DIFFERENTIATION AND MEDIATION.
TWO LOGICS OF COSMOGENESIS, ONTOGENESIS AND EPISTEMOLOGY
1. Introduction
The following essay investigates two different accounts of the birth and functioning of the world and individuals: the logic of differentiation and the model of mediation. Formally speaking, it is a matter of emphasis: in the logic of differentiation, the emphasis is on the two poles of a relation (it can be taken as the simplest model of difference), which are considered to differentiate themselves from a third, more primordial state (which is typically left unnamed, or named only reluctantly). The model of mediation, however, stresses the relation (the “third”) between the two elements; the elements are taken to be already there, and it is the third element (which is typically named) that is active and puts them into relation.
The logic of differentiation will be characterized on Chinese examples (mainly from “Zhuangzi”) and the model of mediation will be shown through Greek texts (mainly through Plato). The analysis is carried out in three domains: cosmogony, ontogenesis and epistemology. I try to bring out a certain number of systematic differences, which are formed around one or the other logic.
2. Cosmogony
2.1. Zhuangzi
I will take some examples from “Zhuangzi” and Plato’s “Tiamaeus”. Let us start with the story where Zhuangzi’s wife has recently died and Zhuangzi’s friend Hui Shi comes to condole him, but finds him beating on pots and singing out loudly.
“She lived together with you,” said Master Hui, “raised your children, grew old, and died. It 's enough that you do not wail for her, but isn’t it a bit much for you to be beating on a basin and singing?” “Not so,” said Master Zhuang. “When she first died, how could I of all people not be melancholy? But I reflected on her beginning and realized that originally she was unborn. Not only was she unborn, originally she had no form. Not only did she have no form, originally she had no vital breath. Intermingling with nebulousness and blurriness, a transformation occurred and there was vital breath; the vital breath was transformed and there was form; the form was transformed and there was birth; now there has been another transformation and she is dead. This is like the progression of the four seasons—from spring to autumn, from winter to summer. There she sleeps blissfully in an enormous chamber. If I were to have followed her weeping and wailing, I think it would have been out of keeping with destiny, so I stopped” (Mair 169).[1]
惠子曰：“與人居長子，老身死，不哭亦足矣，又鼓盆而歌，不亦甚乎！”莊子曰：“不然。是其始死也，我獨何能無概然！察其始而本無生，非徒無生也，而本無形，非徒無形也，而本無氣。雜乎芒芴之間，變而有氣，氣變而有形，形變而有生，今又變而之死，是相與為春秋冬夏四時行也。人且偃然寢於巨室，而我噭噭然隨而哭之，自以為不通乎命，故止也。” (46/18/15-19)
We find here a genetic series: a state of “nebulousness and blurriness” (wanghu 芒芴), then vital breath (qi 氣), then form (xing 形) and finally life (sheng 生).[2] In other places in “Zhuangzi” the initial state is also called “void” (xu 虛) [3], non-being (wuyou 无有) [4] and similar expressions, but it is to be understood as a kind of interpenetration of everything, i.e. not some kind of “non-being” as opposed to “being” in the sense of the Greek presocratic philosopher Parmenides, but a potentiality or virtuality that contains everything in a confused and intermingled state. The genesis seems to be a process of differentiation of this primordial state. It is a gradual stressing of differences, so that what was “together” or “interpenetrating” before, becomes more and more distinct and separate. And the cycle of existence is concluded when a being returns to the primordial state of interpenetration. The word “cycle” could be misleading in the sense that this word could imply a kind of repetition of the same cycle (or repetition of an analogous cycle on a higher or lower level in a spiral movement), whereas the nature of the “cycle” is actually not specified here. At least it is not explicitly subjugated to some principle of identity between the cycles.
The less determined is the source of the more determined. This is expressed in the supremely comic (but at the same time very serious) story in “Zhuangzi” which runs as follows:
“The emperor of the Southern Sea was Lickety, the emperor of the Northern Sea was Split, and the emperor of the Center was Wonton. Lickety and Split often met each other in the land of Wonton, and Wonton treated them very well. Wanting to repay Wonton's kindness, Lickety and Split said, “All people have seven holes for seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing. Wonton alone lacks them. Let's try boring some holes for him.” So every day they bored one hole, and on the seventh day Wonton died” (Mair 71).
南海之帝為儵，北海之帝為忽，中央之帝為渾沌。儵與忽時相與遇於渾沌之地，渾沌待之甚善。儵與忽謀報渾沌之德，曰：“人皆有七竅，以視聽食息，此獨無有，嘗試鑿之。”日鑿一竅，七日而渾沌死。(21/7/33-35)
This is almost a biblical narrative in the negative. Both stories have an introductory situation involving three characters (here Lickety, Split and Wonton; cf the formless and void earth tohuvavohu[5] plus the Spirit of God hovering above it, Genesis 1:2) which is followed by a seven-day sequence. But whereas in the biblical narrative it denotes a progress, which culminates in the creation on man and woman, then Zhuangzi’s version seems rather to express a regression. Or perhaps not even a regression, but we could take it as another expression of similar basic ideas as in the previous story we discussed. Here we would have the first stage (the Wonton) and the second stage (Lickety and Split, as a kind of yin-yang differentiation, cf. the qi-stage in the previous story[6]), and we could imagine also a third one which is the creation of beings with seven orifices, i.e. man and other creatures with form and life, as the results of this primordial “murder” through perforation.
2.2. Plato
In Zhuangzi’s account the genesis moved from less individualized to more individualized, without any agent behind the process, in virtue of an immanent differentiation. In Plato’s “Timaeus”, instead, the genesis is effectuated by a demiurge who is a kind of cosmic manufacturer.
“For God desired that, so far as possible, all things should be good and nothing evil; wherefore, when He took over all that was visible, seeing that it was not in a state of rest but in a state of discordant and disorderly motion, He brought it into order out of disorder, deeming that the former state is in all ways better than the latter” (Timaeus 30a).
βουληθεὶς γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἀγαθὰ μὲν πάντα, φλαῦρον δὲ μηδὲν εἶναι κατὰ δύναμιν, οὕτω δὴ πᾶν ὅσον ἦν ὁρατὸν παραλαβὼν οὐχ ἡσυχίαν ἄγον ἀλλὰ κινούμενον πλημμελῶς καὶ ἀτάκτως, εἰς τάξιν αὐτὸ ἤγαγεν ἐκ τῆς ἀταξίας, ἡγησάμενος ἐκεῖνο τούτου πάντως ἄμεινον.[7]
Then the Maker proceeds with a double process of creation, that of body and that of soul. The bodily world is visible and tangible. For it to be visible, it must be made of fire, and for it to be tangible, it must be made of earth, but
“it is not possible that two things alone should be conjoined without a third; for there must needs be some intermediary bond to connect the two” (Timaeus 31 bc).
δύο δὲ μόνω καλῶς συνίστασθαι τρίτου χωρὶς οὐ δυνατόν: δεσμὸν γὰρ ἐν μέσῳ δεῖ τινα ἀμφοῖνσυναγωγὸν γίγνεσθαι.
This demand for a third is very characteristic of the model of mediation we are discussing here; it is always the “third” that mediates (whereas in the logic of differentiation it would be the “zero” that differentiates itself). In this concrete case of the creation of world’s body, these intermediaries are water and air, which help to make up the three-dimensional world.
Then Plato describes the genesis of world’s soul.
“Midway between the Being which is indivisible and remains always the same and the Being which is transient and divisible in bodies, He blended a third form of Being compounded out of the twain, that is to say, out of the Same and the Other; and in like manner He compounded it midway between that one of them which is indivisible and that one which is divisible in bodies. And He took the three of them, and blent them all together into one form, by forcing the Other into union with the Same, in spite of its being naturally difficult to mix. And when with the aid of Being He had mixed them, and had made of them one out of three, straightway He began to distribute the whole thereof into so many portions as was meet; and each portion was a mixture of the Same, of the Other, and of Being.”
τῆς ἀμερίστου καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἐχούσης οὐσίας καὶ τῆς αὖ περὶ τὰ σώματα γιγνομένης μεριστῆς τρίτον ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ἐν μέσῳ συνεκεράσατο οὐσίας εἶδος, τῆς τε ταὐτοῦ φύσεως [αὖ πέρι] καὶ τῆς τοῦ ἑτέρου, καὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ συνέστησεν ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ τε ἀμεροῦς αὐτῶν καὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὰ σώματα μεριστοῦ: καὶ τρία λαβὼν αὐτὰ ὄντα συνεκεράσατο εἰς μίαν πάντα ἰδέαν, τὴν θατέρου φύσιν δύσμεικτον οὖσαν εἰς ταὐτὸν συναρμόττων βίᾳ. μειγνὺς δὲ μετὰ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ ἐκ τριῶν ποιησάμενος ἕν, πάλιν ὅλον τοῦτο μοίρας ὅσας προσῆκεν διένειμεν, ἑκάστην δὲ ἔκ τε ταὐτοῦ καὶ θατέρου καὶ τῆς οὐσίας μεμειγμένην. (Tim 35 ab)
This already complicated story is followed by even further details on the genesis of world soul, but we will not go into these details.
Plato’s cosmogony can be summed up as follows: 1) Two primordial entities or aspects, “chaos” and “paradigm”, or in other words on the one hand “discordant and disorderly motion” that the Demiurge “sees” (as the motion is “visible”, ὁρατὸν), and on the other hand, an eternal paradigm or model that the Demiurge looks at or has his[8] gaze fixed on (βλέπων, Tim. 28a).[9] These entities are mediated by a third, which is the Demiurge himself and who likes order (i.e. he has taken the side of the paradigm). 2) Then the Demiurge orders the chaos and forms the World with its two aspects, body and soul. The relation of World’s body and soul is on the one hand that of Differentiation (like the ever-differing chaos) and Integration (like the integrative paradigm), but on the other hand they are both also internally differentiated: world’s body includes the mutual genesis and “friendship” between fire and earth (or between fire, air, water and earth) that mediates between them, keeping them both distinct and keeping them together. Similar synthesis of the Same and Different takes place in World’s Soul. 3) Then the Demiurge moves on to create the heavenly bodies and beings both divine and mortal.
2.3. Zhuangzi meets Plato
The most important thing that concerns us in Plato’s account is the very fact that there is a Demiurge who creates of models the world, or in more general terms, that there should be a “third” between two aspects (this requirement is explicitly stated), which is the active kernel of the relation: the paradigm and chaos are passive or inert by themselves; it is the mediation of Demiurge that puts them into motion and sets off the genesis.
In the second story by Zhuangzi we discussed, we find the opposite structure: it is the extremes (Ruler of North and Ruler of South, yin and yang) that are active, while the center (“Wonton”, i.e. hundun) is passive. The differentiation takes place at the expense of this primordial state (and in a very dramatic way!), which is left on the background, forgotten or “killed”.
The cosmogonies are useful in the sense that they present in most basic and clear terms two different approaches. The model of mediation seems to stem from explaining conscious individual action. The conscious agent finds already at hand some material and has some ideas: in the cosmic scene all these elements become archetypes (demiurge, chaos, paradigm). The interest lies in how the action or creation proceeds. Later Aristotle will analyze it in even greater detail (his famous four “causes”: material, formal, efficient and teleological), and although his understanding of action and embodiment is very different from Plato’s, it still fits in the same broad idea of focusing on action and the will of the actor.
Zhuangzi’s stories are in a sense more basic, because they do not presume any agents, materials or goals, but investigate the genesis of the agents themselves. They are seen as the results of a process of differentiation from a more interpenetrating state of affairs. It will be later presented in more formal terms by Laozi § 42[10] where we find the sequence of differentiation: Dao > One > Two > Three > Ten thousand things. The logic of differentiation focuses on the birth and development of the whole of the system, comprising doers and the things they do.
It is not surprising to encounter animal metaphors in models of mediation and vegetal metaphors in stories of differentiation: the first is built on the analogy of animals who by definition are heterotrophes, i.e. who need others to feed themselves, i.e. who have to seek for food (and flee for enemies), i.e. who focus on a certain point of their perceptual field, bring it into clarity, and act on it. Differentiation metaphors, on the other hand, deal with the birth and development of all beings, including animals who also must undergo some development before they can start to act.
Also, the model of mediation favors explanation by causation (A causes B), which has been the main way of explaining cosmogony in the West. The logic of differentiation, on the other hand, operates between different layers or stages of interpenetration and distinction – what counts here is not so much the identification of causes and effects, but to find out the potential of a situation as a whole, and its most probable lines of evolution.
In the following section we will take a look, how the two logics work at level of individuation and individual psychosomatic life.
3. Ontogenesis
3.1. Bodies in the logic of differentiation
As we saw from the first story from Zhuangzi, attention is paid to the genesis of the individual, of the coming into being of a being. But the life of every being is also a process. From Chinese conceptions concerning body and mind we can see that stress is laid on regulation, i.e. adjusting the flow of somatic and psychic events, and on relation, i.e. beings are seen as fundamentally relational. This means that beings are in constant becoming, both in their inner constitution and due to their changing relations with other beings. As C. Despeux says: “What counts is not the physical object we see before our eyes, but the various possibilities of transformation afforded by a dynamic vision of life. The body is recast in terms of motion, as the site of the circulation of qi and blood, and the transformative mechanisms of Yin and Yang and the Five Agents; the inner landscape; the world of the gods and demons” (Despeux 2005: 51).
From Deborah Sommer’s analysis of different Chinese notions of body, it appears that a clearly limited and individualized body is not so much presupposed, but that it is rather the result of a delimitation, of a more or less advanced juxtaposition. This can be seen from several notions (and perhaps their plurality itself testifies to the fact that there is no simple and clear-cut idea of the body). Let us consider in this light some examples given by Sommer 2008 and 2010.
1) The ti3 體 body “can be partitioned into subtler units, each of which is often analogous to the whole and shares a fundamental consubstantiality and common identity with that whole. [...] [O]ne human being [...] may be inhabited by multiple ti bodies, and several human beings may participate in a single or common ti body” (TB[11] 294-5). For example, the expression “four ti” denotes four limbs, so that our body would be made up of four ti-units. A single human body is also a ti, which is again comprised into bigger wholes, as it is “organically consubstantial with the bodies of ancestors and descendants and is only one part of a larger whole” (CB 223 vist). The ruler and the ministers form also a ti-body. And finally the “largest unit of the ti is the cosmos itself” (CB 224).
The ti-body is understood in vegetal terms and its prototype is the vegetative reproduction, where a plant can be divided into several parts, all of which develop into a copy of the original plant.[12] The vegetative reproduction is about growth and differentiation: you have the original plant, which then grows into bigger (i.e. more differentiated, inside the organism) plant or is divided into several small plants (i.e. increases the differentiation or distinction between organisms). In a sense the whole universe can be considered as a big “plant”, of which the various organisms and things would be local (and temporal) differentiations.
2) The xing2 形 body “has two primary valences of meaning: first, as Sivin and Ames note, it refers to a visible or solid form, shape, mass, or physical frame whose boundaries, outlines and external features are clearly discernible on the surface to the naked eye. [...] Second, it refers also to nonvisible structures, patterns, or matrices that lie beneath the surface of the visible form and give it its shape or structure” (TB 300-301, cf. CB 218) like the skeleton, terrestrial landscape, the configuration of an army etc. So, xing would denote a certain individualized internal structure or pattern and the shape that it shows outside. If the ti-body was about part-whole relationship, then xing-body is about inside-outside relationship (TB 301), i.e. what is comprised inside an individualization process and what is left outside (but which cannot survive without this “outside”; a shape is always drawn on the background of a more primordial shapelessness).
“Xing forms are bounded by formlessness itself [i.e. the pre-individual – M.O.]; they exist at a more primordial or elemental level than do ti bodies and are sometimes described as coming into existence prior to the ti body.” (TB 301). They surely do not precede the ti body in the sense of the whole of cosmos, but in the sense of a part of it: the differentiation of a pattern and shape can be taken to describe the division of that “one body” (yiti) or “common body” (tongti) of cosmos. The beginning of individualization that is implied in the xing body would mean the appropriation of a part of ti-body, its distinction from other focuses of individualization.
It is interesting to see, as Sommer points out[13], that in “Zhuangzi” a much stronger emphasis is put on the xing body, in comparison to other texts. “Zhuangzi” insists on going beyond social and human world, towards higher levels of interpenetration – so it would be evident, why it is so important to pay attention to the very first stages of individuation or juxtaposition (because individuation implies one individual being next to another, a focus of individualization makes the first distinction of inside/outside). Zhuangzi invites us to “forget” about the form or to “slough it off” (CB 221). And he describes some characters who have succeeded in doing it, so that “far from being perturbed by change, Zhuangzi’s characters find great joy in the innumerable transformations of forms” (CB 221), like a willow sprouting from the arm[14], or arms turning into chickens or crossbows etc. (ibid).
Although in a different manner, the xing body is also about differentiation and making more clear distinctions, as two or more juxtaposed parts (shapes, patterns) come from a previous situation where they were merely virtual and interpenetrating.
3) The shen1 身 body. The xing is usually not reflected (although as an exception, in “Zhuangzi” the xing can be practiced and cultivated), and it is mainly the shen body that is the kernel of self-awareness and self-cultivation[15]. It is a further step in individualization or becoming a person: “Having a xing form prevents one from being formless in the cosmos, but having a shen body places one in more specific, parallel relationships with other human shen bodies, with one’s clan, and with the state.” (TB 303). Shen bodies to not overlap in the way ti bodies do, but are linearly contiguous. The shen body can be “developed through thought and reflection” (TB 304).
For our purposes we could temporarily make a distinction and say that ti body is communal, xing body is individual and shen body is personal, each signifying a further distinction. Shen body is the “site of familial and social personhood located within one’s physical frame. It is also the site of individual personhood constructed by such factors as self-cultivation, education, and social status.” (CB 215-6). In Zhuangzi there seems to be the idea that this body can live out its lifespan or that it can die prematurely (hence the “usefulness of the useless”, e.g. a person with a mutilated shen body can avoid conscription to army and possible premature death).
Like ti and xing bodies, also the shen body is relational in its own way, related most importantly to one’s “parents, ruler, state or even all-under heaven” (CB 216), and it can be monitored and cultivated through these relations (which in ritual contexts finds expression through the gong body, see below). Through self-awareness of the shen body it is possible to regulate these relations and to become better integrated and more flexible in one’s personal encounters.
4) The gong1 躬 body “is a vehicle for the performance of ideal values, and it there it [sic!] moves in stylized, nonspontaneous ways guided by ritual conventions. Its conduct is meant to be witnessed visually by others” (CB 214). The values accumulated and reflected internally in the shen body can be conveyed publicly through the gong body; and the gong body “in an expanded sense refers to the sum total of the self or person that is created by those actions” (TB 307). Gong body is a body-for-others, which connotes a social commitment: “Gong bodies endure hardship and perform exemplary physical labors, often in paradigmatic ritual contexts. Such toil is virtuous conduct, for the laboring body displays efforts performed not for personal gain but on behalf of society at large” (TB 308).
The exertion of gong body is seen as virtuous in the Analects, but in Zhuangzi it is used in a pejorative sense. We may think that they take two different attitudes how to regulate the social relations: Confucius takes a humoristic attitude and tries to blend into the ritual behavior, so that it becomes a second nature; Zhuangzi takes an ironic attitude and rejects the entire social web, endeavoring to attain even higher “naturalness” or flexibility.
In all these cases[16] the stress is not laid on the mediating role of the individual, on his/her willpower and determination, but on his/her relations with other centers of individuation or personalization, and on each individual’s or person’s capacity to respond to the whole, i.e. his/her ability to maintain the contact with the pre-individual and pre-personal, i.e. the virtual field of interpenetration.
3.2. Soul as mediator
3.2.1. Soul as the governor of the body
The mediation-type description of individual’s life can be found in several places of Plato’s dialogues. Let us take some examples from “Phaedrus”. Here Plato explains that the soul puts body to movement: the body is moved by other (i.e. soul), but the soul is moved by itself.
“For every body which derives motion from without is soulless, but that which has its motion within itself has a soul, since that is the nature of the soul” (Phaedrus 245e).
πᾶν γὰρ σῶμα, ᾧ μὲν ἔξωθεν τὸ κινεῖσθαι, ἄψυχον, ᾧ δὲ ἔνδοθεν αὐτῷ ἐξ αὑτοῦ, ἔμψυχον, ὡς ταύτης οὔσης φύσεως ψυχῆς
Plato formulated the general idea of the soul as the mediator, and Aristotle made its meaning even more strong and precise. It is Aristotle who called body the “tool” (organon) of the soul (De anima 415b). What we call today the “organs” are in turn the tools of the body. “What made a part an organ, however, was its role in some activity, the enabling of acts like seeing, talking, walking. Organa were tool – the original meaning of the term – instruments with specific uses. And they presupposed a user.” (Kuriyama 1999: 264). The user, of course, is the soul. Body is the primary tool of the soul and with manufactured tools the power of body can, of course, be further extended. What is important, is that this logic is intimately related to teleological and causal analysis: soul is the place which sets goals and finds means, it is where deliberation takes place, and the choice between possibilities. This space of deliberation (which is both external-political and internal-psychological) points towards the freedom of soul: it is not tied to the deterministic causal chains, but can choose between different possible ways of initiating causal chains.
So we have here a relation of mediation: on the one hand the world (some job to do), on the other hand the body (the tool for this job) and finally the soul as the one that mediates between them: conceives plans and goals in the world and gives orders to the body. That the body is the instrument of the soul has been repeated ever since Aristotle.
3.2.2. Soul as internally mediated
In Plato’s account the soul itself is sometimes described according to the scheme of mediation – e.g. in his famous image in Phaedrus where the soul is compared to a chariot driven by two-horses and a charioteer:
“We will liken the soul to the composite nature of a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the horses and charioteers of the gods are all good and of good descent, but those of other races are mixed; and first the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character. Therefore in our case the driving is necessarily difficult and troublesome” (Phaedrus 246ab).
ἐοικέτω δὴ συμφύτῳ δυνάμει ὑποπτέρου ζεύγους τε καὶ ἡνιόχου. θεῶν μὲν οὖν ἵπποι τε καὶ ἡνίοχοι πάντες αὐτοί τε ἀγαθοὶ καὶ ἐξ ἀγαθῶν, τὸ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων μέμεικται. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἡμῶν ὁ ἄρχων συνωρίδος ἡνιοχεῖ, εἶτα τῶν ἵππων ὁ μὲν αὐτῷ καλός τε καὶ ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἐκ τοιούτων, ὁ δ᾽ ἐξ ἐναντίων τε καὶ ἐναντίος: χαλεπὴ δὴ καὶ δύσκολος ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἡ περὶ ἡμᾶς ἡνιόχησις.
The “good” horse is orderly and tends towards the long-term good, but the “bad” horse is disorderly and inclined to immediate satisfaction. The role of the charioteer is to discipline the bad horse, so that it will finally follow its commands (Phaedrus 253c-256a). This requires willpower and determination. Here again the mediation is named and personified (the charioteer)
The description of soul as mediator (or the soul mediated internally) is all about conscious action: how to set goals, find tools and implement plans. This is seen as the most important part of one’s life.
3.3. Zhuangzi and Plato
In several places Zhuangzi makes reference to a kind of meditation practice, which he calls as “fast of mind” and which is described through the comparison that your “body is like dried wood and mind like dead ashes” (e.g. 3/2/2, 48/19/20, 55/21/25, 63/23/41). We could suppose that the aim of this practice is to trace back through the levels of differentiation, distinction and separation, from personal to individual to pre-individual. To somehow go back to the state of interpenetration of things or “roam in the land of nothingness” (游於無何有之鄉) and be more responsive to everything there is. The idea is that we could even anticipate external encounters with things, because we have arrived at the state of interpenetration of things before they take form and become juxtaposed one next to another.
Plato’s practice is not one of meditation, but of mediation – to reinforce the entity – i.e. the soul – which mediates and chooses. Not to let it interpenetrate with other things and their overall process of changing (the “dao”), but on the contrary, to make this entity ever more distinct, self-determining, capable of decision and action.
Both distance themselves from “things”. We are familiar with platonic critique of sensible cognition, but also Zhuangzi is critical of behavior, which gets attached to things and stresses the existence of something different (“the thing-er of things is not a thing” 物物者非物 – but again it is very characteristic that it is not named, what this “thing-er of things” is – or “thing things and not let yourself be thinged by things”物物而不物于物, ch. 20). But after this seemingly similar observation in Plato and Zhuangzi, the paths taken are very different, Zhuangzi towards interpenetration (but not identification!) with things, and Plato towards even more distinct separation from things (it is important to separate the soul from the body, which is an important part of the philosophico-spiritual practice of “melete thanatou” or “mindfulness of death”).
Nevertheless I would allow the possibility that these diverging paths could meet at the end, so that the practice of meditation and mediation would at the end give the same effect. What this effect would be, I would rather let undecided here (if it can be decided at all). One is actively passive (Zhuangzi), the other is actively active, but both of them edify themselves somehow.
4. Epistemology
4.1. Zhuangzi
It is said in the “Zhuangzi”:
“I've only heard of people knowing through knowing, never of people knowing through unknowing” (Mair 33, translation modified).
聞以有知知矣，末聞以無知知者也 (9/4/31)[17]
“Then not to know is to know! To know is not to know! Who would know the knowing of not knowing?” (Mair 219, translation modified).
弗知乃知乎！知乃不知乎！孰知不知之知？(60/22/61)
I would like to argue that these phrases don’t refer to the impossibility of not-knowing or unknowing, but rather to the problematic inherently related to knowing. “Not knowing” or “unknowing” (不知, 無知 or 弗知) is not simply the negation of knowing, but it is another type of knowing. The two types of knowing relate to each other as clear and fuzzy, or explicit and implicit. Our knowledge forms a more or less clear region with clear-cut pieces of knowledge with which one can manipulate. The facts one knows and the arguments one is familiar with are of this type. But this clear region floats in an obscurity, its borders fade into darkness (and the pieces of clarity run always the risk of drowning, being forgot, fading away).
We could conceive that the pieces of our clear knowledge are formed by bringing together a certain amount of suspension, which is brought up into the clear daylight and separated from all the rest. The leftover is cast to the obscurity, which by this becomes a little darker. The clarity always implies this darkness[18], floats on it and drowns in it. This obscure ground of our clear knowledge itself will by definition remain unknown. On its basis I can bring into clarity ever more things, but the obscure ground will always draw itself further away as a horizon.
According to my interpretation, Zhuangzi’s idea is to somehow “intend” this obscure knowledge, to take it into account. We can have a different attitude towards this non-knowledge as obscure knowledge. We can either think that we are defined by our clear knowledge, cling to its pieces and dedicate our whole attention to the manipulation of them. Or we can respect the obscure knowledge as the genetic ground of all clarity, so that we could recognize the role of all the obscure cognitive processes involving my whole body and its surroundings. This second possibility considers knowledge as differentiation and separation of clarity from interpenetrating and fused obscurity. It can keep moving the cognitive cycle of bringing into clarity and letting to fade away, of understanding and forgetting. I propose that it is namely this way of knowing that Zhuangzi wants to render with the seemingly paradoxical phrases I cited above.
4.2. Plato and Western theories of signification
Mediation-type theories focus on the link that unites words and things, and which is called with different names in different schools: idea, concept, signification, reference, designation, denotation or other. According to Plato,
“the soul views some things by itself directly and others through the bodily faculties” (Theaetetus 185e).
εἰ φαίνεταί σοι τὰ μὲν αὐτὴ δι᾽ αὑτῆς ἡ ψυχὴ ἐπισκοπεῖν, τὰ δὲ διὰ τῶν τοῦ σώματος δυνάμεων.
The things the soul sees via bodily faculties are the sense impressions and the things it sees by itself are the essences (οὐσία).
If soul was the mediator between the body and its surroundings, then ideas or essences are soul’s transcendent objects, which mediate between a perceived object and its recognition, and most specifically between words and things. We perceive a sensible multiplicity and recognize it as a “chair” thanks to the idea, concept or essence of the chair, which assembles the perceived multiplicity into one whole and permits us to make use of the real-world chair. And we understand the word “chair” thanks to the linguistic idea or signification, which enables us to recognize the same concept through different pronunciations of the word (this idea can be extended over languages: we recognize the same concept through different linguistic expressions of it: chaise, Stuhl, sedia, tool, yizi etc. all refer to the concept of chair[19]).
4.3. Complementary accounts
The two logics of epistemology and signification – by differentiation and mediation – can be of mutual help to each other: the mediation-strategy allows us to formulate precise and scientific programs of research for perception, cognition, semantics etc., clarifying the physiological and psychological mechanisms involved in them. But by themselves these theories may give us false impression of explaining the whole of knowledge. We must not forget that they deal only with the floating pieces of clear knowledge, which imply the obscure ground of non-knowledge. The other account, of the logic of differentiation, can reintegrate this scientific research and its results into the whole of man’s life-world, because otherwise they would remain perfectly senseless. And an immersion into the not-knowing (or of interpenetration, “land of nothingness” according to Zhuangzi) can also help to dissolve received forms of knowledge and form new ones. There is no reason for the logic of differentiation to be hostile to mediation-type research (or vice versa); on the contrary, it can make it more dynamic and powerful.
5. Conclusion
In this essay I examined two different philosophical strategies – the logic of differentiation and the model of mediation – in cosmogony, ontogenesis and epistemology. They imply very different ideas, ways of knowledge and behavior. They can be seen as complementary to each other, or of mutual help to each other, and the benefit of considering these different logics is that we could more freely use the other strategy, if we have become too much involved in one or the other way of understanding things – and thus evolve more freely in the course of the world or create and act more powerfully in that world.
Bibliography
Catherine Despeux, “Visual representations of the body in Chinese medical and daoist texts from the song to the qing period (tenth to nineteenth century)”, in Asian Medicine, vol 1, nr 1, 2005, pp 10–52.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine, Zone Books, 1999.
George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago 1980.
Victor Mair, Wandering on the Way, New York: Bantam Books, 1994.
Deborah Sommer, “Boundaries of the Ti body”, in Asia Major, 2008, vol 21, part 1, pp. 293–324 (abbreviated as TB)
Deborah Sommer, “Concepts of the body in the Zhuangzi”, in V. Mair (ed.). Experimental Essays on Zhuangzi, Three Pines Press, 2010, pp. 212–227 (abbreviated as CB).
Zhuangzi yinde, Shanghai, Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986.
Greek texts from: www.perseus.tufts.edu
[1] If not indicated otherwise, all English translations of Zhuangzi will be taken from Victor Mair, Wandering on the Way, New York: Bantam Books, 1994. Wade-Giles transcription is changed to pinyin. Hereafter we will use the abbreviation “Mair”.
[2] See also Sommer 2010: 221.
[3] E.g. 60/22/65.
[4] E.g. 63/23/57 and 60.
[5] This word consists of two parts, tohu and bohu, so I take it to be “two”
[6] Yin qi and yang qi are the basic forms of qi.
[7] The English translations and Greek texts of Plato are taken from the website: www.perseus.tufts.edu
[8] The word for Demiurge is masculine in Greek.
[9] As we see, this model of mediation is very visual; Plato often speaks about seeing with the eyes of the soul, and the word “idea” itself comes from the word horao “to see”. We start from two visible or perceptible aspects (e.g. body and things or words and things), and it is assumed that the third one, which mediates them, is also visible, although not corporeally, but spiritually. On the subject of Greek medicine, Shigehisa Kuriyama has traced the history of the birth of the “anatomic gaze” (Kuriyama 1999).
[10] Following B. Watson and J.-F. Billeter I take this text to be later than the story about the death of Zhuangzi’s wife’s. At least intrinsically this would seem to be their order, as Laozi’s account is more formalized. Perhaps Zhuangzi would not have subscribed to such a straightforward or “objective” account.
[11] For abbreviations see Bibliography.
[12] In fact, in the earliest texts, ti was used to designate vegetal bodies (TB 297-299).
[13] “In the Zhuangzi, the xing form has all these connotations [i.e. of shape and pattern. – M.O.] – and more besides, for he endows it with more life energy and physical presence than found elsewhere” (CB 218).
[14] Some commentators like to mend the “willow” (liu3 柳) to “tumor” (liu2 瘤).
[15] “Xing is usually below the level of conscious reflection for people other than sages, and for most people, it is the shen body, person, or self, that is self-aware and is the site of inner reflection and cultivation” (TB 303).
[16] I suppose this analysis could be extended also to the more “spiritual” aspects of a person: jing 精, qi 氣, shen 神, hun 魂, ling 靈, etc.
[17] According to Zhuangzi Yinde. The first number refers to the page number in that edition, the second number to the chapter and the third number to the row in the chapter.
[18] Cf. Heidegger’s analysis of Greek aletheia ‘truth’ as a-letheia, ‘un-concealed’.
[19] The old form of pre-established and universal concepts has been of course abandoned. In contemporary cognitive semantics they are replaced by certain universal principles and strategies that result from our embodiment (see the seminal book by Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago 1980). They have introduced the logic of differentiation into semantics: the existence of conceptual metaphors (the very fact that there are words by which we designate and distinguish things, although in the nature they might not be clearly distinguishable, e.g. a “mountain”) and orientational metaphors (to articulate the space in terms of location in relation to one’s body: before/after, above/below etc). are universal in all languages (although the particular distinctions vary), as well as the principle of transposing from more concrete to more abstract (the “metaphors”, the two most noteworthy examples being talking about time in terms of space and about language in terms of containers). The more closely we look, the more divergence we see between languages. Lakoff and other linguists have elaborated a new semantics which is more flexible and adequate than the previous semantics of structural linguistics and generative grammar, but which in large part still fits into the same general tradition, which sees the essence of knowledge in mediation. It is just that the mediators have become more flexible (e.g. different category types of Lakoff, not just one of logical embedding). Other linguistic theories of philosophical intention have sometimes introduced the logic of differentiation and non-knowing into their core, e.g. G. Deleuze’s “Logic of sense”, where “sense” is something different from the three commonly accepted relations of reference, designation and signification.