I am now taking the Eastern Philosophy class that I was telling you about Xun. I want to try to keep an ongoing dialog about the topics covered in class. Here are the required texts we will be reading:
Essential Dialogues of Plato B. Jowett (tr.) The Ethics of Spinoza Dagobert D. Runes (ed.) The Primacy of Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines Rene Guenon The Bhagavat Gita Eknath Easwaran (tr.) What the Buddha Taught Walpola Rahula Zen in the Art of Archery Eugen Herrigel Tao Te Ching Lao Tsu The Tao of Pooh Benjamin Hoff
The first week we are reading pages 9-40 of Guenon’s book. The professor posted the following two questions for discussion:
Do you think Guenon’s assessment of the differences between the East and the West is accurate?
How is it possible to look at Eastern Philosophy without the ‘classical prejudice’?
I have already given my response to the two questions but was wondering what input you (Xunzian) or others might have.
Here was my response:
Do you think Guenon’s assessment of the differences between the East and the West is accurate?
In some ways yes, but in others not so much. I disagree with the racial segregation of east and west. In fact, the idea that we are all one (traditionally thought of as eastern) should apply here. We are not east and west, we are both. The cultures of humanity developed in between east and west. Both peoples of the east and of the west were affected by each other. Many Greek ideas could be considered Eastern, and many Eastern ideas were strongly influenced by the West.
I personally don’t like this dichotomy. If anything, separating the two seems like a western thing to do. How about we study world philosophy. We look at what these people came up with over here (the west), and what these other people came up with over there (the east) and also what the peoples of the south and the north came up with too!
Page 15 “Unless one’s mind is shaken free from the Western outlook, one will inevitably misjudge the most important aspects of eastern thought.†I agree that openness of one’s mind is important, but completely shaking off relative perspective is impossible.
Overall, I think that it is a cop-out of sorts to pigeon hole westerners as never being able to truly understand or comprehend eastern thought. Why could the same not be said of the easterners and their understanding of western thought? Either way, none of this labeling business or segregation leads us to a greater understanding of either side. How about we open up the books and take a look at what different civilizations actually produced, rather than arguing whether or not people from supposedly different cultures are going to be able to understand them.
How is it possible to look at Eastern Philosophy without the ‘classical prejudice’?
It is very possible. What honest historian would “attribute the origins of all civilization to the Greeks and Romans� (page 17) ‘ALL civilization’ no! We know that there were many other cultures contemporary with the Greeks and that there were many cultures BEFORE the Greco/Roman cultures.
On the other hand, is it possible to look at anything without bias or personal view? Of course not. We all come from somewhere and were raised in a particular culture, with a particular world view. That doesn’t mean that we cannot evaluate other cultures though. It doesn’t mean we can’t be influenced, changed or attain new understanding.
I do know that traditional western philosophy is often criticized as being ‘analytical philosophy’ and that eastern philosophy is not. “Analytic philosophy is defined by its emphasis on clarity and argument, often achieved via modern formal logic and analysis of language, and a respect for the natural sciences.†(Wikipedia) It seems to me that proponents of eastern philosophy might dismiss an analytical philosopher, such as myself, as never being able to understand eastern thought. This can be shown to be a weak argument, but as soon as I say that, the eastern philosopher might say, “Eastern philosophy isn’t about argument or logicâ€. Yet they would be the last to admit that claiming, “Eastern philosophy isn’t about argument/logic†is in fact itself an argument or a position being made.
I guess I didn’t like being told that as an analytical philosopher, I wasn’t going to understand eastern philosophy from the outset. Is this true Xun? In what way can I best approach Eastern philosophy? I want to have as open of a mind as possible. I want to bridge the gap (as it seems you have) between Eastern and Western philosophy.
Please keep us updated. I love the comparisons beteween east and west. I side with the east and think i have an okay grasp of its essential wisdom, but growing up in the west I am severly influenced and cant shake the thought of creation versus what the east says about growing out of nature, even though i think god is not separate from us, that we make up everything. There is no god, when there is nothing but God–Alan Watts.
Sorry about that, I didn’t notice the post until now. While I haven’t read the book in question (though I could check it out) lemme check the link. I will say, as an introduction, I think the distinction between “Eastern” and “Western” philosophy is overblown. Now, before I say anything further, I will admit to a huge cultural bias, which is that when I talk about “Eastern” philosophy, I mean “Chinese” philosophy. I am somewhat familiar with Indian philosophy, but I can really only paint it with a very broad brush. That said, I think that the difference is more one of emphasis than of actual, fundamental difference. I could list off a variety of Eastern philosophers and their Western cognates and while the alignment isn’t always perfect (that is to be expected, after all, they are different people), they are more alike than not alike. I’ve described it before as being more a matter of who “won” in a historical context and how that philosophy was born out as opposed to some real, fundamental difference between their mindsets. A couple things to consider that I’ve written about before:
So already I think your professor has set-up a false dichotomy, since you are studying a relatively modern Western philosopher (Spinoza), a modern take on an ancient Western philosopher (Essentials of Plato), a whole bunch of Western perspectives on Eastern philosophy (Tao of Pooh is #1, a Sinologist once referred to that text as “his bane”, but the others are also written by Westerns for a western audience where exotification and paternalism play important roles) against primary texts (Gita and DDJ – and if the romanization is any key on the DDJ, a rather old translation at that! While I don’t know much about the Gita, I am somewhat familiar with the DDJ. Whose translation are you using?).
Look, the old stueck about “not being able to understand Eastern philosophy” in bunkum. Nobody is gonna seriously tell you that you can’t get Plato because you aren’t Hellenic, right? Same deal here. Just a lack of imagination. Since you like the Analytic tradition, have you checked out much Whitehead? He worked with Russell a whole lot back in the day. Whitehead tapped into some very foundational assumptions that Eastern philosophy takes for granted and incorporates them seamlessly into western philosophy. I think that will give you a nice bridge to walk over. Another example, on the other side of things, in Feng Youlan. He was a student of Dewey’s and he linked a lot of Eastern and Western philosophy very effectively.
If I may break down your post:
Very true.
Yes-and-no. While clear cognates can be found between them, who “wins” in terms of these cognates and how that follows is very important. Sometimes “pure philosophy” has to be discarded for real-world considerations, and given how they have developed, I would say that your classical average Eastern philosopher is likely to hold radically different assumptions from your classical average Western philosopher.
I agree, it is a good idea to recognize one’s bias. We all have them. When someone claims to be free of bias, I generally take that to mean that they are blind of their bias. Far better to know what it is and that we ought strive to eliminate/minimize it.
When I hear things like what you are responding to, I really wanna rock out to some zither music and bang a gong. Perhaps while Charlie Chan makes a guest appearance? Philosophy is philosophy, people make too much of a distinction between them.
Have you ever played Chinese Chess (Xiangqi)? There are a variety of programs available for play on-line, download one and fiddle around with it. I think that is a very apt metaphor for Eastern vs. Western philosophy. I mean, the game is clearly the same game. It is really obviously chess (in a way that, say, Go, isn’t) but how they dealt with the various problems of the pieces in terms of making the game “fun” from its classical ancestor are very different. Try fiddling around with it and I think you’ll get what I mean.
Yes-and-no. It is very interesting, actually. Chinese proto-logic, like Western proto-logic, isn’t very good (in its most primitive form, it favors rhyming schemes, and even slightly more developed it can be seen as a sort of “logic-by-analogy” where A is to B as A’ is to B’), but more importantly, Logicians aligned themselves with a school of thought known as the Legalists/Realists, which were basically the world’s first attempt at Fascism. After the Legalists were removed from power, many of their advances were considered “tainted” and discarded. On top of that, many later systematizers in the Chinese tradition employed shockingly arbitrary systems and so when they were discarded people made the mistake of assuming that all systems are arbitrary.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you “can’t understand it”, though it does pre-dispose you to disagree with much of it. The trick here is to cultivate that open mind. Here, if I may slightly modify Kant, there are three questions a philosopher can ask:
What can I know?
How should I live?
What should I aspire to?
Western philosophy excels at and is fixated on #1. Indeed, it seeks to understand the other two questions in terms of #1, which is why (what with the sunderings of modernity) you end up with the clusterfuck that is modern western philosophy (see: postmodernism). Granted, this is a gross generalization but I think as a whole this generalization holds. The other shoe in this generalization is that Eastern philosophy focuses too much on #2 and tries to understand them in terms of #2 (which, in the West, would be the role of religion).
Why is that? I think it makes perfect sense. It is a short quote that captures the problem with the idea of a God Being.
Either God is an actual Being, separate from the universe… or he is not.
If God is everything… then he certainly isn’t a separate Being from himself… He is everything.
Saying ‘God is everything’ makes the concept of a separate God Being impossible or null by definition.
Pretty good. The first half of the class, I think we are covering western stuff, then we will go into the east in the second half. I’ll keep you updated and let you know about new or interesting topics.
One thing I was thinking about. It has become hip in the business world to quote things like The Art of War and other eastern works and sayings. It is a businessman’s way of showing off. Do you know much about this? It is quite similar to business people also nearly abusing Darwin’s ideas of “Survival of the fittest” etc. They are like little fads in the business world.
I know that Musashi’s Five Rings is also popularly quoted. I think that a lot of it comes from the stigma attached to being a Merchant. In the Confucian ordering of society, merchants are technically the lowest class in society (in China merchants and their descendants were even banned from the examination system! Well, most of the time anyway). In a capitalist society, of course, the situation is reversed and wealthy merchants are up at the top . . . but how to deal with that incongruence? By playing make believe, of course, and presenting merchants are warriors of the modern world. That is my guess anyway.
It is interesting to read the reviews of Tao of Pooh at Amazon. Most are positive reviews. But there, of course, are the negative ones. It is good to read them too. Have you read it Xun? I just rented it from the library, so I have it now.
I think I’d rather read about Taoism from Eastern translations and scholars, rather than some western dude from here in Oregon giving me his interpretation of Taoism. I’d rather read about Taoism, than a “Pooh-py” interpretation of Taoism.
Hey Xunzian, can you quickly post up a few labels that might describe your philsophy or religion? What principles from what schools of thought would you most identify with? What traditions?
Those are very tough questions and I don’t think that they can be easily answered. I mean, the short answer is that I largely identify with the idealistic tradition in Chinese Neo-Confucian thought. For example, my favorite philosopher is Tu Weiming who uses existentialism to marry the post-May Fourth rationalist and idealistic trends in Confucianism. But I tend to think answers like that leave more questions than there originally were!
Like most Neo-Confucian thinkers, I think that principle and material force (energy and matter, more-or-less) are unified and I agree with Wang Fuzhi that material force is predominant – that feeds directly into my historical materialism which I feel is supported by Mencius when he said, "In good years the children of the people are most of them good, while in bad years the most of them abandon themselves to evil. It is not owing to any difference of their natural powers conferred by nature that they are thus different. The abandonment is owing to the circumstances through which they allow their minds to be ensnared and drowned. Take what happens to barley. Let it be sown and covered up. The ground being the same, and the time of sowing likewise the same, it grows rapidly up anywhere; and when the full time is come, it is all found to be ripe. Although there may be inequalities of produce, that is owing to the difference of the soil, as rich or poor, to the unequal nourishment afforded by the rains and dews, and to the different ways in which man has performed his business in reference to it.â€
Like Wang Yangming, I think that understanding and action are unified. This is very important. The classic “The Great Learning” presents a sort of chain logic (not entirely true, but for our present purposes, it is useful to think of it that way) and at the very center the is “the investigation of things.” This was generally taken to mean things outside of one’s self, but Yangming famously asked, “Can we really derive a guiding principle for action by investigating the anatomy of a bamboo tree?” Instead we have to look inwards and, as Confucius put it, “Overcome the self and return to propriety” which leads to the central irony of Yangming’s thought: true realization can only be found within the self, but the self does not exist. Well, that isn’t entirely true, the self exists just not as we normally perceive it to be. Instead of an autonomous agent, the self is an intersubjective construct that exists in between the relationships that we have. As soon as that is realized, we can manifest what Mencius calls, “The great body” where we expand ourselves to encompass all of humanity – Yangming takes this one step further and seeks to embrace all of reality. An expansive view like this demands that people have an intuitive grasp on the good, right? So, from this perspective, it is impossible to say something like “I know violence is wrong” and commit violence of any sort. Any act that goes counter to theoretical understanding suggests that something is obscuring your understanding of the wrongness of violence. After all, if you understood it and truly manifested yourself as you are, such an act would be impossible.
That sets a foundation for now that I think will work.
I think the following threads help illustrate my philosophy and where it comes from:
Principle. I don’t know how much your course deals with Neo-Confucianism, by the looks of the reading material I would say barely at all. Neo-Confucianism is a reaction to Buddhism in China. It is an interested fact that there is no good word for “religion” in Chinese, it can either be rendered as “teaching” or “superstition”. “Teaching” can mean just about anything, the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Keynes would be rendered the same way, as would te lectures given by your professor – they are all on the same playing field. Superstition, on the other hand, has a universally negative connotation (just like in English) so people are apt to deny they believe in something that would be considered a “superstition”. Because of this when a fully developed religion, Buddhism in this case, came to China it absolutely trounced the “religions” that were already there. So, both Daoism and Confucianism started developing counter-ideas to Buddhism while busily filing the serial numbers off of Buddhist products and claiming them as their own. The Confucian approach in this case was to discuss “principle” (li – not to be confused with ritual, which is also li. Confusing, I know. Sorry, I didn’t make the language but this point is important because I see a lot of people conflate the two which is mostly wrong). So “principle” which can also mean “pattern” became the foundation of Neo-Confucian thought.
The Challenge of Epistimology gives a good idea as to, err, my epistemological leanings and I try to make it clear where they come from/what they are informed by.
A Tu’s worth. This expands on the ideas presented in the epistemology thread while dealing with principle. I think the blog I linked in this section is worth checking out, especially the commentary. Some of it is heady stuff (he links the Useless Tree by Sam Crane, another good blog and it is done by a sociology prof so the philo is more straight-forward).
The New Legalists. When China was first unified, it was done so by a state that embraced a Legalist ideology, which is a sort of militarized Daoism. But since you are reading “Tao of Pooh”, I think this serves as a nice counter-point to its merry vision of Daoism. Like everything else, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but I think this site is worth a read.
We all have much to learn from him. An extremely well read individual.
By the way Xun, your post above was exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted to get some labels and start piecing some of them together. It helps my discussion with you if I understand some of your primary influences. I’m simply trying to get more of a historic framework or picture of Eastern thought at this point. I know not to take myself too seriously and think that “i get” the East right now. I want to take it all in with an open mind. But I know that I simply cannot expect myself to delve that deeply into true understanding of the culture and thoughts. I’m gonna do my best though. I’m REALLY into this right now. While I drive around town, I have had The Teaching Company - Buddhism class playing. An excellent course! It is a VERY good intro, and I am refreshing myself on the origins, philosophy and doctrines of Buddhism.
Yeah man, I’ve spent a lot of money on Teaching Company tapes. It was pretty nice for a while since my car is ancient as still takes cassettes, so when they were trying to unload those puppies I stocked up. Good stuff. When you get to the Consciousness Only School (probably lecture 20) and Chan/Zen lectures those are the ones that are most relevant to my thinking. While I’m not terribly familiar with the primary material, Consciousness Only had a strong influence on Yangming, and Zen is basically a Buddhist accommodation to Daoist sensibilities in China and the subsequent developments from there. My girlfriend is also a Zen Buddhist, so when I go to temple that is also the way I roll by default and I’m not gonna lie and say that doesn’t influence my thinking.
I’m glad I’ve been of help so far, and I’m glad you’re getting into what you’re learning. I know it sounds trite, but I really think it is worth throwing out there that Eastern philosophy is a great corrective to Western philosophy but I also generally think it works best when taken in that light: as a corrective. Confucius said, “When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them,” and I think that both Eastern and Western philosophy have a lot of good qualities to offer as well as a lot of very negative qualities that ought be avoided. Being firmly rooted in one while using the other to help you identify and correct its shortcomings produces a much more rigorous philosophy, in my opinion.
As for “getting it”, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. The disciple whom Confucius singled out as his best student once remarked on the lessons he was trying to learn, “I looked up to them, and they seemed to become more high; I tried to penetrate them, and they seemed to become more firm; I looked at them before me, and suddenly they seemed to be behind.” And from an epistemic standpoint, the Confucians are the most optimistic of the three traditions! It is less about “getting it” and more about the process of trying to get it. I do agree that putting them into a historic context is an important part of that process. I actually talked about that a while ago, Dilemma in teaching ancient Chinese thoughts.
Again, good call on the Teaching Company. I’m really afraid now that they sell MP3s that I’m gonna go broke buying them.
