Epistemology, Ontology and Nothingness: The Kyoto’s School’s Ideas on 無

The Kyoto School (京都学派) of Japanese philosophers provides a fascinating insight into the combination of 20th Century German and Buddhist philosophy. The combination of Western philosophical analytical frameworks and unique East Asian perspectives, gave rise to ideas on the self, existence, and experience (phenomenology), that had never before been seen.

The Kyoto School’s efforts to understand the Buddhist concept of “Nothingness” (無) contrasted with Heideggerian understandings of ‘being’ is a good example of how fundamental assumptions in Western Philosophy are difficult to apply to certain concepts. [1] Nishida’s efforts to “topologise nothingness” portrays how his understanding of both Buddhism and Western thought on “self” produced a unique philosophical position. The Buddhist idea of Nothingness, in Nishida’s view, is a ‘place’ where subjectivity and objectivity are part of a whole, and where knowing and experiencing exists together. Hence, Nishida contextualised Nothingness in Western Philosophical terms as a “meontology” or “mu-ontology”, a category of analysis that does not quite fall into traditional categories in philosophy. Although the term “mu-ontology” has been used to describe Nishida’s thought, I believe that the way he describes the phenomena of self and the world around self suggests a breakdown of the traditional barriers between epistemology and ontology. [2] 

Brett W. Davis discusses this idea in terms of the separation of epistemology and ontology. However, it seems almost counterproductive to do so when understanding Nothingness. Nishida’s referral to Nothingness as a “place” bashō (場所), despite explicitly denying this separation, suggests that the idea falls into the realm of Ontology more so than Epistemology. [3] Despite this, by examining the practice of meditation as a path to enlightenment, we can better understand what Nishida is attempting to do in his philosophy.

Zen practices of meditation as a means of achieving enlightenment, discuss Nothingness as both an experiential and phenomenological process, guided by an internalised understanding of the Dharma. This suggests that in Buddhist thought, epistemology and ontology are not separated. To reach a state of Nothingness, a practitioner must simultaneously understand the Dharma (epistemological) and change their view of the world around them (ontological). That is to say, that, to know something, also changes one’s perception of the world and vice versa. The continual process of combining the two allows one to reach such a stage in their path to Enlightenment. [4] Thus, Nishida’s attempt to form an understanding of Nothingness by finding an alternate philosophical perspective that integrates a fundamental split in Western Philosophy is enormously impressive. This is because Nishida’s concept of combining epistemology and ontology are rare in philosophical discussions now.

Returning to original Buddhist texts, the classical description of Nothingness taken from the Heart Sutra describes it as a state where the dualities of existence and non-existence become one, and the “self” exists without attachments (5 Aggregates, or Skhanda). [5] In this case, the Heart Sutra describes Nothingness not necessarily as a “place” as Nishida describes it, but rather as a state of being. Perhaps Nishida’s attempts to reconcile the subjective and objective, are an effort to rationalise Nothingness both as a state of being and also a “place”. By saying that there is no distinction between what exists in the mind and what exists in reality, one can rationalise Nothingness as a “place”. This perplexing idea that appears to be diametrically opposed, is later re-examined by Hajime Tanabe in Hegelian terms; by treating existence and non-existence through a dialectical thought process. [6]

Tanabe criticised Nishida’s understanding of Nothingness as an unmoving “place” that merely exists at a point in time and space. His application of the Hegelian dialectic created a more dynamic understanding of nothingness as a “moment of absolute negation”. This understanding of Nothingness seems more similar to the experiential descriptions that exist in the Heart Sutra. [7] Rather than seeing Nothingness as a state that is reached and maintained, Tanabe’s conceptualisation of it as consistent existence and non-existence resonates more accurately with the Heart Sutra. Indeed, Tanabe’s criticisms did go on to influence the way Nishida considered his original ideas. Towards the later stages of Nishida’s thought, he began to see Nothingness less as a “place” and more as a continual dialectic process.

With all of this considered, there is a distinct possibility that I may have misunderstood Nishida and Tanabe’s ideas on Nothingness. The ideas discussed by the Kyoto school are very difficult to grasp and are questions that perplex even experienced practitioners of Zen. That being said, I believe that it is beneficial to genuinely reflect on the efforts that the scholars of the Kyoto School have made to apply different philosophical perspectives to existing thought. Figures such as Nishida and Tanabe amongst the other Kyoto School philosophers have made a serious effort to apply what they have learnt from Western philosophy to a central idea in Zen Buddhism. I would hope that their work receives more attention and generates greater dialogue in the years to come.

[1] Davis, Brett W., The Kyoto School, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/, 2019, Introduction

[2] Ibid, Section 3

[3] Ibid, Section 3.3

[4] Gethin, Rupert, The Foundations of Buddhism, 1998, pp 175-176

[5] The Heart Sutra

[6] Davis, Brett W., The Kyoto School, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/, 2019, Section 3.4

[7] Ibid, Section 3.3

The Unique Nature of Chinese Cosmopolitanism: Examining Similarities and Differences Between East and West

Yan Xishan’s pamphlet, “How to Prevent Warfare and Establish the Foundations of World Unity” is a fascinating document that discusses the ideology of Cosmopolitanism combined with Chinese concepts of Da-Tong (大同), and Socialist thought. An ideological system that can be succinctly described as Chinese Socialist Cosmopolitanism. [1]

In terms of time, the general intellectual trend was leaning towards Cosmopolitanism during this period. With the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, ideas of global governance and unity were being discussed. However, the place that this pamphlet arose from is surprising.

Despite, Western political and ideological concepts such as Republicanism, Democracy and Welfare introduced through Sun Yat-Sen’s (孫中山) declaration of the Three Peoples Principles in 1905, being well known and popular throughout China. These concepts were mostly constrained in a national context. To embrace, and indeed expound the concept of Cosmopolitanism as Datong was incredibly far-sighted on Yan Shixan’s part.

Several intellectual strains come to mind when considering Yan’s ideas. The first is that of Kantian Cosmopolitanism, especially his work ‘Towards Perpetual Peace’. This is in specific regard to the “Recognition of the equality of man without discrimination of race, colour, belief, country” as highlighted in the pamphlet. Yan invokes, whether with or without intent, Kant’s concept of ‘Cosmopolitan Law’ which suggests a universal law that incorporates states and individuals globally. [2] The concept of Datong has a similar concept to that of Kant’s Cosmopolitanism but instead utilizing a “right” based legalistic approach to Cosmopolitanism, emphasizes an ethical and moral social grounding for it. This points to the motivations for actions promoting global harmony and cooperation being grounded not in the rational thought of individuals forming society, but rather moral cultivation and development.

The second intellectual strain that Yan considers when elucidating his concept of Cosmopolitanism, is that of the Doctrine of the Golden Mean (also known as Aristotelian Virtue Ethics). This idea is derived from Western Philosophical traditions from Ancient Greek Philosophy. [3] Despite this, to view Yan’s understanding of the Golden Mean as one that was simply borrowed from Greek Philosophy would be to assume that similar concepts in Chinese philosophy do not exist. The concept of Zhongyong (中庸) taken from Neo-Confucian Scholars such as Zi Si (子思) is also commonly referred to as the Doctrine of the Mean. Indeed, Aristotle never really expanded his concept of the Golden mean to encapsulate ‘trespasses’ taken by one person against another. [4] His concept was more concerned with individual ethical behaviour with the fundamental basis of his theory being Ethical Egoism. Yan, on the other hand, seems to interpret ‘Unity of Contradiction’ as a Golden Mean between individuals, something that is more evocative of Zi Si’s understanding of the Golden Mean.

Considering the origin of intellectual ideas is incredibly important especially when discussing ideas originating from East Asian sources. Due to the vast majority of our educational upbringing, it is often assumed that the intellectual origins of ideas are taken from notable Western thinkers. Yan Xishan’s ideas on Cosmopolitanism highlights the similarities in intellectual ideas between Western and Eastern thought while allowing us to examine the differences at their core.

[1] Yan, Xishan. How to Prevent Warfare and Establish Foundation of World Unity, pamphlet, pp1-41

[2]Brown, Wallace Brown, Grounding Cosmopolitanism: From Kant to the Idea of Cosmopolitan Constitution, Book, 2009, pp31-54

[3]Hursthouse, Rosalind, Virtue Ethics, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/, 2016

[4] Boi, Peter K., Neo-Confucianism in History, Harvard University Asia Center, 2008

Was the Japanese Buddhist Mission to Korea an attempt by the Japanese to gain political control?

Various Japanese Buddhist sects sent missionaries to Korea under the notion that they were to protect Japanese citizens in Korea. Hwansoo Ilmee Kim proves this to be very much the opposite in Empire of the Dharma; Korean and Japanese Buddhism.  Throughput chapter 3, Kim explores three different sects of Buddhism and what their respective missionaries achieved. In order to answer the overarching question, a sub-question must be asked. Where the missionaries really missionaries or were they politician’s in disguise?

I will take the example of Okumura Enshin of the Higashi Honganji (Otani-ha) sect and Sano Zenrei of the Nichirenshu sect as my two case studies; these two studies will be compared and contrasted in order to find a suitable answer.

Okumura Enhsin was a prominent figure in the Korean court, and he went as far as converting Yi Tong’in who would later become a prominent  Korean official to Higashi Honganji. In this case, it can be argued that Enshin’s influence was that of a politician as he was able to exert control over a prominent official. However, this can be discounted because even though Yi did convert his name to a Japanese one because of Enshin. Yi still advocated for pro-Korean reform and tried to push Korean favor internationally. On the other hand, Kim does make clear that Enhsin had an aim of converting like-minded officials to Higasho Honganji. Overall, in this stance it can be argued that Enhsin was a political monk and that he aimed to exert political control in Korea, in terms of speaking of Japanese political control it can be clearly argued that Enshin’s main aim was to push the Japanese favor, Kim makes this very clear by quoting Elliot Griffs by stating “Christianity has made in its ranks in Japan, but is determined to forestall the exertions of Christian missionary in the Korean peninsula.” While the political influence may not seem evident at first when a historical narrative is added, it makes the political influence clear. Japan had outlawed Christianity as it was becoming too ingrained in their society and was beginning to encroach on their political system, and thus they went into isolation. When Japan re-emerged from isolation, they gradually became the dominant power in East Asia and Korea was its closest landmass, and therefore, in order to make its mark the most important. By trying to persuade another country to abandon an religion and to further your interests is a very political move. This is precisely what Enhsin is doing and what he succeeded to an extent to do, however when his main political alliances died and disappeared the Higashi Hinganji were then replaced by Nichirenshu. The fact that Enshin lost favor not because of religion but because of his political motive speaks volumes about his role as a politician. Therefore, it can be argued the Buddhist Missions to Korea was to gain political control.

 

Sano Zenrei was one of the most successful missionaries in the Buddhist missions. However, his achievements are considerably diminished in history. He paved the way for Japanese control and the success of Nishi Honganji (Honganji-ha). Unlike Enshin, Zenrei’s immediate aim was to gain the favor of the imperial family and get the anti-Buddhist law lifted. Zenrei was successful in this, even though the law was re-enacted three years later, this was the first significant breakthrough for the Japanese in the Korean court. The fact that Zenrei was able to lift the ban shows the amount of political clout that he had. His approach was looked down on by other monks. Who believed that monks should stay in their traditional roles instead of being invested in politics. Zenrei’s breakthrough in the Korean government was a success for the Japanese instead of the Koreans. With this being said, Zenrei is looked down on because he was a Japanese monk who succeeded while other Koreans did not. Once again, the Japanese political clout is being seen. This level of political clout can only really be attributed to a politician instead of a monk. While Zenrei was a monk, he had left Japan due to resistance of his own sect and came to Korea in order to preach. When taking this into account, as he was technically ostracised from his sect, he was not working for a religious aim but more for a political objective as he would not have succeeded as far as he did not have political backing. Therefore it can be concluded that Zenrei was more of a politician than a monk, and the Buddhist mission were more of a political move than a religious one.

Overall, when looking at the two case studies, there is strong political presences and religion is instead regulated to the background and is seen as more of a thinly veiled excuse for Japanese citizens to be in Korea. Therefore it is not out width the realm of possibility that the Buddhist Missions were more of political move on the Japanese’s part to gain some control of the government prior to the annexation of Korea.

How Ibsen came to influence the revolutionary movements of China

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen has been hugely influential in the history of theatre and his plays are among the most performed ones in the world. Not only did Ibsen infuse the world of theatre with a more realistic and character-driven style but his plays are also very political – which is indeed the case with his perhaps most famous work, A Doll’s House (1879). The political significance of Ibsen’s plays travelled across Eurasia to Japan and China in the early twentieth century and ended up influencing not only new radical movements such as anarchism and feminism, but its significance also garnered significant critique from far-right movements in China, showing that Ibsen’s writings had a meaningful role in the tumultuous political climate of China in the first half of the twentieth century.

 

Edward Krebs’ book Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism, shows how the anarchist faction within the New Culture Movement embraced Ibsen’s A Doll’s House not only as a feminist critique of the institution of marriage and a call for women’s liberation, but also as a call for the emancipation of love in Chinese society.1 For anyone familiar with A Doll’s House, the most obvious interpretation of the play is the perhaps more practical side of female emancipation from the structural limitations of life as a woman. That is, the limitations of marriage and family life where the woman has little room for freedom and expression, which, in the play, leads the protagonist, Nora, to reject all of this by the end of it. Interestingly, it seems that the New Culture and May Fourth movements in China not only embraced this but also used the, now perhaps taken for granted, search for love as a concept of both female emancipation and rebellion against the old way of life by a new focus on individuality, as is pointed out by Haiyan Lee. Indeed, Lee claims that ‘[n]o other translated text electrified the May Fourth generation more than Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House’.2 Lee goes on to write that it was not before anarchist takes on the play emerged that the inherent critique of bourgeoise domestic life in particular of A Doll’s House was used politically. Naturally, the combined implications of female emancipation and rejection of bourgeoisie life was then used as a rebellion against the Confucian family ideals. Moreover, the anarchist interpretation developed into a rejection of love as an ‘ideological camouflage’ for the lies of the Confucian family ‘covering up the unnatural and unjustified private ownership of sex’.3

 

Curiously, the apparent rejection by Nora of bourgeoisie life touted by the anarchists was used against them by the far right and the New Life Movement (NLM). As the illustration titled ‘Nora after Leaving Home’ from the magazine New Life Women’s Monthly implies, Nora’s rejection of family ideals leads to immorality, and in opposition to the leftist interpretation, she continues to embrace the capitalist bourgeoisie or perhaps a sleazier underground life.4 Obviously, the NLM, promoting a fascist and highly conservative ideology, was staunchly against the ideals of the New Culture and May Fourth movements and their rejection of the Confucian family ideal. As Clinton points out, the NLM critique highlights the futility of Nora leaving the traditional family structures given the lack of opportunity for independent women in Chinese society, which would lead her to a life of degeneracy.5 Thus, A Doll’s House did not only act as a critique of the Confucian family in China, but the open ending also allowed for some rather easy refutation of the leftist interpretation.

 

A Doll’s House was not the only Ibsen play that proved to be influential among leftist revolutionaries in China in this period. In The Birth of Chinese Feminism, Liu, Karl and Ko highlights how The Lady from the Sea, which was first translated into Japanese then into Chinese in 1920, fits perfectly into the anarcho-feminism of a significant figure in anarchism and feminism in China as He-Yin Zhen. The passage they focus on is one where Ibsen is very critical of the whole institution of marriage, which he describes as an arrangement similar to prostitution.6 This passage in itself is perhaps a more direct and radical critique of traditional family structures than most of what is said in A Doll’s House. By being so direct in the description of marriage as a form of prostitution, The Lady From the Sea might even have put off some not so radical leftists at the time, which might explain why A Doll’s House was more popular, and thus more influential.

 

The curious case of Ibsen’s influence on revolutionary movements in China is another proof of Ibsen’s skill as a playwright and it shows the relevance of his writings across cultures and time, which is furthermore exemplified by his continuous significance today. Ibsen, who may or may not have been an actual feminist himself, did write plays – such as those mentioned above and Hedda Gabler – which presents rebellion against society in the form of female rebellion. This made him a favourite among anarchists and feminists, and also an ‘easy’ target for more conservative voices. However, plays such as A Doll’s House obviously did not only inspire the most extreme leftists at the time since the message can be easily applied to wider society as a whole. It is for that reason Ibsen’s story of Nora’s rebellion became the most ‘electrifying’ foreign piece of writing in the eyes of the May Fourth generation.

  1. Krebs, Edward S., Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (Lanham, Md, 1998), p. 162. [↩]
  2. Lee, Haiyan, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 109. [↩]
  3. Ibid., pp. 182-183. [↩]
  4. Clinton, Maggie, Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937 (Durham, 2017), p. 154. [↩]
  5. Ibid., pp. 152-155. [↩]
  6. Karl, Rebecca, Ko, Dorothy and Liu, Lydia, The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Text in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 93. [↩]

The Fallacy of Freedom as Identified by Jiwei Ci

Jiwei Ci identifies two ways by which human beings acquire agency and constitute their own subjectivity, “agency-through-freedom” and “agency-through-identification.”1 Throughout his book, Moral China in the Age of Reform, Ci pays more attention to “agency-through-identification” because he sees this method as characterizing Chinese society. However, an analysis of Ci’s claims concerning “agency-through-freedom”, which he presents as an ideal type of modern liberal societies, provides some useful insights into the nature of liberal democratic rule. In addition to illuminating some surprising characteristics of this type of governance, Ci’s discussion of freedom in liberal societies reinforces the pessimistic outlook that characterizes the whole of his work.

Ci argues that political contestation over the socialization process of an individual can result in the production of concrete “socially delineated freedoms” that are evidence of “relations of domination”, therefore, “the fact that freedoms can be framed by relations of domination, along with the fact that people can be ideologically induced to turn a blind eye to such framing, is the Achilles heel of a society marked by agency-through-freedom.”2 It is therefore the appearance of choice, not the actual existence of which, that creates a society where citizens are said to enjoy freedom. This claim relates to an earlier one made by Ci, that freedom as a mode of subjection is the “secret of liberal society” because it “simultaneously helps give a specific expression to the human need for agency and bring[s] agents into line with the particular kind of order that prevails in their society.”3 Citizens are empowered as agents who are supposedly “free”, but in reality their activities are influenced by the nature of the prevailing form and content of order in their society. This creates the impression that liberal societies are characterized by the least repressive form of governance, despite the fact that each citizen must formulate their ideas and actions according to a set of options which are constructed as socially acceptable by the powers that be.

There is another important stipulation, which is that the construction of societal values must be done in an indirect way which avoids alerting its citizens to the existence of this process: “under modern conditions, the struggle for domination can be won only when the hand that imposes values is able to render itself invisible.”4 In order for a set of values to be successfully adhered to in a society, they must be imposed in a way which reinforces the concept that citizens are free – both in content and in manner of implementation. This vision of liberal society as essentially a fallacy, is incredibly disheartening, especially considering that Ci positions liberal democratic societies as much more beneficial to the everyday citizen than the kind of authoritarian government found in China. This leaves the reader with the impression that Chinese society is in a crisis which cannot easily be escaped, and even if it is, the result will be a freedom that is far from perfect.

Bibliography

Ci, Jiwei, Moral China in the Age of Reform (New York, 2014). 

 

  1. Jiwei Ci, Moral China in the Age of Reform (New York, 2014), pp. 93-94. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 97. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 49. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 197 [↩]

‘National Spirit’ in the revolutionary agendas of Liu Shifu and the Guomindang.

 

As argued by Maggie Clinton in Revolutionary Nativism, nationalism can be a ‘Janus-faced’ phenomenon[1]. In the early twentieth century, Chinese revolutionaries looked to their nation’s past to ‘remap’ the present by invoking the idea of a ‘national spirit’[2]. Apparently existing from time immemorial, ‘national spirit’ would be the source of China’s modernisation, facilitating the social, political and cultural revolutions necessary for China’s national rejuvenation. This article examines two somewhat contradictory notions of ‘national spirit’- the Guomindang’s (GMD) invocation of Confucianism and Shifu’s appeal to Buddhism- arguing that such notions were imagined to support specific revolutionary agendas and to create a unified sense of Chinese identity in the face of foreign imperialism.

Liu Shifu was an anarchist of the early twentieth century who, disgusted by the moral decline and subservience of China to foreign powers, endeavoured to initiate moral reform for the purposes of strengthening the Chinese nation. In 1908, after being sent to prison for a failed assassination attempt, Shifu wrote his ‘prison essays’ which contained his thoughts on the ‘national essence’ of China[3]. Shifu blamed Confucianism for the supposed moral decline of China, arguing that it legitimized the self-serving Manchu government[4]. Furthermore, he detested the fact that Confucianism claimed sole heritage of the classics and that it was regarded as the fount of all wisdom in China[5]. For Shifu, the ‘national essence’ or spirit of China could be found in the precepts of Buddhism, from which one could discern universal values that would aid social reform[6]. One such value was gender equality, which Buddhist scriptures supposedly buttressed by arguing that women are more in tune with their spirituality than men and can thus more easily acquire the Buddha-nature[7].

This invocation of Buddhism as exemplifying the ‘national spirit’ of China is the antithesis to the GMD’s notion that it should reflect Confucian ideals. The GMD, who ruled China from 1927 until the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, sought to revive Confucianism from the attacks levelled against it by revolutionaries such as Shifu, but also from the New Culture and May Fourth movements which sought wholesale cultural and social revolution[8]. They viewed Confucian principles such as filial piety and interpersonal obligation as necessary to cultivate citizens who would devote their lives to the nation[9]. Confucianism also fostered social harmony, thereby uniting China’s myriad ethnic groups together under a singular national spirit[10]. According to Clinton, this idea of social harmony also sanctioned violence against those people who threatened national cohesion, thereby legitimizing the militarist regime that the GMD were seeking to create[11].

The social harmony indicative of the ‘national spirit’ therefore gave the GMD a prism through which to oppose western encroachment on Chinese culture and identity. Hence, a key similarity between the GMD and Shifu’s conceptualization of a singular Chinese spirit is that they saw it as necessary to revitalize the Chinese civilization after a period of marked decline. For example, Shifu idolized Buddhist monks such as Yuekong of the Shaolin monastery who fought with 3,000 soldiers against the Japanese at Songjiang, thereby exemplifying the ideal of ‘daring to die’ for the nation: a key principle if China was going to truly withstand foreign interference[12].

Ultimately, the contradictory contents of these ideas of ‘national spirit’ are indicative of its malleability as a concept. Both the GMD and Shifu cherry-picked aspects of China’s past in order to support their respective revolutionary agendas. The expediency of the idea of a ‘national spirit’ is particularly true if we consider that Buddhism was a foreign import to China, which is an irony that anarchists such as Shifu were willing to ignore[13]. Nonetheless, despite the artificial nature of such an idea as ‘national spirit’, its utility is evident as a rhetorical device to help unify the Chinese nation, and more importantly, to construct an independent essence of Chinese identity that stood in opposition to foreign intervention.

[1] Maggie Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism: fascism and culture in China, 1925-1937, (Durham, 2017), p. 64.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Edward Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism, (Lanham, 1998), p.47.

[4] Ibid., pp.47-50.

[5] Ibid., p.50.

[6] Ibid., p.51.

[7] Ibid., pp.51-52.

[8] Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism, p.67.

[9] Ibid., p.73.

[10] Ibid., p.10.

[11] Ibid., p.11.

[12] Krebs, Shifu, pp.57-58.

[13] Ibid., p.49

Jiang Qing: Standing against the homogenisation of political ideology

Scholarly reaction to Jiang Qing has been mixed, which is to be expected considering his work appears to transcend an academic analysis of the role of ancient Confucian thought in modern-day China. Instead he makes sweeping proposals for the creation of new political structures that would revolutionise Chinese governance after decades under Mao. This article approaches the reception of his work and finds that his proposed political structures have incited an interesting reaction from those who seemingly stand against the homogenisation of governance along western liberal democratic lines.[1]

What Jiang Qing proposed was a wholesale reanalysis of the nature of governmental power in China and cited a Confucian idea of The Way of Humane Authority as a foundation for these changes. Under this new order, power would be divided equally between three parliamentary houses. The house of Confucian tradition, dealing with the matter of sacred legitimacy; the house of the people, dealing with the matter of popular legitimacy; and the house of the nation, dealing with the matter of cultural and historical legitimacy. At the core of this system was the rejection of the western political principle of the sovereignty of the people – in favour of a system in which the balance between the three aforementioned forms of legitimacy is strictly maintained.[2]

Reception to these ideas has been mixed, and those who see it in a positive light cite the uniqueness of the Chinese context and the care that must be given to avoid the wrongful application of western democracy to a strictly eastern context. Daniel A. Bell has taken this view and expounds the importance of incorporating cultural resources into the governance of China.[3] Both Daniel Bell and Ruiping Fan go as far as to suggest that such a movement toward a trilateral parliament has the potential to gain support in the future, should the right provisions and adaptations take place. It would seem that support for Jiang Qing rests on the assertion that the alternative, a western style liberal democracy founded on the sovereignty of the people, would not respect the cultural and religious heritage of the state of China. To follow in the footsteps of Japan and Korea in adopting a westernised system of separated powers would be to support the supremacy of a political philosophy that neither originated, nor holds sway, in China.

Opposition to Jiang Qing appears to be ideological in nature, and surrounds debates about Jiang’s interpretation of Confucianism. An example of such opposition is that of Li Minghui, who strikes down Jiang’s ideas as utopian. Li claims that in creating a dichotomy between mainland and Taiwanese Confucianism, Jiang is ignorant to the political aspects of the latter.[4] Far less lofty than those who support him, Jiang’s opposition seems to be less concerned with the practicality of his conception, and rather with how he has interpreted China’s ancient frameworks of politics and spirituality. Li goes on to claim that Jiang puts far too much emphasis on the political aspects of Confucianism and is ignorant to matters of morality and the mind.

As stated, the scholarly reaction to the work of Jiang Qing has been mixed, but I would argue that they largely miss the mark in terms of the impact and significance of what Jiang was at least attempting to achieve. Following decades of Maoist rule, China looked to the future and sought new mechanisms of government to redefine their position in the modern world. Jiang’s vision of a trilateral parliament that looked to China’s ancient heritage for legitimacy and foundation was one that presented an interesting and ironically forward-thinking solution to the problem of governance. Opposition centred around Jiang’s individual interpretation of Confucianism failed to grasp the significance of Jiang’s stand against ideas of western democracy that were creeping in. Standing against the homogeneity of political ideology along western lines was, at the very least, a fresh vision for China’s future.

 

[1] Jiang Qing, “From mind Confucianism to political Confucianism”, The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China, (Dordrecht, 2011), p.17.

[2] Jiang Qing, A Constitutional World Order, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan (Princeton, 2015), p.29.

[3] Daniel A. Bell, “Jiang Qing’s Political Confucianism”, in Ruiping Fan (ed.), The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China, (Dordrecht, 2011), p.139.

[4] Li Minghui, “I disagree with the phrase “mainland new Confucianism””, Contemporary Chinese Thought 49:2, (2018), pp.100-112.

‘Overcoming Modernity’ as a product of modernity: Influence of capitalist abstraction and specialisation on the discourse of ‘Overcoming Modernity’

The phrase ‘Overcoming Modernity (kindai no chōkoku 近代の超克)’ refers, in a narrow sense, to a symposium organised by a journal Bungakukai, and circulates in a broader sense as a general term describing ideological attempts to transcend modernity brought about by capitalist modernisation in Japan since the Meiji Restoration. However, contrary to their intentions, the intellectual struggle by Japanese intellectuals in the interwar period to  overcome modernity was indeed one of the products of abstraction and specialisation resulting from capitalist modernisation.

As Takeuchi Yoshimi described it as ‘one of the catchwords that took hold of the Japanese intellectuals during the war’ and ‘one of the magic words’,[1] ‘Overcoming Modernity’ was an ambiguous and comprehensive slogan with vague ideas of what modernity was and what was intended to be accomplished after modernity would have been transcended. In fact, the 13 intellectuals who participated in the symposium ‘Overcoming Modernity’ were not only philosophers, but also music, literary, and film critics, physicists, and other intellectuals from a variety of academic fields. This symposium, which brought together specialised intellectuals on the abstracted theme of ‘modernity’, is arguably the epitome of capitalist modernisation.

In Overcome by Modernity, Harry Harootunian states that the interwar Japanese history was the process of being overcome by the dynamics of modernity instead of the intellectuals overcoming modernity.[2] The intellectuals of the time sought to restrain the uneven development brought about by capitalism, which commodified everything in everyday life, and searched for something unchanging to transcend modernity. As a result, they proposed the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘community’, but this was a form of commodification as well, labelling abstractions that had not been named before.[3] That is, what the intellectuals initially aimed to do was to overcome capitalist modernity through the pursuit of concepts with temporal invariance, but the result was a situation in which modernity was being overcome by modernity.

More precisely, however, they had been swallowed up by modernity, rather than overcome by it. They may have seriously sought to overcome modernity, but ‘modernity’, which was steadily constructed after the establishment of the new Meiji government in 1868, was already too abstract a concept at the time, and it would have been practically impossible to determine how much of the change in their circumstances resulted from modernisation and the capitalist economy.Furthermore, their perspectives on the arbitrary conception of ‘modernity’ were so varied and specialised that they ended up with different possible approaches to ‘overcoming’ it. Therefore, their intellectual endeavours were solely within the framework of capitalist modernity, and as such, no matter how much the thinkers searched for a way to overcome modernity, their methods and consequently the vision to ‘overcome modernity’ devised as a result were also products of capitalism and modernisation.

As such, the failure to formulate a systematic solution to overcome modernity lay in the fact that intellectuals in the interwar period struggled to confront the ‘modernity’ that surrounded them even though they themselves existed within the capitalised modern Japanese society. The discourse on ‘Overcoming Modernity’ demonstrates the difficulty for intellectuals to objectify the subject of their studies and propose new theses that would transcend its framework as long as they constitute the subject.

[1] Yoshimi Takeuchi, What Is Modernity?: Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi (New York, 2005), p. 103.

[2] Harry D. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, 2001), p. 94

[3] Ibid., p. xxiii

An Internalised Pure Land: Haijime Kawakami and the Imprisonment of Self.

Haijime Kawakami was an economist and one of Japan’s first Marxist philosophers, born in the late 20th century. He published articles which aimed to educate workers in Marxist theory and provided the introduction for the Japanese translation of Marx’s Das Kapital.[1] His activity with the Japanese Communist Party led to his imprisonment in the 1920s, which was formative in his engagement with the Buddhist philosophy of Pure Land. Kawakami’s engagement with the Pure Land is significant, as he belonged to a new generation of secular Pure Land philosophers who aimed to identify and reconfigure the Pure Land independent of religious tradition. Alongside Miki Kiyoshi and Ienaga Saburo, Kawakami used his Marxist background to discuss the potential of the Pure Land as a tool for the liberation of the masses from the state.[2]

Kawakami’s Prison Ramblings, written in 1937 after his arrest because of his involvement in the Japanese Communist Party, reveal his adoption of Pure Land philosophy.[3] This is synthesised with Marxist ideas to create a new sphere in which to propagate a utopian Japanese vision of the future. Consequently, in this work, Kawakami contributed to the reconfiguration of the Pure Land as something accessible and mouldable in the secular sphere. Primarily, Kawakami speaks of a ‘consciousness of consciousness’. He believed that in order to gain a true understanding of ourselves (which was needed in an age of repressive state techniques and the blanket identity of Japanese modernisation) we must examine our own consciousness in an extraordinary way.[4] This acts as an internal reconsideration which places our thought processes beyond the present and extracts us from accepted contemporary thought. Kawakami’s process of reimagining the Pure Land is based on an internalisation of thought which leads to an expansion of the mind beyond traditional peripheries. As such, it is a process of negation that eliminates all thoughts in order to provide access to a sphere of personal realisation, an ‘estranging image’.[5] This is what gave Kawakami’s Pure Land the power against the state. It removes reality in order to lead to an internalised realisation which, in turn, resituates Kawakami in the here and now. This implies an entirely empty vision which extracts the mind from restrictive structures of the state and the physical possibility of the Pure Land and locates Kawakami’s thought in the abstract. It is a positive discovery of the internalised conscience.

The internalisation of thought can be traced to Kawakami’s experience in prison. tenko, or ideological conversion, was a popular technique for confession or release of a prisoner.[6] Kawakami’s attempts, as a secular man, to draw on Buddhist philosophy are therefore surprising due to this attempted suppression and coercion. However, the internalised nature of his thought suggests a physical and mental withdrawal from any association with the state and their narrative of conversion and suppression. Just as the Pure Land itself gave internalised liberation, the actual process of Kawakami’s philosophy and writing of his Prison Ramblings liberated him from the horror of the present moment. As such, the very process of modern Pure Land thought was just as significant as the Marxist ideology behind it. Kawakami’s thought in prison created a space which the state could not access and therefore gave him the freedom that Pure Land advocated. It allowed him to create a solution to tradition, and from the very entrapment of his prison cell, force liberation and globalisation of philosophy. Kawakami’s Pure Land was a product of his Marxist thought- a rejection of the structures of state which literally surrounded him in prison, and emphasis on the individual. A connection with others philosophical liberation grounded him in the Marxist ideal of a communal victory for the masses, whilst his Pure Land remained abstracted within the self.

Kawakami’s Pure Land was revolutionary. He used Marxist theory to reject the structures of the state and remove the need for a centrally controlled paradise. His Pure Land was accessible only individually, through the internalisation of thought and negation of the constrictions of the present world. This was Kawakami’s way of waging revolution on the Japanese government when he was physically restricted in the present world. It was also a philosophical revolution in the sense that Kawakami had no Buddhist background. He uprooted Pure Land philosophy from its traditional religious sphere and opened it up as a possibility for secular philosophers and ordinary people. Both these revolutionary aspects reveal Kawakami’s desire to create a Pure Land which was accessible to the masses, via their own resource of the inner mind. The internalisation which Kawakami advocated can be seen as a philosophical representation of his tangible experiences in the present world. Imprisonment, coercion, and his end of life in the days after World War Two, where briefly, the possibility of a globalised world had become apparent. Kawakami’s internalised Pure Land was a modernist and globalised vision which sought to project this philosophy into the future.

[1] Melissa Curley, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists and the Utopian Imagination (Honolulu, 2017), pp.86-87.

[2] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.84.

[3] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.89.

[4] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.97.

[5] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.29.

[6] Curley, Pure Land, Real World, p.92.

Kuki Shūzō and Nishida Kitarō – Fascists or Subjects of Ideological Manipulation?

Christopher Goto-Jones makes the convincing argument that Nishida Kitarō did not promote facist ideologies, but instead that he expressed opposing political views with philosophical language. Goto-Jones argues that Nishida employed orthodox vocabulary in his political texts from the 1930s and 1940s in order to ensure that his texts would be published and also to avoid punishment from the increasingly totalitarian government.1 Nishida is often regarded as the founder of the Kyoto School, however unlike other groups of thinkers who are unified by an academic institution or an official organization, the Kyoto School can be used to loosely group together a diverse set of thinkers who did not formally organize.2 Although historiography on the Kyoto School is varied, the dominant view is expressed by James Heisig, who defines the school in terms of three central contributors: Nishida, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji.3 Although these figures may all be thought of as belonging to the Kyoto School, their philosophical thought differed greatly. This had adverse effects on Nishida in particular, the oldest of the three scholars, whose words were quoted out of context, thereby “manipulating his linguistic and ideological conventions into forms that resonated much more closely with the ultra-nationalist orthodoxy.”4 The language used by Nishida, necessitated by security concerns due to an overbearing government, created the possibility for ideological manipulation which resulted in Nishida’s thought being viewed as fascist.

The framework that Goto-Jones uses to exonerate Nishida from claims that he supported Japan’s brutal imperialism is a useful tool which can be instrumentalized in a discussion about Kuki Shūzō to show how the representation of Kuki’s ideas as fascist resulted from a lack of contextualization. Kuki is described as having been on the fringe of the Kyoto School, probably due to his teaching position at Kyoto Imperial University more so than due to similarities in philosophical orientation.5 Despite the fact that Kuki is not considered a central figure in the Kyoto school, and that his philosophy was markedly different than Nishidas, his ideas were also taken out of their original context and used to support facist ideologies. Similar to the process of de-contextualization of Nishida’s works which Goto-Jones describes as contributing to the false classification of this scholar as a fascist, Kuki’s writings have been taken out of their original context in order to support the claim that he was an active supporter of the fascist policies of the Japanese government.

In the case of Nishida, this ideological manipulation was undertaken by his fellow Kyoto School scholars, whereas in the case of Kuki it was done by scholars such as Leslie Pincus. Pincus argues that “By the late 1930s, Kuki had enlisted the tripartite structure of iki in the service of an ultranationalist imperial state.”6 In this view, Kuki’s vision of the aesthetic style of pre-Westernized Japan which he saw as a signifier of Japan’s capacity to excel in the modern world, as described in Iki no kōzō, provides an philosophical basis for Japanese domination in East Asia. As Yukiko Koshiro observes, Pincus’s failure to include Kuki’s other philosophical works in her study “dilutes the overall validity of her analysis.”7 Similar to the way in which Nishida’s works were taken out of the political context in which he wrote them to demonstrate his supposed support for fascist policies, Pincus uses Kuki’s Iki no kōzō without locating the text among his other contributions to show how it was used as a tool of cultural fascism. The alternative view, that “Kuki was unlikely to have been a willing and active conscript in serving the ideology that fueled Japan’s imperialism”, is more convincing because it accounts for the scholars lack of control over the ideological manipulations that their work is subject to.8 Goto-Jones’ analysis of Nishida’s works is a useful framework for an investigation into the political orientation of Kuki because it demonstrates how a philosopher’s work can be enlisted in fascist state policy, regardless of the author’s intentions.

  1. Christopher Goto-Jones, Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School and Co-Prosperity (London, 2009), pp. 81-86. [↩]
  2. Bret Davis, ‘The Kyoto School’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2019, [accessed 14 November 2020]. [↩]
  3. James Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School (University of Hawaii Press, 2001), p. 3-7 and 275-278 as cited in Davis, ‘The Kyoto School.’ [↩]
  4. Goto-Jones, Political Philosophy in Japan, p. 105. [↩]
  5. James Heisig, Thomas Kasulis, and John Maraldo (eds.), ‘Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School’, in Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Honolulu, 2011), p. 829 [↩]
  6. Leslie Pincus, ‘In a Labyrinth of Western Desire: Kuki Shuzo and the Discovery of Japanese Being’, Boundary, 18: 3 (1991), p. 154. [↩]
  7. Yukiko Koshiro, ‘Review of Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics (Berkeley, 1996), by Leslie Pincus’, The Review of Politics, 59: 3 (Summer, 1997), p. 607. [↩]
  8. Hiroshi Nara, The Structure of Detachment: The Aesthetic Vision of Kuki Shuzo (Honolulu, 2004), p. 6. [↩]