Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College!

In this unit, let’s continue to talk about David Hume, not about his empiricist epistemology, but his so-called moral sentimentalism.

As discussed in last unit, Hume can be considered as a rare dissenting voice among modern thinkers, since he thinks it is “custom and habit” which plays the most dominant role in human knowledge about the objective natural world. His general attitude towards natural science, because of his emphasis upon custom and habit, remains modest since according to his theory, all human reasoning about cause and effect is based upon what we today call “induction,” and this implies that all scientific conclusions about causality are by no means certain and fixed once for all. Instead, they always succumb to testing, falsification and perfection, which is quite in line what we have discussed about Karl Popper’s thought on the distinction between science and pseudo-science, although Popper’s understanding of scientific methodology is somewhat different from Hume. In an era when the reputation of natural science was skyrocketing because of its unprecedented power of accurate prediction and technological transformation, we have to admire Hume’s modesty and reservation about how limited human knowledge can be.

However, in comparison with Hume’s ethics, I think the salient nature of Hume’s thought in epistemology will even pale. This is because Hume’s evaluation on the role of reason in morality is not even “modest;” it is actually a downright denial. In other words, Hume thinks in evaluating a character trait of human beings or their action as good or bad, virtuous or vice, morally right or wrong, “reason” does not play any role whatsoever. Therefore, contrary to the normal moral teaching (which we may hear too much during our daily conversations with each other) that urges human beings to listen to their reason rather than passion, Hume claims that reason, no matter how accurate and “true” it may sound, cannot play any role in motivating humans’ actions, and thus, it is actually passions, emotions, feelings, and in a word, sentiments which ultimately constitute the human judgement on moral virtues and vices.

Hume’s argument for this seemingly very counter-intuitive view is relatively easy to understand. He says “reason,” just as what he has mused in his epistemology, can only achieve two things: it is either about the relationship of “ideas” following the law of non-contradiction, or about cause and effect in matters of fact. The reasoning about the relationship between ideas can never motivate humans to act in their moral affairs because as explained in his epistemology, “ideas” are vague copies of “impressions”; they lack the vivacity and intensity of impressions such as the raw sentiments of pleasure and pain, and therefore, a mere contemplation of the ideas can never directly indicate the values of outside objects to human life, and hence, motivate human beings to react to these values. This is the reason why the presentation of data, statistics or mathematical reasoning in general rarely, if not never, motivates us to act morally towards a certain direction.

If reasoning is about cause and effect in matters of fact, considered by itself, this sort of reasoning is just to represent what happens objectively outside of human mind. Since it comprises of representations, this sort of reasoning would be like putting a screen between human mind and the outside world. In other words, since a mere representation of the outside world does not cause any direct perception of the good or bad of outside objects, reasoning in matters of fact cannot motivate our moral actions either.

Instead, Hume thinks that in order for any process of reasoning to have those possessive power to eventually grasp the attention of humans, and thus, motivate humans to react to circumstances, it needs to be conjoined with another fundamental component of human consciousness, that is the sentiment of pleasure or pain, as well as the triggered passions such as pride and shame, love and hatred. Understood in this way, the role played by reasoning in morality is merely twofold: firstly, if the awareness towards certain objects does cause the feeling of pleasure or pain, reason can help to check whether such objects exist or not, since one function of reason would be to represent the objects in the outside world. Secondly, the reasoning of cause and effect on matters of fact can help humans to find the means to fulfill their desires which are ultimately caused by the sentiment of pleasure or pain in the first hand. In other words, by all counts, it is the sentiment of pleasure or pain which helps humans to judge whether any outside object, such as a character trait of humans or any action, is morally good or bad, virtuous or vicious. Reason, using Hume’s own words, is just “the slave of passions,” and it can by no means be contrary to passions, since reason alone cannot motivate humans to act. What the normal moral teaching of listening to one’s reason rather than passions really conveys, according to Hume, is actually to use one passion to counteract another. This is because only passions can motivate humans’ moral judgment and behaviors, whereas reason merely comes afterwards to serve the actions out of passions as an instrument.

What is particularly interesting about Hume’s thought on the significance of sentiments in morality is that he thought while moral judgement is based upon the sentiment of pleasure or pain, it is not purely out of self-interest that humans evaluate certain deeds as virtuous or vicious. For instance, we can estimate certain character traits of our enemies, such as diligence, loyalty, or wisdom, as virtuous even if these virtues are contrary to our self-interest. Therefore, in order to have “sentiments” play the central role in moral judgment, Hume also thinks our moral consideration needs to be conducted from “a general point of view,” rather than from a merely selfish perspective. In other words, if we think certain character traits as being able to bring pleasure and joy to a certain human fellow or others, then, they can be judged as virtuous. This also brings us to another very important aspect of Hume’s ethical thought: sympathy. According to Hume, It is out of sympathy with the sentiments of human fellows that we ultimately deliver our moral judgment about virtue and vice regarding any potential moral event in human society.

When almost every named philosopher eulogized the triumphant role of reason in the modern era of Enlightenment, Hume’s skeptical voice towards reason using such a rigorous argument is really freshing, if not utterly convincing. It points out the limited role of reason in moral affairs, and most importantly, in order to live a good human life, individuals should pay more attention to cultivating their virtues, which are intimately interconnected with their moral sentiments, than acquiring advanced calculative power of human intelligence. Unfortunately, I do not think even today, human fellows have carefully listened to Hume’s advice. For instance, the educational system, from pre-K to higher education, is still dominated by a mentality of what I may call “intelligence first, and character second.” In other words, the cultivation of sentiments, emotions and feelings has not yet occupied a central role in the curriculum of modern educational institution. In this respect, I think philosophers and educators today really need to revive Hume’s thought for the sake of the general well-being of human fellows in modern society.

However, although Hume’s thought is indeed extremely valuable for reminding us of the significance of sentiments and passions for the good human life, his view that reason does not play any significant role in morality is also a little bit overstated, since he gives such a narrow definition of “reasoning” to make it exclusively address the relationship of lifeless ideas and represent objectively matters of fact. Defined as such, reason indeed has very little power to motivate moral thought and action. However, reasoning can also be about “values,” rather than just about ideas and facts. Per Hume’s analysis, the value of things ultimately derives from the sentiments they cause to human beings. However, just as indicated by his analysis of the role of “sympathy” in triggering our moral sentiments, “pleasure” has its different kinds, intensity and endurability. Accordingly, values of things to human life based upon such different pleasures can also be varying. In this sense, we can compare the values of things, character traits, actions, or even lifestyles and worldviews so as to “reason” about them in order to guide our moral reaction to things in the world. In other words, when things in the outside world affect us, our perceptions of them are normally entangled with our value judgments of them, and these value-laden judgments in turn can trigger a certain kind of emotions, which eventually motivate us to act. Actually, this identified sequence of stimuli – value-laden perceptions – emotions – behaviors is a major tool for today’s therapists to envision the significance of philosophy for mental health, since a philosophical understanding of certain aspects of human life can directly shape our perceptions of the outside world, which in turn will rectify certain kinds of self-defeating emotions such as stress, anxiety or depression due to our misperceptions of the value of things in the world.

Of course, my critique towards Hume is not a major one in comparison to his enormous contribution to the discussion about what really matters in morality among modern thinkers. In a certain sense, this critique can also be made compatible with Hume’s thought since moral sentiments are indeed a major source for our judgment of values of things in the world. In a word, if we include “values” as a major target of human reasoning, we can still claim “reason” plays a significant role in morality, and we indeed need to rely upon the cultivation of a specific kind of sentiments, which can be aided by our moral reasoning, to live a fulfilled good human life.

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of “History of Modern Philosophy” at Washington College.

After reading Rene Descartes’s Meditations, we will learn another very different philosopher, who is representative for the so-called school of British empiricism, in order that you can get a more holistic picture of the development of modern philosophy. This philosopher is David Hume, and the “temperament” of his thought is modest, amicable, and always remains skeptical towards the over-speculation of philosophy in case that the philosophical speculation may fly too far away in one’s solitary thought from the everyday reality and the common sense of human fellows. For students who have learned western Ancient philosophy, you will find the difference between David Hume and Rene Descartes is similar to the one between Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle’s philosophy is quite empirically oriented. He thought human knowledge derives from observation and experience, and to live a good human life, humans need to follow the good customs of society and cultivate good habits so as to become virtuous. All these themes would be repeated by Hume’s empiricist philosophy to a certain extent. Whereas, Plato’s mind was always preoccupied with the world of the so-called “ideas” or “ideals,” just like Rene Descartes, whose Meditations intends to build the entire system of human knowledge from the most basic, allegedly innate ideas within human mind, such as soul, body and God.

In more concrete terms, the difference between Hume and Descartes can be envisioned in the following aspects:

Firstly, rather than treating “metaphysics” as lying in the root of the tree of philosophy and thus ascribing a fundamental role to it, Hume indicates in his writing a great suspicion towards the discipline of “metaphysics” in general. He thinks scholars’ discussions on metaphysical issues (such as the existence of God, the ultimate power and secret of nature, the essential and immortal nature of soul, the interaction between a thinking mind and an extended body, and other extravagantly abstract topics prevalent in modern philosophy) barely produced any certain result, and the debate on these issues seemed to be endless, if not desperately fruitless. In comparison with the very solid development of natural science in the era of Isaac Newton, who was both a compatriot and a slightly elder contemporary of Hume, Hume thinks that the discipline of metaphysics, as indicated by its poor performance in the early modern era, is deeply flawed. In order to rectify these flaws, Hume thinks that the primary task for philosophers is to imitate what Newton has achieved in natural science, and hence, to investigate the more fundamental topic of “human nature,” particularly the operations of human mind, before diverting our energy into those endless metaphysical debates. Hume’s suggestion is that through investigating the operations of human mind, we will get to know how human ideas are formed from their empirical origins, and how human mind associates these ideas so as to produce knowledge on different subjects. If we can pin down the origins of all the extravagantly abstract ideas in metaphysics, then, the language we use to discuss metaphysics will be more clear and we will therefore be able to grasp the limit of human knowledge lest our metaphysical thinking would have become a sheer speculation doomed into on-going, yet fruitless controversies and debates. (About Hume’s view on metaphysics, please refer to the assigned reading “Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” Section 1).

Secondly, a pattern of western philosophy is that idealistic thinkers normally quite cherish the distinctive value of mathematics. For them, such as Plato and Descartes, the empirical world cannot be where mathematical ideas derive, since all empirical knowledge lacks the universality and certainty of what mathematical reasoning can live up to. However, humans cannot arbitrarily manipulate mathematical ideas either, since mathematical objects have their stable traits and inviolate laws which human mind must obey. For Descartes, the two aforementioned reasons, viz., the non-empirical and the objective natures of mathematical knowledge, lead to his conclusion that fundamental mathematical ideas, such as size, magnitude, number, and in one word, “extension” of body, are innate. They are the blueprint of divine creation, which God imprints into human mind so as to inform humans of the essence of bodies which are also created by the same almighty God.

However, for Hume, just like for Aristotle, mathematical ideas do not occupy such a distinctive position in the world of ideas of human mind. Hume distinguishes all human perceptions into two groups according to their degrees of vivacity and strength: impressions and ideas. “Impressions” are those raw, vivid perceptions of the world which humans acquire from outer sense (such as vision, hearing, smell, etc.) and inner sense (such as our feeling of hunger, thirsty, pleasure, pain, etc.). However, when these raw impressions are stored into memory, revived in imagination or abstracted in intelligence, they will lose certain degrees of vivacity and turn into “ideas.” For Hume, all ideas, including mathematical ideas, derive from impressions, and thus, have an empirical origin. It seems that human mind can work on mathematical ideas alone in separation from the empirical world; however, according to Hume, this is because once abstracted from their empirical origins, the connection of mathematical ideas can be investigated according to the logical law of non-contradiction. Even if it seems we can acquire much knowledge of mathematical objects in reliance upon the work of human mind alone, the knowledge is just about the relation of “ideas,” and whether the knowledge can be applied to the everyday empirical world would still depend upon experience and observations. In other words, for Hume, the ideas of math derive from empirically given impressions, their relationship can be investigated by human mind alone, but whether mathematical ideas can be applied in the empirical world would still depend empirically. In a nutshell, there is no innate idea in the Cartesian sense, and all human knowledge derive ultimately from observation and experience, which is definitely a very different stance from Rene Descartes.

Thirdly, and most importantly, since experience and observation, rather than reason, plays the ultimately prominent role in the development of human knowledge, compared with Descartes, Hume also furnishes a much higher evaluation of the role of “customs and habits” in epistemology. As indicated by last unit’s reading, the hyperbolic method of doubt which Descartes uses in his Meditation I targeted customs and habits of human cognition that he inherited from his medieval scholastic background. For Descartes, nothing is more urgent to overthrow all those old ideas and beliefs in order to obtain an entirely new, and absolutely secured foundation of human knowledge. However, with a purpose of highlighting the irreplaceable roles of custom and habit in human knowledge, Hume asked an extremely consequential question for the further development of modern philosophy and for our general understanding of scientific knowledge. And the question is: on what basis shall we infer that an effect will be produced from a cause given our past observation of the constant conjunction of the two events identified respectively as a cause and an effect? For instance, we observed constantly in the past the rising of the sun can lead to the rising temperature of a stone; however, if we conclude “the rising of the sun causes the rising temperature of a stone” as a piece of knowledge, it will imply that in the future, the rising of the sun would always cause the rising temperature of the stone. But Hume’s question is that: how can we infer a future state of the worldly phenomenon based upon our past perception?

Hume does not think “reason,” in the form of demonstration which deduces one consequence from its premise according to the logical law of non-contradiction, can play any role in the aforementioned inference. This is because if the rising sun does not cause the rising temperature of the same stone in any future event, this does not bring any self-contradiction to our ideas. In other words, a different effect from a given cause is entirely possible, and thus, it is not self-contradictory to connect “a rising sun” to “the non-rising temperature of the stone.” In other words, the so-called causal reasoning is actually about matters of fact, which is different from the one about the relationship of ideas, and hence, it must be operated upon a completely different mechanism from the latter.

After surveying all possible answers to the above question, Hume concludes that it is nothing other than “custom and habit” that incline us to infer a stable repetition of future events from our past observation of the same events so as to develop our knowledge of causality and matters of fact. In Hume’s words, “After the constant conjunction of two objects – heat and flame, for instance, or weight and solidity – sheer habit makes us expect the one when we experience the other.” (pp.20, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding.)

So, according to Hume, there is no secrete power or ultimate cause of nature which guarantees that nature will always proceed according to a fixed, unchangeable set of laws. Instead, Human knowledge of nature, viz., matters of fact in Hume’s words, solely and entirely derives from our observation and experience of the natural world, and thus, it is customs and habits, rather than any pre-established metaphysical reasoning, that help humans to know and adapt themselves to the constantly changing world with its discoverable, falsifiable and perfectible laws of causality. In other words, Hume’s “skepticism” employs customs and habits to remain suspicious towards metaphysical reasoning, while Descartes employs metaphysical reasoning to remain suspicious towards customs and habits. Shall we find a difference between Hume and Descartes more striking than this? I bet it would be very hard.

Nevertheless, despite that Hume’s philosophy can be read in a contrasting manner from Descartes in the above multiple aspects, Hume is surely still a “modern” thinker. His admiration towards Isaac Newton speaks to a common commitment among modern philosophers to the utilization of scientific method, the one of reducing complex issues into simple ones similar to what Descartes has articulated in the Discourse of Method, in the investigation of human mind. Also, Hume’s extraordinary work upon the study of the operations of mind represents another distinctive trait of modern philosophy which we analyzed before: its unusually intensive focus upon the subjective world of human mind. In fact, Hume is thought of as a pioneer of the modern discipline of psychology, and his study on the law of the association of ideas and the related moral philosophy which focuses upon sympathy continually generates great impact upon the study of psychology and the practice of psychotherapy even today.

Based upon the illustrated differences and similarity between Hume and Descartes, I would like to characterize Hume as a rebellious sibling of Descartes in the same family of modern thinkers.

Practical Enlightenment: Bin Song (part II)

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College!

Let’s continue to talk of Descartes’s Meditations.

I described in last unit that Descartes’s philosophical Meditations share a similar structure to religious meditation which comprises a two-way practice of descending and re-ascending, or reduction and reunion. Therefore, after making sure the Archimedean point of human knowledge “I think therefore I am” in Meditation II and the Archimedean lever “God exists and He is not a deceiver” in Meditation III, Descartes starts to regain the validity of human knowledge that has been put into radical doubt in Meditation I. The overall thinking process of Meditation IV to VI can be summarized as follows: in Meditation IV, Descartes presents his theory of making good judgment: whenever we correctly use our freewill to judge vividly and clearly perceived ideas, we human beings would not make mistakes. Then, in Meditation V, using this theory, Descartes proves that mathematical knowledge is certain, and in Meditation VI, still using the same theory, Descartes proves the existence of body and the value of sensory perceptions of it. During the process, fundamental issues such as the existence of God and the distinction between mind and body are frequently revisited, and eventually, what Descartes contributed in his six Meditations counts nothing less than a prototype of modern philosophy: he demolishes all previous beliefs inherited from the scholastic past, and constructs something new that seems to provide solid knowledge on three most basic substances of the world: soul, body and God.

Although whether Descartes succeeds to argue in the most rigorous and impeccable way all the claims he intends to make in Meditations is up to debate, his thought on several major themes of Meditation IV-VI is of immense value for us to comprehend the nature of modern philosophy as a whole.

Firstly, Descartes resorts to old scholastic strategies to explain why God, as an omnibenevolent supreme being, allows the human creatures to be able to make mistakes in our cognitive activities of pursuing knowledge. Descartes says that as a creature, humans inherit “non-being” or “nothingness” in their nature, and thus, cannot avoid imperfections; moreover, imperfections of human beings serve the overall perfection of all creations by God. Therefore, there is really no reason for humans to blame God for human imperfections. However, since the overall creation can explain away human imperfections, Descartes asks a further question in Meditation IV that since this is the case, what is the overall purpose of God to put human beings in such a humble position among all his creations? At this juncture, Descartes indicates again the nature of his modern thought, that is, he would utilize pre-modern terms of theological thinking to argue for his modern cases. In other words, Descartes thinks that since God is infinite and humans are finite, there is no way for humans to understand the overall purpose of divine creation. Because of this, the just asked question has no way to get an answer from human intelligence, and as a consequence, there is no basis either to use “teleological” explanation in natural sciences.

We once read Aristotle’s Physics and On the Heavens where Aristotle characterizes “nature” in four connotations: a nature of an object can mean its material, form, efficient cause and purpose. For Aristotle, the cause of “purpose” is the most important since it indicates the overall order of worldly phenomena. However, for Descartes, since the purpose of God’s creation is unfathomable for human beings, nature just means “a fixed order in the sequence of cause and effect which operates upon things in the world.” In other words, Descartes’s understanding of “nature” becomes purely mechanical; the natural world is therefore thoroughly “disenchanted,” and this disenchanted worldview paves the way for the flourishing of modern natural science which is premised upon mechanistic explanation and mathematical reasoning. In this sense, the metaphysics of Descartes really serves as a “root” for his “physics” and other applied sciences, just as they are described in the “tree of philosophy.”

Secondly, although “I think therefore I am” speaks to the essence of “thought” or “thinking” for the substance of “soul” or “mind” in Descartes’s metaphysics, if we read carefully Meditation II and Meditation IV together, we would find such an essence would boil down to an acknowledge of “free will” as the genuine distinction of human beings from other beings. In Descartes’s theory of judgment, he instructs two forms of human freedom. One form is negative, which implies human will can suspend its approval or disapproval to ideas presented by human intelligence, and thus remain “indifferent” to the truth of those presented ideas. One best example of this negative freedom is when humans would simply doubt any piece of human knowledge, and thus, refuse to make any choice among presented ideas. Another form of freedom is a positive one, which implies the will of human beings approves or disapproves strongly the ideas that have been vividly and clearly perceived by human intelligence, and thus, is able to make swift decision regarding a variety issues of human life. For Descartes, the more knowledge humans have, the freer humans can be positively. However, the negative freedom is also fundamental, since it speaks to the fact that humans are not programmed machines, and can hence withhold judgments whenever our will would like to do so. Isn’t the “hyperbolic doubt” used by Descartes’s Mediation I such an example of the application of the negative form of human will? Yes, it is, since “doubting” is the activity of human will when ideas perceived by human intelligence are judged as not vivid or clear. In this sense “I think therefore I am” is actually “I doubt therefore I am,” which is furthermore equal to “I am free therefore I am.” In other words, the Archimedean point upon which all Descartes’s philosophical meditations are based upon is actually the self-affirmation of the freedom of human will, definitely a very strong indicator of the modern nature of Descartes’s thought.

Thirdly, one most interesting idea that Descartes contributes to his metaphysics is actually the one he mentions in the last Meditation, and he also didn’t address quite well. While asking himself what is the value of sensory perceptions such as the feelings of pain and pleasure caused by outside objects if most of these perceptions are so confusing and unclear that do not tell the truth of these outside objects, Descartes concludes that these perceptions mainly tell whether these objects are beneficial or harmful to humans, and therefore, speak to the close “union” of mind and body. Otherwise, Descartes continues to muse that, if mind and body are not closely united, then, if something hurts our body, we can just intellectually and abstractly perceive the body is undergoing certain damage without actually feeling the pains. Since we are indeed feeling the pains, this means the relationship between body and mind is different from the one where body is like a machine and mind is like an operator sitting in an air-conditioned control room to monitor the process of body movement. No, since we feel the pains on top of our intellectual perception of the damage of body, Descartes concludes that the real nature of human existence is actually neither body nor mind, but a close union between the two. However, if mind and body have been argued by Descartes in previous Meditations as two completely different substances, each of which has its distinctive nature called “extension” or “thought,” how can they be closely “united” and interact with each other? If we take the aforementioned concept of “free will” into consideration, then the asked question will indicate a further dimension: how can an utterly free human being live a life that is fully embedded in the world of machine-like “bodies” which, as Descartes argues in his concept of “nature,” follow exact mechanical and deterministic laws of causality? Furthermore, if “feelings,” “emotions,” and sensory perceptions are so important for the good human life , doesn’t it do a disservice to ourselves to mention this unique kind of worldly phenomena in the last place of the Meditations, and hence, get a somewhat perfunctory treatment in Descartes’s metaphysics in general?

I hope these last few questions can help to generate reflective thoughts on the nature of Descartes’s thought in particular, and of modern philosophy in general, so that perhaps, whenever you feel somewhat dissatisfied by the way of living of a modern human, you can find some clues or even make some breakthroughs through reading Descartes’s foundational modern thought.

Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod, Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early Chinese Thought, Bloomsbury, 2021, 245pp., $115.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781350082533.

Reviewed by Bin Song, Washington College, at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2021.03.01:

To paraphrase Kant’s words on enlightenment, I propound that on the topic of transcendence and non-naturalism in Chinese and comparative philosophy, although we do not have a reckoned book yet, we finally have a book of reckoning.

Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod discern two major reasons why scholars assume there is no robust idea of transcendence, and hence, take naturalism as an inevitable lens for interpreting early Chinese thought: Firstly, some of these scholars would like to find in early Chinese thought something that is different from the West, mainly from Christianity. Secondly, some of them would like to find in early Chinese thought something that looks the same as the West, viz., the same as the scientific and analytic mindset prevalent in Western academia since early modern Europe. Regardless, one common assumption has been taken by these apparently contrasting approaches: All these scholars take what is purported to be the West as a fixed and pre-established standard, and then read early Chinese thought against it. While doing so, they have overlooked other hermeneutical possibilities, firstly, that early Chinese thought may imply more than what comparisons via a set standard can tell. Secondly, the pre-established standard may itself not be adequate to the rich diversity and potentiality of Western thought. Therefore, what Brown and McLeod try to accomplish in this book is to prove there are a number of texts of early Chinese thought (such as the Chunqiu fanlu (CQFL), Xunzi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mozi, etc.) which can be interpreted fruitfully by means of a conversation with Western thinkers rich on transcendence and non-naturalism, such as Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius, etc. As a consequence, Brown and McLeod also urge the field of Chinese and comparative philosophy to pass the domination of “whether or not” questions concerning transcendence, and instead to ask more interesting questions such as “what these concepts were like in early China, what roles they played in both particular systems and broader swaths of the intellectual tradition, and in what ways early Chinese understandings of these concepts compare with those of other traditions.” (193)

I celebrate that, because of their sophisticated analyses of so many early Chinese texts, Brown and McLeod have accomplished their goal. One good example of this is how they argue the transcendence of the Dao in perhaps still the most well-known ancient Chinese cosmology to the West, viz., Laozi’s Dao De Jing. The text is frequently taken by scholars such as Roger Ames and Francois Jullien as the evidence par excellence that classical Chinese thought lacks the Western idea of hierarchical transcendence, since the Dao is interpreted by these scholars as a hidden force which unfolds within a single plane of being. In comparison, the Western conception of transcendence normally implies a supreme being on a superior plane of being which contrasts with the inferior ones.[1] However, Brown and McLeod argue: “Concepts of transcendence are meant to capture the idea that there are different orders of existence, some of which are outside of or in important ways not subject to the states and conditions of the orders of existence and the rest of the sensible world are subject to.” (185) They also believe that there are good reasons for interpreting Laozi’s Dao as indicating such a different order of existence. For instance, Dao is described by the initial chapter of Dao De Jing as “constant” (常), and therefore, although the Dao is surely a principle immanent to the process of growth and decay of worldly phenomena, we need to admit that “the process of growth and decay is not itself subject to the process of growth and decay.” (151) By the same token, the change of world phenomena is conceptualized by the Dao De Jing as being caused by the interaction between the yin and yang aspects of the Dao. However, yin and yang are “how Dao maintains the generation of the phenomenal world, but the process does not work in reverse.” (152) In other words, as causing the yin-yang change of the phenomenal world, the Dao itself cannot be changed by yin and yang in the same way things in the world are changed. All these analyses by Brown and McLeod demonstrate that Laozi’s Dao indicates significant traits of transcendence, even if these traits may not belong to the hierarchical, contrastive type of transcendence against which Ames and Jullien read Laozi.

Although the goal of the book has been accomplished, not all of the concrete interpretations of selected early Chinese texts are convincing. This is mainly because the five key concepts of the framework employed by Brown and McLeod for the interpretations — naturalism, non-naturalism, contrastive transcendence, non-contrastive transcendence, and non-transcendence — are either not clearly defined, or while being clearly defined, not consistently applied in the course of interpretation. For instance, after investigating the ambiguous connotations of “naturalism” in contemporary philosophical scholarship, Brown and McLeod conclude by treating “naturalism” more as an affiliation claim than as a marker of a substantive philosophical position, and hence define “naturalism” as “a commitment to standing with the sciences, to adopting views and constructing systems that are respectable from the point of view of the physical sciences and their practitioners, or at least do not directly oppose them.” (22) In tandem with this treatment of naturalism, they also define “contrastive transcendence” via a quote of Kathryn Tanner’s theological work: In contrastive theories of transcendence, “divinity and the rest of the world taken as whole are viewed as logical contraries within a single spectrum: this forces an a priori separation of the two.” (35) A non-contrastive transcendence of the divinity would underlie the entire spectrum of all beings in the world, and thus would imply that “divine involvement with the world need be neither partial, nor mediate, nor simply formative: if divinity is not characterized by contrast with any sort of being, it may be the immediate source of being of every sort.” (36) In other words, a contrastive transcendence characterizes ultimate reality as a supreme being which stands alongside worldly beings and imposes an imperial order of existence upon the de facto existence of those beings. However, a non-contrastive transcendence explains the origin of the being of the world. While being itself is ultimately unknowable and ineffable, such a ground of being does not dictate what the world is apart from the existing empirical order of the world. Instead, the empirical order of the world would be the only means by which humans can know such an ultimate ground.

Among all the three mentioned concepts, naturalism has not been clearly defined, although Brown and McLeod may have good reasons not to do so. However, according to the presented conceptual framework, we envision there could be a serious philosophical endeavor to construct a worldview which is both transcendent in a non-contrastive mode and naturalistic in the sense that what the worldview presents is compatible with modern physical sciences. This also means that when we discern robust themes of transcendence in early Chinese texts, we cannot infer ipso facto that they are non-naturalistic. However, the core commitment of a philosophy cannot be both contrastively transcendent and naturalistic at the same time. Unfortunately, I find that Brown and McLeod frequently combine these logically inconsistent concepts to interpret selected early Chinese texts. For instance, while analyzing CQFL, they conclude: “in the cosmology of the CQFL, tian is understood in terms governed by contrastive transcendence but the text concomitantly embraces what are apparently both naturalistic and transcendental aspects of tian.” (81) If Brown and McLeod were correct, the thought of CQFL would be incoherent since it is interpreted by them as advocating both the contrastive transcendence of tian, which impinges on the de facto order of the empirical world, and the naturalism of tian. The conclusion is surely worth debating. Similarly, while analyzing the Xunzi, Brown and McLeod say,

we think it is fair and accurate to interpret the Tianlun as defending some aspects of tian’s transcendence . . . Consequently, far from seeing Xunzi as a poor naturalist, we think it is better to interpret him as a very unique and interesting non-naturalist, whose conception of tian should be placed in conversation with other non-naturalist conceptions of the world and the divine. (113)

Readers would wonder why Xunzi cannot be simultaneously transcendent and naturalistic, since this is a reasonable combination according to the adopted framework.

While remaining sympathetic with their overall goal of the book, in the remaining part of this review I will try to perfect Brown and McLeod’s conceptual framework so as to pave a way for future scholars to more consistently and continually furnish novel and legitimate readings of the addressed early Chinese texts. The aforementioned five concepts can be refined as follows, and such a refinement would surely succumb to further critique.

I agree with Brown and McLeod that naturalism is a name of affiliation which speaks to one’s commitment to the concept of “nature” fashioned by modern physical sciences. However, as indicated by historians and philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, and Geoffrey Lloyd, this name of affiliation also designates a marker of a substantive philosophical position on “nature,” which is predicated on the following two claims: Firstly, there is a set of orders which operates upon the totality of existing realities in the universe, and these orders can be discovered in the form of laws of nature via a bottom-up method of empirical observation and human reasoning. Whether these orders come from a deeper realm of being remains undefined by this concept of nature. Secondly, the set of orders is stable in the sense that these orders remain uninfluenced by unpredictable metaphysical entities, such as souls, spirits and other magical forces which may also exist among the realities of the observed world, and hence the discovered laws of nature are testable, falsifiable, and improvable so that the knowledge of nature can progress on the basis of accumulative human endeavors within scientific communities. Still, whether these unpredictable metaphysical entities exist and whether they come from another realm of being remain unanswered by this concept of nature. In a word, naturalism would refer to a worldview which either affirms or remains compatible with the two conditional claims: the order of the existing world can be discovered empirically via human reason, and the order is recognized as being stable in a certain degree so that derived laws of nature remain debatable. According to this re-definition of “naturalism,” the so-called naturalistic transition detected by Brown and McLeod in early Han texts cannot be assessed as strictly naturalistic, since as admitted by Brown and McLeod (84 and 92), the correlative cosmology of early Han texts enchants the world. Such an enchantment makes the world so full of omens, signs, and mysterious resonances among apparently unrelated things that, as pointed out by Joseph Needham,[2] the theories that are used by early Han thinkers to explain the worldly phenomena, such as the one of yin-yang vital energy and five phases, cannot be seen as laws of nature in the strict sense of modern physical sciences.

Non-naturalism would be a view of nature that denies the validity of either of the two conditional claims which naturalism as defined makes. This explains further why an enchanted worldview of early Han cannot be seen as fully naturalistic, since it complies with part of the first condition of naturalism, but is not compatible with the second.

A view of non-transcendence would affirm that the totality of existing realities in the universe has no origin other than themselves. I also agree with Brown and Alexus’s conceptions of contrastive and non-contrastive transcendence, and would furthermore indicate that this distinction is essentially the same as the one by which Paul Tillich distinguishes God as “a supreme being” from “the ground of being.” Consequently, a view of transcendence would aver that the totality of existing realities in the universe cannot explain the origin of themselves, and thus need another realm of being for such an explanation, regardless of whether this original realm of being is contrastive or not.

According to this refined conceptual framework, we can envision multiple possibilities of combination and be better positioned to interpret varying philosophies. For instance, both naturalism and non-naturalism can be non-transcendent. A non-transcendent naturalism would imply the self-sufficiency of the scientifically perceived world to explain itself, whereas a non-transcendent non-naturalism would present an enchanted world not supervised by a supreme deity, such as the one which may be envisioned by astrology, alchemy or other so-called pseudo-sciences. Furthermore, a naturalism could be non-contrastively transcendent. This would be the case when what a thing is gets explained by the de facto relationship among things, whereas where a thing comes from gets explained by another realm of being which does not impinge upon the empirical order of the existing world. However, naturalism cannot be contrastively transcendent unless the order implied by the divine realm of being remains compatible with the empirical order of the existing world. We cannot find an easy example of such a compatibility particularly in the Abrahamic religions, since the idea of a supreme God normally implies a divine plan which is conceived by God even prior to the existence of the world. Moreover, a non-naturalism could be either non-contrastively transcendent, when an enchanted world is said to derive from an ultimately ineffable God, or contrastively transcendent, when the enchanted world is thought of as being grounded within such a divine origin.

If we employ this refined conceptual framework to interpret early Chinese thought, we’ll garner new insights. For instance, CQFL would present a non-naturalistic view of the enchanted world with a contrastively transcendent Tian, which governs the world providentially. Laozi’s Dao De Jing presents a naturalistic Daoist view of nature with a non-contrastive transcendence, but such a view does not prioritize the role of human beings in realizing the cosmic Dao in the human world. However, the Xici (the Appended Texts of the Classic of Change) presents a naturalistic Ruist (Confucian) view of nature with a non-contrastive transcendence, which does prioritize the role of humanity in realizing the humane manifestation of the cosmic Dao. Moreover, the Xunzi presents a mainly naturalistic Ruist view of nature with a mainly non-transcendent view of Tian, because although Tian is still treated as being the evolutionary origin of existing things in the universe, humans are encouraged by Xunzi to utilize Tian to serve the flourishing of human society and, hence, to strip Tian of its divine depth. The view of Mozi would be both non-naturalistic and contrastively transcendent, since the text advocates both the existence of ghosts and the supreme status of Tian as a providential deity.

I would not claim that the refined framework is the right way to interpret early Chinese thought. However, concurring with Brown and McLeod’s urge to ask more interesting questions of Chinese and comparative philosophy concerning transcendence, I do think we need more refined comparative categories to treat both Western and non-Western thought with more respect, nuances, and novelties.

REFERENCES

Song, Bin (2020). A review of Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Regions without Borders, by William Franke (State University of New York Press, 2018). Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 88, Issue 1 (2020): 278-281.
Needham, Joseph (1956). Science and Civilization in China, Vol. II (Cambridge University Press).

[1] For details of Ames’s and Jullien’s interpretations of the Daoist metaphysics in the Dao De Jing, please refer to Song 2020.
[2] Needham 1956: 290.

• I also reviewed this book from the perspective of interreligious studies in the Journal of Interreligious Studies, please click here.