Critique, Subversion, and Chinese Philosophy

Sociopolitical, Conceptual, and Methodological Challenges

Hans-Georg Moeller, Andrew K. Whitehead, Hans-Georg Moeller, Andrew K. Whitehead

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350115866
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Bringing together a number of case studies, this book shows how from early on Chinese philosophical discourses unfolded through innovation and the subversion of dominant forms of thinking. Narrowing in on the commonplace Chinese motto that "the three teachings" of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism "are joined into one", as if there had never been any substantial differences between or within these schools of thought, a team of esteemed contributors challenge established views. They explain how the Daoist tradition provided a variety of alternatives to prevailing Confucian master narratives, reveal why the long history of Confucianism is itself full of ambiguities, disputes, and competing ideas and discuss how in Buddhist theory and practice, the subversion of unquestioned beliefs and attitudes has been a prime methodological and therapeutic device. By drawing attention to unorthodox voices and subversion as a method, this exciting collection reveals that for too long the traditional division into "three teachings" has failed to do justice to the diversity and subtlety found in the numerous discourses constituting the history of Chinese philosophy. Critique, Subversion and Chinese Philosophy finally makes such innovative disruptions visible.

1

Introduction: Conflict, Contradiction, Reconciliation: (Dis-)harmonious Critique in Chinese Philosophies

Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead

To someone who studied philosophy at a university in mainland China in the 1980s, the development of Chinese thought would have seemed like an endless chain of critiques and subversions. At the time, most textbooks and overviews of the history of philosophy still applied the framework of dialectical materialism quite rigidly. Accordingly, socioeconomic contradictions were regarded as the “base structure” of society and the ensuing class struggles as determining all intellectual developments. Some schools of thought, such as the Legalists and Daoists, were located within the progressive, materialist camp opposing feudal structures, while other schools, most prominently the Confucians, were seen as reactionary idealists whose ideology served the function of legitimizing oppressive social hierarchies and maintaining exploitative modes of production.

In the wake of the reform politics and modernizations initiated in 1978, China underwent rapid changes which eventually swept away traditional Marxist and Maoist modes of thought. China’s 1990s should prove dialectical materialism correct, albeit in a most ironic way: Indeed, the shift toward a new mode of production, namely capitalism, once more brought about fundamental changes in philosophical thought—this time, however, these changes resulted in an almost complete demise of old-school dialectical materialism in mainstream Chinese philosophy. Since the 1990s, the philosophical discourse in mainland China has replaced emphasis on conflict and contradiction with emphasis on unity and, especially, harmony (hexie 和谐)—which has become a major buzzword in the present decade. If, for instance, one points out today at an academic conference in mainland China that early Daoist texts tend to harshly criticize their Confucian counterparts, one is soon likely to be reminded that in the end Daoists and Confucians nevertheless pursue more or less the same goals.

In philosophy, the current focus on harmony is sometimes implicitly or explicitly connected with the traditional motto of the “unity of the three teachings” (sanjiao heyi 三教合, referring to Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism), the roots of which can be traced back to the sixth century CE (Gentz 2011). The sanjiao heyi discourse typically suggests that differences between the main Chinese intellectual and religious traditions are outweighed by an ultimate spiritual coherence. In fact, however, there has hardly ever been “any successful attempt at creating a harmonious system of Chinese religions in which all three religions have equal positions” (Gentz 2011: 540). As Gentz (2011) demonstrates, those who have claimed the “unity of the three teachings” mostly concluded that one of the teachings was more equal than the others. Today, this role is once more ascribed to Confucianism. Confucian “culture” is often presented as the centerpiece of Chinese civilization, and Daoism, Buddhism, and other philosophies or religions appear as supporting ornaments on its fringes. Such a “Confucian-centrism” is not only prevalent among representatives of Chinese philosophy in “greater China” or the “sinophone” world, but also among many leading Western scholars of Chinese thought.

In effect, however, a philosophy that emphasizes harmony over contradiction is just as critical and subversive as a philosophy that takes the opposite stance. Both sides of the dispute critique one another. Critique is first and foremost a philosophical method and not tied to any specific doctrine, position, or argument. Arguably, it is the philosophical method per se. Philosophical thinking and writing is intrinsically critical.

In the context of explaining the art of dialectics in book seven of Plato’s Republic, Socrates points out that contradictions in our sense perceptions “summon the intellect” (523b; Bloom 1991: 202). A finger seems soft to our senses when we first touch it, but when we press harder and get to the bone, it seems hard. This simple example illustrates a first meaning of critique and subversion. One perception (“hard”) negates another (“soft”). Thereby the senses subvert themselves. They disclose their own limitations. They cannot tell us if a finger is soft or hard. Because of this subversion, we can no longer rely only on immediate sense data and must try something in addition. The intellect needs to get to work and reaches a different level of consciousness that transcends the senses. It critiques the available sense data and analyzes them in order to arrive at a more complex understanding of the concept or the “idea” of a finger that can entail both softness and hardness at the same time. Critique, in this sense, is for both Plato and Hegel the engine of thought that drives the development or building (Bildung, as Hegel would say) of the mind.

Kant further specified the significance of critique as method. For him, philosophy consists in a systematic reflection of the mind, as “reason,” on itself. Critical thinking, in this sense, does not take knowledge about “things” in a dogmatic sense at face value, but tries to identify the conditions that allow knowledge of them to arise in the first place. After Kant, philosophical critique no longer simply asks: Is this so? Instead, it tries to “deconstruct” the underlying structures that make claims about things appear plausible or true. For Kant, such structures were the “a priori” conditions of reason, but for the thinkers that practiced critical philosophy after him, these structures could be, for instance, historical, psychological, social, linguistic, or economic—as was the case for Marx.

Critique consists by no means merely in criticisms—in saying that something is wrong or bad, and that something else instead is true or good. Rather, critique questions the simplicity of such claims; it questions why we believe what we believe or know what we know. Importantly, critique is therefore also self-critique. Wherever philosophy is practiced, in the ancient world or in present-day China or the “West,” critique and self-critique are very much at its heart.

The chapters collected in this volume investigate the possibility of a defined notion of critique in Chinese philosophical history, offering a resounding and emphatic affirmation to the idea that critique has been operating in a number of different, sophisticated ways across a wide array of texts and traditions. They discuss critique as method, instances of sociopolitical subversion, and practices of critiquing concepts and ideas.

Contributors cover topics such as Critical Confucianism, feminist critiques in Daoist writings, and Chinese philosophical encounters with thinkers such as Marx and Kant. Offering original philosophical contributions, the authors look at ideas and arguments attributed to Confucius, Zhuangzi, and the Chan master Mazu Daoyi alongside the works of Plato and Husserl. They thus provide new ways of understanding how critique connects to philosophy and underline the need to reemphasize precisely this in how we practice and what we mean by philosophy today.

Two caveats deserve to be mentioned here. First, early Chinese texts are typically composite works drawing from numerous sources and often reflect diverse viewpoints and philosophical orientations. Scholarship therefore warns us to not overly personalize early Chinese philosophers and the texts ascribed to them. To give just two examples: Confucius’s words, like those of Socrates, were written down after his death, and it is impossible to assess today in how far the texts in which these words are found represent his “original” ideas. The text that bears the name Zhuangzi, on the other hand, is a collection of materials that has been revised and edited over the course of many centuries. Rather than being a coherent treatise going back to one person and one specific time in history, it is a multilayered and “polyphonic” text.

Second, the history of Chinese philosophy is so long and complex that it is impossible to present a comprehensive or even representative collection of critical and subversive positions and voices it includes. Our collection, reflecting the respective areas of expertise of its contributors, focuses on the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions and includes only few chapters (those by Rosker, van den Stock, and Wang) focusing on contemporary contexts. We apologize for the limitations of our volume and encourage others to help filling its lacunae in the future.

The chapters of the first part of this volume approach the topic of critique in terms of methodology, drawing on sources from Confucianism, Daoism, and Chan Buddhism, with a focus on different instances of critique and its various forms in early Chinese philosophical texts.

In Chapter 2, Geir Sigurðsson rethinks the process of learning in terms of “pedagogical self-subversion,” using Confucianism as his chief reference point in understanding this process as one of critical becoming, as a process of critique. He finds that there is an increasing tendency in current scholarship toward a more open-minded analysis of Confucian philosophy in which its critical elements become significant. Sigurðsson develops his reading of Confucian texts as philosophies of education in service to a “transformative self-critical attitude.”

Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio, in their co-authored chapter “Crisis and Critique: Zhuangzi’s Philosophical Turning Point,” seek out the crucial turning point in the Zhuangzi, philosophically understood as the “existential or intellectual experience of the imminent collapse of what has been taken for granted, and the subsequent emergence of a different viewpoint” (p. 21). In reflecting on the story of the poaching at Diaoling, the authors take it to be an allegorical expression “of a crisis that brought about the critical method of the Zhuangzi.”

Brook Ziporyn draws our attention to Zhuangzi, and to what Ziporyn calls Zhuangzi’s “perspectival mirror.” This is a mirror that has “its own position, its own perspective, enabling it to ‘overcome,’ rather than reflect, whatev...