On
Sunday evening I had an inspiring discussion with Joyce.
On Saturday she had prepared a thorough article which was distributed to the
audience, “The Translatability and the Untranslatability of the Law of Life:
Liang Qichao versus Zhang Taiyan”. In her speech she did not have time to touch
upon all the parts of the text. As I had the printed text, I could read it
later. And as I suspected, there were extremely interesting and important
things. As the title suggests, the article is about the two persons, Liang
Qichao 梁啓超
(1873-1929) and Zhang
Taiyan 章太炎 (1869-1936). In the following
I will be treating only Zhang Taiyan’s ideas, as presented by prof. Liu, and
not all of them, but only some of them. For the moment I am relying entirely on
prof. Liu’s interpretation of Zhang Taiyan; I hope in the future I will have
time to read Zhang himself. My reading might be perhaps far-fetched and even
erroneous, but it is done in good faith. Of course, when I say that Zhang
Taiyan says this or that, it should be understood “Zhang in the interpretation
of prof. Liu as I understood it”. All the quotations are from prof. Liu’s text,
if not indicated otherwise. Provided Chinese characters are also mostly present
already in prof. Liu’s text.
Zhang
Taiyan performs a critique simultaneously on two levels, individual or
psychological on the one hand, and societal or political on the other hand.
1) Zhang
criticizes the “ego-fixation” (wozhi 我執), which could be interpreted as the “mental
processes” or “objective judgements” (see p. 20) or “the illusory and deluded
consciousness” (p. 20-21). Mentation and judgement are tied to the ego, receive
their orientation and values from it. I judge things to be useful or harmful,
interesting or without interest; and psychological mentation consists largely in
judging on the exteriority. Its basic functioning is to create distinctions; it
makes things unequal. To a certain extent it is good and necessary.
At
the same time it has its limits in the sense that the products and habits
formed by this process represent the mechanical or repetitive side of life. But
if life is to continue living, it has to be also adaptive and inventive, and
this can not be achieved solely with the acquired forms and habits. The
achieved and finished identity appears then as an obstacle to life and
transformation. In order to overcome these inhibitions, Zhang uses Zhuangzi’s
notion of “mind-fasting” (xinzhai 心齋). This is the “vacuous and inoperative nodal
point at the center (環中)”,
and its constant movement makes “room for the arrival of all others as equal
beings” (p. 18). That is, it undoes the particularism of ego-fixation, and it
manifests other aspects of things, other possibilities, that were previously in
the dark. So, the mind-fasting gives a more global, comprehensive, impartial
and adaptable look and take on things.
Another
aspect of it is that the habit by definition creates abstractions, i.e. classes
of perception and action (that can be performed quasi-mechanically or
instinctively). The mind-fasting brings things back to their “singular temporal
moment” (every one has its own time or temporality, 各有時分 p. 21), their concreteness and shows them as
they appear by and for themselves (and not only as reflected in the mirror of
my own interests and biases). Ego-fixation shows things in their actuality, in
their present finished habitual form; mind-fasting teaches to view each moment
“as the co-existence of all aspects of the events and as the seeds and geneses
of all things to come” (p. 21). Prof. Liu (and supposedly also Zhang Taiyan)
refers at this point to the sentence from the opening section of ch. 27 of
“Zhuangzi”: 萬物皆種，以不同形相禪，如卒若壞環，莫得其倫，是謂天均, where on the one hand we
have the mutual complementing or substituting of different things and on the
other hand things as seeds.
I.e. on the one hand there is implicated all the past and on the other hand all
the future. Things are not limited to the actual present form, but they imply
all the past and are open to the future, are able to transform (namely thanks
to the non-exclusion of others in the global inclusion of mutual conditioning
of past and present causes). “To Zhang Taiyan, ... the radical affirmation of
the future to come was not presented through the projection of an ideal vision,
but through the constant act of negativity so as to challenge and remove the
fixated rules and habitual conventions” (p. 30). The mind-fasting is “the
counter-movement of the fixation in all forms” (p. 31).
2)
The second level or aspect of Zhang Taiyan’s critique touches upon the
“law-fixation” (法執). The individual or
psychological stretches inevitably to the societal and political by the fact
that the mental processes and objective judgements of the individual or
psychological level are “inevitably influenced and shaped by the conventional
consensus and nominal system shared by local practice (舊章制度，名教串習，庸眾共循)” (p. 20). “In order to dis-entangle
and dis-articulate the rigid concept derived from the nominal system, it is
necessary to loosen up the law enforced either by conventional consensus or by
the epistemic structure” (p. 21). In this way the mind-fasting implies also a
cultural and political critique of established laws, norms, social habits.
If
we want this critique to be consistent, the mind-fasting on the psychological
and individual level is not sufficient, but we have to conceive a social
structure that would by itself undo its fixed forms and habitual norms. In the
same way that the mind-fasting pointed to the vacuous “place” in the
individual, Zhang Taiyan also conceived a similar void in the social system. He
understood the nation as “the place of emptiness” , in a continuous process of
being composed and decomposed, a “vacuous and inoperative place that allows the
arrival and departure of different people” (p. 19). He saw the nation as a
dynamic movement in constant re-composition. “The nation has no substance of
its own, but appears only as a mobile condition. (然其組織時，惟有動態，初無實體)” (p. 26). “Zhang further
stressed that the love for the nation (愛國心) was not to love the fixated present state (所愛者亦現在之正有), but to love its composing (組合) and the ““not yet germinated” that is to come
in the future (渴望其未萌芽者)” (p. 26). Zhang “stressed
the importance to acknowledge the historical process of the dynamic and
constantly altered composition [...] and to welcome the coming of new people
and new composition of the nation” (p. 26). A society or a nation is not to be
judged according to what it “is”, according to its present “identity”, but
according to its capacity of becoming, creating, adapting – according to its
future.
So,
there is never a “fixed norm for different generations (文之轉化，代無定型). All the classics, including
the Book of Rites, Book of Documents, Spring and Autumn Annals, the Classics of
Poetry, and even the Classic of Changes, were all records of various historical
moments, presented merely the traces of the subjective judg[e]ments of one moment
of time in the past, and [were] not to be taken as unbreakable laws or canons.
We should not model after any norm as if the ancient kings set it as norms of
teachings” (p. 22). In China, the land of ancestor-worship and filial piety,
this kind of statement is bold and consequential. In fact, similar statements
were already made by Mozi and especially Han Feizi during the Warring States
period. And in general, it is clear that we grow in the soil of a past
tradition, we come from our ancestors – but if we want to be genuinely faithful
to them, we should not repeat the same
that they did, or find solutions in the same
way; because their solutions were adapted to their particular historical setting, and if we are to imitate the “same”
capacity of problem-solving, we have to find new ways that would be suited to
the our present situation.
What
would be the social structure that could encourage the society’s power of
becoming and problem-solving? Zhang “analyzed the representative system of the
government and pointed out the drawbacks of this system”,
for instance that “the power of the representatives was seized by the rich and
the upper class people” (p. 27). In a speech delivered in 1912 Zhang suggested
that “offices for administration, legislation and supervision should be
independent from one another, and the power of the president should be limited
and placed at a “vacuous and inoperative place” (空虛不用之地) to prevent him from developing into a
dictatorship system”. Furthermore, “the office for education and examination
should be independent from the central government” (p. 28). So, it means that
Zhang Taiyan promoted the idea of the separation of powers, only with certain
particularities. There would be five branches: administration, legislation,
supervision, president, education-and-examination. The administration and the
president could be considered as equivalents of the executive in the Western
conception of separation of powers; and the supervision as an equivalent of the
judiciary. Actually, it seems that the supervising branch would include both
the judiciary and what in Estonia is called the National Audit System (Riigikontroll), and perhaps other
functions. The main difference would be an independent branch of education. The
significance of this fact is to be pondered upon. Zhang
Taiyan also proposed a decentralized type of government where the central
government would act as a moderator between the provinces. It is important that
no single vantage point (president, central government) should seize the center
(see p. 29), which is the place of emptiness and where all things interact with
each other as seeds (p. 31). Zhang Taiyan thus was “against the seizure of
power in all forms and over all aspects of life so that the power of thought
could counteract the utilitarian and juridical vision of nation-state advocated
by his contemporaries” (p. 30). In this way mind-fasting acquires also
political significance: “Through the dynamic movement of the xinzhai, any partition set up by the
economic regime of perceptual-nominal system could be analyzed, contextualized,
contested and dis-articulated” (p. 31).
3) The
empty place in the individual and in the society that enables both of them to
live, transform and adapt, is the “thusness” (真如) of
things. “Following Zhuangzi and Buddhist thoughts, Zhang Taiyan elaborated his
reasoning to restore life from the binding and separation exercised by
empirical or symbolic laws, and to take life’s “thus-ness” as it is, which is
the law of life itself in the sense that all life and all law is equal” (p.
30). It should be noted that the law in the phrase “law of life itself” is
different from the ‘law’ in the phrase “law-fixation”. The latter was based on
fixation, exclusion, and actuality, while the first is perfectly mobile,
inclusive, and virtual. Counter-acting the ego- and law-fixations allows “the
dynamic movement of the liveliness of life to constantly unbind the nominal
bondage, so that thoughts [or any forms – M.O.] appeared and disappeared in a[n]
instant and the place could make room to welcome others” (p. 30). It is the
love for the “not-yet-germinated (愛其未萌芽者)” (p 23).
Zhang
Taiyan has some points in common with the ancient school of Legalists, notably
Han Feizi. Both conceive of the sovereign as an “empty place” that should take
no initiative by him/herself; both underline the necessity to find new
solutions in the new historical requirements, and not to slavishly cling to the
past solutions (cf Han Fei’s “sit by the stump and wait the rabbit”); both also
search for inspiration in Daoist sources, Zhang Taiyan in Zhuangzi and Han Fei
in Laozi. But there is a decisive difference, where Zhang could succeed but
where Han Fei inevitably fails – so that Zhang could have some important things
to say to us, whereas Han Fei must be completed or driven further than he
himself actually went. Their aspirations are also often diametrically opposite:
Han Fei wanted to strenghten the ruler, the center, the hierarchy, while Zhang
Taiyan promoted decentralization.
Han
Fei’s initial problem that gave birth to his idea of government was how to make
so that the negative individual characteristics of the monarch would affect the
society as little as possible. According to him the ruler must be as
“non-acting” (wuwei 無為) as possible, intervene as little as possible;
the ruler should not act or think by himself, but receive instigations for
action and thought from others, most importantly from his ministers. So that he
would only “manage” them, act as a facilitator. Because otherwise, Han Fei
warns, the ruler will be inevitably overthrown: if he acts and thinks by
himself, he shows his preferences, so that his subjects know how to please him
– and in this way they usurp his power and finally overthrow him. The ruler
must be “non-acting”, because it is in his own interest, lest he be killed. But
still this appeals to the rationality of the ruler, so that at least he would
be capable of thinking in the long term. But what guarantees that he does?
Isn’t short-sightedness more widespread among men? Don’t they tend to think in
a rather short term? Of what if the ruler is so ruthless and cynical – or
simply mad and suicidal, as not to care about the inevitable downfall sometime
in the future? “After me, the Deluge”... In theory the center of power should
be empty, but it is still filled by a person; and there are no real or
realistic checks on his power.
In
Zhang Taiyan’s case there are. In principle, the five branches should balance
each other (it goes without saying that in practice it would still require a lot
of civilty and culture in social behavior – just as in case of the Western
separation of powers). Of course, we should see more closely, how is it worked
out in detail – but this I must leave for some future time.
Zhang
Taiyan’s notion of a void inside the person and inside the society, and ways to
uphold it (with mind-fasting in the individual plane, that by itself grows into
a radical social and political critique; and with a social system of
power-separation that would in turn breed more powerful, free, “futural”
individuals) are very much needed in the present world. If I would take only
the social and political side, then after the recent crisis it is clear that
the society has to be reinvented, that old forms of democracy are not
sufficient any more. Perhaps we haven’t yet received the answers, but it was
important to formulate the problem and the terms of this problem: how to access
and maintain the “empty” center of a society that makes it alive?
The
common social sphere has to a worrying extent been appropriated by small groups
of persons and institutions (the “1%”, multinational corporations, ...) who
often do not serve the common good at all. How to break these fixations,
blockings and make the society flow? I will not endeavor an answer here; but a
“mind-fasting” in Zhuangzi’s and Zhang Taiyan’s sense, and corresponding types
of interactions between persons could be a thought-seed for this topic.
