Abstract
William Franke in his new publication, A Philosophy of the Unsayable, stakes out a position for apophatic thinking between the sometimes shrill dialectic of what he describes as a kind of radical secularized immanentalism on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxon and Continental resurgence of a Radical Orthodoxy on the other. Hegel in the introduction to his Encyclopaedia Logic observes that one of the most difficult problems for evaluating philosophical positions is the question of where they begin. Secularized immanentialism in embracing Nietzsche’s death of God rejects utterly transcendentalism and the “theo-ontological thinking” that grounds it. Franke avers that “Starting from the world in its actuality—this world as it reveals itself in human life and society without externally imposed metaphysical and a fortiori theological constructions—is the bottom line for secular theology.” (p. 273) Radical Orthodoxy on the other hand insists that “it is necessary to start from theological revelation as expressed in the Christian vision and its narrative in order to understand the world—and not the other way round.” (p. 273) Franke argues that while both positions tend to reject apophatic thinking, apophatism is in fact the common root or “radicality” that they share.
How can Chinese cosmology join this conversation? In the absence of ontological commitments, the radical transcendence/immanence dualism of Western theology has been neither a positive nor a negative possibility for an emergent, processual Chinese cosmology. But indeterminacy is a major factor in the primacy of vital relationality that serves as its starting point, whether it is the wu 無–forms that are defining of optimal relationality in Daoism or the role of deference (shu 恕) in Confucian role ethics and the project of cultivation for relationally-constituted persons. What then is the relationship between this radical indeterminacy and the radicality of apophatic thinking?
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Notes
- 1.
I have rehearsed these arguments in detail in Chapter 5 of my Confucian Role Ethics.
- 2.
Granet, La pensée chinoise, 478 [10].
- 3.
Tang, Complete Works, Vol. 11, 241: 中國民族無含超絕意義的天的觀念 。中國人對天有個普遍的觀念 , 就是天與地是分不開的 。[16].
- 4.
Needham. Science and Civilisation, Vol. II, 290 [15].
- 5.
Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 287 [9].
- 6.
Franke, A Philosophy of the Unsayable, 273 [4].
- 7.
Franke, A Philosophy of the Unsayable, 273 [4].
- 8.
Franke, “The Philosopher or the Sage,” ms., 1 [6].
- 9.
Franke, “The Philosopher or the Sage,” ms., 2 [6].
- 10.
Franke, “The Philosopher or the Sage,” ms., 7 [6].
- 11.
Psalms 100:3.
- 12.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 10–11 [5].
- 13.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 11 [5].
- 14.
Analects 12.2: 仲弓問仁 。子曰 :「出門如見大賓 , 使民如承大祭 。己所不欲 , 勿施於人 。在邦無怨 , 在家無怨 。」仲弓曰 :「雍雖不敏 , 請事斯語矣 。」
- 15.
See Analects 6.2 and 6.6.
- 16.
Analects 5.12: 子貢曰 :「我不欲人之加諸我也 , 吾亦欲無加諸人。」
- 17.
Analects 15.24: 子貢問曰 :「有一言而可以終身行之者乎?」子曰 :「其恕乎!己所不欲 , 勿施於人。」
- 18.
Daodejing 1: 道可道,非常道 。名可名 , 非常名 。無名天地之始;有名萬物之母 。
- 19.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 8–9 [5].
- 20.
Legge, The Texts of Taoism, Vol. 1, 47 [14].
- 21.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 20 [5].
- 22.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 9 [5].
- 23.
Daodejing 11: 鑿戶牖以為室 , 當其無 , 有室之用 。故有之以為利 , 無之以為用 。The translation Wright uses is “The reality of the building does not consist of walls and roof but in the space within to be lived in.”
- 24.
Wang Bi in his commentary to Daodejing 38 captures this aspectual relationship between “forming and functioning” by coining the expression tiyong 體用, a binomial that is thereafter used pervasively in Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian philosophy to explain the transformative nature of the underlying cosmology.
- 25.
Linck, Yin und Yang [11].
- 26.
See the distinction between genealogical and metaphysical cosmogony in Confucian Role Ethics, 225–231 [1].
- 27.
Ames and Hall, Focusing the Familiar, 90 [2].
- 28.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 20 [5].
- 29.
Legge, The Chinese Classics, Vol. 1, 55 [13].
- 30.
Tang, Complete Works, 100 [16].
- 31.
Ames and Hall, Focusing the Familiar, 89 [2].
- 32.
Ames and Hall, Focusing the Familiar, 89–90 [2].
- 33.
Mencius 4A12: 誠者天之道也 , 思誠者人之道也 。“Cheng is the way of tian, reflecting on cheng is the way of the human being.” In this seminal passage, we witness the repeated image of an inner intensity and resolve, and its vast outer cosmic reach and compass. This cosmic association of human resolve (cheng 誠) with creativity has been anticipated in Zhongyong 16:
夫微之顯 , 誠之不可揜如此夫 。Such is the way that the inchoate is made manifest and that creative resolve cannot be repressed.
It occurs again in Zhongyong 20:
誠者天之道也 , 誠之者人之道也 。誠者不勉而中 , 不思而得 。 從容中道 , 聖人也 。誠之者擇善而固執之者也 。Resolve is the way of tian; creative resolve is the proper way of becoming human. Creative resolve is achieving equilibrium and focus without coercion; it is succeeding without reflection. Freely and easily traveling the center of the way—this is the sage. Creative resolve is selecting what is efficacious and holding on to it firmly.
- 34.
Ames and Hall, Focusing the Familiar, 106 [2].
- 35.
Earlier in the text in Zhongyon g 20, “what is optimally appropriate” (yi 義)—that is, what is moral—has been defined paranomastically as “what is most fitting” (yi 宜) in any particular situation, providing a warrant for reading this character here as what is optimally appropriate as a source of moral significance.
- 36.
See Daodejing 4 in which the textual variants describe dao 道 itself in these terms.
- 37.
Fraser, “Distinctions, Judgment, and Reasoning in Classical Chinese Thought,” 13–14 [8].
- 38.
See Hall, The Uncertain Phoenix, 249–250 for an elaboration on the same distinction between power and creativity [12].
- 39.
See Hall, The Uncertain Phoenix, Chapter 2 “Disciplining Chaos.” [12].
- 40.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 17 [5].
- 41.
Franke, “Francois Jullien and the Notion of Immanence in Chinese compared with Western Thought and Culture” ms., 1 [7].
- 42.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 23 [5].
- 43.
Franke, “All or Nothing?,” 20 [5].
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Ames, R.T. (2016). Getting Past Transcendence: Determinacy, Indeterminacy, and Emergence in Chinese Natural Cosmology. In: Brown, N., Franke, W. (eds) Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43092-8_1
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