On Transcendence

——a comparative study from a perspective of transcendence

Yu Xuanmeng

(The Philosophy Institute, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)

Abstract: Having recognized that the formulation of the history of the Chinese philosophy cannot imitate the notion and framework of the western philosophy, we have been faced a serious choice: either to renew the notion of philosophy or to give up the claim of Chinese philosophy as a philosophy. I believe, since Chinese philosophy is a matter of fact and calls more and more attention in the world, it forces us to renew the notion of philosophy that had dominated over the west since Plato. This has been also the request of the western philosophers after Hegel exposed in the slogan “philosophy is end”. This paper is to venture the way to reach the unique source of the both philosophies by dealing with the issue of transcendence considered as the essential feature of philosophy. I hope it will help to formulate the new way doing philosophy.

Introduction

The Chinese philosophy and the Western philosophy are of two different types. They are different not only by point of views towards some problems, but also by the ways doing philosophy. One of possible ways to demonstrate such difference is to investigate into the way of transcending. “To transcend”, can one reach something transcendental. The Chinese philosophy put stress on the way to transcend, while the traditional western philosophy something transcendental. Therefore, for the traditional Chinese philosophy, to do philosophy means to pursue the Dao by one’s own way of transcending, what remarkable here is to adjust one’s way of existence, i.e., to adjust one’s own existentiality, which is called self-cultivation in both of body and mind. While in the West, philosophy is the universal knowledge transcending all sorts of particular knowledge. Therefore, for the traditional Western philosophy, to do philosophy is to focus on the issue of transcendent realm, whatever being for or against it. To put it in another words, to do philosophy means for the Chinese philosophers to live in a certain way for the sake of following Dao; while for the western philosophers, to grasp the truth as universal knowledge by operating conceptual reasoning. The different ways of doing philosophy lead to various different features of the two philosophies, that makes them almost incomparable as we ask: what is philosophy? But, if we compare them in the level of the ways doing philosophy, we find that to operate the conceptual reasoning is one of the possible ways of human being’s own existentiality, which has been revealed in phenomenology, especially in Heidegger’s work. This paper is to demonstrate how the seemingly incomparable becomes comparable on the basis of existential analysis. If to work out the way doing philosophy is also an issue of philosophy, and even a more profound issue, then, we might say, philosophy is the reflection of human being’s own way of existence?

In this paper I will demonstrate that, “to transcend” is the source of something transcendent. For the Chinese philosophy, to transcend displays in adjusting one’s own existentiality to answer the challenges coming forth from our life. Transcending could be in various ways; conceptual reasoning of the western philosophy is one of these ways. To begin with, I will trace back to the notion of transcendence in the western philosophy.

The Notion of Transcendence in Western Philosophy

The notion of transcendence is very important for the western philosophy. It reveals a realm beyond our world perceivable. We can even say that, to do philosophy means, especially for rationalism, to enter into the transcendent realm. This notion of transcendence makes dualism the basic characteristic of the western philosophy that sharply contrasted with that of the Chinese philosophy.

Though we cannot read the word transcendence in Plato, it is without any exaggeration to say that his theory of idea is of transcendent. For Plato, outside the perceivable word there exists not only ideas, but a whole world of idea separated from our world. The idea world is absolutely transcendent. Being strange it sounds, if we follow Plato’s way, the establishment of the idea world is not without reason. As the matter of fact, in daily language, we often use the general terms to explain some particular things. It leads us further to inquire into those object referred by general terms. For instance, when we say, this girl is beautiful, that flowers are beautiful, Plato would ask, what does it mean by beauty itself? Since beauty is a general term, we cannot exhaust its meaning by pointing out some perceivable things. As something universal absolutely differ from perceivable things, Plato suggests that there is an idea of universal beauty and the like that exists in a world other than our perceived world. Though, Plato did not use the word transcendence, it was no doubt that the idea world was a transcendent world.1

Philosophy drives in various directions and with different ways. The direction opened by Plato turned out to be the main trend in the west. Following this direction, we have learnt that there occurred different philosophical schools and problems. May the problems be different and the ways variety, the traditional philosophy has been always relevant to the realm of transcendence. Transcendence is based on the absolute separation between the two: such as truth contrast to opinion, one to many, reality to actuality, etc.; in which the former one element of each pair transcends over the later one. Since philosophy aims at truth and essence, it encourages people to go into the transcendental realm.

The notion of transcendence is not used in philosophy only; it is also used in Christianity. The Heaven where God exists is transcendental. It is separated from our world. Human being cannot ascend into heaven by his own effort. However, God has the characteristic of both transcendence and immanence, so that God’s grace can reach human being. Immanence and transcendence are thus used in theology.

Since modern times, philosophy has freed itself from theology. The meaning of transcendence, accordingly, changed as well. It denotes no more the world of heaven, neither the world of Plato’s idea, but the rational world. Rational world has the characteristic of transcendence because of its separation from the world of sensation. It says, we cannot grasp the rational world by sense organs; it is the object of our reasoning with the universal concepts. Here, reason means basically our faculty of conceptual reasoning. However, not every one is willing to accept a transcendent world. For instance, according to Hume, there was no evidence to show that we can get the universal concepts out of perception; therefore he suspects the existence of such universal concepts and the reality denoted by them. He even maintained that we could not have universal knowledge out of experience except probable knowledge. However, we do have some universal knowledge, not only the mathematics, but also natural sciences. This forced Kant to think in other way. To answer the challenge, Kant maintained the only reasonable answer is that we human being do have the faculty of conceptual reasoning. Mathematics and natural sciences are the result of using categories (conceptual reasoning) to the data of sense. Here, Kant divided sense and reason as two different realms. They are separated from each other. He called the later one, namely pure reason, the transcendental realm. He called the philosophy discussing pure reason “transcendental philosophy”. [2]

So we have learnt the three types of transcendence: Platonic, theologian and modern philosophy. Though there are some differences among the three, the basic meaning of transcendence lies in that there is a gap between the two sides: idea world and perceivable world; heaven and earth; the experience and reason. Within each pair, the two sides cannot be reduced to each other. This made the dualism the characteristic of the western philosophy.

In the narrow sense, dualism means the separation of body and mind, as Descartes said. In a broad sense, it means the separation between experience and reason. It further displayed in a serial of separations: essence vs. phenomenon, mind vs. material, necessity vs. accidence, knowledge vs. opinion, rationalism vs. irrationalism, absolutism (or universalism) vs. relativism, rationalism vs. empiricism, idealism vs. materialism, etc. The two sides in each pair separate from each other and they cannot pass from one side into the other. This is the ground for monism to make sense. Here we see why it is inexact when we contrast the Chinese philosophy and the western philosophy as: at the one hand the combination of heaven and human being, at the other hand, the separation of heaven and human being, because they are not in the same level, hence they are incomparable in that level. The same as we contrast the combination of subject and object with the separation of subject from object.[3]

The rise of the notion of transcendence is definitely related to the motivation of pursuing the universal knowledge. Though we can rarely find the word universal in Plato’s dialogue,[4] it is no doubt that the so-called idea of Platonism is absolutely of universal. When Plato searched for ideas, he actually performed for the people how to turn our conscious into conceptual thinking so as to grasp something universal. Universal was so impressive so that Aristotle could dismiss ideas but universal. To him, there was no necessary to presuppose the existence of ideas; instead, we had something universal. He was probably the first one to state clearly that, the more universal the knowledge was, the more valuable it was. Of course, universal knowledge in Aristotle was not something transcendent in the sense beyond the experience. But, as he praised high the value of the universal knowledge, he could not prevent people from searching for more and more universal knowledge, until reaching the most universal knowledge. The most universal knowledge is supposed to prevail all particular knowledge, but it cannot be any of the particular knowledge. Just as the most universal knowledge cannot be any particular knowledge, it turns out to be the transcendental knowledge, or transcendental philosophy as Kant said.

Here we should clarify the general from universal. Sometimes, people mix the general with the universal. Especially in Chinese, we have the same term “Pu Bian” for both general and universal. Actually “the general” distinguishes from “the universal” in that, the general never means absolute universal, since it usually means the general generalized from experiences. What is the point here is that the absolute universal transcends all experiences.

Metaphysical knowledge is transcendent. Not only the whole knowledge deals with a realm out of experience, but also the concepts it uses are beyond time and space. This means, the transcendental concepts do not gain their meaning from what they denotes. Actually, they denote nothing. They get their meaning from their mutual relationship; that is to say, they have their meaning as logic determinations.

What I said above is actually ontology. People might say, not all the western philosophy is ontology. They also have as their theme epistemology, ethics or axiology. Even though, no one would deny, ontology is the core of the traditional western philosophy. It have been determined the decisive characteristics of the western philosophy.

Transcendence in the Chinese Philosophy: “ to Ascend from Hexagram”

At the first glance, there seems to be nothing in the Chinese philosophy about the transcendence. To tell the truth, there was no word in the Chinese classics corresponding to “transcendence”, nor corresponding to “metaphysics”. Now we translate “transcendence” as “chao yue”(超越), “metaphysics” as “xing er shang xue”(形而上学). They are new terms formulated for the translation of the western philosophy. But if we go deep into the Chinese philosophy, we would find that there is indeed a sort of transcending which differs from the western philosophy which marks the Chinese philosophy so profoundly. Let’s begin with the term “xing er shang xue “.

Originally, we don’t have the term “xing er shang xue” (形而上学). What we really have is “xing er shang” (形而上). It is picked from the first part of a complete sentence of The Book of Change, it reads: “xing er shang zhe wei zhi dao, xing er xia zhe wei zhi qi”(形而上者谓之道, 形而下者谓之器), which means: “That it is going with Dao to ascend from hexagram; that it is dealing with vessel to descend from hexagram”. In this sentence, “xing” is hexagram, “shang”and “xia”, “to ascend” and “to descend”, “qi” could be vessel literally, but broadly speaking, means any things we can handle. “er” has no substantial meaning, it functions in this sentence as displaying the attitude of turning, i.e. from dealing with hexagram turn to another topic, say, from dealing with hexagram to dealing with Dao or handling vessel. The key fragment in our talk: “xing er shang ” means “to ascend from hexagram”. There is no “xue” (学) in the original sentence, which meaning a discipline, a learning. So “xing er shang xue” literally means a learning or a discipline concerning “to ascend from hexagram”. I think if the western scholars have learnt the meaning of “xing er shang xue” word by word this way, they would be surprised at calling it metaphysics.

As we know, the traditional western philosophy, as the most universal knowledge, is a science which transcending all sorts of particular sciences. Metaphysics, as pure philosophy, is considered the first principle of philosophy and is transcendental in the sense beyond experience. To speak rigorously, as the first and transcendental principle, metaphysics, i.e., ontology is formulated by the pure concepts determined logically. However, the Chinese “xing er shang xue”, a leaning concerning “to ascend from hexagram” has nothing to do with the operating of the logical concepts. Furthermore, no evidence shows that “xing er shang xue” deals with the realm beyond the experience, to the contrary, Dao never separates from concrete things, and one reaches Dao by his personal experience, but not by conceptual deduction. What is more, no one says Dao is an object of concept. Accordingly, the Chinese “xing er shang xue”, if understood literally, is not tantamount to the western metaphysics.

Unfortunately, when people use “xing er shang xue” to translate the western metaphysics, at the same time, even worse, people begin to understand “xing er shang xue” according to the western metaphysics. This is to say, people come to expound the traditional Chinese philosophy according to the notion of the western philosophy as they get the meaning, more or less, of the western metaphysics. This way of doing philosophy is widely reflected today in China; which leads to the suspicious of the legitimacy of the Chinese philosophy on the one hand, and motivates some writers to rewrite the history of the Chinese philosophy on the other hand. Here I’d like to concentrate myself on the issue how people expound Chinese “xing er shang xue” by western metaphysics.

One evidence concerned is about the translation of “xing er shang zhe wei zhi dao, xing er xia zhe wei zhi qi”(形而上者谓之道, 形而下者谓之器). Wing-Tsit Chan, as an authority in translating Chinese philosophy source into English, translated the above sentence into: “What exists before physical form (and therefore without it) is called the Way. What exists after physical form (and therefore with it) is called a concrete thing.” [5] Here we have three things: Way (i.e., Dao), physical form (hexagram), and concrete things. The paragraph shows the relation of the three items: Dao exists before Physical form; concrete thing exists after and with physical form. The problem here is how to understand “before” and “after”. It would be absurd to have the terms mean the sequence in time and space. Chan explained “before” as “therefore without it”. Does it mean that Dao is something apart from form? If yes, it reminds us to think of the western metaphysics that there exists something beyond experience. Though Dao is flexible, few would agree with the above point. Rather, it is broadly available that Dao is full of everything.

Another author Wu Jing-Nuan’s translation shows the same bias: it reads: “Thus, that which is antecedent to physical form is called ‘The Dao.’ What is subsequent physical form is called a ‘vessel’”[6]. By “antecedent” and “subsequent”, the translator suggested a sequence among the three items. Both of the two translations put the sight on the relations among the three items, which, as I can see, do not catch the original meaning of sentence. What about if we take the sentence as a way to guide us personally into obtaining Dao?

For the sake of working out the meaning of sentence, I’d like to explain the meaning of the words first. In Chinese language, we cannot tell whether a word is a verb, a noun or an adjective unless we read it according to its function on the text. So here, as I can see, “shang” is a verb, means “to ascend”. Then we face the challenge: who is the subject to ascend? The answer is: everyone who wants to reach Dao, because, “xing”(hexagram) cannot ascend by itself. And “to ascend” means to adjust one’s own existentiality so that one can live in a way as Dao goes. The purpose of this sentence is to direct people to reach Dao. And, to reach Dao is definitely not by the way of sheer knowing. More important, it is realized in one’s own way of dealing with things properly. In short, it is in his opening to the world in accord with the opening of the world. So “ascend” is the Chinese way of transcendence, in the sense to transfer or surpass from one existentiality (dealing with things or with hexagram) to another existentiality, i.e., going with Dao.

That “to ascend” means “to transcend” in the sense of transferring one’s own existentiality. It could be testified in the following remarks: “As words are used for clarifying the symbols, forget the words when having got the symbols; symbols are used for preserving meanings, forget the symbols when having got the meanings.” This is from Wang Pi’s (226-249BC) explanation of The Book of Change that directs people to read the book. “Having got the meaning” means “having reached the meaning of Dao”. Here, symbol is for hexagram. What noticeable is “ to forget”. Only by “forget”, can one go from hexagram to the meaning of Dao. In English oral composition, “forget it” means don’t talk about it, or don’t mention it. It is a tentative action. Usually people think that we can tentatively bear in mind something, but we cannot be intended to forget something. Anyway, for Wang Pi, in talking about Dao, what should be heeded is not something outside us, but our own existentiality. Forget is one’s own way of existence. This shows that, Dao is not something grasped by concept. If Dao is something transcendent (in the sense not beyond the experience, but beyond the hexagram and concrete things), it reveals itself in the human being’s own transcendence (ascending from dealing with hexagram, form, or vessels and concrete things, to going along Dao).

Whether or not my explanation of the above sentence is correct, it can be checked through the whole history of Chinese philosophy. Generally speaking, the main task of the traditional Chinese philosophy is to strive to be a sage or saint, rather than to get “objective knowledge” of the world. It accounts to the fact that to do self-cultivation is the main task for the ancient Chinese philosophers, even they don’t bear the names of philosophers.

In talking of the issue of transcendence, I put so much in reading the above sentence from The Book of Change. It is because that, firstly, both Confucianism and Daoism have accepted this book as the source book. Secondly, Dao is the key issue of Chinese philosophy, the way to reach Dao shows the Chinese way doing philosophy. Thirdly, here we encounter the key notion of transcendence that is the key characteristic of metaphysics. With the insight into the issue of transcendence, we get a new perspective to comparative study between the two philosophies.

From Incomparability to Comparability

    The issue of transcendence provides a new perspective for us to do comparative study.

When we do comparative study between the Chinese philosophy and the western philosophy, almost no one raised the question whether they are comparable or incomparable. Actually it is a problem. As people formulated the Chinese philosophy according to the western philosophy, they tacitly considered the two were comparable. While people begin to suspect the legitimacy of the Chinese philosophy, they must think the two are incomparable. Whether they are comparable or incomparable, it depends on our perspectives when we take them into comparison. For instance, when we view philosophy as some general knowledge dealing with the world, society and human being, they are comparable. They are also comparable as we think philosophy from the aspect of the way of thinking. But as we go into the types of the two philosophies, whether the two philosophies are comparable is a problem. Since the traditional western philosophy has ontology at its core, which determined the type of western philosophy as the first principle formed by logic deduction. But as I can see, there is no ontology in the Chinese philosophy. To be sure, when we come to ontology, we have the insight of the core and a deeper understanding of the western philosophy. To follow the way of the western philosophy in formulating the history of the Chinese philosophy is sure to come to ontology at last. As we can see in several recent textbooks since 80’s of the last century, they treated the history of the Chinese philosophy as the development of the categories logically. But I don’t think by this way the history of the Chinese philosophy could be disclosed. The two philosophies are heterogeneous in various aspects, to cite some of them for examples:

1, The realms of philosophy are different. Ontology depicts a transcendent realm, that is to say, a realm beyond our sensation, so that it leads to dualism. For the Chinese philosophy, Dao is not something outside our world; rather, Dao goes together with everything. If the task of philosophy is to deal with the transcendent world, as metaphysics does, we could not find such a philosophy in China.

2, The languages of philosophy are different. Ontology uses logical determined category which out of time and space. Logical concepts differ from daily concepts in that they do not get their meaning from what they denote, their meaning determined by their mutual relationship. So they are not names of some objects. Based on the Chinese culture, the Chinese philosophy mainly uses “names”. As generally accepted, names would have no meaning if they separate from what they denoted. As the result, the Chinese philosophy did not display itself by pure conceptual deduction.

3, The forms of expression are different. Ontology says something as first principle. It cannot but in the most universal form, which is supposed to be the essence of the things, the law of universe, and the absolute truth. But for Chinese philosophy, what the topic is focused on the obtaining Dao. Since Dao is not something grasped by concept, the issue of the Chinese philosophy would be mainly the communication of personal experience of Dao. The problems discussed here are, to cite some as examples: Why people need to follow Dao? Whether could every one reach Dao? How to prove that man and the world are out of from one source? How could we experience the situation without the differentiation of the world and me? All of these cannot be expressed by logic deduction, but by appealing to personal experiences, etc.

4, In short, the stress of learning philosophy in the west lies in doing thinking training, while for Chinese, to do philosophy means to do self-cultivation in both body and mind.

As the above sharp contrast we have, how could we compare the two heterogeneous philosophies in the same level? To find the way out, it is why this paper begins with the issue of transcendence. It might be a hint for us to go from incomparability to comparability. Superficially, as we talked above, transcendence has different meaning in two philosophies; therefore, they are incomparable. For in the Chinese philosophy, transcendence means human being’s own action of transcending, i.e., to adjust one’s own existentiality in accord with the opening of the world. While in the western philosophy, it seems as if transcendence has nothing to do with human being’s own action except being the characteristic of objects. But it is not true to say that now. Due to Husserl, people come to know that, for everything revealed in our conscious, there is a sort of intention responded. Heidegger discloses further that human beings own existentiality, i.e., his own way to be, reveals the beings as beings. I’d like to go a step further to make it more clear for our comparison here: it is human being’s own way of transcending makes the different types of philosophy.

What is significant in Husserl and Heidegger is that, they moved the eyes from sheer what is disclosed in conscious into the consideration of the both sides, say, “to intend” and “the intended”, or, Being(to be) and beings. Perhaps, we could even trace this point back to Kant. In his Critique of Pure Reason, the same concepts could be both concepts of understanding and the pure reason concepts depend on our using of them. If we put them into empirical use, they are pure concepts of understanding; put them into pure reasoning deduction, the pure concepts of reason. That the same concepts could belong to different sorts lies in the different usages. The using of the concepts are our own existentiality, just like our existentiality of doing math problem is different from that of reading a novel.

There are various sorts of revelation people might take from the above doctrine. What I can see is a ground for comparison study between the Chinese philosophy and the western philosophy. As we said, if we compare the two philosophies from the perspective of ontology, we faced the incomparability, so as the question of the legitimacy rises. But if we take the two philosophies as the matter of facts, what we could compare is the way to do philosophy. In this direction, we ask: How does the philosophy written down relate to human being’s way of existence? Is there a similar structure as human being transcending? If different types of philosophy correspond to different ways of existence, how to depict the different existentiality of the Chinese philosophy and the western philosophy respectively? If something transcendent lies in the way of human being’s own transcending, how could it possible for human being to transcend? And many other issues as well. In the following, I can only depict some of the points as a preliminary study.

Go to the Roots by Existential Analysis

From what we discussed above, “to transcend” makes something transcendent. “To transcend” is our own way of existence. According to dictionary, the verb “transcend” ordinarily means “to rise above or go beyond the limits of; overpass; exceed”. Here, what noticeable is that, we face something not being successive. For instance, what we have in the western philosophy is that, something in our conceptual understanding is transcendental, because it is beyond, surpass, or excess what we can perceive by our sense organs. Indeed, Hume has demonstrated for us that, we could not go from the ideas of sensation to the rational conception. The two are not successive. To put into our existential analysis, it is simply the fact that our faculty of perception is not the same as that of reasoning. That is to say, there is a break between our two sorts of faculty, say, perception and reason. Since they are different sorts of faculty, each corresponds its own appearance, so it seems the rational world is separated from that of the sensation. Actually, the break is not only between reason and sensation. Even within perception, there are full of breaks. For instance, eyes are for color, ears are for sound. We could not see sound by eyes, nor could ears for color. As a French philosopher said, if someone has noise as his only sense organ, he would recognize the world as smell. For a blind, the color is something transcendent; for a deaf, sound is something transcendent. We see color is successive from bright to dark, we hear sound successive from strong to weak. But sound and color are not in continuity. They are separated because eyes and ears, as the different faculty, have the different functions. Usually we don’t think one sort of sense separated from another, it is because we can synthesize the data of perception. That is another faculty. The blind also can synthesize what he sensed into a world, but this world is a world without color. Compared with the difference between color and sound, the difference between reason and perception might be bigger. It is because of that, at most part, we cannot synthesize what we thought and what we sensed into one, especially when the thinking goes in pure reasoning. Though rational world is considered as something transcending the perception world, they are all in the grasp of human being. In this sense, nothing is beyond human conscious. Everything revealed corresponds to human being’s own openness.

But at the other hand, human being does transcend himself. For he can turn from one sort of faculty to that of another according to one’s need, just as we turn the frequency channel of TV. There is a leap from one channel to the other.

Now the question, how many sorts of faculty do we have? It is not easy to answer. Not until we have answered all the challenges we have in our life, we cannot exhaust the sorts of our faculty. One thing is certain that the division of faculty made by western philosophy is obviously too simplicity; which left no room for ability to reach Dao. In the last analysis, the faculty of human being is his own possibility to existence. The possibility to existence is not limited to the ability of knowing. Therefore the more profound question is how a person develops his/her ability of existence. Since human being can only live in the given environment, rather, he comes from the environment and exerts influence on environment. As Heidegger said, there is a structure, Being-in-the-world, in which both world and man open. Without any exaggeration, the ancient Chinese philosophers also had such idea in their mind. In The Book of Change or Lao Zi, they talked about that, at the very beginning, there was unique one, from which differentiates heaven, earth and human being; this very unique one is called Tai Ji (T’ai-chi). The way it opens is called Dao. Zhuang Zi, in his The Equality of Things, even went into more details. Recognizing everything, including human being, came out from the same unique source, he wrote: “Without other, there would not be I. And without me who will reveal the other?” I don’t think this “I-other” structure has any essential difference from that of Heidegger’s “Being-in-the-world”.

Being exposed the structure of existence, there are three items could be caught up into our reflection: I, other, and I-other as a whole. If we observe the Chinese philosophy and the western philosophy from the perspective of existential analysis, we find that, for the western philosophy ever since Plato, philosophers had mainly heeded on the “other” item while neglecting the corresponding conceptual thinking as their own existentiality. This, as I think, explains the existence of transcendental world. For the Chinese philosophers, the most important thing they thought is to frequently remind people of the unique source of the world and man, i.e., the “I-other” item. Since everything opens from the unique source, this is why man should follow Dao. Again, we are in the process of opening, so that, naturally we are in Dao, but if we heed “I” or other separately, the whole structure “I-other” would be lost. So, to follow Dao needs get rid of whatever being caught by the “other” and “I”, this is what “to ascend” means.

Not only transcendence, but also many respective characteristics of the Chinese philosophy and the western philosophy could be explicated. But that will be beyond this limited pool. If this paper says something of philosophy, then, the philosophy for us is nothing but the reflection of human being’s own way of existence. The aim of philosophy, as I believe, is to be self-awareness of life.