Becoming Human - Li Zehou's Ethics

346 Pages·2020·1.991 MB·English

by  Jana S. Rošker

Becoming Human
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Modern Chinese Philosophy
Edited by
John Makeham (La Trobe University)
volume 20
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mcp
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Becoming Human
Li Zehou’s Ethics
By
Jana S. Rošker
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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The author acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) in the frame-
work of the research core funding No. P6-0243 “Asian languages and cultures”.
Cover illustration: Detail of Children Playing in an Autumn Courtyard, Su Hanchen, National Palace Museum,
Beijing. Public Domain.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2019054217
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ISSN 1875-9386
ISBN 978-90-04-42365-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-42366-4 (e-book)
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Contents
Notes on References, Bibliography, and Translation vii
Prologue: Li Zehou, His Life and Work viii
1 The Importance of Ethics 1
2 General Philosophical System and Crucial Concepts 6
1 Anthropo-Historical Ontology and the Question of
Becoming Human 7
2 Sedimentation 14
3 Subjectality 20
4 One-World-View and Du 度 as a Dynamic Method of “Grasping
the Proper Measure” 26
3 Ethical Thought: an Overview 34
4 Ethics and Morality 53
1 Unfolding the Difference: Etymological Meanings and Later
Connotations 53
2 Li Zehou’s Distinction 63
情
3 Historical and Developmental Foundations: From Qing
情
as Collective Emotionality to Qing as Individual Emotion 67
4 Two Kinds of Morality 73
5 Political Philosophy and Moral Psychology 80
5 Epistemological Approaches and Ontological Foundations 86
1 The Ethics of Pragmatic Reason 87
2 The Emotio-Rational Structure and the Fusion of Reason
and Emotions 99
3 Emotion-Based Substance 110
6 Harmony and Justice 127
1 Individualism vs. Relationalism 127
2 Harmony Is Higher than Justice 137
3 Utilitarianism, Communitarianism and the Response to Sandel 145
4 Western and Chinese Liberalism 154
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vi Contents
7 Humanization of Inner Nature 167
1 The Shaping of Free Will and the Role of Moral Emotions 169
2 Transformation of the Empirical into the Transcendental 182
3 The Forgotten Significance of Rituality 197
4 The Capacity of Humanness and the Relation between
Right and Good 210
8 Inspirations, Combinations and Critiques 217
1 Classical Confucianism and Traditional Chinese Ethics 217
2 Neo-Confucian Philosophies and Modern New Confucianism 234
3 From Kant to Marx and Back 247
4 Further Dialogues with the West 259
9 Theoretical and Methodological Innovations 281
10 Epilogue: Learning to Be Human 295
Appendix: General Scheme of Ethics 299
Sources and Literature 300
1 Primary Sources (Li Zehou’s Works in Chinese) 300
2 Primary Sources (Li Zehou’s Works in Western Languages) 303
3 With Co-Authors 304
4 Secondary Literature 306
Index of Proper Names 317
Index of Specific Terms, Phrases and Titles (Chinese-English) 320
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Notes on References, Bibliography, and Translation
Because of the small number of Chinese family names, the reference style of
Chinese names in this book does not entirely follow the common Western
guidances. In addition to their surnames, the given names of Chinese authors
are included in the references (for instance, Wang Yangming 2018, I:5 instead
of Wang 2018 I:5). To distinguish between sources that have been published by
Chinese authors in English and the ones that have been published in Chinese
by the same authors, the first and last names of the authors of Chinese mate-
rial will not be separated by a comma. In contrast, in references to their works
written and published in English or other Indo-European languages their sur-
names will be followed by a comma.
For example: a reference to Li Zehou’s article written in English is: Li, Zehou
1999, “Subjectivity and ‘Subjectality’: A Response,” Philosophy East and West
49(2): 174–83, the source within text is cited as (Li, Zehou 1999). His work in
Chinese: Li Zehou 李澤厚 1999, Zhongguo sixiang shilun 中國思想史論 [On
Chinese Intellectual History], Hefei: Anhui wenyi chuban she, is cited within
text as (Li Zehou 1999). Such specific conventions do not apply to sources writ-
ten by non-Chinese authors.
Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from classical and modern
Chinese contained in this book are my own.
Jana S. Rošker
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Prologue: Li Zehou, His Life and Work
Li Zehou was born in 1930 in the Chinese city of Hankou and is currently liv-
ing in the United States. He graduated from the Department of Philosophy at
Peking University and was then a researcher and professor at the Research
Institute of Philosophy at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
(CASS, Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan 中國社會科學院) in Beijing. As an impor-
tant, renowned, and influential contemporary Chinese philosopher, he is
commonly acknowledged as one of the most significant and vital theorists in
post-Mao China and “the leader of the Chinese Enlightenment” of the 1980s
(Chong 1999a, 3).
Li Zehou’s theory is based upon philosophically innovative and remark-
ably creative analyses and interpretations of aesthetics, epistemology,
ethics and anthropology. It has been variously categorized as neo-traditional,
romantic, historical materialist, pragmatist, Neo-Kantian, Post-Marxist, or
Marxist-Confucian (Jensen 2005, 461). He advanced exceptionally creative
readings of art, literature, and philosophy in the politically, culturally, and
philosophically inspired period of the 1980s when it seemed that aesthetics
offered the greatest prospect of recovery from the social chaos caused by the
Cultural Revolution (ibid.). Among other issues, he played a prominent role
in the founding of the most important Chinese philosophical academic jour-
nal Zhexue yanjiu 哲學研究 (Philosophy Research). In this journal he published
one of his most significant and most influential early theoretical essays “Lun
meigan, mei he yishu 論美感、美和藝術” (On Aesthetic Feeling, Beauty, and
Art, 1956), with which he quickly entered the national currents of intellectual
discourse in the aesthetic debates over socialist realism.1 With this and some
other influential writings, the twenty-something Li quickly became a well-
known figure in the progressive academic circles. During this period, he began
to actively participate in the so-called Great Debate on Aesthetics (Meixue da
taolun 美學大討論) of the 1950s and 1960s,2 in which he critically questioned
the works of two hitherto most famous Chinese aestheticians, Zhu Guangqian
1  Lionel Jensen (2005, 462) reveals that “for this essay, published in a tense atmosphere of
literary politics … he was branded a ‘rightist’ and, along with so many other intellectuals
identified with Hu Feng’s critique of establishment literature, consigned to a work camp in
Hebei.”
2  This debate was followed by a second wave of discussions on the function and essence of
aesthetics, which took place during the 1980s under the name Aesthetic Fever (Meixue re
美學熱). Li Zehou actively participated and assumed a leading intellectual role in both
discourses.
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Prologue: Li Zehou, His Life and Work ix
朱光潜 and Cai Yi 蔡儀. Li soon became one of the most visible proponents of
this influential discourse, taking part in all of the most important controversies
that decisively formed its development. Hence, it is not a coincidence that he
belongs among the pioneers of modern and contemporary Chinese aesthetics.
In 1979, Li achieved scholarly distinction with the publication of his book
titled Pipan zhexue de pipan: Kangde shuping 批判哲學的批判: 康德述評
(Critique of Critical Philosophy: A New Approach to Kant).3 In this theoretical
reevaluation of Kantian philosophy, Li placed its central framework upon a
social and materialist foundation by simultaneously incorporating into it
the original Marxist definition of human beings as homo faber, i.e., as living
beings developed through practice and their ability to make and to use tools
in a systemic, continuous way. Humans are thus, in Li’s view, re-creating both
their environment and their inwardness into something he called “human-
ized nature.” In this book, he formulated the sprouts of his emergent theory
on the development of the human mental faculties through “sedimentation”
(jidian 積澱). In this context, he redefined Kant’s a priori formations (i.e., the
preempirical faculties of the human mind, which help us to perceive and to
order elements of our sense impressions) mainly by borrowing and applying
to this discourse the dialectical methodology of Hegel and early Marx. In most
of his work, he applied a modified version of historical materialism, but selec-
tively drawing additional inspiration from the works of Heidegger, Lukács, the
Frankfurt School, Lacan, Piaget, Habermas and others. Li also deepened the
problematics of the self in post-revolutionary modernism by putting forward
a new concept of human beings as active agents. He expressed this reconcep-
tualization of the human subject with his newly coined neologism subjectality
(zhutixing 主體性). By contradicting the passivity of the human subjects, as
well as by establishing the dialectical-materialist view of their consciousness
as something that surpasses mere mechanical reflection of the material world,
Li brought forward an ideational revolution. This revolution was generated in
the name of beauty and was directed against all ideologies and doctrines serv-
ing the indoctrination and manipulation of human beings and limiting their
humanness to a status of passive and obeying objects.
In subsequent years, Li’s influence grew constantly and gradually he gained
the reputation of being one of the most important Chinese theoreticians
of the twentieth century. In the first four decades after the establishment of
3  In the preface to the English translation of this book that was published almost four decades
later (2016), Li mentioned that he originally intended to title the book A New Explanation of
Kant (Kangde xin jie 康德新解) but, due to various circumstances, he was not able to use this
title.
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x Prologue: Li Zehou, His Life and Work
the People’s Republic of China, Li was most famous for his work in Chinese
aesthetics. His first comprehensive book on this topic was published in 1981
under the title The Path of Beauty (Meide licheng 美的歷程). His other impor-
tant works on related themes include The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (Huaxia
meixue 華夏美學, 1988) and Four Essays on Aesthetics (Meixue si jiang 美學四
講, 1989). These three books were later reprinted and published together in his
famous collection titled Three Books on Aesthetics (Meixue sanshu 美學三書).
Because of his huge influence on young intellectuals throughout that period
and due to the fact that he was one of the signatories of a petition to the govern-
ment during the 1989 student movement, he was criticized in the official press
after the Tian’anmen incident and indicted of being an exponent of “bourgeois
liberalism” (Chong 1999a, 3). In 1992, he left China and has lived abroad ever
since, returning merely for infrequent visits and as a guest lecturer at vari-
ous Chinese universities. He has also been a guest professor at many Western
universities, but most of the time, he taught philosophy at the University of
Colorado in Boulder. After his retirement, he continues to publish academic
writings.
In spite of his great fame in the field of aesthetics and Chinese art history,
Li also became an extremely productive writer in other areas of philosophy.
He published a wide range of articles, essays, and over thirty books, dealing
with his views on Chinese intellectual history, classical Chinese and compara-
tive philosophy, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, ontology, theories
of modernization, political thought and ethics. All these works partly include
a comparative perspective grounded on Li’s broad knowledge of traditional
and modern Western philosophy. Due to his extreme productivity, it is rather
difficult to decide which of his works deserve a special mention. Below, I will
nevertheless try to point out some of his most influential books and essays.
Among the works that provide an overview of his own philosophical sys-
tem and explain the crucial concepts of his theory are Wode zhexue tigang
我的哲學提綱 (The Outline of My Philosophy) and Zhexue gangyao 哲學綱要
(Outline of Philosophy). Many essays on related topics can also be found in his
influential collections that include, among others, Zou wo zijide lu 走我自己
的路 (Following My Own Way) and Za zhu ji 雜著集 (A Collection of Various
Essays).
His works on epistemology are also hugely influential, especially those
based upon his critique and elaboration of Kant’s philosophy. Besides the
aforementioned Pipan zhexuede pipan—Kangde shuping 批判哲學的批判:
康德述評 (Critique of Critical Philosophy: A New Approach to Kant), an overall
description and argumentation of his reinterpretation of Kant’s subjectivity
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