Can Different Cultures Think the Same Thoughts?

A Comparative Study in Metaphysics and Ethics

Kenneth Dorter

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780268103569
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

Kenneth Dorter's Can Different Cultures Think the Same Thoughts? is a study of fundamental issues in metaphysics and ethics across major philosophical traditions of the world, including the way in which metaphysics can be a foundation for ethics, as well as the importance of metaphysics on its own terms. Dorter examines such questions through a detailed comparison of selected major thinkers and classic works in three global philosophical traditions, those of India, China, and the West.

In each chapter Dorter juxtaposes and compares two or more philosophers or classic works from different traditions, from Spinoza and Shankara, to Confucius and Plato, to Marcus Aurelius and the Bhagavad Gita. In doing so he explores different perspectives and reveals limitations and assumptions that might otherwise be obscure.

The goal of Dorter's cross-cultural approach is to consider how far works from different cultures can be understood as holding comparable philosophical views. Although Dorter reveals commonalities across the different traditions, he makes no claim that there is such a thing as a universal philosophy. Clearly there are fundamental disagreements among the philosophers and works studied. Yet in each of the case studies of a particular chapter, we can discover a shared, or at least analogous, way of looking at issues across different cultures. All those interested in metaphysics, ethics, Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy will find much of interest in this book.

CHAPTERONE

GOINGBEYONDTHEVISIBLE

Zhuangzi and the Upaniṣads

In the next three chapters we will see how metaphysical thinking can have ethical implications, but here we will address the preliminary question of what is meant by metaphysics and how it arises out of our usual practical way of thinking. Although the term etymologically means “after the physics,” a reference to the sequence of Aristotle’s writings, it has come to mean “beyond the physical,” a kind of thinking that recognizes a reality beyond the world of our senses. Metaphysical thinking is often organized into a systematic interpretation of that reality, but it need not be systematic as long as it concerns itself with a reality beyond the senseperceptible. We will be concerned in this chapter with metaphysics in this more general sense.

Since our customary point of view is to regard the world in empirical terms as equivalent to what the senses perceive, what moves us to acknowledge a radically different reality? Even in religion there is a tendency to conceive the unseen world as an extension of the physical world: God is a father, heaven is above and hell below, tangible rewards and punishments are meted out for good and bad behavior, et cetera. This is religion in Plato’s cave. How do we become free of the self-reinforcing attitude that “seeing is believing”? The dominant response of Western philosophy has been to offer arguments showing the limitations of our normal way of thinking and the need for a different kind of thinking, like the efforts of Plato’s Socrates to undermine our usual opinions by reference to the timeless nonsensible truth of mathematics (a strategy not used by traditional Asian philosophers as far as I know) or by reductios ad absurdum that paralyze our customary thought and leave us in a state of wonder.¹ Philosophy begins with wonder, as Plato (Theaetetus 155d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics A.2.982b12–19) attest.² One way that Western philosophy differs in emphasis from Asian philosophy is in this relative prominence of intellectual arguments to change our perspective. There is more emphasis in Asian philosophy than in the West on nondemonstrative techniques for bringing our customary thinking to a halt and redirecting it into other channels, most dramatically in the koans of Zen Buddhism. For that reason in this chapter we shall primarily compare philosophers from the two Asian traditions, although there will be briefer comparisons with some Western philosophers.

Awakening

Zhuangzi begins with a striking image: “In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is Kun [roe, fish egg]. The Kun is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is Peng [roc, a mythical bird]. The back of the Peng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across, and when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven” (chap. 1, p. 1).³ The image suggests a double transformation in a single direction. The name “Kun” reminds us that even the biggest fish started out a miniscule egg.⁴ The egg is transformed into a living creature submerged in darkness, but through a second transformation it flies up from the depths of the northern darkness into the light of the sky. It cannot do this without support, however: “If wind is not piled up deep enough, it won’t have the strength to bear up great wings” (chap. 1, p. 2). What does all this signify? At first it may seem to be an image of the transformation of yin into yang,⁵ but there is no suggestion that Peng subsequently metamorphoses back into Kun, like yang into yin, so we must look elsewhere.⁶ In chapter 2 Zhuangzi mentions two kinds of awakenings: “While he is dreaming, he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream, he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream” (chap. 2, p. 16).

This can be read as a demythologization of the Kun-Peng story. Just as the egg metamorphoses into the darkness-dwelling Kun, who in turn transforms into Peng that flies into the bright sky, our dreaming self awakens first from sleep into the ontological darkness of the material world and may subsequently awaken again into the brightness of mental illumination. How Zhuangzi helps us to achieve the second transformation is the hermeneutical dimension of the book. As Kuang-ming Wu writes: “Understanding Chuang Tzu is not a matter of mere academic curiosity, but nothing short of a life enlightenment and conversion . . . like that envisioned by Plato in the myth of the cave. . . . Since Chuang Tzu seems to insist that a proper understanding of him entails a rejection of usual understandings of understanding, he demands nothing less than a transvaluation in hermeneutics” (1982, 31). As we have seen, the comparison with Plato’s cave is apt. The prisoners’ inability to see anything when they turn from darkness to light, and their subsequent refusal to believe in any reality beyond the shadows on the wall, has its corresponding image in Zhuangzi: When Peng rises up ninety thousand li and prepares to journey to the southern darkness, “the cicada and the little dove laugh at this, saying, ‘When we make an effort and fly up, we can get as far as the elm or the sapanwood tree, but sometimes we don’t make it and just fall down on the ground. Now how is anyone going to go ninety thousand li to the south!’ What do these two creatures understand? Little understanding cannot come up to great understanding; the short-lived cannot come up to the long-lived” (chap. 1, pp. 1–2).⁷ Peng flies from the northern darkness in which Kun lives, and which is tantamount to simple ignorance, to the brightness of the sky, which corresponds to the light of conceptual understanding, and then finally to the southern darkness, which must be not the darkness of ignorance but the darkness of ineffability.⁸

The Upaniṣads offer a parallel analogy. Like Zhuangzi, the Kena tells us that our goal is reached not by ordinary (“little”) understanding but only by awakening:

It is conceived of by him by whom It is not conceived of.

He by whom It is conceived of, knows It not.

It is not understood by those who understand It.

It is understood by those who understand It not.

When known by an awakening, It is conceived of.

(2.3–4)⁹

One feature of awakening from a dream is that normally we cannot achieve it by our own effort because we do not realize we are dreaming; we must be awakened by something other than our will. That is true also for the higher kind of awakening. The Katha Upaniṣad speaks of the need for grace:

One who is without the active will beholds Him, and becomes freed from sorrow

When through the grace of the Creator he beholds the greatness of the Self [Atman]. . . .

This Self is not to be obtained by instruction,

Nor by intellect, nor by much learning.

He is to be obtained only by the one whom He chooses;

To such a one that Self reveals his own person.

(2.20–23)¹⁰

This also seems to be the meaning of Zhuangzi’s remark that Peng can fly only if enough wind is piled up under his wings. The implication is that we cannot achieve this awakening by our own efforts alone. Similarly, not until “the sea begins to move [does the bird Peng] set off for . . . the Lake of Heaven” (chap. 1, p. 1).

But the Upaniṣad also reverses the metaphor of awakening: “Truly everything here is Brahman; this self (atman) is Brahman. This same self has four fourths. The waking state . . . is the first fourth. The dreaming state . . . is the second fourth. If one asleep desires no desire whatsoever, sees no dream whatsoever, that is deep sleep, . . . the third fourth. . . . The state of being one with the Self . . . is the fourth” (Mandukya Upaniṣad, verses 2–7). Here the dreaming state is higher than the waking state. How is that possible? The Brihadaranyaka Upaniṣad explains: “When one goes to sleep, he takes along the material of this all-containing world, himself tears it apart, himself builds it up, and dreams by his own brightness, by his own light. Then this person becomes self-illuminated. There are no chariots there, no draft-animals, no roads. But he projects from himself chariots, draft-animals, roads. . . . For he is a creator” (4.3.9–10). Dreaming, then, is an echo of maya, the illusory projection of individuated things: “This whole world the illusion-maker (mayin) projects out of this [Brahman]. . . . Nature (Prakriti) is illusion, and . . . the Mighty Lord is the illusion-maker” (Śvetaśvatara Upaniṣad 4.9–10).

Zhuangzi does not exalt the dream state over the waking state, but he does point to comparable consequences. The most famous passage in his book is also about dreaming and waking: “Once Zhuang Zhou [Zhuangzi] dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up, and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he were Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly, there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things” (chap. 2, p. 18). To see the point of the story we need to ask ourselves what difference it makes to our consciousness whether we are awake or dreaming. If we think we’re a butterfly we do what a butterfly does, if we think we’re a person we do what a person does. It’s futile to ask whether the form we find ourselves in is our true form. Our true form is the Dao, and we express it in whatever form we find or imagine ourselves:¹¹

The Perfect Man has no self. (chap. 1, p. 3)

Yan Hui said, “Before I heard this, I was certain that I was Hui. But now that I have heard it, there is no more Hui. Can this be called emptiness?” “That’s all there is to it” (chap. 3, p. 25)

The clansman Tai . . . sometimes he thought he was a horse; sometimes he thought he was a cow. His understanding was truly trustworthy; his virtue was perfectly true. (chap. 6, p. 54)

The implication of this absence of self is that there is no ultimate difference between things. As the Katha Upaniṣad says:

Whatever is here, that is there.

What is there, that again is here.

He obtains death after death

Who seems to see a difference here.

(4.10)

If there is no ultimate difference among things, then all things reduce to a singularity. Zhuangzi is explicit about this:

This man, with this virtue of his, is about to embrace the ten thousand things and roll them into one. (chap. 1, p. 4)

Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse.¹² (chap. 2, p. 10)

The Way makes them all into one. . . . No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. (chap. 2, p. 11)

If you were to hide the world in the world, so that nothing could get away, this would be the final reality of the constancy of things.¹³ (chap. 6, p. 45)

The Hermeneutics of Awakening

Heraclitus remarks that “for the waking there is one common world, but when asleep each person turns away to a private one” (B89), the world of dreams. Even in our waking world, however, we are asleep in a metaphorical sense: “People fail to notice [lanthanei] what they do when awake, just as they forget [epilanthanontai] what they do while asleep” (B1). In Zhuangzi and in the Upaniṣads we saw that we must awaken not only from our private dreams but also from the public dream of maya in which we see all things as self-subsistent individuals instead of transitory moments of the One, whether conceived as the Dao or as Atman.

How can authors bring about this transformation in their readers? I suggested earlier that “the southern darkness” is the darkness of ineffability. Zhuangzi uses the wheelwright’s art as a metaphor: “You can get it in your hand and feel it in your mind. You can’t put it into words” (chap. 13, p. 107). How can words awaken us to what cannot be put into words? I just spoke of “the One, whether conceived as the Dao or as Atman,” but Atman means “self,” and according to Zhuangzi “The Perfect Man has no self” (chap. 1, p. 3). If the ineffable can be named in antithetical ways, what efficacy can speech have to raise our minds to this thought?

The Upaniṣads and Zhuangzi both recognize this issue.¹⁴ The Kena Upaniṣad says:

There . . . speech goes not, nor the mind.

We know not, we understand not

How one would teach It.

Other, indeed, is It than the known,

And moreover above the unknown. . . .

That which is unspoken with speech,

That with which speech is spoken—

That indeed know as Brahman.

(1.3–4)

And Zhuangzi writes: “Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. ...