Wu, Chan-liang
National Taiwan University
Ever since the introduction of the idea of science and logic into Modern China, Chinese intellectuals were in a constant struggle to adopt and to come to terms with Western rationalism. Most of the Chinese intellectuals chose to surrender to the authority of science and reason. However, there were also some intellectuals chose to criticize it. Among them, the Modern Confucians, especially the school of “philosophy of life,” played a crucial role.
In this speech, I will concentrate on an analysis of Liang Shuming and some other Modern Confucians’ philosophy of life in the May-Fourth period. Liang is a most original thinker and also a founder of Modern Chinese Confucianism and Cultural Conservatism. He was deeply immersed in Buddhist, Taoist, Chinese medical, and Confucian traditions. An analysis of his thought can clearly demonstrate the conflicts between the Chinese tradition and a rationalized new world view.
1. Background
2. Liang’s life
3. Liang’s theory
4. Liang’s influence and evaluation
In the process of world modernization, Western rationalism played a crucial role. Modern science and technology, market economy, division of labor, bureaucracy and management, rule of law, democracy, ideas of human rights, and individualism are all inseparable from Western rationality which is deeply rooted in the Western intellectual tradition. A new world view and mode of thinking based on Western rationality, especially that of Enlightenment rationalism, is something that Chinese people must face in their search for modernity.
However, Chinese people have their own highly developed and sophisticated world views and modes of thinking characterized by Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist “rationality.” The Chinese “rationality” is, however, different from Western rationality in many fundamental ways. When the Chinese during the turn of this century first met the powerful rational world view from the West, the impact upon them was tremendous. An iconoclast movement that developed based on Western rationalism proclaimed the futility of the entire traditional Chinese world view and mode of thinking as long as they were different from Western rationality. This is what we usually call the Chinese Enlightenment that blossomed during the May Fourth Period (1915-1927).[1] There were, however, many other intellectuals who tried to criticize foreign rationality from a traditional perspective, or to develop a dialogue between the traditional and those aspects of Western rationality that they felt they had to accept. Many more Chinese people, while advocating Western rationalism in their consciousness, were strongly influenced by the non-Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment elements that they inevitably retained from their upbringing.
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Among all the cultural conservatives in the New Culture Movement, Liang Shu-ming was the first to provide an overall and penetrating analysis of the meeting of Western rationalism with the Chinese intellectual tradition. In 1921, Liang published his Tung hsi wen-hua chi ch'i che-hsueh (Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies, hereafter cited as THWH), which soon became the focus of attention for contemporary Chinese intellectuals.[2] In this book, he showed subtle sensitivity not only to the world view associated with reason but also to the fundamental difference, and the possibility of communication, between a rational world view and a traditional Chinese world view that, in his theory, centered on a very different kind of mentality--intuition. He criticized the "mechanistic civilization" of the West severely, but he also admitted the need for China "to learn from the West completely," especially in the areas of Western science and technology. He searched for the spirit of Chinese intellectual tradition, the advantages of the Chinese way of thinking and the Chinese world view, and spoke eloquently of their universal values, especially their value in a mechanistic, alienated, and fragmented modern world. By doing so, Liang presented himself as being drastically different from the conservatives before him, who asserted the value of Chinese culture mainly from a more narrowly China-centered point of view. In clear contrast to their views, Liang's reflection on Western rationalism and Chinese tradition is a part of global post-Enlightenment conservatism.[3] It was also the first formal and systematic statement of the "Modern Chinese Cultural Conservatism."[4] The historical situation in which Liang created his philosophy is what I call "Liang Shu-ming's moment," since he was the first one to meet the challenge from modern rationalism so powerfully as to elevate traditional cultural conservatism to Modern Cultural Conservatism, and to initiate the Modern Confucian Philosophy of Life, New Confucianism, and Neo-Humanism in modern China.[5]
The Structure of Liang Shu-ming's System: The Meeting of the Chinese and Western World Views
The New Culture Movement raised some pressing and puzzling questions for contemporary Chinese: What are the essences of Chinese and Western cultures? What are the true values of Chinese culture? Should and could China be Westernized? If so, in what sense?
In his Tung hsi wen-hua chi ch'i che-hsh (Eastern and Western Cultures and Philosophies), Liang attempted to answer all of these questions. He started from the question of essence. From a traditional Chinese perspective, Liang viewed a culture as an organic whole developed from a central theme. China, the West, and India, which he saw as the world's most important cultures, were representative of three fundamentally different themes, and these themes he defined as different attitudes toward life. According to Liang, each attitude corresponded to an emphasis on different mental faculties--reason for the West, intuition for China, and "immediate sense" for India.[6]
The[TW1] meeting of China and the West, therefore, meant the encounter between basically different styles of life, patterns of cognition, mental attitudes, and the different "world views" developed from these attitudes. As a result, the dialogue between rationalism and the Chinese mind also symbolized the meeting of the basic spirits and philosophies of China and the West[TW2] .
In Liang's writing, the Westerner was characterized as having strong individualized drives to conquer and to manipulate the external world with reason, "the highest form of self-regarding emotions."[7] In order to fulfill the strong desire to conquer and to acquire, westerners use reason to calculate, to analyze, and to dissect things calmly, or even cruelly, so as to manipulate things efficiently.[8] To Liang, the three most distinctive achievements of the West -- the conquering of nature, science, and democracy--are mainly results of this basic style.[9] To conquer nature means to change the "original harmony" and to fight with nature ruthlessly. To study things scientifically, on the other hand, means to alter the harmonious relationship between man and the environment, and to break, to analyze, to separate, to cut the world into pieces in order to understand it. As for democracy, it means struggling with other people and with the authority to reach a consensus among ambitious and contending individuals. One must be highly motivated and rational, which also means to be indifferent and calm to the not-me-world, in order to achieve those objects.[10]
Using the same logic, he labeled the basic attitude toward life of modern westerners as utilitarianism, which emphasizes "rational calculation, knowledge, and rational management."[11] Western economy is characterized by cold and competitive capitalism-- a ruthless competition between individuals.[12] In such an economic system, the workers "are used by machines," such that their work becomes "tedious and uninteresting." Even people with relatively high positions must "devote [themselves] to the management and pursuit of merchandise, be calculative all the time, and suppress their feelings and emotions."[13] Similarly, the order of Western society is maintained not by people's free and good will but by the imposition of law, a product of reason. The rationalized modern Western world as a whole appeared to him as "fragmented"--artificially cut into different categories, elements, interest groups, individuals, regulations, and laws by man's reason.
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Based on both his criticism and appreciation of the basic style and achievements of Chinese and Western cultures, he proposed a synthesis of the two. The new approach for the Chinese, he said, should be to "adopt Western culture completely but with its basic attitude changed, and critically bring forth the original Chinese attitude."[14] The new attitude Liang advocated is a dynamic attitude toward life, which is energetic and powerful like that of the westerners but still self-satisfied and loving like the original Confucian teaching. Since he believed that cultural contrivance and development are mainly determined by one's attitude toward life, he asserted that this new attitude could be the basis for incorporating the advantages of both Chinese and Western cultures. In the new culture created by this new attitude, intuition would play the central role and reason would be treasured, but Liang left the relationship between reason and intuition unclear.
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II. Metaphysical Issues: Becoming Over Being
While Liang was writing THWH, his thoughts were dominated by two kinds of philosophy: the voluntarism which originated from Mahayana Buddhism, and a Life Philosophy derived from Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese medicine. Both of these philosophical tendencies, however, were also encouraged or influenced by Liang's study of Western science and post-Enlightenment philosophy. Buddhist voluntarism was essential to his philosophical system, his criticism of Western rationalism, and to his cultural theory. Chinese Life Philosophy was his life-long belief and the basis of his interpretation of the Chinese world view. These two philosophies then, are the keys to Liang's sophisticated mental world.
Both Liang's voluntarism and Life Philosophy are, like their "counterparts" in modern Western intellectual history, at odds with rationalism in many ways. By their own very nature, both Eastern and Western voluntarism and Life Philosophy tend to set up a couple polarity. On the one hand they praise will, sentiment, organicism, integration of life, human instinct, intuition, art, holism, monism, becoming, process, dynamic world view, moral subjectivity, affection between people, tradition, custom, and natural community. On the other hand, they, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to criticize reason, analytical methodologies, knowledge, science, a mechanistic world view, technology, technocracy, the concept of being, order, law, structure, atomism, pluralism, social engineering, contract theory, utilitarianism, and modern society. Granted, not all these issues were treated by Liang. His philosophical sensitivity and broad interests, however, led him to infiltrate most of the topics. Given its resulting complexity, it is impossible to unveil his grand scheme all at once. In this section, therefor, only matters pertaining to the first principles, the "metaphysical issues," will be analyzed.
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Liang was a Confucian while he was writing THWH. However, being a newly converted Confucian, the philosophical basis of his world view was still largely dominated by Mahayana Buddhism. In THWH he said: "I am applying only a Buddhist view to judge everything. The method I employed to observe a culture came exclusively from Buddhism."[15] Although this statement ignores the influence he received from other sources, it still informs us of the central importance he gave to this Buddhist world view.
From Liang's Yogacara Buddhist world view, "the entire universe is 'living,' there is only living but no universe." What[TW3] is living? Living means "the continuation of things." What is a thing? A thing is the inquiry and response of will. Our sensations, consciousness, and self-consciousness only represent different forms of willing. Their inquiry causes things to happen, which, in essence, are only the effusion of will. Things, as the process of living, have no independent and separate substance of their own. The "Essence of living is will," and the entire universe is the manifestation and embodiment of the Great Will. Ourselves, our living, the universe, and the will are an inseparable One.
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Liang's Buddhist voluntarism, which he abandoned in his later years, cannot, like Schopenhauer's voluntarism and Hegel's idealist ontology, maintain ontological or cosmological credibility in today's philosophic dialogues. Nevertheless, it is still valuable in analyzing human nature and culture. To Liang, as to Schopenhauer, reason is only the instrument of will. It is therefore will, not reason, that determines the basic orientation of human action. Based on this voluntarist philosophy, Liang defined the essence of a culture according to its basic mode of willing, in other words, its attitude toward living. To him, "the essence of living is will, and culture is nothing other than the style or mode of living, therefore, it is obvious that the differences of culture are caused by the differences of will."[16] The major trend of history, as well as of human life, is formed not by rational deliberation, material conditions, and environment, but by man's will and desires. Reason, science, and knowledge are the means of these desires, but not their end. The advantage of this kind of cultural philosophy is to recognize the decisive power of will in human affairs; the problem is, obviously, oversimplification.[17]
B. Life Philosophy and the Chinese Tradition
After Liang's conversion to Confucianism, Life Philosophy gradually became his life-long central belief.[18] In this section, I would like to demonstrate that Liang's Confucianism was a philosophy centered on the idea of life, that this Life Philosophy, though with complex origins, came mainly from Buddhist and Chinese traditions, and that Life Philosophy was crucial in determining his attitude toward Western rationalism. Major elements and characteristics of Liang's Life Philosophy and their innate resistance to Western rationalism will be analyzed in order to clarify the complexities involved.
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As mentioned in the above section, Liang's Confucian Life Philosophy grew out of his Buddhist metaphysics of will and living. However, it was not simply a derivation from his Yogacara Buddhism, but also a world view and way of life deeply rooted in his complex intellectual background. As a grand philosophical system, its basic theme came from Liang's study of Chinese medicine, Taoism, and Confucianism; its metaphysical and cosmological structure derived from the Yogacara Buddhism; while a modern interpretation of it came from his understanding of Western physical and biological science, Life philosophy, and Vitalism. Behind all this was Liang's persistent inquiry into the questions of life, and a search for a coherent and humane world view.
About the origins and central importance of his Life Philosophy, Liang said:
Tzu-jan (nature, [things]-from-itself) and sheng-ming (life) are the two essential concepts of my thought. I view this universe as alive, and take tzu-jan as the canon of everything. It seems that I emphasize more on nature than on the artificial. This is the Chinese way. Both Taoism and Confucianism, the two important Chinese schools, take life as their basic concept. The Four Books say: "What says the heaven? Four seasons proceed, and all the things grow;" and "be proper and keep harmony, the universe will be in order, and everything will flourish." They express fully the meaning of life and tzu-jan. . . . For a certain period, I studied Buddhism with endeavor, and then turned to Confucianism. In the initiation of this change, the Ming Confucian Wang Shin-chai [Wang Ken] provided me the greatest inspiration, and led me to the gate of Confucianism. He honored tzu-jan the most, from which I began to understand the meaning of Confucianism. . . . Later, comparing [the two concepts] with Western thought, I was deeply attracted by Life Philosophy, represented by Bergson, which elucidates it the best. Moreover, studying Chinese medicine has benefitted my philosophy. Medical texts inspired me as to [the nature of] life; . . . Confucianism, Western Life Philosophy, Chinese medicine are the roots of my thought.
The idea of tzu-jan and life represent Liang's life-long central belief that the essence of existence is a life-like, dynamic cosmic process that is unceasingly growing and changing.[19] Liang's thought underwent many modifications in later years. However, the emphasis on the process, instead of on the end or result, never changed.[20] To him, the process is the only end, the only reality. Only thing-from-itself is tzu-jan (nature), and it is much more valuable than things from a calculative basis other than itself. This attitude, which is also the spirit of Neo-Confucianism, became the foundation of his "Confucian philosophy."[21]
To Liang, nature is nothing other than this cosmic process; and this cosmic process is a growing, active, internally connected, responsive, and organic whole, just like life itself. Therefore, life and nature are usually analogous in his philosophy. Nevertheless, since Liang was much more interested in human affairs than in nature, and maintained an anthropocentric interpretation of the cosmic process, the concept of life is still more significant than nature in his philosophy. Accordingly, he used his Life Philosophy to define the highest principle of existence--Tao-- by saying: "What is Tao? Tao is the great life of the universe; to be one with Tao is to be one with the great life of the universe."[22]
Liang learned this same principle from his study of Chinese medicine. He began to study medicine, both Chinese and Western, in 1914, and found that the "logic" and methodologies of Chinese and Western medicine are fundamentally different.[23] He discovered that "Chinese medicine is thoroughly [embodied by] the concept of life." Life refers to the overall vitality of the life-form. It cannot be measured by the well-being of specific parts of the body. When a Chinese doctor "measures the pulse," he pays attention to the "strength of the entire life-force." Liang also found that in contrast to Chinese medicine, the "object of contemporary Western medicine is not life but body." It "emphasizes partial mechanism [of the body], but does not pay enough attention to the "change, growth, and decline of life."[24] Clearly, life to Liang is a dynamic and organic whole which cannot be reduced to the mechanistic sum of the partial mechanisms. This holistic concept of life that Liang found in Chinese medicine greatly helped to shape his interpretation of the "Chinese world view."
C. On the Metaphysical Basis of Western Rationalism
Liang believed that both traditional Western rationalism and Western culture come from an aggressive attitude toward life. According to his Buddhist voluntarism and Chinese Life Philosophy, reality is by itself a constant flux, a life-like cosmic process, which is beyond the rigid reign of reason and rationality. By contrast, it is the goal-oriented mentality, a kind of "illusive insistence," of westerners that creates the idea of substance and the belief in using reason to inquire into the substance of things. Rationalism and the rational world view are only the products of this mental habit. He traces this Western tradition by saying:
Originally, Greek thought flourished in every aspect. There were both outwardly oriented study and inwardly oriented study, study of nature and study of man, study of substance and study of change. However, later on, only the outwardly oriented, nature-oriented, and "static substance" oriented study flourished. Other thought dwindled away.
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In other places :
From their rational and analytical mind, they categorize and materialize the entire universe. Nature is viewed as a pile of broken dead objects. Man himself is also classified into nature, and becomes a composite of broken objects. There no longer are the concepts of harmonic and unified universe and the undefinable spirit (THWH, 178).
To put the "implicit logic" of Liang's theory into a more explicit and analytical framework, his argument would proceed as follows: From a voluntarist view, the will to acquire and to manipulate creates a mental world in which a thing, as an object of the will to acquire, obtains a fixed state. Reason, as the instrument of the will to acquire, endows the thing a fixed form in our minds, and assumes the form as its substance.[25] Therefore, reason, backed by the will to acquire, divides and splits the world, which by essence is an inseparable cosmic process, into different categories and forms. It grants its own mental objects names and definitions, and presumes that the forms are their substance, a process which could be called the "objectification of the world." By doing so, reason links itself to "static substance," and obtains a natural tendency to take "static material" as the essence of the world. However, this rational and divisive world is only the mental product of reason and the will to acquire. Without the will to acquire and without the accompanying reason, the world would have no fixed forms, and things would not appear to be in "fixed state." Westerners maintain that the world is governed by logos, principles, and elements; they take logos as reality, cosmic process as appearance. In fact, it is reason that creates this rational world view and, in return, people believe that the substance of this world can only be known by reason. Yet, none of these reveal the reality.
The scheme of Liang's theory reminds us most of Heidegger's interpretation of Western rationalism and modern Western civilization. Heidegger defines the modern "technological civilization as the most advanced phase of Western metaphysics because in technology 'objectivizing thought,' or rationalism, has been taken to the most extreme degree experienced thus far by humanity."[26]
Anyone who is familiar with the modern critique of the "subject-centered reason and the domination of nature, society, and the self that it promotes," and the condemnation of reason as "nothing more than a perverted and disguised will to power" initiated by Nietzsche and inherited by Heidegger, Bataille, and Foucault, would be struck by the profound similarity between the opinion of these Western and Eastern radical critics of reason.[27] Nietzsche views "modern science as the product of the will to power that animates all Western thought and history."[28] Heidegger, on the other hand, regards "'self' and 'control' as the dominant, though concealed, motifs not only of modern science but of the basic notion of truth that develops in the West."[29] Bataille's systematic investigation of "the other of reason" tells us "what is expelled and excluded from the world of the useful, calculable, and manipulable."[30] Foucault's genealogy of knowledge unmasked "the essential intrication of knowledge with power."[31] Liang, as I mentioned before, also defined reason as the "highest form of self-regarding emotions." To these sensitive minds mentioned above, the internal link between Western rationalism and an aggressive attitude toward life is apparent. Here, what really impresses us is that Liang, possessing such a very limited and indirect contact with Western civilization, could identify this subtle but fundamental theme so well, and that he made the "will to acquire" and rationalism the core of his wide-ranging interpretation of Western culture.
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In terms of this major tradition of Western thought, Liang was right in saying that reason is inseparable from the concepts of substance, being, form, and "idea" itself, and the traditional study of metaphysics, even though he knew nothing of the above development.
Liang did not know much about the origin of Western rationalism; it was his philosophical talent and a completely different world view that offered him the sensibility to see the intrinsic relationship between the Western concepts of reason, substance, and being. Starting from his Buddhist and Chinese world view, which was characterized by holism and the emphasis on will, becoming, process, and life, it was natural for him to view Western metaphysics as being too engrossed in the concept of the universal and "static substance." He acknowledged that there were Western philosophers like Heraclitus and Bergson who emphasized becoming. However, he still rightly asserted that the major tradition of the West stresses those unchangeable rules, laws, and principles much more than the changing cosmic process. He did not really understand how the belief in a well structured world (in Lovejoy's term, "the great chain of being"), with concrete principles that can be discerned by our reason, had essentially shaped Western metaphysics, sciences, philosophy, and various kinds of institutions. However, he keenly sensed that the belief in "static substance" was essential to Western rationalism, science, philosophy, and culture.
Although Liang showed amazing insight in discovering the intrinsic relationship between reason and the concept of substance, and in pointing out that the Western rational world view is fundamentally different from the Chinese world view of becoming, Liang's interpretation and evaluation of Western rationalism, due to the lack of a good understanding of the meaning of the Platonic tradition, somewhat remains problematic. Starting from the assertion that reason aims at substance, Liang advances to the argument that the traditional Western rational world view is by nature materialistic and fragmented. This kind of criticism reminds us of many a Romantic thinker's criticism of the "mechanistic and materialistic world" brought by industrialization and the Enlightenment philosophy. It could all be seen as an effort to keep the "humanistic and spiritual" tradition and to resist the cold, materialistic, and mechanistic aspect of modern culture, which, from today's perspective, seems to be irresistible. However, as philosophers starting with Whitehead and Santayana up until our present-day Habermas have tried to illustrate, rationalism does not necessarily lead to materialism or to a mechanistic world view, and should not be confined to the study of nature. The true meaning and value of Platonic rationalism is something that Liang never understood.
Intuition Versus Reason: On Oriental and Western Epistemology and Learning
Liang's epistemology, and his interpretation of Western epistemology, were linked much more directly to his Yogacara and Confucian metaphysics.[32]
The Buddhist and Chinese world views, as Liang understood them, are fundamentally different from the Greek world view in that the former two emphasize that the world is a cosmic process of change whereas the latter emphasizes a perceivable substantial world.[33] Therefore, the Buddhist and the Chinese are not, like the westerners, so much interested in an underlying substantial world of being, and the being-oriented reason. The Buddhists emphasize the "empty essence" (k'ung-hsing) of this changing world, so they belittle our knowledge of the so-called substantial qualities and laws of this world derived through our imperfect senses, reason, and intuition, and view them as products of blind will. The Chinese, however, take this world seriously, and view the process, the becoming itself, as the only reality. The result of this is that, with limited interest in the being-oriented reason, the Chinese engaged themselves in the becoming-oriented intuition.[34]
Since intuition and reason represent fundamentally different mental approaches toward reality, these different approaches cause different ways of expression, different linguistic characteristics, different "conceptual worlds," scholarships, and leanings. Moreover, to Liang, they are also the foundations of different world views and cultures. In other words, Liang's discussion of reason and intuition was not only the core of his reflection on Chinese and Western epistemology, methodology, and learning, but was also the center of two different world views.
Following the Wei-shih school, Liang believed that human cognition consisted of three elements: hsien-liang (pure and simple sense), pi-liang (reason), and fei-liang (intuition and other false knowing)[35] In his Buddhist period, he adopted the Wei-shih doctrine that our common knowledge came from the combined workings of immediate sense and reason, and that intuition led to false knowledge.[36] His analysis of human cognition started with the denunciation of the intuitive belief in the concept of "substance," the most important source of false knowledge. He asserted:
When the eyes sense the color of a jar, they acquire the sensation (of white or black) only. Reason, [then], concludes the meaning of it (the sensation), but it [reason] cannot ascertain the substance of the color.[37]
Therefore, when we assume that the color is something which concretely exists in the jar, it is beyond our knowledge. From this perspective, he denies the idea of "substance of things" in general. The same logic applies to "our 'it concept' of anything." The "it concept" is created by a mental habit of treating an object as if it is really substantial. People describe things by saying: this is white, or that is a jar. When we do so, we refer to whiteness or a jar as something which really "is", something with concrete substance. However, this is beyond our knowledge, because the mind can only be sure of what we sense, and we can never be sure of what is there objectively.[38] The objective essence of whiteness and jar, or of any name given to things, is beyond our knowledge and the power of reason.[39]
Liang went on to assert that our concepts of things, and our language in general, are closely linked with the assumption of the substance; therefore, they too are unreliable too. For example, the concept of whiteness itself is a mental construction. What we originally have is specific, individual impressions of color only (tzu-hsing, original sensation). Through the comparison of these individual impressions by our reason, we form the conception of whiteness. Yet, this conception does not necessarily correspond to reality either. Furthermore, common knowledge, in contrast to the real knowledge derived from immediate sense, depends on concept; therefore, it is fundamentally unreliable.[40] To Liang, both intuition and reason are mental facilities which try to abstract meaning from individual sense data. There is nothing to confirm the correspondence between our mental construction and the real world. Consequently, Liang said: "Buddhism is nothing but the dismissal of reason and false knowledge, . . . everything of reason and false knowledge is about concepts (kung-hsiang)."[41] Only when the false concepts formed by reason and intuition have been removed can people return to the only mental facility which has direct connection with reality -- immediate sense.
C. On Chinese and Western Epistemology, Language, and Learning
Buddhist epistemology had profound influence on Liang's philosophy. Since Confucianism and Taoism did not offer such a systematic analysis of the knowing process, Buddhist epistemology remained the basis of his theory of knowledge after he became a Confucian. However, with his conversion to Confucianism, he also made a very important modification to the Buddhist Wei-Shih epistemology by giving intuition, a source of false knowledge according to the Buddhist view, a major role in the formation of reliable knowledge.[42]
i. The Nature and Functions of Intuition
According to his new theory, our knowledge of the world is still based on sensation which, however, by its very nature is disparate. Only through intuition do the immediate sense data begin to have meanings to us. When we look at a white cloth, for instance, the eye cannot see the whiteness directly, because only "discrete" dots of color are sensed. The impression or feeling of whiteness is grasped by intuition from the discrete sense data.[43] After we have had many intuitive impressions of whiteness, reason, then, with its abstractive capacity, extracts the "concept of whiteness" from individual impressions.
This epistemology was founded on Liang's cosmology of becoming. Since the essence of the world is change, the transient, disparate, and immediate sense data are all that our senses are supposed to detect. Beyond that, any impressions or meaning discerned are artificial interpretations of the essentially transient reality. Intuition is human's first step toward meaning; reason is the second step.
Intuition, therefore, refers to the mental function which can tell directly the scent or flavor of a cluster of raw empirical data. Starting from this point, Liang attributes other complex forms of intuitive knowledge to intuition--the holistic feeling one comprehends while looking at a work of calligraphy, at a painting, or while reading an article. He calls the former "intuition attached to sensation," and the latter "intuition attached to reason." This seems to be because reading is apparently not separable from reasoning.
Since Chinese metaphysics addresses the question of change, the method it adopts is certainly different from that of the West and India, because the static and rigid concepts used in describing the substantial questions is completely unsuited to the discussion of change. The terms it uses [Chinese metaphysics] are abstract. . . . In order to recognize this kind of abstract scent or tendency, we must rely entirely on our intuition so as to experience and appreciate [it]. The so called yin (the passive, negative, feminine principle), yang (the active, positive, masculine principle), ch'ien (heaven, active principle), k'un (earth, passive principle; all these are terms from I-ching [The Book of Change] and could not be derived from sensations or reason. The concepts formed by reason are explicit and fixed, but these [Chinese concepts] are dynamic and holistic."(THWH, 116)
This kind of abstract and elastic "metaphysical language," combined with its emphasis on intuition, is employed in both academic and daily language. The terminology used in Chinese medicine, for example, "air, blood, phlegm, heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney" do not refer merely to these substances or organs, but also indicate the complex functions related to these objects. What these terms indicate are "not concrete things, but some meaningful phenomena that cannot be defined."[44] In Chinese medicine, "yin, yang, and the 'five cosmic principles' (wu-hsing), these elastic and abstract metaphysical symbols, are fundamental principles; therefore, all the other concepts, by extension, are elastic." Moreover, to Liang, since "the Chinese love to use yin and yang to describe everything, everything is metaphysics, but not science."[45]
ii. Art, Holism, and Non-Logical Spirit
To Liang, this kind of intuitive and metaphysical attitude makes Chinese scholarship a kind of art, rather than a kind of science. Liang maintained that in Chinese medicine, as well in other realms of Chinese scholarship, personal genius, wisdom, art, and intuition assume a much higher position than do "objective standards and rules." As a result of this artistic and metaphysical attitude, in comparison to Western science, Chinese learning is unsystematic, unorganized, subjective, speculative, full of discrepancies and divided into different schools. The artistic approach also causes Chinese scholars to worship ancient genius and to undervalue objective standards. Since it emphasizes personal wisdom and acumen, it is pragmatic; it is interested in practical methods but not in basic principles, and it lacks a rigorous and systematic theory and knowledge to help men deal with things.[46]
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Liang pointed out that one of the basic characteristics of Chinese learning and Chinese medicine is its holistic way of thinking. To Liang, to study a thing in its context is the only way to understand it. This holistic approach is contrary to what Kant says about the basic qualification of science:
In both Liang's Buddhist and Confucian periods, we notice that reason is not really confirmed in his theory of knowledge. Reason is regarded as useful in giving us knowledge in the empirical area, but it cannot bring us to reality, especially in the field of ethics. On the other hand, with all his criticism of the Chinese way of thinking, Liang himself was still employing a very Chinese way of thinking and language. He made holistic and impressionist observations rather than theoretical analysis. He employed intuition and correlative thinking rather than reason and argument. The way in which THWH was composed and the way in which his cultural theory was established are testimonies to Liang's "method." The dialogue between reason and intuition remained a difficult one both in his philosophy and in his actions.
Confucian Ethics and Rationalization
After his conversion to Confucianism, his central thought became the promotion of the natural flowing of inner feelings and intuition. This attitude comes directly from a world view of becoming and vitalism, a metaphysics which takes the universal "process of living" as the only reality.[47] According to this view, human beings are only part of this cosmic process. Therefore, the meaning of life is found in our union with it, not through analytical reason, but through an intuitive grasp of this universal process.
The kind of intuition Liang promoted is by no means a collective and vague label for all kinds of direct feelings, but a highly cultivated and purified mental state. In order to unite with the undifferentiated universal process, one has to get rid of personal desire (ssu), prejudiced knowledge and convictions, detrimental deliberation and calculation. He takes Confucius as the highest model. Confucius's mind, he said, is always flexible. Confucius adheres to no finite rationales, rules, or doctrines, and never goes to extremes. Confucius refrains from calculation, and acts only according to the immediate intuition which leads to natural beauty, harmony, and goodness.[48] Besides this Neo-Confucian style interpretation of Confucius, Liang, following in the Neo-Confucian tradition, alluded very often to Mencius, The Mean, Great Learning, and I-Ching. However, it was the Ming Neo-Confucian Ch'en Pai-sha, and Wang Yang-ming's disciples Nieh Shuang-chiang and Lo Nien-an who offered him the crucial teaching on cultivating intuition.[49] Great emphasis was placed on achieving sereneness and placidness (chi) before responding (kan). One has to release his inner self from desires and prejudice before he can really be responsive. Only then can he "accommodate the changes of the universe itself," and achieve "natural fitness."[50]
Moreover, by reuniting oneself with this undifferentiated universal principle, one can transcend the barriers between things, and become compassionate toward the world. This is because intuition, unlike reason, does not draw a clear line between the subject and object, self and the world, so it does not alienate itself from the world. Since the universal process of living is one, the ego always feels at home with itself. With the rise of the feelings of harmony and affection, there will be no more alienation and reification. People will be highly responsive to other's feelings and situations, mutual understanding be achieved, and warm feelings created. Liang used this concept of "keen intuition" to interpret the central doctrine of Confucius--jen, and Mencius and Wang Yang-ming's liang-chih (innate conscience).[51] He maintained that "all the virtues of human beings come originally from this intuition."[52] Only on this level can one proclaim that he understands the universal Tao, the ultimate truth of everything. Liang's metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics become one in this highest union.
Since this is the central doctrine of Liang's philosophy, Liang emphasized again and again that intuition is the only channel to our true life. Furthermore, he established a clear antithesis between reason and intuition in ethics. He asserted that "Confucians always use intuition, they seldom use reason;" and that "the single most important attitude of Confucius is not to calculate. This is the most distinctive attitude of Confucianism."[53] To him, the Confucian "jen is human instinct, compassion, intuition . . . when the compassion is elevated, reason subsides," and vise versa. Man is essentially dominated by intuition and instinct. Will and feeling are more important than knowledge.[54] The art of life can only be achieved through intuition, not through reason. In creating an ideal attitude toward life, free choice from our intuition should be the only moral basis.[55]
ii. Critique of Utilitarianism and Western Life Style
In contrast to the Chinese attitude toward life, Liang felt that the Western attitude toward life is characterized by strong self-consciousness and internal desires, while using reason and knowledge to achieve the goal.[56] He credited this attitude with power, efficiency, organizational ability, and the conquering of nature, but also criticized it severely. He called this kind of ethical attitude utilitarianism, and regarded it as characteristic of the Western attitude, and thus the major target of his criticism.[57] However, he also noticed that utilitarianism was dominant mainly in the Anglo-American world; continental and German thinkers had created a different tradition. Nevertheless, in Liang's view, their common emphasis on reason and knowledge make them descendants of the Greek tradition initiated by Socrates.[58]
Liang's criticism of utilitarianism, studied in the context of his metaphysics and epistemology, could be seen as part of a penetrating critique of what, in today's terminology, are termed objectification, alienation, and reification. His criticism of the phenomena of alienation and reification in Western culture starts on a very fundamental level. Since the cosmic process itself is beyond conceptualization, in Liang's view, the Western mind begins to alienate itself from the essence of the world by "objectivizing" the world. The will-forward, while desiring a specific goal, objectifies the goal for its own need, and separates the subjectivity from the object and rest of the world. Reason, as the highest form of this self-regarding emotion, is the tool of the will-forward to objectify and to manipulate things. The conceptualization of I or ego, together with individualism, are also products of this process.[59]
B. A Humanistic Critique of Modern Society
In THWH, Liang's social philosophy was more an extrapolation of his ethical ideals on social issues than a mature and deliberate social theory. While writing this book, his knowledge of traditional Chinese society was rather limited. Therefore, he spent more time in criticizing traditional Western society than in detailing his ideal Confucian society. Liang's criticism of capitalism focused on the reification and alienation that prevailed in a rationalized capitalist society. In contrast to mechanized modern society, his ideal society is characterized by an emphasis on social instincts, mutual affection, voluntary action, and harmony, in which one acts not according to reckoning but according to intuition, so as to express one's emotions freely. It is a combination of Confucian and socialist utopias.
i. On the Alienation in Capitalism
Liang's persistent emphasis on compassion and harmony in human life naturally led to his socialist economic philosophy. He was highly attracted by the "Guild Socialism" newly advocated by Russell, which was characterized by a kind of communitarianism and consumption-oriented economy. He then combined this socialist critique of capitalism with his critique of the alienation in a rationalized economic system. To Liang, reason, along with the will-to-conquer, objectifies and reifies the world. Machines represent the objectification of material, while individualism could be called the objectification of humanity. Capitalism (characterized by the conquering of nature by calculation) prohibits man's natural affection toward the world. People are treated like objects in this system. Competitiveness and efficiency become the first concern.[60] Economic fluctuation creates recession and unemployment. The poverty-stricken and machine-enslaved underclass is tortured by hard work, a tasteless life, and broken families. The upper-class is bound by endless calculation. Humankind no longer has real feelings. Adam Smith's and Herbert Spencer's advocacy of free competition, mechanization, division of labor, and production-oriented economy were also to blame.[61]
ii. Confucian Utopia Versus Legal Society
Liang believed that voluntary action is the basis of an ideal society, and disliked law imposed by society. However, knowing the need for law in a chaotic China, Liang regarded law and regulations as a kind of necessary second choice in his early years.[62] In THWH, nevertheless, his criticism of Western law being a calculated social convention, was aroused by his distaste for rationalism and utilitarianism. He wrote:
Nowadays, everything depends on law. Social life under this kind of law is very much coerced by force. . . . The basis of law is to utilize people's reckoning to control. . . . This kind of mandatory law just cannot exist in the future (THWH, 194).
What he meant by "the basis of law is to utilize people's reckoning to control" was that people obey the law not because they like to do so but because they, after calculation, conclude that obeying the law is in their best interests. It is not voluntary but mandatory. However, Liang did not know that besides the utilitarian element of modern Western law-- the social contract theories since Hobbes-- there are also non-utilitarian elements of modern Western law-- natural law, and the Christian law tradition. What he presented here was a criticism of any superimposed law--whether rule by law or rule of law. His criticism of law as rule by force and punishment was targeted not only at the West but also at the ancient Chinese Legalists (Fa-chia), who promoted rule by law. In this sense, it is a continuation of the age-old debate of "morality or law" between the Confucians and Chinese Legalists.[63]
Moreover, Liang understood the characteristics of democracy as "the advancement of individuality and the development of social character."[64] People with a strong sense of individuality tend to fight. Thus, in order to maintain power and unity, people must organize themselves through law. Logically, Liang, like Hobbes, almost certainly believed that this kind of organization comes from people's reckoning, although he did not make this point clear in his THWH.[65]
From an ethical perspective, Liang detested regulation, law, reckoning, and the will-to-acquire. He longed for the social order of a Confucian society achieved by the cultivation of people via decorum and music. However, practical needs urged him to embrace Western style political struggle for human rights and order. The rift between his ethical and political thought exploded in his later years and made him abandon Western style democracy. While writing THWH, however, he still hoped that a dialogue between Confucianism and democracy, and between Chinese and Western culture in general could be achieved.
C. The Dialogue Proposed
Three stages
i. The West is Turning to the Chinese Way
Like many of his contemporaries, Liang rediscovered his ideal cultural spirit from the pre-Ch'in period, the origin of the vitality of Chinese civilization. This new spirit is a return to the spirit of the major teachings of Confucius, which Liang wished to use to catalyze a Chinese Renaissance trough Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian style lecturing.[66] With the kang attitude, one can revive one's natural vitality, and not be driven by insatiable individualistic desires. One can fulfill his intuitive affection toward man and nature, and can be also dynamic enough to strive for personal rights and democracy, to use reason to acquire scientific knowledge, and to manipulate natural resources. With kang, man could create a new civilization that is both vigorous enough to solve the various survival problems, and compassionate enough not to alienate mankind from each other and nature.
[1]Ex. Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 1-11, 13, 94, 106-7, 118-121, 122, 125, 202, 207, 226-227, 239.
[2]Liang Shu-ming, Tung hsi wen-hua chi ch'i che-hsueh (First printed in Shan-tung, 1921; fifth reprinted in Shanghai, 1922, with a new preface; Taipei reprint of Shanghai edition, 1968).
[3]Guy Alitto points this out in "The Conservative as Sage: Liang Shu-ming" (in Charlotte Furth ed., The Limits of Change, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976]), 217-221. However, to my thinking, he overemphasizes the similarities between Liang and other Western conservatives, and does not pay enough attention to the specialty of Liang's conservatism.
[4]Some people regard Liang Ch'i-chao as the first "modern conservative." However, Liang's reflection on Western and Chinese civilizations, though pioneering and important, was neither comprehensive nor profound enough to form a new system.
[5]1. J. G. A. Pocock's famous book The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) was the inspiration for this term. Pocock suggests that while facing the instability of the republics in Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli and other Florentine thinkers revived the ideal of the classical republic, and therefore started the Republican tradition of the entire Atlantic world. A similar analogy can be made between Liang's historical situation, his cultural theory, and the rise of New Confucian and Neo-Humanist tradition in modern China, despite the fact that Liang and other Neo-Humanists' thought was far from mainstream. 2. Professor Mou Tsung-san also regarded Liang as the first to have "reopened the access to the revival of Sung-Ming Neo-Confucianism" (Sheng-ming ti hsh-wen [Taipei, 1972], 112).
[6]Liang, THWH, 177.
[7]Liang's definition of reason as the "highest form of self-regarding emotions" came from sociologist Benjamin Kidd, an influential socialist in China (ibid., 174-175).
[8]Ibid., 158.
[9]Ibid., 54-55.
[10]Ibid., 104.
[11]Ibid., 155.
[12]Ibid., 162-165.
[13]Ibid., 165-166.
[14]Ibid., 202.
[15]Liang, THWH, 48.
[16]Liang, THWH, 54.
[17]Many scholars mention the problem of oversimplification in Liang's cultural theory. But most of them also admit that "Liang contributed most by analyzing sympathetically certain characteristics of the three civilizations." (Chow, The May Fourth Movement, 331)
[18]We know that while Liang was writing THWH, he, as a Confucian, still adhered very much to the Buddhist philosophical system. However, as illustrated above, Liang's Yogacara Buddhist world view has both the elements of voluntarism and Life Philosophy. The distinction between them is so subtle that Liang himself, now a Confucian having a seemingly-Buddhist world view, sometimes could not discern it clearly. While he was writing THWH, the Buddhist world view was still prevalent in his mind, and he tended to say that living and will refer to the same thing. Only in later years did he place greater and greater emphasis on life, and accord less and less to will. This indicates that the influence of the idealist Buddhist metaphysics grew weaker and weaker, and his world view became more and more like that of an orthodox Confucian.
[19]1. Liang's organicist world view could be called a kind of "philosophy of organicism." As a philosophy of process, it is also a world view without a creator or a supreme being. Professor Mote, by alluding to Needham, indicated that the early Chinese saw the world as an "organismic, spontaneously self-generated cosmos." (Frederick W. Mote, "The Cosmological Gulf Between China and the West," in Transition and Permanence: Chinese History and Culture [Hong Kong: Cathay Press, 1972], 8) Mote believed that this characteristic distinguished the Chinese cosmology from all the other ancient traditions.(ibid., 7-8) Liang's world view appeared to have inherited many basic features of the ancient Chinese cosmology. 2. However, in alluding to Needham, Professor Mote quoted Needham's interpretation of Chinese cosmology as "an ordered harmony of will without an ordainer." The original text is "wills" instead of "will"-- a fundamental difference in terms of cosmology.(ibid., 8) Needham's organicist theory interprets the ancient Chinese cosmology as "an ordered harmony of wills"--"like the spontaneous yet ordered, in the sense of patterned, movements of dancers in a country dance of figures. . . cooperate in a voluntary harmony of wills."(Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 2 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962], 287) Liang's world view, though a organicist one, differs from Needham's theory in that it is not so analytical, and in that it focuses solely on the one universal essence--Tao.
[20]In this aspect, he was inspired by many modern Western thinkers like Darwin, Spencer, Schopenhauer, Le Bon, and Bergson ("Chiu-yuan chh-i lun" [in Liang, Sa-ch'ien], 17-33, 43).
[21]Liang, Chao-hua, 123.
[22]Ibid., 127.
[23]Liang Shu-ming, Wo ti nu-li y fan-hsing (Kuei-lin: Li-chiang ch'u-pan-she, 1987), 44.
[24]However, Liang readily acknowledged the effectiveness and many advantages of Western medicine, and the many shortcomings of Chinese medicine. Liang, Chao-hua, 125-26.
[25]Liang did not have a clear idea of "form." But he was very aware of the function and forming of "concept," and the relationship between reason and concept.(see next section)
[26]Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), xxiv.
[27]Thomas McCarthy, Introduction to The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity by Jgen Habermas, tr. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990), xiii.
[28]Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 10.
[29]Ibid.
[30]Thomas McCarthy, Introduction to The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity by Jgen Habermas, xiv.
[31]Ibid.
[32]In both Western and Eastern intellectual histories, we find again and again that there seems always to be a metaphysics behind one's epistemology. Kant's analysis of reason is based on a Newtonian world view, while Karl Popper's and W. V. Quine's are inseparable from Quantum physics and relativity theory. On the other hand, one's metaphysics is also inseparable from, and often decided by, one's habit of using his mind or his epistemology. The relationship between epistemology, metaphysics, and cosmology is central to man's effort to understand the essence of himself and the world. Each culture contributes in her own way to this topic, so as to reveal the rich possibilities of the relationship between the human mind and the universe.
[33]Most Greek thinkers believe that this world is intelligible only via reason. The metaphysics underlying this belief is their faith in "a substantial world," a real world which transcends this changing phenomenal world. To the Greeks, the world known through our senses or intuition consisted of nothing but changing phenomena, limited to time-spatial and subjective conditions. It could not be the object of knowledge. Only the nominal world, which can only be perceived through reason, is intelligible. The structure of this substantial world is a "great chain of being." Therefore, it is possible for us to inquire more and more deeply into the essential principles of this world.
[34]Liang was the first Chinese intellectual, and perhaps the first one in the world, to make clear these fundamental distinctions between the Chinese, Buddhist, and Greek world views.
[35]Liang himself translated hsien-liang as sensation, pi-liang as li-chih (reason), and fei-liang as chih-chh (intuition). See THWH, 70-71, 78; Yin-tu che-hsh kai-lun, 177.
[36]Ibid., 185. Liang believed that, however, in the ultimate sense, only immediate sense is true, even reason is deceitful.
[37]Liang, Yin-tu che-hsueh kai-lun (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1919), 187.
[38]Ibid., 188.
[39]This argument is reminiscent of Russell's famous assertion that science only tell us how, but can never tell us what. The question of what belongs to the realm of metaphysics.
[40]Liang, Yin-tu, 189-90.
[41]Ibid., 191.
[42]Liang, THWH, 69, 72-74.
[43]Ibid, 70-72. Some people may argue that since whiteness is sensed by certain light-sensitive cells in the eye, it is purely a part of our sensation. However, Liang could certainly assert that kind of sensation is the direct response to external stimulus only. The sense of whiteness must involve the function of central nerve system--an intuitive one. Therefore, the feeling of whiteness is a joint result of direct sensation and intuition.
[44]Liang, THWH, 30.
[45]Ibid., 30-31.
[46]Ibid., 26-27.
[47]With regard to the central importance of this metaphysics of life, Liang said: "Confucian philosophy of life derives entirely from this kind of metaphysics. There are no words of Confucius which do not speak of this. From the beginning to the end, it is always this message" (Liang, THWH, 120-21).
[48]Ibid., 123-125. Liang also alludes, very appropriately, to the Analects and Mencius to refute Hu Shih's assertion that early Confucians, unlike later Neo-Confucians who were influenced by Buddhism, paid little attention to the study of the mind.
[49]Ch'en, like Liang, was also famous for his emphasis on a world view centered on the concept of life (sheng). See Chan Wing-tsit, "Pai-sha chih tung-te-che-hsh y ch'uang-tso," Hsin-t'ien-te (Hong-kong), V.4, No. 1, 1965, 11 (from a lecture given in 1963).
[50]Liang, THWH, 128-130.
[51]Ibid., 125-126, 135-140.
[52]Ibid., 127.
[53]Liang, ibid, 121, 131.
[54]Ibid., 124, 131, 140-141.
[55]Ibid., 134, 140,
[56]Ibid., 159.
[57]Ibid., 133-34, 158.
[58]Ibid., 155-158, 169.
[59]Ibid., 104. This reminds us of Hegel, Heidegger, Habermas and their followers' critique on the "subject-centered reason" and "modern subjectivism" initiated by Descartes (Habermas, Discourse of Modernity, 132-133).
[60]Liang, THWH, 166-67, 174.
[61]Ibid., 161-166.
[62]Liang, Sa-Ch'ien, 57-58, 63.
[63]Liang, THWH, 194-95.
[64]Ibid., 41.
[65]Ibid., 37-41, 152, 61-62.
[66]Ibid., 213.
[TW1]
[TW2]in p. 81 I suggest that immediate sense could be seen as intution from western point of view. clarify.
[TW3]Need an introduction to Yogacara Buddhism