Imagination: Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses

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

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781350163959
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350050150
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

Imagination: Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses is a rare intercultural inquiry into the conceptions and functions of the imagination in contemporary philosophy.

Divided into East Asian, comparative, and post-comparative approaches, it brings together a leading team of philosophers to explore the concepts of the illusory and illusions, the development of fantastic narratives and metaphors, and the use of images and allegories across a broad range of traditions. Chapters discuss how imagination has been interpreted by thinkers such as Zhuangzi, Plato, Confucius, Heidegger, and Nietzsche.

By drawing on sources including Buddhist aesthetics, Daoism, and analytic philosophy of mind, this cross-cultural collection shows how the imagination can be an indispensable tool for the comparative philosopher, opening up new possibilities for intercultural dialogue and critical engagement.

Part One

Imagination in Chinese and Japanese Philosophies

1

Truth and Imagination in China: Opposition and Conciliation in the Tradition

Richard John Lynn

“Imagination” in the Chinese tradition, the formation of mental images in the mind, both of the actual and the non-actual, is problematic and complex; for it differs with time, with the theories and practice of thought involved, especially as ideas relate to words through the medium of images, and from genre to genre in literature, where it is sometimes judged to lead to and render “truth,” and sometimes regarded as inimical to it. A passage in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi 莊子, with the commentary of Guo Xiang 郭象 (c. 252–312), might be a good place to begin our exploration of imagination in China, as it provides perspectives on several essential issues involved.¹ Here we see it championed as a vital form of cognition, defended on empathetic and creative grounds, and discredited in terms of the rational intellect as pretension and fantasy:

莊子與惠子遊於濠梁之上。莊子曰：「儵「出遊從容，是「之樂「。」惠子曰：「子非「，安知「之樂？」莊子曰：「子非我，安知我不知「之樂？」欲以起明相非起不可以相知之義耳。子非我，尚可以知我之非「，則我非「，亦可以知「之樂「。惠子曰：「我非子，固不知子矣；子固非「「，子之不知「之樂，全矣。」舍其本言起給辯以難「。莊子曰：「請循其本。子曰『汝安知「樂『云者，既已知吾知之起問我，我知之濠上「。」尋惠子之本言云：「非「則無緣相知耳。今子非我「，起云汝安知「樂者，是知我之非「「。苟知我之非「，則凡相知者，果可以此知彼，不待是「然後知「「。故循子安知之云，已知吾之所知矣。起方復問我，我正知之於濠上耳，豈待入水哉！」夫物之所生起安者，天地不能易其能，陰陽不能回其業；故以陽生之所安，知水生之所樂，未足稱妙耳。 (Guo Qingfan 1894: [17] 606–607)

Whilst Master Zhuang and Master Hui were walking about on Hao Bridge, Master Zhuang remarked, “The shu fish emerge to wander so free and easy; such is the joy of fish” (Guo Qingfan 1894: [17] 606).² Master Hui then said, “You are not a fish, so can you know the joy of fish?”³ Master Zhuang replied, “You are not me, so wherein do you know that I do not know the joy of fish?” [Guo Xiang:] By saying this he wants to cast light on the proposition that because one is not another he cannot know that other: If despite not being me you still can know that I am not a fish, then it must be true that even though I am not a fish, I too can know the joy of fish.⁴

Master Hui then said, “I am not you, so I definitely do not know what it is to be you, but as you are definitely not a fish, this proves perfectly that you do not know what it is to be a fish.” Abandoning his original thesis, he tries to use nimble disputation to refute him. Master Zhuang responded, “May I get back to your original thesis? When you said ‘wherein do you know the joy of fish,’ you already knew wherein I knew it but asked me anyway: I knew it above the Hao.” He gets back to Master Hui’s original thesis, in which he said, “Since you are not a fish you have no means to know what it is to be one.” Now [to paraphrase Master Zhuang], “You are not me yet still ask wherein do I know the joy of fish, which means that you know that I am not a fish, and if you know that I am not a fish, this in general means that mutual knowing [between self and other] is such that a this one can know a that one, and one need not depend on being a fish and only then know what it is to be a fish. Therefore I went back to what you said about wherein could I have known such a thing, which means that you already knew what I knew! But just when you persisted in interrogating me, I knew it exactly there above the Hao, so why did I have to depend on entering the water!” That creatures live where they feel safe and secure [an] is because Heaven and Earth cannot exchange places, and yin and yang cannot interchange productive activities. Therefore, one living on land may by reference to how he feels safe and secure know how those that live in water feel joy—there is nothing especially profound or mysterious about this at all!⁵

Although it is clear from both the text of the Zhuangzi and Guo’s commentary that the vehicle of cognition is empathetic imagination, neither use specific terminology to identify it, and only Cheng Xuanying refers to it these ways: da wuqing suoyi 達物情所以 “understand how the innate character of creatures is as it is” and ti wuxing 體物性 “embody the inherent nature of others.” Da might also be rendered “have unimpeded access to,” and ti is thus employed surely with the meaning of such binomials as tihui 體會 “bodily understand” or ticha體察 “bodily apprehend,” functions that involve the whole body, its physical sensations, and workings of the mind and heart, all of which involve empathetic imagination.

However, another common way to render “imagination” in the Chinese tradition is with the term xiangxiang 想象[像], “images produced by/of thought/ideation,” a term which dates back as early as the Hanfei zi 韓非子 [Sayings of Master Hanfei] third century BCE., the fu (rhapsodies) of Cao Zhi 曹植 (192–232), and the poetry of Xie Lingyun謝靈運 (385–433). Although xiangxiang is generally neutral vis-à-vis truth/authenticity/the actual, other terms associated with imagination, such as kongxiang 空想 “fantasy,” wangxiang 妄想 “delusion,” and huanxiang 幻想 “illusion” (all also common in pre-modern usage) obviously have negative denotations. The expression/depiction of “truth” in Chinese literature is equally problematic. In the elite tradition of classical poetry and prose, “truth” means the authentic expression of the “real” person of the author, epitomized in the age-old maxim taken from the “Great Preface” to the Classic of Poetry, shi yan zhi詩言志: “poetry verbalizes intent/what occupies the mind.” That is, persona and person should be one: what appears in writing should be the authentic personality of the author and his actual experiences. Narratives should be accurate as to historical fact, and description and accounts of places and people should accord with what the author actually knows of them. The fantastic spirit journeys of Qu Yuan 屈原 (c. 340–278 BCE) or the bizarre accounts of strange creatures in the Zhuangzi (fourth to third centuries BCE), as well as men writing in the personae of women, for example, were justified in this tradition by casting them as allegories or parables that aim at truth through metaphor and allusion. Poets who deviated from these models stood accused of fabrication and falsehood, and eras in which such heterodoxy became common, the later Six Dynasties and the Late Tang, for example, largely came in for disapprobation by traditional mainstream critics; although many a later poet may have indulged in creative and imaginary fabrication, their reputations in later traditional criticism never fared well. However, with the appearance of the ci 詞 [song lyric], which developed during the later Tang, Five Dynasties, and early Song, and the qu 曲 [dramatic lyric], which developed during the Yuan, elite classical verse and these two lyric genres, rich in imaginative fictionality, began to influence one other: classical verse became more prone to attempt dramatic inventiveness, and lyrics at times became vehicles for the intense kinds of personal expression hitherto reserved for classical verse. These general trends can be traced in indigenous Chinese works of literary thought, which included shihua 詩話 (discussions of poetry), letters, essays, and technical manuals. This paper will explore these sources to determine how “truth” and “imagination,” though often opposed in literary thought, at times achieved genuine conciliation.

One passage in the Chuci 楚辭 [Elegies of Chu], Yuanyou 遠游 [Far roaming], clearly contains an occurrence of xiangxiang 想像 that can only mean “imagine”:

涉青雲以氾濫游兮 忽臨睨夫舊鄉

僕夫懷余心悲兮 邊馬顧起不行

思舊故以想像兮 長太息起掩涕⁶

(Wang 王逸1936: 5 [10b–11a])

Traversing clouds up in the blue, I roamed as if flood in surge, oh,

But suddenly looking down, spied my old homeland.

My driver was homesick while I grew sad, oh,

As the trace horses looked back and would not go on.

Remembering my old friends as I imagine [xiangxiang] them, oh,

I long heaved great sighs and concealed my tears.

The composition as a whole is thought to be a later counterpart to the first of the Elegies of Chu, the more familiar Lisao 離離 [Encountering sorrow], whose celestial spirit-journey is generally either interpreted as an analogy for a virtuous man’s search for a worthy sovereign or the recording, however highly edited, of a shaman’s vision of a spiritual journey through supernatural realms. As analogy, the Elegies of Chu inspired many later similar compositions, one of which by Cao Zhi we examine below.

In a prose text roughly contemporary with the Elegies of Chu, the Han Fei zi [Sayings of Master Han Fei], third century BCE, an attempt is made to explain why the character for elephant (xiang 象) came to mean “image” and “imagination,” in the section Jie Lao 解老 [Explaining the Laozi]:

人希見生象「，起得死象之骨，案其圖以想其生「，故諸人之所以意想者皆謂之象「。今道雖不可得雖見，聖人執其見功以能見其形，故曰無狀之狀，無物之象。(Chen 2000: [6] 413)

People rarely see a living elephant (xiang), but when they get the bones of a dead elephant, complying with their design, they imagine the living thing. This is why when anyone imagines something, this is always called a xiang (image). Now, although there is no way to know how the Dao looks or sounds, the true sage grasps its visible effects and thereby manages to discern its shape. This is what the text [of the Laozi] refers to when it states “the shape of that which has no shape, the image of that which has no physical existence.” (Lynn 1999a: 72–73)

Han Fei’s explanation of image and imagination, based on hints of things unseen, might well be ultimately based on the way the images (xiang 象) of the Yijing 易經 [Classic of changes] were interpreted by the ancient sages who, apprehending the principles underlying Heaven and Earth and all things, channeled them to mankind in terms of analogous images:

聖人有以見天下之聖。起擬諸其形容。象其物宜。是故謂之象。

The sages had the means to perceive the mysteries of the world and, drawing comparisons to them with analogous things, made images out of those things that seemed appropriate. This is why they are called “images.” (Lynn 1995: [1] 57)

Although chronologically out of sequence, at this point we should briefly consider what Wang Bi 王弼 (226–249) had to say about the images in the Classic of Changes:

夫象者。出意者「。言者。明象者「。盡意莫聖象。盡象莫聖言。言生於象。故可尋言以觀象。象生於意。故可尋象以觀意。意以象盡。象以言聖。故言者所以明象。得象起忘言。象者所以存意。得意起忘象。猶聖者所以在兔，得兔起忘聖。筌者所以在「。得「起忘筌「。然則，言者。象之聖「；。象者。意之筌「。(Lou 1980: 609)

Images are the means to express ideas. Words [that is, the texts] are the means to explain the images. To yield up ideas completely there is nothing better than the images, and to yield up the meaning of the images there is nothing better than words. The words are generated by the images, thus one can ponder the words and so observe what the images are. The images are generated by ideas, thus one can ponder the images and so observe what the ideas are. The ideas are yielded up completely by the images, and the images are made explicit by the words. Thus, since the words are the means to explain the images, once one gets the images, he forgets the words, and, since the images are the means to allow us to concentrate on the ideas, once one gets the ideas, he forgets the images. Similarly, “the rabbit snare exists for the sake of the rabbit, once one gets the rabbit, he forgets the snare, and the fish trap exists for the sake of fish; once one gets the fish he forgets the trap.”⁷ If this is so, then the words are snares for the images, and the images are traps for the ideas. (Lynn 1999b: 86)

Wang’s observations concerning the intimate connections among ideas, images, and words had considerable influence on the later Chinese tradition, including the great sixth-century literary critic Liu Xie, whose thought is examined below.

In a somewhat later text than the Sayings of Master Han Fei, the Tangwen湯問 [Questions of Tang] section of the Liezi列子 [Sayings of Master Lie], another significant use of the term xiangxiang 想象 appears:

伯牙善聖琴，鍾子期善聽。伯牙聖琴，志在高山。鍾子期曰：善哉！峨峨兮聖泰山！志在流水。鍾子期曰：善哉！洋洋兮聖江河！伯牙所念，鍾子期必得之。伯牙游於泰山之陰，卒聽暴雨，止於巖下；心悲，乃援琴起聖之。初為霖雨之操，更造崩山之音。曲每奏，鍾子期輒窮其趣。伯牙乃舍琴起歎曰：善哉，善哉，子之聽夫！志想象猶吾心「。吾於何逃聲哉？

(Yang 1997: [5] 178)

Bo Ya excelled at playing the zither, and Zhong Ziqi excelled at interpreting how he played. When Bo Ya played his zither, his mind on high mountains, Zhong Ziqi said, “How wonderful! Lofty, like Mount Tai!” And when his mind was on flowing waters, Zhong Ziqi said, “How wonderful! Vast, like the Yellow River and the Yangzi!” Whatever came into Bo Ya’ s thoughts, Zhong Ziqi was sure to grasp it. Once when roaming with Bo ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Introduction
• Part 1: Imagination in Chinese and Japanese Philosophies
• Part 2: Comparative Studies on Imagination
• Part 3: Post-Comparative Conceptions of Imagination
• Index
• Imprint