledge of the orange comes from the contribution
of different sciences, from botanic to biochemistry. The most productive trend is that of passing from
a purely multidisciplinary approach (in which different disciplines offer separately their specific
contribution) to an interdisciplinary approach, in which these contributions are interrelated and try to
reflect in their mutual relationship the ontological unity of the referent. This approach is particularly
necessary when the referent is clearly a system, that is, an entity endowed with specific global
properties and functions, which in turn is constituted by parts that are subsystems, being themselves
characterized by specific properties and functions, but at the same time depending for their survival
and functioning on the good functioning of the whole system.

Brain and Mind

The brain is the principal ‘material object’ of the neurosciences and, since the number of these
sciences is not small, we must say that this material object can become the ‘formal object’ of several
disciplines, each of them being characterized by its own specific approach: just to mention a few of
them, not only anatomy, physiology, and pathology investigate the brain from their own point of view,
but also biochemistry, electrodynamics, cybernetics, information theory, computer science have
provided their results and offered their methods and modelling possibilities in the study of the brain.
The reason for which all these different sciences, that are well definite in their specific cognitive
approach and methods, could often give rise to a sub-domain (within their general domain)
characterized by the prefix “neuro” is the fact that their discourse is specifically oriented toward a
particular referent, namely, the nervous system of which the brain is the most important constituent.
These considerations clearly show that the “unity of the referent” was the ground for the flourishing
and cross-fertilization of these disciplines.
What are the ‘referential attributes’ of the human brain? That is to say, which attributes enable
people to spontaneously and almost immediately recognize something as a brain? It seems natural to
answer that these attributes are the quality of being an organ in a living organism, located in the head
and having a great deal of physical connections (called nerves) with almost every other organ. (From
the Greek etymological root “neuro” for “nerve” derives the words “neurology”, “neurological” and
“neuroscience”). Therefore, the brain is a system endowed with certain specific structures and
functions, which is a subsystem of the organism and stays in mutual ostensible relations with the

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other subsystems. This system can be studied as an isolated entity, for example in order to describe
its configuration and structure in an anatomic perspective, and in this case it is like ‘dead’, whereas
the study of its functions (physiology) cannot be done without considering its being systemically
connected with the other parts of the organism. The great advancements in specific technologies made
possible to monitor or to “observe” in vivo the structure and behavior of the parts of a “living” brain
or of the nervous system. To be precise, one could not say that a brain is alive or dead, since only the
global organism can be such. This is a clear indication of the systemic nature of the issues regarding
the brain. For sure, for certain particular reasons (linked with the practice of organ transplants), the
notion of “brain death” has been coined, but this was done, significantly, in order to take the ceasing
of the brain activity as the sufficient indicator of the death of the human individual as such, in spite
of the fact that certain elementary “vital functions” can be artificially continued for a certain time.
If we consider the concepts used in the discourse of the neurosciences, we easily see that they
are all of a “physicalistic” nature. This is absolutely obvious if we simply consider that these sciences
are the application of the discourse of a sector of biology to the study of the brain, while modern
biology is in turn characterized by a pervasive use of knowledge, concepts and theories derived from
chemistry and physics. We want to put, however, a question. Any system is usually a subsystem of a
larger system, which in turn is also a subsystem of a broader system, and we have seen that the human
brain is a subsystem of the whole human organism. Now, here is the question: “Is the organism really
‘the whole’ with respect to which the brain is a subsystem”? The answer must be negative: the
“whole”, correctly understood, is the human individual, who is not limited to his organism. To see
that this statement is by no means paradoxical it is sufficient to consider other subsystems of the
human individual that cannot be located in the organism, such as the system of his beliefs, his thoughts,
his emotions, his projects, his moral principles, his free choices, and so on. The reality of such things
is absolutely undeniable, and every normal adult human being is able to refer to them in his
conversation with other humans. Their ontological status can be questionable, and it has been
questioned many times in the history of philosophy, but what is certain is that they are different from
the ontological status of our organism and its parts. A suitable term for denoting the whole of this
system can be (in English) the mind. Without entering here too complicated questions, we can simply
say that the mind, understood simply as the system of what we often call the “mental states”, is a
subsystem of the human being, a subsystem that is articulated into several mental subsystems and
which, in particular, is also connected and correlated with the other non-mental subsystems
constituting the organism. The “mind-body” problem consists in the investigation of the correlations
between these two ‘large’ subsystems of the human individual, while the “mind-brain” problem
investigates the more direct relationships existing between the brain and certain subsystems of the
mind considered as especially linked with the brain activity.

The Systemic Unity of the Human Being

The systemic point of view gets rid of certain wrong dichotomies such as that of dualism-monism,
that have inspired endless controversies regarding the mind-body or mind-brain relationships. The
wrong tacit and implicit presupposition was that mind and body are two separate substances. If so, it

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is problematic to see how they could mutually communicate and interact. Note that also the materialist
monism is prisoner of the same presupposition, while it only tries to eliminate or to “explain away”
the mind as a simple product of the body. The correct position seems to be that neither the mind, nor
the brain, nor the heart, nor the lungs, nor the hands, etc. are substances, since they are only
subsystems of the whole individual human being, which is the substance. Only of a human individual
we can say that he has “his” ideas, beliefs, brain, hands, mind and so on, whereas it would be
inappropriate to say that the brain has “its” feelings or thoughts, or the tooth has “its” pain. Therefore,
the idea that one must not violate the principle of the “physical closure” of causality appears to be an
arbitrary extrapolation of the form of causality, which is specific of a certain subsystem, in order to
cover all possible ways of infrasystemic and intersystemic causality. How arbitrary is this alleged
methodological prescription is something that easily emerges from the consideration that also every
human individual is a system embedded in several other systems that constitute together his “global
environment” or his world of life or his existential situation. The contents, structures and dynamics
of his mind are correlated and even causally depend (not totally, but certainly in part) on this
environment, much more than on his brain. Our ideas, concepts, values, criteria of judgment are
formed almost directly by what we receive from our cultural historical environment, from our
education, from the intrinsic dynamics of our reflection, decisions, commitments. We do not need to
appeal to any brain function in order to understand and explain these rich contents of our mind. Of
course, without a well functioning brain, our mind could not function well even in the most favorable
of the existential environments. This means that the brain is a necessary condition for the functioning
of the mind, but it is no less true that a brain isolated from the whole organism and belonging to an
animal organism unable to communicate and interact with the human world of life could never
“produce” a mind.

References

Agazzi, Evandro. “Reductionism as Negation of the Scientific Spirit.” in The Problem of

Reductionism in Science, edited by Evandro Agazzi, 1–29. Dordrecht/Boston/London:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
———. “Some Epistemological Remarks: Unity of the Referent, Diversity of the Attributes,
Specificity of the Scientific Approaches.” In Moral Behavior and Free Will: A Neurobiologial
and Philosophical Approach, edited by Juan José Sanguineti, Ariberto Acerbi, José Ange, 25-
45. Morolo: IF Press, 2011.
———. “Systems Theory and the Problem of Reductionism.” Erkenntnis (1975-) 12, no. 3 (1978):
339–58.
Galilei, Galileo. Opere. vol. 5. Edited by Favaro Antonio et al. Florence: Barbera, 1895.

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 To Be a Poetic Free Human

Zhang Shiying

My topic is “To be a poetic free human.” First of all, what is freedom?

It is well-known that “freedom is to understand necessity.” Is this definition of freedom
comprehensive and adequate? It comes from some generalization of Spinoza’s thought. Spinoza
believes that “All things in reality are determined by necessity, and everything depends on something
else. A human is free as long as he understands the necessity and acts on it” (Spinoza, Ethics, The
Commercial Press, 1958. P206). “A human who lives by reason pure and simple” (ibid) is one who
“understands necessity and acts on objective necessity” (ibid, P202). “The nature of reason lies in the
fact that it regards everything as necessary” (ibid, P77). In other words, freedom means that one turns
an external and forced necessity, by means of knowledge, into an internal and voluntary necessity. A
free human is one who follows universal necessities and acts on them willingly.
It certainly makes some sense for Spinoza to argue that one can acquire freedom through
knowledge. He was one-sided, however, when he completely denies free will in human mind.
Bertrand Russell has pointed out that ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus “was not a determinist”,
“Though we have to obey natural powers, which can be studied scientifically, we still have free will,
and in a certain extent, are masters of our own destiny”(Bertrand Russell, A History of Western
Philosophy. Vol. I, Commercial Press,1963. PP.312,313). Epicurus informs us that we have a sphere
of freedom where we are the maker of our decisions apart from scientific research –the “natural power”
of scientific knowledge that calls for absolute “obedience.” Freedom is neither mere “knowledge of
necessity” nor willing obedience to natural necessity.
Christian Father Augustine, a transition from ancient times to the Middle Ages, is the first
philosopher who clearly puts forward a theory of free will. He argues that a human is able to act freely,
that is, he is determined not by external conditions but by his own will completely. Through free will
a human was liberated from natural necessities. Because of free will, he must be responsible to what
he does. The sole cause – the ultimate reason that makes a human lose his mind of virtue and commit
evil is his free choice. So Augustine said: “I am aware that I have a will, just as I am aware that I live.
Therefore, it is me not anyone else who wills or does not will, am aware or am not aware; and I come
to see more clearly that this is the cause of my sins” (Augustine, Confessions, Commercial Press,
1963. P116). Though he becomes a determinist in later years, and believes that human actions are
caused by prior conditions which may lead to God in the end, Augustine always admits that a human
has a space of freedom and autonomy, and some action still comes from one’s internal will despite
some external conditions. Augustine’s implicit meaning is that a human must be responsible for his
evildoing and must put the blame on himself.
The Renaissance liberated humans from the bondage of God and provided him with certain
freedom, however, it is confined to the freedom of “understanding necessity.” Actually a human was

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determined by causal necessity. After the Renaissance Kant offered a systematic and detailed
philosophical theory of human free will for the first time. He believes that a human has two key
characters: the one is natural, and the other of free will. The natural character is determined by causal
necessities such as human needs for clothing, food, shelter and means of travelling as well as sex,
which are determined by objective natural conditions, independent of human subjective free will. But
his other character is independent, autonomous and self-determining (Kant, Foundations of the
Metaphysics of Morals. Commercial Press, 1959. P67).
The two human characters come from the opposition between “phenomenon” and “noumenon”:
what a human usually experiences and understands is phenomenon where one thing is causally and
necessarily related to other things, and “understanding,” as one of human cognitive faculties, only
grasps the necessary phenomenon, hence no freedom at all; however, phenomenon is not “thing-in-
itself” but mere representations or manifold things through which the “whole” or “thing-in-itself”
shows itself. Reason, as a higher cognitive faculty, requires to understand “thing-in-itself”, i.e. to
grasp “the noumenon” or the “whole” which is not limited by necessities, but unfortunately it has
failed, in other words, “reason” has this need, but cannot meet it, so “thing-in-itself” (the noumenon,
the whole) lies beyond understanding; Kant believes that this unknowable “thing-in-itself” may be
grasped by “faith.” Faith is the “postulates” of reason that are real rather than fantastic or dreamlike,
and we believe they are what they are - some “presuppositions” derived from reason, or say human
reason requires some “whole” as “thing-in-itself.” Individual things in the world of phenomenon all
exist in the chain of causal necessity, only the “whole” as “noumenon” or “thing-in-itself” is
independent and free because nothing is outside of it as some limit. Therefore, subjectivity exists only
as “thing-in-itself” – the “whole” (see Kant, Critique of Practical Reason. Commercial Press, 1960.
P102). Kant said that, as the subject of morals, a human has freedom, and “this subject” “is aware
that he is the thing-in-itself,” “not determined by time” (i.e. not determined by necessity) (ibid, P100).
Finally Kant reduced the free will from the “whole” (the noumenon or thing-in-itself) to human
“conscience” (ibid, P100-101). “As thing-in-itself” (the whole or noumenon) the “conscientious”
“subject” acts on some “imperatives” which “spontaneously” take moral actions, yet this “spontaneity”
cannot be explained through physical necessity (ibid, P102).
Kant’s analysis of the nature of human freedom completely overturned the view that freedom is
nothing but to understand necessity. Kant clearly argues that freedom means to go beyond necessity,
and he has made careful and systematic discussions about the nature of human freedom for the first
time in the history of western philosophy. This is a great contribution Kant has made.
Kant’s philosophy clearly informs us that to be a free human who has gone beyond necessity is
to be one who acts on the “imperatives” of moral conscience. Unfortunately Kant’s discussions are
abstract and hard to understand in the sense that he classified freedom under the sphere of
transcendence, out of touch with reality; as to his view that moral actions are fully free, I think it
deserves a second thought, to which I will turn below.
In any case, Kant as well as Epicurus and Augustine argues that a human is able to transcend
necessity to become free and independent – a view opposite to the belief that “freedom means to
understand necessity,” a deeper definition of the nature of freedom, and the locus of the deeper
essence and dignity of a human as what he is.

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 From the daily experience of consciousness we are personally aware that our thought is free and
independent, not limited by anything out of it. For example, I may imagine at will that I could fly
high to the sky like a bird despite that this is impossible in reality. You may say this is fantastic,
illusionary or subjective, yet fantasy, illusion or subjectivism is, after all, human free thought.
Subjective thought and objective impossibility are questions at different levels, and the former cannot
be limited by the latter. Shakespeare’s Hamlet has a famous saying: “Though shut up in a nut shell, I
might think as well that I was the sovereign with unlimited space.” How boundless a space does a
free thought enjoy! French philosopher Derrida even argues that a human may think illogically. For
example, “To imagine that a square is round makes some sense.”

II

All in all, a human lives in an objective real world and must deal with real things. As Spinoza said
above, real things “are determined by necessity, and one thing depends on other things.” Thus in
dealing with real objective things human subjective freedom of thought may be hindered, and he or
she can be free as long as he or she understands this necessity and acts on it. This is the freedom given
by human cognitive faculty – the so-called scientific knowledge. But as mentioned above, this
“freedom,” derived from “understanding necessity,” only knows how to follow external things,
therefore it is not the independent and autonomous free will that originates from inner mind.
Then how is it possible that, on the one hand, a human lives in the real world and deals with real
things, on the other hand, he enjoys independent and autonomous freedom, not limited by necessity?
In the course of one’s self-development, a human moves gradually from the consciousness of
necessity and non-necessity to the consciousness of “good” and “bad”, up to the consciousness of
duty and responsibility he undertakes to others, thus a development from cognitive consciousness to
moral consciousness. Psychologists believe that the “self” at this level has gained the sense of duty
and responsibility, that is to say, a human has the freedom of self-choice and self-determination, and
“considers himself the master of his destiny” (J. Loveinger, Ego Development, trans. Wei Zimu.
Zhejiang Education Press, 1998. P. 18-20).
Nonetheless, there is some distance from the individual and independent free will to the
advanced and perfect “sphere of morality.” To attain this sphere, a human must go further to nourish
a consciousness of respect for others’ free will as well as their independence and autonomy.
I think the universe is a network whole 网络整体where “all things are interconnected 万有相
通.” The network whole is neither transcendental nor above time or space, but real, just in time and
space; it is infinite in time and space, but knowable. Situated in this network whole, a human may
observe concrete things from the viewpoint of both concrete things and the network whole. The
former leads to the view that all things must bow to necessity, hence no real freedom at all; by contrast,
the latter leads to a fully independent and autonomous free will because nothing is outside the whole.
Moral will originates from the viewpoint that one looks at things from the perspective of “all things
are interconnected.” To look at things and people from this point of view, I attach importance not
only to my own independent and autonomous free will, but also to that of other people and other
things which I regard as what I am, as indispensable elements of me, and as flesh and blood of mine,

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so that I attain a sphere where “all people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my
companions” 民 吾 同 胞 ， 物 吾 与 也 – a sphere where the division of subject and object is
transcended and all things and I have become one, namely a free will to respect others’ independent
and autonomous free will. This is what morality means.
We see that at the root of the transition from “knowledge” to “morality” lies the transition from
observing things from the perspective of things (to look at particular things from the angle of
particular things) to observing things from the perspective of the whole, i.e. a transition from subject-
object dichotomy to subject-object oneness, with the result that the freedom of understanding
necessity is sublimated into the freedom “that has transcended necessity.” Obviously the freedom
“that has transcended necessity” is no longer the unreal and subjective freedom mentioned above, but
one that has integrated subject with object and observes real things from the angle of the whole.
Yet “the moral sphere” is neither the highest level of freedom nor the acme of one’s personality.
First, Hegel said: “The view of morality is the view of ‘relationship,’ of ‘ought’ and of ‘request’”
(Hegel, Werke,Suhrkamp, 1986, P206). “Ought,” “request” and “relationship” all refer to the distance
that still exists between subjective ideal and objective reality, or between subject and object, and they
have not yet achieved complete integration as a whole, therefore the freedom of mind is limited to a
certain extent. It is said that morality talks about “ought,” but “ought” implies constraint, though the
“ought” in moral sphere is a voluntary constraint. Second, “the moral sphere” talks about seeking
others’ benefit, however, a moral consciousness that is completely detached from benefit is
unpractical. Talks about benefit – seeking utility, means that external objects serve as human tools,
which means necessity, and implies that “the moral sphere” has not yet completely divorced from the
model of subject-object dichotomy, and subject is still limited by object to some extent.
The highest sphere of mind is “aesthetic审美.” Compared with “the moral sphere,” the aesthetic
sphere enters further into the kingdom of “the freedom that has transcended necessity.” First, the
“aesthetic” has transcended the “cognitive” in the sense that it no longer attaches importance to the
question of “what particular things are” in the external relationship between subject and object (the
limitation of necessity is always there), on the contrary, the subject has integrated object into itself to
attain a sphere where one’s feelings and the natural setting are perfectly blended, and subject and
object become one (borrowing a term from the traditional Chinese language, we call it “heaven-
human oneness”天人合一), hence a completely free and independent subject, beyond which no
limitation of necessity from the object. Wang Yangming said that if there is no mind, then there will
be no heaven, earth and myriad things, conversely, if there is no heaven, earth and myriad things,
then there will be no mind; mind and heaven, earth and myriad things “are permeated with one
material force一气流通,” integrated into one body “without separation,” and this inseparable “one
body”一体 is uniquely real. When I see the flowers in the mountain, their colors “at once show up
clearly,” yet “the colors of the flowers” that “at once show up clearly” are concerned with both
humans and heaven which are inseparable at any instant; the relationship between me and the flowers
here is not cognitive at all because I do not, as a biologist, consider, analyze or understand the flowers
to be red or green, or light red or light green, etc.. It is when I look at the flowers that I attain the
artistic sphere意境 where their colors “at once show up clearly,” a sphere that is concerned with both

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the flower and the mind, and they “are permeated with one material force” without any “separation.”
The mind here does not mean knowledge or thought, but a feeling, sentiment or experience. We say
“artistic sphere,” “mental sphere心境” or “situational sphere情境,” all of which contain Chinese
characters like “sphere” and “mind,” or “sentiment” and “artistic,” in fact they all refer to the
integration of humans and the world or the heaven-human oneness; so aesthetic consciousness is no
other than an “artistic sphere,” “mental sphere” or “situational sphere.” Chinese poetics often uses
the term perfect blending of feelings and natural settings or of feelings and natural situations 情景/
情境交融, which means the same thing in reality. “The Physical World” 物色篇 of the Literary Mind
and the Carving of Dragons文心雕龙 by Liu Xie刘勰 in the Liang Dynasty of the Southern
Dynasties writes: “Feelings will change when things have changed, and words are derived from
sentiments”情以物迁，辞以情发. Here is implied the perfect blending of feelings and natural
settings. Jiao Ran 皎然 of the Tang Dynasty says that only through the natural setting景 is the poet
able to express his true disposition, therefore the poet’s artistic sphere is made up of the perfect
blending of feelings and natural settings. SikongTu 司 空 图 of the Tang Dynasty argues that
“conception and natural settings go hand in hand”思与境偕. Wang Fuzhi王夫之in the late Ming and
early Qing dynasties contributed a more systematic theory about the perfect blending of feelings and
natural settings. He said: “Feeling is not empty but may be set out naturally, and the natural setting is
not empty but may contain feelings”情不虚情，情皆可景；景非虚景，景中含情 (Anthology of
and Commentary on Ancient Poems古诗评选, Vol. 5). That is to say, neither feelings without natural
settings nor natural settings without feelings can make up aesthetic images.
Second, based on the above argument we see that “the aesthetic sphere” also transcends the
practical relationship in “the cognitive” and “moral spheres.” Hegel said: “Desires fade away in the
aesthetic,” and the object, which used to be “a useful tool,” thus an “alien goal,” “has now
disappeared,” so has the “limited relationship” of “the mere ought” (ibid, P155). “Because of these,
the aesthetic observation is characterized by freedom, in that it turns its object into part of a human
which is free and unlimited, hence the object no longer as something useful to meet his or her limited
demands or intentions, or to satisfy his or her possessiveness or pursuit of fame and wealth” (ibid,
P155-6).
In short, aesthetic activity transcends not only the limit of desires and usefulness, but also the
limit of “ought,” and attains the sphere of freedom that is completely above and beyond the bounds
of necessity. Human love and pursuit of beauty is derived from “the nature” rather than the “ought,”
and that is the reason why “aesthetic activity” is superior to “moral activity” and becomes the highest
sphere of human mind. Though superior to moral sphere, aesthetic sphere is not immoral but includes
it because a human in the aesthetic sphere must obey moral rules and do what is morally good,
however, he does what is morally good naturally, without any constraint. Seen from this perspective,
unlike what is usually taught that to be a human means to be one who merely acts on moral dogmas
(one “ought to” or “should” do something), to be a human means to elevate one’s sphere of mind,
and to be one who lives in the “aesthetic sphere” and naturally does what is required of him.
Actually in the second half of the eighteenth century, German aesthetician Schiller has clearly
advocated that to be a human means to be an “aesthetic human” because only the “aesthetic human”

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is a “whole human” or “free human.” He argues that mere “sensual impulse” makes one be “limited”
by sensual desires, and mere “rational impulse” makes one be “limited” by rational rules (including
one’s obligations in the form of moral rules), thus both of them make one unfree because a full
realization of one’s humanity lies in the transcendence of his or her “limits” to attain the “limitless,”
and Schiller calls this limitless “free activity” “game impulse”, i.e. “aesthetic consciousness.” Schiller
said that “aesthetic intuition” contains both sensual images and intellectual or rational things, i.e. both
of which were integrated in “aesthetic intuition” so that sensual desires do not occupy a dominant
position due to their lack of reason’s dignity, meanwhile rational rules (including moral obligations)
are not considered an imposition due to their lack of sensual desires. In this way the sense of limit
and imposition that mere “sensual impulse” and mere “rational impulse” caused within us “will be
excluded.” “A human in game” (an aesthetic human) attains the highest level of freedom (Schiller,
Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter 23, 15).
Beauty is usually divided into different levels such as the beauty of senses感性美 (the beauty of
sound and color), the beauty of type典型美 and the beauty of artistic image意象美 (the beauty of
appearance and disappearance 显隐之美). But which one makes a human perfectly free?
In different articles and books I have argued that the beauty of artistic image in Chinese tradition
is the highest level of beauty. I will not go into details here. But I want to emphasize how the poetic
quality 诗意 of the artistic-image beauty inspires a human to become perfectly free.
The universe is a network whole where “all things are interconnected,” and every intersection
(every event, human and thing) on the network includes both its present conditions and its background
of limitless connections. Using the terms of the Chinese aesthetics, the former may be called
“appearance” 秀, and the latter “disappearance” 隐; using the terms of the western philosophy, the
former is called “presence,” and the latter “absence” (Heidegger called the former “unconcealment”,
and the latter “concealment”). It is the latter that makes up, builds or achieves the former, as the origin
and mother of it. Every event, every human or everything in the universe must be a unity of “presence”
and “absence,” or a fusion of “appearance” and “disappearance.”
The aesthetic theory of artistic image in Chinese tradition claims that “beauty lies in artistic
image,” that is, beauty shows in the “significance” beyond the “image,” or the feeling beyond the
words; another example is the famous saying that “Things that happen around us are called
appearance, and the feelings beyond the words are called disappearance”状溢目前曰秀，情在詞外
曰 隐 , which also claims that beauty lies in the pursuit of the hidden origin - “feelings” or
“significance,” hence a return to the whole of appearance-disappearance unity.
Any work of beauty may exist either in sound or color, or in words, and it must have an “image”
(“the present”). The “theory of the artistic image” tells us that the sense of beauty means to
comprehend “the significance beyond the image” and “the feelings beyond the words,” i.e. “the
absent.” This is not only the beauty of senses at the low level, but also the beauty of artistic sphere
and of the mind at the high level. Why must a human move beyond the image to attain the sphere of
beauty? I think the reason lies in the fact that any work of beauty is an intersection on the network
whole of the universe, something currently “present,” but it originates from the organic and
inseparable relationships between it and the limitless network whole behind it. In other words, any

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work of beauty must be a crystalization of limitless relationships (including all other intersections)
behind it. To be specific, the limitless network of relationships refers to the social and historical
background as well as the people and things behind the work. To appreciate a work of art is no more
than to reveal in our imagination the countless contents (“the absent”) of “the present” condensed in
the work for pondering; it is nothing but a return to the original whole from which the work has
developed, thus we come to realize that “So that is how matters stand,” hence a free and relaxed
satisfaction. That is what we usually call “aesthetic pleasure” or “aesthetic enjoyment,” not a sensual
entertainment or satisfaction, but a spiritual or mental contentment. Why does Van Gogh’s painting
“Peasant Shoes” produce aesthetic pleasure? Heidegger provided a vivid explanation: It is the
“present” peasant shoes that leads the appreciator to return to a series of “absent” things behind it –
the peasant woman who labored for bread along the rugged road day and night, exposed to rain and
wind all the year round, and poverty, injustice, backwardness, etc., all thisare the source of the holes
on the shoes. It is in this return that the appreciator is awakened, hence a mentally free and relaxed
satisfaction.
Traditional Chinese culture is characterized by the beauty of connotation 含蓄之美, which
actually means that the author leaves his feelings or significance behind the superficial image or
words for the appreciator to understand or experience “the absent” hidden behind the work, i.e. the
feelings or significance of the relationship network in the universe to get the satisfaction of awakening.
We often use the words “pondering infinitely” 玩味无穷 to describe our appreciation of certain
outstanding works. “Pondering” can be “infinite” only because “the absent” hidden behind the works
are “infinite.” Of course, the extent of “pondering infinitely” varies because it is determined not only
by the quality of the works, but also by the literary cultivation of the appreciator. Originally the
aesthetic consciousness is the product of the fusion of author and appreciator.
Usually there are two views of beauty, the one advocates beauty for beauty’s sake, and the other
beauty for life, in order to make beauty actualized or art life-oriented. The current situation of our
culture calls for the latter. To make aesthetics actualized or art life-oriented does not simply mean the
sensual styles of dress or ornamentation in daily life, but more importantly, it suggests that humans,
as the aesthetics of “artistic image” asserts, look at all things in everyday life from the perspective of
a lofty aesthetic sphere – the holistic view of the unity of appearance and disappearance. In other
words, rather than fixing their eyes solely on the things present at hand and confined to this finite
“image” to calculate immediate gains or losses, humans should look out for the original whole hidden
behind all this – “the significance” of the infinite, to broaden their vision in order to wander leisurely
in the free and relaxed sphere. Both Kant and Hegel emphasize the liberating function of aesthetics
and poetry. I believe the poetic quality the beauty of artistic image contains in Chinese tradition may
best perform this function indeed. We cannot require everyone to become a poet, but we hope that
everyone can be more or less aware of the beauty of “the artistic image,” hence a poetic human. To
be simpler or more understandable, it should be feasible that everyone may look at his or her daily
life from a lofty and holistic perspective. The freedom a human enjoys when he or she enters such
sphere is not only real but also independent and autonomous.

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 A Naturalist Scheme of Interlinking Mind, Body, Consciousness and Emotions

Amita Chatterjee
School of Cognitive Science & Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University

Let’s begin with an imaginary scenario. Suppose you see five discrete dots on a piece of paper or a
white board. Immediately you will start wondering ‘why these dots?’ Your in-built curiosity will not
let you stop here. Next you will ask what do they stand for? If someone knowledgeable gives you the
names of objects they stand for, you will pose the next question and then the next, the next after
next…What kind of objects are they? How do they function? What do we do with them? Can these
dots be connected? Given a large number of possible connections, how are we supposed to choose
amongst them? Can these be brought under one umbrella, one overarching frame? Only after
receiving an affirmative answer to the last question you may pause for some time. Here, instead of
five dots we are given five concepts -- mind, body, brain, consciousness and emotions. Incidentally,
none of these has been unanimously defined. Philosophers and scientists attempt to connect these
concepts in different ways, having determined their initial meaning. In my talk, I shall present some
reflections on interconnections of these concepts from the perspective of a group of Indian thinkers
of a broadly naturalistic persuasion.
A naturalistic worldview exhibits the following characteristic features1. (a) Nature is admitted
to be homogeneous and is constituted by physical/ material things and their properties; (b) Interaction
among physical things are governed by law-like regularities; (c) Naturalistic explanations are
generally reductive in nature, i.e., higher level regularities are explained by causal interactions
amongst lower-level constituents till the basic level is reached; (d) At the basic level usually it is
possible to say how things at that level are interconnected but not why; (e) Though the basic level is
not fixed, basic phenomena are expected to be amenable to the same level of description. Post-
positivistic science still considers the level of physics to be the basic level, therefore anything non-
physical cannot be branded as basic. Thus a common naturalist is likely to treat mind and
consciousness as surds.
Why do I call protagonists of this discourse broad naturalists? The simple answer is: because
they construe nature rather widely. If we look at their ontology we shall find that they have
accommodated different kinds of entities within nature. In other words, they subscribe to a pluralist
ontology. Hence they can easily talk about law-like causal connections obtaining amongst things of
different kinds, even among conscious mental states and bodily actions, considered almost a sacrilege
in modern western philosophy. They individuate and explain the concepts under discussion on the
basis of our lived experience. That is, they theorize on these concepts at the person-level, not at the
level of physics or neuro-sciences, using the ordinary language vocabulary eminently suitable for
expressing human experiences. They have posited an inner sense organ, manas, to account for mental
functions – cognitive, conative and affective but did not know much about salience of brain. But that

1 ‘Naturalism and the Problem of Consciousness’, Todd Moody, The Pluralist Vol. 2, No. 1, 2007.

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should not bother us because though brain functions constrain our mental and bodily states, yet, we
all know, there is an explanatory gap between our person-level experiences and their neural correlates.
Besides the levels of description of person-level phenomena and neural phenomena being different,
our protagonists do not fall back on sub-personal brain-functions in order to explain our mental and
bodily experiences; their explanations rely more on subjective introspection and their hetero-
phenomenological corroborations.
The main opponents of our protagonists are the so-called ‘spiritualists’ who have their base in
the Upaniṣadic monism, later developed in the hands of proponents of different schools of Vedānta.
It is interesting to note that hardcore spiritualist systems also admitted the significant role that body
and the bodily properties play in our empirical existence. However, in all these systems including the
nineteenth century transformations of the Upaniṣadic monism, attempts at transcending the bodily
constraints of our empirical existence in order to participate in the exalted life of eternal bliss were
evident. Sri Aurobindo1, for example, integrated the material/ the bodily, the vital, the psychical, the
mental and its higher stages with the Supramental, the essence of which is existence-consciousness-
bliss, in his narrative of emergent evolution. As the human mind climbs higher and higher peaks, ego-
centric emotions are eliminated making room for experiencing the most exalted emotions associated
with the delight of existence. In this scheme mind, body, brain, consciousness and emotions are inter-
related and inter-dependent. Each has a value of its own, no doubt, but Spirit or Consciousness
remains the source, the end and the guiding principle of creative evolution.
K.C. Bhattacharyya2, acknowledged as the most original and creative Indian philosopher of the
colonial period, also offered a scheme of inter-relating body and the bodily properties with
consciousness, emotions and subjectivity, solely from an Indian perspective. Following the Vedanta
tradition he gave an account of graded consciousness and the alternative ways of realizing the
Absolute through the process of dissociation. According to him, our feeling of body from within or
our bodily subjectivity gives us the first taste of freedom by dissociating itself from all objects
surrounding it and serves as the ground of higher stages of subjectivity. Psychic subjectivity, to which
we have access through introspection, urges us to dissociate mental/psychic states from their
intentional contents, say, images, ideas and thoughts that possess merely quasi-objectivity. He
distinguished amongst various levels of introspection to show that each would lead to greater freedom
from objectivity. Bhattacharyya maintained that in feeling one is completely free from objectivity
and one experiences the subject as freedom, not limited by any objective constraint. He designated
the subjectivity realized through feeling ‘spiritual subjectivity’ because he held that attaining absolute
freedom from objectivity was a spiritual demand. Thus by dissociating consciousness gradually from
objectivity of all kinds, one reaches the final stage of Subjectivity as felt freedom. It is true that in
Bhattacharyya’s scheme mind, body, brain, consciousness and emotions all are important players but
to reach the highest form of freedom body and the bodily finally falls by the way-side.
Another proponent of the Upaniṣadic monism, our Nobel-laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore too,
highlighted the role of body in the onward march of Humanity toward perfection, toward greater and
richer realizations of unity, love and freedom. Tagore was much impressed by Darwin’s theory of

1 Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,Dutton, New York, 1951.

2 Bhattacharyya, K.C., The Subject as Freedom, The Indian Institute of Philosophy, 1930.

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evolution, yet in his Hibbert Lectures (1930) 1 he presented a vision of humanity going beyond
physical evolution by responding to the call of the Eternal Spirit that dwells deep in human heart. It
inspires in human beings a spirit of supreme sacrifice in the midst of their self-centred life style.
During earlier part of evolution the struggle for survival was mainly decided by size and strength of
body till the coming of humans who started ruling over the roost by their wit and intelligence. Human
body and brain evolved sufficiently to pluck and eat the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge. ‘It is the
consciousness in Man of his own creative personality which has ushered in this new regime in Life’s
Kingdom… This consciousness finds its manifestation in science, philosophy, and the arts, in social
ethics, in all things that carry their ultimate value in themselves.’ Of all creatures, said Tagore, man
lives in an endless future of which our present is only a part. ‘From individual body to community
and from community to universe, from universe to infinity – this is the soul’s normal progress.’ Thus
Tagore also places consciousness and soul at a higher rung than brain and body.
Our protagonists, on the other hand, begin and end with the concept of embodied mind where
mind and body remain closely connected. In their metaphysics they enumerate different kinds of
entities, viz. soul/self (ātmā), body (śarīra), sense organs (indriya), objects of experience (artha),
knowledge / consciousness (budhhi), inner sense (manas), etc. A summary account 2 of these
metaphysical entities shows that all these kinds of knowable objects are inter-related. Here, an
individual soul (ātmā) is the seer of all things, enjoyer of all things, knows and experiences. The
distinguishing feature of a soul from any material object is that the former alone has the potency of
being conscious during its embodied existence alone. Hence consciousness is an adventitious quality
of soul. It is not located in any special part of body. Body is the site of all sorts of experiences
cognitive as well as affective including enjoyment and suffering. The sense organs are the means of
knowledge and enjoyment. Manas is the internal sense organ, with the help of which we introspect
our inner states. It is physical in nature and atomic in size. Body is said to be the substratum of effort,
sense organs and pleasure and pain. By ‘effort’ is meant voluntary action, i.e., action performed by
an individual in order to obtain an object of desire, or to avoid an undesirable object. Volition (pravṛtti)
is that which leads to physical and mental acts. Affection, aversion and stupidity are listed as faults
(doṣa-s). Transmigration (pretyabhāba) means the series of births and deaths through which an
individual soul travels until attaining liberation. Birth means connection of a soul with a gross body,
senses, and so forth; death means their dissociation. Hence soul cannot be individuated without a
body. Consequences of activities are mainly of two types: pleasure and pain which are also limited
by the body. That is, our body actively shapes the life of an individual. The means of release from
the cycle of life and death is the correct knowledge of different types of entities which enables one to
distinguish between self from not-self. It is evident from the above account that if the excellence of
an individual lies in its knowledge, its sentience, its attempt to avoid painful existence – it cannot be
an abstract essence – a soul minus its bodily entrapments. It has to be a self-body continuum immersed
and engaged in meaningful pursuits of life in its journey towards emancipation – towards absolute
cessation of all sufferings.

1 Rabindranath Tagore, Religion of Man, The English Writings of Tagore, Volume 3, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1996;
reprinted 2002.
2 Vātsyāyana, Nyāya-sūtra-bhāṣya, ed. Anantalal Thakur, Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi, 1997.

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 Even when dissociated from a body, the prospect of the mental life of an individual is determined
by the contingency of its relationship with a body. It has been stated that desires (rāga) are
conditioned and determined by one’s biological body – human beings having human body possess
human desires, other animals having other kinds of body have differential animal desires 1 . An
objection may be anticipated to this position 2 . Since our protagonists believe in transmigration,
theoretically it is possible that a human baby is born with dispositions of its past non-human life. If it
had lived in the body of an elephant then instead of human desire it would crave for things usually
sought after by the elephant cub. This objection has been ruled out on the ground that the character
of a child’s desires depends on the body he has in his present birth and not that of an elephant cub the
life of which it underwent in one of its past lives. This view, says Ganeri3, anticipates the ‘embodied
mind’ thesis of Shapiro in The Mind Incarnate, that ‘minds profoundly reflect the bodies in which
they are contained’.
Even then, the relationship between soul/self and body is much more intimate than the simple
container-contained relation. Body is the locus/residence (adhiṣthāna) or the home (āyatana) of the
senses, etc. Senses in their turn are said to be the instruments of experience (bhogasādhanam). That
means when one wills to obtain something which one desires, it is the body where an action occurs.
The body is also said to be the locus of the senses because senses are benefitted by the benefit of the
body and are harmed by the harming of the body. That is, sense-organs, external or internal, could
not perform their function without the body. This claim can be substantiated with an example of
(visual) perception which can be extended to any other kind of perception up to mānasa. Besides,
perception being the basis of all other types of cognition, it will follow that human cognition is
without exception body-based.
We have already mentioned that the perceiver or the knower, according to our protagonists, is
an embodied soul. In their causal account of perception, they point out that perception of the world
depends upon threefold contact – the soul/self comes in contact with manas (the inner sense), manas
comes in contact with the appropriate external sense organ and sense organ comes in contact with the
object, the immediate outcome of which is perception. Perception, therefore, is the result of the self-
manas-sense organ–object-in the world acting together in consonance. Not only that, perception is
not a modular process in the sense of being an informationally-encapsulated process, but depends on
the perceiver’s intention and sensory abilities. When our visual sense organ comes into contact with
water, first, we have indeterminate perception of water and water-ness and in the next moment we
have a determinate perception of the form, ‘This is water’. After perceiving water, the perceiver, if
thirsty, proceeds to drink it. But this action is preceded by knowledge that this water is potable and
will quench thirst. But how does the knower determine that the water he has perceived is desirable?
He can because of his previous experience that clear and limpid water is potable. However, if the
perceiver were not thirsty, he would have simply ignored it, without taking any action. If the perceived
water appeared dirty and undrinkable, then the perceiver would have refrained from drinking it. Thus

1 Vaiśeṣika-Sūtra 6.1.13, ‘Desire (rāga) is also determined by the particular biological kind.’ Ed. Muni Sri Jambubijaya,
Gaekwad’s Oriental Series 136, Oriental institute, Baroda, 1961.
2 Vācaspati on the Nyāya-sūtra 3.1.26., Nyāya-Vārttika-Tātparyatīkā, ed. A. Thakur, Indian Council of Philosophical
Research, New Delhi, 1997.
3 Ganeri, J., The Self, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2012.

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perception is always action-guiding. Again, suppose someone comes across a glittering piece of tinsel
which he mistakes as a silver coin. If the perceiver were in need of money or of a greedy disposition,
then he would proceed to pick up the coin, otherwise he would simply ignore it. Hence it appears that
the perceiver always guides his action depending on his local situation – psychological, biological
and cultural.
One might object at this point and say so what? No one is unwilling to admit that our perceptions
are dependent on the structure and abilities of our body, but that is trivial. Can we say that our higher
cognition and psychological properties are also body-dependent, not merely actions and action-
guiding basic perception as well as our emotions? Our protagonists would unhesitatingly affirm that
our perceptual experiences, higher order intellectual activities as well as our affective attitude – all
are grounded in our bodily capacities.
Evidence in support of this theory of embodied consciousness can be garnered from the language
we use which is replete with spatial relation concepts and bodily metaphors. Spatial relations cannot
be seen like physical objects. For example, we do not see nearness and farness. We just see where
certain objects are located and we ascribe nearness and farness in respect of certain landmark. This
shows that we get our spatial relation concepts through our perceptual and bodily system. ‘Here’ and
‘there’ are two adverbs which occur frequently in ordinary language. ‘Here’ denotes the present
location of the perceiver or the agent and ‘there’ indicates the place which is at some distance from
the perceiver/agent. Space, we know, is one and ubiquitous. Keeping in mind our pragmatic
convenience, we introduce some conceptual divisions in it. Our protagonists categorically maintain
that ‘to the east of’, ‘to the north of’ are relative and are to be determined with respect to some points
of reference. The East, for example, is that region which is near the point on the horizon where the
sun rises. The words ‘in front of’ and ‘in the back of’ literally mean ‘facing the perceiver’ and ‘behind
the perceiver’ respectively. The expressions for these two contain the word ‘face’ and ‘the hind part’.
Things that do not possess a front or a back are also ascribed these attributes in relation to us. Take,
for example, a tree. The side facing us is called the front of the tree and the side away from us is
called the back of the tree.We also come across metaphorical extension of the container-contained
relationship in case of immaterial soul, when, for instance, they say that merits and demerits reside
in the soul even in its disembodied state, prior to liberation. An instance of the source-path-goal
schema is realized in the descriptions of the aim of all individual souls. An individual soul, though of
infinite magnitude gets delimited by the body at a particular point of time which is taken as the birth
of an individual and that is the starting point of his life’s journey. It ends with death but the final goal
of any life is liberation from all pain. Accumulated merits and demerits are the detractors or the
impediments to the path of liberation because they take the individual back to the cycle of life and
death.
It is high time that I disclose the identity of our protagonists. They are the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika
philosophers. This school of philosophy is still extant after undergoing various changes through two
thousand years. Their view, we find, closely resembles contemporary embodiment theories, yet there
are also significant disanalogies between the Nyāya theory and contemporary theory of embodied
cognition. First, the Nyāya view was in no way influenced by the theory of evolution. Second, the
Naiyāyika-s, according to the standard interpretation, are direct realists who admit the existence of a

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pre-given world and hence cannot but maintain the outer versus inner distinction. Third, though they
did not feel the need for admitting an intermediate layer of representations, they were not, strictly
speaking, enactive theorists because in the Nyāya world the relation between the knower and the
known was not one of dependent co-origination. Fourth, the Naiyāyika-s were blissfully unaware of
the neural level of our brain. The only reference to the sub-personal level is found in the working of
manas, the inner sense. The Nyāya theory of embodiment is phenomenological rather than
neurological. Its phenomenological orientation offers to explain why our categories and concepts fit
so well with the way we schematize things and function in the world.
Though Soul and body are very intimately related in the Nyāya scheme; soul cannot be reduced
to body, nor can mental properties be ascribed to body. The classical texts of Nyāya offer five
arguments to support this non-reductive stance. Ganeri1 names these arguments as the Unity, Spatial
Parts, Persistence, Self-Knowledge and Self-Reference arguments. The crux of the Unity argument
is that the unification of our experiential data requires that there be a single unifier. The Spatial Parts
and Persistence Arguments attempt to demonstrate that there are fundamental differences between
mental and physical properties in their spatial and temporal modes of occurrence. The Knowledge
and Self-Reference Arguments appeal to asymmetries in the way mental and physical properties are
known about and referred to. These arguments are offered to establish two points: (a) that the
relationship of inhabitation and endorsement which are correlates of having a first-person stance are
fundamentally different in kind from any relation of physical exemplification; and (b) the body and
the bodily states and processes are not autonomous (paratantra), they are governed by the
autonomous (svatantra) soul/self, yet self in a sense is dependent on body as it cannot fulfill its ends
in its disembodied state.
Not only that, our moral commitments, our attitudes towards our own being as well as others
(inanimate and animate objects) too are rooted in our embodiment. Both Praśastapāda 2 and
Vātsyāyana uphold that our conscious states of mind supervene on the physical states of the body by
virtue of an unconscious mechanism of comparison, selective attention of self-monitoring,
information retrieval and action guidance. Manas mediates in these unconscious processes. The
second important aspect - the account of agentic involvement are found in their description of bodily-
grounded emotions. According to the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophers, the core attributes of an emotion
are an appraisal, an inclination to action and a capacity to be felt –- none of which can be realized in
a disembodied state. Pleasure, for example, is elicited by the appraisal of something as likeable or
pleasant, is exhibited in an inclination to maintain a continuing relationship with the desirable object.
Desire is elicited by the appraisal of something which is not yet at hand but has the potency to be
realized. It is exhibited in an inclination to create a relationship with its object. Pleasure is a stable
state, a state of acceptance and continuing interaction with something in one’s environment. Pain is
an unstable state, a state of interaction with things that is not to be endured and intolerable. The felt
presence of such an emotion, feelings it causes, shape one’s will to act in order to dissociate oneself
from those feelings, and more importantly to destroy them altogether. Emotions thus often unify the
commitments, values, preferences and intentions of a single subject. ‘For a state to be owned is

1 Vide Ganeri, 2012.

2 Praśastapāda-bhāṣya, ed. J. Bronkhorst, Motilal Banarasidass, New Delhi, 1994.

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therefore precisely for it to engage the whole of one’s being through its potential to make normative
demands on any other owned state: this is part of what gives substance to the ideas of inhabitation,
participation and endorsement that attributions of ownership imply. Ownership entails embodiment
because some of these demands can be satisfied only in action.’1 Ownership is therefore a normative
concept of endorsement and presupposes the continuity of the participant self. It is the defining feature
of a first-person stance which implies that one endorses one’s state of mind and takes responsibilities
for them; one is not merely a spectator or witness of them. So it is from the first-person stance alone
that we can explain our decisions and actions.
It follows from this analysis that pain has a utility and instrumental value of its own. It is to be
eradicated not for the reason that it is painful or metaphysically bad but because of the system-
instability and incongruence that follows from it. Ganeri thinks that the elimination of the
incongruence is the right way to eliminate the pain and not merely by suppressing the pain itself. By
recommending the eradication of pain, Indian theories of liberation attach a special value to the
mental life of coherence and stability. The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophers are right in upholding that
the possibility of pain is integral to any mental life, for there always remains the possibility of
mismatches resulting in incongruence. That is why the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophers maintain that
a state entirely free from the possibility of pain will lead to complete insentience.
In the Nyāya literature, a disembodied state of liberation is allowed as a formal possibility. But
in the disembodied state all mental capacities are lost; there does not remain any conscious thought,
sentience or intellectual activity because a connection between the souls and the body is the generic
cause of all cognitions and affections.
Liberation in Nyāya then consists in the pure existence (svarūpa-sthiti) of the self, when it is
dissociated from all its distinctive qualities (viśeṣa-guṇa) including consciousness and sentience with
which the self is endowed in its phenomenal existence. Naturally in the state of liberation the self
becomes completely insentient, free from agency and moral commitments, pain as well as pleasure,
knowledge as well as ignorance. The life of a self then, according to the Nyāya philosophers, consists
in being capable of having mental states and properties. In emancipation, with the loss of body, gross
and subtle, selfhood is also lost. This view indirectly entails the converse thesis too that harming a
body amounts to harming its self too which provides the sufficient ground for inculcating self-respect,
respect for others and empathy for all beings in our environment.
It is often doubted that naturalism compromises the normativity of morality. To contest this point
I would like to mention a more radical and uncommon Nyāya view which has been developed by
Pandit Badri Nath Shukla2. Probably, this view gives the maximum credence to the embodiment
thesis. Shukla calls his view dehātmavāda (theory of Body as Soul) and upholds the non-standard
thesis that one need not posit an eternal self or ātman at all to be a practicing Naiyāyika. The concept
of a body with manas is sufficient to serve all the purposes for which the classical Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika
philosophers posited self. The living human body can be the ground in which properties like cognition
/ consciousness, desire, pleasure, pain even accumulated merits and demerits inhere. These properties
cannot be specific qualities of the body. However, nothing prevents them from being general qualities

1 Ganeri, 2012, 12
2 ‘Dehātmavāda or the Body as Soul’, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi, 1991.

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(sāmānya guṇa-s) inhering in the body. It is not necessary for general qualities to be constituted of
the same kind of material elements by which the body is constituted. Thus they do not evolve from
matter through the process of transformation within their constituents. Nor need they be similar to
the physical / bodily properties. It appears that both physical and mental properties can be ascribed
to an embodied individual which reminds us of Strawson’s ascription of P-predicated and M-
predicates to persons. What Shukla has actually been proposing is that like the general quality of form
(rūpa), consciousness (buddhi), etc., also inheres in the body, as long as the body lasts. This is
undoubtedly a celebration of naturalism. However, it does not tell us to have no truck with the
normative. Since this view does not bring along any promise for a future life, it has the distinct
advantage of inspiring a person to lead a commendable unselfish life. All improvements, excellences
that a person looks forward to, have to be attained in this life. Shukla concludes by saying, in the
ātman doctrine the temptation of postponing a good action and leaving it for another life is very
strong. A man is more likely to pursue mean and selfish ends under the spiritualist scheme than under
dehātmavāda. Dehātmavāda is, consequently, not only more rational but also more moral. Thus
unifying the mental and the bodily as well as consciousness, emotions and actions this brand of
naturalism motivates us to aspire for and strive toward human excellence within the span of our
present life.

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 Neural Reuse and Embodied Cognition

Shaun Gallagher
Philosophy, University of Memphis (USA)
Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong (AU)

Introduction

According to classic cognitivist, i.e., computationalist/internalist theories, the brain is the most central
part of the central nervous system where everything of importance concerning cognition, action, self-
awareness and our relations with others happens. Michael Gazzaniga (1998), in his prediction that
psychology is a thing of the past, to be replaced by neuroscience, provides a nice example of an idea
that operates in numerous theories of cognition, namely that psychological processes are reducible to
neurological processes:

My view of how the brain works is rooted in an evolutionary perspective that moves from the fact that
our mental life reflects the actions of many, perhaps dozens to thousands, of neural devices that are built
into our brains at the factory. These devices do crucial things for us, from managing our walking and
breathing to helping us with syllogisms. (Gazzaniga 1998, xiii; see Gazzaniga and Gallagher 1998)

The related claim by Alvin Goldman and Frederique de Vignemont (2009:154) that the “central
system of the mind [… i..e.,] the brain is the seat of most, if not all, mental events” represents a similar
view. According to this classic orthodoxy, the brain is where emotions happen; it’s where intentions
are formed, and actions are prepared; it’s where our understanding of others takes shape.
In thinking about cognition, self, agency, free will, autonomy, social cognition, and other aspects
of mind – and in thinking about when things go wrong in these domains (as in psychopathology) –
neurocentrism (or neuroessentialism) is standard. In philosophy, neurocentrism as a form of
internalism is represented by the well-known brain-in-the-vat thought experiment, which, beyond its
use as a thought experiment, is sometimes proposed as a model for our best understanding of how
things really work.

Some form of internalism must be right because there isn’t anything else to do the job. The brain is all
we have for the purpose of representing the world to ourselves and everything we can use must be inside
the brain. Each of our beliefs must be possible for a being who is a brain in a vat because each of us is
precisely a brain in a vat; the vat is a skull and the ‘messages’ coming in are coming in by way of impacts
on the nervous system. (Searle 1983:230)

Neurocentrism can be described as a ‘narrow’ perspective on cognition. The term ‘narrow’ is a

technical term in philosophy of mind. It refers to processes contained “in the head” – for example,
brain-based representational processes and contents. Narrowminded views have been challenged by
“wide” “E-approaches” – that is, embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, ecological approaches to

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cognition, which in various ways argue that the unit of explanation ought to be brain-body-
environment. On such externalist views, the brain is not dismissed as unimportant for understanding
cognition, action, emotion, human experience, an so on; rather it is decentered and given a partial,
although still important, role to play along with bodily and environmental factors.
In this paper, I will discuss the idea that we need to re-think our understanding of how the brain
works within the larger system of brain-body-environment. I will look at this specifically from the
perspective of phylogeny, and the notion of the neural reuse hypothesis.

Brain, Body and Beyond

The neural reuse hypothesis is an important and influential insight into how we understand brain
functions. As Michael Anderson (2010) explains it, neural circuits originally established for one use
can be reused or redeployed for other purposes while still maintaining their original function. This
hypothesis was originally understood in terms of an evolutionary notion of plasticity, exaptation: “the
shift in the course of evolution of a given trait or mechanism, which is later on reused to serve new
purposes and functions” (Gallese 2014: 6). A good example is Broca’s area in the human brain. The
homologous area in the monkey involves motor functions. Across evolutionary changes it retains
these original functions – movement preparation, action sequencing, and action imitation (Binkofski
& Buccino 2004). But, in the human this area is exapted for additional functions involving language
and action recognition functions. Its function in speech production has been long known and well
established (Broca 1861). The presence of mirror neurons in this area links it to action recognition
(Rizzolatti et al. 1996). Mirror neurons are another example of reuse: originally motor neurons
involved in motor control, they are exapted in the course of evolution to serve social cognition.
This idea of reuse has been appropriated by a narrow, internalist “weak” conception of embodied
cognition (EC). According to weak EC, neither the physical body itself (its anatomy, activity, postural
body-schematic processes) nor the environment are important contributories to cognition. Rather,
what’s important for weak EC are B(ody)-formatted representations and the reuse hypothesis. B-
formatted representations are nonpropositional interoceptive or motoric representations “of one's own
bodily states and activities” (Goldman 2012: 74). These B-formats are characterized as “sanitized”
neural representations (Goldman & Vignemont 2009), and are sometimes discussed under the
heading of the ‘body in the brain’ (e.g., Berlucchi & Aglioti 2010). On the weak EC view, the reuse
hypothesis is put to use as follows: Any cognitive task that employs a Bformatted representation, in
either its original function or its exapted/derived function is, on this definition, a form of embodied
cognition. Examples include not only mirror neurons and their role in social-cognitive simulation,
but also Pulvermüller’s (2005) language-grounding hypothesis – the idea that action words, like lick,
pick, and kick activate cortical motor areas that involve tongue, hand, and foot, respectively. In this
case, motor areas and interoceptive, B-formatted motor representations are reused for language
processing. Along this same line, by simulation or metaphor, one can explain the embodied roots of
abstract thought (Barsalou 2008; Lakoff & Johnson 1999). Thus, “higher-order thought is grounded
in low-level representations of motor actions’ (Goldman 2014: 94).

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 The evolutionary principle of reuse can get reframed as a developmental principle, in, for
example, Stanislas Dehaene’s (2005) ‘neuronal recycling’ hypothesis, according to which there are
ontogenetic changes in the ‘visual word form area’ of visual cortex when a person learns to read.
Goldman also uses the concept of reuse to apply to token neural activations and cognitive events. For
example, he mentions “reusing or redeploying Bformats to execute a fundamentally non-bodily
cognitive task (Goldman 2012: 83), an example of which is the activation of mirror neurons, which
is “a redeployment of the motoric format in a novel, cognitively interpersonal, task” (2012: 79).
I’ve argued (Gallagher 2015b; 2018) that accepting these extensions in the use of the reuse
hypothesis, including Dehaene’s (2005) neuronal recycling hypothesis, and Pulvermüller’s (2005)
language-grounding hypothesis actually undermines a purely internalist account of cognition – across
all timescales: evolutionary, developmental, and the timescale of everyday action.
Indeed, accepting the concepts of neuronal reuse implies a strong view of EC. On the timescale
of evolution, reuse has everything to do with the body – including its morphological features, which
are dismissed as trivial by weak EC (Goldman and Vignemont 2009). Specifically, and obviously,
the human brain evolves with the human body. Evolutionary changes in the body that allow for the
upright posture, leading to a restructuring of the skull and jaw allows for a larger brain and for the
development of speech. These changes are accompanied by many other morphological changes
involving hands, feet, etc. All of these changes drive evolutionary changes in the brain, and promote
reuse.
Not only the body, but also physical, social, and cultural environments are important factors
both evolutionarily and developmentally for any understanding of neural reuse or neuronal recycling.
Neither brain evolution nor brain development happens in vitro or in a vat. The role of the cultural
environment, for example, is directly relevant in developmental contexts. This remains unstated, but
implicit even in Goldman’s discussion of Pulvermüller’s work in neural linguistics – “an excellent
example of the redeployment of an older (motoric) system, featuring a bodily format, to help execute
tasks of language comprehension” (Goldman 2014, 103). Activation of perceptual or motor areas for
language and conceptual processing is not just the result of brain plasticity, but cultural practices and
learning. The role of culture and context (including bodily practices and environmental factors),
applies equally to token events. For example, motor simulations related to word processing in the
context of a sentence are more specific than the meaning represented by the abstract verb outside of
a sentence (Naumann 2011): one would expect a different pattern of neural activation for the
sentences ‘Bill picked up the needle’ versus ‘Bill picked up the barbell’ – since there are differences
in both neural and bodily activations for the differences in grasping (the picking up) involved in such
actions. Importantly, the neural activation will depend not only on knowing what a barbell is, or what
a needle (or what kind of needle – sewing, compass, hypodermic) is involved, but also to some
significant extent on the history of one’s use of such items, and one’s skill level, one’s bodily practices
(consider novice versus expert seamstress or weightlifter).
Such things are not just neuronal, but also involve bodily, social and cultural factors. The
plasticity involved here is not just neuronal plasticity, but also metaplasticity (Malafouris 2013); not
just brains, but bodies and environments, and social and cultural practices undergo changes due to
their on-going, dynamical interactions across all relevant time scales.

227
 More than just evolving (in the restricted Darwinian sense of variation under natural selection),
we have been altering our own developmental paths [including our own brains] by making and
changing the material means by which we engage the world…. The plasticity of the mind is embedded
and inextricably enfolded with the plasticity of culture” (Malafouris 2015, 351).
Full consideration of the reuse hypothesis leads us directly to the role of body and environment,
including cultural context. The unit of explanation is not just the brain, not just the body, not just the
environment, but the brain-body-environment (Gallagher et al. 2013). In evolutionary terms, the brain
operates the way it does because it is part of an organism that has hands which can reach and grasp
in specific ways, and eyes structured to focus, an upright posture, an autonomic system, and so forth,
all of which evolved to cope with specific kinds of environments, and with other people. Changes to
any component of the individual’s bodily, environmental, or experienced social-cultural context will
elicit responses from the system as a whole. As the enactivists have argued, rather than internal mental
representations or the computation of information, we should understand the brain as participating in
the overall action of the system as a whole (Gallagher 2017b; Hutto & Myin 2013; Thompson 2007).

Conclusion

Since the 1990s, the assumption in cognitive science has been that neuroscience will at some point
replace psychology and that we will adjust our philosophies of mind accordingly (Gazzaniga 1998).
The expectation was that the best explanation of brain function will be worked out in the vocabulary
of neuroscience. In contrast, I want to suggest that the best explanation of brain function may be
found in the vocabularies of embodied and situated cognition, developmental psychology, ecological
psychology, dynamic systems theory, applied linguistics, the theory of affordances, along with the
anthropological insights found in discussions that extend from concepts of cultural niche to material
engagement. There is a methodological question involved here: whether neuroscience can start to
speak this different language and enter into the right kind of dialogue. There is also a substantial
question: how do brains operate in the complex and dynamical mix of interactions that involve
perceiving, moving, gesturing, acting, emoting and expressing bodies?
It is conventional to think of the nervous system as an organ that monitors and motivates the
body rather than an organ controlled by the body…. Nevertheless, the body’s influence on the nervous
system is as important for the organism as is neural dominion over the body. (Purves 1988: 1)
That the body essentially constrains and ‘pushes’ the organization of the brain through its
dynamic behavioral interaction with the environment was already well documented by G.E. Coghill
(1929), in Anatomy and the Problem of Behavior. Merleau-Ponty, in his 1957-58 lectures on the
concept of nature, was inspired by Coghill’s work for setting the principles of dynamic anatomy in
opposition to strict determinism, and he provides an appropriate conclusion.
The nervous system emerges from a preneural dynamic. Thus when the nervous excitation
occurs, it can’t play an important role in the organization of the nervous system. This organization is
not so much due to the functioning of the neuron as to the growth of the total organism. The preneural
system of integration “strides across” the nervous functioning and it doesn’t stop when it appears. So
the nervous system can’t be the ultimate explanation. Then we must admit an intrinsic potentiality of

228
growth, a dynamic system reacting to its surroundings as an organism would do. It replaces the
function of conduction as being a consequence, not a principle of the system. (MerleauPonty 2003:
192)

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was supported by the Humboldt Foundation’s Anneliese Maier Research
Award and the Australian Research Council (ARC) grant, Minds in Skilled Performance.
DP170102987.

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The Question of a Philosophy of Margins, Between Truth, Solidarity and Justice

Charles Romain Mbele

The École Normale Supérieure of the University of Yaoundé 1

The philosophy of the margins was at first a question of Western classical metaphysics from antiquity
all through to modernity. It has recently become the mantra of the new social sciences and
philosophies of the South, especially those born in India in the early 1960s, before spreading to Latin
America, the Caribbean and Africa. This is also a response to historical struggles and shake-ups. The
stakes of the latter therefore remain economic, cultural, aesthetic, ethico-political, epistemological
and metaphysical. Henceforth, the South is praised for the project "of a deaf multiplicity of diversity"
against the "universal of transparency"1, in favor of marginalities and marginalized people2. It would
be places of being where the accumulated sufferings of history3 would be redeemed in a vast kenosis.

Ⅰ.

A metaphysical tension has always been at work between the center and the margins of being. By
metaphysics I mean in the classical Greek sense, a philosophical reflection on being as such, on the
totality of what is. From this point of view, the refusal for the margin still continues - even in its
negative aim - to be part of metaphysics: favoring the border, the edge, the boundary, the limit, the
interstices remain in the confine of a philosophical reflection on liminality and laterality in the order
of being (social, aesthetic, ethico-political).
This is the debate that Plato encounters, following Parmenides' referral of the sensible and the
multiple to the margins of being. Plato leads this debate in the Parmenides, and he pursues it in the
Sophist. He conceptualizes it in terms of unity and difference, and this, against the mania of denying
the contradiction that founds the rejection of the sensible, as a domain of the multiple and the diverse.
Now, for Plato, it suffices to posit dissimilarity in itself and resemblance in itself, and to conclude
that sentient beings participate to these opposite forms of being. Plato distinguish five main genres:
being, movement and rest, the other and the same. These kinds communicate with each other in a
precise way, because each being is the same as he is and other than what he is not. Which amounts to
saying that the other is non-being, insofar as each being is other than what it is not. The other - the
non-being - participates in the being and, therefore, is. The other and the being penetrate through all
genres and become intertwined: "Non-being is not less than being itself; for it is not the opposite of

1 Édouard Glissant, Discours antillais, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Folio », 1997, p. 14.
2 V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, Bloomington, Indiana
University Press, 1988, p. 5; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincialiser l’Europe., Paris, Editions Amsterdam, 2009, p. 53; Jean-
Godefroy Bidima, La Philosophie négro-africaine, Paris, PUF, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 1995, p. 124 ; « La philosophie en
Afrique », in : Jean-François Mattéi (sld), Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, tome IV : Le Discours philosophique,
Paris, PUF, pp. 814-821 ; L’Art négro-africain, Paris, PUF, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 1997, p. 8, p. 111.
3 Jean-Marc Ela, « Les voies de la renaissance africaine », in : Le Monde diplomatique, juin 1998.

231
being which it expresses, it is simply something else than being ". 1To elaborate a metaphysics of the
margins of being, to speak in terms of "being in third" or "being third" 2 , of "third-space" 3 , of
"interstitial spaces"4, of "formless", of " not yet ", of the" non-place of being "5, it is just to place
oneself in another point of view of the metaphysics of the center, the objective of the marginal being
is to" push the Being to persevere in the Being.”6
You cannot integrate into the parties without being integrated into the whole. You cannot know
the parts without knowing everything and vice versa. Also, for Pascal, Schelling, etc., the concern for
the fragment aims to better know the totality.7 Somehow still a thinker of the One, Gilles Deleuze
inscribes himself in this perspective when he confounds philosophy with ontology, which confuses
itself with "the univocity of being," that is to say, this reality "that there is one and the same being:
on the contrary the beings are multiple and different, always produced by a disjunctive synthesis,
themselves disjoint and divergent, membra disjecta [...] a single Being for all its forms [...] ».8

II.

Until recent modernity, philosophy has remained inscribed in a metaphysics of the center, the
foundation, the principle, the totality (Pascal, Kant, Hegel). This determination of being as presence
is to be understood as the position of the origin and the end (arche and telos), of the essence, of
existence, of the one and all (Schelling), of the truth, etc.
It resulted in the affirmation of an "ontology of social and historical being" (Lukács9, Castoriadis)
who thought in terms of "proletarians" (Marx and Engels), "damned of the earth" (Fanon) ,
"voiceless" (Marcuse), "those have no part" or "party of the poor" (Rancière), "pariahs" (Varikas),
"illegal immigrant" (Balibar, Mezzadra and Caloz-Tschopp) ), "without work" (Tosel), even
"superfluous" (Baumann). Defined here as taking into account the totality of what is, of whole and
parts, metaphysics implies a practical postulate: these categories and these figures of the split of the
modern "unhappy consciousness" (Hegel, Schelling) are resulted from the position of inequality and
domination in the range of being. They must be overcome in historical effectiveness by reconciliation
through equality. To make a common world of truth, solidarity and justice supposes taking into

1 Platon, Sophiste, 258 d, cité par Marcien Towa, dont nous suivons l’analyse, dans Identité et Transcendance, préface
de Joseph Ndzomo-Molé, Paris, L’Harmattan, coll. « Problématiques africaines », 2011, p. 126 sq.
2 Bourahima Ouattara, Penser l’Afrique, suivi de L’Afrique fragmentée, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2002, pp. 44-45.
3 Homi Bhabha et Jonathan Rutherford, « Le tiers-espace », traduction de C. Degoutin et J. Vidal, entretien in : Multitudes,
n 26, automne 2006.
4 Homi K. Bhabha, Les Lieux de la culture. Une théorie postcoloniale, traduit de l’anglais (Etats-Unis), Paris, Payot, coll.
« Rivages », 2007 [Titre original : The Location of Culture @ 1994]; cf. Marie Cuillerai, « Le tiers-espace, une pensée de
l’émancipation », in : La revue internationale des livres et des idées, novembre-décembre 2009, pp. 33-35.
5 Jean-Godefroy Bidima, Théorie critique et modernité africaine. De l’École de Francfort à la « Docta spes africana »,
Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne, 1993, pp. 240-241.
6 idem
7 Lucien Goldmann, Introduction à la philosophie de Kant, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Idées/NRF », 1967, notamment le
chapitre II, « La catégorie de la totalité dans la pensée kantienne et dans la philosophie en général », pp. 61-70 ; Le Dieu
caché. Étude sur la vision tragique dans les pensées de Pascal et le théâtre de Racine, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Tel »,
1992, especially the first chapter : « Le tout et les parties » ; pp. 13-31.
8 Gilles Deleuze, La logique du sens, Paris, Minuit, coll. « Critique », p. 210 sq. ; cf. Alain Badiou, Deleuze. « La clameur
de l’être », Paris, Hachette Littératures, coll. « Pluriel », 1997, especially the chapter « Univocité de l’Être et multiplicité
des noms », pp. 31-47.
9

232
account the "univocity of being"1 and the work of knowledge as a quest for truth that subsumes nature,
necessity, the system in freedom, theory in praxis (Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Marx).

III.

Opposite to the perspective of "the event of rupture" which is constructed by the critique of
metaphysics. Nietzsche replaces the concepts of being and truth by the concepts of play, interpretation
and sign (of sign without present truth) ; Freud criticizes the presence of self, that is to say the
consciousness, the subject, the self-identity, the proximity or the property of self; Heidegger destroys
onto-theology, the determination of being as presence.2 This criticism is contemporary with the desire
to go beyond Hegel's "philosophy of everything" by Rosenzweig, who leans on Kierkegaard,
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, in order to value the "value of the world" for man or the individual,
whose value of life is invaluable, unquantifiable. This is achieved at the expense of questioning "on
the essence" (the "objective value", "the value for 'something'" whatever it may be, the "meaning" or
the "finality of the world"), the goal being to relativize "the Knowable Whole". 3
Decades later comes the primacy of language - itself contemporary with the replacement of the
search of truth4 by the "logic of meaning" . The truth (aletheia) is extenuated or weakened by the ruin
of metaphysics, especially the "overthrow of Platonism"5, for putting an end to the logos and the
center.

IV.

The origin and the function of a metaphysics of the margins in the current philosophies of the South
go back to a metaphysics of decentering or decentration within a Western theoretical consciousness
confronted with the nature of knowledge coming from the "human sciences". For Jacques Derrida,
they are themselves contemporaries of the ruptures linked on the one hand to the criticism of
metaphysics and on the other hand to the anticolonial struggles of previously dominated, exploited,
marginalized peoples who posit the need for their auto-centration, in the name of the affirmation in
breadth and depth of the universal, solidarity and justice: "Ethnology could not be born as a science
until a decentering could be operated: at the moment European culture - and consequently the history
of metaphysics and its concepts, has been dislocated, driven from its place, having to cease to be
considered as the reference. This moment is not at first a moment of philosophical and scientific
discourse, it is also a political, economic, technical moment [...]. The critique of ethnocentrism,
condition of ethnology, is systematically and historically contemporary with the destruction of the
history of metaphysics. Both belong to one and the same period. ”6The idea of decentring engages

1 Alain Badiou, Deleuze. « La Clameur de l’être », Paris, Hachette Littératures, coll. « Pluriel », 1997, p. 31 sq.
2 Jacques Derrida, L’Ecriture et la Différence, Paris, Seuil, coll. « Tel Quel », 1967, p. 411 sq.
3 Franz Rosenzweig, L’Étoile de la Rédemption, traduction de l’allemand par Alexandre Derczanski et Jean-Louis
Schlegel, entirely reviewed and annotated by Jean-Louis Schlegel, préface de Stéphane Mosès, Paris, Seuil, 2003, pp. 19-
45.
4 Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, coll. « Critique », 1969.
5 Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, op. cit., p. 292 sq.
6 Jacques Derrida, « La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines », in : L’Ecriture et la
Différence, op. cit., p. 417.

233
both the classical sources of philosophy and the material life of the Western world, because it is part
of the "history of metaphysics, as of the history of the West."1 These stories are "the determination
of being as presence to all the senses of this word. We could show that all names of the foundation,
the principle or the center have always designated the invariant of a presence (eidos, arche, telos,
energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject), aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness,
God, man." 2 A theoretical event - the emergence of structural linguistics - redoubles criticism of
metaphysics: the structure is no longer neutralized" by a gesture that consisted in giving it a center,
in relating it to a presence. to a fixed origin. "3This is due to the primacy of language:" It is then the
moment when language invades the universal problem field, and it is the moment when, in the
absence of center or origin, everything becomes discourse [...], that is to say, a system in which the
central, original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside the system of
differences. The absence of a transcendental signified extends to infinity the field and the play of
meanings.4 "Structural linguistics abstracts from the speaking subject, the speech, to consider the
functioning of the language as a system of arbitrary signs that do not refer to an extra-linguistic
signified that would ensure the stability and relevance, but which refer to each other by a set of
reciprocal relations based on opposition and difference, because the arbitrariness of the sign leads to
its differential character.5 This closing of the signs on themselves results in an integral textualization
of the real which implies a process of indefinite and rhizomic differentiation of every presence -
where there exists neither a signified distinct from a signifying, nor the presence of a subject that
poses a direction (telos) to the game of signifying.

V.

Thus, in our contemporaneity the idea of decentering, that of instability in the order of being. are
founded at the same time. Then, by speaking of "reassuring foundation" or "a founded game
constituted from a foundational immobility and a reassuring certainty" 6 , Derrida indicates very
precisely the existential dimension of the question of the centered structure: the end of any center
corresponds to the end of material anxieties which correspond to the control of the industrial order -
that "implementation of the Platonic dream" of rationality.7 To develop a metaphysics of the margins,
to put an end to the foundation, the center, the origin and the end, it is for our peoples not to want to
leave the scarcity. Finally, the relativization of European centrality is strongly affirmed as a break
with the old Western episteme: Euro-centrism is denounced as the projection of the "European
concept of philosophy" in so far as "a fantastic projection of the accidental successes of European

1 Jacques Derrida, « La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines », in : L’Ecriture et la
Différence, op. cit., p. 410.
2 L. c., p. 411.
3 L. c., p. 410.
4 L. c., p. 411.
5 Pierre Aubenque, Faut-il déconstruire la métaphysique ?, Paris, PUF, collection de métaphysique/Chaire Étienne
Gilson, 2009, p. 57.
6 Idem, p. 410.
7 François Châtelet, « Platon », in : La Philosophie de Kant à Husserl, Paris, Marabout, t. III, 1979, p. 27.

234
history "1; we postulate the failure of the project of modernity (realization of progress and the hope
of a final victory of reason over all forms of obscurantism). The break with the Enlightenment and
what they have promoted has, in fact, favored the development of a decentred understanding of the
world, to bring out, outside the exclusive framework of Western modernity, other formations of the
universal consciousness. 2
In short, faced with the time and space of a totality that reject peoples and individuals in the
margins and interstices of being, philosophies strive, as if by a return of stigma, to theorize and
assume this marginalization as "the opportunity for the vanquished to make their story". 3In some
Southern philosophies, this has led to the form of "societal" metaphysics, which include women,
children, the mad, the disabled, etc., in marginality, that is, a diffused " intermediate space" between
tradition and modernity.4
The categories of "differential constructions"5 or of community difference (in short, ethnicity,
religion, the tribe against the nation in so far as an exclusive and totalitarian project), of "limits of
totality", "exploded images of the dialectic ", of" fragmentation of the logos ", of" negative thought
", of multiplicities, of" praise of difference "intend to denounce the notion of center as a lie, that is to
say, triumph of the dominants over the rags and rejects; this triumph is posited as that of the One, of
the essence or the substance, which opposes truth and error, objective and subjective, finite and
infinite, outside and inside, is realized at the expense of the limit, the edge, the border, the overflow,
the bifurcation zones, the thresholds, in short the margin. 6 The aim of this intellectual and
philosophical offensive is to participate in a "new era", that of "the destabilization of totalities and
conceptual wholes".7 The criticism of the logos as a rational discourse, of phallus, as male and of the
center understood as the source of meaning 8 aims to leave the philosophical discourse that
marginalizes the body, the sex, the child, the woman, the thugs, the handicapped, the new sexualities,
local knowledge 9 - especially magic, alchemy, paranormal enthusiasm, astrology, these "false
sciences" criticized by Descartes, Leibniz, Kant.
The purpose is to put an end to a conceptual vision issued from critical rationality, because the
logos being no longer arché, opposing totality and fragment, system and margin must be realized for

1 Cornelius Castoriadis, « Les Mouvements des années 60 », in : La Montée de l’insignifiance. Les carrefours du
labyrinthe, tome IV, Paris, Seuil, coll. « La couleur des idées », 1996.
2 Achille Mbembe, De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine, Paris, Karthala,
coll. « Les Afriques », 2000, p. 27.
3 Jean-Godefroy Bidima, Théorie critique et modernité négro-africaine. De l’École de Francfort à la « Docta spes
africana », Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne, 1993, p. 241.
4 Valentin Yves/Vumbi Yoka Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge,
Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 5.
5 Mamadou Diouf, L’Historiographie indienne en débat. Colonialisme, nationalisme et sociétés postcoloniales, op.cit.
6 Sur tout ceci lire, Jean-Godefroy Bidima, L’Art négro-africain, Paris, PUF, 1997, p. 8 ; La Philosophie négro-africaine,
Paris, PUF, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 1995, p. 124 ; « La philosophie en Afrique », in : Jean-François Mattéi (sld),
Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, tome IV : Le Discours philosophique, Paris, PUF, 2000, p.
7 Bouharima Ouattara, « Figures ethnologiques de la pensée de l’être », in : Cahiers d’Études africaines, n° 157, XL-1,
2000.
8 Jean-François Mattéi, L’Homme dévasté, préface de Raphaël Enthoven, Paris, Grasset, 2015, pp. 241-242.
9 Ramon Grosfoguel, « Vers une décolonisation des « universalismes » occidentaux : le « pluri-versalisme décolonial »,
d’Aimé Césaire aux zapatistes », in : Nicolas Bancel, Florence Bernault, Pascal Blanchard, Ahmed Boubeker, Achille
Mbembe, Françoise Vergès (sld), Ruptures postcoloniales. Les nouveaux visages de la société française, Paris, La
Découverte, 2010, pp. 119-137.

235
the benefit of fragmentation, of de-foundation, de-totalization, of the primacy of the multiple and of
the diversity over "subsuming identities". We decree the end of any ontology of the presence which
signifies a unified world. It is no longer a question of defending central values where each can
recognize each other, to preserve rules of common life, to have confidence in a common action.
This new philosophical orientation is in fact a critique of the emancipation philosophies of the
conference of Bandung and the struggles for liberation, because they have posited auto-centration as
the norm regulating our existence.

VI

Let us conclude. The conceptual grammar of marginal metaphysics in Southern philosophies shows
neither a headland nor a compass with respect to the fundamental ethical principle of the original
value of each individual.
The need to get rid of rationality, to challenge the new cogito that goes along with the principle
of profit – at the risk of acosmie, extra-historicity or self-exclusion of universal history - is combined
without coherence and without synthesis.
There is no desire to resolve in depth and breadth the political problem of equality and the ethical
problem of dignity. Some thinkers even dream of constituting inequality and exclusion by means of
creative destruction, for the purpose of productivity and primitive accumulation. And this, against
the Kantian source of the practical philosophy which thinks that the dignity, the integrity of the person,
the democracy, the truth, the justice are non-negotiable absolutes. They cannot be sacrificed in the
name of increased benefits or the good of the many.
Being on the margins is not a sign of an election, although the mystique of margins is one of
them. Suffering and lowering do not redeem. Against all spiritual need of suffering, the excluded
must resist, fight to achieve another City where it will no longer be at the margin in the form of the
object, but in the center, busy producing what it needs, in an order that aims for equality and human
fraternity.

(Translated by Li Dan; Proofread by Feng Li)

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 Solidarity and Social Risk

Sally J. Scholz (USA)

Abstract: ‘Solidarity,’ like ‘social justice,’ conventionally carries a rather positive connotation,
informing collective engagements that are inclusive, communal, and cooperative. Invocations
of solidarity call forth the spirit of a community and remind individuals of their connections
with others in significant moral bonds. Such moral bonds require some element of shared social
risk; however, social risk is sometimes inequitably distributed, unjustifiably limited, or
strategically withdrawn. In this paper, I focus on the inequitable distribution of social risk in
civil solidarity, or the solidarity of society as a whole. Social risk is both the extent to which
one’s well-being is dependent on others as well as the potential to gain or lose personal strength,
power, or well- being from a decision. An analysis of social risk highlights the way individual
vulnerabilities such as hunger, thirst, and injury—rather than social goods—are distributed in
society. Liberal democratic societies organized to secure social goods and protect individual
well-being traditionally establish social structures to minimize social risks. All participants are
expected to assume at least some social risk and allow their well-being to be interdependent
with that of others such that all will be similarly interdependent in a collective whole. But
sometimes inequitable distribution of the risks results in individual participants subjected to
vulnerabilities created by that structure. In such cases, solidarity may become dangerous for
some participants. Revealing how the willingness to engage social risk may be hindered or
structurally maldistributed aids in unpacking the collective moral obligations of civil solidarity.
This analysis also offers insight for a commitment to a universal norm of solidarity with
equitable distribution of social risk as a guiding principle for grounding human rights.

Solidarity and Social Risk

‘Solidarity,’ like ‘social justice,’ conventionally carries a rather positive connotation, informing
collective engagements that are inclusive, communal, and cooperative. Invocations of solidarity call
forth the spirit of a community and remind individuals of their connections with others in significant
moral bonds. Globalization, however, has transformed the social landscape such that at least one form
4
of communal interdependence is global. Although there are numerous Civic solidarity overlaps with
civil society in important ways but points to a distinct moral relation pertaining to the obligations to
protect each fellow citizen among and between all the participants and levels of involvement. Civic
solidarity has come to be associated with the welfare state through such things as social security
income, insurance against unemployment, healthcare, and consumer and environmental protections.
As I show below, its roots are deeper and civic solidarity ought not to be reduced to merely welfare
state organization. Civic solidarity identifies a responsibility to consociates, to help them when they
are in need and to receive help from them when one is in need. A global civic solidarity assumes a
moral relation that utilizes civil society organizations as consociates alongside individuals and states.
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 Jean-Jacques Rousseau lays out the challenge of civic solidarity in the initial justification for his
social contract. Humans in the state of nature reach a point that seems to pit their freedom against the
unity. As individuals, they require a “sum of forces” to overcome obstacles to their continued
existence. The problem is that “each man’s force and freedom are his primary instruments of self-
preservation,” leading Rousseau to ask “how can he commit them without harming himself, and
5
without neglecting the cares he owes himself?” In other words, the “cooperation of many” appears
to be in contradiction to the individual’s duty to self-preservation and status as a free human being.
The task then, as Rousseau explains, is: “To find a form of association that will defend and protect
the person and goods of each associate with the full common force, and by means of which each,
6
uniting with all, nevertheless obey only himself and remain as free as before.” What Rousseau
noticed is that being part of a group involves a certain risk. The group, which in Rousseau’s case is
society, could just as likely dominate and enslave the individual as ensure the individual’s freedom.
However, when the risks of unifyingare equitably shared, the society allows the individual to actually
be free, to enjoy the liberty that civil, political, economic, and social rights are meant to ensure.
We can use Rousseau’s insight to think about global civic solidarity. Rousseau argues that “each,
7
by giving himself to all, gives himself to no one.” No one would alienate all of his or her rights to all
others without the expectation that the social structure would be organized such that he or she would
not be unduly subject to vulnerabilities created by that structure.
Albeit not a society, a global civic solidarity is a way of imagining global relations as informing
obligations to consociates. Rousseau’s society is organized to minimize social risks.
Participants assume a social risk, to allow their well-being to be interdependent with others,
ostensibly such that all others will similarly be interdependent with them in a collective whole, in
order to mitigate individual risks. A global civic solidarity begins with the acknowledgement of
global interdependence of consociates, be they individuals, organizations, or states. There is no choice
in the matter, although, as is evident in the current world situation, states do seem to think they can
opt out. I think that is mistaken: opting out is adopting a position of dominance.
Decisions in a global civic solidarity are self-determined but measured or circumscribed by
moral relations to all other. Although modest in proposal, there are benefits to thinking in terms of a
global civic solidarity.
One benefit is that a global civic solidarity takes the fact of interdependence and transforms it
into a duty. By acknowledging how decisions of one organization connect with the decisions or ability
to take self-determined actions of other organizations or peoples, civic solidarity emphasizes the
responsibilities shared among consociates globally. When parties act in this manner, they accept a
willingness to share social risk that includes aiding others when those others are in need. Much like
the shift in thinking that occurs when the international community moves from state sovereignty
understood as noninterference to state sovereignty understood as the responsibility to protect, civic
solidarity shifts from ensuring rights to the responsibility to provide. To be sure, this is a slight shift
and, arguably, ensuring rights should entail the responsibility to provide. Certainly the opposite is
true: the responsibility to provide entails ensuring rights. Again like the responsibility to protect, civic
solidarity assumes that human rights exist because of global interdependence and our collective

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 8
commitment to protect each other in times of need. In this way, it also addresses a need that Carl
Wellman identifies when he reflects on so-called third generation human rights, “Unfortunately, not
every state will do its full share to solve the global threats to human welfare and human rights. Hence,
there is an urgent need for joint obligations binding upon all states to require some states to do more
9
than their fair share and thus to ensure the adequacy of the efforts of the international community.”
The ideal, of course, is for every state to do its full share to solve the global threats. Civic solidarity
is a form of joint obligation to bind all states. The need for some states to do more is a form of
responding to the needs of others. Although unlikely, the vision is that with the equitable sharing of
risks, all consociates will be secured against social vulnerabilities and moderately protected or
rescued in light of natural vulnerabilities.
Risk generally refers to the possible material, physical, or status loss to one’s self.
Although many risks are voluntary risks that one takes for some other purpose (entertainment,
for instance), some risks are involuntary as when one is exposed to possible harm (natural disasters,
for instance). Vulnerabilities are weaknesses or barriers to safety, security, or preservation. The nature
of interdependence also requires human beings to live in and rely on society. Social risks, then,
emerge because we live in complex societies. They exploit vulnerabilities and can also be created or
exacerbated by humans or through human interaction.
The level of risk generally varies among people based on their vulnerabilities. Shifting
circumstances can also expose new or additional vulnerabilities and result in some people taking on
more risk than others.
Vulnerabilities, too, can be social insofar as they exist because of the structure, values,
institutions, or practices unique to the society or community in which a person lives. Social
vulnerabilities include such things as socio-economic inequality, unequal access to resources,
environmental hazards, inaccurate or incomplete information, exclusionary institutions, and similar
elements of living together that affect some members of society more than others and affect their
ability to engage in civil and political liberties.
David Miller identifies “a willingness to collectively protect members from risks, including
redistributive pooling of risk, a brake on inequality, and nurturing trust” as important instrumental
10
benefits of solidarity. Indeed, this is a fairly typical understanding of the goals of welfare state
protections. Civic solidarity is conceived as a means of sharing risk so that individuals will not be
hindered by vulnerabilities in their exercise of civil, political, social and economic rights. “Civic
solidarity does not try to eliminate inequalities entirely, but it does try to keep these inequalities from
11
affecting one’s ability to participate in society.” It takes is most prominent form in the welfare state.
The benefit of this approach is that it focuses on vulnerability. Rights-based accounts of justice
emphasize individuals’ rights and corresponding duties of the state or claims against the state. An
account of solidarity is an account of the layered communities of responsibilities seeking to meet the
needs of the most vulnerable. Responsibilities set the agenda for appropriate obligations with rights
12
as a guide or lens through which to understand responsibilities.
The sharing of risk in civic solidarity resembles the sharing of risk in a mutual insurance plan.
In insurance, “the pool can cover the sum needed for the insurance event, as individual participants

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 13
cover only tiny parts of the cost, which is their fair share of the risk.” Of course, insurance companies
are active third parties that also seek their own good. In a civic solidarity, there is no such third party
although the United Nations might stand as a mediating force.
The structure of civic solidarity, with the equitable sharing of risk, seeks to avoid domination.
Although some states or organizations will have more power in certain circumstances, the nature of
the commitment requires them to put this power in the service of the whole rather than seek advantage
against the group. In solidarity embracing the equitable sharing of risks, individuals and groups can
seek to foster liberty and solidarity through concrete practices that embody trust. Domination is
avoided in part through decisions structured to address vulnerabilities. Rather than seek mutual
advantage, then, consociates seek to concentrate on the needs that keep some fellow members from
acting on their liberty and self-determination.
One feature associated with solidarity generally is that those who are so connected agree
implicitly or explicitly to the consequences that might befall them as a result of their common
commitment. This feature appears in different guises as shared fate, acceptance of sacrifices, or
refusal of benefits from privilege. Part of what makes civic solidarity different is that it conceptualizes
this particular feature differently as sharing of risk.
Contrary to sharing fate in relevant contexts, it shares a willingness to assist but an expectation
of mutual protection against the particularly bad things that fate brings. It comes somewhat closer to
refusing benefits but the emphasis is rather on mutuality of benefits rather than merely refusing one’s
own entitlements. Finally, civic solidarity is constructed such that the whole is constituted by the
parts; the good of the whole relies on the self-determination of the parts and vice versa. Rather than
potential opposites requiring sacrifices, one cannot exist without the other.
Finally, as indicated at the outset, global civic solidarity seeks to aggregate the responsibilities
of all consociates in the social whole who may experience increased vulnerabilities because of social
organization: Individuals, organizations, peoples, and states. Among other things, individuals lend
their agency; Civil society organizations provide language to raise issues, regional and international
mechanisms to challenge national policy, tools to criticize states, and an impetus to connect various
movements; activists and advocacy groups force governmental compliance to human rights found in
United Nations declarations and conventions; states remain the central focus of international relations,
14
and so on. In effect, a global civic solidarity utilizes the variety of parties as consociates.

Obstacles to Global Civic Solidarity

One of the primary obstacles to a global civic solidarity is the reluctance of states to curtail their self-
interest by tying their lot to that of other states. A global community capable of insuring individuals,
peoples, and states against social vulnerabilities requires significant commitment. Thus far states have
been unwilling to cooperate to the extent necessary. The Kyoto Protocol is an excellent case in point.
This agreement makes clear that a social vulnerability (climate change) caused by our human activity
poses a serious threat to all peoples, especially the world’s poorest. In many ways, the Kyoto Protocol
embodies the principles of global civic solidarity: the process of negotiation and the agreements

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undertaken demonstrate a collective understanding of the responsibilities states have to each other
and to the whole.
However, such an international agreement is strong only if all parties are willing to share the
risks together. Prominently, the United States has not been willing and, in fact, put concerns for the
domestic economy above the concerns for the global environment we all share and hence above the
well-being of all humans. Civic solidarity requires consensus on priorities and, as Rousseau warned,
a unity lends the force of the whole but leaves the particular free. That cannot happen without an
15
equitable sharing of the risks involved.
Further, an objection might be raised that global civic solidarity shares some commonalities with
the solidarity rights or third generation of human rights articulated by Karel Vasak. Vasak contended
that solidarity rights addressed threats that crossed borders or required responses from “all the actors
on the social scene: individuals, States, public and private groups, and the international
16
community.” As Carl Wellman explains, “The problems of achieving the full development of all
peoples, preventing the deterioration of our shared environment and preserving world peace require
the creation of a new international order, a set of global institutions, that impose joint obligations
upon all states. Only by collective action in a spirit of solidarity can humanity achieve well-being, or
17
even survive.” Ultimately, Wellman argues that there is no need for solidarity rights but that joint
18
obligations may be “derived directly from the existing human rights of individual persons” This
objection might be raised against the current proposal as well: that is, that global civic solidarity is
unnecessary given the human rights frameworks currently in place and overseen by the United
Nations.
In many ways, this objection seems well-founded. Human rights should function to secure
political liberties and social equality for all participants. The current status of international affairs
relies on states. States are the relevant actors in international human rights law. If states fail to act or
act in a manner that fails to protect their citizens, regional bodies or the international community have
19
a responsibility to step in. A global civic solidarity, drawing on the existing global civil society,
however, contributes to the existing framework by broadening the duties and suggesting some
channels, albeit moral rather than legal, for joint obligations among and between various actors.

Conclusion: Revisiting the Refugee Crisis

Human displacement is a special kind of social vulnerability on the world stage. What does sharing
social risk in the face of mass migration due to a brutal civil war, persecution, or torture mean for
individuals, peoples, organizations, and states in affluent democracies? What does a global civic
solidarity owe the 50 million children displaced from the country of their birth? The six proposals
laid out by UNICEF in their 2015 report on migrant and refugee children offer an excellent example
of the creative aggregation of consociate responsibilities to address the heightened social vulnerability
20
of displaced children. To note just one example, proposal four reads:

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 Keep all refugee and migrant children learning and give them access to health and other quality services.
An increased collective effort by governments, communities and the private sector is needed to provide
education, health, shelter, nutrition, water and sanitation, and access to legal and psychosocial support to
these children. This is not only a collective responsibility; it is in all societies’ common interests. A
child’s migration status should never represent a barrier to accessing essential services.21

This proposal directly appeals to the “collective responsibilities” from a variety of consociates in the
global community. Further, it links the fulfillment of these responsibilities to the common interests
of all. That is, the collective whole is made better with attention to the most vulnerable. This message
is echoed in UNICEF’s “No Lost Generation” campaign. The vision for the campaign is succinctly
stated as “Children and youth have access to certified quality education, while benefiting from a
protective environment. Adolescents and youth are supported to contribute to resilience and social
cohesion in their communities, and have expanded livelihood opportunities in line with national
22
legislation.”
In closing, consider again the analogy to insurance. Lehtonen and Liukko note that exclusion
from insurance pools is a form of inequality. “To regard national citizenship as a particular type of
risk class highlights that, because there are no universal pools, the question concerning who can or
must be included in a given pool is a political issue. First world nations have built their welfare
systems for those who are included in the risk class comprising citizens of the nation-state….In other
words, those left out of insurance solidarity are forced to bear their risks alone, as individuals and
23
households, in a situation where any kind of sharing would be advantageous.” Global civic
solidarity rejects exclusive “pools” for sharing social risk. No one ought to be left to bear the risks
alone. Children displaced by conflict are among the most vulnerable world citizens. Global civic
solidarity obligates all people as individuals, as members of associations, as peoples, as citizens of
states, and as participants in the global community to share the risk. When we fail in our willingness
to equitably share social risk, we assume a position of dominance, subjecting others to increased
social vulnerabilities, and hindering everyone’s ability to exercise their civil, political, social, and
economic human rights.

References
1 UNICEF, Uprooted: The Growing Crisis of Refugee and Migrant Children. United Nations
Children’s Fund. Sept. 2016.
2 Uprooted, 6.
3 Uprooted, 14.
4 I offer a more thorough description of civic solidarity in contrast with other forms of solidarity in
Scholz, Political Solidarity (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008).
5Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract, in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings,
edited by Victor Gourevitch. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997), 49.
6 Rousseau, 49.

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7 Rousseau, 50.
8 In this way, human rights become a perfect duty.
9 Carl Wellman, “Solidarity, the Individual, and Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 22, no. 3
(2000), 651.
10 This description of Miller’s piece comes from Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, eds., The Strains
of Commitment: The political sources of solidarity in diverse societies (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2017), 35.
Miller himself does not use the language of risk in this manner but the argument certainly supports it.
(Miller, “Solidarity and its Sources,” in The Strains of Commitment, ed. Keith Banting and Will
Kymlicka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
11 Sally Scholz, “Solidarity as a Human Right,” Archiv des Völkerrechts. March 2014. Vol 52(1):
56.
12 Young discuss a different model of responsibility built on the social connection model. Young’s
social connections, however, are for structural injustices like social inequality and unjust labor
practices – a benefits and costs relation. I am suggesting that interdependence is a more
thoroughgoing connection informing responsibilities. Iris Young, Responsibility for Justice (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
13 Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen and Jyri Liukko, “Producing solidarity, Inequality and Exclusion Through
Insurance,” Res Publica, 21(2015), 158.
14 Gould proposes a network solidarity or a transnational solidarity built on networks of empathy or
globalized care; Carol Gould, “Transnational Solidarities,” Journal of Social Philosophy 38, no. 1
(2007): 138-164.
15 Of course, US officials would likely counter saying that it is precisely because developing
countries were did not share the same risks that they refused to sign on. In this case, the identification
of the risks is at issue. Siding with the most vulnerable would not favor the US official retort.
16 Wellman, 652
17 Wellman, 651.
18 Wellman, 651
19 I have in mind here the Responsibility to Protect that appeals to a newer notion of sovereignty.
Sovereignty is no longer the right of noninterference, it is the responsibility of the state to protect the
lives and promote the welfare of citizens, while also being accountable to citizens and the
international community. (R2P, 2.15)
20 Uprooted, 4-5
21 Uprooted, 5.
22 UNICEF https://nolostgeneration.org/ Accessed May 31, 2018.
23 Lehtonen and Liukko, 166.

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 Systems of Injustice and Sites of Resistance

Sally Haslanger

Injustice

The world – both regionally and globally, in our homes and in international economies – is fraught
with injustice. How do we begin to get a handle on the multiple forms of injustice and how might
we make a difference?
Philosophical efforts often begin with the normative question: what is justice? The question is
raised both so that we can better identify forms of injustice and provide a guide for amelioration.
This sounds plausible: how can we identify violations of justice unless we know what justice is? And
how can we aim for justice unless we know where we are headed? I believe, however, that this
normative question is not where we should begin.
Historically, the project of analytic political philosophy has employed a method of beginning
with clear and simple cases to get a grip on our concept of justice, and then build up (a priori?) from
there. Those who are dubious of this approach worry that:
• The clear and simple cases are often not the central phenomena to be understood;
• The tools we develop to understand them are inadequate and cannot simply be expanded or
permuted to understand the phenomenon as a whole;
• What are in fact central, though complex, phenomena, are pushed aside and downgraded as
unimportant or to be addressed “later” (when we have the theory worked out!);
• The selection of the clear and simple cases often seems to be biased towards cases that particular
socially situated (dominant) inquirers find compelling or familiar, e.g., consider the invisibility
of care work and disability in most political philosophy;
• It seems methodologically questionable to develop theory using mainly a priori methods and
then think it can be simply applied as needed, e.g., as if so-called “applied” ethics can be done
by just adding empirical details to utilitarianism or deontology.
Of course there are many kinds of legitimate questions. And reflection on different conceptions
of justice can be useful. Yet another starting point raises questions about how we might solve a
particular problem facing us, a problem that has arisen in our interaction with the world, or with each
other, or through self-reflection. We want to solve problems that arise in managing our lives together
here and now. To solve such problems, idealized examples and ideal theory is neither necessary, nor
particularly helpful: we need to understand – drawing on empirical inquiry – the complexity of the
situation that faces us and diagnose the problem; we can make progress in solving the problem
without knowing what the ideal is; and attempting to implement an ideal when the circumstances and
agents are far from ideal, is often a mistake.
What, then, can philosophers offer? I suggest we begin by considering two sources of insight
and understanding: (i) situated knowers who are subject to injustice (who may also be philosophers!),
and (ii) social theory.
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 A social theory aims to provide an account of how society works: how different practices,
institutions, and structures interact, and the role of individual agency in constituting and maintaining
them.
This, of course, can happen at different levels of generality: societies differ in how they work.
It is an empirical question how general our theories can or should be.
There are many empirically adequate ways of describing “how society works,” both on the local
level and broader levels. A critical social theory, however, has a more specific aim. It seeks to reveal
in its account the sites and sources of injustice. It does so by drawing on the insights of the vulnerable
and those who resist domination. For example, critical social theory allies itself with feminist efforts
to reveal how social norms render women more jeopardized by rape than men. It allies itself with
union organizers to expose how unregulated capitalism exploits workers. It allies itself with antiracist
activists to demonstrate how racial segregation – through law and culture – has given rise to durable
economic stratification. Critical social theory is not a value-neutral description of society. It draws
on philosophy to expand the critical resources of situated knowers and to challenge the biases
embedded in the dominant system.
But, you might ask, how do critical social theorists decide what is unjust? Eliminating flawed
explanations of stratification, e.g., it is natural, it is God’s will, the poor are lazy, reveals sites of
social coercion. And knowledge of injustice is available from those who suffer it (and those who
empathize with those who do). A theory of justice is not required.
There are several ways in which a critical social theory of this broad sort is valuable in addressing
injustice:
• Because it takes seriously the claims of injustice that arise in the circumstances, rather than
importing them from an ideal theory, it avoids certain forms of ethnocentrism and conceptual
imperialism;
• Because it works with an empirically grounded account of the processes that produce social
stratification and discord, it is better positioned to identify faulty explanations of disadvantage
or privilege, and to locate leverage points where activism can be effective;
• Because it offers an alternative framework for self-understanding, it can motivate individuals to
take part in collective action.

Systems

I’ve suggested that philosophers can fruitfully begin to address the problem of injustice with critical
social theory, and that we should attend to the workings of social systems. Of course, when a human
right is violated, an individual suffers the wrong. If the violation is an isolated wrongful action, then
the solution, I assume, should focus on the wrongdoer and reparations to the victim. But even here,
the ability to understand why the wrongdoing occurred, what methods of adjudication are apt, and
what would count as adequate reparations requires broader social analysis. Moreover, most injustice
arises systematically. Individuals are subject to it or benefit from it by virtue of being a member of
a group or by occupying a particular social position. The processes by which benefits and burdens
are produced are often large, unwieldy, and not directly in anyone’s control. These processes include

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institutions and practices that manage education, transportation, health care, labor, family formation
and dissolution, food production and distribution, legal enforcement and protection, etc.
Social structures and practices are what distribute things of value and disvalue. Practices are
performed by individuals, but are guided by law, policy, social norms, culture, and material (physical,
geographical, biological, architectural) conditions. In the USA, toxic waste is dumped in poor Black
neighborhoods and good schools built in the White suburbs. Of course, these practices are not
arbitrary; there is no surprise where the good stuff ends up. But the distribution of goods doesn’t end
up how it does because of what most people believe, for it is just as true that individuals share racist
and sexist beliefs because they live in a world in which certain groups get the good stuff. We learn
about race and what different races and sexes “deserve,” or what is “best” for them, by looking around
us. The world has already been shaped to confirm what we are supposed to believe.
It is helpful, I think, to model societies as something like ecosystems (and, of course, societies
exist within broader ecosystems). In an ecosystem, there are many interdependent parts that function
to keep the system going, and a change in one functional part prompts changes in others to
accommodate it. Ecosystems tend toward equilibrium, but they are dynamic and evolve over time.
The same is true of societies.
Like stable states of ecosystems, durable injustice is best understood in terms of dynamic
homeostasis (Mallon 2003, Boyd 1999). In a stratified society, there are mechanisms that position
groups hierarchically along certain dimensions. Homeostasis explains the persistence of hierarchy:
changes in part of the system are adjusted for elsewhere so that the status quo is maintained. This is
a depressing fact. The fact that the system is dynamic offers some hope: although relatively stable,
there are historical developments: the adjustments don’t always return the system exactly to the
original state but can allow a shift to a different sort of hierarchical structure. But there is no guarantee
that change brings progress towards justice. (Slavery Jim Crow Mass incarceration.)
Political philosophers tend to focus on law and policy to promote change. Some have called this
the “medical model” of social change (Shelby 2014, 256) because of the prominent role of experts in
diagnosing and treating the problem. On my view, however, culture – what I call the cultural technē
– and the material conditions are crucial factors in maintaining the stability of unjust systems, so these
too must be addressed. Both culture and material conditions are best addressed through social
movements that empower the vulnerable.

Social Movements

If social structures are homeostatic systems, then it is not surprising that social change is difficult.
How is it even possible? There are three reasons why philosophical argumentation and rational
deliberation are insufficient to promote social change within such systems (the first poses a theoretical
problem, the second two practical problems, but they are linked):
(i) A cultural technē limits an individual’s experience, values, and reasoning. Culturally informed
reasoning will often lack resources for self-critique, and the universal laws of logic won’t be
sufficient.
(ii) Even if the majority become convinced that a better way is needed or more just, the pressures to

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 coordinate block change.
(iii) The material conditions have been shaped to support the dominant structure, and these
conditions are so entrenched that they limit real material possibilities.
(iv) But if not rational argumentation, what are our other options for promoting change (besides
violent revolution!). How can we make a difference? The practical interventions of social
movements are varied. As Anderson points out:
Between pure argument and violence is a wide range of contentious activities that are more or
less disruptive of habitual ways of life, from petitioning, publicity campaigns, theatrical performances,
candlelight vigils, litigation, and political campaigns to street demonstrations, boycotts, teach-ins,
sitins, picketing, strikes, and building occupations. (9)
Moral argument, of course, is relevant, because it can play a role in revealing tensions in our
everyday beliefs and practices, and in offering potential resolutions. (12)
A central purpose of culture is to provide a collective basis for communication and coordination.
So the first step to motivate critical reflection and invite transformation is to change the circumstances
so that reliance on the problematic social meanings and background assumptions does not achieve
the intended coordination. Refusal to comply with an existing cultural technē and its norms raises
questions about its aptness (Anderson 2014, 10).
Social movements also disrupt coordination by changing the material conditions within which
the practice takes place. Street demonstrations make it impossible for people to use the roadways;
strikes make it impossible for work to continue “as usual.” But not all change in the material
conditions need be as explicitly challenging, disruptive, or unruly. It can make a difference to change
a seating arrangement in a room, or create a new space for informal interaction between groups that
are normally segregated, or a new space where the subordinated can gather without interference or
monitoring.
But, of course, not all social movements are warranted, and not all of them move us in the
direction of justice. Change is not always change for the better. How can we be confident that the
movement is promoting progress?
Anderson suggests two criteria. First, dominant social practices rely upon the endorsement and
enforcement of the powerful. But are the practices they support justified? One criterion for progress
is critical and epistemic: if the powerful are wrong about the justice of the practices they support, e.g.,
perhaps they are biased and misrepresent their own self-interests as binding on others, then there is
reason to seek alternatives. Some social movements also rely on biased and false claims to destabilize
legitimate power, e.g., Neo-Nazis. In such cases, the movement should be resisted, for it cannot claim
to be a source of moral improvement. Work in social theory can provide empirical refutation of the
claims of those in power or of a misguided movement.
Anderson’s second criterion is practical. Social movements must not only undermine the
existing unjust structures, but must propose alternatives. She supports Mill’s idea that moral ideas
are tested through experiments in living: “[T]he ultimate test of moral progress must lie in critical
reflection on the results of a social movement, in the experiences of those living under the new norms
that an effective social movement establishes.” (15; also Anderson 1991) In short, we form a new
conception of how to live and try to live the new way. We then consider: is it an improvement? She

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suggests:

What makes a conception of the good an empirically grounded one is that it leaves itself vulnerable to
criticism by the felt experiences of those who attempt to live up to it…. The conflict between one's beliefs
about what is valuable and what one finds in one's experiences to be moving or valuable provides the
first evidence that a theory of the good is mistaken. The explanation for this conflict provides the first
evidence for a rival theory of the good. (1991, 26)

But when are experiences under the new regime morally authoritative? We might be struggling
because the change is too much for us to handle, or because we cannot get over our old habits of mind
and action. And the new set of social structures might also be ideologically sustained and cause the
subordinate to participate willingly in spite of its injustice.
How might we spell out this second practical criterion? I argued before that in the case of unjust
systems, there will likely be some who are suffering and know that the suffering is wrong. It is their
experience – and the moral claims that arise from it – that forms the basis for contentious politics. If,
through an effective social movement, a new form of life, a new set of social practices, is attempted,
then a first idea is that a criterion of its success is whether those who were suffering are relieved, and
whether or not they are simply replaced by others who are now suffering instead.
We should be cautious here, however, for just as the initial account of moral knowledge does
not take just any claim of suffering to be authoritative, likewise we should place some conditions on
the acceptance of such claims as a basis for moral evaluation. We need a (naturalized) moral
epistemology that enables us to identify the circumstances in which experience is most likely to
provide moral knowledge.
We already know that there are some basic conditions that must be met. In particular, the social
context must provide tools for critical reflection and epistemic agency. Robin Celikates (2006) puts
it this way:

The critique of ideology…can therefore be understood as directed against such closed social conditions
and symbolic representations that hinder the use of critical and judgmental capacities in social practices,
that block the transformation of capacities into abilities and prevent the practical realization of one’s self-
understanding as a judging and acting subject. (35)

On Celikates’ view, critique of epistemic practices is as far as one can go with ideology critique,
for the critic must remain morally neutral. On my view, however, there is a dialectic between moral
and epistemic critique: we critique the epistemic conditions (and the social institutions that affect
them) in order to enable moral knowledge, which in turn, can provide a basis for further moral critique
through a richer understanding of agency, knowledge, and well-being. Moral critique can prompt
social change that moves us forward morally, and also reveals additional epistemic barriers that call
for epistemic critique, and so on.
So, on my view, we can (defeasibly, contextually) rely on a social movement that (a) raises
legitimate challenges to the biases of those who benefit from and maintain existing social structures,
and (b) offers alternatives to existing practices that can (eventually?) be tested under conditions that

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are epistemically and morally empowering and are not, in turn, rejected or coercively enforced.
Practices are cooperative enterprises, and if parties to the cooperation have good reason to think that
they are being treated unjustly, or that values they care about are being undermined, there is reason –
at the very least – for all parties involved to reconsider the practice. Insisting on terms of cooperation
in the face of non-consent is coercive, and is a pro tanto wrong. This is the normative basis for
contentious politics. How to resolve contention cannot be judged in advance, however. Justice is
path-dependent and is accountable to community involvement, process norms, and history. Our
responsibility in the face of injustice is to act together, collectively, to empower those who are most
vulnerable, to provide critical resources to disrupt confidence in misguided authority, and to
experiment together in new forms of life that we can all accept, even embrace.

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 Responsibility in Philosophy and Right

Julian Nida-Rümelin

British philosopher of law H.L.A. Hart once argued in an essay, which has become a classic, that the
most important function of action-describing utterances (or sentences) consists in the ascription of
responsibility to the person who performs or has performed the action. He has thereby established a
close connection between the legal practice of responsibility-ascription through, for instance, court
judgments or statements of claim on the one hand, and the everyday practice of ascribing
responsibilities on the other hand. According to him, the ascription of actions to persons in lifeworld
practice is in a similar way contestable just like the (legal) statements of claim.1
Such an approach, being made also by other influential philosophers of law and analytical
theorists of action, has met with intense criticism.2 The criticism agrees on one point, namely that
although H.L.A. Hart has offered an important impulse, he has nonetheless made two serious mistakes:
The action-theoretic mistake, which failed to see that the close conceptual relation between action
and responsibility applies rather only to actions on the macroscopic scale that are not connected with
individual responsibility; And the mistake in philosophy of right or law, which wrongly claims that
the criteria for ascribing responsibilities in legal practice are in correspondence with those criteria in
lifeworld normative practice. Later researches even pointed out that it is already wrong to suppose a
close connection between action-ascription and responsibility-ascription, because the criteria for
ascribing responsibilities did not arise until the European Enlightenment and are thus associated with
the emphasis of the subject and the idea of a rational way of life. 3 Since the notion of action is old
while the notion of responsibility new, a philosophy of action would indeed not do well if it attempts
to establish a logical connection between the two. More sympathetic interpreters of H.L.A. Hart noted
that his argument was off target, because although there are cases in which action-ascription is
connected with responsibility-ascription, they are restricted to specific situations, e.g. when the
relevant norm is violated (Feinberg) and the analogy between legal and lifeworld practice of
responsibility-ascription applies at best to criminal law and never to civil law.4 In this talk, I will take
the opposite path and argue for the indissoluble interconnection between action and responsibility as
well as for the uniformity in the normative criteria for both legal and ethical responsibility. Unlike
H.L.A. Hart, who started with legal practice and then searched for its analogy in lifeworld, I take the

1 Cf. H.L.A. Hart, “The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights”, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 49 (1948/49),
pp. 171-194.
2 E.g. Joel Feinberg, “Action and Responsibility”, in: idem., Doing and Deserving, Princeton, New Jersey 1970 or, ten
years beforehand: George Pitcher: “Hart on Action and Responsibility”, in: Philosophical Review 69 (1960) etc.
3 Cf. Ludger Heidbrink, Kritik der Verantwortung. Zu den Grenzen verantwortlichen Handelns in komplexen Kontexten,
Weilerswist, Velbrück, 2003 or idem., „Definition und Voraussetzungen“ in: idem. et al. eds., Handbuch Verantwortung,
Wiesbaden, Springer 2017.
4 Cf. Christine Windbichler, „Freistellung unternehmerischer Entscheidungen von persönlicher Haftung“ in: Ulrich
Immenga et al. eds., Wirtschaftliches Risiko und persönliche Herausforderungen, Baden-Baden, Nomos, 2006.

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lifeworld practice of responsibility-ascription as starting point, i.e., I start with the normative criteria
in both ethics and law, which already entails their uniformity since there could only be one normative
Ought. The parceling out of normativity through a systematic differentiation is usually regarded as a
gain in rationality, but I interpret it as a threat, or even, according to its latest ramification, a
systematic destruction of the normative essence of human practice, which has been convincingly
demonstrated by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. The two disciplines concerned here – philosophy
and jurisprudence – will not be given an equal amount of consideration in my talk; rather, my focus
will be the analysis of the philosophy of responsibility and its foundation in the action theory, while
the legal-theoretic implications will be only indicated. A closer investigation of the latter,
programmatically speaking, consists rather in a program that, I hope, could be carried out by jurists
with relevant expertise. In some sense, what I am going to discuss below can also be seen as a revision
of my own works on practical philosophy in the past years. Here, revision does not mean critical
change. It means that one passes a judgment on whether the various positions that he has received
and been presented with reasons are intrinsically consistent and contain interesting perspectives for
research. 1 Philosophy is in some sense always programmatic, since it does not turn into any
paradigmatically solidified individual disciplines equipped with certain empirical methods; or, to put
it another way: where there such solidification is taking place, the relevant research field emigrates
to individual sciences or sets up a new independent discipline. Should part of what we are representing
here emigrate to jurisprudence, however, I would by no means feel sorry about that.
For what are we held responsible? Anyway, we are responsible for our actions. We are
responsible for all our actions. If something is considered as action of a person, then that person is
responsible for it. Action and responsibility are two closely interconnected concepts. There is no
action without responsibility, and no responsibility for a behavior that has no character of an action.
Any objection of this thesis would have to name a kind of action that its person in question is not held
responsible. A candidate of this kind might be actions under coercion or under the influence of alcohol.
Let us examine if that is true. Suppose a tourist in Rio de Janeiro has been forced to hand over his
wallet at late night at Copa Cabana by a young man pulling a knife on him. After he returned to the
hotel, his wife blames him, thinking that he should not have handed over the wallet. Can the tourist
answer: “I was not responsible for this since I was forced to do so”? It seems to me that he cannot.
Imagine that the tourist had refused to hand over his wallet and was stabbed. In the hotel his wife
asks him: “Why didn’t you hand over the wallet? It is the only reasonable thing to do under such
circumstance.” Obviously, the tourist was not forced to hand over his wallet in the sense that he was
left with no other choices. He has had another choice, even if that would turn out to be disastrous. He

1 I have offered an account of the notion of responsibility in a small monography. In a first part, I characterized the
subjects and the objects of responsibility and provided a justification of why we are held responsible for all those which
we have reasons for, or better, for all those which can be affected by reasons: actions, beliefs, and (emotive) attitudes:
JNR, Verantwortung, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2011, (Chapter I-III). In a second part, I analyzed different forms of responsibility:
responsibility for consequences, cooperative responsibility, corporative responsibility, political, scientific, and moral
responsibility, (Chapter VII-XII). However, this small monography is only a part of a bigger project that I call “structural
rationality”, which is a constructive part of a criticism of consequentialism: JNR Kritik des Konsequentialismus,
Oldenburg, De Gruyter, 1995; Strukturelle Rationalität, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2001; Structural Rationality and Other Essays
on Practical Reason, Dordrecht/Heidelberg/New York, Springer, 2018 (in print); and finally the bigger philosophical
context: Eine Theorie praktischer Vernunft , Berlin, De Gruyter (in preparation).

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was obviously responsible for what he did if he handed the wallet over as much as if he did not hand
it over. Those who thinks that the action under coercion is action without responsibility confuses the
fact that the relevant action in such case, if it is to be performed as response to a threat, must be able
to be otherwise judged as if it would be performed when the threat is absent, with cases where the
relevant behavior had no alternative and hence had no character of an action. It is indeed supported
by many that a behavior is considered as an action only if there are alternatives to it, i.e., only if the
person could have decided to act otherwise, where external coercion does not imply that there could
be no such alternative. Decision presupposes deliberation, weighing the reasons for and against the
relevant action. Deliberation presupposes that I could have acted otherwise. So far as I had an
alternative, so far that my behavior was a result of deliberation, however rudimentary, I take
responsibility for it. Of course, despite such commitment, our actions are to be judged according to
different circumstances as either good or bad, either well-founded or irrational, either morally
acceptable or immoral. A person’s action is to be otherwise judged if it is under coercion, as opposed
to if it is performed when the coercion is absent. The person then does not need to shoulder all those
responsibilities for what he did, since the criteria for judgment lead to another outcome.
The action under the influence of alcohol is completely different. Depending on level of
intoxication, the person is counted as having either only partial responsibility or no more
responsibility at all for what he did. In court dispute, people speak of diminished responsibility or
diminished capacity. Typically, a person is no longer counted as responsible for what he did due to
incapacity. Sometimes, the person’s responsibility is judicially limited to having got himself
intoxicated, because after all, at some point in time, he was in a non-intoxicated state and, by turning
into an intoxicated state, he has made decisions such as continuing to drink, well knowing that that
would lead him to diminished ‘capacity to steer conduct’ (Steuerungsfähigkeit). When such capacity
deteriorates, the scope of capacity also diminishes. It thus makes sense for the legal ascription of
responsibility to stipulate certain thresholds, so that when those thresholds are passed, we could say
that there is no more responsibility, or that full responsibility will be ascribed. But in reality it is
evidently a continuous process. The responsibility reduces when the level of intoxication increases.
But what has exactly changed with an increasing level of intoxication? What is relevant to the
reducing responsibility of the person in question? A heavily intoxicated person is rarely able to think
about the consequences of his act. An essential part of the deliberation on reasons for action is missing.
He is, according to our experience, also highly impulsive, i.e., rather than having a process of
deliberation preceding his action, he reacts instantaneously. His character also changes, and usually,
we can observe a kind of regression into childlike personality, immature emotionality, and above all
a tremendous loss of frustration tolerance and willpower. We explain why a person heavily influenced
by alcohol is only partially, or not at all, responsible for what he did by referring to his loss of control,
which encompasses the loss of not only the coordination of his body movement but most importantly
also the complex metal processes necessary for him to act like a mature and responsible person. A
mature and responsible person is capable of putting her individual actions into the bigger context of
how to act, that of the structure of her act and her life. She optimizes her action not only punctually
but also weighs reasons and gives reasons for what she does. Giving reasons also means committing
oneself to acting likewise in comparable situations. Adopting reasons means giving structures to one’s

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life. The act of the intoxicated is incoherent in this sense for its lack of structuring. Responsibility
requires behavior control. The control is not, however, a punctual, temporary, short-lived or
momentary one, neither is it because of one’s mood; rather, it consists in the bigger context of the
practiced life and the deliberations that steer the course of life. This explains the phenomena, which
at first sight might appear curious, that in the legal sense full responsibility only applies when one
reaches the age of majority. In many cases seventeen-year-old juveniles have higher intelligence
quotients than many adults, they emphasize their independence from parental influence, they make
their everyday decisions on their own responsibility. Yet the rather late application of full legal
responsibility seems to be appropriate, since responsibility not only depends on the capacity to
calculate, on knowledge of empirical connections, and financial independence, but presupposes much
more. Especially, it presupposes the capacity of coherently deliberating on reasons and the authorship
of one’s own life, which, above all, manifests that the person can see through long-term goals, that
he has the momentary impulses under control, and that the dependency on others’ judgment is
sufficiently reduced so that he can maintain his belief also under opposition. These essential
conditions for full responsibility, ego-strength and the power of judgment indeed develop only
relatively late, perhaps not that late as the tendency towards extended adolescence in Western
industrialized countries suggests, but anyway not at the same time as intelligence and knowledge. We
ascribe full responsibility under rather demanding conditions. These conditions are already no longer
fully satisfied by intoxicated adults, and at the center of these conditions are the capacity to weigh
reasons and apply them in concrete cases (the power of judgment), to act in correspondence with the
result of recommendation (willpower), and also to act and to live coherently (ego-strength).1

II

Joel Feinberg has criticized Hart for erroneously expanding the criteria from the English right of
ownership in the legal sphere to the general practice of responsibility-ascription. Indeed, for Hart the
term ‘defeasible’ plays an important role. Suppose that the opponent in a trial points out that a person
has not fulfilled his duties, and the opponent gives reasons so convincing that the defending side must
refute those reasons. The presented reasons, which are according to Hart prima facie evidence, are
hence defeasible. We could also say that the evidence produces justifications that repudiate the
accusation, which show that the accused carries in one way or another no responsibility for his alleged
misconduct so that the action under accusation cannot be ascribed to him. Feinberg asserts that
although such complex procedure with prima facie evidence and its refutation plays an important role
in law, it does not in everyday life. The accusation that one has offended another person can be refuted
not only in court but also in everyday life, by arguing that the corresponding gesture (hitting one’s
forehead) was unintended or aimed at something else, namely, it is accompanied by other intentions
rather than carried out by those that are characteristic for an offense (scratching the forehead instead
of pointing to a bird). But if we make such parallelization between legal and lifeworld practice, we
will be forced to adopt an obviously narrower concept of responsibility: It concerns ascribing

1 The characterization of the responsibility of action in this section follows from §6 JNR, Verantwortung, Stuttgart,
Reclam, 2011.

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someone a culpable misconduct or (if the given reasons are refuted) the withdrawal of the ascription.
Responsibility would therefore only have to do with a possible misconduct. The close association
between action- and responsibility-ascription would dissolve. Our everyday linguistic practice
appears to support such dissociation: Someone is playing a piece on the piano written by Chopin. It
sounds odd to say that she is responsible for having carried out the action of playing a piece of Chopin.
Now, suppose her neighbor complains about the disruption of his Saturday afternoon quietness. We
can now say that he holds his housemate responsible for the disruption of quietness, and it
presupposes that the action, which allegedly or actually has caused the disruption of quietness, is
ascribed to the person in question. In our ordinary use of language, persons are held responsible for
the consequences of their acts but not for the acts themselves. However, can we hold someone
responsible for the consequences of his action, without also holding him responsible for the action
itself? In ordinary language use we refer to the consequences of actions when we hold a person
responsible, precisely because action and responsibility are so closely connected with each other that
in normal cases we cannot ask the question whether one is responsible for a specific action. If a
behavior has the character of an action, one is responsible for that behavior as well as for all its
foreseeable consequences. The question of the responsibility for a behavior itself, rather than the
responsibility for its consequences, is to be raised only in rare cases where it is dubious whether the
relevant behavior has the character of an action. What is associated with the ascription of a behavior
as an action is eo ipso the responsibility for that action as well as for its connected, foreseeable
consequences. So, it is exactly the close connection between action and responsibility that explains
why, under normal conditions, speaking of responsibility for actions appears to be pleonastic and not
meaningful: actions are precisely those behaviors of ours that we are responsible for.
Such a close association between responsibility and action seems to have counterintuitive
consequences. If we are not responsible for a behavior, then accordingly it would not have any
character of action. But I still say: We ascribe a behavior to a person as one of his actions if and only
if we hold him responsible for what he does. This simultaneous ascription of responsibility and action
makes sense only on a gradualistic understanding. There are degrees of responsibility and degrees of
character of action. Legally speaking, a juvenile is only partially, or not at all, brought to account. He
is in the legal sense only partially, or not at all, responsible. But this juvenile is also held fully
responsible. He must justify his actions and it appears already appropriate, because he is capable of
weighing reasons. Yet his capacity to lead an independent life, his ego-strength and his willpower to
structure the everyday life are not fully developed. He is thus to a lesser degree responsible for what
he does. Nonetheless, he is capable of deliberation and responsible to the extent of this capacity. I am
reluctant to characterize this genuine responsibility for actions as moral responsibility, which is
common in literature, because the differentiation between moral and non-moral reasons is
problematic. There are forms of responsibility that absolves actions (e.g. actions of children will not
be regarded as crime) and forms of responsibility that do not presuppose a character of action (The
legal responsibility of parents also includes the actions of their children; the political responsibility
of a minister also includes the actions of his employee). To distinguish these forms of responsibility
from genuine (moral) responsibility, we may call these institutional responsibilities. The indissoluble
connection between the concept of action and the concept of responsibility does not apply to all forms

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of responsibility. It is a behavior’s intentional character that makes it an action. Such action-
constitutive intentionality is expressed in terms of preceding intentions, which are fulfilled through
the action. We call this form of intentionality decision. A decision forms the conclusion of a
deliberation, i.e. of weighing over reasons. With the decision I commit myself. I reach the settlement
of the weighing process and fulfill the action-preceding intention – the decision – at a given time with
a corresponding behavior. This behavior, however, must be in a minimal sense equally steered by
intention, it must be controlled and intentional. We have therefore two essential elements of the
concept of action: Intentionality of the behavior that realizes the action, and a preceding intention,
which takes a deliberation process, even a still very rudimentary one, to the conclusion. Preceding
intentions are fulfilled by the action itself. The action-motivating intentions are not fulfilled by the
action itself, but by its consequences or outcomes. Such a complex of motivating, preceding, and
accompanying intentions constitutes a part of a network of intentionality that gives our life structure.
The less isolated actions appear to be, the more rational (or better: more coherent) they appear to be,
and thus the more distinctive the agent’s responsibility appear to be.
If it is the case that we are responsible for exactly the part of our behavior that we have reasons
for, then the question comes up: Aren’t we also responsible for other things that we have reasons for?
We have reasons, for instance, also for our beliefs. A belief is not an action. It could be an action (a
speech-act) to express a belief. So, are we only indirectly responsible for beliefs, to the extent that we
express them, thus perform a speech-act, for which we have reasons and then are also responsible? It
appears to me to be an artificial narrowing of the concept of responsibility. The capacity for
deliberation and reason-weighing makes us rational, free, and responsible beings. We weigh reasons
as persons. The (rational) core of our personal identity is expressed in the weighing of reasons. We
can disagree with wishes, feelings, and attitudes that we observe in us, and it can be expressed in
certain circumstances that we do not permit these wishes, feelings, and attitudes any efficacious action.
In the same way, we cannot distance ourselves from our deliberations, which are in a strong sense
always our own, we identify ourselves as persons with them. The beliefs led by reasons are our own,
we cannot distance ourselves from them without paying the price of changing our personal identity.
In this respect, beliefs led by reasons have the same status as actions, they are constitutive of the
person that we are, and this constitutive role is expressed, among others, in terms of our being
responsible as persons for the beliefs and actions so that we need to evaluate them against criteria.
Thus, it appears to me that the exclusion of beliefs, which are led by reasons, from the domain of
objects that we are responsible for, is completely mistaken. Beliefs exemplify more unambiguously
than actions the connection between reasons with responsibility and freedom, because the akrasia-
problem occurs to beliefs rather rarely. We are responsible for the conclusion of our deliberations
because our own deliberations constitute (‘affect’ would be a wrong word) our control.
One cannot reduce the responsibility for beliefs to the responsibility for actions because the
reasons for expressing a belief are different from the reasons for an action, which are practical reasons.
In favorable cases the weighing of both types of reasons leads to the expression of my belief and
thereby my truthfulness. In unfavorable cases, the weighing of both types of reasons leads to different
conclusions and I am thus – rationally – untruthful. There could also be moral reasons for
untruthfulness, e.g. the consideration for others’ feeling. Expressions of beliefs are usually only

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theoretically, but not practically, justified. It means that a good justification of expressed belief is
deemed as good justification of belief-expression. However, this only shows that the rule of
truthfulness is self-evident (and constitutive of communication 1 ), so that a belief’s theoretical
justification entails, under the normal conditions of everyday communication, the practical
justification of the expression of the belief. But there are situations where this is not self-evident, as
in negotiations between political and economic powers, or as a defendant in court, etc. In these cases,
the communication becomes ‘strategical’, thus when a belief is justified, the expression of it is not
deemed as already sufficiently justified.
There is a close relation between the concept of personal identity and that of responsibility.
Responsible beings are exactly those which we attribute personal identity to. Personal identity
presupposes responsibility. Beings that are free to decide what to do on reasons – reasons for actions,
reasons for beliefs, reasons for attitudes – have a personal identity. Beings that are not free to decide
what to do on reasons have possibly an identity, but not personal identity. Beings that are free to
decide what to do on reasons are also responsible. Beings with personal identity are therefore
responsible.
A horrible crime was committed. The offender responds to accusation not by denying what he
has done, but by asserting that what has occurred is inexplicable to him. He could not explain why he
did that. Perhaps he would add that he could no longer remember the course of the event. What the
offender means by explanation here refers to reasons rather than causes. It is inexplicable to him in
the sense that he does not understand his own act (or pretend that he does not understand). Just as he
knows himself to be a person (or he thinks he knows), there can be no good reason for him to act like
that. The memory gaps are thus a further indication of a break in continuity. At the time when the
crime was committed, the deed was to a certain extent done by someone else, someone led by
completely different reasons, reasons which later appear to the person in question to be alien and
groundless. Perhaps he would think that he has now become a completely different person unlike
himself, and it seems that someone else had committed the crime.
Whether the court will be impressed by this portrayal is of secondary importance here. Maybe
the court will speak of a loss of control and allow of mitigating circumstances. If the offender’s
portrayal was truthful, then one can indeed speak of a loss of control, a loss of control from the
perspective of the offender’s normal self. Or, maybe the offender has carried out his action in a very
controlled manner, his action carefully planned, not driven by any instantaneous passion. The loss of
control would then refer to something more deeply underlying, namely, to the loss of control of the
action-guiding reasons by the normal personality emerged so far with its characteristic attitudes,
beliefs, and actions. He is capable of acting in an ethically responsible way, as he can offer convincing
reasons for what he does. The force of conviction demands coherence in two dimensions: It must be
ensured that the totality of the reasons that come into deliberation is at all times coherent; and it must
be ensured that the changes in the structure of the reasons over time are comprehensible, i.e.,
justifiable. If someone provides reasons erratically, at one time for these reasons and at another time
for those, although the situations are comparable, then he could hardly convince us, and he would

1 JNR, Strukturelle Rationalität, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2001, Chapter 6.

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seem irresponsible. We would need to ask for further explanations of those contradictory statements,
and if no explanation could be given, he would appear to us as mysterious. If such phenomenon
repeats itself more frequently, he would be in the end ruled out as a member of the community of
understanding and interaction, since we no longer know with whom we are dealing with or what kind
of person we are facing. The Person constitutes itself on the basis of reasons that are sufficiently
coherent and sufficiently consistent over time, or more precisely, on the basis of reasons that are intra-
and intercoherent. These reasons make up the core of what we usually call personality. They shape
our essential attitudes, beliefs, and actions.
In law, there is the statute of limitations. This can be seen pragmatically as an article of the law,
or it can be interpreted as expression of the limitation of ethical responsibility. With increasing
distance in time, the responsibility of the current person decreases since he has less in common with
the offender. The reasons that constitute the person change over time, and when the change proceeds
slowly enough, we do not demand (meta-) reasons to justify the change. The continuity of
responsibility, just like the person, is a gradual one.

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 Romancing Extremism? Understanding the violent turn in struggles for rights,
responsibility and justice

Chaiwat Satha-Anand
Peace Information Center, Thammasat University, Bangkok

Abstract: Addressing the issues of rights, responsibility and justice together in one breath
through the idea of extremism, this paper is an attempt to argue that it is by “romancing” –
journeying in pursuit of- the force within extremism itself that will help one deal with the
question why the idea is so powerful as to attract so many from various backgrounds to engage
in violence oftentimes because they consider themselves responsible to struggle either for their
own peoples, or even the world, in the names of rights and/or justice. This paper is organized
into arguments using 5 words. After the word “prize” which serves as an entry point into
“romancing extremism”, the second word “evidence” discusses a global organization, a
national leader, and an internet sensation to point out why extremism could be used as a
connecting idea in discussing rights, responsibility and justice together. Then the third word
“extreme” will be examined to suggest how extremism as an idea does have its root in accepted
philosophical reflection. The fourth word “magic” discusses how the force of extremism works
in attracting human minds. The paper ends with the word “Daedalus”: a return to Plato’s first
dialogue as a way to critically call into question the magic of the extremes.

Introduction: “The Prize”

At the roundtable discussion on “Tackling Extremism and intolerance in a Diverse Society” held from
March 5 to 7, 2018 in Monaco, Moshe Kantor, President of the European Council for Tolerance and
Reconciliation (ECTR), the organizer of the event, said: “Today, from Le Pen’s National Front in
France to Jobbik in Hungary, to Golden Dawn in Greece and the Freedom Party in Austria, anti-
semitism, anti-immigrant and xenophobic parties are on the march, literally and politically. These
parties are, in almost every example, rapidly increasing their support nationally and inching ever-
disturbingly closer to the hearts of disgruntled supporters who express disdain for the mainstream.
With this in mind, it is incumbent for Europeans to try to find a way to stop the hateful rhetoric of
these parties and their leaders, while maintaining the values of our continent.” To deal with the
problem of extremism, ECTR announced to offer the prize of 1 million Euros ($1.16 million) in a
competition “to find effective and innovative ways to counter intolerance.”1
Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and ECTR chair explained at the prize launch that:
“It is essential we don’t sit back and let extremism and intolerance become an accepted part of our
public discourse. In all our societies at the moment, there are forces of radicalization and extremism

1 (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/racism-antisemitism-xenophobia-europe-political-extremism-1m-
prize-ectr-far-right-far-left-a8281921.html, accessed July 20, 2018)

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and these often serve to promote forms of speech that indicate hatred towards those that are different.”
Pointing out that hate speech and online incitements are dangerously far more powerful on social
networks, Kantor said that is why “We must act against words that cause violence in ways similar to
the way we would act against violence itself.”1
I do not agree with Blair’s point that words could cause violence because he misunderstood the
role “words” plays in the complex and highly contested phenomenon of “violence”. I would argue
that words do not cause violence. Instead, words drawn from evidence, formed as rationality, and
often times grounded in faiths, are used to justify violence. To deal with the human sufferings resulted
from violence, it is important not to confuse justification with causation.2
What I find remarkable, however, is the fact the ECTR believes that to come up with “effective
and innovative ways” to counter extremism warrants a global competition. Though the 1 million
Euros prize pales in comparison to the amounts of money spent by the US government in countering
violent extremism aid in 2018 which is around $200 million3, the fact that the prize is offered suggests
that Europe indeed feels threatened by the rise of violent extremism. Blair’s statement indicates that
it is traditional European values such as rights, justice, tolerance, and perhaps responsibility that are
being threatened.
I choose to address the issues of rights, responsibility and justice together in one breath through
the idea of extremism. This paper is an attempt to argue that, socio-economic-cultural factors
influencing perpetrators of violent extremism notwithstanding, it is by “romancing” –journeying in
pursuit of- the force within extremism itself that will help one deal with the question why the idea is
so powerful as to attract so many from various backgrounds to violently take the lives of the others,
especially the innocents, while oftentimes willingly lay down their own lives in the process. They are
doing all these oftentimes because they consider themselves responsible to struggle either for their
own peoples, or even the world, in the names of rights and/or justice.
This paper is organized into arguments using 5 words. After the word “prize” which serves as
an entry point into “romancing extremism”, the second word “evidence” discusses a global
organization, a national leader, and an internet sensation: “The UN”, “Rabin”, and “A Thai Buddhist
Monk” to point out why extremism could be used as a connecting idea in discussing rights,
responsibility and justice together. Then the third word “extreme” will be examined to suggest how
extremism as an idea does have its root in accepted philosophical reflection. The fourth word “magic”
discusses how the force of extremism philosophically works to attract human minds. The paper ends
with the word “Daedalus”: a return to Plato’s first dialogue as a way to critically call into question
the magic of the extremes.

“Evidence”: the UN, Yitzhak Rabin and a Buddhist Monk

The UN

1 Ibid.
2, Chaiwat Satha-Anand,“Violence as Anti-Politics: A Political Philosophy Perspective,” (April 7, 2014). International
Political Science Association, 21st World Congress of Political Science, Santiago, Chile, July 12-16, 2009. Available at
SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2421166 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2421166
3 (file:///C:/Users/Chaiwat/Downloads/SAM_US%20Counterterrorism%20Aid%20FY15-19.pdf)

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On December 3, 1982 at the height of the occupation of Namibia by South Africa as well as the
Israeli-Palestinian deadly conflict, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution
affirming the self determination rights of people who suffered from continued colonial and foreign
domination as well as alien subjugation. What is most interesting here is a passage from the adopted
resolution which reads that the UNGA: “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for
independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination
and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle; …”.1 What this means is:
if the rights to self determination is officially accepted by the world body as legitimate, so is the
armed struggle as a means in pursuit of that rights.

Rabin
After Mark Perry introduced Yitshak Rabin, the then Prime Minister of Israel, to a group of Arab
American reporters in Washington in 1993, Rabin was angry because Perry was making a mistake in
calling him “a man of peace”. He said: “I want you to know, I am not a man of peace. I am an Israeli
patriot and I am a soldier. I would do anything to help Israel. If making peace will help Israel, I will
do that. If making war and killing Palestinians will help Israel, why, then I would do that too. I will
do anything for the country I love.”2 On one hand, Rabin’s words reaffirm his self understanding as
a patriot who “will do anything for the country” he loves. On the other, the fact that he served as the
Israel’s Prime Minister adds a deontic quality to his statement. It could mean that as the Prime
Minister of Israel, it is his responsibility to make sure that the country and its people are safe, even if
it means “making war and killing Palestinians.”

A Thai Buddhist Monk

For the past 14 years, Thailand has seen a re-explosion of violence which has claimed some 7000
lives in the three southernmost provinces where the Malay Muslims are the majority. Among those
killed in the violence were Buddhist monks as well as Muslim religious figures.3 On October 30,
2016, a Thai Buddhist monk from a Bangkok royal temple posted a fiery facebook message:
“If one monk in the three southern provinces (of Thailand) were bombed or shot to dead by the
Malay terrorists, it has to be traded with burning one mosque down to the ground. It will begin from
the North (of Thailand) downwards. Then we will purge that creed/religion out of the land by
whatever means possible until there is no believer (of that faith) left in the land and (we will) oppose
the coming of this creed/religion in every way in those provinces by whatever means possible.” He
also pointed out that this was but a suggestion, people could choose to follow at will. He added, “We
should be kind to those who deserve to be kind to.” When some responded by saying that the negative
message was too strong, the monk responded: “One life for one mosque- a trade.”4
His facebook message was first taken out under public pressure. He was later found to be in
violation of security law, was then disrobed and taken into custody by the Thai authority on

1 UNGA resolution 37/43, my emphasis.

2 Mark Perry, Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with its Enemies (New York: Basic Books, 2010), p.195.
3 Chaiwat Satha-Anand, “Red Mosques’: Mitigating Violence Against Sacred Spaces in Thailand and Beyond,” in K.
Miichi and O. Farouk (eds.) Southeast Asian Muslims in the Era of Globalization (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
4 (https://prachatai.com/journal/2015/10/62185)

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September 20, 2017. It is clear that the notion of Buddhist mercy was put aside and the notion of
exaggerated retributive justice emerges in its place in the mind of this monk, and perhaps many others
who agree with him.
It goes without saying that these three incidents are but tips of the iceberg both in terms of the
frequency of such incidents, and the complex causes that give rise to them. It occurs to me that
perhaps from the dark side, the tie that binds all three philosophical concepts: rights, responsibility
and justice: armed struggle in the first case, maintaining state security by killing Palestinians in the
second, and burning down a mosque for a life of a Buddhist monk in the third respectively, could be
violent extremism. But while violent extremism is now a hot topic for research and practices in a
world plagued with horrible violence in the name of religions, nations, or ethnic groups, among other
things, I would argue that it is not difficult to see how rights, responsibility and justice can connect
with violent extremism precisely because violent extremists would justify their courses of action in
the name of rights-self determination or something else; responsibility- to protect or defend that which
is held dear by the protector or defender; and justice, especially the retributive kind.
What is perhaps a more difficult question is to ask: why is it that many in the world have been
attracted to the idea of extremism, understood as a belief that in pursuit of political goals of
movements with superior narratives, violence is necessary?1 There are several ways to deal with this
question. For example, to explore the type of people who are attracted to extreme ideas in general,
and violent extremism in particular is a research route frequented by social scientists as evident in the
works on violent extremism in India or Africa.2
But a more appropriate question, and relevant to the present conference, would be: what are the
ideatic elements within extremism itself that attract so many from various backgrounds in different
contexts to lay down their lives, and taking the lives of others, in pursuit of their different goals? I
would argue that it is possible for extremism to exercise such influence in the minds of many because
of “the magic” inherent in the extreme itself. In fact, this is the idea critically advanced by the
philosopher Eric Voegelin. But since the phrase “magic of the extreme” is from Nietzsche, it is
important to first return to his formulation.

“Extreme”: Nietzsche’s Crossed Out Passage

In the American presidential election of 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater was a candidate for the
Republican Party’s nomination. Perhaps because Goldwater’s constituency was from outside the
party structure, he was chastised by traditionalists within the party, Rockefellor, Lodge, Scranton-for
example. In fact, it was then fashionable to call Goldwater an “extremist”.

1 This is a truncated version of a complex definition of extremism to be found in Lisa Schirch (ed.) The Ecology of Violent
Extremism: Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Human Security (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield International,
Forthcoming-2018).
2 See for example, Kunaal Sharma, What Causes Extremist Attitudes among Sunni and Shia Youth? Evidence from
Northern India (Washington DC: George Washington Program on Extremism, November 2016); Journey to Extremism
in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment (New York: United Nations Development Program,
2017); and Matthew Nanes and Bryony Lau, Surveys and Countering Violent Extremism: A Practitioner Guide (The Asia
Foundation, 2018).

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 In his acceptance speech at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on July 16, 1964, Goldwater hit
back at his attackers. He said: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
I would also remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
This famous aphorism came from the mind of Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015), a political
philosopher also known as the Dean of the West Coast Straussians. Jaffa points out that the source of
Goldwater’s aphorism he crafted was from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which was in turn
rendered to near perfection in Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man as: “A thing moderately good is
not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is
always a vice.”1
Jaffa’s memorable formulation privileges extremism. In a world starkly divided by virtue and
vice, extremism is not always leaning towards the latter. Jaffa’s use of extremism in Goldwater’s
speech is instrumental. This means that when it is used in pursuit of a noble goal, then it is a virtue.
Put another way, whether it is vice or virtue depends on the ends it is designed to serve. Extremism
as virtue is possible precisely because it is instrumental and conditional.
I would say that Jaffa’s extreme turn is not complete. It is not because, true to his philosophical
inclination, the formulation is clearly Aristotelian. If one believes, with Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics, that there is a profound difference between theoretical and practical sciences, and that the
world of politics belongs to the latter,2 then extremism as a political instrument falls in the realm of
the practical. In this realm, there is no absolute vice or virtue. As a result, an act cannot be said to be
right or wrong at all times. More importantly, when extremism is considered an instrument, it does
need something as an end that it serves. Depending on the ends which justify extremism as a means,
it can therefore be vice sometimes, and at other times –virtue. Aristotle’s notion of practical science
renders extremism as an idea weakened since its force has to depend on external elements outside
itself.
To find a philosophical foundation that would stand extremism on its own ground, one has to
fast forward roughly two millenniums, from Athens to Weimar Germany.
There is a passage in Nietzsche’s The Will to Power that was originally crossed out in the
manuscript.3 The passage was first written in the Spring-Fall of 1887, and revised a year later in 1888.
Here is not the place to explore why it was crossed out, but because it contains a most fascinating
idea of the force contained within extremism as an idea, it needs to be seriously considered.
The crossed-out passage reads:

“The princes of Europe should consider carefully whether they can do without our support. We
immoralists-we are today the only power that needs no allies in order to conquer: thus we are by far the
strongest of the strong. We do not even need to tell lies: what other power can dispense with that? A
powerful seduction fights on our behalf, the most powerful perhaps that there has ever been-the seduction
of truth-"Truth"? Who has forced this word on me? But I repudiate it; but I disdain this proud word: no,
we do not need even this; we shall conquer and come to power even without truth. The spell that fights

1 Harry V.Jaffa, “Goldwater’s Famous ‘Gaffe’,” National Review, August 10, 1984, p. 36.
2 Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, Ch.8: 1141 b 23-8.
3 Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Holllingdalee (trans.), Walter Kaufman (ed.) (New
York: Vintage, 1968), see fn. 107, p. 396.

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 on our behalf, the eye of Venus that charms and blinds even our opponents, is the magic of the extreme,
the seduction that everything extreme exercises: We immoralists-we are the most extreme.”1

Nietzsche is saying that the strongest of the strong is the immoralists. But the reason for their
immense strength given here is not that they are beyond good and evil. Instead it is because “a
powerful seduction” is fighting on their behalf. This powerful seduction resides in extremism without
exception because it is this very seduction “that every extreme exercises.” The “spell that fights” on
the immoralists’ behalf is “the magic of the extreme.” But what is this “magic of the extreme” that
fights on behalf of the immoralists? Nietzsche uses the “eye of Venus” as the representation of the
elusively omnipresent “magic of the extreme.” To understand the powerful magic of the extreme,
there is a need to raise 2 questions: what does “the eye of Venus” do? And how does it do that?
To answer the first question: the eye of Venus/Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty,
“charms and blinds” the opponents of the extremists. Venus/Aphrodite’s irresistible power was best
captured in her longest Homeric Hymn which begins: “Tell me, Muse, the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
the Cyprian, who stirs up sweet desire in the gods, and overcome the tribe of mortal men, and the
birds that fly in the air, and all the creatures that live on dry land and in the sea.” There are only three
living beings immune to her power. They are the virgin Greek goddesses: Athena, Artemis, and
Hestia. All others, humans and gods, as well as animals on land, in the sea or the air are susceptible
to Aphrodite/Venus’ power.2
The order which Nietzsche used to characterize Venus’ power is also important. It first charms
and then blinds the opponents. Originally charms means “to enchant or to fill someone with desire.”
When someone is enchanted and filled with desire of love, h/she will be blinded to his/her own
volition and allows Venus’ beauty to lead him/her both in actions and/or conscience. The sight of
Venus’ beauty is not immediately deadly as that of Medusa’s. Setting the sight on Medusa’ dreadful
head petrifies the lookers, turning them into stone. But with the sight of Venus’s irresistible beauty,
the looker is charmed, not petrified, because h/she is instilled with overwhelming desires. The sting
of love will corrupt the lover’s mind, first by seducing and then by forcing him/her to act blindly in
line with Venus’s design. Perhaps, this is why Nietzsche thinks that the magic of the extreme first
charms and then blinds the opponents.
To answer the second question: how the magic of the extreme works on the human minds
throughout the ages, I have to turn to Eric Voegelin’s Meditation.

“Magic”: Eric Voegelin’s Meditation

In 1981 Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) published “Wisdom and Magic of the Extreme: A Meditation”
using Nietzsche’s phrase prominently in the title.3 Voegelin believes that no other philosophers but
Nietzsche was able to trace the origin of the extreme back to the extremist’s passion in transforming
“the truth of divinely-created order” into “the terror of humanly created untruth.” 4 After quoting

1 Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, p. 396. The italics is mine.

2 Jenny March, Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology (London: Cassell & Co: 2001, p.107.
3 The Southern Review, Spring 1981, pp. 235-287.
4 Ibid., p.244.

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Nietzsche’s famous passage on “the magic of the extreme”, he categorically asserts that: “The power
of the extreme does not derive from an ulterior source; it is contained within itself.” “The magician’s
extreme” is the “causa sui of reality” which disposes the reality which people live while establishing
the “second reality as it breaks forth from a beyond of truth.” 1 This work could be said to be
Voegelin’s complex attempt to examine the problem of Gnosticism and its relation to political
ideologies.2
Voegelin’s political philosophy is a meditation on order and history. Meditation, which is in the
title of his article, is “a philosopher’s effort to explore the structures of existential consciousness.
Meditations have a historical dimension: they try to clarify the formative center of existence, the
Metaxy, and to protect this noetic center against the deformative forces prevalent at the time.” 3 The
discussion that follows will not be an exegesis of Voegelin’s whole text that will yield a precise
understanding of his meditative project- a Herculean task that requires much more than what is
possible under the present circumstances.
What I would try to do here is using Voegelin’s meditation as a guide to construe the ways in
which “the magic of the extreme” has worked on the human minds by focusing on 3 related questions:
who are the extremists? what is their project? And finally, what is the dynamics of the extremists’
magic?
It must first be noted that Voegelin originally wrote this piece in 1977 as a lecture given at the
Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland. The theme of that conference was “the sense of
imperfection.” Voegelin explained that the provocative theme was so relevant at the time when “…all
of us are threatened in our humanity, …by the massive social force of activist dreamers who want to
liberate us from our imperfections by locking us up in the perfect prison of their fantasy.”4 This is the
key to the text because here Voegelin identifies the problem facing humanity while pointing fingers
at those responsible for the calamity he called “activist dreamers” and their massive social force that
are threatening everyone. The threat is also characterized as an attempt to liberate all humans from
the reality which we live that is imperfect by locking us up in their fantasy which Voegelin called
“the perfect prison.” The piece could be seen as a critical analysis of this radical type of existential
conditions brought about by the “activist dreamers” who want to imprison us in the utopias of their
fantasy, not unlike what Plato and Aristotle undertook with devastating results for the Greek city-
states.5
I think Voegelin’s term “activist-dreamers” well captures who the extremists are. The extremists
are those who engage in action based on dreams. In fulfilling their dreams, they visualize humans as
being trapped in an imperfect world. Persuaded by the Gnostic tendency, the extremists believe that
they have a vision of the perfect world and that they know how to move from the present imprisoned
state into the future liberated state. The extremists’ project is in fact an action project that “intends to

1 Ibid., p.243.
2 Claire Rawnsley, A Consideration of the Philosophical Insights of Eric Voegelin: The Life of Reason, the Equivalent
Symbol of the Divine Human Encounter. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of History, University of Queensland, July 1998,
p. 20.
3 Ibid., p.285.
4 Ibid., p.235.
5 Manfred Henningsen, “The World Without Polis: The Meaning of Praxis in Eric Voegelin’s Political Philosophy”.
(Unpublished manuscript, no date.)

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overcome the existential tension of imperfection-perfection.” As an imaginative project that is an
autonomous construction, this “true dream”, complies with the logic of a revolt against reality.1
Voegelin criticizes the extremists of using the term “Utopian” to characterize their projects as
part of everyday language because in doing so they have placed us all inside the extremist’s imagined
prison. In moving towards their utopian project, the extremists suspend their consciousness of the
real that the project is unrealizable. The suspension manifested itself in public space as the professed
belief that the unrealizable image of perfection can be realized. Voegelin argues that this is in fact a
perversion of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) when his “Nowhere” becomes “Everywhere”. More’s
perfect order of a dream has been concentrated in the extremists’ will to power (libido dominandi)
whose dream of perfection will be forced upon the rest of humanity. In the extremist’s language,
“Utopianism has become the great symbol that is supposed to justify any action, whatever its human
cost, if it pretends to overcome the imperfection of man’s existence.” 2
The extremists must try to eclipse the existing image of reality with a counter image that would
supply a plausible basis for the extremists’ action. The extremists’ counter-image must at once be
comprehensive enough to cover the existing structure of reality, and at the same time obscure enough
not to reveal its dream-image character.3 In addition, the extremists’ dream works in three phases. It
begins with the end of existing history when the “true history of perfection” is claimed to be
imminent. Then reason for the transformation towards the establishment of the perfect social order is
given. Finally, the third phase occurs when “the order to be established is declared to be ultimately
perfect, because it endows everybody with the full stature of his humanity so that any further pursuit
of perfection has become superfluous.” 4
But why do people follow the extremists’ dream? From Nietzsche’s formulation, it could charm
and blind. But how does the charm work? Voegelin argues that the magic of the extreme works not
unlike the phenomena of word-intoxication and drug addiction.5Analyzing passages from Plato’s
Gorgias, Voegelin explains how speech (logos) is so very powerful for the sophist Gorgias: “It
operates with magic force (goeteia, mageia) on man; the spell of divinely inspired language can
swerve the soul when it is weakened,…the power of the logos over the soul can be compared to that
of a drug (pharmakon) over the body; as the drug can heal or kill, harmful persuasion can drug and
bewitch the soul.” 6 Then from Plato’s Laws, Voegelin discusses the legislation on “drugging”
(pharmakeia). Plato subdivides the misdeeds into two types: drugging the body with bodily drugs and
drugging the soul with sorcery and incantation. (932e-933e)7 In fact, Plato uses the term “magic arts”
to characterize the tricks of the sophisticated extremists who later turn out to be tyrants, demagogues,
and sophists. (908) In other words, the magic of the extreme is dangerous because in its intoxicating
moments, it manages to rob its victims the faculty of critical reasoning necessary for the minds to
make a distinction between the real and the dreams. The extremists suffer from “the disease of the

1 Voegelin, “Wisdom and Magic of the Extreme,” p. 237.

2 Ibid., p. 236.
3 Ibid., p. 238.
4 Ibid., pp. 238-239. The quote is on p. 239.
5 Ibid., pp. 248.
6 Ibid., p. 249.
7 Ibid., p. 251.

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mind” understood as “the ultimate murderous unwillingness to distinguish between dream and
reality,” a symptom that Cicero characterizes in his Tusculan Disputations (IV 23-32) as “a rejection
of reason.”1 In addition, the magic of the extreme’s addictive quality makes it difficult for those under
the extremists’ spell to break free from them, but to continue to ask for more.
Voegelin believes that the magic of the extreme could be primarily construed by confronting the
self-interpretation of the magicians with the self-analysis of a balanced mind. 2 A balanced mind
knows that the extreme cannot be reached through passionate pursuit. In fact, the self analysis should
indicate that “The dream of reaching it will, if pursued, collapse when faced with the reality of not
having reached it. From the collapse there rises the balanced insight.” 3
Such analysis will illuminate that humans have to consciously participate in the reality which
they are parts of. The desire to know should be tempered with the understanding that mystery in
human life exists as the horizon to such desire. He writes: “The mystery is the horizon that draws us
to advance toward it but it cannot be reached; it can give direction to the quest of truth but it cannot
be reached; and the beyond of the horizon can fascinate as the “extreme” of truth but it cannot be
possessed as truth face-to-face within this life.” 4
While together with other philosophical sources, Plato’s last dialogue helps one understand the
force of the extreme, I would say that it is Plato’s first dialogue that helps elucidate the tragedy of the
magic.

Daedalus: Return to Plato’s Euthyphro

Plato’s first dialogue is Euthyphro. It is normally thought of as Plato’s teaching about Socratic method
and is widely used in introductory philosophy classes around the world. It is a story of how the
religious prophet and seer –Euthyphro- met Socrates on the way to the latter’s trial and the former’s
prosecution of his own father for murder against killing a slave. Socrates called Euthyphro’s extremist
position on justice into question through a conversation about the nature of piety. Euthyphro’s notion
of piety was interrogated through grueling Socratic method. When Euthyphro was about to give up
because “whatever proposition we put forward goes around and refuses to stay put….” (11 b),
Socrates mentioned Daedalus:

“Your statements, Euthyphro, seem to belong to my ancestor, Daedalus. If I were stating them and putting
them forward, you would perhaps making fun of me and say that because of my kinship with him my
conclusions in discussion run away and will not stay where one puts them. As these propositions are
yours, however, we need some other jest, for they will not stay put for you, as you say yourself.” (11 c)5

I am curious about why Daedalus was brought into the dialogue?

There are three possibilities: literary, biographical, and philosophical.

1 Ibid., p. 241.
2 Ibid., p. 246.
3 Ibid., p. 247.
4 Ibid., p. 245.
5 Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates.G.M.A. Grube Trans. (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1975), p.14.

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 First, Daedalus was brought in as a literary instrument to portray Euthyphro as a fool in following
Socrates’ relentless questions in a circle, not unlike what Daedalus could do with his stone sculptures,
the automata. Plato does this by poking fun on Euthyphro’s name which literally means “a straight
line” or “straight thinker”. 1 Pulled by the philosopher’s questions, Euthyphro circumambulated
Socrates, not showing any sign that as a wise seer with such a name, he could see that he was being
made fun of by the philosopher and on display for all readers to see.
Second, historically it is well known that Socrates’ father-Sophroniskos was a stonemason or a
stone carver. Therefore in the Euthyphro, Plato had Socrates say that he was nothing like his ancestor
Daedalus, the legendary- if not mythical- first architect. Daedalus not only built the automata so
animated with divine life that they had to be put in chains, the two were possibly referring to in the
dialogue, but also the Labyrinth where Theseus slew the Minotaur and Ariadne's dancing floor in
Knossos. When Socrates claims Daedalus as his ancestor, it could very well be that in the archaic
polis, it was Greek architectures that later became the cradle of Western thought. 2 If this line of
argument is acceptable, then it is incredibly logical for Plato to write that Socrates’ ancestor was
indeed Daedalus.
Third, blurring the lines between the philosophical and the mythical, I would say that Daedalus
appears in Euthyphro not only to show Socrates’ ancestral lineage, but also because Daedalus’ life
story is the one that resonates so beautifully with the issue discussed in the dialogue. In examining
the meaning of the holy or piety with the story of Euthyphro prosecuting his own father for murder,
Euthyphro is a dialogue that calls such extremism into question. And it calls extremism into question
through two related routes.
First, Euthyphro did what he did because, like most people, he believed he knew the right course
of action since he knew with certitude what piety is. But his was an unexamined knowledge. Touched
by the wisdom of Socratic method, his knowledge grounded in his dreamlike sense of self with such
certitude that would allow him to cross the line and prosecuting his own father could no longer hold.
Euthyphro chose to leave the dialogue rather than to admit that he was an extremist whose knowledge
was grounded in dreamlike rationality.
Second, and equally important, Daedalus was in Euthyphro the dialogue with his own unsaid
story. He was also a father who lost his son-Icarus- to his own science when he built both two pairs
of wings to escape from the prison in Crete. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Daedalus warned Icarus with
the following words:

“Remember to fly midway, for if you dip too low,

the waves will weight your wings with thick saltwater.
And if you fly too high
the flames of heaven will burn them from your sides.

1 Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkely, Los Angeles, London:
University of California Press, 1998), p. 38.
2 Indra Kagis McEwen, Socrates’ Ancestor: An Essay on Architectural Beginnings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).

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 Then take your flight between the two.”1

Icarus with the wings could not resist the magic temptation to soar high through the sky. Ignoring his
father’s instruction and warning, Icarus flew too close to the sun and the wings glued to his body
could no longer hold. He fell to his death from the sky into deep blue sea telling two lessons. First,
the product of the diseased mind called pride is ever dangerous because it could destroy those with
false sense of self. Second, avoid the extremes of flying too close to the sun with false pride, or too
low towards the sea with false humility.
Apart from a lesson in avoiding the extremes, I would say that Euthyphro is also a story about
the relationship between fathers and sons gone tragic because of the magic of the extremes.
Euthyphro’s unexamined knowledge of piety with incredible certitude, Tantalus’s madness in
cooking his own son to serve the gods as a way to humiliate them (11 e), and Daedalus’s technical
knowledge that finally contributed to his own son’s death. In this sense, Euthyphro, Plato’s first
dialogue could be seen as a philosophical warning against the magic of extremes precisely because
the extreme is so magical that will blind those who choose to follow along its path blind to the tragedy
that awaits.

1 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Horace Gregory (Trans.) (New York: The Viking Press, 1958), Book VIII, pp. 211-212.

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 Transhumanism and Biopolitics of Human Enhancement

Sangkyu Shin
Ewha Womans University

Human enhancement means the use of science and technology to improve or augment the intellectual,
emotional, physical, and psychological abilities of human being, including the extension of healthy
lifespan or the elimination of aging. Transhumanism supports such human enhancement. Nick
Bostrom has defined transhumanism as ”the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the
possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason,
especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly
enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities."1 Today, there already exist a
variety of enhancement technologies, such as plastic surgery, prosthesis, mood-enhancing drugs, and
germline genetic intervention. It is expected that future enhancement technologies will be much
powerful than now, and the degree of human transformation will be much larger. The drastic changes
of human may lead to the emergence of new species of posthuman that are distinguished from the
present biological human species.
The word 'enhancement' in everyday language implies a positive evaluation which means
improvement of something in a desirable direction. For that reason, this expression is mainly used by
transhumanists. However, in the context of academic discussion, when we use the term 'human
enhancement’, we need to be more careful to its implications. If we look only at the expression, the
object of enhancement is the human being itself, from which it seems as if the betterment of human
being results. But many people think that human enhancement does not make humans better. It is
only various abilities of humans that are enhanced by science and technology. The improvement of
human capacities doesn’t necessarily lead to better human life or the betterment of human beings. A
smarter, physically stronger person is not necessarily a better person. What more is required for
human enhancement to result in better human beings or better human life?
I think that the betterment of human beings means that people live more ethical life than it is
now. Ethics or morality is basically about the relationship between me and others. Ethical
relationships become possible when the dignity of others is acknowledged and mutual prosperity can
be promoted under the solidarity of human community. Human beings become better when they are
able to live in accordance with their values while maintaining ethical relationships with others.
Keeping this in mind, I argue that we need to change the terrain of human enhancement debate. So
far, the controversy has been primarily on whether or not human enhancement is allowed. I think that
the debate will be more productive if it is framed as the confrontation between the left and the right
in terms of autonomy and equality. In the remaining of this paper, I explain the differences between
two transhumanist views, libertarian transhumanism and technoprogressivism, and advocate
technoprogressive perspectives by focusing on the relation between autonomy and equality.

1 Bostrom, N., “Transhumanist FAQ v2.1.”, p4.

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1.Biopolitics of Human Enhancement

James Hughes, director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), argues that the
analysis of political views should be done in a three-dimensional way that adds a biopolitical
dimension to cultural politics and economic politics.1 The frontline of the human enhancement debate
in terms of biopolitics can be summarized as in <Table 1>.

Technoprogressives Libertarian Transhumanists

IEET, James Hughes Extropy Institute
Left-wing Bio-conservatives Right-wing Bio-conservatives
Sandel, Harbermas, Fukuyama Leon Kass
<Table 1> Biopolitics of human enhancement

The upper parts of the table are occupied by transhumanists who support human enhancement by
using science and technology. The lower parts of the table represent bio-conservatives who oppose
to human enhancement. The main front, which has so far been fiercely contested, has been formed
between transhumanists and bio-conservatives. The key issue between them was whether to allow
human enhancement or not, and the focus has been on whether there are some principled reasons to
oppose human enhancement.
Various of criticisms against human enhancement by bio-conservatives are roughly summarized
as follows.
(1) Human enhancement may lead to unexpected risks or bad results.
(2) Human enhancement will exacerbate social justice or inequality.
(3) Human enhancement would be playing the role of God, which reflects human arrogance
or hubris.
(4) Human enhancement undermines the autonomy of descendants.
(5) Human enhancement threatens the conditions of human morality and destroys various
important human values.
These criticisms can be divided into two groups according to their characteristics. (1) and (2)
are empirical objections based on bad results that human enhancement is likely to cause. They are
called empirical because, at least on the surface, whether the expected bad results occur is a matter of
empirical facts. Of course, these objections also appeal to normative concepts, such as social justice,
equality, and safety, but it is still subject to empirical judgment whether such values are violated or
not. Meanwhile, (3) to (5) try to show, through the conceptual analysis or a priori arguments, that
human enhancement inherently conflicts with important normative values or principles.
Up until now, the main debate about enhancement has focused on (3) to (5). This is because the
controversy was mainly made between transhumanists and bio-conservatives on whether human
enhancement is positive or negative. Once the debate has been set in this way, it has the effect of
significantly restricting what are the central issues or relevant considerations. Bio-conservatives want

1 https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/biopolitics

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to show that human enhancement is not acceptable. Therefore, what they need to do is at least to
present a decisive reason why enhancement cannot be tolerated. However, empirical forecasts of
future development are always accompanied by uncertainty. This means that it is very difficult to
present a knock-down argument based on future predictions. Thus, bio-conservatives are forced to
find a reason for opposition at the level of normative principle, and they focus on the infringement of
normative values that is considered to be inherent to or can be deduced in a conceptual way from
human enhancement.
Bio-conservatives have usually appealed to the concepts such as human dignity, autonomy,
human hubris, authenticity of life, and 'life as a gift'. For example, Habermas argued that parents who
genetically design their children will threaten the autonomy of children that they should have as the
sole author of their life.1 Through biotechnological intervention, children are not born by chance but
are created or produced according to the needs and purposes of parents, so that they are reduced to a
means to satisfy parents' ambitions.
The conceptual frame in which transhumanists approach the problem consists of libertarian
vocabularies such as autonomy, tolerance, and the Millian harm principle. They argue that human
enhancement is essentially a matter that should be decided through autonomous choice of individuals,
not social judgment or state intervention. The autonomous choice of an individual may be constrained
by society or state power only when it is (directly) harmful to others; otherwise, the state or society
should respect the individual’s choice as much as possible.
Transhumanism is often characterized as liberal eugenics. The idea of "gene supermarket" 2
proposed by Robert Nozick, a spokesperson for American libertarian philosophy, captures the basic
idea of the libertarian tradition advocating transhumanism. It is not the responsibility of government
to judge the outcome of one’s attempts to improve genes, and what can be lawfully done in free
societies is to ensure that such processes are made entirely by the free choices of individuals.
Nick Bostrom argues that every person may want or refuse to use technology to improve himself
or herself, and transhumanism respects this individual's choice. He also argues that transhumanism is
an extension of modern humanism or enlightenment, and transhumanists respect the values of rational
thinking, freedom, tolerance and democracy. Transhumanists only focus more on the potential of
what we can become, and more on the autonomy of individuals who can plan and choose their lives.
According to him, “[I]t is not our human shape or the details of our current human biology that define
what is valuable about us, but rather our aspirations and ideals, our experiences, and the kinds of lives
we lead. To a transhumanist, progress occurs when more people become more able to shape
themselves, their lives, and the ways they relate to others, in accordance with their own deepest
values.”3

1 Habermas, J. (2003). The Future of Human Nature, Polity: Cambridge.

2 Nozick, R., (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Basic Books.
3 Bostrom, N., “Transhumanist FAQ v2.1.”, p4.

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2. Libertarian Transhumanism and Technoprogressivism

Depending on the way the debate is framed, only some of the issues related to enhancement are
highlighted, and other issues that need more careful attention are ignored. I think the problem of
social justice and inequality that can be caused by human enhancement is such an issue we need to
address more urgently. Libertarian vocabularies, such as the freedom to choose one's own life, or the
Millian harm principle are not good enough to deal with the socio-political issues of human
enhancement. I contend that at the moment the more important issue of human enhancement is not
the question of whether to allow or forbid it, but how to regulate and control the development or
application of human enhancement technologies.
To facilitate the discussion of this problem, we need to set the frame of debate in a different way.
In the confrontation of transhumanists and bio-conservatives, the controversy tends to focus on
normative values or principles associated with human enhancement in a conceptual way. In this frame,
transhumanists are forced to advocate the freedom principle of individual choice. This gives us a
misleading impression that every transhumanist is libertarian. On the other hand, due to such a way
of debate, the ethical problems of human enhancement tend to be reduced to a matter of an individual's
ethical choice.
However, the proliferation of enhancement technologies is not just a matter of an individual’s
choices but also a political issue to be discussed at the social level. This is particularly true of the
inequality that can result from enhancement technologies. Of course, it is not the case that the problem
of social inequality or justice has not been discussed, but it needs to be recognized as a more central
issue than it is now. One of the options we can take is to reset the focus of the debate to the
confrontation between the left and the right, in particular between libertarian transhumanists and
technoprogressives. Once the debate has been reset in this way, the question of how to use or control
enhancement technologies to promote social equality or fairness can be discussed more appropriately.
All transhumanists agree in principle to use science and technology for human enhancement.
Still, depending on their political orientation, they can be broadly categorized into the following two
groups. First, there are libertarian transhumanists. Accepting transhumanism at the biopolitical level,
they take libertarian position at the cultural and economic level. They are against state or government
intervention and believe that the risks or inequality that can be brought about by enhancement
technologies can be managed through the market. Their position is, so to speak, a market-oriented
capitalist position.
On the other hand, there are technoprogressives. While they support the use of enhancement
technologies, they argue that it need to be coupled with strengthened democracy. They contend that
risk management for enhancement technologies or the social distribution of the benefits made
possible from enhancement cannot be left to the market, and that intervention and control by
governments or societies, operating on democratic governance, are required. They focus on the ethical
use of enhancement technologies and the universal improvement of human welfare through them,
and they believe that democratic control over technologies is necessary to achieve such goals. 1

1 See https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/biopolitics for the differences between the two positions on the various issues.

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 Even if both are transhumanist positions, there are differences between these two views. In
particular, they are taking a very different position with respect to securing the safety of enhancement
technologies and distributing the benefits of enhancement technologies. Moving the front of the
enhancement debate to the boundary between these two is important for the following reasons.
First, human enhancement is more a matter of social structure rather than individual choice. The
fundamental force driving the present technological development comes from the capitalist
competition mechanism based on economic incentives. The development of enhancement
technologies is driven not by any vision for the value of human life, but by the competitive pressure
in the global capitalist regime. In addition, the excessive competition-oriented lifestyle of
contemporary society, dominated by the value of competition and efficiency in the market, forces
individuals to 'voluntarily’ accept enhancement of various forms. There isn't much choice left for
individuals who are driven to competition. Even scientists and engineers do not seem to be very
concerned about the social, political, and cultural implications of the powerful technologies they
create. It is very difficult for individual scientists to grasp the full picture of the long-term impact of
technology on the fabric of society. Scientists and engineers are those who pursue the pleasures of
new discoveries and innovations in the short term.
Second, human enhancement technologies are likely to bring various potential benefits to human
life. However, if we approach enhancement technologies in the form of pros and cons debate between
transhumanists and bio-conservatives, it would greatly limit the discussion of the many benefits that
can be offered. Bio-conservatives distinguish between therapy and enhancement and argue that
science and technology should be used only for therapeutic purposes. However, the distinction
between therapy and enhancement is not so clear, and various cases classifiable as enhancement have
already been widely accepted. Enhancement technologies can provide a means to treat mental and
physical illnesses or disorders that could not be overcome if they were banned from the beginning.
They can also open new possibilities for public welfare. In such a situation, we need to discuss more
actively various possibilities of using enhancement technologies in benign ways, such as mitigation
of existing social and genetic inequality.
Third, the prohibition of human enhancement is not only practically difficult to implement but
also hard to justify through normative consideration. As mentioned earlier, the opponents of
enhancement usually try to present a rationale for prohibiting enhancement by showing that it undermines
the moral values such as human dignity and autonomy. However, human enhancement does not seem
inherently morally wrong, and it seems almost impossible to prove it based on normative considerations. If it
is not possible to ban the use of enhancement technologies, and if it is practically inevitable to develop
or apply those technologies, it is prudent to seek realistic countermeasures against possible harm they
may cause.

3. The Problem of Inequality

We have previously distinguished between human enhancement and 'the betterment of human being',
and asked what conditions are necessary to become better humans. In this regard, there is a point to
be noted in the debate between transhumanists and bio-conservatives. Their discussion takes place in

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relation to the normative value of human life, which makes us to think again about why the existence
of human species is important.
Bio-conservatives are opposed to human enhancement. This is in fact to claim that human
species should be preserved and maintained in the current state. If there is a reason to do so, what is
it? This comes down to the question of why "humanity" is important, or why is human existence
meaningful. The best answer I can think of to this question is that 'we humans are moral beings'. As
natural beings, humans cannot but be constrained by instinctive selfish desires. However, humans
may go beyond the limits of nature’s constraints by choosing moral behavior when moral obligations
and selfish desires conflict. It is a moment of transcendence through moral action. Biological
mechanisms that enable human moral behavior may originate from the history of evolution. But the
normative nature of practical choice made between moral duty and selfish desire can never be reduced
to such a biological origin.
Sandel's criticism of human enhancement concerns the deterioration of the conditions of moral
practice. According to him. “the moral stakes in the enhancement debate are not fully captured by the
familiar categories of autonomy and rights, on the one hand, and the calculation of costs and benefits,
on the other. My concern with enhancement is not as individual vice but as habit of mind and way of
being.”1 He argues that enhancement reveals the impulse to perfection and conquest and hinders our
appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements, thereby changing the three
main features of our moral landscape, i.e., humility, responsibility and solidarity. The gist of his
criticism is the concern that our attitude to human enhancement will aggravate the conditions of our
moral practice.
However, even if enhancement could lead to such bad results, what if this is not due to the nature
of enhancement technologies themselves but rather to the capitalist lifestyle based on Neoliberal
political order? In other words, if enhancement technologies by themselves do not undermine our
morality or the conditions of its practice, isn’t there any reason to oppose them? I think the negative
consequences that Sandel says are not the result of enhancement per se, but the result of the way of
life we maintain now. Then, an appropriate response to Sandel's argument is to suggest ways to use
enhancement technologies to avoid such negative consequences. These measures would be related to
changes in our way of life, including changes in political and economic structures. What we really
need to worry about is to make sure that human enhancement technologies are used in a way that
does not compromise the conditions of human morality or dignity.
What are the values that constitute our morality? The moral values we pursue does not have to
be absolute one transcending time and space. The context in which we make moral judgments is the
present situation we are living in now. So, the important question we should ask is what moral values
we can agree on as important to preserve in today's context. One of the moral challenges we are facing
now is to build solidarity with others through compassion for the suffering of others and to create
socio-economic conditions where as many people as possible can live a dignified life. Enhancement
technologies should then be used in a way that recognizes the dignity of others and promotes the
solidarity of the human community.

1 Sandel, M., (2007). The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Belknap Press. p.96

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 The problem of social justice and inequality is at the center of this challenge, and I think that
concerns about inequality should be at the center of human enhancement debate. The problem of
social justice that human enhancement poses is about the possibility that the benefits of new
enhancement technologies will be distributed primarily to a small number of rich and powerful people,
thereby exacerbating existing inequalities. In the current capitalist way of life operating at the global
level, human enhancement technologies are very likely to bring about a new form of inequality, at
least in the short term. Unless social measures are taken to cope with this problem, inequalities in
wealth, income, health, education, and medical enhancement will accumulate, leading to serious
injustice, such as excessive dominance and systematic exploitation of others.

4. Reconsidering the Concept of Autonomy

All transhumanists, both libertarian and technoprogressive, agree that personal freedom of choice for
enhancement takes precedence over religious constraints, unpleasant feelings, or yuck factors.
However, it is too complacent to assume that problems such as risk management and the distribution
of benefits can be solved by the market. This is a claim that represents the political view of libertarian
transhumanist. I believe that even though individual freedom of choice or autonomy is recognized as
one of the highest values, social intervention and control over enhancement technologies can still be
justified. To support this conclusion, I first examine the concept of autonomy and explain why
restrictions on individual autonomy can be justified.
The literal meaning of 'autonomy' is to govern or control oneself. Living an autonomous life, in
the sense of governing one's own life, is living a life that is in accordance with one's basic desires,
values, or ideals. To be faithful to the value of autonomy is to increase the degree to which you live
your life according to your own value orientation. According to libertarian transhumanist, the use of
enhancement technology should be left to the free choice of an individual. It is because this increases
the degree of autonomy enjoyed by individuals. However, on the contrary, is it unlikely that the use
of enhancement technology will reduce the degree of autonomy that individuals should enjoy?
I argue that when enhancement technologies are widely accepted and used in society, they can
have negative effects on people’s overall autonomy. It can happen in at least two ways. First, even
though it appears that enhancement is due to an autonomous choice of individuals, genuine (authentic)
autonomy may be suppressed because it is to obey oppressive or problematic social norms. Second,
enhancement may deteriorate the distributive justice among classes, thereby reducing the overall level
of autonomy in society. This is because even if the autonomy of those who benefit from enhancement
may increases, the autonomy of those who do not benefit is reduced. That is, an increase in one's
autonomy means a decrease in another's autonomy.
In order to examine these in more detail, let us distinguish two meanings of the concept of
autonomy. 1 The first is the autonomy as a right to be respected for one's choice without being
interfered with by others. Let’s call it autonomy1. This is the right supported by the traditional

1 I got a lot of help from Niklas Jude's paper on the distinction between the two meanings of autonomy. See Niklas Juth,
“Enhancement, Autonomy, and Authenticity”, in Julian Savulescu, Ruud ter Meulen & Guy Kahane eds., Enhancing
Human Capacities, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

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principle of liberalism. As the Millian harm principle describes, the autonomy of an individual's will
cannot be interfered with by the power of the state or society, unless it causes (direct) harm to others.
The enforcement of power against the will of an individual can be exercised legitimately only for the
purpose of preventing harm to other members of the civil community. The autonomy in this sense
can be understood as a negative right to be protected from external coercion. The advocacy of
autonomy by libertarian transhumanism is a defense of individual autonomy in this sense.
On the other hand, we can talk about the autonomy as an ability, distinguished from the
autonomy in the first sense. Let’s call it autonomy2. The autonomy in this sense means the ability of
an individual to live a life of one’s own choice by oneself without being controlled by or subordinate
to others. Autonomy2 can be measured by the extent to which individuals live their chosen lives in
accordance with their own value orientation. It has the characteristic of positive value attribute that
should be promoted as much as possible. Autonomy2 depends on various factors such as an
individual’s social background, environmental conditions, educational level, and his/her basic
cognitive, physical, emotional abilities and attitudes.
The two meanings of autonomy can lead to conflicting judgments about the same situation. It
may be possible that autonomy1 is protected but autonomy2 is reduced, or conversely, autonomy1 is
violated but autonomy2 is increased. For example, biomedical enhancement that Habermas criticizes
for violating the autonomy of descendants is such a case. Habermas argues that genetic intervention
to select or improve children violates the liberal principle of autonomy and equality. Those who are
genetically programmed by bioengineering intervention cannot regard themselves as the sole
responsible author of their own life history. Genetic intervention also undermines the foundation of
equality because it subordinates children’s lives to the one-sided and unchallengeable intentions of
parents, thereby destroying the essentially symmetrical relations between free and equal human
beings across generations.1
Habermas' argument concerns the autonomy of unborn descendants. By choosing the traits that
a child will have, parents will deprive the child of his/her right (autonomy1) to decide important
matters in his or her life. In the case of bio-enhancement, however, the traits of a child that parents
want to improve are usually physical characteristics such as appearance and health, or psychological
abilities such as intelligence and personality. In general, the traits that parents want their children to
have are characteristics or abilities that are socially preferred, and unless the structure of society
changes at a fundamental level, the improvement of these abilities or characteristics will increase the
options the children may have in their lives. 2 This will increase autonomy2 as an ability. Thus, the
biotechnological intervention of parents on their children leads to a situation where the two senses of autonomy
are in conflict by violating autonomy1 but increasing autonomy2.

1 Habermas, J. (2003). The Future of Human Nature, Polity: Cambridge.

2 We strive to provide better nurturing and education for our children. It is in some sense the duty of parents to make
every effort to improve their children’s abilities. Savulescu argues that it may even be the duty of parents to get help from
biotechnological enhancement when giving birth to children. See Julian Savulescu, “In Defence of Procreative
Beneficence,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 33(5), 2007.

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5. Authenticity of Autonomy

What if normal adults use human enhancement technologies to improve their own abilities? At least
on the surface, the application of enhancement technologies does not seem to undermine the
autonomy of normal adults in terms of either rights or abilities. It seems that we should respect the
autonomy1 of the individuals who choose to enhance themselves because they do not appear to
infringe on the rights of others or cause harm directly to others. In addition, in a competitive social
structure, if individuals improve their cognitive and physical abilities, the likelihood of living a life
that meets their own values is increased, so that the autonomy2 of individuals increases.
But the situation is not that simple. On the surface, improving abilities through enhancement
seems to provide people what they want and enable more options in their lives. However, it may
undermine the autonomy of individuals by making them to live a life which is far from what they
truly want. We have stated that living an autonomous life is a matter of living a life in accordance
with one’s own values. This autonomy can only be achieved when one is faithful to what one truly
wants. However, enhancement through science and technology does not always guarantee that.
Consider the following situation. Today we live in an unprecedented competitive society. We
are driven to a way of life in which we must survive by ourselves in unlimited competition. We strive
to improve our abilities in various ways so as not to fall behind in competition. In such a situation, if
social resistance to enhancement is reduced and people start to use enhancement technologies to gain
competitive advantage, enhancement will spread quickly throughout society. If enhancement
technologies are wide spread in this way, it will act as a strong social pressure to force people to adopt
enhancement technologies. In the end, the choice to improve oneself through enhancement, even if it
is made on voluntary decisions and will of oneself, is not an autonomous choice at all, but the result
of external pressure from society.
One might criticize this observation about genuine autonomy as demanding too strict conditions
for autonomy. One might say, “If autonomy means something derived purely from me, without any
social influence, no one can have autonomy.” We are born not in a vacuum but in a culture or society
where certain values and norms are prevalent. And we internalize those values or norms through
upbringing or education at home and school. That does not imply that all our thoughts and actions
are non-autonomous. The authenticity of autonomy should be compatible with the obvious fact that
the various values and norms we hear and learn as we grow up are important factors in the formation
of our personality.
To respond appropriately to this criticism, we need further clarification of what genuine
autonomy is. First, if the internalization of values and norms is done one-sidedly and irreversibly, this
is equivalent to cultural indoctrination or brainwashing, and is far from genuine autonomy. If your
actions or judgments are merely the result of blind obedience to social conditions or the dominant
ideology of society, we cannot call such choices "genuine" autonomous choices. Then, what
conditions should be added to get to genuine autonomy? At least, in addition to the fact that you judge
and choose for yourself, I think critical reflection on the values and criteria of judgment that you
accept is necessary. If, after critically examining those values and criteria based on your best

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knowledge or information, you still maintain your original choice, then we may call it a genuine
autonomous choice.1
Then, if someone recognizes that the choice for enhancement is a result of social pressure but is
still willing to make the same choice after a process of critical reflection, should we always respect it
as an autonomous choice? I do not think so. Not all choices or judgments should be respected just
because they are autonomous. The right or wrong of the ideology that is influencing the choice or
judgment of an individual can be a problem.
People have different worldviews and values, and they make very different judgments about the
same issue. One of the most fundamental principles of democratic society is tolerance for differences.
Respect for the autonomous choice of an individual is, after all, an outward expression of such
tolerance. But that does not justify the choice of oppressive norms or values that are morally
problematic. What we need to ask here is what is the nature of social practices or ideologies that make
us pursue enhancement. If the social pressure to drive enhancement are expressions of norms that are
oppressive or morally problematic, submissive attitudes toward such pressure can never be defended
in the name of autonomous choice. They only contribute to the strengthening of the problematic
norms. Sandel's criticism seems to point out that. Sandel is worried that the “habit of mind and way
of being” implicit in the pursuit of enhancement will lead to deterioration of moral practice conditions.
Does enhancement really contribute to the spreading or strengthening of oppressive or immoral
norms? Although controversial, consider the following situation for the sake of further discussion. In
our society, not only sexual attraction but also intelligence, business ability or even personality are
often judged by the appearance of women. This is a very male-centered and sexist practice. Let's
assume that the main reason many women undergo cosmetic surgery is to make themselves look
attractive to men in order to increase not only romantic opportunities but also social opportunities
that would otherwise not have been given. The widespread dependence on cosmetic surgery in this
situation will further strengthen gender discrimination practices and norms. It may be an inevitable
choice on a personal level, but it is wrong or at least morally problematic to practice such norms at
the social level.
But there is one more thing to consider here. It is about the nature of the relationship between
enhancement and oppressive norms. If there is some intrinsic connection between a particular way of
enhancement and oppressive norms so that the pursuit of such enhancement always contributes to the
strengthening of those norms, then such enhancement may never be advocated as the autonomous
choice of an individual. Sandel seems to think that biotechnological enhancement expressing desire
for perfection will inevitably worsen the social conditions of moral practice. But I am skeptical about
the inherent connection between enhancement and oppressive norms.
I do not think that enhancement inevitably leads to worsening of the social conditions of moral
practice. The relationship between these two is extrinsic and contingent, being dependent on the
interplay of various factors that make up society, including the ways we live our lives. What is to be

1 This is an explanation borrowed from Harry Frankfurt's conception of freedom. Frankfurt understands our freedom as
the ability to order our wills in accordance with what he calls second-order volition, that is, with second-order desires to
have certain kinds of first-order desires. For more detail, see Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept
of a Person”, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Jan. 14, 1971), pp. 5-20.

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blamed in this situation is usually our ways of life that encourage the use of such technologies to
reinforce oppressive norms rather than enhancement technologies themselves. If the relationship
between enhancement and oppressive norms is extrinsic and contingent, a more reasonable response
is to critically examine and reform the ways we live our lives without shifting all responsibilities to
enhancement technologies.

6. Autonomy and Inequality

We may also apply this conclusion to the problem of social inequality which may result from
enhancement. Enhancement has been criticized as contributing to the strengthening or spread of social
inequality. This is because only the wealthy can access to enhancement technologies and the socially
underprivileged enjoys limited benefits. Moreover, the expansion of inequalities due to enhancement
not only deprives some people of possible benefits, but also places them in a semi-permanently
disadvantageous position, thereby turning them into targets of easy domination or exploitation. Some
enhancement technologies have the characteristic of positional goods. Hence, they provide a merely
competitive advantage and do not positively contribute to human society. Under such a circumstance,
if, as some libertarians claim, enhancement is regarded as a matter of personal choice and the role of
government or society is restricted to the regulation of safety, a new type of class society is highly
likely to emerge.
In order to properly address this problem, it is necessary to reevaluate the relationship between
autonomy and social inequality through two meanings of autonomy, which we distinguished in the
above. Libertarian transhumanists advocate their position mainly by focusing on autonomy1 as a right,
which means the freedom not to be interfered with by others. On the other hand, autonomy2 as the
ability to actually live the life of one’s choice in line with one’s own value orientation is relatively
neglected. In the libertarian individualistic moral frame, the autonomy1 of individuals, the right to
choose one’s own life, is regarded as the supreme value. Therefore, they usually approach human
enhancement as a matter of personal choice. However, a libertarian language that emphasizes only
an individual's right to choose is not sufficient to address the problems of enhancement, such as
adverse effects on social justice or deterioration of moral practice conditions.
To fix this situation, we may apply the Millian harm principle in relation to the second meaning
of autonomy. In other words, if the violation of another's autonomy2 is recognized as directly harmful
to others, then autonomy1 of individuals can be restricted socially and politically. In social life,
various factors, such as intelligence, aspiration, and attitude, affect an individual's success. Suppose
it is possible to artificially enhance these abilities through technology. But if only a small number of
people can afford to benefit, then those who are already in socially and economically advantageous
position will be more competitive. And the vast majority of people who do not benefit will be less
competitive than before. This will eventually deprive them of opportunities for various paths of life
that they could choose from. This amounts to the perpetuation of inequality.
This reinforces the structure in which the future of an individual is largely predetermined
according to the socio-economic background of the family. It is by no means desirable that the path
of life open to an individual is determined by such background. Human enhancement is likely to make

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that structure even more firm. If we unconditionally admit the right(autonomy1) to choose for human
enhancement, the ability(autonomy2) of most people to live their lives in accordance with their own
desires and values can decline significantly. In other words, one’s autonomy1 is protected at the price
of reducing the autonomy2 of others. This can be regarded as a serious violation of the rights of others,
which justifies the intervention by the state and society.
There are inequalities that we can tolerate, and inequities that we cannot tolerate. The standard
of inequality acceptable to society depends on the level of its political, economic, and cultural
development. I believe that the less an individual's background, including inborn abilities, affects the
opportunities for life, the higher the level of civilization. In that sense, we need to approach autonomy2 as
a matter of distributive justice.
Many people think that if everyone is given a fair chance, the inequality resulting from such a
situation can be relatively more tolerable. We usually evaluate whether fair opportunities are given
in terms of education or nurture. However, there are also cases where inborn abilities block the
possibility of fair opportunities. Unfortunately, there are some unlucky people who are significantly
disadvantaged in competition because of their inborn abilities. They may not have even the least
chance to choose their life. In a sense, that people are born with intelligence, personality, and aptitude
they have is like winning a genetic lottery. In the past, there was nothing we could do about it. But if
science developed the potential to intervene, what would be our choice? What if, with the help of
human enhancement technologies, we could improve the autonomy2 of these people? We need to be
more open-minded about the possibility of new kinds of welfare and the equality of opportunities that
will become possible through the development of science and technology.

7. Epilogue: Enhancement Technology and Democratic Governance

The problem of social inequality does not provide a sufficient reason to prohibit enhancement. If you
think so, this is to admit some kind of enhancement technology exceptionalism. Almost all
technologies have the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities. Looking back at the history of
mankind, we can easily confirm this. The ability to read and write has always been one of the most
important factors to define social class or power relations in human history. Even so, it is foolish to
ban the use of letters. Rather, the desirable attitude we should take is to enable as many people as
possible to read, write, and enrich their lives. I think the same is true of enhancement technologies.
In this respect, the problem of social inequality can be thought of as providing a good reason to
manage and control enhancement technologies democratically.
There is an urgent need to prepare political and social measures to ensure transparent and
democratic control over the development or application of enhancement technologies, while paying
more attention to the problem of social inequality. We pointed out earlier that enhancement
technologies by themselves do not guarantee a better society or a better life, nor do they make a better
human being. Then, why should we still pursue enhancement? This is the most important question
we should ask about enhancement. Our challenge is to make human enhancement contribute to the
value of human life and the happiness of human community. We must use human enhancement
technologies to promote the solidarity of human community and to increase the happiness and welfare

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of all mankind. If it is possible to reduce the inequality of inborn abilities through our efforts, we
should seriously discuss the ways how to implement it. This will include efforts to provide everyone
as equal opportunities as possible by reducing the differences in individual abilities determined by
genetic coincidence. Isn't that what it is to be better human beings or better society? In this regard,
enhancement technologies need to be supervised and controlled by the processes of democratic
governance in which governments, social organizations and citizens participate. We need more social
deliberation about what we want of our human community and how human enhancement can
contribute to it.

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 Being Human

Lars Fr. H. Svendsen

University of Bergen

Kant famously claimed that philosophy in a cosmopolitan spirit could be summarised by three
questions: (1) What can I know? (2) What should I do? (3) What can I hope for? He then argued that
these three questions are contained in a fourth: What is man? (Was ist der Mensch?)1 However, giving
a plausible answer to this fourth question is no small feat.
The fact that we are humans is clearly of great importance to us, and it lies at the foundation of
our self-understanding and social practises. Yet, it is notoriously difficult to explicate what this
alleged fact consists in. Our thinking on what it means to be human tends to be rather muddled, and
this paper may prove to be no exception.
On the one hand, there is the problem of demarcation against all other animals: What if anything
is the distinguishing mark or marks of humans? On the other hand, current debates on posthumanism
seem to indicate that human nature can in some sense be transcended, that we can evolve by
technological means to such an extent that the resulting creature is no longer, properly speaking,
human. What would it take to be “posthuman”?

Human vs. Nonhuman Animals

In everyday life we usually have little difficulty with distinguishing between human and nonhuman
animals, but if we are challenged to make this distinction explicit, we are typically at a loss. In
philosophical anthropology one has searched for a human property that differentiates us from all other
animals, and it is presupposed that it must a significant property that sets us apart from them in the
right way, conferring a special status to humans.
Numerous properties have been suggested as being the essential difference between human and
nonhuman animals, such as self-consciousness, language, conceptual capacity, tool-using, tool-
making, awareness of one’s own mortality, metacognition, morality etc. Goethe jokingly claimed that
the capacity for being bored was the essential property, and if monkeys could be bored, we would
have to recognise them as fully human.2 There is in fact good reason to think that monkeys can be
bored, but I never the less do not think that they are human. That is not the dividing line, but it is hard
to say where the dividing line is.
Many of the practises and capabilities that have been assumed to be unique for humans have
been found in other species, such as tool-using and tool-making. There are also many properties about
which we cannot say much with confidence whether or not they exist outside of the human species.

1 Immanuel Kant: Logik, in Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.): Kants gesammelte Schriften, Vol. IX,
Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1902-, p. 24f.
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: West-östlicher Divan, Epen. Maximen und Reflexionen, Goethes poetische Werke zweiter
Band, Stuttgart: Cotta’sche Buchhandlung 1950, p. 791.

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It is, for instance, hard to tell if any other creatures than humans are self-conscious, because the most
common test for self-consciousness – being able to recognise oneself in a mirror – is critically flawed.
In comparing human and non-human animals, we will have interpret animal behaviour in order to see
if we have reason to attribute certain properties to them. Such attribution will always be somewhat
uncertain.
Is there anything uniquely human? Blushing is a strong candidate. Darwin called it ”the most
peculiar and the most human of all expressions”.1 However, a capacity for blushing is hardly the
distinguishing mark that we are looking for. It may be a phenomenon found only among humans, but
it is hard to see why blushing would be the essential property that confers a special status to humans.
It might also be the case that there is no such distinguishing property and that one will therefore search
in vain for one. Humans are of course unique in a trivial sense: No other species are just like the
human species. All species are unique in this trivial sense: No other species than cats are just like cats,
either. The question is whether or not humans are unique in a nontrivial sense. There are stronger
candidates than blushing, such as a capacity for moral agency and language, as these are properties
that humans typically have and that no nonhumans have, as far as we know.
Darwin argued that there are no fundamental differences between the mental lives of humans
and higher mammals. But there are quite fundamental differences, and also Darwin himself admitted
this, for instance in his insistence that only humans are capable of genuine moral agency.2 But perhaps
another moral species will evolve. After all, there is certainly proto-moral behaviour among animals,
and perhaps some species will cross over the threshold into proper moral agency at some point. That
would hardly make them human, even though it would certainly change their moral status. On the
other hand, there are people who are not capable of moral agency, but we would not place them
outside of the class of humanity simply because of that.
I believe that no other species than humans possess a proper language, but they do communicate,
of course. Even what the most meticulously trained chimpanzees and gorillas produce in terms using
symbols, falls significantly short of what we usually take to be a competent use of language. The
chimpanzee Nim, who was one of the stars in this field, made by far his longest continuous statement
with the following remark: “Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give
me you.”3 In comparison, a human two-year-old is usually able to use nouns, verbs, prepositions and
so on, in a grammatically correct manner. Two-year-olds can also talk about things other than what’s
right in front of them at that moment. Might other primates develop a proper language at some point?
Why not? It is perfectly conceivable, and for instance Kant speculates that orangutans and
chimpanzees might one day develop such a capability, albeit after a “natural revolution”. 4 Even if a
talk, it would not be a human, but a talking orangutan – or rather a “postorangutan”, since possessing
language would be such a game changer that there would be a qualitative difference between this

1 Charles Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009,
ch. 13.
2 Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press
1981, p. 88f.
3 Cf. Kevin N. Laland: Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind, Princeton/Oxford:
Princeton University Press 2017, p. 178.
4 Kant: Anthropologie, in Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.): Kants gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VII,
Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1902-, p. 328n.

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orangutan and its ancestors. On the other hand, not all creatures that we identify as human possess
language, and it seems unreasonable to exclude someone from the human race merely because they
do not have a language.
What about an answer in terms of our DNA? The problem is genetic variation among humans
on the one hand and genetic continuity between other species and ourselves on the other. Where do
you draw the line? DNA itself does not answer the question as to how much variation we can allow
before the term “human” would no longer be applicable. You would have to narrow it down and claim
for instance that someone is human if an only if his or her DNA contains a specific sequence. The
problem is, of course, that there will probably be variations even when we are narrowing it down to
that sequence, and it is far from unimaginable that there will be creatures we readily identify as
humans, but where this sequence is slightly different. DNA in itself does not tell us very much. There
are a lot of sequences that are only found among humans, but one could never the less ask why those
sequences should be particularly relevant to answer the question as to what a human being is. What
if such a sequence was also to be found in another species? Would that warrant the verdict that this
species is in fact human even if it possesses very few properties that we otherwise take to be central
for being human?
Some might say that what a genetic perspective shows us is that there really is not much special
about being human, because we have approximately 98.5 percent of our DNA in common with
chimpanzees, but that would be a rather misguided claim. These percentages do not tell us very much,
because the last 1.5 percent of DNA can make a world of difference. Sharing 98.5 percent of your
DNA with a chimpanzee no more makes you 98.5 percent chimpanzee than the fact that you share
approximately 50 percent of your DNA with a banana makes you “half-banana”. Your phenotype is
definitely not 50 percent banana, and we must go by phenotypical properties here.
There are certain properties that we typically ascribe only to humans, but they are neither
necessary nor sufficient conditions for being human. I am talking in plural here, because they cannot
be reduced to one fundamental property. There is morality, free will, language, self-consciousness,
blushing etc. It would be a mistake to look for the “essence” of humanity solely in our capacity for
rational thought. Even though there is a large overlap, especially with other mammals, the emotions
of humans differ from those of other animals. We can attribute even such advanced emotions as
loneliness, grief and boredom to many animals, but animal loneliness, grief and boredom differs from
human loneliness, grief and boredom. This can perhaps be seen more clearly in the case of such a
basic emotion as fear, where the neurophysiology of fear is quite similar in humans and for instance
rats, but human fear is never the less radically different from rat fear because we also inhabit a
symbolic universe, and so we can fear someone we never have and never will actually encounter.
You cannot single out any specific property – language, rationality, sociability, emotions etc. – as
what makes us human. Our humanity consists in their interrelation. Our emotions are inextricably
tied to our language, rationality and sociability. As for our rationality, it is also tied to our language,
sociability and emotions. And so on.
Perhaps the best solution to defining humanity in biological terms is to say that you are human
if you have human ancestors. Could not “having human ancestors” be a necessary and sufficient
condition? After all, all humans have human ancestors and no nonhuman has human ancestors. The

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problem is that such an answer is pretty vacuous, because it does not add anything to our
understanding of what we mean by calling someone “human”.
The differences between humans and their nonhuman ancestors are gradual, but never the less
significant. There are properties that are typical for human life and that are not found in other species,
such as awareness of one’s own mortality, being capable of using a proper language and having the
ability to chose to live one sort of life rather than another. And blushing, of course. Even though these
properties are typical for humans, there are humans who do not possess them.

Human vs. Posthuman Creatures

The term “posthuman” is used in different ways, for instance as referring to a different conception of
humanity or to successors of humanity. I will use it in the latter sense. As already pointed out, there
is significant continuity across species. In spite of this, there are certain properties that are, as far as
we know, found only in humans, and we can use them to draw a line – a slightly blurred line – between
humans and nonhumans in the animal kingdom. Drawing a similar line between humans and
posthumans appears to be more problematic. Whereas a comparison can be made between properties
found in humans and other animals, we have no idea of what sort of properties posthumans would
have, simply because they do not exist.
What do even mean by the term “posthuman”? If we simply mean that humans will continue to
evolve further, what we are saying is trivially true. Something more than that is clearly intended. I
will take it to mean that our evolution – be it natural or technological, which in itself is a problematic
distinction – results in beings that are so different from humans as we know them that they would not
be able to identify with humans and vice versa. The next question is what sort evolution it would take
to cause such a breakdown in mutual recognition as humans.
It is tempting so say that posthumanity will be a reality when descendants come into being and
lack an essential property of humanness or possess a new essential property that no humans possess.
By an essential property we mean a property without which a creature cannot be a certain kind of
being, e.g. a human. If having a language is an essential property of being human, then all humans
will have language and no creature without language will be human. As it is, having a language is not
an essential property of humanness, since we readily identify for instance pre-linguistic infants as
humans and the same holds for people who have lost their capacity for language. As we saw in the
earlier discussion of human versus nonhuman animals, it is notoriously difficult to come up with
plausible candidates for an essential property of humanness, because we either find the property – or
something rather similar – in other animals or some humans lack it.
Posthumans must be descendants of humans for the “human” part of the expression to make
sense, but they must on the other hand no longer be human for the “post” part to make sense. We
could assume that such creatures would come into being at some future time, simply in virtue of
natural evolution, just like earlier species have had descendents that are so different from that we take
them to belong to a different species. In this sense, it seems obvious that there will one day be
posthumans provided that the human race does not become extinct. Referring to such creatures as
posthumans would be analogous to referring to humans as postmonkeys. Such a process would

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probably take at least hundreds of thousands of years. When posthumans are discussed, it is usually
assumed that the process will be a lot faster and that it will take place by technological means.
If we, by posthuman, refer to a situation in which technology functions as an extension of the
human body and radically alters human existence, there has never been a time when humans were
not always already posthumans. Prior to human invention of technology, there was technology that
was invented by ancestors that we would not quite see as humans, and through the emergence of such
technologies – such as the stone-axe – the evolution of humans was made possible. In that sense, we
did not invent technology, but were rather invented by technology, in the sense that the existence of
these technologies made the emergence of humans possible. This also the reason why the notion of
transhumanism seems to be a bit superfluous. If we by transhumanism mean the project of human
enhancement through technology, humans were always already transhuman. In that sense,
“transhuman” is an oxymoron.
What about cyborgs? The integration of technology in the body as opposed to being outside of
or on the surface of the body hardly makes much difference. Whether something is an implant or
something more easily detachable hardly makes much difference. To integrate something in the
human body does not differ significantly from wearing outer prostheses. If I were to throw away my
glasses and have artificial lenses, that would not affect my humanity one iota. What if I were to
replace all my body parts? I guess that it would still be me, as long as my mental life is intact. What
about genetic modification? Again, I fail to see why that in itself should make much difference.
Genetic mutation takes place constantly, and whether it is “natural” or “artificial” seems to have no
bearing on whether or not the subject of this modification is human or not. What if I were to leave
my body behind altogether, uploading my consciousness to a computer cloud? Not having an
embodied existence would be quite a game changer, but I do not think that we have a very clear idea
of what such an existence would be like.
What about immortality? Immortality is not on the table. Even if we could stop aging altogether,
accidents happen. People slip, an aneurism ruptures, a thief or a jealous husband kills someone, war
breaks out etc. Keynes would still be correct in his saying that “in the long run we are all dead”. In
the long run, something will kill you. What if you dispose of your body altogether, and upload your
consciousness to the cloud? Well, accidents and malfunctions would occur in the cloud as well. What
if we make the extremely unlikely assumption that no such accidents happen? Well, there’s always
the heat death of the universe. We can leave proper immortality off the table. But that does not mean
that we cannot in principle get very old. What if it became possible to slow down aging to such an
extent that people became as old as Metusalem in the Old Testament: 969 years. That would be
dramatic, but not necessarily significantly more dramatic than the changes we have already seen in
the average global life expectancy. In the year 1900, it was 31 years, in 1950 it was 48 and today it is
72. The extra years will probably give diminishing returns, and it is far from obvious that the
difference between 72 and 969 years is qualitatively bigger than the difference between 31 and 72.
Strictly speaking, there is no “normal” human life span. Let’s just for the sake of argument assume
that immortality can be an option. That would be a game changer. Such a creature would no longer
be defined by the Heideggerian existential of Being-towards-death, and this would appear to
transform its existence as a whole, closing off the possibility of an authentic existence. However,

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there are alternatives to death and anxiety in Heidegger’s philosophy. Such an immortal being would
surely succumb to boredom, and boredom can fulfil the same systematic role as anxiety for Heidegger,
and disclose the possibility for authentic existence.1 In brief, I do not think that even something as
radical as potential immortality would warrant the jump from human to posthuman, and what could
be more radical than that?
The problem with identifying a given property or set of properties as what constitutes humanity
is that there are creatures that we would insist on including in the class of humans even if they do not
have these properties, such as a capacity for language, rational thought or morality. Why do we do
that? Probably because they are sufficiently similar to us in other respects, one of them being that the
have human ancestors, just like us. Could we not then say that having human ancestors is a necessary
and sufficient condition for being human? A problem with such an approach is that the first humans
cannot have had human ancestors, because if they did, they would not be the first humans. It would
also follow from this approach that all our descendants will, per definition, be humans in virtue of
having human ancestors. Hence, there can never be any posthumans. That also seems quite
unreasonable. Just like humans obviously have nonhuman ancestors, posthumans could have human
ancestors. However, these descendants would have to be radically different from humans to warrant
the term “posthuman”. There would have to be some sort of communicative breakdown, such that
humans could not understand this new form of life and vice versa. Posthumans would have to have
properties and practises so different from human properties and practises that they would no longer
fall under what Wittgenstein describes as “the common behaviour of mankind”.2 It would have to be
such a significantly different form of life that we could not communicate with them, along the lines
of Wittgensteins famous lion that we could not understand even if it could talk. 3 If there were
posthumans, they could not tell us what it is like to be posthuman, any more than Red Peter, the
talking ape in Franz Kafka’s short story “Report to an Academy” (1917), would be able to tell other
apes what it is like to be a talking ape. What is more, Red Peter is not even able to recall what it was
like to be a normal ape without language because having a language has made his “apeness” just as
remote to him as it is for humans. The same would be the case with posthumans: They would have
to be so removed from humanness that they would not be able to understand what it is like to be
human. They could make guesses, of course, based on observation of human behaviour, but the
human mind would be no more accessible to them than the chimpanzee mind is to humans. Even if a
posthuman spoke, and used the same words that we use, we would not understand it. What would
such posthumans be like? I have no idea. Why should we refer to these creatures as human, albeit
with the prefix “post”? We usually do not refer to humans as postmonkeys. They would be a new
species.

1 Cf. Martin Heidegger: Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, Gesamtausgabe Band 29/30,
Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann 1992.
2 Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophische Untersuchungen, Werkausgabe Band 2, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1984,
§ 206.
3 bid. ch. IIxi.

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Closing Thoughts

I believe that neither necessary nor sufficient criteria can be found for being human. “Humanity”
should be taken as a functional category that does not apply in virtue of any single property shared
by all humans, but rather in virtue of a loose set of properties that is subject to change. Perhaps “being
human” is not best understood in terms of some inherent property, but rather in terms of ascription
and recognition. To be human is then to be recognized as human, to have certain interpersonal
relations.
What it means to be human is an open-ended question because humanity is permanently
unfinished, and that is why the notion of post-humans is often confusing, perhaps essentially confused.
The question as to what is means to be human is a question of our self-understanding, “What is a
human being?” differs crucially from “What is a cat?” or “What is a dog?”. Humans are unique in
being able to ask themselves the question as to what or who they themselves are. We could say that
being human means being a self-defining animal But there are humans who never ask themselves
such questions. We are the only creatures who attempt to figure themselves out, the only creatures
who can be a mystery to themselves, but, again, this does not hold for all humans. Is there a human
nature? The answer depends on what you mean by “human” and “nature”. Humankind should
probably not be regarded as a natural kind, but there is no reason why this should stop us from talking
about a common humanity.
In so far as this paper has anything resembling a conclusion, it is that we cannot determine, with
any great precision what it means to be human. As a consequence, the distinction between human and
nonhuman animals on the one hand and humans and posthumans on the other will be fuzzy. Maybe
this simply must be accepted.

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 Science, Technology, and the Ecological Self

J. Baird Callicott

In the history of Western thought, natural philosophy—the philosophy of ϕυσις—is first philosophy.
It was the first topic to be engaged by the Greek philosophers of the 6th century BCE. And it is first
philosophy in the Aristotelian sense of that which is logically prior: Being qua Being—ontology and
metaphysics.
All subsequent Western science grows from these Greek roots by way of a diachronic dialectic
of ideas. Thales of Miletus speculated that all things are composed of water. His successor
Anaximander implicitly criticized that idea, reasoning that if everything is composed of water then
everything would be wet. The originary substance, he insisted, must be indefinite, qualityless—
απερον. And from the απερον the various primary qualities—the Hot, the Cold, the Wet, and the
Dry—separate out. Anaximander’s successor, Anaximenes, pointed out a contradiction in his
predecessor’s theory: the putatively one underlying απερον is not actually one, but a mixture of four
kinds of being. And he followed with his own subtle proposal to preserve the unity of the ultimate
stuff, while accounting for its plural manifestation as it expands and contracts. This diachronic
dialectic of ideas eventuated in the atomic theory of matter conceived by Leucippus and elaborated
by Democritus in the fifth century BCE. When natural philosophy began to be vigorously pursued
anew in the West, Gassendi and Newton picked up where Democritus had left off. Prior to that, of
course, Copernicus built on the mathematical astronomy begun in the Academy by Eudoxus, Plato’s
younger contemporary, and developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the 1st century CE. Copernicus’s
radical redaction of Ptolemaic astronomy was inspired by the heliocentric astronomy of Aristarchus
of Samos in the 3rd century BCE.1
Further, in the West, moral philosophy follows natural philosophy and reflects it as microcosm
to macrocosm. The first Greek theory of ethics and society was the social contract, variations on
which theme played all the moral philosophers (maligned as sophists by Plato) contemporary with
Socrates. Each human being is a social atom, externally related to all other social atoms. By nature
(ϕυσις) there is a chaotic competition for resources and mates; the strong take what they can and the
weak suffer what they must. Yet the strong, with age and infirmity, will eventually be among the
weak. Law (nomos) is an artifice bringing a fair order (κοσμος) to the social world as the laws of
nature bring a beautiful order (κοσμος) to the natural world. And, sure enough, after atomism
reappeared in Western natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, social atomism and the social
contract theory of law and society was revived, most notably by Hobbes.2
No less foundational to Western philosophy is psychology, originating with Pythagoras. The
soul (ψυχη) is itself a kind of immortal (and hence divine) psychic atom, incarcerated in a material
body. First Empedocles and then Plato elaborated this psychology and, due in large part to Plato’s

1 For a full discussion, see J. Baird Callicott, John van Buren, and Keith Wayne Brown, Greek Natural Philosophy: The
Presocratics and Their Importance for Environmental Philosophy (San Diego: Cognella Academic Publishing, 2018).
2 See J. Baird Callicott, “A NeoPresocratic Manifesto,” Environmental Humanities 2 (2013): 169-186.

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enormous influence, the psychic-atom idea became a cornerstone of Christian doctrine.1 Descartes
provided a modern version of this combination of psychic and material atomism. Thus did the West
inherit an individualistic notion of the self as a psyche existing just where Descartes located it—
behind the eyes and between the ears—fearfully looking out through the portals of the senses on an
alien “external world.” 2 This “ghost-in-the machine” psycho-material ontology has scarcely been
challenged by post-Cartesian developments in Western philosophy: Kant’s transcendental ego, albeit
noumenal, is still substantive; in phenomenology one pole of a persistent dualism is intentional
consciousness.3 Each monadic self, enclosed in its bodily cladding, is thus externally related to all
other selves. Each pursues its own conception of the good, constrained only by socially imposed laws
and norms. And life is a zero-sum game with individual winners and losers.
In the early twentieth century, the diachronic dialectic of ideas began to take Western natural
philosophy into a domain of ontology more Milesian than Democritean.4 The Milesians envisioned
the stuff of the world—Thales’s water, Anaximander’s απερον, Anaximenes’s air— to be a fluid-like
continuum. The early architects of quantum physics clung to the notion of ever smaller discrete
granules as the fundamental constituents of composite objects—protons, neutrons, electrons—and,
ultimately, quarks. But at last, here in the twenty-first century, a field ontology characterizes natural
philosophy—now no longer Western but global in its practice. As British physicist David Tong avers,
“Physicists routinely teach that the building blocks of nature are discrete particles, such as the electron
or the quark. That is a lie. The building blocks of our theories are not particles but fields: continuous,
fluid-like objects spread throughout space.”5 The only significance of the creation of the ephemeral
(existing for only 1.56x10-22 s) Higgs boson in the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva Switzerland
was to confirm the existence of the Higgs field. Fugitive particles such as the Higgs boson are now
understood to be quantum excitations of underlying fields—fleeting chips, so to speak, off the
pervasive continua. That these excited states of the underlying fields—some dozen of them—are
internally related is dramatically illustrated by the quantum phenomenon of nonlocality in which a
change in the quantum state of one “particle” results in the instantaneous change in the quantum state
of another, with which it is entangled, irrespective of the distance between them. In quantum field
theory, persistent “particles,” such as photons, are bundled wavelets in the electromagnetic field.
A similar paradigm shift in ontology occurred, also beginning around the turn of the twentieth
century, in ecology, a science remote from physics. Generally defined, ecology studies the
relationships of organisms to their physical, chemical, and biological environments. Each organism
is shaped by environmental gradients of temperature, moisture, prey, parasites, predators, and
hundreds of other factors. The body and mind of a deer, for example, have become what they are in
response to wolves and other predators, seasonal variations in weather, edible vegetation, parasitic

1 See Callicott, et al., Greek Natural Philosophy; Augustine, Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, Vol 1. On the Immortality
of the Soul, Whitney Jennings Oats, ed. & tr. (New York: Random House, 1948); and Frederick Copleston, A History of
Philosophy: Vol 2, Part 1, Augustine to Boneventure (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1950).
2 René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, Stephen Voss, ed. & tr. (Indianapolis, In.: Hackett Publishing Co.: 1989).
3 Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949); Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman
Kemp Smith, tr. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963); Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall, eds., Husserl, Intentionality
and Cognitive Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982).
4 Callicott, “NeoPresocratic Manifesto.”
5 David Tong, “The Unquantum Quantum,” Scientific American 307/6 (Dec. 2012): 46-49, p. 48.

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ticks and worms, etc. And just as particles have been supplanted by fields in the ontology of physics,
so have organisms been supplanted by ecosystems in ecology. To be sure, organisms remain
ontologically robust in ecology, but they are regarded as moments in the linear flow of energy and
the cyclical flow of minerals through trophic pyramids.1
If past dynamics of the diachronic dialectic of ideas hold true to form, we should soon see a
similar revolution in social and moral ontology. How to reconceive oneself and one’s individuality
as internally related, as a unique and dynamic locus in a socio-environmental continuum, is at the
leading edge of contemporary environmental philosophy. Each of us is in fact thoroughly embedded
in and utterly dependent upon a complex skein socio-environmental relationship. Global climate
change and what it entrains—the dislocations of peoples and disruptions of agricultural and all the
other global socio-environmental systems—is an existential threat to every person on Earth. But the
prevailing social atomism inhibits our capacity not only to understand but viscerally to experience
the socio-environmental analog of entanglement in quantum physics. Inundation of the Ganges-
Brahmaputra Delta, drought-and-heat-related crop failure in Africa, acidification and stagnation of
the oceans, is not just someone else’s problem. Those bells also toll for thee and thine and for me and
mine.
Two early environmental philosophers sketched the ecological or relational sense of self. Arne
Naess urged “Rejection of the man-in-environment image in favour of the relational, total-field image.
Organisms are knots in the field of [internal] relations.” Naess explains that “An [internal] relation
between two things A and B is such that the relation belongs to the definition . . . of A and B, so that,
without the relation, A and B are no longer the same things. The total-field model dissolves not only
the man-in-environment concept, but every compact thing-in-milieu concept.” 2 Paul Shepard
envisioned a “self as a center of organization constantly drawing on and influencing the surroundings,
whose skin and behavior are the soft zones contacting the world instead of excluding it. . . . The
epidermis of the skin is ecologically like a pond surface or a forest soil, not a shell so much as a
delicate interpenetration. It reveals the self as ennobled and extended, rather than threatened—as part
of the landscape and the ecosystem, because the beauty and complexity of nature are continuous with
ourselves.”3
With a longevity equal to Greek atomism and now a popular ubiquity equal to or greater than
that of international science, Buddhism provides a classical expression of the sense of self now finally
underwritten by theoretical physics, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Imaginatively disentangle the
relationships constituting each unique individual and one finds annata (no-self). Originally a
deconstruction of the Atman (soul)—equated, in Hindu Advaita Vedanta, with Brahman (universal
Being)—the Buddhist anatta is, by parity of reasoning, equated with śūnyatā (emptiness). The
meaning of anatta as śūnyatā is open to a variety of interpretations. Prominent among them is
something similar to Naess’s notion of the individual as a nexus in a skein of internal relations. This

1 Robert V. O’Neill, Donald DeAngelis, J. B. Waid, Timothy F. H. Allen, Garland E. Allen, A Hierarchical Concept of
Ecosystems (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986)
2 Arne Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary,” Inquiry 16 (1973): 95-100, p.
95.
3 Paul Shepard, “Introduction: Ecology and Man—A Viewpoint,” in Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinley, eds., The
Subversive Science: Essays Toward an Ecology of Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969), p. 2.

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interpretation is perhaps most formally expressed by the philosophers of the Kyoto School, founded
by Nishida Kitarō. Nishida’s twin concepts of jutsugo ronri (“logic of the predicate,” in contrast to
subject-centered Aristotelian logic) and “mu no basho ronri” or “logic of the place of emptiness,” led
Nakamura Yūjirō to coin the hybrid phrase “topos of mu” in reference to the “predicative self.”1 In
short, the individual self is not an abject void, but is uniquely constituted by its unique configuration
of socio-environmental relationships—its predicates. In addition to those relationships, there is no
substantive subject or self. But the self is not nothing; indeed far from it, being vastly expanded into
the fibers of family, friends, place, world, biosphere, planet, sun, and stars.
More popularly expressed, Thich Nhat Hanh, a contemporary Vietnamese Buddhist philosopher,
writes that each person “has to co-exist . . . has to inter-be with all the others . . . empty of a separate
self means full of everything.”2
Modern communications technology and social media has the potential to foster the experience
of self-identity in such relational terms. The very notion of an internet crystalizes that idea.
Admittedly, however, the lives or many of our contemporaries appear to be shrunk to the dimensions
of computer and cell-phone screens, leading to an epidemic of self-absorption and its attendant
loneliness. They say, “It’s darkest just before dawn.” Let’s hope that that saying is true.

1 David Dilworth, “Nishida’s Final Essay, ‘The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview’,” Philosophy East and
West 20 (1970): 355-368.
2 Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra (Berkeley, Cal.:
Paralax Press, 2009), p. 7.

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 Scaling Up, Scaling Down: What’s Missing?

Helen Longino
Stanford University

1. Introduction

“Individualist” is a charge levied against many scientific and philosophic approaches. The term can
mean many things, and it has multiple contrast terms. Just for starters, philosophers and social science
researchers distinguish between metaphysical individualism and methodological individualism.
Methodological individualism is a form of research parsimony, a recommendation to look for
explanatory relations at a single level of analysis, the level of individuals. Economic analysis that
analyzes changes in the distribution of wealth as the outcome of multiple choices made by individual
participants in the economy is guided by methodological individualism. Metaphysical individualism
is a “nothing but” view: nothing but individuals (or the atomic constituents of individuals) are real
entities. One can be a methodological individualist without being committed to the metaphysical view,
but my contention is that even methodological individualism (indiscriminately followed) can be
empirically misleading.
This talk will focus on the ways behavior is conceptualized in behavioral sciences. Many
philosophers who criticize individualism in philosophy and in the sciences argue for the introduction
of group level analysis. I will be suggesting that there is a level intermediate between the individual
and the group, at which certain questions are better entertained. To make the case, I will review work
from my recent Studying Human Behavior on the operationalization of behavioral concepts, show
how an individualist ontology is presupposed in such operationalization, and introduce questions that
cannot be answered if this presupposition is maintained. Interaction, I will suggest, is a necessary
alternative ontological category to those of individual or group.
In Studying Human Behavior, a comparative study of behavioral sciences, I point out that they,
too, focus on individual organisms, let us say individuals, assuming human individuals. The
approaches I reviewed included:
Quantitative Behavior Genetics
Molecular Behavior Genetics
Neurophysiological behavioral research
Social-Environmental behavioral research
Integrative approaches:
Developmental Systems Theory
GxExN (Caspi & Moffitt)
Multifactorial (Kendler)
Human and nonhuman organisms of the same species resemble one another in some ways and differ
from one another in some ways. What accounts for the different behaviors or different intensity or
frequency of behaviors organisms of the same species exhibit?

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 Different research methods permit different specific questions and hypotheses. So, quantitative
behavior genetics asks: to what extent can variation in B in pop P be attributed to genetic variation
and to what extent is it attributable to environmental variation. Neurophysiology asks to what extent
can behavior B be associated with / attributed to neural process N? Social-environmental approaches
ask to what extent can behavior be associated with / attributed to social-environmental condition E?
Social phenomena like aggression or sexual behavior which generally involve two or more persons
are studied as individual traits. The overall questions that animate the family of research approaches
are more general questions such as: “What factors impact the disposition to react aggressively to
situations?” and “What factors impact choice of sexual partner, activity?” In the book, I argued for
pluralism with respect to these explanatory/investigative approaches. I also argued that approaches
that take individuals and individual differences to be the central object of research are not able to
address all the questions one might want to ask. Here I want to elaborate on that argument and draw
some conclusions.

2. Studying Behavior

Focusing on humans, we can see that Individuals vary in their expression of different behaviors:
• some individuals read more than the average member of their population, others less;
• some eat meat; others don’t;
• some marry, some don’t;
• some finish university; some don’t;
• some are energetic, some are quiet
• some are quarrelsome, some are not;
• some who marry later divorce, some don’t.
Where these are options in a population, the question is why people fall into one or the other of these
categories, or fall into a particular position of a multiply valued quantitative (more or less) trait.
Behavioral sciences seek to answer this question. Even when the research methodology permits only
correlations among behaviors and studied factors, it is intended ultimately to contribute to an
understanding of the causes of behaviors.
To ask about the causal influences on the expression of a trait in a population is already to be
committed to an individualistic point of view. The sciences listed above seek to understand factors
that impact on the internal psychic or physical structures of individuals. These factors may be genetic,
hormonal, brain structural, or environmental. The question for researchers is how these factors
influence an individual’s disposition to respond to situations in one way rather than another.
When researchers turn to more social phenomena, like aggression or sexual behavior, the
ontology stays the same. The focus is on why individuals are mor or less aggressive than others or
why they experience the sexual attractions they experience. Both aggression and sexual orientation
present measurement challenges: both are large and somewhat vague categories requiring
measurement by more measurable and precisely identifiable proxies. Sexual orientation in humans
poses the additional challenge of stigmatization and hence resistance to observation. To reduce the
vagueness and to utilize already existing research on biological determinants of animal behaviors,

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researchers model the operationalization of human social behaviors on the operationalization of non-
human social behaviors.
In the case of aggression, animal aggression and aggressive dispositions are measured by
instances of
• stereotyped motor behavior (flank marking)
• offensive reaction to ‘intruders’ in cage
• maternal (protective) aggression
• sexual competition
• other similarly measurable phenomena
Of course, it is not possible to identify such stereotyped behaviors in humans. The literature
shows that researchers use the following as markers or indices of human aggression or aggressive
disposition:
• conviction of violent crime
• fighting in prison
• delinquency (including truancy and drug use)
• violent rage (verbal or physical)
• expressions of anger, irritability, verbal aggression
• hitting a doll
• assault
The methods of measurement include self report (i.e. through surveys, questionnaires, or interview);
report by a third party (parent or teacher); clinical observation; public records (for crime or
delinquency). The research effort is to associate the frequency of or variation in a particular measured
behavioral index in members of the study population with genetic, hormonal, neuronal, or social
factors or some combination of these. One key assumption here is that all of the indices or proxies
are measuring the same behavioral disposition: aggression.1 Additionally, these operationalizations
all involve action of one individual against another (or surrogate). They are not measures of the
aggression of soldiers, police, mobs, or prison guards. Finally, the behaviors, through
operationalization, are described independently of the contexts in which they are meaningful actions
towards or against another.
Sexual orientation was initially treated as a simple binary: persistent attraction to or active
sexual engagement with opposite or same sex individuals. Animal research continues this tradition
of binary and dichotomized representation. Heterosexual orientation is operationalized as
• Male mounting (or other active behaviors in reproduction)
• Female lordosis (or other receptive postures)
Homosexual orientation is operationalized as
• Presentation/expression of sexual readiness to same sex conspecifics
• Expression of sexual behavior primarily associated with the opposite (e.g. female mounting)

1 Some researchers and reviews distinguish delinquency and aggression, but many do not.

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Human sexual behavior is not observed directly and orientation in particular is ascertained via survey
or interviews. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey introduced a range of categories between exclusive
heterosexuality or homosexuality:
• Exclusively heterosexual
• Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
• Predominantly heterosexual, more than incidentally homosexual
• Equally heterosexual and homosexual
• Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
• Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
• Exclusively homosexual
Nevertheless, in research practice, sexual orientation is operationalized as either of the extremes.
Individual answers that would put them in intermediate categories are either absorbed into the
extremes or discarded as outliers from the sample. And, other dimensions of sexual / erotic orientation
are neglected.1
The questions about these social behaviors so understood is why some individuals are more
aggressive than the average for a population, or why some individuals seek partners of the same sex,
or other questions about the individual participants in these social activities. The operationalizations
of these behaviors are shared across the different research approaches, facilitating the assumption that
there is a unitary dispositional feature underlying the measured manifestations. I will now attempt to
cast doubt on this assumption.

3. Creating a Studiable Object

These operationalizations redefine the original behavioral concepts. It is, of course, necessary to
operationalize in order to proceed with research, but the operationalization is often black-boxed,
rather than critically examined. Operationalization is an aspect of the creation of an object of inquiry.
What is investigated is really an abstract (or abstracted) object that is manifested in the various
behavioral proxies or indices that are measurable. The creation of this object is a process with
identifiable components.
The individualist operationalization of these social behavior categories is, I propose, an outcome
of three factors interacting in the semantic process of meaning-making:
• the shared context of origin of interest, our folk psychology,
• the requirements for creating a studiable object of inquiry, and
• Ontological/methodological presuppositions, especially individualism.
With respect to the shared context of origin, our interest in behavior lies primarily in our moral lives
and discourse. We want to know why someone is particularly hurtful, particularly helpful, deviates
from social norms in various ways, or why some group deviates from social norms in certain ways.
Our folk psychological system of classification and explanation of action coordinates with our
practices of moral judgment. And so, the behaviors studied will be those about which we have moral

1 Whalen, Geary and Johnson (19##) proposed the following as dimensions of variation worth study: degree of
arousability, frequency of sexual interaction, number of partners, features of partner other than sex/gender identity.

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(or prudential) concerns. We may want to know why some individuals in a society are more prone to
aggressive behavior than others in that society, why some individuals in a society deviate from
expected norms of that society.
With respect to the creation of a studiable object, the phenomena that interest must be separated
from the messy contexts in which they occur in order to be made objects of investigation. This
requires
A) Isolation of phenomena that can be studied, i.e. reliably identified, (assigned criteria of
identification) and re-identified as being of a particular type, whose frequency can be measured.
B) Decontextualization of phenomena as event types, expressive of individual dispositions,
rather than intentional actions, and represented as participating in natural regularities. In the
case of humans this involves detaching the behavior from the context in which it is meaningful
to the participants. It is a rendering of both intentional action and more reflexive behavior as of
the same kind.
C) Recontextualization of the behaviors so (re)defined through classification with other
phenomena (individual traits of various kinds) susceptible to similar explanations. So,
intentional assault is reclassified with the random flailing of Huntington’s chorea as both
(potentially) having a genetic component.
The third factor influencing the operationalization is a methodological individualism that sees the
individual as the primary unit of investigation and explanation and that looks to factors internal to
individuals as explanatory of manifest individual difference. Hence, the behavior of groups or
populations is conceptualized as the aggregate of behaviors of individuals and thus best studied at the
individual level. Causation is internal to the individual and so, causal factors must be factors that
operate on (and in) individuals.
These three factors influence how a concept or category will be operationalized and are
elements shaping the transition of a concept from a phenomenon of general interest (as initially
conceived vague and imprecise) to a more precisely understood object of inquiry. The object of
inquiry is transformed from the concept in our folk psychology to a studiable object, an object
putatively measured via operationalizations (or as psychologists sometimes say, a “construct”). The
selective elimination (of the context which makes a given behavior a meaningful action) and the re-
aggregation (with phenomena that are similarly measurable), enables a conflation of the original
concept with the scientific concept.
In the transformation of aggression from a phenomenon of general interest into an object of
inquiry aggression becomes an individual act of harm directed against another individual originating
in or expressive of a trait internal to the individual. Harm, individual aggression, and criminality
become associated through the semantic process of operationalization. Other forms of harm (state
sanctioned military, police, prison guard; indirect (corporate malfeasance); mob violence; mass
defensive) are eliminated from aggression as an object of inquiry. The outcome is to associate
criminality with individual aggression, so that those convicted of crime are understood as aggressive,
while those who harm indirectly or under state supervision are excluded from the category of
studiable, hence, studied, aggression.

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 In the case of sexuality, when this is studied as bimodal sexual orientation, the research aligns
human sexuality with laboratory animal sexuality, it empties the space of intersection of sex of erotic
object and other dimensions of erotic orientation, and it absorbs the spaces between the Kinsey
extremes into the Kinsey extremes.
There are two kinds of problematic consequences of this semantic process. The social
consequences include stereotype reinforcement and looping effects. The ontological / epistemological
consequences restrict the kinds of phenomena understood as susceptible of scientific inquiry, and
hence, as in some sense, real. I have addressed the social consequences elsewhere.1 Here I focus on
the ontological / epistemological.

4. Scientific Ontology: Scaling up and Scaling Down

A crucial consequence of this process is the restriction of the kinds of question that can be asked
about social behavior to questions about individuals, about variation and similarity among individuals.
And these questions will be answered with the same approaches as are used to address other questions
about individuals, scaling down to questions about how genes, hormonal exposures,
neurotransmitters, social experience (parental treatment, toys, media exposure…), etc. increase the
frequency of operationalized expressions of behaviors of interest. In the case of aggression: how do
genes, hormones, neural structures and processes, or social experience affect the frequency of
criminal conviction, fighting, rageful verbal expression. In the case of sexuality, how do those factors
affect total same sex vs. total other sex orientation. All measured as properties of individuals, and
research focuses on factors potentially determining internal states of individuals. These questions
about individuals must always be understood as relative to some specified population. Its properties
are held as fixed and so irrelevant to variation among individuals.
But there are questions about these phenomena that become apparent if we move to a different
scale, if we scale up. If our question is
Why are crime rates in country Y different from crime rates in country X? or
Why are recidivism rates in neighborhood N1 higher / lower than those in neighborhood N2?
we are asking about variation among populations. There are two families of answer to questions
such as these.
One family of answers treats population level properties as summations or aggregations of the
properties of individuals in the population. The why question will be answered by identifying the
causes of individual variation and summing or aggregating that at the population level. So, the answer
will be that causes of individual variation – whether genes, genotypes, neurochemicals, neural
structures, familial environments – are differently represented in the two populations. Another family
of answers, however, is non-aggregative, that is, it does not treat different frequencies of a trait as
merely different numbers of individuals expressing the trait. Instead, it treats them as population-
level features and looks to other population-level differences as causal factors in the generation or
maintenance of the population difference in question. Such factors may be features of social structure

1 In Longino 2013, ch.s 10 and 11.

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or of physical environment. Table 1 summarizes the difference between the aggregative and non-
aggregative approaches.

Aggregate effect of Population level variation among populations

individual dispositions

Genetic Features of social structure: e.g. variations in distribution of

Neuro Phys/Ana wealth, of labor, of resource access; age structure
Familial Environment
Culturally transmitted Physical environment: e.g
Resource base shrinking/expanding
Climate stable or changing
Table 1

Success of the aggregative approach would require that distribution of the causal factors
affecting individual traits (genes, school and family environments, neural structures and processes)
vary in parallel with the behavioral distributions. To my knowledge, no research investigating group
level differences has attempted to show that group differences in the distribution of individual level
causal factors track population differences in the way that would be required.1
To see this, consider a study of sex difference in the heritability of aggression that used data
from the UK and Sweden2. They found no sex difference in heritability. But the researchers did note
another feature of the data, although they made no attempt to explain it. The two national cohorts did
differ in the frequency of aggressive behavior, the British population showing a higher frequency of
interpersonal violence than the Swedish one.
In an aggregative approach, the Swedish and British populations would have to differ genetically,
neurally, or with respect to the patterns of child rearing (or in some combination of these factors) in
a way that tracks the different frequencies of aggression in those populations. But it is simply not
credible that two northern European populations would differ systematically enough in any of these
factors to support a methodologically individualist explanation of the noted behavioral difference.
The difference between the two countries can’t be treated as summations of the effects of factors that
explain why individuals within each population differ. One must look instead at other factors that
vary between the populations.
Interactive phenomena similarly resist explanation in terms of individual level causal factors.
Suppose two geographically separated populations of the same species differ in frequency and timing
of grooming behavior. Grooming involves one individual picking insects and other debris from the
hair/fur of a conspecific – it requires two or more individuals each playing different roles. Or consider

1 An exception would be efforts to attribute group differences in average scores on cognitive tests to factors
generative of individual difference using twin and adoption studies. These efforts 1) simply assume that a factor
making a difference among individuals in one context would have the same effect in another and 2) have been
thoroughly critiqued for failing to adequately distinguish one kind of individual level factor from another in the
studies performed. See Nisbet et al. 2012 for a recent review.
2 Eley, Lichtenstein, and Stevenson 1999.

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the sexual behavior of female bonobos, who engage in nonexclusive mutual sexual stimulation and
gratification with each other.1 The differential distribution of these interactions is not explainable in
terms of similar distributions of causal factors operating on individual members of the population. It
requires treating the interactive behaviors as phenomena in their own right.
When we focus on population differences, it seems obvious to ask what the status of entities
above the individual level is. If an aggregative causal approach fails to be applicable, do we conclude
that groups are more than the sum of their parts? Such a move may seem to invite a problematic
holism, according to which what is real is the whole or collective, individual constituents being
dependent on the whole. Whether scaling down to factors internal to the individual or scaling up to
the groups or populations of which individuals are members, we seem to be faced with an unpalatable
choice: reductionism or holism. Interaction offers a different perspective. [Social] interaction is the
mutually affecting of two or more autonomous individuals. 2 How does thinking in terms of
interactions offer an alternative to scaling or scaling down?
First of all, we might note that at the population scale, behavior is depersonalized: it is not
individuals performing certain actions, but what’s really counted in counting social behavior are
interactions rather than individual traits or behaviors. The focus on interaction is permissive, not
required. But the focus permits different research questions.
Thinking interactionally, we can identify alternative measurable objects for the study of
aggression. Instead of crime, arrests for crime (which involve arrestor and arrestee), instead of
recidivism, rearrests. Instead of assaults, reports of assaults, or incidents of fighting (where fighting
is understood to involve two or more individuals. Instead of rageful expression, violent quarrels.
Alternative measurement objects for sexual orientation can include same-sex coupling, hetero-sex
coupling, couplings in context of committed relationship, one-time “casual” couplings (“hook-ups”),
even celibacy and onanism can be understood interactionally.
These are all interactions. As such, they Involve individuals, but do not denote properties of
individuals. Rather, they denote interactional events or event types These categorizations lend
themselves to investigation through other research approaches. Taking interactions as ontologically
basic, we don’t have to ask why individuals are disposed to respond to similar stimuli in different
ways. Instead, We can inquire about changes in the relative frequencies of each episode/interaction
type
• over time,
• in different forms of community (urban/rural),
• in different societies, (Norway vs. France, Sweden vs. UK)
• different kinds of societies (agricultural/industrialized), etc
• We can also inquire about
• what conditions facilitate the occurrence of a given interaction of interest?
• What conditions impede the occurrence of a certain interaction of interest?
Studying interactions requires creating studiable objects, just as much as does studyng
individual behavior. It requires specifying criteria of identification and reidentification, isolating

1 Thanks to Esther Rosario for reminding me of this example.

2 See De Jaeghere, Di Paolo, and Gallagher 2010 for an elaboration of this definition.

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measurable features, classifying types, e.g. symmetric and asymmetric, and distinguishing interaction
from other similar phenomena, e.g. joint or collective action; coaction.
Understanding the phenomena of interaction and population level variation as phenomena in
their own right should free us from seeking the one level of reality to which all else must be referred.
In particular, focusing on interactions qua interactions rather than on the individuals participating in
them can facilitate a different understanding of the behaviors than either scaling up to populations (of
individuals) or scaling down to constituents (of individuals). This is not to say we ought to abandon
the scaling down program. Rather, it is to say that scaling down may answer some questions, but not
others. Similarly with scaling up: the focus on population level difference may obscure from view
questions about what conditions facilitate the occurrence of specific interactions in a given context.
The important ontological point that emerges from this investigation of the semantics of
operationalization is that privileging one ontological level over others disables us from asking
meaningful and important questions about the phenomena. Therefore, I advocate pluralism not only
with respect to our explanatory/investigative approaches, but also with respect to the categorization
of the behavioral phenomena we seek to understand.

5. Some Conclusions

This perspective has several implications. One implication is that the classification of behavior is not
theory neutral. The alternative stance is not the theory-ladenness of observation advocated by Thomas
Kuhn or Russell Hanson. Rather it is that the way in which phenomena for explanation are
conceptually prepared for research and analysis already set limits to the kinds of
theoretical/explanatory approaches that will be relevant. Whether we treat a phenomenon as a trait of
individuals or as an interaction will determine what questions we can ask about it. Another
implication is related to part of the theme for this session. The individualist approach to
operationalization detaches individuals from their context. The interactionist and population
approaches to operationalization include individuals in their context. The interactionist approach sees
individuals in interaction with other individuals and asks what factors increase or decrease the
frequency of certain kinds of interaction in a context. The population approach sees individuals as
parts of populations and the frequency and distribution of traits and interactions as a function of
properties of the population. As I noted, these population level properties can include aspects of the
social environment or of the physical environment. What the necessity of supra-individual
Conceptualizations/operationalizations of behavior in addition to conceptualizations at the individual
level shows us is that a full (multi-perspectival) understanding of individual behavior requires taking
the environmental situatedness of individuals into account.
Finally, a note on the implications of this approach to the theme of the Congress, Learning to Be
Human. Making the interactional aspect of social behavior salient reminds us that we are human only
together with other humans: our individual humanity is possible because we inhabit shared physical
and social worlds. Individuals are dependent on the relations in which we find ourselves to be
who/what we are. Who/what we are varies from context to context: assertive in one context, quiet in
another; dominant in one context, submissive in another. One insight of feminism that drove its

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critique of science has been that changing the conceptual structures of dominance/subordination
(which were pervasive in the sciences) can change the material relations in which we find ourselves.
The point is not to free individuals from their relations with others, but to change the relations
themselves to enable different forms of self-realization. A science of behavior that takes this into
account is more likely to be successful than one that does not.

References

Eley, T., P. Lichtenstein, and J. Stevenson (1999). “Sex Differences in the Etiology of Aggressive
and Non-Aggressive Antisocial Behavior: Results from Two Twin Studies” Child
Development 70, 1: 155-68.
De Jaegher, Hanne, Ezequiel Di Paolo, and Shaun Gallagher (2010) “Can social interaction
constitute social cognition?” Trends in Cognitive Science 14, 10: 441-47.
Longino, Helen (2013). Studying Human Behavior. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Nisbett, Richard E.; Aronson, Joshua; Blair, Clancy; Dickens, William; Flynn, James; Halpern, Diane
F.; Turkheimer, Eric (2012). “Intelligence: New Findings and theoretical Developments”
American Psychologist 67, 2: 130–159.
Whalen, Richard, David Geary, and Frank Johnson (1990). “Models of Sexuality” in
Hoosexuality/Heterosexuality: Concepts of Sexual Orientation ed. By McWhirter, Sanders
and Reinisch. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 61-70.

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 Creation, Imagination and Aesthetic Sense

Jean Godefroy Bidima

Tulane University

Resume: In the century of organised capitalism (of politics and economics), human symbols, artistic
creation and aesthetic sense are under respiratory assistance. It is the commercial logic and the
financialisation of art that give them an injection. The motor of the aesthetic sense is thus in relative
heteronomy. Precisely because it is possible to put a damper on this "aesthetic engine, daughter of
capitalism" that we must resist the disfigurement of life by questioning - from several angles and in
a repetitive way - the functionalism that invades the "aesthetic dimension" of man through the
exploitation of his/her attention and imagination. In this re-creation of the aesthetic sense, the art
object will have another status. It will force us to move our gaze from the object to the work on the
object, from the object as a product to the conditions of production that provide information about
the worker and his working conditions. A gaze that goes beyond the materiality of the object with its
possible commercialization towards what this object promises or what it doesn’t promise, towards
what this object communicates or what prevents it from communicating. We must restore to the object
of art the aura (as Walter Benjamin said) which is always removed by the mass culture that vex it
with its shortcuts, its small connivances, its murderous sentences, calculated consecrations, its
organized markets, and its disdain for everything that doesn’t fit into the accounting system. The
aesthetic sense will thus be a work on the Motivations of the Subject, on the complications of his
imagination, on its utopias as well as on the status of the object of art which points to our bloodless
lives.

Introduction

Let's start this presentation with a complaint made here:

“Spectacular architectures that redesign museums, stadiums and airports, artificial islands that make up
a giant palm tree, shopping malls that rival decorative luxury, shops that look like art galleries [...] and
everyday objects whose beauty transforms into quasi-collectibles, fashion shows conceived as staging of
play and live tableaux, films and music galore at any time and any place: could it be that capitalism,
accused always to destroy all and make everything uglier, is something other than the torturing spectacle
of horror and also works as an art entrepreneur and aesthetic engine?”1

Precisely because it is possible to put grains of sand in this "aesthetic engine as the daughter of
capitalism", we must resist the disfigurement of life by questioning - from several angles and in a
repetitive way- the functionalism that invades the "aesthetic dimension" of man. This aesthetic
dimension that comes out of the capitalist garage delivers to the subjects of the post-postmodernity

1 Gilles Lipovetsky, Jean Serroy : L’esthétisation du monde, vivre à l’âge du capitalisme artiste, Paris, Gallimard,2013.

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that we still are an "aesthetic engine", whose mechanic has adjusted on one side bolts that are the
imperatives of consumption, and on the other hand the screws that are the manipulations of desires
and affects. For the concept of production in aesthetics, we must substitute the ambiguous and almost
metaphysical theological creation. For flattening the aesthetic object to its only materiality and
immateriality, it must be added the symbolic dimension that Walter Benjamin in his time called aura.
To the speed imposed by the digital, it must be opposed by parasites and slowness of reflection. To
the communication, it must be opposed by the intellection and reflection in the specular sense. The
question of creation and re-creation of the aesthetic sense is therefore at the crossroads of several
tracks. First, the economic-technical structure. The aesthetic sense also depends in part on the
technologies of communication, on the stakes of advertising promotion, on the becoming-commodity
of totality of existence and the generation of profits. Then, we can deal with this aesthetic sense by
referring to the psycho-affective structures that structure and accompany the processes of
subjectivation and individuation of the perceiving, desiring and feeling subjects. In this case, the
question of the relationship between symbols and the aesthetic sense could only be posed by dealing
with relations related to tastes, to affects, to the exploitation of attention, to machines that provide
solicitations, and to ideological over-determinations imposed by various commercialization, to the
links between the environment and aesthetics which itself goes beyond the scope of the perception of
works of art to join life as the German philosopher Schiller1 wanted. Finally, the question of the
aesthetic sense would summon the politico-poetic-anthropological dimension. At this level, one
might wonder how the idea of creation fits into the unfolding of the imaginary structures. Indeed,
noises, sounds, images, lights, speed, slowness, shadow, color, paste, text, hypertext, archi-text, para-
text, material, material and the immaterial, the height and the extension are various biases by which
the question of creation is intimately associated with the unconscious and conscious springs that are
in the imaginary. The three approaches of the problem of the creation of the aesthetic sense evoked
must not be taken in a global way, nor in an isolated way, but in a transversal way. Our thesis in this
article is that: faced with the corruption of the aesthetic sense, there is no question of redefining it
with the help of the two concepts - as vague as rich - that are the symbol and the creation, but to
elaborate the conditions which today make possible the creation which, by itself, will give aesthetics
the role of saving not art, nor the taste for art, but certain important aspects of the existence of man.
For this we plant a decoration that will have two ornaments: 1 / The aesthetic and the imaginary as
conditions of “aesthetic sense”, and 2 / the access to the object of art, “the aesthetic sense” and
historicity. These pieces of the decor will not serve to answer the question of aesthetic sense and
symbols but to blur it.

I- Aesthetics and the Imaginary as A Condition of Aesthetic Sense

I.1. Incentives

The aesthetic sense must help us to decenter while experiencing authenticity. This proposition seems
paradoxical because the decentering is a distance and a gap that is instituted in relation to a focus that
is the provider of direction and movement. A home can provide meaning, identity and something like

1 Schiller, Lettre sur l’éducation Esthétique de l’homme, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne,1992.

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authenticity. Our aesthetic sense - since we are at once readers, spectators and actors of works of art
- is more or less dependent on this home we can name, it is at the same time language, habits of
perception, structures of the imaginary (according to the word of Gilbert Durand). We have, in our
lives - both empty and filled - material and immaterial dwellings that we can call "symbolic niches".
Everyone recognizes himself by redefining the relationship with oneself, others and institutions.
Everyone can use it in case of individual or social crisis. First of all, this symbolic niche gives a being
meanings - at once complementary and contradictory - to the multiple relationships that he weaves
together. Then, it protects the Subject from the pangs that occur during his processes of subjectivation,
individuation and socialization. This niche finally serves to allow resilience in the painful moments
of life. This symbolic niche, once destroyed and disqualified by what Adorno and Horkheimer have
called "cultural industry", opens us to a nostalgia: a common home through which aesthetic sense and
nonsense must circulate. This common house is not an appropriated place assigned but a non-place,
a u-topos through which the subjects go back and forth between what has been, what they are and
what will happen to them. To speak of aesthetic sense, we must not start from ethics (Wittgenstein
put ethics and aesthetics at the same level) 1 but co-sensuality of significations as Merleau-Ponty
pointed out to us.
Starting from the senses, we must now pay attention to the multiple incentives and captivations
of our attention. What causes or anesthetizes our faculty to take an interest in this rather than that?
An anthropological and psychological work must be done at the level of gaze or hearing to evaluate
how our ways of watching and listening were transformed by the cultural industry. Adorno and
Horkheimer, in their Californian exile, reported in their time, on music, what they called "regression
of listening" through musical fetishism, the standardization of the sense of taste, the leveling of
aesthetic judgement and confusion between the logic of the work of art and the social system based
on the logic of the commercial exchange. They were also ironic about what the aesthetic sense could
become in this cultural industry regime: “The industry adapts to the vote it inspired itself”2. A work
on incentives -preludes and conditions of creation - will only be done by combining the parameters
of perception, technological challenges and the logic of profit.

I.2. The Imaginaries

The work on incentives should take into account both the imagination and the current exploitation of
attention. The questions of the imaginary and the imagination that were studied - let us limit ourselves
in the French context - by philosophers like Bachelard, Sartre, Castoriadis and Gilbert Durand incite
us to give back to the imagination its subversive force. Let's limit ourselves to Castoriadis and Durand.

1 Consult this subject from the beautiful article of Jean-Jacques Boutaud, "Esthetics and aesthetics. The figuration of
flavor as artificer of culinary ", Societies & Representations 2012/2 (n ° 34), p. 85-97. Boutaud, following Merleau-Ponty,
combines aesthetic (sensations), aesthetics (forms) and ethics (values). In general, we often dissociate the three
approaches, but in order for the aesthetic sense to be emphasized, it must be accompanied by the question of the sensitive
and the values which is the politico-ethical domain. Merleau-Ponty, in his day, told us that: "the aesthetic expression
confers on what it expresses existence in itself, installs it in nature as a perceived thing accessible to all, or conversely
pulls out the signs themselves - the person of the comedian, the colors and the canvas of the painter - from their empirical
existence and delights them in another world "in Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, Gallimard, 1945, p213.
2 Max Horkheimer/ Theodor Adorno : La Dialectique de la Raison, Paris, Gallimard, 1974, p143.

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Castoriadis is a staunch critic of the functionalism that has invaded Western culture. He proposes to
rehabilitate the imagination which, in Western culture and according to him, has been considered as
an appendage of memory or, worse, as an illusion (Pascal). For Castoriadis, we have explained what
happens in society with the functionalist parameters, in other words, the institutions are there to
satisfy needs and also that everything that happens in a society must be explained by a cause
(economic, political, industrial etc.) Castoriadis affirms that: what "holds together" institutions in a
given society is the instituting action that is represented through the imaginaries structuring the social-
historical. The set of dreams, myths, music, tragic stories, disappointed hopes and representations
help the historical creation: “What in the social history is and the position that make of it, we call it
social imaginary in the first sense of the term, or instituting society”.1 The putting into perspective of
these imaginaries is likely to favor the historical and artistic creation, that is, to clarify and to shake
up the relation existing between the springs of the unconscious, the aesthetic representations, myths,
day dreams (Ernst Bloch), prohibitions, wishes, perceptions of forms, the modalities of hearing and
the transformation of our lives and our individual and collective histories. We have talked about the
perceiving subject who must reformulate “the aesthetic sense”, what about the art object?

Ii- The Access to the Object of Art, "The Aesthetic Sense" and Historicity.

We cannot speak of the aesthetic sense without raising the difficulties which are experienced in the
analysis of various objects of art on the one hand and, on the other hand, their relation to historicity.
Let's start from the art object. Seven difficulties at least emerge.

II.1. Difficulties to Seize the Object of Art

1. What is an art object? Who decrees that this object painted, sculpted, carved or represented in
audio-visual form, or such written text, is an object of art and not simply a simple tool or a banal
sequence of words or images? The first problem is therefore the arbitrariness of the
determination of the so-called art object.
2. The second difficulty is that of the diversity of cultures and perspectives that each incites to
think, to see, to listen and to feel in a different way the relation to the so-called art object. Here it
can be the object of the religion of worship, there at the service of the religion of mercantile
consumption and a little over there an adjunct of symbolic-political power.
3. If there can be the arbitrariness of the determination of what is an art object, and if we cannot talk
about art object in the abstract while forgetting the diversity of perspectives, we see nevertheless
in front of certain objects of art - especially in architecture – subjects which, being of different
artistic culture and without having previously conferred with each other, rave about before this or
that object of art. The difficulty here is to know if there is a narrative community that would
be like an anthropological and transcultural invariant that would pre-train our judgments
and appreciations of taste.
4. The fourth difficulty is that of the spatial apprehension of an art object. This one is often before

1 Cornelius Castoriadis : L’institution imaginaire de la société, Paris, Seuil, 1975, p493.

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 us, either at the artist's, at the museum or at the collector's. This object, before our appropriation
or appreciation, is surrounded by a space / time. The contours of the object, the connections with
other objects during its exhibition, the disposio implicating the play of light, colors or sounds
refer to the fact that an art object implicate the study of surfaces (its own and those around it).
This study would also be complicated by the superposition of temporalities in this object (the time
of its creation by the artist, the time of its circulation in the networks of collectors or publishers,
the time of the exhibition and the time of the signification. This superimposition of space-time is
of a nature not to reduce an object of art to its only facticity.
5. The fifth difficulty consists in seizing the art object as an article in a series. How to study an
art object without referring to its expressiveness, the effects of fashion, the modification of criteria
of taste, the introduction of technique in the reproduction of art objects, the fighting between the
original objects and fraudulent copies, changing the concepts of genius, authenticity and
originality? What to privilege in this series of problems?
6. The sixth difficulty comes from the status of the art object at the era of virtualization of objects.
Today there is especially in the field of design the relationship of the art object to its virtualization.
As the aesthetic scholar Florence de Meredieu says: “the history of material is [...] that of its
opacity. Designed as substance, texture, resistance to the eye and touch, the surface on which the
organs of the senses come to rest ... the birth of modern art is characterized by the discovery of
an imponderable and almost invisible element; the light [...] appeared as a form of decantation
of the real, a kind of radiography of the invisible universe. [A] spectral analysis [which would
desire that] each body in nature be composed of series of spectra superimposed [...] on
infinitesimal films in all the senses in which optics perceives this body ”.1 So an art object admits
therefore its share of spectrality. The opacity of the materiality of the art object is thus undermined
by its diaphanous nature (which allows the light to filter through). And as the artist Severini
suggests, “why forget in our creations the power redoubling our sight, which can give results
similar to those of X-rays”.2 When we speak of art object how to take into account at the same
time the opacity of its materiality and the diaphanous nature of its spectrality? At once material
and spectral, mass and rays, what to make of the object of art?
7. The seventh difficulty does not come from the art object itself but from conversations around /
about it. Who speaks of the art object, in other words, who is authorized to give it an interpretation
and a legitimation? First, the artist who believes to explain what he / she wanted to paint, write or
sculpt by sacrificing to the metaphysics of genius in which “the artist puts some coquetry to say
that he is a prey of inspiration, visited by the muse or by grace [...] in a mystical or lyrical
language”.3 Does creation of a work of art give the right to release all the meanings if it is true
that in the process of creation we find associated our fantasies, our primitive fears, our surges of
anticipation, the religious pressures, the tricks of the market, the venality of the patrons and the
political dialogues? Then come the philosophers who speak about the art object only with a
pretentious and sententious lexicon manipulating the aesthetic concepts with the good conscience

1 Florence de Mèredieu : Histoire matérielle et immatérielle de l’art moderne. Paris, Editions Larousse, 2004, p57.
2 Severini : Ecrits sur l’art, Paris, Editions du cercle d’art, 1987, p10.
3 Mikel Dufrenne, Esthétique et philosophie, Pris Klinsksieck, 1976, p180.

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 to contribute something to the poor humanity crushed by the weight of ignorance and of
immediacy. The philosopher wants to elevate the object of art from its pure immanence to
concepts that claim transcendence like Beauty, the Sublime, the fantastic and the marvelous, but,
in doing so, he chooses rhetoric and forgets the question of the constitutional material of the object.
Then comes the turn of the media which vilify, consecrate, improvise specialists, organize,
classify, designate, reward and manipulate instincts and intelligences. By the object of art and its
multiple representations, they try to crush the distance that any object of art must have with its
public. The media often anesthetize the untimely dimension of the art object by making it familiar.
At the last corner of the table of conversation around the art object is posted the art critic who
directs a choir composed of semiologists, soprano group who, in an acute way, sings the refrain
of the various symbolic postures of the object, by the side are anthropologists and sociologists of
art – alto group - who strive to explain the object of art either by the tribal cosmogonies and the
ethos of the peoples or by the symbolic powers. In the middle of this choir are the buyers, the
auctioneers, the museum curators, the tenor group, which watches over the circulation,
preservation and production of the surplus value of the art object. The last group of the choir is
made up of patrons and the fluctuations of the art market, bass band which gravely buzzes in
provoking and inspiring modes of consumption and taste. This choir has a beautiful refrain to
sing: "the object of art, we have domesticated in its inspiration, its creation, its course and its
reception, because we ensure its reputation.” And dare to add perfidiously as the philosopher
Nietzsche says: “He who knows how a reputation is born will have mistrust even with respect to
the reputation of virtue”.1
Our purpose on the art object will drag the seven handicaps evoked by focusing on the question
of the relations that this object maintains. These relationships open to possibilities and we will explore
them on two levels. First, the relationship that the object of art has with history, and then we will
examine the relation of this object with some of its appropriations.

II.2.-The Object of Art and History

Our thesis in this sequence is to say that the art object is history, it says history and can make history
and that it is precisely this sense of history that is killed by the cultural industry.
Let us clarify at the plan of vocabulary what we mean by history. While the French language
has only one word for the term History, l’histoire, the English language has two: first, History that
tells these human adventures with their temporalities, spatialities and speed, then the histoire is Story
about narratives more or less real and which, more often than not, involve more or less arbitrary
speeds and temporalities. The German language has the same distinction between Geschichte and
Historie. By History, with regard to the art object, we mean both meanings: History with H and stories.
Victims most often of the suggestive and captivating character of the object of art, prompted by
the taste of the antiquity and the marginality that the object maintains, attracted by the complication
or the simplification of its texture, pressed by the social prestige that not only acquires to us the object
of art but also the repetition of some comments gleaned from the salesman with the catchy and tourist

1 Friedrich Nietzsche : La volonté de puissance, Paris, Librairie générale française, 1991, p213.

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style, we will not make any historical analysis of the object of art. Of course, the art object can be the
personal message of the artist to himself, to his artistic community, to other cultures, to the potential
buyer or to his posterity. At this level it would translate history or very complicated personal histories,
ranging from the problems of his unconscious, to those of his community, culminating in the cultural
and political issues that concern the majority. And since the meaning of the art object does not depend
solely on the artist alone, we may historically evaluate the object by the general history of the styles
that were dominant at the time of the creation of this object and decode the various messages and
symbols that the object entailed and its sense for its contemporaries and for us. Another type of
historical analysis is to play synchrony and diachrony with regard to the art object. At this level, the
work of art is grafted onto national or tribal history. The art object becomes not the reflection but the
witness of freedoms, independence, the voice of minorities, the output of historical events and
historical figures of what the philosopher Ricoeur called organized forgetfulness. Such a destiny of
the art object flatters, because it suggests that this object is in pace with the interpretation of the social
history of the society that produces it, it ensures, as we say, the continuity between the producing
society and whoever will receive it. These historical approaches to the art object are not really
historical. History is not for us a simple succession or juxtaposition of facts and events but the place
of crises. The art object does not tell the story of its creation by a quiet succession of steps, it must
instead interrogate the crises. The crisis expressed by the object of art makes it possible to evaluate
regimes of historicities. What do historians mean by this term? “The historicity regime would be a
heuristic tool, helping to better apprehend not time, all the time or totality of the time, but mainly the
moments of the crises of time [...] It would thus be a way of illuminating, almost from the inside, the
contemporary questions about time [...] are we dealing with a forgotten past or a past too much
recalled, a future that has almost disappeared from present horizon or a future that is especially
threatening, a present no doubt consumed in the immediacy or almost static and interminable [..]? ”.1
The true relation of the object of art to history thus consists of analyzing the crises by it.
Representation crises, social crises, psychic crises, crises of categories helping us to experience, crisis
of languages, the object of art not seen as a symptom of a past crisis or latent crisis would quickly
become a fetish. And like any fetish, it becomes political, insofar as fetish gathers around it and allows
cults, liturgies and high priests charged with the science of the interpretation of the mysteries of the
fetish. This fetishized art object that no longer speaks the crisis abandons itself to the game of surplus
value and becomes a flat, consumable object. And as Baudrillard says, in this case, “what is consumed
is never objects, but the relation itself [...] It is the idea of the relationship that is consumed in the
series of objects which gives it to see.”2
The relation to history is therefore a phenomenology of the notion of the crisis of the object of
art which, throughout its process of creation and inheritation, is transformed into an object-sign. The
history of this transformation is the place where the crisis must be seized. This crisis is that of the
political economy today because the art object cannot ignore the market. The history of the object of
art must therefore be made today also in terms of political economy. “Political economy is this
immense transmutation of all values (work, knowledge, social relations, culture, nature) into value

1 François Hartog, Les régimes d’historicité, Paris, Seuil, 2013, p38.

2 Jean Baudrillard, Le système des objets, Paris, Gallimard, 1968, p277.

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of economic exchange. Everything is abstracted and resorbed into a global market and in the
prominent role of money as a general equivalent.”1

II.3-The Object of Art and Its Receptions: The Critical-Utopic Question

In the notion of reception, we want to show that the art object is a crossroads of the possibilities of
the Subject and its Society. At least three notions will be examined here.
a- The notion of horizon. Research on the hermeneutical appropriation of the work of art - theories
of the reading of literature according to Hans Robert Jauss and the viewer's theory in theater and
cinema - emphasize that the reception of an object of art involves the question of the horizon.
The horizon is never beside the Subject although it is in sight. The horizon is call and reminder.
Call first of all indicates that going forward is the only way to keep in touch with this horizon,
then recalling that the present state of the work indicates that its relation to time is perpetual
transactions from it. The possibilities of the art object are always ahead of it.
b- The art object is the sign par excellence of a bet. In general, especially in the artistic and
literary research of the so-called southern countries, it is often agreed that an art of affirming
identity, preserving heritage, liberating speech and expressing the voice of voiceless, rewrite the
history from the "subordinate" point of view is necessary. In this case, the art is often against the
local political powers and colonization, and the Manichean division of the world. Leaving aside
the denunciation of the powers of the artist, the auctioneers, publishing houses and the press, the
object of criticism becomes a ruse of a system that secretes its own criticism by fixing the limits
that should not be crossed. The art is critical if you do not criticize those who create and talk.
The art object must therefore bet on self-criticism.
c- The object of art and populism. It is often said that an art object can have a pedagogical mission,
which means that the message is well articulated and that there is a narrative community between
those who will receive this message and what the object expresses. What about the people? Is
the artist the voice of the people? Should he and can he take the people as an ally? The deification
of the people is often very frequent in the artistic productions of those who speak of engaged art
like Sartre, our position which joins that of Marcuse is the following one. Inasmuch as the people
are often possessed by the system of dominant needs, working to liberate alienated
consciousness implies not to stand on the side of the people. The art object must become
"untimely" in the sense Nietzsche understands it. Untimly, that is to say, to contradict what
desires to be timely and as Marcuse says; “The possibility of an alliance between art and people
presupposes that men and women administered by capitalism unlearn the language, concepts
and images of this administration, that they experience the dimension of qualitative change, that
they regain their subjectivity, their interiority”.2

1 Idem : Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, Paris, Gallimard, p129.
2 Herbert Marcuse, La dimension esthétique, Paris, Seuil, 1977, p39

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Conclusion

To reflect today on the object of art and what we mean by aesthetic sense is to say that it is at the
center of relationships.
1. Vertical relations with what attracts it to the untimely, in order to make it express the plurality of
its symbolic, religious and epic messages.
2. Horizontal relationships also with both the archaeological dimension (which exhumes by the
object of art and because of it, the snippets of past history of a people to establish a link with
previous generations), and the proleptic slope (which anticipates the future).
3. Transversal relations, the art object expresses both the conventional language of institutions and
the unconventional language of creation, this one being a displacement compared to the norms
devoted.
4. Finally, the transaction relations. The object of art forces us to move our gaze from the object to
the work on the object, from the object as a product to the conditions of production that provide
information about the worker and his working conditions. A gaze that goes beyond the materiality
of the object with its possible commercialization towards what this object promises or what it
doesn’t promise, towards what this object communicates or prevents from communicating. It is
necessary to restore to the object of art the AURA which is always removed to it by the mass
culture, with its short cuts, its small connivances, its murderous sentences, its calculated
consecrations, its organized markets, its great-masses cultural and its disdain for anything that
does not fit into the accounting system. And as the German philosopher Walter Benjamin so aptly
puts it; “What, indeed, is the aura? a singular plot of space and time: the unique appearance of
a distant, so close may it be”.

References
Jean Baudrillard: Le système des objets, Paris, Gallimard, 1968
———. Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, Paris, Gallimard, 1972
Walter Benjamin: Oeuvres, III, Paris, Gallimard -Folio, 2000
Cornelius Castoriadis: L’institution imaginaire de la société, Paris, Seuil, 1975
Mikel Dufrenne: Esthétique et philosophie, Paris Klinsksieck,1976
François Hartog: Les régimes d’historicité, Paris, Seuil,2013
Max Horkheimer/ Theodor Adorno: La Dialectique de la Raison, Paris, Gallimard,1974
Gilles Lipovetsky: Jean Serroy: L’esthétisation du monde, vivre à l’âge du capitalisme artiste, Paris,
Gallimard,2013
Herbert Marcuse: La dimension esthétique, Paris, Seuil, 1977
Florence de Mèredieu: Histoire matérielle et immatérielle de l’art moderne. Paris, Editions
Larousse,2004.
Friedrich Nietzsche: La volonté de puissance, Paris, Librairie Générale Française, 1991.
Schiller: Lettre sur l’éducation Esthétique de l’homme, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1992
Severini: Ecrits sur l’art, Paris, Editions du cercle d’art,1987.
(Translated by Li Dan; Proofread by Feng Li)

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 Creativity in Art: A Critical View

Bashshar Haydar

There is a growing literature on creativity, whether in relation to art or in connection with various
other domains or activities, such as science, business and sports. A great part of the literature on
creativity belongs to an ever growing work in psychology and neuroscience. The aim of the latter
work is to understand the creative process and identify its psychological and neurological basis and
processes. Work on the psychology of creativity, as Berys Gaut points out, has implications on
various philosophical issues related to creativity. These issues include, among others, the relationship
between creativity on the hand, and rationality, virtue, imagination, and tradition, on the other.
Another set of philosophical and quasi-philosophical questions that are raised by the notion of
creativity are concerned with the definition of creativity, the unity of the notion of creativity across
different domains and activities, as well as the relevance of creativity for artistic appreciation and art
criticism. In this presentation, I am concerned with the latter question. In other words, I will be
looking into whether creativity should be seen as an aesthetic or artistic merit in works of art.
It is widely agreed that creativity is defined primarily in terms of originality. A creative work is
one which is both original and valuable. The ‘valuable’ component rules out what Kant called
‘original nonsense’, by which he meant something novel.but lacking in value.
But independently of whether creativity should be understood in terms of originality plus value,
creativity and originality are closely connected and share important features in common. They are
often used interchangeably as positively valanced property in art criticism. That is, they imply a
positive judgement on a work. They are not neutral terms. This is the case, of course, when originality
is understood to include merit or value Moreover, both terms are perfectly applicable outside works
of art. A scientific theory or invention, a business plan, or a chess move or strategy can all be described
as creative and original. More importantly to our purpose, both terms point to something outside the
experientially perceived qualities of the work itself. Originality is applicable to a given work of art
only as result of comparing the work in question to other works belonging to the same relevant
category. Thus, to say about a piece of music that it is original, is to say that it differs in aesthetically
relevant ways from other works in music that were created before it. Similarly, creativity also points
to something outside the work itself. It refers to the process through which the work was produced.
A creative product is one that was produced creatively or imaginatively (to use a different but closely
connected term). In other words, to say that a work of art is creative is to say something about the
way or manner by which the artist has produced the work.
Given that the terms ‘creative’ and ‘original’ both point out to something outside the work itself,
one cannot always discern the presence of these qualities only from the perceivable properties of the
work itself. One might need to look beyond the work itself in order to assess the applicability of term
‘creative’ to it.
A forgery, or a work that simply imitates or copies the style of another artist, lacks both creativity
and originality. It lacks the latter because of the existence of previous works of art with which it

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shares aesthetically relevant features. It lacks creativity because the work in question was not
produced through a creative or imaginative process. It is at best a product of skillful imitation.
The above understanding of creativity and originality shows, however, that they have different
meaning or connotations. Originality involves a reference to other works, while creativity involves a
reference to a kind of process. Given that they have such different meanings, it is not clear how one
can define creativity and originality in terms of the other.
One possible answer to the above question is that although these two terms differ intensionally,
they overlap extensionally; the set of creative works is a subset of original ones. This would be the
case, for example, if all works that involve a creative process will end up being different from other
works, and hence original. Creativity, in other words, guarantees originality.
The fact that creative works of art happen also to be original leaves open, however, the question
regarding which of these ascriptions to a work of art is more fundamental for artistic merit? Put
differently, do we value creativity in art because we value originality and novelty, or value originality
because it is a sign of creativity which we value?
On one view, creativity is considered the more artistically fundamental quality, while originality
is valued mainly because of its connection to creativity. According to such view, what we value about
original works is that they are produced creatively. They manifest the artist’s creative capabilities
assigning primacy to creativity over originality is supported by the way we evaluate works of art in
relation to their originality, when the latter is notion understood in terms of newness or uniqueness.
First, we would still highly value the work of an artist who unknowingly and coincidentally, and
hence non-derivatively, comes up with an artistically valuable innovation, even though virtually
similar innovation has been also developed by another artist. If what matters is the novelty or newness
of the work in question as such, then the value of even unknowingly making an artistically valuable
innovation should have less value. But given that we ascribe high value to such unknowingly
duplicated artistic innovation, it follows that what seems to matter is the manner in which the art work
is created, rather than its novelty or uniqueness. To use an example for outside art, if it is true that
Leibniz and Newton did completely and independently develop calculus, then neither of their work
would be unique. However, both works would be highly praiseworthy achievements, since each one
of them was creatively produced. The same applies in art. Even if we think that Cubism, as a style in
painting, was independently innovated by Picasso and Braque, their cubist work would not lose any
of its value because it was not unique. When we continue to describe the cubist work of both artist as
original, we are basically referring to the creative and non-derivative process by which Picasso and
Braque produced their work. Hence, it is not the mere existence of other works with relevant similar
features that threatens the value of a given work or product. It is rather the derivativeness and
unimaginativeness of a work that diminishes its merit. Forgeries, or tourist-tailored imitations of
impressionist painting, are paradigm examples of works that lack valuable originality. What makes
these works lack such valuable originality, in the fact that they were imitative or derivative. Their
reduced artistic merit is due the uncreative and unimaginative manner by which they are produced.
If correct, the above analysis shows that originality matters only, or mainly, because of its
connection to creativity. Hence, originality is not a fundamental artistic merit. It is a merit only when
it is the result of creative or imaginative process.

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 But why should the process of production carry such weight or have such value. If the creative
process, through which the finished work is produced, manifests itself in the properties of the work
itself, then we should not need to appeal to the process of production in order to evaluate the product
or the object in question. The relevant qualities of the work itself should suffice. The causal,
psychological, or physical antecedents that led to the product in question, it might be argued, are
irrelevant for its evaluation or merit. The creativity of Poincare’s work in mathematics (and
theoretical physics), for example, manifests itself in the work Poincare has produced in these
domains. Although Poincare himself has tried to describe the psychological process of his creative
thinking under which he came up which his ideas in mathematics, we don’t need to know anything
about such process in order to discern the full merit of his work in that field. One is, of course, justified
in presuming that Poincare’s work in mathematics cannot be but the result of creative mental process.
Still, the full merit of Poincare’s work is located in the discernible qualities of the work itself without
the need to allude to the mental creative process through which
Poincare has produced his work.
The same also applies to works of art. We describe a work of literature as compassionate, as we
may aptly do in the case of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina for example. The compassion we ascribe to
Tolstoy’s work is a condition, or more precisely a psychological attitude, which enables Tolstoy to
paint a deep and insightful portrait of his characters and their predicaments. Thus, when we describe
Tolstoy work as compassionate, we are praising the depth and scope of insights which his work
exhibits about the characters and situations he deals with. Tolstoy’s compassionate attitude towards
Anna Karenina’s, and hence woman in her situation, might explain partly his ability to portray his
protagonist with a considerable degree of perceptiveness and sophistication. But, whether this is true
description of Tolstoy state of mind, is irrelevant to our evaluation of the novel. It is the
perceptiveness and sophistication of Tolstoy’s portrayal of Anna, which are discernible from the
novel itself, that are constitutive the novel’s merits. Although compassion might causally explain
some merits in Tolstoy’s Anna Karinina, it is not something that can be considered as such an
aesthetic merit of the novels.
“Skillful” is another example of a causally loaded term of artistic praise. In the same way we
might describe a work as creative, we might also describe a work as skillful. But, as in the case with
compassion, it might be argued that skill refers to the causal conditions that explain the qualities of a
given work. Presumably, a skillfully produced painting is one that manifests such skillfulness via
properties that are discernible from work itself. These properties necessarily include aesthetically
non-valenced ones such shapes, colors, lines, composition, texture, and the like. (They are non-
valenced in the sense that merely possessing them is neutral, and they are not terms of praise or
dispraise as such.) The work will also possess valenced properties such as “elegant”, “powerful”,
“insightful”, or “perceptive”. Each of these valenced and non-valenced properties can be relevant for
an artistic evaluation of a given painting, in the sense that valenced properties will depend on the non-
valenced substratum. However, the fact that these properties are produced skillfully or imaginatively
pertain to set of causal antecedent to the aesthetic merit of work in question, but not an aesthetic merit
itself.

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 There is a long debate in art criticism regarding the relationship between the art work and the
artist. On one side, there are romantic theories of art which advocate a strong relationship between
the artist and art criticism. Art, according to the romanists, is an expression of the artist’s feeling and
emotions via an artistic medium. Hence, facts about the artist state of mind are at the heart of art
criticism. From this perspective, facts about the artist psychology are inseparable from our proper
appreciation of the work of art she creates.
On the other side, there are those (call them the autonomists about art) who take the view that,
once completed, an artwork is totally independent form the psychological features of the artist who
produces it. Appreciation or interpretation of works of art, according to this view, should take place
independently of the aims, intentions, or other similar biographical facts about the artist or author.
Hence, facts about the artist or author mental or psychological processes of production are irrelevant
from the perspective of art appreciation or art criticism. One implication of such a view of the
autonomy of works of art is the author has no privileged authority over the way her work should be
seen or interpreted. The work stands on its own and open to all sorts of interpretations. The artist’s
own take on her art stands on equal footing as those of others.
The autonomist, therefore, would reject the claim that creativity as such is an aesthetic merit in
a work of art. Given that creativity refers to the mental or psychological process by which a work is
produced, and given that the autonomist rejects the aesthetic or artistic relevance of such biographical
information, it follows that the autonomist would deny that creativity as such is an aesthetic and
artistic merit in a work of art.
One argument in support of the autonomist position with regard to creativity is that the latter
does not seem to be a merit in non-artistic contexts (an observation made by James Grant in a recent
article entitled “Creativity as an Artistic Merit”). Other things being equal, we would not think that a
creatively discovered cure for a given disease has more merit than a cure which was discovered in a
purely accidental way. Given that both cures yield equivalent medical and scientific advantages in
the long and short term, they should be seen as having equal scientific merit, regardless of these
difference in conditions of their production. We would consider the creative solution to be more
valuable only if it provides better scientific outcome, i.e. only if it provides better scientific or
technological advantages. Short of that, there is no ground for preferring one cure over the other. If
creativity in scientific or technological context is not relevant for the assessing a give work or product,
the autonomist would argue, there is no reason why the same would not apply to creativity in art. The
same point applies equally to various other academic and intellectual domains, such as philosophy,
anthropology, and history (including art history). In all these fields, psychological facts about the
author are irrelevant for the assessment of the merits of their views. Work in these fields may indeed
be creative. But the latter merit is cashed out totally in terms of the properties of the produced works
themselves. Psychological features and facts pertaining to the authors are irrelevant from this
perspective.
The same applies to the relationship between artists and their work. Consider, thus, the following
case. Suppose that we came to know, contrary to what was believed before, that a particular artist has
produced most of her interesting and powerful work under the influence of heavy drugs. Would we
change our assessment of the merits of the works in question in light of the new information? I would

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not think so. Most likely we would not revise our view about the creativity of the artist or the merits
of her work. We would simply acquire the new belief that the artist’s capacities and talent seems to
be unleashed under the influence heavy drugs. Our assessment of the artistic merits of the works in
question seem to be robustly based on the aesthetic and artistic qualities of the works themselves, and
not on such biographical information about the psychological state of the artist. Creativity, understood
as a set psychological processes and mental occurrences, belongs only to the latter category. Hence,
it should not be seen as artistically or aesthetically relevant.
What is said above about creativity applies to the relevance of psychological features of the
artist. It does not deny that other possible conditions of production might legitimately affect our
aesthetic assessment of works of art. Consider the following example. Suppose that paint has
accidentally dropped on a piece of canvas at an artist’s studio. Imagine also that the result of this
accident was a visually striking and powerful combination of colors and shapes. The artist decided to
frame the canvas in question an exhibiting it turning it as a work of hers. Would the fact that the work
in question was produced in the manner described above affect the way we judge it artistically?
In order to answer this question, it is should pointing out that, even though the canvas in the case
described above was accidentally painted, it was not, however, accidentally framed and presented as
the artist’s work. Had the latter been true as well, then the work may not be ascribed to the artist, or
even as a work of art in the first place. The framing the canvas is itself an artistic choice. Beauchamp’s
readymades are well known examples of framing as an artistic act of creation. Moreover, the
psychological state of mind of the artist makes no difference. It might matter for our artistic
appreciation of the work under consideration to be aware of the fact this that it was produced in the
manner described above, and not painted in a more regular fashion. Certain facts about a given object,
which refers to things other than its directly perceivable qualities, might be relevant for the aesthetic
or artistic appreciation or evaluation of the work. It might even be relevant to whether we should see
the object as an artwork or as something else. For one thing, the presence of a agency, either in the
making or framing of an object, is essential to whether we should even consider the object in question
as a work of art in the first place.
Hence, some aspects or features of the conditions or context of production of a given object can
be relevant for evaluating it aesthetically and artistically, as well for seeing it as an artwork in the
first place. Psychological facts about the artist or author, however, are not clearly part of such relevant
facts. If saying that an object was produced creatively amounts to saying something about the
psychological state of the producer, then creativity - understood as such - does not seem to be relevant
for aesthetic or artistic evaluation. The adjective ‘creatively’ (OC: or just “creative”?) is surely used
a positively valanced term. But, in light of the above, it is not clear that creativity should be seen as
artistic merit of the art work itself a term, rather than merely a praise of the artist herself.
In response, defenders of the artistic relevance of creativity might appeal to examples where
creativity seems to play a role in our artistic evaluation of a work of art. The examples mentioned
above of forgeries as well as derivative impressionist paintings tailored for touristic consumption,
might provide such cases. Let us start with the latter type. Usually, such works of art are considered
of lower artistic value on two counts. First, they often exhibit perceptible mediocrity usually found

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in such commercial pieces. Second, they are derivative works containing hardly any element of
freshness, creativity, and originality.
Let us assume, however, that one of such works is not the typically cheap work that is made for
artistically unsophisticated and easily impressionable tourists. In other words, let us assume that the
work under consideration does not exhibit the perceptible mediocrity often found in such
commercially produced art works. Such work however, would still be derivative and unoriginal. It
would be in other words, uncreative. In this sense, such work would be similar to skillfully produced
forgeries, with the only difference that the artist involved is not being deceptive about the origin of
the work. What forgeries and such highly derivative work have in common is that they both lack
creativity in their production, or at best have it to very limited degree, and that is why they have lower
aesthetic and artistic merit.
The above argument in favor of treating creativity as an artistically relevant feature or property
faces an objection raised by Bruce Vermazen against the artistic relevance of originality in his 1991
article titled “The Aesthetic Value of Originality”. Vermazen appeals to the example of Frans Hals
who produced dozens of highly artistically valued paintings that differ from one another only in that
they present different faces. As Vermazen points out, if originality and novelty do matter artistically,
then we should assign much more aesthetic merit to the first of these paintings by Hals than to the
latter ones. However, such a view is clearly counterintuitive, as Vermazen points out. Vermazen’s
example and argument against the aesthetic relevance of originality raises the following question:
How can we justify aesthetically valuing Hals’ later portraits to almost the same degree that we value
his first one, although Hals was simply applying the same style and techniques in his later paintings,
albeit to a different face, while we assign much less value to the paintings of another artist who simply
copied Hals’ techniques and style. Or, to put it in other terms, why should works that involve a level
of ‘self-imitation’ be considered more artistically valuable than those works that imitate others?
It might be replied, as James Grant does in “Creativity as an Artistic Merit” that all of Hals’
paintings in that series have similar aesthetic and artistic value because they manifest the creativity
and imaginativeness of Hals’ artistic thinking, regardless of their chronological position in the series.
There is a problem, however, with this response to Vermazen’s challenge. It does not show why
works that exhibit self-repetitiveness should be considered more artistically valuable than those works
that imitate the works of others. If all of Hals’ painting in the series in question manifest Hals’
creativity, as Grant argues, then so would be the paintings done by the other painting and which
imitate Hals’ style. The imitator’s paintings would also manifest Hals’ creativity and imaginativeness,
even though they do so via the work of a much less creative or imaginative artist.
Grant acknowledges that the fact that even artist who have been creative at some point might
themselves become self-repetitive and, hence, producing derivative work with considerably less
artistic merit. He says that this happens when producing art in that same style would be clearly “lazy,
perfunctory, or mechanical”. Grants’ account of how self-repetitive art becomes problematic is not
very convincing. In response to Grant, it might be pointed out that the repetitive artist need not be
lazy, perfunctory, or mechanical. His repetitiveness might be the result of the drying up of the artist
creative and imaginative capacities, despite her hard work, diligence, and care. The same can also be

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true of the imitative artist. The latter might also put great effort and attention in producing his
derivative piece.
Therefore, we still need an explanation for why we would not assign much less artistic value to
Hals’ later painting in the series, in contrast with his earlier ones, while we would assign much less
value to the work of another artist who simply copies Hals’ style and technique. To say that Hals’
later portraits, although they are not different except in the faces they represented, continue to
manifest his creativity, is not enough. The work of the imitative artist also manifests Hals’ creativity.
The only difference between the two artist is that the work of one (Hals) is a manifestation of his own
creativity, while the work of the other (the imitative artist) manifests the creativity of the someone
else, namely that of Hals. There is no question that the credit and praise should mainly go to Hals for
both types of works. But why should there be a significant difference in the way we artistically
evaluate the works themselves. Surely we should celebrate Hals’ creativity and qualities as an artist,
and hope to have more artists like him than his imitators. Only with truly creative artist, we can hope
to enrich our aesthetic and artistic experience. But all that is consistent with treating similarly, from
an artistic point of view, the pieces produced by Hals and by his imitator, albeit not giving equal
credit to both.
The same is clearly and uncontroversially accepted outside the art world. The first (commercially
usable) lightbulbs manifest the inventiveness and creativity of Thomas Edison. But so do the later
lightbulbs that imitated the ones invented by Edison, but where produced by others. All of these
lightbulbs manifest the inventiveness and creativity of Edison. Surely, the first earlier lightbulbs have
historical and perhaps sentimental value, and hence more market value as a result. A work of art, it
might be replied, manifests the creativity and imaginativeness of the artist who produces it in a
different and more intimate way than inventions like lightbulb or smart phones manifest the
creativeness of their inventors. It is not clear, however, why and where this intimacy is to be located.
There is doubt or dispute that artistic creativity is valuable. What is not equally clear or
undisputed is whether creativity is valuable as an artistic merit in works of art themselves, rather than
simply a property of their creators. I have argued above in favor of the latter claim.

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 If It’s Free, It’s Because You are the Producer:
A Modest Proposal for Reason, Wisdom, and the Good Life

Maurizio Ferraris

Solving the Mystery of Labour

For a little over a decade, we have been witnessing what I call "documedia revolution". With this
expression I refer to a series of changes that have taken place in the fields of business, communication
and the media - and therefore in labour in general. On the one hand, the sphere of documentality (as
I define the set of formal and informal documents on which every human society is based 1 ) is
expanding at unprecedented speed: documents are now produced automatically and in unparalleled
numbers. On the other hand, the media are no longer vertical, but horizontal: every recipient of
information is potentially, through social media, a producer of information.
A humanity used to living with few documents now has an overabundance of them. This is the
true capital of our time, and this sheds light on the nature of previous forms of capital, which also
were document-like: over the centuries, capital has always been a particular form of archive. However,
now that all social interaction can be archived, it seems evident that we are witnessing the
capitalization of social interaction: this is what I call "mobilization" 2, namely the system of actions
that we all perform on the web. The documedia revolution, like every technological and social
revolution, thus allows for the emergence of fundamental structures that were present since the origin
of human civilization. Effective political action in this context requires theoretical awareness, and to
this end it is important to focus on the nature of capital as it emerges from the documedia revolution.
In particular, the documedia revolution has led to the solution of what Marx called the "mystery
of commodities". The fact that the commodity is a relationship between people is no longer a mystery:
it is fully evident, given that today’s truly valuable goods (because they are rich in information) are
produced by our mobilization, while machines are delegated with the production of manufactured
goods. So, today we ourselves are the producers of commodities, but this, surprisingly, does not seem
to be the problem. With a trick that Marx would have defined typical of bourgeois economy, instead
of emphasizing our active role in the production of documents we have focused on privacy, as if it
were a question of etiquette. But privacy is obviously the least of problems for all those (over half of
the world) who post content on social networks, and those (almost all of the world) who give their
consent to the use of cookies, impatient to get along with whatever they are doing. Privacy is by no
means the greatest objective problem we are facing, nor is it a subjective concern of the mobilized -
that is, of the greater part of humanity. How much would an unemployed person care about their
privacy? Consider the many beggars owning a smartphone: would they be happier if their privacy
were protected, or if their mobilization was recognized as labour, and therefore paid?

1 M. Ferraris, Documentality. Why it is necessary to leave traces, New York, Fordham University Press 2013.
2 M. Ferraris, “Total Mobilization”, The Monist, Volume 97, Issue 2, 1 April 2014, pp. 200–221.

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 Once you solve the mystery of commodities, you also solve the mystery of labour, in the
framework of the redistribution of profits on the internet. It is certainly a conceptual error to claim -
as is often said - that we are the product, because we are not in a slave economy. However, it is not a
mistake to maintain that we are the producers: we work (for free), and we pay for the means of
production, producing documents by means of the web just as Manchester textile factory workers
produced fabrics by means of looms. Now, it is true that we would not know how to use those
documents, and that without the big internet corporation they would not even be collected. But it is
also true that without us these documents would not exist. This situation is not so different from the
classic relationship between capital and labour, but with a very important variant: namely that today
labour is not paid, and, what's worse, is not even recognized as such.

Documedia Capital

Money and memory. Before discussing labour, let's try to clarify something about capital. The essence
of capital has always been an archive, but this was not so obvious in earlier centuries because one
could think that the archive was valuable because it contained money. American economist Narayana
Kocherlakota emphasized this view in 1996, putting forward the thesis that “money is memory” 1.
Memory is an agent's knowledge of the acts of all the agents with whom she has had direct or indirect
contacts in the past; money is an object that, unlike commodities, you cannot manufacture yourself
and is available in fixed quantities; and yet, these amounts of money somehow make up for the limits
of human memory, representing an artificial information storage and resulting in a form of primitive
memory: instead of taking note of an exchange, a universally accepted document is created that
anonymously replaces the note (this is particularly interesting for narcos and the mafia).
As I mentioned, the documedia revolution is now revealing the document-like nature of capital
in the clearest possible way. Four years after the publication of Kocherlakota's article, economist
Hernando De Soto2 observed that the essence of capital consists in storing information. Before him,
in 1967, with truly stunning visionary foresight, philosopher Jacques Derrida 3 prophesied that the
fundamental mark of our age would be the boom of writing, that is, what I conceptualize precisely as
the hyperbolic development of documentality. Which is precisely what came to be after the
documedia revolution. Today it is perfectly clear that the archive is worth because it contains
documents, which are infinitely more valuable than money because they keep track of every act of
humanity, which can be interpreted through algorithms that transform a library of Babel - i.e. a
meaningless chaos - in a source of prediction and knowledge of human behavior.
Document money. To grasp this point, we need to get rid of the naive view of money that many
of us intuitively share, according to which the value of gold is sort of heaven-sent, then it is transferred
to coins, and from there to banknotes. The most naive believe that banknotes can always be exchanged
with gold (in reality they can only be exchanged with other banknotes, if they are damaged, if the

1 N. N. Kocherlakota, “Money is Memory”, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Research Department Staff Report
218, October 1996.
2 H. De Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, New York,
Basic Books 2000.
3 J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press 1997.

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currency changes, etc.). The less naive believe that banknotes cannot be exchanged with gold, and
that their value is conventional, while the value of gold is intrinsic. In both cases we are dealing with
an irrational perspective, but in the social world we very often act in an unreflected way: I do not
need to be an expert in economics to pay my taxi just as I do not need to be an expert in physics to
ride a bicycle.
The document perspective follows an opposite line of reasoning1. Any way to take note of a
credit, to facilitate exchanges and to build up a store of value will do: cows, salt, paper. This was true
even before there was currency in the strict sense (on closer inspection, money in the ultimate sense
has never been formed, we are always on the path towards money). Gold is particularly handy because
it has intrinsic properties of rarity, malleability and resistance. The idea that paper is a substitute for
gold, rather than an alternative to it like salt and shells, was developed about two centuries ago, when
banks had to convince laymen to accept something that to them might have looked like simple paper
(an expert would need no such assurances).
The universal blackboard. If the function of money is precisely that of guaranteeing credit,
facilitating exchange and establishing values, its essence is that of a universal blackboard, visible to
all, on which all debts, exchanges, and accumulations are written. Approximations to this ideal
blackboard are the Manhattan National Security Agency Tower or, more precisely, the blockchain.
In this sense, bitcoin is not a transformation of, or a deviation from, the essence of money, but rather
its implementation. The essence of money, as we have seen, is recording; money is therefore a social
object that responds to the basic rule of documents, namely social object = recorded act. That is to
say: a social object is the result of a social act (such as to involve at least two people, or a person and
a delegated machine, or two delegated machines) that has the characteristic of being recorded on
some medium.
If this is the case, the document appears as super-money, as it shares money's characteristics but
adds many properties that money lacks: it is not surprising, therefore, that a document capital is
infinitely more powerful than a financial capital. Capital, as I said, can in fact be represented in the
form of a universal blackboard recording all social acts (i.e. such that occur between at least two
people) in a way that is indelible and accessible to all humanity. If such a blackboard were feasible,
we would need neither documents, nor that peculiar kind of document that we call money.
Document as super-money and absolute commodity. The documedia revolution has not
produced the universal blackboard (which probably will never be realized, as it is infinitely more
complicated than the library of Babel), but it certainly has marginalized the role of money qua
informatively poor document: money, an incomplete representation of the archive, has now been
replaced by the archive itself. Now that - as the theorists of the document predicted2 – everything
from heartbeat to religious practices can actually become a document, because every act can be
recorded, it turns out that the products of our online interactions are not only big data, but rich data,
infinitely more valuable than money.

1 For a more detailed exposition, see J. R. Searle – M. Ferraris, Il denaro e i suoi inganni, ed. by A. Condello, Torino,
Einaudi 2018.
2 S. Briet, Qu’est-ce que la documentation?, Paris, Édit 1951.

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 The documents produced by the internet, in fact, create knowledge not only of someone's
finances, but of their political views, health, and personal preferences: that is, a degree of knowledge
of the individual that has never been conceivable before in the history of the world. For centuries it
was believed that the individual was unknowable, and that one could only know types, classes, or
species - in the same way, modern industrial production focused on standardized mass production as
opposed to individualized products. Now the latter are once again economically sustainable, as in
pre-industrial times, and this is true both for traditional industries and for the digital artisan (maker)
working with 3D printers and using individualized parameters. For the first time in the history of the
world, the individual is knowable.
It is this encounter between producibility and knowability of the individual that makes
documents much more powerful than money. Traditional money only carries information about its
own value; electronic money carries information about a chain of transactions and purchases; rich
data carry information about people and, besides this, they can perform the traditional functions of
money: unit of account (of which price is a much more approximate synthesis than a bundle of data);
medium of exchange (I can exchange data for goods or services, or, if I wish, for money); and store
of value (there is no capital more powerful than the documedia capital).

III. Surplus Value and Exploitation

Populism. Why should all this be of interest to philosophers concerned with wisdom and the good
life? Allow me to speak as an exponent of the peripheral reality to which I belong. European populist
movements have not taken account of the documedia revolution and are attacking non-existent
enemies - Migrants, Banks, Europe - giving voice to an unsustainable and outdated nationalism. But,
political analysis aside, what matters most is that, just like their alleged opponents, populists are
mistaken about a crucial point: the problem lies not in financial capital, but in the surplus value of the
internet.
Attacking the too poor (migrants) or the too rich (banks) as the enemies of national interests
seems particularly ironic in the small European region of which I am a citizen - i.e. Italy - for more
than one reason. First of all, economic malfunctions depend not on European banking and finance,
but on tax evasion and organized crime, which are purely national phenomena. But even without
taking this into account, the fact remains that Italy, of all European countries, is the one that has the
most deposits in banks: even more than Germany, France and the UK. So why yell at banks while
lending them money at the same time? Populism, as often happens, is the reaction to a problem it
ignores the causes of, and of which it only feels the discomfort: the new surplus value produced by
the web.
This is not an economy of knowledge. It is necessary to specify something that is of primary
importance for the present discourse. In spite of what is often said, and despite the actual similarity
between knowledge of the individual and absolute knowledge, the documedia economy is not an
economy of knowledge. We should not forget that we are dealing with a mobilization, whose value
in terms of documents produces knowledge only if interpreted - something that cannot be done by
either the mobilized (the generic users of the internet) or by those (teachers, executives) who are

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usually designated as "knowledge workers".
This is why the working-class interpretation does not hold1: what we offer as mobilized is not
knowledge, but information about ourselves (of which we are often not even aware). Conceptually,
the classic relationship between capital and labour is reproduced: the mobilized, like factory workers,
provide the workforce. Capital provides not the means of production but the means of interpretation:
the correlations and the meaning of data. Workers are not subjected to monotonous or tiring tasks, as
was the case in factories, but they have to pay for the means of production, i.e. internet terminals. The
production is at the bottom, knowledge at the top: the mobilized can access the knowledge (for
example, books or encyclopedias), but in doing so they produce further, much more individual,
knowledge about themselves.
An unfair exchange. It follows that this is an unfair exchange: capital gives the mobilized general
and public knowledge, while the mobilization gives capital individual and capitalizable knowledge.
Just as pre-Marxist economists did not see that workers were only paid for part of their work, so today
we tend not to consider that the mobilization is paid for only in part by the free services offered by
the internet.
It is hard to miss the asymmetry between giving and having here. The documents that the
archives provide to the mobilized are general and accessible to everyone, by definition: therefore they
do not offer competitive benefits. The information that the mobilized offer to the archives are
individual and accessible only to the archives: therefore they offer enormous competitive benefits.
As a user, I get only the negative part of this advantage, the one that pushes me to spend money
according to the probabilistic prediction of my habits. On top of this, as I recalled earlier, the
mobilized pay for their means of production: technological equipment and internet subscription (as
well as one's house in Airbnb or one's car in Uber).
As mentioned, here we find the capitalist production of surplus value as analyzed by Marx. One
may object that this perspective only holds if one embraces the labour theory of value (value is the
result of the labour used to produce the commodities, in this case the documents), but there is no
reason not to to so. The labour value is right and ontologically founded, otherwise we would have the
most radical constructivism, along the lines of "there are no prices, only interpretations" - the
economic equivalent of "there are no facts, only interpretations" in the philosophical field.
To think that the economy is based on arbitrariness and imagination (because this is what
happens if you discard the labour theory of value) means to adopt a nihilism that does not reflect in
any way the very concrete, and anything but fantastic, reality of the economy and of the social world
as a whole. It is very clear that value arises from the encounter between the mobilization that produces
the documents and the investments made to collect them, make them analysable, and build models to
match users' preferences and market offers (and vice versa).

IV. Recognizing Mobilization as Labour

Mobilization is labour. Instead of challenging an unquestionable fact like that of labour value, I would
suggest making a different consideration: what produces value, as happens with our mobilization on

1 M. Hardt – A. Negri, Assembly, Oxford University Press 2017.

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the web, is objectively labour, even if subjectively it may not be perceived as such. In order to
decrease the current economic inequalities, it is not feasible to implement a universal progressive tax
on capital,1 because it presupposes a global political agreement that is by definition unattainable.
The reduction of working hours, which others strongly propose,2 was implemented in France
and Germany with the aim of creating new jobs but did not produce the expected results. Furthermore,
work should not be sought through policies aimed at increasing the (small) numbers of workers in
internet corporations. This would only make the web less profitable, and decrease its efficiency. Nor
can we ever think that the number of web workers can be equal to that of farmers or factory workers,
given that the prevailing logic is that of a radical and progressive reduction of living labour. And it is
not even opportune, as Bill Gates proposed, to establish a “robotax” that would make human work
more profitable: this would be a reactionary attitude that would merely curb development (which is
why governments did not accept this idea).
As for the proposal of a citizenship income, it is economically unsustainable, especially in a
country like Italy where a third of the work is undeclared and half of the tax revenue is evaded, in
addition to having a huge public debt. So, unlike the suggestions made so far, I believe the point is to
retribute the mostly hidden labour that manifests itself as mobilization on the web. This mobilization,
just like consumerism, is a necessary element of the concept of work qua interaction between man
and nature, and today between man and man via machine.
In the eighteenth century, on a physiocratic basis, Thomas Paine proposed to replace charity for
the poor with an income for humanity as a whole, deriving from the common ownership of the earth
- citizenship income derives to some extent from that conception. The proposal of a mobilization
salary seems to me much more sensible than a citizenship income, as it implies recognizing not
people’s abstract belonging to society, but an effective production of wealth.
Mobilization is biopolitical labour. The production of man through man is not only the ingenuity
of the world of spirit, of a realized humanity in Schiller's sense: it is travel, clubs, restaurants, wine,
haute cuisine, fashion, extreme sex, drugs, everything that a beaver would not want, that moralists
condemn as consumerism or degeneration, but which in fact defines the greatest commercial
enterprise of our time.
Mobilization salary. Rather than wasting energy in populist nonsense, true political action - in a
coordinated European strategy - must focus on the recognition of the work that each of us performs
on the internet by producing data, which are the real wealth in our age. This would entail a
redistribution of profit on part of the big internet corporations.
The ideal solution would be a direct relationship between the mobilized and the corporations,
but this is technically complex: it would entail profit for those who are already rich and give too little
to those who do not have a job, risking to finance illegal activities. Furthermore, in all likelihood it
would produce a serious side effect: if users were paid in proportion to their activity on the web, they
would end up artificially increasing this activity only to earn more, and in this way their online actions
would no longer reflect their real interests, which is what the companies that manage the web want
to monitor. Therefore, it seems preferable to implement a tax collected by the EU and redistributed

1 Th. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard UP 2014.

2 D. De Masi, Il lavoro nel XXI secolo, Einaudi 2018.

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among European citizens below the poverty line.
But why should big corporations accept this tax? The answer is simple. The bargaining power
to induce them to do this would arise from the fact that the European Union has a strong demographic
mass. Europe has long claimed to be the spiritual continent par excellence. Less than a century after
Husserl, Heidegger and Valéry made a similar assertion, this claim appears futile and laughable.
Europe does no longer have the monopoly of the spirit, provided it ever did have it, but it is still a
great producer of documents. We are many, half a billion, the third geopolitical entity after China and
India. Therefore, we are interesting, as we produce information and value. So let's try to valorize our
mobilization.

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 From Virtue to Happiness: a Neoplatonic Reversal

Paul Kalligas
University of Athens

One of the most remarkable characteristics of Ancient Greek philosophical thought is its
extraordinary diversity. Looking at the history of its development, from its beginnings in the sixth
century BC to its final demise in the sixth century AD, one is amazed by the multifariousness of
approaches and positions that have been advanced by the various philosophical schools during this
extensive period, while at the same time most of them have adopted a distinctly traditionalist attitude
regarding the main issues addressed by philosophical thinking as such. It is all the more surprising
then, that most of the ancient thinkers seem to be in accord regarding one of the central topics of
philosophical discussion in antiquity, namely the problem of what is the ultimate end of human life,
the one aim that all humans are, each in his or her own way, trying to achieve during their lives.
One way of seeing this is by following a method advocated by G. Vlastos several years ago in
his acclaimed book on Socrates (Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Cambridge 1991, 203):
based on a passage from Plato, he goes on to reconstruct an imaginary dialogue between two persons,
A and B. In this exchange A asks B about his reasons for doing something, and B replies that this
was done in order to get something else. A persists in his asking until the point is reached where B
replies ‘Because it will make me happy’; and then the questioning stops, since to renew it after that
would be pointless. The conclusion is therefore that happiness is in fact the end (telos) of all our
actions. This, however, “is not to say that this is what we are always, or often, thinking of when
choosing what to do in our daily life, but only that this is the last of the reasons we could give if
pressed to give our reason for choosing to do anything at all—the only one which, if given, would
make it senseless to be asked for any further reason.” It is thereby designated by Vlastos as “the
Eudaimonist Axiom” and, as he has pointed out, “once it was staked out by Socrates [in the 5th century
BC], it becomes foundational for virtually all subsequent moralists of classical antiquity”. In Vlastos’
words, this axiom states that “happiness is desired by all human beings as the ultimate end (telos) of
all their rational acts”.
On the other hand, if we turn into examining the way in which this notion of eudaimonia is
understood by the various schools, and especially the means by which this final aim is supposed to
be reached, we are immediately confronted by a bewildering diversity of views and positions
representing the aforementioned extreme variety of philosophical opinions on this issue, as they had
developed during this period. It might be useful, though, to point out right from the start that the
concept expressed by the term eudaimonia does not entirely accord with the notion of happiness as
we tend to understand it today.
First of all, eudaimonia is usually described as an objective state of affairs regarding an
individual, one that does not necessarily involve that individual’s feelings about his or her condition,
or even the awareness that one’s state is such as to accord with the standards that make somebody
happy. The instances adduced by the historian Herodotus as exemplary cases of eudaimonia, during

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Solon’s famous discussion with the king of Lydia Croesus, include an Athenian citizen who died in
battle fighting for his country, and two brothers who had died in their effort to bring their priestess
mother to a temple where she was supposed to perform the sacred rites. Nothing is said about the
feelings these persons had experienced during those events, since obviously the latter were regarded
as irrelevant to the fact that, because of their conduct, the individuals in question had actually
achieved the irretrievably blissful state of true eudaimonia.
As the examples mentioned above have already indicated, the basic means by which such a state
of perfect happiness in achieved was commonly perceived to be virtue or arete. Now, once again,
one needs to make clear that the meaning of the term arete in Ancient Greek does not entirely coincide
with that of the modern concept of virtue, since it mostly represents someone’s (or even, occasionally,
some thing’s) excellence in being able to perform his (or its) specific task in a most effective and
appropriate manner, namely, in a way that takes into account that person’s (or thing’s) specific task
or ergon, as perceived by the particular community or social group, who is the one to decide whether
one has successfully achieved the ultimate goal of attaining eudaimonia. One should keep in mind,
however, that the exercise of virtue or arete hardly depends on slavishly following any specific
guidelines of conduct preordained by some external authority, be it religious or secular, or on adhering
to any rules laid out by any established legal or moral standards. It is thought to represent an
individual’s internal predispositions and moral attitude in general, and to be the outcome of one’s
free and deliberate choice. No doubt, virtuous behaviour sometimes, or even most of the time, tends
to conform or to reflect the standards of human excellence acknowledged by some specific society,
however those in no way determine the character of an action or of a person as being virtuous or
otherwise just on the basis of their adherence to any divinely or socially imposed rules.
During the classical period of 5th and 4th century BC Athens, the notion of arete gradually began
to take on a new meaning, primarily due to the impact of the extraordinary personality of Socrates on
the way in which both the aims of human life and the precise content of the notion of happiness came
to be perceived. For human excellence was no longer regarded as necessarily involving one’s being
recognized by one’s social environment as being successful on the social or even the political and
military level, in the way the heroes of the homeric epics had been, but rather as a state of being fully
consistent with one’s self-induced principles of behaviour, which depend on one’s constant rational
examining of one’s beliefs and manners of conduct, without being carried along by irrational impulses
or other motives that do not conform to and are incapable to withstand rational scrutiny. Such scrutiny
is supposed to be completely unprejudiced, to lie beyond the constraints of prevailing or even long
established views, and to be able to guide a person’s conduct successfully only when it is firmly
grounded on truth. In such a way truth, and hence philosophical inquiry which investigates after truth,
turn out to be an essential component of human excellence and, furthermore, an inextricable
prerequisite for a human being to become confidently placed on the way to eudaimonia.
As one might expect, one of the main questions discussed in this context was the precise relation
between virtue and happiness, or between arete and eudaimonia. It might seem a reasonable way to
address it by saying that virtue is a means through which a human being can attain happiness, namely,
that by exercising virtue one might hope to reach the ultimate and highest end of one’s existence,
which is to become happy. In a famous allegory, usually attributed to the sophist Prodicus of Ceos,

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the hero Heracles is asked to decide which course he will take in front of a crossroads, one leg of
which is the way of Virtue and the other the way of Vice. The two ways are evaluated on the basis of
the benefits they have to offer, and Virtue eventually wins, because she is able to prove that, in spite
of all the intervening difficulties, she alone can lead the hero to the desired outcome, namely to the
enjoyment of a happy life. On the other hand, already Plato appears to be at pains to establish that a
virtue, such as justice, is something good that is desirable and thereby an aim in itself, and not as a
means leading to anything beyond itself, namely, that it is something worth pursuing just for its own
sake, without taking into account any further considerations regarding the effects it might produce
for the individual performing the just act, or even for the way in which any given society in which
such an act is performed perceives or issues an assessment regarding the particular just act in question.
Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, picked up the challenge and also maintained that a virtuous act is
something of intrinsic value, not because it produces some desirable consequence, but because it is
worth pursuing and possessing by itself. It is true that, for Aristotle, the most perfect kind of virtue is
theoretical wisdom or sophia, and that the way to exercise it is by means of intellectual activity or
contemplation, so one might think that such activity should be enough to make someone achieve his
final goal and hence to be happy. Nonetheless, Aristotle, has famously the common sense to realize
that contemplation alone cannot suffice for one’s pursuit of happiness. He acknowledges that there
are other needs, associated with the complexity of human nature as involving a body positing
demands of its own, but also having requirements pertaining to one’s communal life and the fact that
one exists together with other people in some organized society, and that the fulfillment of these plays
an important, albeit contributing part in making someone really and fully happy. This means that,
apart from the supreme good achieved by the way of contemplation, there are also subsidiary goals
that also play a part in one’s attaining perfect happiness. Furthermore, the mere possession of the
virtues, which are no more than moral predispositions to act virtuously under specific circumstances,
is not enough to allow someone to activate his moral potential to its full capacity. One needs further
to be given the opportunity to act in an appropriate environment which provides the required occasion
to act in accordance with one’s virtuous character and thus to activate one’s moral powers until they
fulfill one’s competence to reach the culmination of his existence as the person he is, and in this way
to attain happiness in its fullest form. This implies that there are certain preconditions that have to be
met in order that one’s virtuous powers are properly exercised, and thereby one’s nature as a virtuous
agent comes to its full fruition. According to this view, the exercise of virtue is to be seen not just as
a means for achieving the ultimate goal of happiness, but as a crucial component of a happy life which,
along with some other contributing factors, constitutes and brings about the perfect way of living
one’s life and hence to gain happiness.
After Aristotle, and during the so-called Hellenistic period, the main philosophical advocates of
a way of life which aspires to happiness through the exercise of virtue were the Stoics. However, their
stance was more austere and uncompromising than Aristotle’s in maintaining that virtue is the only
requirement that needs to be fulfilled for this purpose. For, according to them, nothing else possesses
real value (axia) except virtue, which is the only good worth pursuing by a rational agent such as
humans are, while all the other concerns pertaining to objects that are either completely worthless or
otherwise are indifferent (adiaphora), bear no impact in one’s natural urge to attain real happiness.

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Therefore, according to the Stoic analysis of human motivation, the only rational course for human
action is the resolute and unflinching striving for virtue, while any other pursuit that would distract
the individual from achieving this sole worthwhile goal was viewed as involving false judgement,
which for the Stoics was equivalent to what they called passions (pathe). These correspond not to any
real actions on the part of the agent, since they do not represent one’s real wishes that can only aim
at something which is really good, but only mark one’s succumbing to external forces coercing him
or her to behave in ways that lead away from what one really wishes for, namely happiness, and can
only throw a person into a course ushering to wretchedness and disaster. Such conduct drives man
away from the course of reason which alone can make one happy, and it brings one down to to the
level of irrational beasts, who are unable to control their behaviour and to make it conform to what is
the only course that is truly beneficial and worth pursuing, namely that of virtue governed by reason.
The unwavering seeking after virtue is the only way worthy of man’s rational constitution and an
inseparable component of a mode of living that is truly happy. Again, the exercise of virtue by means
of actions totally guided by rational principles and considerations is not merely a way of attaining
happiness, but in fact is tantamount to being happy, since no other contributing component is required
in order to achieve the final goal of human existence, namely living in accordance to reason
(homologoumenos zen).
It was left to the Epicureans, the most notable hedonists of antiquity, who posited pleasure as
the highest good bringing happiness, to adopt a purely instumentalist attitude towards virtue. They
maintained that virtue contributes to happiness only in so far as it helps the agent to achieve various
kinds of pleasure, mainly of a social character, by reaping the benefits of one’s association with other
people in a mutually supportive community of like-minded individuals.
From this brief survey of ancient Greek philosophical views on the topic of the ultimate goal of
human existence presented so far it emerges that virtue was almost unanimously regarded as an
essential component of a happy life, and that no human being could be regarded as enjoying a blissful
existence unless one is able to implement one’s virtuous predispositions by acting accordingly,
namely by exhibiting virtuous conduct in the various circumstances encountered during one’s life,
and by developing to the utmost extent the potential bestowed on an idividual by nature, that is, by
fulfilling the aims designated by reason. The exercise of virtue, while not a simple means for the
attainment of happiness, is nonetheless an inseparable ingredient for any life aspiring to achieve the
highest goal of happiness. The latter is considered to be unthinkable apart from a way of living where
virtue, far from remaining a mere dispositional attitude, quite on the contary finds the opportunity to
implement itself in action by performing deeds not just conforming to externally imposed standards
of moral behaviour, but actually exhibiting the rules of coduct that have been freely established by
the agent himself on the basis of one’s own rational considerations alone. In such cases, one is acting
purely on one’s own accord, by adhering to the decrees issued by one’s rational thinking and by
selecting the appropriate route that will bring him to what he, as everyone else, most intimately desires,
namely to be happy. In this sense, the wise man, that is, the one who can clearly discern the right
chain of choices and decisions that are truly conductive to the attainment of the final goal, is indeed
both autonomous and free, since he is in a position, in every given circumstance, to make the right
choice, the one that will bring one closer to what one most fervently desires. Acting in accordance to

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virtue is a necessary part, and also the inescapable route leading to happiness, leaving no room for
any other alternative to supplant it.
When we turn to late antiquity, that is, to the era when the last phase of ancient Greek philosophy
flourished, the one we nowadays usually call Neoplatonism, we find an approach to this problem
which, although undoubtedly representing a development based on some of the views presented
earlier, it seems to mark a significant turn, one might even talk of a radical reversal of some of the
fundamental premises that have guided previous thinkers. In my view, the most radical breach can
already be detected in the teaching of the earliest of all Neoplatonists, namely of Plotinus, who was
born in Egypt, but exercised his activity in Rome during the middle of the third century AD. Even
though his teaching displays several superficial similarities with those of some of his predecessors,
especially the Stoics, and despite the fact that he usually presents it as little more than an exegesis or
clarification of the doctrines of Plato, in reality his approach represents a radically new attitude, which
perhaps would be worthwhile to bring to the forefront of modern discussion.
The fundamental tenet that governs and determines all of Plotinus’ theorizing in the area of
ethics is that the final aim every human being aspires to is assimilation to God (homoiosis theoi). This
is based on an utterance by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, and seems to have played a part
in the development of Platonist ethics for some time before Plotinus. Plotinus is quick to establish a
close relation between the reaching of assimilation with God, on the one hand, and of virtue, on the
other, by advocating an intimate relation between the two, explicitly stating that the former is
unattainable unless one follows the course indicated by the latter. In a famous passage (II 9.15.38-9),
he points out that without virtue God is nothing more than an empty name. In other words, that there
is no other course for achieving assimilation to God apart from acting virtuously. On the other hand,
he advocates a hierarchical arrangement of virtues ranging from the most practical (or “political”, as
he calls them) to the most elevated or theoretical, that are able to bring the individual closer to
exercising the activity most proper for divine beings, namely intellectual contemplation. It comes as
no surprise then, that for Plotinus eudaimonia, that is happiness or well-being, is identical with the
highest order of intellectual activity, the one that deals exclusively with supra-sensible realities
populating the transcendent world of pure Platonic forms.
Plotinus’ uncompromising intellectualism immediately raises the question of how the exercise
of practical virtues, such as courage, temperance or justice, unthinkable in the case of a strictly
transcendent God, is related to the attainment of happiness, if the latter is regarded as pertaining only
to the theoretical engagement of the soul in its contemplation of higher, purely intelligible realities.
For he posits happiness or well-being as equivalent to the highest form of life, namely, to the activity
of the immaterial intellect in its grasping of its special objects of cognition. The latter are no different
from the Platonic forms envisaged as comprising a complex level of interconnected existents,
identical with intellect itself, which hence is perennially engaged in a self-reflecting and self-
constituting contemplation of itself. This seems to leave no room for the practical virtues to contribute
anything at all to the attainment of eudaimonia. Practical concerns and activities can only distract the
wise person from focusing on his intellectual activity, and hence can only impede his enjoyment at
participating in this elevated form of life.

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 Indeed, there are passages where Plotinus appears to be advising against someone becoming
involved in any kind of practical activity, even if the latter might otherwise serve some noble purpose,
such as helping one’s fellow humans or even saving one’s country from disaster. This, however,
seems to run against his remark quoted earlier, that appealing to God without practicing virtue is
completely devoid of any sense. Do we have to deal here then with a plain contradiction?
In order to adress this puzzle, one has to examine more carefully Plotinus’ rather idiosyncratic
view regarding practical action or praxis. In his special treatise On Contemplation, he unambiguously
declares that all practical matters are an unworthy concern for a wise person, whose attention should
always and exclusively be focused on his contemplation of intelligible realities alone. Nonetheless,
among these realities are included some that, although they cannot be properly described as virtues,
are said to be the ideal prototypes on the basis of which the various types of virtue are constituted.
These comprise ideal forms such as intellection (noesis), which is said to be the prototype of wisdom,
self-concentration, which is the prototype of self-control, minding one’s own buisiness (oikeiopragia),
which already in Plato is the essence of justice, and abiding purely focused on oneself, which is
regarded as the essential aspect of courage (I 2.7.3-7). These intelligible forms are considered to be
intricately interconnected with each other as to establish a single unified whole of mutually supporting
truths, but they furthermore have an impact on the soul contemplating them, which is bound to reflect
some of their features at the level of its own, temporarily determined mode of existence. This creates
a series of reflections at the various levels of soul’s activities, reaching down to the lowest regions of
practical action. This is the reason why Plotinus describes action (praxis) as an attenuated kind of
contemplation. He makes his position clear in a remarkable passage (III 8.4.31-47), which deserves
to be quoted in full:

Men, when their power of contemplation weakens, make action a shadow of contemplation and reasoning.
Because contemplation is not enough for them, since their souls are weak and they are not able to grasp
the vision sufficiently, and therefore are not filled with it, but still long to see it, they are carried into
action, so as to see what they cannot see with their intellect. When they make something, then, it is
because they want to see their object themselves and also because they want others to be aware of it and
contemplate it, when their project is realised in practice as well as possible. Everywhere we shall find
that making and action are either a weakening or a consequence of contemplation; a weakening, if the
doer or maker had nothing in view beyond the thing done, a consequence if he had another prior object
of contemplation better than what he made. For who, if he is able to contemplate what is truly real will
deliberately go after its image? The duller children, too, are evidence for this, who are incapable of
learning and contemplative studies and turn to crafts and manual work.

This is by all means an extraordinary passage that seems to maintain that all practical activity,
whether virtuous or not, is at best a dim reflection of a much more important aspect of one’s life,
namely that of contemplating pure ideal forms. It finds a correlative in Plotinus’ view concerning the
activity of an artist, who is said to perform or to execute his work not for its own sake, but as a
shadowy reflection of his real goal, which is the intellectual grasp of pure form exhibiting
unadulterated intelligible beauty.

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 Such a statement might create the impression that, in Plotinus’ opinion, practical activity is
almost completely irrelevant for someone’s moral life, since it has no autonomous moral significance,
being a dim “shadow” or a mere concomitant of one’s intellectual engagement with supra-sensible
realities, or even a side effect of one’s attempt to establish such an engagement by means of direct
noetic contemplation. Practical action seems to be viewed as a pis aller, or even as the outcome of a
failed effort to reach a state of happiness by purely intellectual means. Instead of contributing to one’s
achievement of beatitude, it rather looks like a distraction, deflecting one’s attention from one’s
proper intellectual aim towards an inferior task that bears no intrinsic value of its own. In this way,
practical virtue might appear as being a diversion, or even an impediment for one’s effort to achieve
real happiness.
This, however, would be a serious misunderstanding of Plotinus’ position on this issue. For it
completely overlooks the positive aspect of the relation between the two levels of human activity,
which are involved in this model. There can avowedly be no dispute concerning the supremacy of
theoretical knowledge over practical virtue in the philosophy of Plotinus. But this should not obscure
the fact that, even as a dim likeness of contemplation, practical action retains some significant
resemblance to it, thus exhibiting some of its more dignified features, albeit in a reduced and
attenuated mode. It is for this reason that a work of art, for example, although falling short of the
perfect intelligible beauty which is the ideal the artist is aspiring to, nevertheless may still display
some of the engaging characteristics that make it beautiful and appealing to behold. In the same way,
a virtuous act may still reflect the goodness of its prototype residing, as already said, in the intelligible
realm, and thus it can prove to be both valuable and beneficial, although defective in some other
respects.
Moreover, it is crucial here to realize that the relation existing between contemplation and
practical activity is both necessary and one-sided. It conforms to a pattern pervading Plotinus’
thinking in various areas of his philosophy, namely that of an original and its image or trace. In the
same way that an image, qua being an image, necessarily is different from its original in some respects
while at the same time it reflects some of its features, virtuous action is different from theoretical
thinking by being involved in the contingencies of the external world, but at the same time shares
with it some of its more elevated features, such as the aspiration for what, at the time, appears to be
the good, or the best course of action. It is important to notice here that the necessity of this relation
is such as to render unavoidable the occurrence of the consequent, namely of the expression of the
corresponding ruling issued on the theoretical level in the area of practical action, at least in the form
of an intention for action, since, as we have already seen, the eventual outcome of any act is bound
to be, at least to some extent, undecidable. In other words, the wise person who engages in
contemplation of the eternal truths is bound to always act in a virtuous manner, at least as far as the
intentions governing the particular act are concerned. This is not because he wishes to conform to
any externally imposed regulations or rules of action, but because he carries within him the principles
of virtuous conduct and realizes that one can only be free if one acts in accordance to these. For only
such adherence can offer him what he most fervently aspires to, namely a happy life.
There are, of course, external contingencies that may prevent the full realization of what a
particular act was actually intended to achieve, however this in no way retracts from its virtuous

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character, nor affects its conformity with the rules preexisting in the intelligible realm. On the other
hand, it becomes unavoidable that the wise person will choose to act in accordance to these rules, and
in this way try to make the world a better place to live in. But one needs to be clear that this is not the
true aim of the wise person’s actions. For his or her real concern is only to contemplate, and hence to
conform to the unalterable realities inhabiting the intelligible world, existing beyond all worldly
contingency. This is why one is not concerned with, or disurbed by, the eventual outcome of his
actions, since one should be aware of the fact that this inevitably depends on a plurality of external
influences completely out of one’s control. In other words, action is always beset by a radical
deficiency regarding its actual impact on a given worldly situation.
It is important to investigate more closely the reasons for this deficiency. There is a passage
from Plotinus’ treatise On Free Will (VI 8.5.1-21), which is most illuminating in this respect:

Is self-determination and being in one’s own power, then, only in intellect when it thinks, that is, pure
intellect, or is it also in soul when it is active according to intellect and engaged in practical action
according to virtue? Now if we are going to grant it to the soul engaged in practical action, first of all it
should not perhaps be granted in reference to the accomplishment; for it is not we who are in charge of
the accomplishment. But it is granted in reference to acting finely and doing everything which comes
from oneself, this might be correctly said. But how is that in our power? For instance, if we are brave
because there is war; what I mean is, how is the activity then in our power when if war did not break out
it would not be possible to carry out this activity? But it is also the same with the other actions done
according to virtue, since virtue is always being compelled to do this or thatto cope with what turns up.
For certainly if someone gave virtue itself the choice whether it would like in order to be active that there
should be wars, that it might be brave, and that there should be injustice that it might define what is just
and set things in order, and poverty, that it might display its liberality, or to stay quiet because everything
was well, it would choose to rest from its practical activities because nothing needed its curative action,
as if a physician, for instance Hippocrates, were to wish that nobody needed his skill.

It emerges from this text that the main deficiency besetting all practical endeavors is the
uncertainty regarding the external circumstances in which they occur and the contingent character of
the state of affairs in one’s life that determine one’s choices as advantageous or preferable to others.
There are further inherent deficiencies in the sensible world, due to the latter’s material constitution,
and practical virtues are meant to remedy those as far as possible. However, the treatment of such
deficiencies is not always dependent on the individual agent’s will and they are therefore envisaged
by him or her as external constraints on one’s freedom of choice. Someone is totally free in his pursuit
of happiness only in so far as his activity is directed toward the intelligible world, whose inherent
stability and the strict identity between the contemplating subject and the contemplated object serve
as a guarantee for the unperturbed bliss to be enjoyed there. And there cannot be any greater happiness
than sharing in the eternal life that pervades the intelligible realm.
We see now how this new approach to the notion of happiness reverses in a drastic way its
relation to virtue that we have encountered in earlier thinkers. Virtue is no longer treated as a means,
not even as a constituent part of happiness, but instead is reduced to the status of a simple concomitant
or of a side effect, one might say, of the enjoyment of true happiness. This is why it represents not a
transient or whimsical dispositional attitude on the part of the individual, but rather a deep seated
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condition of the soul, which reflects its determination to persist in its grasp of intelligible truth and
not to be diverted by external concerns or by temporary passions that merely restrain it by captivating
it in the snares of destiny and of contingent occurences. In this way, it becomes clear that the principal
element which determines whether an individual is capable of attaining happiness is one’s autonomy,
namely one’s capacity to determine by oneself whether he will conform with the goodness residing
among the intelligibles, and thus attain true happiness. For a person can be entirely happy only if he
or she is completely free to pursue the eternal truth that resides in the deepest core of his own existence,
as the foundation of his rationality which allows a mortal human being to become assimilated to God,
and thus to participate, as far as possible, in its divine eternal bliss.

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 Recognizing the Good in Husserl and Heidegger

Thomas J. NENON
University of Memphis

Introduction

For too long, the contrast has been drawn between a “representationalist” Husserl and a much more
forward-thinking Heidegger whose approach is much closer to what we might now think of in terms
of an “enactivist” theory of knowledge and practice, 1 or between what Heidegger himself called
Husserl’s “reflective phenomenology” versus his own “hermeneutics of factical existence.” Dreyfus
and Føllesdal are among the well-known proponents of the former view; Friedrich Wilhelm von
Herrmann as recently rehearsed the latter.2 In my talk this evening, I do not intend to attempt to
explain why I think these oppositions are not only misleading, but also overlook the close relationship
between the two in Heidegger’s early and Husserl’s middle period (i.e. from about 1919 through
1927). Instead I intend to on what I think was the most basic and fundamental difference that
separated the two during this period, one that concerns one of the most ancient and fundamental issues
for philosophy since its inception, namely the nature of the good and how we recognize it.
If one reads Heidegger’s own account of their relationship during this period by looking at what
he says about Husserl in the lecture courses that he gave in Freiburg and Marburg between 1919 and
the publication of Sein und Zeit 3 in 1927, it becomes clear that in the first few years, they saw
themselves as two fellow researchers each pursuing phenomenology as—to use Heidegger’s words—
the “original science of life in itself” (“Ursprungswissenschaft vom Leben an sich”) (GA 58, 1)4 or
simply of “Geist” (GA 58, 19) not only in parallel, but also in collaboration. Part of the reason for
Heidegger’s close identification with Husserl was not only the fundamental insights he had gained
ever since reading the Logische Untersuchungen beginning with his university studies in 1909,5 but
also the trajectory that Husserl’s work had taken after his encounter with Dilthey as articulated, for

1 For a recent refutation of this position as an accurate picture of Husserl, see Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Legacy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 51-76.
2 For a summary of this description and my objections to it, see my review of Wilhelm-Friedrich von Herrmann’s
Hermeneutics and Reflection: Heidegger and Husserl on the Concept of Phenomenology, in: Notre Dame Philosophical
Review: An Electronic Journal, July 2014.
3 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1972), abbreviated in the following as SZ.All
citations will be listed according to the page numbers in the Niemeyer edition, which are also listed in the margins of both
of the published English translations.
4 Martin Heidegger,Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (Wintersemester 1919/20), ed. H.-H. Gander, Gesamtausgabe,
Band 58 (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann Verlag,1992). References to Heidegger’s works other than Sein und Zeit will be
cited according to the Gesamtausgabe, listing the volume number, followed by the page number.The English translations
of the lecture courses list these page numbers at the headers of the translation text.
5 As reported in his own account of his life from the Foreword to his Frühe Schriften from 1972 (GA 1, 56).

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example, in the Third Part of Ideen II1 and in his lectures on “Natur und Geist.”2 In particular, it
becomes apparent that the Ideen II is in fact the main texts that Heidegger had in mind in the famous
footnote in Being and Time where he thanks Husserl for “intensive personal guidance and the most
generous access to unpublished investigations that had acquainted him with the most diverse areas of
phenomenological research” (SZ 38). Here, Husserl had come to recognize that our primary and
everyday approach to the world is not as mere theoretical observers and perceivers, but as persons
engaged with our own projects, together other persons that we comprehend and understand within
social, historical and communicative frameworks, and with things that surround us and that we grasp
immediately as use- and cultural objects constituted primarily in terms of the practical and aesthetic
predicates, i.e. their relevance for our projects and our values. Another way of putting it for both
Husserl and for Heidegger, is that they our daily lives are conducted in a practical Umwelt that is both
historical and communal.
This is also the same period in which Husserl was presenting lectures on ethics centered around
a robust notion of personhood and coming to ask how we can conduct our lives as authentic existences,
which also brought him closer to themes that we are all well familiar with from the early Heidegger
as well.
However, it is here that a fundamental difference not only remained, but emerged more clearly
during this period. In the 1923-24 course, Heidegger introduces the object of phenomenological
research by means of “Husserl’s up until now furthest developed position, the ‘Ideas concerning a
Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Research’” (GA 17, 47). He cites Husserl’s description
of phenomenology “as the descriptive eidetic science of pure consciousness” (ibid., 139), but
criticizes Husserl’s assumption that philosophy must be a science (ibid., 79-82) and its overemphasis
on theoretical knowledge as the model for experience as a whole (ibid., 82-83). Between the earliest
Freiburg lectures and this course in Marburg, Heidegger had come to see a difference between the
basic direction of Husserl’s work and his own. He does not see Husserl’s orientation on verifiable
truths as helpful for the kinds of questions now in the foreground for him. “One should note above
all that truth, in as far as it is interpreted as validity, hides the decisive problems of Dasein. The
question is whether for historical knowledge in general the interpretation of truth as validity makes
any sense. Even more questionable is it with regard to philosophical knowledge, most impossible is
it in the case of the ‘truth’ of art and religion” (ibid., 98). He emphasizes that “… what Husserl says
about evidence is vastly superior to everything else that has ever been said about it and that he placed
the issue on secure footing for the first time” (GA 17, 272-73), and he acknowledges—without
reference to the specific passages in the Ideen I to this effect3—“… that Husserl sees that each domain
of objects has a specific evidence corresponding to its content …” (ibid., p. 273), but adds, “… by
contrast, the authentic question of evidence in the most fundamental sense only begins with the

1 Edmund Husserl,Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch,
Husserliana, Band IV (den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952 References to Husserl’s works will be cited using the volume
number from the Husserliana series in roman numerals followed by the page number in Arabic numbers. These page
numbers are normally listed in the margins of translations into other languages, including English.
2 Edmund Husserl, Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919, Husserliana. Materialien. Band IV (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 2002).
3 Namely §§138-39 (Hua III, 321-24).

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question about the specific evidence of the access to Being and the disclosure of a being, of retaining
and holding on to a Being that has become accessible. Only within the phenomenon grasped in this
way does theoretical evidence have its place” (ibid.). Heidegger says that Ideen I fails to move far
enough beyond the tendencies within modern philosophy to categorize and scientifically determine
everything including consciousness itself. He sees the project of determining life as the whole of
experiences that are seen as individual facts instead of “understanding life itself in its authentic Being
and responding to the question concerning the character of its Being” (ibid., 274-75) as deeply
problematic.
The fundamental character of life in its authentic Being is what he calls “temporality,” which
now means above all a confrontation with one’s finitude and the fact that life is a performance
(Vollzug) that must be understood as “call.” Life is not a fact but something that must be accomplished.
This reliance on facts is what Heidegger means by “validity” in the passage cited above. The critique
of truth as validity implies that Heidegger now sees Husserl’s project as hindered by his presumption
the kinds of questions at stake in the truth of art and religion can be answered by intuitions that will
provide the same kind of certainty and universal validity that is possible for theoretical questions.
Heidegger’s position will eventually culminate in the famous dictum from Sein und Zeit that the
most fundamental questions must be faced with the awareness that no one and nothing can provide
Dasein with the answer to the question of the ultimate source of meaning for one’s life and that facing
up to the essential indeterminacy of the proper response is essential for authentic Dasein. Hence the
remarks at the end of the course where he describes the task of phenomenology as “explicating Dasein
in its Being” (ibid., 278) and as “the exhibition (Aufweis) of Dasein itself” (ibid., 279). What
Heidegger calls the “historical” here is not a set of facts, but a point of decision. His critique of
Husserl, above all of the predominant tendencies still present in his work, even his work on ethics, is
that his orientation on reason modeled upon the search for knowledge is ill equipped to handle these
sorts of questions.1
By1925 at the latest, Heidegger had come to the conclusion that, in spite of Husserl’s
contributions to phenomenology, his approach still remained too strongly oriented on the model of
theoretical knowledge and a conception of truth that was not adequate to address questions about “the
truth of art and religion.” He also claimed that Husserl’s his approach was not adequate to the primary
task of phenomenology, which is “understanding life itself in its authentic Being and responding to
the question concerning the character of its Being” (GA 64, 274-75), life not as an object of
knowledge, but as something that must be enacted and accomplished.
But what does Heidegger mean by that? My claim is that the basic difference is due to their
differing views on the possibility of a grounding for ethics, if by ethics we mean an inquiry into the
nature and foundations for right action guided by some conception of the good. Husserl contends that
the very nature of reason involves the implicit claim that all sorts of position-takings, including
decisions about right actions, point to the possibility of an intuition, an experience that can confirm

1 If one wants to try to identify a “turning point” in this gradual development, a good candidate would be the lectures on
Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens (GA 60) in which the guiding model is the early Christian issue of the “conversion”
to a whole different dimension of temporality—the time of eternal life versus the time of mundane existence—as
articulated in the Pauline epistles. See on this issue Ted Kiesel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), 176-227.

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or refute the validity of that position-taking consistent with the intention/fulfillment structure of
consciousness in general. Heidegger by contrast considers this as ill-suited to the basic questions that
provide the ultimate grounding for action, and he sees this view as an illicit reliance on a model taken
from theoretical reason. He contends rather that authentic Dasein recognizes that Dasein itself must
take on the responsibility of providing meaning to a life, but that “no one and nothing” can relieve
one of the burden of that choice—which is why in authentic Dasein, the voice of conscience that calls
one to face up to this fact speaks silently because it cannot tell you what the right choice is. The main
sources that I will use to highlight these differences will be Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit and Husserl’s
lectures from 1920-24 entitled “Einleitung in die Ethik” (“Introduction to Ethics”), published a few
years ago as Volume XXXVII of the Husserliana.1

Heidegger on the Groundless Ground. Reading Sein und Zeit in light of the line of thinking
developed in the early lectures, it is very clear that when Heidegger criticizes earlier philosophers for
having failed to address the question of the meaning of Being, it is the Being not of things that
populate the world, but of the world itself as a set of possible ways of Being, of Dasein that has been
overlooked from his perspective. Reading the early lectures in light of the much more extensive
discussion of death, conscience, resoluteness, and temporality presented in Sein und Zeit allows the
reader to see much better what Heidegger was thinking in the much briefer discussions of those topics
with which he closes the 1925 lectures cited in the first section of this chapter. The general direction
of the analyses is already apparent in those lectures when he says that “Facing (Vorlaufen) death in
each moment (Augenblick) of Dasein signifies Dasein’s self-retrieval out of the They (Man) in the
sense of choosing oneself” (GA 20, 440) and that, “In facing its death, Dasein can make itself
responsible in an absolute sense” (GA 20, 440-41). To argue that the main topic of Sein und Zeit is
the possibility of grounding an ethics is at least controversial, and perhaps even provocative, but it is
a thesis that I will attempt to explain and defend in the following remarks.2
In some ways, it is easier to see how the project of Sein und Zeit can appropriately be described
as a non-metaphysical grounding of ethics in light of the earlier lectures that provide some of this
background to Sein und Zeit. In general terms, one can see how the question that later shows up as
the question of the meaning of the Being of beings in general and of Dasein very specifically and its
relationship to originary temporality emerges against the background of questions into the proper
kind life as a practical matter, as a choice for which one must take responsibility. My claim is that, in
spite of the changes in terminology, the same question is still the fundamental issue at stake in Sein
und Zeit.
Of course, we recall that Heidegger does not begin Sein und Zeit with an analysis of Dasein per
se. Rather, in the First Division of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger introduces the notion of world by way of
an analysis of how objects within the world show up for us in our daily lives. The fundamental trait

1 Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Ethik, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920/1925, Husserliana Band
XXXVII,ed.Henning Peucker (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004).
2 It is, however, not completely new; for instance, Francois Raffoul claimed something quite similar at OPO II in Lima
and made a good, but slightly different case for it compared to the description I will lay out here.Francois Raffoul,
“Heidegger and Ethics,” Selected Essays from North America. Phenomenology 2005,Volume 5, eds. Lester Embree and
Thomas Nenon (Bucharest: Zeta Books 2006), pp. 501-22.

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that this analysis reveals is that it is part of their very nature that they have Bewandtnis or relevance
in some way to us (SZ 83-85). They are meaningful not in themselves, but in reference to what can
or cannot be done with them, how they affect us in our daily lives. “Relevance” points in two
directions: something (an object within the world) is relevant for doing or accomplishing something
(an activity). Hence “worldhood” is introduced by showing how things we encounter in our daily
lives are organized around the way they fit into our goals and are well or ill-suited to helping us
accomplish the things we want to do, “possibilities of Dasein” he calls them. “World” then is not a
sum of objects within the world or a temporal-spatial realm within which objects are located, but a
set of possibilities of Dasein that form the backdrop for how objects within the world appear for us.
Moreover, Heidegger also points to the fact that these “possibilities of Dasein,” as ways of doing
things or reacting to things we encounter in our lives, are themselves organized into interrelated
“contexts of meaning” (Bedeutungszusammenhänge) and that there is a hierarchical relationship
between the levels of meaning, where objects are not only organized according to their function as
means towards some end that is a possibility of Dasein (hammers for driving in nails, and homes as
places to live), but that these possibilities themselves are organized into means/ends relationships
(driving in nails to make a home, having a home to provide shelter, be a good investment, or impress
one’s friends) in which every means (einWozu), be it an object or an activity, points to some other
activity (in the broadest sense whereby even having things happen to you is an activity, a way of
being (“Seinsweise”), or a “possibility of Dasein” that has meaning for us and from which it derives
the significance it has, until ultimately one comes upon some possibility that has meaning in itself
and for no other purpose outside itself (SZ 84). This is the Worumwillen, the “for-the-sake-of-which,”
what one might call the ultimate end or the highest priority in light of which all other things and
activities derive the significance that they have for Dasein (ibid.).
But where does this Worumwillen come from? What provides the justification for it?
Heidegger’s analysis of fallenness suggests that in everyday life meanings seem just to be there “in”
the things within the world or that they are social conventions whose substantiality (to use Hegel’s
term) consists in the fact that they seem as solid and objective as the brilliance or hardness of a
diamond because there seems to be no one individual to whom they can be traced back as their source,
and hence no one who could simply revoke them and their power if he or she chose to do so.
What anxiety, as Heidegger describes it, reveals is that this substantiality is an illusion (SZ 184-
88). In anxiety, things lose their meanings, their relevance becomes questionable or it fades away. If
indeed they were as substantial as they otherwise might seem, this would be impossible. This does
not necessarily mean that there is not a right or a wrong answer to the question about what really is
good, and of course it does not mean that it makes no difference which answer you choose. As much
as anything else within the world, the answer one accepts is decisive for who one is and what course
one’s life will take. What anxiety reveals is that no thing and no one can tell you the answer, can tell
you what is really important, what the ultimate ends, the highest priorities for a life should be. If there
were something or someone that could tell you that answer apart from a standard one has already
accepted, in terms of which something would count as the answer, then things would once again
regain the meaning that is missing in anxiety. But if no one and nothing can, then there is no firm
ground from which to make a decision. Yet, since each life is always explicitly or implicitly guided

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by some sense of an ultimate end or highest priority for a life, one cannot wait around to make a
decision until such a firm ground emerges.
Perhaps there are other modes of access to this insight than the experience of anxiety as
Heidegger describes it, but even if that is true, the basic point stays the same. No thing and no one
can tell you what the ultimate norms for a life should be—or better put—no one can tell you who to
listen to (people try to tell us all the time) about the ultimate norms, the highest priorities for a life,
except in terms of ends or priorities that we have already accepted as valid. If those are precisely what
are in question, then this is indeed a rather unsettling experience, especially if you would like to have
something solid and substantial to tell you what is and is not good and important, and thereby to
provide a reliable guide for action.
In everyday life, it looks like the answer is settled or at least like there is some firm ground for
settling the issue. I take it that one of the main differences between authentic and inauthentic being-
a-self is that in authentic being-a-self, one is aware that there is no firm ground outside of oneself to
which one can appeal to find out what the ultimate end or the highest priority for a life should be. For
Heidegger, the question of the good is the question of what is important in life. And once again, we
recall that, already in the First Part, Heidegger had suggested that no one (the They) and nothing (no
being within the world or any feature of it apart from the relevance we give it in light of the
significance we attach to the possibilities of Dasein that it furthers or hinders) can tell us the answer.
In fact, even the call of conscience that Heidegger sees as calling one to authentic existence, speaks
“silently” for precisely this reason (SZ 277, 296). If conscience could tell us the answer, then a force
outside of ourselves other than Dasein, and not Dasein itself, would be the source of meaning and
direction.
So if there is an answer, it has to be one for which I am responsible. Even if I choose an answer
that I take from someone or somewhere else—revealed religion, the traditions of my ethnic
background or my family, my friends, my teachers—, then it is I who have done so and no one else.
The fact that I am the one who accepts this answer that sets the overall priorities in my life and has a
certain view about the significance of events and things within the world for me, Heidegger terms—
I do not think, inappropriately— “freedom” (SZ 266; cf. WdGr 51), moreover not just freedom in
general, but “freedom towards death.”
Why does he call it “freedom towards death”? I would like to suggest that this is intimately
connected with the way that Dasein is the ground of its choices through the adoption of a
Worumwillen that, precisely because it is ultimate, cannot be grounded in anything else. It is freedom,
among other things, because it involves a choice and because no one and nothing can determine this
choice for Dasein. It is appropriately called “freedom” because it is about a choice, and it is about a
choice that is not determined outside of Dasein. It does indeed have ontological significance because
it sets the context against which things can show up as the kinds of things they are, but since what it
above all concerns is the “Worumwillen” of a life that is Dasein’s own, this is not a matter of
theoretical classification as much as it is about what things matter and what things do not, and how
they matter—whether they are to be embraced or avoided, valued or shunned. And it not only has
practical implications, but if this is right, it is this primary or original choice that determines what one
should and must do. If the examples of “ways to be” are taken simply from the everyday activities of

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Dasein, then the kind of practical concerns one is describing are things like “building a house” or
“being a chemist” whose value is presupposed, and the predicates for objects within the world are
simply utility-characteristics. But if, in authentic Dasein, what one realizes is that the question is what
gives meaning to a life, then the question goes far beyond utility and what is up for debate is not just
how best to accomplish a given aim, but rather what the proper aim for a life in general is.
To say that it is “freedom towards death” is another way of stating what he calls in Wesen des
Grundes the “finitude” of human freedom. In that essay, the finitude is connected with the fact that
freedom is something that “happens to us,” and that our choices are “finite.” This explains why he
says that freedom is not only the “ground,” but also the “Ab-grund” (“abyss”) of Dasein, that it is the
“Ohnmacht” (powerlessness) because it is not in Dasein’s control whether this originary event occurs.
Dasein projects (entwirft), en-visages a Worumwillen, but it does so as thrown, which is the first
limitation. Dasein does not get to decide its starting point or its circumstances. For instance, I did not
choose to be born into a modern technological age any more than ancient Greeks chose not to, but
our possibilities are very different nonetheless and both of us must still make choices about the
ultimate priorities for our lives within each of those different contexts. Moreover, Dasein is also not
free not to choose, Dasein does not get to decide whether to set a highest priority for itself or not; and,
at any point where the moment of authentic decision arrives, Dasein discovers that it has already been
making this basic decision all along whether it knew it or not. In Sein und Zeit, the finitude that I am
or rather enact at each moment (what he calls “being-towards-the-end” or “constantly dying”), is
brought out by such phrases as the “impossibility of Dasein,” or my being “das (nichtige) Grund-sein
einer Nichtigkeit” (SZ 285). Finally, setting an end or a goal for a life does not necessarily mean one
will achieve that goal.
The finitude of freedom also means that fallenness is not an accident because to live is to act in
a concrete setting that involves interaction with things in the world (that are not under my complete
control) and other people. It involves not just holding possibilities open as such, but also necessarily
seizing one of them not just as a possibility but as the actual priority that guides my actions and my
refraining from acting and thereby becomes part of something concrete as well—or if I fail to do so,
then the abstract choice of holding open possibilities is my highest priority, whose choice prevents
me from seizing upon any one of them, and this is in itself a concrete course of action or “inaction”
that I have chosen.
Is there any way of knowing what will happen if I make one sort of life my ultimate priority
instead of another? For Heidegger, the answer is no. Is there someone who can tell me the answer?
Again, the answer is no. It is something for which each individual must take responsibility. And are
there any facts in the world that can tell me what matters, what makes a life meaningful? This is for
Heidegger the most important question and what we have been suggesting is that the answer here is
once again no, but that the decision about what is to count as significant is the most important question
there is and that it is the ground of all other significance and relevance of events and things that
happen in the world, which is to say within one’s life. That is why I have been arguing that, for
Heidegger, the most important question in ethics is one that one can only face authentically when one
recognizes that Dasein is the groundless ground of all meaning in the world and that what counts as
right and wrong is decided by Dasein’s resolute commitment (he calls it a “projection”) to the

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goodness of a specific form of life that it recognizes is just one possibility among many. This is then
anything but a theoretical question and there is no “fact,” nothing that theoretical reason or anything
like it can contribute to the solution or grounding of the answer to this question.

Husserl on the Ultimate Grounds of Ethics. Husserl’s project in his Einleitung in die Ethik lectures,
by contrast, is to show how moral and ethical reasoning functions in ways that parallel theoretical
reason. The general program of a Husserlian ethics could hence be described as the programmatic
attempt to show that there are structures of reason within the practical and axiological spheres that
are analogous to those within the sphere of theoretical reason, and he even provides a relatively
specific example of this parallel in a passage from the lectures that deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

Indeed we have spoken repeatedly about a distinction within the sphere of emotional acts that we called
evaluative acts of feeling that precisely parallels the distinction between judgments of opinion and
judgments based on insight that are grasped as the truth. We just need to emphasize that these are not
passive graspings of value, but rather acts that have been performed by the I. We can say that the so-
called grasping of value, of which it is said that it is a loving grasping of value, in which the value itself
is comprehended and possessed is the originary acquisition through a conscious act as opposed to a mere
opining its value, this I’s act of loving, looking forward to something etc. that just opines it as something
to look forward to, considers it lovable, but has not appropriated the value in an originary way and in
itself—or in the opposite case, has experienced a rejection, a disappointment when the I in the attempt at
originary appropriation experiences that the thing that was valued is in truth not something pleasant, that
the thing that was considered beautiful is a piece of awful kitsch, etc. In the same way in the sphere of
willing, there is a new kind of motivating acts for practical decisions just as there are for acts of believing
and in acts of valuing. (XXXVII, 120)

“Reason” in the practical sphere is not, therefore, a matter of theoretical calculation or of the
intellect alone. It is the self’s directedness towards appropriate experiences and intuitions that can
serve as confirmation for the purportedly beautiful or valuable in the aesthetic or the good in the
ethical sphere. It is also clear how reason is not the opposite of feelings. Rather it is the search for
appropriate feelings and dispositions for acting. For Husserl, not all feelings are created equal and
not every feeling is sui generis pathological in a Kantian sense. For him, the question is not how to
have pure practical reason trump all of our inclinations, but rather how to sort out the appropriate
from inappropriate inclinations. In fact, Husserl believes that all actions are motivated by feelings:
“Mere understanding is not practical. Only feelings can determine actions” (XXXVII,170), and
further,

Human beings’ practical conduct is manifestly determined by feeling. If we attempted to extinguish all
feeling from the human breast, then concepts such as end and means, good and bad, virtue and vice and
all of the concepts that belong to them would lose their meaning. Human beings would not then be
striving, willing, acting beings anymore. We must then have recourse to feelings and more precisely
investigate them, in order to be able to clarify the sense of ethical concepts and to study human beings as
ethical beings, to clarify the uniqueness of their moral conduct, and to provide grounding for the ethical
laws that explain it. (XXXVII, 148)

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 Even Kant recognizes that feelings must play a central role in ethical life when he acknowledges
that the awareness of the obligatory character of the moral law gives rise to the feeling of respect that
motivates a person to act in a manner consistent with the law, but Husserl wants to recognize a much
wider range of acceptable feelings as appropriate motivating factors for rational agents. He mentions
approval and disapproval, but also love—love of oneself and love of others—and “Seligkeit,” two
concepts that he adopts from Fichte, and some of his other examples seem to point to feelings such
as pride, a sense of accomplishment, and others that could be legitimate reasons to act ethically as
well.
Even though Husserl disagrees with Kant on the role and range of feelings in ethical decision-making,
he does agree with him on one point, namely that the fundamental concept of an ethical life as rational
is duty, and that duty involves the decision-making that any rational agent should in principle be able
to accept as appropriate in these specific circumstances. Husserl is not a formalist, among other things
because he believes that the specific circumstances and limitations do matter in ethical decision-
making, but he believes that it is inconsistent with morality for an agent to place a higher priority on
his or her own specific ends or perspective than to those of other rational agents. Here again he sees
a parallel with theoretical truths. People often disagree even about fairly basic matters of fact and
often have their own individual views about them, but from Husserl’s perspective that does not mean
that they are all correct or that none of them are. So too in the moral realm the idea of a moral ought
or duty means:

... that every moral judgment does not merely express a subjective feeling and not even just the general
fact that every normal human beings in fact tends to feel and act this way, but rather that according to its
very sense contains the claim that the particular practical conduct is correct or incorrect ... Moral truth
includes just as every mathematical and every other judgment the sense that whoever decides this way,
morally, mathematically or any other way, decides correctly, just as falsehood includes the sense that
whoever decides this way decides incorrectly, in a way that is to be condemned. (XXXVII, 149)

He stresses a couple of pages later that there are also some significant differences between
mathematical and practical truths. For instance, mathematical truths do not express norms as practical
truths do. However, he does agree that the very nature of practical reason itself dictates that everyone
should recognize the truth of some basic practical principles such as the principle of love of neighbor
(Nächstenliebe) that follows from the nature of reason itself as universal and establishes an affinity
to Kant’s categorical imperative, in spite of Husserl’s reservations about Kant’s “formalism” and
Kant’s refusal to recognize moral differences among the very different kinds of feelings that can
legitimately motivation ethical decisions beyond mere respect for the moral law. He agrees with Kant
about the universal responsibility of all human beings to recognize these principles when he says that
even the moral sinner can recognize the sin and know what should have been done.
The parallels between the theoretical and practical reason for Husserl then are explicit and very clear.
Just as within the theoretical sphere, for Husserl reason is universal. In a negative sense, this means
that anything that could not in general be compatible with the willing of other free beings is ruled out.
Positively speaking, it means that any reasonable person should be able to agree with the rightness of
practical decisions under similar circumstances. Circumstances matter for Husserl, including one’s

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historical and cultural settings against which authentically egoic acts are undertaken, and these
include acts of valuing and willing, so different persons will reasonably choose differently, and what
makes the decision or act right in a given setting is not something that the individual decides but
rather discovers. It is something about which the person can be right or wrong and that the further
course of experience or perhaps reflection or discussions with others can confirm or disconfirm.
Although it is not theoretical insights guiding practical actions alone or even primarily, the structure
of intention and fulfillment that Husserl identifies with the sphere of theoretical reason as the rational
ground of theoretical judgments has parallels in notions of right valuing and right action that find
confirmation or disconfirmation through the further course of experience as well.

Conclusion

The previous remarks have attempted to show that Heidegger correctly identifies a fundamental and
important point of difference between them. When he argues that Husserl is too much oriented on the
model of the science and the theoretical realm that cannot appropriately deal with questions about the
truth of art and religion, I am suggesting that what is really at issue is the question about the ultimate
principles for practice, for actions, and whether they can be justified in ways that parallel justification
of theoretical beliefs or not. Heidegger thinks not; Husserl believes that they must be. For Husserl,
responsibility involves critical reflection on and submission to the constraints of practical reason
through respect for universality and the constant reexamination of sedimented values and tendencies
to action through the confirmation that appropriate kinds of experiences or intuitions provide. For
Heidegger, responsibility means recognizing that these are fundamental choices for which no one and
nothing else can provide justification, that these choices must be resolutely faced as “projections” of
Dasein. This is what authentic futurity entails and why he calls this feature of human existence
originary temporality. Heidegger not only notes the differences, but claims that Husserl is mistaken.
Is there a way to decide?
Husserl’s conception seems to suggest that there is some standard or experience that could
demand universal agreement about basic priorities or fundamental goods. This seems mistaken to me.
Perhaps that is one reason why, except for formal principles such as respect for other persons, Husserl
himself fails to provide a normative ethics, and that where he does move in that direction by praising
the virtues of the arts or learning over other more “base” activities, the case he makes for them seems
weak, and seems more to represent the consensus of a specific society (Germany) at a specific time
(late 19th, early 20th century) than a universal principle.
At the same time, however, I do think that Husserl is correct when he emphasizes that we do not
believe something is preferable because we prefer it, but that we prefer something because we find it
preferable. I think it belongs to the phenomenon of seeing something as good or valuable that we
sense ourselves as recognizing, not making it. I think that I recognize something about the goodness
of continuing learning that I think other people miss. They are sure that they are recognizing
something about the importance of physical attractiveness or great wealth that I miss. We have
different priorities because we see things differently. This is, I think, what Husserl means when he

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says that recognizing values and goods are “intuitions.” From the perspective of the person “choosing”
a life, they are choosing it because they recognize it as the best.
The question is whether it makes sense to think of the answer to questions about the ultimate or
most basic good not just in terms of the general structure of intention and fulfillment, but whether the
model of fulfillment (or disappointment) from the theoretical realm is applicable here as well, in
particular whether what one person learns and experiences is generalizable for experience in general
in a way that is similar to way that fulfillments in the theoretical realm purport to hold for everyone
in similar circumstances. My own view is that Heidegger is correct when he claims that ultimate ends
are foundational in a way that makes them significantly different from claims about theoretical states
of affairs and even of practical judgments about means and ends. I think that what I or anyone else
comes to view as the appropriate priorities for a life under certain circumstances will not always or
even normally seem compelling to others. However, I still disagree with Heidegger’s description of
these ultimate priorities as mere “projections” instead of what present themselves to us as insights.
Even if do not necessarily expect others to share my insights, I do believe that they are valid, that my
own experience confirms their validity, and that they therefore do not operate completely outside the
intention/fulfillment structure. The fact that not all people share these insights does not make them
seem less compelling for the person who has them. I would argue that these kinds of insights resemble
theoretical insights to the extent that the act of seeing, the noesis, —in this case the recognition of the
valuable and the good—, is directed to what is seen, the noema—in this case the truly valuable and
the good. We prefer this life over that because we really do think it is more valuable and better—a
fundamentally Platonic position perhaps. But whereas Plato could claim that the recognition of the
good is a kind of theorein because there is something to be seen there, it is hard to think of an example
of confirmation or disconfirmation for ultimate ends that is akin to that of theoretical intentions if
these ultimate ends are, to use Heidegger’s language, not anything that resides within the world, but
rather constitute the meaningfulness of the world as such.

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 Joy, Wealth and Wisdom
--An Ethical Paradigm of the Good Life in Early Confucian Texts

Xinzhong Yao
Renmin University of China

Abstract: This paper is intended to construct a particular Confucian paradigm of the good life as
ascribed in the early Confucian texts. To fully appreciate this paradigm, we will investigate how
virtue and wisdom converge at the joyfulness of life, what kind of roles wealth and friendship play in
life, why joy is said to be derived from virtue and wisdom and is able to enable virtue and wisdom to
be fully appreciated. This has made Confucian paradigm of the good life essentially ethical: only
those who are joyful, virtuous and wise can lead a truly good life.
Key Words: Good Life Wisdom Joyfulness Confucian Philosophy

Unlike the modern philosophy that is heavily theorised on the separation of subjectivity from
objectivity, philosophers in ancient Greece and China take conceptual analysing and reasoning merely
as a way leading to the good life. The most famous example of this practical orientation can be found
in Aristotle who claims that human flourishing or happiness (eudaimonia) is the highest end of
intellectual activities, stating that ‘all knowledge and every pursuits aims at some good’, and ‘the
highest of all practical goods’ is ‘happiness’ that is identified with ‘living well or doing well’1.
‘Living well’ or ‘doing well’ requires more than general knowledge and cannot be achieved
unless in the guidance of wisdom. Philosophy, the intellectual activity of pursuing wisdom, has thus
become a necessary part of any paradigm on the good life. While living well is a complex of many
dimensions and layers, as far as an individual person is concerned, it would normally considered from
three interconnected perspectives: the internal perspective concerning whether or not one would feel
satisfied (for example, with oneself and with one’s living conditions), the external perspective that
takes into account the factors on adequate means to meet one’s needs (for example, wealth,
friendship), and the ultimate perspective that seeks insight into human nature and destiny (for
example wisdom or faith)2. Among these three, the internal satisfaction is normally taken as a prime
measure of one’s perception of good life.
The good life is therefore often defined by ‘happiness’. Happiness is understood differently in
different cultures and in different philosophical traditions, but it is generally interpreted more in terms
of the satisfaction of multi-layered and multiple structured needs 3 , than merely as emotional
satisfaction and sensual pleasures 4 . In Greek philosophies it is often associated with intellectual

1
The Ethics of Aristotle—The Nicomachean Ethics, translated by J.A.K. Thomson, revised with notes and appendices by
Hugh Tredennick, introduction and bibliography by Jonathan Barnes, Penguin Books, 1976, p. 66.
2
B. D. Robins, ‘What is the Good Life? Positive Psychology and the Renaissance of Humanistic Psychology’, Humanistic
Psychologist, 2008, 36 (2): 96-112.
3
Abraham Maslow: “A Theory of Human Motivation”, Psychological Review, 1943, 50 (4): 370–96; Motivation and
Personality. New York, NY: Harper, 1954.
4
Although supported by many empirical philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham who claims that ‘Nature has placed
mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’ (An Introduction to the Principles of Morals

346
activities as we have already seen in the case of Aristotle. In Confucianism, happiness is also
important for the good life, but in a different way, where the pivotal focus is not on the spirit or the
intellect, but on virtue and wisdom which interact to provide the foundation and guidance of a joyful
life. To understand the Confucian view of the good life, we will investigate how virtue and wisdom
converge at the joyfulness of life and why joy is said to be derived from virtue and wisdom and is
able to contribute to the good life. In other words what we intend to do in this paper is to construct a
particular Confucian paradigm of the good life as ascribed in the early Confucian texts1.

Two Dimensions of the Good Life

Different from ancient Greek Philosophy where the good life is facilitated by the activity of the soul2,
logos or reason3, in early Confucianism, the good life is made possible by two powers, the intellectual
power of wisdom (zhi 智) and the moral power of benevolence or humaneness (ren 仁). The two
powers contribute to the good life in different ways, but converge at the internal satisfaction, enabling
joy or joyfulness (le 樂) to happen. The word le appears 48 times in the short Analects of Confucius,
of which 18 times refer to pleasure or joy while the rest goes for music 4. In Mencius it appears 90
times, most of them refers to joy or delight but it is differentiated between the joy of a gentleman and
the joy of a small man, the former referring to an ethical virtue while the latter to the selfish
satisfaction of sensual pleasures. Despite with different orientations and emphases, both a person of
wisdom and a person of benevolence are characterised by their wholeheartedly enjoying, or
delightfulness in, life. Confucius is recorded as having commented on the two ideal personalities,
claiming that

A person of wisdom delights (le) in water.

A person of benevolence delights in mountains.
A person of wisdom is active.
A person of benevolence is in quietude.
A person of wisdom is joyful (le).

and Legislation. Dover Publications, 2009, p. 1), most philosophers would either totally disqualify sensual pleasures as
happiness or modify it as something more substantially related to the quality of satisfaction.
1
By early Confucian texts we mean the recognized classics produced in pre-Qin China, with a particular focus on the
texts attributed to Confucius (551-479 BCE), Mencius (371?-289？BCE) and Xunzi (fl. 298-238 BCE), together with
other two short texts known as the Great Learning (Daxue 大學) and the Doctrine of the Mean (zhongyong 中庸).
2
For example, Plato believes that the most excellent life is led by philosophers. There is a difference between true virtue
and the shadow or imitation of virtue. The former is termed as wisdom while the latter is dominated by passion, desire,
and emotions. He also states that ‘The soul of the philosopher achieves a calm from such emotions; it follows reason and
ever stays with it contemplating the true, the divine, which is not the object of opinion. Nurtured by this, it believes that
one should live in this manner as long as one is alive and, after death, arrive at what is akin and of the same kind, and
escape from human evils. (Phaedo 84a-b)
3
Aristotle holds that the function of the human being is logos or reason, and that the more thoroughly one lives the life
of reason, the happier one’s life will be (Aristotle 1976, pp. 75-76).
4
The common sematic origin of le as music and le as joy often leads to the assumption that joy is a product or value of
fine arts. In early Confucian texts there is an indication that this might be reasonable. However we must remember that
music in Confucius is mainly used as a tool for the moral society and le is therefore both of artistic and moral value.

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 A person of benevolence is long-lived1.

This poetic verse draws us a picture in which both a person of wisdom and a person of benevolence
demonstrate a distinctive character of joyfulness. The difference between them is merely that they
tend to derive their joy from different images. The person of wisdom finds the stimulating source of
joy in water, while the person of benevolence delights in the image of mountains. They demonstrate
different characters in attitude and achievement. One is fond of activity (like running water) and the
other of quietude (like still mountains), but in the end they are the people who are both joyful and
satisfied, because only wisdom enables one to fully enjoy the fruitful life, while only benevolence
can make a person live a long and heathy life.
The appreciation of joyfulness has a fundamental effect on the Confucian paradigm of good life.
It has been made clear in the Confucian texts that joy does not come merely from one’s satisfaction
of physical needs because the good life cannot be ensured unless one is both wise and virtuous. It is
in wisdom and virtue where joyfulness arises. Wisdom and virtue interact, mutually supplement and
strengthen each other to become the source of joyfulness, while joyfulness is both the result of
wisdom and virtue, and the good way to wisdom and virtue. For Confucians the wiser and more
virtuous one has become, the happier one will be; in turn, the more one enjoys life, its richness and
fullness, the more likely one is able to ascend the ladder of wisdom and to become a virtuous person.
Although early Confucians do not identify happiness with sensual pleasures they reject the
paradox that, to lead a good life, one must give up enjoying or must endure suffering. They are in
general positive towards internal satisfaction, and confirm its value for the good life. This has made
them quite in opposition to those who see happiness negatively 2. It seems that Confucius places
longevity above joyfulness, but for him, the ageing process is to increase knowledge and
understanding3, while true understanding of life will naturally bring about joy and happiness.
In moralizing the real world, Confucians argue that the good life is none other than the virtuous
life, which is sustained and enabled by one’s wisdom. The way to the good life has two paths,
carefulness and seriousness in fulfilling responsibilities in accordance with ritual-propriety 4 and
joyfulness and delightfulness one has experienced. In his conversations with students, Confucius has
clearly cast a distinctively joyful mark on his views of wisdom, that is, wisdom is meant to bring
about joy or is essentially related to delightfulness, believing that the wise are wise because they can
take joy in all activities and throughout all times. When Confucius described his own character, he

1
The Analects, 6: 23. All quotations from the Analects are, with moderations, from Confucius: The Analects, translated
with an introduction by D. C. Lau, Penguin Books, 1979. This paragraph is translated as follows: ‘The wise find joy in
water; the benevolent find joy in mountains. The wise re active; the benevolent are still. The wise are joyful; the
benevolent are long-lived’. (p.84)
2
Happiness ‘is really and essentially always negative’. A. Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation, Dover,
1969, Vol. I, p. 319.
3
‘Age is thus an ordering and sequencing principle. A distinctive feature of Confucian ethics is to accept seniority as a
value in setting up social hierarchy.’ In Wei-Ming Tu: ‘Probing the “Three Bonds” and “Five Relationships”, see
Confucianism and the Family, edited by Walter H. Slote and George A. De Vos, State University of New York Press,
1998, p.127.
4
For example, Zengzi, the youngest disciples of Confucius, described his attitude towards life as ‘In fear and trembling,
as if approaching a deep abyss, as if walking on thin ice’ (Lunyu, 8: 3). According to Confucius, the only way to
benevolence is to ensure our seeing, listening, speaking and acting to be in full accordance with ritual-propriety (Lunyu,
12:1).

348
made a special reference to his joy in learning:

He is the sort of man who forgets to eat when trying to solve a problem that has been driving him to
distraction, who is so full of joy that he forgets his worries and does not notice the onset of old age1.

One of Confucius’ favourite disciples, Yan Hui 颜回(511?-480 BCE), is highly praised for his
learning, conscience and virtuous character, because ‘he loved learning so much that he would remain
joyful even when having little for food and plain water for drink’. In the later Confucian tradition,
this kind of joyfulness is identified as one of the defining qualities of a wise and good person (xian
zhe 贤者).

The Joyful Wisdom

Why must joyfulness or happiness, rather than seriousness or stressfulness, be characteristic of the
concept of wisdom? To this question, early Confucians examine the nature of happiness and clarify
the interactive and mutual supplemental relationship between wisdom and joy2. For them, wisdom is
an insight into the essence and ultimate meaning of life, and the insight cannot be gained unless going
through a virtuous course of life and through the process of learning and self-cultivation. In the words
of Xunzi, learning is the means by which humans are set apart from animals: ‘Those who undertake
learning become men; those who neglect it become as wild beasts’3. Success in effectively engaging
in learning is essential to the good life. However, only when enjoying learning can one constantly
pursue it, as Confucius once puts it: ‘To be fond of (hao 好) something is better than merely to know
(zhi 知) it, and to find joy (le 樂) in it is better than merely to be fond of it’4. Confucians emphasize
that joyfulness and wisdom are connected in one’s moral consciousness and activity, insisting that
wisdom entails bringing of joy to the people and enables people to cope with hardship.
Joy is by nature opposite to fears and worries. Confucian wisdom of the good life is aimed at an
intellectual solution of the perplexities that are caused by the complicatedness and ambiguity of social
conditions. They claim that wisdom enables one to be exempt from uncertainty about right and wrong,
good and bad, and point out that ‘a person of wisdom has no doubts in his mind’5. Confucius believes
that to be free from perplexities and worries one has to be engaged in self-cultivation. Self-cultivation
underlies the Confucian way to freedom and courage, as well as to joy and wisdom, because freedom
and wisdom mark one’s breaking through the finitude of the self. Confucius says that only after

1
The Analects, 7:19, see Confucius, 1979, p.88.
2
As far as the relation between wisdom and joy is concerned, we find that Confucianism and Daoism have a common
ground. Both place joy in deeper wisdom rather than in superficial knowledge. Daoist masters also highly value joyfulness
in wisdom. ‘To be one with the Way is not a miserable journey. It is a personal experience. ‘He who conforms to the Way
will be delightedly accepted by the Way; he who conforms to virtue will be delightedly accepted by virtue.' (Daode jing,
23) Both Confucians and Daoists emphasise the importance of being content with what one has had, believing that this is
the guarantee for a happy life.
3
Xunzi, translated into English by John Knoblock, Library of Chinese Classics, Hunan People’s Publishing House and
Foreign Language Press, 1999, volume I, p. 13 (Xunzi, 1.8).
4
The Analects, 1979, p.84 (Lunyu, 6: 20).
5
‘The man of wisdom is never in two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; the man of courage is never afraid’.
The Analects, 1979, p. 100. (Lunyu, 9: 29)

349
seventy years’ untiring learning and practice has he gained a total freedom in his self: whatever he
does in following his own desires, he would not violate the Way1. Interpreted as such, Confucian self-
cultivation is no longer a dull and boring ‘job’, but a joyful and pleasant process of personal
engagement in moral growth, which will bring about great joy and deep insight into the meaning and
value of the good life.
There are different kinds or types of joyful wisdom. Internally, joyful wisdom is attained when
one’s heart is no longer troubled by ambiguity and perplexity. The process of gaining true joy involves
many steps, each of which is an important link in the continuous chain of ‘learning to be human’.
According to the Great Learning, the process starts with investigating things and affairs, moves to
expand one’s knowledge, then aims at establishing a sincere will, and consequently makes one’s mind
correct. A rectified mind is free of worries and anxieties2, and is therefore full of joy. Confucius has
noted that only upon examining oneself and finding nothing to reproach oneself for, would one be
without worry and fear3, while Mengzi claims that ‘All the ten thousand things are there in me. There
is no greater joy for me than to find, on self-examination, that I am true to myself’4.
For Confucians, joyful wisdom is derived from one’s moral achievement and consciousness.
According to Mengzi, a gentleman would feel joyful in three things. The first is that his parents are
alive and his brothers are well; the second is that, above, he is not ashamed to face Heaven, while
below, he is not ashamed to face other people; and the third is that he has the good fortune of having
the most talented students in the Empire to teach5. However, Confucian joy is more than what we call
personal satisfaction. It is to be extended to human communities and to ‘delight on account of the
world’ (le yi tian xia 樂以天下)6. It is argued that when self-cultivation has been carried out, one is
able to successfully regulate the family, govern the state and bring peace and order to the world. This
is, according to Confucians, the highest grade of joy, happiness and wisdom.
Confucians differentiate long-term joy from short-term joy and define the former as wisdom and
virtuous joy. For them, long-term joy comes from benevolence and wisdom, and therefore endures
and is thorough, while sensual pleasure resulting from immoral and unwise activities is temporary
and superficial. It is in this sense that Confucius said that only a person of benevolence and wisdom
can have true and lasting joy, while ‘One who is not benevolent cannot for long endure adversity, nor
can he for long stay in joyfulness’7. The contrast between joy as wisdom and joy as personal pleasure
is illustrated by the difference between the joy of a gentleman and the joy of a small person. The
former lasts while the latter disappears after a short while8.

1
The Analects, 1979, p. 63. (Lunyu, 2:4)
2
Wing-tsit Chan (eds. and trans.), A Source Book of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963,
pp. 86-87.
3
The Analects, 1979, p.113 (Lunyu, 12.4).
4
Mencius, translated with an introduction and notes by D.C. Lau. London: Penguin Books, 1970, p. 182 (Mengzi, 7A:4).
5
Ibid., p. 185.
6
Ibid., p. 63. ‘But for one in authority over the people not to share his enjoyment with the people is equally wrong. The
people will delight in the joy of him who delights in their joy, and will worry over the troubles of him who worries over
their troubles. He who delights and worries on account of the Empire is certain a true King’. (Mengzi, 1B:4)
7
The Analects, 1979, p. 72 (Lunyu, 4: 2)
8
‘[Future] rulers deemed worthy what they deemed worthy and loved what they loved, while the common people enjoyed
what they enjoyed and benefited from their beneficial arrangement. That was why they are not forgotten even after they
passed away’. Wing-tsit Chan, 1963, p.88.

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Poverty, Wealth and the Good Life

Joyful wisdom makes people satisfied with their way of life. Unlike cynicism that would ‘express
contempt for wealth’ and ‘distain for conventional propriety’1, Confucian masters are realised that a
certain level of wealth or possessing sufficient material means to meet one’s (and one’s family) needs
is a necessary guarantee for a good life, while poverty often leads to a distorted character and
miserable life. It is no surprise therefore that we read from the Great Learning that ‘Wealth makes a
house shining and virtue makes a person shining’2 and in Mencius that ‘wealth is something every
man wants’, and a man in extreme poverty has no home to go back to3. Although later Confucians
frequently refer to wisdom and virtue as the extinction of desires (mie ren ru 灭人欲), in early
Confucian classics, meeting physical needs and having a decent material life are an integral part of
the good life, in which regulated passion is needed for the attainment of wisdom4.
Wealth not only provides us with necessary life-provisions and prevents us from suffering from
hunger and cold, but also is an important condition for a respectable social life. Contrary to the
commonly accepted view in some philosophical traditions that wealth corrupts human spirit whilst
poverty can produce good qualities, Confucian masters tend to justify their argument that wealth itself
does not necessarily lead to evil or immoral attitudes and that poverty is not a necessary part of the
good life.
It is true that Confucius was once quoted as saying that the head of the state should not be
worried about poverty but about instability5 and in Mencius we can also read a quotation from Yang
Hu that ‘If one’s aim is wealth one cannot be benevolent; if one’s aim is benevolence one cannot be
wealthy’ 6 . These have been taken as the evidence that early Confucians believe in a diametric
opposition between the rich and the virtuous. However, in the same section Mencius also points out
that ‘Those with constant means of support (heng chan 恒产, permanent property) will have a constant
heart’ and confirms that a certain level of wealth is necessary to ensure the pursuit of the good life.
Confucius repeatedly says that being rich and being morally good do not necessarily constitute a
contradiction and that being poor does not necessarily lead to good, for poverty would prevent people
from being virtuous: ‘It is more difficult not to complain of injustice when poor than not to behave
with arrogance when rich’. In light of this it is natural for him to advise the rulers on the good
governance that their priority should be ‘to make the people rich’7.
Pursuing adequate living conditions is not only socially sound but also morally justifiable.
Confucius makes it clear that ‘If wealth were a permissible pursuit, then I would be willing even to
act as a guard holding a whip outside the market place’8. The moral problem with pursuing wealth

1
Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010, p. 80.
2
Wing-tsit Chan, 1963, p.90.
3
Mencius, 1970, p. 138.
4
‘Before the feelings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy are aroused it is called equilibrium (chung, centrality, mean).
When these feelings are aroused and each and all attain due measure and degree, it is called harmony. Equilibrium is the
great foundation of the world, and harmony its universal path.’ (Zhongyong, 1; in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy,
p. 98.)
5
Lunyu, 16:1.
6
Mencius, 1970, p.97 (Mengzi, 5:3).
7
The Analects, 1979, p.125 (Lunyu, 14:10) and p. 120 (Lunyu, 13.9).
8
The Analects, 1979, p. 87 (Lunyu, 7:12).

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does not lie in wealth itself, but is caused by the improper means to become rich. Confucius turns his
back on immoral ways to wealth, and declares that ‘Wealth and rank attained through immoral means
have as much to do with me as passing clouds’1. Although he admits that ‘wealth and high station are
what all people desire’, and that ‘poverty and low station are what all people dislike’, he makes it
clear that unless he becomes rich and highly ranked in the right way he would not remain in them,
and even if he could escape from poverty and low ranks in an unjust way he would never do it. Further,
Confucius explores the deep reasons for imbalance between virtue and wealth under the good or bad
social institutions and governmental measures. For him, morally permissible means for wealth is
more likely to be availabe in a well-governed society, while in a chaotic society people more
frequently go for wealth through unjust means. While we cannot determine the world we live, we do
have a choice to make and what we choose would make a difference. It is in this sense that Confucius
comments that ‘It is a shameful matter to be poor and humble when the Way prevails in the state.
Equally, it is a shameful matter to be rich and noble when the Way falls into disuse in the state’2.
Not only should wealth be acquired through moral means, but it must also be used in full
accordance with ethical requirements. In any society where exists a polarity of the rich and the poor,
a wise and morally good way to safety and harmony is generosity of the rich towards the poor and
moderation of the poor in their life3. A poem quoted in the Mencius claims that ‘Happy are the rich;
but have pity on the helpless’ and Mencius defines ‘generosity’ as ‘sharing one’s wealth with others’4.
Why have some people become rich while others poor? What is the cause for their poverty or
wealth? Confucian answers to these questions range from the metaphysical prerequisites for the social
structure to the practical account of the tools one happens to be able to employ. For Confucius,
differences of intelligence among the people are natural, and poverty might have come from one’s
ignorance and disregard of the wise teaching. Although to be rich is the desire of all the people, due
to different situations in which they are born and live, not all the people can be rich. There is no shame
on the poor, but disgrace is on those who become rich by immoral means and on those who are too
lazy to make an effort to change their dire conditions. To the question whether it is possible for a poor
man to become rich, Xunzi’s answer is positive, believing that poverty can be overcome and the poor
can be reversed through ‘learning’5. However, the Confucian learning is not simply an accumulation
of knowledge. In fact knowledge itself does not necessarily bring about a wealthy and prosperous life,
as it is apparent that ‘for all their breadth of knowledge’ some people would be ‘reduced to poverty
because of their penchant for slander’6. More important is that one has a good character and leads a
life of virtue and wisdom.
Due to the complexity of social conditions and personal circumstances, it is possible that
whatever one does, one may still remain poor. However, there is a sharp contrast between the wise

1
The Analects, 1979, p. 88 (Lunyu, 7:16).
2
The Analects, 1979, p. 94 (Lunyu, 8:13)
3
‘When good fortune comes your way, maintain concord with others and keep well ordered; when misfortune comes,
maintain inner quietude and order. When rich, display liberality; when poor, use moderation…If you are like this then
you may be described as a “fortune-prone man”’. Xunzi, 1999, volume I, p. 153. (Xunzi, 7.5)
4
Mencius, 1970, p.65 and p. 103, (Mengzi, 5.4).
5
‘Though base-born were I to wish to be noble, or though stupid were I to be wise, or though poor were I to wish to be
rich—would this be possible? I say: It can be done only through learning’ (Xunzi, 1999, volume I, p.175; Xunzi, 8:7).
6
Ibid., p. 69. (Xunzi, 4:2)

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and the fool in their attitude towards poverty. The wise would not allow poverty to distort their life
while the foolish would be overwhelmed by a dire life situation. Confucius compares a gentleman
who in poverty acts as a gentleman (jun zi 君子), with a small man (xiao ren 小人) who in extreme
straits would throw over all restraints. Confucian wisdom of the good life is such as that one should
not allow the conditions of being rich or poor to damage the integrity of one’s character, and Mencius
praises the great man in that he cannot be led to excesses when being wealthy or honoured, nor can
he be deflected from his purpose when being poor and obscure1. Facing the rich and the poor, the
correct attitude recommended by Xunzi is not to be arrogant in treating the rich and the eminent, nor
to demean oneself before the poor and humble2.

Good life and Friendship

As social beings, humans live in inter-personal networks. It is therefore important for the good life
not only that one does not unnecessarily offend other people but also that one has some people as
close companions and friends. In all philosophical traditions how to make friends and guide people
in dealing with human relations is an important part of the ethical paradigm on the good life 3 .
Confucians too take the principle for the interconnection between friends as one of the five universal
ways (da dao 逹道), and Xunzi explicitly defines the way of a gentleman as to ‘esteem his teachers
and to be intimate with his friends’4.
Highly valuing the importance of interpersonal relations for the good life, Confucians do not
recommend one to be in company with every sort of people; rather, they ask their students to choose
carefully the people they are to be associated with. How to keep a distance from the fool and the
unworthy, and how to be a friend with the wise and the good are not only an important part of wisdom
but also the essential content of the good life. Admitting the mutual influence between wealth and
friendship, Confucians nevertheless make it clear that the rich or the poor should not be taken as the
criterion in choosing friends, because there is no necessary contradiction between wealth and
friendship and a certain level of wealth is important when making friends. The primary concern in
Confucianism about whom one should be associated with is given to the personality and moral virtue.
Confucius taught his students that in order to benefit from friendship, they must carefully choose their
companions, who should be morally good and be more advanced in moral cultivation5. Xunzi explains
that friends are those with whom one has mutual interests. One therefore must choose those who
share the same way as one’s own, because ‘It is improper for the common people to be careless in
the choice of friends. Friends are those with whom one has mutual interests. If their way is not the
same, how can there be mutual interests?’6 This is in the same vein as what Confucius had said ‘There
is no point in people taking counsel together who follow different ways’7. It is clear for Confucians

1
Mencius, 1970, p.107 (Mengzi, 6.2).
2
Xunzi, 1999, volume I, p. 67 (Xunzi, 3.14).
3
For example, Aristotle asserts that ‘Nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things’.
Aristotle, Ethics, p. 258.
4
Xunzi, 1999, volume I, p.22 (Xunzi, 2:1).
5
The Analects, 1979, p. 99 (Lunyu, 9:25).
6
Xunzi, 1999, volume II, p.915 (Xunzi, 27:102).
7
The Analects, 1979, p. 137 (Lunyu, 15:40).

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that the importance of having friends or choosing right people as friends arises from the (moral)
benefit one can gain from the friendship. The reason why Confucius advises his audience to ‘make
friends with the most benevolent gentlemen in a state’ 1 is that they would benefit from these
benevolent gentlemen. He goes even further to define three kinds of people as beneficial, and another
three as harmful:

To make friends with the straight, the trustworthy in word and the well-informed is to benefit. To make
friends with the ingratiating in action, the pleasant in appearance and the plausible in speech is to lose2.

True friendship not only benefits our social and moral life, but also can make our life more pleasant.
The often quoted first sentence of the Analects records Confucius as saying that ‘Is it not a joy to
have friends come from afar?’3 However, a joyful thing can easily be turned into distress if we do not
cultivate friendship in the right way. A significant part of the Confucian wisdom is devoted to the
discussion of how to appreciate and maintain friendship. Confucian wisdom is to promote and
enhance friendship through virtuous attitude and behaviour. Although there is an element of mutual
(material) benefit in friendship, Confucians define it primarily as an ethical relation. Therefore when
we make friends with others, we must not rely on any perception of taking material and social
advantages from them. Rather, whether or not to take someone else as a friend, the only consideration
must be his virtue. The same is also true in maintaining friendship. It is important to establish trust
between friends, because without trustfulness they would easily lose confidence in each other. Many
of the close disciples of Confucius define ‘trustfulness’ (xin) as the sole criterion for maintaining
friendship, and Mencius first raises ‘trustfulness’ between friends to the level of the five constant
virtues (wu chang 五常, Mengzi, 6:4), and this has become one of the most important moral teachings
in China.

Joy, Virtue and Wisdom

In early Confucian texts, joy which arises from virtue and wisdom is not, primarily, sensual pleasure.
Although having no rejection to bodily enjoyment in their perception of the good life, Confucians do
reveal to us a tension between pursuing wisdom and taking pleasure by satisfying one’s corporeal
needs. They are fully aware that while wisdom could make a diligent person wealthy, seeking pleasure
would often lead to folly and poverty. Confucians have seen the tension, admitting that necessary as
it is to live a life without worrying about food and clothes, possessing a large amount of materials
does not necessarily bring about joy, as Mencius points out: ‘wealth is something every person wants,
yet the wealth of possessing the whole Empire is not sufficient to deliver him from anxiety’4. In terms
of the consequences joy may have brought about, Confucius makes a distinction between beneficial
joy and harmful joy; the former brings benefits to oneself and others, while the latter brings harm to
the self and community. For him, beneficial joys are manifested in taking pleasure under the correct

1
The Analects, 1979, p. 133 (Lunyu, 15:10).
2
The Analects, 1979, p.139 (Lunyu, 16:4).
3
The Analects, 1979, p. 59 (Lunyu, 1:1).
4
Mencius, 1970, p.138 (Mengzi, 9.1).

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regulation of rites and music, in singing the praises of other people's goodness and in having a large
number of excellent persons as friends, while harmful joys are brought about by taking pleasure in
showing off, by living a dissolute life and by indulging in food and drink1.
Joy results from one’s appreciation of things and matters. The same thing would often appear to
be joyful to some people, but may well be unpleasant to others. Confucian wisdom of the good life is
to enable one to see the joyful nature of things and to find joy in a variety of life situations. Confucians
have listed two conditions under which humans can rightly appreciate joy. First, being virtuous is a
precondition for enjoying, and in fact only a virtuous person can have true joy. A person of a noble
character is full of wisdom and enjoys a pleasant life, while a person of a vile character is full of
worries and anxiety, and can therefore never have true pleasures. When discussing what kind of
people would really enjoy natural beauties, Mencius argues that ‘Only if a man is good and wise is
he able to enjoy them. Otherwise he would not, even if he had them’2. Secondly, a personal joy must
not be in contradiction with the joy of other people. Mencius remonstrates his contemporary rulers
by the exemplary ancient sages, and praises the latter as those who had true joy and were recognized
as true kings because they shared their enjoyments with the people in the world and were whole-
heartedly delighted when all the people were also joyful and delighted3.
From what has been examined above, we can see clearly that early Confucians construct an
ethical paradigm of the good life by three key items, joy, wealth and wisdom. The wisdom of the
good life is meant not only to enable the people to lead a happy and wealthy life in a morally justifiable
way, but also to connect their personal satisfaction and wealth with the satisfaction and wealth of
others and the entire human community. This makes their paradigm of the good life essentially ethical:
only those who are joyful, virtuous and wise can lead a truly good life.

1
The Analects, 1979, p. 140 (Lunyu, 16:5).
2
Mencius, 1970, pp.49-50 (Mengzi, 1.2).
3
Mencius, 1970, p.63 (Mengzi, 2.4).

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 Expressibility, Dialogue, Translatability:
Chinese Whispers and Philosophical Translation

Michael Beaney

Saying Clearly and Crystallizing Thinking

If an idea is worth thinking, then it is worth saying clearly; and if it is said clearly, then it will
crystallize thinking in others. As I remarked in the preface to my very short introduction to analytic
philosophy, this expresses a sentiment that has always informed my teaching and writing. But stating
something clearly is more easily said than done, and what counts as ‘clarity’ depends on the context
– and, in particular, on the intended or envisaged audience. Indeed, if the aim of saying something
clearly is to crystallize thinking in others, then the extent to which such thinking is crystallized
provides a criterion for judging its clarity.
What is involved in crystallizing thinking in others? I had first formulated (in ‘What is Analytic
Philosophy?’, p. 25) the sentence that opens this paper in offering a gloss on Alexander Pope’s famous
words in An Essay on Criticism (Part 2, ll. 297–300):

True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.

The key idea here is giving expression to a thought that others have had but never managed to
express so well – in such a way that they can immediately recognize it as capturing a thought that
they have had but never adequately articulated. The metaphor of crystallization has long struck me
as a good metaphor for the process involved here. Our mind is like a liquid in which all sorts of ideas
and thoughts float around in an inchoate or semi-choate form, requiring the right seed to crystallize
them into something more choate. What ‘true wit’ does is provide the seed for this crystallizing
process, and this represents one way in which ‘clarity’ is achieved.
The use of this metaphor presupposes a certain homogeneity or ‘fit’ between the seed and the
elements of the liquid which all combine into the resultant crystal. The medium of our ideas and
thoughts is language, so the liquid is a particular language. True wit crystallizes the thoughts of those
who speak the same language. So how do we crystallize thinking in people who speak other languages?
The answer, of course, is through translation. Compared to finding the right words to crystallize
thoughts in those who speak one’s own language and share one’s own culture, however, finding the
right words to do the same for those who speak a different language and have a different culture
seems to be a task of several orders of magnitude more complex. Yet throughout the world, and not
least in academic philosophy, the task of translation is massively undervalued. We too readily take

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for granted the existence of dictionaries, ‘professional’ translators and (more recently) online
translation tools that can do it more or less automatically, without involving ‘true wit’.

Google Translation

The global paradigm of an online translation tool is Google Translate. The World Congress of
Philosophy has seven official languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and
Chinese. So let us see what happens when we translate the opening sentence of this paper successively
into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese, and then finally back again into English.
Here are the results for when I first did this in December 2017:

If an idea is worth thinking, then it is worth saying clearly; and if it is said clearly, then it will crystallize
thinking in others.

Wenn eine Idee es wert ist zu denken, dann ist es wert, sie klar zu sagen; und wenn es klar gesagt wird,
dann wird es das Denken in anderen kristallisieren.

Si une idée mérite d’être pensée, cela vaut la peine de dire clairement; et quand il est clairement énoncé,
il cristallisera la pensée chez les autres.

Se un’idea merita di essere pensata, vale la pena di dire chiaramente; e quando è chiaramente affermato,
cristallizzerà il pensiero degli altri.

Si una idea merece ser pensada, vale la pena decir claramente; y cuando está claramente establecido,
cristalizará el pensamiento de los demás.

Если идея заслуживает того, чтобы ее задумали, стоит сказать ясно; и когда он будет четко
установлен, он будет кристаллизовывать мысли других людей.

如果一个想法值得怀疑，那么值得一提的是，明确的时候，就会明白别人的想法。[Rúguǒ yīgè
xiǎngfǎ zhídé huáiyí, nàme zhídé yī tí de shì, míngquè de shíhòu, jiù huì míngbái biérén de xiǎngfǎ.]

If an idea is doubtful, then it is worth mentioning that, when it is clear, you will understand the ideas of
others.

The final result is wonderful. An idea being worth thinking has been transformed into an idea
being doubtful (is an idea only worth thinking if it is doubtful, and is an idea only doubtful if it is
worth thinking?), and the aim of crystallizing thinking in others has been transformed into the aim of
understanding their thinking. I especially liked the suggestion that by seeking to clarify my own ideas,
I could understand those of others – indeed, that by clarifying just one doubtful idea, I could
understand all the ideas of everyone else! This is certainly worth mentioning. (Now I understand
Leibniz’s monadology.)

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 Running my sentence through Google Translate on subsequent occasions has produced variants,
among them the following:

If this idea is doubtful, it is worth mentioning that when it is clearly established, it will form ideas in
other areas.

If an idea is worth thinking about, then it is worth mentioning that when it is clearly stated, it will reflect
the thoughts of others.

I cannot say that any of the results has succeeded in capturing – let alone expressing better – the
thought that I hoped I had articulated, whatever the delights of their false wit in crystallizing other
interesting thoughts. Running Google Translate on numerous occasions, however, shows that there
is far less variation when translating between European languages, at least between English, German,
French, Italian, and Spanish. Greater divergence arises with Russian, but occurs especially –
unsurprisingly – between European languages and Chinese. Indeed, if we just translate my English
sentence directly into Chinese and then back again, we get the following:

If an idea is worth thinking about, then it is worth saying clearly; if it is clear, then it will reflect the idea
in others.

This suggests that a key difficulty is the translation of the metaphorical use of ‘crystallize’, and one
might expect that metaphorical uses of terms are particularly hard to translate.

Chinese Whispers

When I was a child, I used to play a game called ‘Chinese whispers’. We would sit or stand in a circle
and someone would begin by whispering a message quickly in the next person’s ear, who would then
repeat it – as they understood it – to the next person, and so on, until we all heard what the final
person took the message to be. The results were often hilarious, and invariably changed the original
message beyond recognition. The language-game played here has many variants, and indeed, goes
by different names in different cultures and languages. In France it is called ‘téléphone arabe’, in
Germany ‘stille Post’, and in Italy ‘passaparola’, and it is also called ‘broken telephone’ or just
‘telephone’, ‘the messenger game’, ‘grapevine’, and ‘Russian scandal’, for example. Perhaps some
terms betray a certain racism, although ‘Chinese whispers’ seems to me as relatively harmless as “It’s
all Greek to me” said when one cannot understand something. Since one of the game’s variants
involves successive translations of a message into different languages, and the case of translating
between English and Chinese is especially difficult, I shall use the term ‘Chinese whispers’ here.
The various games of Chinese whispers show just how easy it is for messages to get distorted in
transmission – or to become lost in translation. This is all very familiar, as we hardly need reminding.
But we can use the idea of Chinese whispers to offer a criterion for clarity: clarity is what survives
Chinese whispers. Since we should allow degrees of clarity, we can put this as follows: the expression
of a thought is clear to the extent that it can be readily translated into other languages. Traditionally,

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analytic philosophy has placed great emphasis on clarity (even if not all practitioners exhibit the
virtue), and one (socio-linguistic) explanation I have for the global spread and success of analytic
philosophy is that many of its key texts can indeed be relatively easily translated into other languages
– or relatively easily understood in their original English (beziehungsweise Deutsch) by non-native
speakers. One only needs to compare the writings of Bertrand Russell (beziehungsweise Gottlob
Frege), on the one hand, and G. W. F. Hegel and Martin Heidegger, on the other hand, to appreciate
this.

Reformulating

This connects with something else that I emphasize in my teaching: you understand the content of
what you hear or read to the extent that you can play it back appropriately on later occasions – put it
in your own words as you think it over, explain it to your mother, offer paraphrases in evaluating it,
re-state it under examination conditions, and so on. Simply repeating the words of your teacher or the
phrases or sentences in a book is not to understand them. I understand the words “I am here now” in
a text message, for example, only if I can rephrase it, say, as telling me that my daughter Harriet has
just arrived at Berlin Schönefeld airport. Indeed, what I hope I have just clarified here (expressing it
in my own words) is what I take as the most fundamental principle of Confucianism: you have only
learnt something if you can teach or practise it. What could be more satisfying than this?
In analytic philosophy, we are often led to believe that it is only by formalizing a proposition (a
sentence expressing a thought) into logic (quantificational logic, extended as required) that we can
attain clarity. Formalizing a proposition reveals its logical form, appreciation of which is a necessary
condition for understanding the proposition. But logical languages need to be learned just like other
languages, and logical form is not the only thing that we need to appreciate to attain clarity.
Recognizing that formalization is itself a kind of translation, however, helps us see that the very act
of translation – whether into a formalized language or another natural language – offers a way of
getting clearer about what a proposition means. In many university departments in the English-
speaking world, a course in elementary logic is compulsory for first-year students of philosophy, a
policy which I strongly endorse. But I also think it essential that all philosophy students learn – or
improve their competence in – at least one foreign language. Seeing how to translate sentences into
another language can also shed light on what they mean, and the more different the source and target
languages, the more instructive it can be. As we move into the next decade, when Chinese philosophy
is finally recognized as worthy of study in the Western world, I imagine a time when learning Chinese
is compulsory for philosophy students. That, at any rate, is what I wish as my 2020 vision, unclear as
it might in fact be at the moment.

Philosophical Translation

Just learning other languages – even to fluency – is not sufficient, however. Just as we teach people
how to formalize sentences and arguments into logic, so too we have to teach people translation, and
in both cases practice is required. Philosophical translation requires particular skills, and raises deep
philosophical issues, and I know nowhere where this is properly taught. When I first translated some

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of Frege’s writings for The Frege Reader (which was published in 1997), I simply did it, and learnt
on the job. Looking back on it, I realize how naïve I was about what was involved, and I now
appreciate much more just how difficult philosophical translation is and what principles are and
should be adopted. I know others have had similar experiences, but there still seems to be very little
actually written on the nature and practice of philosophical translation and the philosophical issues it
raises. I have written one paper myself, entitled ‘Translating “Bedeutung” in Frege’s Writings: A
Case Study and Cautionary Tale in the History and Philosophy of Translation’, which developed
directly out of my own experience in translating Frege’s writings and reflecting on how and why
‘Bedeutung’ had been translated in the various ways it has over the last 120 years.
There are other exceptions, of course, the most notable of which is the magnificent Vocabulaire
européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, edited by Barbara Cassin, which was
published in 2004, and translated (yes, indeed!) as Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical
Lexicon, with additions and some deletions, which appeared in 2014. I came across the latter by
chance in a bookshop in Cambridge soon after it was published and managed to carry it home. The
Dictionnaire has three kinds of entries: ‘word-based’ entries, on ‘untranslatables’ such as
‘Geisteswissenschaften’ and ‘phronêsis’, and terms such as ‘sens’ (‘sense’) that present networks of
concepts; ‘thematic’ entries, such as on translation; and ‘directional’ entries, such as on ‘temps’
(‘time’), that indicate relevant entries elsewhere. Their point of departure, Cassin writes in her
introduction, “is a reflection on the difficulty of translating in philosophy” (2014, p. xvii), and the 1.5
million words that make up the volume afford more than enough material for a life-time’s reflection.

The Translation of ‘dào’

The focus of the Dictionnaire was on European languages. The title of the English translation
removed the reference to Europe, to open up the possibility of widening the scope in later editions
(2014, p. ix). Since this paper is being presented at the World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing, let
me illustrate the kind of reflection that the volume encapsulates and inspires by considering a famous
Chinese example instead. I have already alluded to the opening lines of the Analects (Lunyu), the
founding text of Confucianism, so let me take the opening lines of one of the two founding texts of
Daoism, the Daodejing (or Laozi):

道 可 道 非 常 道。名 可 名 非 常 名。

dào kě dào fēi cháng dào; míng kě míng fēi cháng míng.

‘dào’ represents, of course, the central concept in Daoism, but in the first line of the Daodejing the
term is used both as a noun (in its first and third occurrences) and as a verb (in its second occurrence).
The noun ‘dào’ has a very natural translation into English as ‘way’ (I will return to this shortly), while
the verb ‘dào’ means ‘speak (of)’, ‘say’, ‘transmit’, ‘communicate’. ‘kě’ means ‘can be’, ‘fēi’ means
‘is not’, and ‘cháng’ means ‘constant’. ‘míng’ in the second line is also used, correspondingly, as
both a noun and a verb, just as ‘name’ can be in English, and ‘name’ is indeed the perfect term to use
in translating all three occurrences of ‘míng’. But the main problem in translating these two lines lies

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not so much in rendering the constituent Chinese characters as rather in what is not present (a
deliciously Daoist irony). Chinese notoriously lacks the definite and indefinite articles, and nouns can
also be understood as either singular or plural. So are the first and third occurrences of ‘dào’ referring
to a way, the way, or ways? And are the corresponding occurrences of ‘míng’ referring to a name, the
name, or names? Here are three translations of the opening two lines of the Daodejing, the first by D.
C. Lau (1963), the second by Philip J. Ivanhoe (2001), and the third by Edmund Ryden (2008):

The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way; the name that can be named is not the constant
name.

A Way that can be followed is not a constant Way. A name that can be named is not a constant name.

Of ways you may speak, but not the Perennial Way; by names you may name, but not the Perennial Name.

(1) adds the definite article, (2) the indefinite article, and (3) pluralizes the first occurrence of ‘dào’
and ‘míng’, respectively, and adds the definite article to the third occurrence.
One of the founding texts of analytic philosophy is Russell’s ‘On Denoting’ (1905), which first
presented his theory of descriptions, and we know from this just how logically significant is the
distinction between the definite and indefinite article. But it is not just a matter of understanding the
correct logical form of a sentence; the distinction may also have metaphysical implications. In talking
of ‘the way’, both (1) and (3) suggest that there is a single, fundamental – ‘constant’ – way, the point
being that we cannot speak of it. Admittedly, later passages in the Daodejing do seem to talk of ‘the
way’, and of its being nameless, mysterious, ineffable, incomprehensible, and so on, giving the
impression that there is some deep religious or spiritual truth being gestured at. But equally, from
these two lines alone, it could be that something much more ordinary is being said, namely, that any
way of which we can speak is not ‘constant’. (A gloss might be: any use of a name can soon enough
be extended to cases not originally specified or envisaged in the relevant naming practice.) One of
the interpretive issues about Daoism concerns whether its ‘mysticism’ is a mysticism of the natural,
ordinary and everyday or a mysticism of the supernatural, extraordinary and exceptional. I see
something of this issue reflected in the differing translations of these two famous opening lines – and
all reflected in whether we add the little word ‘a’ or ‘the’ or pluralize. We have a wonderful example
here of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remark in the Philosophical Investigations: “A whole cloud of
philosophy condenses into a drop of grammar” (‘Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment’, §315).
Indeed, we could condense further. For there is another difference between (1), on the one hand,
and (2) and (3), on the other hand, which might easily go unnoticed – the capitalizing or not of ‘Way’.
Writing ‘the Way’ rather than ‘the way’ accords it grander status, and makes us wonder what this
special Way is. We capitalize ‘God’ in the Christian tradition, so is it spiritual justice that demands
capitalizing ‘Way’ in Daoism? (Or should it be ‘W-y’?) And as for ‘the Perennial Name’, this is
especially intriguing. Is this not the Holy Grail of philosophy, the ultimate expression to crystallize
thinking in others (were it possible)? Of course, we have capitalization of all nouns in German, and
I have often wondered if German philosophy sounds more profound just because it capitalizes its
nouns. Whole clouds of philosophy condense into droplets of capitalization. What storms and

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hurricanes are then brewing once we turn to issues of expressibility involving more than just
capitalization? This is Wonder indeed.
There is a far more powerful way than capitalization, however, of making philosophy sound
more profound when translating, and that lies, paradoxically, in not translating. Here is a fourth
translation of the opening lines of the Daodejing, by James Legge (1891):

The Dao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Dao. The name that can be named is not
the enduring and unchanging name.

Even though ‘dào’ is most naturally translated as ‘way’ in English, it certainly makes it more
mysterious and ineffable if left untranslated. The concept of dao is clearly central to Chinese
philosophy (and not just in Daoism), however, with nothing that readily corresponds to it in Western
philosophy, so there is a good rationale for leaving it untranslated.

The daos of Translation

2018 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Schleiermacher. In his influential essay,
‘On the Different Methods of Translation’, Schleiermacher distinguished between what has become
known as ‘domesticating’ and ‘foreignizing’ translation: one might call them the two daos (two Daos,
if we are German) of translation. The first “leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves
the author towards him”, while the second “leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and
moves the reader towards him” (1813, p. 9). Schleiermacher (whose name would translate as ‘veil-
maker’) favoured the foreignizing approach, which he saw as enriching the language of the reader. In
the case of key concepts from a different philosophical tradition, embedded in different networks of
connected concepts and practices, such an approach may well be the right one. Introducing new terms
can help crystallize the new thoughts that arise in attempting to understand that different philosophical
tradition.
Where does this leave us as far as the translation of the opening lines of the Daodejing is
concerned? Considering all the existing translations (or as many as one can) helps one to appreciate
the interpretive issues involved and hence to get a better fix on what might really be meant. But we
also need to take into account the text as a whole, of course, as well as the wider context, and here
what is especially relevant is the general scepticism about language that is characteristic of Daoism
(as expressed, for example, in chapter 32 of the Daodejing and throughout the Zhuangzi). With this
in mind, I would be inclined to offer – with all due humility – the following as a translation of the
opening lines, crystallizing my own thoughts as to what is going on:

A dao that can be spoken of is not a constant dao; a name that can be named is not a constant name.

Given the increasing tendency among English speakers to make verbs of nouns (a very Chinese
practice), one might even foreignize this further:

A dao that can be daoed is not a constant dao; a name that can be named is not a constant name.

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And if – heaven forbid! – I were Jacques Derrida, with Zhuangzi’s delight in word-play, I would find
the insertion of a small ‘t’ irresistible:

A dao that can be daoted is not a constant dao; a name that can be named is not a constant name.

Expressibility, Dialogue, Translatability

Whatever the best translation, however, what we have in the opening lines of the Daodejing is a
thought that seems to run counter to the thought formulated at the beginning of this paper. We might
bring this out by offering the following variation:

A thought that can be crystallized is not a constant thought; a formulation that can be formulated is not a
constant formulation.

If this paper were construed as a game of Chinese Whispers, then we might seem to have a
wonderful example of reaching something very different from where we started. We began with a
thought that is characteristic of analytic philosophy – that there is a way of saying something clearly,
which can crystallize thinking in others. But on the Daoist view, any formulation of a thought, and
not least a supposedly canonical formulation, is suspect: it will never adequately capture the thought.
The problem of expressibility may be common to both analytic philosophy and Daoism, suggesting
a prime site for constructive dialogue, then, but the two traditions seem to be too fundamentally
opposed for fruitful engagement with one another.
The key to reconciling the two positions lies in the Confucian principle noted earlier – that you
understand something the more you can rephrase it in explaining and teaching it to others. But this is
not incompatible with there being a more or less favoured or canonical formulation, which occupies
centre-stage in a network of alternative formulations, condensing and crystallizing the thinking
involved in offering and considering these formulations, in all their degrees of accuracy and
pertinence. Paradoxically, the more alternative formulations you consider, the more a single one
might be judged as best capturing it – just as the more translations you consider of a given passage,
as I hope we have seen, helps you to converge on the most appropriate translation.
This paper is going to be translated into six other languages. I look forward to seeing what (if
anything) I have said clearly, and what I might thereby learn in improving my thinking and my daos
of expression. I am aware, though, that I have also set some interesting challenges, and I wonder how
the translations will be done. Bang bang! Help! Having suggested (with tongue in cheek) that this
paper might itself be construed as a game of Chinese whispers, however, then there is only one dao
to follow in ending. If an idea is worth thinking, then it is worth translating; and if it is translated well,
then it will help foster intercultural dialogue.

References

Beaney, Michael, ed., 1997, The Frege Reader, Oxford: Blackwell

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____, 2013, ‘What is Analytic Philosophy?’, in M. Beaney, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History
of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–29
____, 2017, Analytic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press
____, forthcoming, ‘Translating ‘Bedeutung’ in Frege’s Writings: A Case Study and Cautionary Tale
in the History and Philosophy of Translation’, in P. Ebert and M. Rossberg, eds., Essays on
Frege’s Basic Laws of Arithmetic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 603–51
Cassin, Barbara, ed., 2004, Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles,
Paris: Le Seuil; tr. E. Apter, J. Lezra and M. Wood as Dictionary of Untranslatables: A
Philosophical Lexicon, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014
Ivanhoe, Philip J., tr., 2001, Laozi (“The Daodejing”), in P. J. Ivanhoe and B. W. Van Norden, eds.,
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd edn., Indianapolis: Hackett, pp. 161–205
Lau, D. C., tr., 1963, Tao Te Ching, London: Penguin
Legge, James, tr., 1891, Tao Te Ching, London: Trubner
Pope, Alexander, 1711, An Essay on Criticism, London: W. Lewis
Russell, Bertrand, 1905, ‘On Denoting’, Mind, 14: 479–93
Ryden, Edmund, tr., 2008, Daodejing, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953, Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell;
4th edn. 2009, tr. rev. by P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte.

364
Culture, Dialogue, and the Good Life: Toward Learning What It is to be Human
in an Interconnected, Globalised World

Paul Healy
Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

Abstract: Is it the case that cultures are so irrevocably different that we are inevitably confronted by
a ‘clash of civilisations’? Or are there sufficient affinities between cultures to facilitate productive
intercultural understanding and learning? In defending the latter eventuality over the former, I
contend that a hermeneutically-informed dialogue model has particular merits in terms of vindicating
the possibility—and indeed necessity--of productive intercultural learning, while transcending the
pitfalls of incommensurability, dichotomous thinking, and invidious comparison. A further strength
is that it valorises the ideal of human well-being and flourishing, as epitomised in the concept of the
‘good life’, as a measure of cultural rationality and, hence, as touchstone for intercultural
communication and learning. Having delineated its constitutive features, I draw on core insights from
classical Eastern and Western philosophies to illustrate how the dialogue between West and East can
yield an enlarged understanding of what it is to live a good life, and thereby provide a potent stimulus
to learning what it is to be human in a tightly interconnected, globalised world.

Introduction

Is genuine dialogue between cultures possible, or are cultures so irrevocably different that we are
inevitably confronted by a “clash of civilizations” along the lines prefigured by Huntington (1993).
In defending the possibility of intercultural dialogue over irrevocable misunderstanding and conflict,
I contend that a hermeneutically-informed dialogue model has particular merits in terms of
vindicating the possibility of intercultural communication and learning, while transcending the
pitfalls of incommensurability, dichotomous thinking, and invidious comparison. Having elucidated
its strengths and constitutive conditions, I draw on core insights from classical Eastern and Western
philosophies to illustrate how the dialogue between East and West can yield an enlarged
understanding of what it is to live a good human life, and thereby provide a potent stimulus to learning
what it is to be human in a tightly interconnected, globalised world.1

1 Cf. Guignon 1999: “The question of the good life aims at identifying the most fulfilling, meaningful, and satisfying life
possible for humans, a life which may be described as thriving, flourishing, and ... "blessed". ... our ability to answer
questions of this sort has a direct bearing on our ability to understand our obligations as participants in a shared world”
(vii-viii).

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Intercultural Dialogue: A Hermeneutico-dialogical Approach1

In valorising intercultural dialogue, a hermeneutico-dialogical approach proffers the possibility of

mutual understanding and learning between cultures through finding and building on common ground.
But as the Winchean rationality debate attests,2 this goal is beset by several obstacles, most notably
by threats of incommensurability, dichotomous thinking, and invidious comparison. And
notwithstanding the influence of globalisation, it has recently been contended that there still exists
“an intellectual divide between East and West”, attributable to “vast differences in Eastern and
Western ways of perception, conception, and representation”, giving rise to a “predominantly
oppositional paradigm” which “conceives the differences between East and West as a series of
dichotomies” (Gu and Guo 2015, 299-300). Nonetheless, Gu and Guo concur that the idea of “cultural
empowerment and reciprocal enrichment” remains a tenable ideal for intercultural dialogue with the
capacity to strengthen each cultural tradition (312) and contribute to the development of “a new
consciousness” that will “benefit and enrich all cultures across the globe” (298).
But is intercultural dialogue oriented toward mutual understanding and learning in fact possible?
Or do the manifest differences between cultures render them incommensurable, such that, to
paraphrase the early Kuhn, inhabitants of different cultures effectively live in “different worlds” with
no common measure between them (cf. Kuhn 1970, 150), as the “clash of civilizations” thesis also
presupposes. For instance, do the Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist ontologies which underpin
traditional Chinese culture render it incommensurable with the ancient Greek heritage of Western
civilization? For those who continue to view the East as “the ultimate other of the West” (cf. Gu and
Guo 2015, 300) or vice versa, the answer must be in the affirmative. Fortunately, on closer analysis,
the strong incommensurability thesis does not prove compelling.

Beyond Incommensurability

Thus, firstly, as G.E.R. Lloyd points out: “Empirically, there is no human society with which
communication has proved to be totally impossible, however hard mutual understanding … may
sometimes be to attain” (cited in Zhang 2010, 347). On the philosophical level, this claim is matched
by compelling arguments to the effect that we cannot coherently view another culture as a functioning
human culture without necessarily presupposing that its conceptual scheme and worldview overlap
with ours in significant respects (cf. Davidson 1973, Fay 1996, 80-84, Healy 2013, 269-270).
Moreover, as Winch famously contended (1970, 107), the “limiting notions” of “birth, death, sexual
relations” provide enduring points of contact and communication between cultures; and this list could
easily be extended. Correlatively, a hermeneutico-dialogical approach provides a productive
alternative to the restrictive “myth of the framework” from which the strong incommensurability
thesis derives (Bernstein 2010). Challenging the inherently flawed and restrictive conceptualisation

1 Briefly stated, the term “hermeneutico-dialogical” is intended to designate an approach which, underpinned by Hans-
Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, aspires to do justice to the dialogical character of human understanding,
its historico-cultural situatedness, and openness to other cultures and traditions.
2 For the issues at stake in this debate, see especially Winch’s “Understanding a Primitive Society” (Winch 1970), and
the responses thereto collected in Wilson 1970.

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of cultures as mutually impermeable, it conceives of cultural horizons and boundaries as linguistically
constituted, and hence as mobile, fluid, and inherently open to one another. 1 It thus provides a
theoretically well-grounded alternative that is more complex, less reified, and correspondingly truer
to our experience. And in incorporating an inherently dialogical conception of human relations, it
likewise embodies the potential to underwrite productive possibilities for mutual understanding and
learning between different cultures and traditions, despite the potential barriers. Indeed, on this
approach, far from constituting an intractable barrier, the encounter with difference can provide a
powerful stimulus to intercultural understanding and learning.
But if so, what of the dualisms that pervade our thinking about other cultures even in an
increasingly globalised world, and which lend credence to an “us/them” dichotomy? For example,
while the West is typically portrayed as valorising individualism, anthropocentrism, mastery, self-
centredness, detached objectivity, and decontextualized reason, the East is correspondingly
characterised as valorising interconnectedness, cosmocentrism, harmony, self-transcendence,
benevolence, “heart-mindedness” (Shun 2004), and wisdom. As with the incommensurability thesis,
the conceptual flaw again lies in presupposing that the dichotomies are necessarily mutually exclusive.
What is thus precluded is the dialectical recognition that the seemingly polarised alternatives “are in
fact deeply interconnected” and hence that the differences can be both preserved and transcended by
being held dynamically in “tension within a larger framework” (Fay 1996, 224, 234).

Transcending Dichotomies

As a corrective for such polarised “either/or” thinking, a dialogical (or “dialectical”) approach comes
into its own (Fay 1996, 223-224). For in embracing “both/and” over “either/or” thinking, such an
approach can do justice to the realisation that, like both sides of a debate, both terms of a seeming
dualism can have validity and may in fact be needed to encapsulate the complexities at issue. Likewise,
recognition that seemingly complete answers are only partial and require “their supposed opposite
for completion” (Fay 1996, 223) holds open the possibility that perceived dualisms can give way to
the discernment of complementarities, thereby providing a powerful stimulus to mutual
understanding and learning. But such an outcome is only possible provided certain conditions are
fulfilled, beginning with the requirement that the other culture is engaged with on a basis of equality
(Gu and Guo 2015, 305, Ru 2014, 186).
While equality may seem an obvious precondition for dialogue, the Winchean rationality debate
illustrates just how difficult it can be to overcome an ethnocentric tendency to presuppose the superior
rationality of our home culture. To correct for this, a genuinely dialogical orientation must do justice
to the richness and integrity of the other culture as a complex repository of meaning, comparable in
significance to one’s own, such that it can prompt us to reappraise our own taken-for-granted values,
standards, and presuppositions (Healy 2013, 271-273, cf. Kögler 1996, Taylor 1994).

1 As Gadamer himself puts it, “as verbally constituted, every such world is of itself always open to every possible insight
and hence every expansion of its own world picture, and is accordingly available to others” (1989, 447).

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Embracing Comparable Validity and Dialogical Equality

To this end, a hermeneutico-dialogical approach postulates as constitutive conditions the principles

of comparable validity and dialogical equality, which require that we allow the other culture to make
a serious claim on our attention, in recognition that it may embody ways of viewing the world, and
of thinking and reasoning about it, comparable in validity to our own, from which we could profitably
stand to learn. Correlatively, we accord it the right to articulate its self-understanding in its own terms
and, attending carefully to fundamental differences in ontological, epistemological, and valuational
presuppositions, stand ready to modify our existing preconceptions in the light of what we thus come
to learn. In short, as an antidote to ethnocentrism and invidious comparison, these postulates enjoin
us to acknowledge members of other cultures as co-subjects in intercultural inquiry and, beyond that,
as equal partners in a process of growth of understanding and intercultural learning, thereby opening
ourselves to the possibility that we may have much to learn from the other culture about what it means
to live a worthwhile human life. Notably too, this stance is motivated not just by ethical but also by
epistemological and ontological considerations, deriving from the recognition that it is needed to
foster “our development as mature human beings who both recognise our own distinctiveness from
and our inter-relatedness to others” (Fay 1996, 237).
Endorsement of the foregoing postulates presupposes a commitment to genuine openness to
learning from the other culture to the extent that we are prepared to allow it to pose a challenge to our
own preconceptions about how best to live a worthwhile human life. Genuine openness to mutual
understanding and learning thus constitutes a further indispensable condition for intercultural
dialogue. Integral to this condition is a willingness to maintain an open-minded, questioning attitude
oriented toward uncovering the ontological, epistemological, and valuational basis of the other
culture’s self-understanding with a view to learning from its strengths (Healy 2013, 274-76, cf. Ru
2014, 186). This in turn entails the need for tacking between perceptions of sameness and difference.
For a genuine process of intercultural learning presupposes a moment both of “familiarization” and
“defamiliarization”, such that “not only might “they” become more familiar to “us”, but we may well
become more “strange” to ourselves” (Simpson 2001, 89, cf. Kögler 1996, e.g., 199, 213, 245). In
simultaneously apprising us of the limitations of our own worldview and the corresponding strengths
of the other, this has the potential to fuel a holistic learning process, culminating in a potentially
transformative “fusion of horizons” (Gadamer 1989), whereby we learn “to move in a broader horizon,
within which what we have formerly taken for granted as the background to valuation can be situated
as one possibility alongside the different background of the formerly unfamiliar culture” (Taylor 1994,
67).

The envisaged outcome is not, of course, the substitution of one way of life for the other, but
rather a process of complementary learning whereby each worldview “can become more educated,
refined, and sophisticated” through its engagement with the other culture.1 Hence, a commitment to
engaging dialogically with another is simultaneously a commitment to learning about ourselves in
the process of learning about them (cf. Fay 1996, 229). Moreover, since there is no algorithm which

1 Thus, “In a conversation of this kind each interpretive stance may retain its distinctiveness; it can also help to develop
and enrich the others and, in turn, be developed and transformed by them” (Warnke 1992, 132).

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can determine how we should proceed to unravel the different assumptions and “epistemic
orientations” (Kögler 1996, 165) in the unfamiliar cultural context, this process is “always precarious
and fragile” and depends on “the cultivation of hermeneutical sensitivity and imagination” (Bernstein
1991, 92-93).

Learning to Be Human through East/West Dialogue

The challenge of learning to be human, the theme of this World Congress, provides an especially
worthwhile and defensible telos for intercultural dialogue. As multidimensional and holistic, it
transcends the demonstrated inadequacies of the unidimensional measures that characterised the
earlier rationality debates, thereby enabling us to regain instead the Winchean concern with learning
from other cultures about the possibilities for living a worthwhile human life (cf. Healy 2013, 276-
278). In this way, it contributes directly to enhancing our understanding of what it means to be a good
global citizen and therewith to the development of a cosmopolitan humanism, 1 factors that have
become increasingly important in a tightly interconnected, globalised world (cf. Jia and Jia 2016).2
Let us conclude, then, by considering some illustrative examples of how the dialogue between
traditional Eastern and Western philosophies could enrich our understanding of what it is to be human
by enabling us to transcend apparent dichotomies and discern commonalities and complementarities,
despite the dangers and limitations of drawing such high-level contrasts.3
While dialogical learning is manifestly a two-way process, I focus here on briefly delineating
how traditional Eastern philosophy could provide a needed counterpart to some deeply entrenched
Western preconceptions. As already emphasised, the dialogical desideratum is not to negate such
differences but, rather, to hold them in dynamic tension.

Interconnectedness vs Individuation

Thus, firstly, the Eastern emphasis on interconnectedness, such that “everything in the universe” is
understood to be “interconnected and interdependent” (Gu and Guo 2015, 302), can provide a strong

1 As envisaged here, such a cosmopolitan humanism would provide the philosophical grounding for what it is to be a
good global citizen and epitomise its defining characteristics. In The Fragile “We”, Lawrence Vogel provides some
thought-provoking reflections on a “cosmopolitan interpretation” of “authentic being-with-others” which could contribute
to its development (see further, Vogel 1994, ch. 4, especially pp. 69-71).
2 In addressing this topic from a neo-Confucian perspective, Jia and Jia reinforce the interconnection between learning
to be human and learning to be good global citizens, and the significance in this regard of the concepts of “co-humanity”
(2016, 34f.) and “holistic humanism” (37f.), which they term “correlative” and “complementary” ideals (45). They
likewise reinforce the need for recognising “opposite forces” as complementary (because “dialectically and reciprocally
interrelated” and “interconnected” (39, 43)); and remind us that far from being a once-off occurrence, pursuit of these
ideals is a “ceaseless and unending process” (44). While their approach has many affinities with the hermeneutico-
dialogical approach, as presented here the focus of the latter remains “cosmopolitan” rather than “anthropocosmic”.
3 There is clearly need for caution in drawing such broad and high-level contrasts. Doing comparative philosophy is “hard”
(Wong 2017), essentially because there are innumerable ways of misinterpreting the other culture, and of highlighting
contrasts between cultures to the point of neglecting affinities and crossovers. Moreover, it is all-too-easy to neglect the
fact that the (putatively) contrasting poles are also typically represented within (and not just between) cultures and to
overlook ongoing internal conflicts of interpretation. Furthermore, the higher the level of generality and the more
condensed the analysis, the greater the danger of misrepresentation. Nonetheless, appreciation of these dangers should
not be such as to induce paralysis when it comes to drawing productive, if necessarily very general, comparisons and
contrasts.

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challenge to the individualism which typically characterises Western conceptions of human well-
being and flourishing. While there are clearly crossovers between the traditions, 1 the process of
defamiliarisation engendered by the encounter with the deep and distinctive ontological
underpinnings of the Eastern concern with interconnectedness as differentially manifested in the
Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions should alert us in the West to the benefits of embracing
this dimension as a counterpoint to an undue preoccupation with individuation in the interests of
becoming better global citizens.

Self-transcendence vs Self-centredness

Correlatively, the pervasive Eastern emphasis on other-relatedness can provide a salutary

counterpoint to the Western tendency toward self-centredness (cf. Joshanloo 2014, 482). For example,
the strong Confucian emphasis on the “relational and collective aspect of the self” (Joshanloo 2014,
483) ensures that the concern is not with the individual self as such, but with the self as centre of an
ever-expanding set of relationships (Tu 1997, 8-9), ultimately including the whole global community
(Jia and Jia 2016, 44). From this perspective, “[s]elf-interest and selfishness are [mere] indicators of
an immature mind, [which] has failed to realize that others are its own extensions” (Joshanloo 2014,
478). Here again then, the learning process engendered by the encounter with difference should alert
us to the fact that being a good global citizen entails striking a judicious balance between self-
centredness and self-transcendence.2

Cosmocentrism vs Anthropocentrism

Likewise, the cosmocentric orientation of traditional Eastern philosophy can provide a needed
counterbalance to Western anthropocentrism. Thus, challenging the traditional Western tendency to
view humankind as a “privileged creature”, in Eastern philosophies humanity has long been
understood to be a “small part of the cosmos” which, given its “insignificant position in the cosmic
hierarchy” (Joshanloo 2014, 484-485), would do well to recognise both its inextricable
interconnection with and reliance on the rest of the cosmos. The implications for our relations with
the natural world are especially evident. Since “all creatures including human beings, animals, plants,
and even non-sentient beings are considered to be parts of an underlying unity”, “ideas like mastering
or conquering nature are alien to [Eastern] traditions” (Joshanloo 2014, 485). Although a cosmic
orientation is by no means absent from the Western tradition,3 the prominence accorded this theme
in traditional Eastern philosophy again provides a powerful reminder of the need to strike an

1 Thus, for example, in Western Stoicism we find a deep awareness of (cosmic) interconnectedness (e.g., Hadot 1995,
229), while Confucianism retains a significant emphasis on the individual albeit as intrinsically related to the community
(e.g., Tu 1997, 11-12).
2 Here too, however, closer dialogical engagement would alert us to crossovers and commonalities where before we
perceived only differences between the traditions. For example, it becomes clear that a concern with self-transcendence
is by no means foreign to traditional Western philosophy but was rather the specific object of the practices of self-
cultivation (or “spiritual exercises”, as Hadot dubs them) exhorted by ancient Western schools such as the Stoic and
Epicurean (Hadot 1995, e.g., 102-103, 242).
3 As evidenced, for example, by the Stoic emphasis on the need for attunement to the “all-embracing Logos” (universal
reason) (Hadot 1995, 242, cf. 268, 272).

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appropriate balance between the cosmocentric and anthropocentric, so that we, humans, can become
true “shepherds of being” (cf. Heidegger 1998).

Harmony vs Mastery

Traditional Eastern philosophy can also correct for a Baconian preoccupation with mastery, often
perceived as a correlate of Western anthropocentrism, such that we humans believe ourselves licensed
to control “other aspects of creation” and that “raw nature” in particular is “a force to be controlled
and subordinated” (Joshanloo 2014, 484). Here again, engaged with dialogically, the ideal of
harmony (he) which pervades traditional Eastern philosophies, as evidenced especially in the Daoist
emphasis on cosmic and natural harmony (e.g. Chen and Liu 2014, 206, Ru 2014, 184-185) and in
the Confucian concern with social harmony (Joshanloo 2014, 481, Ru 2014, 183), can provide a
salutary counterpoint.1 Hence, a concern for harmony--with the environment, with others, and indeed
ultimately with the cosmos (Chen & Liu 2014, 217-218, Joshanloo 2014, 485)--must also be deemed
an indispensable hallmark of a cosmopolitan humanism which strives to counterbalance advancement
of human well-being with good stewardship of resources.

Benevolence vs Self-interest

Furthermore, the Eastern emphasis on benevolence (Confucian ren) and compassion (Buddhist
karuna) can provide a needed corrective for the Western proclivity toward detached, egoistic
calculations of self-interest. While precepts such as the Golden Rule and the Socratic injunction
against perpetrating injustice are familiar to us in the West, these do not have the same pervasive
prominence or force as their Eastern counterparts. In particular, as superordinate ethical ideal and
crowning virtue of the fully-realised human being or noble one (junzi), Confucian ren has much to
offer as a counterpoint (e.g., Jia and Jia 2016, 38f., Joshanloo 2014, 481, Shun 1997, 140-141). As
conditioning all our dealings with others, it provides a timely reminder that the exercise of
benevolence cannot be just an occasional, philanthropic interlude from pervasive self-centredness,
but must instead be woven into the very fabric of our existence. Correlatively, as extending outwards
in concentric circles, from family and friends, to community, nation, and ultimately the world (Jia
and Jia 2016, 43-45), it can be seen to embrace the whole global community in a way that renders it,
too, integral to the constitution of a viable cosmopolitan humanism.

Wisdom vs Reason

Finally, while the Eastern and Western traditions initially seem to converge in their valorisation of
wisdom as integral to a good human life, here again, there is significant room for mutual learning
given the variations in how this desideratum is conceptualised. Thus, in the Western tradition the

1 Although the theme of harmony is by no means absent from the Western tradition (Hadot 1995, 266)—as evidenced by
the extent of the Pythagorean influence in particular (e.g. Ru 2014, 186)—the priority accorded it in the classic Eastern
tradition again provides a timely reminder of its contemporary significance for our dealings with both the natural and
social worlds (cf. Chen & Liu 2014, 209-213).

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pursuit of wisdom has typically been equated with the exercise of reason (e.g., Cooper 2012, 6-7, cf.
Guignon 1999, xiv). This is true even of Socrates, the classical Western figure who perhaps most
closely mirrors the Eastern conception of the wise man, or sage, and who also famously professes
ignorance as integral to his imputed wisdom. In contrast, the Eastern tradition typically valorises
wisdom of a perceptibly more holistic, intuitive, and experiential sort (cf. Chen 2005, 28-29, Cheng
2002, 310-311, Tu 1997, 10-11) , deriving from attuning one’s understanding to the rhythms and
harmony of the cosmos as a basis for discerning the implications for the appropriate conduct of human
life as epitomised, differentially, by Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist sages (see, e.g., Ivanhoe 1997,
157-158, 163-164, Rosemont 1997, 176). Clearly, there is much we in the West still stand to learn
from this more holistic, “heart-mind” , tradition if we are to become better global citizens and true
shepherds of being.1

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1 See further, Special Issue on “Wisdom in Comparative Perspectives”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33 (3), 2006. In
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Guignon, Charles B.(ed.). 1999. The Good Life. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
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Foucault. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. Original edition, 1962.
Rosemont, Henry, Jr. 1997. "Chinese Socio-Political Ideals." In A Companion to World Philosophies,
edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe, 174-183. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ru, Xin 2014. ""Harmony in Diversity” and Dialogue among Cultures." In Intercultural Dialogue:
In Search of Harmony in Diversity, edited by Edward Demenchonok, 181-190. Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Shun, Kwong-loi. 1997. "Ideas of the Good in Chinese Philosophy." In A Companion to World
Philosophies, edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe, 139-147. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 2004. "Conception of the Person in Early Confucian Thought." In Confucian Ethics: A
Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, edited by Kwong-loi Shun and David
B Wong, 183-199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simpson, Lorenzo. 2001. The Unfinished Project: Toward a Postmetaphysical Humanism London:
Routledge.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. "The Politics of Recognition." In Multiculturalism: Examining the ‘Politics of
Recognition’, edited by Amy Gutman, 25-73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tu, Weiming. 1997. "Chinese Philosophy: A Synoptic View." In A Companion to World Philosophies,
edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe, 3-23. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Warnke, Georgia. 1992. Justice and Interpretation. Cambridge: Polity.
Wilson, Bryan, ed. 1970. Rationality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Winch, Peter. 1970. "Understanding a Primitive Society." In Rationality, edited by Bryan Wilson, 78-
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Wong, David. 2017. "Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western." The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/comparphil-chiwes/>.
Yao, Xinzhong. 2006. "Introduction: Wisdom in Comparative Perspectives." Journal of Chinese
Philosophy 33 (3):319-321.
———. 2006a. "From “What Is Below” to “What Is Above”: A Confucian Discourse on Wisdom."
Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33 (3):349-363.
———. 2006b. "Knowledge, Virtue, and Joyfulness: Confucian Wisdom Revisited." Dao: A Journal
of Comparative Philosophy 5 (2):273-292.
Zhang, Longxi. 2010. "The Complexity of Difference: Individual, Cultural, and Cross-Cultural."
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 35 (3/4):341-352.

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 “Clarifying Sameness and Difference” ：The Language of Diversity, Difference
and Communality within the Classical Linguistic Context of China

Wang Zhongjiang
Department of Philosophy, Peking University

When discussing the concepts of “difference,” “diversity” and “commonality,” etc., they can be
philosophical, religious or cultural. They can also be from different historical traditions, such as
Western or Eastern. The current tendency and direction is that most people tend towards cultural and
religious concepts of “difference” and “commonality.” They focus on the meaning and value of
difference, diversity, and plurality and there is a clear feeling of distance and unfamiliarity between
them and “universality” and “commonality.” The concept of commonality and its value that are
included in civilization and culture have been encompassed underneath a thick fog of difference.1
“We” have retreated into seclusion and the cultural relativism expressed by representational symbols
such as “other,” “whose,” and “identity” possesses more and more influence.2
Actually, just how things do not only have “commonality,” they also do not only have
“difference” and “diversity.” On the whole, civilizations and cultures are all compound bodies of
diversity, differences, and commonalities. Within their commensurability there exists difference, and
just the same, within their difference there exists commensurability. The classical linguistic context
of China provides a testimony to this. You can see their differences, diversities, and commonalities
that exist side by side; there you can know that the position of the Confucians cannot be simply
described as a “particularism.” Taking advantage of this opportunity, I want to present everybody
with the various concepts of “difference (chayixing),” “diversity (duoyangxing),” and “commonality
(gongtongxing)” within the classical linguistic context of China. There is no doubt that the concepts
of difference, diversity, and commonality, etc. are terms which we now commonly use. Within
ancient classical texts, the terms used to express similar concepts were mainly “tong (to be the same,
to make be the same)” and “yi (to be different, to make be different).” Similar to these two terms are
“gong (common, shared; public) and “shu” (particular; unique; special), “yi (one; unity, to unify) and
“wanwu” (the ten thousand things). Below, we will investigate the conceptions of “tong” and “yi” as
well as other concepts within the classical linguistic environment of China to see what kind of

1 For example, Samuel P. Huntington claims that civilizations are opposed to and in conflict with each other. Refer to
Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Originally referred to the Chinese
version: Wenming de Chongtu yu Shijie Zhixu de Chongjian, Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 2010. Or for example, searching
for similar things in history, thinking that Confucianism is a particularism, etc.
2 For more on the discussion of commonality, universality, and the differences and diversity of culture, refer to Zhao
Dunhua: Wei Pubianzhuyi Bianhu – Jian Ping Zhongguo Wenhua Teshuzhuyi Sichao, in Xueshu Yuekan, 2007 di 5 qi,
pgs. 34-40; Zhang Xianglong: The Philosophical Feature of Confucianism and its Position in Inter-cultural Dialogue:
Universalism or Non-universalism, in Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Volume 4 Number 4, December 2009, pgs. 483-
492; Beck, Ulrich: Multiculturalism or Cosmopolitanism: How Can We Describe and Understand the Diversity of the
World? Originally referred to Duoyuanwenhuazhuyi huo Shijiedatongzhuyi: Women Ruhe Miaoshu he Lijie Shijie
Duoyangxing, in Guoji Shehui Kexue Zazhi, translated by Yue Youxi, 2011 di 2 qi, pgs. 82-86; and refer to Macintyre,
Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. Originally referred to Shei zhi Zhengyi? Hezhong Helixing?, Translated by
Wan Junren, et. al., Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1996.

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difference, diversity, and commonality they expressed. I will begin the discussion of each dimension
with an example.

1. “Common Minds” and “Universal Principle:” “Commonality” within the World

The first important dimension and level of the “theory of sameness and difference (tongyilun)” within
the classical linguistic context of China is its knowledge and acceptance of the world’s “commonality.”
There is an example that is quite suitable for bringing out this level of the Chinese “theory of sameness
and difference.” The Harvard-Yanching Institute is in a red brink building where there is a resting
room. In this resting room there hangs a couplet: “Civilizations new and old mutually improve, east
and west in the mind are originally the same.” This couplet was written towards the end of the Qing
Dynasty by an official named Chen Baochen for the Harvard-Yanching Institute when he was 84
years old. During the late Qing Dynasty, Chen Baochen was known for remonstrating frankly and in
his late years he was the teacher of Pu Yi (the last emperor of China). According to Chen Baochen’s
couplet, although different civilizations are different and diverse in terms of past and present, new
and old, however, communication between them is capable of bringing mutual benefit. Because
regardless of whether or it is in the East or in the West, people’s “original heart-mind” and the
“principle” of everything in the world all originally possess a “commonality.” Chen Baochen was
active during the late Qing and experienced the beginning of the Republican Era, this was a time
when the old civilization of China began to interact with, absorb and assimilate the new civilization
of the West. Chen Baochen knew from his own lived experiences that the interaction of different
civilizations always being beneficial originates in the common nature of humanity and the common
principles of the universe.1
Chen Baochen’s basic belief is that “east and west in the mind are originally the same” has its
reasons. It embodies the high cognition and recognition of the “view on sameness and difference
(tongyiguan)” in regard to the world’s “commonality” within the classical linguistic context of China.
When Lu Jiuyuan was young, he became aware to a truth while meditating on the boundlessness of
the “universe” and the relationship between the universe and the human beings. Human beings
possess a common nature (“xintong, or common mind, as above”), the ten thousand things possess a
universal law (“litong”). This is a basic Confucian belief. In regard to “common mind,” the
Confucians believed that humanity possesses a “common” “original nature (benxing).” Although
Confucius thought that people’s intelligence varied vertically, however, he affirmed that people’s
natures are similar (xing xiangjin). Human beings all have free will and can pursue moral values and
self-completion. Mencius acknowledged that things have differences, however, he clearly affirmed
that human beings have a common good nature and innate knowledge and capabilities, just like how
people all have the same sensational desires. Lu Jiuyuan, Wang Yangming and his disciples fully
developed Mengzi’s theory of a common human mind and theory of a good human nature. Wang
Yangming fully affirmed that human beings possess a common innate moral nature and capability

1 In the 1920s, Bertrand Russell provided this kind of argument based on the experiences he had in China. Refer to Russell,
Bertrand: The Problem of China, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., pgs. 185-198. Originally referred to Zhongguo
Wenti, Shanghai: Xuelin Chubanshe, 1996, pgs. 146-156.

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(“innate knowledge (liangzhi),” “innate capability (liangneng)”), people simply have to fully develop
their innate knowledge and innate mind so that they can become a highest-level person and undertake
the highest-level affairs in the world. Cheng-Zhu lixue (or “study of principle(s)”) has been
considered to be different from Lu-Wang xinxue (or “study of mind”), however, Cheng-Zhu lixue
also affirms that human beings possess an innate common good nature (nature of heaven and earth
“tiandi zhi xing”) and a common good-natured heart-mind (“daoxin”), as well as possessing an
impure “nature of material qi (qizhi zhi xing)” and an impure “human heart-mind (“renxin”).”
Regardless of what the Confucians say human nature is, the Confucian tradition affirmed that
people possess a common nature and a common mind, they affirmed that all people can realize
themselves. The Confucians did not have a class consciousness like that of India, they also did not
have the concept of slavery like that of ancient Greece. The Confucian theory of a common human
nature is also at the same time a theory of an equal human nature. Chinese Buddhism believed that
all people possess a common Buddha-nature and that all people can become enlightened, just like the
idea maintained by Huineng of “illuminate the mind and see your Buddha-nature.” This has been
generally viewed as the exceptional characteristic of Chinese Buddhism. Daoism as a philosophy and
Daoism as a religion are also like this. Laozi and Zhuangzi think that people all possess a common
“de nature” (i.e. the reason why a human being is a human being and not a tree); Huang-Lao
philosophy thinks that people possess an innate nature (xingqing, or “nature and emotions”) to tend
towards benefit and avoid harm; Daoism as a religion thinks that people all possess a common “dao
nature (daoxing).” These all express that within the classical linguistic context of China, there exists
a concept of a common “human mind.”
Similarly, within the classical linguistic context of China there is the concept of a “universal
principle (litong).” Lu Jiuyuan’s concept of a “universal principle” is a part of the Song-Ming Neo-
Confucian “theory on a universal principle.” There existed many different schools during this period
of Neo-Confucianism, but they all had something in common, that is, they all affirmed that the
universe and the ten thousand things possess a common “natural principle (tianli)” or “principle (li)”
(also dao). This can be clearly seen in the concept of “the principle is one (liyi) in the saying that “the
principle is one and its particularities are many (liyi shufen).” This can also explain why they thought
the ten thousand things were a unity (wanwu yiti). “The ten thousand things are a unity” takes the
universe as the greatest common body, it is Zhang Zai’s general claim that “the people [are all my]
kin and the ten thousand things [are all my] partners (minpao wuyu).” This surpasses the early
Confucian classical text Liji – Liyun’s idea of a “great community.” In searching further, the
Confucian “universal principle” points to the common ethical values of the “human heart-mind” in
Mencius, it is the basis for human beings having a “common heart-mind.” In Xunzi, “universal
principle” points to the universal order of heaven and earth, and humanity. It is the “commonality
(lei)” and “unity (yi)” that exists within “differences (za)” and “diversity (wan).” This kind of
continuous “unity” also exists in the history of humanity, the function of great personalities is in their
grasping and utilizing this kind of “unity.”
In a general sense, Chinese thought and culture believe that humanity and the universe possess
a common “principle (daoli)” and a common “virtue (daode).” Each character in these two terms
were initially separate and they also possess differences between Confucians and Daoists, but after

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undergoing complex evolution, they became compound terms, pointing to both a universal principle
and a universal value. At the beginning of the Song, Song Taizu asked Zhao Pu this question: “What
thing is largest in the world?” After thinking about this question, Zhao Pu answered: “The dao
principle (daoli) is largest.” Song Taizu was very pleased with Zhao Pu’s answer. They were two of
the most powerful people in the world, and they both believed in the dao principle and viewed the
“dao principle” as a base value higher than “authority.”1 “Principle” and “virtue” are still the shared
foundation for the Chinese spirit and value consciousness. This ends our discussion of “common
heart-mind” and “universal principle” within the Chinese linguistic context.

2. The Creative Power of “Difference” and “Diversity”

The second important dimension and level of the “theory of sameness and difference” within the
classical linguistic context of China is that it thinks that difference and diversity possess a strong
creative power. In regard to this dimension, I want to begin from an important passage from the
“zeyang” chapter in the Zhuangzi. This chapter makes up an imaginative conversation between two
very different persons. One of these two is “Little Knowledge,” who lacks in knowledge, the other is
“Da Gongdiao (or per Watson’s translation, Great Imperial Accord),” who is able to talk highly and
broadly. Da Gongdiao answers Little Knowledge’s question on what customs and public opinion are
(“the words in the hills”) and then he provides an important argument on the “relation of sameness
and difference.” He says that to bring things that are not the same and are different together is to be
“communal,” to take something that is communal and break it apart is difference (“Combine what is
different to make what is the same; break apart what is the same to make what is different”). What is
even more important is that this passage emphasizes that difference and diversity contribute to the
power of totality and communality. In order to show this more clearly, this passage lists a few definite
examples. For example, low earth can be piled up into a high mountain, many tributary streams can
run into and form a larger river, etc. According to these examples, the power of things’ holistic and
communal nature comes from diversity and difference. If things are not different or diverse, then
there this nothing that is useful of itself, there is no creativity, and things also lack their holistic power.
The thought that the diversity of things possesses a creative power was brought up during the 8th
century BC (late Western Zhou) by a grand archivist named Shi Bo.2 He thought that mixing diverse
things would produce something new; if it is just the accumulation of a single kind of thing then in
the end there is still just one thing. The word “to harmonize (he)” includes the diversity of things and
has the dually significant meaning of “to harmonize (tiaohe, also: to blend, to mix, to mediate)” and
“to fuse (ronghe)” thereof. Just like Shi Bo explains, to mix different things together and then balance
that mixture is called “to harmonize.” The reason why “harmonizing” is able to create new things is
because it is based in the diversity of things and is based in using some things to combine and balance
other things. On the contrary, “singular” things and their pure accumulation in quantity does not have
this creative power, they do not produce new things. Shi Bo’s thought on “diverse harmony and

1 See Song Shen Kuo: Mengxi Bitan – Xubitan.

2 See Guoyu – Zhengyu Shibo wei Heng Gong lun Xingshuai.

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creation” was later developed into the Chinese wisdom that everyone is familiar with: “to harmonize
yet not make the same (he er butong).”
One of its important developers was a person from the state of Qi during the Spring and Autumn
period by the name of Yan Ying. Yan Ying used multi-flavored soups to explain “harmony” to Lord
Jinggong of the state of Qi and its essential difference from “unity (tong).” Delicious soups are made
by using many kinds of ingredients (meat, vegetables, etc.) and accordingly matching them with
different seasonings. The Odes has the word “harmonized soup (hegeng).” If there is just a single
thing, water for example, then no matter how you make it, it will not be delicious. This is the operating
of “harmonization” in the culinary arts. Music is also another very good example that can explain the
creative power of “to harmonize.” The original meaning of “to harmonize” was “musical harmony.”
Beautiful and pleasing to listen to music is created through the skillful mixing of diverse sounds.
Political life is the same. If rulers and ministers need to mutually supplement each other through
different and even contradictory opinions, then they will be able to effect very good policies. This is
called the “harmony” between rulers and ministers.
The “promote harmony and negate sameness (shanghe feitong)” thought of Shi Bo and Yan
Ying was summarized by Confucius as “to harmonize yet not make the same.” In Confucius’ eyes,
this is one of the places where the gentleman is separated from the petty man (“The gentleman
harmonizes but does not make things the same, the petty man makes things the same yet does not
harmonize them.” Analects 13.23) Political tolerance is even more difficult yet all the more important.
Essay 51 of The Federalist Papers states that: “This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival
interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs,
private as well as public.”1 This is a modern expression of China’s “to harmonize yet not make the
same.” Social harmony is established on the foundation of difference and diversity. It is not the result
of eliminating difference and diversity. Constructive and creative wisdom comes from different
opinions and views, they do not come from a single voice or idea.

3. “Sameness and Difference Mutually Obtain:” The Mutual Reliance and Mutual
Completion of the Relation of Things Same and Different

The third important dimension of the “theory of sameness and difference” within the classical
linguistic context of China is that it thinks that “sameness and difference” are mutually reliant,
mutually dependent and mutually completing. Mojing – Jingshang has a saying that goes “sameness
and difference mutually obtain (tongyi jiaode).” This saying is very beneficial to our understanding
of this dimension. This originally appears in the sentence “sameness and difference mutually obtain,
for example: presence and absence.” Mojing – Jingshang does not have a concrete explanation of
“sameness and difference mutually obtain,” instead it provides an example. It “compares” the
relationship in “sameness and difference mutually obtain” to that between “presence and absence.”
“Presence (you)” and “absence (wu)” are opposite and interdependent concepts. “Sameness and
difference” are also like this. If “there is sameness” then there is “difference,” if there is “difference”

1 Hamilton, Alexander, et al: The Federalist Papers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pg. 257. Originally referred
to Lianbang Dangren Wenji, Translated by Cheng Fengru, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1990, pg. 264.

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then there is “sameness.” On the other hand, if there is no “sameness” then there is no “difference,”
if there is no “difference” then there is no “sameness.” Mojing – Daqu provides an important proof,
it says that the reason why things have “differences” is because they have “sameness.” It is the same
the other way around, the reason things have “sameness” is because they have “differences.”
Other places in the Mojing where it discusses “sameness and difference” argue further for the
mutual dependence and mutual completion of the “sameness and difference” of things. Mojing –
Shangjing (and also Mojing – Daqu) divide “sameness and difference” into four kinds. The first kind
is “categorical sameness (leitong)” and “categorical difference (leiyi).” This points to the “sameness”
of an individual or a thing belonging to one type of “communality” and the “difference” of it not
belonging to a certain type. Both exist within the thing. For example, a stone has hardness and color.
The hardness of the stone belongs to one category, its color to another, but their sameness and
difference both exist within the stone. The sameness and difference of taxonomic relations are like
this.
The second is that of “totality (tongti)” and “partiality (yiti).” This points to the parts of a thing
being mutually connected to form a holistic “total (tong)” and the “partiality (yi)” of each part
separately having their own different uses. What this “sameness and difference” touches upon is the
mutual relationship of a totality and its parts. From the perspective that each separate part of a thing
belongs to the thing as a totality, they are all mutually connected and mutually entailing. For example,
the four limbs and other parts that make up a human body cannot leave the totality of the body. They
are mutually dependent and mutually completing in constructing a whole thing. This is the “sameness”
of a thing’s parts being “unified (yiti, literally “one body”).” It has the meaning of “the totality is
greater than its parts” and is also the evidence for thinking that totalities are organic. However, as
separate parts of a totality, they each have their own function. The function of the hand is different
than that of the leg. This is a part’s “partiality.” Regardless, the totality and partiality of a thing both
exist within the thing. A complete thing is a thing that maintains the best relation between the totality
of its wholeness and the partiality of its parts.
The third is that the “sameness” of a thing being itself and the “difference” of things which are
not it. This points to the relationship of a particular thing’s “sameness and difference.” Each
particularity is singular, it is only itself and not another particular. This is the “sameness” of its “unity.”
However, all you need is for there to be two particularities for them to be different. That there are not
two leaves that are completely alike on a tree points to the difference of two particulars. Each
particularity is in terms of itself its own “unity” and in terms of other particulars it is the other’s
“difference.” This is difference within sameness and sameness within difference. Within this relation
of sameness and difference, the creative power of diversity and difference become the creative power
of things themselves and each other’s own function. To respect one’s self is to affirm one’s self, it is
to affirm the creative power of the self. To respect others is to respect each and every particularity
and the creative power of others.
The fourth is the “sameness” of things that exist within a shared space and “difference” of things
that do not. This points to the relation of sameness and difference in terms of space. This kind of
sameness and difference makes things not only have spatial sameness but also spatial difference. That
things exist within space is just like their existing in time, this is the special spatial characteristic of

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things. The similar and different spaces which things exist in have different degrees of influence on
them. The diverse spaces of things possess different activities and creativity. The diversity of
organisms to a large extent comes from the earth’s spatial diversity. The diversity of cultures comes,
in part, from the different spaces cultures exist in.

4. The Biases and Collaborations of People: “Plurality” and “Consensus”

The fourth dimension of the “theory of sameness and difference” within the classical linguistic
concept of China is that it thinks that human beings both have their biases and different tendencies as
well and at the same time have a certain common position. To use modern language is to use the
terms “plurality” and “consensus.” I will begin from a saying of Xunzi. He says: “All of the people
in world each possess their own ideas while still maintaining a common ground between them.” This
sentence comes from the “dalüe” chapter from the Xunzi. The text of the Xunzi is mostly composed
of essays that contain strict discussions on certain topics, but the “dalüe” chapter is not like this, it is
a collection of Xunzi’s scattered sayings. Among these sayings could be called famous remarks and
some of them have further explanation. This saying of Xunzi’s is one such famous remark. This
saying means that all of the people in the world have different opinions and ideas in regard to things,
they all have different biases, yet they also have something which they can communally accept and
approve of.
Xunzi’s “own ideas (teyi)” and “common ground (gongyu)” are similar to the concepts of
“plurality” and “consensus.” According to the former, Xunzi acknowledges that people’s ideas and
positions in regard to things are pluralistic and different; according to the latter, people still have
“consensus” in regard to things. What Xunzi focused on was how to govern a social and political
entity. He thought that ritual and music and the historical Chinese political system were created by
the Three Dynasties’ sages, therefore, their stability and continuity should be preserved. If it is not
passed on or is not conducive to change, then the “common ground,” “consensus,” and
“acknowledgement” of the people will be destroyed, that is to say, order will be lost and its destruction
will happen in the split of a second. Therefore, nations must cherish people’s consensus and systems.
Of the other meanings of “own ideas” and “common ground” which Xunzi discussed, one is that
the ten thousand things coexist within a single universe, yet they still each have their own particularity
and form. Although they are not determined in advance to be of use to human beings, however, they
still have a use for humans.1 The second is that humanity communally lives in one world, they all
have the same desires and value pursuits, but knowledge and experiences in regard to satisfying their
desires and the values which they pursue are different. This is the relationship between “own ideas”
and “common ground” that Xunzi paid even more attention to.
The concepts of plurality and consensus within the Chinese classics manifest in different aspects
of the social community. Mozi’s thought tended towards a singleness brought about by “valuing
sameness” in terms of government. However, between Zi Chan, who was even earlier than Mozi,
being from the Spring and Autumn period and who was from the state of Zheng, and Huang Zongxi,

1 This type of meaning is different from Xunzi’s “The ten thousand things exist in space yet have different individuality
and that they do not have fixed uses for men to utilize is a principle .” (Xunzi – Fuguo “enriching the state”).

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who came two thousand years later between the Ming and Qing, there existed brilliant ideas which
were pluralistic and common. Due to Zi Chan’s enlightenment and tolerance, the people of the state
of Zheng often collected in his small village school to discuss contemporary matters of politics. Ran
Ming, a Zheng official, worried that this would negatively influence the political order of the state of
Zheng, thus he suggested to Zi Chan that he tear down the school. However, Zi Chan rejected his
suggestion. He said that that people come to his school day and night to discuss the good and bad of
political affairs expresses their wishes. What they affirm I will accept and enact, what they criticize I
will change. This is a place for my own learning, how can I tear it down? This village school in the
state of Zheng can be said to be a place of education as well as a space for public opinion. Zi Chan
was also tolerant, allowing society in Zheng to have space for free plurality. Kongzi heard this story
and affirmed Zi Chan, he said: “Looking at it this way, people said Zi Chan was not humane (ren),
but I do not believe this.” (Zuozhuan – Xiang Gong Year 31)
Huang Zongxi, from in the Ming-Qing period, also brought up similar concepts of plurality and
consensus in Mingyi Daifang Lu – Xuexiao. Within the Confucian classics there are sayings such as
“in all of the world there is one place of return but multiple paths, the result is the same though the
ways of thinking are one hundred” (Zhouyi – Xicizhuan xia), “the ten thousand things grow together
and do not harm each other, the ways are parallel and do not turn backwards,” (Liji – Zhongyong).
These both acknowledge that society’s plurality and consensus have a mutually beneficial
relationship. They both think that only if you go through pluralistic “multiple paths” will you be able
to have true consensus— “same point of return;” only if you go through pluralistic “one hundred
ways of thinking” will you be able to arrive a true consensus— “the same result.”
In modern society, the concepts of “plurality” and “consensus” are widely used in different
aspects and fields. However, they are at the front when it comes to culture and politics, they are the
same as freedom, order, openness and have been acknowledged to have a close relationship.1 The
“theory of sameness and oneness” within the classical linguistic context of China also includes
plurality and consensus in some sense.

Conclusion

The American philosopher David Kolb points out: “The encounters which occur through
philosophical globalization can open for us a new type of unity and diversity.”2 The phrase “sameness
and difference” within the classical linguistic context of China and its recognition of diversity,
difference, and communality opens a new kind of unity and diversity which should be able to develop
into a something with a constructive function. We are in a time of highly globalized interconnectivity;
our fates are more and more connected together. Therefore, we need to have global consensus and
acknowledgement, we need to turn every self into a communal self and adopt communal actions.

1 In regard to the concept of a pluralistic society, order, and consensus, refer to Lin Yusheng: Shenme shi Duoyuan Shehui?
– Zaida Liang Guoshu Jiaoshou (What is a Pluralistic Society?), see Lin Yu Sheng: Zhengzhi Zhixu yu Duoyuan Shehui,
Taibei: 1989, pgs. 147-165.
2 Kolb, David: Chuncui Xiandai Pipan—Heigeer, Haidegeer jiqi Yihou (The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel,
Heidegger and After), translated by Cang Peihong, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 2004, pg. 8. This line only appears in
the preface to the Chinese edition.

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However, the modern world is more and more complicated, more and more diverse, people’s
emotions, desires, and biases are less and less the same, therefore, we need to have plurality and
difference in order to make each self also be able to become like what Whitehead has said: “Men
require of their neighbors something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently
different to provoke attention.”1

(Translated by Kevin J. Turner; Proofread by Li Zhen)

1 Whitehead, A. N., Science and the Modern World, New York: The New American Library, 1948, pg. 207. Originally
referred to Kexue yu Jindai Shijie, Translated by He Qian, Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1989, pg. 198.

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 How to deal with Differences?
Logic of Identity, of Difference, and of Overlaps

Ram A. Mall
FSU, Jena, Germany

1. A Few Introductory Remarks

The central thesis proposed, discussed and defended here is the following: The question is not how
to get rid of differences but how to deal with them. If the concept of philosophical rationality or
philosophical thinking denotes something universally binding, which it undoubtedly does, at least in
the sense of a proto-philosophical activity or as a regulative idea, then it cannot and should not be
exclusively equated with a particular concept of the same, be this Western or non-Western.
Philosophical rationality rightly understood is, therefore, a neutral tool and nobody’s sole possession.
What we badly need today is a logical foundation of a liberal, philosophical pluralism, which is
de facto there from time immemorial. No simply two-valued logic can do justice to the vast field of
logical models.

2. Logic of Identity, of Difference and of Overlaps

There are three categories claiming primacy in some form or other when it comes to encounters
among different logical models. These are identity, difference and overlapping. The problem of
identity and difference has long been a central question of philosophy in all-philosophical traditions
whether Western or non-Western. Vedantists and Buddhists in India, Taoists and Confucians in China
and Heraclitus and Parmenides in Greece exemplify this.
The tripartite division into identity, difference and overlap gives rise to a tripartite division of
hermeneutics. These is a hermeneutics of identity, of difference and of overlap.
The defenders of identity tend to a kind of hermeneutic essentialism, giving undue primacy to
the concept of identity. This leads to a form of hermeneutics of identity aiming at total
commensurability. Understanding becomes here a mere duplication of one’s own understanding.
Advocates of such a logic of identity propose uniform ideas like truth, knowledge, morals, justice and
the like. As essentialists they believe in universal, unchangeable principles. In the field of politics
they tend towards some form of absolutism.
It was (and in certain quarters still is) this logic of identity, which was at work when Eurocentric
historiography of philosophy denied any philosophical thinking in non-occidental philosophical
traditions. This it did by making its own way of doing philosophy (if there ever was or is just only
one way of doing philosophy for all philosophers even in the Western tradition) as the one universally
valid model of philosophy.

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 The protagonists of difference are anti-essentialist and tend to a hermeneutics of radical
difference, implying incommensurability. A hermeneutics of radical difference makes mutual
understanding impossible. The defenders of such a theory believe in the historicity of all that is there.
They tend towards some form of relativism in philosophical matters.
The logic of overlaps stresses the empirical presence of perspectives, which are not mutually
exclusive. They do share some overlapping contents in spite of the due recognition of differences.
This logic of overlap helps us to overcome the impasse between relativism and absolutism, between
total commensurability and radical incommensurability. The logic of argumentation, which is at work
here, stresses the point that opposite arguments are arguments after all in spite of their being contrary
or sometimes even contradictory. The hermeneutic methodological approach outlined here is
conducive to mutual and cooperative understanding across borders in all-human undertakings.
Let me ask two questions on my way to finding an answer for an overlapping framework in the
service of a peaceful encounter among different logical models. First, how similar must logical
models be in order to be comparable at all and second, how different must they be in order not to be
comparable at all? Comparisons are well nigh impossible if we maintain the thesis of total
commensurability. There is a branch of an ill-founded hermeneutics, which defines hermeneutics as
a duplication of self-understanding. A hermeneutics of radical difference commits the same mistake
with the roles reversed. A for example tells B: you don’t understand me if you fail to understand me
in the way I understand myself or the way I want you to understand me. But if identity of views
defines understanding, there is hardly any fun or challenge in our pursuit of understanding the other.
Total identity makes understanding redundant. If, on the other hand, A tells B you cannot understand
me because your views are so radically different from mine that understanding is not possible. A does
not undertake the trouble to start to understand. He rather deduces the failure of understanding from
his a priori assertion of radical differences. Ethnological research, at least of the earlier period, testify
to this. Even such great philosophers as Hegel and Husserl subscribe to such a view.
The better way would be a third option, which is the route of seeking overlaps. Neither of the
above frameworks is in a position to supply us with a mediating concept of a tertium comparationis.
Our search for an intercultural overlapping framework tries to answer the question: How is it possible
that two thought frameworks, otherwise very different, can still have something common so as to
legitimately deserve the predicate to be a framework after all? The way out seems to lie somewhere
in the middle. We should reject, as mentioned above, the two fictions of a total identity
(commensurability) and of radical difference (incommensurability) and search for mediating overlaps
as the real seat of tertium comparationis. There are degrees of similarity and of difference. Overlaps
recognise difference and make use of similarity. Of course, we should avoid the temptation of
essentializing difference as well as similarity. There seems to be some sort of a Wittgensteinian
‘family resemblance’ at work here. It is true that there is a deep-rooted desire in the human heart to
start or to end with one all-inclusive model. But such a step, if it singularizes and absolutizes itself,
stands in the way of any logic of conversation.
There is a strong homemade fear of relativism. Of course relativism, which makes truth with a
capital ‘T’ relative to only one gestalt of philosophy becomes dictatorial because of its singularization
and absolutization. Such relativism must be rejected as detrimental to inter- and intracultural

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philosophical understanding. Here, relativism and absolutism seem to conspire together and represent
two sides of the same coin. Is not absolutism some sort of a universalised relativism?
But if relativism, on the other hand, means that we human beings, including philosophers, do
possess different views, insights and convictions as to what is truth, knowledge, logic, argument, then
I simply wonder how one could avoid being a relativist. In addition, such relativism is diffident,
tolerant, open and conducive to any peaceful intercultural dialogue. This has the further implication
that any claim to a privileged standpoint is no longer convincing today. The German philosopher,
Helmut Plessner asks us to be diffident and develop and cultivate the virtue of abstaining from making
absolutist claims.

3. What Logic qua Logic Should Stand for in the Face of the Plurality of Logical Models?
A Methodological Proposal: Logic of the First and of the Second Order

Logical thinking, before it takes a particular form such as two-valued, many-valued, seven-valued,
para-consistent and so on, is an intentional step to give reasons for our ways of thinking and doing
things. This is the universal aspect of logical thinking that is binding for all of us. We may give it the
name of “logic of the first order”, which is in a sense binding for all of us who enter into a discourse.
Logic of the first order is not a particular form of logic say two-valued or many-valued. A particular,
concrete form of logic is the “logic of the second order”. Logic of the first order is a primordial logical
attitude; a meta-logical orientation, which rejects the absolutist claim of any logic to be the logic.
The moment that the logic of the first order takes on a concrete form; it becomes two-valued,
many-valued and so on. This is what differentiates the different logical models. Logical models may
differ from each other but they are nevertheless logical models. The same applies to a protological
theory of argumentation. Counter arguments are arguments in spite of their being sometimes contrary
or even contradictory. Alternatives are alternatives and they should be taken and respected as such.
The logic of overlap as outlined here is itself not the name of a particular concrete logical model.
It is rather a formal culture of thinking very much akin to arithmetical counting, which is not a
counting of concrete objects like trees, human beings etc. One of the essential features of this logic
of the first order is that it possesses its universalistic and particularistic aspects.
Our logic of overlaps is, rightly understood, a normative logical instance that is overarching
across all the different logical models and enables us to converse with each other. Conversations
across lines of difference among various logical models are made possible because the logic of
overlap allows for the plurality of multiple stances of various models of logic.
The logic of overlap briefly outlined here pleads for philosophical pluralism. Within this model
there is enough room for diversity in reasoning without losing sight of commonality and difference.
From variation in the manifold of reasoning patterns, it does not follow that the idea of logic of the
first order is itself context-sensitive. What is context-sensitive is the logic of the second order. This
explains and justifies why different logical models, even though they may be sometimes contrary or
even contradictory, are logical models after all. The Sanskrit term “purvapaksa” in Indian
philosophical literature (an opponent imaginatively taken into account by the author of a
philosophical treatise) represents the idea of a potential objection. This guarantees a plurality of

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thought models, which in turn provides us with different authentic forms of explanation and
justification of logical models, of human rights and so on.
A plausible answer to the question as to what makes a philosophic-logical practice reasonable
lies in our conviction that it is the logic of overlap, which allows for a plurality of ways of thoughts
that cannot and should not be reduced to any one single, all-inclusive mode of total integration. Thus,
it is the logic of overlap, which mediates between the otherwise quite hostile logics of identity and of
difference.
When we compare different logical models, we always need a ‘tertium’, i.e. a third element,
which enables us to recognize and compare similarities and dissimilarities without putting any one
particular logical model in an absolute position. This is what the logic of overlaps as a third point of
view does. When we compare, for example, the five membered Indian syllogistic theory with the
three membered Aristotelian theory, we compare the two models keeping in view a third
comparandum as to what logical reasoning as a ‘tertium comparationis’ stands for. 1
Our logic of overlap as outlined here underlies the importance of overlapping contents. Let us
ask the question: When are two persons, two things, say two models of logic just different and when
are they radically different? Two persons Tom and Dick are different men. But at the same time they
are two instances, examples of the generic concept “man”. Their difference lies in their being Tom
and Dick but they are not different as men. When we apply this analysis to the field of different logical
models, we find them different as logical models. They would be radically different if we say that if
two-valued logic is true, then all other models are no logical models at all. For a very long time,
Western philosophy denied the presence of philosophy and rational, logical thinking anywhere else
in the world except in Europe. The argument often runs as follow: If non-European philosophy is
similar to European philosophy, then it is nothing more than a repetition of Western philosophy. On
the other hand, if it is completely different to European philosophy, then it is no philosophy at all.
It is an age old ‘mantra’ of Western philosophical tradition to repeat the homemade dictum:
philosophy is Western and Western alone. This is obviously also an example of the logical mistake
“petitio principii”.

4. The Seven-valued Indian Jaina Logic and Its Contributions for Our Present Problems:
An Attempt at an Application of Jain Logic and Methodology of Non-onesidedness
(Anekantavada) with Its Seven-valued Logic (Saptbhanginaya)

In working out my concept of an interculturally oriented logic of overlaps, I have drawn on many
sources, for example, Hume, Husserl, Ricoeur, Plessner, Mohanty, Matilal, Ganeri and, above all, the
most suitable methodological approach of the Jain idea of many-sidedness (anakantavada),

1 Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralf Weber differentiate four factors in our act of comparison: “1) A comparison is always
made by someone (person P); 2) At least two relata (comparanda) are compared (A and B) 3) The comparanda are
compared in some respect (tertium comparationis) (F) 4. The result of a comparison is at least a four-term relation between
two comparanda on the basis of the chosen respect and the comparer.
Hegel, of course, ‘accepts’ the Indian and Chinese philosophical temper as earlier and less mature ‘stages’ of Reason’s
dialectical march towards progress which would reach its pinnacle with Hegel’s own thought. So his comparison is the
most ridiculous of all. With Hegel as P. In: Comparative Philosophy without Borders. Eds. A. Chakrabarti and R. Weber.
London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015, pp. 1ff.)

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conditional predication (syadvada) and theory of standpoint (nayavada). This methodology does not
ontologize and essentialize and can be very well applied to our present needs for an intercultural and
interreligious encounter. In addition, this Jain methodology is deconstructive of absolutizing truth
claims of particular standpoints (nayas). What Jain thinkers did in those days in the Indian
philosophical and religious context, I have tried to do it in the modern global context by way of re-
contextualization and re-conceptualization.
The Jain plea for a reciprocal recognition of different standpoints (nayas) is one of the best
methodological moves in the service of an intercultural understanding and communication, which are
not exclusive but complementary to each other. One of the strongest methodological arguments in
the service of a badly needed intercultural hermeneutics is the conviction of Jain philosophy that two
standpoints may be contrary or even contradictory to each other but they still are standpoints. It is
here that the category of difference becomes a binding force supporting dialogue across borders. It is
not the unavoidability of the necessity of having a standpoint, which stands in the way of a
harmonious philosophical dialogue; it is rather our temptation, our obsession to absolutize our own
standpoints. This insight leads us to the recognition of the Husserlian idea of overlapping contents
and is the source of the logic of conversation beyond the two fictions of total commensurability and
radical difference.
The moment we universalize one particular standpoint (naya) we are led to a wrong standpoint
(durnaya), which is potentially violent not only on a practical level but also implies some sort of a
‘theoretical violence’.
The true spirit of interculturality proclaims as its motto that the desire to understand and the
desire to be understood go hand in hand and are the two sides of one and the same interculturally
oriented hermeneutic coin. The mere desire to understand the other may turn out to be empty and the
desire only to be understood by the other may become blind. In the long period of colonization,
whether in culture, religion or politics, the desire for their own logic to be understood was most
powerful on the part of the colonizers accompanied nevertheless by an unwillingness to understand
the logic of the colonized.
If we do find ourselves on the verge of a more promising intercultural encounter today in a
context of greater global inter-relations we are all obliged to contribute to its success. This is possible
only when we give up all centrism and absolutistic truth claims. The Jaina-logicians provide us with
a logical model, which allows us to think and act rationally in spite of the presence of inconsistencies.
The inconsistencies grow less fatal when we come to realize that the truth of an assertion is relative
to the standpoint (naya) in which it is embedded.
The Jaina logicians develop a model of logic with seven predicates (bhangi) in support of their
theory of many-sidedness. These predications are quite similar to truth-values although not formalised
that far.1 I follow here the twelfth century Jain author Vadideva Suri in his book “Pramana-naya-
tattvalokalankarah, chapter 4, verses 15 – 21.2 These seven predicates represent seven claims about
sentences, all preceded by the conditional “syat”, i. e. conditionally, arguably. They are composed of

1 See Ganeri, J.: Indian Logic: A Reader. Curzon, London 2001, Chap. 5.
2 Vadideva Suri: Pramana-naya-tattvalokalamkara, ed. And transl. by H. S. bhattacharya, Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal,
Bombay 1967.

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assertions and denials, either simultaneously or successively, and without contradiction. I quote here
from Ganeri’s book Indian Logic: A Reader, p. 53.

1. Arguably, it (i. e. some object) exists (syad asty eva). The first predicate pertains to an assertion.

2. Arguably, it does not exist (syad nasty eva). The second predicate pertains to a denial.

3. Arguably, it exists; arguably, it doesn’t exist (syad asty eva syan nasty eva). The third predicate pertains
to successive assertion and denial.

4. Arguably, it is ‘non-assertible’ (syad avaktyavyam eva). The fourth predicate pertains to a

simultaneous assertion and denial.

5. Arguably, it exists; arguably it is non-assertible (syad asty eva syad avaktavyam eva). The fifth
predicate pertains to an assertion and a simultaneous assertion and denial.

6. Arguably, it doesn’t exist; arguably it is non-assertible (syan nasty eva syad avaktavyam eva). The
sixth predicate pertains to a denial and a simultaneous assertion and denial.

7. Arguably, it exists; arguably it doesn’t exist; arguably it is non-assertible. (syad asty eva syan nasti eva
syad avaktavyam eva). The seventh predicate pertains to a successful assertion and denial and a
simultaneous assertion and denial.”

All these seven possibilities may be exemplified with the help of the very popular example of a jug,
pot (ghat).
Instead of the two truth-values of a two –valued logic, the Jain seven-valued logic starts from
three basic values. These are: true (t), false (f) and non-assertible (u). The combination of the three
first predications with the fourth one results into seven predications, assertions.
A careful application of this Jain-logic is able to free us from our fear of relativism and our claim
to absolutism. The reason is because no assertion takes place without any reference to a standpoint.
When two parties enter into a dialogue, there are assertions, which are inconsistent or even contrary.
But still both the parties produce reasons to support their assertions. So rationality and inconsistency
may go together when we argue in the spirit of the Jaina-logic. This provides us with a logical basis
for pluralism in philosophy, and not only in philosophy. Different philosophical (and not only
philosophical) views, theories and systems are from time immemorial in conflict with each other.
“The situation”, Ganeri writes, “ the Jains have in mind is one in which a globally inconsistent set of
propositions, the totality of philosophical discourse, is divided into sub-sets, each of which is
internally consistent. Any proposition might be supported by others from within the same subset. At
the same time, the negation of that proposition might occur in a distinct, though possibly overlapping
subset (italics mine), and be supported by other propositions within it.”1 Philosophical quarrels may

1 Ibid., P. 51.

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come to a tolerably peaceful end if we enter into philosophical discourse in the spirit of Jaina- logic
and methodology that philosophical perspectives are perspectives after all. All that we need is to
refrain from putting one particular perspective in an absolute position.
The seven-valued Jaina-logic supporting the thesis of the many-sidedness of what there is
(anekatavada) helps us to communicate in spite of our differences. The Jaina logic wants us to be
diffident in our claim to be in possession of the one Truth with a capital T. Jain logic is thus a model
for philosophical liberalism, pluralism, openness and tolerance. The Jaina theory of standpoints
(nayas) is a very valuable meta-philosophical theory.
We have seen that each naya-statement is a statement from a particular point of view, has a truth-
claim but a conditional truth-claim. Every philosophy, rightly understood, is thus a ‘naya’. Logically,
methodologically and even ontologically, Jain-philosophy with its theory of many-sidedness
(anekantavada) and with its seven-valued logic (saptbhangi-naya) humanizes all centrist, exclusivist
and absolutist methodologies, metaphysics and ontologies. This in turn teaches us to learn to be
human in all our theoretical and practical endeavours. The seven-valued logic really unfolds the
complete meaning of things being ‘contextually relative’. This again leads us to avoid the use of any
theoretical violence.

5. Blueprint for an Interculturally Oriented Multi-valued Logic

My plea is for logic of overlapping similarities and illuminating differences, which will enable us to
be open, tolerant and human in all fields of human undertaking.
Logical thinking distinguishes itself from all others in being an explanatory and justificatory
model. This possesses some sort of a universality and also particularity. The various models of logic
from two-valued to multi-valued are all logic in spite of their differences. We have already
differentiated between the logic of the “first order” and that of the “second order”. There is thus an
overlapping element between the two. Our logic of overlaps thus pleads for a rational discourse even
between otherwise inconsistent logical models, implying a meta-logical approach. Husserl’s concept
of ‘overlapping contents’ is of great methodological help here because it mediates between extreme
relativism and absolutism.
Western logical thinking often complains that Eastern logical thinking, for example,. Indian
thinking, fails to give due importance say to the law of contradiction or excluded middle. This charge
is unjust because Indian logic does accept the law of contradiction but not fully and unconditionally.
The model of two-valued logic comes to its application only when we divide the whole field of
discourse just to begin with into two opposite camps that exclude each other. This may be one of the
reasons that a number of logicians have tried to work out a model of logic, which is contradiction-
resistant or contradiction-tolerant e.g. para-consistent logic.
Wittgenstein is very clear on this point. He does not ask how to get rid of contradiction but how
to deal with it. He writes: “The contradiction is not to be taken as a catastrophe but as a wall showing
us that we cannot get any further here. I don’t ask so much “what must we do in order to avoid

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contradiction?” than to ask, “what should we do when we have reached a contradiction?” Why is
contradiction more fearful than tautology?”1
It was the famous mathematician logician Lukasiewicz who found the Aristotelian law of
contradiction unsatisfactory and not universally valid because it presupposes a particular form of
ontology of identity. For Buddhist thinking it is true A cannot be A and non-A at the same time not
because the identity of A is thereby in danger but because there is no identical A. Thus the Buddhist
philosophers meet with and differ from Aristotle, Heraclitus and Parmenides at the same time.
A closer look at the history of philosophy makes it abundantly clear that the path travelled by
philosophy is full of contrary, even contradictory ways of thinking and doing philosophy. Our
philosophical longing for freedom from contradiction must learn to live and cope with the ambiguity
of diverse philosophical traditions and schools. Whoever aims at fighting back the problem of
contradiction by appealing to the precept of freedom from contradiction forgets that this precept is
itself open to philosophical discussions. No decision can be made here from any instance, which lies
outside the domain of philosophical discourses.

6. My Proposals for a Few Imperatives in the Spirit of Our Logic of Overlaps and in the
Service of Our Learning to Be Human in All Walks of Life

1. Try to refrain from following two fictions in philosophy: the fiction of total identity and the fiction of
radical difference.

2. Remember that the category of difference seems to precede the category of identity.

3. Try to work out ways and means to communicate in spite of the absence of consensus.

4. Remember ‘the view from nowhere’ is really ‘nowhere’.

5. Avoid all fixations of tertium comparationis in any one particular philosophical tradition, be it Western
or non-Western.

6. Differentiate between uniqueness and absoluteness.

7. Keep in mind that absoluteness of the truth of your model of thinking for you and for those who think
like you does in no way imply the falsity of other ways of thinking.

8. Remember, ‘learning to be human’ means to respect and recognise different perspectives, except of
course only those, which violate this rule.

1 Wittgenstein, L.: Über Gewissheit. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. a. M. 1984, S. 436. “Der Widerspruch ist nicht als Katastrophe
aufzufassen, sondern al seine Mauer, die uns anzeigt, dass wir hier nicht weiterkönnen.
Ich möchte nicht so sehr fragen “Was müssen wir tun, um einen Widerspruch zu vermeiden”?, als “was sollen wir tun,
wenn wir zu einem Widerspruch gelangt sind?”
Warum ist ein Widerspruch mehr zu fürchten, al eine Tautologie?”

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 9. Keep in mind: the problem is not how to get rid of differences but how to deal with them.

10. ‘Tolerate the tolerant’ and take it as a ‘self-commitment of tolerance’ itself.

11. Read and let read believing that agreement and difference are meaningfully co-existing facts leading
to philosophy not only as a way of thought but also as a way of life.

The logic of overlap, very briefly outlined here in the spirit of an intercultural philosophical
orientation along with a logico-philosophical and pluralist epistemic reformulation and re-
contextualization of logical thinking appeals to some sort of a ‘proto-logical ethos’ and steers clear
between the two one-sided and opposite alternatives of the logic of identity and that of difference. It
is a promising theoretical and practical approach in service of our ‘learning to be human’ in all spheres
of human undertakings.

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 Confucianism in a Multicultural World

Sor-hoon Tan
Singapore Management University

From being demolished, scattered to the four winds, relegated to museums, reduced to a “wandering
spirit,” Confucianism is being vigorously revived in the People’s Republic of China, from academic
scholarship to private education and practices among ordinary Chinese. While such revivals have
been linked to Chinese cultural nationalism, viewing Confucianism as a crucial or even definitive
part of Chinese culture, to many supporters Confucian philosophy also offers alternative ethical and
political ideals superior to Western models of government and society, applicable beyond Chinese
societies. Is Confucianism poised to become the new Universalism? Would its spread be the
equivalent of sinicization on a global scale? I shall argue that these unappealing possibilities can be
avoided by heeding the cultural diversity within Confucian traditions, and by avoiding the cultural
superiority complex that easily leads to hegemonic or imperialistic approaches. There are resources
in the Analects that could be reconstructed into a model of cultural interaction based on mutual respect
well suited to a multicultural world.
Since Confucius linked his destiny with that of “this culture (siwen 斯文)” (Analects 9.5),
Confucians have accepted as an important part of their mission the preservation and promotion of
their culture. Confucius and his followers were experts in rituals, which had an important part in
defining the culture of their times, and distinguished them from the tribes surrounding them: the Yi
in the East (东夷), the Rong in the West (西戎), the Man in the South (南蛮), and the Di in the north
(北狄).1 The term “barbarian” is the most common translation of “yi 夷,” “manyi 蛮夷¸” or “yidi 夷
狄” in Chinese texts. The Book of Documents (Shangshu 尚书), record of Rites (Liji 礼记), and the
Zuo Commentaries to the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu zuozhuan 春秋左传) are among the
earliest texts that mention “huayi zhibian 华夷之辨” or “yixia zhibian 夷夏之辨,” a distinction
between these tribes and the Chinese, the people living in the “central kingdoms,” often understood
as a distinction between civilization (huaxia 华夏) and barbarism.
Some very prominent Confucians held ethnocentric, even racist, opinions throughout the ages.
Mencius called Xu Xing “the Southern barbarian with the twittering tongue” (3A4). Han Yu (768-
824) of the Tang dynasty proclaimed that “humans are the masters of barbarians and beasts,” and
advised his readers, “Make humans of them [the barbarians], burn their books, make homes of their
dwellings, make clear the way of the former kings to guide them …”2 In his famous memorial to the
emperor about the Buddha bone, Han Yu condemned Buddhism for being “a cult of the barbarian
people.” That the Buddha “did not speak the language of China and wore clothes of a different

1 The Mencius (1B11; 4B1; 7B4) also refers to the “Yi in the West” (xiyi 西夷).
2 Han Yu 韩愈, Complete Works (Han Changli quanji 韩昌黎全集) (Shanghai: Zhonghua Press, 1935), p. 131.
Translated in Sources of Chinese Tradition, ed. William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1999), 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 573.

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fashion” bothered Han Yu as much as the fact that Buddhist teachings “did not concern the ways of
[Chinese] ancient kings.”1 During the Qing dynasty, Wang Fuzhi’s (1619-1692) attitude to cultural
others was also extreme, “it would not be dishonest to deceive them, nor inhumane to kill them, nor
ethically wrong to rob them.”2 While one might treat these as polemics that should be understood in
the context of their specific historical circumstances, they should not therefore be dismissed casually.
Albeit they surfaced only under pressure of severe threats to Chinese culture and the Confucian way,
taking heed of such ethnocentric tendencies and the conditions under they arose is an important
precaution in charting the way forward for Confucianism in our increasingly multicultural world
today.
Did Confucius himself value cultural diversity or was he an ethnocentric assimilationist? There
is evidence in the Analects that Confucius considered other cultures inferior to the huaxia culture of
rites and ceremonies.

“The Yi and Di tribes with rulers are not as viable as the various Chinese states without them.” (Analects
3.5)3

Yet, unlike Han Yu or Wang Fuzhi, he did not exclude these tribes from his ethical concern. The
Master wanted to go and live amongst the nine Yi tribes. Someone asked: “What about their
crudeness?” The Master replied, “Were an exemplary person to live among them, what crudeness
could there be?” (Analects 9.14) The cultural inferiority of the tribes was not inherent, so “barbarians”
could be civilized, transformed by Confucian exemplary persons who could teach them the right way
to live.
However well-intentioned the desire to spread ethical teachings and improve everyone’s life
regardless of ethnic identities and cultural differences, such attitude is ethnocentric and often leads
to assimilationist policies. The spread of cultural influence, even when the emphasis is ethical or
soteriological, historically has often been accompanied by territorial expansion and political control,
with different degrees of coercion and hegemony. Even if the attempts to “export” Confucian culture
are peaceful, as Chinese cultural nationalists intend them to be, from the perspectives of other
cultures, it is no less ethnocentric and therefore a threat, and an injustice if the transformation
succeeds.
The Chinese state also had indulged in imperialistic conquests at different points in their history,
but some scholars have emphasized the differences between the Chinese “tribute” system and the
colonization practiced by European countries before the twentieth century. Liang Qichao and Qian
Mu saw some restraint on nationalism’s xenophobic tendencies in the Confucian ethical concern for

1 “Memorial on the Bone of Buddha (Lun fogu biao 论佛骨表),” in Han Yu, p. 333. Translated in de Bary and Bloom,
pp. 583–84.
2 Wang Fuzhi 王夫之, On Reading Sima Guang’s Comprehensive History of China (Du tong jian lun 读资治通鉴)
(Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1936), p. 607.
3 Translations of the Analects from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (trans.), The Analects of Confucius: A
Philosophical Translation (New York, Ballantine, 1998).

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“tianxia 天下 (all-under-heaven).”1 More recently, Zhao Tingyang has proposed a tianxia system as
a superior model of international relations that takes a “world perspective” instead of nation-based
approaches to global problems.2 Equating tianxia with the world could prove problematic due to the
mixing of descriptive with normative meanings when using this concept. Is Mencius offering an
empirical observation or a normative prescription when he argues that “it is tianxia’s common li 理
(pattern or principle)” that “those who rule are supported by those who are ruled”?3 As Song dynasty
Confucian master Zhu Xi explained, li is both suoyiran 所以然, that by which something is so, and
suodangran 所当然, that by which something should be so. Rather than inquiring into what the world
in fact need or want when addressing global issues, there is the risk that the tianxia perspective may
be an imposition of the norms treated as universal when they are merely the preferences of those in
power, or the contingent customs of a single dominant culture. All contemporary powerful states,
regardless of their philosophical and cultural legacies, have the potential to use coercion and practice
hegemony over other states as well as over their own citizens. Such coercion and hegemony is likely
to be worse for those at the receiving end when the perpetrators believe that they are in possession
of universal truths and acting according to universal norms, that their thus derived cultural superiority
justify their interfering with other people’s ways of life.
Just as the “barbarian” tribes encompass a variety of different peoples, “huaxia” by no means
referred to any monolithic civilization; it indicated a vaguely defined region emerging from a
confederation of several cultural areas, each developing independently for some time.4 It could be
argued that the “Chinese” civilization was multicultural from its inception. Since then, Confucianism
has often been described as a way of life common to East Asian societies. In actual fact, while
Confucius’ teachings about how to cultivate oneself, relate to our various family members, friends,
government officials, and others, have imparted some significant similarities to these societies, East
Asians do not share one culture, one way of life. Insofar as the various East Asian societies, China,
South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam could all be considered Confucian, there is not one but many
Confucian ways of life. If we acknowledge that Confucian philosophy could be embedded in
different practices at the cultural level, then Confucianism should not be equated with Chinese
culture. There is much more to Chinese culture besides Confucianism, just as there is more to Korean,
Japanese, and Vietnamese cultures that distinguish them from the Chinese despite the common

1 Qian Mu 钱穆, Guide to Chinese Cultural History (Zhongguo Wenhuashi Daolun 中国文化史导论) (Beijing:
Commercial Press, 1994), p. 23; Liang Qichao 梁启超, History of Chinese Political Thought During the Early Tsin Period,
L.T. Chen (trans.), (New York: AMS Press, 1969), p. 7.
2 Zhao Tingyang 赵汀阳, “All-under-Heaven” System: Philosophy of World Institution (Tianxia 天下体系) (Nanjing:
Jiangsu Education Press, 2005); Tingyang Zhao, “A Political World Philosophy in Terms of Allunder-Heaven,” Diogenes,
no. 221 (2009). See also Gan Chunsong 干春松, Back to the Kingly Way: Confucianism and the World Order (Chonghui
Wangdao: Rujia Yu Shijie Zhixu 重回王道：儒家与世界秩序) (Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2012).
3 Mencius 3A4; the same could be said of 2B2 (rank, age and virtue as three “most exalted things”); 4A7 (about the states
of affairs “when the way prevails” and when it does not). Cf. “three years mourning is the common practice of tianxia”
(Analects 17.21) – as an empirical statement, it is unlikely that the yidi tribes practiced three years mourning, and
according to Mencius 3A1, it was not even practiced by the rulers of the state of Lu; as a normative statement, it becomes
a universal prescription that applies to “the world.”
4 Chang Kwang-chih, The Archeology of Ancient China, 4th rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1986); Fei Xiaotong
et al., Unity in Diversity Situation of the Chinese People (Zhong hua min zu duo yuan yi ti ge ju) (Beijing: Zhongyang
minzu xueyuan, 1989).

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Confucian heritage. These multicultural dimensions to the Confucian traditions of East Asia
precluded the spread of Confucianism in the past from being reduced to sinicization. Only if it takes
multicultural forms would Confucianism be a global philosophy for the future, so that one could
speak of Boston Confucianism, even American Confucianism, just as one speaks of Korean and
Japanese Confucianism.
Acknowledging the cultural diversities of Confucian traditions is not enough to prevent cultural
hegemony. The danger also comes from an assumed superiority that often drives cultural or ethical
projects to “transform” the world. This superiority complex is incompatible with mutual respect
among cultures, which provides the best immunity against cultural hegemony and imperialism.
While Confucians may be guilty of this superiority complex in practice, it is not an inherent feature
of the philosophy. This is best elucidated by re-examining the teacher-student relationship we find
in the Analects, since the cultural transformation sought by Confucians is very much an educative
project, in the sense of jiaohua 教化. The commonly understood model of Confucian teacher-student
relationship is one of hierarchical authority, with unilateral reverence for the teacher who imparts
knowledge and wisdom to students. I shall show that there is also another model of teacherstudent
relationship in the Analects: rather than the teacher being unquestionably superior, Confucius the
teacher exemplifies humility, openness to learning from his students, willingness to be questioned,
even corrected, attention and deference to students’ personal characteristics and circumstances – all
of which contribute to a teacher-student relationship of mutual respect rather than unilateral
reverence that could deteriorate into domination.
The Analects records many instances of Confucius’s students questioning their teacher.
Confucius became worried when Yan Hui did not ask any question or object to what he had to say
(Analects 2.9). Furthermore, he complained, “Yan Hui is of no help to me. There is nothing that I
say that he doesn’t like” (Analects 11.4). Confucius expected his interactions with students to be
mutual exchanges wherein he too would advance his own learning, rather than a one way transfer of
knowledge from him to the students. He expected his students, when shown one corner, to return to
him with the other three, juyi fansan 举一反三 (Analects 7.8). With only one corner given, there are
infinite sets of “three corners” to correspond to it, depending on the dimension of the square being
completed. It is at least debatable whether Confucius always had a specific “square” in mind so that
there was always a single correct answer on any one occasion.
Confucius did not consider himself superior in knowledge to everyone else, and on more than
one occasion admitted to not knowing (for example, Analects 3.11; 5.8; 5.19).
When Zigong admitted that he could not compare with Yan Hui who, “learning one thing will
know ten,” Confucius responded, “neither you nor I are a match for him” (Analects 5.9). His own
fondness for learning (Analects 5.28), humility, and willing admission that some of his students were
superior to him suggest that Confucius was open to his students returning with responses that were
new to him and from which he learned something.

Zixia inquired: “What does the song mean when it says: Her smiling cheeks – so radiant, Her dazzling
eyes – so sharp and clear, It is the unadorned that enhances color!” The Master replied: “The application
of color is to the unadorned.” “Does this mean that observing ritual propriety (li 礼) itself comes after?”

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 asked Zixia. The Master replied: “Zixia, you have stimulated my thoughts. It is only with the likes of you
that one can discuss the Songs.” (Analects 3.8; see also 1.15)

Besides getting further than the Master in a learning exchange, Analects 6.2 offers another example
of a student finding the Master’s view inadequate and proposing an alternative that the Master
accepted.

Zhonggong asked about Zisang Bozi. The Master said, “It is his candor that recommends him.”
Zhonggong responded, “In overseeing the people, wouldn’t acting with candor while maintaining an
attitude of respect for them recommend him more? In fact, wouldn’t acting with candor while being
candid in his attitude amount to an excess of candor?” The Master replied, “It is as you say.” (Analects
6.2)

Confucius took his students’ occasional criticisms of his deeds or words seriously, patiently
clarifying or defending himself (Analects 17.5; 17.7), or even admitting his mistakes when they were
justified.

The Master, on travelling to the walled town of Wu, heard the sounds of stringed instruments and singing.
He smiled, saying, “Why would one use an ox cleaver to kill a chicken?” Ziyou responded, “In the past
I have heard you, Master, say, “Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) who study the way (dao 道) love others;
petty persons who study the way are easier to employ.” The Master replied, “My young friends, what
Ziyou has said is right. What I was saying was just in fun.” (Analects 17.4)

In highlighting these aspects of Confucius’s relation with his students, the point is not that Confucius
was not superior to his students, who certainly accepted his superiority in going to learn with him,
and they adhered to all the rituals that signify reverence for the teacher. Neither does Confucius’s
acknowledging of superiority on the part of some students and learning from them introduce a
reciprocity that equalizes the relationship. What needs emphasizing is that even when one is superior,
or at least thought to be so by others, an exemplary teacher does not adopt a superior attitude but
engages students who wish to learn from her in the spirit of sharing her knowledge or skill; she does
not do so with the assumption that she is benevolently benefiting the other but rather with the belief
that she also gains from the sharing and furthermore may learn something new in the process.
Underlying this humble Confucian teaching-as-learning attitude is a respect for the other that
has two important aspects. First the teacher recognizes that the learner enters the learning process
voluntarily – the Analects (12.1) clearly recognizes that learning cannot be coerced, any coercion to
enter the learning process or accept what the teacher tries to impart during the process, even if it were
possible, is a failure to respect the learner. Even though he clearly disapproved of Zaiwo’s attitude
and glib reasoning against the three-year mourning rites, Confucius’s response was “If you are
comfortable [eating fine rice and wearing colorful brocade during such time], then do it.” (Analects
17.21) Second, the student’s individuality (of character and circumstances) means that she will learn
in her own way with her own objectives, and respecting that individuality means finding the most
appropriate way to guide and aid her learning. Confucius himself used different methods and

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customized what he had to say to each student according to the latter’s particular circumstances, so
much so that he sometimes appeared to hold contradictory views on a single topic (Analects 11.12).
The above mutual respect model of teacher-student relation in the Analects means that the
Confucian project of cultural transmission or transformation, when understood as an educative
project, should be based on mutual respect among different cultures. While Confucians should
always be willing, even eager to share Confucius’s teachings with anyone who is interested, whether,
and how much, to learn from Confucian cultures is a matter of the recipient’s choice, be the recipient
an individual or another culture. This process of sharing should be one of mutual cultural exchange,
meaning that a Confucian who hopes others would learn from and accept Confucianism should also
be open to learning from others, and willing to question and re-examine her own Confucian beliefs
in the light of diverse human experience. Deferring to others’ choice and their individuality with
regard to their objectives, interests, and goals, and willingly seeking to learn more about them as well
as learn from them require certain communicative skills and virtues. Just as the interaction between
Confucius and his students consisted of a series of conversations or dialogues in the Analects, the
process of mutual cultural learning may be understood as cultural dialogues.
Dialogic approaches to cross-cultural comparisons and interactions have been explored
extensively with the ideas and conceptual frameworks of European philosophies, such as Gadamer’s
philosophical hermeneutics.1 The Analects also suggests the importance of certain skills and virtues
in learning from others and more generally, understanding and coming to know what, or who, one
encounters. These include the skill of asking appropriate questions in appropriate manners; attentive,
sympathetic, and empathetic listening; and imagining oneself in another’s situation and taking their
perspectives (shu 恕, Analects 15.24). Various Confucian virtues, which pertain to how we should
relate to others, have communicative dimension, as communication is fundamental to interpersonal
understanding and relationships. The virtue of humaneness (ren 仁 ) as a virtue of inclusively
embracing widening circles of others in one’s ethical concern involves listening to them to gain better
understanding of their needs and desires, as well as paying attention to their experience and
circumstances to assist them more effectively in improving their welfare. Rather than “righteousness”
in the sense of upholding and imposing some supposedly transcendent principle on others, the virtue
of (yi 义) involves appropriately relating to others (yi 义) as a mutual process of meaning-making,
discovering what has significance or meaning to others, sharing what is meaningful and significant
to oneself, and through mutual participation in such a relationship together co-create new experiences
of meaning and significance for one another. The virtue of ritual propriety (li 礼) as Confucian
civility involves deference to others, behaving towards them in interactive norms expressing respect,
and other emotions appropriate to each particular occasion, thereby fostering harmony. Other
Confucian virtues, such as sincerity (cheng 诚) and trustworthiness (xin 信), also are relevant to an
ethic of communication, of understanding others and helping others understand oneself, a
communicative ethic that could be reconstructed with Confucian concepts.

1 An excellent example recently published is James Tully, “Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond: A Dialogue
Approach to Comparative Political Thought,” Journal of World Philosophies, vol. 1 (2016). Tully explores the obstacles
and conditions for genuine dialogues across traditions of political thought and practice from the European tradition of
dialogic philosophies, especially Gadamer.

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 I wish to conclude with a few words about a communicative vice that Confucius warned us
against, inflexibility (gu 固), the avoidance of which is explicitly associated with learning.
The Master said: “Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) lacking in gravity would have no dignity.
Yet in their studies they are not inflexible.” (Analects 1.8) Avoiding inflexibility (bugu 不固) – not
holding dogmatic and fixed opinions and not being entrenched in one’s habits – implies openness
and receptivity that is crucial for understanding and accepting new knowledge of what one has not
previously encountered or experienced before. It renders possible the self-transformation that is
concomitant to genuine learning and understanding. Its importance in Confucian thought is evident
in the explicit attribution to Confucius of a strong antipathy towards the vice of inflexibility.

There were four things the Master abstained from entirely: he did not speculate, he did not claim or
demand certainty, he was not inflexible, he was not self-absorbed.” (Analects 9.4)

Weisheng Mou said to Confucius, “Why do you flit from perch to perch? Are you aspiring to be an
eloquent talker?” Confucius replied, “It is not that I aspire to be an eloquent talker, but rather that I hate
inflexibility.” (Analects 14.32)

Had Confucius moved to live among the Yi tribes, he would not have conducted himself in the
superior manner of an omniscient sage handing out certain knowledge to all and sundry, expecting
the Yi to abandon their cultures for the ways of the central kingdoms. Confucius the teacher was also
first and foremost a learner, genuinely interested in others’ views and ways of life, eager to inquire
further into new situations without prejudice, that is, with the willingness to revise his own previous
beliefs and practices should what he learned justified doing so.

The Master said: “Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) in making their way in the world are neither bent on
nor against anything; rather they go with what is appropriate (yi 义).” (Analects 4.10)

“…I do not have presuppositions as to what may or may not be done.” (Analects 18.8)

Hopefully we can look forward to a new epoch of Confucianism that will see the same flexibility
in cultural exchanges of mutual learning.

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 Ancient and Modern Practical Ethics of Humanity:
Concrete Humanity from Mencius to Schweitzer

Hans Lenk

The general idea of being humane towards other humans, the ideal of an all-encompassing humanity
was developed much earlier in ancient Chinese philosophy than in the middle stoic tradition
(Panaitios) in the West. “Ren” (“humanity” or “humanitarianism) was indeed the main idea in
Confucianism already (KongZi: Lun Yu XII, 22), though KongZi (Confucius) himself did rather
favour particularly the component of righteousness, rightness or justice in applying this ideal of
humanity, relying basically on the well-known Golden Rule (Lun Yu V, 12; XII, 2; XV, 24), i. e. the
negative formulation of that formal principle of reciprocity. 1 . MoZi (Micius) had extended the
reciprocal idea of treating other compatriots in a humane way to all humans, including so-called
"barbarians" (i.e. non-Chinese people); all of them were considered addressees of the universalised
and generalised “jian ai” (universal love).
It was however MengZi who argued for the virtue, dignity (MengZi VIA, 17), and value of
humanity and human love on a more down-to-earth level, dispensing with the over-emphasis on the
rather abstract ideas of “yi” 2 and “li” (righteousness, or rightness, and hierarchy, or decency,
respectively). He already went beyond any utilitarian justification in a modern sense 3. Schweitzer
(2002, 127) emphasized that human love in MengZi would “spring purely from the necessitation
originating in compassion. It belongs to being human”. Thus, although certainly relying on KongZi’s
vision of the “the holy kings” or sages of antiquity and their high ethics as reflected in KongZi’s work,
MengZi mitigated or moderated the respective rigour(ism) and emphasis on right(eous)ness without
denying this normative idea as a partial component of the ideal of humanity. Indeed, as MengZi
repeatedly stressed (e.g., “IA, 1,): “All that matters is that there should be benevolence and rightness”,
i.e. “humanity” (or “benevolence”) and “righteousness” (Legge). These would be the “only topics”
and “themes”: “Benevolence is the heart of man and (VIA, 6, Legge). “Benevolence” or “humanity”,
i.e. the idea of being humane to others, compassionate to all human beings, not only to compatriots,
is certainly a less rigorous and formal idea than the rather abstract universal content of, e. g., the so-
called Golden Rule. MengZi epitomized his own doctrine in a rather classical Chinese style:

1 Don’t act towards others in a way that you don’t want to be done unto yourself! - Interestingly enough, KongZi had the
positive version of the Golden Rule, also (e.g., Lun Yu VI, 30; XII, 2). He even went beyond the formal reciprocity.
Unger (1995) finished his interesting article by epitomizing that especially, even only, “Confucianism …discovered and
developed the Golden Rule, analysed its implications and considered its consequences – it would not be Confucianism
without the Golden Rule”.
2 But even "yi” (often just translated by "justice” or "the fulfilling of duties”) would cover much more than the Western
concept of, say, compensatory justice. At least, it comprises distribution (distributive justice after Aristotle) and mutually
useful or even "caring” behaviour in concrete "life situations”, indeed "humane behaviour” (Moritz 1990, 79). Yi is rather
the "practice of co-humanity (Mitmenschlichkeit) (ren), albeit somewhat more down to earth and pragmatically oriented
than the all-encompassing "universal love” (jian ai) in MoZi. Whereas KongZi stressed hat li was connected with ren/jen,
MengZi would, by contrast, "emphasize within the relationship of ren-yi-li the two norms mentioned first in comparison
to the latter one” (Moritz, ibid. 137).
3 Albert Schweitzer erroneously found utilitarianism prevalent in KongZi.

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 “…whoever is devoid of the heart of compassion is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of shame
is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of courtesy and modesty is not human, and whoever is
devoid of the heart of right and wrong is not human. The heart of compassion is the germ of benevolence;
the heart of shame, of dutifulness; the heart of courtesy and modesty, of observance of the rites; the heart
of right and wrong, of wisdom. Man has these four germs just as he has four limbs.” (IIA, 6, my italics)

MengZi even goes beyond KongZi: this can be seen not only by the fact that he talks much more
and more warmly of humanity than the latter one, but also in that he grounded it more deeply
(Schweitzer 2002, 127). In KongZi, it still has a twofold root: It is rather derived from the principle
of reciprocity and at the same time also looked upon as something directly given in the essence of
humans. In MengZi, the utilitarian provenance (as emphasized in MoZi 1 ) is is no longer found.
Human love derives directly from empathy/compassion. It belongs to “the truly being human”
(Schweitzer). MengZi explicitly even differentiates between “good” and “the profitable” or “useful”2
(VIB, 4). It would be essential for the ethical human being “to give full realisation to his heart” which
“is for him to understand his own nature”, and a human being who knows his own nature will know
Heaven” (VIIA, 1). “Mencius said, ‘From the feelings proper to it (i. e. nature, H. L.), it is constituted
for the practice of what is good. This is what I mean in saying that the nature is good” (including the
human nature) (VIA, 6).
Thus, human (caring and empathetic) love in MengZi would flow directly from compassion and
co-sensitivity and be found in almost all humans. “The feeling of commiseration is / implies the
principle of benevolence” (IIA,6; VIA, 6, italics by Legge). Accordingly, sympathy, empathy and
compassion or commiseration are the basis of an ethics of human love, anchored in the nature of the
human being itself3. Benevolence and righteousness both naturally belong to man (MengZi IIA, 6).
MengZi however tries to be more down to earth – regarding what Schweitzer (2001, 52) calls “the
logic of the circumstances” – in order to develop some specific strategies and exhortation regarding
the treatment even of unloved humans who are not relatives or friends (VIIB, 1). However, as
Schweitzer (2002, 129) also stresses, the “idea of ‘love thy enemy’4 remains still out of his scope”
although MengZi forbids a hostile or inimical mentality. In general, everybody has to “look into” his
own basic benevolence, goodness and humanity, even wisdom (IVA, 4). It is the concreteness and
practicality which characterizes MengZi’s approach in comparison to MoZi’s overall general
humanitarianism of universal love.
Thus, Schweitzer (2002, 130) thinks that these optimistic and activist affirmative ethics went
not only beyond KongZi’s social formalism and the traditional scope of common morals in terms of

1 Although MengZi in a way takes up the universal and general idea of human love as particularly emphasized in MoZi,
he clearly criticizes the abstractness and all too comprehensive generality of MoZi’s encompassing ideal of human love.
2 Usefulness is – like yi in general – secondary to benevolence/humanity (IA,1; see also VIA, 18). According to KongZi
(after MengZi VIA, 5, Legge) “we therein (i. e. in exercising righteousness, H. L.) act out of our feeling of respect” which
“is said to be internal.” It seems to be a rather deontological argument against any utilitarian foundation. Indeed, MengZi
was according to Schweitzer (2002, 128) almost some sort of “a predecessor” of Kant’s universal a priori foundation of
ethics relying essentially on the inner motivation of “the good will” (Kant).
3 This is true even of human dignity: "All men have in themselves that which is truly honourable” (VIA, 17).
4 Swidler (2003, 19) would even include love of "one's enemies” in the treatment of the "unloved" ones.

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compatriots and reciprocity by including, as KongZi also did, non-compatriots, but also beyond
MoZi’s universalism and all-encompassing “jian ai”.
MengZi seems to be the first “wise thinker” who really brought the idea of humanity down to
earth in the concrete idea of being humane in practice, i.e., he is the first humanist author to develop
what can be called a practical or concrete humanity as I would like to stress. In the Western tradition
that would be attributed only to the middle stoic thinker Panaitios1. Generally, in the West, the idea
of “humanity” (being human and/or humane in the treatment of other people) is accorded to these
ancient stoic philosophers - most notably to Cicero.
Yet, the Chinese forerunners had already the same encompassing idea together with the
attributes of practicality and concreteness some 200 years earlier. In particular it was MengZi, who
fought against the abstractness of ethics on the one hand and its formalism or formalization on the
other side, by arguing for concrete embeddings in situations and social settings and nevertheless not
sticking to utilitarianism or just egoistic interests.
MengZi even extended compassion and ethical treatment beyond the realm of humans to include
benevolence towards and commiseration with animals, thus deviating from KongZi’s solely
anthropocentric ethics. MengZi in fact tried to differentiate between “ai”, treating with care, as
pertinent to animals (they are not loved in the human sense) and “ren” for human beings (even for
foreigners or “barbarians”), whereas love in the full sense would be reserved to close relatives
(VIIA:45)2, 3.
In general, Schweitzer’s assessment of MengZi’s contribution to humanitarian ethics is as
follows:

The ideal of the noble man, in which Kung-tse’s ethics climaxes is changed in Meng-tse to that one of
man who has reached perfect humanity. 200 years before the ideal of humanity gains form for the first
time in the history of European thought in the stoic Panaitios (ca. 180-100 B.C.), it is found in Meng-tse
more vivid and deeper than in him (Panaitios, H. L.) (2002, 133).4.

Therefore, we can agree that MengZi’s ethics was the climax of Chinese ethical thinking in
antiquity, combining the enlargement of the scope of ethics to all humans (including even

1 Or to his disciples such as Poseidonios, whose student Cicero “invented” or dubbed and proclaimed the “homo humanus”
idea.
2 However, according to Schweitzer, this differentiation cannot be carried through fully: “All kinds of love would spring
from the same source and flow together in the same riverbed. They cannot be separated. According to its essence, love is
the same, towards whom ever it may be directed” (Schweitzer 2002, 133).
3 According to Roetz (2003, 119), in MengZi "the 'naturally given' social relations are complemented by a new relation
into which one enters spontaneously – the relationship between friends, which is acknowledged by MengZi as one of the
basic human relationships. It is this relationship that brings China on the way toward unconditional 'universal love'" – as
Roetz interprets Schweitzer: "Thus, Schweitzer, unlike most interpreters of Chinese ethics, had a feeling for the explosive
power of MengZi's fifth relationship. The potential of MengZi's ethics unfolds in his ethics of 'universal compassion,'
which, for Schweitzer, was the climax of Chinese ethics."
4 Schweitzer goes on to state that only in MengZi is the ethical affirmation of life and world so vivid and deep that the
idea of a civilized state (“Kulturstaat”) takes on an ethical character. “The objective of Meng-tse’s civilized state is an
ethical humankind”. This ideal of a civilized state is certainly not MengZi’s creation. “Already long before, it has been
developing in Chinese thought, determined by ethical affirmation of life and world. Meng-tse however renders the
building complete” (ibid. 134)

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"barbarians") and even animals, with the rejection of utilitarianism and of an empirical a posteriori
based ethics, nevertheless not dismissing, but stressing concreteness and practicality.
However, MengZi, according to Schweitzer, did not support the later Christian idea of “loving”
(Legge: “care for”) even one's enemies, though unloved humans are also to be treated like loved
humans! (Legge: “proceed to what they do not care for”) (VIIB, 1). Unlike MoZi, who only made a
general plea for love, MengZi also takes into account the idea of righteousness, rightness (yi) and
duties to somehow “formalize” the respective relationships, although the “inner principle of action”
would still be human love1.
In short: Without denying the universally encompassing scope of the ethical as regards any
human being and in fact any living being whatsoever, MengZi argues in a concrete and practice-
oriented manner, not denying formal obligations, righteousness and justice as well as organisational
necessities in rendering ethical intentions practicable2..
In a word, MengZi is the first great thinker to really combine the universal scope of the ethical
and the idea of humanity (an ethics of being humane) with the need to be concrete and practical in
one’s thought, norms and actions. Thus, he is the discoverer and father of concrete humanity, of the
ethics of practical humanity, the combination which Schweitzer himself particularly emphasized (see
Lenk 2000).
Thus, MengZi, as Schweitzer’s well appreciated ancient forerunner, highlighted the ideas and
ideals of concrete humanity, of thinking and acting humanely in a manner that is at the same time
rather general, if not universal, in scope and practice-oriented or down-to-earth in the conditions and
situations of real life3.
What now is the idea of concrete humanity in short (see Lenk 1998 and, as regards Schweitzer,
Lenk 2000)?
Schweitzer’s ethics, like MengZi’s, is a universal, encompassing ethics in scope, and has an a
priori rationalistic foundation of the ethical independent of utilitarian sources. At the same time it is
an ethics of concreteness and responsibility in practical life. The idea of humanity would and should
lead us through “the jungle of life” like a compass: Schweitzer only adds the general label of
“reverence for life” (“Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben”). Indeed, both are the outstanding ethicists of
concrete humanitarianism.
Let us now deal with the question: What is the ethics of concrete humanity today and in the
future?
In the Western tradition, Socrates was the first philosopher to emphasize the specific value of
the individual person and thus the idea and virtue of the human being in philosophical and practical

1 Schweitzer thinks (2001, 52) that MengZi like “hardly anyone else was gifted to have delved into the question of ethics
in everyday life and still remain always deep (i.e. in his thinking and attitude, H.L.). For his depths it transpires as a sort
of witnessing that he, being a practical moralist, sees utilitarianism as the great danger for ethics… With the same
seriousness as Kant, he defends the direct, absolute necessity of the ethical and protests against reducing it to the profitable,
if even in the best intention”.
2 MengZi even goes farther than Schweitzer himself who in his Civilization and Ethics (1923, 350) denigrates “the ethics
of society” in contradistinction to the individualistic “personal ethics”, which would be the “only true ethics” in the first
place (ibid. 312f, 325, 349, 352)
3 Schweitzer only added that MengZi had not stressed the “love even thy enemies” as Jesus would have done. Yet,
MengZi required the loving treatment of the un(be)loved ones. In a sense, Jesus with his all-encompassing ideal of caring
love for everybody seems to be much closer to MoZi and his all-encompassing idea of "jian ai” than to Mengzi.

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life. As mentioned already, the middle stoics like Panaitios and later Cicero developed the idea of the
"homo humanus". It comprises in an emphatic sense the idea of a humanity cultivated by education
and a refined moral and intellectual development, morality, noblesse and dignity, elegance, taste,
solidarity, cosmopolitism, kindness, goodness, hospitality, magnanimity etc.
Jumping to the era of classical modern Western philosophy we have to emphasize: “Humaneness”
(according to Vauvenargues the highest virtue) is considered by Johann Gottfried Herder to be a
special ethical or moral virtue and basic idea. Herder developed an ethical theory of humaneness or
humanity ("Humanität") including also practical humanity, i.e. situation-oriented, and thus
(practically realized humanity in everyday life, transcending abstract general rules in the sense of a
concrete sympathetic solidarity by practice-oriented ethical reasons1. Whereas the traditional ancient
idea of homo humanus was rather static and educational, Herder conceived of it as an anthropological
and ethical fundamental concept. He might also be seen as an intellectual opponent of Kant's moral
rigorism which relied too much on lawlikeness in ethics and morality. The idea of practical
humaneness and co-humaneness in concrete situations and practical contexts may even be expressed
by an apparently paradoxical formula: Do not rely always and strictly on abstract moral rules and
commands, but exercise a more humane individual- and situation-oriented way of life (cf. Lenk 1998,
132ff)2. This approach implies that super-regulatory and supererogatory aspects of humaneness are
particularly relevant in the field of practical humanity, admitting of exceptions and special
considerations according to the general leading idea of a co-humaneness or participatory and mutually
respectful humanity.
It is the idea of a theory of practical or concrete humaneness ("konkrete Humanität", see Lenk
1998) dating indeed back to MengZi’s and Herder's idea of a practical humanity, for which, starting
from discussing Schweitzer, I coined the slogan, “In dubio pro humanitate concreta sive practica”
(In cases of doubt, plead - and act - always for concrete or practical humanity”).

1 Indeed, as early as 1793-5 Herder (1953) emphasized the peacefulness, sociability or community orientation
(conviviality, being companionable), the participatory and empathetic aspect as well as sympathy, human dignity and
human love and charity ("love for humanity”), justice and human duties (on a par with and combined with human rights),
the supererogatory idea of going beyond formal duties and obligations. He also explicitly mentioned tolerance as the
respect and acknowledgement of other opinions, attitudes and valuations of other people(s) and individual persons.
Tolerance was not separable from humaneness, in particular practical humanity in the mentioned sense and vice versa.
Tolerance is, so to speak, a basic value of a character, of an attitude, and of a way of liberal and pluralistic thinking and
valuation. This value of tolerance as an attitudinal value closely combined with the respect of individuals and other persons
in specific situations and in general, was one modern cardinal virtue according to Herder which should be instilled by
education. Next to co-humaneness and the ideas of human solidarity and charity, it is tolerance, the respect for other
individuals' opinions, beliefs, "Lebensanschauungen”, i.e. views of life, and the other's civilization including his or her
religion, that characterizes an important trait of philanthropy, including a way of practising co-humaneness in the form of
mutuality of respect, sympathy, empathy, co-emotionality etc. Consequently, Herder launched a quest and a plea for the
"unity of a true and potent immaculate moral character" ("die "Einheit eines wahren wirksamen rein moralischen
Charakters").
2 Not the strict enforcement of rules and commands per se like any “Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus” should be the guiding
idea in morality – nor should there be a general rule like “Fiat moralitas, pereat mundus”, but the respective consideration
of humane perspectives and moral values as well as generosity beyond pure and strict legal or moral norms, in a sense
which Christian ethics called the “works of supererogation” (capacity and readiness for supererogatory deeds and words,
to do the not demanded good).

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 An outstanding or even the most prominent modern proponent of this principle was indeed
Albert Schweitzer himself1(1960, 352, see also 348 f.), who considered ethically valid “only that
which is compatible with humanity”, and with a truly human practical responsibility in concrete
everyday situations. Schweitzer2 also said that humaneness or “practical humanity” even literally
consists in the belief that a human being should never be sacrificed on the altar of any aim or objective
whatsoever (ibid. 313)3. “Abstraction is the demise of ethics: for ethics is a living relationship with
real life” (ibid. 325)4. We can safely expand this to mean also, “Abstraction is the demise of practical
humanity”, of an ethical humanism in concreto.
Schweitzer’s humanism is certainly not just an abstract idea, but rather practical humanity in
concreto, a sort of practical or as it were “concrete humanity” or “concrete humaneness”. Schweitzer
was a moral genius of humanitarianism in concreto – both in his practice and in his thinking. In his
ethical practice, he was not embarrassed or misled by any theoretical ambiguities, vicissitudes or
difficulties. In his ethical practice he pursued his own way steadfastly, with determination and
unperturbed, really being a kind of “moral genius” of humanistic and humanitarian praxis. Here, he
was unwavering, though he could not succeed in the comprehensive rationalistic foundation of ethical
theory in general (see Lenk 1990 and 2000). In matters of ethical practice, he remains not only a
paragon of ethical mentality and impressive versatility, but also an important critic of traditional
ethicists and a theoretician of ethics, though here certainly not of such originality as in his practical
ethics and regarding his idea of concrete humanity. He was in our times one of the most outstanding
practitioners and also theoreticians of what we may call “concrete humanitarianism” or “concrete
humanity” (in the sense of always being humane towards any human and even to other living beings).
We might, as mentioned, coin a slogan to summarize his humanistic conception by saying “In
dubio pro humanitate concreta!” (In doubtful cases of decisions and actions as well as conscience,
always give first priority to practical and concrete humanity – even against abstract principles of
humanism and, at times, traditional or law-abiding values.)
Indeed, ethics is not just, or primarily, a matter of ethical laws or rigorous universal prescriptions,
absolute norms, or casuistic typologies. Rather, ethics is mainly a matter of practical decisions
pertaining to and transpiring within life in concreto, regarding decisions of our conscience under the
overall idea of humane behaviour with respect to any other humans as well as all other living beings
coming into the scope and realm of one's reach of responsibility and actions – maybe on a face-to-
face basis or on other “secondary” interactions, at times even including rather remote (today including
some intercontinental) dependencies.

1 Schweitzer, surprisingly, did not base his ethical humanitarianism on Herder's but rather on Goethe's humanist
classicism as well as – to be sure – on the Christian doctrine of caring love.
2 As mentioned, Schweitzer, like Mencius, even expanded the idea of a practical humanity to a "humane" treatment of
animals (1960, 349; 1961; 1994).
3 The idea and theory of practical humaneness and co-humaneness implies some approach like Fletcher's "situation
ethics" (1966). It cannot however be restricted to situation-oriented action, but is generally regulated by a universal
principle of taking into consideration co-humaneness, solidarity, a typically humane morality, whereas situation ethics
only brings to the fore the particular aspects of special circumstances.
4 However, both of these statements are abstract ones; they are not really operative or operational by themselves to render
situation-oriented concreteness and practicality. We need values, virtues, and viable norms to render and engender
"concrete" humanitarianism.

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 Concerning the idea of “concrete humanity”, we may state that all the attitudes, virtues and moral
values of the concrete humanitarian approach as embraced by MengZi, Panaitios, Herder, and
Schweitzer also draw heavily on the supererogatory character of truly ethical considerations or really
moral motivations in the narrower sense; they transcend and at times even transgress strictly
enforceable rules from the perspective of an extended practical humanity. In particular, the noble idea
and practice of forgiveness or condoning is virtually a climax of humanitarianism and genuine
humaneness. (Regarding practical humanity, a widely known paragon example of this is the Good
Samaritan of the Christian Bible. (Practical humanity is definitely not pharisaical.) We find parallel
examples in the Koran, in Buddhism and – as outlined above – in Confucianism as well, in particular
in MengZi.)
Practical humanity highlights not only adequate and person-oriented ways of coining, instilling
and transmitting attitudes and valuations, assessments etc., but also leaves open a realm of formally
guaranteed liberty in which to develop and cultivate oneself – an essential idea in KongZi as well as
in MengZi. It concentrates on a holistic view of persons as against segmentation and division into
roles and partial functions. Concrete humanity and substantial tolerance are in that sense person-
oriented and holistic, although always in a practical setting.
They also exercise justice as fairness in accordance with Rawls and a certain kind of fair
behaviour in everyday life. Practical humanity emphasizes co-humaneness in groups, irrespective of
valuations, feelings and aspirations and in day-to-day life: It stresses co-humaneness – like ren which
explicitly includes the social component - not only as a way of knowledge, but also philanthropy as
characterizing empathetic, communicative, sympathetic, and feeling, compassionate beings. Personal
responsibility with respect to partners in concrete social and day-to-day situations and with regard to
social systems and ecosystems are new aspects of the humane handling of environmental and social
challenges. Even the practically humane treatment of non-human creatures is part and parcel of
practical humanity in this sense; this is, as was emphasized, stressed by Schweitzer – even more
pointedly than by MengZi.
What are the traits of concrete humanity today? (See table 1)

Table 1
Concrete humanity / Practical humaneness
1. Always respect the human dimension. Self-imposed (“wise”) moderation.
2. Take into account conditions and constraints in practical situations but always from a logical
perspective (consistency).
3. Do not segment humans into partial roles and functions, but treat other persons from a holistic point
of view.
4. Argue as far as possible with fairness to the individuals -including their attitudes, valuations,
personal assessments.
5. Justice as fairness (Rawls): Be fair in daily life – not only in sport.
6. Allow unto others open space for actions, opinions and decisions.
7. Cultivate this liberty for yourself also...
8. Respect humanity and exercise humaneness in and in front of groups.
9. Treat others with tolerance.
10. Take personal responsibility in your own practical realm of action.

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 11. Show charity to the needy in your realm of responsibility.
12. Treat all humans as empathetic, compassionate and communicative beings.
13. Forgiveness and condonation are the true epitome or hallmark of humaneness.
14. Treat other creatures with humaneness, too, e.g., domestic animals and primates.
15. Have and exercize a general “reverence for life” and affirm and honor the “will to live”.
16. Act for and contribute to an environment worth living in and with a decent quality of life for humans,
animals and even representative plants and the necessary functioning of important eco-systems.
17. Have self-respect and take also full responsibility for your own person and well-being.
18. Pursue self-cultivation in the form of aesthetic refinement of taste, personal experience and
formation of own values.
19. This would and should include a really humane and emotional oriented erotic and/or sexual
partnership.
20. Always try to exercize human love and humaneness in concreto: In dubio pro humanitate!

In the age of all-encompassing globalization, notably the variants of situation-dependence and action
orientations as well as responsibilities have changed quite drastically: Through world-wide
communication and economic interdependency most of the less fortunate people who were hitherto
deemed very remote from us are now our „functional neighbours“, as regards survival chances (food,
medical care, economic conditions etc.) and a minimum of well-being depending on responsible help
from the privileged parts of the world. Even if the problems of famine, undersupply of food and
inadequate healthcare are not easily solved by existing political, legal or economic measures, the
situation necessitates new ethical responsibilities and certainly redefines the concepts of
“dependence”, (functional) “neighbourhood” and “concreteness” or even “situation-orientation” in
terms of interdependencies and worldwide interactions: If not (only) from a legalistic perspective, we
certainly need to find new ways to extend applied ethical approaches that highlight the new worldwide
functional adjacencies, interdependencies and interactions. We need a new understanding of
humanitarianism in the sense of concrete humanity, given the greater situation-dependence, by
defining and applying new concepts of the "concreteness" of social “situations”, interactions,
interdependence etc. in a functionality-based sense. Ethically speaking, this drastically changed
situation on our finite planet Earth, with its ever more limited resources, overpopulation and
undersupply as well as distribution problems, really calls for a revolution in our ethical thinking and
notably in our ethical and humanitarian practice.
Certainly, the idea of a general practical humanity or co-humaneness (practical human solidarity)
also implies and involves aspects of a formal and substantive tolerance and fairness with respect to
opinions, rules, communication and conflict regulation. Therefore, it contains subordinate ideas and
procedural norms and rules for social communication, action systems and strategic situations (in
particular rules for procedures of conflict regulation that are consistent with ideas of basic fairness
and tolerance).1

1 The motto "In dubio pro humanitate concreta" may be extended to the slogan "In dubio pro humanitate concreta atque
tolerantia practica. Practical humanity or co-humaneness and tolerance are concepts and norms or values which mutually
depend on one another. This is especially true of horizontal tolerance and humanistic (individual-oriented) tolerance, but
it also has major implications for procedural, legal and public strategies of the constitutional state. Tolerance as a moral
ideal is a pervading, rather functional (mainly, but not only procedural) way of respect for differing or even opposing

407
 We can, by the way, trace a specifically educational road from the legal conception of human
rights towards an ethical interpretation of human dignity claims and a proposal for a human right to
creativity and creative activity which seems to be basically Confucian (“Learn and exercize all the
time!”) and Mencian in its idea and contents as well as in its mental and conceptual character and
motivation.
To come to some closing remarks: if we turn to the topic of general human rights, we can find
the following historical development: Literally speaking, the tradition of human rights discussions
and conceptions as well as declarations – including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
1948 – constructs human rights as legal protection rights against encroachments by the state or ruler,
i.e. human rights were conceived of as prevention rights for the protection of individuals. These rights
and legitimate moral claims of the individual vis-à-vis the state and other holders of power in a legally
codified version. However, starting some decades ago, protective human rights have been widened,
so to speak, to include positive self-determinative and participatory rights for the individual to choose
his or her own lifestyle as well as self-determination (including in recent jurisdiction as, e.g., by the
ruling of the German Constitutional Court, informational self-determination). We have also seen the
development of participatory rights for the individual to the guaranteeing of a certain living standard
and social participation in order to make possible a life consistent with human dignity: There has
been noticeable progress from the interpretation of human rights as protection rights vis-à-vis the
state or ruler towards the rights of active participation in social life and partaking in guaranteed social
opportunities etc. as well as towards the inclusion of sometimes so-called collective human rights of
groups, minorities, etc., guaranteeing them equal treatment. In other words, there has been a
remarkable development from the interpretation of legally codified protection rights towards
participatory social opportunity rights and guaranteed life-improving maintenance (at least in
principle). The latter human rights can be called social human rights or positive beneficiary rights,
as I have stated elsewhere (2001). Indeed, there is historically speaking a characteristic extension of
the original meaning of negative protection rights (against non-encroachments) towards positive
participatory and beneficiary social rights as well as the guaranteeing of opportunities and chances.
If this is true of the legal interpretation of codified human rights, it is all the more true of the
ethical interpretation of regarding legitimate moral claims to enjoy the privilege of being treated
according to the principles of human dignity. Instead of just speaking of moral human rights, I prefer
now (Lenk 2001) terminologically to speak of legitimate moral or ethical claims to human dignity
(“Menschenwürdeanrechte” or “Menschenwürdigkeitsanrechte”) instead of my earlier (Lenk 1997)
references to the apparently all too much legally shaped moral “rights” in a narrower sense1. I shall

opinions and for regulating conflicts in a pluralistic society on the intellectual level according to the principles of fairness
and procedural reason under the auspices of basic egalitarian conceptions of humankind bestowing equal worth on all
human beings. Tolerance is part of the essentially humanitarian tradition of the human rights movement which is, e. g.,
highlighted by the Declaration of Principles on Tolerance of the UNESCO of 1995. Tolerance has to be spelled out
according to the above-mentioned types and functional differentiations to render more substantial and effective some
rather formal insights into specific variants of the general humanitarian approach. There is no true humaneness and co-
humanity without general legal and moral as well as situation-oriented tolerance. In dubio pro humanitate concreta sive
practica atque tolerantia formale et substantiale!
1 In fact, the latter development would also include the general legally not enforceable human rights as, e.g., the general
collective human right to jobs and other so-called "reflexive” "programme statements” within the General Declaration
as well as in the European Social Charter of 1961 (II, art. 1) stating just general guarantees, no legally renforceable rights

408
not go into the details of these differences and the historical development here.
In addition and rather short passing, I would like to add here another moral human “quasi-right”
of human dignity or an ethically legitimate participatory claim regarding freely chosen, non-alienated
authentic creative activity (Eigenactivity) or – to play on words: “creactivity”, i.e. “Eigentätigkeit”
or “Eigenleistung” (see my 1983, 1985-6, 1994, 2001). Like the above-mentioned reflexive
programmatic, legally not enforceable human right to a job and a corresponding standard of living
etc., this would also be proposed as a human right to be educated, to indulge in non-alienated free
creative activity (including at times recreation), to enjoy and perform meaningful eigenactivity, i.e.
productive activity being part and parcel ofauthentic and free self-determination and self-
development. Voluntary proper Eigenactivity and Eigenachievement 1 would be considered a
legitimate ethical claim to human dignity and even proposed as a human right of a participatory social
provenance (like the “reflexive” right to have or get a job). The state would have to ensure that the
conditions and opportunities for such creative free activity of the individual, in short, for Eigenactivity
and Eigenachievement and creative performance have to be fostered, if not guaranteed, at least in the
sense of providing free scope for such activities. This would also include a reorientation and
revaluation of voluntary activities in social realms.
Such a new positive cultivation of freely chosen, personally engaging non-alienated meaningful
activities should be developed and fostered in the framework of a human right (or ethical claim) to
social and meaningful Eigenactivity and creative personal actions as well as recreation. This may be
understood as an extension of or in agreement with some of the UN declarations of human rights of
1948 and 1966.- This particular variant of a participatory positive ethical human right is certainly a
special interpretation of the very basic human right to education and has certainly to be realized in
education. Indeed, education towards the abidance by and through such human right is part and parcel
of such an extension of an activist positive interpretation of many of the thus far codified human
rights and of the principles underlying them. To note, the emphasis on recognizing the duty to educate
oneself by active permanent learning and by authentic Eigenactivity and even the need for lifelong
learning was repeated time and again by KongZi (LunYu, passim) and MengZi (IVB, 14; VIIB, 5;
VIA, 11; VIA, 20).
Whereas we have first of all to teach human rights in the strict and basic sense of protective and
participatory rights – particularly in situational settings taking into account concrete (practical)
humanity – we should see to it that the ethical human right or legitimate moral claim to meaningful
eigenactivities and authentic creative endeavours is guaranteed and included in the general discussion
on human rights and human dignity. Humans are creative and free beings: Not only ideally speaking,
but in practical settings, too, education should foster this objective and emphasize the positive activist
connotations of the thus extended ideas of human rights.

or claims of the individual. The same is true of human rights to education (ibid. art. 26) and participation in cultural life
(art. 27); also in the UN Human Rights Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 (III, art. 6).
1 KongZi already emphasized (Lun Yu XV, 20) that the noble man would hate the idea of leaving the world without
having achieved something worthy of continuous acknowledgement. Time and again in his counselling statements, he
comes back to the necessity, and value, of "learning, learning, learning!” (LunYu I, 1+4, I, 14, II, 15, V, 15, V, 28, XV,
31, XIX, 5f).

409
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 Insight and Understanding

Ernest Sosa
Rutgers University

Let us explore a particular sort of understanding, understanding why, and a related sort of knowledge
why—firsthand knowledge why—and the place of this in the humanities, including philosophy.
We shall focus on one dimension of the humanities, not the whole, and on the humanistic side
of philosophy, though there’s a lot more to philosophy than that.
I’ll be arguing for the importance of firsthand intuitive insight. And that in turn will bear
interestingly on two questions in the epistemology of the humanities, including philosophy: First
question. Given that firsthand intuitive insight has special value and standing in the humanities, how
is the epistemic standing of our own beliefs affected when we encounter the disagreement of others?
Secondly, if firsthand intuitive insight is shown to have such special standing and value, how if at all
does this affect what epistemological standards are properly operative in humanistic domains?
Eventually, we will come to these two questions about the humanities, one about the place of
disagreement, and the other about the proper epistemic standards. But first we take up the place and
value of intuitive insight.
1. Of the varieties of understanding, one has special importance for our project, namely
understanding why, understanding why it is so that p. Such understanding why is correlated with
knowing why, and both come in degrees of quality, as in the following example.
Suppose a woman contracts an infection, which we attribute to the germs on her airplane tray
table. Suppose she did pick up germs on those surfaces and transferred them to her nose or eyes. But
what if the germs would not have affected anyone with normal defenses? Suppose they would have
come nowhere near doing so. Our woman acquires the infection in part because of the germs but
mainly because her defenses are very much lowered (by her cancer treatment).
Suppose contact with the germs was indeed essentially involved in how and why the woman
was infected. If so, we do have some knowledge of why she got infected. And so we do gain some
understanding of why it happened. She was infected at least in part because of her contact with the
germs. But our understanding in that case falls short. We have some understanding without
understanding fully. Just as you might have some justification for a certain belief without being
justified outright in holding that belief, so you might have some understanding of a certain
phenomenon without understanding it well enough to really understand it outright.
3. We would like to understand a distinction between questions properly settled through
epistemic deference, and questions that require or invite firsthand assessment, beyond sheer deference.
Many questions call just for information. Take utilitarian questions, whether financial, legal, or
medical. Answering such questions has a practical value fully realized with no need for deeper
understanding. By contrast, humanistic questions hold scant practical value, at least in the short term.
Although we focus on humanistic questions, we’ll consider an account that extends to many
questions in the liberal arts more generally; in fact, we begin with an example in geometry, a

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discipline not usually placed in the humanities.
A young teenager still innocent of plane geometry is told by his teacher that the Pythagorean
Theorem is true. The teacher lays out the theorem (not the proof, just the theorem), and affirms it to
be true. A smart kid with a good memory, the student thereby knows through deference the truth of
the theorem. But he falls short in his understanding of why the theorem is true, lacking as he does
any adequate grasp of the proof.
It does not help if the student accepts by sheer deference the conditional that conjoins all the
premises in its antecedent, and contains the theorem itself as its consequent, along with accepting by
deference also the truth of the antecedent. He still does not grasp the truth of that conjunction well
enough firsthand. He accepts it just through deference to the teacher.
That is why he falls short in his understanding of the truth of that theorem. The desired level of
understanding requires insight of one’s own into the premises and into the immediate inferences that
constitute the proof.1
4. Nevertheless, although an insightful proof would constitute a higher attainment, deference to
the geometry teacher can still enable knowledge of the theorem’s truth, even absent understanding.
Compare also humanistic domains such as art and its appreciation, the nature and content of
morality, and many issues in philosophy. In these domains knowledge through deference seems again
available.
Prima facie, someone trustworthy might answer aptly some normative yes/no question, which
provides some secondhand knowledge to their hearers. Many others might then add their powerful
support, with no dissent in view, enhancing the quality of that secondhand knowledge. So, what
distinguishes moral, aesthetic, and other humanistic domains is not that secondhand knowledge is
there unavailable, but rather that firsthand knowledge is both available and particularly desirable.
What is further available in those domains, and particularly desirable, is also knowledge, firsthand
knowledge, attained when the thinker gets it right sufficiently through firsthand competence.
5. Why might normative humanistic questions invite, reward, and even require understanding,
and not just information?
Here is one reason: Because anyone who navigates uncritically, on mere instinct or tribal mores,
or on mere deference, neglects their rational standing.2 But why do we prioritize firsthand knowledge
as we so often do? Because it is so often through such knowledge that you flourish as a rational
animal. Practical, utilitarian questions are properly answered with mere information acquired through
sheer deference. But deeper choices require rational guidance beyond deference.
6. That is the high road, which I am myself willing to take, but there is also a less lofty route.
Suppose human flourishing does not require that we prioritize firsthand thought. Suppose
instead that each of us has leeway on how much of that to go in for. That is bound to depend on one’s
specific situation, interests, and abilities.

1 And it is not just understanding-why and knowledge-why that admit our distinction between a grasp that is merely
deferential and one that is firsthand. Expressionless and in a flat voice, you may tell me you have a headache, and I may
thus acquire deferential knowledge of your headache. But your firsthand knowledge has higher quality, is more certain.
2 Any proper human life will include a set of values—prudential, political, moral, aesthetic—supported by a humanly
relevant outlook on oneself and the environing world. Such a view would then contain degrees of the coherent generality
that underwrite corresponding degrees of understanding.

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 A life of tilling the land is far removed from the Aristotelian life of pure contemplation. But no-
one is to blame for a life of hard labor if they have no choice all things considered. Of course such a
life can be admirable, even if deprived of much rational attainment.
We need not even agree with Aristotle’s hierarchical claims. Suppose we recognize the widest
range of proper life plans, and we put them all on the same level, or anyhow we omit any hierarchy.
Suppose we just focus on lives that do make room for intrinsically motivated desire to understand.
For such lives, our distinction between the utilitarian and the humanistic still comes to the fore.
That distinction then has extremely broad application. It is not restricted to highbrow interests
in the fine arts, the humanities, and pure philosophy. On the contrary, firsthand judgment is apposite
in athletic stadiums and arenas as well as in symphony halls and museums, in bar-room arguments as
well as in seminar dialectic. It may be even more jarring to just defer in lowbrow venues.
On this more democratic, less prescriptive approach, when is firsthand judgment preferable to
mere deference? This now depends on the agent’s desire for understanding, whether highbrow or
lowbrow; and it depends also on whether such understanding requires firsthand insight. So, we are
still left with an interesting question to consider: Just when is a desire for outright understanding
satisfiable only through firsthand insight?
7. When and why does outright understanding require a firsthand approach? According to our
account, you understand well enough why p if, and only if, you know well enough why p, which
requires knowing, for some fact, that p because of that fact. That is a minimum necessary condition.
Even when that is not sufficient, however, what is required in addition may just be more of the
same. That is suggested already by our case of infection caused by germs on a tray table, where we
learn that the woman’s defenses are low. More generally, what is needed for enhanced understanding
may be just more knowledge, more propositional knowledge that is properly interrelated.
We thus face the following challenge.
Suppose you know why it is so that p. Might you not know this simply because you know, about
some rich and deep enough set of facts, that it is because of those facts that it comes about that p? Is
such rich and deep enough knowledge attainable only through a firsthand approach? Not clearly. Why
can’t it be attained through deference to testimony that p because q, r, s, … ?
This threatens to drive a wedge between two things that seemed to be bound together: namely,
the desirability of going beyond testimonial deference, and the thirst for understanding, with the latter
explaining the former. It has become less clear why we need to go beyond deference. How is this
challenge to be met?
8. Here first is a concession. We need not insist that, on any possible question, outright
understanding requires firsthand access, beyond deference. In order to understand better why the
woman got infected, for example, I need to know also that her defenses were extremely low. Her
infection is more fully explained when we attribute it not only to the germs but also, and mainly, to
the lowered defenses. But this further fact is one available through testimonial deference.
So much for our concession. Not all important questions call for thoroughly firsthand
understanding and knowledge-why. On many questions a deep, full explanation might amount to a
rich enough set of facts, whose grasp through deference enhances understanding.
However, questions in the humanities might still require a particularly large and salient element

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of direct rational appreciation? If so, why might this be so?
9. Why might a question call for much more than deference? Because it might call for a kind of
rational understanding.
Consider first the aesthetic assessment of an art work. Is it original, arresting, elegant? Let’s
focus here just on whether it is (artistically, not just financially) successful. If it is indeed successful,
there will be reasons why that is so, reasons that will form the ground of its success, in virtue of
which the work attains that success.
And there is then a notable distinction between the following two cases:
In the first case one knows through sheer deference about the success of a certain art work
(identified just as the seventh on a certain list).
In the second case one spots at least implicitly the reasons why the work is successful, so that
one’s knowledge of its success is based on those grounding reasons (even if this basing remains
implicit).
In the latter case, one has firsthand knowledge of the work’s success along with understanding
its success by knowing why it is successful, through insight into the grounds for that success. Here
firsthand humanistic knowledge comes with understanding attained through insightful rational
explanation. One experiences the work in the relevant way—be it a piece of music, a painting, or a
novel—and one discerns the reasons for the work’s success through firsthand experience.
10. Objection
Not so fast! Suppose a critic explains that the work has features F1, F2, … Fn, and that these are
the features that make it successful. Would that not enable one to know why the work is successful?
Reply
Yes, if the critic is reliable enough, then deferring to their testimony may enable us to know that
much. But one might still fall short significantly in one’s understanding. Recall the student who
knows the Pythagorean theorem to be true, and also knows to some extent why it is true, but only by
deferring throughout to the teacher.
11. Our point about aesthetic judgment applies also to moral judgment.
An adolescent may defer to a parent’s moral advice, for example, with no proper firsthand
appreciation of the features that make the recommended action right, nor of the fact that they do so.
The mother may say: “Tommy, you must apologize.” She may have seen the whole action and may
be sensitive to various features of the case that she is unable to specify fully in an English formulation.
She may have seen the level of grief in the eyes of the friend at being bullied by Tommy. The behavior
was not terrible but it was definitely bad enough to require an apology. Tommy may just defer to the
mother and go ahead with his apology. But even later that day he may fail to appreciate on his own
when an apology is required.
In that case, the child gains from the mother some understanding of why he must apologize. She
tells him that it’s because of the bullying and the grief that it caused. And Tommy does sincerely
defer. But his secondhand knowledge falls short. It manifests insufficient appreciation of the behavior
that matters, and of the relevant level of upset. He takes it entirely on deferential trust that his behavior
and the upset that it caused were bad enough to require apology. And this gives only truncated
understanding.

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 12. The Pythagorean example is comparable in its own way. Also comparable in a different way
is a tourist’s deference to a museum guide who attributes a painting’s success to how the pastel colors
contrast with the darker reds. The tourist gains some appreciation and understanding of why the
painting is successful. But what if he is color blind? In that case, the tourist falls short in his
understanding, even as he views the painting firsthand.
Understanding through firsthand knowledge is salient for normative issues generally, and for
moral issues more specifically. It is salient in the humanities generally, where we should and do often
prioritize firsthand, non-deferential judgment.
13. Something similar applies to another side of the humanities, namely metaphysics.
Suppose the topic of social construction comes up in bar-room conversation and someone points
out that we are sitting on bar stools, artifacts composed of disks attached to legs. But she then adds
that this observation is partial and superficial. What matters more deeply is that such items are given
a certain purpose by the culture, one that their physical constitution enables them to serve. Bar stools
are constructed by carpenters, true enough, but more deeply they are socially constructed. If that
function were not conventionally assigned to objects so shaped, they might constitute side tables
rather than stools. From there we might turn to more gripping issues of gender, or race, or the nature
of persons, or justice, or knowledge, as Socrates might have done. (Recall the Euthyphro on the
direction of grounding. Does it go from god-love to goodness, or from goodness to god-love?)
Through reflection we might attain a kind of firsthand insight as to what grounds various
phenomena of great human interest. What we need is insight into thought experiments that will reveal
the relevant metaphysical by-relations, the metaphysical basis, so that the phenomenon of interest
comes to be thereby. Of course, if such subject matter eludes one’s grasp, or its subtlety leaves one
bored or impatient, then one may forego such insight, and that is fine. Such metaphysics is not for
everyone, nor is philosophy, nor the humanities.
Such issues of social construction are cited just to illustrate a sort of understanding that some of
us do find enlightening.
Humanistic understanding can thus be desirable for at least two sorts of reasons. First, it can be
required for the understanding of values and choices that should guide a rational animal. Second, it
can also be desirable just for its own sake, for the satisfaction of our curiosity. This latter is crucial in
the humanities, and in the liberal arts more generally, as with geometry.
It remains only to draw some lessons about the proper epistemology for the liberal arts, including
the humanities, and philosophy more specifically.
14. First lesson
Note first the intimate connection between testimony and disagreement, which holds a lesson
about disagreement.
There is a notorious problem of disagreement in the humanities, philosophy being no exception.
How can we claim to know much at all in fields with so much disagreement? Faced with that, should
we just suspend on all disputed issues? Not if we downgrade deference, for this now has an interesting
implication.
Once we properly aim for firsthand knowledge in pursuit of understanding, while bracketing
secondhand information, we can properly discount disagreement! Disagreement must be discounted

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along with testimony, disagreement being a special case of testimony. In any such domain we
properly aim for aptness of judgment unaided by deference. More generally, we aim for aptness of
judgment unaffected by sheer deference.
In any case, we cannot have it both ways. Where deference is optional and best avoided, there
disagreement does not after all render our judgments problematic.
Firsthand knowledge in pursuit of understanding requires that you reach your answer through
competence seated in yourself, not through sheer deference to others. The mere fact that someone
else holds a contrary opinion need not move you to revise, not in the slightest.1 It may instead prompt
just an exchange of views. But even when engaged in such exchange, you may still aim to judge
autonomously.
That makes for a hopeful epistemology of the humanities, including issues of aesthetic and moral
interpretation and appreciation, and issues of armchair philosophy more generally.
Humanistic disciplines tend to be organized differently from what is familiar and important in
the sciences. A lot of humanistic inquiry tends to be individual, with no deference to others. In
philosophy the attitude is pervasive. Everything is subject to critical scrutiny. Nothing significant is
accepted through sheer deference. That’s how it is, and plausibly how it should be, which fits our
discussion of the main role of testimony in philosophy. The interesting implication is that
disagreement should not be as troubling in the humanities as it is often taken to be. In philosophy
specifically, we should not be so much moved by disagreement, since we should rarely be moved to
assign much weight to the sheer sayso of someone else, no matter how well placed. We can be moved
to reconsider, yes. We can even be obliged to reconsider, on pain of negligence; but not to revise, not
in the slightest. Note the distinction that matters here: reconsidering is to be distinguished from
revising. You can do the former seriously, without doing the latter, without being moved in the
slightest by the sheer sayso of someone else.
That view of humanistic accomplishment, in philosophy specifically, aligns well with
Descartes’s Meditations. These are a record of the author’s meditations, but they also serve, and are
surely meant to serve, as a script for the reader’s own performance. A main aim of the work is the
enlightenment of the reader, not through deference to the author but through guidance to firsthand
insight and understanding.
A geometry teacher might also aim to provide a script meant to aid students attain their own
insight into the proof of a theorem. In providing such guidance, she goes beyond merely presenting
the abstract structure whose necessary truth underlies the soundness and validity of the argument.
Rather, the teacher presents a script for a student’s own performance through inferences by natural
deduction. The student would be guided to the insights required, tied together by immediate
inferences in proper sequence. By following that script properly, the student can attain firsthand
insight into the truth of the Pythagorean theorem. In this respect, the cases are identical, even if
Cartesian reflection is conducted in the first person, unlike geometry.
Correct judgment deriving from firsthand competence can of course depend on the conduit to
reasons provided by testimony. That is how you can properly depend on guidance by Descartes, or

1 Except when “in my opinion no-one holds any opinion contrary to my own,” and such cases.

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by a geometry teacher. Having been made aware of good available reasoning, you can then make it
your own, so that the success of your judgment is then a firsthand success. And the accomplishment
will then depend not at all on sheer deference to someone else.
15. Objection
We are assuming that in humanistic domains we aim to answer our questions and to get it right
in so doing. How then can we coherently have this aim while refusing to defer to others recognized
as more reliable than we are?
Reply
That is a good question, but it has a good answer, by analogy with the case of archery, our model
of evaluable performance.
As an archer I would normally want to hit my target through firsthand competence. This might
be in the sport of archery or as a hunter in the woods. When I allow a coach to guide my hands, by
contrast, the desire for firsthand performance is suppressed. Not so when I perform as a competitor
or a hunter. There I dispense with external aids. I cannot defer to a coach’s direct guidance as I draw
my bow and prepare to shoot. And this is so even if I still very much want to hit the target and know
perfectly well that I could do so much more reliably with the coach’s help!
In many domains agents aim for firsthand success attained aptly, through competence. Often,
external aids that would boost competence must be shunned. Many are forbidden formally, as are
performance enhancing drugs. An artist who performs on the stage with a coach at their elbow would
ridiculously violate the conventions of artistic performance. Even when there are no laws, rules, or
conventions that prohibit such aids, moreover, performers still aim for fully apt firsthand success.
16. The point is brought home by a striking example.
Of two aficionados addicted to the NY Times crossword puzzle, one tries to solve the puzzle
with no external aids, and often succeeds. Another always waits for the answer to be published the
next day, then dutifully fills it in, and gets the solution exactly right. Why does this seem so foolish?
Because the whole point of a crossword puzzle is to give you the amusement that goes with a
challenge that can be met but not too easily, one that calls on your own resources and engages your
attention pleasurably.
Both agents want equally to get it right, yet one of them foolishly neglects the proper objective.
Truth is a part of the objective, but only a part. Attaining the truth by just copying the right answer is
not in the right spirit. Rather, your aim must be not just success but firsthand success.
In that specific respect humanist judgments are like crossword solutions. Indeed, given our broad
understanding of humanist questions, crossword puzzles constitute a light humanistic domain, where
it is preferable and generally preferred to reach one’s answers firsthand, not just through deference.
We saw earlier how humanist value judgments properly engage one’s own autonomous
competence. Proper deliberation uses testimony only as a conduit to reasons which can then be
accessed firsthand, adopted as one’s own, and deployed through firsthand reasoning. Testimony can
play that role of conduit perfectly well, since the recipient need give no weight to the word of the
testifier as such.
17. This last point gains further importance when we move beyond the evaluative side of the
humanities, as with many questions in philosophy. If our aim as philosopher were only correctness

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no matter how attained, then deference would tend to be required. Suppose I am convinced that my
opponent is a more gifted, skillful philosopher, more likely to have the right answer. If then my sole
aim on that question is to answer it correctly, I am best advised to defer.
By contrast, if my aim is to attain a correct answer, and to do so firsthand, I must not defer to
the opponent’s sayso, simply as such. But is one not acting incompetently by failing to give proper
weight to a source recognized as most likely to be correct? And so, is one not obliged to yield through
deference to such a superior opponent?
No, one is no more bound to yield deferentially when one aims to hit the mark of truth firsthand,
than one is bound to yield deferentially to a coach’s hands in an endeavor to hit a bullseye.
18. Second lesson
A further lesson concerns how standards differ substantially across epistemic domains. Doctors
and lawyers are socially bound to issue their expert opinions based on due care and diligence.
Scientists must abide by social rules binding on communities of collective inquiry. High standards of
reliability apply, since members of the community must be able to defer to the reported results of
experts. Negligence may even call for a lawsuit.
Even everyday practice imposes social standards for information storage. Violators incur
disapproval, blame, and loss of trust.
But humanistic domains seem interestingly, importantly different.
Suppose others are neither expecting nor expected to rely on you for their opinions in a certain
domain. Suppose in that domain there is pressure to avoid mere deference, and to form one’s views
firsthand. We are thus pressured to go beyond sheer deference, even in some cases where deference
is not disallowed, and even in cases where deference is required. How can this be so?
Here it is crucial to note that through a single doing one can make more than one attempt. Thus,
one might flip a light switch in an endeavor to illuminate a room, and also in an endeavor to alert
someone outside. Similarly, through a single affirmation, whether public or to oneself, one might
endeavor to get it right on a certain question, perhaps by sheer deference, while also endeavoring to
get it right firsthand. Here one makes two attempts through one doing, and the doing is also
overdetermined, since one bases one’s affirmation on deference and also on separately sufficient
reasons that one deploys firsthand (without the aid of deference in that deployment). Such doubling
up is not impossible, as we have seen, and need not even be rare in intellectual endeavor.
Faced with a weighty moral decision, we may do our best to arrive at a correct firsthand
judgment while also giving due weight to the sayso of a trustworthy authority. The issue may indeed
be important enough that we are morally required to give due weight to that authority and even to
defer.
Again, we might aim to simply get it right, and endeavor to do so deferentially, i.e. by giving
substantial weight to the sheer sayso of an authority, while at the same time, with the very same
affirmation, we might or might not also endeavor to get it right firsthand.
However, we might alternatively just refuse to defer even when we know that we are thereby
rejecting a more reliable way to answer our question. We might prefer instead to leave the question
open until we can address it through our own resources. This I take to be a quite proper and common
attitude to humanistic questions of art appreciation, moral assessment, and other philosophical

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insight.1
All of that being so, your firsthand judgments in humanistic domains need not be so reliable. At
least that is so from a social point of view, from the perspective of social norms on responsible
judgment. In such domains you are not so concerned with others in your distinctively desirable and
responsible judgments, since others are not supposed to give much weight to your sayso in forming
their judgments. The reasons that you can provide might matter greatly, but you are just a conduit to
those reasons, which others will need to assess and apply firsthand. Others must assess firsthand the
soundness of any arguments you may present. Your sayso will carry zero weight as such. So, your
judgment can still be competent enough while less reliable. Such domains thus tolerate more risk.
And that is why intellectual performance is subject to less stringent social standards of reliability in
philosophy, and in the humanities.
19. Summing up
We have explored a particular sort of understanding, understanding why, and a particular sort of
knowledge why—firsthand knowledge why, especially through intuitive insight—and its place in the
humanities including philosophy.
I have argued for the special importance of firsthand intuitive insight on many questions in the
humanities, and for implications concerning two things: concerning, first, disagreement, and
concerning, second, the applicable epistemic standards of reliability.

1 There is moreover a further objective that matters greatly in these domains: namely, discovery, originality. One aims
not only to reach the truth firsthand, through one’s own insight or reasoning. That much one can do, as we have seen,
even while concurrently also deferring on the very same question. What one cannot do while also deferring is to discover
that truth. However, discovery seems ambiguous. In a weaker sense it is possible for one to discover anew, for oneself,
what had also been discovered previously by someone else. In a stronger sense, that cannot possibly happen. One cannot
discover a truth that had already been discovered by someone else. Even if one had no awareness of the prior discovery
by someone else, that still rules out the possibility that one also discover that truth at the later time. (This is a rough,
generic distinction, which allows nuances.)

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 Sympathy as the Foundation of Morality:
A Confucian Emotive Moral Theory

Hee-Sung Keel

1. Moral Life in an Amoral World

Contrary to widespread moral relativism among intellectual circles today, the vast majority of people
are still moral realists who believe that moral values have objectivity validity. Whether they are
considered based upon the moral will of the transcendent God or regarded as rooted in the very nature
of the ultimate reality called Heaven (天) or the Dao (道) in Confucian East Asian cultures, or upon
the belief in the law of karma as in Hindu and Buddhist cultures, ordinary people believe that moral
law is as valid as the law of nature. Despite the apparent differences in moral beliefs, the vast majority
of people today still demonstrate a remarkable agreement in their basic moral views. For instance,
lying and stealing are universally prohibited, and doing violence against the innocent and the helpless,
young and old, and the needless violence to animals are universally condemned.
On a more serious level, the vast majority of people have lived, and are still living their daily
lives with some kind of belief in the concept of ‘natural law,’ according to which our basic moral
principles are regarded as not only self-evident but also rooted in the very nature of the world. Broadly
speaking, it is this belief in the natura1 law - whether in the theistic form or in the fashion of Stoic
philosophy; whether in Confucian belief in Heaven’s Way or in the Hindu-Buddhist belief in the law
of karma - that has been called into question by the modern scientific view of the world, according to
which morality has nothing to do with the nature of the world itself. Consequently, morality is
believed to have no ‘factual’ basis. Besides, various forms of biological views of man are becoming
increasingly popular and even lauded as if they were a liberating ‘gospel’ for modern men and women.
Humans are considered essentially rational but selfish beings fighting against each other for survival
and self-preservation, homo homini lupus in the ‘state of nature’ as Thomas Hobbes (or Freud) put it
long ago. Ironically, though, even the modern champions of biological anthropology often pose
themselves as ‘humanists’ dedicated to human liberation, without explaining how their moral
commitment agrees with their espousal of the biological view of human beings which stresses human
selfishness and the survival of the fittest.1
Consequently, modern men and women have to carry out their moral lives in an amoral world
from which moral meaning has disappeared. The world or nature itself has no moral message to us
and does not say anything about how we ought to live and what values to pursue in our lives. Uprooted
from the world itself, values are now subject to individual choices, likes and dislikes. Facts and values
are radically disjoined and value judgment is considered devoid of factual basis.

1 In his In Defense of the Soul (Oxford: Oneworld Publication, 1992), 161, the British theologian Keith Ward criticizes
the concluding ‘humanistic’ part of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976) for
contradicting the very point the author makes throughout the whole book. I do not think that some of the Neo-Darwinists’
attempt to reconcile human selfishness with pure altruism through the concept of ‘kinship selection’ is convincing.

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 Nothing reflects this moral plight better than the moral theory called ‘emotivism.’ According to
this theory, moral values simply express our subjective preferences, just like our personal preferences
in food or hobby. An extreme form of moral subjectivism, moral relativism is its natural corollary. 1
Modern moral theories can be said to be virtually a series of attempts to solve this problem, or fill
this ‘vacuum’ created in the modern world, where belief in natural law and divine moral will has
disappeared and humans are left to their own ‘secularized’ reason to find rational moral principles to
guide their lives.
Not only is there no convincing argument about what is morally right or wrong; even more
seriously and radically, we have no convincing answer as to why we have to live morally at all in the
first place. For the world itself is deprived of any moral meaning or message it used to carry, and the
human being is also considered having no moral nature. Not only is morality unrelated to the nature
of the external world; it also lacks an anthropological foundation. The main threat comes from the
biological/physicalist view of human nature which increasingly passes as a commonsensical truth
among modern men and women. Considered fundamentally against human nature, morality is now
considered arbitrary and even oppressive to our nature.
In this situation, several theories have been proposed as to why we should be moral, why we
have to follow moral principles at the expense of our own self-interests. None of these theories, with
a possible exception of the Kantian approach, is convincing enough to persuade the skeptics. Despite
the high regard I have for the Kantian deontological approach to morality, its cultural limitation or
‘parochialism’ is obvious to those with non-Western cultural backgrounds. This constitutes one of
the main reasons this paper is seeking a new foundation of morality by revisiting the emotive moral
theories, East and West, which advocates the primacy of sympathy for morality.2
I do not agree with the verdict, widespread among contemporary moral thought, that the
‘foundational’ approach in moral theory has floundered completely today. Instead I think that it needs
a more convincing theory. By ‘foundational’ approach, I do not simply mean a moral theory that
seeks to establish a universally acceptable norm with which to judge the right or wrong and good or
evil in our conduct, but more radically a theory which can “confer a possible legitimacy to morality”
as Francois Julien says in his illuminating study of a comparative nature.3 After Nietzsche and Freud,
the question is whether we can really be moral. Unless one believes firmly that morality is its own
reward and fulfills our human nature, there seem to be mainly four ways to address this fundamental
issue.
The first response is the most traditional, and still the most popular one in cultures with
monotheistic religious backgrounds, namely to appeal to the divine will and to God’s punishment and
reward, or to the law of karmic retribution in Hindu and Buddhist cultures. The main problem with
this theory is that it presupposes belief in an invisible reality, which is losing ground in the modern
world.

1 See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). 11-22.
2 As will be made clear, I sharply distinguish ‘emotism’ from ‘emotivism’; they are two different moral theories.
3 Julien François, Fonder la morale: Dialogue de Mencius avec un philosophe des Lumieres (Paris: Bernard Grasset,
1995).

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 The second way is to resort to the theory called ‘rational egoism.’ Simply put, it argues that
morality eventually ‘pays.’ But this ‘eventually’ or ‘in the long run’ is precisely the problem. For,
most people cannot resist the temptation of the immediate benefit which accrues to them when they
ignore morality, especially when it costs more than what they can afford to bear with.
The third theory, very popular in the modern world, is utilitarianism, which appeals to ‘the
greatest happiness for the greatest number of people,’ happiness being usually equated with pleasure
with its materialistic overtones. The most obvious flaw of this theory is the fact that the conception
of happiness and pleasure can differ from person to person, and from culture to culture. More
seriously, utilitarianism fails to answer the radical question we mentioned, namely why we should be
concerned with the happiness of other people at all, the happiness of ‘the greatest number.’
Lastly, in a stark contrast to the three theories mentioned above, all of which appeal to some
form of our self-interest or happiness, there is the purist moral theory proposed by Kant’s
deontological ethics, which regards moral laws simply as our duty, the categorical imperative dictated
by our practical reason. It is purist in that it purports to establish moral principles for their own sake,
regardless of their consequences or interests for moral agents; moral law is to be followed with no
ulterior motivation, simply because it is the command of our practical reason. As I have indicated
before, the main reservation I have with this theory comes not so much from the theory itself as from
its purist and austere nature, so that its validity seems confined mainly to highly educated people,
especially to those who grew up in the rationalistic philosophical culture and the Christian religious
background.
The emotive moral theory which appeals to sympathy as the foundation of morality is equally
‘purist’ as deontological ethics but less rigorous and puritanical. Its motivational power is immediate
in that it needs no other reason than itself for us to act morally. Hence it can offer a more popular and
universal ground for morality beyond cultural boundaries. The aim of this paper is to find a “possible
justification of morality” through another way than divine commandment or its social utility,”1 in an
emotive moral theory advocating the primacy of sympathy for morality with its anthropological
foundation on homo sympathicus.2 Before embarking on this emotive moral theory, however, some
further elaboration on the cultural limitations of Kant’s moral theory is in order.3

2. Kant’s Moral Theory and Its Cultural Limitations

Kant is said to have been initially fascinated by Rousseau’s view of morality as human nature being
essentially good, regarding the sentiment of sympathy as its basis. But he eventually abandoned this
view because his analysis of the feeling of sympathy led him to conclude that it is too fickle and

1 Julien, op. cit., 7.

2 A new term coined by myself after Jeremy Rifkin’s idea of homo empathicus. The Empathic Civilization: The Race to
Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (New York: Jeremy F. Tarcher/Penguin, 2009). See Rifkin’s masterful review
of the history of Western thought in terms of three periods: the Age of Faith, the Age of Reason, and the Age of Empathy.
His critical discussion of Cartesian disembodied rationalism vis-à̀ ̀̀ -vis the embodied thinking (experience) is particularly
illuminating. See 139-5.
3 I rely heavily on John Rawls’ discussion of Kant’s moral theory in his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). Those who are familiar with Kantian moral
theory may skip this chapter.

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unreliable to constitute a firm universal foundation for morality. Thus, Kant turned to our practical
reason and tried to establish a more reliable moral principle purely on that basis.
Kant’s ethics presupposes the view of the human being as an isolated, independent and
autonomous moral subject, a view which is far from the reality of communal societies in which the
vast majority of people have lived and are living in today. 1 We may find some highly educated
individuals in Asia and Africa to whom the Kantian moral theory can appeal, but they would occupy
a very small minority. Most people there live in a ‘thick’ network of social relationships - their
relatives, neighbors, friends, and influential local figures. Even in highly industrialized Asian
societies such as Japan and Korea, the typical person we meet with in daily life is not a cool rational
individual who lives with a minimal ‘thin’ identity, disengaged from a thick network.2 In this respect,
what Virginia Held points out from her perspective of the ethics of care about the view of the human
being underlying modern Western moral theories in general, is essentially correct:

The dominant [moral] theories can be interpreted as importing into moral theory a concept of the person
developed primarily for liberal political and economic theory, seeing the person as a rational, autonomous
agent, or a self-interested individual. On this view, society is made up of “independent, autonomous units
who cooperate only when the terms of cooperation are such as to make it further the ends of each of the
parties,” in Brian Barry’s words. Or, if they are Kantians, they refrain from actions that they could not
will to be universal laws to which all fully rational and autonomous individual agents could agree.3

The ‘thin’ abstract character of Kant’s deontological ethics clearly reflects the socio-cultural
condition of the modern West; it is doubtful whether its strong rationalistic and formalistic nature can
really work as a universal moral guide for the vast majority of the world’s population living everyday
life with a ‘thick’ relational identity. Rawls makes the abstract character of Kant’s moral thought
clear:

... Kant does not mean to seek to show us what is right and wrong (he would think that presumptuous)
but to make us aware of the moral law as rooted in our free reason. A full awareness of this, he believes,
arouses a strong desire to act from that law... a desire belonging to us as reasonable persons, to act from
an ideal expressible in terms of a conception of ourselves as autonomous in virtue of our free reason,
both theoretical and practical. In his moral philosophy, Kant seeks self-knowledge: not a knowledge of
right and wrong – that we already possess – but a knowledge of what we desire as persons with the
powers of free theoretical and practical reason.4

It is questionable that “the awareness of the moral law as rooted in our free reason can really
‘arouse a strong desire to act from that law’” for most of the people in Asian, African, and Latin
American countries. It is no less questionable for post-Enlightenment intellectuals, for whom what

1 Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (Oxford: oxford University Press, 2006).
2 ‘Thick’ and ‘thin’ are expressions borrowed from Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and
Abroad (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).
3 Virginia Held, op. cit., 13.
4 John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000),
148. My following discussion of the religio-cultural aspect of Kant’s moral thought is indebted to Rawls.

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moves human beings is not so much our rational thinking as our irrational desires and feelings which
form our ‘unconscious’motivations.
Another cultural limitation of Kant’s moral theory, less clear than the above but not less
significant, is its implicit Christian background. Unlike the first limitation, this aspect requires a more
lengthy discussion. The first point to note is the affinity of Kant’s notion of categorical imperative
with the divine imperative characteristic of morality in monotheistic religions. The solemn authority
of the moral imperative which is taken for granted by Kant is unthinkable without the pietistic
Christian background in which he is known to have grown up in his early years. Rawls points out this
unmistakable religious – Christian, of course – character of Kant’s moral theory, a point rather natural
when we consider his pietistic background. Rawls observes:

I should add that in this connection Kant may also seek, as part of his pietistic background, a form of
moral reflection that could reasonably be used to check the purity of our motive. In a general way we
know what is right and what is wrong, but we are often tempted for the wrong reasons in ways we may
not be aware of. One use he may have seen in the categorical imperative is expressing a reasonable form
of reflection that could help us to guard against by checking whether the maxim we act from is legitimate
as permitted by practical reason. I say a reasonable form of reflection because one thing Kant found
offensive in the Pietism he was exposed to at the Fridericianum was its obsession with the purity of
motives and the compulsive self-examination this could engender. By contrast, the categorical imperative
articulates a mode of reflection that could order and moderate the scrutiny of our motives in a reasonable
way.1

The primacy of practical reason, to continue, is not as clear or as universal as Kant assumes. Is
it really true that “moral law can move us so strongly as to outweigh all of our natural inclinations,
even the love of life itself”?2 Is it not a rationalistic bias to assert that “the pure thought of duty, and
in general the moral law, has by way of reason alone... an influence on the human heart so much more
powerful than all further incentive capable of being called up from the field of experience that, in
consciousness of its own dignity, reason despises these incentives and is able gradually to become
their master”?3
Regardless of how we assess Kant’s moral theory, its strict and rigorous nature is unmistakable.
And its ‘compulsive’ and repressive nature, for that matter, cannot be overlooked either. As depth
psychology shows us, the ‘scar’ a person may have experienced at such an early age – the 8 year old
boy Kant entered a Pietistic school Fridericianum which he is said to have hated - does not go away
that easily; and I suspect that it unwittingly revived in a modified form in his rigorous ideal of moral
autonomy that each person ought to be a moral legislator like God, a free and ‘supreme maker of
law’4 who creates its own ‘realm of ends’ like God’s creatio ex nihilo.5 In fact, we could even say
that all the ‘good’ attributes of God are internalized by Kant as the immanent qualities of each

1 Rawls, 148.
2 Rawls, 201.
3 Rawls, 202.
4 Rawls, 227.
5 Rawls states that “pure practical reason constructs (as its a priori object) the ideal of a possible realm of ends as an order
of its own according to ideas of reason.” Ibid., 284-85.

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individual as a supreme moral legislator. Rawls concludes his discussion of Kant’s moral theory as
follows:

I conclude by observing that the significance Kant gives to the moral law and our acting from it has an
obvious religious aspect, and that his text occasionally has a devotional character. In the second Critique,
there are two obvious examples. One is the passage beginning: “Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name...
what origin is worthy of thee?” The other is the passage beginning: “Two things fill the mind... with
admiration and awe... the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”1

3. Some Theoretical Issues Concerning the Emotive Theory of Morality

Several preliminary theoretical issues need to be addressed before discussing our emotive moral
theory advocating the primacy of sympathy for morality. Firstly, we use the term ‘sympathy’ in a
rather inclusive sense without sharply differentiating it from other related terms such as empathy,
compassion, pity, commiseration, etc. 2 More particularly, we use it primarily in the sense of
‘commiserating mind-heart (惻隱之心) unable to bear to see the suffering of other person(s) (不忍
人之心) as defined by Mencius and the Confucian tradition. The primacy of sympathy in morality
advocated in this paper is summed up by the thesis that the commiserating mind-heart, which we
humans naturally possess and without which Mencius says that we are less than human, constitutes
the simple and universal basis of morality, its anthropological ’foundation.’
Whatever the precise meaning of sympathy may be - it is doubtful whether there can be
unanimity on this matter - it refers to the warm altruistic feelings humans harbor toward fellow human
being(s) who are in suffering or pain, especially toward those who suffer for no fault of their own,
that is, victims of innocent suffering. Sympathy may even be extended to animals which can feel pain
as humans do. But it is apparently a unique capacity confined to humans alone which enables them

1 Rawls, 160.
2 For a general discussion of the conceptual problems surrounding ‘sympathy’, see Robert C. Solomon, “The Cross-
cultural Comparison of Emotion,” in Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy, eds. Joel Marks
and Roger T. Ames (Albany, New York: New York State University Press, 1995). We use the term ‘sympathy’ in a rather
inclusive sense including empathy. But some distinctions can be made between the two terms. ‘Empathy’ is a more
general term than sympathy; sympathy can be considered a particular form of empathy, but both are based upon our
analogical and imaginative capacity to read another person’s mind, especially feelings, on the basis of one’s own mind.
But sympathy is a more direct and spontaneous response to the person in trouble than empathy, which needs ‘a certain
emotional distance’ and the effort to ‘understand’ the situation. Another notable difference is that while empathy is
morally neutral in the sense that it can sometimes be used as a psychological technique to manipulate and deceive another
person’s mind, sympathy, due to its association with negative feelings another person may have such as suffering, misery,
distress, plight, is usually considered a purely altruistic feeling. On the ‘dark side of empathy’see A. Ciaramicoli and K.
Ketcham, The Power of Empathy: a Practical Guide to Creating Intimacy, Self-Understanding and Lasting Love (London:
Piatikus, 2000), 7-8. Furthermore, we should note empathy is a more active mental phenomenon than sympathy, which
is usually a passive response; at least we do not make an active effort to sympathize with the victims of misfortune.
Because of its active character, empathy is widely recognized in academic circles, especially in humanities, as a
hermeneutical term referring to one’s effort to understand (verstehen) human phenomena. Empathy, unlike sympathy,
enables us to understand not only the feelings but also the motivation and desires, as well as thoughts and ideas of the
other party. It concerns nearly all aspects of our mental life, whereas sympathy is usually confined to our feeling of
commiseration and pity.

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to transcend their usual self-preoccupation and the pursuit of self-interest. 1 Thus we argue that
without it no moral concern worth the name can even exist in us in the first place. For instance, even
when we are concerned with injustice against a person or a group, we usually sympathize with its
victims first, if our indignation is going to make us take action against it. Sympathy, with its
immediate power to motivate us to take, constitutes the initial sine qua non for morality, its primordial
and universal foundation.
Secondly, sympathy is considered a natural moral capacity innate to all human beings,2 so that
morality is not considered something imposed on us from outside of us but ingrained in our very
nature. This by no means suggests that we invariably ‘manifest’ it like other natural desires of
biological nature. The capacity to sympathize is with us as a potentiality to be nurtured and developed
to its maturity, all of which, needless to say, are influenced by the social relationships and cultural
environment of a society.3 Sympathy needs to be learned like our talent for music or mathematics,
but we are born with the capacity itself.
Thirdly, the emotive theory we advocate has nothing to do with the so-called ‘emotivist’ theory
of morality, which is symptomatic of the poverty and plight of modern moral theories in general. The
basic question confronting modern moral theories has been how to establish through rational
discussion a universal basis for moral judgment which is acceptable for all people, regardless of their
social, religious, and cultural backgrounds, all of which are considered essentially ‘contingent’ factors.
According to MacIntyre, this ‘enlightenment project’ to establish a rational and universal
foundation of morality failed. He attributes this failure to the breakdown of the Aristotelian
teleological way of thinking based upon classical essentialist philosophy, especially concerning
human nature. Behind the breakdown of this Aristotelian teleological thinking lies the modern
scientific way of thinking which works solely with mechanical causality. As a result, modern men
and women now have to live moral lives in an amoral world from which moral values, and with it
moral purpose and meaning, have disappeared. Consequently, how to establish a moral foundation in
an amoral world on the sole basis of rational argument emerged as the unprecedented challenge
humankind had to face.
While I share MacIntyre’s sweepingly negative view of modern moral theories in general, I do
not necessarily include Kant’s moral theory in it, for the reason that it, too, presupposes a moral view
of the human being as a rational moral subject, culturally conditioned as it is, as we have seen. Despite
what appears to be an irreversible breakdown of the metaphysical and theistic basis that has supported
the traditional moral view of the world, I still regard a moral anthropology based upon a moral view
of human nature as a sine qua non for a truly meaningful moral theory, and in this respect I consider
Kant’s moral theory in a positive way, although Kant himself insisted that moral law “must not be

1 Some animal behaviorists tell us that there are indications that some highly intelligent animals, such as elephants and
chimpanzees, demonstrate behavior suggesting empathic bond they have not only with their own kind, but with other
animals of other species. See Jeremy Rifkin’s summary discussion of this, 82-92.
2 Possibly pre-wired in some animals as well.
3 Some psychologists and social scientists put forth their theories on the stages of the development of empathic sensibility
in an individual life. See “How empathy develops in children,” Rifkin, 110-28.

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sought in human nature (the subjective) or in the circumstances of the world (the objective).” For
“here nothing whatever can be borrowed from knowledge relating to man, i.e., from anthropology.”1
At any rate it appears to me almost self-evident that if a moral theory is not grounded upon a
convincing view of human nature, it is bound to be unsatisfactory for several crucial reasons. The
first is that there is indeed no way to overcome the notorious split between is/ought, the qualitative
gap between what we essentially are and what we ought to be. Thus morality is considered external
to us, forced upon us by some external authority, making our moral life essentially unhappy as well
as inauthentic. Rifkin puts this as follows:

Moral codes, embodied in laws and social policies, are helpful as learning guides and standards. But the
point is that one isn’t authentically good because he or she is compelled to be so, with the threat of
punishment hanging over them or a reward waiting for them, but, rather because it’s in one’s nature to
empathize. We don’t internalize morally appropriate behavior by fiat or promises, but externalize it by
feelings of identification with the plight of others. To be truly human is to be universally empathic and,
therefore, morally appropriate in one’s embodied experience.2

The problem is further aggravated when we have no other convincing view of human nature
than the biological which stresses the primacy of our selfish interests and instincts. If indeed we
humans are essentially selfish beings as the Hobbesian or Freudian homo homini lupus puts it,
morality is bound to be viewed as a product of social necessity and going against human nature, thus
as something foreign and doing violence to it.
In fact, the nature of human freedom being what it is today, even when we can find a convincing
moral view of human nature, as we claim in this paper, the notorious problem of the split between ‘is
and ought’ does not disappear completely, because someone may still argue that he or she is free to
live against his or her own moral nature. When freedom becomes absolute and unconditional to the
extent it can turn against the human nature itself, or when freedom is lauded as the supreme nature of
the human being, so that it can turn against other views of human nature, there seems to be simply no
way to restrict it in a rational way. It was perhaps this problem of absolute freedom and its corollary,
a radical moral nihilism, that haunted Dostoevsky’s mind when he said that “if God does not exist,
anything would be allowed.”3 As I understand this remark, he did not mean to suggest that without
believing in God there is no way for us to know good and evil, but that even if we knew, morality
would still look without authority and binding force, its power of ‘ought.’
At any rate, it seems clear to me that at least some sort of a moral anthropology, if not moral
ontology or world-view, is indispensable in our age if a moral theory is going to have authority and
motivating power for modern men and women. This requirement still constitutes the minimum
condition for a moral theory to alleviate, if not solve, the problem of the notorious is/ought’split that
has plagued modern moral thought in the West. It is in this light that we are necessitated to revisit the

1 Quoted from Rifkin, 347. The passages are from Kant’s Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals.
2 Rifkin, 177.
3 Often attributed to Dostoevsky, I cannot locate it exactly in his works. In the section on the Grand Inquisitor in
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the second clause is put into the mouth of Ivan, but not together with the first
clause, although it seems to be implied.

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tradition of emotive moral theory, East and West, which stresses the importance of sympathy as the
new foundation of morality. As Jeremy Rifkin rightly observes, empathic consciousness is “both
descriptive and prescriptive.” For “there is no dividing line between what one is and what one ought
to be. They are one and the same... When one identifies with another’s struggle as if it were one’s
own and celebrates their life by comforting and supporting their quest, one is living authentically and
fully. One’s self is enlarged and expanded and spills over into broader, more inclusive communities
of compassionate engagement.”1 Although even our emotive theory may not be able to claim that it
can free us completely from the problem of is/ought gap, the problem can be considerably lessened
in the emotive theory which regards sympathy as a part of human nature, as in the Confucian moral
tradition most notably.
The fourth point to note concerning the nature of sympathy is the fact that like our consciousness
in general sympathy is also an ‘intentional’ phenomenon, to use a phenomenological jargon; it is
directed to a certain individual or group of people about whose situation we already have some factual
information and make judgments, implicit or explicit. 2 Contrary to common misunderstanding,
emotions not merely are closely related to our cognitive activities, but almost invariably presuppose
them. Emotions such as fear, anger, or jealousy, for instance, are based upon some information about
the other person to whom these feelings are directed and by whom they are provoked. The cognitive
aspect of sympathy is clear from the fact that we usually do not feel as much sympathy for the
suffering of adults as for innocent children, or for the strong and privileged as for the weak and
disadvantaged who suffer for no fault of their own. This shows that sympathy is usually preceded by,
or even dependent upon, an apprehension of the affected person’s situation: who they are and why
they suffer, etc. Sympathy, like other emotions such as anger and grief, is information-dependent.
Thus when the factual judgment which initially gave rise to sympathy turns out to be ungrounded
later on, the sympathy we previously had also changes or may disappear altogether.3
To put the matter in stronger terms, sympathy does not arise for no reason; nor does it occur
without producing some effect afterwards. 4 There is always a certain circumstance apprehended
before it elicits an emotive response of sympathy in us; this we may call its causative aspect.
Sympathy also produces some effects, its consequential aspect. The intentional character of sympathy
is specifically related to the causal circumstances, whereas its consequential aspect often involves
rational deliberations as to what to do if we are going to help the person in plight.

1 Rifkin, 176.
2 The intentional character of our feelings is rightly pointed out by R. C. Solomon. See Mary Bockover, “The Concept
of Emotion Revisited,” Emotions in Asian Thought: a Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy, eds. Joel Marks and Roger
T. Ames (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995). In this article Bockover examines R. C.
Solomon’s theory of emotions as ‘intentional events’ like beliefs having cognitive contents. See also David Wong, “Is
There a Distinction between Reason and Emotion in Mencius?”, Philosophy East and West (January 1991), 31-34. Wong
stresses the role cognitive function plays in sympathy.
3 Contrary to the common antithetical contrast of emotion and reason, Ronald de Sousa’s The Rationality of Emotion
(Cambridge, Mass. an London: the MIT Press, 1987) argues for the ‘object-directedness’ of emotions, making it possible
for them to play a crucial role in rationality; they are ‘susceptible to rational assessment.’ De Sousa even argues that
emotions are ‘perceptions of the axiological level of reality.’ 331-32.
4 David Wong mentions this point, op. cit. Wong rightly points out the immediate and spontaneous motivating power of
sympathy as well as its intentional character in Mencius’s thought. The paper also analyzes the consequential aspect of
sympathy in terms of the role of practical reason as distinct from the emotive.

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 Rifkin rightly points out the complex nature of sympathy when he says that “empathy brings
together sensation, feelings, emotions, and reason in a structural way toward the goal of communion
with the vast others that stretch our physicality... Many scholars mistakenly associated sympathy with
just feelings and emotions. If that were all it was, empathic consciousness would be an
impossibility.”1 “Empathy is both an affective and cognitive experience.”2
To recognize the complex nature of sympathy is not to belittle or weaken our central thesis of
the primacy of sympathy for morality, but rather to remind ourselves of the limited nature of our
thesis. The aim of this paper is modest in that it does not seek to be a comprehensive moral theory
which claims to explain all aspects of morality solely through sympathy, as most of the
representatives of the emotive moral theory in the West tend to do, as we shall see shortly. Our
position still stands firm that sympathy constitutes the most rudimentary and foundational element in
morality, and that sympathy as such is primarily an emotive phenomenon, a feeling that needs to be
clearly differentiated from the cognitive and volitional elements involved in moral life, although they
are closely associated in reality.
Another way to put the matter is that we do not have to view our emotive moral theory and the
rationalistic moral theory of the Kantian type as mutually exclusive. It is a plain truth that if morality
is going to produce a concrete result, it needs to move our hearts as well as our heads. Nonetheless it
is the merit of sympathy that it is of a more spontaneous character and has an immediate motivational
force. A moral theory built upon that basis can have a greater appeal to people with diverse cultural
backgrounds across the world.
The fifth and last point that needs our attention regarding sympathy is the fact that even positive
emotions, such as love and sympathy, are not always and thus unconditionally good. For if excessive,
they can be harmful to the person to whom they are directed, or even to the person whose sympathy
is ‘over-aroused.’ Nor are negative feelings such as hatred and anger always destructive, because they
can sometimes play a constructive role by unleashing the energy needed to change a wrong social
system and establish justice; there are so-called moral or ‘holy anger (wrath).’ All these phenomena
prove that morality needs both our heats and heads. Without the guide and a proper restraint by
rational judgment and wisdom, the virtue of ‘prudence,’ even positive emotions can easily produce
opposite effects. This does not however suggest that the distinction between positive and negative
emotions is invalid or unnecessary, but that positive emotions often do not necessarily produce
positive results, and vice versa. Nevertheless, a clear distinction between various emotions and
between the cognitive and rational elements involved in moral activity is still valid and necessary.
For my following investigation of the emotive moral theory I will draw mainly on the Confucian
moral tradition with occasional comparisons with the emotive moral theories proposed in the West
by such figures as David Hume, Adam Smith, and J. J. Rousseau in particular. As for Confucian
moral thought, I will focus on the moral thought of Confucius, Mencius, and Chong Yagyong (Tasan.
1782-1836), in whose name the present lectureship was established by the Korean Philosophical
Association. First let me begin with a brief examination of the emotive moral theories proposed in
the West.

1 Rifkin, 172.
2 Rifkin, 173.

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4. Emotive Theories of Morality in Western Thought.1

According to Hume, sympathy is the primary and rudimentary moral feeling which all people
naturally have as humans. Without it we would not be considered human, and certainly never moral.
Surely its intensity as a feeling varies from time to time and from person to person, but it always
belongs to us all as our potential inclination and capacity to be stimulated and developed. For Hume,
as for Mencius in Confucian thought as we shall see shortly, sympathy simply belongs to human
nature behind which no further inquiry is possible or necessary. We simply have to accept it as
naturally given to us. In this sense, Rawls even talks about Hume’s ‘fideism of nature,’2 which I think
is valid for the Confucian moral tradition as well.
Despite this recognition of the primordial character of sympathy as our natural feeling, however,
there is some indication that Hume’s moral theory was an outcome of moral skepticism: “Given the
impossibility of justifying any rational opinion, we should simply allow ourselves to be swept up by
our native instinct.”3 Like the emotivist theory of morality, Hume’s emotive theory may as well
reflect the predicament of moral thought facing the modern West.
The main theoretical problem I have with Hume’s theory is its rather unsuccessful attempt to
explain all the major aspects of our moral activity, especially the cognitive and deliberative element,
through the feeling of sympathy. In other words, Hume’s emotive theory goes further than simply
asserting the primacy of sympathy for morality. Like other champions of the emotive theory in the
West, Hume attempts to derive even our moral deliberation and judgment, clearly a cognitive activity,
from the feeling of sympathy. In view of the relative autonomy of moral judgment, however, it is
doubtful whether this can really be done persuasively.
The emotive and the cognitive constitute two separate, though closely related, elements in
morality. For instance, sympathy as a feeling is a phenomenon distinct from the idea of justice or
injustice, which I regard as basically cognitive and rational. I do not think that sympathy can in itself
engender the idea of justice, although it may later lead us to be concerned with injustice as the cause
of suffering of a person or group. As an emotive phenomenon sympathy is clearly distinct from the
cognitive activity of moral judgment. We have already mentioned that sympathy is an ‘intentional’
phenomenon in that it is directed to an object about which we are bound to have some prior knowledge,
explicit or implicit. We also noted that sympathy does not arise without reason. For all this, however,
we stressed at the same time that sympathy is primarily an emotive phenomenon, not to be confused
with other elements involved in moral activity. The primacy of sympathy in our emotive theory only
goes only so far as asserting that it constitutes the rudimentary element in morality. It may certainly

1 The following discussion of the representative emotive moral theory in the West is largely indebted to Copleston’s A
History of Philosophy, Vol. VI. Modern Philosophy: The British Philosophers, Part II. Berkeley to Hume (New York:
Image Books. 1964); Vol. VI. Modern Philosophy, Part I: The French Enlightenment to Kant (New York: Image Books,
1964). Those who are familiar with the emotive moral theories in the West may skip this part and go directly to the next
section.
2 Rawls’ expression, op. cit., 100. See his brief criticism of the weakness of Hume’s emotive moral theory relying on our
natural “moral sense which must confirm itself.” Although it is controverted by modern thinkers representing the
biological view of human nature, I regard it as a strength rather than weakness. Later on I will even use the expression
‘moral faith’ concerning Confucian ethics based upon a moral anthropology. I take ‘fideism of nature’ as the position that
regards morality as naturally given, needing no further rational grounding or justification.
3 De Sousa, op. cit., 305-06.

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be closely related to the moral approval and disapproval, which is largely volitional and hence to be
distinguished from the emotive phenomenon. What we call ‘moral sense’ is also largely of an
intellectual and intuitive nature. Sympathy belongs to the category of moral sentiment as a feeling.
Despite the fact that the relationships between the emotive, the volitional, and cognitive in moral life
are often hard to differentiate sharply, they are respectively irreducible elements and not to be derived
from each other.
The moral primacy of sympathy finds another advocate in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral
Sentiments (1759), Hume’s friend and the famous author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of The Wealth of Nations (1776). Copleston introduces Smith’s moral theory with the following
remark:

One salient feature of Adam Smith’s moral theory is the central place accorded to sympathy. To attribute
ethical importance to sympathy was not, indeed, a novel position in the British moral philosophy.
Hutcheson had attributed importance to it, and Hume, as we have seen, made great use of the concept of
sympathy. But Smith’s use of it is more obvious in that he begins his Theory of Moral Sentiments with
this idea and thus gives his ethics from the very start a social character. “That we often derive sorrow
from the sorrow of others is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it.” 1 The
sentiment of sympathy is not confined to the virtuous and humane; it is found in all men to some degree.

Copleston continues:

Smith explains sympathy in terms of imagination. “As we have no immediate experience of what other
men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we
ourselves should feel in the like situation.” ... However, if we assume the causes of sympathy, whatever
they may be, we can say that it is an original sentiment of human nature. It is often so directly and
immediately felt that it cannot reasonably be derived from self-interested affection, that is, from self-love.
And there is no need to postulate a distinct ‘moral sense’which expresses itself in moral approval or
disapproval.2

We have no problem applying this view to Mencius’ view of sympathy as well, except for the
last remark that “there is no need to postulate a distinct ‘moral sense’ which expresses itself in moral
approval or disapproval.” For, as we have repeatedly indicated, our emotive moral theory does not
endorse this view that denies the relative autonomy of ‘moral sense’as a cognitive phenomenon.
Without denying that the feeling of sympathy may presuppose or affect our act of moral judgment
and evaluation, it is no less evident that the latter requires a separate act and moment of reflection.
The relative independence of cognitive and rational activity in our moral life has to be admitted
without denying the obvious fact that sympathy can affect or even engender moral judgment
afterwards, and vice versa. To conclude, what we are opposed to is the attempt to build a
comprehensive moral theory that seeks to explain virtually all aspects of moral activity solely through
sympathy.

1 Copleston, op. cit., 159.

2 Ibid., 159-60.

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 In this respect I am more sympathetic to another Scottish philosopher, Dugald Stewart (1753-
1828), who clearly distinguishes moral perception or moral sense (of the right and the wrong) from
moral emotions and sensibility. 1 Unlike the latter, the former belongs to our rational activity
according to Stewart. It can certainly stimulate moral emotions, but it is a separate activity, a rational
activity involving moral deliberation and judgment. Stewart therefore did not seek to reduce all moral
activities to sympathy, as Hume and Adam Smith did.2 In short, we conclude that the cognitive and
the emotive constitute two distinct categories of moral activity, and that although they are closely
related and can be complementary to each other, they should not be confused.
It was J. J. Rousseau, more than anybody else in Western moral philosophy, who came closest
to the Confucian emotive theory of ethics in that he stood for the primacy of sympathy as the starting-
point and the ‘sufficient and decisive foundation of morality.’3 Inborn, immediate. and universal, the
feeling of sympathy is said to be prior to all thinking and without any calculative mind. It constitutes
the experiential foundation of morality for Rousseau. Distinguishing natural humanity from social
humanity, he viewed sympathy as true humanity itself.4
Rousseau was opposed to Hobbes’ picture of the state of nature as a state of war of all against
all. For Rousseau, man in the primitive state of nature is good, and morality is simply a development
of his natural feelings and impulses. 5 Thus man is naturally good and that there is no original
perversity or sin in human nature; self-love in the sense of the impulse to self-preservation does not
in itself involve badness and violence.6
According to F. Julien, however, Rousseau’s analysis of the feeling of sympathy in Emile
revealed some ambiguity which led him to face a dilemma when he came to the problem of how we
can have sympathy in the first place. 7 For if it is true that we cannot feel sympathy without
imagination, and that we need to reach a certain age to have the capacity to have an imaginative
understanding of another person’s mind, Rousseau thought that children cannot have sympathy,
seemingly contradicting his own view of sympathy as our natural and universal inclination.
More crucially, however, Rousseau’s close analysis of sympathy, according to Julien, led him
to realize the paradox of sympathy that in insofar as we can stand in other person’s place we are
bound to imagine that his or her misfortune could have happened to us as well. Rousseau described
the feeling resulting from this imaginative experience the ‘sweetness of sympathy’ - a sort of ‘sadistic’
pleasure, a form of selfishness after all! Rousseau saw no way out of this dilemma, says Julien. Thus
Rousseau came to conclude that sympathy is after all a modified form of self-love! It is a queer moral
feeling, if indeed it is ‘moral’at all.

1 My discussion of the moral thought of D. Stewart and Adam Smith mainly relies on F. Copleston, A History of
Philosophy. vol. V. Modern Philosophy: The British Philosophers. Part II. Berkeley to Hume (Garden City, New York:
Image Books, 1964).
2 Copleston says that this aspect of Hume’s thought is somewhat confusing and sometimes even difficult to follow, op.
cit. See also the careful analysis of Hume’s moral theory by John Rawls, op. cit., 84-101.
3 Francoix Julien, 30. As for Rousseau’s moral thought, I rely heavily on Julien’s work as well as on Copleston, A History
of Philosophy. Vol. 6. Modern Philosophy, Part I: The French Enlightenment to Kant (Garden City, New York: Image
Books, 1964), 83.
4 Julien, 30-31.
5 Copleston, 83.
6 Ibid.
7 For the following discussion, see Julien, 31-35.

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 According to Julien, this paradox of sympathy stems mainly from the individualistic framework
presupposed by Rousseau’s thought. Thus Rousseau failed to discover in sympathy the true humanity
he was looking for. This leads Julien to pay attention to the merit of Mencius’ moral theory as an
alternative approach to finding a new foundation of morality. He is of the view that we need to go
beyond the individualistic framework within which modern moral theories in general have operated.
In particular, he notes the Chinese tradition of the relational view of man, a trans-individualistic view
of personhood, as a potential alternative framework for a new moral theory.
Schopenhauer was another philosopher who, harshly critical of Kant’s abstract rationalistic
approach, championed compassion as an immediate feeling that constitutes the core of morality. In
compassion, which of course needs to be brought out and nurtured, he said, “I suffer directly with
him; I feel his woe just as I ordinarily feel only my own, and, likewise, I directly desire his weal in
the same way I otherwise desire my own... At every moment we remain clearly conscious that he is
the sufferer, not we, and it is precisely in his person, not in ours, that we feel the suffering, to our
grief and sorrow. We suffer with him and hence in him; we feel his pain as his, and do not imagine
that it is ours.1
Julien points out that Schopenhauer’s emotive theory of morality faced a similar problem as
Rousseau did. Unlike Rousseau, however, Schopenhauer went for an ontological solution in order to
escape from the trap of the individualistic framework by denying the notion of self altogether. 2
How should we assess this alleged ‘dilemma,’ the paradox of sympathy, in Rousseau and
Schopenhauer? Our initial response is that a moral theory should aim at the people at the ordinary
moral level, not at the spiritual perfection of a saint. Thus our question is: Does Rousseau’s moral
compunction present a real paradox, or is it a symptom of a purist obsession? How can we expect
from ordinary people moral perfection such as we find in the teaching of Christ and the Buddha, for
instance? What would we say when we see a person doing an act of charity out of pity for a homeless
person, but falls short of the absolute standard set by Jesus: “But when you give alms, do not let your
left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret” (Mt. 6: 3-4).
Similarly, should we find fault with a generous donor who gives his money out of pity to those in
dire poverty, for failing to meet the high standard set by the famous notion of ‘giving (dāna) without
dwelling on the notion of giving’ (無住相布施) as taught in the Diamond Sutra? In short, there seems
to be no reason for us to be preoccupied with moral perfectionism which verges on moral masochism.
That we humans possess the natural capacity of analogical imagination necessary for sympathizing
with other persons must be a ‘natural grace’ given us by Heaven as Mencius thought. 3
Furthermore, we may ask: what is so wrong with our natural selfishness, which Rousseau
himself regarded as our primary instinct for self-preservation? Can anybody really survive without a
measure of this natural selfishness, if indeed it has to be called ‘selfish? After all, what is so wrong

1 Quoted from Rifkin, 349. Emphases are Schopenhauer’s.

2 Julien, 47-50.
3 Mencius, of course, did not use the term ‘natural grace,’ although for him, as well as in East Asian thought in general,
‘Heaven’ carries a theistic connotation in contrast to the secular view of the world (nature) in the atheistic naturalism of
the modern West. On this issue, see my paper, “Asian naturalism: an old vision for a new world,” presented at the XXII
World Congress of Philosophy (Seoul, 2008). Its condensed version is contained in Selected Papers from the XXII World
Congress of Philosophy (Charlottesville, Virginia: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2012).

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with us feeling relieved when we realize that the misfortune did not occur to me and thus feel relieved
and be thankful?
Most importantly, from a post-Enlightenment and post-Freudian perspective, sympathy,
according to a host of psychologists, should simply be taken as a sign of humans as social beings,
their connectedness and interdependence. We do not have to resort to the ‘Chinese’ way of thinking
or the Buddhist ontology of universal interdependence of all things, nor to Schopenhauer’s
ontological dissolution of individuality, in order to justify this natural and immediate solidarity we
feel with another person in suffering.
To be sure, children need to reach a certain age before they develop self-consciousness and
introspective awareness of their own states of mind; at least, they should know they are different
selves and know what it means to be hurt and to suffer, based upon their own experiences, in order
to empathize with other persons’ pains and plights. We call this capacity ‘imaginative analogical
thinking.’ This capacity itself humans are born with, although no doubt it needs to be nurtured and
learned through ‘normal’ interactions with other persons, above all with their mothers first, and then
with their playmates, and so on, as we are all familiar. When they reach a certain age with clear self-
consciousness, their imaginative analogical capacity can even take a universal form of a philosophical
and religious awareness of our common vulnerability as human beings to all sorts of tragic vagaries
of life - the awareness coming from the unavoidable experience of life.
Why should we then take this spontaneous and natural capacity built into our very constitution
and turn it into a subtle form of egoism? Nowadays, even animals are known to have this natural
capacity to empathize with other animals, not only with their own kind but even with those belonging
to a different species.1 Regardless of whether or not sympathy is based upon one’s own imagined
misfortune, there is no denying that we are born with this capacity to empathize with another person’s
feelings. This must be a sign that we humans are social beings connected with other people and not
to live alone or isolated.2 Without this capacity of analogical imagination it is questionable whether
even Kant’s theory of a moral maxim is feasible, namely that it should pass the test of being able to
be made universalized: “Act only on that maxim that can at the same time be willed to become a
universal law.” For this obviously requires our imaginative analogical capacity to read another’s mind
on the basis of our own mind, its ability to ‘stand under’(understand) other persons’ places
hypothetically.

1 See the next footnote.

2 This view of human nature as homo empathicus is supported by the relational view of the human being represented by
a host of post-Freudian psychologists of the so-called ‘object relations theory’ such as Fairbairn, Kohut, Winniecott,
Suttie, and Bowlby. They all share the view that the most fundamental need of the human being from its infancy on is
that of human connection, reciprocity, love, and companionship with others, especially with the mother. See a summary
discussion of their theories in Jeremy Rifkin, 55-81. Rifkin also talks about scientists’ discovering the existence of ‘mirror
neurons’and their circuits in humans, and possibly even in some animals like elephants, which enable them to show
empathic behavior, indicating that humans are by nature pre-wired for empathy. See Rifkin, 83-90, ‘What Mirror Neurons
Tell Us About Nature Versus Nurture.’ Rifkin also points out the fact that even Darwin, in his later works, was well aware
of the social nature and affectionate bonds of animals. He wrote: “many animals certainly sympathize with each other’s
distress or danger.” See Rifkin, 90-92, ‘The Darwin We Never Knew.’ Of course, Darwin interprets these social
phenomena of animals and humans from his evolutionary perspective of natural selection of the fittest. For a further
discussion of the ‘empathic sensibility’ of social species, especially mammalian species, see Rifkin, 83-104. Arthur
Ciaramicoli also gives us several instances of what he calls “genetic endowment of empathy” in some animals like
elephants and chimpanzees. The Power of Empathy (Piatkus: London, 2000), 27-29.

436
 The above reservations I have with Julien’s interpretation of Rousseau’s sympathy and its
alleged dilemma is reinforced by Copleston, who nevertheless offers a very contrasting interpretation.
This difference stems mainly from his insightful reading of Rousseau’s moral thought in light of the
traditional concept of natural law and natural theology.1
Closely related to this is another feature of Copleston’s interpretation, which does not view our
two natural instincts, self-love and compassion, as opposites, but a natural development from the
former to the latter. Rousseau regarded our passion of self-love as our fundamental instinct, not evil
in itself. He believed that in the ‘state of nature,’ where the trappings and accretions of civilization
have been stripped away, the human being is naturally good; it is civilization that brought inequality
and a host of evils.2 The fundamental passion of self-love as an instinct for self-preservation is not
evil; it is not to be confused with egoism for Rousseau. Copleston describes Rousseau’s conception
of the hypothetical ‘state of nature,’ so contrasting with Hobbes’ notion: “In the beginning the
individual took little note of his fellows; and when he did so the natural or innate feeing of compassion
came into operation. It precedes all reflection, and even the brutes sometime show it.” Thus for
Rousseau “man in the primitive state of nature is good. Even if he cannot be called good in a strictly
moral sense, morality is simply a development of his natural feelings and impulses... man is naturally
good and that there is no original perversity of sin in human nature.3
According to Rousseau, egoism is a feeling which arises only in a society and leads a person
always to prefer himself or herself to others. “In the true state of nature,” says Rousseau, “egoism did
not exist.”4 For primitive man did not make the comparison necessary for egoism to be possible. Self-
love, considered in itself, is “always good, always in accord with the order of nature.” 5 “Primitive
man is depicted as moved by natural pity or compassion, which Rousseau describes as ‘the pure
emotion of nature, prior to all kinds of reflection.’6 “This feeling comes into operation only when a
man has taken note of his fellows. But he does not reason to the desirability of compassion; he simply
feels it. It is a natural impulse.”7
As Rousseau himself and Copleston’s interpretation admit, the relationship between the passion
of self-love and the feeling of compassion is apparently a little more complicated and nuanced than
the above: “Rousseau may sometimes seem to imply that compassion is a feeling or passion different
from and originally independent of self-love. Thus he speaks of compassion as ‘a natural feeling
which, by moderating the violence of love of self in each individual, contributes to the preservation
of the whole species. And he goes on to add that in the hypothetical state of nature compassion

1 Copleston, op. cit. As for the element of natural theology in Rousseau, see Copleston, 94-96. See also the long profession
of faith by Savoyard Vicar in Rousseau’s Emile (English trans. Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1979) which I regard as
Rousseau’s own view of religion and morality, particularly his own version of natural law and natural theology. The chief
weakness of Francois Julien’s otherwise fine comparative study of Mencius and Rousseau comes largely from his rather
narrow understanding of Christianity which ignores the tradition of natural law and natural theology.
2 Ibid., 76.
3 Copleston, 83.
4 Ibid., 92.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid. 92.

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supplies the place of laws, morals and virtues. But though we can distinguish between self-love and
compassion, the latter is really a derivative of the former.1
But more significant to note from our perspective is the connection of Rousseau’s emotive moral
theory to his famous concept of the general will via the natural moral law graven on human hearts.
Copleston makes this connection clear:

Rousseau assumes that the general will is directed towards the common good or interest, that ‘the most
general will is always the most just also, and that the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God’...
Again, if you would have the general will accomplished, bring all the particular wills in conformity with
it;... But if the virtue is nothing more than this conformity of the particular wills with the general will, to
establish the reign of virtue can be nothing more than to conform all wills to the general will.2

In other words, the general will of a political society is a particular canalization of the universal
orientation of the human will towards the good, a new expression of the traditional concept of natural
law. Hence Rousseau’s stress on the public education and the legislator’s task to conform the laws to
the general will.3
At any rate, there seems to be no doubt that for Rousseau “all morality is founded on our natural
feelings.”4 He explains how from natural passions and self-love, and the emotion of compassion,
‘flow all those social virtues.’ Virtues of generosity, clemency or humanity, as well as conscience
and the sense of justice, are explained as either flowing from or are natural extensions of compassion.
“Thus the first notion of justice,” says Rousseau, springs not from what we owe to others but from
what is due to us.”5
As in the case of Hume’s and Adam Smith’s moral theory of sympathy, we do not have to agree
with Rousseau’s attempt to explain all moral virtues and concepts as ‘natural extensions’ from
compassion, although Copleston’s interpretation focusing on the tacit belief in natural moral law lying
behind Rousseau’s emotive moral theory and even his social theory, is profoundly insightful. At any
rate, as we shall see, Copleston’s interpretation of Rousseau’s emotive moral theory in the light of
the traditional concept of natural law is basically valid and highly significant for understanding the
Confucian emotive moral theory as well, although we don’t find in Mencius anything like the highly
abstract and hypothetical notion of ‘the state of nature’ and the concept of the general will.

5. Sympathy as Commiserating Mind-Heart: Confucius

In stark contrast to a strongly pessimistic current on human nature in Western thought,6 Confucianism
has for thousands of years held fast to moral optimism predicated upon the essential goodness of
human nature. This moral optimism originates from Confucius himself, was reinforced by Mencius,

1 Ibid., 92- 93.

2 Ibid., 88.
3 Ibid., 88-89.
4 Ibid, 93.
5 Ibid., 93-94.
6 Mainly due to the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the influence of modern thinkers like Hobbes and Freud who
view human ‘state of nature’ as homo homini lupus.

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and received a metaphysical grounding through Neo-Confucian philosophy, which culminated in the
thoughts of Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130-1200) and Wang Yang-ming (王陽明, 1472-1529).
Confucius’ thought centers around two key concepts: li (禮, propriety) which he inherited from
the past, the ceremonial and proper pattern of human behavior, and by extension the social norms in
general. But according to Confucius this proper pattern of behavior is not to be followed thoughtlessly
and mechanically; they should be practiced with proper attitudes and concerns, genuine feelings and
sincerity, the most important of them being ren (仁, benevolence, humaneness), the chief virtue which
the noble person (君子, gentleman), the ideal human being in Confucius’ teaching, must have. In fact,
benevolence is more than a virtue for Confucius; it is the Dao (道), the Way and the principle to be
followed by all who aim at being a gentleman. Just as the Dao should never be forsaken even for a
moment, “the gentleman should never desert benevolence even for as long as it takes to eat a meal”:

The Master said, “Riches and honors are what men desire. But if it cannot be obtained in the proper way,
they should not be held. Poverty and meanness are what men dislike. If it cannot be obtained in the proper
way, they should not be avoided. If the gentleman forsakes benevolence, in what way can he called so?
The gentleman should never desert benevolence even for as long as it takes to eat a meal. Even when he
is in frustration he should never leave it.1

We can render ren simply as ‘humanity’ in the sense of humaneness. As we shall see shortly,
Mencius explicitly identified the two, emphasizing that without
ren we are less than human. By teaching that li should be observed by all people regardless of
their social status and that it should be based upon ren, Confucius went beyond the formalistic and
conservative moral tradition he had inherited from the past; he can be said to have universalized while
internalizing it. There is no doubt that Confucius considered the ideal of gentleman or the noble
person (君子) as the goal for all people to pursue regardless of their social backgrounds.
There is no denying that the Confucian ethics of benevolence is strongly family-oriented.
Although benevolence is to be applied to all people universally, the “magnitude of concern diminishes
as it moves outward from the family.”2 This is called the principle of ‘graded love,’ often contrasted
with the ideal of ‘impartial love’ championed by Mo Tzu (墨子, 479-438, B.C.E.). “In the well-
ordered state, society becomes the family, writ large,” observes Ivanhoe. 3 More positively, it is
apparently family which Confucius regarded as the cultivating ground of love. Hence filial piety (孝)
and respect for one’s elder brother (弟) are said to be “the root of benevolence.”4
According to Confucius, benevolence is loving other people (愛人), which can reach the level
of even sacrificing one’s own life for it (殺身成仁). From the perspective of modern moral theories,
a more interesting aspect of Confucius’ moral thought is his concept of reciprocal mind, or
likemindedness (恕), as the principle to practice benevolence: it is the analogical capacity to know

1 Analects 4, 5. My translation.
2 Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 6.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.

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another person’s mind by likening it to one’s own. 1 Confucius himself regarded it as the ‘single
principle running through his entire teaching.’ In the Analects we find the following conversation:

Tzu-kung asked “Is there a single word which one could act on all one’s life?” The Master said “Would
it not be likemindedness? What you do not yourself desire do not do to others.”2

In another place of the Analects, Confucius responded to the question of the same disciple (子
貢): “You regard me as having studied a lot and thus a learned person. Not so. I have a single
[principle] that runs through it all.” In yet another place, benevolence is explained more concretely:
“If one wants to stand up he should let others stand, when one wants to get through he makes others
get through. Taking the nearest as analogy can be called the method to practice benevolence.” 3
Many have noted the striking similarity between this Confucius’ version of the Golden Rule and
that of Jesus, and even Kant’s formulation of the moral law as categorical imperative. The first
obvious difference is that in contrast to the formal rationalistic character of Kant’s formulation,
Confucius’ Golden Rule plainly has a psychological character appealing to our common experience.
The second point of difference lies in the different historic-cultural backgrounds of the two moral
principles. The Kantian moral maxim presupposes an egalitarian view of the human being as a
rational moral subject regardless of his or her age, gender, social status, and other attributes of
contingent nature. Without this egalitarian view as a self-evident truth, Kant’s moral maxim qua
categorical imperative cannot work as a universal principle. It is doubtful whether we can find this
abstract rationalistic concept of the human being in Confucius’ teaching or even in the long tradition
of pre-modern Confucianism, although it has always viewed the human being as the moral subject of
self-cultivation. Certainly Confucius’ view of the human being can be characterized as a moral
egalitarianism in that he espoused the ideal of gentlemanliness as the universal goal for all people to
attain, and the Confucian tradition after him held fast to the ideal of moral perfectibility for all people:
all can and should become sages. We may also say that Confucius recognized the universal dignity,
if not right, of all humans regardless of their social standings. In education particularly, he was known
for accepting students regardless of their social or economic backgrounds.
The third important difference merits our attention as well. Unlike Confucius’ likemindedness
as a way of practicing love, Kant’s formalized principle of the Golden Rule is solely based upon our
practical reason and does not presuppose or require moral virtue on the side of the person applying it,
thus inviting the criticism that it is liable to misuse as Kant himself was aware.4 For example, what if
a criminal would ask for clemency to the court judge on the basis of the Golden Rule? Although we
have no evidence that Confucius was aware of this problem, it is generally recognized in the
Confucian tradition that moral virtue is a prerequisite for practicing likemindedness. In this
connection, it is significant to note that in yet another place in the Analects Confucius mentions the

1 Literally, “The Way (Tao) I follow is unified by the single principle of likemindedness.”
2 From A. C. Graham, The Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (Illinois: Open Court, 1989),
20; translation slightly emended; I will consistently use ‘likemindedness’ for shu.
3 Graham, 21.
4 In fact, we may question whether Kant’s notion of categorical imperative is solely formal, or if it is already ‘value-
laden.’

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virtue of wholeheartedness in explaining the principle of likemindedness. Thus he explains his single
principle as “wholeheartedness( 忠 ) and likemindedness( 恕 ).” 1 Furthermore, in addition to the
analogical principle of likemindedness as the way to practice benevolence Confucius duly
emphasized the need to “overcome selfish desire and recover propriety” (克己復禮) as well. At any
rate, keeping the prior moral requirement in mind, the golden rule and the principle of likemindedness
as the analogical ability to “reach another person’s mind by inferring from one’s own mind” (追己及
人) can serve as an excellent moral principle for us all living in a global village.2
Indeed, there is no intrinsic reason for benevolence to be confined to the interpersonal level. For
we know that sympathy, when accompanied by likemindedness and understanding, can even dispel
our long-held prejudice against enemies and make us understand and forgive their wrongdoings in
the past, building new relationships with them. It goes without saying that in a modern context
Confucius’ principle of likemindedness should be applied on a social level as well, although the
distinction of personal/social was not mentioned by him. The need for collective sympathy and
likemindedness is certainly a valuable asset in the modern world as we witness numerous collective
conflicts going on across the world. It is obvious that without the analogical and imaginative capacity
of collective likemindedness, any dialogue or negotiation between antagonistic groups is bound to
fail.3

6. Sympathy as Commiserating Mind-Heart: Mencius

Mencius (孟子, c370-c290 BC), the most eminent follower of Confucius’ teaching, who was active
about a century after him, further internalized the concept of benevolence by identifying it with the
very nature of the human mind-heart itself. Rooted in our nature, it is called ‘the comfortable house
of man’ (人之安宅), or simply our humanity itself (仁者，人也), without which no human being
can even be called human. In this sense we are fully justified in asserting that for Mencius the human
being is indeed homo sympathicus.4 Benevolence, as evidenced by its incipient sign or sprout, the
mind-heart commiserating with another person’s suffering, is our natural tendency just as it is the
nature of water to flow downwards. Mencius said, “benevolence is man’s mind-heart, and
righteousness man’s path. How lamentable it is to neglect the path and not to pursue it, to lose this
mind-heart and not to know how to seek it again.”5

1 These two words are not to be taken as referring to two different states of mind, two minds so to speak, which is against
‘single principle.’ The key to a proper understanding of these two words modifying likemindedness lies in the correct
understanding of the concept of ‘wholeheartedness’ (忠) which is commonly translated as ‘loyalty’ but is not suitable
here; the Chinese character consists of two words, ‘middle/center’ (中) and mind-heart (心), which therefore should be
taken together as “from the bottom or center of our mind-heart,” that is, wholeheartedness and sincerity.
2 For an example in this direction, see Hans Küng, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (London: SCM
Press, 1991), particularly his brief discussion of the Golden Rule, 58-59.
3 In this respect, Jeremy Rifkin’s Empathic Civilization is highly significant for its emphasis upon the global importance
of the spread of empathic awareness.
4 A term coined by myself after Jeremy Rifkin’s idea of homo empathicus. Op. cit., 42-43.
5 成百曉 譯註, 孟子集註 (“Seoul: 傳統文化硏究會, 1991). When I give my own English translation, I will continue to
use this useful text which has a Korean translation as well as the Chinese text not only of Mencius but also some important
passages from the commentaries of the famous Neo-Confucian thinkers.

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 Mencius’ main contribution to Confucian moral thought is considered bringing the problem of
human nature to the fore in the history of Confucianism, and indeed throughout the Chinese and East
Asian thought in general. Mencius provided some psychological insights of empirical nature to
support his doctrine of the inherent goodness of human nature. The question whether human nature
is essentially good or evil, or neutral, emerged as a hotly debated issue among the Chinese thinkers
during the fourth and third centuries B. C. when Mencius was active. He was the most pronounced
champion of the positive view of human nature as essentially good. Without going into a detailed
discussion of the different positions on this issue,1 suffice it here simply to quote from Mencius an
argument attributed to Kao Tzu (告子) that human nature is, or can be, both good and evil, and
Mencius’ refutation:

Gaozi said. “[Human] nature is like the water of a ford. When we make a passage for it in the eastern
direction, it flows eastward, when we make a passage for it in the western direction, it flows westward.
Human nature itself has no distinction of good or evil like the water itself does not distinguish between
east and west.” Mencius retorted, “Surely water does not distinguish between east and west, but does it
not distinguish between up and down? The goodness of human nature is like water flowing downward;
there is no one who is not good as there is no water that does not flow downward. But when we strike it
and cause it to leap up, we can let it go over your forehead, or when we strike it and move it, we can let
it be in a mountain; how can this be its nature? It is the force which makes it so. Humans can also be
made to do what is not good when their nature is forced to do it.”2

Within the Confucian tradition the view that humans are evil or selfish by nature has invariably
been attributed to Hsün-Tzu (苟子, 235-267). Whenever Mencius’ positive view of human nature is
introduced – recognized as orthodox in the Confucian tradition – Hsün Tzu’s view is mentioned along
with it as its counter-position or nearly as a foil to make Mencius’ view more convincing.
Let us first listen to the best-known argument Mencius employs in order to make his case for the
goodness of human nature:

All men have a mind-heart which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others. ‘The ancient kings had this
commiserating mind-heart, and they, as a matter of course, had likewise a commiserating government.
When with a commiserating mind-heart was practiced a commiserating government, to rule the whole
world was as easy as moving things in their palm. The reason why I say that all people have a mind-heart
which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others is that supposing they see a child about to fall into a
well they all will have a mind-heart of alarm and pity. It is not for the sake of being on good terms with
the child’s parents, nor because they seek the praise of their neighbors and friends, nor because they hate
the [bad] reputation. Judging from this, when you are without the mind-heart of pitying you are not a
human being, without the mind-heart of shame you are not a human being, without the mind-heart

1 For a good discussion of this, see Graham, The Disputers of the Tao. 117-32.
2 孟子集註, 告子章句, 上, 313-14.

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 deferring to others you are not a human being, without the mind-heart which approves and condemns
you are not a human being.1

Several points merit comments here. First of all, Mencius enumerates the four moral sprouts or
incipient signs (四端) as indicative of the innate moral nature of the human mind-heart - the
commiserating mind-heart (惻隱之心), the mind-heart of modesty and deference (辭讓之心), the
mind-heart of shame and dislike (羞惡之心), the mind-heart knowing the right and wrong (是非之
心) - which respectively constitute the ground of the four cardinal virtues (四德) in Confucianism:
benevolence (仁), righteousness (義), propriety (禮), and moral wisdom (智). 2 These four moral
sprouts and the four virtues thus constitute human nature common to all people, sages or ordinary
persons alike. “The essence of our nature is said to be good in the sense that we are able to do good,
and if men do what is not good, the blame cannot be imputed to their natural power (材).”3 The
individual moral differences depend on how we cultivate and nurture it, just as the basic nature of a
tree or plant is the same everywhere, while its growth depends on varying natural conditions and
human care.
According to Mencius’ important insight, unless the nature of our mind-heart has the propensity
to delight in virtuous conduct, unless therefore we are essentially moral beings in the first place,
morality cannot but be oppressive to us as something forced upon us or “infused into us from
outside.”4 Thus Mencius is emphatic that we originally have the natural inclination, the four moral
sprouts in our mind-heart, to follow the virtuous life of benevolence, righteousness, propriety,
wisdom. It is noteworthy that Mencius repeats four times(!) concerning the four mind-hearts
respectively, that without them one is not even to be called a human being.
Mencius was of course well aware that we have biological desires as well, so that we often ignore
the call of our four moral mind-hearts. But the important point is that for Mencius morality is basically
not at odds with our nature, and does not do violence to but completes it. Unlike the champions of
the biological view which regards the human being as fundamentally selfish, Mencius firmly held
that morality fulfills human nature as its natural development. Mencius was also aware of the position
held by another philosopher of his times, Gaozi (告者) that human nature is morally neutral. Mencius
refutes this view sharply:

The philosopher Kao (告子) said, “Mans’ nature is like the ch’i-willow, and righteousness is like a cup
or a bowl. The fashioning benevolence and righteousness out of man’s nature is like the making cups and
bowls from the ch’i-willow.” Mencius replied, “Can you, leaving untouched the nature of the willow,
make with it cups and bowls? You must do violence and injury to the willow before you can make cups

1 James Legge, trans. The Works of Mencius, The Chinse Classics. Vol. II (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,
1960), 201-02; translation slightly altered by me.
2 For a good general discussion of the four mind-hearts and the four virtues, their nature and relationships, see Donald J.
Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1969), 74-77. See also
David Wong’s article, op. cit. 31-32 for a brief discussion of the relationships between the four mind-hearts. Wong views
the four mind-hearts as the “compounds of two functions,” namely the affective function of compassion and the cognitive
function of wisdom.
3 Legge, 402. 孟子集註, 告子章句 上, 321-322.
4 Legge, 403.

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 and bowls with it. If you must do violence and injury to the willow in order to make cups and bowls with
it, [on your principle] you must in the same way do violence to humanity in order to fashion from it
benevolence and righteousness.1

The second point to note is that Mencius begins his list of the four moral sprouts with sympathy
as a commiserating mind-heart (惻隱之心) “unable to bear to see the suffering of another person”
(不忍人之心), indicating that it is the chief incipient clue to our moral nature. It is the sprout of, and
the clue to benevolence (仁), the chief virtue in the Confucian moral tradition. Literally, sympathy as
a commiserating mind-heart means the mind-heart that cannot harbor a ‘sword-like’ (忍) mind, sharp
and cruel, toward others, so that it cannot ‘bear to see’ the suffering of other person(s). The Neo-
Confucian philosopher Ch’eng I even said that “this commiserating mind-heart fills our bowel.”2
As we can tell from the story of the child about to fall into a well, a commiserating mind-heart
is said to be pure and spontaneous, not caused by any ulterior motivation. It constitutes for Mencius
an unmistakable indication of the moral nature of the human being, proving that morality is ‘natural’
to us. Thus sympathy as commiserating mind-heart has an immediate motivational power to make us
act; it constitutes its own reason to act, although some other factors may hinder us to act. It may be
followed and reinforced by later practical reason as to how to help the child, but it itself needs no
extra reason to motivate us to take action for the child. Without this anthropological basis of morality
we are left with no choice but to regard morality as something either forced upon us from external
authority – such as divine punishment and reward, social pressure, or karmic retribution - or to appeal
to other practical reasons to motivate us to act for the victims of innocent suffering.
The third noteworthy point about the passage is that Mencius also mentions the other three mind-
hearts as indicative of our natural morality. Although he does not discuss the relationship between
the commiserating mind-heart and the three mind-hearts, it is sufficient to note the fact that Mencius
does not seek to reduce them to sympathy. Mencius likens the four virtues to the four limbs of our
body. But Mencius clearly distinguishes sympathy, an emotive phenomenon, from the mind-heart
discerning the right and wrong (是非之心), the ‘covert evaluative activity’ of ‘our innate moral sense,’
an activity of a rather intellectual nature.3 The other two mind-hearts, the mind-heart of shame and
dislike, as well as that of modesty and deference, also belong to our “moral sense” rather than feeling
like sympathy. Both of these moral senses, particularly the mind-heart of modesty, are grounded upon
commiserating mind-heart. For it is questionable that without sympathy one can have a deferring and
yielding mind-heart toward the elderly and the weak. Likewise, our mind-heart to discern the right
and wrong and express our moral approval and disapproval, as well as our sense of shame and dislike,
is considerably affected by whether or not a person’s behavior shows a sympathetic mind-heart. From
these observations we can conclude that for Mencius sympathy constitutes the primary and
indispensable element for nearly all moral activities.

1 Legge, 394-95.
2 孟子集註, 公孫丑章句 上, 103.
3 Munro, 75. See also a brief analysis of these four inclinations in David Wong’s illuminating article, op. cit., 31-32.
Wong views them as “compounds’ of two functions, the affective and the cognitive.

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 In this connection, another well-known story Mencius tells about a king, who happened to see a
frightened cow being dragged to be slaughtered for ritual purpose, merits our attention. Unable to
bear to see the cow, the king ordered his minister to release and replace it with a sheep, saying that “I
cannot bear its frightened appearance, as if it were an innocent person going to the place of death.”
In this story, we can once again confirm the intentional character of sympathy. It is clear that
had the king initially not had the prior notion of innocence - as in the case of the child on the verge
of falling into a well, or in the case of an innocent person to be executed - he would not have had a
commiserating mind-heart. Sympathy does not arise in us in a mental vacuum. Pure and unconditional
as the power of sympathy as a feeling may be, we note that it is always directed to a specific ‘object’
in suffering. Although Mencius does not talk about the cognitive aspect of sympathy, it is obvious
that it does not arise in a mental vacuum but is always preceded by some sort of information or
cognitive judgment about the person(s) to whom it is directed.
Also to be noted in this story is the fact that it is by no means a trivial fact that sympathy easily
transcends the boundary of humans and is extended even to animals. In fact, in the later Neo-
Confucian thought sympathy acquires a cosmic dimension, as we see in the story about Wang Yang-
ming, a famous fifteenth-century philosopher, who is said to have felt pity even at the broken pieces
of a tile.
More importantly, the above story of the cow continues to tell us that after commending the king
for possessing a tender mind-heart of “not bearing to see” the suffering of the innocent, Mencius is
said to have admonished the king with the following words:

Treat with the reverence due to age the elders in your own family, so that the elders in the families of
others shall be similarly treated; treat with the kindness due to youth the young in your own family, so
that the young in the families of others shall be similarly treated. Do this, and the kingdom may be made
to round in your palm... The way in which the ancients came to greatly surpass other men was no other
but this: - simply that they knew well how to carry out, so as to affect others, what they themselves did.
Now your kindness is sufficient to reach animals, and no benefits are extended from it to reach the people.
- How is this? Is an exception to be made here?1

This is a good example of how far Mencius thought our commiserating mind based upon
analogical likemindedness can and ought to go, namely even to the political level. We should note
that for Mencius as well as for Confucius a sharp differentiation of individual ethics and social ethics
was unknown; the latter was simply a natural extension of the former.
It is hard to exaggerate the importance of the natural character of morality for Mencius. “We
have the moral virtues in us originally,” says Mencius, “we just do not think about it.”2 Or, to quote
what I consider the most important passage in Mencius, which beautifully encapsulates the gist of his
moral thought: “When one exhausts one’s mind-heart, one knows one’s nature, and when one knows
one’s nature, one knows the will of Heaven. To preserve one’s mind-heart and to nurture one’s nature
is none other than the way to serve Heaven.”3

1 Legge, 143-44.
2 孟子集註., 告子章句 上, 322.
3 Ibid., 盡心章句 上, 373.

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 What I call Mencius’ ‘moral faith’ is basically in agreement with the spirit of Rousseau and Kant,
in that for them as well morality constitutes the main path to Heaven/God. As Rousseau says in his
novel New Héloise, “the true worship God wants is none other than our right behavior.”1 Rousseau’s
notion of conscience as the voice of Heaven (voix celeste) or God, which Kant took as the voice of
reason (voix de la raison), comes very close to Mencius’ idea. He called our innate moral propensity
‘good ability’ (良能), our innate moral knowledge ‘good knowledge’ (良知), and our innate moral
mind-heart ‘good mind-heart/mind’(良心).2 We might as well call these three terms respectively our
‘natural moral ability,’ ‘natural moral knowledge,’ and ‘natural moral mind.’
In another place, Mencius clearly states that “the ability possessed by men without having been
acquired by learning is good ability, and knowing possessed by them without the exercise of thought
is good knowing.”3 Among Mencius’ three innate abilities, Wang Yang-ming later adopted ‘good
knowing’ in particular as the foundation of his moral philosophy.
According to Zhu Hsi (朱熹, 1200), the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher, ‘good’
means ‘the original goodness,’ that is, our moral nature endowed by Heaven. Hence, “when one
exhausts one’s mind-heart, one knows one’s nature, and when one knows one’s nature, one knows
Heaven.’4 Thus, “to preserve one’s mind-heart and to nourish one’s nature is that wherewith to serve
Heaven.”5 Human mind-heart, human nature, and Heaven form an inseparable triad for Mencius. This
constitutes the gist of Mencius’ moral thought.
It is in the same spirit that the Doctrine of the mean (中庸) declares at its very beginning:

It is the decreed by Heaven which is meant by one’s ‘nature’, it is the course in accord with one’s nature
which is meant by the ‘Way’, it is training in the Way which is meant by ‘teaching.’ That ‘’Way’ is not
to be parted from for a moment, what may be parted from is not the Way.6

If morality constitutes the sure path to Heaven for Mencius, Heaven itself must have moral
character for him, although Mencius does not mention this explicitly. In this light, to call Mencius’
world ‘a morally-charged universe’ is definitely an understatement. 7 For Mencius’ moral faith is
definitely predicated upon a moral and ontological continuity from our mind-heart to our nature to
Heaven. Morality is not just a human affair for Mencius: it is anthropologically as well as cosmically
grounded. We may even say that morality has a mystical dimension for Mencius, so that we can talk
about a ‘moral mysticism’ in Mencius which aims at a perfect unity of the triad: moral mind-heart,
human nature, and Heaven.8

1 Quoted from Julien, 201.

2 Ibid., 盡心章句 上, 384. ‘Good mind-heart’ (良心) is currently the word corresponding to the Western concept of
‘conscience’ in China, Korea, and Japan.
3 Legge, 456. I changed Legge’s ‘intuitive ability’ to ‘good ability, and his “intuitive knowledge’ to ‘intuitive knowing.’
4 Ibid. 盡其心者 知其性也 知其性 則知天矣
5 Ibid., 373. 存其心 養其性 所以事天
6 Quoted from Graham, 134. Graham’s elaboration on the spirit and meaning of this classic and its affinity with Mencius’
thought is illuminating; see his discussion, 134-37.
7 Ivanhoe’s expression, op. cit., 8.
8 My understanding of the Confucian moral tradition in light of the natural law concept in the West is in basic agreement
with Leibniz’s view of Confucian thought set forth in his Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese (Hawaii: The
University of Hawaii Press, 1977). See especially pages 92-107.

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 This cosmic dimension of morality was further elaborated in Confucian tradition by the Neo-
Confucian philosophers such as Chan Tasai (張載), Cheng (程) brothers, Chu Hsi, culminating in
Wang Yang-ming’s metaphysics and his concept of mind-heart. Ivanhoe describes it as follows;

Mencius extended the range of morality when he shifted from Confucius’ tradition-based morality to a
morality based upon the spontaneous reactions of the mind-heart. We see that Wang Yang-mind took
this process several steps further, when we examine the scope of his notion of morality. Wang argued
that our feeling of concern extended down to plant, tiles, and stones, that benevolence extended to every
corner of the cosmos. This is consistent with his argument for the basis of our benevolent feelings; that
they reflect the universe’s underlying unity. But such a notion is completely alien to Mencius.

Ivanhoe continues:

Wang based his morality on the underlying unity of the universe. For him, any injustice committed is a
wrong against him, any disorder a disease he suffers and any injury a pain in his own body. This unites
the tasks of personal and worldly salvation in a fascinating way. It clearly is derived from Mahāyāna
Buddhist notion about the role of the Bodhisattva, an influence that was felt throughout Neo-
Confucianism.1

I am not sure that the notion of cosmic unity is ‘completely alien to Mencius’, but Ivanhoe is
certainly right in attributing the Neo-Confucian metaphysics, especially Wang Yang-ming’s, to a
Buddhist influence.
Mencius was well aware that the road to moral perfection and the mystical unity with Heaven is
a long and arduous process consisting of many stages. It begins with the stage of goodness when we
desire it (欲), the stage of assurance (信) when we actually attain goodness, the stage of beauty (美)
when it fills us, the stage of greatness (大) when it not only fills us but radiates toward the world, the
stage of sagehood (聖) when this greatness has the naturally transformative power, and the final stage
of divine spirit (神) when it is immeasurable and inscrutable for us.2
The spirit of Confucian humanism based upon the doctrine of the goodness of human nature is
made clearer when it is contrasted with the moral tradition of the Christian West, where morality has
been generally considered following the will of the transcendent God, and has long been associated
with an ascetic mind under the influence of Platonic dualism and the monastic tradition. Added to
this were two other streams that deeply affected the Western moral tradition. One is a strongly
pessimistic note due to the influence of the Christian doctrine of original sin. The other is the
rationalistic spirit of Western culture where morality is inconceivable apart from our rational self-
control curbing biological instincts, which in turn brought about an extreme reaction by modern
thinkers such as Nietzsche and Freud.
It is not that Mencius was unaware of the conflict between our moral nature and our physical
desires, but he remained optimistic to the end that our moral nature, specially endowed by Heaven in

1 See Ivanhoe’s excellent discussion of Wang Yang-ming’s moral thought, its cosmic and metaphysical aspect, “The
Nature of Morality: Wang Yang-mind,” op. cit., 15-21.
2 孟子集註, 眞心章句 下, 430. Ch’eng I says that this final state is not different from that of sagehood.

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humans only, has the upper hand. The conflict is not viewed as a fundamental opposition between
two equal forces but rather, between the major and the minor parts of our being, what Mencius calls
the great body (大體) and the small body (小體), that is, between our faculty of eyes and ears as our
baser part and ‘the will of mind-heart’ (心志) or the faculty of mind-heart (心之官) as our noble part.1
According to Mencius, what determines a ‘small person’ (小人) or a ‘great person’ (大人) depends
on whether one’s small part hurts or nurtures his great part.2 The following confessional words give
us some inkling of how hard Mencius thought the moral struggle can be:

Life is what I desire and righteousness is also what I desire. But if I cannot have both and have to choose,
I will give up life and choose righteousness. I desire life also, but since I have something more desirable
than life, I will not seek to have it by all means. Death is also what I hate, but there is something I hate
more than it. Therefore, I do not seek to avoid suffering at times. ... For this reason, I do not use means
in order to preserve life nor the means to avoid suffering... It is not men of wisdom only who have this
mind-heart; all people have it, but the men of wisdom do not lose it.”3

Mencius believed that our moral inclination, given proper nurture and cultivation, can win over
our physical desires. As Graham puts it, “to say that goodness is natural is to say that we have moral
inclinations which it pleases us to satisfy in the same way as other appetites, and which conflict with
appetites only as they conflict with one another. In making the stronger claim that human nature is
good Mencius implies something more, that it is natural to prefer the moral to other inclinations.”4
Mencius’ moral optimism based upon his moral faith is nowhere more evident than in his moral
approach to the political problems of his day. Noticeably, the book of Mencius begins with a dialogue
between him and the king of Liang. In it Mencius charges the king for giving precedence to seeking
profit (利) over benevolence and righteousness, saying: “If your Majesty say, ‘What is to be done to
profit my kingdom?,’ the high officers will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our families?’ and the
lower officers and the common people will say, ‘What is to be done to profit ourselves?’ When the
high and the low alike will seek profit, the kingdom will be endangered.” 5 Mencius also says: “If a
minister serves his king with self-interest, a son serves his father with self-interest, a brother serves
his elder brother with self-interest, this would in the end lead to abandon benevolence and
righteousness, because they relate each other with self-interest; there is yet no one who do that and
not perish.”6
Mencius’ persistent pursue of the rule by virtue (德治) and benevolent governing (仁政) is very
impressive in view of the turbulent period he lived in, the Age of Warring States, and the tough-
minded realistic rulers he had to deal with. Certainly, Mencius was not so naive as to believe that
morality alone would be sufficient for a good government. He was well aware that the material
livelihood of the people is the essential condition for the people to be able to live moral lives:

1 孟子集註, 告子章句 上, 337-38.

2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., 331-32.
4 Graham, 130.
5 孟子集註, 梁惠王章句 上, 15.
6 孟子集註, 告子章句 下, 352.

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 The way of the people is this: If they have a fixed livelihood 恒産, they will have a fixed mind-
heart 恒心; if they have not a fixed livelihood, they have not a fixed mind-heart. And if they have not
a fixed mind-heart, there is nothing they will not do in the way of self-abandonment, of moral
deflection, of depravity, and of wild license. When they have thus been involved in crime, to follow
them up and punish them is to entrap the people. How can such a thing as entrapping the people will
be done under the rule of a benevolent man?”1
The charge of moralism and paternalism often leveled against the traditional Confucian approach
to politics is not groundless, but Mencius’ tireless insistence on the primacy of moral principle in
politics, and the audacity with which he confronted the tough-minded rulers of his times, are no less
impressive. It is something that cannot be explained apart from his deep-rooted ‘moral faith’ - the
faith rooted in his firm belief that morality fulfills our Heaven-endowed human nature, and that
morality is its own reward.
Mencius was well aware of the palpable discrepancy between morality and happiness we often
experience in our lives. But this did not sway his firm conviction of the validity of the moral approach
to politics. For Mencius the moral order of the universe is unalterable as the Way of Heaven (天道).
Mencius was well aware that for some unknowable reasons Heaven’s moral order sometimes appears
to betray our expectations. Like Confucius, Mencius’ response was a calm resignation and acceptance
of Heaven’s decree or destiny (天命). When pressed what he would do in case his moral approach to
the political problems did not work, Mencius responded that we should first look into our own mind-
hearts to see if it still has some shortcomings. Rooted in the very nature of man and the world, moral
law was almost like the law of nature for Mencius. In one rare case Mencius even uses the word ‘law’
(法) concerning moral order of the world: “The gentleman waits for Heaven’s order after practicing
the law.”2 As Julien points out, this reminds us of the stoic concept of nomos, the natural law and
Reason.3
One of the most common arguments of theodicy in the West has been that evil, moral or natural,
ultimately serves a greater good. What appears to come closest to this way of thinking in Mencius
may be his remark: “When the Heaven is going to commit an important task to a person, first it
necessarily harasses his will of mind-heart by making his sinews and bones toilsome and exposing
his body and skin to hunger and subjecting him to extreme poverty; thus it confounds his undertakings
so that it may rouse up his mind-heart and make his nature patient, thereby strengthening his weak
points.”4
But more fundamental than this argument which justifies the undeserved suffering of a righteous
person as a Heaven-willed trial in order to raise him to be a great person, is Mencius’adamant belief
that morality is good in itself and that it is its own reward. It is the mark of a true man of virtue to
maintain his composure and not be swayed by adverse events; he would even take pleasure in
adhering to the Way of Heaven with steadfast perseverance. This attitude, coupled with a firm belief

1 Legge, The Works of Mencius, 239-40.

2 孟子集註, 盡心章句 下, 33.
3 Julien, 187.
4 孟子集註, 告子章句 下, 370.

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in the ultimate victory of justice (事必歸正), is widely known in Confucian cultures as ‘being
peaceful in poverty and taking pleasure in the Dao’ (安貧樂道), an ideal of life for the superior
person.1
Mencius’ moral faith accounts for what amounts to be a nearly magical and mystical view of the
power of morality. This power, Mencius believed, flows like water from the high down to the low in
a society as Confucius suggested with his metaphor likening a gentleman (君子) to the wind and a
small man (小人) to the grass: “The virtue of gentleman is the wind while the virtue of small man is
the grass; when the wind blows over the grass, the grass must bend.”2 Closely related to this is another
striking feature of Mencius’ thought that morality is dynamic in so far as it is ‘natural’ and has its
own vital energy (氣), a moral energy, so to speak, which spreads to the whole world. As a cosmic
energy it permeates all beings, not just humans. Myriad beings partake of this vast energy emanating
from moral power according to the qi-oriented Chinese natural philosophy. Mencius talks about his
own experience of ‘nourishing’ this ‘flood-like qi (浩然之氣).’ We could even say that in this cosmic
aspect morality has for Mencius a ‘mystical’ dimension. Here is what he says about his own
experience:

I am good at nourishing my flood-like qi... It is the sort of qi which is utmost in vastness, utmost in
firmness. If by uprightness you nourish it and do not interfere with it, it stuffs the space between heaven
and earth. It is the sort of qi which matches the right with the Way; without these it starves. It is generated
by accumulation of right doing, it is not that by sporadic right doing one makes a grab at it.3

We cannot but agree with Ch’eng I’s remark that “Two theories of Mencius’ on human nature
and nourishing chi, are not what the previous sage(Confucius) did mention.”4
Lastly, two other significant aspects in Mencius’ political thought merit our special attention
from the modern perspective. One is his insistence that political power must have moral legitimacy.
The other, related to this, is the thought that people have the right to revolt against the tyrannical ruler
and depose him.5 For there is no question that Mencius considered people to be the most important
element, certainly more important than the ruler, of a state (民本). Thus Mencius boldly affirmed the
people’s right to revolt against and depose a despotic ruler. Legge observed on this matter long ago
as follows:

The people are the most important element in a nation, and the sovereign is the lightest; - that is certainly
a bold and ringing affirmation. Mencius was not afraid to follow it to the conclusion that the sovereign
who was exercising an injurious rule should be dethroned. His existence is not to be allowed to interfere
with the general good. Killing in such a case is no murder... With regard to the ground of the relation
between ruler and people, Mencius very clearly refers to the will of God(Heaven)... But the question
arises –How can this will of Heaven be known? Mencius has endeavored to answer it. He says: ‘Heaven

1 These two Chinese phrases are common sayings in Korean Confucian culture.
2 Mencius quotes Confucius’ word. 孟子集註, 滕文公章句 上, 142.
3 Graham, 126-27.
4 Ibid., 13.
5 Ibid.,

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 gives the throne, but its appointment is not conferred with specific injunction. Heaven does not speak but
shows its will by a man’s personal conduct and his conduct of affairs.’ The conclusion of the whole
matter is that “Heaven sees according as the people see; Heaven hears according as the people hear.”1

But we have no evidence that these progressive and even ‘radical’ aspects of Mencius’ teaching
ever led to anything resembling the modern idea of representative democracy. Consequently, the
happiness of the people precariously depended on the benevolence of the ruler in the traditional
Confucian moral and political system.
To conclude our discussion of Mencius’ political ethics with a brief critical note from our
modern perspective, despite his moral egalitarianism there is no evidence that he had anything like
the concept of universal human rights, which underlies the modern concept of political and legal
egalitarianism. However, one significant statement we find in the book of Mencius can easily lead to
the idea of universal human dignity, if not to universal human rights: “Nobility is common to the
mind-heart of men. Each and every person has something noble in himself; it is only that he does not
think about it.”2 Mencius also said, “Even a starving beggar would deny the food if it is kicked at
him.3 Interestingly, Zhu Xi interprets this as a manifestation of the human ‘mind-heart of shame
abhorring the act disregarding propriety (羞惡之心); he would rather starve than to take the food!4

7. Sympathy as Commiserating Mind-Heart: Tasan

It is appropriate to conclude this lecture with a brief introduction to the moral philosophy of Tasan
(丁若鏞, 1762-1836. epithet: Tasan 茶山), who is one of the most illustrious Confucian philosophers
in Korea. He is best known in the history of Korean Confucian philosophy for his theory of human
nature as inclination (性嗜好說). According to Tasan, humans do not differ from animals in having
physical inclinations and selfish desires for food, sex, shelter, and other natural instincts; Humans,
however, differ from animals in being specially endowed by Heaven with another nature of mind-
heart. Tasan describes it as follows:

Based upon its original meaning, what is called nature is none other than our mind-heart’s inclination. ...
When our embryo is fully formed, Heaven endows it with an essence empty, spiritual, and formless (虛
靈無形之體). As for what it is, it delights in good and abominates evil, is fond of virtue and ashamed of
disgrace; this is called nature.5

It is clear from above that this Heaven-endowed “empty, spiritual, and formless essence” of our
mind-heart has a moral inclination such as the four incipient moral sprouts Mencius mentions. Tasan
elaborates on this essential goodness of our nature as a moral inclination:

1 James Legge, The Works of Mencius, 44-45.

2 孟子集註, 告子章句 上, 340.
3 Ibid., 告子章句 上, 332.
4 Ibid.
5 Keum Jang-tae, Tasan Silhak T’amgu (Seoul: Sohaksa, 2001), 96. My own English translation of the Chinese text.

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 The nature of all people invariably delights in goodness and is ashamed of evil. Consequently, if someone
performs a good deed he is filled with happiness, and if he performs an evil deed his mind is obscured
by melancholy. Even when he has never done anything good and yet spoken well of, he is delighted, and
even when he has never done anything bad and yet is slandered, he becomes angry. This is because he
knows good actions are gratifying and evil actions are shameful. When he sees the good actions of others
he regards them favorably, and when he sees evil actions he regards them with distaste. This is because
he knows good actions are respectable and evil actions are hateful. All these are appetites for things
which are immediately visible.1

Tasan describes this unique Heaven-endowed moral propensity of the human mind-heart in
various terms such as “empty, spiritual, and formless essence” (虛靈無形之體), “empty and spiritual”
(空寂) or “spiritual and bright” (靈明), and “empty and quiescent, spiritual and knowing” (空寂靈
知). Or, simply “spiritual knowing and never darkening” (靈知不昧). These terms, not uncommon
in the Neo-Confucian philosophical vocabulary characterizing the nature of the human mind-heart,
are basically of Mahāyāna Buddhist origin referring to the Buddha-nature (佛性). Tasan is clearly
aware of this, and is critical of the baneful influence the concept of Buddha-nature might exert on the
traditional Neo-Confucian view of human nature as “the originally pure nature” (本然之性). Tasan
was apprehensive that its Buddhist understanding might mislead people to understand human nature
in a deterministic way, to the effect of making them neglect moral efforts to cultivate their mind-
hearts. Hence, Tasan advanced his own view that human nature should simply be taken in its plain
sense of our natural moral inclination or propensity – which is indeed its original meaning in Mencius
- rather than in a dogmatic metaphysical sense or as referring to actual virtues themselves.
Tasan was even more critical of the other concept of the pair forming the traditional Neo-
Confucian anthropology, namely the concept of physiological nature (氣質之性). For it attributed,
although not entirely, the individual moral differences of people to their inherited physiological nature,
its purity and impurity, and etc. This obviously entailed, Tasan thought, moral determinism which
renders our moral effort meaningless.2
It is important to realize that the term “empty spiritual” modifying the nature of the human mind-
heart has a dual sense in Tasan: one refers to the natural moral inclination of human mind-hearts as
in Mencius, and the other to the special faculty of human mind-hearts, still Heaven-endowed but
rather morally neutral. As far as I am aware, Tasan himself did not make this distinction in his
writings.3 But, as we shall see shortly, it is the latter aspect, that is, the special faculty of the human
mind-heart, which assumes a great importance in his moral philosophy. For it apparently refers to the
‘transcendent’ element in human beings as free moral agents. It seems to correspond to what Mencius,

1 Quoted from Mark Setton’s Chong Yagyong, 75. For the Chinese original text, see Han Hyeong-jo, Juhee eseo Cheong
Yakgyong ero (Seoul: Segyesa, 1996), 234.
2 The origin of evil is one of the most difficult problems facing religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, and
Confucianism. Nothing shows the dilemma which Neo-Confucianism, with its optimistic view of human nature, had to
face than its attributing individual moral differences to our inherited physiological qualities. Ivanhoe shows this clearly
when he points out Wang Yang-ming’s failure to explain the origin of evil, especially in the light of his main doctrine of
the original purity of our mind-heart in itself, what he calls ‘pure knowing’ (liang-chi, 良知). See Ivanhoe, “The Origin
of Evil: Wang Yang-ming,” op. cit. 61-70.
3 This important distinction has been rather ignored by most Korean interpreters of Tasan’s moral philosophy.

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and Wang Yang-ming later on, called our innate good knowledge (良知) to know good and evil and
our freedom to act according to it.
Behind Tasan’s stress on the spiritual luminosity of the human mind-heart as the faculty of moral
knowledge is his clear awareness of the cardinal importance human freedom plays in moral life, what
Tasan calls ‘independent ability to weigh on (權)’ (自主之權)1 good and evil and choose them.
Humans are free moral agents responsible for their own conduct. Without freedom or ‘free will,’
Tasan thought, our acts are bound to be ‘fixed’ like animal behaviors, rendering moral life impossible.
Tasan describes in an unmistakable way the vital importance of freedom for moral life:

If a person’s good act is like the water flowing down or the fire rising up, it cannot be attributed to that
person’s effort. Therefore, Heaven bestowed on people the self-determining power and enabled them to
perform good deeds if they desire good, perform evil deeds if they desire evil. Thus they freely change
[their will and behavior] and are not fixed; their power belongs to themselves and are not like beasts
having fixed mind. Therefore, if they perform good deeds it really becomes their merit, and if they
perform evil deeds it really becomes their fault. This is the power of mind-heart, not its so-called nature.2

The following remark makes the importance of freedom and man’s moral responsibility even
stronger:

Bees are what they are, and thus they cannot but protect their lord. Yet nobody regards them loyal because
they have fixed mind-hearts; tigers are what they are, and thus they cannot but hurt living beings. Yet
nobody in charge of the law can talk about killing them on the basis of law because of their fixed mind-
heart. Humans are different in this respect, because they can be good and evil, because their will (主張)
is of their own and their acts are not fixed. Therefore [when they do] the good, it becomes their own merit
and their evil becomes their fault.3

For Tasan morality depends upon how we exercise our unique capacity to make moral decisions
as free agents. He even points out that it is humans only who, unlike animals, can be faulted for
‘transgressing the limit or falling short’ (過不及).4 Reminiscent of the Kantian moral autonomy, this
clear awareness of the crucial importance of self-determining power and the free will has to be
considered a rather unique feature in the long Confucian tradition, although the idea of individual
subjectivity as the agent of moral self-cultivation (修身) must be an indispensable element for a
strongly moralistic tradition like Confucianism.
Confucianism is generally known for viewing the human being primarily as a relational/social
being with a prescribed social role to play, rather than as an abstract, disengaged individual. In this
respect, it is highly significant to note the important role the concept of will (zhi, 志) plays in the
Confucian moral tradition, as Chung-ying Cheng argues in his illuminating paper on the Confucian

1 This can be rather loosely translated as ‘self-determining power.’

2 Quoted from Keum, 49, 108. My own English translation. This passage seems to differentiate the power of freedom
from human nature, although Tasan would no doubt regard both as aspects of our mind-heart.
3 Keum, 109. My own translation.
4 Han, 216.

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notion of person.1 Strongly suggesting the existence of a transcendent self and the Kantian notion of
freedom and its dialectical unity with the immanent self in the Confucian concept of personhood,
Cheng poses the following crucial question:

Does the Mencian or Confucian view of self and will fail to achieve freedom in this sense? No, it does
not fail to achieve this Kantian sense of freedom because what it has achieved included this Kantian
freedom and yet included something more than this Kantian freedom.

In the first place, even though a person is not conceived to be created by God in his image because there
is no such God in Confucian metaphysics, a person has a special nature (xing, 性), which on reflection
achieves self-consciousness of the mind-heart, which rises upon the empirical self by reflection and
becomes what is called a ‘transcendent self,’ which is nevertheless not separable from the empirical self,
becomes the nature of the self that combines the immanence of the temporal and the transcendence of
the transcendent.

Cheng continues:

It is in the nature of xing that such transcendence is possible. With this transcendence, we can see how
independent judgment, evaluation, valuation, choice and decision can be made. Once made, it is
immediately rooted in the nature of the human person and becomes a basis for action. The transcendent
does not legislate like the reason or rational soul in Kant, but it does reveal and disclose what is deep in
nature and make the law because the law is already contained in nature.2

In this insightful passage Cheng touches on what I consider the core issue in Confucian ethics,
namely, whether Confucian moral thought had a clear notion and recognized the importance of moral
subjectivity, that is, the notion of a transcendent self, a free moral agent disengaged from all the
concrete and contingent elements surrounding the person. The answer to this crucial question is a
resounding yes, at least for Tasan. Although Cheng does not talk about the identity of “the special
nature (xing), which on reflection achieves self-consciousness of the mind-heart, which rises upon
the empirical self by reflection and becomes what is called a ‘transcendent self,’” it must be what
Tasan describes as “the spiritual luminosity of Heaven which is directly in touch with our human
mind-heart so that there is nothing hidden which it cannot see and nothing obscure which it cannot
illuminate.”3 If so, a further question arises as to
Tasan, too, emphasized the importance of will (志) in his moral thought, of the voice of our
conscience without being swayed by the changing circumstances surrounding us. 4 Admittedly, there
is some ambiguity in Tasan regarding the ‘transcendent’ character of this “spiritual luminosity” of
the human mind-heart. On the one hand, Tasan inherited the traditional Confucian concept of human
mind-heart consisting of two aspects as everything else in the world does: ch’i (氣, material energy

1 “A Theory of Confucian Selfhood: Self-Cultivation and Free Will in Confucian Philosophy.” In Confucian Ethics: A
Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, eds. Kwong-Loi Shun and David B. Wong (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 136.
2 Ibid.
3 Keum, 32.
4 Ibid., 139-42. Tasan emphasized the importance of will to control ch’i as its master.

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of force) and li (理), the heaven-endowed principle as our nature. On the other hand, Tasan was
apparently influenced by the Catholic thought to which he was exposed in his early days, and which
suggests a stronger sense of the transcendent character of the human mind-heart as the soul created
in the imago dei.1
Lastly, another novel aspect of Tasan’s moral-political thought deserves our serious attention
here, one which came very close to the modern idea of representative democracy. According to him,
all the government officials, from the lowest to the Son of Heaven, used to be – and ‘ought to be’! -
recommended (推) by the people. In Tasan’s own words: “It is the people who arrested and pulled
him down [from his position], and it was also the people who elevated and honored him. Since it was
the people who elevated and honored him and now find him guilty, how can it be against reason that
they replace him with another person?2
According to Tasan, it was only after the state of Chin had overthrown the Chou regime, that
this change of power by the people became impossible. Certainly not a historical fact, its idea is
nevertheless truly ‘revolutionary.’ For, if implemented and institutionalized, it can easily lead to a
form of modern representative democracy. Although Tasan was by no means a social revolutionary,
and not involved in any form of political movement of a radical nature, the spirit is clearly there: “If
I have a wish, it is to make all people of the country become aristocrats (兩班) so that the whole
country would be without them.”3

1 We find the same ambiguity concerning the Buddhist concept of the Buddha-nature, which influenced the Neo-
Confucian anthropology. The question is whether the Mahāyāna concept of the Buddha-nature is a Buddhist version of
the Hindu Vedānta concept of ātman, thus a betrayal of the Buddha’s doctrine of no-self(anātman). Put in another way,
the question is whether the Buddha-nature and Tasan’s spiritual luminosity of the human mind-heart refer simply to a
functional aspect of our mind-heart or to a metaphysical substance in itself. This problem is closely related to another
question, namely how far Tasan was influenced by the Catholic thought. This issue still remains a hotly debated issue
among Korean interpreters of Tasan’s thought. Unfortunately, I cannot go into a detailed discussion of this matter here.
2 From Keum, 220-23.
3 Ibid., 224. ‘Aristocrats’ is a loose translation of yangban, the two upper classes of Choseon society. It is not clear
whether this novel radical idea of an elective system originated with Tasan himself or he was influenced by other sources,
and if the latter, what or who it was that influenced him. We can surmise three possible sources of his idea: one is the
idea we find in the Confucian Classic of the Record of Rites (禮記, 禮運篇) which says: “As for the course of the great
Way, the world elects the wise and the able for the sake of the public order.” The other possible explanation may be that
Tasan somehow became acquainted with that idea when he associated with the Catholic circle in his early days. Thirdly,
we can surmise that Tasan’s idea may simply be an extension of the well-known thought of Mencius that people have the
right to remove a tyrannical ruler from his position. But none of these theories is convincing, I must say. There are
indications, though, that during his career as a local bureaucrat he recognized and took side with people’s right to disobey
the repressive measures taken by corrupt officials – a sort of ‘civil disobedience’ in today’s terms.

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 Spiritual Humanism:
Self, Community, Earth, and Heaven

TU Weiming1
Peking University

Confucius offered a comprehensive and integrated way of learning to be human. Confucian

philosophy takes the concrete living person here and now as its point of departure. Concrete refers to
the whole human being, body and mind. Since we are using English, a cautionary note is in order.
The word “body” seems straightforward, but, as we shall see, it conveys subtleties beyond the
physical body, but the word “mind” is highly problematical because what I would like to express is
not simply the cognitive function of the mind but also the affective function of the heart.
To avoid misunderstanding, scholars in Confucian studies often use the compound “mind-and-
heart” or “heart-and-mind.” I prefer “heart-and-mind” to give emphasis on the importance of feeling
in the Confucian tradition. To make the matter a bit more complex, the concreteness of the whole
human being includes not only the physical form, heart, mind, but also soul and spirit. Thus, by
concrete I do not mean to give the impression that all I refer to is the physical body only.
If you accept my notion of concrete, I urge you to pay more attention to the word living.
Obviously, it does not refer to anything without life and vitality. The word concrete makes it clear
that it is not merely an abstract idea. Concreteness, nevertheless, can still suggest that something is
tangible, like stone, but not necessarily alive. Of course, my reference to heart and mind already
indicates that the concrete, unlike stone, or for that matter tree, is alive like an animal, dog or horse
for example. At this juncture, I would like to introduce a philosophical idea. It is vitally important for
my exploration: “lived concreteness.” In any philosophical inquiry abstract concepts are unavoidable.
By using the word concrete first, I would like to stress that while abstract conceptualization is
unavoidable my purpose is to enable the concrete, immediately and experientially accessible. I may
not be able to focus on the concrete all the time, but its presence is always assumed. I would like to
make it explicit that it is a specific kind of concreteness that I am particularly concerned about. The
specificity excludes virtually all things except living entities. In the vast universe, this is rare. With
our immense observational capacity so far, we are only certain that our planet earth alone has the life-
sustaining environment. Yet, among the concrete living things, there is a tiny set that I will refer to
as “lived concreteness.” We may attribute “lived concreteness” to all plants and animals, but what I
mean to suggest here is that only human beings are aware of their lived concreteness. Furthermore, I
choose the word person to give some texture to being human as differentiated from being any other
animals.2

1 I’m grateful to Dr. John Ewell and Dr. Wang Jianbao for their comments and suggestions.
2 Confucianism stands for neither individualism nor collectivism but personlism as per Wm. Theodore De Barry,
“Individualism and Personhood” in: idem., Asian Value and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p.25.

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 One of the most basic Confucian precepts is that leaning to be human is to learn to become a
person. Becoming a person entails a dynamic process of transformation. A distinctive feature of being
human is that despite seeming inevitability of growth, we become persons through learning. We learn
to acquaint ourselves with our bodies; each act of eating, sitting, walking, speaking, or sleeping
requires constant learning. Strictly speaking, we do not own our bodies. We become our bodies.
Bodies are not givens. They are attainments, indeed, amazing achievements. Bodies in all their
dimensions, physical, physiological, emotional, psychological, mental, intellectual, and spiritual,
define holistically who we are as lived concreteness.
We can imagine a concrete living person because we have encountered so many of them, from
the closest kin to casual acquaintances. But, “here and now” refer to the spatial and temporary reality
that we must acknowledge for it is not an imagined possibility but a presence. How do we deal with
a concrete living person here and now? This is tantamount to our way of being aware of our own
existence.
Surely, I can imagine that the concrete living person here and now is someone else, but most
likely I recognize that it is myself. Others may be aware of my presence occasionally, but I alone, by
choice, am always conscious of my presence here and now. The purpose of stating that Confucian
philosophy takes the concrete living person here and now as its point of departure is to underscore
the importance of self-awareness1.
However, if you believe that Confucius’ real concern is what sort of human beings we ought to
become so we can be useful to society (indeed, social harmony depends upon the persons that we all
learn to become; real human beings are those humans who have learned to become socially desirable
and necessary), we may come up with a significantly different understanding of the Confucian project,
namely human beings are relational, situated, contextualized, and functionally differentiated.
Through learning we assume different social roles. If we play our roles adequately, effectively, and
proficiently, we will all contribute to the public good and enhance the well-being of society.
On this view, the idea of the concrete living person here and now focusing on the centrality of
self-awareness seems too self-centered. It has the tendency to slip into an individualistic trap. A
person may become isolated, alienated from the others, and confined to the domain of a privatized
ego. The overly psychological reading of the Confucian heart-and-mind, as in the case of Mencius,
may have departed from a more balanced Confucian approach to human flourishing. The quest for
the inner self at the expense of social engagement is an unfortunate outcome. According to this line
of thinking, Xunzi’s insistence upon the discipline of external constraints through ritual and law is an
appropriate corrective.
I am not going to burden you with the divergent trends of self-cultivation thought in the
Confucian tradition. My option to follow Mencius’ articulation of the essential difference between
human nature and animal nature in general is to establish a solid basis for the primacy of self-
awareness. I fully acknowledge that there is rich resource in Xunzi’s conception of the mind and that
his admonition on learning is shared by Mencius. Xunzi’s theory on human nature is on the surface
in conflict with Mencius’ broad vision that moral feelings are innate, but there are many points of

1 TU Weiming, “Mencius: Self-Awareness of A Profound Person”, in TU Weiming Anthology, (Wuhan: Wuhan Press,
2002), vol. 5, pp. 28-56.

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convergence between the two positions. Mencius and Xunzi both had faith in the perfectibility of
human nature, the transformative power of learning, the efficacy of self-cultivation, the tradition of
the sages, and good governance through ritual propriety. They both believed that human beings are
never static structures but always dynamic and creative processes of becoming.
Why the insistence on self-awareness as a point of departure then? We can certainly come up
with a coherent view that other-regard takes precedence over self-regard. It is because that we are
aware of the others that we become aware of ourselves. Without acknowledging the existence of the
others, I may not be aware that I exist at all. It is conceivable that my relationship to the other is prior
to my self-awareness. There are numerous examples in the Confucian tradition that we can cite to
support this view. The value of filial piety, the obligation of the child to the parent, is central to
humanity precisely because the love that flows from the parent to the child is natural. We learn the
value of reciprocity through learning to acknowledge our indebtedness. As we grow up, we are
increasingly aware how much other-regarding thought and action we ought to have cultivated to show
our gratitude and suddenly for some of us, it is too late.
A person is a center of relationships. It is not possible to conceive of the center as totally isolated
from its relationships. They give color, sound, sight and texture to that center as a concrete living
person. The lived concreteness of a person, necessarily unique, involves ethnicity, gender, language,
age, place of birth, social class, and faith, not to mention personality traits. Each of them symbolizes
an extensive social network encompassing thousands and thousands of people. Each one of them is
meaningful to me in variant degrees of intensity based on circumstances.
Self-awareness does not mean to suggest that we are aware of all these distinctive features as we
evolve around all our relationships. Rather, it enables us to remain centered without falling into the
disarray of total disintegration and fragmentation. It gives us a sense of direction, a point of
orientation. It is a compass that helps us to navigate on troubled waters. This may have been the
reason that Confucius urged us to “learn for the sake of the self.”1
Learning ordinarily means the acquisition of knowledge or the internalization of skills.
Knowledge and skills can be understood as learning for the sake of the self, but what Confucius had
in mind is significantly different. What he proposed is the knowledge and skills that can transform us
by becoming an integral part of our body. For the sake of convenience, I would like to define “learning
for the sake of the self” as “embodied learning.” 2Let us take the example of learning a skill as an
illustration. If we learn to play a musical instrument, say the violin, we need to invest a great deal of
time to familiarize ourselves with the bow and fingering, so we can produce relatively pleasing sounds.
If we are talented and totally committed to the arduous task of becoming a musician, we will then
devote our life to it. If we become a virtuoso, the violin, so to speak, is an extension of our body. We
no longer play the violin as an instrument but express our artistic sensibility through it. In short, we

1 Peimin NI, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations, (New York:
State University of New York Press, 2017)，pp. 338-339, “Among contemporary Confucian scholars, TU Weiming
champions advocating the importance of ‘learning for oneself,’ saying that it embodies the Confucian view about the
establishment of moral subjectivity, or simply put: to become human (cf. 1.15). To become human is dependent on oneself
(12.1). Cf. TU 1985, 51–65.) Cf. also 1.16, 4.14, 8.7, 14. 42, 15.5, 15.21.”
2 TU Weiming, “The Dignity of Human Being from the Perspective of Embodied Knowing (Outlines)” in International
Confucian Studies, vol. 6 (February 1998)

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have embodied knowledge of the violin. This is of course an exceptional case and only a handful of
great musicians can attain it. However, if we can imagine that the instrument we are supposed to learn
to play is not the violin but ourselves, or our bodies holistically comprehended.
“Learning for the sake of the self” is vitally important because our whole life is at stake. The
question is not simply what career I would like to have, how successful I want to become, how I plan
to realize my ambition, what kind of social role will be most satisfactory, or how I can be rich and
famous. Rather, given that I am a concrete living person here and now, the question is what kind of
human being I would like to become.
Self-awareness so understood involves knowledge and skill to be sure, but it is primarily a
transformative act rooted in our primordial awareness of humanity. The uniqueness of being human
reveals itself at this level in its pristine form with brilliance and warmth. This is what Mencius referred
to as the “Great Body.”1 The famous story about evoking a sense of commiseration upon witnessing
a child is about to fall into the well is worth noting here. It may give the impression that we must be
shocked to realize that we are all endowed with the feeling of commiseration (sympathy, empathy,
and compassion). The real message is that it is so common that if we are incapable of feeling it, we
are no longer human.
Learning for the sake of the self is character-building. It is totally compatible with our
professional aspiration, our quest for excellence, our drive to improve our lots, our willingness to
contribute to social harmony, and our desire to be recognized and live a comfortable life. However,
it addresses a more fundamental dimension of our existence—the meaning of life. Implicit in the idea
of the self as a center of relationships is subjectivity. It is critical that we do not reduce the center to
relationships. A concrete living person is made of a multidimensional complex of relationships.
Putting them all together, they cannot fully constitute the person. We should also take into
consideration all the primordial ties (race, gender, language, age, and so forth). Neither can the center
of the self be established by them. They are all relevant and significant. Each of them is both a
constraint and an enabler. They are all enabling constraints. This requires an explanation.
A distinctive feature of Confucian humanism is the recognition that we are all fated to be a
particular person. All our primordial ties are in a sense given. With determination, we may be able to
alter some of them, such as gender and language, but by and large, they are determined. In many great
religious traditions, this fact of life is considered, at best, constraining. They restrict our choice and
freedom of action. We hope to change them, if not to get rid of them. At least we are instructed to
liberate ourselves from these constraints. Some instructions are enforced relatively. In the Christian
tradition, adherence to the real fellowship of faith should take precedence over family attachments.
Others are highly restrictive. Buddhist monks are often asked to sever all family relationships. The
Confucian choice is quite different. The fact that we are all fated to be a particular person should be
accepted, and fully acknowledged. It may not be a blessing, but it calls for positive recognition and
even celebration. The perceived constraints are at the same time vehicles or instruments for self-
realization. Therefore, they are not simply constraints but enablers as well. In fact, it is these enabling

1 James Legge, Works of Mencius in Chinese Classics, vol. 2, (Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc. 1991), p. 417.

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constraints that make us concrete living persons. Confucian self-cultivation is a matter of substantially
transforming constraints into enablers through personal effort.
I have published a few essays exploring the epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, and religious
implications of self-cultivation as a mode of knowing. I coined a Chinese term to convey this widely
used and yet rarely analyzed idea in traditional Chinese culture: tizhi (“embodied knowing”). 1 It is
neither knowing that nor knowing how, but a third type of knowing which is necessarily a
transformative act. Put it figuratively, the knowing involves not only the brain and mind but also the
body in a holistic and integrated sense. Bodily engagement as well as the cognitive function of the
mind and an affective response of the heart is required. Among the sports, Confucius singled out
archery as an example. If we miss the mark, we need to adjust our physical position and mental state
here and now. To learn the art of archery, our sense of presence is a prerequisite.
Self-awareness is essential for the kind of learning that Confucius recommended. Through self-
reflection, self-examination, self-criticism, self-admonishment, and self-encouragement, we establish
our self as a center of relationships. This selfhood, diametrically opposed to the private ego, is open,
dynamic, creative, and transforming. It is forever open to the outside, dynamically interacting with
people, creatively engaging with all things, and transforming the world around by transforming itself
within. As Mencius’ “Great Body” specifies, “the myriad things are already equipped in me.”2 This
is not an imagined possibility but an achievable state. We can expand our vital energy to enable it to
fill the space between Heaven and Earth. Specific physical disciplines, such as the breathing
technique, may have been involved, but Mencius avowed that he was able to do it through moral and
spiritual exercise. This is not a figure of speech but an experienced reality.
This reminds us of the 12th century Confucian thinker Lu Xiangshan, who said that he “got” the
gist of Confucian learning himself by reading Mencius.3 The message from Mencius is precisely the
idea of human greatness. This idea was so much embodied in Xiangshan that he could not approach
it as a hypothesis to be argued for or to be proved. It simply manifested itself from within. And, as he
believed, it should be self-evident to every concrete living person here and now. The anecdote
requires an explanation.
Lu Xiangshan often referred to Mencius’ instruction, “to first establish that which is great in
us,”4 when he was asked about learning to be human. He repeated the statement so often that his
critics queried that if Master Lu had any other important message to convey. Xiangshan responded
bluntly that “there is no other more important message to offer than to establish that which is great in
us.”5 Xiangshan is noted for his commitment to the Mencian line of thinking. He made it explicit that
his experiential understanding of Mencius did not come from any other sources than reading the
Mencius and that he got it by himself. 6 To him, reading the Mencius is not to read an ancient text to
understand, through interpretation, the textual meaning of what the Master meant to say. Rather, it is

1 TU Weiming, Embodied Knowing Confucianism, (Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2012).

2 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 79.
3 LU Jiuyuan, Classical Quotation B in Lu Jiuyuan Collection, vol. 35, (Beijing: China Publishing House, 2008), p. 471.
4 James Legge, The Works of Mencius in The Chinese Classics, vol. 2, (Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc. 1991), p. 418.
5 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p. 582, “Recently someone has commented of me that aside
from [Mencius'] saying, ‘First build up the nobler part of your nature.’I had nothing clever. When I heard this, I said,
‘Very true indeed.’(34:5a).”
6 LU Jiuyuan, Classical Quotation B in Lu Jiuyuan Collection, vol. 35, (Beijing: China Publishing House, 2008), p. 471.

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a living encounter with Mencius in person who uttered these words to him personally and directly.
This kind of utterance sounds like a religious injunction that is not subject to discussion, debate, or
verification.
“That which is great in us” is available to every human being. There is greatness in each one of
us. All we need to do is to establish it. There is no other condition than our willingness to do so. No
external forces whatsoever, political, social, or cultural, can prevent us from establishing that which
is great in us. Nor can we rely on anyone else to establish the greatness in us. Underlying this assertion
is the conviction that each one of us, not just the human species in its entirety, is great. The first order
of business for every concrete living person is to establish that which is already in us. In other words,
learning to be human is to realize the greatness within by establishing it ourselves. It seems on the
surface that the injunction is not a factual statement or a proposition but an encouragement. Strictly
speaking, however, what Xiangshan, following Mencius, meant to convey was not wishful thinking
but a truth, indeed, a reality about being human.
The Confucian tradition that Xiangshan advocated is widely known as the xinxue (learning of
the heart). A distinctive feature of this school is the centrality of the heart. It is often rendered as mind
as well. Xin (heart and mind) is both cognitive and affective. It can feel, will, sense, and know. The
feeling, willing, sensing, and knowing capacities of the heart provide the basis for the “great body”.
The first order of business for self-realization is to be aware of the activities of the heart to establish
the great body, to underscore the uniqueness of being human. The initial step then is to awaken the
heart to make it sensitive to the world around us. The feelings that can be aroused by stimuli from the
outside are only a superficial manifestation of the sensitivity of the heart. Xiangshan’s learning of the
heart is to have access to the “original heart” (benxin) underlying the great body. Strictly speaking,
the original heart defines what human nature really is.
Human nature in turn expresses itself through the vitality and dynamism of the original heart. It
is not only an idea but an activity. It feels, wills, senses, and knows in connection with an ever-
expanding network of relationships. It is relational and its potential for connectivity is unlimited, but
there is always a core, a center that cannot be reduced to its connections no matter how extensive they
are. The original heart as the core of humanity is the culmination of the evolutionary process. It is not
a static structure, but a continuously becoming activity. In this sense, human beings should not be
conceived as being but becoming. Human beings as becoming are ceaselessly evolving. This has
cosmological as well as anthropological significance.
Implicit in this reasoning is the ontological vision of the “continuity of being.” 1 In this vision,
the human relates to all modalities of being; minerals, plants, and animals. If we probe deeply to find
some linkages, we are part of a continuum. Yet, the uniqueness of being human is qualitatively
different from all other modalities of being. The defining human characteristics are not reducible to
any of the properties that have become constitutive parts of the human condition. This evolutionary
perspective is widely shared in Chinese philosophy. An obvious example is found in Xunzi:

1 TU Weiming, “Continuity of Being”, in TU Weiming Anthology,（Wuhan: Wuhan Press, 2002）, vol. 5, pp. 4-6.

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 Water and fire have qi but are without life. Grasses and trees have life but are without awareness. Birds
and beasts have awareness but are without yi. Humans have qi and life and awareness, and moreover they
have yi.1

This idea of the human is a combination of rootedness and emergence. The distinctiveness of
the human is based on a paradox. It is an integral part of the same process that enables water, fire,
grass, plants, and animals to come into being. Yet, as an emergent property, the human is unique; it
is not reducible to its constitutive parts. This is of course true with life and consciousness as well. We
cannot adequately understand an emergent property by reducing it to the genetic forces that have
made it possible. This is not to deny that structurally it is always intertwined with all the elements
that contribute to its form of existence. In the evolution, so to speak, nothing is lost. The cumulative
process that eventually enables the human to emerge is holistic, dynamic, and continuing. In this
sense, the “continuity of being” does not mean a linear progression but a process of transformation
with increasing velocity of coordination, collaboration, and complexification. I would argue that in a
subtle way it is not incompatible with some versions of creationism.
The vital energy (qi) that is present at all levels of the evolutionary process is spiritual as well
as material. The spirit and matter dichotomy is not applicable here. By implication, spirituality is
embedded in the life world. It is not defined exclusively by reference to the transcendent, let alone
radical transcendence. It does, however, involve a transcendent dimension. The sharp contrast
between the secular and sacred does not exist. Herbert Fingarette’s characterization of Confucius,
“the secular as the sacred,”2 is suggestive, but the dichotomy is problematic. Indeed, all exclusive
dichotomies, such as body/mind, mental/physical, and flesh/soul, are alien to the Confucian holistic
thinking. Take the example of yin and yang. They are different, conflictual, and sometimes tension-
ridden, but in principle and in practice, they are complementary. More significantly, they are co-
existent and mutually infiltrating. There is no yang without yin and no yin without yang. There is
always yang in the yin of the yang and so forth. This enables the Confucian to see unity in
contradiction and to experience the world as both material and spiritual.
Life (sheng) symbolizes the emergence of an entirely different stage of coordination,
collaboration, and complexification. In modern biological terms, it is reflected in an adaptive
organizational structure, the capacity of metabolism, the ability to maintain homeostasis, the potency
of growth, the potentiality of reproduction, and the responsiveness to the environment. We can
maintain that between dead matter and life, there is discontinuity, even rupture. This challenge to the
“continuity of being” is overcome, or at least mitigated, by the subtle observation that, from the
perspective of the vital energy, the idea of “dead matter” itself is inappropriate. Take the example of
stones. To the Confucians or Chinese in general, a piece of jade is not necessarily lifeless. This
figurative expression does not negate the fundamental difference between life and death, but it is
profoundly significant if we reject the notion that all inanimate things as simply “dead matter.” I am
reminded of the heated debate in the drafting of the Earth Charter decades ago when the
representatives of the scientific community eventually were persuaded by the elders of many

1 Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi, the Complete Text, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 76.
2 Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: the Secular as the Sacred, (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).

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indigenous traditions that it is all right to enshrine the phrase into the sacred document: “the earth is
alive!” Put it differently, even the so-called “dead matter” is not merely materiality devoid of any
spirituality.
The issue of zhi (consciousness and feeling) is much more intriguing. There is virtual agreement
that animals have feelings. Whether or not they have consciousness is controversial. Some animal
lovers believe that they (particularly dogs and horses) do. A few veterinarians insist that they also
have “self-consciousness.” Xunzi uses rightness (yi) to differentiate humans from all other animals.
He underscores the cognitive function of the mind, especially its ability to analyze and differentiate,
as the basis for building stable social organizations. In this lecture, I follow Mencius’ line of inquiry.
He makes it explicit that the difference between human nature and animal nature is slight. For
example, like animals, the desire for “food and sex” (survival and reproduction) is inevitably human
nature. The uniqueness of being human lies in a totally different magnitude. He does not want us to
forget that human beings are animals. His strategy is to build the case on the slight difference. We
can say that the slight difference is that human beings are the kind of animal that is capable of self-
consciousness of a particular kind. Despite the necessity of “food and sex” which are prerequisites
for our physical existence (“the small body”), self-consciousness enables us to realize the full
potential of humanity (“the great body”).
From the perspective of the “continuity of being,” the emergences of life and consciousness
indicate the trajectory of the advent of the human. One can well imagine that human beings are
interconnected not only with the human world but also with all members of the animal kingdom, the
life world, the earth, and beyond. This connectedness enables the human to develop a vision of holism.
There is nothing in the cosmos that is totally irrelevant to the feeling capacity of the heart.
Neither a distant star nor a blade of grass, not to mention human affairs, is outside the scope of the
sensitivity of the heart. In principle and in practice, its capacity for responding to all things is
unlimited. It is not the result of wild imagination but of immediate recognition that Mencius asserts
that “all the ten thousand things are there in me.” 1True to the Mencian spirit, Cheng Hao (1032-1085)
and later Wang Yangming (1472-1529) maintained that humanity forms one body with Heaven, Earth,
and myriad things.2 They insisted that “forming one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things”
is a human capacity realizable by every person in ordinary daily existence.
Wang Yangming tried to demonstrate this capacity by a series of illustrations. Our reactions to
a child about to fall into a well, animals trembling with fear before they are slaughtered, trees cut
down, and mountains denuded may vary in emotional intensity in evoking our responses, but they all,
in diverse ways, affect us. We are, consciously or unconsciously, connected to family, community,
nature, and the cosmos. By implication, he maintained that the full realization of humanity requires
that we overcome not only egoism, nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentrism, and nationalism, but
anthropocentrism as well.
This move from the concrete to the universal rejects both closed particularism and abstract
universalism. The negotiation is between personal rootedness and public-spiritedness. The authentic

1 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p. 79.

2 Ibid, p. 524, “His brother （Ch’eng I） also said that ‘The man of jen regards Heaven and Earth and all things as one
body.’ And the doctrine is later fully developed in Wang Yangming,”

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possibility of such negotiation is predicated on their mutual intelligibility and potential
complementarity. To be personal is not to be private. While I normally choose not to disclose my
private thoughts, I often feel impelled to share values that I personally cherish. I am rooted in my
primordial ties—ethnicity, gender, language, place, status, age, and faith, but I have no difficulty in
recognizing that they are contextualized and historicized to the extent that they represent a unique
configuration which defines, in the concrete, my own singularity. However, my self-understanding
dictates that I appreciate what I am in the broader racial, gender, linguistic, economic, political, social,
cultural, and religious contexts. This enables me to know that there are other singularities that are
equally complex. I know that I can never fully understand the singularity that I recognize as myself,
but I know for sure that it is my privilege and responsibility to try to do so. By analogy, I am aware
that numerous singularities, like me, are in the same boat.
This is the human condition that is relevant to all spiritual traditions. The Confucian path, simply
put, is that I am not what I ought to be and yet I am aware that I must work through the structure and
function of what I am to live up to the highest standard of self-realization. The logic of the Great
Learning can be stated as follows My self is the point of departure: “from the emperor to the common
person, each should regard self-cultivation as the root.” In concrete terms, self-cultivation is to
transcend the privatized self-centeredness to the public good. We may even say that I am private, my
family is public; my family is private, the community is public; the community is private, the nation
is public; the nation is private, the global village is public; the global village is private, the cosmos is
public. Public-spiritedness can only be realized through self-cultivation. This move from the rooted
private ego to the public-spirited relational self is open to all human beings. Human greatness lies in
the infinite capacity of the human heart to embody the cosmos. The embodiment is through dialogical
communication.
The dialogical mode is a defining characteristic of the Confucian way of life. It is manifested in
the four inseparable dimensions of Confucian humanism: self, community, nature, and Heaven. Only
through dialogue, can integration of the body and mind, fruitful interaction between self and society,
harmony between humankind and nature, and mutuality between the human heart-and-mind and the
Way of Heaven be attained. Dialogical encountering, rather than dialectic overcoming, enables the
refinement and enlargement of the feeling of commiseration (sympathy, empathy, and compassion)
inherent in all humans to be extended and expanded from the self, to family, community, nation,
world, nature, and beyond.
Learning to be human is “for the sake of the self.” The dignity, independence, and autonomy of
the self are cherished Confucian values. Self-knowledge is necessary for political responsibility,
social engagement, and cultural sensitivity. Confucius’ disciple, Zengzi, remarked that an educated
person must be broadminded and resolute, for the burden is heavy and the road long. 1 He carries
humanity as his personal task. How can we say that the burden is not heavy? He ends his journey
only with death. How can we say that the road is not long? Mencius used the metaphor of digging a

1 Peimin NI, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations, p. 219: “Master
Zeng said, ‘Educated persons (shi 士) cannot do without being broad-minded and resolute. Their responsibility is heavy
and their journey (dao 道) is long. Human-heartedness is their responsibility—is it not heavy? Only with death does their
journey end—is it not long?’ ”

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well to convey his sense of “getting it oneself” as a proper way of learning. Only if we deeply immerse
ourselves in self-understanding will we benefit from the flowing stream beneath to enrich our ways
of life. The ability to cumulate rich poetic, political, social, historical, and metaphysical resources
within is the precondition for embodying an ever-expanding network of relationships without.
Since the Confucian self is never an isolated individual but a dynamic center of relationships, it
cannot but interact with other centers through dialogue. The recognition of and respect for the other
is a point of departure for entering a fruitful relationship. All five basic relationships are reciprocal:
the father is compassionate, and the son is filial; the ruler is benevolent, and the minister is loyal; the
older brother is friendly, the younger brother is respectful; trust among friends and division of labor
between husband and wife. The spirit of reciprocity pervades all relationships. The golden rule stated
in the negative, “Do not do unto other what you would not want others to do unto you,”1 is based on
the self-awareness that the integrity of the other takes precedence over the desire to establish a
relationship in one’s own terms. The passive injunction must be augmented by a positive charge, “in
order to establish myself, I must help others to establish themselves; in order to enlarge myself, I
must help others to enlarge themselves.”2
This dialogical mode is applied to nature and Heaven as well. In the spirit of dialogue, nature is,
in Thomas Berry’s felicitous expression, “a communion of subjects,” rather than “a collection of
objects.” 3 Nature so conceived is the mother earth enabling us to survive, grow, and flourish.
Similarly, our relationship to Heaven is based on mutual responsiveness. In the Confucian perception,
Heaven is omnipresent and omniscient but not omnipotent. It may have created all things, but it relies
upon human participation to complete the magnificent work. Humans are supposed to appreciate all
that the cosmic flow has engendered and to create a peaceful and harmonious abode for themselves
and their environment. The dictum that “Heaven engenders, and humans complete”4 suggests that
human beings, as Heaven’s partners, are co-creators of their universe. By implication, they are also
powerful destroyers. As an old Chinese proverb says, “humans can survive all disasters except
manmade catastrophes.”5
The Han Confucian thinker, Dong Zhongshu, identified three great roots: Heaven is the root of
creativity, Earth is the root of nourishment, and humanity is the root of completion. Zhang Zai’s
(1020-1077) Western Inscription, a foundational text in Neo-Confucianism, begins with a similar
idea: “Heaven is my father and earth is my mother. Even such a tiny existence as I finds an intimate
niche in their midst. That which fills the universe I take as my body and that which directs the universe
I take as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters and all things are my companions.” 6 We
learn to return to our human nature by discovering our interconnectedness with Heaven, Earth, and
the myriad things. We also learn that our “great body” is great because of its capacity for this kind of
interconnectedness. Mencius maintained that if we fully realize our own hearts and minds, we will

1 Peimin NI, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations, p. 281, p. 364.
2 Ibid., p. 187.
3 Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to The Ecozoic Era -- A
Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos, (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1992).
4 Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi, the Complete Text, pp. 87, “Heaven and Earth produce them, but the sage completes them.”
5 James Legge, The Works of Mencius in The Chinese Classics, vol. 2, p. 199.
6 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p. 497.

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know our nature. Through knowing our nature, we will know Heaven. He further contended that if
we reflect upon ourselves and realize that we are sincere (true and authentic), this is the greatest joy
in life. In short, he simply expounded the anthropocosmic vision in Zhongyong (the Doctrine of the
Mean):

Only those who are the most sincere (true and authentic) can realize their own nature. If they
can realize their own nature, they can realize the nature of others. If they can realize the nature
of others, they can realize the nature of things. If they can realize the nature of things, they can
take part in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth. If they can take part
in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth, they can form a trinity with
Heaven and Earth.1

This is the reason that Confucius stated that “humanity can make the Way great; the Way cannot
make the human great.”2 Lest this is construed as an anthropocentric assertion about human hubris,
what Confucius believed in is human potential, promise, and responsibility. A salient feature of
Confucian humanism, unlike the secular, anthropocentric, rational humanism of the Enlightenment,
is its necessary connection with Heaven and Earth. Humanism, as Confucians would have it, is neither
de-spirited nor de-natured. It is, in theory and practice, rooted in the spiritual realm and grounded in
the natural world.
Our innate sense of being connected in a sympathetic resonance with Heaven, Earth, and the
myriad things may very well be the deepest and commonest source for human greatness.
The faith in the continuity, indeed the consanguinity, of all modalities of being in making the
human an integral part of our existence is cosmological as well as anthropological. It has the great
ecological implication of making the earth our proper home. The “continuity of being” in a deeper
sense is not merely a horizontal idea. The emergences of life and consciousness strictly speaking are
not “ruptures,” but they strongly indicate profound transformations evoking a sense of transcendence,
at least self-transcendence. This symbolizes that the evolutionary process also entails a vertical
trajectory. The sensitivity of the heart has depth as well as breadth. Its all-embracing holism is an
inherent human capacity. Therefore, the original heart, rather than consciousness and feelings we
share with animals and life we share with plants and grass, is distinctively human. It is the original
heart that makes human great and enables us to have the great body. What is the verticality of the
evolutionary process? Cheng Hao confidently asserted that his learning in general was indebted to
his predecessors, but the true import of the two characters “Heavenly Principle” (tianli) was
intimately embodied in him by himself. In other words, Cheng Hao experienced the full meaning of
the Heavenly Principle by personally getting it himself. His subjectivity enabled him to realize that
the Heavenly Principle is in his original heart. It was not revealed to him by an authoritative force
from outside. He really got it himself.3

1 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, pp. 107-108

2 Peimin NI, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations, pp. 366-367.
3 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p. 520.

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 To him and indeed to all the thinkers in the learning of the heart, the Heavenly Principle is within
our nature. This is in perfect accord with the opening statement of Zhongyong: “human nature is
endowed by Heaven.” 1 Since human nature is endowed by Heaven, the Heavenly Way (presumably
how the Heavenly Principle functions) is encoded in human nature. Heaven makes humans human,
but humanity ought to be responsive to Heaven as well. Having our nature conferred by Heaven, it is
our obligation to enlarge it. This implies that humans have the capacity and responsibility to bring
the Way to fruition in the world. The highest manifestation of humanity is cosmological and
anthropological. In short, it is “anthropocosmic,” predicated on a holistic and integrated humanism
with profound reverence for Heaven. In the Book of Change the cosmos is always a dynamic process
generating new realities by creatively transforming the existing order. The message for us is that we
ought to emulate this Heavenly vitality by continuous effort of self-strengthening. Our reverence for
Heaven is not to worship a “wholly other” authority totally beyond our comprehension but to express
a deep sense of awe for the source of life and creativity in itself.
The uniqueness of being human is our inner ability to learn to become worthy partners in the
cosmic process. This is predicated on the assumption that we are empowered to apprehend Heaven
through our self-knowledge. As Mencius avowed, “if we can realize the full measure of our heart, we
can know our nature. If we know our own nature, we can know Heaven.” 2
Understandably, the highest aspiration of self-realization is the “unity of Heaven and humanity.”
Yet, we must acknowledge the asymmetry in the Heaven-human relationship. Although Heaven is
creativity in itself, human beings learn to be creative through personal effort. Heaven’s genuineness
is naturally brilliant, whereas human beings struggle to become true to themselves by means of
knowledge and wisdom. But as co-creators, human beings can carry the Way in the world on behalf
of Heaven. They are obligated by their own nature to realize the Way in their life world. In so doing,
the Way is no longer out there as mere transcendence with no intimate relationship to human existence
here and now. Rather, it is embodied in the common experience of everyday life, making ordinary
people, without necessarily being aware of its far-reaching implications, personally connected with
Heaven. There is a transcendent dimension of Heaven beyond human comprehension, but Heaven is
also immanent in human nature. Mencius articulates this insight: “Our body and complexion are given
to us by Heaven. Only a sage can give his body completion.”3 Thus the way to sagehood is a process
of authenticating our body. Our mind, soul, and spirit are all embodied in the deep structure of our
body. They are refined manifestations of selfhood because they radiate from the core of our nature
which is inherent in our body. In other words, the human body is a microcosm of the cosmos. Through
the cultivation of the heart, the body can open itself to the world and the entire cosmos.
This is succinctly captured by Wang Yangming (1472-1529) in his brilliant comprehension of
Mencius’ idea of liangzhi (“primordial awareness”).4 This “primordial awareness” is precisely what
Lu Xiangshan identified as the “original heart” They all took it for granted that this is the greatness
of being human and the potential expansiveness of human nature. To the learners of the heart,

1 Ibid., p. 99.
2 Ibid., p. 78.
3 Ibid., p. 80
4 James Legge, The Works of Mencius in The Chinese Classics, vol. 2, p. 456.

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“primordial awareness” is “embodied knowledge.” It is both cognition and affection. It is feeling with
intrinsic reasonableness. It is knowing that entails a transformative act. The activity involves three
trajectories.
It purifies the quality of the body, it affects the world, and it fulfills the Heavenly Decree. The self-
discovery and conscientious activation of “primordial awareness” calls for joy and celebration. All
humans at that moment exhibit sageliness. To say that people in the street are all sages, as several of
Wang Yangming’s followers were fond of saying, is an encouragement (“we should all learn to
emulate the sages”) and an ontological truth (“all human beings are not only potentially but really
sages”). 1 At the same time, it is easily understandable that every person (Confucius included) always
falls short of attaining sagehood (existentially Confucius made it explicit that he was far from being
able to attain it).2 Therefore, learning to be human requires a ceaseless process of self-cultivation.
In light of the discussion on human greatness, Heavenly Principle, and “primordial awareness”,
I would like to reiterate the centrality of subjectivity in Confucian humanism. While it seems
reasonable to define Confucianism as a form of social ethics, it is vitally important not to reduce
subjectivity to a set of social roles. One can argue that human-relatedness is implicit in Confucian
subjectivity and that without the social dimension the distinctiveness of Confucian subjectivity is lost.
Indeed, the Confucian person is always enriched by connectivity. We learn from the thesis “the
continuity of being” that “forming one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things” is not an
imagined ideal but an experienced reality. It is not through rational calculation or empirical proof that
we know it is true. It is through a profound feeling, embodied in our original heart, that we know
intimately and immediately that it is so. The feeling so conceived is not separable from ordinary
feelings and emotions such as joy, anger, sadness, and happiness. Yet, it is fundamentally different
because it is a constitutive part of our humanity. It expresses itself as empathy, sympathy, compassion,
or, in Mencius’ terminology, commiseration3. It is the very reason that human beings are great for it
evokes the Great Body in us.
This feeling is not merely anthropological. It is also cosmological. Indeed, it is anthropocosmic.
To reiterate Cheng Hao’s reference to the Heavenly Principle (tianli). His ecstasy of experiencing it
through intimate embodiment suggests a personal realization of the transcendent reality. He got it
himself because it had always been laden in his original heart. We can imagine that for Cheng Hao it
is precisely the embodied knowledge of the Heavenly Principle that enabled him to articulate the
conviction that humanity forms one body with Heaven, Earth and the myriad things.
Humanity so conceived is awareness. It is an internally generated awareness. It may be a
response to an external stimulus, but it is not merely the consequence of an outside force. It has its
own autonomous and independent agency. Unlike ordinary feelings, it is not merely passively
responding but also actively probing. However, it does not function at the empirical level alone. Its

1 Wing-tist Chan, Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yangming, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1963), pp. 239-241.
2 Peimin NI, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius, pp. 211-212. “The Master said, ‘As for sageliness and human-
heartedness, how dare I claim myself to have obtained them? Only being insatiable in working on it and being tireless in
offering instruction to others—that much can be said of me.’ Gongxi Hua [Zihua] said, ‘This is exactly what we disciples
are unable to learn.’”
3 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, pp. 65-66.

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connectivity is all embracive. It connects by making contacts and forming linkages. In a deeper sense,
it connects by participation and transformation. It is a cognitive function to be sure, but it is also
affective. Indeed, all our bodily sensations (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching) are both
cognitive and affective. Humanity as awareness, in the case of sympathy for example, is a
transformative act. It is knowledge and, at the same time, action. The spontaneity with which it
expresses itself makes action an integral part of knowledge. Unlike ordinary sensations, it naturally
emanates from the heart without reflection or intention. It is empirical and transcendental. We can
experience it as ordinary sensation, but we cannot sense its depth and breadth at that level. We should
recognize that our original heart defines our true nature. It is of course the quality that we are born
with, but more importantly it is conferred by Heaven. As the opening statement of Zhongyong
specifies that human nature is decreed by Heaven. In other words, the original heart (our true nature)
is where the Heavenly Principle resides.
The Heavenly Principle is omnipresent. It is present in humans, animals, plants and rocks, indeed
all the beings in the evolutionary process. It is the ultimate reason for their existence. However, Cheng
Hao’s personal experience of embodying the Heavenly Principle is significant in two senses. It is a
vision of humanity and it is a confirmation of subjectivity. Humanity as Cheng Hao envisioned it is
not merely an idea but an activity; dynamic, transformative, and productive. This is how the Heavenly
Principle functions in human life. Its dynamism is ceaseless. It is always in the process of becoming.
It displays tremendous transformative potency like the power of growth in nature. It produces and
reproduces with inexhaustible inner strength.
As an activity, humanity expresses itself in feelings; sympathy, empathy, compassion, and
commiseration, in short, a feeling of love. There are several attempts to define more precisely the
meaning of love in this connection. A prevalent position is “to love people” or “to love others.” The
etymology of ren (humanity) containing the graph two certainly lends strong support to this reading.
The eminent Sinologist of Berkeley, Peter Boodberg, strongly argues that the proper translation of
ren should be “cohumanity.” 1 However, I prefer the rendering of ren in the recently discovered
bamboo strips from Guodian: body on top and heart below, indicating the inseparability of body and
heart. I do not wish to enter an elaborate philological debate here. Suffice it now to point out the two
different readings have profound philosophical implications. If ren is rendered as cohumanity,
human-relatedness is a constitutive element and sociality is an integral part of humanity. If humanity
is made of body and heart, we can well conceive of it as individuality, indeed singularity. According
to this reading, the primacy of love can very well be “self-love” which may serve as the basis for
“making others love me” and “loving others.” This is precisely the order of priority Confucius
preferred as cited in Xunzi: “self-love” takes precedence over “loving others” which takes precedence
over “making others love me”.2
What is wrong with defining humanity in social terms alone? I can appreciate the effort to define
humanity in social terms, but the danger of defining humanity exclusively in social terms is to miss
an essential feature in the Confucian project of learning to be human.

1 Peter Boodberg, “The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian Concepts.”, in Philosophy East and West, vol. 2
(January 1953), pp. 317–332.
2 Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi, the Complete Text, pp. 329-330.

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 Let us continue with the discussion on love. Confucian humanity expresses itself in
differentiated rather than undifferentiated love. Universal love, as advocated by Mozi, is critiqued
because of its impracticality. If we insist that one should take care of a stranger’s father as intensely
as one takes care of one’ own, chances are most fathers will be not be properly cared for. 1 In family
ethics, the practice of humanity must begin from parents and expand outward. This is true with
sympathy, empathy, and compassion. The sequence is not arbitrary, but the pattern is established as
a practical guide. The parent-child relationship is often cited to show the centrality of the family in
Confucian ethics. Filial love is the first step in cultivating it. By emphasizing family relations, the
rectification of names dictates that “let fathers be fathers and let sons be sons.” 2In concrete terms,
the teaching of filial piety is to instruct the son to behave as son towards his father. This requires that
the son is aware of his role as a son. This awareness precedes the son’s ability to perform his role
properly. If he is willing to obey his father or to submit himself passively to the orders of the father
without being critically aware of what a proper father-son relation ought to be, he has already
abandoned his responsibility as a son. Therefore, Confucius was furious when Zengzi asked him
“how about following the orders of the father?” Confucius stated that the Son of Heaven is surrounded
with seven censors, a lord with five and a sub-lord with three. Their sole responsibility is to
remonstrate with their rulers. If the son does not remonstrate with the father, he is abdicating his duty
as a son. This is tantamount to setting a trap for his father to fall into unfatherly behavior. Obeying
the father blindly is diametrically opposed to filial love.3 Underlying the reasoning is that the son’s
self-cultivation demands that he is aware of his obligation to see to it that his father behaves in a
fatherly way. Father-son relationship is mutually beneficial. The centrality of self-awareness is
obvious.
Humanity is also communication. I have already mentioned that humanity’s connectivity is
positive engagement and active transformation. It communicates not as an outside observer but as an
inside participant. Implicit in the subjectivity there is also intersubjectivity. The recognition of the
other is not an imposition of my selfhood on the other. Nor is it an appropriation of the other into my
selfhood. The other is not only tolerated or recognized but also respected. The integrity of the other
cannot be compromised even if I strongly believe what I do is for his benefit. I need to first understand
his wishes as a precondition to persuade him to follow my way. I do not prematurely do to him what
I hope that he will do to me. It is after I have fully appreciated his situation that I begin to interact
with him positively. This may sound therapeutic in a doctor-patient relationship, but the ethical reason
is considerateness. The Golden Rule stated in the negative precedes the active charge of doing unto
others what you would want the others to do unto you. Observing the rule, “do not do unto others
what you would not want to do unto you,”4 may avoid unnecessary clash of faiths. Interfaith dialogue

1 Wing-tist Chan, Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yangming, pp. 56-57.
2 Peimin NI, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations, p. 289. “The
role of a father requires the person to love and take good care of his children, to nurture them and educate them.
Reciprocally, the children must treat the father with due respect and filial piety (xiao). Most translators only catch one of
the two meanings and hence the reciprocity is lost in their translation.”
3 Henry Rosemont Jr. and Roger Ames, The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of
Xiaojing, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), pp. 113-114.
4 Peimin NI, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations，p. 281, p.
364.

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challenges conversion as the only purpose of missionary work. This does not mean that one is no
longer obligated to share the “good news.” It merely recommends more expedient ways (skillful
means) to convey the message. The crucial point is that the interest of the other is already in my self-
awareness.
Humanity as awareness assumes a transcendent significance. Since we are inseparable from and
holistically interconnected with all things, we find a common source. It is not the objective reality of
the common source alone, but the human awareness and capacity of participation in it that enables us
to assert greatness as human beings. Subjectivity is critical in this connection. No relationship can
generate the light and warmth of self-awareness. Every form of vital energy that makes a thing
embodies a principle. All principles emanate from the Heavenly Principle. They are endowed in the
original heart. This is in perfect accord with Mencius’ claim that “all the myriad things are equipped
in me.” His following statement that the greatest joy in life is that “upon reflection, I find that I am
true to myself” 1can thus be interpreted to imply that the ultimate happiness is the realization that I
am an authentic human being forming one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things. We
should add that there is subtlety in this seemingly thorough monism, namely “oneness of principle
and multiplicity of its manifestation.”2For example, humanity as universal love should be encouraged
but in actual practice differentiated love, beginning with the closest kin and extending outward is the
appropriate method of realizing it in family, community, nation, and beyond.
In recent decades, various significant attempts have been made to revitalize humanism as an
underlying concern for reconfiguring a world order that enables human beings to live together in an
inclusive society. The deliberate effort to transcend abstract universalism, in which harmony is
misinterpreted as uniformity and the seemingly all-embracing idea of common destiny is merely
disguised as a strategy of domination, makes all sophisticated advocates of humanism in the 21 st
century wary about unilateralism. Understandably, the recognition of cultural diversity features
prominently in humanistic thinking today. Many humanists consider difference as a precondition for
harmony. Harmony without uniformity, or more positively, harmony that tolerates, recognizes and
respects difference is the right path, whereas the demand for conformity to a preconceived and often
ideologized pattern of control is a distorted version of harmony.
Globalization is arguably a more intensified process of modernization, but in a deeper sense, it
is also a profoundly significant departure from modernization, not to mention Westernization. The
spatial idea of the west and the temporal idea of the modern both imply a developmental strategy that
leads to convergence and even homogenization. Yet, globalization also enhances localization,
nationalization and regionalization. It enables us to see a whole new spectrum of color, sound, smell,
taste, mood, emotion, and sentiment associated with ethnicity, gender, language, age, place, class,
and faith. Human community has never been so differentiated and at the same time, due to advances
in science and technology, especially information and communication technologies, has never been
so interconnected.
How do we envision harmony in diversity in a differentiated and interconnected community? I
would like to offer Spiritual Humanism as a response. From this perspective, humanity is

1 Wing-tist Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p. 79.

2 Ibid., p. 544，Ch’eng I: Principle is one but its manifestations are many.

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differentiated from and simultaneously interconnected with all modalities of being in the universe. It
is unique but inseparable from everything else. The evolution of the human, in its most authoritative
story known to the scientific community to date, is a microcosm of the macrocosmic narrative of the
Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago involving the emergence of the sun and the earth. In the planetary
scale, the emergence of life, animals, and the human species is also an integral part of the same
narrative. In this sense, to say that “Heaven and Earth are our parents” is not a romantic assertion but
an empirical statement.
Each human being as endowed by the Heavenly decree is intrinsically free, equal, and valuable.
to realize that is great in us. Our dignity is guaranteed by our subjectivity. It is our noble mission to
cherish our individuality (singularity). No outside authority should or can take the “original heart,”
“Heavenly Principle,” or “primordial awareness” from us: “the authority of the commander of the
three armies can be taken away, but the will of a commoner cannot be taken away.”1
An equally crucial premise of Spiritual Humanism is sanctity of the earth. Our universe is
saturated with intrinsic value and numinous beauty. This reality cannot be proved by empirical data.
Nor can it be gasped by reductive logic from natural sciences such as neurobiology. Rather, it is a
commitment, indeed a faith which may or may not be theistic. The critical issue is to recognize that
it has taken billions of years with fine tuning of all the elements—air, water, soil, and numerous other
factors for us to emerge for so brief a moment. We can dismiss the whole story as senseless. We can
follow major and minor creation stories to accept the thesis that there is teleology in our existence.
Of course, there are numerous other options. The onto-theology underlying Spinoza’s philosophy
which was a source of inspiration for Einstein seems to be an excellent candidate for articulating such
an idea. Also, Paul Tillich, and Carl Sagan as mentioned by Ronald Dworkin all supported his thesis
that we should have faith in the ‘objective reality’ that there is meaning in life and that nature has
intrinsic value (Religion without God; Harvard University Press). 2 However, I do not accept his
outright rejection of materialism and naturalism and I am strongly opposed to his anti-theistic position.
I agree with Ronald E. Osborn that the onto-theology that Dworkin advocates lacks “deeply
humanizing community or life-sustaining joy” despite its “decorum and dignity” (Harvard Divinity
Bulletin, Winter/Spring 2015)3. I also have major reservation on Dworkin’s hope that physicists and
astronomers eventually will answer the ultimate question when they discover the theory of everything.
It is not only too optimistic, but simplistic. If “we live in a strange universe: atoms make up only 4
percent of the visible universe, dark matter makes up 24 percent, and dark energy – energy associated
with empty space -- makes up 72 percent” (David N. Spergel, Daedalus, Fall 2014, 125), 4 it is
reasonable to assume that there is always mystery beyond human understanding

1 Peimin Ni, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations, pp. 242-243,
“During the Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976), Liang Shuming(1893–1988), known as “China’s last Confucian”
because he defended Confucianism in the wake of the New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century, was
criticized for refusing to attack Confucianism, and he openly responded with this quote from 9.26! This spirit is also well
captured in Mencius’ famous saying, ‘Those who cannot be led into excesses when wealthy and honored, or deflected
from their purpose when poor and obscure, or be made to bow before superior force—this is what I would call great
persons (Mencius, 3B:2).’”
2 Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God,（Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013）.
3 Ronald E. Oborn, “Ronald Dworkin’s Onto-Theology”, in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, vol. 43, Nos. 1 & 2 (Winter/Spring
2015).
4 David N. Spergel, “Cosmology Today”, in Daedalus, vol. 143 (October 2014), pp. 125-133.

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 The grammar of theism strikes a sympathetic resonance in Spiritual Humanism. Sacred places
(cathedral, church, temple, mosque, synagogue), hymns, songs, prayers, dances, festivals are beyond
the pretensions to scientific, philosophical, or theological control. All three great theistic religions
have spiritual resources and intellectual depths to inspire us to sing songs of hope and express our
gratitude to divine love. They have made profound contribution to human religiosity.
Nevertheless, Spiritual Humanism may be theistic or pantheistic, but it embraces atheism and a
variety of vitalism characteristic of most indigenous traditions as well. It differs from monotheistic
religions in several essential ways. It takes the sanctity of the earth for granted. It subscribes to the
idea of the continuity of being. By implication, it does not believe in radical transcendence such as
the “Wholly Other” which alone is the numinous in Rudolph Otto’s sense. 1 To use Herbert
Fingarette’s felicitous phrase, it regards “the secular as sacred.” In other words, the life world is
intrinsically meaningful. It is where the ultimate meaning of life is realizable and ought to be realized.
To a spiritual humanist, we are rooted in earth and community, especially the family. Our body is the
proper home for our mind, soul and spirit. We learn to be fully human through earth, community and
body. Our spiritual transformation is not a departure from where we are but a journey to the interiority
of our being. Paradoxically, the innermost core of our being, the source of our self-knowledge, is
none other than the macrocosmic reality ingrained in our existence. Surely, earth, community, and
body constrain us. They shape us into concrete forms. We are inescapably earthly, communal, and
bodily. Hitherto, spiritual traditions in general have instructed us to free ourselves from these
constraints. A great human aspiration is to be liberated from mundane bondage, to escape from the
prison house of the soul. In Spiritual Humanism, these are enabling constraints, the vehicles that carry
us forward to our destiny. They are instrumental in offering each of us the unique path for self-
realization. Without them we cannot exist in any concrete sense. They are our incarnations.
A human being so conceived is not a creature but an active agent in the cosmic transformation
as an observer, participant, indeed co-creator. Even though there may not be a Creator, the creativity
since the Big Bang has never been lost but cumulated in every segment of the evolutionary story--
sun, earth, life, animal, and human. We are the inheritor of the cosmic energy. We are charged with
the responsibility to see to it that what has been endowed in our nature continues to give generative
power to new realities and life forms. Spiritual Humanism believes that human life has transcendent
meaning, that there is always mystery to be comprehended, and that theism as well as other
manifestations of human religiosity teaches us to rise above secularism. We are finite beings, but in
our finitude, there is the constant presence of infinite divinity. Spiritual Humanism is a faith in
Humanity: the task of learning to be fully human is to “form one body with Heaven, Earth and the
myriad things,” for there is intrinsic unity between immanence and transcendence.

References
1. Berry, Thomas, and Brian Swimme, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to
The Ecozoic Era -- A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos,(New York: Harper San
Francisco, 1992)

1 Based on Rudolf Otto's idea of “mysterium” in his concept of the “numinous”, see Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy,
trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923; 2nd edition, 1950).

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2. Boodberg, Peter, “The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian Concepts.” , in Philosophy East
and West, vol. 2 (January 1953).
3. Chan, Wing-tist, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963).
4. Chan, Wing-tist, Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang
Yangming, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).
5. De Barry, Wm. Theodore, Asian Value and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian
Perspective, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
6. Dworkin, Ronald, Religion without God,（Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013）.
7. Fingarette, Herbert, Confucius: the Secular as the Sacred, (New York: Harper & Row, 1972.)
8. Hutton, Eric L., Xunzi, the Complete Text ,(New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014),
9. Legge, James, Works of Mencius in Chinese Classics, vol. 2, (Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc.
1991).
10. LU Jiuyuan, Classical Quotation B in Lu Jiuyuan Collection, vol. 35, (Beijing: China Publishing
House, 2008)
11. Ni, Peimin, Understanding of the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with
Annotations, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2017).
12. Oborn, Ronald E., “Ronald Dworkin’s Onto-Theology”, in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, vol. 43,
Nos. 1 & 2, (Winter/Spring 2015).
13. Otto, Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1923; 2nd edition, 1950).
14. Rosemont Jr., Henry, and Roger Ames, The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A
Philosophical Translation of Xiaojing, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).
15. Spergel, David N. , “Cosmology Today”, in Daedalus, vol. 143 (October 2014)
16. TU, Weiming, “Continuity of Being”, in TU Weiming Anthology,（Wuhan: Wuhan Press,
2002）.
17. TU, Weiming, “The Dignity of Human Being from the Perspective of Embodied Knowing
(Outlines)” in International Confucian Studies, vol. 6 (February 1998).
18. TU Weiming, Embodied Knowing Confucianism, (Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2012).
19. TU, Weiming, “Mencius: Self-Awareness of A Profound Person”, in TU Weiming Anthology,
(Wuhan: Wuhan Press, 2002).

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 Gender in Translation/ Beyond Monolingualism

Judith Butler

I am honored to be here today to give the first of the Simone de Beauvoir Lectures at the World
Congress of Philosophy. I would like today to speak about the notion of gender even though it is a
foreign term in so many languages. Indeed, sometimes there is a resistance to the idea of gender
precisely because it is foreign. Perhaps it seems like an American import, or perhaps it challenges
existing linguistic terms in other languages for designating the difference between men and women.
Gender is not a term that Simone de Beauvoir used. It would have been, for her, a foreign term in
French. And yet, arguably, her own philosophy pointed the way toward the development of a
philosophy of gender. Beauvoir argued in The Second Sex that one is not born a woman, but rather
becomes one. That formulation became the basis for the feminist theoretical distinction between sex,
understood as a biological reality, and gender, understood as the cultural or social meanings that that
biological reality assumes in a specific time and place. It was important for many reasons, chief
among them the claim that there is nothing in the sex of a woman that determines what kind of work
she should have, what kind of life she should live, or who she should love. The distinction between
sex and gender became an operative one for many feminists who have insisted that regardless of the
social constraints imposed upon women, they are relatively free to chart their own course of action.
In feminist theory of the 1970s and 1980s, de Beauvoir’s formulation was read as suggesting that
whereas sex is a natural category, gender described the cultural and social interpretations of that
natural category. That meant that no natural teleology governs the development of a woman from a
biological condition of being female. A social man could emerge from a biological female; a social
woman could emerge from a biological male. For some, de Beauvoir’s formulation established that
gender is a choice, but others have argued that for Beauvoir, the development or “becoming” of a
woman is not a pure choice, but a form of reckoning within what she called a “situation.” Indeed, sex
itself, for Beauvoir was not a natural fact, but a “situation” – one that is established through political,
social, psychological, and economic realities. She did not deny natural facts, but she insisted that such
facts are organized by the situation in which they occur. Some followers of de Beauvoir insist that
she would not have liked the idea of gender. It was the category of “women” that she sought to
empower by insisting that no causal determination or natural teleology governs the kind of work a
woman can and cannot do, the kind of thought she can and cannot have, the kind of social equality
she deserved.
So even now, among those feminist philosophers indebted to de Beauvoir, we can discern at
least three positions. One is that biological sex imposes no direct causal sequence on the gender one
becomes, and that gender is a form of becoming (this view is contested in part by those who claim
that sex can also be changed, and that those forms of transition are also understood as a kind of
becoming). The second is that sex is itself a natural fact, but we should ask about the sciences that
establish and describe those facts, since they are often biased, and presumptions about women’s social
inferiority or inequality are built into the scientific hypotheses themselves. The third is that sex is a

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“situation” which means that a number of social and historical processes, or forms of power, come to
bear upon the designation of sex, and that women, though not determined biologically, are not
radically free, but struggle within the terms of their situation, seeking to transform it from within its
terms, and to realize greater freedom and equality in the course of that struggle. As Margaret Simons
has persuasively argued, de Beauvoir departed from the Sartrian idea of a “project” as she developed
her own idea of a situation, of women’s situation, the situation of being at once subjugated within the
world whose transformation one must undertake.
The notion of gender was, I suggested, foreign to de Beauvoir, and yet she introduced a
distinction, a gap, that could not easily be closed. If we take sex for granted, then we take a specific
version of sex for granted, within the language we speak, or within a certain set of social and scientific
presuppositions. Indeed, the scientific criteria for determining sex are themselves very often in
conflict with one another. So we cannot rely on sex to be a simple fact, known through a positivist
empiricism. And yet, even though sex is established differently in different languages, it is generally
established, suggesting a problem, a reality, that requires a form of linguistic designation. And yet,
no one language has the power, or authority, to name sex definitively. Sex is always taken up by a
language, even if, or especially when, it is the language of scientific authority. My point is not to
argue for linguistic relativism. Rather, I want to understand what happens when we consider gender
to be the linguistic articulation of sex in a multi-lingual context. We may want to say that sex is a fact
– although the persistence of intersex challenges our ideas of bodily dimorphism. We may want to
dismiss those who do not accept the fact of sex. But that fact depends upon conditions of its
appearance – that would be a Kantian claim. And if language is one way of formulating sex, of
interpreting what sex is, then how do we come to terms with the fact that the cultural and linguistic
interpretation of sex – what I would call gender – happens differently across languages?
I have just suggested two points that are central to my argument today. The first is that sex cannot
be fully separated from the linguistic formulation that establishes it has a fact. The linguistic
formulation of sex as a fact is, in my view, part of what is meant by gender. Secondly, gender is a
foreign word. Gender always produces a problem for translators. Indeed, gender only arrives in any
language as a result of a difficult translation. As a result, it never quite means the same in any language.
Even in English, the term was coined in the 1950s, and sounded quite foreign to those who
thought that gender was a grammatical set of rules governing pronoun usage. Gender, I want to
suggest, is the kind of word – and the kind of concept - that has trouble entering into a language.
What significance does this difficulty have for us, for the concept itself? Can there even be gender
without translation?
I have found that sometimes the resistance to the term gender is syntactical, as if to start to use
the term in language would challenge, or even defy, the basic syntactical structures that govern sense
making within a given language. This produces a different kind of linguistic disturbance at basic level.
At first the problem appears to be one of usage: how does one use the term? Does a person belong to
a gender? Is gender a predicate of a person? How does one use the term “gender” in a sentence? Other
times, the problem seems to be the introduction of a broader set of cultural practices where the use of
the term is presupposed and put into play. The debates about whether “gender” can be translated focus

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on what is lost and gained, lost from English, but also lost from the other language into which gender
enters, or perhaps what kind of disturbance the entrance of that foreign word into a language produces.
When the term “gender” enters into another language, English itself enters, or rather, enters
again, and certainly not for the first time. It seems fair to assume that English has been entering for a
long time. That clearly happens when the term “gender” is preserved in the second language in its
English form; it happens differently when a new word is devised in the second language to
approximate the term gender. Of course, as important as it is to consider specific responses to the
various arrivals and incursions of English into other languages to the term “gender” or to gender
theory and analysis, that cannot be the focus of my remarks today (though it is related and is surely a
worthy project, raising as it does, and from the outset, the question of cultural influence, even cultural
imperialism).
Rather, what I hope to ask today is why debates about gender as a term do not very often consider
the presumption of monolingualism at work in such debates? For instance, when in the US or the UK
or in Australia we approach gender as a category or a concept, we tend to set aside the fact that we
are referencing an English usage. We assume in romance languages that it will be relatively the same
- le genre, el genero – or that it should be, and that in principle the discussions we have in English
are generalizable to an indefinite number of contexts. Indeed, when we argue about “gender” – and
here I mean the term - elaborating its meaning or its conceptualization, we are already operating
within a monolingual field, unless of course we are arguing in another language and “gender” is a
foreign term. But even then, when gender enters as a “foreign term” is remains oddly foreign in
languages other than English; it burrows into another language as a foreign incursion. As such, it
raises all the usual questions, what is the foreign doing here? Is it welcome? Has it been invited? Is
gender the sign or instrument of an imperial take over?1
In English we make various generalizations about gender as if we were referring to a concept
and not a specific linguistic usage– one such generalization might be that “gender is performative or
relational, intersectional or processual.” For the most part in English the presumption is made that
what we are arguing about is easily, if not fully, translatable by virtue of its inherent generalizability.
Although gender theorists in Anglophone contexts may not always recognize it, they invariably take
up an attitude toward translation when they are arguing about gender. There are several senses in
which this turns out to be true. First the term “gender” within feminist, queer, and trans theory, and
throughout the social sciences, comes to us from others sources, both grammatical and sexological.
So we are working with a received coinage, and we coin it further all the time. Second, in practicing
theory as we do, our assumptions about the generalizability of our claims rests on a tacit conviction
that there will be no disturbance or blockage when “gender” is translated into other languages: in fact,
the political uproar about the entry of the term into non-English language contexts has only intensified
in recent years – I will give some indication of that. Thirdly, gender assignment is a discursive and
institutional practices that works upon the body at the time that an assignment is made, but continues

1 See Adorno on “On the Use of Foreign Words in Writing”, Notes on Literature (290-91), noting the importance of the
breakdown of the organic and pure idea of language:
“The power of an unknown, genuine language that is not open to any calculus, a language that arises only in pieces and
out of the disintegration of the existing one; this negative, dangerous, and yet assuredly promised power is the true
justification of foreign words.”

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to work on the body through time. Gender assignment operates according to translation, since the
infant who is gendered, called into life as a boy or as a girl, must undertake the work of translation
from the adult world into the infant’s own universe of meanings (Jean Laplanche turns out to be
important to this argument that the names the infant is called require the work of translation on the
part of the infant, though I cannot pursue those implications here).1
So first, then, let us consider whether when some of us debate in English about what gender is,
or should be, we rarely ask whether the terms we are using are translatable even though the
generalizability of our claims presume that they are. Of course, some of us may not care whether the
key terms are translatable – that is a problem for translators, after all, and though we are even
sometimes glad to assist them with their struggles, we do not always consider that the generalizability
of our claims actually depend on establishing a conceptual equivalence between the terms in both
languages. When there is no conceptual equivalence, we are confronted with yet a different problem.
Of course, one can avert the problem by simply assuming or asserting that gender is not readily
translatable, because, in fact, it properly belongs to English, or has come to belong to English. On
this presumption we Anglophones invite everyone into English as the established contemporary
linguistic frame or lingua franca, or we export that frame in a beneficent spirit. Polite imperialists,
we! Or it may be that philosophically we think gender names a concept and that the language we use
to name or to describe the concept is quite incidental to the concept itself, and that we are engaging
in a purely conceptual analysis, not a linguistic one. According to that kind of argument, linguistic
usage neither generates nor sustains concepts. Concepts are generally presumed to have a relative
independence of how they are used in language; gender is one such concept; therefore, gender can be
analyzed conceptually without regard to the language in which it is used or, indeed, the language in
which it makes sense.
This last view, however, cannot take into account the problem of conceptual non-equivalence
that emerges in the practice of translating gender. Sometimes this emerges as a grammatical problem:
how to use the noun-form of gender in a language, for instance, that only inflects gender through
verbs or adjectives. But sometimes it is a syntactical disturbance, meaning that the very joints that
hold a sentence together cannot operate, challenging sense-making itself. That happens in languages
that describe action, like coming or going, and inflect the verb to indicate whether he or she is coming
or going. Gender in those cases is not self-standing. This accords, for instance, with anthropologist
Marilyn Strathern’s notion that categories such as “man” and “woman” are abbreviations of social
relationships, and that they do not have an independent ontological status outside of those
relationships. Although these are serious problems for a translator, they also pose a problem for theory.
If it turns out that gender is always a problem of translation, then the translator and the theorist may
not be separate – they may be the same not only in fact, but also in principle. Indeed, we are with
gender confronting both a theoretical problem for translation and a translation problem for theory.
What I have tried to name so far as a problem is certainly familiar to those who regularly work
among languages or for whom English is a second language (or third or fourth!). But I have yet
another point to make that may not immediately appear to follow, and that is simply that translation

1 Laplanche, Butler, “What Does Gender Want of Me?”

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is the condition of possibility of gender as a useful category of analysis. We will see whether I make
that case persuasively or not in what follows.
My view is that the problem of translatability is an unmarked presumption of a monolingualism
that pervades the discourse on gender as it crosses academic and popular life. Derrida refers to
“monolingual obstinacy” to describe the “resistance to translation.” In his monograph
Monolingualism of the Other, he describes the conviction that strengthens as one enters ever more
deeply into one’s one language to argue a point. One not only inhabits that language as one’s home,
but the sense one has is that only in that language can one make sense and communicate the sense of
things. So I not only speak this language, but this language is my way of inhabiting the world and the
very essence of who I am, and the very condition of the sense I make of the world. Derrida counters
this conviction first by claiming that one’s own language is never really one’s own, surely not a
possession, but already, and from the start, a sphere of non-belonging. Language has its life –
language is alive - before we utter any word, and it always precedes us, arriving from elsewhere. That
elsewhere, in Derrida’s view, is there at the inception of the speaking subject, and it can never really
go away. And yet, monolingualism not only covers over this originary condition, a condition of being
dispossessed in language, but intensifies our sense that whatever we utter in the language we speak
is immediately generalizable. He ventriloquizes the defensive posture of the monolinguist when he
writes the following (I am using the English translation here): “Not only am I lost, fallen, and
condemned outside the French language, I have the feeling of honoring or serving all idioms, in a
word, of writing the ‘most’ and the ‘best’ when I sharpen the resistance of my French, the secret
‘purity’ of my French…hence, its resistance, its relentless resistance to translation; translation into
all languages, including another such French.”(56) The intensification of monolingualism produces
a paradeox (if not an aporia): the language one inhabits as one’s own is, as it were, where one is
dispossessed from the start, for in language one speaks or in which one writes one has no rights of
ownership. And yet every refinement of thought within that language intensifies the sense that this is
one’s own language, resulting in a resistance to translation. Translation threatens the monolinguist
with a loss of place and property in language. Yet in one’s own language, one is already dispossessed.
In fact, what occurs in one language cannot be completely or adequately translated into another
language. Thus, Derrida argues that every translation founders on moments that cannot be translated.
The “untranslatable” haunts every translation, not only as a small problem here and there, but as a
structural condition that makes itself known in those moments of grammatical faltering and syntactic
disturbance that happens nearly every time, for instance, that the English “gender” enters into another
language.1 Translation opens up the productive potential of errancy and coinage, challenging ideas
of linguistic mastery, offering a path of linguistic humility for English, and a possibility for encounter
that preserves the untranslatable dimension of any language. The untranslatable dimension of gender
opens up the question of how to co-habit a world when conceptual non-equivalence is part of the
conversation.

1 There is much to be said about this topic, recently pursued by the French philosopher, Barbara Cassin and the topic of
a rather enormous volume, The Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (Princeton University Press,
2014), in which numerous concepts are thought – or rethought – in relation to the problem of translation. An earlier
version of this paper appears there under the category of “Gender”.

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 But first, let us remember that there are many contemporary reasons to conduct an inquiry such
as this one. For instance, in France the term, “genre”, which refers in French to types of literary
writing or as a the grammatical function of definite and indefinite articles, had to be stretched to
accommodate a new set of meanings for the debate over “genre” to begin, and the resistance to
translation was evident. The willingness to adopt new usage, especially from English, could hardly
be taken for granted. The paradox of accepting and rejecting the term emerged quite forcefully when
one historian said to me, “There is no place for gendaire in French.” She had not only given it a place,
but she had some made it French, resisting its translation as genre. The resistance had left and right
wing variants. Some feared that this was the “Mcdonaldization” of academic theory. Of course, the
problem of American cultural influence was often cited. But sometimes “gender” or “la theorie du
genre” signifies no less than the breakdown of the unity of the French nation, the increasingly porous
national boundaries across which anything, and anyone, can pass, and so at issue as well is migration,
minorities, racial mixing, ever more vague forces of cultural destruction, but also debates on religion
and secularism (or laicité), focusing the cultural primacy of Catholicism to the nation, natural law,
patrilineality, normality and pathology, family, homosexuality, gay marriage, and queer kinship. Very
often the popular use of the term signifies access to reproductive technology by single women, trans
men, single or partnered lesbian and gay partners, whether married or not, but all of these debates
were haunted by migration, the loss of national identity, and the dissolution of the founding
presumptions of the Republic. The term is understood either to threaten to destroy a version of natural
law that holds family and nation together or to challenge cultural or symbolic laws or norms that
holds the family and nation together and without which post-national chaos is understood to ensue.
In announcing his candidacy for the French presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy named the opposition to
“gender” as one of his first four priorities, and just a few days ago had a row with the minister of
education, siding with the Pope, that “the theory of gender” should not be taught in schools and should
be considered a “diabolical ideology”. The term now signifies in a a wide range of ways: depending
on context, it can signify women, women’s rights, or women’s equality, and so feminism, but also
transgender, and gay, bisexual, and lesbian life, love, associations, partnerships, and marriages,
reproductive freedoms, rights to adoption. In some religious objections, “gender” simply is the same
as, or is a cover for, homosexuality. One finds that presupposition operating in many countries,
including Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Greece as well as UN debates on gender, violence, and autonomy.
For some, this theoretical notion of gender is unreadable and not just because the language is
difficult or the theory is abstruse. It raises a problem of translation and even translatability. On the
face of it, the problem seems to be one of semantics, but it emerges from a broader sense that the
syntactic organization of sense-making within a national language and religious framework is
imperiled (my favorite example was a woman from French-speaking Switzerland who came up to me
at a public event and in French told me that she was going to pray for me, and I asked why, and she
said because I do not believe in natural law and do not follow God’s word. I asked her whether she
had read what I had written, and she said, “of course not, I would never read such a book!”).
So though in such an instance we are not exactly in the realm of thoughtful debate or the
presentation of evidentiary claims, something socially significant is happening which calls for some
thoughtful reflection, even a redefinition of the task of theory. Why has “gender” become such a

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provocative term? In France, the teaching of gender in the schools as part of a state-approved
curriculum is no longer allowed, and in recent months similar laws have passed in Brazil and in Italy,
and now there are bitter debates in Poland, Turkey, and Serbia as well. In Spain, the RAE, the Real
Academia de Lengua refuses to accept “gender” into the language because it is apparently a Puritan
deflection from simply saying sex. So the sex and sexuality are conflated while gender is prohibited.
Whatever the term “gender” might once have meant is for the most part quite transformed through
translation as it becomes a spectre to be fought and defeated. Those of us who sought to craft precise
meanings for the term have found ourselves surprised by the public appropriations and translations.
Gender – the academic term, the debates on gender – are now bound up with the question of
whether the word, the theory, the politics for which it is imagined to stand, can be let in, or whether
it should be barred at the border, and all this as a result of religious, social, and political fears and
anxieties. The life of the term has exceeded and confounded any original intentions or animating aims
it may once have had in the English-language context. The term has entered into other zones than the
one in which I live, and it takes me with it, challenging my monolingualism. No one owns this term,
and no one ever did; the implications of this primary dispossession have taken on heightened
significance right now, since we cannot exactly take it back nor can we exactly let it go.
In the United States, the term gender was introduced by sexologists who were interested in
regulating bodies that did not immediately fit into the category of male or female. The term started to
acquire its contemporary meaning with the publication of John Money’s Harvard dissertation on
hermaphrodites in the late 1940s. Money sought to develop behavioral techniques and surgeries that
would bring intersexed children into conformity with existing gender norms. If a child was born with
anatomically ambiguous features, Money and his team sought to find a way either to “correct” the
body or to bring it into line with gender norms as he understood them. But by the 1970s, feminists
strongly criticized Money, and sought to understand gender as culturally variable, and so refused the
idea that there was one way to be a man or a woman. This is where de Beauvoir returns to the
conversation. But there was a further aspect of Money’s theory that has produced: Money used the
term “gender” to describe what a person is, giving it an ontological status. 1 So the very possibility of
asking what gender you are, or what gender is the infant, was not really a possible question within
English until later in the 1950s and more prominently in the following decades.
Quite contrary to feminist and queer appropriations of the term, the original deployment of
“gender” was in the service of gender management programs with strong and cruel normative plans.

1 John Money and Anke Ehrhart, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972;
Robert Stoller, Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity. N.Y., Science House, 1968. His
dissertation, “Hermaphroditism: An Inquiry into the Nature of a Human Paradox” observed past surgical interventions as
faulty because of the focus on gonadal tissue (Karkazis 2008: 48). He challenged this management because of its lack of
focus on psychological dispositions of the person and physical developments at puberty, both of which could change. In
order to prove his point “… Money did a comparative analysis of 248 published and unpublished case histories (from
1895 to 1951) and patient files, as well as an in-depth assessment of ten living individuals classed as hermaphrodites”
(Karkazis 2008: 49) Although Money found this to be true, his development of a protocol did not reflect his insight. (blog
piece, on gender, sexuality, and the body). I would add that his version of social constructionism was faulted for arguing
that gender could change, since that was the basis of his social engineering projects, including corrective surgery for
indexed infants. But the counter conclusion is possible on the basis of the same premise: gender can change also leads to
greater claims of autonomy for those who seek to change gender assignments. See also Terry Goldie, The Man Who
Invented Gender: Engaging the Ideas of John Money, (University of British Columbia Press, 2014).

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Money and his colleagues sought to identify and correct people with intersexed conditions understood
as mixed primary sexual characteristics that produced the question for him of how such a body could
possibly conform to gender norms. Mixed or ambiguous anatomy posed for Money a serious problem
of social adaptation – how could such a child come to live a happy or “normal” life as a woman or a
man. The category was bound up in that context with the imagined normativity of a life. Money
expected gender to mirror sex, for sex to be identifiable, and for gender to be normative. He expected
that an infant would develop along normal lines, so he thought that gender should follow from sex,
that sex establishes an expectation of social roles, and that gender is the fulfillment of that expectation.
In the view of sexologists at that time, and still in many places in the world, intersexed children
constitute a disturbance to be “managed” in order to realize a normal developmental trajectory for the
child. It was this perceived failure to conform to the expectation of what a sexed infant was supposed
to be that first brought about the notion of gender: developmental expectations were not met, or could
not be met, or they were confounded; there was a deviant beginning that called to be corrected before
the future of the child could be realized.1 In this context, gender named a problem, an errancy or
deviation, a failure to actualize the developmental norm in time. It exposed the fact that sex and
gender do not always match, that the one does not mirror the other; that the one does not follow from
the other. Gender was the name for that very incommensurability. The sex of the intersexed infant
seemed to be different from either gender category that was available. Was it a boy or a girl? The
question could not be answered. The unanswerability of the question led to the contemporary use of
the term “gender.” Money’s solution was to assert gender as a developmental and social norm that
required adaptation, even when, or especially when, there was an incommensurability of bodies and
genders. His question was, how to remake bodies so that they fit the norm. But he never asked whether
the norms were wrong, or too restrictive, or whether the norms could change, even dissolve, to make
room for those bodies.
Sometimes parents or doctors had to decide which gender an infant should be; at such a moment,
gender became a defining attribute of a person, something that the person is, without which the person
could not be, could not exist, in any social sense. Outside of gender is monstrosity. When medical
professionals did not know how to refer to the infant – shall we say “he” or “she” they asked the
question of what gender the infant should be, and then placed the infant within that identity category.
Thus a practice of pronomial reference – “he” or “she” became a new ontological category by which
persons could be described and distinguished from one another. In a way, they moved beyond one
grammatical function of gender in English – pronomial reference - and coined a new grammatical
function, one that produced the ontology of gender as a result. The question of what you are called,
or what you should be called, became a different question: under which category do you fall? And
who are you, really?
Many problems emerged from this approach, including social engineering and the imposition of
narrow and fixed gender norms. But even though sexologists like Money thought they found a way

1 The expectation of the normal life involves the imagining of the future life of the infant; intersex was considered a block
against that imagining of the normal life – indeed, as a term it emerges at about the same time as the films of Douglas
Sirk who in films such as Written on the Wind documented the various errancies that confound the imagined normality
of sex and sexuality.

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for ambiguous bodies to be classified under categories, they named, and brought to light, the
incommensurability of bodies with those very categories. And this was an incommensurability that
was not restricted to intersex infants and children. Sex was not gender. Money’s task was to find a
way to assign gender and to give the assignment ontological status: one has a gender or is a gender,
and that is established through assignment or procedure. The norm according to which the body is
supposed to live out its time, the norm that organizes the life of the body, conditioning its viable
futurity, is precisely that which has already proven to be non-determining. So the ontological status
that is established by the sexologists for the body is precisely one that is induced by the naming
practice itself.
Money and similar practitioners presumed something was wrong with the young body brought
before them rather than challenge whether something might be wrong with the normative phantasms
suffusing linguistic forms of reference that seek to control and craft bodies into normative forms.
There was no sense that the person they were naming might at some point which to decide how they
might like to be named. This was not imaginable as a sphere of autonomy, and the effect of their
practice was to suspend that imagining for many people for many decades.
In making gender into a noun-form, we saw the beginning of locutions such as “what gender
are you” or “what gender is this person?” Check your gender here, in this box. Crawl inside that box
and live your life. The category functioned as a predictor of normalcy. Oddly, the sexologists thought
that gender would secure the normalcy of social practices and institutions (precisely those which in
France and several other countries are considered now to be threatened by gender). This practices and
institutions included the development of heterosexual orientation that would lead, hopefully without
too many detours, to heterosexual marriage, and then procreation within conjugally organized
families that would then supply cohesion for society and the state, a social form that would be
consolidated as a norm and reproduced as and for future generations. Extremes of surgical and
behavioral intervention made this period of sexology into one associated with criminal regulatory
power. Gender did not just become a name with the power to fix the referent; the body itself was then
subject to “fixing” and “correction” through cruel and hideous means that left lasting scars and
constituted criminal acts on the part of sexologists and other health professionals who used surgical
and behavioral means to achieve their goals.
The noun-form of gender, operating as it does with its ontological effect, requires a re-
organization of syntax as well as a new grammatical usage. A new way of making sense emerges
when sentences now take “gender” as an existential predicate, and when new questions can be asked,
such as: which gender are you? With the sexologists, “gender” as a term started to acquire different
usage within the particular language that is English. It was and was not a foreign term within English,
or at least some of its regional histories. It changed again when feminists sought to take the term over
to explain that the identification of sex does not imply what gender might be. Simone de Beauvoir re-
enters our conversation here. As her important criticism of biological determinism was brought into
feminist theory in the 1970s and 1980s, it became increasingly identified with the position that the
cultural and historical process by which a sexed infant becomes a gendered being is variable, and that
it depends on language and culture, history and kinship. The thesis of gender variability opposed the
claim that there is an inherent developmental teleology to be found in “sex”, one that unfolds naturally

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or normatively into one kind of gender or its other. Both Marxist feminism and Simone de Beauvoir’s
existential- phenomenological feminism concurred on this point. There is no one path for becoming
a gender. If we stay within the binary gender frame for the sake of argument, both “women” and
“men” are socially organized ways of inhabiting a body in a broader social world. The task of critical
feminist anthropology in the 1960s and 70s was to uncover and track the cultural or historical
processes by which that transformation takes place. As the historian Joan Scott puts it, “when
American and English feminists borrowed the term gender from the writings of John Money and
Robert Stoller they could be said to have performed its second translation. Translation here means
moving a term from one context to another and thereby altering its meaning. Money and Stoller had
previously taken the grammatical category to distinguish between anatomy (sex) and social
role/social identity (gender) in order to resolve the dilemmas faced by intersex children and to justify
medical intervention that would assign them to an appropriate male or female identity. 1 Feminists
took up the term in order to refuse the dictum that biology was destiny; the motivation was political,
not medical and it troubled (rather than accepted) the normative male/female dichotomy with which
the endocrinologist and the psychiatrist had worked.” In the following years, a number of view on
gender emerged: gender is a choice, or gender is an essence or an abiding feature of identity, or gender
is an historical situation. Or gender is a social category that we use to analyze the public sphere,
inequality, the meaning of work, the problem of freedom. This last use of gender – articulated by
Joan Scott herself – does not see gender as an attribute of identity, but as a theoretical viewpoint by
which to redescribe the historical world and its processes of transformation.
Some feminists and gender theorists have argued about whether there can be genders that go
beyond man and woman, or whether gender itself should be transcended, and we should live in a
world without gender categories at all. My own view is that we should seek to bring about a world
that is more livable for the many relations to gender that exist, the many languages for gender, and
the many ways of doing or living a gendered reality. Some people very much like the binary
framework for gender and want to find their right place either as a man or as a woman and to live
peaceably, if not happily, within its terms; for them, gender is a prerequisite for inhabiting the world.
They want to be able to name themselves with the category and to recognize themselves and to feel
at home in the language of gender that they speak, and to find themselves acknowledged in the name
by which they are addressed. Ethically considered, such claims are to be honored – radically and
without qualification. At the same time, there are others who cannot live very well, cannot find a
livable life, within those binary terms, including trans people who understand “trans” to exist at a
critical angle to the binary, and for them other gender vocabularies are required for inhabiting the
world, feeling at home, or relatively at home, in the language they use, or in refusing the language
that is used; that refusal is also an opening onto a habitable world. And so, reasonably enough, there
are some who ask for new lexicons, or for ways of living outside the category of gender altogether:
they press coinage to a further extreme and for another purpose, or they abandon the practice of
naming, undertaking a strike against gender as we know it.

1 Joan Scott, “Gender Studies and Translation Studies: “Entre Braguettes” – Connecting the Transdisciplines” in Border
Crossings: Translation Studies and other disciplines, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, University of
Turku & University of the Free State / KU Leuven & Stellenbosch University, 2016

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 In fact, all of these are legitimate positions because each of them tells us about a group of people
who are searching for livable lives within the language that they find or make or refuse. Indeed, one
cannot be “against” any of these positions, if each of them opens up a different trajectory of hope for
living a livable life. Given that not everyone finds the same terms to enhance livability, we have to
be careful not to impose a new gender norm that generalizes the conditions of livability, or that
decides without consultation what someone else should be called (some of the debates about “cis-
gender” bring this to the fore). We have to be prepared to translate between a language in which we
live and another language that dispossesses us from that sure sense of things that comes with
monolingualism. After all, some find life and breath by escaping the terms by which recognition is
conferred, and others find life and breath through finally feeling recognized by existing terms, and
some welcome or make the foreign term as a way of busting open the naturalized function of language
(Adorno found hope in the foreign word precisely for that reason as he sought to unsettle the
connection between monolingualism and nationalism in Germany). Experiments with grammar,
riddled with foreign words, produce an impure language, potentially disrupting national identity at
the level of language use where we are always stumbling to find the right words, and allowing
ourselves to feel less sure, less certain than we can when we live in a world of shared grammatical
and syntactical assumptions or presumptive monolingualism.
So there is no referent we might call “gender” that belongs to a pure order of being or even a
translinguistic concept. At the moment one has to explain gender in another language, one sees that
one’s own language is but one way of trying to present the phenomenon, and that the phenomenon
changes depending on the mode of its presentation. It is a moment in which we undergo a certain
humility about the particular language we use, whether it is English, French, Chinese, Spanish, or
Tagalog. There is no one language that can monopolize that referent, no one mode of representation,
no one medium, so sometimes those various versions of gender clash depending on the language. Of
course, this can be hard, since if we understand our gender to be part of who we are, and if we seek
to refine the language of who we are in the monolingual context, drawing on the lexicon and grammar
of that language and becoming resistant to translation, as Derrida has suggested,, we may find
ourselves increasingly unable to communicate who we are across languages. The result is problematic,
for that means that in order to be who we are, we have to stay within a monolingual world and defend
its borders against incursion by anything foreign. Paradoxically, as new coinages proliferate in order
more precisely to specify the identity, translation becomes all the more difficult, and it would seem
then that one can only get recognition for who one is within a monolingual frame – perhaps within a
specific set of language users within that monolingualism.
The proliferation of noun-forms for gender and sexual identity raises specific problems for
translation. Consider the fact that there is no noun form for gender in Japanese. Gender is
communicated mainly through the inflexion of verb-forms, so it is not, strictly speaking, an attribute
of a subject. In Chinese, as I understand it, gender is bound up with grammar in some different ways,
variously expressed by the conjunction of phonemes and numbers: the term for gender is "xing(4)
bie(2). The numbers denote “tones” and there are four of them for each of the two terms. Thus, Xing
(2) means something different than Xing(4). Indeed, this roman system is already a translation of
Chinese characters, so makes something of a grid out of a graphic sign. "Xing" (4) is a term meaning

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"category or kind," but it also means "sex" and so sustains a relation with those languages that link
sex to species. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did the term begin to mean "gender", so to
distinguish gender from sex, some feminist scholars in China put the term "social" (she(4)hui(4) )
before the term Xing(4)bie(2). "Bie"(2) means difference, thus linking with those formulations of
gender as sexual difference.
We can think of many variations here which suggests first that no one language has the exclusive
power to refer to gender, and that means that every way of referring to gender has a certain
contingency. We may individually feel urgency and necessity about being referred to in one way
rather than another; we may understandably feel disrespected if we are referred to in the wrong way.
Those may be moments of monolingual obstinacy or failing to see that the work of translation is
obligatory. We cannot control all the ways we are addressed, the language through which others
understand us, even as we seek to lay claim to the right to name ourselves. That means we cannot
assume a sovereign position over language use: our language rather than someone else’s gets to the
truth of the referent. This cannot be true. And when it is treated as true, it is an act of cultural arrogance
or a denial of multilingualism.
I nevertheless want to argue that politically one should be free to embrace the gender of one’s
choosing, or to side-step the gender binary in favor of another language or, perhaps, a preferred
silence, even though no one makes such a choice ex nihilo. If it is a choice, it is one undertaken within
a scene of constraint and within an historical situation, as de Beauvoir has described. Even as I make
the case for a certain kind of freedom, I am clear that not everyone feels very free in relation to the
gender one has been assigned. Yet, it is not a contradiction to affirm and articulate gender as a
condition that is largely unchosen or, at least, in some sense foreign, that greets us in infancy and
which, usually with some difficulty, we seek to fathom. This language we speak – even this language
of freedom - is foreign to us from the start. So, too, is the language through which we articulate this
most serious and intimate sense of self. I seek to say who I am within a language that proves to be
untranslatable or that is, in important respects, already foreign to me. Only by seeing the matter this
way can we escape the intensification of an ever more refined monolingualism as we seek to make
ourselves known. As much as we seek to own and master the language of the self, we are dispossessed
in language precisely when we seek to break out of the national frame, a singular and dominant
language, to reach, and by reached by, a broader world, multi-lingual, and multi-syntactical. So the
most treasured of our nouns come apart as we come to value translation and the important possibilities
that loss of mastery open up. As much as we make a public claim for how gender should be, we also
come up against the conditions and limits of communicability itself. Even as we formulate language
in which we assert and own ourselves that we are not in some sense dispossessed by a language whose
history and force precedes and exceeds us.
Simone de Beauvoir departed from Sartre’s notion of the project precisely because she
understood that for women, and for subjugated people, exercizing freedom takes the form of a
complex struggle within an historical situation. Freedom is not a spontaneous upsurge, but an ongoing
bind. Even when we claim that nothing about our gender is chosen, it would be a mistake to conclude
that everything about gender is determined. We open up a zone of provisional freedom when we
claim or coin a language of our own in the midst of a linguistic dispossession for which there is no

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reversal, no remedy, no exit. For what we call our language is and is not our own, and the terms by
which we seize ourselves may or may not be translatable, even to ourselves. The untranslatable may
be another name for the desire that exceeds every effort at lexical capture and normative control. It
may constitute that pause or break in language that calls us to attend ethically to one another. It may
also, for those of us who live in English, point to the value of faltering in a foreign language, ceding
the mastery of monolingualism for a world in which we are, luckily, dispossessed together, fathoming,
as we can, through terms we both find and make, a more livable way of inhabiting the world.

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 Marx at the World Congress and in the World

William L. McBride

I began writing this lecture on the date that we are celebrating here, May 5. Marx, had he outlived all
the patriarchs of Western lore, would have been two hundred years old on that date in this year. As I
began writing, a ceremony was taking place in the town of Marx’s birth, the city of Trier, in which a
large statue of Marx, donated by the government of the People’s Republic of China, was being
unveiled. Although Marx ended his permanent residence in Trier when he went to university at the
age of seventeen, it is evident that he in a sense still lives there, as he also does in London, in New
York, in Beijing, and throughout our world. He is present here at our World Congress of Philosophy,
where many participants, myself included, may be strongly tempted to think of him in the way in
which the Western Medieval thinker, Thomas Aquinas, thought of and referred to Aristotle – as “the”
philosopher, philosophus. For, just as the worldview of Aristotle (whom Marx himself, as you no
doubt know, regarded as “the greatest thinker of Antiquity”) strongly shaped thinking and even some
languages in Europe and the Fertile Crescent for centuries, just so Marx has strongly affected thought
patterns, not just in the West but indeed worldwide, for more than a century and a half. Remember
that the Manifesto of the Communist Party was published 170 years ago, when Marx was thirty, and
Volume One of Capital was published 150 years ago, when Marx was fifty. And the major student
demonstrations that began in France and spread to many other countries occurred as many prominent
philosophers were in Paris to participate in a UNESCO-sponsored commemoration of the centenary
of the appearance of Capital in 1968, just fifty years ago. So in fact we have many Marx-related
anniversaries to celebrate here in Beijing.
Most of my remarks today will consist of an attempt to defend my seemingly audacious claim
that Marx is THE philosopher of our time. I shall begin that effort with a reference to some remarks
by the Twentieth-Century thinker with whose writings I have been most occupied among Twentieth-
Century thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre. But first, before that, I feel a need briefly to take account of a
possible objection to the effect that Marx should not be regarded as a philosopher at all.
If I am not mistaken, this objection used to be raised more frequently, at least among professional
philosophers themselves, than it is now. From time immemorial, no doubt, there have been
philosophical schools or movements whose proponents have claimed to be the only true and pure
philosophers, the only ones engaging in philosophy comme il faut. Such people still exist, of course,
but they are no longer taken as seriously, either in the academic world or in the world at large, as I
remember their having been taken when I was beginning my career. In any case, such an attitude runs
strongly counter to the spirit of FISP and of the World Congresses of Philosophy, as I have been
maintaining since I began my close association with this institution decades ago.
Setting this dismissive attitude aside – dismissing it, in other words, and rightly so – we are still
confronted with a few texts in which Marx himself seems to be distancing himself from his
philosophical past. That there was such a past is beyond dispute: There is, for example, his Doctoral
thesis on Epicurus and Democritus. But what of the final thesis on Feuerbach, for example, in which

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Marx says that the philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, but that the point is to
change it? As I see it, only a very tendentious, hair-splitting interpretation of that sentence would
conclude that Marx was saying that he was no longer a philosopher. A different kind of philosopher,
yes, but he remained a philosopher in the robust, encompassing sense of the word that I want to
embrace. And I found it interesting but hardly surprising that the accounts that I read of the dedication
of Marx’s new statue in Trier all referred to him as a philosopher. A certain spirit of common sense
remains among the general public and the mass media.
So, let me now begin my argument in defense of Marx’s philosophical pre-eminence by referring
to a text of Sartre’s from the late 1950s. It was first published in Polish translation in a special issue
of a Polish journal devoted to exploring contemporary French culture, and its original title was
“Marxism and Existentialism;” in its French version it is called “Questions de méthode” and in
English Search for a Method. At the beginning of this essay Sartre discusses the meaning of the word
“philosophy” and maintains that certain rare philosophies capture the spirit, the world-view, of their
epochs. From the seventeenth century to the twentieth, he says, he sees three such waves as having
occurred, the first of which he identifies with the names of Descartes and Locke, the second with the
names of Kant and Hegel, and the third, the current one, with the name of Marx. He goes on to
contend that, for the present time, there is really no way of going beyond Marx; one may oppose his
philosophy, of course, but one is incapable of setting it aside.
It might be interesting to explore further details of Sartre’s claim, but that is for another time and
place. What I want to emphasize here is that, when I first read this text, I felt, despite my general
admiration for much of Sartre’s writing, that it was a gross exaggeration, attributable, at least in part,
to the dominant role that Marxism was then playing in French intellectual life and that of Eastern
Europe, the Soviet Union, and China, but not necessarily in the rest of the world. Now, more than
sixty years since this text was first published, I am inclined to think that Sartre’s overall claim, some
details aside, was correct then, and moreover that it still holds. Marx is still the indispensable thinker,
in so many fundamental ways, for understanding our world. What may NOT hold, on the other hand,
is the belief that history can be neatly periodized and seen as essentially progressive from one period
to the next that underlay Sartre’s division of epochs and that Marx himself inherited from Hegel and
yet at times strove to put into question. Let me explain.
Hegel, as we know, divided world history into three major phases, the order of which he rendered
syllogistic: one is free, some are free, all are free. To the first phase he gave the sweeping name of
the Oriental World, characterized by despotism, one-person rule. If this were not Hegel, we would
smile at the naïve oversimplification of all of this; perhaps we should smile at it anyway. In any case,
world history as Hegel saw it came to a climax in the same Germanic world in which Marx, at the
time at which Hegel was giving his university lectures on the subject, was going through childhood
and then early adolescence; it should not be forgotten that this was also, according to Hegel, the way
in which GOD saw world history. When Marx first came to grips with Hegel’s philosophy and, after
being somewhat repulsed by it at first, began to recognize its many undoubted charms, he could hardly
have avoided being influenced by that aspect of it that I am now considering, its periodization of
history along a path of inevitable progress. In light of his recognition, very early in his career, that
economic relations played a far more important role in history and social formations than Hegel had

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thought – although, it is important to note, Hegel certainly accorded them SOME role especially in
his Philosophy of Right – Marx paid particular attention, in terms of historical epochs, to the transition
from the feudal period to capitalism and to the evolution of capitalism itself up to his lifetime.
Now, no one can seriously question that salient features of human life identified with such terms
as “the feudal period,” for example, were real and dominant during such-and-such a period. But I
would like to mention two problems that periodization, as I am calling it, of this sort raises, and they
are conceptually linked. One is the problem of the precise MEANING of any given period – that is,
of accurately situating it in the course of world history. The second problem is, of course, that of
confidently asserting that there IS a definable course of world history, which can be understood at
least until the present moment, if not also projected into the future. Hegel clearly rejected any future
projection, which is not the same as maintaining, as simplistic accounts of his philosophy would have
it, that history had come to an end in his lifetime. Sartre, at the end of the section of his essay that I
have cited, DOES engage in a future projection of sorts, speaking rather vaguely of a philosophy of
freedom that would replace Marxism once scarcity has been overcome, although he adds that we have
no way of knowing what that philosophy will look like. As for Marx himself, well, every reader
recognizes that the penultimate chapter of Volume One of Capital can be seen as a scenario of things
to come – the expropriation of the expropriators, and so forth – and students know that in some of his
letters he expresses a strong expectation of a post-capitalist world to come. But in fact to attribute to
him a sense of the inevitable development of history along a certain general line, a notion that we do
find in Hegel, would be questionable.
There is, for example, a letter that Marx wrote in response to a query from Russia as to whether
he believed that that country would need to pass through an extended capitalist period before it
became ready for a socialist revolution. Marx emphatically asserted there that he had never claimed
that every society needed to tread exactly the same historical path. In fact, he went so far as to imagine,
deeply knowledgeable as he was about the Classical civilizations of the West, Greece and Rome, that
the class struggles between the patricians and the plebeians in Rome could conceivably have had a
different outcome. So when philosophers attribute to Marx, as Althusser and many others have done,
the discovery of a new science of history, there are no doubt some senses in which that is correct, but
this “science,” if that is what it is, cannot be understood on the model of, say, a chemical equation,
with rigorously defined proportions.
Speaking of science, while always bearing in mind the fact that “Wissenschaft” in German has
a much broader scope than does “science” in, say, ordinary English, I would like to comment for a
moment on the very well-known text that occurs near the end of the Postface to the Second Edition
of Volume One of Capital in which Marx quotes at great length from a review of the first edition that
was published in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1877. This text uses the word “scientific” many times,
and it praises Marx especially for his analytical rigor and his awareness that different rules apply to
different economic periods, something that the reviewer says is not typical of most economists. At
one point the reviewer writes, famously, that “Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural
history,” governed by laws that are independent of human will. It would be a mistake, I think, to
assume that Marx himself agreed with every word of the text that he cited at such length, although it
would be equally mistaken to assume that he disagreed with much of it. But I do not wish here to

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enter into familiar disputes about determinism and epistemology in Marx. Rather, I am calling
attention to this text today for two reasons: first, for the idea that the theories in Capital can be
construed as a “natural history,” and second, because of a few words of comment that Marx makes
immediately following the citation, to wit, that the reviewer has depicted what he takes to be Marx’s
method “in a striking and, as far as concerns my own [that is, Marx’s own] application of it, generous
way.”.
To begin with my second point, while I have read that text hundreds of times, it was only very
recently that I came to appreciate the significance of one word in it: “generous.” Now, what I am
about to say is my own construction, or reconstruction, which may be somewhat whimsical, but I
think it is not. For Marx was not a person who, as a familiar English expression puts it, “suffered
fools gladly.” He had a very acerbic wit, which is manifested over and over again especially in Capital.
What reader could ever forget, for instance, Marx’s characterization of Jeremy Bentham, in a footnote
in Chapter 24, with the words “In no time and in no country has the most homespun manufacturer of
commonplaces ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way”? Or his conclusion to a passage in which
he recalls Aristotle’s fantasy about self-weaving and other types of automated machinery, allowing
for the end of slavery, with the remark, reflecting a bit of well-merited snobbery on Marx’s part, that
the ancient philosophers “lacked the specifically Christian qualities which would have enabled them
to preach the slavery of the masses in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus might become
‘eminent spinners’, ‘extensive sausage-makers’, and ‘influential shoe-black dealers’”? So Marx’s
obvious feelings of gratitude toward the “generous” reviewer for the European Messenger of Saint
Petersburg struck a chord in me when I began to reflect on that remark of his. Marx was a fierce
polemicist, clearly, and was prepared in every text and every footnote, of which there are thousands,
to point out both the stupidities and, often enough, the deep cruelty of those whom he cites, especially
from among those whom he calls the vulgar bourgeois economists. And yet here in this text he shows
that he could be deeply appreciative of someone who read him carefully and formed a clear, even if
partial, overview of his novel methodology and overall theoretical strategy. In the course of my re-
reading it occurred to me that, despite so much evidence of his success in developing a following,
inspiring political organization, and, in short, becoming a well-known figure in some circles of the
European intellectual scene, Marx must have realized that it was not certain that his ideas would have
anything like the amount of resonance that they have had since his death, which happened just ten
years after the writing of that Postface. For, to repeat what I said earlier, there is no straight,
irreversible line of historical progress – certainly not in the history of ideas and of cultures that
ultimately constitutes what we call the history of civilization.
Which brings me back to my first point concerning the text in the Postface, namely, the idea that
Marx treats social movements as a process of natural history. First of all, of course, this identifies
Marx as a materialist, in contrast to Hegel’s idealism; this is easy to see. But I think that there is a
further implication, of which neither Marx nor his reviewer may have been thoroughly cognizant, but
which makes profound sense from our twenty-first century standpoint: namely, that the history of the
human race, as important as it seems to us human beings, is but one small part of a larger cosmic
history of which the evolution of the planet earth, both before and presumably after the millennia of
human existence, is just a fragment. Looked at in this way, the last two hundred years since Marx’s

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birth, the roughly four to five hundred years since the capitalist system began to take off, and even
the longer period of recorded Western history with which Marx was so familiar, constitute very brief
moments of time. But this is our time, the time of gradually learning, and sometimes unlearning, what
it means to be human. And in the theoretical understanding of this process, certainly over the past
century and a half, no thinker is more prominent or has been more successful, I assert, than Karl Marx.
Before rehearsing some of the main components of this success, let me ask you to consider
possible rivals to this claim – other philosophers, again in the broad sense of that word, of the past
century and a half who might be thought to have contributed as much or more than Marx to the
understanding of our global societies. There are some who have been influential but who themselves
owed their initial orientations to their reading of Marx: Lenin and Mao Tse-Tung come first to mind,
and there are others as well, such as Sartre on his sociopolitical side or even, to a considerable degree,
our colleague Jürgen Habermas. Among other candidates one might consider Mahatma Gandhi as
having a special place. It is obvious that I cannot offer a long, comprehensive list here, and moreover
I am here to celebrate Marx and not to examine or criticize others. However, it might be worthwhile
briefly to mention the one recent social theorist who, while the object of an impressively large amount
of scholarly attention, hardly mentioned Marx at all in any of his writings, John Rawls. (In the index
to his first and most important book, A Theory of Justice, there are just six references to Marx, all but
one to footnotes or parts of footnotes.) What Rawls sought to do was in effect to defend, or perhaps
more accurately to revive, political liberalism, which is the title of his second major work, by
generating a type of ideal theory that is beholden to some extent to social contract theory and to some
extent to Kant, but that depends at base on a set of intuitions of what principles of justice would be
chosen by abstract representatives of several generations of human beings who are sequestered
outside of actual society and ignorant of the positions that they will be fated to occupy within it. The
idealization may still appear heart-warming to some, but it strikes me, and in fact has always struck
me, as I argued in a conference four months ago in Xiamen, as having more to do with utopian
fantasies from the world of American hegemony of the 1960s when it was written than with our real
world – as Rawls’s later work on international matters, The Law of Peoples, illustrates even more
clearly.
One of my earliest clues to the regressiveness of Rawls’s theory came when, early on in my first
reading of his book, I found him asserting, in his chapter on what he calls “the veil of ignorance,”
that, while the imaginary parties in his imaginary “original position” do not know what places they
will occupy in society, they DO “understand political affairs and the principles of economic theory.”
Ah, yes, I thought: political affairs and economic theory for all times and places (or, as Rawls himself
at the very end of A Theory of Justice characterizes it, sub specie aeternitatis – from the perspective
of eternity). This was exactly the fallacy of nineteenth-century bourgeois economists, Marx’s
identification and avoidance of which earned such praise from his Russian reviewer. Marx would
certainly have enjoyed dissecting and deconstructing Rawls. And this brings me back squarely to the
question of Marx’s pre-eminence. He had read these people, so many of them, and was ready and
eager to cite and critique them extensively. He had also read compilations of statistics and
Parliamentary hearings and so had developed a vivid sense of the actual sufferings of actual British
people under the yolk of cut-throat capitalism. And not only British: Capital includes, for example,

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accounts of severe exploitation of workers in Belgium and France and, in one of the closing chapters
of Volume One, reference to extreme colonialist brutality and corruption, for the sake of what
economists called “primitive accumulation” of capital, in Africa, India, China, Indonesia, and the
Americas.
Now, Marx was always very clear, by contrast with Rawls, that his careful analyses and
theoretical constructs were NOT meant to be applicable for all eternity – that is precisely the point,
made by his reviewer, about his insisting that historically distinct societies operate under distinct and
different economic rules. And Marx was of course very hopeful that the arrival of a “society of
associated producers” – a socialist society, if you will – to replace the existing capitalist order was
imminent. However, what has struck me with increasing clarity in my most recent readings of Capital
is the extent to which, first of all, the underlying ideology of so many of the defenders of capitalist
practices whom he cites can be heard, and IS heard, every day in our twenty-first century world, and
secondly these very practices and their underlying structures remain remarkably unchanged, at least
in those countries in which, as the first sentence of Capital puts it, “the capitalist mode of production
prevails.” Yes, in recent decades some new terms have cropped up in our economic vocabulary; two
of the best-known are “privatization” and “globalization”. As you may recall, it was Margaret
Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, who popularized the first of these terms, for which, as I always
like to point out, the unabridged Webster’s Third Dictionary, as recently as its 1981 edition, gives
only one definition, one that is far from positive: “The tendency for an individual to withdraw from
participation in social and esp[ecially]. political life into a world of personal concerns usu[ally]. as a
result of a feeling of insignificance and lack of understanding of complex social processes.” In fact,
the reactionary enthusiasm for privatization, often used as nothing more than a slogan, on the part of
some citizens and politicians IS reflective of a “lack of understanding of complex social processes,”
as Marx would have been the first to observe if he had been alive to witness Thatcherism and its
aftermath. In any event, “privatization” in the economic sense is certainly nothing new in the capitalist
system, and Marx was all too familiar with it.
As for “globalization,” this term has suffered a rather strange fate, from being used positively in
earlier literature to being considered very negatively, at least by many, in recent years. What has also
come to be seen, I think, is how much it was already anticipated in many respects by Marx and how
it, too, is really “nothing new.” Marx was well aware of the giant trans-Continental operations of the
British East India Company, for example, and, while focusing his detailed economic analyses on
Great Britain as the most advanced industrial country of his day, was perfectly cognizant of the rising
power of the United States and the rapid industrialization of the European Continent. It was, after all,
Marx who, along with Engels, wrote in the Manifesto of the Communist Party that “the workingmen
have no country.” Marx was certainly a globalist, some would say a cosmopolitan, and so in this
respect, too, his world remains our world.
The fact is that, while some of the physical and technological milieu familiar to Marx has
changed – skyscrapers, automobiles, airplanes, radio and television, and of course the Internet have
all come on the scene since his time – there is a real sense in which, in much of the world to this day,
fundamental social change has not occurred: the capitalist mode of production still prevails. The
institutions of capitalism have evolved, but not so much as might have been expected in view of the

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technological changes. Joint stock companies, as Marx called large corporations, were already salient
features of the economic scene back in his day, and the modern credit system, while still in its infancy,
was something that he anticipated and that can easily be understood within the framework of his
system, as scholars have shown. Some work needs to be done, within a Marxian framework, by way
of comprehending the recent trend of developing and using non-governmental coinage; while I myself,
I confess, have not yet attempted to pay this the serious attention that it probably deserves, I know
others who are working on it, and I have no doubt that Marx, were he alive today, would have much
of value to say about it. (One has only to recall, for example, his brilliant discussion of the historical
role of coins early in Volume One of Capital, or other references in the same work that show that his
familiarity with this subject went back to Roman times.) In short, despite some disagreements about
the continuing efficacy of the labor theory of value in an age of advanced (but, in the world as a whole,
very unevenly distributed) automation, Marx’s theoretical framework and method of analysis remains
very viable and is in fact deployed by the best minds for the understanding of what many have called
“late capitalism.”
In fact, then, Marx’s legacy constitutes a sort of living paradox. Although, as I have often argued
elsewhere, there is no way, using the principal economic variables featured in Capital, to predict a
definite terminus of the capitalist system within a limited period of time – and an indefinitely
postponable prediction is not, strictly speaking, a prediction at all – it seems obvious that Marx FELT
very strongly that capitalism’s demise was on the near horizon, and of course he found this prospect
highly gratifying. (For, despite all his personal setbacks and tragedies, he was at heart a nineteenth
century optimist.) If, however, we were living at a time after this demise, then by Marx’s own
reckoning we would be celebrating the birth anniversary of an historically important figure whose
analyses made sense of the world of yesteryear but were by definition no longer applicable to OUR
world. But it is obvious, as I have been demonstrating, that they are.
In short, what is it that made Marx the greatest social thinker of the Nineteenth Century and
warrants his continuing to claim this accolade well into the Twenty-First? It was his uncanny capacity,
combining a brilliant intellect with a lifetime of hard research into all aspects of what it has meant
and means to be human, to uncover the mechanisms – call them “economic” in the very broadest
sense of that word – that drive the operations of the real world, particularly the modern world. The
system that he unearthed, building on the findings of political economists such as Adam Smith and
of philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel, but synthesizing and going far beyond all of them, was and
unfortunately still is one that has as its basis the exploitation of many human beings by a relative few
and that has as its supreme value the quest for profit, often pursued with great cynicism as I personally
witnessed when working as a clerk on Wall Street during the summers of my university years, in the
interest of unlimited material accumulation. Many before him had inveighed, as moralists, against
excess and greed, but Marx succeeded in providing detailed and clear-eyed descriptions of just how
it was done – and still is in today’s world. There remains no thinker better able than Marx to explain
how the contemporary equivalents of the “extensive sausage-makers” and “influential shoe-black
dealers” to whom Marx referred, having mastered the techniques of exploitation that “late capitalism”
affords, can acquire and maintain positions of both economic AND political power in those societies
in which the capitalist mode of production prevails.

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