Personal Reflections: What is Philosophy? Am I a philosopher?

Returning to the source is serenity;

it is to realize one's destiny. To realize one's destiny is to know the eternal. To know the eternal is to be enlightened. Not to know the eternall is to act blindly and court disaster. Whoever knows the eternal is open to everything. Whoever is open to everything is impartial. To be impartial is to be universal. To be universal is to be in accord with heaven. To be in accord with heaven is to be in accord with the Way. To be in accord with the Way is to be eternal and to live free from harm even though the body dies.
(Lao-Zi, Dao De Jing)

Philosophy is to the Chinese, the way道 that will create a unity of self with heaven. It is the universal, impartial, moral and humane primal source of everything in the world. We cannot see the way道 because its metaphysical nature is obscure and mystical it escapes all definition. It is hidden and indescribable yet, it is the absolute which flows everywhere and nourishes life. The way道carries a dialectical perpetual movement and gentleness which is supposed to be truth. The way tells us that those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know. It speaks ill of our human’s doctrines of knowledge morality and by urging that these are our cause of hypocrisy, chaos and disorder. It urges us to abandon wisdom and cleverness to rediscover love and duty, to discard profit to be freed of thieves and robbers. It insinuates that our current world is too complicated and that life is rather quite simple. Is philosophy the way of life? Is it my movement? Is it a will to passivity or activity? Is it Nietzsche’s will to power? Is it Lao Zi’s will to some mystical universal truth that will forever elude our grasp? I think philosophy is a means not to nihilism or power. It is neither but rather, a will to weave out a structure of understanding based upon realization a profound interruption of a person’s experience and understanding of human life. I do not think I can be called a philosopher in the Western analytic sense. My sense of logic bears a contorted face and is rather displeasing to the professional analytic philosopher’s eye. I am better a Sociologist and Historian but sometimes, I don’t think I seem to fit in. I come from all over to establish synthetic connections. Am I a philosopher? that I have made incursions into what is now called, philosophy reading Kant, Husserl, Beauvoir, Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, Foucault, Adorno, Baudrillard, Hobbes, Sen, Machiavelli, Kiekegaard, Descartes, Hume, Leibeiz, Berkeley and so on. There are many but these are the few that first come to my mind. There seems to me to be a tendency to regard people who work on logic, epistemology, mind, language and metaphysics philosophers. So we also have Bertrand Russell, John R Searle, Thomas Nagal, Hilary Putnam, P. F. Strawson, Wittgenstein as the usual Great philosophers of our time. These are certainly great philosophers who have influenced our method of thinking and I have the utmost respect for their works, some of them I have read and deeply thought about. But do we consider people like Husserl, Heidegger, Satre, Merleau Ponty, Albert Camus philosophers? Is phenomenology and existentialism not as well, Great philosophy? Have we left out the names of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Judith Butler? What is philosophy? We are all aware of the great chasm between continental philosophy and analytic philosophy whose categories do not even parallel each other in the logical sense.

The reason why I bring this questions up is because, I think we must re-define or rather, re-appropriate philosophy and in a manner, transcend these sub-categories that seem to make us philosophers. I think philosophy belongs to each one of us. By philosophy, I mean a radical questioning of our knowledge, reality, political rights, morality, and aesthetics of everyday life. I think the act of questioning has already a sort of radical alterity inherent in it which is evoked because of certain a disrupted, outraged and unease with present reality and our experiences that come along as we grow older. We come to know hetero-normative gender norms and marriage institutions are patriarchal. We know also that discursive racial lines are often used to support and legitimate the power of despotic rulers and leaders. We know that the nation-state is a rather recent modern phenomenon that does not occupy the entire span of human history. We know that capitalism is not heaven’s treat and is the basis of ineffaceable class inequalities. I think then philosophy must be the act of thinking, the primal source and drive to understand these social problems. Well then, am I a social philosopher? But I come from everywhere and am nowhere. I practice philosophy in the dawn of the mornings and usually write through the night. The pen is like my wand and my thoughts are my engine. Through the text, I fill in the gaps of my experience of reality. I take make incisions, tear them apart and piece distant fragments together. I establish relations and a structure of thinking about things. The process is much like a Queen ant’s hive whose ant-workers never stop working in hope that one day I can attain serenity and universality. I crave for power. But power over what? I do not think most philosophers really desire power and perhaps fame in that sense but yes, power over one’s understanding of life. Philosophy is quite interesting it makes you feel as if those who have not practiced it are floating above the ground and wavering like jelly puddings and whose opinions float from air. Whereas after a certain time of practicing philosophy, you do find yourself with an in grown mode of ever-change that is firm and grounded to what you experience and see.

I think this is because philosophy is both historical and universal in nature. It is historical because it is always written in sometime and hence even the purest philosophy reflects its culture and mode of thinking of its time. Philosophy is I think a sense of radical grounding and the unwillingness to take things as it is, a floating obscure sense. Philosophy is my life and even as it is always changing, it is my structure of thoughts that will never abandon me and will always feed me with an understanding of my social reality. Through philosophy, I establish a certainty of my world and engage with an everyday task of a radical understanding of life. Philosophy is mine and I embody the thoughts I philosophize about. Through philosophy, one becomes individual. Philosophy is the way to be individual and to embody its own mode of transcendence. Philosophy is also a permanent immanent movement. If the question comes about again and I be asked if I were a philosopher, my answer would be yes because philosophy is the will to a form of grounded yet perpetual movement that animates the mind and transposes it out of its static reality. Philosophy is the invisible primal source of my life and a very serious personal vocation.

Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: On Consumption, Duration and History (from p. 66 to p. 85)

Imagination has a big role to play in this modern cultural economy and this is shown in practices of Consumption and this I think is best shown in Appadurai’s writings on Fashion and Nostalgia (p. 75). Mediascapes and together with the global ‘frenzied condition’ a term I think best suits the flux of modernity, can sometimes created “imagined nostalgia” (p. 77) – nostalgia for things that never were (p. 77). Fredric Jameson calls this “nostalgia for the present” a term he uses to discuss films that project a future whose present is historicized and misrecognized as something the viewer has already lost (p. 77). The present is showcased as if it has already slipped away (p. 77). Fashion and movie trends often bite on this to sell ‘a product’ that can help ease our “lost past.” All they need to do is to supply our memory (sell to us) an image that we have never actually suffered but created in our imaginations. Appadurai calls this nostalgia, an “armchair nostalgia” – one without lived experience or collective historical memory (p. 78). Such nostalgia creates the simulacria of periods of time – periodicities – that constitute the modern imagining subject’s flow of time often comprising of a present conceived as lost, absent or distant (p. 78). Time thus becomes commoditized as something that can be fashioned and sold and this itself has several effects. It can produce what is called “free time” away from work for the consumption of leisure. Luxury, cruise and packaged vacation is thus commodified as “time out of time (p. 81).” Consumption becomes the daily practice of nostalgia and fantasy in a world of commodified objects (p. 82). With this, our experience of time and the present also becomes transformed

Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: On the Global Cultural Economy (from p. 27 to p. 47)

Appadurai brings up how Deleuze and Guattari calls the world we live in now rhizome or sometimes just schizophrenic (p. 29) from which also emerges theories of rootlessness, alienation, distanciation or also, the phenomenon ‘electronic propinquity’ (p. 29). I identify with these conceptual theories because I have always seen modernity as a sort of transcendental uplift and a constant state of frenzy. Sometimes, there indeed is no synchrony between the real referential world and its signifiers and everything is like a sort of cultural rerun, gyrate, circularity (p. 29-30). This modern global order is highly disjunctive such that a central-periphery or homogenization/heterogenization understanding of it may not be quite so sufficient.
What Appadurai suggests is to see this disorganized capitalism, or disjunctures between the economy, culture and politics in terms of five dimensions of global cultural flows he calls, ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes. The suffix –scape is supposed to point to the meanings of fluidity irregularity of our global landscape (p. 33). This ‘landscapes’ are building blocks for imagined worlds that most people in this global world live in.

Ethnoscape refers then to the tourist, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers and moving groups that constitute our world. It signifies how the ‘warp of stabilities is everywhere shot through the woof of human motion’ as we all have to deal with the notion of moving or wanting to move to somewhere other than our very own locality (p. 34). Technoscape refers to how technology now moves at high speeds across various spaces. Financescape refers to the disposition of global capital that is now a more mysterious, rapid and difficult landscape to follow e.g. currency markets, national stock exchanges, commodity speculations etc (p. 34). Appadurai rightly argues the global relationship between the ethno, techno and fiancé –scapes is deeply disjunctive and profoundly unpredictable because each of its landscapes has its own constraints and incentives and each acts as a parameter for movements in others (p. 35). There is also the mediascapes and ideoscapes. Mediascapes refer to the distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations and film production studios) and the images of the world created by these media. Mediascapes entail different modes of delivery, hardware, audiences and people who control these mediascapes (p. 35). The effect of the mediascape is that it blurs the lines between what is realistic and fictional. Mediascapes help to produce imagined worlds that are chimerical and aesthetic (p. 35). Mediascapes are image-centered, narrative based accounts of strips of reality out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives. They help constitute the narratives of the Other and protonarratives of possible lives (p. 36) that can in turn form the basic desire for acquisition and movement (p. 36). Ideoscapes Appadurai claims are political and often have to do with ideologies of states, counterideologies of movements oriented to capture some state power (p. 36). They include ideas/narratives such as freedom welfare rights sovereignty representation democracy etc. Such ideas govern the communication between elites and followers in different parts of the world although they can be subjected to specific contexts (p. 36). These scapes thus form Appadurai’s model of global cultural flow (p. 37) which is characterized by disjunctures, movements and violence. For instance the spread of martial arts to form the basic notions of masculinities and violence spurring increasing in arms strade, the spread of action-packed AK-guns in films (mediascapes), influencing ideas of state secuirity and military activity (ideoscapes) and so on. The key to note is that different sorts of global flows can result in different sorts of landscape and hence, the ‘global landscape’ is usually very uncertain. We may not know what is the product of different inter-mingling scapes.

The fact that we are in a sort of cultural flux, over-fluidity or simply put imbricated in uncertainty can jump start people to search for a stable present which manifests itself as fundamentalisms, revival of religious movements etc. The key point Appadurai is making is that cultural forms are fragile, fractal, overlapping and characterized by non-resemblance or non-isomorphism

A naturalistic view of morality: Mencius’s conception of the moral nature of Human Beings

Mencius argues that humans differ from animals because we have moral virtues that are innate to us (Lee, 2006: p. 69). Also, Mencius argues that there is a sort of human nature that is universal in all human beings because human beings belong to the same species (Lee, 2006: p. 69). Because morality is innate in us, we have a potential to develop moral sense. Mencius uses an analogical argumentative form that seems to be quite weak to me. He argues that humans are alike in our tastes for flavour, ears for music and our eyes for beauty such that we would recognize great chefs, great musicians or great beauties (Lee, 2006: p. 70) and so all humans cannot have minds that differ from our sensory organs. We must be alike in minds. Sages are among us and sages morally superior and are recognized. So our minds must appreciate morality just like how our taste buds appreciate food (Lee, 2006: p. 70). If we have a liking for great chefs and musicians, so must we have a liking for sages’ moral conduct (Lee, 2006: p. 70). The problem with this argument is that it is too generalized. Mencius wants to prove that people naturally and universally prefer the Good or Moral as opposed to the vices by claiming that everyone would have the same taste for the Good or Moral. But, just as how a Muslim may not appreciate the best Pork cut or the Buddhist cannot appreciate the best Beef cut, it is spurious how all human beings can appreciate what is Good and Moral universally.

Hence from the above we can see that Mencius disagrees with Gaozi that righteousness or yi comes from external impositions. This has important implications because if one thinks that the individual cannot do the right thing in the right context, then one is implying that the individual does not have moral autnonomy and we would require external rules, laws and prohibitions to regulate the individual’s behaviour. Mencius however thinks that respecting the elderly come’s innately and yi comes from the heart not imposed by anyone from the outside. The beginning assumptions matter because if one thinks that individuals universally have moral sentiments innately, then we would promote policies that facilitate the sprouting of such moral virtues such as education etc. instead of external regulatory laws (Lee, 2006: p. 68-72). Mencius believes that human nature contains ren, yi, propriety and wisdom and we can cultivate these moral virtues.

Mencius goes as far as to argue that “there is no human who does not tend toward goodness” (Lee, 2006: p. 72). He argues that there is no one who sees a young child fall into a deep well and not feel alarm and compassion in itself (Lee, 2006: p. 72). Mencius argues that this is the beginning of humanity in their nature. Yet the weakness of this argument is that even if one has such natural comisseration and sentiment, it does not necessitate moral actions. It does not take into account that one could just ignore the child or still push the child into the well.
On this count, Mencius differs from the Western philosophers in that he is also implying that the beginning of morality is not in the seed or Reason but in human emotions and sentiments. Mencius believes that moral sense is natural to human beings (Lee, 2006: p. 76).

Mencius argues that if we fail to do the moral thing, it is because our sensory desires (desire for food, sex and material goods) compete with our mind/heart (Lee, 2006: p. 76). Our mind/heart has four functions of thinking/reflecting; feeling/having emotions and sentiments; willing/zhi that makes resolution and the employment and cultivation of moral qi (Lee, 2006: p. 77). Our sensory desires can deviate from the moral path (major part of us). Another reason is because we do not have a strong enough will and hence even if we wish to do Good, we will give up half way (Lee, 2006: p. 77). It can also be because we fail to cultivate the right qi and we give up ourselves and deny ourselves to do good (Lee, 2006: p. 80).

If one does the moral thing, one need not try to show it. It will be manifested in us especially our eyes. It seems that Mencius thinks that it is pointless to pursue universal love (what Mozi thinks). He adopts the Confucian stand or doctrine called the “love with distinction” that claims that we love our family more than we love a stranger.

On the points of Shu (Empathy) and Ren (man of humanity)

The notion of shu or empathy plays an important role in Chinese Confucian philosophy. Shu is titled in Liu JeeLoo’s Introduction to Chinese Philosophy as a ‘Golden Rule’ much like Kant’s categorical imperative. Shu means “Do not impose upon others what you yourself do not desire (Lee, 2006: p. 53).” This I think is an important golden rule because of its implications on our relations with the greater human sociality. It provides a guiding compass as to how to act in society. We can first imagine what we do not desire. We do not desire to be humiliated, laughed at, stolen from, harmed in any way or mistreated. So we conclude that we should not treat others in these ways as well. Shu also helps us to appreciate what other people in other roles are doing and how they are feeling (Lee, 2006: p. 55).

The confucian moral ideal seems to be based on the assumption that helping others, altruism and contributing to society is the best. A person who is morally superior is called a junzi or “gentleman.” Those who help others to cultivate themselves are men of humanity or called ren and those who extend benevolence to the masses are called sages sheng. This moral ideal is not a notion as opposed to “actuality” or “reality.” In Chinese Confucian thinking, ideals should be or can be embodied in actual reality. Humans are perfectible creatures and should pursue moral cultivation. Confucian Philosophy is optimistic of human beings for it focuses on “what humans can become” (Lee, 2006: p. 56). It is concerned with what is right or virtuous (Lee, 2006: p. 57) and we can become righteous by pursuing the Dao or the Way. A junzi or superior person has the Dao as one’s ultimate way of life. To do so means that one pays full attention to one’s moral growth by constant self examination (Lee, 2006: p. 57). Lee (2006) claims that such a person constantly asks 3 questions. 1. Have I failed to delve deeply into what I have learnt? Have I moved in the right direction of the Right based on what I have just learnt? 3. Have I been able to alter myself upon recognizing my misdeeds? We can say that the moral ideal or the Way is sought inward through a diligent and scrupulous process of self examination and reform.

To be cleansed of evil is to be Ren. Ren is a state of being and it represents the ideal state of a human being (Lee, 2006: p. 58). To be Ren alone is not enough for if one wishes to establish one’s moral character, one also should help others establish their moral characters (Lee, 2006: p. 58). One should share joy, help each other to grow and love one’s fellow man. This is something quite similar to Spinoza who also argues that it is impossible for growth to take place alone but must be done so in a polity. Spinoza also argues in favour of the view of helping others because we are always in a polity (relations of human beings), and if others fare well, they will necessarily better ourselves and well-being and the vice versa is true. Ren also means to master oneself and to return propriety (Lee, 2006: p. 60).

The most noteworthy point in this study of Confucianism and Chinese philosophy is that Confucius says: “Do not worry that you are not known to others; worry rather that you yourself lack ability.” Confucius claims that a virtuous person does not seek recognition from others (Lee, 2006: p. 63) but only constantly scrutinize oneself, think about one’s words and deeds and its measure towards truth. The measure of Goodness is sought of from within and one should not seek recognition. The most abhorrent person is one who only appears virtuous (Lee, 2006: p. 60). I say that this is the most noteworthy point because I think that in our modern society, in contradistinction to Confucius’s ideal of a Ren, the modern masses’s ideal is that of fame and outward recognition. These ideals are sought outwardly. As such, one is concerned not with one’s self and one’s self growth but an outward appearance of how one appears to be. One is no longer concerned with being but with one’s appearing to be. If virtues and the morally ideal stems from our innate state of being, attitude, intentions and actions in our everyday, then being only concerned with how one appears to be does not in any way foster the sort of scrupulous self-scrutiny of one’s life and actions. One would not be engaged in a process of reasoning with oneself and hence learning the right Way or pursuing the Dao with Reason. The modern masses more concerned with appealing to others are highly susceptible to engaging in petty and shallow affairs such as: personal favours, bantering, bootlicking etc that are not in tandem with virtuous state of being and life.

General differences

Chinese philosophy differs very much from Western philosophy. There is a tendency for Western Philosophy’s theories of ethics and morality to stem Reason and the Will.

Morality for instance for Kant is grounded in a universal categorical imperative that applies to all of humanity. This is manifested in the humanity formulation of the categorical imperative that says ‘Act in such a way that you treat humanity whether in your own person or in any other person, always at the same time as an end, never as a means only (G 4:429).’ The basis of this formulation stems from several key percepts. (1) Humans have Willkur or the power to make choices about which ends we will adopt and (2) Wille which presents or legislates categorical moral principles to moral agents (Dean, 2009: p. 85). A rational being is one who accepts the a priori categorical imperative or practical law and subjects himself to it i.e. make it the determining ground of his will (CPrR 5:62). Moral actions and being is hence governed by an a priori law that our Wille presents or legislates. Kant wants to argue that because humanity or rationale nature is an end in itself it can ground a universal categorical imperative (Dean, 1990: p. 90) applicable to everyone. A subjective principle of ‘my’ actions is also an objective principle for it is the way every ‘other’ rational being conceives his own existence (Groundwork 4:428-9). Any self sufficient reason for action is hence always self-legislated by our Wille in accordance to the categorical imperative.

We see such ideas very prevalent in Western philosophy that the universal is above the particular; intellect as prior to the sensuous intuitions and so on. Husserl in his discussion of the Universal under ‘transcendental analytics’ evokes the Platonic term ‘eidos’ ἰδέα standing for idea to be that which has no extension consisting of empirical facts and actualities. The pure eidetic generality and judging only has an extension of pure possibilities (S88 S90 p. 299) says Husserl. Shortly later on (S90 p. 299ff), Husserl claims that every actuality given in experience is necessarily subject to the a priori conditions of possible conditions - something that Kant himself has also argued for in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Chinese philosophy on the other hand differs from this sort of universal principle in that its highest moral ideal is not grounded in reason but Ren and Care. The notion of Ren and care does not take place in a metaphysical empty space but in a relational context. The question is of how to lead a moral life includes obligations to one’s self, family and people (Li, 2008: p. 176). The highest moral ideal of Ren is to love others (Analects 12.22). Inclinations, affects and desires alike are seen as insufficient for moral actions in the Kantian tradition but on the other hand, Mencius establishes in Chinese Philosophy, Ren as a key to moral action and being. Ren refers at once to having compassion for others. Ren in Li’s essay is noted to be benevolence, love, altruism, tenderness, charity, compassion, human-heartedness, humaneness and so on (Li, 2008: p. 177). The ideogram of Ren consists of a human figure and two horizontal strokes that is often interpreted as reaching out to others (Li, 2008: p. 177). This suggests again that Ren does not take place in a metaphysical empty space but in the context of human relations. Confucian morality is grounded in a context of the metaphysics of a moral universe – one that is outlined in the yijing (Lee, 2006: p. 34). In the yijing, the eight basic trigrams (of heaven, earth, lake, mountain, fire, water, wind and thunder) each have their own moral attributes. For instance Heaven exemplifies attributes of creativity and constancy; thunder represents forcefulness and fearfulness; fire represents radiance and clarity; water represents humility and continuity and so on (Lee, 2006: p. 34). The moral universe is the source of our moral attributes and inspiration for our moral conduct (Lee, 2006: p. 35) and the moral thing to do is to emulate attributes of Heaven and Earth (Lee, 2006: p. 34). Coming back to the Ren, we can see Confucius evoking “Heaven” or the Moral Universe as a ground for achieving Ren. Confucius says that one can achieve Ren if “everywhere under Heaven [one] practice[s] the five: courtesy, breadth, good faith, diligence and clemency (17.6).” Ren is to love or ai – love- or care for others. To be a moral person is also to develop a heart of shame, courtesy, modesty and right and wrong. Li notes the comments of Gilligan that the ideal or concept of care is a real time or actual activity of relationship of seeing, responding and taking care of the world by sustaining the web of connection so that no one is left alone. Recall that Kant says that the rational nature is an end-in-itself but here Chinese philosophy insists that Ren and caring is an end in itself.