130. Confucius

 As described by Karen Armstrong in The great transformation, philosophy in India and China was very early, in the 9th to 6th century BC, to turn inside the self in ethical reflection, renouncing violence, war, and excessive material acquisition. In India in one stream this turn took the form of lifting the self (atman) above or outside itself, to be absorbed into the higher all or one (brahman), or in kenosis, an emptying of the self to become receptive to a higher will or force. In another stream the aim was not to surrender personal identity but the find the true, higher self.

In the 5th century BC some sages and their followers became oriented towards extremes of compassion and altruism, extended not just to humans but also to animals and even plants, so that life was barely livable, for not stepping on an insect or a fresh blade of grass. They invented the Golden Rule of not doing unto others what one would not want to be done unto oneself.

In Chinese philosophy Confucius raised altruism and orientation to the other human being as a central tenet, and adopted the golden rule. Prior to Confucius (born 551 BC) there were 200 years of strife and war. Confucius strove for peace, justice and tolerance. Confucianism is humanistic, in seeking goodness and happiness not in nature nor beyond nature but in humanity itself. It also was pragmatist, in a unity of thought and action.

Confucian ideals were brought more ‘down to earth’, made more concrete and practical, more utility-based and oriented at welfare, in Mohism, with external sanctions and incentives added to the intrinsic values of Confucianism. 

What attracts me in Confucianism is its orientation towards the other, and the idea that thought and action interact, which is akin to the pragmatism that I employ. That stands in contrast to the more self-oriented and passive stance of Buddhism, and to the reach towards a higher order in nature, beyond humanity and society, in Taoism.

What I dislike in Confucianism is its excessive subservience to authority and its obsessive formal adherence to details of ritual and ceremony. From Karen Armstrong I learn that ceremony has the crucial value of creating a communal ethical sense in the public celebration of spirituality. She compared it to the public feasts and performances of tragedy among the ancient Greeks, for sharing catharsis, purification of the soul. I can see the value of that but remain suspicious of rigid ritual.

A central value in Confucianism is filial piety. To this I object, claiming that the upheavals and rebellion of puberty have value in the preparation of children to break away and assume their own life and convictions. Education should in my view not be the mere transfer and indoctrination of established thought and morality. Literally[1] ‘education’ means ‘leading outside’. While in religious circles that is interpreted as a leading out of darkness into the light of faith, I prefer to interpret it as helping the young to break out and think their own ideas.

If we see Nietzsche as dynamics without altruism, we might see Confucius as altruism without dynamism, while what I advocate is dynamism with altruism. In Confucianism the proper attitude to life is to remain calm in joy and sorrow. There appears to be a lack of Dionysus.

But perhaps while preserving the pragmatic interaction between thought and action, and the orientation towards the other, confucianism can be developed into a more dynamic view. Some of that occurred in later Chinese thought, as I will discuss in the following item. 

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[1] As noted by Joseph Nalin Swaris.

129. What to make of East and West?

Where to stand, in the comparison of Western and Eastern philosophy outlined in the preceding item?

First, as in Buddhism, I do not acknowledge any metaphysical absolute substance or being, beyond reality, in the form of a God or in any other form, since if it exists, then almost by definition we could not say anything about it (see item 14 of this blog). In other words, I am an agnostic. I might accept Spinoza’s view of a God that is identical to the system of nature, which may be close to the view of Taoism. However, that would not be God in any customary sense, as a personal and providential God with designs for the world and for Man, and I think it makes for more clarity not to call the system of nature God.

Second, the notion of substance leads to the notion of absolute universals that I have argued against (items 16 and 17), as Buddhism does. In both knowledge and ethics, I argued for universals that are provisional and temporary, allowing for individuals that escape from the universal and contribute to its shift or transformation. This connects with my cycle of discovery (item 13). I was astonished to find out that this seems similar to a certain interpretation of Yin and Yang in Taoist philosophy. I will return to this in a later item.

Related to this, with much Eastern philosophy, and Western pragmatism and Heidegger, I share the idea of the unity of thinking and being in the world: ideas develop as they are put in action. 

Third, following Hume, and in agreement with much Eastern philosophy, I take a non-substantial view of the self. However, against Hume and Buddhism, I argue in my blog (item 8) that while indeed the self is neither unitary nor fixed, there still is a meaningful identity and continuity of the self, in a bodily coherence of neural activity. Without any identity for the self, how could we still talk of agency, intentions, learning, discovery, etc.? I will return to that issue also, in a later item.       

Fourth, I agree with Eastern philosophy, and with Montaigne, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, that language is misleading. In my blog, in the items on language and meaning, I discussed what I called the ‘object bias’ in our thought and language (item 29). That corresponds with the misleading lure of the notion of substance. We conceptualise abstract things (peace, happiness, meaning, power, identity, …) in terms of objects in time and space. I will not return to that issue. 

Fifth, as I discussed in item 122, in both Western and Eastern philosophy there is a tendency to reserve enlightenment for an elite of the initiated, the illuminated, the trained, the ascetic, in gaining access to a transcendent, elevated, absolute, supreme being (God, Brahman) or to an enlightened existence in the world (Nirvana). If we renounce absolutes and embrace imperfection on the move, we can achieve freedom from self-obsession in ordinary life, in horizontal, immanent transcendence.  

Sixth, inspired by Aristotle, and in line with Taoist thought, I seek a middle between extremes of: internal and external, self and other, subject and object, universal and individual, stability and change, exit and voice, trust and control. I seek to do this by analysing the dynamic interplay between the two.

However, I cannot make sense of Taoist rejection of causality in favour of parallel occurrence (what Jung called synchronicity). I hold on to causality, albeit in its form of Aristotelian multiple causality (see item 96).

128. Eastern and Western philosophy

Here I start a series on differences and similarities between Eastern and Western philosophy, and my position in that.

There is still a widespread inclination to think that there is an unbridgeable chasm between Eastern and Western philosophy. And a Western bias still is that the East can learn from the West, rather than vice versa, and indeed is doing so, as is exhibited in the spread of technology, capitalism and democracy. 

As a side comment, let me add that one can speak of such spread only when allowing for a variety of capitalisms and ‘democracies’. A number of self-proclaimed democracies are in fact vehicles for authoritarian rule (Russia, Turkey, Singapore, Malasia). However, Western smugness concerning the greater purity and merit of democracy in the West is partly the result of blindness to its own limitations. Capitalist market ideology is corrupting culture and institutions and removes control over the forces of globalized markets from the populace. The European Union is shaping a huge democratic deficit. 

Prior to the Enlightenment, Western philosophy was indeed different from Eastern philosophy on a number of fundamental points. However, particularly in the 18th century there was a large and widespread effect from Eastern on Western philosophy and culture. In philosophy there were effects on the thought of Malebranche, Leibnitz, Voltaire, Hume, Herder, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Jung and Heidegger. In some cases the effect was superficial (as in the Romantic philosophy following Herder, and in Nietzsche) or Eastern philosophy was used only to highlight or support one’s own ideas (Voltaire, Hegel, and again Nietzsche). In some cases, however, the effect was fundamental (Leibnitz, Hume, Schopenhauer, Jung).   

On a number of points my philosophy, as expounded in this blog, is more congenial with Eastern than with Western philosophy and on those points some of the Western philosophers that have inspired me are among those who were influenced by the East (e.g. David Hume and Heidegger).

Perhaps the most important and fundamental point concerns the pervasive role of change and variety, in denial of traditional notions from Western philosophy such as substance, absolute (unchanging) universals, God, and a unitary, stable self (individual identity).

Related to this, with much Eastern philosophy, and with Heidegger and American pragmatist philosophy, I share the idea of a unity between thinking and action: ideas develop as they are put in action.

In combination, this has brought me to pragmatism, the volatile self, the role of the other, and the notion of imperfection on the move. The underlying intuitions and ideas have developed in my career as an innovation scholar. They also loom large in Eastern philosophy.

With notable exceptions (e.g. Heraclitus), in early Western philosophy a static view of reality was taken, with substance as the carrier of properties and the basis for identity of the self. In a Platonic tradition, concepts were seen to entail universals, applying always and for ever.

Buddhism, by contrast, recognized no substance and saw reality not in terms of things but in terms of processes and impermanence. Buddhism is not concerned with a flight into the safety and stability of a metaphysical being, but faces the fragility and perishability of the human being, and of being in one’s body. It did not believe in a transcendent being as creator of the world. An advantage of that is that the problem of evil, the justice of God, in creating evil or allowing it to exist, disappears. Buddhism is not concerned with explaining sorrow but in overcoming it. Life is imperfection on the move. In Buddhist Nirwana there is peace, absorption in a state of non-becoming. However, it is not some place or heaven beyond life, but is to be achieved in this life. As such its transcendence is immanent, as I have also argued for. 

Hindu (Vedic) philosophy did entertain notions of an ultimate, transcendent, encompassing, indifferent identity or being, but is was hardly a God in any usual Western sense, and it was held to be ineffable, not accessible to human categories of thought and language. As such it was more akin to mystical Western traditions.

I will develop these and other themes in the following items of this series.

The main sources that I use in this series are the following

-          Cheng, Chung-Ying &Nicholas Brunnin (eds), 2002, Contemporary Chinese philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell

-          Coplestone, Frederick F., A history of philosophy,
-          Elders, Fons (ed.), 2000, Humanism and Buddhism (in Dutch), Brussels: VUB press.
-          Mcfie, Alexander Lyon (ed.), 2003, Eastern influences on Western philosophy, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
-          Muller. John M. (ed.), 1963, Oriental philosophies, London: Macmillan.

 

127. Beneficial imperfection

What do democracy, market and science have in common? They do not achieve grand designs but correct the ones that fail. They are imperfect but redress imperfections: imperfection on the move. 

There is perennial grumbling about the imperfection of democracy, with its bumbling politicians, dilettantism, lack of long-term vision, cacophony of contrary voices, inertia, bureaucracy, decisions as watered-down compromise, and yo-yo policies, undoing under one government what the previous one did. Regularly there is a clamour for a strong, leader, a visionary, and occasionally there is envy of dictatorships or charismatic (Berlusconi) or authoritarian (presently Erdogan in Turkey) leaders, who do show vision and strength, and get things done.

As recognized by Alexis de Tocqueville, the purported weaknesses of democracy are in fact its strengths. The point of democracy is not that it achieves perfection but that it manages to timely weed out imperfections. The presumed strengths of dictatorships are in fact their weaknesses. In the long run, dictatorships lose and democracies win.

Consider Stalin, Hitler, Mao, with their grand designs ultimately collapsing in disaster. Democracies won the wars. After the disasters under Mao, China is now doing well economically, but will it sustain its success without yielding more to democracy?

Markets and science are similar to democracy, in their fundamental logic. They also are correction mechanisms of failures. They also do not achieve grand visions by design but allow for a variety of designs from others (here entrepreneurs, scientists) to arise, and then see to it that the ones that fail are weeded out. That also is the logic of evolution.

In markets it is not (or should not be) governments but entrepreneurs that yield ideas for products. With this, the risks of enterprise are privatized. Those risks would be unacceptable to a political system that is geared to be prudent, i.e. to avoid risks. When entrepreneurs fail they go bankrupt. Failures of grand designs by large firms or governments are hidden for reasons of prestige, and are propped up with subsidies from what does succeed. 

In science, according to Karl Popper’s methodology of falsificationism, scientists exercise their insights and risk their careers with ideas, ferreting out each other’s failures. It is the scientists, not committees or institutions that come up with the occasional successes and the frequent failures.

The point in all three cases, democracy, markets and science, is this. They allow for mistakes but also correct them, evoking criticism, giving voice to failure, and replacing failed visionaries. Dictatorships and economic and scientific planning, by contrast, stifle criticism, hide failure and prop up the failed visionary. As a result, mistakes develop into disasters, while in democracies they are redressed.

Of course, this does not happen automatically. There is a persistent urge to design blueprints, plans and programs top-down. In democracies as well as in markets and science systems, governing elites when given the opportunity will hide mistakes, will silence or divert criticism, seek agreement rather than opposition, collaborate only with collaborators, not critics, building bastions of support. Democracy requires a tenacious maintenance of freedom of speech, a vigilant press, and all the usual institutions of a separation of powers (the judicial, the legislature, and the executive), police monopoly of violence, etc.  Markets require that lobbying by established firms be curtailed. Science requires that open dissemination of publications be maintained. And they all require openness to new entrants.