WORLD PHILOSOPHY1
Margus Ott
One possible approach to world philosophy is purely nominalistic: philosophy is a name for certain cultural practices, whether in the West, in India, China, Africa or elsewhere. These practices might not have very much in common, or have only a family reseblance, like analytical philosophy, continental philosophy, philosophy of the Upanishads, buddhist philosophy, ancient Chinese philosophy etc. Perhaps one can proceed to try to discover these resemblances. But the following paper takes a different approach and tries to find some internal reasons to what the world philosophy is about, and what would be the utility or interest of determining it, i.e. why would we need a world philosophy. Due to the limits of my knowledge, the following will be focused mainly on European and Chinese philosophies.
As a guiding principle, I take the affirmation of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (in their book "What is Philosophy?") that philosophy is the creation of concepts and the unfolding of a plane of immanence. But one thing they seemed to miss is that there are different planes of immanence, more different than French, German and English philosophy, that they theorize in their book. Of course, the naming is not so important: as a consequence of contacts with other "philosophical" traditions, we can either retain the word and modify our old idea of "philosophy", or we can invent new words to designate those other traditions, making "philosophy" to have a more restricted meaning. The choice depends on our strategic goals: whether we want to stress the unity or diversity. In the following I will use the first strategy, but for other purposes the second one is perhaps preferable (as does Jullien in his Un sage est sans idée, where he takes a broader look on philosophy than Deleuze-Guattari, but decides not to designate Chinese thinkers as "philosophers", but as "sages").
I will begin with a short historical supposition about the emergence of philosophy. Then I distinguish between two coherences (2. section), "digital" and "analog", and trace its consequences to social/political thought (3. section) and to the idea of man (4. section). I venture some possible ways in which the two logics could interact, and how the respective traditions who have stressed more one or the other could enrich themselves mutually. Because otherwise it is not so easy to make explicit the implicit presuppositions of a tradition. For example: the distinctions theory-pranctice, abstract-concrete, cause-effect, essence-accident are deeply rooted in the Western thought, and it takes a good deal of spiritual violence to undo them, a violence very probably not generated by intrinsic means, but received from an Other, from another tradition.
1. Historical background
Some scholars2 have been fascinated by the emergence of philosophy at roughly the same time -- in the 6-5 century BCE in different parts of the world: in Greece (presocratics), India (Upanishads; buddhism, jainism), China (confucianism, mohism, daoism), Near East (hebrew philosophy). One might ask for the reason of this happening, and although I am not qualified to go into the topic, one interesting hint to consider would be that it happened in the context of interface between cultures (or sub-cultures), in regions of contact between different cultural and religious codes: the ionian philosophers in Anatolia at the edge of the Greek world and on the shore of the sea; in India, the emergence of another cultural center around present-day Varanasi, besides the traditional culture of Delhi region (Bronknorst 2007); internal struggles between different regions of China (which meant also intensification of other forms of contact), with a Kong-zi from the eastern margin, a Zhuangzi from the southern margin; the Babylonian captivity of the hebrew elite and the philsophical reflections it caused, both in contact with and in reaction to the Assyrian multicultural context.
The general reason would be quite clear: philosophy requires a certain extent of reflexivity in the thought, a certain inner distance of the thinker; and this is most likely to happen when you come into contact with a different way of thought, different worldview: through this contact, on the one hand your own world-view becomes more explicit, and even when you oppose the other, you take something over from him/her, already creating the presuppsitions for overcoming the initial incomprehensions and oppositions (only to discover afterwards new, and more subtle differences and incomprehensions!). Yuri Lotman has presented a powerful conceptual framework for further elaboration of the topic of "dialogue", of philosophy as emerging from dialogue with some different world-view.
If it is so that cultural differences stimulate thought and perhaps philosophical insights, then one might ask, why after all there are so few great philosophical traditions? As an educated guess, I would suggest that this is simply a reason of quantity, of spatial and temporal extension of a would-be philosophical tradition. That is, if embyonic philosophy is instigated by an encounter with the other, then this would happen everywhere and in everybody (because even in your own culture, you encounter others, and perhaps even your language as other, and when you meet somebody from another culture or background, this would simply be an intensified form of this encounter). But for these embryonic instigations to come together and to empower each other in the specifically philosophic form, a rather extensive and old culture is usually required, and usually also a writing system (one of the most powerful tools of alienation).
2, Logics or coherences
That's how far I can go with sociological reasons. But if we now try to characterize the emergence of philosophy in internal terms, what would we say? I mentioned that philosophy is the creation of concepts. Now, according to the idea proposed here, philosophical concepts are different from mythological figures of speech. Our purpose is not to define a set of tokens by which we could classify a text as philosophical or mythological. It makes no sense; the beginnings are most often imperceptible. Our idea is just that we can theorize distinct intentions, which might be interpenetrating each other at the beginning (or at some other time), but which we can detect more or less clearly at some later point of time. So, a mythological text also expresses the meaning of the universe and of human existence, but the difference is that it does it mainly in figurative terms, through narrative and description. It is not that this way of thinking would be more "confused" or more "primitive" -- would we claim that a good poem is some confused and primitive way of thinking?. Then we would simply miss the point of the poem, we would be incapable for this other form of precision and elaboration (perhaps due to the habit of scientific reasoning, which, again, is not more precice and elaborate than poetry, but has a different kind of precision and raffination). But in mythological thinking the ideas are expressed through tales. They also vehicle philosophical content, but I propose that philosophy in the narrower sense emerged when a certain reduction or formalization was made on the level of expression: as in mathematics, where you do not speak about five apples and four bananas, but simply about 5 and 4. This is a generalization which needs not be thought of as an abstraction: the general notion arrived at need not be cut from the concrete multiplicities which are its basis (as an idealization separated from the sensible), but it can be thought as a concentration or contraction of these multiplicities. Actually, as I try to show later, the first type of generalization (i.e. abstraction) would be more characteristic of certain cultural aeras (namely, Greece, and perhaps also India), and the second type of generalization (i.e. concentration) would be more characteristic in other areas (for instance, China).3 Issues of the world as a whole, of animals and humans, of human society, etc. are treated, but in a conceptual manner, i.e. not so much through narratives and figures of speech, but through systems or coherences of concepts. I do not intend to affirm that philosophical concepts are not metaphorical or that narrative is not involved in philosophical speech, but that they relate to each other differently in mythological and philosophical settings. In philosophical context their concrete being is generalized or, so to say, diluted. In this way the philosophical narrative becomes in a sense more vague than mythological narratives: attention is not so much on the concrete particular happenings of a character in a tale, but on the thought-content of it. But on the other hand, a new kind of precision is won, which operates namely on the conceptual level. Specific thought-tools are invented, certain terms or concepts, and a certain logic or way of connecting them.
Here, a comparison of Chinese and European philosophy is useful to show that this generalization must not necessarily be an abstraction, but can be a "condensation". The Greek philosophers started to search for the true essence of world, and they found it in a certain element (water, fire, air, earth, aether) or in more "pure" concepts like platonic ideas or aristotelian synolon of form and matter. This is construed as an abstraction, i.e. the idea of a thing (if we take platonism as a characteristic representative of Greek thought) is beyond the sensible things, as the ground of their being. I would name this type of reasoning "discrete", "digital" or "juxtapositional" (logic of integrity in Kasulis' terms). This means that certain realities are intended somehow to be outside each other (either really or ideally), that they are one next to another (juxtaposed), that there is a "gap" between them (the abyss between the ideal and real), a discrete or digital distinction.
The Chinese philosophers, on the other hand, do not seek ideal essences behind real things. From very early on, also the Chinese conceived of certain inner principles of things -- this is manifested in the hexagrams of Yijing, in the dialectics of yin and yang, in the five xing.4 But they are very different from Greek first principles or archai. Greek principles are theoretically autonomous, and their interactions are conceived of as one such principle acting on another. But Chinese principles are only aspects of the same process, of the process as a whole, and if the five xing were at the beginning translated as "elements", then very correctly this translation has been changed to "phases". This is indicated aready by the sinogramm for xing (行), which means "to go, to move" etc. (originally, a representation of crossroads). So, "five goings" or, we could very well say, phases. So, the Chinese idea is not to explore the ideality behind the reality, but to investigate the different nuances and tendencies of one and the same reality, understood as one process. The Chinese try to bring out and to conceptualize the tendencies of the process (most generally: yin and yang, or their more nuanced combinations), but these concepts do not designate something behind the process investigated -- instead, they are intended to describe the inner mechanism of the process itself. I would name this type of reasoning "indiscrete", "analog" or "interpenetrating" (or "intimate" in Kasulis' terms). This means that although we enumerate certain amount of concepts, they are not intended to be outside each other, but inside each other (interpenetrating mutually), that there is no "gap" between them (they form all together one process), an indiscrete or analog distinction (the concepts designate certain thresholds of continuous variation). In one phase all the other phases are implicated, and an abstraction of a phase "in itself" would be inconceivable.
3. Society
I would like to take another example, that of social interaction, which leads me to propose a way in which Western and Chinese philosophy could mutually aid each other. In the Western idea of social interaction, the notion of equality is one of the central concepts. It is said to have two roots, in ancient Greece and in the Jewish tradition. In the Greek democratic polis, all the citizens are in prinicple equal before the law. Again, their relations are "discrete" in the sense that you have several free and autonomous individuals, who are separated by a gap -- and communication is secured over this gap by certain common public rules and laws. You have a number of equal individuals who are not subject to any one individual by that individual's intrinsic right (as in monarchy or tyranny), but to supra-individual prindiple, law. Nevertheless, the number of citizens in ancient Greek polises was quite limited and again, every city had its own laws. The Jews took this principle further, so that everybody was equal before an even more separated or trancendent principle, the God, and His "law" was valid over all the chosen people (later extended to all the mankind by the Christian tradition). This very relation to a juxtaposed principle bestows the individual with an intrinsic value, which is the greater, the more transcendent is the principle. So, in judeo-christian context every individual has an absolute value (because the transcendence is absolute)5, even should we strip him/her of all the "terrestrial" relations. The community of autonomous individuals implies characteristic modes of relating to each other, which Kasulis calls "responsibility" (and which he distinguishes from "responsiveness").
The positive import of such kind of view is that it liberates persons from the overwhelming domination of immediate relationships: neighbours, relatives etc. This has evolved so far that in a contemporary Western society people can very easily contract distant relationships, which is facilitated by the modern means of communication. So perhaps I feel that I have more in common with somebody in Johannesburg or Melbourne than with the man next door. Perhaps I have more to speak with a frenchman or a chinese than with an estonian with whom I share my mother tongue, but not cultural values and ideals. The other side of the story is that, as Henry Rosemont stressed many times, even if other people and the government may recognize your lawful rights, they are not obliged to take any interest in you. So it happens very often that some of those autonomous persons are deemed into an autistic position where nobody cares about them: old people, poets, artists, alkoholics and scores of others (this is a very acute problem in Estonia, which is a very individualistic country)6. It can happen that the anguish of facing the void or the transcendence, becomes depressing and impedes action.
Also, it seems that the idea of individuality has not been taken far enough and that we actually are not true individuals, i.e. singular persons that differ from everybody else, but that we still attach our individuality to certain "identities" like nationality, gender, cultural values, political and religious views and so on. It seems that we choose a small number of our relations, bundle them up and call it our "individuality". But this individuality is still identical to thousands of other individuals, it is not our singular being. And I surmise that it is not an accident, but a structural tendency of the discontinuous or digital way of thinking: if I make a gap between myself and others, then most often I don't have enough courage and strength to take it to the logical end, where my individuality becomes truly singular, but mostly I let myself to be determined by crude forms of relation (or "identities").
In China, a person is not cut off from other persons, in the sense of his/her essence being in direct contact with the transcendence and everybody being equal in repect to this relation. In China, human relations have always been considered unequal, like emperor-minister, father-son, man-wife, elder brother-younger brother, (elder) friend-(younger) friend. Actually this gives a more precise description of human reality: my relations to others and to my surroundings are most of the time unequal. It is a question of forces: sometimes the other's force is greater, sometimes my force is greater. The essence of a force is to be unequal (cf. Nietzsche). So, we are not homogeneus "individuals", but in principle every person as an intersection of different lines of forces is different (even if it is not made explicit). Also, as the person is not separated from others and the world by a gap, there is no motive for an existential anguish. I do not mean to say that traditional Chinese didn't have existential anguish, but I suggest they didn't treat their case separately from all the other human beings and from the world. So, this way of thinking is more close to the concrete reality, more nuanced and flexible, as it doesn't operate with ready-made other-worldly entities ("ideas", "individual essences" etc.). Every human being is an intersections of relationships, of forces, and nothing outside of them (as Henry stressed several times), and these forces and relationships are unequal.
The problem with Chinese political thinking is that, due to a historical and sociological accident, it was tied up to a monarchical conception of government. To some extent it is also logical: if all the relationships are unequal and there is always somebody superior, then this whole system seems to naturally point towards the summit of the pyramide, where the monarch is situated. Of course, there is some kind of analogue to the transcendence: the Heaven (天) which gives the mandate to the ruler and which can also take it away. But this transcendence was never carried very far and it remained an immanent element of the whole Process or Dao (道), and it didn't have comparable emancipating power as the Western Heaven or God (Mohists went as far as to speak about the "will" of Heaven, but the personification didn't go further, and even the mohist idea died out). But I think that the pyramidal structure is not the only possible and necessary outcome of this kind of thought-system. If I, as an intersection of forces, am stronger than another intersection in respect to one force, I can very well be weaker in another respect, and an intersection of absolute power, which would be stronger than all the others in all respects, seems impossible. As I said, it seems more like a historical chance that a pyramidal scheme has imposed itself to Chinese political thought (perhaps in part motivated also by the inner logic of the thought), and it can be changed.
So, the Western "digital" thought could help to emancipate the Chinese thinking from the pyramide, because people in a pyramidal structure are always liable to abuses by the upper layers of the pyramide. And the Chinese "analog" thought can take the Western idea of individuality much further, all the way to the singularity -- because I am singular only when I don't reserve some private essence for myself (because this would in fact be common with so many others), but when I have given up all "essence" and acknowledge myself to be wholly determined by my relationships. It is only this particular network of relationships that is truly singular.
4. Man
As a final suggestion, I would like to propose still another way in which an encounter with Chinese philosophy could be useful for the Western world in general and Western philosophy in particular. I have in mind the conception of man in his/her psychophysical constitution. Here again, the West has proposed and gradually radicalized the idea of a kind of transcendent instance -- the mind, or reason -- vis-à-vis the bodily reality. We are bodies, but our body is subjected to the mind, spirit or reason, which uses it as its tool or "organ". Body is the tool of the mind. This can be a useful simplification (as also the ontological and sociological simplifications, considered above), but problems arise from the juxtapositional way of thinking it comes from: body and mind are then considered to be one next to another, and as strange as it might not seem, heated arguments over their relations have still not ceased in the West. Here again, a Chinese or Indian conception of man is probably more realistic and close to the reality. Notably I have been interested in a strange concept which from the Western viewpoint would seems to be situated between the body and the mind, namely the Chinese notion of qi (氣; also several other graphs are used, with certain differences in meaning) and the Indian notion of prāṇa. I have not been able to develop this idea very far, but in a very general way we could imagine a human person as an indivisible process, of which "mind" and "body" would be two different aspects, one more "subtle" and the other more "coarse". One could both say that this conception would signify the materialization of the mind or the spiritualization of the matter. But the truth would be that it would actually signify a change in paradigm, in logic: instead of a digital or discontinuous conception, an analog or continuous understanding. Instead of ruling over our bodies as transcendent instances (our "minds"), we would be regulating ourselves, both in our minds and bodies. I have had some contact with the practice of taiji. It does involve bodily movements, but it is no hard sport; it doesn't involve any particular intellectual strain other than to pay attention to what you are doing. But after some time of practice, body becomes more healthy and mind more penetrating. Taiji is said to improve the movement of qi, and the improvement of body and mind seem to be like a side-effect. You practice the whole of yourself.
Here again, the two conceptions of man have their own advantages. The juxtapositional conception helps a person to be more independent, self-ruling, more able to detach onself from his/her surroundings. The interpenetrating approach helps a person to be more healthy both physically and mentally (and the first step to health is to undo the juxtapositon of "physical" and "mental").
5. Conclusion
In the previous discussion, I have brought out two logics, "digital" and "analog". The idea was that, even though the "analog" coherence is by no means completely lacking in the Western thought, it has still been underestimated and underdeveloped. Perhaps "digital" simplification or radicalization has had its part in the Western success in the sphere of science and technology (so that they would be "useful simplifications"). But nowadays this mode of knowledge has been firmly secured, so that this simplification is not necessary any more, and we could start to make more nuances in our ontological presuppositions. To do this, it would be wise to meet with other philosophical traditions (India, China, Tibet, Japan, Hebrew, Arab etc,). If we assume that the philosophy was born on the borders (as was perhaps too boldly proposed in the 1. section) of cultures, as an abstraction or concentration of earlier thought, then the world philosophy could be born on the borders of different philosophies.
References:
Johannes Bronkhorst. Greater Magadha. Studies in the Culture of Early India. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007.
Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
François Jullien. Un sage est sans idée. Paris: Seuil, 1998.
Thomas Kasulis. Integrity or Intimacy. Philosophy and Cultural Difference. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2002.
Juri Lotman. Culture and Explosion. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009.
1 I would like to thank Mart Kangur and Eik Hermann for useful remarks, as well as the very good professors of Tallinn University Summer School 2010 on World Philosophy.
2 Here I should include some reference, but unfortunately I have forgotten where did I encounter this idea, and I seem to be unable to identify it at the moment. Of course, this section is higly hypothetical and is based on very insufficient historical knowledge. I decided to include this section thanks to the possible relation with Juri Lotman's theory of culture (in "Culture and Explosion", which seems to me an interesting line of research.
3 This is a question of degree. I do not support cultural or linguistic determinism; these two logics coexist in every culture and it is only a question of emphasis and finding sources for examples (and a question of background and foreground, as for Kasulis). "West" and "China" are more like heuristic tools, as in Jullien. I admit that in a more refined version of the ideas presented here, the different logics should come out more clearly by themselves, and need not any more to be tied to a certain culture.
4 Scientifically, I'm not very precise here, I don't distinguish between different theories (as the yin-yang, wuxing) according to their time of emergence. I have a more general or esseistic approach here.
5 That is, the individual has an absolute obligation, responsibility towards the transcendence. I anticipate the objection that transcendence lessens the value of "this world" (one of Nietzsche's favourite topics) -- it is right in the sense that it is not the individual by itself that has absolute value, but it is his/her relation to the transcendence that is valued.
6 The professor of Italian in Tallinn University, Daniele Monticelli, once made the remark that Estonians don't have solidarity, but they are tolerant, and the Italians, vice versa, have solidarity, but are not tolerant. If somebody lays on the ground, Estonians can very well pass by, thinking "Well, it's his right to lie there", but the Italians wouldn't tolerate such kind of anomaly. One or the other can be better, depending on the occasion: whether the person has some problem or he/she simply wants to be left alone. This is related to the logic of integrity vs intimacy, as theorized by Kasulis.