Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning (Chinese Contemporary Art Series) 9811502099, 9789811502095

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Contents
About the Author
Comparative Aesthetics
1 Spiritual Rituals of Chinese Ink Painting: The Suggestions of Shitao
1.1 Ritual and Rituals in Art
1.2 Performance and Practice Approaches
1.3 Rituals in Shitao’s Artistic Practice
1.4 Contexts: Shitao’s Identity and Daoism’s Relevance
1.5 Conclusion
References
2 Ideas of the Body in Zhu Guangqian's Aesthetics
2.1 Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
2.2 Empathy, Body and Inner Imitation
2.3 Vico’s Bodily-Based Senses
2.4 Conclusion
References
3 Confucian Aesthetics and the Recent Suggestion of Its Reference to Western Feminist Aesthetics
3.1 Feminist Critique of Kant’s Aesthetics
3.2 The Suggestion of a Matriarchal Aesthetics
3.3 The Aesthetic Experience in Traditional Chinese Philosophies and Matriarchal Art
3.4 Conclusion
References
4 Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics in China: Paradigms and Practices
4.1 Background
4.2 Critique of Western Traditional Aesthetics Revisited
4.3 What Do Feminist Aestheticians Advocate?
4.4 Confucian Aesthetics and Its Feminist Modalities
4.5 Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics and Its Practice in China
References
Gender, Art and Knowledge
5 Transformation of Social Reality and Susanne Langer’s Illusory Space in Dance
5.1 Dance as Field of Virtual Powers
5.2 Philosophy of Dance and Its Layers
5.3 Hong Kong Dance Choreography (1980s–2010s): The Case of Helen Lai
References
6 The Relation of “Self” and “Others” in the Confucian Traditions and Its Implications to Global Feminisms and Public Philosophies
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Global Feminism
6.3 Public Philosophy and the Dualism of the “Private” and “Public”, “Self” and “Others”
6.4 Confucianism as a Form of Religion
6.5 The Confucian’s Reading of the “Self” and “Others”
6.6 A Concluding Remark
References
7 A Further Reflections on Some Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology
7.1 A Critique of Traditional Western Epistemologies: Main Objections and Arguments
7.1.1 Knowledge as Representation
7.1.2 The Neutrality of Knowledge
7.1.3 Reason and Masculinity
7.1.4 The Notion of Objectivity
7.2 Feminist Suggestions of Knowledge Formation and Epistemological Approaches
7.2.1 Feminist Empiricism
7.2.2 Feminist Standpoint Theory
7.2.3 On Objectivity and Truth
7.3 Further Reflections: Problems, Difficulties and Criticisms
7.4 Is a Feminist Epistemology Possible?
References
Embodiment
8 Judith Butler’s Reading of the Sartrian Bodies and the Cartesian Ghosts
8.1 Background
8.2 Sartrian Bodies and Cartesian Ghosts
8.3 Sartre’s Pitfalls?
8.4 Being-for-Others and the Problem of Gender
8.5 Gender as Choice
8.6 Embodiment and Autonomy
8.7 Concluding Remarks
References
9 Beyond Ontology? Reflections on Robert Solomon’s Ideation of Emotion and Mencius’ Moral Cultivation of “Embodied Emotion”
9.1 Solomon’s Theory of the Ideation of Emotion
9.2 Reflections on Solomon’s Theory of the Ideation of Emotion and Its Implications
9.3 Mencius’s Moral Cultivation of “Embodied Emotion”
References
10 A Cross-Cultural Reflection on Shusterman’s Suggestion of the “Transactional” Body
10.1 Shusterman’s Reading of Dewey’s “Interactional” and “Transactional” Body
10.2 The Transactional Whole of Body-Mind and Environment
10.3 The Meaning of the “Transactional” Body in Confucianism
10.4 On “Transactional Body”: Dewey, Mencius and Shusterman
References
11 Chinese Bodies in Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender and Politics: Methodologies and Practices
11.1 Feminist Aesthetics and Chinese Philosophy Traditions
11.2 Body Theories and Bodily Representations in Art
References
Learning
12 A Historical Review and Reflection on the Confucian “the Great Learning” and Its Contemporary Implications for Higher Education
12.1 A Brief Historical Review of the Controversies and the Meaning of Education in the Great Learning
12.2 The Three Principles and the Eight Items
12.2.1 The Investigation of Things (Ge-Wu)
12.2.2 The Extension of Knowledge (Zhi-Zhi)
12.2.3 Sincere Intention (Cheng-Yi)
12.2.4 The Rectification of Mind (Zheng-Xin 正心)
12.2.5 Self-cultivation
12.2.6 Regulating the Family
12.2.7 Governing the State Well
12.2.8 Harmony in the World
12.3 The Three Principles as the Ultimate Goals of Learning
12.3.1 Illustrating the Illustrious Virtue (Ming-Ming-de 明明德)
12.3.2 Loving and Renovating (or Renewing) People (Qin-Min)
12.3.3 Resting in the Supreme Good (Zhi-Yü-Zhi-Shan 止於至善)
12.4 Knowledge and Practice, the Sageness Within and the Kingliness Without
12.5 Postmodernism and Neo-Conservative Views on Education
12.6 Future Prospects of the Humanities Education: Contemporary Implications of the Great Learning
References
13 Lao Sze-Kwang’s Discourse on Chinese Philosophy and Contemporary Popular Confucianism in China
13.1 Modernization in China and Its Problematics
13.2 Chinese Philosophy and Philosophy in China
13.3 “Orientative Philosophy” (引導性哲學) and “Cognitive Philosophy” (認知性哲學)
13.4 The Future Direction of Chinese Philosophy
13.5 The Confucian Revival in China: A Recent Study by French Anthropologists
13.6 Popular Confucianism
13.7 New Confucianism in China and Confucian Religiosity
13.8 Chinese Confucianism and Confucianism in Contemporary China
References
14 What Does Comparative Philosophy Mean to a Female Chinese Scholar Like Me?
References

Citation preview

Chinese Contemporary Art Series

Eva Kit Wah Man

Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning

Chinese Contemporary Art Series Editor-In-Chief Dr. Chunchen WANG, China Academy of Fine Arts, No. 8 Huajiadi Nanjie Street, Wangjing, Chaoyang District, Beijing, P.R. China e-mail: [email protected] Deputy Editors-In-Chief Paul Gladston, Professor, Nottingham University ([email protected]) Wenny Teo, Lecturer, Courtauld Academy of Art ([email protected]) Advisor Board Alexandra Munroe, Curator of Asian Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Britta Erickson, Ph.D., independent curator, Palo Alto Duan Jun, Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Art, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing Eugene Wang, Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University, Boston He Guiyan, Associate Professor, Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts, Chongqing John Rajchman, Professor, Art History, Columbia University, New York James Elkins, Professor, Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Katie Hill, Dr., Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London Mian Bu, independent curator, Beijing Melissa Chiu, Director of Hirshhorn Art Museum, Washington DC Michael Rush, Director of Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing Paul Gladston, Professor, Director of the Centre for Contemporary East-Asian Cultural Studies, The University of Nottingham Sheng Wei, Dr., Deputy Editor of Art Magazine, Beijing Thomas J. Berghuis, Dr., Curator of Chinese Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Voon Pow Bartlett, Dr., Project Manager, Tate Research Centre: Asia-Pacific, London Wenny Teo, Dr., Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London Yi Ying, Professor, Art Historian, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing Yin Shuangxi, Professor in Contemporary Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing Yu Yang, Associate Professor in Modern Chinese Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing Zheng Shengtian, Editor-in-Chief of Yi Shu magazine, Vancouver

This series focuses on what is happening to Chinese art in the course of recent decades. Since China has changed greatly, it is now a curiosity and a research task: What is that? Why is that? How can it be that? Culturally, why does Chinese art have its own special image narrative? How to evaluate and criticize Chinese art made today? Is it a continuation of its history and heritage? Is anything new that could be reconsidered further? Is Chinese art an artistic issue or a political one? This series of books will concentrate on such questions and issues and will invite international writers and scholars to contribute their thoughts on the explanation and elaboration of Chinese art today.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13527

Eva Kit Wah Man

Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning

123

Eva Kit Wah Man Academy of Film Office Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong, China

ISSN 2199-9058 ISSN 2199-9066 (electronic) Chinese Contemporary Art Series ISBN 978-981-15-0209-5 ISBN 978-981-15-0210-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful for the support given by my family and colleagues at the Academy of Film of the Hong Kong Baptist University, and for my research fellow Gilbert Gu, who has done a great job as my RA and eased the worries and pressure I have gone through in the writing and the editing process of this book. I sincerely thank Leana Li and Prof. Wang Chunchen, editor and editor-in-chief of Springer’s Chinese Contemporary Art Series, for the opportunity they have granted me again and their kind approval. I dedicated this book to philosophers, feminist pioneers and friends Hilde Hein, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Peg Brand and Kathleen Higgins, whose writings have such great impacts on my reflection as a woman and a scholar, also to my late teachers in philosophy, Prof. Philip Shen, Prof. Lao Sze-Kwang and Prof. Liu Shu-Hsien, they are all very unforgettable persons in my young academic career and personal life. Eva Kit Wah Man

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Introduction

This anthology assembles researches and writings which reflect on traditional and current global issues related to art and aesthetics, gender perspectives, body theories, cultural traditions, knowledge and learning. It illustrates core dimensions that are crossing over philosophy and cultural traditions, laying grounds for comparative researches and dialogues among aesthetics, Chinese philosophies, Western feminist studies and cross-cultural thoughts across these subjects. The interdisciplinary approach throughout the writings also integrates philosophical enquiries with cultural anthropology and contextual studies. The first four chapters grouped under aesthetics present comparative studies on art and philosophical aesthetics between China and the West. Through discussing contemporary artistic performance in ink painting and aesthetics, these four chapters seek to argue how Chinese philosophical aesthetics offers meaningful revelations to contemporary aesthetical thoughts. One example can be found in the first chapter, which takes the famous Chinese ink painter Shitao (1642–1707) to demonstrate the ritual’s essential connection with art. The study on Shitao has significance in proposing a ritual theory of art for two reasons. First, his treatise on ink painting, Hua-pu, provides discourse on rituals in artistic practice. Textual analysis on Hua-pu demonstrates that the artist is involved in the interconnectedness of what one depicts. The involvement, visualized by the fusion of brush and ink in the painting surface, presupposes the penetration into the primordial intuition towards what one perceives, and an ethical imperative to utilize artist’s talent assigned by Heaven or Dao. Second, Shitao’s artistic practice can be interpreted as a response to the sociopolitical changes during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. The elaboration on Shitao as an “abandoned citizen” of the Ming dynasty which was taken over by the Qing dynasty’s Manchu ruler and Hua-pu’s relevance to Daoism, further supports the argument that Shitao’s artistic practice is a survivor’s response to his existential situation. The practice and related ritualistic elements correspond to his complex identities and assumed destiny. Shitao’s artistic practice is revealing to the claim “art is ritual”, together with the appeal to an ideal form of art.

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Chapter 2 engages with the founder of the studies of aesthetics in twentieth-century China, Zhu Guangqian (1897–1986). Zhu’s “Theory of Subjective-Objective Integration” contends that one can deal with objects at two levels. Objects as things-in-themselves are at the primary level, while objects, in terms of their beauty and form through human consciousness under subjective “prisms” including ideology and taste, are at the secondary level. The secondary level is influenced by human subjectivity and social activity, and thus, the object is no longer natural or a thing-in-itself but rather a social product. Nonetheless, the product of beauty (or the form of an object) still rests on the object’s own qualities. Beauty is thus the meeting of the subjective and the objective. A closer look at Zhu’s theory reveals that beauty is ideological, as he has claimed clearly that beauty is secondary. Zhu’s discussion is founded on his detailed reading of Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscript, in which he referred back to Engle’s writing in 1876, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. Engels begins by stating that social labour represents the “basic condition for all human existence”, in which the human mind and body are results of the historical process of labour. During labour, the human hand is not only an organ but also the product of labour; so as other human bodily parts like ears and eyes which interact with the nature of things during labour. Body in its physical, mental and social (ideological) senses is the site to creative labour during which the body is not constrained by basic physical needs like animals do. Both Zhu’s famous notions of “naturalizing human” and “humanizing nature” happen at the labouring body. This chapter reviews how Zhu’s aesthetics is under the influences of Marx’s early writing, and his school has become one of the most notable and debatable aesthetics schools in modern China. The cross-cultural reference makes his aesthetics an outstanding one in twentieth-century China. A comparative study on philosophical aesthetics between China and the West is conducted in Chap. 3, which firstly illustrates the Feminist critique of Kant’s aesthetics by laying out the analysis of the two main notions in Kant’s philosophy— taste and the sublime. Such criticism is part of a much broader contemporary feminist criticism, which has challenged some fundamental categories in the history of western philosophy. The chapter introduces Heide Göttner-Abendroth’s model of matriarchal aesthetics with a summarization of its nine principles. This alternative aesthetical mode suggested by a Western feminist scholar reminds me of some aspects of Chinese philosophy, as her emphasis on Nature’s unity with human beings is well embedded in traditional Chinese philosophy. Commonalities in the agenda can be found when comparing Göttner-Abendroth’s paradigm with aspects of Daoist and Confucian aesthetics, and critical dialogue with one another towards exploring how they might learn from each other is expected. I argue for the possibility of Chinese philosophy as a useful resource, or at least a frame of reference, for the development of an alternative aesthetics along the lines sought by Western feminist scholars. The next chapter takes a deeper and broader look at the possible cross-cultural reflection on Chinese philosophy and contemporary aesthetical thoughts, again taking feminist aestheticians’ critique as the departure. The discussion is a follow

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up of Chap. 3 and quotes the author’s previous studies and writings to lay the foundation of the discussion. Viewpoints of feminist aestheticians arise from the critique of the “defections” of traditional aesthetic concepts are suggested including again the aesthetics of Kant. On the one hand, feminist aesthetics criticizes traditional aesthetics by examining their opposition to modern formalist art in the twentieth-century. Modern formalist art is embedded in Kant’s aesthetics and it implies “ideal observer”. On the other hand, feminist aestheticians advocate the contextualization of art, a post-patriarchal status of art which should be communicative and “compassionately” responsive, and renunciation of the traditional binary scheme related to the dichotomous construction of subject and object. Here again, Confucian aesthetics may serve as a useful reference for Western feminist aesthetics. However, a critical reading on the Confucian practices as a response to the historical and political contexts in China is necessary, and the case of Chinese women’s embroidery and its contemporary implications demonstrate this. The chapters that follow (Chaps. 5–7) discuss core philosophical issues related to gender and knowledge. Chapter 5 uses my recent study of contemporary dance choreographers in post-colonial Hong Kong as examples to expand the possible reading of Susanne Langer’s understanding of dance as form of emotion. These dance authors and performers build their choreographies and develop them along the historical passage in their social reality, and one can apprehend the heavy emotional responses and interactivity in the form. They are good illustrations of Langer’s suggestion of layers of illusion in dance. She suggested a primary level as sort of a bodily intuition and the second level at which, as she suggested, are dance devices that support the total creation or enhance its expressiveness. I argue that these artistic effects are in fact rich in meanings and revealing in addition to their relation to Langer’’s notion of the primary illusions. Langer suggests that these two radically distinct orders of illusions never merge, yet the distinct appearance of a simpler illusion, e.g. pure space or pure time, is in the context of the more complex illusion of dance. These case studies illustrate what Langer refers to, that is a sudden revelation of emotive import (by stressing a formal aspect and abstracting it), which makes its feeling-content apparent. The chapter involves a further reflection on the issue of contextualizing Langer’s notion of “virtual form of dance” in the case of Hong Kong and its post-colonial space in which cross cultural factors are vectors of its dances. Chapter 6 revisits the ideals of global feminisms and public philosophies. The main objective of global feminism is to dismantle the currently predominant structures of global patriarchal and to conceptualize feminisms broadly enough to encompass a vast array of local variations displaying multiple identities. However, the problem of global feminism is its approach to deal meaningfully with a subject matter that runs across the global. Thus, I introduce public philosophy and its foundational thinking, for its primary goal is to certify that there are higher general rules or universal moral norms that one should follow. Here, I suggest the Confucian’s notions of the self and other, which are inspiring to global feminism and public philosophies. My argument is that Confucianism is a form of civil religion in the sense that it reinforces the social relations under the fervour of

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harmony, and the law of social life is in conformity with the law of nature. The Confucian notion of “harmonizes but not conforms” suggests to global feminisms the respect and the praise of the co-existence of different standpoints, capacities and the needs of women in a vast variety of situations. And the Confucian saying of “the Sageness within and the Kingliness without” sends its moral message to public philosophies, which is always concerned with the foundation and the practices of justice. The chapter also provides a critical reading on the Confucian model in its concluding remark. The next chapter brings focus to some fundamental questions in epistemology. It first outlines the main arguments of the feminist critiques of Western traditional epistemology, which concerns the problems of knowledge and representation, the neutrality of knowledge and reason, the influences of masculinity and the notion of objectivity. I delineate feminists’ suggestions of knowledge formation and epistemological approaches and introduce two influential feminist positions, namely the Feminist Empiricism and the Feminist Standpoint. The discussion involves further reflections on the problems, difficulties and criticisms these suggestions have received, all pointing to the question: “Is a so-called ‘feminist epistemology’ possible?” The next four chapters are grouped under the subject of embodiment. They review body theories in contemporary discourses under the light of feminist philosophy and Chinese traditional thoughts. The first chapter of the group (Chap. 8) demonstrates the significance of Judith Butler’s readings on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943) for the review of the notion of “biological sex”. According to Butler, less seriously in Beauvoir’s work, is the existential choice towards a Cartesian mind/body dualism. Butler questions this ambivalence, but her reading has led to the emphasis that gender is always a contemporary way of organizing past and future cultural norms. Furthermore, Butler has disclosed more in Beauvoir’s work to go against the Cartesian version of disembodied freedom by pointing out her idea of the body as a “situation”, which means one’s body is a field of cultural possibilities both received and reinterpreted. In this sense, a woman’s body is always embedded with an expected mode of existence; but within the limits that constrain human person, a woman can still shape her own existence out of the notion of Nothingness. Butler also finds Sartre’s concept of being-for-others helpful in explaining the persistent inequality between men and women regarding the problem of gender. Her reading aims not to differentiate sex from gender since the body/mind split is not sensible to her, but to ask the woman to cast off those weights that are impeding her progress towards authentic selfhood. The chapter on American philosopher Robert Solomon echoes the meaningful revelations Chinese philosophy is able to offer to contemporary western thoughts on the mind and body issue. Robert Solomon with his fervours in existentialism regards emotion as a form of cognition and a matter of ideation. He opens the question of whether cultures with different ideas might have different understandings of conception and emotion. He sees the values of cross-cultural research on emotion as it “clearly lies on the side of ‘ideas’ and different ways of conceiving

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and evaluating the world”. He argues that claims of the “ontology of ideation” may lead to a philosophical black hole and that he prefers “phenomenology” for its better attention to details and its insights and understanding. If cross-cultural studies are revealing to his interests in the role of ideas in emotion, the approach will be revealing also to those who investigate the moral ontology of Confucian philosophy and its regulatory ideas and practices regarding embodied emotion. I quote Mencius’ theory of the body as a cross-cultural example to review the relation and tension between the ontological and phenomenological elements which are put forward in Solomon’s discussion. It demonstrates how Mencius’ theory of the body and physical regulation of embodied emotion, as well as the examples in the Chinese classic, Book of Rites, would provide insights to the answers of Solomon’s invitational questions, which ask: “Do ideas share some of the properties of feelings and those being concerned with the body?” “How are both ideas and feelings tied to behaviour and the social world and relationships?” and “Are emotions essential to ethics?” and finally, “Are emotions shaped by culture?” The short chapter of the group, Chap. 10, explores the suggestion of Richard Shusterman’s “transactional body”, and reviews his statement that the will is not a purely mental affair that is independent of physical modality but is always in interaction with its environment. This chapter makes the same extensive reference to Mencius’ text, as quoted and analysed in the previous chapter when Solomon’s theory of emotion is reviewed. While Shusterman also appreciates the Deweyan interactional model as much as Solomon, he develops the “transactional mode” and implies that the interactivity should expand the body-mind unity to the level of social and cultural conditions. Shusterman finds discussions of similar integrations and transactions among the mental, psychophysical and physical levels in Asian philosophical traditions. I conduct a comparative study between his theory and Mencius’ understanding of the body, in which the contrast of aesthetic experience explicated by Dewey and Shusterman is also brought into the picture. This is interesting to place Chaps. 9 and 10 together for their common orientations, references to the same sources for reflection, as well as their different emphasis. The last chapter of the group on embodiment (Chap. 11) summarizes the methodological approaches I have adopted when I dealt with body matters and discourses in Chinese and Western philosophies. It is a brief of my studies in the fields of gender studies, body theories and aesthetics in comparative studies. Most Western philosophical paradigms are based directly or indirectly on the binary oppositions of the rational/irrational, subject/object, nature/culture, form/matter, mind/body, active/passive or presence/absence that was proposed by ancient Greek philosophers such Aristotle. Naturally, these presumed binary oppositions have had profound implications for the issues of gender, body and mind. Western feminists commonly feel that these oppositions have been foundational to the establishment of masculine and rational cultures in the West. Most philosophical debates and criticisms concerning these paradigms hardly look beyond the West. By describing how I go around my researches, I try to show how methods and perspectives borrowed from feminist research, for example, the use of case studies to ground philosophical discussions, could be fruitful in these comparative studies. The

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questions I seek to address include the following: does Confucianism rule out the capacity of women as moral subjects, and hence as aesthetic subjects? Do other forms of Chinese philosophy in any way contribute or correspond to the patriarchal Confucian culture? In terms of patriarchal values, is the situation in Chinese philosophy fundamentally different from that of the West, and if so, how? Can Chinese philosophy act as a source or a frame of reference for the development of the alternative perspectives sought by Western feminist scholars? The chapter also goes beyond philosophical discussions of traditional Chinese texts and briefs on my studies over female aesthetic representations in women’s embroidery, social attitudes regarding sexuality and contemporary body art and fashion, which combines philosophical analysis with methods from other disciplines. The chapter also addresses women fashion globalization and the case of the 2008 Beijing Olympics hoopla, which would meet the contemporary feminist aesthetics discourses in China. The final three chapters, under the theme of learning, are my reflections on the traditional ethos of education in the Confucian discourse and its revelations to contemporary higher education, the religious implications in Confucian teachings and how popular Confucianism developed in China in recent years. Chapter 12 concentrates on one of the “Four Books” in Confucianism, The Great Learning (大學). It first provides a brief historical review of the three principles and the eight items in The Great Learning. I revisit Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130–1200)’s citation of Cheng Yi (程頤, 1033–1107) about the book, saying that investigation of things and self-cultivation of the individual are both treasured as knowledge and practice and the meaning of “the sageness within and the kingliness without”. Before the speculation on how such an understanding of education can act as a resource in the postmodern era and in our contemporary higher education, a review of our humanities education is conducted, followed by a list of its common critiques received today and clarification on the anxieties about higher education in the postmodern condition. These bring back the educational ideals of The Great Learning and my argument, siding with J. F. Lyotard’s positive prospects of postmodern knowledge, that knowledge is/should be constituted by the harmony of the inner self and outer practice. Three implications are concluded according to my reading of the traditional Confucian text on Humanities education, all referring to a holistic concept in unity: the human mind and the Dao; values and practices; individual and society. Chapter 13 takes a further look at the development of Confucianism in contemporary China by focusing on the meaning discussion raised by contemporary Chinese philosopher, Lao Sze-Kwang (1927–2012). In his influential work, Illusion and Hope: On Contemporary Philosophy and Culture (虛境與希望: 論當代哲學 與文化, 2003), Lao presents an organic and holistic view of culture when he discusses modernization. He advocates the idea of an internal core of a tradition with cultural manifestations in outer layers, including social systems, governance and ways of life. An important aspect that Lao attends to is the “Loss of Effects” (失 效) of traditional Chinese culture when its traditions and corresponding social structure fail to function in the new era. French cultural anthropologists, Sebastien

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Billioud and Joel Thoraval, conducted a field study in China in the last decades to document the development of Confucian culture and its reception. They witnessed the “loss of effects” of Confucianism in the midst of “popular Confucianism” raised in China in recent years. The popularity of Confucianism as a phenomenon, as analysed by Lao and now confirmed by anthropologists, is linked to the destruction of institutional forms which are replaced by new, institutionalized brands of Confucianism claiming religious dimension, or a creative mixture of the “politico-religious” or “theologico-political” forms. This chapter discusses Lao’s notes of the philosophy of culture, the tension between the core of the values of a culture and social construction. At the last chapter of this book, I purposely provide a personal note in responding to the feminist agenda that grand theories and their so-called objectivity, should not rule over case studies and personal, concrete experiences. I review how the subjects in this book—aesthetics, Confucianism, comparative studies and embodied existence—have spoken to my personal existence in reality. If the assignment to me as a philosophy undergraduate is an accident, my path towards the study on feminist philosophy, feminist aesthetics, and comparative studies is an articulation of my sustained reflection on the Confucian influences on my concrete existence. When I look back on my choices, I feel grateful I have become more understanding and forgiving to myself and to other important people in my life. I wish the critical thinking presented in this anthology, which assembles cross-cultural reflections on the research of philosophical aesthetics, gender existence and cultural traditions, would benefit researchers in the area of comparative philosophies. It blends academic fervours with personal reflection, which is a critical practice of feminist philosophy in itself.

Contents

Part I 1

Comparative Aesthetics

Spiritual Rituals of Chinese Ink Painting: The Suggestions of Shitao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Ritual and Rituals in Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Performance and Practice Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Rituals in Shitao’s Artistic Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Contexts: Shitao’s Identity and Daoism’s Relevance . . . 1.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2

Ideas of the Body in Zhu Guangqian’s Aesthetics . . . . . . . . 2.1 Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 2.2 Empathy, Body and Inner Imitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Vico’s Bodily-Based Senses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3

Confucian Aesthetics and the Recent Suggestion of Its Reference to Western Feminist Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Feminist Critique of Kant’s Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Suggestion of a Matriarchal Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Aesthetic Experience in Traditional Chinese Philosophies and Matriarchal Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics in China: Paradigms and Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Critique of Western Traditional Aesthetics Revisited . . . . . . . . .

37 37 38

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Contents

4.3 What Do Feminist Aestheticians Advocate? . . . . . 4.4 Confucian Aesthetics and Its Feminist Modalities . 4.5 Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics and Its Practice References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part II 5

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83 83 84 85 87 88 90

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Gender, Art and Knowledge

Transformation of Social Reality and Susanne Langer’s Illusory Space in Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Dance as Field of Virtual Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Philosophy of Dance and Its Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Hong Kong Dance Choreography (1980s–2010s): The Case of Helen Lai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Relation of “Self” and “Others” in the Confucian Traditions and Its Implications to Global Feminisms and Public Philosophies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Global Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Public Philosophy and the Dualism of the “Private” and “Public”, “Self” and “Others” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Confucianism as a Form of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 The Confucian’s Reading of the “Self” and “Others” . . . . . . 6.6 A Concluding Remark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Further Reflections on Some Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 A Critique of Traditional Western Epistemologies: Main Objections and Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Knowledge as Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 The Neutrality of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Reason and Masculinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.4 The Notion of Objectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Feminist Suggestions of Knowledge Formation and Epistemological Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Feminist Empiricism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Feminist Standpoint Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 On Objectivity and Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Further Reflections: Problems, Difficulties and Criticisms 7.4 Is a Feminist Epistemology Possible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Contents

Part III 8

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Embodiment

Judith Butler’s Reading of the Sartrian Bodies and the Cartesian Ghosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Sartrian Bodies and Cartesian Ghosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Sartre’s Pitfalls? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Being-for-Others and the Problem of Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 Gender as Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6 Embodiment and Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.7 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Beyond Ontology? Reflections on Robert Solomon’s Ideation of Emotion and Mencius’ Moral Cultivation of “Embodied Emotion” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Solomon’s Theory of the Ideation of Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Reflections on Solomon’s Theory of the Ideation of Emotion and Its Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Mencius’s Moral Cultivation of “Embodied Emotion” . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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95 95 96 98 99 100 101 103 105

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10 A Cross-Cultural Reflection on Shusterman’s Suggestion of the “Transactional” Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 Shusterman’s Reading of Dewey’s “Interactional” and “Transactional” Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 The Transactional Whole of Body-Mind and Environment . . 10.3 The Meaning of the “Transactional” Body in Confucianism . 10.4 On “Transactional Body”: Dewey, Mencius and Shusterman . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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121 122 124 126 129

11 Chinese Bodies in Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender and Politics: Methodologies and Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 Feminist Aesthetics and Chinese Philosophy Traditions . . . . 11.2 Body Theories and Bodily Representations in Art . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part IV

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Learning

12 A Historical Review and Reflection on the Confucian “the Great Learning” and Its Contemporary Implications for Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 12.1 A Brief Historical Review of the Controversies and the Meaning of Education in the Great Learning . . . . . . . . 147 12.2 The Three Principles and the Eight Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

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12.2.1 The Investigation of Things (Ge-Wu) . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.2 The Extension of Knowledge (Zhi-Zhi) . . . . . . . . . 12.2.3 Sincere Intention (Cheng-Yi) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.4 The Rectification of Mind (Zheng-Xin 正心) . . . . . 12.2.5 Self-cultivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.6 Regulating the Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.7 Governing the State Well . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.8 Harmony in the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3 The Three Principles as the Ultimate Goals of Learning . . . 12.3.1 Illustrating the Illustrious Virtue (Ming-Ming-de 明明德) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3.2 Loving and Renovating (or Renewing) People (Qin-Min) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3.3 Resting in the Supreme Good (Zhi-Yü-Zhi-Shan 止於至善) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.4 Knowledge and Practice, the Sageness Within and the Kingliness Without . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 Postmodernism and Neo-Conservative Views on Education . 12.6 Future Prospects of the Humanities Education: Contemporary Implications of the Great Learning . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Lao Sze-Kwang’s Discourse on Chinese Philosophy and Contemporary Popular Confucianism in China . . . . . . . . . 13.1 Modernization in China and Its Problematics . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2 Chinese Philosophy and Philosophy in China . . . . . . . . . . . 13.3 “Orientative Philosophy” (引導性哲學) and “Cognitive Philosophy” (認知性哲學) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.4 The Future Direction of Chinese Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . 13.5 The Confucian Revival in China: A Recent Study by French Anthropologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.6 Popular Confucianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.7 New Confucianism in China and Confucian Religiosity . . . 13.8 Chinese Confucianism and Confucianism in Contemporary China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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150 150 151 151 152 152 152 153 153

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14 What Does Comparative Philosophy Mean to a Female Chinese Scholar Like Me? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

About the Author

Prof. Eva Kit Wah Man is currently the Director of Film Academy and Chair Professor in Humanities of Hong Kong Baptist University. She publishes widely in comparative aesthetics, comparative philosophy, woman studies, feminist philosophy, cultural studies, art and cultural criticism. She was a Fulbright scholar conducted research at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004. She was named AMUW Endowed Woman Chair Professor of the 100th Anniversary of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, in 2009. She contributes public services to the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Hong Kong Museums Advisory Committee and Hong Kong Public Libraries and other committees for LCSD and Home Affairs Bureau of HKSAR and Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Arts and Cultural Heritage projects.

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Part I

Comparative Aesthetics

Chapter 1

Spiritual Rituals of Chinese Ink Painting: The Suggestions of Shitao

Ritual has an essential connection with art. This chapter will suggest that the study on Shitao (石濤) has its significance in proposing a ritual theory of art for two reasons. First, his treatise on ink painting, Hua-pu 《畫譜》 ( , Treatise on the Philosophy of Painting), provides a systematic discourse on rituals in artistic practice. Textual analysis on Hua-pu will demonstrate that artist is/should be involved in the interconnectedness of what he/she depicts. This involvement requires the penetration into the primordial intuition towards what he/she perceives and has an ethical imperative to use artist’s talent assigned by heaven. Second, Shitao’s artistic practice will be interpreted as a form of rites, reacting to the sociopolitical changes during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. The elaboration on Shitao’s identity and Hua-pu’s relevance to Daoism will further support the argument. And it is in this sense that Shitao’s case is revealing to the claim that “art is ritual” is/should be metaphorical with the function of its appealing to an ideal form of art.

1.1

Ritual and Rituals in Art

Ritual, directly from Latin ritualis, originally had the meaning of “relating to (religious) rites”. The word can also be derived from ritus, meaning “religious observance or ceremony, custom, usage”. It seems that religion, at least etymologically, plays a significant role in defining what is ritual. This hypothesis can be partly proved when we trace back the history of theories about ritual and religion, of which Catherine Bell provides a fairly comprehensive depiction in her practical

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_1

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Spiritual Rituals of Chinese Ink Painting: The Suggestions …

introduction to ritual practice and its study, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. According to Bell (1997, p. 20), both the historical origins and the ahistorical or eternal essence of religion are the major1 concerns for the adventures of ritual scholars like William Robertson Smith (1846–1894), Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941) and Mircea Eliade (1907–1986). The questions such as whether religion and culture were originally rooted in ritual not only gave rise to a prolonged and productive debate on the origins of religion but brought about some most influential approaches, in a roughly chronological ordering—evolutionary, sociological, and psychological—from which the first generation of the fields of scholarship to study ritual emerged. Then comes to the functional-structuralist approach. Instead of emphasizing the individualism, mysticism or emotionalism of ritual action, this generation of theoretical studies of ritual combines the interests in mechanism for maintaining social equilibrium with the structural perspective on the organization of symbols to explore how ritual affects the organization and workings of the social group (Bell 1997, pp. 23–60). In other words, the functionalstructuralist approach focuses on what ritual accomplishes as a social phenomenon, and specifically, how it facilitates social life. However, new concerns about how ritual and social structures changed over time or under duress, as well as the interests in how symbolic and linguistic systems work, urged theorists to go beyond the framework of functional structuralism. As a result, the emergence of the concept of ritual as “a form of cultural communication that transmits the cognitive categories and dispositions that provide people with important aspects of their sense of reality” appears to be the synthesis of the successive layering of the scholarly predecessors, which can be categorized as the so-called a “culturalist” perspective on ritual (Bell 1997, p. 2). Within this perspective, notably, theories of ritual performance and the proposal of defining ritual as a form of cultural practice are most influential. The 1970s saw both the emergence of a performance approach to the study of ritual and several formulations of human action as praxis/practice in anthropology, and then, in conjunction with greater attention to the lingering effects of colonialism, the practice theory of ritual began to gain currency as one of most holistic and pragmatic treatments of ritual as “acultural and historical construction that has been heavily used to differentiate various styles and degrees of religiosity, rationality, and cultural determinism.” (Bell 1997, p. ix). Can artistic practice be treated as a form of performance or a cultural and historical construction? Or to say, how can we argue for a theory of art as ritual? To answer such questions, perhaps we shall step back and start from the religious ritual first. When Cynthia Freeland tries to assess the validity of a theory of art as ritual, religious ritual comes first in her mind. In her short but popular introduction to art theory, But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory, Freeland’s understanding on ritual is quite the same as ritual’s etymological meaning, in which she emphasizes

1

The etymological investigation of the word was primarily conducted by searching through the Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame= 0&search=ritual. Accessed 5 Aug 2017.

1.1 Ritual and Rituals in Art

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that ritual reinforces the participants’ proper relation to God or nature through their gestures that everyone in the community clearly understands and frankly agrees (Freeland 2001, p. 4). By pointing out that art, like ritual, with its rich colors, design, and spectacle, always involves producing symbolic value by the use of ceremonies, gestures, and artefacts, Freeland (2001, p. 2) proposes a viable theory of art as ritual that “ordinary objects or acts acquire symbolic significance through incorporation into a shared belief system.” However, after an assessment of ritualized or ritual-like contemporary art, especially feminist art and performance art, it is its seeming irrelevance to religion that raises Freeland’s doubts on the ritual theory of art: The theory of art as communal ritual fails to account for the value and effects of much contemporary art. The experience of walking into a spacious, well-lit, and air-conditioned gallery or a modern concert hall may have its own ritualistic aspects, but ones completely unlike those achieved by the sober participants with shared transcendent values […] such as a Mayan or Australian Aboriginal tribal gathering. It seems unlikely we are seeking to contact the gods and higher reality, or appease spirits of our ancestors. (Freeland 2001, p. 28)

There is no doubt that ritual has an essential connection with art as Freeland admits art can have its own ritualistic aspects although she takes the ancient religious rituals as a given. As we have seen and will see in what goes on in the history of theories about ritual, ritual-like activities are not unique to religious institutions or traditions, and there are many ways for people to act ritually. Leddy (2016, p. 7), in an earlier draft of his response to Freeland’s account, notices that something valuable in ritual draws Freeland’s attention to think of the nature of art, but well points out that there is no need to hastily deny the claim of a ritual theory of art by the assumption that ritual simply identifies art where art and ritual are both in their narrow sense, i.e., art referring to some contemporary art and/or ritual going back to tribal ritual. The explication of artworks and the interpretation of ritual are changing and evolving over time in the history of both studies. Interestingly but not surprisingly, scholars (e.g. Williams and Boyd 1993, pp. 5–11) have noticed a considerable overlap between the concerns of philosophers of art and those engaged in ritual studies when they compare the two studies—artworks presenting themselves as instruments of knowledge, as representative, expressive, or purely formal objects; scholars in ritual studies proposed the corresponding definitions of ritual to the classical theories of art. For example, expressionism claims that it is the essence of art that artworks communicate feelings and mirrors human being’s emotional life; and, likewise, Kapferer (1983, p. 195) regards the organization of dance gesture by Sri Lanka exorcist as “a culturally recognizable modeling of emotion or feeling”, and the feeling form is “a model for the reality of experience.” The lack of any definitive winner in the history of theories does not mean that scholarships have not forged useful tools for the analysis and reflection on what may be going on in any particular set of activities in and even outside the certain academic discipline. In this sense, not only artists who are inspired by ritual seek to gain a deeper form of art that probably addresses similar human needs as addressed by ritual, but a

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Spiritual Rituals of Chinese Ink Painting: The Suggestions …

philosophical theorization of the nature of art is able to apply itself to the questions raised by ritual studies. It is this intimacy between art and ritual and their study that draws me to the performance and practice approaches to ritual which I believe can provide a paradigm to analyze rituals’ role in artistic practice and artworks.

1.2

Performance and Practice Approaches

Historically speaking, a number of ideas came together to yield the models of seeing ritual as a performative medium, including Victor Turner’s notion of social dramas and Erving Goffman’s work on the ritual units that structure the performances of social interaction (Bell 1997, p. 73).2 In general, most performance theories have their three major central principles: first, they appeal to the physical and sensual aspects of ritual as an event, in which ritual participants are regarded as active subjects who actually effect changes in their perceptions and interpretations by their creativity, physicality and reflexivity; second, the concept of “framing” is featured to distinguish ritual as such that gives the acts a privileged status that communicates the message “this has extra significance” and create a sense of condensed totality of the macrocosm; third, performance theorists are very concerned with peculiar efficacy of ritual activities, implying that an effective ritual performance would be one in which a type of transformation or situation is achieved (Bell 1997, pp. 72–76, 159–164). As summarized by Bell (1997, p. 76), “performance theory has proven useful in its stress on the dramatic process, the significance of the physical and bodily expressiveness found in ritual, and its evocative attention to secular and new forms of ritual or ritual-like activity.” Sharing a number of concerns with performance theory, particularly its emphasis on historical change, action as action, and acting individuals as bodies, practice theory also sees human activities, as formal as a religious ritual or as casual as a leisure activity, as “creative strategies by which human beings continually reproduce and reshape their social and cultural environments”. Yet it is also interesting in understanding how cultural activity in general works and pays more attention to the political dimensions of social relationships (Bell 1997, p. 76). Scholars from anthropology, sociology and history have developed a number of highly theoretical models for the cultural practices involved in ritual activity. Bell is among them. In her earlier discourse on ritual, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, Bell (1997, pp. 81–83) addresses her methodology of a practice approach to ritual, which can be summarized into three major points: first, the approach has to address the real context of ritual actions, which means the full spectrum of ways of acting within any given culture, and when and why such ritualization is deemed to be effective;

2

See Turner (1974), Goffman (1959), (1967). Relying on Bell (1997, p. 283).

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second, the body movements of ritually knowledgeable agents hold the primacy in terms of the central quality of ritual actions, as their physical actions actually simultaneously define, experience and reproduce the cultural values ordering the environment; and lastly, practice theorists are more concerned with how ritual is a vehicle for the construction and inscription of power relationships. As a result, ritualization is more likely to posit the existence of a type of authoritative reality that is deemed to derive from beyond the immediate situation, according to values that differentiate the sacred as transcendent. It is these features of ritual and ritual-like activity, with their useful concepts and tools for analysis and reflection, suggested by the performance and practice approaches that make me think of Shitao, the influential painter in the late Ming and early Qing period in China, as well as a proposal of a ritual approach to art. To be specific, this chapter will try to demonstrate the significance of Shitao’s case in the discussion of rituals’ role in artistic practice and artworks for at least two reasons. First, Shitao’s key theory of one-stroke (yi-hua 一畫) in his surviving notes on ink painting, Hua-pu, provides a systematic discourse on rituals in artistic practice. The one-stroke in ink painting is argued as both a visible event and a metaphysical concept, which includes primordial intuition, spiritual transformation, and ways to achieve the proper forms of living. The methodology to demonstrate the value of seeing as ritual is to investigate the key concepts and those related chapters in Huapu with reference to the tools and arguments in the performance and practice approaches to ritual. Second, Shitao’s personal experience provides crucial references to the understanding of his painting as a sort of ritual in which his theoretical inscriptions are carried out in praxis. Here, his artistic practice as ritual can also be interpreted as an individual form of rites, reacting to the social and political changes during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition when Manchu, as foreign rulers, took over China. The textual analysis that follows will reveal much to the reading of the related complex.

1.3

Rituals in Shitao’s Artistic Practice

Shitao is not only well known as an ink artist, but also as a prominent art theorist who suggested art as metaphysics. Hua-pu, as one of the most important Chinese philosophical reflections on the art form,3 contains eighteen chapters, and, at its simplest level, they can be divided into four major sections, each of which is led by one key chapter. Chapters 1–3, deals with the decisive metaphysical concepts in Shitao’s

3

On the authenticity of Hua-pu and the question of the treatise’s various recensions and titles, Hay (2001, pp. 208–209, 364) has provided an overview and list of bibliography. The English translations cited in this paper come from Earle Jerome Coleman’s English translation (1971, pp. 141– 180).

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Spiritual Rituals of Chinese Ink Painting: The Suggestions …

theory, are dominated by Chap. 1—“Oneness of Brush Stroke” (yi-hua-zhang-di-yi 一畫章第一). Chapters 4–7, discusses painting as practiced by artist, leading to the subject “Harmonious Atmosphere” (yin-yün-zhang-di-qi 氤氳章第七) in Chap. 7. Chapters 8–14, turns to what artist is depicting, is led by Chap. 8—“Reality of Mountains and Rivers” (shan-chuan-zhang-di-ba 山川章第八). Chapters 15–18 appeals to artist’s responsibilities, ends up in Chap. 18—“Creativity and the Fulfillment of Nature” (zi-ren-zhang-di-shi-ba 資任章第十八).4 To discuss ritual’s role in artistic practice in Shitao’s treatise, this division itself also offers a feasible framework. The following textual analysis on Hua-pu will firstly begin with the discussion of artist/subject, focusing on the concept of yin-yün (氤氳), and then turns to the nature of the world/object, summarizing Shitao’s idea of painting as representation, as discussed in Chaps. 8–14. Finally, the discussion addresses to the relationship between artist/subject and world/object, mainly elaborating the concepts of zun-shou (尊受) and zi-ren (資任). For Shitao, the definition of yin-yün in terms of painting theory is a fusion of brush strokes and ink wash: When the brush strokes and ink wash are unified, this is called yinyün [yin-yün], that is, harmonious atmosphere. Yin and yün are not divided; they are harmonized (nondifferentiated). (Coleman 1971, p. 154)

This unity, argued by Hay (2001, p. 271), one of the authoritative scholars in the study of Shitao, is a dialectic one, where brush and ink are placed on an equal footing and are respectively emblematic in Shitao’s writing of “the controlled, directed act and the material reaction with its margin of autonomy.” But the interaction between brush and ink is after all realized by the practice of the artist and therefore places great demands on artist’s wrist, of which Shitao lists some characteristics in Chap. 6. The saying is that a revolving wrist in painting should be flexible and alert (xu-ling 虛靈), be gifted in substantiality (shou-shi 受實) and flexibility (shou-xu 受虛), follows the correct position (upright) (shou-zheng 受正), be slanted (shou-fan 受反), be quick (shou-ji 受疾), move slowly (shou-chi 受遲), be free (shou-hua 受化), transform (shou-bian 受變), be wonderful (shou-qi 受奇), and have spirit (shou-shen 受神). With all these qualities, artist “moves the brush with a revolving movement”, “enriches the strokes by rolling the brush hairs”, and “leaves them unbounded by any limitations.” (Coleman 1971, pp. 152–153) Just as an active imagery of performing actor has brought the possibility to talk about the nonintellectual dimensions of what ritual does, what yin-yün does is exactly the physical aspects of art-making, and art-making here can be treated as a performative medium for the artist’s deployment and embodiment of his/her schemes of physical action. Along with the physical, sensual, and emotive aspects of artistic participation, the artist “opens heaven and earth (the harmony)”, “transmits all the ancients

4

This division refers to the analysis on the treatise by Hay (2001, p. 275).

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and moderns”, and establishes his/her own school (Coleman 1971, p. 143). And for what he/she depicts: “[…] to painting a mountain, the mountain is spiritualized. […] to painting a stream, the stream moves. […] to human figures, and they are free from mundane defilements.” (Coleman 1971, p. 154) Shitao concludes this unity of brush strokes and ink wash, visualized by the master of wrist, as follows: […]on a one foot long scroll through painting, the appearance and structure of things are completely transformed. In harmonious atmosphere, illumination issues forth. Even if the brush stroke is not a brush stroke (does not appear particularly desirable), ink is not ink (fails to impress), and the painting is not painting (does not qualify as exemplary), my own reality is in the painting, for one moves the ink, the ink does not move him. He holds the brush, the brush does not hold him; he is free from early form or style and does not wait for early style to free him. (Coleman 1971, pp. 154–155)

Here, it should be noticed that with the ongoing fusion of brush strokes and ink wash, artistic practice is no longer just brush moving with ink splashing. In Hay’s words, “this unified, individualized whole [yin-yün] confronts the viewer as the displacement of the painter’s self: a self-presentation with the authority of the body’s investment.” (Hay 2001, pp. 275–276) The artistic practice is now a constant scheme generated and mobilized by the body move. Thus, the goal of art-making as such is completely circular: the creation of an art-making agent, a performing or practicing actor with a form of art-making mastery, who embodies flexible sets of schemes and can deploy them effectively in multiple situations so that he/she can re-construct those situations in practical ways. As mentioned in the consequence of applying yin-yün to paint a mountain, a stream, or human figures, the issue of painting as representation has already come up. This discussion on what artist depicts is further elaborated in Chaps. 8–14, where Shitao mainly addresses some specialized theories/principles of painting. For example, when Shitao talks about the skills to paint peaks, he lists sixteen different types of peaks, and argues that [a]n artist must follow the different forms of peaks to reproduce the various aspects of peaks. Peaks and wrinkles are one (there must be an agreement or conformity between them). Wrinkles are produced from peaks, but the peaks cannot transform the substance and function of wrinkles. On the other hand, the wrinkles are able to supply the conditions (potentiality) of peaks. (Coleman 1971, pp. 159–160)

So, it is because of the various forms of peaks that corresponding wrinkles are required to represent them. In addition, things are not only diverse in quantity, but also in mobility and are organic in their quality: To paint the reality of mountains, streams and the manifold things, depict the back and the front, the different aspects (vertical and horizontal), that which is clustered or scattered, near or distant, inside or outside, vacant or solid, broken or connected, gradations and roughness, richness and elegance, and misty vagueness. These are the essential elements of lively potentiality. (Coleman 1971, pp. 149–150)

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This lively potentiality stays in every object. But the portrait of the object is also affected by the changing of time: Whenever one paints the scenery of the four seasons, the style and flavor vary accordingly. Cloudy weather and clear weather differ from each other. Observe the seasons and determine the weather in order to express them. (Coleman 1971, p. 170)

However, Shitao’s understanding does not stay at suggesting the mobility within the individual object through the time. For him, all things in the world are somehow associated with each other. For example, The swallowing and disgorging of the sea is not the seas revealing their spirit, but it is the mountains functioning as the seas. The sea can likewise function as the mountains. […] Sea tide resembles mountain peaks and night tides are like mountain ranges. This is the way the sea acts like mountains, not that mountains actually dwell in the sea. Thus mountains and seas act like themselves and man has the eye to recognize them. (Coleman 1971, p. 168)

With the concretion of brush and ink in the painting surface, an artist is involved in this interconnectedness of sea and mountains of the landscape he/she encounters with, and, as a result, the whole artistic practice unfolds itself as an event and contains all its expressions in this subject-practice-object unity. Here, the performance theory of ritual can also provide insights on such practice and strategy of artistic involvement. Bell (1997, pp. 167–168) suggests that the ritual participants tend to see themselves as responding or transmitting and their highly orchestrated activities of ritualization appear to be the appropriate thing to do, if not the easiest. In other words, ritualization is a way of engaging the wide consensus that actings are doing so as a type of natural response to a world conceived and interpreted. It is in this sense that art-making can be compared to ritual, especially the genre of rites of exchange and communion, which tends to help articulate complex systems of relationships among human beings, the world, gods, and so on. Artists are thus not constructing, but simply responding to circumstances, participating in the creation of a profound sense of cosmos interrelatedness. This is why Shitao claims that [i]f what is obtained from the sea is omitted from mountains, or what is obtained from mountains is omitted from the sea, then men are misconceiving their interrelationship. The way I understand the interrelationship, the mountain is the sea, the sea is the mountain. Mountains and seas know that I understand. (Coleman 1971, p. 169)

Now it is naturally and logically to turn to the concepts of zun-shou and zi-ren so that the relationship between artist/subject and world/object can be fully demonstrated. According to Zhu (朱良志) (2005, pp. 46–50), another authority in Shitao’s study, the concept of zun-shou contains two meanings: first, referring to direct feelings—how an artist perceives the world; second, signifying primordial intuition —artist’s intuitive insights on the world. The former is the basis—the artist should penetrate into the reality of the landscape; the latter is transformation—the landscape is manifested by the artist’s creativity (Zhu 2005, p. 56). So the concept of

1.3 Rituals in Shitao’s Artistic Practice

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zun-shou is much about the efficacy of art-making, and this is where we can refer again to the principle of ritual as performance. Also emphasizing on the peculiar efficacy, performance theorists distinguish ritual activities from literal communication and pure entertainment by suggesting that what emerges from ritual are not only the event of the performance itself but also the shifts and changes brought about by this event which constructs a new situation and a new reality (Bell 1997, pp. 74–75). In this sense, to achieve a type of transformation by virtue of the dynamic and diachronic characteristics is the common goal for a ritual performance and a Shitao’s painting. The verb shou (受) acts as the two-folded conceptual role to connect artist/subject with the world/objects: “Painting is transmitted by the ink [hua-shou-mo 畫受墨], ink is transmitted by the brush [mo-shou-bi 墨受筆], brush is transmitted by the wrist [bi-shou-wan 筆受腕], and the wrist is transmitted by the mind [wan-shou-xin 腕受心], just as heaven creates life and earth completes it. This is creative intuition [ci-qi-suo-yi-shou-ye 此其所以受也].” (Coleman 1971, p. 147) It should be pointed out that shou has the same pronunciation of the other verb shou (授), but with a different meaning: the first shou (受) refers to intuition; the second shou (授) means giveness. And they are interchangeable as discussed in Hua-pu: Heaven can give [授] man a method, but cannot give [授] him skill. Heaven can give [授] men painting, but cannot give [授] men transformation. If men disregard technique and claim their own skill, if they ignore theory and merely look for innovations, nature no longer exists in men. And although there is calligraphy and painting, they cannot endure. (Coleman 1971, p. 175)

However, when talking about primordial intuition, one cannot assume that everybody has equal inborn quality and is able to acquire the given talents or potentiality to the best: This is what heaven gives to man: Because he can receive, heaven gives to him. If one has a great capacity, then he receives a great gift. If his capacity is small, he receives a small gift. Therefore ancient and modern works of calligraphy and painting originated from heaven and were completed by man. From heaven, there is this kind of gift. Whether they had great or small capacity, all mastered the method of calligraphy and painting and advanced it to some degree. (Coleman 1971, p. 175)

There is no need to complain about the gift given by heaven. Instead, one should zun (尊)—“it requires that people consider valuable the obtaining of this primordial intuition and do not underestimate or deprecate themselves.” (Coleman 1971, p. 147). This attitude is further justified when Shitao, in the final chapter of his treatise, proposes the concept of zi-ren to address the ethical value of painting. After stating the qualities that heaven assigns to the landscape and how landscape manifests its nature at the beginning of Chap. 18, he deduces the argument to human being: Man receives his qualities from heaven and fulfills them. It is not for the mountain to interfere with man. From this point of view, we see that the mountain spontaneously fulfills its qualities as they should be fulfilled. We cannot change the qualities of the mountain and

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fulfill them. Therefore the integrated man cannot change the real qualities of the mountain and enjoy the mountain. (Coleman 1971, p. 178)

Endowed by heaven, both the artist and the landscape possess their own qualities, which they have their respective responsibilities to fulfill. To be specific, for a landscape painter, his/her responsibility is to manifest he fusion of the landscape with him/her by freely wielding the powers of visualization: Those who possess these qualities must first let them be revealed by themselves, then they will be able to be applied by the brush. If one should not let these qualities be revealed by themselves, then the brush work will become rigid, shallow, and awkward, and he will not be able to let them be fulfilled spontaneously by themselves. (Coleman 1971, p. 177)

Shitao treats painting as an ethical imperative, and, as understood by Hay (2001, p. 209), this ethical imperative suggests that Shitao’s view of the world is a self-regulating system, in which artist functions as receptive to heaven, to landscape, to the world and expressive by his/her brush stroke. This is quite similar to the mechanism of ritual argued by the functionalist approach to ritual: For social functionalists, ritual is a means to regulate and stabilize the life of this system, adjust its internal interactions, maintain its group ethos, and restore a state of harmony after any disturbance. As such, religion and ritual are social mechanisms with a particularly vital role to play in maintaining the system. (Bell 1997, p. 29)

On one hand, art-making as ritual is thus given a sense of human responsibility for more than his own immediate needs, as the artist sees his activities as simply the appropriate response to heaven. On the other hand, artistic practice as ritual-like activities actually reveals the fundamental dimension of ritualization—“the simple imperative to do something in such a way that the doing itself gives the acts a special or privileged status.” (Bell 1997, p. 161) In this sense, the style of painting creates a type of framework around the artistic practice that communicates a specific microcosmic portrayal of the macrocosm. Starting from an artist’s authority on brush and ink, to the mobility and connectedness of the landscape, and finally to the concepts of zun-shou and zi-ren, what has been demonstrated is ritual’s role in artistic practice, namely, that the visualization of the fusion of brush and ink in the painting surface is prepared by the artist’s involvement in the interconnectedness of the landscape he/she encounters with. This involvement requires the penetration into the realm of the landscape, into the primordial intuition towards what he/she perceives, and has an ethical imperative to use the talent which heaven assigns to him/her. Therefore, Shitao’s declaration—“Mountains, rivers and I meet on a spiritual level and mingle together without trace.” (Coleman 1971, p. 158)—becomes intelligible. In addition, the tools of the performance and practice approaches to ritual undoubtedly help to formulate a way of looking at artistic practice as a ritual-like activity—to appreciate the physical and bodily expressiveness found in art-making and its deliberate type of demonstration which tends to invoke both the larger cosmic order and the specific immediate situation.

1.4 Contexts: Shitao’s Identity and Daoism’s Relevance

1.4

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Contexts: Shitao’s Identity and Daoism’s Relevance

However, if we examine Shitao’s identity and his painting career contextually, it is interesting to draw attention to the role of ritual in his artistic practice from a different perspective. Shitao was born two years before the Qing conquest of the Ming Dynasty in 1644. He was descended from a Ming princely lineage under the name of Zhu Ruo-ji (朱若極) and bear the royal title, “tenth-generation descendant of [Zhu] Zan-[yi]” (朱贊儀之十世孫), which was disclosed very late in his life. The little imperial family member was brought to a temple in the city of Wuchang (武昌) in Hubei (湖北) at an early age and started learning to read and paint as a Buddhist monk till his youth. Simply taking into account the birth and education, one can easily tell that Shitao is doomed to be special in terms of his identity. Shitao, as a Chinese literatus/shi (士) with an imperial background, is not only “a remnant subject (yimin) [yi-min 遺民] of the Ming”, but also a “yimin [yi-min 逸 民], literally ‘a subject who has fled,’ or more simply a hermit.” (Hay 2001, pp. 31, 41) Shitao’s life stories mostly happened in the South of China. Before his high-yield period (from around 1697 to 1707) in Yangzhou (揚州), Shitao left the Southern temples and traveled to the North, pursuing a career within the Buddhist hierarchy and acting as a professional artist in and around Beijing, the capital of Qing Dynasty. But the hope for imperial patronage by Emperor Kangxi (康熙) was defeated. After the four-year unsuccessful experiences, he determined to go back to Yangzhou, the typical prosperous Jiangnan (江南) city, in which there was a historical sympathy towards yi-min and a vast painting market.5 Around 1697, three to four years after his return to the South, witnessed Daoist fervors in a visible central place in Shitao’s public identity. An overt Daoist identity guarantees Shitao’s right in a position “outside the square” (fang-wai 方外) and a commitment to personal self-cultivation by continuing a standard Chan (禪) career (Hay 2001, pp. 30, 125). However, Hay (2001, pp. 257, 276) treats Shitao’s conversion as the subordination of the Buddhist character of his past to his Daoist sympathies. This is first because Shitao’s attraction to Daoism had been regularly demonstrated in more or less pure form in his former 30 years’ painting career (Hay 2001, pp. 242, 258–259). If recalled by the failure of his Beijing ambition and in the popularity he could earn from the Yangzhou community, one could easily get the logic of this life conversion and, therefore, the depiction of leisure in Shitao’s landscape could be understood as an enforced and devalued leisure of political withdrawal. In terms of the level of visuality in painting, this shift could be reflected

5

Yangzhou remained under the control of the short-lived Southern Ming based in Nanjing, and fell in 1645, followed by a massacre. However, the city recovered fast and earned its great prosperity for its administrative, economic, and cultural role to the dynasty. It was also the essential stop for Qing emperors during their Southern Tours. Regarding to Shitao’s experience in the North, Hay (2001, pp. 97–109) has a detailed description on.

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on Shitao’s increased use of brilliant or raw color, subjects of leisurely living and outings, or the extraordinary such as Yellow Mountain, new engagement with visions etc. Trails of this particular identity can also be detected from the contents in his paintings. In Hay’s analysis on the inhabitants and social geography of Shitao’s landscapes, it was found that “the shi in literati and gentry guise” provides the main figures in the various Han Chinese spaces created by Shitao, and that four zones —“the leisure zone, the far-flung realm of the strange, the no-mans-land of interurban travel, and the dreamlike city, appears to escape”—configure the dominant social geography of his paintings (Hay 2001, pp. 30–35). Hay (2001, p. 26), based on these striking patterns, points out “the central importance of leisure as a marker of class identity in Shitao’s landscape world.” Such understanding could be further explored if we interpret Shitao’s artistic practice and artworks as a form of rites. In traditional Chinese society, the literati responses to the decay and rise of dynasties were always full of rituality, mainly because most of them firmly believed the absolute value of China as a country despite the change of dynasty or emperor. Thus, the concept of tian-xia (天下) is always placed prior to the concept of guo-jia (國家). So, how would a Ming remnant react to the fall of the dynasty, reconcile with his identity and survive in a regime ruled by a non-Han emperor? One of the sound theoretical explanations suggests that the two poles regarding the literati responses to the fall of their dynasty are loyalism and collaboration, which can both be understood in terms of the paradigms furnished by death ritual: loyalists refuse to pursue politics, feign madness, or even suicide—all interpreted as a symbolic accompanying-in-death or mourning for their parents like country. Collaborators join the new government by their commitment to the continuity of tian-xia, and their act was justified as another form of symbolic self-sacrifice, the so-called “voluntary servitude,” which the mourning period is curtailed (Hay 2001, pp. 38–40). From the sociopolitical perspective, these two alternative political options are both necessary for maintaining the social equilibrium during the transition of the two dynasties, since they imply an underlying social mechanism of ritual responsibilities. Hay said, In one case operating a continuity of dynastic time, in the other its suspension, the two mechanisms in effect jointly contributed to the naturalization of the dynastic changeover, operating as one of the multiple means of reproduction of the dynastic system. Through the play of temporalities associated with different ritualized political options, the dynastic transition was structured as a ritual narrative, in which both loyalists and collaborators were necessary, and in which the plot, like that of a Chinese play, had the seeming inexorability of destiny. (Hay 2001, p. 40)

If put into one of the basic genres of ritual action, this form of symbolic human sacrifice, which can also be seen as a simple extension of the logic underlying other forms of offering, falls into the rites of exchange and communion. This implies that many Shitao’s landscape paintings, with its central importance of leisure, can be read as the ritual practice of political mourning in the form of his restless creation of

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different spaces of interior exile. The paintings of QingxiangDadizi’s Reminiscence of the Thirty-six Peaks (《清湘大滌子三十六峰意》) and Repotting Chrysanthemum (《對菊圖》) are such two typical artworks to understand the political inflection in Shitao’s landscape space, where Shitao locates the two-folded yi-min status within the metaphorical environment of the wilderness/madness (野), “a space of displacement, where the displacement referred to the particular subjecthood of exile or withdrawal.” (Hay 2001, pp. 37–42). Therefore, the context of Shitao’s identity and personal experience are inseparable from Shitao’s artistic practice. Painting is a way that Shitao acts in his world, and all those factors that he acts will influence the practice and understanding of his painting, as well as his theoretical completion of one-stroke theory. It is argued that Shitao’s subordination of his Buddhist past to Daoist sympathies “marks the culmination of a long pursuit of Oneness through painting over a period of fifty years.” (Hay 2001, p. 276) In Shitao’s own words, I, having mastered one-stroke painting, can penetrate into the form and spirit of mountains and rivers. This is why I have always kept to mountains and rivers during the past fifty years. I neither neglected them as useless nor let them conceal their secrets. Mountains and rivers let me communicate for them. They are free from me and I am free from them. I thoroughly investigate strange peaks, making rough sketches. Mountains, rivers and I meet on a spiritual level and mingle together without trace. Therefore, finally all belong to Ta T’i (Shih-t’ao). (Coleman 1971, p. 158)

As a theoretical system, all of the concepts demonstrated above find their close connection to the concept of one-stroke. For example, with the concept of yin-yün in the discussion of artist/subject: “From Oneness, produce the ten thousand things, govern the One. Transform Oneness into this harmonious atmosphere (yin yün) [yin-yün], and this is indeed the highest achievement of art in the world;” (Coleman 1971, p. 155) with the nature of the world/object, if one uses the one-stroke to fathom it, he can participate in the transforming and sustaining of the universe (heaven and earth). The artist can then describe the conditions of mountains and rivers, estimate the breadth and length of the terrain, judge the dispersion and density of mountain peaks, and penetrate into the obscurity of clouds and mist. (Coleman 1971, p. 157)

With the concepts of zun-shou and zi-ren, Shitao talks about the relationship between artist/subject and world/object: “To engage oneself in painting one must value thinking (intuition). Intuiting oneness, man’s mind arrives at its destination and is joyful. Therefore the art of painting will enter into what is subtle, refined, and beyond imagination.” (Coleman 1971, p. 172) Thus, when we discuss the function of painting, we see the truth of the awakening from non-differentiation and lively spirit. From oneness, deal with the ten thousand things; from the ten thousand things, deal with the oneness. It is not the function of particular aspects of mountain or water or the function of mere brush strokes or ink wash, or the function of antiquity or the present, or the function of the wise man. Within this function, there is reality. In short, it is the oneness of strokes. It is limitless, it is the Tao of heaven and earth. (Coleman 1971, p. 180)

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One-stroke actually encompasses all other concepts in Shitao’s treatise. In other words, it is the only single absolute unifying principle underlying the practice of painting. When one-stroke is argued in the subject-practice-object unity in terms of its state and propagation, two other metaphysical concepts, meng-yang (蒙養) and sheng-huo (生活), appear as companions: The splashing of the ink onto the brush is to be done with spirit. Ink wash cannot be spiritual unless one has achieved the state of concealment in non-differentiation. If the brush stroke is not endowed with vitality [蒙養], then the brush is without spirit [生活]. If the brush contains the spirit of concealment in non-differentiation [蒙養] yet cannot release the spirit of life [生活], then this is ink wash without brush strokes. If one’s brush can contain the spirit of life [生活], but cannot transform this into concealment in non-differentiation [蒙養], then this is having brush strokes without ink wash. (Coleman 1971, p. 149) When the awakening of cultivation of nondifferentiation [蒙養] and lively spirit [生活] is grasped, then flowing everywhere, and embracing and encircling each other, will take place. When flowing everywhere, and embracing and encircling each other take place, then the function of mountains and rivers is fulfilled. (Coleman 1971, p. 179)

Here, Zhu’s explanation has its significance in understanding these two concepts. According to Zhu (2005, pp. 57–74), meng-yang comes from I Ching (《易 經》) and has three implications in the context of Hua-pu: firstly, the instinctive dao (道) of the landscape, second, the primordial state of simple and unadorned in terms of cosmogenesis, and third, the real origin and potentiality, somehow same as LaoZi’s metaphor of infant. And sheng-huo (生活) has at least three meanings according to Shitao: the living state of all things on earth, the vigorous interaction among them, and the omnipresent creativity, which is the innermost power of life (Zhu 2005, pp. 64–69). The intimacy between Shitao’s metaphysical ideas and Daoism is no doubt in the light of these two concepts. The relevance to Daoism can also be easily detected even at the very beginning of Chap. 1—“Oneness of Brush Stroke”, which is an initial statement of cosmogenesis. It echoes Daodejing (《道德經》), and set the stage for the one-stroke as the continuity of being that unites the self and the world: In remote, ancient days there were no principles. The primordial p’o (or state of uncarved block) had not been dispersed. As soon as the primordial p’o was dispersed, principles emerged. How did these principles emerge? They were founded upon the oneness of strokes. This oneness of strokes is the origin of all beings, the root of myriad forms. It is revealed through spiritual reality, and is innate in man. However, man in the world does not realize this. I was the first to discover the principle of oneness of strokes. (Coleman 1971, p. 142)

Shitao’s view of the world is a self-regulating system, within which artists have their own ethical imperatives to fulfill and they function as receptive to heaven’s gift. As a result, the artistic practice can be argued again as a performative medium, just like ritual, which can be characterized as “cosmological ordering” since it focuses on the ritual re-creation of perfect harmony between the human and divine

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17

realms—“if everyone kept to their place, there would be harmony and well being.” (Bell 1997, p. 187) In addition, with the introduction of the word fa (法) method, one-stroke is affirmed its unique transcendental position that encompasses and unites all things in the world. And the nature of the one-stroke becomes more expressive when Shitao explains fa in detail: If the oneness of brush strokes is understood, then there is no veil before one’s eyes and painting can flow freely from his mind. When painting issues directly from the mind, obstructions naturally recede. To have the true method is to be free from obstructions; to have obstructions is to lack the genuine method. The method is produced in the act of painting and obstructions diminish. When method and obstruction do not mix, the meaning of the action is obtained, The Tao of painting is clear, and the one-stroke is thoroughly understood. (Coleman 1971, p. 144)

Most artists are enslaved and obstructed by those so-called methods but they haven’t grasped the true meaning of method. So what is the true method according to Shitao? The principle of oneness of strokes is such that from no-method method originates; from one method, all methods harmonize. (Coleman 1971, p. 142) Thus the perfect man has no method. No-method is the method which is the perfect method. Therefore, to have method, one must have transformations. Transformations, then, yield the method of no-method. (Coleman 1971, p. 145)

To further support the idea of transformation, Shitao even quotes one citation from the Analects of Confucius, following by his comments: The reason I am myself is that there is a real self-present. Confucius said: “I am not one born with innate knowledge. I love the past and earnestly pursue it.” To love the past and earnestly pursue it, one should carry out transformations. (Coleman 1971, p. 146)

Due to the mobility and interconnectedness of the landscape, the perfect method, with the involvement of artists whose inborn creativity are naturally determined, is no-method method. Hay (2001, p. 256) provides his understanding on the underlying logic in Shitao’s argument that, “[t]o align himself with that fa was to occupy a utopian, free-wandering point that transcended ancients, moderns, and the individual self, though he was necessarily forced into calling it ‘my own fa’.” However, if we recall the features of performance and practice, i.e. the dynamic of framing and the tendency to promote authority, they can also throw light on the understanding of fa. By virtue of the dynamics of framing, ritual as performance is understood to be something other than routine reality, but to have the potential to signify or denote larger truths and create a complete and condensed, if the somewhat artificial world (Bell 1997, p. 160). This artificial world is realized by ritualization as a way of acting, in which the participant may embody and deploy various schemes for molding the immediate environment, experiences within it, according to those values that differentiate the sacred as transcendent. As a result, the participant/artist acquires “an instinctive knowledge of schemes that can be used

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to order his or her experience so as to render it more or less coherent with these ritual values concerning the sacred.” (Bell 1997, p. 82) Shitao, while dissolving himself in the state of oneness, thus participates in the Daoist ideal of the perfect man: Therefore the perfect man cannot not be wise, cannot not be enlightened. Because he is wise, he transforms; because he is enlightened, he is free. When confronted by things, he is undisturbed. When he deals with forms, he leaves no traces. When he moves the ink, it is as if the work were already finished. When he grasps the brush, it is as if he were doing nothing. On a one foot wide canvas (small area), he manages heaven, earth, mountains, rivers, and the ten thousand things; yet, his mind is as pure as nothing. Because ignorance is diminished, wisdom is produced. Because ordinariness has vanished, purity of mind is attained. (Coleman 1971, p. 173)

1.5

Conclusion

In Leddy’s conclusion of his earlier draft to respond to Freeland’s account on the theory of art as ritual, a citation from John Dewey’s Art as Experience is made to support his argument, that the definition of “art is ritual” is/should be honorific and metaphorical with the function of its appealing to “an ideal form of art, something that we could attempt to achieve again in some way.” (Leddy 2016, p. 9) In the end, he puts his claim into a simple sentence—“‘art is ritual’ is (or was) a call to change society by way of changing our relation to art.” (Leddy 2016, p. 10). It is not easy to argue that Shitao had any blatant ambition to change the mind of the authority or the aesthetic taste of the painting market. However, it can be at least said that Shitao’s artistic practice was a survivor’s continual response to his life situations, reconciliation with his complex identities, and cognition of his assumed destiny. And it is in this sense that Shitao’s case is revealing to the ritual theory of art.

References Bell, Catherine. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. Coleman, Earle Jerome. 1971. Philosophy of Painting by Shih-t’ao: A Translation and Exposition of his Hua-p’u (Treatise on the Philosophy of Painting), 141–180. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Hawaii. Freeland, Cynthia. 2001. But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual. Chicago: Aldine. Hay, Jonathan Scott. 2001. Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

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Kapferer, Bruce. 1983. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Leddy, Tom. 2016. Is There A Ritual Theory of Art? Draft of Paper to be Presented. Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Williams, Ron G., and James W. Boyd. 1993. Ritual Art and Knowledge: Aesthetic Theory and Zoroastrian Ritual. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. Zhu, Liangzhi 朱良志. 2005. ShitaoYanjiu 《石濤研究》. Beijing: Beijing University Press.

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Chapter 2

Ideas of the Body in Zhu Guangqian's Aesthetics

When Zhu Guangqian (朱光潛) looked back into his learning experience of aesthetics in his 1980 article, Some Lessons Learned from My Study in Aesthetics 《學美學的一點經驗教訓》 ( ), he unexpectedly highlighted the necessity “to insist on doing physical exercises”. To be specific, Zhu (1993, p. 379) added, “a sound mind relies on a healthy body”, and he took his habit of outdoor walking while not working as an example. What interests me in such an experience is how Zhu would theorize the practice of physical exercises, including “his determination to do running regularly”, learning simple Tai Chi, qigong (氣功), etc., into his understanding on aesthetics. Zhu (1993, p. 380) provides a simple answer that “mind becomes more efficient when exercising, just as body does.” And, with these words, he turns to the spirit of Marx’s historical dialectics: Idealists unilaterally understand the reality from the perspective of subjectivity activity. However, we should see the world from both the subjective and objective sides. The objective reality and subjective activity are unified by practice. Practice is the idea adopted by Marxism. (Zhu 1993, p. 214)

It implies that, besides the contribution by one’s spirit or inner vision, material is also a must for creative activities. To support this statement, Zhu (1993, p. 215) argues that no matter it is from the perspective of subjective knowledge or that of objective material and social conditions, the product created by man is determined by the concrete conditions accumulated by human life throughout history. There is no doubt that such an argument on the relationship between man and nature is based on body discourse, which Zhu takes seriously in his study of aesthetics, and his reading on Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 can act as the starting point for following discussion.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_2

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2.1

Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Referring to the creative and productive practices, Zhu (1993, p. 218) always bears in mind Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, which he brings up from time to time the claim such as it is labor that begins human history. In creating a world of objects by man’s practical activity, no matter it is voluntary or coerced, external or internal, it starts with the involvement of human body. However, when Marx (1964, p. 110) analyzes the alienation of labor, he points out that the worker is not able to develop freely his physical energy but mortifies his body when labor is external to the worker. This is the typical case of a self-estrangement of man from both himself and the nature, as, according to Marx (1964, p. 112), man is defined to be a species being to have conscious life activity. And Marx’s propositions for man to prove himself as a conscious species being, who shall produce universally and freely, include: the productive labor process starts with the making of tools; that man also transforms himself while laboring with the improvement of his knowledge of nature and mastery over nature; man is the subject of production, while tool is the object of production; man freely confronts his product; and finally, man transforms himself from the state of “chaos” to a conscious social being through the process of labor. It should be noted that the relationship of the labor practice and the involvement of human body is dialectical in this process of labor, as, compared to animal’s practical activity, “man produces even when he is free from physical needs and only truly produces in freedom therefrom” (Marx 1964, p. 113). Zhu further quotes Marx that “man knows how to produce in accordance with the nature of every species, and knows how to apply the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also creates things in accordance with the laws of beauty” (Marx 1964, pp. 113–114). In other words, man, as a conscious species being who treats the species as its own essential being, can fully realize his “essential powers” when creating things in accordance with his perception of the objective world. Man gets self-confirmation, self-projection, and self-perception when confronting with the objects, and then enriches his life both materially and spiritually (Zhu 1993, p. 224). Zhu summarizes this dialectical process of labor into the idea of the interaction between “objectification of man” (ren-zi-ran-hua, 人自然化) and “humanization of nature” (zi-ranren-hua, 自然人化): My labor objectifies the essential powers of man based on human needs. On the one hand, the nature was humanized when they are products created by labor, and, on the other hand, man transforms himself when he changes the objective world. (Zhu 1993, p. 225)

This means, for example, not only one’s cognition is strengthened in the process of labor, but his/her hands are trained in their intimate involvement. The hands get exercised constantly and become deft gradually during the process of productive practice.

2.1 Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

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It is in this sense that Zhu (1993, pp. 225–226) deeply resonates with Engel’s writing, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, in 1876 on its idea on bodily involvement in creative making. He quotes Engels (1995, p. 1) that “the hand is not only the organ of labor but also the product of labor,” and it will finally attain high degree of perfection through its continuing development. This means, the hand is the essential organ for creation on one hand, but, on the other hand, it is also transforming itself as it learns the nature of objects during the accumulation of labor experience. As a result, the hand achieves greater flexibility in its labor process and truly becomes free. This dialectical evolvement of one’s hands also applies to other human bodily parts, including ears, eyes and etc. They get polished through constant exercises as well. These changes finally come to the rise of man over animals, and man becomes more aware of how the object is able to manifest “human nature”/”social existence” according to their aims of making. Therefore, Zhu also brings the social consequences of human sensuous activities into focus. Quoting Engels (1995, p. 1) that “the eagle sees much farther than man, but the human eye sees considerably more in things as does the eye of the eagle”, Zhu (1993, p. 226) further proposes the principle of joint creation and collaboration between the subjective and the objective, i.e., for the subject, the object exists only in the condition that the subject’s essential power acts as a subjective competence. In other words, the object makes its sense only when the subject’s five senses come into being by its virtue. The humanity of the senses earns its great importance in Zhu’s aesthetics, and Zhu emphasizes that will and love in spiritual senses shall also be included in the category of senses besides what one sees, hears, touches, smells and tastes: The richer the objective world is opened by the productive practice – i.e., the humanization of nature, the more subtle man’s sensibility becomes. The product made by man is fulfilling not only for his practical needs but also his spiritual needs. (Zhu 1993, p. 227)

If we still keep in mind that the dialectic nature of the process as a transformation from a state of chaos to the unification of contradictions or opposites, when we look at the interaction from the perspective of the object, nature also evolves its being from the inorganic into the humanized and the socialized. And, as a total, man who treats the species as his own essential being, presents himself in an appropriate balance via his grasp of the object’s nature. Or to say, in Zhu’s words (1993, p. 241), with the revelation of the object’s nature, the laws of beauty are manifested in man’s creative achievements.

2.2

Empathy, Body and Inner Imitation

If Marx’s idea on man and labor provides the theoretical basis for Zhu, his discussion on beauty and aesthetic feeling from the perspective of physiology, especially his reference to Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) and the idea of inner imitation,

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further demonstrates his understanding on the relation of aesthetics and the state of the body. Lipps is best known for his theory of empathy, in which he argues that we appreciate one object as beautiful because empathy allows us to see it in analogy to human body.1 For example, when we respond to a standing Doric column in front of the Greek temple, the column seems to erect itself up, that is to say, to proceed in the way that man does when he erects himself up, and empathy happens as man recognizes this activity in the column and projects his experiences as being in the column (Zhu 1993, p. 336). However, as suggested above in the discussion on the dialectic nature of the labor process that both subject and object are manifested in the principle of joint creation and collaboration, in order to apply the idea of inner imitation into this principle, Zhu uses the concept of qi-yün-sheng-dong (氣韻生動) in Chinese painting theory to echo. For Chinese landscape painters, their longstanding observation towards the nature makes their bodily breaths to acquire the capability to find the resonance with winds and clouds. When their stroke is put on paper, all their former perceptions would instantly but naturally come out. This illustration of the concept of qi-yün-sheng-dong applies to Chinese calligraphy as well, and Zhu mentions the leading Chinese calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty, Yan Zhenqing (顏真卿), in particular. According to Zhu (1993, 337), the characteristics of strength, boldness and grandness in Yan’s artistic style precisely fits into Yan’s noble personality, and Zhu contributes the pleasure gained by the viewer of Yan’s calligraphy to the empathy that he/she cannot help sitting up and remaining dignified and vigorous. Therefore, the aesthetic feelings, with their impression on one’s mind, are naturally related to one’s bodily activities, and thus the bodily involvement plays a significant role in aesthetic activities. In order to further explain the close connection between aesthetic feeling and the body, Zhu put the issues of rhythm, empathy and inner imitation together when he describes certain aesthetic activities: Rhythm can be detected not only within artworks, but from man’s physiological activities. When body organs for breath, circulation and movement are confronted with the aesthetic object, one would feel harmony and pleasure if the rhythm represented by the object conforms to his/her natural body rhythm; otherwise, one feels uncomfortable or unbalanced, and is thus unpleased. (Zhu 1993, p. 334)

It can be noted that the rhythm, as emphasized by Zhu, acts as the medium in the unity of the subjective and objective, while thoughts and tastes are conveyed via bodily involvement. The bodily rhythm, which is now full of thoughts and tastes collected and represented by the artist, can thus be revealed in the tone and rhythm of the artwork. It is in this sense that the audiences who attend concerts, dance performances, painting exhibitions, movies, even readers of poems, are able to experience and succeeded in receiving the thoughts and tastes stimulated by the

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For a detailed introduction on Lipps’ empathy theory, see Lipps’ Empathy theory (2006). In Roeckelein (2006).

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tone and rhythm within the artworks by the musicians, dancers, painters, artists and writers (Zhu 1993, p. 335). Referring to the forms of rhythm in various artistic mediums, Zhu (1993, p. 335) suggests that although we mainly feel rhythm from sound, sound is not the only source for rhythm. “Rhythms”, or “laws”, can also be detected from objects interlaced by different shapes, colors, and qualities, and one example can be that a literature piece normally has its rhythm which contains the steps of opening, developing, changing and concluding for its composition, and even architecture is said to own its rhythm when it was metaphorically described as “the frozen/ solidified music” by aestheticians in the history (Zhu 1993, p. 335). Another key concept, the so-called “vitality” (sheng-ming-huo-dong, 生命活動), needs further elaboration when it comes to the idea of “dissolution of both subject and object” (wu-wo-liang-wang, 物我兩忘) or “identity between subject and object” (wu-wo-tong-yi, 物我同一) in the theory of empathy. Objects which has originally nothing to do with lives and sentiments, when being injected or transfused with human vitalities and tastes, will be perceived as being rich in life activities and human feelings while keeping its existence as a matter. Such examples are artist’s contemplation on natural sceneries into his/her output as a form of artworks, and literature is of course inevitably connected to this case as Zhu (1993, p. 336) suggests that the principles of “comparison” (bi, 比) and “affective image” (xing, 興) in poetry mostly originate from empathy.

2.3

Vico’s Bodily-Based Senses

In Zhu’s (1993, pp. 341–374) introduction of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), including his translation on the Italian philosopher’s magnum opus, New Science, one can see Vico’s principle of common sense (sensus communis) draws particular attention from Zhu. He finds that although Vico firmly believes that human souls are immortal, he still acknowledges the significance of human body and his principle of common sense is bodily-based in nature. According to Vico (1968, p. 21), human history, as a “necessity of nature”, is a gradual progress of civilization—a qualitative improvement from the bestial state of early society, which is characterized by undirected passion, to the rule of law where the rude beginnings is transformed into virtue. This account of the history of civil society is thus conditioned by the moderation and regulation of human passion via education and develop into human virtues. Zhu (1993, p. 358) therefore concludes that the civilization is created by human beings s, and regards it as the theoretical foundation of the arguments in Vico’s New Science. Interestingly, Zhu (1993, p. 347) notes the fact that Vico, whose New Science was published in 1744,2 and Darwin, whose On the Origin of Species was

New Science was first published in 1725 and again in a second and largely rewritten version in 1730, and the 1744 version was a third edition edited by Fausto Nicolini.

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published in 1859, are both followers of Francis Bacon’s Empiricism. This perhaps explains why Zhu is attracted to Vico’s perspective of evolution and his views that the mental makeup of social morality, emotion and other spiritual developments in human civilization arise from human being’s primitive stage as animal. Vico traces this primitive stage back to the two distinct features of human/animal nature in the age of gods and heroes, during which the human mind is not able to understand anything of which it has had no previous impression, but just relies on senses and imagination, and the age of men, where the human wisdom gains ascendance over human imaginative capacity. However, it should be emphasized that the age of men cannot stems from the human intellect without its origin from the age of gods and heroes, and this is why Zhu (1993, p. 358) claims that if there was no power of imagination, there would be no starting point for the development of human history, not to say the birth of poetry or arts and then poetics or theory of arts. The primitive state of society is subordinated to barbarian human bodily passion, but will be replaced by the emergence of philosophy under the strong impulse of violent passion: Out of ferocity, avarice, and ambition, the three vices which run throughout the human race, legislation creates the military, merchant, and governing classes, and thus the strength, riches, and wisdom of commonwealths. Out of theses three great vices, which could certainly destroy all mankind on the face of the earth, it makes civil happiness. (Vico 1968, p. 62)

It is this beginning of thinking that imposes form and measure on the bestial passion and thus transforms them into human civilizations. According to Zhu, thinking springs from man’s Conatus proper to hold the motions impressed on the mind which is in check by the body, and further directs to their better use and finally make man become civil (Zhu 1993, p. 363). However, it should be pointed out that this control over the motion of body is an act of freedom by human choice, and is thus out of free will, which is the one and only stable and reliable agent for the development of a society toward perfection (Zhu 1993, p. 364). Therefore, corresponding to this dual nature of human being respectively, Vico (1968, p. 297) brings up two kinds of wisdom—“poetic” and “philosophical”—which have their different relationships to bodily senses that, in Zhu’s (1993, p. 359) wise summary, “the philosophical wisdom hauls out the soul from the data of sense, whereas the poetic wisdom immerses the soul in the data of sense. The former rises toward universals; the latter descends to particulars”. We should also keep in mind the context of Zhu’s study on Vico, including the reason why Zhu wanted to translate Vico’s New Science and regarded the translation as his priority work. Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), Vico’s student, aroused a great discussion and criticism among Chinese aestheticians in the twentieth century. It is also related to the founding of the four schools of modern Chinese aesthetics.3 Zhu has found the aesthetics School which claims the “Subject and Object unity”, 3

For the heated debates and discussion among the four representative schools of aesthetics in China in the 1950s, can refer to Man (2012, pp. 164–173).

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and his insistence on the proposition of the subjective and objective unity in human creativity has to do with a deeper understanding of Croce’s idealism, which inevitably directs him to Vico and his New Science (Zhu 1993, p. 371). What he learns mostly from New Science and applies to his own aesthetics is Vico’s analysis on human nature and the progress of civilization, in which the manifestation of human’s faculty of “reflection” (riflessione) marks the age of men. Thanks to Vico, Zhu then feels more comfortable to theorize that, on the acquisition of new knowledge which is bodily and material-based, the subjective and objective collaborate and are thus united. The conclusion is human body responds to the stimulation from the world, and this interaction between the subject and the object starts with the subjective perception and brings about the assimilation with the object, simultaneously reflecting on the change of his/her own cognitive structure. With this background understanding, we can better grasp Zhu’s claim that “perception happens when the external object functions as the internal cognitive structure” (Zhu 1993, p. 374).

2.4

Conclusion

When Zhu was in the age of eighty, he reviews his learning experience in his study on aesthetics, (1993, p. 379) and asserted that his physical form had a positive relationship with his mental state, especially with his understanding on aesthetics. He said it is because matter co-exists with its form as knowledge, and his physical state provides the condition for his cognitive activity. This is why Zhu is always cautious about his body during his pursuit of intensive study on aesthetics. “Aging and stiffness are symptoms of one’s lack of vitality. To restore vitality, one has to keep the association of the body and mind. To enhance vitality, one has to eliminate the cause of lack of vitality” (Zhu 1993, p. 384). In Zhu’s later years, he kept practicing standing qigong (站樁氣功) every day.

References Vico, Giambattista. 1968. The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (revised translation of the 3rd ed). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Engels, Friedrich. 1995. The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, vol. 47, Iss. 6, 1. Monthly Review, New York. Lipps’ Empathy Theory. 2006. In Elsevier’s Dictionary of Psychological Theories, ed. J.E. Roeckelein. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science & Techonology. Retrieved from https://login. lib-ezproxy.hkbu.edu.hk/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com%2Fcontent %2Fentry%2Festpsyctheory%2Flipps_empathy_theory%2F0%3FinstitutionId%3D6521.

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Man, Eva K.W. 2012. Contemporary Philosophical Aesthetics in China: The Relation Between Subject and Object. In Philosophy Compass, vol. 7. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Marx, Karl. 1964. Introduction. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, ed. Druik J. Struik. Translated by Martin Milligan. New York: International Publishers. Zhu, Guangqian. 1993. In Zhu Guangqian Xuanji, ed. Xin Yang and Shirong Zhu. Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Chubanshe (in Chinese: 朱光潛著,楊辛,朱式蓉編,朱光潛選集,天津:天津人民出版社).

Chapter 3

Confucian Aesthetics and the Recent Suggestion of Its Reference to Western Feminist Aesthetics

It is no surprise that Kant’s philosophy has been the favourite subject of criticism by feminist scholars. In part, this has to do with the nature of his philosophy and in part with his open statements on the roles of women. I will try to illustrate this by laying out some of the critical analysis by feminists of the two main notions in Kant’s aesthetics—taste and the sublime.

3.1

Feminist Critique of Kant’s Aesthetics

It is believed that there are significant connections between Kant’s views on women and his theory of taste (Hein and Korsmeyer 1993, p. 179). While Kant took the prevailing 18th-century view that the female sex is naturally inferior in rational and moral capacities and that they are creatures of inclination, concerned mainly with outer appearance, his notion of taste, in fact, has similar characteristics: […] to show taste in our conduct (or in judging other people’s conduct) is very different from expressing our moral way of thinking. For this contains a command and gives rise to a need, whereas moral taste only plays with the objects of liking without committing itself to any of them. (Kant 1987, pp. 52–53)

It is further pointed out by feminist scholars that Kant’s notions of taste and women are both systematically contrasted with and ultimately subordinated to individual morality and masculinity, respectively (Hein and Korsmeyer 1993, p. 181). Both of them need to be disciplined in order to do good to culture as they This chapter was originally published as “The Origin of Aesthetic Experience as the Key to Comparative Aesthetics: The Case of Confucian Aesthetics and the Recent Suggestion of Its Reference to Western Feminist Aesthetics,” in R. Wilkinson (ed.), New Essays in Comparative Aesthetics (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp. 109–118. The original article has been revised, re-edited and published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_3

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are rooted in sensibility which are basically not trustworthy. According to Kant, the validity of aesthetic judgments or judgment of taste depends upon the harmonious relationship between the understanding and the imagination. Imagination combines the manifold of intuition while understanding provides the unity of the concept uniting the presentations. As Kant (1987, p. 91) said, understanding alone gives the law. Feminist claim the relation of imagination to understanding in judgment of taste is analogous to that of a wife to her husband in a marriage. Both are domesticated by a “masculine” understanding (Hein and Korsmeyer 1993, p. 184). A masculinist orientation has also been detected in Kant’s notion of the sublime. The experience of the sublime is an “inner” response to an “outer” occasion that provides us with a perspective on our ‘elevated” destiny or paradoxical psychological effects of epic and tragic poetry. According to Kant, the condition of the sublime is the obedience of imagination to a kind of law which utilizes nature as a “schema” for representing the ideas of reason. The experience of Kant’s sublime is said to have characterized in overtly “masculine” terms like “powerful”, “active”, “threatening”, “dominating”, “masterful” etc., which are regarded as universal norms for the character and judgment of all human beings (Brand and Korsmeyer 1995, p. 70). It has been pointed out by feminists that, with Kant’s reading of the feeble nature of women, they are less capable of having the experience of the sublime and of developing the crucial human aesthetic, rational and moral dimensions therein. In his 1764 writing, Observations on the feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, Kant said, The virtue of a woman is a beautiful virtue. That of the male sex should be a noble virtue. Women will avoid the wicked not because it is unright, but because it is ugly; and virtuous actions mean to them such as are morally beautiful. Nothing of duty, nothing of compulsion, nothing of obligation! (Kant 1960, p. 81)

The rejection of this kind of feminine aesthetic attitude is further promoted by Kant’s aesthetics in his later work, Critique of Judgment (1790), in which he says that real aesthetic judgment should be “disinterested”. The aesthetic subject should abstract himself from all kinds of practical values, desires and emotions and concentrate on the contemplation of the forms of objects. Obviously, Kant’s women lack this kind of capacity. When it comes to his notion of the sublime, which involves psychic disturbance by contrast, and a transcendence of terror, again, only moral man is exclusively qualified. According to Kant, only educated men are able to cope with the passive faculty of intuition related to objects by exerting regulation of moral law of the subjects. Feminist scholars claim that the exclusion of women from human aesthetic and moral qualities can be traced back to Kant’s distinction of “form” and “matter”. In Kant’s philosophy, moral and aesthetic judgments are concerned only with “form” (the good a priori) and not with “matter” (chaotic empirical “stuff”). This in effect reestablished the ancient Greek’s links between “form” and “maleness” and “matter” and “femaleness”. Feminists are suspicious of such a division (Brand and Korsmeyer 1995, p. 104).

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Feminist critics have suggested that non-Kantian transcendental arguments are possible and that we should consider aesthetic arguments which neither appeal illicitly to external grounds, nor insist on the uniqueness of the conceptual schemes (Margolis 1986, pp. 301–307). Feminist aestheticians are yearning for alternative and new languages in aesthetics in which the above-mentioned division is no longer valid. New language is necessary as it is claimed that the common vocabularies, as well as those used by the institutions of art, epistemologies and critical discourses are all performed in masculine ways, and that radical changes in aesthetic discourse are necessary (Brand and Korsmeyer 1995, pp. 411–413). Such feminist criticism is part of a much broader contemporary criticism which has challenged in fundamental ways the model of western traditional philosophy. Gender is one of those fundamental categories which have been challenged. Along with Derrida’s concepts of Phallocentrism and Logocentrism, and Foucault’s historical analysis of sexuality and the relation of knowledge to power, we find feminist scholars such as de Beauvoir’s reading of man’s capacity for transcendence, Kristeva’s semiotics, Irigaray’s critique of the subject and object relation in the history of western philosophy. They are all concerned directly or indirectly with the binary oppositions of rational/irrational, subject/object, nature/culture, form/ matter, mind/body, active/passive, presence/absence etc. and their implications for issues of gender. They attribute these oppositions to the establishment of masculine and rational culture in the west. Their philosophical criticism invites reflection on Chinese philosophy as well. Questions related to the above discussion include: Does Confucianism also rule out the capacity of women as moral subjects, and hence, as aesthetic subjects? Do other forms of Chinese philosophy in any way contribute or correspond to the patriarchal Confucian culture? In terms of patriarchal values, is the situation in Chinese philosophy fundamentally different from those of the West, and how? Can Chinese philosophy provide us with a source or at least a frame of reference for the development of an alternative aesthetics along lines sought by Western feminist scholars? I would only deal with the last of these questions in this chapter by introducing a model of matriarchal aesthetics suggested by a Western feminist scholar and discuss it in the light of Chinese philosophy.

3.2

The Suggestion of a Matriarchal Aesthetics

Based on art forms found in the work which already have matriarchal features, Göttner-Abendroth (1986, pp. 81–94) has set out nine principles of a matriarchal aesthetic which might provide us with a recent paradigm of feminist aesthetic. The summary of these principles is that matriarchal art is in the form of magic, in the sense that magic intrudes into reality by means of symbols and has the effect of changing reality. According to the ancient wisdom of magic, it was necessary to communicate with Nature via symbols in order to make people understood, to make it clear to Nature that it should stand by its intention. It is believed that

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communication with Nature could help the fragmented, specialized, stereotyped self/subject of today to regain her/his totality. Matriarchal art is diversity in unity. Unlike patriarchal aesthetics of Kantian type, the unity is not dogmatic and the diversity not subjective. Diversity in unity refers to a way of thinking which was inherent in the structure of old matriarchal mythology and was the basis of the beliefs of all early complex cultures. This way of thinking was repressed by the patriarchal forms of thought which followed. Under this meaning context, Matriarchal art transcends the traditional mode of communication which consists of author-text-reader. It is not limited to a product or a text but is a process which gives a pre-existing inner structure, like the ritual of dance, in which people participate collectively to create the external expression, so all are simultaneously authors, text and spectators. Matriarchal art, like mythology, exists as a fundamental category of the human understanding not in the meaning of Kant, but in a more ancient meaning from which all later artistic artefacts of the imagination developed. The arbitrary chain of associations of imagination emphasized by patriarchal aesthetics like that of Kant is only its very late and degenerated aspect. It is said that matriarchal art follows its own rules. In matriarchal art, there is no division between emotion and thought. It is said that the universal, objective nature of the structure of matriarchal art prevents the identification from becoming subjective sentimentality, the theorizing from becoming abstract arbitrariness, and the action from becoming mere catharsis. These statements obviously can be referred to Kant’s aesthetic judgment and his notion of the sublime. It is also said that matriarchal art welds together feeling, thinking and doing in the form of the concrete mythological image and in this totality, releases true ecstasy in the participants. The true ecstasy unites the intellect, emotions and action in a climax where no one power is limited by another. They are expressed simultaneously, and each to its utmost capacity. Ecstatic moments are described as “the chords of the harmony of the spheres played on the fragile instrument that is man and woman”. Only by entering the process can one experience it. As it is a dynamic process characterized by ecstasy, matriarchal art cannot be evaluated and interpreted by outsiders, for it cannot be objectified and therefore is coherent without being dogmatic as it does not prescribe meanings. However, it has a positive impact on reality.1 Because matriarchal art cannot be objectified, it cannot be subdivided into genres. Thus, the division between art and non-art and art and life are all redundant. It is a complex whole process which takes place on many levels, isolation of any single element is inappropriate. It is said that with matriarchal art the erotic is the dominant force replacing discipline. Its primary principle is the continuation of life as a cycle of rebirths and not inhuman ideals. On the other hand, matriarchal art brings about social changes which override the divisions in the aesthetic sphere and return to art its original public role, bringing about the aestheticization of the whole of society. Finally, matriarchal art is not ‘art’ in the sense 1

More explications on this point are offered in Margolis (1986, pp. 303–307).

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of patriarchal aesthetics which is fictional, which is based on the fundamental dualisms mentioned above. Rather matriarchal art seeks to shape life and change life; it is itself energy and drives towards the aestheticization of society. As matriarchal arts involve the possibility of communicating with Nature by means of symbolic acts, it is demanded that we should learn to adapt ourselves to Nature which includes our bodies and our immediate environment. It is stressed that the joy and delight thereby released can be traced back to the harmonious correlation of a change in Nature with a spiritual change in ourselves which is a new form of living. We can see that such a matriarchal paradigm accentuates nature’s unity with human beings as opposed to Nature’s exploitation and utilization by men, as well as emphasizing the harmony of the individual’s capacities as opposed to their fragmented specialization. I want to suggest that each of these is already implied in traditional Chinese philosophy. As our focus is aesthetics, I would like to compare this paradigm with aspects of the Daoist and Confucian aesthetics, to see if there are fundamental similarities and differences and thus to place these models in cross-cultural and critical dialogue with one another as what this book’s title has suggested, and towards exploring how they might learn from each other.

3.3

The Aesthetic Experience in Traditional Chinese Philosophies and Matriarchal Art

Despite the saying that systematic aesthetics is absent in traditional Confucian and Daoist philosophies, neo-Confucian scholars Mou Chung San and Tang Chun I have reconstructed theories of human primal experience according to traditional Confucianism and Daoism which allude to aesthetic experience. Mou appropriates Kant’s aesthetics critically and Tang presents his Chinese aesthetics by referring to Hegel’s philosophical paradigm. In one of his latest writings, the translation and critic of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Mou presents and recommends the notion of Daoist’s “intellectual intuition” which is aesthetic in nature. Firstly, he points out the “subjective principle” of Daoism as “wu-wei” (no action, 無為), which refers to the effort of the human subject’s mind to transcend all kinds of human epistemological functions and move towards the realm of a more metaphysical Dao. Daoist’s philosophy promotes the annulments of subjective activity and knowledge to recover the presentation of Nature in itself which has been hidden and distorted by the self’s understanding, perception and conception. According to Daoism, to know is to be not knowing, to be wise is to be ignorant, only the so-called fools are able to grasp the truth of nature. Mou further explicated the wisdom of Daoism, xuan-zhi (玄智), as a form of intellectual intuition. In the realm of the Dao when the human mind has stopped ‘knowing’ and travels with qi, it would, together with other things, present itself in

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its original nature. These are not “phenomena” in the Kantian sense of epistemology, but the original nature of things of which can only be resumed after the abolition of the dominant scheme of subject-object relation exerted by the knowing subject. It is said that the state of “intellectual intuition” of the mind in the Daoist sense stated above is the “calmness of mind” described by Zhuangzi’s “xin-zhai” (心齋) as described by this Daoist influential figure, who once claimed: Do not be the master of knowledge (to manipulate things). Personally realize the infinite to the highest degree and travel in the realm of which there is no sign. Exercise fully what you have received from Nature without any subjective viewpoint. In one word, be absolutely vacuous (hsu [xu, 虛]). The mind of the perfect man is like a mirror. It does not lean forward or backward in its response to things. It responds to things but conceals nothing of its own. Therefore it is able to deal with things without injury to (its reality). (Chan 1963, p. 207)

In the “calmness of mind,” there are no differentiation of mind and body, form and matter or subject and object but the emergence of all things (including the minds) in themselves. They juxtapose with each other without being known. Mou calls the state “a negative and static form of birth” which basically is disinterested, non-intentional and non-regulative, and is, therefore, aesthetic in nature. His elaboration of the state is as follows: The state of mind of xin jai [xin-zhai] is the termination, tranquillity, emptiness, and nothingness that follow the abolition of the quest and dependency on learning and knowing. The wu wei [wu-wei] of the above necessarily implies a certain kind of creativity which form is so special that it can be named as negative creativity […] that in the light of the tranquil state […] things present themselves in the way that they are […] not as an object, but as an ideal state[…] and this is the static “intellectual intuition”. (Mou 1974, pp. 208–211)

In the transcendental realm of the Dao where one’s mind is engaged in, a thing in appearance is not an object but an “ideal state”, a form in itself, appreciation of which is capable only with the Daoist wisdom, i.e. the “intellectual intuition” or “the principle of no form” in which the sense of beauty and aesthetic pleasure, the real form of freedom, spring up in tranquillity. Achievement of this state requires the effort of transcendence of all human epistemological constraints or judgements that Kant’s aesthetics prescribes in the metaphysical realm of the Dao. This explains the criteria and aesthetic categories in Daoist aesthetics, e.g. Laozi’s “qi” (氣), “wei” (味), “miao” (妙) and “xu” (虛), which refer to the activities and characters of the realm and are applied in the evaluation of Chinese arts. It should be noted that according to the readings of Mou and Tang, the human primal experience of a similar nature also takes place in the Confucianism. Mou names it the Confucian “intellectual intuition” in which the human mind has also transcended the subject and object relation and is engaged with Nature. Here Nature fills the human mind with its attributes of benevolence and creativity, enables things to actualize themselves under the “light” of the mind which is “coping” with things. Mou (1974, p. 184) emphasizes that the intuition involves his so-called “Principle of Ontological Actualization” (存有論的(創造的)實現原則) in contrast with the

3.3 The Aesthetic Experience in Traditional Chinese Philosophies …

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“Principle of Cognitive Presentation” (認知的呈現原則) in the western epistemological sense in which things are being perceived as objects. The deeper the engagement of the human mind with Nature or Heaven, the more moral the mind which initiates fuller actualization of things under its light, the more beautiful is the form, and greater the potential to lead one to stronger aesthetic emotion. This helps us to understand both moral and aesthetic categories central to Confucian philosophy, such as harmony, the vividness etc. Tang introduces his so-called “host and guest” relation to describe the relationship between things and the mind in the human primal experience, in contrast with the subject and object relation in Western theories of knowledge in which subjects dominate and objects subordinate. According to Tang (1978, p. 187), objectification of the mind takes place only after the primal experience which he describes as “the totality of intuition” (his understanding of the experience is very similar to that of Mou). Hence comes the division of subject and object. Functions and activities of the former (including the artistic ones) then begin to exert their influences and judgements onto the latter. Again my suggestion is that we can find many similarities between the principles of a matriarchal aesthetics outlined above and those of traditional Chinese philosophy. Points of comparison which we might pursue further are: both emphasize the communication with nature in gaining a form of human totality; both refer to a unifying way of thinking, contrasting with “patriarchal” aesthetics which is regarded as dogmatic and subjective; the aesthetic experience of both takes place in a fundamental, principal process which gives a “pre-existing inner structure” prior to the objectification process in which the relation of the object of art (the text), the author and the audience is formed. Moreover, both involve a form of inner ecstasy or erotic force which is the origin of the intellect, emotion and action. The primary principle of matriarchal art is claimed to be the continuation of life as a cycle of rebirths which resembles the circulation of life (chi) in Daoism and the principle of creativity of Heaven in Confucianism. Matriarchal aesthetics desire to bring about the aestheticization of society is analogous to Confucianism’s concern with the moral growth of individual and society. Matriarchal art as energy in itself, is a drive towards the aestheticization of society and feminist aestheticians stress its ability to shape life and change life, this also coincides with the Daoist and Confucian aesthetic experience where the human mind is elevated to a transcendental level and produces a dramatically different life experience. Finally, both demand that we should adapt ourselves to nature which includes our bodies and our immediate environment. This reminds us of the famous Daoist analogy, the joy and delight of Butcher Ding. His professional performance in being a butcher and cutting the cattle bodies leads to the harmonious correlation of a change in Nature with a spiritual change in ourselves via aesthetical acts.

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3.4

Conclusion

The comparison of feminists aesthetics with Chinese aesthetics outlined above obviously needs much more research and detail than was provided here. However, even this brief study shows that this area of cross-cultural philosophical dialogue might present scholars working in aesthetics, Western or Chinese, with promising directions for further research. One area which clearly needs more exploration is on the differences (metaphysical and experiential) between the types of mythic/ritual complexes of archaic peoples to which the feminist paradigm referred and what we find in the Daoist texts. It also needs to say that this study does not deny that there are patriarchal forms and institutions in the Chinese tradition but begins to look at that tradition for resources which might deconstruct that patriarchy and provide us with some new directions in the consideration of cross-cultural aesthetics. This revelation will be explored further in the following chapter with a philosophical investigation into the Confucian aesthetics paradigm and discourses. It will also consider the relevant contemporary artistic practice to review its transformation and development.

References Battersby, Christine. 1995. Stages on Kant’s Way: Aesthetics, Morality, and the Gendered Sublime. In Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer, 88–114. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Chan, Wing-tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gould, Timothy. 1995. Intensity and Its Audience: Toward a Feminist Perspective on the Kantian Sublime. In Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer, 66–87. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Göttner-Abendroth, Heide. 1986. Nine Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic. In Feminist Aesthetics, ed. Gisela Ecker, 81–94. Boston: Beacon Press. Hein, Hilde S., and Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.). 1993. Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1960. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Trans. John T. Godthwait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kant, Immanual. 1987. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kneller, Jane. 1993. Discipline and Silence: Women and Imagination in Kant’s Theory of Taste. In Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, ed. Hilde S. Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer, 179–192. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Margolis, Josephy. 1986. Pragmatism without Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism. Oxford, New York: Blackwell. Mou, Chung San. 1974. Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy. Taiwan: Commercial Press. Tang, Chun I. 1978. Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture. Taiwan: Ching Chung Book Stores. Waugh, Joanne B. 1995. Analytic Aesthetics and Feminist Aesthetics: Neither/Nor? In Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer, 399–415. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Chapter 4

Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics in China: Paradigms and Practices

4.1

Background

Western feminist aesthetics arose from past reflection on the status of women’s artistic creativity. Traditional social conditions have resulted in women’s creative expression being primarily concentrated in the minor arts, including crafts and decorative and applied arts. At the level of production, women’s creativity has neither been encouraged nor recognized. There are difficulties surrounding their access to education and formal training and their entry to the male-dominated professional elite. These hurdles are connected to their lack of social and economic independence. It is said that from romanticism to modernism, and even in the post-modernist age, the artist has always been regarded as possessing the ideal of transgressive masculinity: most visual images of women in art portray male desires and fears concerning women (Felski 1995, p. 432). It has been pointed out that ever since the 5th century, men have built a world based on the mind, reason, spirit and intellect, and have belittled the body, the senses, desires and emotions, features that have always been related to the notion of femininity (French 1993, p. 72). It is also noted that at the level of criticism, the traditional patriarchal art world sought objective “truth” from a highly subjective realm. Following the emergence of social movements and the elevation of women’s self-awareness since the middle of the 20th century, the feminist response to the aforementioned inferior artistic status of women has been to follow a process of rediscovery and revaluation of the tradition of female creativity. Women artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Judy Chicago have given birth to a language that provides a foundation for female-centred art. The projects they have pursued form the main agenda of so-called feminist aesthetics. Feminist aesthetics have also developed in conjunction with the dynamic growth of new feminine literary, painterly and cinematic practices since the 1970s, which have surrounded names including Kate Millett, Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro and the W.A.R. group activity supported by Lucy Lippard. Their advocates concentrate on the critique of traditional aesthetics © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_4

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and the development of new aesthetics from the philosophical perspective. These people include Irigaray, Cixous, Kristeva and their American counterparts such as Hein and Korsmeyer. The list is now being expanded by the addition of an increasing number of young women philosophers. However, it should be noted that while their target of attack remains the same, their points of departure are heterogeneous.

4.2

Critique of Western Traditional Aesthetics Revisited

As Hein (1995, p. 449) once stated, aesthetics have a place in the matrix of Western philosophy that is inconsistent with its fundamental logic, metaphysics, epistemology and values. Feminist aestheticians challenge this entire network, recasting and re-conceptualizing it from its own alternative perspective. What is its perspective? Its viewpoint arises from the critique of the “defections” of traditional aesthetic concepts, one of which is represented by the aesthetics of Kant. The reasons why Kant’s philosophy has been the favourite subject of criticism by feminist scholars are provided and discussed in Chap. 3, which is partly associated with the nature of his philosophy and is partly connected with his open statements on femininity and the roles of women. Kant’s aesthetics have also produced the traditional notion of the “ideal observer” performing the aesthetic act as an agent, or subject, upon a passive object, or subject-objectified. It is said that in knowing the object, the subject exercises power over it and controls and bends it to the will of the divine subject, who is wholly self-sufficient and omnipotent, just as the aesthetic act is transcendent and disinterested. In a word, the ideal observer in art is free of private interest. In this way, objective standards of truth and reliable techniques have also been agreed upon in traditional Western aesthetics. Feminist aestheticians now question the possibility, and even the desirability, of the existence of this ideal observer (Hein 1993, p. 10). Based on the above understanding, modern art and formalist theory in the 20th century are accused of implying that the “ideal observer” of the 18th century exists under various disguises. They seem to have claimed that there is a certain autonomy of art within the culture and that art is conceptualized as transcendent works or objects. Because of this transcendence, art is conceived as being separate from society, and the negative result of this view is that in much art of the modern era, there is a form of aggression reflecting a hostile relationship with both society and the audience. As stated by Gablik (1991, pp. 60–61), the identities of modern artists are filled with cultural myths that turn them egocentric or into separate selves whose perfection lies in absolute independence from the world. She elaborates on her statement by adding that modern aesthetics have left us with an ontology of objectification and permanence, and have undermined our sensitivity to the ecological and process characteristics of the world. The feminist aesthetician reading of modernism is that it increasingly appears to be a mode of patriarchal consciousness

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that contains the one-track mind of Western thought: segregation and renunciation of the manifold of phenomena in favour of dualism and a closed system of the world (Wolf 1985, p. 102). We can conclude that feminist aesthetics and their various arguments, criticize Western aesthetics through their opposition to modern formalist art. This can be summarized in my favourite quotation: We should not define art in terms of formal properties, qualities or principles in a hierarchical order which privileges those least useful to life… good arts are not necessarily those which meet the so-called standards of excellence established by trained tastemakers, or depend on their formal transcendence of nature and culture, or on the artists genius, or on the critic’s “disinterested” interpretation… we should not appreciate art as a thing in itself which only carries objective languages.” (Lauter 1993, p. 28)

4.3

What Do Feminist Aestheticians Advocate?

As feminist aestheticians criticize the idea of objective criteria for “artistic quality,” some suggest bringing a sociological perspective to the study of art, and they are emphasizing the importance of concepts as class, sex and culture in determining what constitutes so-called “good” art and for whom it has been created in a given period (Langer 1988, p. 117). The understanding is that art is not universal or above gender: it implies political standards and is deeply contextual. The primary function of a new theory is to identify art by delineating its multiple relationships to its contexts. The implication of such an approach is that female creativity has nothing to do with the notion of essential femininity, as femininity is a social construction and is not innate. We can still see the portrait of innate femininity in some works of the 1970s (e.g. those by Georgia O’Keeffe), but see this to a declining extent among artists who advocate the post-modernist and deconstructionist positions in subsequent decades (e.g. Mona Hatoum). Hein (1993, p. 6) argues that some feminist artists and scholars advocate a new definition of theory that decenters, displaces and provides a foretaste of the inessential, and does not flee from experience to seek refuge in theories, and she suggests that feminism has to recast theory: either it makes nonsense of the very concept of traditional theory, which is basically monolithic and phallocentrically rooted, or it suggests many theories instead of one. At the same time, based on an understanding of the effect of social construction, some advocate that women’s art is “a different logic, a different way of asking questions, a different kind of strength and weakness, friendship and enmity” (Wolf 1985, p. 107). Feminist aestheticians seek to promote the status of, and attention to, women’s art. As Gablik (1991, pp. 60–67) suggests in The Re-enchantment of Art, it is time to look for a true post-patriarchal art that does not equate aesthetics with alienation from the social world but embodies modes of relatedness. What this refers to is something derived from the notion of femininity, to develop a partnership model in the art that should be communicative and “compassionately”

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responsive. This new orientation of art is to be seen as a process rather than as fixed forms; a process sensitive to the ecological character of the world (which is, in Gablik’s words, “the feminine principle of empathy and relatedness to others”). This process implies moral responsibility and care. The example Gablik has given is the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who has been an artist-in-residence in New York. Ukeles spent a year and a half walking around and talking with sanitation workers and foremen. She then completed an artistic work called Touch Sanitation over a period of eleven months, during which she travelled around the five boroughs of New York and personally shook hands with everyone in the sanitation department, in what was an eight hours per day performance work. Gablik (1991, p. 70) regards Ukeles’s work as falling squarely within the dialogue mode, creating the realities of partnership through an empathetic bond between herself and her audience. However, one should stress that none of these “feminine” characteristics associated with women is biologically determined, but is constructed by cultures and do not represent all women. Art is not objective, as one feminist scholar states: it can reveal important aspects of women’s thought, but not women’s essence (Lauter 1993, p. 28). One may conclude that in feminist aesthetics, the relations between art, nature and life are subject-to-subject relationships that are egalitarian by nature and that art should not be separated from other aspects of life. In the Western tradition, the arts assume a position of elite superiority, whereas feminist aesthetics are aimed at providing comprehensibility and accessibility in terms of artistic language and style. In sum, the convictions of feminist theories include the premises that art is ever-expanding and has various models; that art concerns life and that the boundaries between art, culture and nature are shifting; that because the aesthetic value of good art is related to moral and cognitive values, we should evaluate art according to its potential in promoting a more effective, moral and satisfying life. Along these lines, one can see that feminist artists prefer to focus on bodily expression rather than pure concepts without experience. Women’s experiences are being sought, patriarchal ideologies that involve power domination in the art are being penetrated and demystified, and the convention holding that women’s work is trivial and insignificant is also being challenged. The aggressive program of feminist practice in art is aimed at establishing how to practice art history and art criticism in a way that diminished the sexist domination of the present. In addition to providing women’s experiences with the same respect, opportunities and representations that male modes of seeing have always received in society, there is a concern with creating alternatives to art, art history and criticism that have been shaped and defined by men under a patriarchal ideology (Langer 1988, p. 117). Three stages of work have been accomplished in recent feminist literary criticism. The first is the resurrection of “lost” women writers and works. The second is the consideration of the development of female imagination and female sensibility. The third is gender analysis of literature and art to show how texts are connected to their cultural and historical contexts.

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It is suggested that the more aggressive agenda of feminist aesthetics is to transgress the boundaries of signification and subvert the fixed categories and binary logic of phallocentric thought in the Western tradition. We can see how some feminist artists have explored the so-called “negative aesthetics” of rupture, fragmentation, contradiction, undecidability and dis-identification. This has been done to create an alternative model to that of the patriarchal tradition of reason, organic harmony, integrity and totality of artwork, while at the same time manifesting these labelled feminine characteristics. There are also attempts to consider other senses beyond the faculties of eye and ear, such as the sensibility concerning the qualities of taste, smell and touch that diminishes the dichotomy of subject and object. Things once defined by man’s philosophical reflection as inferior and suspect have now become treasures of feminist artists and scholars. This is also a creative space for female subjectivity and experience. The strategy followed here is referred to as “paraesthetics,” representing a branch of aesthetics turned against itself (Felski 1995, p. 434). As Hein (1995, p. 451) states, “What is distinctive to feminist art is not that it is about women, but that it is so in a way that is new, albeit using the same instruments as before.” Thus, the goal of feminist aesthetics is a renunciation of the traditional binary scheme and the dichotomous construction of subject and object. It is also aimed at accentuating artistic experience and practices and the concrete conditions of production.1 Therefore, reversing the polarized system or promoting femininity is not the ultimate objective.

4.4

Confucian Aesthetics and Its Feminist Modalities

Alternatives found in the aesthetic paradigms of other cultures may serve as useful references for Western feminist aesthetics, in which one can discern an integrated relationship among subjects, objects, human and nature. Confucian aesthetics, as suggested in the previous chapter of this book, should provide some rich resources suggesting possible paradigm alternatives. Comparative consideration should be undertaken before appropriating Confucian aesthetics into the feminist agenda, as strong metaphysical and ontological fervour are detected when comprehending the discussion of aesthetic experience in both Confucian and Daoist thoughts. As explicated in Chap. 3, Daoists claim that aesthetic experience requires an effort to transcend all human epistemological constraints. The more “transparent” and tranquil is the human mind, the more it is able to perceive things in light of the tranquil state in the realm of metaphysical nature. Thus, they present the subject in the ideal state, leading one to aesthetical ecstasy and on to aesthetical manifestation. The Confucians, on the other hand, regard aesthetical light as originating from the moral mind rather than from a withdrawing mind, which illuminates the ontological

1

Hein’s talk on Feminist Aesthetics on August 4, 1995 in Lahti, Finland at the International Congress on Aesthetics (unpublished).

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manifestation of things. It is noted that the moral mind can see things-inthemselves, for it is endowed by and corresponds to metaphysical Nature or Heaven, which generates all things and designates the kindness of the human mind or moral consciousness. These are ideas lacking in most Western feminist discourses; while they condemn dichotomous relations to avoid a dominating structure, only a few of them represent new ideas with metaphysical possibilities that go beyond oppositional models. Confucian aesthetics present an alternative model in which Western feminist aestheticians should find meaningful, and human transcendent activity will not end in indifference or “disinterestedness,” but will provide a source of moral strength and concern. It may be correct to say that Western feminists are considering retracing artistic values from the vividness and directness of aesthetic experience. Some of them are concerned with the moral implications and values of aesthetic experience, and the Confucian version reminds us that experience does not merely promote imaginative understanding. It has been suggested that art also has transformative capacity: it works through both the body and the mind in enhancing one’s moral and ethical senses. As discussed earlier, the Confucian model suggests that aesthetic experience comes before all other human experiences. Daoists suggest that the subject encounters the completeness and full manifestation of things-in-themselves when one’s being is sufficiently transcendent and is totally engaged with Nature. Yet this traditional and philosophical discussion is not analogous to the feminist critique of the indifferent attitude of some modern artists, as transcendental experience is merely the necessary prior stage that enables ensuing aesthetical, moral and epistemological judgments. As far as Western feminist agendas and Chinese philosophy are concerned, one may conclude that the feminist modalities of Confucian aesthetics are as follows. First, they add the importance of somatic perception to the narrow epistemological sense of the Western tradition, as illustrated by Confucius’ discussion of how music regulates one’s physical and mental states and how they promote and interact with each other. As in the case of the Daoists, they emphasize physical and mental practices as the story of the Butcher Ding depicted by Zhuangzi has illustrated, that it is through long and regular bodily practices that one would enter into the Nature of the object and integrate the subject and the object together in the realm of the Dao or Nature, where comes along the encounter, the understanding and the aesthetic experience. This echoes the recent work of feminist philosophers who are reconstructing body theories and discussing bodily knowledge in feminist epistemology, and chimes with their critical responses to mind and body dualism in the Western philosophical tradition. Irigaray (1987, pp. 65–87), for example, acknowledges the “bodily roots of the thinking process,” a perspective shared with other feminists who consider that the notion of the body must be brought into focus when examining perception. Furthermore, bodies are always engendered and undergoing social construction. The mind is not seen as separate from the body; rather, the mind is understood to be aware of the situated body, and as elaborating an understanding of its feelings.

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Second, Confucian aesthetics integrates the Kantian segregation of truth, beauty and goodness, and regards aesthetic experience as the foundation and platform of ethics and epistemology. Confucius discusses how music could unite social members in a state of peace and harmony, as artistic activities and ritual practices originate from the inner self and should not be isolated from society. This suggestion ridicules the modern concept of “atomic individualism” and the notion of “disinterestedness.” Third, while one cannot identify metaphysical fervour in all feminist agendas, the Confucian emphasis on the inter-relationship between human and Nature reflects sympathy with the ethos of environmental aesthetics promoted by feminist aestheticians.2 Here, one should also reflect seriously on the Confucian metaphysical and ontological implications, which refer to in-depth religious beliefs in our integrated relationship with Nature. These references are not merely logical, theoretical inferences or pure speculation, but are traditional convictions, even in religious manners, on the interaction and exchange between people and Nature. They are suggested in the mind and body practices Confucius explicates through his teachings on music, for example.3 Fourth, the Confucian approach points to a parallel and interactive development in art and social culture manifested in an organic and integrative model of aesthetic activities and their community. According to Confucian aesthetics, art has never been, and should never be isolated from, social reality. There is always a point at which art departs from reality and the genuine concern over how one should live with others in a state of wellbeing. As stated in the Analects, in a society, poetry can empathize, observe, unite and condemn. Confucius said, “If a man is not humane (ren), what has he to do with ceremonies? If he is not humane, what has he to do with music?” (Chan 1963, p. 53) Thus, Confucian aesthetics and feminist aesthetics have a common agenda: there are common interests in society, and participants (artists and audiences in collaboration) are to explore and express such interests in art and aesthetics with enthusiasm and concerns for life. Can Confucian aesthetics really contribute to more harmonious gender relations in society? What are the gender dynamics and context in which Confucian aesthetics developed? These are questions that concern not only feminists but also others, including historians of Chinese intellectual and social history. It is said that while the patriarchal structure has a long history in China, it was reinforced and strengthened in the Han dynasty when Confucian scholars utilized cosmological beliefs to justify gender, social and political relations, designating yin and yang as the two primary cosmological dimensions or principles of femininity and masculinity, respectively. Given that yang refers to the principle of cosmic actuality and yin to that of cosmic potentiality, the explicit model of yang assumes priority. This inference ends in masculinity as the leader and femininity as the follower. One can see that these social justifications, under the beliefs in Heaven and human

2

One of the representative works is Arnold Berleant’s Art and Environment. This was discussed extensively in my another piece of writing, See Man (2015).

3

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correspondence, were strong and functional. They laid out the five social relations of the Confucian tradition and related social rules: loyalty between ruler and ruled, filial piety between son and father, fidelity between wife and husband, justice between brother and brother, and trust between friend and friend. Moreover, the law of social life conforms with the law of Nature. In this sense, it was a civil religion. One’s most important responsibility was to follow the heavenly law and promote social and universal harmony, implying a “religion resonance” (Zhou 2003, p. 45). The patriarchal Chinese culture did not give birth to less gendered notions in aesthetics but is regarded as a coincidental, as well as a necessary, interesting development in response to particular historical and political contexts in China. It is said that Confucius promoted moral humanity and his aesthetics in the eras of the pre-Han dynasty with the intention of restoring the patriarchal social propriety that flourished in the Zhou dynasty which was deteriorating in his time. Idealistic Confucian beliefs in humanity were certainly not “disinterested” in themselves, but were filled with social and political interests of the times. An example related to gender issues is that while Confucian doctrines stated that the key to becoming a junzi (a gentleman) was self-cultivation through moral knowledge, social discourses on a woman junzi referred to the three obediences (to obey her father before marriage, her husband during married life, and her sons in widowhood) and the four virtues (fidelity, physical charm, propriety in speech, and skills in needlework or embroidery). It is said that they all worked together to maintain social order and the political structure in China and the related proposed “harmony” (Zhou 2003, pp. 54–55). The critical reading here is that while it does not accord with the binary opposition and dichotomous thought feminists criticize, Confucian discourses and practices have shifted to hierarchical authoritarianism that penetrates the five human relations, and its gender elitism has never endowed women with equal status. While the Confucian model is not horizontally oppositional or dichotomous and emphasizes benevolence among people and the correlation and interdependence of all elements on earth, its public myths and political order are still hierarchical, vertically suppressing and authoritarian. It is in these places where “creative transformation” and reinterpretations of traditional philosophical resources are asked for, as is its necessary integration with other contemporary and heterogeneous discourses including feminist aesthetics. This reflects the belief that Nature is the origin of beauty, goodness and truth, in which body and mind collaborate harmoniously to realize transcendence. Yet contemporary criticism of this concept also reminds us of the social and political contexts, which are always in a state of dialectical tension with the transcendental potentiality and practice discussed. It is in this context that I would refer to some contemporary developments in women art as cases of reference, which I have elaborated in my other work (Man 2016a). Here I would mention the new development of women embroidery as an example to see women art in context.

4.5 Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics and Its Practice in China

4.5

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Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics and Its Practice in China

Scholars have been concerned about how the skilful Chinese female hand was connected to knowledge and the construction of subjectivity in the everyday practice of embroidery.4 Women were believed to be able to create a space of limited empowerment for themselves and other women. Studies of the poetic writings, treatises, and manuals women produced about embroidery indicate their self-perception and awareness of their position in knowledge production in China from late imperial times to the early Republican period. All such knowledge production has been traced back to the development of sericulture. Weaving originally played a significant social and economic role in the classical gendered division of labor, as described in the phrase “men plough and women weave” (nangeng nüzhi 男耕女織), until the single whip tax reforms (1581) of the late Ming, when cash replaced textile and grain as the means by which household tax payments were made to the government (Bray 1997, pp. 265–269). While weaving often appeared in women’s self-representation as the trope for a virtuous, honourable means by which a woman could support herself and her close relatives, embroidery acquired status as the refined occupation of women in economically wealthy households moving upward in society. Embroidery also became very much a part of women’s daily experience. Art historian Marsha Weidner has observed that in Ming and Qing dynasties women trained their hands and eyes through embroidery. They became attentive to the smallest details, refined their sense of colour, and mastered a large repertoire of motifs and compositional formulas. Weidner (1988, p. 21) states that although the high demand for embroidery in the context of social, ritual, aesthetic and official life in China turned it into a commodified skill that had to be supplied or supplemented by the labour of women from the lower classes, it remained a consistent component of learning among elite young women, and in Weidner’s words, “needlework was the premier feminine art, one measure of a woman’s worth.” Embroidery was also among the memorable moments in a shared girlhood of emotions and dreams. The concentrated practice of embroidery while alone in inner quarters and the repetition of the stitching took on a meditative, religious quality because its repeated practice was similar to religious recitation. Embroidery was also described as a feminine activity that fitted into a contemplative mode requiring patience and diligence (Fong 2002). Women’s writings pointed out that embroidery required rectification of the mind through the hardship of bodily practices. It was an art that should be pursued by those with a kind personality and a good disposition, and an ideal embroiderer was defined through a series of attributes that implied class and proper upbringing. The skill was also compared to calligraphy and painting (Fong 2002, p. 29). Classical records noted that an idealized female space for embroidering was an aestheticized 4

The discussion under embroidery is covered extensively in my other piece of writing, See Man (2016a).

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environment (Fong 2002, p. 30). Such a space had four components: xian (閑 unhurriedness), the internal state of mind and external condition of being unhurried and relaxed; jing (靜 tranquility), the tranquil mood required for good quality work; ming (明 brightness), whereby the embroidery loop was to be placed in the source of light; and jie (潔 cleanliness), an uncontaminated environment. These records were aimed at underlining the expertise, concentration and discipline preferred for embroidery, and at emphasizing the sacred physical and mental space required for this activity (Fong 2002, p. 37). One should note that when the mental state is discussed, the mind and the body have to work and integrate together to produce quality embroidery pieces, which saying echoes with Mencius philosophy of the mind and the body under the Confucian context, as well as the feminist critique of the isolated, stand-alone mind in the praise of Western formalist art. All of these observations emphasized that the women’s art of embroidery was not a trivial or minor craft, but was equal in status to reputed elite male cultural practices such as painting, calligraphy and composition, which involved methods for structure and vitality, and for coherence and continuity (Fong 2002, p. 35). Embroidery showed the talent, skill, knowledge and expertise a female author possessed and displayed the mental state she could enter into to confirm her status as a knowing, moral and spiritual subject (Fong 2002, p. 14; Langer 1988, p. 117). While embroidery was closely associated with the raising of women in families of the gentry in the late imperial period, it is its class basis and status changed rapidly with the advent of modernity. From the beginning of the 20th century, embroidery shifted from an art practised by elite women to a modern craft that provided a means enabling women workers to earn a livelihood. The arrival of a market economy and mass production led to women’s claim to embroidery as their field of knowledge and expertise, and of gender and personal expression, becoming lost with social and class changes (Fong 2002, p. 40). Embroidery became township enterprise-products, such as textiles, silk, tea, knitwear and toys produced by women employees, earning the most foreign exchange for the country. Recent figures show that women workers in rural areas of Longkou City and Shandong Province were responsible for around seventy-four per cent of the production tasks of township textiles, clothing and embroidery enterprises. In 1990, the embroidery articles women made for export earned US $2.5 million for the country.5 In terms of both women’s hobbies and labour skills, embroidery became popular again under the modernized Communist regime. Books and manuals were published, workshops conducted and societies founded. Some of these activities became a new form of entertainment and leisure, and ritual and religious fervour were replaced by the desire to follow the vogue for busy post-modern living. Young women began to use their talents and energy to make money and buy European fashion brands to craft new identities as China’s economic structure began

See “Equal Rights and Important Role in Economic Sphere”. White Papers of the Government: Human Rights in China. November 1991, 9 December 2012. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ whitepaper/8(3).html.

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incorporating the capitalistic fervor for a modernized identity in the world. In recent years, Western fashion has been transformed by a craze for oriental embroidery, and working-class women have begun to make their living by producing traditional embroidery for export. Embroidery skills have been revived as a new production technique and fashion. Thousands of training programs attracting women workers have sprung up all over China. Vivienne Tam’s fashion, which has become a global brand, is an example of the status of Chinese embroidery in contemporary consumer space. Born in mainland China and raised in Hong Kong, Vivienne Tam moved to New York in the early 1980s and launched her self-titled label. Her trademark signature East-meets-West fashions and embroidery clearly signalled her Chinese identity to Western society as she practised a new form of Orientalism. For example, Tam’s spring 1998 collection was inspired by the five universal elements of Chinese cosmology— metal, wood, water, fire and earth—all infused with delicate embroidery, dainty beading and the bright colours of cloisonné jewellery. The orientation lasts through Tam’s label till today. Many of Tam’s designs are worn by Hollywood celebrities, and she is regarded as the quintessential designer of oriental style due to her transformation of embroidery into ornamental art and her fashions combining Asian beliefs and aesthetics. Tam’s favourite icons include the ocean, bamboo, peony, lotus and chrysanthemum flowers, goldfish, tigers, bats and dragons, all in the form of Chinese water paintings. An ever-present weighty icon for her clothing designs, dragons figured in her collections from spring 1997 till today. Tam’s appropriation of the dragon enriched it with a particular meaning. Tam has stated that “Dragons represent individuals who are always full of life and enthusiasm with a reputation for being loving and innovative. This perfectly describes the woman for whom I design.” The strong masculine image of a dragon had thus been modified to make it feminine and soft. In this reading, the dragon is not only a totem or symbol of China but is also an icon for women. Furthermore, the red dragon and Tam’s model’s faces have always pointed in the same direction, implying they have some common values. Presenting this icon in red seems to provoke an immediate revolution, just as the sky becomes red and quiet before a thunderstorm. Some regard this as a signal to the West that China has wakened up. Tam once claimed that she did not want to see Chinese crafts disappear and that her goal was to bring all its colours and skills into fashion. She said that her work is a result of the “reinterpretation of opulent Chinese ornamentation, which could be whimsical when revisited by Western eyes.” Her designs frequently incorporate the handiwork of embroidery and beading as tools to signify femininity, which is another key register of her work. Tam’s East-meets-West designs appropriate exotic, traditional and mysterious oriental elements with new and modern edges, but they are also gendered. Tam’s fashions bring out new femininity in traditional women’s embroidery work, which has not only created a successful market space but also reconstructed cultural and gender expressions in aesthetic terms. Tam’s work is a notable contemporary attempt to show traditional ornamental art in the making.

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Contemporary Chinese feminist aestheticians would agree with and promote the above reading of Tam’s embroidery designs and studies of the kind, which expands the reading of gender and reviews the development of what is regarded as women’s art in social, cultural and global contexts. The field of contemporary Chinese feminist aesthetics has to date produced reviews and studies promoting women’s literary writing and related forms of writing, which are linked to the concerns of minorities and challenges to the hegemony of heterosexual ideologies and modes of thought. Contextual studies are advocated and argued, historical and cultural dimensions are taken seriously, and more women arts are responding to social and political circumstances in the new China. Critiques are being levelled against phallocentric and patriarchal domination and accusations, and analogies and imageries based on such patriarchal and hegemonic inclinations in literary texts are usually related to the nation of China. There is also a call to attend to the differences between the Western feminist reading and Chinese realities, including in their cultural and philosophical backgrounds. Textual analysis is also regarded as a key to feminist critique (Wei 2009, p. 113). In September 1995, the United Nations convened the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing under the theme “action for equality, development and peace.” This meeting is seen as a milestone for feminist studies in contemporary China (Zhang and Feng 2012, p. 112). The ensuing rise in the popularity of feminist studies, including feminist aesthetics, was manifested in three areas: feminist critiques of male texts including literary writings and their treatment of women subjects; the rediscovery of lost work and creative art forms produced by women authors; and interdisciplinary gender studies that allow cross-cultural conversation and comparison (Zhang and Feng 2012, p. 113). Scholars who are sceptical about these developments claim that cultural theories should not replace literary criticism, that gender politics should not have taken over women’s literature, and that feminist aesthetics should also be seen as a form of feminism, cultural criticism and art criticism in China (Nicholson 1990). It is interesting to note that contemporary Chinese feminist aestheticians prefer the post-modern feminist position. Using Linda Nicholson’s definition, post-modern aestheticians argued against the supposed neutrality and objectivity of a subject or institution, stating that claims put forth as universally applicable have invariably been valid only for men of a particular culture, class and race. Ideals that have given backing to these claims, such as “objectivity” and “reason,” have reflected the values of masculinity at a particular point in history. Post-modern feminists have criticized the autonomous and self-legislating self as reflective of masculinity in the modern West. While Western feminists, with post-modernism as a natural ally as Nicholson suggests, avoid the tendency to construct theories that generalize the experiences of Western, white and middle-class women, contemporary Chinese feminist aestheticians attend to women’s liberation more generally against the grand narratives of the national socialist regime. They revisit the recent history of Chinese women’s lives via various literary and other forms of texts, reveal traditional gender oppression that limits personal growth, as discussed in the

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case of women’s embroidery and point to new means by which the female body has been oppressed in contemporary capitalistic China. There are sufficient examples demonstrating a growing trend of feminist art critics asking for attention to be paid to the real-life situation of women in China and for the evaluation of feminist art against social realities (Zhang and Feng 2012, p. 113).6

References Bray, Francesca. 1997. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chan, Wing-tsit. 1963. A source book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. French, Marilyn. 1993. Is There a Feminist Aesthetic? In Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, ed. Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Felski, Rita. 1995. Why Feminism Doesn’t Need an Aesthetic (And Why it Can’t Ignore Aesthetics). In Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, ed. Peggy Z. Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Fong, Grace. 2002. Female Hands: Embroidery as a Knowledge Field in Women’s Everyday Life in Late Imperial and Early Republican China. In International Symposium on Daily Life, Knowledge, and Chinese Modernities, Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 21–23 November. Gablik, Suzi. 1991. The Reenchantment of Art. NY: Thames and Hudson. Hein, Hilde. 1993. Refining Feminist Theory: Lessons from Aesthetics. In Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, ed. Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Hein, Hilde. 1995. The Role of Feminist Aesthetics in Feminist Theory in Ignore Aesthetics. In Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, ed. Peggy Z. Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Irigaray, Luce. 1987. Is the Subject of Science Gendered? Carol Mastrangelo Bove (trans.). Hypatia 2 (3): 65–87. Langer, Cassandra L. 1988. Feminist Art Criticism. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press. Lauter, Estella. 1993. Re-enfranchising Art. In Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, ed. Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Man, Eva K.W. 2015. Some Reflections on Confucian Aesthetics and Its Feminist Modalities. In Issues of Contemporary Art and Aesthetics in the Chinese Context. Heidelberg: Springer. Man, Eva K.W. 2016a. Reflections on Traditional Chinese Women Embroidery: The Subject of Bodily Expression, Gender Identity and Fashion. In Bodies in China. New York: SUNY Press. Man, Eva K.W. 2016b. Bodies in China. New York: SUNY Press. Nicholson, Linda. 1990. Introduction Chapter in Nicholson. In Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda, Nicholson. NY: Routledge. Wolf, Christa. 1985. A Letter. In Feminist Aesthetics, ed. Gisela Ecker. Boston: Beacon Press. Weidner, Marsha. 1988. Women in the History of Chinese Painting. In Views From Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists, ed. Marsha Weidner, 1300–1912. Indianapolis/New York: Indianapolis Museum of Art and Rizzoli.

6

Some of the case studies are also discussed, See Man (2016b).

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Wei, Ying. 2009. Nǚ xìng zhǔ yì meǐ xué de běn tǔ huà jiàn gòu jí wén huà tè zhì. qíu suǒ. Húnán, cháng shā: hú nán shěng shè huì kē xué yuàn. Zhou, Jinghao. 2003. Remaking China’s Public Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century. USA: Praeger Publishers. Zhang, Huan, and Feng, Xiaolu. 2012. Nǚ xìng zhǔ yì – shěn měi pī píng: guān yú dāng dài Nǚ xìng zhǔ yìwén xué pī píng de sī kǎo. dāng dài wén tán – pī píng yǔ chán shì. Sìchuān: Sì chuān shěng zuò jiā xíe hùi bīan jí dān weì. April.

Part II

Gender, Art and Knowledge

Chapter 5

Transformation of Social Reality and Susanne Langer’s Illusory Space in Dance

In her representative book, Feeling and Form, Susanne Langer said, “(Dance) can harbor no raw material, no things or facts, in its illusory world. The virtual form must be organic and autonomous and divorced from actuality. Whatever enters into it does so in radical artistic transformation: its space is plastic, its time is musical, its themes are fantasy, its actions symbolic.” In this way, what can the virtual space in dance be read besides contemplation? Are we only apprehending the form? What else can a dance critic do when a social reality or cultural study proposal puts forward? And what does Langer really mean in her discourse on dance? I want to use my recent study of contemporary dance choreographers in post-colonial Hong Kong as an example to expand the possible reading of Langer’s understanding of dance. These dance authors and performers build their choreographies and develop them along the historical passage in their social reality, and one can apprehend the heavy emotional responses and interactivity in the form. They are good illustrations of Langer’s suggestion of layers of illusion, the second level of which, as she said, are devices that support the total creation or enhance its expressiveness. I will argue that these artistic effects are in fact rich in meaning in the midst of their relation to Langer’s notion of the primary illusions. It will be very revealing to revisit Langer’s theory of dance, who suggests that the distinct appearance of a simpler illusion, e.g. pure space or pure time, is in the context of the more complex illusion of dance. These case studies illustrate what Langer refers to, that is a sudden revelation of emotive import (by stressing a formal aspect and abstracting it), and makes its feeling-content apparent. Here I try to involve a further reflection on the issue of contextualizing Langer’s notion of the “virtual form of dance”.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_5

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5 Transformation of Social Reality and Susanne Langer’s …

Dance as Field of Virtual Powers

Langer conceives the world of dance as a field of virtual powers, and she claims that “no art suffers more misunderstanding, sentimental judgment, and mystical interpretation than the art of dancing”. This very confusion is about what dancing is— what it expresses, what it creates, and how it is related to the other arts, to the artist, and to the actual world. What Langer most appeals to is the intuitive appreciation of dance, which people have given up on, as direct and natural as the enjoyment of any other art. Langer suggests that an intuitive appreciation of dance has to acknowledge dance as something that has its own “primary illusion”. It is something created by actual life gestures, functions as signals of creators’ desires, intentions, expectations, and demands. The actual life gestures can be consciously controlled, so they may also be elaborated into a system of assigned and combinable symbols, a genuine discursive language (Langer 1953, 174–175). In comparison to other art forms, in the so-called “modern dance”, the dancer seems more directly to present his/her emotions, and, as a result, this self-portraiture that reflects the dancer’s findings and feelings in the actual world becomes a motif. “For the appearance of movement as gesture requires only its emanation from a centre of living force; strangely enough, a mechanism ‘come to life’ intensifies this impression, perhaps by the internal contrast it presents” (Langer 1953, 181). Similarly, the mystic force is even more effectively visible. When I was studying aesthetics and the cultural philosophy of Langer and Ernest Cassirer, I was always thinking of the idea of virtual powers and therefore focused on the dancers’ leaping, whirling, kicking, the seemingly struggling and stamping piston-like beats, and other selfless movements. I thereafter agreed with Langer’s saying that dance magic is projected to a spectator, to heal, purify, or to inspire (Langer 1953, 199). Langer also emphasizes on the phenomenon of the muscle: the dancer knows well, that “the lines composed by his body form the illusionary forces, even for a solo dancer, the rhythmic play of the muscle, the freedom in which impulses go along in complete and intended movements” (Langer 1953, 197). It is under this assumption that we now understand the differentiation from reality, the transformation of artistry and the symbolism of movement, as well as the words of Mary Wigman, whom Langer quotes: “All dance construction arises from the dance experience which the performer is destined to incarnate and which gives his creation its true stamp. The experience shapes the kernel, the basic accord of his dance existence around which all else crystallizes. Each creative person carries him his own characteristic theme. It is waiting to be aroused through experience and completes itself during one whole creative cycle in manifold radiations, variations and transformations” (Langer 1953, 206).

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Langer firmly follows her teacher Cassirer’s argument of cultures and arts as systems of symbols when she tries to illustrate her idea of dance forces as virtual powers. Langer echoes Cassirer’s notion of “animal symbolicum”, that human is essentially a symbol living creature, and dance is a form of vital force and feeling in symbolic ways. Langer emphasizes on a holistic approach to dance, with which she also mentions the identity issue. Dance expresses forms of feeling which is in a stream of tensions and resolutions, and probably emotion, mood, and personal existence in an indefinite interplay of tensions (Langer 1953, 372). I see this understanding in my studies of six contemporary dance choreographers in Hong Kong. To Langer, dance choreographers and dancers transform their dance into an articulation of symbols in organic diversity. They do not have to experience the emotion embedded in their work in real life but skillfully utilize dance so that the work can be objectified. Langer elaborates this point to a good extent. For according to the theory of intuition, art-making and artistic appreciation are both subjective activities of mastery and understanding of the art form. Cognition of form is intuitive in an organic wholeness of all relatedness—distinctness, congruence, correspondence of forms, contrast, and synthesis are in a total gestalt, which can be grasped only by direct insight, which is intuition. Good examples are Mondrian’s formalistic composition and dance. Langer points out that the emergence of meaning is always a logical intuition or insight (Langer 1953, 379). To understand dance is to own the denotations of all the emotion, expressiveness and form through intuition. Langer’s conclusion is particularly applicable to the case of dance: …in art falsely so called there is no failure to express, because there is no attempt at expression […]. Corruption of consciousness is not a recondite sin which overcomes only an unfortunate or accursed few; it is a constant experience in the life of any artist, and his life is a constant and, on the whole, a successful warfare against it. (Langer 1953, 381–383)

The significance of symbols lies in their inclusion of thoughts and ideas which are beyond the artist’s personal experience and history. Here, the criticism directed at Cassirer is also applicable to the proposition of dance as symbol. For example, in 1920s, Heidegger challenged Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms by invoking the limits of the human body, which shall be along with thoughts, concepts and ideas to make up of our world. To respond, Cassirer in his posthumous work, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, acknowledged the fundamental phenomenon of vitality, including the human body, and modified his proposition that the foundation of cultural philosophy is the study of the phenomenology of perception. The Cassirer-Heidegger debate thus became the footage for his student Langer and influenced her theory of symbolism. The consideration of vitality, emotion and expressiveness provides an effective theoretical tool to the understanding of dance as a form of vital forces.

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5.2

Philosophy of Dance and Its Layers

Langer said the philosophical significance of dance stems from two fundamental sources: which are the primary illusion, and the basic abstraction whereby the illusion is created and shaped (Langer 1953, 169). She said the “primary illusion” is something created at the first touch—in the case of dance, is with the first motion, performed or even implied. The motion itself, as a physical reality and therefore “material” in the art, must be transformed, as what she said “everything becomes expression, gesture.” Gesture, to Langer as inspired by Mary Wigman, is the basic abstraction whereby the dance illusion is made and organized (Langer, 1953, 174). Gesture, to Langer, is vital movement; which is always at once subjective and objective, personal and public, willed (or evoked) and perceived. For as she describes, in actual life gestures function as signals or symptoms of our desires, intentions, expectations, demands, and feelings. But like language, they can be consciously controlled and elaborated into a system of assigned and combinable symbols, a genuine discursive language. Gesture in dance is always spontaneously expressive, by virtue of its form (Langer 1953, 175). Then when it is imagined, it becomes an artistic element, a possible dance-gesture; then it becomes a free symbolic form of will, which may be used to convey ideas of emotion, and may be combined with or incorporated in other virtual gestures, to express other physical and mental tensions. Langer further argues that the spontaneously gestic character of dance motions is illusory. In her words, “the primary illusion of dance is a virtual realm of Power— not actual, physically exerted power, but appearances of influence and agency created by virtual gesture…The prototype of these purely apparent energies is not the “field of forces” known to physics, but the subjective experience of volition and free agency” (Ibid.). She admits that in dance, the actual and virtual aspects of gesture are mingled in complex ways; it is the dancer’s emotion in which such gesture begins is virtual, that turns movement into dance-gesture (Langer, 1953, 180). Langer said it is the conception of a feeling disposes the dancer’s body to symbolize it; (Langer 1953, 181) that is, something actual that is revealed, articulated, and made manifest by the symbol. In her words, Everything illusory, and every imagined factor (such as a feeling we imagine ourselves to have) which supports the illusion, belongs to the symbolic form; the feeling of the whole work is the “meaning” of the symbol, the reality which the artist has found in the world and of which he wants to give his fellow men a clear conception. (Langer 1953, 182)

Langer goes deeper into the nature of dance, which she mainly refers to the virtuality in the making of the symbol and Cassirer’s term of “the mythical consciousness”, which is structurally the same as the artistic consciousness. (Langer, 1953, 184) Ernst Cassirer, in his writing in Language and Myth (Ernst, 1946), quoted Max Muller:

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Mythology is inevitable, it is natural, it is an inherent necessity of language, …it is in fact the dark shadow which language throws upon thought… Mythology, in the highest sense, is the power exercised by language on thought in every possible sphere of mental activity”

Langer provides an in depth preface on Cassirer’s book Language and Myth (1946) in which she regards Cassirer’s emphasis on the constitutive character of symbolic renderings in the making of “experience” as the masterstroke, meaning that Cassirer uses the Kantian doctrine, that mind is constitutive of the “external world,” to explain the way this world is experienced as well as the mere fact that it is experienced (Langer 1946). The prevalence of myth in early cultures and its persistence in religious thought—these and other widely scattered facts receive new significance in the light of Cassirer’s constructive philosophy in which objects immediately “given” in experience composed of sense data, must be “associates” to form “things”. The influences she received from Cassirer is that, “the mythic mind never perceives passively, never merely contemplates things; all its observations spring from some act of participation, emotion and will… Only where this vital feeling is stirred from within, where it expresses itself as love or hatre, fear or hope, joy or sorrow, mythic imagination is roused to the pitch of excitement at which it begets a definite world of representations.” (Langer, 1946. Here she refers to Cassirer’s work, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, II, 90.) Langer touches on the meaning and position of objectivity, and describes dancing as expressing moment in vivid phases. She said, “there is the utmost tension between the subject and its object, the outer world; when external reality is not merely viewed and contemplated, but overcomes a man in sheer immediacy, with emotions of fear or hope, terror or wish fulfillment: then the spark jumps somehow across, the tension finds release, as the subjective excitement becomes objectified and confronts the mind as a god or a daemon.” (1945, 32–33.) “(The dancing moment) is merged with its object in an indissoluble unity…The potential between ‘symbol’ and ‘meaning’ is resolved; in place of a more or less adequate ‘expression,’ we find a relation of identity, of complete congruence between ‘image’ and ‘object,’ between the name and the thing.” She said. (Ibid., 57–58.) As in the world presented in mythology, in dance every form is capable of changing, it combines within itself, at one and the same instant of its existence. There is a complete lack of clear division between mere ‘imagining’ and ‘real’ perception, between wish and fulfilment, between image and object. (Here she refers to Cassirer’s work, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, II, 48–49.) Words in Cassirer’s An Essay on Man (Cassirer 1962) echo Langer’s philosophy of dance, “The world of myth is a world of actions, of forces, of conflicting powers. In every phenomenon of nature it [mythic consciousness] sees the collision of these powers. Mythical perception is always impregnated with these emotional qualities. Whatever is seen or felt is surrounded by a special atmosphere—an atmosphere of

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joy or grief, of anguish, of excitement, of exultation or depression” (Cassirer 1962, 76–77). As Langer said dance is a field of virtual powers—there are no actualities left in it, no untransformed materials, but only elements, living Beings, centers of force, and their interplay (Langer 1953, 187). Again, there is no differentiation of virtuality and actuality, but total absorption, assimilation and appropriation, as she said, “The virtual form must be organic and autonomous and divorced from actuality. Whatever enters into it does so in radical artistic transformation: its space is plastic, its time is musical, its themes are fantasy, its actions symbolic.” (Langer, 1953, 204)

If there are primary and secondary illusions in dance, then its secondary illusion is hailed to its nature, that is, assimilating the whole phenomenon of dance to the realm wherein the given illusion is primary; the second illusion is an art of time, a poetry and drama, in Langer’s words (Langer 1953, 205). Like other arts, the work of dance composition or choreography is constructive and imaginative; “it springs from an idea of feeling, a matrix of symbolic form and grows organically” (ibid.). What is distinctive in its higher layer is that, “each creative person carries his own characteristic theme, waiting to be aroused through experience and completes itself during one whole creative cycle in manifold radiations, variations and transformations” (Langer 1953, 206).

5.3

Hong Kong Dance Choreography (1980s–2010s): The Case of Helen Lai

When Langer talks about the relationship between art work and its public, she adds that art, including dance, has its essential social intent. The argument is the meaning of the work would be created also by audience’s intuitive activities. In Langer’s words: “only in so far as the work is objective, the feeling it exhibits becomes public; it is always bound to its symbol. The effect of this symbolization is to offer the beholder a way of conceiving emotion; and that is something more elementary than making judgments about it” (Langer 1953, p. 394). Sharing with Langer ‘s line of thought, I conducted a study on six contemporary dance choreographers in Hong Kong from 1980s to 2010s. According to Langer, any beholder experiences the excitement when encountering the work, such excitement is not personal and it indicates the depth of human mentality to which that experience goes. What a work of dance does to us is to formulate our perceptions of feeling and conceptions of the visual and audible reality altogether —i.e. “it gives us forms of imagination and forms of feeling, inseparably” (Langer 1953, p. 397). The dance work of the Hong Kong

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choreographers in my study fits Langer’s idea of “intuitive anticipation”, as the audiences have already owned their anticipation before the curtain goes up, including the styles, i.e. the significant form and structural expressiveness of these choreographers. My study shares Langer’s suggestions. Langer said, (The) energy of art imposes itself on men, and becomes for them the plastic standard of the period. […] All the art works of an epoch end by resembling the most energetic, the most expressive, and the most typical works of the period. (Langer 1953, p. 400)

While tracing back to the three decades of Contemporary dance (1980–2010) in post-colonial Hong Kong, my study is concerned with the expressiveness being symbolized, and the ways the important choreography went along with the rise and the fall of Hong Kong society and their beholders or audiences. The study refers to Langer’s notion of “expressive force” in understanding the respectable choreography works. There is no general principle or theory for the expressiveness, each choreographer must find their own means in expressing and symbolizing their ideas and emotions as a whole. For the critic, one must see and comprehend the commanding form of the work, which is closely linked with the feeling, vital force, sensitivity, muscle regulation, mentality and interaction internally and externally with the social environment, which are all linked with the hope and despair, indictment and compromises as expressed in the dance itself (Langer 1953, p. 407). Langer said art is a public possession, because the formulation of “felt life” is the core of a culture. Once life is symbolized by its setting, the world seems important and beautiful, and is intuitively “grasped” (Langer 1953, p. 409). My study ties with Langer ‘s saying that: “great artists have often struggled for expression, but the urgency of their ideas caused them to develop every vestige of talent until it rose to their demands” (Langer 1953, p. 408). Here I use Hong Kong choreographer, Helen Lai’s work, as example. The study contributed by Ya-ping Chen has reviewed three of her representative work: Revolutionary Pekinese Opera (1997); Tales of Two Cities–Hong Kong. Shanghai. Eileen Chang; an adaptation of a novel by Eileen Chang and was presented in 2010, and Her Story (2007). From stage to the city of Hong Kong, it is suggested that one should look at the multi-dimensional narrative in Lai’s production, and concludes her method as “volumetric choreography”, which has rich implications when we are talking about the three-dimensional urban design and the vitality of the city of Hong Kong. Chen’s reading even refers to the architectural historians like Peter Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz, and the notion of intensity by Thomas Kvan to illustrate a picture of dense buildings, transport network, the crossing corridors and overpasses of Metropolis (Chen 2019).

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From inter-relating with the urban design, Chen concludes Lai’s volumetric choreography with reference to the hybrid culture of Hong Kong with special reference to the floating and intertwining structure of multiple ideologies and body languages on media. They are related to the marginal position of colonial citizens, women and dancers, and also the hidden antitheses of China and patriarchy. Thus, body languages are filled with symbols in Helen Lai’s dance. Besides movements, there are also words, signs, sounds, rhythms and original music clips in Lai’s productions, especially her choice of music, which is always sophisticated but independent. All the expressive elements and forms are connected and interacted in an organic whole (Chen 2019). The narrative position and perspective of those repeating multi-tones in Lai’s dance, which she uses to interrupt the harmonious tendency deliberately, makes the symbolization a diversified and a living organism. That refers to the stage performance which involves Langer’s ideas of forms and feelings, sometimes happen under the context of the entanglement, the fracture and personal loss one experiences in a relationship. For example, in Tales of Two Cities–Hong Kong. Shanghai. Eileen Chang, one sees dance integrating the several main characters and their relationships by the well-received literary writer Eileen Chang. The imageries are clues of complicated emotional relationships through a montage of dance movements, in which the love and hatred of a relationship is stretched into other non-stoppable affections in Chang’s other stories. Lai takes advantage of those flickering literary symbols in Chang’s well-known novels, historical events and words by Eileen in her creation of congested symbols and meanings in the post-colonial city and its gender politics (Chen 2019). Recently, I revisited Lai’s more recent choreographic work, Soledad performed in 2016 in Hong Kong, and found the close relationship from the primary illusion of the gestures to the dance composition assembles people’s actual and also volumetric actions during the Hong Kong Umbella Anti-government Movement in 2014, including the pattern of movement and the props being similar and the same, and more importantly, the restaged feeling and outrage. The intuition tells all, without further analysis or conceptual cognition. Lai’s work echoes and expands Langer’s theory of dance, that the feelings expressed in dance are in symbolic forms more than being single and arbitrary, they are dimensional, adoptions of semiotic in multiple propositions, like all the dance work in other particular social, political and cultural contexts.

References

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References Cassirer, Ernst. 1962. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chen, Ya-ping. 2019. Hong Kong as Method—The body narrative in Helen Lai’s Dance productions. In Six Contemporary Dance Choreographers in Hong Kong 1980s-2010s: History, Aesthetics and Cultural Identities, ed. Eva K.W. Man. Hong Kong: IATC (Chapter 2). Ernst, Cassirer. 1946. Language and Myth. Trans. by Susanne Langer. NY: Dover. Langer, Susanne K. 1946. Preface in Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth NY: Dover. Langer, Susanne K. 1953. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

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Title Soledad (stage photo, City Contemporary Dance Company (Hong Kong) Production, 2016.)

Artists Choreographer: Helen Lai Photographer: Ringo Chan

Year 2016

Medium: Film

Chapter 6

The Relation of “Self” and “Others” in the Confucian Traditions and Its Implications to Global Feminisms and Public Philosophies

6.1

Introduction

Under the calls of global feminism and public philosophy, there is the common project of a utopian form of emancipation. Postmodern discourses, on the other hand, confirm that conceptualizations of difference have constituted the relations of domination, and these are the barriers to gender equality and human liberation as a whole. If differences can be originated from the construction of subjectivity and otherness, what the French feminist critic Hélène Cixous called “a feminine libidinal economy” may explain why some feminist theories are read as profoundly transgressive of the binary opposition of Self to Other (Sargisson 1996, p. 169). The basic logic in this term is that otherness as difference can be understood only if sameness and difference are seen as placed in an oppositional relation. For example, when femininity and masculinity underwrite the hierarchical structuring of binary oppositional thought, feminine sexuality is defined only in terms of its difference from masculine sexuality. This structure, it is argued, is fundamentally oppositional yet simultaneously involves a certain interdependence, only that the benefits of which are not equally distributed (Sargisson 1996, pp. 170–175). As Cixous said, Already I know all about the “reality” that supports History’s progress: everything throughout the centuries depends on the distinction between the Selfsame, the ownself (what is mine, hence what is good) and that which limits it: so now what menaces my-own-good (good never being anything other than what is good-for-me) is the “other.” (Cixous and Clément 1986, pp. 70–71)

The further elaboration on woman’s situation as Man’s Other by this binary system of hierarchical opposition is one of its outcomes that women adapt to internalize the hierarchy and the related values. This means the knowledge on reality that women are inferior and contemptible is formed and reaffirmed, and individual women even find themselves alienated from other women, for example, in forms of those beauty discourses (Sargisson 1996, p. 181). © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_6

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In this context, new forms of Self/Other relation, those not being grounded in arrogant perception, or fear of difference, or other manifestations of cultural superiority, are in need, especially when we are talking about the paradigm shift of global feminisms and public philosophies. Homogenizing views of the Self/Other relation are thus suggested, which argue for the unification of conception and affinity, in which empathy and intimacy are the key terms (Sargisson 1996, p. 183). An example is Iris Young’s appeal to a communitarian ideal, which “privileges unity over difference, immediacy over mediation, and sympathy over the recognition of the limits of one’s understanding of others from their own points of view” (Young 1990, p. 300). According to Young’s design, her ideal would extend itself as “an end to the conflict and violence of human interaction”, since it realizes the unity of general will and individual subjectivity, and thus there would be no further stage to travel (Young 1990, p. 308). Not to say the bright future depicted in this communitarian ideal, Young’s suggestion at least well points out that each person’s moral integrity is related to the maintenance of the moral integrity of others, and therefore the development of a sense of Self is dependent on one’s relations with others (Whitbeck 1989, p. 67). In short, self-interest cannot be separated from the interests of others. In addition, this relation of Self to Other is non-possessive and at the same time heterogeneous, i.e. the two subjects involve are same and different, known and strange, inclusion and exclusion. This means, if put into the words by Cixous and Clément (1986, p. 78), Self would not be threatened by the existence of an otherness, but is rather delighting “to discover, to respect, to favor, and to cherish.” Another illustration on the homogenizing views of the Self/Other relation is by Elizabeth Grosz (1989, pp. 140–146), who refers to Emmanuel Levinas’ understanding of the encounter with alterity and then outlines four major characteristics of the concept of the Other: that the Other is “a form of exteriority, separate from and unpredicted by the subject;” the Other is “the sites of excess, an unabsorbable, indigestible residue;” the Other is “an infinite category;” and the Other is “an activity, in relation to which the subject is passively positioned.” (Grosz 1989, pp. 142) The overall idea in Grosz’s summary is that the Other summons up the subject. While regarding to the concept of Self, Ann Ferguson’s “Aspect Theory” has indicated its promising theoretical potential: If the self is seen as having many aspects, then it cannot be determined universally which are prior, most fundamental, or more or less authentic. Rather, aspects of our selves are developed by participating in social practices that insist on certain skills and values. (Ferguson 1989, pp. 101–102)

It is these implications on Self-Other relation by the Western scholars cited here that remind me of the Confucian’s notion of Self and Other, as well as the inspirations Confucianism might grant to global feminism and public philosophies on most feminists’ agendas. But let us firstly revisit the ideals of global feminisms and public philosophies in order to go along with my intention in this chapter.

6.2 Global Feminism

6.2

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Global Feminism

Global feminism, as commonly described in public sources, is also known as “world feminism” or “international feminism”, concerns itself primarily with the forward movement of women’s rights on a global scale, aiming to dismantle the currently predominant structures of global patriarchy.1 As communities of various situations are inevitably involved in its agenda, conflicts and disagreements are for sure embedded, and therefore it is criticized that the so-called “community”, which seems to assume the collectivities as homogeneous, would overlook the conflicting interests among the members. This is especially evidenced by the examples of migration and dislocation. As Uguris (2000, p. 49) suggests, with immense changes in the conditions of modernity caused by the effects of globalization and space/time compressions, those lives of a vast number of people moving from their home countries, and of the local “communities” who meet with the problems caused by migrants, are now in highly unpredicted conditions. In spite of the conflicting and unpredictable nature embedded in this feminist theory, suggestions have been made in order to conceptualize feminism globally, and one of them is to think about them organizationally and tactically as well as ideologically (Rupp 1998, p. 536). To be specific, we need to view feminisms and internationalism from their national, comparative, and international locations, i.e. to engage in more comparative work and to expand our horizons to feminisms practiced at a global level, and, therefore, the main objective of global feminism is to conceptualize feminisms broadly enough to encompass a vast array of local variations displaying multiple identities based on the common denominators of women’s relationship (Rupp 1998, p. 538). The commonalities mentioned here include reproductive capabilities, susceptibility to gendered violence, lack of political power, fighting domestic violence, promoting women’s rights, establishing rape as a war crime, etc., and there is always more to envisage. Such an example is the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault, which is now probably the most influential undergoing global campaign on the agenda. However, although the movements or campaigns always have the power to change the mood in society, it is always the policy to be changed so that the privilege might be ended and women’s reality could be improved. Thus, those who work towards global feminisms have raised the question of communication, especially when gender experts are now acting more and more as communicators and lobbying with public policy-makers for the planning and monitoring the effects of policy on gender (Carney 2003, p. 52). Among these are the so-called “gender mainstreaming” processes, which go some ways to achieve a feminist consensus on the issues mentioned above, and, as argued by Carney (2003, p. 59), such processes as the communication between feminism and mainstream policy-makers would bring about more mutual understandings where justice is the intersection of all. The intersection acts as the shared basis, on which policy-making can be revised and 1

See Global Feminism (2018).

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re-built. Thus, holding international forums or global civil societies becomes more important, and each party should initiate critical self-transformation. If the “gender mainstreaming” process is the promising direction, then the discussion has to revolve around the following questions: How could one begin to deal meaningfully with a subject matter that runs across the global and all of the cultural, economic, historical, and political diversity within it? If the intersection is justice, where should we start? Here, I think of public philosophy and its foundational thoughts.

6.3

Public Philosophy and the Dualism of the “Private” and “Public”, “Self” and “Others”

When Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) first referred public philosophy to the doctrine of natural law and western civilization, the primary goal for public philosophy is to certify that there are higher general rules above mankind or universal moral norms that humans should follow, and such common and unchangeable values and beliefs could be familial piety, faith to friends, ban on killing the innocent, etc. (Jiang 2007, pp. 1–2). These values or beliefs that aim to make people pursue public welfare rather than private interests are thus expected to act as the basis of public philosophy. It is now commonly agreed that public philosophy could not be narrowly defined as political philosophy, as it concerns all the issues emerging in the public fields, be it political, economic, social, moral, religious, or communicational, and it represents a certain kind of normative belief which has the potential to become social doctrines (Jiang 2007, p. 1). However, it should be noted that this tone is somehow different from the homogenizing views hold by many feminist scholars, including Young, who are skeptical of proclamations of universality and hold the communitarian position that emphasize more on local traditions and beliefs. Though Lippman’s notion of public philosophy, covering from the area of a state to the space of a community, is comparatively more concerned with public rationality, public good and public justice, a dichotomous thinking is still embedded in the Western discourses on public philosophy. According to Uguris (2000, p. 58), the thinking unavoidably leads to the existence of separations and barriers between dualistic concepts, such as self/others, private/public, home/work, physical/social, minority/majority, male/female, etc., and among these concepts the distinction between the public and the private is no doubt the basic dichotomy that affects gender relations. Duncan (1996, p. 128) adds that the constant use of public/private dichotomy to construct, control, discipline, confine, exclude and suppress gender and sexual differences has played the role of preserving the traditional patriarchal and heterosexist power structures—the private, as an analogy to the female gender, is traditionally been associated with the domestic, the embodied, the natural, the family, property, personal life, intimacy, passion and immanence; whereas the

6.3 Public Philosophy and the Dualism of the “Private” and “Public” …

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public is the domain of the disembodied, the abstract, the cultural, rationality, critical public discourse, citizenship, the market place, the state, heroism and transcendence. Therefore, the boundary between an inside and an outside not only paves the way to the construction of an imagined opposing position between the “Self” and “Others,” but also brings about the enclosed, indoor and private life of many women (Uguris 2000, p. 61). However, philosophers still believe that there are many rich resources left to offer to policy makers who think seriously about distributive justice in connection with women’s inequality. For example, moral philosopher Nussbaum (1998, p. 769) looks at the institutionalization of giving every citizens their “capabilities” or opportunities, as Nussbaum believes that the involvement of a set of material preconditions, as well as citizens’ genuine capability to perform a formal manner, are the measure of quality of life.2 This echoes Zhou Jinghao’s appeal that public philosophy shall “search for ‘the origins of social order,’ public truth, common good and beliefs, and international order” (Zhou 2003, p. 15). To be specific, Zhou (2003, p. 15), attributing to Richard J. Bishirjian, sums up the four principles of public philosophy in his reflections on the experience of a higher order of goods: that Public philosophy is based upon the common truth; that public philosophy should be committed to the common good; that public good is not necessarily in agreement with public opinion; and public philosophy is compatible with the theological truths reflected in our public myths. The fourth point leads to reflection of our connection between public philosophy and civil religion. Civil religion, according to Neuhaus (1986, p. 101), has the characteristics of cultic aspects, recognized leadership, means of participation, a statement of beliefs and a moral code so that civil religion is said to meet the criteria of a religion. Based on Neuhaus’ definition, Zhou (2003, p. 16) thereby makes a further comparison on public philosophy and civil religion, which can be summarized into three major points: that both public philosophy and civil religion are important to articulate and support political order; civil religion provides an ultimate meaning for public myths and ultimately articulates a political order; and public philosophy accommodates both political theory and civil religion. What has been done is a theoretical transition, by analyzing around the dualistic concepts of private/public and self/others, from global feminism to public philosophy and then to civil religion. My next move is to investigate into the religious aspects of Confucianism so that the possible implication by the Self/Other relation in the Confucian traditions can therefore be extended to the domains of global feminism and public philosophy.

2

However, the issues raised by the side of cultural relativism involved in this proposal should also be taken into account. See Richard John Neuhaus, “From Civil Religion to Public Philosophy” in Civil Religion and Political Theology (pp. 98–110), ed. by Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), p. 770.

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6.4

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Confucianism as a Form of Religion

Questions concerning the religious dimension of Confucianism have been asked by scholars of philosophy and religion for many years.3 A typical negative view on this debatable issue is that the Confucian tradition is grounded in what has been called a continuity or unity of being between the divine and the human, which are always interpreted as having more to do with politics than with religion. But, as Tucker (1998, p. 36) suggests, the broad and diverse dimensions of the Confucian tradition, which have energized individuals and families for many centuries across cultural and national boundaries in East Asia, should be paid real attention to, as Confucianism is for sure more than a political or ideological system. My approach, in agreement with Tucker’s positive attempts, however, focuses on identifying the religious character of the tradition, based upon the premise that the Confucian tradition is profoundly religious. The approach starts with a few definitions on “religion” in Western tradition, not meant to be comprehensive or necessarily acceptable to all, but aiming at being broad enough to allow us for the discussion of Confucianism within the parameters. It is noted that C. P. Tiele defines religion as “pure and reverential disposition or frame of mind which we call piety;” F. H. Bradley claims that religion is “the attempt to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our beings;” James Martineau argues that religion is the belief in “a Divine Mind and will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind;” Paul Tillich speaks of the “ultimate concern,” “a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life.”4 Each of these definitions specifies different characteristics, and as we shall see in the following discussion, some will apply to Confucianism better than others. Besides the relevance contributed by these definitions, I find W. C. Smith’s approach, which adopts the terms “religious” or “religiosity” or religious dimension to describe the meaning of religion (Smith 1991, p. 195), most eligible for my intention. This is important because in his book, The Meaning and End of Religion, Smith (1991, pp. 124–125) well points out that the concept of religion, as an intellectualistic system with its patterns of doctrine, is far from being universal and self-evident, but is distinctively Western invention exported to other parts of the world.5 This is exactly what I intend to argue for Confucianism as a form of religion, as I do not want to claim that Confucianism is a religion per se but it is 3

Some representative attempts include, James Legge, The Religions of China (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1880); Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (New York: Free Press, 1951); C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961); Julia Ching, Confucianism and Christianity: A Comparative Study (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1977); Tu Wei-ming, Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Though (Berkeley: Asian Humnaities Press, 1979); Taylor (1990), Tucker (1998, pp. 5– 45). 4 For more definitions on “religion,” see House (2006), Chart 1. 5 Smith’s position in this respect is also summarized in Hick (1990, pp. 110–111).

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religious, manifests religiosity or has religious dimension. Though there is recently a craze for Confucianism as rites and religion as revealed in field study findings in China in the 2000s by Cultural anthropologists. These findings are reviewed and analyzed in Chap. 13 of this book. Regarding to the basic beliefs of Confucianism, it has to be clarified that, in general, Chinese culture believes in the interrelation and correspondence between heaven and humanity, and thus the interpenetration of the sacred and the profane. This belief promises the development of each person’s inherent nature to achieve sagehood, and a sage thereby manifests the benevolence of nature in his/her thought and action. This interpenetration of the sacred and the profane can be further demonstrated by the Confucian notion of li (rite, 禮)—unlike Western traditions which separate the sacred and the profane by enclosing the sacred within religious rituals, Confucianism ritualizes the everyday practices and thus all of human living is taken as sacred rite. In other words, human nature is the excellence imparted by the universe to humanity, and human acts, no matter how seemingly insignificant, have its religious dimensions. In this sense, the “nature,” as understood by Confucianism, should not be confused with the one in the sense of Western naturalism—for Confucians, human nature is understood as the moral consciousness and practice which emanates from an internal or inherent awareness rather than obedience to social norms, doctrines or calls from an external transcendent being. Therefore, Confucianism, as a form of humanism, can be said to have the dimension of transforming itself into a strong religious humanism. Since the 1950s, Confucian scholars have begun to engage in the debates about the religious dimension of Confucianism primarily as a response to questions posed to the tradition by Christian-theology, and, as one of the major achievements, Confucianism’s own sense of religious dimensions, including its certain transcendental elements, has been recognized and articulated. The conditions under which Confucianism can be considered to have a religious dimension since the new era include the view that if we do not restrict the definition of religion only to the existence of a High God or a transcendent or a personal God, but being religious or manifesting religiosity, the religious dimension of Confucianism can be founded on the “immanent transcendental” structure of the human mind, in which human mind is ontologically related to and correspondent with heaven. Simultaneously, the nature of Heaven is imparted to and internalized as one’s moral consciousness. In this sense, morality for Confucianism is said to be always religious. If we consider some of the modern definitions of religious dimension suggested above, such as Paul Tillich’s notion of “ultimate concern,” Confucianism should definitely be accepted as being religious since its main concern is the ultimate ground and meaning of one’s present life, which is suggested as the manifestation of the divine nature of man imparted by the way of heaven. Some Confucian doctrines, for example, the texts on filial piety or loyalty, might seem on the surface to be merely ethical, but when put into the context of the correspondence between heaven and earth, these “earthly” practices naturally take on “heavenly” dimensions as they are the realization of the law of Nature which nurtures all (which is also the

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realization of the universal). Confucian text Chung Yung (The Doctrine of the Mean, 中庸),6 summarizes the humanistic tradition of Confucianism as follows: Only those who are absolutely sincere can fully develop their nature. If they can fully develop their nature, they can then fully develop the nature of others. If they can fully develop the nature of others, they can fully develop the nature of things. If they can fully develop the nature of things, they can then assist in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth. If they can assist in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth, they can thus form a trinity with Heaven and Earth. (Chan 1963, pp. 107–108)

In this sense, Confucianism can be described as a “moral religion”. Contemporary neo-Confucian scholar Mou Zongsan has engaged in the debates. Mou (1984, pp. 177–190) suggests that both Christianity and Confucianism share a sense of transcendence. While Christianity believes in the supreme personal God, Confucians admit a metaphysical reality, called Tian (heaven, 天), whose nature is the everlasting standard of the moral conduct, and humanity would be fulfilled by the actualization of one’s moral nature. In other words, Christianity’s personal God differentiates and separates itself from humanity and thus becomes an external object of worship and belief, while Confucian metaphysical reality creates an internal correspondent structure with man since heaven and humanity are One. If we take the Christian commandment “to love thy neighbor as thyself” as a religious calling to reciprocity and benevolence, there is also a corresponding one in Confucianism—the concept of ren (仁). In addition, the differentiation of little ren and big ren is connected by the typical Confucian logic that in every small act of benevolence and reciprocity, there is also a cosmic act of benevolence. Confucius has explicated this universality of ren by adopting the phrases like “employ the people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice” (使民如承大祭) and “do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you” (己所不欲,勿施於人) (Chan 1963, p. 39). In terms of religious experience, Confucians’ version lies in the realization and actualization of one’s moral mind by moral practices, which is the manifestation of the Way of heaven. This is different from Christians’ experience of God, which is through God’s revelation or the Holy Spirit. Finally, it should be noted that early Confucianism inherited rituals and folk beliefs of traditional Chinese religions that believed in Gods and ghosts. Both Confucius and Confucianism attempted to differentiate from these beliefs and practices. But in more recent discussions, under the light of the broadened definition of religion, Confucianism’s religious dimension is argued. I also argue that Confucianism, which emphasizes on the unity or continuity of being, is a form of religion with its potential to overcome the dichotomies between the secular and the sacred, through its ways by making living acts and relationship a sacred ritual.

6

The English translations on traditional Chinese philosophical texts cited in this chapter come from Chan (1963).

6.5 The Confucian’s Reading of the “Self” and “Others”

6.5

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The Confucian’s Reading of the “Self” and “Others”

In what ways does Confucianism, as a form of religion, promote public philosophy? And what are the inspirations it may provide to the thoughts of global feminism? In general, Confucian’s understanding of the “Self” and “Other” can be summarized into this saying in the Analect: A man of humanity, wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others, and wishing to be prominent himself, also helps others to be prominent. To be able to judge others by what is near to ourselves may be called the method of realizing humanity. (Chan 1963, p. 31)

This idea on Self/Other relation is further elaborated in another major Confucian classical texts, The Great Learning (Da-Xue 大學), which sums up the Confucian educational, moral, and political programs into the so-called “three principles and eight items” (三綱八目). The three principles signal the ideal of inward sageness (nei-sheng 內聖), starting from self, then extending to others, and finally referring to the ideal of outward kingliness (wai-wang 外王). To be specific, the self-cultivation-oriented Confucian education consists in “manifesting the clear character, loving the people, and abiding (chih 致) in the highest good.” (Chan 1963, p. 86) One’s clear character is said to be a subjective requirement of an educated person, loving the people is a behavioral requirement, and abiding in the highest good is a combined requirement of an educated person’s psychological and behavioral attitudes.7 The eight items, under the framework of these three principles, are then placed in such a sequence: The ancients who wished to manifest their clear character to the world would first bring order to their states. Those who wished to bring order to their states would first regulate their families. Those who wished to regulate their families would first cultivate their personal lives. Those who wished to cultivate their personal lives would first rectify their minds. Those who wished to rectify their minds would first make their wills sincere. Those who wished to make their wills sincere would first extend their knowledge. The extension of knowledge [zhi-zhi 致知] consists in the investigation of things [ge-wu 格物]. When things are investigated, knowledge is extended; when knowledge is extended, the will becomes sincere; when the will is sincere, the mind is rectified; when the mind is rectified, the personal life is cultivated; when the personal life is cultivated, the family will be regulated; when the family is regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there will be peace throughout the world. (Chan 1963, pp. 86–87)

Chapter 12 of this book follows on the analysis of the Great Learning, and it is the Self/Other relation that should be attended here. One should note that there are ten chapters of commentary following the above text,8 and among these chapters there is a further elaboration on the Self/Other relation: 7 One should note that Song (宋) philosopher Cheng Yi (程頤) presents another reading of the second principle: instead of reading it as “loving the people” (qin-min 親民), they have suggested “renovating the people” (xin-min 新民). See Chan (1963, p. 86). 8 According to Zhu Xi’s remark, they are the views of Zengzi (曾子) and were recorded by his pupils. See ibid, p. 87. One should note that Zhu Xi’s commentaries on this Confucian Classics were made the official texts in the civil service examination from 1313, despite the fact that the

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6 The Relation of “Self” and “Others” … […] there are few people in the world who know what is bad in those whom they love and what is good in those whom they dislike […] This is what is meant by saying that if the personal is not cultivated, one cannot regulate his family. (Chan 1963, p. 90)

The regulation of the family requires each family member’s self-cultivation, and therefore it means each person shall behave correctly according to his/her position in the family (Cheng 1991, p. 229). Then, the syllogistic extension can move forward to people outside the family, and “this practice of virtue for a man in the position of ruling a state is now called that of governing the state well” (Cheng 1991, p. 229). Finally, the fulfillment of extension will reach the level of the State or Tianxia (天下). If a state is well governed, the order of the whole world would be naturally achieved. The “three principles and eight items” explain why Confucianism has such a profound influence on Chinese society and culture, as the discourse legitimates and reinforces the social relationship between the ruled and ruler, son and father, wife and husband, female and male, sisters and brothers. As stated in the discussion on Confucianism as a form of religion, we have already seen that the law of social life was in conformity with the law of nature. It is now even more comfortable to confirm that Confucianism is a civil religion in the way that the union of personal moral behavior, Nature and society is in accordance with the law of the Universe. Therefore, the fulfillment of a self’s very first responsibility is to follow the heavenly law by keeping the harmony in social relationship. It is in this sense that we can now understand why Benjamin Schwartz (1985, p. 7) claims that certain Confucian traditions, for example filial piety, are “more than simply an ethical value,” as it “has in it almost a religious resonance.” Underlying the keen on social relationship is the fervor of harmony, and it is important to emphasize that the acts of harmony are originated from the moral mind. This is clearly illustrated in the following text from The Doctrine of the Means (中庸): Before the feelings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, and joy are aroused it is called equilibrium (chung, centrality, mean) [中]. When these feelings are aroused and each and all attain due measure and degree, it is called harmony. Equilibrium is the great foundation of the world, and harmony its universal path. When equilibrium and harmony are realized to the highest degree, heaven and earth will attain their proper order and all things will flourish. (Chan 1963, p. 98)

Here, the notion of harmony confirms the idea of non-differentiating all the dualistic terms. In other words, the Confucian notion of harmony overrules the

debates around his reading have a significant impact on the decanonization of The Great Learning. One impact comes from the famous philosophical battle between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiang Shan (陸象 山1139–93), a contemporary influential Confucian in Sung, on the notion of “ge-wu.” According to analysis reviewed by neo-Confucian scholars, Zhu Xi favors an intellectual or discursive approach to the term ge-wu, or investigation of things, whereas Lu champions an intuitive approach. Zhu is said to stress the need to examine knowledge as much as possible, both moral and non-moral, while Lu’s intuitive approach emphasizes moral effort and introspection, relegating the pursuit of discursive knowledge to secondary importance. See idid, 90.

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Western models of dichotomy and binary opposition including those of the “self” and “other”, “private” and “public.” Yet the moral reasons involved in the acts, guided by the basic moral principle of ren, ask to tell right from wrong, as stated in the Analects (Chan 1963, p. 41), the superior man is conciliatory but does not identify himself with others; the inferior man identifies with others but is not conciliatory.

The difference between identification and conciliation indicates that if we merely hide our judgment and subordinate our opinions to others in order to seek superficial agreement and peace, it is just conforming or identifying with others, but not the attempt to harmonize. On the contrary, it is the different opinions or standpoints that make harmony rich and meaningful, and harmony can be established only when the differences co-exist. Therefore, the ideal interpersonal relationship proposed by Confucianism to harmonize, requires one’s loyalty and forgiveness, and to be kind to others. However, there is still the criticism that the so-called “harmony”, defined by the existing social order and political structure, is inevitably a patriarchal by-product of Confucianism (Zhou 2003, p. 54). This is critically evidenced when we are looking at the gender bias in the tradition that, although the key to becoming a male jun-zi is self-cultivation through moral knowledge so that he can further regulate the family and serve the country, the social discourses of a woman jun-zi are referring to the three obediences (to obey her father before marriage, her husband during married life, and her sons in widowhood) and the four virtues (fidelity, physical charm, propriety in speech, and efficiency in needlework).

6.6

A Concluding Remark

When we appreciate the multiplicity of public philosophy and the core of an East Asian public philosophy in the classical Confucian texts, the ideas such like “coexistence of loyalty and piety,” “distinction between righteousness and interests,” and “from inner Sageness to outward Kingliness”, etc., seem to provide the possibilities to negate the Western framework of “division between the public and the private,” “theory and practice,” “means and ends” and “the universal and the particular” (Jiang 2007, p. 3). In addition, inspirations brought by Confucianism may grant global feminism and public philosophies most of the feminists’ agendas. For example, the Confucian notion of “harmonizes but not conforms” (he-er-butong 和而不同) suggest to global feminisms the respect and the praise for the co-existence of different standpoints, capacities and the needs of women in a vast variety of situations. And the Confucian ideas on “the Sageness within and the Kingliness without” (nei-sheng-wai-wang 內聖外王) sends its moral message to public philosophers, who are always concerning the foundation and the practices of justice.

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However, while the Confucian paradigm seems to be in discord with the binary oppositions and dichotomous thinking, it has also shifted to a hierarchical authoritarianism that penetrates the five human relations. For example, the gender elitism embedded in Confucianism has never endowed women with equal status. In other words, compared to the horizontally oppositional model in the form of dichotomy, the Confucian model is emphasizing on the correlation and the interdependence of the self and others, but, it is still vertically hierarchical and authoritarian in terms of its public myths and political order. Nevertheless, it is only through such comparative studies that make the integration of traditional philosophical resources with other contemporary, heterogeneous discourses meaningful and revealing. Otherwise, “creative transformation” could never happen.

References Carney, Gemma. 2003. Communicating or just talking? Gender mainstreaming and the communication of global feminism. Women and Language. 26 (1, Spring): 52–60. Chan, Wing-tsit. 1963. A source book in Chinese philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cheng, Chung-ying. 1991. New dimensions of confucian and neo-confucian philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cixous, Hélène, and Catherine Clément. 1986. The newly born woman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Duncan, Nancy. 1996. Renegotiating gender and sexuality in public and private spaces. In BodySpace: Destabilizing geographies of gender and sexuality, ed. Duncan Nancy, 127–144, London: Routledge. Ferguson, Ann. 1989. A feminist theory of the self. In Women, knowledge, and reality: explorations in feminist philosophy, ed. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall, 93–107. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Global Feminism. 2018. In Wikipedia. Accessed 10 Aug 2018. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Global_Feminism. Grosz, Elizabeth A. 1989. Sexual subversions: Three French feminists. Australia: Allen & Unwin. Hick, John. 1990. Philosophy of religion. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. House, H.Wayne. 2006. Charts of world religions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Jiang, Yi-Huah 江宜樺. 2007. Confucianism and East Asian public philosophy: An analysis of “Harmonize but Not Conform.” 儒家思想與東亞公共哲學——以“和而不同”意旨之分析為 例. Journal of East China Normal University: Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition. 39 (6): 1–10. Mou, Zongsan 牟宗三. 1984. Impressions of the Times《時代與感受》. Taipei: Ehu Chubanshe. Neuhaus, Richard John. 1986. From civil religion to public philosophy. In Civil religion and political theology, ed. Rouner, Leroy S, Notre Dame, 98–110. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. 1998. Public philosophy and International Feminism. Ethics. 108 (4): 762– 796. Rupp, Leila J. 1998. Feminisms and Internationalism: A view from the centre. Gender & History. 10 (3): 535–538. Sargisson, Lucy. 1996. Contemporary feminist utopianism. London: Routledge. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1991. The meaning and end of religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

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Taylor, Rodney Leon. 1990. The religious dimensions of confucianism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Tucker, Mary Evelyn. 1998. Religious dimensions of confucianism: Cosmology and cultivation. Philosophy East and West. 48 (1): 5–45. Uguris, Tijen. 2000. Gender, ethnicity and ‘The Community’: Locations with multiple identities. In Global feminist politics: Identities in a changing world, ed. Ali, Suki and Coate, Kelly and Goro, Wangũi wa, 49–68. London: Routledge. Whitbeck, Caroline. 1989. A different reality: Feminist ontology. In Women, knowledge, and reality: Explorations in feminist philosophy, ed. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall, 51–76. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Young, Iris M. 1990. The ideal of community and the politics of difference. In Feminism/ postmodernism, ed. Linda J. Nicholson, 300–323. New York: Routledge. Zhou, Jinghao. 2003. Remaking china’s public philosophy for the twenty-first century. Westport: Praeger.

Chapter 7

A Further Reflections on Some Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology

The philosophical study of knowledge, the so-called epistemology, is of fundamental importance in understanding our position in the world. In recent years, feminists have pointed out that culturally entrenched stories on knowledge actually rely on a series of dichotomies that exclude “woman” from the class of knowing subjects. This dichotomy is mainly due to the association of the feminine with passivity and nature—as opposed to the masculine, which is associated with activity, being seen as a rational subject of knowledge and a dominant part of contemporary culture. Such gender implication is also engaged in the critique on the notion of “objectivity” in Western epistemology. This chapter, with the “further reflections” as part of its title, is a reflective response to, also an elaboration of this feminist project. I will first outline the main arguments of the feminist critiques of Western traditional epistemology, concerning the problems of knowledge as representation; the neutrality of knowledge and reason; the influences of masculinity, and the notion of objectivity. I will then delineate feminists’ suggestions of knowledge formation and epistemological approaches by introducing two influential feminist positions: namely, the Feminist Empiricism and the Feminist Standpoint theories. The final discussion involves the problems, difficulties and criticisms these feminist suggestions received, all pointing to the question—Is a so-called “feminist epistemology” possible?

7.1 7.1.1

A Critique of Traditional Western Epistemologies: Main Objections and Arguments Knowledge as Representation

One of the main tenets of Western epistemology is “representationalism,” in which knowledge is best understood in terms of how individuals represent their © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_7

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environment. According to this view, when we say knowledge we must think of a world composed of objects with causal properties that individuals attempt to know. Thus, philosophers of mind will first study the mental representation, and epistemologists will then find out which conditions must be met by representations so that they can be legitimately valued as knowledge. In short, knowledge is conceived as something like a mental object with its semantic properties that an individual possesses. Feminists start their challenge by pointing out the assumption in this foundational idea on knowledge that such focus on the role of an individual knower in epistemology is a legacy of the Cartesian tradition—while stressing the importance of autonomy for knowledge, philosophers like Locke and Descartes see the autonomous self as “an individual who can achieve knowledge by employing only his own will, and by having control over what contributes to this achievement” (Tanesini 1999, pp. 17–18). Thus, the main argument raised by feminists is that people do not begin their thinking about knowledge from representations. Instead, knowledge is already invested with human values. That means knowledge is socially constructed—not to say that practical knowledge is produced from socially institutionalized practices, even theoretical knowledge shall be construed as a special form of practical knowledge. This idea will be further elaborated in the following critique on the neutrality of knowledge.

7.1.2

The Neutrality of Knowledge

Most of the feminists have viewed the notion of the neutrality of knowledge (also known as “value-neutrality”) as neither possible nor desirable, and it seems that they see the ideal of value-neutrality appealing only if we conceive knowledge as a relation among things devoid of meaning and human representations of them (Tanesini 1999, p. 15). Taking science as an example, Harding (1991, p. 49) points out that cultural agendas and assumptions are part of the overall assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses of science, which are then used as evidence in favor of or against a scientific theory, and therefore she criticizes the traditional view of scientific method for its lack of self-reflexivity. Irigaray and Oberle (1985, p. 83) also suggests that the psychic and sexual implications within discourse, discoveries and their modes of presentation shall be taken seriously in the scientific horizon as they are interrogating the subject of science and thus need to be questioned. For example, the language of science hidden behind the assumed so-called neutrality, in fact, is always a particular manifestation of the existence of only one, i.e. the male, speaking position in language, in which its pretenses and ruses is never neutral, and its move to the impersonal conceals the fact that the subject of science is gendered as male. In short, the language of science is a production of gendered (masculine) beings.

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Feminists might hold different political and/or philosophical views from Jürgen Habermas, yet they do recognize that Habermas’s work, especially his reading on the intention of early Positivism, offers many valuable resources for their critical reflections on power, norms and subjectivity. For example, in Knowledge & Human Interests, Habermas (1978, p. 71) states that as soon as knowledge is deemed sufficient to be defined by modern sciences, sciences are no longer comprehended within the horizon of possible and a priori reflected knowledge. As the impact of man on nature depends mainly on the knowledge it has acquired about the real laws of inorganic phenomena, the scientific belief of the sciences is justified by the realization of the so-called “positive spirit,” which implies that the political as well as the moral and intellectual development of humanity is absolutely inseparable from its material progress. Here, “positive spirit,” according to Habermas (1978, p. 74), refers to the methodological rules articulated in Comte’s philosophy of science, which are to guide the procedures that would guarantee scientific objectivity. To be specific, Habermas (1978, p. 74) analyzes Comte’s use of the term “positive” into four levels of meanings: first, it refers to the actual, as distinct from the merely imaginary (réel-chimérique), that can claim certainty, as distinct from the undecided (certitude-l’indécision); second, it refers to the exact, as distinct from the indefinite (le précis–le vague); third, it refers to the useful, as distinct from the vain (l’utile–l’oiseux); and, finally, it refers to the what claims relative validity, as distinct from the absolute (le relative–l’absolu). In this sense, there follows three principles set by positivism so that science can be defined. First, [p]ositivism adopts the basic rule of the empiricist schools that all knowledge has to prove itself through the sense certainty of systematic observation that secures intersubjectivity. Only perception can claim evidence about reality. […] Sense experience defines access to the domain of facts. Science that makes statements about reality is always empirical science. (Habermas 1978, p. 74)

Second, [m]ethodical certainty is just as important as sense certainty […] Science is directed at the manifold of facts, which are in principle infinite and which can never be comprehended in their totality […] it must be grounded subjectively in a systemic procedure of the investigator […] only the analytic interconnection of universal propositions and the logical connection of observation statements with such theories secure the precisions of our knowledge. (Habermas 1978, p. 75)

Third, “science makes possible technical control over the processes of both nature and society,” for this significant property or knowledge is just as important for its intrinsic value as well as for its practical utility (Habermas 1978, pp. 76–77). However, it should be noticed that the notion of scientific thinking, along the lines of positivism, has always remained relative to our organization and our situation, or to say, “the basic ways in which man thinks about himself and the world” (Bernstein 1971, p. 283). The cultural situations and humanistic beliefs inevitably come to the declaration of an unreal essence of metaphysics, and by restricting the realm of decidable questions to the explanation of facts, positivism removes

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metaphysical problems from its discourse. Habermas (1978, pp. 79–80) quotes Comte’s expression that metaphysics is expressed as ‘undiscussable,’ even though “it is only through metaphysical concepts that positivism can render itself comprehensible.” That’s why for Comte, religion can be tolerated only because of its pragmatic social functions. Hence every knowledge becomes identical with scientific knowledge while the object domain in turn can only be defined by methodological rules of inquiry, and, as a result, the paths of reflection on the meaning of knowledge are almost blocked off since the only remaining perspective is the adoption of objectivism as the foundation (Habermas 1978, pp. 80–81). Habermas attributes this dogma of the prescientific interpretation of knowledge as a copy of reality to scientific objectivism, for it limits access to reality to the dimension established by the scientific system of reference through the methodical objectification of reality[, and i]t prohibits discerning the a priori element of this system of reference and calling into question in any way its monopoly of knowledge. (Habermas 1978, p. 89)

7.1.3

Reason and Masculinity

For feminist scholars, the alleged universality of the traditional subject of knowledge and the presentation of a universal human ideal are in reality masculine. Evelyn Fox Keller, the well-known American female physicist, for example, challenges on this issue from the perspective of developmental psychology. According to developmental psychology, children need to develop a sense of themselves as separate from their surrounding environment in order to achieve full emotional and cognitive maturity and their personal autonomy. As women are always playing the role of caring for children in society, the development of children’s autonomy is first via the demarcation from their mothers. According to Keller (1995, p. 88), this demarcation is more acute in boys, and the process of separation is more likely to be accentuated, because this “disidentification from mother” not only serves the purpose of establishing oneself as a different individual from the mother, but it heads to the consolidation of a different gender from mother. Boys must undergo a twofold process of demarcation. In addition, the culture pressure more or less adds further impetus for boys to develop their independence and autonomy to construct a stereotypic masculinity (Keller 1995, pp. 88–89). Boys are expected to acquire the capacity for objectivity, for delineating subject from object, for knowing his environment, and for being able to satisfy others’ needs. It is said that this separation anxiety can be regarded as one of the major characteristics to tell the birth of the modern world from the mother-world of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and Descartes’ work can thus be read as a “psychocultural story” (Bordo 1987, p. 5).

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Other examples can be found in the biology of human fertilization: Since Aristotle women have been conceived as passive, and men as active. These metaphors have guided the formulation of hypotheses in biology. Thus, the female egg has been understood as passive, while the spermatozoon has been seen as active. The traditional account of fertilization focuses on the activities of the sperm. It tells us that one ejaculation releases millions of them in the vagina. Millions of them die in the inhospitable female genital tract, but some find their way into the oviduct. Finally, one penetrates the egg, and fertilizes it. In this story the egg does not do anything, it simply waits to be penetrated. (Tanesini 1999, p. 78)

The biology of fertilization as suggested is obviously formed by the language and embedded by the views and observations on the behavior appropriate to the two genders. So it is legitimate to suspect that such metaphors of female passivity might have misguided scientific research and cause serious problems. Among such suspects, Carolyn Merchant argues in her book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (1989), that instead of as an active living organism, the new science of the seventeenth century introduced a conception of Nature as a lifeless passive mechanism, and what implies in such an mechanistic conception is an exploitative attitude toward Nature, which shall be responsible for the contemporary ecological disasters. On this matter, Merchant (1989, pp. 127–148) also reminds people to bear in mind the longstanding stereotypical identification of women and witches with the image of Nature as Disorder. However, the masculine dimension of the human reason becomes more problematic when it comes to body issues. For example, the Enlightenment rhetoric of “emancipation” and “autonomy” are said to be complicit in a fantasy of escape from the embodied condition (Lovibond 1989, p. 12), and this complicity involves placing the features of reason opposed to those traditionally associated with the body—reason would be unchangeable and immune to history, and thus called “universal reason,” while the body belongs to the realm of change. This mind-body dichotomy is of course attributable to Descartes’ dualism, and it was further developed to the Kantian notion of reason featured by autonomy, in which reason is conceived as being indifferent to sexual difference while bodies are gendered. It is necessary to review the concept of reason in the history of Western philosophy here. Genevieve Lloyd (1984, pp. 4–6) points out that Plato, especially in his early dialogues, conceives of rational knowledge as involving transcendence of matter in which matter is represented as feminine and transcendence involves going beyond matter and the material body. Reason is a divided faculty—it includes lower instinctual parts, which are in conflict with higher cognitive part—and the lower functions of this faculty, with the overtones of femaleness, are seen as something to be transcended in the search for rational knowledge. Lloyd (1984, pp. 38–41) moves forward to give her historical account and well notes that before Descartes, reason encompassed the whole of human thought, while after Descartes, it becomes associated with one very specific way of thinking, namely, “a precisely ordered mode of abstract thinking.” Passion and instincts are conceived as irrational, and

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they became outside reason rather than a part of it. As a result, woman, who is already associated with matter/the lower instinctual parts in the tradition, comes to be associated with what is outside reason as Descartes advocates a complete separation of rational mind from the body (Lloyd 1984, p. 50). When it comes to Francis Bacon, scientific knowledge is conceived as control of nature in which form and matter are no longer separated, and the task of science becomes the exercise of the right kind of dominance by man over nature, in which nature is presented as knowable feminine (Lloyd 1984, p.11, 1996, pp. 47–52). Rousseau, based on Bacon’s theory, is one of the first philosophers to claim that the ideal character for a woman shall be different from that for a man due to women’s closeness to Nature— men should aspire to become good citizens, while women should be good private persons (Lloyd 1984, p. 77). Although it sees the feminine as representing a kind of intellectual character that may complement rationality, the precisely ordered mode of abstract thinking is enjoying its status of transcending the feminine. As Lloyd (1984, p. 106) concludes, the history of reason is “not a simple exclusion of women, but a constitution of femininity through that exclusion,” and women are seen as a kind of being who should not pursue reason in the ways that women are conceived as deficient males.

7.1.4

The Notion of Objectivity

The traditional accounts of objectivity as value-neutral are also the major targets in contemporary feminist criticism. In her influential work Reflection on Gender and Science, Keller (1995, p. 97) points out that the radical separation between the knowing subject and the known object gives rise to the subjective autonomy as a total and the radical independence that relates cognitively and emotionally to external reality. Keller (1995, p. 103) opined that the issue of autonomy and control naturally and necessarily requires this separation, and control will be transformed into a preoccupation with domination and mastery through a “psychological assimilation of autonomy with external authority” (Keller 1995, p. 103). Therefore, the so-called value-neutrality is in fact a process of objectification, and the acquisition of objectivity is by assuming the relation between the knower and the known as one of distance/separation or mastery/domination. Many feminists, just like Keller, maintain this view of social constructionism, which rejects any notion of independent reality. They argue that the discourse about disembodied knowledge and objectivity under the aegis of the separation of an autonomous subject and external object, is a mere ideological disguise for attempts to persuade relevant social actors that one’s manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power (Haraway 1988, p. 577).

7.2 Feminist Suggestions of Knowledge Formation and Epistemological Approaches

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Feminist Suggestions of Knowledge Formation and Epistemological Approaches

As one can conclude from the above criticisms, most feminist epistemologists argue for the social character of knowledge. Following are suggestions from these alternative approaches concerning knowledge and its related notions argued among various feminist epistemologies. The argument that social and political factors are relevant to knowledge is explained in different ways. But no matter how varied their accounts on these factors are, it is beyond dispute that some aspects of traditional analytic epistemology shall be questioned as it abstracts from social constraints and focuses on the individual subjects alone. Directed against the mainstream analytic theory of knowledge, their efforts can be generally summarized into three groups: Firstly, feminist theories of knowledge are concerned with social practices; analytic epistemology, instead, is individualist partly because it implicitly subscribes to the model of knowledge as representation. Secondly, feminists engage in new investigations about the subject who has knowledge; analytic philosophy still employs a conception of the subject that abstracts from social considerations. Thirdly, feminists attempt to formulate an epistemology that helps to guide intellectual inquires; mainstream analytic theory of knowledge has very little to say about this. (Tanesini 1999, p. 21)

In recent years, feminist philosophers such as Susan Bordo and Elizabeth Potter, historians of science like Donna Haraway, anthropologists like Sharon Traweek, and scientists such as Keller have developed a so-called cultural approach. This new approach aims to make explicit the background of social practices within which scientific activity gains its significance. In other words, these people are committed to open up new ways of understanding how science, like any other human activity, acquires its significance in a broader cultural context. However, we should also pay attention to the different emphases and points of departure among these feminist epistemologists, especially when we focus on different feminist positions on the relation between politics and knowledge. According to Harding (1986, p. 24), there are three major positions: namely, feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theory, and feminist postmodernism. In this chapter, I will focus on the first two positions.

7.2.1

Feminist Empiricism

Contextual empiricism and naturalized empiricism, developed respectively by Helen Longino and Lynn Nelson, are the two major streams in feminist empiricism. Both of them concur with at least two basic beliefs: that theories provide concepts necessary for observations, and that there will always be more than one theory compatible with the available empirical evidences. Longino and Nelson realize that any adequate account of knowledge would have to consider its social dimensions, which has long been ignored by old-style empiricism largely due to its commitment to individualism. Therefore, virtues of feminist empiricism can be characterized

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mainly as pragmatic, and it establishes its foothold on its ability to sustain the dialogue with mainstream science and philosophy. However, differences certainly exist between the two forms of feminist empiricism, and to highlight them, it would be revealing to review the notion of objectivity. As a contextual empiricist, Longino emphasizes that what functions as evidence for a theory are not “raw” data, but are always experiences informed by theoretical considerations: Data - even as represented in descriptions of observations and experimental results - do not on their own, indicate that for which they can serve as evidence. (Longino 1989, p. 264)

Hence, we could only hope to minimize the influence of values in science, that is, admitting that scientific inquiry is inescapably a social practice conducted by a socially varied community and doing our best to screening out all social values from science (Longino 1989, p. 265). Longino’s understanding of objectivity thus welcomes criticism, aiming to include all perspectives in science, and shall be responsive to criticism as well, and it would finally turn out to be a matter of degree for the process is likely to eliminate subjective preference from either an individual’s or a community’s practice of science (Longino 1989, p. 266). Although it sounds unachievable, Longino’s project is still a regulative ideal for science. Nelson is also suspicious of the objectivity in empirical evidence/science, and there are two important tenets of traditional empiricism she particularly criticizes— first is that logical and mathematical statements are immune from revision; and second, observations that confirm statements in isolation (Nelson 1990, pp. 90–91). For her, empirical evidence is not autonomous from common-sense beliefs and theories shaped by our political and moral vies (Nelson 1990, p. 247). However, Nelson holds a slightly different view on the notion of empirical evidence in terms of the role of values in science. Instead of trying to screen out or minimize the influence of values in scientific enquiry so that a “maximal minimization of subjective preferences” can be generated, Nelson (1990, pp. 306–308) does not think that the objectivity of science would be undermined by values, because she believes that values are not necessarily subjective and they can and should be evaluated by scientific standards. Therefore, Nelson’s objectivity is more likely to be accessed by a critical self-assessment of the values underlying scientific research, aiming to identify the values that are more defensible and objective than others.

7.2.2

Feminist Standpoint Theory

Standpoint epistemology is said to be one of the most popular feminist approaches to knowledge. Its general argument is that there is always a distinctive perspective from a masculine and privileged one on reality that pertains to feminists and women. Arguing that “the position of women is structurally different from that of men, and the lived realities of women’s lives are profoundly different from those of

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men,” standpoint feminist epistemologists look for women’s labor and lives which are structurally differentiated from men’s (Hartsock 2003, p. 284). Most of the notable standpoint feminist epistemologists, including Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, and Dorothy Smith, have explicitly modeled their theories on Marxism, as Marx’s analysis on the labor division is well suited to adopt and develop a distinct perspective for women. For example, standpoint feminist epistemologists bring their observation that there are so few women in science and the knowledge produced by science is so abstract and depersonalized to the forefront, and they appeal to the acknowledgment of the involvement of emotion in labor and the process of knowledge acquisition (Rose 1983, pp. 83–84). In addition, they extend their emphasis on women’s experiences to all the systematic studies of society and social relations so that women’s experience as a resource can become the basis for sociology to proceed (Smith 1987, p. 78). Women’s experiences as a resource owns its great potentials to challenge the current set of social relations, as the standpoint of women is in dual central and marginal positions—saying central is because women produce the invisibility of work as work and thereby indirectly help to sustain the current patriarchal system; saying marginal is because women do not occupy a position of power within the system. The dual central and marginal positions thus indicate that women’s experiences are more accurate to reflect on the reality of relations than men’s, because women have a direct and concrete experience of what is invisible to men and thus have the potentials to perceive the rupture between what the world is like for them and how dominant views represent it. It is expected that, starting from women’s experiences, it is possible to expose the different cognitive domains structuring our realities, and therefore provides an alternative to the social reality occupied by men’s abstracted conceptual modes (Smith 1987, pp. 83–84). But what on earth is the so-called “women’s experiences”? Instead of claiming that women have the experiences in which the contents are particularly distinct from those gained by men, standpoint feminists prefer to say that women have a different way of experiencing, or a different cognitive style of experiencing, from that employed by men. They believe that the new approach to knowledge requires a new sense of self to the world, i.e. “the female sense of self as connected to the world” (Hartsock 2003, p. 295). Reinharz (1983, p. 183) provides one of the descriptions to this women’s specific ways of being in the world, called “feminine cognitive style” as “not in the pejorative sense of sentimental, irrational or unscientific, but in the positive sense of artistic, sensitive, integrated, deep, intersubjective, empathic, associative, affective, open, personalized, aesthetic, receptive.”

7.2.3

On Objectivity and Truth

One of the ultimate tasks for feminist epistemologists is the reevaluation of objectivity and truth. Most of them believe the concrete form of universality can only be achieved by applying “a holistic approach” as a corrective to the current

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construction of scientific knowledge, which means both subjects and objects shall be involved in the process of formulating human knowledge from their interrelated situational experiences (Mangena 1994, p. 278). On one hand, the object is silent as a passive resource, and the world can thus be said precisely lost in the doctrines of representation and “scientific” objectivity (Haraway 1992, p. 313). On the other hand, for subjects, one perspective is inevitably partial and subject to revision and therefore both men and women shall be invited to participate in the cognitive process. The acknowledgement of the legitimacy of more than one perspective without claiming that all perspectives are as good as any others is what feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint both encourage when they are talking about the multiplicities of concrete experience. It is in this context that the very notion of “objectivity” gains its new meaning. Regarding to the attempts to define the so-called feminist objectivity, Haraway (1988, p. 581) makes it quite clear that “[f]eminist objectivity means quite simply situated knowledges.” According to Haraway (1989, p. 4), scientific practice and theories are embedded in some particular kinds of stories, and she therefore treat them as one of the story-telling practices—“a rule-governed, constrained, historically changing craft of narrating the history of nature” (Haraway 1989, p. 4). The metaphor of diffracting rays is adopted to demonstrate this story-telling practice —“the rays from my optical device diffract rather than reflect,” and they “compose interference patterns, not reflecting images” (Haraway 1992, p. 299). So the subjects’ positioning is the key practice in grounding knowledge since the responsibility for subjects’ enabling practices is required, and it follows by that “politics and ethics ground struggles for and contests over what may count as rational knowledge” (Haraway 1988, p. 587). Haraway’s speculation reminds me of the matriarchal aesthetics presented in Chap. 3 of this book, and Heide Gottner-Abendroth’s nine principles of the matriarchal aesthetic which provides us a recent paradigm of feminist aesthetics, in its particular perception of Nature which is different from mainstream sciences. I have also compared it with Daoist theory of human’s relation with Nature and the related understanding and perception, which demonstrates rich common agenda and rooted grounds. I do think that the comparison will shed light on the cross cultural reflection of the arguments involved in this chapter and offer support from non-Western views of the world and Nature. Instead of advocating an ontological notion of objectivity, Longino (1990, p. 63) ascribes objectivity to the method of inquiry, expressing more concerns about “the extent to which it provides means of assessing hypotheses and theories in an unbiased and unprejudiced manner.” Therefore, Longino’s view on objectivity is better understood as “a characteristic ascribed variously to beliefs, individuals, theories, observations, and methods of inquiry,” and she believes that “the objectivity of science is secured by the social character of inquiry” (Longino 1990, p. 62). To prove this, Longino (1990, pp. 66–81) has conducted a detailed analysis on intersubjective criticism to suggest that the influence of values can be erased via intersubjective criticism if social groups firmly put scientific method into practice. Harding (1991, p. 149), who also believes that objectivity can be secured by the

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social character of inquiry, even proposes a stronger notion of objectivity: one shall take into account all the evidences marshaled for or against hypotheses and theories by acknowledging and examining those powerful background values and beliefs, no matter they are “good” or “bad”, within scientific research processes.

7.3

Further Reflections: Problems, Difficulties and Criticisms

Doubts and resistances towards the feminist epistemological approaches can be summarized into three attitudes. Firstly, analytic philosophers tend not to think about justification in term of practices. For them, mainstream epistemology is not concerned with the norms of methods embedded in the practices for achieving knowledge in a given context. They are just self-evident and are indeed simple instances of knowledge. Secondly, philosophers of science draw a sharp distinction between the factors involved in the discovery of theories and those involved in their justifications. The context of justification is what matters but not the “context of discovery.” For philosophers of science, a claim is scientific only if one can justify it by means of experience. Thirdly, methodological confirmation should remove any subjective influence that might have permeated science through the context of discovery, as any influence of values on science may produce bad results. These attitudes actually reveal the value judgment that places practical knowledge as only second best to theoretical knowledge, and such judgment has been historically employed to devalue the knowledge produced by women due to its highly practical character (Tanesini 1999, pp. 110–111). Responses are particularly sensitive and critical when it comes to feminist standpoint theory. Although the sex-gender division in ways of thinking is generally endorsed, the unchallenged endorsement is that men possess reason which is conceived as “a highly abstract mode of thought,” while women are left to deal with “the emotional complexities and practical demands of ordinarily life” that are expected to be either empirically correct or politically useful (Lloyd 1984, p. 49). This partly reflects the persistent discrimination on the female ways of thinking. In addition, to make the claim that there is a unique cognitive style or set of experiences pertaining to women is also problematic, as this seems to suppose that women have some essential features and ignore the differences among women themselves. However, putting too much emphasis on differences among women may cause controversies as well, because such attitude tends to create mysterious “others” among women and hence falls prey to all sorts of generalizations or “clichés,” especially when it comes to the discussion on the women issues in countries like India, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia that have different cultural and women’s histories. What is more aggressive is to question that there is a female nature or essence on which the theory of knowledge is grounded. Harding (1986 and 1991),

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for example, has remarked that standpoint epistemology appears to entail false essentialisms and universalizations. This draws us to some fundamental criticisms that a proposed feminist epistemology grounded on female experience would encounter. First, we shall ask whether the concept of women’s experience as a form of experience may belong to a classical empiricist tradition, that is, to the very source of positivist social and natural science. Lazreg (1994, p. 52) delivers good responses to this “epistemic fallacy” by pointing out that “identifying the characteristics of women living in a male-dominated society does not necessarily mean that these characteristics constitute knowledge of women.” Second, we must doubt whether experience alone could constitute a valid basis for knowledge. To be specific, as we begin to think of the concrete cultural, national, economic and political contexts that shape the world’s lives, is it possible for a new epistemology which is grounded on a conception of experience as just as multiple and empirical? (Lazreg 1994, pp. 52–54). In terms of cross-cultural reflection, from the standpoint of a Western woman, the experience of “other” women (from different cultures or races) is easily to be either denied (and subsumed under one’s own) or deemed incomprehensible. In other words, an objectification of “other” women—an appropriation of “other” women’s voices or constructing a new subjectivity for “others”—is the by-product in the process of power acquisition. One cannot say women’s standpoints are free of self-interests, and thus are neutral. Others criticisms are in more general senses. For example, it is difficult for a so-called feminist knower to escape men’s reification, manipulation or construction if she does not have the status of being a subject endowed with consciousness (Lazreg 1994, p. 54). Another general criticism directs to feminist critiques on the natural sciences, saying that they are always more tempered and less ready to offer specific alternatives. One critic modestly states that “most precepts of feminist science still take the form of ‘don’ts’ rather than ‘do’s’” (Eichler 1980, p. 119).

7.4

Is a Feminist Epistemology Possible?

When one admits that women’s experience, as a part of social activity, is historically specific and susceptible to change, the tasks before feminists are to determine the conditions under which social activity becomes gendered, and to capture what is human in women and men. Here, freedom shall act as the very basis to ground feminist perspectives, for “[w]omen cannot be reduced to their experiences without denying them the will and ability to change” (Lazreg 1994, p. 59). Here, I would refer to Harding’s notion of “strong objectivity” with its criticism. A strong objectivity to Harding, is based on “a notion of strong reflexivity,” which would require that the objects of inquiry be conceptualized as gazing back in all their cultural particularity and that the researcher, through theory and methods, stand behind

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them, gazing back at his own socially situated research project in all its cultural particularity and its relationships to other projects of his culture […] “Strong reflexivity” requires the development of oppositional theory from the perspective of the lives of those Others […] since intuitive experience […] is frequently not a reliable guide to the regularities of nature and social life and their underlying causal tendencies. (Harding 1991, p. 163)

A strong objectivity requires all background assumptions, cultural agendas, and influences rendered visible and with their power structure recognized. One of the criticisms that Harding’s notion has received is that the principles used by various groups sometimes are not just different but also incompatible (Barwell 1994, pp. 89–90). In this case, it does need to establish a practice or criteria that enables consensus on how conflicts should be resolved and regulated. But how is this possible? I agree with Longino that the non-epistemic values in decision-making within theoretical practices is instructive, but to establish the decisive procedures by which conflicting points of view within the practice can be assessed still needs more clarification (Barwell 1994, p. 92). Miranda Fricker (1994, pp. 103–108) lists six points as the ideals for a possible feminist epistemology, which I think have demonstrative values on the establishment of a non-epistemic practice/criteria: First is Self-consistency, that there is a need for a regulatory ideal of self-consistent truth combined with a methodology of openness; second is Coherentism, which ideal is to depict belief as normatively constrained both by reality and by a process of rational self-criticism (Fricker 1994, p. 104); third is Holism, which is the attitude to recognize and invite sociopolitical developments about the different ways where knowledge is situated, that is, the ways that sociopolitical values, among others, mediate data and theory (Fricker 1994, p. 105). Here, it should be understood that although Holism gives marginalized groups the epistemological license to assert their own perspectives and to force revisions, the actual success depends on the political climate or whether a methodology of openness prevails. The fourth point is Dialectic of facts and values, which is that the ideal epistemology should acknowledge that “all beliefs in a system are logically interdependent, for their justification depends on their coherence with the rest of the system” (Fricker 1994, p. 106). The fifth is a realist account of empirical beliefs, which understands that “reality anchors our belief-system, for it provides substantial empirical constraints on what we may believe” (Fricker 1994, p. 106). Lastly, a self-critical practice in Fricker’s saying that one “must provisionally take up an attitude of unquestioning acceptance towards the rest of the system in order to have a position from which to criticize the section under review” (Fricker 1994, p. 107). When we are talking about a possible epistemology and all the criticisms it receives, the consensus shared is that feminist epistemology is an important suggestion. But it is both epistemologically legitimate and politically imperative that feminism and other progressive politics should contribute to the construction of a revised epistemology. What this chapter at least suggests is that feminist epistemology is one of suggested forms of modification on traditional epistemology, although most feminist discourses are still talking about ideal forms and attitudes, taking the form of “don’ts” rather than “do’s”. In the midst of the strong resistances

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posed by mainstream epistemologies and sciences, we are still waiting for practical changes and workable demonstrations by feminists to show a more realistic and beneficial alternative in epistemology.

References Barwell, Ismay. 1994. Towards a defence of objectivity. In Knowing the difference: Feminist perspectives in epistemology, ed. Lennon, Kathleen and Whitford, Margaret, 79–94. London: Routledge. Bernstein, Richard J. 1971. Praxis and action: Contemporary philosophies of human activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bordo, Susan. 1987. The flight to objectivity: Essays on cartesianism and culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. Eichler, Margrit. 1980. The double standard: A feminist critique of feminist social science. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Fricker, Miranda. 1994. Knowledge as construct: Theorizing the role of gender in knowledge. In Knowing the difference: Feminist perspectives in epistemology, ed. Lennon, Kathleen and Whitford, Margaret, 95–109. London: Routledge. Habermas, Jürgen. 1978. Knowledge and human interests. London: Heinemann Educational. Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14 (3, Autumn): 575–599. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge. Haraway, Donna. 1992. The promises of monsters: a regenerative politics for inapproprate/d others. In Cultural studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, 295– 337. New York: Routledge. Harding, Sandra G. 1986. The science question in feminism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Harding, Sandra G. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge?: Thinking from women’s lives. Milton Keynes: Open University Pres. Hartsock, Nancy. 2003. The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology, and philosophy of science, ed. Sandra G. Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, 283–310. Dordrecht Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Irigaray, Luce, and Edith Oberle. 1985. Is the subject of science sexed? Cultural Critique 1 (Autumn): 73–88. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1995. Reflections on gender and science. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lazreg, Marnia. 1994. Women’s experience and feminist epistemology: A critical neo-rationalist approach. In Knowing the difference: Feminist perspectives in epistemology, ed. Lennon, Kathleen and Whitford, Margaret, 45–62. London: Routledge. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The man of reason: “Male” and “Female” in western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1996. Reason, science and the domination of matter. In Feminism and science, ed. Keller, Evelyn Fox and Helen E. Longino, 41–53 Oxford: Oxford University Press. Longino, Helen E. 1989. Feminist critiques of rationality: critiques of science or philosophy of science. Women’s Studies International Forum 12 (3): 261–269. Longino, Helen E. 1990. Science as social knowledge: Values and objectivity in scientific inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lovibond, Sabina. 1989. Feminism and postmodernism. New left review, 178 (Nov–Dec), pp. 5–28.

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Mangena, Oshadi. 1994. Against fragmentation: The need for holism. In Knowing the difference: Feminist perspectives in epistemology, ed. Lennon, Kathleen and Whitford, Margaret, 275– 282. London: Routledge. Merchant, Carolyn. 1989. The death of nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Nelson, Lynn Hankinson. 1990. Who knows: From quine to a feminist empiricism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Reinharz, Shulamit. 1983. Experiential analysis: A contribution to feminist research. In Theories of women’s studies, ed. Bowles, Gloria and Klein, Renate, 162–191. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rose, Hilary. 1983. Hand, brain, and heart: A feminist epistemology for the natural sciences. Signs, 9 (1: Autumn): 73–90. Smith, Dorothy E. 1987. The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Tanesini, Alessandra. 1999. An introduction to feminist epistemologies. Oxford: Blackwell.

Part III

Embodiment

Chapter 8

Judith Butler’s Reading of the Sartrian Bodies and the Cartesian Ghosts

8.1

Background

Feminist philosophers and biologists have been trying to review the notion of “biological sex.” American philosopher Judith Butler is among one of the formers. One can summarize her idea by her famous postulation that “[t]he body posited as prior to the sign, is always posited or signified as prior” and “precedes its own action”, and if this is so, there should not be a mimetic or representational status of language or signs that follow bodies as the body is only signified as prior to signification (Butler 1993, p. 30). The positing process constitutes and conditions the “materiality” of the body. However, Butler (1993, p. 29) also points out that what enables this positing is a problematic gendered matrix that ontologizes and fixes the “irreducible” materiality into a bunch of taken-for-granted discourses on sex and sexuality. This argument is echoed by Luce Irigaray’s analyses of Plato’s Hystera and on Nietzsche, confirming that within the masculine/feminine (form/matter or mind/ body) binary, the feminine is not an intelligible term and is “set under erasure as the impossible necessity that enables any ontology” (Butler 1993, p. 39). As suggested in Butler’s famous works, including Gender Trouble (1990), Bodies That Matter (1993) and The Psychic Life of Power (1997) etc., the binding, forming, and deforming of gendered bodies through social prohibitions and the so-called cultural intelligibility criteria of sex constitute and regulate the fields of bodies. Before these later works, Butler in her earlier articles started out her thinking on gender and sex by reading Simone de Beauvoir, and was out of question influenced by Beauvoir’s famous postulation that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” In her piece published in 1986, Butler (1986, p. 35) regards the postulation as a distinguished contribution to make the sex/gender distinction, which implies a radical heteronomy of being female and being a woman—if being female designates a fixed set of natural corporeal relations and facts, being a woman means the variable cultural interpretation of sex, i.e. “an active process of appropriating, © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_8

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interpreting, and reinterpreting received cultural possibilities” (Butler 1986, p. 36). One year later, in the article entitled “Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig, Foucault,” she made a revised reading on Beauvoir through Monique Wittig and Michel Foucault, in which she comes to an conclusion of what she calls “the schematic outline of a theory of gender invention” (Butler 2004, p. 35). The outline is conducted by reconstructing Beauvoirs distinction between sex and gender and reformulating gender as a cultural project, and Butler (2004, p. 26) points out that gender is neither suddenly originated at some point in time after which it is fixed inform, nor traceable to a definable origin, but itself is “an originating activity incessantly taking place.” However, if to become a woman assumes a culturally established corporeal style and significance, Beauvoir’s argument is said to shoulder the burden of a so-called “Sartrian choice.” This means the continuing daily act of reconstruction and interpretation is based on an existential doctrine of “choice,” in which choice signifies “a corporeal process of interpretation within a network of deeply entrenched cultural norms.” (Butler 2004, p. 23). Butler thus raises the following questions for further speculation: [W]hat happens to the ways in which we are, as it were, already culturally interpreted? How can gender be both a matter of choice and cultural construction? […] If gender is the corporealization of choice, and the acculturation of the corporeal, then what is left of nature, and what has become of sex? If gender is determined in the dialect between culture and choice, then what role does “sex” serve, and ought we conclude that the very distinction between sex and gender is anachronistic? Has Beauvoir refuted the original meaning of her famous formulation, or was that declaration more nuanced than we originally guessed? (Butler 2004, p. 23)

The “Sartrian choice” seems to postulate a choosing self prior to its own chosen gender.

8.2

Sartrian Bodies and Cartesian Ghosts

A self which is occupying a position outside language and cultural life is a typical Cartesian view, and according to Butler’s observation, whether consciousness has any discrete ontological status apart from the body is a question that Sartre answers inconsistently throughout Being and Nothingness (Butler 2004, p. 24). However, one can still find Sartre’s efforts to expel the Cartesian ghost. For example, as interestingly described in the chapter “The Body” in Being and Nothingness, Sartre suggests that consciousness is in some sense beyond the body: [T]he body, since it is surpassed, is the Past. It is the immediate present to the For-itself of “sensible” things in so far as their presence indicates a center of reference and is already surpassed either toward the appearance of a new this or toward a new combination of instrumental-things. In each project of the For-itself, in each perception the body is there; it is the immediate Past in so far as it still touches on the Present which flees it. This means that it is at once a point of view and a point of departure - a point of view, a point of departure which I am and which at the same time I surpass toward what I have to be. (Sartre 1966, pp. 399–400)

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Butler (2004, pp. 24–25) thinks Sartre, instead of refuting Cartesianism, is aiming to conceptualize the feature of personal identity as both embodied and transcendent, thus paradoxically, as the duality of consciousness, and such a subversive paradox shall be understood in Sartre’s references to “surpassing” the body as itself a corporeal movement: The body is what I nihilate. It is the in-itself which is surpassed by the nihilating for-itself and which re-apprehends the for-itself in this very surpassing. […] In one sense therefore the body is a necessary characteristic of the for-itself; it is not true that the body is the product of an arbitrary decision on the part of a demiurge nor that the union of soul and body is the contingent bringing together of two substances radically distinct. On the contrary, the very nature of the for-itself demands that it be the body; that is, that its nihilating escape from being should be made in the form of an engagement in the world. (Sartre 1966, p. 379)

Butler (2004, p. 25) emphasizes that although Sartre’s references to “surpassing” the body may be read as presupposing a mind/body dualism, one needs to understand that the body itself is a surpassing, and thus rethinks both the traditional ideas of “transcendence” and of the mind/body dualism itself. This implies that one may surpass the body but may not get beyond the body: The body is not a static or self-identical phenomenon, but a mode of intentionality, a directional force and mode of desire. As a condition of access to the world, the body is a being comported beyond itself, referring to the world and thereby revealing its own ontological status as a referential reality. For Sartre, the body is lived and experienced as the context and medium for all human strivings. Because for Sartre all human beings strive after possibilities not yet realized, human beings are to that extent “beyond” themselves. (Butler 2004, p. 25)

Therefore, Sartre claims that the body only exists in the mode of being surpassed: [T]he body can not be for me transcendent and known; the spontaneous, unreflective consciousness is no longer the consciousness of the body. It would be best to say, using “exist” as a transitive verb - that consciousness exists its body. Thus the relation between the body-as-point-of-view and things is an objective relation, and the relation of consciousness to the body is an existential relation. (Sartre 1966, p. 404)

This proves that Butler makes a point when she says that Beauvoir does not so much refute Sartre but take him at his non-Cartesian best (Butler 2004, p. 25). However, a common mistaken view is that Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is simply an application of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to woman’s specific situation. Yet though not necessary, an understanding of Sartre may in a lot of ways enrich our appreciation of Beauvoir as an original thinker (Tong 1992, p. 196). For example, Butler (2004, pp. 25–26) points out that Beauvoir’s “becoming one’s gender” as “a contemporary way of organizing past and future cultural norms” and “a way of situating oneself in and through those norms,” seems both a radicalization and concretization of the Sartrian formulation.

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8.3

Sartre’s Pitfalls?

The famous Sartrian notions of “being-for-itself” (pour-soi) and “being-in-itself” (en-soi) provide another perspective to get away from the Cartesian ghosts. The common understanding on the two notions are that “being-in-btself” refers to “the constant, material existence that humans share with the animals, vegetables, and minerals,” whereas “being-for-itself” refers to “the moving, conscious existence that human share only with other humans” (Tong 1992, p. 196). Tong (1992, p. 196) further suggests that if we apply the two notions to the analysis of the human person, the distinction would provide rewarding insights on the body theory: The body has constant and objective being, because it can be seen, touched, heard, smelled, and/or tasted, the body is the perceived. In contrast, the perceiver – the entity that does the seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, and/or tasting – is not itself perceptible object but, according to Sartre, still has a certain kind of Being: Being-for-Itself. […] According to Sartre, what separates one’s “I” – one’s consciousness or one’s mind – from one’s body is, paradoxically, nothing (literally no-thing, or nothingness). (Tong 1992, p. 196)

The Sartrean consciousness is an attempt to overcome the duality of non-communicating physical and mental substances, and subjectivity becomes an act of pure will or choice. As a result, the world can be said consisting of only “me” and “what is not me” since “nothingness is not anything except human reality apprehending itself as excluded from being and perpetually beyond being, in common with nothing.” (Nye 1988, p. 105) This application lets us find that, compared to Beauvoir’s more attention on how woman exists her body through various social and cultural situations, Sartre is more interested in the relation of consciousness to the body as an existential relation. This relation is better to be explained in his own words: First of all, it is evident that consciousness can exist its body only as consciousness. Therefore, my body is a conscious structure of my consciousness. […] Non-positional consciousness is consciousness (of the) body as being that which it surmounts and nihilates by making itself consciousness - i.e., as being something which consciousness is without having to be it and which it passes over in order to be what it had to be. In short, consciousness (of) the body is lateral and retrospective; the body is the neglected, the “passed by in silence.” And yet the body is what this consciousness is; it is not even anything except body. The rest is nothingness and silence. (Sartre 1966, p. 404)

This understanding on the consciousness-body relation paves the way to appreciate the well-known proposition “existence precedes essence.” [W]e exist only as amorphous, living organisms until we create separate and essential identities for ourselves through conscious action - that is, through making choices, coming to decisions, reaffirming old purposes and projects, or affirming new ones. […] nothing compels us to act in any one way, we are absolutely free. Our futures are totally open; none of the blanks has been filed in for us. (Tong 1992, p. 197)

As a result, all conscious beings, without essence or definition, can only be defined through the mutually related processes of decision making and action-taking.

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However, if there are any pitfalls in the Sartrian bodies, one may think of the critique by Jean Bethke Elshtain. Elshtain (1981, pp. 307–308) notes that woman’s body often appears negative in The Second Sex from a typical narcissistic male perspective—a body “seems wanting in significance by itself,” and this indirectly works to silence the vast majority of women in advance or gives them an implicitly coercive alternative: [w]oman is portrayed as “the victim of the species.” […] Pregnancy is described in foreboding terms as the alienation of woman from herself (the woman is not “transcended” through her procreative capacity as the male is through his sperm). The fetus is characterized as a “tenant,” a parasite upon the mother’s existence. Menstruation is horrific and disgusting. Nursing merely exhausts the mother […] [Beauvoir] calls a woman’s breasts “mammary glands” that “play no role in woman’s individual economy: they can be excised at any time of life”. (Elshtain 1981, pp. 309–310)

According to Tong’s understanding on Elshtain’s critique, Beauvoir’s general distrust of the body was rooted in “an existentialist distress about the carnality and mortality of the flesh and in a feminist concern about the way in which the female body imposes special burdens upon woman.” As body, the unavoidable object limiting the freedom of each conscious subject, is always a problem within the existentialist framework (Tong 1992, p. 212). In other words, the Cartesian ghosts of the mind and body duality are still haunting here. Nevertheless, Beauvoir’s ambivalence toward the mind-body dualism was never so serious as that of Sartre, and Beauvoir did caution Sartre that his attitude toward the body and the emotions was too inflexible which suggests that her attitude toward the emotions commonly associated with body was never as negative as his: I criticized Sartre for regarding his body as a mere bundle of striated muscles, and for having cut it out of his emotional world. If you gave way to tears or nerves or seasickness, he said, you were simply being weak. I, on the other hand, claimed that stomach and tear ducts, indeed the head itself, were all subject to irresistible forces on occasion. (Beauvoir 1965, pp. 128–129)

8.4

Being-for-Others and the Problem of Gender

Besides “being-for-itself” and “being-in-itself”, the third forms of being, “being-for-others”, is said to be probably the most suited of all Sartre’s categories for a feminist analysis (Tong 1992, p. 199). According to Sartre (1947, p. 115), there exists a perpetual conflict when each being-for-itself tries to recover its own Being and establish itself by defining other beings as Others. The process of self-definition suggests that it is only by way of Others’ view of me that I can know who I am, and only from them that I can get an external view of myself, and therefore Others are still necessary for a Sartrean subject. As stated in the section “The Body-For-Others” in Being and Nothingness:

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[T]he Other’s very existence as the Other-for-me implies that he is revealed as a tool possessing the property of knowing and that this property of knowing is bound to some objective existence. This is what we shall call the necessity for the Other to be contingent for me. (Sartre 1966, p. 420)

Yet Sartre also claims that the Other’s appearance is the revelation of the taste of one’s being as an immediate existence although “I” do not grasp this taste as he does, and as a result there are three ontological dimensions of the Sartrean body: I exist my body: this is its first dimension of being. My body is utilized and known by the Other: this is its second dimension. But in so far as I am for others, the Others is revealed to me as the subject for whom I am an object. […] I exist for myself as body known by the Other. This is the third ontological dimension of my body. (Sartre 1966, p. 430)

Beauvoir accepts Sartre’s account of the relations between self and Others, and she finds the sexual relation the locus where conflict between self and other is played out most intensely. This is not only because the bad faith of man wants woman to surrender to him and to agree to carry out his projects instead of her own, but due to woman’s own bad faith that she makes herself an object so that the anxiety of the masculine subject, who needs her reflection of himself but is terrified of her independence, can be comforted (Nye 1988, pp. 85–86). And if the independent existence of Others is admitted, the autonomy of the subject would be immediately threatened. As Nye (1988, p. 104) concludes, This admission makes incoherent the existentialist prescription to assert ourselves and live authentically, aware of our absolute responsibility for all our actions and attitudes. If our very identity is constructed by others, it is not clear how we can have such a freedom or take on such a responsibility.

This again explains why the subjectivity project initiated by Descartes would be an illusion of autonomy.

8.5

Gender as Choice

To escape the ambivalence towards a Cartesian mind/body dualism and radicalize Sartre’s implication of “existing one’s body,” Beauvoir focuses on the establishment of an embodied notion of freedom. Butler (2004, p. 26) attributes Beauvoir’s view of gender to Sartre’s doctrine of pre-reflective choice, which is a tacit and spontaneous act that people make and only later realize that they have made. This would make the notion of choice more like a “taking on” act through which gender is assumed. Butler (2004, p. 26) further points out that the “taking on” act indeed implies a world of already established corporeal style, but is reinterpreting, renewing, reproducing and reorganizing those assumed norms all along. To choose a gender is thus given a concrete cultural meaning, although to make choices in the becoming process is not an easy one:

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I not only choose my gender, and not only choose it within culturally available terms, but on the street and in the world I am always constantly constituted by others, so that my self-styled gender may well find itself in comic or even tragic opposition to the gender that others see me through or with. (Butler 2004, p. 35)

Later on, this view of gender is developed into Butler’s gender performance theory, in which she emphasizes that it would be a painful process when it comes the moments of gender dislocation. Here comes to the next question that within the limits that constrain any human person, can woman still shape her own existence? This takes us to Sartre’s conception of freedom implied in the proposition “existence precedes essence.” Although an existential consciousness-body relation suggests that a person is absolutely free, he/she is simultaneously losing himself/herself and annihilating all the others as he/she starts to choose and affirm: We buy the future at the cost of our past, a cost that burdens our psyches. If we argue that we do not experience any of the psychic burdens - dread, anguish, nausea - that he described, Sartre will accuse us of “bad faith,” a state of being akin to self-deception, false consciousness, or delusion. (Tong 1992, p. 197)

Sartre’s mode of bad faith reminds us that when we pretend that we are thing-like, we are just a body or another object in the world that has nothing to do with our choice. Here, it brings us back to Sartre’s efforts to expel the Cartesian ghost in which the Sartrian body only exists in the mode of being surpassed. Nye (1988, pp. 103, 113) also suggests that although Sartre’s subject is positioned in a particular family, class or culture by the body, these situations, which belong to the discussion of “Being-for-Others” in Sartre’s theories, are only “givens” for the subject to surpass, and the conscious subject necessarily decides how to live his/her situations. To avoid the solipsism, the Other is posited as a “surging up” that suddenly confronts the subject working on his/her own projects in the physical world, and such “primal Sartrean moment” is replayed from time to time in the dynamics of gender relations (Nye 1988, p. 104).

8.6

Embodiment and Autonomy

In Beauvoir’s incisive description on the cultural situation by masculine perspective in The Second Sex, she compares men and women in terms of the feature of human existence: Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it. (Beauvoir 1997, p. 15)

From this cultural situation in which men are associated with the disembodied or transcendent feature of human existence and women with the bodily and immanent

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feature of human existence, Butler (2004, p. 28) sees the symbol potentially of human decay and transience - men both making themselves other than their bodies and making their bodies other than themselves. Thus, she criticized the deceived pursuit of disembodiment embedded in the cultural situation by masculine perspective since the body can never be denied, and firmly agrees with Beauvoir on the idea of an embodied identity, i.e. the definition of body as a situation. As an alternative to the gender polarity of masculine disembodiment and feminine enslavement to the body, “body as situation” has a twofold meaning according to Butler’s analysis: [1] As a locus of cultural interpretations, the body is a material reality that has already been located and defined within a social context. [2] The body is also the situation of having to take up and interpret or reinterpret that set of received interpretations.

The sculpting of the original body is already given a cultural form, and “existing” one’s body becomes the proliferation and variation of the received norms and constraints. However, if we accept the body as a cultural situation, the sex/gender distinction seems no longer necessary. In other words, the notion of a natural “sex” seems increasingly suspect since both gender and sex in the formulation by Beauvoir and Butler are now thoroughly cultural affairs (Butler 2004, p. 29). It is here better to quote Beauvoir’s own words on the nature of woman to understand this unstated consequence by the formulation: [W]e must view the facts of biology in the light of an ontological, economic, social, and psychological context. The enslavement of the female to the species and the limitations of her various powers are extremely important facts; the body of woman is one of the essential elements in her situation in the world. But that body is not enough to define her as woman; there is no true living reality except as manifested by the conscious individual through activities and the bosom of society. […] Our task is to discover how the nature of woman has been affected throughout the course of history; we are concerned to find out what humanity has made of the human female. (Beauvoir 1997, p. 69)

Beauvoir’s strategy is to suggest “proliferation” and “assimilation” to diffuse the social restrictions, regulations and oppressions in the deployment of sexuality and development of the category of sex. In other words, Beauvoir is asking woman to cast off those weights that are impeding her progress toward authentic selfhood (Tong 1992, p. 216). It is not to transcend power relations, but to realize the situation and identify a concrete and accessible way to politicize personal life for women: [W]hen an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of ‘to have become’. Yes, women on the whole are today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities. (Beauvoir 1997, p. 24)

Beauvoir (1997, p. 24) therefore endorses the manifesto in favor of a free and independent woman: “What is certain is that hitherto woman’s possibilities have been suppressed and lost to humanity, and that it is high time she be permitted to

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take her chances in her own interest and in the interest of all.” To return to Butler (2004, p. 36), she extrapolates woman’s possibilities from Beauvoir’s position to her emancipatory potential: If human existence is always gendered existence, then to stray outside of established gender is in some sense to put one’s very existence into question. In these moments of gender dislocation in which we realize that it is hardly necessary that we be the genders we have become, we confront the burden of choice intrinsic to living as a man or a woman or some other gender identities, and this is a freedom made burdensome through social constraints. (Butler 2004, p. 27)

The task is thus in effect a political program to conceive woman on the metaphysical order of becoming, i.e. “to invent possibility into her experience, including the possibility of never becoming a substantive, self-identical ‘woman.’” (Butler 2004, p. 36)

8.7

Concluding Remarks

A common mistaken view is that de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is simply an application of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to woman’s specific situation. Yet though not necessary, an understanding of Sartre may in a lot of ways enrich our appreciation of Beauvoir as an original thinker. (Tong 1992, p. 196) Beauvoir said that consciousness exists one’s body, which, in the context of culture, involves the “becoming” of one’s gender (Butler 2004, p. 21). Yet, Butler’s revisions include (2004, p. 23) that for Beauvoir, to become a woman is a purposive and appropriative set of acts, the gradual acquisition of a skill, and a “project” in Sartre terms, to assume a culturally established corporeal style and significance. Butler’s question is: when “become” is taken to mean “purpose-fully assume or embody,” Beauvoir’s declaration seems to shoulder the burden of a Sartrian choice. For if genders are in some sense chosen, then what happens to the ways in which we are, as it were, already culturally interpreted? How can gender be both a matter of choice and cultural construction? In her reading, Beauvoir’s formulation of gender as a project in The Second Sex seems to invite speculation. Butler suggests a theory of gender that tries to make cultural sense of the existential doctrine of choice. “Choice” in this context comes to signify a corporeal process of interpretation within a network of deeply entrenched cultural norms, i.e., it does not come from a sense of “Nothingness”. When the body is conceived as a cultural locus of gender meanings, it becomes unclear what aspects of this body are natural or free of cultural imprint. Indeed, according to Butler, it will be unable to find a body that preexists its cultural interpretation, and gender is the acculturation of the corporeal. Butler’s questions are: If gender is determined in the dialect between culture and choice, then what role does “sex” serve? Ought we conclude that the very distinction between sex and gender is anachronistic? Has Beauvoir refuted the original

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meaning of her famous formulation, or was that declaration more nuanced than we originally guessed? Butler suggests that to answer these questions, we must reconstruct Beauvoir’s distinction between sex and gender. She questions the existential choice implied in the thoughts of Sartre and Beauvoir when they are applied to gender. The notion that we somehow choose our genders poses an ontological puzzle, for it might at first seem impossible that we can occupy a position outside the gender in order to stand back and choose our genders. The question along the line is: If we are always already gendered, immersed in gender, what sense does it make to say that we choose what we already are? For a long time, Butler has argued that gender may be “chosen” only from within the parameters of culturally available terms which always preexist the subject. She suggests that tracing the history of gender may reveal its gradual release from the binary gender restrictions. It is obvious that psychoanalytic, Foucauldian, and Marxist insights continue to support her theories of gender, sex, and performativity. Butler argues that Beauvoir’s verb “become” in her famous statement “one becomes a woman” contains a consequential ambiguity. In her introduction to The Second Sex, Beauvoir explicitly positions herself not as a woman or as a feminist, but as an existentialist who stresses on choice and freedom. If one can be free to choose one’s gender, and if freedom has any meaning, it is in taking responsibility for one’s actions, in realizing that there is always room for some sort of choice, no matter how constricted one’s circumstances. In this sense, Butler insists that inventiveness or innovation is more effective than the transcendence of sex and gender (Butler 2004, p. 22). It is understood that the only substance of the Sartrian consciousness is ‘negation,’ and Sartre in his overcoming of the duality of non-communicating physical and mental substances, revealing subjectivity as an act of pure will or choice. One way of overcoming the Cartesian mind/body dualism is to argue that sex is already gender, as both Butler and Beauvoir do, since the body/mind spilt no longer makes sense if you claim that gender is a way of “doing” the body. Butler claims that sex is always already gender: the body does not “cause” gender, but it is an effect of genders which constrain that taking up or “choice.” Butler claims that yes, we “become” our genders, but there is no place outside gender which precedes this becoming (2004, p. 21). Butler argues that the tension in Beauvoir’s theory lies in the move from the natural to the acculturate body. She said one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman does not imply that this “becoming” traverses a path from disembodied freedom to cultural embodiment. In Butler’s words: “The movement from sex to gender is internal to embodied life, a sculpting of the original body into a cultural form. To mix Sartrian phraseology with Beauvoir’s, we might say that to “exist” one’s body in culturally concrete terms means, at least partially, to become one’s gender.” (2004, p. 25)

A concluded reading is this: when Beauvoir asked woman to transcend the limits of her immanence, she was not asking woman to negate herself but rather to cast off those weights that are impeding her progress toward authentic selfhood. Some of these

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weights may be too heavy for any individual to cast off; but others can be disposed of through small and large acts of empowerment. What is now does not always have to be. No one or no-thing can hold women back forever. (Tong 1992, p. 216)

References Beauvoir, Simone de. 1965. The Prime of Life, trans. by Green, Peter. Harmondsworth: Penguin Bks. Beauvoir, Simone de. 1997. The Second Sex, trans. and ed. by Parshley, Howard Madison. London: Vintage. Butler, Judith. 1986. Sex and gender in simone de beauvoir’s second sex. Yale French Studies 72: 35–49. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 2004. Variations on sex and gender: Beauvoir, Wittig, Foucault (1987). In The Judith Butler Reader, ed. Salih, Sara with Butler, Judith, 21–38. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1981. Public man, private woman: Women in social and political thought. Oxford: Robertson. Nye, Andrea. 1988. Feminist theory and the philosophies of man. New York: Routledge. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1947. Existentialism, trans by Frechtman, Bernard. New York: Philosophical Library. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1966. Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology, trans. and with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press. Tong, Rosemarie. 1992. Feminist thought: A comprehensive introduction. London: Routledge.

Chapter 9

Beyond Ontology? Reflections on Robert Solomon’s Ideation of Emotion and Mencius’ Moral Cultivation of “Embodied Emotion”

9.1

Solomon’s Theory of the Ideation of Emotion

Solomon (1973, p. 20) argues in his 1973 paper, “Emotions and Choice”, that emotions have traditionally been understood as physiological disturbances, and that much of the twentieth century’s literature on emotions has been dedicated to mapping out the relations between sensations and correlative occurrences. In 1976, he goes on to argue that emotion is not reducible to its distinguishable neurological correlates, even though we have some knowledge of the effects of certain chemicals on our states of consciousness (Solomon 1976, pp. 151–152). Here, Solomon (1976, pp. 154–157) first addresses William James and C. G. Lange’s theory of the emotions, according to which emotions are nothing but our awareness of the chemical and physiological changes in our bodies. He then reviews the negation of James–Lange’s model in the 1940s by W. B. Cannon’s argument that physiological changes and their accompanying sensations have no role in differentiating emotions. Despite rejecting James and Lange’s theory, Solomon (1976, p. 155) also expresses disagreement at this point with the extrapolation of Cannon’s argument that the “emotion felt” is the emotion, as if neurology had nothing to do with it. At an early stage in his thinking, Solomon (1973, p. 27) maintains with the conviction that emotions are rational and purposive; that we choose an emotion as much as we choose a course of action. In short, emotions are always intentional. They are judgments and partake in conceptual relationships. Emotions are our choices and our responsibility (Solomon 1973, p. 40). In 1988, Solomon (1988, p. 2) further argues that emotions are political in nature and that they are powerfully implicated in the relationships between people living in a particular region. In the article, “The Politics of Emotion,” he proposes a framework for addressing emotions as relating not merely to the mind or to the body, but to one’s social context in all of its ethical and interpersonal complexity. In Solomon’s words, emotions do not just “happen” to us, but are actions that we carry out, both individually and collectively (Solomon 1988, p. 6). In this sense, emotions are also political strategies © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_9

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and attitudes, and means by which one reaches out to one’s living and social environments. They are thus tied to actions, such as the exercise of power in persuasion, manipulation and intimidation, etc. Solomon argues: The emotion is ‘in the world,’ not in the mind, the psyche, or the soul […] politics of emotion (therefore) extend to the “meta-” realm of emotion “labeling,” emotion-recognition, emotion reportage. […] emotions are vital experiences had by conscious social creature. (Solomon 1988, pp. 8–10)

Regarding the reportage of emotion, Solomon (1988, p. 13) suggests that emotions involve languages and concepts, which are either linked with, pervade, or define the emotions themselves. However, he does not reject the notion that emotions are embodied and may even involve voluntary neurologically based responses. He argues that “one need not deny physiology to engage in philosophy, but neither should we allow the facts of physiology to eclipse significant philosophical investigations.” (Solomon 1988, p. 18). How does Solomon deal with the dualities of the body and the mind, emotion and reason? He describes emotions as physiological disruptions and psychic “forces” beyond our control and commends the existentialist emphasis on social relationships and engagement in speech and behaviour as part of living in the world (Solomon 1988, p. 14). Emotions arise in the social world via interaction; they are interactive results of being in the world, and choices made by subjects. In Solomon’s own words, complex creatures like human beings “should not be split up into a simplistic and arbitrary ontology of bodies and minds.” (Solomon 1988, p. 10). Solomon also praises John Dewey’s theory of experience for its holistic, all-embracing view of emotion, which he considers a useful model for the multiplicity of embodied emotion. In the process of revisiting the Deweyan model, I review Dewey’s explication of aesthetic experience as a form of intense feeling, as in the following statement in his work, Art as Experience: Experience occurs continuously, because the interaction of live creature and environing conditions is involved in the very process of living. […] we have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences. A piece of work is finished in a way that is satisfactory; a problem receives its solution. […] Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience. […] Nevertheless, the experience itself has a satisfying emotional quality because it possesses internal integration and fulfillment reached through ordered and organized movement. (Dewey 1980, pp. 35–38)

Influenced by biological evolutionism and his own sense of its functional and pragmatic implications, Dewey regards aesthetics as basically instrumental. He states that the activities of living things are characterized by natural needs, by the efforts to satisfy those needs, and by the forms of satisfaction themselves, resulting in a range of emotions. The process leading to emotions is primarily biological, as described in his other work, Experience and Nature:

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By need is meant a condition of tensional distribution of energies such that the body is in a condition of uneasy or unstable equilibrium. By demand or effort is meant the fact that this state is manifested in movements which modify environing bodies in ways which react upon the body, so that its characteristic pattern of active equilibrium is restored. By satisfaction is meant this recovery of equilibrium pattern, consequent upon the changes of environment due to interactions with the active demands of the organism. (Dewey 1958, p. 253)

The Deweyan model, which Solomon considers sensible, emphasizes the biological and natural needs of the human subject, regards emotional experience as an intense, direct, immediate and integrated manifestation of the interaction of humans with their living environments. Dewey also identifies happiness as a product of the subject’s physical adjustment, leading to an emotional experience that is satisfying because “it possesses internal integration and fulfillment reached through ordered and organized movement.” Here, “fulfillment” refers to the feeling that things are “just so”; in other words, a sense of rightness and coherence. Aesthetic experience is thus described as valuable to the lives of human beings, due to the equilibrium and the harmony attained in the process of interaction and adjustment, which is experienced as “delightful.” Solomon’s theory of emotion goes further than the Deweyan model as it is further developed with the insight that emotions interact with reason; that emotional choices are made for particular reasons. In a 1992 article, he argues that to be reasonable is to have the right emotions and being rational includes having the right emotional premises. For example, anger involves the apportioning of blame; jealousy entails judgments about a potential threat or loss, and both love and hate involve evaluative judgments (Solomon 1992, pp. 609–610). Solomon (1992, pp. 611–613) claims that emotions are closely entangled with rationality: rationality presupposes the right emotions, and emotions constitute the framework of rationality, and he states clearly that one’s conception of the world is defined by the scope and objects of one’s emotional cares and concerns. Solomon (1992, p. 618) goes on to discuss universal emotions, and whether emotions are “relative” to cultural formations and particular social conditions.1 He does not take a negative view of cultural relativism and its effects on the emotions, but insists on open dialogue and a “live and let live” policy of mutual tolerance (Solomon 1992, p. 619). In a paper published in 1997, he uses Hume’s philosophy to address cultural considerations and reinforces his own theory of the ideation of emotion, and he concludes that “the promise of cross-cultural emotions research” lies “on the side of ‘ideas,’ in terms of different ways of seeing, different ways of conceiving, and different ways of carving up and evaluating the world.” (Solomon 1997, p. 289). At this point, Solomon (1997, p. 290) also suggests that emotions are phenomenological rather than ontological; i.e., they are not metaphysical constructs

Solomon encapsulates this discussion in the following question: “Does that mean that cross-cultural conversation and negotiation are impossible, that international conflicts are unresolvable except by force, that what seems to us to be the grossest cruelty or immorality cannot be criticized except by way of a kind of cultural imperialism?”.

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or simple generic frameworks but modes of immediate experience (including bodily experience) that may be manifested as facts, things, events or states of affairs. When Solomon maintains that emotion consists of ideas, has intentional objects and can be rationally evaluated, he also suggests that emotions are embodied in the form of feelings. He asks the following questions: Do ideas […] share some of the properties of feelings, for example, the property of being “felt,” the quality of intensity, being pleasant or unpleasant, perhaps also being concerned somehow with the body? And how are both ideas and feelings tied to behavior? To the social world and relationships, to other people? (Solomon 1997, p. 291)

The answer to the first question seems to be in the affirmative. Although Solomon concedes that emotions have a biological substratum, he argues forcefully for the significance of biological-cultural variance in determining emotional experience. He stresses the cultural constitution and cultural specificity of the ideas that underlie emotions, and draws the following conclusions regarding the interaction of subjective and objective domains: (Solomon 1997, pp. 293–299). Firstly, the human condition including the neurological structure, might lead to some truly universal ideas and so develop much the same emotional responses. They are found in human experience, in the human body and in the human condition. Second, emotional judgments are always evoked from a perspective, defined in part by one’s physical embodiment but, more generally, by one’s place in the world, one’s cultural context, status and role(s) and one’s personal situation. At the same time, they are rational and judgmental, need not be overly intellectualistic but are existential choices. Emotions are also culturally taught, cognitively framed, but implemented by the individual in the interactive mode of the body and the mind. Eventually, emotions belong to a culture and they enable cross-cultural comparison. Solomon clearly seeks to place adequate emphasis on both sets of theories—emotions as physiologically based and emotions as socially constructed—and points out the dangers of neglecting either of them. He suggests a workable phenomenological theory of the cross-cultural comparison of emotions, which he feels should go beyond ontology in a mere physical, metaphysical or essentialistic sense (Solomon 1997, pp. 299–302). The above ideas reach some developments in the 2000s. Solomon (2003, pp. 202–203) stresses in his 2003 article, Not Passion’s Slave, that most emotions are processes within which we make various choices and have considerable control. Even feelings, which he differentiates from emotion by adding basic physical fervours, are not mere “readouts’ of processes going on in the body and they are not distinct from cognition or judgment (Solomon 2003, p. 192). In reviewing his earlier work, he admitted in the mid-2000s that he should have related more of his existential theory of the emotions to recent research findings in cultural anthropology, neurobiology and evolutionary biology (Solomon 2003, p. 22, 2007, p. 5). He bluntly refuses what he so calls cognitive reductionism and biological reductionism (Solomon 2003, pp. 131–132). Some advancements are noted in his theory of the emotion in the 2000s, that “appropriateness” is the truth of emotions, which refers to both the subject’s characters and one’s living culture; that “emotional

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integrity” is the unity of one’s emotional life, based on “the wise management of emotional conflicts in conjunction with one’s heartfelt values” (Solomon 2003, p. 205). One should note that he relates these values to the notion of “authenticity” in existentialism, which he stresses “has built into the idea of social virtue as well as existential individuality” (Solomon 2007, p. 268).

9.2

Reflections on Solomon’s Theory of the Ideation of Emotion and Its Implications

It is evident that Solomon’s theory of the ideation of emotion casts light on the nature of emotional experience. In the following, I discuss the work of several scholars who responded either directly or indirectly to Solomon’s insights. Robert Roberts responded immediately to Solomon’s explication of the ideation theory in 1988. Although conceding that some emotions have typical physiological concomitants, Roberts (1988, pp. 183–201) maintains that emotion also depends on the subject’s desire to realize a particular state of affairs. He defines emotion as serious, concern-based construal that effects desires and aversions, and emotional feelings as intentional states with propositional content. Such propositional content, when taken seriously, creates both the desire and the intention to perform a bodily action. Yet the awareness of emotion is more than the awareness of a physiological condition, as it involves cognition of physiological arousal, which in turn directs the emotions (Roberts 1988, p. 207). Roberts’s criticism of Solomon’s theory focuses on the notion of “judgment”, saying that: Phenomenologically, a construal is not an interpretation laid over a neutrally perceived object, but a characterization of the object, a way the object presents itself. […] I have argued elsewhere that emotions cannot be identified with any judgments because a rational person has more options with respect to his emotions than he has with respect to his judgment. (Roberts 1988, pp. 191–192, 198)

On closer reading, however, Roberts’s proposed correction, “concern-based construal,” actually echoes Solomon’s statement in 1992 that one’s conception of the world is defined by the scope and objects of one’s emotional cares and concerns, and his later argument for the experiential interaction of the subjective and the objective domains, with emotional choices as existential decisions made according to rational judgment (Solomon 1992, pp. 611–613). An increasing number of scholars of comparative philosophy is offering support for Solomon’s claim that emotional judgments always arise from a particular perspective, defined in part by one’s physical embodiment but in more general ways by one’s place in the world and one’s cultural context. Bockover (1995, p. 161) observes that the distinction between subjective and objective is one of the most prominent Western formulations of the emotions. Following Solomon, she criticizes James and Lange’s theory of emotion on the grounds that it “makes no sharp distinction between feelings qua perceived bodily disturbances that occur internally

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or physiologically and those expressed externally or behaviorally.” (Bockover 1995, p. 162). Bockover explicates Solomon’s theory of the ideation of emotion, in contrast to James and Lange’s model, and uses the comparison to suggest a further revision. She argues that greater emphasis should be placed on the role of intentionality in providing emotions with content and direction and Solomon’s notion of normative judgments is adduced as an example of such an intentional event (Bockover 1995, pp. 164–167). Bockover (1995, p. 174) regards emotions as irreducible unities which are both affective in themselves and a distinct kind of intentional event. They are amenable to rational evaluation and control because as intentional events, they are essentially directed at objects. This explains why Bockover turns to Confucian philosophy for comparison. She pays particular attention to Confucius’s theory of the inseparable concepts of li (禮) and ren (仁). Ren, the basic moral principle, is reflected in li or bodily rituals, which a person “practices in the ready and masterful way and through which one is truly cultivated in social grace that can effectively relate the person to others.” (Bockover 1995, pp. 169–171). Ren and the rituals of li are all intentional events and purposive acts of consciousness. Bockover (1995, p. 174) claims that both human decency and emotions have a distinctive way of being conscious, which she describes as “a mysterious and almost magical orientation toward persons and things in our world which simply cannot be reduced to bodily feelings, to mere behaviour, or to normative beliefs.” This, she writes, also explains the existence of emotions regarded as irrational, unjustified, unreasonable or inappropriate. These may arise from a purely subjective, intrapersonal framework, or else be considered “objective.” Her understanding of the “subjective” and the “objective” coincides Solomon’s claims. For Bockover, “subjective” refers to intrapersonal phenomena, and “objective” to phenomena presumed to have reality not dependent on the experiential idiosyncrasies of any given person. In short, a neat application of the subjective/objective dichotomy to the understanding of emotions is just not possible. Her argument recalls Solomon’s suggestion of interactivity among the human body, one’s living and cultural environment and one’s existential judgments. It is important to recall that Solomon’s notions of judgment and the ideation of emotions are in essence intentional. In an article published in 2011, Emily McRae lists numerous instances of the Western insistence on the impossibility of cultivating basic moral feelings due to their alleged caprice, unreliability and blindness to value. She also offers a Confucian theory of emotion as a corrective proposal, reminds readers of the proposal for a unique method of moral self-development through the cultivation of feeling (McRae 2011, p. 587). McRae (2011, pp. 587–588) notes, in particular, Mencius’s idea of a process of “extension” by which the cultivation of feeling operates in emotional-ethical life. In McRae’s reading, Confucian philosophy makes no clear conceptual distinctions between reason and emotion, mind and body. Following Shun Kwong-loi, McRae identifies “the heart/mind” as the seat of the mental and affective capacities, which she associates with the emotions. Shun implies that the faculty enables desire, as quoted by McRae:

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“xin 心,” a term often translated as “heart” or “mind,” can have desires (yu 欲) and emotions (qing 情) and can take pleasure in or feel displeasure at certain things. It can also deliberate (lu 慮) about a situation, direct attention to and ponder about (si 思) certain things and keep certain things in mind (nian 念). (McRae 2011, p. 589)

Here, McRae stresses that in the Confucian philosophical tradition, rational and emotional capacities are not distinguished by kind. This point is elaborated in her discussion of Mencius’s notion and method of extension, which she understands as a process of attending to objects outside one’s current area of concern and, where appropriate, applying a particular feeling to those objects (where “feeling” is used as a synonym for “emotion”) (McRae 2011, p. 592). McRae quotes Mencius’s description of the process as follows: Treat your elders as elders, and extend it to the elders of others; treat your young ones as your ones, and extend it to the young ones of others; then you can turn the whole world in the palm of your hand. The Odes says, “He set an example for his wife, it extended to his brothers, and so he controlled his family and state.” This means that he simply took this feeling and applied it to that. Hence if one extends one’s kindness, it will be sufficient to care for all within the Four Seas. If one does not extend one’s kindness, one will lack the wherewithal to care for one’s wife and children. That in which the ancients greatly exceeded others was no other than this. They were simply good at extending what they did. (McRae 2011, pp. 589–590)

First, McRae (2011, p. 8) takes a rational approach to the important notion of “extension,” arguing that Mencius understands moral feelings as primary and moral doctrine as enabling these feelings to mature and develop into their corresponding virtues. In her analysis, extension is both a rational process, based on beliefs and judgments (in Solomon’s definition), and a matter of values. McRae (2011, p. 9) glosses Mencius’s account of extension as a gradual process consistent with human psychological tendencies. She judiciously identifies extension as the process by which, according to Mencius, one develops compassion for all people and thereby gains the virtue of benevolence. In developing one’s compassion, and in the later process of extending that compassion, one should begin by examining one’s own heart, then engaging one’s rational and intellectual capacities by reflecting on the human quality of virtue and its cultivation. Lastly, McRae (2011, p. 12) offers a detailed reading of the final aim of extension, which is to cultivate feelings by accessing beliefs, judgments and even mental images that arouse compassion and thereby “trigger, maintain, heighten and lessen our affective states.” In short, McRae understands Mencius’s theory of extension as a rational process based on moral reasoning, one that interacts with our moral beliefs, empathetic imagination and cultural judgments. According to McRae (2011, p. 18), the empathetic extension begins with awareness of our own psychological tendencies. We use the tendencies we have discovered in ourselves (or observed of human beings in general, through sympathetic engagement) to cultivate the desired feeling. In her summary, extension is a method of aligning our feelings with our beliefs and well-considered value judgments to cultivate moral virtue. All of these judgments, in Solomon’s sense of the word (that is, referring to the ideation of emotion), along with the feelings

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subsequently cultivated, are understood to originate from the faculty of the heart/ mind emphasized by Mencius (McRae 2011, pp. 22–23). However, McRae (2011, p. 25) adds that “we ought to give an explanation of how this cultivation happens, especially given the history of suspicion of feelings in the Western philosophical traditions. […] Mengzi’s method of extension gives us just such an explanation of how one cultivates feelings into virtue.” Solomon stresses that emotional judgments are always defined by one’s physical embodiment, cultural context, social status and social roles. It is constructive, therefore, to compare his model of the emotions with Mencius’s theory, which shows strong ideo-somatic leanings.

9.3

Mencius’s Moral Cultivation of “Embodied Emotion”

What is the “mysterious and almost magical orientation” that Mary Bockover finds in Confucian philosophy? In what ways might it correspond to Solomon’s theory of the ideation of emotion, and how might it expand or confirm Solomon’s reading? Mencius’s precepts, which contain materials crucial to our understanding of embodied emotion in the Confucian tradition, should help to answer these questions. In the following, I discuss a few citations in details.2 (Mencius:) Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves. When they say that their ruler cannot develop them, they are destroying their ruler. If anyone with these Four Beginnings in him knows how to give them the fullest extension and development, the result will be like fire beginning to burn or a spring beginning to shoot forth. When they are fully developed, they will be sufficient to protect all people within the four seas (the world). If they are not developed, they will not be sufficient even to serve one’s parents. (2A: 6)

The “Four Beginnings” referenced here can be interpreted as innate moral qualities (Chan 1963, p. 66). In essence, Mencius argues that human nature is inherently good in the sense that humans have an innate knowledge of goodness, which Mencius calls moral knowledge or consciousness (liang-chih 良知), and the inclination to act according to it. According to Cheng (1991, pp. 297–300), this innate knowledge is related to our potential as human beings to achieve harmony both within ourselves and with other people and objects in the world. The difficulty lies in preserving this natural and innate sense of the right and the good and extending it to cover every phase of our lives and activity. The “Four Beginnings” are the four fundamental feelings and sentiments that make up liang-chih: compassion, shame, modesty and reverence, including the distinction between right and wrong. These feelings and sentiments are natural and universal among human beings and can be accessed immediately in the proper circumstances. They produce

2

Translation sourced from the chapter on Mencius in Chan 1963).

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the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom, respectively, and give the moral subject the inclination to act accordingly when interacting with others. According to Mencius, liang-chih is the ontological foundation of virtue, but one that must be nurtured and preserved. In other words, each of these four fundamental moral sentiments holds simply the potential for moral action and thus an individual’s development into a whole human being in harmony with all of humankind (Cheng 1991, pp. 272–273). But what happens to embodied emotions? How do they interact with moral sentiments? Mencius provides an in-depth account of their relationship, as shown in the following extracts: (Mencius:) It is all right to say that what is not attained in the mind is not to be sought in the vital force, but it is not all right to say that what is not attained in words is not to be sought in the mind. The will is the leader of the vital force, and the vital force pervades and animates the body. The will is the highest; the vital force comes next. Therefore, I say, “hold the will firm and never do violence to the vital force.” … If the will is concentrated, the vital force [will follow it] and become active. If the vital force is concentrated, the will [will follow it] and become active. For instance, here is a case of a man falling or running. It is his vital force that is active, and yet it causes his mind to be active too.” Ch’ou asked, “May I venture to ask, sir, in what you are strong?” Mencius replied, “I understand words. And I am skillful in nourishing my strong, moving power.” “May I ask what is meant by the strong, moving power?” “It is difficult to describe. As power, it is exceedingly great and exceedingly strong. If nourished by uprightness and not injured, it will fill up all between heaven and earth. As power, righteousness and the Way accompany it. Without them, it will be devoid of nourishment. It is produced by the accumulation of righteous deeds but is not obtained by incidental acts of righteousness. When one’s conduct is not satisfactory to his own mind, then one will be devoid of nourishment. (2A: 2) (Mencius): With proper nourishment and care, everything grows, whereas without proper nourishment and care, everything decays. Confucius said, “Hold it fast and you preserve it. Let it go and you lose it. It comes in and goes out at no definite time and without anyone knowing its direction.” He was talking about the human mind. (6A: 8)

“Vital force” (qi 氣) refers to a bodily substance, matter and desire, and is different from “will” (zhi 志, the moral mind), but both are interrelated in the sense that the moral mind must govern zhi or virtue will fail. Qi in this sense may be read as the totality of embodied emotions, which differs from the “strong, moving power” (hao-jan chih chi 浩然之氣) whereby qi is guided by righteousness (yi 義) in the fullest sense. Through one’s self-conscious and conscientious effort to act according to moral principles, yi leads naturally to the ontological extension of oneself and transforms the world into a universe of significance integral to the individual self (Cheng 1991, p. 243). (Mencius:) There is not a part of the body that a man does not love. And because there is no part of the body that he does not love, there is not a part of it that he does not nourish. Because there is not an inch of his skin that he does not love, there is not an inch of his skin that he does not nourish. To determine whether his nourishing is good or not, there is no other way except to see the choice he makes for himself. Now, some parts of the body are noble and some are ignoble; some great and some small. We must not allow the ignoble to injure the noble, or the smaller to injure the greater. Those who nourish the smaller parts will become small men. Those who nourish the greater parts will become great men. (6A: 14)

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(Mencius:) Those who follow the greater qualities in their nature become men and those who follow the smaller qualities in their nature become small men. When our senses of sight and hearing are used without thought and are thereby obscured by material things, the material things act on the material senses and lead them astray. That is all. The function of the mind is to think. If we think, we will get them (the principles of things). If we do not think, we will not get them. This is what Heaven has given to us. If we first build up the nobler part of our nature, then the inferior part cannot overcome it. It is simply this that makes a man great. (6A: 15)

Critical commentary on the above citations discloses a moral metaphysics in Mencius’s precepts. The phrase “this [the mind] is what heaven has given to us” signifies a person’s relation to his or her ontological foundation, tien 天 (heaven). According to Confucian philosophy, heaven is the transcendental ground of everything in nature including human beings, whose essential attribute, the moral mind, is endowed by heaven. Therefore the mind is the noblest and the greatest component of the body. Its moral consciousness or innate knowledge of goodness makes it more than merely physical. Human beings are also made up of smaller, physical components with basic functions, such as hearing and vision. The physical needs, embodied emotions and desires of these smaller components are subordinate to the control of the “thinking greatest-component,” which is central to one’s moral principles and will. As Cheng points out, the moral psychology and moral metaphysics underlying this model offer a guide for behaviour—in the form of moral practices—in one’s personal life and social interactions. According to traditional Confucian philosophy, this process is the central and ultimate concern of human activity (Cheng 1991, pp. 482–483). (Mencius:) What Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. (6B: 15)

This extract demonstrates the significance of the mind’s role in dominating and repressing the smaller components of the body, including the desires generated by the gratification of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching, etc. However, this process also involves the suffering of having these desires in excess. It is only through the stimulation of the mind and the hardening of the body that one is able to fulfil the great responsibility bestowed by heaven. The process of regulation and repression includes a series of exercises by which bodily desires, feelings and embodied emotions are under control. As a result, the morality of one’s mind and behaviour is nourished. (Mencius:) Form and color (our body) are nature endowed by Heaven. It is only the sage who can put his physical form into full use. (7A: 38)

What insights can we gain from the above discussion of Mencius’s theories of the body? Do these ideas constitute an alternative ontology of the body to that compiled in the Western tradition? The saying is the vital force pervades and animates the body and assembles its small components, which are the material senses related to the feelings we discuss, should be governed by the mind, the

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greatest component. This is through the judgment involved in the process that turns the embodied emotions into moral emotions. The small components of the body could be interpreted as the material and ontological bases of human existence. These small components are also the locations of the “receiving” principle, waiting passively for the form-giving process and for the guidance of moral imperatives— both of which activities are supervised by the mind. The remaining question concerns the binary structure and the equilibrium or harmony that Solomon and other scholars aspire to. Do Mencius’s ideas of the body resemble the mind-body dichotomy criticized by them? Some hints are given in the I-Ching, the fundamental text of Confucian cosmology, especially with reference to the yin and the yang: One yin and one yang is called Tao (the way). What we inherit from (the Tao) is good. What forms things in nature (hsing)… Being full of being is the great deed; being fresh and novel everyday is called luxiant virtue. To produce life is called change. To form forms (hsiang) is called chien (the creative principle). To follow up (the chien) is called kun (the receptive principle). To exhaust numbers in order to know the future is called derivation. To comprehend change is called conducting an affair. The unpredictability of the changes (due to the interchange of yin and yang) is called the divine….Thus I has the great ultimate, which generates the two norms. Two norms generate four forms. Four forms generate eight trigrams.3

Cheng (1991, pp. 188–195) explains that there are always two opposite but complementary forces in the process of change: the yin, representing the receptive and the potential, and the yang, representing the creative and the actual. The differences between things are manifestations of the interaction of the yin and the yang, which resembles the interaction of the vital force and the moral mind. These general polarities do not exhibit any real opposition or antagonism; they are only opposite insofar as they are complementary. There is neither tension nor hostility between the terms. According to the I-Ching, the world is undergoing change and development, moving towards unity and a state of holistic harmonization. Discrepancy, imperfection, conflict, contradiction and struggle are understood to arise from incomplete sub-processes in the interaction of polarities. Moreover, conflict is only a matter of a person’s inability to conform to reality and to appreciate the intricacies of change. Conflict can be avoided if one strives to conform to nature (hsing in the human sense) by cultivating one’s understanding and adjusting one’s actions appropriately. Such adjustment is also the process of harmonization. To conclude, according to the metaphysics of harmony and conflict outlined in the I-Ching, antagonism calls for humans’ moral and practical transformation.

3

See Baynes (1950).

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The non-mechanical, non-binary and non-essentialistic interactivity of the two cosmological principles enables the body and the embodied emotions to form a single process interacting with its situated context. The interaction of the two principles also fundamentally shapes the concrete experiences of life, history, and time (Cheng 1991, p. 105). It is on these grounds that Mencius’s ideas of the mind and the body can be used to initiate a radical rethinking of the connections among rational judgments, emotions and ethical-political issues into Solomon’s discussion and provides significant insights. Solomon (1997, p. 289) states that the promise of cross-cultural emotions research lies in “ideas,” in terms of “different ways of seeing, different ways of conceiving, and different ways of carving up and evaluating the world.” Here, he could equally be referring to empirical research, as he describes emotions as phenomenological rather than ontological, modes of experience (including bodily experience) rather than a form of metaphysical existence. However, Mencius’s theory of the body, which offers a different way of “carving up and evaluating the world” based on its own system of moral metaphysics, provides another framework for the ideation of emotion in support of Solomon’s theories. It is the moral metaphysics within that framework, which implies interactivity among heaven, moral mind or moral reason (the faculty of xin), feelings, embodied emotions and action. This is also the answer to Mary Bockover’s question about the “mysterious and almost magical orientation” she detects in Confucian philosophy. The universal ideas underlying Mencius’s theory of the body, including the notion that the moral mind is bestowed by heaven, and that the embodied emotions and desires of the body’s smaller components must be regulated or cultivated by its greater components (namely the moral mind), are, in Solomon’s broad sense, rational and judgmental. Mencius’s discussion of the moral, intentional choices of action and behaviour, whose co-workers are feelings and embodied emotions, ascribes to human beings a similar degree of existential choice. His descriptions of the mind’s control over our vital force (qi) and the importance of making virtuous choices in life with a sage’s wisdom, recall Solomon’s claim that emotional judgments always arise from a particular perspective, defined in part by one’s physical embodiment, but more generally by one’s place in the world and one’s cultural context, and that they need not be overtly intellectualistic but are existential choices. This argument clearly resembles Confucius’s situational ethics. Solomon’s notion of universal emotions may refer to the human condition, including human beings’ shared neurological structure, which is not the same as the qi described by Mencius. As qi implies both embodied emotions and the stratum waiting to be humanized or moralized by the metaphysically endowed mind. However, these differences verify Solomon’s theory still, which emphasizes the cultural positioning of emotions and the possibility of cross-cultural comparison.

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For Solomon, emotions are always culturally taught and cognitively framed. The comparison conducted in this chapter demonstrates similar fervours in refusing cognitive reductionism and biological reductionism and finds in between the two, the “appropriateness” or existential choice within one’s ethical judgments, and the “emotional integrity” with one’s heartfelt values. Mencius’ moral theory also advocates the notion of “authenticity” in Solomon’s later elaboration, which is the moral intuition that has taken into account the social virtues and the existential subjectivity.

References Baynes, C. F. (trans.). 1950. The Great Appendix. In I-Ching. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bockover, Mary. 1995. The Concept of Emotion Revisited: A Critical Synthesis of Western and Confucian Thought. In Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy, ed. Joel Marks and Roger T. Ames, 162–180. Albany: State University of New York Press. Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cheng, Chung-Ying. 1991. New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Dewey, John. 1958. Experience and Nature. New York: Dover Publications. Dewey, John. 1980. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books. McRae, Emily. 2011. The Cultivation of Moral Feelings and Mengzi’s Method of Extension. Philosophy East and West 61 (4): 587–608. Roberts, Robert. 1988. What an Emotion is: A Sketch. The Philosophical Review, vol. 97, no. 2, 183–209. Durham: Duke University Press. Solomon, Robert. 1973. Emotions and Choice. The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 27, 4–24. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America. Solomon, Robert. 1976. The Passions. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday. Solomon, Robert. 1988. The Politics of Emotion. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 1. Malden and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Solomon, Robert. 1992. Existentialism, Emotions, and the Cultural Limits of Rationality. Philosophy East and Wes, vol. 42, 597–621. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press. Solomon, Robert. 1997. Beyond Ontology: Ideation, Phenomenology and the Cross Cultural Study of Emotion. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 27 (2/3): 289–303. Solomon, Robert. 2003. Not Passion’s Slave. New York: Oxford University Press. Solomon, Robert. 2007. True to Our Feeling. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Title: Portrait of Professor Robert Solomon Author: Photo taken by Kathleen Higgins (Taken in Joigny, France ) Year: 1997 Credit: Kathleen Higgins

Chapter 10

A Cross-Cultural Reflection on Shusterman’s Suggestion of the “Transactional” Body

10.1

Shusterman’s Reading of Dewey’s “Interactional” and “Transactional” Body

In “Redeeming Somatic Reflection,” the final chapter of his work Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics, Shusterman (2008, p. 182) analyzes John Dewey’s philosophy of body and mind and claims that Dewey looks to biological naturalism to provide a more unified vision of the two. He also observes that compared with William James, Dewey provides a better-balanced theory that integrates emotion, cognition and physiological reactions into a larger unity of behavioural response. Shusterman (2008, p. 182) echoes that the will is not a purely mental affair that is independent of physical modality, and that a living organism’s survival is always a matter of interaction with its environment. He traces in detail the influences, development and changes in Dewey’s discourses, and demonstrates how Dewey’s philosophy evolves in terms of mind-body dualism, which he calls a mode of thought that “mind and matter are just different ways of parsing a fundamentally unified field of pure experience.” (Shusterman 2008, p. 184). Shusterman (2008, p. 184) stresses that Dewey presents a more consistent non-dualistic naturalism in which body and mind are not two different, separable things but a fundamental unit, or “a unified wholeness of operation.” He observes that the Deweyan model is not based on mind-body interaction, but “a transactional whole of body-mind.” He further states clearly that Dewey does not think that the body-mind unity is an ontological given, but rather a progressive goal of dynamic, harmonious functioning that individuals should strive toward (Shusterman 2008, p. 185).

This chapter was originally published as “A Cross-Cultural Reflection on Shusterman’s Suggestion of the ‘Transactional’ Body” in Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2015, 10(2), pp. 181–191. The original article has been revised, re-edited and published with the permission of Higher Education Press. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_10

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This chapter explores the meaning of Shusterman’s “transactional mode,” which he implies should expand the level of the body-mind unity to social conditions and even act as a measuring stick of the quality of a culture (Shusterman 2008, p. 185). The meaning of Shusterman’s “transactional whole of body-mind” is supplemented by his further elaboration of the “three interpenetrating levels” (the physical, psychophysical and mental levels), the complexity and intimacy of which increase in relation to their interactions with an organism (Shusterman 2008, p. 186). Shusterman begins by analyzing the complexity of the physical level, observing that an organism organizes complex physical materials and energies as a mean of survival. At the psychophysical level, he demonstrates how Dewey argues that emotion is a combination of distinct cognitive perceptions and bodily reactions that underline the basic unity of purposive behaviour. At the mental level, he mentions Dewey’s linguistic requirement for the mind, which situates it in the realm of culture. In this way, he explains these levels’ high degree of complexity, and suggests that interpenetration occurs when the human mind is not opposed to but is an emergent expression of the human body; when ideas and emotional excitation are constituted at the same time and when culture is not a contradictory force but rather a fulfilling and reshaping one (Shusterman 2008, p. 186). This refers not only to the cross over among the three levels but how they are actually integrated together as a complex, non-differentiated whole.

10.2

The Transactional Whole of Body-Mind and Environment

Shusterman’s discussion of habits reveals a deeper meaning of the transactional whole of body-mind. His explication of habits illustrates his thesis that “mental and bodily reactions are not two different things in search of a philosophical synthesis but are instead analytical abstractions already enveloped in the primal unity of purposive behaviour.” (Shusterman 2008, p. 187). According to Shusterman and Dewey, habits involve the interpenetration of the emotional, cognitional and physiological levels. One must recognize that the notion of habit has undergone changes since the 19th century, the period to which Dewey’s line of thought was applied. In the latter half of the 19th century, theories of habit beat around the biologically based theories of mind and explained habit as the tendency of the mind to reinforce mental patterns as a closed system and drive the individual to repetitive, automatic behaviour to conserve energy. This explanation made individuals afraid that they were trapped in predictable and inflexible behaviour that forbade their free will and ability to change (Vrettos 2000, p. 400). That habit became a contested area of psychological debate is also related to Shusterman’s words about culture. The discourses of the late 19th century reflected the situations of individuals living in increasingly modern, mechanized and industrial cultures (Vrettos 2000, p. 400). Much like that seen in Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times, human behaviour

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during that era is now considered mass-produced. This historical reality has initiated changes in the reading of habit along with its complexity and integration. From the discourse of habit, Shusterman analyzes the interpenetration of the will, behaviour and environment, which cannot be reduced to the mental, physical and psychophysical. Shusterman (2008, p. 192) observes that the will cannot be an entirely autonomous and purely mental construct because it is constituted by habits, which always incorporate environmental features. The will and habit are tied in such a way that it is hard to differentiate the two or determine their priority. According to Shusterman (2008, pp. 194–195), “a habit [is] before an ability to evoke the thought at will … will is deeply enmeshed in habit.” It takes tremendous effort and a lot of acquired skill to free the will from unreflective habits. Under these kinds of conditions, Shusterman echoes Dewey by observing that intelligence, reason or a mind cultivated by education can save an individual from involuntary habits. Shusterman (2008, p. 212) further suggests that conscious control through somatic reflection and the related disciplines can help to eliminate the habit. This coincides with Dewey’s description and elaboration of the individual’s existential interaction with the environment. In Dewey’s words, the self can be defined in terms of habits, and habits must engage with and assimilate the environment in which the individual functions. Shusterman (2008, p. 214) particularly quotes Dewey as follows: “(we) live … as much in processes across and ‘through’ skins as in processes ‘within’ skins.” Shusterman’s note focuses on Dewey’s preference for the term “transactional” over “interactional” when describing one’s existence, as it diminishes the implication of greater separation and independence. Shusterman (2008, p. 214) also advocates the term and thinks that the transactional self and body “convey the sense of a dynamic, symbiotic individual that is essentially engaging with and relating to others and is in turn essentially reliant on and constituted by such relations.” It is clear that Shusterman also refers to the meaning and implications of the term as saving one from unreflective habits and helping an individual to adopt a better and freer life through the promotion of somatic control. Shusterman’s promotion of the “transactional body” explains his motive of understanding the body in its environmental context and thereby strengthening one’s somatic sensitivity for greater somatic control. According to Shusterman (2008, p. 215), “We must develop greater sensitivity to the body’s environmental conditions, relations, and ambient energies.” Shusterman finds similar integrations and transactions among the mental, psychophysical and physical levels in Asian philosophical traditions. He particularly refers to Dao (which he addresses as spiritual sensibility) and Ren (principle of virtue) in classical Chinese thought and identifies recognition, integration and virtue practices (Shusterman 2008, p. 215). He strongly appreciates the Daoist Dao in the sense that its practices imply somaesthetic cultivation, which he describes thoroughly in his work on the subject. According to Shusterman (2008, p. 216), “(Dao, or Nature) promises the richest and deepest palate of experiential fulfillments because it can draw on the population of cosmic resources, including an uplifting

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sense of cosmic unity.” Shusterman correctly points out that Confucian notions also coincide with this cosmic model of somatic self-cultivation. He quotes the Confucian expression that Heaven and Earth and all things form a unified body, and Mencius’ saying that the functions of the body are the endowment of Heaven and that only a sage can manifest them (Shusterman 2008, p. 216). It would be worthwhile to look further into the meanings of the related integration and compare the transactional sense of the body implied in Confucian thought with the notion suggested by Shusterman.

10.3

The Meaning of the “Transactional” Body in Confucianism

Shusterman particularly mentions Mencius’ ideas of the body in the transactional context. For the purposes of review and discussion, some representative citations from the book of Mencius are given as follows. The quotations from Mencius in this chapter are extracts from A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy by Chan Wing-Tsit (1963): (Mencius:) Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs … If anyone with these Four Beginnings in him knows how to give them the fullest extension and development, the result will be like fire beginning to burn or a spring beginning to shoot forth. When they are fully developed, they will be sufficient to protect all people within the four seas (the world). If they are not developed, they will not be sufficient even to serve one’s parents. (2A: 6)

The “Four Beginnings” are the four fundamental forms of moral knowledge, that is, the liangzhi. These forms comprise feelings and sentiments of compassion, shame, modesty and reverence, and include distinctions between right and wrong. They are natural and universal and produce virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom, respectively. They also drive the inclination to act appropriately when the moral subject interacts with others. Mencius considers liangzhi to be the ontological foundation of the virtues and observes that it must be nurtured and preserved. Feelings and sentiments represent the potential for moral action in the development of a person into a whole human being who is in harmony with all of humankind. (Cheng 1991, pp. 272–273) The following passage considers the integration and interaction of the moral mind and the social world, and introduces the effect of the body’s “vital force”: (Mencius:) The will is the leader of the vital force, and the vital force pervades and animates the body. The will is the highest; the vital force comes next. Therefore, I say, ‘hold the will firm and never do violence to the vital force’ … If the will is concentrated, the vital force [will follow it] and become active. If the vital force is concentrated, the will [will follow it] and become active … If nourished by uprightness and not injured, it (i.e., the vital force) will fill up all between heaven and earth. As power, righteousness and the Way (or Dao) accompany it. (2A: 2)

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The “vital force” (qi) refers to bodily substance, matter and desire. It is neither the will nor the moral mind exclusively, but both interrelated in the sense that the moral mind should govern qi, or virtue will fail. This is a crucial point for humanity. Through the self-conscious effort to act according to moral principles, such as when qi is guided by righteousness (yi), the righteous act naturally leads to the ontological extension of oneself and transforms the world into a universe of significance that is integral to the individual self (Cheng 1991, p. 243). (Mencius:) There is not a part of the body that a man does not love … There is not an inch of his skin that he does not nourish. Now, some parts of the body are noble and some are ignoble; some great and some small. We must not allow the ignoble to injure the noble, or the smaller to injure the greater. Those who nourish the smaller parts will become small men. Those who nourish the greater parts will become great men. (6A: 14) (Mencius:) Those who follow the greater qualities in their nature become great men and those who follow the smaller qualities in their nature become small men. When our senses of sight and hearing are used without thought and are thereby obscured by material things, the material things act on the material senses and lead them astray. The function of the mind is to think. If we think, we will get them (i.e., the principles of things). If we do not think, we will not get them. This is what Heaven has given to us. If we first build up the nobler part of our nature, then the inferior part cannot overcome it. It is simply this that makes a man great. (6A: 15)

A critical reading of the preceding citations discloses Mencius’ metaphysical levels of integration between the mind and body, the moral and physical, and the individual person and cosmos, and provides an expanded version of Shusterman’s notion of the transaction. The phrase “this (i.e., the mind) is what heaven has given to us” signifies a person’s relationship with the ontological ground heaven (tien). It should be noted that the Confucian Heaven is the transcendental ground of everything in Nature, including human beings, whose essential characteristics are endowed by Heaven as the moral mind. The mind is the noblest and greatest component of the body and is more than simply physical due to its moral consciousness or innate knowledge of goodness. The smaller components suggested by Mencius are the physical parts with basic functions, such as hearing and vision, the needs or desires of which should be subordinated or regulated by the control of the moral mind; and the “thinking greatest-component,” which constitutes the centre of moral principles and the will. One can read the extended meaning of the transactional body in Mencius’ promotion of the cultivation of the vital force, where moral knowledge and its capabilities must be developed and preserved through the physical to transform the human subject into a “great person” or sage. At the second level, both moral psychology and moral metaphysics (involved in the moral mind according to the principles of the benevolent Heaven or the Confucian Dao) provide a basis for understanding what a person should do (i.e., moral practices) in his or her personal life and social intercourse with others. According to the traditional Confucian school, this process is the central and ultimate concern of human activity (Cheng 1991, pp. 482–483). The transactionality is best illustrated by the following reputational quotations of Mencius:

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(Mencius:) When Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. (6B: 15) (Mencius:) Form and color (our body) are nature endowed by Heaven. It is only the sage who can put his physical form into full use. (7A: 38)

Cheng Chung-Ying provides a concise interpretation of the relationship between “fate” (ming) and “nature” (hsing) to the following famous section: (Mencius:) It is due to our nature that our mouths desire sweet tastes, that our eyes desire beautiful colors, that our ears desire pleasant sounds, that our noses desire fragrant odors, and that our four limbs desire ease and comfort. But there is also fate (ming) [whether these desires are satisfied or not]. The superior man does not say they are man’s nature (hsing) [and insist on satisfying them]. The virtue of humanity in the relationship between father and son, the virtue of righteousness in the relationship between ruler and minister, the virtue of propriety in the relationship between guest and host, the virtue of wisdom in the worthy, and the sage in regard to the Way of Heaven – these are [endowed in people in various degrees] according to fate. But there is also man’s nature (hsing). The superior man does not [refrain from practicing them and] say they are matters of fate. (7B: 24)

Cheng’s interpretation stresses that both mind and nature (hsing) mingle within the individual being, representing and fulfilling the different functions that constitute being human. Hsing (Xing) is able to fulfil the person in terms of achieving identification with Heaven (tien), which provides Nature to humans and enables them to achieve greatness. Fate (ming) is able to fulfil the person in terms of his or her interaction with others. Ming is not a deterrent to one’s virtue but is sometimes an occasion for fulfilment. Mencius notes that one must receive fate in the right way, that is, to avoid what is undesirable and fulfil what is desirable (Cheng 1991, pp. 344–346).

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On “Transactional Body”: Dewey, Mencius and Shusterman

In his article entitled “The End of Aesthetic Experience,” Shusterman (1997, pp. 29–41) suggests that people are losing the capacity for deep experience and feeling, largely because they are undergoing extensive series of informational revolutions. His discussion of aesthetic experience offers meanings that are related to his subsequent notion of the transactional body. His call for rekindling the notion of aesthetic experience hints at the transactional body, as it includes the following belief: aesthetic experience is a heightened, meaningful and valuable phenomenological experience; its importance and richness should be recognized more fully, as it will be strengthened and preserved the more it is experienced; and its concept is directional and able to remind us of what is worth seeking in art and elsewhere in life (Shusterman 1997, p. 39).

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Shusterman’s call for an ideal aesthetic experience is a clear reminder of Dewey’s explication of aesthetic experience as an integrated and interactional bodily and emotional experience, described in Art as Experience: Experience occurs continuously, because the interaction of live creature and environing conditions is involved in the very process of living […] We have an experience when the material experience runs its course to fulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences. A piece of work is finished in a way that is satisfactory; a problem receives its solution […] Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience […] Nevertheless, the experience itself has a satisfying emotional quality because it possesses internal integration and fulfillment reached through ordered and organized movement. This artistic structure may be immediately felt. In so far, it is esthetic. (Dewey 1980, pp. 35–38)

Under the influences of biological evolutionism and his belief in functional and pragmatic implications, Dewey states that the activities of living things are characterized by natural needs, by the efforts to satisfy those needs and by satisfaction. These terms are primarily implemented in a biological sense as described in his work Experience and Nature: By need is meant a condition of tensional distribution of energies such that the body is in a condition of uneasy or unstable equilibrium. By demand or effort is meant [… to] modify environing bodies in ways which react upon the body, so that its characteristic pattern of active equilibrium is restored. By satisfaction is meant this recovery of equilibrium pattern, consequent upon the changes of environment due to interactions with the active demands of the organism. (Dewey 1958, pp. 252–253)

It is interesting to note how Dewey expands the satisfaction of experience to aesthetic experience, which is often considered spontaneous, unexpected, fresh, unpredictable, purposive and instrumental, rather than the classical notion of “disinterestedness” that aesthetic experience implies: “A consummatory object that is not also instrumental turns in time to the dust and ashes of boredom. The ‘eternal’ quality of great art is its renewed instrumentality for further consummatory experiences.” (Dewey 1958, p. 365). Petts (2000, p. 63) explains Dewey’s notion of “consummation” as a job felt to be satisfactorily completed, a problem felt to be solved and a game played through “fair and square.” He claims accordingly that aesthetic experience is a feeling that things are “just so.” However, he also hints that this feeling that things are “just so” has an implication of value, for it is both prompted and validated by a felt response or feeling of approbation, and introduces the possibility of many kinds of motives and interests, ranging from physical needs to emotional desires, personal interests and aesthetic evaluations. Petts (2000, p. 67) stresses that aesthetic experience is privately felt but intrinsically public, as it takes on value when it is marked by a consummating moment. Petts is of a similar mind to Dewey and Shusterman in terms of believing that human experience in full is extensional and transactional: My argument, in short, is that aesthetic experience is not simply a socially constructed response to environment … but is defining of a more profound natural (to be explained)

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response of human beings to their environment, without which it would be inexplicable how any cultural preferences could emerge from that experience. (Petts 2000, p. 67)

As Shusterman suggests, a cross-cultural study would enrich the reading of the transactional body, and he particularly refers to consulting Asian thought for a deeper understanding. The Deweyan model represents a belief in the biological and natural needs of a human subject, from which a full existential experience involving the mind, psyche and body (like an aesthetic experience) may arise as an intense, direct, immediate and integrated manifestation of the interaction of humans and the natural living environment. The feeling that things are “just so” represents fulfilment, describes the value of human experience and refers to equilibrium and harmony attained through interaction and adjustment. This connection is the foundation of the later expansion of works to the social, linguistic and cultural dimensions and to interaction. In terms of Mencius, the feeling that things are “just so” has at least two levels. The first refers to moments when the vital force is regulated in a way that the tendency of behavioural practice accords with the moral mind. The second refers to the distanced accordance of the human mind to Heaven, where the latter confers a principle of morality that only a human could manifest. This level is both humanistic and cosmic. In the Deweyan sense, happiness or delight achieved at a biological level should be different from that achieved at the metaphysical level implied in the Confucian ontology. The former lacks depth in terms of the meaning of ultimate concern for things and their value. However, Shusterman and Petts refer to a transactional body and experience that is in touch with the plane of value both naturally and socially. One can also detect the harmonious state in the moral and aesthetic experiences in the Confucian thoughts, yet the differences between them and the Deweyan model are both epistemological and metaphysical. While the “just so” or the rightness described by Dewey refers to the successful adjustment between the subject and the living environment, the “just so” in the Confucian thinking is an ontological manifestation of things under the light of the human mind, when it is engaged with the metaphysical Nature and Heaven. This explains the suggestions made by Dewey’s followers like Beardsley, who discusses the aesthetic values of aesthetic objects in terms of the measurement of intensity, coherence, integrity and complexity of the aesthetic experience. Yet if the happiness or delight in the Deweyan sense is based on a biological dimension, it should be different from that being at the spiritual level or in the light of the wisdom implied in the Confucian ontology. In brief, successful environmental adjustment cannot satisfy an answer related to art and value. It should be noted that both the Deweyan and the Confucian models share the view that aesthetic experience in the broad sense comes prior to all other human experience. For Dewey, an experience arises that has a satisfying emotional quality as it possesses internal integration and fulfilment reached through ordered and organized movement. It is an aesthetic structure itself, which may be immediately felt and it enables an intellectual (and a moral) experience to be complete (Dewey

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1980, pp. 35–38). The Confucian tradition reads aesthetic experience as an upsurge from the life experience itself when the mind could capture only when it is totally engaged with Nature. The quests for human purpose and the meaning of life must obviously extend beyond environmental interaction and reach the capacity of the human mind for hope and potential. Confucian thought dictates that the human mind is able to transcend the subject-object relationship and engage with Nature. For Dewey (1980, pp. 35–38), a bodily experience that has a satisfying emotional quality (because it possesses internal integration and fulfilment reached through ordered and organized movement) may be immediately felt and enables a complete intellectual (and moral) experience. The comparative reading sheds light on Shusterman’s notion of the transactional body when he quotes the Confucian expression that Heaven and Earth and all things form a unified body. The transactional body addresses the physical, psychophysical and mental levels of a human being, and refers to the individual’s private and public lives. And the Confucian context has also the metaphysical implications. In “The End of Aesthetic Experience,” Shusterman (1997, p. 30) identifies the worry that people are losing the capacity for deep experience and feeling in the new age of living. The notion of the transactional body elaborated in his notion of the somaesthetics and his reference to Mencius’ theory may provide a way to reflect on the reconstruction of human experience, and the Confucian body discourse confirms its possible integration and transaction with the physical, the social and the metaphysical. It is worthwhile to do this comparative study and cross-cultural reflection not only for illustration and confirmation purposes but to enlarge our thinking horizon of the relationships among self, object and our environment. Shusterman (1997, pp. 29–41) once called for rekindling the notion of aesthetic experience with the beliefs that the experience embraces heightened, meaningful, and valuable phenomenological experience. Its importance and richness should be fuller recognized as it will be strengthened and preserved the more it is experienced. Its concept is directional and is able to remind us of what is worth seeking in art and elsewhere in life. In the Confucian’s reading, the aesthetic experience happens in the engagement of the human mind with the metaphysical Nature provides an alternative, yet in-depth revelation to the points that Shusterman once raised.

References Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cheng, Chung-Ying. 1991. New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Dewey, John. 1958. Experience and Nature. New York: Dover Publications. Dewey, John. 1980. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books.

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Petts, Jeffrey. 2000. Aesthetic Experience and the Revelation of Value. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticsm 58 (1): 61–71. Shusterman, Richard. 1997. The End of Aesthetic Experience. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticsm 55 (1): 29–41. Shusterman, Richard. 2008. Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Vrettos, A. 2000. Defining habits: Dickens and the psychology of repetition. Victorian Studies, 42 (3): 399–426. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.lib-ezproxy.hkbu.edu.hk/docview/ 212010062?accountid=11440. Retrieved on December 29, 2019.

Chapter 11

Chinese Bodies in Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender and Politics: Methodologies and Practices

In the fields of gender studies, body theories and aesthetics, comparative studies that involve both Western feminist and Chinese philosophical discourses deserve greater attention. My work addresses the meaningful revelations that have come through these comparative studies, which in return, should provide methodological innovations and advances in Chinese philosophy.

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Feminist Aesthetics and Chinese Philosophy Traditions

As mentioned in Chap. 4 of this book, most Western philosophical paradigms are based directly or indirectly on the binary oppositions of the rational/irrational, subject/ object, nature/culture, form/matter, mind/body, active/passive or presence/absence that were proposed by ancient Greek philosophers such Aristotle. Naturally, these presumed binary oppositions have had profound implications for the issues of gender, body and mind. Western feminists commonly feel that these oppositions have been foundational to the establishment of masculine and rational cultures in the West. Most philosophical debates and criticisms concerning these paradigms hardly look beyond the West. I feel it is meaningful, therefore, to reflect on how these discussions relate to Chinese philosophy. My basic question is to see the ways Chinese philosophy can act as a source or a frame of reference for the development of the alternative perspectives sought by Western feminist scholars. I also aim to address, demonstrate and offer

This chapter was originally published as “Chinese Bodies in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics: Methodologies and Practices.” In Tan, Sor-Hoon (ed.) The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies (London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), pp. 257–270. The original article has been revised, re-edited and published with the permission of Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_11

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perspectives that may help to provide alternative models in some of the key debates concerning gender, body and aesthetics. I find a lot of wisdom in a range of feminist philosophies on the body, but I also see their limitations. These discourses commonly begin with critiques of Plato, who proposed the dualisms of form-matter and mind-body. Plato asserted that the body interferes with and is a danger to the operations of reason. He believed that man is a spiritual or non-corporeal being trapped in the body or soma. His discourse on the hypodoche (or original matter) is considered to define the essential qualities of materiality. According to Platonic philosophy, Nature receives the form as a sensible object, her proper function is to receive, take, accept, welcome, include and even comprehend (Butler 1993, pp. 40–53). She has no proper shape and is not a body unless she receives form and direction from an external formative principle. This “receptacle principle” of matter, which is held to apply universally, is then associated with the female. Femaleness is constructed as non-thematizable materiality that never resembles either the formative principle or what it creates. This image of a sensuous, passionate, receptive corporeality enables philosophers to uphold the essential neutrality and superiority of the mind (Gatens 1996, pp. 49–50). Most of the new conceptual models that feminist scholars propose to seek to displace Platonic dualism and to emancipate our concepts of the body from Cartesian mechanistic models or metaphors. I consider these theoretical and philosophical proposals by Western thinkers such as Plato, Descartes or Spinoza in terms of their views on the body and mind, and I wish to explore how the Chinese philosophical ideas offered by Confucians and Daoists may provide an alternative body ontology for the critical practices of feminists. My research on female aesthetical representations considers classical Chinese works such as The Books of Songs, women’s embroidery, social attitudes regarding sexuality and contemporary body art. These representations demonstrate an intertwining relationship between the body, sexuality, aesthetics and gendered roles in their social environments. The concepts of yin, yang and qi apply to studies of the body, gendered roles, arts and aesthetics. This discussion takes the bodily experience of the subject and the interaction between the subject and her environment as the core sources of aesthetic experience. I follow the suggestions of feminist philosophers who question the notion of abstract impartiality and who relate their philosophical discussions to concrete case studies. I examine female bodily representations as seen in the literary fantasies from late Ming times, in the iron girls of Communist China and in the hoopla surrounding the Beijing Olympics (Man 2013, pp. 368–384). I also consider the first application of Freudian psychoanalysis in China (in the 1920s), in which the pioneering therapist Pan Guangdan tried to assess the female literati Feng Xiaoqing 馮小青 (1595–1612) in Qing dynasty (Man 2016, pp. 154–174). My empirical work investigates the transformation of women’s fashion in Hong Kong during the 1960s, after the political riots of 1967 under British colonial rule (Man 2016, pp. 175–186). The subject of sex and emotion in the ethical discourse among Chinese female sex workers at the turn of the nineteenth century is another case study that has seldom been examined (Man 2016, pp. 187–202). The methodologies adopted throughout these studies offer a coherent attempt to explore Chinese thinking on the body, which includes gendered bodies. The

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discussion begins with a basic view from the I-Ching and extends to the Confucian discourses on the body and mind, which are well articulated by Mencius. Numerous feminist philosophers and biologists have tried to destabilize the notion of “biological sex.” (Butler 1993, pp. 29–30). These thinkers strongly contest any return to biological essentialism. As pointed out in previous chapters, they argue that “physical experiences” alone do not make gender, but rather the specific social and regulatory ideals by which female bodies are trained and formed. The Western philosophical concepts of corporeality start with Plato and Descartes, and the works of Spinoza and Merleau-Ponty may offer alternative understandings of the body and mind that could challenge the Cartesian body-mind dualism. As informed by Elizabeth Grosz’s critique, I indicate how new concepts of corporeality that go beyond the regime of dualism will still need to be developed (Grosz 1994, pp. 21–22). In view of this development in Western thought, I propose to look at Confucian philosophy, especially Mencius’ ideas of the body and mind, to see if this tradition can offer a form of ontology and metaphysics to complement the efforts of Western feminist philosophers. This investigation is followed by a comparative analysis of both Western and Chinese philosophical traditions. I will argue that Mencius’ ideas of the mind and the body can initiate a radical rethinking of the connections among reason, body existence and a range of ethical-political issues. Such rethinking enables feminists to develop an alternative model of corporeality. In investigating whether Mencius’ ideas constitute an ontology of the body that is useful for critical feminist practices, my answer is only partly affirmative. A certain ambiguity appears because it is difficult to tell whether the body, as Mencius considers it, is gendered. If we examine his work in its historical and cultural contexts, taking the Confucian patriarchal society into account, the discussions of the sage, the “great man” or the “superior man” seem to refer to men only. As women in the Confucian tradition are viewed as feeble in terms of their moral capabilities, it is commonly said that they need to be educated and controlled, otherwise they would upset the patriarchal social order. Female bodies are dangerous and threatening because they can be seductive, leading men to excessive sexual desires or socially deviant behaviour. However, women’s behaviour can also be beneficial to men, if the women act according to instructions derived from Daoist theories of sexuality. The way that Mencius is translated or commented upon concerning his usage of “man” and “he” to indicate “human”, suggests that Mencius regards the body as gendered, and as male. In ideological sense, an identification of women with materiality can also be detected in Mencius’ work, and feminists have pointed out that this view is feminine-oriented. Certain components of Mencius’ teaching could be interpreted as indicating material and ontological base for the “female side” of human existence. These components imply a “receiving” principle—of waiting passively for the form-giving process and for guidance from moral imperatives, both of which are provided by the mind (Man 2000a, pp. 155–169). The Western binary of passion-reason seems to correspond to a polarity of vital force–moral will in Mencius’ teaching. In both traditions, it is implied that vital force or passion should follow reason and moral will for the attainment of harmonious humanity.

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Despite any associations we make concerning the social, historical and ideological contexts of Mencius’ teaching, the nature of this binary structure is the main question that remains. Are Mencius’ ideas of the body and mind the same as the mind-body binary that Western feminists criticize? The Confucian cosmological model differs from Western philosophy, yet the Confucian texts seem to separate vital force (ming命) from will (hsing性) while emphasizing the superiority of the will in every respect. In considering the Chinese understanding of this duality, I turn for reference to the I-Ching, which is the basic articulation of Confucian cosmology with its concepts of yin and yang. The revelation proposed in the I-Ching is that the yin (the female principle, or force representing the receptive and the potential) and the yang (the male principle, or force representing the creative and the actual) do not exhibit any real opposition or antagonism in Chinese philosophy. These principles are presented as co-existing and interacting within all things. As clearly explicated by Cheng (1991, pp. 188–195), they are only opposite in so far as they are complementary. There is neither tension nor hostility between these principles. I concur that according to the Chinese cosmological paradigm illustrated in the IChing, the world is a process of change and development that is moving toward unity and a state of holistic harmonization (Cheng 1991, pp. 188–195). The appearance of discrepancy, imperfection, conflict, contradiction or struggle is seen to result from an incomplete sub-process in the interaction of polarities. Conflicts can be avoided if one strives to conform to human nature (xing) by cultivating one’s understanding and adjusting one’s action properly. This adjustment is a process of harmonization. Therefore, according to the metaphysics of harmony and conflict in the I-Ching, antagonism calls for a moral and practical transformation of human life. I am drawn to wonder whether this belief can lead to a relaxation of Chinese traditions involving the patriarchal suppression of women. Might the view presented in the I-Ching and the early Confucian texts indicate that the condition of gender inequality is an artificial, contextual and political practice that Confucian spirituality and moral philosophy can help to transcend? As suggested in Chap. 4, Western feminists might find the yin-yang polarities useful. They might include the mutually generative and destructive modes described in the I-Ching with their contrary and complementary qualities, as a useful basis for viewing the dualities of body, mind and gender. The principles of holistic unity and organic balance are meaningful ideas that offer real alternatives to the mechanical-atomistic model that the feminists oppose. In this sense, Mencius’ ideas of the mind and body can initiate a radical rethinking of the connections between reason, the body and society’s ethical-political issues. The issues of aesthetics would also help in laying the ground for a comparative study of matters related to the body. Chapter 3 of this book deals with the critique of binary oppositions in Western philosophy, and I have introduced a model of matriarchal aesthetics that is suggested by Göttner-Abendroth (1986, pp. 81–94), and discuss this model in the light of Chinese philosophy. Göttner-Abendroth sets out several principles of a matriarchal aesthetics that might provide us with a new paradigm of feminist aesthetics. Her writing summarizes the principles that matriarchal art is a form of magic that expresses diversity in unity. Such art is like mythology, which

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exists as a fundamental category of human understanding. Gottner-Abendroth argues that the universal nature and the objective structure of the matriarchal artworks prevent the viewer’s identification with the art from becoming a matter of subjective sentimentality. Such art cannot be simply objectified, as it represents the complexity of a whole process. The interesting thing is that as matriarchal art involves the possibility of communicating with Nature by means of symbolic acts, it suggests that we should learn to adapt ourselves to Nature in a relationship that includes our bodies and our immediate environment. Göttner-Abendroth stresses that the joy and delight thereby released can be traced back to the harmonious correlation between changes in Nature and spiritual changes within ourselves, which can give rise to new forms of living. When viewed in such terms, matriarchal aesthetics offers a world view that can be compared in useful dialogue with Chinese aesthetics. It is commonly held that Confucian and Daoist philosophies have no systematic approach to aesthetics. However, some neo-Confucian scholars such as Mou Chung San and Tang Chun I have reconstructed theories of primal human experience according to traditional Confucianism and Daoism, and these theories allude to aesthetic experience. I have often turned to some of the key notions suggested by these two neo-Confucian masters for sources of comparison, which were also referred to in previous chapters. When translates and critically comments on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Mou (1974, pp. 208–211) presents and recommends the Daoist theory of “intellectual intuition.” He emphasizes the subjective Daoist principle of wu-wei (no-action), which refers to the human mind’s effort to transcend all kinds of epistemological functions and to move toward a more inclusive, metaphysical experience of the Dao. As mentioned, Daoist philosophy promotes the annulment of human activity and knowledge. It seeks to recover the direct perception of Nature in itself, which has been hidden and distorted by human understandings, perceptions and interpretations (Mou 1974, pp. 208–211). Tang introduces his key notion of the “host and guest” relation to describe the relationship between things and the mind in the human primal experience. This view contrasts with the subject-object relation expressed in Western theories of knowledge, in which subjects are dominant and objects are subordinate (Tang 1978, p. 187). According to Tang (1978, p. 187), objectification of the mind takes place only after the primal experience, which he describes as “the totality of intuition.” His understanding of this experience is actually quite similar to that of Mou. My suggestion is that we can find many similarities of theoretical modality between the suggestions of feminist scholars (such as those concerning matriarchal aesthetics) and the suggestions of Chinese philosophy. There are several points of comparison that we might pursue further. One such point is that the aesthetic experiences described by both Western feminists and Chinese philosophers take place in a fundamental, principal process that perceives a “pre-existing inner structure” prior to the objectification process. This principal process demands that we should adapt ourselves to Nature (which includes both our bodies and our immediate environment) in an interaction that leads to the harmonious correlation of change in Nature with a spiritual change in ourselves.

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Body Theories and Bodily Representations in Art

In the West, there has been a recent call for reclaiming the body and repositioning its locus and nature in terms of both academic and artistic expression. Body theories and body art have drawn considerable attention and inspired new philosophical discussions. I look at this issue from a comparative perspective, focusing on representative cases of Chinese and Western portrait paintings as a source of empirical evidence. I have examined Francis Bacon’s works on human bodies to identify the philosophical and psychological loci involved (Man 2004, pp. 621–631). I then outlined the Confucian discourse on the body and its related metaphysical grounds and showed how these understandings influence traditional Chinese portrait painting. I introduced a representative discussion on Chinese portrait making by Gu Kaizhi of the 4th Century A.D. and compared his approach with the body portraits presented by Bacon. In this comparison, the following questions are addressed: How are body discourses related to different bodily expressions? In what ways do Confucian ideas of the body shed light on the recent discussions of the reclaiming the body in the West? Are the problems of the dichotomy between the mind and body resolved in the Confucian tradition? Can active engagement via the process of reworking art create new possibilities of bodily expression? From the summary of Gu’s artistic practice, one can see that most human expressions in Gu’s work are restrained and delicate. There are few extremes of either emotion or gesture, and the figures seem to combine humanness with a certain ethereal quality. The depictions of human subjects convey both a certain naiveté and a humanistic spirit. I recap Mencius’ theory that the mind is the noblest and greatest component of the body. The mind, for Mencius, is more than simply physical because of its moral consciousness and its innate knowledge of goodness. This understanding explains why Gu’s portraits emphasize the subjects’ heads and faces, particularly the eyes or the pupils, which he believes can speak for the subject’s soul or spirit (Man 2004, pp. 621–631). In contrast, Bacon’s subjects are associated with an “exhilarated despair” involving sexuality and violence, which seems to violate the moral norms of his times. His figures present the “shattering of the subject,” or the replacement of a unified self by a fragmented self, which has been read as a “loss of self,” with various psychoanalytic implications. Gu’s subjects assert a moral self, conveyed through his delicate and linear style. I point out that the works of Bacon and Gu belong to different cultures at different times. In our time, however, I wonder if we can go further in asking how Confucian theories of the body might inform the recovery of the body in contemporary Western discourse (Man 2004, pp. 621–631). Confucians discuss the body as something ontological and natural, as do some theorists in the Western tradition. However, contemporary discourses stress that the differences in bodies do not have to do with biological “facts” so much as the manner in which culture marks bodies and creates specific conditions in which they live and recreate themselves. This marking of bodies happens through the operation of various forms of power relations that involve languages or signifying practices. In the discussion, I have revisited a point made by Gatens (1999, p. 228): what is crucial in our current context is the thorough interrogation of the means by which bodies become invested with differences. The findings of my previous studies confirm a model of

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construction whereby the social acts upon the natural, so that there is no reference to a pure body that is not at the same time a further formation of the body. For my re-visitation of theory and a survey of the Chinese bodies manifested in arts and aesthetics, I refer to both traditional and contemporary Chinese art or writing. These sources include the representations of the female body in the Book of Songs, the images in traditional Chinese embroidery, various discourses on sexuality and the contemporary practice of body art in China. I have great fun in examining the pre-Qin Confucian text, The Book of Songs, which is an important source for the early discussion of feminine ideals in Chinese women’s history (Man 2012, pp. 113–130). I first reviewed the discussion on feminine ideals by referring to representative cases or stories described in this source. Then I classified the kinds and modalities of female bodily ideals into gendered narratives, social and political representations, or perceptions concerning the common excellence of human qualities. I seek to investigate the relations among these recommended ideals in terms of situational ethics, gendered notions of “inner beauty” and “outer beauty,” love and marriage or eros and sexuality. Among the lines of The Book of Songs, one can see that the classical Chinese descriptions of female beauty (meiren) referred to femaleness in terms of skin colour, erotic qualities and bodily beauty, including the shape of the limbs, the style of makeup and the colour of clothing (Man 2012, p. 130). These descriptions specified qualities relating to all of the five senses, yet it was the vitality of the body that counted most, and the sensations related to the heterosexual appeal. These conceptions of femaleness were grounded in male desires and fantasies. Over time, however, the notions of female beauty went beyond physiological and sexual considerations and increasingly involved cultural and normative constraints. The reading of The Book of Songs interestingly reveals that moral discourses did not necessarily have a higher priority than daring emotional and erotic expressions in this ancient text. Various views are there to be explored in the text, and they act as valuable sources for the discussion of Chinese female ideals. Through textual analysis, I find that these descriptions of women form the map of a lost female horizon. Following this ancient source of female depiction, I consider a form of women’s handicraft art that has long shaped Chinese women’s physical and emotional lives, as highlighted in Chap. 4 of this book. I chose embroidery as a subject of study, as this art is often associated with women and identified as a feminine practice across the history of China (Man 2016, pp. 61–72). I examined how practices of embroidery enable women to become subjects of their own artistic expression and how this art helps to construct women’s social identities and value systems. This survey begins with a brief historical survey of women’s embroidery in China, followed by an examination of the intertwined relationship between this form of handicraft and women’s lives. The creation of embroidery has represented and fulfilled the Confucian gender and hierarchical roles of women as wives, mothers of sons and teachers of daughters. I discussed the extent to which embroidery practices are mediums of expression and how the creation of this artwork has given Chinese women value as talented subjects. I argued that in imperial China, embroidery as women’s art was equivalent to reputable elite male cultural practices such as painting, calligraphy and composition (Man 2016, pp. 61–72).

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In contemporary China, however, different meanings have emerged regarding women’s embroidery skills, which have revived as a new form of high-quality production. The popular work of Vivienne Tam, as introduced in Chap. 4, is my favourite example of how Chinese embroidery has become a sought-after fashion symbol. By creatively developing new aesthetic styles, I argue that the self-Orientalizing technique of modern fashion designer has succeeded in battling the negative stereotypes commonly associated with “Oriental Others.” (Man 2016, pp. 61–72). Tam’s East-meets-West designs appropriate exotic, traditional and mysterious Chinese elements with new and modern edges. Her work is also significantly gendered. Tam often mixes brocade and embroidery with experimental modern elements such as leather and fake fur, producing what she describes as an “eccentric approach of Orientalism” and an innovative development of femininity (Man 2016, pp. 61–72). On the one hand, the Orient itself is an other that passively receives the West’s gaze. On the other hand, the Orient now gazes back. Tam’s fashion work brings out new femininity in traditional Chinese women’s embroidery work, which not only creates a successful market space but also reconstructs cultural and gender expressions in terms of aesthetics. Her art is a notable contemporary attempt to present a traditional ornamental art in the process of evolution. In this new expression, political and commercial meanings are more important than expressions of specifically female forms of creativity, life experiences or physical constraints (Man 2016, pp. 61–72). Beyond literary depictions and handicrafts, matters of the body are manifested even more explicitly in sexuality norms. I, therefore, explored the subject of kissing in China —a theme that has not been commonly investigated (Man 2016, pp. 73–84). Kissing in different cultural contexts may signify respect, social ritual, friendship, romantic feeling, passionate love, sexual temptation or happiness that may be momentary or even eternal. Kissing in China, however, has traditionally been taken as a specific sexual behaviour. In this tradition, the act of kissing has been restricted to the private space of the bedchamber, and this explains why Western visitors to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China provided no records of Chinese people kissing each other in public. I show that for a long time in China there was no specific word for kissing. There were very few public discussions of the practice, except in certain Daoist discourses related to the art of the bedchamber. By examining kissing in China as a form of eroticism and by examining traditional points of view on this activity, especially the functional concepts of female bodies in the terms of the benefits their sexual postures can bring to the males, I have also laid a foundation for looking at kissing in its contemporary social context and investigating how it is further constructed. Chinese landscape design should be an extension of philosophical reflection on bodily experience. My previous study compares Arnold Berleant’s recent work on the nature and experience of a Chinese garden with Confucian descriptions of landscape and garden (Man 2016, pp. 101–112). I review Berleant’s notes on the subject in terms of the object relations, bodily reactions and aesthetic feelings experienced in the environment of a Chinese garden. I compare Berleant’s writing about his experience in a Chinese garden with the comparable reflections of Tang Chun I. In his influential work Zhongguo Wenhua de Jinshen Jiaji (The Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture), Tang (1978) proposes a metaphysical manifestation in the design of traditional Chinese architecture and gardening, with an interactive

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relation between man and Nature. This view expands on Berleant’s observations, as is suggested by Tang’s bodily notions of “hiding,” “maintaining,” “resting” or “travelling” in a Chinese garden. The parallel observations of the two writers invite a comparison of aesthetics and critical responses. Berleant claims that Daoism is the key to understanding the Chinese scholar’s garden and that Daoist philosophy functions as a pervasive perceptual presence, providing a cognitive undertone. Berleant (2004, pp. 95–98) also considers the Chinese garden as a landscape that represents the Daoist ideal of wu-wei, or no action, which is one of the key notions suggested throughout his book. Tang, however, regards the Daoist idea of travelling as the basis for the aesthetics of these gardens. This view integrates the physical freedom of the body and the metaphysical transcendence of the mind. I use Qing garden, Geyuan (個園) in Yangzhou, China, which I have visited as a case study that perfectly demonstrates Berleant’s observation. It is said that all of the elements and parts of the garden are designed to blend gently together and show the harmonious forces of the Nature (Berleant 2012, p. 136). In Tang’s words, to experience landscape aesthetics is “to (let the body) follow the Dao of Nature, getting oneself in tune with the underlying rhythms of the seasons, the plants, the very universe, so that there was no discrepancy between inner being and outer reality.” (Tang 1978, p. 395). I can see a lot of correspondence between Berleant’s landscape aesthetics and Chinese aesthetics. These different views supplement and enrich each other, showing the potential for mutual benefit in such cross-cultural dialogue. The presentation of women’s body art is informative and extremely revealing to the subject I am exploring. I have chosen the bodywork by the Chinese female artist He Chengyao as an exemplary study. This artist provides a series of very interesting and explicit subversions of traditional notions concerning female beauties (meiren) and of various globalized female beauty myths (Man 2011, pp. 171–191). Her extreme body art and her performances also depict the political agendas underlying the Chinese contemporary historical context. I focus on this artist’s works since the early 2000s, including more than 20 representative body artworks that reference real family histories and national political affairs in contemporary China. My approach to this study is based on both cultural and cross-cultural perspectives. I aim to demonstrate the artistic functions and political agendas expressed by the extreme displays of pain and emotional “scars” in these works (Man 2011, pp. 171– 191). I explore the gendered accusations and resistances implied in He’s works and relate these observations to the issues of global feminism and the female beauty industry within the contemporary Chinese economic context. This survey of female body art in China echoes Amelia Jones’s observations that body art is one of the most dramatic and radical types of cultural production (Jones 1998, p. 5). He’s work incorporates socialist, family and gender peculiarities into a series of subversive and accusative gestures. The boldness, roughness and violence projected onto the female body are demonstrations of body politics. The juxtaposed nude bodies of her mother and her son present powerful messages about political history. The liberation of Chinese bodies and their public showing in this artist’s work conveys contrasting notions of freedom and captivity (Man 2011, pp. 171–191). I have focused my study on Chinese female body aesthetics, and relate political developments to changes in the notion of female beauty (meiren) in China. I divide

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this survey into two parts, in which I address these two overlapping issues: How can the related discourses and developments concerning the female body be understood within the particular historical and cultural context of China? How can these discourses be related to various other factors such as economic and political developments? My questions also concern the treatment of males as the speaking subjects in the Chinese patriarchal system. How do male imaginations (especially those represented by the literati) construct the ideal and the aesthetic quality of women’s bodies through the projection of their own wishes, regrets or fantasies? (Man 2000b, pp. 169–196). My findings from the review of the philosophical discussion of female beauty in the Chinese tradition are followed by those of a contextual study of the development and construction of the feminine ideals in the courtesan culture of late Imperial China. I illustrate how the notion of female beauty has been represented and redefined by male literati at certain points of political and economic change in China. I then extend this study to the contemporary notion of female beauty in Communist China, which has departed from older traditions to follow the capitalist West (Man 2013, pp. 368–384). The global economy obviously has a major effect on the perceptions offemale beauty in China today. A series of multicultural and historical factors have set in motion a process of rapid formation and construction, resulting in monolithic fad-like trends in women’s fashion and appearance in PRC. However, when discussing the issue of contemporary female beauty in China, its contestation within the turbulent history of modern China deserves serious consideration. This subject requires examination of the policies, promotions and regulations imposed by China’s state apparatus (Man 2013, pp. 368–384). I suggest that certain factors have been constant in the contemporary discourses of Chinese female beauty, but also that the discourses on female beauty have passed through three cultural phases during the twentieth century. As commonly set by Chinese historians, these phases are the “enlightening period” (from 1919 to 1949), the “degradation period” from (1949 to 1978) and the “awakening period” (from 1978 to 2000). The related female beauty discourses and the built-in political burdens and social implications as they appeared in these phases are reviewed. The ways of how the themes are emerging in each of these periods and developed through related cultural, political and economic discourses are also discussed. The study process involves collecting historical images of Chinese women and studying their representations, which covers the “jianmei women” of the 1930s, the “iron ladies” of the socialist regime and the “Olympic girls” during the 2008 Beijing Games as subjects for contrast and reflective discourse (Man 2013, pp. 368–384). The 2008 Beijing Olympics hoopla had already produced new forms of female beauty. Female students who dreamed of being Olympic volunteers frequented English training centres, gyms and body beauty parlours. The stories of these young girls and their harsh self-discipline were reported in the media with reference to the emergence of a new self that was not only historically and culturally specific, but also tailor-made as an object of national pride (Man 2013, pp. 368–384). I conclude that although the “Olympic girl” image has been yet another process of normalization in the history of China, one may query the origins of the ideas involved and the reasons they have become the new standards of female beauty for representing China today. It is obvious that certain traditional bodily appearances have been

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appropriated and incorporated, yet the new images have also been seriously reduced and designed to fit international and global imaginations concerning “Chinese beauties.” (Man 2013, pp. 368–384). The making of Olympic girls can also be read as an updated “domestication of cosmopolitanism,” with implications like those previously stated. Through tailor-made female bodily construction, this new development involves renegotiating China’s place in the world. The promotion of a new image is motivated by the desire for global recognition of the country’s wealth, resources and greatness (Man 2013, pp. 368–384). Psychoanalysis and the diagnosis of women’s psychopathology in feudal China is definitely another vital issue for understanding Chinese women’s lives, physically and mentally. The first application of modern psychoanalysis to the case study of female literati from the seventeenth century deserves recognition. This study, drafted in 1922, was conducted by Pan Guangdan 潘光旦 (1899–1967) and it analyzed the young female writer Feng Xiaoqing 馮小青 (1595–1612) (Man 2016, pp. 154–174). The study first gives Pan’s diagnosis of the woman’s mental illness and his appropriation of the concepts of psychoanalysis, which were new to China at the time. My study of the case gives Pan’s understanding of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical model and his theory of narcissism, and his reviews of the application of that theory to the historical context of China in the 1920s. In that era, Western modernization was seen as an obvious model for China’s national progress. The study also provides Pan’s observations on the conditions of life for women in feudal China and the implications for sex education in Pan’s own era (Man 2016, pp. 154–174). My evaluation of this study concludes with a reassessment of Pan’s views in light of recent feminist critiques, particularly of Freud’s narcissistic theory, and more generally of psychoanalysis as a whole in relation to the gender issues raised by contemporary feminist psychotherapy. The most important observations Pan makes concern the psychopathological situation of numerous late Ming-era female literati. A diagnosis is offered that these women, as a result of working and living in a repressive feudal and patriarchal social situation, commonly suffered from mental illness. They are also diagnosed as commonly suffering from tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases (Man 2016, pp. 154–174). Pan’s psychoanalytical reading is that these problems resulted from sexual repression, resulting in mental imbalance and physical weakness. Pan sees a connection between tuberculosis, depression and other psychological disorders. Pan’s meticulous case study of Xiaoqing was the first of its kind in China, and it paved the way for further gender studies, women’s histories and reflections on the sexual history and psychology of women in China. As contextual studies are generally regarded as vital and revealing by feminist scholars, I conduct research based on my own existential experience, which should be an important component and point of departure in terms of methodology in feminist theories. The 1960s was a restless period in many Western countries, and in Hong Kong, this era saw a tremendous political, economic and cultural change. The importance of fashion in women’s lives calls for more attention than is usually given in feminist critiques of consumerism and the subordination of women. Fashion should also be regarded as a locus of the struggle for identity. In Hong Kong during the 1960s, many women were searching for a new female identity via

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fashion. The resulting modernist trend in East Asia can be read as a response to several kinds of social friction: the friction between Western colonizers and the Eastern colonized, between traditional and modern, and between the backwardness of China and the advancement of Hong Kong in both political and cultural dimensions. I, therefore, conduct a parallel reading of the tensions surrounding Hong Kong’s female fashions and the social or political tensions of the city in the 1960s (Man 2016, pp. 175–186). At that time, women attempted to integrate all of these forces by eclectically combining traditional Chinese styles with current Western trends, while remaining rather conservative in their ways of thinking. The conditions of life before and during the 1960s in Hong Kong are recounted, and women’s ways of dressing are reviewed and compared with the contemporary European fashions. Women in the British colony projected their self-images and fantasies onto fashion models, who might appear fast, carefree, naughty, sharp, discriminating, balanced, easygoing, sophisticated, coquettish, serious or ingenuous. At a time when the majority of women in the city were still housewives, students, factory workers or social and family dependents, they began to receive the better levels of education and job opportunities they needed to gain financial independence. They enjoyed more social activities and therefore demanded fashions to cope with their new identities (Man 2016, pp. 175–186). Barthes (1983, p. 243) suggests that the multiplication of personalities in a single being is considered an index of power. This sense of power can be considered one of the reasons for the popularity of new and eclectic fashions in Hong Kong during the 1960s. Women in the colony were building their power via body representations at a time when fashion virtually ceased to exist in Communist China and little was developed in Taiwan or other overseas Chinese communities. The study refers to the sayings of Bhabha (1992, pp. 141–153), who explains that in the post-colonial period women can utilize their own peripheral position to challenge the ideologies in the centre. The behaviour of Hong Kong women in the 1960s demonstrates that fashion can facilitate this kind of challenge. These women discarded the feudal Chinese constraints on females through the liberation of fashionable dress. They responded to the prospect of Hong Kong’s return to a backward Communist China by portraying modern Western designs. They rejected submissive attitudes toward the British government by choosing rebellious ways of dressing and acting in the colonial city (Man 2016, pp. 175–186). The various investigations and their findings mentioned in this chapter serve as useful resources for comparative studies and cross-references on the subject of Chinese female bodies. These studies provide materials for expanded reading on this subject and for a review of theoretical frameworks. As a body of research, these studies illustrate the core philosophical questions that appear to be basic for comparative research and dialogue among Chinese philosophies, feminist critiques and contextual studies. The interdisciplinary approach is recommended and practised as it integrates philosophical enquiries with contextual methodology and empirical studies, and this integration echoes the main agenda of both the feminist and the Confucian philosophies in their aims for the inclusive ethical concerns and the betterment of human life. I find these efforts in critical research useful and beneficial. Case studies in my research experience offer a lot of fun and reflection, which are especially helpful for enlivening the dry, abstract and isolated practice of philosophical enquiry as traditionally known in the West.

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References Barthes, Roland. 1983. The Fashion System. New York: Hill and Wang. Berleant, Arnold. 2004. Re-Thinking Aesthetics: Rogue Essays on Aesthetics and the Arts. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Berleant, Arnold. 2012. Aesthetics Beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays. Farnham, UK; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. Bhabha, Homi. 1992. The World and the Home. Social Text, no. 31/32, pp. 141–153. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge. Cheng, Chung-Ying. 1991. New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gatens, Moira. 1996. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, and Corporeality. New York: Routledge. Gatens, Moira. 1999. Power, Bodies and Difference. In Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, ed. Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, 227–234. New York: Routledge. Göttner-Abendroth, Heide. 1986. Nine Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic. In Feminist Aesthetics, ed. Gisela Ecker, 81–94. Boston: Beacon Press. Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Jones, Amelia. 1998. Body Art/Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Man, Eva Kit Wah. 2000a. Contemporary Feminist Body Theories and Mencius’s Ideas of Body. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 27 (2): 155–169. Man, Eva Kit Wah. 2000b. Female Bodily Aesthetics, Politics, and Feminine Ideals of Beauty in China. In Beauty Matters, ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand, 169–196. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Man, Eva Kit Wah. 2004. Reclaiming the Body: Francis Bacon’s Fugitive Bodies and Confucian Aesthetics on Bodily Express. Contemporary Aesthetics, Vol. 2, 621–631. Australia: Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd. Man, Eva Kit Wah. 2011. Expression Extreme and History Trauma in Female Bodily Art in China: The Case of He Cheng Yao. In Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Mary Bittner Wiseman and Yuedi Liu, 171–191. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing. Man, Eva Kit Wah. 2012. Female Bodily Aesthetics and Their Early Revelations in the Book of Songs. In Overt and Covert Treasures: Essays on the Sources for Chinese Women’s History, ed. Clara Wing-Chung Ho, 113–130. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. Man, Eva Kit Wah. 2013. Beauty and the State: Female Bodies as State Apparatus and Recent Beauty Discourse in China. In Brand, Peg, ed. Beauty Unlimited, 368–384. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Man, Eva Kit Wah. 2016. Bodies in China: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender, and Politics. New York: State University of New York Press; Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Mou, Chung San. 1974. Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy. Taiwan: Commercial Press. Tang, Chun I. 1978. Spiritual Values of Chinese Culture. Taiwan: Ching Chung Book Stores.

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Title: CHINESE EMBROIDERY AN ILLUSTRATED STITCH GUIDE Author: SHAO XIAOCHENG Year: 2014 Credit: SHANGHAI PRESS, BETTER LINK PRESS; HARDCOVER WITH JACKET EDITION

Part IV

Learning

Chapter 12

A Historical Review and Reflection on the Confucian “the Great Learning” and Its Contemporary Implications for Higher Education

12.1

A Brief Historical Review of the Controversies and the Meaning of Education in the Great Learning

The Great Learning (Da Xue 大學), originally the forty-second chapter of the Book of Rites in Han, was extracted by the Cheng brothers, Cheng Hao (程灝 1032– 1085) and Cheng Yi (程頤 1033–1107) of the Song dynasty. Then follow the other Song scholar, Zhu Xi (朱熹 1130–1200), who later groups The Doctrine of the Mean, another chapter of the Book of Rites, with The Analects and The Book of Mencius to form the so-called Four Books. Zhu wrote Commentaries for the books, and they form the basis for civil service examinations in China from 1313 to 1905. People have claimed that The Great Learning sums up the Confucian educational, moral, and political programs. Though this chapter will soon investigate the debates of The Great Learning’s Confucian orthodoxy, I still think Zhu Xi’s citation of Cheng Yi is an appropriate introduction to the book. A common assumption is that “The Great Learning is a surviving work of the Confucian school and is the gate through which beginning students enter into virtue, and it is only because of the preservation of this work that the order in which the ancients pursued their learning can be seen at this time.” (Liu 1998, p. 57).

This chapter was originally published as “A Historical Review and Reflection on the Confucian “Great Learning” and its Contemporary Implications for Higher Education,” in Mak, King Sang (ed.), Transmitting The Ideal of Enlightenment: Chinese Universities since the Late Nineteenth Century (Maryland: University Press of America Inc., 2009), pp. 135–148. The original article has been revised, re-edited and published with the permission of University Press of America. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_12

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The Three Principles and the Eight Items

The Great Learning is summarized as the so-called three principles and eight items, which was outlined in Chap. 6 of this book. The first paragraph establishes the three principles, which signal the ideal of inward sageness (nei-sheng 內聖). The subsequent text extends these principles to others and refers to the ideal of outward kingliness (wai-wang 外王). Supreme good would be achieved when both inward and outward aspects are taken care of. For the three principles, the text1 says: “The Way of the great learning consists in manifesting illustrious virtue, loving the people, and abiding (zhi 致), in the highest good.” (Chan 1963, pp. 86–87). Manifesting one’s illustrious virtue is said to be a subjective requirement of an educated person, loving the people is a behavioural requirement, and abiding (zhi) in the highest good is a combined requirement of an educated person’s psychological and behavioral attitudes. Although one reading is that all the manifesting, loving and abiding should apply to all the domains of illustrious virtue, people and the highest good, the three principles follow the main direction of ancient Confucian education, which is self-cultivation. We should note that both Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi present another reading of the second principle: instead of reading it as “loving the people” (qin min 親民), they have suggested “renewing the people” (xin min 新民) (Chan 1963, p. 86). Zhu comments that the term “renewing” means the abolition of bad old orientations and that it strongly implies reformation and cultivation. Thus he says: “Therefore, the superior man tries at all times to do his utmost (in renewing himself and others).” (Chan 1963, p. 87). Zhu’s other debatable radical reading arrives at two of the eight items, which starts from the discussion of the mind in the second paragraph. The text says: Only after knowing what to abide in can one be calm. Only after calm can one be tranquil. Only after having peaceful repose can one begin to deliberate. Only after deliberation can the end be attained. Things have their roots and their branches. To know what is first and what is last will lead one near the Way.

Then the third paragraph introduces the eight items needed to realize Confucian ideals, first within the individual, then extending to society, and finally to the world. The text says: The ancients who wished to manifest their illustrious virtue to the world would first bring order to the states. Those who wished to regulate their states would first regulate their families. Those who wished to regulate their families would first cultivate their personal lives. Those who wished to cultivate their personal lives would first rectify their minds. Those who wished to rectify their minds would first make their wills sincere. Those who wish their wills sincere would first extend their knowledge. The extension of knowledge [zhi-zhi 致知] consists in the investigation of things [ge-wu 格物]. When things are investigated, knowledge is extended; when knowledge is extended, the will becomes sincere, when the will is sincere, the mind is rectified; when the mind is rectified, personal life

1

The English translations of the quotations in this chapter are from Chan (1963).

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is cultivated; when personal life is cultivated, the family will be regulated; when the family is regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there will be peace throughout the world.

The important paragraph quoted above can be read as the eight items, or the five steps and the three items, all in strict order, leading to the complete actualization of an educated person. The steps in order are the investigation of things (ge-wu); the extension of knowledge (zhi-zhi); the making of the will (or intention) sincere; the rectification of the mind; and the cultivation of personal life. All these signal inward sageness. And the three items in order are regulating the family; putting the state in order; and establishing peace throughout the world. All these signal outward kingliness (Liu 1998, p. 59). Zhu Xi’s controversial interpretation arrives at the base of all the necessary steps and items, which are the investigation of things (ge-wu) and the extension of knowledge (zhi-zh). According to Zhu, the “three principles” and the “eight items” are all clearly explained, except the sections on ge-wu and zhi-zhi.2 He finds that each of the three principles and the eight items have explanatory comments except for the ge-wu; therefore, it is important for him to complete the “perfect” edition, and he offers a correct reading based on his own understanding of the text. This results in his famous “supplementary commentary” (pu-chuan) the ge-wu zhi-zhi passage. We should note that Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Confucian Classics were made the official texts in the civil service examination from 1313, despite the fact that the debates around his reading have a significant impact on the de-canonization of The Great Learning. One impact comes from the famous philosophical battle between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiang Shan (陸象山 1139–93), a contemporary influential Confucian in Sung, on the notion of “ge-wu.” According to analysis reviewed by neo-Confucian scholars, Zhu Xi favours an intellectual or discursive approach to the term ge-wu, or investigation of things, whereas Lu champions an intuitive approach (Chow 1999, pp. 151–152). Zhu is said to stress the need to examine knowledge as much as possible, both moral and non-moral, while Lu’s intuitive approach emphasizes moral effort and introspection, relegating the pursuit of discursive knowledge to secondary importance. The disagreement between Zhu and Lu has led to reductive approaches conducted by a series of Lu’s followers, who simply reject The Great Learning as a Confucian text and challenge Zhu’s position as a genuine Confucian scholar.3 However, Zhu Xi’s exposition of the text remained the dominant view in the Ming dynasty until the greatest challenge in the sixteenth century from another influential Confucian scholar Wang Yang Ming (王陽明 1472–1529). In Wang’s view, the lack of focus in Zhu’s intellectualist program of moral cultivation would only lead

2

Reading of this debate mainly refers to Chow (1999, pp. 151–152). Like Lu’s disciple Yang Chien, whose opposition to the text was based on his reading that the text contained ideas incompatible with those of Confucius himself. This strategy of denial was one of the most frequently used weapons in intellectual debates over exposition of texts. 3

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the literati astray (Chow 1999, pp. 151–152). Let us review Zhu’s original commentary on these two steps and then the other six items of The Great Learning in order.

12.2.1 The Investigation of Things (Ge-Wu) Zhu Xi refers to the expression, “the perfection of knowledge depends on the investigation of things (ge-wu),” in his commentary (Chan 1963, p. 89). Cheng (1991, pp. 100–101), a contemporary Chinese scholar, tries to supplement this reading by introducing the concept of Chinese causality. In Chinese causality things or events belong to an order originating from the source of the totality of things. This order of orders is called li. Thus, to investigate things is not to seek laws governing the individual relationships of things but to understand their holistic orientation, to classify and coordinate different types of things and individual events into correlative orders and patterns. The reading of another contemporary scholar, Liu Shu-Hsien, presents a syllogistic reading: that the first step in the great learning is to instruct the learner about all things in the world, to proceed from the knowledge one has of their principles, and to investigate further until one reaches the limit. After exerting oneself on this road for a long time, one will eventually arrive at a wide and far-reaching penetration into Dao or the Way of things. Then the qualities of all things, whether internal or external, will be apprehended and the mind will be perfectly intelligent (Liu 1998, p. 60). One can read the meaning in Zhu Xi’s further comments: If we wish to extend our knowledge to the utmost, we must investigate the principles of all things we come into contact with, for the intelligent mind of man is certainly formed to know, and there is not a single thing in which its principles do not inhere. It is only because all principles are not investigated that man’s knowledge is incomplete. For this reason, the first step in the education of the adult is to instruct the learner, in regard to all things in the world, to proceed from what knowledge he has of their principles, and investigate further until he reaches the limit. After exerting himself in this way for a long time, he will one day achieve a wide and far-reaching penetration. Then, the qualities of all things, whether external or internal, the refined or the coarse, will all be apprehended, and the mind, in its total substance and great functioning, will be perfectly intelligent. This is called the investigation of things. This is called the perfection of knowledge. (Chan 1963, p. 89)

The investigation of things would lead to the extension of knowledge (zhi-zhi).

12.2.2 The Extension of Knowledge (Zhi-Zhi) We should note that the so-called “perfection of knowledge” or the “perfectly intelligent” in either the sense of Zhu or Lu is not limited to the knowledge of things but is instead the knowledge of virtues as the final goal. The extension of

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knowledge is believed to refine and sharpen the judging abilities of one’s moral conscience (liang-zhi 良知), which is also related to its law or its source. It is believed that there are universal moral qualities. All the moral qualities or virtues an individual develops in relating oneself to others are not arbitrary but have an objective status derived from the ultimate nature (Dao) or the benevolent Way of things. Thus, the extension of knowledge should also be the extension of moral knowledge, or awareness (zhi-liang-zhi 致良知). We should remember that Zhu Xi’s younger contemporary Lu Xiang Shan (1139–1193), and later Wang Yang Ming (1472–1529) in the Ming dynasty, both give a different meaning to the notion of an extension of knowledge (ge-wu). Lu feels strongly that the investigation of empirical knowledge has little relevance to personal cultivation or to the formation of one’s moral character. However, Zhu is convinced that all things in the world have principles that are the manifestation of the same principle of Heaven or Dao. The investigation of things to a certain point would bring about enlightenment of the ultimate creative principle that is the origin of all things and values (Liu 1998, p. 60).

12.2.3 Sincere Intention (Cheng-Yi) We can read the syllogistic chain of The Great Learning that Zhu Xi suggests, which begins with the investigation of things and ends with bringing order and peace to the world. The proposal is that sincere intention is one of the key links in-between. The text says: “allowing no self-deception, as when we hate a bad smell and as when we love what is beautiful.” An agreeable reading is that those things one cannot feel directly one must judge in terms of right and wrong, true and false, by appealing to a standard; and one will have no standard without investigating things and obtaining true knowledge of them. Only when one’s intentions are made sincere in the light of truth and the right, can one’s mind be said to be rectified and not be guided by individual prejudices and selfish interests (Cheng 1991, pp. 227– 230).

12.2.4 The Rectification of Mind (Zheng-Xin 正心) As the analysis above shows, the investigation of knowledge traces the ultimate truth that guides a person’s sincere intentions, which then ends in the rectification of mind. Thus, knowledge acquired from the investigation of things is called “knowing the fundamental” (zhi-ben 知本). The text says: “Things have their roots and their branches. Affairs have their beginnings and their ends. To know what is first and what is last will lead one near the Way.” (Chan 1963, p. 86). This necessary knowledge is the result of the rectification of mind.

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Cheng (1991, pp. 227–230) points out that there are two types of connections or syllogistic chains in The Great Learning. The first type is what is described above, from investigating things to attaining knowledge, to making sincere intentions, to rectifying one’s mind, and finally to cultivating a person—which are the five steps. The second type is extending the scope of one’s moral action, linking cultivating a person to regulating the family, then to governing a state well (zhi-guo 治國), and finally to bringing peace to the world (ping-tian-xia 平天下)—which are the three items.

12.2.5 Self-cultivation Here comes the reading that the rectification of mind ends with virtues, which must then be constantly cultivated so that growth and the completion of mind activity as a value-determining activity can be made. This is the ideal of “sagehood” (or sageness), where harmonization of the inner feelings and the feelings of others is achieved, and also the achievement of constant freedom and creativity of oneself. Yet we can add that this point is not fully explicated until Wang Yang Ming does it in the sixteenth century (Cheng 1991, p. 256, 260).

12.2.6 Regulating the Family Zhu Xi’s commentary on this notion is that: […] there are few men in the world who know what is bad in those whom they love and what is good in those whom they dislike. […] This is what is meant by saying that if the personal is not cultivated, one cannot regulate his family. (Chan 1963, p. 90)

An elaboration is that a person’s family will be regulated in the sense that each person in the family will behave correctly according to his or her position (Cheng 1991, p. 229).

12.2.7 Governing the State Well The syllogistic extension is that one who has achieved the regulation of one’s family can be a virtuous example for people outside that family. This practice of virtue for a man in the position of ruling a state is called governing the state well (Cheng 1991, p. 227–230).

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12.2.8 Harmony in the World If a state is well governed, there is no doubt that the whole world could be ordered following the state’s example. We can see that the investigation of things and the attainment of true knowledge finally lead to social harmony and political order in the world.

12.3

The Three Principles as the Ultimate Goals of Learning

12.3.1 Illustrating the Illustrious Virtue (Ming-Ming-de 明明德) In The Great Learning, to seek true knowledge is the same as “to illustrate illuminating virtue” (the so-called ming-ming-de), for true knowledge refers to the knowledge of the ultimate value that is the foundation of all virtues. Moral knowledge is said to unveil the nature of humankind and the human potentiality for achieving social harmony and political order. This goes beyond individual wisdom for attaining well-being (Cheng 1991, pp. 227–230).

12.3.2 Loving and Renovating (or Renewing) People (Qin-Min) To combine the original text and Zhu Xi’s reading of the notion, qin-min—which is the second principle in The Great Learning, loving and renewing people—refers to a deeper meaning of fulfilling the nature of people and things.

12.3.3 Resting in the Supreme Good (Zhi-Yü-Zhi-Shan 止於至善) The last principle of learning is to attain and preserve the power of ultimate goodness. It is understood that social participation involves a series of transformation and creation, and is grounded on knowledge and practice in one’s ethical and political life.

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Knowledge and Practice, the Sageness Within and the Kingliness Without

Though The Great Learning begins with the investigation of external things, this step is still humanistic in the sense that it aims at the source and the higher order that, according to Confucian beliefs, governs both the natural and the human worlds and their values. Despite the controversies between, on the one hand, Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, who emphasize descriptive and empirical knowledge, and, on the other hand, Lu Xiang Shan and Wang Yang Ming, who focus on moral intuition and evaluative knowledge; scholars usually agree that the investigation of things in the full context of The Great Learning refers to the order beyond—and covers—both types of knowledge. Descriptive knowledge refers to things outside one’s mind, and Confucians think it can facilitate correct judgments. But learning must also entail the cultivation of one’s intentions and the rectification of mind, which cannot happen without a practical dimension of commitment to values and goals. This is the Confucian golden rule of “The Sageness within and the Kingliness Without.” Cheng (1991, pp. 157–158) makes three points about the golden rule: Firstly, Confucians make no particular qualitative distinction between ethical relations in a family and those in society. Political and social relationships are equally treated as deeply ethical, for they are all matters for the cultivation of oneself. Secondly, it is essential that one should cultivate oneself internally before relating to others in a family, state, and the world. This means that the process of internal cultivation should continue with the process of relating externally, which will reinforce moral consciousness to rest in the supreme good of the family, state, and the world. Third, the actuality and practice of relating oneself to others are reciprocal virtues that will enhance the ability of one’s mind or the internal self, in the sense that one must be educated before being subject first to the system of rites of society and regulations of a state. The external considerations of society and state and their ordering, in return, determine and guide the inner growth of individuals (Cheng 1991, pp. 204– 205). We should note that the Confucian belief of knowledge of oneself and the good, and what things or states constitute correct behaviours, is different from the classic Socratic conception of “know thyself”. Confucians believe that moral will is between one’s knowing and behaving, that it could be nurtured through a deeper understanding of the way behind all things. This is what The Great Learning calls the self-cultivation of the individual. As Cheng (1991, pp. 227–230) points out, through the five steps and the three items are intimately related in an order moving from within to without, and to attainments solidifying within, The Great Learning exemplifies how knowledge guides—and is completed by—practice. Unity and a dynamic whole are then formed with the growing process of one’s practical personality and a harmonious world.

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Postmodernism and Neo-Conservative Views on Education

In the conclusion of the text, it says: “From the Son of Heaven down to common people, all must regard cultivation of personal life as the root or foundation.” (Chan 1963, p. 87). This leads to our speculation on how this is treasured in the postmodern era and in our contemporary higher education. Though The Great Learning has drawn hermeneutical debates grounded in contesting ideologies to establish and de-establish its authorship, and the reductionist attempt that eliminates or denies the fluidity, heterogeneity, and complexity of its text, the book nevertheless remains the most influential canon of Chinese education philosophy, as well as a meaningful resource for comparative education studies (Cheng 1991, pp. 159–160). Humanities education has undergone such a big change generally that it demands genuine reviews of scholars. Crane (1967, p. 7) suggests a definition that can be traced back to a Latin grammarian of the second century, who defined the humanities simply as “education and training in the good arts” or disciplines. Those who earnestly desire and seek out these arts are said to become highly humanized, in the sense of being endowed with the virtues and knowledge that separate humans most markedly from lower animals. Crane points out that this definition identifies the humanities not with certain subjects of study or with the pursuit of certain abstract ends, but with the proper cultivation of certain arts or disciplines, that is, of certain means. We are all too familiar with the four principal groups of humanistic methods or arts: those of language; of conceptions and reasons; of literary and artistic criticism; and, finally, those that give the knowledge and understanding of particular historical situations and causes. Crane (1967, p. 9) claims that these are the arts of the humanities and that their convergence is humanistic in the most complete degree. This concept of the humanities also recalls the notion of a Renaissance “man” who tries to “embrace all knowledge” and “develop all his capacities as fully as possible.” We would invariably think of a poet, scientist, mathematician, “gentleman,” artist, and astronomer all in one. Every educated “man” of the Renaissance supposedly seeks the fullest education possible and accomplishes his goals by spending his entire life as a student and an educator. We would invariably think of Leonardo da Vinci, or Leon Battista Alberti, who was also a skilled horseman. However, this formation of a Renaissance “man” that has long been the ideal in the study of the humanities is now widely seen and rejected as superficial. As Proctor (1988, p. 144) suggests in his Education’s Great Amnesia, ever since the hegemony of classical education was subverted in the last century, our humanities curriculum has slowly degenerated into a smorgasbord of courses with no focus, unity, or integrating design. Common critiques of the humanities education today include the following, that it focuses on the technology and techniques of teaching; it tyrannizes the present with no sense of the past, resulting in present experience as an intellectual vacuum; and obviously, its disenchantment with traditions. Finally, it expands instrumental rationality; posits a radical dichotomy

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between mind and nature, the knowing subject and the natural world, and cognition and emotion (Proctor 1988, p. 159). Some propose that the urgent task is to engage ourselves in a dialogue with our past. Proctor (1988, p. 144) even urges us to recapture the ancient vision of the unity of all beings. Others like Bloom (1987) make a case for teaching the arts and humanities with an emphasis on “the classics,” claiming that in the absence of traditional training, students were descending to a lower moral plane. But before elaborating on all these, we should also clarify anxieties about the postmodern condition. One of these is fragmentation. A description is that the world lacks a unifying core and is instead a series of chaotically related events (Bradburd 1997, p. 97). There is a common saying that “post-modernism refuses to privilege any one perspective, and recognizes only difference; never inequality, only fragments, never conflicts” (Wilson 1988). Postmodernism challenges global and all-encompassing world views, whether political, religious, or social: distrusting modernity’s moral claims, traditional institutions and all kinds of “deep interpretations”. It does not only remain in perpetual self-critiquing confusion but also leads to disenfranchisement, which demands that everything should be questioned and under suspicion (Bradburd 1997, p. 100). But one may also see the values of postmodernism when its disenchantment with “truth” is more noticeable to humanities educators (Bradburd 1997, p. 101). Educators are urged to promote the critical capacity to challenge and transform existing social and political forms and to provide the convictions and compassion necessary for exercising civic courage (Giroux 1996, p. 690). These hopes may be the reasons that post-modernity is seen as smart and as a “reconstitution of utopian thought” (Schmoker 1997, p. 29). This mentality is so different from the conservative or the neo-conservative views of education. What distinguishes neoconservative views on education is said to be their promotion of falsely objectified and depoliticized disciplinary knowledge at the expense of diverse student experiences, and of a monolithic set of exclusionary cultural values at the expense of critical reflection. The neo-conservative curriculum agenda specifically challenges a multi-perspective approach to the curriculum and most of all, the value of individual human experience (Fleener 2002, p. 37). Yet, despite the debates between the education model of postmodernism and that of neo-conservatism, we may have to agree with the saying that the times we are living in call for not only a great investment in intellectual patterns, but also a psychic investment of faith in our better humanity (Hayes 1998, p. 301). There is also a search for post-material values, a person’s need for affirmation, a new vision that has “a vital balance of spirituality and social action,” and a different set of assumptions that are more spiritual and transcendental (Smith and Wexler 1995, p. 73). While all these echo the educational ideals of The Great Learning, we should remember that in its era the emphasis is on social awareness, that people know a great deal about the conditions that reproduce society and their own position within it. This explains also the emphasis on action and knowledge (Funnell 1995, p. 172). Teachers used to have a disregard for the codes and values of economic policies, yet

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today we are sharing the description that when teaching jobs disappear, schools close, class sizes expand, and colleges are compelled to consider legislation and find more resources, the so-called economic rationalism is pushing teachers toward a denial of a self-founded on educational values and moral worth (Funnell 1995, p. 165). Can educators and learners turn to the old wisdom of The Great Learning to strive for moral and psychological capacities to intervene and reverse the situation?

12.6

Future Prospects of the Humanities Education: Contemporary Implications of the Great Learning

Instead of advocating the negative saying that postmodernism is itself an oppressive, forceful collision of symbols, images, and icons, my argument will side with Lyotard’s positive prospects of postmodern knowledge. He describes it as positive notions of “know-how,” “knowing how to live,” and “how to listen” (Lyotard 1993, pp. 73–74). Lyotard’s reading of one of the principal features of knowledge coincides with that of The Great Learning: both regard knowledge as constituted by the harmony of the inner self and outer practice. Lyotard (1993, p. 75) says things are judged to be “good” because they conform to the relevant criteria (of justice, beauty, truth, and efficiency respectively) accepted in the social circle of the “knower’s” interlocutors. The consensus that permits such knowledge is what constitutes the culture of a people. He said that “people” (a community, a nation) and their political institutions formulate prescriptions of knowledge that lead to norms. These prescriptions range from ethical knowledge and even to the sciences; they legitimize narratives and the validity of knowledge (Lyotard 1993, p. 87). Formation of knowledge, which is a tool of harmony, thus has to go through a series of social institutions from the family to the state and finally to the world. This reminds us of Zhu Xi’s notion of investigating things. He claims that when the investigation reaches the limit, one will achieve a wide and far-reaching penetration, then the qualities of all things in their total substance and great functioning will be perfectly comprehended. This will facilitate our moral responses to the manipulation of things. To give this reading a contemporary understanding is that not only does genuine knowledge help us deal with practical needs, it can also help us resist seduction, for example, the “false needs” in Marcuse’s sense, and hence increases the quality of our public and private decisions (Hayes 1998, p. 248). The investigation and comprehension Zhu Xi advocates should also include the meaningful experience one forms with family and friends and the society members that Lyotard suggests. The form of inquiry and enthusiastic learning can resist the blind obedience and the repressive authority that others attribute to postmodernity. This echoes Zhu Xi’s implication that one experiences human quality through intellectual patterns and understanding, though ironically, Zhu himself is accused of having a dominating attitude toward reorganizing and reinterpreting the text.

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Our reading of the traditional Confucian text The Great Learning has disclosed the contemporary implications for humanities education. Firstly, as Cheng (1991, pp. 157–158) has clearly explicated, the text refers to a dynamic and ontological identification of the mind or self with Heaven or the Way that would provide senses of righteousness when an individual always is situated within a network of social, political or ethical relationships. One should have a sympathetic understanding of the philosophical or religious attitude toward Heaven or the Way while wondering about the implied postmodernist critique of hegemonic claims or grand narratives. Religious and spiritual themes in Eastern religions have shown insights regarding our relationship with our natural and social environments and in personal and social transformation. These can be regarded as meaningful resources in providing possible meanings and thoughts of life and the values to live by (Smith and Wexler 1995, pp. 72–73). This is well said: “The Great Learning articulates the cultural legacy of the Way or Dao and its all-embracing order, that its sentences can serve as the gateway for learners who wants to enter into virtue.” (Rodeheffer et al. 2000, p. 112). Secondly, the importance of the knowledge of values and norms parallels its practical, volitional, and emotional elements. For what one learns or knows is not simply knowing what to do and how to do it, but also knowing what is right to do and what one is capable of doing. The Great Learning suggests the three principles, which involve the continuous pursuit of ultimate understanding, harmonious relation with others, and resting with the supreme good, which is claimed to be universal according to the particular context the discourse is in. The five steps of practice in attaining these principles are requested to be exhibited in actual relationships among humans, as it is believed that fully developed individuals offer communities vitality (Hayes 1998, p. 256). Finally, The Great Learning implies one must follow the principle of reciprocity in every action and in every relationship. One cannot know the reality of the ultimate and of our living and social environments without participating in common affairs or fully projecting oneself in an ethical and political life (Cheng 1991, pp. 466–467). It is correct to say that when we compare a “search for meaning’ with “living a meaningful life,” both require participation. Without participation, the tangible meaning is never realized (Hayes 1998, p. 247). All these implications refer to a holistic concept of unity, involving the human mind and the Way; values and practices; individual and society. This unity is the substance of humanities education, which was restricted in the past by dominant and stagnant discourses and traditions, and is now increasingly being recognized in the contemporary world whenever the meaning of learning is reviewed. The conclusion of The Great Learning tells that learning is an act of becoming, and is life long, and learning of our own volition throughout our lives is the key to a meaningful future (Hayes 1998, p. 301). The thousand-year-old text The Great Learning has already promoted a series of personal practices or Kung fu, leading up to the achievement of the supreme good. The process of education performs the positive sides of postmodernity by exploring the self as a primary site of politicization, good potentials and daring thoughts that inspire hopes of the future horizon through social participation.

References

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References Bloom, Allan. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bradburd, D.C. 1997. Postmodern, Humanity, and Art. In Under Construction: The Role of the Arts and Humanities in Postmodern Schooling, ed. Donovan R. Walling. Bloomington: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation. Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cheng, Chung-Ying. 1991. New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Chow, Kai-Wing. 1999. Between Canonicity and Heterodoxy: Hermeneutical Moments of the Great Learning (Ta-hsueh). In Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics, ed. Kai-Wing Chow, On Cho Ng, John B. Henderson, 147–164. Albany: State University of New York Press. Crane, Ronald Salmon. 1967. The Idea of Humanities, and Other Essays Critical and Historical, Vol. 1. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. Fleener, M.Jayne. 2002. Curriculum Dynamics: Recreating Heart. New York: Peter Lang. Funnell, R. 1995. Corporatism, Self and Identity Within Moral Orders: Prestructuralist Reconsiderations of a Poststructuralist Paradox. In After Postmodernism: Education, Politics, and Identity, ed. Richard Allan Smith and Philip Wexler, 156–181. London: Falmer Press. Giroux, H.A. 1996. Towards a Postmodern Pedagogy. In From Modernism to Post Modernism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence E. Cahoone, 687–697. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Hayes, Charles D. 1998. Beyond the American Dream: Lifelong Learning and the Search for Meaning in a Postmodern World. Wasilla, AK: Autodidactic Press. Liu, Shu-Hsien. 1998. Understanding Confucian Philosophy: Classical and Sung-Ming. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Lyotard, J.F. 1993. Excerpts from The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. In A Postmodern Reader, ed. Joseph P. Natoli and Linda Hutcheon, 71–90. Albany: State University of New York Press. Proctor, Robert E. 1988. Education’s Great Amnesia: Reconsidering the Humanities from Petrarch to Freud with a Curriculum for Today’s Students. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rodeheffer, Jane Kelley, David Sokolowski, and J.Scott Lee (eds.). 2000. Core Texts in Conversation. Lanham, Md.: Association for Core Texts and Courses/University Press of America. Schmoker, Michael J. 1997. Contradictions and Consequences in Postmodernism. In Under Construction: The Role of the Arts and Humanities in Postmodern Schooling, ed. Donovan R. Walling. Bloomington: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation. Smith, Richard Allan, and Philip Wexler (eds.). 1995. After Postmodernism: Education, Politics, and Identity. London: Falmer Press. Wilson, Elizabeth. 1988. Hallucinations: Life in the Postmodern City. London: Hutchinson Radius.

Chapter 13

Lao Sze-Kwang’s Discourse on Chinese Philosophy and Contemporary Popular Confucianism in China

The main reference of this chapter is Contemporary Chinese philosopher Lao Sze-Kwang’s anthology, Illusion and Hope: On Contemporary Philosophy and Culture (虛境與希望: 論當代哲學與文化), published in 2003. According to Lao (2003, pp. 57–74), anti-Confucian discourses in contemporary China do not attend to the theoretical content of Confucianism, but rather its functions in and impacts on the society in certain historical situations. For example, Confucianism is discussed in the context of what happened in the late Qing, when the Western invasion brought with it all kinds of cultural challenges. Lao names this xi 勢, the objective situation that has led to certain needs and responses. He differentiates xi from li 理, as it is a matter of success and failure in social reality, rather than a reflection of generally true or false inferences. This distinction explains the main arguments of the anti-Confucianism movement in modern China, which regards traditional Confucian culture as an obstacle to Chinese modernization; anti-Confucianism deems it historically necessary to enable modernization in a given period. Lao (2003, p. 64) argues that traditional Confucian culture had long lost its vigour by the late Qing era and that it was largely destroyed and replaced during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. He admits that the close, inclusive system (封閉 系統) of the traditional culture might have created obstacles to the modernization process of the country in terms of its value system and ways of life, yet these parts are not the whole of Confucianism. It is more sensible to investigate the rationales and effectiveness of the anti-Confucianism movement. One of Lao’s hypotheses is that there is discontent among cultural critics with regard to Chinese Communist rule, mixed with discontent about the cultural traditions in China and that this takes the form of a confusing complex (混亂糾結). This complex involves the sense that Communist China has itself become a form of the tradition opposed by the anti-traditionalists, who aim at reform and modification. However, Lao does not elaborate on the origin of the complex.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_13

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Modernization in China and Its Problematics

Lao (2003, p. 67) presents an organic and holistic view of culture when he discusses modernization. He advocates for the idea of an internal core of a tradition with cultural manifestations in outer layers, such as of ideas, social systems, governance and ways of life. The manifestations are parts of the whole and affect each other. Adopting the view of culture as an organic whole, Lao’s cultural philosophy is clear in his argument that cultural process and progress are given form by the core and its activities. He does not agree with the notion of culture as simply a “complex of facts.” However, the negative sides of his understanding are also very clear, in that culture can grow into forms of inertia, insularity and reclusiveness. The core of a culture—Chinese culture, for instance—also appropriates and incorporates other cultures when they enter its “territory.” Lao’s summary of the critiques of Chinese culture is also notable. He classifies these into two groups: those that assert traditional Chinese culture is an obstacle to modernization, and those that assume modernization can be developed and generated from the cultural core of Confucianism. Lao (2003, p. 72) names Neo-Confucianism a representative of the latter group. Lao’s critique of Neo-Confucianism is that modernization is actually ascribed to and learn (模擬) from Western cultures. While the foundation of modernization is generated from the cores of Western culture, it cannot simply be generated (創生) from the Chinese tradition itself. He suggests China run some of the Western systems, then incorporate them via a process of cultural adaptation and appropriation until a social equilibrium is reached. He does not agree with anti-tradition, argues that it leads to nowhere and instead creates complications and unrest (Lao 2003, p. 74).

13.2

Chinese Philosophy and Philosophy in China

Lao’s suggestion that there is a difference between Chinese philosophy and philosophies in China is consistent with his understanding of culture as an organic core and its generations. Chinese philosophy has a core meaning structure, and its cultural counterparts, namely values and ways of life, develop from this core. This is different from philosophical pursuits conducted in China, which may cover various forms of enquiry and result in a range of thoughts (Lao 2003, p. 26). The meaning structure of Confucianism as the core of Chinese culture gives form to its central tenets through the political structure, social systems and economics throughout the living history of China. When the culture met foreign influences and challenges in modern history, its core values remained, together with its philosophical sensibilities. However, it had gone through the process of incorporating the imported influences before appropriation, evaluating the foreign influences to see if they could be acculturated into equilibrium.

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Lao (2003, p. 91) regards the ways of reception of modernization in China forms of intrusion and argues that the impacts of the process on China have induced crises. Its effects have been forceful due to a sense of backwardness, as well as being functional and instrumental. In the recent history of China, people have pursued technology, weapon-making and advancements in shipping due to the influences of wars and foreign relations, yet without a genuine understanding of the cultural foundation of these Western fascinations. An understanding of the organic cultural core and its outer manifestations results in Lao’s critique of Zhang Zhidong’s (張之洞) notion of “Chinese body and Western Practices” (中體西用), which was an attempt to justify modernization when Sino-European relations were rocky (Lao 2003, p. 94). The Hegelian mode that Lao identifies brings doubts about modernization and uneasy feelings toward the loss of the tradition. He recognizes in Neo-Confucianism a kind of reformation of the core of Confucianism and sees in Chinese Communism insufficient social foundation and historical conditions that have led workers’ revolutions to seek reference in Russia. Lao asks the following question: what part(s) of the Chinese tradition can be modified to make modernization possible and viable, and thus able to produce the results of Western advancements of which reformers are envious? According to Lao (2003, p. 105), there must be something integral to the culture’s core and to the related systems and attitudes in an organic whole. These structural parts can be static, yet there are also dialectical factors driving them in the historical process. Lao’s critique of Neo-Confucianism is that its discourses refer to a static structure without taking into consideration the historical dynamics and social impacts.

13.3

“Orientative Philosophy” (引導性哲學) and “Cognitive Philosophy” (認知性哲學)

One important theoretical distinction raised by Lao (2003, p. 149) is the difference between “orientative philosophy” (引導性的哲學) and “cognitive philosophy” (認 知性的哲學). He suggests that orientative philosophy aims at personal and social transformation, whereas cognitive philosophy enquires about truth claims and so-called objective knowledge. Confucianism, together with its morality discourses, is a form of orientative philosophy according to Lao. Its concern is what a person should become, in contrast to cognitive philosophy, which aim is to “know” and understand things. Lao (2003, p. 150) conducts a detailed reading of Confucianism as a form of moral philosophy and its problematics, at three levels. The first level is the basic reflection on the possibility and necessity of the related moral discourses. The second level is about moral will and moral lives; specifically on what motivates moral acts and their related practices. The third level concerns moral order and moral education, and Lao reminds us of the possibility of replacing discourses of the moral core with social construction theories. Lao (2003, p. 154) argues that the moral core and social perspectives should be interrelated and reviewed as a whole;

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that Confucians should not have confined their attention only to its moral core, which might have caused Confucianism’s detachment from modernization. The Confucians’ emphasis on subjectivity and transcendence has formed a philosophical paradigm very different from both cognitive and social discourses and the empirical sciences. In this context, Lao mentions the social structural and functional model suggested by American sociologist Talcott Parsons, which is Lao’s favourite subject, and contrasts it with the Confucian discourse of subjectivity. He argues that instrumental rationality is the driver of modernity, which poses a great challenge to the transcendental subjectivity that Confucians advocate. Yet Lao adopts an optimistic and open attitude towards the difference between the two modalities, noting that it is under the historical factors that complementation and supplementation between the two drives may happen. Lao (2003, p. 159) therefore suggests the notion of “constructive consciousness,” which is a subject he often discusses in his late thinking. The question remains: what are the open and closed elements in Confucianism that may contribute to its reform when facing the new world order?

13.4

The Future Direction of Chinese Philosophy

Lao (2003, p. 163) says the future direction of Chinese philosophy is to understand and disseminate its particularities and suggest how they could meet social changes, and he mentions two common attitudes that academics advocate regarding Chinese philosophy: one is to understand it with the approach of cultural anthropology, the other is to see its agenda of personal moral transformation in a sense of religious studies. The approach of cultural anthropology, according to Lao, draws our attention to what people practice or do instead of why people do the things and the values of these practices. He also recognizes the mystical and religious characteristics of Chinese philosophy in the eye of Westerners, who adopt a rational approach to philosophy. In addition to the discussion of “orientative philosophy” and “cognitive philosophy,” Lao (2003, p. 167) proposes that Chinese philosophy should become a part of world philosophy and that one should review its “open elements”. An important aspect that Lao attends to is the “Loss of Effects” (失效) of traditional Chinese culture when its traditions and related social structure fail to function in the new era. When modernization becomes necessary, it departs from being an instrumental value to a value in itself. Politics, economics, social structure and all ways of life are expected to follow the path of modernization. “Reform” and “modification” became slogans while the old society was disintegrating under deconstruction and new construction (Lao 2003, p. 192). Yet Lao sees only partial modernization in contemporary China because the movement was basically instrumental in nature, without a genuine understanding of the ethos that supports modernization and the ideology lay within the development of Western culture. Furthermore, the induction of the market economy in China segregated from its

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Western origins, beliefs and historical conditions does not help the development of modernization in the new China. The situation is intriguing when the central Chinese government enforces modernization in a totalitarian manner, driven by a rationale that does not address individuals’ rights and freedom. The visions of the new China are political democracy, free economy, high efficiency, technological advancement, civil cultivation and the wish that these can help to promote the integration of its new society. However, all these presuppose transformation of the closed elements of Chinese traditions and the full development of its open elements.

13.5

The Confucian Revival in China: A Recent Study by French Anthropologists

During the 2000s, two French cultural anthropologists, Sébastien Billoud and Joël Thoraval, conducted a field study in China to understand the development of Confucian culture in China and its reception. Their work was published in 2015 in the book entitled The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China. It would be very revealing to examine and review their approach and findings under the intellectual light shed by Lao. In recent years, the revival of Confucianism in China has generated impressive literature. There are re-appropriation and reinvention of popular practices, as the two cultural anthropologists have observed. They found that specialization and transformation of the ancient and multifaceted tradition in pure “thought” was the consequence of a recent—and maybe only temporary—historical evolution. After the loosening of the state’s grip in the post-Mao era, the Confucian tradition is expected to generate new developments within the Chinese population (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 1). The two authors argue that philosophical questioning has to be complemented by sociological and anthropological fieldwork. Through their own fieldwork, they find that ordinary people in Shandong province, for example, collectively reinvent and re-appropriate practices to enable them to directly interact with the ancient sages. They find manifestations of the idea of a “popular Confucianism” (min-jianru-jia 民間儒家) (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 2). They basically share the view of Lao, that the Western invasion and its impacts led to the collapse of the imperial order in 1911 and that it has resulted in a century of destruction, marginalization and radical transformation of the Chinese cultural tradition in the name of a modernizing nationalism. Although contemporary Neo-Confucianism has been developed in the form of a philosophical movement, ordinary people have been appropriating the teachings of the sage, and their ambition is not doctrinal but primarily practical (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 4). The Neo-Confucianism movement took advantage of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and open policy in the late 1970s, after which ordinary people attempted to re-establish part of their common legacy of ancestral temples (祠堂). It has been

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found that kinship relationships and religious practices became more important when the urban population started to increase rapidly at the expense of village life. This was a form of adaptation to social changes and the unity of a community. Anthropologists find that when Chinese villagers are involved in ancestor cults or in the revival of lineages, they do not necessarily feel any need to claim a Confucian identity. Instead of making philosophical enquiries, people are more likely to affiliate with a tradition reconstructed around Confucius and/or with a tradition Confucius symbolizes in some way (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 5). This is not the consequence of a discourse promoted by the party-state, but something that happens especially when people are far away from their local roots of kinship or territory. An affiliation with Confucianism is f promoted via the Internet and networks. It has been noted that in response to the rapid economic development in the1980 s, “Confucianism” was introduced not as an obstacle but as a beneficial factor encouraging the rise of an Asian brand of capitalism and the so-called “four little dragons.” A deeper reading of Billoud and Thoraval enables us to summarize the cult of Confucianism in that it helps to disseminate the idea of a new type of modern authoritarianism among political Chinese elites of the Deng Xiaoping era; it demonstrates an ambition to go beyond dogmatic Marxism; it manifests the confidence of a nation in its own power; and that it is a signal to the nation to exert its influence on the global stage. The new formation of a Confucian power is a statement to correct the ideology of so-called “Asianism.” In a more concrete sense, it is within a national framework that an official ideology with a seemingly traditional accent emerged in the 2000s (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 6).

13.6

Popular Confucianism

The popularity of Confucianism as a movement, as analyzed by Lao and now confirmed by cultural anthropologists, is linked to the destruction of institutional forms that took place after the fall of the empire in earlier eras and then during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. The new, so-called “popular Confucianism”, is a form of institution that has revived a ritual system similar to the imperial order. Yet at the same time, it is new in that people from all walks of life—technicians, workers, and peasants—may now enter the Mencius or Confucius temples for rituals. This constitutes a kind of transgression, as these commoners had no access to the temples in the tradition’s past (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 8). Billoud and Thoraval see the phenomenon of popular Confucianism as a striving for psychological balance or therapeutic effect for the communities in the new China. This is a time of moral crisis driven by the rapid growth of the economy, or the so-called “Socialism with Chinese characteristics,” although nobody understands what this term really means. Anthropologists recognize the manifestations of greed and egoism: the cult of money (bai-jin-zhu-yi 拜金主義), selfishness at the expense of justice (jian-li-wang-yi 見利忘義), neglect of the common good and

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development of private desires (sun-gong-fei-si 損公肥私) among their interviewees and subjects of study. Billoud and Thoraval note that the opposition of the Western-inspired “modernity” and a Chinese “tradition” in scholarly discourse does not exist anymore, but identification with the new modernized and even post-modernized era. There are critiques of “tradition” represented in an imperial past and the authoritarianism of the Maoist era as a great leap into new forms of “feudalism.” Now, the cultural tradition is translated into a repertoire of concrete objects, symbols or ways of behaving that have been reinvented (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 12). The anthropologists share Lao’s observation of anti-Confucianism and the concurrent revival of its new types, but they also recognize new, institutionalized brands of Confucianism claiming a religious dimension, or a creative mixture of the “politico-religious” or “theologico-political” forms. As a form of cult and religion, popular Confucianism is therapeutic and functional. Its worshippers seek real transformation and redemption from secular Confucianism, and they are looking for direction in life. Billoud and Thoraval’s field study in Shandong province reveals that people organize classics readings for their children and employees for the purpose of personal cultivation. Confucian teaching is seen as relevant in a more general way for the destiny of humanity, and interviewees believe Confucianism is a solution to the world’s problems (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 113). This belief is recently shared among entrepreneurs who feel invested with social responsibility. They consider Confucianism a tradition that is likely to contribute to the common good. In many cases, Confucianism is a fulfilment rather than a refuge in the wake of a personal crisis (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 114). In other cases, entrepreneurs turn to Confucianism as a sanctuary after having traumatic experiences in the business world. One can find numerous reasons for the rise of popular Confucianism in China. Laymen in popular Confucianism may be confused and feel adrift when they need to do things contradictory to their most basic Confucian moral principles, which they learned in their childhood. Billoud and Thoraval (2015, p. 115) find that the common moral principles among laymen still include trust (xin 信), sincerity (cheng 誠) and filial piety (xiao 孝). When people face personal turmoil in the new economic regime in China, there follows increased interest in the reinvented Confucian rites of passage. These principles and practices also feed the mental needs of people in the post-Cultural Revolution generations whose unfortunate experiences in youth have generated a cognitive need and a quest for meaning in life. In brief, there are patterns of “conversion” that contribute to the diversity of experiences leading to Confucian religiosity, although some may turn to the Buddhist faith instead of religious Confucianism.

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New Confucianism in China and Confucian Religiosity

Billoud and Thoraval report that religious practices in China are theoretically and practically forbidden outside places of worship. Yet Confucianism, as a form of Chinese philosophy, is not considered a religion but a set of shared beliefs and self-cultivation practices. As the two anthropologists (2015, p. 121) put it, Confucianism is generally placed in the vague categories of culture and morals. Yet the recent revival demonstrates that Confucianism has acted as a form of civic religion with rituals and worship. According to field reports, various groups or classes of followers sometimes downplay the function of the master Confucius as an object of worship and instead emphasize the self-transformation or self-liberation dimension of Confucianism. In other words, they believe that it is most important to follow one’s own original heart/mind (ben-xin 本心). The conclusion is that people involved in popular Confucianism do not conflate Confucian teaching (jiao) with the conception of a religious institution (zong-jiao 宗教) imported from the Christian West (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 122). Billoud and Thoraval also report a remarkable trend of reactivation of the master-disciple relationship in the current Confucian revival. These followers, like those in some religions, give up their former jobs and start daily reading of the classics and related “spiritual exercises.” They even form si-shu (private schools or 私塾) and enroll children, thereby reviving the spirit and practices of Song-Ming Confucianism. Obviously, things changed in the 2000s, which featured debates from the Republican era that focused on the relations between religion and politics. Cultural anthropologists have asked what status could be ascribed to Confucian religion in a post-Maoist era, and have come up with four possible options (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 145). Firstly, Confucianism can be institutionalized as a religion, like any other religion recognized by the state. Second, it can occupy a central position within a syncretistic religious movement and lobby to be legalized. Third, It can gain a privileged position in the religious landscape if it is turned into a “national teaching” or a “state religion.” Lastly, it can be reinterpreted as a form of modern civil religion in the American sense. All of these options would be difficult to induce in the new China. The current Chinese regulations still recognize only five religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Christian Protestantism. Nevertheless, anthropologists argue for a sixth religion with its own special needs and meanings, based on the views gathered from the group of subjects who want to institutionalize Confucianism as a force to “strengthen unity and national cohesion” (qiang-hua-min-zu de tuan-jie yu ning-juli 強化民族的團結與凝聚力). The basic view is that Confucian teaching is the best possible solution for the promotion of “spiritual civilization,” which should be endorsed by the authorities to accompany the “material civilization” facilitated by the new capitalist development, whether political, economic or technical (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 151).

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The political and social controls under the strong leadership of Xi Jianping have made things more difficult for such an endorsement to happen. Still, Billoud and Thoraval note that the first Confucius hall, inaugurated in 2009 in Shenzhen’s Donghu park, is in a building that looks like a new version of a Confucian place of worship (dao-chang 道場). The field report record a large room with an altar, a representation of the sage and an incense burner. It is primarily used for rituals, practice of traditional music and classics reading courses. In 2010, the Kongshengtang (孔聖堂) was officially registered as a non-governmental organization affiliated with another structure based in Qufu, Shandong, and local authorities are invited to its activities (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 154). The anthropologists (2015, p. 155) call it “the Shenzhen model” (深圳模式), the basic philosophy of which is to promote a number of secular activities such as weddings, funeral rites and training sessions for the implementation of a “Confucian corporate culture” in companies. The Kongshengtang intends to be a transitory instrument to promote a Confucian religiosity that would coexist with other spiritual traditions, despite its unclear legal status for the time being. Billoud and Thoraval’s interviewees reveal their hopes that Confucianism will become China’s state religion in the future. Another current of Confucianism in the new China is its appropriation by syncretistic religious movements, as recorded by anthropologists. This movement advocates a “way of pervading unity,” or Yiguandao (一貫道). The belief is old in that the Dao is considered to be the source of teachings and, in turn, teachings are considered a practical path of self-cultivation toward the Dao. Adherents voice the Yiguandao’s claim to be “primarily Confucian” (yi-ru-wei-zong 以儒為宗), as China is supposed to have a “mainstream tradition” (zhu-liu-chuan-tong 主流傳 統), and they aim to have it legalized (guo-jiao 國教) as proposed by Zhou Beichen (周北辰). This raises the question of the complicated but poignant claims of the “theologico-political” or of the “politico-religious” and the arguable claim of zhijiao-yi-ti, sheng-su-fen-quan (治教一體,聖俗分權), namely that the Confucian church should be endowed with the power to educate whereas “the secular king will dispose of the power to govern” (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 163). Bearing in mind Lao’s differentiation between Confucianism as the Chinese philosophy and philosophical enquiries in China, we should review what constitutes the Confucian core. If Confucianism is Chinese philosophy, it is debatable whether it can be a religion per se; however, it may manifest as religiosity or have a religious dimension. The Confucian core may be characterized as follows: Chinese culture believes in the interrelation and correspondence between heaven and humanity, and the interpenetration of the sacred and the profane. The sacredness of humanity refers to its unique moral nature, or at least the “seeds” of that unique moral nature. It is through the development of this inherent nature or these seeds that one achieves sagehood. A sage manifests the benevolence of nature in both thought and action. This already has elements of a religious dimension. The moral nature of the human, as understood by Confucianism, should not be confused with the word “nature” in the sense of Western naturalism. For Confucians, human nature is understood as the moral consciousness and practice that emanate from an internal or inherent

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awareness that corresponds to Heaven, rather than obedience to social norms, doctrines or calls from an external, transcendent being. Although Confucianism can be considered a form of humanism, it involves belief in the interpenetration of the scared and secular, which makes it a religious humanism or a humanist with a strong religious dimension. This interpenetration of the sacred and secular can also be seen in the Confucian notion of li or rite. Unlike Western traditions, which separate the sacred and profane by enclosing the sacred within religious rituals, Confucianism ritualizes everyday practices. In this sense, every act, no matter how seemingly insignificant, has a religious dimension. Discussions of religious dimensions versus ethical or political dimensions are modern questions. The conditions under which traditional Confucianism can be considered to have a religious dimension include the following. Firstly, our definition of religion cannot be restricted to only the existence of a High God or a transcendent or a personal God. Traditional Confucianism has been called a tradition in which the religious dimension is founded on the “immanent transcendental” structure of the human mind. The human mind is transcendent because it is ontologically related to and correspondent with Heaven; conversely, the nature of Heaven is imparted to and internalized as moral consciousness. In this sense, morality for Confucianism is always religious. Second, if we consider some of the modern definitions of the religious dimension, such as Tillich’s notion of “ultimate concern,” traditional Confucianism should definitely be considered a religion. Its main concern is the ultimate ground and meaning of one’s present life, which is a manifestation of the divine nature of human beings imparted by the way or heaven. Some contemporary forms of Confucianism, as observed and reported by cultural anthropologists studying popular Confucianism, have doctrinal aspects and related practices. Such doctrines as filial piety or loyalty may seem on the surface to be merely ethical, but when understood within the context of the correspondence between heaven and earth, these “earthly” practices take on “heavenly” dimensions. Salvation comes not through a savior but through the realization of true nature with moral fervors (which is also the realization of Universal nature). The Confucian text Chung Yung (or The Doctrine of the Mean) says it all: Only those who are absolutely sincere can fully develop their nature. If they can fully develop their nature, they can then fully develop the nature of others. If they can fully develop the nature of others, they can then fully develop the nature of things. If they can fully develop of things, they can then assist in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth. If they can assist in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth, they can thus form a trinity with Heaven and Earth. (Chan 1963, pp. 107–108)

In this sense, Confucianism can be described as a “moral religion.” Third, it should be added to this philosophical review that all of the debates and hegemonic claims about Confucianism may be reduced to ways of expressing a more basic sentiment, namely the need to strengthen a brand of cultural nationalism. This strengthening is deemed necessary in the context of globalization, under which claims for cultural identity have become important. A related view is that the

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state should “support the Confucian teaching (rujiao 儒教) and ascribe to it the status of national teaching (guojiao 國教).” As the Billoud and Thoraval (2015, p. 165) concludes, Confucianism has been introduced as the future “religion of the people” to serve the totalizing action of state power controlling politics, education and culture.

13.8

Chinese Confucianism and Confucianism in Contemporary China

The findings of cultural anthropologists bring us back to Lao’s differentiation of Chinese philosophy and philosophies in China. The name of Chen Ming, the founder of the journal Yuan-dao, together with his defense of a “Mainland Contemporary Confucianism” (da-lu xin-ru-jia 大陸新儒家), is introducaed by Billoud and Thoraval in this context. Chen is critical of the metaphysical claims of Mou Chung San and Tang Chun I, who reside outside of the mainland. He is suspicious of an all-encompassing philosophical system and has advocated for a practical, social and popular role for contemporary Confucianism. Chen became interested in the religious status of Confucianism in a post-Maoist society and began to refer to the American civil religion model. He later suggested Confucianism as a form of “civil religion” (gong-min-zong-jiao 公民宗教) (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 166). Chen further proposes the institutionalization of Confucianism, suggesting that its structural characteristics can communicate with popular beliefs and be linked to political institutions (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 168). He elaborates that civil religion could nourish itself through vibrant elements rather than ideological discourses disconnected from the lives of the people. Chen is critical of the metaphysical claims and the all-encompassing character of Chinese philosophy; however, his goal is to deal with contemporary social issues in more practical ways. Like the anthropologists, and as Lao comments, Chen does not consider the review or evaluation of Confucianism’s philosophical core and its organic values system, but rather paves the way for a political or social instrumentalization of Confucianism. Even the anthropologists who have, according to Lao, put aside the philosophical discourses of Chinese philosophy would say new efforts to turn Confucianism into a form of civil religion will “only encourage the feeling of a fictional continuity with the imperial past, and hinder the reflection on a consubstantial link between civil religion and the idea of a society of citizens” (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 170). They remind us of the opposition met from both outside and inside Confucian circles. They have observed two main tensions: first, the ill-defined intermediary space between the force of spiritual quests expressing a desire for religion without necessarily materializing in actual practices; and second,

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the reality of communal and individual practices that are still scattered and looking for an institutional setting (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 170). Here I would like to quote Billoud and Thoraval’s observation of the second tension, as it articulates in its fullness that “there is an unresolved tension between an aspiration toward official institutional recognition, and a claim to the autonomous existence of a Confucian teaching whose value is reflected in people’s beliefs rather than state-sponsored projects. The role of the state is a sensitive and difficult issue due to the twists and turns of the last century’s political history” (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 171). They remind us to take into account a form of mediation that could link individual feelings and collective behaviors, as well as political authority and popular practices (Billoud and Thoraval 2015, p. 171). While cultural anthropologists do not conduct philosophical analysis of Confucianism at its core, as Lao has correctly pointed out, they and their fieldwork do contribute tremendously to discovering what happens to Confucianism in the contemporary context of China. Their field study findings confirm some of Lao’s earlier reading of the xi 勢 of Confucianism today, including its functions and impacts on society in some historical situations. Their findings depict the objective situation that has led to certain social needs and responses, and hence what Confucianism has developed into recently in China: a Chinese traditional cultural product in action. Lao reminds us of the possibility of the replacing discourses of the moral core by social constructions. He argues that both the moral core and social perspectives should be reviewed as a whole. Let us be reminded of the two common attitudes that academics have advocated for Chinese philosophy, as suggested by Lao (2003, p. 163): one is to understand it through the approach of cultural anthropology, and the other is to attend to its main agenda of personal moral transformation. He mentions three levels of concern of the latter: the basic reflection on the possibility and necessity of the related moral discourses; the moral will and moral lives, including the specificities of what motivates moral acts and the related practices; and finally, moral order and moral education (Lao 2003, p. 150). Although Lao notes the possibility of replacing discourses of the moral core by social construction, he adopts an optimistic and open attitude towards the two forms, for both must develop in the context of modernization. It is under this historical context that complementation and supplementation may happen, and his suggestion of the notion of “constructive consciousness” requests further attention and exploration.

References Billoud, Sébastien, and Thoraval, Joël. 2015. The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lao, Sze-Kwang. 2003. Illusion and Hope: On Contemporary Philosophy and Culture (虛境與希 望: 論當代哲學與文化) Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Chapter 14

What Does Comparative Philosophy Mean to a Female Chinese Scholar Like Me?

Philosophy has never been a popular major for female freshmen entering undergraduate studies in Hong Kong. Traditional parents thought that the ideal professions for their daughters were in teaching, nursing, social work, public relations, administration or support. The majors offered by the Faculty of Arts or Social Sciences provide skills that female students should acquire. I joined the Faculty of Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in the 1980s as a result of a heartbreaking incident. I was so devoted to theatre acting and directing during my post-secondary school years that I came to learn about the first School of Communication at the Hong Kong Baptist College (HKBC). Yet bowing to the expectation of my father, I have also applied to the Faculty of Arts at the CUHK. I was accepted by both institutions, still recall receiving the call for orientation camp from a CUHK student union member on a morning in July. My father picked up the phone. His face glowed with happiness and I dared not to tell him I was actually waiting for news from the HKBC. The admission letter from HKBC’s School of Communication was dropped in our mailbox the next day. My father opened it. Chinese parents occasionally intrude on their children’s privacy, as they think it is a necessary parenting practice. He tore the letter into pieces and labelled my dream “vanity.” The School of Communication, according to him, was an incubating centre for movie stars and television artists, which were professions full of temptation for riches and fame. I picked up the pieces of paper and soaked my pillows in tears that night, for my dream of being a performing artist was shattered. I was offered an undergraduate placement by the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the CUHK. The first two weeks were tumultuous. I took “Introduction to Religious Studies” and “Introduction to Philosophy” to begin with. This chapter was originally published as “What Does Comparative Philosophy Mean to the Social Existence of a Female Chinese Scholar?” Journal of World Philosophies, Vol. 2(1), July 2017, pp. 144–149. The original article has been revised, re-edited and published with the permission of Indiana University Press. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. K. W. Man, Cross-Cultural Reflections on Chinese Aesthetics, Gender, Embodiment and Learning, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0210-1_14

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The reading assignments were more than a naïve young Christian girl like me could handle. They were abstract, sophisticated and unfamiliar. I was in the university library searching for encyclopedia and dictionaries, trying to understand every strange English word that I had not encountered before. I had no help and I was desperate. These feelings changed when I met a tutor who demonstrated his strong passion for the philosophical reflections of Søren Kierkegaard. I then realized how influential a philosophy tutor could be. This young senior, Stephen, took us all to a campsite. We formed a circle and listened to a Catholic person talking about his life story. His father was imprisoned for smuggling drugs when he was born and he had never met him. He then found his sanctuary in the Catholic church. Kierkegaard’s work on Christianity led him to deeper philosophical reflection. I have to say I was moved by Stephen’s delivery and lines of thought and admitted immediately that this was what a university student should study, making enquiries about ultimate truths and values. I was proud to be a university student in Hong Kong, as there were only two universities in the ex-colony in the 1980s. It was so competitive that enrollment would make all parents proud, including my father. My father, due to the Sino-Japanese war in the 1940s, never received any education beyond primary school. Like most traditional Chinese fathers, he did not motivate his daughters to pursue higher education. However, under the umbrella of the Faculty of Arts, I was safe to choose a major. Yet, with all the practical and daily preoccupations that surround around a woman, I shared Simone de Beauvoir’s view that it is difficult for a woman to conceive metaphysics and all its fervours, when she has to respond to and be responsible for all of the concrete daily chores. My thought was boxed with romantic anticipations and love affairs in my youth from reading the Mills and Boons series. Yet, I was also inspired by the readings and discussions I was assigned as a philosophy undergraduate. Compared to my male classmates, I was driven by examinations, whereas they exercised their capabilities and keen interests in abstract thinking and logical analysis. I remembered I excelled in ethics and aesthetics courses but hated courses such as symbolic logic and analytical philosophy. I graduated with fair grades and honours and remained a student and a graduate that not many teachers or classmates would mention or even remember. The only shining event in my undergraduate days was when I was named “Best Director” for a play I directed for an inter-college competition. After graduation, I entered the workforce as a civil servant, drank with teacups marked with the crown of Queen Elizabeth II and followed a nine-to-five workday routine. I was not happy and was never satisfied. I took classes in film criticism and rock music history after work just to continue the intellectual pursuit that was initiated by my major in philosophy. It only came to my belated awareness that philosophical orientation was successfully instilled in me, in a female embodied self and a person with an intellectual appetite. It is a feeling of a whole person, but not parts, that the so-called camps of ideas and substances, mind and body, and abstract and concreteness were all mingled in an integrated whole in my real existence.

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Two years later, I became the first female program officer at Radio Television Hong Kong that an Associate Director of Broadcasting had ever employed. I had the opportunity to interview celebrated authors, film directors, dancers, artists and scholars. It was when I conducted the interviews that the intellectual thirst cried from inside: “Who am I and what am I doing here?” The shameful feeling of my ignorance and shallow knowledge drove me to make immediate self-improvement. I could no longer bear failing to dig out in fullness from interviewees who were just too brilliant for my questions. I finally resigned from and joined the Graduate School at CUHK as a Master in Philosophy student and later a Doctoral student in philosophy. Getting a Ph.D. in Philosophy is something more perplexing than getting a medical degree for a Chinese woman, even in the ex-colony of Hong Kong. The choice is neither practical nor necessary. It is just too abstract and weird. It explains why when I was asked about what I was doing when I started teaching, my answer was always just “teaching.” “Are you teaching in a primary school?”, “In a secondary school?”, “What kind of subject are you teaching?” You don’t want to know the answer. When I got my Ph.D., I learned that I was one of the five female Ph.D. students in philosophy in Hong Kong. Later I turned my study in feminist philosophy, a discipline that I had never been exposed to during my 10 years of university philosophy education. All of my professors were Chinese (mainly Taiwanese) males who did not encourage female students to study philosophy but did not mind granting them high grades when they performed well. The least one would expect to learn from them is the gender dimension. My inclination toward feminist philosophy was not due to any external influences, but my own reflection on my social existence. The first initiative was a conference paper on Confucianism, Chinese women and family, which I was invited to deliver at a Christianity and Confucianism conference. The readings related to Confucian teachings for women and their patriarchal backgrounds awoke my mind. They were so revealing. I started to look at my social existence, knowing that the issues or problems involved did not come from individuals or members of my family or cultural community, but a collective consciousness that had a long tradition of placing gender in a social hierarchy with a certain division of labour. Confucian discourses at the social level have shaped Chinese life in stereotypes. The economic and political grounds are just too clear to miss. The related understanding, as if something I learned for the first time, was groundbreaking for me. Not only was I very much interested in Confucianism and its gender implications, which spoke to my life as a Chinese woman, but I was also fascinated by the philosophical agenda behind it. It integrated religious beliefs, metaphysics, cosmological structure and their correspondence to political-social power. The more understanding I gain, the more forgiving I become. Philosophy to me has never been so down to earth. My encounter with feminist aesthetics came shortly after, with the discourses fascinating me to the same extent. Its modality shares that of Confucian philosophy and more so with Daoist philosophy, in terms of subject-object relationships, Nature and humans. The first volumes of work that I read include Hilde Hein and

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Carolyn Korsmeyer’s (1993) edited work, Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, and Peg Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer’s (1995) edited volume, Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Feminist aestheticians refer to modes of patriarchal awareness, which contains Western thoughts of segregation and the renunciation of manifold phenomena in favour of dualism and a closed system of the world. They yearn for alternatives and new languages in aesthetics. They call for sociological and cultural perspectives to be introduced to the study of art, emphasizing the importance of the concepts of history, class, sex and culture in the determination of what constitutes so-called “good” art and for whom it has been created in a given period. In short, the primary function of a new theory is to identify art by sorting its multiple relationships into its contexts. The agenda spoke to me so well, as my social existence was like art calling for similar approaches to reading. Moreover, aesthetics should not flee from experience to theories, which is the key to understanding women’s art and art in general. If women’s art is “a different logic, a different way of asking questions, a different kind of strength and weakness, friendship and enmity,” as Hilde Hein suggested, it needs reading of concrete personal and social experiences. I was also under the influence of Suzi Gablik’s (1991) work, Re-enchantment of Art, which does not equate aesthetics to alienation from the social world, but embodies modes of relatedness. She advocates a partnership model in art, which should be communicative and “compassionately” responsive, echoing with the notion of femininity. I aspired to this feminist agenda, promoting the relations between art, Nature and life in the form of subject-to-subject relationships. I believed that aesthetic ideas should focus on bodily expressions rather than on pure concepts or speculations and that art should be evaluated according to its potential to promote a more effective, moral and satisfying life. I saw the pros and cons of my Confucian influences. Confucian governance turns to control and power and forms a dualism of the yin and the yang, male and female and the five social relationships, including the King and the minister, father and Son, brother and brother, husband and wife, and friend and friend. Yet, at the philosophical level, it supposes a harmonious relationship between subjects and objects and between Heaven and humans. In this sense, it shares the agenda of feminist aesthetics. I reflect seriously on Confucian metaphysical and ontological implications, which refer to in-depth religious beliefs in our integrated relationships with nature. These references are not just logical, theoretical inferences or pure speculations, but traditional convictions in the interaction and exchanges between humans and nature. These are suggested in the mind and body practices that Confucius explicates through his teachings of music, and Mencius’ later discussion on mind and body coherence. Confucian theories of art also target a social therapeutic model that feminist aestheticians advocate. All of these ideas were pillars in my later work in comparative studies. The more I explore, the more I learn about gender issues socially and culturally, and think beyond gender in the social sense and seek solutions at the original source or at the metaphysical level. Here I revisit another life experience that I had after I earned my Ph.D. While I was writing my dissertation in June 1989, the June 4 massacre brought an aftershock. I migrated to Canada as a lot of Hong Kongers did, with the thought of Hong

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Kong being returned to China in 1997. I landed in Victoria, B.C., Canada as a new immigrant. The inferiority complex and the isolation of being a new immigrant, a single mother, a graduate student, an Asian and a female were reinforced in a community and environment that I had difficulties engaging with. I lived in various forms of dualism between citizenship and people in exile, being well established and being disorientated and Chinese culture and Western thoughts, etc. The disintegration experience later stimulated my keen interest in comparative studies, informed findings of possible dialogues between different cultures, orientations, thinkings and living paradigms. The first link I was thrilled to discover was the common agenda between feminist and Chinese philosophy. As a liberal postgraduate I fought against the Confucian gender norms and the social pressure exerted on me for years in my social life, as I was keen in all of the rights-oriented traditions introduced in my early education in an ex-British colony. I was affiliated with a Confucian Chiu Chow community, which emphasized stereotypical gender relationships and the priority of the community. I paid by living in anger and despair, facing all of the accusations that I received. But I gained a much better understanding and made reflective findings in feminist discourses and their conversations with Confucianism. I also contrasted their implications from the philosophical level to the social and political levels, which could be so different and contradictory. Comparative studies are beneficial to people like me who live in hybrid, post-colonial and ex-colonial spaces. If comparative philosophy has been therapeutic for me, it is this statement that is telling: “Sometimes we can understand others just well enough to know that we don’t understand them.”1 Conducting comparative philosophy can be very difficult, not only because of the vast range of texts and their intellectual and historical contexts but also because we tend to oversimplify and excessively contrast. Yet, the challenge is that discipline forces reflection on the most deeply entrenched and unquestioned assumptions of one’s own traditions. Comparative philosophy is a sensible strategy for doing philosophy and that when facing hardships it is simply a good strategy to consider a wide range of enduring and respected ideas. Even more so is this suggestion, “It is that comparative philosophy can stretch one’s sense of possibility, in this case, of human possibility. That is a benefit in itself.” I have become more understanding and forgiving, to myself and to other important people in my life since working on comparative philosophy.

“Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2008 edition. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/fall2008/entries/comparphil-chiwes/. Retrieved on Feb. 24, 2017.

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References Brand, Peggy Z., and Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.). 1995. Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2008 edition. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/fall2008/entries/comparphil-chiwes/. Retrieved on February 24, 2017. Gablik, Suzi. 1991. The Reenchantment of Art. N.Y.: Thames and Hudson. Hein, Hilde, and Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.). 1993. Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.