Zehou Li and the Aesthetics of Educational Maturity: A Transcultural Reading

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of figures
A note on Chinese names and Chinese characters
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I Educational maturity and an ‘aesthetic’ proposal
1 The ‘school sloth’ and the educational maturity
2 An ‘aesthetic’ proposal for educational maturity
Part II The transcultural Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens
3 Aesthetic metaphysics: by analysing the slogan ‘replacement of religion with aesthetics’
4 Aesthetic ethics: juxtaposing two types of morality and moral reasoning
5 The aesthetic theory of subjectivity: ‘subjectality’
6 A summary of Li’s transcultural aesthetics and a transcultural reading of Li’s philosophy as a whole
Part III The aesthetics-education approach
7 A mature student: student maturity that is both emergent and sedimenting
8 Grown-up parents: through the second-order educational reclamation that fosters ‘a layered self’
9 Mature teachers: teachers’ aesthetic professionalism, practice and policy
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Mainly inspired by the arguments of the Chinese philosopher Zehou Li, this book endeavors to develop an ‘aesthetic’ approach to promote educational maturity, both on the individual and systematic level of education. It makes a substantial contribution to developing powerful philosophic educational theories. I believe it could help us to reconsider the direction of future education reform, locally and globally. Zhongying Shi, Professor of Education, Tsinghua University; President of The Philosophy of Education Society in China (PESC) “The question of maturity is one of the key concerns of modern education. As educators we want our students to grow up, not just physically but particularly with regard to their ways of being in the world. Whereas questions of maturity have been central in Western educational thought at least since the Enlightenment, Flora Liuying Wei gives the scholarship about educational maturity a completely new impetus through a nuanced and detailed discussion of the ideas of Zehou Li. What is particularly striking, and of great importance for contemporary discussions, is the aesthetic ‘turn’ in thinking through educational maturity. This book opens up contemporary Chinese philosophy to the English speaking world and contributes original insights to contemporary philosophy of Education.” Gert Biesta, University of Edinburgh, UK & Maynooth University, Ireland

Zehou Li and the Aesthetics of Educational Maturity

This book articulates a unique conception of aesthetic educational philosophy and its relation to the Chinese world, drawing on the works of the prominent contemporary Chinese philosopher Zehou Li. The book outlines an aesthetics approach to educational maturity that recognises both the contributions of Western Enlightenment ideals and Chinese traditions, paving the way for an inclusive and post-comparative philosophy. It offers a nuanced discussion of Zehou Li’s thought and how his work can be framed at the border between traditional and modern China, between China and the West. The book combines a discussion of aesthetics with educational theory and considers their combined implications for educational practice (in particular in the first-person perspectives of students, parents and teachers), in both local and global contexts. Providing a way of doing philosophy of education that carefully considers interactions and overlaps between Western and Chinese civilisation, the book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of educational philosophy, educational theory, and Chinese and crosscultural philosophy. Flora Liuying Wei 魏柳英 is Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai Campus), China.

New Directions in the Philosophy of Education Series

Series Editors Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University, China Gert Biesta, Maynooth University, Ireland and University of Edinburgh, UK Liz Jackson, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

This book series is devoted to the exploration of new directions in the philosophy of education. After the linguistic turn, the cultural turn, and the historical turn, where might we go? Does the future promise a digital turn with a greater return to connectionism, biology, and biopolitics based on new understandings of system theory and knowledge ecologies? Does it foreshadow a genuinely alternative radical global turn based on a new openness and interconnectedness? Does it leave humanism behind or will it reengage with the question of the human in new and unprecedented ways? How should philosophy of education reflect new forces of globalization? How can it become less Anglocentric and develop a greater sensitivity to other traditions, languages, and forms of thinking and writing, including those that are not rooted in the canon of Western philosophy but in other traditions that share the ‘love of wisdom’ that characterizes the wide diversity within Western philosophy itself. Can this be done through a turn to intercultural philosophy? To indigenous forms of philosophy and philosophizing? Does it need a post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of education? A postpostmodern philosophy? Or should it perhaps leave the whole construction of ‘post’-positions behind? In addition to the question of the intellectual resources for the future of philosophy of education, what are the issues and concerns that philosophers of education should engage with? How should they position themselves? What is their specific contribution? What kind of intellectual and strategic alliances should they pursue? Should philosophy of education become more global, and if so, what would the shape of that be? Should it become more cosmopolitan or perhaps more decentred? Perhaps most importantly in the digital age, the time of the global knowledge economy that reprofiles education as privatized human capital and simultaneously in terms of an historic openness, is there a philosophy of education that grows out of education itself, out of the concerns for new forms of teaching, studying, learning and speaking that can provide comment on ethical and epistemological configurations of economics and politics of knowledge? Can and should this imply a reconnection with questions of democracy and justice?

This series comprises texts that explore, identify and articulate new directions in the philosophy of education. It aims to build bridges, both geographically and temporally: bridges across different traditions and practices and bridges towards a different future for philosophy of education. In this series Education between Speech and Writing Crossing the Boundaries of Dao and Deconstruction Ruyu Hung Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Education Rethinking Ethics, Equality and the Good Life in a Democratic Age Mark E. Jonas and Douglas W. Yacek Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality Simon Ceder Bearing with Strangers Arendt, Education and the Politics of Inclusion Morten T. Korsgaard Literature and Philosophical Play in Early Childhood Education A Humanities Based Approach to Research and Practice Viktor Johansson Ilan Gur-Ze’ev and Education Pedagogies of Transformation and Peace Alexandre Guilherme Education, Crisis and Philosophy Ubuntu within Higher Education Yusef Waghid Zehou Li and the Aesthetics of Educational Maturity A Transcultural Reading Flora Liuying Wei Essays in the Phenomenology of Learning The Challenge of Proximity Fiachra Long

For more information about the series, please visit www.routledge.com/NewDirections-in-the-Philosophy-of-Education/book-series/NDPE

Zehou Li and the Aesthetics of Educational Maturity

A Transcultural Reading

Flora Liuying Wei

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Flora Liuying Wei The right of Flora Liuying Wei to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-29404-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-29405-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-30146-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

to Bob Davis and Penny Enslin Two Great Educators at Glasgow & to the life so far that I have lived in this world

Contents

List of figuresxiii A note on Chinese names and Chinese charactersxiv Acknowledgementsxv Introduction1 PART I

Educational maturity and an ‘aesthetic’ proposal5 1 The ‘school sloth’ and the educational maturity

7

2 An ‘aesthetic’ proposal for educational maturity

22

PART II

The transcultural Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens29 3 Aesthetic metaphysics: by analysing the slogan ‘replacement of religion with aesthetics’

31

4 Aesthetic ethics: juxtaposing two types of morality and moral reasoning

51

5 The aesthetic theory of subjectivity: ‘subjectality’

72

6 A summary of Li’s transcultural aesthetics and a transcultural reading of Li’s philosophy as a whole

95

xii Contents PART III

The aesthetics-education approach119 7 A mature student: student maturity that is both emergent and sedimenting

121

8 Grown-up parents: through the second-order educational reclamation that fosters ‘a layered self ’

135

9 Mature teachers: teachers’ aesthetic professionalism, practice and policy

150

Conclusion

162

References166 Index177

Figures

4.1 An Overview of Zehou Li’s Moral Philosophy 4.2 Zehou Li’s Dialectic Interaction Among Two Kinds of Moralities, and the Real Situations 8.1 Parents’ Re-imagining at the Second Stage of Life 9.1 Confucius Aestheticism Through Zehou Li’s Interpretation 9.2 Teacher Aesthetic Professionalism

57 61 144 154 157

A note on Chinese names and Chinese characters

When addressing Chinese names, I followed the English convention of given name first and family name last. This is mainly because as a Chinese writing in a second language (herein English), I prefer to respect the English language custom. Meanwhile, when the Chinese name was addressed the first time, its corresponding Chinese characters were attached. Regarding the usage of Chinese characters, traditional Chinese characters were adopted when citing the traditional text or in accordance with the original text, while simplified Chinese characters were present in some other cases. Usually Hanyu Pinyin was applied, while in a few cases to respect contemporary Chinese cultural diversity, for example the Wade-Giles system, this also remained unchanged in this book.

Acknowledgements

I am unlimitedly grateful to my PhD supervisors, Prof. Bob Davis and Prof. Penny Enslin. They have kept me in good company in the years of my doctoral journey. Without them, I do not think I could have my doctoral experiences recapitulated in one word ‘consummate’. Neither can this book be written out. To accomplish a work in philosophy of education is not easy by itself, while this task is increasingly difficult for an international student who needs to articulate and defend through a second language associated with a rich culture that needs decades of efforts to command. However, my dear supervisors are patient enough to read every sentence in my draft, attentive to the exact ideas that I want to express. We have spent more than 100 hours together – sitting side by side; discussing face to face – about what I have written. I learnt from them how they practise their calling as a teacher, learnt from their suggestions of wording and composing the subtleties of English culture. They have enacted justice in the modern practice of international education, because they help another voice out decently as seen in their own culture another’s own cultural world. This is a real mutual respect as we appreciate in acts each side. In addition, embodying my initial culture I deepen my study through the lens of another cultural system to rethink what I have thought, to express consciously what I come to know. It is explicit that the one who learns is enriched, and thereby the law of justice is working. I cannot help acclaiming this first-class cross-cultural educational experience in a global age of human civilisation. Above all, in my own case, thanks to two real educators – Bob Davis and Penny Enslin – whom I have had the good luck in life to encounter. For initiation into the field of philosophy of education, I benefit from the educational communities at Mainland China, Taiwan and worldwide. I especially thank Prof. Wei Yu (于伟), Prof. Cheng-Hsi Chien (簡成熙), Prof. Ferng-Chyi Lin (林逢祺), etc. For improving writing and thinking, I am very much appreciated for the great help from my thesis examiners Prof. Nicki Hedge and Prof. Jua-Wei Dan (但昭偉). I am also indebted to scholars who translate and write about Zehou Li’s work in English for what they produce helps further my research. I would like to thank in the same sense the librarian

xvi Acknowledgements

team of Glasgow University who provides almost all the consulting materials that I need. Certainly, I cannot forget to thank philosopher Zehou Li whom I have not yet got a chance to meet up though I long to do so. Now with deep sorrow, I have to accept the fact that Li passed away (on 2 November 2021, aged 91). Li’s work has been inspired me since I attended university in 2009. My study of Li’s philosophy registers my intellectual growth both in terms of insights and methodologies. I really appreciate I live in an age in which I can appreciate his wisdom. I would also extend my sincere thanks to the Chinese Scholarship Council who supports me to study in the UK for four years and in the ‘marginal’ subject of philosophy. Because of the public help I am lucky enough to enjoy a precious period at my prime time the leisure of contemplation. Once again, I am thankful for the age that I live in and many memorable people I have met with and learnt from. Last of all, to my beloved family members, especially my parents and my two younger brothers, I owe thanks that go beyond words. You have always trusted me and supported me unconditionally. With you I can see the grace of life is illustrated.

Introduction

The topic of ‘maturity’ which was prominent in the 18th century European Enlightenment tradition is far from outdated. Instead, it is still intellectually engaging as it is by nature both highly philosophical and highly educational. The concept of educational maturity as addressed in this book is productively applied to criticise the unsatisfactory, actual conditions of schooling which now beset us. The exploration of maturity in a Kantian sense in relation to contemporary school practice, in particular, helps us to realise how the key categories of educational participants (namely, students, parents and teachers) are encumbered by their own characterised ‘immature’ states of mind. These key participants in schools often feel impotent in dealing with their own educational affairs, and thus might be no more than ‘muddling through’ the systems of school education. This specific problem has been coined as systematic school sloth. While there is a little discrepancy here with regard to our daily sense that no matter be they teachers, students, parents or headmasters, all are seriously busy with school education, what the ‘systemic sloth’ highlights is exactly not the individual failures in the school system but rather effectively reflects the systematic blindness in their diligence. Other problematic symptoms associated with it include but are not limited to performative cultures prevalent in schools and universities, overwhelming parental anxiety in societies. However, this philosophical diagnosis of contemporary education only constitutes a departure point of this book. The main task herein is to explore how to attain states of educational maturity. Then, in a further philosophical analysis, the aforementioned predicament is just a reflection, or say another instance of the problem of modernity. Since the 18th century European Enlightenment movement, almost every culture in the world has been learning to cope with Western modernity, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Chinese civilisation is no exception. Through an arduous and successive process of learning from their Western pioneers for over 150  years, the preferred cultural reimagination for the Chinese to conduct their modernisation programme is found to be aesthetical. Zehou Li’s philosophy as an exemplar that comes to fruition at the borders between the Chinese and the West, and at the same time in the encounter between traditional and contemporary China has been drawn upon DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-1

2 Introduction

to elaborate such a unique aestheticism towards Chinese modernity. Indeed, it argues for a viewpoint that supports a complementary model of engaging civilisations towards global flourishing, rather than a view of civilisation clashes that pessimistically lead to ideological wars. Thus, modern Chinese aesthetics encompassing an up-to-date transcultural capacity has been attempted to explore ways out of immaturities in dealing with schooling wherein students, parents and teachers are currently mired. These attempts based on present-day Chinese iterative intercultural inquiries are aligned with the orientation to continue the project of Enlightenment. It is unambiguous that, following philosopher Zehou Li (for his brief view related to Enlightenment in China, see Li, 2010a), the ‘aesthetic’ approach recognises a Western Enlightenment ideal of maturity. It is also clear that, through Li’s percipient cross-cultural efforts, the promotion of personal autonomy is deepened, by substantially marshalling cultural resources more inclusive than a Western modern period and a Eurocentric geographic zone. Taken together, this is a project to explore maturity in a contemporary educational sense through the lens of Li’s transcultural aesthetics. I draw on a Chinese ‘aesthetic’ tradition – an understanding of aesthetics that is different from the West but equally sensible and coherent – to fashion an approach to promote personal autonomy in contemporary school context. To be more specific, this book intends to promote the cultivation of individuals’ maturity in dealing with school education, empowering subjects in education, particularly students, parents and teachers. It is hoped that the case made here supports a view of the key participants in the project of education who can exercise astuteness in handling the educational question by using their own enhanced understanding of education, and being able as a result of this to competently articulate their own views and to defend as well as to develop their own practices and roles within education. What to offer is an aesthetic educational philosophy to rejuvenate a vital schooling. Neither seemingly busy schools nor essentially slothful schools, but instead, aesthetically vibrant schools that apart from or alongside with one’s family, are recognised as able to help individuals to have a life scope wider and richer than the life experience limited to the certain time and space in which s/he was originally born. Last but not least, since this work is fundamentally nourished by the disciplinary tradition of philosophy of education, the understanding of its thinking framework is inseparable from the understanding of the ways of doing research in philosophy of education. It is therefore necessary to introduce to readers what kind of research framework has been adopted, including why the structure of this book has to be so. Briefly, the study reported in this book is situated in the inquiry model of Anglophone philosophy of education, in which the core logic is the application of philosophy to education. However, it is concerned with a third way of doing philosophy of education within this Anglophone model. Before I address the third way, let me make a detour to explain a bit about the other two ways of doing philosophy of education under the Anglophone framework.

Introduction 3

Since John Dewey (1916) defined philosophy as ‘the general theory of education’ (p. 383) and education as ‘the laboratory in which philosophic distinctions become concrete and are tested’ (p. 384), philosophy of education in the AngloAmerican world has been characterised as a branch of applied or practical philosophy. In the 20th century and beyond, this application model of philosophy of education was developed along two ways: (1) to deal with philosophic questions that are inherent in educational theory and practice, such as the problem of the nature of knowledge in education and the problem of the clarification of key educational concepts; (2) and to deduce educational thought from the philosophy of a particular thinker such as Plato or from a kind of system such as existentialism. In both approaches, philosophy is convincingly conceived as a resource at disposal, which is explicitly intended to deal with or to illuminate educational problems. Seen from the past centurial journey of philosophy of education, the two approaches have been successful. For example, the study of epistemology in philosophy or the analytic philosophy in relation to education does offer more sophisticated and systematic thinking for practitioners in education. The inspiration of, for example, Plato’s philosophy of education and existential educational philosophy has helped in the task of thinking education anew. Besides, philosophy of education has also developed by facing challenges from within itself, such as going beyond a superficial deductive approach that the analytic philosophers of education criticised unrelentingly. However, it cannot be ignored that the preceding two ways of doing philosophy of education have been experiencing persuasive criticisms from without. The applied model of philosophy of education has been powerfully criticised for either becoming too philosophical (and therefore not educational) or becoming too theoretical (and therefore not practical). In order to confront these compelling challenges, a concrete examination, rather than a sweeping assumption, of both ‘what the philosophy is’ and ‘what the educational problem is’, is necessary when conducting studies in philosophy of education. The basic consideration is that once the educational problem is properly philosophically reformulated (just like a prior reformulation of the research question that is required in the empirical study), the philosophy that is selected to throw its light on it will be more ‘able’ accurately and robustly to respond. Hence, an additional, ‘third way’ of doing philosophy of education is forthcoming. In this third way, neither the philosophy nor the educational problem can be unsystematically preferred, while a proper connection between the question and the relevant philosophical resources that are chosen to deal with the question is emphasised. This third way is therefore intended to narrow the gap between philosophy and educational philosophy, between theory and practice, by further contextualising the disciplinary logic of applying philosophy to education. Hence, in this book, I follow this third way. In terms of structure, it means fuller accounts about ‘what the educational problem is to be addressed’ (see Chapter  1) and ‘what and why this kind of philosophical approach is to be drawn upon’ (see Chapter 2) – responses that have been purposefully provided before commencing the substantial inquiry. Subsequently, I move on to examine

4 Introduction

key, relevant aspects of the foundational philosophy in depth (see C ­ hapters 3, 4, 5 and 6) and then to explore their proper application to the analysis or the reconsideration of a particular question as formulated in Chapter 1 in educational theory or practice (see Chapters 7, 8 and 9). The other reason that I choose the third way is because the first two ways of doing philosophy of education are not suitable for this case. I have not inquired into the rounded or comprehensive study of the foundational philosophy (in this case it is Zehou Li’s philosophy) in order to develop or to deduce an educational theory (in this case it could be Zehou Li’s philosophy of education). Although philosopher Zehou Li does provide the concept of ‘aestheticseducation’, he does not develop it further in educational terms. I believe it is philosophers of education who should shoulder this responsibility and who are able to take the task further – to flesh out the philosophically enriched idea of aesthetics-education with living educational questions and content. When I am not confident that a detailed examination of Li’s aestheticised philosophy can sufficiently educationally turn into an aesthetics-education approach, I also find the first way does not fit with the study chosen. This is because, when I  discuss the educational issue of ‘maturity’ through a Chinese philosophicaesthetic lens, the aesthetic perspective which might be an enhanced light for illuminating it is neither explicit enough for Western audiences nor systematic enough on its own terms to be drawn upon effectively. Thus, a coherent, unique Chinese understanding of aesthetics that is beyond the literal level is vital for the subsequent aesthetic examination of maturity in education. That said, I have to go further in this inquiry in the first way of addressing the inherent philosophical question of educational maturity, by conducting a supplementary study of related aspects of ‘aesthetic philosophy’, such as Li’s, which is not yet well known even in the circles of philosophy. Overall, the substantial content of this book involves three main parts. In the first part, I highlight the operational definition of educational maturity as a starting point and consider an aesthetic proposal for developing such defined maturity as the main task for this book. The second part is concerned with the relevant study of Li’s aestheticised philosophy, involving three dimensions: (1) metaphysics, (2) moral philosophy and (3) theory of subjectivity. The third part is about developing an aesthetic educational philosophy that addresses the question formulated in the opening chapter on the issue of educational maturity. That is, I apply these enriched philosophical thoughts developed by Li to address three ‘immature’ states of mind in a Kantian sense identified in contemporary education – states of mind by which students, parents and teachers are respectively and typically encumbered. In developing my educational thesis I adopt three key educational perspectives – that of (a) students, (b) parents and (c) teachers – which are also devised to pursue practical relevance (sustained by philosophical rigor and competence).

Part I

Educational maturity and an ‘aesthetic’ proposal

Chapter 1

The ‘school sloth’ and the educational maturity

The systematic ‘school sloth’: a Kantian analysis Problems or complaints concerning school education are very common in our daily life. As Robin Barrow (1981, p. 32) points out, ‘schooling is a general term that implies little more than the imparting of some lesson to others by some means or other, while the word school adds only the implication of a location set aside for the purpose’. Without any doubt, the education that is made intentionally in the place called ‘school’ has contributed significantly to the civilised society in which we nowadays live. Furthermore, since mass education was introduced in the 19th century, school education has been a main part of the system of human becoming. However, it does not mean that we already have a perfect schooling system for any physical human to transform themselves into a ‘real’ human who can achieve the full and rounded development of oneself, or say who is walking on the road to exercise cognitive, conative and affective power as a whole, striving for self-fashioning overall with basic consciousness to flourish. On the contrary, there are improvements we need to make in order to have schools functioning better in the desired human becoming enterprise I just described. Different researchers will give different diagnoses of the school system. For example, sociological researchers might delineate ‘double binds’ as a main problem of schooling: that is, ‘the ways in which [school teachers’] effectiveness was measured within a performative culture were not reflected in their own evaluations of their experiences as practitioners at the same time that the performative impacted and changed their practice’ (Blackmore, 2010, p. 108). However, I  will conduct a philosophical diagnosis, pointing out the ‘school sloth’ as the main problem of school education. This philosophical perspective stems from Kant’s analysis on what the Enlightenment is. Kant argues in his 1784 journal article that Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his

DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-3

8  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

self-incurred immaturity1 and at the same time, ‘laziness and cowardice’2 are the reasons why people remain immature for life (1784/1970, p. 54). For Kant, the condition of immaturity is manifested in ‘three apparently extraordinarily flat and familiar examples’ (Foucault, 2010, p.  30): a person substitutes a book for his own understanding; replaces his own moral conscience with the spiritual director; and substitutes a doctor’s knowledge for what he is capable of knowing, deciding or planning with regard to his own life. The situation nowadays is of course not completely what it was 200 years ago when Kant thought that people were too ‘lazy’ to take trouble themselves; instead, it is nowadays the case that most people do take trouble themselves in school education, but they always take it ‘involuntarily’, with the extrinsic criteria, which results in a new form of laziness and cowardice, and I name this, echoing Kant, the systematic ‘school sloth’. This new form of laziness and cowardice, the ‘school sloth’, refers to the lack of resolution and courage to pursue intrinsic values3 of education in schools. It is generally true that all people agree on the ideal of educational equity: where individual students can have suitable education which aims at the all-round development of individual being, and even more ambitiously, where people think this suitable education of quality is the quality we want for every member of our community. But in reality, we always give up the ability to judge whether what we seek is truly in our interests4. When we think of well-off parents who desperately send their children to top tier schools, or think of parents in disadvantaged positions who are self-blamed for their incapability to have their children attend good schools in terms of social criteria, these parents

1 ‘Man’ and ‘his’ are terms used in the source text; my preferred terms throughout this book are ‘people’ or ‘s/he’ and ‘his/her’ or just ‘their’. 2 Modern usages lend a slightly pejorative sense to sloth, laziness, and cowardice. Kant’s notion of laziness and cowardice can be understood in contemporary terms as a culture of compliance or dependence, which could be less of an insult. Meanwhile I agree with Foucault (2010, p. 33) that ‘Kant is not setting his sights on moral faults here, but actually on a sort of deficit in the relationship of autonomy to oneself ’, which will be elaborated later in this chapter and asserted throughout this book. Overall, in order to preserve the Kantian sharpness and sensitivity, I use Kant’s original terminologies as translated into English. 3 Regarding intrinsic values, see p. 63ff in Chapter 4 and p. 132ff in Chapter 7. Both a universalpublic moral reasoning and an aesthetic-private moral reasoning can help to discern intrinsic values. That is, intrinsic values follow logic in both terms of ‘ought to do’ and of ‘could/might do’. In this book, an aesthetic-private moral reasoning is concerned with an unregretful justification in the Chinese context and an equivalent thought experiment on ‘would you live your life ever if given the chance?’ in the West. Associated with the aesthetic moral reasoning, the legitimacy of intrinsic values lies in its principle of abiding self-consistency, while the process of exploring intrinsic values could be contingent. 4 According to Hirschman (2013, p. 40), the 17th century’s understanding of interest through the maxim ‘interest will not lie’ has its exactly normative meaning. Here the use of ‘interest’ is associated with the line of thought that interest should be carefully considered and preferably followed to other differently motivated acts.

‘School sloth’ and educational maturity 9

are like the people 200 years ago who relied solely on the diet that the doctor recommended. Although this parental anxiety seemingly is on the opposite of laziness and cowardice, since parents do engage actively, this kind of anxiety in essence is caused by a ‘laziness’ of equating the generally extrinsic criteria of what a good school is to an intrinsically good education, which is mainly searched for with regard to one’s own case. In the case of the students nowadays, their disengagement with their schooling in terms of intrinsic values is twofold. One is fulfilling superficial engagements as merely conforming to the performative demands. What Macfarlane (2016, p. xiv & p. 5) deals with systematically in his monograph – a­ ttending classes, demonstrating emotions such as ‘empathy’ through a self-reflective exercise, taking part in classroom discussions in order to convey an impression of enthusiasm and commitment – are such cases in point. The other is students’ deeper disengagement manifested in their apathy in determining their own educational affairs. Very few students in school systems can articulate clearly whether the school is doing justice to them, and one of the reasons might be that from the beginning they are not taught to use/how to use their own understanding to optimise the education they are to receive. Even in the field of higher education, adult students have not been treated as independent learners in determining when they learn, how they learn and what to learn (Macfarlane, 2016). It is not hard to reckon that in the field of primary and secondary schooling, students have not been equipped with a capability to exercise their freedom to learn, not to mention a sufficient consideration of why they learn. Indeed, this inadequacy on the part of the students in determining their own learning courses is something worth close attention, but it has been underdeveloped. Thus, students are accustomed to be ‘lazy’ about their own educational affairs while they can be very dedicated to learning what they are asked to learn. In contrast with the students’ laziness, which is performed implicitly, teachers are forced relatively explicitly to be lazy because they are assessed mainly through the practices of accountability and performativity. Through Blackmore’s (2010, p. 105) sociological critical review, we can know teachers in this logic of delivery are positioned as problematic, in need of strong leadership and requiring new accountabilities to align them with the policy logic of continual improvement. No doubt sometimes in our eyes teachers ‘turn blind eyes towards possible betterment’ (Reid, 1962, p. 116) as teaching has seriously been degraded to an instrumental and technical activity (see Larsen, 2011, pp. 3–5). Through the examples of parents, students and teachers I  have exemplified earlier, I suggest that this new form of laziness and cowardice arises when we are tempted to substitute readily available criteria for our own flexible intelligence and judgments. This ‘sloth’ partly is due to the root 200  years ago – s/he is never asked to make the attempt to think for himself/herself (see ­students when receiving education), and partly is a contemporary new face of the old problem: dogmas and formulas which were the ball and chain of

10  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

men’s permanent immaturity (Kant, 1784/1970, pp. 54–55) in past centuries are now transformed into self-bound extrinsic values. In short, it is slothful to be pursuing the intrinsic values and it is ‘systematically slothful’ because it is not attributable to the wrong of any individual members such as parents, students, teachers or even the officers who conduct assessment of accountability and performativity. It is a systematic problem called the ‘school sloth’ in which members are just easy to process in a lazy way whether implicitly (see the students case) or explicitly (see the case of parents and teachers) when confronting the intrinsic values they need to choose; they process in a state of helplessness without the vitality to advance intrinsic criteria: for instance the educational equity achieved by suitable education of every individuals. The situation Kant described in the Enlightenment where what he termed ‘self-incurred tutelage’, or dependence on an external authority does not come from a condition of natural powerlessness or juridical deprivation (Foucault, 2010, pp. 28–29) continues into modern forms of education. Today’s ‘school sloth’ is not attributable to a human incapability of taking charge of one’s own conduct; nor is it a matter of the authoritarian deprivation of a right to exercise critical thinking. Rather it is found in the way that subjects are predominantly directed by extrinsic criteria, which are mostly implicit symbolic values breeding bureaucratic inertia and intellectual laziness. These symbolic values involve the managerial overstatement of efficiency and effectiveness, the social logic of e.g. ‘good parents should do such and such’, and the conventions learnt in order to survive and succeed. As Kant does not deem all forms of authority illegitimate, I do not think that extrinsic criteria are unnecessary or totally wrong. In line with Foucault’s reading of Kant’s original text, I still think of this ‘school sloth’ as ‘a sort of deficit in the relationship of autonomy to oneself; a vitiated relationship between government of self and government of others’ (2010, pp. 32–33). Here I will not go on discussing what or how Foucault takes up this problem on ‘a completely different scale, with completely different historical reference points, and completely different documents’ (2010, p. 39), while shifting the specific focus on the proper and constructive exercise of personal autonomy5 within the context of school education. Furthermore, to deal with the systematic inertia which can be thought of as a new form of ‘immaturity’, I would first ask what ‘maturity’ in our current time in dealing with school education might be. Is it the case that when we reach maturity we can find a way out from those heavily self-incurred extrinsic values? – when parents, students and teachers are able to use their own understanding concretely, personally and individually with the aim of fashioning

5 The intended emphasis on personal autonomy is seemingly not in consonance with Foucault’s insights since Foucault negates unilateral discussions of state control, or of personal autonomy (Fendler, 2010, pp. 172–173, 199), but I would say our ethical regard ultimately for ‘a self ’ (Fendler, 2010, pp. 188, 205) is much the same.

‘School sloth’ and educational maturity 11

suitable education which aspires to the overall development of individual? Is maturity achieved when we overcome the failure to base education on intrinsic educational values, empower members in this system to possess ‘the capacity for originality in posing and answering the question, what ought I to do? How ought I to dispose of my life?’ (Reid, 1962, p. 160; Peters, 1966, p. 116)? Although the answers are not linearly and unconditionally yes, a proper understanding of maturity is fundamental. Thus, before conducting an inquiry into rejuvenating school education – the most likely place on earth where intrinsic values are to be the main currency – or say attaining educational maturity, we must seek to clarify what mature educational understanding is.

Conceptualising mature educational understanding The conception of maturity is a critical presupposition both in Kant’s theory of Enlightenment and here in this book. According to Kant’s article ‘What is Enlightenment?’, humanity will reach ‘maturity’ when it is no longer required to obey; but when it is told: ‘obey, and you will be able to reason as much as you like’ (Rabinow, 1984, p. 35). As his prescription of public and private uses of reason indicated, Kant presupposed his conception of maturity in the exercise of the critical-reasoning faculty. It is on this presupposition that Kant pointed out (a) humankind’s self-incurred ‘immaturity’ as not using our own understanding; and (b) what our way out is in exercising critical activities. In the previous section, based on Kant, I was enabled to see two forms of ‘immaturity’ in contemporary education: (1) not thinking for oneself when receiving education; and (2) being bound involuntarily by extrinsic values, as typified in the cases of parents and teachers. This is also because I prioritise ‘to become oneself ’ – to exercise one’s autonomy with sincerely and seriously discerned intrinsic values in order to realise one’s full development or the fullness of things – which is thought of as the eventual desired state of ‘maturity’. Now I shall explain maturity in dealing specifically with schooling, and then go on to consider a proposal to take such maturity forward. Maturity in dealing with schooling is initially that the subjects, i.e., parents, students and teachers, are becoming aware of developing a set of understandings gradually and incrementally during their involvement in school education: that is, a maturity manifested in awareness of perceiving schools and of conceiving education as essentially an inquiring process. There are two points that need to be clarified. First, this awareness of self-understanding is particularly important because without such consciousness a person is effectively giving up his or her legitimate rights as an independent human subject in schooling. That is, the ‘mature subject’ does not ‘prefer to forgo the rights, nor accepts his [or her] environment defined as it is by the immediate needs of life’ (Reid, 1962, p. 159). This growing self-awareness related to schooling is thus of basic necessity. Second, this set educational understanding is neither given by the

12  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

authority of a scientific knowledge nor any political power directly, nor is it acquired by standard mechanical training; instead, it is acquired by a learning mind and heart, and by the practice of trial and error. This ‘inquiring state’ can be depicted as follows in relation to making sense of schooling: such inquiries on the part of students/parents/teachers take place ‘in their own conversations with themselves and others, to come to terms with themselves and the world, to enjoy what is worth enjoying, to wonder, and to grow through these contacts’ (Reid, 1962, p. 160). Actually, both points here echo Kant’s promotion of making use of one’s own understanding, while emphasising this is a process of development and interaction involving the cultivation of one’s initiative and one’s self-awareness concerning the experience of schooling and purposes of schooling. Besides an emphasis on developing self-understanding in the involvement of schooling, maturity is also nourished and enriched from many other sources. While here ‘many sources’ may refer to consulting experts and researchers in various fields, consuming educational research independently and competently, and also using material or research tools such as learning technologies or psychological instruments, it pays particular attention to the cognitive feeling – a special form of knowledge which is critically elaborated by Reid (1970, p. 48).6 In Reid’s theorising, cognitive feeling is feeling and knowing by being. This means not only the function of the cognitive faculty, but also recognition of wider conative and affective power in the registering mind as a whole. It therefore also means that both physical-psychological factors and personal experiences are taken into consideration. Hence, maturity in dealing with schooling emphasises a comprehensive human intellect in both ‘feelingly knowing’ and ‘knowingly feeling’. The reason why this enlarged cognitive feeling is so important in developing mature educational understanding is that a maturity based on sufficient self-knowledge requires this ability of cognitive feeling. The point becomes more convincing when we find maturity is about being true to oneself, becoming oneself, and thereby knowing what is intrinsically good for oneself. Cognitive feeling is necessary or even vital to attain those value-loaded forms of knowledge or judgments, in turn leading to a deeper insight into whether the education being provided is suitable for any particular individual profiled and understood in these detailed terms. Third, maturity in this book encompasses an experimental spirit and a practice of ingenuity. By ‘an experimental spirit’ in this context I refer to an orientation to try things out. By ‘a practice of ingenuity’ I  mean to try things out with all available means. As noted by Kant, to ‘have the courage to use your own understanding’ is the motto of the Enlightenment; the conception of maturity here encourages acts that make virtues out of the given situation,

6 Cf. the idea of ‘rationality melts into emotionality’ as addressed in the Chinese aesthetics, also see Note 7 next for a brief explanation.

‘School sloth’ and educational maturity 13

producing acts in accordance with one’s own understanding precisely in the aforementioned two senses of maturity. That is to say, not only should the mature understanding of the human being differentiate itself from (on the one hand) animal instinct and (on the other) the precise calculation performed by the machine, but the mature subject should also have the courage and resolution to combat the inertia of the passive human nature, not surrendering its educational tutelage to others. It should also, on the same basis, eschew the simplistic and reductive accounts of the ‘intrinsic values’ that education exists to discover and develop. Furthermore, the mature individual is expected to be able to keep the integrity of his or her vision, which is developed from various sources by himself or herself as a result of the self-exploration cultivated in years of school immersion. An ‘experimental spirit and practice of ingenuity’ can also be understood through the critical ontology aspect of Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’ which is later very powerfully elaborated in highly materialist terms by Michel Foucault in his 1984 essay of the same name: The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them. (Rabinow, 1984, p. 30, my italics; also see Foucault, 1986, pp. 88–90, 2010, pp. 20–21) In these terms, maturity of schooling is not limited to coming to self-awareness regarding what we are, or where we are located in education. It moves beyond even the most comprehensive understanding – beyond even the school – to the prescription of the operation which is required to effect change within its own present. In a fourth point, I  will present the practical formulation of the question concerning maturity. As the theory of maturity and its practice (its action in the world) are often two sides of one coin – a view which is not uncommon in humanities and social sciences – the preceding theorising of what is meant by mature educational understanding cannot be separated from that practical application where theoretical ideas and commitments are tested in the world. While I  emphasise the connection between practice and theory, I  have no intention to deny the independent value of the theoretical construction. It is of course clear in both social sciences and humanities that some theories can be applied or are useful in only certain specific situations, or that some theories will only manifest their practical power at some time in the future. Then to be precise, the practical formulations of the question central to this book – ‘what constitutes the maturity in dealing with school education’ – are not intended to substitute for abstract theory, but to supplement, to expand and to strengthen

14  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

it. The practical formulations focused here are expected to function as starting points for all those active in the community of education in order to facilitate their development of such inquiry into mature educational understanding. In this book, I argue, indeed, that posing the following three sub-questions can become a habit of everyone involved in schooling and education: (a) How can I know the education/schooling in which I am involved is beneficial/good/right/meaningful/efficient/effective/useful (in one phrase: of true interest) for my students/children/myself? (b) In my specific position, on what basis am I to take the initiative in education in relation to its contribution to my life at the present time and to my imagined future? (c) On what basis are we capable of knowing, deciding or planning an enlightened education appropriate for our contemporary world and society? Through these practical manifestations of asking as exemplified, individual participants in the practice of schooling are encouraged to keep asking this category of questions in order to develop mature educational understanding for making suitable educational choices for themselves. At the same time, it is obvious that wondering about one’s own school education is only a departure, a starting point. Systematic studies and having the courage to practise are also crucial in aiding one’s inquiry into, and development of, mature educational understanding. To sum up, alongside practical actions such as posing questions at the starting points, forming a rounded appreciation for one’s own school education – including a robust understanding based on competent uses of knowledge, tools and faculties, and a commitment to some sort of self-fashioning – constitutes the conceptual understanding of maturity in dealing with schooling that underpins this book. Mature educational understanding is developed mainly by oneself, according to our actual involvement in schooling. To some extent, we can say such maturity belongs to the realm of aesthetic experience7 which is accrued and tested by oneself. Moreover, mature educational understanding enables people to have both material and symbolic tools at one’s service but not to be controlled by them. Mature educational understanding is intended very practically to establish and empower learners and other stakeholders (e.g. teachers,

7 Such maturity expressed in aesthetic terms is a cognitive feeling or, say, a humanised emotion that is held on the part of the individual: about the world, history, and life. It is concerned with a union of the subjective self with the objective environment. As seen in philosopher Zehou Li’s account, aesthetic experiences are not only a result of long historical and social processes in which human beings themselves participate, but also a result of rationality that dissolves into emotionality. The aesthetic experience is both accumulating and ever-renewing; in other words, it is ‘sedimenting’ (see pp. 26–27, pp. 44–46, p. 96, pp. 112–113, pp. 133–134 of this book).

‘School sloth’ and educational maturity 15

parents) themselves in their own purposeful engagement with schooling and potentially beyond formal schooling into the experience of their wider lives. That is, the mature educational subject is expected to possess an understanding of education, acting in a positive way in education, and not following slavishly outmoded or false beliefs when dealing with education simply on the basis of their supposed established or customary authority. It is of course necessary to question and justify the grounds for this enhanced understanding of educational maturity and its relationship to an intrinsically sustainable schooling. After this justification is put forward in the following section, some consideration will be given in the next chapter (Chapter 2) to practically and philosophically robust approaches that might help us promote these enriched conditions.

The justification of this conception of maturity in dealing with schooling In the first section, based on a Kantian analysis, the systematic ‘school sloth’ is used to refer to the immature state where members involved in schooling are involuntarily or unwittingly dominated by extrinsic criteria imposed on them, thus preventing a full use of individual understanding for shaping the education that suits the individual. The second section continues a philosophical inquiry into ‘mature educational understanding’, thought of as fundamental for a way out of this dependence. Such a conception of maturity in dealing with schooling is characterised by four features – cultivating self-awareness to think of school education; developing competent understanding about education; a spirit of ‘experiment’ that challenges the status quo; and several natural ways of inquiring into and developing maturity of education as habits conducted in practice. These also aim to foster individuals’ autonomy in discriminating and judging one’s own school education. However, I have not yet explained on what ground I commit to such a conception. Now I am going to justify this conception of maturity, which is assumed to be defensible in dealing with school education, elaborating its extended meanings and applications. Specifically, I will draw on R.S. Peters’ celebrated essay ‘Education as Initiation’8 to make explicit three justifications for the conception of mature educational understanding.

8 There are three entries to this text: (1) Peters’ inaugural lecture as the Chair of the Philosophy of Education at the University of London, Institute of Education delivered in December 1963; (2) as a chapter in R. Archambault (Ed., 1965). Philosophical Analysis and Education; and (3) his own monograph Ethics and Education (1966) part one.

16  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

A conception of maturity reacting to an extrinsic-criteria blight which is both intellectually and morally insidious

By ‘extrinsic-criteria blight’, I  mean that subjects who are active in education such as teachers, parents and students suffer from domination of and by extrinsic criteria. To a large extent, this is a term borrowed from R.S. Peters (1965, pp. 88–89). In using ‘a conceptual blight’, Peters originally indicated that teachers may be afflicted by such a problem if they think (and operate) too much in terms of economists’, sociologists’ and psychologists’ specific senses of education. Today, more than ever, as indicated in the problem of the Kantian ‘school sloth’, it is not only teachers, but also parents and students who are affected by the domination of extrinsic-criteria in their experience of school education. Of course, compared with the ‘conceptual blight’ in the 1960s, the extrinsiccriteria blight nowadays is disguised much more sophisticatedly. Previously, education was assessed roughly by its contribution to human resource and social cohesion, but now the extreme ‘performativity’ and ‘accountability’ cultures of contemporary education are explicitly related to teaching, learning and the quantitative preoccupation with ‘educational quality’. As Hodgson, Vlieghe and Zamojski (2017) have noted, ‘education today is for league tables, benchmarks, return rates, and educational surplus value. But arguably, none of these things are educational; they are something externally imposed and that substitute education’. Indeed, even though these performative expectations/ indicators are disguised behind an educational façade, they are just as ‘extrinsic’ as anything Peters condemned in the 1960s. What is worse is that such ‘extrinsic-criteria blight’ as identified in the systematic ‘school sloth’ is insidious both intellectually and morally, echoing again Peters’ criticism of the imposition of behaviourism on education (1965, p. 88). We can see the misleading intellectual dimension in many examples where the complex interests of stakeholders in education are assimilated into simplified performative indicators, easily equating education quality, without the subjects’ own careful reflection, to outer criteria such as school places in the league tables or other explicit observable indicators. Stakeholders then habitually come to think of their education in such distorted terms, which they presume to be unavoidable (even when they know they might not be reliable). What is morally dangerous, in terms Peters would recognise, is that these conditions prevent members engaged in education from making a full, informed use of their own individual understanding which could contribute to fashioning an education that suits them. By insidiously subjugating education to outer measurements (Biesta, 2009), or to the classic forms of performativity (Macfarlane, 2016, p. xiv), these prescriptive goals for students, teachers or schools directly interfere in teachers’ teaching and students’ learning, and further subtly and sophisticatedly stifle all participants’ independence and responsibility in education. Taken together, the systematic ‘school sloth’ as derived from Kant’s observation

‘School sloth’ and educational maturity 17

reflects today the problem that an extrinsic-criteria blight inhibits individuals’ thinking on their own education, and still worse, renders individuals less confident and less competent in dealing with their own educational affairs. The conception of maturity is intended to react to such an extrinsic-criteria blight in school systems which breeds a culture of dependence and suppresses the vitality of teachers, parents and students in promoting an education that works for them. A  mature educational understanding that is developed and owned by teachers, parents and students is capable of carving out a robust sense of self and volition, clarifying each stakeholder’s own position in particular educational circumstances and concentrating on reaching proper, wise decisions related to their own situation, and marked by that concerted effort to go beyond the present, which should characterise effective education. In summary, a maturity of education intends to restore subjects’ agency9 in education, enabling them to make up their own minds about what intrinsic means under certain circumstances that they desire to pursue, in clear contrast with those sterile extrinsic criteria which are fixed and imposed and essentially non-educational. An ongoing formation of educational subjectivity capable of resisting extrinsic domination

I use the term ‘educational subjectivity’ to support Peters’ claim that ‘education is what it is and not some other thing’ (1965, p. 88). It further refers to considering education from the viewpoints of members in the educational community who have that inside experience of education (Peters, 1965, p. 89). To establish educational subjectivity relates to Peters’ concern that education gets fundamentally distorted when we can point only to the ‘function’ or effects of it in a social or economic system (Peters, 1965, p. 89). Peters committed to styles of educational subjectivity by thinking of education from the teachers’ perspective (1965, pp. 87, 89), in order to critique the instrumental model of it – whether it was derived from the goals of economic advantage or even social cohesion (1965, p.  95). In line with his defence of this kind of educational subjectivity, the conception of ‘mature educational understanding’ used in this book resists the new forms of extrinsic ends prevalent at the current time by reimagining education from the points of view of students and parents, along with teachers. This is an educational subjectivity enlarged by including teachers, students and parents as key members who engage in the shared enterprise of education in ways that can resist and contest the current extrinsic domination that prevails especially in contemporary schooling. Specifically, it is by cultivating these members’ ability to articulate and to develop individual and diversified thinking

9 ‘Agency’ is used interchangeably with ‘autonomy’ in this book.

18  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

with regard to their own educational affairs that we are able to avoid eclipsing specific, thoughtful and individualised judgments for the kind of generalised prescriptive goals embedded in the metrics of statistical data or league tables; and in turn, these efforts may restore to us an education that works properly for individuals. Although we may often feel helpless when the top-down prescriptivism, performativity, accountability, or a preferred logic of economy and utility are enforced, individual mature educational understanding is always a source of strength if we exercise that maturity in developing a relatively clear and convincing understanding of what we need and what we want in school education. It is with this understanding, which accommodates particularities and stems from personal initiative and exploration, that we are able to summon the courage to make virtues out of the given situation, even when it might appear to be very discouraging. Moreover, we are in the best cognitive position to do the best-possible-in-these-particular-circumstances (Reid, 2013, p. 139; and see his thought of creative morality) when we adopt this stance of thinking self-reflectively. In brief, then, educational maturity developed by ourselves gives us confidence and courage as well as wisdom to deal with those formidable and imposed extrinsic criteria, to make reflective renegotiations towards intrinsic educational values through a process akin to the sequence – I know what I  want on the whole and in the long run, and I  have been carefully considering what is in my interest (‘interest’ with normative connotations, see Note 4 in this chapter). Of course, some extrinsic ends such as forms of outcome-based learning or other prescriptive indicators can be harmless or even sometimes helpful in facilitating learning or teaching at some stages or in some specific contexts (learning to drive may be one of these). At the same time, that the maturity might be developed is by no means necessarily unbiased and impartial; indeed, it could well harbour deep prejudice or illusion in light of alleged scientific and objective standards. (On the other hand, this might explain why the possessors of mature educational understanding can retain very divergent values and views of the world). However, the point is that participants in education, especially teachers, students and parents, should be fortified to have the responsibility and ability to speak their own minds. They should be encouraged to make decisions about what to use and where to go in pursuit of their educational goals, rather than surrendering (in Kant’s terms) their educational tutelage to others, be they in the form of explicit regulations or less visible symbolic values. That is, the conception of educational maturity that underpins this book intends to empower key participants in education with an ability to discern what is of necessity and what is of appropriateness, rather than to constantly mistake means for ends. It is envisaged that teachers, students and parents are not only vital elements of the educational enterprise, but also are critical actors contributing to a successful educational experience for themselves, and by implication, wider society. In short, the ongoing formation of educational

‘School sloth’ and educational maturity 19

subjectivity – which is composed of teachers’, students’ and parents’ diversified exercise of mature educational understanding – is vital to tackle the extrinsic domination particularly prevalent in current global systems, since partial and contextual considerations are revealed to the key participants themselves. The minimal criteria of what R.S. Peters terms wittingness and voluntariness writ large in the embrace of education to be counted as education

In order to take my argument further, I draw upon R.S. Peters’ minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness. Peters develops this main conceptual point about ‘education’ (Peters, 1965, p. 96) while recording his rejections (on the one hand) of the models of ‘filling up’ the structure of the mind with valuable items and (on the other) of the post-war ‘child-centred’ revolt against this (Peters, 1965, pp. 93, 95, 1966, p. 35). In order to maintain a balanced focus both on the worthwhile content of education and on morally and psychologically acceptable means of education (1966, pp. 42–43), he further argues that a minimum of comprehension must be involved for something to count as an educational process (Peters, 1965, p. 96, 1966, p. 42). For this, there are three points intended: (1) caring about what is worthwhile – we would not call a man ‘educated’ who knew about science but cared nothing for truth; (2) being brought to care about it and to possess the relevant knowledge or skill in a way that involves at least a minimum of understanding – children should understand what is being passed on and know what they are meant to be doing and understand the standards which they are expected to attain; and (3) a minimal sense in which students act as voluntary agents, for they can rebel and refuse to do what is required of them (Peters, 1965, pp. 96–97, 1966, p. 42). If we substitute ‘students’ in Peters’ preceding account of minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness for ‘students, teachers and parents’, thinking beyond the context of classroom teaching and learning to a broader educational process which covers one’s primary, secondary schooling and tertiary education, (and as represented in the conception of maturity in dealing with schooling that we have been discussing), we will have Peters’ educational criteria writ large. This is to say, not only the original aspect of the minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness that is necessary for an educational process comprising teaching and learning is to be admitted, but also the broader implication of these criteria is acknowledged by directing a proper critical thinking and relevant powers of judgment to the enterprise of education itself. Indeed, as Peters says, the educated person should have some senses about what he is doing (1966, pp. 31–32), and by the light of this s/he should not only be critical of forms of thought such as history, philosophy or mathematics, but should also be critical of the form of education itself that s/he is receiving or conducting, or even has been experienced. Hence, this more generous and expansive

20  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

notion of wittingness and voluntariness, which is highlighted by the aforementioned conception of maturity, makes education fully moral and desirable in the sense that students, parents and teachers all have a consciousness about what they are doing and a care for education itself. Meanwhile, in Peters’ terms, they are encouraged and enabled to spell out their points of view about how to learn and to evaluate, as well as what to learn and to assess, and even allowing for its rejection or alteration if reasonable explanations and critique can be provided. Additionally, another educational expression is that a growth of confidence, responsibility and competence in dealing with education emerges when the minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness covering the whole educational trajectory are applied to parents and teachers, along with students. Because when parents and students are exercising the minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness, they are naturally promoted from laymen in education to a new position of ‘educationists’. This means they are going to (and believe they are able to) care about what school education is intended to transmit, and able also to contribute to meaningful ways of learning, while even on some extreme occasions choosing to reject or revise what they consider to be unsuitable for them. Hence the confidence and competence of parents and students in dealing with education gradually evolves. In the case of teachers, this may be the educational and intellectual basis on which professionalism rests and develops. This is not only because teachers’ professional judgments about matters and manners of education are respected on a basis open to criticisms, but also because of a helpful differentiation that arises between ‘educationists’ (students and parents) and what we can term professional education experts (teachers), who are thence irreplaceable for the specialisation they own and unmatched for the professional experience they have accrued over long working careers. In a nutshell, the conception of maturity in dealing with schooling represents the minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness writ large – extending from the part of students to that of parents and teachers, at the same time broadening to the whole range of school education, and thereby strengthening Peters’ logic for an education that can truly be counted as education. Furthermore, maturity in dealing with education aims not only to making good education for individuals, but also to the generation of a vibrant sharing of confidence and responsibility that goes back to the strengthening of school systems as a whole. Thus, the justification of maturity in dealing with schooling as conceived in this opening chapter is contextualised in the tradition of educational sciences. The observation, the methodology and the insights which R.S. Peters manifested in ‘Education as Initiation’ are drawn upon to elaborate the conception of mature educational understanding’s extended meaning and applications: reacting to the intellectually and morally insidious blight of ‘extrinsic value’, cultivating an ongoing formation of educational subjectivity which not only

‘School sloth’ and educational maturity 21

includes the agency of students, teachers and parents, but also extends the minimal criteria of what Peters terms wittingness and voluntariness for education to be counted as education, to the whole trajectory of education. Now I turn to explore what kind of approaches can lead to attaining such states of educational maturity, which is no less a way to deepen the understanding of it. That is, the concept of ‘how to fully engage into such a concern of educational maturity’ will be the central focus in the rest of this inquiry.

Chapter 2

An ‘aesthetic’ proposal for educational maturity

An ‘aesthetic’ proposal for mature educational understanding In Chapter 1, a conception of maturity especially in dealing with school education has been posited as significant for resolving the problem of the systematic ‘school sloth’, perceived through a Kantian recognition of the widespread lack of subjects’ intrinsic thinking for their own education. This systematic ‘school sloth’ in Kant’s terms is partly self-induced, while partly also due to the tight and insidious regulation increasingly obvious beneath the modern ‘educational’ façade. It is self-incurred because students are not equipped to formulate their own points of view concerning their own education, and also because parents are easily afflicted by the dominant social norms. The external cause today of ‘sloth (inertia)’ is the tight control imposed on education, which occupies teachers with fulfilling accountability-based bureaucratic demands and demonstrating success for external evaluation, rather than concentrating on the practice of good teaching (Larsen, 2011, pp. 3–5). All in all, the problem that this book has conceived is that, in the current school systems, there is a shortage of intrinsically genuine efforts for fashioning suitable and vibrant education that works for individuals, rather than for external demonstration, evaluation or competition. And in addressing the problem as depicted here, this book is mainly concerned with the following challenge: that key participants in schools – such as teachers, parents and students – are often mired in forms of immaturity in dealing with their own educational affairs. They often feel helpless (and thus hardly have resolution) to advance intrinsic educational values. Although it is of course unfair literally to accuse teachers, parents and students of being ‘slothful’, in the traditional, antique sense of that term, this word is used mainly to underline, by contrast, an effort we need to make in order to strive for an education that meets our authentic needs, and to shoulder that shared responsibility with courage and vitality, on the understanding that education is essentially our own business and means our lives. Earlier in Chapter 1 (p. 10), when considering a conception of educational maturity, I mentioned my affinity with Michel Foucault’s agreement with Kant DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-4

Aesthetic proposal on educational maturity 23

formulating the problem as ‘a relation of autonomy to self ’ and as ‘a proper relationship between government of self and government of others’. And I then theorised ‘mature educational understanding’ with a preference to foster capacities of self-governance and flourishing personal autonomy. Indeed, this conceptualisation of maturity in dealing with education is based heavily on the notion of encouraging humans’ striving for reason (which is not limited to logical thinking) and expecting persons who can think for themselves, particularly in the context of ‘receiving’ or ‘experiencing’ education. In detail, this maturity is conceptualised with the four following features: an awareness of self-examination; a competence to understand education; a spirit to experiment; and a habituation to such styles of inquiry in concrete educational practice. Further, this maturity with its four conceptual points is justified on the grounds of restoring individual agency, forming educational subjectivity capable of contesting formidable extrinsic-ends and realising an educational imperative which upholds an enriched liberal educational value of autonomy. Broadly speaking, then, a maturity owned by individuals in dealing with schooling is called for, reacting against the forms of extrinsic domination and reclaiming pragmatic individual agency based on concrete, personal and individual thinking with regard to one’s own education and the education of others. In order to take this maturity forward, several additional questions can be asked: for instance, what does ‘cognitive, conative and affective power as a whole’ to think about education (as is required in the second conceptual point of mature educational understanding), actually mean? What is the relationship between mature educational understanding and mature conduct? How does this conception of maturity apply to students, parents and teachers respectively? And an overarching question is determining what intrinsic criteria for students, parents and teachers in education actually are. In other words, the core of mature educational understanding as conceptualised here should concern (on the one hand) what truly the interests are in particular circumstances of schooling for teachers/parents/students; and (on the other) how the partly self-incurred and partly imposed extrinsic values can be resolved properly and wisely so that what is concentrated in education becomes fundamentally intrinsic. Clearly, there are many approaches in various levels and directions which could be taken to further these inquiries. For example, Plato’s four cardinal virtues – wisdom, justice, temperance and courage – as well as the Confucian three primary virtues – wisdom, benevolence and courage – are helpful for a deep elaboration of maturity as conceived herein. Through the framework of basic virtues, a series of interesting sub-questions can be formulated as follows: is self-awareness about one’s schooling a benevolent virtue? Is competent understanding about education a wisdom virtue? Is an experiment in what you find right, and a continued inquiry into practice, an expression of the virtue of courage? Are the relationships between basic virtues and moral conduct applicable to the case of mature understanding and mature action? Similarly, I would agree that Aristotle’s practical wisdom (phronêsis) is also invaluable to a

24  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

discussion of the mature educational understanding that I have been considering here. Additionally, both theories about self-recognition by C. Taylor (1992, quoted from Dan, 2015, pp. 44–45) and about self-respect/esteem by J. Rawls (1971, pp. 178–179, quoted from Dan, 2015, pp. 43–44) can prove illuminating for inquiring into sources of mature conduct. In the following chapters, an aesthetic approach will be proposed to isolate the relationship between the extrinsic and the intrinsic in education from the viewpoints of teachers, students and parents. The approach will try to answer questions about how teachers, parents and students can discern what ‘intrinsic’ finally means in education, as well as why; and how the extrinsic often conflicts with the core aims of education thus conceived. The approach will also seek to resolve the alienation of the intrinsic in modern school systems, restoring a system of working collaboratively towards a schooling harmonised around educational vitality. Although the definition of aesthetics is complex, contentious and ongoing (Higgins, 2011), an aesthetic approach seems feasible and valuable in this context. This is first because of the explicit features of ‘the aesthetic’ which are core to educational maturity as conceptualised earlier: reflective character; dual functioning faculties of the cognitive and the intuitive; and the close relationship between theoretical thinking and practical action. For example, collaborations between analytic intellect and authentic feeling in aesthetics can prove illuminating for mature educational understanding. Second, a ‘philosophical aesthetics’ is not only itself of centrality to discussions of beauty, taste or vitality, which are commonly explicit manifestations of what we think of as ‘intrinsic’, but is also particularly relevant for discussion of the aesthetic experience to which mature educational understanding belongs (see Note 7 in Chapter 1). Last but not least, it would also be interesting to think of the classical and liberal ideal of personal autonomy, which is so well embedded in the preceding conception of educational maturity – alongside an influence of pragmatisms through the lens of aesthetics. In the ‘philosophical’ search of an approach to develop mature educational understanding, I  am also aware of a necessity to go beyond the Eurocentric Enlightenment limit of a ‘rationalistic’ conception of maturity. In this consideration, I reflect on neglected Chinese cultural assets – asking if there is anything that I  can draw upon in them to develop an approach to promote maturity which should go beyond a mere rational base? Further, I  cannot ignore the proposition that ‘Chinese culture is in essence aesthetic’ that has been suggested by several important generations of Chinese intellectuals since approximately the 19th century, when they looked out upon a strong and aggressive Western culture (for more details, see Chapter 3). However, it needs to be noted that ‘aesthetics’ is commonly perceived to be a perspective that originated in the West. Therefore how can it be used to grapple with the question of Chinese cultural identity? Indeed, Chinese intellectuals understand aesthetics in cultural terms with which their Western counterparts are unfamiliar. Insofar as

Aesthetic proposal on educational maturity 25

the Chinese understanding of ‘cultural aesthetics’ is intellectually coherent and sensible, it tends to bear the nature of hybrid understanding in the modern sense. I reckon once I find out what is meant by ‘an aesthetic Chinese culture’, I might have an enhanced light as associated with aestheticism on the wider question – one that tries to balance modern Western civilisation and Chinese tradition – to engage with the problem of maturity. In all, principal consideration is given to aesthetics as a form of inquiry capable of aiding individuals to develop mature educational understanding. A new aesthetic approach may become vital in systematically tackling how we can gain this built-up through time mature understanding of education and how it can be facilitated into a wider rejuvenation of our school systems. In particular, I  consider how to take such maturity forward in a way that could make its realisation more practical and more balanced with rationality. In this additional consideration for balancing the rationalistic orientation of Western liberal Enlightenment inherent in the conception of educational maturity as philosophically conceived earlier, I take initiative to turn to Chinese aesthetics. That is, I will reflect on the intellectual resources of contemporary Chinese cultural aesthetics, which bears a transcultural character that mediates between modern Western and Chinese tradition.

The aesthetics in educational philosophy Another consideration at the heart of this book is related to developing a theory of mature educational understanding as an educational theory. Through the intersection between aesthetics and autonomy, that is, discussing the four aspects of educational maturity as set forth via the lens of aesthetics, an enriched educational theory of mature educational understanding is expected to inform educational practice – one which parents, teachers and students can draw upon to inquire what ‘intrinsic’ means for their own educational enterprise. Therefore, the approach adopted should not only be of aesthetic importance, but also of educational significance too; I call it temporarily an ‘aesthetics-education approach’. In order to advance a lucid account of the sort of educational philosophy with which the Chinese aesthetics approach can be aligned, the following question needs to be tackled. That is, what is the location of it in relation to the existing reception of aesthetic theory in educational studies? This section will draw upon existing scholarship at the intersection between education and aesthetics, in order to add to an understanding of the aestheticseducation approach that I intend to develop for promoting educational maturity. Basically, educational theories about aesthetics can be divided into two categories summarising the points from M.C. Beardsley (1970), Tan (1995), N. Wang (2007). One is theories about aesthetic education; and the other is aestheticising modern education, fashioning education as works of art. The first category of aesthetic education, as R.A. Smith (2005, p. 19) writes, may imply arts education programs that develop aesthetic literacy in matters of

26  Educational maturity, ‘aesthetic’ proposal

creating and appreciating arts, and the fostering of a distinctive sensibility that might be extended to natural and cultural things. For comprehensive and contemporary literature reviews on this field, four pieces of work so far have been deemed to be core. They are from Eisner (1992), R. Moore (1998), R.A. Smith (2005), and Higgins (2011). Regarding the second category about aestheticising education, there is a slight difference in terms of approaches: mainly between one that presupposes the discipline of aesthetics as a basis of education (thus labelled as aesthetics of education) and the other one preferring a blend of aesthetics within education (thus named as educational aesthetics). In detail, starting from aesthetics, Beardsley (1970, p. 7) offers two sorts of parallel illumination – aesthetic concepts’ direct play in instructional theory and the aesthetic process used as a model either at the decorative level or of the deeper uses of education (pp. 17–19). In addition to this, the papers for example by Michael J. Parsons addressing ‘The Concept of Medium in Education’ and by Peter F. Neumeyer ‘Intention in Literature: its pedagogical implications’ in Aesthetic Concepts and Education (Smith, R. A., ed., 1970) belong to this subtype discussion of aesthetics of education. Takuo Nishimura (2007) also contributes from the Japanese perspective to this line of inquiry by drawing upon Motomori Kimura’s theory of expression. Related to aesthetics from the viewpoint of education, Higgins (2011) encapsulates three domains of educational ­aesthetics – the ArtisticAesthetic as Educational Ends and Means; Artistry and Aesthetic Response in the Conduct of Educational Research; and Aesthetic Foundations in Teacher Education. Another important book, Aesthetics and Problems of Education edited by R.A. Smith in 1971, indicates a systematic effort in this direction of the educational use of aesthetics. As a supplementary, educational aesthetics as I conceive it here includes aesthetic education as the first category mentioned earlier. It is explicit that the first category of aesthetic education complies with the typical, even one could say standard, understanding of aesthetics in the West. Its common expression in education can be referred to as the artistic or perceptive facet either in teaching or instruction. The focus on aesthetic experience, that merging oneself with the environment, uniting object and subject, has not been ignored (e.g., see Higgins, 2011; C.M. Smith, 1971) but has been less discussed and elaborated. This observation is corroborated by a study of Q. Wang (2010, p. 71), demonstrating the academic attention to aesthetic experience was seminal in the early 20th century China while in the formation of Western aesthetics it has not been a core concept. R.A. Smith and C.M. Smith (1971, pp. 138–140) further explain that the nature of ‘aesthetic experience as a kind of knowledge which is not discursive’ might constitute a reason why it looks less ‘visible’ in past literature. Briefly, not by generalising, classifying and perceiving things as instances of classes, aesthetic experience is ‘brought back to the concrete bogy of the world as a unique entity’ (R.A. Smith & C.M. Smith, 1971, p. 133), and is thereby less articulated. Apart from the difference of presupposition dividing aesthetic education, educational aesthetics and aesthetics of education, the diversity of the reception

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of aesthetics in education that is manifested in the level of methodology is also important (see Tan, 1995). The first level is to manipulate aesthetics as means to achieve educational efficiency and effectiveness. It is common to see arguments for artistic and aesthetic education in line with their potential contribution to both intellectual and moral development (and one might add emotional development here). For similar points, also see Broudy (1975) on aesthetic education as the cultivation of aesthetic perception and cerebral power (though it should be noted that Broudy’s viewpoint is not limited to this). The second level is about pursuing aesthetics as ends. If the first level is an explicitly utilitarian use of aesthetics, then the second level is an implicit one. It is argued that incorporating aesthetics enables an individual to attain rounded development and thereby to attain educational success. This observation about ‘arts and mature personality’ can also be seen in the work of R.A. Smith & C.M. Smith (1971, p. 129) and Beardsley (1966, p. 35). The third level – the most desirable yet the least addressed – as conceived by C.B. Tan (1995, p. 20) is as follows: the aesthetic adoption as a level of worldview shedding light on education in order to realise the meaning of life (also see Liu, T.F., 2018). This viewpoint is indeed familiar for the Chinese and will also be explained soon in Chapter 3 in relation to aesthetics as a ‘first philosophy’ for the Chinese. I also find Japanese scholars such as Nishimura (2012), Yasuo Imai and Christoph Wulf (2007, p. 15) coming to terms with this same understanding of aesthetics – which is recapitulated as ‘an aesthetic access to the world’. By contrast, it is not easy to find expressions on a par with this third level in Western scholarship – at least not in the recent resurgence of aesthetics in education since the 1970s across the work done in the educational community in the Anglo-American world. However, this third level, of perceiving aesthetics as worldview, is in essence a development derived from the Western, in particular Eurocentric, discussion of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics (Ehrenspeck, 1997, pp. 53–55). Meanwhile, it should be noted that the earlier mentioned Chinese cultural aesthetics (see the preceding section) on the one hand converges with this European aesthetic tradition, and on the other hand advances to embrace aesthetics as the highest ideal and clarify itself as ‘beyond the ethical’. Indeed, Chinese aesthetics clarifies itself as ‘beyond the ethical’, rather than freezing at ‘aesthetics as ethics’. So far, it is clear that seen from the perspective of the existing reception of aesthetics in education, my focus on aesthetics lies in the sense that is implied in the idea of ‘aesthetic experience’, and if interpreted from the methodological level it is also repurposed as ‘worldview’. The aesthetics-education approach belongs to a theory of perceiving modern education as aesthetics, aestheticising education. But what does that ‘aesthetics functioning as worldview’ concretely mean? What is really meant by that ‘aesthetics is beyond ethics’ as held by the Chinese towards modernisation? Evidently, a systematic account of the transcultural Chinese aesthetics is necessary for further discussion of what I term an ‘aesthetic’ approach to educational maturity.

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To explain such an iterative cross-cultural understanding of aesthetics, I cannot bypass philosopher Zehou Li. In what follows, I will draw more heavily and systematically upon Li’s thought. After acquaintance with his ‘aesthetic’ philosophy in the next three chapters, I  will come up with an operational understanding of aesthetics by which the aesthetics-education approach can be underpinned (see Chapter 6). The Chinese development of the aesthetic lies in its embrace of aesthetics as the highest ideal (which will be elaborated on in Part II). This point can be traced to Confucius’ aestheticism and now awaits its modernisation in the contemporary period. Now let us move to Chapter 3 to explore the first aspect of the Chinese cultural aesthetics.

Part II

The transcultural Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

Chapter 3

Aesthetic metaphysics By analysing the slogan ‘replacement of religion with aesthetics’

Aesthetics, as a modern perspective initially coined by Baumgarten (1750) and considerably further developed by Kant in the 18th century, has captured Chinese intellectuals’ attention and imagination since around the end of the 19th century (Wang, B., 1997, p. 17; Peng, 2010, pp. 139–140; Pohl, 2010, p. 167). From the beginning, aesthetics was seen, along with Western technology, science and social theories such as Marxism, liberalism and nationalism, as ‘one of the practical solutions for China’s problems’ – rescuing the culture on the brink of collapse when confronted by the strong, aggressive and advanced (modern) Western civilisation (Wang, B., 1997, pp. 19, 55–56). Through B. Wang’s (1997) reinterpretation of the seminal aesthetician Guowei Wang 王 国维 (1877–1927)1, we can see Chinese aesthetic discourse was already in its initial stage ‘preoccupied with the welfare – the viable sense of self and identity – of a specific individual in a specific historical situation and hence was ideologically and politically grounded’ (1997, p. 20). Later, during the 1910s and 1920s, in the anti-religion movement, aesthetics played a liberal role in the nationwide intellectual debate on so-called doctrinaire and institutional religions, be they Christianity or Confucianism or Buddhism. Even after the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, when there were relatively rigorous controls on ideology and unwelcoming attitudes towards the ‘bourgeois’ style most likely typified by aesthetics, the liberal role aesthetics once played continued. As revealed by the two historically prominent ‘aesthetic crazes’ in post-1949 China – the first aesthetic debate (1957–1964)2 under the banner of ‘Marxist aesthetics’ and the later ‘breakout-interests’ of aesthetics

1 ‘Guowei Wang was a scholar of extraordinary accomplishments in areas ranging from philosophy, aesthetics, archaeology, and literary criticism’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 19); he was also ‘one of the strongest among the intellectuals and writers at the beginning of 20th century who took upon themselves to introduce and expound Western aesthetics’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 22). 2 Basically this was a debate on the essence of beauty, about the subject-object relationship in aesthetic experience. For details, see K. Liu (2000, pp. 122–141) and Man (2015, pp. 23–24), Gao (2018, pp. 155–163).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-6

32  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

among both intellectuals and general public in the 1980s3 – aesthetics has been proven to be a resilient field. The history of this enthusiastic Chinese embrace of aesthetics signifies that aesthetics is ‘more than a fascinating foreign concept’ in China, as B. Wang (1997, p. 9) points out. Following K.P. Wang’s (2006, p. 113) modest comment that aesthetics has always been active at the borders between the Chinese and the West, and at the same time in the encounter between traditional and contemporary China, I regard aesthetics as the crux for understanding Chinese cultural identity.4 In all, ‘aesthetics’ was a foreign term not only acquired by Chinese intellectuals but also substantially tempered by shifting historical contexts and invested with ideological motives for the service of China’s modernisation programmes from the turn of the 20th century onwards. The significant question here is what the functioning ideas are when appropriating aesthetics. That is, what was the kind of aesthetics selected? Why and how? What implications can we draw from the underpinning ideas of aesthetics that have fascinated the Chinese over the past hundred years for the aesthetic development of mature educational understanding? In relation to the question of ‘what are the main functioning ideas during this sympathetic while selective reception of aesthetics’, B. Wang (1997) in his fine monograph The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China has already provided one extremely illuminating angle: an interpretation of aesthetics intertwined with politics. He adopted the aesthetic category of the sublime to reveal Chinese appropriation and manipulation of Western aesthetics: for example, situating it within the broad context of the nationalistic program of constructing a new people in a new time. This leads us to ask a further question: are there any useful connections between refashioning a new person and rejuvenating a vital schooling by aesthetics? Are there any historical lessons for us today that ‘in tackling ethical and political questions one resorts to and explores the possibilities promised by the aesthetic mode of understanding and argument’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 21)? Bearing in mind the aforementioned questions, I attempt to unearth the ideologies within the aesthetic enterprise by analysing a provocative but important

3 After the Cultural Revolution which ended in 1976, an intellectual and spiritual crisis ensued. In response to such a crisis, a cultural ferment occurred, within which philosopher Zehou Li’s study of Chinese aesthetics and theory of aesthetic subjectivity played an outstanding role in the country. For more information, see K. Liu (2000, p. 126). 4 I am not rejecting Edward Said’s apt comment (1993, p. 217, quoted from Zhou, 2005, p. 783) that ‘culture is never a matter of ownership’, but I am using the term ‘Chinese cultural identity’ to denote and to emphasise the aspect of what the Chinese understand of who they actually are. As for the point that aesthetics assumed a special place in China’s grappling with Western thought, also see Pohl (2018, pp. 59–60, 70) where he unravels the origins of such a prominence of aesthetics over the last century in China, and affirms the idea that ‘the Chinese understand their own culture as an essentially aesthetic one’.

Aesthetic metaphysics 33

slogan5 – aesthetic education as a substitute for religion – initially put forward by Yuanpei Cai 蔡元培 (1868–1940)6 in 1917 and further elaborated by Zehou Li 李泽厚 (1930–2021)7 in 2016. This methodology is on the one hand in alignment with B. Wang (1997): my aim in this chapter is also to hold a view of aesthetics which is not as a pure ‘science of beauty’, nor on a par with the other social sciences (Wang, B., 1997, p. 19); neither is it dealing merely with human perceptions, feelings and experiences of art, as in the Western origins of the discourse. On the other hand, differing from B. Wang’s (1997) sophisticated and intriguing political interpretation of the sublime applied to the various aesthetic forms such as literature and film over 20th century China, my discussion foregrounds the thread of thought which promotes aesthetics to a very high position as a foundational ‘first philosophy’ for the Chinese.8 The representative modern thinkers of this significant line of thought include but are not limited to Yuanpei Cai 蔡元培 (1868–1940), Qichao Liang 梁启超 (1873–1929), Guowei Wang 王国维 (1877–1927), Xun Lu 鲁迅 (1881–1936), Shuming Liang 梁漱溟 (1893–1988), Youlan Feng 冯友兰 (1895–1990) and Zehou Li 李泽厚 (1930–2021). Among them, Yuanpei Cai, Qichao Liang and Guowei Wang belong to the first generation of modern Chinese intellectuals who ‘received a very high level of training in traditional Chinese culture’ and ‘tended to defend its basic values and spirits,’ but were creative and innovative in using Western culture to revise and to complement traditional Chinese culture (Li & Schwarcz, 1983, p. 47). Within these representative great thinkers of the first generation, who were both well versed in Chinese classics and had a good command of Western culture, Liang, Wang and Cai all had the concern for ‘the ideological function of religion fleshed out in the form of the aesthetic’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 24). In particular, the epitome of this stream of thought is embodied in the notable slogan ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’, although this easily strikes readers at first glance as being either very naive or very controversial. The slogan is, indeed, too preliminary, too unsystematic and not solemn enough if no further explanation and elaboration is provided.

5 Although nowadays it is improper to say one writes ‘slogans’, it is a historical fact that the proposition was expressed in a manner intended to acquire the status of a slogan in a social movement. Overall ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’ is more than an attractive mantra, but worthy of decoding. It is in this sense that I use the word ‘slogan’ here. 6 Yuanpei Cai, the Hanlin Academy official of the Qing dynasty and the first Minister of Education of the Republic of China, was one of the most important intellectual leaders in modern China and the highly respected architect of modern Chinese education. ‘Cai’s position in Chinese intellectual history is analogous in some respects to those of the pre-Revolution philosophers of France’, Sakai says (1949, p. 188). 7 Zehou Li works mostly in the history of Chinese thought and aesthetics. He is also the founding philosopher of this book. 8 According to Li (2010b, p. 209), this is one of the two salient examples over the 20th century demonstrating the ancient Chinese tradition’s creative power in absorbing Western ideas.

34  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

It is however worth examining this proposition in depth since it is a serious position held by a very important intellectual generation of modern China and adopted enthusiastically by later generations. Specially, Cai once formulated a research proposal intending to develop systematically and academically this early account (see his foreword for a book by Y. Xiao 萧瑜 [Juyou xueshuo pinglun 居友学说评论], Cai, 1938/1987, p.  310). While Cai unfortunately had not completed this further study owing to changes and burdens of life and work incurred by his occupation of several major national roles, thinkers of later generations, such as the philosopher Zehou Li, carried this aspiration forward (see Li, 2016a). Thus, the thinking behind aesthetics may well be reconsidered in terms of the slogan analysis of ‘replacement of religion with aesthetics’ – which outlines a critical overview of aesthetics for the Chinese, in parallel with Wang’s (1997) political reading of the category of the sublime. At the end of this chapter, implications will be drawn from this examination which go deep into the modernisation of China over the past century and deal with an important theme in this process related to aesthetics, and which form some points of departure for an overall aesthetics-education approach. On the other hand, in the tradition of educational studies, there are many famous and influential analyses of celebrated educational slogans. For instance, ‘education according to nature’ has been analysed substantially by C.D. Hardie (1962, pp. 1–23) and T.W. Moore (1974, pp. 33–37). And Scheffler in his renowned book The Language of Education (1960, pp. 36–46) provides a useful methodology to evaluate educational slogans of this type. In that book, he used his methods to analyse two then popular and even now influential slogans – ‘we teach children, not subjects’ and ‘there can be no teaching without learning/ there can be teaching without learning’. On the whole I adopt his template of slogan-criticism to analyse the educational slogan I am tackling in relation to aesthetics in early republican China. According to Scheffler (1960, pp. 36–38), a slogan analysis requires a dual evaluation. It is a critique of both of the literal and the practical purport. By the literal purport, Scheffler means to evaluate the slogan as a straightforward assertion, to interpret it literally, asking the question ‘Does it make sense?’. By the practical purport, Scheffler means to examine the slogan as a symbol of a practical social movement, to excavate the practical relevance, the emphases, and the rallying symbols of the key ideas and attitudes of the educational movement. To carry out an independent criticism of the practical movements which give birth to the slogans is to ask ‘whether or not such application ought indeed to be made’ (p. 40). In this step, we need to be clear that ‘the practical purport’s varied fortune is a function of changing times and changing problems and that it does not result from the failure of the slogan as an invariant literal doctrine’ (p. 41). While Scheffler lays less focus on the parent doctrine(s) examination, at least in the materials I am consulting, I am inclined to make the critique of the parent doctrine(s) an explicit and equally important third aspect of the

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slogan analysis. To illustrate the third step, compare a slogan of the progressive ­educational movement. I  have mentioned earlier the slogan ‘we teach children, not subjects’, which transmitted a series of progressive educational ideas. Behind the progressive context in which such a slogan took shape is the evaluation of John Dewey’s theoretical influences (though Dewey himself often did not agree with all of the progressive use of his ideas). This constitutes an analysis of the parent doctrine(s) from which the progressive slogan has sprung. Now I enter into the substantial three-step slogan analysis, applying a critique of the literal purport, the practical purport and the parent doctrine to the slogan ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’. For an extra explanation, this sort of tripartite criticism from a hermeneutic perspective is equivalent to inquiry into the following three questions: (1) what exactly did the original thinker say? (2) What exactly did the original thinker intend to say? (3) What would the original thinker say nowadays? (Wu, Y.T., 2002, pp. 5, 89, 111, 150).

The analysis of the literal purports As Scheffler (1960, p.  36) notes, it is idle to criticise a slogan for its formal inadequacy because slogans are intended to be enthusiastically restated instead of being subjected to serious reflection. However, since this slogan of ‘replacing religion with aesthetic education’ is easily misunderstood or underestimated by being taken as a literal doctrine, it is necessary to unpack the literal arguments assumed when the thinker(s) made this proposal. Basically, there are three literal points to be illustrated. First, it is based on the evolutionary relationships among religion, education and aesthetics from the ancient times till the modern period. At this point to understand the literal equivalence between religion and aesthetic education, we need to bear two additional perspectives in mind: one is the Chinese historical understanding of religion; the other is the development of modernity in the Western world which differentiates into approximately three autonomous domains – the scientific, the moral and the aesthetic. As for the historical rationale, the Chinese language has preserved the primordial simple equation of religion with education. ‘The Chinese makes no distinction between the theistic religions and the purely moral teaching of their sages’, as Shih Hu 胡 适 (1934, p. 79) points out. The Chinese word for ‘religion’ is Jiao 教 which means teaching or a system of teaching, be it to teach people to believe in a particular deity, or to teach them how to behave toward other humans (Hu, 1934, p.  79). With some modern knowledge, Cai further adds (1932/2015, pp.  253–254) one explanation to this straightforward identification that the main components of education – intellectual education, moral education and physical education – all originally were performed by a unified form of religion. That is, religion provides accounts for the natural world, from birth to death. At the same time, the instructions and rituals of religion cultivate people’s moral understanding and foster individuals’ physical training. In view of

36  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

the close historical relationship between the two, it is hardly surprising that the Chinese feel subconsciously that the interchange between religion and education is natural. Hence in a contemporary context, when education becomes evidently legitimate, replacing religion with education, and not vice versa, is both reasonable and acceptable – of course without implying that the Chinese are not religious or incapable of religious life or experience (Hu, 1934, p. 78). Another intellectual perspective giving literal support to the slogan of ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’ needs to recall an idea from Max Weber on modernity. According to Weber, modernity was characterised by the disenchantment with, and separation of, the united religious worldview then carved up into three autonomous spheres: science, morality and art (see Habermas, 1983, p. 9). Apparently, as Shusterman (2000, p. 211, quoted from Peng, 2010, p. 153) writes, ‘this tripartite division was powerfully reflected and reinforced by Kant’s critical analysis of human thinking in terms of pure reason, practical reason, and aesthetic judgment’. It is this interpretation of modernity regarding rationalisation, secularisation and differentiation that makes Cai’s proposal seem literally comprehensible. In particular, in modern times, with science and technology on the rise and religious faith on the wane, especially since many religions have proven to be sheer instruments of power and domination, aesthetic elements have drifted apart from the bankrupt systems of faith and significantly came into their own. (Wang, B., 1997, p. 23) Cai applied (1917, 1932/2015, pp.  254–257; also see Chen, Y.Y., 2010, pp. 191–192) this tendency to a modernity in which the religion waned, arguing that with the accelerated development of the natural and social sciences, the only remaining valuable function of religion lay in the domain of emotion, although the three general aspects of humanity – the intellectual, the volitional and the emotional – were once all cultivated by religion. Further in Cai’s viewpoint, the function of ‘emotional balance’ can be better served by the independent sphere of aesthetic education in accordance with the advantages that the aesthetic possesses and the disadvantages that organised religion encompasses. In reaching this conclusion, Cai (1917, 1930, p. 484, 1932/2015, pp.  257–258; also see Chen, Y.Y., 2010, p.  192; Peng, 2010, pp.  140–141) argues that aesthetic education is more free without religious dictatorship; it is progressive and evolutionary in styles and tastes as time changes, while religion is orthodoxy without open criticism; it is universal while religion is exclusive and thus religious wars are always unavoidable. Since the explicit merits of aesthetic education in channelling the emotional and the spiritual supremely outweigh that of the remaining function of religion, it is literally and logically legitimate to defend replacing the remnant of religion (i.e. emotional education) with aesthetic education.

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The second point of the literal purport is related to a replacement of i­nstitutionalised religion, be it an imported Christianity from the West or any kind of revivification of traditional religions such as Daoism, Chinese Buddhism or Confucianism. Actually, Cai did not claim that religion was completely useless; on the contrary, ‘for him, religion was still an alternative in educating the masses to be less selfish and more considerate of others’ (Chen, Y.Y., 2010, p. 192; also see Wu, Y.T., 2002, p. 132). Therefore, to be accurate, what Cai intended to replace is an organised and institutionalised religious system expediently established for the Chinese or appropriated to tempt people to a blind faith (Cai, 1922). Since Cai (1932/2015, p. 253) proposed to study religion objectively and scientifically, rather than with personal preferences and private partisanship, religion itself for him is not a thing to be sentenced to death by a superficial reading of the concise and provocative language of the slogan. Third, in comparison with ‘replacing religion with science’ (Chen, D.X., 1917)9 and ‘replacing religion with ethics’ (see Confucianism’s practice of ­politics-ethics in traditional China), ‘aesthetics as a substitute for religion’ seems more promising as a way out for a flourishing human future. Human history to date has already convinced us that neither ‘replacing religion with science’ nor ‘replacing religion with ethics’ is desirable or possible. The development of the natural sciences and of scientific thinking more generally, so far all over the world has proven that the sciences are insufficient to solve all the problems of humankind (indeed they may often be directly implicated in them). Meanwhile, over 2,000 years of Confucian experimentation and perfectionism, which prioritised ethics in society, indicates that such a unilateral effort is not enough to solve objective problems of survival – such as earthquakes, plagues, accidental deaths and evil uses of military-political power by the aggressive – that an uncontrolled environment anytime can cruelly pose to us. Nor is it in any sense a sustainable guarantee for realising every individual human potential in general, for the precondition of material productivity has been marginalised. So, in an age when religion is in general fading away and religious ethics are called into question, proposing aesthetic education as a substitute is preferable compared with the replacement of religion by either pure science or pure ethics. On the other hand, based on the obvious achievements of both science and ethics so far, it is in fact very positive to assume that aesthetics might add a further step in building successful, fulfilled human life. While the preceding analyses of the literal purport embodied in the slogan ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’ have been justified from three aspects, it would hardly be claimed true even by proponents of the slogan that

9 Duxiu Chen 陈独秀advised the youths of the nation to worship two gods: science and democracy (Hu, 1934 p.  39) and put forward the slogan ‘replacing religions with science’ during the same period when Cai raised his aesthetic proposal.

38  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

religion can really be replaced. From a logical point of view, aesthetic education which is constitutively unable to deal with issues of the ‘God/gods’, or questions such as eternal life, a life after this life, is not in fact ‘identical’ with religion and therefore the slogan is not interpretable as both literal and true. In addition, from an existential viewpoint, religion as a social phenomenon with a history as long as that of humankind is autonomous and independent in its own sense and this condition is likely to continue to exist. Hence it is pointless to replace one thing that exists and endures with another new choice outlandishly. What is more, even if we assume that aesthetic education can replace institutionalised religion as a logical and theoretical possibility, what then emerges is the same a priori phantom like religion itself (Li, 2016a, pp. 579–580), besetting every individual life. At best we might conclude along the Confucian line that this aesthetic ‘replacement’ is perhaps closer to the world of human experience, in contrast with religions’ inescapable association with the ‘God/gods’ (Li, 2016a, pp.  577–578). However, this position could entail both a merit and a deficit at the same time: the merit of reaching people more easily from a basis in empirical experience; the deficit of lacking any truly transcendent element (after all, who knows if a closer and enlightened alignment with God/gods might not be eventually desirable?). To sum up the analysis of the literal purport embodied in the slogan ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’, it can be seen that there are literal and logical defects in the proposal and that such a replacement is not likely to happen in reality. But the slogan has at least three plausible points where the question concerns the Chinese historical understanding of religion, the influence of modernity all over the world on religion, and the late development advantage that the aesthetic encompassed, in contrast to pure science and ethics, for the making of a decent human world.

The analysis of the practical purports According to Scheffler (1960, pp. 39–40), to evaluate the practical purport of the slogan is to grasp the relevance of its emphasis, the aims it symbolised, the essential tendencies with which it was associated, regarding the given context in which such a practical message took shape. Here I go on to examine what exactly the original thinker intended to say in the slogan ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’. When going back to the historical situation of the earlier 20th century, where Cai formulated the slogan, we can see that the overarching concern of the intellectuals represented by Cai was the modernisation of China, incorporating the best parts both of its own tradition and of Western civilisation. As Pohl (2009, p. 91) points out ‘the encounter with Western thought brought the Chinese a wealth of fascinatingly new ideas, allowing them to look for familiar concepts which could be aligned with their own tradition’. So the judgment ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’

Aesthetic metaphysics 39

in a sense is a result of this creative encounter and represents a serious effort on the part of Chinese intellectuals of the period. Briefly it entailed a liberal role – rather than a religious function – assigned to the aesthetic on China’s road to modernisation, with specific aims to liberate and rejuvenate the Chinese people’s spirit; to balance potentially over-developed materialism in the sciences; and to resuscitate the historically rooted Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music) tradition in the modern period. With regard to fashioning a new spirit of freedom, democracy and science (Peng, 2010, p. 140; Duiker, 1971, p. 219, 1972, p. 395) among the Chinese people, which is recognised by Cai as the key to unlock the door to China’s salvation (that is Chinese modernisation), aesthetic education was conceived at the time as the means to foster a new civic ethos as an alternative to the import of a religion from the West or the ‘invention’ of a new religion for the Chinese. The smartest Chinese intellectuals, exemplified by Cai himself, had come to know that China needed a spiritual and intellectual revitalisation, widening the parochial Confucian viewpoint and regenerating the then rather demoralised Chinese nation (Lubot, 1972, pp.  163–164; Wang, B., 1997, p.  56). It was believed that a nation of liberated, sceptical and rational citizens would hopefully form the solid foundation for a new society (Lubot, 1972, p. 164). At the same time, the aesthetic seems to have been regarded as ‘an effective way of dealing with the world of human senses and emotion, and hence lent itself to the moral refinement and education of the populace’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 22). For Cai (1917), aesthetic education could promote noble feeling and morality to form a better society based on the voluntary consent of free citizens through a universal love of beauty, in contrast with the enforced culture of compliance promoted by an outworn religion. Thus, it seems intelligible that to serve the purpose at the time of cultivating and nurturing a new person, one who would be ‘dynamic yet tolerant, skeptical yet rational’ (Lubot, 1972, p. 164), aesthetic education was reasonably adopted as a substitute for religion. During the same period, dominated by World War I (1914–1918) and the great revolution in Russia (1917), came doubts in many Chinese minds about the stability and permanent value of Western civilisation, about which there was the warning of ‘the bankruptcy of the scientific civilisation’ (see Hu, 1934, pp. 40–42). Given such a turbulent and violent situation, the relevance of the aesthetic became obvious. While ‘it was popular among culturally conservative intellectuals at this time to posit a Chinese spiritual inclination against a Western materialistic culture’ (Pohl, 2009, p. 91), Cai in highlighting aesthetics was more than a mere proponent of his own tradition. This was because rather than going to another extreme to deny the necessity of material prosperity, Cai held the sensible attitude of rebalancing an over-developed materialism which ‘permits the machine to dominate the man, science personified by greed to triumph over art personified by selflessness’ (Duiker, 1971, p. 225). On the one hand, Cai understood well the aesthetic being useful in transcending ­materialism – ‘aesthetics is in large part a protest against the forcing of all experience into

40  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

instrumentality (utility), and of all things into commodities’; and ‘it is an affirmation of certain human meanings and values which a dominant social system reduced and even tried to exclude’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 18). Cai certainly had no doubt about the disinterestedness and the beyond-utilitarian character of the aesthetic, which is finely in alignment with ‘the traditional repugnance for materialism in the Confucian tradition’ (Duiker, 1971, p. 216). On the other hand, Cai had a modern sense that aesthetics and the sciences are complementary. In anticipating R. Moore’s (1998, p. 90) famous argument that arts education complements and enhances training in science, mathematics, logic and so on, by infusing them with the love of life and vicissitude that arts inspire, Cai also emphasised the vital and creative spirit that aesthetics could bring about for scientists (1921/2015, pp. 199–202). Orthodox religion in this regard, by contrast, was construed as an obstacle to the pure search for natural knowledge and thus not deserving further consideration (Cai, 1917; Duiker, 1972, p. 398). In short, Cai once again assigned a liberal role for the aesthetic, instead of religion, to aid a vital development of science in China which was necessitated by China’s modernisation programme, which its leadership believed must not lead to a callous materialism. The third point of the practical purports in which a liberal role assigned in the slogan is related to inheriting the tradition of Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music) in China of the modern era (also see Wu, Y.T., 2002, pp. 97, 135, 140). In a 1904 essay titled ‘Confucius’ aestheticism of education’ (kongzi zhi meiyu zhuyi 孔子之美育主义), published in Educational World anonymously but with strong and persuasive evidence that it was written by Guowei Wang (see Fo, C., 1987), Wang elaborated on Confucius’ educational aestheticism in its form of poetry education and musical education, as well as natural education.10 The education in music and poetry belongs to the Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music)11 tradition, which according to contemporary philosopher Zehou Li (1999a, p. 67, 2010b, p. 13, 2015/2018) is ‘the Confucian theorization of the ancient shamanistic ritual in Chinese primitive society’. That is to say, Confucius’ aestheticism manifesting the Li Yue tradition through poetry, music and nature education was to some extent the secular and disenchanted form of religion in ancient China. Li’s argument of the Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music) as the rationalisation of the primitive ritual awaits more detailed historical exposition. But the conversion of original religion into Confucian Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music) tradition is convincing, because in hindsight Confucianism does function as ‘religious laws’, and arts such as poetry and music are all largely 10 Natural education herein mainly refers to a kind of all-round edification gained by appeal to vitality in nature and by individuals who immerse themselves into the natural environment. 11 For more details about the rites and music tradition, see Li (2010b). Chapters 1&2. Basically, it is argued as follows: the Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music) which shored up social orders, was transformed by Confucianism first into a self-conscious humanism and then gradually sedimented into a certain type of mentality among the Chinese (Li, 2010b, p. 52).

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and successfully vehicles for conveying ‘the Confucian way and an instrument of moral edification’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 20; Huang, 1963, p. 51). Thus, in line with poetry education and musical education functioning as religious elements in ancient China, aesthetic education as the modern form substituting for religion is regarded as the current development of the prior Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music) tradition. Indeed, as Hu (1934, p.  78) writes, ‘it cannot be denied that the educated people in China are indifferent to religion and that the whole intellectual tendency there is not favourable to any religious movement or revival’. It is this accumulated ‘collective memory’ (Pohl, 1999, p. xi) of the preference for an aesthetics that once liberated and secularised primitive China from the primordial shamanistic, through the efforts of Confucians in the classical period (e.g., Duke Zhou and Confucius as main representatives), that is crystallised in its new life and power in the slogan ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’ for refashioning a modern liberal China. Taken together, we can not only see plausible points in the literal sense of the slogan, but also see the positive evaluations of these areas of emphasis representing the practical purports of the slogan for 20th century China, caught as it was in a quagmire of social revolution and transition. Both the literal and practical analyses of the slogan indicate a definite contrast with its naive surface as a simple form of replacing A with B. Rather, by unpacking hidden motifs and designs in the slogan, we can become critically aware of a humanistic and rationalistic and thus liberal appropriation of the aesthetic for a new spiritually rich and democratic China, alongside the material wealth initially brought by the development of Western science and technology. Nevertheless, it has been 100 years since the slogan was put forward, during which period China has transformed enormously and Chinese people’s understanding of modernity and religion has become more comprehensive. From such visible ideational, spatial and temporal distances, there is no doubt that some of the literal and practical messages are less urgent than they once may have been. For instance, since all kinds of religion live peacefully in China today, it is unreasonable to reiterate excluding religion. Some other points may also be less warranted, such as a historical consciousness or unconsciousness not differentiating religion from education. However, there are some thoughts assumed in the slogan that are still strong: for example, the advantages of the aesthetic in fostering human beings and aiding scientific development; and the creative and critical legacy of Confucian aesthetic adjustment. It is therefore necessary to excavate the parent doctrine(s) embodied in the valuable thinking behind the seeming appropriation of the aesthetic, especially expounding its important cultural roots, and reimagining what the line of thinkers associated with it would nowadays say. In order to explore the transcultural Chinese aesthetics – what the Chinese understand as the aesthetic; how/why they elevate the aesthetic; and especially what they have refashioned through its appropriation – I will pay particular attention to, among other factors, the modern adaptation of Confucius’ aestheticism.

42  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

The analysis of the parent doctrine The modern interpretation of Confucius’ aestheticism as the crucial source of the slogan ‘replacing religion with aesthetics’ is on the surface similar to the perspective of modern aesthetic thinkers in the West, ranging from Matthew Arnold to Martin Heidegger, who tend to elevate the aesthetic to the status of religion (Wang, B., 1997, p. 24). However, it should be clarified that while modern Chinese intellectuals, from Cai to Li, have indeed been influenced by the aesthetic perspective from the West to bear on China’s modernisation, what is more significant is that they have productively found sources for it in China’s own tradition, as indicated in the aesthetic preference exercised by Confucians in the classical period for rationalising primitive religious teaching. In Chapter 6 when discussing ‘Li’s Assessment of Confucianism’, I will present this aesthetic reading of Confucianism more systematically, expounding how Li examined it by identifying three significant cultural characteristics of Confucianism, which is well-nigh an equivalent of Chinese culture. In particular, readers will see how the statement of ‘replacing religion with aesthetics’ has been more fully clarified, in accordance with the inner logical development of its primary thought, into the proposition that ‘aesthetics supersedes religion (aesthetic pleasure as the highest ideal for human life)’ (see p. 106ff of this book). Now let us turn back to the modern craze for aesthetics in China with a primal connection to Confucius’ aestheticism. In detail, I  will mainly draw upon Cai and Li’s modern perspective on Confucius’ aestheticism, especially Li’s comprehensive understanding. Basically, with the affirmation of aesthetics added to the understanding of Chinese culture, modern Confucius’ aestheticism seems to provide a new articulation and an invaluable understanding of the relationships between the individual, society, environment, tradition, the influence of the West, and the necessary perception of the spiritual in opposition to the secular. This adaptation of Confucius aestheticism, conceiving the aesthetic as a ‘first philosophy’, is significant for the current vacuum in values, elaborating the system of ideas and values capable of resolving the ideological, ethical and political problems that have beset modern China since the 19th century. Hence it is important to unpack the heritage of Confucius’ aestheticism, and at the same time explicate its intricate development and modern refurbishment. In this way, we subsequently go forward to the implications for an aesthetics-education approach fashioned to develop mature educational understanding as proposed in Part I. As Hall and Ames point out (1987, p. 91, quoted from Leddy, 2014, p. 46; also see Chandler, 2017, p.  2), ‘Confucianism is fundamentally an aesthetic tradition as it is featured by emphasizing the uniqueness of each and every situation, and in which the goal of ritualized living is to redirect attention back to the level of concrete feeling’. This is especially the case when we think of the Li Yue (礼乐, rites and music) tradition, which ‘affirms, emphasizes, and elevates the natural needs, desires and emotions of the individual human’ (Li,

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D’Ambrosio & Carleo III, 2016, p. 1099). While Li (礼, ritual and rites) regulates as the external norms used to maintain the socio-political order, Yue (乐, music) serves as the emotional outlet of individuals – expressions of the individual’s inner feelings which harmonise the human being’s inner psyche (Li, 1999a, p. 67; Huang, 1963, pp. 55–56). However, this harmonised emotional expression, for Confucius, is not a ‘self-delighted’ indulgence, but is, rather, morally and socially structured (Huang, 1963, p. 58; Wang, B., 1997, p. 22; Li, 2010b, p. 10). With such a successful ‘fusion of internal emotions and the interflow of emotions within one’s heart’ by Yue (乐, music), which is intended to bring about a balance between body and mind in the individual, the promotion of social harmony is the next deeper and major purpose (Li, 1999a, pp. 67, 70, 2010b, p. 19). Hence, Confucius’ aestheticism is deeply concerned with the commitment of an aesthetic criterion of harmony12 – the harmony within the individual human being which is also essentially a concern for social harmony synchronically consisting of groups of harmonised individuals. Beneath these concerns about harmony within the individual and among the individuals, it is Confucius’ affirmation of human existence in this life on the earth – in contrast with many other ‘religions’, which routinely condemn the worldly life (Chandler, 2017, p. 96) – that is the most appreciated heritage for modern Chinese people. Indeed, modern Confucius’ aestheticism inherits the Confucian positive expectation for the social and worldly life, consistent with the vital notion that ‘the world of Nature is good and orderly and beautiful; the world of man should and can be made better and more orderly and more beautiful when harmony permeates the life of the individual and society’ (Huang, 1963, p. 57; Li, 2015, pp. 218–219). Without any doubt, it is a gamble of Confucius’ aestheticism that the universe takes on a harmonious character – it is in essence an aesthetic attitude13 in itself, more partial to believe in the uniqueness of each one thing and its plural contribution when put together to form the thriving whole, wherein pairs of opposites are interrelated and even interdependent. On the other hand, Confucius’ aestheticism, characterised by harmonious treatment of individual desires and by preferable affection for this worldly collective life (also see Zhao, 2010, p. 591) in its depiction of the natural environment, is mysterious. More precisely, it has been marginalised since its inception by the mainstream Chinese intelligentsia (see Chong’s reiteration of Li’s viewpoint, 1999, p. 136; Ames, 2006, p. 320). In its modern update, the theoretical rebalancing with regard to this weakness has thus been put on the agenda. To improve an aesthetic understanding of the relationship between the individual and the environmental nature, Confucius’ aestheticism in its modern

12 Rather than in the sense of sameness, the word ‘harmony’ is used in a metaphorical understanding of symphony. 13 In Chinese that is qingyuan xiangxin 情愿相信. Also see the explanation of ‘an aesthetic type of moral reasoning’ in Chapter 4.

44  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

refinement becomes rather materialistic – an inflection, which might result from the influence of historical materialism derived from Marxism and of the substantial and demonstrable effectiveness of Western science and technology. But from another angle, it is also important to recognise the modern reconsideration of, and recombination with, Daoism, which is ‘cosmological and more concerned with the place of the human in the universe’ (Liu, Y.D., 2014a, p. 25). Thus, viewed holistically, the nature of this rebalancing has not been changed into a spiritual-logical speculation or as a rational system as such. Neither has it been changed into a materialistic empirical metaphysics. But by borrowing these significant elements from the Western philosophy and science, it updates the Chinese feature of philosophy – oneness of material and spiritual – into both the material-rational and the spiritual-emotional, forming a comprehensive worldview for humankind living on the earth. This both material-rational and spiritual-emotional version of modern Confucius’ aestheticism is inspiringly elaborated by Li (2016a). In particular, Li updates two basic elements in the original Confucius’ aestheticism for the modern period: one is to perceive the universal (cosmic) order – noting that it is no longer confined to the primitive religion order – as an aesthetic order (Li, 2016a, pp. 586–588); the other is to perceive both previous and existing societies aesthetically in a historical ontology – which denotes a metaphysical viewpoint of a diachronic gathering together of the past (Li, 2016a, pp. 590–592, 597). As for an aesthetic order, I have introduced an aesthetic (Li Yue 礼乐) experience of the harmonised relation within the individual, and at an interpersonal level, as the key principle of aesthetic judgment in Confucius’ aestheticism (Huang, 1963, p. 54; Li, 2010b, p. 24). It is at this point that Li tries to expand our view. Li first understands the universal order, on the one hand as social objectivity; on the other, as natural necessity. For Li, the origin of such universal orders is initially found in the making and using of tools by primitive people organised in groups in transforming the external natural environment. In particular, what works gives rise to humankind’s understanding of proper measure (DU 度),14 which herein is first of all a physical law of the nature ‘felt’ and ‘grasped’ by the physical human. Since today’s human faculties have been much more extended by technology – for example, in the way that a telescope or a microscope extends human eyesight, the isomorphic structures of universal orders become more complicated too, let alone extra influences from history and society. Thus, the traditional Chinese aesthetics which upholds ‘the highest ideal is

14 Proper measure (DU度) is a vital category in Li’s philosophy, which could be understood as a revised criterion of aesthetic judgment. That is, the proper measure includes but is not limited to the standard of harmony. More precisely, proper measure (DU度) has two aspects of denotation: (1) ‘eureka’ found in material and technological production; and (2) ‘pleasure’ attained when rationality is dissolved into emotionality in a human psyche (see Li, 2015/2018, pp. 268–269). Usually these two aspects function interrelatedly, also see p.  61ff for an illustration of the place of DU in Li’s moral philosophy.

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the ­natural’ – attributed to Daoism, and especially Laozi (Peng, 2010, pp. 144, 152) – gains a materialistic explanation, adding to a modern Confucius’ aestheticism an enlarged view of the aesthetic order expressed in the materialism of various universal orders or natural/social laws open to discovery by the sciences. On the other hand, Li does retain some necessary mysterious elements. He urges us to cultivate a kind of emotion, taking the universe as noumenon (a thing as it is in itself) which cannot be fully known but which can be pondered, replacing religious fervour with that attachment to the unknown (or unknowable) which refers to the genesis and existence of the physical universe as a whole. Besides striving for a more intelligible account of physical nature (both the internal and the external natural environment), to update Confucius’ aestheticism, Li tries to broaden our understanding of nature from a historical ontological perspective. That is, aside from a physical nature, we still live in a historical nature that is likewise real and pre-existent for any individual who is newly born into it.15 Specifically, Li draws our attention to this ‘second nature’ – a historical one, compared with the first nature – a physical one, by explaining two sorts of historical existence implied in it: the diachronic thousands of years of historical human societies and the decades of lived history of the individual. With regard to the entirety of human communities to date across time and space, Li emphasises the objective quality of their temporality and inconstancy, and their progressive and accumulative features, which indicate that our human world is limited by certain historical cause and effect factors; is manipulated through social power and knowledge – in the sense of organising people to accomplish things that would not have been done otherwise – as effectively revealed by modern genealogical thinkers such as Michel Foucault (1984, pp. 295–298). That is, with sympathetic recognition to these gradually yet uneasily accomplished human practices, made by large groups of actual people at specific times and specific places on earth – especially those pains endured, oppressions suffered, hardships overcome, new realities imaginatively and successfully created to enrich our lives – Li invites us to imbue history with a fresh sense of appreciation. These accumulated historical facts, for Li, situate and explain the transcendent within the phenomenal world, leading to a natural inclination to make the world we live in more admirable, rather than falling into the negative idleness of nihilism (Li, 2016a, p. 590). This serves to confirm Rosemount’s claim (quoted from Chandler, 2017, p.  57) that, ‘those who have preceded us, those in whose midst we live, and those who will follow us’ constitute the Confucian spirituality (or better say reality). Another sense of appreciation is projected on to the living history of one’s own self, concerning ‘an attachment to life, an apprehension of existence, and

15 For a similar point addressing both a long history and an awareness of its length within the Chinese culture, see ‘Manifesto on Behalf of Chinese Culture’ by Mou Zongsan, Xu Fuguan, Zhang Junmai, Tang Junyi, and Xie Youwei (Harris, trans, 2014).

46  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

an experience of becoming through the overflowing of human emotion’ (Li, 2010b, p. 56). Put another way, it is concerned with an individual’s temporal cherishing in the interpersonal world, wherein key states of mind, like preserving and cherishing one’s subjective affect and effort in an objective temporal time (one’s authentic acting in the world), assume an ontological meaning (Li, 2016a, pp. 583, 586). Li also stresses the potential of this precipitation of the ‘spatial’ past to influence the future (Li, 2010b, p. 55, 2016a, p. 586). In all, the transcendent appreciation of the immanent historical ontology is to be aesthetically felt, acting as a constructive source of identity and unity (Li, 2010b, p. 57). The value of this extended aesthetic understanding of ‘second nature’ – the history of humankind and the individual history in modern Confucius’ ­aestheticism – is that it offers constructive possibilities for the human mind, will and soul, enriching our apprehension of this unique life composed of our multiply lived histories in this physical, material world.16 In summary, the cultural heritage rooted in Confucius’ aesthetic preference for secularisation and rationalisation of primitive religion (i.e., respecting individual needs and embracing a form of purely human existence) is still valuable for contemporary China, which constitutes the sophisticated basis of the 1917 slogan ‘aesthetic education as a substitute for religion’. Meanwhile the modern version of this line of thought, with enhanced materialistic concerns and perceptions, assimilates the Western fruits of scientific thinking on the one hand, and on the other preserves spiritual interests by appreciating the increasingly intelligible (though ultimately this might be unfathomable) natural environment and the complicated yet venerable human history. Overall, the modern Confucius’ aestheticism aims to arouse and establish a ‘self ’ – a self that ‘enrols’ in nature without losing a grasp of necessary mundane affairs; a self that ‘registers’ in society without losing individuality (Li, 2016a, pp. 582–583). What is more, since modern Confucius’ aestheticism is a philosophy dedicated to living well in this world, an inquiry into, and curiosity about, what is beyond this world is not necessarily excluded (Li, 2016a, p. 579). Although still opposing the idea of proselytising Confucianism as a religion (Li et al., 2016, p. 1141), Li believes that holding Confucius’ aestheticism as a ‘first philosophy’ is compatible with positively choosing one’s own belief in any recognised religion. Additionally, it is vital to bear in mind that when Li encourages religious beliefs, it is on the proviso that ‘public virtues’ such as equality, freedom, respect and individual autonomy, which facilitate modern social life and economic production, are

16 The point of the appreciation of history herein is very similar to Hannah Ardent’s concept of ‘amor mundi’ (rendered in English as ‘Love for World’) – ‘to take the well-being of the world to heart and commit oneself to assuring its continuity through generations’ (see Harrison, 2014, p. 117). Furthermore, Zehou Li (2010b, pp. 55–58), owing to his percipient command of Chinese arts, explains this World Love as the emotionalisation of time, ‘[which] causes the psyche to take on a noumenal existence that transcends both conceptual thought and morality’. And it is by these nonhomogeneous emotions within time that aesthetic appreciation is enabled to take the place of religion.

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sufficiently internalised by individuals (Li et  al., 2016, p.  1127; p.  62 of this book). Finally, I  shall pull together all the threads of the earlier three-step analysis of the original slogan. In the foregoing account, I  have outlined several of the functioning ideas within the promotion of aesthetics in China over the past century. These underpinning ideas are related to fundamental issues such as religion, Western modernity, China’s modernisation programme, the earlier Chinese secularisation, Enlightenment, education, humanity and science, and are further encapsulated in an understanding of aesthetics as a ‘first ­philosophy’ – what we might term a ‘riverbed philosophy’ – for the Chinese. Briefly, the unique Chinese aesthetic cultural theory is first traceable to Confucius’ aesthetic secularisation and further inherited, developed by modern Confucians’ proposal of aesthetic replacement. While the first two analyses of literal and practical rationales formally reveal the mantra of ‘aesthetics taking the place of religion’, the exposition and explanation of the parent purport within this mantra – that is, modern Confucius’ aestheticism – unveil the culturally sophisticated and valuable principles sustaining such a promotion of aesthetics.17

The Chinese aesthetic metaphysics Now let me clarify some implications from the earlier broad and intricate metaphysical discussions to set out the further exploration of an aesthetics-education approach. First of all, while it is now clear that aesthetics assumed a place of ‘first philosophy’ for the Chinese, it is important to understand the type of aesthetics involved. This kind of first philosophy of aesthetics invites people ‘[to] participate in the sedimented transcendent ontological world [to recall Li’s terminology, it is historical ontology], through science, life affirming religions and aesthetic experience’ (Chandler, 2017, p. 96), for an ultimate purpose of human thriving. It is also clear that aesthetics, in China, owing to the classical Confucians’ ‘application’, has played a role equivalent to that which religion has played in the West (Chandler, 2017, pp. 19–20). It is thus not surprising that the main Chinese intellectuals are inclined to discover their cultural identity through aesthetics rather than religion, and further reasonably anticipate filling the moral vacuum following for example the Cultural Revolution with such a time-honoured aesthetic tradition. On the other hand, it also cannot be denied that the aforementioned Chinese thinkers, such as Cai and Li, have been deeply influenced by the German aesthetics thinking of the 18th-19th century (such as Kant’s, Schiller’s, Marx’s). As B. Wang (1997, p. 21) notes, Kant’s ideas – especially of ‘disinterested contemplation’ and ‘purposiveness without purpose’ – are often taken to be the theoretical sources in this regard. However, in contrast with the

17 For another relevant key Chinese cultural principle, see ‘(a) the one-world view’ in Chapter 6.

48  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

Western ­thinkers – for whom aesthetics mainly means arts and occasionally certain encounters with nature – modern Chinese Confucians, as highlighted in this context, incline towards an aesthetic attitude to the world consisting of both natural components (both inner psychological nature and outer natural environment) and historical elements (be it humankind’s history as a whole or the individual’s vicissitudes of fortune). As Li (1999b, pp. 141–142, italics added) summarises this: This positive evaluation of the cosmos, nature, body and life is not scientific or speculatively rational. It is aesthetic. Aesthetics in Chinese tradition is not the joy of sensation, but the satisfaction of the whole soul, merging rational understanding with emotional belief. Through aesthetics, the Chinese tradition merges philosophy and religion, rationality and feeling, individuality and universality. So far, one might have been surprised to see how aesthetics was domesticated to serve local Chinese interests, and one might be even more amazed to see how the idea of aesthetics was further defamiliarised in its promotion to a very high intellectual status. Indeed, there may even be a misunderstanding or misreading of the original aesthetics from the West, but it is a creative one. One direct cause of such a ‘creative misunderstanding’ is that the initial translation in Chinese of the term ‘aesthetics’ was ‘the study of beauty’, and thus ‘much of modern Chinese aesthetics was to become – with the literal translation of the term aesthetics into Chinese – beautology美学’ (Pohl, 2009, p. 92). Like an exploratory voyage in the wrong direction, but led to an interesting territory (Pohl, 2018, p. 60), pursuing aesthetics as a study of beauty – which is neither confined in the form of the creation and appreciation of arts, nor simply about sophisticated development of five senses (i.e., sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste) – generates invaluable cultural fruit such as the modern Confucius’ aestheticism: once again, regarding aesthetics as a ‘first philosophy’. I shall elaborate on the conceptual undergirding of ‘aesthetics as a first philosophy’ – mainly the consideration of ethics under the aesthetic lens – in the next chapter, Chapter 4. As a second point, it is also quite clear that while the high expectation of aesthetics for human perfection is passionately emphasised in the Chinese world, it has not yet been fully validated. Indeed, it is unclear how credible it is to ascribe such transcendent potential to the aesthetic – such as believing, for example, that aesthetics is capable of refining humanity on the basis of voluntary consent. Monroe C. Beardsley once also remarked that since Schiller this belief has been doubted, ‘as no one has ever staked out a higher claim for aesthetic education (later writers on the subject have had more modest expectations)’ (see Smith, R. A., 1998, p. 93). Furthermore, it is never easy in a limited political and economic reality for aesthetics to achieve the realisation of full human freedom, rationality and moral judgments. Despite the national enthusiasm for aesthetics of the Chinese people in the past century, the gradual and long-run

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ideal of regenerating ‘new people’ – begun in the 1920s in a programme of aesthetic education for modern China – was unfortunately disrupted by subsequent calamities, such as the demand for immediate and compulsory political activism and then the Japanese invasion. As Lubot (1972, p. 175) convincingly explains, ‘new attitudes can only develop when those with political power favour them, and they can only endure when economic and social adjustments reinforce them’. Nevertheless, as R.A. Smith and C.M. Smith revealed (1971, pp. 129–130), the prima facie plausibility of aesthetics, being championed enough by thinkers from both East and West from ancient time until the modern period, cannot be denied. When promoting aesthetics foreshadowed from the very dawn of their own civilisation, Chinese intellectuals were heavily influenced by the belief that ‘the aesthetic contains a potential for protest (instrumentality) and a promise of freedom for the individual human being’ (Wang, B., 1997, p. 18). As traditional Chinese aesthetics maintains that the appreciation of natural things can help people ‘escape the bounds of culture, escape their prejudiced perspectives and live truly or honestly as natural beings’ (Peng, 2010, p. 144), the transformative power within the aesthetic is acclaimed as indigenously inherent. In all, echoing the 18th and 19th century German tradition of aesthetics, such as Kantian aesthetics and Schiller’s conception of aesthetics (Pohl, 2018, p. 60; Liu, K., 2000, pp. 29–32), it is believed that the aesthetic, encompassing the classical oneness of the moral, the authentic and the beautiful, was able effectively to mediate between cognition and morality, between imagination and understanding. With the further influence from the modern Western civilisation, Confucian scholars, such as Cai (1912, pp. 236–237), were enabled to clarify that this potential and promise of aesthetics resides in the universality and disinterestedness of the aesthetic experience, which is the bridge between the phenomenon and the noumenon (the world of reality), between the present and the future.18 In addition, Li is enabled to update the Confucian aesthetic project by expanding the scope of aesthetic order and aesthetic object. For an illuminating account of an aesthetic contribution to human becoming, see Li’s interpretation of ‘subjectality’ elaborated in Chapter 5 later in this book. All in all, in the encounter with Western aesthetics, both the intrinsic values embedded in aesthetics (see especially the appreciation of arts and nature) and the associated desire to broaden its use in modern secularised life, to the extent of taking the place of religion (see its extended appreciation of inner psyche and outer environment, of individual fate and humankind’s history), have been well adapted and assimilated by the Chinese. Adding these perspectives to interpret the Chinese tradition of human becoming and human form of existence, ‘aesthetics as a first philosophy’ has been successfully portrayed as a Chinese transformation of Western aesthetics. Inseparable from this, a coherent

18 Also see Sakai, 1949, p. 184; Tai, 1952, p. 58.

50  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

and consistent contemporary development of Confucius’ aestheticism has been expounded, starting from the first generation of modern Chinese intellectuals and culminating at philosopher Zehou Li’s reimagining. On the one hand, this transformed philosophy – aesthetics as a first philosophy – dedicated to human beings’ living in this world, carries the original Confucius’ aestheticism forward; on the other, it strengthens itself by shedding an aesthetic light on both physical nature and ‘historical nature’. Indeed, there is throughout a central concern for the dual development of both the material-rational and the spiritual-emotional. Hence this conception of the aesthetic as a first philosophy mediating between rationality and emotion, between the cognitive and the intuitive, between the natural and the social, first exemplified in Confucius’ aestheticism and later manifested in Cai and Li’s modern modification, provides a rich intellectual context for the aesthetic understanding of the aesthetics-education approach – further inspiring my inquiry into ‘mature educational understanding’. Overall, the aesthetics-education approach would base itself on a discussion of aesthetics centred upon a love of beauty, a love of the natural, a desire to live well and a concern for past-present-future (i.e., appreciation of human history and dedication to human development), rather than skills and knowledge in ‘arts-making’ or connoisseurship. In summary, the aesthetics-education approach is concerned to establish a decent subject – one that is neither lost in nature nor in society. Basically in Chapter  3 I  discussed the international journey of ‘aesthetics’ over the 20th century from West to East, resulting in a self-understanding of culture on the Chinese side – and ultimately encapsulating a concept of ‘Chinese aesthetics/aesthetics as a first philosophy’ – I now go on to carry out the further work of its conceptual clarification. That is, alongside the aesthetic metaphysical account as explored earlier, I am now delving into the moral philosophy and the theory of subjectivity, among others, that are aligned with it.

Chapter 4

Aesthetic ethics Juxtaposing two types of morality and moral reasoning

In Chapter 3, I introduced the ideal of ‘aesthetics as a first philosophy’, as an invaluable fruit of the ongoing intellectual interaction taking place in contemporary China, crossing ideological, temporal and cultural distance. I have explained how aesthetics as a modern Western perspective has been adopted to grapple with the understanding of Chinese cultural identity which dates back to Confucianism again, though being modernised. Put in philosopher Zehou Li’s contemporary comparative perspective, this transformed Chinese conception of the aesthetic is a result of two great civilisations’ critical conversation, i.e., between the ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体) of the Chinese (mainly Confucian) tradition and ‘Rationality-Ontology’ (li benti 理本体) of the Western (mainly Greek-Judaeo-Christian) tradition. For Zehou Li, the Chinese ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体) can be understood first through a set of political-social institutions of governance. Consistent with what is maintained in much historic Chinese political practice and theoretically encapsulated in Confucian ideology, the main rationale underpinning such constructions is to achieve harmony (hexie 和谐). There is no ready equivalent of Qing (情) in English, though it can be approximately rendered in two senses: (1) ‘emotion, whether it is of the individual or of the societal, in the form of humane feeling’ (thus it is not an ‘animal-like’ desire); and (2) ‘social matters or human affairs, including situations and facts’ (thus it is not a mechanistic reality). In summary, the principle of Qing (情) is mediating between animal impulses and mechanical automaticity and, hence, is a bona fide humanism which plays a crucial role in Chinese social constructivism, equivalent to the role that ‘rationality’ plays in the Western public life. ‘Rationality-Ontology’ (li benti 理本体) as the main characteristic of Western civilisation, in accordance with Li’s insight, can be seen through the influence of Plato, the mosaic Abraham and Kant, from the ancient to modern, from philosophy, religion and on to politics in the West. That is, a traceable tradition of what we might call ‘scientific reasoning’ to Plato in philosophy ‘identifying the ideal of rationality with explicitness in moving from reasons to conclusions’ (Hampshire, 1978, p. 34). The mosaic-Abrahamic t­radition – as the key influence of three of the world’s major religions (Judaism, Christianity DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-7

52  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

and Islam) – exemplifies ‘Love God by Faith’, essentially by following a supreme rational order. Kant, as a modern ‘liberal’ thinker lying at the ideological threshold of the emerging early modern bourgeois societies, consistently places tremendous stress on reason (see his political proposal of ‘public and private uses of reason’ in his 1784 essay ‘What Is Enlightenment?’). This extends also to Kant’s conception of the ‘metaphysics of morals’, underpinned by rationality, with which I shall engage later in this chapter. Basically, it is arguable that Chinese cultural aesthetics is inherently concerned with the harmonised relation between reason and emotion. Now we can interpret that relation as a mediation between the central principle of Qing (情) rooted in Confucian tradition (including a pursuit of humanity with rationality dissolved into emotionality) and the Western rational tradition (involving the scientific-instrumental and the politic-procedural rationality). Implications in the light of this insight for political philosophy and moral philosophy are therefore worth reconsidering. It is in just this regard that we can recognise Li’s theory of aesthetic ethics as an exploration or elaboration of a new politicalmoral philosophy. According to L. Chen’s (2017) assessment, Li’s philosophy of morals was first put forward in the 1990s to deal with the scholarly dilemmas of ethical relativism and absolutism, and then was applied as a dialectical treatment of liberalism which advocates a universal modernity. With regard to the political dimension, Li has no reservation about incorporating the public rationality of liberalism (especially prioritising principles such as humans as ends, and rights) in order to modernise the legal-political and social systems of China. However, he rejects the version of ‘universal liberalism’ which is ready-made and a complete form for adoption, choosing instead to emphasise the unique importance of the different traditions’ cultural contributions to their own modernisation programmes (Li, 2018, p. 8; also see Ames, 2006, p. 321). To illustrate this, Li explores the potential of China’s Guanxi-ism as a local cultural value – that is, the essential Confucian viewpoint of shared human existence originating in the local – to optimise China’s social-political programme of modernisation (see Li et al., 2016). Viewed holistically, then, Li’s aesthetic ethics, on the one hand, has clear roots in the Chinese aesthetic canon – the Qing (情) principle and the humanism of merging rationality into emotionality; on the other, it cannot be separated from an extremely intellectually imaginative conversation among three major streams of political-moral thought: utilitarian concern for effectiveness and efficiency; the Kantian emphasis on rational free will; and Rawls’ liberal overlapping consensus. Certainly, these reconsidered political aspirations, placing political goals under an aesthetic light to better organise highly developed contemporary societies, are of paramount interest in Li’s philosophy. However, in what follows I will return to Li’s basic ethical thoughts which are foundational to further comprehend the extended political and moral significance of his philosophy. Specifically, I will begin with the differentiated usages of morality and ethics

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which are made by Li in alignment with his systematic moral thinking. Then I  will move on to explicate Li’s unique terminology of public morality and private morality – how and on what grounds he defines these two kinds of morality, and to explain through his historical-material lens the purpose of such a differentiation – ultimately in the service of a prosperous (yet balanced) modern human life. In the third section, light will also be shed on the moralpersonal philosophical aspects of Li’s thought. In particular, an aesthetic type of moral reasoning – another major and distinctive theoretical contribution made by Li – will be elaborated, in contrast with the Kantian moral reasoning of universal law legislation. Thus, in Li’s system, the aesthetic sense of morality demonstrates how rationality can be dissolved into emotionality, giving rise to an enriched moral philosophy and moral awareness for individuals.

Li’s differentiation of ethics from morality In the English-speaking world, ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are often treated as interchangeable; but a differentiation of ethics (lunli 伦理) from morality (daode 道 德), in philosopher Zehou Li’s eyes at least, bears a pragmatic necessity. That is, in order to deal with the scholarly issue of moral relativism and moral absolutism, Li puts forward such a distinction. He proposes to use ‘ethics’ to denote social rules and regulations of a particular society during a certain period in history and thereby embodies a relative character to morals. Whereas ‘ethics’ is the external expression of morals, ‘morality’ is particularly related to the inner moral-psychological structure of human moral actions – which can be explained by Kant’s clarification that individuals are conscious of values and principles chosen and act volitionally in accordance with them. For Li, when social ethics in a certain society is enacted voluntarily by individuals, the relative aspect of morals (i.e., ethics of a particular period as the content) is transformed into individual morality and thereby morphed into the absolute stock of humanity (i.e., free will as the form is strengthened). In reality, such a differentiated usage of ethics from morality can be employed to explain a little more clearly the intricate issues of morals that routinely beset us – apart from the earlier relativism and absolutism of moral rules, it includes the passive and active facets of moral education. For example, it is helpful to comprehend the commonplace moral understanding that ‘the human becomes human through ethics’ with such a distinction. That is, morality is understood as the individual moral psychology which signifies humanity, while the moral human being is, on the other hand, built up through a rudimentary process of obeying external ethical regulations. Thus, the conventional equivalence that is assumed in ‘the human and the ethical’ is able to be unravelled through this differentiation of ethics from morality – the ethical active doing forms the moral essence of human being. The significance of the differentiation between ethics and morality can also be seen from Li’s cross-cultural understanding of Marx’s and Kant’s philosophies.

54  Chinese aesthetics through Zehou Li’s lens

Li is influenced by Marxist philosophy when he argues that social ethics is prior to private morality (such as various religious beliefs) (Li, 2016b, pp.  95–96), although the former bears a relative quality while the later has an absolute character.1 Li thinks the social-economic base to which social ethics serves provides a necessary condition for personal morality to arise, and therefore social ethics assumes a priority. It is urgent especially when the social-economic base is being dramatically changed as in modern China. In a society moving from an agricultural system through to an industrial-commercial transformation, the problem of the reestablishment of social ethics becomes particularly prominent. Overall, Li’s emphasis on social ethics, e.g., the making of laws, the following of regulations, comes from his concern for the current social development of China and also finds its complete expression in the ideology of Marxism. However, as a Marxist philosopher who only admits he is on the ground of historical materialism, Li clarifies what exactly the beliefs that he holds are – namely, that human life from ancient time till now hardly makes sense unless the biological existence of humankind is presupposed (Li, 1979/2018, p. vi). Clearly, he is associated here with Marx and Engels, regarding those aspects of tool-making, technology, productivity and economics as fundamental for human life. In line with this logic, it becomes intelligible to say that without the corresponding social rules and customs which are vital to the maintenance of human existence, the morality of the populace cannot find its soil to grow. Indeed, the relatively changeable social ethics play the main role in sedimenting into the ‘subsequent’ absolute psychological-structure of individual morality, which means at the macro level, the ethical regulation of objective circumstance is paramount – see one of the medieval social ethics, i.e. Christianity, later sediments into personal moral psyche. However, at the micro level (or within individual contexts), Li argues, rational autonomy, compared with variable desires and conditioned situations, is the dominant driver of morality. It is thereby obvious that Kant’s influence has become prominent in this part of the thinking of Li, in relation to an individual psychological sense of morality (and thereby a revised Kantian view). Li certainly agrees with Kant’s deontology, especially its ascription of the essence of moral action to human rational control. Nevertheless, Li has his own unique argumentation for his agreement with Kant.2 Li thinks that the rational free will exercised by the human being has not only successfully captured the grace and dignity of the human species

1 Rather than at first a Marxian theoretical inference, Li’s viewpoint that ‘private morals originates in social ethics’ might primarily owe to the historical study about ancient China which formulates the thesis that ‘the Li (viz. rites) functioning as private morals in traditional Chinese societies originated in customs of the more remote ancient societies’ (li yuanyu su 礼源于俗) (see Li, 1980, 2016b, p. 35). However, be it a historical ‘was’ or a theoretical ‘ought’, Li discusses and applies this view with regard to a concern about the establishment of a modern economy in China. 2 For a slightly different analysis of the same viewpoint, see Carleo, R. A., III (2020, especially Section I (i) Revising the Kantian Will).

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(Li, 1986a, p. 566), but also gradually and pragmatically fostered humankind’s posterior cognitive rationality (Li, 1989/1994, p. 255, 1979/2018, pp. viii–ix). Put another way, the exercises of following social commands are concomitant with the explorations of the natural environment, which cultivate primitive people’s cognitive rationality. This insight into rationality in practice not only postulates the genesis of human morality and cognition, but also explains aptly why the two – morality and cognition – together constitute a vital part, from hindsight, of humanity and human civilisations. Thus, apart from the linguistic distinction of morality in emphasising its rational characteristic, it is in this historical-genetic sense that Li understands Kant’s conception of morality in terms of rationality. Regarding the substantial points rather than the assertion of the importance of the rationality in characterising morality, Li has two thoughts to offer: one is the moral autonomy wherein rationality is in control of animallike desires (li zhuzai yu 理主宰欲), as typified in Kant’s rational conception of morality3; the other is rationality dissolved into emotionality, wherein the normative regularity is much more voluntarily applied by the human to react to reality (li rongyu qing 理融于情, of which three connotations are concluded in Chapter 6 later in this book, see pp. 112–113). What is more, Kant’s rational influence on Li’s moral thinking could be seen further through his interpretation of Kant’s three principles – (1) ‘universal legislation’; (2) ‘humans as ends’; and (3) ‘free will’ – again by treating them either as the category of ethics or as the category of morality. On the basis of his modified combination of principle (1) and (3) into one formal structure of moral psychology – ‘humans possess free will capable of universal legislation’ (Li et al., 2016, p. 1105), Li understands them under a frame of morality, referring to the kind of human moral psychology that enables the human person to esteem rationally the self-legislated universalisable moral law and act in accordance with it. On the other hand, Li thinks the second principle of ‘ends in itself ’ or ‘personality’ should be read as modern ethics. That is, while the first and third principles should be read in terms of human morality, the second principle of respect for persons is one pivotal to current social ethics. Li further explains that the principle of ‘humans as ends’ has only recently become attached to modern social morals, because in primordial time, as revealed by anthropological studies (see some early modern Japanese customs), killing the old or the young to preserve the larger group was once ‘acceptable and reasonable’, and thus ‘humans as mere instruments’ was once generally ‘ethical’ (Li, 1979/2018, p. viii; Li & Liu Y.D., 2014a, p. 24, 2014b, p. 7). In all, through a critical understanding of Kant’s moral philosophy, Li conceives morality to include the Kantian rational moral reasoning, and ethics as the rational contents and notions of morality.

3 For an elaborated analysis of the Kantian asceticism of duty, see Schiller’s celebrated essay ‘On Grace and Dignity’ (1793/2005, in particular, pp. 160–161, 157–158, 149, and p. 150).

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So far, Li’s appropriation of Marx’s and Kant’s philosophies to reconceptualise ethics and morality might seem rather loose and not convincing enough. However, Li’s genius in this reconsideration of morals through the preceding absorption of influential Western philosophy very fortunately finds an explicit resonance with Chinese tradition – especially the classical period of Confucianism, which lends its strong support, reinforced by the bamboo manuscripts of Guodian (produced no later than 300 B.C.E) which were excavated in 1993 and later disclosed in 1998. These ancient manuscripts not only in general give witness to Li’s important reconception of Confucius’ ethical theory as ethics of emotion (see Jia’s nuanced elaboration, 2016, pp. 758–766; Liu, 2014b, p. 53)4; but also, in particular, Strip 3 道始于情 read as Dao stems from Qing5, directly reinforces Li’s vision of ethics and morality elaborated earlier. In the record of this ancient writing, there are two ways for Dao 道 (i.e., morals) to come about, since Qing 情 in the Chinese language, as used in the excavated texts, has basically two kinds of meaning (Jia, 2016, p. 766, p. 771): (1) existential situations and (2) human emotions. That is, in line with the first connotation of circumstances (qing1), the idea assumed in this ancient text that ‘Dao begins from circumstances’ supports Li’s Marxist argument of ethics – that morals come into being in social situations. In terms of the second domain – human emotions (qing2) – the meaning of ‘Dao stems from Qing’ becomes one that morals come in to being when dealing with human individual sensations, wherein rationality is in harmony with emotionality, differentiating itself from both animal-like inclination and machine-like automaticity. Li’s understanding of morality derived from Kant’s philosophy of the rational free will is accommodated within the common ground of such Confucian humanism. All in all, Li’s differentiated usage of ethics and morality, which his systematic moral theorising requires, convincingly complies with the ancient Chinese primordial discussion of morals – traceable to the very beginning of the contemplation of morals, before it assumed its highly complicated modern forms. To sum up the theoretical points of the differentiation between ethics and morality, we can refer to the first line made bold ‘qing1-norms-reasons-qing2’ (qing1-li1-li2-qing2, 情-礼-理-情), presented in the figure (Figure 4.1) drawn

4 Regarding the emphasis on emotion in Confucianism, another significant scholar, Joseph S. Wu 吴 森, has also provided his own justification. See Wu’s ‘The Son Bore Witness Against The Father: A Paradox in the Confucian Analects’ in his essay collection in English titled Clarification and Enlightenment: Essays in Comparative Philosophy (1978a, pp. 103–117), and Wu’s Chinese article ‘Feeling as the Essence of Chinese Culture (Qing yu Zhongguo Wenhua 情与中国文化)’ (1974) which was later reprinted in his Chinese monograph Comparative Philosophy and Culture (比较哲学与文化 Vol. 1) (1978b, pp. 39–52). 5 This saying of ‘the Way starts with Qing’ recapitulates other related viewpoints in the same manuscripts of Guodian, such as Rite Generates From Qing (li shengyu qing礼生于情); Rite Comes Out of Qing (li zuoyu qing 礼作于情).

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Figure 4.1  An Overview of Zehou Li’s Moral Philosophy (adapted from Rošker’s translation, see Rošker, 2019, p. 278)

by Li to explain his general scheme of ethics (for the full Chinese version, see Li, 2016b, p. 178; for the direct English translation, see Rošker, 2019, p. 278). To begin with, the two senses of ‘qing’ correspond respectively to the understanding of ethics and of morality. The first sense of ‘qing’ at the left means the states of affair which give rise to norms/rituals (including regulations, customs, law, etc.), and thus to the generation of ethics; the second sense on the right is emotions within individuals, including those which are controlled by ‘qing1-norms-reasons’, and thus captures the essence of morality (that is the rational is at the control). To elaborate, Li explains the formulation of ethics in social situations within a historical span, while recognising that the cultivation of morality is associated with the learning of ethics in a didactic process. Besides the relationship as demonstrated by the solid arrows between ‘qing1norms-reasons-qing2’, Li also thinks the moralised/rationalised emotion can react to social circumstances that once shaped or are shaping ethics and the critical free will that can likewise examine norms set before it (see the dotted arrows which imply reactions). It is therefore explicit that Li’s differentiation of ethics from morality has an implicit aim to suit his ambitious – systematic and dynamic – overarching account of human morals. The second pillar of his theorising, i.e., two kinds of morality (the public and the private), will now be introduced.

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Li’s division of morality into public and private In the context of Western scholarship, especially Eurocentric culture since the Enlightenment, it has been the main task to reject the morality associated with metaphysics, or say, a cosmology, and even a supernatural cosmology (Hampshire, 1978, p. 19). Whether it be the utilitarian solution to calculate with clear reasoning about consequences, or the Kantian proposal for universal-moral legislation or the Rawlsian ideation of mapping out an overlapping consensus – all prefer to put aside these traditional rituals and manners that already embody a complex set of morals. Correspondingly, on the Chinese side, there is the same issue of reorganising national secular life especially after the encounter with the ‘successful’ Western industrial and commercial systems and their associated advanced scientific technologies. In this regard, for Li (2018, p. 6), it is necessary to carry out a preliminary deconstruction in its society of the traditional Chinese amalgamation of ethics, religion and politics (also see ‘(b) the Pragmatic Rationality’ in Chapter 6). That is to say, China needs to reconsider its previous version of secularisation since Confucius on the basis of the new modern modes of production, and this line of thinking might also suit other societies which are increasingly involved in the more and more globalised commercial-industrial activities. However, in contrast to the modern preference to repudiate traditional values in the name of progress, Li is sympathetic with these other thinkers who affirm at least a part of the values of traditional morality. It seems that, following this shared inclination, these thinkers would converge in dividing morality into its two kinds: public morality and private morality (see Downie & Elizabeth, 19696; Hadley, 1907; Hampshire, 1978; Li, 1994). Since Li’s proposal was generated from a unique consideration of reconstructing China’s legal and social system, by openly deconstructing the former trinity of ethics, politics and religion, differences between Li’s theorising and the other versions of dividing morality are no doubt evident. First, compared with Hadley’s (1907) and Hampshire’s (1978) conceptions of public morality (morality of a social group) and of private morality (morality of an individual), Li’s theorisation is closer to Downie and Elizabeth’s (1969, pp. 38, 65–83) – in other words, reflection upon individuals’ morality in the public realm and in the private realm. If the first comparison and contrast is not that clear-cut, then the second one is rather more significant. Although emerging in the same manner as these two kinds of morality associated with Downie and Elizabeth (1969), Li’s thinking is significantly different in terms of the exact demarcation of the two kinds of morality. This difference basically originates in Li’s Marxist emphasis on the

6 Downie and Elizabeth (1969, chapter II and pp. 76–80) offer rigorous justifications for these two senses of morality, especially an elaborated argumentation about the existence and necessity of a concept of private morality. They have argued that private morality is not only necessary, but not less important or basic than public morality, for it addresses a person’s duties to be a human being in the world, rather than merely being a person in one’s own society (pp. 78–80).

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priority of economic productivity and on the importance of the economic base in promoting desired values. For instance, when Downie and Elizabeth (1969, p. 61) place ‘respect for persons’ as an ultimate ground underpinning both public and private morality and thereby seek further foundation in metaphysical and meta-ethical positions, Li thinks ‘respect for persons’ belongs to public morality and is thereby attributed to its functional necessity in material life (see the requirement of free employment in modern economic systems in order to maximise productivity). Briefly, Li believes in the advantage of such a historical-materialist explanation of morals to actualise public morality within substantive institutions. Furthermore, in line with the earlier Marxist-practical attitude, Li’s utilitarian perception of ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’ affirms Hadley’s (1907) observation in early 20th century American society that ‘when any of these principles (referring to liberty, democracy and constitutional government) is made not a means but an end which justifies its use in the interests of a class, instead of the general interests of society, it becomes a menace instead of a protection’ (p. 28). In all, what Li puts forward is a unique theory of dividing morality into the public and the private. His division of morality on the one hand admits traditional values by retaining them within the realm of private morality. Like thinkers such as Downie, Elizabeth and Hampshire, Li criticises the deficiency of the callousness embedded in utilitarian thinking and the over-emphasis on the rational universalisation assumed in Kantian philosophy. On the other hand, Li’s theory of public morality reflects a serious incorporation of liberalism (such as Rawls’ public reason) in consideration of the modern material life in which a large number of people thrive. As further discussed next, Li’s theory of two kinds of morality is still a version compatible with his previous account of ethics differentiated from morality. Now we shall look further at how his two kinds of moralities integrate with his earlier thought and what public and private moralities actually mean for him. Since Li understands morality in a psychological sense, then morality, in his theory, involves elements of cognitive moral notion (the cognitive content of morals, which is changeable as time changes), free will (as the main force to act morally) and emotion (as the supplementary force to moral conduct). For illustrative purposes herein, I  categorise these moral constituents assumed in Li’s conception of morality into two domains – the moral notion and the moral reasoning associated with it. It is in this way that Li’s public morality and private morality in terms of the moral notions, refer respectively to the modern social morals and the traditional religious morals (see D’Ambrosio, Carleo III & Lambert, 2016, pp.  1066, 1062–1063, 1064). Next, the associated processes of moral reasoning to which the public and the private correspond respectively are the Kantian universal law legislation and the Confucian circumstantial accomplishment of least regrets (which is an aesthetic type of moral reasoning as will be discussed in the section that follows). In this section I deal with the first facet: moral notions in relation to public morality and private morality. (Undoubtedly, these notions

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come from the broader discourse of ethics [norms, regulations, customs, laws, etc.], past and present, written or unwritten). For Li, there is clearly an integration of liberal and utilitarian approaches to public morality. Or to follow Li’s later finding – his conception of public morality coincides with Rawls’ idea of ‘overlapping consensus’, which intends to separate the judgment of right/wrong from that of good/bad (also see Tong’s elaboration, 2012, pp. 39–42). Li further clarifies a liberal principle of public morality such that individuals are subject to minimum obligations in modern life and accommodates modern liberal notions of human rights and social justice in his own theory. He also explains that the possibility of these universally accepted norms lies in their functional effects within our current social system in which more and more people lead a modern, materially prosperous life. In one word, public morality, for Li, decisively ‘fits’ with the establishment and the maintenance of the modern market-oriented economy. In Li’s early work A Critique of Critical Philosophy – An Introduction to Kant (Pipan Zhexue de Pipan: Kangde Shuping, 批判哲学的批判：康德述 评，1979/2018)7, he already realised the contrast between modern Western secular social values coming to the fore and traditional religious morals, such as that of Christianity and of Confucianism, which he saw were on the wane. When Kant argues for a notion of reason to replace the interpretation of God (see his formulations of universal moral laws such as principles of humanity and autonomy), Li perceives Kant’s efforts as paving the way for the establishment of the modern liberal Western society. Again, this Western style of modern social morals, which in Downie and Elizabeth’s (1969, Chapter II) celebrated analytical examination could be read as principles of utility, equality, liberty and an ultimate principle of respect for persons, is for Li initially grounded in the then emergent modern economic-commercial system typified by individual employment, equal exchange and the contractual spirit. In consideration of the world as inexorably coming into a being around an increasingly globalised, common economiccommercial system, Western-styled social morality becomes a universal public morality, which means principles of utility, equality, liberty, autonomy, justice and human rights are, and continue to be, universally and consciously accepted and esteemed by individuals in their public life. Taken together, public morality expresses what is publicly expected and required for the community’s survival, that is, ‘what must be followed’ in the public realm. The liberal moral values developed originally by the Enlightenment philosophers in forms of ‘what should be the case’, (maybe contrary to all their expectations) effectively and substantially sustain those modern economic activities which are vitally concerned with a large

7 This work was undertaken secretly during the Cultural Revolution, and then published in Spring 1979, and now the English version is available, see A New Approach to Kant: A Confucian-­Marxist’s Viewpoint (1979/2018) by Zehou Li (Author), Jeanne Haizhen Allen and Christopher Ahn (Translators).

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number of people striving to improve their daily material circumstances. These values have hence nowadays been successfully enshrined as our current functioning version of public morality. With regard to the private sense of morality, Li always thinks about religious morals (e.g., Christian ethics) and other culturally embedded traditions (e.g., Confucian ethics), which functioned in the past as ‘public morality’ dominantly affecting people’s moral decisions and which have receded swiftly in the modern period. This is because, for Li, these traditional ways of life, albeit different from each other, are commonly concerned with what counts as a person and what is deemed to be a meaningful life, so much so that they still often retain the requisite moral resources for sustaining individuals (also see Downie & Elizabeth, 1969, p. 65; Hampshire, 1978, p. 6). In particular, the private sense of morality, concerning ‘the agent’s conduct vis-à-vis him or herself ’ (Downie & Elizabeth, 1969, p. 92), is reflected in the attachment to the supreme worth of human beings without further qualification, and in the assessment of being merely persons irrespective of the utility required by public morality. Hence, private morality ‘is regarded more as religious or conventional in nature [involving] restrictions on behaviours which do not have a basis in some principle of social organization’ (Downie & Elizabeth, 1969, p. 65). Using Li’s own words, the understanding of private morality includes the pursuit of the meaning of life, the exercise of intellectual criticality, the conscious choice of being oneself and obligation to develop distinctive human qualities (Li, 2018, pp. 5, 8, 15). Furthermore, because of the Chinese tradition regarding religious experience as a form of the aesthetic state of mind, Li thinks aesthetic experience – for example Confucius’ aesthetic pleasure positively expressed in ‘following the desires of the heart without overstepping the bounds of right (Analects 2.4)’, or put it in the negative expression, the accomplishment of ‘least regrets’ – is also constitutive of the attainment of private morality. On the other hand, the correct understanding of the relationship between public morality and private morality is crucial to apprehending Li’s whole theory of two moralities. D’Ambrosio (2016) compares Sandel’s ethical theory with that of Li’s, and at the end notifies that one of the future areas of comparison is ‘a dialectical movement in moral reasoning between actual situations and moral principles that both Sandel and Li argue for’ (2016, p. 735). I would

Figure 4.2 Zehou Li’s Dialectic Interaction Among Two Kinds of Moralities, and the Real Situations

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now explore the difference between the two, including to clarify the crucial understanding of the relationship between public morality and private morality as intended by Li. Li’s dialectic interaction between public morality, private morality and real situations is actually much more sophisticated (for a concise reading, see Figure 4.2): At first, in relation to the content of the two kinds of moralities, it is the ‘regulative and properly constitutive function’ (D’Ambrosio et al., 2016, p. 1064; Jia, 2016, p. 776) of private morality that is felt at the interface between public morality and private morality; using D’Ambrosio’s (2016) terms that is between religious principles (private) and universal principles (public). To regulate, rather than to define, means that private morality plays a supplementary role while public morality occupies a clearly dominant position. This is mainly because traditional religious values – such as Christian ethics – no longer admit of adequate analysis in terms of sustaining societies (Downie  & Elizabeth, 1969, p.  65). It also means the importance of the locally established tradition and culture, included in the content of private morality, is recognised as a way of penetrating modern social institutions and constructions, but can no longer dominate them. This point accords with Downie and Elizabeth’s (1969, pp. 63–64) sensitivity in noticing that the Judaeo-Christian concept of agape exercises a key influence over the understanding of the Enlightenment universal idea of fraternity. In the same regulative spirit, it is incoherent, in Li’s theory, to say ‘the principles of equality and liberty are taken into account to amend the utilitarian principle of utility’, as intended in Downie and Elizabeth’s work (1969, p. 64), because these principles all belong to the same public category, aiming essentially at maximising the productivity of the societies that produced them – and if these immense and powerful forces are to be ‘regulated’ it needs to be through a more heterogeneous category such as the ideal of harmony. Second, the relation between the regulated-universal principles and practical judgments, which for Sandel is in a dialectical movement (see D’Ambrosio, 2016, p. 722), is for Li completely the opposite – a decisive one. Although the implementation of the regulated-universal principles in reality needs flexible adjustments in accordance with the concrete situation, the regulated-universal principles, as localised public morality, play an authoritative role in regionalsocial life. Hence the universal principles, such as the ideal of justice, when regulated by culturally diverse traditional morals will become implemented in regionally characteristic forms. In this same way, universal liberalism is routinely modified by the penetrating influence coming from plural-local traditions. In all, different traditions with their historically and culturally inclined systematic understanding of personal belief, convictions and conceptions of the good can shape the specific social construction with some degree of flexibility while sticking convincingly to a liberal-public morality. To recapitulate Li’s model of interaction, we can focus on the manipulation of proper measure (DU度) taking place at two levels. One is in the regulative and properly constitutive relationship between the content of public morality

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and of private morality. The political-plural-liberalism is in this way realised, by assimilating locally established traditions. The other is a dialectical movement between regulated principles and actual situations. It is this part that overlaps with Sandel’s theorisation and with which D’Ambrosio (2016, p. 726, p. 736) says they ‘sound alike’. Returning to Li’s context, the second proper measure (DU 度) operates in qing 情: besides the former sense of qing1-situation (already referred to in Sandel’s thought), it includes the second sense of qing2-emotion, which in Li’s words is human psychology. These two levels of functioning DU explain what Li means when he says that ‘local culture’ and ‘human psychology’ can affect the public realm. In the second level of DU, we can even conclude that the better the treatment of qing (i.e., situations and emotions) the better the moral realisation. Now I shall turn to the facet of individual moral reasoning, still in alignment with the theoretical framework of two kinds of morality offered by Li.

An aesthetic type of moral reasoning Morality as seen through Li’s lens involves (1) the functioning rational content of morals and (2) the corresponding process of moral reasoning. In relation to his two kinds of morality, there are indeed two kinds of moral reasoning implicated in Li’s thinking. One that corresponds to public morality is expressed in Kant’s Universal Law Formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which demands an explicit rational free will manifested in the thinking of everyone who occupies the same place should do the same. The other, that is active in private morality, that is effective in choosing the ideal ‘way’ of personal life and in building up a self with an established personhood8, is underpinned by the aesthetic moral reasoning, which Li thinks is necessarily in parallel with the former kind – the Kantian universal legislation of moral law – for the functioning of an intact moral understanding and at the same time for a vibrant modern collective moral life. The aesthetic type of moral reasoning in Li’s theoretical context first appears and is frequently expressed in his quotation of Confucius’ Analects 17.219 ‘Would you feel at ease about it (於女安乎)?’. The Confucian context here is Confucius’ presentation of a final-visceral response to his disciple’s question on whether it is acceptable to adjust the ritual of three years mourning for parents to one year. Confucius himself did not definitively respond, though his implicit answer at that time was ‘No, for every child cannot live on his/her own in their first three years without their parents’ attentive care and thus in a reciprocal way three years mourning necessitates’. Indeed, if read from the conventional

8 Put in Schiller’s term it is a beautiful soul that ‘sensuousness and reason, duty and inclination are in harmony; grace is their expression as appearance’ (Schiller, 1793/2005, p. 153). 9 For example, Li, 1999b, pp. 136–137, 2010b, p. 219; Li et al., 2016, pp. 1093–1094.

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textual interpretation of Analects 17.21, it tends to convey a strong moral message. It follows that when Confucius found himself unable to persuade this disciple (who in accordance with other historical analyses seemed to be a sophist), Confucius seemed to give out a ‘reluctant’ answer in public, in the disciple’s presence, and in the context of the principle of his/her psychological-comfort. Once the disciple left, Confucius in private instantly criticised him who would be comfortable for a one-year ritual as ‘inhumane’. Thus, as a moral interpretation of this passage, the disciple was actually compelled by Confucius to accept the standard three years mourning, because what Confucius pedagogically implied was that gentle persons should not feel at ease for just one year’s ritual service. However, Li’s ‘aesthetical’ reading still holds. This is because, even in the exegesis of Analects 17.21, it is debatable whether Confucius meant gentle persons should not or could not feel at ease in the one-year mourning. It is equally plausible that Confucius meant that gentle persons usually could not feel comfortable within one year after parents were deceased, and thus three years’ ritual service helped. It then reasonably follows that if a person could feel comfortable within a year, s/he could just go ahead. Therefore, it is tenable that Li takes the aesthetic criteria legitimately implied in the original text, ‘could feel comfortable or not’, as his preferred interpretation. In line with this aesthetic reading by Li, the emphasis on a state of ease10 by Confucius unsurprisingly complies with a sensuous psychology while still seeking to judge impartially, by exploring, what is of my concern? What is of my interest? What is actually at stake for me? In accentuating my ‘psychological yet aesthetic’ ease – aesthetic in the sense that ‘seeks free enjoyment of form’ (Schiller, 1793/2005, p. 148), this series of normative inquiries is indeed sensuous, but at the same time beyond the senses. This, in brief, is a highlight of the harmony between rationality and sensuousness, the dissolution of the former into the latter. It resonates powerfully with Schiller’s argument that, ‘a beautiful soul can leave affect to guide the will without hesitation’, because ‘the ethical sense has at last so taken control of all a person’s feelings’ (1793/2005, p. 152). This aesthetic reasoning with reference to ease is therefore not merely about ‘subjectively feeling good’, but also carrying out humankind’s exacting duties as if from the inner impulse. The aesthetic reasoning is thus to discern and to realise intrinsic values, which for example might be utterly the opposite of ‘managerial ideals’ such as ‘minimal criteria’ and ‘once and for all’ principles, or other varied forms of contemporary ethical complacency. Put another way (or in a negative sense), the aesthetic morality lies in the fundamental principle of willing – which I formulate as ‘inclining towards acting

10 This anticipates Schiller’s viewpoint (1793/2005, p.  146) that, ‘the general feeling alone among humans makes ease into the main characteristic of grace [i.e., a beautiful soul, a beauty of character, a harmony between sensuousness and reason]’.

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on that maxim through which you can secure the least(less) regretful state of mind vouchsafed even in the fully examined life’. The fitness of the principle of action is concerned with ‘a consistent and least regretful self ’, taking into account a lifetime as a whole. The main underpinning mental process could be conceived as the weighing of ‘regrets’ at the spiritual plane just as ‘harms’ are weighted on material and psychological terms. The least regrets in the spiritual sphere equal the satisfaction of the soul. This domain of the spiritual is understood when compared with the sector of the lower desires. Thus, the satisfaction of the soul is demarcated from the short-term delight of the arbitrary emotions. In addition, both the soul and the desires, in Li’s context, are embodied in the human body and mind and, therefore, are not concerned with for example the Christian viewpoint in which the soul goes up to the Heaven or down to the Hell.11 In brief, it is to complete a best humanly possible self via every achievement of ‘least regretful states’ that are won and accumulated by oneself overcoming difficulties in this life. Just as tremendous strength is demanded in the exercise of rational-universalisable free will, so it is by no means an easy task to discern the aesthetic intent which aims to capture the ‘less regretful’ states of mind even with hindsight. Aesthetic moral deliberation is therefore still formulated as a rational command that you make it your maxim to do. However, the aesthetic-rational free will proceeds from a dissolved rationality into emotionality. This means, unlike the universal-moral legislation – its understanding of necessity and universality is interpreted as connecting each individual with the common measure of the species – the aesthetic moral judgment is by contrast circumstantially particular while characterised by a quality of inner timeless (Li, 2010b, p. 55) and lifelong consistency (Li, 2016b, p.  372). Understood through another contrast, this means that unlike the Kantian moral lawfulness, which is displayed in a form of ‘everyone should do the same’, the aesthetic willingness is manifested in the moral logic of ‘I could(might) do’, underpinned by a certain confidence rather than a blind guess. This dissolved rationality, on the one hand, explains why in aesthetic moral reasoning others can recognise what you choose to do but might not come to the same course of action as you. We can return to Confucius’ rhetorical question at the beginning ‘are you spiritually (including psychologically) comfortable? . . . If you really feel at ease, then do it’. Although Confucius implied a negative answer (as one year’s mourning is not enough for him to release grief and return to normal life and work), other legitimate ways to answer this question are permitted (witness that the three years’ mourning has

11 For a philosophical reason of rigorousness, I need to clarify the difference of the understanding of the soul herein, instead of overtly denying the Christian way of thinking. On this same standard of philosophical rigorousness, I do not have reasons and evidence to challenge the religious beliefs and they have little relevance in this particular context.

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indeed been changed as time has advanced and society changed). On the other hand, the dissolved rationality manifesting in ‘could (might) do’ and ‘prefer to do’ in aesthetic moral reasoning does address Kierkegaard’s ‘religious’ outlook (Patrick, 2002, pp. 58–68), releasing a greater degree of moral creativity that the Kantian approach lacks. Doubtless, Li intends to retain ‘leaps of the imagination, moments of insights’ that ‘might lead to new moral ambitions and to new enjoyment of living’ (Hampshire, 1978, p. 53). One additional thing that should be noted is that thinkers like Kierkegaard (Patrick, 2002, p.  68) and Hampshire (1978, p. 53) in their conceptions imply ‘only unusual men who are morally mature can have this unusual moral achievement’, and Schiller even holds that the intimate agreement between rationality and sensitivity is an ideal to be lived up to while never fully to be attained (1793/2005, p. 154). Li thinks otherwise. Li thinks ordinary people like you and me, whose humanity contains rationality and sensitivity – and further, bears possibilities of dissolving rationality into emotionality – are capable of exploring these sorts of ‘extraordinary’ experiences. He further adduces to a cross-cultural and cross-temporal example of Confucius himself, anchoring the ideal of a life-attainment of aesthetic freedom in relation to ‘a beautiful soul’ through an ordinary person’s lived reality (see the discussion about Analects 2.4 in the next chapter). In a nutshell, aesthetic moral reasoning is both poetic and plural, both particular and practical. It is aesthetic not only because genuine sentiments and perceptions are required but also because a complete and balanced humanity between rationality and emotionality is entailed. The aesthetic deliberation thus usually and successfully lies beyond conventional causality (e.g., utility, natural necessity, formal requirement or prudential recommendations), injecting vitality into morality by reflecting in site-specific and equally responsible ways. Based on my current inquiry, Li’s development of this aesthetic type of reasoning is obviously an ally of Schiller’s critique of dignity assumed in the Kantian notion of pure autonomy. In Schiller’s essay ‘On Grace and Dignity’, his conception of grace indicates a treatment of natural desires – psychological and material concerns – not as burdens to be thrown off (Schiller, 1793/2005, p. 149) but within an authentic governance of the natural inclinations. Echoed by Confucius’ aestheticism in the preceding Chapter 3 (pp. 42–43), this means channelling these emotional instincts which are inescapably parts of human physical necessity, because ‘humans must feel what nature wants them to feel’ (Schiller, 1793/2005, p.  155). Schiller (1793/2005, p.  159) further clarifies movements of two kinds in every emotion: (1) emotion itself that proceeds from the human physique and is therefore completely determined by nature; and (2) the objects of emotion that are arbitrary and changeable. Schiller, like Confucius, regards the first kind as a legitimate part of humanity, no less important than rationality – that is, this part needs to be recognised, while the second sort indeed cannot be counted as a reliable companion to moral determination – that is, this part needs to be overcome. Just as Schiller argues, Li also believes that only when the humanly natural instincts are not to be renounced

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but treated and affirmed within just limits, does morality become more secure, since the whole humanity – both rationality and sensibility – is then involved in moral thinking. Hence, like Schiller putting down his moral thoughts on an aesthetics centring around ‘grace’ and ‘dignity’, Li puts forward an aesthetic type of reasoning: affirming the need for a harmony and a conformity of the undeniable sentiments – because, after all, the enemy reconciled is truly vanquished (Schiller, 1793/2005, p. 150). What could be counted as Li’s advance here is his practical proposal for the complementary public and private uses of morality implemented in modern life, which sustains the harmonious union of rationality and emotionality within the same person. We can also see from Li’s further contemplation on the aesthetic type of moral reasoning, that its key ideas are also traceable to the traditional Chinese cosmology of aestheticism. In Chapter 3 I have already discussed Confucius’ aestheticism, including to incline towards a harmonious character of the world (p.  43 earlier). This aesthetic attitude to the world is in Li’s terms generally concerned with ‘emotional-cosmology’ (youqing yuzhou guan 有情宇宙观). Philosopher Roger Ames (1993, pp. 45–46, with my italics) conclusively elaborates this kind of aestheticism as follows: The Chinese world view can be described as an ‘aestheticism’, exhibiting concern for the artful way in which particular things can be correlated efficaciously to thereby constitute the ethos or character of concrete historical events and cultural achievements. Order, like a work of art, begins with always-unique details, from ‘this bit’ and ‘that’, and emerges out of the way in which these details are juxtaposed and harmonized. That is, in this emergent sense of order, rationality is penetrating into emotionality – the aesthetic moral reasoning coordinates circumstantial details (including the concrete situations, the associated human feelings, other given facts, etc.) – ‘and in so doing seeks a harmony that maximizes their creative possibilities’ (Ames, 1993, p.  45). Of course, it is also this ‘bottom-up’ quality that assures the diversity and inclusiveness of the unique, legitimate ‘aesthetic willingness’ that then emerges or arises. Aesthetic moral reasoning is also inseparable from the characterisation of the Chinese culture of pleasure (see ‘(c) the Pleasure Culture’ in Chapter 6), where an optimistic outlook towards this one-world life is emphasised. It is because living in a postulation that is not parasitic on any help from God(s) requires a deep optimism for humankind to live on. However, this optimistic vista is not directly or simplistically concerned with joy. Rather, it is accumulated by every fragment of ‘least regret’ that people arduously achieve. To some extent, the myth of Sisyphus rolling an immense boulder up a hill time after time but never succeeding in reaching the top, captures the unavoidable regrets experienced by human beings in this world; like Sisyphus who never gives up, humankind endeavours to go on, producing the least regret. Thus, it is

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not because regrets need to be avoided that we chase the ‘least regret’, but because it is an inescapable human fate to experience and to accrue remorse that we strive to reduce this as much as we can by summoning all our means. It is true that ‘past moral mistakes are liable to have a formative influence on the kind of people we turn out to be’; we are always educated by ‘our later revision of initial moral diagnosis which often uncovers moral saliences we had missed at the time’ (Carr, 2000, pp. 232–233). That is, we are always to be taught by our regrets. Nevertheless, since such regrets are inescapable for human beings – the lessons coming from regrets and guilt are always there – it becomes clear that the fewer regrets we experience, the more good we gain. In short, the ‘least regretful life’ is the realisation of the aesthetic life, which begins from a recognition of inborn emotions (e.g., regrets) and ends up with the elevation of these sentiments (e.g., least regrets) to the domain of the highest human ideal. All in all, by weighing ‘regrets’ (including but not limited to material and psychological considerations), the aesthetic type of moral reasoning discerns one’s intrinsic and perceptive ease – to know what one really pursues and to incline towards doing this (which in Chinese is Dongde Fayuan; Dongde Qingyuan 懂得发愿; 懂得情愿).12 Certainly, this type of aesthetic reasoning embodies an ‘imaginative capacity to project – to believe, make believe, and suspend disbelief ’, which is one of humanity’s basic neotenic traits in the cultural sphere (Harrison, 2014, p. 23). Further, by dissolving rationality into emotionality, it means the discovery of the aesthetic willingness in an ‘accurate appreciation between variously different social situations in a minutely observant spirit’ (Hampshire, 1978, p.  43) and in a ‘development and correction of previous inexplicit morality of traditional ritual and manners’ (Hampshire, 1978, p. 19). Thus, moral creativities are generated in various and specific sites. Returning to two domains of morality, while in the realm of public morality, a person is forced to obey moral principles (most of these are currently ‘liberal values’) to the extent that s/he lives in society, in the realm of private morality, a person has no obligation to adopt any traditional ideal. For instance, neither the Christian doctrine to prepare for an eternal life nor the Confucian way to live in line with the Three Bonds (sangang 三纲) and the Five Constant Virtues (wuchang 五常) is the mandated way to realise a person’s essence. We hence see in the realm of private morality that there is an open moral zone where persons can apply the logic of ‘could (might) do (or not)’ which is apparently different from the moral logic in the public field of morality where persons as persons in society must (ought to) follow (though what now are mostly a liberal version of morals).

12 This echoes Confucius’ aesthetic pleasure (see Analects 2.4) that what he desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.

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Aesthetic ethics: rationality dissolved into emotionality (I) 13 Both Li’s development of a private type of moral reasoning and his theory of juxtaposing two kinds of moralities reflect the effort to pursue the significant aesthetic relationship between reason and emotion (i.e., rationality dissolved into emotionality). Li’s ethics is aesthetic for it results from two great civilisations’ critical conversation between the Chinese (‘Qing-Ontology’) and the Western (‘Rationality-Ontology’), with an attempt to dissolving modern Western rationality into Chinese emotional cosmology and thereby modernising/rejuvenating Chinese culture. That also said, exchange either within a rationalistic culture or an emotionalistic culture does not constitute an aesthetic culture. Indeed, both types of moral reasoning (the Kantian universal legislation of moral law and the Chinese circumstantial accomplishment of least regrets) are, for Li, complementary for our balanced modern life. Li acclaims the Enlightenment asset that undergirds our current public morality in which we as beneficiaries enjoy a roster of bona fide human rights – supported both by material prosperity for most ordinary people and by spiritual emancipation from past strict moral taboos or arbitrary despotic powers. Meanwhile, Li also appreciates the traditional religious morals which once successfully sustained generations of people’s lives before us. He not only asserts a regulative and properly constitutive function of traditional morals in constructing the moral notions we are expected to hold in public life, but also clarifies an aesthetic type of moral reasoning in a private realm for maintaining our creative exercise of purposiveness. This poetic moral reasoning can be justified not only through Schiller’s sensible aesthetic-moral theory in the West, but also from its roots in the long-standing Chinese aesthetic worldview (see pp. 42–43, p. 67 earlier). It is therefore not a fall into subjectivism and relativism but a practice complementary to the universal moral legislation functioning in the public realm. I started in this chapter from the comparative perspective of ‘Qing-­Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体) in Chinese vis-à-vis ‘Rationality-Ontology’ (li benti 理本体) in the West. Since this strong and advanced Western prosperity is based on a rational-oriented societal-cultural construction (in addition to its highly developed science and technology), for the Chinese who do not wish to embrace an entire Westernisation but do admire features of the West’s project of modernisation, it is worth considering incorporation of the West’s renowned rational strengths into Chinese aesthetic thinking, which mediates between rationality and emotionality. In this line of analysis, the question facing the Chinese can be reformulated in this way – how does the 21st century ‘Qing-ontology’ (qing  benti 情本体) become possible? How is the central

13 For rationality dissolved into emotionality (II), refer to last section of Chapter 5.

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characteristic of the Qing principle (essentially a cultural identity) highlighted in concrete situations and how can psycho-emotions be strengthened while incorporating Western modern rationality (mainly those rationally-based social creations and scientific inventions)? In the past, the Chinese obviously prioritised emotions in their social construction, but now drawing from the successful example of Western modern achievement, China wishes to employ rationality in  the better  organisation of  its public life, while the emotions still can contribute in some other ways. This is indeed not in any sense an easy question, but the juxtaposition of Confucian emotional morality and Kantian rational morality unfolded in Li’s philosophy  might well serve  as an example for demonstrating how it can be possible to have a strengthened ‘Qing-ontology’ (qing benti 情本体) – aesthetic ethics – which incorporates two types of morality, intersustaining a balanced modern moral existence. One might question these comparative concepts such as the Chinese ‘QingOntology’ (qing benti 情本体) and the Western ‘Rationality-Ontology’ (li benti 理本体) as too generalising. It is indeed dogmatic to classify the two traditions as either associated with the category of ‘Qing’ or ‘rationality’. However, it is methodologically appropriate to adopt these classifications as intellectual tools either (1) to represent the object one seeks to comprehend, or (2) to lead to further corroborations or falsifications. The usages of ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti情本体) and ‘Rationality-Ontology’ (li benti 理本体) by Li in the foregoing account from this chapter characterise the two contrasting civilisations and then develop his understanding about the possibly constructive interactions between them in our time. Now I provide a short example to justify the effectiveness of these coinages used by Li. This is not to say that Li’s framework works everywhere, but it is another piece of evidence found to demonstrate that this framework works. This is an example about how contemporary big thinkers in the two traditions – Zehou Li himself and Martha Nussbaum – in their own arguments for the same aim of the recognition of emotions14 fall into the two cultural categories in which each was born and nurtured. When Nussbaum (2004) argues for the legitimate place of emotions in human life, she constructs her argument for emotion by treating ‘emotion itself as a function of reason’ (p. 193). That is, Nussbaum tends to recognise the emotion by linking it with reason to the extent that ‘reason looks like just the place to house it’ (p.  194). Nussbaum’s strategies can be summed up as a route of ‘emotions dissolving into reasons’. However, while Li also argues for the cognitive value of emotions, in his philosophical system he consistently emphasises his approach as ‘reasons dissolving into emotions’. Li interprets the intelligent components of emotions as a result of humanisation (see p. 96 of this book). He argues for the emotions as results of social and historical rationalisation. He does not ‘elevate’ the

14 Both Nussbaum and Li herein discuss a special kind of emotion that involves cognitive components.

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emotion to occupy a place of reason, but to incorporate reasons into emotions, and thus to justify these intentional bodily movements as humanised emotions (also see p. 68 of this chapter). Briefly, for Li, these humanised emotions first arise from a human-animal base alongside its variable external circumstances and then develop into special kinds of emotions which retain their distinct forms and meanwhile become complementary to pure rationality. It is because of this key understanding of even ‘elevated’ emotions that are inseparable from human irrational-instinct foundation, that using the term ‘emotionality’ as seen in published text bearing a sense of irrationality and messiness is in fact doing justice to Li’s idea related to Qing (situations and emotions), which has never been transformed into the category of reason. In one word, even when emotions are rationalised, they are still emotions (in Li’s own terms, they are ‘new sensitivities’, see Chapter 5). As analysed earlier, it is clear that Nussbaum consciously or unconsciously situates in the paradigm of ‘Rationality-Ontology’ (li benti 理本体), in which reason is the core value, while Li consciously or unconsciously sticks to the paradigm of ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体). I believe they did not communicate with each other before arguing for the same point through contrasting (and also complementary) approaches. To explain this ‘coincidence’, it is unsurprising that the different cultures – ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体) or ‘Rationality-Ontology’ (li benti 理本体) – that have fostered them have here influenced them. Again, this is not to say all Western or (Anglophone) scholars bear the footprint of rationality while all Chinese intellectuals identify with the principle of Qing, which is ‘rationality dissolved into emotionality’. This instance of Li and Nussbaum simply indicates that implicit cultural influences as conceived earlier can be seen at work, especially when this sample of comparisons between Li and Nussbaum in terms of their viewpoints of intelligent emotions is subsequently found to suit this purpose of corroboration. Furthermore, while I do not wish to sharpen the distinction between scholars from traditions of ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体) and ‘RationalityOntology’ (li benti 理本体) – in case it becomes a stereotype – I  find the contrast still counts in Nussbaum’s and Li’s ways of expressing their thought. It can be seen in how Nussbaum (2004) presents her idea in an elaborated account with effective arguments step by step, while Li has identified his approach and applied it as a core viewpoint from his earliest career (e.g., see his Chinese aesthetic study, 1988/2010b, pp. 152–153). Bypassing the presentation of detailed arguments, Li systematically illustrates his perspective through his research projects, and thereby justifies his theory. Again, this is an additional explicit difference without judgments of superiority or inferiority.

Chapter 5

The aesthetic theory of subjectivity ‘Subjectality’

Two preliminary questions: Why a distinction between humans and animals is presupposed and why a ‘sensuous freedom’ is accentuated At the beginning of the last chapter (Chapter 4), I discussed aesthetics from a perspective of cultural interplay between two contrasting civilisations: the Confucian ‘Qing’ tradition vis-à-vis the Greek-Judaeo-Christian ‘rational’ tradition. It is emphasised within Chinese aesthetics that rationality melts into emotionality and thus constitutes a bona fide humanity different from either the animal-like or the machine-like conditions.1 So why is such a distinction of humans from animals (and including that from machines) so important for the Chinese conception of aesthetics (associated as it is with this particular understanding of humanity and freedom)? Why is it so important that Zehou Li, like all the other Confucian scholars, has to postulate such a distinction – rendered as humanity versus the beasts (人兽之别/人禽之辨) – to carry out his further argumentations (see Li & Cauvel, 2006, pp. 174–175; Li, 2018, p. 2)? Meanwhile, will not Kantian scholars necessarily question the seeming ‘psychological freedom’ assumed in the Chinese aesthetic thinking? Has not Kant clearly explained that a psychological conception of freedom is inferior (see Sedgwick, 2008, pp. 21–22)?2 Has not Kant impressively justified an absolute conception of freedom by placing it in the other world (in the supra-natural noumenal world), which well-nigh implies freedom is ‘out there’ to be made one’s own? After all, are not subjective feelings susceptible and suspicious? 1 Although Schiller also emphasises a consonance of the rational and the sensitive, it is in his eyes a God-like quality and ultimately unreachable for human beings (see Schiller, 1793/2005, p.  154; Hohr, 2002, p. 489). Li, on the other hand, thinks humans can exert efforts to build up their everrenewing humanities which continually balance the two kinds of nature between rationality and emotionality (for more thorough arguments for this viewpoint by Li, see p. 77ff). 2 Kant’s rejection of the thesis of ‘psychological freedom’ is argued as follows: since it has to be based on the compatibility of natural determinism and freedom, which means the psychological freedom is simply the absence of external constraint (or say simply ‘caused within’), hence it is not strong enough for sustaining the moral will.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-8

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The first question is essentially concerned with the conception of freedom and its justification: in particular, whether to justify the conception of freedom within the one-world view as the Chinese do, or within the two-world view as the Western world does, constitutes subsequent cultural and social differences. With regard to the two-world theory, Ames (1993, pp.  35–37) summarises it as a dualistic mode of thinking which is ingrained in Western civilisation. Especially in the classical Greek, Roman and Judaeo-Christian traditions, there are conspicuous dichotomies between the world of reality and the world of change, the determinative beginning and the teleological ends, that which creates and that which is created, and the like, which undergirds Western intellectual understanding of the world. Doubtless Kant’s construal of a noumenal will is just another case in point. On the other hand, because the Chinese hold the one-world view3 which is preoccupied with concerns for people’s life in this earthly world, its justification of freedom cannot take a departure from the existence of the other world from which the free will can be derived. It is apparent that the Chinese have to respond with intelligible arguments based in this phenomenal world. It is thus that an emphasis on humanity in differentiation from animals and mechanics is necessitated. With regard to the associated concern of ‘building up’ humanity4 in this world, a metaphorical pursuit of ‘driver’s freedom’, in which a driver though following some necessary transportation rules drives freely to his/her own destination, also comes to fore. Although the occupation of ‘driver’ and the phenomenon of free transportation only become prominent in our modern life, this metaphorical usage does capture the ancient Chinese imagination of freedom – that is, you and I, ordinary people though subject to hundreds of tacit social and cultural assumptions, can drive our own lives independently (for more elaboration, see the next section). To answer the second question of ‘psychological freedom’, I need to refer to the notion of sedimentation highlighted by Li (1979/2018, pp. viii, 88, 91–92, 237). In the same sense inseparable from the one-world view, the historical and the collective human efforts assumed in the evolutionary process – the sedimentation of humanity and of civilisation – enable individual humans to become humanised, including to attain the ‘driver’s freedom’ that steers our own lives on our own terms. As Li (1979/2018, p. v) says, ‘human nature is neither an endowment from God nor an outcome of natural evolution; instead, human psychology has arisen historically through the social and collective practice of making and using tools over millions of years’. Clearly, this cultural ‘sedimentation’ – both the mental and the material – involves an accumulated-empirical quality. It is neither a priori independent of experience, nor a simple layer of physio-psycho character related merely to a

3 See Note 11 in this chapter. 4 That is, the care for the human becoming.

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certain period, a specific place and a particular individual. Just as the calculus studies continuous change in mathematical forms, the concept of sedimentation is put forward to manifest the process of humankind’s historical-cultural evolution (or say, this human-world’s formation) (Li, 1979/2018, p. 125). Therefore, the sensuous freedom, discussed in Li’s theory as a result of the anthropo-historical sedimentation, lies beyond the empirical individual sense. That is, the seemingly ‘psychological freedom’ is made possible by human beings through the long and gradual historical-anthropological process on the earth. In Li’s account, human cognitive, volitional and aesthetic consciousness of mind – which are essentially emotio-rational structures – are the results of primitive sedimentation. They are developed from the long process of material labour and social activities since the times of primitive people (Li & Cauvel, 2006, pp. 134–136; Chandler, 2017, pp. 38–40). From the collective perspective, this sedimented freedom requires efforts from generations over generations (see only within the recent millions of years did human beings come to know this subjective freedom in general). From the individual perspective, decades over decades are required (see only at teenage years do we begin to have some taste of the meaning of life). Briefly, sensuous freedom is earned, enabled and sustained by layers upon layers of accumulation of human effort both in terms of the collective and the individual, in concomitant transformations of both the inner psycho-environment and the outer natural environment. Admittedly, sedimented psychological human freedom is evidently confined by many constraints, seen from another vantage many more constraints – e.g., evolved organs that suit appreciation, a fit body that sustains actions, newcomers come to successfully familiarise themselves with traditions that might involve things previously unseen for them – need to be overcome by humans to be able to experience this humanly sensuous freedom. However, the negative view by Kant that ‘psychological causality subjects man to natural necessity as much as mechanical causality does’ (see Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 1788, quoted in Acton, 1970, p. 48) is not necessarily integrated in the oneworld view. Rather, viewed through the lens of the historical-anthropological sedimentation, psychological elements and perceptual histories (especially situational emotions/desires and varied forms of contingencies) are possibly constructive components – even if they are truly not helpers, they need not to be marginalised or isolated, but rather channelled or at best even transformed.5 These interrelated threads of thought about the justification of freedom and the comprehension of sensuous freedom within the one-world view indicate that the Chinese conception of subject is different from the familiar Western idea of ‘subjectivity’. Accordingly, Li (1999c, pp. 174–175) created a new English word ‘subjectality’ (zhutixing 主体性) to denote such textual differences. 5 I have discussed this viewpoint of harmonious treatment of the natural desires which belong to an equally objective challenging environment confronted by humans (see pp. 42–43, pp. 66–67, pp. 80–82 of this book).

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In alignment with the one-world view (involving the ‘driver’s freedom’ sustained by humankind’s historical cultural sedimentation) – which differs from the two-world view (such as the Kantian freedom that is almost an existence already given there from the noumenal) – ‘subjectality’, seen through a ­Confucius-Marxian lens by Li, offers a reimagination of a modern ‘self ’. In what follows, the understanding of ‘subjectality’ will first be situated in an elaborated cross-cultural dialogue with the Western philosophical discourse of ‘subjectivity’ (particularly with the idea of rational autonomy, or say, the Kantian conception of maturity). By juxtaposing excavated and contrasting cultural assumptions, the ‘driver’ metaphor of freedom6 – traceable to Confucius’ sensuous freedom (also to Schiller’s ‘a beautiful soul’) – will be further delineated. Essentially it complies with, but is not limited to, the 18th century Enlightenment ideal of autonomy, whether in terms of Kant or by the subtly different view of Schiller. This new conception of autonomy offered by Li will become much clearer after an introduction of Li’s theory of ‘subjectality’ and of ‘sedimentation’, which are explicitly influenced by Confucius’ and by Marx’s thought. Finally, I will return to the analysis of a ‘driver metaphor’ of freedom, explaining why it cannot be a more befitting illustration of Li’s subjectality. But first, I  shall delve into the intercultural differences of subjectivity ultimately between the Chinese one-world view and the Western two-world view.

A ‘driver’ metaphor of freedom vis-à-vis the Enlightenment ideal of subjectivity The transcendental-empirical paradox of subjectivity – the conflict between the transcendental subject (i.e., subject for the world) and the empirical subject (i.e., as object in the world) – has long been perplexing, especially for philosophers in Western frameworks of philosophical inquiry.7 As David Carr (1999, p. 136) describes it, ‘the philosophical temperament has always favoured

6 I was inspired to develop this metaphor to which Villsante has already paid some attention (see his book review on What Is Enlightenment: Can China Answer Kant’s Question?, 2016, p. 524). Since Dao (the Way) is essential to Chinese thought, people walking or driving on the road, as well as the corresponding orders to follow in the society are elements commonly seen in Chinese theorising. For example, morality/virtue in Chinese 德 has a prominent component of 彳which means walking or making one’s way. It is almost a cultural inclination to discuss this modern driver metaphor in a context of contemporary Chinese philosophy. In addition, philosopher Zehou Li himself in his whole theory acknowledges the significant role of technology (tools) in human life, and thus it is consistent to introduce his thought via the driver metaphor, be it about driving horses/carts or operating a ship/plane. Of course, the driver metaphor adduced to explain human freedom is not perfect in the sense that such machinery automations might in turn signal a loss of self. However, by the light of Chinese tradition and Li’s philosophy as a whole, the driver metaphor is both felicitous and useful, and therefore necessary to apprehend Li’s updated Chinese conception of human subjectality. 7 According to J.S. Wu (1978a, p. 264), the distinction between the ‘empirical self ’ and the ‘transcendental self ’ is also obvious in Hindu philosophy.

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the one over the many, concord over opposition, and will often find it even when it is not there’. Indeed, following Li’s insight (2016b, p. 81), it is because of the ingrained two-world view in the West that most Western philosophers consciously or unconsciously appeal to, for example, the appearance-reality distinction. Great thinkers like Kant, Husserl, Heidegger and many others commonly find themselves encumbered with a worldview similar to, or essentially that of, Christian natural theology – see Kant’s the noumenon, Husserl’s the absolute idealist, Heidegger’s Being (Carr also offers a searching examination regarding this point, 1999, pp. 136–140), not to mention the more recent Rawls’ veil of ignorance. Li (2016b, p.  8, 421; in Ames &  Jia, 2018, p.  24) believes these influential modern Western thinkers might vigorously deny their relationship with any forms of religion or with metaphysical commitments, but their theorising undeniably postulates another ‘unconditional existence’. As modern a republic as America is, Li finds the influence of the other ‘perfect world’ still creeping into even its Declaration of Independence. This document, a true ‘child of Enlightenment’, came to maturity in a politics which still reads that ‘all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . .’, although in the wording these truths are regarded as ‘self-evident’!8 In all, the Western intellectuals are inescapably time and again reminding us that ‘we can think both possibilities’ (Carr, 1999, p. 61), one of which is in essence a rational faith that ‘derived from the laws of nature and of nature’s God’ (Harrison, 2014, pp. 99–100) – while in reality nowhere can we actually turn our eyes to see such inalienable rights and equality as these framers assumed. [For a comparative point, the Chinese one-world view presupposes its ‘rational faith’ too, but what it presumes is not related to Deity but to an undeniable fact that ‘human beings live on’. What is interesting is that this factual description that ‘human beings live’ implies its persuasive value prescription that ‘human beings ought to live on and to live well’ (see Li & Liu Y. D., 2014a, p. 22).] The Chinese, of course, have to face up to the same paradox of subjectivity, but it seems that they prefer to deal with it within the one-world framework as foreshadowed in the dawn of the Chinese civilisation (and especially as it is in the case of the Confucian school). In order to avoid the misunderstanding that all Chinese intellectuals argue in line with the one-world view, and all westerners associate with the two-world view, I particularly cite arguments of a Western scholar (rightly a contemporary of Kant), who tackled the paradox to some extent that is aligned with the adopted theory of the Chinese social-­ cultural construction. This would demonstrate that it is varied ways of thinking, especially the different intellectual tracks that have been actually pursued,

8 The original version of it was ‘sacred and undeniable’.

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that constitute the subsequent diversity of cultural identity,9 rather than the existent natural and geographical differences of nationality. That is, while not prominent as a basic assumption of Western civilisation, one-world view thinking in relation to the conception of freedom does exist in the Western tradition. For example, it can be seen in the thought of the important and influential philosopher, Thomas Reid (1710–1796), Adam Smith’s successor in the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, who exactly advanced a line of argument related to the differentiation of rational motives from animal or mechanic motives for the explanation of human freedom (1788, Essays on the Active Powers NO. 4, p. 16, p. 19). Reid, in his strong disagreement with advocates of the doctrine of necessity, argues that human actions do not follow the causal laws that animal life takes and that mechanic motions abide by. Accordingly, they ought to be looked at in different terms (see Acton, 1970, pp. 48–49). Reid’s argumentation indeed from time to time appeals to God, e.g., ‘moral liberty must be the work of God who made us’ (1788, p. 23); ‘man is endowed with moral liberty by God’ (1788, p. 26) – which is a typical ‘two-world’ viewpoint as categorised by Li. However, one thing that is certain for Reid is that he strives to vouchsafe this presumed human freedom by developing his arguments in relation to both animate and inanimate worldly phenomena. Reid’s one-world view argumentation is less strange because he is a modern thinker living in an age of Enlightenment driving the trend to Western secularisation. Thus, a distinction of the human from the animal and from the machine, be it in the West or in the East, can be adopted to support the one-world view theorising of human freedom and subjectivity.10 However, what is integral to the one-world view is to follow thoroughly the inner logic of this line of thought. That said, it is concerned with generating forces in the argument for freedom to be realised within this world by the motive to differentiate from animals and machines. What is associated with this viewpoint of human freedom on the earth is the conception of humanity centring upon

9 J.S. Wu (1978a, p. 161) has also sharply pointed out that although the intellectual interpretations of God by Western philosophers, such as that of Plotinus, Spinoza, Hegel, Schleiermacher and Whitehead, are secular, the actual society in the Judaeo-Christian tradition has not been influenced by this philosophical track. By contrast, the religious beliefs, the religious feeling of the ordinary people that is long-established in the Western life constitutes its unique cultural characteristics in reality. 10 Similarly, even within the mainstream Confucian tradition, transcendental arguments – e.g., Mencius’ viewpoint (renxingshan 人性善) that the good endowment of human nature is inherent; Neo-Confucianism’s emphasis on tianli 天理 (Heavenly Principles) – are also evident. While these arguments sound aligned with a two-world view framework such as those of ‘God-given’, they are still essentially of a one-world view, because for the Chinese, both the good endowment of human nature and tianli 天理 (Heavenly Principles) are to be made great in this world. Just as Confucius said, ‘it is man that can make the Way great, and not the Way that can make man great’ (Analects 15.29), the Chinese one-world view treatment of the transcendent message are therefore unique (see Liu, S. H., 1971, pp. 157–167).

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the emotio-rational structure (qingli jiegou 情理结构) – that is, rationality counts, emotionality is undeniable, and rationality dissolved into emotionality matters vitally and thus in contrast to animal-physiological sensations and mechanical movements (D’Ambrosio et al., 2016, p. 1060). Returning to the earlier point on sedimentation, this humanly emotio-rational structure is sedimented from a long historical and cultural process ongoing since primitive times, rather than being something that can be found in or given from somewhere overnight. In all, instead of the division between this world and the world beyond, between the transcendental and the empirical, the Chinese worldview is an undivided one and ‘freedom’ and ‘subjectivity’ are to be made into its being by human beings. Hence, the Chinese conception of freedom is not very much like the liberal conception of autonomy, in which freedom, typically the rational free will, is a ‘complete product’ as a possession of a subject or as internal to an ego (see Standish, 2011, p. 76), or as an existence out there that can be derived. Nevertheless, for Li, the classically Western spiritual emancipation of self-­ legislation and the liberal-social construction (such as minimal regulations in the public realm) since the 18th century Enlightenment are positive advancements, let alone the material prosperity brought about by their associated achievements in science and technology. Indeed, Li agrees with the concept of Kantian maturity, where humankind is characterised by thinking and speaking for oneself. He expects that individuals are in control of their actions and consciously taking up responsibility for themselves. This is what he implies in his key thought of ‘li ming 立命’ – to accomplish one’s destiny (Li & Liu X. Y., 2011, p. 9; Li, 2015/2018, p. 150). To be honest, what chiefly concerns Li is not the question of a rational and cerebral subject as an aim, but the strategic problem of the cultivation of autonomy, especially placed in the one-world view tradition which is undergoing its modernisation (Li, 1999d, p. 28).11 As LaVaque-Manty (2006, p. 376) explains, ‘how to combine subjection to legitimate constraint with one’s facility to exercise one’s freedom’. To be precise, for Li, the question is how we can realise our freedom in the modern era, in alignment with the Chinese one-world tradition that humanity earns control of its life (a reminder that ‘people form a triad with heaven and earth’) when following or transforming the laws of this natural world (thanks to its Western counterparts, the understanding of these natural laws is now dramatically expanded scientifically and materially). In this line of

11 There are three points to understand the traditional Chinese one-world view: (1) the human world, the natural world and the supernatural world are essentially one world; (2) the harmonious relationships for the sake of the sustainability of community; and (3) the emphasis on genuine emotions among people and toward things (also see page 103 in this book). For its modernisation, let us take the understanding of the human world as an example. That is, the comprehension of the human world in the modern era for the Chinese is not limited to lives on the Chinese land, but with a global scope it is extended to other multicultural human societies on different continents.

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inquiry initiated by Li about modern freedom realised in this world, the ‘driver’ metaphor of freedom is found to be of paramount importance. There is no doubt that ‘driver’ is a popular figure only in the modern period – only recently do we see human beings in large numbers able ‘to drive’ their cars at the phenomenal rate of free mobility. However, it is this modern daily reality that rejuvenates our understanding of Confucius’ aesthetic freedom, ‘following the desires of the heart without overstepping the bounds of right’ (Analects 2.4). This state of mind of Confucius is oft-quoted in Li’s philosophy as the aesthetic achievement (also related to his Marxian idea of ‘the naturalisation of the human’). Now I can elaborate on this point shifting from its inward mystic aspect of aesthetics to a daily open experience in terms of the ‘driver’ metaphor of freedom. The original text of Confucius Analects 2.4 is as follows12: The Master said, at fifteen, I  had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I  stood firm. At forty, I  had no doubts. At fifty, I  knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I  could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right. 子曰：「吾十有五而志于學，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知 天命，六十而耳順，七十而從心所欲，不踰矩。」 Li (2010b) first explains this state of freedom in Confucius from the perspective of an ordinary man’s life-time cultivation. That is, ‘the result of [Confucius’] lifetime of self-cultivation is the harmony, conformity, and unity of subjective goals with objective principles’ (p. 48). The ontological condition of freedom is thus delineated through a union of subject and object or say of purposiveness and lawfulness. In relation to our modern life, the understanding of this sensuous freedom could be strengthened through the freedom of the ‘drivers’ – although following many rules, the driver is enabled spontaneously to realise his/her own purpose. The ‘vehicular’ tools that help toddlers to walk, such as leading strings (reins) and walking carts (baby walkers), are also adduced to explain the conception of human maturity by the 18th century enlighteners, such as Kant (see LaVaqueManty, 2006, pp.  374–379). However, read from Li’s fundamental-Marxist theory of tool using and making, there are significant differences between the metaphor of ancient walking tools and of modern travel tools in relation to the attainment of freedom. For one thing, toddlers’ walking tools (for example, walking carts) are negatively used with a concern for safety (LaVaque-Manty, 2006, p. 374) and thus for a preventative purpose, while we drive private cars

12 Translated by James Legge, cited on 15 June  2018, retrieved from https://ctext.org/analects/ wei-zheng

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positively for free mobility. For another, the walking carts are only useful transitionally and ultimately need to be removed (LaVaque-Manty, 2006, p. 376), whereas modern human beings need to be equipped with concrete transportation tools as part of the process of realising free actions. What is amazing is that neither the hardware equipment itself (such as the car), nor the communal regulations (such as transportation rules), affect the self-directed activities of the drivers. Thus, free exercise of our bodies on our own terms and at our own pace is different from free exercise of tools which extend our capacity and aid realisation of free actions. In the former case, the more artificial the tools, the more dependency one retains on instruments; whilst in the latter, the more advanced and superior the command of the travel tools the more real the sense of ownership of the actions and behaviours. So, what can we draw from the analysis of ‘the driver metaphor of freedom’? Clearly, for the driver to be at the helm, three crucial conditions are necessary: (1) travel tools, such as privately owned cars; (2) travel infrastructures (e.g., highways, express lanes) and institutions (e.g., speed regulations and systems that warrant the driver license); and (3) last but not least – a healthy human who enacts. Undoubtedly, the Chinese concept of Dao is explicit in the sense that the agency of humans is presupposed to enact Dao. The driver metaphor of freedom presupposes that Dao – like the road or the way the car drives – is functional, which without human actions possesses no real sense of freedom (see Li, 2015/2018, p. 38). Unsurprisingly, the primary concern for Chinese philosophy – in essence because of the decisive influence of the one-world view – with ‘the right ordering of human life and society’ (Copleston, 1980, p. 56) is brought to the fore again. However, its reconsideration at the modern stage is not limited to the mirroring of integration between Heaven and Earth as contemplated in the ancient oriental context. Rather than that, thanks to the increased knowledge initially brought about by Western civilisation, its thinking of humanly meaningful order is now extended by both a scientific and liberal one-worldliness, producing a mind inclined to live in Great Harmony with all the other societies on different continental landmasses.13 Like the one-world view justification of freedom mentioned earlier, the driver metaphor of freedom, though traceable to Confucius in Li’s philosophy, can also be situated in dialogue with its Western counterparts. First of all, Confucius’ sensuous freedom or the naturalisation of the human, as interpreted by Li, has no doubt converged on Schiller’s conception of ‘a beautiful soul’, where ‘the mind governs with liberality [and wherein] the will begins and the sensuous follows it’ (1793/2005, pp.  160–161). The description by Schiller

13 Once again in line with the ‘one-world’ view, we are enabled to recognise the ‘[characterised] moral aspiration of the Chinese tradition has always been to create the Great Harmony here on earth, rather than pursue a selfish immortality of the soul or a private spiritual salvation and transcendence’ (Li, 1979/2018, p. 353).

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(1793/1902, p. 180) that ‘the intelligence’s exigencies meet and accord with the necessary laws of nature so well, that one executes the order of the other whilst acting according to its own inclination’, completely anticipates ‘driver’s freedom’ that I discussed here in the context of our modern daily life. Furthermore, joining Confucius and Schiller in championing ‘a peaceful, harmonious disposition and a sensitive heart’ (1793/2005, p.  163), Li also highlights ‘rationality that melts into emotionality’, not only as the bona fide humanity but also as the highest expression of that humanity.14 What is advanced by Li through the metaphor of driver’s freedom is that the understanding of the aesthetic sensuous freedom melting rationality into emotionality is not confined to its inward mysticism. The attainment of such human freedom becomes more available and open to common people due to the technical-social progress that humans accumulated throughout history, while at the same time individuality is no doubt strengthened by for example the popularisation of education. Second, while Li concurs with Schiller in the approach to realising true mastery of the instinctive, which finds resonance with Confucius’ viewpoint and broadly with the ideal of Confucian political institutional design – it does not mean Li is opposed to Kantian rationality. Instead, as addressed in the preceding chapter on Li’s ethics, he stands firmly on the Kantian rational viewpoint of free will, although Li’s explanation of the possibility of this rationality is significantly different from Kant’s (see pp. 54–55 of this book). Even converging into an aesthetic autonomy, the modern realisation of it in daily life as indicated in the driver’s freedom still fully complies with the same vital understanding of making choices by oneself. Despite the fact that the most commonly held liberal conception of freedom is ‘as opposed to license’ (see LaVaque-Manty, 2006, p. 376), this licensed freedom becomes acceptable in the reimagined picture by Li since the ‘licensed driver’ who exercises freedom by him or herself is equally truly free. What is more, the unvarnished ‘everyday weight of intention, interest, morality, and value’ (see Friesen, 2013, p.  117) can be openly considered by individuals – externalising a thoroughly liberal spirit. This can be practical and feasible because the concern for a larger whole is already preconsidered in the communal design, like that already taken into account in the design of transportation rules in the driver figuration. Overall, the declared freedom of ‘drivers’, which can be enjoyed by nearly everyone, complies with the Enlightenment ideal of subjectivity, be it in form of Kantian maturity or of Schillerian beauty. This, in Li’s philosophy, first means

14 Li justifies this viewpoint in light of his theory of practice: that an aesthetic level of humanity can be attained wherein one can adjust one’s heart-mind and at the same time apply the law successfully (see the discussion of the following sequence – from rationality in practice to practical rationality, and then to aesthetic practice in the third section of this chapter). In addition, J.S. Wu (1978a, pp. 257–266) arguing for a path from habit towards meta-habit which transcends the conventional, scientific and even moral thinking, provides another explanation for such attainment of highest humanity.

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that the value of the established individual ‘I’ is recognised unlike the traditional oriental thinking that ‘the ego is itself a bondage that needs to be liberated’ (see Wu, J. S., 1978a, p. 265). Further, in alignment with the one-world view of freedom that liberation attained by living well both with external constraints and internal forces, Li’s conception of subjectivity associated with the driver’s freedom differs from that of Kant’s or Schiller’s. Unlike Kant, Li thinks (1) freedom from every aspect is established and earned by human beings through a long historical process of material and social practice; and (2) the realisation of subjectivity is more than the rational/discursive exercise which disbelieves the affective aspects. Though Schiller also recognises both legitimate aspects of rationality and emotionality within human nature, Li further believes the ordinary person with emotional-rational mental structures – that is to say, a bona fide humanity neither high as God is, nor low as animals are – is able to enjoy full human freedom. Why is Li more confident than Schiller with regard to the subjectivity to be established in this world? On the one hand, this confidence is certainly influenced by the classical Confucian tradition which has been optimistic with a conception to establish human freedom. On the other hand, this practical view of freedom is now able to be reconsidered in a modern scene. Since Li is a three-way worker on Kant-Confucius-Marx, we cannot ignore the key Marxist influence of historical materialism on his theory of subjectivity and its related expression of the driver’s freedom. Now in the next two sections, I go on to elaborate on the theoretical content of ‘subjectality’ and ‘sedimentation’ developed by Li, so that the discussion of the driver’s freedom with a perspective of the first singular person is not isolated from its broader picture and is not mixed with any forms of egotism or atomistic individualism.15 With the basic knowledge of Li’s theory of ‘subjectality’ and sedimentation, we will also come to understand why a metaphor of driver’s freedom delineates Li’s subjectality well.

Four dimensions of subjectality (zhutixing 主体性) From the perspective of the Chinese language, the distinction between zhuguan xing 主观性 and zhuti xing 主体性 is explicit. These philosophical terminologies related to ‘subject’ were translated by Japanese scholars particularly during the 19th-20th century by using Chinese characters (Liu et al., 1984, p. 408).16 In such distinctions, in the Japanese scholar Tetsuro Watsuji’s account,

15 For this point, see pp. 90–91, pp. 115–116 of this book and also see Rošker (2018b, p. 76). 16 Since there was a fashion to learn from Japan in the early 20th century in China, these translations of Western learning into the Chinese language have become naturally integrated, though the detour occasioned by the Japanese should not be ignored. For a fuller account of this intercultural history, see T.Y. Feng’s research team, 2016, pp. 171–175.

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Marx’s dissatisfaction with 18th century materialism played a significant role in forming the idea of subject of praxis – ‘the subject is understood as (bodily) engaged in activities and hence socially and historically located’ (Standish, 2011, p. 75). In other words, the term of Zhuti 主体 is emphasised against the epistemological self – one that is held to be detached from the things that we want to understand (or say, zhuguan 主观). Nowadays the English term ‘subjectivity’ in its common use involves intricate senses of consciousness, feelings, agency, etc. However, if we trace it to its origins in Western philosophy, ‘subjectivity is often mentioned in the philosophy of mind’ (Francescotti, 2017), which technically discusses mental states alongside intentionality, either in conscious or non-conscious terms. Even in conscious terms of the subjective aspect, it is ‘typically defined with reference to the first-person-standpoint to objective knowledge’ (Solomon, 2005). Later in the 20th century, the philosophy of subjectivity not only became prominent, but also broadly developed, in particular its previously neglected, embodied and embedded nature receives deep analyses (Solomon, 2005; Zahavi, 2009). Overall, in alignment with the origin of the philosophical terminology of subjectivity, returning to a context in which this term was first introduced into the East from the West, the technical understanding of subjectivity both in English and Chinese is centred on mental consciousness (zhuguan xing 主观 性). Li further explains his understanding with regard to the identification of ‘subjectivity with zhuguanxing 主观性’ and ‘subjectality with zhutixing 主体 性’. He mainly finds its explanation in the different philosophical traditions of China and the West (1999c, p. 174). Since Western philosophy from Descartes and Kant has been concerned with human consciousness, subjectivity as zhuguanxing 主观性, especially the character 观 (guan), which means ideas and concepts, is apt to signify a concern for subjective consciousness. While this subjective consciousness involves the higher-order level where the subject is aware of his/her mental activities, it is still emphasised within the epistemological realm, that is, in separation from the object body. However, within the Chinese tradition there is commonly no clear-cut distinction between subject (consciousness) and object (body). Further drawing upon Marx’s material philosophy, ‘subjectality’ as zhutixing 主体性 – in which the character 体 (ti) highlights material substance including the human body in praxis – becomes more compatible and hence fundamental to the Chinese understanding of the subject. That is, on the basis of this cross-cultural philosophical differentiation and analysis, a new English term ‘subjectality’ is theoretically necessary to express the Chinese-conceived subject as a union of mind and body, of thinking and reality in flow. As indicated earlier, Li’s understanding of subjectality comes to fruition by absorbing both Chinese tradition and Marxism. However, besides the differentiated interpretation of the subject, Li also extends the question to an inquiry into how such subjectality becomes possible. Further seen through his theory of practice and of sedimentation, for Li four dimensions of subjectality are

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concurrent and complementary. First, there are two levels of subjectality – that of the species (the larger self, dawo 大我) and that of the individual (the small self, xiaowo 小我). Among the two, the individual subjectality becomes possible only when humankind’s subjectality is ensured. This means only when the survival and sustainability of the human species – that is, how to live – is assured by collective human efforts such as the successful transformation of the natural environment and the effective organisation of the community, does the individual subjectality related to ‘why live?’ become sensible. Related to these two levels of subjectality (the development of civilisation and the maturation process of human individuals), two kinds of formation – the technical-social and the cultural-psychological – have been highlighted as two fundamental roots for the establishment of subjectality (be it again noted that this is subjectality in two senses: the collective and the individual). The collective subjectality and the technical-social formation

Let us now start with humankind’s subjectality and the corresponding emphasis on the technical-social formation meant by Li in relation to his theory of practice. Li first thinks in the following sequence – from rationality in practice to practical rationality, and then to aesthetic practice17 – this is how the collective subjectality (dawo 大我) is established. He thinks that when primitive people were organised to transform their natural environment (e.g., from shelter to housing; craft manufacturing; labour divisions), objectivity (guilǜxing 规律性) – mainly the foundational natural laws and the then social orders that they followed – was gradually detached from subjectivity (zhuguanxing 主观性) within primitive peoples. This means that both objectivity and subjectivity were growing within the human mind, though by separation. Generations after generations, the separate growth of objectivity and subjectivity in practice (which has undergone millions of years of evolution and been practised by a rather large group of actual human beings on earth) gave rise to practical rationality (he guilǜxing 合规律性). The emergence of practical rationality – i.e. reflexive conformity of law – indicates the subjectivity is renewed or transformed to a level of selfconsciousness, no longer at an instinct level. Unsurprisingly, the Kantian moral will to universal self-legislation is one form of such practical rationality. Just as Chandler (2017, p. 43) recapitulates, ‘[in line with Li’s anthropo-historical ontology], when humans began to live in social groups we gained the ability to transform nature, to think in terms of scientific causality and mathematics, and to engage in the supra-biological social behavior involved in morality and aesthetics’ (my italics).

17 While the original Chinese reads ‘实践中的理性-实践理性-理性的实践’ – that is, seemingly interchanging combinations of practice and rationality, the translation and exposition in English here offers a contextualised reading.

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While the aforementioned basic socialisation and natural transformation do account for the distinct human strategy of survival – which is inseparable from the paramount importance of social, natural and practical rationality – a more fundamental reason explaining the origin of such vital rationalities is concerned with the practice of ‘tool-using and tool-making’. For Li, the collective subjectality (or the civilisation), from primal ages until now, cannot thrive without the invention and advancement of tools. We saw earlier that the differentiation from animals and machines has been demonstrated as a vital presupposition of Confucian theorising, and it is at this point that Li further clarifies that the line demarcating human beings from other animals lies in the necessity and universality, as well as the diversity, of humankind’s tool using and making for its survival and maintenance. In all, from the perspective of the human species, the technical-social practice transforms human beings into something no longer animal. With regard to an elevation beyond animals, such tools as artificial extensions of human limbs help humans to form a supra-biological (chao shengwu de 超生物) body and in this way humans’ supra-biological behaviour is enabled. Moreover, an elevated humanity beyond the mechanical and the banausic is also notable (and again integral to the line of categorically one-world view thinking). This means on the basis of the separate growth and renewal of both objective lawfulness and subjective-reflective purposiveness – see the former two stages of ‘rationality in practice’ and ‘practical rationality’ mentioned ­earlier  – a more realistic realisation of humanly free practice becomes possible.18 Earlier in Chapter 3 (p. 37) when expounding the Confucian proposal of ‘replacing religion with aesthetics’, we have discussed one of its literal purports that aesthetics seems preferable if it is sustained by the previous development of science and ethics. Now this advanced position of aesthetics can be further interpreted herein. That is, this third (aesthetic) stage indicates objectivity and subjectivity are reunited at a new level, where the subjective is more reflexive than before and the amount of the varied kinds of lawfulness (e.g., the natural, the social and the moral) that are grasped and manipulated are enabled to sustain a greater degree of humankind’s freedom. Following this Marxian reading of the essentially Confucian conception of aesthetic freedom (see p. 79 of this chapter), Li means ‘a state of freedom in everyday life where practical mastery of the outside world is in a reciprocal relation with an advance in the pragmatic power of the human personality’ (1999a, pp. 75–76, 2010b, p. 50). It is in this way that the aesthetic form is regarded by Li as the highest expression of humanity and meanwhile a future task we human beings need to fulfil. In the aesthetic practice of human beings, not only can objective facets be known and grasped, not only can aims once set up by the mind be achieved accurately, but also the subjective

18 Although Schiller (1793/2005, p. 141) also discussed a similar point about ‘nature leaves humans themselves to fulfil its purpose, which alone makes humans’, Li stresses it with such a historical materialist base.

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purposiveness can be flexibly adapted to align with normative demands which sometimes could be rather creative and even anti-conventional. At this juncture, it seemingly indicates the first two stages of subjectivity in its original Western philosophical sense form the base for the third stage where a higher level of subjectality emerges. However, does not Li argue ‘subjectality as the foundation of subjectivity’? Yes. But it is not self-contradictory because in his argument Li refers to a preliminary level of subjectality regarding ‘the basis of human existence [which] is tool using and making (or say, material production), rather than consciousness or language’ (Li, 1999c, p. 175). Li is consistently associated with a notion of ‘subjectality’ from his own culture, either consciously or subconsciously, to the extent that even when he draws upon the Western philosophical perspective of subjectivity (as in his conception of rationality in practice and practical rationality), he tends to incorporate it into self-­explanations and thereby to develop his own theory of ‘subjectality’. Thus, more than a discourse of naive cultural identities of Western subjectivity (zhuguan) and of Eastern subjectality (zhuti), Li on the one hand retains the significant contribution of Western subjectivity by recognising its advantage for sophisticated epistemological inquiries; on the other hand, his creation of such an English term ‘subjectality’, and his theory of subjectality as seen through these three stages (as well as with the four dimensions that I  am right now introducing), actually deepens the conversations on the subject in both cultures. To conclude the third stage of aesthetic practice, such sensuous freedom in practice or a higher level of subjectality, as understood by Li, is operated through the human emotio-rational structure. It means in the aesthetic practice rationality can be melted into emotionality, and thus bona fide humane acts can be actualised. In the discussion on ‘aesthetic practice’ expressing the highest level of humanity, wherein humans are able to adjust purposiveness in the process while not violating lawfulness, Li actually implies an emphasis on the enrichment and the rounded development of the individual. He further explains the sense of aesthetic he intends: individual singularity, richness and diversity, which were first exhibited by fine art, can be expected to find their fullest development in all aspects of social life and the fullest potential of individuality can be expected to become a leading characteristic of future society. (Li, 1979/2018, p. 335) The individual subjectality and the cultural-psychological formation

We have already touched upon Li’s serious emphasis on tool using and making by humans (precisely organised humans), to which he even accords an ontological status, in the explanation of the origins and further development of

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human civilisations (also see D’Ambrosio et al., 2016, pp. 1065–1066). Inseparable from this ‘tool ontology’ (that is, the technical-social formation, gongyi shehui jiegou 工艺社会结构), is Li’s corresponding emphasis on culturalpsychological formation (wenhua xinli jiegou 文化心理结构). Admittedly, this cultural-psychological formation seen at the species level is a result of the anthropo-historical sedimentation to which I have alluded (see page 74 earlier about primitive sedimentation). In essence, this is a parlance about ­humanity – and with Kant’s critical analysis of human thinking, it can be divided into epistemology, morality and aesthetics. Further, like the Enlightenment concept of autonomy and maturity, this cultural-psychological formation when considered in relation to the individual is also about the ‘becoming’ of a human. Nevertheless, the distinctiveness of this concept – the cultural-psychological formation – lies in its intricate emphasis on an emotio-rational structure (qingli jiegou 情理结构). When discussing Kant’s theory of subjectivity through the Confucian light (see Chapter 6, p. 112), Li indicates the increasingly important aspect of Qing (情) in building up a modern subjectality. The understanding of the emotio-rational structure, apart from its emotional and rational facets, includes the Qing (情) aspect – which is rationality merged with emotionality, coined as what we have seen as the aesthetic facet of individual subjectivity. In alignment with its key role in aesthetic practice, the emotio-rational structure has the same prominence in building up a modern self. In particular, if the material tools (e.g., the smart phone) and the cognitive tools (e.g., mathematics) extend human limbs and minds to a supra-biological level of existence, then the cultural-psychological formation which cultivates an emotional-rational human psycho-structure enables humans a supra-biological level of need and enjoyment. By a supra-biological level of need and enjoyment, Li (2005/1988, p.  293) means the aesthetic – the pursuit of gourmet dining rather than eating for hunger; the love between partners instead of mere sexual intercourse; a desire to travel around and to appreciate works of art, etc., which are all culturally developed sensitivities. Li also dubs the cultivated sensation as ‘new sensitivity’, xin ganxing新感性 (Li, 2005/1988, p. 295). Initially based in humans’ physiological sensations, these aesthetic needs and enjoyments are then sedimented with rationality – possessing senses of historicity and sociality. In a nutshell, what is emphasised in this human cultural-psychological formation is concerned not only with rationality, but also with emotionality, and most importantly with a mediation between the two (Li, 1979/2018, pp. v, 347). This does not mean the proper suppression of emotionality by rationality, which results in the development of cognition and morality, is no longer important; neither does this mean the emotionality is unimportant. Nevertheless, it means that the dissolving of rationality into emotionality – which is the turn towards the aesthetic without overturning the cognitive and the moral, and thus leads to the state of the highest human freedom. For now, to sum up Li’s theory of subjectality, the first point to make is that it contains two levels: one is the collective (the larger self, dawo 大我)

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and the other is the individual (the small self, xiaowo 小我). The former is mainly concerned with species survival and maintenance and thus highlights the ­technological-social formation; the latter chiefly relates to individuals’ cultivation of humanity (namely, the formation of an emotio-rational structure). Further explication of individual subjectality, especially in its aesthetic sense will be presented in the next two sections in relation to the sedimentation theory and the final analysis of the freedom of the drivers. The cultural-psychological formation can also be read through both the collective and the individual perspective (see ‘the empirical turns into the transcendental (a priori)’ explained later in this chapter, p. 89). Briefly, the next point is that the technologicalsocial and the cultural-psychological are also two constitutive forces of humanity and civilisation. Indeed, as the two levels of subjectality cannot be separated from each other, the cultural-psychological formation (viz. humanity) also cannot be isolated from the technical-social formation (viz. civilisation). On the other hand, Li’s systematic theorising of subjectality with four facets – the collective and the individual; the technical-social and the cultural-psychological – still possesses two significant theoretical characteristics, which are (1) both concomitant and complementary; and (2) both material and spiritual. Hence, Li’s subjectality theory is complex, but it is necessary for it to be so. Likewise, the concept of sedimentation – at once accumulative and ever-renewing – is designated to take us as far as it can, regarding the complicated relationship among the four facets (the collective and the individual; the technical-social and the cultural-psychological).

The theory of sedimentation (jidian 积淀): both accumulative and ever-renewing There is no doubt that a tone of the collective is prevalent in Li’s philosophy since he regards himself as a historicist (see pp. 115–116 in this book). Li even says more directly that ‘Humans, including their ethics and morals, are established and created by humans themselves not as atomic individuals but as societies and communities – [they are] the results of history, education, and socialization’ (see Li et al., 2016, p. 1075). It is therefore clear that the individual subjectality seen through Li’s lens presupposes the collective subjectality; and the technical-social formation is realistically (historically) more important than the ‘subsequent’ cultural-psychological formation. However, the heavy stress that Li puts on to the collective and the technical dimensions does not mean that his philosophy of ‘anthropo-historical ontology’ is encumbered by social constructivism. Conversely, his theory of sedimentation is fittingly put forward to rectify any misunderstanding or ignorance of the individual and the spiritual aspects of his vision. While the concept of sedimentation is indeed intended to depict the genesis of human epistemology, morality and aesthetics, alongside the historical-cultural-evolutionary process of humankind (that is, its accumulative character), the other side of it is to

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highlight how the collective, the social, the historical and the rational are sedimented into the individual, the natural, the psychological and the emotional (that is, its everrenewing character). This is to say, the theory of sedimentation has another significant intention in emphasising the sedimentation at work on the part of the individual. As indicated in its original geological sense, it is the changing accumulating surface that essentially constitutes the bedrock. Hence the theory of sedimentation is viable for highlighting the active contribution of the individual in actually constituting and layering the sedimentation. Put differently, it emphatically does not mean that the importance of individuality in Li’s Theory of Anthropo-Historical Ontology has been denied or downplayed. I shall now interpret further Li’s theory of sedimentation and his concern for the individual subjectality from his three conclusions set out in his ultimate ‘theory of anthropo-historical ontology’. These are: (1) ‘history builds up rationality’ (lishi jian lixing 历史建理性); (2) ‘the empirical turns into the transcendental (a priori)’ (jingyan bian xianyan 经验变先验); and (3) ‘psychology grows into substance’ (xinli cheng benti 心理成本体).19 It can be said that the first two of these explain the ‘accumulative’ aspect of the sedimentation, while the last underlines its rejuvenating aspect, which at the same time is regarded by Li as assuming greater and greater significance for the philosophy as a whole. In the ‘accumulative’ sense, the phrase ‘history builds up rationality’ (lishi jian lixing 历史建理性) summarises the preceding technical-social formation (see from ‘rationality in practice’ to ‘practical rationality’, and then to ‘aesthetic practice’). ‘[T]he empirical turns into the transcendental (a priori)’ (jingyan bian xianyan 经验变先验) also concludes the formation of the cultural-­psychological. That is to say, the cognitive, moral and aesthetic elements are first accumulated by human beings as a whole during the actual process of social practice and interaction. Meanwhile, these accumulated mental forms function as ‘prior’ categories in the process of individual formation, sedimenting into the individual psyche. Seen from another vantage point, what is empirical in the technologicalsocial achievement of humankind as a whole assumes a priori character, such as the tradition and the historicity that are no longer directly sensed experience for individuals who come into the world as newcomers but which are sedimented through varied cultural systems. Above all, as an individual, the subject’s cultural-psychological formation relies crucially on postnatal learning and education.20 It is also appropriate at this point to relate Li’s accumulated-empirical collective subjectality (the larger self, dawo 大我) to the transcendental subject in the Western tradition which is meaning-bestowing, world-constituting and independent of experience. That is, seen through Li’s lens, the transcendental subject is deconstructed: an a priori form of thinking related to the transcendental

19 Also see p. 114 of this book. 20 The understanding of learning and education is certainly not limited to schooling and can be extended to a wider life world dramatically and indefinitely.

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is ‘disenchanted’ by the collective subjectality which assumes an accumulated empirical quality. Once again as Li says, it is in the maintenance of the species that individual mental life – that search for the meaning of life by the ­individual – germinates. Hence the collective larger self can take the place of a transcendental self, especially in what I have identified as Li’s one-world view thinking. At the same time, the empirical subject, of which its companion concept is the transcendental self, indeed overlaps but does not identify with the individual subjectality (the small self, xiaowo 小我), as Li conceives it. On the one hand, the empirical subject and the individual subjectality are both concerned with ‘the particular person that I am, with my history, personality, and so forth’ (Carr, 1999, p. 53). When Li recapitulates that – in parallel with the aforementioned ‘history builds up rationality’ and ‘the empirical turns into the transcendental (a priori)’ – ‘psychology grows into substance’ (xinli cheng benti 心理成本体) (see Li, 1979/2018, p. viii), he certainly means to emphasise the advancement of the same sense of individuality. On the other hand, however, Li’s individual subjectality is always situated in the three levels of sedimentation as theorised in his model. These levels of sedimentation, clarified by Jane Cauvel (1999, p. 158, with my slightly modified annotation), are revealed as follows: (1) species sedimentation (forms common to all human beings, e.g., cognitive categories, moral understandings, aesthetic experiences); (2) cultural sedimentation (ways of thinking and feeling common to our regional or ethnic culture); (3) individual sedimentation (those ways of looking at the world accumulated from our own individual life experiences). Li admits this helpful clarification by emphasising that ‘these layers are interacting, intertwining, and interpenetrating each other’ (Li & Cauvel, 2006, p. 176). This is to say, the establishment of the individual subjectality not only involves self-construction but more significantly it cannot be separated from the other two interrelated levels of layering. In one phrase, the individual subjectality is a layered self. Meanwhile, if the first two levels of sedimentation are sufficiently developed, the third level of sedimentation becomes increasingly important in sustaining the further development of the first two. In particular, Li envisages that we are entering an age in which the individual sedimentation (viz. ordinary persons like you and me) can significantly add to the species and cultural sedimentations. To explain this ‘new age’, we can point to a number of factors: gene technologies, global travel, the growing population on earth and the popularisation of education, to name a few, which are all instances of the advanced development of the first two levels of sedimentation. Overall, it is within this iterative framework that ‘psychology grows into substance’ (xinli cheng benti 心理成本体) to be made sense in terms of the current priority of human inner becoming.

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Again, like the counterbalanced theory of subjectality, the theory of sedimentation is balanced by observing both the relatively static-fixed character of the bedrock and the modifiable-changeable and variable quality of the surface (Chandler, 2017, p.  37; Rošker, 2018b, p.  74). Mediating between an ­accumulative-empirical quality and an ever-renewing character, the theory of sedimentation not only considers both the diachronic and the synchronic totality, but also vividly captures the contribution of the creative individuality. Within the iterative framework of three levels of sedimentation, it is ‘a sedimented self ’ exercising a high level of individuality but not attached to any extreme forms of socialisation or egocentrism. In the layering framework, the aesthetic facet of individual subjectality (involving the Qing (情) aspect and the cultivation of the new sensitivity) is not only possible but also vital. I shall now link back to our earlier analysis of ‘driver’s freedom’, on the basis of Li’s theory of subjectality and sedimentation. I will conclude by how the driver’s freedom can best capture the individual subjectality as conceived by Li, which is an updated version of classical aesthetic autonomy.

Aesthetic subjectivity: rationality dissolved into emotionality (II) Reviewing this chapter, I first sketched the culturally contrasting conceptions of subject – provisionally rendered as ‘subjectality’ versus ‘subjectivity’ – by presenting two underlined divergent understandings of freedom and sensuous freedom along the framework of the ‘one-world’ or the ‘two-world’ view. Then I argued in the second section in depth about the detailed differences, drawing upon a vital metaphor of ‘driver’s freedom’. In particular, I argued how Li, in a dialectical treatment of Kant’s rational maturity, concurs with Confucius or Schiller in favour of an ‘aesthetic autonomy’. In relation to the aesthetic and sensuous freedom that can be enjoyed by the human race in general, Li further develops this through a Marxist lens. Confucius’ sensuous/aesthetic freedom is then seen as interchangeable with the Marxist notion of ‘the naturalisation of the human’; but in Li’s context, the sequence from ‘the humanisation of the nature’ to ‘the naturalisation of the human’ is much more inclusive because not only is the Confucian one-world view incorporated, but the highest achievement of humanity, culminating at the aesthetic realm prized by both Schiller and Confucius,21 is also recognised. And most significantly, the transformation of nature and of human nature by individuals in social practice over a long time period is also admitted to the analysis. It is hence in the third and fourth

21 The difference of Confucius aesthetic freedom and Schillerian beauty lies in the difference between the one-world view and the two-world view, including whether it is a level attainable by human beings. (Meanwhile, for more details about the similarity between Confucius’ related thought and that of Schiller’s, see p. 66, pp. 80–81 of this book.)

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sections that Li’s theory of subjectality was necessarily clarified, with his associated theory of sedimentation – both of which are obviously influenced by Marx’s philosophy. In order to make more accessible the unique yet persuasive and illuminating thinking of the modern self that is offered by Li, I will conclude this final section by analysing Li’s individual subjectality in line with the earlier analysis of the driver’s freedom. As analysed earlier, there are three necessary conditions for the driver’s freedom: (1) travel tools; (2) travel infrastructures and institutions; and (3) an ordinary human being that practises. At the same time, Li’s conception of ‘subjectality’ is based on his theory of two formations and three levels of sedimentation. The two fundamental formations are the ­technological-social and the cultural-psychological. Both of them play significant roles in shaping humanity, either by transforming the external natural world or by moulding the internal human psyche. It becomes clear that the travel tools and the transportation systems respectively signify the technical constituent and the social institution of modern life. As a historical materialist, Li values the technical-social aspect as more fundamental. It is on this basis that Li acclaims modern Western civilisation, which contributes significantly in respect of the technical-social formation to the world we live in nowadays. For Li, the experience of Western modernisation is undeniably a ‘global contribution’ that is worthy of recognition and embrace. Meanwhile, owing to the more fundamental role of the technicalsocial root, the cultural-psychological facet is naturally influenced and enriched by it. Imagine the subjective driving experience between a horse driver in the agricultural society and a car driver in our modern life: in the former case, one can only see ahead or behind at a time; while in the latter, one can see back and forth. Let alone today’s drivers can experience driving either in the UK or the HK right-hand drive or, in the Chinese Mainland or America left-hand drive. Briefly, the divergent cultural-psychological driving experience is obvious because of the evolution or variety of transportation systems and vehicles. However, because the driver – that is, the person him/herself – is vital in the sense of enacting the social systems and manipulating the material tools, Li’s theory of sedimentation – especially the third level of individual sedimentation on the basis of the species and cultural sedimentation – can be drawn on to explain the no less important dimension of individuality. As envisaged by Li, the sedimentation on the part of the individual – based on the experience of general humanity in type and also on the particular local-tradition – is becoming increasingly significant for a yet further step of development. This is the reason Li emphasises the enrichment of individuality and the establishment of personhood. On the basis of our current level of humanity and civilisation, the person who can manipulate technologies and live with social systems while carrying out his/her own projects with a high level of individuality is required for both the advancement of humanity and civilisation, and for the sake of human freedom and happiness. This is also what Li’s proposal for a future founded on ‘the beginning of education’ means: to build up an ever-enriched

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account and experience of humanity. It is Li’s expectation for a Second Renaissance of Humanity (see p. 116 of this book): as the first one emancipated humans from the sovereignty of divinity and monarchy, the second one should liberate humans from the current ‘machine’ domination (both the social bureaucracy and the scientific supremacy) by which we are nowadays beset. It then becomes clear that individual subjectality as conceived by Li is certainly one that is not lost in the social or the natural; rather, it is one that can transform society just as the natural environment has been transforming. To connect Confucius’ teaching that humans are to be humanised and Marx’s criticism of the modern alienation of rationality and sensitivity, Li longs for the naturalisation of the human, that is, naturalised humans living in the world, like drivers driving freely on the road. Briefly, for Li, subjectality is realised by a grown-up relationship with the natural, the social and the technical; just like the driver, a real flesh-blood figure who receives ongoing cultivation and training, accompanied with his/her life-long practice of driving, lives well with all kinds of constraints on the road. Hence we interpret Li’s materialist-socialist perspective on Confucius’ aesthetic freedom, or Schiller’s ‘beautiful soul’, through a metaphor of modern drivers’ common exercise of free mobility. Both Confucius’ and Schiller’s classical aesthetic autonomy are no longer mystical in its aesthetic inwardness, but open to real daily life and ordinary people. Just like the minimal health condition that is required for the driver in the metaphor, common people equipped with proper technical instruments and following proper communal rules are able to enjoy this sort of aesthetic autonomy. Up to this point, the sense of balance that is intended by Li in his grand theorising surely can be seen: with the driver metaphor of freedom perfectly expressive at the same time of the complexity and the integrity of subjectality in the real world. In a driver’s freedom, not only the manifold facets of ­subjectality – the technology, the social environment and the human being with his/her layered individuality – are involved, but issues of priority and of necessity within it are also clearly outlined. None of them can be ignored while some come before others in a historical and general sequence. Furthermore, the key aesthetic idea of ‘rationality dissolving into emotionality’ can be seen through the free driver figuration that expresses the co-working of cognition and volition in human sensuous bases, mediating the technical and the ethical to a state of personal liberty. Meanwhile, this theory of subjecality also indicates how ‘aesthetics as beyond ethics’ (as promoted by the Chinese) is possible – that is, the turning towards the aesthetic is encompassing both the technical and the ethical. When the driver decides the speed and direction of the car within the permits of communal regulations, s/he can travel and even explore on his/her own pace without prescription. In this sense, s/he is aesthetically ‘in control’ of life as conceived by Li – the sensuous human being lives well in the rational circumstance be it composed of material tools or social institutions. Li certainly expects that every one of us can develop the aesthetic facet of our individual

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subjectality, to become the driver of our own lives, merging rationality with emotionality, flexibly adjusting goals and applying laws. All in all, with the driver metaphor of freedom, Li is enabled to assert that the exercise of free will becomes more possible when our capacity is extended by necessary tools on the basis of a sound communal system. In this way, Li sticks to the rational tradition rather than falling into an emotional utopia. Above all he upgrades the classical Confucian or Schillerian aesthetic autonomy by locating this ideal firmly within the modern achievement of technological and social progress.

Chapter 6

A summary of Li’s transcultural aesthetics and a transcultural reading of Li’s philosophy as a whole

A summary of Li’s transcultural reading of aesthetics Here I sum up the iterative cross-cultural understanding of ‘aesthetics’ that has been undergirding the current study. In actuality, ‘aesthetics’ in the Western world from the time of classical Greece, through the Enlightenment era to the modern period has itself undergone several different shifts in emphasis. The connotations of typical Western aesthetics range from the development of the five senses and the extended attention to arts, which could cultivate those human sensibilities, to the formal study of beauty and the discussion of the inner sense of beauty, with the aim of balancing rationality and emotionality – then on to those epistemic facets of aesthetics which inquire into the relationship between the object and the subject, etc. (Jones, A.L., 1915, pp. 51–54; Moore, R., 1998, p. 89; Higgins, 2011, p. 131). When ‘aesthetics’ took its cross-continental journey from the West to the East in the 19th-20th century, it quickly captured the imaginations of then influential Asian intellectuals such as Motomori Kimura (1895–1945) in Japan and in China Guowei Wang (1877–1927) and Yuanpei Cai (1868–1940). Both Chapter 3 of this book and Nishimura’s works (2007, 2012) have demonstrated these Eastern scholars’ enthusiastic interest in aesthetics. The contemporary Chinese philosopher Zehou Li has continued this special line of inquiry into aesthetics, advancing in understanding the ways in which ‘aesthetics’ is important for Chinese culture (or, say, the culture that is associated with the ‘oneworld’ view) and how it could contribute to the future development of our world. From Chapter 3 to Chapter 5, mainly based on Zehou Li’s philosophy (A Theory of Anthropo-Historical Ontology 人类学历史本体论, see the section that follows for an introduction), three senses of ‘aesthetics’ could be summarised as central. They are (1) ‘aesthetics’ as a first philosophy1 (美学作为第一

1 Basically, in Chapter 3 I depicted such a notion of aesthetic metaphysics.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-9

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哲学); (2) ‘aesthetics’ as ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体)2; (3) ‘aesthetics’ as the completion of one’s subjectivity, just like those expressed in ‘music and arts’ (Chengyu Yue 成於樂), or say driver’s freedom.3 In alignment with the ‘one-world’ view, it is contended that neither the God-given nor the inborn state is as precious as the human earned-condition. Take the understanding of freedom as an example. The human freedom that is enabled and sustained through a long historical material and social practice is prized utmost. Aesthetic experience – which is a humanly-earned free experience differing from animal sensation and from mechanic automation – is then regarded as the highest realm of the ideal for human life. The aesthetic thus functions as the ‘first philosophy’ for the Chinese – which, if converted into the ‘two-world’ view framework typical of the West, assumes the equivalence of religious experience. Since faith is often considered to be irrational, it is further not surprising that such an understanding of ‘aesthetic metaphysics’ could be regarded as emotional in essence (Li himself also terms this as ‘emotional-cosmology’, youqing yuzhou guan 有情宇宙观). This interpretation of ‘aesthetics’ as ‘emotion’ is not wrong only if ‘emotion’ is understood as postnatally cultivated emotion rather than something we are born with, in the Chinese context as Li conceives it. This posterior emotion rationalised by historicity and sociality – i.e., humanised emotion (also see the concept of new sensitivity earlier, p.  87) – is considered the most desirable for its vital contribution to both individual flourishing and the well-being of humankind as a whole.4 Thus, in the Chinese aesthetic one-world view, those humanised emotions encompassing historical and social ­rationality – especially as ultimate and conclusive as ‘attachments to the cosmos and the nature, to the hometown and the family; love for one’s parents and partners, siblings and teachers/classmates; faith in religion or spirit or history’ – are metaphysical references which no longer aim to provide all-round explanations of the world but to sustain ‘the infinite desire to express ultimate meaning’ (Smith, J. Z., 1998, p. 281). In one phrase, aesthetic metaphysics fosters the core life forces for human existence. (If in the Western sense of aesthetics, an aesthetic attitude towards the evolving natural world counts as typical, then in the transcultural sense of it, the extended appreciation of the accumulating human world could also be considered as aesthetic [see pp. 45–46, in Chapter 3 earlier].) Next, it is through the idea of mediating between rationality and emotionality that the imported ‘aesthetics’ can be sensibly related to the original and older Chinese notion of humanised emotion, and thereby translated into Chinese as

2 In Chapter 4 I presented such aestheticised moral philosophy. 3 In Chapter 5 I discussed such aesthetic subjectality as an open way to the establishment of personhood which is held on the part of the ordinary individuals. 4 As Virág says, ‘right emotions were essential to the Confucian conception of virtue, which was none other than the art of living properly and well’ (2014, p. 207).

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Qing 情. This humanised emotion (i.e., emotion rationalised with historicity and sociality) is what Qing 情in ‘Qing-Ontology’ (qing benti 情本体) mainly denotes. This clarification by Li of ‘aesthetics as Qing 情 (humanised emotion)’ offers an explanation of why it is sensible that ‘aesthetic education’ was initially translated into Chinese as emotional education 情育 (see Wang, H.C., 2018, p. 18). The seeming ‘misunderstanding’, or by courtesy ‘creative misunderstanding’ of ‘aesthetics’, shifts its original Western meaning to now be related to Qing情 as the rational historical socialisation of innate emotion. That is, both aesthetics as ‘Qing-Ontology’ and aesthetic education as ‘emotional education’ are comprehensible because they comply with the aesthetic discussion of rationalising and socialising inborn conditions, differentiating the human from the animal and from the mechanical (see pp. 51, 66–67, 72 earlier of this book). Apart from the clarification of ‘aesthetics’ as a first philosophy and ‘aesthetics’ as Qing 情, Li also develops such aesthetically-metaphysically influenced moral philosophy. In Li’s aesthetic moral theory, he demonstrates what aesthetics as rationality dissolved into emotionality 理融于情 can mean, and also how it can contribute to a promising future world that balances rationality and emotionality. Li first understands both types of moral reasoning (the Kantian rationaluniversal legislation and the Chinese rational-unregretful accomplishment) as necessary. He further develops this viewpoint in his proposal for the public and private uses of morality, which improves upon Kant’s proposal for the public and private uses of reason. Li’s public use of morality is similar to (or say, developed from) Kant’s private use of reason, since what are followed and discharged in Li’s conception are those that can stand up to liberal criticisms and those that can be tested by what Kant himself formulated as the principle of universal legislation. Acknowledging the deficiency that ‘all we need is reason’, Li puts forward the private use of morality in parallel with the public use of morality, assigning the private sense of morality a salient role in dissolving rationality into emotionality (and thus pertaining to aesthetics). For Li, both the life that one lives and the traditions that are collectively accumulated are the sensual starting points that await transformation (otherwise there is no difference from the existence of the lower animals or the banausic machines). From these existential states, the aesthetic-private moral ­reasoning – the weighing of regrets summoning the best knowledge of one’s life and also referring to other lives lived before – encompasses a kind of rationality no less convincing than the rationality implied in the universal legislation as Kant conceives it. This kind of aesthetic rationality reveals the ‘universal’ by means of the particulars (indeed an artistic undertaking); in contrast with the scientific rationale to describe particulars in general terms. In addition, the weighing of regrets is not abstract because humans rely on their emotional experiences to know and to reckon the regrets they confront. Taken together, the identification of aesthetic-unregretful willingness (least regretful state of mind) is a result of rationality melted into the starting point of sensational situations. That is, the

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rationality assumed in the weight of regrets emerges from a human physicalpsychosocial foundation alongside the corresponding social circumstances. In short, it is aesthetics understood in the form of emergent order – like that generated in creating arts in which attempts, adventures, as well as explorations are inherent (for this point also see Chapter 4, pp. 67–68). Now we come to the end of the second sense of aesthetics as indicated in Li’s moral philosophy, especially in his private use of moral reasoning. This isolated sense of aesthetics is concerned with rationality dissolving into emotionality, in which an emerging sense of order like that arising in art creation is identified. Besides this aesthetic sense of emerging order, there is another approach to apprehend ‘rationality dissolving into emotionality’. Let us recall the aesthetic pleasure externalised in the driver’s freedom, expressing subjectivity as a form of ‘art and music’ (成於樂的主体性) – see Chapter 5. The aesthetic subjectality, as put in Li’s terminology, is seemingly identified with emotionality because the freedom the subject enjoys is so sensuous. But it should be noted that such sensuous states are beyond the senses. This can thus again be described as the rationality dissolved into the emotionality – because the attainment of the aesthetic subjectality not only takes its departure from the sensuous and physical condition of human beings, but it also ends by/leads to an accomplishment of aesthetic freedom alongside an elevated state of sensibility (始于情终于情). Meanwhile, rationality has not been downplayed here, because both instrumental rationality (think about the manufacture of cars in the driver’s metaphor) and social rationality (think about the transportation system in the same case) are perfectly exercised to order our feelings and situations. It is worth emphasising that we cannot reverse the order, where emotionality dissolves into rationality. This is a crucial point that should not be misunderstood. The correct expression of ‘rationality dissolves into emotionality 理融 于情’ on the one hand gives primacy to rationality, and on the other hand acknowledges the sensuous human existence both as a de facto starting point and as a desired end when elevated. Above all associated with the Chinese one-world view, Li’s anthropo-historical ontology accentuates emotion while not denying reason. Seen through a historical lens, both the development of individual humanity and of collective civilisation cannot be separated from the rational maxim. Concerning the general original human condition, which is just animal-like sensuousness requiring to be educated to the humanised condition, the emotional characteristic is necessitated both at the starting point and at the accomplished point (so that it is neither as high as God-like, nor as low as animal-like). Li (2016c, preface) also explains his idea of ‘rationality dissolving into emotionality 理融于情’ by the analogy of salt melted into water  – i.e., in the emotional sea reason functions as salt, which gives varied tastes of water (meanings of life) according to the different degrees of salt (rationality) dissolved. To know the aesthetic subjectality that enjoys spontaneous freedom like that enjoyed by the drivers of our common life, and that is positively sustained

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by technical and social rational progress, leads us to know the third sense of ­aesthetics that Li intends. This is related to the formation of the emotio-rational structure (qingli jiegou 情理结构), which, in outer realities, represents the transformation of the natural environment and, in inner realities represents the humanisation of the physiological psyche. When I discussed the aesthetic facet of the subject and the aesthetic practice in Chapter 5, I argued that the aesthetic means the co-working of the sensuous human psyche with cognition and ­volition – as well as the mediating of the technical and the ethical, which eventually leads to the attainment of personal liberty. I recognised that the aesthetic state of mind that diffuses from rationality into emotionality aims at the pleasure of the will and the soul, and at the union of lawfulness and purposiveness. This re-imagination of the self with the emotio-rational structure reminds us of moral sages or the ‘genius’ of people in the past who could (and might) ‘attain’ such a high degree of freedom. In the traditional heroic society, the inward mystical approach which prioritises quietist aesthetic experience is cherished by the sages to attain such free states of mind, unifying the self and the world. But how does it come to be real in a modern democratic society that is open to everyone? Is it possible that a return to the ordinary does not necessarily let go of the impurity and the messiness of life but actually elevates them? Is it possible that our modern achievements, such as technological development and the configuration of the liberal public sphere, could be incorporated to foster the aesthetic attainment of the individual, and further be made more open to everyone, rather than remaining the mythic-luxurious preserve of those who are fortunate? Li is optimistic about this democratic aesthetic realisation of individual personhood (see the figuration of the driver). Since Li is a thinker who cares about the modern refurbishment of Chinese culture (see the section that follows), he has to take seriously the recognition of the self and the formation of a personhood that could work for the ordinary individual. Li, then, has to confront the question of the aesthetic contribution to the individual subjectality. He has to think about how that highest aesthetic ideal can be applied to the ordinary individual life especially against the backdrop of the modern scene. Thus, Li’s third sense of aesthetics is related to the formation of the emotiorational structure held among each of us and at the same time remaining rich with modern and democratic concerns. Hence I  conclude the understanding of aesthetics that the aesthetics-­ education approach supports, as derived from Zehou Li’s philosophy, as follows: it is one that functions as a ‘first philosophy’, with an improved moral project and an imagination of the place of democratic practice in the production of the modern self. This aesthetic perspective on the mediation between rationality and emotionality, throwing its light on the Chinese tradition, enables the emergence of a kind of self-understanding for Chinese cultural construction, and thereby strives to guide the national culture in its realisation of its own modernisation programme. The aesthetic pursuit represents the noble aim of the complete balanced humanity – with a vigorous relationship between the

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cognitive and the intuitive, the understanding and the imagination, cognition and volition. The aesthetic pursuit represents the solemn search for the complete and balanced civilisation – with a sustainable relationship between individuality and universality, freedom and necessity, nature and society, past and future, goodness and truth. In its philosophical detail and specificity, aesthetics (1) means Qing 情 (humanised emotion) in Chinese; (2) denotes ‘rationality dissolving into emotionality’; and (3) points to the completion of emotio-rational structure. The extended understandings include an emergent sense of order like that generated harmoniously in the creation of art, and in genuine sentiments that can be felt in common perceptions of historic and societal rationality; the optimistic spirit that is projected on behalf of the betterment of the future; and the aesthetic pleasure that ordinary people like you and me are entitled to enjoy – as accessible as the driver’s free experience in driving – feasible and practical in relation to the modern technical-social progress and even with respect to the modest mental-physical health of the individual being. All in all, rationality and emotionality as reconciled, as Li conceives earlier, to mean nothing less than beauty.

Zehou Li’s philosophy at the contemporary crossroads of East and West With the wisdom of hindsight of some 40  years, Zehou Li is definitely the most influential thinker in China’s post-Mao era. Among the mainstream contemporary Chinese intellectuals, he is an extremely outstanding figure – ‘expressing his thought-provoking ideas with an intellectual sophistication and theoretical depth which few of his contemporaries can match’ (Lin, 1992, p. 970). Moreover, in Chinese society in general, his influence is unparalleled. He was not only regarded as ‘the teacher of youth’, enjoying a national reputation in the 1980s – a time just after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) when the official leadership encouraged liberation of thought – but also the books he published have been gaining a high level of circulation, possibly up to 2,000,000, or more. In actuality, Li’s philosophical achievement reflects the spiritual and cultural needs of his age in China. Li firmly believes that Chinese Civilisation – with a history as long as 5,000 years; a territory as broad as 9,600,000 square kilometres; a super-sized population as large as 1.404 billion and the overall population calculated in history as approximately 20 billion5; with such a huge spatial and temporal zone of human practice – is capable of having its own unique

5 The number of 20 billion is a proportional estimation – as the estimated number of all Homo sapiens born on earth since history is 108 billion according to the American scholar Carl Haub’s study, in line with the current percentage of Chinese in the world, 20 billion is as a result of the reckoning (See Xingqiu Yanjiusuo, 28 January 2018).

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form of modernity. Belonging to an intellectual generation in China of the modern period, Li is particularly clear about the serious mission to bridge the Chinese traditional past and modern advanced Western culture (Li, 2017, p. 15). It is therefore appropriate to regard him as a man diligently working at the 20th–21st centurial crossroads of East and West, leading the modern refurbishment of Chinese culture. There already exists some literature in the English-speaking world introducing Li’s philosophy, either from a perspective of most recent Chinese intellectual discourse from 1978 to 1988 (Lin, 1992), or in terms of the development of Confucianism (Chan, 2003), or through a lens of Chinese aesthetics merging Marxist and Confucian viewpoints (Ding, 2002). Another helpful entry into Li’s thought is The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (Leitch, 2010, pp. 1744–1760), which provides a good introduction to Li, especially his aesthetic theory, with a brief bibliography of his published work in Chinese and other languages. The Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies (see Boundas, 2007, pp. 670–672) depicts Li’s philosophy in a context of comparative philosophy, where Chinese philosophers appropriate Western philosophy to transform Chinese tradition; and Li, in parallel with Zedong Mao (毛泽东), is regarded as a Marxist transformer. In comparison with the aforementioned angles on Li’s thoughts, ranging from Confucianism to Marxism, from aesthetics to politics, the present work will carry out a more comprehensive (yet analytical) cross-cultural examination of his philosophy, at the perceived focal point of Chinese modernity. Indeed, Li’s philosophy is a result of rich and intricate intercultural communications. According to Lin’s analysis (1992, p. 974), the intellectual sources upon which Li drew are mainly composed of three strands mixing together Chinese and Western ideas: (1) the Enlightenment tradition from Kant to Hegel to Marx; (2) Chinese traditional thought, largely Confucianism and Daoism; and (3) ideas of the intellectuals of the May Fourth6 era in the 20th century China, such as Xun Lu (鲁迅). Apart from these explicit influences, Li also develops his own system of thought through dialogue with other popular strains of philosophy either in Chinese society or Western society: for instance, he responded to key ideas of Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Foucault, as well as post-modern trends (see Ding, 2002, pp. 249–250; Li, 1979/2018, p. 352). In his recent work (Li et al., 2016), Li also responds to Communitarian philosophers well-liked in China such as Michael Sandel. In this instance, since Li’s thoughts have reached a fair level of maturity, the responses he offers are less a dialogue with his interlocutor

6 The May Fourth Movement, also called the May  4th New Culture Movement, was an antiimperialist, cultural and political movement which students-intellectuals initiated in Beijing on 4 May 1919. Democracy and science were then two main values promoted for China’s development. Zehou Li prizes the critical reformist spirit towards Chinese tradition in that era.

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and more of a direct exposition of his own thinking in comparison and contrast with Liberalism, Communitarianism and utilitarianism. Last but not the least, the methodological influence from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology also cannot be ignored. For a more comprehensive examination of Li’s work in the light of intercultural exchanges, I will go on to analyse the tripartite cross-cultural communication (Confucius-Kant-Marx) made by Li. That is, using Li’s own figurative expression, ‘how Confucian thought “blends” Kant and Marx in the pursuit of a bright human future’ will be expounded.7 More specifically, the following three questions will be dealt with in sequence: (1) how does Li conduct a critical review of Confucianism, sifting out the living Confucian mentality (in Li’s terms that is the Confucian-collective (un)consciousness) in the Chinese mind? (2) How does Li assess Western Civilisation, focusing on such key examples of Marx’s historical materialism and Kantian Subjectivity? and (3) As a result of (1) and (2), how does Li, at the vital cultural intersection of both his own and Western tradition, build up his own philosophy, titled ‘a theory of anthropo-historical ontology’, for China in particular and for the global world in general? Basically, I will start from Li’s examination of Confucianism from the classical period to the modern time. And then the light of this fresh critical understanding of Confucianism will be thrown on to Li’s sophisticated grasp of Kantian philosophy and Marxian philosophy. Afterwards, the new assumptions upon which Li’s philosophy – A Theory of Anthropo-Historical Ontology (人类 学历史本体论) – are based, with its implied and unconventional perspectives, will be clarified. Li’s assessment of Confucianism: three pivotal characteristics

Li contends that it is not because Confucianism is on the brink of dying that we need to save it; but, rather it is because it is still actively living among the Chinese people, embedded in their implicit thinking and daily behaviours, that we need to examine the still influential Confucian elements in the people’s cultural psyche (Li, 1996/2012, p. 132). Indeed, Li argues that ‘Confucianism is a cultural-psychological structure that has permeated Chinese philosophy for millennia and has thus become synonymous with Chinese culture’ (Chandler, 2017, pp.  29, 216 note 14). Bearing this perspective in mind, Li’s series of inquiries into Confucianism – such as his re-evaluation of Confucius himself (Li, 1980), his thoughts on Neo-Confucianism (Li, 1986a), his insightful

7 It should be noted that Li’s actual grasp of Chinese tradition, Kant’s critical theory and Marx’s philosophy, for modern China’s sake, are nearly concomitant tasks for him; rather than a picture of linear and logical development as presented here which is more of a strategy to make his thoughts more accessible.

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account about ‘a tradition of shamanism and historiography’ (巫史传统) (Li, 2015/2018), and his more systematic exposition in the monographs The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (2010b) and Reading the Analects Today (2008) – can all be reorganised in accordance with his final conclusion that Confucianism as a cultural mentality still functioning in contemporary China is characterised by (a) the one-world view (一个世界); (b) the pragmatic rationality (实用理性); and (c) the pleasure culture (乐感文化). Earlier (on p. 42), when I alluded to these three characteristics of Confucianism, I pointed out this categorisation assumes an equivalence to Chinese culture (for further accounts see Li, 1985/2019, p. xvii & Chapter 9). Hence, there is no doubt that readers find Daoism (not only Confucianism!) shares these key features, which exactly attests to Li’s conclusive, percipient observations on the essence of Chinese tradition. However, in this context I discuss these three key characteristics in terms of Confucianism – this is not only because I  draw upon Confucian texts such as the Book of Change (易经) to introduce these arguments but, more importantly, because in Li’s cross-cultural philosophical inquiry as set out by him, Confucianism (to be precise, Rujia 儒家) is acknowledged as the epitome of Chinese culture, which acts as the Chinese representative philosophy (see Li’s annotation of the Analects, 2008) in engaging with Western philosophies. Thus, what is presented next is a Confucian account of three pivotal characteristics of Chinese culture, which explains the Chinese cultural-psychological formation involving vitally active and effective characteristics of Chinese people. Now I  shall turn to these three key points one by one. (a)  The one-world view (一个世界)

By the one-world view, Li mainly refers to a cosmology or a metaphysics held by the Chinese that the human world, the natural world and the supernatural world are essentially one world (Li, 1999b, pp. 140–141; also see Wu, J. S., 1969, p.  101). That is to say, for the Chinese, not only the human world and the natural world comply with one Dao – for example, ‘the movement of universe is vigorous; the gentlepersons ceaselessly strengthen themselves’8 (天行健 君子 自强不息 in the Book of Change) – but also the supernatural world is well-nigh an extension of this world. Since the deceased, e.g., ancestors, are elevated to a position enjoying worship and have a responsibility to look after their offspring in this world, the boundaries between this life and the life after this life are blurred. Furthermore, in line with this one-world view, if people act in accordance with the Dao, they can ‘assist the transforming and nourishing powers of heaven and earth and form a triad with them’ (Can Tiandi Zan Huayu 参天地 赞化育) (Chan, 2003, p. 121).

8 My adapted translation.

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Beside the preceding point creating an open space for individual moral subjectivity to develop, a harmonised interpersonal relationship vital in the formation of the community is a requisite for this one-world metaphysics. Most especially in the kind of agrarian society that China has long been, this importance of community is not surprising. Inseparable from the reliance on a harmonious relationship between individuals, the harmonious emotions, generated through e.g., an attachment to life, affection for parents and siblings, an appreciation of surrounding events, are powerfully constitutive of the meaning of life in this world. It is clear therefore that, these two things – harmonious interpersonal relationships and genuine emotions – are essential for the ‘one-world’ view. This view of ‘one world’ is undoubtedly the fruit of the early secularisation taking place on the Chinese land, ‘through which the Chinese tradition of clear-headed rationalism and historicism triumphed over mysticism and fanaticism’ (Ding, 2002, p. 254; Li, 2015/2018, p. 218). In Chapter 3 of this book when analysing the thought embedded in the important slogan ‘replacing religion with aesthetics’, this ideological process was preliminarily delineated. Here the point needs to be added that this ‘one-world’ view – a metaphysical viewpoint – as the first characteristic of the Chinese collective (un)consciousness is particularly important in the sense that it not only guarantees the coexistence of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism in China, but also enables the incorporation of other exotic cultures, including the transformation of Buddhism, originating in a foreign land, into ‘Chinese Buddhism’ (Li, 2015/2018, p. 115). In alignment with this percipience of Chinese culture, Li’s analysis of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism (ChengZhu Lixue 程朱理学 and LuWang Xinxue 陆王心学 in the European medieval and early modern 10th-17th century period) and Modern New Confucianism (New Confucians such as Shili Xiong 熊十力, Zongsan Mou 牟宗三 in contemporary time) becomes increasingly intelligible and illuminating. For Li (1986a, p.  552), the Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism (960–1644) adopts the ‘one-world’ view, which affirms the person’s perceptual existence and the value of the human world. In this way it can face the deep challenge coming from Daoism and Buddhism, which each deny ‘the perception of the existing changing world and seek after nothingness or longevity as the unchanging noumenon’. The cultural result is successful, since both religions are living peacefully along with Confucianism – that is, living under the rational spirit of valuing this life without denying a search for an ‘after life’. With the same line of reasoning that ‘[even in the Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism] there is no differentiation between the noumenal and the phenomenal world’ (Chan, 2003, p. 119), Li (1987, p. 306, p. 309) criticises Modern New Confucianism, especially Zongsan Mou’s thought. He criticises it, on the one hand, for treating morality as an all-encompassing metaphysics at the expense of bringing back a kind of moral fever (including pan-moralism and moral mysticism). On the other hand, Li (2016b, p. 649) also disagrees with this strand of moral metaphysics (rather than a metaphysics of morals, see Liu, 2017) in its key theory

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of ‘immanent transcendence’ (内在超越) and ‘intellectual intuition’ (智的 直觉), which restages the two-world presupposition – that is, if not recast with a further social-historical dimension (Li, 2015/2018, p. 116) it seriously violates the central Confucian tenet of the secular ‘one-world’ view. (b)  The pragmatic rationality (实用理性) 9

The pragmatic rationality, in Li’s systematic theory, based on archaeological material, owes its origin to ‘a tradition of shamanism and historiography’ (巫史传统) dating back to primitive China more than 5,000  years ago (see Li, 2015/2018, pp. 19–31, 51, 94). According to Li’s observation, shamanistic rituals were enacted by shamans who acted as the medium for practical goals such as praying for rain or for victory in battle. In a sense, shamanism is a particular means for attaining certain ends, without any implied meaning of the salvation of the human soul (Li, 2015/2018, p. 20). Since shamanistic rituals, usually related to the forms of singing and dancing, were the main spiritual activities in primitive societies, its formative influence on rationality in practice and for practice in the context of early humankind should be paramount. Thus, pragmatic rationality in its origin derived from efficacious shamanistic exercises for achieving intended goals, overlapping with instrumental rationality; in addition, emergent folk knowledge of e.g. astronomy, geography, weather forecasting, medicine and other techniques was often also involved (Li, 2015/2018, p. 59). However, pragmatic rationality is more than instrumental rationality because its development in primeval China also owed much to the historical rationality (Li, 2015/2018, pp. 60–64). In ancient texts, such as the Book of Change, there exist many explicit records of divination activity and of its posterior results as seemingly historical occurrences. By accumulating these apparently tested and verified divine revelations, and by interpreting these carefully recorded histories, an increasingly empirical and rational apprehension of the world thus gradually came into being. As a result of this historical rationality, then, the Chinese mind gained much pragmatic understanding of the world, life and the nature of the human person. Of course, not all of such pragmatic understanding is imprinted with a sense of happiness or joy, and some are indeed imbued with a deep regret caused by this (just so) everyday world. In all, pragmatic rationality thus registers not only the facts of human success and failure, woes and blessings, in the past or the present, but also offers reflections on knowledge

9 In differentiation from John Dewey’s pragmaticism, Li once summarised three differences and three similarities (see Li, 2016, p. 651). In addition, Lynch (2016) has a paper just titled ‘Li Zehou and Pragmatism’ addressing related issues in this aspect. For further inquiry into the relation between Li’s pragmatic theory and Dewey’s, the two references just mentioned are for information.

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and technique, on the means-ends practice as manifested in these early cultural indicators of instrumental rationality. Following Zehou Li’s extended understanding, the aforementioned forms of pragmatic rationality were crystallised in the institutional-political establishment of what is known in China as Zhou Li (周礼, usually translated as the Rites of Zhou). Although recorded in the post-Confucian 2nd century BCE, its contents are held to have been formulated by the pre-Confucian sage Duke Zhou (周 公) in 11th century BCE, seen more precisely as a key figure who laid the substantial foundation for the political-social system of China which since then had endured for nearly 3,000 years. In accordance with Li’s (2015/2018, pp. 65–68) analysis, the resultant system is formed from a triad of religious-­ethical-political design, moving from shamanistic ceremonies and rituals to social rites and customs (also see Chan, 2003, p. 118; Chandler, 2017, p. 6). It is well known that Confucius upheld the Li (礼) of the Zhou dynasty unrelentingly for his whole life. When the ethical code inherited from the Zhou dynasty lost its sacred character in Confucius’ time, Confucius defended its concrete institutions, regulations and etiquettes along ‘a materialist-historicist line – as practical teaching closely related to people’s lives’ (Chan, 2003, p. 119). For example, the rites of three years’ mourning for one’s parent is ascribed by Confucius with a psychological-reciprocal human affection between parent and child – to repay the first three years’ love from parents which they give unreservedly to the child before s/he is able to leave the bosom of their care (Li, 1999b, pp. 136–137). Thus, the aspects of consanguinity, human psychology and the spirit of humanism are all integrated into the nature of the individual, constituting the long-lasting Confucian ideological pattern of benevolence (仁), which is ‘an organic whole characterized by practical rationalism’ (Li, 1980, p. 118).10 In a nutshell, pragmatic rationality has been ‘sedimented’ in the Chinese mind since the ancient ‘Confucian’ sage Duke Zhou solidified it in the form of external institutions and Confucius strengthened it by internal psychological identification. (c)  The pleasure culture (乐感文化) 11

In Li’s knowledge of pedigree, the ‘one-world’ view and the pragmatic rationality that characterised Confucianism are inseparable from his observation of the key third feature of ‘pleasure’ that is assumed in Confucian thinking. First,

10 In Li’s paper re-assessing Confucius himself, he explains in detail how the pattern is ‘an organic whole in the sense that its factors are mutually restricting, mutually balanced, and internally sufficient to produce adjustment and development’ (Chong, 2010, p. 578). 11 Michael Nylan (2018) addresses helpfully the Chinese pleasure culture by fleshing out the points I made here through her historical approach. In particular, I think she is quite successful to comprehend the Chinese concept of pleasure by comparisons and contrasts with ‘happiness’, ‘joy’, ‘hedonism’ and also with ‘the converse of pain’ in the Euro-American tradition. For a succinct understanding of Chinese notion of pleasure, see Nylan, 2018, pp. 17–18, 33–57.

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in resonance with the Confucius’ pragmatic-ideological structure of benevolence (仁), the culture of pleasure refers to a ‘strong humanism’, cherishing humankind’s efforts to live on and live well on the earth. There is the celebration of people’s capabilities, which emphasises exerting oneself unceasingly – to carry on and to carry forward. In other words, it is a culture of optimism. With such an activist and optimistic outlook, people are encouraged to find the flourishing life by themselves and for themselves. Second, the concern for worldly happiness (namely, the prosperous and flourishing life) remains perfectly compatible with the belief in the ‘one-world’ view that emphasises this worldly individual establishment, interpersonal relationships and genuine emotions, as does pragmatic rationality. Consequently, material and spiritual welfare are specified as two important aspects of the understanding of pleasure. Short-term pleasure (delight) and long-term pleasure (satisfaction) are both requisites in the Confucian collective (un)consciousness. Besides the optimistic orientation and the clear-minded view of worldly happiness as implied in the characteristic of Confucian pleasure, another significant sense of pleasure excavated by Li (2015/2018, p. 94, footnote 138) is concerned with the completion of one’s subjectivity as forms of ‘music and aesthetics’ (Chengyu Yue 成於樂). ‘Music and aesthetics’ in this context is a metaphorical use, indicating ‘the trans-ethical and super-aesthetic ontological realm which everyone can attain, and which is seen as man’s highest existence’ (Li, 1986a, p. 558, 1986b, p. 146). More clearly, Confucius in his Analects has three typical passages elaborating on the aforementioned conception of aesthetic pleasure as the highest ideal for human life (with my italics)12: Analects 7.6 Confucius said, ‘set your intention upon the Way, rely on its virtue, lean on humaneness, and wander in the arts.’ 子曰：志於道、據於德、依於仁、游於藝。 Analects 8.8 Confucius remarked, ‘be awakened by poetry (or the songs), be established by ritual, be perfected in music.’ 子曰：興於詩。立於禮。成於樂。 Analects 6.20 Confucius said, ‘to know something is not as good as to esteem it, and to esteem it is not as good as to take joy in it.’ 子曰：知之者不如好之者，好之者不如樂之者。 It is thus that ‘aesthetic pleasure’ as the third point of the culture of pleasure in Confucius’ context is concerned with established subjectivities which could take joy in Dao, virtues, humaneness and arts, which then attain the level of sensuous freedom as experienced in free musical and aesthetic appreciation. Furthermore, as Chengyu Yue 成於樂 (literally ‘be perfected in music’ and metaphorically ‘be completed in aesthetics’) indicates, an aesthetic state of mind regarded as life’s

12 These translations are taken from Li’s monograph The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (2010b) in English.

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highest realm constitutes the most prominent element in the Chinese spiritual vision in its purely secular frame. According to Li (2010b, pp. 189–191), the postulation of this aesthetic realm as the high point of Confucian philosophy had been firmly established after its successive and successful absorption of Zhuangzi, Qu Yuan and Chan Buddhism. It then becomes clear that what is implied in the slogan of ‘replacing religion with aesthetics’, which has been upheld ardently since the beginning of the last century (see Chapter 3 of the present book), is definitely focused upon a strongly Chinese vision of culture – aptly complying with the aforementioned three essential Chinese cultural emphases and ultimately with an ‘Aesthetic Metaphysics’ (aesthetics as the first philosophy). To understand Confucianism in this way as aesthetic rather than ethical may be rather counter intuitive and is obviously not the orthodox viewpoint. However, Confucianism has always been a developing tradition, incorporating other streams of thought both within China and from abroad. Its aesthetic prioritisation can be seen in its later era’s incorporation of, for example, Daoism or Zhuangzi’s aesthetics to confront the challenge from Buddhism (Li, 1985/2019, p. 195). Apart from this aesthetic development of Confucianism in the later age, in the very early stage of Chinese civilisation classical Confucians had also set out its project of aesthetic secularisation of primitive religion (see p. 40ff, in Chapter 3). In the 20th century, when facing a strong Western culture, aesthetics was assumed to be a replacement of religion repurposed into China’s pursuit of modernisation, as well as its subsequent confrontation with postmodernism. Taken together, in this book as seen through Li’s lens, the primitive Confucian root before the Common Era in aestheticism, in combination with its recurring inclination to aesthetics in the 10th-17th century and the 20th century, provide an illuminating aesthetic sketch of Confucianism (for the fuller aesthetic interpretation of Confucianism, see Li, 2010b). In addition, quotations of Analects 17.21 and 16.4 (see pp. 63–64, 128 of this book) also demonstrate how these Confucian passages can be plausibly read as aesthetic accounts (the logic of ‘could’), instead of or apart from their moral perspectivism (the logic of ‘should’). ‘Confucius’, ‘Marx’, ‘Kant’: in intercultural exchanges for a modern China’s sake

Since Confucianism had dominated China culturally and politically for over 2,000 years, the previously highlighted characteristics – the ‘one-world’ view, the pragmatic rationality and the pleasure accentuated – are deeply ingrained in Chinese society and are still vividly living elements in the collective (un)consciousness of the Chinese people. Of course, there are weaknesses and strengths which can be found in the surviving Confucian consciousness as isolated earlier (see Li, 1999b, p. 140). However, for Li, such an empirical and realistic perception of living Confucianism, which is almost synonymous with Chinese culture, cannot be more ideal as a starting point for making beneficial cultural exchanges with the Western world. This is an important way to further uphold

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a legitimate sense of Chinese cultural identity while making substantial and necessary improvements to it via learning from the advanced Western civilisation.13 Indeed, Li is the kind of professional philosopher who, as depicted by Lin, Rosemont and Ames (1995, p.  754), ‘takes the direct confrontation with their own intellectual heritage, with all its strengths and shortcomings; endeavours to transform that heritage by appeal to Western ideas, beliefs, and practices’. So whither Chinese culture in the modern period? In Li’s eyes, Marxism and Kantian philosophy are two vital Western cultural assets that need to be absorbed. Marxism cannot be bypassed given its successful life and practice, taken up by the Chinese Communist Party since 1921 in saving the country (i.e., unifying the country and defending it against imperialism). Within 28 years the new regime had been established (viz., the People’s Republic of China, 1949) and after 70 years it is still leading the country on its walk on the road to prosperity. But as Lin (1992, p. 971) states, ‘for Li, the legitimation and maintenance of the existing ideological order relies on critical transcendence, which should be achieved by a gradual continuous transition from the old discourse to the new’. Li is perceptive not only in knowing where the question is, as indicated in the ongoing need for Marxism’s reinterpretation, but also in setting out the basis for its evolutionary transformation. As early as the 1960s-1970s, Li had carried out his study on Kant’s philosophy, trying to inject the powerful source from the Enlightenment tradition since from the 18th century onwards that had opened the road for Western modernity. Li believes Kant’s theory of subjectivity, Marx’s concept of historical materialism and ‘humanised nature’, accepted on the basis of Confucius’ emotio-rational structure, are of vital significance to the making of a uniquely Chinese modernity (Li, 1979/2018, pp. 349–352; Jia, 2016, p. 776). Now I shall move on to examine the ways in which Li executes the project of transforming the Chinese cultural-­psychological structure formed since the dawn of Chinese civilisation, in dialectical exchange with the thought of both Marx and Kant. (a) Marx’s concept of ‘the historical materialism’ and ‘the humanised nature’ in the Confucian light

In a 1999 paper published in English, Li (1999b) enshrined in the title his intellectual intention of combining Marx and Confucius. What he means by a combination of ‘Marx’ and ‘Confucius’ has two clear dimensions. One is to uphold ‘historical materialism’. He thinks the emphasis of historical materialism on the priority of the productive forces, but not the decisive role of them, is in resonance with the original Confucian focus on the flourishing life in this world

13 It is not because the Chinese identity cannot be renounced but because the success of a cultural evolution is due to an accumulative approach. After all, culture is not built overnight nor can it be changed at once.

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(Li, 1979/2018, pp. vi, 349). Before a division of labour was systematically and effectively implemented in industrial society, a harmonised interpersonal relationship was deemed to be the crux in the Confucian system in forming the human community. While Western civilisation made a great contribution to the material advancement of human life, through the development of science and technology – including advanced making and using of tools in production, the creation of a market economy, and the like – the Confucian mind with a one-world view (this world) and pragmatic rationality surely would embrace the superior mode of production, and at best to integrate into it that older stress on interpersonal harmony, which is also vital to the sustainability of the whole. The other element (namely, the humanisation of nature, or the humanised nature) that is picked out from Marx’s thoughts is explicitly about the problems brought about by highly developed materialism. But with regard to ‘the antidote’ to this condition, Li differentiates his proposal from that of ‘postmodernism’ – that is, not to relinquish ‘modern’ production, but to think about a suitable mindset that aligns with modern life. In one word, this is to think about the advancement of humanity. In this direction, Li thinks Marx and Confucius are both helpful in a mutually reinforcing way. On the one hand, Confucius’ teaching, as shown in his interpretation of external regulative institutions of the Li (礼)14 in relation to building up an internal voluntary psychology in humans, is no more than a cultivation of humanity through ‘rites’. To interpret Confucius’ practices of education in the axial age in the form of ‘discovery/ rediscovery of human nature’ (Li, 1999b, p. 135), Marx’s criticism of alienation of humanity situated against the background of modern relations of production – alongside his concept of the ‘humanisation of nature’ or ‘humanised nature’ referenced in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 – on the other hand, can be seen to be continuous with the same Confucian project of ‘building-up’ humanity. Consistent with Marx’s incisive criticism of alienated sensuality (i.e., degrading human nature to the animal level) and alienated rationality (i.e., reducing humanity to the machine level), Li proposes that the desirable human nature, in both modern and even postmodern conditions, is the ‘naturalisation of the human’. By this he means continuing the process of the humanisation of nature (the transformation of the external natural environment and the cultivation of the inner psyche) is also to attain the level of the ‘naturalization of the human’ (Li, 1986b, p. 146). This understanding of the ‘naturalization of the human’ in Li’s theory needs to refer back to the earlier Confucian point of aesthetic pleasure, wherein ‘the genuine aesthetic experiences are the highest, most meaningful, and liberating experiences a person can have’ (Chandler, 2017, p. 49). That is, the pursuit of humanity is completed when individuals can live their lives

14 A reminder – the Li (礼) is ‘rituals and rites’ from the Zhou Dynasty (approximately from 1046 BCE until 256 BCE).

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with sensuous freedom, melting rationality into sensuality, and mirroring the freedom enjoyed in aesthetics (Lin, 1992, pp. 989–990). Thus, there are two senses in which to conclude that the combination of ‘Confucius’ and ‘Marx’ is mutually-reinforcing for the project of building-up humanity: (1) in the aforementioned sense of the continuity between the axial age and modern times, and (2) in the sense of interaction between the ‘humanisation of nature’ and the ‘naturalisation of the human’. (b) Kant’s theory of subjectivity seen through a Confucian-Marxist lens

Li’s first attempt to develop his own philosophy was made when he critically examined Kant’s philosophy, from 1972 to 1976. The work which was published in Chinese in 1979 has been recently translated into English with a clear title declaring it to be a Confucian-Marxist’s view of Kant (Li, 1979/2018, p. viii). Indeed, it can be said that, among the complicated cultural exchanges between ‘Confucius’, ‘Marx’ and ‘Kant’, the topic of ‘building up human nature’, that is, the establishment of modern subjectivity, is the linchpin (also see Rošker, 2018a, pp. 1–2). As Lin et al. (1995, p. 739) reveal, ‘Li’s subjectivity is the result of a two-staged interjection: first Kant is interjected into Marx, and then this fortified Marx is interjected into Chinese philosophy’. To clarify the condensed reasoning behind this process, I shall begin with Li’s accentuation of Kant’s philosophy as a philosophy of subjectivity. Li acclaims Kant’s comprehensive understanding of subjectivity in terms of epistemology, ethics and aesthetics (Li, 1986b, p. 137). In particular, Li asserts that Kant is right in his ethics, giving prominence to the human person’s capacity to carry out rational control. This point of moral autonomy, with an emphasis on rationality in morality, not only echoes the Neo-Confucians’ insight into human beings’ ethical subjectivity (Li, 1986a, p. 556), but also in the same way far surpasses utilitarian ethics applied to the individual (Li, 1986b, p. 142). In addition, Li thinks the second ‘categorical imperative’ that ‘human beings are ends’ formulated by Kant should be treated as a modern social moral (Xiandai Shehuixing Daode 现代社会性道德), because treating persons as ends was not a social priority until history crossed the modern threshold. Even now the perception of humans as instruments is not extinct and can be seen in phenomena such as unfair employment and unjust religious movements all around the world. However, Kant is right again, for the tenet ‘men and women are ends’ has been sedimenting into a modern social morality which inspires our construction of modern society in its anticipation of full realisation, hopefully in a not too distant future. At a deeper level of thinking, for Li the question is how this subjectivity, with the explicit human characteristics of cognition, volition and emotion, comes into being. In a move different from Kant’s answer, which stresses that a priori forms of knowledge enable our understanding, Li, as a Confucian-Marxist,

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reformulates the question into ‘how the human species becomes possible’ and then gives out his historical explanation: centring on the importance of practice in forming humanity’s subjectivity and pointing out the necessary aspect of Qing (in Chinese 情, which I will explain in the next paragraph) in constituting individual subjectivity. From the perspective of humanity, Li argues that human practical activity has played a determining role in moulding all of humans’ cultural-psychological structures which is another term for subjectivity (see Li, 1986b, pp. 137–138). Doubtless, this position is influenced by Marx’s view, since Marx says, ‘the forming of five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present’ (see Tucker ed., 1978, p. 89). In all, Kant’s transcendental philosophy is thus recast by Li through a historical-materialist account of evolutionary psychology. From an individual’s perspective of subjectivity, Li, on the one hand, insists on its subordination to the aforementioned evolution of the subjectivity of humankind (Li’s figurative expression is that ‘one gorilla is not able to transform itself into a human but among groups of gorilla socially evolved humanity might become possible’.). On the other hand, he believes the Qing (情) aspect, which is rationality merged with emotionality, coined as what we have seen as the aesthetic facet of individual subjectivity, is of key priority in building up a modern subjectivity. Qing 情 is a unique concept enriched in the Chinese language (with other equally unique concepts such as Dao 道, Du 度, YinYang 阴阳, see Li, 2018, p.  1). While roughly rendered into English, Qing includes two kinds of meaning (1) the matters/affairs, situations, circumstances and facts; and (2) human emotions, feelings and sensations. In Li’s philosophy of Qing – ‘rationality dissolved into emotionality (li rongyu qing 理融于情)’, there are three senses: (1) the Confucius’ aesthetic pleasure ‘following the desires of the heart without overstepping the bounds of right’ (Analects 2.4) that is manifested in a state of freedom in everyday life uniting lawfulness (regularity) and purposiveness (see the section of ‘A “Driver” Metaphor of Freedom vis-à-vis the Enlightenment Ideal of Subjectivity’ in Chapter 5); (2) as a moral faculty exercising the principle of circumstantial least regrets (see the section ‘An Aesthetic Type of Moral Reasoning’ in Chapter 4); (3) rational re-examination and poetic adjustment of traditional religious morals which were formulated in past situations and circumstances15 (for the aesthetic treatment of traditions which enacts the Qing principle in institutional designs, see the section ‘Li’s Division of Morality Into Public and Private’ in Chapter 4).

15 That is, the liberal treatment of traditional religious morals consigns them to a broader historical view alongside emotional attachments (传统宗教性道德范导原则).

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Clearly, the importance of Qing 情 is not only seen through its necessary role in moral reasoning which balances Kant’s overemphasis on rationality in the universalisation of morals, but is also seen through its completion of the naturalisation of the human person (namely the attainment of the aesthetic freedom) which is, for Li, the final achievement of individual subjectivity. Now we can conclude that Qing 情 literally understood in English contains two categories of meaning: qing1-situations and qing2-emotions; however read through the aesthetic lens it has three further denotations – (1) aesthetic pleasure/freedom, (2) aesthetic moral reasoning to secure the least regretful state of mind, and (3) ethical creativity/poetics manifested in treating traditional morals with modern rationality. Further clarifications of Li’s own theory of ‘anthropohistorical ontology’: its new assumptions and major breakthroughs

From the foregoing account of Li’s philosophical thinking, it is explicit that Li is a comparative philosopher working fruitfully at the contemporary encounter between China and the West. In this series of cross-cultural exchanges, Li, on the one hand, consciously delves into systematic studies of Chinese traditional intellectual thought (see his three monographs respectively on Ancient, Modern and Contemporary Chinese Intellectual History, 1985/2019, 1979, 1987); on the other hand, he openly draws upon multi-disciplinary sources from the West in aiding his philosophical inquiry into Chinese culture and its modernisation. For example, the socio-psychological concept of ‘collective (un) conciousness’ (which both D.É. Durkheim and C.G. Jung have addressed16) has been brought to light by him to address the question of the (un)conscious collective archetype of the Chinese people. With further insight as a philosopher, Li pondered this question about the inner structure/pattern of Confucius’ benevolence (仁), which has been long sedimenting in the Chinese mind. His resultant excavation of the structure of benevolence (仁)17 later constitutes his basic understanding of the sustainability of Chinese culture. The other related conceptions of the one-world view (一个世界), the pragmatic rationality (实用理性) and the culture of pleasure (乐感文化) are subsequently and appropriately developed to aid his broader interpretation of Chinese culture, where many scholars in the field agree that Li has indeed captured the essence of Chinese civilisation (see Youlan Feng’s,

16 See Chandler, 2017, p. 41; Chong, 1999, pp. 129, 133, for the differences between theirs and that of Li’s usage. 17 It has four aspects: ‘consanguinity’; ‘psychological justification’; concern for humanism; and concern for the establishment of personality, which in mutually influencing ways function as a self-sufficient and self-reforming spiritual system.

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Ruchang Zhou’s and Zaifu Liu’s comments, etc., in Blog Sina dedicated to Zehou Li). What is more, with inspirations from biogenesis’ epistemology, like that of C. Darwin and of J. Piaget, Li develops new philosophical concepts as his analytical tools. His concept of ‘sedimentation’ (积淀) is such a case in point. With this brand new philosophical concept, the accumulative (yet ever-renewing) quality of culture is brought into light, sustaining three major conclusions for Li’s theory. That is (1) the accumulative empirical (of the human being as a whole) turns into the transcendental (a priori for the new coming individuals) – (jingyan bian xianyan经验变先验); (2) exercises of reason in practice from antiquity onwards build up rationality, including cognitive and axiological rationality – (lishi jian lixing 历史建理性); (3) our cultural-psychological self, which is increasingly enriched by a ceaselessly changing outer environment and as a result of the transformation of the inner nature will turn into a prominent mode of being for the present and future – (xinli cheng benti 心理成本体). Further, Li is able to pose the following important questions regarding cultural evolution; that is to reformulate questions concerning human nature and human civilisation in a new way: (1) how is rationality sedimented in emotionality? (2) How does the historical become sedimented into the psychological? (3) How does the social sediment in the natural? And (4), ultimately how is the collective humanity embodied in the individual humanity (See Li, 1999d, p. 28; Li & Cauvel, 2006, p. 167)?18 Along with such deeply reflective intercultural inquiries, and such productive exchanges between philosophy and other disciplines like psychology, sociology and archaeology, etc., Li has finally built up his systematic philosophy, which he terms ‘A Theory of Anthropo-Historical Ontology’. Li’s ‘Theory of Anthropo-Historical Ontology’ in its formal content includes his thoughts on ethics, epistemology and ontology, beside appendices of his own philosophical autobiography, the fourth outline of human subjectivity19 and another two dialogues made recently (Li, 2016b). Of course, this chapter so far has only offered an abbreviated treatment of his whole thought, but the tripartite analysis among philosophies of Kant, Marx and Confucius is vital to understanding other areas of Li’s thinking (see Li, 1979/2018, p. vii). Then what are his new philosophy’s assumptions? What emerging perspectives and what important suggestions has he made? (a)  New assumptions

Li is an obviously ambitious philosopher, given that his anthropological ontology ‘seeks to explain the existence and development of human beings in

18 In Chinese: (1) 理性的东西怎样沉积在感性中? (2) 历史的东西怎样表现在心理中? (3) 社会的 东西怎样积淀为自然的? (4) 人类总体的东西如何具现在个体中? 19 For its English version, see Ding, 2002, pp. 254–256.

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material and spiritual fields’, and aims to ‘help people to choose their personal values and individual priorities and to determine their own destiny’ (Ding, 2002, p. 248). So where then is the Archimedean point on which Li’s philosophy is based? From where can he derive the ultimate ‘undeniable’ source of values? Simply, Li just reminds us that ‘people are not celestial spirits, but real physical beings who want to maintain their life and hope for a better future’ (Li, 1999b, p. 130). Thus, as anticipated by the Chinese sages at the dawn of the civilisation and echoed within Marx’s concern for a strong material base for society, the sustainability of this human world constitutes the highest good (至 善). Different from the utilitarian view privileging the happiness of the greatest number, Li emphasises the actual life lived by actual people (like you and me) at specific times and specific places on the earth. That is, for him, the life lived by thousands of generations of human beings before us, the life of the current population we live with, and the life of the future generations who will follow us, constitute together what he conceives as the Reality. More precisely, this means that not only is the fate of humankind the focal theme of his philosophy, but also the vicissitudes of individual existence. Through this important convergence of Confucius and Marx, which he interprets through the idea that ‘the material life of the average person is the foundation of society’, Li also finds ‘Confucius’ and ‘Marx’ in a complementary way working on the same project of cultivating human nature. And this leads us to Li’s other vital assumption about humanity, besides the aforementioned one about the highest good. Li is also a strongly humanist scholar who believes that human beings establish themselves as human beings, either at the macro level from history or at the micro level on the part of individuals. In all, by an explicit contrast with other philosophical assumptions that ‘humans are born to be humans, and thus free and equal’ or ‘God made humans’, Li regards the human species as ‘super-biological beings’ (Chao Shengwu 超生物), evolving in historical processes and becoming subjects through social praxis. That is, in the historical and social process, the humanisation of the outer environment accompanied with the humanisation of the inner nature (such as five senses established, and psychological emotions enriched) is gradually constituting humanity, eventually successfully distinguishing humans from other animals. It is therefore not exaggerated to say that Li’s philosophy is a philosophy concerned with the laws of cultural sedimentation and accumulation, which gives rise to humanity and which generates care for the increasing enrichment of human nature. (b)  Emerging perspectives and important suggestions

Confronted with liberalism, communitarianism and utilitarianism, Li defines himself through a historicism. It is now clear that his historicism comes from his foundational assumptions in believing the past-present-future development of human species (that is, anthropo-existence) on the earth as the ontology (that is, historical ontology). Thus, through such a historicism, he justifies the

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promotion of liberal values on the basis of maintaining the modern productive mode, while skilfully avoiding the repercussions stemming from the abstract postulation of atomistic individuals, which is inherent in much mainstream liberalism. Through a historicism, Li also challenges the ahistorical assumption of the given ‘equal individual’ commonly held by liberals and communitarians. He argues that in the lens of historical reality, there is no real equality between individuals – what he implies is that equity is made by weighing various interrelationships of the varied nature and the diverse degrees in which individuals inescapably live (for a succinct understanding of this point, see D’Ambrosio et al., 2016, p. 1061, on Guanxi-ism). Committed to a historicism, Li also concludes that two roots (­Shuangbenti 双本体) are concomitantly important for the development of human civilisation: one is the technological-social formation; the other is the cultural-­ psychological formation. Although Li stresses the priority of the first aspect in the light of human origins, he points out that the contribution from the second facet is paramount especially when it becomes an increasingly independent entity. For example, the individual’s creativity, which lies in the cultural-­ psychological formation, has an irreplaceable historical significance for leading material and mental innovations. In this way, he responds to the utilitarian’s flaw of ignoring the minority. In all, through his historicism, Li believes firmly in celebrating human beings’ physiological, psychological and cultural achievements in the past while admitting ‘the best world still waits to be created’ (Li, 1999b, p. 143). Then what does a better world in Li’s ‘Anthropo-Historical Ontology’ mean? Li does provide a proposal titled ‘the beginning of education’. Education, in this context is in alignment with Confucius’ teaching – the development of human nature, is concerned with the building-up of an ever more enriched humanity founded on the basis of modern achievement. As Li explains, this Second Renaissance, in comparison with the first one liberating people from the domination of the divinity, is about to liberate people from the domination of machine technology (Li, 1999b, p. 144). Indeed, for Li, a bright future lies in the full development of individuals’ human nature – in particular with a rounded psychological growth encompassing flexibly balanced rationality and sensibility. On the basis of the two renaissances, the desired subjectivity anticipated is not only a highly developed subject in speculation, but an active agent in practice. Careful readers would find that Li’s theory of ‘Anthropo-Historical Ontology’ is congruent with the aforementioned characteristics of Chinese culture embodied in Confucianism – complying with the one-world view (一个世 界), the pragmatic rationality (实用理性) and the pleasure culture (乐感文 化). However, it is at the same time a renewed and strengthened theory as Li successfully drew upon a wide range of engagements either from the Western philosophies or from other influential disciplines. Overall Chinese culture as so conceived is right now embracing learning from the West while not losing

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itself. It therefore will probably forge an updated modernity that suits itself and might be helpful for (at least might lend confidence to) the rest of the world. In addition, Li’s elaboration of his theory, including the concepts he constructed and the argumentation he presented, is to some extent in accord with the traditional Chinese style of thinking featured in many interdependent viewpoints and complementary lines of argument (see related explanations in Chandler, 2017, p. 2). Nevertheless, as Lin et al. (1995, p. 741) aptly comment, the powerful impact of Li Zehou, came not so much from his idiosyncratic philosophical construction, [. . . but from] his insightful analysis of the agelong process of ‘sedimentation’ that has shaped the cultural-psychological structure of the Chinese as a nation. It is not his encompassing theoretical framework but the layer upon layer of aesthetic and moral ethos he has managed to excavate with this framework that is influential.

Part III

The aesthetics-education approach

Chapter 7

A mature student Student maturity that is both emergent and sedimenting

A philosophical re-evaluation of students’ educational maturity In today’s world, being a student in a school or a university becomes a distinct part of an individual’s modern life. A person born in the period of the 1990s (and after) generally holds a ‘studentship’ of some kind for 10–20 years, and up to 30 in some cases. In brief, childhood and youth in many societies are closely interwoven with systematic educational institutions. On the one hand, where in developing countries these conditions do not yet prevail, it is routinely the desire of national governments and international agencies to see them happen. On the other hand, this prolonged preparation of the young generation to enter society is becoming increasingly common and feasible thanks to the substantial advancement of human civilisation that many right now have the luxury to enjoy. Considering the dramatically extended student life, we cannot help asking – what is the ‘mature’ character of being a student? In what ways do we say ‘the student is mature’? Does a student at his/her biological age of 30 or 40 (which can be seen often in the doctoral stage in which some adult students pursue the most advanced educational degrees) necessarily entail in essence a student of ‘maturity’ by the light shone from education? By these questions, I seek to understand at root the ‘mature character’ of a student in accordance with the educational culture. I am inquiring into not the biological maturity of the student, but maturity in the sense of receiving and responding to the experience of education. In our daily life in educational institutions, with regard to the issue of students’ educational maturity, we either presuppose the students’ quality of maturity in education or just ignore the significance of it. In the former aspect of the problem, we tacitly assume students have reached their educational maturity when they pass through the educational system. That is, when a student has gone through all the stages of schooling that are prerequisite, and when the student reaches the end point of the educational trajectory, it seems that we naturally think ‘all is done’ – presupposing the student is mature enough DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-11

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to leave the school or the university. Viewed thus, we might conclude that the graduation ceremony in schools and universities is, by analogy, the coming-ofage ceremony in the individual’s (educational) life. In the latter expression of the problem, when we rely on standardised assessments to measure the educational outcome, we even subconsciously ignore the quality of the educational maturity that the student may or may not possess. We replace a concern for the significance of maturity with the high visibility of formal success in education. In this high visibility culture, we can see how the ‘managerialised’ educational system prioritises or chases a provisional success in the form of ‘gold-standard’ educational assessments. We can see how our habitual ways of thinking obsess around increased key exam scores (e.g., in the National College Entrance Examination in China or in the A Level Exams in England) as signifiers of the more successful student. Furthermore, when students meet these performative demands – as basic as attending classes and following school rules; as elevated as demonstrating emotional engagements such as the ‘passion to learn and to discuss in the classroom’ – we tend to favour students demonstrating these requisite behaviours. Evidently, we become accustomed to judging students by grades and by prescriptive goals, without taking notes of the deeper educational sense that might be present in the concept of maturity. Recognising these realities necessitates the philosophical re-evaluation of educational maturity – e.g., ‘what does a “mature student” mean?’, because the lack of concern with such a question actually aggravates in reality the ‘immaturity’ of the student and the ‘immaturity’ of the educational system. In Chapter 1, through a Kantian analysis, I have already debunked the ‘systematic school sloth’ as the symptomatic figure of educational immaturity, in which human subjects in education are just mired in dependency – be it implicitly in the case of students or explicitly in the cases of parents and teachers. This left us with the vivid image of key participants in education muddling through as no better than sleepwalkers. To consider again the case of the student, I have examined those ‘immature’ states of mind by which students are currently beset and which are commonly seen throughout the educational system. I spoke of Students are naturally unconscious about their own educational involvement, while they can be very dedicated to learn what are asked to be learnt; very few students in school systems can tell whether the school is doing justice to them; students have not been equipped with a capability to exercise their freedom to learn, not to mention a sufficient consideration on why to learn; they are not taught to use/how to use their own understanding to optimise the education they are to receive. (see p. 9 of this book) Indeed, seen through the Kantian lens we have been enabled to depict the immaturity in education that we are experiencing. In the following we will also

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see that we are further enabled to argue that the student develops a character of maturity when s/he is able to unite his/her private and public uses of reason in relation to education. In Chapter 1 I also developed a conception of maturity in dealing with schooling (to recap those four features: an awareness of selfexamination; a competence to understand education; a spirit to experiment; and a habituation to such styles of inquiry in concrete educational practice). I  now in the present chapter will think through the more specific individual perspective of the student. In this chapter I will focus on how a student can attain the modest level of educational maturity which has been discussed generally in Chapter 1. I will formulate an appreciation of the quality of maturity in being a student from the viewpoint of the student. In detail, I would say to a student that you become mature in education when you are able to ‘argue as much as you like and about whatever [in education] you like, but obey’ (Kant, 1784/1970, p. 59). In what follows, I will first explicate the educational use of Kant’s proposal earlier: that is, how it can be applied to the conception of a ‘mature’ student. Next, I will justify this conception of a ‘mature student’ – not in the light of biological maturation but of educational maturation – by making explicit its social and educational significance and ramifications.

The concept of a mature student: by way of Kant, Li and the intellectual tradition of educational studies ‘[A]rgue as much as you like and about whatever you like; but obey’ is what Kant concluded in his famous and influential 1784 article ‘What is Enlightenment?’ as the solution for humankind to become mature, in other words, to realise their autonomous dignity. Kant’s proposal for a way out of human immaturity is composed of two kinds of uses of rationality – the public use of reason as indicated in the promotion of the free exercise of criticality, in combination with the private use of reason showing that we are functionaries and playing a part within the social machine. In Kant’s deliberation, both the freedom of criticality in public and the discharge of obedience in private (such as duty within an occupational structure) are necessary to the eventual realisation of autonomous human life. Later generations of scholars have continued to comment on this conception of autonomy articulated by Kant, for it deeply influences and is still constituting the modern liberal world in which we now live. For example, the contemporary Western scholar Stephen Law (2006) defends Kant’s Enlightenment ideal against undue criticisms coming from communitarianism and religionism. The premier Chinese philosopher Zehou Li appreciates the contract of rational despotism with free reason1 as conceived by Kant, since a gradualist preference is applied and encouraged, rather

1 Foucault’s coinage, 1984, p. 37.

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than the radical orientation assumed in the revolutionary ideology (Li, 2016b, pp. 193–196). Some other scholars, such as Foucault, disagree with Kant’s presupposition of rational universality in the public use of reason (Foucault, 2010, pp. 36, 39). In this context, as influenced by the foundational philosopher Zehou Li – converging with Kant’s liberal Enlightenment thought and holding a belief in the existence and necessity of basic universality (which is derived from the production mode, see p. 60 earlier) in human society, Kant’s formulation about the two kinds of uses of rationality is positively recognised. In particular, Li comes to agree with Kant on the basis of the proposal’s success in the envisaging of the modern fabric of society, in which the modern mode of production does indeed sustain those Enlightenment liberal ideals (2016b, p. 179; pp. 60–61 of this book). Further, Li advances Kant’s proposal by putting forward his theory of two kinds of morality (see Chapter 4). Li’s two kinds of uses of morality include but are not limited to Kant’s two kinds of uses of reason. To demonstrate the more inclusive character of Li’s theory, I have applied it to the consideration of the question of teachers’ morality (see Wei, 2019). Basically the point of advance is that when read through Li’s theoretical framework of two kinds of morality – public morality and private morality – Kant’s suggestion of a complementary use of both public and private reason put forward in a preliberal society equates with Li’s public use of morality devised in a society that is already liberal and democratic.2 On the whole, Li incorporates Kant’s universal legislation of moral law as public morality while complementing the Chinese traditional ‘least regrets’ principle of securing least regretted states of mind even with the wisdom of hindsight as private morality (see p. 63ff earlier). However, in the instance of thinking through the perspective of a student in the contemporary context, I find the proposal by Kant, devised at the end of the 18th century, is particularly appropriate for addressing the conception of students’ educational maturity today. It is probably not wrong to say in the preliminary case of the student we need the Kantian Enlightenment to spread the spirit of rational freedom, while in the latter case of the teacher we need Li’s brand of continuing Enlightenment to cultivate a more comprehensive sense of human freedom. Now I shall shed the Kantian light again to inquire about what a ‘mature student’ means. Following Kant’s proposal, a mature student would still be asked to be a ‘good’ student in the normal sense, such as to learn as well as one can. Those students are taught at schools, to develop as far as they can capacities that are regarded as desirable in the curriculum. Put in Kant’s terms, students in their private use of rationality fulfil their duties as young members of their society

2 The liberal and democratic society here does not necessarily refer only to the configuration of the developed Western world, but specifies a modern society in which an established free market economy and a civil political system are both effectively working for people’s welfare.

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to inherit the valuable part of accumulated human civilisation. However, for students who realise an effective use of private rationality it is not enough to reach their maturity being students since the public use of reason in relation to their educational affairs is essential for enlightened maturation, as Kant’s philosophical insight informed us. Therefore, the formerly normally good students just depicted – typically those who can earn high scores in schools – cannot be regarded as ‘mature’ if they have not yet applied their consciousness to the educational acts that they perform. That is, the student comes to the real maturity in education when s/he starts to be reflexive about his/her own educational involvement. This kind of reflectivity – which one exercises in relation to the educational content that one has learnt or has yet to learn, or in relation to the educational practitioner that one has met, or the fellowship that one has in schools, or the individual growth per se, etc. – can be regarded as the public use of reason by students. Attaining such a reflexive level to consciously think about one’s education, a student could be deemed to be reaching the mature state in education. At a further point, the student would be regarded as fully mature when s/he is able to articulate and to defend the idea for him/herself by explaining adequately – for example, why s/he becomes enthusiastic or apathetic in learning; whether the teacher’s evaluation is doing justice to his/her reality; what the future educational choices are that s/he wants to make for him/herself. To apply directly Kant’s dual uses of reason – ‘argue as much as you like and about whatever you like; but obey’ – to address the conception of students’ maturity, I do not mean to say that students are especially mature when they at every moment question the education they receive. I would say it is tantamount to a misunderstanding if one assumes that the more they question education, the more they are mature in education. This is because the first aspect of maturity as conceived above refers to the capacity of the student to be taught.3 A mature student in the first sense of maturity needs to be able to learn what is provided in public education – that is, to be good at learning what is believed by the open collective4 as the valuable assets of human cultures. Therefore, for most of the time the students’ maturity is manifested by their curiosity for knowledge, diligence to study, patience to listen and desire to explore. Furthermore, I would say it is a misunderstanding if one equates the promotion of

3 By clarifying the philosophically sophisticated concept of ‘being taught’, Gert Biesta (2017) argues powerfully and illuminatingly against the prevailing and insufficient constructivist ideas about learning. I do agree with his insight into the significant experience of being taught and the irreplaceable experience of receiving the gift of teaching; while in this context by ‘students’ capacity to be taught’, I  mean more inclusively both the capacity to learn from resources and to be taught by people, both the ability to acquire objective truth (i.e., propositional knowledge and practical skills) and to discern subjective truth (i.e., truths that the knower relates oneself to). 4 See R.S. Peters (1966, p. 52) for the concept of a public world. These related concepts emphasise the sustainability and the desirability of shared and ever developing human civilisations and conversations.

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free thinking with the truth of what is freely thought. To be precise, this means not that whatever is argued in education by the students is necessarily ‘right’, but that the action to think by themselves and for themselves in relation to the education they receive and experience is one of the least harmful elements (compared with radical revolution or absolute dictatorship), as extrapolated from Kant’s liberal theory. No matter how unpopular in the current age’s suspicion of excessive freedom, this principle has been successfully guiding and creating the liberal society in which the majority of human beings are able to enjoy greater degrees of material prosperity and human dignity than was the case in earlier times. On the other hand, does this liberal conception of students’ maturity mean a revolt against the traditional education which is inclined towards the ‘moulding’ metaphor of education – ‘filling up the structure of the mind with valuable items’ (as analysed by Peters, 1966, p. 35)? Moreover, is it a convergence onto the progressive education agenda which commonly opts for a ‘growth’ metaphor for new education – emphasising child-centred educational methods for teachers to teach and for students to learn? Just like the compromise that Kant made in balancing the public use of reason (argue freely) and the private use of reason (but obey), analytic philosophers of education such as R.S. Peters have tried to find a modern rebalance in education between the traditional model (knowledge transaction) and the progressive turn (learning facilitation). Echoing Peters’ (1966, pp. 51–52) dialectical treatment of both points of emphasis in the educational scholarship tradition – mainly by disclosing ‘the shared impersonality both of the content that is handed on and of the criteria by reference to which it [the content] is criticised and developed’ – the mature student as conceived here also gives legitimate attention to both the normative content of education and the morally and psychologically acceptable methods of education. Emphasising the first aspect of student maturity (the student’s duty and capacity to learn well) presupposes both the direction of growth and the worthwhile content of teaching as expected in the liberal and democratic collective. When extending the second facet of student maturity to educational reflexivity, we find that respect for students as the human agents of learning is certainly included and recognised. However, the genuinely ‘mature’ students earn respect for themselves in education by starting to think about and to articulate the interests, needs and stages of development of themselves in education. The students reach their full maturity when they truly become the centres of education and in the ideal condition where they are, in fact, able to exercise self-education. Thus, the conception of a mature student who can argue as much as s/he likes and about whatever (in education) s/he wills, but mainly follows the normative requirements in education, converges with Peters’ account of minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness (also see earlier Chapter 1, p. 19, for this point). Both are dedicated to a modern balanced focus between the two main tenable but not complete traditions of education. T.W. Moore (1974)

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helpfully interprets Peters’ minimal criteria of education as the principle of participation by the student. As Moore understands it (p. 89), ‘participation by the pupil is a criterion for the application of education in its normative use, and [meanwhile] participation is possible only to a free agent’. Precisely to bridge the implicit contradictions between the normative matter and the free manner, two main components are necessary: (1) the student acts as a voluntary agent with a basic comprehension of what and how s/he is taught and with a possibility to rebel and refuse to do so; and (2) the student prizes intrinsically the worthwhile knowledge and understanding (also see Christopher Martin, 2018, p. 341). Then, it becomes clear that the Peters formulation of minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness essentially facilitates the emergence of students’ maturity – in the two senses of acceptance and reflexivity – in education.

The social significance and the educationalpractical uses In the previous section, I have situated the clarification of the conception of a mature student – who starts to debate his/her educational involvements, but nonetheless mainly obeys (i.e., is attentive) in the educational world – from two main theoretical contexts. One is concerned with Kant and Zehou Li’s related philosophy of rationality and morality, and the other is related to the intellectual educational tradition mediating between the ‘moulding’ model and the ‘growing’ model of educating. I will, in this section, move on to defend this conception of student maturity by manifesting its significance for society in general and for education in particular. To develop and defend such a conception of students’ maturity is explicitly to carry forward the 18th century Enlightenment spirit, cultivating the autonomous sense of the self which is entitled to be held by every member in the human society. Zehou Li (2017, pp. 379–382) seriously asserts that the modern sense of the self – the freedom that is enjoyed by the individual and that is sustained by the reality of daily materialistic life – is really a precious fruit of recent human civilisation, which is worthy of care and of preservation. In the past, usually scholars at court or a few exceptionally talented, privileged people were able to develop such inner depths of the self. However, with the industrialisation and technological advances of modern times came the rise of ‘the majority’, who in the right conditions can understand themselves in depth. For example, the popularisation of reading novels in the 19th century helped cultivate and strengthen such sense of the self among literate individuals – that is, with ‘a peculiar intimacy of address to the [novel] reader who is alone and individualised in the experience’ (Standish, 2007a, p. 21), a new sense of self-consciousness is evident. A Kantian liberal conception of the mature student who is dedicated to learning and at the same time is reflexive about his/her own learning is certainly in line with this modern sense of the self that is sufficiently sensitive to be able to articulate his/her relationship with

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the external environment, with other people, and with oneself. In alignment with the developed sense of a modern self, we foster initiatives among our students to seek their own selves in relation to their educational lives. Since we are entering or are already born into the educated society where most of us spend a significant proportion of time in our lives receiving education in schools, a selfawareness related to all these educational experiences ought to be encouraged – in order to make our educational world more civilised and more vibrant (see Li’s coinage of the age of the individual sedimentation, p. 90 earlier). Moreover, there can never be too much emphasis on this educated and enriched sense of the self, for we need it to live well on earth (also see pp. 45–46 of this book). Especially given the danger that AI will reduce human beings to a ‘useless class’ (as termed by Yuval Noah Harari in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow), we urgently need this enriched self in order to consciously reflect on our own situations. All through the study I have conducted so far in this book, I have come to understand and agree with Li’s insight into the modern development of the Chinese world. This means I  have no reservation in promoting his ‘liberal’ sense of the self among the Chinese people. For a conclusive understanding see Chapter 5 on ‘Subjectality’. I would further here couch this modern liberal version of the self in terms of what Confucius anticipated as being a ‘beneficial friend’, in other words, a self-expectation of being frank, of being sincere and knowledgeable/resourceful (子曰: 友直，友諒，友多聞, Analects 16.4).5 The fuller context of Analects 16.4 is that Confucius identified three kinds of friendship which are beneficial and another three which are injurious. It is unclear at the literal level if Confucius intends a moral message that we should make friends with such people who are regarded as beneficial. It is plausible that this includes Confucius’ self-expectation to be such a beneficial friend. Thus, his possible self-expectation extends both a liberal posture (rather than expecting others to do so) and a liberal substance (as seen from the Enlightenment vantage). A ‘mature student’ who is sufficiently reflexive to argue as much as s/he likes and to speak out whatever in his/her mind – starting from his/her own educational affairs and from his/her early age – is certainly more likely to become an upright and broad-minded person in society. The dedication experienced by the student (what s/he ‘obeys’/is attentive to in the educational world as the first facet of maturity in being a student) is more likely to yield the fruit of sincerity. Briefly, the Kantian liberal understanding of the mature student in essence fosters what we prize as the modern precious sense of self – advancing the modernisation of the Chinese society purposively and meanwhile enacting perfectly Confucius’ motto of ‘self-expectation’. (Regarding a reference to Confucius, explicitly we suppose Confucius in his time held successfully a

5 Translations are reconsidered on the basis of several versions both in Chinese and in English.

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developed sense of self, with which we want every ordinary individual in the modern democratic age to be able to develop on a par.) In the light of the educational significance of promoting such an understanding of students’ maturity, I can think of at least two practical points that are important to make. I would not draw upon the re-elaboration of the ‘true’ meaning of education – such as that neatly recapitulated by Eisner (2002, p. 24) that ‘education is a process of learning how to become the architect of your own experience and therefore learning how to create yourself ’ – to emphasise the significance of supporting the aforementioned thinking of a liberal conception of student maturity. Rather, I would argue there are two important practical uses resultant from such a reconsideration of maturity held on the part of the student. In the first place, this philosophising of student maturity can be used as an intellectual tool for disclosing the deficiency of the crude reduction of educational evaluation and assessment, and for enriching a much more productive way of thinking about the authentic educational evaluation of students. Previously in this book (e.g., pp. 9, 16, 22), I have addressed periodically the insidious influence of the neoliberal6 ideology in education, with its dreadful emphasis on standardised management, barely efficient input-output ratios, observable educational outcomes and the like. If a concern is held for the ‘mature character’ that is to be developed by the student, then what ‘evaluation’ in education should attend to is not limited to how well the student learns but is extended also to include how ‘mature’ the student’s learning actually is – e.g., to move beyond the consideration of whether it happens that s/he gets the ‘right’ answer, to concern with the depth as well as the sustainability with which the student holds the learning. I  think we would celebrate if evaluative techniques can be developed that shed light on the ability and the quality of students’ reflexivity about their own learning states – which are generated contingently, are not necessarily sufficient at one episode and truly are accumulative in processing. Truly it even takes a lifetime to know and to judge. Since the techniques of assessment are not ‘mature’ enough to measure the students’ maturity of learning, we should keep the results of qua evaluation less pervasive and never lose a commitment to rounded inquiry. It is on this basis that resources should be allocated to deal with those elements in education that can be measured relatively early and those that must await fuller observation. In brief, equipped with such a philosophical concern for students’ maturity in receiving education, educational assessments will be redirected to aid 6 As Kipnis (2008, pp.  276–277) notes, there is complexity to apply neoliberalism in the Chinese context. Because it is in the Western academia that ideologies of neoliberalism are often criticised for their insidious influence on education, such as the audit cultures of schools. By contrast, in contemporary China in particular the examination-oriented Confucian culture is often accused of damaging education. Nonetheless, for the globally sweeping impact of neoliberalism to date, using the term to depict the common effects still applies to current China.

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more accurately students’ self-education and to empower students in education by encouraging their inner voices in managing their own educational journey. A second important practical use of the conception of students’ ‘maturity’ would be to aid teachers’ proper evaluation of students’ learning by taking into account students’ articulations of their own study. In the common educational reality, even if a teacher is candid and serious enough to conduct tests and assessments, the teacher may often feel a lack of capacity to evaluate inclusively and accurately in relation to the student’s educational attainment (see Randall & Engelhard, 2010, p. 1376; Wisch et al., 2018, p. 153). There is a grey zone in which teachers commonly feel uncertain in giving proper grades to students’ work. By ‘proper’ I mean: (1) being accurate to reflect the student’s explicit performance and engagement; (2) being accurate to reflect the student’s potential for development – like the future value of the business company can be calculated and admitted in the stock market, and thereby improve productivity effectively; and (3) opportune humanist encouragement to the student’s good effort, attitude and behaviour. Even though in theory it is a controversial issue that factors such as potential, effort or behaviour are involved in the final grade assignment – either for the reason of the technical difficulty in measuring them, or for the reason of creating extended conflict and confusion among stakeholders (Randall & Engelhard, 2010, pp. 1372–1373), in practice teachers who are capable of proper evaluation as described earlier are nonetheless expected. Even supposedly objective as some marking systems claim to be in giving credit to student work in accordance with the collectively agreed standards, especially as in the case of competitive-oriented evaluation and selection, these rarely take the second sense of proper grading into formal account. It is also not surprising that the hegemonic-generalising evaluation approach neither promotes the teacher’s flexible judgments nor attunes to the individual student’s concrete case. Basically, this difficulty besetting rounded educational evaluation is on the one hand due to the inherent limit of universalising evaluative techniques based on the ideology of disguised behaviourism and managerial expediency. On the other hand, these can almost always be improved by considering more angles of information on students and their work, including teachers’ practised observation of the potential held by the student to reach further development and the students’ own account of their work. By this I particularly mean (institutionally) if the student is provided with opportunities to argue over the scores/grades that s/he deserves or will be able to deserve, it might be another helpful angle for the teacher to consider. This is because such further consideration by the teacher in essence pays heed to the second facet of student maturity – that is, students’ self-reflexivity in relation to their studying. While the students’ views could be positively appropriate or negatively overstated, the point is to encourage them to express them. If the teacher at that moment cannot judge the student’s arguments and therefore cannot take the student suggestions into consideration, the act that the student argues for his/her case can

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still be recorded in, and valuable for, the formative evaluation. When there is evidence in support of the student’s own evaluation, extra credit – for example for the admission to university – could be granted at a future time. Suppose a student when applying to the university that s/he wants to attend offers not only evidence of an exact exam result, but also submits – based on the rationale of valuing ‘maturity in education’ – an application for educational credit supplements (i.e., to gain credits needed by the university by articulating and defending why this is acceptable and desirable), when entrance exam scores are not by themselves enough to secure his/her desired university place. It can then be expected that universities will thus lose fewer talents and gain more enrichment in education when students are allowed to exercise their educational maturity in this way. In all, the conception of a ‘mature student’ who can argue for him/herself in relation to his/her own educational life enables us to reimagine an evaluation and assessment system that works more vibrantly and efficiently for the flourishing of students’ studies – whether by adding value to the marks that a student attains in standardised tests for doing justice to their exercise of maturity through which they add explanations in relation to the result received, or through the project of educational credit supplements obtained also by taking into fuller account their maturity as learners. There are indeed non-utilitarian and anti-behaviourism approaches developed in the field of educational assessment and evaluation – e.g., Eisner’s connoisseurship/criticism model based on artistic appreciation and judgment (see Donmoyer’s fine review of Eisner’s work on evaluation, 2014); Hayward and Spencer’s (2010) use of ideas of complexity in challenging simplistic ideas in assessments. What I  present here through the concept of students’ maturity offers additional philosophical arguments and bolder institutional imagination which take students’ articulated judgments into formal and procedural consideration, in order properly to prize valuable, contingent yet accumulative experiences of self-reflexivity in education.

The aesthetic nature of student maturity I have so far considered ‘what does a mature student mean?’ mainly in the light of Kant’s proposal in answering ‘What is Enlightenment?’ that you ‘argue as much as you like and about whatever you like; but obey’. I  have come to understand that the missing point when we consider whether a student has reached maturity in education is that we usually have not paid sufficient attention to the student’s reflexivity on his/her raison d’être which s/he finds in the school and the meanings that s/he discovers for the educational life. We usually care about other important dimensions – such as whether the intended educational content has been well absorbed by the student, whether the applied educational methods are based on the student’s psychological condition and accord with the procedural principle of a liberal-civil society. Nevertheless, we tend to omit the no less significant dimension of a ‘mature

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student’, in which s/he up to a point starts to reflect upon his/her educational experience. I also have detected the ‘utilitarian-potential’ in this conception of maturity held on the part of the student, which could lead us to renew and enrich our existing system of evaluation and assessment in education. The last point with regard to this conceptual understanding of student maturity that I need to explicate further is about its nature – the essence of this kind of experience. I have emphasised that the student’s bona fide maturity lies in the student’s empirical reflections on their own educational life. These kinds of reflexive experiences indicating the students’ maturity in education are usually rarely systematic (at least initially) and therefore often in essence elusive and ephemeral. Take my own life story as an example (which I  intend for illustrative purposes here). I first started to question the meaning of being at school when I was around 18 years old, when my every day seemed to be occupied with preparing for exams for university admission. The time I spent in schools before the senior high school stage had been quite fruitful until the overwhelming pressure for the national entrance exam ruled out the vitality that I had previously known at my school days. I  came to reflect unexpectedly and suddenly one evening after supper returning to the night class as usual in the high school, wondering whether I was wasting my prime time – my youth – busy with such exam preparations. Soon I found I could list many reasons, though they were of one kind, to persuade myself: ‘I was not wasting time; see the textbooks of the biology, the chemistry, etc. which are full of knowledge (which I did not yet know and I was keen to know)! Then, moving to my assignments, where I was still puzzled to answer questions and to solve problems, showing my lack of command of those forms of knowledge. As a result, I  therefore concluded that I  had better continue my study, and study hard!’ [This questioning stopped here, but I have been drawing upon (e.g., right now!) the criticality/sensitivity exercised in that moment to be more conscious about my subsequent educational experience.] This is a real narrative of my own experience, in which I started to doubt the meaning of my senior high school days when I was occupied with the examoriented education. However, I stopped my questioning soon after for I was reassured by my identification of the value of the knowledge. I felt from the bottom of my heart that I was intrinsically curious about those forms of knowledge and I also did believe at root that the knowledge that the school and the educational system require me to learn was worthwhile. Hence, since I wanted to grasp those subject matters and was helped by the educational system to do so in my then current situation, I stopped further examining and accepted my school life as it was at that time.

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Readers might see this as demonstrating the maturity emerging from being a student, in a context where it is generated contingently and instantly. It was not a systematic reflection because e.g., I had not further asked if the school were the only place to learn this worthwhile knowledge; I had not further explored if this examined-oriented education was the best way to learn those bodies of knowledge, and in terms of the justifications I found, they had not extended to other dimensions, such as my growth in sociality and the development of fellowship. If equipped with the educational theories that I nowadays have (see Standish, 2007b, pp. 40–49, for discussion of related theoretical perspectives), I still could professionally come to understand that there are various expressions of worthwhile activity besides those forms of theoretical knowledge and understanding; I could still condemn the alienating effects that the then schooling generated as a result of barely transmitting propositional knowledge and lacking extremely in learning by acquaintance. However, for me at that time it was in practice unrealistic to invest time and energy to do more questioning. Above all, it was beyond my capacity to do a series of qualified reflections on the educational question. In addition, it did not help with my aim of trying out the openly competitive and relatively fair national entrance exam for access to higher education, since the prevailing system could not change for me overnight or even within three to four years. And most significantly in theory, I had no need to make a perfect and qualified reflection on those affairs to be a ‘mature student’. This is primarily because the reflexive experience expressing my maturity as a student was ephemeral in nature. Just like aesthetic experience (see earlier Note 7 on p. 14, pp. 26–27, 44–46, 96), it is also both authentic-intrinsic and accumulative-productive. Returning to my earlier example for illustration: I  took the initiative to come to articulate my feeling-response to the object education here in the question. It was stopped soon in the phenomenon, but the inner concentration it contained continued into my subsequent educational life, influencing my awareness to choose an area of interest to study in the university and my awareness to plan my higher educational journey. Hence, those reflexive experiences as indicators of a student’s maturity in education are basically incidental and it is not necessary to pursue them in a systematic and complete way. This kind of mature expression by students is also in nature sedimenting – both accumulating and ever-renewing, a way similar to being gradually and eventually beneficial to the establishing of the self in education. All in all, while formal evaluation and assessment in education are encouraged to take care of the growth of student maturity as conceived earlier, and even to give it a greater role to play in the practice of educational appraisal, the reflexive experience demonstrating the student’s maturity in education cannot be expected to be an intended result or a complete product, for the nature of it is intrinsic, emergent, accumulatedempirical and in one word aesthetic. Furthermore, owing to the nature of this kind of experience, the students’ realisation of maturity is not a stage to attain

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but a state of mind to achieve, time and again in their school lives, accumulating in processes. Thus, students from primary schools to universities at their own pace can feasibly accumulate kinds of mature states of mind. That is, student maturity is achievable across the whole trajectory of schools and universities, once the aesthetic nature of mature experience – contingent, emergent, sedimenting – is recognised.

Chapter 8

Grown-up parents Through the second-order educational reclamation that fosters ‘a layered self ’

A philosophical re-evaluation of parental maturity In Chapter 1 I analysed explicit immaturity in contemporary education – that is, parents and teachers bounded by extrinsic values unwittingly or involuntarily. I will continue in this chapter to deal with the phenomenon of ‘parental immaturity’: taking up parents’ specific perspectives with the aim of relieving them of their individual insecurity in child-rearing. In contrast with the ‘implicit immaturity’ that is typified in the case of the students – that they habitually mindlessly accept the education provided and do not think about how to perceive critically the schooling itself – I depict the self-inflicted immaturity of parents as explicit in the sense of ‘dedicatedly but mistakenly taking up the trouble of their children’s education’. I thus focus here on parents who actively engage in their children’s education but in an inappropriate way which routinely leaves them feeling unsettled in relation to their children’s upbringing. ‘Immature parents’ are therefore not only those who do not care about their children’s growth, but includes those engaged parents who do industriously exercise their understanding over their children’s education but unwisely in the direction of surrendering their own selves in the role of parenting.1 These ‘mis-engaged’ parents are immature because they almost lose their own sense of self when they are excessively and unnecessarily preoccupied with their children’s welfare. For example, they ‘relentlessly’ impose social norms related to the education of their children, motivated by an ‘irrevocable’ yet in a deeper examination well-nigh a mis-belief. That is, they mis-conceive that, if they do

1 For the analysis of such parental predicaments of over-parenting and parent-blaming, also see ‘the exhausted parents’ by Hodgkinson (2010), ‘the always feeling guilty parents’ by Schaubroeck (2010), ‘paranoid parenting’ in which parents are mired in ‘a culture of lack of confidence’ by Furedi (2001, 2008), cited in Van den Berge’s (2013) re-examination. Apart from the social dimension of this parenting problem, there are also dangers of ‘psychologisation’ (Ramaekers & Suissa, 2012), ‘technologicalisation’ (Smith, R., 2010) and ‘desubjectivation’ (Vansieleghem, 2010) of parenthood in our current world.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-12

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not preach at their children about studying harder and aim to secure the best educational services, all of them in the future will be regretful. In order to avoid this possible regret, as parents they had better comply with the social conventions to have their children attend top tier schools and win the social competition. This trapped ‘least-regret’ reasoning recapitulates parents’ various enforced motivations in making educational decisions such as choosing schools and buying private supplementary tutoring (see Mark Bray’s examination of shadow education in cross-continental settings, 2009, especially p. 27, 62, 63). As this is in essence a matter of compliance and involuntariness, it is hard to see how parents can feel secure in these educational situations and through these educational actions. What is worse, among these engaged parents who are well-educated and well-off these dilemmas can produce ill-feeling, with parents often externalising their antipathy to school education and sometimes even developing unfriendly relationships with the classroom teachers of their children (e.g., these parents may feel unsatisfied that the public school teacher takes care of their privileged children through the grouping approach rather than the individualised approach). Certainly, the force that these engaged parents exercise (no matter how inappropriately) to some extent promotes the educational progress of their children. They are indeed able in utilitarian terms to create or find efficient means to meet intended ends, such as to have their children learn effectively what is required to learn. Urged by the restrictive assumption of ‘survival of the fittest’ – which might be further explained by a theory of ‘necessary evil’,2 parents consciously or unconsciously strive to ensure ‘success’ in moulding their younger generation. However, it is also clear that both the ambitious parents and the anxious parents bring few benefits to the project of the good school. This is not in the interest of their children – for I believe trust and cooperation among parents and teachers is essential to the whole education of the school children. Nor is it in the parents’ own interests – for it is clear that the angst and the anxiety related to their children’s school education are causing significant harms to parents’ psychological health and even their life in general. In all, either read by Kant’s light or by Li’s light, these ‘mis-engaged’ parents are immature because of their ‘laziness’ in equating convenient norms (such as the social, the scientific, psychological or technological) with the purpose of education (or say norms sought in education), and for their haste in mis-applying the ‘least regretful’ principle to the educational life. With regard to the ‘grown-up’ parents, I  expect based on arguments in Chapter 1 that they exercise self-examination and encompass educational competencies when making educational choices for their children. I  expect that parents, when caring for their children, can also at the same time have their

2 The term is commonly used to depict, for example, the existence of government as a ‘necessary evil’ for a better society to result.

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own selves functioning critically. The understanding of parents’ critical selves can be unpacked in at least two interrelated but slightly different ways: (1) seen through the educational-practical lens, being clear about which kinds of trouble they can take on their children’s behalf and which not; and (2) seen from the legal-moral lens, being clear-minded about legitimate parental partiality (Swift, 2003, pp. 18, 19). Hence I hope parents can not only push forward the utilitarian progress of education, but also can give voice to what they perceive as the impropriety or injustice in education, even to the point of calling out the inadequacy of the current institutions (also see Ramaekers  & Suissa, 2012, pp. 353–354, 363). I hope that the parental force can join the analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and embark upon, and experiment with, the possibilities of going beyond these boundaries. Above all, how can the parents themselves ‘grow up’ in such a way as to exercise sound judgments in handling educational affairs? To be precise: what does parental self-examination mean? How can parents develop contemporary and worthwhile educational competencies? How can parents reclaim their ‘critical selves’ and simultaneously enrich their own selves by proper participation in their children’s growing up? In what follows, I will address this series of questions in more depth. Seen in classical Chinese terms, we can divert parents from their ‘parental anxiety’ by anchoring their current stage as a middle one in life and thus direct their attention to think about their life as a whole within three main stages (see the following section). In particular, I will herein draw upon Li’s theory of ‘a layered self ’ within the iterative framework of three levels of sedimentation. I will, in these terms, situate parents in the lifespan of three ‘30 years’ stages – approximately age 1 to 30, age 30 to 60 and age 60 to 90. This model (where the stages are more important than the actual chronological ages) encourages parents to enliven their roles by observing and consciously recognising the first stage of life that many of them will just be completing while not losing sight of the prospect of the aesthetic pleasure that they can (and should desire to) intensively experience in the third three-decade stage. If in the second section I adopt the strategy of what I term (positively) ‘distraction’ to relieve parents of their angst, then in the third section I zoom in on their current situation and intend to trigger a re-imagination at their second 30 years (or middle stage) in life as parents. I will at this juncture review the ‘least regret’ thinking in the Chinese context, by relating what might be seen as an equivalent in the Western tradition, which is found in the no less haunting question of ‘would you live your life over if given the chance?’ (see Neiman, 2016, p. 216). This supplementary cross-cultural philosophic inquiry will further be applied to the case of parents, in order to enlarge and to sustain the ongoing internal and deliberative conversation of parents with their younger selves and with their present-future selves. I will in the final section deal with more specific methodological issues related to this theoretical account of reimagination and reflection, intended to help parents to ‘grow up’ as outlined in the previous section. Through the cultivation of a pedagogical narrative

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inquiry by parents themselves, which is necessarily organised and facilitated by researchers in education, I propose to complete the second-order task of reclaiming education by these same parents. The intention of the second-order educational reclamation by parents is then to materialise the reflexive potential productively possessed by the parents dedicated to this discipline. All in all, the ultimate aim is to secure the ‘critical self ’ of the parent – to help them feel at ease as far as a parent can possibly be.

Situating parents in the lifespan of three three-decade stages I shall start with Li’s theory of sedimentation in relation to the broader viewpoint of lifespan for parents. Li’s sedimentation theory includes (1) species sedimentation, (2) cultural sedimentation and (3) individual sedimentation. We could broadly consider the first three decades of life (generally the age range of 1 to 30) as the layering of the species sediment. This is basically because in this stage ranging from birth to youth, all homo sapiens generally complete their physio-psychological growth and equally have a biological-material life expectancy of averagely less than 100 years. Put alternatively, within the first 30 years, we undergo obvious physical growth and develop convertible mental structure up to the species standard, for example, there are in median terms no radically significant differences of height and weight among us, just as there are similar cognitive-volitional-aesthetic forms of understanding across ethnic groups. In the light of the brain development, neuroscientists also reveal that most of our brains generally take three decades to reach the threshold of maturity (Somerville, 2016, p. 1166; and see updated science news to the public from the international meeting of the Academy of Medical Sciences in Neurodevelopmental Research just held in March 2019, at Oxford, where the same point is re-emphasised for its significant social implications).3 Further, what is mainly experienced in the middle life from age 30 to age 60 is easily understood as constituting the specific-oriented cultural sediment. The specific society into which we were born has been breeding in us its own characteristic culture. However, the cultural influence becomes more explicit and pervasive when we are grown up to enter society and when we have to earn a living in that national or regional society, by complying without any excuse with its public morality (see Chapter 4 for discussion of this concept by Li). Overall, in this second stage, individuals are particularly occupied with

3 For example, see Adulthood begins at 30: Scientists say that our brains are not fully grown-up when we are in our twenties, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6824499/Adulthood-begins30-Scientists-say-brains-not-fully-grown-twenties.html, published on 19 March 2019; Why is 18 the age of adulthood if the brain can take 30 years to mature? https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/adultbrain, published on 20 March 2019, cited on 2 April 2019.

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their social roles such as parents and employees or employers. They become the backbone of the society; wherever they live they must abide by certain ways of thinking and feeling common to the community where they are located or choose to relocate (see the case of immigrants). Associated with Li’s conception of public morality, which is liberally oriented while locally regulated, these ‘certain ways of thinking and feeling’ that are required to be followed can be understood in terms of the driving rules implied in the metaphor of ‘driver’s freedom’ (see Chapter 5). That is, drivers must follow the regionally diverse rules of driving – see the UK right-hand drive and the US left-hand drive – to ensure the realisation of their own purpose and meanwhile the common welfare of the public. It is also true that in some cases these ‘certain ways of thinking and feeling’ are not necessarily legitimate and even worse need to be improved or overthrown. To address this significant concern, we can further draw upon Li’s emphasis on private morality, which is inseparable from his conception of public morality indicated earlier. Indeed, this interrelated creative-private facet of morality underlines the renewal and mutable aspect of the theory of sedimentation, in which the individual sediment always enacts itself to accommodate difference and to admit transformation. That also said, without implying that the third level of individual sedimentation only appears in the third stage, this third-stage interpretation offers a fuller picture in which the individual sediment reaches its culminating point. That is, the individual sedimentation corresponds to the third stage in which a real sense of the established self comes to the fore. Just as not everyone has the fortune to live up to 90+ years old (while continuing to live independently), not everyone can come to possess an absolute individual sediment owing to various kinds of obstacle (e.g., objective institutional oppression or subjective self-incurred heteronomy). However, just as it is more and more possible that individuals can now begin to live a life that is different from that of their ancestors since the 18th century Enlightenment, so it becomes increasingly feasible in our age for individuals to accomplish the third level of sedimentation – that is, more and more people are enabled to become aware of their ‘selves’ and to cultivate their own ‘personhoods’. The ways of looking at the world accumulated from our own individual life experiences are no longer by default disregarded as ‘subjective and passing whims’ subsumed by larger communities. This ‘individual accumulation’, as Li conceives of it on the basis of its relationship to the first species and the second societal sedimentation, enables us to ‘see our life as a whole’ and to build up a sense of our own character (see p. 90 of this book). In earlier chapters I elaborated on Li’s aesthetic ideal of life, such as identification in the attained aesthetic pleasure or the accomplished ‘driver’s freedom’. These accounts are in line with the third stage of life-realisation that I am discussing now. Neiman (2016) describes it in more detail as follows: [It is] about resolving to savour every second of joy each season contains. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal

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(p. 202). You discover what you want, not what you are expected to want, and you know something about how to get it. You care far less about what people think of you. . . . Life still surprises you, but you learn to trust your own responses to it. (p. 203) Taken together, Li’s three levels of sedimentation in an iterative framework can be applied to an individual lifespan of the three main stages of 30 years. The anxiety and worry of parents about their children’s rearing that occurs in their middle life is therefore on the one hand unsurprising, because that stage is by nature obsessed with social duty and social functions which have to be performed in order to sustain the collective life. On the other hand, as the lifespan projects forward, individual life has not plateaued at the second stage and therefore parents have to make efforts to transform themselves for the possible and desirable third stage of life. In this way, I intend to remind the individuals that when they become parents their future life is not extended by that of their children – they definitely have their own life – (but) achievable by positively looking forward to living up to the age of 90 and by fulfilling their third layer of the sedimented self. I note in passing that if asked to give reasons as to why we aim for an average life expectancy of 90 years old, it is mainly because for the rounded development of the individual personhood that can be democratically possessed through each of the three full sedimentations, we need this estimated amount of time in theory. With an observation that it generally takes three decades to finish the species sediments, it follows that it takes another two ‘three-decade’ periods to go for the remaining of two processes of sedimentations. Of course, in reality it is not a failure to live a life shorter than 90 years; indeed many people who are able to reach the age of 90 might still be unable to enjoy the third level of individual sedimentation (e.g., due to a lack of sufficient mental or physical health resources). The theory only describes a macro prediction that there is a greater chance for all to reach the third level of development given the base of greater longevity of 90  years. To take the thought experiment a step further, if the average life expectancy of human beings were 120 years old, all social studies and humanities would be marvellously rewritten to the extent that we might be no longer encumbered by its ambiguities.4 Nevertheless, in our current situation it is still perfectly possible to attain the third level of sedimentation earlier in life – we can indeed adduce actual examples in the history of gifted poets and artists, be they from the East or West, many of whom died young but lived out the fullness of their personalities (which can be seen through their works left to us). But what about an ordinary person for whom living a long lifespan as

4 I owe thanks for this inspiration to the discussions that occurred in the course of Life and Death that I took in HKIED (now The Education University of Hong Kong) in 2011.

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estimated to 90 years old is meanwhile difficult? Positively, we do have chances to reach the third level of development mainly by self-cultivation. In what follows I will go further to address precisely this kind of self-cultivation, particularly related to the middle stage of life with the role of being a parent.

‘Parents living over again their first 30 years’ I now look into the specific second stage of sedimentation in life, in relation to the self-cultivation of playing parental roles. I  earlier pointed out (at the start of this chapter) that those mis-engaged parents who generally experience insecurity in their children’s educational affairs use the ‘least regret’ principle wrongly – they rush to the conclusion that if they do not follow the conventional path, they will regret what they could have done to win the social game for their children and through their children. The thinking of least regret seems failed in the instance of parents’ problematic weighing of regrets, and therefore this is a fitting juncture to supplement the examination of the Confucian maxim of least regrets with its alternatives in the West. There is no implication here of the weakness of one culture and the strength of the other; rather, it is a matter of flexible substitutes and enriched choices for life. With regard to classical Chinese thinking, to secure the least regretful state that I have expounded in Chapter 4 in relation to the concept of private morality, I am inextricably concerned with the discussion of the maxim of consistency. In the theoretical account of the least regret principle as presented in Chapter 4 (p. 65), I adduced the rationale of ‘a consistent and least regretful self ’. Kant himself also paid percipient attention to the notion of consistency – to be in agreement with oneself (Critique of Judgment, §40, quoted from Neiman, 2016, p. 215), alongside ‘to think for oneself ’ and ‘to put ourselves in thought in the place of everyone else’. Now I can conclude that the consideration of the maxim of consistency – to be in agreement with oneself – can be unfolded through two main styles of ongoing reflection, in accordance with the different cultural construction of the Chinese and the West. That is, in parallel with the well-known question of ‘will you be regretful (or not) when seen through the lens of this life as a whole?’5 in the Chinese one-world context, the equivalent question as configured in the Western two-world setting is the famous one, ‘would you live your life over (or not)?’. Let us think again through Li’s comparative perspective of one-world view and two-world view. It is natural that in alignment with the Chinese one-world view, which presupposes the most certain thing is that we have and are having this one life, Chinese people when doing moral reasoning would incline towards checking whether they will feel regretful in this life as a whole. By

5 In Chinese language, it could be expressed succinctly through four Chinese characters plus a question mark: 此生无悔?.

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the same token, influenced by the tradition and legacy of the Western twoworld view, the potential to imagine living one’s life over again is more easily germinated – at least the majority of Christians might permissibly be asked if they would continue or change this life track in the eternal realm that is promised to them. Neiman (2016, pp. 216–221) also demonstrates the varied answers from several great philosophers in the Western lineage, such as that of Leibniz, Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Kant and Nietzsche. In all, whether these Western philosophers are associated with Christianity or not, having been nurtured by this essentially two-world view culture they were subconsciously and habitually involved in this characteristic way of inquiring into the question of life-consistency. Further, according to Neiman (2016, p.  216), the question of whether you would live your life again makes much more sense since the Enlightenment age, for the prescribed life that was for our predecessors preordained by social and political forces can now be subjected to change by the choices of the individual. There is clearly enormous reflection implied in the existentially diversified responses of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘yes and no’ to the question, and in the continuing specific discernment of ‘how many of the choices you have made are truly fixed?’ as well as ‘what parts of your life are changeable and what do you want to keep?’ (Neiman, 2016, p. 221). In brief, both forms of aesthetic moral reasoning are equally illuminating in unpacking the maxim of consistency, either for the abiding consistency crystallised in this life or for the everlasting consistency continued in the next life. As with the evocation of judging whether we will feel regretful or not, the deliberation to live life over again or not is similarly haunting. As an inclusive view resulting from the preceding cross-cultural philosophic analysis of the maxim of self-consistency, it is beneficial in the present chapter to ask each of us individually ‘if I could, would I live over again the last decades (especially the first three decades of life)?’, alongside the equivalent question about life regrets. From my individual perspective, I would primarily say no – because of the condition that I  am satisfied with my current development, I have no ambitions to repeat the success that I have engaged and to overcome those not especially significant failures remaining in my past – let alone many of those experiences of progress that I had, frequently accompanied by unavoidable frustrations. In all, for me to live seriously, once is enough. For other individuals, they certainly can have various answers, ranging from a full ‘Yes’, to a partial ‘Yes’ and even a ‘No’. Certainly, for such a deep-minded, stirring question, whether the short answer be definite or ambiguous in the moment of asking, we will soon find ourselves left in hovering states between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. For one thing, the growth of the previous decades involves a huge amount of ‘upbringing data’, which can be evaluated from every angle and therefore no one clear answer is likely to be sufficient. For another, it does take time and energy to figure out from past experience what is worthwhile to retain and what is worthless – not to mention that the judgments are changeable owing to effects of our newly acquired experiences and perspectives.

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However, if we apply the same test asking parents, ‘If you could, would you live over again the first stage of life?’, we will find that the question could be transformed from a rather open one to a quite closed one. The question remains open because parents by themselves are still essentially independent individuals and therefore certainly have varied sorts and degrees of answers to the question (just as analysed in the last paragraph). This same question becomes a closed one because when these individuals assume the role of parent (be they birth parents or adoptive parents) and thus shoulder the parental responsibility to attune to their children’s needs and development, they seem almost to be put in a place to live over again! That is, the question is no longer about ‘if I could, would I . . .?’ but is morphed into one that ‘qua parent, I almost live the first stage of life again’, through my children. There are three reasons to argue that by virtue of being parents they become the human beings most likely – figuratively and vicariously – to gain a chance to live again (though in reality no one does). First, as parents (especially overlapping with the role of guardians), they are in the midst of making many actual decisions that their children are not yet capable of making for themselves. This guardian discharge involved in bringing up children is tantamount to a chance given to vicariously live youth again. Second, in making many decisions related to their children’s growth and development, parents no doubt consciously or unconsciously draw upon their own growing experience from their previous decades. This composes the second sense of living their own past again. Third, as parental love is observed anthropologically across all parental groups (both ambitious and anxious parents, both wealthy and disadvantaged), parents are eager to make the best possible choices on their children’s behalf just as if they would want to see that choice made for themselves (if the clock turned back to their former days). Thus, parents feel obliged to live the first stage of life again – taking the changing environment into account and to place themselves in their children’s shoes – for that is what the parental roles inextricably bring about, especially in the current cultural climate. Hence when parents (at the second stage of life) are invited to imagine ‘living over the first 30 years (the first stage of life) again’, what they confront is not merely a philosophically provocative question, but almost an existential and empirical one. See Figure 8.1: for the shouldered guardian responsibility (i.e., the portion between the double straight lines), the exercised self-projection capacity (i.e., the part between the curved lines), and the fundamental parental love (penetrating until the end) enable parents to take the most advantageous position for inquiring into this ‘living again’ question, through many considerations related to their offspring’s development and welfare. Overall it is desirable to be metaphorically ‘reborn’ through accompanying the growth of our (own) children – it is worthwhile when afforded such an opportunity to regularly reflect on the value of life, since every person has that ‘third task’ of individual sedimentation, the fulfilment of which is envisioned through a stage perspective in the next 30 years that follow.

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Re-imagining the second stage of life as living over the first 30 years

Parents’ lifespan Age 0

Children’s lifespan

30

60

Age 0

30

90

60

90

Figure 8.1  Parents’ Re-imagining at the Second Stage of Life

Thus, I am keen to invite parents to keep asking themselves both ‘if so, will you be regretful or not?’ and ‘if given the chance, how do you live it well over?’. The value of regularly asking these two categories of ‘haunting question’ in relation to the maxim of self-consistency lies in its power to keep individuals’ minds ever refreshed. This kind of reflexive exercise is particularly significant for parents in the middle stage, because it is concerned with whether parents can play a proper role in their children’s first three-decade sedimentation in which the young are right now recapitulating the species sediments which parents just completed. Reflexive parents who can critically draw upon the first-hand flesh-and-blood experience of their own first threedecade stage of species sediment can develop deeper rethinking6 of their children’s real investments in growing. In short, it is hoped that the intricate, sincere and what sometimes might be contrasting answers to the questions of self-consistency will keep one’s reflexivity and imagination as much open and vibrant as they can be. Through this philosophical hermeneutic, in combination with the existential positions, parents, though placed in a permanent dialogue with their past – their younger selves and those which shaped them – and their present, are enabled to cultivate beneficial educational sensibilities and capacities. In contrast to the promotion of parental expertise which commonly leaves parents redundant in the sense that they hand over to parental services and lose their ability to speak as a parent (for the further analysis, see Vansieleghem, 2010; also see Smith, R., 2010), the central theme here is cultivating a critical and settled parenthood. As Swift (2003, p. 3) notes, ‘[parents] will be clearer about what is at stake, about the reasons [that they] would have to taking or rejecting any particular position’. 6 To understand such deep reflections, also see the aesthetic type of moral reasoning on p. 63ff of this book.

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The second order of parental educational reclamation: the terminology and the methodology I have so far presented philosophical justifications for the idea that an enriched introspection is a useful means to self-cultivation in the particular case of parents. Many existing parenting programmes either focus on special groups of parents such as immigrant parents and parents whose children need special care, or are targeted at ‘politically correct and practically effective’ parental skills such as enhancing and facilitating children’s learning. However, the initiative and intervention I propose aims at parents in general who are invited to cultivate their own selves by critically fulfilling their parental duty. Such a proposal is of a retrospective orientation learning from one’s or the collective’s past while not losing a vision for both personal and interpersonal-communal future (this comes to echo Van den Berge’s (2013) well-argued insight on desired parenting supports). I develop this proposal with a comprehensive application of Li’s theory of individual subjectality (involving the sedimentation theory as well as the least regret principle), meanwhile also drawing upon Western-styled aesthetic moral reasoning about reimagining living life again. Both the checking of least regret and the rumination on re-living can be flexibly used to serve as enhanced tools not only to reinvigorate one’s past and what has shaped one’s past, but also to project to a future stage of self-realisation that awaits completion. However, the philosophical account of the ‘invitation’ for parents to reimagine at the second 30 years of life by ‘living again’ their first 30 years alongside their children still remains rather general. I hence need to discuss in more detail its ­methodological-procedural issues, in alignment with an educational research project concerned with developing parental self-examination and parental competencies in practice. In the following, therefore, I  will term such a close-to-practice research project dedicated to parents as ‘the second-order of educational reclamation’. Before moving on to address major principles and orientations that are constitutive of this line of inquiry, let me first explain the meaning and significance of such a terminology of ‘the second-order of educational reclamation’. There are basically two insights assumed in this coinage. To begin with, for any individuals, the reclamation of education can only be done after the subject formation has been fostered by education or acculturation and thereby in this logical sense education can only be reclaimed in a second-order way. As Neiman (2016, p. 133) felicitously puts it, ‘for we are all the products of [an] education we did not choose’. It is therefore clear that we cannot be the subject of the educational reclamation in the first order since we rely on a prior education to foster the ability to exercise reclamation. Although in theory no one can do the first order of educational retrieval, it does not follow that this logical difficulty will leave us resigned in our educational affairs. On the contrary, the critical reflexive ability that one develops and the sincere concern that one

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encompasses in relation to education always facilitate the second order of educational reclamation. This further leads to the other sense of ‘the second-order of educational reclamation’, which is particularly explicit in the case of parents. That is, as parents – though they are still not able directly to reclaim the education through their first-singular-person perspective – they can in an indirect sense claim an education by discharging the role of parents. I have just pointed out that while attentive parents cannot help adapting scrupulously to their children’s needs – fulfilling their parental-guardian duties and projecting their own self-expectations – this almost entails that they are living the first stage of life again (while at this time they have the company of their children) vicariously. It thus could be said that in the role of parents, they are granted a practical chance to reclaim education indirectly: when parents try their best to secure the better educational provision for their posterity, just as they would have done for their own interests, they exercise a qua indirect reclamation of education. It is in the second sense, as seen through the lens of parents, of ‘the secondorder of educational reclamation’, that I now address its methodological issues. The significance of conscious parental reclamation of education is paramount because, when parents do this, they not only morally fulfil their duty as parents to bring up the younger generations, but they also contribute to the critical re-examination of the educational enterprise itself. The initiative present in the parental second-order of reclaiming education carries the significance of cultural renewal just as the famous anti-foundationalist philosophical image of Neurath’s Boat – the boat of knowledge – captures the demand on ‘the sailors who have to re-build their ship on the open sea’ (Blackburn, 2008). Since the vital parental ability to ‘retrieve’ education is not naturally endowed, it is necessary to develop procedures to foster and to fortify it. It is also because of the limitations of any individual’s own parents’ educational capacities – owing to their inevitably limited personal experience against a backdrop of equally inevitable accelerated change in the external environment – that I  need to repurpose the ‘parental reclamation of and reflection on education’ into a collective and qualified educational task. The collective research project, or say essentially a significant social task, of parental reclamation of education is basically described in the ways that parents are encouraged to gather together and work collaboratively with educational professionals to reimagine critically at the second stage in life, so as to live their first stage again while accompanied by their children. This includes reviewing the species sediments that parents as adults have completed while their children are making their own. It also includes reflecting upon the education that they as parents once (not necessarily successfully) experienced, and the best available alternatives of educational experiences that they can offer to their children – not in the conventional sense that the best means ‘better and more luxurious than what others possess’, nor in the convenient technological sense that falls within the so-called general-scientific developmental principles, but in the authentic educational sense signifying that which ‘particularly suits the

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development of one’s child’. Other aspects that could be incorporated include but are not limited to reflections upon normative assumptions about parenthood and upbringing (Ramaekers & Suissa, 2012), being a parent as a matter of ‘being with’ children (Smith, R., 2010, p. 368). In line with this theoretical account, the participation of parents who might be unconfident about their educational experience is doubtless recognised to be a significant contribution to the project. However, in practice there is a risk of excluding parents who are not confident or articulate enough, since a comfort and a capacity to express oneself is a preliminary condition for such a project to flourish. To address this concern, two factors I think can be helpful to ensure the inclusion/engagement of varied groups of parents. One is the ethics check entailed in the procedure of research approval to guarantee a concrete case for this kind of research is doing it justice. The other factor that can be vital is the role of the professional researcher. The professionalism that an educational researcher exercises can be valuable in making the situation more considerate, which encourages disadvantaged parents to contribute while their psychological barriers are also being removed. In the established educational inquiry tradition, we can draw upon several research paradigms (for example, narrative inquiry, phenomenological research and action research) to formulate the methodology that is applicable to the project of second-order educational reclamation by parents, in partnership always with professional educational researchers and scholars. Given the task, and that the scope of the current book is to purpose an educational philosophy for subsequent educational research and practice, there is no need for the moment to delve into the detailed design of any particular research paradigm for the project in view. Nevertheless, there are indeed some preliminary research directions and priorities that are worth taking into account by parents and researchers in this important collaboration. Let me conclude this chapter by briefly clarifying three key points necessary for the implementation of this project that are aligned with Li’s foregoing account of aesthetic philosophy in general – and that also comply with the ideal of the second-order of educational reclamation in specific ways. First, the primary goal to promote the second order of reclaiming education by parents is to cultivate the ‘critical parental self ’. Drawing upon the theoretical insight on the differentiation between ‘leading reins’ and ‘travel tools’ that I explored in Chapter 5 in relation to the conception of human maturity (p.  79ff earlier), such a second order project is intended to emancipate parents from their compliance with conventional rules and the cultural bondage which together function as ‘leading strings’ to the extent of limiting the free range of individual exploration. Inclining towards the metaphor of travel tools, I  would inspire parents to imagine ‘re-living’ their first three decades while guiding their children’s growth, and thereby opening all their senses of being, like the openness experienced (including excitement and naivety) in traveling into another cultural location. Just like travel tools such as cars or flights, which

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aid our free actions, the parental reclamation of education fosters parents’ free subjectivity by stimulating reflection on the education they themselves received personally and reassessing the education their children are to receive. Put metaphorically, to grow up as a parent, is not to be enslaved to the ‘walking tool’, but to manipulate the ‘travel tool’ in the parental journey. That is, parents are expected to come to discriminate more clearly those features of their children’s needs that they can meaningfully and morally address, from those interventions that are morally illegitimate and educationally unnecessary. That is, resisting both the myth of parental determinism (Van den Berge, 2013, p.  398) and the problematic demand of ‘parental expertise which parents can never have enough of ’ (Vansieleghem, 2010, p. 349), what I am concerned about is the core capacity of parents to discern, in bringing up children, what kinds of trouble are necessary to be taken on their children’s behalf, while some others are not. In all, to be a good parent is not to salve one’s conscience in relation to a supposedly absolute love for one’s children, but to preserve and cultivate one’s precious self through the second stage in life via a successful discharge of the role of parent. Next, as a collaborative research project, the principal ways to empower parents ought to be characterised by (1) democratic discussion and (2) intellectual inquiry. In collaborative terms, we on the one hand expect that professional researchers (in residence) are made available to conduct the task of educational reclamation with parents, either in the same residential community or in the same school. On the other hand, the collaboration would be mainly realised by democratic dialogue among participating parents. Parents who join such a reflexive exercise of reclaiming education share their own experiences and judgments with others without inhibition. In giving their own voices and hearing from their counterparts, they expand their own mindset and meanwhile enrich those of others. This is akin to the duty of the citizen to articulate and to reflect in the public square – which Standish (2007a, p. 25) puts as follows: initially ‘this is how I see it . . . can you see it like this?’ and afterwards ‘is this really how I see it?’ – parents offer their own view and absorb others’, then reflect further on their own. In this exercise of democratic discussion, parents are empowered, because they are gradually enabled to ‘[open] a way of speaking, thinking, and theorising that allows [them] to act in a particular way, and to understand their own actions, to refer and relate to them, and to defend them if needed, and to put into words why they are important (or problematic in educational terms)’ (Hodgson, Vlieghe & Zamojski 2018, p. 98; also see Van den Berge, 2013, p. 403). To maintain the research quality, there is a conceptual requirement to develop knowledge. In addition, for the objective of equipping parents with educational competencies, the reclamation and reflection by parents has to be characterised by intellectual rigor and expertise (of course not obsessed around practical skills). The important role of the professional researcher as a facilitator and organiser is thereby obvious – once again they are here not for transmitting

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effective skills in parental care (see Vansieleghem, 2010, p. 344), but mainly for aiding the critical self-cultivation of parents who are expected to be in charge in their parenting. Furthermore, as against the myth of established neutral knowledge that is simply to be ‘delivered’, the democratic co-construction of ideas, such as researching jointly with parents, is necessary not only in principle but also methodologically – above all, parents are also key educational subjects who are not destined simply to listen but can be vital forces in the search for knowledge of education. Finally, it is also important to reconsider the prominent research questions that are brought to light by the foundational philosophy that has been developed in this book. For illustrative purpose, I summarise them as the last key point. That is, the research emphases integral to the parental project that we are concerned with in this context are centred on a reflection on the ethics of education. Once again parents are placed in the advantageous position of inquiring into the humanisation of education – because they themselves experienced the preliminary humanising process and they themselves once passed through their own educational trajectories. That is, they know best – knowingly feeling and feelingly knowing (p. 12 of the present book) – the happiness and sorrows of their own school days. When the group of dedicated parents assemble together, with the combined experiences of simmering frustration and successful experience of growth, they are enabled, by the guidance and partnership of the research team, to comprehend better the ethics of being taught – how it is better to enable one human being to be taught by another human being. Emphasising the centrality of the ethics of education for parents, I am not to shift the focus away from what parents are usually most concerned about: the quality of education. It is still desirable to examine publicly prescribed aims and contents of education through the lens of parental audit. Parental accountability still works as a part of a managerial social system determining if the aims of education have been attained and the contents of education are delivered. However, seen through the new philosophical light purposed by the present book which prioritises our common humanity – including a humanised (educational) world and a full three-level-sedimentation of human beings – the second order of parental educational reclamation ought to take the comprehensive concern for ethical educating as its chief priority. Most importantly, it is essential for the second-order of parental reclamation of education to perform this task in order for parents to make their valid, unique and hitherto neglected contribution to the enrichment of our knowledge of the ethics of education.7

7 Of course this chapter will be fully relevant to carers occupying formal parental roles, although I speak more specifically to the subject of parents due to the research scope as I mapped out in Chapter 1.

Chapter 9

Mature teachers Teachers’ aesthetic professionalism, practice and policy

In the previous chapter (Chapter 8), when dealing from the parental perspective with the issue of ‘educational maturity’, a combined perspective of educational researcher and research design was applied. In this chapter which is concerned with teachers’ maturity in relation to their educational work, I will still think primarily through the eyes of practising teachers, while an additional policy consideration in the field of teacher education will be integrated into the discussion. Relating to a political viewpoint at this juncture, I assume that teachers’ development of maturity requires structural facilitations; otherwise, the road to becoming a mature teacher is seriously obstructed. Let me start with a long-standing predicament for ideal teacher practices and effective teacher policies. This can be formulated as the tension between the role of teacher as a person and that as a professional. In essence, the third kind of immaturity in contemporary education as I diagnosed it in Chapter 1 is that teachers are afflicted owing to an imbalance between what they know as human beings that they should substantially make better and what they are required to do institutionally to meet imposed professional (procedural) prescriptions. In the modern age, when basic (public) morality comes into focus, teacher professionalism8 has been developed to maintain teachers’ social status, while preserving their private selves in relation to living up to public expectations. This professional model of the teacher, which prizes the liberal pursuit and rational achievement of educational knowledge, is doubtless helpful in both maintaining ethical standards and providing a recognised pedagogy for the ­public – especially when compared with the traditional model, which was often characterised by a fascination of ‘omnipotent’ teachers. However, since knowledge is progressively accumulated and thereby always in short supply, the gaps between knowledge and ethics, knowledge and methods, are still too broad to meet the aforementioned challenge at the private-professional interface of teachers’ lives. Rather than radically giving up the ideal of professionalism, for the development of mature teachers, a strengthened model mutually

8 Referring to the general idea of professionalisation.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-13

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sustaining both facets of the personal and the professional is necessary to facilitate teachers’ educational maturity. To reform such a deficient model of epistemic-oriented professionalism, in order to better suit the real-life profession of the teacher, I argue that Confucius’ aestheticism has a vital role to play. By this I mean, especially, Confucius’ aestheticism as interpreted by Zehou Li, because it offers an illuminating understanding for developing an ‘aesthetic conception’ of that teacher professionalism. Therefore, in the following, I will first reprise Li’s interpretation of Confucius’ aestheticism, and then derive from it an elaborated idea of an aesthetic professionalism aiming at the teacher as a flourishing figure who is cognitively aware, volitionally free and ‘aesthetically willing’ (to which I will return in due course) in the world of education. At the end, with the theoretical elucidation provided, policy implications for teacher education aligned with the formation of a mature teacher (or say, aesthetic teacher professionalism) will be discussed.

Confucius aestheticism through the Marxian-Kantian lens of Li As explored in the previous chapters (3, 4, 5 and 6) of this book, the ideal of aesthetic pleasure as the highest realm of human life is argued by Zehou Li throughout his studies of both ancient Chinese thought (1999e, p. 53, 2008, 2016a) and the Chinese aesthetic tradition (1999a, 2010b). In this context, the usage of ‘pleasure’ is close to Collinson’s (1973, pp. 198–200) explanation that some sort of pleasure or delight is taken to be the essential nature of the aesthetic experience – as either illumination, Enlightenment or fulfilment has been achieved, be it by dint of terror or sorrow, the sublime or the elegant. Furthermore, when Confucius speaks of his joy both of ‘studying and then applying it at the appropriate time’ and of ‘having a friend visiting afar’ (Analects 1.1), or of ‘being driven by such eagerness to teach and learn that . . . he enjoys himself so much that he forgets to worry, and does not even realize that old age is on its way’ (Analects 7.19), these are concrete examples of the aesthetic state of mind (Li, 2008, pp. 29–32, 1985/2019, p. 322). It is concerned with rationalised sensitivities to delight; it is sensuous but beyond the senses. Precisely, it is all those humanised emotions that are anchored within the experience of temporality, where pleasure is concretely but no less spiritually felt. It is therefore clear that Confucius’ conception of aesthetics is in an apparent contrast with the familiar Western notion of ‘aesthetic pleasure’ as the lowest value, following the religious and the ethical (Kierkegaard’s aesthetics, see Patrick, 2002, pp. 45–69),9 while at the same time being more appositely aligned with J.S. Mill’s distinction of ‘higher pleasure’ (Mill, 1863/1906, pp. 11–15).

9 According to the material I have read, I think the difference in order is a matter of different systems of terminology. The two lines of thought are communicable, and this communication might

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However, compared with Mill’s direct affirmation of the higher pleasure inherent in human excellence (1863/1906, p. 12), Confucius’ explication of aesthetic pleasure, interpreted by Li, provides a more intricate understanding in terms of what that higher faculty, in preferring the more desirable pleasure, actually is and how that capacity for nobler feelings becomes possible from the first-person perspective (‘I’). Following Li’s insight into Confucius’ aestheticism, aesthetic pleasure is essentially understood as ‘a state of freedom in everyday life where practical mastery of the outside world [with skills and tools] is in a reciprocal relation with an advance in the pragmatic power of the human personality’ (Li, 1999a, pp. 75–76, 2010b, pp. 47–52). Put succinctly and boldly, it is an aesthetic experience elevated to the point where lawfulness (regularity) and purposiveness are united by humankind, leading to a union between humanity and nature manifest in the established personhood of this worldly existence. What is more, since this kind of pleasure, achieved through the command of material laws and the establishment of personhood is not Heaven-sent, but obtained through human practice, its status as the highest experience is conferred within the temporal frame (a reminder of the Chinese one-world view in Chapter 5 earlier). Thus, the mastery of objective laws of the given world10 and the growth of personality are interconnected, and as a result of this, the aesthetic satisfaction brought about by recognition of the union between the objective and the subjective is deemed to be ‘the highest ideal of human life and the ultimate expression of the human personality’ (Li, 2010b, p. 50). According to Li’s further examination of the Analects (2008, 2010b), Confucius’ aesthetic perspective – the aesthetic state of mind as the highest and the noblest condition – is emphasised, typically in 7.6, 8.8 and 6.20 (with my italics)11: Analects 7.6 Confucius said, ‘set your intention upon the Way, rely on its virtue, lean on humaneness, and wander in the arts.’ 子曰：志於道、據於德、依於仁、游於藝。 Analects 8.8 Confucius remarked, ‘be awakened by poetry (or the songs), be established by ritual, be perfected in music.’ 子曰：興於詩。立於禮。成於樂。 Analects 6.20 Confucius said, ‘to know something is not as good as to esteem it, and to esteem it is not as good as to take joy in it.’ 子曰：知之者不如好之者，好之者不如樂之者。

hopefully expand the capacity of thought to come to terms with Kierkegaard’s religious outlook, which we still lack a language to contemplate. 10 It contains the natural and the social. 11 Also see pp. 107–108 in Chapter 6 of this book earlier, as well as Chapter 3 as a whole for the Chinese cultural promotion of aesthetics.

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Indeed, even within Confucius’ prioritisation of aestheticism, as depicted here, there are resonances with the classical Western sense of the highest good being both the final and the complete end (Beiser, 1998, p. 286). On the one hand, it is admitted that aspects of the Way, virtue and humaneness are indispensable to the ‘wandering’ in the arts, which represents the cultural and technical civilisation of that time; similarly, initiation into poetry and ritual are necessary to being ‘completed’ in ‘music’.12 On the other, it is obvious that the aesthetic is achieved by finally encompassing the various values that precede it. Moreover, the subtle superiority of aesthetic pleasure is evident enough in the last verse, from which we can draw the formula: Knowing ＜ Esteeming (Loving) ＜ Willing. To distinguish knowing, loving and willing from each other, it is not difficult to recall the famous Kantian divisions of human thinking into three autonomous fields – epistemology, ethics and aesthetics – that in the light of Weber also constitute ‘modernity’ (Habermas, 1983, p.  9). But rather than delving into the historical differences and similarities between the two (e.g., while Kant theorises the aesthetic bridges the epistemic and the ethics, Confucius conceives the aesthetic as above the rest), Li interprets these three vital elements from a tool-making and tool-using oriented evolutionary perspective, drawing out accounts of humane capabilities and humane emotions (1999d, 2010b, pp. 49–50, 2016a, p. 579). Put another way, Li recasts Kant’s theory of the three major mental faculties with Marx’s sense of practice, centring on material and historical conditions (1999d, p.  31, note 4, 1999f), and highlighting the perspective of ‘sedimentation’ within this (see Leitch  & Cain, 2010, pp.  1744–1747). Briefly, from Li’s viewpoint, ‘operative rationales’ in the millions of years of human practice have been internalised as rationality, constituting one of the unique humane capabilities (that is, the intellect). For example, actual practical operations, such as counting, relating and ordering, performed regularly by primitive people in maintaining their lives, gradually develop into mathematical abstractions: natural numbers, plus and minus calculus (Lynch, 2016, p. 707). Meanwhile, with ubiquitous social forces, another part of ‘operative rationales’ (viz. rational-ethical social commands) has also been internalised into the form of morality as expressed in the will and the associated action – which together indicate another distinctive human capability (wherein its boundary with emotion starts to blur). Echoing Confucius, the highest level of humane maturity is achieved in the aesthetic, in which rationality encompassing the intellectual and the moral dissolves into sensitivity and sensibility. Therefore, aesthetic willingness is not only a pure humane capability but a superior one that transcends cognition and volition, moving into sensuous freedom (Li, 2010b, p. 50). In actual fact, by promoting an aesthetic state of mind, what Confucius pursues is the state of governing one’s nature – be it the inner (e.g., shaping desires) or the outer (e.g., transforming the natural or social environment). But the

12 For the ‘metaphorical use’, see p. 107 of this book.

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Figure 9.1  Confucius Aestheticism Through Zehou Li’s Interpretation

end in view is not a God-like person who is both omniscient and omnipotent. Instead, in accordance with Confucius’ description of his own arrival at aesthetic freedom/pleasure, it is the condition where one is ‘following the desires of the heart without overstepping the bounds of right’ (Analects 2.4). That is, as Li writes (2010b, p.  48), ‘the result of a lifetime of self-cultivation is the harmony, conformity, and unity of subjective goals with objective principles’. In a nutshell, this aesthetic state of mind is natural but mature, is sensuous but rationally perpetuated, and is socialised but not restrained. (Also see the metaphor of driver’s freedom for further explanations in the preceding Chapter 5.) To recapitulate, the aesthetic state of mind, prioritised as the highest and the noblest by Confucius in the light of Li’s analysis, is one where the human personality (personhood) is not only conscious and volitional, but aesthetically willing: it is accumulatively achieved, in the process of mastering arts and crafts with the ‘pleasure of freedom’ attained. Put differently, this aesthetic pleasure/ liberty is not only supplementary to knowledge and skill in one’s field, supportive of love and the commitment to the work, but it also constitutes the completion both of what is known and esteemed. As a visual summary, see Figure 9.1.

Teacher aesthetic professionalism Addressing the epistemic inadequacy inherent in the existing teacher professional model, which is akin to that of lawyers and doctors, David Carr, drawing upon Aristotelian phronesis (2003, pp. 43–47), has criticised its distinctly

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impersonal character emphasised at the expense of the right kind of affective dimension. However, in comparison with Carr’s defence of the teaching profession as essentially a form of moral inquiry (2000/2004, p. 102), the aesthetic professionalism inspired by Confucius would argue for the greater role that the technical dimension can play, not least in relation to the establishment of personhood. Simultaneously, fewer dichotomies are present in the whole theoretical argumentation,13 while the teacher as a living human being is more asserted in such an aesthetic project. Basically, this ‘aesthetic professionalism’ is then a tripartite association of educational knowledge, ethics and aesthetics. As discussed in the previous section, the aesthetic is, on the one hand, coworking with cognition and volition; on the other, it is mediating the technical and the ethical towards a state of liberty indicated by the person’s inner pleasure. Hence, with an explicit recognition of the professional model’s existing emphases on knowledge, skill and commitment, the teacher in the aesthetic conception of professionalism is still primarily cultivated by a repertoire of theoretically grounded expertise and related practical mastery (see Hirst, 1990, p. 85). In order to understand the epistemic and technical factors which underpin an aesthetic state in education, it is useful to adopt the understanding of educational theory in the two senses distinguished by R.F. Dearden: (1) the technical – a set of received prescriptions for the educational practice, and (2) the theoretical – a species of theorising on the educational practice (1986, pp. 81–82). Overall, it is certain that Hirst’s (1990) re-conception of the t­heory-practice relationship in teacher training fits well into this model of aesthetic professionalism inspired by the Confucius and Li’s line of thought, since both technically and morally successful educational practices are ‘well-considered’. Nonetheless, insistence on the intellectual reflection on practical experience and principles should not and cannot exclude the concern for the formation of qualified and sensitive character, as emphatically contended by Carr (2000/2004, pp.  73–74). In short, as clarified at the very beginning of this chapter, method and ethics are indeed presupposed in many forms of intelligent inquiry, but the gap between knowledge and method/ethics is not necessarily narrowed down as a result of growing rational understanding. On the other hand, to rectify this insufficiency, the existing discourse of qualitative contributions to character formation is not very operational for teachers in practice. It is therefore important to highlight within this aesthetic model an associated concept – the teachers’ ‘sensory organ’ of aesthetic feeling and its related contribution to personhood. Specific implications of dissolving rationality into sensibility and the accompanying unity of thinking and action, as featured earlier in Confucius’ aestheticism, are worth elaborating on within more situated educational contexts. Talk of the ‘aesthetic sensory organs’ is certainly not limited to natural sense organs such as the nose or the skin. It is more directly concerned with ‘organs’

13 No sense of advantage or disadvantage is implied.

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(or what sustains inner states) of intention, inspiration, affinity and the like, capable of dissolving rationality into sensibility. Accordingly, especially aesthetic pleasure is not merely pleasure of eyes and ears, neither solely of heart and mind, but essentially pleasure of will and soul (Li, 1999b, p.  141). The aesthetic sensory organs, such as a musical ear and an eye for beauty, and what transforms sexual passion into love, meal for subsistence into dining, can be further understood through Li’s ideas of humanised nature, supra-biological limbs/organs and super-biological psychology (Li, 1999b, p. 135; Lynch, 2016, pp. 709, 714). Here the ‘aesthetic sensory organs’ terminology, or say the aesthetic faculty, is adopted to refer to this unique human supra-biological ability to blend rationality and sensuality (also see Li’s concept of ‘new sensitivity’, on p. 87, or of ‘humanised emotion’ on p. 96, of this book). In addition, the aesthetic faculty is also manifested in justifications of aesthetic willingness. Regarding an aesthetic justification of willingness in the teaching profession, it is about proficiency in posing and answering such questions as ‘what is my interest, as a teacher?’, ‘what I  am willing to do, as a teacher?’, and ‘will I have regrets regarding my career as a teacher?’ (see earlier p. 63ff for the analysis of an aesthetic type of moral reasoning in Chapter 4). In this process of aesthetic justification, various psychological and material weightings will be invoked. Thus, the conflict between the teacher as a person and as a professional – and within the realm of the profession the notorious gap between theory and practice – will be reframed under the index of ‘aesthetic willingness’, diffusing from rationality into sensitivity, which ultimately leads to a higher level of sensibility.14 That is, besides knowing what they ‘must’ (either in a scientific or technical sense) and ‘ought to’ do (in an ethical or normative frame), as informed by contributing studies on education, teachers are characterised in this understanding by their aesthetic sensibility to articulate what they themselves are inclined towards (expressing above all what could/might be done through the aesthetic lens, see pp. 65–69 earlier). On the other hand, the teacher’s personhood cannot be counted as fully completed without actions corresponding to the aesthetic justification. Generally, only by actualising aesthetic thinking can the aesthetic pleasure which underpins the union of lawfulness (regularity) and purposiveness in education or in a wider field be realised, concomitantly contributing to the personhood of the teacher. On the basis of Li’s recognition of the practice of using tools in bringing about physiological and psychological changes in the evolutionary formation of humankind (Li, 1999f, 1999d; also see Lynch, 2016, p. 710), it can be seen that the importance of technical innovation, and the resultant actions that add to personhood, is rooted in a prior capacity for transforming

14 The direction of dissolving from rationality to emotionality, rather than vice versa, is vital in Zehou Li’s basic theory of emotion as substance (see D’Ambrosio et  al., 2016, p.  1061; Li et  al., 2016, pp. 1093–1094; for further explanations, see p. 98 in Chapter 6 of this book).

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Figure 9.2  Teacher Aesthetic Professionalism

limbs at the animal level into supra-biological limbs which can both manufacture and manipulate further, additional ‘tools’. That is, when guided by the light of such an actualised harmony between purposes and principles, aesthetic pleasure enriches one’s personhood in a freedom close to Confucius’ sense of settling oneself well by fulfilling personal desires without transgressing objective requirements. Hence, teachers capable of aesthetic justification earn the aesthetic achievement through their own context-sensitive judgment and action, which distinctly differs from a robotic calculation directed by technically collected statistics and evidence, or from following instructions just set by a superior authority. This sort of aesthetic attainment earned by the individual teacher is, of course, necessarily limited, temporary and fragile, but it can be sufficiently rewarding for the accumulative consolidation of his or her own personhood in the temporal world. Taken together, teacher aesthetic professionalism is advanced by mediating between knowledge and methods, knowledge and ethics, with the teacher as a whole figure in mind who can not only grasp theory but can fulfil his/her personality by realising aesthetic justifications in the educational work. Briefly put, the aesthetic model is a tripartite association of educational knowledge, ethics and aesthetics, consisting of an aesthetic justification of willingness and the

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corresponding action. It is about embracing the aesthetic state of mind in education, which culminates in aesthetic pleasure/liberty where the objective and the subjective are one. It could be said that ‘aesthetic professionalism’ is a shift from the logic of ‘must’ and of ‘should’ to that of ‘might/could’ in conducting education. It is, indeed, a turning towards the aesthetic without overturning the epistemic and the ethical. For a concise reading, see Figure 9.2.

Policy implications for teacher education: directing at the aesthetic personhood of the teacher Concern for the fulfilments of ‘the aesthetic’ which dwell in educational practice necessarily leads us to think about what implications at policy level can be drawn out to aid such an aesthetic enterprise – the teacher to be a cognitively aware, volitionally free figure capable of aesthetic justifications (e.g., competent in the art of being less regretful) – and thereby a projection that ‘the less regretful’ in the teacher’s career equals a service to the greater good in public educational provision. Confucius’ aestheticism, in Li’s interpretation, embraces ‘aesthetic pleasure as the highest ideal’, pivoting around (1) the aesthetic justification manifest in the diffusion of rationality into sensibility, and (2) the aesthetic actualisation via the pragmatic mastery that unites lawfulness (regularity) and purposiveness – and of which the supreme aim is the aesthetic growth of personhood. So implications for an aesthetic outline of teacher education might then be conceived as follows. First of all, we need to address the teacher as a person at work possessing an aesthetic faculty capable of dissolving rationality into sensibility, of which ‘a deep immersion in educational-humanistic scholarship such as philosophy, history of education, studies of contemporary cultures, and the like’ (Hansen & Zhang, 2017, p. 48) is a sine qua non. Returning to the theoretical account of Confucius’ aestheticism – ‘Knowing ＜ Esteeming (Loving) ＜ Willing’, or – in Li’s terms – the aesthetic is the highest level of human maturity, in which an immense humanistic quality is undoubtedly assumed. Hence, without a sufficient humanistic depth, the aesthetic sensory ‘organs’ diffusing from rationality to sensibility cannot be cultivated; without immersion in educationally related advanced studies, the teacher’s educational-aesthetic capacity cannot be developed. This scholarship-oriented teacher education concept definitely reminds us of the ‘foundations approach’ to teacher education that was put forward in the 1930s-'50s in the USA (Borrowman, 1956, pp. 216–222; Tozer, 2011, pp. 1–2), or ‘contributing disciplines for education’ later developed by analytic philosophers of education in the UK (Peters, 1977, p. 188; Hirst, 1990, pp. 80–82). Certainly, it also evokes the important and more recent trend of the cultivation of practical wisdom (Dunne, 1997; Carr, 2000/2004). However, ‘aesthetic teacher education’ is distinct even from these, for the immediate aim of educational theory in teacher education is neither for the increase of knowledge and understanding, nor for the moral sensibility within the educational

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practice, but is primarily the growth of the aesthetic personhood of the figure who is taking the role of the teacher. Although cognitive value and moral wisdom are invaluable, the realisation of them cannot be detached from the whole figure; thereby being constitutive of the aesthetic completion of the teacher’s personhood is most crucial. In essence, the prime concern of the growth of the teacher’s personhood echoes the time-honoured spirit of ancient ‘teachers’: learn for oneself (古之学者为己). Inseparable from this, the immediate aim of the educational-scholarship immersion is to ‘aestheticise’ the teacher’s existing rationality and emotionality. As a second key point, Confucius’ conception of aesthetic pleasure in uniting lawfulness (regularity) and purposiveness is presupposed in a special understanding of the technical in relation to the establishment of personhood. Hence, it then becomes understandable that the ‘technical’ input will play an increased role in aesthetic teacher education. By this I  first mean there is entailed a broader conception of the technical: it now includes an understanding of scientific technologies in the form of most effective means to particular ends, but it is not limited to this. It is also concerned with an element that can be made one’s own and thus an extension of human power itself (let us say the second sense of the technical). Reverting to a previous point in Li’s recognition of tool using/making in humankind’s evolution (p. 73 and pp. 85–86 in Chapter 5 earlier), this broad understanding of the technical in human becoming is explicit in the new aesthetic regime. It is important to remember that the aesthetic achievement in Confucius’ eyes is related to a control of one’s nature, be it the inner natural impulses or the outer natural/ social environment. Hence, basic technical command in education, such as pedagogical skills and subject-matter instruction, is certainly integral; another sense of the technical contribution to the aesthetic personhood at a level to unite the objective and the subjective is also prominent. In short, the technical aspects as conceived earlier are indispensable to teachers’ successful justification and actualisation of aesthetic willingness – to realise what I am willing to do, as a teacher, so that I can be less regretful or even not regretful at all when later panoramically reviewing my life. Explicitly, a teacher who is aesthetically educated is not one with a whole heart but only a half brain and no hands-on; conversely, s/he is not only sensibly thinking and questioning, creatively wondering and inquiring, but effectively and competently acting: for instance, fulfilling the richest joy even when confronting the most pressing difficulties in their work. Further to consider the technical input, it is, on the one hand, admitted that there is still a lot of work to do to advance the repertoire of useful educational knowledge and skills, since we have little understanding of what e.g., Dewey (1904, p. 21) recapitulates as the most effective theory in education: to see and influence the inner mental movement of the student. Even within the Confucian heritage, tenable principles as summarised in Xueji (see Xu & McEwan, 2016, e.g., Text 12, 19), which are not very much about scientific causality but about holistic unity (or, say, our second sense of the technical), await to be

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made more intelligible to wider audiences. On the other hand, it is once again worth emphasising that the technical aspect of aesthetic teacher education is not constrained to a limited sense of technology and a narrowed scope of ‘what works’. According to Biesta’s (2007, pp. 16–18) persuasive clarification of practical epistemology within the teaching profession, it is, indeed, very important to help teachers gain a critical perspective on what research is and what it can do and, just as importantly, what it is not and cannot do. More significantly, while it is defensible to expect that evidence of ‘what works’ and of teachers’ wisdom are effectively applied to education, what is explicit in the aesthetic approach is that, via effective teaching practice, the orientation primarily is to the teacher’s aesthetic personhood – first in the cultivation of initiative and then to extend this to solving further problems. In all, as immersion in scholarship adds to the teacher’s aesthetic personhood, via the cultivation of the aesthetic faculty blending rationality into sensibility, the vital technical aspects of teaching mastery, in the Confucian aesthetic logic of teacher education, are without exception equally constitutive of the cultivation of the personhood. Besides the previous concrete implications called for at the policy level – scholarship-immersion and technical-mastery – in teacher education, three further theoretical clarifications might be helpful to the formulation of policy. First, there is an implied shift throughout this argument from the practical epistemology which has been the ideal epistemic frame within Western philosophy of professionalism (Biesta, 2007, p.  11) to the aesthetic ontology that I  have been discussing throughout this inquiry. This follows because, within the aesthetic ontology, not only are the educational values of the means/instruments naturally considered, but the participation of ‘the subject’ in situated judgments is explicitly grounded. Most significantly, owing to a deep concern for the establishment of personhood and the accompanying attainment of ‘being less regretful’, understanding of internally related means-ends, which depends on wider social and democratic discussions set out in practical epistemology (Biesta, 2007, p. 10), are ontologically activated on the part of the teacher. That is, the scientific and normative discussions of education do not disappear but make themselves more accessible to teachers at work, equating to a shift from the logic of ‘must’ and of ‘should’ to that of ‘could/might’ in conducting education. The second clarification for policy consideration is seen through the Confucian lens of the ‘reversed’ conception of the teacher. That is, the privileged assumption which sees the teacher as a full member of homo sapiens with unique capabilities to teach is revised by the Confucian view that the teacher’s ‘becoming a human being’ is in a ceaseless process and is related to their aesthetic pleasure in the teaching profession itself. As the immediate object is to build up the personhood embodied in the role of teacher, the prevailing logic of practice is reversed as follows: from ‘in order to do educating well, I should be critical and percipient and thus immerse myself into theoretical sophistication and practical mastery’, to ‘in order to establish my personhood through taking the role of the teacher (as I choose this profession), I should educate well, and be educated well, through both intellectual and practical immersion’.

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The third clarification is related to the treatment of the ‘neutral teacher’. In line with the theory of virtue ethics, the teacher of practical wisdom is supposed to exemplify the virtues and values recognised in their own person (Carr, 2003, p. 44). Thus the model of phronesis seemingly overlaps with the emphasis on aesthetic personhood. But in reality the aesthetic model makes an advance by tackling the issue of teacher neutrality. In an increasingly liberal and democratic society, actively promoted all over the world, it is unavoidable and indeed essential to be serious about the liberal ideal that ‘no-one is entitled to impose his or her own values on other people’, as well as the question of ‘legitimate moral plurality’. In the aesthetic approach, the aesthetic personhood exemplifying private morality, which is ultimately a matter of personal moral choice (see Li’s theoretical account in p. 61 earlier), is thus not about imposing a particular fixed set of cultural values on others. If the teacher’s poetic and diversified establishment of his/her own personhood, as an objective existence, is to be accused of imposing values, is it reasonable to blame other educational objects such as books or blackboards for unduly influencing the younger generation? Additionally in order to establish the teacher’s personhood, the teacher, to be honest, should exemplify effortlessly in front of the student the public morality such as respect for persons, equality and justice.15 Obviously, complementary points of public and private morality assumed in the teacher-aesthetics respond to the perplexing issue of teacher neutrality with a clear-cut stance. All in all, the value of knowledge and technical expertise, and the emphasis on moral commitment as implied in the prevailing models of teacher professionalism have not been denied in this argument, but rather affirmed by a turning toward an aesthetic principle where teachers’ training is first and foremost for the determination of their personhoods. This personhood is not merely cognitive, or moral, but is a ‘diffused rationality’ – incorporating the intellectual and the moral – into sensuous freedom, and thus distinctly aesthetic. And by dint of this refined sensitivity to difference and nuance, the personhood of all is seen to be essentially unique while instancing what the aesthetic actually means. In one word, all aspects of teacher education are being questioned in relation to their contribution to the establishment of the teacher’s personhood, which is assumed both as a vital good for the teacher and as beneficial to the public as a whole. Admittedly, at the present time, we do not yet seem to possess a natural language for depicting the exact mechanisms by which the aesthetic power is revealed; but it remains truly worthwhile to aim at an aestheticism in which the teacher is mediating between cognition and volition, the ‘scientific-technical’ and the ethical, so that the tension between the teacher as a person and as a professional – and within the profession the predicament of the ideal teachers and their effective practice – will be better resolved in the affirmation of a tripartite reimagining of knowledge, ethics and aesthetics.

15 See earlier p. 60 of this book for Li’s thought of public morality. For justifications of these various kinds of public morality in an educational context, see Peters (1966).

Conclusion

Drawing upon aesthetics which I have elaborated through Li’s lens, I have been developing an aesthetics-education approach to promote educational maturity. Its present form comprises reconsiderations of the prevailing practice of student evaluation and the dominant policy ideology of teacher education – accompanied by a new proposal regarding the idea of parent-oriented collaborative research. These suggestions on the organisation of the transformations for students, parents and teachers are not directed at the individual level. Although my ­aesthetics-education approach aims to develop mature educational understanding that is held on the part of students, parents and teachers, what I suggest for individuals tends to be primarily thought-provoking. Just as I  recognised in Chapter 1, it is not the individuals’ fault of being ‘immature’; rather, they are simply caught in a systematic and structured immaturity. Thus, my aestheticseducation approach to maturity on the individual level encourages individuals to take in anything that they think is useful for them. Furthermore, to develop an approach to promote maturity already inextricably bears a footprint of paternalism – with a stereotype that I ‘know’ maturity and I know ‘the best’, I therefore avoid offering specific suggestions to individuals. However, I  do have specific ideas and principles to promote educational maturity across system levels in relation to students, parents and teachers. These are: the institutional design of students’ educational credit supplements; the research project of the second order reclamation of education by parents; and the alternative aesthetics-based policy ideology for teacher education. These initiatives require educational leadership to marshal forces and resources in order to enact the principles or to test the ideas. Such future work to be undertaken ranges from educational experiments, cross-cultural research (both collaborative and empirical) within educational backgrounds, to further philosophical inquiry. In detail, educational experiments centred on student evaluation practice and educational admission policy can be carried out to explore the accommodation of students’ exercises of maturity, through which they add deeper explanations in relation to the test result received (and in a not distant future, DOI: 10.4324/9781003301462-14

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to the educational big data collected around his/her study journey). In terms of cross-cultural educational research, a collaborative research between parents and researchers can explore if there are any deeper cultural differences between Western parents and Chinese parents when a Western-styled aesthetic moral reasoning in relation to the maxim of self-consistency applies. In the same sense of transcultural exploration, an empirical research into ‘teachers’ regrets’ – inquiring into a teacher’s lifelong career, if any; what constitutes their regrets and why – can not only indirectly inform how the teacher can have the aesthetic completion within their educational practice, but also directly investigate differences of regrets, if any, between teachers in Eastern cultures and teachers in the West. In the philosophical aspect associated with comparative perspectives, it would be of value further to compare and contrast varied modern ideas of subjectification. There are other contemporary visions rooted in different cultures even within Europe: such as the revised interest in the German concept of ‘bildung’, which addresses relationships among culture, society and individuals, as well as the late Foucault’s ‘ethical self ’, which also discusses self-government in relation to oneself, others and environment (Luxon, 2008, p. 384). It will strengthen the understanding of the modern self to compare these, alongside Zehou Li’s idea of subjectality (see Chapter 5 of this book). In addition, it is also worthwhile to put this piece of work on educational maturity in dialogue with conceptions of Mündigkeit and Eriziehung in the Continental tradition (in particular in the German tradition of educational studies). By virtue of the defence of a third way of doing philosophy of education, the structure of this book is on the one hand more sophisticated; on the other hand, it also becomes more complicated. Adopting the first-singular-person perspectives of students, parents and teachers in order to tackle a complex issue of maturity, the author even ‘takes risk’ to find a way out of dilemmas through reforms at various system levels. What is now present before the reader is indeed ‘a grand narrative’. However, fortunately, each chapter of this book can be read separately while combining them together still constitutes a wellorganised whole. Also as a result of the third way, it structurally focuses on the educational application of Li’s thought while postponing a fuller assessment of Li’s more detailed philosophical work as well as an additional critical evaluation of Li’s philosophy. In particular, it tends to make critiques of the foundational philosophy not a necessary part of the educational study while it must be acknowledged that reasonable criticisms facilitate a good command of the contributing philosophy. For this technical limitation exists in the basic appreciation of Zehou Li’s philosophy, I suggest to readers to consult works that critically evaluate Li’s philosophy such as X.B., Liu, 1994; Lambert, 2018, p. 102; L. Chen, 2019, p. 12; Zhang, 2019, pp. 184–188. In this whole course of study, I frequently deal with the issue of translation and text interpretation. I work primarily with the existing and published English translations in order to comply with the common practice. I either cite these

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directly when I have no problem with them or choose one version that I think works ‘better’. In rare circumstances when the English translation of the Chinese text (for example Li, 2016a) was then not yet available, I tend to quote the idea with my occasional rephrasing into English as a bilingual researcher myself. When I think a particular version of translation is not enough for full justice to the original text or for the context I am located in, I try to work between translations of the texts and the originals. In this case, I always work between translations into English and originals either in traditional or modern Chinese. As a result, I either combine several existing versions of translations or make adaptations, with a footnote signalling such as ‘my adapted translation’. Admittedly, in this process of combinations and adaptations, I interpret the text (for example Confucian Analects 16.4) in a way that is ‘creative’ rather than ‘literal’. I appreciate the meticulous approach of translation and would like to encourage myself as much as I can to attend to the historical subtleties of the original text; however, to serve the philosophical purpose of my current inquiry, my interpretation often inclines towards a more modern and acceptable hermeneutics. In addition, when I come across texts which I cannot access directly, such as the case of German texts, I explore further, if possible, by comparing different but respected translations into English, to serve the purpose of double-checking. For example, I take two versions of translations of the German text ‘On Grace and Dignity’ by Schiller (1793/1902, 1793/2005) into consideration. The maxim used for selecting texts in the inquiry certainly centres upon the theme of maturity, on Chinese aesthetics in a cultural sense, on a transcultural and comparative perspective and also on a pursuit of educational theory. Basically, I adopt a ‘snowballing’ approach to literature selection in order to deepen and widen my contemplation of the topic. For example, when I study Kant’s 1784 journal article ‘What is Enlightenment?’, I also benefit from studying Focault’s (1986, 2010, pp.  1–40) reading of this same paper by Kant. On another occasion to study philosopher Zehou Li’s thought, the snowballing approach has two directions. One is towards comparing and contrasting Li’s ideas with similar ideas visible in the Western scholarship (such as connecting Li’s theory of two moralities with, or distinguishing it from, that of Downie & Elizabeth, 1969 and of Hampshire, 1978). The other is towards untangling the comparative discourse that is already embodied in Li’s philosophy. In this direction of study, for instance, I opt for investigating Schiller’s ‘On Grace and Dignity’ (1793/1902, 1793/2005). Since Schiller’s aesthetic thought was initially imported into China, Li’s understanding of aesthetics is inextricably influenced by Schillerian aesthetics, just as Kantian aesthetics is also. It is indeed an exciting journey to intensively and systematically read materials structured around a cluster of intellectual interests that is both philosophically and educationally engaging. This built-up and theme-oriented snowballing approach to literature study also brings about surprises from time to time, especially when it leads to expanding the scope of thought vitally, as well as to untangling the nets of thought with some degree of success.

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Overall, what has been presented is a project to explore maturity in a c­ ontemporary educational sense through Li’s brand of ‘Chinese aesthetics’ as an iterative cross-cultural philosophical result. It reflects that the ‘universality/effectiveness’ of Li’s aesthetic philosophy that communicates cultural assets between modern West and traditional China does not lie in its fixed form to impose on every situation, but in its flexible adjustment attending to specific cases as well as in its inclusive spirit that illuminates rather than informs. It is Li’s balanced framework that is both traceable to its origin without reservation (as shown in Chapter 7) and adaptable to different contexts with openness (as parts of Chapter  8 showed) that is the quintessence of his theoretical advancement. Such seemingly indirect applications of Li’s theory, which are more meaningful when associated with his larger framework than isolated from it, also by themselves comply with the traditional Chinese style of theorising. Lastly, a philosophically direct application of Li’s theory can also be fully seen in Chapter 9 of the aesthetic teacher professionalism that considers teachers’ maturity in relation to their educational work.

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Index

accountability and performativity 9–10, 16, 18 accumulated-empirical quality 73, 89, 91; see also sedimentation aesthetic attitude 43, 48, 96, 67; see also emotional-cosmology aesthetic education 25–27, 33, 36, 39, 41, 48–49; see also emotional education aesthetic education as a substitute for religion 35–44; see also slogan analysis aesthetic experience 14, 26–27, 31n2, 47, 49, 61, 90, 96, 99, 110, 133, 151, 152 aesthetic moral reasoning: Confucian maxim of least regrets 43n13, 63–68; Western-styled aesthetic moral reasoning 141, 145, 163; see also maxim of self-consistency; optimism aesthetic order 44–45, 49; see also harmony; Zhou Li aesthetic pleasure 79, 98, 100, 155; classical aesthetic autonomy 81, 91–94; the co-working of the sensuous -human psyche with cognition and volition – as well as the mediating of the technical and the ethical 99, 155, 154; see also driver’s freedom; naturalisation of the human; optimism; sensuous freedom aesthetics: cultural aesthetics 2, 52, 69, 95 (see also enthusiasm for aesthetics); typical Western aesthetics 26, 95 aesthetics as a first philosophy 27, 33, 42, 47–48, 49–51; aesthetics as the highest 81, 85–86, 91, 96, 107–108, 151–153, 158; see also aesthetic education as a substitute for religion; aesthetic pleasure; aesthetic state of mind; beyond ethics aesthetic secularisation 46, 47, 104, 108

aesthetics-education approach 4, 25, 27–28, 34, 42, 47, 50, 162; see also philosophy of education aesthetic sensory organs 155–156, 157; see also aesthetic willingness; rationality dissolved into emotionality; supra-biological beings aesthetic state of mind 61, 79, 99, 107, 151–154, 158; see also aesthetic experience; least regrets; rationality dissolved into emotionality; religious experience aesthetic willingness 65, 67, 68, 153, 156; see also aesthetic moral reasoning agency 17, 21, 23, 80, 83; see also autonomy Ames, R. 42, 43, 52, 67, 73, 76, 109 Analects 56n4, 77n10, 103, 107–108, 128, 151–152, 164; Analects 2.4 61, 66, 68n12, 79, 112, 154; Analects 17.21 63–64 analogy 98, 122 animal impulses: mastery of 66, 71, 74, 79, 81, 84, 153, 159; vs. mechanical automaticity 13, 51, 43, 54–55, 65; see also Confucius’ aestheticism Anthropo-Historical Ontology 88–89, 98, 116, 84, 102, 114; Confucian-Marxist lens 111–113, 104, 115, 60n7; materialistsocialist 93; see also Marx, K., humanisation of nature; origin; priority; tool ontology Archambault, R. 15n8 Ardent, H. 46n16 autonomy 2, 11, 15, 24–25, 47, 54–55, 60, 66, 75, 87, 111, 123–124, 127–129; cultivation of autonomy 78, 87; a relation of autonomy to self 8n2, 10, 23; see also aesthetic pleasure, classical aesthetic autonomy

178 Index bamboo manuscripts of Guodian 56 Barrow, R. 7 Beardsley, M.C. 25–27, 48 beauty 24, 31n2, 33, 39, 48, 50, 64n10, 81, 91n20, 95, 100, 156 beginning of education 92, 116 benevolence 仁 106–107, 113, 23 beyond ethics 27, 85, 93, 99, 107–108, 153, 155–158; see also aesthetic pleasure beyond the senses 64, 98, 151; see also aesthetic moral reasoning; humanised emotion Biesta, G. 16, 125n3, 160 Book of Change 103, 105 Broudy, H.S. 27 Cai, Yuanpei 蔡元培 33–42, 47–50, 95 Carleo, R.A., III 43, 54n2, 59 Carr, D. 68, 75–76, 90, 154–155, 158, 161 Chen, Duxiu 陈独秀 37n9 Chen, Laien, 52, 163 Chinese aesthetics 12n6, 25, 27, 32n3, 45, 48, 50, 72, 101, 164, 165; aesthetic metaphysics 47–50, 96, 108; see also aesthetics as a first philosophy; QingOntology; rationality dissolved into emotionality Chong, Wei Lien 庄爱莲I 44, 106n10, 113n16 circumstantial accomplishment 59, 67, 61; particulars 18, 65–66, 97, 92; see also least regrets cognitive feeling 12, 14n7, 70–71, 149 communitarianism 102, 115, 123 comparative perspective: aesthetics from West to East 50, 95; Confucius-KantMarx 91, 102, 108–113, 116–117, 55; Confucius vs. Schiller 64, 91n20 (see also aesthetic pleasure, classic aesthetic autonomy); Kant and Schiller 55n3; leading reins vs. travel tools 147–148; Martha Nussbaum vs. Zehou Li 70–71; zhuti and zhuguan 82–83 Confucian school 76, 82, 85 Confucius 41, 56, 61, 65, 66, 75, 102, 106, 109, 113, 116, 128–129, 154–158; see also Analects; comparative perspective; Confucius’ aestheticism Confucius’ aestheticism 28, 40, 42–47, 50, 151–154, 154; see also Chinese aesthetics contextualisation 84n17, 155–158, 3, 20; see also tradition of educational studies

corroboration 26, 70–71 cosmology 58, 103; see also emotional-cosmology cultural identity 24, 32, 47, 51, 70, 77, 109 cultural principles 41, 99, 103–105, 108; see also cultural identity cultural-psychological formation 84, 86–89, 92, 102–103, 109, 112, 114 Cultural Revolution 32n3, 47, 60n7, 100 D’Ambrosio, P.J. 43, 61–63, 78, 87, 116, 157n7 Dao 56, 75n6, 80, 103, 107, 112; see also Daoism Daoism 37, 44, 45, 101, 103, 104, 108 dawn of Chinese civilisation 49, 76, 109, 115 Dearden, R.F. 155 Declaration of Independence 76 democracy 37n9, 39, 41, 59, 101n6, 124n2, 161; democratic discussion 126, 148–149, 160; democratic practice 99, 129, 140 Dewey, J. 3, 35, 105n9, 159 discipline 2, 26, 114, 138, 158; multidisciplinary 113–114, 116 Downie, R.S. and Elizabeth, T. 58–62, 164 driver’s freedom 73, 75, 81–82, 91–94, 96, 98, 112, 139, 154 Du 44n14, 61–63, 112; see also regulative and properly constitutive function ease 63–64, 68, 138 educational maturity 11–15; aesthetic nature of student maturity 131–134; student maturity 121–127; see also initiative; parental reclamation of education; teacher aesthetic professionalism educational professionals 20, 146; professionalism 147, 150–151, 160; see also teacher aesthetic professionalism educational sciences 20; see also tradition of educational studies educational subjectivity 17–19, 20–21 Education as Initiation 15, 20 educationists 20; see also educational professionals egotism 82, 115–116 Ehrenspeck, Y. 27 Eisner, E.W. 26, 129 emotional-cosmology 46n16, 67, 69, 96; culture of pleasure 106–108; see also least regrets; one-world view

Index 179 emotional education 36, 97 emotional utopia 94 emotio-rational structure 74, 78, 86, 87, 88, 99, 100; Confucius’ emotio-rational structure 109, 56; see also Qing-Ontology; rationality dissolved into emotionality Enlightenment 1–2, 7–8, 24–25, 56n4, 58, 60, 62, 69, 76, 77, 78, 81, 101, 109, 124, 126–127, 139, 142; see also autonomy; What Is Enlightenment enthusiasm for aesthetics 32, 34, 48, 95 epitome 33, 103 evaluation 22, 34, 125, 129–133, 162 ever-renewing character 14n7, 88, 91, 114, 133 evolution 73–74, 84, 112, 159; cultural evolution 109n13, 114; see also sedimentation extrinsic criteria 8–9, 10, 11, 16–19, 23–24

intrinsic value 8n3, 63–68, 146–147, 156; interests 8n4, 23, 46, 126, 136 iterative framework 2, 28, 95, 90; see also lifespan of three three-decade stages

Foucault, M. 8, 10, 13, 45, 101, 124

layered self 90–91, 93, 139–140 least regrets: aesthetic-unregretful willingness 97; least regretful state of mind 63–68, 113; see also aesthetic moral reasoning liberalism 52, 59, 62–63, 102, 115–116, 129n6 licensed freedom 81 lifespan of three three-decade stages see three levels of sedimentation Liu, Tiefang 刘铁芳 27 Liu, Yuedi 刘悦笛 44, 55–56, 76, 104 living Confucian mentality 102–103, 108, 113 logic of could (might) do 65–66, 68, 156, 157; see also aesthetic moral reasoning; intrinsic value logic of should do 8n3, 63, 65, 128, 157; see also two kinds of moral reasoning

generalising 9, 18, 26, 70, 130, 146 Habermas, J. and Weber, M. 36, 153 Hadley, A.T. 58–59 Hampshire, S. 51, 58–59, 61, 66, 68, 164 Hardie, C.D. 34 harmony 43n12, 44n14, 51, 104, 67, 80, 62, 56, 67, 78n11, 79, 154, 157, 63n8, 64, 74n5, 81, 110; see also comparative perspective, Confucius vs. Schiller Higgins, C. 24, 26, 95 highest good 115, 153 hindsight 41, 55, 65, 100, 124 Hirst, P.H. 155, 158 historical rationality 105; see also social rationality human future 37, 102 humanised emotion 14n7, 68, 70–71, 96–97, 100, 104, 151, 156; see also cognitive feeling; Marx, K.; new sensitivity(ies); Qing Hu Shih 胡适 35–36, 37n9, 39, 41 Imai, Y. and Wulf, C. 27 immaturity: explicit and implicit 9–10, 122, 135–136, 150 initiative 14, 18, 25, 128, 133, 145–146, 160, 162 instrumental rationality 98, 105–106, 9, 17, 52

Kant, I. 36, 87, 47, 51–52, 53, 59, 60, 66, 126; Kant’s proposal for two kinds of uses of rationality 123–124, 124–126, 97, 124; Kant’s subjectivity 72–76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 87; see also comparative perspective, Confucius-Kant-Marx; maxim of self-consistency; rationality, morality in terms of rationality; rationality, practical rationality; school sloth; two kinds of moral reasoning, Kantian rational-universal legislation; What Is Enlightenment Kierkegaard, Søren 66, 151–152 knowledge of the ethics of education 149

Macfarlane, B. 9, 16 maintenance 54, 60–61, 85, 88, 90 Mao Zedong 5, 100–101 market 60, 110, 124n2, 130 Marx, K: historical materialism 44, 54, 59, 82, 85n18, 92, 102, 109–110, 112; humanisation of nature 70, 91, 99, 109–111, 115, 149, 156; Marxism 83, 101, 109 maxim of self-consistency 65, 141–142, 144 means-ends 106, 160

180 Index mechanic motions 12, 74, 77–78, 85, 96, 97; automaticity 51, 56; see also animal impulses metaphor 43, 73, 75n6, 79, 107, 126, 143, 147–148, 154n5; see also driver’s freedom minimal criteria of wittingness and voluntariness 19–20, 126–127 misunderstanding 71, 76–77, 88, 125; creative misunderstanding 48, 97 modernity: Chinese modernity 2, 101, 109, 117; Western modernity 1, 35–36, 38, 47, 52, 109, 153 Modern New Confucianism 104 modern social morals 55, 59, 111; Western styled of modern social morals 60 Moore, R. 26, 95 Moore, T.W. 34, 126–127 moral absolutism and moral relativism 52, 53 moral education 35, 53 mysticism 79, 81, 93, 99, 104 naturalisation of the human 79, 80, 91, 93, 110–111, 113; see also driver’s freedom new sensitivity(ies) 87, 71 Nussbaum, M. 70–71 one-world view 47, 67, 73–78, 78n11, 80, 82, 85, 90–91, 95, 98, 103–105, 106–108, 110, 113, 116, 141, 152 one-world view vs. two-world view 76, 77, 82–83, 89–90, 96, 141 optimism 67, 107, 82, 99, 100 origin 32n4, 33, 44, 83, 85, 86, 105, 116, 165; see also Marx, K., historical materialism parental reclamation of education 146–149 Peters, R.S. 11, 15–21, 125n4, 126–127, 158, 162n8 philosophy of education 2–4, 15n8, 147, 163 Pohl, K.H. 31, 32n4, 39, 41, 48–49 popularisation of education 81, 90 postmodernism 101, 108, 110 priority 54, 59, 109, 116, 90, 93, 111, 112, 149; see also maintenance Qing 52, 71, 87; qing1-situations and qing2-emotions 56–57, 61, 63, 112–113 Qing-Ontology 51, 69–71, 96–97 rationality: aesthetic practice 84–86, 87, 99 (see also emotio-rational structure); morality

in terms of rationality 54–55, 81, 111; practical rationality 84 (see also reflectivity); pragmatic rationality 105–106, 58, 108, 110, 113, 116; rationality in practice 54–55, 153, 84, 105, 81n14, 86, 89; see also historical rationality; rationality dissolved into emotionality; Rationality-Ontology; sedimentation rationality dissolved into emotionality 55, 98, 70, 112, 12n6, 72n1, 116; juxtaposing two kinds of moralities 69, 97, 141–144; see also aesthetic moral reasoning; aesthetic pleasure; humanised emotion; logic of could(might) do; Qing; Qing-Ontology; regulative and properly constitutive function Rationality-Ontology 51–52, 69–71 Rawls, J. 24, 52, 58–60, 76 reality 46, 73, 76, 115 Reid, L.A. 9, 11–12, 18 Reid, T. 77 reception of aesthetics in education, methodology level 26–27 reflectivity 24, 84–85, 114, 125–131, 138, 141–149, 155 regulative and properly constitutive function 61–63, 68, 112n15 rejuvenation 2, 11, 25, 32, 39, 69, 79, 89 religious experience 61, 96 religious morals, traditional 59–60, 61, 69, 112 religious tolerance 46–47, 104 reversed conception of the teacher 160 Rošker, J.S. 57, 82n15, 91, 111 Scheffler, I. 34–35, 38 Schiller, F. 48, 63–67, 72n1, 75, 80–82, 85n18, 91, 164 school sloth 1, 7–10, 15, 16, 22; see also immaturity second nature 45–46 second-order of educational reclamation 145–146; see also parental reclamation of education Second Renaissance 93, 116 second sense of the technical 159–160 sedimentation 54, 73–74, 78, 87, 88–91, 106, 114, 153, 157, 40n11, 45, 109n13, 129, 131, 133; third level of individual sedimentation 139–140; see also ever-renewing character; rejuvenation; three levels of sedimentation

Index 181 sensuous freedom 72–75, 79, 80–81, 86, 91, 97–98, 107, 111, 153, 161 separation 36, 83, 84 shamanism 40–41, 103, 105–106 shift, from practical epistemology to aesthetic ontology, from logic of -must and of should to logic of could/might 160 slogan analysis 34–35; analysis of the literal purports 35–38; analysis of the parent doctrine 42–47; analysis of the practical purports 38–42; three-step slogan analysis 35, 47 Smith, R.A. and Smith, C.M. 25–27, 49 social rationality 96, 98 Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism 77n10, 102, 104 soul 65, 46, 48, 99, 156, 80n13, 105; a beautiful soul 63–64, 93, 91n20 spontaneous freedom see aesthetic pleasure stages: Parents’ Re-imagining at the Second Stage of Life 141–144 (see also lifespan of three three-decade stages; second-order of educational reclamation); third stage of aesthetic practice 85; three stages of subjectivity 86 Standish, P. 78, 83, 127, 133, 148 subjectality 74, 78, 82–83, 89–90; the collective subjectality 84–86, 90; the individual subjectality 86–88 supra-biological beings 84–85, 87, 115, 156 Tan Chuanbao 檀传宝 25, 27 Takuo Nishimura 26–27, 95 teacher aesthetic professionalism 154–158, 157 teacher education 26, 151, 158, 159–160 teacher neutrality 161 technical-social formation 81, 84–85, 87–88, 92, 100 three levels of sedimentation 138–141, 144, 146, 74 tradition of educational studies 25–27, 34–35, 123–127, 147, 163; see also slogan analysis transcultural philosophy 2, 25, 27, 41–42, 72–77, 80–82, 95–100, 101–102, 141–142; see also Anthropo-Historical Ontology; comparative perspective; one-world view vs. two-world view;

Qing-Ontology; Rationality-Ontology; two contrasting civilisations; two kinds of moral reasoning; triad with heaven and earth 78, 103; see also trinity of ethics, politics, and religion trinity of ethics, politics, and religion 58, 106 tool making and using 12, 44, 73, 79, 85–86, 110, 153, 156, 159; see also tool ontology tool ontology 87; see also technical-social formation two contrasting civilisations 70, 72 two kinds of formation see two roots two kinds of morality 53, 58–60, 124; private morality 61 (see also traditional religious morals); public morality 60 (see also modern social morals); see also two kinds of moral reasoning two kinds of moral reasoning: Kantian rational-universal legislation 58, 63, 65, 55, 111; see also aesthetic moral reasoning two levels of subjectality see subjectality two roots 84, 116; see also cultural-psychological formation; technical-social formation two-world view 73, 75–77, 91, 96, 105, 141–142 utilitarianism 58, 102, 115–116; critiques of utilitarianism 59, 62, 111, 115, 116; utilitarian concern for effectiveness and efficiency 27, 61, 52, 59–60, 132, 136 volition 17, 93, 99–100, 111, 153, 155, 161, 53, 151, 158, 36, 74, 138, 154; see also rationality, practical rationality Wang Ban 31–40, 41, 43, 47, 49 Wang Guowei 王国维 31, 33, 40, 95 Wang Nang, 25 Wang Que 王确 26 What Is Enlightenment 11, 13, 52, 75n6, 123, 131, 164 Wu Sen. Joseph 吴森 56n4, 75n7, 77n9, 81n14, 82, 103 Wu Yaoting 35, 37, 40 Zhou Li 周礼 43, 106, 110n14; li yuanyu su 礼源于俗 54n1