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 WORLD PHILOSOPHY SERIES

STORY-THINKING:
CULTURAL MEDITATIONS

KUANG-MING WU

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Wu, Kuang-ming.
Story-thinking : cultural meditations / Kuang-ming Wu.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-61761-258-9 (eBook)
1. Life. 2. Storytelling--Philosophy. 3. Thought and thinking. 4. East
and West. I. Title.
BD435.W78 2010
128--dc22
2010026178

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York

 This humble trial at global interculture
is dedicated to
My dear Father 吳永授(1907-1951)
Who gave me Taiwan, China, Confucius, Japan, music, and much more,
and
My dear Teacher, the Rev. Boris Anderson, MA (Oxon), MA (Cantab)
Who gave me the Bible, Greek, Shakespeare, poetry, and
How to be simple, deep, and alive,
in
Deepest reverence, gratitude, and appreciation.
 CONTENTS

Preface vii
Prelude: Life as Story and Storytelling 1
Chapter 1 Storytelling 13
Chapter 2 History 59
Chapter 3 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 87
Chapter 4 Interculture, Relativism 113
Chapter 5 Milieu Our Lifeworld 177
Chapter 6 Pain 195
Chapter 7 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 235
Chapter 8 Selflessness, Silence 269
Chapter 9 From Oneself to the Music Together 293
Conclusion 353

Coda: Story-Thinking China 362

Index 447
 PREFACE

Story-thinking is direct actuality-thinking; actuality is active and alive, never set or

formal but free and reasonable. Actuality is things as they are alive, actively actualizing
themselves, birthing unceasing. They sound forth to resound, vibrate to inter-vibrate, tell to
retell it, to reveal-R to express-E it. This ―R to E‖ is not logically inferential, free of
inferential error. Such R-to-E process dialogically transmits across an instant as ―story-
thinking.‖ Story-thinking primordially hears of actuality to story-express it. Thus, actuality
sounds itself—tells its story—to a sensitive hearer who retells the story-actual in her own
resonance, and her vibration is ―storytelling.‖ Actuality tells and is heard, and storytelling
comes about. Story-thinking begins at storytelling to continue storytelling, this way.
 PRELUDE: LIFE AS STORY AND STORYTELLING
A. STORY AND STORYTELLING AS ESSENTIAL TO LIFE
Story-thinking is direct actuality-thinking; actuality is active and alive, never set or
formal but free and reasonable. Actuality is things as they are alive, actively actualizing
themselves, birthing unceasing. They sound forth to resound, vibrate to inter-vibrate, tell to
retell it, to reveal-R to express-E it. This ―R to E‖ is not logically inferential, free of
inferential error.
Such R-to-E process dialogically transmits across an instant as ―story-thinking.‖ Story-
thinking primordially hears of actuality to story-express it. Thus, actuality sounds itself—tells
its story—to a sensitive hearer who retells the story-actual in her own resonance, and her
vibration is ―storytelling.‖ Actuality tells and is heard, and storytelling comes about. Story-
thinking begins at storytelling to continue storytelling, this way.
Actuality tells its hearer to tell its story, and so storyteller is the primal story-hearer of
actuality. This storytelling is then heard by other story-hearers, who retell the story, and
adjust and add to the story heard, and new stories are born. Actuality telling-hearing is
―storytelling,‖ to retell in story-hearing to story-add, to tell new stories; story co-vibrates, re-
enacts, re-performing the primal music of actuality vibrating, from storyteller to story-hearers,
as things birthing unceasing.
All this is story-thinking, hearing actuality to tell it forth, hearing to story-tell of things, to
be heard by another to retell their story to add on, to retell it. Such is things‘ creative
rehearsal, resonating from actuality birthing to storyteller, from storyteller to story-hearer
who adds to tell her story her own way. This creative birthing-transfer is ―story-thinking‖
where storytelling begins the story-rounds. So story-thinking is often expressed as
―storytelling,‖ a shorthand for storytelling-hearing-adding resonating across an instant here
now, and then across time into history.
Story-thinking is thus story-communication, which is oral-aural, direct and primal, in
story-thinking as real actuality-thinking, true without editing. The process is interpersonal
reel-to-reel transfer from me spontaneous to me aware, from me aware to hearer, or often
1
onto paper, and from paper-record to heartfelt reader in time, from heart to heart through
history. Story-thinking is thus historical, this way.

1
Reading a story on paper forgets reading and paper to hear and co-respond. On the importance of writing down
stories, see Kuang-ming Wu, ―World Interculturalism: China Written in English,‖ Taiwan Journal of East
Asian Studies, June 2005, pp. 1-42.
2 Kuang-ming Wu

Telling and hearing reel off a series of echoes called ―history,‖ whispering in silence at
the heart of being, making a musical poetry of actuality. Telling is heard instantly, and silence
nods echoing, caught intimately, through time. Story-thinking thus distinguishes itself as the
actual, the natural, and the human without pretension, directly interpersonal, nothing
objectively impersonal. I do not emit sounds but tell a story word-echoing ear to ear as music,
orally or on paper, deep to deep. Did I repeat myself? How could I resist this story-thinking,
life-thinking?
This fact is more than intimated in Feyerabend‘s spirited attack on the one seamless robe,
2
as it were, of Western natural science. His attack is odd, betraying something story-important
unawares. His consistent logic demolishes the all-ruling logic of one imperial science; his
logic the familiar argues for scientific development the novel unfamiliar. All this is existential
contradiction of a logical sort. He pulls off the stunt by historically showing how illogical
concrete cases are.
This is a matter of course. The ―belligerent plurality‖ (p. xiii) of fierce independents
3
would have pulverized and silenced everyone, unless some connection is made among them;
4
the connection is ―logic‖ in a wide sense, a ―gathering.‖ He yet tells of ―settlement of
controversies‖ (x), ―negotiations between different parties‖ (xi), without telling us their how,
their logic. His is story-thinking that accepts clashes, contradictions, and paradoxes logical
and actual.
While vaunting ―anarchism‖ (chapter 1), Feyerabend also notes, ―The stories they
(Indians, Chinese) told and (their) activities enriched their lives, protected them and gave
them meaning‖ (3); theirs is story-thinking that has story-rhythm of historical actuality; it is
5
poetic and dramatic, as he himself intimates that poetry and drama complement scientific
research, to conclude his volume (267).
The way a story goes—the way we talk, our grammar, and our writing-system—shapes
the way our world goes. We all live many my-story-shaped worlds. ―Culture shock‖ is world
shock, as a result of going from my globe to an alien moon and other stars. Poetry is a grain
of sand among many to make a world among many, a compressed storytelling to sing a
specific world thus made among many. Poetry shapes science, and so science is a plural,
6
spewing out diverse sorts of ontology, as Feyerabend correctly said.
What Feyerabend did not say is that, therefore, our story should shape according as we
are shaped by our milieu in which we breathe and move naturally, never to force our story-
way onto nature-milieu to violate it. Our story-ontology should conform to nature-ontology
surrounding us, breathing us, even while we breathe to shape nature, as nature and we inter-
shape breath to breath.

2
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (1988), London: Verso, 1993. Cf. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: 25th
Anniversary Edition, Shambhala, 2000, and The Turning Point, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1982; China features
in both books prominently. Also see Douglas R. Hofstadter‘s convoluted Gödel, Escher, Bach, 1979, and I am
A Strange Loop, 2007, both by Cambridge, MA: Basic Books. Spontaneous inter-involvement should be
delightfully simple.
3
―Connection‖ is his favorite word. We wish he devoted a chapter telling us what it means and implies.
4
On ―logic‖ as gathering, see Wu, On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998,
pp. 162 and note 41, 334 and note 181, Calvin O. Schrag, The Resources of Rationality, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1992, p. 93, and Merriam-Webster‟s Collegiate Dictionary, 2008, pp. 144 (on ―analects‖)
and 710 (on ―legend‖).
5
See Feyerabend, op. cit., p. 273, index on ―art.‖
6
Ibid., esp. Chapter 16. Wu said as much in Togetherness, op. cit., pp. 27-87.
 Prelude: Life as Story and Storytelling 3

Thus the way we talk and the way we write shape the way we think to shape the way our
world works, either for or against our nature-milieu. So, our grammar and our syllabary had
better be shaped by our life-milieu to naturally shape our world most natural. So far in human
speech-world, Chinese ideographs, aurally resonating with the sense of things, have shaped
7
the only story-ontology that creates its world most natural and its long history, albeit quite
tragic.
Story-thinking uses stories to think and thinks story-way. Such thinking begins at
storytelling, around which story-reading, story-hearing, story-adding, and story-revising
revolve—to story-think. And so, we begin with storytelling and keep telling stories of
storytelling, knowing all this while that all this story-telling on ―storytelling‖ represents story-
thinking in a cosmic-comprehensive sense quite irresistible.
All human enterprises political, sociological, economic, commercial, etc., tell stories of
recent past to make a flowchart of the trends, to scheme steps into the projected future. Stories
are told of the past to chart our actions to project tomorrow, and past, chart, and project are
8
stories. Story-thinking patterns life; we live stories. All journals and writings are storybooks.
We live in stories to live out stories. We must then solidify life by telling stories of story-
thinking. Story, not logical argument, moves people. After all, few people dislike stories.
On a few people who prefer paintings, sculpture, movies, music, and news to stories, we
9
can say that paintings and the like are so many ways to tell stories, and these people‘s
preferences also tell interesting stories of disliking stories. Besides, painting and sculpture tell
stories more often and more naturally than stories are painted and sculpted, for aesthetic
appeal, factual punches, and logical coherence feature storytelling, more than beauty, facts,
and logic feature painting or sculpture per se, to fascinate us and teach us about life.
―The purpose of a short story is, I believe, that the reader shall come away with the
satisfactory feeling that a particular insight into human character has been gained, or that his
knowledge of life has been deepened, or that pity, love, or sympathy for a human being has
been awakened. . . . The instinct to listen to a good story is as old as humanity itself,‖ said
10
Lin. It would be less usual to claim for painting or sculpture what is claimed here for
storytelling.
All this is because every life has a story on which it lives. In fact, our life is an ongoing
11
story; life itself tells stories. No wonder, one loses oneself who loses one‘s story.
Storytelling extends far into history, when myth is reenacted in ritual that myth explains, and
myth is ancient story that ritual actualizes. Life acts out parables in stories that express our
acts since time immemorial. Our life is rooted in history; history is story-in-time to sense-
solidify life. Our lifeworld is packed with stories and shaped by stories, as daily news shows.

7
Feyerabend also noted something like it (op. cit., pp. 36-37, 163) in the specific area of Chinese medicine.
8
Interestingly, two well-known magazines kicked off 2010 with articles on China and Taiwan, ―The Great Leap:
New China Enters Its Third Act,‖ The Nation (the oldest weekly in USA), January 11-18, 2010, pp. 10-17, and
―Taiwan‘s Love Affair With Beijing,‖ Foreign Affairs, January/February 2010, pp. 44-60. Their quality is
beside the point here.
9
Movies are dramatized stories; news is today‘s story. Music is our primal language, our painting and sculpture in
time, and so considering language, painting and sculpture considers music. This is because painting and
sculpture tell stories to dance music, as China has been foot-tapping poetry musical for millennia. I am
preparing a book, Chinese Thinking That Dances, a delightful musical.
10
Lin Yutang, Famous Chinese Short Stories, NY: John Day Company and Pocket Books, 1948, 1951, 1952, p. xi.
11
Neuropsychologist Oliver Sacks dramatically brings out this stunning truth in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for
a Hat, NY: Summit Books, 1970, though he did not put it our way here.
4 Kuang-ming Wu

And so, all conscientious scholars cannot help but study storytelling, but so far they all
treat it as ―narration‖—naming storytelling activity as noun is significant—objectively
analyzing it as ―narratology,‖ one discipline among many others. Some astute scholars did
sense the importance of narrative and study time-and-history (Ricoeur) and primal culture
12
(Frey) in terms of storytelling, but neither probes storytelling as storytelling.
All august scholars I know of have thus missed ―storytelling,‖ for such life-activity is the
primal matrix of humanity; it is the dynamo in which and by which all our thinking operates.
Storytelling is culture told, words and intellect crystallized, awareness total and human,
unawares. To understand storytelling we must undergo it as a physiognomy of living, and
then we will see how storytelling illuminates all disciplines, and see that it puts the cart before
the horse to study storytelling with methods of these disciplines derived from storytelling.
Scholarship kills stories.
Thus, instead, the pages below touch and probe religions, history, myths, words, politics,
psychology, music, poetry, science, philosophy, pain, ethics, idleness, kids, logic, milieu,
fanaticism, devotion, translation, and so on, to show how storytelling as pan-method enlivens
all these diverse ways of living human. Storytelling is the torch that enlightens all our
activities conscious, intellectual, and cultural, and since the torch is minded, self-aware
spontaneous, its vast generality does not trivialize its importance or eliminate its luminous
centrality in life.
Thus few things are more significant than stories to shape us and lifeworld. Story-
13
thinking is the air we breathe, flowing through us to sustain us. So nothing is more common
than stories, and nothing is harder to capture. These pages may appear too diffuse to grasp,
for what enables coherence cannot capture coherently, except by showing how, by telling
stories of storytelling. Still, it is to do X to explain X the unknown. There is no other way to
elucidate story-thinking than telling stories of it; it is to be caught, not explained, for
explaining is also a storytelling. Story-thinking is at work as storytelling, story-hearing, and
story-adding. From now on, ―storytelling‖ is often used to stand for all three activities to
show story-thinking in action.
―If storytelling can only be story-told to appear, and if life tells its stories, then why do
you exercise in such futility of telling stories of storytelling?‖ This important query answers
itself. If life‘s past is non-present till appearing in its story, history, so as to show us how to
live better now, then our life elusive as past must show itself-as-storytelling telling its stories,
so we can turn self-aware to self-grasp, to self-examine to live better.
―Telling stories that are living‖ is cathartic of us to solidify us; it is our indispensable task
of living-as-human, as we live story-way. The pages below do not consider story as an object
of study and analysis, but tell of what story is story-way—as storytelling and story-hearing in
story-thinking—as we actually think story-way and argue story-way.

12
Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Vol. I (1984), Vol. II (1985), and Vol. III (1988), University of Chicago Press.
Rodney Frey, ed. Stories That Make the World: Oral Literature of the Indian Peoples of the Inland Northwest,
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
13
Roland Barthes also says something similar about the universality of narratives as ―life itself,‖ but curiously
describes narratives as ―transhistorical, transcultural.‖ See A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag, NY: Barnes
and Noble, 2009, p. 212. Stories and story-thinking are the very sense and essence of history and culture—as
life is, not beyond it.
 Prelude: Life as Story and Storytelling 5

B. THREE NOTIONS IN OUR TITLE

14
The pages below consider story-thinking by telling its stories, and our title, ―Story-
Thinking: Cultural Meditations,‖ tells in these three terms of how we tell stories of
storytelling, that is, what our story-thinking consideration consists in. Our story-consideration
is stories told in and as ―meditation,‖ ―culture,‖ and ―story-thinking‖ itself.
(1) Meditation: We here ponder over story-thinking. As meta-philosophy that considers
philosophy is itself a philosophy, so to consider story-thinking we tell stories of telling
stories, to show how impossible it is to live without story-thinking. ―Meta-philosophy‖ is not
thinking but quietly pondering over things and thinking, what can be nicknamed ―meditation‖
that our title indicates. Meditation undergoes the situation as it is to understand it, and to
undergo is to go along with its story of the situation as the story goes on, a storytelling-
hearing, a story-thinking.
(2) Culture: Storytelling reveals and elucidates culture as nothing else does. Culture is our
life-habit and cultivates it, habituates us into a lifestyle, a habitat of life. Family and society
cultivate our certain way of seeing, thinking and doing, to make our habit of life; we now
have our life-habit (―habit‖ and ―have‖ are etymological siblings) as our living style, our
culture, thanks to our storytelling routine and spontaneous.
This life-cultivation is a cultural activity; civilization is its deposit. Our culture cultivates
and explains our logical thinking; logic does not explain culture. Children have no ―universal
validity‖ of logic, but show ubiquitous coherence, primal-logic, in storytelling, and then
―mature‖ into logical validity to settle as part of our adult world. It takes a genius to come
back to the child to break out of such accustomed routine of thinking, to see things otherwise,
afresh.
Lewis Carroll was a mathematician at Oxford, genius enough to break out of logic into
―Wonderland‖ for ―Alice‖ his favorite child-friend. M. C. Escher was genius enough to etch
out a world of his imagination that defies our accustomed ―logic of actuality,‖ playing with
the ―illogical world,‖ reveling in it to catch mathematicians‘ attention, to delight ―kids of all
ages.‖15
Why are we so happy if not eager to revolt against ―cultural trivial logic‖ to go back to
the child‘s ―useless‖ world defying it? Its answer is significant. All things flow (Heraclitus)
and change (Chuang Tzu), and our en-cultured lifestyle and habitat must change, by self-
examining to re-turn to our primal nimble childhood, back to where our life begins from
scratch, as we do every dawn, to rejuvenate and re-start life. Our child-dawn is the primal
vigor to adapt to change to ride on its crest.
This answer has three significant spin-offs. First, we must return to the dawn of our
culture at regular intervals to self-rejuvenate, as we must sleep every 12 hours to re-begin at

14
I sadly rejected the title ―cultural metaphilosophical reflections on storytelling,‖ or even ―cultural narratology,‖
for its anti-storytelling stuffiness and cultural-philosophical parochialism in the word, ―metaphilosophy,‖
typified by the journal of that name, or ―narratology‖ that represents a genre of analytical studies of narratives
as object.
15
Lewis Carroll is too well known to require citation. On Escher, see F. H. Bool, et al., ed. J. L. Locher, M. C.
Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work (1892), NY: H. N. Abrams, 1992, for moving essays on his life,
his mathematical interests, and graphics. He wrote, ―My subjects are also often playful; I cannot refrain from
demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a
pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and of three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships,
and to make fun of gravity.‖ Douglas R. Hofstadter comes to mind who is much less than delightful.
6 Kuang-ming Wu

dawn, reborn as baby. Then we see things for the first time, stunningly strange and beautiful.
We run around with kids gazing at things and touching them around as the first dawn of
creation, with birds chirping so beautifully afresh.
Secondly, refreshing is coming home to where things actually are, to reshape the
lifeworld of culture made of ―names‖ as called in ancient China. ―Righting names 正名‖
rights the world, and righting names requires returning to things‘ primal freshness. Name
Scholars 名家 insist—tell stories—that ―white horse, no horse,‖ i.e., distinct from ―horse‖ in
general, and ―take off today, arrive tomorrow,‖ so as to jolt us into an awareness of our taken-
for-granted common sense, to reshuffle our culture,16 to renovate to remold our lifeworld.
Thirdly, culture as life-habit is habituated, and habituation takes time; it is a historical
process. Culture is historical, and history tells stories of life to elucidate life.17 We must then
repeatedly listen to our stories-of-the-past, to enable us properly to tell our new story of today
and prepare for storytelling tomorrow. In short, culture is our home where we are born to do
its house-cleaning with storytelling. Storytelling makes culture to re-make culture, and so
meditation on storytelling, i.e., story-thinking, is indispensable, in the following pages.
(3) Story-Thinking: What is story-thinking, however? Asking this question touches the
core of these pages. Story-thinking is a sort of ―mediation‖ that is also a distinct thinking with
a story-logic that is not symbolic logic. Or rather, symbolic logic is one sort of language of
story-thinking to express an impassioned story, as did Aristotle, Spinoza, J. S. Bach, Lewis
Carroll, Pablo Picasso, and M. C. Escher.18
Wright said that China has no ―philosophy‖ but ―thought‖ between philosophy and
19
common folks‘ common sense. We reply that China has a grammar that includes the

16
This is Name School‘s version of ―righting names.‖ Confucius grabs another version of ―righting names,‖ to
―right‖ our life-praxis to the ―names‖ we profess in society, fathers must behave as ―father,‖ children behave
as ―filial,‖ etc.
17
Even our notion of ―universal gravity‖ has undergone from Newton‘s to Einstein‘s, and then is changing to
whatever sense only our future knows. This notion is the story-in-time of physics that explains the shift of
physics in the shift of culture, from the absolute space-time to the relativity of the universe, so far. Thomas S.
Kuhn tells its story as The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), University of Chicago Press, 1996. We
came then to have inexpensive nuclear energy and horrendous nuclear weaponry, both spreading today very
rapidly throughout the world.
Another example of culture as story-in-time is China. Its autocracy persisted for millennia to collapse in the Opium
War and the May Fourth Movement. It has since been searching for an alternative sociopolitical system.
Mao‘s ―Cultural Revolution‖ adapted from alien Marxist ideology is still on, looking all over for a viable
alternative to centralized autocracy. The West has undergone a similar revolution in the Renaissance but
China‘s is more tragic, poignant, and no less worldwide in its impact of ongoing nationwide upheaval, still
waiting to rise from the ashes. And why did all people have to begin with autocracy? Why did they have to
change it later? China is an enigma, for it has no one-God to set up theocracy as the West did, where why
people had to rally to one-God and then revolt against him requires explanation. All this is a story-in-time of
China and the world to elucidate them.
18
See J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher, NY: Oxford University Press, 1981; Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly
as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu, Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1990, pp. 366-368, 394. H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent
Processes of His Reasoning, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934, 1983; Marjorie Grene, ed.,
Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, Anchor Books, 1973. F. H. Bool, et al., On M. C. Escher, see
Impossible Worlds, Köln: Taschen, 2002. Carsten-Peter Warncke and Ingo F. Walther, Pablo Picasso, 1881-
1973, Köln: Taschen, 2002. Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll: the Definitive Edition
(1960), NY: W. W. Norton, 2000; Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990
(on Lewis Carroll). Bach needs no documentation.
19
Arthur Wright was correct in saying (H. G. Creel, ed., Chinese Civilization in Liberal Education, University of
Chicago Press, 1959, pp. 144, 135, 154, 159) that China has no Stanford philosophy of logical analysis where
he was. David S. Nivison in the same milieu agreed. Henry Rosemont, Jr. said (1983) that China has no ethics
 Prelude: Life as Story and Storytelling 7

20
Western kind of philosophy and common-sense wisdom. This is Chinese wisdom, the so-
21
called ―Chinese philosophy.‖ Western philosophy pursues consistency and necessity ;
Chinese wisdom flexes with coherence that goes on as actuality does historically, that is, in a
story-net, vast and coarse-meshed, nothing leaked, as Lao Tzu said of Heaven Web (73).
Chinese wisdom has the grammar of actuality, both historical and rhetorical. The
grammar does not logically legislate on actuality but follows it to express our rhetorical
activity that flows with and within the world, as the inter-flow of actuality around us and our
expressive actuality right here throughout Heaven and Earth. This is the ―logic‖ of
storytelling, story-thinking.
Storytelling is thus worded expression, wording that has an order. Ordered wording is
usually called ―logic‖ that is part of ―rhetoric,‖ the logic of flowing persuasion of words. The
logic of words is ―grammar,‖ ―the grammar of persuasion‖ that is the logic of delivery-
rhetoric, and the ―grammar of assent‖ that is the logic of reception-rhetoric, and both tell
stories as forms of story-thinking.
―How can we rhetorically tell truth, not do demagoguery that misleads? How do we steer
rhetoric from capricious demagoguery toward solid guide?‖ Well, an agitator fans up hearers‘
fascination to channel it into his preset goal. Truth-rhetoric is based on actuality to ―argue‖
from it, flowing from it to follow wherever it leads.
After all, more rhetoric cures rhetoric, for adding falsehood on falsehood exposes them as
―false,‖ by and by, as history. In history, actuality sounds and resounds over and over, and
sooner than later demagoguery emerges to sound hollow. Afterthoughts are better as after-
sights, reviews, are, because they thus turn truer, more actual. The ―Aha!‖ time will come,
and history judges in the end. In all, history reveals what sort of rhetoric we hear.
All this sounds spooky until we realize that we are history, as these seven points explain.
(1) I breathe Homer‘s Odysseus, Plato‘s Socrates, Confucius‘ Analects, all of whose presence
I feel in my bones. (2) My felt presence of the past changes the past as the past directs how I
breathe and feel now. It is history. (3) To provoke such breathing and feeling is self-
cultivation; it is education. (4) Thus history and education are one, living in me, in you; we
die without history-education. We are alive creating because of history-education. What does
―creation‖ mean here?
(5) We naturally react to reading as we breathe responding to air, and putting down our
reactions is called ―criticism.‖ Reading is history; criticism enlivens it. Criticism is our own,
so it is creation, our life, thanks to history, as we breathe our own way thanks to the air. (6)
Now, all this is my own critical reaction to Eliot,22 but he would not have recognized himself
in it, being so much altered out of his shape. I thus practice history that becomes me as I
become history, creating it.

of an Aristotelian systematic sort. H. G. Creel criticized Wright and Nivison, and Wing-tsit Chan criticized
Rosemont, yet none said what ―Chinese philosophy‖ is, not just as convention or thought in China. I reacted to
them all in ―中國哲學的共相問題,‖ 哲學論評, 臺大哲學系, 八十年一月, pp. 1-23, On Chinese Body
Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp. 207-208, On the “Logic” of Togetherness, op. cit.,
pp. 304, 305, 435. Here I continue my reply.
20
K. Wu, Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010.
21
―Consistency‖ turns deconstructively complex, while ―necessity‖ turns sinuously analytical, in the West today.
22
―T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays: New Edition,‖ in Modern Poetics, ed. James Scully, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1965, pp.
61-64.
8 Kuang-ming Wu

(7) As breathing made conscious turns self-conscious and unnatural,23 so history cannot
be objectified as the self is systematically elusive. Criticism in history is ―past‖ and ―now‖
mutually measuring, confessional, autobiographical. Thus China has no criticism of history,
no philosophy of history; all criticisms by Grand Historians are history. History cannot be
objectified; it can only be presented as stories.
Let us put the same point and same content another way. ―What is history?‖ can be asked
from outside history and from inside history. Collingwood asked the question from outside,
by fighting objectivism (scientism, scissors-and-paste approach), saying, ―history is ideas re-
enacted in question-and-answer.‖ Dilthey also asked it from outside as he fought objectivistic
scientism, when he said knowing can undergo personal ―understanding.‖
And then ―What is history?‖ can be asked from inside history, where we realize that
―asking‖ is itself part of history to make up history, for our asking results in recording our
living through time as history. Our asking makes ―us‖ to realize; asking makes us aware that
our living composes history, that our living is history. We are history, and history is bigger
than any one of us.
This is why China‘s two volumes on historical criticism, History All-Through 史通 and
Literary History, Comprehensive Meaning文史通義, are not on history but on how to be a
good historian. As we cannot ―we,‖ so history cannot ―history‖24; as we cannot stand outside
our ―self,‖ so history cannot be objectified as ―history,‖ while history keeps mirroring us in
time.
Thus we breathe Homer, Plato, Einstein, Hitler, as our parents breathe us now. We call
our breathing-in-time ―history.‖ Pull off history, and we humans die into animals; realizing
we are history, we come alive as human. To make one another among us realize all this is
―education.‖ And then we see Dilthey and Collingwood are our history teaching us history.
Education is how history works; history is what education does. History teaches history, at
one as story-thinking.

23
Breathing exercises, in religions and health disciplines, purposely make breathing self-conscious to adjust it
correctly, so as to turn it non-self-conscious by and by.
24
章學誠 said, ―六經不言經，三傳不言傳，猶人各有我而不容我其我也,‖ (文史通義校注, 經解上,
北京中華書局, 2005, p. 93); 經 and 傳 are history. His volume is one of the only two on historical criticism in
China that are not on history but on how to become a good historian, for history is ―systematically elusive‖ as
we. Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson, 1949, pp. 195-198) and Ian Ramsey (Christian
Empiricism, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1974, pp. 17-31) noted ―the systematic elusiveness of
the ‗I‘.‖ Neither Ryle nor Ramsey took the elusive I as historical, as part of history. Let us go slower here.
―不容我其我‖ says that ―the I has no room to ‗I‘ its I.‖ I can ―I,‖ not actual I, as Tao can ―tao,‖ not Always
Tao. As classic ―classic‖-ed is not actual classic, so history ―history‖-ed is not actual history. No actual sage
claims himself a sage; no actual history claims itself as history. The reason is simple; no I obtrusively declare
I, as no Tao declare itself Tao, as God is ever a hidden God. This is to oppose Socrates. Self-examination
manifests the self that does not self-describe-manifest; the self‘s meta-act shows the self but does not describe
or analyze the self. Pragmatism can only be the spirit of pragmatism that is the pragmatic spirit; no
―pragmatism‖ is here. Art criticism (詩品，書譜，文心雕龍) must be itself art (see my ―Chinese Art
Criticism as Art,‖ Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010, p. 137); criticizing historians is
itself history. No art or history describes its analyses of them, for praxis is praxis, and ―pragmatism,‖ thinking
about praxis, is praxis. Thus no praxis, classic, history, or art can be objectified, for they are activities of the
self that ceases to be the self once objectified as the ―self.‖ Subjectivity objectified is no ―subject,‖ for subject
is no object. When I say ―I,‖ I exhibit I or display I, yet I do not produce an object, ―I‖; I-as-object does not
exist. So, writing that transposes onto paper as sincere conversation, that is, letter-writing and journals, is most
natural and powerful. They tend to mention dots of points, open-ended, to move people, and evoke the
participants–writers, readers—to freely develop the themes and the points mentioned. Cf. William H. Shannon
and Christine M. Bochen, eds., Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters, HarperCollins, 2008, pp. x-xiii.
 Prelude: Life as Story and Storytelling 9

Story-thinking shows in literature that tells stories about persons and events, what
happened and to whom. ―What happened to whom‖ is biography, ―what happened‖ is history
that includes biographies, all ―factual‖ that includes fictive stories with factual impact. We
tell our ideas, factual or fictive, to us and others in stories, and the telling is a fact, what
happens to make things happen.
―History fictive‖ may raise some literalist eyebrows. This is ―fancy history‖ that has no
fact, yet no unreal impact, as a statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback, to bear on actuality to
stir us up today. This ―fiction‖ is then ―actual beyond fact.‖ This is history-at-meta-level.
―Meta level‖ is of two sorts, observing not-participating, and catalysis to make things happen.
Fancied history is a meta-level catalyst to real-ize things. This whole volume is itself a meta-
level catalyst to China-West interculture in a story-thinking milieu, to facilitate inter-
enrichments among world cultures.
25
Thus persons and characters embody ideas that events show. Ideas are ―demonstrated,‖
that is, proven and shown, not logically but factually-rhetorically in history, for logic tolerates
nothing illogical that constantly happens, while rhetorical storytelling includes whatever
happens; in fact, that is what ―history‖ is, telling stories about whatever happened, to discover
what they mean, their ―ideas.‖ In short, all ideas are expressed concretely in storytelling.
26
Story-thinking tells stories; it is a ―concrete logic‖ to demonstrate ideas in history, factual
and fictive.
27
Let us take a concrete example. On reading Fischer‘s Liberty and Freedom on
America‘s ideas, we cannot help but ask two sets of questions, each with four sub-questions.
One set are on ideas; another are on our struggles to actualize them. The first set ask
wherefrom those ideas, how many, how related they are, and how they developed. We know
where the two ideas came from. To him, liberty is independence; freedom is belonging. The
two are distinct in America due to its root in individualism; China has no such distinction.
Fischer must answer other three questions.
The second set ask how much has been achieved, how our struggles have changed the
ideas, how the idea-changes have changed our struggles, and where we (should) go from here.
So we ask, and the book must answer on those eight themes that are our latecomers‘
retrospective roundup, objective and intersubjective.
―Fischer has no obligation to bother with your questions, does he?‖ He is obligated to
clearly elucidate the themes of his book‘s title, and the elucidation answers eight questions of
mine entailed by the title. I doubt if his book has answered well any of my questions, and thus
his book is a defective history. Or else, answers must be extrapolated from the book, and how
easy we can extrapolate shows how good is his book, which cannot be a random lump of
scattered data. We call such probing dialogues ―history of ideas.‖ It is ―history.‖

25
See on how the 19th century English writers eschewed bloodless abstraction of logical proof to express their ideas
in persons and events, in John Holloway‘s slightly soft The Victorian Sage: Studies in Argument (1953), NY:
W. W. Norton, 1965, pp. 12-13, 292, et passim. His ―plot‖ is our storytelling; his ―sage‖ reminds us of Chinese
sagely mode of ―argument.‖ Sadly, those writers—Carlyle, Disraeli, Eliot, Arnold and Hardy—labored under
the shadow of the context of ―logic,‖ and few philosophers pay attention to them. Chinese sages happily have
no such sad shackles; they are cumbered instead with soft sentimental muck in need of logical clearing and
cleansing.
26
―Demonstrate‖ side-glances at ―demonstrative‖ that shifts meaning with shift of user and of situation. This point
fits the dynamic character of rhetoric that shifts with concrete situational shift. This is headache to staid logic.
27
David Hackett Fischer, Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America‟s Founding Ideas, Oxford University
Press, 2005.
10 Kuang-ming Wu

C. STORY ABOUT STORYTELLING

Story-thinking operates in storytelling. We are here, then, to tell a story about storytelling
told to all people in ancient days and today, to kids and adults alike. We must note that
storytelling is no dissecting of story, though analysis is one peculiar sort of storytelling.
Analysis de-scribes to flatten and enervate things, while telling a story presents things as they
actually are, alive. Analysis constructs an abstract system with dissected bits, while telling a
story is systematic as pre-sented matters, as revealed in the very process of storytelling.
Story is a circle irresistibly expanding, with ―everywhere‖-center and ―who‖-edge all
28
over, bits and pieces everywhere, every one reflecting all others, as Leibniz saw in monads,
as Blake saw in grains of sand that see many worlds. Our pages follow these bits of sand-
grains as ―sections,‖ as they spontaneously arise to exhibit structures structure-less, i.e.,
systematic and coherent without a formal system. We tell coherent stories of storytelling
scattered all over life.
Various academic muscles—ethnology, typology, historiography, cultural anthropology,
and the list goes on—have been greatly flexed to analyze stories and storytelling, only to
29
dissect them to death. To understand what ―story‖ is, we must tell stories, and to ―correct‖ a
specific story, we must tell more stories, simply because storytelling is one supreme
indispensable way to let things cohere and present themselves to us as they are. Academic
30
analyses themselves are one mode of storytelling, a less good one than usual storytelling we
are daily accustomed to.
So, storytelling is the best way to undergo to understand—tell a story of—storytelling. To
tell a story about storytelling, we must tell it as it is, that is, we must just tell a story about
storytelling. Storytelling is the best, flexuous, open-ended, and at the same time most
rigorous way to present things, as stories of all sorts do, gossip, fables, news, history, myths,
speeches, letters, conventions, sciences, celebrations, memos, gifting, ideologies, and the list
goes on.
The reason is simple: We cannot open our mouths without telling stories. This is why few
people dislike stories; in fact, no human can live on without storytelling. To ―prove‖ so we
must, without further ado, begin telling stories about storytelling. So, we here tell stories of
storytelling that meanders coherently in the river of life, shooting breeze where it wishes with
winds of nature.

D. NINE SECTIONS IN THIS VOLUME

We have nine sections called ―chapters,‖ on story-thinking as storytelling. Since
storytelling is indefinable as life, Chapter 1 reminds us with ―storytelling‖ in general by
telling of its origin, its how, its magical power, and how we meta-story-tell. Chapter 2 tells of
the story of life, ―history.‖ It begins with translation in time as transposition of our forefather

28
Our later section, ―Various Ponds Alive,‖ will ponder on this strange circle, to tell its story.
29
E.g., Pierre Maranda, ed., Mythology: Selected Readings (Penguin Books, 1972) congeals the blood of
storytelling.
30
I also shiver at scientific analysis of myths by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber, in When They
Severed Earth From Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth, Princeton University Press, 2004.
 Prelude: Life as Story and Storytelling 11

in our historical reenactment, then goes into specific stories of politics and history of ideas,
then surprises ourselves to realize how history makes no mistakes as the I Ching its story in
mathematical poetry does not.
This Chapter concludes with a look at how history relates to mathematics, a part of
culture, under three themes, science, culture, and milieu. Stories tell of our knowledge,
―science,‖ and our ―culture,‖ both amounting to our ―milieu.‖ So we have Chapter 3: Science,
to show that storytelling not science comprehends random events, which now appear with
story-sense, and science itself is part of mythmaking. Then we see how Japan‘s Shinto nature-
love story makes agrarian technology and ―idleness‖ that nurtures the self, but psychology as
science cannot.
Chapter 4: Culture, follows to tell of its two themes, vital relativism that is a dynamic
―circle‖ of China-West interculture, and, naturally, Chapter 5: Milieu, rounds up both science
and culture as our life-milieu. It begins intimately with kids, and then spreads to logic, time
and space, and our ―self‖ in relation to our milieu.
After this, we turn personal to Chapter: Pain, which is not evil, in pleasure-involvement
that leads to the biblical love of enemies, charity, against capital punishment, and global
ethics. Pain is shown as strangely unintelligible in Chapter 7: Akrasia, violence and
depression. Finally, storytelling climaxes in Chapter 8: Silence, and Chapter 9: Music, where
storytelling and hearing join in nature.
In short, as time heals, history resolves matters to enable life to go on. Reflecting history,
storytelling and story-reading put us at ease, to make sense of all things, and fulfill life. The
following pages tell stories of all this story-thinking, reflexively and spontaneously. This is
the only apt and natural way to deal with life as it is naturally told in stories.
Chapter 1

STORYTELLING
WHEREFROM STORYTELLING
Stories such as Homer‘s Odyssey develop over a vast period of time; it has been a popular
hit, recited, read, and quoted repeatedly by a vast number of people, all over the world, for
millennia. Besides, kids and students love to talk, talk, and talk, making teachers insane and
making cell phone companies thrive. This fact of ubiquitous storytelling raises fascinating
questions on why, what, and how we tell and hear stories.

Why Tell and Hear Stories?

Why, to begin with, do we love to tell and hear stories, as if we had nothing else to do?
Odysseus‘ slave the swineherd, who played host, gave us an answer, when he invited his
guest, beggar stranger Odysseus (actually his master), saying, ―But we two, sitting here in the
shelter, . . . shall entertain each other remembering and retelling our sad sorrows. For
1
afterwards a man who suffered much and wandered much has pleasure out of his sorrows.‖
That was the world‘s earliest psychotherapy. Story-therapy is an excellent counseling;
counselor is simply a hearty skillful listener who requests to hear a story told her, ―Now, tell
me about yourself. . . . Please, tell me more.‖ We love to tell and hear stories because, among
others, storytelling heals.
Why does it heal to tell and hear stories, however? Well, what is a ―story‖? Story is
2 3
intimately related to ―history,‖ not only etymologically but also in life, as Sartre said,

(A) man is always a teller of stories. . . he sees everything which happens to him through
these stories; and he tries to live his life as if it were a story he was telling. . . . While you live,
nothing happens. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that‘s all. There are no
beginnings . . . an interminable and monotonous addition. . . . But when you tell about a life,
everything changes; . . . events take place in one direction, and we tell about them in the

1 The Odyssey of Homer, XV.398-401, tr. Richmond Lattimore (1967), NY: HarperCollins, 1999, p. 235.
2 See Oxford English Dictionary, 2001, VII:261 (―history‖), XVI:797 (―story‖).
3 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, NY: New Directions, 1964, pp. 56-59. Cf. Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being,
Chicago: Regnery/Gateway, 1960, I: 192-194. We appreciate storytelling here in opposition to their view that
it is a self-deception. Cf. my The Butterfly as Companion, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990,
pp. 7-8.
14 Kuang-ming Wu

opposite direction. . . I wanted the moments of my life to follow each other and order
themselves like those of a life remembered. I might as well try to catch time by the tail.

Storytelling weaves together scattered meaningless bits of life-events into a coherent

sense, to make a meaningful ―history‖ out of life events, to make sense of life, and
meaningfulness makes life whole—and to make whole is to heal. We can now smile at our
4
pain. To tell is already to shape life‘s chaotic pieces into a story. The story is now a coherent
life, a complex whole, all of a piece; and to heal is literally to make whole. Therefore, to tell a
story is to heal.
Storytelling is unfinished without being heard, however. Telling implies listening;
storytelling expects to be heard; such is story-thinking. A story needs a listener to support,
5 6
interfuse, and complete, as Siddhartha felt when he met that humble ferryman Vasudeva.

Vasudeva listened with great attention; he heard all about his origin and childhood, about
his studies, his seekings, his pleasures and needs. It was one of the ferryman‘s greatest virtues
that, like few people, he knew how to listen. Without his saying a word, the speaker felt that
Vasudeva took in every word, quietly, expectantly, that he missed nothing. He did not await
anything with impatience and gave neither praise nor blame—he only listened. Siddhartha felt
how wonderful it was to have such a listener who could be absorbed in another persons‘ life,
his strivings, his sorrows. (Then) the ferryman listened with doubled attention, completely
absorbed, his eyes closed.

It is clear, then, that ―listening‖ is quite an active involvement. The activity of the listener
turns crucial as one‘s story makes an intolerable whole of sorrows, for then the listener would
gently nudge the storyteller to retell, re-describe, and rewrite a new story, and thereby turn the
painful negative whole into a prideful joyous one.
The gentle turning takes time, listening to which amounts to ―psychotherapy.‖ It
happened when Siddhartha was unable to face the prospect of letting go of his son, the young
rebellious Siddhartha, quite spoiled. Vasudeva had to gently nudge him to attend to the only
hope for his son, to let his son leave him to face the world alone by the son himself.
7
Siddhartha remained hesitant, until finally a tragic breakup erupted.

The (father) told him to gather some twigs. But . . . he stood there, defiant and angry . . .
―Bring your own twigs,‖ he shouted, foaming. ―I am not your servant. I know that you do not
beat me; you dare not! . . . I hate you; you are not my father even if you have been my
mother‘s lover a dozen times!‖ . . . The following morning he had disappeared.

All this while, Vasudeva was silent, waiting, waiting, and waiting, watching Siddhartha‘s
fatherly pain, and followed him wherever he went in search for his son. Vasudeva listened
well with his quiet behavior and followed Siddhartha‘s life-story with his life until it is
complete.8

4 This is the whole point of Viktor Frankl‘s meaning-therapy, logotherapy, in Man‟s Search for Meaning, Boston:
Beacon Press, 2004.
5 The listener can be oneself listening to oneself, of course.
6 Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, tr. Hilda Rosner, NY: Bantam Books, 1971, p. 104.
7 Ibid., pp. 123f.
8 Ibid., pp. 136f.
 Storytelling 15

As Vasudeva rose from the seat on the river bank, when he looked into Siddhartha‘s eyes
and saw the serenity of knowledge shining in them, he touched his shoulder gently in his kind
protective way and said: ―I have waited for this hour, my friend. Now that is has arrived, let
me go. I have been Vasudeva, the ferryman, for a long time. Now it is over. Farewell hut,
farewell river, farewell Siddhartha. . . . I am going into the unity of all things.‖

As we see it happened, the events cooperated with the waiting, or rather, the waiting went
along with the events. Waiting could do so because waiting takes time, and taking time gives
room to go along with the events. Waiting is thus synonymous with listening, listening to
events as we listen to the one suffering. Listening waits on the sufferer as listening waits on
time to transpire.
I walk out (of myself) into nature, and I am in raw contact. Green trees keep telling me of
their green stories, with birds chirping, all by just being themselves in casual breeze. Flowers
are not beautiful enough without birds chanting them, for birds are flowers of the air and the
sky, and flowers are birds on the roadside singing beauty; they match and echo. We call them
―stories.‖ Hearing their stories, I feel so good, put together wholesome.

How to Listen

How did he listen to the life-story of Siddhartha‘s as it developed? Anthropologist

9
Rodney Frey, in his objective ethnographic project, told us that he once bombarded a Crow
Indian Chief Alan Old Horn with ―naïve‖ questions. In the end, Alan‘s patience ran out. He
held up his hand and pointed to a tin shed some fifty yards away.
―You see that tin shed?‖ Alan asked. ―It‘s like my culture. You can sit back here and
describe it, but it‘s not ‗til you go inside, listen, feel it, see from the inside looking out, that
you really know what it‘s all about. You‘ve ‘gotta go inside!‖ The lessons of the ―tin shed‖
were taken to heart. Twenty years have passed since they sat under that cottonwood.
What does Alan‘s talk mean? When I am just alone, not lonely, I am just I am; I do not
listen to me, not deal with me, but I am just I am, alone; I am that tin shed. And then I hear
this, see that, and they are just as they are, alone. We are alone, together. That is togetherness,
in a tin shed. Thus togetherness has the quiet shed-depth of being alone, as the unknown bird
just chirps, and the bare branch just stretched there, against the blue sky, as I trudge on, while
in me my tin shed.
Togetherness trudges on, alone. All this trudging makes it hard to imagine a year has just
passed, and I cannot believe I am ―this old‖ now. I am what I am, and nothing is ever
different from what I am. ―Difference‖ is not me but someone else talking outside the tin
shed. I am I while someone else talks to make a difference, to make togetherness, alone and
different. That is Alan talking, from his tin shed to invite us in.

9 Rodney Frey, ed., Stories That Make the World: Oral Literature of the Indian Peoples of the Inland Northwest As
Told by . . . Elders, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995, p. 5. Alan‘s lesson shapes this book that
tells this story and their stories.
16 Kuang-ming Wu

All talks are oral literature. All talks are a storytelling that is a ―confession,‖ what
10 11
literally speaks-out from inside a culture my tin shed and inside myself; such a talk links
things together and yarns, weaves, and makes the world, my world, and thereby makes things
whole—whole ciphers alone—and heals them all, the storyteller and the listener.
To listen to such talks is to ―go inside, listen, feel it, see from the inside looking out,‖ and
share the new creation of the world that puts us at home our tin shed. And that was what
happened to Siddhartha as he, with Vasudeva, listened intently to the river, the Nature in
which they both lived, intently. Such listening together made a new creation, in a new story of
life, told, confessed, and intently listened to.
In creation something brand new begins to be; it is the first step to initiate something
new, and ―something new‖ is a fresh coherence of things, a making ―whole‖ against previous
disintegration into chaos, into bits and pieces. Disintegration describes discomfort and dis-
ease in disarray; creation is fresh integration and coherence, where things fit together whole.
Creation makes things emerge fit and whole, something wholesome.
Now where does such creative beginning of all things begin? It begins at the self;
creation is first and foremost an initiation of self-creation, to wit, making my self whole.
Creation makes the self fit, whole, and thus wholesome. Creation in its very initial step is
12
self-healing. Creation makes whole to heal.
Therefore, scientist Rodney Frey must have felt fit and wholesome as he told us the story
of how Chief Alan Horn told him how to understand his tribal stories that compose their tin
shed, their culture. This scientific storytelling of storytelling tells us a variety of sorts of
storytelling and story-hearing. We can see five ways of seeing such variety of storytelling—
story-thinking.

Five Sorts of Storytelling

We see five points here about diverse sorts of storytelling.

First, we have an originative storytelling from inside me and inside my culture, my tin
shed my stories. It is overpowering; ―So he spoke, and all of them stayed stricken to silence,
13
held in thrall by the story all through the shadowy chambers.‖ Here I see everything alive,
14
ocean (Poseidon), dangerous high cliffs (Skylla), whirlpool on the coastline (Charybdis),

10 See Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 1989, 2001, ―confess,‖ III.702. All words are alive with their
unique biographical-etymological stories to tell-confess to us their users. All our talks are made of these living
words that comprise our culture; to talk is to tell stories cultural and confessional.
11 I have been untiringly telling everyone that Chinese people think by telling stories, in all my books and articles.
12 This reflection answers the question of why Jesus heals. Jesus who claimed to be the Son of the Creator, came to
habitually heal us in every sense, and often on the Sabbath, the Day exclusively of Creator God. Jesus the
healer also tells stories, for stories heal; Jesus the healer and Jess the storyteller are one. As for story that heals,
see Rollo May‘s interesting explanation of how storytelling—he calls it ―symbolism‖—heals in Symbolism in
Religion and Literature, edited with an Introduction by Rollo May, NY: George Braziller, 1961, pp. 11-49.
13 Odyssey, op. cit., XIII.1-2 (p. 198).
14 As are well known, these are divinities who sorely troubled Odysseus in ibid., XII.85 (p. 187), XII.104 (p. 188),
as explained in Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (With revised supplement),
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 1617 (Σκύλλα) and pp. 1980-1 (Χάρσαδις).
 Storytelling 17

15
and even Dawn and necessity (Anankē). Nature is ―natura naturans and natura naturata,‖
16
nature naturing, the birthing-power birthing things, and nature natured, things thus born.
Nature is forever nascent physis, in constant process of growth, ―birthing, birthing,
17
without ceasing.‖ This sentiment of things alive, all in their own right, naturally breeds
awesome polytheism, often condescendingly taken as ―anthropomorphic,‖ while we today
continually recognize Nature‘s awesome power by naming hurricanes as Hurricane Agnes
(1972), Hurricane Andrew (1992), Hurricane Mitch (1998), etc. ―Nature‖ is a correlative
term, i.e., alive with us.
Then, in reaction to the above inside storytelling, there arises storytelling from outside, an
objective one. Here things are seen as mechanical blind stuff and processes, and today‘s
18
physics is born. Mechanism is the story taken for granted today; mechanics of technē, hand-
control, governs all things in the world and the world itself now. In opposition to
anthropomorphism, this is ―mechano-morphism‖ today covering literally all, including
ourselves in physiology, psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, cultures, and
everything in life in the universe.
Thirdly, there is a storytelling from both inside and out. In fact, looking back, we realize
that we have been telling stories about storytelling this way. To realize how naturally we see
things from inside (how Mother Nature forever natures), and to see us today seeing things
from outside (objectively, mechanically), we must ―catch time by the tail‖ (Sartre) to see time
spatially and see space in time, as divinities do. We are ―created in divine images,‖ ―god-
intoxicated.‖
This is again a polytheistic way of telling stories. Here we hear the stories of things in the
world in time/space from the past through now to the future, as told by Muse (and the dead
19
people beyond space/time) in the Odyssey. It is significant that Muse is the goddess of
musing, that is, pondering and meditative thinking, as Oxford English Dictionary X:121 tells
us. Etymology tells the story in the word.
She oversees and surveys the entire story of anything; in fact, the Odyssey begins with
appealing to goddess Muse for the hearing of the whole story of Odysseus. This
comprehensive frame contains the confessional and autobiographical stories of Odysseus‘
adventures in Books VI through XII, and beyond.
Fourth, the above three sorts of stories can be told in three ways. First, stories are told by
life-behavior called ―ritual,‖ sacrifices and hecatombs with much invocation to change the
course of events to our benefit and gratitude afterward, in ancient days, and today‘s science
and technology to change the world without gratitude.

15 Quite often goddess Dawn appears in Odyssey to initiate new stage in Odysseus‘ adventures.
16 For ―natura‖ see P. G. W. Glare, ed., Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1982, 2002, pp.
1158-1159. For ―natura naturans and natura naturata‖ see William L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and
Religion, Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1996, p. 509.
17 See ―ananke‖ and ―physis‖ in F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, New York
University Press, 1967, pp. 18, 158-160. I combined this meaning of ―nature‖ as the constantly growing
Urstoff with the famous Chinese phrase, ―生生不息.‖ Martin Heidegger was obsessed with physis as eruptive-
active, Introduction to Metaphysics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 252 (index on ―phusis‖).
18 Ibid., p. 190.
19 The Odyssey begins with a request to Muse to ―tell me of the man of many ways‖ (I.1 [Lattimore, op. cit., p.
27]). The great Dead are as divine as nymphs, freely going in and beyond the confines of space/time (XI,
pp.168-184).
18 Kuang-ming Wu

Stories can also be told by words of mouth, which is alive, rhythmic, rhymed-repetitious,
and constantly in flux, as do today‘s political speeches inherited from such oral tradition. That
was the oral tradition of epic poems and of today‘s political campaigns. Finally, stories can be
told by hand into written mythologies, classical and contemporary, and volumes of pages.
Fifth and finally, all explanations tell stories. We see two ways of telling such stories. (1)
To begin, Aristotle summed up our explanations in ―four causes,‖ formal, material, final, and
efficient; obviously, they tell four sorts of stories of how things are shaped, made, for, and
work. Why does it rain? We humans say, because there is a tilt in the earth‘s revolution, the
Dragon Up There sheds tears, I am hungry, or it just happens. We say they are ―why-
because,‖ so they are ―reasoning,‖ the first scientific, the second mythological, the third
zodiacal, and the final fatalistic.
We can equally say that these four sorts of reasoning sum up these sorts of storytelling.
―Is ‗science‘ a story?‖ Well, ancient people told their scientific stories that we call
―mythologies‖; we can equally say that science today continues to tell mythologies of the
future, for today‘s science is a ―mythology‖ of tomorrow as ancient ―science‖ is today‘s
mythology. Such science-mythology inter-transfer is story-thinking communicating itself
across time.

Lessons from Stories

(2) Besides, each storytelling breeds more stories of significance, lessons for our living.
For example, the Odyssey stirs our meditations on four matters of consequence to life: (a)
how important death and dead people are, (b) how Odysseus is strikingly compared with
Agamemnon, (c) how this comparison illustrates an innocent joining of fate with freedom,
and (d) how Greek polytheism, which graphically tells stories of this joining, echoes Christian
triune monotheism.
(a) The Odyssey has two elaborate episodes of dead people and Odysseus‘ visit with
them—one is in the middle of Odyssey, just before Odysseus‘ straight journey home (Book
11); another is at the end, just before he visited his father Laertes (Book 24). These episodes‘
positions, the dead people first appear to Odysseus just at the crucial juncture of homecoming
to give him a vista of his life-course, and then appear again at its conclusion to render their
final judgment.
Dead people have such an uncanny power, almost divine, because death is history, the
retrospective finality of all; world history is indeed world judgment. History is the final
arbiter because, as all Chinese history-writings show and tell us, history exhibits as nothing
else does how nature works; history embodies the law of nature that natural science
instinctively tries to discern by ―experiments,‖ contrived history. This—history in nature,
nature in history—is the standard whereby all historians judge historical incidents. Let us go
slower here, for the point is crucial.
Incidents straightly story-told judge, and their historical judgments are most serious. A
bare word of praise exceeds highest honors, and bare half-blame cuts deeper than axes and
20
galleys, for historical praises and blames stay forever incorruptible. History does not say but

20 My English trailed, barely from afar, 劉勰‘s incomparable 「褒見一字， 貴踰軒冕；貶在片言，

誅深斧鉞。」in 史傳第十六, 文心雕龍, 臺北市三民書局，民83, p. 156.
 Storytelling 19

shows, intimating its two judgment-criteria, wisdom and law, by straightly telling of both as
another bunch of stories. The historians‘ criteria to judge incidents are historical wisdom and
historical laws of cosmos.
The first one is historical wisdom. Ssu-ma Ch‘ien judged Hsiang Yü‘s tragic arrogant
21
demise as due to his ―refusal to learn of ‗old‘ 不師古‖ ; Ssu-ma could judge Hsiang by
learning of old 師古. Thus historical incidents are judged by accumulated wisdom of history,
hammered out by long periods of repeated critiques of the ages, during which all various
dross of ―mistakes‖ is found and cleansed. History as process of critical judgments thus
makes no mistake; history is wise without qualification, for history-process includes all
qualifications; it has gone through it all.
The second criterion of historical judgment is the Laws of Nature-going ascertained by
history. They are cosmology in cosmogony manifesting the Yin-Yang Five-Goings
陰陽五行, obtained by the long periods of repeated observations of various happenings
perpetrated in history. Laws of nature are those by which ―mistakes‖ appear, and ―mistake‖ is
inapplicable to the laws. Such natural laws are sought after by today‘s scientific
experimentation, i.e., contrived history, and amassing observed data by sociology and natural
sciences, i.e., historical data.
Thus, these two standards of historical judgments are themselves ―history.‖ In short,
history is judged by history. Uncannily, however, history betokens dead past. ―Cover the
coffin, (we) finally judge 蓋棺論定,‖ China says. As we can now step back from the dead to
look back at all matters about them, so can the dead now afford to give us their definitive
vista, guide, and judgment over our past, present, and future. We make history out of dead
people to critically learn from them about our own lives now into future.
Now the last statement above is itself un-cannier than we can imagine. It amounts to
saying that we ourselves make dead people uncanny, for the statement amounts to saying that
it is we ourselves now who cover the coffin to the dead past, to make the dead come alive,
make ―history‖ out of dead people, and have them tell us, judge us, and guide us, as we
modify their instruction.
We latecomers are the ―dead people,‖ as it were, to those who are dead, to make dead
people come alive, to judge us as we judge them! ―Only dead people talk; we the living just
chatter,‖ say we. Well then, if we want to really ―talk,‖ we had better be ―dead,‖ dead serious,
to dead people and listen carefully to them. How? We do so by telling their stories with
loving care.
The Odyssey is in fact such a ―history‖ that renders the final judgment over our ideal hero
Odysseus. He suffers so much as to be given an epithet, ―hated of gods and men‖ as his name
22
shows, yet he ―stubbornly‖ persisted in love of his no less ―stubbornly‖ devoted wife
23
Penelope until he was ―allowed‖ to succeed to come home to join Penelope.
(b) As part of the final picture in retrospect, Homer skillfully placed throughout the story
the dead Agamemnon side by side with the living Odysseus. The contrast is striking, serving
as a striking foil to the breathtaking magnificence of Odysseus‘ life-adventure. How closely

21 This is Ssu-ma‘s 司馬遷 concluding remark in 項羽本紀第七, 史記，臺北市三民書局，2008, I: 457.

22 The mythic origin of the name ‘Οδσζζεύς is ―hated by gods and men,‖ ―Why, Zeus, are you now so harsh with
him? ηί νύ ηόζον ώδύζαο, Σεΰ;‖ (Odyssey 1:62, Lattimore, p. 28; cf. pp. 99, 219, 242, 286, 289, 291, 292) See
‘οδύζομαι in Liddell and R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, op. cit., pp. 1199-1200.
23 Both Odysseus and Penelope described themselves as ―stubborn‖ (Lattimore, pp. 94, 299, 337, 339, 341).
20 Kuang-ming Wu

similar one life was to the other, and yet in how radically divergent they ended their
respective lives!
Both Agamemnon and Odysseus were rulers, friends to each other, fought together, loved
their wives, and even made it home after much suffering. They both loved and were so
grateful to be back and met their wives. Incredibly, however, Agamemnon was then murdered
by his own wife and her paramour, while Odysseus came back and methodically murdered his
devoted wife‘s arrogant suitors! Nothing is more shocking and poignant than this contrast.
24
This contrast is the climax in the final Story of the Dead People that concluded the final
judgment on the life of Odysseus. Their contrast climaxed in having the dead former bless the
25
living latter, and the admiring judgment was delivered by none other than Agamemnon who
freely admitted to his tragic fate before his friend, that incredibly fortunate Odysseus. What a
26
devoted friend Odysseus had in Agamemnon!
(c) We cannot help but sigh, ―But poor Agamemnon! Why did their lives go so similar yet
so different?‖ The Odyssey nonchalantly tells their stories, however, on how they were both
free and fated. ―How could fate and freedom join in so naïve a manner?‖ In response to this
query, the Odyssey simply keeps on telling their stories, as if to say, ―It just happened that
way.‖
If we are disappointed, it is we who are naïve, for we are blind to how significant this ―It
just happened that way‖ is. We don‘t see that if it just happens, it is beyond us, to wit,
something divinities ordain, and so it is fated; at the same time, if it just happens, we can just
enter the way things happen and freely do something about it. It is precisely in such an actual
storytelling as this, of what just actually happens, that fate and freedom ―naively,‖ i.e.,
naturally, join.
(d) This is what makes polytheism so appealing, what makes our lives alive, colorful, and
variegated. ―It just happens‖ in polytheism relieves us from theodicy—to reconcile evil with
one almighty all-loving God—while we can freely struggle to adjust what ―just happens.‖
Such ―simple‖ interactive union of divine fate and human freedom was vividly brought out by
a straight telling of gods and goddess‘ love/assistance and hate/torment, diverse divine
interventions, in Odysseus‘ persistent suffering struggles.
Athene, the goddess of love, wisdom, war, and power, constantly came in to help
Odysseus, even to the extreme of operating like ―deus ex machina.‖ Besides, her assistance
was under the aegis of Zeus her supreme father god, who even appeared to Odysseus with the
27
portent of thunder. The theophany of both divinities binds the story, to begin and end the
Odyssey.
Now, this lively Greek polytheism echoes Christian monotheism. It takes two different
matters and situations, far apart one from the other, to echo one against the other. Nothing is
farther apart than Greek polytheism and Christian monotheism. Precisely because of their
distance in every sense, we hear their echo, such as the Christ of love, fight, wisdom, and

24 Lattimore (p. 5) calls our attention to how often Athene exhorted Odysseus‘ son Telemachos to follow admirable
Orestes‘ example to avenge on the suitors as Orestes avenged his father Agamemnon‘s death by murdering his
father‘s murderer. It may well be so, but this insight fades in importance before the striking Agamemnon-
Odysseus contrast.
25 Ibid., p. 350.
26 China has some stories of moving friendship, but not as dramatic. We admire Agamemnon‘s generous
friendship.
27 Lattimore, pp. 301, 319.
 Storytelling 21

power as the Son of God the Father who sponsors Christ‘s mission. Atheists accuse such acts
of ―deus ex machina.‖ God the Father thunders ―for your sake,‖ said Christ (John 12:29).
Homer foreshadows Christ.
―Now, are we sure of lessons of consequence today in dated classical mythologies? What
28
about ‗immortality‘?‖ Let us look at the world‘s oldest epic, Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh the
heroic king of Uruk was jolted by his bosom friend Enkidu‘s death into an intense passionate
search for immortality. Against four warnings by immortals to enjoy his present moments of
mortal life, Gilgamesh kept up his wearisome search.
Gilgamesh finally met an extraordinary mortal, Utnapushtim who, blessed by immortals,
lives on undying. At his wife‘s urging, Utnapushtim gave Gilgamesh a plant that restores
youth, which Gilgamesh sadly lost to a snake before he came home. He ―engraved on a stone
the whole story,‖ and died happily ever after.
Now, Gilgamesh must be happy that his story indicates at least five sorts of immortality.
First, what immortals told him must be immortally valid, namely, we mortals can and must at
any moment enjoy the present moment to the hilt, for ―now‖ is eternal. This insight is picked
up later by Zen masters, ―Day after day, it is a good day 日日是好日.‖
Secondly, Gilgamesh found Utnapushtim forever idle in a rocking-chair; this is one sort
of living undying. Do we want such life? Thirdly, he gave Gilgamesh the plant of renewal of
youth, as the snake shedding its skin. Fourth, the immortality Gilgamesh wanted was his
heroic exploits that forever win recognition. Fifth, this was why his whole story was ―carved
on a stone‖; storytelling itself often achieves immortality as a ―classic.‖
The above five sorts of immortality remind us of four more sorts. Sixth, a person‘s
―character‖ or ―virtue‖ can often attain immortal renown, what Chinese people yearn as the
first of ―Three Incorruptibles 三不朽,‖ the other two being Exploits and Words, also
mentioned above by the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Seventh, Indian people believe that human lives keep on dying and rebirthing
(transmigration of souls) unless, eighth, some manage to reach and unite with the Eternal One
and can afford never to return (Nirvana in later Buddhism). In response, ninth, Christianity
looks forward to God‘s Kingdom after the Final Judgment.
We hardly need to remind us that all these ―immortalities‖ are informed by ancient
mythologies, and we today barely pursue only two of them, the second easy idleness and the
29
third youth-renewal, neither with much success. ―But then, what about the proposal that the
present moment as eternal? Doesn‘t it sound incredible, if not too good to be true?‖ This
query leads us to considering ―historical particularity.‖

THE CHRISTIAN SCANDAL OF HISTORICAL PARTICULARITY

To show how the above explanation—storytelling—of storytelling is no idle talk but has
practical bearing on the now as eternal, let us take the Christian scandal of historical

28 Among many versions, the following strikes the balance between literal truncated verses and a wholesale
embellished story. N. K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh, London: Penguin Books, 1972.
29 These two sorts are what we usually mean by ―immortality,‖ as told by the editors of Time-Life Books in Search
for Immortality, Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1992.
22 Kuang-ming Wu

particularity, supposedly30 unique to the Christian faith. With all respect to much
sophisticated reflections in theology and comparative religion since Kittel coined that
notorious phrase, ―the scandal of particularity,‖31 the problems enshrined in it32 refuse to
leave us. In fact, today‘s global shrinking intensifies the problems.33 Here story-thinking
handles the problem better than logical analysis.
The problem is created by the impact of the beyond. Suppose we list incidents of the
beyond, the non-actual, just for fun. We can think of going faster than the speed of light, a
dragon a hotchpotch of actual features, a monster un-paint-able, forefathers and future plans,
ideals unreachable, logical operation non-actual, mythical beings, gods and goblins, the
imaginable, the unimaginable, UFO, parapsychology, fiction, utopias, the absurd,
contradictions, paradoxes.
We can go on listing them indefinitely. Kids are good at compiling them. These incidents
happen without rhyme or reason. Storytelling can yarn it out, even yarning out logic and
illogic. Scientific technology actualizes some of them, and metal can now fly and float to go
to the moon, and smash and fuse atoms. Geniuses pleasantly, and insane people unpleasantly,
expand our prosaic mundane mind, and they are beyond us to tell apart.
Under the impact of the Ultimate Beyond, our usual world of concrete particulars now
turns strange and awkward. Things no longer fit together as expected, but appear as oddly out
of joint as described by Chinese Name Scholars, British Lewis Carroll, and Dutch M. C.
Escher, though none of them seems to be aware of the impact from the Beyond on them
(unless their inspiration is taken as the Beyond‘s impact). To us humans, religious ultimacy is
universally particular, a strange one.
Days going and dawns coming are beyond logic as religions are, yet as the Beyond-us,
past events and future plans capture us as awesome gods and goddesses do, all vigorously
come alive to enthrall us, in the irresistible power of storytelling as history, as visions, and as
otherworldly might, to impinge on us here now to alter our world for ever. Story brings us the
impact from Beyond us. Story and religion are twin sisters as the Muses and Hermes are
siblings of mighty mythology, another name for storytelling. But ultimacy is one; religions
are many.
Historical Christianity is in a bind, in history. Jesus said, ―One who is not against us is
with us,‖ such as Buddha, and ―One who is not with me is against me,‖ 34 such as Buddha.
What does Jesus want of Buddha? Jesus said to Peter, ―You will be this and that‖; Peter

30 ―Supposedly‖ unique, because the Christian faith is often taken to uniquely typify this scandal, but as we see
later, this ―scandal‖ is just a part of human daily living in naming specifics that spreads to universals.
31 Gerhard Kittel coined that notorious phrase, ―the scandal of particularity‖ (in Mysterium Christi, 1930), tacitly
assuming Lessing‘s unbridgeable ―ugly broad ditch‖ between eternal logical necessity and ephemeral
historical contingency (Lessing‟s Theological Writings [1886-1924], tr. Henry Chadwick, London: Adam and
Charles Black, 1956, p. 55). This ―difficulty‖ is concocted out of radically separating the logical from the
actual, with a Western penchant of logic-rationality. The scandal has another problem, however, as mentioned
in the main text.
32 Obviously a cluster of issues, all ―tough cookies,‖ are related to this ―scandal‖—the uniqueness of Christianity,
its truth, its mission, its relation to other religions, agnostics, atheists, deists, anti-Christians, non-Christians,
other religionists, and the list goes on. Christ‘s atonement is not considered here, for it falls under
―uniqueness‖ as Buddha‘s Nirvana does to Buddhism. These issues are best raised naturally, as we will do
some of them, while considering the concrete ―scandal‖ of a historical universal, Jesus as the Christ.
33 Notable are Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism, ed. Peter Phan, New York: Paragon House, 1990, and
Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002;
both volumes have extensive bibliographies.
34 Luke 9:50, 11:23. Amazingly, these two statements that seem tautological are actually incompatible!
 Storytelling 23

responded, ―How about him?‖ He said, ―What is he to you? You just follow me.‖35 Be not
concerned with others but follow Jesus; but love is concerned with others. We should spread
his love, to clash with other religions, but love does not compete (with other religions).
Historical specifics gnaw.
The resolution (not solution, for we cannot solve eternal problems beyond our logic) must
be our common sense, that all religious, historical or not, are beyond us humans. The Beyond
both intensifies the above problems and resolves them, in a storytelling way. We first
consider the problem before its resolution.

How Problematic the Scandal is

The scandal is that of the historical particularity of trans-historical ultimacy (not

historical contingency involved in logical necessity as Lessing thought36). One form of the
scandal is the ultimacy allowing no religious plurality, yet manifested as religious plurality in
fact. Here are two concrete examples to show how problematic this scandal is, (a) whether the
Confucian classics can serve as an Old Testament to Chinese (Christians), and (b) how we
believe in historical Jesus as the Christ at all.
(a) The first issue is, Can the Confucian Classics be the ―Old Testament to the Chinese‖?
Can Chinese people take Christ to fulfill the ―Chinese OT‖ as he does the Jewish Bible? This
is a two-edged dilemma, for Christianity as the Incarnation of ultimacy is historical and
missionary, two features pulling in opposite directions. The historicity of Christianity entails
its historical spread, i.e., Christian mission its life. So historicity and missionary spread inter-
imply, and yet they pull apart, as follows.
On one hand, as the historical faith, Christianity must be incarnated in the historical
context of Judaism; Jesus was a Jew, and cannot forego his Jewish heritage—cut OT, and NT
turns unintelligible. So, Bultmann37 is wrong in trying to extract the universal Christian
―essence‖ out of its historical ―mythological husk‖ that includes Judaism.
On the other hand, the Christian faith is a missionary faith. It must be spread among non-
Jews to incarnate in non-Jewish cultures, and giving non-Jews the ―alien‖ Jewish OT gives
38
them a burden. Is this burden indispensable? Is this ―historical particularity‖ of having the
Jewish OT an essential part of the ―Gospel scandal,‖ or is it an excess ―yoke‖ (cf. Acts 15:10,

35 John 18-22.
36 Gotthold E. Lessing said, ―That is: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of
reason.‖ (―On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power‖ [Lessings Werke, ed. Lachmann-Muncker, xiii, pp. 1-8], in
Lessing‟s Theological Writings, tr. Henry Chadwick, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1956, pp. 54-55)
37 I considered Bultmann‘s ―demythologization‖ in On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001,
pp. 283-310. He is today‘s Marcion of Pontus (c85-c160 AD) who cut OT for the ―pure‖ Gospel in NT, ―pure‖
in terms of his unhistorical principles of Gnosticism, as Bultmann‘s ―pure kerygma‖ today is Heidegger‘s
existenz. On Marcion, see Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (1967), London: Penguin Books, 1980, pp. 38-
40, 77, 80-81, 107, Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967, V.155-156 (note its
Bibliography), and Paul Lagassé, ed., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, NY: Columbia University
Press, 2000, pp. 1752-1753.
38 Those ―Christians‖ such as T. Merton, W. Johnson, and others, who try to ―welcome‖ Buddhism into their
Christian faith, are strange/―funny,‖ as if advancing to someone else‘s wife. Cf. Sylvia Boorstein, That‟s
Funny, You Don‟t Look Buddhist: On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist, HarperSanFrancisco,
1997.
24 Kuang-ming Wu

39 40
19)? In short, can we substitute the Confucian Classics—equally historical —for the
Jewish OT, to the Chinese?
The crux of the problem is the very notion of ―incarnation.‖ It is ―Word made flesh,‖
Ultimacy made into history, Ultimacy historicizing in two senses. It can mean ―once and for
all,‖ ―at last,‖ in the past; Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Christ, and no other. This is the
historicity of Christianity. Incarnation as historicizing can also mean Jesus become Christ
continually in history in all places and times; Jesus is Christ for Africans, Indians, Chinese,
and so on, today, tomorrow, and always. This is the Christian mission spread; no spread, no
Christianity.
Historicizing Christianity thus means both ―once‖ and ―continuous.‖ The Jewish Bible as
Christian OT belongs to the historical aspect; asking if Confucian classics can be OT to the
Chinese belongs to the missionary aspect. We want both, but ―once‖ and ―continuing‖ cannot
join. Such is the problem we have of Christianity as historical incarnation of the ultimate.
(b) This Incarnation-problem cuts deep into the second scandal, a more radical Gospel
41
scandal. What does historical Jesus as ultimate Christ mean? Concretely, what does it mean
for us today to believe in historical Jesus crucified under Pontius Pilate, as the ultimate Christ
our eternal Savior of the whole world in all its history? Two extreme positions are possible.
(i) Does it mean that the Christians of the twenty-first century must speak Aramaic of
Jesus‟ day, go in pilgrimage to Golgotha, and be in quest of Jesus‘ skull? Do we embrace the
historical fetish of Jesus in all his historical smells and details? We shrink from saying/doing
so. At the same time, we are uneasy about the other extreme as well.
42
(ii) Jesus told us that we love him when we love the least of our brethren, so Jesus is a
mere tag for loving God and brotherly men in general (Harnack). We now have no historical
Jesus (Schweitzer), as Zen Buddhists kill historical Buddha and burn specific bibles standing
in our way of universal love. In other words, accepting the Gospel-historicity wholesale
would be historicism-fundamentalism, but picking-choosing from the Gospel as Marcion and
Bultmann did would be judging the Gospel from (today‘s) general extra-historical principles.
If neither of them is the Christian faith, what is? We can say that accepting historical
Jesus does no blind historicism or intellectual judgment, but what does saying so mean? What
is accepting the ―Christ crucified‖? Put Jesus‘ historical particularity this analytical way, and
43
we are impaled in a logical dilemmas, cornered in an analytical cul-de-sac.
We must realize that such a logical way of analyzing history always lands us in insoluble
troubles. Why? Logic misses the flesh and blood of history by analyzing and chopping it in
two, ―on the one hand, on the other hand.‖ Logical either-or has cleaved up a living organism
of history into two irreconcilable poles.
Lived history is now nowhere, for history is neither anachronistic fetish nor ghostly
principle that logic demands. Historical particularity is thus a ―scandal‖ to logic that analyzes,

39 Another problem: taking the Chinese Classics as an OT to Christianity may smack of a Christian knowledge of
the Elephant (a favorite image among Indians) after which other religions only grope.
40 Taoism or Buddhism in China is not mentioned because they are less historical than Confucianism.
41 Mind you, Jesus Christ was crucified by the power that executed criminals, and all this happened by God‘s
agency, for Paul. That is the Gospel scandal. Historical understanding as a part of the Christian faith, however,
is not a scandal, much less Gospel scandal. We consider the latter, not the former.
42 Matthew 25:40.
43 Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism, ed. Peter Phan, NY: Paragon House, 1990, bravely walks this analytical
route to harvest some impressive fruits, none of which is wholly satisfactory. We go a storytelling way.
 Storytelling 25

while history is as it actually is; it is a time-woven montage of events and situations. History
alive, as flesh-and-blood, cannot be torn up into bits lifeless and unintelligible.

Resolving Historically—Storytelling Way—The Problem of Historicity

Luckily, if logic chops, story joins. Analysis divides the forest of the world into its trees
44
to miss the world-forest; story-thinking joins trees to perceive the forest, for storytelling is
not cognition of things but recognition of their whole pattern. Storytelling is alive as life. Any
event that happens into life sticks together one after another into stories, into history, to tell of
life to make sense of life. The Bible is made up primarily of stories of histories. Cobb said,
―Where have I learned these things? . . . I must come back to the fact that it is from the
45
Christian story that I have learned them, primarily from the Bible.‖
Story is yoked to history, and both are joined to understand lived particular events.
History comes alive as stories because history is a story of living humanity. Historical
46 47
particularity can only be historically understood, to wit, by storytelling (not by logical
analysis into generalities). E.g., the horrendous description in Judges 19 is less enlightening
48
than David‘s tragic ―O Absalom, my son, my son!‖ How can we think so? We do so
historically, taking that fullness-of-time Incident, Jesus of Nazareth, as fulfiller of David‘s
wishes, not of Judges 19.
49 50
Historical Jesus thus completes historical OT that explains him. History makes more
history to make history intelligible, storytelling way, to understand how historical
particularities, Christian and non-Christian, join toward intelligibility. ―How does such
historical understanding go?‖ We can only tell stories, one after another, to show how.
(a) Thus the dilemma of what comprises our belief in historical Jesus originates in
unnatural logical analysis, and can be resolved in natural story-way, somewhat as follows. We
see how the mother tenderly tenders her child‘s physical wellbeing by washing him, feeding
him, and clothing him. Seeing her serving his physiological needs, we say, ―Aha, Mom loves
her child.‖ Spiritual love invisible is shown in physical service all too visible to all.

44 This forest-perception is what Bernard J. F. Lonergan calls ―insight‖ in Insight: A Study of Human
Understanding, NY: Philosophical Library, 1958. Gestalt psychology calls it ―pattern recognition.‖
45 John Cobb, Jr. in Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, ed. Leonard Swidler, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987,
p. 92. Sadly, Cobb has his own problem he does not even perceive and falls into universalism of a sort with
John Hick.
46 Contrary to Gordon Kaufman‘s claim that history is a quagmire of relative human limitations (The Myth of
Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, eds., John Hick and Paul F. Knitter,
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987, pp. 3-15), we must assert that history is the final judge of things, as many anti-
uniqueness scholars judge Christianity by its historical effectiveness, as Jews and Jesus constantly appealed to
OT‘s events and sayings, and as Chinese people meant by ―immortality‖ as historical continuation of virtue,
feats, and words. Chinese historians continue to appeal to history to judge the past and the present. We
continue to admire/learn from Socrates throughout history. See also ―§ History and the I Ching Make No
Mistakes‖ below.
47 C. S. Lewis (Reflections on the Psalms, 1958) confesses that he cannot be proud of some passages in the Psalms
(e.g., 137:9), for he takes the Bible as a collection of eternal ahistorical truths. We can take such passages
historically, and see how lovingly God the Father has collected all his children‘s inner feelings and outer
behaviors, mostly embarrassingly ugly. Our ugliness manifests God‘s parental love cherishing it.
48 2 Samuel 18:33.
49 ―Ye have heard that A. But I say unto you that not-A‖ to ―fulfill‖ ―the law and the prophets.‖
50 ―And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith. . .‖ (Mark 15:28)
26 Kuang-ming Wu

This is by the nature of the case. As Peter lost sight of Jesus to fall into the turbulent
waters on which he was walking, he instinctively called to Jesus for help. Jesus‘ stretch of
hand was instant. That physical pullout provoked the disciples‘ worshipful awe and belief in
51
Jesus as the Son of God. Here is the nick of time unity of pulling and believing, as dialing
―911‖ call for help that has no split between physical cares and personal attention.
Similarly, as we claim we believe in historical Jesus, we know how to do so without
bothering with the logical dilemma of whether our belief is to take him as our logical
principle or to take his concrete details, cultural, historical, and physiological, as our idols and
fetish. The principle is the concrete that incarnates the principle. What nature and history join,
let no logical analysis put asunder.
(b) The problem of whether the Confucian classics can serve as an OT to Chinese
Christians is more complex to resolve, though it is in the same line as above. Let us begin by
again telling a story. Suppose Mr. and Mrs. Smith went to a show of ―West Side Story.‖ As
Tony was murdered, Mrs. Smith wailed aloud, ―O, poor Tony! My poor Tony!‖ Whereupon
Mr. Smith was so enraged he dragged her out to accuse her of infidelity. She wiped tears and
said, ―My dear, how could you miss me so miserably? How could I love you so if I were
unable to cry over Tony?‖
This answer completely baffled Mr. Smith, but we see what she means. Her love of
husband enabled Tony‘s tragic death to unbearably incarnate in her, as the incarnation in turn
fortified her love of the husband. Two separate historical particularities, one actual, another
52
fictive, mutually echoed and fortified her spousal love. This story deeply moved me.
Mrs. Smith‘s pain for Tony reenacts Jesus‘ praises of the Roman centurions, the Good
53
Samaritan, and the Samaritan leper. ―Bring your husband,‖ Jesus lovingly told the
Samaritan woman before elucidating how to worship God in spirit. To love my neighbor, the
one close to me, as myself now, all this is to worship God with all my heart and soul.
Neighbor-love here now deepens God-love, while neighbor is no God, as shedding tears over
Tony deepens Mrs. Smith‘s love of Mr. Smith, though Tony is no Mr. Smith. Love knows
such oddity.
Let us repeat this important point. Jesus said our spontaneous service to the needy here
now is to serve Jesus himself always; it is what really counts at the Last Judgment. His story
of the Good Samaritan, a Gentile‘s concrete assistance of someone nameless, upon seeing
him half dead on the roadside, and all such Gentiles he cherished, elucidate the very inner
sanctum of the Christian faith in God as ―loving my neighbor as myself,‖ all too inter-human
love here now.
He did not cite Abraham‘s love of Lot or Moses‘ love of his people. We cannot cleanse
our house first, and then go out to spread the Christ to the infidels, for the Bible is itself
suffused with ―mission‖ praxis that composes and spreads the Bible. To love and learn from
my unbeliever-neighbor—as Jonah was forced to learn from Assyrians so atrocious an enemy
superstitious and pagan, the Jonah Jesus cited as the only miracle for us—is to spread-serve

51 Matthew 14:28-33.
52 This story differs from the view that belief in Christ is like spousal commitment that allows others‘ similar love-
commitment to other religions. Mutual evocation and strengthening differs from allowing.
53 All these common Gentiles, great in Jesus‘ eyes, will be mentioned soon to understand the Christian faith.
 Storytelling 27

Christ, who told his disciples he had food they did not know, for sharing divine love with
54
infidels feeds our faith.
But we have overshot ourselves. We must go slowly, beginning from scratch, to show
how going out cherishing the human Gentile outsiders deepens our own divine faith inside.
Let us begin at the Bible itself, on how it is formed by surrounding superstitious religions,
which are not targeted as objects of conversion by our ―mission‖ if not of abolition.

Rejection Cum Assimilation as Self-Assertion and Enrichment

The weak small Israelites had to assert their unique monotheistic faith against
surrounding overwhelming religions of the mighty Assyrians and Babylonians, for religious
―faith‖ is the essential force that unifies and fortifies ethnic integrity against absorption.55
This situation yielded a paradox, however.
On one hand, Israel must reject the surrounding polytheistic myths, and yet, on the other,
in the very process of rejection, could not help but assimilate them, in a changed form, into
the Israelite canon. Rejection and assimilation strangely went hand in hand to enrich the
Israelite religion. The Bible itself shows some examples.
Our first example is Genesis 1. Reworked assimilation of Mesopotamian myths resulted
in an austere poetry of world-creation. In Genesis 1, the Hebrew tehom the Deep replaces
Akkadian Tiamat, conquered in a messy cosmogonic battle by the god Marduk, and the
majestic divine call resounded over the primordial waters, ―Let there be light!‖ and there was
light primordial before the sun and the moon came about.
And then, over six ―days‖ were issued six clarion calls of ―Let there be . . . !‖ and the
orderly world came about in an orderly way, to be blessed with ―Very good!‖ before
climaxing on the Sabbath Day of cosmic Rest. Adapting from the polytheistic myths
produced these magisterial poetic lines.
Such rejection cum assimilation makes up the Israelite‘s pattern of asserting their unique
monotheism, of which they so weak were unsure at the time, over against their surrounding
56
religions. Niditch said,

Our God is one, while theirs are multiple. Our God need only speak and the world
becomes, theirs need to fight. . . . Genesis 1 points to Israelite insecurity at a time when her
people, holy city, and temple have been conquered by the Babylonians, the people of Marduk.
In fact, many people feared that Yahweh was weak, no longer able to protect his people, no
longer God. Genesis 1 answers boldly, as does Isaiah 40, that God is the sole creator and is
all-powerful. No tension grips the reader of Genesis 1, for chaos has no power. Rather, one
approaches the account in awe, in the mode of the experiential.

54 Matthew 12:39-41, John 4:31-34.

55 Speiser strongly asserts this view, E. A. Speiser, Genesis, The Anchor Bible, 1962, pp. xlvii-lii.
56 Susan Niditch, Ancient Israelite Religion, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 53. Speiser strongly insists on both
the entire OT‘s extensive textual alignment with the Mesopotamian ―scientific‖ tradition and sharp divergence
in over-all approach from it (Genesis, op. cit., pp. liv-lviii, 8-13). Cf. Genesis: As It Is Written, ed. David
Rosenberg, HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, pp. 15-34. Neither probed what all this means, however.
28 Kuang-ming Wu

Besides, significantly, to repeat, such daring and awesome self-assertion of monotheistic

faith is accomplished by adopting and adapting the religious languages of those against whom
the assertion was made.
The second example is vividly typified in the story above of Mrs. Smith that captures the
logical paradox of historical love: Mrs. Smith deepens her love of Mr. Smith by wailing over
Tony‘s death. Two instances in OT reminiscent of Mrs. Smith elucidate the paradox of love
that seeps into our hearts and souls.
The first is divine love. Yahweh-love vehemently rejected Baal-love while accepting the
57
Baalism-image of god-as-husband, by which to condemn Baal-idolatry as Yahweh-adultery.
58
The condemnation is legitimate in Judaism of the law of severe love. This love-paradox is a
part of the paradox of Judaism rejecting other surrounding religions, and then avidly taking
them into Judaism. Baal-love is vehemently rejected, only to enter Judaism as Yahweh-
59
husband pledging his absolute fidelity to the wayward Israel-wife.
The second Bible instance of Mrs. Smith is the pagan gruesome offering of firstborns to
60 61
appease gods that Yahweh forbade, yet Yahweh ―tempted‖ Abraham with this horrid trial
62
itself. And then, incredibly, these two abominable instances, sex-worship and infanticide,
joined in the Bible to make up the core of Christianity! How did the joining happen?
63
Both Isaiah and Ezekiel vehemently condemned sex-worship and fiery infanticide
64
routinely practiced among the surrounding neighbors. However, the twofold prohibition
later somehow transmuted into God offering to himself his own Son on the gruesome Cross to
65
atone for our sins, ―for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.‖ Thus the
two pagan abominations turned into two foci of the oval, the ―olive‖ of Good News that,

57 This sentiment climaxed in Hosea. See Francis J. Anderson, Hosea, The Anchor Bible, NY: Doubleday, 1980.
H. D. Beeby, Grace Abounding: A Commentary on the Book of Hosea, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
1989. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, eds. Karel van der Toorn, et al., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.
Niditch, Ancient Israelite Religion, op cit. And the list goes on.
58 Judaism is not a missionary religion and only slowly proselytized pagans almost by default, and so the paradox
exists only by default. This is my opinion contrary to most OT scholars.
59 Biblical theologians are almost all obsessed with the closest intimacy between the Judeo-Christian tradition and
its surrounding cultures and religions. Niditch‘s Ancient Israelite Religion, op. cit., chronicles intimacies of the
Israelites with religions surrounding them. John H. Marks and Robert M. Good, eds., Love and Death in the
Ancient Near East, Guilford, CT: Four Quartet Publishing Company, 1987, has essays on death, love, sex,
kings, and human mortality in cultures surrounding the biblical tradition. John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in An
Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence, Atlanta,
GA: Scholars Press, 1988, sees parallels between Seneca‘s proud catalogue of sufferings and Paul‘s. Dale B.
Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1990, sees how the Christian community adopted the Greco-Roman notion of ―slavery‖ to
express their pride in being ―Christ‘s slave,‖ saved by their Lord Christ and absolutely belonging to him.
Aristotle‘s words, ―some are fit to rule, some fit to be ruled,‖ could also have been picked by Paul—Christ fit
to rule, Christians fit to be ruled, not by talents but by His self-giving love. Even Norman H. Snaith‘s The
Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (1944), London: The Epworth Press, 1957, appeals to parallels to
surrounding cultures to bring out the distinct Christian tradition. None, however, notices the paradoxical
character of unique exclusive Judeo-Christian sentiment and its close parallels with surrounding cultures it
vehemently rejects.
60 Whether or not this custom is related to the offering ―of the first of all the fruit of the earth‖ (Exodus 23:19,
Deuteronomy 26:1-10, etc.) awaits investigation.
61 See Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5, Ezekiel 16:21.
62 See its terse gripping story in Genesis 22.
63 Isaiah 57:5, Ezekiel 23:37.
64 See II Kings 3:27, 16:3, 17:31, 21:6, 23:10.
65 This is the famous John 3:16. Seldom do people notice its paradoxical joining!
 Storytelling 29

incredibly, the Son to be offered announced as divine Love wooing his unworthy wife of
humanity!
Here is the paradox of rejecting two pagan abominations—sex, infanticide—only to take
them, transformed, into the core of Christianity, as God‘s persistent atoning compassion, and
then into our redeeming imperative of divine compassion to spread vigorously as Love-
Incarnation among various peoples of alien cultures. The spread thrills our souls.
66
The shepherd leaves 99 sheep in the wild to go after the one lost ―until he finds it.‖
Compassion is intensely particular. OT is full of God‘s ―arrogant‖ declaration, ―Mr. A I love!
Mr. B I hate!‖ It is a fierce partiality of love, and it strangely spreads all over. This is because,
paradoxically, this partiality of empathy eventually, inevitably, spreads throughout every
particular act, as Mrs. Smith‘s love of Mr. Smith spreads to her compassion with Tony‘s
disaster, only to redound back to Mr. Smith.
The Red Cross and medical personnel heal enemies. Historians‘ empathy on each event
makes ―history.‖ The parents love each child as if they had no other, and their partiality spells
67
their impartiality. Yehudi Menuhin vowed never to play the Beethoven Violin Concerto
with any other conductor—such musical empathy he had with Furtwängler his conductor!—
and then played it 25 times a year with every other conductor. Compassion in enthusiasm is
relentlessly particular to spread to all, without confusion. All this happens here now.
If this spread of particularity sounds incredible, think of our love of many biographies.
We love to read biographies of all sorts, of various heroes, heroines, and scandalous people,
each unique and different from all others, yet we do not confuse them, much less losing our
own lives in them. On the contrary, we devour biographies of others to learn how to live our
life, not in their ways but in our respective ways.
In fact, not only do we not mind reading biographies of different times and cultures; we
positively relish such differences, transporting ourselves to those days and cultures as we
enjoy traveling to foreign lands and meet exotic peoples. In fact, it is not too much to claim
that all short stories and long novels, and even essays, casual or theoretical, are disguised
biographies and autobiographies. They tell of themselves and we listen intently as Odysseus‘
swineherd and Siddhartha‘s friend, ferryman Vasudeva, do.
Events and things appear; their phenomenon shows their autobiographies telling of
whereon they depend, wherefrom they spring, and wherein they rest, and nothing is hid as
they tell of their self-stories. Things appear always confessing to their stories, and their
phenomenal appearance is their phenomenology their appearance-logos, showing their
stories. To watch, observe, and ponder on their telling, confessing to their dependence,
origins, and home understand them.68 Such is ―story-thinking‖ on things‘ ―phenomenology.‖

66 Divine Love‘s search is persistent (Luke 15). [a] Love goes after the lost sheep in the wilderness of iniquity
among ―all the [captivated] publicans and sinners‖ ―until he finds it/him/her—dead, and is alive again.‖ It
seeks the lost coin in the house of orthodoxy among ―the [murmuring] Pharisees and scribes‖ ―till she finds
it—lost, and is found.‖ [a‘] Love thus leaves the 99 sheep (for one sinner), sweeps the house (for his elder
brother Pharisee); love revolutionizes the entire establishment (Luke 15:1-10). [b] The first two parables focus
on the Son of God as shepherd searching, as lady sweeping, until finding the precious lost; the third describes
how all this while Father God intensely, patiently, awaits the beloved home. [b‘] The parable climaxed in the
lost sinner-son joined with his Father (17, 20-24); sadly, Father‘s pleading with elder brother to harvest his
homecoming (28, 31-32) is yet to realize. Jesus‘ three love-parables are tightly knit, heartrending.
67 Less dramatically but no less concretely and crucially, a little sister insists on having her birthday party on the
big brother‘s that day, or else it is ―Not fair!‖ Their parents comply, smiling; what else could they have done?
Equality (of love) is no sameness (of treatment).
68
I rifled Confucius‘ sigh (2/10), ―視其所以，觀其所由，察其所安。人焉廋哉! 人焉廋哉!‖
30 Kuang-ming Wu

It is thus that we love biographies, stories-of-life, in history that is time-biography, in

culture that is race-biography, and in the current news that is today-biography. Informed
about stories-of-life out there to resonate with them, our life here now grows enriched. We
join with them naturally to inter-thrive, yet without confusion.
The point is clear. We should accept historical Jewish Jesus with his OT, and accept our
respective cultural-historical traditions, to see Moses and Jesus among us. By the same token,
Britons should study their Churchill, Americans study their Washington, and Chinese their
Confucius, to appreciate Jewish Moses. Churchill is not Moses any more than he is
Washington or Confucius, but studying them in our respective cultures inspires our lives in
our respective ways, as the Moses does us as he does Jews. This realization leads to a maxim
of Christian mission.

Christian Mission
69
Inter-learning to inter-deepen various respective faiths is what ―conversation‖ means.
70
After all, a dialogue assumes and requires differences among its partners. Mountain
climbing conquers our inner-mountain, and chopping a tree chops the chopper, they say, but
obviously our self remains the human self, not mountain or tree. Remaining disparately
themselves, these events coincide as co-incidents co-happening.
As the exclusive faith of Judeo-Christianity rejects pagan abominations only to absorb
them to self-deepen, so its life in mission-spread consists in saving other faiths and cultures
into themselves. The Christians must not level down other faiths; such our human move plays
god, a prime crime against the Christian First Commandment. Instead, the Christians should
admit that they are as human as other religionists, and humbly learn from them to enrich their
own Christian faith, and invite others to learn from Christianity, and help them deepen their
own non-Christian faiths.
Religions are concrete cases of coincidence of counterparts. This existential drama
manifests clearly in our handshake, which requires both parties to stand facing each other,
mutually opposed, to stretch hands from opposite ends. Dialogue among religions is a
religious handshake, a conversation inter-versing among empathetic minds, independent,
diverse, and opposed.
The handshake occurs at the Mountaintop of Salvation for the Hindus, the Elephant of
Reality for the Buddhists, the Heaven Above All Over for the Chinese, and the Logos of
Truth for the Christians. For the Christians the Christ is Logos Incarnate, for the Chinese the

69 I explained how Christians can learn from Zen and Taoism in On the ―Logic‖ of Togetherness: A Cultural
Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 240-253, etc. Yagi Sei-ichi has breathtakingly deepened the Christian
truths in subterranean Oriental mindlessness (無心) and naturalness (自然) in 八木誠一 and 秋月龍泯著,
無心と神の國: 宗教における<自然>, 東京青土社, 1996. My stand agrees with Jacques Dupuis‘s quite
wordy Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002, pp. 7, 11,
17f, 23, 198-201, etc., John B. Cobb, Jr.‘s Whiteheadian Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation
of Christianity and Buddhism, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, and H. D. Beeby‘s devotional Canon and
Mission, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999. But none effectively relate inter-learning
(relatedness) to its rejection (ultimacy).
70 Dupuis also stressed the differences among dialogue partners, and stressed both faith-commitment and other-
openness. Sadly, he simply wordily repeated his assertions without rationale or explanation (op. cit., pp. 379-
380, etc.).
 Storytelling 31

Heaven is what they best understand, for the Buddhists the Buddha is the Elephant, for the
Hindus, many gods and goddesses are the Mountaintop.
To the Christian description of self-sacrificial love toward neighbors (Good Samaritan)
and friends and foes (Christ on the cross), the Buddhists would nod as selfless ―mercy,‖ and
the Confucians would nod as self-sacrificial devotion to societal ―justice.‖ The Christians
would in turn deepen their faith by realizing the Buddhist dimension of mercy, and the
Confucian filial devotion to justice, in Christ‘s love. Thus in the dialogue of handshake each
party learns from others to know better about their own Mountaintop, Elephant, Heaven,
Logos, and Compassion.
All partners honestly affirm their respective stands and viewpoints for genuine
meaningful dialogues to occur in inter-versals, to attain a universal in the religious multi-
71
verse. Such is the ―Christian mission to nonbelievers,‖ the mission of mutuality of
deepening. ―Mission‖ is inter-mission dialogical, as Jesus was ―fed‖ by a Samaritan woman
and urged us to learn from Roman centurions and soldiers, the Good Samaritan, a Syro-
Phoenician woman, and the list goes on.
―How about Christian ‗redemption‘ in this inter-learning context?‖ Well, Jesus told us to
learn from them all, for learning is one mode of loving them, and redemption is an act of
dying for the beloved, whoever they are. Jesus told us not to tell about him while roaming
everywhere; he commissioned us the task of ―mission‖ only after he died for us all, for all
Romans, all Syro-Phoenicians, all Samaritans. He performed loving them, dying for them
(=redeeming them) one by one, in silence, and then asked us to love them, one by one,
likewise, in silence, incognito, now.
To redeem people is to restore them into themselves as they really are. Christian medical
and psychiatric missions of Schweitzer and countless others restore people‘s health, physical
and mental, and Christian literacy campaigns enrich and deepen indigenous cultures.
Christian hospitals in Taiwan turn so many people vibrantly healthy, and Taiwanese language
written and spoken was promoted-deepened by many vernacular dictionaries that are
72
unwitting torchbearers of Taiwan culture. Redemption is restoration to pristine spiritual
selves, physical and cultural.

71 To the query whether honest non-Christian believers, or even honest humanist atheists, can be saved, the
Christians can answer, ―We humans do not know, but we do know Christ died for them, and the God of Christ
is all-compassion. So our God will take very good care of them.‖
72 Charles R. Joy, ed. Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology, Boston: Beacon Press, 1947. 潘稀祺編著，
新樓情，舊相簿：全台第一間西醫病院，歷史腳跡, A Pictorial History of the First Western Hospital in
Taiwan: The Sin-Lâu Christian Hospital, 1998, and 臺灣醫療宣教之父—馬雅各醫生傳，2004, both
published by 台灣基督長老教會新樓醫院. Rev. Carstairs Douglas, suppl. By Rev. Thomas Barclay, Chinese-
English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy (1873), Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc.,
2009. Rev. Dr. William Campbell, The Dictionary of the Amoy Vernacular (1913), Taiwan Church Press,
廈門音新字典, 臺灣基督長老教會公報社出版, 2009, continuing to be in press. The last volume begins by
citing how conversion to the Christian faith turned all illiterate catechumens literate, from Report of the
Centenary Missionary Conference at Shanghai. All medical-cultural missions and publications in other lands
and by Catholicism are omitted.
32 Kuang-ming Wu

The Divine One beyond Human Reason

―Where is the Divine One in these bewildering inter-learning dialogues?‖ Their final
rationale lies precisely in this Divine One as beyond ours. In ―God is One‖ the One is a
73 74
Mystery ; it is beyond and includes human numerical ―one.‖ God‘s One is beyond and
75
includes both the West‘s either-or exclusivity and Asia‘s inclusive both-and; the Divine
76
One includes both the West and Asia and is neither, for the Divine is beyond us all.
―How does it obtain?‖ Look at the child, to whom the Kingdom of God belongs, says
Jesus. His saying so stunned people at the time that all three Gospels record the saying almost
verbatim.77 ―But the child is still growing up to adulthood, how could it be where Perfection
belongs? Kids are so imperfect; how could Perfection belongs to imperfection?‖
Well, such adult chauvinism is precisely what angered Jesus, provoking him to make the
statement that Perfection belongs to imperfection on the go. ―What can we learn from the
imperfect child, then?‖ What about its constant learning attitude? We must learn their
constant learning; anyone who ceases to learn is dead. Let‘s see how kids learn.
To a child, the fascinating adult world has every sort of things, a, b, c, . . . and so the
adult world is a+b+c+ . . . But a is not b and often cannot be joined to b, so a+b+c+ . . . is a
contradiction, an impossibility. This is because the adult world includes the child‘s world and
it is not the child‘s. We are children in the adult world of the Beyond. Moreover, we humans
know only a, b, c, and do not know ― . . . ,‖ nor do we know what ―+‖ means.
―A single grain of sand‖ is enough for us to ―see a whole world,‖ and, worse, we do not
know if we tend to take ―enough‖ as ―no other savior‖ or not. Finally, we must refuse to
―draw implications‖ of agnosticism, universalism, inclusivism, etc., out of our ignorance, for
such ―logical drawing‖ does not hold in the realm of the Beyond, as if we could apply our
human notion of ―cause‖ to the creation of the world to reach its Almighty Creator as its
―Cause.‖ These negatives warn us about our human finitude before the Beyond.
So many various schools in Chinese Buddhism, Catholic scholasticism, and the
78
hopelessly cluttered history of Western philosophy, show how impossibly mind-boggling

73 Often mentioning the word ―mystery,‖ Dupuis never reverently and seriously considers what it means.
74 Paul Tillich develops this theme in an interesting way, saying that the ubiquitous criterion of the divine is self-
negation as self-affirmation, as Christ on the cross did. F. M. Jelly summed it well in Christianity and Wider
Ecumenism, ed. Peter C. Phan, NY: Paragon House, 1990, p. 195.
75 Tillich says, ―Religion is the depth-dimension of culture . . . Unity does not exclude definitory distinction. . . .
[T]he dimension of ‗depth‘ shines through [that of] cognition.‖ This is said on the ―unity‖ of religion and
culture. This saying fits our view if ―religion‖ is our ―mystery‖ and ―culture,‖ many actual religions. (The
Theology of Paul Tillich, eds., C. W. Kegley and R. W. Bretall, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1961, p. 337.
See its elaboration in his Systematic Theology, Volume Three, University of Chicago Press, 1963, p. 158.)
76 This is a short gist of my On Nonsense: Cultural Meditations on the Beyond, yet to publish.
77
Matthew 19:14=Mark 10:14=Luke 18:16. ―Such as these‖ means ―kids of all ages.‖ Derived from kids‘ learning
openness is of course their honest translucency; ―Mom, grandpa gave me a candy, and told me not to tell you.‖
This is pure innocence, lost among Adam and Eve hiding from God in the primal Kingdom the Garden of Eden.
Adam‘s posterity, scholar Nicodemus, furtively visited Jesus at night; so Jesus had to shock him by advising him
to be born again in wind and water of open translucency (John 3:3-8). Openness goes with translucency, so open
as to be a secret closed to Nicodemus‘ scholarship; this is kids‘ Kingdom of Perfection, revealed to infants alone
in joy, hid to the wise (Luke 10:21, cf. Matthew 11: 25). It is kids‟ Gateless Gate 無門關that Zen misses.
78 Sorensen said, ―Mathematicians characterize prime numbers as their atoms because all numbers can be analyzed
as products of the primes. I regard paradoxes as the atoms of philosophy because they constitute the basic
points of departure for disciplined speculation.‖ (Roy Sorensen, A Brief History of the Paradox, Oxford
University Press, 2003, p. xi) The quip that begins his book on the history—story—of paradox can be
understood by taking paradox as an embarrassing cipher of logical mess (reason‘s ―dox‖ ―para‖-ed) at the
 Storytelling 33

these logical kaleidoscopes are, and even each school is beyond our understanding on what it
has and why it goes that specific way and not any other.
All this ―makes sense‖ if we take it as manifesting the human confronted with the
Beyond. In fact, every religion, every history, even daily happening now, is as spectacularly
79
mind-boggling, without rhyme or reason. The historical scandal of the Christian faith just
honestly exhibits this fact of the Beyond made flesh in human actuality.

Inclusive and Irrelevant

This realization enables us to reject both Hick flattening all religions including
Christianity, and the fundamentalists totally rejecting non-Christian religions—and include
80
both approaches. We now understand why Jesus tells us to go nowhere except the houses of
the Israel, and to go learn from all non-Christians on how to worship God and love our
neighbors—Roman centurion, the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan leper, the Syro-Phoenician
81
mother, and other Gentiles.
―What does it mean to claim the Beyond to include both fundamentalists and liberals, yet
has nothing to do with them?‖ Let us be concrete. Fundamentalists are right in taking the
Bible as God‘s message, but are wrong in claiming that therefore the Bible is wholly inerrant
and divine. The liberals are correct in saying that the Bible is written by men, but wrong in
saying that therefore the Bible is wholly human, expressing only human awareness of the
holy. The truth is made by combining what are right in both parties, that the Bible is God‘s
message ―seen darkly‖ through fallible human perception.
For example, Psalm 137:9, Judges 19, and many other embarrassing records of ugly
deeds and emotions are wholly human (liberals), and God‘s love in horrendous sorrow
recorded all of them, as human parents collect all their beloved children‘s words and deeds,
mostly so embarrassing and horrendous (fundamentalists). Thus the records of human
ugliness reflect and exhibit God‘s extraordinary parental love. The key is parental love that
goes beyond and includes all children‘s ugly emotions and deeds. The Kingdom of Perfection
belongs to kids-of-all-ages opening out learning unlimited, forever refreshing.

From Parental Love to Christian Mission as Interreligious Dialogues

Parental love hits three points. One, parental love is a concrete universal joining
particular and general, one and many, concrete and ultimate. Two, generalizing parental love
into a family of the world is a pivotal move in the Christian faith and every human culture.
Three, the Heaven and Earth as a triune Family of Father Heaven, Mother Nature, and

heart of Western philosophy; it is philosophical reason self-bankrupt, Socratic self-examination of reason

pushed to the ultimate.
79 See the later section, ―§ How to Manage Things Happening Without Rhyme or Reason.‖
80 This point counters the anti-uniqueness thinkers‘ dogmatic appeal to ―mystery‖ to claim that no religion or
theology can therefore adequately comprehend God (The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic
Theology of Religions, eds. John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987, pp. 53-88).
81 Matthew 10:5-6, 8:10, 15:24, 15:28, Mark 15:39, Luke 10:37, 17:15-16. It is thus that we depart from Dupuis,
Hick, Cobb, etc., as we include them.
34 Kuang-ming Wu

Humanity-their-Child is heartfelt and central in the entire Chinese tradition. ―Heavenly

Father‖ in the Bible is the soul notion to China, and is apt and natural to Chinese folks,
Christian or no.
This reflection helps us understand the goal of the Christian mission to bring all peoples
into Christ‘s fold. 1John 4:12 (cf. 2:5) gives us a quiet bombshell, saying in essence, ―The
love of God is perfected by our loving one another.‖ It is paradoxical as ―My strength is made
82
perfect in weakness,‖ ―because the weakness of God is stronger than men.‖
To see how paradoxical such a thought is, we look at the ―love of God‖; it can mean ―our
love of God‖ or ―love of God.‖ ―The love of God‖ as ―our love of God‖ would mean that the
First Commandment of loving God with all our souls is performed by the Second, loving our
neighbors as ourselves here now. Our love of God depends on our love of neighbors to
manifest; it is a surprise that God depends on us.
No less surprising is ―The love of God‖ as ―God‟s love‖; it would mean that our love of
neighbors is part of God‘s love, and our neighborly love completes and perfects God who is
Love! Both these points are quite incredible and extraordinary, literally ―turns the world
83
upside down‖! Perfect Love perfectly depends on the beloved‘s mutual love to be
perfected!
All this graphically expresses how God‘s parental love thrives in our acceptance and
spread of it. In fact, its acceptance is measured by its spread, and its spread so completes the
love that the love does not need to be touted as such in its spread. God‘s love spreads in our
loving neighbors, so much so that we need not tout ―love‖ as His as we love one another
heartily. Love is its spread, from God to us and through us all to God, here now.
In other words, the ―essence‖ of Christ is love, and love fulfills the integrity of each
beloved individual. Helping to fulfill the integrity of each non-Christian religion fulfills the
84
mission of Christ‘s love. ―Hidden Christ‖ is poignantly true here. Young Jesus quoted an
OT passage as his mission, as God‘s ―servant, . . . chosen (and) beloved,‖ to ―proclaim justice
to the Gentiles.‖
How? ―He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the street. He
85
will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to
victory.‖ Clearly, ―justice‖ here heals and acts to right wrongs; it is not judgment. It is thus
86
that in the end ―in his name the Gentiles will hope‖ ; it is thus that his mission is
accomplished in silence, right here and now.
This quiet righting-healing justice goes quite a long radical way. Jesus highly praised a
Roman centurion‘s deep awareness of the divine authority, and told all his followers to learn
from this Gentile‘s ―faith,‖ which might not have been the Israelites‘ faith in exclusive
monotheism. During the discussion with the Jewish lawyer about the two central
Commandments, loving God and loving neighbors, Jesus told the lawyer the know-it-all to

82 2 Corinthians 12:9, 1 Corinthians 1:25. Implications here (is it possessive genitive? Is it subjective genitive?) are
again so staggering and bottomless that both passages have to be left alone.
83 Acts 17:6.
84 ―Hidden Christ‖ means not Christ all over in other religion. Instead, it assumes no error in other religions as Karl
Rahner‘s ―anonymous Christians‖ does.
85 Curiously, he may allow reeds to bruise or wicks to smolder but never allows them to break or quench, i.e., be
destroyed totally. Reeds stand on their own; wicks shine around. He heals, fulfills, and enhances our reed-
integrity and our wick-flame for others; his is such ―justice‖-in-action.
86 Matthew 12:18-21. (NRSV)
 Storytelling 35

87
learn from a Good Samaritan, a despised non-Israelite who could not have cared less about
abstruse Judaic doctrines.
Jesus told us to learn from the Samaritan despite the fact that the Samaritan village
refused to receive Jesus. Whereupon Jesus and his disciples quietly ―went on to another
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village,‖ for he ―has not come to destroy lives but to save them.‖ Jesus healed the Gentile
centurion‘s servant and bound the wounds of many unknown others wherever he saw, as did
the Good Samaritan.
He silently healed Gentiles‘ hurts and helped them. That is how he fulfilled his mission,
to unobtrusively ―proclaim justice to the Gentiles.‖ (Christ‘s) love is fulfilled in fulfilling the
beloved needy, including nonbelievers; all the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and the
89
imprisoned are the least in Christ‘s family, helping whom helps Christ himself.
All this is what it means to have an inter-religious inter-learning dialogue among many
religions. Such inter-learning should not compromise, much less ―correct,‖ but enrich the
absolute integrity of each religion, to mutually deepen the self-understanding of each
90
religion that is by nature incorrigibly ultimate.
91
The ―fruit‖ of Christian mission is less conversion than mutual cherishing ; we are all
―converted‖ to mutual appreciation toward God beyond us all, an appreciation of insights of
92
other religions for ―deeper openness to God . . . through the other,‖ and an appreciation by
other religions for the enrichment of their own deeper self-understanding due to the Christian
considerate love of neighbors, that is, whoever we meet here now.
Such mutual enrichment, not correction, results in the final ultimate rejoicing together in
93
the Final Judgment Day of Divine Love all around. Here is no room for quibbling about
whether this Final Day is Buddhist or Christian or any other. Our shared joys drown all our
quibbles in the Ultimacy of the Beyond.

Storytelling through it All

Thus, we should rejoice in historical Jesus loving us and see him in every brother we love
here now. Such a logical paradox can be captured, understood, and lived, only in storytelling.
No wonder both OT and NT are collections of stories of living love, lived in love. Christian
94
theology is narrative theology, and Zen Buddhists talk about killing Buddha, burning

87 Cf. John 4:9, ―Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.‖

88 Luke 10:25-37, 9:51-56.
89 Matthew 25:35-40. (NRSV)
90 This stance is not mutual corrections but mutual deepening of religions (Dupuis, op. cit., pp. 381-382).
91 Saying, ―[The dialogue] tends to . . . conversion of each to [the same] God‖ to risk pantheism, Dupuis suddenly
identifies this ―same God‖ as Christian God (p. 383; this is the key place where he betrays his ―Christian
bias‖)!
92 Dupuis, p. 383, though I hesitate to claim with him that ―[exchange and encounter] are an end in themselves."
93 ―Is this Divine Love the God of Christ or the Mercy of Buddha or . . . ?‖ The question remains in the realm of
Mystery. One thing is certain. Here in this Ultimate Realm, every religion is satisfied and fulfilled, beyond our
human understanding. In the Beyond all quibbles are dissolved without dissolving respective integrities.
94 George A. Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism, Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1984, Robert A. Oden, Jr., The Bible Without Theology: The theological tradition and
alternatives to it, Harper and Row, 1987. Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, NY: Doubleday,
1993, p. 1573 (―Passion Narratives,‖ Index). See also Frank Kermode‘s interesting ―New Ways with Bible
Stories‖ in Poetry, Narrative, History, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990, pp.29-48, and the bibliography there. I
36 Kuang-ming Wu

95
scriptures, and then go ahead to expound on Buddha‘s teaching —and thrive in such telling
of their stories as this.

Confucian Classis as OT to Chinese Christians

Saying so above raises two interesting issues. One, how do the Confucian classics serve
as an OT to the Chinese Christians? Two, how does the Confucian classics fit in with the OT-
NT scheme already there in the Christian dispensation? Our clue to answer is how the Jewish
OT used its ―OT,‖ the mythologies of their surrounding cultures such as the Babylonian
mythology, and how Jesus used his OT and how Paul used both the Jewish OT and Athenian
mythologies. Such ―OT‖ of Christian OT forever surrounds Christian OT as its humus out of
which Christian NT grows.
One: ―How do the Confucian classics serve as an OT to the Chinese Christians?‖ An
answer is: In the same way as ancient mythologies served as an OT to the Jewish OT, and as
the Jewish OT served to Jesus. It is well known that mythologies and beliefs of other religions
surrounding Israelites entered Jewish OT, reshaped, refashioned to fit OT‘s pattern of beliefs
to let the remolded stories tell and proclaim OT. This is a ―sacramental‖ use of the ―bread‖ of
96
existing materials, i.e., mythologies of other religions, around the Israelites.
97
A dramatic example is Baalism, as mentioned a while ago. The prophets violently
opposed it yet Hosea adopted its central notion of Baal as ―husband‖ to the believers, and
proclaimed Yahweh as the jealous Husband of Israel; Ezekiel followed suit. Similarly, Jesus
used the OT to proclaim his Good News, by pouring his new wine into his refashioned OT as
a new wineskin, his mode of expression; ―you heard it said A, but I tell you B.‖ He called this
operation a ―fulfillment of the laws and the prophets.‖
Thus, what mythologies of other religions are to OT is what OT is to NT. Thus again, for
the Christian believers, as NT is the interpretive principle of OT, so OT is the interpretive
principle of mythologies of other religions. OT is a sacramental symbol to NT, and so
religious mythologies are ―OT‖ to OT.
Paul must have used OT this way when he said that ―according to the scriptures‖ Jesus
died and rose to life for us. His well-known hymn of Jesus Christ, who with his similitude
with God obeyed God the Father to most miserable death, and was raised to the heights of
glories, and we must have Christ‘s heart as ours, must have been taken from OT or other
religious myths and adapted to the Christian faith So must his ―hymn‖ to Christian lovebe out
98
of ―pagan‖ hymns.

hesitate, however, to estimate how many among them genuinely appreciate how pivotal narrative
understanding is for NT, not taking it as just one tool among others of understanding the Bible.
95 Cf. Y. Kashiwahara and K. Sonoda, eds., Shapers of Japanese Buddhism, Tokyo: Kōsei Publishing Co., 1994.
96 See Donald M. Baillie, The Theology of the Sacraments, NY: Charles Scribners, 1957, Susan Niditch, Ancient
Israelite Religion, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997; Norman H. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old
Testament, London: The Epworth Press, 1944; Brevard S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament,
London: SCM Press, 1960; Henri Frankfort, et al., Before Philosophy (1946), Middlesex: Penguin Books,
1946, esp. pp. 266 (index on ―chaos‖), 270 (index on ―Marduk‖), et passim.
97 The same applies to the Christian adaptation of Molech/Baalim fiery infanticide.
98 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, Philippians 2:5-18. Many scholars too numerous to cite, noticed the poetic hymn-like
feature of Paul‘s intoned praise, and attribute its origin to some hymns of former times, either in the OT or
elsewhere.
 Storytelling 37

The fact remains, however—and this is important—that it was not Babylonian myths or
Baalism that served as OT; it was OT that made intelligible those myths and NT. Conversely,
it was not OT that explains NT but NT, and its Center, Jesus, who explains and ―fulfills‖ OT,
as in Matthew 5 and Luke 24:25-27.
We must then go to Jesus to render intelligible Babylonian stories, Baalism, and
Confucius—as to their meaning and significance—to us-as-Christians, whether we are
Chinese Christians or Babylonian Christians, or Israelite Christians, etc. Jesus is the
hermeneutic Principle for all those non-Christian scriptures and wisdom, for the Christians.
We now know the principle of taking the Chinese Confucianism as Chinese OT for the
Chinese Christians.
Two: ―Concretely, how would the Confucian classics fit in with the Christian OT-NT
scheme?‖ Let us take two specific examples. The first example is this. Confucius took the
notion of ―princely one (chün tzu 君子),‖ originally meaning man of princely blood, and
changed it into man of princely virtue. This ―princely one‖ could help us understand Jesus as
the Christ and Messiah, an OT notion baptized into NT‘s divine Savior-King. As royal prince
is of blood, Confucian prince is of virtue. Likewise, as Messiah is of OT, Christ is of NT.
Our second example is the Golden Rule, justly popular everywhere for being situated
between Kant‘s abstract Categorical Imperative and Mencius‘ (1A7) concrete ―‗Old-ing‘ my
old folks to reach others‘ old folks; ‗young-ing‘ my young folks to reach other‘s youngs.‖
Jesus‘ formulation of the Golden Rule is logically identical with Confucius‘, yet they differ in
99
praxis, and storytelling alone can bring out their difference. Let us see how they differ.
Confucius said (12/2), ―What oneself desires not, give not to people.‖ Rabbi Hillel said
(Shab. 31), ―What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. This is the whole of
Torah and the remainder is but commentary.‖ This is a negative version of Jesus‘ Golden
Rule, ―Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
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them: for this is the law and the prophets.‖ We could see, though need not,101 that
Confucius and Torah see eye to eye to serve as OT to prepare for Jesus. How does it happen?
First, the Confucian classics parallel OT. The human situation tends to agree more on
what is hateful than what is loved, so prohibitions of hurtful acts and hateful matters, what not
to do, urgently spring up to order society, to publicly declare ―laws and statutes‖ against
harm. These laws publicly express our inner considerate spirit for others: ―Do no harm.‖ This
is a natural negative version of the Golden Rule.
The whole OT is built on this principle of ―Do no harm,‖ whose detail applications all
prophets zestfully proclaim. Likewise with the Confucians, such as Mencius (2A2) who
nudges us to see how ―helping (things and people) grow‖ kills them. The road to hell is paved
by goodwill that imposes, not letting be. Never meddle with things, in proud ―goodwill,‖ for
do-gooding sours, stunts, and slays. Sadly, perhaps later Confucian traditionalism has
102
neglected Mencius, and imposed yokes onto free breathing of life.

99 Interestingly, Mencius‘ insistence could be taken as Kant‘s imperative concretized in story form. H. G. Creel‘s
Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung, NY: Mentor Books, 1953, interprets China in Kant‘s way.
100 Matthew 7:12.
101
This way would be for Jesus to fulfill them as he fulfills OT. Another way is to see them fulfilled by Jesus
redeeming them. We go the first way, in line with our viewing of Chinese classics as Chinese OT.
102 See a shocking confession to choking Confucianism by Donald J. Munro‘s ―Afterword‖ to Tsai Chih Chung,
Zhuangzi Speaks: The Music of Nature, tr. Brian Bruya, Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 127-142. Cf. a
38 Kuang-ming Wu

Secondly, the Confucian classics could thus prepare China for NT, as OT does Israel for
NT that in turn fulfills the true intentions of OT. NT‘s basis is this OT, Confucian or Jewish.
To love people means to restore them to their original health, if needed, as the Good
Samaritan did, but otherwise to let them be freely themselves without disturbing them; it is
the Golden Rule in negative praxis, here now.
Remember how Jesus led his disciples in silence to go to ―another village,‖ when ―a
103
village of the Samaritans‖ ―did not receive him.‖ To love neighbors as ourselves and to
104
love enemies are all in this spirit of non-interference, to support all people to grow of
themselves into themselves, and that is the spirit of the Golden Rule Jesus incarnated in his
105
life and his death. Jesus is the Golden Rule fulfilling OT.

Christian Mission Again

―What would you say on ‗mission‘ at the heart of Christian faith, however?‖ Christians
are supposed to preach Jesus as Christ and convert people. Mission is the cornerstone that the
theory-builders reject, only to crush them to pieces; it is the ―stone of offense,‖ ―the rock of
106
stumbling,‖ to abstract theorization on Christian-non-Christian relationship.
Let us then meditate on this most difficult theme in the context of religious dialogue, to
clinch the entire matter. Four points can be raised out of Jesus‘ dialogue with a Samaritan
Woman (John 4:3-43), as he ―left Judæa‖ his religious turf on his way to Galilee. This is his
journey of mission; to meditate on this journey mediates on the Christian mission.
One, the Bible-words are less logical than confessional, as Kierkegaard, Marcel, and
107
Stendahl said. Confession is made not to assert and point to metaphysical truths, logical,
objective, and bloodless, but to ex-press from the bottom of the very existence of the
experienced subject, ―in spirit and in truth.‖
Two, confession involves the hearers to move them. Jesus asks for water. The lady
responds. Then he confesses, ―Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in
this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, worship the Father. . . . (T)he hour cometh, and now is, when
. . . worshippers shall worship . . . in spirit and in truth . . .‖ (John 4:21, 23)
Three, confession unwittingly reaches out to help, to fulfill others; it is ―love language.‖
Jesus‘ request of water begins his giving of Living Water (4:10-15), to begin his death on the

grain of truth in the misguided essay, ―Five Things We Can Learn from China,‖ in Time, November 23, 2009,
pp. 34-41, saying China is oppressed under the weight of its history.
103 Luke 9:51-56, 10:25-37, especially verses 35 and 42 saying ―leave them alone.‖
104 These precious matters will be detailed later in ―§ Love thy neighbor as thyself‖ and ―§ The Bible as Stories of
Loving the Enemy.‖
105 Luke 6:31-32 takes this Golden Rule to go beyond ―sinners‖ i.e., to love enemies to climax Matthew 5. So
Jesus means by this Rule Jesus‘ radical love of enemies he lived and died for.
106 All this is extrapolated from Luke 20:18 and Isaiah 8:14-15. All theoretical considerations of Christian-non-
Christian relation that I know of either bypass the ―Christian mission‖ (Monika K. Hellwig, in Christianity and
the Wider Ecumenism, op. cit., pp. 82-83) or dismiss it as leftover of Christian arrogance (John Hick).
107 Kierkegaard stresses Subjectivity as Truth. Marcel has Mystery that involves the subject of the inquirer. For
Kristen Stendahl, the Bible assertions are confessional ―love language, caressing language.‖ (quoted by Phan
in Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism, ed. Peter Phan, NY: Paragon House, 1990, p. 173) For R. P.
Scharlemann, confessional statement has free personal response as its base, not logical implication or
perception. (ibid., pp. 38-40)
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108
cross, which is his self-negation without self-loss (Tillich ), i.e., self-affirmation within
other-affirmation, in other words, selfless love-creation of others that spreads.
Four, all this give-and-take pleased Jesus immensely. He told his disciples that he was
fed (4:31-35); the lady did respond to Jesus‘ request and gave him a drink, after all. Thus to
109
share the Good News with non-believers is to be fed by them. This it is that feeds Jesus,
enriches him, and authenticates him, and this it is that spreads (4:16, 21, 25-29, 39-40) to
fulfill his ―work,‖ his mission, to ―rejoice together‖ (4:34, 36).
Before generalizing the Christian paradox of universal divinity incarnated in historical
110
specificity, we here distinguish our position from John Hick‘s inclusivism, for our position
and his appear inclusive, identically, indifferently. That we mutually differ can be shown as
follows, however. This is crucial.
Hick sees religions as indifferently ―many human awarenesses‖ of one divinity, and blots
out all specificities as contingent irrelevance. How does he, being human, know that religions
are human awarenesses only, unless he takes his ―one‖ as a logical one confidently divine,
though actually human? As a result, he ends up downgrading the exclusive specificity of
particular historical religions as dated superstitions.
Hick‘s ―universal one‖ is thus, ironically, one of ―exclusive religions‖ he opposes, not
truly ―inclusive‖ as he claims his is. His ―inclusivism‖ plays god to exclude all contingent
historical religions, as the fundamentalist ―exclusivism‖ excludes all non-Christian religions
but his own. Hick idolizes Platonic eternity as the fundamentalist idolizes Biblicist eternity.
Both forget they are human, to arrogate themselves as divine.
Our position, in contrast, takes the ―divine one‖ seriously as divine, that is, beyond human
―one.‖ As a result, historical exclusivity of historical religions, such as ―fundamentalism,‖ are
included. At the same time, being human, we would never play god, and the religious claim
of ―the historical Jesus as the divine Christ‖ we can only humanly respect with reverent
reticence, as Confucius‘ reverence expressed in his reticence.
All we humans can and should do is never to facilely judge among those supra-human
claims that are beyond our understanding, but to humbly facilitate their inter-learning and
inter-enrichment. Much less would we brush aside, as Hick would do, those different beyond-
human claims as so ―many different human awarenesses‖ of the indifferent divine one.
This fact and imperative, that we are human, not gods, and must behave as human, cannot
be overstressed. This is what is great about Jesus, that he knew and lived precisely as human,
as a mere obscure servant, to obey God till death on the cross; being human he lived as
human. Thus his powerful cry, ―He that believeth on me, believeth (not on me but) on him
that sent me,‖ originates in his utterly human confession, ―he that believeth on me, believeth

108 See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Volume 1, The University of Chicago Press, 1951, p. 136, among others.
Significantly, missionaries to China (James Legge, Courtenay H. Fenn, R. H. Mathews, Carstairs Douglas,
Thomas Barclay, William Campbell, etc.) are often Sinologists and dictionary-compilers, contributing to the
advancement of literacy in China. Many missionaries are also medical doctors. These humane endeavors could
be taken as Love‘s healing and enlightening power gradually incarnated among us. Love enhances itself in
enhancing the beloved.
109 This is a direct clinching description of Christian-non-believer relation, not Scharlemann‘s (op. cit., pp. 35-46)
who is incoherent. He has no ―mission,‖ a core problem; he denies application of intra-Christian matters to
extra-Christian realm (36), yet he applies Peter-Judas relation to Christian-non-Christian relation (43); Yes-No
in freedom is not Christian-non-Christian; his position (40) is not Barth‘s (38).
110 Of so many publications of John Hick‘s, the most recent, clearest, and shortest I know of is his ―Is Christianity
the Only True Religion?‖ in World Faiths Encounter, Number 28, March 2001, pp. 3-11. My brief response
appeared in its next issue, ―Religious Togetherness,‖ pp. 22-24, Number 29, July 2001.
40 Kuang-ming Wu

111
not on me.‖ This it was that resulted in his being ―highly exalted‖ to the name above all
names.
We should also behave likewise. Being human, we should never play gods, casually mov-
112
ing divine pawns on human intellectual chessboard. Only by consistently stubbornly
behaving as human, all too human, can our thinking begin to devoutly discern what passes all
understanding. Fear of the Lord is the alpha and omega of religious wisdom.

F. The Paradox and the Power of Naming, of Universals

It is time to take stock. We have considered the here now as eternal by considering
historical particularity under the beyond-human eternal. We now generalize our story-
reflection so far, to realize that our religious paradox of divine one and actual many is (a)
really the paradox of our ordinary daily life, typified in particular naming/wording as
universals, and (b) enlighten our basic issue: How did religious ultimacy—the divine One—
turn out so many actual religions? How is the singular religious ultimate related to many
religions in our actual world?
(a) The paradoxical combination of one and many in religion may well have come from
our daily situation in this world.113 ―Religion‖ means what is beyond the human world within
the human world; it is our problem of the Beyond. The ―beyond‖ means that when A is
beyond B, A is not B but enwraps B. These two contrary features between A and B, A
unrelated and related to B, describe how we note the relation of ―beyond.‖
This noting composes the above paradox, and noting is manifested in ―naming‖ that
indicates our knowing and wording. Thus, our religious paradox of one and many is really the
paradox of our ordinary daily life, captured in particular naming and wording to result in
universals. We now describe how noting as naming and wording produces the paradox. Mind
you; the description here thinks story-way, via logical parsing, about the problem of paradox.
Naming produces the notorious problem of ―universals‖; a name names many things into
an identical group, say, ―leg,‖ to two legs of a chicken that we call ―two legs.‖ We take
―legness‖ as somewhat synonymous with ―leg,‖ that is, as leg-universal. Hui Tzu the name-
logician says, therefore, the chicken has ―three legs‖ when we see two legs.114 Is there now
one more leg added to the chicken‘s two legs? Do we have two in three and three in two?
If Yes, then we must call the previous ―legness‖ we just named with a new name,
―legness1,‖ for the same reason as we had to add ―legness‖ to the two ―legs.‖ But then, we

111 Philippians 2:7-9, John 12:44.

112 We remember how, when Paul and Barnabas were about to be apotheosized as Mercury and Jupiter, both rent
their clothes and ran in among the people, crying, ―Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like
passions with you . . . !‖ (Acts 14:11-18) They resolutely, consistently, kept to their being human.
113 [a] is here; [b] is far ahead later, where we say, ―Let us now return to religions and their stories.‖ In all this, we
must keep in mind that this is the problem in our world, not in the World Beyond us. This is the so-called
onto-theo-logical principle, the categorical rule of considering things beyond us and God beyond us. We must
remember that we can never know thing in itself or God in himself. Neglecting this rule plunges us into Kant‘s
antinomies (our paradoxes here) and a Hick-fundamentalist arrogance that plays god to violate the First
Commandment, not knowing what we talk about. Cf. Mark 9:6, 10:38. I treated this problem of one-and-many
in religion in On Nonsense: Cultural Meditations (556 pp.), yet to publish. I treat it here in a fresh way, for the
Beyond always begins afresh here now.
114 Chuang Tzu 33/75. Chuang Tzu reported Hui Tzu‘s paradoxes, many originating in names/universals. Chuang
Tzu gave all these paradoxes to illustrate the wonder of actuality beyond our understanding.
 Storytelling 41

now have to keep adding more and more legnesses without end, for we must keep naming
―legness‖ over the legness we have just named, ad infinitum. If No, why did we add ―legness‖
in the first place? What is this not-leg ―leg‖ that we call ―legness‖?
In short, does this legness stand side by side with other ordinary legs, or not? Chuang
115
Tzu goes the Yes-way and tells us to simply stop, and this ―stop‖ indicates the ineffability
of the unspeakable concreteness of things, where our wording goes bankrupt, wiping out the
effectiveness of words, to wonder at actuality beyond understanding. Western philosophers
go the No-way to produce conundrums of realism, nominalism, etc., to make up ―answers to
the problem of universals.‖ We are hardly satisfied with this route, either.
If this question is answered neither Yes nor No, what is this legness, this strange ―not-leg
leg‖? Should we stop naming legs? But we cannot live without naming things. No wonder,
Lao Tzu honestly says that ―a name nameable is not the always-name,‖ and then goes on to
name things important in life in Tao Te Ching. This act is a paradox over word-paradox, quite
unsolvable, and Lao Tzu simply lets it stand, as a meaningful paradox. Just think, just naming
a thing generates such insoluble paradoxes! Russell‘s paradox, etc., are ―self-referential
inconsistency‖ and their amendments, e.g., that restrict applying ―all,‖ is a copout from
applying the words, not to resolve the paradox.
When we get stuck in a naming cul-de-sac like this, what we should do is to retreat and
look on concrete things all over again. We then realize that the whole problem begins at
naming itself. Naming something indicates our noting/recognizing/knowing it, to fixate it
with word as such-and-such, but fixating things, always in flux, is an exercise in futility.
Remember. Words just label things, having nothing to do with things themselves. No
wonder, things out there slip through our words/names, and people resent being ―called
names.‖ Words are ours, the thing is not, and capturing not-ours with ours would surely fail.
But we cannot help but wording/naming things, for without names we cannot identify things
to live with them; even things unknown must be identified as Unidentified Flying Objects so
we can live with them.
So, here is the tragedy. We cannot help but identify things with labels, but labeling would
slip into identifying things as labels, and we miss things themselves; we end up taking the
worded as the words, falling into the ―fallacy of misplaced concreteness‖ (Whitehead116). It is
thus that the paradox of naming and universals comes about.
Lao Tzu had to say (1, 25), ―Name can name, not Always Name,‖ and the Unnamable
had to be ―nicknamed ‗Tao,‘ ‗Great.‘‖ Words go over and accompany all thinking, all
expressing, as words hover beside things and try clumsily to enwrap them in vain, and the
very failures cipher the existence of things beyond naming. Paradox insinuates; name-
bankruptcy intimates.
In sum, the ―problem‖ of universals comes from words labeling no-word things, and then
misidentifying names with named. Chuang Tzu parodies it by counting ―one‖ to reach an
unmanageable infinity.117 India‘s ―third eye‖ Siva is ―philosophy‖ of reflection,118 to pile up

115
Shakespeare is England, Goethe is Germany, Pyshkin is Russia, and Cervantes is Spain. So people say. Who is
China, then? We are hard put to answer, for China is full of so many literary beauties. Is Chuang Tzu China? We
suspect so because, more than Ch‘ü Yüan 屈原，Chuang Tzu 莊子began all beauties in China. This point answers
the question as to why I often quote Chuang Tzu.
116 For ―fallacy of misplaced concreteness,‖ see Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925),
NY: Free Press, 1953, pp. 51, 58, etc. This is the fallacy of reification.
117 Chuang Tzu 2/10-40, 51-55. They are profound entanglements indeed, and he tells us to stop.
42 Kuang-ming Wu

unmanageable examples, rambling, going nowhere.119 Wording is Nicholas of Cusa‘s

―circle,‖ edge-less (universal) with centers everywhere (things), a paradox. Tillich‘s God is
―God beyond God,‖ an enigma.
Religion beyond us is the ultimate of universals where, naturally, the absolute enwraps
the relative, and the universal embraces the concrete, as the form/name does the actual. This
is where the many includes the one, the one implies the many, while the many rejects the one
and the one rejects the many, for the ultimate unspeakable is both one-and-many and neither
one nor many. We see here the Chinese Yin and Yang internecine while inter-nascent.
This is because ―one‖ and ―many‖ are our words, and religion beyond us is beyond our
words. We now know about all this ignorance of ours about religion. Religion is Nicholas of
Cusa‘s ―docta ignorantia‖ (learned ignorance), knowledge of our ignorance. Religion beyond
us acts out the ignorance of our human self-recursive self-examination; isn‘t Socrates pious!
Still, Socrates lived in vain in assiduity in good conscience, we sadly realize. Keeping up
with ―self-examination‖ supposedly keeps life worth living less and less imperfect, and never
perfect. This continual life praxis shows life unfinished, ever not-real, inauthentic, and such
self-honesty shows such living as worth living, as authentic—and so futile.
Thus being honest about inauthenticity is authenticity; life is an earthen vessel cracked in
two. Life worth living is fatally cracked in two, revealed by self-examination. The integral
self is nowhere, for we are either in unexamined pretense, or in examined imperfection ever
cracked. We sigh at Socrates‘ exercise in futility, at our living ever futile. All is vanity.
―Let‘s put the cracks in time,‖ King T‘ang says. Socrates‘ self-examination sifts off dross
to reshape me; my crack is now the crack of dawn. The self now cracks on to tomorrow. Self-
examination ushers in ―day to day new, again today new‖ since millennia. Countless dawns,
ever beginning, tell the story of ―history.‖ Perhaps Socrates indicates it in retrospective self-
examination, perhaps unwittingly if not wrongly.
(b) Let us now return to religions and their stories. Here we see how the paradox of
naming universals turns into the power of life. This turning can be accomplished by
storytelling. Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables was a sinner converted into a
powerful hero of irresistible compassion, and has moved countless readers to tears throughout
many cultures and incarnated himself in countless incidents.
Does Mr. Jean Valjean exist or does he not? He is an ideal type Hugo created, a name
that exists only as a universal in Hugo‘s novel, to get concretized in real lives. The Idiot is
another universal Dostoevsky invented, too good for our scheming world where he always
stirs up troubles, and Botchan, a universal of green lovable boy Natsume Sōseki invented,
manages to clumsily ―right wrongs‖ of the society. These three characters are too good for
this world, and are all reenacted repeatedly in this world.
Do these characters actually exist or not? Our question persists. Both, we would say.
Being mere fictive characters, ―existing‖ in name alone, they all yet exerted profound impacts
in the actual world in countless different and concrete ways. So, without existing physically,
they exist quite powerfully with powerful impacts on so many persons through so many days;
they do exist more convincingly than most of us dragging on physically in this routine world.

118 The first scientific eye of knowledge looks out, the second religious eye of discernment looks in, and the third
philosophic eye of reflection looks at the looking. (cf. Troy Wilson Organ, Third Eye Philosophy: Essays in
East-West Thought, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987, Preface)
119 Organ‘s book (ibid.) has an incredible wealth of citations and examples, limitless bits here and bits there in just
162 pages, to revel in the paradox of one and many inter-involving, as the universal enwrapping the concrete.
 Storytelling 43

What about those who have actually existed in history, say, Confucius, Socrates, Buddha,
and Jesus, who are not here now but continue to exert influences today? What should we say
about the historical universals continuing on through history? Jesus is peculiar to the
Christians. He was a fictive criminal the Jews invented out of historical Jesus, who then
turned into the divine Savior Christ for Christians till today. This peculiarity is the Christian
―scandal of historical particularity.‖
Now, each character above is unique120 and irreplaceable; each is irresistibly powerful
over our lives to inspire us on. Thus all of them are both many individuals and one in personal
impact, both existent and non-existent, and neither. That is the paradox, and as such, they
wield their ever captivating power over us.
Being paradoxical as above, they are specific names and general universals, inspiring
inter-versals, and continue to live on in us. That is the paradoxical power of the name, the
ideal and the universal that inter-verses. Storytelling alone can do justice to such strange
power of the paradox of specific naming/wording to generate general universal inter-versals.
The point of all this is clear, on two counts. One, the so-called Christian ―scandal of
particularity‖ may be a logical one but never a ―scandal‖ in actuality. On the contrary, it is a
most natural phenomenon of how our understanding takes place, how a name makes a
universal notion that enables our life to go on. Two, from our reflection on naming as
producing universals, we can envisage a hope of resolution—not quite a solution yet—of our
difficulties understanding the Christian ―mission‖ among world religions, as follows.
In naming a particular thing or event as such and such, the name bleeds out into universal
intelligibility of things. In naming an ethical notion such as honor, grace, kindness, or the
Golden Rule, the notion, while staying as a particular name, spreads to naturally cover widely
different occasions and actions, cultural, historical, and actual.
In our historical world, events such as ―conquests‖ or ―sages‖ appear and disappear to
show how they do not repeat but rhyme in human time. When the matter comes to the
Beyond, the particular and the universal join in extreme intimacy in this world, literally ―out
of this world beyond worldly understanding.‖
Here is ample room for both ―mission‖ as a spread of a historical particular and religious
―dialogues‖ of inter-learning, inter-influencing, and inter-pervading, as religions shake hands
by standing apart, opposed, facing one another, to mutually clasp their hands, hearts, and
souls. The Confucian classics can now serve as an OT to the Chinese Christians, with the
Jewish Torah as an OT to the Christians in the West. The particular here now is now
immortalized in religion.

120 Incredibly, some feminists accused the Christian claim to uniqueness as sexist arrogance, as if asserting
―2+2=4‖ were sexism, as if the Christian claim to uniqueness did not mean the unsurpassable and worshipful,
as if the claim were not a confession to the religious beyond-human to remove all arrogance, and as if religion
could be judged by human criterion of the efficacy of effecting justice in the world. See The Myth of Christian
Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, eds. John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 1987, pp. 137-161, and Christianity and The Wider Ecumenism, ed. Peter C. Phan, NY: Paragon House,
1990, pp. 169, 173, 175, 180.
44 Kuang-ming Wu

Storytelling as Life-Imperative

One final point we make to conclude all: All this takes place in story-thinking. We have
just told a story about how stories of Confucianism, OT, and Jesus come together without
confusion. In this way, all ―classics,‖ cultural and religious, are stories that continue to evoke
more stories, powerfully breeding lessons of consequence in life.
Besides, we may not always realize that all sorts of stories mentioned—scientific,
mythological, zodiacal, fatalistic, Buddhist, Confucian, and Christian—are all classics that
evoke and captivate us into action. We may not realize that each life-story, as classics,
intimates significant lessons for our lives now, in what ―this specific story‖ amounts to and
thereby what it can mean for us today. Storytelling, ancient and today, is our life-imperative.
Thus, every story well told, to wit, told from our hearts, is a ―classic‖ worth paying close
attention to, for it shakes us at the core and basis of everything in us and around. Psychology,
psychiatry, counseling,121 and theology operate, live, and thrive on a realization that
storytelling integrates, makes sense, and makes whole in this classical heartfelt way, to set us
on our new life‘s way. The Christian paradox of historical particularity is an extraordinary
story-―scandal‖ that heals and shapes our life praxis.
How? Well, let us focus on the ―scandal‖ itself to wrap up all this meditation. It all begins
with our words that name things. This fact amounts to three points. One, things out there,
particulars here and there, are more than our naming, our words. Two, things express
themselves in/via our words. Concrete particulars overflow to slip through our sieve of
naming words, through which they express themselves. Three, the name, ―religion,‖ expresses
one thing in the world beyond it. Religion overflows words to appear through them as
―religion‖ and ―religions.‖
That is the way actuality is, nothing scandalous about it. To take all this as a ―scandal‖ is
our scandal, we the scandal. Our taking all this as a ―scandal‖ expresses our wonder at all this
that goes beyond our words our expression and our expectation. This fact expresses itself via
breaking through our expectation/expression. This wonder at the Beyond is of course what
―religion‖ means, and such religion inevitably beckons us to living a radically new life.
Religion beyond us is the categorical imperative to live beyond our routines. All this is
beyond words conveyed by storytelling words.

Words as Logos

Words are expression, expectation, intention, and all this is packed in an ancient Greek
word, ―logos.‖ We have taken words as ours so far, but words are more than ours. Suppose
we take things out there as actuality beckoning us to express them. That beckoning is their
originative primal expression, a primal logos originating in the Beyond, Its self-expression
beyond us.
The Beyond is; it is beyond what it expresses to us, the Logos that creates/expresses to be
expressed by being ―made flesh‖ in history,122 in the human that expresses in words what all
this is out there beyond human expression. It is the Beyond, the ―more,‖ that is divine, the

121 For similar reasons, Rollo May urged all pre-counselors to major in literature, in Symbolism, op. cit., pp. 11-49.
122 John 1:1-14.
 Storytelling 45

wonder that scandalizes our expectation. All this is ―good,‖ in fact, creative novelty ―very
good‖123 beyond words, through words.
Words just told us all this, in a story that tells of this ―scandal‖ that is our ―wonder,‖ our
religious devotion. Now wonder is our access, our homecoming, to the originating primal
Source of things, and our homing makes us whole as we originally are. Healing is making
whole; making us whole as we originally are heals us at our roots. We go home to where
everything is fresh and full as kids, and is ―very good,‖ at the dawn of creation of each day.
Now, how does all this immortalize every moment here now?
We had better learn the secret from kids. After all, to teach is to show why and how I
love the subject-matter. I share my enthusiasm and learn with students. Students teach me as I
learn from students. Education is an reenactment of learning, learning redoubled reincarnate.
If we think we teach children, we had better learn from them first.
Andrew aged five wanted to change his birthday, to get birthday gifts anytime he wants;
his dad said he cannot change it, but he persisted. O, how refreshing his demand is! None but
kids alone can stunningly demand it! I his ―Gumpa Akong‖ was drawn in; I told him how to
do it. This is how. He can forget his birthday to begin all, all over again. Even if his Mom told
him of his birthday (he whispered, ―February 26!‖), he can not-believe it, and ask her to
―prove it!‖124 Mom cannot prove it, for proving a fact must repeat it as science does, and
birthday cannot repeat.
Forgetting as Taoist and demanding proof as Hume, change his birthday, you see. Now
he can change his birthday, any day every time he demands it, for his official ―birthday‖ is
only as good as what Mom tells him, and after all, this is his birthday he is handling. He
nodded in silence, in a strange sort of composure only he understands.
I was about to tell his Mom how he can change his birthday, when he shouted me down,
―Don‘t tell! It‘s a secret!‖ I asked, ―Do you have secrets?‖ ―No,‖ he said. So this is his secret
of no secret—his birthday change! Why is it a secret to Mom? The reason is simple;
divulging secrets de-magicizes the magic. O, how cute, how deep is his secret Magic Land of
no secret!
And here is the crunch. Andrew may not realize this, much less do I, that ―today‖ begins
the rest of his life and mine, and his incredible demand to change his birthday activates this
truth, to make me and make him realize this every today as every birthday of his and mine.
So, his asking to change his birthday has already changed it; in the very asking, right now, his
birthday of everything comes about, for his demand makes his today sparkle with the
beginning of the rest of his life, for kid‘s demand sparkles things afresh, as he the kid is
forever fresh, making everything afresh.
He-asking-demanding is the delightful scandal of every particularity of ―birthday‖-
creation of everything, immortalizing today into the future. I cannot help but sing,125

Future comes

123 See Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31.
124 David Hume is the kid here; he dares to disbelieve in any birthday! His so-called ―skepticism‖ is really kid-
asking in wonder, refusing to settle anywhere; it is kin to relativism. This is where the world is born.
Skepticism, relativism, and birthday are sisters in the creation-family of kids, and this is a secret!
125 Kuang Wu, ―Future Comes One Day at a Time,‖ Timeless Voices, ed. Howard Ely, Owings Mills, MD: The
International Library of Poetry, 2006, p. 1. Apropos of its theme, this poem is the first one to begin all in this
book of collection of poems.
46 Kuang-ming Wu

One day at a time.

My future is here,
I must walk out to it.

Morning fresh,
Evening calm;

Every day is a new day,

The first day of my life.

The squirrels are here

Hopping with me.

My future is my birthday today, one today at a time hopping with my Andrew hopping,
hopping ahead with our squirrels, for no squirrel hops back, no Andrew hops back. This is the
morning where/when I can do anything, as kids can do anything. Andrew is the first morning
of creation of all, inside and out!126 Now, doesn‘t this story give all of us a smile? Even I
laughed as I told this fabulous story!
Such open secret of Andrew‘s, such breathtaking smile he evokes! He is the immortal
here now. ―Here now‖ the unrepeatable, the despair of Mom unable to prove Andrew‘s
birthday, now repeats itself as unrepeatable, as each unique moment keeps coming again and
again. Creation is continual re-creation, thanks to Andrew‘s incredible demand to change his
birthday.
―Thus‖ to embrace our scandal of particularity in kid‘s asking-wonder heals us at our
roots, reborn afresh. It is our redemptive ―salvation‖ here now. This ―thus‖ is the story—
haven‘t I told you this Andrew-story?—that makes us whole, smiling. The world is birthday-
storytelling and more storytelling unceasing; we all live storytelling, rebirth in it, to have our
beings in historic storytelling, and to be healed to begin all over, thereby to spread the healing
to heal others, making them whole, whoever wherever they are—the new Heaven and new
Earth is thus birthday-created.
Oddly enough, this kid-story is told to us adults, for Andrew could not care less about this
story. How does all this incredible morning of all come about in our adult-world today? How
is our ―storytelling‖ born? Unlike kids‘ world of storytelling, ours is born slowly. Storytelling
takes time as time-narrative; time brews stories. It takes time to produce our adult stories.
Stories are spread in time so that we adults can see history the time-spread, and live in it
as time comes alive in storytelling, to consciously make ―birthday‖ of all things possible, one
morning at a time, as we look around at one thing at a time. Our world is born this morning in
storytelling, and shaped by the telling of these specific morning-stories. Birthday-story
immortalizes here now.
―But what is storytelling?‖ Now, ―what is‖ is tricky, tending to imply that we can survey
and look at ―what it is‖ from outside it, seeing it from nowhere in the Platonic sky. But story
is story-told, and telling takes time in a story-organized way, to shape us in storytelling-

126 Andrew outshines Henry Bugbee‘s The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form, State
College, Penna.: Bald Eagle Press, 1958.
 Storytelling 47

hearing. To understand a story we must listen and go through the story as it goes along, as we
live on along our storytelling. Here in story, to understand is literally to undergo life.

STORYTELLING AS TELLING WHERE A STORY IS BORN

Story goes on. Story is its telling-hearing that goes on, never standing still. Story stood
still is no story; a storybook waits for us to go in to go through. To understand storytelling on
the go, we must understand music on the move, for story is music worded as coherent dance
of life in intelligible music. We had better go into music to understand story that sings life.
(1) I once wished I could ―get‖ a whole piece of music in an instant, for I had no time for
the long time it takes to undergo the music. My impatience jolted me to see me so hurried to
survey things visually. I thought thinking is to schematize, systematize spatially, skipping
time. In contrast, music is art in time; we cannot deal with it spatially. We can only meet,
enter, and take time to undergo to understand it. Understanding music cannot stand still
outside music and survey it in an instant; I can only go-with the flow of music to become
127
music itself.
(2) Music is no random noises but an artistic sonic ensemble to undergo and appreciate.
Music develops, evolves as it envelops us along. The ―harmony‖ of many musical elements is
made by elements interpenetrating in time to pervade everywhere, and we must undergo each
element to ―get‖ it as it transpires as an element. The ―rhythm‖ of music throbs, varying itself.
Harmony and rhythm compose melody, patterning itself spontaneously, as an art-in-time
distinct from paintings and sculptures.
(3) Music is thus alive to seep into our life, intelligible beyond analytical dissection of
logical spatial reason. Music is life-reason pulsating itself as life. No wonder both Confucius
and Plato touted music as education to shape us, and in Chinese common sense an ideal
government is government by music, spontaneously organized, harmonious in melodies of
128
communal concord.
Music bespeaks the lived orderly evolving of the telling of stories and the dialogue, in
neither of which we know beforehand how the telling-talking would develop, conspire, and
consummate. Realizing thus enables us to envisage ―history‖ as grand composition of
storytelling and event-dialogues, a diversely and unpredictably developing story-music of the
lifeworld.
129
(4) Here we may notice that spontaneous ―telling‖ recorded on paper is world apart
from carefully contrived theoretical treatise on paper. History is the former writing. Chuang
Tzu‘s (26/49) yearning after a word-forgotten one to word with may intimate yearning after
the former records-of-telling. Chinese literary tradition is such, in Confucius‘ Analects,
thinkers‘ journals, short essays, prose poems, as well as sayings of Buddha, of Homer,
Socrates‘ dialogues, Shakespeare‘s dramas and poetry, and the list goes on.

127 Sadly, Mikel Dufrenne whom I deeply respect analyzes music in spatial terms; he schematizes and systematizes
musical harmony, rhythm, and melody as if they were things out there to be handled. He explicitly said so in
The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, trs. Edward S. Casey, et al., Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1973, pp. 239-273.
128 This theme is elaborated in my Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010.
129 Rodney Frey carefully, delightfully, recorded Indian oral literature, Stories That Make the World, Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Pp. 141-153 is particularly moving.
48 Kuang-ming Wu

(5) Besides, our understanding in ―reading a page‖ proceeds musically, seeing point A,
then B, then C, then putting them together, and everyone comes to have their own personal
pattern of going through those points and gathering them. So, every thinker—and we all are,
being human—has a music-logic making one‘s own music of stories.
So does every community, every nation, every culture, and history is a loose collective
storytelling of so diverse a musical telling of stories through time. Reading of every sort
could be taken as a counterpoint to writing, as listening is to musical performance. Reading is
a being-told, a going-through of the author‘s excitement of telling-on-paper, an understanding
that cannot stand still but undergoes to obtain, a musical happening of historical process.
Receiving and responding, receiving and responding, the reader joins the musical rhythm
and melody of the writer, dances with the writing, and in the meantime strikes out in the
reader‘s own direction, creating with the writer an inspired dialogical music. It is thus that the
music of ideas goes on this dialogical way, weaving a tapestry of history and a kaleidoscope
of culture.
Thus, it is the process of storytelling that originates stories and their hearing. We undergo
to understand, trailing the same process of storytelling yet ever so slightly differing from the
storyteller as we undergo our way to understand. All this parallels performance and
enjoyment of music. Storytelling is a time-art as music is; both are the music of life. How
does this music come to be? It makes a ―system‖ of reality. What does story as a system
mean?

HOW STORYTELLING
William Trevor (born 1928) the famed short-story writer said130 that everyone has a book
in them, to enjoy being outside it, not belonging anywhere, that short stories are life-glimpses
from outside. Our life is our story that is in us to get outside us—and that is our world in us
outside us. In this way our life describes how we write stories, naturally; in fact, we cannot
help telling stories as long as we are humanly alive. We see three implications here.
One, everyone has a storybook in them because to be human is to carry a story of one‘s
life; we all have memories that weave our life into a living coherent whole that yarns and
spins forward as we live on. Life is not human without such ongoing open-ended coherence
called ―a story.‖ Two, storytelling-as-living catches glimpses of life to understand it as we
undergo it; undergoing from inside enables catching a glimpse of life from outside.
Finally, for us to have a glimpse of life, we must be outside our life-milieu to tell of it,
and we must be outside what we write about to be fair and comprehensive. But the story of
our life is ours, and we must be inside us to write it to undergo to understand it. So
storytelling is an act of being in and out of ourselves at once. To consider how we manage to
do so is an exciting storytelling task of living itself.

130 This is his off-the-cuff talk in ―All Things Considered,‖ Morning Edition, October 21, 2002.
 Storytelling 49

STORY AS ORAL, AS TOLD

We must carefully pick our way as we watch our steps here. Stories are basically told and
lived, even as they are written down, for writing stories is for the sake of being read as told,
and storytelling has an unexpected dilemma. Worse, storytelling in the end comes to
forgetting words. Let us take an example.
Chuang Tzu the great sensible storyteller sighs forth a story (26/48-49), ―The rabbit-trap
is for the rabbit; once we get the rabbit we forget the trap. Words are for the intended-
meaning (意); once we get the meaning-intended, we forget the words. Where/how can I get
the one who has forgotten words to word with?‖ At these colorful words, we are quite
nonplussed. We twist and turn to ponder on what they could mean at all. Our five points in
story come quite spontaneously.
(1) Our immediate reaction is, of course, to wonder how someone word-forgotten can
have words at all. (2) On second reading, we find the saying quite logical in this context. To
have a word with someone is for the sake of getting the intended meaning, the one who has
got the meaning forgets the word that has trapped the meaning, and so we want to have words
with the one who has forgotten words, having got the meaning.
(3) For all this, however, our initial shock and bewilderment remains, that is, the word-
forgotten one has no words, and can have no word to word with. ―One who knows, words
not,‖ quips Lao Tzu (56, cf. 81). The one deserving to word with has no words to word
131
with. How do we get out of this strange dilemma?
(4) Here another of Chuang Tzu‘s quip comes to mind, ―Ultimate words leave words (as)
ultimate deeds leave doing 至言去言, 至為去為‖ (22/84). As real deeds leave ―much ado
about nothing,‖ so ―true words‖ cannot quite logically word out, for usual words are often
roundabout and contrived, if not chatty. Logic is often chatty and redundant.
True words are instead apt, direct, and simple. Kids are good at it; ―It‘s quiet when
birdies sing,‖ they whisper, and then they shout, ―Look, a same different care!‖ ―I‘m OK,
you‘re no-K!,‖ and they make perfect sense, not logically (being superficially contradictory)
but truly, straightly, deeply. One really understands who is in tune with them and with the
situation. One understands who is insider ready to perceive and receive.
―But understand what?‖ Good question you raised, my pal. Kids are in tune with nature;
they are nature. Nature always has plenty of time; it is never in a hurry. Yet it is always
changing without our knowing its change, as flowers open while we cannot see them opening.
Nature changes without changing; it never frets as I do, racing against time. Nature is always
same different at each moment.
We follow along, day in and day out, and we won‘t be harassed. Birds sing their same
songs to quiet me down. Kids shout and play as usual, to please me. Nature is always same,
always different at every moment, as plants are. That is why I love nature, admire nature, and
try to follow it, for it is stable and fresh, for I am part of nature. I am also same different at
every moment. I am just not aware of this fact. I need to gaze at nature to realize it. Realizing
it fulfills me. I am same different as kids are, in nature, as nature. It is beyond adult logic.
Thus only the one who has forgotten words, logical, roundabout, can truly utter ultimate
words that perfectly fit to ex-press what is actually the case. Those words often sound

131 Is this situation similar to one where only those who need no repentance can truly repent?
50 Kuang-ming Wu

unusual, even illogical; they are directly to the point, a straight talk directly connected to what
actually is to express it; this is an immediate communication from and to those in tune with
the situation.
(5) These ultimate words of no usual words can be crisp; ―Great debate words not 大辯
132
不言,‖ says Chuang Tzu (2/59). They can also be quite involved, often attended with
stories and parables. Jesus has many a story to tell, many a parable to share, only with those
who have ears to hear and no other. Those stories and parables themselves can seem illogical
and can be taken variously, and, for all that, they can be understood only directly, for they are
confession from heart to heart, straight from the heart of the matter to the speaker‘s soul, to
the listener‘s heart.
Perhaps our situation is like this. Ezra Pound said that poems are the most meaning in the
least words. The saying sets me thinking. Meaning here overflows words, which float in the
misty ocean of meaning, and whenever words are caught meaning appears, overflows words,
and we disappear in them, word-forgotten; we say we are word-forgotten in poems.
We have words and silence; their echo hugs them both, and their echo itself is neither
133
word nor silence. Echo is penumbra talking with umbra shadowing forth its thing. Echo is
silent as a baby embraced, while the cuddled violin, the violinist‘s soul, is just touched. The
violinist never pounds but just touches her violin only at three spots, chinrest, bow, and
strings on fingerboard. Touching to hug the violin, the violinist vanishes into it vibrating
tunes in midair; there the violin and the violinist vanish as echoes to the tune.
You pound on the piano before you, big, majestic; you hug your violin as part of you so
134
fragile, intimate. Pianist plays on any piano ; violinist carries and plays her soul-violin.
135
Piano is orchestral, dot-symphonic, and sonorous; violin sighs one voice soul-penetrating
136
long, quite personal. Piano is balanced, comprehensive, and public even when soft
137
appealing. Violin intoxicates, inundates, even insinuates to transmute all over. Piano was
not invented in China, whose music is unthinkable without strings. Piano choruses the West;
138
violin intones China.
The West pounds the piano sonorous to cover the world; all this while China touches the
violin in music to hug silence, free, soaring, as its music in silence soaks the world. As silence
vibrates the world, all people in it come alive, musical echoing to sing and hug the world,
both aloud and silent, both in ode and in elegy.
Every touch hugs, to each inter-echo to sing the world in silence of music all over. Every
thing hugs itself to sing the world—in silent music so self-attractive. This decrepit car on the
roadside sings the world, with this stone that no one cares if it is big or tiny. One is blessed
who hears rhythms of silent echoes of things in the world‘s music. I am silent wile I am
feeding, for silence feeds as in Buddhists‘ gathering and Quakers‘ gathering. Only birds chirp

132 ―Pien 辯‖ can mean ―discrimination‖ (Watson, Graham), ―disputation‖ (Mair), ―argument‖ (Legge, Giles), and
the list goes on. This is itself a case of straight talk grasped and told variously.
133 Chuang Tzu 2/92-94, 11/63-65, 25/81 are combined here.
134 Horowitz shipped his piano to Russia for his recital, but no other pianist I know of does so.
135 At most, violin strains out two or three voices but no more, and they are so personal.
136 Someone told Accardo that she heard Francescatti as his violin was played by Accado.
137 We are transfixed by those who play piano like violin (Artur Schnabel, Clara Haskil, Ingrid Haebler), and
shrink from those who pound on violin like piano, as so many violinists do today.
138 See long article, ―China,‖ Harvard Dictionary of Music, Willi Apel, Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 151-
157. Sadly, this entire article vanished in later editions.
 Storytelling 51

among silent clouds, over the grass; and now all is quieter deeper as all is as it is. Do you
hear Debussy‘s silence in all this? I am fed here.
That is how music echoes silence to hug the world, and we are hugged, trembling in the
joy of living. We call all this renovation of the world in us, and ours echoing the world,
―music alive,‖ as if nothing were the matter. Menuhin‘s music hugs silence, the louder the
music, the louder the silence, and the silence hugs the music. My Professor Clare Anderson
139
has this poem, ―Hear,‖ that binds and sums up the rest in her book of poems:

Here on this pebbled shore how music and silence meet,

As the wind cries through the waves
And the song hangs in the air
And the rush of the spirit is one.

Looking through long far-off times how the waters come and go,
And the rocks break into stones
140
And the seats enfold and release
And the gathering and scattering are one.
Agate and forest amber and many-moulded flint
Lie here in balanced motion
Like violin bow suspended,
And the movement and stillness are one.

141
This is poetry of the world, and this is how we come to word with the word-forgotten
one, in the silent story, in poetry. Many stories, essays, and analects among the great ancients,
religious sages, and those in China and in Japan, are of this expressive sort in and of the
world; that is why and how they come down to us today echoing in us as ―Classics.‖
Stories are told, lives are lived, and each life-story means differently to different people at
different times as they live and understand variously. Stories can be complex, various
parables can be told; they can be understood variously, and all remain straight talks, directly
connected to the actual situation and to the hearers and speakers. Story remains the stuff of
which life is made and the frame in which life is lived, and storytelling is the way life goes on
and grows in silence. Everyday is fresh, full of stories straightly told and lived, and variously
received and lived.
While strictly forbidding idolatry taking earthly things as God‘s images, the Bible says
that humans are God‘s image, and the Son of Man God Incarnate is God‘s true Image that
keeps giving us many earthly things as images, likeness, and parables of God‘s Kingdom.
Jesus tells parables to form images of God‘s Kingdom in us, to show us God in things alive
142
here.
Perhaps directly ―telling‖ to ―show‖ (as children‘s ―show and tell‖?) directly shakes us
and shapes us, allowing no detached survey or visual examination, and idolatry is a matter of

139 Clare Anderson, Sad, Mad, Good, Bad, North Yorkshire, UK: Tradewinds Design and Printing, 1999, p. 2.
140 This is ―§ Why the I Ching Makes No Mistakes.‖
141 This world-poetic sentiment is echoed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty‘s The Prose of the World (1969, ed. Claude
Lefort), tr. John O‘Neill, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
142 Cf. Matthew 13 except vv. 44-46.
52 Kuang-ming Wu

143
visual images detached from our hearts for us to survey with our inspecting minds.
Storytelling is luckily not idolatrous but basically oral; stories can be written down as records
of what they tell, while stories by nature tell. Stories are told and we hear them as parables; all
stories are parables that straightly show us novel unnoticed truth innocent, straight. What does
telling-and-hearing involve?
Frey savored and sensitively catalogued how telling-hearing differ from writing-reading;
144
Smith pondered on ―orality.‖ Telling/hearing is auditory, surrounding the hearers with
impacts that cannot be shut off at hearers‘ will, the impacts that often shape the hearers
beyond their control. Hearers are thereby linked via storytelling to the storyteller and the
story, which in turn is shaped by hearers‘ reactions, to shape the storyteller shaped by
actuality, to shape the world story-told-heard-and-shaped.
Their shared world is thus shaped and revealed to them all as interactively changing,
shaping, and becoming, ever in process. The process includes the action of telling that
overflows spoken words, for storytelling often goes by nods and intoned gestures to point to
the surrounding stones, trees, rivers, and mountains now echoed with story-significance to
shape their shared world. Storytellers and story-hearers experience these stories shaped
directly, personally; stories are the lived and living stuff of which their lives are made to
145
create the world.
Such a story-dynamic life-phenomenon reminds us of confession, a story told from one‘s
heart to someone. A story is really a confession about what is the case to the listeners. Is such
a confessional story really a truthful one? Well, it is if it is told long enough in time, to
become a part of history. Nothing is hid in such a story in time called ―history.‖ Things are
told as they are, leaking nothing, in this time-net as Heavenly Net (Lao Tzu 73), true stories
told as true, lies often told as things interesting if not as straight lies.
Stories told are recorded often, and read often. Such a reading is repeated, not for new
information as our usual reading is for, but to reenact it and participate in it and be shaped by
it, thereby shape it further. We live in/by/on such constant reenactment, which is re-
descriptive reliving that inevitably pro-duces something fresh, drawing forth something non-
existent before yet patterned after that ―before‖ that is thus reenacted and relived. This is
human creation by stories.
So to reenact is to re-create, to inherit the past is to create the now and the future, and in
order to create we must reenact the past. To live through this creative process is history; we
live in/by/on history and, in fact, we are reincarnations, again and again, of history itself. In
this sense, reading religious scriptures (such as Buddhist Sutras, Islamic Koran, and Christian
Bible) is a life-recital, a recitation of life lived and living as it was lived in the great past
stories told, to be enriched by them and incarnated in them.
What does all this amount to? We inherit the tradition by kicking it. Anti-traditionalism is
the true tradition. This is because tradition is something worth handing down, something
excellent/distinguished/outstanding, and things outstanding are things that stand out of what
has been, distinguished from the past, differing from past excellence, and such differing kicks

143 Moses unwittingly went (―turn‖) to the burning bush to ―to see‖ (Exodus 3:3-4).
144 Rodney Frey, ed., Stories That Make the World: Oral Literature of the Indian Peoples of the Inland Northwest,
Norman: the University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Huston Smith, The World‟s Religions (1958), NY:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, pp. 368-372.
145 I have freely rifled Frey and added my own thoughts. There are some more but this is enough to show how
vibrantly alive to communal life storytelling and story-hearing are. See Frey, op. cit., pp. 141-158, et passim.
 Storytelling 53

the past excellence, kicks the tradition, to be ―more‖ excellent than past excellence. So I used
146
to say; that was my past claim.
Now, suppose I now disagree with this claim, then my disagreement amounts to kicking
this claim, and I thereby inherit this claim that insists on kicking the inheritance. Suppose I
agree with this claim, then I must follow this claim by kicking it. Thus, while agreeing or
disagreeing with this claim, I end up following it, in the same manner as the belief in criticism
embraces both agreeing and disagreeing with this belief. In other words, this claim is
universally valid in all cases, whether we agree or disagree with this claim.
Such is how history—storytelling in time, in life, throughout the ages—works. We end
up being in history, while following or refusing to follow history. World judgment is world
history, for our judgment of history is/becomes part of history. So history turns Hegel‘s
dictum (―World history is world judgment‖) upside down, and justifies Hegel himself as part
of history; history thus overflows and embraces its critiques, all our fuss about it.
Story is thus powerful through time. We will have much more to say about the power of
storytelling and story-thinking through time soon enough but we had better shed now our
prejudice against storytelling and story-thinking as kid-stuff, beneath the dignity of ―adult
mature thinking.‖

HOW STORYTELLING WORKS WONDERS

Sartre said that drab daily ongoing, once told as a story, gains a life of its own, as if
147
catching time by its tail. This is how we make history, to become historical. We sigh and
say, ―This is the wonder of storytelling.‖ Now, our question is how so, how storytelling,
why/how just retelling what has happened or what is the case (nothing was the matter there),
could work such a wonder.
The situation is complex, perhaps tri-plexed. A child from inside the car shouts, ―Dad,
look, a same different car!‖ and we instantly understand what he means, yet we who know
―logic‖ laugh and marvel; nothing can be both same and different, the child is logically
wrong, yet how straightly apt the expression is!
So, we have here in this situation (a) the child‘s innocence, honestly reporting the fact of
―a same different car,‖ (b) an adult the logician who judges it to be incorrect, (c) yet marvels
at its peculiar aptness, and is jolted into laughter by the clash between unassailable situational
aptness and logical incorrect-ness.
Telling this mini-story brings this ordinary event into a complex wonder. ―Kids say the
148
darnedest things‖ only from Mr. Linkletter‘s adult viewpoint, for kids are just kids, to be
marveled at only by the adults, to be told to by Linkletter. It takes Mencius (4B12) to say,
―The Great One is one who has not lost one‘s own ‗infant‘s heart‘‖ for us to marvel, while the
infant is no ―great one‖ himself. Let us stay here for a while.
The child is both original and originative, primal-root (Li Chih) and primitive-growing
(Piaget), and its mysterious depth lies in this ―and,‖ the natural blend of its opposites. Here

146 The Butterfly as Companion, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990, p. 9.
147 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, NY: New Directions, 1964, pp. 56-59. This novel was his first storytelling, an instant
bestseller. Cf. Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, tr. G. S. Fraser, Chicago: Regnery/Gateway, 1960, I:
192-194.
148 Art Linkletter, Kids Say the Darnedest Things! Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts, 2005.
54 Kuang-ming Wu

are what kindergarten kids say about ―peace,‖ as my daughter with the heart of the child
emailed me in mid-January 2010.

Peace is trying to help everyone feel like they belong. Peace is a feeling you have inside
your heart when you help people. Peace is like basketball—it‘s not about who is winning but
how much fun we are having playing! Peace is happiness for everyone. Peace is taking care of
our earth and everyone on it. Peace is caring for everybody. Peace is making friends with
someone who looks like they are being left out of a game. Peace is making friends with our
world, the people, the animals, the whole earth. Peace is playing with someone no matter what
they look like. Peace taking care of each other. Peace is giving people a second chance even if
they hurt your feelings before. Peace is smiling at someone you don‘t know yet.

In their refreshing immaturity these tiny kids teach us mature adults that ―peace‖ is felt
acts of peacemaking interpersonal, never quiet, and never kept inside. ―Peace‖ vanishes
otherwise, set, staid, dead.
―Toward the close of his life, Black Elk, a shaman of the Oglala Sioux, often fell to all
fours to play with toddlers. ‗We have much in common,‘ he said, ‗They have just come from
the Great Mysterious and I am about to return to it.‘‖149 Here is the mysterious unity of sagely
maturity and toddler‘s immaturity, both gather to play on all fours. Such deep fun together!
The wonder of wonders is that this ―mysterious unity‖ is never mystical, esoteric, or
exotic, but starkly concrete beyond adult understanding. The child primitive disarms us into
its primal depth, its surprising originality. This is the origin of the ordinary as the
extraordinary, the simple as the spectacular, the origin of simple things around as they are
present in depth.
Things here now are the active child. The hills are just hills, and then appear as more than
just hills, and then show themselves as hills truly, spectacularly, as poets, painters, musicians,
and scientists perceive them. But all such stages of ―progress‖ tell of us adults progressing
(Zen progress, we say) toward the children, who just clap their hands and stamp their feet
―dancing the hills‖ out there, for nothing, for joy of hills just there.
The child thus charms us, disarming us, and so it is deep—because it is primitively
concrete present so clearly, so completely; nothing is hid, and so all is dizzyingly deep
beyond all fathoming. The child is an open secret so starkly present, singing in unison with all
things so starkly concrete. We adults must simplify our engagements to go back home to the
child‘s original depth of the simple concrete, solidly concrete.
To put it another way, the reason why grandparents have no generation-gap with
grandchildren is because grandparents are twice removed from the children. The parents
scrape with children, while the grandparents sit back, clap hands, and enjoy them, and we
who are neither parents nor grandparents tell their stories and smile. Only then can we marvel
at the splendor of the kid-simple in daily life.
What is simple is what is clear, out there for all to see, as a baby crying to show she is
wet, tired, hungry, or sick, nothing else. Such charming simplicity is yet bottomless, for we
cannot stop gazing at her in sleep or in smile, and her tears draw ours. She has no dull

149 Li Chih, ―On Child‘s Heart 童心說,‖ in 李贄文集，北京社會科學文獻出版社, 2000, I: 91-93. See Jean
Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, NY: W. W. Norton, 1963, The Moral Judgment of the Child,
NY: The Free Press, 1966, and many other volumes studying the child‘s development into adulthood. Huston
Smith, The World‟s Religions, HarperSanFrancisco, 1986, p. 374.
 Storytelling 55

moments, for we wish she were awake when she sleeps, and wish she sleeps when awake.
She keeps us busy. Simplicity keeps us busy, bottomless; each moment is eternal, and each
eternity lasts but a moment.
Traditional Chinese calendar loads each day with tons of instructions on what to do and
what not to do. Each day is loaded with meanings. Western calendar has simple blank,
vacancy, for each day. Both calendars are correct; simple blank is loaded with meanings. We
call it being alive. Simplicity is alive, deep, and endless. Simplicity is deep, for it has nothing
in itself, and so simplicity is roomy, nestling us; we are deepened inexpressibly, as much as
we can do and be filled, and more, much more than we can, endlessly.
Simplicity is thus irresistible, disarmingly charming people. Kids, Haydn, and Bruckner
are all simple in all their different depths, drawing us all. But ―we all‖ here are no kids, and
Haydn or Bruckner is no kid, either. We learn from kids to whom nothing is the matter and
nothing matters, for to kids things are just as they are to play with, as kids are just as they are,
―naughty, unmanageable,‖ full of pep overflowing each moment.
Thus it would be misguided to extol the child as a genius just because the genius has the
150
child‘s soul and perspective ; it is not the child‘s simple innocence but the adult‘s second
innocence that is precious. Being a child and having the child in an adult‘s heart are two
completely different worlds, and to bring out the difference (a) we must tell stories about both
(b) the child and (c) the adult.
To put it yet another way, daily life is simple as it is, nothing special. It takes (a) Chuang
Tzu to notice its splendor to describe it in beguilingly simple mini-stories, (b) name-logician
Hui Tzu to challenge Chuang Tzu, and (c) Chuang Tzu to ―rebut‖ Hui Tzu. It takes all these
three to compose Taoism‘s various marvels at the splendor of the simple, and thereby thrive
151
in such stunning simplicity of this world. An example (17/87-91) gloriously exhibits the
wonder tripled.

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu (the name-logician) were strolling (yu) above the Hao River.
Chuang Tzu said, ―Minnows are out in a leisurely wandering (yu); such is the joy of the fish!‖
Hui Tzu said, ―You are no fish; how (could you) know the fish‘s joy?‖ Chuang Tzu said,
―You are not me; how (could you) know I don‘t know the fish‘s joy?‖ Hui Tzu said, ―I am not
you; of course I don‘t know you. (But) you are of course not the fish, (so it) completes (the
case) of your not knowing the fish‘s joy.‖ Chuang Tzu said, ―Let‘s trace (back to) your
original (question). Your asking ‗How (could you) know the fish‘s joy?‘ (shows) you already
knew I knew it and asked me. I know it above the Hao.‖

(a) Being in situ, on the spot—above the Hao—enabled Chuang Tzu to understand the
fish‘s joy. At the same time, this spot is where two friends enjoyed (b) creating problems and
bantering around on it to understand the cause of knowing the fish‘s joy. As they on the
bridge enjoyed darting back and forth arguing, so the fish under the bridge enjoyed darting
back and forth.

150 王國維 risks committing this error when he said, ―自某方面觀之, 凡赤子皆天才也.; 又凡天才自某方面觀之,
皆赤子也. Seen from a certain aspect, all infants are geniuses, and all geniuses, seen from a certain aspect, are
infants.‖ (in <叔本華與尼釆>, quoted by 馬自毅 in his 導讀 in 新譯人間詞話, 臺北: 三民書局1994, 2001,
p. 19)
151 Chuang Tzu has stories out of this world as well, to say that things out of this world are part of this world, to
say that this world is ―out of the world.‖ It limit is the sky, which recedes as you think you have reached it. We
realize that the sky is limitless only by reaching to it as our limit. The sky is this world out of this world.
56 Kuang-ming Wu

(c) Finally, Hui Tzu‘s questionings manifested this joy, this way. ―I know fish-enjoying
on the Hao.‖ This knowledge has two inconsistencies; each has a No in Yes. One, Chuang‘s
knowing contains his not fish, difference is ignorance, so his knowing contains not-knowing.
Two, difference as ignorance contains its denial, as Hui not Chuang yet knowing Chuang not
fish. Both Nos compose Chuang knowing fish‘s joy here now, containing two Nos. Yes exists
by containing No; negative is part of affirmative as room‘s vacancy makes it roomy and
useful.
Hui Tzu was thus indispensable to Chuang Tzu‘s enjoyment as No is essential to Yes. No
wonder, Chuang Tzu sorely missed Hui Tzu‘s death (24/48-51).

Chuang Tzu was accompanying a funeral when he passed by Hui Tzu‘s grave. Turning to
his attendant, he said, ―There was a man of Ying who, when smeared with plaster on his nose-
tip as (thin as) a fly‘s wing, let carpenter Shih to slice-it-off. Carpenter Shih raised the wind
wheeling the hatchet, following152 (the wind), sliced off every plaster bit, and the nose was
not hurt (while) the Ying man stood (there) unperturbed. Lord Yüan of Sung, hearing of it,
summoned carpenter Shih and said, ‗Try do it for me.‘ Carpenter Shih said, ‗Your servant did
use to be able to slice it off (like that). However, my material-partner has long been dead.‘
Since your death, Mister (Hui), I have no one for my material-partner any longer. I have no
one to talk with any more.

We can see that, after such a dazzling display of enjoyment in arguing with his friend Hui
Tzu, Chuang Tzu then looked down at the ground in silence; he did not drum on an empty
bowl and sing as he did when his wife died (18/15).
Such touching storytelling is what constitutes the ―classic‖ out of the Book of Chuang
Tzu. Telling stories like this, and telling about all this, bring out all this poignancy of life to
make us ponder. In short, it is thus that storytelling works wonders—of life. Now, have we
noticed it? We have just told stories about how stories work wonders; we have done meta-
storytelling on storytelling. What is meta-storytelling? Is it just another storytelling? Or is it
something special? We must look into this fascinating territory.

META-STORYTELLING
Look at how incessantly stories pour out in magazines, journals, and as bestsellers and
long-sellers. ―Why do we keep telling stories of life?‖ we ask, and we tell stories about
why/how we tell stories. ―What are good stories and bad ones? How do we tell stories to tell
‗good‘ stories from ‗bad‘ ones?‖ ―Are we not supposed to tell stories sometimes? When
would that ‗sometime‘ be?‖ ―Is there an unethical storytelling?‖ We ask and ask, and we tell
stories about narrative ethics to decide on the ethics of storytelling.153
One thing is clear. We never can get out of storytelling, for we never can get out of
living, and storytelling is (part of) our living; we live on it. Cut storytelling, and we die.
Answers to all above good questions matter little. We are simply awed and impressed by how

152 ―Listening 聽 [to the wind]‖ in the original.

153 Rita Charon and Martha Montello eds., Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics, NY:
Routledge, 2002, is just that, telling stories about how storytelling helps medical ethics, not reflecting about
how to judge what sort of storytelling is unethical and why.
 Storytelling 57

persistent and inescapable storytelling is, even here at the meta-level. It is simply awesome
indeed, this storytelling. To think of it, though, storytellers themselves do not in fact raise the
above questions, which lie outside storytelling itself; these questions make no sense.
Now, the I Ching (Classic of Changes) and religions are made of stories and poetic story-
bits, and poetry opens out to its sense, to the future of its open-out sense, by opening out to its
readers. For example, Aesop154 tells of a tree accusing two men of ingratitude who complain
how useless the tree is, while the tree is sheltering them from the scorching heat. Chuang Tzu
would softly mumble, ―It‘s tall tree‘s silence that speaks with jittery chitchatting magpies.‖155
Now, it is up to us its readers to see what this Aesop-Chuang story means. For example,
―trees‖ sheltering us from life‘s scorching heat are often natural, free, unnoticed, and even
complained to their faces. It takes a sensitive Aesop to tell us this amazing truth/fact, and
takes a no less sensitive Chuang Tzu to nudge us to note that such sheltering trees are silent,
silently accepting our ungrateful complaints, as they continue to shelter us, in silence.
We had better then be sensitive enough to be grateful. Gratitude takes sensitivity to pull
off. Our further reading could see/hear the trees‘ accusation in silence very soon turn lethally
loud as many species die one by one; remember ―silent spring‖! Even frogs cease to be
around, before we humans vanish. Gratitude is due us and nourishing to us and to everything
around whose inter-survival depends on gratitude.
In the end, we realize that gratitude is the message of sensitive Aesop and Chuang Tzu.
These are two among many meanings we their readers could see, sensitively, thanks to
evocation by their sensitivity. Such evocation of sensitivity of storytelling is what makes life
worth living, and Socrates‘ urging of self-examination could amount to an urging of
evocation of life-sensitivity. This volume tells stories that evoke as story-thinking.
The I Ching and religions are divinatory-future-telling and ontological now-telling, and
so they cannot answer ontological questions about storytelling itself (Why tell stories at all?)
and normative ones (Are we not supposed to tell sometimes? Is there an unethical
storytelling?). We cannot ask which fortune-telling is correct to a fortune-teller, or which
religion is right to a religion. ―Histories have no word ‗history,‘ as no self allows self to
‗self‘‖ (Chang).156 As the self is silent on the self, so history-storytelling is silent on itself.
―Does all this point make nonsense out of storytelling, fortune-telling, religions, and
history that tells of all this?‖ Well, it may well do, but if they are nonsense, life is, for life is
storytelling, and fortune-telling is concerned with future life and religions concern with
ultimate matters of life—in the mode of storytelling as history. Life is at the rock bottom of
normative and meta-reflections and storytelling exhibits to expand life. So, storytelling cannot
be subject to normative or meta-reflections storytelling initiates, enables, and exhibits.
Now, ―Is such reflection in this section itself a story?‖ Yes, indeed. We have told a story
about storytelling, this time in the mode of meta-storytelling. ―Is meta-storytelling itself a

154
Themes of Aesop‘s fables overflow our daily lives to overflow every age and every place. Aesop‘s fables
produce an unending flow of books. Here are just two of them. Aesop: The Complete Fables, NY: Penguin
Books, 1998. Simon Stern, ed., The Life and Fables of Æsop, NY: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1970. Still, what we
said above may be the first to think about Aesop, as Deleuzi was about Lewis Carroll (The Logic of Sense), and
Wu about Chuang Tzu (World Philosopher at Play, Butterfly as Companion).
155
Chuang Tzu 2/73, 75. ―長梧子 ch‘ang wu tzu, Mr. Tall Dryandra,‖ could be a homonym to ―長悟子, ch‘ang wu
tzu, Mr. Long (deep) Enlightenment.‖ This is one more example of how one Chinese character can be a compact
story mutely appealing to our understanding. See my Chinese Wisdom Alive: Vignettes of Life-Thinking, NY:
Nova Science Publishers, 2010.
156
」 says 章學誠 in 文史通義校注，葉瑛校注，北京中華書局，2005 p. 93 (經解上).
58 Kuang-ming Wu

storytelling?‖ Most definitely yes; we often tell stories about stories that tell about other
stories, and this is one of such occasions. ―But then, haven‘t we done meta-reflection on
storytelling that we said we should not do?‖ Well, Yes we have, for we did meta-storytelling
indeed, yet No, for we did it not in reflection different from storytelling but as storytelling,
albeit of reflective sort.
―But then aren‘t all reflections a storytelling, or at least a meta-storytelling?‖ We must
admit that it is the case. We must take reflection as itself a storytelling, not as not-story. This
is the point of this section. Life with its reflection is all storytelling that makes all generations
of human lives a history of the world. What then is ―history‖? How does it come about?
Chapter 2

HISTORY

To understand history, we begin with ―translation.‖ Translation is our labor to transfer us

from the past to the future. We are transferred by imitating and learning of our forefathers
who wait for us in the future. People in the past appear in (the historical context of) continual
critical dialogues with us latecomers, by continual reenactment. One sad story of history is
that of politics full of dictatorial disasters precisely in the name of ―people,‖ or of democracy.
History makes no mistakes, however, for it continually exposes all things, and also
exposes mistakes, and what exposes mistakes makes no mistake; if it does make mistake, then
what exposes mistakes in that ―exposer‖ would make no mistake. The Classic of Change, I
Ching, captures this powerful nisus of history for us and our future. The I Ching was number-
structured. We are prompted to see how numbers, humanly understood, were in the history of
China. Here we must go beyond human numbers to consider translation as such.

TRANSLATION, TRANSPOSITION, STORYTELLING

In order to see how history takes place, we must consider translation as transposition
from one situation to another. We call it ―description,‖ more prevalent than we suspect.
Whenever we spot something noteworthy we describe it. Description is ubiquitous; we are
hard put to find things non-descriptive, for things appear only by recognizing their names, to
recite their stories.
Philosophy, unlikely as it may seem, is full of descriptions. Phenomenology is a
description of things that appear as they are. Metaphysics describes basic stuff behind things,
cosmology describes the world, ontology describes what it is to be, critical philosophy
describes how we know, logical analysis describes the coherence of our knowing, and the list
goes on. Name packs description, and description tells stories.
Description tells a story, philosophy thinks, and so thinking is storytelling. Thoughtfully
to tell stories gathers things into a coherent whole to make sense1; to gather to make sense is
logic to make whole.2 In other words, we think by/in storytelling; telling stories, we think to
make whole. We repeat: to think is to tell various stories, to variously make each life of a

1 Martin Heidegger, among many thinkers, thrives on this simple but spectacular realization, called ―logos.‖
2 To ―heal‖ is to something ―whole,‖ to make it all of a piece.
60 Kuang-ming Wu

thing whole as this thing, each in its own way. Name packs such storytelling that makes
whole each existence told of.
Life continues to tell various stories to make whole various lives and things; thus history
is continually made. Stories of lives then translate into other different lives, other cultures,
and other times—by transposing themselves in more stories of more sorts and more cultures.
Translation makes history to go around in time and in space. What is ―translation,‖ then? It is
understanding that is quite complex. Let us put it this way.
We have two ways of understanding a school of thought, from outsider and from inside.
Outside understanding can be historical or philosophical. China‘s historical understanding is
often from a specific standpoint albeit unawares. Western philosophical understanding is
taken as itself above criticism, high up in Platonic heaven of eternity. One who understands
from inside, in contrast, lives in that idea-climate, in which to look at everything around us.
The person is incarnated by that idea-air, to bring all things breathing alive.
Ch‘en Ku-ying‘s external approach, typical of all objective historical studies of ideas, has
definitive enunciations, as if the historian were smarter than the sages commented on; here is
no internal going-through. Munro and Ch‘en stand off from China, observe it from above,
from nowhere, to render definitive (if not final) pronouncements on an exotic (if not
barbarous, for Munro) culture, ―China‖; they are quite confident that they know-it-all above
all things, seeing all things Chinese from nowhere.3 ―Know-it-all‖ sadly ciphers ―know
nothing‖ unawares.
Moreover, to complicate the matter further, China has ―I commenting on Six Classics
我注六經‖ and ―Six Classics commenting on me 六經注我.‖ ―I commenting Six Classics‖
can understand the Classics from inside and outside in my ―commentaries 注‖; ―Six Classics
commenting me‖ uses the Classics to express myself. They thus seem to be in contrast, but
more is involved than this contrast.
Inside understanding involves I-development, not Classics, while ―involvement‖ in ―I
commenting‖ is concerned with ―Classics,‖ and ―Classics commenting‖ is concerned with
―me.‖ So ―I commenting‖ and ―Classics commenting‖ have both internal understanding and
external one; the relation of commenting with understanding is then quite complex, and leads
to somewhere unexpected.
Let‘s take an example. Tai Chen 戴震 advertised his ―objective/external‖ commentary on
the Mencius,4 but actually he intended it to passionately correct scholarship of his day, i.e., his
commentary was his inside understanding; he made Mencius as commentary to him. But of
course he would be the first to deny such underhanded arrogance, and would insist that in his
commentary he vanished in Mencius, who vanished in him. Here the inside and the outside
fused in one.
To all such happening, later commentators, advertising as objectively/externally
commenting on Tai‘s commentary on Mencius, continue to do likewise, to the extent that the
external vanishes into the internal to finally inter-vanish into one. All this provokes even later
thinkers to do likewise. Such is what China cherishes as its ―commentarial tradition,‖ never to

3 To the same Chuang Tzu, Ch‘en Ku-ying and Donald J. Munro adopt external approach; I do internal. See
陳鼓應著，老莊新論，臺北市五南圖書公司，民84. Donal J. Munro‘s ―Afterword‖ to Tsai Chih Chung,
Zhuangzi Speaks, Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 127-142. Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as
Companion, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
4 戴震 (1724-1777) 著，孟子字義疏證。 Ann-ping Chin and Mansfield Freeman, trs., Tai Chen on Mencius:
Explorations in Words and Meaning, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
 History 61

be mocked. Western interpreters neglect all this historical commentarial complexity at their
own peril, as with Richards, Fingarette, Graham, Yearley, Hansen, etc., in their external
observation. We will have occasion later to go into them all.
Such is the Chinese ―intellectual history,‖ the story-in-time of the Chinese mind. This
sort of inter-internal-external understanding had already begun in ancient days as
transcription and translation of ―history‖ in the Tso Chuan 左傳 that often raises the Western
eyebrows of objective and external historiography-scholars as ―arbitrarily subjective.‖5 In
short, ―translation‖ is idea-transposition complexly inter-transforming, never a straight word-
for-word transference.
We are surprised to find translation full of trials and errors, and going through this
process, this history, is part and parcel of ―translation.‖ In the end, we will realize that this
going-through is translation that is what history is about. But this is to anticipate. Let us cite
another specific example. Here is a story of my long letter to an avid translator of Lao Tzu‘s
Tao Te Ching.
Dear John: Lao Tzu is translator‘s nightmare; I see four difficulties here, plus fifth and
sixth points that are two unwitting and strange breakthroughs. One, Lao Tzu is ―ambi-guous‖
―going-around‖ among a word‘s several meanings. When Lao Tzu uses it to mean, other
meanings are ready at hand, quite inter-involved. In mutual meaning-resonance, the sentence
rings powerfully convincing, subtly ineffable. Translator must negotiate the difference
between Chinese meaning-cluster and English one. ―Tao can Tao, not always-Tao‖ that
begins the Tao Te Ching is typical.
The second ―tao‖ has been an enigma. Its usual interpretation, ―tell, say, talk 言, 云, 談‖6
may have emerged later than sixth century BCE when Tao Te Ching was written. Fukunaga
inexplicably took it as ―stipulate 規 定.‖ Cleary took it as ―guide 導‖ to make of the whole
sentence as ―A way can be a guide, but not a fixed path,‖7 taking ―always 常‖ as ―fixed.‖ This
rendering flattens the sentence to trivial sense, violating Lao Tzu‘s second mystery, ―always.‖
―Always 常‖ you rendered as ―common‖ has three meaning-involvements. One,
―common‖ means ―well trodden‖ and ―well-known,‖ but, two, in Lao Tzu, what is well
trodden is not well known among us. However, three, what is well trodden is also that with
which we are familiar or know well as our daily routine—we just don‘t realize it. Now, how
can we pack all these meaning-involvements into one neat English sentence as Lao Tzu did in
his Chinese?
Two, Lao Tzu is so paradoxical as to self-defeat. He declared, ―Tao as Tao is no Tao,‖ yet
the entire Tao Te Ching that follows talks about ―Tao as Tao.‖ His point is precisely to tout in
our face such self-contradiction. To say, ―Ways we know are not the Way,‖ is so clear it
dispels Lao Tzu‘s mystery, and leaving it as unintelligible gibberish doesn‘t help. We are
damned if we make it intelligible, and damned if we don‘t. We have the worst of both worlds.

5 Both Wu and Watson cite such examples. See K. Wu, ―Distinctive Features of Chinese Hermeneutics,‖ Taiwan
Journal of East Asian Studies, June 2004, pp. 233-247. Burton Watson, tr., The Tso chuan: Selections from
China‟s Oldest Narrative History, NY: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 80, cf. p. 217, index on
―Confucius.‖.
6 Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo rendered the whole sentence as ―TAO called TAO is not TAO‖ and
appended their explanation on it that seems quite unconvincing (pp. xviii-xix) in their Tao Te Ching,
Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.
7 Fukunaga took ―stipulate‖ to mean ―捉える, 定義 grasp, define.‖ 福永光司著, 老子, 上, 東京朝日文庫, 1978,
1992, pp. 31-33. Thomas Cleary, The Essential Tao, NY: HarperCollins, 1992, p. 9.
62 Kuang-ming Wu

Three, Tao Te Ching has the world‘s most numerous translations, second only to the
Christian Bible. Why do you want to add one more? Yours will be as one-sided as they, and
add to the cacophonous confusion out there, unless yours somehow, by some impossibility,
pulls off a perfect English mirror of the Chinese original ambiguity.
Four, we must go another way, for, as Chuang Tzu said, ―The Way walks it and forms.‖8
We are, then, to explain and paraphrase, not straightly translate. Sadly, as jokes explained are
jokes no more, Lao Tzu interpreted kills him. But if we don‘t, Lao Tzu is left unapproachable.
Again, we are damned if we do, damned if we don‘t.
All in all, one thing is clear; the translator‘s task is not to translate but to transpose. How?
Well, we see two ways. One way is to do indirection, as Tao Te Ching itself has done, to
purposely contradicts itself, and throw the enigma at the reader. He contradicts himself with a
wink at us. Kierkegaard retold us Christ by way of using pseudonyms, evoking Subjectivity,
jotting down parables and short stories in journals, all against straight objectivity and
systematic exposition. Nietzsche9 and many others do likewise.
Another way is to propose contemporary sentences and stories parallel to Lao Tzu‘s, as
pungent and poignant as Lao Tzu‘s. It requires a Lao Tzu of today. Where can we find such a
Lao Tzu poet? Well, the Taoists other than Lao Tzu, and those later than he, did pull off
precisely such stunt. Chuang Tzu packed ―Tao as Tao is no Tao‖ into ―Great Tao declares not
大 道 不 稱‖ and then elaborated on it.10
Then the entire book of Chuang Tzu has three genres of story-writings we call the Inner,
the Outer rewording, and the Miscellaneous, rewording the reworded. Lieh Tzu and Huai Nan
Tzu the other Taoists ―translated‖ Lao Tzu by stories transposing Lao Tzu. Huai Nan Tzu‘s
story of ―Uncle Fort losing a horse 塞 翁 失 馬,‖ presents and illuminates Lao Tzu‘s (58) ―O,
woe where weal leans! O, weal where woe lurks! 禍 兮 福 之 所 倚, 福 兮 禍 之 所 伏.‖
Similarly, Hermann Hesse wrote a novel, Siddhartha (1922), a new story to convey to us
today ancient Buddha‘s timeless story; Leonard Bernstein produced a musical, ―West Side
Story‖ in 1957, to deliver us today Shakespeare‘s unbearable poignancy in ―Romeo and
Juliet‖ performed in 1594-1595 and published in 1597.
Thus, clearly, the translator‘s task cannot be straight word-for-word transfer; it must be a
sensitive transposition of the felt sense, intention, and various implications involved in the
original. For this purpose, storytelling is an indispensable vehicle age after age, generation
after generation, without ceasing.
Five, now, here is a bombshell that smashes all above four hesitations, to redeem them
all. Here it is. Lao Tzu himself says, ―Tao tao-able is no common constant Tao,‖ and then
goes on to present all tao-ables—toward an exercise in self-wiping futility. Doesn‘t this very
futility show how un-tao-able the Tao is, thereby negatively presents the common constant
Tao? How beautiful this self-defeating performance is in all its roundabout way, its ambi-
guity!
Isn‘t it ―wu-wei, no-do‖ and no not do 無為而無不為, neither do nor not-do in effective
action all around! And isn‘t this ―all around‖ another way of putting ―ambi-guity,‖ driving

8 Chuang Tzu, 2/33. Line 112 in my Butterfly, op. cit., p. 141.

9 Besides his usual volumes, see Søren Kierkegaard Papers and Journals: A Selection, translated, etc., by Alastair
Hannay, London: Penguin Books, 1996, and Parables of Kierkegaard, ed. Thomas C. Oden, Princeton
University Press, 1978. Cf. A Nietzsche Reader, selected, etc., by R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 1977.
Both volumes are packed with aphorisms and quotables.
10 Chuang Tzu 2/68f. Lines 183f, op. cit., p. 146.
 History 63

around all over, if not fooling around,11 to intimate? ―Have gun, will travel‖ used to describe
the lifestyle of ―the wild, wild West.‖ Isn‘t this ―no-do driving-around‖ in ambiguity our only
almighty ―gun‖ with which to travel the wild, wild lifeworld? It is how such a no-do and no
not-do fares in translation of the untranslatable.
Can‘t we, shouldn‘t we, follow this ―way‖ by laboring on ―an accurate rendering of the
original‖ and fail? Irresponsible muddled mis-translations will not do in this wink at
circuitous ambi-guity; we must strive, the best we can, at an ―accurate‖ rendering, and then
confess to our failures. Can‘t our struggled translation, succeeding in one-sided clarity,
likewise present in all its clarity at least one tao-able Tao, another not-Tao, to miss the Tao, to
negatively intimate the common constant Tao?
If we must tell a story and not directly translate, we must tell a story that does not tell, by
way of straightly struggling clumsy telling. Isn‘t a clear telling—translating—of not-clear
truth, itself one clumsy way of telling? Isn‘t the Way tacitly present here, with a wink,
unsuspected, unawares, in our clear one-sided translation, which is a clumsy one after all?
Six, here is another bombshell. Someone may wonder why we bother to translate at all.
Well, to ―translate‖ means to ―transfer,‖12 and so translating an ancient story transfers it to our
world today. Translating an ancient story re-describes it, thereby transposes it to us here now.
Why do we do so? Because transposition of a story enables us to learn from it, act it out,
thereby relive it our own way in our daily lives. We are then transformed by the great ancient.
All this operation is an historical reenactment that is quite significant. How is it so?
The Zen master kicks words away, and yet he is often most wordy with the koans handed
down from the past. He kicks away words because he is intent on doing, not talking, and yet
he is quite wordy because he word-does word-kicking. He does history, telling stories to
reenact. To reenact the past is to act it out, act it forward in our lives our way, to live a new
life inspired, breathed-in, by it.13
Space can repeat; ―here and there, funny things are everywhere,‖ said Dr. Seuss. Time
cannot repeat, but can and does return rhymed, in writing and reading. Each time I write and
read, the unique moments come back uniquely in me, rhymed to these moments. Writing
keeps memories; reading visits and revives them. We say that ―history rhymes‖ in literature to
make Chinese culture. I write/read history to live my ―same different‖ life here now. Their
history rhymes forward into my future life. Thus Thucydides, the great ancient Greek
historian, says,14

11 Thus, Chuang Tzu is frivolous when profound, profound when frivolous, as Lin Yutang said, though he did not
say why. We supply one reason here.
12 Colossians 1:13, Hebrews 11:5. NRSV and Moffatt say ―transfer, take,‖ Phillips says ―reestablish, promote,‖
Revised English Bible says ―bring us into, take up to.‖ These are all significant renderings.
13 Despite his insight that history is a re-enactment, Collingwood shrank from such strange thought of unstable
―rhyming‖ and got stuck in reenactment as a mechanical repetition of thought—in political constitution, in
mathematics. The Republican constitution of Rome he cited is the same then as it is now, in our mind. The
Pythagorean Theorem in Pythagoras‘ mind then is same as the Theorem in our minds here now. See R. G.
Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford, 1946, 1993, pp. 217-218. Such a mechanical repetition loses all the
vitality of history pulsating/rhyming, reflecting/mirroring, in our collective life in time.
14 The History of the Peloponnesian War (431-413 BCE), Book 1, Section 22. Thucydides was defeated in the War
he conducted. In exile as its punishment, he wisely wrote this magnum opus on the War. Later (85 BCE), his
punishment paralleled Ssu-ma Ch‘ien 司馬遷 who wrote his magnum opus, ―Historical Records 史記,‖ and
set a pattern for later historians. So, history rhymes/reflects itself even among the historians. Inter-
rhyming/reflecting in time also enables their historical ―re-enactment.‖ Still, all this is our latecomers‘ after-
vision; the two historians must not have thought so.
64 Kuang-ming Wu

I shall be content if it (my history) is judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact
knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of the
human things must resemble if it does not reflect it.

Time goes to inter-resemble, inter-rhyming, inter-reflecting, and so knowing our past aids
us to interpret our future, to know ourselves better, to plan our future better, and to live our
life better and more confident.
It is thus that reading a biography heals us,15 and keeping a journal makes an
autobiography that also heals, to wit, makes us whole, integrated. Therefore,
―graphotherapy‖—reading and writing therapy—is an important therapeutic strategy, for to
read life and write life is to shape life and put it together, whole.
Now, the importance of writing/reading life as life-shaping goes beyond personal living.
Thurlow said that myth is a tale of the supernatural, to reveal the divine in terms of this life,
describing other-worldly matters in this-worldly concepts.16 Myth is the Beyond-us told for
our understanding here now. Why do we bother to do so? We do so in order for life here now
to partake in the Beyond, in what is beyond in the future. That is why the Christian myths,
say, are constantly retold every Sunday.
We usually say the primitive people reenact the cosmic events in rituals, and explain their
meanings by telling myths. We do not realize that the primitive people perform rituals and tell
myths for us today to pattern our lives after theirs, and that to tell in this context is already to
do. We with them make myths to enact rituals; no, our mythmaking is itself ritual-enacting.
To tell and recite is to act; we act-telling (ritual) and tell-acting (mythmaking). Performing
acting-telling, we shape the world into a ―cosmos,‖ an all-beautiful orderly whole, to integrate
and renew life.
Thus to translate an ancient story is to re-describe it to transpose it here now, so as for us
to imitate it (not repeat it), learn from it, and relive it in our lives in our own ways, re-
freshened and invigorated in the primal vitality of the ancient story. Here to learn is to imitate
to reenact; that is what ritual performance is all about, i.e., reenacted in mythmaking, in
storytelling our way. Translation of stories, again and again, is history-making and history-
reading that is a sacred performance of mythical life-ritual, powerful, rejuvenating us and our
lifeworld.
The key here is to imitate to learn; to imitate is to learn and follow an example—in
action, in life.17 ―Monkey see, monkey do‖—children are experts in learning by imitating, and
Mencius assures us that the Great Ones lose no heart of their own baby (4B12) who
constantly imitates and learns. Learning does not prepare for life; learning is life itself. They
say that every portion of Shakespeare can be traced to his predecessors; it is imitation that
made Shakespeare what he is, with the greatness all his own.
Furthermore, imitation is no repetition. Japan imitates other cultures differently from the
way USA imitates. No single imitation is identical with any other; each subtly differs from all
others, including the original that appears to each distinct imitator. No two students grow
alike under the same teacher, nor do they achieve alike. Imitation implies some subtle

15 Reading Eisenhower American Hero: The Historical Record of His Life (American Heritage Publishing Co.,
1969) stirs our hearts. Four stories of Jesus‘ life are bequeathed to us in the New Testament, and there has
been endless outpouring of the ―life of Jesus‖ since then.
16 Thus begins Gilbert Thurlow, Biblical Myths and Mysteries, NY: Crown Publishers, 1974.
17 A well-known classic in this context is Thomas à Kempis‘ (1380-1471) Imitatio Christi that is no imitation.
 History 65

incongruity from the original.18 It is because imitation is a controlled creation—controlled

both by the original (so it is an imitation) and by the imitator (so it is a creation).
Ironically, the imitator may have to deny that his imitation is his. In imitating A, A
appears in the imitator, not the imitator appears, as praising A promotes A, not the one who
praises.19 An openly admitted imitation, as ―mine,‖ is a contradiction; or perhaps, once
admitted, it is no longer imitation but learning, for all learning begins with silent imitation to
end in creation that is by definition beyond the original.
No wonder, in his passionate exhortation to learning with which he began his writings,
Hsün Tzu 荀 子 says, ―The blue issues from indigo and is bluer than indigo‖—bluer, purer,
and more brilliant than the original indigo. A learner goes as the teacher points to, and soon
goes beyond the teacher whom she leaves behind. Thus the true teacher is a dead one, to wit,
a dated one.20 Teacher is a history, a story to start, to take off into our own stories.
This is as it should be. Imitation staying imitation stunts originality; it is learning stunted,
stopped. Imitation must be ingenious and creative to be enjoyable. All comedians and
cartoonists in high creative IQs are imitators openly touted to evoke laughs, and great
painters, calligraphers, and storytellers (novelists, journalists) imitate the situation to reveal
and evoke learning. Exact repetition is a fiction cranked out of machines; no human is capable
of ―imitating‖ machine.
To ―imitate nature (天 倣)‖ is unintelligible unless it means ―nature let go of (天 放).‖21
But how could we imitate nature, how could we let nature go, and how could ―imitating‖ be
―letting go‖ when it comes to imitating nature? Aren‘t we duplicating nonsense with
nonsense? Well, the impossibility disappears if we note that we have in us an urge to imitate
what is there in nature, in us or outside, and to satisfy that urge, we let go of nature, both
within us and without.
This is the origin of art as imitation,22 children‘s especialty—―monkey see, monkey do,‖
and monkeys are everywhere, for ―here and there, funny things are everywhere,‖ as Dr. Seuss
wisely said for kids. We are profound when we return to this kids‘ primal urge. Exposition,
exegesis, history, they are all imitations of actuality. Phenomenology is descriptive
metaphysics, a re-description as they appear; it is an imitation of the nature of things. Each
description differs from every other, uniquely revealing the world. Creation imitates as
imitation creates.
We have just described and traced imitation, and we feel good; to live is to imitate,
creatively. All this human creation-imitation constitutes a continuous story. Now, here is a
storytelling about life-stories of imitation description in ―history.‖ What is history? In a way,

18 So says Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 2001, VII: 677.

19 In In Praise of What Persists (NY: Harper and Row, 1983), its ―editor‖ Stephen Berg disappears.
20 Jesus began his ministry at John the Baptist, who pointed his disciples to Jesus and in joy yielded them all to
Jesus. No wonder, Jesus said John was the greatest among men. Jesus died and rose for us, and vanished,
leaving us to do the Acts of the Apostles.
21 I considered this play on words, a pseudo-homonym, from a different perspective in ―Learning as a Master from
a Master: ‗Chuang Tzu‘ in University General Education,‖ Journal of Humanities East/West, December 1998,
p. 178.
22 Aristotle is the first person to claim art as imitation, but he is not responsible for this insight in this context in
this manner. For a magisterial albeit wordy study of Aristotle on art, see S. H. Butcher, Aristotle‟s Theory of
Poetry and Fine Art with a Critical Text and Translation of The Poetics (1894, 1897, 1911), Fourth Edition,
NY: Dover Publications, 1951, pp. 116, 122, 150, 198, et passim. Jones saw how rhythm relates to imitation
and praxis, but he is more provocative and controversial than elucidating, much less enlightening (John Jones,
On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy, Oxford University Press, 1962, 1968).
66 Kuang-ming Wu

we have been rehearsing history, reshaping history, by telling stories about history, for history
is storytelling in human time. To this thrilling query we turn, where our ―forefathers‖ appear.

OUR FOREFATHERS
What is history? Our expressions of it tell us a strange paradox. On the one hand, as the
phrases ―before the common era‖ and Chinese ―i ch‟ien 以前‖ say, the past is before us, in
front of us. On the other hand, the past is what is already passed-and-gone, ―kuo ch‘ü 過去,‖
what is gone-on, ―i wang 以往.‖ As what is passed away, the past is dead, nowhere; as what
is before us, the past continues to lead us on into the future, what-is-to-come.
Combined both points above, history amounts to being our ―forefathers,‖ our past
(―father‖) in front of us (―fore-‖), showing us what would happen if we do A, not B or C. The
true teacher is a dead one. As ―dead,‖ the past does not obstruct our prospective vision of the
future. We can freely decide to act in whatever way we wish, for the past is dead, and yet
history is a ―teacher‖ to admonish us not to act in a certain way.
Socrates‘ Daimon that admonished him must have been the daimonic power of history.
Thus the past, the history, has a strange power over us at present. The past does not control
us, yet we are strangely drawn to it by our own adoration and reverence to it. The past at the
back leads us on in front by attraction, not by oppressive control. History is an excitement
without obstruction.
An example at hand—no need to go to ancient Sisyphus yet—shows how exciting history
is. We all have our forefathers who have passed on. Recently my brother Jung-ming brought
our father‘s ashes from Taiwan to rest with our mother in Long Island. Here is what I
confessed to everyone in our family on that glorious day of celebrative memorial.

Thanks to Uncle Jung-ming and Auntie Norma‘s historic struggles of love, we all see
today this momentous Joy of A-kong joined with A-má in the USA. To understand this Joy,
we must gaze at our Lord Jesus Christ‘s Resurrection from the dead. Three things show the
Joy through the young man: (a) Jesus is going ahead of us to (b) Galilee where he made us (c)
the children of God‘s family.

(a) The dazzlingly white young man23 told us that ―He is going ahead of‖ us with our A-
kong and A-má (Grandpa and Grandma), who want us to go see them. They are ahead of us in
time! Today begins tomorrows; every today we die into new tomorrow.

(b) Today is our empty tomb showing that they are ahead in the Galilee of tomorrow. Its
―linen cloths‖ are what ―wrap‖ our today‘s ―body‖ of plans, pleasures and sorrows, to be left
with A-kong and A-má‘s precious ashes, all testifying to tomorrow, and another fresh
tomorrow.

(c) Galilee is where we are forever the children of God and of our A-kong and A-má.
Kids are fresh, living for tomorrows. We are kids to A-kong and A-má who are with Jesus

23 The person, who brings us from past Jesus we remember to the resurrected Christ ahead of us, is a ―young man.‖
The One who translates our life to the future, where our forefathers are waiting for us, is forever ―young‖
because the future is young. That Young Man is Jesus himself resurrected, and our A-kong and A-má are with
Him.
 History 67

ahead of us, waiting for us as we live today, one at a time, for the Galilee of tomorrows with
A-kong and A-má, with Jesus.

That is why we are so glad here today hugging A-kong and A-má‘s ―linen cloths,‖
testifying to the joy of tomorrows. All these words are our conviction, expressing my actual
daily experience. I am sure they are of yours also.

A-kong and A-má our grandparents, who have passed on, beckon to us to pull us ahead
toward tomorrow. Their ―linen cloths‖ of stories that wrap them in our remembrances do so.
Those linen cloths are our historic dawn today toward our tomorrow.
To make a long story short, in Sisyphus‘ dark pit, at the bottom of the hill, is our dawn
with Sisyphus‘. The childhood dawn in life everyday—especially the dawn of every today—
is a given, a historical boulder. We would always gladly carry it with us as long as we always
push the boulder as the day grows, today, for the boulder is ―us‖ given us by our A-kong and
A-má. The rest is history, unending.
Thus to live along in history enriches the history endlessly. How could the story of our
history be endless? One reason is that the very telling of the story of history is itself history,
as a telling of history-storytelling makes its own story. Unlike Gödel who said that any
system—a stand-together of ideas—is incomplete, provable only by other system(s), no
problem we have here to show that the telling of history is history itself, for we are proved by
those beyond-us, our A-kong and A-má. Gödel is wrong (history self-proves) because he is
right (we are proved by forefathers).
Three explanations can be given of above. One, the dawn is nothing and everything; it is
self-creative. Storytelling describes the dawn of things. It invokes, via description, to establish
the Thou (as Buber proposed) of things, not flatly describing them to destroy the Thou into an
It (as Marcel cautioned). Two, story is both coherent and open, ready to go on out in any
direction, ready to take in anything described as a part of the story, and anytime a story is
told, things whatever gather to come out coherent and meaningful.
Three, painting snow-shadows paints snow un-paintable; story paints things, and their
milieu shows. We cannot point at a milieu in which we point at things. Story induces a milieu
by describing things that are in the milieu yet not the milieu. Story describes things that then
naturally manifest their milieu; thing-description indirectly creates milieu. ―Story‖ is thus a
portmanteau word-world to mirror a protean milieu-world, thereby the lifeworld; mirroring is
indirection of storytelling.
All three points indicate that storytelling is a loose coherence; we tell story to make some
sense (coherence) out of whatever things that come, often senselessly, and yet the story-sense
we make is flexible (loose), a coarse-meshed net ready to change to accommodate whatever
changes that come. How could insane Neroes and Hitlers make history? But that is what they
do; that is the only ―sense‖ they make. Gödel was correct in the spatial things-standing-
together, systems; his theorem works in the world of time, history in storytelling, only
indirectly, one story linking to another, each changing into and by the other.
This is because the sort of system he had in mind stays put and does not change, while
story-in-time, history, is a system on the go that keeps changing. As time goes, our history
gets more things in, and its perspective on things and on itself keeps evolving, changing,
turning wider. The later history is the same as and differs from the previous one.
68 Kuang-ming Wu

History is the ―same different system,‖ which is possible only in time. Because the
previous history and the later history are the same history, the later history knows enough
about the previous one to judge it; because they differ, the later one has a different wider
perspective with which to judge the previous one.
At the same time, the pre-vious history is ever before (以前, 前世, as the Chinese say)
the later one for it to learn from. We learn from our ―forefathers,‖ who serve as our pristine
vision and direction, if not our ideal to follow, yet attended with our loving modifications
with our hindsight wisdom. After all, Charlie the young lad and Charlie the grown-up are a
―same different person,‖ and so he can correct himself. At the same time, ―Great Ones lose no
baby heart of theirs‖ (Mencius); all religions teach us to learn from the child in us and in front
of us. All religions say the child is our Beyond.
By ever accommodating those events without rhyme or reason, wherever they come
from, storytelling weave them into a coherent rhyme called ―history.‖ Thrillingly, we the
storytellers and story-hearers become part of this rhyme, this history. We can show this point
by two themes, how we together identify a historical personage, and how we continue history
by reenactment.
We first go to our identification of a historical person. We would be surprised to find that
in history, identifying a person amounts to identifying an idea, or idea-trend, or ideology as it
comes out and matures, that is, history of a person is a history of ideas. Ideas are alive in
history and its persons.

HISTORY OF IDEAS AND STORYTELLING

Of course, there are stories and there are stories. Wrong stories of ―war on terrorism‖ can
be cured only by right stories of ―compassionate conservatism‖ of ―war on poverty.‖ Stories
can be corrected by telling more and different sorts of stories. An example—a story—of this
telling of different stories is the task of history of ideas, and history of ideas amounts to
history of persons who incarnate these ideas. Studying these ideas amounts to dialoguing with
persons incarnating these ideas, and dialoguing with the person is important, not (just)
―finding the person as he is.‖
We usually think that to study history is to ascertain a ―real thinker,‖ ―a past thinker
exactly as he was in his own historical setting‖ by ―textual criticism,‖ and so on. My
professor, Dr. John Wild, rejects this approach—―antiquarian‖ storytelling—for ―living
dialogue . . . with the past in (our) own point of view,‖ another sort of storytelling. Wild says
that the ―real Plato‖ is nowhere after he is gone. Each Plato reconstructed later is different
from all others and we vainly fight for one against all others.
Our fight mistakenly takes Plato as ―an isolated individual,‖ not ―a communicating agent
who spoke to many persons . . . , stirring them to living dialogue . . . throughout history to
further reflections and questions. (We must not) make an arbitrary cleavage between all this
and the real Plato . . . who initiate(d) this ever expanding flow of thought and meaning . . .‖
To an objection that ―other men, not Plato, carried it on,‖ Wild replies that ―dialogue is
precisely a fusion—a confusion—of the two. . . . a living tissue (that) belongs to both of us. . .
The real Plato, in his essential being, is to be found precisely in the ongoing history of
 History 69

Platonic criticism and commentary,‖ and Platonic criticism and commentary are dialogues
with Plato.
Plato is unintelligible without these later critics as they are without him. ―Objective‖
investigation of the meaning of Plato as if it were facts about Plato (dates/places of
birth/death) neglects its own historicity, with new horizons of interests/questions. To try to be
―objective‖ about Plato reduces him to an object, bypassing his subjectivity. Criticism of the
text and factual study of its time prepare Plato studies; they are not their center/goal. 24
To bring out Wild‘s contention and substantiate him, here is a proposal,25 to see an
individual as a story or a series of stories. Two stories about an individual would help us
understand this proposal: a ―tree‖ as different showings-to-beholders, and a ―child‖ as a
constantly growing/changing dynamics.
Story One: When two persons, A and B, look at a tree and talk about it, ―this tree‖ is the
tree-as-shown-to-A in contrast to the tree-as-shown-to-B. Both A and B recognize these
showings, in all their differences, as veritably ―the same real tree,‖ and yet in fact there exists
no ―real tree‖ separate from these showings. Their common observation of and discussion on
―this tree‖ is impossible otherwise. At the same time, both persons also realize that these
showings, for all their differences, are sufficiently coherent and distinctive as to make ―this
tree,‖ not ―that tree.‖ This tree is the same-different tree, for ―to be is to be perceived.‖
Story Two: A child is a newborn, a three year old, a teenager, and a husband, a father, and
then a grandfather, all of these different persons. He still remains, however, this same dear
child to his parents and this same dear friend to his friends who know him through his life-
changes. ―This real he‖ is nowhere to his friends apart from these different persons at
different times. There is no ―real child‖ to his parents apart from all these different growth
stages. This person is a same-different person.
Combining these two stories, we now realize that ―Confucius‖ is the record of his
conversations by his disciples called The Analects of Confucius, and Chu Hsi‘s impressions of
Confucius that differ from those of Wang Yang-ming and many others in the history of
Chinese thought. ―Confucius‖ is none other than (Story One) what appears, and how ―he‖
appears, throughout the ages, (Story Two) growing and changing as ―our Confucius,‖ as (One
and Two) we ourselves in later ages grow and change with him.26
In all these changes we can distinctly recognize Confucius as ―Confucius,‖ not any other
person such as Socrates. In all this, further, the distortions or misunderstandings are so
labeled because of wide (not just slight) deviations from a broad (not narrow) consensus
among later historical impressions of ―Confucius,‖ including the consensus on the texts.
Furthermore, a defense of a new view is conducted by appealing to the same broad
consensus on subsequent impressions of Confucius throughout history. It is thus that
storytelling of history is refined and corrected by more and different storytelling. As part of
Confucius, his ideas grow and shift as he does, with later interpretations of those ideas of his.

24 Sydney and Beatrice Rome, eds, Philosophical Interrogations, NY: Harper Torchbook, 1964, pp. 121-123.
25 This proposal continues my reflection on ―correspondence‖ and ―objectivity‖ in On Metaphoring: A Cultural
Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 84-89.
26
Michael Nylan & Thomas Wilson catalogue many images of ―Confucius‖ in Lives of Confucius, Doubleday,
2010. Raynmond Dawson also sees Confucius‘ images as ―vague and shadowy‖ (Confucius, Oxford University
Press, 1981). It is an interesting chase after a will-o‘-the-wisp, unless we have other purposes in mind, as here.
70 Kuang-ming Wu

Mind you, we the latecomers are an integral part of this process. Confucius thus shaped the
whole China, as Wing-tsit Chan correctly said.27

HISTORY THE HUMAN DRAMA OF REENACTMENT

History is a story, humanly lived, ever continuous. Its dramatic significance is never more
illuminated than by a single word of Collingwood, ―re-enactment.‖ History is the human
drama of reenacted understanding. Sadly, however, his belabored explication of this notion
risks distortion.
Eager to show how the dead past can and does reappear now, he appealed to our mental
capture of Rome‘s Republican Constitution and Pythagorean theorem, exactly as ancient
Romans and Pythagoras entertained them in their minds.28 Here Collingwood committed an
overkill to collapse human reenactment into repetition, cognitively legal-logical and
mathematical. We must nudge him to be wary; reenactment is no repetition. We must now
explain how they differ.
Argument goes in self-replication that describes how we come to understand to rehearse a
complex logical argument; this process of subjective growth in understanding and rehearsing
belongs to history.29 Still, logical argument as such objectively remains unchanged out there,
ready to repeat itself indifferently in many minds across time and space.
In contrast, interpersonal understanding goes by reenactment, subject-subject co-
resonance. History is a river whose water of each moment, one experience, differs from the
water of any other experience. Co-resonance of human experiences, diverse, interrelated, is a
peculiar river that flows on self-recursively.30 Experiences inter-reflect, co-resound (影 響)
―breath to breath‖ (息 息 相 關), birthing unceasing (生生不息), day after day ever novel
(日日新又日新), to reenact into ―history.‖31 Two examples may help to concretize the matter.
My reading of fatherhood logically infers what fatherly love is, but I perceive what it
really means as I hold my own baby in my arms. I now say, ―Aha, this is fatherly love. I now
understand how my dad loves me,‖ yet I know my love to my baby is not my father‘s love of
me; they differ in character, in circumstances. Their interaction of similarity and difference
makes the history of fatherhood to tell its story deep in our souls.
Again, I go visit my dear friend to weep with him whose wife has just been declared to
live for six more months. I weep because he is my dear friend, and in my love of my wife I do
understand his sorrow in his deep love of his wife. I know I do not love his wife and his

27
Wing-tsit Chan said so in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 14.
28 Collingwood, Idea of History, op. cit., pp. 217-218.
29 We have a ―history‖ of the development of logic and mathematics, to be sure, but it is a story different from the
one we are considering. The history of logic-development is a part of human history, and its consideration
should be reserved until we have ascertained the nature of history itself as dramatic reenactment, not automatic
repetition. We will consider repetition in science at the end of this section.
30 That the world is a river is a familiar perception of ancient Heraclitus and Aristotle (Metaph. 987a32, Meteor.
357b30) and ancient Chinese Confucius and Mencius. Heraclitus said that one cannot step into the same river
twice, and the river itself is ―change‖ produced by strife (The Pre-Socratics, ed. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos,
Anchor Books, 1974, pp. 189-213 [G.S. Kirk and W.K.C. Guthrie]). Confucius and Mencius stood in awe at
the riverbank (Analects 9/17, Mencius 4A18).
31 These Chinese phrases are cited because Chinese people are deeply history-conscious.
 History 71

spousal love differs from mine. My weeping historically reenacts experiences; history is
human drama of reenactment, not bland logical self-repetition.
China is historical in reenactment. Three Confucian examples suffice. One is Confucius‘
three sighs that begin his Analects. He sighs, ―Oh isn‘t it rather pleasant to learn and practice
it time and again!‖ Learning follows the teacher to grow beyond him in daily practice. Isn‘t
this process an historical reenactment so pleasant?
Then he sighs, ―Oh isn‘t it rather delightful that classmates come from afar (to inter-
learn)?‖ Friends give-and-take in inter-sympathetic differences. Confucius finally sighs, ―Oh
isn‘t it rather princely of a person whom people ignore, and never sours?‖ Doesn‘t Confucius
personally reenact his own princely composure as a climax of learning from teacher and
friends? The entire Analects go on in such historical reenactment.
Two, later Mencius (2B13) yearned impatiently after the reappearance of legendary
princely rulers such as T‘ang and Wen, for the customary 500 year cycle for the return of
princely rulers had long been reached and gone. Still, he could not have imagined that the
new emerging princely rulers to be identical with rulers T‘ang and Wen.
Three, Mencius (1A7) urged Duke Hsüan‘s heart unable to bear the sight of a bull, in
mortal jitters being dragged to a sacrificial slaughter, to apply to people; the unbearable heart
at the non-human bull is reenacted into the unbearable heart at the human. History is a
threefold verb; it reenacts, rhymes, and develops. The Duke‘s act to a bull reenacts it on
people. His-act-to-a-bull rhymes with his-act-to-people, to develop princely rulership, to
become historic.
In contrast, science treasures exact repeatability of its discovery as its proof and
confirmation. Logic allows no deviation from the strictly prescribed steps. Still, logical
repetition has its place in the historical dynamics of reenactment. Geometrical proof is
historical performance that goes from this point to the next; the necessity of 7+5=12 is not
analytical, for ―12‖ cannot obtain by analyzing, ―7,‖ ―+,‖ ―5,‖ and ―=,‖ but by adding 7 to 5,
historically.32 Kuhn also describes ―scientific revolution in paradigm shift,‖33 history in
scientific reenactment.
It is time to take stock. All the above Chinese examples have been paradigms rekindled
again and again in the souls of subsequent generations—till today. No less exciting is the
history of scientific revolution rehearsed by Kuhn, whose slender volume is justly hailed as
one of ―The Hundred Most influential Books Since the Second world War‖ by The Times
Literary Supplement.34

32 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976, pp. 384-286.
See my On Chinese Body Thinking, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp. 300-302. The same historical-bodily performance
is seen in the synthetic a priori calculation of 7+5=12 in Kant‘s Critique of Pure Reason, B15-17, as I
explained in History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, pp. 16-
17.
33 Newton‘s absolute space/time gave way to Einstein‘s relativistic warps in time, and then to self-recursive super-
string theory and beyond. On today‘s physics, see Michio Kaku‘s popular Hyperspace, Oxford University
Press and NY: Doubleday, 1994. The book adopts a fashionable title ―hyperspace,‖ perhaps showing the
science as spatial, as if to say that our going-beyond in ―hyper-― is not historical. We have no ―physics of
history‖ but a history of physics, as here, showing that history goes beyond physics.
34 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Third Edition, The University of Chicago
Press, 1996. The quotation from The Times Literary Supplement appears in its back cover. We won‘t be
surprised if someone claims that the root cause of our continuing attraction to the notion of ―evolution‖ lies
here; evolution is reenactment marching on in history.
72 Kuang-ming Wu

―Rekindling‖ and ―excitement‖ here are reenactments that make history. History is our
collective melodious performance of the life-music of human nature, each life-performance of
which differs from all others.35 History is the human drama of rhymed reenactment, never
bland self-identical replication, although reenactment includes repetition as its part, as rhythm
and rhyme. Rhythmic rhyme composes ―reason‖ in logical thinking.
Reenactment is presented in one life-story after another—in history, as history. To tell
countless stories of human experiences is itself to relive and reenact them to continue history.
We live to tell stories of life-experiences, to reenact them to relive them, to perform and
create an exciting music of history, and thereby to become history. The music of history is
humanly, socio-culturally orchestrated in ―politics.‖ Human history is typified by political
history. Thus we cannot help but at least peep into the history of politics.

HISTORY OF POLITICS
Mind you. The purpose of this section is not to present an exhaustive scholarly treatise on
political theory but to tell stories of politics to tell of the power of storytelling, its cash value
in communal living. By its nature, this section is an impressionistic overview, a rough story,
of the sad stories of human politics. It is likewise with all other sections on all other themes of
life. Stories are told of them, to tell stories of storytelling, not of those themes told of.
Let us take a look at a concrete story of mankind, as to how powerfully storytelling
governs the world. One of humanity‘s most complex and depressing stories is that of politics,
and no politics is without an ideology, that is adherence to a myth, a story. Politics as
government entails two parties, ruler and ruled, and stories weave their interactions, wrapped
in stories called ―ideologies‖ that govern the community‘s constitution, convention, and
common sense.
Why do we need governance in the first place? Answering this question rehearses
familiar stories of human nature, in China and the West. China appeals to natal ―family‖ ruled
by the father with parental care and guidance. Rulership must be insistently, consistently
fatherly, caring for all family members of the state, especially the injured and the helpless,
and such parental care originates in the human heart that cannot bear people suffering. So, the
inherent necessity of political governance originates in our human nature of family
tenderness, to dictate how government should proceed.
World politics is thus home economics of all under heaven. This is politics 政 rightly 正
handling ㄆ res publica, affairs of the public realm. Departing from this norm of humane
natural law of politics departs from orderly cultivation of the human world, and everyone is
destroyed, the ruler with the ruled, in bloody revolution after revolution.36
Sadly, the ideal of ―(all) under heaven, one family 天下一家‖ all too soon turns into the
desire, ―(my) family (over) all under heaven 家天下‖; attention now shifts to how the ruler
can effectively govern to effectively benefit the ruler alone. ―Family politics‖ now turned a

35 All religions have musical scores for humanity to reenact and to play repeatedly, but perhaps Buddha‘s is the
clearest and best known—―birth, senescence, sickness, and death.‖
36 Confucian political ideals have just been quickly rehearsed. Taoist revolts are unintelligible without this
common understanding of Chinese politics.
 History 73

clever political campaign to dupe people into blindly obeying him as their ―father,‖ no matter
what.37 As a result, devastating dictatorship dominates Chinese history.
In the West, Plato also had a natural necessity of politics with the three parts that
constitute a person, the rational governing the voluntary and the nutritive; ―body politic‖ is
and is to be similarly constituted by rational ruler, military guardians, and productive farmers
and sustaining artisans. Public ―health‖-under-reason was ―justice‖; administering public
justice is healthy politics.38 Sadly, the ―rational necessity‖ of the ruler soon turned into ruler‘s
rationalization to devise to benefit him alone, and propaganda tricked his people into
following his dictates, as the Machiavellian prince. Disasters ensued.39
Interestingly, the above quick survey shows that all dictators had to persuade their
governed populace; government depends on the governed to work. An unabashed promoter of
rulership if not dictatorship, Hobbes, placed its origin in people who consent to yield part of
their individual sovereignty to their common ruler.40 The public monster ―Leviathan‖ is
people‘s creation, and an absolute monarchy is ironically based on democratic principle. All
politics is people-supreme.
Naturally democracy flourishes, yet ―people government‖ is a contradiction of the ruled
as the ruler. So Plato condemned democracy as mob-rule of chaotic desires. No wonder, odd
as it may sound, John Locke‘s classical rationale for democracy has to continue the ruler-
ruled framework, on the then common idea that our Ruler is God in natural law that includes
reason, to equally rule people. Human ruler is viceroy of Supreme Ruler, heaven and nature.41
Oddly, democracy is rationalized by the divine right of kings, God and natural reason.
Interestingly, China parallels Locke by taking people to be under ―Father Heaven‖ whose
viceroy is the ruler the ―Son of Heaven‖ to administer the heavenly responsibility of
nurturing, protecting, and caring for people the Heaven‘s children 天民. The state is centered
in the ruler who is responsible for people‘s welfare, as the family is centered in the father who
is responsible for children‘s welfare. God and nature are one as ―Heaven.‖
What do we say to all this? Democracy literally means people-power, not people-rule, for
the people means the ruled (Plato42). God and Heaven are invisible, so natural reason must be
that under which people are to be ruled. Concretely, Americans are under the law and statutes.
Their ruler the president is chosen by the people by the principle of—what? It must be ―by
natural reason,‖ which does not come naturally,43 but must be taught. Hobbes‘ people
prudently give up some of their sovereignty to be ruled under a ruler, but their prudence must
come from education.

37 Arthur Waley has a handy description of the sad affairs in Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (1939),
Stanford University Press, 1982, pp. 151-196.
38 See the Republic 434d-445b. Francis MacDonald Cornford‘s translation is perhaps the clearest (Oxford
University Press, 1941, pp. 129-144).
39 Why violent disharmony erupts against rational natural necessity of political harmony belongs to the mystery
called ―akrasia.‖ Violence is everywhere, interpersonally (violence) and individually (misfortune, depression).
Various sections in the present volume describe this mystery.
40 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (1651), edited with an introduction by C. B. Macpherson, London: Penguin Books,
1985. Laslett devoted a considerable space (pp. 67-93) to denying that Hobbes was Locke‘s primary target of
attack (Filmer was), but doubtlessly Hobbes was involved in Locke‘s attack of Filmer (cf. p. 70). See Locke:
Two Treatises of Government (1960), edited by Peter Laslett, Cambridge University Press, 1988. All this
however is a side issue in the history of ideas.
41 See ibid., especially pp. 93-122.
42 Plato‘s people are the voluntary-appetitive part of body-politic. Aristotle just repeated Plato, saying that those fit
to rule must rule and those fit to be ruled must be ruled.
43 People were not born with natural reason as animals were with instinct.
74 Kuang-ming Wu

No wonder, as Plato stresses education, Jefferson insists that democracy can properly
operate only as people are educated. Confucius says that it is joy to learn from teachers,
classmates, and people around, and we must be princely enough not to be offended by people
ignoring us.44 That is the sign of an educated person.45 If uneducated, we take offense at
people and begin to take the law into our own hands. Violence ensues.
As O‘Neill said, Dictator Bush is a blind man among deaf people.46 Bush was quite a
poor student at school,47 and American people honor education with their mere lips.48 No
wonder gun control is quite unpopular in USA and its National Rifle Association rules
supreme as a member of ―international rifle association‖ where various weapons trades thrive.
Raw violence is popular.
Democracy is in a shambles now, for no one takes serious education seriously. Many
dictators today thrive under the name of ―democracy,‖49 including brutal plutocracy of which
USA is preeminent with its unabashed dictatorship, and Bush bullying everyone with world-
unilateralism. Since democracy thrives on capitalism50 (like it or not, justified or not)
plutocracy easily takes over democracy in the name of ―democracy.‖51
Democracy is thus gutted empty, leaving its hollow name, ever dangling to entice people.
Churchill famously said in 1947, ―(D)emocracy is the worst form of Government except all
those other forms that have been tried from time to time.‖ What he said is apt if ―democracy‖
were replaced with ―wolf dictatorship‖ under the sheep-hide of ―democracy.‖

44 ―O, learning and often practicing it, isn‘t [it] rather delightful? O, having classmates from afar [to mutually
learn], isn‘t [it] rather pleasant? O, people-ignored and not offended, isn‘t [it] rather princely [of] man?‖
―Among three people walking must be my teachers.‖ (Analects 1/1, 7/22)
45 No wonder, the father of legalism Hsün Tzu insists on education to shape us into obeying the law. Sadly, later
legalists insist on education of the people, not of the ruler, i.e., shaping people to obey ruler, not shaping ruler
to care for people.
46 Paul O‘Neill, Bush‘s former Treasury Secretary, said in ―60 Minutes‖ (1/11/04), ―In the cabinet meeting, Bush is
a blind man among a roomful of deaf people.‖
47 Bush was a C- student (got D- in philosophy) at Yale; it is not proud of him. Worse, he is a born-again Christian
who wants simply to bask in God‘s cozy acceptance as he is, refusing to be under the dictates of God‘s law of
compassion. He is now a law unto himself and flaunts his money and military might over the whole world.
48 The dumber you are, the politically better you are; it is the worst of ―American egalitarianism.‖ Eisenhower beat
Adlai Stevenson who spoke too well, an "egg-head." See Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American
Life, NY: Vintage, 1966; ironically, an American intellectual has written on American anti-intellectualism. It
evokes many thoughts. [a] Plato is right to see democracy as the worst mob-rule of unbridled/uneducated
desires, as Jefferson is to stress education as the backbone of democracy. [b] How the educated can live in the
stuffy uneducated air without suffocation is a marvel. [c] How ―dumb USA‖ is the richest in money and
science is another marvel.
49 Fareed Zakaria portrays a deterioration of democracy in the name of ―democracy,‖ from Peru to the Philippines,
in ―The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,‖ in Foreign Affairs, November/December 1997, pp. 22-43. Sadly, he did
not note USA as the highest hijacker of democracy with ―money democracy.‖
50 Perhaps this is because money is power anyone can get in a free market, capitalism is free-market economy, and
democracy is people-power. Communism has equality of the people but no equal opportunity for the people,
democracy and people‘s equal opportunity to make money is capitalism. Such is how reasoning on paper goes,
but in fact money-power is not free for everyone, for capitalism turns into money-elitism, plutocracy, to
oppress people.
51 Someone may say, ―Democracy is associated with capitalism that is money-operated, and so plutocracy, money-
rule, is at the center of democracy.‖ We must disagree. Capitalism is money-democracy; plutocracy is money-
dictatorship. People in democratic capitalism freely compete in money-enterprises, while people in plutocratic
regime are suppressed by money-tyranny. We must admit, though, that the two tend dangerously to collapse
into each other, and democracy easily slides into plutocracy, while it is quite hard if not impossible for
plutocracy to ―climb‖ up to democracy, simply because competition selects the winner who dominates the rest.
Look at how often the Republican Party, money-party, elects the president. Cf. John W. Gardner, Excellence:
Can We Be Equal and Excellent too? NY: Harper, 1961, and Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism, NY:
W. W. Norton, 1969.
 History 75

The revolt came in Henry D. Thoreau‘s ―Resistance to Civil Government‖ (1848) closely
followed by John S. Mill‘s ―On Liberty‖ (1859).52 Sadly, however, eloquent as they both are,
they are more of powerful tracts against government abuse than careful theoretical essays
elucidating what true democracy consists in.
Theoretically unstable and devoid of solid rational basis, democracy flourishes today all
over the world, to enable catastrophic confusions to rule supreme. This phenomenon would
have dumbfounded if not confounded Locke and Jefferson whose promotions of democracy
were precisely in order to stem such catastrophes. True reflection on democracy, truly
effective, is yet to appear53; such a sad story of world democracy!
But then, how do we know all politics as dire? We do so by history of politics that judges
all politics wrong. What is it that judges history, then? It is history, and in fact history makes
no mistakes. All our sadness must not blind us to a solid base of life that is infallible through
histories of all ages, history itself. This surprising fact we must consider now.

HISTORY AND THE I CHING 易經 MAKE NO MISTAKES

The original Aesop‘s fables are a rough mirror of the rough world in the sixth century
BCE Greece and its environs, mixed with eye-catching wits and clever jokes. People later
trimmed them to charm us, instructing us in our moral standards. This is the story of
―progress of mankind,‖ history improving on history. China goes the same way, just more
self-conscious of history with grand historians judging the events as they record the events, as
with the Tso Chuan 左傳, the Shih Chi 史記, and so on.
Thus human behaviors continue as they are but standards to judge them change as history
progresses. To ―continue as they are‖ is Akrasia, describing nature as mix of compassion and
cruelty mirrored by the original Aesop‘s fables; humanity tells compassion from cruelty, and
comes to choose compassion as a ―moral standard.‖ The reason is that compassion lasts (it is
―proper in situ,‖ yi2 宜, so it is ―right,‖ yi4 義), while cruelty does not last (called ―violence‖).
Thus we humans are part of nature to follow the nature of things. Our story of nature-
following is called ―history,‖ human-natural, to judge human behaviors. Such history-
―judging‖ with its standards changing as it progresses shows that history makes no mistake.
Aesop‘s fables are pretty but ―complete Aesop‖ is not pretty, out of which pretty Aesop is
born. Such birth-story is history, and so history makes no mistake. The same historical
progress is told by ―complete Grimm‖ and ―complete Andersen.‖54
Let us concretely see history as storytelling by considering the I Ching 易經 the Classic of
Changes Confucius admired. We ask, ―Does the I Ching ever make mistakes?‖ Before
answering this fascinating question as point (3), we must see (1) what mistake in life is and

52 Walden and Resistance to Civil Government: Henry D. Thoreau, Second Edition, ed. William Rossi, NY: W. W.
Norton, 1992, and John Start Mill: On Liberty: Annotated Text, Sources and Background Criticism, ed. David
Spitz, NY: W. W. Norton, 1975.
53 Plato correctly said that democracy is the worst form of government and education is the cure, but his ―solution‖
of philosopher-king is empty of content and has fostered dictatorship of dunces.
54
On the not-pretty story of the original Aesop‘s fables, see Olivia and Robert Temple, trs, Aesop: The Complete
Fables, NY: Penguin Books, 1998, pp. ix-xxiii. See also The Complete Grimm‟s Fairy Tales, NY: Random
House, 1972, p. xiii, and The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, NY: Random House, 2006, p. xi.
76 Kuang-ming Wu

then see (2) what the I Ching is. We will then (4) conclude that history makes no mistakes,
and derive some benefits from this point.
(1) Western thinkers have long been so preoccupied with ―mistakes‖ as a central notion,55
to miss the ―knowledge‖-forest for the ―mistake‖-trees. Let me explain. We sense in life; as
sensing is direct, so knowing is. Knowing things is direct, starting at knowing that I am
hungry.56 Of course no direct human sensing of knowing is immune from taking things amiss;
such mistaking is part of humanity that yet does not take away the directness of sensing that
induces knowing.
Knowing directly contacts things that include my self, and directness is an ingredient of
57
―truth.‖ Without such directness as truth there can be no human life. Directness is primary;
occasional mistakes are secondary. In the final analysis, we must follow our heart, our inner
conviction—it is directness. Such thickness and depth of actuality make us.
We must check our conviction against outside actuality, to check against self-infatuation;
an unexamined life such as Hitler‘s is not worth living. Checking yet remains a subordinate, a
servant, to conviction, not its substitute. One enslaved to endless checking eviscerates oneself
soulless. An unexamined life is less worthless than a life lost in endless self-examinations,
forever uncertain. Hitler at least earned his foul name in history; a man lost in examination,
confirmation, and verification has lost his human identity, even a ―bad human.‖
58
After all, ―to err is human,‖ we say to express our self-knowledge that betokens our
59
knowledge of no-mistake, knowledge of truth, without which we cannot ―err.‖ This fact
indicates that truth is inextricably involved in our very ―erring‖; we betoken truth in and via
error. We are in truth by way of being in error, often truth-ing by erring.
Now, we note here many action-words. These words prod to warn us that the above
paragraph does not mean that to correct mistakes we must pre-suppose truth. Saying so
arranges ―mistake‖ and ―truth‖ as static pieces, concepts, and concludes backward to their
logical relation. This is a static thinking, spatial, observing, and detached.
We leave such analytical and objective inference, and claim that detecting mistakes, that
60
is, perceiving that we have taken things amiss, leads us to correcting them, and in correcting

55 Western philosophy is a series of inter-pickings-apart of mistakes. The possibility of mistakes has fascinated
Western thinkers since Plato (the Theaetetus). Josiah Royce built his idealism on it (The World and the
Individual, 1900-1901). We consider this question concretely by considering the I Ching in China.
56 Descartes convolutedly shows it in the Cogito; Royce elaborates it into a complex system of pragmatic idealism.
57 Bertrand Russell contributed to philosophy with knowledge of acquaintance distinct from knowledge of
description, the latter being based on the former. Sadly, he takes ―acquaintance‖ as that with ―sense data‖
alone, and has hard time inferring direct self-knowledge from knowing sense-data. The supremacy of
contrived sense-data and logical inference haunted his philosophy throughout life, confusing such contrived
supremacy with ―clarity‖ of thinking. See his The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Oxford University Press,
1997, pp. 46-69. Cf. his Preface to The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell 1903-1959, eds. R. E. Egner and L.
E. Denonn, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1961, pp. 7-8, and my comment on it in ―‗Emperor Hundun 渾沌': A
Cultural Hermeneutic,‖ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, September 2007, pp. 263-279.
58 We follow Alexander Pope who said so in his ―An Essay on Criticism (1711)‖ (line 525).
59 How we could do so at all is a mystery, performatively expressed as ―akrasia.‖ E.g., Japan cherishes China‘s
cultural treasures and despites ―dirty Chinamen‖ (akrasia-1), yet does not consider why Japan can cherish and
despise at once (akrasia-2), why ―dirty Chinamen‖ could have produced such treasure (akrisia-3), and why
producing elegant treasure, Chinamen remain so ―dirty‖ and uncouth (akrasia-4), and so on.
60 How can we detect mistakes in the first place? This is the mystery of being historical, that we are wiser after the
fact. We have a mysterious intuition to detect mistakes after the fact. See my Ph.D. dissertation, ―Existential
Relativism,‖ Philosophy Department, Yale University, 1965. We intimated its solution as we mentioned ―more
rhetoric cures rhetoric‖ when this volume began, and then cited history as correcting history.
 History 77

ourselves there emerges truth, post factum, historically, performatively. ―Truth‖ here then is a
historical performance of detecting and correcting ―mistakes,‖ what has been taken amiss.
Here ―truth‖ and ―mistakes‖ are concrete descriptions, telling stories of our thinking
process in time, not static concepts. We do not analyze ―time‖ as an object; we are one of all
61
existents that are in process, in action in time, in ―history.‖ This is a dynamic story-thinking
time-ly, historical. But all this is to anticipate.
(2) Now in this dynamic light, we can consider what the I Ching is. Scholarly Freud
62
quipped, following splashy Wordsworth, ―The child is the father to the man‖ who has
63
obviously fathered the child. Human actuality is made of such inter-parenting, essential to
the Yin-Yang interacting to structure the I Ching thus schematized.
Beware, however; its logical binary schema is not abstractly analytical but thoroughly
concrete, that is to say, enfleshed with poetic story-bits that shimmer forth various tangible
meanings at every meeting with every wayward contingency, the concrete specifics of the
situation of a specific person-milieu, and a specific ―self.‖
Western binary system (11 and 10, 01 and 00) is abstractly concocted to apply
mysteriously to actuality. In contrast, I Ching‘s Yin-Yang mirrors natural mountain shade and
its sunny side, existentially inter-fighting in inter-parenting, reflected in story-bits of the
poetry of five factual trends. The I Ching is a poetry of nature spontaneously no-does (wu-wei
無為), inclusive of the reader, and is open to the future that simply dawns ―without rhyme or
reason‖ yet captured in the Yin-Yang web.
Here is a non-analytical scheme, its sense is non-logical, to tell fortune-future. What
comes we can only meet, helped by the I Ching in the time-river.64 We cannot push the river;
we can only swim in it. Swimming and not pushing, meeting and not controlling, we simply
no-do wu-wei 無為. How? Tommy shouts, ―I don‘ wanna sleep!‖ Mom says, ―OK, don‘t
sleep. Just sit here beside your pillow. Mom will tell your favorite story, OK?‖ He nods.
―Once upon a time . . . ,― And he hits the pillow. Mom did no-do and nothing not done.65
(3) Now we can ask, ―Does this I Ching make mistakes?‖ Incredible as it may sound, it
does not, as nine points here explain. One, the I Ching is a poetry, which makes no mistakes,
for Two, poetry opens out to the human situation for sense, and it makes no sense to say that
the situation makes mistakes, for situation simply situates us, beyond sense or no-sense, and
―mistake‖ is possible only in the context of sense-meaning.
Three, the I Ching‘s composition includes history and the history of its interpretation.
Helmut Wilhelm said,66

61 On how time-as-object to analyze differs from time-as-lived to undergo, see my On the “Logic” of
Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 342-385.
62 Wordsworth said so in his ―The Rainbow‖ (I.7). Freud‘s psychoanalysis that digs out the client‘s past is based on
this idea that childhood-features continue on in life to beget all adult consequences. Japan also says, ―The soul
of three year-old till one hundred 三つ子の魂百まで.‖
63 Chinese thinkers‘ ―actuality‖ is inter-opposing and inter-parenting (相剋相生), and such opposing and parenting
inter-parent! Western ―actuality‖ is linear, not inter-recursive. Kierkegaard opposed Hegel but not the other
way around, nor did the one parent the other; nor did Nietzsche parent Christianity as he demolished it.
64 On ―time‖ in China as seasonal timeliness, see Kuang-ming Wu, The “Logic” of Togetherness, Leiden: Brill,
1998, pp. 342-385.
65 We will come back to this irresistible story later.
66 Helmut and Richard Wilhelm, Understanding the I Ching: The Wilhelm Lectures on the Book of Changes (1966
and 1979), Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 51. This is extraordinary in the West, where no books would
be made of its interpretive history.
78 Kuang-ming Wu

But the essential thing is to keep in mind all the strata that go to make up the book.
Archaic wisdom from the dawn of time, detached and systematic reflection of . . . the Chou
era, pithy sayings from the heart of the people, subtle thoughts of the leading minds: all these
disparate elements have harmonized to create the structure of the book as we know it. Its real
value lies in its comprehensiveness and many-sidedness. This is the aspect under which the
book lives and is revered in China, and if we wish to miss nothing important, we must not
neglect the later strata either. In these, many of the treasures of the very earliest origins are
brought to light, treasurers (treasuries?) that up till then were hidden in the depths of the book,
their existence divined rather than recognized. When the occasion arises, we shall follow the
lines leading back from the later to the earlier elements, in the hope that from the study of the
living development of the book itself we may also derive insight into its meaning.

In other words, the I Ching is the book of changes of the times; it is the book-of-history.
It is itself made of history, an accumulation of the transpiring of the situations, and as no
situation makes mistakes, so no history does, nor does the I Ching make mistake of its story.
Four, thus, the I Ching describes and tells the story of history. History in Chinese is lih-
shih (歷史); ―lih‖ is ―footprints‖ of what continues dripping and ―shih‖ is ―(human) handling
of the records (on bamboo strips).‖67 So, history in China is natural goings-on plus human
meaning-giving (hermeneutics) following it; history unites the natural and the human in it.
For Hegel, world history is world judgment; China adds, ―World history is world meaning,
which the I Ching describes.‖
A ―game‖ evolves out of how its rules naturally evolve in its constant playing, and the
evolving is history; so did the rule of life‘s game. The I Ching is a poetic storybook of rules
of life‘s game, and its storytelling makes no mistakes, for the rule-story is the rule by which
we spot mistakes. Now, in all this time-process, as the situation from past to present is
history, so the situation from present to future is ―destined (天運),‖ not fated (命定). ―What is
their difference?‖
Well, if we so love birds as to make a big birdcage for them, to enjoy them. Then we
expand the cage into an aviary for them to fly freely in it but not outside. We realize then that
the fields and skies are a natural aviary for all birds, with us with them, and so we let them go,
knowing that they won‘t fly out of this Globe, on pain of perdition. This Globe is the aviary-
milieu where they move, live, and have their free being.
Clearly birdcages and aviaries confine birds, ―fated‖ to live in a determined way, but can
we say that these birds with us are ―confined‖ in an ―aviary‖ of this Globe? Are we fated to
live here? No, for we all cannot freely survive outside this Globe. The Globe is the home that
enables us all freely to sing, soar, live and thrive. Here we are ―destined,‖ not ―fated,‖ to live,
and our Globe-in-time is ―history‖ where we are ―destined‖ to move and have our free beings.
Thus history is destined, and destiny is historical. We know our destiny after we have
been through it all and look back at it as history. The I Ching in contrast looks forward to the
future and enables us to know what ―it‖ all is, destined, before we live it; as the I Ching says,
―By managing historical goings-on, the Princely People clearly perceive the timely
君子以治歷明時.‖68 The I Ching renders the future as definitively destined as history is set

67 藤堂明保著, 漢字語源辞典, 東京學燈社, 1965, pp. 477, 480, 106.

68 周書 in 禮記 says, ―易曰, 澤中有火. 革. 君子以治歷明時.‖
 History 79

and mistake-free. So the I Ching is as mistake-free as our past-and-future is destined, for

―mistake‖ is senseless in destining.
Five, human understanding of the times can be mistaken, and human mistakes are part of
history that makes no mistakes, for in history the notion of ―mistake‖ makes no sense. The
witches told Macbeth that no man born of a woman could kill him, so he thought him
invincible, yet Macduff who killed him was not ―of woman born‖ but ―was from his mother‘s
womb untimely ripped.‖69 Macbeth made a mortal interpretive mistake, but not the witches
telling of future destiny as sure as past history, whose part Macbeth‘s interpretation became.
In general, a definite affirmation, ―It is A,‖ can make mistakes, but future prediction is no
definite statement but hypothesis awaiting future confirmation or disconfirmation. A
hypothesis is a probable statement, ―It may be A or not-quite A‖; if this hypothesis turns out
to be ―not-quite A‖ it is not ―mistaken.‖ Thus future prediction makes no mistakes, and the I
Ching is a poetic guide to future prediction, therefore the I Ching makes no mistakes.
Six, the I Ching (a) blends natural transpiring of events with human understanding, and
(b) such human reasonable blending composes a pattern (structural hexagrams, 64 arranged in
a rhythmic poetic pattern) that opens out in time, and (c) the timely, structural, makes no
mistakes, for (d) this structure is no mathematical repetition, for life-patterns structurally
return to offer a fresh beginning at each moment in each situation, enabling life to produce
significant diaries and journals, each different from others. In difference is no mistake that
exists in repetition alone.
―Repetition‖ in life is significant. We can learn from the mystery of children‘s love of
repetition. Adults welcome things fresh, the familiar renewed that refreshes, not novelty that
threatens with unfamiliarity; we smile at things fresh each morning but shrink from
challenges in new places and new jobs. Children in contrast have no such luxury. For them,
everything is novel for the first time in life, and repetition is one way to turn it into the fresh,
to ease them into things novel in life, as the fish take to fresh water.
Something similar happens in music, where repetitions and variations abound to help us
dwell in the memorable rhythm and tunes we love. Children particularly love music; they live
in its rhythm to learn and thrive in things novel. Stories have a musical rhythm; storytelling
makes music-in-events, and children of all ages love stories. Following children, we adults
can/should repeat the routine activities to savor their unsuspected depths as every morning
refreshes itself.
Seven, history says, ―That is the way it was and is, and there is no room for mistakes or
no-mistakes.‖ The I Ching records history as structured in 64 ways of Yin-Yang opposing-
parenting, in 64 hexagrams.70 Someone may say, ―History may make no mistakes, but the I
Ching that describes it may.‖ Our answer is No, for the following reason.
To begin, the I Ching‘s description is couched in poetic story-bits that are open to the
situation and to the reader in the situation, and so the I Ching‘s meaning is a blend of the

69 Macbeth, 5.10 (lines 10-15).

70 Numbers and mathematics are envisioned in the West as a mechanizing force of human life, as with decision
theory, game theory, and economics. In contrast, China has humanized mathematics and mechanics throughout
the entire universe, in fiction, painting, calligraphy, healing arts, martial arts, arts of war, culinary arts, and so
on. Such humanistic application of numbers and mathematics is quite powerful indeed.
We cite only one example, in the I Ching, of the cosmic, sociopolitical, interpersonal, and personal application of
numbers and mathematics. We note its one surprising feature alone, that the I Ching makes no mistakes in
history any more than history does. Interestingly, backed by mistake-less mathematics, human time-journey, in
history or into the future, makes no mistakes, and this feature is what the I Ching captures.
80 Kuang-ming Wu

―suggested‖ meaning of poetry and the reader‘s interpretive decision. Thus, the reader decides
on the definite meaning of the I Ching. From the objective interpreter‘s side, then, the I Ching
is obscure in meaning, and its obscurity prevents it from the reader judging that it has made a
mistake. Thus we cannot objectively see if the I Ching, in itself, has made mistakes or not.
This is not to say that history is purely subjective, for there is no such thing as ―pure‖ or
―in itself alone‖ here. The true enough statement, ―All history is contemporary,‖ does not
deny that history is also about the past toward the future. This is because actuality is concrete,
and concreteness is an interwoven concresced71 composite, where ―objectivity‖ is
subjectively perceived and constituted and ―subjectivity‖ is objectively constituted by the past
to compose the present and the future.
Natural science in the West says, ―Whatever has been will be‖; it is a science of the past,
to tend to fatalism. The I Ching says, ―Whatever goes on will become‖; it is a science of the
future (what is to come), to destine us to destiny. How? Since whatever goes on now will
become, the I Ching helps us to discern the trend now, the Way things are going, and helps us
on how to act accordingly, as we drive safely by ―watching out for the other guy‖ on how he
drives. ―The other guy‖ is the future in our life-driving; future is mine, and so future the other
guy is my brother.
The Chinese people for millennia have constantly patterned their lives after the I Ching to
tend their future. History is an ultimate judge; it has consigned Babylon to oblivion and now
judges the I Ching mistake-less, as our constant use of spinach from time immemorial judges
spinach to be our unmistakable food.
Eight, in this connection, the notion of ―mistake‖ is crucial and interesting. The Western
thinkers often take it to be a noun, and tread backward to get to that because of which mistake
is made possible. So Plato had to assume the eternal Idea, and Royce had to go to absolute
idealism. Now, such a treatment of mistake is either trivial or senseless.
It is trivial because mistake-as-wrong does assume no-mistake-as-right; what else is new?
Such a treatment of mistake is senseless because one cannot make a mistake when one knows
it to be a mistake, when one knows ―what is not mistake.‖ One cannot take something wrong
if one knows what is right that ―wrong‖ presupposes; in other words, one cannot make a
mistake if one knows what makes it possible, this backward way.72
To put it another way, this sort of oddity happens because we treat mistake spatially. We
would be puzzled on why two cars can tread the identical crossroads, if we do not take into
account the traffic light that tells one car to go through a spot at one time in one direction,
another car to the same spot another time in another direction. If we do not consider the
phenomenon in a time-ly way, we would be puzzled on why two cars can go across the same
crossroads at all.
Besides, we are curious. How did China, being human, come to hit upon the eternal
Something, the I Ching, so comprehensive and divinely unmistakable as to reign over all our
life, activities, and mistakes, and make sense of them all? The question contains its own
answer, in the little phrase, ―come to.‖ History, our retrospective survey, realization, and

71 ―Concrete‖ is concrescence done, a togetherness. See Kuang-ming Wu, On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A
Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998.
72 This is the real cause for an extraordinary contortion Plato/Royce had to undergo in considering ―mistake‖ in the
Theaetetus. The contortion is not because the problem of how making mistakes is possible is difficult, but
simply because the problem of mistake is approached in a mistaken manner.
 History 81

storytelling, mysteriously reveals to us an amazingly accurate panorama of what was the case,
impossible while we are undergoing the situation.
Let us come back to our original theme of mistake. Observing how we come to make a
mistake, we see that ―mistake‖ is a verb, to take-amiss, to take something to be other than
what it is. The ―Eternal Idea‖ or ―All-Encompassing‖ describes what we realize to differ from
what we did after we did it.
How do we realize that we have made a mistake? We find it later that we took something
in error. It is the finding-it-later that makes mistake possible, and finding-it-later clearly tells a
story-of-how we first think of A to be B, and then come to realize that A is not B, to wit, that
we mistook A to be B.
This story-of-how, this finding-it-later, is history. ―Mistake‖ shows a dynamic history,
not a static substance of what makes mistakes possible. Mistake is an historical notion, a
storytelling, and the story of mistake-making makes no mistake, for otherwise ―mistake‖
would be impossible to make. Perhaps this story of mistake-making is what is indicated (not
told) in the ―story‖ told in Plato‘s Idea, Royce‘s ―an infinite unity of conscious thought,‖ and
Jaspers‘ All-Encompassing.
So, in asking the question, ―Can the I Ching make mistakes?‖ we unwittingly but
inevitably connect the I Ching to history, which we later find is the core of the I Ching. Thus,
asking this question answers itself in the negative. If the I Ching reflects history, making
mistake is history, and what makes mistake possible does not itself make mistakes, then the I
Ching cannot make mistake, for history does not.
Nine, now, we are ready to see the point to which our consideration of the I Ching has
been leading us. How is I Ching a book of history? We have seen that it is its poetic
storytelling hooked on and open to the situation-as-it-transpires. We have seen that this
storytelling composes the I Ching. The situation-as-it-transpires is history. So the I Ching is a
book that is history, which makes no mistakes but is that in which mistakes make sense, and
so this is also what makes the I Ching mistake-less but makes sense of mistakes, transpired as
history description.
In other words, it is storytelling-open-to-actuality that is solidly mistake-free to enlighten
us to our future to tell our fortune (i.e., destiny), to make us prudent, worldly wise. Is all this a
story told? Yes it is, all of it, as long as we keep firmly in mind (without letting it slip into the
mistake of taking all this as eternal unchanging truth, a noun) that we have gone through a
process of inferring that is a process-in-time, our situation-as-it-transpires into understanding.
It is our history, our story, of how we came to realize all this. Thus history is more significant
than we realized.
Bacon said,73 ―(N)o pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of
truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see
the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this
prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride.‖
Little did he realize that ―the vantage-ground of truth‖ is no other than the story told of
these ―errors, and wanderings . . in the vale below.‖ It amounts to saying that ―the vale‖ is not
―below‖ but itself the ―hill‖ of ―truth‖ once it is told as history, ―always clear‖ but its air not

73 Francis Bacon: Essays and New Atlantis, ed. Gordon S. Haight, Toronto: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1942, p. 5. Cf.
Selected Writings of Francis Bacon, ed. Hugh G. Dick, NY: The Modern Library, 1955, p. 7.
82 Kuang-ming Wu

serene. In all, the gentle almighty power of storytelling impresses on actuality that is ours,
that is history that is a storytelling after all, and such a history makes no mistakes.
(4) Now, is this conclusion surprising? It is surprising at first, but on second thought it is
as it should be, for all this just straightly tells the story of life of existence, and since the story
of existence is history, we can simply say that history makes no mistake, so its mirror the I
Ching does not. This is because history is the process of humans re-enacting (Collingwood),
that is, they re-act, reactivate, and reanimate what they have lived to relive their lives anew in
time, and the process makes no mistake.
Thus history is truly a process to ―warm up the old/past and know the new 溫故而知新,‖
as Confucius said (2/11), where ―and 而‖ is the process from the ―past 故‖ to the future
inherent in ―knowing the new 知新‖ itself. And beware. The new 新 differs from old in the
past that is imperfect, full of mistakes. Is the new filled with mistakes as well? It is another
story of reenacting what is said here, thanks to its being a verb; the new renews itself.
The ―knowledge of the new 知新‖ here is a self-corrective act of new creation 創新,
always ―new from day to day, and daily anew 日日新又日新‖; here ―new, anew 新‖ is a self-
reflexive verb, self-adjusting, self-correcting, thereby daily, constantly, self-renewing. History
is a verb, an unbroken act of renewing, new-(新)-ing, repeatedly.
History is the story of humanity‘s process of reprocessing, of self-renewing. This is
literally the process of ―threading (with the time-thread) the gone to open the coming
繼往開來‖ that life itself inherently implies. To live life is to engage an unbroken activity of
time-threading the gone to open the coming, for life is a continual living, living is to ―open
the coming‖ that is to ―open the yet-to-come,‖ the future.
The future cannot come without ―time-threading the gone,‖ for this ―continuing the past‖
is itself the very process of ―opening the future‖ we are currently going through. For
Collingwood, only humanity has history. Pace his objection, we must say that every life, not
just human life, is historical, whose story Darwin‘s ―evolution‖ graphically tells.
All living existence is such lived historical story, and in fact all existence in nature is
74
such a historical story. This is because existence literally stands-out of its past to constitute
nature, and ―nature‖ is natura naturans (nature naturing) emerging out of natura naturata
75
(nature natured), future emerging out of past.
Existence is renascence in process, constantly rebirthing and re-evolving, literally rolling-
out of itself again and again, to weave out a situational context, a tapestry of the story of
natural history, of the history of nature. As long as history re-enacts itself, that is, reacts,
reactivates, and reanimates itself, history is the story of self-adjustment and self-correction in
time, including us ourselves correcting ourselves.
In fact, to realize a mistake is to have gone beyond what is done and see, looking back, to
realize that what was done has missed the target. ―Mistake‖ is a historical performance of
retrospection. Every ―mistake‖ betokens a re-enacting, re-evaluation, of what-is-gone, the

74 ―Existence‖ is made of ex-histemi, to stand-out.

75 The twin phrases were made famous by Spinoza who, elaborating on his forebears, Vicente Beauvais and
Giordano Bruno, took them to mean the infinite essence and eternal principle and finite temporal existence
follows, by necessity from this principle. Thus the West destroyed the living historical rhythm of these twin
phrases, even though this very process of philosophical reanimation aptly tells the story of historical process.
 History 83

past, to re-correct itself into the future. World history is world judgment of itself, the world
self-correction, again and again, forward. Therefore history makes no mistakes.
Perhaps we can have a final refinement here with the help of our imaginary critic. He
may say, ―Wait a minute. You said history makes no mistakes because it corrects itself, but
‗correction‘ makes no sense unless there are mistakes to correct. As long as history self-
corrects, history does make mistakes, then.‖
Our reply is, ―Of course, but correction itself is no mistake, and history self-corrects, so
history makes no mistakes, after all. But you are right. It is not that history makes no mistakes
but has no mistakes after self-correction, as we are wiser after the fact, and this dynamic
‗after‘ is history. Thus the statement, ‗History makes no mistakes‘ says, not that history is a
static perfection, but that history constantly moves to having no-mistakes, dynamic moving to
and into the no-mistake realm. History moves, history moving is no-mistake, so history makes
no mistakes.‖
Our dear critic would not give up so easily. He continues, ―Let me put it from the other
end. Your ‗self-correction‘ presupposes mistake-making. This claim goes contrary to Plato
(Idea), Spinoza (God), Hegel (Absolute Spirit), Royce (Being), Collingwood (Absolute
Presupposition), Jaspers (the Encompassing), and the list goes on, all saying that ‗mistake‘
presupposes Truth (no-mistake) to obtain. Your statement, ‗History makes no mistake,‘ then,
turns upside down the world of Plato, and so on.‖
We answer, ―Perhaps so, but our saying all this merely describes how history operates,
showing history as a how, a movement of ‗turning‘ the time-less world of speculation (Plato,
and so on) ‗upside down.‘ We tell presupposition-thinkers that ‗history‘ as time-dynamics has
nothing to do with their spatial thinking; and such a ‗turning upside down‘ is what we
described as ‗self-correcting‘ of the world, of Plato, and so on.
History simply corrects wherever mistakes are found to have been made, by Plato, and so
on, who thereby become parts of history. The claim, ‗History makes no mistakes,‘ shows
history as a dynamics-in-time; the statement is itself an historical statement. In fact, our very
dialogue so far on this statement—and ‗so far‘ here is historical—is itself part of history that
presents such fact of history, thereby demonstrates this dynamic truth of history.‖
This is why great reflective people of ancient times have all thoughtfully appealed to
history to justify things and their performances, at least to their satisfaction at the time. Later
generations continue to correct their corrections to the latecomers‘ best knowledge and in
their good conscience, and Chinese people are people of such historical conscientiousness on
the go.
Sadly, however, we today, perhaps including Chinese people, tend not to realize, at least
not quite as much as ancient people did, how essential history is to us,76 because we are
influenced by the Western spatial thinking static, and so we are very clumsy at handling
history. Philosophy of history is one of the weakest disciplines in the West, together with
philosophy of arts, but both are the warp and woof of humanity and of their history. All such

76 Sadly, even today‘s arch-historian, Jaroslav Pelikan, is no exception. His spirited The Vindication of Tradition
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984) is just that, cleverly spirited. He merely touched the hem of
history; he failed to carefully reflect on what ―tradition‖ is, to wit, how history goes. He draws exclusively on
the funds of Western ideas on history and tradition, thereby violates the universality of history as the history of
all human cultures, not just the West. Worse, he takes history as objects of our reflection, not our reflective [a]
process itself that is [b] our very livings-on. His thinking is curiously spatial, not in time, as dynamic as time‘s
ongoing. His reflection on history is not historical but anti-historical.
84 Kuang-ming Wu

reflection, however, belongs to history, and to another essay another time, and another story
of human history.
Our critic finally says, ―History without mistakes is a cake painted on the wall, filling no
hunger of mine, for I would not live to benefit from history; posthumous benefit is no
benefit.‖ We nod, ―A good point you raised, pal. Still, our knowledge of infallible history
does give us two strengths to go on now while alive. One, we can be sure that things we feel
‗wrong‘ now would be exposed as such later, so we need not fret. Two, we can ‗warm up the
old‘ now to discern and steer our living better, now. So this section has cash value, thanks to
storytelling history!‖
Meanwhile, we cannot ignore numbers and mathematics since they are so fashionable
today. We must tell their story in the context of human history and cultures. We must see first
how numbers and mathematics were originally humanly understood in the context of human
affairs and human world. The I Ching as mathematical poetry of human time is instructive.

HISTORY, NUMBERS/MATHEMATICS, CULTURES

No human culture, however ―primitive,‖ is devoid of numbers and computation,
mathematics. The West has been so obsessed with them that numbers are alive in thinking
(―number mysticism‖), and anything learned (μάθημα) amounts to thing mathematical. This
has been so in Plato whose poetry was inspired by mathematics mystically spread wide, in
Aristotle and in the vast majority of Western thinkers whose thinking is ―logical‖ as
mathematical.
All fields in science and technology today are thoroughly mathematical. We all recognize
this ubiquitous presence of numbers and mathematics among us. What is less evident yet just
as factual, is that the ―story of lives‖ of numbers and mathematics, that is, their history, tells a
fascinating story of cultural differences.77 Five points below tell how it is so.
One, today numbers and mathematics are supreme; calculation infuses all things.
―Mathematics‖ is supposedly poetry and mysticism united with mechanics. Now, math drops
poetry and mysticism and parades itself everywhere as proud comprehensive metaphysics of
mechanics of impersonal calculation.
Two, worse, business, socio-ethics, and psychology are construed in terms of mechanical
mathematical metaphysics in stories of ―efficiency,‖ ―calculation,‖ ―precision,‖ and
―management‖ to dominate academia. Psychology of persons is now sociology of statistics,
physical science of behaviorism, brain physiology, and chemical pharmacology, all strictly
computed in numbers. Metaphysics is mechanics-physics; humans are stones. If someone
socializes mathematics and understands stones in human terms, it is ―anthropomorphism,‖
superstition quite unscientific.
Three, we forget that it was naturally the other way around in former days. Things and
numbers were alive as humans in Plato, Aristotle, and this sentiment was carried almost to the
present day, such as once quite popular Lorenz Oken (1779-1885) whom the

77 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (1988), London: Verso, 1993, is instructive in this context, as is Morris Kline,
Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, Oxford University Press, 1980. Both books tell of the lively story of
mathematics throbbing, and its throbbing decline, quite fascinating.
 History 85

transcendentalists (e.g., Emerson) praised and admired.78 Yet even Oken did not personalize
numbers and mathematics, which he made cosmic, quite impersonal; and even he died out of
fashion. He was dated, to be demoted into wastebasket.
The number ―zero‖ has much bedeviled and fascinated thinkers from ancient Athens to
Los Alamos today; it collapses the sun into a black hole, was hated by the Romans, feared by
Catholics, revered by Muslims, and turned inherent in modern physics.79 Still, zero has never
entered the human world in the West, never making itself an ethical or social force. Numbers
and mathematics in the West remain impersonal albeit cosmic factors.
Four, in contrast, zero in China is Taoist roominess (hsü) that accommodates, and
Buddhist nirvanic emptiness (k‘ung) of our very beings; in both worlds zero is something
cosmic, socio-ethical, and personal, all at once. To simplify the matter, let us take examples
from philosophical Taoism alone.
For Lao Tzu, the Heaven and the Earth work like an empty bellows (5). The mysterious
Female is the empty birth-gate of the Heaven and Earth (6). Nothingness (wu) at the hub-
center, in the vessel, and in the room, is what makes the cart, the vessel, and the room useful
(11). In fact, the entire Tao Te Ching elaborates on this zero at every juncture of the cosmos
and our living.
It is no less so with Chuang Tzu. The Cook‘s knife carved in exquisite dancing through
an ox for nineteen long years, while the blade remains as sharp as fresh from the grindstone.
Why? Because ―joints have spaces; the blade has no thickness. Enter the space with the thick-
less, and there is space to spare for the blade to leisurely play around in.‖ Hearing of such
story of thick-less playing blade in ample joint-spaces, the Duke sighed, ―I have heard the
words of the Cook, and got my life nourished!‖ (3/12) The delightful mutuality of zeros
nourishes us.
Five, it is likewise with numbers in China. They in their nimble combinations throb in
living bloodstream through Heaven and Earth, flowing pulsating in human lives personal,
interpersonal, and sociopolitical. China has humanized mathematics and mechanics
throughout the universe in fiction, painting, calligraphy, healing arts, martial arts, arts of war,
culinary arts, and so on. Such humanistic application of numbers and mathematics, living
them, is quite powerful an argument indeed.
We cited only one example, the I Ching, of cosmic, sociopolitical, interpersonal, and
personal living-applications of numbers and mathematics, and noted just one surprising
feature, that the I Ching makes no mistakes in history as history does not. Interestingly,
backed by mistake-less mathematics, human journey in history and into the future makes no
mistakes, as captured by the I Ching. Sadly, however, the West turns numbers and
mathematics into the mechanizing force of human life (decision theory, game theory,
economics) and the predominant force in nature.
We have bewailed mechanism with personalism, to redress today‘s trend of pan-
mechanism. Numbers and math can go either way but must not go one way alone. Machine
alone kills humans into stones; personalizing stones deifies in superstition. Personal
mechanics in machine-infused persons is natural sanity of myriad all.

78 Lorenz Oken‘s story on numbers is in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, NY: Macmillan Co,
1967, V: 535-536. See also ―Mathematics in Cultural History,‖ Philip P. Wiener, ed., Dictionary of the History
of Ideas, NY: Charles Scribner‘s Son, 1973, III: 177-185.
79 Cf. Charles Seife, Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea, NY: Viking Press, 2000.
86 Kuang-ming Wu

Cultural stories of numbers and math reveal this crucial point. The next chapter tells the story
of how ―science‖ today fares in nature, physical and human, in the West and then in Japan
that naturalizes/humanizes science and technology.
Chapter 3

SCIENCE: STORY FACTUAL AND FICTIVE

This chapter goes as follows. One, science today cannot understand things that just
happen; psychology is a disaster. Two, an event is no brute happening but has three stories of
three meanings; natural science today is mythological. Three, Japan tells its story of
―agrarian‖ science in Shinto love of land, in loving care of soil in ecological technology; it is
based surprisingly on ―idleness,‖ just letting things be with the self. Thus culture is at the base
of science, so we consider interculture in next Chapter IV.

HOW TO MANAGE THINGS HAPPENING WITHOUT RHYME OR

REASON
As nature has few straight lines in space, so it has few predictable happenings in time.
Things just happen without rhyme or reason, but we must manage them with rhyme or reason,
for both methods are all we have to manage things, that is, the methods of making literary
sense or logical sense. We love to make logical sense and we would have loved to manage
nature—things that just happen—by law. This is why we keep trying to find ―laws of nature,‖
but things just happen; we cannot indict/punish earthquakes, tsunamis, or tornadoes ―violating
their laws.‖
Our reasoning by law does not work on nature, so we try mathematics. We say ―natural
law‖ ciphers statistical average of things that just happen, and statistical measurement of
things now helps us manage them. Statistics can handle accidents, tabulating sea battles won
in history and sea battles lost, and take random samples, polling pre-election opinions.
Statistics can even create incidents in scientific experiments.
Statistics calculates random happenings to make some logical sense; scientific tryout
checks, probes, and controls to manage random accidents. Thus ―randomized trials‖ is the
most ―powerful‖ of our tools to logically manage things that just happen without rhyme or
reason. Unfortunately, this tool is not as powerful as we wish it to be.
1
Take a scientific nightmare, missing data in randomized trials that generate missing data
to haunt statisticians, the problem inherent in scientific exploration. The very purpose of

1 See ―randomization,‖ ―randomization test,‖ etc., in Andrew M. Colman, Dictionary of Psychology, Oxford, 2001,
pp. 613-614, and ―Random Samples‖ in Edward W. Miniu, et al., Statistical Reasoning in Psychology and
88 Kuang-ming Wu

randomized trial is to explore, fish up, whatever we may have missed in our allegedly
scrupulous coverage of an intended research area, making the area exceptionless, yet
randomness by definition entails missing of potentially crucial data.
In other words, randomization by nature hits or misses, and so a randomized trial that hits
always is not random but comprehensive, and yet randomized trial is designed to cover
comprehensively the territory. It is scientific randomness that generates two results mutually
opposed—obtaining new data otherwise would be missed and potentially missing relevant
data. Exploration entails randomization in novelty and slippage and, in fact, novelty entails
slippage. Exploration, the soul of scientific research, is incorrigibly messy, if not
contradictory; its ―solution‖ is twofold.
One, there is no way to totally cut slippage—missing data—in randomized trials, and yet
we cannot cut randomization from scientific research, for research is exploration entailing
randomized trials that entails potential missing of data. So, all we can and should do is to
minimize (not eliminate) the slippage and narrow down (not close up) the range of
possibilities of data-missing—as best we possibly can.
Two, this methodological maxim suggests a way of dealing with the problem, to wit, we
must have more randomized trials. Why? As perceptual errors are corrected by more
perceptions and logical errors straightened by more numerous and more careful arguments, so
randomized trials can minimize their potential missing of data by more trials.
Randomized trials must be conducted more often, in more diverse directions, in more
extensive areas, and with more researchers in more diverse fields. In this way, we must spread
our net of research by randomized trials as far and wide as possible to find more data to detect
and correct errors in them. We fully use statistical apparatuses to help reduce potential
missing, fully aware of their strengths and weaknesses. While not 100% foolproof, our
cautionary tactics saves us from unnoticed blunders, as best we can.
Scientific research advances this way, ever exploring virgin territories, ever vexed with
mistakes and missing data, to ever find new truths by randomized trials, finding new errors
even in these precious new truths discovered. Things are ever messy in science, for logical
exploration in science has no convincing frame2 to unify its two opposing tendencies, finding
in missing, missing in finding.
All this while, things keep just happening randomly. Randomness at the core of things
can never be completely managed by logic, for randomness is by nature beyond logic.
―Randomized trials‖ remain in the realm of ―inexact science,‖ a term unpalatable to scientific
logical reason, for randomized trial tries to be both mathematically coherent and open to
embarrassing adjustments to accidental happening, and logic allows no tight coherence
coupling uncertain openness to unpleasant surprises. Accidents, random happenings, remain
beyond logical reason.
Now we know things just happen without rhyme or reason, and ―without reason‖
describes as above how hopeless management by logical reason is—and description is
storytelling. If so, then we can manage accidental things happening ―without reason‖ by
storytelling that is both coherent and open—the coupling that is an embarrassment in science
and logic.

Education, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1993, pp. 16-17. Books on statistics in psychology are cited, for the
―science‖ of psychology cannot avoid statistics, and the strict science of statistics cannot avoid randomization.
We will soon look into the disaster of psychology as such science.
2 We know that the ―convincing frame‖ is storytelling, both coherent and open, both systematic and exploratory.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 89

With storytelling we can now describe and comprehend—embrace and understand—

cases of things that just happen. This is how history thrives to ―rhyme‖ with things just
happening to reenact and re-enrich living in time, for us to sense their ―reason.‖ The story of
history keeps telling to comprehend things that happen, without rhyme or reason. How does
all this happen?
Watching events, we come to realize that ―randomized experiments‖ constantly happen to
make up life. They are all quite inconceivable, often tragically unspoken. Young Ann Frank
wrote in her diary, ―I still believe people are basically good,‖ as she perished in people‘s hand
in Auschwitz. Such tragic incongruity is unthinkable until told as a story. Life has many
tragic Auschwitz‘s so unspeakable and so persistently repeated in so many lands, so often in
history of the world.
What perishes without rhyme or reason sometimes produces paragons and no-paragons.
Viktor Frankl‘s Auschwitz-loss of all his family produced his ―search for meaning‖ that heals
people, as Socrateses and Jesuses came of sad events, Monicas pray for her sons Augustines,
and many Neroes‘s mothers perished in her sons‘ hands, all again without rhyme or reason.
We have no way of making sense of them until hearing their stories that give them rhyme, for
us to sense their reason. In deep sighs, we appreciate that such is life.
If beauty is in the beholder‘s eye, then justice is also, and so we can understand beauty
and justice only by knowing whose beauty and whose justice they are—and ―knowing
whose‖ comes only by telling and hearing their stories. That is what towering storytellers
Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, and countless others in other lands, are for.
Storytelling alone does justice to events just and beautiful.
Why does storytelling do justice to actual events? How does storytelling do so where
logical reason fails? Let us take a concrete example of ―wavicle,‖ an entity with properties of
both waves and particles. Joseph Needham said of ―wavicle‖3 that

Old Chinese philosophers . . . thought of chhi as something between what we should call
matter in a rarefied gaseous state on one hand, and radiant energy on the other. Though all our
assured knowledge gained by experiment makes us infinitely richer than they, is the concept
of ‗wavicle‘ in modern physical theory so much more penetrating?

Needham claims that China‘s ―ch‘i 氣‖ is more ―penetrating‖ than the West‘s new
concept of ―wavicle‖ that is conceptualization of nature, for ―chhi, ch‘i 氣‖ is natural
description of nature,4 a story of moving vapor or active breath of life.
It is instructive to consider how this is so. ―Wavicle,‖ combining two abstract concepts
wave and particle, is another abstract concept uneasily hovering over actuality it is designed
to explain. It is a theoretical construct unstable, logically contradictory, each ingredient
excluding the other, as ―wave‖ is no ―particle.‖

3 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge University Press, 1962, IV.I:135. He collects
gadgetry, no scientific frame/attitude peculiar to China. See his interesting biography by Simon Winchester,
The Man Who Loved China, HarperCollins, 2008; its pp. 191-194 have a theoretical frame of this massive
collection of ―Chinese science,‖ all in a Western perspective of Whitehead‘s process philosophy.
4 Does the West have something similar? M. Merleau-Ponty said (The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, pp. 139, 147, 267) that Greek ―elements‖ are between objects and fields,
before being. Cf. F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, New York University Press,
1967, pp. 70-71, 180-185, on ―stoicheia (elements).‖ This is the closest the West came to Chinese ―ch‘i 氣.‖
90 Kuang-ming Wu

In contrast, ―ch‘i‖ describes a thing that constantly happens as natural vapor and life
breathing, a not-thing breath of things, to compose things‘ life, a combination-activity of not-
thing and thing, to story-describe a common situation of concrete things, a notion
performatively capturing an actually contradictory situation of nature. This is what
storytelling does; where logic says no, storytelling says yes. Logical inconsistency in things
ciphers randomness of concrete happenings captured by storytelling.
How5 does storytelling comprehend random things? St. Augustine says, ―The world is a
book, and those who do not travel read only a page.‖ Another way of reading the world-book
besides travel is to read its stories. Emerson says, ―Life is a dictionary‖6; we add, ―The world
is a dictionary behind life-dictionary.
We live by opening the world dictionary, taking in its word-things. Words compose our
frame, perspective, and horizon to pull in random things, and they come in as our words
coherent, rhymed and reasonable to become our world. Words are supreme, telling the story
of the world, and our world merges with the world, whatever it is.
Let us put it another way. In the beginning are words that organize into word-tissue,
word-tell to make stories. In the beginning then is storytelling where words enflesh the world,
to create the world; in storytelling the world begins. The world is story-shaped or it is
nothing; such is how we word-shape the world.
We open our dictionary of random things to read them, take them in, and organize them
into one coherent world. ―Hazard a big guess, check on small details,‖ Hu Shih famously
said.7 We boldly propose to open out to things, and carefully confirm them to cohere into one
single world to make sense. We do both by means of ―stories.‖
Knowledge of science comes by randomized trials random-open to events to turn
“coherent as random-ized.‖ This is our story of scientific trials, and things cohere
randomized, events turn rhymed and reasonable. ―Randomized trial‖ is scientific experiment,
knowledge-exploration; we have just performed its storytelling. To concretize all this, we
zero in on a tough territory, studying human awareness in all this, ―psychology as science.‖
All sciences of things begin here, and it is precisely here that science in the West bankrupts.

EMOTION PSYCHOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

Nothing is more tragic than sticking to science as straight mathematical calculation to
study the incalculable realm of human awareness in mind and emotion. Reading books on
―emotion psychology‖ as ―science‖ of emotion makes us feel that feelings are straitjacketed
there, where emotions are not allowed their full expressions but looked at, inspected,
investigated, tabulated in scientific frames, and explained, and explained away. The fault is
not in such a scientific methodology but in how aptly it is used and, more generally, how
―science‖ is understood.

5 This description—story—of how storytelling proceeds defines what storytelling is. This is an operational-
performative definition of storytelling. Storytelling unifies the how and the what, as life does.
6 St. Augustine‘s quip appears on a page after p. 32 in Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2010. Emerson‘s appears in
―The American Scholar‖ his 1837 address at Harvard (The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed.
Brooks Atkinson, NY: Modern Library, 1940, p. 54).
7 胡適 quipped, 「大膽假設，小心求證。」 I translate it as ―Hazard a big guess, check on small details,‖ and
―Boldly propose, carefully prove.‖
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 91

―Science‖ means ―knowledge‖ that accurately fits the nature of what is to know, and
knowing is not just to know ―objects‖ alone. ―Natural science‖ in the West is a branch of
science that deals with what is to know, strictly as object to be known by its separate subject.
Such ―objectivity‖ is attained by objective treatment of the object of knowledge, that is,
experimentation, ―trial and error‖ at manipulating data, the given, from outside, according to
a set theoretical frame concocted by the subject, the frame and flow-chart of quantification.
Crucial here is treatment ―from outside,‖ in studying what has happened, and remote
from the subject. Thus the remoter the objects, the more effective such objective methodology
is. Inanimate objects are most amenable to such treatment (physics, chemistry, astronomy,
geology), lower animate beings come next (botany, biology, physiology), and the higher the
living beings, the less amenable to such treatment they are (animal science, medical science,
economics, sociology, cultural science, psychology).
We often call the last bunch of sciences ―soft science‖ or, worse, ―inexact science,‖ as if
they were less scientific, simply because they are not amenable to the patterns of physical
studies of inanimate objects. Such calling exposes our partiality to physical sciences, which
we take as the standard of ―true science.‖
Our partiality is our prejudice, blind to the simple truth that true ―scientific objectivity‖
lies in tailoring our standard and methods to fit the nature of what is to know, so various in
nature. Our blindness leads us to simply identifying ―science‖ as ―natural physical science,‖
―scientific methodology‖ exclusively as ―quantifiable repeatable trial and error,‖ and
―accuracy‖ as one mathematically measurable by these methods alone.
This situation fares the worst in ―psychology,‖ the science of our psyche, the inner core
of the subject‘s felt core, and ―science‖ in the sense of ―physical science.‖ We at once feel
where and how it pinches, for we study human feelings with the method to study wholly
unfeeling stones and sticks. Feeling feels actively as emotion that e-motes, ―moves‖ us ―out‖
of the status quo, spontaneously. It is not structure-less yet ―structure‖ is a notion too
8
structured to fit felt emotional core of human subject. Let us look elsewhere than stones.
Music expresses emotion naturally. Music is not at all structure-less, yet musicology
should not be dominated by structural mathematics of ―music theory‖ but rather to be helped
by it. The music of emotion can be understood as its inner rhythm, which objective
9
methodology can help us understand but should not dominate as our frame of understanding.
Moreover, importantly, as music creates its own melody and rhythm, so emotion has its
own rhythm and pattern, to understand which requires not fixed external ready-made

8 Gendlin and Schrader may call the ―structure-less structure‖ of emotion ―prereflective,‖ ―preconceptual,‖ and
―prelogical‖ meaning, ―felt,‖ ―primitive‖ and ―primary‖ to mean emotion that is ―determinate,‖ so ―structured‖
in some sense. See George A. Schrader, ―The Structure of Emotion‖ in James M. Edie, ed., An Invitation to
Phenomenology, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965, pp. 252-265, esp. p. 256-258. Schrader‘s is the most
―accurate‖ (though somewhat wandering) thoughtful treatment of emotion I know of, although his view that in
human existence feeling is thoughtful and thought is feeling-filled (my words) would have difficulty, without
further elucidation, and ―prereflective,‖ ―preconceptual,‖ or ―prelogical‖ smacks of taking ―reflection,‖
―conceiving,‖ or ―logic‖ as external objective operation..
9 A recent example is Tracy J. Mayne and George A. Bonanno, eds., Emotions: Current Issues and Future
Directions, NY: The Guilford Press, 2001. Almost at every step I feel pinched by their approaches and
conclusions. Just to cite an example, a conclusion is drawn from two rather commonsense facts that social
experience influences expression of emotion, and emotion has social functions, both of which ―scientific
researches‖ document ad nausea (p. 234). Those ―scientists‖ are blind to the simple fact that emotion is not a
function of its social influences. To deny emotion as ―a natural category‖ because of social interactions in
emotion confuses a thing‘s influence/function with the thing itself. The confusion stems from studying feelings
from outside, as if studying stones by a subject separate from stones.
92 Kuang-ming Wu

methodology of quantification and experimentation but inner personal empathy, as with

musical appreciation. Empathy has a definite methodology to ascertain the empathized
structure that cannot be missed, yet harder to ascertain than investigating crystallography.
It is precisely this inner idiosyncratic ―structure‖ of emotion that distinguishes it from
predictable calculable logic. Describing emotion need not be emotive, but it must be properly
congruent with emotion. Studying Auschwitz as if studying dinosaur-extinction is improper;
improper also is Kipling reporting with equanimity a British soldier beating a ―nigger‖ to
10
extract money. In contrast, the author of The Rape of Nanking committed suicide ; our tears
admire her integrity, for her report-content cohered with its report-impact on her.
This is a fair desideratum, and storytelling flexibly fulfills this requirement. Storytelling
does justice to emotion that is not structure-less yet not structured in the mode of physical
science. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Hugo, Dickens, and many other literary giants, great
storytellers, tell us more, and more directly, accurately, and poignantly, of human emotions
than objective, roundabout, external, and quantitative research of emotions with methods of
natural science.
Perhaps we should say that natural science tells best stories about stone, while literary
writers tell best stories about human emotion, and one sort of storytelling cannot apply to
both sorts. Stories of human reactions to (precious) stones are stories of human reactions, not
of stones. We should not tell stone-stories of natural science about human felt psyche, nor
should we tell literary stories about stones themselves. ―But can‘t we ask for how stories of
all existents tell?‖ I suppose we can. Let me try.

EVERY EVENT HAS THREE STORIES

Every existent has three stories: (a) what it is, (b) what it means, and (c) what it means for
us storyteller(s) and their listeners, and these three stories inter-involve.11 Seemingly
colorless, this simple observation has crucial life-implications to be developed by storytelling
alone, as can be seen in four examples below of meaning-imbued facts.
Example One: Here is a fact, (a), that human genes are said to be 99.4% identical with
chimpanzees‘. (b) What this simple ―scientific fact‖ means is staggering. It can of course
mean that studying chimps would benefit our knowledge of the human and promote the
progress of medical science to benefit mankind.
Humans are not supposed to be monkeys, though, and so how they differ becomes for us
a problem. If humans do not differ from monkeys, there would be no ―species‖ of humanity.
If, as China traditionally says, humans are the spirit of myriad things (人為萬物之靈) and
―spirit‖ is no ―animality,‖ then genetics gives us nothing specifically human and ―spiritual.‖

10 To study Nazi atrocity ―with scholarly composure‖ is insanity, not scholarship. James H. Cone‘s Black Theology
and Black Power, HarperSanFrancisco, 1969, is written in such legitimate anger. On Kipling, see A Collection
of Essays by George Orwell, Doubleday, 1954, pp. 123-124. Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, Penguin, 1998.
11 This is a shorthand elucidation and illustration of my four-level story-thinking in ―Chinese Philosophy and
Story-Thinking,‖ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Summer 2005, pp. 217-234, and ―Distinctive
Features of Chinese Hermeneutics,‖ Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, June 2004, pp. 233-247.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 93

So, the ―fact‖ that humans and monkeys share 99.4% of genetic structure can mean that
―humanity‖ overflows if not eludes physiology and medical science of the West.12 Skin-down
gaze misses skin to miss elephant with butterfly13; skin-up expands skin to sociopolitical
lifeworld. Thus lifeworld overflows physiological skin. Science says human brain has been
alike for 100,000 years; if so, then, why ancient myths are so preposterous compared with
science today is a mystery.14 Culture thus overflows brain.
(c) What humanity is, then, can only be discerned apart from genetics. For example, Five
Social Relations (五倫) can be said to constitute humanity that physiology and medical
science of the West cannot describe. ―Sociobiology‖ that explains human sociality by ants‘ is
invalid, then, for ants‘ ―sociality‖ is only analogized from humans‘; sociobiology is
anthropomorphism pretending to biology-morphism.
Human arts—poetry, fiction, sculpture, painting, and music—would evoke humanity,
thereby capture it, genetics does not, but arts are not unrelated to genetics. The arts-genetics
relation may be best—artistically—expressed as lotus flowers blossoming out of mud-humus
of physiology and genetics. How genes-mud relates to arts-flowers remains unknown, but
they remain related, as mutually different.
Example Two: Let us pursue further the (c) pondered above. The arts as a whole that are
crucial to humans are, to think of it, much more pervasive than the specific ―art‖ connotes. If
humans are by nature social, then we live on communication of self-expression we casually
call ―arts,‖ and the (c)-level of life-stories, occupied by the arts, pervade our entire human
life. This point itself raises three points on three levels.
On level-(a), Professor Gene Barabtarlo contends that poetry with its peculiar music of a
specific culture is untranslatable into other cultural medium; Professor Lin Huo-wang
(林火旺) wonders aloud how the image of Chuang Tzu or Confucius produced by a scholar
can fit in with another different image of another scholar.15 We can see, on level-(b), what
both scholars contend means; they have raised an important enigma, on the feasibility of art
as artistic communicability among humans in general.
On level-(c), we realize that their enigma is a caution/problem within human
communication, not a challenge to communicability itself, for if it were the latter, their own
raising of the challenge doubts its own communicability and cuts down the very possibility of
their raising itself. Thus two points are here.
One, we must personally and culturally inter-translate to inter-learn to be human at all;
we are no human if we are cut off from communication. Thus the necessity of communication
dictates the imperative of inter-human and inter-cultural learning/communicating; translation
in a widest sense is our existential imperative to be human.

12 As an example of how humanity overflows science, here is a scientific measurement on how we cannot tickle
ourselves; subjectivity evaporates in objectivity.
13 Buddhist would of course nod, saying, no elephant or butterfly exists. They are puffs of wavicle-wind blown by
my desire into empty ideas, empty wind blowing over empty chaos; ―all actuality‖ is vanity. This route
silences all. All Buddhist discourses so massive are actually so much engine-idling tautology, signifying
literally nothing. ―Nothing signifying‖ is the Buddhist pride and glory. If this is a contradiction, so be it, for
nothing can be said, and so anything said is contradictory.
14 Elizabeth W. Barber and Paul T. Barber bravely deal with this problem with scientific analysis. Whether they
succeed or not remains to be seen. See their When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind
s\Shapes Myth, Princeton University Press, 2004.
15 I treated this problem of ―objectivity‖ from another angle in On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden:
Brill, 2001, pp. 85-87.
94 Kuang-ming Wu

Two, yet inter-learning is full of difficulty of missing the communicated content and, if
ever communicated, its misunderstanding. What we can/should do is to make a virtue out of
the necessity and make a creative use of the predicament of misunderstanding, to, if possible,
―improve‖ on the original message, as if we could improve on Mozart!
In fact, Mozart ―imitated‖ Bach and Haydn, and his ―imitations‖ remind us of Bach and
Haydn in Mozart, what is a delightful ―enrichment‖ of Bach and Haydn. Communication of
the music of poetry in cultural media other than music is then eminently possible, even
desirable in all its altered forms and sentiments. How to do so is another theme no less
eminently worth developing, all dependent on a Mozartian ingenuity of the poetic translator.
The history of ideas is rife with, in fact, amounts to, such creative misunderstanding of the
great thinkers.16
Example Three: (a) A researcher at Medical School, NYU, proposed in June 2003 to
create an individual called ―Chimera‖ of human-chimpanzee genes-mix. This is a fact. (b) If
successful, this project means two things. One, genetic miscegenation shows that humans and
monkeys are not just inseparable but also not even distinguishable. Two, it is a human who
proposed to wipe out the distinction, not a monkey, and this ―not‖ shows that the very
wiping-out of distinction establishes the human-monkey distinction.
(c) Observing the above, we realize that life is after all such radical mixing. We have four
examples. One, health is kept up by ―balanced diet,‖ a wide mixture of vegetables and meats.
Two, incest depletes life; exogamy, mixed marriage, propagates healthy species. Three, the
future is vigorous only by learning from history, for forgetting the past differing from now
repeats it. Four, a culture is healthy only by learning from other cultures; the Nazis refusing
other cultures committed suicide. These four examples show mixture to invigorate life. Life-
mixture lives better.
Example Four: Have we noted above a curious ―mix‖ of fact (genetic-mixing) and value
(ought to)? The mixture smashes away the notorious fact-value dichotomy of fact-(a) from
what it means-(b) and what it means for us-(c), establishing their interrelations, how (a)
inevitably leads to (b) and (c), while (b) and (c) thoroughly shape the manner and direction of
(a). There is no (a) without the interest of (b) and (c), no ―pure‖ fact-description without
extra-factual axes ((b) and (c)) to grind.
Russian geography, say, is not Chinese or American one. The very structure of today‘s
psychology is patterned after Anglo-European natural science. The Western medical science
is not Chinese medicine or Indian. Journalism is often a political/cultural mouthpiece,
conscious or not. Each culture is a specific journalism that tells a story about life different
from other cultures, that is, different sorts of ―journalism.‖ A ―culture‖ means a specific sort
of ―storytelling,‖ nothing else.

EXISTENCE AS THREEFOLD MEETING

Now, to say that an event has three stories, what it is, what it means, and what it means to
us, amounts to saying that things and events ―exist‖ only as the subject notes them. The
falling tree on the mount no one sees neither exists nor makes sounds; the sight, sound, and

16 I touched on this problem from the angle of ―objectivity‖ and ―relativism‖ in ibid., pp. 119-124, 180-183, 338-
345, etc. Cf. our Section later, ―Writing China in English.‖
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 95

indeed the very existence of a tree (falling) on the mount does not lie in the tree
(―objectivity‖) nor in someone close-by (subjectivism) but in their meeting.
So, to exist is to be perceived (Berkeley) and existence is a subject-object inter-existence.
Subjective under-standing composes objective substance (stand-under). The three-story
structure of a happening indicates that ―actuality‖ is a subject-object meeting, that there exists
no subject or object, pure and simple; and such a ―meeting‖ is three in kind: (1) I-Thou, (2) I-
17
It, and (3) I-Milieu. To the story of this exciting threefold meeting we now turn.
(1) In the I-Thou realm, we see how opposed ―infatuation‖ that burns the self to death is
to ―concern‖ for others that lasts forever, as Paul vividly tells us in his ode to charity. 18 I
wrote to John my son as follows.19

Dear John:

I admire you as a deep thinker, profoundly reflective. I wish you would calmly consider
with extreme care what I tell you now. Take time to read it. Important!
There is a big sharp difference between ―infatuation‖ and ―concern.‖ ―Infatuation‖ is in-
fatuus, fatuous, in folly (as Webster‟s Dictionary says). It is a silly trap in the ―self‘s‖ heat.
Heat is blind. Infatuation blindly burns the self to death, a great life-danger. Paul‘s Poem of
Love (1 Corinthians 13) warns that love is not giving the self to burn (v. 3). Love is not blind
giving, not infatuation.
―Concern‖ is for the ―other,‖ as you are for your son David. You do not burn yourself,
you calmly perceive him; you are concerned with him. Paul‘s positive picture of love (vv. 4-7)
describes perceptive concern. It begins with patience (v. 4), and ends with endurance (v. 7);
love takes time. Concern-full love lasts (vv. 8-13). So, love is perceptive of other‘s true
situation; love takes time and lasts and lasts.
To know takes time. It took you eight years to know son-David. It takes as much time to
know friend-Mary. Never burn; never blindly give. Calmly take time to perceive Mary. She is
not going anywhere. If you love Mary, never be infatuated, OK? Please calm down and take
time. Please.

Praying.

Love, Dad

(2) It is important to note that I-Thou relation alone has concern vs. infatuation, and
nothing else. In the I-It realm, our pro-attitude takes on different feelings and features, with
different shades of intensity, from an indifferent nod at it to liking it, through being possessed
with its sentimental values, being a favorite, a treasure, to being an overwhelming fetish. I-
Thou infatuation and concern are both intense but inter-differ; one burns, the other does not.
I-It indifferent nod lacks the intensity of obsessed fetish.
An example of I-It attachment to the extent of fetish obsession is a sad story entangled
with the calligraphic Sage of all times, 王羲之‘s (Wang Hsi-chih, 303-379) legendary brush

17 Cf. my ―The I-Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (I), December 2007, pp. 1-60‖ and ―The I-
Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (II), June 2008, pp. 1-68,‖ Journal of World Religions.
18 1 Corinthians 13:3, 8. My letter to John soon explain this point in detail.
19 Later I told him instead of writing to him, for intimacy and effect.
96 Kuang-ming Wu

piece of his ―蘭亭集序 Preface to Orchid Pavilion Collection.‖20 This long story shows the
length of several life-involvements in a fetish It, ―the Preface.‖ The story has it that

Wang once went on a boat trip with many literary notables for an exorcise ritual (祓褉).
On the boat they variously composed poems, and Wang composed a poetic introduction to the
anthology and wrote it with a mouse-hair brush. This is the celebrated ―Preface.‖ This
calligraphic piece was so divinely inspired that Wang himself could not reproduce it later, and
it became Wang‘s own treasured piece. It was handed down to posterity till it reached Wang‘s
seventh generation Chih-yung (智永) who, on deathbed of almost 100 years old, bequeathed it
to his disciple Pien-ts‘ai (辯才) a literary genius, who carefully hid the precious piece in a
hole in a beam above bedroom.

Now in Pien-ts‘ai‘s days there was an emperor T‘ai Tsung of T‘ang dynasty (唐太宗,
627-649), an avid collector of Wang‘s authentic calligraphic pieces. Overhearing that Pien-
ts‘ai had that ―Preface,‖ the emperor invited Pien-ts‘ai to three, four sumptuous dinners,
politely asking him about the ―Preface,‖ but Pien-ts‘ai kept insisting on his ignorance. Further
reconnaissance assured the emperor of Pien-ts‘ai‘s possession of it; his eagerness for it made
him lose sleep, appetite, whereupon someone recommended Inspector General Hsiao I (蕭翼)
to obtain the ―Preface‖ by hook or by crook.

Hisao I requested some minor calligraphic letters of Wang‘s, changed his attire into a
student‘s from Shan-tung area, visited Pien-ts‘ai‘s temple, and ingratiated himself with Pien-
ts‘ai in ten odd days. The two intimate literary friends now discussed literary matters day in
and day out, composing poems over drinks.

One day when conversation went to calligraphy, Hsiao casually mentioned his family
inheritance, some authentic Wang pieces. Delighted, Pien-ts‘ai pressed him to bring them
over. Gazing at them, Pien-ts‘ai calmly said, ―Very good, although not the best of Wang. I
also have Wang‘s piece, not at all anything commonly seen.‖ ―What letter pad of Wang‘s is
it?‖ ―The Preface.‖ ―Ha, ha! You are kidding. After these long war years, such real Wang
cannot be in existence now. Yours must be a copy or a fake.‖ ―O, yes. It was my beloved
Teacher‘s treasure; he personally bequeathed it to me; no mistake about it. I will show you
tomorrow.‖

On seeing the Preface the next day, Hsiao purposely pointed out its defects, insisting that
it was a tracing, and Pien-ts‘ai no less vehemently insisted its authenticity. Since then,
however, Pien-ts‘ai left the Preface on the desk with Wang‘s calligraphic letters that Hsiao
brought over, practicing on them. Thus it was that Hsiao‘s intimate comings and goings were
taken for granted in the temple. The time was ripe, Hsiao thought. When Pien-ts‘ai was out,
Hsiao came claiming to fetch for him something he forgot, let a boy-guard open the door into
Pien-ts‘ai‘s study, and took all Wang‘s pieces. Hsiao then went to the local authorities,
announced his identity and his royal mission, summoned Pien-ts‘ai to his august presence of
Inspector General, and said goodbye. It was too much for Pien-ts‘ai in his eighties—he
fainted, and within a year, he died, without eating much. Hsiao on his part was greatly
rewarded and promoted. The emperor then ordered the Preface to be copied by several notable
calligraphers of the day and distributed to the luminaries of the day. This was a story

20 See 伏見冲敬‘s summary of it in 東晋王羲之蘭亭叙七種, 東京二玄社, 1988, pp. 60-62. It is taken from one of
the oldest legends on the matter, 何延之‘s 「蘭亭記」.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 97

supposedly told by Yüan-ssu (元素), a disciple of Pien-ts‘ai‘s; a sad inhumane story it was
indeed.

This long touching story conveys, as no other medium can, the long unbearable pathos
lasting more than ten generations and beyond till today. To balance off this sad story, here is
one healing story on Chih-yung (智永) who devoted thirty years to writing 800 copies of
―Thousand-Word Poem 千字文‖ and deposited them in 800 temples. Its one version has been
my personal intense delight.
This version makes me gaze and gaze at it, till I get so relaxed as to facilitate my bowel-
21
movement. So, ancient calligraphy has deep effects on bodily health today; it is my season
of spring. Even Needham in England fell in love with calligraphy, and then with China, as to
devote his life compiling China‘s gadgetry,22 and also so much so that removing calligraphy
removes Pien-ts‘ai‘s life.
(3) Such a story of the touching I-It attachment simply brands itself into our hearts and
bodies. It is no longer a simple It but consumes and heals our whole beings, as the Preface
and Chih-yung did in above stories. The It shades into the I-Milieu where a thing to which
one is attached is the world wherein one breathes and is invigorated, so much so that
removing it removes one‘s life, as the story above shows. ―It‖ is now ―milieu‖-environment.
The senior folks deprived of their job-environment upon retirement are as mothers
deprived of their babies in whom they live—they die early. The Milieu of life is life itself to
any living being; yet it is itself hidden as air from one‘s awareness, until it is removed.
Culture shock suffered by moving somewhere else than one‘s birthplace is as painful as a fish
thrown into alien water.
Everyone knows when the spring comes, even kids welcome it singing, ―The spring
came! Spring came! Where has it come? It comes to the hills, it comes to the villages, it
23
comes to the fields!‖ Still, no one can exactly point at it, for the spring is not an ―it,‖ an
object to be separated, specified. Wild flowers say, ―The spring is here‖ but they are not
spring, or are they? Spring is ―here‖ showing in them; spring-―milieu‖ just enfolds us all, and
birds chirp spring, grass turns green shy and tender. I take my cap off, and spring warms up
into me, as I walk on breathing birds and grass.
The spring is that in which we feel we are, all balmy, when/where we relax, smile, and
take a deep breath afresh, alive out of chilly winter. The season is such a life-milieu, as
unmistakable as it is elusive, impossible to objectify. So is every morning, the tender dawn of
myriad all. To be a friend to someone is to be the dawn of the spring in which someone
springs into herself. Friendship is a spring to inter-existence to authentic existence.
We shifted our gaze from our hugged It to our enwrapped Milieu, and It-in-Milieu leads
us to friends to make us be. If friends inter-birth our beings as spring, then loss of friendship
is loss of life in winter, even if those persons are still alive. We attend their mourning again

21 The version is 「智永草書千字文」 published by 臺南市大眾書局，民72. It is my treasure. Oddly, the same

version, 隋智永：關中本千字文，東京二玄社，2007, is more expensive and less good for my taste, at least.
22
Joseph Needham compiled 24 volumes of Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge University Press) since
1954, still adding. His project began at him practicing calligraphy in England, told of by Simon Winchester, The
Man Who Loved China, HarperCollins, 2008, p. 45. Sadly, he collected gadgetry, not theory. His ―dexterous
China,‖ not inept mandarin, gives us smile; his China as hand-nimble and theory-blind sheds our tears. Our tears
in smile began at Needham‘s practice of calligraphy.
23 ―春が來た! 春が來た! どこに來た？ 山に來た，里に來た，野にも來た!‖ sing Japanese kids!
98 Kuang-ming Wu

and again, silently bewail their absence, so sad; we cannot even cry. While describing
friendship, China is silent about this sad incident, while Thoreau expresses it this way,
24
perhaps hiding his sobs :

We lose our friends when we cease to be friends, not when they die. Then they depart;
then we are sad and go into mourning for them. Death is no separation compared with that
which takes place when we cease to have confidence in one with whom we have walked in
confidence, when we cease to love one whom we had loved, when we know him no more.
When we look for him and cannot find him, how completely is he departed!

It is an eternal winter when everything withers, no life but a blanket of chill, of snow.
Spring cannot be found here. It is sad chilly winter-milieu. Friendship is weather of personal
living. It can vanish.
We cannot directly describe how indispensable the Milieu is, however; we must appeal to
indirection via storytelling of things in that milieu, and those ―things‖ are things of I-Thou
and I-It. The I-Milieu appears only via I-Thou and I-It, to which we attend. They are the
objects of our intending; in our awareness that we are; we are aware of Thou and It, in a
certain Milieu. The Milieu does not exist without Thous and Its, while Thous and Its do not
exist without their Milieu.
Asked how he could live in din of horse buggies and not hear it, poet T‘ao Ch‘ien said
―heart distanced, place self-retire,‖ and casually picked flowers at eastern hedge, gazed long
at southern hills in dusk air suffusing hills, dotted by flying birds paired encircling, and
sighed, ―herein is real sense, want to explain, already forget words.‖ Two points appear. One,
the ―place‖ and the ―sense‖ is the milieu of the heart, and two, the milieu can be intimated
only by describing casual incidents in it.
So here is an interesting situation. As soon as we are aware of our Thous and our Its, they
surround us to become our world/environment/Milieu in which we are. It now infuses us with
Thou-ish style and It-ish atmosphere, and that in our own way, and then we note that all these
Thou, It, and Milieu inter-infuse. Two examples may help to explain this strangely complex
yet utterly familiar ordinary life-situation.
Example One: This was how I enjoyed the spring. As I was enchanted by spring-
chirpings of the birds, I realized that I was unwittingly switching back and forth between
listening to their songs and letting go of them, as it were. I allowed them to seep into me
while I merely steeped myself—bathed—in them. Whereupon I suddenly realized that I
steeped myself in them as I listened to them, and listened to them as I was engulfed in them.
Here I was in them without losing me as I listened to them; in fact, my attention was
sharpened by being thus enchanted. Both were there with me—my awareness of them and my
enjoyment in them unawares. The in-milieu enjoyment attends the enjoyment of-Thou-It of
my attending. For me the birds are my Thou and my It, to compose my milieu that is my
spring all over me. This is the case now even when birds are not singing, as they sing silently
in me.
No birds singing for two mornings now. What happened? Silent spring is no less dreary
than silent winter. O I hear some! Ugly cute squawking! But how rare, in the first warm sun,

24 ―1850: age 32-33: After January 5‖ in I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D.
Thoreau, ed. by Jeffrey S. Cramer, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 44. This is the only description that I could
find of such loss, anywhere.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 99

the morning sun since after several days of chill! Now, I hear one faint chirp, and one more!
O how I missed you, birdies! There they are again, chirping! My god, they are chirping!
And then they stopped. Dogs keep barking. I have found my own rhythm walking, slow
at my pace. It‘s getting warm, in my winter morning walk. Dried leaves on sidewalk have
now been swept away clean. I miss them. Birdies are nowhere to be heard. I miss doves
cooing the other morning as I walked right here. They are so loud in their silence. They are
my Thous my Milieu.
Example Two: Now we can understand the mother-child relation, the basic originative
human relation of humanity. The mother is both the Thou-meeting and the Milieu-
surrounding the baby, both vital to him. The baby is in turn both the Milieu where the mother
breathes her life and the Thou to whom she attends with constant caring solicitude; her cares
It-arrange for his growth in which Mom grows, and their Thous and her It blend into a unique
Milieu, as their air to inter-enliven their Thous.
Thus in It-birds in Thou-birds Milieu and mother-baby as Thou-Milieu inter-growing,
they tune in Thous and Its, to gently shape a specific Thou-air and It-style of life we live.
These relations can negatively extrapolate into a network of conspiracy to 9/11 Tragedy.
Importantly, storytelling alone can evoke these life-and-death relations, pro and con.
Journalism is a poignant art of daily storytelling.
Now we are convinced of a right answer to our old persistent question, ―Why do we tell
stories?‖ Our storytelling somehow makes deep sense of all this life drama; storytelling
makes a felt story-sense of all life‘s routines and even absurdities. We cannot help mumbling
about what goes on, and our mumble makes a story that somehow comforts us by giving us
an orientation inexpressible otherwise. That was what happened to the story of Wang‘s
―Preface‖ cited above, and since then we have been rehearsing stories one after another.
Today journalism is the science as science is the journalism—of storytelling of life.
Journalism journeys through life as science knows life, both spinning out a new story a day.
Kids do so at the crack of every dawn, to powerfully pulse into tomorrow. I dreamed of
telling a tiny boy to use his tender palm to cup and reflect his warm breath into his freezing
nose. He did, clumsily, and I awoke. His wobbly palm is still here, and I am so very happy.
His palm is my dawn. Now, to mix palm-It as kid-Thou in my Milieu of Nature is agrarian
revolution, of today‘s technology in Japan.

AGRICULTURE IN TECHNOLOGY IN JAPAN25

Here is an amazing story of today‘s Japanese technology as agrarian. We often take
agriculture as a dated primitive engagement now replaced by efficient industry and
technology today. This section contends that precisely this ―dated‖ agriculture is the green
salvation of today‘s technology the destroyer of nature and humanity. Japan leads the world
in infusing the spirit of agriculture into science/technology/industry.
Japanese farmers treasure land as gold, cherishing the ―family‖-community in loving
land-cultivation together. Such agrarian sensitivity pervades Japan‘s ecological industry.
Agrarianism is an agricultural way of life, to love/respect Nature, to live with it on it, not off
it over it; the land is an undercurrent that nourishes its science/industry today. This section

25 My dear student Miss Jessica Pue‘s permission to adapt her detailed essay on this theme is deeply appreciated.
100 Kuang-ming Wu

tells this exciting story of ―agricultured‖ technology in ecological industry, for our whole
world to follow to thrive together in nature. Agrarianism is our global future.
Ancient Japanese lovingly cultivated their precious land for centuries, and their agrarian
attitude survived nineteenth century industrialization that killed traditional institutions to
create an industrialized veneer. We now tell the story of (1) Japan‘s traditional agrarianism,
(2) destruction of its agrarian institutions by industrialization/urbanization, and then (3) the
persistence of agrarian traits/attitudes today (4) to nourish Japanese science/industry, based on
(5) agrarian principles that forebodes well for (6) the future green world.

1. Respectful Oneness with Nature—Japan’s Traditional Agrarian Lifestyle

Japan‘s ―agrarian attitude‖ is a respectful intimate identification with nature as typified in

its sociocultural life, rooted/thrived in ancient times, and went underground in the Tokugawa
era. Japan‘s rocky, mountainous terrain limits cultivation to a fraction of its tiny islands;
people developed an intensive small-scale agriculture to treasure Mother Nature.
Because life totally depended on scarce arable land a tiny plot was prized as gold.26
Intense cultivation familiarized farmers with their land, and many generations‘ land-
cultivation intensified oneness with the soil. All this led in turn to close family ties working
together and their cooperation and sharing resources led to village camaraderie.
Treasuring Nature led to its reverence in nature-religion, and they appealed to Nature-
deities kami to protect them from sickness/catastrophe and for good harvest. Thus geography
shaped Japanese agrarian life-patterns far back in history, deeply attached to land, and tightly
bonded them as family-community of intensive land-cultivation, in a filial religion of the
spirit of Nature-reverence.

2. Destruction of Japan’s Agrarian Institutions by

Industrialization/Urbanization

Meiji Restoration (1868) swiftly industrialized Japan into Western lifestyle, uprooting the
above traditional agrarian institution in the family, rural villages, religion, and annual events.
One: Agrarian kinship bonds assured support of cohesive farming community, and then,
outside hirelings came in to loosen family farming,27 and individualism came to choose one‘s
own work.28 Young folks moved to cities en masse for lucrative factory or office jobs. New
city-dwellers with different work-styles separated rural families spatially and then culturally.
Families fell apart.
Two: Family land-ownership vanished in government annexation or administration under
new townships to benefit a few VIPs.29 Three: Modern transportation brought new culture,
and belief in ―taboos‖ on childbirth or death faded, for urban situation prevented their
observance, and village taboos lost authority as no harm came on their violation.30 The

26 Shoichi Watanabe, The Peasant Soul of Japan, NY: St. Martin‘s Press, 1989, p. 10.
27 Kunio Yanagida, ed., Japanese Manners and Customs in the Meiji Era, Tokyo: Ōbunsha, 1957, p. 105.
28 Ibid., 109.
29 Ibid., 78-79.
30 Ibid., 305-308.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 101

government banned ―socially disruptive‖ beliefs of fox-messengers of agriculture-god, Inari,

to possess people, to pit ―possessed‖ houses against ―unpossessed‖ ones31; Western education
of mechanism dismissed spell-casting.
Finally, the government dropped traditional lunar calendar for Western solar calendar
and created new less meaningful national holidays, e.g., Emperor‘s Birthday.32 Traditional
agricultural festivals lost fascination for city-dwellers who with a little money could easily
afford entertainment any day.33 The ancient festivals and holidays on the lunar calendar were
essential to marking seasons and giving relief from taxing farmwork. Stopping farming
stopped observing these special events, severing vital links to Nature.

3. Agrarian Undercurrent in Modern Japan

Yet agrarian attitude continued in clan loyalties in city, village spirit of cooperation,
religious practices, farming holidays, and old festivals. Clan loyalties stayed. Young people in
cities still felt obligated to fight for financial success to bring honor to families.34 They
preferred hardship to bringing shame to the family. City employers preferred applicants from
their own villages to strangers.35 Villagers formed cliques in companies, schools, and political
parties in the same city. Provincial rulers in the city sponsored education of youths from their
own villages.36
Religious practices survived despite government proscription and education. People
observed ―immoral‖ bon festival (when spirits from hell roam about the earth), carried
talismans or held rituals to fend off bad fortune (―small pox deity‖). They developed new
festivals of old village in schools (organized sports, picnics), new conscripted army (feasts for
new recruits).37 Fortunetellers advice on decisions to build a house, change residence, or
adopt a new method of tilling38; fortunetellers fulfill old needs that new institutions could not
satisfy. It is thus that Japan retained ancient agrarian values within modern industrial society,
with closeness to Nature at the base, which have positive impacts on Japan‘s industry.

4. Japanese Industry Nourished/Directed by Agrarianism

These agrarian life-patterns merged with Western cultural elements to distinctively shape
Japanese industry. Japanese industry now has ―quality in meticulous details‖; agrarian kinship
bonds re-configured modern workplace; Japan molds the society to fit traditional values; love
of Nature ecologically shapes industry; and infusing industry, technology, with such love of
Nature would lead modern world to an ecological future.
Japan‘s detailed quality in manufacturing industrial products came from ancient small-
scale, intensive farming, where attention to details gave quality on the smallest scale. In 1979,

31 Ibid., 309.
32 Ibid., 255-257.
33 Ibid., 273.
34 Ibid., 113.
35 Ibid., 78.
36 Ibid., 102.
37 Ibid., 267.
38 Ibid., 315.
102 Kuang-ming Wu

39
Hewlett Packard reported that Japan‘s microchips had a defect rate one-tenth of US ones.
40
Sony introduced its revolutionary pocket-sized transistor radio. Detroit faced competition as
American consumers turned to fuel-efficient Japanese cars after the Arab oil embargo in
41
1973. American auto industry collapsed in early 2000s, survived by Japan‘s Honda, Toyota,
and others.
In the past, working on tiny plots, Japanese farmers had to coax every bit of soil into
productive harvest, and so learned to appreciate compactness, high quality, and the greatest
yield, to pervade ingenuity with tight quality control. This effort at quality control is now the
entire workforce‘s duty, not just overseers‘.
Employee loyalty to their own company is a legacy of farmers‘ tight kinship bonds;
42
workers often forego vacation to show devotion. Japan has the fewest strikes, often
symbolic, than other nations. Art Buchwald was surprised to see employees with red
headbands showing dissatisfaction with the management, yet continue to be hard at work;
43
―they work even harder and with more proficiency‖ to appeal to their bosses‘ consciences.
Executives look out for employees‘ interests to assure company cohesion and loyalty;
44
employees are never asked to serve under someone their age or younger. Lay-offs are
avoided in the lifetime employment system, and top management suffers the largest pay cuts
45
in tough times. The management is head of the family, directing family activities to
protect/promote the clan. Employees are family members, hard at work for the
defense/prosperity of the clan.
Company‘s farmer-family security fulfills the amae-need, our desire to presume
another‘s goodwill, to enjoy an innermost circle where we are permitted some self-
46
indulgence, perhaps because (though Doi did not say so) of Japan‘s agrarian family
cohesion, a must for collective survival. Employees see themselves as members of a team,
identified to outsiders not by position but by company name.
47
Company sports teams, vacation resorts, and field days foster familial solidarity. Group
cooperation is encouraged by ringisei, conducting meetings for consensus over personal
48
opinion. Such agrarian shaping of modern industry beckons Japan to many unique
prospects industrial, technological, and scientific.
Japanese resentment of Western modernity originated in agrarian environmental respect.
As gaudy Western products offend Japanese aesthetics, so must Western industry‘s disregard
49
of the environment, for profit at all cost (a contradiction!) offend Japan‘s historic love of

39 John Hunter Boyle, Modern Japan: The American Nexus, Ft. Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993, p.
378.
40 Ibid., 374-375.
41 Ibid., 368.
42 Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese Today, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, p. 324.
43 Boyle, Modern Japan: The American Nexus, op. cit., p. 378.
44 Reischauer, The Japanese Today, op. cit., p. 321.
45 Ibid., p. 321.
46 Takeo Doi and John Bester (trans.), The Anatomy of Dependence, NY: Kodansha International, 1973, p. 28.
47 Reischauer, The Japanese Today, op. cit., pp. 323-324.
48 Takeo Doi, tr., Mark A. Harbison, The Anatomy of Self: The Individual Versus Society, NY: Kodansha
International, 1986, p. 35.
49 Profit cannot obtain by costing it. Besides, as we short-sightedly abuse our planet today to secure our own
comfort, convenience, and wealth, we most assuredly risk destroying our future in which to enjoy them.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 103

Nature. Against them, Japan can draw on its agrarian roots to prosper nature-loving
technology, to prosper all.
Japanese scientists have dedicated shrines to laboratory animals, honoring them as
―comrades‖ who sacrificed their lives to scientific progress. Were this attitude to pervade all
science/industry, Japan would change our views and behavior toward Nature where we
breathe. Japan is ready to lead the world to ecologically sound technology in auto-industry,
transportation industry, factory designs, and government policies.
Japan produces fuel-efficient hybrid gasoline-electric cars that combine an efficient
gasoline engine and an electric motor to emit one-tenth the pollutants of standard cars, and
fuel-cell vehicles that produce electricity by mixing hydrogen and oxygen electrochemically
50
to emit the ―waste‖ of water. The continuance of this trend in auto-industry and its further
application to other clean, energy-efficient technologies shows Japan‘s environmental
51
concern in industry.
The 500 Series shinkansen between Tokyo and Hakata in northern Kyushu maximizes
speed, safety, and comfort, and minimizes environmental impact with a novel aerodynamic
52
design and reduced noise. Japan plans an Intelligent Transport System to connect people,
roads, and vehicles via a data communications network, cutting exhaust gases by reducing
acceleration/deceleration. Drivers could pass through tollgates without stopping, for the
53
transaction occurs instantly by on-board equipment with a roadside computer.
By 1998, Asahi Breweries had converted all its plants to zero-emissions by recycling
54
excess yeast for use in foods and pharmaceuticals. The Ministry of International Trade and
Industry gives tax incentives to research to find energy efficient technologies. In 1993, the
government initiated ―The New Sunshine Program‖ to speed development of renewable
energy sources and advanced fossil fuel use. Relatively high energy prices and 3%
consumption taxes on refined oil products, natural gas, and electricity, urge responsible
55
energy use.
Thus with environmental respect Japan surpasses the West in reducing industrial
pollution and in conserving energy. Their automobiles run cleanly, public transportation
combines speed and safety with energy-efficiency, and factories produce little pollution.
Government policies reinforce technological innovations, for people and corporations to use
energy prudently. Reverence for Nature sustains environmentally sound science, technology,
and industry.
Western technology is based on abstract objective science to separate human subjects
from Nature, to exploit/manipulate, to ruin Nature and humans. Japanese technology should
continue to build on concrete human-involved nature-friendly science. Concrete theories or
56
perhaps meta-theories (Shinto Kamis) show human intimacy with Nature, Nature-dependent

50 Yahoo! News: Asia, ―Asian carmakers tout weird and wacky designs‖ 25 Oct. 2001
<http://www.sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia_68026.html.
51 While such technologies are being developed worldwide, so far the Japanese car industry leads in making
energy-efficient automobiles available to general consumers, as shown by the success of Toyota and Honda in
putting hybrid-vehicles on the market.
52 Japan Atlas, ―Advanced Technology‖ <http://jin.jcic.or.jp/atlas/technology/techno_fr.html>
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Environmental Review: Japan, June 1995 <http://www.eia.doe.gov/emen/env/japan.html>
56 Wu shows how to concretely theorize space (313-42) and time (342-85) in On the “Logic” of Togetherness,
Leiden: Brill, 1998.
104 Kuang-ming Wu

humans tilling soil, managing matters, thriving with and within Nature. The true scientific
spirit is agrarian, following Nature (―objectivity‖) and becoming its part to prosper with it
(―ecology‖). Ecology is agrarian.

5. Conclusion: Future World Significance of Japanese Agrarianism

In conclusion, two caveats must be entered. One, concrete evidence for Japan‘s agrarian
science/technology is purposely drawn from the relatively early period of the Meiji era, the
beginning of Japan‘s modernization, to end in 1990s before the bursting of the economic
bubble—to point out Japan‘s undeniable cultural roots, its agrarian tradition.
Two, we admit that Japan is one of the world‘s worst polluted nations. Technological
reclaiming of natural environment is like firemen belatedly facing forest fire. Industrial and
commercial wastes pile up all over these tiny overpopulated islands; agrarian technology
seems a rearguard spraying of water drops on the raging fire.
For all this, being not far behind Japan in environmental devastation, the West has no
historical/cultural basis on which to repair horrendous damages inflicted by its technological
disregard of Nature. Japan has; its agrarian roots infusing respectful harmony with nature into
calculative/mechanical technology, is not only unique to Japan, but the one essential to, and
humanity‘s sole history-rooted hope for, saving the eco-fragile global tragedy today. We
fervently hope that Japanese age-old love of Nature would vigorously spread to the entire
57
world in technology.
The pivot of modernity, in Japan and in the West, turns on attitude and perspective. The
West dropped, in the humanistic Renaissance, the classical notions of things‘ desire to ―fall‖
to reach the center of the universe (Aristotle), or things having the ―conatus‖-desire to be as
they are (Spinoza). The West now takes nature to be a big machine to objectively observe,
conquer, and manipulate (Bacon), that is, to exploit to benefit its human master alone.
A machine is made of disposable, dispensable, and displaceable/replaceable parts, each
bit as separate and alone as every other. From such a mindset came the Western ideal of
clarity, objectivity, analysis, manipulation, and individualism, and soon came the culture of
throwaway disposables and planned obsolescence, i.e., planned wasting. The recent vogue of
recycling shows a belated awareness of the disastrous consequences of such cultural attitude
and lifestyle that governs science, technology, and industry.
An alternative mindset is a sense of belonging, a pride of being an interdependent
indispensable part of a respected Whole, eager to blend in, contribute to and be nourished by
the Whole. This Whole is Nature, expressed in Japan as an age-old agrarian reverence. From
such respectful attachment to Whole Nature comes many a distinctive trait.
In a holistic attitude, I always watch out for the other guy my brother to care for him. I
am distinctly free within my group my community, averse to being at liberty (to stand out)
58
from my family my fatherland. This is group spirit, laboriously building up consensus in

57 Despite such ―pep-talk,‖ a gaping mystery stays on why agrarian Japan was the world‘s worst polluter in the first
place. Still, as long as Japan is trying to redress itself with its agrarian attitude, our eyes must be glued to its
future; its past Akrasia must yield to its theoretical lament.
58 David Hackett Fischer said, ―The Latin libertas implies separation and independence. The Indo-European root of
‗freedom‘ meant rights of belonging in a community of free people.‖ See his Liberty and Freedom: A Visual
History of America‟s Founding Ideas, Oxford University Press, 2005.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 105

good ―group think,‖ not blindly following the mob in pecking order. It is a rainbow coalition
blending varied hues into a multicolored kaleidoscope, much more than coming to be a
59
monochrome society, in fact, distinct from such society.
As a result, people see each other as comrades and fellow partakers of the community of
Nature. They share destinies to co-thrive, respect one another and work together. Communal
spirit flows through companies and research teams, and is extended to non-living things,
including machines, garbage, and cars, to extend to myriad all in Nature.
Care is expended on each machine, even each part of each machine, as if it were a part of
human life. Machines are made for safety and built to last to zero-waste. Garbage is carefully
managed to generate heat for the city. Environmentally friendly cars and gadgets are
produced. Environmental pollution is a serious public felony (kōgai), a crime against Nature.
60
Of course, American Indians, Indians, and Chinese also have such an agrarian mindset, but
only in Japan does this attitude infuse, nourish, and direct today‘s science and technology.
In sum, beneath a modern veneer, Japanese people are basically agrarian. During the
Meiji era, the nation drastically altered its course to avoid Western domination, changing
countless aspects of daily life to accommodate the broad institutional changes that would
make Japan an industrial power. Yet Japan‘s autochthonous needs and attitudes have
persisted as its agrarian roots that nourish us, to link people to Mother Nature.
The old agrarianism remains in Japan intertwining with modern Western elements,
shaping Japan to ecologically manage Nature. An agrarian attitude of reverential attachment
to Nature has transformed modern Japan into one both agrarian and industrialized, providing
unique prospects for the ecological future of Japan.
This Japanese appreciation of Nature can transform science, industry, and technology
worldwide to save nature and humanity. Perhaps this ―postmodern revolution‖ will show in
industrial products designed to suit the Japanese love of the environment, or the investment of
science and technology with reverence for the sacred Nature and all beings sacred, sentient
and non-sentient.
This new Post-Industrial Revolution is a movement away from our modern destructive
course, with Japan leading the West. Yet, paradoxically, Japan‘s scrupulous reverence of
Nature and its cooperative cultivation comes from its ―idleness‖ to give room to others and
letting things be. This is because ―respect‖ of others implies letting them be while one stays
behind, and staying behind is an attitude of idleness, i.e., not moving on one‘s own, but
support others to work together. Respectful camaraderie shows itself in ―idleness.‖

ON IDLENESS
Suppose we ask what it is that enables Japan to engage in ecologically conscientious
science and technology. An answer to it is quite refreshing: It is that Japan can afford to love
nature, for Japan is infused with reverence to things that simply are there and just happen.

59 This is to oppose taking holism as agreement by Amitai Etzioni (The Monochrome Society, Princeton University
Press, 2001).
60 As an emerging superpower in science and technology, China is also exerting its autochthonous influence on
world science and technology.
106 Kuang-ming Wu

Such sensitivity often has action prudently idled. An idled activity is not lazy inaction.
Idleness here finds rich funds of stories.
To begin, we are amazed at having so many synonyms on idleness—idle, indolent, lazy,
61
and slothful—yet no dictionary to my knowledge notes the distinction among them. Still,
China and Japan note that their distinction critically sobers us. There is ―sloth,‖ the last
deadly sin, that rots the self, and there is ―idleness‖ judiciously refraining from vain struggles
to cultivate authenticity, never ―help growth,‖ Mencius warns (2A2). Sloth decays; idling can
edify. The distinction is subtly crucial.
Chinese people idealize and perform ―idleness.‖ In Confucius it became the princely one
retiring from the world-in-chaos, not irritated at being unrecognized. Impressed, his disciples
let it be the last of the triplet sighing long to initiate his Analects. Chuang Tzu went further,
with two stories toward the end of Chapter Seventeen, ―Autumn Waters 秋水,‖ as follows.

Chuang Tzu was fishing at the P‘u River. King Ch‘u dispatched two officials to him,
saying, ―I wish to encumber you with my realm.‖ Holding the fishing-rod, without turning,
Chuang Tzu said, ―I heard that Ch‘u has a sacred tortoise already dead for 3,000 years. The
King keeps it, clothed, boxed, on top of the ancestral temple. Now, would this tortoise rather
be dead bones and honored, or would it rather be alive and drag its tail in the mud?‖ The two
officials said, ―it would rather be alive and drag its tail in the mud.‖ Chuang Tzu said, ―Go
away! I‘ll drag my tail in the mud.‖

Hui Tzu was a chief minister of Liang; Chuang Tzu went to see him. Some told Hui Tzu,
saying, ―Chuang Tzu is coming to replace you to be the minister.‖ Alarmed at this, Hui Tzu
searched three days and three nights throughout the state. Chuang Tzu went and saw him,
saying, ―In the south there is a bird whose name is phoenix, do you know of it? Starting at
South Sea to fly to North Sea, it rests on no tree but the Wu-t‘ung, eats nothing but the Lien
fruit, drinks nothing but from the sweetest spring. Just then an owl that got a rotten rat, looked
up at the phoenix flying by and glared, saying, ―Shoo!‖ Now, having your state of Liang, do
you want to shoo me?

We have overshot ourselves. We have unwittingly surveyed two fascinating implications

of ―idleness,‖ both subtly cultural—Judeo-Christian, on one hand, and disarmingly Sino-
Japanese, on the other.
The active Judeo-Christian tradition has a periodic practice of the ―Sabbath‖ rest from
work, yet, surprisingly, Christian ―theology of the Sabbath‖ is yet to emerge out of millennia
of reflection. To Jews‘ angry query on why he healed on the Sabbath, Jesus said curtly, ―My
Father is at work even till now,/ and so I am at work too,‖62 his healing merely reflected God

61 ―All the heat of the Day they idle it under some shady Tree.‖ ―Plough-Monday was an idle day,‖ a day of
celebration. ―A good idle ashore would be very pleasant.‖ ―Cecily let her fingers idle upon the keys.‖ ―A clear
brown brook idles through the pastures.‖ Ms. Pue surmises ―idle‖ as verb can connote something positive,
negative, or neutral, but she can not find its adjective use as anything else than negative—at most frivolity,
quite different from the Chinese/Japanese take on idleness. All are examples of positive connotation on ―idle‖
from Oxford English Dictionary. Also, ―Let the car sit with the engine on ‗idle‘ for a while so the heater will
warm up the car.‖ Sadly, examples on positive use of ―idle‖ are so few and far apart in English. I had to rely
on Dr. E. Bowers and Ms. J. Pue to find these precious few examples.
62 John 5:17, Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, The Anchor Bible, 1966, p. 212; his exegesis on
the Sabbath (pp. 216-217) has no Sabbath-rest as work—the central enigma in this saying of Jesus. God‘s
work feeds (John 4:34), so do Jesus works on the Sabbath; its rest is acts of love, says William Temple
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 107

the Father‘s customary work on the Sabbath his rest, for ―sabat‖ ―rest‖ conduces creative
work. No thinker has even noted this obvious paradox: Why is work-stop ultimate work?
What does it mean? 63
Well, Sabbath has a surprising wealth of implications. The Sabbath Year releases debtors
and bond-slaves, rests the land from sowing, reaping, or pruning. Rest restores, to renew,
release, and resurrect, in short, to make whole, i.e., to heal and save. Jesus releases us from
years of bondage in illness, to heal us. During the Sabbath period Christ died and resurrected
to grant us life into our resurrection/salvation, ―today.‖ This is the time of arrival, of final
harvest, of final judgment, of ultimate Paradise, New Jerusalem night-less.64 Sabbath rests us
to new active life.
Thus the God of Sabbath-rest never slumbers so we can sleep in peace; Jesus has
nowhere to pillow his head so we can go to him as our bird-nest and foxhole. The Lord of
Hosts, Sabaoth God, is really the Sabbath God who hides his right hand behind the left, our
Shade secretly birthing, nurturing, and rebirthing us.65
Daily healing, medical or mental, re-creates life, life-rejuvenation is the first-fruit of the
final New Creation, and both events are cosmically synonymous with the Sabbath that is the
crowning creation of the Six Days of Divine Creation.66 Sabbath crowns creation, the height
of activity that goes on to create and re-create. Armed with this Christian meaning of
―Sabbath,‖ we now enter the world of Asian ―idleness.‖
We feel a sea change, a continental shift, as we read Tanizaki.67 ―To be forewarned is to
be forearmed.‖ So I forewarn you, his reader; you cannot be forearmed! Tanizaki meanders

(Readings in St. John‟s Gospel [1939, 1940], Wilton, CT: Morehouse Barlow, 1985, pp.107-108). No
explanation is given.
63 Dear Pastor Chuck: I am sure you know this book (a bit wordy) that I read yesterday, The Sabbath, by Abraham
Joshua Heschel (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951). He claims (p. 22) that the Sabbath calmly culminates
the Divine Six Days of Creation. The Sabbath is the day of His crowning Creation, ―menuhu,‖ the blessed,
sanctified ―stillness‖ as it is described in ―the still waters‖ of Psalm 23. For us Christians, Christ died on
Friday to calmly lie during the Sabbath, for ―It is accomplished!‖ (John 19:30, Revised English Bible) His
Resurrection begins ―the first day of the week‖ (Mt 28:1, Lk 24:1, Jn 20:1) of the New Creation. His
Resurrection invites us to partake of his New Week of Creation, and ―the Acts of the Apostles‖ describes its
―First Day of the New Week‖ of the New Creation with us! The ―New Six Days‖ lead up to the cosmic Good
Friday in Christ (Mt 24, Mk 13, Lk 21, Rev 1-19) to culminate in the Sabbath of all Sabbaths of All New
Creation. Rev. 21-22 describes that Day of ―a New Heaven and a New Earth,‖ ―the New Garden-City in Eden‖
that has the River of Life and the Tree of Life (cf. Gen. 2:9-10) under God the glorious Sun. That will be the
Day! The Death of the Messiah by Raymond E. Brown (NY: Doubleday, 1994, two vols.) is too bogged down
in exegetical details to note this connection of Christ‘s Death-Resurrection-Eschaton with Sabbath-―the First
Day of the Week‖-―the Sabbath of all Sabbaths.‖ Sad. Kuang-ming
64 Genesis 30:22, Deuteronomy 15:1-12, Leviticus 15:1-7, 26:34-35, Ezekiel 37:13, 2Chronicles 36:21, Luke
13:15-1, John 7:23, Mark 16:1, Hebrews 4:7-10 (Eugene H. Peterson), Revelation 22:5.
65 See Psalm 121:3-5, Matthew 8:20, Job 23:9, etc.
66 ―Shabbat‖ is from the verb ―to desist,‖ freeing us from the slavery of daily toil as in Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15)
into being fellow-laborers with God whose work is creation (Exodus 20:8-11) (H. L. Ellison, Exodus,
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982, p. 110). This interpretation fits with one here on Jesus‘ healing on
the Sabbath, that he desists daily human work to do God‘s creative work, i.e., making people whole. Dr.
Bowers said that during the Orthodox Shabbat observation no work is done, not even cooking (done in
advance), no electric appliances used, and no outside social engagements made as they focus on the family.
The family talks and sings together for maybe 24 hours. It helps people iron out family difficulties without
distractions; they are forced to get along. Thus the Sabbath creates concord.
67 See 谷崎潤一郎‘s ―懶惰の說‖ in his 陰翳禮讚, 中公文庫, 1975, 2000, pp. 66-91. I considered this fascinating
essay in ―Tanizaki‘s ‗Theory of Idleness (Randa no Setsu)‘ and ‗Japanese Philosophy‘,‖ in Why Japan
Matters! eds. Joseph F. Kess and Helen Landsdowne, BC, Canada: University of Victoria, 2005, pp. 703-716.
108 Kuang-ming Wu

into an ―idle river‖ meandering in an unsuspected direction, to disarm you into chuckling
surprises all over, all the way.
He insists that Japan-idleness is not Taoistic or philosophical but ingrained in his cultural
soil among common folks, and cites casual examples from China.68 Fastidious cleanliness69
imported from the West denatures us. Pearl-white teeth neatly aligned, forever smiling, bite
off our natural tendency to be comfortably dirty—and relaxed. At dinner in formal attire with
etiquette at the appointed hour, kills appetite and us. Busily doing self-sacrificial good to the
poor, as Salvation Army does, is alien to our Buddhist way of quietly conforming to nature as
we idly are.
Rousseau‘s aggressive ―Back to nature!‖ is not our relaxed idleness. Do you consume
rich beefsteak, then vigorously exercise for stamina? Look at our old ladies sitting motionless
in the house all day, on a modicum of pickles barely enough for birds, to live much longer
than men. Straining to sing? Isn‘t it comical to strain after playing the music that is supposed
to relax listeners? Hum your own tune to enjoy yourself, or better, just hum it in mind, no
voice-singing.70
Tanizaki then, surprises us by concluding the essay denying that he is selling idleness, for
he himself is studious!71 Studious or no, he is himself. So, now, Tanizaki‘s series of arresting
oddities climaxed in such a resounding non sequitur, so openly unadorned and unarmed, to
wham us on our clever head. Loitering, he disarms us and makes us laugh—as we wonder
what he is up to, and we find nothing. He just comes to us so untidy that we feel we can be
untidy as he is. Unhurried, he is all over in nature to put us at ease with ourselves.
His essay thus relaxes and refreshes us—naturally. Yet we read it again, and we, without
warning, feel its subtlety shimmering throughout in the wisdom of a wrinkled grandpa,
untaught, uncouth, an uncarved blockhead.72 Defenseless, he needs no defense, and we
simply cannot win him; we are won over. That‘s the disarming power of powerless idleness,
this Tanizaki‘s rejuvenating essay, dawdling along.
For all his stunts, Tanizaki is just following the age-old Japanese tradition shown in
Tsurezuregusa (idle-grass).73 This is in line with China where we all find the secret
irresistible strength of no-do, wu-wei 旡為, merely flowing along with the tides of nature
inside and out. Our no-do is a discerning idleness that follows nature naturally, fully aware
unawares.
In all, we feel—not see—the atmosphere shift. The Sabbath is rest from work to
rejuvenate for work. The Lord of the Sabbath is Luther‘s deus absconditus (hidden God) who
works incognito, letting his Son be buried on the Sabbath to heal us into the Final Judgment.
Sino-Japanese people idle 懶惰 in indolence, slackening, sloppily attentive-inattentive, and
slow to move (怠けること, 物臭さ, 億劫がり). Sages hide among thugs, as Nature thrives

68 They are further lustily enriched by Lin Yutang, though Tanizaki did not mention Lin. See ―The Cult of the Idle
Life‖ in Lin Yutang‘s The Importance of Living, NY: John Day, 1937, pp. 152-165.
69 ―Cleanliness is next to holiness‖ is simply an anathema to Tanizaki; it kills us into holiness.
70 This confession reminds us of Chuang Tzu‘s (2/43) saying, ―‗No completion, no defect‘ is Chao the musician
not drumming, not strumming.‖
71 To think of it, we cannot ―sell‖ idleness any more than we can command our friend to be on her own!
72 Lao Tzu‘s ―uncarved block 樸‖ has this human implication of being a blockhead (chs. 15, 19, 28, 33, 37, 57). Cf.
a subsequent masterpiece, Pao P‟u Tzu Mr. Hug-Block, or Mr. Blockhead, 抱朴子, 臺北市三民書局, 民90, in
two thick volumes.
73 吉田の兼好著, 徒然草, 西尾實, 安良岡康作校注, 岩波文庫, 1928, 2001. Essays in Idleness: The
Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō, translated by Donald Keene, NY: Columbia University Press, 1967, 1998.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 109

in no-do 旡為, even in tsuanmi! Sabbath-rest acts to nurture74; Sino-Japanese idleness

excludes acts, with a wink.
Now, what does it mean to have ―idleness‖ in life-as-activity? Idleness is free leisurely
storytelling, continual telling, forever evolving as history does. It must imply that life is
always on its way on its own, not to be disturbed; this ―not‖ is what being idle is, our life
moving on its own. This is the paradise of the ―underachievers.‖75
Many so-called ―underachieved people‖ want to simply have an ―easy job that pays
well,‖ meaning they want to enjoy being on their own, easygoing as they develop themselves.
Such a lifestyle does not go well with fidgety toil-and-moil trifles of the Western world. The
challenge here is to adjust the dominant culture in the West by designing our easygoing to
adjust to it.76
Someone may say, ―But all these are cultural matters; Tanizaki‘s idleness applies to the
inscrutable Orient alone, as Judeo-Christian ‗Sabbath‘ belongs to the West.‖ This response
shows cultural relativism, a copout from hard thinking. The whole ―cultural‖ issue can
redound to our mental health, i.e., life‘s health, and the ecological health of nature.
This crucial point has an important bearing to Japan‘s agrarian technology. Japan‘s
―idleness‖ amounts to a revolution in Western science and technology that continues to ruin
nature, both of Mother Nature and of us people. Intercultural adjustments are significant quite
beyond mere cultural realm. Culture mirrors nature in more than one sense. Before going into
―interculture,‖ though, we must take a final look at ―science‖; it surprises us by showing itself
as mythological, connecting itself to the ancient roots of humanity.

SCIENCE AND MYTHMAKING

We cannot live in incongruities for long; we must connect them in some order out of
chaos that ruins things. This ―ordering‖ is done by storytelling to result in cultural mythology
and ideology. To describe a culture is to tell its ―story‖ in myths and legends, and even its
―scientific description‖ is a storytelling.77 All this is a given. We are surprised, however, that
when such story-order comes about, some sort of novelty to the point of ―revolution‖ also
comes about.
―Scientific revolutions, almost by definition, defy common sense,‖ so begins Michio
Kaku in his interesting story of theoretical physics in Hyperspace. I cannot distinguish playful
Escher from theoretical Hawking; both are fantastic cartoons.78 Facts are stranger than fiction,

74 This is why Bertrand Russell‘s ―In Praise of Idleness‖ merely goes as far as opposition to work beyond necessity
and promotion of pursuit of tastes in leisure time, neither of which has much to do with idleness. See his In
Praise of Idleness, London: Unwin Books, 1935, 1967, pp. 10-21. This volume has fascinating titles and
delivers little.
75 Cf. Benjamin Anastas, An Unachiever‟s Diary, Picador, 2000. It has a slight inconsistency to it, for how could
an underachiever manage to write such a great book?
76 This reminds us of a bum in a Tokyo Park challenging a workaholic company executive, told in a 1960 Wright
Lecture at Yale Divinity School, quoted as Story Three, in our later pages.
77 Henri Frankfort, et al., Before Philosophy, London: Penguin Books, 1954, pp. 15, 25, 27, 29, 42f, 53f, et passim.
78 Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and The Tenth
Dimension (Oxford University Press, 1994), NY: Doubleday, 1995, p. vii. M. C. Escher: His Life and
Complete Graphic Works, ed. J. L. Locker, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1992. Stephen Hawking, The Illustrated
Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell, NY: Bantam Books, 2008.
110 Kuang-ming Wu

for fiction is contrived while fact is fashioned natural unawares to stun our awareness; but
even fiction is surely stranger than common sense.79
Two points are here. One, science that describes facts must be stranger than common
sense. Two, straight folktales and legends are stranger than common sense. Two questions
remain, that is, how similar science is to legends in being strange, and how science differs
from legends in their shared strangeness. Yet surely all are storytelling stranger than
everything we know. M. C. Escher consciously joins fantasy and fact-description, saying,80

I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos
without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often
playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to
be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of
two and of three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity.
Escher‘s graphic works tell stories; each wood block tells an indefinite number of stories.
Escher is not alone in mixing ―fact‖ we know and ―fancy‖ we like. Fantastic ancient
mythology and tales of The Classic of Mountains and Seas, for example, yields us today
veritable ethnological harvests on rituals, medicine, botany, zoology, natural history, and
ethnic peoples of the ancient world. Thus we freely make sober academic uses of mythic
sagas and legends to gain precious information on ancient days.81
To wonder how ancient bombastic tales could yield to modern scholarship any ―decent
academic ethnographical harvests‖ at all is to assume that science and fiction never mix, and
this assumption is wrong. Michio Kaku reports that ―Steven Weinberg, who won the Nobel
Prize in physics in 1979, . . . commented recently that theoretical physics seems to be
becoming more and more like science fiction.‖82
In other words, science is advancing toward fiction. How? By ―daring to hypothesize,
carefully to demonstrate‖ (Hu Shih) that the hypothesis proposed would simplify, cohere, and
unify disjointed theories of science to explain all ―laws of nature.‖ What distinguishes science
from fiction, then, is that science proceeds in demonstration of a certain sort while fiction
does with another sort.83 The process is the same, from fictive hypothesis to demonstrated
science, from science fiction to science that advances to fiction; it is a hermeneutic circle with
a vengeance.
What excites us is that for Weinberg science is advancing toward science fiction, not the
other way around. We can see that the very demonstration process that turns fictive
hypothesis into solid science is itself an odyssey of a saga, a story as fascinating as fiction. In

79 Anyone who reads Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll: the Definitive Edition (1960), NY:
W. W. Norton, 2000, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien (1954-1956), will agree. See also
Michael Page and Robert Ingren, Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were, NY: Viking Penguin, 1987, 1993.
80 This is quoted in the book cover of F. H. Bool et al., M. C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work, NY:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1992.
81 See 袁珂譯注, 山海經, 臺灣古籍出版社, 上下卷, 1988, 臺北市里仁書局, 民84, 山海經，臺北市三民書局,
2008, and Anne Birrell, The Classic of Mountains and Seas, London: Penguin Books, 1999. Cf. Elizabeth
Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber, When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth,
Princeton University Press, 2004. Not many scholars would use the book of Chuang Tzu, though, as sources of
ethnographic studies, it being so ―out of line‖ of everything!
82 Kaku, op. cit., p. 9.
83 It may well be that fiction-writing and storytelling does have its own ―demonstration‖ of at least its internal
coherence. It is fair, however, to alert ourselves that story-demonstration is more elusive, if not more complex,
than the scientific one, though no less strict and rigorous.
 Science: Story Factual and Fictive 111

fact, Kaku‘s description of science is absorbing because it is itself such a fascinating

storytelling.84 It is a soberly exciting story telling an excitingly sober story of science.
Thus in more storytelling of more demonstration, the more will chaotic hypotheses and
disjointed sciences cohere. This process of science is completely open, ever cohering; in
science our ―laws of nature‖ turn simpler and more elegant when expressed in a higher
unified story, such as a unified field theory of higher order, as stories of ―open coherence.‖85
Does open-endedness mean, then, that all things cultural—Judeo-Christian and Sino-
Japanese, scientific and mythological—are relative? Are ―all things‖ relative? What does
―relative‖ mean? What does relativism look like from the perspective of cultural storytelling?
Let us probe this fascinating twofold theme, culture and relativism, in an intercultural context.

84 Some of other examples of good storytelling on today‘s science are Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters:
An Overview of New Physics (1979), NY: Bantam Books, 1980, Philip and Phylis Morrison, The Ring of
Truth: An Inquiry into How We Know What We Know, NY: Random House, 1987, Robert Gilmore, Alice in
Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics, NY: Springer, 1995, and Stephen Hawking, The Universe in
a Nutshell, NY: Bantam Books, 2001.
85 Cf. my The Butterfly as Companion, op. cit., pp. 67-68.
Chapter 4

INTERCULTURE, RELATIVISM

Cross-cultural dialogues on values moral and non-moral are rife with problems, and
naturally what has been produced so far is quite unsatisfactory.1 Their insufficiencies
originate in ―cross-culture‖ that assumes cultures as ―isolated and separate,‖ and so the
problem of judging across cultures arises as insoluble. We must instead consider
―interculture‖ rooted in existence we all share as inter-existence, and ―moral values‖ or
―virtues‖ are rooted in existence we humans all share, and so we must begin considering the
matter at this basic level.
We will strike out our own way from scratch, at the intercultural existential level. We
insist that the very word ―culture‖ is already ―interculture,‖ and ―relativism‖ is ―inter-
enrichment.‖ We would convince the reader so with storytelling, as follows. First, ―to be
specifically‖ creates existence specific, and specificity is in history expressing ―culture.‖
Against Ricoeur flattening this historic creative be-ing, we say story-of-cultures is a
―circle‖ edgeless and center-less, ever expanding. This is ―relativism‖ of storytelling.
Relativistic interculture is then told in a story of ―China written in English,‖ to envision the
coming-together of storytelling in China and in the West. Moral debates across cultures shall
then turn intercultural give-and-take.

CONCRETE CREATIVITY AS REAL-IZING, STORYTELLING AS

COSMOS-“SYSTEMATIC”
We begin at the beginning of things, and see how things‘ coming-about is already infused
with culture. Let us first consider philosophy in the West.2 Two thinkers in the West claim
our attention. They are Martin Heidegger and Gabriel Marcel. We will (A) consider
Heidegger, then Marcel from whom we take cues on how existence creates, to (B) connect
with culture.

1 See, e.g., Samuel Fleischacker, The Ethics of Culture, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Amitai Etzioni,
The Monochrome Society, Princeton University Press, 2001, esp. ―Cross-Cultural Moral Judgments,‖ pp. 232-
245.
2 We consider Western philosophy where ―system‖ tends to be logical. Chinese philosophy is ―story-philosophy‖
and deserves a separate consideration.
114 Kuang-ming Wu

A. Heidegger and Marcel

Martin Heidegger is allegedly notorious in abstruse obscurantism on the fundamental

ontology that he claims to have discerned and revealed; he awesomely claims that it is the
revolution of Western philosophy. A close and delightful reading of his Being and Time
(1927)—as lucidly translated by Joan Stambaugh—however, reveals otherwise.
I found the clue in her unassuming explanation of factors that makes Heidegger‘s volume
difficult to translate. His bountiful neologisms came from everyday German (Befindlichkeit
from ―wie befinden Sie sich? How are you doing?‖); he mixes common vocabulary with
uncommon meanings (Dasein), and uses traditional philosophical words in untraditional
senses (Wahrheit, Sein).3 Being sensitive to his manner of mixing the common with the
uncommon, her translation is refreshing, intelligible, and even delightful. We must ask what
all this shows.
Heidegger shows (a) his familiarity with the traditional thrust of Western philosophizing,
yet (b) he constantly gazes at our daily living expressed in our daily language to realize how
our ordinary living reveals what it mysteriously means to ―be.‖ (c) These ordinary/mysterious
meanings of Being differ so conspicuously from queries and answers in Western philosophy
that he had to pronounce the latter mistaken.
(d) Thus, he tries to correct it by the raw primordial insights revealed in daily living. (e)
The result is that his entire philosophical task has a hard shell that contains a soft core. The
shell is asking questions with jargon and system of traditional Western philosophy; the core is
exposition of what is at hand in life, again in the traditional manner.
All this renders Heidegger awesomely unapproachable—clad in a formidable system and
a formidable battery of jargon. Is all this necessary? Doesn‘t our difficulty understanding him
show how unsuitable the Western methodology is to his insights? Thus the hard shell of his
thinking (that he himself thought was wrong) vitiates the soft core of his concrete insights.
The vitiation goes this way.
He now thinks about those insights from outside, always circling around them with
misplaced jargon.4 His philosophy pursues answers, in the systematic mode of ―Western
philosophy‖ he thought was wrong, to the question, ―What is Being?‖ a typical one in
―Western philosophy‖ he thought was wrong. How disastrously ironic it is to judge Western
philosophy wrong5 and stay there to pursue the novel insights missed by Western philosophy,
and that with the jargon and methodology of ―philosophy‖ he thought was wrong!6
―Why is all this approach wrong?‖ Well, isn‘t it odd to complain that something is wrong
and still stay in it? It is to complain an apple not sweet as melon, and insist on having an
apple-that-is-melon-sweet, a contorted garble. Rather, it is to call apple no-sweet-melon,
melon sweet-apple, and then complain that apple is no melon. Of course, things get contorted
and complex; in their ―precision‖ of his contortion, Heidegger prides himself. What proud
exercise in complex futility he generates and conducts!

3 Joan Stambaugh, tr., Martin Heidegger: Being and Time, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996,
―Translator‘s Preface,‖ p. xiii.
4 This feature is most apparent in his aesthetic reflections on arts conveniently anthologized in Poetry, Language,
Thought, tr. Albert Hofstadter, NY: Harper and Row, 1971. See also ―The Origin of the Work of Art‖ in
Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, HarperSanFrancisco, 1977, pp. 143-187.
5 Being and Time, op. cit., I.1.
6 Ibid., I.2.
 Interculture, Relativism 115

The point is clear. If Plato says ―A‖ as only Plato can, then Plato is the one saying-A, and
is no other. We cannot complain that Plato-saying-A is wrong, should have said B, and keep
saying so in ―Plato‖-way, for Plato-saying-B is no longer the Plato as he is, Plato-saying-A.
No wonder Heidegger turns turgid and unapproachable, in contorted garbles of ―philosophical
exactitude.‖ He should have first reformed his philosophizing manner and given it a new
name, not ―fundamental ontology‖ haunted by the ghosts of ―Western philosophy.‖
Now let us go to Gabriel Marcel. He has no such awkward irony and so he is naturally
and subtly complex. On one hand, Marcel is as firmly rooted as Heidegger in Western
philosophical tradition7 and is as sensitive to life‘s ongoing as Heidegger. On the other hand,
while Heidegger unreflectively sticks to the systematic West in ―fundamental ontology,‖
Marcel champions a ―concrete philosophy‖ of ―critical Socratism‖ that keeps a judicious
distance from ―system‖ to end up being systematic unawares.8 Thus, Marcel can puff out
offhand astonishing insights, vitally concrete and penetratingly universal.
Let us take an example. Marcel in his usual casual pungency noted that ―creativity‖ and
―being‖9 imply each other; to create makes be, and to be creates. He said,10

I am in complete agreement with Mr. Gallagher when he stresses the importance of the
following phrase: as soon as there is creation, in whatever degree, we are in the realm of being
(p. 84). But the converse is equally true: that is to say, there is doubtless no sense in using the
word ―being‖ except where creation, in some form or other, is in view.

Where there is creation there is being, and being is where creation is in view. This
twofold statement hits us out of the blue, quite extraordinary.
At first, we do not know what to make of it; ―being‖ is such a vague scary word. But
slowly as we munch on it, its truth dawns to impress itself on us. Every act, in a most general
sense, trivial or momentous, strikes us as being itself in so far as we notice it as such; it is a
new creation against the backdrop of all we know. Let us go slow here.
Imitation is-not; only initiation is, where authenticity resides. Authenticity is new
11
creation. Each moment is the dawning of an ―inward morning‖ that creates new being. This
provocative truth, creation is being, amounts to saying that creation real-izes. That is,
creativity changes drab ―nothing‖ into something real, of substance, and so of significance.

7 Marcel studied Josiah Royce a solid Western systematicist, Royce‟s Metaphysics, trs. Virginia and Gordon
Ringer, Chicago: Regnery, 1956.
8 To be fair, we must confess that Marcel and M. Merleau-Ponty are poetically perceptive yet hard to feel their
poetic cadence, especially in their early volumes. Heidegger‘s poetry is easier to sense. Or perhaps all three
have their poetry, and we must be more perceptive to savor their poetic thrusts, each in his distinct pulsation.
For all that, Heidegger‘s poeticism jargonizes turgidly; Marcel and Merleau-Ponty poetizes not poetically but
philosophically, in a typically Western manner.
9 ―Being‖ is Heidegger‘s and Marcel‘s favorite word. Marcel strikes out in a fresh surprising direction on this word,
while Heidegger seems to clothe himself with contorted obscurantism on it.
10 Gabriel Marcel‘s Foreword to Kenneth T. Gallagher‘s The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, NY: Fordham
University Press, 1962, p. xiii. The whole page and the next explain further as Marcel refers to Gallagher‘s pp.
84-85. Gallagher‘s last chapter criticizes Marcel, yet Marcel‘s Foreword has nothing but thinking further with
him. This ―thinking further with‖ is Marcel‘s hallmark, completely displayed in his disarming replies to each
critical essay in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, eds. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, La Salle,
IL: Open Court, 1984. There, Marcel spots the themes he took to be the essayists‘, for which and whom he
thanks, then develops them further in his own way, constantly stressing how much he owes them for his
insights. It is a true conversation, a ―critical Socratism.‖ It is a sight to behold.
11 This extraordinary phrase is the title of Henry G. Bugbee, Jr.‘s The Inward Morning, NY: Collier Books, 1961,
prefaced by Marcel. Bugbee can be called Marcel‘s alter ego.
116 Kuang-ming Wu

12
Then, against this Western background, Taoists‘ Hun Tun and non-being and Buddhist
Emptiness appear with an Oriental stroke of genius, as creativity that makes things of real
significance even out of drab, unspecific, and unspecifiable ―nothing.‖ It is a surprising move
toward a distinctive creativity; here is a creation of ―nothing‖ that is now something really
matters, by remaining precisely an empty nothing.
Now, have we noticed here a subtle cultural shift? In the beginning is an act of be-ing that
is a creation—that differs in different cultures. In the West, Marcel noted a be-ing that comes
out of nothing as a being-creation. In Asia, Taoism and Buddhism noted a nothing that comes
out of nothing as a being-creation. ―Being‖ as creation takes on differing hues as it appears
out of nothing, in different cultures.
All this brings up an important thought on what ―system‖ can mean, again differing as
cultures differ. To create is to real-ize, to become concretely real, which is to appear as
13
concresced, coherently, and coherent concrescence is an existential system. In short, to
create is to be systematic.
At the same time, however, to be creative is to be messy; no time to tidy things up when
things constantly erupt to surprise us. Marcel did not say so, but life being novel everyday
and novelty being synonymous with being creative, life-coherence cannot by nature be
―systematic‖ in usual logical sense. To be is to create. As being, existence is an emergence of
a system-as-concresced; as emergence in creation of being, however, existence is messy, not
logically systematic. Being as creation is thus an unsystematic system, logos alogoi.
14
Thus in his sparkling insights, Marcel naturally steadfastly refuses to systematize, and
his systematic refusal of creating a system makes a stumbling block to the Western sentiment.
Marcel was relegated to oblivion soon after his death; even his great disciple, Paul Ricoeur,
came to say very little about him, much less follow his style and steps of thinking.
This fact brings us to an important issue of what ―being systematic‖ can mean. I used to
distinguish ―systematic‖ in the West from ―coherent‖ in China, and ―being systematic‖ in
China from ―having a system‖ in the West. It is time to explain what this distinction means.
Let us come back to Marcel. He even refused to be systematic, and Gallagher accused
15
him of being temperamentally incapable of systematization, a sort of being philosophically
handicapped, if not unphilosophical. This amounts to criticizing Frederick Delius as incapable
of making music because his music is not ―systematic‖ as those of Haydn and Beethoven are,
and Picasso as no painter because he violates every traditional painterly canon.
Both Delius and Picasso are great artists, however, as long as many generations of
listeners and viewers can appreciate both, however much both challenge our ―decent‖ artistic
sentiment. Similarly, Marcel is a ―systematic‖ thinker against our canon of system, as long as
we who differ from him can understand him and are enlightened about what being systematic

12 See Wu, ―‗Emperor Hundun 渾沌‘: A cultural Hermeneutic,‖ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy,
September 2007, pp. 263-279.
13 ―Concrete‖ is literally to be ―concresced,‖ grown-together.
14 Gallagher takes Marcel as a ―relentlessly unsystematic thinker‖ and tries to do justice to his ―elusive‖ thinking
(op. cit., p. ix), but did not probe into the depths, nature, and significance of this unsystematic elusiveness,
much less devote a chapter to understanding it. Gallagher tends to take it more as obstacle to thinking than as
an indispensable opening to a new crucial dimension of/to thinking, as Marcel obviously did. It is not a
coincidence that the present volume spontaneously grows coherent and systematic by resolutely refusing a
―systematic‖ format.
15 Ibid., pp. 147-149.
 Interculture, Relativism 117

means in real life of beings thanks to him, though he offends conventional canons of
―system.‖
All this amounts to saying this. ―System‖ signifies universal understandability of sane
reasonable coherence in existence. The closer such a lived coherence con-forms to the
contours of life élan, the truer to life, the more real, and more genuine the system is to
conduce to universal life-enlightenment. Lived coherence is thus the true system.
So we can see that Marcel coherent and alive is the most conscientious arch-systematic
thinker in the West precisely because he opposes the traditional Western sense of ―system‖
that tends to hermetically seal from lived sinuousness. Storytelling and story-thinking
perform such a lived sinuous system, and it is not an accident that Marcel is a musician and a
dramatist who constantly refers us to life-drama, telling its stories, whenever things get rough
16
in philosophical reflection.
Mind you, such a life-reflection as above on Marcel in the West is impossible in the
West. It forebodes cross-cultural interculture; it has to originate in Lao Tzu (73) who has the
Heavenly Net sparsely meshed, to flex with life-vicissitudes to leak nothing. The word
―network‖ in fashion today, as a noun and a verb, echoes ancient Lao Tzu‘s cosmic Net.
No wonder, almost every traditional Chinese treatise on any theme in life, from fiction,
calligraphy, and painting to cooking, medicine, martial arts, and sociopolitical ethics, begins
with cosmology to interconnect themes, to network into cosmogony, the story of everything
coming to be. That is ―system‖ truly so called.
Gabriel Marcel remains, as Martin Buber, a Western thinker echoing Chinese style—
concrete, perceptive, spontaneous, peripatetic and unpretentious—and unpredictably
systematic. The fact that Marcel is a playwright, pianist, and music and drama critic made
him the ―concrete philosopher‖ that he was. Marcel parallels Chinese literati versed in poetry,
painting, calligraphy, seal engraving, and in politics, as they were deeply engaged in thinking
on life to engage the world. Still, Marcel is alien to ―nothing‖ on which China thrives.

B. Interculture, Life

Now, storytelling is such a flexuous ―system‖; if all this above has not told the story of
how philosophically and inter-culturally significant ―storytelling‖ is, we do not know what it
did. To recapitulate, ex-plicate, and expand on all above, we have six points toward all our
life in interculture.
One, to be creative is to be (Marcel), to be is to emerge to be-there, to cause the situation
to differ from before. To appear existing-as-differing from before is such be-coming process,
a process of coming-to-be. This process of appearing to come to differ comes to differ from
before and before the beholders.
To ―pre-sent‖ is to ―be-before‖ both in time (out of the past) and in space (in front of the
beholder). Appearance-before to come-to-be ―presents‖ itself as existence. This appearing
process tells a story of be-coming, to grow as Einstein‘s special relativity grew into general
relativity, Lewis Carroll‘s wacky Alice‟s Adventures in Wonderland grew into the no less

16 The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (eds., P. A. Schilpp and L. E. Hahn, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1984) is a
magnificent example of this tendency of his, to always draw on concrete living itself in philosophical
reflection, as sharply contrasted with his commentators who are often so abstract, so turgid.
118 Kuang-ming Wu

wacky Through the Looking-Glass, and this process of appearance and growth before its
beholders spreads the story to tell and show how things before and things now stand-together,
as sy-stem.
Thus, we have just proceeded from creativity, through be-ing, be-coming process of
coming to be different from before, and appearing (standing-out) as such before its beholders,
to storytelling that manifests how things stand-together, which is ―system‖ through time. And
this proceeding from-to is itself a storytelling, a lived system in the making, called ―history.‖
Two, ―system‖ has four ingredients. An idea-system appears (a) perceived by usual
readers, common audience, to (b) stand together to (c) make sense. (d) To be perceived is
perceived by people other than the creative system-teller, thereby to spread from the original
system-teller to hearers in other places, other times, and other cultures; such spread is itself a
system. A system communicates to spread into a bigger wider-resonating system. Ideas and
people come to stand together into a new lived ―system‖ universalizing cosmically. The
system of words/ideas is a system of existents, an existential system.
Three, how the ideas should properly come to stand-together into a system is dictated by
how they would enable perceptive understanding by people in a specific culture, not by pre-
set rules such as logical canons that are after all a fruit of cultural experience of
understanding. But how do ideas stand together to induce people‘s understanding? What sort
of stand-together of ideas—culture—is it that makes for cultural understanding?
It is our natural/cultural mode of daily living that cohere things in sense, to enrich the
common mode of living we all in a community share. After all, to write in a specific language
is for sharing, for standing together in understanding with readers of the same culture or
similar cultures. Logical system across all cultural/historical barriers is a poor way to share,
for logical system bypasses an indispensable medium of understanding, specific culture(s),
transmitted by intercultural translation; translation is a medium that gathers cultures to
become intercultural system.
Four, thus the most compelling and effective system is not a logical one but a natural
storytelling, sensitively, perceptively laid out, where ideas naturally, culturally gather in
spontaneity that is anti-rule, for the ―rule‖ is what elucidates how things stand together.
Marcel follows his instinct of dramatic musical rhythm of life. He resonates with Chinese
storytellers of reflective life. In their respective cultural ways, Marcel and Chinese people
stand together to co-resonate and inter-enrich. Here is a lived system of cosmic interculture.
How do they do it?
Five, by so perceptively following and explicitly representing the spontaneous hanging
together of things as we stand ideas together, our living itself comes to integrate self-
reflective way. This is the way of stories telling and spreading. Story forms our system by
storytelling to appeal to hearers. This story-system cannot help but expand into all listeners to
join them together through time and space to form a net, a process of networking things into a
story-system, and to network the story to its readers, thereby to create a ―brave new world‖ of
myriad all hitherto unsuspected. This world is an expanding dynamics of system-as-verb.
Wilfred Sellars described philosophy as the study of how things in the most general sense
hang together in the most general sense. Doesn‘t this description of philosophy describe a
story-system? Sellars may not have realized how cosmic a significance his ―the most general
sense‖ has. He has just told us a mini-story of how philosophers think, perceive, and describe
the system-order of all things, that is, how they stand together to form a ―cosmos‖ in its
original sense of comprehensive beautiful order of all things.
 Interculture, Relativism 119

Such description of order tells stories, and philosophers are systematic storytellers of the
world. Besides, Sellars may not have realized that ―the most general sense‖ differs as each
culture differs from the other, that the Greek-―general‖ is not German-―general,‖ Chinese one,
or Spanish one, and that such differences of the ―general‖ tend to gather into the general of all
generals that keeps expanding as cultures expand in history.
Six, such an expansion of the meaning of ―system‖ is not just an expansion of the scope
from the author‘s system-building to embracing the reader into their common system. It is a
revolution of the very way of systematic thinking, from thinking-as-logical to thinking-as-
living, and from living-in-a-culture to living-adjusting to many living-ways of many cultures,
spontaneously, coherently.
After all, the familiar steps of logical argument cannot lead us into territories of
unfamiliar novelty, and novelty is nature naturing unceasing. Thus, to roam in actuality and
do justice to its throbbing bubbling novelty, we must tread the unfamiliarity of logical
surprises in the lifeworld faintly smiling, profound while casual in levels of profound senses.
It is a revolution from system as logical to system as lived, life-system that distinguishes
itself one from another, distinctive as each culture is, to system as life-together that keeps
expanding renovating. It is a revolution from thinking as system to community-as-system,
that is, system-as-thinking-from-nowhere to system-as-communication to build a community
of many cultural meanings and, in the end, the very cosmos as a beautiful system culturally
co-implicative and ubiquitous.
How does such a living expanding system of things come about? Another favorite teacher
of mine, Robert Frost, is here, smiling. He says words would ―fetch‖ from everyday speech of
the street to come alive ―unmade,‖ for it is ―made in the united states of nature‖ and, we
would add, culture-shaped. First he agrees with poet William B. Yeats that ―all our words to
be effective must be in the manner of everyday speech‖; but he is ―sick of people who use
only these ready-made words and phrases.‖
He says, ―I like better a boy who invents them for himself—who takes a word or phrase
from where it lies and moves it to another place. . . . (D)o you ever get up a new one (new
17
word or phrase)?‖ This moving is to metaphor without using the tired word ―metaphor.‖ We
18
must ―fetch‖ the common words to give them ―a poetic twist,‖ such as ―Are you satisfied?‖
to replace the tired ―How are you?‖ To fetch perceives; to twist tells stories.
Actually, metaphor is a thinking verb that spreads thinking this way. Meeting an A,
impresses, calls forth, fetches, the thought of B like A but not A. Calling forth B ferries A
over to the new similar B to rhyme with A, as a boy points to a giraffe and calls, ―Doggie!‖ to
induce laughs of everyone around. The boy is a poet who expands ―dog‖ to include giraffe to
include everyone around, ferrying everyone over to an exciting novel territory. Such a
delightful story!
―Ferry-over to the new‖ fetches a creation; inter-resembling A and B rhyme-sings poetry
resounding. Resounding poetry all over thinks to spread. The spread tells stories, and A and B

17 My On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001, is entirely on ―metaphor‖ without, I hope,
tired trite metaphors that kill metaphors.
18 I wish he said, ―Are you glad?‖
120 Kuang-ming Wu

19
cohere to cohere Cs and Ds and more. Storytelling coheres to story-think in China, not
logic-thinking in the West. Metaphor, poetry, and storytelling cohere.
Likewise, we must have, not seeing eyes but ―the imagining ear,‖ to fetch the living
―sounds of speech‖ into writing; here is no fancy dead decency of the so-called written
language. Frost fetches us to his own five lines: ―I‘m going out to fetch the little calf (light,
informative)/ That‘s standing by the mother. It‘s so young, (free)/ It totters when she licks it
with her tongue. (persuasive, inviting)/ I shan‘t be long.—You come too. (afterthought,
20
inviting)‖ to spread.
The resulted poem stuns us, fresh in all its common words, as that calf, as pasture fresh
from winter, Nature in the daily Vermont farm that day. It is ―the unmade word,‖ uncreated
nature-fresh, culture-fresh, in all its spontaneous reasonableness of living. It takes a poet of
Frost to fetch it into our awareness. China‘s poets are all kinsfolk of Frost‘s.
Reason is now life-fresh, life-reason (Ortega), reason alive as the throbbing bloodstream
of Nature itself—birthing, birthing, without ceasing—in all its en-cultured naturalness. Here
reason is life as a system, all-standing with all, in all, each a calf so young standing beside his
mother culture who loves her lick-able calf the new creation. Reason alive in each calf gathers
provincialisms to produce inner harmony of the self and among the selves, relishing lively
provincial smells and tastes of each earthy expression in that living in that community, in that
way that day, the loving cow.
Our words enable licking-tasting each another‘s cultural smells and sounds, colors and
flavors to relish one another‘s cultures. We shall then naturally self-forget and mutually relish
our differences, letting one another live out the full life of each person and each culture, as
each of us tastes, relishes, and relates to all the others, however tottering-ly.
Now, ―relishing‖ and ―tasting‖ spontaneously appeared above. Life is made of tasting-
relishing and hitting the pillow sleeping. Combining tasting with sleeping may come as a
surprise. I see two connections between the two. One is that tasting takes in foods to fulfill
oneself, as sleep takes in oneself to fulfill oneself. Two is that we love to taste as we love to
sleep, for we love our selves. Both tasting and sleeping express our loving attachment to
living. Thus tasting at our gut-level is one of two basic activities that sustain life, as follows.

SLEEPING, TASTING, LOGIC, AND STORYTELLING

Life lived, systematic unawares, is explained above. We must now see how actually
systematic life is, aware or no, by watching two basic life activities, sleeping and tasting.
Even at the physiological level, life without sleeping and food-tasting dies away. This basic
fact of life is applicable throughout all personal levels of life reflective and spiritual.
To sleep is to come home to oneself; to eat is to go out to take into oneself from outside.
We must have room to return home to ourselves, as we interact with outside to inter-digest
things to grow. Such is how healthy life grows into itself, to grow together by eating and

19 Its structure (―the logic of storytelling,‖ as it were) is traced in my On Chinese Body Thinking, Leiden: Brill,
1997, pp. 22-79.
20 I freely summarized Robert ―The Imagining Ear‖ (pp. 687-689) and ―The Unmade Word, or Fetching and Far-
Fetching‖ (694-697) in Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays, NY: Literary Classics of the United
States, 1995.
 Interculture, Relativism 121

letting eaten, sleeping and letting sleep, and a community is born where we grow together
into our respective selves. We first consider ―sleep,‖ then ―eating and tasting.‖

A. Sleep

Sleep is a common daily affair. We take it for granted so much that no philosophy,
21
psychology, or even religion has ever, much less seriously, considered it. This fact may
testify that sleep is not to be considered objectively but to be undergone to discern, though we
keep undergoing it without discernment. To show what it is, how indispensable it is, and how
essential it is for being human, we must meditate on it in a Taoist manner, for only there can
we entertain some hope for enlightenment on sleep.
We usually think sleep a waste of time. In surprise, we discover that sleep fortifies and
fulfills the self, and well slept life, or sleep-infused life, is true humanity. Here are two sorts
of such meditations, A. Mediations on Sleep as Spontaneity in five subsections, and B.
meditations on Sleep as Self-Fullness in four subsections, to sum up in C. Concluding
reflections to come home to storytelling.

A. Meditations on Sleep as Spontaneity

Life cannot go on without sleep, yet in sleep everything is so wiped out that life goes
blank and non-conscious. What is such strange sleep? Nothing is more daily and trite, and
nothing more mysterious; yet, strangely, no philosopher thinks about it22 except Aristotle,
who proudly probed it with his preformed categories, and missed it.23
As usual, when in philosophy we get stuck we go outside its super-conscious analysis,
and Chuang Tzu is often there, welcoming us with smile. He seldom disappoints us, for he
just tells stories to softly enlighten us. On sleep, his story-thinking is quite full of insights, as
usual. Here is his story, in poetic lines so rough and pungent.24

(Uncouth) Mr. Chew-Chipped asked (cultured) Mr. Clothed on Tao. Clothed said,
―You right your form, one your vision—
Heavenly Harmony will arrive.
Fold your knowledge, one your bearing—
Spirits will come homing-in.
Virtue will be your beauty, Tao will be your lodge—
You gaze like a calf newly born and not seek causes.‖

21 Psychology considers sleep in its defective mode, sleeplessness, as a symptom of psychic stress, never probed
―sleep‖ as it is as the essential ingredient of healthy growing living itself.
22 I know of no article on sleep in dictionary or encyclopedia of philosophy.
23 Aristotle enquires on whether sleep belongs to body or soul or both or half of each, etc., whether sleep is a
contrary to waking, whether it is actuality or potentiality, and so on. (―On Sleep‖ in The Complete Works of
Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 721-
728) Aristotle tries so hard to trap the sleep-wind of life in boxes he designed, to measure the size of the flow
of sleep-life with the tape measure he constructed. He cuts a tragicomic figure. We must go out of his
cognitive snare and describe sleep as it is.
24 Chuang Tzu 22/21-24. This is my translation that tries not to smooth away rough poetic lines as many English
translations did.
122 Kuang-ming Wu

Words before ended, Chew-Chipped fell fast asleep. Clothed, much pleased, departed
singing,
―Form like a withered skeleton, mind like dead ashes, . . .
Dim, dim, dark, dark,
Mindless and cannot consult with,
What man is he!‖

Whatever else this poetic story may have, it clearly does one thing—it praises sleep as the
highest of our life ideal, that is, to come home to the self. Sleep is authentic self-ing, for no
one can be unreal or deceptive in sleep. Thus ―sleep treatment‖ emerges as the oldest mental
healing in ancient Egypt, and ―sleep therapy‖ in psychology. Sadly, psychology today is
intent only on exploiting sleep‘s healing efficacy, not dipping into its what and its why.
Let us repeat. Sleep enlightens us on why we sleep at all, what it means to become
authentically oneself, and how to come spontaneously back home to oneself. Nothing is more
25
common in life, and nothing more important, than sleep as wholeness unawares, yet seldom
is ―sleep‖ (not dreams) recognized as ontologically nourishing. We have five subsections here
to discern what all these can mean.

1. What Dream is
Attending to dream, related to sleep, can help clarify sleep. We dream both while asleep
26
(nightmare) and while awake (daydream), so dream is not sleep, nor is it awakening. What
27
then is a dream? It is a mistake to claim, as Freud and Jung did, that dream occurs in the
unconscious, individual (Freud) or collective (Jung), for while dreaming, we are not
28
unconscious or comatose.
This obvious fact enables psychologists and philosophers to write on dreams but not on
29
sleep, for we are non-conscious while sound asleep and so philosophers or psychologists,
those supremely conscious thinkers, can consciously say nothing about non-conscious sleep.
30
What Freud or Jung may have meant is that dream is our non-self-conscious activity. A
self-conscious activity splits oneself into observing self and agent self, the former reflecting
31
on the latter. Self-consciousness initiates the self as another, and self-deceit-conceit and
32
other-deceit emerge.

25 We can thus see how sleep deprivation is one cruel torture that deprives the self of the self, amounting to murder.
26 See Kuang-ming Wu and Ruth C. Chao, ―Cultural Variations in Nightmare: A Content Analysis,‖ International
of Journal of Psychological Research, forthcoming. We tried to cover, albeit imperfectly, these aspects of
―nightmares.‖
27 E.g., Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Carl G. Jung, Dreams, compiled and translated by R.
F. C. Hull, Princeton University Press, 1974.
28 Greek Hupnos (sleep) is Nux‘s (night) child and Thanatos‘ (death) twin brother—related yet different. Being
unaware in sleep is not being unconscious in death.
29 I am yet to find literature devoted to sleep.
30 Or we can say, ―non-egological,‖ which is less inclusive and more pedantic than ―non-self-conscious‖ or ―non-
self-aware,‖ or simply ―non-aware.‖ Mind you, non-self-conscious (in sleep) is not un-self-conscious or
unconscious (in coma or death).
31 Paul Ricoeur (as Sartre) is also mistaken in taking the split self as something original in human nature (Oneself
as Another, University of Chicago Press, 1990). He should have said instead that human nature is originally
one but fragile; it tends so easily to split into two, to become one self as another.
32 Being so much within the self, this ―other-ing‖ tendency misled Jean-Paul Sartre into taking such ―deceit‖ as
ingrained in consciousness qua ontological ―nothing‖ (Being and Nothingness [1943], NY: Philosophical
Library); it is a mistaken ontological phenomenology. Socrates cuts a naïve tragic hero urging us to self-
 Interculture, Relativism 123

In contrast, non-self-consciousness closes the self‘s ―eye‖ away from otherness to return
home to the primal self, the childlike wholeness without split, without unreality. My son Peter
said, ―You know, Dad, I have three names, me, myself, and I. Bye, Dad!‖ and off he ran to
play. He could play with gusto because he was non-deceitfully one, so he could afford to play
with and within his own ―three names.‖
Peter‘s is the true self as it originally is; it is threefold authenticity without deceit. In
contrast, in a dream we are not self-conscious yet aware, so ―the dream shows the inner truth
and reality of the patient (the person) as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as the
‗patient‘ would like it to be, but as it is.‖ (Jung33)

2. How to Put “Sleep” into Waking Life

―But how do I put my sleep-unity into waking activities? Do you want me to sleepwalk?‖
Well, returning to sleep-unity is a conscious turning to sleep-oneness. It is not simply to
collapse into sleep, as sleepwalk is a sleep-collapsed act. Self-examination treasured by all
Western thinkers must itself be examined, to attain non-awareness purposely turned to, as we
purposely hit the pillow, close our eyes, and calm our awareness, before we fall asleep
unawares. Falling asleep crucially differs from collapsing into it.
Here is that mysterious self-folding-back-together, repeated daily, uniting self-act aware
and fall-into-sleep unawares despite oneself, much like falling in love. In sleep every night,
we fall in love with our own self. This unity of conscious effort and non-conscious falling
asleep signifies the spontaneous reunion of the split self into the primal one-self; this
―spontaneous reunion‖ is what is mysterious. What does spontaneity have to do with reunion
of split self back into the primal one-self? Every word is a mystery.

3. Sleep is Spontaneous
Sleep is spontaneity incarnate, and spontaneity is notoriously elusive. Conversing with an
objective analyst about dream and/or sleep enables us to understand what spontaneity is not.
34
He may say, ―In a dream, one can watch oneself flying or walking, so one is not un-self-
conscious as while sleeping. Besides, Heidegger‘s formula of self-identity is belonging-
35
together-with-oneself-in-thought. How could this identity not be conscious? Again, this
time formally, self-identity is not self-disappearance, actual or conscious.‖
This is a familiar critical objectivism that misses sleep-spontaneity. Dreaming about
watching oneself flying or walking is just that, dreaming that one is watching, not actually
watching. Dreaming that one is watching does not actually watch. Heidegger, as Kant,
engages in logical explication to bypass spontaneous understanding. His formula of self-
identity is fine on paper; sleep/dream as spontaneously undergone is beyond such formal
structural description.
―But the sense of I-ness is quite operative in sleep.‖ This true enough statement, however,
is made either outside sleeper or after sleep. Both are external perspectives in space or in
time. Such an outsider‘s observation is irrelevant to understanding of the personal undergoing
of sleep. ―But what you are objecting to is objective logical explication that is not Kant‘s or

examine irrespective of its success or failure or of examining its possibility or whether it is an essential trait of
humanity or not.
33 C. G. Jung, Dreams, op. cit., pp. 87-109.
34 Such objective analyst is usually a he; ladies are more perceptive than that.
35 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, NY: Philosophical Library, 1957.
124 Kuang-ming Wu

Heidegger‘s transcendental explanation, which clearly presents what can be explained.‖ This
objection sounds tidily logical, where two words, ―can‖ and ―explained‖ give us a pause.
―Can‖ here is a logical ―can‖; ―explanation‖ is logically ordered. In fact, to say is to
explain that is to logicize and externalize. Explanation is packed logically, analyzing,
reckoning, and arranging in order, as the very meaning of ―logic‖ (legein, logos) originally
36
meant. Only an external observer or retrospective reminiscence later can perform such
analyzing/arranging. The actual spontaneity of sleep is ineffably internal and concretely self-
less to the self.
It was said that the unipede envies the millipede, who envies the snake, who envies the
wind, who envies the eye, who in turn envies the minded heart 心, that is, awareness, says
37
Chuang Tzu. But this minded heart, non-self-conscious awareness, that moves legs and
mind disappears once made self-aware. Its structure is notoriously elusive.
Millipede was happily walking until asked by leg-less Snake how he could coordinate his
38
million legs. Millipede stopped to ponder on how, and turned unable to walk again. Polanyi
said that we must attend from ourselves to play the piano, must disappear to our
consciousness to play, which is a self-expression. Self-disappearance to the self enables self-
expression. Such self-disappearing spontaneity is reenacted every night in our sleep and
dreaming.
This fascinating tacit dimension of life is its very vitality. It requires sensitivity to wonder
at the nuances of its expression, for its expression encroaches on its content. At issue here is
not Kant‘s/Heidegger‘s correctness (or incorrectness) but their mode of expression. Saying ―I
love you‖ can solidify or destroy love, depending on whether it is said as a description, in
admiration, disdain, or sarcasm. How ―I love you‖ is said expresses many varied meanings.
Kant/Heidegger‘s formality misses these living modes of spontaneity in the saying. As
casual saying aloud of ―love‖ can destroy love, so a formal saying-out of morality can
demolish morality. This is because to say is to objectify and formalize, while love and
morality is lived spontaneity unsayable, that is, unanalyzable into components, unpackageable
into formulas.
In the human world, what is said must be conveyed hidden in how it is said, for the
human subject must be hid to appear, disappear to become authentic, as clothing expresses the
unique self that vanishes in physiological sameness when stripped naked. Cosmetics
companies manufacture not produced stuff but fashions, as various as possible, for consumers
to choose what fit them. The consumers buy these fashions to partake of ―top of the fashions‖
to show off their identities to themselves and then others.
Thus their naked physique is not them, not their identities, but bare material on which to
mold their true selves, as trees are bare raw material with which to build a home to suit home-
owners‘ taste. Nakedness must hide in clothes to show the self. Hiding shows. Thus clothing
stores are crucial to human self-expression; ladies are sensitive to this human truth.

36 Logos articulates a gathering. Calvin O. Schrag, The Resources of Rationality, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1992, pp. 77, 93. Wu, On the “Logic” of Togetherness (1998, Leiden: Brill), pp. 162 (note 41), 334 and
note 181, and Wu, On Metaphoring (2001, Leiden: Brill), pp. 10 (note 23), 54-58.
37 Chuang Tzu 17/53-60 is a wonderful story of stages of spontaneity that culminate in consciousness that is non-
self-aware. See Wandering on the Way, tr. Victor H. Mair, NY: Bantam Books, 1994, pp. 159-160.
38 Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man, University of Chicago, 1959, among others, explains the tacit dimension.
Polyani devoted his entire life to explicating this dimension alone.
 Interculture, Relativism 125

Objectivism bulldozes all such subtle truth, to force actuality to disappear, missing and
destroying the tacit experiential reality. Sleep hides self-awareness; objectivism ruins sleep.

4. How to Sleep-Spontaneity
Now, to see how concretely our daytime activities can and should be empowered by such
spontaneity of sleep-unity, think of Socrates‘ assiduous practice and promotion of self-
examination, which is the height of acts of split-self. Pushed straightly far enough, these acts
would have immobilized him in an infinite regress of self-reflections, were it not for the fact
39
that Socrates constantly relied on that inner mysterious Daimon he never examined.
His Daimon stopped him from going in a certain direction that he later found to be
inappropriate, and so he simply followed its injunction without examining It, which is after
all a part of himself beyond him. It is here that Socrates ceased to self-examine, in order to
examine himself well. His self-examination requires a stoppage of examination at an ultimate
daimonic level he does not examine, for he cannot examine examining.
Let us put it another way, and we are surprised at how this other way opens us out into
the world. ―We must be open-minded,‖ we say. ―Open‖ cuts into me; I must open me to
whatever comes, never judge it as if I were know-it-all that closes me off. Socrates opposes
self-closure with self-examining to open out to learn, listening. Socrates thus combines self-
examination with listening to his inner Voice of Daimon to thereby dialogue with others
differing from him. Self-examination unclogs me to open, to listen, and to perceive anything
that comes.
So my total self is open, ever ready, alert and sensitive to whatever will come. Nothing is
here yet, and this not-yet makes a powerful dynamo toward—what? No one knows. This is
the dawning of creation of what is yet to come to be. Such is ―perfection‖ inexpressible, as
the musician yet to pluck her zither, and its ―music‖ cannot be faulted, and ―no fault‖ is
perfect. Is a kid not yet grown up ―perfect‖ in this sense?
This is the dynamo of perfection called kid who is of course imperfect, and so, to children
of all ages belongs the Kingdom of Perfection of which they are the greatest. Kids are here
40
beginning, to begin to yet to begin to yet to begin to begin. All this describes my acts that
begin my abiding posture pervading all my thinking; it is the way I think and the way I live.
Let us tarry here in the child.
Jesus said, ―It is to such as these (children) that the kingdom of God belongs.‖ Perfection
belongs to kids‘ imperfection, not kids belong to perfection; the saying so stunned all three
gospels into recording it, identically, and John (3:3-8) records how Jesus stunned the scholar
Nicodemus with the necessity of being born again in the natural wind and water. We put it
41
another way, and our surprise remains. Kids the ―true heart‖ at our root is immaturity! How
could it be? This existential inconsistency, disjoined joint at our root, is space-logical crack.
―Kids‖ are unintelligible to us in space-logic as above, so we take them into time-logic.
Adult maturity-now hits the ceiling, no more room there; the child is the horizon-in-time

39 On the fascinating story of Greek ―daimon,‖ See F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon,
New York University Press, 1967, pp. 33-34, Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament (1962), Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1978, II:1-20, and E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the
Irrational, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1951, p. 317 (index on ―daemons‖).
40 Matthew 19:14=Mark10:14=Luke 18:16, Chuang Tzu 2/43, 2/49, and Matthew 18:4 are combined here.
41 Kids‘ immaturity and growth are missed by ―童心說‖ in 李贄文集, 北京社會科學出版社, 2000, I:91-93.
126 Kuang-ming Wu

wide-open, unlimited. The horizon ciphers ―growth‖ beyond logic. No growth, no kid, and no
growth, no perfection (who would want perfection without growth?), so no kid, no perfection.
Perfection belongs to kids growing!
Time-logic cannot be mocked and the West is slowly learning it. ―Cosmos follows the
eternal laws to have countless dimensions beyond the four we know‖ is space logic where
time is part of space as ―warped,‖ and even warping is a spatial notion. ―Cosmos evolves
according to laws, itself evolving‖ is time-logic where space is a stage of time, when what
and how it is now, soon to change.
Actually, Western theoretical physics is slowly switching from the definite space-
perspective to the logic of evolutionary time-change as above described. Such a shift in logic-
mode cannot be handled by logic that is set and operates within a set perspective. The logic-
shift can only be described by stories. This new time-story of cosmos has three features:
One, up until now life-realm is patterned after stone-realm. After the switch to time-mode
of understanding, the stone-world is patterned after life-evolution. Two, ―evolution‖ used to
go from simple to complex, but cosmos may go from simple to complex and then from
complex to simple, as Yin and Yang internecine inter-nascent. Three, thus time-order is
42
unpredictable and inevitable, not random. Existence pulses in its heartbeat as music, to sing
history rhyming in time.
So, Western physics is approaching ―perfection‖ as cosmic. Perfection is growth in
perfection, under the divine (divine is perfect) grace upon43 grace. Grace is motherly
perfection. So, perfection is the dynamics of kid‘s growth in perfection, in parental perfection
upon parental perfection; it is an asymptotic dynamics of perfection embraced by Perfection
Parental, in the Nisus of the Spirit of Perfection.
44
And mind you. Mom grows with her dear child, as divine Love is perfected in us. God
is thus our Perfect Parent in the Perfect Kid, as the Perfection-Kingdom belongs to the kid‘s
dynamics to Perfection in Parental Grace, as the Perfect Kingdom belongs to the kid‘s wonder
at Perfection, the kid‘s growth-dynamics so tenderly watched over and identified with by the
divine motherly Love, growing with her kid. Mom is born with her kid, to form a life-

42 I join two stories in Discover, April 2010. Adam Frank‘s ―Who Wrote the Book of Physics‖ (pp. 32-37) tells of
the ―rebels‖ switching from our usual pursuit of eternal truths behind everything to envisaging cosmos
evolving from simple to complex. Stephen Ornes‘ ―Microscopy in the Fourth Dimension‖ (p. 15) tells of our
electron microscope watching atoms and electrons pulsing as heartbeat. Both stories pattern nature after the
rhythm of the living.
43
See three meanings of ―anti, upon‖ in ―grace upon grace‖ (in place of, upon, after) in Raymond E. Brown, The
Gospel According to John (i-xii), Anchor Bible, 1966, pp. 15-16.
3831John 4:12 has this amazing verb, ―teteleiömenë (having been perfected),‖ repeated in 1 John 2:5, ―teteleiötai
(has been perfected)‖; fortunately, human Jesus perfected divine love for us on the cross, saying (John 19:30,
cf. 17:4), ―tetelestai (it has been perfected).‖ (Raymond E. Brown plays with ―love for God‖ and ―love from
God‖ in 1John 4:12, The Epistles of John, the Anchor Bible, 1982, p. 521, so as to avoid the ―embarrassment‖
of divine love being perfected by imperfect human love.) Richmond Lattimore honestly translates 1 John 4:12
as ―if we love each other, God abides in us and his love is made perfect in us‖ (Acts and Letters of the
Apostles, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982, p. 269). New Revised Standard Version, New American Standard
Bible, and William Barclay have ―his love is perfected in us.‖ So do King James and New International
Versions. Eugene Peterson also has ―his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!‖ (The Message) J. B.
Phillips ingeniously puts it as ―his love grows in us towards perfection‖ to have the cake and eat it, smoothing
away the paradox as he keeps it (The New Testament in Modern English, NY: Macmillan, 1958, p. 521). Yet,
no one seems to notice the cosmos-shattering paradox in this extraordinary announcement, not once but twice
(1 John 2:5 and 4:12), i.e., perfect love of God is perfected in our imperfect love! Love alone pulls off this
stunt.
 Interculture, Relativism 127

palindrome as Mom-kid is kid-Mom. Love alone pulls off such a stunt to and fro, to grow and
fulfill life.
―But kids are so wobbly, so imperfect,‖ you say. Yes, wobbly imperfection manifests
precisely the lively stage busy growing. That ―imperfection‖ tells of the erupting power of
self-perfecting dynamism, perfection vernal moving on perfection irrepressible. Kid is stark
future-now tenderly sprouting into its own self, and such a drama developing is no defect.
Dawn is no low noon; kid is no low adult. Kid spontaneous is adult subliminal, and dawn
sublime. Kid is Perfection at dawn all its own so fresh, so fabulous.
Love is perfect, and Perfection belongs to growth; Perfection thus belongs to this child,
whose misshaped immaturity describes wobbly growth so irresistible. We call growth ―the
child.‖ Now no adult would dare to belittle little children, for the ―true heart‖ of humanity is
growth. We have thus just cracked the secret of kid-mystery at the crack of dawn; it is six in
the twilight dawn, the child of our ―today.‖
―Now, what else is new?‖ Nothing is new; the child is still sleeping. But O, what a
discovery we have made! Kid growing is imperfection—nothing new—to which divine
Perfection belongs! Motherly God is always-Kid always growing into the fabulous God
beyond our ―God.‖ The God who saves us is born a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth,
45
sleeping in an animal-feed box. Whoever would have dreamed of such? Going thus beyond
all our expectation, this nisus of going-beyond, to grow ever beyond, is the real God beyond
our ―God.‖
46
Soon, ―(Child) Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men,‖ for
everyone likes him, even God likes him. Such is the child growing beyond child; he is God
growing beyond God, our true flesh-and-blood God-as-Kid Parenting, God parenting in
growing, God parenting our growth as he himself growing in parenting, parenting in growing.
47
Isn‘t this life-dynamism what we in our ignorance byname as ―phusis,‖ as things birthing
unceasing, Mother Nature ever naturing, birthing and rebirthing? Would anyone dare ask
what else is new now?
Let us translate and unpack this amazing power-point further. To live is to live on, and
living on is this growing posture of ever opening to all, ever ready to deal with whatever will
come. Thus I am powerful because I am powerless, empty, accepting all to inter-change. Here
is the nothing-power of letting it all to happen, whatever ―it‖ is, pain or joy, ever unexpected.
Thus, poetry of life begins to sing with all, and science of myriad all begins to dance.
This radical self-opening makes an empty ―net‖ ever expanding to include all that comes,
to approach Nature as this coarse-meshed Net, leaking nothing. This spirit of resolute
acceptance makes history so comprehending constantly that it makes no mistake, to judge
myriad all. ―Open,‖ not judging, is the judge of all, the kid ever growing; it is nature naturing
toward a complex unity, the unity that is so stark, simple.

45 Sean Caulfield (In Praise of Chaos, NY: Paulist Press, 1981, pp. 7-11) noisily notes our freedom as the child
growing, but shrinks from taking God as child. Many world myths have gods as kids, but quite vaguely, in
splashing playful story-bits, not like that baby in Bethlehem that caused tons of troubles, described by
Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, NY: Doubleday, 1993.
46 Luke 2:52.
47 See ―phúsis‖ in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1974, IX: 251-277, and ―physis‖ in F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon,
New York University Press, 1967, pp. 158-160. Martin Heidegger thrives on this concept, ―phusis.‖
128 Kuang-ming Wu

Nature is ―nature‖ the Milieu where myriad all, such as we, live, behave, and have our
being. Nature is also the other—nature the Thou or the It—to be influenced by human efforts,
to influence humans in turn; nature is ―naturing‖ via us. As the milieu for us and as the other
to us, nature naturing is vitally inter-involved with us its part as it is also part of us (―nature‖),
48
and the other where we thrive (―naturing‖). I am open, all ears and all eyes, to whatever is
as it is, and as such, I effectively contribute to nature, as nature feeds me.
This is how opening out to nature feeds me; listening to birds chirping far, to dry leaves
crunching underfoot, and gazing at trees silent, rugged, and longest-lived, all out here, is my
soothing joy of health. Nature is now in me as my walk listens to my body responding to my
footsteps, to heal me all over. Medical science listens to my body-language, body-music;
medical art is musical walk.
All poets open themselves to doves cooing, kids shouting, for doves and kids show
themselves a poetry of life that embraces poets; poets live in nature as nature creates poets to
create nature as kids, opening to nature. Opening one‘s self is the Open Sesame to the
lifeworld of nature. All this is never a ―closing in,‖ death in depression; ―closing in‖ is not at
all autism listening to oneself in vivid self-awareness—and we hope autistic persons will,
empowered by their self-oneness, soon open powerfully out to things around.
The fact thus remains that our self-awareness is supported and enabled by that rock-
bottom layer of bare self-ness unquestioned, aware unawares. We have moments of
fascination when we are transfixed, of rage when we hit the ceiling despite ourselves, of
involvement in an engagement in which we forget ourselves, of artistic enjoyment when we
are enraptured, transported, and of archery when we become that arrow about to fly
cosmically. This childlike oneness of the self is always ready to appear at the drop of a
conscious hat, to guide us to achieving (with) the cosmos.
Chuang Tzu is never tired of telling us how irresistibly powerful those moments are,
simply because when we are one with ourselves, we are one with the world, unawares; the
whole world is here embodied in us into one as we become and remain an integral part of the
49 50
world. ―I am born with the Heaven and Earth, and myriad all and I are one.‖
51
The whole point of Zen Buddhism is here also, to train us to attain this state of supreme
primal self-unity in(to) world-unity. It is literally to ―attain life‖ itself, as Chuang Tzu puts
52
it. This is the sleep-unity realized in the wakeful self that is ―greatly awakened,‖ awakened
53
to sleep, to unify the self with the myriad all, to ―one one-self‖ with the cosmos.

5. Awakening to Sleep
Now, what does ―awakening to sleep‖ mean? This phrase is cited in contrast to Buddha
who wanted us to wake up from sleep. Chuang Tzu urges us to be awakened to the fact that
no one is sure of whether one is awakened or asleep, as his story of butterfly-dream testifies

48 This complex point of unity totters out in Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, An Essay on Nature (1940), NY:
Columbia University Press, 1961.
49 Chuang Tzu‘s Chapters 19 and 23 (especially its conclusion) are just some examples, but actually the entire
corpus of his writings are about this state; to attain it is to ―nourish life,‖ as Chapter 3 is so titled.
50 Chuang Tzu 2/52-53.
51 E.g., 高僧傳, Two volumes (2005), 碧巖集, Two Volumes (2005), 六祖壇經 (2008), all published by
臺北市三民書局. And the list goes on.
52 This is the title of Chuang Tzu‘s Chapter 19, 達生.
53 This is what Chuang Tzu proposed to clinch the profound Chapter Two.
 Interculture, Relativism 129

54
to. It is also to realize, to awaken to, the fact that he can be butterfly dreaming to be man
now or can be man having dreamed to be butterfly, and either makes sense yet neither can be
true with the other.
In short, it is to awaken from dogmatic awakening, cocksure of being awakened when
one could be asleep, dreaming either as butterfly or as man, but not as both at once. Such is
the Great Awakening to sleep and to dreaming. It is to turn our commonsense ridicule upside
down; we usually laugh at unthinking people ―drunk live to dream die 醉生夢死.‖ This is
also to oppose Buddhist otherworldly ideal of waking up to the world beyond.
Awakening is becoming aware. To be awakened from awakening is to become aware of
being aware, to end up awakening to becoming aware of sleep-oneness, to be awakened to
sleep, to become one-in-sleep, sleep-one. This is to re-turn to sleep, and falling asleep is just
one route to sleep-return that extends the sleep-unity at night into daytime activities, sleep-
infused, aware unawares.
Here sleep begins everything and empowers every act. It will be powerful indeed, as
invincible as the power of Nature itself, immune from disasters of Nature as Nature is
immune, unabashedly claimed Chuang Tzu. This is because the sleep-fulfilled self is self-full
in nature-full, as opposed to self-exhaustion in jittery trials here and there.
Stevens said, ―It is not only that the imagination adheres to reality, but also, that reality
adheres to the imagination and that the interdependence is essential,‖ called ―nobility.‖ This is
the fit; Chuang Tzu would add that this existential nobility is so comfortable that we forget
ourselves in it. The whole Chuang Tzu concerns this theme. Non-self-consciousness is self-
forgetful spontaneity in self-fit, shoes fitting forget the feet, belt fitting forgets the waist, and
55
so forgetting right and wrong shows mind-heart fit in the world, to fit in forgetting the fit.
The ultimate of all this is a good sound sleep, a non-conscious homecoming to oneself
that we practice at least once everyday, to replenish ourselves into authenticity. This self-ness
enables us to conduct ourselves during waking hours in full childlike spontaneity, to become
as joyous as child so alive and true. Kids live fantasies spewing out of volcanic life-vitality in
―Alice‘s Wonderland,‖ where sleep-spontaneity infuses all waking hours. Great indeed is the
one who loses none of one‘s baby-heart (Mencius 4B12) throughout life.
But then, if one-self is the basic primal ―essence‖ to the self, it needs otherness to feed it.
Eating nourishes sleep as the other nurtures the self. No wonder a psychologist usually asks,
―Do you sleep well? Do you eat well?‖ Good sleep and eating well are the twin hopeful signs
of becoming whole, un-split, all of a piece. Let us then consider ―eating,‖ whose apex
―tasting‖ is another fundament of solid healthy self.

B. Tasting

We now gaze at tasting. Although nothing is more important in life than being oneself,
and so activities in the day are for the sake of sleep at night when one comes back home to
oneself, one cannot be oneself asleep without first eating, tasting, and enjoying food to fill up

54 See my The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters in the Chang Tzu, Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1990, p. 493 (index on ―butterfly‖).
55 Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination, quoted in Modern Poetics, ed.
James Scully, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1965, p. 144. Chuang Tzu 19/62-63, abridged.
130 Kuang-ming Wu

oneself; one cannot sleep when hungry. We must also realize. Remaining concrete, ―taste,‖
56
―tasting,‖ ―tasty,‖ ―tasteful,‖ and ―tastefully‖ are so basic that they tacitly spread out
universally in culture, in life and death, in sociopolitical management, and in logical thinking.
We see how tasting includes all our five senses, relishing wording and relishing tasteful
57
life-―walking.‖ We ―eat‖ our beloved spouses and our children, as we say, ―O, I love you so
much I can eat you up!‖ No wonder Greek myths cite instances of gods eating their own
58
children, and Plato takes ―knowing‖ as ―sexing,‖ a version of eating.
Our taste buds taste life as we eat and digest the world, and the world becomes ours as we
59
grow into it. The world is now the sensible meaning to constitute ourselves. We eat things‘
meanings and relish their beauty, and we turn tasteful, to be person of good decent taste. We
live on the world‘s irresistible taste, smacking our lips on faith, hope, and love. We savor our
self-fulfillment as we sing the world, relishing it. Dining the world, we chant, clap hands and
dance in world-fulfillment, with world-gusto.
Sadly, Western philosophers have seldom considered ―taste,‖ it being the lowest in the
scale of our senses. This move generates three serious disasters. One, this move needlessly
concocts artificial conundrums out of mind-body dichotomy. Two, this move breeds sexism;
60
the female is the visceral bottom and the male the visual is on top of the social scale.
Three, seriously, this move ignores the basic fact that all living things cannot survive,
much less grow, without tasting things outside to taste them in and digest them into their life.
The fact remains then that there has been no serious philosophy of tasting and eating in the
61
West, and there would be no philosophy without thinking about such basics of life.
The final important point above bears elaboration. The basest is often the basic, and so it
is the most universal. The universal Tao is the lowest for Chuang Tzu, who puts it this
62
marvelous story-way (22/43-47) :

Master Easturb asked Chuang Tzu, ―What‘s called ‗Tao,‘ where is it exactly?‖ Chuang
Tzu said, ―Nowhere it is not.‖ ―You‘d better answer as expected.‖ ―It‘s in crickets, ants.‖

56 The same holds for synonyms of taste such as ―sense,‖ ―sensation,‖ ―delicious.‖ ―Sexuality‖ belongs here also,
as Plato in Symposium understands knowing sexually, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty sees sense and sex as
modes of our bodily being (Phenomenology of Perception, tr. Colin Smith, London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1962, pp. 3-12, 154-173, 203-242, 369-409, etc.). Neither Plato nor Merleau-Ponty considers bodily
―taste‖ as body thinking, however.
57 Cf. Chuang Tzu 17/79 on learning to tastefully walk in elegance.
58 So much in Greek mythology centers on tasting—feasts with the gods, hospitality signaled by eating together,
and eating one‘s own children in a few myths.
59 Conversely, we enter the world and change it, as we influence the situation and change it science-cognitively and
socio-politically, so much so that we cannot objectively observe ―things as they are.‖ Thus the we-world
interaction mandates that we be forever open in our mind and our action to be corrected by the world as we
correct it.
60 It took a female aesthetic philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer in Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) to bewail this trend in Western philosophy. Sadly, however, she
missed the obvious fact of our inability to survive without eating. She just wordily beat around the bush, the
social and aesthetic significance of tasting food. She never thought of why tasting food carries social
importance and breeds beauty, and what this fact means.
61 We are reminded of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought, NY: Basic Books, 1999. That they have to ―challenge‖ the West describes
thinking in the West as disembodied. Their own exposition feels curiously disembodied, however. This
volume itself belies its thesis. Does this fact mean, however, that even disembodied analysis has to be
embodied? What place does such thought put this book, however?
62 As usual, this is my translation, consulting renderings by 黃錦銓, Graham, Mair, Watson, Giles, and Legge.
 Interculture, Relativism 131

―What, so low?‖ ―It‘s in weed, tare.‖ ―What, still lower?‖ ―It‘s in tiles, shards.‖ ―What, worse
yet!‖ ―It‘s in shit, piss.‖ Master Easturb responded no more. ―Your queries, sir, just don‘t get
at the substance. Director Huo asks the head of market to step on pigs, and he says pressing
down lower reveals the pig‘s situation more. Don‘t you insist on exact locale; you can‘t
escape from things. Ultimate Tao is like this; Great Words are thus as well.‖

Remember, pigs are cherished as our delicious food; so is Tao. Likewise, the ―lower‖ we
go down the ―hierarchy of five senses,‖ the more we see how our sense turns intimate and
pervasive, concrete and universal. This is so in four aspects. First, taste is bodily and is more
specific and intimate than all other senses, and intimacy suffuses the whole bodily life.
Besides, being most specific and intimate, taste includes all senses, as visual survey
penetrates things when vision tastes what is surveyed, as hearing deliciously tastes things‘
music, as smelling inhales smells tasting them, and as tactility touches a thing to feel to taste
it. Thus, moreover, taste alone intimately enters us to pervade and nourish us as no other
senses do. Finally, as taste is most bodily specific and intimate, as ―it tastes good,‖ so taste is
63
―least bodily‖ and most pervasive, as with ―he has a good taste‖ or ―it is tastefully done.‖
Taste is all over, concrete and universal.
Tasting is also cultural. Both animals and humans eat, but only we humans relish dinner.
Animals and humans taste food with gusto, but animals taste food and forget it. Our taste
cultivates us ―human‖ beyond animality and distinct in each culture. First, taste makes us
human distinct from animals. Taste is the human grammar of comportment, the canon of
sense that feeds us into humanly alive.
Our thinking then must follow the logic of taste, the logic of our basic sense. Here usual
logical system is not worshipped or abolished, but is naturally accepted, let be, as a nudge, a
wink, and a reminder/maker of life-coherence, a spice of life-system in every culture.
Relishing taste is the logic of all logicizing, the reason of all life-reasoning, the principle of
64
every living and everyday logic of living. Logic ultimately is the logic of sense. Thus,
actually, taste is the highest and lowest sense so unique, the intimately bodily sense that is
65
logical, universal.
Thus taste makes us distinctly cultural-human. Being the intimately bodily, taste in the
end is the anchor and flavor of a culture. Cultural sensibility is based on taste; the best direct
way to be acquainted with a culture is to literally taste it in its dinner, tasting its specific tang
of convivial sensibility. Taste is redolent with distinct flavors, fragrance, aura, and sounds of
dinners of a specific culture, beckoning us in.
Life is a tasteful logic, the logic of tasting mutuality, for existence to stand-out of the
other by tasting the other. This is more and other than self-alienation of Hegel, Marx, and
Sartre. In China, tasting makes the self as another and in another, as Chuang Tzu (6/50-52.
55) tells the marvelous story of dying joyously expecting to be tasted into a rooster, a pellet,
and more.

63 We say ―a tasty three minute song,‖ ―this delicious phrase.‖ See examples in Oxford English Dictionary (1991)
on ―delicious‖ (IV: 417) and ―tasty‖ (XVII: 662). Professor Higgins said, ―She is deliciously vulgar,‖ in a
movie, My Fair Lady.
64 Gilles Deleuze (The Logic of Sense, trs. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990)
may not have sensed the ―logic of sense‖ in this tasteful sense.
65 I ―argued‖ extensively for this point in On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic (Leiden: Brill,
1997), although at the time I did not realize the intimacy of taste with sense and the intimacy of bodily sense
with beyond-mere-bodily sense.
132 Kuang-ming Wu

―Wow! ‗What/Who makes things‘ still goes on making me into this crumpled thing.‖ ―Do
you hate it?‖ ―No, why should I hate it? By and by he‘ll change my left arm into a cock, and
I‘ll be at the night watch. By and by he‘ll change my right arm into a pellet, and I‘ll be at a
roasted owl dinner. By and by he‘ll change my buttocks into wheels, my daemon into a horse,
and I‘ll ride it.‖ . . . ―How great is this making-changing! What is it making you still? Where
is it sending you? Making you into a rat-liver? Into a fly-leg?‖

This is how China takes tasting to be; tasting relates intimately to living and dying, both
delicious, delightfully inter-transforming and inter-transmigrating by tasting-digesting.
Our story of tasting in China does not end here. We are what we eat as we eat to grow
into what we are respectively, distinctly, culturally. China rightly takes ―what we are‖ socially
to be nourished by what we eat. The ruler-chef skillfully prepares an exquisite banquet by
tastefully mixing and harmonizing communal affairs, personal and interpersonal, for all
people to taste and live on, relish and thrive on, young and old, poor and princely. The human
66
world, social and personal, is to be scrupulously cooked, and expertly relished together.
Its recipe the Tao of Food is, ―Governing the big state is as frying small fish.‖ (Lao Tzu
60) We call this the culinary art of ―socio-politics.‖ In the end, China sees the whole Nature
as managing itself by cooking itself. ―Liao-li 料理‖ in China means ―management,‖ and as
the phrase travels to Japan, it, now pronounced ―ryōri,‖ adds a new sense of ―cooking.‖
Management and cooking mutually imply in the world of interculture.
This is the ―Economy of Nature‖ in the Triune Heaven, Earth, and Humanity through
life-and-death cycles via inter-tasting of various species, as in Chuang Tzu‘s above quotation.
All this tells a tasty story culturally, thoughtfully, intertwining into a unity of culture and
culinary arts. Nature is an inter-tasting society, killing in enlivening, in birds singing, brooks
whispering, and leaves rustling. Listening to them heals; all parties taste giving as taking and
taking as giving, in Yin-Yang interaction that inevitably spreads to co-resonance with birds,
brooks, and leaves.
No wonder cultures, myths, and religions abound with ―tasting‖ that enriches. The Lord
Christ institutes the Supper to offer himself in bread and wine to his disciples, who taste him
to enrich them, to satisfy (feeds) the Lord in return; just taste John 4:32 in its whole story-
context. This is the center of the Christian rites of the shared agape-meal, the breaking of the
bread, the way that Jesus presented himself as an essential part of human existence by
associating himself with the bread and wine.
Foods taste good, thanks to the hostess of good taste, who in turn tastes the well-fed
guests‘ praises to feed her into joyous satisfaction. Human foods are thus both physical and
socio-cultural, and both unite to make human community, to ennoble physical nature a mutual
eating society. Tasting food (tastes good) is thus intimately linked to taste as cultural cipher
(good taste),67 and pervades throughout the whole world of Nature.
In conclusion, both sleeping and tasting thus show how bodily concrete we are as human
in the lifeworld. The Chinese character ―hsin 心‖ is often rendered ―heartmind‖; it can

66 Cf. Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, NY: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1937, p. 452 (index on ―food‖). Richard
Craze and Roni Jay, The Tao of Food (NY: Sterling Publishing, 1999) briefly touches on this point toward the
end. Cf. K. C. Chang, ed., Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.
67 The French anthropologists, like Levi-Strauss, have picked up on some of that angle in their discussion of those
who eat raw food vs. those who cook.
 Interculture, Relativism 133

actually render ―bodymind‖ to tread ―shen 身,‖ the bodily life-span, the life-existence that, as
Chuang Tzu shows, extensively tastes-connects to thrive in the whole Nature, ceaselessly
naturing in, with, and around us.
All this gathers life in storytelling, and gathering is ―logic.‖ So we now consider the logic
of storytelling. We will be surprised that storytelling is the primal logic of life‘s
epistemology. That is, how we tell stories is how we know myriad all, and how we know is
how we taste with our whole body, soul, and life. This is the logic of story-thinking, a
gathering-in of things via storytelling. Thus the logic of storytelling pursues the ―taste‖ of life.

C. The “Logic” of Storytelling

Taste weaves a tasty life-system, what we casually call ―storytelling‖; to live is to tell its
story as children constantly do by their living, in all their self-expressing to grow. Have we
bumped into a kid, so imperial and defiant in a chocolate mess, to dare us to touch her? It is a
sight to behold, not to touch. She is the marvelous glorious story of herself! Children of all
ages thus taste the lived telling of life as story and relish hearing such stories.
Philosophers must simply follow the child who is the parent (Wordsworth), the guide
(Nietzsche), and the greatest (Mencius) of us all adults. Now we must pursue this line of
sleeping, tasting, logic, and storytelling, and we are surprised, fascinated. Storytelling (a) has
a logical sort and (b) a non-logical sort, and (c) it opens out deliciously. We must explain in
three points.
68
(a) Storytelling can be logical as with mathematical and scientific essays in the West to
inform us about the world. Albert Einstein‘s relativity theories write in mathematical
formulas that are a science of the universe. In any case, a mathematical and scientific essay is
supposedly logically tight, coherently whole. For all that, interestingly, Kurt Gödel proved
with tight coherent math that they are each incomplete, for no mathematical theorem can
prove itself; it is provable only by another system outside. Math parallels life that eats, tastes,
and takes in things outside.
We are tempted to ask Gödel, ―Is your theory of incompleteness itself incomplete, in
69
need of Einstein to prove and support you?‖ By the same token, logical storytelling in the
West is coherent and open to other storytelling of other cultures. Each culture must taste the
others to survive and thrive. Logic then must be logicized/supported by non-logic.
(b) Storytelling can be non-logical, as with myths of Gilgamesh, fables of Aesop, and tall
70
tales of Alice in Wonderland; they are delicious haphazard associations of ideas and themes.
We note that as long as they are ―associations of themes/ideas‖ we can understand, they are
coherent; and yet as long as these associations are ―haphazard,‖ they are open to
interpretations, modifications, and additions. Such combination makes the living story-system

68 Mathematics essays are stories told in a specific cultural language of mathematics, as stories in China are told in
Chinese language, those in Germany in German, those in England in English, and so on.
69 Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Open Court Publishing Company, 1949, 1970,
has an essay by Kurt Gödel (pp. 555-562) and Einstein‘s replies (pp. 687-688). They were good friends.
70 Non-logical stories are ―logically parsed‖ as Gilles Deleuze did on Alice (The Logic of Sense, Columbia
University, 1990), C. G. Jung on mythology (Four Archetypes: Mother/Rebirth/Spirit/Trickster, Princeton
University, 1973), and many on chaos (N. Katherine Hayles, ed., Chaos and Order, University of Chicago,
1991). None, however, thought on logic-non-logic interdependence.
134 Kuang-ming Wu

that renders it tasty/tasteful. Non-logical storytelling is coherent and deliciously open, ever
ready to taste something else.
Mind you, further, that we ourselves exist this way, for we live on to make history to
judge it. Our life is also coherent and open-ended, as history judges itself (coherent) while
rhyming itself forward (open). It is an ongoing fact-music. History has Vietnam war, then
Iraq war, My Lai massacre, then Iraq prisoners-abuse, Nixon, then Bush, Kissenger, then
Rice, and the rhyming list goes on in time.
Fact is stranger than fiction; our history is strangely coherent and open as any myth or
fable. Doesn‘t this twofold feature of open coherence rhyme with being as creation by tasting
things outside, to make our life a concrete existence-system, as creatively messy as Marcel‘s
―being as creation, creation as being‖?
(c) Storytelling logical and non-logical is thus coherent and deliciously open to describe
―Heavenly Net‖ (Lao Tzu). Storytelling as a flexible net is a dynamic circle relishing life, to
use another metaphor; storytelling is complete in itself as any circle, and yet opens out, lustily
invites and tastes others to relish life to grow together. Storytelling inherently, integrally, and
tastefully expands; it is a paradoxical irresistible ―open circle‖ pan-centered, no-edged.
Tasting is delicious; ―not delicious‖ is not tasty. A circle pan-centered and edgeless
(Nicholas of Cusa) expands; expansion has no-edge. ―Delicious‖ shows how tasting benefits,
as ―expansion‖ includes more and more. Benefiting expansion can be told of in stories of
criticism. Here are two such stories. Neville‘s three criticisms of Wu enrich Wu-in-response.
Wu‘s criticism of Ricoeur clarifies Wu‘s story-thinking. In the following we tell Neville‘s
story, then Ricoeur‘s story.

THE SPIRIT OF SYSTEMS AND THE SYSTEMATIC SPIRIT

To illustrate the expanding circle of storytelling, let us take Robert Neville‘s critique of
Kuang-ming Wu‘s writings. Dr. Neville accuses Wu as an anti-system systematic thinker, a
71
contradiction, and objects to Wu‘s ―concrete philosophy‖ as contradictory and totalistic. He
has three critiques. I systematize anti-systematically (Forewords to Body Thinking, 1997 and
Togetherness, 1998); I am idiosyncratic in what I pick (Foreword to Metaphoring, 2001); and
stressing ―concreteness‖ to totalize toward totalitarianism (Foreword to Togetherness). I
respond thus.
One, the concept of ―system‖ has non-concrete, inclusive, and organized categories to
classify all concrete details. Widening systematically into generality that is comprehensive
and detailed dilutes myriad all to senselessness; now everything is related to everything else
72
indifferently. Two, everyone is idiosyncratic as ―idios,‖ oneself, so we all must gather
respectively our own ways to inter-enrich. Making an indifferently comprehensive system
blinds us to the idios and leads us to false empty universality.
Three, ―concreteness‖ is just what there is as it is. Many elements are concresced, and
one concresced pattern now is ready to change into another new pattern in the next moment.
Concreteness is time-flexuous, concresced anew in each situation. We naturally tell stories on

71 ―Philosophy‖ thinks about the concrete, and so cannot be ―concrete‖; ―concrete philosophy‖ self-contradicts.
72 Cf. my thoughts on ―system‖ in China-West Interculture: Toward the Philosophy of World Integration, ed. Jay
Goulding, NY: Global Scholarly Publications, 2008, pp. 298-302.
 Interculture, Relativism 135

how naturally comfortable ―being oneself‖ is, whole and glowing healthy. This ―glow‖ is
subdued73 whole unawares. All this is beyond objective system. Concrete details are noted to
spontaneously ―connect,‖ no ―system‖ separate from actuality, no ―comprehensive totalism.‖
Three connections are here.
(1) Connections by two-way metaphor; I familiarize myself with the new by seeing it as
similar to the old, and then renovate the old with the unfamiliar new now made familiar, as
explained in my On Metaphoring. (2) Connections by contagion; a thing is seen to be similar
to another by that first thing ―bleeding out‖74 to the second, by comparison, contrast or
reminding, sometimes haphazardly. (3) Connections by family resemblance; a thing is seen to
be a ―family member‖ of another as an activity is seen as ―game‖ with another, as
Wittgenstein proposed.75
These three connections are experiential, no comprehensive system but concrete going-
through, presentable in storytelling in a systematic spirit, not in systems. Examples can help.
An example of (1), connection by two-way metaphor, is to learn from the past to design
the present,76 and then renovate the past with the new present patterned after the past. An
example of (2), connection by contagion, is Paul‘s ―In everything give thanks,‖77 by
comparison when things go well in situations A and B, and by contrast of happy A against
tragic B. An example of (3), connection by family resemblance, is a quip, ―Trust no past.‖78
The ancients said so to people then, they say so to us now, and both situations resemble as
family members.79
Now, all these situational examples are understandable only as told in stories of how we
come to regard an experience A as related to new B. Even these three connections themselves
are somehow mutually connected. Here our circle of understanding expands from A to B then
from B to A, experientially in a storytelling way. All this is neither totalistic, anti-systematic,
nor a system. Instead, all this follows things as connected, expanding, storytelling way.

CONTRA RICOEUR
To ignore the dynamic expanding circle of storytelling kills storytelling. This is
graphically shown by Paul Ricoeur‘s alleged description of narrative. His Time and Narrative
makes me angry for this reason. Its problem setting, and so its problem, begins at taking
―narrative‖ as made of ―emplotment‖ (muthos) for ―imitation/representation‖ (mimesis) of

73 葆光, 莊子 2/62.
74 Chinese/Japanese ―感染 felt and bled out,‖ meaning ―contagion,‖ captures its intimacy with ―bleed-out.‖
75 On Metaphoring, op. cit., pp. 18-19.
76 Confucius‘ ―Warm up the old to know the new‖ (2/11) did not say, ―then warm up the new to know the old.‖
77 1 Thessalonians 5:18. Cf. Ephesians 5:20, 2 Thessalonians 2:13. ―God the Creator of all is love in each particular
event‖ has a similar problem of ―all‖ being applied to ―particulars,‖ and can be resolved by giving thanks in
happiness and giving thanks in tragedies, each specifically, yet each identically to the other, i.e., in gratitude.
78 See, e.g., Chuang Tzu 13/68-74, 14/35-37.
79 ―But doesn‘t this saying itself part of the past? We cannot follow this saying or oppose it without falling into a
contradiction, then.‖ To cavil thus at this saying, as self-referentially contradictory, makes sense only when we
take the past-and-the-now as one comprehensive system. In any case, Paul‘s ―hymn to love‖ in 1 Corinthians
13 also cites a love-effect in each situation that differs each time it happens, and so the description seems
scattered yet is coherent.
136 Kuang-ming Wu

human ―discordance‖ (Augustine), thereby solves its tragic actuality.80 This is not
spontaneous storytelling.
The problem here is that he contrives. His ―narrative‖ is not a story but fiction that
requires ―emplotment,‖81 an elaborate plotting. Plotting leaves experience and ―time,‖ and
then all sorts of ―aporias‖82 arise that his three volumes of ―Time and Narrative‖ are contrived
to solve or resolve systematically, only to end in ―Time is a mystery‖; the problems stay
unresolved.
The whole problem begins when Ricoeur re-defines ―muthos,‖ myth, primal human
storytelling, as straight ―emplotment‖ that is—we must protest—only distantly related to
myths,83 if at all. After all, a simple ―plot‖ may or may not have been ―emplotted,‖ that is,
contrived in advance. A plot may well just naturally emerge in our descriptive process; a plot
comes to us spontaneously while we tell stories about our experience. To know a narrative by
analyzing its plot is to understand a human person by analyzing his bones, by first killing him
to pull out his bones.
I don‘t want ―narrative‖; I want simple story, however short. I don‘t want ―plotting‖; I
want the story-coherence of simple experience-description that does not ―imitate/represent‖
but mirrors/echoes actuality, or at least makes a coherent sense of experience. Chuang Tzu the
great short-story teller did so; every Chinese thinker does so. They tell short stories in their
meditations and reflections of life, to weave out stories of what we glibly/casually call
―Chinese philosophy,‖ to make sense of our life-world.
The issue cuts deep. Chinese classical thinkers compress stories even further into curt
aphoristic sayings, and even one pregnant word, being an ideo-audiogram, tells a story
intimated by that word. Later ―commentators‖ write treatises to unpack the nuanced stories,
as ―expositions‖ of classical sayings, longer than the originals many times over.84 What
happened? It cannot be that those ancient sages were so inept as to need later scholars to
expound on their theses. What I observed is this.
History may teach us, but we must learn how it teaches us; raw random data teach us
nothing. It is we who learn raw random sayings to be wise aphorisms and probe to explicate
them, to result in commentaries and treatises. ―But such ‗randomness‘ itself must have
something worth learning,‖ you say. All right, the ―something worth learning‖ is its evocative
enabling. Classical sages are ―enablers‖ of later scholars to expound on what these latecomers
think the revered classical thinkers thought, and end up developing on their own. Classical
writers are ―classical‖ due to evocative enabling power.
―How do these enablers do so?‖ They do in two ways. One, those aphoristic sayings are
concentrates of things-unsaid to call forth saying-expounding. Two, those aphoristic sayings
are inter-coherent but seem scattered; Chinese thinking shows Dr. Seuss‘ ―Here and there,
funny things are everywhere.‖ Later scholars are drawn into ―systematizing‖ those precious

80 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (1983), University of Chicago Press, 1984, I: 31-34, cf. Preface.
81 Not even Oxford English Dictionary has ―emplotment.‖ Such a convoluted contrivance!
82 Why doesn‘t he simply say ―problems‖? This is another contrivance.
83 Myths (muthos) have an ―underlying sense‖ (hyponoia) hidden in their simple childlike stories that cannot be
lightly dismissed in logical argumentation (logos) of Plato (Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, Timaeus) and
Aristotle (Metaphysics 1091b, cf. 982b, 1074b, 1000a). See F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A
Historical Lexicon, New York University Press, 1967, pp. 120-121, and J. A. Stewart and G. R. Levy, The
Myths of Plato, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960.
84 Just see contemporary ―translations‖ of Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Sun Tzu. They are all stuffed with
―introductions‖ much longer, often many times over, than the actual translations of the original texts.
 Interculture, Relativism 137

―funny sayings everywhere,‖ resulting in one scholar‘s specific system, another one‘s another
different system, etc. ―Chinese philosophy‖ thrives on such ―thinking game‖ for millennia.
The West is similar; sayings abound everywhere. From Thales‘ ―All is water‖ and all
Pre-Socratics‘ poetry through Euclid‘s The Elements, Spinoza‘s Ethics, Pascal‘s Pensées, to
Nietzsche‘s writings and Wittgenstein‘s Tractatus, thinkers keep pro-ducing pungent sayings
for later thinkers to expound and systematize. Even Hegel‘s, Kant‘s, and Whitehead‘s
―systems‖ are expounded by Neo-Hegelians, Neo-Kantians, and Whiteheadians. China just
explicitly admits and glorifies itself in this situation, while the West does not.
Western philosophers spontaneously perform thought experiments by entertaining
concrete examples and counter-examples. Plato has ―myth of the Cave,‖ Hobbes and
Rousseau have ―state of nature,‖ Rawls has a ―veil of ignorance‖ (in A Theory of Justice,
1971), D. E. Harding has ―on having no head‖ (1961, 1987), and Thomas Nagel has ―being a
bat‖ (in The Mind‟s I, 1981). Sadly, these philosophers never stop to reflect on what they are
doing, on how significant it is for life to think by such storytelling.
This entire seeming quibble over the classics, past and present, is not just a matter of
whimsical preference, personal or cultural, but necessitated by life; it is alive and relevant to
life actuality. We just think of ―history‖ that cannot be plotted but can only be lived, dotted,
and described. There is no ―science of history‖ in the mode of natural science, as there cannot
be ―natural science of human living,‖ for our daily living can only be recorded, collected, and
described in aphorisms and journals—and then commented on by posterity.
This is perhaps because natural science is constructed to deal only with repeatable parts
and aspects of nature that does not repeat itself. Natural science is so plotted as to depart from
―actual time,‖ our lived world. Our lived world is all-too-historical; our life is history in the
making, history itself, and ―history does not repeat but rhymes.‖85 If we cannot have a natural
science of history, we cannot have natural science of our life, our experiences and our daily
world, whether cosmic, physical, or psychological.
Thus there is no exact (natural) science of sociology, economics, trade, or weather. Our
diary and journal that dot events record them, often aphoristically, have no (natural) science
to them, either, for every day differs from every other day and their differences cannot be
calculated, tabulated, repeated, and generalized, and predicted precisely. They can only be
concentrated into curt aphorisms, to scatter around all over, on each event each day, at a time.
Narrative or fiction is, then, a ―fake‖ so contrived86 that in writing it we are
distanced/torn from ourselves. Ironically, such an unnatural fiction-making87 is also a part of
our life. Scholars would describe how we make fiction to live our lives, and then our
description turns out no fiction but description of fiction-making, itself one of our real life-
activities, a part of our ―history‖ that includes fiction-making as one of our life-activities that,
in turn, compose our life-world. Let us tell one of its basic stories, on life and no-life.
Machines do not die; only things alive grow and die. Machines just wear out and
disintegrate. Disintegration is not death. The boy lying dead beside his warn-out bike that fell
apart is brought home to us by a story; logic would have seen them identical. Can and cannot

85 Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003, p. 2.

86 That is, as long as fiction requires artificial ―emplotment‖ (Ricoeur). ―Is there really no fiction-making that has
no emplotment?‖ Well, in fact, ―fiction‖ connotes imaginative invention (Oxford English Dictionary, V: 872)
as in ―fictitious‖ and ―The average man is a fiction,‖ contrasted with ―fact.‖ Taken this way, fiction is not
―story‖ that includes fiction.
87 I take ―fiction-making‖ to include ―fiction-writing.‖
138 Kuang-ming Wu

are living words; do and do not are machine-words. Babies cannot think, talk, work, laugh, or
play—yet. Machines do not taste, or sex, talk, or think, at all. When a ball is bounced by kids,
kids laugh, but the ball does not even ―bounce,‖ which is a life-word. Kids wait; machines do
not. Taste, sex, talk, think are life-words. Signs are part of talk that is life-word.
Only we humans alive ask, ―Can machines think?‖ Machines do not ask; asking is life-
word. The above is told of as stories; only stories describe all this. Logic cannot understand it,
for logic just computes. Logic is machine-word; story is life-word. In fact, even ―compute‖ is
life-word, for machines just click on. All this is told as stories. Story-thinking tells stories that
life and no-life inter-traffic to inter-exist, as the violinists play their violins, becoming part
one to another to make life-music.
Our lifeworld is itself such storytelling; it is story-shaped.88 No wonder ancient
Aeschylus took ―logos‖ to mean something to be perceived at once by the ear as sound and
talk, and by the phren, those who have ears to hear, as principles and reasons pervading the
cosmos.89 Likewise, the Chinese take Tao to be both talk and cosmic principle,90 as Lao Tzu
began his Tao Te Ching with ―Tao can tao (talk-as-Tao91), not Always Tao.‖
In self-negation, Lao Tzu shrewdly repeated Tao so many times, to stress how thoroughly
Tao pervades Heaven and Earth, in its negative visibility and positive ineffability. Tao is the
word, the story, of cosmic principle, spreading as a dynamic Circle of the universe that
expands everywhere, without an edge, with its center everywhere. We are now ready to
consider ―circle.‖ And this circle would reveal to us how cultures and storytelling are
interrelated to reveal our living as human.

CIRCLES, CULTURES, STORIES

There is a circle whose center is everywhere and its edge nowhere, said Nicholas of Cusa,
92
proverbially, or Augustine (as Emerson said). Both men used such a circle to describe
93
God but it is no less awesomely revealing of actuality, closely relevant to ―what there is‖ if
not identical to it. In any case, such is how this interesting notion, this strange circle, appeared
in history. We must consider what it is, and then what it means.
To begin, what is this strange circle? A circle shows a definite relation between a point at
the center and all other points at its edge, connoting a coherence of a center with all

88 Cf. Rodney Frey, ed., Stories That Make the World: Oral Literature of the Indian Peoples of the Inland
Northwest as Told by Lawrence Aripa, Tom Yellowtail, and Other Elders, Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1995.
89 David Sansone, Aeschylean Metaphors for Intellectual Activity, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, 1975,
p. 80.
90 ―Logos‖ in John 1:1 means both ―principle‖ (to appeal to the Greeks) and ―word‖ (to appeal to the Jews).
Chinese translators cleverly rendered ―logos‖ as ―Tao‖ to combine ―principle (li 理)‖ with ―word (yen 言).‖
See 聖經: 啟導本, 香港: 海天書樓, 1989, pp. 1482, 1880-1885.
91 At least this is what almost every later commentator takes it to mean, although I am not sure it is correct, for
―tao‖ as ―say, talk‖ appeared in the fourth century BCE while Tao Te Chine appeared in the sixth. Still, the
interpretation is not off the mark, and apt here.
92 The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, NY: Modern Library, 2000, p. 252. I once saw a book about
how China also independently noted such a circle to exist, but I now lost the reference.
93 See Coda: Various Ponds Alive, below. I have also considered this circle as descriptive of God in my
manuscript, Nonsense: Cultural Meditations on the Beyond, yet to be published. I consider here this circle as
our historical actuality of storytelling and cultures.
 Interculture, Relativism 139

equidistant points at the edge. The circle with an everywhere-center and nowhere-edge must
then not stay but moves, for ―everywhere‖ is ―here and elsewhere,‖ ―nowhere‖ is ―ever
expanding elsewhere from ‗here‘,‖ and ―elsewhere‖ moves somewhere ―else‖ not ―here‖-
anywhere. This circle is then a moving coherence, a circle of many circles, blending one into
the other in waves, out and out.
Now, what does this intriguing dynamic circle mean? It can describe (1) daily ongoing,
94
(2) my life, (3) cultures, (4) interculture, and (5) storytelling.
One, the circle of everywhere-center and nowhere-edge can describe daily ongoing that
goes around in open coherence. The sun rises in the east every morning (constant), while the
wind blows as it chooses (moving, indeterminate), as Whitehead said, and each day is this
coherent unity (circle) of constancy (everywhere-center) and indeterminacy ever going ahead
(nowhere-edge). Everyday is thus same-different, round and round, out and out.
Two, this dynamic circle may describe the pond of my life dotted with countless
raindrops of inspiration, each rippling out a circle that constantly expands into nowhere, that
is, constantly vanishing to blend into another ripple-circle made by another inspiration-
raindrop, and then another, incessantly, indefinitely. The pond of human awareness makes a
circle dotted with many expanding circles, a circle in time, coherently one in centers
everywhere, to expand edge-nowhere.
Three, all this has profound cultural implications. In the West, Einstein dissolved
Newton‘s absolute space and time into relative ―spacetime‖; for Derrida an absolute circle of
the universe was now ―deconstructed‖ into many subject-circles each related to the others,
―deferred‖ into the others constantly appearing and disappearing likewise.
Plato and Hobbes gathered up loose crowds into the politics of a center, a philosopher-
king or a Leviathan, and Foucault ―deconstructed‖ it into political rhythms of push-and-pull
in waves of raw power. Our universe is now a ―shoe-string‖ circle of moving ―wavicle‖-
circles, each pulsing and undulating into the others, as the circle of a system cannot prove
itself (Gödel), that is, a circle exists as such only thanks to the other to which it opens and
ripples out.
Our circle of universe and its understanding is now waves and rhythms of many
interblends of circles constantly expanding into nowhere. The West expressed all this in the
95
mathematics of tight logical analysis and no-nonsense experimental deduction/induction ;
strict circle-coherence pervades the moving open-ended circles/circumferences. Many
moving inter-blending circles inter-pervade to manifest a pond that is peculiarly Western.
Thus, we all think/live in a moving circle of open-ended coherence, such as in the West‘s
mathematical/experimental weaving of science/technology. Only China explicitly manifests it
as such, both in thinking and in expression; China is another pond of many moving circles
that is distinct from the West. We now consider China-circle and its cultural implications.

94 See Wu‘s ―World Interculturalism: China Written in English,‖ Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, June 2005,
pp. 1-42.
95 Chad Hansen is today‘s I. A. Richards, innocently taking Western ―analytical logic‖ to be universally applicable,
confidently pushing his analytical interpretation all through Chinese history of thought (A Daoist Theory of
Chinese Thought, Oxford, 1992). That story-thinking can accommodate analytical logic indicates how great
story-thinking is, for analytical logic to house story-thinking results in tearing logic apart (as Alice in
Wonderland did to Lewis Carroll‘s math) and tarnishing analytical logic itself (as Deleuze did to Alice in
Wonderland by logicizing her, Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990).
140 Kuang-ming Wu

François Jullien wrote on the Chinese notion of ―shih, 勢‖ he translates as ―the propensity
96
of things.‖ He was perceptive enough to see this notion as a center from which scatter-
spread out all sorts of notions all over China, a key to understanding the thought-world of
China. Jullien may not have realized, however, that the same universal reverberation of
implications and connotations exist in all Chinese pivotal notions.
Each of the words, ―Heaven 天,‖ ―Tao 道,‖ ―nature 性,‖ ―ritual-propriety 禮,‖ ―princely
man 君子,‖ ―humanity 仁,‖ ―loyalty-conscientiousness 忠,‖ ―fidelity 信,‖ ―filiality 孝,‖
―principle as the grain of things 理,‖ ―breath-élan 氣,‖ ―feeling-situation 情,‖ ―the Yin-Yang
陰陽,‖ ―the divine 神,‖ and so on, covers no less than the entirety of the world of China.
When Confucius wanted his disciple Tseng Tzu to thread his Tao into One, Tseng Tzu could
have rightly cited any common notion that came to his mind.
Our fascinating question here is, ―Why is all such the case?‖ The ―cause‖ quite possibly
lies in the nature of actuality itself. Almost any notion that is interesting, that is, eye-catching,
can be a center from which all sorts of implications flow. It belongs to Chinese genius to
perceive this irradiation of ideas and capture it in a distinctive mode of thinking and
expression that is describable as historical and literary 文史—all concrete storytelling. This is
the sentiment of the circle with everywhere-center and nowhere-circumference.
In addition, the reverse is also true. Any moment, any place can be a new circle which
irradiates all sorts of new notional radii of implications, and in fact, any individual in any
situation can begin an epoch-making revolution. As a common Chinese saying goes, ―The
97
situation shapes the hero as the hero shapes the situation.‖
The moral of our life is clear: Do not be trapped. We must always break out new and
pursue the implications of new insight that comes at every moment, and expand it into a new
98
circle, and then go to another circle. This is how the new story of the New World is created;
the brave new world begins at the new story-circle.
Verification/confirmation consists in how far the new circle can expand its implications.
If it expands just a few yards, then it is weak if not false, e.g., violence; if unlimited in its
horizon, ―nowhere‖ to be seen, then it is powerfully valid, e.g., compassion. Such is the
circle-canon of Chinese circles, Chinese culture. China calls the range of expansion ―history.‖
Let us come back to our ―pond,‖ our culture that is our peculiar circle of inter-blending
circles. How do we detect the peculiarity of each pond as distinct from others? A handy sign
is translatability. ―Grace‖ and ―honor‖ in English are almost untranslatable into Chinese;
some say ―freedom‖ and ―democracy‖ are as well. The reverse is also true.
There exist no words as exact replicas of ―culture,‖ ―analysis,‖ ―philosophy,‖ or other
Western terms. Chinese language must struggle to devise compound words, ―文化,‖ ―分析,‖
―哲學,‖ either nonexistent before the Ch‘ing period when China first contacted the West, or

96 François Jullien, The Propensity of Things: Towards a History of Efficacy in China, NY: Zone Books, 1999.
97 Jullien‘s book sadly missed this shaping reciprocity between the 勢-situation and the individual (not just
individuals helplessly riding on it), as Saussy also missed who reviewed the book brilliantly (in The Journal of
Asian Studies, November 1996, pp. 984-987). Besides, Saussy (as did perhaps Jullien) missed culture as an
open circle, as stressed here, and Saussy‘s problem (rather flamboyantly put) of the familiar lack of common
categories in cultural comparison is resolved to my satisfaction in On Metaphoring, foreshadowed in previous
Body Thinking and Togetherness; but I admit Saussy wrote in 1996 while my books were out in 1997, 1998,
and 2001.
98 Emerson‘s ―Circles‖ (op. cit.) is alive primarily because of this emphasis on breaking out into novelty.
 Interculture, Relativism 141

apply compound words to those Western technical terms with meanings different from their
99
original ones—to approximate their new technical imports.
The Western penchant for objective abstract analysis turns psychology into medical
physiology and tangible sociology. Scientists resort to brain scanning to ―measure‖ pain and
―determine‖ how a shy anxious man differs from an impulsive extrovert, and takes counseling
as psychology. We thus understand how the West sees China as ―fuzzy and unclear‖ and
China the West as ―cold and barren‖; how tiresome a platitude-mouther Confucius is in the
West as how brutal and unreasonable Socrates is in China, and the list of such cultural
incompatibilities goes on.
Words are truly alive only in the culture-pond in which they mean in their own way. The
West imposes the ―problems‖ of freedom vs. fate, and God‘s love vs. human suffering, onto
100
the Bible that has no such dilemmas, for ―love‖ and ―freedom‖ in the Bible differ from
those in the West, whose ―theology,‖ logical-systematic if not analytical-scholastic, is foreign
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to the Bible.
Barclay said, ―(W)ords have associations. They have associations with people, with
history, with ideas, with other words, and these associations give words a certain flavor which
cannot be rendered in translation, but which affect their meaning and significance in the most
important way.‖ This is why he had to write a book to give that linguistic ―flavor‖ to some
Bible words. Likewise, Lewis also had to write a book to elucidate the very ―life‖ of certain
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common English words.
103
As some Western words are difficult to render into Chinese, so ―風骨 (wind bones?)‖
and ―情節 (feeling nodes/joints?)‖ are untranslatable into English; some say almost any
Chinese notion is as well, for example, ―ssu, 思‖ is not quite thinking, nor is ―k‘au, 考‖ quite
equivalent to ideation or deliberation.
This is why Confucius‘ compact Analects and Lao Tzu‘s no less turgid Tao Te Ching
have not been successfully rendered into English, despite almost an unlimited number of their
translations have long been flooding the market. No wonder we often hear such comments as
―China has no philosophy‖ (Arthur Wright) though it has deep reflections on matters at hand
and in Heaven and Earth, and ―China has no ethics‖ (Henry Rosemont, Jr.) though it has Five
interpersonal Relations (五倫).
Their untranslatability comes from the fact that each culture has its own ―music‖ of sense
and reason that cannot be rendered into different tunes, rhythms, and resonance of other

99 ―文化‖ originally meant teaching-transforming common people with exquisite virtues (以文德化民); ―分析‖
simply meant to divide; ―哲學‖ came from Nishi, Amané (西周)‘s ―希哲學‖ adapted from 周茂叔‘s (周敦頤)
―希求賢哲.‖
100 People in the Bible did suffer from those dilemmas, but did not treat their suffering as intellectual problems.
101 Robert A. Oden, Jr.‘s The Bible Without Theology: The Theological Tradition and Alternatives to It, NY:
Harper and Row, 1987, tries to develop a non-theological hermeneutic to the Bible. Although he still adopts
the usual analytical methods of anthropology to understand the Bible, no one seems to have paid attention to
his thesis.
102 William Barclay, New Testament Words, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974, p. 12. C. S. Lewis,
Studies in Words (1967), and also An Experiment in Criticism (1969), both from Cambridge University Press.
Cf. Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning (1973, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press),
History in English Words (1926, London: Faber and Faber, 2009, Barnes and Noble, 2009), Speaker‟s
Meaning (1967, London: Rudolf Steiner Press), etc.
103 Is ―wind‖ here like ―airs and graces‖ or ―give oneself airs‖? Did natural air come to have such human
complexity because ―ch‘i 氣‖ as the root dynamics of life circulates throughout Nature and human nature?
142 Kuang-ming Wu

cultures. Hence, culture shocks and misunderstanding, as well as cultural inter-learning of

creative delight occur. The Tower of Babel has its headaches and attractions, and its
headaches are its attractions.
Four, if each pond of circles of no circles has its peculiar life-style and flavor, these
ponds are themselves circles of everywhere-centers and nowhere-edges; the culture-ponds are
themselves circles of expanding circles inter-blending into other culture-ponds, and an
exciting world of multicultural inter-translations comes about. This ―world‖ is itself a circle
of circles of everywhere-centers and nowhere-edges, themselves in coherent flux, inter-con-
fusing without confusion, a chaotic cosmos.
Here is an ample room for creative misunderstanding, continual cultural miscegenation,
creative inter-borrowing into constantly emerging new worlds, one after another. I used to
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typify and explain the mode of such interculture as ―metaphoring‖ ; I will claim here that
this metaphoring activity is actually storytelling, as ancient as the history of humanity itself.
Five, these cultural ponds of circles, expanding, interblending, are expressed in
storytelling in the languages of mathematics (West) and delightful notions/myths (China).
They inter-yarn into a meaningful coherence, a story, that constantly expands by opening
itself into unexpected other stories, blending in with them. Story is itself an act of storytelling
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that moves and weaves itself out (open) and, all this while, still remains itself (coherence).
How do such storytelling form circles of everywhere-center and nowhere-edge? Its answer is
itself an interesting story.
Barfield said, ―(T)here is one case where the past . . . live(s) on in the present . . . where
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we . . . re-enact (as Collingwood said) . . . wherever we speak or write . . .‖ This is history
widely understood. Let us extrapolate from Barfield in our own way. This meaning-
reenactment in history-time and community-space makes dynamic circles of anywhere-
centers, nowhere-edges.
As we use (in speaking/writing) a word in roughly similar ways as its inherited meanings,
they come to accumulate those meanings into a cluster of meanings in a dictionary; this is part
of a cultural pond, made of communal usage of words. When we express ourselves by
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contracting the lexical meaning (e.g., ―furniture‖) or expanding it (e.g., ―focus‖), we make
a circle-center, anywhere, and it has to spread in communication to its audience, and the
spread expands the circle‘s edge indefinitely, constantly, that is, ―nowhere.‖
―How did the past meanings of the word get initiated, however?‖ We don‘t know; all we
see is that we are in the midst of this continuous process of dynamic complex reenactment,
from time immemorial to future immemorial. This is another example of circles of anywhere-
nowhere, alive in history everywhere. Contraction and expansion are just two ways in which
word-reenactment occurs, to form a moving meaning-circle of its center everywhere and its
edge nowhere.
All this word-usage tells stories of our expression of meaning and its communication,
themselves a storytelling, and Barfield tells stories of all this storytelling. When we want to
communicate English meaning-expressions among communities of other cultures, we engage

104 In my On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001.

105 I briefly considered this peculiarity of ―story‖ in my The Butterfly as Companion, Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1990, pp. 67-68.
106 Owen Barfield, Speaker‟s Meaning, London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1967, p. 23.
107 Ibid., pp. 31-32, 41-42. We do not need to go into details of how ―furniture‖ and ―focus‖ got transformed,
expanded, or contracted, as Barfield sees them. It will detract from our main thread of reflection here.
 Interculture, Relativism 143

in hermeneutic understanding, translations, from one culture-pond to another, and circles of

anywhere-center and nowhere-edge keep inter-blend to expand worldwide.
Now, our description above unwittingly displayed three sorts of circles of storytelling,
inter-involved. We have told the story of how this circle of everywhere-center and nowhere-
circumference occurred in the history of our thinking, then the story of what it is, then that of
what it means; each of three sorts of stories (how, what, its meaning) leads to and blends into
the other.
―Are these stories, then, three aspects of one story, or three separate but related stories?‖
It is an open question. Answering it makes another sort of story. ―Here and there, funny
things are everywhere,‖ said Dr. Seuss, and set out to write stories about them for children of
all ages who are eternally curious. Life is indeed funny and enjoyable. Life is larger than logic
and beyond what we usually think and sense, and anything bigger than what we can
understand can evoke laughter.
Dr. Seuss is not alone. Ancient Kung-sun Lung 公 孫 龍 shows us how logic can be used,
twisted, to tell stories on how we view things beyond our casual perceptions and common
sense. Escher, Einstein, and Lewis Carroll did so likewise; so did all literary writers, Erasmus,
Voltaire, Twain, and world mythologies. Things sparkle with fresh brilliance because of such
going-beyond our thing-perception.
Homer‘s Odyssey is one of the world‘s oldest stories of this mind-expansion. Kung-sun
Lung is another, and Chuang Tzu yet another. Sadly, usual commentaries on Kung-sun
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Lung and Chuang Tzu try so hard to convolutedly fit them into the Procrustean bed of our
usual perception of things. A. C. Graham‘s studies of Moh Ching 墨 經 turn them into dull
scholastic contortions.
Actually, all Name Scholars‘ 名家 writings are delightfully refreshing. They are
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expanding our common sense into things‘ vast visions, their ―tall stories.‖ Myriad things
are in fact ever out there beyond us. They are then ―outrageous‖ to our common sense, which
must turn outrageous-to-itself to fit into actuality. There are more fun things than our
philosophies dream of.
Now this is not as far-fetched as we usually think, as our common sense takes. Take an
outrageous but instructive example: We in our thought experiments on letting ―Humpty
Dumpty‖ sit on a wall and see how it fares—it ―falls, breaks.‖ Kids repeat the story, adults
repeat the experiment, and we all find that ―no king‘s horses, no king‘s men, can put it back
again‖; it is confirmed, that an egg that sits on a wall would break.
―But Humpty Dumpty is a unique entity, not an ordinary egg, incapable of repeatedly
experimenting on,‖ say we adults. Well, in which case, we adults say this is outside ―fact,‖ in
the realm of ―myth,‖ of nursery rhyme; but kids don‘t care and keep repeating the ―story‖
until it becomes ―history‖ for them, for whichever ―kid‖ doesn‘t remember Humpty Dumpty
sitting on a wall and falling down?
History rhymes as poetry and music to move us rhyming historical reality into their flesh.
Scientists perform dull same experiments to confirm; kids bounce nursery rhymes for fun
dancing. Kids love funny ―Humpty Dumpty‖ sitting on the wall as adults on the ―fact‖ of an

108 E.g., Max Perleberg, The Works of Lung-Sun Lung-Tzu, Hong Kong, 1952 (private printing).
109 Chuang Tzu‘s ―ch‘i hsieh 齊諧‖ (that begins Chapter One) can mean ―all jokes,‖ that is, ―tall stories.‖ See my
The Butterfly as Companion on this point. We are forced to say, ―You must be kidding!‖ in disbelief always;
jokes often reveal truths.
144 Kuang-ming Wu

110
egg breaking, no fun. If adults laugh at kids‘ ―Humpty Dumpty‖ as infantile and unreal,
kids can laugh at adults‘ ―fact‖ as adult-silly, for ―fact‖ is no fun, and nothing is more
111
important than having fun, and what is real, as history, is rhyming fun! Kids‘ ―fact‖ is
112
adults‘ ―Humpty Dumpty.‖
113
In other words, we are all kids enjoying the whole ―event‖; kids call it a ―story‖ to
repeat by chanting, dancing its rhyme for fun, while adults call it a ―science‖ to confirm by
experimenting and theorizing on it as fact. And then all such storytelling, rhymed and
confirmed, becomes our ―history‖; if it is far back in history, we call it a ―myth‖ as with
Gilgamesh or Odyssey.
―Well, all this outrage, these shenanigans, may have originated in our actual experiment
and experience,‖ we adults insist with a long face. It doesn‘t matter, for kids enjoy the story,
whether Humpty-Dumpty falls and breaks or no, and kids‘ enjoyment repeats the story—and
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their rhyming repetition ―confirms‖ the story for them as fun for sure.
In short, there surely exist far more things in our world than our philosophies dream of.
Here in this statement, the phrase ―more . . . than‖ makes for an outrageous feature of the
world that remains ours. If our reason, logos, means to put matters together to understand
them, then our reason is our story in four modes: story, science, history, and myth. These four
remain in actuality and as actuality, and the greatest of these is story. The story has to be
outrageously rich and varied as described above in science, history, and myth; if it is not
outrageous, it is no ―story.‖
We must now push further this strange storytelling that is a circle of everywhere-center
and nowhere-edge. As Emerson correctly intuited, this circle is dynamic self-transcendence,
going beyond itself and its milieu, breaking in pieces all egg-conventions and limitations of
the experienced and the known/knowable. The circle breaks through past experience; it is
trans-experiential, changing, changing, never ceasing, always envisaging a new horizon, and
such a process of breaking forth into the new is storytelling that expresses life itself.
Let us look into what this self-transcending élan is. The élan in life is expressed—in
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storytelling—in an aesthetic creation of the active Subject. This pushing beyond the push
itself pushes beyond this world to the trans-world, and we enter ―religion.‖ Religion is that
beyond-world, beyond-self, in which we live and which enables our life to self-create beyond
itself, and so we humans do not create religion, nor do we see or know it; we can only accept
it whose part we are, for we grow out of status quo thanks to ―it.‖
Going beyond this-worldly self-transcendence (aesthetics), this transcendence of self-
transcendence, this going from this-shore to that-shore, is religious transcendence. To obtain
succor in our absolute trustful acceptance of the Absolute is Christianity; to reach Nirvana
after ceasing all world-delusions is Buddhism. To obtain the Way to become sagely is

110 ―You kids do no experiment; we repeat it to confirm facts.‖ ―Your ‗experiment works‘ in your heart/mind as
our nursery rhyme works for us. Your ‗experiment‘ is your favorite nursery rhyme. We kids repeat ours, too.
Besides, your nursery rhyme is no fun; ours is, for we dance on ours, and you don‘t on yours!‖
111 Kids‘ ―fun‖ the adult Aristotle called ―happiness,‖ which is less happy than ―fun.‖
112 That is, kids‘ Humpty Dumpty is factual as adults‘ egg, and adults‘ fact should be fun as kids‘ Humpty
Dumpty.
113 Are we not kids? We should be. ―Great Ones are those who lose none of their ‗baby-heart.‘‖ (Mencius 4B12)
114 Every time kids repeat a story they change it a little, as our oral tradition does. We call such repetition with
variation ―rhyming‖ as in poetry, music, and myths.
115 Why ―aesthetics‖? It is because art is the freest realm of human creation so sensuous, so sensible.
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116
Confucianism; it is the highest form of morality. To divinely conform to the Way is
Taoism; it is the highest of naturalism where life itself is fulfilled in Nature that overflows
life.
Now, we have unwittingly told stories about life‘s storytelling, even the story beyond
life‘s storytelling, this circle of everywhere-center and nowhere-edge, pushing, pushing,
forever pushing out of itself. This pushing beyond itself is ―history,‖ our life-story, our
storytelling, our living. ―How does storytelling relate to history?‖
Both in Chinese and in English, ―story‖ both relates to ―history‖ and overflows it. As we
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are made of stories, stories overflow history that we are. This phenomenon shows how we
overflow ourselves; we are more than what and how we actually are. So, we have two points
here, one, what story is, two, what we are, as told and shown by story and storytelling.
Thanks to story and storytelling, we are bigger than we are. What do both these points mean?
One, ―story‖ narrates what happened; story is related to history, etymologically and
logically (故事, 史譚, 事蹟, 來歷). Such a story of history would not tell unless it is
interesting (軼聞, 逸事, 傳記, 逸話). Soon (logical and chronological ―soon‖) ―interest‖ takes
over and story overflows history and turns into a tale taller than historical facts, that ―facts‖
that may not have happened and may never happen, a ―fable‖ (傳奇, 傳説, 小説).
Two, the telling is of the story of things, persons telling and told to, told to us, to us
before (典故, 來歷) and to us after. Telling forms us, history shapes us; in the telling we
stand-out, exist as ―we,‖ as story. Without storytelling, there would be no telling (情報, 情節,
結構). By the same token, without telling, there would be no story. Besides, without story and
storytelling, there would be no ―we.‖ We overflow actuality to exist in story and
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storytelling, factual and fictive.

RELATIVISM AND STORYTELLING

Before we go further into the panorama of storytelling, we may note that, as we read a
story, at least sometimes we feel why it went this way and not that, or it ought to have
happened this way instead of that. This feeling is our thrust to normative critique that
spontaneously arises as we read a story about what actually transpired.
What fascinates us here is that our normative thrust takes us in a direction of what is
―logically expected that differs from how the story goes.‖ Our logical sense wants to have it
this way, not that, while the story-sense follows wherever things go, ―this way is OK, and that
119
way is OK, too.‖ This both-and thrust can ―walk both‖ ways mutually incompatible, and
we open the notorious Pandora‘s Box of ―relativism.‖

116 Being ―divine‖ means being an awesomely divine performer of music of life.
117 Story overflows history because story can soar beyond fact to which history is confined. Stories soar
imaginatively beyond fact, even counterfactually.
118 All this story of stories is woven with a glance at ―story,‖ ―history,‖ ―storytelling,‖ and ―exist‖ in the Oxford
English Dictionary. Chinese words and phrases inserted here and there show how much the Chinese sentiment
agrees with the West on ―story‖ and ―storytelling.‖ We all agree as human on all this.
119 ―Walk both‖ is a natural (we walk with both legs, don‘t we?) but paradoxically insightful phrase of Chuang
Tzu‘s (2/40), who explains his points, and delights and convinces us of his points, by continual storytelling
such as ―morning, three, evening, four‖ in this context.
146 Kuang-ming Wu

Relativism is a way of ―paradox,‖ suspending us among many directions mutually

logically-exclusive. Paradoxically, however, we find pleasure, fascination, and satisfaction in
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confronting such a paradox-situation. This is perhaps because in this paradoxical both-and
we find ourselves saying, ―But of course!‖ We finally come to see actuality eye to eye, and
that spells an unspeakable satisfaction. Paradox, relativism, and storytelling intertwine to
gratify and delight us.
Relativism cuts much deeper than a hand-off ―anything goes‖ attitude or ―leave me alone
as I leave you alone‖ solipsism. These are two of many withdrawal-pitfalls of democracy so
much in vogue today. Relativism is actually a dynamo that pushes us out into a panorama of
diverse worlds storytelling displays.
Relativism shows diverse views on the same theme, such as Descartes, Confucius, and
Chuang Tzu taking the ―self‖ in different ways, or else show diverse takes on the same view,
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such as American spirit of pragmatism vis-à-vis Chinese pragmatic spirit. We are
fascinated and frustrated; what can we do? In fact, what should we do?
Can‘t storytelling help? Three stories come to mind. One is Chuang Tzu‘s well-known
but puzzling ―morning, three; evening, four.‖ A Monkey Uncle announces to the monkeys
that from now on he is going to give them three nuts in the morning and four in the evening.
Monkeys are furious. ―All right, then,‖ said he, ―how about four in the morning and three in
the evening?‖ They applaud. Relativism is here, indeed.
Another story says that two disciples dispute over two views mutually opposed. Their
Master goes to one and says, ―You are right,‖ then goes to another and says, ―You are right.‖
A third disciple complains, saying, ―But Master, the two are opposed one to the other. How
could both be right?‖ Briefly paused, the Master then says, ―And you are right, too.‖ Isn‘t he
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the Master of relativism?
Finally, we see Tommy say to Mom, ―I hate Charlie. I want to kill him!‖ Mom says, ―All
right, you can kill him tomorrow. Now, come to your dinner, OK?‖ Tommy says, ―OK,
Mom.‖ Tommy then forgets all about what he said to Mom. Another marvelous story of
relativism is displayed here.
We spontaneously nod to all these stories. ―There is something here that manages
relativism just right,‖ say we, but what is it? All three show an amicable accommodation to
whatever that comes. ―Whatever comes‖ is relativism; ―amicable accommodation‖ is its
solution. The beauty here is that the solution takes place so smoothly, so naturally, as if
nothing were done. That‘s storytelling ―solving‖ and resolving the potential bloodshed of
contention among incompatibles.
It is thus, in any case, that storytelling opens us into relativism of the diverse worlds, and
manages them with natural apt poise without fanfare. Here is a win-win situation where
everyone is satisfied, thanks to tact and sensitivity of Monkey Uncle, the Master, and Mom. It
is a breathtaking concord, with sensitivity intellectual, empathetic. It is hospitality.

120 I freely rifle Roy Sorensen‘s A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind,
Oxford University Press, 2003. Although interesting, Sorensen is too much confined to historical exposition to
freely explore the fascinating depths of paradox, what it amounts to, where its roots are, why we are delighted
and satisfied precisely in our inability to resolve the paradox, how it relates to relativism, and so on.
121 See my On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 303-342. The
volume told stories of these two cases, and told a story of these two stories.
122 See my On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 339-345. The whole volume
concerns storytelling as metaphoring; it tells a story of life.
 Interculture, Relativism 147

The story of Odysseus silently shows us the crucial virtue of hospitality. Hospitality is
not something nice to do but a matter of life and death, giving life to those who are
hospitable, killing those who are not. The strength of USA is founded on the spirit of
hospitality to those immigrants who are poor, miserable, and hopeless. The Statue of Liberty
is a gift from other nation (France) to celebrate the American Spirit of Hospitality after which
everyone yearns. No wonder, American democracy is the whirlpool of relativism, an
accommodative experiment in world togetherness.

RELATIVISM AS STORYTELLING
―How are relativism and storytelling related, however?‖ We must first consider, that is,
tell a story of, what ―relativism‖ is and how crucial it is in life. I have treated this theme
elsewhere,123 but as befits relativism, we must start all over from scratch.124 Relativism
forever begins afresh; it is an eruptive thrust of life in cognitive garb. But this is to anticipate.
To begin, we must realize that ―relativism‖ has two meanings, as a noun, an assertion of a
thesis, and as a verb, a description of life-process. This realization generates seven points on
life as relativism alive.
(1) Often relativism is taken as another assertion, one of usual judgments, categorical and
terminal, and so relativism is what absolutely asserts a denial of all absolutes. It is then easy
to attack relativism as self-contradictory; doesn‘t it assert its own denial? Or we can attack it
as intellectually irresponsible; doesn‘t it take any view as equally good as any other, all
depending on one‘s perspective, cultural, ethical, or otherwise?
Philosophers since Socrates (contra sophists) such as Kant (contra Hume) are supposed to
fight/demolish relativism in the same manner as we fight religious heresies. Closely related to
these accusations are many questions, ―Is there an absolute truth at all?‖ ―Are all views
equally valid?‖ ―Is there a universal form of reasoning?‖ and ―Can we judge between two
views?‖125
These questions emerge because we think we can know whole truths and what we know
to be true are whole truths. Mathematician Whitehead warns us, ―There are no whole truths;
all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.‖126
These questions are insoluble conundrums requiring acrobatic ingenuity, once we take

123 Kuang-ming Wu, Existential Relativism, Ph.D. Thesis, Yale University Philosophy Department, 1965, and On
Metaphoring, op. cit., pp. 339-344 and 669 (index on ―relativism‖). See later ―§ Rorty, China, and World
Relativism.‖
124 By ―as befits relativism,‖ I mean relativism is a description (not assertion) of our reasoning as life-process,
forever on the way, on the go. This is to anticipate, however.
125 These are some of the typical questions hurled at relativism in Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, eds.,
Rationality and Relativism, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986. Rom Harré and Michael Krausz, Varieties
of Relativism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, also takes relativism as an assertive view.
126 Isn‘t this an insight of relativism? The saying appears in Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. Lucien
Price, Boston: David Goding, 1954, p. 14. As master mathematical logician, Whitehead must be aware of
contradiction in his saying. Is his saying the whole truth? What if his saying is only a half truth? Either Yes or
No answered to either question would lead him into difficulty. But he did not mean his saying as a definite
thesis. It is this ―not‖ that is relativism.
148 Kuang-ming Wu

relativism as one among usual asserted views.127 Strangely, however, we say relativism is
dead wrong, and yet historically it keeps popping up everywhere in life and in thinking.128
(2) Such an impossibly formidable maze that drives us into a dead-end, and yet refusing
to leave us, signals that relativism is crucial in life and that it is wrong to take relativism as a
noun, a static definitive view on a par with absolutism. Relativism must instead be a
descriptive verb, a challenge to the absolutist approach to life-issues, and being a challenge to
an assertive approach, relativism cannot itself be as set, assertive, definitive, and cut and dried
as absolutism.
Relativism must instead sinuously describe an actual situation, not judge, declare, and
categorically assert a view. As description, relativism realistically testifies, points, and
proposes. Relativism is a verb, being constantly, critically, alert to every issue and every
view, ever sifting, ever searching, forever on the go.
Is this why Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu constantly tell stories of common living, alerting us
to its unsuspected implications, egging us on to reflect on them, yet proposing no definitive
views? Is this how the Taoists came to be accused of committing ―an error of relativistic life-
withdrawal—vague, indecisive, and irresponsible‖? Relativism is a description of a living
process, that is, a story as alive as actuality, unceasingly telling stories of life, one after
another, so that we can live through various views and attitudes to inter-learn one from the
other and inter-cultivate.
Interestingly, ―better‖ and ―best‖ are usually taken as part of mathematically exclusive
ordinals, such that if A is better than B, B cannot be as good as A, and if A is the best,
nothing else can be as good as A. But we can understand parents proudly proclaiming their
children to be ―the best in the world,‖ proud spouses pointing to their beloved as ―the best
dearest in the world,‖ and proud children claiming their mothers as ―the most beautiful in the
world.‖
―The biggest sale of the season got even bigger!‖ says Marshall Fields. How can the
―biggest‖ be ―even bigger,‖ mathematically? But ―bigger‖ emotionally boosts the ―biggest.‖
Are we ―more blessed than billions of others‖ with foods in the refrigerator, safety to worship
our God, some cash reserves in the bank? Yes, but so are other billions who are also blessed
because ―Blessed are you who weep‖ (Jesus). Who is more blessed?
Thus, we can and do often freely use ―better‖ and ―best‖ to describe our happy situation,
as long as we allow others to do likewise, congratulate them, and rejoice with them. In the
human world, ―better‖ and ―best‖ are non-exclusive description of blessedness. Non-exclusion
is the warmth of relativism that goes around in the world among humans.
(3) ―But relativism cannot blindly describe; it must describe what life is and how we must
behave.‖ Yes, it does both. Ruthlessly realistic, relativism points us to life as it is, and to an
appropriate life-posture, ever empathic and critical to things and views. Relativism says that

127 A self-proclaimed relativist Joseph Margolis faces these challenges head-on, rambunctiously stirring up turgid
pages in Pragmatism without Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism (NY: Continuum, 2007),
Truth About Relativism (Blackwell, 1991), etc. We agree that relativism is as alive as he is spirited, and yet
wonder if it is as unapproachably complex as he makes it out to be.
128 No independent comprehensive article, ―Relativism,‖ exists in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Eight Volumes (Macmillan, 1967). Nor is there such article in Philip P. Wiener, ed., Dictionary of
the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, Five Volumes (Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1973). Still,
both sets have a long list of its scattered appearances in their Indexes; there, relativism appears as relation,
situationism, skepticism, subjectivism, and even anarchism. Ubiquitous yet non-existent, relativism remains a
mystery if it is taken as a set asserted view against another set asserted view, absolutism.
 Interculture, Relativism 149

we are and thus are to be ever ―on the way‖ trailing the Tao of Nature ever naturing. No view
is perfect yet none is totally wrong, and every view must be carefully, patiently, gone
through, vigilantly discerned, never pompously pronouncing the final judgment. Relativism is
an apt and a normative posture of life.
(4) ―But views must have goal; relativism cannot go aimless.‖ Yes, but its goal is not set
eternally. Aristotle said that ―happiness‖ is our common goal that differs as all lives differ,
and differs as life grows. My Johnny once excitedly vowed he was to be a garbage collector!
Later, he vowed he was growing up as a milkman! He is now happy violinist, music historian,
and medical technologist. One just changes interest as one grows. Ends are endless (Dewey)
as life. Goals of life go on varying endlessly; so does the goal of relativism not predictable,
not arbitrary.
―But we need a method, not arbitrarily wander around. What is the method of
relativism?‖ Well, relativism‘s method is to carefully discern, going through views from
inside the view, existentially.129 This is the truth in its ―laughing stock claim‖ that ―all views
are equally true; we are all-tolerant.‖ All views are not actually equally valid, but relativist‘s
method of sifting them applies equally to all views, yet its method cannot be canonized
definitively; it has to sinuously follow each specific view that emerges.
Socrates complained that Euthyphro‘s ―definition‖ of piety as ―what all gods love‖ is a
contradiction, ―what all gods love and hate‖ among gods in conflict. Euthyphro could have
responded that, of course, it is so by nature. Socrates‘ complaint holds only if we pursue a
definition of ―love‖ identically universal, which is absurd.
And so the definition could be amended as ―piety is what each god loves,‖ offering to
each god what is due to it and no other. No single ―generic gift‖ pleases everyone; the same
gift can of course be loved by one and rejected by another. Gifting is person-specific and
cannot be uniform or arbitrary. All this is not a ―definition‖ of piety but its description.
(5) Now, here is a bombshell on method, on argument. Relativism does not argue but
simply describes what actually is the case, and description itself thereby argues—as Socrates
did, powerfully, when he described how he came to be indicted as youth-corrupter and
atheist. He described how, on the contrary, he improved their souls (no parent indicts him), as
he followed the Delphic Oracle totally disregarding his own living, and his own life 130—and
his description of this life-behavior demolished the indictment of impiety.131
Kierkegaard and Voltaire, Hugo and Tolstoy, among many others, followed suit and kept
telling stories, and Western thinkers have been doing ―thought experiments,‖ arguing with
―examples‖ and ―counterexamples,‖ and all Chinese thinkers have been ―arguing‖ by
tirelessly telling stories from history, actual or imagined. Story-argument is most powerful
and persuasive because it ruthlessly follows life itself. Someone still demurs, however.
―Facts are not opinions because facts are not values; examples are not points, so
relativism confuses description of facts with logical demonstration.‖ This accusation commit
false dichotomies at the high judgment seat of ―abstract thinking‖ (Marcel). Thinking should
be concrete; far from a contradiction, ―concrete thinking‖ is the way human life goes. Life
forms history, an ongoing ―story argument,‖ to which Chinese thinkers constantly appeal.
Here is an example from ―strictly conscientious‖ analyticity.

129 Cf. Kuang-ming Wu, ―Existential Relativism‖ (Ph.D. thesis, philosophy, Yale University, 1965).
130 The Apology, 20-24, et passim.
131 This is the best of journalism, whose factual description is an argument. Description as argument here parallels
description as prescription in (3) above.
150 Kuang-ming Wu

G. E. Moore‘s ―naturalistic fallacy‖ says that we can still ask, ―Why are they ‗good‘?‖ to
naturalistic properties cited to compose things ―good.‖132 Well, why is it a ―fallacy‖? Don‘t
those factual properties show how they actually compose ―good,‖ and showing so
demonstrates ―good‖ as good? Isn‘t this what Socrates did when he demonstrated—proved
and showed—how unjustifiable the indictment was by simply describing how in fact he came
to be indicted?
―But thinking makes a system. How could storytelling weave a system?‖ Fischer-
Barnicol wants Marcel to pay more attention to ―system‖ that connects ideas. Marcel says he
has been doing so in his dramatic works ―under the heading of ‗yes-but‘,‖ and this is being
systematic without the ―intellectual imperialism‖ of having a system.133 Marcel has been
telling stories and acting them out in ―dramas.‖ So did Sartre, whose ―systematic‖ work of
―phenomenological ontology‖ is packed with stories after stories of the intertwining of ―being
and nothingness.‖
Such phenomenological description argues systematically. Marcel confesses, ―I . . .
stimulate theologians or . . . offer them food for thought (, not) to think as a theologian
myself‖134; he claims he does not do theology, but lets others do it. His systematic thinking
has induced theological thinking, for his story-style delivery of thinking is thinking, and
dramatic storytelling is itself a systematic argument. In short, relativism describes, describing
demonstrates, that is, argues in systematizing things.
(6) Now, in thus describing how relativism describes to demonstrate, haven‘t we
described storytelling that describes? Isn‘t storytelling as sinuously alive as relativism, as
alert, empathetic, and judicious to life, in a word as realistic and formative, as relativism?
Doesn‘t relativism point to the story-way of story-formation, first appearing in an oral
tradition, then coming to be written down, and then revised, rewritten, as history goes?
Isn‘t history itself such a relativism-growth of storytelling? Isn‘t this the way we all walk,
live, move, and have our be-ing to create life? To be is to create, live, and have our be-ing
that is storytelling—in relativism-way that is the Tao of life. ―The Tao is walked and it is
formed,‖ Chuang Tzu said (2/33). Likewise, our life is lived, reflected on, and it is formed.135
(7) Now, the ―self-defeating‖ feature of relativism so much exploited and ridiculed by
opponents of relativism takes on a strangely new significance. Whitehead said,136

The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground
of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it
again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

He may not have realized that this airplane of thinking can take off and fly on, because
our thinking ―defeats itself,‖ as it were, in what he calls ―inconsistency‖ right after this

132 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, 1903. Cf. P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (1954), Harmondsworth Middlesex,
England: Penguin Books, 1963, p. 323, index on ―Moore, G. E.‖
133 Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, La Salle, IL: Open Court,
1984, pp. 421-455.
134 Ibid., p. 455.
135 This way of putting things—relativism, storytelling, history—goes a long way to simplifying Marcel‘s involved
explanation of being systematic—to think in a connected fashion—against ―having‖ a system, in response to
Fischer-Barnicol‘s emphasis on ―system.‖ Marcel‘s insistence on life-dramatic ―yes-but‖ to avoid intellectual
imperialism of labeling a system as ―mine‖ is relativism at its best (ibid., p. 455).
136 Alfred N. Whitehead, Process and Reality: Corrected Edition, NY: The Free Press, 1978, p. 5. See my
reflection on it in On Metaphoring, op. cit., p. 254.
 Interculture, Relativism 151

quotation. Wittgenstein celebrates it as he concludes the Tractatus with oracular pungency,

saying,137

6.54: My sentences are illuminating in the following way: to understand me you must
recognize my sentences—once you have climbed out through them, on them, over them—as
senseless. (You must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after you have climbed up on it.)
You must climb out through my sentences; then you will see the world correctly.

Philosophical thinking is ―senseless‖; we ―climb up on the ladder‖ of thinking only to

―throw it away.‖ We must first climb ―out through‖ his sentences to ―see the world correctly.‖
Still, Wittgenstein wrote all this down, and we understand it, before we can climb out
through it. We still have to live with all this senselessness. We must first climb up on the
ladder before we kick it. Climbing up on the ladder follows its rungs, its rule; likewise,
kicking it also follows some rules to avoid getting hurt. In the end, aren‘t ladder-kicking rules
a part of ladder-climbing rules, as Max Black insists138?
This self-defeating activity is elucidated by his another saying, ―Don‘t worry about what
you have already written. Just keep on beginning to think afresh as if nothing at all had
happened yet.‖139 So the ladder is our past thought that is no longer sensible now. Our
thinking is a relentless process from past to present. Relativism forever begins at the
beginning, learning from the past and then beginning afresh on one‘s own. Learning is an
imitation that kicks the original; imitation is no mechanical copying.140
Here, neat packaging is out of question. One must pick as many big or small insights as
one can, insights relevant or even significantly irrelevant. This messy advance results in the
scattered nature of seminal revolutionary writing. Thus the dotted feature141 of the journal-
making of Pascal, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Buber, and Paul Weiss,142 among many
others in the history of thinking, is so significant.143
―Are these thinkers ‗relativists‘?‖ Well, all thinkers are alive to the extent that they are
―relativistic.‖ This is less to say that all thinkers are relativists than that they are true thinkers
so long as they sensitively heed the warning of relativism and follow its ruthless life-

137 Wittgenstein‟s Tractatus, translated by Daniel Kolak, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company,
1998, p. 49. I quoted from this most recent translation I know of. An earliest translation I know of is C. K.
Ogden‘s (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd,
1922) that has a slightly different rendering.
138 Significantly, Max Black (―Is the ‗Tractatus‘ self-defeating?‖ in A Companion to Witgenstein‟s “Tractatus,”
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1964, pp. 378-386) rehearses our process of understanding mathematical
―infinity, ∞‖ and metaphysical concepts by extending ordinary notions, to defend Wittgenstein against the
criticism that Wittgenstein falls into total senselessness. Kicking is extending of the ―circle.‖
139 Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-1916, eds., G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe,
Oxford, 1961, p. 30 (6), quoted by Black in A Companion, op. cit., p. 2.
140 For Aristotle (Poetics, 48b4-14), learning occurs via pleasant imitation, but he never took it as exact copying.
Cf. my ―Learning as a Master from a Master: ‗Chuang Tzu‘ in University General Education,‖ Journal of
Humanities East/West, December 1998, (Vol. 18). See my On Metaphoring, op. cit., pp. 615-640
141 On ―dotted pragmatics‖ see my On Metaphoring, ibid., pp. 387-395. Our book-essay here follows this route.
142 Cf. Paul Weiss, Philosophy in Process (11 volumes), Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1955-
1989. Thinkers in the West are cited because all Chinese thinkers are journalistic.
143 This is why these writers are hard to summarize and their systematic ―progress‖ hard to chart. This
phenomenon is typified by Lao Tzu and a bewilderingly superb book on healing based on Lao Tzu, Greg
Johanson and Ron Kurtz, Grace Unfolding: Psychotherapy in the Spirit of the Tao-te Ching, NY: Bell Tower,
1991.
152 Kuang-ming Wu

following. They should never yield to the temptation to universalize/generalize too quickly to
seal themselves off in a glorious consistency of a system, as relativism warns them.
Here familiarity blunts no fascination any more than beloved folksongs do. The pleasure
of writing and reading intimate journals that continue to make impacts on one‘s life-quest.
Journal bits are subtly connected as musical composition in life whose leitmotifs
spontaneously reappear with rhyming modulations. The whole show is impressively free,
forceful, original, and organic, to illuminate life-perplexities; it is a ladder to climb up on, to
kick, i.e., evoke our own elaboration of those life-perplexities jotted down, if not to resolve
them. History is our communal journals of life.
History-ladder is thus to be climbed to kick away, only to come back for us to climb
again and kick again. Chuang Tzu kept insisting that the past is useless because it is irrelevant
to the present; to try to follow the past is to follow footprints, not the moving shoes, to revere
the scum of old, not its life, to push a boat on land, not a cart.144 And then, all Chuang Tzu‘s
insistence on the uselessness of the past itself turned into the past for us to kick away.
History does not repeat itself; it rhymes.145 Our kicking is the way toward re-freshening
our present. The present lies in this kicking; thought experiment keeps going and we will later
throw away most of it. Nietzsche told us to kill God; our true God is in fact the God we have
killed, willingly or no. For Kierkegaard, our true teacher is the dead one; we add, she is the
teacher of the past who passes on in the hand of our present.
This is the only way our life advances; this is the modus operandi of relativism, a
dynamic attitude imploding/exploding forward, dynamite that pulverizes the surrounding as it
presses ahead, building senseless ladders to explode them, and those pieces are bits of
dynamite themselves to continue exploding. No wonder innovative writings are never a
system, such as Socrates‘ early dialogues, Pascal‘s Pensées, Buber‘s I and Thou, Marcel‘s
circular concentric mode of exposition, and the list goes on.
They all share the protesting forwarding spirit of relativism. These writings are bits
imploding each into the other to explode forward all over, being systematic, but without
system. In fact, any living ―system‖ (as Kant‘s, Heidegger‘s, Tillich‘s) is a concatenation of
insights, grown-together.146
Wittgenstein‘s aphoristic bits match Lao Tzu‘s, less linear continual expositions than
evocative invitations to explode to co-exploration. The Tao Te Ching builds its own ladders
and does its own kicking; it is an excellent exercise in significant futility. Both Lao Tzu and
Wittgenstein self-destroy. ―Why bother to build a ladder and kick it?‖ This exercise gives life.
This self-inconsistency makes Tao Te Ching and Tractatus forever alive, forever fresh
and controversial, demanding to be re-interpreted by every new generation.147 The story of
relativism tells us all its serpentine way life as lived. Relativism is the way history tells our
story to shape us. We must live and live well to understand relativism, and relativism must be
studied to live life well in the ―logic of history‖—story argument—that is our life.

144 Arthur Waley has conveniently collected these stories (Chuang Tzu 13/68-74, 14/35, 74-78, etc.) in Three Ways
of Thought in Ancient China (1939), CA: Stanford University Press, 1982, pp. 14-19.
145 The saying is quoted in Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003, p. 2, to justify its ―Flashback‖ to Allen W.
Dulles‘ report on the occupation of Germany.
146 Even Aristotle is a member of this dynamic group. See my comments on him in Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 372, 494.
The present volume aspires to grow, concresced, likewise.
147 Due to religion‘s inherent contradictions, usually called ―paradoxes,‖ all religious scriptures such as the Bible
demand continual reinterpretation and retranslation.
 Interculture, Relativism 153

In relativism, our story and our history cease to be irrational and our life ceases to be
choked to death by logic, a definitive straightjacket. No wonder, relativism spreads all over to
silently support philosophizing and philosophical writings—as it is attacked as a distinct,
definitive topic in encyclopedias, in dictionaries.
Relativism inevitably leads us to culture, the deposit of the history of a community, and
further on to inter-involvement of cultures to spread as dynamic circles. Nothing is more
important than to go concretely here to demonstrate this point. We thus tell a story of a case,
writing China in English. We have been in this volume doing so unawares. Now it is time to
really gaze at it, to realize the importance of open-ended inter-involvement of cultures. It is
our life-task that makes our true life possible.

CHINA WRITTEN IN ENGLISH—THREEFOLD IMPACT TOWARD

INTERCULTURE
Three points must be made here, one, what thinking is; two, how both China and the
West fail to realize it; three, what twofold task ahead we have. All such consideration leads us
to writing China in English as the first step toward thinking world-interculture way.
One: Thinking is ―how to think what.‖ Saying so says about what thinking is, which is
how we think. Thus in thinking, method is content, critical Kant penetrating ontological Plato,
the flow-chart draw-er gazing at the stars, to go to Mars. Plato without Kant is blind, and Kant
without Plato is empty, ―Kant today‖ would say. To hear all this is enabled by me, a Chinese
thinker learning from Plato and Kant in the West.
Two: This ―mixed-up‖ Chinese, me, realize. The method-content unity is displayed in
China for millennia, not in the West, yet China does not know it. The West intimates all this,
and does not know it, either. The West instinctively (unawares) sits on an analytical hilltop,
148
looking far to the land of method-in-content, not knowing what the land is. Its ignorance
149
parallels how no one knows what the self is, until tiny Peter leads the way, saying, ―I have
three names, Dad, me, myself, and I. Bye!‖ and goes out to play—in that Land, leaving us the
job of scouting the Land.
Three: Our task is to elucidate the land of the method-content unity, in two ways. First,
we must explore what the thinking-mode ―China‖ has, its how in its what, its what in its how,
as concrete-thinking, body-thinking, story-thinking, etc., although China has never been
aware of all this. China just keeps thinking, not thinking about its thinking-mode. China is a
Peter so young so all of a piece.
And then, we must direct our exploration, enabled by the West‘s logical sensitivity, to
world ―interculture,‖ beginning at dialoguing with another Western thinking-mode that is

148 The West looking far to the land not reached is indicated by its four sensitive thinkers, Buber‘s I-Thou and
learning from China, Whitehead‘s ―The precision is a fake,‖ Wittgenstein‘s climbing his proposition-ladder
and kicking it, and Derrida deconstructing logocentrism. None has reached a final satisfaction of reaching their
intuited faraway land. Derrida needs no citation. Wittgenstein‘s climbing-kicking, accused of ―mysticism,‖
concludes his Tractatus (1922) in §6.54 and §7. Whitehead‘s quip concludes his final published essay,
―Immortality,‖ in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1951. On Buber, see
his I and Thou (1958) and ―The Teaching of the Tao‖ and ―China and Us‖ in his Pointing the Way (1957).
149 Psychology in the West has retreated from studying the psyche long time ago. China has no ―psychology‖ as an
―-ology,‖ an objective study.
154 Kuang-ming Wu

clear-distinct, lucid-analytical, and thus tends to miss the forest for the trees. ―Writing China
in English‖ is one concrete step toward such China-West interculture, toward world
interculture, as Peter constantly addresses me his Dad.
So, Western analytical sensitivity looks at China in wonder and disbelief at its apt
subtlety of life-presentation. Meanwhile, China‘s life-sensitivity gazes at Western clarity in
wonder, admiring how careful it proceeds in life. Finally, both wonders would gather to inter-
150
learn and inter-enrich. Here is no comparison of details in one Western frame. Here is
instead frame-comparing in how China sees the West Western way, and how the West sees
China Chinese way, comparing the two ways. Now, do we have a grand story of interculture-
thinking? Let us be concrete.
151
Here are two concrete intertwined questions. What would happen when Chinese
culture is considered and communicated in English? How significant is the story of China
written and thought about in English? This is not just English translation of Chinese stories,
but English translation of the entire Chinese culture, English understanding and rendering of
Chinese way of thinking and living. This phenomenon is becoming quite common in the
world today, and we must consider its intercultural impact.
Thus we will consider Chinese culture considered and communicated in English, or
152
simply ―China written in English.‖ We give our conclusion first: China is written in
153
English to interculture. We write about China in English, not in Chinese, to reveal and
154
shape both China as concrete/allusive and the West as clear/analytical. It is ―argued‖ here
that we write about China in English (A) to self-shape, (B) other-share, and (C) inter-shape to
interculture. (D) Such threefold impact cures cultural conflicts to make for world concord.

A. Writing to Self-Shape

To write is to write down, to de-scribe to objectify. Writing (i) externalizes oneself to (ii)
bounce the theme against oneself, and (iii) project—throw-out beyond—such internal

150 Here are two sad examples, quite erudite: Lee H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and
Conceptions of Courage, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990, and John B. Henderson,
Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis, Princeton University
Press, 1991.
151 Jörn Rüsen in ―How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches to a Culture of Recognition by History in the
21st Century‖ (Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, June 2004, pp. 59-74) says that history is a narrative that
forms cultural identity. Agreed, history is an identity-narrative, to which we gave a rationale. Then he said
such narrative [1] ossifies as a, b, c, and [2] proposes a‘, b‘, c‘ to fix/develop into [3] a ―universal history‖ of
―(the unity of) humankind.‖ Three comments are here. Point [1] is a common sense writ-shaped; who does not
know that history can coagulate into ethnocentric pride? On point [2], we can go on endlessly to cite d, e, f,
etc., and propose d‘, e‘, f‘, etc. to fix them. Point [3] shows the Western mind; its ―universal history‖ will
jostle for supremacy with Chinese one, Japanese one, African one, etc., and ethnocentric conflicts reappear on
a meta-level ―universal history.‖ We take off in a new threefold direction. One, we show how writing in China
can avoid ossification Socrates worried about and continually shapes cultural identity. Two, we positively
describe the modus vivendi of concrete interculturalism, ―China written in English.‖ Three, we propose not a
―universal history‖ but cultural inter-learning, inter-shaping, and inter-enriching, i.e., ―world interculturalism.‖
152 I discarded ―sinography‖ because of its technical ring, quite un-Chinese and even un-English.
153 Merriam-Webster‟s Collegiate Dictionary, 1993, 2008, p. 651, has ―interculture,‖ one word. To my knowledge,
no other dictionary (not even Oxford English Dictionary) has it.
154 ―Argue‖ is put in quotation marks, for Chinese writers seldom argue deductively; this book-essay must ―argue‖
in ways palatable to both Chinese and Western readers. We here performatively ―argue‖ for inter-humanity.
 Interculture, Relativism 155

bouncing onto paper beyond/before oneself. Writing is then a going-beyond tripled, going
155
beyond itself to self-externalize to self-communicate.
Writing thus saves us from self-dissipation in the fluid here now, by representing us,
distancing us to confront us, for us to re-experience ourselves to understand—stand under—
ourselves to undergo ourselves, and realize ourselves anew. Such reenacted realization—
showing/revealing to ourselves to real-ize ourselves—of our situation is essentially a Socratic
self-reflection to shape us human. Plato de-scribed Socrates to shape him as one who urged us
156
to self-reflect to self-shape. Writing shows the writer, thereby reveals to shape the writer as
human. Let us see how.
―What do I do to own myself?‖ To write down this question answers it; my writing it
down, while no one cares, no publisher approaches, is my magnificent self-owning on which I
live. If to be self-conscious is to be uneasily beside myself, then to be (conscious of)
homecoming to myself is to self-forget to heal self-consciousness, to be comfortably myself.
Writing is one such self-homecoming, as I forget myself when I write.
To write is to self-forget to come home to myself. Writing on my situation (a) accepts
myself to (b) unwind my jittery self. Thus writing shapes me into myself natural, unawares.
Psychologists urge us to keep a daily journal to self-heal, to heal even the psychologist
herself. Freud wrote much in his neurotic days. He wrote not despite depression but because
of it to shape himself out of it. ―Why/how does writing unwind, shape, and heal the writer?‖
Writing is thinking; it is oneself seeing the self-shaping-the-self, a Socratic self-reflection
to self-shape157 to self-create. George Herbert Palmer wrote that158
expression and thought are integrally bound together. We do not first possess completed
thoughts and then express them. The very formation of the outward product extends, sharpens,
enriches the mind which produces, so that he who gives forth little, after a time is likely
enough to discover that he has little to give forth.

Expressing and showing thought in writing reveals its thought as it shapes it, to think
further. Moreover, writing shapes the integrity of be-ing oneself in society, in a language that
is ―the shrine of a people‘s soul,‖159 to create and reveal personal identity in society.160

155 Ssu-ma Ch‘ien 司馬遷 dramatically performed this self-real-ization as he devoted himself to writing/chiseling
forth the monumental Records of History 史記, which solidly immortalized him throughout Chinese history!
156 Similarly, ―singing‖ (or chanting-wailing) heals. Singing and climbing the Mount of Olive (Matthew
26:30=Mark 14:26), singing at Taoist friend‘s death (Chuang Tzu 6/62-88), and singing at Chuang Tzu‘s
wife‘s death (18/15-19), are confessions, far from casual. All confession, singing, chanting, and writing
express and describe oneself (in spontaneous self-reflection) to heal and shape the self.
157 Socrates in Theaetetus (206d) and Phaedrus (26a-b) says so. 高行健 connects writing not unreasonably to self-
sex, masturbation, in 沒有主義, 臺北聯經出版事業公司, 2001, p. 29. Does this connection explain Socrates
enjoying homosexuality? It is curious, however, why Socrates prefers oral conversation to conversation on
paper, writing. Plato via Socrates told of a dialogue between god Theuth and an Egyptian king. Theuth offered
his invention of the letters, praising them as the medicine of memory and wisdom. The king said that,
neglecting our remembrance, the letters only aid recollecting knowledge we already have, and deceive us
transmitted into believing that we have knowledge we lack. The letters say not a word, cannot reply, decide
whom to transmit, or defend themselves (Phaedrus, 274-275). In short, writing does not respond. I don‘t see
why not. Writing shapes ideas, even creates them as they appear on paper. Written message is conveyed as
Plato‘s does to quietly provoke responses and reinterpretations, to transform the written words. Staying as they
are, they thus ―change‖ in meaning; they ―respond.‖ Plato wrote the anti-writing sentiment to provoke
responses.
158 George Herbert Palmer, ‖Self-Cultivation in English,‖ in On Writing Well: Selected Readings from Two
Centuries, ed. William D. Templeman, NY: Odyssey Press, 1965, p. 3.
159 Edwin W. Smith, The Shrine of a People‟s Soul, London, 1929.
156 Kuang-ming Wu

Writing shapes me into myself independent of loss, use, worth, fame, effect, and
whatever is other than myself. Such writing that reveals my personal integrity is my absolute
sine qua non and ultimate right to be a person, to be alive as myself. Expressing myself in
writing, talking, nodding to myself in my words on paper—seemingly de trop, they all vitally
create myself to self-comfort. I am self-sufficed, self-pleased, for good over ill.
This is not selfishness as the dictator‘s ―I am the state!‖ that depends on his people‘s
compliance to fulfill. In contrast, a Polish writer‘s assertion, ―I am Poland,‖ quietly says that
he just rejoices in the pride of his culture where he roams unencumbered. His declaration is
also mine. Showing reveals to shape; I am deep in my culture as I write in its language.
Writing reveals to me that I am myself, independent, alone and self-full in a little corner of
my culture, away from limelight and pressure.161 I am alone myself and social when I write.
In my writing I rejoice in such pride of being myself, social, and socially unbound, free
of selfishness that has to look askance up to others. The Pulitzer Prize-winner Eudora Welty,
after her 90 odd years of writing, was described as follows.162

Welty never married, and lived almost her entire life in the family home in Jackson. She
wrote and rewrote . . . What others called a sheltered life she called crucial to her art.
―Southerners tend to live in one place where they can see whole lives unfold around them. It
gives them a natural sense of the narrative, of the dramatic content of life, a form for the story
comes readily to hand.‖ Only in solitude, away from social clangs, can I observe deep and
wide about life in all its details without distraction, without distortion.

As I write alone, I show to myself, ―not go outdoors, know (all) under heaven,‖ as Lao
Tzu wrote.163 Writing shows me off to the world to satisfy me, possess me, and empower me,
smiling to replenish me. If someone is interested in reading it, even after my death, I would
have lived in my happy self-expression beyond my life and death. Writing is my mirror to
know myself, to let my invisible me appear. I go outside to become my other, my lone writing
164
is inherently social. ―Why do I write?‖ I ask me, and answer, ―I do, for I want to be me.‖
I just want to write, as I just want to be me, as a kid just wants to dig a hole. I am my-
writing as the kid is his-digging. I live on writing-all-this-down to birth me before me as the
kid digs to birth himself. Not digging, he turns grouchy, ―Nothing to do!‖ i.e., he cannot give
birth to himself. A motherly instinct in me urges me to write, as the kid urges himself to dig.
Excitingly, I see me ―born‖ before me in writing, my ―digging,‖ for writing digs me out,
rounds me up, to make me whole.
Writing puts me at ease, rids me of futility; I feel no vanity of possible fame or futility of
being rejected by the public or publisher. Confucius said (1/1), ―People ignoring-me and not

160 Section B considers this theme.

161 All this I irreverently rifled from 高行健‘s rambling volume, 沒有主義, 台北聯經, 2001. The ―Polish writer‖
mentioned here appears in p. 10 as ―波蘭流亡作家康布羅維奇.‖ I arbitrarily arranged what I rummaged and
added some of my own for my pleasure, though a bit redundantly because I was pleased, self-disappearing in
the joy shared.
162 This is quoted from Newsweek, August 6, 2001, p. 60, soon after she died happily ever after. See also The
Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Orlando: Harcourt, 1994.
163 ―不出戶, 知天下,‖ Tao Te Ching, ch. 47. All English translations are mine unless otherwise noted. I tried for
more fidelity than felicity to bring out the vigorous parsimony of the original Chinese so poetic.
164 Why can I not ask why I want to be me? To ask so I must pretend to be other than me, and painful psychosis of
being beside myself erupts; my pain stops me from asking why I want to be me.
 Interculture, Relativism 157

irritated, isn‘t it so princely of a person?‖ Writing pushes me ahead frivolously writing on. I
165
am a Sisyphus nonchalantly rolling my own rock my pen to keep me fit, renewing myself.
166
God ―is the poet of the world,‖ for God shapes as poets do to enable poets to do as
God the Poet of all poets does—to write Nature. I do not create out of nothing, so I am no
Christian God, but I am what I am as god, for writing creates me beyond what I am. In
167
writing, I am what I will be. On wings of writing as Thoreau168 I soar beyond ―I‖ as my
169 170
―God beyond God.‖ Desiring living words, Socrates desists writings that ossify, yet
word-ossification decisively shapes; I keep writing to keep decisively shaping me, as Plato‘s
writing keeps spreading Socrates‘ anti-writing.

B. Writing to Other-Share
171
My writing objectifies me, shapes me into another ; writing pushes me out as my other,
to self-shape to other-share. I become social as I write alone. How do I do so? ―Writing‖ is in
a language I learn, and language and learning are both social and cultural. My writing creates
an I-other mutuality, as writing in self-self mutuality, a primal sociality, spreads to others in
printed sociality for others to read.
We who can see and hear, now understand how, through writing, a blind Homer and a
deaf Beethoven created their own sights and sounds, their glorious worlds more enchanting
beyond our ordinary world beyond their entering. To write is to creatively share our various
worlds. Eight points below explicate this important truth.
One, generations of readers and audience vouch that Homer and Beethoven‘s worlds are
more enchanting than our common world. Experiencing their excellence through written
history, we came to know their names, ―Homer,‖ ―Beethoven.‖ It all began at their writing
down. Next, someone says, ―You and I with perfect vision see an identical scene, and you can
be moved while I am not. So, beauty lies not in senses but in sensitivity, worthy of being
written out,‖ for writing shapes the impact that blindness or deafness may have enhanced,
irrelevant to an external stimuli.
Three, self-pride in writing is not self-glorying. Kant may have simply wanted to share
what he had found. Writing shows my simple joy of sharing, ―Hey, look what I‘ve found!‖
Four, in writing, sharing the joy of truth-discovery spontaneously appears, not out of self-
enhancement. The writer naturally merges in joy-sharing, vanishes in writing to share

165 In China, brushes are heavier than hoes that cultivate the land, for obviously the brushes cultivate writers who
are more strenuous to shape and nourish than land.
166 Alfred North Whitehead said, God ―is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of
truth, beauty, and goodness.‖ (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, NY: Free Press, 1978, p. 346)
167 This is a shotgun marriage of two readings of God‘s name in Exodus 3:14, ―I-am-what-I-am‖ and ―I-will-be-
what-I-will-be,‖ to enable Paul to say, ―By God‘s grace I am what I am,‖ which means three things. [a] It is
the Other Beyond, God, who enabled Paul to be ―I am what I am.‖ [b] Paul said so in I Corinthians 15:10 on
the ―resurrection‖ of the past, the status quo, beyond itself. [c] Paul wrote it down as the Exodus-writer(s) did.
168
Poet Robert Bly sees in Thoreau The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau, San Francisco:
Sierra Club Books, 1986.
169 ―God beyond God‖ is Paul Tillich‘s provocative phrase concluding Courage to Be (1951), with no explanation.
170 Phaedrus 274-275.
171 This way of taking ―writing‖ turns Paul Ricoeur‘s scholastic Oneself as Another (The University of Chicago
Press, 1992) into a social dynamic.
158 Kuang-ming Wu

enjoyment together; ―O, for the word-forgotten one to word with!‖ wrote Chuang Tzu the
self-forgotten one.172 Word-forgetting forgets oneself to word authentically, to authenticate
both selves inter-wording.
Five, in my meditation spreading, I vanish in my written ideas to roam beyond to reach
others, often beyond my death. Ideas enter me to expand through me, and I am nowhere, self-
fulfilled beyond me. This sharing-without-―me‖ who share happened in Kao Hsing-chien‘s
高行健 solitary nonchalance in an obscure corner of his society, delightfully echoing Chuang
Tzu‘s and mine. We three would look at one another, find nothing to oppose the heart of our
173
minds, and part our ways. We are with one another without being with one another.
Friendship flows with insipid water.
Six, oddly, Kao‘s obscure corner in Paris is now a storm center; he is the first writer in
China to win the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. Being oneself as Chinese, merges in sharing
174
oneself with non-Chinese cultures. Seven, Jesus the Son of God says, ―Ye are gods‖ to
those to whom God‘s words come to become gods, and God‘s words are words from beyond
within me that enter me. As I meditate on them and write them out, I rank as a god in
literature where I disappear; I am what I am to be beyond me, disappeared as a god beyond
175
god. Emerson writes,

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature
this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher world. St.
Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its
circumference nowhere. . . . Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle
another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is
always another dawn risen in mid-noon . . .

―Without end‖ ciphers the beyond as ―every end a beginning‖ does me writing. The
circle‘s center everywhere is ―I,‖ as its circumference nowhere is I beyond me. I am the
Beyond in me; I am beyond me with others, in writing. No wonder I am happy with flying
birds above that hoard nothing, in songs of inter-thriving life that pulses this world. ―Those
who hear not the music think the dancer mad‖; I am madly writing/dancing my own music to
vanish into a community beyond me. I am happy beyond joy and sorrow! ―Ultimate joy, no
joy,‖ chimes Chuang Tzu in (18/11).
I am glad I have just found someone who found ―religion‖ alive beyond ossified belief.176
―Beyond‖ is a radical verb, going beyond even itself. The river of vitality carves its own
course, to become this river and no other, only to break out of its own banks. Every day is
ever a baby growing beyond itself, beyond its expression beyond words, always new, always
unpredictable. The kingdom of God belongs to babies of all ages, at every moment. Every day
is exploding with new ideas. In the beginning is Word beyond words, God beyond gods. Such
commonplace! And such Beyond-common so awesome!

172 This sigh concludes his Chapter Twenty-Six significantly titled ―Outside Things 外物,‖ where ―outside‖ may
be a verb, to go outside, things going outside us, etc.
173 Chuang Tzu 6/45-47, 61.
174 John 10:34-35.
175 The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, NY: Modern Library, 2000, p. 252.
176
James P. Carse, The Religious Case Against Belief, NY: Penguin, 2008.
 Interculture, Relativism 159

Let us put it the other way around. Jesus for other people does ―bad things‖ as pointed out
and accused by the scholarly Scribes and holy Pharisees. It is thus that Jesus went down to
hell for bad people, and for people in pain. Jesus is our Robin Hood rifling the trunks of
social decency. He suffers with us every day. The Beyond is every day, day to day new, day
to day is such a good day. Every day is such a healing beyond what it is!
Eight, the ―beyond me‖ here ciphers interculture. Writing China in English reveals such
peculiarities of China as story-thinking and the Yin-Yang of negating affirmations that the
section below considers. These features would not have been noticed, and China would have
kept writing routinely, were it not for ―English writing on China spontaneous writing.‖
Meanwhile, the English thinking is thus revealed, affirmed, and shaped as how analytically
lucid it is in its very revealing of the Chinese world.177 The twofold interculture is achieved in
China written in English.

C. Writing China in English—to Inter-Shape

We now concretely execute how the West reveals/shapes China to reveal/shape the West,
as follows. Writing shows a language that shows a culture. The English language with its
specified parts of speech clarifies to objectify, analyze, and survey. The Chinese language
178 179
lacks marked parts of speech to ―indirect‖ to implicate, intimate, and wink.
The West analytically notes that Chinese writing objectifies to indirect, and such noting
180
redounds to revealing the West‘s analytical sensitivity. Plato/Aristotle proposed a logical
181
pair, collection (sunagoge) and division (diairesis), to join into an assertion. Chinese
collection in storytelling does well to join Western division in analysis to complete humanity.
As a result, the West writes a common theme in sentiment distinct from Chinese writing
on that theme, e.g., romantic love. In 1916, six girls of rural Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania,
placed their letter, signed with six names and addresses, in a bottle in the Susquehanna River,
saying,

We are all good looking and industrious young women, but the boys of our town are too
slow. We want husbands. They must be good to look at and strictly temperate and above all
they must not be slow. . . . Now if you mean business please write, finder of this bottle, and
we will be glad to tell of our abilities and exchange photographs.

177 My On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Brill, 1997, executed this China-West mutuality of
inter-explication, in dialogue with Merleau-Ponty on body-thinking.
178 It is not that no Western writer used indirection but that that writer would be atypical in the West. Kierkegaard
touted and practiced indirection and was taken an ―odd ball‖ in the West, while Chinese writers simply
spontaneously do so. See my On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001, p. 666 (Index on
―indirection‖). My Nonsense: Cultural Meditations on the Beyond (forthcoming) explicates and executes
indirection, only via which can the Beyond be intimated.
179 Complete clinical nakedness is a bore, while fascinating nudity is revealed through clothes-covering, indirectly.
180 The whole essay‘s ―argument‖ gives a ―framing‖ to this ―section on Chinese anecdotes‖; see Section D.
181 On ―sunagoge‖ see Plato‘s Theaetetus, 150a2; Phaedrus 266b4 (opposed to ―diairesis‖); Republic 526d3,
Aristotle‘s Physics 217b 15; Nicomachean Ethics 181b 7; Politics 1316b 40. On ―sunthesis,‖ see Plato‘s
Phaedo 96a, Republic 611b, Aristotle‘s Nicomachean Ethics 1174a 23. On ―diairesis,‖ see Plato‘s Laws
768c8, Protagorus 358a6, Republic 534a6, Aristotle‘s Metaphysics 1016b4, Politics 1294a34.
160 Kuang-ming Wu

182
Happy conjugal endings ensued.
In ancient China, the following ―animated pastiche of a lovely rustic seducement‖ was
183
recorded in the timeless Classic of Poetry, 詩 經.

In the wilds, a dead doe./ White reeds to wrap it./ A girl, spring-touched:/ A fine man to
solicit her./ In the woods, bushes./ In the wilds, a dead deer./ White reeds in bundles./ A girl
like jade./ Slowly. Take it easy./ Don‘t feel my sash!/ Don‘t make the dog bark!

So the ―eternal battles of the sexes‖ are fought stealthily in China and assertively in
America even in the Victorian 1910s, though both slyly and delightfully, as different
languages wonderfully cut these different styles of different cultures.
Now, let us generalize. Going through translation into English of the Chinese originals
reveals as it shapes the cultural differences of two language-worlds. Rendering Chinese
sentences into English refreshingly defines (this is good) and unexpectedly delimits (this is
bad) Chinese sensibility. Comparing Chinese originals with their English translations edifies
both Chinese and English readers. ―How?‖
Tilted toward Chinese language-freedom, unwittingly benefiting from ―restrictive‖
184
―tyrannical framing‖ of English language, the bicultural poet Wai-lim Yip sighed,

I must consider myself fortunate to live (in) a time when both poets and philosophers in
the West have already begun to question the framing of language, echoing . . . the ancient
Taoist critique of the restrictive and distorting reconsiderations of language and power, both
aesthetically and politically. When Heidegger warns us that any dialogue using Indo-European
languages to discuss the spirit of East-Asian poetry will risk destroying the possibility of
accurately saying what the dialogue is about, he is sensing the danger of language as . . .
185
trapping experience within a privileged subjectivity. When William Carlos Williams writes
―unless there is / a new mind there cannot be a new / line,‖ he also means ―unless there is / a
new line there cannot be a new / mind.‖

Here in a single involved breath, Yip unwittingly confessed to having recognized in

Chinese spontaneity a free breathing room for expressivity, revealed by the liberating inter-
influences of two languages and modes of thinking.
Yip may not have realized that Western clarity pinches Chinese sensibility to reveal the
peculiar trends both of the West and of China, and that the uncomfortable ―distortion‖
redounds to enriching both the West and China beyond their original physiognomies. This is
how the meeting of cultures shows and shapes one another. Does this mutuality of inter-

182 Letters to the Editor: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an American Town, edited by Gerard Stropnicky, Tom
Byrn, James Goode, and Jerry Matheny, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1998, p. 181.
183 Both the description and the translation are Wai-lim Yip‘s (葉威廉) in Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major
Modes and Genres, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 36-37. The poem is titled ―野有死鹿
[actually 鹿 with 囷 under it].‖ I changed his ―seduce‖ to ―solicit‖ (誘). Sadly, Bernhard Karlgren‘s obsession
on textual critical matters (Glosses on the Book of Odes, Stockholm, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities,
1942-1964) bypasses what the Book of Odes chants means, even though he translated it (The Book of Odes,
1950). We must begin there, not stop there. Cf. Arthur Waley‘s The Book of Songs, NY: Grove Press, 1996,
that often departs from Karlgren considerably.
184 Ibid., p. xiv.
185 Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, tr. Peter D. Hertz, NY: Harper and Row, 1971, pp. 4-5.
 Interculture, Relativism 161

revealing and inter-creation of both cultures remind us of Yin-Yang gender mutuality,

intimated in the above ―battles of the sexes‖?
With this new sensitivity inter-culturally gained, we notice that, for example, the English
mind hesitates at a simple Chinese phrase ―松風, pine wind.‖ Is it wind blowing through the
pines, pine branches swaying in the wind, pine-scented wind, pines in the wind, wind in the
186
pines, or all of these, or none, or something else?
The Chinese sentiment would respond, ―I didn‘t know all that; but do we have to choose
187
from all these different meanings?‖ This response jolts the West to savor the pre-reflective
pre-expressive ―pine-wind milieu,‖ as China confessed to being jolted to realizing various
connotations in a simple Chinese phrase, freely roaming in and out of fuzzy borders of nouns,
verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
Grammatical ambiguity signals syntactic freedom; almost every Chinese phrase has a
188
poetic overtone, and Chinese poetry is particularly luxuriant. Yip writes,

The words in a Chinese poem . . . have a loose relationship with readers, who remain in a
sort of middle ground between engaging with them ((in) predicative connections (for)
relationships . . . among the words) and disengaging from them (refraining from doing so,
(for) . . . noninterference). Therefore, the asyntactical and paratactical structures in Chinese
poetry promote a . . . prepredicative condition wherein words, like objects (often in a . . .
montage) . . . , are free from predetermined relationships and single meanings . . . to readers in
an open space. Within this space, and with the poet stepping aside, . . . they can move freely
and approach the words from (various) vantage points (for) different perceptions of the same
moment. They have a cinematic visuality . . . at the threshold of many possible meanings.

Being simple tends to be alive, and being alive is usually deep, in varied implications. So
being simple, deep, and alive gather to go together. Never could complexity pull off such a
stunt. Chow and Yu, among many others, amassed many examples to the effect that Chinese
189
grammar-ambiguity enables. We cite just two sorts of quite common Chinese expressions,
story-notions and negating to affirm, which English sensibility reveals.
190
To begin, let us see two common phrasal story-notions. First, Mencius‘ ―pull
seedlings, help growing, 揠 苗 助 長‖ (2A2) distils his exemplum of a simpleton farmer who
lovingly ―pulled seedlings‖ to ―help them grow,‖ to laboriously kill them. This sentiment is
expressible in ―doing too much for its good,‖ ―the futility of over-helping,‖ ―acting contrary
to the times,‖ but none is as concrete, compact, and compelling as that four-character phrase.

186葉威廉著, ―中國古典詩中的傳釋活動,‖ 聯合文學, 民國七十四年六月, pp. 168-181.

187 A Chinese reader of Mencius would also respond with similar disbelief to I. A. Richards‘s ―experiment in
multiple definition‖ in Mencius on the Mind (1932). We will consider him soon and then later in ―§ How to
Read Stories.‖
188 Yip, Chinese Poetry, op. cit.
189 Chow Tse-tsung, ed., Wen-lin: Studies in the Chinese Humanities, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1968; Pauline Yu, et al., eds., Ways with Words: Writing about Reading Texts from Early China, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000. The English essays by mostly English writers are on diverse readings of
identical texts, perhaps unaware that their English lenses on an identical Chinese text reveal their diversity.
These essays innocently help us to see English impacts on Chinese understanding.
190 I chose commonest expressions to show Chinese peculiarities. Sinological exotics are out of place here.
162 Kuang-ming Wu

191
Our second example is also a phrase in constant use, ―push, knock.‖ It describes how
Chia Tao 賈島 on horseback bumped into an illustrious writer Han Yü 韓 愈‘s carriage, while
192
wavering between ―a monk pushes the moon-lit door‖ and ―knocks.‖ Han Yü, impressed,
decided on ―knock.‖ Thus the two-character phrase, ―push, knock,‖ came to remind us of the
story for our casual ―to polish what we say,‖ ―select mot juste,‖ ―fathom meaning.‖
More than life-compelling, stories capture the breeze of life un-trap-able in a conceptual
box. Some exempla are concrete beyond neat conceptual packaging; others are beyond
capsuling even in gnomic phrases. Here are two stories package-able in gnomic phrases but
beyond capturing in a box of logic, ―Uncle Fort lost a horse‖ and ―morning, three, evening,
four.‖
193
First, consider ―Uncle Fort lost a horse 塞 翁 失 馬.‖ An Uncle at the frontier Fort
194
once lost his horse. Condoled, he said, ―How could this not make weal?‖ The horse came
back with a noble steed. Cheered, he said, ―How could this not make woe?‖ Then, his son
rode horseback, fell, and broke his leg. Consoled, he said, ―How could this not make weal?‖
Soon a war broke out; most village boys fought and died. His son, a cripple, was spared
the fight and survived. The story ends here. Is it a happy ending? Do we still hear our Uncle
asking, ―How could this not make . . .?‖? Do we see our dear Uncle Fort firm as the fort, ever
guarding life against outside annoyance, weal or woe? The story has been taken as ―Just you
195
wait‖ pose, ―Woe where weal leans; weal where woe lies‖ prudence, life changes, life
uncertainty, etc. What single concept can capture all such endless variety of sentiments in this
compact story-notion?
196
Our next exemplum is ―morning, three, evening, four 朝 三 暮 四.‖ A Monkey Uncle
offered ―morning, three (nuts), evening, four‖ to monkeys; they were furious. ―Okay, then,
197
morning, four, evening, three,‖ said Uncle, and they were happy. Does this story express
―Penny wise, pound foolish‖? Giving someone a stone for bread? Making a mock of
someone? Being impressed with life vicissitudes? Being fickle? Or being flexible? Is it life
198
itself? Again, the story defies conceptualization.
Now, let us consider two of Chuang Tzu the Taoist poet-thinker‘s stories that are even
beyond gnomic-phrase packaging. One is a story of him dreaming to be a butterfly, another is
he bantering with a name-logician on a bridge over the River Hao.
199
His first story is this.

191The phrase ―推敲‖ sums up a story in ―賈忤旨‖ in 鑑誡錄.

192 僧推月下門 or 僧敲.
193 The story is from the ―人間訓‖ chapter in the Huai Nan Tzu 淮南子 (臺北市三民書局, 民86, p. 965).
194 此何遽不能為福乎?
195 Tao Te Ching, Chapter 58. Cf. Luke 21:28.
196 This story typifies Chuang Tzu‘s (2/38-39) baffling profound Chapter Two, ―齊物論.‖ See my Butterfly as
Companion, op. cit., pp. 127, 178, 207, 387, and 419 (note 48).
197 Rather than ―Smoking is hazardous in ways A, B, C,‖ we can persuasively say, ―Not-smoking is refreshing for
not-A, not-B, not-C.‖ It is the principle of advertisement to keep our society happily on the go.
198 Chuang Tzu‘s explanation of ―heavenly balance 天鈞‖ is as obscure as the story. I tried to understand it in
Butterfly, op. cit., p. 501 (Index, ―monkey‖).
199 I compressed this story that ends Chapter Two ―齊物論.‖ Cf.. Butterfly, ibid., pp. 115-280, et passim.
 Interculture, Relativism 163

He once dreamed to be a butterfly, awoke to deny being a butterfly, and then he was not
sure. Was he ―he‖ dreamed to be a butterfly, or ―butterfly‖ dreaming to be he? He did not
know and said, ―There must be a distinction; this it is that we call ‗things changing.‘‖

200
Ineffably delightful, the story cannot even begin to sum up in a phrase. I wrote 500
pages of The Butterfly as Companion, and the story overflowed that book.
His second no less hard-to-pin-down story has two ―stooges,‖ a Taoist bum Chuang Tzu
and a brilliant Name-logician Hui Tzu. They bantered over the Hao Bridge about why
Chuang Tzu, being not minnows, could have said, ―How enjoyable they are, darting back and
forth!‖ After some playful jostling, Chuang Tzu declared, ―I know it above the Hao!‖ Again,
apropos of the chapter ―Autumn Waters‖ the tale concludes, it floods over the banks of logic,
yet not arbitrary, exuding ineffable joy of spontaneous life glowing larger and lustier than
201
fussy logic.
We have been elucidating Chinese thinking in English. Thanks to our English
translations, these Chinese phrasal story-notions hit us with at least three features of two
divergent thinking modes—(a) concrete China vs. abstract West, (b) negative-affirmative
202
China vs. tidy West, and (c) China‘s dot-pragmatics vs. the West‘s orderly explanation.
None of these has been noted in China or the West until we parsed China in English.
(a) Concrete China vs. abstract West: ―Notions‖ (in China) are notables embedded in
203
actuality; ―concepts‖ (in the West) are ideas grasped out of actuality. Thinking in the West
flies off from concrete particulars into an abstract precision of concepts formally stipulated.
Concepts stand on their feet to move as pawns on the ivory chessboard of thinking.
In China, story-notions inspire thoughts inherently tied to story-actuality, for they are (as
―push, knock‖) unintelligible without concrete stories packed in them (Chia Tao‘s poem and
Han Yü‘s response). Far from flying away from actuality, their meanings consist in story-
facts. Stories are actually concrete notions, notable ―knots 結‖ in the actuality-―cords 繩‖ in
varied open-ended meanings.
The West also has stories, such as the famous ―Pavlov's Dog‖ in a General Psychology
class, where they quickly leave that Dog for the formal definition of ―classical conditioning,‖
for though they may not realize it, the Dog-story differs in meaning from ―classical
conditioning.‖ Dog, bell, food, and salivation are irrelevant-in-meaning to stimulus and
conditioning in ―neutral stimulus, paired with unconditioned stimulus, to turn into
conditioned one.‖
Ironically, students are introduced to the abstract ―conditioning‖ by the concrete ―dog,‖
only to be told to discard the ―dog.‖ China stays in a representative case as a concrete notion,
as a ―knot 結‖ of an actuality-―cord 繩.‖204 Exemplum in the West is dispensable

200 Compare Franz Kafka‘s dreary dream in The Metamorphosis (1915).

201 Mencius‘ ―pulling seedlings to help growth 揠苗助長‖ is more Taoist than Confucian, and perhaps less joyous
than Taoism. Mencius is a Taoist by default, perhaps unawares.
202 A typical dot-pragmatist in the West is of course Henry D. Thoreau. His dots of sentences are strewn all over
his books. His keen observations of concrete details and sharp insights into the sense of things somehow settle
and gather silently to make the reader feel at home—here now. Too bad he is relegated as nature poet,
journalist, and literary essayist, not a thinker. I also wander among wild bushes under bird songs—of notions.
My wanderings make me calm and at home. So does Haydn with kids hopping in simple innocence.
203 See my reflections on this distinction in connection with ―time‖ in On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural
Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 349-353.
204 Ibid., pp. 349-360 has Chinese generalization of concrete particulars.
164 Kuang-ming Wu

appendage205; ―conditioning‖ stands by itself, decorated by Pavlov's Dog. Chinese story-

notions vanish when abstracted from their exempla, expressed in gnomic phrases. A story-
notion directs the eye to its concrete exemplum, which is the notion, an indispensable notable
to really ―knot‖ the ―cord‖ of actuality.
―What is the ‗cash value‘ of concrete story-notions?‖ ―Deliberation‖ is trite, while ―push,
knock‖ vividly depicts the perplexity of that monk trying to ―push or knock‖ on the moonlit
door. Compact illumination of the story-notions is beyond the abstract clarity of concepts.
The entire philosophical Taoism is made of exempla beyond concepts (Uncle Fort lost horse,
happy monkeys at ―morning, four, evening, three‖) and exempla beyond phrasing (butterfly
dream, just being here to know minnows self-enjoying).
China‘s exempla reflect life larger/fuller/livelier than logic. They are Tillich‘s ―symbols‖
that participate in the situation they point to, and grow and die with it and within it; they are
206
Polanyi‘s ―metaphors‖ that symbolize the situation and impress it deeply on us. Concrete
exempla in story-notions burn into us and make us understand. Now we know how with those
notions to think in concrete actuality beyond abstract thinking. Chinese thinking goes in this
actual manner, in this story-notional way as story-thinking—so writes the West.
(b) Negative-affirmative China vs. tidy West: We must again note; the West‘s analytical
sensitivity elucidates China. Left alone, China would not have realized logical intricacies in
its spontaneous story-notions said above or negative affirmation said below, nor would it
recognize and confirm them as peculiarly its own. Now let us consider Chinese negation as
strong affirmation. Chinese 不 is the flight of the bird of intention up away to arrive 至 at a
207
destination. Denial of A affirms B.
Negation in China emphatically affirms as hollows in a bamboo strengthen it, as ―A is not
208
non-A‖ vitalizes ―A is A.‖ Chinese thinking de-fines a notion with a story that de-scribes
the situation, where ―de-― is a negative performance, the performance often in storytelling.
The notion embodies a story, to ―ex‖-press and ―de‖-fine actuality whose negative
confirmations, ―de-‖ and ―ex-,‖ are.
Far from being occasional rhetorical decorations, eight examples below reveal how
integral/pervasive negation is in Chinese thinking/writing. They exemplify the age-old Yin-
Yang cosmic principle that begins with the negative Yin and continues throughout a Yin-
209
negative operation to ―positivize‖ Yang, traditionally dubbed ―internecine, inter-nascent.‖
This Yin-Yang operation is negation tripled. One, Yin and Yang inter-negate while, two,
they negate their inter-negations to result in inter-birthing, and then, three, both negations
double up into a Yang unity that negates these negations. Such negations are the strongest
possible affirmation. China‘s sentiment was revealed so, thereby to be shaped as such, thanks
to Western analysis. Here are eight examples Western analysis reveals.

205 The entry on ―exemplum‖ in The Oxford English Dictionary has good explanations of this sentiment.
206Paul Tillich‘s entire Dynamics of Faith, Harper, 1957, is devoted to this theme. See also Michael Polanyi and
Harry Prosch, Meaning, Chicago University Press, 1975, pp. 66-81.
207 On ―不‖ see 9:944-950, on ―至‖ see 9:952-956, in 說文解字詁林，臺北市鼎文書局，民72. 聞一多 has
detailed interesting explorations on ―不‖ in 聞一多全集(二)，臺北市里仁書局，民37，II;575-580.
208 Cf. ―不得不,‖ ―無非,‖ and Japanese ―しなければならない.‖
209 相剋相生.
 Interculture, Relativism 165

One, Confucius‘ Analects opens with three exclamations studded with negatives: ―To do
210
A, isn‘t it such a pleasure?! To do B, isn‘t it such a delight?! Not known and not vexed,
isn‘t it such a princely man?!‖ Such exclamations with negatives convey the strongest
possible affirmation. Two, the epithet, ―princely man 君子,‖ a person (morally) fit-to rule, is
yearned after, never claimed. In fact, Confucius and Mencius explicitly denied that they were
211
sages at all.

Kung-sun Ch‘ou (said), ―Tsai Wo and Tzu-lumg excelled in rhetoric; Jan Niu, Min Tzu
and Yen Hui excelled in the exposition of virtuous conduct. Confucius excelled in both and
yet he said, ‗I am not versed in rhetoric.‘ In that case you, Master (Mencius), must already be
a sage.‖ ―O, What word is this! Tzu-kung once asked Confucius, ‗Are you, Master, a sage?‘
Confucius replied, ‗I have not succeeded in becoming a sage. I simply never tire of learning
nor weary of teaching.‘ Tzu-kung said, ‗Not to tire of learning is wisdom; not to weary of
teaching is benevolence. You must be a sage to be both wise and benevolent.‘ A sage is
something even Confucius did not claim to be. What word (of yours) is this!‖

The ―sage‖ was often conferred unexpectedly by others, often by posterity, as Confucius
212
experienced himself. The positive epithets, ―sage‖ and ―princely man,‖ are really self-
negating. Three, Mencius often clinches his long exhortations to rulers with a negative
conclusion, ―Doing A, B, and C to care for your people and not being a princely ruler 王,
213
never has such a thing happened in history!‖
214
Four, Mencius‘ ―pulling seedlings, helping grow‖ seems affirmative—―help‖ and
―growth‖ are affirmatives—until we see that it is a negative to affirm how to nourish growth;
the positive (growth) is negative-expressed (not interfere with growth) in a positive-seeming
form (help growth). Confucius raises ―one‖ for return with ―three‖ by students; he never
―helped‖ or ―pulled.‖
Five, Mencius urges rulers to extend their innate ―heart that cannot bear people (in pain)‖
to ―governance that cannot bear people (in pain).‖ No stronger persuasion can be than such an
―unbearably‖ compassionate wording (2A6, 4A1). Here as elsewhere, Chinese ideal of
government is not legal control on popular welfare (positive)215 but a ―sage rule‖ in
―unbearable compassion‖ (negative) with historical nostalgia (more negative). The rule
manifests the Principle fanned by a lack of ideal politics. Chinese political history is anti-
sagely to negatively provoke sagely ideals.
Six, both ―cannot ‗stop‘ (不得已)‖ and ―cannot ‗not‘ (不得不)‖ describe our unstoppable
spontaneity of ―cannot help but‖ and natural inevitability of ―cannot but be.‖ Two
―inevitabilities‖ negatively express a strong positive in nature inexpressible. Seven, ―no-do
無為‖ is not not-do 不為 but a real robust doing loved by Confucians and Taoists alike;

210 ―Not know‖ scrapes us badly as Jesus‘ ―I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.‖ (Matthew
7:23)
211 This is Mencius 2A2 in D. C. Lau‘s translation (slightly modified), Mencius: Volume One, Hong Kong: The
Chinese University Press, 1984, p. 59. Cf. Analects 7/3, 12/3.
212 It was recorded in the Analects 7/26, 33, 34. See also 1/1.
213 Mencius, 1A3, 1A7, 1B4, 2A5, 6B4, et passim.
214 揠苗助長, or just 助長. Significantly, the phrase appears within Confucianism that stresses education, which
perhaps should not mean to ―draw out,‖ e-duco.
215
Legalism tried this route, reaped tragedies, and was discarded by the historical wayside. Confucian negativism
won the name of orthodoxy in history.
166 Kuang-ming Wu

sensitively refraining from ―much ado about nothing‖ is an apt effective doing that follows
along the course of events.
Eight, opposing Confucius, Chuang Tzu the Taoist smilingly put his Taoist ideals in
216
him to renovate the tradition by venerating-opposing it. Taoism opposes the tradition to
become a major one, as with later commentators following the tradition (as A) to ―develop‖ it
(as non-A‘s).217 Again, the West‘s analytical sensitivity has revealed the above Chinese Yin-
Yang dialectic; we appreciate China‘s lived allusion only via undergoing Western translation
into precise English.
(c) Chinese dot-pragmatics vs. Western orderly explanation: Western interpreters notice
218
that China reads the passages not by objective parsing but by memorizing and chanting
them while engaged in daily chores. The ―meanings‖ of the passages then ―come‖ to them in
daily routines, to guide.
Western culture quests for explicit, exhaustive explication; Chinese thinking sits back,
walks around, murmurs meditatively, lets the stuff sink in, and then jots down the harvest in
analects and journals. It is China‘s soft pragmatics; Western hermeneutic sensitivity discerns
how it works, thus.
219
Chinese classics are subtly rhymed ; their sound-sense unity charms to assist lives to
220
come to ―rhyme‖ with the sayings. Enchanted by the rhythm, the reader notices ―a needle‖
here, ―a dot‖ there, beautiful yet incoherent. The reader then goes home, lives with the
scattered ―dots‖ of sayings, and one day, the random dots-collection suddenly flips over, and
221 222
there appears a magnificent tapestry of implications! It is an ―Aha‖-experience.

216 On Chuang Tzu‘s various uses of ―Confucius,‖ see my Butterfly, op. cit., p. 400 (long Note 10).
217
We must watch out, however. The ―logic‖ in China can go backward, as said of 墨辯 that it can 旁行句讀. See
墨子讀本，臺北市三民書局，民85，pp. 304, 575ff. This point alone demolishes A. C. Grahams‘ belabored exegesis
in the mode of traditional Western logic in Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (1978), The Chinese
University of Hong Kong, 2003. Chinese ―logic‖ requires a separate treatment, in contrast with Western logic.
218 Our above sympathetic parsing was woven with dots of commonest Chinese phrases. This is dot-pragmatics of
China informed by sensitive analysis of the West.
219 See my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, ―Sound,
Sight, Sense,‖ pp. 125-174, and On Metaphoring, op. cit., ―Inter-Aesthetics,‖ pp. 519-566.
220 Take Lao Tzu‘s lilting rhythm, ―道可道, 非常道‖ (cf. ―神也者妙萬物而為言者也‖ of 易經 [卦説, 第六章]).
Though ―tao can tao, is-not always tao‖ makes no sense, verbal allusion in the noun, ―tao,‖ dots the saying
quite musically sensible. Rhythmic ―sense‖ is enhanced by such sense-dots in the second ―tao‖ as usual ―told,‖
my ―a ‗tao‘ identifiable as Tao,‖ Maier‘s ―walked,‖ and 福永‘s ―stipulate 規定.‖ Mair‘s ―The ways that can be
walked are not the eternal Way,‖ is in Victor Mair, ed., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese
Literature, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, p. 60. ―これが道だと規定しうるような道は,
恆常不変の真の道ではなく . . . ‖ is in 福永光司, 老子 (上), 東京都朝日文庫, 1978, p. 31. None of them is
satisfactory yet none is wholly wrong, and make a connotative resonance to render the saying alive, alluring,
and challenging. This is not exotic; Basil Mitchell shows (The Justification of Religious Belief, NY: Oxford
University Press, 1981) how theism, not provable or disprovable as with disputes in history, exegesis, natural
science, political theory, and metaphysics, must rely on the cumulative weight of converging arguments not
entirely formalizable. His poor explication of this insight exposes the inability of Western ―clarity‖ here; for
clear rendering of polyphonic sense, in desiccated monotony, loses its melodic sound-sense unity. To reduce
the risk, we try to follow China‘s sonorous sense by puns and wordplay, which may stick in the craw of most
analytical readers in the West.
221 The happening could be dubbed ―evocation‖ (興) that is ―metaphor‖ (usually called 比), in this sense. As we
―warm up the old to know the new 溫故而知新‖ (Confucius, 2/11), we call the happening ―興‖ if the new is
unexpected if not non-existent before, and ―比‖ if the new is a pre-given novelty to challenge us to understand.
Chinese dot-pragmatics is an overall evocation (興).
222 This is nothing exotic. Friedrich Kekule (1865) pictured the benzene molecule as a hexagon. Ideas are
metaphor-syntheses in stellar constellations, psychic complexes, medical diagnoses, market analyses,
 Interculture, Relativism 167

The sense is in the sound, united in pithy melodic sentences to irresistibly entice the
223
reader to recite, chant, and practice them everyday. In joy, the reader jots down the
experience. The jottings make ―commentaries‖ to the Classics. Then these ―commentaries‖ in
turn enchant the readers later to continue to live on those memorable words of the Classics
and commentaries, and continue commenting on them.
A terse essay has such experiential impacts; it pulsates with the rhythm of actuality to
form a musical portrait of daily struggles. Following it follows actuality; Chinese writing
weaves-under history224 as readers make journals on such experiential followings. Then,
original dots remain225 a standing invitation to another reader to live them and, in that new
reader‘s way, to weave another tapestry, a fresh meaning-nexus. The original essay ―raises
one‖ for us variously to ―return‖ with ―two, three, ten.‖226 Under-weavings of reflective
praxis jot into a ―tradition of commentaries.‖
Let‘s take a simplest of examples. ―Born alike, practice apart 性相近也，習相遠也,‖ says
Confucius (17/2). Nothing can be simpler and more boringly platitudinous than this.
Surprisingly, such a simple sigh evoked two of his later listeners, Mencius and Hsün Tzu, to
develop into two contrary trends of thinking that exerted profoundly influences in China.
Mencius took our ―nature‖ to be good, and warned us against pulling at the good seedling
to ―help growth‖; he wanted us to nourish our innate life-thrust instead. Hsün Tzu in contrast
took our ―nature‖ to be bad, and wanted education to shape our growth, to breed in his
students the brutal school of legalism.227
All such contrary developments originated in the provocative power of poetic resonance
in Confucius‘ simplest sigh. Exciting poetry is lost in Lau‘s ―Men are close to one another by
nature. They drift apart through behavior that is constantly repeated.‖ Even Chan‘s ―By
nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart,‖228 missed Confucius.
So, what else is new? No Mencius or Hsün Tzu would have got excited at such a platitude,
didactic, holier than thou.

biography, science, history, and religious conversion. To understand is to see a shape of sense made in dots of
things. Gestalt psychology, psychotherapy, Lonergan (Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight, NY: Philosophical
Library, 1970) and deconstructionists say that thinking is such inter-montaging. The dotted style shows how
metaphorically relevant to actuality Chinese thinking is.
223 Herbert Fingarette noted such uncanny magical power, albeit obliquely, in Confucius: The Secular as Sacred
(1972), Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1998. Huston Smith noted the Koran‘s same effect in The
World‟s Religions (1958), HarperSanFrancisco, revised 1991, pp. 234-235. Many Buddhist sutras have such
chanting hypnotic effect.
224 ―Subtle‖ is sub+tele, under-woven web. This is the creative Gestalt-experience of ―novelty synthesis‖ noted in
A.III. of my On Metaphoring, Brill, 2001. It is Chinese hermeneutics.
225 This is how distinct Chinese culture is—it remains dotted while Greek, Indian, Arabic, and Jewish cultures
have scholastic ratiocination besides dot-sayings. Chu Hsi, say, is reputed to be a system-builder, a Chinese
Aristotle, and from his scattered sayings people today pick bits and pull them together into ―a system‖ for him.
(See Julia Ching, The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi, Oxford University Press, 2000, Yung Sik Kim, The
Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi, American Philosophical Society, 2000). And yet Chu left only scattered
analects. What ―system‖ is it? How are we to know what his ―system‖ is, if he wrote none? Does he our
teacher need our help? Would ―systems‖ others built for him hurt his ―system‖? These queries show that
Chinese dot-sayings remain dots, not arbitrary or logical/analytical but somehow coherent. For various
meanings of being ―systematic,‖ see ―§ Concrete Creativity as Real-izing, Storytelling as Cosmos-
―Systematic‖ above.
226 Analects 5/9, 7/8. Such blossoming has beautifully occurred in 1/15, described in my Chinese Body Thinking,
op. cit., pp. 56-57.
227
This quite plausible hypothesis awaits historical-textual confirmation. I am sure it is at hand; I just do not know
how to approach it.
228
D. C. Lau, Confucius: The Analects, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1992, p. 171. Wing-tsit Chan, A
Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 45.
168 Kuang-ming Wu

Literalism flattens and kills Confucius‘ uneasy provocation of poetry that creates novel
meanings unimagined before. Hegel sadly missed this power in Confucius and so despised
him as a mouther of tiresome platitudes. Every Sinologist, including Chinese scholars, as the
above two cited—they are quite famous—missed this poetic thrust in Confucius, who
promoted and propagated this creative thrust throughout Chinese history; this is why Chan
said that Confucius single-handedly ―shaped‖ Chinese culture.229
Such Chinese way of reading answers Nietzsche who lamented, ―That for which we find
words is something already dead in . . . speaking.‖230 Lao Tzu writes, ―Tao can tao, not
always-Tao‖; to say is to fix and kill. Lao Tzu‘s saying is self-incoherent; it says nothing to
tell us, ―Don‘t say; show it.‖ These Chinese dot-sayings live on in a reader until one day they
suddenly configure into a tapestry of meaning-Gestalt.
All this while, the dots remain dots waiting for another new configuring, then another.
Dot-sayings thus originate writings anew, ever under way toward fresh insights. Dotting
renews re-experiencing as written; it is a showing in writing/saying. Here cognition re-
cognizes as generations regenerate. Chinese writings are such free configurations of dot-
sayings and their re-experiences jotted down. Thus Nietzsche is answered, in this saying-
alive, writing-anew, to dot-metaphor into a tapestry, ―Chinese tradition‖ of life-hermeneutics,
lived ―tapestries‖ in history constantly reenacted.
Here are two examples negatively to show how no Chinese classic can work experiential
wonders of readers-shaping-sharing, without going through this hermeneutic circle. The first
example is Fingarette, the second is I. A. Richards.
Fingarette‘s Confucius231 is filled with breathtaking insights on the ―authentic core‖ of
the Analects, while Chinese readers would feel it somehow ―off tune,‖ its tapestry woven by
alien threads of analytical reductionism. E.g., ―She is silent about it‖ can mean ―It‘s not in
her‖ or ―She assumes it.‖ Emotion-charged Psalms have few emotive words, nor do the Gusii
tribe.232 To see if silence means absence or assumption, we must look into the context and
commentaries. Fingarette steadfastly refused commentators, ―later additions‖ in the Analects,
and Mencius, Chu Hsi, Wang Yang-ming.
He just decided silence to mean absence, and reduced warm li-rite to social convention
with an inexplicable ―magic‖ to draw people (chs. 1, 5). He took Confucius‘ respect of history
(as a matrix of desirables) as his ―strategic maneuver‖ to sway people to local Lu culture (ch.

229
Ibid., p. 14.
230 Socrates preferred speech to writing in the Phaedrus. Schopenhauer also said, ―Thoughts reduced to paper are
generally nothing more than the footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is true that we see the path he has
taken; but to know what he saw on the way, we must use our own eyes.‖ (quoted, ―Introduction,‖ G. P. Baker
and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning: An Analytical Commentary on the
Philosophical Investigations, Volume 1, University of Chicago, 1980). Chuang Tzu‘s Wheelwright (13/68-74)
announced that ancient writings are trash/scum. Huston Smith says that orality gives memory, vitality, and
poetic rhythm/flexibility of the conversation-tradition to stress things important. Letters rob us of them all.
(The World‟s Religions, Harper, 1991, pp. 368-370).Nietzsche‘s epithet is in The Twilight of the Idols quoted
in Harold Bloom‘s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, NY: Riverhead Books, 1998, pp. 715, 740-741.
For Bloom, Nietzsche captured Shakespeare‘s essence in Hamlet, that (in Coleridge‘s words) knowledge is
lethargy to action, and that words so creates the self as to kill action and the self. Bloom claims that Hamlet‘s
acting-in-theater resurrects his death-of-action in thinking-speaking (743). Bloom speculated (what else?) that
since English is the world language today, Shakespeare as the best/central of English is the universal author
unmatched (718). The Chinese tradition responds as above to such Western self-displaying pride in
intercultural hermeneutics, and writing China in English.
231 Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, HarperSanFrancisco, 1972.
232 R. A. Shweder and R. A. LeVine, eds., Culture Theory [1984], Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 82-83.
 Interculture, Relativism 169

4), Tao as a ―social convention‖ to shape us, minus the vast Heaven-earth context (ch. 2), and
jen-personality as response to inter-human sociality, minus unperturbed personal integrity,
and private-personal distinction vanishes in an inner-outer separation (ch. 3). His book is one-
dimensionally logical.233
We feel similarly with another brilliant classic, I. A. Richards‘ Mencius on the Mind.234
He cited all logically possible readings of the Mencius 4B26, and so on (30 odd citations),
then scrupulously followed through on each reading, without noting the ―possibilities‖ that
the Chinese interpretive tradition cuts, and why. He has an analytical ―experiment‖; his
―follow up‖ is Western, for Chinese people do not experiment on logically possible meanings
in a passage; they just live it to taste some of its implications, ever open to more possibilities,
never exhausted.
In short, neither Fingarette nor Richards noticed that what the Chinese texts mean for
Anglo-Europeans differs from what the texts mean for Chinese people. Neither of them did
cultural hermeneutics in frame-sensitivity. As a result, the texts served as an ―exotic mirror‖
reflecting what they think, and read their ideas into the texts. Now, isn‘t such Chinese
discomfort due to their refusal—explicit (Fingarette) or implicit (Richards)—to blend in with
the Chinese commentary tapestry in history, to ―smoke‖ and ―cure‖ (薰陶) us into Chinese
texture and fragrance?
Hellmut Wilhelm writes on the ancient Classic of Changes 易經,235

(We must) keep in mind all the strata that . . . make up the book. Archaic wisdom from
the dawn of time, detached and systematic reflections of the Confucian school in the Chou
era, pithy sayings from the heart of the people, subtle thoughts of the leading minds: all these
disparate elements . . . create (how) the book lives and is revered in China, and . . . we must
not neglect the later strata either. In these, many of the treasures of the very earliest origins are
brought to light, treasures that were up to then hidden in the depths of the book . . . (W)e shall
follow the lines back from the later to the earlier elements, in the hope that from the study of
the living development of the book itself we may also derive insight into its meaning.

Echoing what Adams said of More‘s Utopia,236 we can say of a Chinese classic, ―We
may interpret it as we will, but the way a classic has been read and lived across the centuries
is an authentic part of its nature.‖ To say so amounts to seeing a hermeneutic circle here, a
tapestry of inter-weaving. The circle goes thus.
To interpret Confucius, we must read the interpretive tradition; to grasp the tradition we
must read Confucius. We shuttle between these two poles, Confucius and tradition, to weave
out a Chinese interpretive tapestry that is Confucius, whose weaving shuttle is our historical
living in Confucius. This is the Chinese way of reading/understanding.

233 His views provoked controversies. See Bryan W. Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays,
Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 308-309 for details.
234 I. A. Richards‘ Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition (1932), Richmond, Surrey, England:
Curzon Press 1996.
235 Hellmut and Richard Wilhelm, Understanding the I Ching, Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 51. Fingarette
and Richards sadly missed this point when they studied Confucius and Mencius.
236 Robert M. Adams said of More‘s Utopia, ―We may interpret it as we will, but the way a book like Utopia has
been read and lived across the centuries is an authentic part of its nature.‖ (A Norton Critical Edition: Sir
Thomas More: UTOPIA, tr. and ed., Robert M. Adams, NY: W. W. Norton, 1992, pp. viii-ix) Adams did not
say, however, that, therefore, to read Utopia we must read how ―it has been read and lived across the
centuries.‖ That lack is Western.
170 Kuang-ming Wu

My question on why fish has no umbrella asks not about facts a, b, c, for of course fish
has no umbrella, what else is new? The question calls attention to frames that make facts,
facts with significance as ―fact.‖ That is, my question points to (d) that makes sense of (a),
(b), and (c). All of them are missed when (d) is omitted. Yearley, and Hansen, for example,
read the Chinese texts on their own level (c) alone, and did no cultural hermeneutics (d), thus
missed China. Let us consider those two interpreters one by one.
237
Lee Yearley constructed a tripartite frame, as a Procrustean bed to fit Mencius, by
extrapolating concepts and theories from Mencius‘ ad hoc stories spilled from shifting
situations, and then reprocessing Mencius‘ story-persuasions, situation-sensitive, into eternal
238
logical arguments. Mencius was playing with arguments to persuade, saying (2B13), ―That
was that time, this is this time now,‖ wholly devoid of explicit consistent line of
argumentation, as assumed by Western Yearley.
Yearley completely bypassed this Mencius-in-situ, in the fiery thick of the controversy.
To someone who said Mencius loved to argue, he quipped impatiently (3B9), ―How could I
239
love arguing? I just cannot help it!‖ His heat Wang Ch‘ung caught, but Yearley never did.
Yearley just processed the fiery Mencius into another Western theoretician quietly spinning
theories and concepts. Yearley barked up his wrong Western tree, identical between Aquinas
and Mencius. Comparison is frame-comparison; claiming to ―compare,‖ he never did.
Now, sitting with Richards, Fingarette, and Yearley, Chad Hansen never leaves his
Western armchair of external analysis. Hansen is today‘s I. A. Richards, naively taking
240
Western ―analytical logic‖ as universally applicable, confidently pushing his analytical
241
―unified interpretation‖ all the way through Chinese history of thought, with a subtitle, ―A
Philosophical Interpretation‖ that tells how ―philosophy‖ is his Western analytical tradition
among Dennett, Nozick, Kripke, Parfit, Quine, Rawls, and Rorty.
242
Hansen is not even like John L. Austin that A. C. Graham espouses. It never occurs to
Hansen that reasonableness is wider than analysis, as life is bigger than logic; he never
realizes that China has been proposing and practicing life-reason that includes logic but not
identical to it. This is worse than Graham who recognizes non-analytical ―spontaneity‖ in
China; this is less sensitive than Arthur Wright who takes Chinese thought to be between
―philosophy‖ (Stanford analyticity) and commonsense convention.
In his historical rehearsal of Chinese schools, Hansen disregards the historical trend of
243
China, and treats all schools of thought equally, on the same analytical plane. He never

237 Lee H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage, Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1990.
238 On playing with arguments, see Wu‘s On the “Logic” of Togetherness, op. cit., pp. 150-215.
239 Wang Ch‘ung 王充 said that this Mencius‘ burning heart was responsible for Wang‘s writing of the massive
Balanced Critiques 論衡, in 對作篇, 臺北市三民書局, 民86, p. 1469.
240 Victor H. Mair, ed., Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983, pp. 24-
26. Mair has enough sense to take these essays as ―essays,‖ intellectual trials that Watson hesitates about (p.
xv); Hansen has none of such hesitation. Clever fools rush in where perceptive angels fear to tread.
241 Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation, Oxford, 1992, where
―Dao‖ is logical analysis for Hansen.
242 Hansen rejects Graham‘s reading of China (ibid., pp. 1-2).
243 Revealing is the sentence with which his volume begins: ―A missing text is always an exciting discovery.‖
Causes for the missing are never examined. He just digs up ―obscure‖ schools of thought, treats them, in his
way, on a par with prominent schools, and then turns around to disparage their prominence. Such roughshod
ride is so insensitive to China!
 Interculture, Relativism 171

asks why all schools except Confucianism were suppressed to fall by the wayside of thought;
he assumes that these schools fell out of favor by extra-logical accident. His analytically
coherent view of Chinese thinking comes off so palatable to today‘s Western thinking trend.
Hansen peeps into China through a tiny keyhole of analytical logic, blind to indirection,
humor, non-sequitur, contradiction, storytelling, and laughter, all so Chinese, typical
especially of Chuang Tzu. Ironically, Hansen touts his blindness in all his touting of ―Daoist
244
theory‖ in the volume title, and of being a ―daoist,‖ a ―reincarnation of Zhuanzi.‖
That story-thinking in China can accommodate such one-dimensional probes bespeaks
how roomy story-thinking is. The reverse is not true in the West, however, for once analytical
logic tries to house story-thinking, the move tears logic to pieces (as Alice in Wonderland did
Lewis Carroll‘s) to becloud analytical logic (as Deleuze did to Alice in Wonderland by
245
logicizing her ).
In any case, Fingarette, Richards, Yearley, and Hansen read the Chinese texts in Western
interpretative milieu; they saw themselves reflected in the mirror of mysterious Chinese texts
and attributed their own interpretations to these text; the West was read-into China. They are
on level (c), awaiting ―cultural‖ hermeneutic on (d) to revolutionize them.
Let us repeat this important point. Fingarette, Richards, Yearley, and Hansen never
realize that how Chinese sentences mean in the West differs from how the texts mean in
China. Their ideas are theirs evoked by the ―exotic‖ Chinese texts; they read their thinking
into the texts that mirror it. They did eisegesis, not exegesis.
Mind you, Fingarette, Richards, Yearley, and Hansen are not ―wrong‖ but foreign to the
Chinese tapestry. They stimulate renovation,246 by showing/shaping Chinese manner of
thinking in contrast to their non-Chinese style, atmosphere, and approach.247 Western
exegesis exudes unawares the venerable Anglo-analytical tradition; no Chinese thinker would
approach the text, pose questions, solve them, explore, and deny other interpretations—that
way. Intercultural hermeneutics thus enriches the ―Confucius‖-tradition, as we see this
Western flavor distinct from the Chinese.
We think we are a clean slate on which to objectively write objects, while our direction
and way of research (―writing‖) reveal our bent, our assumptions. Not to realize so is one
thing; refusing to admit so is another. Meeting the Chinese different bent that the West
reveals also reveals the West. As the West admits to weaving its analytical tapestry,248 a

244 See his Acknowledgement. He did treat ―paradox‖ but always from the West‘s logical point of view, never
from Chuang Tzu‘s sort. Why he claims kinship to ―Daoist‖ or ―Zhuanzi‖ is anyone‘s guess. Is it because
Taoism tickles his logical palate, more than dull authoritative Confucianism?
245 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990.
246 H. G. Creel exclaimed, ―In the fifty years in which I have been studying Confucius, I cannot recall that I have
found the work of another scholar more stimulating than that of Professor Fingarette.‖ (Journal of the
American Academy of Religion, quoted in Confucius, back cover). ―Stimulating‖ is eye-catching; he avoids the
word, ―agree.‖
247 For all his intercultural sensitivity, Yip did not reach this level of cultural inter-critical inter-enrichment. He
stays culturally different, mutually ―distant,‖ ―diffusing‖ as a Western dichotomous approach he laments. Even
his style and tone is exclusive as in the West. (Wai-lim Yip, Diffusion of Distances: Dialogues Between
Chinese and Western Poetics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Chinese Poetry: An Anthology
of Major Modes and Genres, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. xiii-xiv, 1-27). Such lack is sad.
248 Richards did, Fingarette was silent.
172 Kuang-ming Wu

healthier intercultural hermeneutics would emerge to enrich both the Western and the Chinese
interpretive communities.249
We must go to hermeneutical level (d) to sensitively reflect on (i) how the West‘s
logical/analytical reading of Chinese texts differs from Chinese literary/historical reading, (ii)
how each should learn from the other, and (iii) how essential such intercultural learning is for
co-thriving in our small Global Village today.

D. Inter-Writing to Inter-Culture

Three sections above have made two points. One, writing shows to reveal, to shape the
writer; my writing-down objectifies me to make me another, who shapes me. Writing
objectifies me to social-ize me. Two, I write in my language to write my life-style, my
culture; writing China in English reveals China and the West to inter-show, inter-shape.
Section A considered the first point, Section B has the second, and Section C has executed
both, to show how inter-writing intercultures. Now Section D here concludes, saying writing
China in English makes impact on both into an interculture to world concord.
Huntington250 wrote that world conflicts today are not of raw power but of cultures, at our
assumptive root. World conflicts originate in felt threats of ―alien‖ cultures ―we‖ don‘t know.
In response, we note that we write to meet and share/shape; Socrates prefers conversation,
and Plato writes it down in Greek for readers to cross-culturally inter-write through history.251
Contacts of two languages reveal two preexisting cultures and shape them further, clarifying,
enriching, and thereby confirming them.
What would we do about misunderstandings that inter-writing contacts generate? Three
answers are here. One, this question reveals ―mistakes‖ no one purposely commits. We can
come to know mistakes after committing them, to reveal historical self-reflective
Socratism.252 Detecting mistakes now enables us to correct them one by one, sooner or later;
this process makes history. How? Two, more inter-writing dispels occasional errors—as more
logical argument cures invalid ones and more perception corrects optical illusions—by more
people, more than once.
Three, today is a cross-cultural era when we can continue cross-checking from many
diverse perspectives, to cut errors as they occur.253 Our critical Socratism (Marcel) in cross-
cultural dialogues today makes a world history of inter-correction, and inter-writing creates a
better intercultural world as writing changes and shapes our common communal world.

249
On global and intercultural implications of all this, see ―Chapter 49: ‗Let Chinese Thinking be Chinese‘: Sine
Qua Non to Globalization‖ in my Chinese Wisdom Alive: Vignettes of Life-Thinking, NY: Nova Science
Publishers, 2010, pp. 451-484.
250 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, NY: Simon and Schuster,
1996. Its dated ―tribal clash‖ does point at a sober world fact today that the world clash is clash of cultures.
251 Chuang Tzu wrote for a word-forgotten one to word with, having written that ancient writings are scum/dross
(13/68-74, 26/48-49). I wrote ―Learning as a Master from a Master: ‗Chuang Tzu‘ in University General
Education‖ (On Metaphoring, op. cit., pp. 615-640), so that the writing-forgotten ―minds‖ can ―meet‖ 會意 at
the writing to joyously forget the meal. T‘ao Ch‘ien 陶潛 confessed to such an ineffable joy that forgets meal,
―每有會意, 便欣然忘‖ in ―Biography of Mr. Five Willows 五柳先生傳‖ in 陶淵明集, 臺北市三民書局,
2004, pp. 361-364.
252 My ―Existential Relativism‖ (Ph.D. thesis, Yale, 1965) argues at length for this point.
253 Cf. my Metaphoring, op. cit., p. 668 (index on ―objectivity‖).
 Interculture, Relativism 173

Writing changes the world. ―How?‖ It shows our situation, thereby shapes public opinion
that seems powerless, until we watch history to which people in China appeal. They usually
rally to authorities, not themselves, yet they affirm the historic principle of highest authority,
―Heaven sees in its people seeing; heaven hears in its people hearing,‖ that is, the supremacy
of public opinion, and the world history validates this ―fatuous doctrine.‖ King Wen‘s 文王
sagely rule was credited to attending to his people, collecting their ―songs‖ of opinions in
Poetry Classic 詩經.
People‘s opinion collapsed the brutal ―First Emperor of Ch‘in 秦始皇‖ in mere 30 years.
Tu Mu 杜牧 wept, writing that the people who ―dared not talk but dared fume‖254 finally
united to topple the almighty Dynasty. Harriet Stowe quietly wrote Uncle Tom‟s Cabin
(1852) to hit the public hard to end slavery. Katharine Graham, the matriarch of Washington
Post, stirred up public opinion to pull down President Nixon.255 Written communication
shapes the public to change the world. Seemingly powerless, public opinion makes history to
revolutionize the world.
Communicated public opinion makes democracy in vogue today; the dictator‘s first task
after conquest is to muzzle writers on paper that fires no shots, for writing stirs up people to
fire dictators. Writing on the situation reveals thinking in the situation, its culture. Writing
expresses culture to shape it, as grammar follows writing to guide it.
If writing revolutionizes the world, powerful indeed is writing across cultures, writing
China in English, that shapes an intercultural world. Jolted by English translation to realize
itself as allusive, Chinese culture can strive to clarify its thinking as the West superbly does;
jolted by revealing Chinese thinking as concrete, the West can sensitize its analytical clarity
as flexuously to actuality as China does.
Writing China in English inter-shapes participant cultures; describing the Chinese
thinking in English sensitivity, this section initiates their inter-writing in appreciative
intercultural revealing. It is an essential step to world self-shaping, to prescribe and produce
world concord. Thus China and the West must inter-write to inter-grasp to interculture.
Our common destiny hangs on this thread of inter-writing into West-China togetherness,
where family-differences thrive in ―family resemblance‖256 of humanity. A language reveals a
life-style, a culture, to shape it. Writing shapes the writer; inter-writing inter-shapes us all in
interculture. ―Writing China in English‖ frames China to frame the West, to shape both
cultures. We have no writing-in-general; a thousand miles of interculture-walks257 start at our
feet,258 writing China in English to inter-shape, to let our Global Family thrive today.

254 不敢言而敢怒.
255 This Chinese ―fatuous doctrine‖ is recorded in Classic of History 書經 II. 10a and was quoted by Mencius
(5A5). On the Classic of Poetry 詩經, see Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs, NY: Grove Press, 1996,
Bernhard Karlgren, The Book of Odes, Stockholm Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950, and Wai-lim Yip
葉威廉, ed. and tr., Chinese Poetry, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 31-33. Tu Mu‘s 杜牧
(803-852) elegy of ―Prose-poem on the O-p‘ang Palace (阿房宮賦)‖ drips bloody pathos (see 古文觀止
[among others, 蘇石山編著, 高雄麗文文化公司, 1995, pp. 604-610]). On Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-
1896) see Ian Ousby, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Cambridge University Press, 1995,
pp. 909-910. One third of Newsweek, July 30, 2001, is on Katharine Graham whose picture is on its cover.
256 This section has interculturally extended Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s ―family resemblance.‖ (Philosophical
Investigations, Third Edition, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, NY: Macmillan, 1958, Section 67, p. 32e)
257 ―World walks‖ is in plural because interculture ―double walks‖ 兩行 (Chuang Tzu, 2/40).
258 ―A thousand miles of walk begins underfoot,‖ said Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching, 64.
174 Kuang-ming Wu

STORYTELLING IN CHINA AND IN THE WEST

Inter-writing of writing China in English is not just a translation of texts, deciphering
what the texts say. We have a job to do on the meaning-level.
First, we can explicate the Chinese mode of storytelling. (a) The Classic of Mountains
259
and Oceans 山海經 is the oldest extant history in China as its comprehensive worldview,
in the form of storytelling. (b) Wang Kuo-wei‘s 王國維 Comments on Words among People
人間詞話 is an aesthetic underpinning of storytelling. (c) Helped by the two that typify
Chinese storytelling, we can survey Chinese Classics.
Then, we compare such Chinese style of storytelling with the Western by taking Alice in
260
Wonderland and its philosophical development by Gilles Deleuze, comparing such with
Socrates-Plato‘s use of myths in thinking. How analytical Aristotle relates to such Socrates
and Plato interests us.
Thirdly, having discerned what these two types, Chinese and Western, of storytelling are,
we now think about (a) what all this storytelling means, (b) and why, (c) and what
significance storytelling in general has. This is a fascinating theme where truly hermeneutic
261
thinking comes to its own! (c) The vital significance of storytelling emerges here. A person
is made of stories always ready to tell, to weave out the continuity of one‘s integrity; to lose
262
one‘s story is to lose oneself, to be sick with radical sickness of self-loss.
One‘s story is made of one‘s communal stories, local gazettes, prejudices, customs and
conventions, all constituting local air and style of living. A community is gone when its
stories are gone. The community‘s stories are part of a group of stories called ―culture‖ that
typifies people in that region. People and communities literally live (in) that culture, and to
get out of culture is to get shocked, sick with ―culture shock.‖
Our world today of Global Village is an interweaving of various cultural stories to inter-
enrich and inter-cultivate. This is life; life is a story of inter-cultivation of cultural life-stories.
But then what is this ―intercultured world‖ that our inter-writing creates? It is our living and
lived milieu. What does ―milieu‖ mean? Here, surprisingly, storytelling also guides us to
understand this fundamental query. This query is what we live for. We now consider this
fascinating theme, and we hope this consideration helps enhance life.

259 袁珂校注, 山海經校注, 臺北里仁書局, 民93. Anne Birrell, translated with an introduction and notes, The
Classic of Mountains and Seas, London: Penguin Books, 1999.
260 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, tr. Mark Lester et al., ed. Constantine V. Boundas, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1990.
261 The so-called ―history of ideas‖ all too often ends in the first two levels of pure rehearsal and report. This is a
truncated history, lacking in meaning-dialogue. Sadly, the so-called ―Chinese philosophy‖ all too often ends
up at just this exegetical/descriptive level.
262 Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, NY: Summit Press, 1970.
Chapter 5

MILIEU OUR LIFEWORLD

We note that Heidegger derives his neologisms from everyday phrases (Befindlichkeit as
related to ―wie befinden Sie sich? (How are you?)‖). He finds in common words uncommon
meanings (Dasein). As a result, he infuses traditional philosophical vocabulary with
untraditional senses (Wahrheit, Sein).1
What is it that enables Heidegger to do so? Clearly, he sensitively ―reads‖ from our
common words what it means to be in a daily situation. Literally, ―wie befinden Sie sich?‖
means ―How (do) you find yourself?‖ that is, ―What is your situation-in-which you find
yourself to be as you are?‖ This situation-in-which he calls ―Befindlichkeit.‖2 Then, he
pursues what such a ―situation‖ means in the most general sense. Situation is where we are
situated, and this ―where‖ draws his attention. He calls it ―Dasein,‖ literally, ―being-there.‖
From Dasein he sees Sein, ―being,‖ a favorite of traditional philosophy, which sadly pursues
it theoretically, not in the way Heidegger pursues, in terms of daily ongoing.
We agree with Heidegger on all this so far here,3 and think ―milieu‖ is the situation-in-
which we are. Milieu is what enables us to find ourselves as we are. However, pursuing
―milieu‖ as ―Befinlichkeit,‖ Heidegger pursues in a traditional philosophical manner he said
we should not engage in, to result in an impossible complexity foreign to living actuality that
is simple and deep.
Instead, we will steadfastly stay in our daily ordinary milieu to understand ―milieu.‖ We
begin and stay with living-with-kids, our primal life-milieu; it is what Heidegger has
forgotten, to commit the crime of Vergessenheit (forgottenness) himself. Heidegger‘s way is
one way to think on actuality. We go another way, to consider instead twofold life-thinking,
time-thinking and space-thinking, storytelling rhymed with milieu, and milieu self-ed vs.
milieu self-less. All this is ―pursued‖ in the common ordinary life-context, our life-milieu.

1 This is my extrapolation from Joan Stambaugh‘ sensitive comments in her translation of Martin Heidegger: Being
and Time, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, ―Translator‘s Preface,‖ p. xiii.
2 And so, to render ―Befindlichkeit‖ as ―attunement‖ may have stretched too far from the original meaning-setting.
3 Heidegger is cited here again in a context different from though related to previous one. Previously he was cited
for his coming-home to actuality without coming home to it; now we cite him for considering milieu in a
formidable unnatural way.
176 Kuang-ming Wu

DAWN, KIDS, STORY

Jean-Paul Sartre, a great storyteller, said, ―a man is always a teller of stories‖ and lives
4
(in) his stories that coherently connect sporadic random life-events. Sartre may have thought
such storytelling a self-deception, but his very description is a story. He took self-deception to
be part of human nature, but storytelling as ―deception‖ is loaded, meaningful only by
assuming that he knows what is real, while ―what is really the case‖ is meaningful only in
terms of a story. Here in this existential self-reference, ―self-deception‖ is impossible.
Thus, Sartre may not have realized how radically and penetratingly true his
characterization of humanity is, despite himself, despite his self-recursive contradiction.
5
Norman Mailer stresses the importance of storytelling for two reasons, negative and positive.
Negatively, fiction is not different from nonfiction; they are ―all fiction.‖ He continued,

Working on ―The Executioner‘s Song (1979),‖ I wanted it to be as accurate as I could

possibly make it. And yet, when I was done, a couple of major figures in it were unhappy . . .
―That‘s not me.‖ So I thought, all right, it is a novel. I think it‘s very good to get rid of the
notion that because you‘ve accumulated some facts, therefore you‘re factual.

6
To say that a mere collection of facts makes no ―factual story‖ means that factual or no,
all stories are stories, that is, made up, fictive.
Positively, he said we need stories to make sense of life-absurdities, to relieve ourselves
from crippling ourselves.

We tell ourselves stories in order to make sense of life. Narrative is reassuring. There are
days when life is so absurd, it‘s crippling—nothing makes sense, but stories bring order to the
absurdity. Relief is provided by the narrative‘s beginning, middle and end.

We must then explore how pervasive in human life storytelling is and should be, and
how, in fact, storytelling constitutes human life itself. This fact is no more clearly seen than
among kids who mirror our primal and authentic self. Bedside stories put kids to sleep; kids
always play stories in their life, always pretending to be characters in stories they love and
literally becoming these characters. Kids live in stories and live stories. Stories nourish them
in every way. They grow in stories; likewise, we continue to grow story-wise.
Someone may object, ―(a) History our life-story is quicksand that keeps changing
senselessly, and (b) our storytelling is simply our arbitrary imposition of sense from outside.
History is arbitrary.‖ Our answer is simple. Arbitrary or not, we are part of history, history in
the making, and our stories made out of events give sense to events to make them into

4 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, NY: New Directions, 1964, pp. 56-59. This was his virgin novel, and was justifiably a
great hit when it first appeared.
5 Both quotations are from Newsweek, January 27, 2003, p. 64. The first is from an interview ―as he turns 80‖; the
second is an excerpt from his The Spooky Art published on January 31, 2003.
6 On interesting forays into factual-fictive distinction, see Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power, NY: Grove Press,
1958, and Lord Raglan, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama, London: Watts and Co., 1936.
Neither bothers to see how significant the fictive is to the factual.
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 177

7
history. We must not forget that the above objection is itself (a) coherent, and is (b) itself a
part of history. The objection holds only by destroying itself.
We humans are peculiar in that we are aware of our past, and our memories accumulate
to confront us as history and tradition. We have three options to deal with history. One, the
Enlightenment humanism and Thomas Jefferson tried to start all over anew in a complete
vacuum of the past, in a naked present. Revolt against the past is yet impossible without the
tradition—thinking-mode, concepts, language, attitudes—that shows how history makes us
what we are; we are the tradition on the go, what has been handed down from the past.
Two, being made by tradition, we can face it as we face ourselves. We can blindly follow
tradition, be wholly immersed in it, and we end up contradicting novelty and creativity of the
lively present, making an easy, if not lazy, tyranny of the dead over insight and innovation of
the present. Yet blind following is impossible, being opposed by ―tradition‖ itself as in
Chuang Tzu‘s celebrated story (13/68-74) of the Wheelwright. He pleaded with his lord on
how impossible it is to even make a wheel by merely reciting the dead scum of the past
leftovers.
Besides, what makes the tradition worthy of ―tradition‖ truly so called also objects to our
blindly repeating the tradition wholesale without change. We must ask here, ―What is it that
makes a tradition a tradition?‖ Answering this question is our third option of how to deal with
our past, to be creative within and with tradition.
Three, tradition means a handing-down of matters worth handing down, what is
excellent. So tradition is a verb, to inherit what makes a tradition to excel its past to deserve
8
handing it down, that is, what is novel, what differs from what has customarily been the case.
To say so prevents us from repeating the tradition as it is, because then we are not excelling
our tradition, not inheriting what makes our tradition, the élan of surpassing the past.
Tradition is anti-traditional.
Now, ―novelty‖ and ―difference‖ bespeak creativity that includes culture-continuity, no,
enhances culture-integrity. Tradition is that sort of creativity-at-work, that is, reenactment and
9
rejuvenation of past excellence that is tradition. Our present creativity is reworking the
10
tradition in the name of tradition. How? In four ways, says Pelikan.
One, we repeat what we deeply feel about a certain passages in old writings, in our ways
in ―recitation,‖ to make a ―mosaic.‖ It is history of our own, the tradition. Two, we interpolate
what we think are assumptions and implications of the texts into ancient texts, so integral to

7
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984, pp. 54-61. It does
not carefully explicate loose connections of scattered insights, but embellishes them with colorful quotations
from all quarters in the Western history of ideas, making this slender volume (only 93 pages including notes)
entertaining. Is this the way a book on history of ideas usually goes? From this vantage point, we see how right
Pelikan is when he proposes an interesting threefold distinction of tradition. Tradition can be an idol to be
blindly followed (medievalists‘ view), an arbitrary token that points beyond it (Jefferson‘s view), and an icon
that points beyond itself to history in which it is inherent. He rightly chooses the last option yet does not give
us a reason for his choice. We supply him with the rationale above as we respond to the twofold objection
above. Storytelling brings out the truth that tradition is an icon of history, for tradition-as-story is the
constitutive part of history itself.
8 Wu, The Butterfly as Companion, op. cit., p. 6-9, where H. J. Paton a traditionalist is quoted.
9 All this is my irreverent extrapolation out of Pelikan‘s insights harvested from years of his research, in The
Vindication, op. cit., pp. 65-82. I thus inherit Pelikan‘s tradition.
10 Pelikan‘s report of his experience in historical research (ibid., pp. 73-79) reminds us of the typology of the
Chinese historical commentarial tradition; sadly, he says nothing about why what he reported is historical
creativity within the tradition, such as that we are part and parcel of history.
178 Kuang-ming Wu

the texts that others may take as ―forgery.‖ Three, we see the texts as instantiations of general
principles; when we unpack what we see, and history comes alive. Finally, the tradition
provides themes and root metaphors, from which we select some as our directions, as our
frame to begin our life our way.
These are four ways in which history and its tradition live on; there must be some more.
In fact, if we say that history is all our subjective projection, then that subjective stance on
history itself is included in history as historical tradition moves on in which we are. Modern
11
science as a part of human civilization, and civilization itself, are various prolongations of
historical tradition that is our horizon, ever shifting and evolving itself in us and with us, as
history, and this history is part of bigger deeper history, ad infinitum.
It is thus that we are history; its tradition lives on in us. Tradition is our parental
inheritance that constitutes us, for us to go in to explore, and exploring such our legacy
explores and enhances ourselves. Thus it is that history comes alive in us; its tradition grows
in us, to grow us. History is alive through us, and we are what we are, vibrantly growing.
This is the way we all are, will be, and must be nourished. It is thus that the tradition
takes place, our partnership among the dead, the living, and the yet-to-be-born (Edmund
12 13
Burke ), or simply the fellowship with the great Ancients (China ). Otherwise, we would
have to doubt if fellowship with the invisible is possible, doubt if understanding someone out
there is possible, doubt if what I think I know is what I really know, and end up being buried
alive in the quagmire of solipsist skepticism.
All this we realize is a matter of course once we reflect on what ―story‖ or ―storytelling‖
14
is. To live is to tell stories, for storytelling connects what were previously disconnected,
even unconnectable—in journals, analects, essays, fictions, even in a ―logical‖ view of
―causal connection‖ among events, and event-connections are what we call ―history.‖ What
connects makes life, makes existence to stand-out of disconnected bits.
In fact, events themselves are ―concrete‖ because they are ―concresced‖ to appear
existing as ―events.‖ Events keep on ex-isting, standing-out of others in their own concrete
coherence among other concrete coherences, among other events. This existential concrete
coherence is human existence that storytelling accomplishes, cohering things incoherent.
We live by cohering things, for we cannot live as ―we‖ among things and events we
cannot make sense of, to wit, make coherent connection. To tell stories about them is to make
15
sense of them, to see/make some ―order‖ and ―sense‖ to live it, for without such ordering
sense we simply disperse into pieces, into decease. In contrast, kids grow by growing more

11
Pelikan even went so far as to say, ―I must go on to point out what Stravinsky himself never tired of pointing out:
that he could not have defied the tradition as he did unless he had first learned discipline from the tradition—
which was why he urged that ‗Bach‘s cantatas . . . should be the center of our repertoire‘—so that he saw
himself, and others now have begun to see him, as its legitimate heir and faithful disciple.‖ (ibid., p. 81,
quoting from Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980, p. 31.)
12
Edmund Burke, Reflections the Revolution in France, ed., Conor C. O‘Brien, NY: Penguin English Library,
1982, pp. 194-195.
13
This is a common saying in China, ―以古人為友,‖ that nourishes us in season and out of season.
14
I had some intuitive reflections on story and storytelling in The Butterfly as Companion, op. cit., p. 506 (―story‖
in Index). I explore here the storytelling aspect of/in life.
15
All this description of events and their connections (and connotations) is called ―history.‖
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 179

and more coherent on more and more events, and they cohere things and connect events by
telling stories. No wonder kids simply love stories.
The reason is not far to seek. Storytelling creates a coherent order, and stories thus
created are the contextual order in which we live, move and have our being. Story is neither
true nor false, but that in and by which truth and falsehood make sense, the context and milieu
of life‘s relevance, justification, and efficacious meaning.
―Culture‖ is a composite of such stories, and all this shifts as our sense of relevance,
justification, and efficacy changes, and our culture and stories determine our sense itself. All
this is complex beyond us, since our very sense of decency and rightness that serves to
understand things is enwrapped in culture and stories. We cannot understand that by which
we understand. This is why the violent word ―revolution‖ is often used to express the shift of
16
paradigms, as Kuhn and Feyerabend did in the sphere of science.
We tell stories to fulfill our aspiration to comprehensive precision. Crucially, precision
tends to limitation to lose things; comprehensiveness tends to being loose in order to lose
nothing. Combined, we have ―The Heavenly Net wide, coarse-meshed yet not leaking,‖ as
Lao Tzu (73) said, Story fulfills our twofold incompatible aim by being both open and
coherent. A story can be freely added, twisted, and/or abridged, and yet it is so coherent that
nothing is allowed to deviate from its coherent structure without changing the structure
17
itself. The structure (story) changes with changes in actuality.
This is story-thinking. In this wide sense of the ―story,‖ no human construction is no-
18
story. We bravely sing ―Song of Myself‖ in ―the Open Road‖ among the ―Leaves of Grass,‖
19 20
to ―sing the world‖ with ―Song of the Lark‖ for a little girl. How? Well, our words have
21
stories of their lives, ―etymologies,‖ to tell. A person‘s sanity and integrity lies in her life-
22
story she is ready to tell any time to anyone. Our life-story is our life-etymology.
Our ―logic‖ and ―arguments‖ are one way of storytelling, and the more numerous and
23
intertwined logic and storytelling are, the better. They come together to weave compound
24
stories of cultures, utopias, anti-utopias, and many other genres of storytelling. Ch‘ü Yüan‘s

16 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Paul
Feyerabend, Against Method (1988), London: Verso, 1993. Both volumes are story-books that story-think.
17 Cf. my Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 68-69, 378, whose elaboration the present statements are.
18 This great poem by Walt Whitman (1856) includes these Songs.
19 This is Maurice Merleau-Ponty‘s beautiful phrase in Phenomenology of Perception (1945), London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1962, p. 187.
20 This is Willa Cather‘s novel (1915) about a girl who braved small-town provincialism to rise to fame.
21 Cf. Oxford English Dictionary, C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words, Cambridge University Press, 1967, Owen
Barfield, History in English Words (1967), NY: Barnes and Noble, 2009, and Brewer‟s Dictionary of Phrase
and Fable, Fifteenth Edition, NY: HarperCollins, 1995..
22 See Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, NY: Summit Books, 1970.
23 John Locke (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [1891], IV:10, Dover, 1959, II:310-312) was against
having God‘s existence depend on a single argument (ontological) and for cumulative argumentation, as was
Basil Mitchell (The Justification of Religious Belief, Oxford University Press, 1981).
24 C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Cambridge
University Press, 1964, tells a story of the medieval culture of Europe. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Second
Edition, tr. and ed. Robert M. Adams, NY: W. W. Norton, 1992, has many utopias and anti-utopias. J. R. R.
Tolkien wove out of his funds of scholarship in Anglo-Saxon epics and folklores and medieval languages,
many imaginative stories such as The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), and Silmarillion
(1977). C. S. Lewis in An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 1961) tells us how to read
stories of whatever kind. Jung and Pepper told us of genres of storytelling as ―archetypes‖ (Carl G. Jung, Four
Archetypes, Princeton University Press, 1959) and ―root metaphors‖ (Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses,
The University of California Press, 1942).
180 Kuang-ming Wu

屈原 tragic poems, ―Ch‘u Tz‘u 楚辭‖ told and made sense of life‘s painful surprises and
disappointments that destroyed him.
Huai-nan Tzu‘s 淮南子 (18) story, ―Uncle Fort lost the horse 塞翁失馬,‖ exemplifies,
illustrates, and explicates Lao Tzu‘s (58) quip about life, ―Bane—it is what boon leans-on;
25
boon—it is what bane lurks-under.‖ Our scientific cosmology today is as weird as ―Alice in
26
Wonderland.‖ They are all stories to nourish us in story-sense through senselessness.
27
Even pictures tell stories; they are stories without words as music is song-story without
words. Story tells our life as ―songs without words.‖ Stories are songs of life in life. No
wonder Plato appealed to stories to open and expand on his philosophical horizons, as
28
Aristotle explicated stories in his Poetics. Culture is a network of socio-historical stories as
religion is of ultimate ones, and the inter-existence of religions and cultures is an exciting
29
story network.
30
A story is ―out of this world‖ within this world, literally ―the prose of the world‖ so
charming, stretching us to make us soar, yet thoroughly within our world of convention and
common sense. There are stories and there are stories, however. Some stories are sarcastic as
31
Erasmus‘s The Praise of Folly.
Some are full of technicalities protesting Western technical thinking as
deconstructionism, too knotty, twisty, viscid, and glum to swallow. Some others are congenial
to daily living. China is a culture of storytelling with many congenial challenging stories of
life‘s joys and frustrations. What structure, what ―logic,‖ does storytelling have? How does it
compare with ―kids‘ logic‖?

25 Philip and Phylis Morrison, The Ring of Truth: An Inquiry into How We Know What We Know, NY: Random
House, 1987; Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell, NY: Bantam Books, 2001.
26 Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll: the Definitive Edition (1960), NY: W. W. Norton, 2000,
was pursued philosophically by Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (1969), NY: Columbia University Press,
1990. Robert Gilmore, Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics, NY: Springer, 1995,
demonstrates how Quantumland is Wonderland.
27 A picture advertises a product or a political view. ―I want to share my excitement at . . . the picture of reality that
is emerging.‖ (Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell, NY: Bantam Books, 2001, p. viii, Foreword)
Hawking described his physics-―picture‖ of the universe in the story of his book that has many pictures; his
picture is his story. On theories of paintings in China, see 俞崑編著, 中國畫論-
類編，臺北市華正書局，民73, two volumes.
28 See e.g., J. A. Stewart, tr., The Myths of Plato, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960, S. H.
Butcher, Aristotle‟s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (1911), NY: Dover Publications, 1951.
29 The following volumes are noteworthy on this theme: John B. Cobb, Jr., Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual
Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982); Hans Küng et al.,
Christianity and the World Religions: Paths to Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday and Co., 1983); Peter Phan, ed., Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism (NY: Paragon House,
1990); and Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, Fourth Edition (Orbis, 1997,
2002).
30 This is Merleau-Ponty‘s inimitable phrase as a title of his poetic volume (1969, English tr., 1973), but used here
in the sense perhaps not intended by him.
31 Among many versions, Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, tr, Clarence H. Miller, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1979, is perhaps one of the fullest and up to date.
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 181

KIDS’ LOGIC, OUR LOGIC, STORYTELLING LOGIC

I once asked Tessie my grand daughter, age two, ―Why fish has no umbrella?‖ She
32
confidently said, ―‗Cause fish has no hand!‖ Her Mom was ecstatic, ―See, Tessie is so
logical!‖ Tessie‘s ―logic‖ disarmed mine into laugh, not agreeing not opposing, so invincible.
Now, this fact that we adults have no choice but break out laughing, shows that she disarms
(―deconstructs,‖ we adults say) adult pretense, rational convention, and cleanses our social
soot, heals our hustle and bustle to put us back into us. The child parents the adult, as both
Wordsworth and Freud said.
Besides, Tessie‘s storytelling reminds us of Marcel saying that Buber‘s saying ―I-Thou‖
turns the I-Thou into the I-It. Buber replies that ―I-Thou‖-addressed brings about the I-
33
Thou. What is at stake is how we say. Objective de-scription pushes things into the It;
calling to address Thou lives things in the Thou.
We ask how both these acts are related, or gather. We shiver at the ever-abiding
possibility of writing and even just saying to freeze Thou into It, while we cannot help but
write and say to direct us to Thou, to keep Thou from vanishing-freezing Thou into It. Look
at Tessie. In her eternal world of innocence, Tessie has no such adult problem. She is in the
Thou, to keep telling stories. She is always ready with performative utterances, storytelling, to
address events, things, and people. In fact, she is writing a ―fiction,‖ now in Chapter Seven,
and fiction is forever Thou!
The Israelites have three ways to say without saying the holy Name. One is to keep
silence in writing, simply to leave the space blank, then, to write an unpronounceable
Tetragrammaton, a four-letter word YHWH, lest God‘s name be pronounced to desecrate into
It, and finally to call ―Lord,‖ ―El‖ or ―Adonai‖ unspecifiable. These not-sayings cipher the
Ineffable Beyond.
Kids are experts here, being oral, perceptive, non-literate, and sensitively Thou-ish. They
cover mouths to show mystery or whisper a story of ―monster.‖ I used to be offended as a boy
when other kids called their fathers ―Dad‖; ―Dad‖ was a sacred Name exclusively of my
father. Music is here, kid-played, sing-performed as kid.
Kids don‘t have music-scores, we adults do. Scores for music are mere ciphers to
occasion it. We all live in the music-of-life, one of which is ―storytelling‖ that can be written-
down without contrived scores of ―emplotment‖ of Ricoeur, Here Thou joins It, telling and
calling, winking at each other. Here silence and writing/saying join. Religious scriptures are
storybooks of songs of life.
The above is, to think of it, itself a story told to embrace Tessie‘s logic and adults‘. Only
storytelling can pull off such a stunt. Obviously, storytelling has its own logic, for otherwise
we won‘t understand the story. Obviously, the story-logic embraces kids‘ logic and adults‘, to
make sense of both, to disarm us into smile in an unspeakable ―understanding,‖ to nod with
Tessie, ―Yes, that‘s right!‖ All this is thinking in story-thinking.

32 I then asked, ―Why don‘t fish say water is wet as Granny does?‖ She asserted, ―‗Cause fish live in water and
Granny don‘t! Don‘t you know that?‖ If I were to ask further, ―But why?‖ we would have been led into
proving God‘s existence with C. S. Lewis in his celebrated Mere Christianity. But that will be a story for
adults; kids don‘t need it, in all their being ―very logical.‖
33 The Marcel-Buber conversation occurs in Paul Arthur Shilpp and Maurice Friedman, eds., The Philosophy of
Martin Buber, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967, pp. 44-45, 706. Cf. my On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural
Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp. 223-224.
182 Kuang-ming Wu

TIME-THINKING, SPACE-THINKING
Here are four points about two sorts of thinking, time-thinking and space-thinking, that
makes possible my knowing, and making possible is the way of logic, especially the logic of
story-thinking. We usually think that two things cannot occupy the same space, and this is
space-thinking. We also know, however, that two things can occupy the same space at
different moments, and this is time-thinking. Our thinking is made up of the tapestry of both
sorts of thinking intertwined, called story-thinking.
So we proceed as follows. (1) We describe two sorts of knowing to (2) realize that
examination, doubt, and mistake are motions in space, (3) our ordinary knowing of the self,
friends, and history is time-immediate and space-complex, and see (4) how both co-
complement into storytelling. All this description—storytelling—shows that storytelling can
powerfully resolve problem in epistemology, in a surprisingly perceptive manner.
(1) Epistemology ―describes‖ the way we know and so amounts to a ―story‖ of the way
we think, which is of two sorts according to our twofold existence, time-existence and space-
existence. Epistemology is the twofold story of our space-thinking (space-epistemology) and
our time-thinking (time-epistemology). Here is a story of such comprehensive time-space-
epistemology.
34
I once explicated how China understands time ; here I consider how we can think time-
ly (as China does but without referring to China till in (3)), how thinking inter-shapes with
time, in time, and in time-ly way, distinct from but related to space-thinking. Both sorts of
thinking/knowing are our thinking in space-mode and thinking in time-mode, or space-
thinking and time-thinking for short. Space-thinking spreads logically-geometrically; time-
thinking echoes co-responsively in space and time. Each sort of thinking is distinct to inter-
enrich each without confusion.
(2) Three notions, interrelated, stand out as belonging to space-thinking: doubt, scrutiny,
and mistake. I must stand outside a thing to doubt and scrutinize it, and ―outside‖ is a spatial
notion. Since Socrates touted self-examination self-scrutiny, Western thinking has been in
space-thinking.
How about ―self-examination‖? If we take self-reflective acts as self-distancing and so
somehow spatial, then self-examination and mistake-deception are the spatial self going
―outside‖ itself. Is self-split in space impossible? Then we can appeal to time-thinking mixed
with space-thinking; the self re-calls the past, to examine the past self. Retrospection is spatial
transcendence in time, ―the self going back in time‖; ―back‖ is a space-notion.
This space-time mix to recall the past (for ―examination‖) amounts to surveying the past
to know the situation; characterization of the situation is a survey with retrospective
examination of what has transpired, ―past.‖ It is likewise with ―self-deception‖ and all self-
35
reflections. The self can distance itself, stand outside to deceive itself. Or else, self-
deception occurs because the self at first thought to be A, and later realizes, via self-
examination, itself as not-A. Self-deception is thus a version of retrospection and self-
examination, a realization of having made mistakes.
Examination of something is spurred by doubt on the possibility of errors/mistakes;
―examination‖ is impossible without ―doubt‖ to check to see if ―mistakes‖ have been made;

34 See my On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 342-385.
35 The same explanation holds with all self-reflective acts with 自, such as自欺, 自負, 自反, 自覺, etc.
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 183

doubt and mistake link to examination. They are all retrospective time-notions. Even Plato
36 37
has no timeless doubt; doubt is not an eternal Form but thinking-in-time. I must doubt
something ―there‖ in the past, at present, and/or already ―there‖ as projected future. ―Already‖
is a time-notion, ―there‖ is in space, and so doubt is a space-time-notion and a retrospective
act, ever toward the future.
Being about potential or actual existence of mistakes, doubt is closely related to
―mistake,‖ which is clearly a retrospective time-notion—for no one consciously makes
mistakes now, much less plan to make mistakes tomorrow. Instead, I re-collect my past,
compare what I took as ―A-before‖ with what I realize to be real ―A-now,‖ collates both and
realize; collation is space-notion, the self-now recalling the self-past is time-operation, so
38
mistake is a time-space-process, a retrospective process-act.
Thus, mistake is a mistake-realization that results from comparative judgment, requiring
retrospective recollection. Therefore, ―mistake‖ is a retrospective time-notion where collation
and judgment between collated items is a space-action. Mistake, doubt, and examination are
space-time action words.
(3) Now we can consider our ordinary knowing. Here are three case-stories: One, I know
I am hungry; two, I know friendship as mothers know their babies; three, I communicate with
my friends-in-history. Knowing hunger is self-knowledge that is immediate in time
(instantaneous) and space (self knowing self); friends mutually knowing is immediate in time
(spontaneous) and spread in space (friends here and there); historical knowing is spread both
in time (now, then) and space (here, there).
The first and second cases are immediate and instantaneous, but how about the third
case? It is as instantaneous, spontaneous, and situational, as the other two. Norman Rockwell
captures the moments of truth in the early twentieth century America; his paintings strike us
with our nodding smiles of ―Yes, that was as it was in those days!‖ Ancient and medieval
paintings in China convey as compellingly the milieus and sentiments of those days. Now,
Chinese writings are such paintings, and such writings are history.
I interact with myself constantly even though the psychology and physiology of self-
reflective behaviors are enormously complex. Friends chatter and laugh while sociologists
and psychologists devote lifetime to probing the intricacies of interpersonal communication.
We recall the past spontaneously, yet the phenomenology of recollection is only beginning to
39
emerge. So spontaneous/complex, knowing is difficult to know, yet its remains so simple.
Thus, all these three cases of knowing communication, with my inner knowledge,
intimate friends, and ancient friends, are all immediate, instantaneous, spontaneous, and
situational, despite their complexity in epistemological structure. To notice only their
complexity in doubt and examination of the possibility of mistakes, as Western

36 Both Augustine and Descartes seem to have treated doubt in this time-less spatial manner, even though both
argued performatively from a doubting act. Doubt is considered time-ly here.
37 Doubt of nothing in particular is ―dread‖ on which Søren Kierkegaard wrote The Concept of Dread (1844).
38 Plato (Theaetetus), Augustine (Confessions), Descartes (Meditations), and Royce (The Religious Aspect of
Philosophy) all treated ―mistake‖ or ―error‖ logically (in a transcendental, abductive manner); they all spread
spatially. Besides, they all used mistake as a launch pad to jump into the unmoving realm of eternal
comprehensive Truth, never stayed in mistake as such to watch its epistemological process. This is typical
Western space-thinking.
39 Edward S. Casey‘s study of recollection is 362 pages long (Remembering: A Phenomenological Study,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
184 Kuang-ming Wu

epistemologists have been doing, is to miss the simple spontaneous happening of daily
40
knowledge, the moment of truth of its epistemology.
Moreover, since we are wholly spatial-temporal, doubting historical communication with
ancient friends would lead to doubting the other two cases, our friendly intimacy and then our
intimate self-knowledge. We would end up being unsure of our own hunger, having to rely on
an outside testing that in turn relies on a testing outside of that testing, in an infinite regress,
to end up having no assurance at all—if we doubt historical communication.
Historical understanding is as immediate and instantaneous a communication as intimate
friendship and self-knowledge of hunger are, for they are all interconnected; we find our root
in the ancients as we are alive social and feel hunger. In short, incredible as it may sound,
doubting history or friendship denies self-knowledge and human existence. No wonder,
41
Confucius wanted to offer sacrifice to forefathers as they are present here now, and once
lamented, ―How I have gone downhill! It has been such a long time since I dreamt of the
42
Duke of Chou.‖
(4) We are naturally curious on how spontaneous immediacy could be complex. Let us
rehearse the twofold epistemology above. We are space-time, so our knowing is
spatiotemporal. The spatial yonder is an outside to soon consider. The time-yonder is the
43 44
past that takes time to come to be yet can be recalled in no time. So, knowing-in-time is
presence unfolding in my immediate consciousness, all at once, co-resonating throughout
heaven, earth, and humanity, present and past inter-enriching, ever ―sacrificing to our
forefathers as present here now.‖
All this tells a story of how the immediate presence of my self-knowledge to myself,
friendship to myself, and my historical communication to myself; totum simul extends from
myself through community to all history in the Infinite Community of the many in one and
one in many. The story pervades myself here now, to togetherness in time (history), in space
(society), and expands yonder into the ultimate of Heaven and Earth in History continuum.
The Yonder is ultimately the Infinite in a time Dynamics.
In contrast, my yonder in mere space is my outside. I must go out of myself to
laboriously reconstruct it to myself physically, logically, in order to reach there, whether the
yonder is my parental past, my friends, or myself. Here the so-called epistemological
problems prop up; space-thinking is the place for doubt, mistakes, and demonstration, and
―complexity‖ emerges in the time-world of immediacy.
What we must beware of here is twofold: One, we must not let this space-thinking intrude
and deny the time-thinking of the immediacy of co-resonance in ―knowing.‖ At the same
time, two, we must not be so naively locked in the time-continuum as to neglect the
possibility of error in it, to which space-thinking rightly calls our attention.
We must remember, then, that my immediate recall of the past can and should be checked
by others‘ memories, historical imagination, and historical evidence. My call to the other

40 Chuang Tzu‘s story (17/87-91) of bantering with his friend name-logician Hui Tzu, on how Chuang knows
minnows‘ joy of darting around ends in Chuang‘s simple declaration, ―I know it over the river Hao here!‖
41 The Analects 3/12; I modified William E. Soothill‘s translation in Confucius the Analects (1910), NY: Dover
Publications, 1995, p. 13.
42 Analects 7/5; this is D. C. Lau‘s translation in Confucius: The Analects, London: Penguin Books, 1979, p. 85.
43 And the future also, but to simplify the matter we consider only the past.
44 ―Experience‖ we call it, in retrospect. We are always wiser after the fact. This is why history is always wiser and
is the judge of all that has been done and happened.
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 185

whom I thought is my friend can be checked by that other‘s response. My awareness of

hunger can be a twitch in the stomach, to be checked by taking in foods, my other, to see if I
am really hungry.
All these appeals to the ―other‖ are my various reachings-out to the spatial outside where
mistakes are ever potentially present. In this other-me divergence of call and recall,
epistemologies in time and in space join; here divergence can appear as a presence of mistake.
This is where immediacy-in-time joins complexity-in-space without one negating the other,
but instead each complementing, establishing, and enriching the other.
Now, we see again two dangers here. One, we may be so cautious about potential
mistakes and their spatial checking as to miss the basic immediacy of time, without which
spatial checking will be lost in infinite regress of uncertainties. Two, we may be so convinced
of time-immediacy as to fall into dogmatism; epistemology-in-time is a will-o‘-the-wisp
parapsychology without epistemology-in-space. Space-epistemology alone in the West is
empty; time-epistemology alone in China is blind. Both must inter-complement to become
themselves, though tend to be in tension.
My brother Aliong emailed me, who urged him to be our family archivist, as follows.

―Preserving old mementos is good, making a museum time-capsule. But, in my humble

opinion, we are the torch (not things), to carry on the message, the love, the good tradition,
etc., to hand over to the next generation. For example, I often talk to Joy and Ken my kids
starting with: ‗Ama used to say....‘. Take care. Aliong‖

I e-replied, ―My dear Aliong: My hearty agreement with you can go in three points. One,
‗tradition‘ is living tradition; it is life-performance of ‗handing-over‘ and so tradition throbs
in and through us, as Darwin‘s ‗evolution‘ tells us that we ourselves change from the past as
we struggle to survive and thrive. In this sense, Darwin is an exponent of living tradition.
Two, at the same time, historical relics are obviously the fossil fuel that powers our living
ahead, powerfully reminding us of our parental past that pushes us forward. Thus our parents‘
past staring at us in their pictures, writings, letters, and the like, amply deserves careful
preserving. Their mementos demand preservation as our lives demand pressing forward.
Three, it remains valid, however, that as you wisely said, our living and lived tradition,
our practice and prolongation of parental legacies, are crucial; mementos are important only
as they help us press forward parental tradition. Sadly, we tend just to embalm ourselves in
their mementos against their true intention/meaning. This is the all-pervasive temptation of
historicism risking ‗rotten scholarship 腐儒.‘ Thus your affirmation is most apposite,
important, and necessary.‖
Now, mind you, we have described ―epistemology‖ as a story covering both how we
know the time-beyond and how we know the space-yonder. This ―description‖ is storytelling.
We have been telling stories of such twofold comprehensive storytelling, of which we are
made. Why do we desire storytelling, however? It is that storytelling gives us a milieu to live
in, without which we simply perish. Storytelling makes our home where we are born to grow.
The yonder storytelling-in-time makes is our home, our milieu. It is the logic of storytelling,
story-thinking.
186 Kuang-ming Wu

STORYTELLING RHYMES WITH THE SITUATION, OUR MILIEU

We must not miss the fact that telling stories is powerful because telling composes a
milieu inside us, making sense to rhyme with our milieu outside to live in. Storytelling is the
dawn of a milieu, the inward morning of life with myriad all. Again, kids know best. We must
go back to kids to learn again, but in our own adult way, for we cannot be otherwise.
The ―situation‖ can be ourselves, and can also be the milieu in which we are situated, and
they both in the end coalesce. The situation is the air that imbues us imbibing our style of
living. The situation is where we perceive ourselves, relate to others, adjust to adversity, and
all this is what we understand to be our purpose of life, to be our living.
Situated milieu imbues our value, our happiness, and helps us understand where we come
from (our heritage), who we are (our identity), why we exist (our purpose), what drives us
(our motivation), and where we go (our destiny). Historian of science such as Thomas Kuhn
says that even a scientist‘s milieu—worldview—influences what he investigates and how he
interprets what/how he investigates. Our worldview—milieu—tells more than other aspects
45
of history. Mind you. All this is revealed by storytelling. Let‘s continue stories in areas
other than science.
Sociopolitical art of ―governing a big state 治大國,‖ is to rhyme (―as if to cook 若烹‖)
with small people (―small fish 小鮮‖ as Lao Tzu says (60) for ―small people 小人‖ to rhyme
with princely person, as Confucius says (12/19)). This is the art of rhyming with the situation
of people-together (society), to listen to heavenly people 天民, to follow ―Heaven (that) hears
from (the perspective of) people hearing 天聽自吾民聽‖ (Mencius 5A5), as Poetry Classic
詩經 was thus gathered from the people by the Chou royal court.
Rhyming with the situation is to chime in with sociopolitical milieu, ―with nature (inside
to) harmonize with nature (outside) 以天和天‖ (Chuang Tzu 19/59) to obtain ―natural balance
天均 ‖ (2/40, 27/10). This is the only supreme practicality (實際) of the real Realpolitik. Now
we are convinced of the importance of fitting actuality, harmonizing with reality, rhyming
with the situation, our life-milieu. Our life consists in living praxis to rhyme with life-milieu.
What is this life-milieu, however? We turn to our kids.

KIDS, DAWN, MILIEU

Soft dawn glows around me to softly mix with birds chirping, lapping my ears. Dawn
opens out a vast tender field, all amber green, inviting me anywhere I go, everywhere I want
to go; riding on the bus, I feel ―I can do anything‖ as any kid would say. Kids are running,
and of course kids are the dawn.
Dawn begins anything, which means nothing is done yet then. So kids can do anything
while they know or do nothing yet, for life has just begun—and at every dawn I am a happy
kid. At dawn here now, ―anything‖ joins ―nothing‖ in the kids‘ ―can,‖ and kids begin
everything at dawn; nothing is here, they ―have to make breakfast from scratch,‖ as an

45 I freely rifled from Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr., The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate
God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, NY: The Free Press, 2002, p. 7. The book is a story about both men.
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 187

exciting camping program says. Kids are making things, things brand new ―that have not
existed before‖!
We are at the dawn of kids when we are on top of creativity to join nothing-here-now
with everything-to-come. After all, ―everything‖ can come only if we have nothing here now
to make way for it. John the Baptist was a creative nothing, a mere ―voice in‖ the fresh dawn
of bare ―wilderness,‖ ―preparing the way for the Lord‖ of everything.
Kids are the greatest in the kingdom of perfection, not because they have accomplished
anything but because they have not accomplished—yet. Their being infantile indicates they
are at the dawn to accomplish something, anything significant. ―Dawn‖ and ―kids‖ show,
shape, judge, and create life as a story does. Each explanation (show, shape, judge, create)
depends on and completes the other; we need not itemize, analyze, and relate them.
Every dawn is such a fresh story of my life, the story of being a kid who loves and lives
stories. Dawn is my life-story at its best, my milieu just begun to do everything possible, as
kids ―can do anything.‖ Storytelling accompanies the kid my dawn-milieu, me the creative
kid. Storytelling, the dawn, the kid, and new creation, they join in me, for I am the kid of
story-lover and story-maker at dawn.
How so? Well, to ask this question and to answer it is already to tell a story, which is no
story unless it is heard fresh every morning and every night. It can be ―an old, old story I love
to tell‖ or a new one unheard of before, and kids love both dearly. To tell a story is to create,
not preveniently but actually in our scheme of things.
A story is a spread of storytelling, and every time we tell a story we pro-duce a new life-
process, draw-out the ongoing of new creation. Life always lives, goes on living; storytelling
dawns, begins, and continues our living. Living expresses life, expression tells, and telling is
telling a story, a ―history‖ of how we have lived and what we will do.
―History has no end‖ because it is a story of us who keep on living since time
immemorial, and we must fill the gap of our memories by telling stories to create history
anew, stealthily, for a new history is still unknown to us as we create it. A kid was drawing;
his teacher asked him what he was drawing. He said, ―How‘d I know? I‘m not done yet.‖
Teacher then gave up on him, but it was the teacher who was hopeless. We are still drawing a
picture and telling its story; we aren‘t done yet. Our life-story keeps on telling, drawing us
ahead into pro-ducing new stories.
Mind you, I said, ―we‖ have not finished yet. When I die, you take over, and our story
goes on. That is how we write our story, as history, science, and civilization, and as epics,
folklores, and myths. Besides, old stories behind us are the dawn of new ones before us.
Bultmann tried to ―demythologize‖ the Gospel stories and ended up writing a new myth, re-
mythologizing himself, and we had better take him over—and we have just told that story, a
history of his conscientious Gospel-telling. Kids are here creating; they are our milieu.

SELF-ED AND SELF-LESS MILIEUS

―Man is by nature a storyteller‖ (Sartre); without stories to tell, no person, community,
culture, much less world culture(s) can live. Storytelling gives them life, value, and existence
188 Kuang-ming Wu

46
itself. Someone tells us, ―Take it easy, but take it.‖ We tell stories to take it, thereby to take
it easy. Why? Well, to take it is to take account of it, to tell a story of it. To tell a story about
it is thus to take it, thereby to take it easy, i.e., to be on top of it, dwell in it, and en-joy it, i.e.,
to take it easy.
Now, to dwell in it is to dwell in a setting, horizon, and milieu, to have a horizon-world
境界 and enjoy oneself in it. Wang Kuo-wei 王國維 said, our horizon-and-milieu can be of
two sorts, the self-ed milieu (有我之境) where things are ―self‖-looked, and self-less milieu
47
(無我之境) where things are thing-looked. This is one way to classify our horizons, from
the self‘s point of view, as self-ed or self-less. An American Indian elder, Alan Old Horn,
48
proposed another classification, in a story told by an anthropologist interviewing him.

In my desire to learn, I bombarded him with questions . . . he was patient with me (, and
then) pointed . . . ―You see that tin shed? . . . It‘s like my culture. You can sit back here and
describe it, but it‘s not ‗til you go inside, listen, feel it, see from the inside looking out, that
you really know what it‘s all about. You‘ve gotta go inside!‖

Alan proposed two ways of looking at things, from outside and from inside; Wang did
worlds self-viewed and thing-viewed, self-ed and self-less worlds. These four ways of
proposing two worlds show how self and things are entwined. It is essential that we exercise
all these four ways of relating to things to understand them. Disasters follow if we obstinately
adopt only one way, excluding the rest. In order to avoid the disaster, we must resort to
―storytelling‖ that sinuously follows and expresses these four ways of seeing things.
Our knowledge of two worlds is intimate and objective, and goes from intimate to
objective knowledge. I know when I am hungry and parents are pricked as their child is
49
pricked ; I can ―not bear‖ your pain (Mencius). That is intimate knowledge, both self-
internal and other-related. Such intimate knowledge is expressed/expanded into objective
50
knowledge that analytically reaches out, step by step, to the other-than-self ; this is what is
usually taken as ―knowledge.‖ Two examples from China and Japan show what objective
knowledge looks like when treasured.
Chinese thinking is ―concrete,‖ a clear lake whose bottom is visible but recedes as we go
in to reach it. The lake is actuality; clarity of seeing shows how ordinary it is; receding bottom
shows depths of implications, layer after layer, to awe us as intimate-knowledge is expanded
objective. Agriculture China and Japan traditionally engage treasures of the soil in, of, and by
which we are, on which we live.
Our life is intimate with earth, on which we depend; one handful of soil is one handful of
gold. This is the ecological respect absolutely essential for our thriving survival with Nature,
as intimate knowledge expands into intimate and objective technology managing nature, as
shown in ―§ Agriculture in Technology in Japan‖ before.

46 Wu, History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991.
47 王國維, 人間詞話, I.3, 臺北市三民書局, 民91, p. 4. Sadly, he did not elaborate.
48 Rodney Frey, ed., Stories That Make the World, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995, p. 5.
49 My son John told me that when his baby David was pricked for blood test John felt pricked and shed tears with
baby David. My student Péng-bûn told me that he and his wife cried when their son Tiat-sîn cried at having an
injection. I was in tears when told about both incidents.
50 Medical science and psychology as science try to objectively know the self and self-knowledge, objectifying
even intimate self-knowledge, and nothing else.
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 189

Such an engagement, cognitive and managerial, has two aspects to make two worlds, the
self-ed and the self-less, from inside the thing-shed and from outside. We responded that the
two worlds interfuse, and that storytelling most aptly expresses such intimate/objective
engagement. Japan‘s heartfelt stories of Taketori Monogatari 竹取物語, Hōjōki 方丈記, and
Tsuretsure Gusa 徒然草, and the like, poignantly exemplify this twofold world. All essays in
China and Japan are in a journal-form, sui-pi or zuihitsu 隨筆, ―following the writing brush‖
51
to tell stories.
Thus, we should judge the ―fantastic‖ stories of the Bible less with outside criteria today
of ―what actually happened‖ than take them as expressing the inner conviction that sustains
52
those who persist through adversities. ―The universally valid criteria‖ of truth such as
scientific objectivity are our ―mythology‖ so as to adjust to other ways of understanding to
inter-complement, by telling stories.
Storytelling liberates us from blind one-track mind; there is no other way to say things
than for the self to say, but for the self to say, as Wang did, bespeaks the existence of the self
in both milieus, the self saying in different manners, self-ed and self-less. This point is quite
significant. The West tends to innocently forget the subject-self that says as in an argument
that takes off with a logical life of its own. Storytelling also takes a life of its own story-logic.
The story tells itself as its characters move by themselves.
Naturally there comes naïve realism of selfless ―scientific objectivity‖ and philosophy as
53
seeing ―from nowhere‖ (Nagel ). Later, there also naturally comes a reaction against such
―self-less milieu‖ with self-ed one, as in ―scientific revolution‖ (Kuhn) and in ―theories are
nothing but sociopolitical and ideological pushes-and-pulls‖ of deconstructionism—nothing
exists except the ―self-ed milieu.‖ So, the West says, ―Self-less or self-ed, never the twain
shall meet.‖
China has the milieu-distinction intertwined subtle and complex as actual situation is. We
have three examples. The first is that great storyteller, Chuang Tzu who always straddles two
milieus of the self and of the not-self, always displaying the paradoxical character of such
54
straddling. A person turned as if he were ―dry wood, dead ashes,‖ that is, self-less, for ―I
have lost me. 吾喪我.‖ Here one who is self-less spoke, and speaking indicates a self-ed
subject (2/1-3). The speaker was in a self-less milieu to perform a behavior possible only in a
self-ed milieu.
And then Chuang Tzu told a story of ―Chuang Chou 莊周,‖ his own name. Is he here
self-ed or self-less? He is both, because he spoke of himself (self-ed), and he spoke as if it
55
were someone else with his name (self-less). ―Chuang Chou 莊周‖ may show how the
storyteller becomes the story he tells, by telling it. The self-ed telling of the story goes into its

51 This heartfelt intimacy/respect of knowledge can be typified as ―religious.‖

52 For example, such a seeing makes sense of otherwise quite an unsatisfactory ―defense‖ of the Book of Daniel in
Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel, The Anchor Bible, Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1978, pp. 103-110.
53 Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere, Oxford University Press, 1989.
54 This is perhaps how Picasso paints, to juxtapose two perspectives at once.
55 On two other implications of ―Chuang Chou‖ see my The Butterfly as Companion, Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1990, Note 10 on p. 414.
190 Kuang-ming Wu

56
self-less content, for here the (self-ed) storyteller is its (self-less) subject matter. Two
milieus here interchange (物化) in mutual distinction (有分) (2/94-96), lived and enjoyed.
Chuang Tzu ended up looking for a word-forgotten one to word with. Why? As we throw
away the rabbit-trap after getting the rabbit, so we throw away words, forget words, once we
got the ideas via words, lest words obscure the ideas (26/48-49). Now, as uttering words
requires the self-ed speaker, ―forgetting words‖ shows a self-less one. The word-forgotten
one, who is self-less, is really the one who deserves self-ed-ly to word with. The simple act of
speaking thus requires a complex blending of two milieus, self-less and self-ed.
Our second example is a tragic scholar, Ssu-ma Ch‘ien 司馬遷 (145-90 BCE). His
devastating story is well known. General Li 李陵 his friend was captured by the enemy. He
defended and guaranteed the general‘s loyalty to the Emperor. Sadly, General Li later
capitulated to the enemy; Ssu-ma was punished with castration. Instead of committing
suicide, Ssu-ma sublimated his indignation by devoting the rest of his life to writing the
sweeping legendary Records of History 史記, biographical stories of peoples, great and small,
good and bad.
Now, is his writing in the self-ed or self-less milieu? The answer is again, both. The
Records is self-ed, impregnated with the passionate judgment of the world, but it is self-less,
objectively tracing out the biographies of historical persons. The two milieus are inter-
implicated yet mutually distinct, for Ssu-ma‘s passion is not those historical persons he
described, yet it was his passion that propelled the writing.
Our third example is a Neo-Confucian Chang Tsai (張載 1020-1077). His ―The Western
Inscription 西銘‖ describes how ―I 吾‖ have Heaven as my father, Earth as my mother, what
fills between them as my body, what guides them as my nature, and so on. 57 Here, its ―I‖ is in
both the self-ed milieu (I describe all this) and the self-less one (the description is in the
cosmic perspective far beyond me). Here are both milieus fused in one (I in them, they in
me), though mutually distinct (I am no Heaven, Earth, or things between them).
So, to make a long story short, the West tips either to the self-ed milieu or to the self-less
one, forever unsettled in abstract clarity. Kant and Schopenhauer so influenced Wang Kuo-
wei as for Wang to notice the two distinct milieus; he was unaware of their complex
interweaving in actuality. Chinese writers innocently/faithfully tell the story of actuality that
is both self-ed and self-less. Wang, influenced by the West, jolted us to realize how
complexly inter-involved the two distinct milieus are, self-ed and self-less.
Let us return to two ways of looking at a shed, to lead to a third possibility, the shed as it
58
actually is. Two interesting points are here. One, we can neither have the actual shed, nor

56 This is a Taoist principle of education (see my ―Learning as a Master from a Master: ‗Chuang Tzu‘ in University
General Education,‖ On Metaphoring, op. cit., pp. 615-640). For Confucius, all education is education in
history, for we are educated on the past-―1‖ so we would return with our own ―3‖ (5/9, 7/8). Confucius
expounds the past for us to create (not create himself) (he 述而不作 7/1 so that 述而使作). Education goes
back to go forward educed enriched.
57
Such bodily organicism of the cosmos is intimated by Plato (the Republic, books 2-4) and Paul (1 Corinthians
12), but faded away in many ways. China develops it in medicine, cosmology, and political ethics, thriving in
Chinese medicine, feng shui 風水, t‘ai chi martial arts. 12 animals paired to our birth years, calendar, etc. All
these offshoots today show how the cosmos is my body writ large, and my body is the cosmos writ tiny. I am one
with Heaven and Earth, and I am born with myriad things in them.
58 We would not consider here the fourth possibility, shed as it really is. Significantly, it is difficult to express the
difference between the real and the actual in Chinese or in Japanese.
 Milieu Our Lifeworld 191

not have it. We cannot have it because the actual shed is objectively outside us, and we
cannot jump out of our skin of subjectivity or intersubjectivity, when we look at the shed. We
cannot not-have the actual shed, either, for subjectivity is senseless without objectivity, and
the very looking at the shed, from inside or out, already assumes the actual shed to look at.
The shed and I interdepend to inter-exist.
Two, amazingly, we suddenly realize that the very raising of this dilemma indicates that
we are already away from the realm of subjectivity, inside or out, individual or
intersubjective. At the same time, the raising of doubt/dilemma enables us to see that the
shed-looking, inside or out, is a subjective looking, ever with my own frame, mindset, and
horizon. Whatever the objective actual shed is, whatever dilemma we have about it, our
awareness of it enables us to look back at ourselves in doubt. We can be away from
subjectivity or in it, thanks to that ―shed‖ our milieu.
In short, looking from inside or out, self-ed or self-less, we are thus forever gently
wrapped in a milieu in which we are, and as we live there, we look out to look from inside
things. The milieu on its part quietly embraces us, while remaining as it is, motherly smiling
59
at us, self-ed or self-less. Besides, whenever we forget the air of milieu we breathe, we must
go back to the kids, and watch them how they live on to play growing, taking things as in a
milieu of their mothers in whom they thrive.

59 I explored a powerful application of this milieu-consideration in ―Realism (Fajia), Human Akrasia, and the
Milieu for Ultimate Virtue,‖ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, December 2002, pp. 21-44, and
―The I-Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking,‖ (pp. 1-60, 2007 December, pp. 1-68, 2007 June) in
Journal of World Religions, Dalin, Chiayi, Taiwan.
Chapter 6

PAIN

Being in a milieu does not ensure quietude; in fact, pain is possible only in a milieu,
disease in health-milieu, poverty in money-miliey. We must consider pain in life. This is a big
theme, and two Sections need to cover two aspects of pain. In this Section we consider pain in
general, pain and evil, pleasure involved, loving one‘s enemy, bottomless ―futility‖ of charity,
and global ethics. The Section that follows considers pain as ―akrasia,‖ a gnawing enigma on
social and individual levels. We begin by considering breaking our life-frame. Pain originates
here at frame-breaking.

FRAME-BREAKING
We must tell stories, for we must join the disjointed, weave the disparate elements in life,
into a story-web of sensible coherence, our ―natural laws‖ of our milieu. However,
―miracles,‖ literally our ―wonderment,‖ keep erupting to disturb us more than fascinate us.
What ―actually happens‖ that we innocently experience is very hard to pull into our expectant
1
web, our ―laws of nature‖ we painstakingly weave with storytelling.
Worse, disjointed elements arise not just outside us but also right from inside us. We
ourselves have an inherent tendency to break out of conventional frame—cultural,
interpretive—into a disturbing novelty, scary and exciting. Pain originates also in our inherent
urge to break our frame of thinking, our milieu.2 We create our own painful miracles that are
ourselves. It is miracles, inner and outer, that give us pain. Creativity is pain. Many geniuses
are in pain that creates.
This tendency seems ―miraculous‖ until we consider what human life is. Life is an
organism, organizing into a coherent unity that is itself. Coherence is an act of cohering,
pulling together different physio-psychological elements, and ―pulling‖ requires and implies
getting out of oneself toward elements different from oneself.
An organism ex-ists, stands-out of what it is, growing out of itself, which is to break its
own cocoon of the status quo. An organism exists by breaking its own frame, and human life

1 Cf. Richard Swinburne, ed., Miracles, NY: Macmillan, 1989, with a helpful bibliography. Swinburne should have
included natural weather, tornado, tsunami, as miracles, for they constantly disturb our ―natural laws.‖
2
Dialogue we need to make headway is an inter-smashing of our pet-frames; dialogue is life-revolution.
194 Kuang-ming Wu

is special in that it is self-conscious of its own frame-breaking. Being self-conscious is to be

con-scious, aware of oneself, which is to stand out of oneself to look back at oneself, i.e., to
break one‘s own frame that constitutes oneself.
Existence thus makes ―routine miracles‖ and is con-scious of it, existing in double
miracles, miracle watching miracle, yet quite routine, for human life routinely ex-ists self-
consciously. Now, ―routine‖ opposes ―miracle,‖ so ―routine miracle‖ is itself a miracle
breaking the frame of the routine. Human existence is by nature a frame-breaker. This general
observation of existence extends in eight implications.
1. Frame-breaking happens even in the most jealously self-guarding and other-exclusive
of religions, Christianity. Cornelius and Peter in Acts 10 are both frame-breakers. Cornelius
breaks the Roman frame and Peter, the Jewish frame—so as to meet in dialogue that surprises
both expectations, both Roman-frame and Jewish frame.
They underwent life-revolutions. They met and soon departed, no more we heard again,
to break their fledgling friendship-frame. So, the story of Cornelius meeting Peter breaks the
frame twice over, once when they met, the second time when they left. The Bible reports
none of their pain, though we can easily surmise they felt pain that may have stopped their
meeting again.
The incident cuts deeper. Our life is a mundane frame-breaker. Today is the beginning of
tomorrow, by breaking into the crack of dawn of tomorrow. We die daily to meet the
daybreak, again and again. This is why Christ has to die and to rise up again, to leave us with
―linen clothes‖ (Luke 24:12) of yesterday, to leave us to go ahead into Galilee (Mark 16:6-7)
where he gave us the ―glorious liberty of the children of God‖ (Romans 8:21). He gives us
our childhood-fulfillment over and over, one tomorrow after another. The pain is undergone
in repentance and rebirth as Nicodemus did (John 3:1-2, 7:50, 19:39).
We need not be kids or wait till birthdays to celebrate birthdays, yours and everyone
else‘s. If today is the beginning of the rest of our life, as every birthday is, and as every kid is,
then of course today, every today, is our birthday, and all kids are our birthday angels—in
fact, we are all birthday kids and angels, as we are kids of all ages to whom, surprisingly, the
Kingdom of God belongs.3 Isn‘t this announcement the biggest of frame-breaking?
―Children‖ are for tomorrow, in tomorrow, and of tomorrow. That is why kids grow up so
fast—into tomorrow, to which they belong. Kids are those who live, move, and have their
beings in tomorrows, whose God is the God of the ever Fresh Future. We are kids; we cannot
help but be kids of tomorrows. We are frame-breakers, breaking the familiar frame and
systems of today. Frame-breaking as life describes the Kingdom-as-verb, the growing pain
into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
2. Frame-breaking is no chaos-mongering, however. The frame is there to be broken,
often with pain of chaos, for the sake of the dawn of Galilee, the New Circle, the Frame never
breakable ahead, for ―Galilee‖ means Circle leaking nothing, breaking nothing. Jesus by
going ahead of us to Galilee may well symbolize that he is going toward the Circle ahead-of-
us, embracing us in tomorrow-circles ever coming at us, one day at a time.
His being ahead-of-us is his tomorrow ahead of our today, every today, to turn us into our
tomorrow. Tomorrow is out of our hand to break us into us-ahead. Our hand in Jesus‘ hand
takes the bread of the frame of today and breaks it, to look forward to cracking the dawn of

3
This saying of Jesus is so surprising that all three Gospels record it almost identically. Matthew 19:14=Mark
10:14=Luke 18:16. Cf. John 3:3 that surprised scholar Nicodemus.
 Pain 195

Galilee ahead tomorrow, to which Jesus, emerged alive out of dead yesterday and today, has
gone ahead of us, beckoning us with our forefathers and foremothers ahead of us.
Jesus said, ―I will not sup with you till that Day,‖ that glorious Tomorrow forever ahead
and unreachable (when tomorrow arrives, it is ―tomorrow‖ no more), yet we keep celebrating
the Lord‘s Supper today. We celebrate the tomorrow-Supper by breaking today‘s bread,
breaking its ―Last‖ Supper, again and again. Tomorrow breaks into today by breaking today,
and tomorrow does not break. We break today toward tomorrow beyond breaking.
―Exciting painful changes are on your way,‖ our today whispers. Our today changes to
break today, and breaking is pain. ―Vanity of vanity, all is vanity,‖ for all that exists today
breaks in pain toward tomorrow that exists not—yet. Our ―vanity‖ of today changes with the
―winds‖ of tomorrow that we ―grasp‖ today. Our today breaks in vanity to catch the wind of
tomorrow, in vain, that blows through today. Catching the winds in vain is pain; catching
tomorrow‘s winds today is to go on living ahead now, and being ahead now is tensed, pain.
3. Ancient Heraclitus‘ ―All flows‖ is our science‘s ―evolution‖ today that is science. Our
science may not have realized, that it must itself evolve to evolve out of itself, deconstruct
itself, breaking its own frame, shifts its paradigm repeatedly, in order to ex-ist, to stand-out of
dissipating today. Such self-shift is inherent in science. Science has to be beyond science, into
the future. Kuhn did not elaborate on the significance of his discovery that science is
4
paradigm-revolution; Feyeraband did. Science beyond science is our god beyond god, the
beyond-now to which we grow.
Sadly, however, science has been framing itself in the ―past‖ in causal nexus. Science
theorizes and experiments on the premise of ―as in the past, so in the future.‖ It must break
that scientific frame of the past into the new ―science of the future.‖ The net of science must
be the net of the future, forever casting ahead of itself, forever evolving out of itself. Science-
sense must break into nonsense—wavicle, time-warp—to make sense of itself, only to break
into further nonsense, and further, and the process of self-evolution goes on. Evolution is
revolutionary nonsense of today. Science is beyond science.
4.‖Frame‖ expresses itself in theoretical systematization, unfit to express tomorrow, as
dramatically shown in otherwise refreshing Nicola Abbagnano (b. 1901), a sensitive thinker
who seriously devotes himself to the notion of ―possibility.‖ To him, possibility is not
Aristotle‘s ―potentiality‖ necessitated in determined actuality, nor is it Avicenna‘s
―contingency‖ that is necessary on account of the other.
Even existentialism defeats itself, for it either foredooms human projections to failure,
reducing possibility to impossibility (early Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers), or negates existence by
turning human possibilities into potentialities necessarily destined to succeed in the end ever
out of reach (Marcel, Lavelle, Le Senne). All thinkers in the West, then, propose ―impossible
possibilism,‖ in contrast to Abbagnano‘s radical ―possible possibilism.‖
All this is so refreshing, yet two hesitations remain, on possibility and on actuality. One,
this is pure ―possible possibilism‖ cut off from actuality. Nor does it exist, for possibility does
not-yet-exist, to wit, does not-exist. Possibility can exist only in relation to actuality that does
exist, what actually exists as the projected future or as an envisioned ideal—yet none of it
exists now. Possibility does not exist; he catches nothing, in vain.
Two, actuality on its part is not just dead determined state of being, but goes on
actualizing. Actuality as the end-of-possibility is endless; it is an endless actualizing process.

4 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (1988), London: Verso, 1993.

196 Kuang-ming Wu

What exists now is infused with what-comes-to-be, the future, and what-ought-to-be, an ideal.
Actuality is meaningful only in relation to projected possibility, in the future, in our ideal.
Possibility and actuality inter-depend to inter-occur as verbs, in one, yet inter-differing. These
two hesitations elude Abbagnano in the heat of controversies; his thinking remains
undeveloped as staid ―possible possibilism.‖
As a theoretical thrust, a reasonable vision of actuality, Abbagnano‘s ―possibility‖ opens
out a new refreshing horizon to the free future, only sadly to get mired and lost in
controversies today with other existing views in the Western arena, to turn into a finished
product of a pure theoretical system, without developing further on what that horizon of
possibility amounts to. Theoretical thrust eludes logical systematic roundup, as Hegel‘s
―moving logic‖ ended in locking in an immovable system.
5
Worse, sadly, few thinkers in the West even took note of Abbagnano. Is it because he is
not dialectical enough to see the unity of opposition between possibility and potentiality or
contingency, or perhaps his possibility-nisus to the free future is foreign to the West‘s
systematizing penchant? After all, breaking the system-frame is a Western anathema, too
6
painful to take note of. Did Abbagnono take note of the pain of frame-breaking inherent in
7
possibility? What is his philosophy of pain of possibility?
5. ―What is the structure of such frame-breaking quite unstructured, the making of
8
nonsense that makes new sense?‖ It is metaphoring as storytelling. Storytelling is the
―milieu‖ where broken frames thrive together. Story breaks to join. Let me explain. The
exciting rub lies in the connection between metaphor and storytelling.
―Metaphor‖ is the creative process of making the strange into the familiar, to make the
new Family of family differences. The most radical of differences is enemy, demanding to be
turned into the most different of family difference. Incredibly this is precisely what Jesus said
(―enemies are your family‖) and did (―Father forgive them (crucifiers), for they know not
9
what they do‖).
The Family is the milieu where we live together at home. We simply must take enemies
in, to rid of their threat to destroy the family-milieu we need to live in, to live on together.
Enmity must be turned into family difference, and the ―turning‖ is painful struggle, as Jesus
did in mortal pain on the cross.
Now ―milieu‖ is that-family-in-which the I-It and the I-Thou emerge to coexist.
Description covers the I-It; invocation conveys the I-Thou. Sadly, Buber who proposed both
I-Thou and I-It missed I-Milieu, so he had to put I-animals just below I-Thou (in a twilight
zone) and I-God as forever entrenched above I-Thou (the Eternal Thou). They may well be as

5 Abbagnano‘s writings in his Italian language were mostly un-translated into English. I got his ideas from Paul
Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, NY: The Free Press, 1967, I:1, and Antony Flew, ed., A
Dictionary of Philosophy, Revised Second Edition, NY: St. Martin‘s Press, 1979, p. 1. The only volume
completely devoted to him to my knowledge is Critical Existentialism by Nicola Abbagnano, tr. and ed. by
Nino Langiullo, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.
6 After all, it is pain to break things.
7 These separative queries are actually incredible in the West that tends to separation—breaking out of itself—since
the ancient days of mythical theomachia, men fighting gods, as gods fight gods.
8 I meditated on ―metaphor‖ as an intercultural verb in On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill,
2001. Here I take storytelling as one mode of metaphoring.
9 Matthew 10:36, Luke: 23:34. These are incredible sayings.
 Pain 197

10
he said but the whole picture is thereby blurred. He may not have realized that perhaps both
animals and God are in the realm of I-Milieu that makes possible I-It and I-Thou to emerge.
―How is I-Milieu a possibilizing thrust?‖
Here we see the importance of storytelling. Kierkegaard said in his Journals dated ―15
11
April 1834,‖

You always need one more light positively to identify another. Imagine it quite dark and
then one point of light appears; you would be quite unable to place it, since no spatial relation
can be made out in the dark. Only when one more light appears can you fix the place of the
first, in relation to it.

―In relation to it‖ describes a milieu that emerges with telling a story about it, as
Kierkegaard just did. Telling a story of two beams of light combines them to let the relation-
milieu of meaning emerge where we can ―place‖ one light—one emerging event—―in relation
to‖ another. This placing-in-relation is made by storytelling, a ―mythmaking,‖ where we live;
our knowing is here. We call it ―paradigm‖; to change myths is a ―paradigm shift.‖ To tell the
12
story of paradigm shift, as Thomas Kuhn and Herbert Butterfield did, tells of the critical
change of paradigm-milieus.
Here a new milieu is ever on the rise, nothing definite is yet. At the dawning of a new
milieu, we ourselves are responsible for its birth, its determination, and its development. It is
quite inexcusable to sit back and do nothing but throw an epithet, ―irresponsible relativist,‖ at
Kuhn the storyteller of the milieu-shift and the milieu-dawn. Here what we must do is to tell a
story; it is what we can do for now, as Kuhn and others did. Storytelling brings out the milieu,
the milieu-dawn, in our milieu-responsibility to shape it further by adding to it and changing
it, by storytelling.
In any case, in the milieu, science describes and religion invokes. To confuse description
with invocation is chaotic superstition, for superstition is chaos. ―Storytelling‖ deals with
such superstition by combining description with invocation, and combination is not
confusion. Story-combination is not superstition that confuses descriptive It with invocative
Thou, to imprison metaphor in literalism.
In contrast, storytelling moves within metaphor-milieu free from literalism. Combination
is a storytelling, a metaphorical means of acknowledging the enemy-milieu to follow along
and manage our living. Science, religion, and myths are all stories. How does storytelling
push the myths of science and religion? Not accidentally we unravel this implication 5 by
describing how Christ made enemies into our Family. Superstition simply identifies It with
Thou; metaphor turns hostile-It into family-Thou with pain-struggle.
In ancient days, our environs our milieu was often hostile. Our forefathers had to frame
this enemy-milieu into their home-Milieu by combining description with invocation, to turn

10 See Martin Buber‘s murky ―Postscript‖ in I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, NY: Charles
Scribners, 1958, pp. 121-137. Its later editions in 1986 and 2000 change little of its content.
11 Søren Kierkegaard Papers and Journals: A Selection, translated with introduction and notes by Alastair Hannay,
London: Penguin Books, 1996, p. 19.
12 See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970,
1996, The Copernican Revolution, Harvard University Press, 1957, 1959, NY: Vintage Books, and Herbert
Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, NY: The Free Press, 1957. These volumes are just a drop in the
bucket of scholarship claiming the ongoing revolutions in knowledge, following Plato, Aristotle, Kant,
Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein, Hawking, etc.
198 Kuang-ming Wu

the enemy-milieu, their myth of hostile cosmogony-cosmology, into a recalcitrant member of

our metaphor-family. Christ did so with bloody pain; our forefathers did so in no less pain.
Today, ironically, our flexing of technological muscle engulfs us in pain. Metaphor is story-
turning in pain, in bloody pain.
6. The above claim amounts to taking all our thinking as storytelling. Our query then is
what counts as no-story. The answer is, a sheer brute happening not even recognized as
―fact.‖ A quotation from Kierkegaard a while back is relevant here. To place an unintelligible
beam of light in relation to another, and telling such a story, throws an intelligible light to
both beams.
Doing so brings the no-story brute happenings into a meaningful milieu. Once the story
enables us to recognize a happening as a ―fact,‖ it in turn tells a new story of what has-been-
made as fact, for a ―fact‖ means ―what has been made,‖ to acquire a meaning as ―fact,‖ and
such meaning makes a new story in turn.
The new story may be the same as the first one that enables events to emerge as
meaningful, but they differ in significance. The first story is a prospective project; the second
is a retrospective history. In any case, where there is awareness there is story-making, which
makes for the life-milieu, the milieu for human awareness—of the I-It, or the I-Thou, or both.
7. ―How does a story come about?‖ Let us trace the ―genealogy‖ of storytelling. Someone
utters words about something unfamiliar; she then throws her words, familiar ideas, beside
that odd object, as a ―parable‖ thrown-beside the unfamiliar. Thus words come about as a
parable, to ―co(r)-respond‖ to something in response to its call. When it is something obvious,
words describe; when less obvious, words allegorize (as Aesop did); when obscure, words
metaphor; and when general, words become a myth.
Furthermore, to whom is it ―obvious,‖ ―obscure,‖ or ―general‖? The answer is of course
―to those who hear‖ the words. Words are thus always calling on us to hear and respond. To
―call‖ for response is to ―correspond‖ to describe. Something calling to someone is at the base
of description. Description does cor-respond, typical of the It, while the Thou is called forth,
to respond. Called forth by something, an It-as-Thou, I cannot help but respond, and
inevitably write-down my responses, de-scribe them, and then with my description I call forth
13
a Thou to respond.
Thus something out there calls for someone to utter words, for someone else to respond.
So, words always invoke, whether in description (something invoking someone to word) or to
14
someone else (words uttered to describe to someone, or to call for response, or both).
Sometimes someone uttering and someone else responding can be the same person, and then
someone‘s words shape that someone. This shaping often changes the subject, and the change
can be pain.
8. What is the ―milieu‖ in which all this occurs? It is the surrounding world as our terms
and assumptions of thinking and discourse, the air we breathe and our bones and sinews, our
vital structure, to which our daily life supplies meat, skin, and bouncy colors. It is our

13 Maurice Merleau-Ponty marvelously describes this primal proto-scientific process of co-responding in his ―Eye
and Mind,‖ The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1964, pp. 159-190. See also my meditation on ―correspondence‖ as ―co-responses‖ in On Metaphoring, op.
cit., pp. 74-93.
14 Interestingly, Chinese ―name 名‖ means someone calling by mouth 口 in the darkness of the dusk 夕.
說文解字詁林, 臺北市鼎文書局, 民72, II:1154-1157. Words (names) describe the story of call and response.
 Pain 199

meaning-habitat where we breathe, move, think and communicate; it is our net/nest of story-
sense built by storytelling.
This life-atmosphere is our music when de-scribed sonically to our ears, our poems,
pictures, and literature when done visually on paper, our sculpture and architecture when
done plastically on a solid. Poems mix music with pictures and literature. Poems musically
sculpt days into our dwellings, and sculpture and architecture are our home, our poetic music
of pictorial literature.
They are all stories told, down-written, of the air we live and breathe, and such
storytelling is itself the way we live and ex-ist, stand-out, as human. Not surprisingly, when
this milieu is impacted radically by the unfamiliar that continually arises in daily lives, we are
existentially ―culture shocked.‖ We call it ―pain.‖

STRUGGLES IN REAL LIFE

―Life is an ocean of pain, for our dream is shattered everyday,‖ we say. Pain came as we
look back at the past that accumulates all shattered dreams. The scene changes as we shift our
gaze. Eleanor Roosevelt said that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of
their dreams, to turn our backward gaze to a forward look toward dreams.
After all, except for a few chronic cynics and pessimists, we live for the future, for
dreams and tomorrows often belong together to form an intertwined pair that never dies.
Dream and tomorrow are not synonymous, for future for some adults is fear. We nonetheless
must live on by looking forward to our ―better tomorrow‖ for which we dream and plan, for
planning is dreaming in action. China looks to the glorious past to plan for the future. In
China, the golden past is really the golden future. Kids also show us how to do so to live
abundantly in fresh laughter playing the tomorrow. For kids, playing is planning in dreaming.
Kids are pleasant, often even to themselves, and few adults dislike them, because they
are tomorrows with no yesterday. Kids join dreams and tomorrow, to live them here and now.
Since dream and tomorrow are not ―here,‖ kids pre-tend, stretch-forth ―now,‖ to play their
tomorrow‘s dreams today.
They live tomorrow today by pre-tending the future dreams here now, to play life. To
pre-tend the future here now is to stretch-forth what is to come into the present, living it here
now, playing it; it is life-as-game all kids of all ages play. The heights of adults playing like
kids that I experienced are the incredible team of Yehudi Menuhin and Stéphane Grappelli
who combine classical elegance with jazz abundance. They, in playful abandon, are ineffably
15
warm, comforting, and relaxing.
Let us put it another way. We are surrounded by the horizon, not confining but inviting us
to go on ahead. As we go on farther to it, the horizon there recedes, inviting us. It can never
be reached. It is there, never here, to keep expanding us here today. Gazing at the horizon
over there to keep going,16 we are ―unfinished‖ today, ever on our way.
Menuhin was unfinished in his ―todays.‖ Now he is silent today; his today has turned into
our today; his ―unfinished‖-then turns into our ―unreachable‖-now. He turns into the horizon

15 Menuhin and Grappelli Play Berlin, Kern, Porter and Rodgers and Hart, EMI, 1988; The Very Best of Grappelli
and Menuhin, EMI, 1998; Menuhin and Grappelli Play . . . , EMI, 1999 (Two CD set).
16
The sky vast above is the clear lake in front that recedes as we go in. The sky is the lake that recedes.
200 Kuang-ming Wu

himself, unreachable by us, ever inviting us today; now we are unfinished ourselves, as he
silently invites us to expand us. We are unfinished here today ever expanding, thanks to him
who is our horizon there surrounding us, ever receding from us unreachable, silently inviting
us today. We are surrounded by him our horizon beyond us.
We are always in a horizon to set a scene of peculiar scents, hues, senses, all in a peculiar
direction. Our horizon is all this scene expanding as we go forward into it; our horizon
surrounds us to expand us. At the same time, we can always get out of one horizon and enter
another new one. As we switch horizons, we realize we are ever in a milieu in numerous
horizons, for us to take a deep breath to soar high this way and that, as we wish.
Let us return to kids. Born of parental past, kids have no past, constantly looking up to
their parents their past who brought them into the world; they in turn inspire their parents by
constantly inquiring about what none has ever thought of before. Kids‘ fresh ignorance
renovates the world they have just entered; their whole beings revolutionize the world.
17
That is also Menuhin the kid! No wonder, Tully Potter sighed,

Menuhin was brimming over with musicianship, yet he always brought something more
than musicianship to his playing. He seemed to express and experience the music with his
entire being, so that his performances had an aspiring quality. No wonder they so often ended
up being inspiring as well.

18
Menuhin is kid forever, whose ―journey‖ is forever ―unfinished.‖ His entire being
performs the musical creativity of yesterdays as the eternal future of tomorrow. Menuhin
plays existence in kids‘ spontaneous play of the aspiring future now to inspire us all. Let us
repeat. Kids pretend tomorrow and play its dream today in daring joy; they live the games of
tomorrow, rejoicing in its dreams. Thus kids are the future, playing its dreams here now,
forever existing in joy and in dancing laughter of future dreams fulfilled now.
In the meantime, all sages and all religions skillfully urge us adults on, showing us how
to persist today in kids‘ persistent dreams of tomorrow, even though our dreams keep being
shattered today. Confucius kept going, confessing that he did ―not know ageing about to
come‖ (7/19); he is forever young in his world of constant frustrations.
―The Great One is one who loses none of one‘s ‗baby‘s heart,‘‖ says Mencius (4B12). It
takes kid‘s persistence to keep our baby-heart. This dream-persistence is kid‘s pain
persistently dancing today as tomorrow that conquers adult‘s pain of having dreams shattered.
Persistence is repeated here, to tell us to repeat it in actual life. To repeat is to do it every
today, to repeat every dawn we undergo.
Actually, childhood dawns everyday; it cracks the dawn of every today. We should
always carry with us our child in us as ―today‖ grows. As the day of life grows, however, the
unlimited dawn often takes on a sinister hue. The unlimited creative possibility grows into a
dark bottomless pit of suffering and of struggles in vain to pull us out. In response, we have
two thoughts in two stories, here.

17 This is an insert to a CD of Yehudi Menuhin playing Brahms‘ Violin Concerto, Violin Sonata, No. 3, and
Hungarian Dances, compiled and digitally remastered in 2004 by EMI‘s ―Great Masters of the Century‖ series.
18 Yehudi Menuhin, Unfinished Journey, NY: Alfred K. Knopf, 1977, and Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years
Later, NY: Fromm International, 1999. No one did ―unfinished journey‖ twice; Menuhin is a kid, indeed. Cf.
Ruth St. Denis, An Unfinished Life: An Autobiography, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1939. She dances her
unfinished life forever.
 Pain 201

One is on suffering in general that seems interminable; another is on co-suffering through

charity that seems futile. Both can be a glorious joy if we just let them be. Between the two
stories is inserted a little thought on what loving our neighbor could mean. We wonder,
though, which is more painful, to undergo pain or to describe it; it is a meta-reflection we can
forego for now.

PAIN AND EVIL

One of the closest of notions to human psyche and emotion is ―pain.‖ Pain is often taken
as synonymous with ―evil‖ to present a challenge to why Creator God as all good and
almighty allows pain as evil to exist. But can‘t we see that evil can be illicit pleasure, and
every pain is not evil? Pain is known by the heart mortally shot by ―Cupid‘s arrow,‖ parents
laboriously raising children, and painstaking effort at improvement, yet no one would dream
of accusing Cupid, children, and parental effort, all causing pain, as evil. Evil is not pain; evil
is illicit experience, pain or pleasure.
Pain itself is multifaceted, multifarious, and multidimensional. Maturity of human life
shows in sensitivity to complex shades and sorts of pain, and nothing is more powerful in
aiding us here than a good storytelling. Literature shows God as beyond our critique based on
pain-as-evil and pleasure-as-good. Stories freely use both pain and pleasure to declare God‘s
―mercy‖ to pass all our understanding, and show that, whatever happens, we can trust Him.
19
―Though he may slay me, yet will I trust in him.‖ Storytelling is a good access to God
all-good and almighty who is mature enough to ―personally deal with pain‖ for us with us.
Storytelling is good ―theodicy‖ in defense of the ultimate legitimacy of the combination of
goodness and power, precisely in pain.
It is precisely pain that shows convincingly, demonstrates beyond our commonsense
rationality and validity, the ultimate poignancy of the good, goodwill, and power unified
beyond our understanding, to strengthen us. Stories enable us to dare to ―know that all things
work together for good to them that love God,‖ that nothing ―shall be able to separate us from
20
the love of God.‖
This does not mean, of course, that storytelling is a cheap pep-talk of moral exhortation.
Good storytelling as a good in-depth history presents the pathos, all too unbearable, of things
as they are and have been, and happenings as they ―actually transpired.‖ These stories stir us
deeply, arouse us into heartfelt judgment, and force us, steer us, into actions that we deem
best as a result of such story-arousal.
There is pain and there is pain, as previously noted, and illicit pain must differ from licit
one. We can and must discern their difference by actually undergoing pain itself, directly or
vicariously via storytelling. Perhaps this is one reason why pain is among us, always,
everywhere, either to train us into maturity or to goad us to judgment, decision, and action.
Pain is the process of our maturity through which the ultimate unity of goodness and power is
accomplished, objectively in our undergoing of pain.

19 Job 13:15. This statement is so obscure that every version of the Bible has an ingenious rendering all its own. I
suspect that its obscurity came partly from our attachment to pain-as-evil and pleasure-as-good. I followed AV
here because it is simple and straight, not shirking its difficulty.
20 Romans 8:28, 39 are unintelligible and reckless unless we discard our hang-ups about pain as evil.
202 Kuang-ming Wu

Pain is a process of dynamic fruition of the ultimate power-goodness unity. In all this,
stories are crucial even in our actual undergoing of pain to weave into our awareness some
21
story-coherence, to give us sense and meaning, if not purpose, to our experience. Stories
cleanse us, empower us, compose us, and direct us to what is compellingly appropriate. Here
is no room for facile suffocating exhortation. Here is only honest reportage, full of passion
and compassion, to appeal to our bone marrows, to stir us into action out of depression.
Stories are news that stays news, ever fresh and gripping. This pathos in fact-reportage,
this good storytelling, shows and brings to pass, through our judgment, decision, and action it
arouses, the ultimate goodness-power unity—ever poignantly in pain. We partake of this
divine mission through pain—―Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. . . . Take
22
my pain-yoke upon you . . . and ye shall find . . .‖ rest to our souls in pain, yoking ourselves
with the divine to accomplish the divine unity-in-pain of power and love.
To see how, we tell stories about it. Telling stories about pain gives us pain—for a while.
Then, in painstaking storytelling about pain, somehow our pain disappears, all by itself.
That‘s the wonder storytelling works. It is thus that we see ―pleasure‖ in pain. We understand
through storytelling how pain ennobles us into joy unspeakable, enabling living on, not why.

WHAT GOODNESS/RIGHTNESS MEANS

―Good‖ and ―evil‖ appeared above in connection with pain. We must consider good and
evil before considering pain and pleasure in life. We all desire to be good and behave rightly.
What do goodness and rightness mean here? As usual, a story of life can help us consider
such important matters of life. Here is one from Confucius‘ Analects:23

The Governor of She said to Confucius, ―In our village there is a man nicknamed
‗Straight Body.‘ When his father stole a sheep, he gave evidence against him.‖ Confucius
answered, ―In our village those who are straight are quite different. Fathers cover up for their
sons, and sons cover up for their fathers. Straightness is to be found in such behaviour.‖

We are bewildered at taking these behaviors as ―straight 直,‖ but such behaviors do exist
that pass as ―right.‖ We could see that the first villager‘s behavior is right intrinsically, in the
sense that ―stealing‖ is wrong no matter what. ―Justice‖ judges the behavior as such; it is
―blind‖ to extraneous circumstances.
We could then see that the second villager includes the interpersonal relation in
considering the right behavior. Being the root of the Five human Relations 五倫,24 the father-
son relation looms crucial as the primary ―right behavior.‖ Thus Mencius (7A35) judged
legendary ruler Shun right as, in an imagined case of his father having killed a man, Shun
would discard his throne, secretly shoulder his father, flee to the seashore faraway where he

21 See Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, NY: Avon Books, 1981. Viktor E. Frankl,
Man‟s Search for Meaning, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006, and many other books by Frankl. These books tell
stories of ―meaningless‖ suffering to stir us upward.
22 Matthew 11:28-29. This is the sole passage in all Gospels, no parallel passages in any other. What this textual
fact means is another matter for meditation.
23 Analects 13/18. D. C. Lau‘s translation in Confucius: The Analects, London: Penguin Books, 1979, p. 121.
24 Analects, 1/2.
 Pain 203

would live happily, forgetting the empire. In all, the right is of two sorts, intrinsic and
interpersonal, and the good is likewise of these two sorts.
The two headings, intrinsic and interpersonal, open out quite a panorama of the
good/right. The intrinsic good/right has eight varieties. One, the first villager‘s straightness
reflects Kant‘s ―universalizability of an act,‖ i.e., an act that is consistently right no matter
when. Two, Euthyphro asserts that his behavior of bearing witness against his own father as
murderer is right because he follows the Greek gods25; he is intrinsically right on theological
ground. Confucius (3/17) also responded to a disciple‘s desire to skip sacrifice, ―O Ssu, you
love the sheep; I love the rite.‖
Three, the intrinsic good is felt so, says Hume,26 in our core. Four, it is Plato‘s ―health‖ in
harmony,27 a ―virtue ethics.‖ Five, felt goodness is Confucius‘ self-truthfulness (chung 忠) or
human authenticity (jen 仁). Six, it is Taoists Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu embodying Tao of
nature, to be natural, self-so 自然. Seven, it is Mill‘s ―high pleasure‖ for which happiness is
calculated; ―better to be Socrates dissatisfied than pig satisfied.‖28 Eight, Aristotle‘s right act
balances bounties (distributive justice), redresses damages (retributive justice), to Golden
Mean.29 All these are variety of ―intrinsic good/right.
Now, we note that both Mill‘s dignity in calculation of happiness and Aristotle‘s
consideration of restoration of justice border on interpersonal goodness/rightness. Mill‘s
maximization of happiness of the most people30 can be seen as calculation in interpersonal
dealings for happiness, and we see it to originate in the maximization of our intrinsic
satisfaction. Confucius‘ ―humanity, jen 仁‖ is also the humane31 best of interpersonal
reciprocity 恕. This is where his other virtues originate, such as rightness 義 and fidelity 信
that are interpersonal.32
Thus, we see how interpersonal goodness/rightness includes the intrinsic one, to naturally
flow into the interpersonal one. The intrinsic good/right has an abiding aspect and a dynamic
aspect, and both inter-involve, composing human nature. This is what is noble and tragic in
humanity, for the abiding easily slips into immobility, and the dynamic can quickly turn
irritating, and then interpersonal interaction turns pain.33 Now we are ready to continue to
consider pain in general.

25 Plato‘s Dialogue of Euthyphro.

26 David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1752).
27 Plato‘s Republic.
28 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863).
29 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.
30 ―The greatest number of people‖ is not a simple majority that stays as such, but a progressive maximization of
the number of people until the greatest happiness for everyone is reached.
31 ―Chung 忠‖ can also mean both fidelity to the self and loyalty to others.
32 This is why, when told by Confucius to thread his Tao into One, Tseng Tzu responded with faithfulness to the
self 忠 and reciprocity to others 恕 (4/15).
33 Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables (1862) is a dramatic case in point. The now-converted criminal Jean Valjean had
to contend tragically long with the police inspector Javert so inflexibly loyal to the letters of the law. We will
consider later the struggle between heresy and orthodoxy called ―democracy.‖
204 Kuang-ming Wu

PLEASURE-PAIN INVOLVEMENT
We instinctively shrink from pain in unthinking reflex to pursue pleasure. So, following
our instinct, Buddhism came to stamp out pain as bad, and utilitarianism declares that
pleasure is good and pain bad, that producing the most happiness for the most people is the
right thing to do. Nothing is farther from the truth in all of this.
Actual stories tell us why. The Cupid‘s arrow shoots at the heart, causing pain to make
love tender and true; no pain, no love. Exploiting the minority to produce most happiness for
most people is wrong. To have bad people suffer is right; to have them prosper in pleasure is
wrong. Bribery makes both briber and bribed happy, yet they are both bad. If the good suffer
and the bad prosper as much as the good prosper and the bad suffer, the first set would upset
us and the second satisfy us if not please us. All this shows how ―pain vs. pleasure‖ is
irrelevant to ―good vs. bad.‖
All this shows that neither pain itself is bad nor pleasure itself is good. Pain is a fact of
life, so is pleasure, and that is that; there is no ―problem of pain‖ that Buddhism, C. S.
Lewis,34 and many others tackled. The whole problem of theodicy (why all-loving almighty
God allows pain) and the Buddhist vision of life (how to get out of life an ocean of pain) are
misplaced and misguided. Pain requires sensitive storytelling to bring out its crucial essential
point, negative, positive, and factual.
Les Miserables is a great story for this reason; it should have been titled, ―The Poignant.‖
We would not be surprised if Victor Hugo was inspired to write this fiction by the Bible that
is immersed in pain, but the Christian Bible‘s relation to pain is much more complex than the
Buddhist scriptures that are no less dipped in pain. Buddhism simply wants to dissolve pain,
while the Bible uses pain to redeem the world.
We see how the Bible, the book of stories, tells stories of how pain, quite unpleasant, is
used by God for many purposes. Asked, ―Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he
was born blind?‖ Jesus answered, ―Neither . . . but that the works of God should be
manifested in him.‖ ―Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners . . . because they suffered
such things? I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.‖ 35 Pain is
unrelated to evil or to God; God uses it as a means to manifest himself as creative mercy, as
warning justice.
This point has two implications. One, it is God who uses pain, and pain is not
automatically evil. Two, since God who is just love uses pain, we can be sure that we are in
Good Hand. Pain is not evil but has a purpose beyond our comprehension, and is often used
as a means to manifest Mercy in Justice. Such is a twofold theme in so many stories of the
Bible that is the storybook of life.
The stories of Joel and Amos, to cite just two gems in the Bible, clearly bear out this
twofold point. Everyday is coming as the holy Day of the Lord, so frightening in his Justice,
so gratifying in his Mercy. Gratifying fright is too much for us humans, so we instinctively
prostrate in awe before the Day of the Lord.
No wonder Jesus ingeniously proclaimed, ―Blessed are you who are poor, hungry,
weeping, hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed for me. Rejoice!‖36 You are in God‘s hand

34 C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940), HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

35 John 9:2-3, Luke 13:2-3.
36 Luke 6:20-23 (NRSV), adapted.
 Pain 205

when you are in pain! Jesus draws the delightful aspect of the awesome Day of the Lord,
precisely when we are in pain we do not like.
Let us ask, however. Why all this pain? What does all this mean? Perhaps pain has much
to do with our yearning for homecoming. We all need home; nothing is more painful than
getting lost. How dreadful it is to lose even the spot on which we rest our soles! A culture
shock it is, dizzy, reeling, and nauseous, to be exiled from our familiar home; our fear of life
lost in death breeds a quest of immortality that we instinctively know is nowhere. Thus we all
go home to the Soil when we die (as in primal, Shinto and Buddhist faiths) or search of our
roots in ancestral history.
The Lord is Christian Home; the Day of the Lord is the House of God. We can tout our
freedom only because we are convinced of our home, whether in us (thinking we can create
home by our freedom) or in our parents (kids shaking off parental hands to wander out,
assured instinctively of their presence).
We yet could, however, wander homeless at home, in nightmare or in depression.37 All
this struggle of ours is in unconscious response to the Lord who keeps looking for us by
sending us pain to goad us back home, as the disastrous Day of the Lord. That is the Gospel
of Suffering (Kierkegaard), the pain as our homing (as Joel and Amos shout). How terrifying,
and how blessed, it is to fall in the Hand of God our Home!
So the world turns upside down (Acts 17:6) when the Lord is our Home that ―goes out‖
as our Shepherd and our Lady who pursue us, until He and She find us in woes as a lost
sheep, a lost coin, a lost prodigal son, and a lost angry older son. Our Father ―comes out‖ to
persuade us into the feast with sinners. Luke 15 is indeed our Gospel of Suffering of Home
coming after us, to turn our everyday into the Day of our Lord, in unspeakable woes and in
ineffable weal. Lao Tzu intoned (58), ―O woe where weal leans! O weal where woe hides!‖
For Jesus they are the same, woe and weal, for one is in the other, forever beckoning us home.

A FIG TREE, JOB, AND CHUANG TZU: TO SUFFER AND TO ENJOY

―How do we find our suffering way home? How do we suffer with other religious
people?‖ OK, here is one way to combine many religions to suffer with gusto, in four ways.
(a) Jesus scolded a fig tree to show that persons are wrong, ―out of season‖ or in. (b) Disasters
made Job realize he was under God, to become godly and good. (c) Genuine humans live and
die happily ever after, in season, out of season, says Chuang Tzu. (d) Such is ―religion‖ as
shown in these three tough cases.
38
(a) To begin, let us consider perhaps the least favored of Jesus‘ stories. On the way to
Jerusalem, Jesus was hungry and went to a lush fig tree for fruit. Finding none, being out of
season, Jesus said, ―No man eats fruit of thee hereafter for ever.‖ The next day they found it
withered. We often take it as his ―acted parable‖ warning us not to be lush outside without
39
solid ―fruit‖ of the Holy Spirit. The tree, however, could not have borne fruit out of season,
and it is unjust to make the tree wither because it does not bear fruit out of season. This
interpretation does not fit.

37 And God would come to look for us as his lost sheep, lost coins, and lost children (Luke 15).
38 Mark 11:12-14 and 20-21.
39 See, e.g., The Interpreter‟s Bible, NY: Abingdon Press, 1951, VII: 828.
206 Kuang-ming Wu

We on our part have four simple responses. One, a fig tree out of season satisfies no
hunger; a seasonal believer, as fair-weather friend, is a fake satisfying no one. Storms train
steady stamina and fidelity in all seasons. Personal character is shaped in failures and
disasters; we should bear human ―fruit‖ precisely ―out of season‖ (2 Timothy 4:2). ―Though
he slays me, yet will I trust him‖ (Job 13:15).
Two, being fruitless with lush leaves is deadly Pharisaism. Jesus said (Luke 18:11-14),

The Pharisee . . . prayed thus with himself, ‗God, I thank You that I am not like other
men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers . . . I fast twice a week; I give tithes . . .‘ And the tax
collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast,
saying, ‗God be merciful to me a sinner!‘ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified
rather than the other.

The Pharisee is not ―justified.‖ Outer good shows lack of inner good, in season or out of
season; decent acts touted instigate other‘s contempt and contempt of others. It reveals an
40
existential lie, a duplicitous person, showing ―white-washed tombs‖ that deserves death as it
already is. This is why Jesus acted out this fig tree parable to show us the gravity of not
bearing fruit of the Spirit, in season or out.
Three, we say, ―Poor fig tree! What did you do to that tree, Jesus?‖ and note that Jesus
then went into holy pharisaic Jerusalem to be ―cursed on the tree‖ as the dead fig tree was, to
bear our death. He bore the curse of the fig tree cursed by him. His curse was an act of
responsible love. Our question remains as to why Jesus cursed, however, for he must have
had good reason for its curse. The next point is what we have found.
(b) Four, good people can so easily turn so bad, for they often confuse pain with evil. We
41
all dislike pain, but our dislike does not make it evil. Let us repeat. Pain is one thing, while
42
evil is quite another. Pain becomes evil (Luke 13:3) or good (John 9:3), depending on how
we relate to Jesus to relate to pain. Pain can be good for us, and good people can commit evil
painlessly. Some concrete cases explain this unsuspected fact.
43
A well-behaved person can so easily despise others as beneath his decency. Contempt
is evil, coming from ―judging‖ others. ―Evil‖ appears by judgment, which belongs to God. To
judge ―pain‖ as evil plays God as Job did, another good man, to violate the First
Commandment, the human presuming the divine, the hubris condemned even in ancient
Greece. To regard pain as evil is the prime crime against God.

40 Matthew 23:27. The whole chapter poignantly describes in tears this tomb; Jesus died for it.
41 A basic muddle of utilitarianism is to equate pain-vs.-pleasure with evil-vs.-good. Aristotle perhaps originated
the muddle when he said that everyone wants happiness, even though he separated happiness from pleasure.
The damage is done. Common sense is sometimes risky.
42 Both are stories. In Luke‘s story Jesus tells us, pain as punishment cannot be used to judge retrospectively, much
less to judge others, and such equation and judgment are themselves sin that invites disaster and deserves
repentance. Job‘s friends poignantly represent this situation. Instead, John‘s story tells us what we ought to do,
to take action as Jesus does for the victim.
43 Lazarus‘ story (Luke 16:19-31) shows that pleasure can easily turns hellish evil. That nameless rich man‘s (for
we have so many!) daily meal in simple disregard of poor suffering Lazarus sent the rich man to hell. No
wonder Jesus wails over the risks of being satisfied in life (Luke 6:24-26).
 Pain 207

44
To realize this simple point must have shaken Job, who was a righteous man, as
admitted even by the devil. Pain led him to question with his unblemished good the ―justice‖
of leaving good people in pain. It is a ―good question‖ that yet exposes his need to become a
really godly man. How is his need satisfied? Let us see how the whole event transpired.
Struck by one terrible disaster after another, Job was driven to question God on the
justice of the whole setup, the world. In his question, Job himself stayed unmoved. His
―friends‖ talking with him so incensed his frustration; he finally vowed to stake his whole
existence on this ―good question.‖ Everyone was silenced.
And then God as the Creator comes to question Job‘s manner of questioning-on-his-pain.
Job then saw the terrible disasters that bashed him were in fact God the Beyond bashing Job
to shake him at the foundation, and must have compelled him to realize that pain consists not
just in disasters that are after all parts of human lot, as Buddha realized. What made Job suffer
was instead the ―injustice‖ of undeserved pain good people are made to suffer.
God now made Job to reflect on the assumption behind his question. Job perceived
―injustice‖ because Job (and his friends) assumed that no good people should suffer, any time,
anywhere. Such ultimate question and assumption are beyond us humans to entertain; they
properly belong to God who alone can ask Job‘s sort of question. Since Job did not create the
world, Job is no God, and his asking amounts to playing God, a sin of the greatest dimension
of the First Commandment. Disaster shakes Job out of his sin of ultimate seriousness.
45
Some people told Jesus

about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. . . . Jesus
answered . . . , ―Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other
Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all
likewise perish.‖

To callously judge others as they did amounts to playing God; they must ―repent‖ of
playing God. It is disastrously easy to callously judge others in pain, especially when one is
good, in pain or in no pain. Job the good man was driven by pain to play God with ―being
46
good.‖ God challenged good Job in his ―good question‖ to realize his prime sin, shaking
Job at his foundation.
The shaking humbled Job to realize his proper place, being human before God. God
accepted this realization, and God‘s acceptance proved to be blessings from Beyond, ―living
47
doubly happily ever after,‖ to conclude the Book of Job. Later,

44 Sadly, arguments both for and against God usually miss this evil-pain distinction. Even the recent Rethinking
Evil: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by María Pía Lara, Berkeley: University of California, 2001, tends to
assume suffering as closely connected with evil, if not a measure of evil.
45 Luke 18:9-14, 13:1-3. (NKJV)
46 Thus all debates, pros and cons, about God, philosophical or otherwise, deserve God‘s challenge. All such
debates redound to debaters themselves who are no God debating on God, who is Beyond arguing that is a
logical absurdity and religious blasphemy.
47 Such existential approach seems the only coherence in Job. Otherwise, propositionally, big Creator simply
bullies Job into silence, bypassing Job‘s good question. All explanations Marvin H. Pope sums up (Job,
Anchor Bible, 1973, pp. lxxiii-lxxxiv) tackled this enigma in vain.
208 Kuang-ming Wu

Jesus . . . saw a man who was born blind. His disciples asked Him . . . , ―Rabbi, who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?‖ Jesus said, ―Neither this man nor his
parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.‖48

―This man‖ was also Job; ―the works of God‖ were ―revealed in him.‖ The revelation
here opens his eyes to twofold happiness—being godly to turn being good, to later
devastatingly rebut those in authority, to earn excommunication, and then to happily
meeting/worshipping Jesus the God, his God.
Now, we round up the matter before we go on. ―Questioning God‖ can be of three sorts.
We can question God with our closed mind, refusing to believe in God in virulent atheism;
we can sincerely open to God in quest of him; and we can be angry, arguing with God against
divine injustice. ―Belief in God‖ inherently includes the latter two sorts of questioning God,
so that we grow; cutting questioning closes us and chokes up our growth. Fundamentalism
joins atheism here.
Job was in the third sort of questioning God, arguing angrily with God against injustice
done him. God so loved Job‘s sincere anger as to show him two things. One, our questioning
God must not question as God, for questioning God as God would do is a prime crime against
God; piety strangely tends to share it with atheism. Two, pain is not evil. Both points meta-
answered Job to dislocate his frame on which his questioning was couched. Now Job was
happy, symbolized as ―restoration to former prosperity doubled,‖ for he was now happily
pious as before, with the knowledge he had not before.
(c) This ―happiness‖ comes with obeying the command, ―Judge not, that ye be not
judged.‖ Judging disasters plays God and worsens pain. No judging can make us realize
49
―Blessed are ye who hunger and weep.‖ Would people be happy as they suffer themselves
50
to death? Still, is there any positive blessed happiness in pain?
51
Chuang Tzu of ancient China would smile in his stories as these.

Messrs Oblation, Carriage, Plow and Come talked to one another, ―Whoever takes
nothing as his head, life as his spine, and death as his buttocks, whoever knows dying, living,
existing, and perishing as one body? I will be friend with him.‖ The four mutually looked and
smiled. Nothing was against their hearts-of-being, so they became friends. All too soon, Mr.
Carriage fell ill. . . . Mr. Oblation asked, ―Do you hate it?‖ He said, ―No! Why should I? Soon
(it) changes my left arm into a rooster, and I will seek (during) night-hours (to crow). Soon (it)
changes my right arm into a pellet, and I will seek an owl to roast. Soon (it) changes my
buttocks into wheels, and with my spirit I will ride it; why (then) need I change a carriage?
Besides, to gain is timely, to lose is to follow; dwell in time, stay following, and no grief or
joy can enter. This is what the ancient called ‗bonds loosened.‘ . . . Why should I hate it?‖

All too soon, Mr. Come fell ill, gasping, dying. His wife and children circled him and
wept. Mr. Plow who went to visit him said, ―Shoo! Out! Don‘t startle change!‖ Leaning on the

48 John 9:1-3. (NKJV)

49 Luke 6:37, 21.
50 We have been relentlessly pursuing Job‘s problem because the problem is most poignant in the Judeo-Christian
context. We are now to quest for ―happiness‖ in pain, and Taoism answers this question clearly, together with
Frankl‘s pursuit of ―meaning‖ (Viktor Frankl, Man‟s Search for Meaning, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).
51 Chuang Tzu 6/45-60; I tried to bring out the vigorous original. Paul also thought about not objecting to our
Creator in Romans 9:19-21. Paul (not Chuang Tzu) has God as Love, but did not think (as Chuang Tzu did) on
how we ourselves should behave—joyously—under the almighty Creator.
 Pain 209

door, he talked to him, ―Great! Change molds! What will you make next? Where are you
going? Will you make a rat liver? A bug‘s leg?‖ Mr. Come said, ―A child under parents goes
anywhere, only at their bidding. The Yin and Yang to us are not less than our parents. If they
bring me near death and I do not listen, then I defy. What blame is there in them? Huge Clod
loads me with a figure, labors me with life, eases me with age, and rests me with death. So
what ‗goods‘ life is why it ‗goods‘ death. Now if as a great smith casts metal, it jumps and
says, ‗I must become an Excalibur!‘ then the smith must think the metal inauspicious. If one
who chanced to be shaped a man insists ―Just a man, just a man!‖, then Change the Molder
must think him inauspicious. If the heaven and earth are a great forge, the Molder-Change a
great Smith, where could I go and not be all right?‖

How ebullient is such looking forward to self-journey after death under Heaven! Truly
52
this is ultimate happiness without happiness, ―wu wei,‖ doing nothing adverse to life under
53
Heaven. Storing all under heaven under all-under-heaven, and nothing gets lost, even after
my death.
Job‘s agonizing questioning proved to be a blessed one, after all. Pain challenged him to
54
question all his what and his how. His questioning confirmed his freedom to question, so as
for the Beyond to challenge him, to reshape him to live happily ever after in piety, even
unjustly suffering pain. Divine disasters challenged Job, exposed Job‘s ―good question‖ as
beyond human, and cleansed Job of his supreme sin of playing god into piety—all in one
sweep of pain, physical (disaster) and mental (questioning).
Now, after this Job-detour, ―why Jesus cursed the fig tree‖ may be seen to be beyond our
human ken to ask. If Job‘s personal problem of the ―injustice‖ of someone good suffering
undeserved disaster cannot be asked, much less can the question of ―injustice‖ of cursing the
fig tree for not bearing fruit out of its season, especially when sinless Jesus was ―unjustly‖
cursed on the tree to redeem us.
(d) Now, this basis-shaking shaping Event is ―religion.‖ Religion is not simply the
Beyond—that would be a view called ―deism‖—but the active Beyond that makes me to
suffer to shake and shape me. ―Blessed are ye who are poor, who weep and hunger,‖ Christ
55
said, and suffers with me, for me. My fruit may well be the Taoist‘s ―wu wei 無為,‖ that is,
doing nothing so nothing interferes, nothing not done (wu pu wei 無不為), being happily fit
and worldly, inside and out, dead or alive, in season or out of season, fig-tree cursing or no.
Chinese people love negatives for an emphatic affirmation. Put positively, ―doing
nothing‖ is ―The Way to do as simply to be, listening to myself and to myriad all, accepting
all,‖ and then ―I find myself adequate in things everyday,‖ which positively expresses
56
―nothing not done,‖ i.e., everything as they are, accepted and freely moved in and out.
No wonder, Jesus seeks fruit hidden in a lush fig tree out of season. We must bear fruit as
Job did in trying times, and be grateful always to spread such Good News in season or out

52 Chuang Tzu 18/11.

53 Chuang Tzu 6/26.
54 God did not curse or condemn Job.
55 Luke 6:21, compressed.
56 I freely combined Carl R. Rogers‘ statements (On Becoming A Person, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1961, pp.
164, 17). He claimed the first statement to be Lao Tzu‘s who actually did not say it verbatim, though he does
convey Lao Tzu‘s sentiment.
210 Kuang-ming Wu

57
(Paul). Religion is the business of realizing oneself under the Beyond to be godly-―good‖ as
Job, enjoying living/dying with Chuang Tzu, in such fruitful living, in season and out of
season, as Jesus taught us with that fig tree.
Job, Jesus, and Chuang Tzu would also agree with audacious fix-all psychotherapy spun
58
out of our common sense, and embrace its audacity with religious depths and its tender
heights. Thus it is time to turn from religions fighting to religions-together healing suffering
from good-and-bad. In pain, we are all blessed by religions; here the Christian faith and non-
Christian religions shake hands, that is, stand ―apart to join‖ hands. With ―pain,‖ we depart
from inclusive view (Tillich), exclusive view (Barth), and pluralist view (Hick) of religions.

“LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF”

Having considered pain that just comes, we now consider pain that comes by loving the
needy and enemies, but we must first consider loving people in general, altruism, i.e., other-
ism, of two types: one based on oneself and one on no-self. Self-ed love has three aspects,
love as oneself those close to me, to spread worldwide. Mencius‘ love is out of unbearable
sensitivity 不忍人之心 to those in pain, Jesus loves neighbor-close-to-me in visceral pain
(splagchnizomai), and Mo Tzu jointly inter-loves 兼相愛 in exchanges of inter-benefit
59
交相利 toward worldwide benefit 興天下之利.
These three aspects shared by Mencius, Jesus, and Mo Tzu are of course inter-involved.
All three begin other-love with oneself, unbearable sensitivity (Mencius), love as oneself in
visceral pain (Jesus), doing others from doing oneself 為彼者由為已, loving people as loving
oneself 愛人若愛其身 (Mo Tzu). Jesus‘ loving neighbor as closest-to-me, as someone I meet,
joins Mencius‘ release of a species-distant ox that one meets to loving one‘s closest old folks
to reach others‘. Mo Tzu spreads them to inter-benefit the world, stressing with Mencius that
60
the spread is so ―easy.‖
In contrast, altruism based on no-self uniquely manifests Buddhist ―sad tender pity
(karuna, 慈悲)‖ on all people of the mundane world still stuck in the illusion of the self,
hopelessly self-obsessed. Buddhist altruism is not love, not passion but com-passionate pity
out of vacuity, on all people without distinction. Such pity co-suffers in com-passion with
people suffering—without itself suffering. All is vanity vacuous, serene joy of no joy.
61
Hospitality flows out of pity of all.
Such love-in-general called ―hospitality‖ has been a responsibility agreed to among all
people since ancient days, Buddhists included. Odyssey is full of stories about those who
thrived by extending hospitality to strangers in need and those who perished by refusing

57 Mark 11:12-14, Ephesians 5:20, 2 Timothy 4:2. These are all difficult passages. So far, what we did seems to be
their only feasible explanation that makes sense of them all.
58 Cf. Richard Carlson, You Can Be Happy No Matter What, Novato, CA: New World Library, 1997.
59 Mencius 1A1-7, Matthew 9:36, 14:14, 15:32, 20:34, Mark 1:41, 6:34, 8:2, 9:22, Luke 7:13, 10:33, 15:20.
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Friedrich, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971,
―spagchnon, etc.,‖ VII:548-559. 墨子，臺北市三民書局，民85, 兼愛上，中，下，pp. 88-113.
60 Mencius‘ stress on ―how easy the spread is‖ is in 1A1-7. Mo Tzu stressed it in 兼愛下. Oddly, Mencius attacked
Mo Tzu who agreed with him. In any case, how the world discarded such ―easy‖ altruism for ―difficult‖ inter-
cruel aggression is a mystery of human akrasia we will consider soon.
61 All this is my interpretation of Buddhist ―pity‖-love, awaiting confirmation.
 Pain 211

hospitality. The Old Testament is equally intent on hospitality to anyone; Abraham and Lot
62
entertained angels unawares when they extended their hospitalities to wearied travelers.
Whoever and whatever they are, all travelers who are wearied deserve our hospitality.
63
Here we consider the problems of what such ―indiscriminately‖ loving people means,
64
and why we must so love. Jesus‘ famous injunction, ―Love thy neighbor as thyself,‖ has at
least two different interrelated senses. One is a popular interpretation, ―to love others as you-
love-yourself,‖ implying that you must love yourself first before you can love your neighbor.
After all, how could you love others without first loving yourself? This interpretation
distinguishes other and separates neighbor—from yourself.
Another interpretation is obvious but unsuspected. It is ―to love your neighbor-as-
yourself.‖ Your neighbor is yourself expressed in your caring for him in need, as the good
Samaritan did, as a teacher cares for her students, one by one, as a leader cares for her people,
one by one, as counselor helps her clients help themselves. You find your neighbor by loving
and helping whoever is in need, one by one.
The latter interpretation fits better with the ―neighbor plēsion‖ that literally means anyone
65 66
close to me, as ―neighbor‖ is one ―nigh‖ I meet. Nothing is more natural than loving
67
neighbor-as-myself, for my neighbor is one closest to me, myself, and nothing is more
natural than loving myself as myself. This injunction, seemingly so tautological, surprises us
by making four points.
One, loving my neighbor as myself produces a miracle: if anyone closest to me is myself,
then I am as many as my neighbors! Two, this point says my neighbor may be so many, yet he
is one who is closest to me. So my neighbor is one and many, both at once. That is, as I go on
paying my special attention to this my neighbor, my neighbor expands, with you doing
likewise, and with him, and with her, doing likewise.
Three, if our neighbor, the one closest to us, comes and goes, we understand Jesus our
neighbor saying, ―Me ye have not always,‖ though we have the poor always (John 12:8).

62 Genesis 18, Genesis 19, Hebrews 13:2.

63 This was supposedly Mo Tzu‘s ―兼相愛 joint inter-love‖ that Mencius condemned oddly vehemently.
64 From here on, we focus on Jesus, obviously because he has more problems than any other, so he has been more
thoroughly discussed, thus resolving problems clustered around him would resolve most if not all of problems
clustered around others. As for Buddhist pity-altruism, it has a not-so-secret escape hatch, a black hole of
vacuity that sucks all problems away; the pity-altruism has the least problems, and the most, for if all is empty,
pity or no-pity matters little, and injunction to pity everyone is rendered senseless; why can we not kill
everyone, instead?
65 Luke 10:31 (cf. Exodus 32:27). Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer‟s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
(1896), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997, pp. 518-519, William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich,
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, etc., The University of Chicago Press, 1957, p. 678, Henry
George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (1843), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 1420,
Gerhard Friedrich, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (1968), Grand rapids, MI: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1979, VI:311-318.
66 A sad point in Lazarus‘ story (Luke 16:19-31) is that a nameless rich man‘s (for we have so many!) daily meal in
simple disregard of poor suffering Lazarus (less than a dog‘s regard), right there under the rich man‘s table,
sent the rich man to hell. Clearly Lazarus (literally, the man ―without help‖) was the rich man‘s neighbor
whom the rich man did not love, much less love Lazarus as himself. Poor rich man did not realize that Lazarus
could have sent him to heaven instead of hell.
67 Someone may object that ―closest‖ is not ―identical,‖ and so someone closest is not oneself. This objection
misses a strange constitution of the human self as self-reflective, self-distanced, and self-objective, not like
other species that are solely self-identical. Only humans love themselves, sticks or stones don‘t; animals ―love
themselves‖ instinctively, i.e., self-reflexively, not self-reflectively. Among us humans, oneself is another, and
so my closest other, my neighbor, is myself.
212 Kuang-ming Wu

Four, this point fits Jesus saying, ―Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these
my brethren (whose needs come and go), ye have done it unto me.‖
Those close to me are Jesus‘ brothers under the same Father in Heaven. This saying
chimes in with ―All within the Four Seas are brothers,‖ my ―t‘ung pao 同胞 (fellowmen)‖
from the ―same Womb‖ (as I), ―the Gate of the Mysterious Female, the Root of heaven and
68
earth.‖ That is the closest I can go to ―neighbor‖ the-one-close to me.
All in all, this latter interpretation of the neighbor as someone close to you thus differs
69
from the former interpretation where your neighbor differs from yourself. These two
interpretations differ; each spins out its own stories of caring. How they are related, that is,
how my neighbor is both different from me and close to me as I am to myself, is not a logical
curiosity, yet ―what the relation amounts to‖ is beyond our understanding.
We only know that the relation originates and reflects self-reflexivity such as dressing
oneself, talking to oneself, examining oneself, shaping oneself, being self-conscious, being
proud or ashamed of oneself, and so on. I am me while I differ from me; I am my other. This
is the glory and mystery of my self as human, and often misery, as will be shown below.
This completes our story of what loving people means, and why we should love. We now
apply our understanding to loving our enemies, contra capital punishment, and bottomless
charity, to finish with global ethics. All this expands myself-as-another, human reflexivity
that inevitably spreads throughout Heaven and Earth. Is this spread bliss or blight? It is both,
we would sadly confess, and we would not solve this problem but simply, innocently tell all
such stories in the following section.

THE BIBLE AS STORIES OF LOVING THE ENEMY

Loving neighbor expands to painful struggle to love enemy. At the time, as any time in
history, when violent hatred is all over among Arabs and Jews, Muslims and Westerners,
―loving enemies‖ is ominously relevant but impossible, for ―enemy‖ means someone to hate
and destroy, and Jesus tells us to love those who want to kill us, those we (should) hate, to
love those not-to-be-loved.
Such a shocker, logical and psychological, must have some hidden truths. Thanks to
storytelling of the Bible, we see ten elaborations on two logical points. The two logical points
are that loving enemy extends the Two Great Commandments, and that loving enemy is
divine, not human. Here are ten inter-involved elaborations on these two points.
One, however contradictory as the injunction to love enemy seems, it is a natural logical
extension of the second Great Commandment, ―love your neighbor as yourself.‖ ―Neighbor‖
is someone ―close to me,‖ my enemy is one close enough to hate, so I should love my enemy
as myself. No wonder Jesus overhauled our commonsense, ―love your neighbor, hate your
enemy,‖ to extend his commandment.
His ―love your enemies, bless them who curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you,‖ climaxed his Sermon on the
Mount. He put such incredible love as the highest act of the children of our Heavenly Father,

68 Matthew 15:40, Analects 12/5, ―東方朔傳‖ in 漢書 (history of Han), Tao Te Ching, 6.

69 Does a person differ from oneself? Yes and No. To be human is to be both identical to and different from
oneself. A person is same different.
 Pain 213

naturally extended from the obligation to love Him with all our hearts, minds, and souls
(Matthew 5:43-47).
Two, the saying still remains humanly incomprehensible and impossible, however high it
is placed to climax his Sermon-Story on the Mount to ―be perfect as your Father in heaven
is.‖ Jesus must then be urging us to go beyond the human to become ―perfect as our Father in
heaven.‖ On our human level, ―enemy‖ is the one to hate and destroy. In the trans-human
realm, enemy deserves our love ―as God loves him‖; we hate our enemy but we should love
him as God does him. We are in God‘s realm when we love our enemy. Ten points explicate
both points here.
(1) A formal solution is to put quotation marks around ―enemy.‖ The phrase is now
―loving my ‗enemy‘,‖ loving the so-called ―enemy‖ who is really my brother, my fellow
beloved creation of God. It shows how ―God‖ makes us go beyond human relations. The
problem remains as to what this formal solution, if valid, really means, and how to put it into
human practice.
Romans 5:10 comes to help us, ―when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by
the death of his Son.‖ We are ―forgiven sinners (=enemies)‖ accepted into God‘s family by
Christ‘s death in love of us. We as God‘s accepted enemies must now also forgive and accept
our enemies as our beloved brethren—through Christ‘s death in love of them and us.
So, Matthew 5 is Romans 5. ―Loving enemy‖ stands between the law and the Gospel.
Jesus‘ Gospel ―fulfills‖ the law (justice to enemy) by going beyond it (love to enemy). We
grow in Grace beyond becoming moral to fulfill morals, for loving enemy results in moral
behaviors, to express how we ―become as perfect as your Father in Heaven,‖ as Jesus
expressed it on His Cross. In Jesus we bear our cross of loving our enemies to be
ambassadors of his Reconciliation to them.
Thus the Gospel remains contradictory as ―loving enemy‖ and ―forgiven sinners‖ are.
Growth in grace is not growth in morals but in loving my enemies. Its contradiction is
dissolved (not solved) in God‘s infinitely intense love of his creation, however hostile it is to
God, ―for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.‖ Christ enables us to fulfill this
humanly impossible mission of Reconciliation, loving our enemies.
However familiar the above may sound, (i) Jesus and Paul now join, and (ii) Paul‘s
declaration of God‘s love now appears as painfully paradoxical as loving our enemy is to our
human reason. Our mission of divine Reconciliation is our superhuman task to love our
enemies, enabled only by Christ who performs it himself.
In short, we have seen how much beyond our logic of law/morality God the Beyond is,
practicing and enabling us to practice the contradictory ―love of enemies‖ that fulfills God‘s
Love beyond our comprehension. God is indeed the God beyond our best gods of
logic/morals. This pilgrimage sees the coherence among various story-notions—loving
enemies, God‘s love of sinners in Jesus‘ death, law and Gospel, ambassador for Christ, and
Jesus and Paul. Such is our formal understanding of this shocker of Jesus. Now we must
consider its concrete content.
70
(2) What does ―loving‖ enemy concretely say? Jesus‘ story tells us that love is actions,
bless, do good, pray for. We don‘t feel favorably before acting favorably; we just care for that
―stinker‖ we could not care less, and then we may come to care about him. Our acts of loving
enemy destroy enmity to change enemy into our friend. We remain incredulous, ―Are you

70 Matthew 5:44.
214 Kuang-ming Wu

kidding? Look at what he did to me!‖ This love of enemy is not human; humans cannot do so.
This is God‟s behavior.
(3) We read again, and see that the Story-Sermon on the Mount is full of negatives
(mourn, hungry, persecuted, break the law, angry, lust, divorce, swear not) to lead up to this
positive climax of loving our enemy to be ―like our Father in Heaven.‖ We now realize that
being merciful, peacemaking, meek, salt, light, and law-fulfilling, and these negatives, are all
stories that describe loving our enemy.
So, importantly, by loving our enemy as God loves him (not as we do), we partake of
being divine. To hate is human, to love, divine, and we turn divine by human cares. In our
human caring of enemies we turn divine, become as perfect as our Father. We call this the
fruit of the Holy Spirit—to love the enemy, even on the cross. We shoulder the cross and
71
follow Jesus as we love our enemy. No wonder, we shudder at the enormity.
(4) (a) Practicing loving our enemy, we become Christ-like; remaining human, we
become Beyond-human. (b) So, paradoxically, our enemy helps us become as Christ. ―By
72
your love you will be seen as my followers.‖ All this is displayed by our enemy, as Jesus‘
73
love was seen by the Roman centurion who ordered His crucifixion. (c) To destroy enmity
74
by loving-caring for enemy is thus the complete victory ever, as Paul also so describes.
Loving enemy is as perfect an act as our Father‘s love.
(5) ―Father‖ here is the crucial key to unlocking our dilemma, for fatherly love has no
75
―anger.‖ Jesus equates anger with murder that violates the law, punishable by hell. We rub
our eyes in amazement and watch Jesus himself described in his Gospel stories, and are
surprised to find him never angry in all his acts, favorable to people or not, painful to himself
or not.
When he overthrew moneychangers at the temple, he was burned with ―zeal for the lord‖
but not anger. When he healed as he sighed at people‘s slowness to belief, he was frustrated
but not angry. When he was upset at his disciples trying to chase children away, he was not
76
angry. When he told a fig tree that people would no longer eat its fruit, he was not angry.

71 Lincoln may well be sanguine when he said, ―Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends with them?‖
We wish to ask him how he does it.
72 Cf. John 17:23.
73 Matthew 27:43.
74 Romans 12:20-21. Sun Tzu agrees from a tactical perspective, not from ―love.‖ See Mark McNeilly, Sun Tzu
and the Art of Modern Warfare, Oxford University Press, 2001, esp. Chapter Three. Sadly, he missed Sun
Tzu‘s irresistible beauty of lilting rhyme that belies its dead seriousness. See 謀攻篇第三 in 孫子,
臺北市三民書局, 民87, pp. 17-23.
75 Matthew 5:21-22.
76 Mark recorded Jesus was angry or quite upset at our insensitivity to [1] the helpless sick and [2] children. [1] He
was ―in anger (órgē)‖ (Mark 3:5) against his injunction against anger (Matthew 5:22, the same word). [2] He
was ―áganaktéō‖ (Mark 10:14), i.e., ―displeased‖ (KJV, AV, New Living Translation), ―indignant‖ (NRSV,
NAB, Moffatt, Phillips), or ―vexed‖ (Lattimore). Significantly, these are the only two records on Jesus‘ anger,
and only Mark recorded ―anger‖ in both incidents that all the synoptic Gospels recorded (for Mark 3:5, see
Matthew 12:12-13=Luke 10:9-10; for Mark 10:14, see Matthew 19:14=Luke 18:16). He must be ―upset‖ (New
Century Version). In Liddell and Scott‘s A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1996), ―órgē‖ is ―natural impulse,
propensity, temperament, mood,‖ then ―anger, wrath‖; ―áganaktéō‖ is to ―feel violent irritation [of the effects
of cold on the body],‖ then ―to be displeased, vexed, grieved,‖ ―pain, irrigation, anger, wrath.‖ On órgē in
general, see Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, op. cit., V: 382-447. Kierkegaard finds another
contradiction in Jesus, Matthew 5:39 vs. John 18:22-23.
 Pain 215

After he devastated the Pharisees with his scathing condemnations he broke down in tears; he
77
was sad, not angry.
How Jesus died is the greatest wonder in his story. He was silent throughout to the
priests, the Pharisees, Pilate, soldiers, and Peter, and even prayed an incredible prayer while
dying an agonizing death on the cross, ―Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they
78
do!‖, for he was not angry. ―They‖ regarded Jesus as ―enemy‖ they so hated as to have
succeeded in killing him, while he was not angry with them at all! His enemies he loved to
death caused by them.
We can understand none of these until we look at his ―Father,‖ for no true parent hates
their children, however prodigal or heinous or hostile. The elder brother was angry at seeing
his prodigal brother come home, but not his father, who was overjoyed at seeing his son back,
and went out to persuade, plead with, the brother son.
Absalom tried to kill David his king and father, yet upon his death David wailed, ―O my
son Absalom! My son, my son, Absalem! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my
son, my son!‖ (2 Samuel 19:4) That father David‘s heart-rending wish Jesus fulfilled dying
on the cross, praying for forgiveness of those who killed him. His enemies he loved to death,
for them.
(6) Jesus said that we should likewise destroy our subjective enmity to others who hate
us, rid us of our festering hatred and anger inside, and become as clean, healing, and healthy
as God our Father is, by doing as He does. But we can guarantee no cessation of enmity from
others, now or later; not even Jesus or his Father could. Still, our obligation under our Father
to love our enemy brethren remains with us.
(7) Does God have enemies? Well, the above point answers yes and no. Yes, because
God is love, to let his beloved free even to the extent of hatred/anger that is its enemy, but No
because cosmic Fatherly love itself has no room for hatred its enemy. Yes, because Perfection
is so perfect (love) that it includes imperfection (enmity). No, because parental love described
above conquers enmity.
God is almighty, so He (a) cannot be conquered (so God has enemy) and (b)
unconquerable, i.e., ―conquest‖ in the parental world is meaningless (so God has no enemy).
Our Father‘s heart has no room for enmity, but his creatures may choose to oppose him, to be
his enemies, and he loves them so much as to allow them to hate him.
(8) Now that we understand the shocker, ―Thou shalt love thine enemies,‖ as above
described, we must be careful lest we lose sight of the shocking contradiction that originates
in its being at the crossroads of the human and the Beyond-human. Jesus the God-man, the
Beyondman-man, deliberately places this paradox at this crossroads to provoke us into the
Beyond. The saying about the Beyond is always contradictory, for the act of saying belongs
here while what it says about is Beyond-here, and so the saying mixes here and the Beyond.
(9) Can we generalize this saying to cover all incredible sayings and deeds of Jesus the
man beyond man? We can and should, for the Bible proclaims God as love that loves all,
even enemies. This Fatherly love of enemies is the key to understanding everything
incredible, everything incomprehensible, in the Bible, the grand collection of incredible yet
factual stories of love.

77 Matthew 23:37-39.
78 John 2:13-17, Matthew 17:17, Mark 10:14, 11:14, Matthew 23:37-39 (Luke 1941), Mark 14:61, 15:5, Luke 23:9,
23:34.
216 Kuang-ming Wu

(10) However far we extrapolate to understand Jesus and the Bible, however, we
extrapolate from this shocker of Jesus, and remain shocked. This is Jesus‘ story that jolts us to
bring us up to the Beyond. All stories lead us beyond us. Now, in this pan-love realm, we
would oppose ―capital punishment.‖ We must consider this theme now.

CONTRA CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

We know the clock cannot be set back, and our life is time-sensitive; once gone, life-
chances keep going unreturned, irreplaceable. We live inexorably in the unrepeatable time-
river. ―There is always a tomorrow‖ is a good strategic attitude only after we realize that
today is today and is never tomorrow, and so ―this life‖ and ―this chance‖ are timely, uniquely
belonging to this time-milieu ―now‖ and no other.79 Only on this assumption does ―There is
always a tomorrow‖ comfort us to push us ahead inexorably.
This realization is ominously relevant to capital punishment. Here is a story about it in a
dialogue and debate. USA Today80 featured a long story, ―Death penalty gains unlikely
defenders: Professors speak out in support of executions.‖ Robert Blecker, professor at New
York Law School, (1) cited ―Barbara Jo Brown,‖ an 11-year old raped, tortured, and
murdered, as a reason for death penalty, plus three more, i.e., (2) wrongful executions are less
numerous than reported, (3) capital punishment does deter, and (4) death penalty upholds the
victims‘ rights.
It is sad that such reflective scholars as law professors, though small in number, are
insufficiently thoughtful on the serious matter of death penalty. Here are my rebuttals, one by
one.
(1) To begin with, it is unclear what reason(s) the ―dramatic case of Barbara Jo Brown‖ is
meant to offer. I can only surmise: the case could imply two reasons—intense emotional
reaction and passion for retributive justice. I have four points to rebut them both.
First, the Brown-case boils our blood in indignation; should our emotional intensity
execute the murderer, then? I hesitate. If loss of a car incensed owner-A more than owner-B
with loss of a car of equal market value, can A be compensated for more than B? Obviously it
cannot be. Assessment of the seriousness of the crime, theft or murder, depends on no
81
emotional reaction to the crime. Theft and murder are both crimes that qualitatively differ,
but their degrees of criminal intensity depend on no emotional reactions to them.
Secondly, retributive justice requires that the murderer pay for his heinous crime. I agree.
But can a murderer pay life ―with his life‖? Again, I hesitate, for two reasons not very
82
obvious but quite important. Reason one, a mass murderer such as Hitler has only one life

79 Even cloning is subject to this inexorable fact and its realization.

80 USA Today (January 7, 2003) on its front pages (pp. 1-2).
81 This point, that emotional reaction alone is no objective assessment of the crime, differs from another point, that
emotional reaction to the crime is relevant to objective assessment, as unfelt report of Auschwitz is
pathological and immoral (James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power, HarperSanFrancisco, 1989, p.
3). For all their differences, there is no ―casual‖ murder; all murders are so serious as to be beyond
retributive/distributive justice among goods. To shout a ―dramatic‖ murder case barks up at the wrong tree.
The issue here is not to impress us on how heinous murder is; it is to consider the appropriate measure to deal
with the murderous wrong.
82 Hitler is an indisputable example of a ―mass murderer‖ to help us clearly see the point at issue.
 Pain 217

to live and ―pay‖; he cannot possibly die millions of deaths for millions of lives he
unjustifiably murdered.
Thirdly, reason two, more seriously, why is it that we no longer practice ―an eye for an
eye‖ because it is a ―cruel and unusual punishment,‖ while we practice ―a car for a car‖?
Obviously it is because an ―eye‖ is a part of the person, never a material possession as a
83
―car.‖ Life is no part but the entire person; we cannot a fortiori practice ―a life for a life‖ on
a par with ―a car for a car.‖
Fourth, but retributive justice still demands that the murderer pay for his heinous crime;
we must devise a fitting punishment. The society could impose the murderer, not the same
84 85
horrible evil of murdering his life but, say, ―social work‖ for life under severe conditions,
and work for life to earn for victim‘s family and the society. Such punishments can be severe
as execution if not more, for today we have ―humane execution.‖
Besides, a wrong life-imprisonment can be retracted later, but not wrong execution; this
is one more reason for life-imprisonment over death penalty. Such is our basic rebuttal on
death penalty; the other three reasons are subordinate.
(2) ―Wrongful executions are less numerous than reported, so capital punishment is
justified.‖ In contrast, we insist that ―one‖ wrongful execution is one serious miscarriage of
justice; one mis-execution is one too much of a miscarriage of justice. Qualitative intensity of
execution cannot be measured by quantitative frequency; seriousness of wrong execution
cannot be weighed by numerical frequency.
(3) ―Death penalty does deter, so it is justified.‖ Three objections are here. One: Blecker
interviewed 60 killers (presumably on death row), and found all ―cognizant of whether they
are operating in a death-penalty state before they pull the trigger.‖ Despite knowing this fact,
the killers did kill; where is deterrence? Two: if death penalty deters, USA should have less
capital cases than the European nations without capital punishment; the fact is otherwise.
Three: deterrence by death penalty is illicit even if it works, for human life is no material, as
argued above.
(4) Here is an important claim for capital punishment; ―death penalty upholds the
victims‘ rights.‖ Does it really? One, doesn‘t death penalty uphold only the ―right‖ to vent
primitive emotion to vengeance, though strong and understandable? Two, does putting the
murderer to death bring back alive our beloved victim? Thus, isn‘t death penalty futile? Now,
let us go a positive way on the claim.
The victim‘s family does have some right; what is it? ―A car for a car‖ makes less sense
as ―your car-loss for my car-loss,‖ for then nothing is recovered, than as ―my car-restored for
my car-lost.‖ Similarly, ―a life for a life‖ is no ―your life-loss for my beloved life lost by
you,‖ for then no life is recovered.
I must have ―my beloved life restored/revived for that life lost by you.‖ Is it impossible?
Zukav has an amazing story of a family adopting the murderer as their murdered son. ―‗The
young man became a devoted son,‘ Brown Bear continued. ‗By the time he died, he was

83 That is why we banned slavery the ownership of humans as chattel, for human person is no chattel.
84 Such socially endorsed killing may encourage callous murderous sentiments among citizens.
85 Life-imprisonment, with mere two hours a week to watch the sky, frequent beating, risks of raping, and cruel
regimented days, is no vacation. Saying so is not to endorse social cruelty but to note that life-imprisonment
may not be ―happier‖ than ―humane execution‖ to end the matter once for all.
218 Kuang-ming Wu

86
known in all the tribes as the model of a loving son.‘‖ Thus, in the actual world, the most
we—the victim‘s family, the society—can demand as ―right‖ is ―your labor for life for my
beloved life lost by you.‖ The victim‘s family has such a right.
In sum, capital punishment is wrong (1) in principle (life is no possession) and in practice
((2) one execution of the innocent is one too many miscarriage of justice, (3) execution does
not deter, we can devise alternative punishments fit for murder), and because (4) death
penalty fulfills nothing. All in all, our consideration negatively demonstrated that ―a life for a
life‖ is senseless, that capital punishment has no place in the imperative of loving our
enemies.

GLORIOUS “FUTILE” CHARITY BOULDERS

So we must love our neighbors as ourselves, and we must practice charity. Sadly,
however, charity is also a source of pain. Listen to this shout of mine to charity organizations:

―Dear Admired Persons of Assistance to the Suffering People:

With profound appreciation, I wish to make three points.

One, unquestionably my heartfelt admiration goes to you all, silently putting in much
thankless and reward-less labor and time, day and night, with uncertain resources to go on,
with no end in sight—all for people suffering, not for yourselves.

Two, contributing a bit to your huge efforts, I am drawn into your struggles. I feel so
futile. The more I give, the more ceaseless piles of mail I get, each as urgent as others, each as
legitimate. I can neither ignore them nor afford to give adequately. I‘m trapped!

Three, this no-win situation makes me think.

(a) Even with all Bill Gates‘ resources, we are no near pulling all sufferers out of pits,
and yet their desperation allows no pulling back of ourselves.
(b) I cannot help but ask, ‗Are we not hopelessly inefficient?‘
(c) Or, is ‗efficiency‘ here an illegitimate word? Should we just bury our heads in sands
87
of suffering and try helplessly to help sufferers?

Perplexed, I am buried in tons of mail for donations that are drops of water to the raging
world-conflagration of suffering. I myself need help. What can we do?
Futilely yours‖
I was in as bottomless a pit of flames as those charity organizations with those who suffer
interminably, burn insufferably.
Next day, an answer shouted back at me. ―The same goes with everything else in life,
politics, employment, business, family feud, you name it; the troubles are limitless. Do you
want to quit? You will quit life itself. Do you want to keep trying? You won‘t win, you can
never win, yet you still have to keep going and trying if you want to keep on living.‖ The

86 Gary Zukav, Soul Stories, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2000, pp. 113-114. This is an alternative ―punishment‖ to
work-for-life suggested above.
87 We will soon see that this is indeed the case, minus futility.
 Pain 219

answer in all its reasonableness simply shouts back at me, shouting me down. The problem
stays inexorably.
The charity-pit is only a part of life-as-a-pit where we keep struggling, turning the
treadmill senselessly, a Sisyphus pushing a boulder ceaselessly up the hill, only to see it roll
down, to push it up again. The whole boulder-pushing wins nothing; it makes no sense. Then
88
comes Camus to tell us that the boulder belongs unmistakably to Sisyphus; no one can steal
it from him.
Besides, the pushing is his; no one steals it from him. In the pushing he finds himself; no
one takes it from him. ―Therefore, we must judge Sisyphus happy.‖ In his ceaselessness of
pushing is the ceaseless joy of finding Sisyphus himself—the joy every time he puts his both
hands to the boulder and arches himself, straining at rolling it up, and up, and up.
Can Sisyphus give us a push to our charity-pushes? He could give us six. One, our pushes
give us our own integrity as his does his; we give to charity for our own sakes! Two, his
boulder is more senseless than ours are, for his is callously nameless while ours have a
compassionate name, ―charity.‖ Three, Jessica Pue said, our sensitive boulders change
89
callous us and cultivate us into compassion—from ―needs great; requests rain-fall; my
wastebasket fills‖ to ―unbearable hearts‖ to those in pain ―as if caring for my sick baby‖—as
we push charity-boulders.
Four, my friend Tom Sachse told me that each of those people we help, a mere few as
90
they are, is actually helped, as Mother Theresa said to a critic on her futility, ―I will let you
worry about that. Here is a dying man who needs me.‖ Charity works on each individual, not
91 92
in general statistics; ―Love thy neighbor as thyself,‖ love not mankind for duty‘s sake. ―I
cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that I can do.‖93
Five, both my friends, Jessica and Tom, showed me that even though we each must push
our own respective compassion boulders as Sisyphus must push his penalty, we each can
94 95
encourage and strengthen the other, as Sisyphus cannot. This task of ours is a camaraderie
that strengthens each as we each fulfills each one‘s obligation. We are luckier than Sisyphus.

88 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1945. Sisyphus was sneaky, dared to cheat death, and Camus outsmarted
Sisyphus and Thanatos to make Sisyphus happy! Camus‘ twist is truly a stroke of genius.
89 ―Since so much of human suffering is manmade, we can try to change our attitudes that lead to the endless
violence, inequality, and destruction that breed suffering,‖ says Jessica. One of our attitudes, callousness, is
serious. Turning my blind eye to fellow suffering humans turns me blind and hollow. My human soul I throw
into a trashcan as I throw into it ―useless‖ letters for hands to fellow humans, for cutting off letters for
handouts cuts off my hands and heart. To keep helping humans helps to keep me human with my fellow
humans. What about cheaters on our compassion? Well, doctors won‘t turn away all patients because of some
fake illnesses; we don‘t throw away all apples because some are rotten. Compassion stopped by some cheaters
is no compassion.
90 He said, ―I understand what you are saying - I feel the same when in Mexico and see all the poverty where only a
few dollars can help an individual - but there are so many individuals! There‘s a story about some one walking
along the beach where starfish are washed up every day left on the beach to dry out and die - thousands of
them - and this person walks along tossing the starfish he encounters back into the ocean. He is told that what
he is doing won‘t make a difference because he is saving only a very small percent of the starfish, to which he
replies that it will make a difference for the ones he saved - I guess that‘s how to approach it - we can‘t help
everyone, but what we do is significant to those that we are able to help – That‘s all we can do - - -.‖
91 That Good Samaritan meticulously cared for one single stranger-victim and no other.
92 Jesus said, ―Let her alone, . . . for the poor always ye have with you, but me ye have not always.‖ to Judas‘
―Why was not this . . . sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?‖ (John 12:5, 7-8)
93 This is a line from a song written for the Global Mission Event held at the Convention Center in Minneapolis,
August 2001.
94 ―Bear ye one another‘s burdens. . . For every man shall bear his own burden.‖ (Galatians 6:2, 5)
220 Kuang-ming Wu

Finally, his boulder remains the same, while we could push aside one boulder, and our
96
one successful push readies us with better ingenuity and stronger resolve for a next boulder.
All this perhaps explains the Preacher‘s calm enigmatic saying, ―Cast thy bread upon the
waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for
97
thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth.‖
Now we may pause to reflect on what it is that resolved my/our charity-problem. It is
Sisyphus‘ little story; in a small dark corner of the underworld, Sisyphus has to accept the
boulder-chore of futility, and Camus says it is OK to accept the futility. Sisyphus accepts it;
Camus is flexible enough to accept Sisyphus, for the latter to be flexible enough to
accommodate the boulder. How? By accepting things as they are, as kids and grandpas do, by
describing the situation. We often call the life-situation ―absurd.‖ Stories absurdly yarn
whatever is, and we are at home.
Absurd are life-surprises that stories etch out, against the backdrop of decent, proper
logic, and somehow tame them. Kids‘ innocence matter-of-factly lets abound all sorts of
―ugly‖ irresponsibility, ―absurd‖ atrocity. Think of Ann Frank in her diary, and many kids on
their singing way to Auschwitz. Look at bloody Greek mythology, the theater of the absurd
today, and even Grimm Brothers have a bunch of dark stories.
Zen Buddhists‘ ―koans‖ are so many insolubles, whose answer is ―But do we have to
solve them?‖ Chuang Tzu‘s Seven Chapters end with an absurd story of the death of that
world-hotchpotch, Hun Tun, for two world rulers gratefully made seven holes into him.
Curing absurdity kills the world. Absurdities become stories to somehow relieve us, no,
strengthen us, as do Sisyphus‘ nameless boulder and our charity-boulders.
In short, our considered story of charity effort seemingly futile makes us realize some
lessons as follows. We are in a dilemma of being able neither to quit charity nor to continue
it. We cannot continue sprinkling drops of water of assistance into world conflagration of
poverty and suffering, nor can we quit sprinkling it. As Sisyphus pushed his senseless
boulder, so did we ours of futile charity, as follows.
First, we realized that we quit, only to grow callous, to quit our humanity, which is
serious. We then pushed the dilemma in a positive direction, that our futility does harvest
fruit—our task gives us integrity, is sensible beyond results, cultivates us into compassion,
actually helps people, can inter-encourage, and can push away boulders one at a time.
It is thus that such a push of boulders strengthens charity givers as it helps receivers; as
refusal to help kills us, so does helping others help us. We are boulders, we realize, and our

95 Until Camus came, perhaps, but even then Sisyphus hardly knew it.
96 I desisted sending my above letter to charity organizations, lest they get discouraged. I once felt terrible at an all-
you-can-eat restaurant, feeling I was robbing starving people of their food. Then I heard a voice, saying, ―Go
ahead and eat as much as you need, as long as you would share later whatever you have with those people who
are your brethren.‖ I did so later. I debated over whether to donate $20 to one charity organization or $5 each
to four. I decided on the latter, for [$20=$5] in the vast ocean of suffering, and [$5x4] spreads wider.To
counterbalance this view, we must ―do the best we can with what little we have, to help those most in need‖
(Edmundite Missions) closest to us. The one ―closest‖ is my ―neighbor (πληίον),‖ the single one in dire needs
to love as myself. The good Samaritan cares for one victim, leaving others alone; the shepherd goes out in the
wilderness for the one lost, leaving 99 in the wild; the lady does her best for the one lost coin, leaving 9; the
father runs out to the prodigal son, leaving his elder one alone; when ―I‖ was sick, in jail, hungry, you came to
me, leaving others ―always with you‖ (Luke 10:27-37, 15:, Matthew 25:25-36, John 12:3-8). Similarly,
answering letters of appeal for help need not be answering all letters. Now, this second view differs from the
first, but perhaps not opposed, although how they could come together remains to be seen.
97 Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 (King James Version). This is perhaps one of the most Taoist of Bible sayings. It combines
the seeming uselessness of today‘s performance for the sake of unknown tomorrow.
 Pain 221

story pushes them to resolve the charity dilemma by persisting in it. This is what we have
learned so far with stories after stories of common but unnoticed actuality.
Let us shift our focus. What can we do with the poor and those in pain? Jesus said, ―The
poor you have always, but not me,‖ and also told us that as often as we do it to the poor, we
do it to Jesus, and since the poor is always with us, as often as we do it to the poor, Jesus is
with us. Jesus is always with us while not always with us. Our Buddhist friends chime in; for
them ―begging‖ is a practice and ―giving‖ a virtue,98 for ―begging and giving‖ identify
ourselves with the suffering poor who are always with us.
Without meeting the world‘s fourfold suffering (birth, senility, illness, death), Gautama
would not have awakened to enlightened Buddhahood. The whole New Testament is dipped
in suffering; Christ should suffer to perfect his salvation, and we rejoice partaking of his
sufferings.99 To suffer pain is futile, while to suffer endless suffering can be an endless
blessing, wrapped in the knowledge that to suffer is to partake of Buddha‘s and Jesus‘
suffering, and Job‘s and Chuang Tzu‘s. To suffer with these Four Greats is a great honor.
―What honor?‖ Some religionists say all religions are many roads to the same goal (of the
Ultimate); some say they are the same road (of salvation) to many goals. We say, whatever
may or may not be known about the Ultimate beyond here now, the very lives of those Four
Greats show us that we all share the same road and goal of serving and suffering with those
who suffer. Such co-suffering is our blessed honor of the Ultimate-in-this-world.
Pain in suffering injustice is the hardest to bear. The wrong of injustice-infliction
remains, however, with those who inflict it, not with its sufferers. In fact, suffering injustice
can and does cleanse the sufferer, while injustice never benefits but always injures its
inflictors. This fact enables sufferers of injustice to be ―blessed‖ by Jesus who suffers it, and
opens them to the possibility of forgiving those who inflict injustice on them.
Injustices often occur, for ―to err is human, (but) to forgive, divine‖; forgiving enlightens
(Buddha) and even redeems injustice-perpetrators (Jesus), as all sages since Confucius, then
Socrates, have been doing. No wonder the sages are often injustice-sufferers, never inflictors,
and so to suffer is an honor and blessing. Blessed indeed are those who are unjustly poor,
hungry, and weep now, for the ultimate Glory of blessedness is theirs, with partakers-in-
charity in futility. This concludes our consideration of the pain of charity-futility, charity-
suffering.
Thus we can answer ―Yes‖ when asked, ―The whole world is in pain; I can do just a
minuscule. Is it OK to do this on this problem, while all others groan in pain?‖ This question
is based on the false scandal of historical particularity. Jesus seldom mass-heals or -solves
problems,100 but approaches one at a time, the ―one of the least.‖ Having lived just three
career years, he healed just so many and no more. God promises salvation to ―everyone who

98 ―A Buddhist priest practices a mendicant life living on alms. He is proud of living a hand-to-mouth life.‖
―According to Buddhism, for one thing, begging is doubly blessed, for begging helps charity. A Buddhist
priest, who lives entirely upon alms or, as he claims, on what the Lord Buddha gives him, lives only in
devotion, doing nothing by way of earning his livelihood. He goes begging, practising a Buddhist mendicancy
and chants a passage from the Buddhist sutra, door after door, praying for the salvation of the people, who
repay him in money or in kind. Besides, we have a saying to the effect that one who goes begging for three
days will never quit begging, and there is a philosophy in this saying, which appeals to the nature of man...‖
Atsuharu Sakai, Japan in a Nutshell, Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1949, pp. 19-20, 101. Merriam-Webster‟s
Encyclopedia of World Religions, 1999, p. 149 (―Buddhism‖).
99 Luke 9:22, 17:25, 24:26 and 46, Hebrews 2:10, Philippians 3:10, 1 Peter 4:13, et passim.
100 This seems to be the Devil‘s temptation in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13.
222 Kuang-ming Wu

believes,‖ that singular ―one.‖101 Mother Teresa and other unknowns do one thing at a time;
so should we.
Such is our love-imperative, effective yet quite inefficient. Why go this way? Why pain
at all? Such puzzles are beyond humans. We only know love shines, and should keep
shining,102 against pain in which love itself suffers. We omit a Buddhist approach to pain;
pain is too urgent to go around for its phenomenology.103

ETHICS THAT IS GLOBAL, PLURALISTIC, AND ECOLOGICAL

We are now confronted with two problems, a challenge to charity efforts and the plurality
of today‘s world. We must first (I) respond to (A) Hardin‘s ―lifeboat ethics‖ that prevents
charity, (B) religious plurality, and (C) if religious co-suffering is worthwhile. All this (II)
leads us to global ethics pluralistic and individual, compassionate and ecological.

I. Responses

Contra Hardin
Our charity effort is jeered at by Garrett Hardin‘s cynical/cognitive ―lifeboat ethics.‖104 It
says that population increases geometrically while foods increase only arithmetically
(Malthus); letting the starved people die keeps the current natural balance between population
and foods without increasing the disastrous number of the starved; so, we in the well-fed
lifeboat should let the starved die and not feed them.
So we have a ―dilemma,‖ ―To feed and be guilty or not to feed and feel guilty—that is the
question.‖ (Joseph Fletcher) Actually, nothing is more blatantly unethical than such ―ethics‖-
story, so calculatingly, brutally, and unforgivably inhumane. Here is an alternative story, in
four points.
One, people dying is a sad misfortune, but calculating to let people die shares
responsibility for their deaths as co-conspiring a mass murder. Acts calculated to effect the
most people‘s most happiness overrides no evil of sacrificing the fewest of people, much less
here where the vast number of people are killed for a few people‘s happiness. So much
murder is committed on so many by so few in ―lifeboat ethics.‖
Two, the ―lifeboat‖ is grabbed in centuries of exploitation of those now starving. Asking
―Whose lifeboat?‖ ought to cut into the conscience of those not starving in the boat that
belongs to all humanity, for the boat is our shared world.
Three, the Malthusian premise was bound to its period. We should genetically expand
harvest of foods in deserts, oceans, arctic regions, and on the moon in ―green revolution.‖

101 Matthew 25:40, Luke 15, cf. Mark 1:37f, John 5:3, 5, John 12:5, 8, Acts 3:2, et passim. John 3:16, Raymond E.
Brown‘s translation in his Anchor Bible commentary, I: 129.
102 Matthew 5:14-16.
103 For Buddhists, pain is a spark in the clash of selves; we can stop the spark by ceasing the self we can control.
104 Its debates are conveniently summed up in Lifeboat Ethics: The Moral Dilemmas of World Hunger, eds.
George R. Lucas, Jr. et al., NY: Harper and Row, 1976. Lifeboat ethics then vanished from academic scene.
Lester R. Brown‘s Tough Choices: Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity, NY: W. W. Norton, 1996,
mentions no ―lifeboat ethics.‖ We go our own way in refuting Hardin. In our opinion, there are no
―dilemmas,‖ much less ―moral‖ ones, about world hunger.
 Pain 223

Mass media should encourage birth control, which can also naturally occur as the living
standard rises. These are alternatives, viable and imperative, to Hardin‘s inhumane starvation
of ―others.‖
Four, to take actions above (point-Three) is not an option but an unforgivable humanity-
crime committed by those not starving, unspeakably unethical and inhumane. In sum, we
should help us all out of starvation; we cannot shirk this responsibility. Mutual help is the
categorical imperative of humanity.

B. Religious Plurality
We insisted, against Hardin, that we are all in the same boat, but our boat our world is
radically divided. Having challenged Hardin toward co-suffering charity, we now turn to the
world torn hopelessly. Religions are the most radically divided. The uniqueness of each
religion is in conflict with so many others; religion is ―ultimate‖ that excludes ―many
ultimates,‖ which yet in fact do exist.105
Christianity honestly confronts the problem. One, we logically have only two sorts of
uniqueness, exclusive and non-exclusive, yet two, none of them can describe religions, much
less Christianity. In this awkward religious ―one-and-many,‖ three, our religious obligation
must be carefully delineated. To simplify, we focus on Christianity where the problem arises
most acutely.
One: We constantly see two groups of Christians. The proud conservatives take Christian
uniqueness as ―no salvation outside Jesus Christ‖ and so ―infidels shall go to hell!‖ Thereby
they are asphyxiated in their ―rightness,‖ their own divine orthodoxy of literalistic
fundamentalism, i.e., verbal inspiration of bibliolatry. They play gods up there to crush down
here to die unawares.
Then amicable liberals are open-minded-hearted-handed; ―we‖ are as unique as ―you,‖ all
human under the One ineffable Ultimate who blesses us with religious variety,106 as if there
were religion-in-general as there were face-in-general. The truth is that Christianity may have
both these aspects yet is completely at home in neither. How so?
Two: The one-and-many dilemma of religions is crucial and insoluble in our world down
here, but is ―embraced‖ in the Beyond—the ―home‖ of religion—beyond numbers, where the
dilemma is not unimportant but not fatal. Take children and sexuality. ―To children belong
the Kingdom of God‖ where married couples are ―like angels and are children of God.‖
Gender distinction exists for children as for seniors, yet they are neither sexed, not-sexed, nor
neuter. They are sexed beyond sex.

105 We have human sociological causes for the upsurge of new religions. New inspiration/revelation revolutionizes
one‘s whole life to challenge the institutional authority. New revelation could reform/invigorate-enrich
established religions, as did Protestant Reformation (in Christianity and Hinduism) and Catholic orders. New
revelation could also prove too much for an establishment, which persecutes or even kills individuals-with-
new-revelation, and thereby a new religion is launched. We bypass such causes. Sociological explanation is
human; it touches no theological dilemma.
106 John Hick (Peter C. Phan, ed., Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism, NY: Paragon House, 1990, pp. 89-103,
etc.) is a prominent exponent of this view. Subtle members of this group are surprisingly various, John B.
Cobb, Jr. (Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism, Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1982), Hans Küng (Christianity and World Religions: Paths to Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism,
and Buddhism, Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1986), and even Karl Barth (see ibid., p. 447, Index on
―Barth, Karl‖), Harvey Cox, and some Harvard New Testament scholars, among many others.
224 Kuang-ming Wu

They nonchalantly embrace sexuality. ―In the resurrection, (people) neither marry nor are
given in marriage.‖107 As sexuality is important to adults who are not seniors, so the religious
dilemma of one-and-many is crucial only to those out of the Beyond. The religious absolute
that excludes other absolutes is not unimportant or important, as sexual distinction is no
crucial distinction up there.
Three: ―How about our obligation here in this world, however? How should we behave in
this world, where the One Truth of a specific religion clashes universal embracing of other
religions?‖ That Christianity is unique neither exclusively nor non-exclusively shows that our
faith is beyond human understanding. This fact tells of two obligations in the Christian living.
We must reject two extremes. Neither should we lock ourselves dead in smug exclusion
of others,108 nor lose the uniqueness of our faith in ―the more, the merrier‖ inclusion. We
should grow with Boy Jesus ―among teachers, listening to them and asking them
questions,‖109 learning from various religions uniquely non-exclusive, and as convinced as
Boy Jesus, asking, ―Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my
Father‘s house?‖,110 to stand out unique.
To be unique non-exclusively is difficult, however; it requires constant vigilance in
humility before the Beyond-human among other beyond-human‘s, i.e., other religions.
Ironically, the least palatable fact of life, suffering, presses into us a timely assistance to our
difficult practice of being together religiously, humanly, for all religions focus on human
suffering, and all propose ―co-suffering‖ as its resolution, although each in its unique way,
differing from all others.

C. Salvation in Co-Suffering
All religions propose ―salvation‖ from suffering in co-suffering. We consider Christianity
first. ―Perfect love casteth out fear . . . he that feareth is not made perfect in love‖111 sounds
strange until we realize that ―perfect love‖ is a full being-power, ―fear‖ is no-power, and so
love-power casts out fear-powerlessness. Accepting God‘s power enables us to fulfill the Ten
Commandments in suffering. Love casts out various evil-deficiencies listed in Paul‘s love
hymn; it is more power-blessed to give than to poverty-receive.112
Those in unjust pain are blessed as the children of God,113 for unjust pain is how we enter
Love-Power. In powerless fear/jealousy Pharisees killed Jesus, who accepted them in Love-
Power that ―driveth him into the wilderness‖ in temptations of lack, pain, injustice. Thus all
problems vanish—why unjust pain is blessed, why Jesus died without a fight, etc. Love-
Power of overflowing Being delivers us from evil and pain. ―(Nothing) shall be able to
separate us from the Love of God‖ (Romans 8:39) powerfully comforts us in suffering.
The Buddhist center, deliverance from suffering, is that an active cosmic ―black hole‖
sucks all; nothing counts any more, not even suffering. A Taoist way is to room all. One who
self-forgetfully follows the Tao-flow of things pushes no river, to swim in suffering out of
suffering. It is between Buddhist emptiness and Christian fullness.

107 Luke 18:16, 20:36.

108 Matthew 23:27, Luke 18:11, John 9:34, 40-41, etc.
109 ―[D]o whatever they teach you and follow it‖ (Matthew 23:3 NRSV). Boy Jesus is a powerful image (Luke
2:46, 52) to egg us on to ―learning‖ from all quarters to vitalize the Christian integrity.
110 Luke 2:49, NRSV.
111 1 John 4:18.
112 1 Corinthians 13, Acts 20:35.
113 Matthew 5:3-12, Luke 6:20-23.
 Pain 225

Here in co-suffering, we see with Chuang Tzu114 three friends-for-life looking at one
another and smile. In order to mutually look and smile, friends must face one another.
Buddhists, Taoists, and Christians do not agree on how they see things, but face one another
to see eye to eye on co-suffering. They need not, indeed, must not, face in the same direction
to see eye to eye and smile at one another, precisely in this ubiquitous matter of co-suffering
in the world. This is not identity but togetherness, religious, cultural, and ethical; here we
meet and oppose Hardin, globally.
In all this, being humorous alive is ever fun in dancing smiles here, there, and
everywhere, bubbling vivacious. ―Humorous‖ is life. Being humorless in contrast lives death;
nothing moves but in wailing cynicism. Things are everywhere twisted brittle, dark, dried up,
and no fun. ―Humorous‖ against ―humorless‖ is kid alive against dead twigs. Life is made of
such ―against‖-attitudes for us to always choose.
―Always choose‖ tells a story of being ever alert to live a humorous kid every moment,
less continuously giggling than living every moment to the kid-hilt, ever bouncing, curious,
heartfelt, in joys and in sorrows. Buddhist black-hole cosmic is quite comic, as Jesus‘
Kingdom of God belongs to kids of all ages, and as Taoist pillowing on a roadside skull
casually making season-rounds. Diverse religious ultimates—hole, whole, self-so—are so
many worlds of fun without end to tarry and bounce in. All such makes global ethics.

II. Global Ethics

Shared suffering (contra Hardin) leads to global togetherness we should strive after.
Ethics should be global, but we live in the globe radically pluralistic in culture, religion, and
geopolitics. We must find a common guide in life-ideal diversity; traditional ethical principle
on the assumptions of one culture is out of touch with pulverized actuality. Mutual giving in
co-suffering sensitivity is relevant today, for radically differing religions converge here.
Buddhism‘s calm realization of pan-emptiness somehow breathes cool ―sorrowful
mercy‖ for all beings. In Christian Paul‘s exultation that nothing separates us from God, God
takes away no suffering. Chuang Tzu‘s meadow of ultimate virtue—co-sharing—has people-
deer roam under ruler-branches. Mencius‘ unbearable sensitivity lets the scared bull go.
In all, not only do we perceive how, reacting in their radical differences to our common
suffering, all religions converge on humane sympathy, but also their co-suffering sensitivity
to consist in inter-mothering co-presence, to allow/enable each of us to grow on our own. We
gather as babies in pain, intently watched by Mother our Ultimate the Beyond in this world of
pain, yet ―helping‖ nothing grow, as Mencius warns us. What does it mean?
To ―love my neighbor as myself‖ tells me to be a ―neighbor‖ ever present to my fellow
being to ―love,‖ to inter-mother, much ―as myself‖ in need of growing into myself. Not quite
―Do to others as they wish done,‖ much less ―Do to others as you wish done,‖ Confucius‘
(12/2. 15/24) ―What you want not, never give to people‖ wins our soul to guide our heart. We
gather close, never meddling, never indifferent, but ever mother-watching. This is our divine
being-with among humans, Emmanuel, God-with-us, incarnate.
Practicing vigilant co-suffering, we are surprised to find our Emmanuel extend far
beyond humans. In fact, our human togetherness is part of species-togetherness. Mencius‘

114 This scene is identical to Chuang Tzu‘s moving description of it in 6/60-76, etc.
226 Kuang-ming Wu

―unbearable sensitivity to people‖ (1A7) arose from a human ruler letting go of a bull in
mortal jitters. Here unbearable interspecies-sensitivity extends inter-human. In the end, close
feelings-with interspecies-beings ―breathe (to) flood‖ the heaven and earth (2A2).
Chuang Tzu was in joy feeling the minnows‘ joy darting around in River Hao, despite his
species-difference from them, as Name-logician Hui Tzu reminded him. He told incredulous
Hui Tzu how it happened, ―I know it (here) on the Hao‖ (17/91). He was there, Sitz im Leben,
with the joys of fellow species-beings, enjoying darting around arguing with Hui Tzu above
the Hao, as the minnows enjoyed darting around there in the Hao. In the end, being with
fellow species-beings inter-befriends, inter-being with without inter-being with, inter-
115
forgetting in the world.
Here is an ecological convergence of species sensitivity. Thus the Confucian, in inter-
species inter-human compassion, breathes to flood the cosmos; Taoist conviviality stays inter-
specific inter-human. This species mutuality is the ―grain in existence 理,‖ running through
them into the family of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity of Chang Tsai‘s ―Western
116
Inscription.‖ Cosmic Household Ethics, sensitive, convivial, replaces Lifeboat Ethics. In a
grain of sand we see the world with Blake, Newton, and Einstein, individual pluralistic,
compassionate cosmopolitan.
A desperate person heals personally only by our being-with him. ―We . . . must clearly
show (him), by the way in which we act toward him, that he is not alone and (we) are in
communion with him.‖117 We must ―respond‖ to him ―with a firm assurance‖ that his ―abyss-
situation‖ is ―not final,‖ that his despair-milieu is embraced in our communal milieu of inter-
mothering, our heartfelt co-presence where he is at home in simple unspoken comfort.
We are just there with him as his ―given‖—with no ready-made ―trap of conventional
conception‖ such as ―causality or determinism‖ or ―traditional consoling words.‖ He on his
part is just there as well, independent, with us all, as he is, not alone. It is in our heartfelt co-
presence—co-mothering nursing milieu—that we huddle together at home and heal pain
wordlessly.118 We are healed here as he is.
A homograph of a Chinese character, ―ch‟ing 情,‖119 elucidates this situation as it is
illuminated. We now know why the character can mean objective reality (e.g., ch‟ing shih
情實) and subjective feeling (ch‟ing kan 情感). A psychosomatic saying quips, ―How (one)
feels is how ill (one) is, 心情即病情‖; here the same ―how 情‖ straddles over intangible
―how-feel‖ subjectivity and tangible ―how-ill‖ situation,120 as ―birding‖ has birds and birder,

115 Chuang Tzu, 6/23, 47, 61, 62, 73.

116 Wing-tsit Chan conveniently translated it with a long comment in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy,
Princeton University Press, 1963, pp. 497-500. Sadly, its poetic pathos and nuanced punch is lost in his bland
explanation-as-translation.
117 These words and the subsequent ones in quotation marks are Marcel‘s (The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, op.
cit., p. 241). We cannot repeat them often enough.
118 Saul Scheidlinger (―On the Concepts of Amae and the Mother-Group,‖ Journal of the Academy of
Psychoanalysis, 1999, pp. 91-100) did not say counseling is a counselor-client inter-mothering-growing.
119 Here I depart from Chad Hansen‘s objective socio-cultural analysis that misses the unity of subjective feeling
and objective reality in ―qing, or ch‘ing,‖ for this character describes a subject-object unity of the situation. His
careful documentation of various uses of the character only deepens this impression. See Encyclopedia of
Chinese Philosophy, ed., Antonio S. Cua, NY: Routledge, 2003, pp. 620-622.
120
We remember 快 can mean 快樂 (joy) and 快速 (speedy), and 適 can mean 舒適 (fit and comfortable) and 合適 (fit
and appropriate). Thus many words show the unity of intimate subjectivity and situational objectivity.
 Pain 227

as ―painting‖ has painter and painted, as we ―feel‖ for something to feel good, and as we
―sense‖ in experience to sense the meaning.
All this stretches oneself to reach the sky, and Socrates listening to Daimon beyond him
follows his deep self. ―Heartfelt co-presence‖ depicts objective presence nestling and
nourishing the hearty subjects. The reality of co-presence is an objective heartfelt inter-
subjectivity nurturing us all around.
Such a subject-object unity is natural and powerful, expressed in the rhymed unity of
sound and sight in etymology such as this. As calm water in the depth of a well, ching 井, is
clean and blue, ch‘ing 清, so blue 青 is the depth of the sky, ch‘ing 晴, and emotion ch‘ing 情
is the material 質 of human nature jen-hsing 人性.121 Without coalescing, these three
situations so co-resonate that ch‟ing 情 expresses human emotion in (human) situation.
Another homograph, ―tao 道,‖ confirms the above point of the situation in subject-
122
objective unity. Tao since ancient means objective path, road, way, and then as verb to lead
(principle, doctrine) and so on, and can also mean our subjective act to ―say, state, talk,‖ and
the like. This double meanings united in ―tao‖ enables Lao Tzu to begin his Tao Te Ching
123
with a quip, ―Tao can tao, not Always Tao,‖ and Chuang Tzu to equate ―the Tao of no
124
Tao‖ with ―the talk of no talk.‖ Subjective words often express objective pervasive Way of
things, and should express it.
How the two meanings unite is anyone‘s guess. Perhaps Chuang Tzu‘s (2/33) ―Tao walks
it and forms‖ means that we walk (走) out Tao (道) in the direction we face, eyeing forward
125
(首); ―facing‖ unites subjective facing-act with objective faced-direction. Tao expresses
126
this facing with the face that has a mouth that ―says and talks.‖ In sum, ―tao‖ expresses the
dynamic situational unity of objective way and subjective talk and walk.
The point is clear. We vitally need nature as our milieu of co-presence, for the objective
co-presence of inter-subjectivity really heals, makes whole. This is because Nature is the
127
Milieu that enables our human milieus to thrive. Industrialists commit suicides by

121 I followed Akiyasu Tōdō, Etymological Dictionary of Chinese Characters, Tokyo: Gakutōsha, 1965, pp. 491,
493. 藤堂明保著, 漢字語源辭典, 東京學燈社, 昭和四十年, on ―情.‖ For its different interpretation, see
說文解字詁林, 臺北市鼎文書局, 民72, 8:1104-1107.
122 Tōdō, op. cit., pp. 191, 192-193.
123 Mencius (3A4) and Chuang Tzu (2/61, 24/68, 25/32, 33/9-11, cf. 12/85, 21/12, 25/32, 31/21) used ―tao‖ in the
sense of ―say‖ or ―persuade.‖ The fact is, however, Mencius and Chuang Tzu lived in the 4th century BCE,
and Tao Te Ching was supposedly compiled in the 6th. Thus the debate continues on if the second ―tao‖ here
can mean ―say‖ or not.
124 ―Tao‖ appears as ―say, etc.‖ in Chuang Tzu 2/61 (=24/68), 25/32, 33/9-11, and Mencius 3A4, as cited above.
On Chuang Tzu, see 赤塚忠著, 莊子, 東京集英社, I:107 (1974) and II:448, 908 (1977).
125 See 說文解字詁林, op. cit., 3:156-158. I explored the intersubjective dynamics of ―face‖ as ―facing‖ in the
“Logic” of Togetherness, op. cit., pp. 109-127.
126 This speculation on the etymological connection of two meanings of ―Tao‖ awaits confirmation.
127 Volumes pour out on this theme. See all Gary Snyder‘s publications, e.g., The Practice of the Wild, Berkeley,
CA: North Point Press, 1990, Craig Childs, Soul of Nowhere: Traversing Grace in a Rugged Land, Seattle,
WA: Sasquatch Books, 2002, Edward Goldsmith, The Way: An Ecological World-View, Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1998, Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, An Essay on Nature, Columbia University Press, 1961,
William T. Blackstone, ed., Philosophy & Environmental Crisis, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974,
Bryan G. Norton, Why Preserve Natural Variety?, Princeton University Press, 1987, M. J. Dunbar,
228 Kuang-ming Wu

despising ―useless wilderness with moose idly roaming,‖ for we need all the wilds with all
their animals to inter-thrive free; in fact how many such unbridled middle-of-nowhere‘s do
we have left to vacation and wander in wild health?
Cut off from Nature, we all perish with our selfish ―profits.‖ Ecology is not a choice; it is
128
our life necessity, our existential imperative. Isn‘t all this an ecological ―pluralistic ethics‖
among various species with the Heaven creating all and the Earth nourishing all, concrete, all
too concrete, and isn‘t it captured not by logical analysis but by concrete stories of our life-
experiences? The backbone of the Chinese tradition, that Nature is a Triune Family of
Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, that we must follow nature in our daily routine in feng-shui
129
pattern 風水and cosmological calendars, eloquently proclaims this ecological reverence.
In contrast, it is instructive to cast a side glance at that famous ―Golden Rule‖ and
consider whether it is concrete enough to be practicable, for the Rule has its own difficulty
once we want to ―do‖ it. It is a bloodless principle. The so-called Copper Rule, ―Do unto
130
others as they would wish to be done by,‖ perhaps betters the Golden Rule, both of which
yet remain empty ―principles.‖ ―What should we actually do?‖ is left open.
Arguments since Plato contrive to fill the bare principles with actual situations they are
for, all in vain. This is because an abstract principle is on this side of an ―ugly broad ditch‖
131
(Lessing) that separates it from contingent actuality on the other, and the one cannot apply,
flexibly, appropriately, to the other. Once we construct the ―ditch‖ separating reasoning from
actuality, we can never jump over it, for we ourselves constructed it. Reasoning is ours;
132
separated from actuality; our principles remove us from actuality.
Someone says the Golden Rule is shared by us all and cannot be lightly dismissed as an
abstract principle. True, the Rule is an age-old concentrate of folk wisdom, of collective
experiential prudence, and people all over the world have been intuitively adapting it to their
daily occurrences. The problem is that thinkers treat this Rule of folk wisdom as an abstract

Environment and Good Sense, Montreal: McGill-Queen‘s University Press, 1971, Hwa Yol Jung, The Way of
Ecopiety, NY: Global Scholarly Publications, 2009, etc.
128 Is nature really our necessity? Our ultra-modern buildings are full of flowerpots, aquariums, and nature-motif
decorations; our ultra-modern life needs regular ―vacations‖ into bucolic nature. Nature lives in us; we live in
nature. Taking out nature takes out us ourselves. See also Bryan G. Norton, Why Preserve Natural Diversity?,
Princeton University Press, 1987.
129 Tragically and ironically, China (with nature-human unity) and Japan (with its nature-loving Shintoism) are the
lands of vast ecological devastation. See an eloquent lamentation of extensive deforestation in China in C. A.
S. Williams, Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives (1941), NY: Dover, 1976, pp. 406-408, et
passim. Ecological Akrasia is here.
130 See Huang Yong‘s ―A Copper Rule vs. the Golden Rule: A Daoist-Confucian Proposal for Global Ethics,‖
carefully argued in a Western manner (unpublished to my knowledge). Actually, all these problems and
adjustments on the ―Rule‖ vanish once we realize that it is not meant to be identically mechanically applied to
different situations. Kindness is gifting, person-sensitive; compassion and friendship know how to adjust
kindness accordingly.
131 Gotthold E. Lessing said, ―That is: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths
of reason.‖ (―On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power‖ [Lessings Werke, ed. Lachmann-Muncker, xiii, pp. 1-8],
in Lessing‟s Theological Writings, tr. Henry Chadwick, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1956, pp. 54-55)
We wonder: With what genre of proof, contingent-historical or logical-necessary, can you prove the existence
of the ditch itself? Max Black faces this challenge in ―The Inductive Support of Inductive Rules,‖
Philosophical Analysis, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1954, pp. 190-208. Once Black admits, however
tacitly, to the induction-deduction ditch, he would never be able to jump across it.
132 Similarly, ―to do to others as I would wish done‖ separates others from me who now know not what they want.
 Pain 229

133
principle to argue about. Late John Rawls and early Robert Nozick quested for ethical
principles in a pluralistic society, yet analysis choked up their insights. Is this another pain of
logicizing not touching concrete pain?

PAIN, BUDDHISM, CHRISTIANITY

Let us take stock of ―pain‖ from outside, before going to pain inside us. All Romans 8
with its glorious ending removes no pain, as the entire Bible leaves pain intact. Pain stays
with Christian life, and praying for its removal may not be Christian. ―Romans 8‖ says
negatively that no parent always gives ―sweets‖ to children and, positively, within pain (not
despite it) we can trust in God-in-Christ who is ever in pain with us. We see three spin-offs.
One, pain can cause death. Evil people‘s pain tells of their punishment, but God cherishes
good righteous people‘s pain, even in the Holocaust. Two, people‘s pain may well be an
encounter with God‘s holiness, as Moses saw fire and Job met whirlwind; both realized then
to have met God in people‘s pain. Jesus‘ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) says pain is
God‘s blessing. God is in pain meeting human sin; Christ died on the Cross to show God‘s
infinite Compassion. People‘s pain touches the heart of God, severe, paternal, and holy.134
Three, thus in pain God and humanity meet. Our pain touches God‘s holiness, and our sin
135
breaks God‘s heart to cost his Son. In contrast, pain is unreal, teaches the Buddha, for our
life is less than a puff of dream. We avoid no pain, for there is no pain to avoid. Pain thus
divides Buddha, cool and wraithlike, pain-less and peaceful, from Christ, hot and calm
fountain of life, pain-full, peaceful. Pain is then where Christ and Buddha meet in peace. In
Christ, we are in peace in pain; in Buddha, we are in peace in pain with no pain.
Two questions remain—What is pain? Why pain?—both due to the total goodness of
God‘s initial creation. The Bible tells us nothing about these questions, only how pain
operates, how we should take it to operate and channel, as above meditated on. Here Christ
agrees with Buddha who came not to answer what or wherefrom of pain but how to take off
the arrow of pain and heal us, now that we are shot at.
We on our part are dissatisfied, wanting much to have answers by Buddha or Christ.
They are silent, so we go our way. We see the what/why of pain connected to the how of
stopping it. We could answer, our imperfection breeds pain, while perfect Christ pained for
us. For Buddha pain is born of ignorance of our self as less than a puff of dream; enlightening
us out of our ignorance dissipates pain as a puff of dream. Jesus wants to use pain to partake
of divine pain of paternal holiness, by partaking of our pain in imperfection and sin.
How is pain used? Lao Tzu said of the laughter of ―low people‖ on hearing Tao; their
laugh qualifies Tao as Tao. Suppose the laugh gets violent, trampling the givers of pearl of

133 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, 1993; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and
Utopia, Harvard University Press, 1974.
134 Cf. Kitamori, Kazō‘s 北森嘉藏 Theology of God‟s Pain 神の痛みの神學, published in 1946 (see 古屋安雄, et
al., 日本神學史, München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1991, ヨルダン社, pp. 129-132). Extrapolating from Hebrews
12:10, Christians see pain touch the hem of paternal holiness. After all, to suffer injustice is not unjust.
135 Only Christ and Buddha are cited in connection with pain because Christianity and Buddhism are two extremes
in the whole gamut of religions, one at the extreme of being, another at that of no-being, and all other religions
are in the middle of these two extremes. Pain is thus treated as existing seriousness in Christianity alone, for in
Buddhism everything is less than no-being, including pain.
230 Kuang-ming Wu

136
Tao, as Jesus warns us, then pain bites the Tao-givers to grate them into being concerned
with the low people. The concern can intensify to Jesus‘ amazing extent, dying on the cross
given by low people, and praying on the cross for forgiveness of them. This is wrong pain
best used.
One thing is clear. If pain is a God-we joint, we must accept it as we accept God. Since to
join is love, our acceptance of it in love is faith that pleases God. Buddha on his part dissolves
pain in cool calm. If our ignorance of existence as less than a puff of dream breeds pain, pain
disappears in our realizing so, in the original Nirvanic puff of less than a puff of dream, where
there is no pain.
Let us now look squarely at pain as such, without appealing to religion or morality. We
can painlessly do evil, do good in pain, and suffer ―unjustly,‖ that is, for no legitimate reason.
Besides, every life, good and evil, suffers pain indifferently. Pain crushes creativity; it also
occasions creativity. Pain itself is, then, not evil or good. It is not unjust to suffer pain, even
of injustice; the Holocaust that visited ―God‘s people‖ was not injustice to good people or
justice to bad people. Pain is not ―evil that enigmatically visits people to give headaches to
good almighty God.‖
Pain everywhere has instead the unsuspected functions of disclosing life and cleansing it.
Pain is not an evil to visit evil people ―justly‖ but exposes evil life as evil; pain here turns into
punishment, thereby cleanses evil. Innocent people such as babies suffering from injustice are
not themselves unjust; their unjust pain exposes the evil of injustice, thereby vindicates their
innocence, showing how pure they are.
Pain trumpets good people as good, as it shows babies and baby-pure. Pain here shows
how noble, admirable, a good life is, how to become good, thereby cleanses other people. In
all, pain exposes, judges, cleanses, and ennobles us all. We often call this phenomenon
―moral‖ cleansing—―catharsis‖ in tragedy—and uplifting of the world via pain, and call good
people‘s pain, ―redemptive‖ of others. ―Redemption‖ is a religious term.
Thus, our meditation on pain independent of morality and religion redounds, strangely, to
open our eyes to deeply moral and religious facts about pain. Christ‘s life calmly incarnates
these cosmic facts to ―redeem‖ the world. More, now that we realize how dependent on our
suffering pain is to turn into judging or ennobling life, Christ pain-incarnate entreats us to
turn pain to our account. ―Be good, so you can use pain to ennoble us all,‖ he seems to urge
us in Luke 13:1-5 (negatively), John 9:1-3 (positively), and sends us out to actualize his
parable of the Good Samaritans in Luke 10.
If we dare to go out of our complaints and become the Samaritan to serve those unjustly
beaten, whoever they are, then Christ calls us all ―who weep‖ and beaten ―blessed,‖ for he
also ―weeps‖ and is ―beaten.‖ He is with us in our pain so that we are in his. As he conquers
world pain, resurrected today with the cross-scars, pain now healed, so do we who are in pain.
Christ and Christians thus take up pain everywhere into them, and pain vanishes in their
unspeakable Joy Beyond this world. Such is ―the Gospel of Suffering‖ (Kierkegaard) offered
by Christianity.
All this is momentous indeed. Religion concerns matters of this world to bring them up to
the Beyond. Of all religions, Christianity alone looks at pain straight in the eye. Here, God
who ought not to suffer, as all ancient Greeks were certain, goes in his Son deep into pain
everywhere, wherever it is. He bears it and turns it into Joy Unspeakable, still with pain but

136 Tao Te Ching 41. Matthew 7:6.

 Pain 231

now turned into scars. No wonder the Cross is at the center of Christianity. No other religion
offers such joy through pain. How does Jesus do it?
Well, pain just comes without rhyme or reason. We don‘t like it and pray for its removal.
Paul did so three times, and was gently turned down; ―My grace is sufficient for you, for My
strength is made perfect in weakness.‖ How? God is in pain with us, and thereby conquers
pain. If we die in pain with him, we rise in joy—with him.
137
―Blessed are you who weep now. For you shall laugh.‖ Weeping does not end only at
the end of our life and the world. Everyday ―dies‖ as the night comes. We die daily, so we
laugh daily, for Jesus is weeping with us, to laugh with us. Prayer for removal of pain is not
Christian, then, for joy comes through pain—with Christ Jesus.

137 Matthew 5:3-12, Luke 6:21, John 11:35, Luke 19:41, Mark 15:15, 19, John 16:33, Romans 8:37, John 20:27,
2Corinthians 12:9, Luke 6:21.
Chapter 7

AKRASIA, INTERPERSONAL AND PERSONAL

We have been listening to stories of suffering from pain that simply comes. Now, we
have to listen to pain that we mysteriously inflict on ourselves. Such a pain is ―mysterious‖
because we cannot understand how we could inflict on us what we detest. We call it
―akrasia.‖ Self-inflected pain is of two sorts, interpersonal pain that is often violence, and
personal pain that is often depression. We now listen to stories of violence, then of
depression, and we would be moved deeply.

VIOLENCE AS WEAKNESS—IN CHINA AND BEYOND

Weapons of mass and suicidal destruction are busy at work today worldwide. It is our
timely obligation to ponder on ―violence‖ and its significance after the Iraqi war and amidst
intercultural bloodbaths in Palestine and Afghanistan. This Chapter describes how violence is
weakness,1 in five subsections: (A) violence and our fascination with it; (B) two features of
violence-weakness; (C) the mystery of akratic weakness; (D) akrasia today; and (E) a sad
postscript, all in a concrete Chinese context and beyond.

A. Violence and Our Fascination with it

2 3
Violence violates human selves, namely, human integrity of oneself and others. We
4 5
claim that violence manifests life‘s weakness in China and beyond. This claim seems

1 So, this Chapter assumes but does not argue why all violence is wrong/evil/immoral. Instead, it describes violence
as weakness. We see how violence defeats itself, how unable/unwilling violence-perpetrators are to admit their
weakness, and so on. Cf. the last Note of this Chapter.
2 The definition of violence as violation of personal integrity is tight, not circular, for ―violation‖ is not
synonymous with ―violence‖ (e.g., non-violent violation of desire); no dictionary defines the one with the
other. Violence as person-violation includes damaging personal property. For reasons listed in the first and last
Notes of this Chapter, I omit considering discussions of violence by Hannah Arendt (On Violence, NY:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), Gregg Barak (Violence and Nonviolence: Pathways to Understanding,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003), etc. Sadly, their descriptions of violence-varieties cover
nothing on violence as self-other inter-violation. Arendt barely said, ―if either ‗wins‘ it is the end of both‖ (p.
8). Much less did they say violence originates in and demonstrates violence-perpetrator‘s weakness. Barak‘s
―reciprocity‖ (pp. 155-169) refers to factors interacting to cause violence. ―How much force should be applied
234 Kuang-ming Wu

fatuous, however, for violation often goes with force that seems no weakness, and yet this
impression actually expresses its perpetrators‘ weakness hidden under cover of force; its
objective display betrays subjective frailty of jittery fear.
6 7
How does violence-orgy show weakness? Violence is other-injury, impetuous,
8
impatient, reckless, and irascible, far from healthy, resilient, and calm. This is because, in
contrast to patient and calm attraction that often obtains uncertain and diffuse results, if at all,
and yet the result obtained is solid and last long, violence has four features; it is swift,
specific, soon spent, and boomerangs disasters.
Violence enables us to force the situation to immediately harvest the intended result, the
result is what our original aim specifically specified, which is quite ephemeral and is soon
wiped out, and unintended disasters come back on the violence-perpetrators. Fascination with
violence is due to impatient myopia that irascibly misses its long-term horrendous
consequences, and that on ourselves. Such myopia spells ―weakness.‖
The notion of ―weakness‖ itself must be carefully defined. We often admire those who
are ―strong and brave,‖ the phrase not innocent. The strong-brave relation has four situations.
One, we can be strong and not brave; we have much strength but dare not use it. Two, we can
be brave though not strong; we are ever ready to dare the challenge without much strength to
back the daring, as the terrorists and the Palestinians are.
Three, we can be both strong and brave; we stubbornly push an initial course of action
without deliberating on whether our course is correct or proper, ethically and situationally.
This is ―small bravery,‖ ―weakness‖ truly so-called. Bush dramatically displays such
weakness as he consistently disregards world opinions or the objective situation, only to
doggedly push the world‘s greatest power to horrendous bloodshed worldwide.
Four, we can be prudent, perceptive about when to dare to strike, when to retire, being
sensitive to how proper our course of action is, and carefully measure how much strength to

before it can be called ‗violence‘? What principle do we have to judge such application of force as
‗violence‘?‖ Questions such as these are couched in quantitative terms (―how much‖) and in outside criteria
(―what principle by which‖), thereby miss ―violence‖ that is violation of personal integrity. ―Violation‖
violates, however slightly, and ―personal integrity‖ is we, not principles separate from us. We know it when
we are violated, irrelevant to quantity or principle. Nonetheless, it helps to expose when/why violence is
wrong, disguised or self-deceived as ―legitimate use of force,‖ to say/stipulate that violence is wrong because
violence is person-violation. It is wrong to violate a person, however slight. This inner ―life-principle‖ is basic
to our reflection/discussion, for without personal integrity nothing can be thought about or argued for/against.
3 Newton Garver says violence violates others (―What Violence Is‖ in James Rachels, ed., Moral Problems: A
Collection of Philosophical Essays, NY: Harper and Row, 1971, pp. 241-249); I say violence violates oneself
and others. To focus here on violence as weakness, violence as inflicting pain or suffering pain is only
indirectly touched (Mencius, Sun Tzu, Taoists).
4 There is no violence in general. Violence is always some particular acts/incidents. We must tell stories of violence
in China, where thinking and understanding proceed in stories of concrete events.
5 Complex violence-expressions in China often center on ―pao. 暴‖ such as 暴行, 暴舉, 暴虐, 強暴, 亂暴, as well
as 兇行, 虐待, 迫害, 傷害 (综合英漢大辭典, A Comprehensive English-Chinese Dictionary, 商務印書館,
Taipei: The Commercial Press, 1936, 1974, p. 1417). Mencius twice used 暴 alone (6A6, 6A7) to indicate
violence. I omit all other references.
6 See Oxford English Dictionary (1989), 2001, on ―violence‖ as from ―violentia,‖ ―vehemence,‖ ―impetuosity,‖
meaning to ―cause damage, to persons‖; other meanings derive from this basic one (XIX: 654); cf.
―impetuous‖ as ―moving with violence‖ (VII: 718). I consider usage of words because our word-usage shows
the way we think.
7 See Oxford Latin Dictionary (1996), 2002, on ―impetus‖ as impulse (p. 844), which is impulsive ―akrasia‖ in lack
of foresight and lack in character, soon to be explained.
8 See ―D. Akrasia Today‖ below for its concrete example today.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 235

apply and how to apply it—at each moment. This is ―great bravery‖ we admire; it is as
difficult to practice as it is to describe.
Unaware of all above, we spectators are dazzled by a forceful display of violence. Our
9
Freudian Thanatos-fascination glorifies violence in the ―Arthurian romances ‖ in China such
as ―三國志演義 Romance of the Three Kingdoms,‖ ―水滸傳 Water Margin‖ a banditry-novel
10
of abiding popularity that extol heroic violence under veneer of ―Robin Hood Justice.‖ Our
violence-glorification blinds us to violence as weakness, and our inability to confront this
truth also constitutes our weakness. The next subsection B picks up this point.
Violence as an inter-violation of persons in all forms begins at self-violation to invite
other-violation. ―People must insult themselves before others insult them; family must
destroy themselves before others destroy them; states must invade themselves before others
11
invade them,‖ said Mencius. Then, he strongly implied that its reversal also holds, that
doing violence to others does violence to oneself.
Conversely, ―extending one‘s gracious bounty 恩 suffices to protect all in the Four Seas;
failing it, one cannot protect one‘s own family,‖ said Mencius to passionately exhort tyrant
Hsüan 齊宣王 to extend to others Hsüan‘s inborn ―unbearable heart‖ to end up enriching
12
himself with others. Mencius told the tyrant that it is not that he could not be benevolent
ruler but that he did not (want to). But why did he not? Was it not because he could not, after
all? Isn‘t it the unity of ―cannot‖ and ―does not (want),‖ and doesn‘t it show human akrasia,
our trouble at the root?
Thus violence to the self invites others to do violence to the self, and violence to others
redounds to devastate the self. Existence is inter-existence; one who cuts a tree cuts oneself.
No one is an island; as we are inter-human, an action makes an impact on one as it does on
the other in both directions, from the self to others and back to the self. Violence is a mutual
self-violation—oneself by oneself, oneself by other selves, and other selves by oneself, and
then the direction of devastation reverses itself.
13
Inter-self-violation begins ominously at seemingly innocent ―education,‖ as it shapes
14 15
the pristine self, originally good (Mencius ) or bad (Hsün Tzu ), into something ―good‖ in
the eyes of societal others. Finally, this ―shaping‖ kills the self to achieve ―humanity‖

9 The word ―romance‖ tells of our twin loves of sentimental love and love of ―heroic chivalry‖ or the ―just war‖
against social injustice, and explains the popularity of ―Romeo and Juliet‖ and ―三伯英台‖ that combine love
with violent deaths.
10 In Chinese, ―violence‖ is 暴力 that implies 強暴, showing how instinctively we connect 暴 with 強 that we
admire. See 英汉辞海 The English-Chinese Word-Ocean (1990), 北京: 國防工業出版社, 1991, on ―violence‖
(p. 5887).
11 Mencius 4A8. All English translations of Chinese statements are mine except where noted otherwise.
12 Mencius 1A7. Japan also has a saying, ―情けは人のためならず‖ (Compassion is not for others), as we say in
the West, ―One who gives lends,‖ ―Charity is a good investment,‖ and ―One good turn deserves another.‖ We
do not realize that this is no supererogation but sheer necessity; negating this inter-human mutuality harvests
such dire devastation on us all that we simply must practice this positive mutuality. Empathy is an imperative,
a duty to concord.
13 The Taoists, e.g., Chuang Tzu, Chapter Eight, tell us that ―education‖ maims for reasons described here.
14 ―Why, if human nature is originally good, do we need calamitously to ‗shape‘ it into goodness?‖ Chuang Tzu
asks.
15 Clearly/famously, Hsün Tzu‘s 荀子 chapters that begin his book—―Encouraging Learning‖ 勸學篇, and
―Cultivating Oneself‖ 修身篇—insist on ―learning‖ as shaping the self by others, ―society‖ and ―teachers.‖
236 Kuang-ming Wu

16 17
(Analects 15/9 ), throwing away life for ―righteousness‖ (Mencius 6A10 ). All this may
have seeded the Legalists‘ arbitrary royal shaping of people under cover of regal ―law and
order.‖ It amounts to drawing such ominous implications from Confucius‘ ―Born alike,
learned apart‖ (17/2) unintended by Confucius.
Thus we see violence-kinship among ―humanity, righteousness, education, and dictatorial
‗law and order.‘‖ Their kinship describes how comprehensively violence captivates us in
18
China, pervading Confucian ―morality‖ and ―education,‖ and Legalist ―law and order‖! No
wonder, Taoism arises to protest all this ―violence to human nature.‖
More concrete examples from China soon to be displayed describe violence, to mutually
―boomerang.‖ Such mutual violation of human integrity clearly violates the inner principle of
human existence, that personal integrity, human nature, is inalienable/inviolable, never to be
19
imposed from outside. Violence is as immoral as it is imprudent/self-defeating, returning to
destroy all violence-perpetrators. As givers lend, other-violators self-violate.

B. Two Features of Violence-Weakness

Violence-fascination/glorification (as it exists in China and beyond) expresses horrid

human weakness. Violence flares up in spectacular impetuosity to dazzle the beholder away
from the reality of violence; its impetuosity wrecks all, victor and victim alike. (1) We do not
know ―violence against violence‖ is still violence to destroy everyone, including the
perpetrator (lacking foresight), (2) we are unable to resist striking back at ―offenders‖ for our
immediate satisfaction (lacking resilience), and (3) both lacks show weakness succumbing to
an easy violent way out. Violence is weakness so primitive under the veneer of civilization.
This weakness has persistently been manifested in histories of China and beyond in two
20
mysterious ways: (1) myopic lack of foresight and (2) character-lack to do what we know is
21
right that we desire and can do. This twofold weakness is what ancient Greeks casually

16 Confucius praised ―killing [one]self to achieve human-integrity 殺身以成仁‖ (Analects 15/9). Similarly, Tzu
Chang 子張, a disciple of Confucius‘, said, ―The scholar-apprentice is quite acceptable who on meeting [the
state in] danger offers his life 士見危致命 . . . 其可已矣‖ (Analects 19/1).
17 For Mencius, the educated princely man (君子) would discard life for righteousness 舍生而取義 as we would
throw away [common] fish to grab [rare delicious] bear‘s palm (6A10). D. C. Lau has ―dutifulness‖ to
ominously facilitate Legalism.
18 Someone may object, ―Your claim here is too Taoistic, doing injustice to legitimate ‗education.‘‖ Yet actually
―moral education‖ results in ―admirable violence‖ this essay describes/objects to. My claim that all violence is
also weakness seems radical; I risk it to shout for alternatives to violence for the results violence aims at but
fails. Besides, my claim smacks of no weak quietism, for my alternatives-to-violence require more resilience
and prudence than violence that exhibits rash weakness. Now, claiming all this may amount to ―education.‖ If
so, this is a legitimate education, drawing-out ourselves away from illegitimate ―moral education‖ that brutally
shapes us maimed, if not dead.
19 This is valid even when God created humans; God intends to give us dignity as inherently human.
20 We know because our sages, such as Mencius and Chuang Tzu, told us, as we are soon to see in [2].
21 No Western philosopher takes ―akrasia‖ as a basic weakness of human nature. Paul‘s lamentation (Romans 7:22-
24) was a religious agony (―Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!‖ [Mark 9:24]) that befits redemption
(Romans 7:25), not a radical enigma deserving of sustained reflection. Worse, the Bible has no name for such
radical persistence Paul described—unwillingness to choose what good we at heart desire. ―Akrasia‖ in the
Bible (Matthew 23:25, 1 Corinthians 7:5) means mere lack of self-control, self-indulgence, or (sexual)
incontinence. Sad.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 237

22
called ―akrasia,‖ ―no-strength (a-krasia),‖ weakness, ―the mind in which we act against our
23 24
better judgment.‖ (1) We lack foresight that violence never wins, and (2) violence persists
even we know it, to show lack in character. Both lacks are beyond our understanding and
control; they are our tragic mystery.

(1). Myopic Lack of Foresight

People perpetrate violence both (a) as self-expression and (b) as a quick means to get
what they desire. Both phenomena show myopia in foresight on how futile and self-defeating
it is to appeal to violence for such purposes.

A. Violence as Self-Expression
Chuang Tzu‘s two stories tell us how myopic it is to appeal to violence for self-
expression. They are Brigand Chih‘s bluster for violence and the true sword of nature that
defeats swords of violence, in two continuous Chapters 29 and 30.
Story One: Brigand Chih 盗跖 (Chapter 29) declared a ―strong argument for violence‖:
with violence one enjoys to express one‘s self-identity. With much pomp and circumstance he
blasted, in essence, ―Life is short; I must bravely do whatever I want, even to kill off people
25
to live on happily ever after,‖ and haplessly, we add. However hideously hyperbolic the
story and the claim may seem, they cut the familiar figure of dynastic rogue-rulers for whom
Chuang Tzu reserved scathing attacks in his Chapter Ten, ―Rifling Coffers 胠篋.‖
In its proud display of violence, this story forcibly exhibits human weakness of myopia,
on two counts. One, one is defective who must depend on killing people off, devastating
others, to prop up self-identity, depending on others to prove oneself. Can‘t Chih and the
tyrants stand alone full in themselves?
Besides, two, Chih and tyrants need not resort to violence to prop themselves; it is sadly
26
restrictive in having to play only the brutal zero-sum game of ―you-die, so I-live‖; for them
there was no win-win option. Killing others confirms oneself and no more, if at all, and even
that is not guaranteed, for doing violence to others brings violence on oneself.
That is why, to ward off violence that will boomerang back upon them, Chih and tyrants
were so desperately eager, in fear perhaps, to project a macho image, to themselves and to
others, of how invincibly tough and strong they were. Vulnerability-awareness breeds

22 I confess to an inability to find a Chinese equivalent to ―akrasia.‖ ―明知故犯‖ is narrowly legalistic, and
Mencius‘ famous ―do not do, not cannot do 不為也, 非不能也‖ (1A7) does not judge ―do not do 不為‖ to be
our root-inability 無能 or powerlessness 無力, that is, akrasia.
23 This is a convenient definition given in The New Oxford American Dictionary, 2005, p. 35. We will give a more
careful description of ―akrasia‖ soon.
24 Note that I will use throughout this subsection B these same signs, [1] and [2], to show how the same two
features variously appear as our basic weakness, akrasia, in violence, in these two features.
25 ―Thugs‖ the Indian Kali-devotees explicitly ritualize violence as such. ―Under covers of morality (Confucians)
and law and order (Legalists), ‗sages‘ ritualize violence,‖ Brigand Chih said, and went to violence to express
himself. Arthur Waley (Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China [1939], Stanford University Press, 1982, pp.
20-29) poignantly juxtaposes Chuang Tzu‘s story (ch. 29) of Brigand Chih‘s self-abandoned violence with
Lieh Tzu‘s story (7/8) of self-abandoned hedonism of Kung-sun 公孫 brothers. Here are self-devastating ―sex
and violence‖! ―On Swords (說劍 Shuo Chien)‖ is Chuang Tzu‘s story (ch. 30) of the greatest ―killing‖ that
kills killing itself (with killers)—with a non-killing (storytelling).
26 We will see in ―D. Akrasia Today‖ that this ―only‖ is what makes Bush the world‘s riskiest fool.
238 Kuang-ming Wu

27
―preemptive assault‖ (Bush). We, much less they, do not know that such ―violence to stop
violence‖ increases more mutual violence, more mutual cuttings down.
We had better know, instead, that to ensure no-violence from them, ―we,‖ and all of us,
must ensure them of no violence from us and assure them of prosperity with them together.
This is the only way to prevent violence from boomeranging back to us. But those who brag
about violence never know that, and do not want to know that.
Hearing this story of Brigand Chih makes us wonder, ―How much more, countless times
more, of guaranteed self-fulfillment/satisfaction/enhancement would they have enjoyed, were
they to devote their prowess to promoting communal welfare, by helping people
(Confucianism) and by facilitating letting each other be (Taoism)? Doesn‘t such activities-
for-others decisively prove how genuinely mighty they are over everyone, even without
28
trying to be so?‖
Thus the Chih-story makes us realize how hazardously other-dependent and zero-sum-
restrictive it is, actually, to exert in dread dreadful violence on the helpless. Enjoyment of
self-identity need not depend on sadistic consumption of liver/kidney soups of the victims,
whose relatives may at any moment return to tear Chih up; such possibility imprisons Chih in
constant fear/violence. Chih could instead have devoted his pomposity to promoting
enjoyment with millions, in whom his self-identity would have waxed a million-fold.
29
Story Two: Positively, the next story of Chuang Tzu‘s, ―On Swords 說劍 ‖ (Chapter
30), exposes the myopic lust for swords of violence that destroys others simply to end up
destroying the swordsmen themselves. King Wen of Chao‘s 趙文王 craving for sword-fight
brought to his state mass bloodshed and decline.
Chuang Tzu, invited by the Crown Prince to stop the royal lust, came and merely told the
story of ―three swords,‖ the Heaven‘s Sword nature-invincible, the Heaven-Son‘s Sword,
nature-patterned politics pan-effective, and the Commoners‘ Sword inter-cutting to pan-
perish. The sword is cutting efficacy, and this description itself sword-wields beyond sword;
it is a stunning sword-stroke of genius. Is there a violent sword more non-violently all-
invincible than this Heavenly one? The King was finally persuaded to stop his sword-lust.
Thus Chuang Tzu‘s negative story and positive story above are the closest we can
imagine on the extremity of violence-as-self-expression, which Chuang Tzu‘s invincible
stories, sharper than the Sword of Commoners, help us to realize such violence as tragically
myopic in foresight. Violence of self-expression is simple suicide, nothing else.

27 We must be clear. Preemption is prudential, but military assault is not. We must preemptively resolve the
problem before it happens, but never use military assault to ―solve the problem‖ before carefully considering
the problem and considering all alternatives. ―More important to stop mushroom clouds (by others) than to
find a smoking gun‖ (C. Rice) is a backward logic, a blank check for attacking any one suspected of attacking
us, a mad dog jumping the gun.
28 Similar stories go far back in time. Ssu-ma Ch‘ien in his magnum opus, History Records (史記, 卷二十五,
律書第三, 二段, 臺北: 建宏出版社, 1995, II.211) has a story of legendary despots, Chieh 桀 and Tschou 紂,
on how strong they were to fight wild animals with bare hands and run alongside four horses. Sadly, their
bottomless military greed made them enemies to people in every small-lane neighborhood. The strengths of
both killed both.
29 To my knowledge, only James Legge renders ―說劍‖ as ―delight in the sword-fight‖ (taking 說 as 悅, as in the
Analects 1/1) (The Texts of Taoism [1891], NY: Dover Publications, 1962, II: 186). Judging from the context,
this is not a bad rendering, as I put it as ―craving for sword-fight‖ in the main text. All textual critical quibbles
are just that, irrelevant quibbles that miss Chuang Tzu‘s stunning application of violence to cutting efficacy of
non-violence.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 239

Violence as Means
Tragically also, people and the nations habitually resort to violent warfare, mistaking it as
a ―powerful means‖ to obtain what they desire, as a sure and secure ―quick fix.‖ Our common
knowledge has it that in history sometimes violence does work to establish a dynasty, safe
from outside invasion, to help common people to enjoy high standards of living, as Roman
citizens did.
A moment of reflection shows again, however, how myopic such usual romantic
admiration of violence is, a ―quick fix‖ that spreads as wildfire to destroy everyone, as in the
30
sack of Rome. In a fit of angry frustration, people appeal to violence, blinded by their anger
to see how eventually they lose what violence obtains, and lose themselves with their loss.
Quick fix quickly fails. Self-defeating is violence as means, yet we often admire it as
―heroic.‖ Here are four stories of myopia on violence as means.
Story 1: We extol an extreme intensity of devotion of an ancient loyal retainer Yü Ch‘üan
鬻 拳 who admonished with a sword his lord the viscount of Ch‘u 楚子, then cut off his own
31
feet to ―punish his crime.‖ In our admiration of him we do not realize, nor did he, that his
―loyalty‖ seriously maimed his lord‘s loyal retainer, himself; his violent ―loyal‖ act maimed
his loyalty.
Story 2: We traditionally eulogize our ―great national hero,‖ Yüeh Fei 岳飛, who tried
single-handedly to restore his beloved crumbling Sung 宋 Dynasty, only to be done in by the
32
underhanded Ch‘in K‘ui 秦 檜 of his own dynasty. We do not realize, much less did he,
that, had he been not as gung-ho in eagerly jumping out to attack the enemy, and instead
waited calmly for a few more years, the situation would have righted itself, as Jullien said
33
with an historical hindsight. Yue Fei‘s admirable loyalty, impatient and violent, was an
exercise in tragic futility that killed him.
Story 3: We hail spontaneous popular revolt as an ―uprising (of) justice 起 義‖ in violent
instinctive desperation to overthrow the tyrannical regime of, say, Ch‘in 秦. Such a revolution

30 See Edward Gibbon‘s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 volumes, 1776-1788).
31 Yü Ch‘üan 鬻拳 later committed suicide after burying the viscount of Ch‘u 楚子 who died of illness. The story
is recorded in 春秋左傳 Annals of Spring and Autumn, 莊公十九年 (James Legge, The Ch‟un Ts‟ew, with the
Tso chuen, Taipei reprint, 1972, pp. 98-99). For this and other similar stories, see my History, Thinking, and
Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, pp. 235-259, where I collected/considered
various ―memorable if not admirable‖ suicides under tragic dilemmas in ancient China. All these cases can be
opposed and alternative solutions proposed in ways similar to that proposed here to Yü Ch‘üan‘s case. In other
words, a collective indictment is launched here against all perpetrators/admirers of ―honorable violence‖; after
all, honorable or no, violence is tragic violation of persons.
32 A similar story is the Forty-Seven Samurai in 忠臣藏 (Chūshingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, tr.
Donald Keene, NY: Columbia University Press, 1971). We can understand their rage if we see how folks in a
North Carolina town felt—anger and pride—at the news that 9 or 10 of their boys died in the Iraqi war.
Samurai also felt so, in anger and pride that we call vengeance and loyalty. Instead of killing their ―enemy‖
and committing suicides, however, they could have regarded their master as now living in them. They could
have expressed true loyalty by so resolutely and persistently pursuing their enemy until the enemy realized his
tragic mistake of unscrupulous disrespect to their lord that resulted in their lord‘s suicide and demolition of the
entire household. This tragedy then would have resulted in the enemy‘s repentance, doing whose best to
redeem his mistake by any means he could muster. Their persistence of this sort would have reduced the
terrible tragedy of three-party deaths to just one, their lord‘s, and compensated for that death by their ―enemy.‖
Again, the fault of violence here lies in myopia in foresight, a lack of thinking through, what made them fall
prey to a simple desperate ―honorable‖ way out in violence.
33 François Jullien, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China (1992), tr. Janet Lloyd, NY:
Urzone, Inc., 1999, p. 201.
240 Kuang-ming Wu

was actually Ch‘in-violence boomeranged, to seed another round of violence in/against

another dynasty. They thus shattered to pieces the nostalgic tradition of ―sagely throne-ceding
禪 讓.‖
They threw away Chuang Tzu‘s judicious advice (4/60-62) to deftly play with the
tyrant‘s childish violence, as a skilled tiger tamer handles his killer tiger till it comes to fawn
on him. They preferred instead to repeatedly fulfill Chuang Tzu‘s dire prediction (4/59-60), to
play a praying mantis to violently bump into the oncoming cart of horrific situation. ―Right‖
or ―wrong,‖ violence builds nothing, in pan-destruction.
Story 4: Horrors of the folly of fascination with violence continue to ―thrive‖ in today‘s
greatest nation of democracy; emboldened by both chambers of Congress firmly in the
34
Republican grip, Bush was proudly displaying all his passion for violence.
The folly lies in the stubborn refusal to consider all other alternatives to war, refusing to
acknowledge that battle-violence solves nothing; it only festers/proliferates more problems.
The Iraqi war was fought in defiance of the entire world opinions. Now its ―victory‖ is
harvesting many lethal headaches: the Iraqis are shouting, ―Get out, Americans!‖ in less than
a week after their children jubilantly threw flowers at the US soldiers; Iraq now is in a
political turmoil while USA pulls out.
Daily loss of human lives was compounded by loss of treasures of ancient civilization.
Wholly inadequate hospitals were overwhelmed with the injured; security problems were
everywhere. Business ―contracts for reconstruction‖ were clinched in secret, rejecting even
35
the British companies; the whole world was boiling with rage and frustration. Terrorism
here and abroad is brewing. And the list goes on. Worst of all, Bush was not aware that these
woes and his war belong together. Obama‘s ―taking on the Taliban‖ is now a replay of the
Iraq debacle.
Significantly, all four stories above are sociopolitical. As China‘s The Great Learning
大學 and Plato‘s The Republic show, society is individuality writ large, made visible. The
Day of National Shame (國恥記念日) is May 9, 1915, when China signed the Twenty-One
Demands, equal to The Day of Infamy, December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Yet ―shame‖ means for China and USA not all-attacks—including counterattacks—but
only attacks by outsiders. No one takes counterattack as a moral ―shame,‖ violence that
violates persons, a cardinal crime on humanity itself. Violence the impractical is ipso facto an
immoral shame, however; it runs amuck all over, in history.
It looks, however, as if we keep stressing violence less as ―violation of moral principles‖
than as pragmatic imprudence; this impression misses China‘s sentiment. In China, to be right
36
and proper (yi 義) is to be situation-appropriate (yi 宜); to be proper is to be appropriate. To
be right is to be opportune, to act at the right time, to time rightly; rightness is timeliness that
stays appropriate for all people. We understand such ―odd‖ ethics this way.
When we do something right we expect to feel good. Surprisingly, we ―do good‖ and
often feel no good. In fact, we all try to do right and often harvest disasters. Tyrants,

34 See ―D. Akrasia Today.‖

35 ―Hostility to USA is worldwide now,‖ said Pue Research Center‘s global attitudes poll (June 3. 2003).
36 Archaic ―meet‖ means ―proper,‖ as in ―It was meet that we should make merry and be glad: for this thy brother
was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.‖ (Luke 15:32) ―It is a theater meet for great events.‖
China has sound-meaning homophonic resonance; sound-similarity ciphers sense-similarity. See ―Sound,
Sight, Sense,‖ my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991,
pp. 125-173.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 241

communists, and Hitlers abound, confidently doing ―good‖ to crank out pain all around. They
neglect another side of the coin of actuality, the milieu. Thus China proposes yi 宜 as yi 義,
i.e., being right-in-situ as being-right. Being right-in is to adjust-us to the milieu and adjust-
milieu to us.
37
There are psychic adepts doing more of adjusting-us than adjusting-milieu; there are
revolutionaries doing milieu-adjusting more. China‘s thesis remains that to adjust to fit 適 is
the right. To fit is to inter-fit in the self and the situation to make the right-in-situ; all this
makes the right. Chuang Tzu says, ―‗Shoes fitting‘ forgets the feet, belt fitting forgets the
waist, and so forgetting right and wrong shows mind-heart fit in the world.‖ When all this
38
happens, it is the right ―forgotten.‖ Here we are so fit we feel nothing; we self-forget. It is
joy of no joy.
Here ethics is naturalistic, situational, and incorrigibly practical. The similarity between
Fletcher‘s situation ethics and China‘s situationism is uncanny.39 The comparison deserves
long and deep deliberation. Here is my preliminary thought. Fletcher, eager to oppose
legalism, seems to connect love directly—without directives—to the situation. The
―situation‖ is protean and complex, so ―love‖ must be carefully set so as not to be sucked in
situational whirlpool. Since ―love‖ is indefinable it must be clearly discerned. Failing to do
so—so easy to fail—Fletcher falls in antinomianism he opposed.
China in contrast has two anchors to its ethics—human nature and Nature as human
family-milieu, history-certified. Inherent unbearable sensitivity to others Mencius crystallized
in the concrete release of a bull in mortal jitters, and homecoming to Nature of all things in
Chuang Tzu‘s so many concrete stories, anchor Chinese ―ethics‖ in nonsystematic actuality.
Socrates died because he violated this situationism. For example, Chinese people could
defend Crito against Socrates‘ refusal to flee from death-prison as follows. Socrates behaved
―appropriately‖ at the trial that was rigged, and predictably lost his defense. Now Socrates
must behave ―appropriately‖ by fleeing the death penalty wrongly imposed on him. The
―Apology‖-appropriateness differs from the ―Crito‖-appropriateness because of the difference
in both situations. What persists through the different sorts of appropriateness is his just living
that enlightens young folks, as he eloquently explicated in his defense-apology.
Thus, examining ―how ineffective violence is‖ is to consider how unethical it is, in
China. Violent people often appeal to shortsighted calculations (―doing right‖) or abstract
anti-situational reasoning (Socrates victimized); they are all blind to violence being short-
lived, ruining everyone, victor-perpetrator and victim alike. They do not know that, in the
end, violence destroys its intended effect and itself, i.e., violence violates ―right as right-in-
situ‖ to self-destroy.
We must thus warn that ―legitimate use of force‖ is self-contradictory because it is self-
defeating, and therefore unethical. We must also warn against the other extreme of cheap
pragmatism, that situation-appropriate is not opportunism of dry leaves in winds of shifting
situation. To inter-fit heartfelt ideal and shifting situation betokens an abiding Situation of
what there is, changing without changing. It is Nature alive in the Abiding Tao 常道.

37 Counseling is here. Cf. David D. Burns, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (1980), HarperCollins, 1999.
38 Chuang Tzu 19/62-63, abridged. This saying was quoted as spontaneity; here is another way to understand it.
39
Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (1966). Cf. Harvey Cox, ed., The Situation Ethics Debate
(1968), both by Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
242 Kuang-ming Wu

Thus, ―Tao tao-able is not the Abiding Tao,‖ says Lao Tzu. Tao is the Self-so 自然,
Nature naturing itself. To dwell in this abiding Nature abides in our own self-so, our innate
nature 性 that Taoists call natal virtue, te 德. The collection of Lao Tzu‘s sayings is called
―Tao Te Ching,‖ Classic of Tao and Te inter-fit, with good reason. Confucian humanity and
righteousness 仁義 violate human nature by ―educating‖ it to death; the Taoist Tao and Te
道德 allow, accept, and accommodate human nature, nurturing it 養 性 to let it thrive of itself
in Nature.
A story of Chuang Tzu‘s describes how sinuously human nature thrives in Nature Milieu
that keeps changing, how to go up and go down in it, now dragon-soaring, now snake-
40
slithering, with lively spontaneous harmony as our measure. It is Mother Nature flexibly
nurturing in situation-sensitive friendship and kindness among all beings. All this differs from
superficial opportunism.

(2). Radical Lack in Character, Akrasia

We have considered how violence displays two myopic lacks of foresight in using
violence as self-expression and as a quick fix that quickly fails. We would now see that our
41
myopic weakness manifests a radical weakness ; these tragic heroes of violence would not
42
have agreed, even if they were to be told the tragic defect of violence. That precisely
demonstrates Akrasia, radical character-weakness.
This sad ―stubborn weakness‖ ancient Greeks casually called ―akrasia,‖ namely, when we
43
have skills, capability, and desire to do something better, we still choose something worse.
It is a radical human character-weakness beyond fathoming; we do not know why it is so or
how to resolve it.

40 Chuang Tzu 20/1-8. See my meditation on this story in On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill,
2001, pp. 146-160.
41 Perpetration of ―heroic violence‖ and its popular admiration result from moral education, so we can take this
subsection as a Taoist indictment of moral education. As mentioned before, Taoism and sagely warnings are
also an education, which educates us out of insidious ―moral education.‖
42 ―If these heroes would not have listened, then they do not have ‗the desire to do something better,‘ hence they
are not akratic, right?‖ Well, human psyche is larger than logic. Rejection may mean sour grapes; the more
acrimoniously they reject something, the more intense attachment to it they may show. Of those who reject
Confucianism and Taoism for pure tactics/strategies 術, Legalists/Realists 法家 are most systematic and
articulate. The Legalists‘ behavior shows, despite themselves, that they may show more and know better than
their overt rejection says. For example, can they resort to deceptive tactics without relying on
Confucianism/Taoism? Han Fei Tzu‘s 韓非子 chapters, ―解老 (Understanding Lao Tzu)‖ and ―喻老
(Elucidating Lao Tzu),‖ explain Lao Tzu, whom he rejects; why? Then, the vehemence of their ―rebuttals‖ of
Confucianism and Taoism may well betray their awareness of the two as something better. Thirdly, their
―instruction‖ can proceed (not in deceit they promote but) only on the basis of teacher-student trust, a
Confucian virtue. Fourth, their government of cheating people had to appeal to Confucian ―ruler-ruled amity‖
for policies to work (Waley, Three Ways, op. cit., pp. 192-193). Fifth, negatively put, with brutal strategies in
the royal court, all officials constantly risk their lives in service (Han Fei, Chapter 12, Waley, 183-188); most
legalists lost their lives in state-violence after their great contributions to the state. These five pieces of
circumstantial evidence show that Legalists‘ rejection of Confucianism and Taoism may well show sour
grapes, knowing/desiring better and not doing it. They are more akratic than not.
43 On this notion of ―akrasia‖ and its bearing on Chinese philosophy, see my On Metaphoring: A Cultural
Hermeneutic, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001, pp. 443-454. As I quoted the handy definition from The New
Oxford American Dictionary, 2005, p. 35, I had to cut ―through weakness of will‖ at its end. Paul Edwards‘
massive 8 volumes of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, NY: The Free Press, 1967, has no ―akrasia.‖ Terence
Irwin (Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985, pp. 410-111) casually
takes ―akratēs‖ as ―incontinent.‖ Antony Flew, ed., A Dictionary of Philosophy, Revised Second Edition, NY:
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 243

Chinese history manifests the mystery of akrasia; life goes on in violence while the sages
keep warning us against it. Great Confucian and Taoist thinkers constantly admonished us
against violence (―No self-violation 自暴 but self-possession 自得!‖) while Chinese history is
awash in an unceasing series of violence, in thought (Hsün Tzu, Legalism) and in deeds
44
(tyrants, Yueh Fei). If all this were no abysmal akrasia on a cultural/historical/national
scale, we would not know what it is.
Here is the fact: Many thoughtful proposals against violence were irresistible and
ignored. Sun Tzu‘s 孫子 subtle ―war of no war‖ strategy wanted us to destroy enmity, not
enemy lives; it was a tactful bloodless maneuver to win enemies over entirely, with no loss of
45
lives/profits on either side. Yet, for all his admonition, all wars in Chinese history have been
bloody destructive beyond measure. Sadly, all this while, no one listened to Sun Tzu, not
46
even Mao Tse-tung who claimed to have closely studied him.
―But weren‘t the violent World Wars I and II justified as appropriate responses in kind to
decimate Hitler in brutal ethnic cleansing and aggressions?‖ Well, violence only spreads
violence; violence can never remove violence, as post-WWII emergence of Neo-Nazis
testifies. After all, destruction of destruction can never construct, only dissolution of
destruction can initiate construction, and soft calm dissolution can never be achieved by
violence that only destroys.
Taking advantage of swift, pointed, yet short-lived efficacy of violence, the Allied Forces
could have quickly stopped the spread of Nazism, never an all-out war, and then quickly
appealed to other non-violent means to liquidate Nazism by and by. Better yet, non-Nazi
nations should have taken measures to prevent Nazism from occurring in the first place.

St. Martin, 1979, p. 372, has it as ―weakness of will,‖ a subordinate problem in ―intention‖ and ―morality.‖ No
philosopher took this notion with seriousness it deserves. Sad.
44 China does have rare exceptions. Poet 曹植 Ts‘ao Chih who, ordered by his brother-lord 曹操 to compose a
poem in 7 steps on pain of death, beautifully responded with a poem ending with ―Stalks under pot burning,
beans in pot crying; originally of the same root born, why mutual boiling so dire?
煮豆燃豆萁，萁在釜下燃，豆在釜中泣，本自同根生，相煎何太急‖ This line shamed Ts‘ao Ts‘ao into
ceasing his violence. Having met unfair royal punishment, Ssu-ma Chi‘ien 司馬遷 vindicated the violent
injustice by devoting the rest of his life to painstaking researches to produce the monumental 史記 (History
Records). It has detailed descriptions and judicious judgments on Chinese history, covering 2500 years from
the mythical Yellow Emperor (2696-2599 BCE) to Emperor Wu of the Han (140-87 BCE). Nothing is more
thorough, justified, and lethal a vengeance than such a historical judgment; he executed an absolutely
irrefutable world judgment with his thoroughgoing world history!
45 Lao Tzu said (9), ―Task done, retire oneself 功遂身退‖; ―retire 退‖ is a great tactical move, said Sun Tzu also.
History Records has a moving story (卷四十四, 魏世家第十四, op. cit., III.259-260). Prince Shen on his way
to battle against Ch‘i was offered an all-win strategy by Hsü Tzu, who said, ―If you win, you get only
wealthier Wei and at most become emperor. If you do not win, there would be no more Wei.‖ Prince Shen
wanted to retreat, but his subordinates said that to retreat after coming out for battle amounted to defeat. So
they fought, were defeated, and the Prince was taken prisoner. In contrast, Fan Sui retreated at the right
moment, after his achievement in the dynasty, and gain safety (ibid., 卷七十九, 范睢蔡澤列傳第十九,
IV.240-243). Fan Li 范蠡 also cleverly retired (ibid., 卷一百二十九, 貨殖列傳第六十九, V.617-618).
George Washington‘s popularity peaked precisely by withdrawing himself home to Mount Vernon after
guiding the colonial armies to victory. See Stanley Weintraub, General Washington‟s Christmas Farewell: A
Mount Vernon Homecoming, 1783, NY: The Free Press, 2003. Is George W. Bush here? Where is Barack
Obama?
46 See Griffith‘s comments in Sun Tzu: The Art of War, tr. and intr. Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press,
1963, 1971, pp. 45-62.
244 Kuang-ming Wu

47
Sadly, China had Legalism with strategy-proposals not above embracing violence. Five
phenomena below demonstrate how foolish Han Fei Tzu‘s 韓非子 Legalist proposal was; it
was rulers‘ covert manual to enrich the state with militarism and agriculture. First, he argued
against all ―idle speculations,‖ Confucian and Taoist; he argued that arguments are
pragmatically ineffective, blind to how nature-rooted Confucianism and Taoism are.
Secondly, Han Fei‘s ―ruler supreme‖ policy had no rationale while Mencius‘ proposal
was based on the Heaven so siding with the people as to take people as the Heaven‘s ears and
mouths (5A5). Beyond these two theoretical myopias in brutal regal policy without base,
three further points show the Legalist‘s stubborn pragmatic myopia.
One, Han Fei obstinately refused to see the simple fact that royal selfishness is self-
limiting, however far it militarily extends its territory, for it is just for the ruler, not for the
people. Worse, selfishness is brutally self-destructive, for people would sooner than later rise
up in revolt. Selfishness defeats itself, as history bears out Mencius‘ many ominous
predictions against royal lives.
Two, Han Fei proposed to the ruler a legal ―stick and carrot‖ 賞罰 system to force people
to labors agricultural and military, and enriching the ruler; people were royal pawns. Han Fei
stubbornly refused to listen to Mencius‘ warning (1B8, 4B3) that brutalized people would
brutally revolt, or to Lao Tzu‘s warning (74, 75) that people would not fear to die with their
ruler so brutal to them.
Three, warfare backed by agriculture compose Han Fei‘s dual royal businesses. Here
again he obdurately refused to look around to see how thoroughly warfare devastated every
state that perpetrated it, as Mencius and Lao Tzu kept warning us all. Those who wield
swords perish by swords; there has never in history been a single winner by the sword. Han
Fei‘s Realpolitik was unrealistic, no, counter-realistic.
What was so tragic was that Confucians, Taoists, and many others who saw through the
situation have constantly been bewailing woes of wars around Han Fei, who steadfastly
refused them, even opposed them. Han Fei Tzu was a blind proponent of violence, a genius of
abysmal akrasia par excellence, in theory, in practice.
Confucians, Taoists, and Sun Tzu themselves were no less tragic. Mencius warned people
against mutual profit-grabbing among them and among the states (1A1), and against laying
waste the Ox Mount of our nature originally lush (6A8), to argue for nurturing our innate,
heartfelt, and unbearable sensitivity to people (1A7, 2A6, 6A6).
These arguments against violence for our inborn compassionate sensitivity were
stunning/compelling/invincible. No less brilliant were the Taoists‘ constant ―arguments‖ for
patient self-cultivation in robust strategic nonviolence. For all this, however, insensitive
violence has been going on, as if no one said anything at all about it.
Sun Tzu 孫子 was spectacular. He wanted us to fight against fight itself with brilliant non
48
fight tactics. He proposed putting our soldiers in strategic positions, trailing/controlling the
situation-dynamics, persistent reconnaissance, loving/unifying/galvanizing our forces/people,

47 Or brutal ―Realism‖ as Waley calls him. Our story here, criticizing Chinese Realpolitik, constantly side-glances
at brutal Machiavellianism in the West today. This is a concrete execution of story-thinking, telling one story
to wink at another.
48 Sun Tzu said that people need strong soldiers to enjoy security from oppression but did not say that soldiers must
fight and kill. Soldiers must be strong as firemen are well prepared, to prevent terrors of fire and oppression.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 245

displaying our strength to overwhelm the enemy to cower, speedy surprises to melt away
opposition without shedding a single drop of blood.
These tactics would have adroitly dissolved enmity to take by surprise the whole
enemy—their allegiance, soldiers, power, people, land, and assets. His was a psychological
49 50
warfare of no-violence to victory total and damage-less. Sun Tzu‘s tactics synthesized all
Chinese wisdom. He took over Legalism in Chapter Eleven, ―Nine Varieties of Ground,‖
Taoism in opportune swiftness, things‘ propensity, and trailing the enemy, Confucianism in
galvanizing soldiers and people and winning over the enemy‘s hearts, and the I Ching in
trailing the trends of the times.
Sadly, although Ch‘in Shih Huang 秦始皇 and Mao Tse-tung 毛澤東 loved and studied
Sun Tzu and claimed to have followed him, neither really followed him. Both ended in
bloody demise. In short, history in China exhibits this mysterious tragedy, that such
irresistible, irrefutable, flawless, and brilliant advices of many sages of many schools were
coupled with such terrible turning of all-deaf ears to them throughout devastating history!

C. The Mystery of Akratic Weakness

Our tragedy is that no one pays attention to sagely advice so invincible/irresistible, and
everyone, even today, continues instead the foolish way of violence to self-destroy. There has
been offered, in China and elsewhere, many ―strategies‖ for victory such as ―war of no-war‖
(Sun Tzu), and dissolving enmity by skillful nonviolence (Chuang Tzu) in Gandhi style.
Histories of China and beyond show that none has been followed.
I am under no illusion, either, that my recent proposal to create a milieu combining all
three Chinese schools of thought that have failed, ―Realism (Fajia 法家), Human Akrasia, and
51
the Milieu of Ultimate Virtue,‖ would work. Failure is sad; failure when knowing how to
avoid it is sadly and dreadfully mysterious. It is the tragedy of akrasia, of inveterate human
weakness in violence under the veneer of civilization.

49 ―No-violence‖ is the state of lack of violence; ―nonviolence‖ is a deft technique of struggle with the enemy.
They are different though related.
50 Mark McNeilly succinctly depicted the futility of war-dreams (e.g., ―fight this war to end all wars‖) in Sun Tzu
and the Art of Modern Warfare, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 16-17, 19-21, 24-27, et passim. Sadly,
McNeilly failed to see [a] how radical Sun Tzu‘s ideal of winning without fighting is (i.e., total opposition to
violence), and [b] why many generals ―followed‖ Sun Tzu and still got defeated (i.e., no one really followed
Sun Tzu‘s opposition to violence). Sun Tzu‘s ―six principles‖ (culled by McNeilly) are strategies of how to
implement [a], to win without fighting; that is, how to stop fighting altogether, to literally win the war itself,
not win in war. Sadly again, all generals and McNeilly take these principles as strategies of fighting. Sun Tzu
never titled his book, ―the art of war‖; his book was called ―methods of soldiery (兵法 ping fa).‖ To ready
firefighters schemes to render them idle; training soldiers schemes for their uselessness. Soldiers are
instruments of peace, of war-deterrence. ―Doesn‘t (nuclear) deterrence simply worsen the threat of (nuclear)
war? Isn‘t the ‗deterrence‘ of anti-missile defense program just another escalation of international hostility?‖
Indeed. We should then expand the meanings of deterrence, soldiery, attack, and weaponry. To attack enemy,
we must dissolve its cause, their enmity, and to do so we must wield the ―sword‖ of humanitarian aids. On the
first day of war in Afghanistan alone, USA dropped 40 bombs, each costing $1 million. We could have used
these $40 millions to build hospitals, schools, roads, and markets there. That is the most powerful attack, for it
is the most efficient dissolution of enmity, a radical deterrence. Vaguely sensing this point is an essay by
Fotini Christia and Michael Semple‘s ―Flipping the Taliban,‖ Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009, pp. 34-45,
arguing for persuasion of insurgents to defect.
51 Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, December 2002, Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 21-44.
246 Kuang-ming Wu

52
Vlastos has a tight rehearsal of Socrates‘ denial of Acrasia. The fact remains, however,
that Akrasia stubbornly persists through all human history. Socrates and Vlastos would of
course claim some faults in our understanding on facts, e.g., not knowing ―good,‖ or not
―heartily‖ knowing good, etc. Their splendid thesis of ―knowing good must act out good‖
thus splendidly stays up there separate, irrelevant and inapplicable to actuality.
Again, there has been no dearth of explanations of the situation; we cite two here, both
futile. One, we can say of this ubiquitous failure that a sick man‘s refusal of a cure says
nothing against the cure itself if it is not adopted. It remains curious, however, that such an
attractive cure has attracted no one. Besides, the refusal here is the sickness itself and so the
cure, whatever it is, is powerless to ―cure‖ at all.
Two, we can still say that past failures warrant no future ones. Still, several millennia of
relentless trials against violence have all failed in China and worldwide, and such consistent,
persistent, and ubiquitous failures have probably exhausted all alternative possibilities. All
their failures in the devastated past hardly offer a great prospect for the future of no violence.
Thus violence in China goes on to manifest all our mysterious ubiquitous weakness, our
shared akrasia, all too sinister, helpless, and devastating.
George Orwell‘s Animal Farm (1945) was finally premiered in mid-November 2002, in
Chinese, in Peking, as the mighty People‘s Congress concluded with an announcement of the
new leader. The play called our attention to China‘s bitter Orwellian irony, that Mao arose
against dictatorship to become a dictator himself, and that the Communist Party arose against
China‘s dictatorial tradition only to continue it, while all rebellions and dictatorships revel in
violence. Mao and the Chinese history make an enormous ―Animal Farm‖ reenacted
continually in bloodshed worldwide.
Orwell joins the august roster of sages in China to tirelessly warn us against violence, and
we gleefully carry on violence; our inability to stop it, despite repeated sagely warnings,
clings on to history. So, touting Chinese thinking as a ―pragmatic philosophy‖ touts its
failure. It has pragmatically failed to dissuade people from violence, and has failed to explain
53
why its dissuasion has failed.
The pen is mightier than the sword, they say; the sages have been wielding their
formidable brushes and pens against our self-defeating sword, and what stubbornness our
weak sword is, defeating itself against the sagely ―mighty pen‖! Chronic akrasia of dire
addiction to violence gnaws at the inner sanctum and outer of human nature, under the veneer
of civilization.
Violence is thus quite alive and well today. Jesus warned, ―All they that take the sword
54
shall perish with the sword,‖ before he, sword-less, perished by it. The situation persists
convolutedly in Chinese and world histories—those with swords against others with swords
make others perish, thereby perish themselves with swords, and violent life-scenes continue

52 Gregory Vlastos, Studies in Greek Philosophy II, Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 43-59.
53 I bewailed this fact in ―World Inter-Learning: Global Agenda for the Teaching of Philosophy,‖ Teaching
Philosophy on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century, eds. David Evans and Ioanna Kuçuradi, Ankara, Turkey:
International Federation of Philosophical Societies, 1998, pp. 155-177, esp. pp. 170-174, and On Metaphoring:
A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2001, pp. 443-455.
54 Matthew 26:52 describes a poignant historic moment, as prophesied by Obadiah 15, among many others.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 247

55
to set and play on, ad nauseam. History reenacts itself for Collingwood. We add, it has been
reenacting itself violently with a bloody vengeance.
The miracle is that, despite centuries of continuous butcheries, China today still has the
problem of curbing their population increase, and world population has also been growing.
The world goes on growing, replete with clangs and booms of weaponry of mass destruction.
Bush‘s clangs were today‘s variations of the abiding tunes of violence. Is Obama far behind?

D. A Sad Postscript

We round up this violence-portrait with three sad points: (a) what violence means, (b)
what sagely injunctions amount to in our violence-situation, and (c) our radical bewilderment.
(a) In sum, violence is impatient violation of personal integrity, to dazzlingly display not
strength—calm, deliberate, efficient, and long-lasting in its effect—but a lack of foresight that
violence defeats itself, that violently hitting others boomerangs hitting the hitter back, to
destroy all. Such curious myopia is unable to see the long-term efficacy of alternatives to
violence. Most of us sold on violence would laugh off not-violent actions as simple inaction,
an easy target of butchery, violence to us by others, and we should only hit it back with our
violence to ―keep the rogues down.‖
We do not realize that no-violence is not inaction, and alternatives to violence are
various, ingenious, powerful ―attacks‖—―attack‖ is no ―violence‖—on enmity the root of
enemies, with such tactics, among others, as Sun Tzu proposed. We must ―bomb‖ enemies
with constructive humanitarian aids. Constructive aids to enemies are, pace Bush, not a sequel
to war-violence but its effective alternatives, powerful attacks in their own right. In fact, there
is no other way of real ―attack.‖
We can bypass cynicism of taking any foreign aid as an economic tool of American
imperialism, by anonymously—no label, ―made in USA‖—building schools, e.g., to induce
beginning a spontaneous peace-revolution from inside the society. It can be an exciting
56
adventure, as shown by a New York Times bestseller story, Three Cups of Tea, telling of a
failed and rescued mountaineer Mortenson who returned to the poverty-stricken village and
helped build fifty-five schools for girls in ten years.
The village was thus consolidated from the ground up, all by itself, in line with
Mortenson‘s conviction that ―you can change a culture by giving its girls the tools to grow up
educated so they can help themselves.‖ He then confessed, ―It was amazing to see the idea in
action, working so well after only a generation, and it fired me up to fight for girls‘ education
57
in Pakistan.‖ He sowed silent seeds to the self-growth of a village. He was a catalyst
invisible, exciting, invincible.
Sadly, we stubbornly refuse to admit the above actual story as even feasible, and despise
it as idle idealism of Pollyanna‘s pies in the sky, although we all know and desire all above in
our heart of hearts—remember, Three Cups of Tea is a New York Times bestseller—and are

55 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (1946, 1993), The Principles of History (1999), both from Oxford
University Press. His ―re-enactment‖ as posterity reliving the ideas of historical individuals, is here widened to
mean history reenacting itself among the historians and the people reenacting the past.
56 Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea: One Man‟s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One
School at a Time, NY: Penguin, 2007.
57 Ibid., p. 234.
248 Kuang-ming Wu

always eminently capable of doing so, as Taoists and Confucians repeatedly insisted. Such
our refusal itself, stubbornly clinging on to violence, constitutes a mysterious myopia that
exhibits weakness of personal character, dubbed ―akrasia.‖ Violence is impetuous disastrous
Akrasia, nothing else.
(b) What do we say about various sagely injunctions in China under such an akratic
circumstance? Reviewing what they were and how they transpired in history gives us three
sad akratic points.
One, Mencius‘ Parable of the Bull Mount (6A8) says that the originally lush mountain of
human nature is now laid waste by constant wood-chopping and grass-grazing, and we must
restore it to its lush original state. We ask, ―Whence the chopping/grazing? Why do you want
to restore it to its ‗original goodness‘? How do you know goodness?,‖ and no one can answer
our question.
Nor can another extreme answer our query. Hsün Tzu (23/18-20) nudges us to see that
the hungry young grab foods from parents, to testify to human nature being innately bad, and
wants to teach/train/shape us into decent behaving persons. We ask, ―Whence the badness of
human nature? How do you, being bad yourself, know ‗good‘? Why do you, being bad, desire
to teach/shape ‗bad us‘ into good persons?,‖ and, again, no one can answer.
Neither Mencius nor Hsün Tzu can answer our query, and so they propose cognitive
akratic mystery. In usual Akrasia, we know, desire, and can do the better, and we do not do it;
we display performative Akrasia. These sagely injunctions may themselves display cognitive
Akrasia. Here they observe how we do, assume we all desire to be good, can attain it by
cultivation (Mencius) or education (Hsün Tzu), and neither knows why they assume so.
Two, based on original human goodness (Mencius) or badness (Hsün Tzu), however
58
mysterious, both agree to desire/struggle for humans to become ―good.‖ Is human nature
―good‖ after all, then, in that we all want to restore or shape ourselves (our human nature?)
toward good? Is human nature ―meta-good‖? it does not matter, for both Mencius and Hsün
Tzu have miserably failed in their projects, as history reports. What made them fail?
Three, the situational cause is simple; they failed because we have constantly been
perpetrating violence despite their persistent warnings. Why do we do ―violence‖? We do not
know. We only characterize this strange situation—wanting/able to do good yet not doing
it—as human weakness, Akrasia, which may mean we are not evil, for we all still want to
59
become good, and yet, for all our desire and abilities, we remain no good. Violence
manifests such akratic weakness all around, human, all too sadly human.
Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) famously declared, ―Man‘s natural state is a war of
every man, against every man, (and our) life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.‖ We
have unhappily shown that he was correct, and thereby shown that he did not realize that such
―natural state‖ of human violence is anything but natural. All this is a brutish mystery, for we
have ascertained and demonstrated that our unrelenting fascination with violence and its

58 We may take the legalists such as Han Fei Tzu as the ―truncated Hsün Tzu‖ their teacher.
59 This subsection has some repetitions for emphasis. It assumes all along that violence is evil without
qualification, for violence violates personal integrity that is basic and inviolable; yet it did no wholesale
defense of its assumption, for its main thesis is not violence but violence as weakness. For the same reason, it
only touched on nonviolence, assuming that nonviolence-as-inaction spells an easy butchery by marauding or
systematic violence, while nonviolence-as-tactic is an active complex maneuver as Gandhi and Martin Luther
King carried out. Such defense of violence as evil and careful reflections on nonviolence, invite another essay
another time.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 249

persistent perpetration exhibit our weakness at the root; we call it akrasia. And we don‘t know
its why.
(c) All in all, persistent perpetration of violence sadly displays our akrasia on two levels.
One, we actually, historically, display akrasia in being aware, desirous, and capable of no-
violence yet not practicing it. Two, we display akrasia at a meta-level as well, as knowing
why this is so and how to resolve it (sagely injunctions) yet stubbornly, proudly, refuse to
implement our knowledge to follow through with sagely injunctions. We are akratic through
and through. Worse, we are abysmally ignorant of its why and its way out.
Socrates wants us to stop pretending to know, by relentless admission of ignorance in
self-examination, perhaps assuming that self-examination would increase knowledge. He may
not realize that precisely here in our stubborn perpetuation of violence, self-examination joins
self-ignorance to inter-enhance, for the more we examine violence, the more ignorant of
ourselves we grow in violence. We are utterly at a loss, not knowing what is such impetuous
inability at the root, so often dazzlingly displayed as continual inter-violence, much less how
to deal with it.60
Thus we humans remain a bestial mystery of violence-akrasia, under a veneer of human
civilization that keeps producing more effective and more numerous weapons of mass
destruction, ever more lethal, more ―specific, operative, and complete.‖ The mystery of
akratic violence is our vast ―nasty‖ wickedness beyond straight ―brutish‖ wickedness, beyond
our grasp.
Finally, an important though subordinate, caveat must be entered to this wholesale
objection to violence. Pan-destructive violence serves as instrument to species preservation.
Violence is used to ward off outside intrusion, and preserve a species by keeping spaces,
selecting the stronger, and protecting the weak via ranking order. Violence pushes evolution
in history natural and human. For all its crude scientism, Lorenz61 reminds us of this point.
Still, violence as instrument does not change our major pan-opposition to violence.

DEVOTION AND FANATICISM

Our consideration on violence leads us to ask: Can we be justifiably committed to
violence, as, e.g., protest by the oppressed (and species preservation mentioned above)? Cox
without hesitation says Yes! to such violence, adding that he is tired of giving rationale
62
without gut feelings, as he endorses Joseph Fletcher‘s ―situation ethics.‖ Cox is a
firecracker without base.
Cox firecracker provokes us to ask, radically, ―Can commitment itself be good or evil?‖
Hitler gave his life to his racial and national dream, however selfish; Socrates gave his life to
his philosophic mission. Both equally and genuinely committed themselves to their ideals to
their death, yet one is judged fanatic and the other, devoted. We ask, ―Why? How does
fanaticism differ from devotion?‖ This is a fascinatingly important question we cannot help
but explore; story-thinking could help us here.

60
Is this our akrasia at the third level? We had better stop here, though, lest we are sucked into Akrasia-quagmire.
61
Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, NY: Bantam, 1967.
62 Harvey Cox, ed., The Situation Ethics Debate, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968, pp. 19-20.
250 Kuang-ming Wu

One could say that both fanaticism and devotion are genuine, and yet using violence as
means to solidifying the integrity of the oppressed may or may not be a good proposal,
depending on the goal‘s range; Hitler‘s was narrowly exclusive, while Socrates‘ (passively
violent) was invitingly comprehensive. The protest of the oppressed must not violate (with
violence) oppressor‘s integrity to violate the goal of the oppressed, i.e., universal spread of
integrity. Violence for species in nature observes this general rule, in that lions do not wipe
out zebras, nor do zebras completely dodge lions.
This view is all right as far as it goes, but we feel a bit uneasy. Can life-commitment itself
be value-neutral, whose value depends on something external such as its goal? Can‘t
―authenticity‖ itself be intrinsically valuable? What does ―range of goal‖ mean? Perhaps
responding to the last question shall illumine the first two. This is because goal and
commitment are mutually internal, that each is an essential element of the other, so much so
that goal without commitment is as empty as commitment without goal is blind, that neither is
complete without the other.
And so an authentic commitment to a narrow exclusive ideal is self-violating fanaticism
as that to an inclusive mission is self-fulfilling devotion, and this answer answers the other
question on whether violence can justifiably be done, for violence would violate in the end all
persons, and so violence can never be justified even if done to defend one‘s integrity against
being brutally oppressed.
The key in the oppressed protesting is the range of their humanitarian goal, a narrow one
vs. a comprehensive one. We must look into what this ―range‖ means here. Narrow vs.
comprehensive ranges at their logical minimum mean ―A only, not not-A‖ vs. ―A and not-A.‖
Now, let us put some concrete contents into this bare logical structure, in five points.
(1) The fanatic would insist, e.g., Saddam is evil, so we have no alternative but to
militarily attack Iraq. The devoted would caution themselves, Saddam is evil, therefore we
must try as many ways as possible to restrain or, better, reform him, and war is the worst
possible way and should be avoided; after all, it is easy to destroy and very difficult to reform.
(2) It is relatively easy to describe the fanatic-devoted distinction under monarchy, where
―loyalty‖ is its hallmark. The fanatic subjects blindly follow the ruler while the devoted
usually apply loyal remonstration, risking an accusation of betrayal or sedition. Democracy,
in contrast, upholds a pluralism of people‘s opinions, where any opinion is respected. It is
difficult to see what the fanatic-devoted distinction would mean in democracy.
We venture to say, in democracy fanatic people are identified by a fixated obsession with
a specific position, while the devoted steadfastly keep many options open. Today many
equally plausible yet mutually incompatible positions vie for loyalty. The right to life opposes
the right of choice on the abortion dilemma. National security is pitted against civil rights to
individual privacy in times of national insecurity. The right to bear arms meets community
safety on the issue of possessing lethal weapons, and the list goes on.
We would say that fanatic people rally to one position and reject all others; the devoted
watch vigilantly over the situation to determine what specific position is appropriate in one
situation, while keeping an eye on other alternatives, always ready to adopt another position
when the situation changes. Thus in democracy, devotion that keeps options open is a much
harder position to take than fanaticism that comfortably settles on one position and no other.
(3) Upholding people‘s opinions, democracy risks blindly following a specific popular
opinion no matter what, falling into smug mob-fanaticism. Comfort lies in number.
Democracy thus deteriorates to crowd-rule under demagoguery; it is ―the worst form of
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 251

government‖ (Plato, Churchill). Antidote to such public deterioration lies in public warnings,
perhaps in the form of journalism and multimedia. We remember it was the journalists who
exposed and provoked Nixon‘s Watergate scandal that brought him down.
Many crises—non-existence of Saddam‘s weapons of mass destruction, negligence in
face of clear intelligence signs of 911 before 911, American soldiers‘ mistreatments of Iraqi
prisoners—were brought out to the public only by the journalists. They clamor for Secretary
of State Donald Rumsfeld to resign on pain of impeachment, yet no impeachment of
63 64
Commander in Chief George W. Bush was proposed, though John Kerry came close.
Alarmingly, journalism and multimedia are easily swayed or ―bought‖ by financial/political
powers into their mouthpieces.
An antidote to selling out the soul of journalistic integrity is adherence to its independent
integrity—by being steadfastly skeptical, ―outrageous‖ to public common sense, being
―voices in the wilderness‖ and ―wooden bells 木鐸‖ to sound public warnings and to call for
public attention. Multimedia journalism should be outrageous but not out of line; journalists
do not act on what they signal, but call attention to keep options resolutely open.
(4) Such journalistic warnings are many and diverse; one journalist says one thing,
another, another thing. They are also time-sensitive, now saying this point, now that.
Democracy is so confusing and disturbing, and devotion to it is not easy. Here, comparison
with medieval Japanese samurai is instructive. Good samurai have three traits: they are
fiercely loyal to the lord to their deaths, highly cultured (in poetry, Zen meditation, flower
arrangement), and good swordsmen. We today could be ―good samurai‖ as well, if we fulfill
the above three traits adjusted appropriately.
First, we should be devoted to the principle of democracy; ―I defend to the death your
right to express an opinion I despise‖ (Voltaire). Second, we must be as highly cultured as we
can, for democracy cannot work without educated people (Jefferson); ―Upon the education of
65
the people of this country the fate of this country depends‖ (Disraeli). Finally, such
cultivation of honor and high culture gives us ―good sense,‖ the ―sword‖ to keep options
open, helped by skeptical journalism to keep journalists skeptical, to open to may options and
to choose one for the ―situation now.‖
(5) We have focused on devotion by considering a concrete question, ―What should we
do to be a good samurai today?‖ Let us continue it by zeroing in on the final requirement of a
good samurai, good swordsmanship, for we do have to fight a good fight. Samurai
swordsmanship today amounts to describing how to fight a clean, aboveboard, and beautiful
fight today as good samurai did. Three descriptions can be raised.
One: Samurai had many ―schools‖ of swordsmanship; today‘s ―swordsmanship‖ has as
many styles as we have cultures, mores, conventions, and morals that crystallize into laws and
regulations. This is the style of justice and standard of behavior, the ―frame‖ of a specific

63 Bush is impeachable for three reasons. He is impeachable for dereliction of duty as commander in chief if he
knew of no prisoner abuse, for failure to stop it if he knew. Thirdly, unique to him, his violence-tendency,
expressed in his self-righteous tone in war on terrorism and ―legal‖ brutal treatments of ―enemy combatants‖
must have seeped throughout the military establishment to create a climate that bred such routine abuse.
64 John Kerry said on May 9, 2004 that the chain of command goes all the way up to the Commander in Chief who
must be responsible. This is the direct result of unilateralism of force. Our force may have no rival anywhere,
but our moral authority is the lowest in the world.
65 Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) said so in the House of Commons, 15 June 1874.
252 Kuang-ming Wu

cultural district we must conform to and wield as sword when we live there to fight for
―justice,‖ unless the socio-cultural frame itself is ―out of line.‖
China has such a socio-ethical frame, the codes of honor, in Four/Eight Cardinal Virtues
66
of Confucianism, and Chuang Tzu extends them into honor among thieves, as Plato did for
67
ancient Greece. When in Rome, we should do as the Romans do; so should we as the
68
Japanese when in Japan. Medieval samurai were loyal to such ―codes of honor‖ that cost
them dearly, as The Tale of the Heike tragically depicts, and laments them on a higher
69
plane/frame, Buddhism.
Two: The Tale of the Heike depicts how those samurai died with their not-so-good lords
of the Taira clan, to leave us with a nagging doubt if the tragedy was a noble/correct one, or
not. The story supposedly illustrates the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence. We suspect
instead the tragedy is of ―fanaticism.‖ The samurai may have rushed to perish under the
narrowly defined ―loyalty,‖ blindly following their codes of honor, blind to what they were
70
really up to. Failure to self-examine here leads to fanaticism.
Their failure leads us to tarry for a while in ―evanescence.‖ Evanescence has at least four
physiognomies, four facial types so fascinating, Japanese, Buddhistic, Western, and Chinese.
Mind you, only stories can cover them, not logic-rationality that is quite powerless here. Here
are these four stories on four types of evanescence; there may well be more.
Japan‟s adoration of evanescence as beauty does not adore the loss of things, so much as
the moving of beauty appearing and then vanishing, over and over, inexorably. This sure
repeated move is what is beautiful. Beauty is dynamics alive, joyous or tragic. Japan wallows
in this dynamics, even purposely jumps into it, often to punctuate the vanishing with self-
destruction, i.e., suicide. This may be one rationale for Japan‘s love of suicide.
In contrast, Buddhism embraces evanescence as bliss. The bliss is no elation in
evanescence at all but in the clean clarity of my awakening to it, where ―I‖ vanishes. I cannot
wallow in vanishing; instead I am in joy of the vanishing of my very awakening. Since all
vanishes, my joy also vanishes, and chanting such ―vanity of vanity, all is vanity‖ is bliss—of
bliss vanished. The whole process is quite self-contradictory in its consistency.
In the West, evanescence is impermanence, disdained (im-) by permanence. The West
struggles out of the cave of flickering impermanence toward serene logic of the ―law of
nature,‖ to control impermanence, to cut decay and contingency with continual supply of
manufactured goods, of health ―insurance‖ against illness, of life insurance against death. The
West fights against brutal impermanence surrounding it as it used to fight against gods; it
used to always lose, but now it is winning inside and out. The West the Sisyphus happily
pushes his assured rock of impermanence.

66 E.g., Chuang Tzu, 10/11-13, 17/62-64.

67 The Republic, I.351.
68 Cf. M. Y. Aoki and M. B. Dardess, eds., As the Japanese See It, Hawaii University Press, 1981.
69 Two English translations of Heike Monogatari 平家物語 I know of are both titled The Tale of the Heike. One is
a translation by H. Kitagawa and B. T. Tsuchida, Two Volumes, University of Tokyo Press, 1975, 1989, etc.
Another is a translation by H. C. McCullough, Stanford University Press, 1988, 1999, etc., who mentioned A.
L. Sadler‘s translation (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1918, 1921).
70 Similar suspicion of fanaticism can be shown in the Forty-Seven Samurai in 忠臣藏 (Chūshingura: The
Treasury of Loyal Retainers, tr. Donald Keene, NY: Columbia University Press, 1971), 47 samurai‘s ―success‖
of revenge over their lord‘s ―enemy,‖ ending in mass hara-kiri, disembowelments. We mentioned this sad
story before.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 253

China‟s evanescence is impermanence as correlate of permanence. In the child‘s wonder,

China romps and roams in nature‘s seasonal rhythm unpredictable, chant-able yet unexpected,
in joy and in sorrow. This inescapable adventure is part and parcel of history that we are.
China meticulously jots down in amazement all such ongoing of life.
So fascinated, China composes nature‘s mathematical poetry to partake of it to envisage
what comes to be. Nature‘s poetry is heaven‘s web blossoming in literature as history, telling
its stories, one at a time, of a biography of nature inside us and out. Life‘s impermanence is
nature‘s rhythm ever surprising, composing the tapestry of literature-history. Here harmony is
achieved as a task in our living of impermanence, to live out life‘s poetry.
Where does ―devotion‖ fit in all this? It must doggedly be for the entire humanity. ―I will
71
defend to the death your right to express your opinion that I despise.‖ This biting statement
jolts us into realizing a principle, conscientious, democratic, to which we should be devoted.
Here is the warrior spirit fighting to death on two fronts.
Today‘s samurai would battle against social lethargy, whose mores/customs tend to
cultural bigotry, to fight for ―your right to self-expression,‖ whatever it is, while fighting
against ―your‖ opinion that I see is reprehensible and unforgivably incorrect. This twofold
samurai battle is a radical protest toward extensive reform, at once comprehensive in overall
framework and conscientiously individual on each idea. Here is no room for fanaticism, a
narrow-minded loyalty in exclusive nepotism (as samurai) or ―my country, right or wrong‖
(as patriotism).
72
Three: Thus justice is conflict (Hampshire). Such battle of perceptive conscience is
clean, above board, and beautiful. Justice is gutsy samurai fight. This fight for pan-justice in
every corner and every aspect of life is no boneless jellyfish, it is not easy; it requires sharp
good-sense and observant sensitivity, cultivated for long in patient character training in all
high cultures. Here our ―sword‖ is the daring mouth and the careful pen, literally vastly
mightier than the usual sword.
An ancient example in China comes to mind. On being granted an audience to Liu Pang
劉邦 the new military victor, scholar Lu Chia 陸賈 urged Liu to study the Classics. Liu
disdained, saying that he had conquered the world on horseback, what else did he need? Lu
replied, ―You have captured the world on horseback; can you govern it on horseback?‖
Stunned, Liu begged for instruction on government. Lu then wrote A New Discourse 新書 for
73
Liu. Lu‘s brave mouth and brush vanquished Liu‘s sword. Lu‘s timely quip initiated
Confucian governance in China.
Today, several cartoonists brought down several unsavory presidents; civil rights
movements, persistently civil, changed public perception on racial equality through decades
of varied nonviolent campaigns; the mighty tobacco industry was toppled within a decade by
assiduous public education by multimedia dissemination of sober medical knowledge.
Journalists and the conscientious populace have been today‘s genuine samurai who battle
with mouths and pens that are mightier and sharper than the sword, cleanly, justly, daringly,

71 This is what I remember as Voltaire‘s saying. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1953), 1966, p. 557, records
it otherwise: ―I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,‖ attrib. in S. G.
Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire, 1907, p. 199. Since the saying is an attribution we can take either one as
Voltaire‘s, though I like better what I remember; it is punchier and more like him.
72 Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict, Princeton University Press, 2001.
73 See ―The biography of Lu Chia,‖ History Records (史記, 酈生陸賈傳, 第九段, 臺北: 建宏出版社, 1995,
IV.600); 100 years later, Wu Ti 步帝 canonized Confucianism as the official State Scholarship.
254 Kuang-ming Wu

persistently, and beautifully, and they have been steadily winning the world through countless
bloody failures. That is unrelenting devotion to perceptive principles for us all. Devotion is
all-powerful when yoked to ―for us all.‖
In sum, the devoted-fanatic distinction is difficult to perceive and practice, yet quite clear
and essential to democracy. Devotion to us all is pitted against fanaticism to pet private
ideals, and devotion to us all implies respect of privacy of others who radically differ from
me, while I tirelessly debate with them against their ―wrongs‖ as I see them, yet ever keeping
my mind open to whatever told me as my wrong. As a result, a zero-sum fight, powerful vs.
powerless, must be fought to be replaced with ―everyone the winner,‖ for the powerful is in
need of the powerless.
In a pluralistic society of democracy today, it is difficult to be ―devoted‖ to anything
specific, and so quite easy to retreat to fanatic loyalty to one‘s private judgment, yet such
fanaticism destroys democracy whose essence is to respect others who differ from us, even
oppose us. Our struggle is to describe with our life by telling our story of life of democratic
devotion, and this difficult and important theme is itself the directive to our devoted struggle
to keep our faith in the democratic principles.
In the end, our storytelling struggles amount to pursuing an ethics that is global and
pluralistic, utterly opposed to fanaticism of violence. Violence shows our craving for power,
as we all want power. Joseph S. Nye proposed soft power and hard power, the power that
draws/attracts and the power that crushes/destroys. We find the power true, real, and
incorruptible in the power that compels, induces, disarms, and makes whole. The one power
74
that does all this is, incredibly, the smile (if not laugh ) of a baby. This power is the dawn
that begins all things and all lives. Let us see how baby smiles to conquer us.
Nothing is more powerful, more promising, and more irresistible, than baby smile. Smile
shows and portends victory; baby smile wins us all, without even challenging us. The world‘s
greatest power is here, beyond all nuclear threats with all Pentagon strategies. Here in baby
smile is tender pervasion, weakness that wins, and simplicity so strong; it is an ultimate
smiling union of all extremes. Smile that amuses, ridicules, or affects is poor adult smile, not
baby smile that disarms, silences, and heals such adult smile that dissimulates to trap us, no
true smile at all.
Baby smile, with that intimate baby smell so fragrant and unforgettable, need not fight
us; it just puts us at ease, pulls us home, and turns us self-forgotten. We nod and we smile
with the baby smiling. Baby smile smiles us all, and we do not know what it is that smiles us;
we are just pleased that the baby is this baby and no other, in whom we are as we are. The
whole baby is pure pleasure so contagious because it is simple so unassuming, so disarming,
just there as it is, called ―cute.‖
―Not all babies are cute; I saw some ugly babies whose smiles are dull,‖ you say. There
are always a few exceptions that do not demolish a general rule. Among the exceptionally
unattractive babies, I can imagine only two sorts, hyperactive ones and misshapen ones.
Hyperactive babies are still not ―violent‖; misshapen babies arouse pity.
We see no repulsive baby-Hitlers, simply because they are too weak for atrocity. There is
no exception to the general rule that babies are weak and immature, for that is what ―baby‖

74 ―Smile‖ is yoked to laugh (Merriam-Webster‟s Collegiate Dictionary, 2008, p. 1177) as ―laugh‖ is yoked to
victory (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 1972, I: 658-662). Isaac the Smile turned his mother
Sarah‘s chuckle in unbelief into smile of joy at the unimagined gift from God, Isaac her baby smiling!
Everyone wins here!
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 255

means. ―Strong and mature baby‖ is contradictory as ―married bachelor.‖ Weakness and
75
immaturity are some ingredients of being ―cute,‖ explainable by elucidating weakness and
immaturity, as we do here. In short, we have fewer ugly babies than we have ugly music.
Sadly, some babies turned out later to be a Herod so insane as to kill babies. We naturally
ask, ―What happened?‖, but one thing we cannot do is to say that their early babyhood caused
their atrocities. Time relation is no causal relation; we cannot say, ―After this, therefore
76
because of this,‖ e.g., Herod‘s killing of babies occurred after his babyhood, therefore he
killed babies because of his babyhood. His babyhood remains innocent of his baby-killing
later in his adulthood.
In all, baby smile thus expresses our best, our joyous Kingdom. That is why baby smile is
mighty beyond all violence; baby is the Kingdom‘s greatest the Devil so hates. ―Out of the
mouth of babes and nursing infants you have ordained strength (into a bulwark built), because
of your enemies, that you may silence the enemy and the avenger. . . . I will give children to
be their princes, and babes shall rule over them,‖ intone the Psalmist (8:2) and Isaiah (3:4,
NKJV). No one can ever win these babies, and we do not even want to win; we want to be
won over, embraced there.
―But babies are so fragile, immature, and useless, smiling or crying. They will be laughed
off if not crushed among the powerful Pentagon personnel.‖ That is precisely the point. The
very weakness of the baby is the litmus test that divides the genuinely human from subhuman
boor. Baby‘s immaturity is the dawn of humanity. Seniors soon vanish; never must we
mature. In fact, those unmoved by baby‘s smiling power are sub-bestial, for so many animals
just love and care for human babies. Babies‘ simple smiles warm to ennoble the whole
lifeworld. ―How so?‖
Look! Baby immaturity continues in girls and boys yelling, shouting, fighting, and
spinning their tops, as they twirl themselves to turn into tops, for nothing. Later, Uncle Fort
the immature just trails what comes, mumbling, ―How can this not make its opposite?‖ Even
later, Sisyphus underground just pushes that stupid boulder uphill, only to see it rolling down,
to push it up again, for nothing, and Albert Camus caught it as ―Sisyphus happy.‖ All this
composes our other stories on other pages, in baby smile growing in immaturity that is
―absurd‖ and fun, for nothing.
Such baby smile never overwhelms, ever releases us into the baby into ourselves. We are
one with the baby in that baby smile in joy unspeakable, gaining nothing, and thereby gaining
everything as it is, at the dawn of immature ―everything.‖ Many composers can be tender,
exquisite, and ethereal, but not smiling innocent as Haydn.

75 Naturally, ―cute‖ is quite a complex notion as beholders‘ reaction to someone with three ingredients: weak as
uncertain, immature as not-yet, and novel-as-forward-ing. They make ―cute‖ that is part of a baby. When weak
is not uncertain and immature is not not-yet but both are set, no one is cute anymore. Imperfect humans are all
weak-immature; to pretend not is to be orthodox, a dictator, to violate the self and others, to be really
defective. They are no babies. In contrast, novelty must include weak and immature, and the mix makes baby;
poets, scientists, and geniuses weak and immature, e.g., Van Gogh, John Nash, Freud, Frost, etc., are ―babies.‖
Are they ―cute‖? It depends on the beholder‘s reaction.
76 Peter Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1996, is not of much help on our problem. Remember the famous fallacy of ―post hoc, ergo propter
hoc‖? Natural science is eager to avoid it.
256 Kuang-ming Wu

77
No wonder, the music of Haydn that smiles baby simplicity pleases me unspeakably. I
cannot help but live in it, while surrounded by pictures of babies smiling no contrived smile,
as I write on baby smile, and on everything else in baby smile so immature, so irresistible.
Even writing all this gives me smile, for nothing.
―You make no sense. The baby is obviously weak yet you say it is invincible. Violence is
macho-tough yet you say it is Akrasia-weak.‖ It is time to clarify. Baby smiles, and wins
tenderly, while violence self-hurts. Baby smiles so full to flow over to others; violence‘s
machismo is hollow, hiding worry/fear of others. Baby draws others to fulfill them as it is
full; violence crushes other to self-crush. Baby is calm, silent; violence is noisy, impetuous
for quick fix to quickly fail. Weak baby is self-full contagious, smiling; strong violence
harbors demise-soon it loathes to see.
You see, we have two powers, hard power to crush and soft power that buds, one to end
and one to begin, one strong and one weak. Strong power crushes to end others to crush to
end itself so soon. It is power to kill; we cannot live by power to let die to die itself. Besides,
such deadly power cannot operate unless it begins at soft power in the bud so weak. Such
weak power is baby smile that embraces us to draw us into us, in irresistible smile simply
unassuming, ever at the dawn of today ever promising tomorrow.
No wonder, Christianity begins at Christmas in a helpless baby Jesus who is our savior.
78
Incredibly, weakness in baby-immaturity saves us—from brittle violence of strong Herod.
We with King Herod despise the weak baby to crush those babies in adult selfishness. We, all
sick at heart, need baby smile ever at faint dawn, to begin afresh.
Violent adult death on the Cross, ending all, needs be saved by baby-rebirth so weak, the
Resurrection soft and discreet at the silent waterfront; it is Christmas dawn rebounded. Here,
the Christ-baby ever smile-alive draws us alive at life‘s dawn in baby-silence. Nothing is
softer power more beautifully powerful.
We say all this is just our wishful phantom, a myth of miracle supposedly to begin life
again. It is simply incredulous. We forget the reminder of baby smiling ever at our side,
drawing us to pull us ahead of us into tomorrow, and tomorrow, and more tomorrows,
gathering us huddled together at this baby. Here is no violent ―sound and fury‖ but just
smiling silence of a simple baby drawing us into caring for her, who in our caring cares for us
to nourish us, ever nurturing us in baby-immaturity so fresh.
―Doesn‘t all this ‗signify nothing‘?‖ Yes, but this time the ―nothing‖ is the silent smile of
a helpless baby, that irresistible weakness that embraces us softly, ever beginning us afresh in
all baby-immaturity so budding fragile. Again, nothing is more beautiful. Nothing is more
invincible. Miracle is here in embryonic omnipotence of a baby nothing.

77 Just listen to Brahms the gnarled tree; his ―Variations‖ manage to twist Haydn dark and uncomfortable. Oddly,
Brahms‘ piano sonatas are a clear sky where we can breathe, though not quite smiling as Haydn. Paganini
sharply goes up and down to stir up excitement, no calm excitement of Haydn‘s smiling daily walk. Etc.
78 Cf. Peter Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1996, pp. 18-20, 294, and Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, NY: Doubleday,
1993, p. 747, index on ―Herod.‖ Herod was reportedly so insane and unpredictable as to have even his own
children executed. He died of a painful disease, perhaps syphilis, and his ending was not pretty but dramatic.
All this reminds us of violent deaths of legalists such as Han Fei 韓非 (6:2801), Li Ssu 李斯 (6:3615), and
others (e.g., Shen Pu-hai 申不害 6:2796) in China. See 司馬遷‘s History Records 史記, Vols. 63 and 87,
臺北市三民書局, 2008. Cf. 商君書, 臺北市三民書局, 民85. Political Akrasia is so brutal and sad; here is no
child, and that is the whole problem; Herod the baby-killer is insane beyond repair.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 257

My silence is everywhere. While I let sun-warmth, birds singing, and tree shades sink
into me, I am silent. My silence is so full beyond words, with cool breeze waving with me as
I walk on, and my pain in my stomach and my foot dissolves of itself. I walk very slowly, in
silence so full so slow as kids on bikes go slow. My silence soaks up the sun with roadside
grass and the birds singing invisibly. They say flowers are leaves, but leaves last longer in
silence than flowers shouting their beauty. Leaves are as beautiful, just less noticed. Silence
is full, slow.79 It is my baby.
Flowers alone are not as pretty; birds alone are not as enthralling. They must gather
because birds are sky-flowers so chirping, and flowers are roadside-birds so chirping; they
must resound to make beauty so casual, so silent. ―Dad, it‘s quieter when birdies sing, isn‘t
it?‖ my boy Mark whispered. I would have responded, ―and it‘s quieter when flowers chirp,
too, isn‘t it?‖ In all, it‘s prettier when flowers and birds hug, so deep, so silent. Such is the
silence of nature telling stories orderly chaotic as it is a chaotic order, all this in silence, full
and alive beyond word.
If, within all this nature-silence, we still persist in the brittle noises of mortal violence, as
we have been persisting for millennia, we are in bottomless mystery of radical weakness,
Akrasia. If we know, can, and want to choose life, and we still choose death, pursue deathly
power of violence, then we must bewail over our mysterious Akrasia-weakness, refusing to
80
be comforted, with those mothers who lost their babies to mighty King Herod short-lived.
We must meditate in sorrow the dark mystery of Akrasia so disastrous, so abysmal.
Let us repeat. If we sadly miss this greatest power in baby smile, as your objection
shows, then violence would manifest its weakness in jitters to grab power, in vain. And then,
as violence-weakness the adult Akrasia pits against baby-weakness the dawn of full human
power, violence is exposed as a typical manifestation of adult‘s mysterious weakness,
―Akrasia,‖ to which we turn.

TWO STORIES OF AKRASIA

Rationally unintelligible is our inveterate ―akrasia,‖ knowing what is better, desiring it,
and capable of performing it, and yet preferring the worse. Socrates did not understand it at
all, and so he declared that we can never knowingly harm ourselves, and perpetration of evil
81
is due to simple straight ignorance.
82
Dahl ingeniously said that Aristotle had two claims on akrasia. One, akrasia expresses
our conflict of motives (218) and desires (223). Two, practical reason can infer an end and
give us a motivation to act on it, but the end may not be integrated enough into our character
to warrant us actually to act on it (219). These two claims are interrelated at the inner
constitution of a person, our ―character.‖

79
Silence talking will soon be considered.
80 Matthew 2:13-19. This is a sad tragic story so incredible.
81 Gregory Vlastos has its tight straight rehearsal, ―Socrates on Acrasia,‖ in his Studies in Greek Philosophy,
Volume II, Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 43-59. He never noticed this critical crack in Socrates‘
―argument.‖ Sad.
82 Norman O. Dahl, Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will, Minneapolis, MN: The University of
Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 218-223. Dahl tried to show how Aristotle can explain akrasia, not how akrasia can
make sense with Aristotle‘s help. Thus Dahl came to hold little water. Sad.
258 Kuang-ming Wu

And of course the two claims raise a question of how interpenetrated reason and character
are. We may ask (a) how rational is our personal character, (b) how influential our reasoning
is on actual personal living, and (c) how they interrelate.83 In short, the mystery of akrasia
remains—however we twist and turn. Incredibly, while akrasia cannot be explained, akrasia
describes human situation through history. Intellectual parsing is powerless here; we try
another route—storytelling.
Religious scriptures are mostly stories for a good reason: Life‘s problems are matter-of-
factly dissolved in storytelling. Or rather, as Jung said, problems do not dissolve but become
a part in a wider context for us to deal with,84 and religious storytelling puts life‘s problems in
a wider higher context. Here is an example.
My sister‘s husband was suddenly hit by stroke, entirely immobilized, and the sale of
their company fell through; my sister Michi herself was riddled with all sorts of health
problems. My agnostic brother Êng-bêng naturally raised crucial insoluble queries. Here is
my open letter to him, appealing all the way to religious stories, not to solve them but to deal
with them in composure.

Dear Êng-bêng:

You raised two important questions on religion. One is why God or Buddha allows all
this to happen. Another is who we are to choose—Christ or Buddha. I now try to respond—
not answer—in three points.

ONE, we are human; we forget this trite but crucial truth. Our forgetting it breeds two
questions. (a) ―Who is more powerful, Christian God or Buddha?‖ as if we were above gods
to judge between them. (b) ―Why me? Why Michi?‖ These questions are beyond us humans to
answer. Why?

TWO, we complain with (b), ―Why me? Why Michi?‖ for we expect God to ―bless‖ us
with ―wealth, health, and professional success‖; we apply such our standard to God, as if we
could throw a stone up at the sky. The stone just comes down to hit us, to expose us as human.

83 Let‘s go slower. ONE, a ―conflict of desires‖ indicates at least two desires in us—a rational one follows reason
and an irrational one opposes it. But such conflict should not have happened to begin with, if Socrates were
right in saying that we would naturally follow what benefits us as reason tells us. Thus this point repeats
Socrates‘ enigma, not solve it. TWO, ―akrasia may be due to the fact that reason does not sufficiently suffuse
character‖ merely says we are still in the stage of ignorance, and does not answer why we choose what we
patently know is evil. Aristotle‘s ―character‖ is héxis, what we have come to ―have‖ by ―habit‖ (―have‖ is
etymologically related to ―habit‖), by habituation; habituation constitutes our constitution. Aristotle‘s, if not
Socrates‘, claim that reason habituates character assumes that reason is naturally congenial to our constitution.
But why need habituation in the first place, if character is rational to begin with? ―Not sufficiently suffuse‖
sounds as if reason and character do not initially (if not easily) harmonize; would not character take to reason
as fish takes to water? This raises a further question. THREE, how rational is character by nature? How much,
how far, is reason part of character? Socrates in Meno said, ―Very much indeed,‖ but the entire human history
demonstrates otherwise, and this ―otherwise‖ is akrasia. Quite many thugs contrive and perpetrate atrocities
with highly educated intelligence; Nazi atrocities were not accepted by the uneducated alone. ―Can virtue be
taught?‖ opens a Pandora‘s Box called ―akrasia.‖ All these considerations show that Aristotle simply
repeated—in fact complicated—the enigma of akrasia, not explained it, much less solved it.
84 See The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm with
a Commentary by C. G. Jung, translated by Cary F. Baynes, NY: A Harvest/HIJ Book, 1962, pp. 91-92
(Jung‘s words). This book is so famous that it has been translated into Japanese (湯淺泰雄，定方昭夫譯:
黃金の華の秘密, 京都人文書院, 1980, 1981). A version of their Chinese original is 呂祖著, 王魁溥編譯,
太乙金華宗旨今譯, 臺北市丹道文化出版社, 民92.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 259

Buddha discarded these ―blessings,‖ and Jesus said we‘d have troubles in the world that he
had conquered.

―Don‘t gods care? Don‘t they do something for us? How is god‘s power (fate) related to
our struggles (freedom)?‖ Again, I don‘t know, but I‘ve found two clues.

First, in Gilgamesh and Odyssey, people accepted unexpected events as ―god-sent fate,‖
and offered big thank-offerings (100 cattle!) when things went as expected. At the same time,
they ―freely‖ did as they wished! The Judeo-Christian tradition has Job protesting God on why
good people suffer, and God answered with a whirlwind affirmation of his absolute
sovereignty. People all this while continued to freely ―sin‖ against God or freely ―obey‖ him.

Second, deeply moved by the refreshing vitality of polytheism without monotheism‘s

dead-end,85 I realized that ―things just happen‖ to unite fate with freedom.

If ―things just happen,‖ then they are fated, as natural science explains how a storm came
from low atmospheric pressure that in turn came from the earth‘s tilt as it turns. If we ask
―why so?‖ scientists would answer, ―it just happens that way.‖

And if ―it just happens,‖ we can do something about it, as the scientist shows us how to
manage nature. Here is our freedom and responsibility. This is why I admire Michi. She is
gloriously managing her storms of life!

THREE, so I see two points to question (a), ―Who is stronger, Christ or Buddha?‖

First, both men offered us no wealth, health, or professional success. The strength or
validity of a religion is not here.

Second, instead, Buddha wants us to graduate from our wearisome round of rebirth; we‘d
graduate from stressful college-of-life by accumulating good ―karma‖-grades.

And Christ assures us, ―You will have difficulties. But take heart. I‘ve conquered the
world.‖ Paul said, ―In all these things we are more than conquerors‖ no matter what.

Michi has difficulties and is more than a conqueror! Why? Desmond Tutu said, ―Only
wounded doctors heal.‖86 With Christ, Michi in difficulties is healing us in difficulties. She is
more than a conqueror!

85 Polytheism has no such problem as, ―If the One God is all-mighty and all-loving, why evil in the world that
opposes God?‖ People in polytheism freely appeal to one god/goddess when another seems to oppose and
torment them, for no reason whatever. Such matter just happens; we breathe freely here. Shimazaki Tōson
(1872-1943) wondered aloud whether Western systematic tendency did not enable monotheism to spread like
wild fire in the West, not in the Orient. (島崎藤村著, 藤村文明論集, 東京岩波文庫, 1988, 1996, pp. 130,
149) Shimazaki‘s casual journalistic style, with scattered bits shimmering with insights, echo many others
(e.g., pp. 97, 175, 176, 180, etc.) to mirror the random and deeply significant way in which things happen. Is
this polytheism on earth?
86 ―All Things Considered‖ reported 1/15/04 that the US medical facilities in Iraq were woefully ill-equipped.
Overwhelmed everyday, a handful of overworked crew had to cope with a continuous influx of the gravely
wounded. No one who came in was refused, Iraqi civilians, enemy combatants, enemy POWs, and even
wounded Iraqis having attempted to blow up a US facility came with US soldiers wounded in the blowup.
Soldiers on seeing Iraqis often picked fights with them while both parties were treated. Thoroughly exhausted
260 Kuang-ming Wu

So, our initial question, ―Who is stronger, Christ or Buddha?‖ is now changed into
―Whom would I choose, Christ or Buddha?‖ I‘d pick Christ‘s ―conquest,‖ not Buddha‘s
―graduation,‖ Nirvana.

Thanks for your two important questions, Êng-bêng, that provoked me to think. I do wish
that we‘d all support Michi with positive words, never negatives.

With much prayer,

Yours as ever,

Kong-bêng

And here is my second letter.

Dear Êng-bêng:

I‘ve shared with you my thoughts on our attitude to religion under life‘s stress. ―But then
what should we do when deceived and suffer loss in business?‖ Two points here beckon us to
a calm enjoyment of loss and injustice.
ONE, I met in Florida a lady of 82 who took a bus out every month to put $20 into a slot
machine. She always lost, had a dinner of +$10, and then took another bus home. So every
month she wasted +$50 (=bus+20+10). I asked why she wanted to lose money. She laughed,
―Well, I enjoy listening to jingles of coins go into the machine.‖

Hermann Hesse‘s (Nobel laureate, 1946) hero in Siddhartha (1922) went to a merchant
and practiced business. He welcomed people, including cheaters taking things/money away.
He smiled at them all, for business was just a game. His warm attitude to everyone made him
huge profits.

TWO, both people above enjoy life, win or lose, for they are inwardly separate from
life‘s win and loss. Jesus told the rich young ruler, ―Give all you have to the poor and follow
me.‖ Both Buddha and Jesus softly said, ―Be in but not of the world.‖

So we have two points. (a) Detachment makes (b) a game out of life; we can now play
life with children. Simply keep yourself straight and enjoy.

Kong-bêng

Now, here is another concrete story, this time quite incorrigible.87 I have a friend of mine,
a very promising young man of brilliant mind and achievements, both cultural and academic.
He lives in a superb environment—wrapped in parental love, at home in an expensive
residence in the middle of bucolic nature. While everything is going balmy, smiling at him, he
has been in pain for over a decade, and lived on in pain for as long as anyone can guess.

crew treating the wounded is a scene humanly closest to ―wounded doctors healing the wounded,‖ closest to
God healing God‘s enemies who wound Him.
87 We previously considered akrasia in interpersonal violence. Now we consider akrasia in inner, personal, and
inexplicable pain.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 261

His pain is entirely inexplicable. He is young, healthy, quite intelligent, and he locks
himself in pain. He in pain stretches hands for advice to parents, to his friends, to his admiring
professor, and even psychological counseling. He has, however, rejected all assistance,
parental, friendly, pedagogical, psychiatric, with a polite and sophisticated smile, proudly
calling them ―unconvincing,‖ ―not much help.‖
Here is a classical case of akrasia, powerful powerlessness. What is going on here? A
friend of his discovered that he does not really want to move out of himself. He just sits in the
high judgment seat, with his high intelligence judging each offer as ―unsatisfactory.‖ His
judgment is yet tinged with autumn shades of sorrow; he silently writhes in pain while
pronouncing judgments wry, noble, smiling, and consistently painfully negative.
This strange stubborn stay in pain shows a self-imprisonment, quite complex because his
high health and high intelligence work in him against him; he locks himself in a prison of
sullen defiance. This prison is himself, the defiance is against outside help, and the prison is
sullen pain. He uses his high IQ to refuse help, and locks himself in pain, stay in pain. Since
this pain-prison is self-made and self-locked from inside, only he can open the prison and get
out, and absolutely no one can unlock it from outside. Dragging out by force heals headache
by chopping the head off.
This is a concrete story of mental akrasia. No. This is a medical case; this ―pain-prison‖
deserves to be broken into and broken apart with an outside ―violence‖ of psychotropic
medicines—with his consent. We are happy that he recently consented to taking psychotropic
medicines; he can now use the medical sledgehammer to break out of his self-made prison,
and the ―violence‖ is now no longer violence.
How did it happen? By telling this story to him, we can now enter inside him and look
around to see with him what is going on. Although we remain deeply puzzled on why such
situation can obtain at all, storytelling helps us to enter this puzzling situation to usher in the
possibility of resolution in the future. In fact, description already works healing wonders,88 in
a fivefold way as follows.
One, description produces a mirror that reflects and ex-presses the self‘s situation, both
inside and out. Then, two, this descriptive mirror reacts on the self‘s situation, by projecting
the self‘s inner events back onto the self, to ―cast a spell on the self.‖ Three, the spell unifies
the self‘s consciousness with its life. Four, this process of self-unification is the Way things
go, and the Unity is the Way itself. Five, here action goes into non-action. The self turns
concentrated in itself, all contrary forces unifying.
Here occurs healing, a ―solution‖ to all problems, ―liberation‖ from all ―entanglements,‖
akratic or environmental. Carl Jung said that all this happens spontaneously,89

(T)he process is spontaneous, coming and going on its own initiative. . . .The conscious
will cannot attain such a symbolic unity because the conscious is partisan in this case. Its
opponent is the collective unconscious which does not understand the language of the

88 This fact explains the huge healing significance of any popular spontaneous collection of stories about illnesses.
E.g., Speaking out on Health: An Anthology, Literary Volunteers of New York City, Inc., 1989.
89 This is quoted from ―Commentary by C. G. Jung‖ to The Secret of the Golden Flower: Translated and explained
by Richard Wilhelm (1932), NY: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1962, p. 107. My fivefold way of healing by
storytelling is extrapolated from Jung‘s authoritative story of how the self heals (pp. 97-107). I agree that self-
description—in dance, in mandalas—powerfully heals, but a trusted other‘s faithful description can also be
effective, for after all the symbolic language in dances and mandalas are part of storytelling that is honestly
and faithfully performed.
262 Kuang-ming Wu

conscious. Therefore it is necessary to have the magic of the symbol which contains those
primitive analogies that speak to the unconscious. The unconscious can be reached and
expressed only by symbols, which is the reason why the process of individuation can never do
without the symbol. The symbol is the primitive expression of the unconscious, but at the
same time it is also an idea corresponding to the highest intuition produced by consciousness.

―Symbols,‖ ―language‖ and ―analogies‖ are our ―stories.‖ Jung says that these symbols
well up, spontaneously grow, from the depths of the unconscious among primitive people.
This spontaneous growth from our psyche can today be enfleshed by the significant other‘s
gutsy honest description; it is this storytelling that heals the self.
To know how the healing happens, we must see that, the ―pain‖ of our young man is the
pain of the inner split. The conscious will wants to go one way, and life in unconscious
psyche stays elsewhere. The inner split is unified only by symbols of the situation that
spontaneously well up as a primal scream to call attention, thereby to unify the split self.
These symbolic expressions are the self90 telling its own story to the self.

ON SUFFERING PAIN CREATIVELY

There is another aspect to inner pain that is surprising. Pain has its creative power in life,
repeatedly borne out by history. All sensitive thinkers have often noted the positive
significance of suffering. Fitzgerald91 carefully documented ―peristasis catalogues,‖ the
catalogues of adverse life-vicissitudes that build us up into the sage.
Quite popular in Greco-Roman world was the ―suffering sage.‖ Adversity is the badge of
character; suffering is a virtuous guide to sagely living. One often touts a catalogue of
hardships over which one triumphed. Suffering shows sagely exploits and certifies one as a
virtuous sage. Now, if to suffer pain certifies sagely virtue, then things negative can positively
help to turn one free anywhere any-when.
So suffering pain blesses life to rejoice in pain. This point enables us to understand Jesus‘
strange blessing on us who weep and suffer injustice, and Paul‘s exaltations in suffering.
Confucius in quiet understatement praised as ―princely‖ those not recognized and are not
vexed. The Taoists fed on pain, danced it, abided in it; it is Chuang Tzu‘s ―Lordly Principle of
Life-Cultivation 養生主.‖92
Pain is a poison that can be a tonic. It can strengthen or kill, and personal strength is
measured by how much pain a person can manage to feed on it. Pascal‘s stomach cancer
enabled him to attain mathematical and philosophical heights. Being deaf, blind, and dumb
made Helen Keller the great person. Freud‘s mental imbalance and painful mouth cancer
produced volumes of insights into the mysteries of human psyche.
Going in and out of sanatoriums, Kurt Gödel revolutionized mathematical proofs. Marcel
confessed to an inordinate pain that created what he was today.93 And the list goes on

90 Or someone else discerning enough to see through the self and tells the self‘s story to the self.
91 John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the
Corinthian Correspondence, Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988. Slightly wordy, this is his scrupulous Ph.D.
Dissertation in Yale University, 1984.
92 I devoted a whole chapter on this Third Chapter of Chuang Tzu‘s to this theme (Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 279-359).
93 See his ―An Autobiographical Essay‖ in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, eds. P. A. Schilpp and L. E. Hahn,
La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1983, pp. 1-68. Ruth Benedict devotes her last chapter to insanity in religion in her
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 263

endlessly, so much so that one wonders whether pain is not an ingredient of achievement.
Pain is not enough or needed to compose a genius, to be sure, but it is surely one common
powerful spine that runs through a genius.
In fact, Socrates‘ astounding ―mission accomplished‖ owes much to his constant demonic
haunting; we would not be surprised if someone claims he was insane. Jesus was accused of
being haunted by the devil, and Paul was suspected of being demented,94 for both were
unusually brilliant and passionate in their strange undertaking. We could generalize and
hazard a guess, that pain of physical indisposition and mental imbalance pervades life to
carve out genius.
Pain relates to genius in virtue and achievement, and the most intimate pain is
demonically inside, insanity. The phrase, ―devilishly smart,‖ surely derives from the word
―genius‖ as of ―genie,‖ a tutelary spirit allotted to every person to govern her fortune and
character to conduct her out of the world, a demon or spiritual being, a prevailing character,
and the like.95 Genius is demonic, and it suffers demonically; genius is haunted, possessed; it
suffers the mortal pain of Cupid‘s arrow shooting through its heart of love of wisdom.
We shudder at the intimacies among pain, insanity, genius, virtue, and achievement. This
is the ―sickness unto death‖ that does not die, for this deathly pain guides the person into her
personal integrity. So, here is a paradox. Much as insanity is my own affair no one can
meddle with, it is my suffering beyond me, for I am possessed with my own genius that
guides me into being myself. I am beside myself, not myself, so as to come home to myself.96
This is my intimate paradox, a crack in this earthen vessel enfleshed with immortal
devilish genius. What redeems me out of pain is that my suffering often makes me a genius.
To be smart is to be-beside-myself, my pain, so I rejoice in my pain.97 To ex-ist as myself is
to stand-out of myself and be beside myself, to be amazed at my genius—of existing at all.
Existence is wonderment. It is my story of this primal word, existēmi, to exist, stand out of
me, being beside myself.
This strange joy has a point in my life. If my negative thinking has pervaded my life so
much that I would not care to notice it, nor would I want to count how many negatives I have

famous Patterns of Culture (1934), Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. M. O‘C. Drury also devotes the last
chapter to the theme, ―Madness and Religion,‖ in The Danger of Words, NY: Humanities Press, 1973. We
suspect that psychotic manifestations may be alike, but what people do with them differ, and it is this
difference that divides the insane from the sages.
94 Mark 3:21-22. Acts 26:24 (cf. 23:9, 25:19). We must remember that ―insanity‖ is a label attached to us by others
from outside. We are always normal; it is they who are abnormal.
95 See Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 1989, VI: 442 (genie), 444 (genius).
96 The sane Bible has this insane paradox. Severe famine drove the prodigal son out of him-in-prodigality, to
―come back to himself‖ (Luke 15:17) to come home. His homecoming in turn drove his father out of the
house, beside himself with joy (15:20, 28)! Luke 2:47 has people who ―went out of themselves‖ in amazement
at Boy Jesus. On grammatical niceties of these passages, see Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, A
Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1988, pp. 181,
244, 245. On existēmē in Luke 2:47, see William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon
of the New Testament, etc. (1952), The University of Chicago Press, 1957, pp. 275-276, Joseph H Thayer,
Thayer‟s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (1896), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997,
p. 224, and H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (1843), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 595.
97 We remember the strange circumstances surrounding Oxford English Dictionary (OED), about which its history
in OED itself (pp. xxxv-lxi) is silent. Biography (July 2003, p. 22) magazine has a story of a Dr. Minor,
doctor, scholar, and murderer, who contributed much to OED from inside a lunatic asylum. (See also Simon
Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford, 2003, and The
Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary,
Perennial, 1999.) I used to wonder how strange it is that a great achievement sometimes has an eerie origin,
and what it means. Now we know; pain accomplishes!
264 Kuang-ming Wu

in what I write, or even care to write about it—then I would let it be, and my inherent pain is
part of me. I would live with it as we manage our diabetes. My depression is my mental
diabetes, my chronic dis-ease that drains me into myself.
A cynic may retort, ―Your pain has been with you, anyway. What‘s the big deal, now that
you realize that it is yours?‖ Well, before my realization, my pain was my difficulty as an
unwelcome parasite I have tried in vain to evict. Now, my pain is neither welcome nor
unwelcome, for I see it as part of me, and I can neither welcome me nor evict myself. Pain
remains I myself, who now know about it to consciously incorporate it into my life.
My living is now pain; pain is my constitution, showing me as such. It is my way of
being what I am, how I live. I don‘t have pain; I am pain. I now understand why I did not
want to move out of my ―prison of sullen defiance‖ with help from outside, for the ―prison‖ is
myself. I hate outside help as much as the Iraqis hate USA. ―Liberated‖ from their much
hated tyrant Saddam, Iraqis now demonstrate with shouts and shotguns against USA their
liberator, for Saddam is theirs.
Now that I am pain I have got rid of that extra-baggage, ―pain as parasite,‖ and can
sinuously, strenuously, and shrewdly use my-pain to my advantage as I use my-hand to
manage daily affairs. My throbbing instability of pain is now my throbbing dynamo to press
ahead. It would be ―fun‖ to describe my unique eerie pain and create my unique eerie world,
as Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) my favorite film director did his. I will, as he did, prove my
virtuosity and make my life a suspenseful thriller—with my pain.
I will use my depression and let it, yes, let it98 contribute to my overall creative life, as
Freud let his pain do through life. Freud‘s enormous output of unique insights is powered by
his depression, his insanity. Likewise, my unique depression is now my unique strength.
There is a catch to this odd elation on creativity of mental pain. He the agonized genius
must ―describe‖ his unique eerie pain to have ―fun‖ in pain. Self-description is one key he
has, no one else does, to open the door of his self-prison, without BEING forced out from
outside. An odd ―key‖ question here is, ―He already has the key but how can he become
willing to use it?‖ The only ―key‖ we have outside for his ―becoming willing‖ is simple
persuasion to write. I wrote to him,

You can combine/compare miso with Zen, Zen with Dali, Dali with Hitchcock,
Hitchcock with Picasso, Picasso with Dali, and all these with Zen, and so on. It will be fun
and exhilarating. . . . You can also write things no one else can write, never. Here you are
truly creative and truly proud of yourself. You can write on yourself, and just for yourself. No
one else can read what you write unless you allow it. You can write things inside you, perhaps
similar to Hitchcock in sentiment. They may well be things violent, socially unmentionable,
Hitchcock-esque, and personally significant. Remember, writing cools, heals, and lifts. It
never hurts; it is fun always. If you disagree, your disagreement will evaporate once you write
your disagreement, one page, even half a page, now.

Back came his answer.

I do so long to be creative, as I was when I was a child. Now I‘m overwhelmed by so

many inhibitions, so many thoughts swirling around in my mind, and so many ways to express

98
This ―letting be‖ is Taoism at work at the core of my life, an existential client-centered ―therapy‖ (Beware
Socrates! No self-meddling!) that extends to enrich everyone and everything.
 Akrasia, Interpersonal and Personal 265

them, fiction or nonfiction, verse or prose. Then when I sit down and try to create I feel
completely paralyzed. I produce nothing, or maybe a couple of lines at best. I heard on NPR
this morning about this year‘s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He works with people
suffering mental illness and has suffered it himself. I was envious of his poetry and wished I
could express my inner world as eloquently.

This sounded slightly hopeful. So, I pressed on,

The world of your favorite ab-normals, Dali, Hitchcock, Picasso, is beyond all dreams to
offend commoners. The more eerie, the better. Not boring commoners, only the extra-normal
ushers in the world so ―bizarre,‖ so ―offensive.‖ You owe it to yourself to write it out before
losing it, depicting ―inhibitions,‖ ―so many thoughts swirling around in my mind,‖ ―so many
ways to express them,‖ in a couple of lines, one at a time. Just do it, as your email just did it.
Sartre (No Exit, Vintage, 1955) and your Pulitzer poet did it; Oliver Sacks helped ―weird‖
worlds out in An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (Knopf, 1995). Help
yourself. Be your own Sartre, Pulitzer, and Sacks. It is fun.

Back came an answer: ―OK, I‘ll try, as long as I don‘t have to share it with anyone.
Maybe Dr. G (my counselor).‖ I said, ―Good.‖ This round of persuasion seemed a success so
far. We will see what happens next.
Let us now push this pain-description to extremity; the worst of pain is death. The
ultimate of a person‘s strength is her sheer capability to complete and crown the person via
the ultimate of pain, death. This is precisely what Jesus consummated on the cross, shouting,
―It is accomplished!‖99 Paul did it via execution, Stoics said, ―To live is to prepare for death.‖
Japanese samurai love to commit suicide for their causes, as in Confucian ideal, ―killing
oneself to consummate the human 殺身以成仁‖ in suicides in classical China.100
Confucius‘ confession (4/8), ―Morning, hear Tao, evening, can die, 朝 聞 道, 夕 死 可
矣,‖ is echoed by Kierkegaard‘s passionate integrity of his efforts to find ―a truth which is
truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live or die.‖ We may take such deaths
as ―weak‖ or ―insane,‖101 but weak/insane or not, to fulfill a cause with death somehow
fulfills ―personal integrity.‖ Death can show the deathly strength of a person and ultimate
fulfillment of a person.
Perhaps we should go further on death. No religion has said death terminates life. Death
is the end of life that ends life, and thereby death is life‘s end to which life aspires, as
―commencement‖ graduates us to life‘s new beginning and retirement ―re-tires‖ life to
renovate and restart its career.
Thus Christ‘s death on the cross has to continue in his resurrection, Buddha‘s death is his
Great Nirvana, and even thoroughly pragmatic China looks to ―life‖ as family, as history, and
as Three Incorruptibles of personal virtue, great exploits, and gnomic sayings, birthing,
birthing, without ceasing.
In sum, we have told stories of how pain relates to virtue and achievement; we do not
know its why or what, but we can now learn how these extraordinary people managed to

99 John 19:30 (Revised English Bible, 1989).

100 My History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, pp. 235-259 cited
some classic cases of suicide in ancient China.
101 We did so in the previous section, ―Violence as Weakness,‖ and then worried about its possibility of
―fanaticism‖ in the ensuing section; devotion does tend to insane fanaticism.
266 Kuang-ming Wu

accomplish themselves via their pain, each in their own ways. We can learn by reading their
biographies, then learn to manage our own pain, each in our own way. The Way of ours we
walk out (Chuang Tzu 2/33); the long journey of our life begins at our own feet in pain, right
here and now (Lao Tzu 64).
Now, all this is realized by stories told of people who went ahead before us, the great
dead. Storytelling of others‘ lives leads us on—to lead our own life; and life-storytelling is
selfless in silence, never showy but silently confessed. The Bible in parsimony expresses this
silence. Examples abound, as Genesis 22. Mere 19 short verses pack unbearable pathos that
moved Søren Kierkegaard to expand into a volume, Fear and Trembling (1843), itself quite
compact. E. A. Speiser, usually quite compressed, devoted three packed pages to feelingly
point to it. He said,102

The episode (describes) the profoundest personal experience in all the recorded history of
the patriarchs; and the telling of it soars to comparable literary heights. . . . Each successive
moment in that seemingly interminable interval of time is charged with drama that is all the
more intense for not being spelled out . . . (T)he unwary victim asks but a single question. The
father‘s answer is tender but evasive, and the boy must have sensed the truth. The short and
simple sentence, ―And the two of them walked on together‖ (8), covers what is perhaps the
most poignant and eloquent silence in all literature. . . . At the appointed site, Abraham goes
about his task with abnormal attention to each detail (von Rad), with the speechless
concentration of a sleepwalker, as if thus to hold off by every possible means the fate that he
has no hope of averting. . . . What is the meaning of this shattering ordeal? In this infinitely
sensitive account the author has left so much unsaid that there is now the danger of one‘s
reading into it too much—or too little.

The poignant silence is all the more pregnant for its being carried out in the NT period by
God‘s only Son himself on the Cross, and this time no stopping hand came from his Father
God, as he mumbled in mortal pain, ―Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?‖103 This is the darkest
divine-human moment in the history of mankind. No silence is more eloquent.

102 Genesis: A New Translation etc., E. A. Speiser, The Anchor Bible, 1964, pp. 164-165.
103 ―My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?‖ in Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34.
Chapter 8

SELFLESSNESS, SILENCE

In storytelling we lose ourselves, become silence. Stories lead us into silence. Then we
see ―silence‖ is a powerful ―nothing,‖ to double negate to connect to storytelling, telling
without telling to hear without hearing, to connect to ―mystery,‖ closing our eyes and lips in
awe of the ineffable Beyond.1 We are in the milieu of mysterious silence eloquent, an open
secret to our open eyes and lips, the mystery of musical silence of nature in us and around us.
We must explore this fascinating mystery of silence in ourselves, and then of our Nature.

SELF-LESS STORYTELLING
Self-less storytelling fascinates us; following our own storytelling, we self-forget, and
self-forgetting captivates. Children play, to be children is to play, and to play is to live in
one‘s storytelling to act it out, often shared with others. I have just got this ―poem‖ from my
son, John. It tells the story of our life in counting our age. We actually play out this story.

George Carlin‘s View on Aging

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when

we like to get old is when we‘re kids?

If you‘re less than 10 years old, you‘re so excited about

aging that you think in fractions.

―How old are you?‖ ―I‘m four and a half!‖

You‘re never thirty-six and a half.

You‘re four and a half, going on five!

That‘s the key.

You get into your teens, now they can‘t hold you back.

1
The relation among secrecy, silence, and awesome initiation is succinctly described in ―mystery,‖ OED, X: 173.
268 Kuang-ming Wu

You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

―How old are you?‖
―I‘m gonna be 16!‖
You could be 13, but hey, you‘re gonna be 16!

And then the greatest day of your life . .

You become 21.
Even the words sound like a ceremony . . .
YOU BECOME 21 YESSSS!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there?

Makes you sound like bad milk.
He TURNED; we had to throw him out!
There‘s no fun now, you‘re just a sour-dumpling.

What‘s wrong? What‘s changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you‘re PUSHING 40.
Whoa! Put on the brakes, it‘s all slipping away.

Before you know it, you REACH 50 . . . and your dreams are gone.

But wait! You MAKE it to 60. You didn‘t think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and

MAKE it to 60.

You‘ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70!

After that it‘s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle;
you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn‘t end there.

Into the 90s, you start going backwards; ―I was JUST 92.‖

Then a strange thing happens.

If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again.
―I‘m 100 and a half!
‖May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!

We grownup children often smile and knit our brows when alone, as we replay our past
stories. We boldly tell stories to ourselves in hypotheses and theories and then play them out
in experimentation, and call all such story-playing ―objective science,‖ objective because we
forget ourselves in it. We live our dreams, our storytelling, called ―natural science.‖
Sadly, such storytelling-living of science chases away storytelling-living of respect,
mystery, and excitement of the young. Our science-story-living has killed ―tooth fairy,‖ ―the
monster under Tommy‘s bed,‖ ―the snow ghost‖ in the blizzard, the foxes that outfox us, and
tigers and wolves that roam to eat us, and we killed our mystery, fear, and respect of nature.
 Selflessness, Silence 269

We stop our life-stories. We are now obsessed with storytelling of ―ethnic cleansing‖ of
Hitlers and Milosevics. We have to decimate such storytelling with another, the ―inalienable
rights of individuals.‖ The child parents the adult; as kids play their own storytelling so do we
the adults, with the difference that we know—or rather, we had better know—how to prefer
the storytelling-living-playing of respect and of mystery and of excitement.
How? By consciously rehearsing and retelling to ourselves our habitual storytelling-
living, we should bring it to our awareness. Only more storytelling can cure false storytelling,
and we should replay it on the screen of awareness. Beware George W. Bush! Repeatedly
play to yourself and live the story you have advertised to us, ―compassionate conservatism,‖
never be obsessed with ―war on terrorism‖ and ―on Saddam Hussein.‖
By the same token, we ourselves must relive and re-play in the storytelling of respect of
the mysteries around us, ecological ethics, etiquette of nature, to treasure ―endangered
species,‖ to recycle, and the list goes on to tread our way of living lightly, circumspectly,
respectfully. Our life with verve of the child will then come back. The child has parented us
adults into the fresh dawn of life ecological. Now, tooth fairies of the child are a ―nothing‖
among adults. ―Nothing‖ has its own stories to tell us.

THE STORY OF “NOTHING”

Incredibly, ―nothing‖ ciphers differences in life-attitude, and our diverse cultural attitudes
to it compose an exciting story. We see at least two broad approaches to ―nothing.‖ One is
logical consistency in the West, saying, being is, nothing is not, so we deal with ―being‖
alone. We will see that this approach ends up in denying change, in world-transcendence.
Another is fidelity in China to actuality, accepting wholeheartedly changes in/of the
world. This approach deals with how two logical contraries of being and nothing intertwine to
make the world come alive, to intimate how best to live and behave. It is thus that we see how
crucial our approaches to ―nothing‖ are in living.

1. Logical Approach to “Nothing” to World Transcendence

To begin, the West thinks ―nothing‖ is nothing, only being is, so change from being to
no-being (moving from this to not-this, here to not-here) are impossible (Parmenides) or
unreal (Plato). Plato advised us to rise above and beyond this actual ―unreal‖ world of
becoming into the ―real‖ unchanging Forms, to realize a sort of intellectual salvation into the
Really Real. Aristotle has a clever device of ―potentiality‖ for things‘ changes, yet
potentiality is mere preparation to stipulated ―actuality,‖ leaving changing actually that
includes ―nothing.‖
Rejecting ―nothing and change‖ rejects actuality. Is it any wonder, then, that natural
science in Aristotelian logic that despises ―nothing‖ later exploits/devastates nature the all-
actual? Plato‘s admonition to go beyond this world of illusory becoming, and enter the eternal
logical realm of Forms, gave birth to nature-devastation.
Interestingly, Buddhism is here also, saying, since our actual life-world is in constant
change, it is a constant nothing; we must ―nothing‖ such a nothing, blow off our desire that
270 Kuang-ming Wu

pursues such no-things. ―Nirvana‖ is this positive nothing-act that stamps out of us this
―illusory world‖ of no-things. Buddhist discarding of this world, however, has oddly not
resulted in exploitative destruction of nature.
Sartre on his part has his own twist to this nothing-act. We are consciousness that is
nothing, for ―it is what it is not, and is not what it is‖ and its ―not‖-infused self-contradiction
ciphers a nothing. This consciousness-nothing confronts an undifferentiated stuff of gooey
glue, ―it is what it is and is not what it is not,‖ which is carved out by ―nothing‖ into this
―thing‖ and that. This creative drama of ―being and nothingness‖ makes up his
―phenomenological ontology.‖
It remarkably assigns an active shaping role to ―nothing‖ as China does, and yet it
consigns the whole project to Platonic contempt, gloom-doomed, for consciousness is hunger
hungry to fill, yet upon filled ceases to be hunger, and consciousness ceases to exist. So edgy
after filling, yet no longer hunger once filled, ―hunger‖ is damned, both as ―nothing‖
hungering after filling, and losing ―hunger‖-identity upon filling, to vanish into ―nothing.‖
Thus, being ―hunger,‖ our life is an unrelenting series of nauseous gloom; life grinds to
an uncomfortable halt that does not halt; it is a sickness unto death that does not die. Such a
disastrous predicament comes about because, with Parmenides and Plato, ―nothing‖ is at
bottom nothing positive for Sartre. In short, all these nothing-as-nothing dramas of Plato,
Aristotle, Buddhism, and Sartre originate in a logical judgment, ―Being is, no-being is not,‖
that rejects ―nothing.‖

2. Actual Approach to “Nothing” toward Life Rejuvenation

Now here is an alternative to the above logical approach, a second approach to ―nothing.‖
China begins with a concrete observation of actuality, and thereby accepts ―nothing,‖ naively
observing that ―nothing‖ does actually exist as a power with being, as it is opposed to being.
Here, contraries—nothing contrary to being, yet with being—bespeaks inter-rejection in inter-
action, despite its ring of logical oddity; in fact, contrariety facilitates reciprocity, as standing
mutually opposite makes a handshake. Lao Tzu (2) describes it graphically: ―Being and
nothing inter-birth.‖
This cosmic fact has a direct poignant relevance to our life. Lao Tzu sighed (58), ―O
Woe! Weal leans here. O Weal! Woe lurks here.‖ Chuang Tzu (25/71) said simply, ―Woe and
weal inter-birth.‖ The Yin of woe and nothing, the Yang of weal and being, they intertwine,
interweave, and inter-birth to make for the lively inter-changes of our actual world.
Opposites co-arise, whose co-incidence forms a polar unity; medieval thinkers in the
West noted it and attributed it to the Christian God. Buddhists noted it and discerned its origin
in the No-thing beyond contraries of things and nothing, life and death. Chinese people
simply accepted it and swim in its tides, coming and going, coming and going, without
ceasing. To ―simply accept it‖ indicates an inner ―hollow,‖ becoming a nothing, to follow
along, trailing what comes and goes.
More, China notes that ―nothing‖ stays with being in actuality, to make things come
alive. This ―making‖ is the so-called ―change‖ in location (motion) and in being
(transformation). ―Nothing‖ infuses itself into being, in-forms it from inside, to en-able things
to be as they are, making—moving, birthing—our world actual, fresh, and alive. ―Nothing‖ is
 Selflessness, Silence 271

then the dynamo that explains how things come alive as they actually are, growing, dying,
and growing again to die again, without ceasing.
We would not push this world-river of change; we simply accept it open-handedly,
follow along empty-mindedly, swimming in its waves, dwelling in emptiness (虛), acting no-
acting (wu-wei 旡為), come what may, woe and/or weal. We note here that the West says
―weal or woe‖ siding positive weal, while China says ―woe and/or weal,‖ accepting both with
cautious optimism. Such is how ―nothing‖ fares in actual world. Let us see how this inter-
birthing drama of woe and weal operates in principle, ontologically, socio-ethically, in our
language, and in our deed.
First, does our understanding need a law or principle of motion/change? Yes, but such a
principle is anything but the unmoved Logos (Heraclitus) or Form (Plato). Instead, this
principle literally ―begins‖ things2 and so it keeps beginning itself, ―birthing, birthing, without
ceasing 生生不息.‖ It is the Tao (道), facing (首) forward, walking forward (走). It is the
river that cuts its own course naturally, flowing unhurriedly, meandering freely. The river is
always on its way. The River is its Way, Tao in its ever-shifting beauty, always on the move.
Unlike the West‘s immovable noun, law (Logos), principle (Form), Tao is a verb of
Nature forever naturing itself (natura naturans) birthing things (natura naturata). We cannot
push the river of life of ―nature,‖ things ceaselessly becoming ―self-so 自然.‖ Such is the
―Way‖ things ―go to form 道行之而成‖ (Chuang Tzu 2/33), and so ―Tao can-tao, is-not (the)
always-Tao 道可道, 非常道,‖ Tao settled as ―Tao‖ is no Tao truly so, says Lao Tzu to begin
Tao Te Ching. This is how the nothing-being interaction—ever beginning, moving—acts out
the principle of Tao-verb.
Then, ontologically, Zen enlightens us on the dynamic being-nothing drama. (a) First we
naively see a mountain over there as a mountain, (b) but then we think that a mountain is
really not a mountain (for it levels off, changes, into a not-mountain), (c) and then we realize
that a mountain is a mountain after all, for the mountain is ―mountain,‖ whether we like it or
not. This explanation is not too good. Let us try something else.
―Mountain‖ can be music. The music heard is that music; the music practiced on is not
quite that music; the music well-performed, naturally, is now that music. Going through it
attains enlightenment; we are now truly we in the true world, the world-river of life‘s ups in
downs and our swimming in it, thereby to interact, intertwine, and inter-birth the world and
ourselves, ourselves as the world.
This is because of the simple though mysterious fact that ―nothing‖ is an essential
requirement to being. Cutting off all spaces not used by our soles renders impossible all our
standing and walking; cutting uselessness (nothing) cuts use (being). Touting its talent of
jumping (being), the polecat jumps into death in a trap (nothing); ridding being of ―nothing‖
destroys being.3
―Useless, undeveloped‖ wilderness (nothing) is essential to the cities; it is the mother of
civilization (being). Drilling Alaska for oil (being) impoverishes if not ruins the entire USA

2 Both ―archē, άρτή‖ and ―princeps, principium‖ have two meanings, beginning and sovereignty. Unfortunately, the
Greek and Roman thinking silently slid from the first meaning into the second, where the West has stayed ever
since. ―Principle‖ is now what logically regulates/explains things and events, not what actually
initiates/follows them, as the Chinese thinking takes it to be.
3 Chuang Tzu, 26/31-33, 1/42-47.
272 Kuang-ming Wu

and, in the end, the entire world (nothing). Thus, whatever we do, and however things
happen, always exhibit the intertwining of being and nothing, nothing and being.
Therefore, thirdly, socio-ethically, in the concrete ―world among people 人間世,‖4
Taoism says we must serve as roomy ―nothing‖ to accept and enable others. Lao Tzu‘s Tao
Te Ching says, we must be as the valley to make the mountain high, as the female ―nothing‖
to bring forth beings, as the supple infant to grow and inspire, and as the water to softly
suffuse things to moisten and enliven them. All cultures enjoin ―hospitality‖5 to strangers,
nobodies, and social ―wretched refuse.‖ Emma Lazarus‘ (1849-1887) ―The New Colossus,‖
engraved (1883) on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, says6

(Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
―Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!‖ cried she
With silent lips.)
―Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!‖

Embracing the tired poor and wretched homeless (nothing) is the New Colossus softly
more powerful than the Greek giants astride the lands (being).
Fourth, as no-being enables beings in nature to change, move things, and make them
come alive, so in language negations strengthen affirmations. ―Not bad at all!‖ praises how
7
excellent something is. Meta-phor actually ferries the audience from ―this‖ to ―not-this‖;
metaphoring is a linguistic act of ―nothing,‖ in itself neither this nor not-this, that transfers us
from this to not-this. Intimation and irony do so likewise.
Metaphor goes ―as this familiar, so that unfamiliar‖ to extend knowledge, and ―as that
new, so this old‖ to renovate knowledge. To warm up the old to open up new knowledge is a
good teacher; raising one old to provoke three new returns is education. As ancient poetry, so
today‘s new world; as beauty of poetry, so socio-ethical norms. In short, ―as old, so new‖ is
teaching; education is metaphorical. Such is Confucius. Mencius and Hsün Tzu who persuade

4 This is the title of Chapter Four in the Chuang Tzu. Cf. 人間の學としての倫理學 (ethics as the science of the
inter-human), 和辻哲郎著 (by Watsuji, Tetsurō), 岩波全書 (Tokyo: Iwanami Zensho), 1934, 1966.
5 Later, we see how ―hospitality‖ is our ―life and death‖ issue in Hebrews 13:2 and Homer‘s Odyssey.
6 Cf. Bartlett‟s Familiar Quotations (1855), eds., John Bartlett and Justin Kaplan, Sixteenth Edition, Boston: Little,
Brown and Co., 1992, p. 558.
7 See my On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001.
 Selflessness, Silence 273

8
by extensive metaphoring. All Chinese thinkers do pan-metaphor. This volume also does
metaphor.
9
Thus ―nothing‖ in these expressive modes renders them poignantly effective. ―Nothing‖
in such linguistic sensibility then overflows to our deed of wu-wei 旡為, doing no-do.
Gandhi‘s nonviolence and deconstructionism show how softly powerful doing of no-do is.
Let‘s repeat our favorite story. ―I don‘ wanna‘ sleep!‖ Tommy shouts. ―Ok, don‘t; Mom reads
you your favorite story; just sit here beside your pillow, ok?‖ Tommy nods. ―Once upon a
time . . . ,‖ and Tommy hits his pillow. Not ―do‖ (push him into bed) or ―do not‖ (let him go),
Mom did no-do of her love.
By the same token, we judiciously refrain from much ado toward worse than nothing. No
10
pediatrician would advise parents to ―help‖ babies to get up and walk! To ―help grow 助長‖
kills growth. The verb ―help‖ has a pair of mutually opposed senses, ―cannot help it‖ vs.
―help one another.‖ Here in actuality they join; often we must help it to really help.
Refraining from pulling and helping seedlings grow allows, helps, them to grow on their own;
11
no-do (wu-wei) lets live.
Lao Tzu‘s three sayings present our final example: ―Work completed, then dwell not
功成而弗居 (2), work done, withdraw oneself 功遂身退 (9),‖ and so ―Work completed,
matters done, (and) common folks all call (it, ‗Done) so (on) our (own)‘ 功成事遂,
百姓皆謂我自然 (17).‖ As the ―Great Tao declares not 大道不稱,‖12 so the Mother, nature or
ruler, is unobtrusive, thereby creative, for she lets things self-create.13
Mom cares so naturally, softly, and silently, that her child proudly proclaims, ―I did it all
by myself, Mom!‖ Doesn‘t all this hit ―democracy‖ precisely? Democracy is people-rule; no
ruler is here.14 Lao Tzu seemed to accuse ―love people, govern the state 愛民治國 (10)‖ and
mentioned no ―serving people‖ as Mencius stressed much. Democracy is no obtrusive service
but to do what needs be done and withdraw.15 That‘s all.
―Democracy‖ here, letting people rule, just popularly extends democracy-in-nature,
letting things rule to ride on life‘s ups and downs. Huai Nan Tzu, the third Taoist after Lao
Tzu and Chuang Tzu, tells two stories of how we can/should follow along equally,
democratically, empty-mindedly, the Yin-Yang inter-birthing of woe and weal in Lao Tzu.

8 Analects 2/11, 7/8, 1/15, 3/8. On Mencius see Wu, Togetherness, op. cit., pp. 329-334; on Mencius and Hsün Tzu,
see Wu, Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., pp. 51-53. On the problem of pan-metaphor and its solution, see Wu,
Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010, pp. 35-36.
9 We need not here detail on this point that the section below on double negatives elaborates. I also detailed on the
affirming power of negation in On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp.
38-79, and in On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 326-328.
10 Mencius (2A2) thus poignantly tells us not to ―help growth.‖ Mencius is a Confucian infused with Taoism.
11 Disturbingly, natural science simply observes to generate the tremendous power of technology, to ruin nature;
―we conquer nature on our knees,‖ says Francis Bacon. Perhaps technology has misused natural science.
12 Chuang Tzu, 2/59.
13 Tao Te Ching, ch. 6.
14 In Kurosawa Akira 黑澤明 (1910-1998)‘s justly renowned ―Seven Samurai 七人の侍‖ (1954), seven rōnin 浪人
the roaming master-less samurai (literally, ―servants‖), were hired by a farming village for protection against
marauding bandits. When they finally succeeded (with deaths of some fellow samurai), survived samurai
mumbled, ―The farmers are the winners,‖ and moved on silently, master-less as before. It is Taoism pure,
simple, soft, and sublime. Do we see Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables here?
15 Beware post-victory ―victor‖ Bush! Don‘t proudly ―serve the Iraqi people for their democracy.‖ Withdraw
yourself—it alone can redeem your ―big mess‖ in Iraq today. He did not withdraw and harvests bitter
bloodshed of Iraqis and Americans.
274 Kuang-ming Wu

The story, ―Uncle Fort Lost Horse 塞翁失馬,‖16 tells how Uncle Fort underwent
unexpected turns of events one after another. He unexpectedly lost his precious stallion,
which came back with another one, followed by an equally unexpected loss of his son‘s leg
on horseback ride, only to ―end‖ with an unexpected battle where most young men lost their
lives while his crippled son survived. This is a story of an Uncle Fort at the city-limit, life-
border, who kept asking, ―How could this-woe not make weal?‖ and ―How could this-weal
not make woe?‖ at every turn of event, woe or weal.
The fort is at the city frontier. Uncle Fort at the city frontier of life, in the ―limit situation‖
of existence (Jaspers), looks toward the uncharted future days. Here one thing is certain: an
event happens to change into its opposite. Lao Tzu sighed, ―O, woe, where weal leans! O,
weal, where woe lurks!‖17 Whatever comes will breed its opposite because opposites coexist
in ovo, ever ready to appear as a coincidence of one pole or the other; a co-incidence of one
event is really a co-happening of both, with one pole hidden under the other.18 So we should
follow Uncle Fort to expect the unexpected, come what may.
Here we are poised and prepared for woe, to let it breed weal. When weal comes, we
prepare ourselves for woe again, to step into the next auspicious stage of birthing weal. This
is how we partake of Nature naturing, birthing unceasing. Shakespeare made a conventional
phrase, ―all is well that ends well,‖ into a comedy. The Chinese agree, and add, the end-well
is endless, as long as we end it well, whatever ―it‖ is, woe or weal. The West says ―weal or
woe‖ to stress weal against woe; China says, ―woe and/or weal 禍福,‖ stressing the negative
the Yin that produces the Yang.
We thus partake of the interchange of things, to be on the crests of waves of Yin and
Yang, internecine inter-nascent, inter-birthing unceasing.19 The I Ching poetically charts the
way, and entire Chinese history shows how life fared in struggles. Buddha softly advises us to
graduate from the college of life, the wearisome rebirth-rounds, by accumulating good
―karma‖-grades. It is Nirvana, blowing off for good the incessant fires of life and death.

16 See Chapter 18, ―人間訓,‖ in the 淮南子. I meditated on the story in On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic,
Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 192-194, et passim. Huai Nan Tzu has another story before this, that despite
auspicious signs of white calves born to a black cow, both a good father and a good son turned blind. Soon the
brutal battle broke out and all the townsfolk were brutally murdered. Both father and son, being blind, were
spared. Soon after, they were able to see again. Perhaps Huai Nan Tzu implies that we must discipline
ourselves to silently look forward to the good future, come what may, before we can have Uncle Fort‘s
balanced state of mind, come what may.
17 ―禍兮福之所倚, 福兮禍之所伏.‖ (Tao Te Ching, ch. 58).
18 Jung entertained at dinner Einstein who ―was developing his first theory of relativity, [and] it was he who first
started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality.
More than thirty years later, this stimulus led to my relation with the physicist Professor W. Pauli and to my
thesis of psychic synchronicity‖ (C. G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, translation by
R. F. C. Hull, Princeton University Press, 1960, 1973, pp. vi-vii). Yet Einstein was too mathematical-
physicalistic to understand the overall philosophical significance of ―relativity‖ in his replies to commentators
(Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed., Paul Arthur Schilpp, La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Co.,
1949, 1970, pp. 665-688). Nor did he think much of Jung, and was blind to psychological implications of
―relativity,‖ much less its deep life significance (Thomas Levenson, Einstein in Berlin, NY: Bantam Books,
2003, pp. 97, 322). The Einstein-others asymmetry is all too staggering. Einstein the supposedly open-minded
theoretical scientist learns nothing from other scholars in other fields who are much stimulated by Einstein to
learn much. Psychologist Jung learns much from Einstein and medicine while medical scientists learn nothing
from Jung‘s synchronicity. What does it mean? Could it be that physicists‘ ―relativity,‖ for all its formidable
mathematical expressions, is a simplified version of the Yin-Yang and the I Ching, for ―relativity‖ covers only
the physical aspect of the Yin-Yang? Sadly, as the quotation from Jung above shows, in the name of being a
―scientist,‖ Jung seemed to be enamored with physical theorists!
19 陰陽相剋相生, 生生不息.
 Selflessness, Silence 275

In contrast, Taoists tirelessly harp on various powers of no-doing, not to try without even
trying, but just wait and be ready to trail along, just to do what is needed, not-do what is not.
We act without interfering. We just become ―nothing‖ to things ceaselessly happening, woe
and weal, unexpected and expected.
Such an admission of ―nothing‖ into our word and action allows us to partake of the
pervasive presence of ―nothing‖ to enrich us. Silently, our common phrase, ―letting oneself
go,‖ shows us the way.20 It tells how, deeply dissatisfied with all the world could offer—
Brahmin‘s royal wealth of wisdom, Asanas‘ rigorous self-denial, and Gautama Buddha‘s
balanced serenity—Siddhartha had to stop his eager search.
Too much doing, striving, and seeking grows the nauseous self; ―What could I say to you
that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking
you cannot find?‖ ―That was why he had . . . to lose himself.‖21 He let himself go and listened
only to his own soft inner voice, to soon follow an irresistible Kamala who sent him to a
wealthy merchant Kamaswami. He practiced a ―Kama Sutra‖ of love and trade, and ended up
making tremendous love with tremendous profit.22
To become a nothing is to let oneself go, which lets go of oneself, and one is no longer in
hot pursuit of a goal. Meanwhile, losing oneself lets oneself be truly oneself. Thus letting
oneself go loses oneself and thereby gains it.23 This is what becoming a ―nothing‖
accomplishes. ―Nothing‖ now pervades our human world, suffuses our linguistic expression
and overflows into our daily activities; it is a fascinating theme celebrated in storytelling. We
must carefully look into its modus operandi, this time, as befits nothing, without obtrusively
mentioning ―nothing.‖

DOUBLE NEGATIVES, DOUBLE AFFIRMATIVES, STORYTELLING

One woe of logic is that it separates us from actual facts, as illustrated above in the first
logical approach to ―nothing.‖ This is to say, not that we need no logic, but that logic must
not lead our observation of the concrete (as Aristotle did), but follow it. This is because logic
is too inflexible a coarse metal sieve that leaks actuality, in contrast to a natural flexible ―net‖
of storytelling that may be logically sparse-meshed but leaks nothing, to quote Lao Tzu (73)
our way.
Let us just take an example, ―double negatives.‖ We often hear that double negatives
equal an affirmative, but double affirmatives remain an affirmative. Two words, ―equal‖ and
―remain,‖ raise the eyebrows of actuality. Four points can be raised.
First, it is false in fact that double negatives are simply equal to an affirmation; things in
actual situations are much more complex. ―It is A‖ is much weaker and uninteresting than ―it

20 As Hermann Hesse‘s Siddhartha, tr. Hilda Rosner, NY: Bantam Books, 1971, says.
21 Ibid., pp. 35, 99, 140.
22 I must admit to quoting Hesse backward. Actually, Siddhartha began with learning from himself, was on his way
to himself (ibid., p. 39), to end up realizing that that was the way to lose himself in worldly power, women,
and money (p. 99), sinking in an utter world-nausea to the brink of suicide. That opened the way to realizing
and self-dissolving in the River that wiped out time in the Unity of things, all present at once. This is a
strangely full version of Buddhism; there is no real Emptiness, and ―Nirvana‖ is casually mentioned only once
(p. 146). The story is more Taoist than Buddhist. This is why I could pilfer from the story as I wished.
23 This is a naturalistic version of ―For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life
for my sake will save it.‖ (Luke 9:24)
276 Kuang-ming Wu

is no not-A,‖ ―it is never heard that A is not the case,‖ ―he would be a fool to refuse A to
knowingly hurt himself,‖ and so on.
These double negations twist themselves, negating their original negation, to emphasize
an affirmation to the contrary (―no less than‖), or to walk around both sides of negation to
make an ironic affirmation to enrich it (―not without‖). Double negations give rise to scathing
attacks, sarcasm to drive home a point, and effective promotion of something controversial.
Logicians often say all this is about rhetorical devices, not about logic. Isn‘t saying so, so
much the worse for logic? Isn‘t logic a part of rhetoric, after all? Isn‘t logic divorced from the
actual force of a statement divorced from logic‘s true mission, to chart the way statements are
made? Isn‘t a simple equivalence of double negatives to straight affirmation simply a false
assertion of logic in fact?
Then, logic takes it as axiomatic that double affirmations simply affirm. Once a thinker
lamented that double negatives affirm but double affirmatives make no difference, whereupon
a fellow thinker said, ―Ya (in rising tone)! Ya (in falling tone)!‖ Everyone laughed. The case
was wryly/performatively made that double affirmatives can negate, and people‘s laughter
assents to this fact. Moreover, ―Ya! Ya!‖ and laughter are full of their respective twists,
similar to double negatives, for doesn‘t this very statement act out a double negative; isn‘t the
act-out a rhetorical performance? ―Why‖ in double negations performs double affirmations.
Thirdly, we note, the crucial point here is ―twist.‖ It is an asymmetrical counterpart of
―irony,‖ saying A to insinuate not-A. Besides, aren‘t both twist and irony two subtle forms of
double negatives? In other words, we could take double affirmations in actual situation (with
tones and facial expressions) to be an ironic expression of double negations.
This point alerts us to the complex power of negation, especially double negatives.
Double negatives can have various functions, depending on actual situations. ―Not without
A‖ is stronger than ―A,‖ ―I don‘t know nothing‖ emphasizes my ignorance, and philosophical
Taoists, Zen masters, Hegel, Nishida, and Heidegger say that double negatives lead us into
higher levels of truth unattainable otherwise. Many thrive on double negatives, Socrates,
Mencius, Chuang Tzu, Nagarjuna, Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Churchill, Mark
Twain, and poets so many.
Finally, ―depending on actual situation‖ above is crucial; logic is irrelevant/powerless
without specifying the actual situation, yet cannot specify/stipulate it. Bringing out the
situation tells stories, as we cited examples and explained them. Double negatives, double
positives, and ironies compactly tell stories that twist and turn to enrich life. Thus,
storytelling, not logic, effects logical understanding of actuality. Now, here are two sorts of
logical understanding of untoward situations, with story-thrust persuasive, poetic.
The first sort is stories straightly born of untoward circumstance. Andersen‘s stories are
mostly sad if not brutal, with few morals. They are snapshots of actual worlds without rhyme
24
or reason. Andersen is a snapshot-maker. My letter to J here has ―sour grapes‖ and a ―lady
on a wheelchair, with a seeing-eye dog,‖ nothing special yet quite powerful. Here it is.

Bach is celebrating my sour grapes, J., for I‘m grateful I‘m leaving here soon. I‘m so old
as to be free as a bird to choose wherever I go and enlighten young folks. I suddenly realized
today I cannot remove the stench; the sooner I leave here the healthier I‘ll be breathing in
fresh air.

24 See The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales (1984), ed. Lily Owens, NY: Gramercy Books, 2006.
 Selflessness, Silence 277

I express my sour grapes; we all need sour grapes to live on. The same grapes are sweet
to someone, sour to some others, and revolting to more others. I cannot stand being bossed
around and pressed into a preset mechanical mold. That idiotic chair person has no gratitude,
no appreciation. She is a machine of routine, set rules and management. To wipe off the
stench, I went to an old bookstore and picked seven volumes for $30.63, tax included; all my
favorites—Heidegger, Jaspers, Kierkegaard (two volumes), Kolakowski, Mark Twain, and
Voltaire—for 30 bucks! This is no town of Acorn the old bookstore where I used to pay at
least twelve bucks each for beat-up volumes. Sour grapes clean me of stench!

Then I was walking down a lane in a campus, when I met a young lady on her way to
class—on a wheelchair, with a seeing-eye dog. Stunned, I stared at her. She did not notice me
but just went by. That was the moment.

Bach is still playing, and I hate to switch to the radio for ―All Things Considered,‖ not
the best but our most comprehensive for news. I‘m disappointed; it‘s so boringly long on the
big fires in California, somewhat expected. Now it‘s on Texas overrun by Republicans and
evangelicals. Here I have another boring bunch of sour grapes.

Now, why did I write you all this? I felt better. Why did I write how I felt better? I want
you to likewise tell a story. Storytelling is talk-therapy moving everywhere to confess your
sour grapes to breathe freely, look and listen to Canada geese honking so loud, flying so high
in the chilly sky! To look at their enormous wonders is to hear your honking, so carefree, so
high and soaring free! No more authoritarianism, no more bossing around! I can now put on
transparency protection to my favorite books. You tell me your own stories, too, ok?

I guarantee you‘ll feel good as I do, right now. Yours,

This is one sort of understanding to expand the healing circle and different circles, for
different readers, beyond myself who initiates storytelling as in the letter above so mundane.
Another sort is provocation by senseless incoherence that arouses hearers; it starts telling
of a circle-center to expand the circle into more circles. Take the notorious statement that
begins the whole Tao Te Ching, ―Tao can tao, not always-Tao.‖ However we parses it, we
meet a logical dead-end, yet we cannot give it up as nonsense, for it seems to hide things deep
that later 81 chapters seem to unpack. The explication itself deepens the paradox, however,
for what follows to explicate is ―Tao can tao‖ that is ―not always-Tao.‖ The book is an
exercise in self-defeating futility.
Provoked, one initiates one‘s own exploration of what the statement could possibly mean;
and perhaps this ―initiation‖ is what it intends. Perhaps the book of Tao Te Ching and its
beginning statement are meant to ―let others begin‖ telling stories, whatever they are, about
the sentiment, whatever it is, expressed in the book. Is Confucius‘ ―raise one [for] three
returns‖ (7/8) to raise one to let three to return? Is this classroom alive?
The ―other‖ can be a friend I wrote to, ―I‘m so happy you are reading at least my stuff.
Now you would write in response. Criticize me. Complement what I missed as you see it. It is
joy you cannot get over. I promise.‖25 My soul breathes in the classroom and the writing, then
each breathes into the other and both come alive.

25
The ―other‖ can also be me the writer.
278 Kuang-ming Wu

What I cannot stand is however much soul I breathe into the class, some students simply
do not come alive; I used to also be bothered by not publishing, however much excellence I
breathed into writing. I have got over the latter; I now enjoy writing for writing‘s sake. I have
to learn how to get over the former ―unmoved students.‖
Let us gaze at the nonsense in Tao Te Ching. Is all this Tao un-tao-able, about a road—
Tao—not taken? Bashō‘s verse, ―This road—/ no one goes down it,/ autumn evening,‖ may
echo Robert Frost‘s ―The Road Not Taken‖ confessing, ―I took the road less traveled by,/
26
And that has made all the difference.‖ Bashō left the autumn road alone, Frost took one and
left the other alone, and both were touched by the road not taken.
―Yet to begin to exist‖ is the ―Ultimate‖ of ―things,‖ as the ―music Mr. Chao‖ the great
27 28
musician ―does not perform (yet?)‖ is the perfect music. The bird out there is prettier than
the one in my hand; the ideal highway is in the civil engineer‘s mind, before drafted; it is
Plato‘s Form, the Really Real. ―Tao can tao, not always-Tao,‖ indeed.
Or else, closer to home, does all this point to ―where there‘s a will, there‘s a way,‖ that is,
29
―there begins a way‖? Is it to say, a ―way walks it, and forms,‖ the Way, the Tao, is the one
the walker about to walk out? The way is the walk to be walked; isn‘t the ―essence‖ of the
walk/way/Tao, yet to begin to begin walking out? If ―well begun, half done‖ is true, then ―yet
to begin, all done‖ is also?
―Beginning to begin‖ must begin, all the same. Doesn‘t an individual initial step initiate
self-creation, itself making the self whole, self-empowered? ―Thousand-mile walk begins
30
underfoot.‖ The elusive Tao of self-creation cannot be objectively tao-ed in an armchair,
but must laboriously/silently walk out. Again, ―Tao can tao (is) not always-Tao,‖ indeed. Tao
Te Ching is such poetry of actual walking the way.
Finally, looking over storytelling provoked by untoward situation and intolerable stress,
we realize how inevitable it is that historic epic stories turn poetic—Gilgamesh, the Odyssey,
31
Bhagavad-Gita, Chinese histories. Poetry comes inescapable and spontaneous as we ex-
press our unbearable agonies and exaltation; poetry is what enthralls, seeps in, and naturally
suffuses the reader‘s heart and mind.
What is poetry? It is verbally indefinable, for it gives life to words, defines expressions,
and what defines cannot itself be defined. We only admiringly note two of its irresistible
traits. Poetry is compact and open; it barely mentions a few crucial words to open us out into
diverse vast horizons; we are fascinated to elaborate on details as pointed to by those few dots
of words. Poetry is ―a foretaste of truth.‖32
Stories compact actuals and open to more; they are poetic. So, great novels are poetic
(pointed, open) in style, sentiment, structure, and substance. So, every profound essay—

26 See Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays, NY: The Library of America, 1995, , op. cit., p. 103, and
Robert Hass, ed., The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa, Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press,
1994, p. 11. Cf. ―All along this road/ not a single soul—only/ autumn evening comes‖ in The Little Book of
Haiku, tr., Sam Hamill, NY: Barnes and Noble Books, 2002, p. 12. Sadly, I have so far failed to locate the
Japanese original in the vast 芭蕉俳句集 (中村俊定校注), 東京岩波文庫, 1970, 2000.
27 Chuang Tzu said so in 2/40 and 43.
28 Modern music, say, Edward Elgar‘s String Quartet (Op. 83), is all dissonance, but these ugly sounds form one
pattern after another that makes sense, and the ―pattern of change‖ of patterns makes music.
29 Chuang Tzu said so in 2/33.
30 Lao Tzu said so in Tao Te Ching, ch. 64.
31 E.g., 春秋左傳, 史記, etc.
32
Poetry, June 2010, p. 246.
 Selflessness, Silence 279

musical, philosophical—is poetic; persuasive is the poetic, dotted and open in Plato, Bach,
33
Beethoven, Nietzsche, Frost, Emerson, Buber, Marcel, Heidegger, and even Jaspers.
Thinkers of poetic sensibility today deconstruct—melt down—cognitive ―system.‖
Philosophy is a part of literature, literature is a collection of stories, and story is music of
words as music is story wordless, melody-dotted, persuasive, in a word, poetic.
All in all, we have thus surveyed two possible expansions—provoked by untoward
circumstances outside, by intolerable incoherence inside, and irresistibly expressed in a poetic
way—of the circle of life, with its center everywhere, its boundary nowhere; it ever expands
beyond itself into diverse circles beyond belief. Alive and self-creative, it is storytelling.
What we must note here, however, is that story-thinking as storytelling and hearing, when
pushed far enough, opens out to a vast horizon where telling is no telling, hearing without
hearing, everything turns silent. How could telling stories turn silent? Here people nod at each
other, story is effected, and people smile and leave. We must go into this ultimate of story-
thinking, in silence.

TELLING WITHOUT TELLING, HEARING WITHOUT HEARING—

SILENCE AT WORK
Storytelling-reading has textual, exegetical, expository, and hermeneutical levels. Having
34
gone through all four levels of storytelling-reading up to the fourth, we must kick with
35
Wittgenstein the ladder we have climbed up on, but with a difference. Wittgenstein ends
Tractatus by saying that the world cannot be expressed.
To make sense of his ―inexpressible world,‖ we should climb up on his ladder of
propositions and kick them away. The kicking after building/climbing is a dramatic collapse;
the kick lets us clap hands at the fall of a house of cards, i.e., our propositional thinking. We
stand amazed; we either ridicule Wittgenstein as logically incoherent or defend him as
profound, yet not knowing why.
36
In contrast, Chuang Tzu just winked and smiled the soft way, in no-do wu-wei of
storytelling; here is a soft kick. Lao Tzu‘s strange quip, ―Tao can tao, not Always-Tao‖ self-
rhymes to self-efface, and then spells out ambiguous aphorisms, tao-ing the can-tao, self-
effacing nonchalantly, again and again. Lao Tzu begins with a self-effacing theme to continue
its refrain; now, how can self-effacing be continued?
It is climbing and kicking in one, inter-woven and under-woven subtly to spread
impossibly, with a wink. Those who are sensitive are fascinated; those not, bypass the entire

33 Note how poetic Karl Jaspers waxes in his marvelous gem on our situational self-transcendence, Reason and
Existenz, tr. William Earle, NY: The Noonday Press, 1957. It admirably sums up his later massive volumes.
34 Tillich objects to describing life with ―level‖ because the term connotes an irreversible hierarchy, while in life
things intermingle inter-reversibly, in mutual immanence, so ―dimension‖ is a more fitting term. (Paul Tillich,
Systematic Theology, Volume Three, The University of Chicago Press, 1963, pp. 12-30, 114, etc.) I don‘t see
how ―level‖ connotes such hierarchical rigidity, so I keep the term ―level‖ until something comes out to
change my mind.
35 Tractatus, 6.54. We have just been through this point in ―Relativism and Storytelling.‖ In fact, Wittgenstein is
thus a thinker of performative silence in the West; later Heidegger also used the word ―Being‖-crossed. This is
also why both thinkers are controversial and unintelligible in the West but quite popular in Japan and now in
China.
36 § Sleep, the Tao of Self-ing is a wonderful way of story-presenting Tao, in sleep!
280 Kuang-ming Wu

show as a bore. Most of us all too easily ignore how he does it, and all too eagerly rush in to
parse ―what‖ he says and to translate it, as if we knew the whole show. After all, there is
nothing in the announcement and in the subsequent sayings announcing that all efface
themselves. His kicking is subtle ―nothing‖ (wu) doing nothing (wu wei); it is silence enacted.
Such performative silence makes us realize that the ultimate of story-thinking consists in
telling without telling, hearing without hearing, in silence at work.37 Why is silence the
ultimate of story-thinking? How do we ―silence‖ in storytelling?38 We consider the why, then
the how.
Why is silence-telling the ultimate of stories? Three points are here. One, objective
historical chronicle,39 mathematics, legal statutes, logical canons, and Western philosophy can
be put down in propositions, but what are behind them, i.e., subjective mood, attitude,
approach, worldview, and horizon to match the shifting flow of actuality and milieu, and so
on, cannot be put down in propositions; they are a silent push behind the saying. The silent
push behind is the ultimate that tells itself through stories pushed; story-thinking ultimately
silence-telling.
Two, we need to record everything, and all we have are words. We must then use words
to hit non-word silence of things, by saying A and kicking/wiping A at once, to say non-A.
Wittgenstein climbs up on the logic-ladder to kick it away to silent-tell of non-logic that does
not tell; Lao Tzu first tells us to wipe tao-able Tao, and then tells tao-able Tao. Western
ladder kicking is Chinese word wiping. Such act of self-kicking/wiping inconsistency
presents silence. Such sound-silence presentation is storytelling.
Thus Chuang Tzu purposely scatters words, and Zen masters say, ―If you say Yes, you
receive 30 beatings; if you say No, you receive 30 beatings,‖ for it is un-say-able. What is ―it‖
here? ―It‖ is what is meant by words to be there but has been obstructed by the words from
being there. In words self-wiped by their self-contradiction, words cease to describe, get out
of our way in our forgetting them, and there emerges what is there as meant by self-erased-
forgotten words. Words now say by negating their saying. ―Stories getting out of the way of
what‘s behind‖ is the ultimate storytelling.
Here is a story, gentler than 30 beatings, which conveys ―it.‖

A new preacher walked with an older one, who went up to a rose bush, handed the young
preacher a rosebud, and told him to open it without tearing the petals. The young preacher
looked in disbelief at the older. But, out of great respect for the elder, he proceeded to try. .
.Soon he realized how impossible this was. Noticing it, the elder began to recite a poem:

It is only a tiny rosebud

A flower of God‘s design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine.

The secret of unfolding flowers

37
Cf. my meditations on ―silence‖ in Butterfly, op. cit., p. 505 (index on ―silence‖), and the conclusion of ―§
Chinese Philosophy and Story-Thinking‖ below.
38
We will soon consider story-reading-and-hearing as silence. Now we must first consider storytelling in silence.
39
Our oldest historical story was ―engraved on a stone‖ (pp. 61, 117), to show the world our life is ―decreed‖ (72).
The Epic of Gilgamesh, tr. N. K. Sandars, London: Penguin Books, 1960, 1972. This was the case in ancient
China, too.
 Selflessness, Silence 281

Is not known to such as I.

GOD opens this flower so sweetly,
Then, in my hands, they die.

If I cannot unfold a rosebud,

The flower of God‘s design,
Then how can I have the wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?

So, I‘ll trust in Him for leading

Each moment of my day.
I will look to Him for His guidance
Each step of the Pilgrim‘s way.

The pathway that lies before me

Only my Heavenly Father knows.
I‘ll trust him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.

What an elegant engaging enigma! What sonorous silence this story has made! We need
no Zen violence of 30 beatings; we just need the fragrant silence of a rosebud of our life and a
lotus flower in Buddha‘s smiling hand. We see Buddha here shaking hand with Christian
God. Handshake takes place between two friends standing opposite. That is, both are friendly
and apart at once—in their handshake, in silence. Such silent handshake of storytelling is the
ultimate silence-telling.
Three, to capture/say ―it‖ by de-scribing the situation as above is storytelling, which has
two aspects—description here sets things down coherently, yet it is for those with ears to hear
to freely hear their sense behind words, not to listen to the explicit words; all this is open.
Description is coherent, textual-exegetical, levels (a) and (b); hearing its sense is open,
expository-hermeneutic, on levels (c) and (d). Here I self-lessly tell a story; you self-lessly
hear it. Silence happens in this story-exchange in which the story comes alive, unfolds
spontaneously, and vanishes in silence.
Now have you noted that in elucidating what silence-telling is as ultimate, the elucidation
is on how silence-telling happens via storytelling? Why and how are entwined here. We must
ask, ―How do we climax our storytelling in silence?‖ Well, what did our Chinese storytellers
do to manage to silence-tell, and how do sensitive thinkers today hear its sense in silence?
They all show us at least seven related ways of telling silence, silence-telling in silence-
40
hearing, to show how silence tells.
Way One: Silence-storytelling is self-effacing. It tells something and denies it, or denies
something and then tells it anyway; this ―anyway‖ powerfully tells silence. As mentioned
above, Tao Te Ching is a telling execution of this ―anyway‖-ploy. Claiming, ―Tao tao-able—
tell-able—is no Tao,‖ it went on to tell about Tao. It ―tells‖ by denying it before telling it, as
Wittgenstein ―tells‖ it and then throws away what was told.

40 Max Picard‘s The World of Silence (South Bend, IN: Regnery/Gateway, 1952), talks too much; he is too noisy
about silence. Amazingly Gabriel Marcel in his Preface to it managed to get out of this trap. My paragraphs
also try to maneuver out of Picard‘s trap. Readers would judge how far I succeeded.
282 Kuang-ming Wu

They ―tell,‖ not in the telling but in their wiping. Denying the efficacy of words, Zen
Buddhism is the world‘s wordiest religion; it kicks words with words, as Wittgenstein kicks
the logic-ladder logically. All that is said is now ―a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing‖ and, in nothing-signifying, all tale says it all—silence.
Here the telling silence tells. How? Let us listen to Shakespeare. On hearing his wife‘s
41
death that silently declared his end, Macbeth mumbled to himself,

She should have died hereafter./ There would have been a time for such a word./
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day/ To this
last syllable of recorded time,/And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty
death./ Life‘s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the
stage,/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/
Signifying nothing.

In letting Macbeth announce his end as ―signifying nothing‖ just before he ends his life,
Shakespeare announces that this play of his signifies nothing. It is ―full of sound and fury‖ to
make no sense, thereby to ex-press the sense that life makes no sense. It signifies nothing to
murder one‘s lord who favors the murderer; it is sad sound and fury. Shakespeare makes a
shivering music out of such noises, suffused with sad silence.
Japan repeats the tragic tune of all-futility in the all-time popular Tale of the Heike, a
story of rapid rise and fall of the no-good Heike hegemony in the twelfth century; it is an apt
parable on the evanescence of struggles to death in loyalty to the lords far from sagely, the
lesson tolled by the bells of the Buddhist temple to the bloody fights among clashes of vain
42
loyalties. The Tale begins with a note resonating with uncanny similarity to Macbeth‘s
mumble:

The bell of the Gion Temple tolls into every man‘s heart to warn him that all is vanity
and evanescence. The faded flowers of the sala trees by the Buddha‘s deathbed bear witness to
the truth that all who flourish are destined to decay. Yes, pride must have its fall, for it is as
unsubstantial as a dream on a spring night. The brave and violent man—he too must die away
in the end, like a whirl of dust in the wind.

It is so tragic and ironic that the sound and fury of ―dusty‖ (Macbeth) ―dust‖
(Heike), vapor-like transience signifying nothing, has been immensely popular, continually
through the ages in England and in Japan, and in China, where silence no less noisily
resounds in all histories and literatures of life..
All tragedies, then, are sad senseless ―sound and fury,‖ to tell of life that ―should have
died hereafter,‖ for ―life‘s but a walking shadow‖ on its strutting fretting ―way to dusty
death.‖ Life is a walk to death senseless; only an idiot can tell such a noisy life-tale,
senselessly idiotic. To calmly make such a sad noise makes tragic silence. Aristotle said
tragedy is an art of imitation cathartic. Macbeth and Heike kick life away in bloody tears; Lao

41 Macbeth, 5.5.18-27. This is in the version of William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, general editors,
Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Oxford Compact Edition, 1988, 1991, pp. 997-998.
42 Hiroshi Kitagawa, Bruce T. Tsuchida, trs., The Tale of the Heike: Heike Monogatari (1975), University of
Tokyo Press, 1989, p. 5. Cf. Helen Craig McCullough, tr., The Tale of the Heike, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1988.
 Selflessness, Silence 283

Tzu wipes out Tao Te Ching with a wink. All tales of sound and fury, signifying nothing, are
idiots‘ stories to cleanse our idiocy in silence.
Way Two: Such silent storytelling just tells of what is so here now. ―What is Buddha?
This shit-wiping stick.‖ We may say that Buddha is this stick that wipes us clean. But No, the
stick is just there, and the Master just sees it and tells of it as it is here now; he is silence as
Buddha is, here now. ―Why fish has no umbrella? ‗Cause fish has no hands.‖ Of course, fish
have no umbrellas, and they have no hands. Ecstatic Mom said, Tessie is ―logical,‖ for she
says a plain fact, and what else is new? And yet all this made Mom ecstatic, and made me
―Wow!‖ Silence impresses us.
Chuang Tzu has tons of stories so provocative because so plainly common, such as
―morning three,‖ but what do they provoke? Nothing, Chuang Tzu just said nothing, for 3+4
is 4+3; everyone knows that! Saying-nothing tells—silence. No wonder we did not get it, for
there is nothing to get. No wonder we thought we‘ve got it, for nothing is there that we did
not know. For all that, in all this commonness, his silence of saying-nothing impresses us—
compellingly, mysteriously.
Way Three: Storytelling says nothing but acts, and in acting says ―silence.‖ It beats,
beating the drum as Chuang Tzu did on his wife‘s death (18/15) and Zen-giving the hearer 30
Zen-beatings. It is a performative utterance that does not utter, and this not-uttering utters
―silence.‖ A baby babbles, mumbles, shouts, beats things, and swings them around—for
nothing. That is how the baby grows. Heraclitus says the world is a river, and we cannot step
into ―it‖ twice; for Mencius the rivers teach us how to be a sage. Confucius simply stands
there at the stream and exclaims, ―Water! O, Water!‖ He sighs, in silence so loud.
His sigh brings us back to the beginning of Analects; here his joy of learning from the
teacher waxed in the joy of learning from many friends, to climax in joy, ―O, ignored by
43
people and not offended (silent), isn‘t it rather princely of a person?‖ Silence was his
44
ultimate joy of learning all alone, as his happy disciple Hui lived in obscurity with little
45 46
food and water. Having gone through many teachers, learning is an ultimate living-alone
without-offense silent, following the world river ignoring him, his maturing life-flow, in the
flow of history, time-silence, that nurtures myriad all, in silence.
How? Everyday dawns, shines, and surveys where we are situated, and a map of our true
situation appears to show us the way to live on. The light enlightens us to show us the truth-
map of our situation in us and around us. The light is our way, our map, and we come to live
in the truth mapped out about us and around us. Here the light, the way, the truth and the life
are one, and we live this unity if we let the light enlighten us, that is, if we believe in the light,
silent, sagacious, and natural. We must allow the light, believe in it, to map us and lead our
way as we walk in silence.
Jesus said so also (John 14:6) just before leaving us left confounded, to let us be free to
let him the light-map-truth live in us. After his death, if we let him at all, he is now our
lighted map inside to silently show us the way, to go on living in the hostile world. The true
teacher is a dead one, alive and silent.

43 Mencius 4B18, Analects 9/17, 1/1. To ―ignore‖ is literally to ―not-know 不知‖ as in Analects 1/1.
44 Not being lonely (孤), being alone (獨) can ―envision unique-aloneness 見獨‖ to ―break through into the dawn
朝徹‖; it comes only by going through learning beyond learning (Chuang Tzu 6/36-41).
45 Analects 6/11, Mencius 4B29.
46 ―Among three persons going, there must be my teachers.‖ (Analects 7/22). Mr. Christian, my friend, and Jesus
are my three teachers, as they will soon appear in Way Four.
284 Kuang-ming Wu

Way Four: My former teacher at Yale, Professor William A. Christian, now gone on,
spoke sparingly and always softly. My friend, who publishes much and is in a responsible
position at a respectable institution, never argues but routinely retires to reticence after
making a point or two. Jesus stood out alone silent through dings of accusations,
interrogations, and cruel treatments by inhumane accusers, judges, and soldiers. Simple
silence of Mr. Christian, my friend, and Jesus, makes a powerful impact for long in the end, if
not at once.
Way Five: Jesus stared at Peter just as Peter finished denying knowing him. His silent
stare overpowered Peter into bitter tears. How could a silent stare be so powerful? Jesus just
trailed Peter, that‘s all, and trailing can overpower. Jesus advised Nicodemus to be reborn in
water and wind, two common things, nature all too silent around us here now for us to follow
47
along, and we will be reborn as Nature. ―It‘s quieter when birdies sing, isn‘t it, Dad?‖ my
Mark whispers.
Similarly, babies just stare at an adult. We can smile at them, and they could not care
less, but simply stare back at us. That is so moving. Similarly, Zen paintings are not
photocopies but caricatures misshapen here and there. Miyamoto Musashi‘s ―Daruma‖
(Bodhidharma) has stern eyes, mouth, and unkempt face. Hakuin‘s ―Daruma‖ has huge
48
eyes. These faces, unattractive, of the same Daruma differ in thrust (ch‘i), as if the portraits
mirror their respective painters who yet share an unspeakably poignant acuteness.
Besides, those Zen paintings often accompany poems, written quite often in ―sauntering
行書‖ or ―grassy 草書‖ style. Those Zen poems are on themes common and plain. One
49
Hundred Zen Poems has no word, ―Zen.‖ Zen ―artists‖ paint and poetize on things
absolutely bland and blank to set off something else Ineffable.
―Zen‖ is meditation, ―Tao‖ is how things go, and ―Buddha‖ is the awakened, but
meditation on what? What is Tao‘s how? Awakened to what? Nothing is told, for it cannot be,
any more than can God, ―YHWH,‖ be pronounced. E. e. cummings so spelt, ―Nothing
surpasses the mystery of stillness,‖ that this sentence cannot be read or uttered. It writes,
50
―n/OthI/n/g can/s/urPas/s/the m/y/SteR/y/of/s/tilLnes/s.‖ He stilled ―stillness‖ itself. All
poetics in the end paints a bland blank in blistering wintry chill to sober us in the wind of
Nature the Self-So.
We call it chi‘i 氣, the stirring natural breath of life. K‘ai shu 楷書 (orthodox) style of
51
calligraphy can be copied but not hsing shu 行書 (sauntering) or ts‘ao shu 草書 (grassy)
style, any more than Lao Tzu can. I am myself here, as I watch their ch‘i breathing in their
vigorous brush-execution, barely to catch/cultivate ch‘i, the thrust of breathing life. Copying
breathing kills life; copying orthodoxy style is easy, yet its breathing is hard to feel and

47 Luke 22: 61-62. John 3: 8.

48 Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) was a painter-swordsman who invented two-sword fight. Hakuin (1685-1768)
was the father of the Rinzai Reformation, famed for his vigor (ch‘i) in Zen paintings. Their portraits of
Daruma are collected as Plates 41 and 41 in Daisetz T. Suzuki‘s Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton
University Press, 1959.
49 王志遠, 吳相洲著, 禪詩今譯百首, 高雄縣大樹鄉: 佛光, 民85.
50 This is ―Poem 42‖ in e. e. cummings‘ posthumous 73 Poems (1963). Cf. my History, Thinking, and Literature in
Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, p. 140.
51 Actually orthodox style is quite hard to copy; no one has copied its master Ou-yang Hsün 歐陽詢 to satisfaction.
 Selflessness, Silence 285

52
copy. Conversely, it is much easier to feel the ch‘i of sauntering and grassy styles but hard
to copy them.
In grassy style of calligraphy, we pay less attention to each character than to the whole
sweep of brush-moving, alive as the breath of life itself of that person, as Huai Ssu‘s differs
53
from Sun Kuo-t‘ing. We learn from a master of breathing on how best to breathe—for a
specific cultural breathing—by watching/tracing the master‘s breathing pattern, in sauntering
and grassy styles. Breathing is quite a serious business of living, and as such it casually
moves us, while we do breathe casually.
54
Yehudi Menuhin‘s performance of Sibelius‘ Violin Concerto ushers us into the
sauntering breathing of his ―thick violin‖; everything is off tune, hewing forth the rough
melody thrust and its patterns, there to powerfully compel and convince us, saying, ―That‘s
Sibelius‘ severe Nature of Finland!‖
Perhaps the point of ―enjoying grassy style‖ is less to decipher its meaning than to feel
the breathing thrust (ch‘i) of the whole execution. Music comes to mind when we try to
55
explain its ―meaning.‖ Musician-philosopher Marcel said,

No, it is inconceivable that by words I could give an idea of something of a musical order
in its qualitative singularity. I could try to do this only by playing it or by presenting a
significant melody—in other words, by participating actively in this music—in the hope that it
will evoke (or, perhaps more exactly, that it will release) in the listeners a kind of inner
movement by which they will move toward an encounter with what I am trying to have them
hear.

As we listen to Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert‘s Lieder, we enjoy more of his singing

than attending to the meaning of his words in the background. I feel Menuhin‘s distinct
grassy style impacts in his performance of Sibelius‘ Violin Concerto. Menuhin is less
technically accurate than powerfully alive to the sentiment, and so more accurate than
―literally accurate‖ performance. He is my grassy Muse! I cannot explain it; I can only
56
undergo the experience in awe with you.
Chuang Tzu‘s praise of common simple wind (2/3-9) was praised by great literary writer
Ssu Tung-p‘o as the ultimate of poetic beauty, yet Chuang Tzu was just ―piping,‖ shooting
the breeze, as the wordless wind was. His human piping blended in with earthly piping, the
wind, the nothing blowing all over, for nothing. His superb description—story-poem—of
wind the nothing-flow is itself the nothing-flow. That is what sweeps us into the wind.
His description itself is a nothing that blows to clean us, enliven, and refresh us with its
wordless blowing beauty of life-breath. He was doing silence, talking wind-silence, by

52 Watch the vigorous inimitable 歐陽詢‘s (554-641) 皇甫誕碑 and 九成宮醴泉銘, both issued by 東京二玄社.
53 唐懷素 自敘帖 (1960)，東京二玄社, 1988. 孫過庭/書譜，香港翰墨軒, 1997.
54 EMI CDM 7639872.
55 The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, eds. P. A. Schilpp and L. E. Hahn, La Salle, IL: Open court, 1984, p. 273.
This is a part of his reply to Gene Reeves‘ stodgy exposition of ―mystery‖; the entire reply (pp. 272-274)
deserves close reading and meditation.
56 Mendelssohn wrote on his ―Songs without Words,‖ ―Unlike ambiguous words, music goes directly from heart to
heart,‖ to Marc A. Souchay (10/15/1812). Mrs. Nixon said of President Richard Nixon that his words from
heart go straight to the hearts of the nation. Words must be used (as both did) to be denied, to give way to
songs without words. The Preface to the Shih Ching (Classic of Poetry) says also, ―Feelings come shaped in
words. Words are not enough, and overflow in groans that in turn overflow to songs chanted out in dancing
hands and feet.‖
286 Kuang-ming Wu

trailing Nature, and silent trailing comes out beautifully compelling. This is how silence
shoots breeze in nature to blow/flow into us.
57
Way Six: We hear Chuang Tzu saying (22/39), ―Humans born between heaven and
earth are as a white colt passing a wall-crack; suddenly it is gone.‖ This saying vividly stays
with us today, and continues to awe us, 2,400 years after his life ended. Thus this saying is
both momentary as our life it described is, and perpetual, outliving us all. We stand in awe at
this ―and,‖ which is silent.
58
Of course, our life is but dreams of drunkards and footprints on sands of time, but
saying so strangely, mysteriously, immortalizes this fleeting fact. Human life with human
sayings is all such unity of eternity and transience, united in history-as-sayings (文史).
59
Anyone who explains and exploits this ―such unity‖ captures ―silence‖ that is actuality.
They can exploit this unity, but not express it; it is beyond their grasp. How could it be
grasped? What does this unity mean? It is silence. What is this silence? Well, a kaleidoscope
is a tube; it contains pieces that are not a tube. The pieces move to make myriad shapes that
flicker, change, and sparkle, to make up the tube, while the tube itself does not sparkle.
Now, how are the tube and the pieces related? The tube contains the pieces. The
―containing‖ situation does not flicker, change, sparkle, or not-flicker, not-change, not-
sparkle, for it is not the pieces or the tube. The ―containing‖ is beyond all these descriptions
of the tube and the pieces. The ―containing‖ is not tube or pieces but beyond them. Still,
without ―containing‖ they cannot make up a ―kaleidoscope‖ that is a tube that has so many
flickers, changes, and sparkles.
Life and its description make a kaleidoscope. Life and its activities change and do not
say; their description does not change but says about changes. How are life and its description
related? Their relation is not ―saying‖ or ―not-saying,‖ not change or not-change. It is beyond
expression, silence, as Chuang Tzu says, ―not word, not silence‖ (25/81); it is silence beyond
60
silence that words forth no word. All Taoism dwells here, ―saying no-saying‖ (27/6), as Lao
Tzu begins with ―Tao can tao, not Always Tao,‖ and then goes on to tao the not-tao-ables.
Both perform silence.
Way Seven: Silence preserves Thou as no verbal expressions can, Marcel says, for words
objectify their referent into an It, which Thou is not. Thou can never be captured in a
61
discourse, but mutual responses in silence leave Thou free as he is, without reducing him to
It. To see what silence means here, we can weave, in our way, the point Marcel made.

57 ―Man‘s life between heaven and earth is like the passing of a white colt glimpsed through a crack in the wall—
whoosh!—and that‘s the end.‖ (Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1968, p. 240). The whole Chapter 22 is beautiful absolutely, poignantly!
58 ―Life in the World is but a big dream;/ I will not spoil it by any labour or care.‖ (Li Po, ―Waking from
Drunkenness on a Spring Day,‖ Arthur Waley, Translations from the Chinese, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919,
1941, p. 122)
59 In contrast, the West since Plato seizes this time-timeless ―cleavage‖ to produce an opposition between the flow
of events in time/history and timeless values, i.e., Ideas and logic.
60 Cf. Chuang Tzu 2/59=24/68, 2/65=18/12, 13/65, 72, 14/27, 17/24, 21/26, 22/7, 84, 24/66, the end of 25, etc.
61 Marcel, ―I and Thou,‖ in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, eds. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, La
Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967, pp. 46-48. Buber objects, saying that when I say ―I,‖ I do not denature myself
into It. Likewise, I do not denature Thou into It when I say ―Thou.‖ (p. 705) I think Buber takes I-saying-―I‖ as
same as I-saying-―Thou,‖ but they are not; saying-I self-identifies, saying-Thou does not, though both identify
without objectifying.
 Selflessness, Silence 287

―In the beginning was the relation,‖ Buber said, but actually in the beginning was ―a
62
certain felt unity‖ that is then articulated to make room for relation, says Marcel. We say,
the ―certain felt‖ unity here is then itself unarticulated, a silence. The relation is the meeting
between mutual Thous of presence. Such mutual presence then composes a community of
―co-belonging to‖ the same history and destiny, the same past and the same prospect.
At an unexpected stop of our train, we become Thou to each other, to touch the heart of
our common vital existential interests. All of these take place in silence—a certain unity,
meeting, the between, presence, co-belonging, touching the heart of our existence. This is the
63
―spirit‖ that silently hovers on the It-waters. Is this ―spirit‖ called ―ch‘i‖ the life-breath?
Thus silence here sums up all these happenings, as a tacit milieu for them to take place as
they are, without reducing them to It. ―Milieu‖ has much to do with the ineffable relation
between what contains and what is contained of the world-kaleidoscope, and with the mid-
point of our fleeting life and the eternity of saying so. To dwell here, in this silence of all
silence, is to become free, eloquent, and powerful everywhere.64
This is where Lao Tzu denies the Tao being say-able, and then goes on freely to say
about the Tao. This is where Wittgenstein says all sorts of things before wiping them away as
nonsense, as kicking the ladder climbed up on, and where Chuang Tzu continues to talk about
no-talk, to do no-do, and to word with word-forgotten ones. They all freely talk in
contradictions, being eloquent in their silence. It is a silent stare of the baby. It is doing-in-
saying simply what it is as it is, as the newsman reporting horrors of the events, silently.
65
(C) In all these seven ways the Tao goes along, forever silent. ―The Tao is silent‖ as
things in the world are. Here telling and hearing join, and heart goes to heart, core straight to
core. Straightness is silence; it is the core of things, as the silent majority is the core of
democracy the people-rule, for the true ruler silently-straightly goes to people, as Lao Tzu
keeps harping on.
All this follows nature. The psalmist intones, ―The heavens proclaim God‘s splendour,/
the sky speaks of his handiwork;/ day after day takes up the tale,/ night after night makes him
known;/ their speech has never a word,/ not a sound for the ear,/ and yet their message
66
spreads the wide world over,/ their meaning carries to earth‘s end.‖
Nature speaks the loudest of all its silence—as both the poets and the scientists know too
well; all their stories, poetic and scientific, are mere faint echoes of nature‘s powerful silence.
In the end, all our stories are no-stories. Non-sense in nature provokes, in silence, sense that is
ours, our living. Here we return to nature, reborn in it, by echoing it, trailing it.

62 Marcel prefers meeting to relation; Buber takes ―relation‖ in a primordial sense, forever pregnant with
continuing latency of ―meeting‖ that comes and goes (ibid., p. 706). All this is a verbal quibble on something
both men agree on, for ―meeting‖ can be universal as relation, as ―relation‖ can be concrete as meeting.
63 Marcel then goes into the eternal Thou who by nature can never become It, for ―he‖ admits of no measure, no
limit. He is not a sum of properties at all but we constantly tend to make this eternal Thou into a Quid (ibid., p.
48). The eternal Thou with animal Thou and nature-Thou are Buber‘s problems; he tries to solve them in pp.
707-709. All this came from sticking to the I-Thou frame, and can be resolved by ―I-Milieu‖; nature, trees,
animals, and God are silent ―milieus‖ for I-Thou to take place. See my ―Realism (Fajia), Human Akrasia, and
the Milieu for Ultimate Virtue,‖ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, December 2002, pp. 21-44, and
―The I-Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (I),‖ (pp. 1-59, December, 2007), ―The I-Milieu: Its
Implications for Culture and Thinking (II),‖ (pp. 1-68, June 2008), in Journal of World Religions.
64
See my ―The I-Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (I)‖ (pp. 1-59, December 2007), and ―The I-
Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (II)‖ (pp. 1-68, June 2008), Journal of World Religins.
65 Raymond M. Smullyan‘s The Tao Is Silent (Harper, 1977) misses all this silence.
66 Psalm 19:1-4. Moffatt‘s translation.
288 Kuang-ming Wu

Chuang Tzu (2/76-77) told us a story of Mr. Tall Tree, who promises Mr. Jittery Magpie
some mindless words (wang yen 妄言) for Magpie to listen mindlessly (wang t‘ing 妄聽).
The whole operation is mindless-of-you (妄 as composed of 亡 loss and 女 you, devoid of
you) the listener in telling, and mindless-of-you the teller in listening, a careless/reckless
67
telling and listening in abandoned way. Again, silence is here, being quite active in nature‘s
non-sense that blows to breed sense.
The wind blows through time, to make us all friends. We befriend everyone, birds, trees,
and the ancients who are now silent. Ancients are scum, says Mr. Wheelwright in a story of
Chuang Tzu‘s (13/68-74), who is now quite an ancient person of 399-295 BCE. The silent
ancients erase themselves to befriend us; true teachers are dead ones. All stories told here are
from our historic masters on birds and trees, and from thinkers sensitive to them.
68
Did I talk too much? I‘m afraid so, being eager to be a companion to silence—to
ancient silence and to tree-silence here now. All companion-talks must cease, as John the
Baptist must decrease for Jesus to increase, who deceases on the cross for us. All is silence,
talking without talking, hearing without hearing, mutually telling and listening, mindlessly,
recklessly, care-lessly, and ceaselessly, while the wind ceaselessly blows where it wishes.
(D) ―Wait!,‖ someone says, ―the wind may blow aimlessly, senselessly, but what about
our silence that talks, even our silence that talks no sense? Our human silence cannot simply
be aimless and senseless as wind, can it? The wind is not our silence, and can never be human
silence. What is their difference?‖
This inquiry asks how two silences, natural and human, relate. Let us go this way. To
grow is being alive, to be alive is to self-move, and to move is to be here and not-here at
69
once. We grow up as nature is alive. Nature is alive in the wind blowing; we grow up
kicking the past-ladder as we climb it. Our climbing-kicking tells that we are growing. All
move in silence that tells.
The wind tells of the weather, spring breeze, wintry gale; the wind is the weather that
70
breathes to tell of the life of nature. The wind-story tells that nature is alive with the birds
71
singing in the wind, singing the world. Birds are so small, invisible, yet they sing so
unmistakably radiant, penetrating everywhere, up there no one cares. Bird songs make me
feel sky-blue good, sky-vast good.
My friend chimes in. ―Do you like birds? I go bananas over them! I forget myself
overhearing them chirping and honking. They are nowhere, invisible up there, and yet their

67 See my ―Learning as a Master from a Master,‖ On Metaphoring, op. cit., p. 631.

68 I tried consistently to be a companion to Chuang Tzu in Butterfly as Companion, op. cit. Max Black was
inconsistent in this regard in his Companion to Wittgenstein‟s „Tractatus,‟ op. cit.
69 Logically unable to tolerate the contradiction of motion, being here and not-here, Parmenides cut motion from
existence. For Plato, motion is real as long as it partakes in the unmoved Forms. Aristotle retrospectively took
motion as acorn-potentiality maturing into oak-actuality; it is a quibble because motion does not mature, it just
moves. Logical analysis has no room for motion, then. Motion is alive only in storytelling that stretches
coherently to accept it.
70 Weather is ―t‘ien ch‘i 天氣,‖ heavens‘ breaths.
71 I always listen to Lang Elliott‘s incomparable CD, poetry-packed ―Songbird Portraits‖ (Ithaca, NY:
NatureSound Studio, 1999) with Bach‘s coherent-lively ―The Well-Tempered Clavier‖ by Edwin Fischer
(EMI, 1989). I hear them all day one after the other continually. Birds and Bach blend in so well that Bach is
―birds singing in human language.‖ This may be why Bach‘s measured music is relaxing/nourishing, as noted
in ―§ Music, Poetry, System.‖ Schubert‘s ―Fantasia in C‖ by the Menuhin-Kentner team (EMI, Menuhin
Edition, 1991), from its exquisite beginning till its undulating end, is also a pure bird song, though I would
hesitate to generalize and say all human music is ―bird songs.‖
 Selflessness, Silence 289

presence is heard loud and clear, everywhere.‖ Nature is alive with the bird singing, with the
cows grazing in the field of swinging grass, and with raging tornado and hurricane.
Nature never dies; it just keeps going alive with the wind. If we humans ―mess up‖ nature
and ―pollute‖ it until we can no longer live in it, the wind still keeps blowing as it does in
other planets and stars. Has nature a purpose? Well, religion says it does mysteriously;
somehow we feel in our spines that nature is not aimless. Nature wordlessly says to teach us;
72
―To stop listening to it would lose ourselves,‖ say our sages and our history.
How do we follow nature? By wordlessly saying as does nature. We call it ―silence.‖
Saying silence allows saying to come alive as nature, breathing with birds, settled as stately
trees, and awesomely invincible as gale—perhaps all at once, that is, as we bird-breathe we
tree-settle to be gale-invincible, all thanks to saying silence. Saying silence carries nature‘s
73
weight, as we use words to wordlessly say, and as we silently show. How?
Casting about for words to describe a scene, we say, ―Not A, not B, not C,‖ and soon just
―A, B, C,‖ as Nietzsche and Beckett did. The hearer on her part takes both routes together as
―absurd,‖ as she realizes that the scene simply cannot be A, B, or C, and all of them at once,
at the same time, and worse, denying them as well, and so she goes on to explore the scene on
her own. This is to use words to wordlessly say.
And then silence shows; silence acts out, exhibits, when people expect words. This is an
extension of ancient rituals that act out cosmos-meaning. We have social rituals today, sacred
as ancient ritual. Neither ritual can be mocked. Of course silence can go on holiday as can
language. Silence can be showy, signifying nothing, silent, and then showy senseless silence
shows as well, as ―showy.‖
(E) A long quiet evening sinks in to stay with us for life, as our grandmother‘s soft story
mumbles on, serenaded by insects‘ rhythmic sounds. Do we remember her story? It does not
matter; we remember the scene, the warmth, the insects, and our grandmother, all evoked, or
rather released, by her droning story in that twilight evening, and that is what counts. Her
story is insects‘ sounds, telling meaning by singing nothing. Grandma is invincible matter-of-
factly, as insects are. Such is silence that talks—and none can withstand it; none can help but
blend into it to be part of it.
Here are our Grandma Theresa‘s silent story-bits, mumbling into us.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed
anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, there may be jealousy; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.

72 Sartre may be mistaken in claiming that we are condemned to meaning. The claim implies that only we humans
mean, but it is nature that means, we simply follow it. Besides, we are not ―condemned‖ to meaning; we thrive
in it—in nature. On both counts, then, his claim allows no room for us to simply be as nature is, naturally,
meaning without meaning. Sartre‘s claim suffocates us, for his condemnation has no history that is the life-
process of nature as meaning that we follow. He is too legalistic and too uptight to allow leisure, to room in
our living to leisurely grow, silently grow, in our own way. He has no silence in nature.
73 The following two or so paragraphs may sound like a repetition of [B] of human ―how‖ above. All the better if
they are repetitions, for such repetition shows how our how conforms to nature‘s how.
290 Kuang-ming Wu

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the
best you‘ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you
and them anyway. - Mother Theresa

Here Mother Theresa‘s soft nudges of ―anyway‖ melt us into the big fold of humanity, a
part of Nature. Hearing her calm words (she was tiny), moving to act in her way, nestles us in
motherly togetherness of all in all. This serene enfoldment is quite irresistible, for it is part
and parcel of all of us. Our Grandpa Charles Dickens chimes in, ―Have a heart that never
hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.‖
Being dead now, Theresa and Dickens tell stories of ―anyway‖-consistency that ―never‖
quits; cynicism74 vanishes in marvels at how we love all this, blended into Lao Tzu and
Mencius‘ stories of the Nature Family of Father Heaven and Mother Earth silently nurturing
Humanity. No wonder, Chinese people are history-conscious, as Chinese wisdom is story-
philosophy,75 shaking hands with Mother Teresa and Papa Dickens.
Now, we have just told a story of silence-talk. Storytelling must include silence-talk to be
real storytelling to its real hearing. Telling without telling, hearing without hearing,
storytelling here silently joins story-hearing in nature‘s story-thinking. In silence the bird-
hearer and the tree-teller blend into one silence, into nature itself that is alive, saying
wordlessly, expressing silence. That is true storytelling truly heard and read. Here are stories
in the wind and the river, in story-hearing in story-telling with birds and trees, in story-
thinking of our inter-mothering co-presence in nature-silence.

74 All queries and objections melt away in wonder; we forget to complain that the ―Good Samaritan‖ is
counterproductive as a practical policy. Love of my neighbor as me stays put with Mother Theresa, in silence.
75
Enter my Chinese Wisdom Alive: Vignettes of Life-Thinking, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010.
Chapter 9

FROM ONESELF TO THE MUSIC TOGETHER

In all our consideration of silence we must not lose sight of the fact that all this starts at
oneself. First, we must realize that ―my self‖ is ―my body‖ that thinks, tells, and acts all this
out. This bodily process is expressed as embodied storytelling. Then, we realize that
storytelling is always an autobiography, even when we read a story. It is in the self that things
happen, and cohere into a story-system, of silence as music. I am story-thinking.

MY BODY, MYSELF
To begin, my self is embodied. This truth cannot be overstressed. ―Body‖ can mean
something physiological and physical. The ―physiological‖ body is scientifically abstracted,
empirically objectified, from the natural concrete body that is ―physical,‖ in the original sense
of ―phusis,‖ active nascence, nature as birth, origination and growth, natura naturans.1 In fact,
―physic‖ refers also to human body.2
The physiological body is thus derived from the physical body in an active natural sense.
Physiological body disappears at death, while physical body keeps on naturing, birthing,
without ceasing 生生不息, full-blooded and enfleshed, postmortem or non-physiological3;
this fact beyond our usual knowledge of our usual world can only be described in poetic
stories, as Chuang Tzu does here (6/45-60):

―Messrs Oblation, Carriage, Plow and Come talked to one another, ‗Whoever takes
nothing as his head, life as his spine, and death as his buttocks, whoever knows dying, living,
existing, and perishing as one body? I will be friend with him.‘ The four mutually looked and
smiled. Nothing was against their hearts-of-being, so they became friends. All too soon, Mr.
Carriage fell ill. . . . Mr. Oblation asked, ‗Do you hate it?‘ He said, ‗No! Why should I? Soon
(it) changes my left arm into a rooster, and I will seek (during) night-hours (to crow). Soon (it)
changes my right arm into a pellet, and I will seek an owl to roast. Soon (it) changes my

1 ―Nature‖ is birth; it means ―nature naturing,‖ as summed up well in William L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy
and Religion, NY: The Humanity Books, 1999, p. 509.
2 See ―θύζις‖ in H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1996, p. 1964, and
―physic‖ in The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, 2001, XI: 743.
3 This postmortem and/or non-physiological body performance is touched on but not fully brought out in my
exploration in On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1997.
292 Kuang-ming Wu

buttocks into wheels, and with my spirit I will ride it; why (then) need I change a carriage?
Besides, to gain is timely, to lose is to follow; dwell in time, stay following, and no grief or
joy can enter. This is what the ancient called ‗bonds loosened.‘ . . . Why should I hate it?‘

All too soon, Mr. Come fell ill, gasping, dying. His wife and children circled him and
wept. Mr. Plow who went to visit him said, ‗Shoo! Out! Don‘t startle change!‘ Leaning on the
door, he talked to him, ‗Great! Change molds! What will you make next? Where are you
going? Will you make a rat liver? A bug‘s leg?‘ Mr. Come said, ‗A child under parents goes
anywhere, only at their bidding. The Yin and Yang to us are not less than our parents. If they
bring me near death and I do not listen, then I defy. What blame is there in them? Huge Clod
loads me with a figure, labors me with life, eases me with age, and rests me with death. So
what ‗goods‘ life is why it ‗goods‘ death. Now if as a great smith casts metal, it jumps and
says, ‗I must become an Excalibur!‘ then the smith must think the metal inauspicious. If one
who chanced to be shaped a man insists ‗Just a man, just a man!‘, then Change the Molder
must think him inauspicious. If the heaven and earth are a great forge, the Molder-Change a
great Smith, where could I go and not be all right?‘‖

Our life in all aspects, thinking included, is thus completely embodied, as shown in the
following body-performances. Theoretical thinking such as mathematics is our body tracing
out calculation. My fingers set down ―7,‖ add ―+‖ to ―5,‖ to sum up ―=‖ as ―12.‖4 ―7+5=12‖
says that, in essence, mathematical thinking is body-performative. ―Thinking‖ theorizes,
literally ―looks at‖5 things to produce their schema, a system, and looking and producing are
bodily acts. Our body performs theoretical seeing from somewhere, some-when, initiated by
Plato, say, and embodied in Plato.
―Platonism‖ is Plato‘s full-blooded body-performance of theorization, which is later
reenacted by Platonists, then Neo-Platonists, by seeing more things than originally in Plato,
then somehow reenacted in Hegel who idealized Plato‘s insights. It was later reenacted again
in Neo-Hegelians6 that in turn bred its upside-down version, Marxists,7 on the one hand, and
its pulverized version in Russell, Wittgenstein, and Austin, on the other.
The folks cited above may be surprised at themselves classified in the Plato-family
against which they revolted; but ―revolt‖ is a sort of creation out of Plato provoked by Plato.8
If someone still demurs at taking Austin as a revolting Platonist, we must remember Austin is
an empiricist as Locke with Aristotle who closely studied Plato and came out of Plato. As
philosophy is ―a series of footnotes to Plato,‖ the self is a series of reenactments of the past.
The ―series‖ shows the past fact; ―footnotes‖ show creation in reenactment of the past. Union
of the two is history called thinking.
History is thus the union of fact and its fiction, fact reenacted. There is no fiction without
fact, and no fact without fiction, for both fact and fiction are literally ―made‖; they are the
past creatively story-thought for the future. Both are ―concresced‖ in one whole ―process‖ of

4 See my interpretation of Kant‘s ―7+5=12‖ as synthetic a priori (the first Critique B15-17) in my History,
Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991, pp. 16-17. Maurice Merleau-
Ponty similarly describes ―geometry‖ as bodily performance (Phenomenology of Perception, tr. Colin Smith,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962, pp. 384-386). Cf. my Body Thinking, op. cit., pp. 300ff.
5 See on ―theory‖ in Oxford English Dictionary, XVII: 902.
6 It has surprisingly wide varieties, e.g., P. T. Forsyth who applied Hegel‘s moving logic to Christian theology.
7 And we are surprised at varieties in Neo-Marxism, e.g., Herbert Marcuse and Eric Fromm.
8 Russell revolted against Bradley a Neo-Hegelian; Hegel revolted against Plato.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 293

concrete ―reality,‖ to borrow Whitehead, and this real process of time, history, is made—as
fact and in fiction—by reenactment of story-thinking.
Thus, literary history 文史 is at the heart of Chinese culture that is at heart history-aware.
Chinese history is story-reenactment written down. The past 史 is judged as written down 文
in Tso Chuan 左傳 and Shih Chi 史記, that idealized-revered legendary sage rulers 三皇五帝
and throne-ceding 禪位, to create new fictive facts as Taoist ―Village of Ultimate Virtue
至德之鄉‖ in ―Small State and Few People 小國寡民.‖9 China executes the ―prose of the
world‖ (Merleau-Ponty10) in history, the world in its dynamic time-depth in literary depth.
All this is the self writing-itself out, the self writ-large, as Plato said of res publica,11 and
writing is one of the self‘s bodily acts. The self as body is a verb, reenacting, concrescing,
naturing, fact-ing,12 and fiction-ing, story-thinking spreading unceasing. It is the reality-
process called ―history,‖ and this fact-fiction is storytelling, all too historically concrete.
Concrete is the body-concrescence of process-reality, an active body-chiasm of historical
reenacted story-thinking, which is a going-backward to go-forward, swinging back and forth,
in wave after wave of regressive time-progression.
Reenactment is history as Collingwood claimed,13 and history is story in time. We have
told stories of mathematical and philosophical thinking, thereby reenacted Collingwood‘s ―re-
enactment.‖ Reenactment is story-doing, a concrete body-act where ―objectivity,‖
―precision,‖ and ―validity‖ are performed by the beholder-thinker‘s eye/hand, to spread to
other body-thinkers in history. Philosophy and mathematics are body-phenomenology,
―appearing as body story-thinking,‖ in historical process.
This body-thinking as storytelling-and-doing is ―history.‖ Every time we open our bodily
mind and our book, historical persons appear—Socrates, Confucius, good people, evil ones,
our forefathers and foremothers, in full bodily conversations. And we reenact their lives by
probing the events by re-envisioning them, assessing their merits by perceiving something
else in them they did not realize, and thereby provoking us to create something new originally
not among them. All this body-act performs story-thinking.
All this is storytelling where concrete persons emerge enfleshed and full-blooded. Jean
val Jean and many others in Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables always capture our excited
attention as fully embodied beyond physiological existents. Their bodily presence so
enthralling, their love and hate so penetrating, they are more vivid, more compelling, and
more concrete than our indifferent neighbors here now. Such is the concrete presence of
physical body beyond physiological one, full-blooded and enfleshed, fully embodied. Mind
you, all this begins at my being myself story-thinking. Let us now think of my self thinking.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ONESELF

I have a story of why it is important to be myself, in three points: One, the question

9 Chuang Tzu, 10/29-35, 12/80-83, 16/5-17, 20/9-28. Tao Te Ching, 80.

10 Sadly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (The Prose of the World, tr., John O‘Neill, Evanston: IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1973) mentions no ―history,‖ the time-depth of the world-prose.
11 The Republic, II. 367e-372a.
12 Never mind ―manufacturing.‖
13 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, 1946, 1993.
294 Kuang-ming Wu

answers itself. Two, self-identity justifies itself and is the base of all my engagements. Three,
my life-engagements enjoy being myself.
1. ―Why is it important to have self-identity?‖ I ask. Well, why/how is it that I ask this
question in the first place? It must be because (a) the question is important (otherwise I would
not have asked it) and because (b) for the question to be asked at all, it is important to have
self-identity (otherwise there would have been no one there to ask it). Therefore, the question,
once asked, answers itself!
Someone may object, saying that I confuse two sorts of importance—one of questioning
act, another of questioned content. That ―I ask the question because asking is important‖ is
not the same as ―I ask the question because what is asked is important.‖ This good objection,
however, does not hold in this specific case of asking for the importance of self-identity. Self-
identity is self-as-itself, i.e., self-consciousness, part of which is self-examination, and one
way of examining oneself is to ask why it is important to have self-identity.
So, in this questioning, questioning-act and what is questioned coincide. The question is
important both because questioning is important and what is questioned is important, for
questioning act is what is questioned in action; self-questioning is part of self-identity, so
questioning here is the questioned. Thus, ―I ask the question because the question is
important, otherwise I would not have asked it.‖ This point-(a) directly links to point-(b), ―for
the question to be asked at all, it is important to have self-identity, otherwise there would have
been no one there to ask it.‖
2. This is to say, because it is important to have self-identity, the question must/can be
asked on why it is important to have self-identity. In other words, self-identity is the rock-
bottom base of life that justifies itself. It is the base of all, so it justifies all other life-pursuits,
including inquiring why of self-identity, and cannot be justified by anything other than itself.
3. This truth—it is important to have self-identity, to be myself—requires no reason other
than itself to be true; it is its own reason for being true. This amazing point has four
implications.
One, education, psychology, arts, science, and philosophy directly express this truth, so
they are crucial and basic in my life. Since ―education‖ nurtures my growth, ―psychology‖
pursues and enriches me, ―arts‖ (literature, music, sculpture, painting, sports, etc.) express my
experiences as myself, ―science‖ satisfies my curiosity to know, and ―philosophy‖ reflects on
14
all this as important for me, these five activities express the basic pursuits of my life.
Two, all other pursuits are also important because I need them to live; their importance
derives from myself as important. I engage in commerce to nurture me, to enrich my
knowledge; it helps express myself. I reflect on it, saying, ―Customers are always right,‖
thereby become myself. I engage in computer engineering to nurture me, to enrich my
knowledge; it promotes me, for I reflect on it, saying, ―See, how easier, faster I can do it
now!‖ thereby become myself. Etc.
Three, this means that I will enjoy all engagements as enjoyments of the truth that my
self-identity is important. In every activity of mine I will say, ―This is myself, in whom I am
well pleased.‖ Enjoyment is being in-joy, and no joy is greater than the joy of being myself. I

14 Noting that we are by nature interpersonal, we can take sociology, politics, and perhaps economics as basic to
human existence as well. Still, we can say that those communal sciences are based on the other five on self-
identity, in a similar way that for Aristotle ethics leads to politics; see conclusion to this section.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 295

should not say, ―I am too busy for this.‖ I must say, ―Let me enjoy it, let me be in joy doing
it,‖ for ―it‖ (reading, writing, engaging) is myself enjoying being-myself, as I enjoy myself.
I have just enjoyed telling the story of all this, of course. I invite you to enjoy
commenting on it. It will be telling another story, and yet another. How enjoyable is our
mutual showing and telling! Perhaps such mutuality is also basic to our human nature, so
sociology, politics, and perhaps economics are also basic to human nature; but remember,
communality is part of self-identity, not the other way round.
Four, how this is so can be explained as follows. All our philosophizing, our thinking,
does Socrates‘ self-examination and Kant‘s self-critique; Locke‘s Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690) is written by his human understanding, and Hume‘s Treatise of Human
15
Nature (1739) by his human nature. All this thinking raises the specter of a problem trying
to solve the problem that is itself; philosophy is a self-critique, and we are sucked into the
quagmire of critiquing the self that critiques the self, and so on.
In contrast, a story told by a storyteller is immune from such a meta-problem, for a
storyteller always tells a story; that is what a story means and is. Even ―a tale told by an idiot,
signifying nothing‖ is a tale; a silly story is still a story. Why does self-critique defeat itself
while storytelling does not? It is artificiality that examines the self; the process makes a
system. In contrast in spontaneity the self realizes oneself, and this process tells stories.
Chuang Tzu said that once we get the rabbit we forget the trap, so words are for what is
meant, once we get the meaning we forget words, and then he sighed after word-forgotten
16
ones to word with. Such wording-with obtains in storytelling that just tells and then forgets
the telling. Thus it is legitimate to describe in storytelling how the self looks as mirrored in
the water of actuality. One self-inquiry realizes oneself; another self-inquiry self-critiques. A
spontaneous story-system of self-mirroring is natural; a strenuous system of self-examining is
sucked into an infinite regress.
History is such self-inquiring self-mirroring. ―History‖ derives from ―historia,‖
17
―learning/knowing by inquiry, an account of one‘s inquiries, narrative, history,‖ harvested
18
by ―historeō,‖ artlessly to ―inquire into or about a thing.‖ ―Narrating‖ all this makes a story,
and the greatest of stories is life-story, obtained by inquiry into the selves. Thus we see that
inquiry, life, self-story, and history inter-implicate; they form a series of connected web,
fascinating as follows.
Our life tells a story, silly or no, to make ―history‖ (story and history are etymological
19
twins ), to judge and justify itself, how ―silly‖ it is, how far it is justified, as explained in
points one, two, three above. Why does a life-story, our history, ―judge‖? We instinctively
shrink from introducing TV cameras into the jury room deliberating on cases, for fear
cameras will destroy spontaneity of deliberation to sway the jury‘s judgment. But why do
they fear? They must fear another party, Big Brother-like, looking into their otherwise natural
ongoing quite spontaneous.
Now, fear ciphers judgment; TV cameras make a journalistic ―story,‖ an instant ―history‖
in public view; story is history that judges. Interestingly, as I write on myself into

15 And he wrote An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) by his human understanding.
16 Chuang Tzu 26/48-49. This concludes this Chapter of ―Outside Things.‖
17 See ―history‖ in Oxford English Dictionary (1989), 2001, VII: 261.
18 H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 842.
19 Compare ―history‖ in Oxford English Dictionary, VII: 261 and ―story‖ in XVI: 797, ibid.
296 Kuang-ming Wu

autobiography, I fear nothing; in fact, I instinctively desire to display myself at least to

myself. I am deeply human in desiring to inspect myself, much as I naturally want to look at
myself in a mirror.
Thus self-realization begs no question any more than storytelling does; we tell our story
to realize ourselves, and every story is in the final analysis an autobiography, writing and
20
narrating my life, for my storytelling shows me as I observe others. Zinsser astutely said,

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about,
but who he or she is. . . . What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his field. How was
he drawn into it? What emotional baggage did he bring along? How did it change his life? It‘s
not necessary to want to spend a year alone at Walden Pond to become involved with a writer
who did. This is the personal transaction that‘s at the heart of good non-fiction writing.

A cartoon has a painter painting nature on a mountain slope, having his self-portrait in the
making on the canvas. People show themselves in telling about many things, for the telling
tells of the teller. Telling about something tells a story of life of things, a biography of things
that sketches an autobiography of the teller. A story is an autobiography that merges into the
world and its biography.
Such examples abound in history. Socrates has the story of his world in The Apology and
Crito, Jesus has it in the ―Four Gospels.‖ Ssu-ma Ch‘ien (c.145-c.85 BCE) vindicated himself
21
in the portrait of Chinese history in his legendary Shih Chi (History Records), and Boethius
wrote his influential The Consolation of Philosophy (524) while awaiting execution. President
Nixon had many autobiographical attempts, having been forced to resign, to canvas the world
of his day; and the list goes on.
This is how individual histories merge with the vast world history toward world
understanding in self-understanding, and, in the end, world judgment-justification in self-
justification, non-threateningly, without self-regress, all too naturally. This enormous history,
at once individual and global, is where we sigh at the immense cosmic river of time, of which
we are a part.
Storytelling is ubiquitous, even self-inclusive, as we have just told a story about
storytelling. ―Heaven‘s Net is vast, so vast, sparse-meshed, and loses nothing,‖ Lao Tzu said
(73), and this saying is another of our human weaving, our insatiable storytelling, of the
heaven‘s Net, ubiquitous through time and space. Is the Net the storytelling? Storytelling is a
closest human approximation to the Net, if not its human replication. Storytelling,
autobiography/history, and self-justification/self-identity, these three remain, and the greatest
of these is storytelling. To attend and perform all this is story-thinking.
It is story-thinking that does all these deeds, to fulfill and justify them all. No wonder we
instinctively tell stories of ourselves and our world in our world. ―Baby soft,‖ ―morning
fresh,‖ ―more shoutouts for outlast,‖ commercials are everywhere with us, too many to cite.
They are clever talks, straight to the point, word-stingy, eye-catching, and mind-blowing if

20 William Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976), HarperCollins, 2006, p. 15.

21 On Shih Chi and Ssu-ma Ch‘ien, see 史記, 韓兆琦注釋, 臺北市三民書局, 2008, eight volumes. Cf. William H.
Nienhauser, Jr., ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, Indiana University Press,
1986, pp. 689-692, 720-723. This famous example is particularly poignant because Ssu-ma told ―his story‖ on
the vast canvas of Chinese history from 2697 to 87 BCE to vindicate himself. This is the best example of
complete merging of oneself with one‘s societal history, thereby to fulfill oneself.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 297

we pay even scanty attention to them. They chant stories; they rhyme, sing, and soar, all over
the world. I keep learning from them to learn about myself.

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY “MY PHILOSOPHY”

My autobiography is shown in ―my philosophy‖ because what I am shows how and what
I think about the world, and what I think of the world shows me. What is my philosophy? I
want to promote interculturalism. By ―culture‖ I mean our customary way-of-thinking. I want
two different cultures—the logical analytical West and metaphoric storytelling China—to
come together to inter-learn and inter-enrich.
How did I reach ―my philosophy‖?22 At first I felt uncomfortable at Yale where I
exclusively studied Western philosophy. Its philosophers congenial to me were only Søren
Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, i.e., a handful of existentialists and
23
phenomenologists ; I found that they share reasoning-in-existence with Chinese thinking.
Then I was attracted to Chuang Tzu‘s jovial thinking, ever ―goofing around,‖ telling stories,
joking and discerning, systematic without system. I began writing on him, and came to
publish two books in English on him.
―Writing Chuang Tzu in English‖ led me to thinking how thus writing China differs from
writing China in Chinese. Here is a fertile inter-enriching field, impossible in writing China in
Chinese, or writing the West in English. Inter-enriching of these two cultures is
interculturalism. Since that moment of realization, my attention was riveted on what
interculturalism means, how we do so, and how significant it is. My curiosity made History,
Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy (266 pp.) and a trilogy in ―a cultural
hermeneutic‖ (504, 469, and 672 pp.), totaling 1,911 pages.
My love of Chuang Tzu made the above process of growth. My first volume, Chuang
Tzu—World Philosopher at Play (1982) announces him as an alternative option in
contemporary thinking to Western. Then The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the
First Three Chapters of the “Chuang Tzu” (1990) explores what Chuang Tzu‘s word-world
is, a companion to his thought-text. My later volumes continue to explore Chuang Tzu‘s
significance in today‘s world.
First, History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy (1991) briefly reflects on
the ―Chinese philosophy‖ as historical-literary thinking (wen shih 文史). Then, On Chinese
Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic (1997) dialogues with Maurice Merleau-Ponty the
West‘s body thinker close to Chinese. On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural
Hermeneutic (1998) shows how interculturalism proceeds.
On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic (2001) describes how this ―how‖ is metaphor
at work. Chinese Wisdom Alive (2010) unpacks what China is. On Storytelling: Intercultural
Meditations (this volume) presents how this ―how‖ proceeds. Nonsense: A Cultural
Meditation on the Beyond (yet to publish, 556 pages) tells how inevitably this human ―how‖

22
See my autobiography in Jay Goulding, ed., China-West Interculture: Toward the Philosophy of World
Integration: Essays on Wu Kuang-ming‟s Thinking, NY: Global Scholarly Publications, 2008, pp. 3-32.
23 Soon I came to be much enamored of Gabriel Marcel, with his crisp insightful responses to thinkers, displayed in
The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (eds. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, La Salle, ILL: Open
Court, 1984), completed, sadly, just about the time of his death in October 1973. I am yet to formally dialogue
with him on how related he is to the Chinese way of thinking.
298 Kuang-ming Wu

stretches as nonsense to the Beyond, elaborated in The Beyond: A Cultural Hermeneutic of

Religions (623 pages, yet to publish). My future is open as the Beyond is open—toward
Heaven and Earth into history.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN GENERAL—STORYTELLING OF THE SELF

My above self-description is an example of autobiography in general, in this way. The
self is the central dynamo of autobiography, but what is the self itself? To answer this
question is also the self‘s job. This self-description of the self amounts to ―autobiography in
general.‖ We must now tell stories about it. The stories are surprisingly diverse, indicating
how rich and diverse the self is. Five sorts of the self below show so.
Let us put it another way. As I listened to Schubert‘s music, I was impelled by a desire to
see him after I die. But then I realized that listening to his music is to meet him. Similarly, I
don‘t need to meet Plato; I just read him closely. My writings also express my soul, any
reader who cares to closely read my words would meet me even after I die. Why do I have to
realize this fact, however? Why was it not immediately obvious to me?
Schubert‘s music does not tell of him, but we ―tell‖ that it is his he, not Beethoven.
Schubert‘s music does not tell him; it lets us tell. Similarly, all our life activities let others tell
about us. Our life and our words are indirectly autobiographical, as our style of behaving does
not tell but shows us, as our sexual identity.24 In fact, normality, what we usually are,
evaporates when advertised as ―normality in general.‖
All this does not discount the significance of usual autobiography, however, such as
Clinton‘s massive one.25 We simply alert their readers that the straight autobiography should
not be taken as a literal reflection of the life described there. It must be sympathetically
interpreted, to discern how it shows the life described in it.
At the center of human life is the self that thrives in self-telling of self-story, an
autobiography that spurs life-growth. Since all human activities are obviously acts of the
human self, all human knowledge is initiated and animated by self-knowledge,26 and every
science naturally clusters in this self-storytelling. It is exciting to see how many genres of
autobiography came out of human history. At least five kinds of our human story of what the
self is stands out: Plato‘s story, Freud‘s, my son Peter‘s, the baby‘s, and folktale-wise.
(1) Plato‘s riding self: Immensely popular today is Plato‟s story of the self, made of three
27
elements, rational (logistikon), ―spirited‖ (thumoeides), and appetitive (epithymetikon). It is
our familiar story of how reason drives the self-carriage drawn by two steeds, will and
appetite. We can say today that the desire-appetitive element may well be our felt sensitivity
and emotion, the spirited element is the will to push and thrust, and the rational element is
reason to synthesize both and guide them in a deliberative direction.

24 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, tr. by Colin Smith, corrected by Forrest Williams,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962, pp. 154-173.
25 Bill Clinton: My Life, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
26 Anthropology and psychology are then at the top of the totem pole of scholarship, but now they operate as
objective sciences of quantitative empirical physicalism, blind to Dilthey/Weber‘s constant reminder that they
are sciences of subjectivity. We must tell our own story of the self, with empathy, not objective empiricism.
27 Plato‘s Republic, IV: 435e-444e, IX: 580d-581a; Phaedrus, 246a-b, 253c-255b; Timaeus, 69d-72d.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 299

We today would add that these three are not separate ―elements‖ but interpenetrated
―aspects‖ of the self, how reason must be felt and directed by feeling and willing to be truly
reason, that feeling is directed and meaningful under rational deliberation, and will is
humanly empathic and reasonable when felt and discerned.
(2) Freud‘s negotiating self: Plato gave us a story of the inner structural dynamics that
constitutes the self, and then Freud told a story of how such a dynamic self interacts with
outside and inside itself. His tripartite story parades as a ―theory‖ to frame Freudian
28
therapy. Ego the center of rational awareness and action tries to negotiate between Superego
the social requirements and Id the inner libidos, to attain some compromise/harmony.
If proved too much out of line with Superego, Ego censors/represses Id into the
unconscious to effect genius-creativity and/or neurosis-abnormality. Psychoanalysis digs all
this out into consciousness to ―heal,‖ i.e., to help the self to set the situation straight, adjusting
the environment to adjust to it. Here the Ego-I creatively synthesizes Superego the above-I
with Id the inner-I, involuntary physiological functions of the ―biological principles‖
(Nietzsche). Self-identity consists in this dynamic self-synthesis.
(3) Interactive self: Besides Plato‘s act-elements and Freud‘s interrelation-regions, we
have another fascinating story of the self, the whole self in reflective interaction. My boy
Peter once told me, ―Dad, I have three names, me, myself, and I. Bye, Dad!‖ and out he ran to
play. He left me stunned, to begin pondering on what he could possibly mean.
I have ―me,‖ my object to examine, clean, and shape. Yet this ―object-me‖ is no simple
object but an I-subject objectified by myself the subject, myself as an other-to-me. Here the
subject objectifies the subject into ―myself‖ as the subject to the subject, myself as another.
All this is a strange convolution of self-reflection. The I is such an inter-reflective dynamism,
an ongoing self-interactivity that is a ―whole,‖ alive as my ―self‖-as-―me‖-the-other that is
―myself.‖
When ―I‖ takes care of ―me‖ from beyond me, ―outside me,‖ it is really my own action
reflecting on ―myself,‖ a strange subject-object interaction, an ―I‖-subject reflecting on
―myself‖ as ―me.‖ It is in this me-myself interaction that ―I‖ come to be me myself, my true
―I.‖ The I synthesizes the objectifying/objectified ―me‖ and the reflected/reflecting ―myself,‖
and the self consists in this I-synthesis.
Moreover, to think of it, my conversation with Peter was itself a projection of such me-
myself interaction, since Peter is myself pro-jected, thrown-out onto the screen/scene of
intersubjectivity, which originated in my self-reflective interaction within myself. It was
myself-within-myself outside me. After all, Peter is my dear son!
(4) Sleeping baby-self: So far, we have considered the self as an interacting among
Platonic elements, Freudian aspects, Peter‘s names, not as the natural whole thriving in daily
rhythm. It was the self often in conflict inside and out, not in daily routine. Babies live to
show the self not as integrated but as an integral whole living non-self-consciously in daily
rhythms of waking-and-sleeping, not occasionally, repressively, if not sinister-unconsciously
(Freud). Instead, our routine non-self-consciousness is quite natural as our breathing, acting,
and sleeping.
Importantly, all such self-ing as above described is not self-enclosed but always surfs on
waves of time for more, wave after wave, each in waking-and-sleeping, every day-and-night.

28 See Sigmund Freud, The Philosophy of the Unconscious (1893), The Ego and the Id (1923), etc. Significantly, he
conducted analysis in discomfort, both physical (cancer in his mouth) and mental (depression).
300 Kuang-ming Wu

―Surfing for more‖ bespeaks growing. This whole and self-interactive self alive throbs in
time-rhythm, as the day dusk‘s as the night dawns, day into night, night into day . . .
I sleep into awakening, into sleeping, into . . . , continually sleep-coming home to myself
to stretch myself out into activities. Babies show us so, telling us so by living it. We call it
―growing.‖ Moreover, it is in sleep that I come home to myself—to grow; I grow in sleep.
Growing in sleeping, and sleeping to grow, babies show us how by living in sleep to wake up,
and wake up to sleep again.
If anyone doubts how we can grow in sleep at all, just watch why we simply do not play
music as fast as we can to reach its end as fast as we can. Music tarries while it savors, as it
goes on to grow itself. ―Tarries where? Savors what?‖ Music tarries in itself and savors itself,
performers and listeners together, enwrapped in the shared melody that mature—for them to
enrich, enhance, and grow in themselves. That tarrying is essential for growth, and such
tarrying is fulfilled in the evening hours, for the ―first time‖ every 24-hours, called ―sleep.‖
Sleep is music as music feeds us unawares.
Babies live sleep, to tell us this important truth, our existential essence, that sleep is an
ingredient part in the musical rhythm of our growth. The baby tells the story by living its
music, showing it in its show-and-tell living. The baby sleeps as it grows, grows as it sleeps.
Sleep comes-back-to-self to shrink-back to consolidate, thereby to expand as it grows and
integrates the self synthesizing outside as its milk.
(5) Folktale-self: Sleep is non-self-conscious. Folktales are also, for they are part of our
communal selves. They are common folks‘ stories that spontaneously express common folks‘
taken-for-granted impressions of things and events. So we cannot ask if they are ―in fact‖ true
or false, any more than we can dispute if someone really hears a lark flying up, as she is
enwrapped in the music, ―A Lark Ascending‖ by Ralph Vaughn Williams, as surely as she is
seeing a lark.
Similarly, we cannot dispute her if she really sees a lark, for if she sees a lark she sees a
lark, as surely as she tastes her mom‘s homemade pie. Sensing and tasting could be checked
later, even changed later, of course, but while we sense and taste something as that
something, we sense and taste such, and that is all there is to it. Our checking on it later—
checking is later business—cannot happen without this primal sensing that we are sure we
sense at the moment.
Thus, as there is no dispute on tasting our favorite dish, there cannot be quibble over
sensing something as our indisputable ―fact.‖ In fact, all ―facts‖ we say ―true‖ or ―false‖ are
what we take so; they are and express our ―folktales.‖ ―Facts‖ are our folktales, and science
and technology are folktales of the West fast spreading all over. As surely as our facts are
―facts,‖ so surely our folktales are our tales.
Being part of ourselves, we take our folktales for granted so much that we are not aware
of them. They are non-self-conscious until confronted with other common folks‘ ―strange‖
folktales. We usually take these other folktales as ―folktales,‖ even laugh at them as untrue or
superstitious tall tales, ―myths,‖ for our folktales are ―true,‖ of course, and differences in their
folktales from ours bespeak their falsehood.
Once in a while, however, their strange differences make us think, as the primal folks‘
folktales, expressing how they habitually cherish nature, jolt us into thinking twice about how
much we pollute, waste, brutalize, and horrendously devastate natural things and habitat, in
nature and among ourselves. Folktales are softly jolted (as it were) and silently judged by
folktales, nothing else.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 301

At the same time, the fact that we usually laugh at folktales different from ours shows
that folktales cannot be imposed on by folktales from outside, that folktales cannot be
legislated, called ―ideology,‖ by dictators or government. Sadly, however, the society has its
own folktales, ideology, mores, ―common sense,‖ by which the minority‘s folktales are often
judged as ―false‖ or ―heretical.‖ Unfair conformity follows as fashion imposes.
All this while, the minority‘s ―heretical‖ folktales that protest—silently and
vociferously—the majority‘s folktales can and do often spread to form a new folktale-milieu;
such phenomenon is called ―democracy.‖ It is thus that an individual‘s life-autobiography,
spontaneously produced/expressed, spontaneously spreads to form a new folktale, to compare
with, learn from, and adjust to other folktales of other societies—historically as time goes,
and socio-politically in protest and in revolution.
These five images in stories of the self tell of—show—what sorts of persons these five
storytellers are. For Plato, the self is seething element-acts showing Plato the vibrantly
analytical and objective. For Freud, the self is depth-regions interacting, showing Freud the
perceptive seer of the unseen.
For Peter, the self is three names in one, showing Peter the playful sharp observer
enjoying his observation. Thoreau is a spectacular Peter in magnificent Journal of ―I to
myself.‖29 For the baby, the self is a natural whole unawares, just showing so. The ―just‖
shows to charm and disarms us. In the folktales, the self frames thinking and doing, to show
that folktales are the historical-communal self to compose us.
Now, there must be so many more varieties of such self-stories that we know beyond our
knowing. Such self-telling telltales appear—show—in every world-engagement of every
person, ―ten eyes seeing, ten fingers pointing‖ at a person‘s ―wherewith, wherefrom, whereat‖
that tell, nothing hiding.30
A person‘s engagement is always engaging the world. It is the fascination of humanity
that their stories are same-different, to compose the world, as their self-descriptions are the
mirror-images of the world that is interactive differences (Plato), invisible depths controlling
the visible to be controlled by the visible (Freud), subjectivity as objectivity (Peter) always
just beginning (baby), always framing-telling-showing (folktales).
And the list goes on, on self-world inter-telling inter-showing. They ―self‖-show the
world that tells of them. The world is born with me so many, and I inter-exist with myriad
things31 in the world the orderly chaos. Story-thinking of the self tells all over the world to
tell of the world.
Now, three points are worth noting in all these five sorts of self-ing—Plato‘s, Freud‘s,
Peter‘s, baby‘s, and folktale-wise. One, this is the drama of self-as-synthesization, a ―family‖-
32
making of autogamous interrelation, subject-subject interaction. Such an autogamous
family of the self is the origin of families to form a social community.
Two, the coherent synthesis of self‘s various elements, aspects, and activities called
―autogamous‖ above, composes our self-identity; the synthesis is self-identity. Three, all this
amounts to many sorts of telling a story, a self-ing storytelling. A story forms itself by telling

29
I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, ed. Jeffrey S. Cramer, Yale
University Press, 2007.
30
I rifled Great Learning 7 and Analects 2/10.
31
Chuang Tzu 2/52-53 is cited-explained here.
32 Oxford English Dictionary I: 803 takes ―autogamy,‖ ―autogamous,‖ and ―autogamic‖ as biological self-
fertilization of cells, being apparently too far-fetched to apply to human family.
302 Kuang-ming Wu

it, whose life-application further tells an enriched story. So is the self that is an expanding
growing story; the self is such a dynamic autobiography. Story is thus the stuff of which we
are made, the frame in which we live, and storytelling is the way we live on and grow daily.
Now, as my life tells a story of my telling my own story, my own storytelling, having
nothing to do with others, can often so irritate others that the society calls it a ―heresy.‖
Considering heresy, then, leads us to think of what an ideal social system should be. It should
be a democracy to be carefully defined so as to conform to the authenticity of individual
storytelling. Such a society authenticates individual integrity as individual integrities
consolidate the authentic society.

HERESY AND DEMOCRACY

One of many genres of autobiography, writing one‘s own life-story of an individual into
the world, writes ―heresy.‖ ―Heresy‖ is a term of social irritation at those who dare to be
different-and-independent, and to risk life to warn society that its ―irritation‖ may well heal
its fatal smugness. This is the message of Socrates, Confucius, and the young Chinese
students bravely perished at Tiananmen Square.
―Heresy‖ is the name of society‘s irritation as it is confronted with lone independent
people who warn it of its smug ―orthodox‖ way of life, for the heretics are so self-critical as
to invite us to criticize ourselves, and criticism irritates. If an unexamined life is not worth
living, as an arch-heretic Socrates said, then a society without heretics collapses into inhuman
monster. ―Democracy‖ tolerates heretics of social critics; here to protest is patriotic. So
―heresy‖ as individuality is related to ―democracy‖ that defines community; heresy defines
democracy. All this is a storytelling of life.
33 34
Let us begin with defining ―heresy‖ that has an interesting etymological route. Mr.
35
Organ said,
The Greek term ―hairesis‖ originally meant a taking or conquering, especially the seizing
of a town by military force. The meaning shifted to indicate the taking for oneself, that is, the
making of a choice. A heretic is one who prefers to make a personal choice rather than accept
and support the view held by the majority of his community. A heretic is a noncomformer. His
nonconformity is in the area of thought, although it is reflected in action. Heresy usually
denotes aberrant beliefs in religion; but it can also refer to deviations in moral, economic,
social, and political thinking. A heretic is a loner. The Greek term ―hairesis‖ is curiously
related to the term idios from which we derive the English word idiot. But ―idios‖ in classical
Greek was not one with a low intelligence quotient. Rather an idios was one who chose to live
alone. . . . The heretic is unorthodox. He holds a view which is not the ―correct‖ view.
Orthodoxy is right belief measured . . . by the number of supporters it has. An orthodoxy is
right because it is held by the majority. A heresy is always the opinion of a minority. It can be
the opinion of but one. The hallmark of heresy is individualism. . . . Protestantism starts with
the prerogative of the individual. This is the root of all heresy.

33 In China, ―heresy‖ has similar socially unpalatable connotations, so we trace its sense-route in the West.
34 I offer it subject to the linguists‘ scrutiny.
35 Troy Wilson Organ, Third Eye Philosophy: Essays in East-West Thought, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press,
1987, pp. 56-57. See also Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, op. cit., I: 180-185.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 303

Professor David Schenker, a classicist in the University of Missouri, Columbia, raised an

important objection that ―orthodoxy‖ can also obtain with an authoritative individual, a king,
say, by decreeing a view to be adhered to by many. His caveat makes us cautious about
individuality.
We now realize. A ―heretic‖ is a lone exception to the majority, and desires to spread its
views to the majority. This description fits two different sorts of heresy, legislative and
protesting. One person can dominate people either as a political autocrat (as Schenker
cautioned) or as a tycoon to spread plutocracy over people; it is ―legislative heresy.‖
The second sort of heresy issues moral warnings (Socrates, Confucius) or political ones
(Thoreau and others); it is ―protesting heresy.‖ The so called ―heresy‖ usually protests
―legislative ―heresy‖ seldom called ―heresy‖; we here consider the former ―heresy.‖
Schenker‘s point becomes crucial also when we consider ―democracy.‖ Moreover, we will
cite recent Bush presidency as a tragic example to warn of any power that be, an orthodoxy so
easy to lead to cosmic disaster.

A. Heresy described

We now connect, story-logically,36 the above wandering description. ―Heretic‖ is one

who ―takes‖ (―heresy‖ relates to hairesis, ―take‖) a town by royal force against others (is this
legislative heresy?), then37 one who ―takes‖ oneself by one‘s regal individual choice (idios)
against society, and this latter ―taking‖ makes protesting heresy.38 This simple description39
has six ramifications, among others.
40
One, one who takes oneself is one, alone, idios, idiosyncratic. To oneself, this person is
lonely; ―foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to pillow
himself.‖ Two, to others, this idios/lone person is ―idiotic,‖ insane, as Jesus was taken to be so
41
by his family and friends, and Paul by his ruler. This person is a ―soft heretic‖ we often
despise as ―insane idiots,‖ yet so many literary essayists all over the world praise them as
42
crucial revolutionaries.

36 Story-connection, not logical one, is alive, free, and historical, as an etymological thread is.
37 ―Whether this ‗then‘ is logical or chronological‖ remains to be seen.
38 Heinrich Schlier‘s hairesis-schema has seizure, choice, school-formation, and heterodoxy (Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament, op. cit., I.180-185). Schlier has no ―idios,‖ and the last link is logically
inexplicable. But heretical independence can and should be generalized to democratic community, as long as
individual choices can and did gather into a school or a community.
39 This twofold sense appears in all Greek lexicons I checked such as Liddell and Scott, Thayer, Arndt and
Gingrich, and Kittel‘s Theological Dictionary.
40 I cannot find this sense etymologically connected with hairesis. I follow Organ because it makes sense here.
Shih-ha Rokurō collected more than sixteen ancient Chinese ―heroes‖ who were intensely ―idios.‖
(斯波六郎著, 中國文學における孤獨感, 東京岩波書店, 1958) History remembers many who were
executed for too much social criticism and/or under suspicion of sedition. Many withdrew to be literati, poets,
and historians to ―establish words 立言.‖ We cite just a few quite obvious yet oddly taken-for-granted (as
paradigms) examples in world history, such as Confucius, Jesus, Socrates, and students at the Tiananmen.
41 Mark 3:21, Acts 26:24. Religious insanity climaxes M. O‘C. Drury‘s The Danger of Words, NY: Humanities
Press, 1973. He cited it without offering solutions.
42 Among the countless examples, we note just the following. Chuang Tzu‘s Chapter Five and many others are
among the earliest. We see many utopias inhabited by ―idiots‖ (cf. J. W. Johnson, ed., Utopian Literature: A
Selection, NY: The Modern Library, 1968). Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (tr., ed., with
commentary by Clarence H. Miller, Yale University Press, 1979), and Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (tr.,
304 Kuang-ming Wu

Three, such idiosyncratic insanity shows that one who bravely takes oneself can risk
being overtaken by oneself, becoming beside (what is expected of) oneself, off-centered,
eccentric in the eyes of society, and sometimes even to oneself. One is now a heretic not just
in the eye of others but turns literally ―insane,‖ as Socrates intimated in his Apology 28b. This
is the negative aspect of taking oneself critically, seriously.
Four, positively, however, seriously taking oneself, i.e., resolutely choosing oneself, can
be a sign of ―genius,‖ a genie-haunted individual, as Socrates was ―demon‖-haunted. This is
why heretics are literary heroes. A ―heretic‖ among social others can be ―insane‖ that can
signify genius.
Jesus‘ opponents said that it was only by Beelzebul the ruler of demons that he cast out
demons, as the two Gadarene demoniacs haunting graves did recognize that he was spirit-
43 44
haunted. Confucius was ridiculed by ―insane people,‖ who figured prominently in Chuang
Tzu‘s writings. Socrates was often taken as an eccentric, as Chuang Tzu was frequently
accused of being a selfish unsociable cynic. These people cited here are ―insane‖ either as
demoniacs or sages or both, as they often tend to be confused as either or both.
Five, ―insane heretics‖ rarely congregate or cooperate but usually roam alone, as the
45
Gadarene demoniacs haunted the graves. Now, before we go on to the sixth ramification, let
us pause, look back, and reflect.
The five points above make us wonder about what such ―heretic‖ geniuses would take
their utopia, their ―ideal community,‖ to be. They would obviously protest a monolithic
totalitarian society under the dictator and the decreed ―orthodoxy,‖ and yet what else is
―government‖ in this world except such a dictatorial regime? Tom Paine‘s resounding
46
declaration opens his ―Common Sense‖ of 1776 :

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former
promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by
restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first
is a patron, the last is a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a
necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the
same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our

Constance Garnett, NY: Barnes and Noble, 2004), are two best known. In Japan, 芥川龍六介著, 河童,
或阿呆の一生 (東京新潮文庫, 平成十二年) and 夏目漱石著, 坊っちゃん (東京新潮文庫, 平成三年) (cf.
his 草枕 [東京新潮文庫, 平成十二年] and 私の個人主義 [東京講談社, 1978]) are notable. Chinese
Communists consider 魯迅 (阿 Q 正伝 and 狂人日記 [the latter title taken from Nikolay Gogol‘s Diary of a
Madman, 1835], see their Japanese translations/explanations by 竹內好, 東京岩波文庫, 1955) a revolutionary
hero. Significantly, 魯迅 the Communist revolutionary hero was so ―revolutionary‖ that even the Communists
persecuted him and he had to flee into the Shanghai International Settlement. See Complete Works of Lu Hsün,
魯迅全集，上海人民文學出版社，1981，16 volumes.
43 Matthew 8:29, 12:24.
44 Analects, 18/5, Chuang Tzu 4/86-91, Chapter Five, et passim.
45 It comes much later, in Section E.
46 Thomas Paine: Collected Writings, ed. Eric Foner, NY: The Library of America, 1995, pp. 6-7. This sentiment
echoes Thoreau‘s no less eloquent ―Resistance to Civil Government (1848),‖ Walden and Resistance to Civil
Government: Henry D. Thoreau, Second Edition, ed. William Rossi, NY: W. W. Norton and Co., 1992, pp.
226-246. Both common men stood erect on the democratic land; both protested with ―common sense.‖ This
fact alerts us to the truth that the government is in constant need of popular protest to stand as true
government; once deprived of popular prop of protest, it at once prostrates to tyranny, even in the name of
―democracy‖ as often in America today. Protest is patriotism in democratic regime.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 305

calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the
ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and
irresistably obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it
necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest;
and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out
of the two evils to choose the least.

Following his spirit of protest, we must raise two points here to protest his protest. One,
the ―lawgiver‖ that Paine took to be ―impulses of conscience‖ is furnished by our ―heretical
protests,‖ nowhere in the government. Two, unwittingly admitting the impulses of protest to
be impossible to implement, Paine fell into Hobbes‘ trap of grudgingly admitting
―government‖ in as a necessary evil. He did not know that his ―Common Sense‖ is a heretical
protest, i.e., his protest is a political act, and so his protest refutes his own implied supposition
that he cannot practice his protesting impulses.

B. Community of heretics

The point just raised deserves pondering further. Can the individualistic ―heretics‖ gather
to form a community at all? Well, if a heretic is idios in the numerical exclusive sense of the
minority of one, private and separate, as Mr. Organ says, then heretics cannot gather, for
―one‖ cannot mix with ―many.‖ But if a heretic is idios in the personal sense of ―one‘s own,‖
then a democratic community of respect of persons is not only feasible but positively required
to conduce to cross-fertilization of ―one‘s own‖ insights that is democracy.
Heresy, criticism, and protest converge in democracy. To begin, the heretic‘s ―one‘s
own‖ is a dynamics of critical protest. The heretic can choose oneself because he is impelled
by self-examination, self-critique in self-protest, all ―idios‖ so vigorously self-choosing
against the status quo as to be critical even of one‘s own taken-for-granted views.
Interestingly, belief/practice of criticism cannot be criticized without endorsing it, to bespeak
communal togetherness of ―endorsement,‖ and so self-criticism vitalizes the self to spread to
self-critical others to form a self-critical community.
Confronted with one-―corner‖ raised by Confucius, his disciples must return with three
more to make up the truth-―square‖47; it is likewise with independence in social
interdependence of respectful disagreement, i.e., democracy. Self-protest makes me disagree
with my own reasons, to spread to protesting others, and such mutual disagreement breeds a
community of inter-critical democracy.
Only a liberal can write an epitaph on ―the end of liberalism‖ to promote liberalism, as
only self-critical philosophers can write ―after philosophy‖48 to annul and thereby animate
philosophy. As philosophical self-critique vitalizes philosophizing camaraderie, so liberals

47 Analects 7/8, cf. 5/9.

48 See Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Authority, NY: W. W.
Norton, 1969; no orthodox conservative could have written the end of conservative orthodoxy; Russell Kirk‘s
handsome Redeeming the Time, Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996, is a collection of self-
praises. Kenneth Baynes, et al, edited After Philosophy: End or Transformation? Boston: MIT Press, 1987; no
historian or sociologist could have written ―after history‖ or ―after sociology.‖ Here, ―after‖ means both ―end‖
and ―transformative beginning.‖ Only self-critical philosophers can pull off the punch.
306 Kuang-ming Wu

continue to gather into a community precisely in criticizing themselves. Only49 the heretic
criticizes himself, and self-criticism is a royal road to self-creation to discover many truths
among many comrades.

C. Heresy as youth vigor

To behave as above is to be fresh, vigorous, to grow mature, and these three typify youth
to characterize democracy, as USA is often called a ―young nation,‖50 and describes an
amicable rebel, a gentleman who is an independent heretic. Confucius is such a ―gentleman‖
as they called him a ―princely man‖ (chün tzu 君子)51; vigorous, princely, and gentlemanly
heretics make and keep USA young and democratic.
Such vigorous gentlemanly-ness persists to risk dangers. Jesus left 100 sheep of orthodox
platitudes to look for the one common compassion lost,52 ―until he finds it‖53; his relentless
search found two in one ―it,‖ compassion and the lost. No wonder the despised common folks
flocked to Jesus; their flocking comprises democracy. ―You come too,‖54 called Jesus to
orthodox people, as he finished his parable of the prodigal son55 that completed this parable of
the persistent shepherd, all told to those orthodox people.
Incredibly and sadly, they were offended, declined his invitation in disgust, and killed
him. Compassion composes democracy that cannot mix with elite orthodoxy. Democracy is
government of the heretics of compassion for the neglected, the oppressed. Democracy is the
government of all people, for all people, and by all people, all suffering from oppression.
As such, heresy resolves one of the ―paradoxes of democracy,‖ that democracy as
people‘s government is a contradiction; ―government‖ governs people, people are the ruled,
yet ―democracy‖ is government by the people, i.e., people the ruler is the ruled. Democracy is
then a paradox that the ruled rule. Democracy, however, is not ―demo-archy‖; it does not rule
people or is ruled by them, but the ―people-power‖ of individual heretical protesters in their
respective idiosyncrasies. ―People‘s government‖ is a shorthand for protesting camaraderie.
For such all-people‘s government to obtain, people must shout, and shouting often takes
heretical protest to irritate people, to whom the protest really belongs. For Thoreau, ―That
government is best which governs not at all,‖56 where common folks have the overall ―not‖

49 No ―orthodox‖ people criticize themselves, for they are already so ―right‖ as to need no critique, as history
shows repeatedly among the Athenians, the Pharisees, China‘s royal courts, and USA today of the uncritical.
50 Harold J. Laski‘s reflections of America as ―young‖ fail to see its root here in the self-critical ―idios‖ of
revolution (The American Democracy: A Commentary and an Interpretation, NY: The Viking Press, 1948).
51 Such princely man 君子 often protests the prince 君主, however gentlemanly as Confucius did.
52 ―Common sense is not so common,‖ Voltaire said (―Self-Love,‖ in Dictionanaire Philosophique, 1764). The
common sense of being humane—to live decent humanity—is surprisingly rare and difficult among us.
53 I extrapolated from Luke 15:4. ―Wilderness‖ here can imply the barren public.
54
Robert Frost repeated this phrase in ―The Pasture.‖ His pastoral ―You come too‖ was eternally fresh, and
eternally young and inviting, thereby the poem turned so famous as to caption The Poetry of Robert Frost: The
Collected Poems, ed. Edward Connery Lathem, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1969, 1975, p. 1.
55
―And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him. . . It was meet that we
should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.‖
(Luke 15:28, 32) The parable of entreating and seeking in compassion cannot end, even after being rejected
and crucified.
56
This is Thoreau‘s (op. cit., p. 226) clarion call that begins his scathing ―Resistance to Civil Government.‖ He
radicalized Emerson who said, ―Hence, the less government we have, the better—the fewer laws, and the less
 From Oneself to the Music Together 307

by protest while governed. This is how the ―no‖ of criticism creates people‘s government,
democracy. Protest is patriotism (Jefferson) and criticism, its means and measure.
All this is not obvious; people are easily lulled into smug orthodoxy. Why do half of the
Americans still want to vote for George W. Bush into his second term, even after all his
disastrous blunders have been exposed so thoroughly via official channels and scholarly
publications? As reported by NPR on August 8, 2004 and repeatedly thereafter, we see their
four typical sentiments.
One, Bush can handle the situation, for he has been handling it. (They are blind to
disasters left by Bush‘s mishandling.) Two, Bush is resolute, consistent, and so trustworthy;
he says he will do it and he does it. (They don‘t know resoluteness without consultation and
deliberation is stubborn, foolhardy inflexibility rushing to disaster.) We shiver to note
Obama‘s reverse danger, who has done nothing even with his democratic Congress.
Three, ―I am uneasy but I will vote for Bush anyway, for I don‘t like Kerry the stranger
and dangerous liberal.‖ (This attitude shrinks from any change by ―dangerous liberals‖ and
rally to ―Bush our boy,‖ for we are familiar with his governance, and he is faithful to our
―familiar values,‖ our cozy tradition.) Security-conscious women want to vote for Bush
because of the popular rumor/impression that Bush is an experienced defender of our national
security, not to check to see how actually Bush made USA much less safe! In herd-mentality,
57
democratic election is competition in demagoguery; plain facts are plainly out of question.
Four, finally, this attitude stems from the gut ―loyalty‖ to the grand old tradition of the
Grand Old Party. Our loyalty cannot, indeed should not, be shaken loose by a rotten apple or
two in the grand old barrel of the tradition and the party that has more than a single person or
deed. The Bush supporters would surely have supported anyone else, as long as that person is
up for re-election in the Party‘s name.
Why does all this sound so natural? Everyone wants to be part of the grand ―tradition.‖
Nothing can go wrong here. Whatever our ruler does is of course correct; any facts to the
contrary are just our enemy‟s propaganda; the world is full of them all deserving zealous
attack. Never mind the happenstance of our unfortunate failures. Here is ―honor‖ and comfort
in the orthodox historic Party. ―We just stick to our old boy! Down with wayward, flip-
flopping, seditious liberals!‖
―Orthodox‖ people accuse John Kerry of flip-flopping, not realizing that Kerry enacted
true patriotism when, despite being able to dodge the draft, as Bush and Cheney did, he went
to the Vietnam War because it was ―right‖ in his honest opinion at the time. He then protested
the War on finding that it was a horrendous unjust war.
He later voted to authorize funding the war against Saddam‘s tyranny, and then voted
against unilaterally rushing into war without consulting with world opinions, no, despite the
world‘s considered consensus against it. These acts identically express his situation-
sensitive58 patriotism. ―There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times‖
(Voltaire)59; patriotism is one such truth. Kerry is absolutely consistent in his deep patriotism.

confided power.‖ (The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson, NY: Modern
Library, 2000, p. 386). Sadly, the Republicans today take ―less‖ in a numerical sense, not in the sense of
protest, anathema to ―orthodoxy‖ they claim to own.
57 See Bob Herbert‘s alarming ―Voting Without the Facts,‖ New York Times, November 8, 2004.
58 Dale Russakoff and Jim VandeHei fault Kerry (―Lifelong Collector of Data Can Bog Down His Staffs,‖
Washington Post, 10/13/04, p. A1); his situation-sensitivity is better than Bush‘s blind stubborn unilateralism.
59 Voltaire‘s ―Letter to Cardinal de Bernis, April 23, 1761‖ (see Bartlett‟s Familiar Quotations, Sixteenth Edition,
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1992, p. 306).
308 Kuang-ming Wu

Orthodoxy rejects all this in the name of ―consistency of the tradition‖; it is actually a
―foolish consistency‖ of sticking to our accustomed conventions, ―the hobgoblin of little
minds.‖60 No amount of factual evidence can change such set mind, for change is painfully
inconsistent with the comfortable status quo.
They prefer ―steady‖ descent into disaster to venturing out to novel prospect. Their being
smug killed Socrates and Jesus and ignored Confucius, and then turned around to enshrine
Jesus and Confucius into ―orthodoxy‖61 to consolidate their contentment later, at a safe
distance, sheltered under ―our good old ways‖ no matter what. Our ―democracy‖ suffers this
fate of ―consistency‖ today.
62
Many unwary people are bewitched by familiar Republican demagoguery, accusing
Kerry of flip-flopping. Heretics say, ―I will vote for Kerry precisely because he flip-flops!‖ in
line with the situation‘s rhythm of flip-flopping. While boating, we suddenly hear water
roaring around, clearly indicating we are heading for the Niagara Falls; should we not at once
turn our boat around? Could anyone accuse us of flip-flopping? ―Flip-flopping‖ with reasons
is essential to survival; Bush‘s stubborn refusal to flip-flop brought on deadly disasters to
deserve impeachment, or worse.
To err is human, to mend it, sagely. Confucius said, ―Mistaken and not to mend it, is
mistake indeed!‖ (15/30). ―Mistaken? Hesitate not to mend it.‖ (1/8) ―Tzu-kung said,
‗Princely man‘s errors are like sun/moon eclipse; the whole world sees them. When he
mends, the whole world looks up to him.‘‖ (Analects, 19/21) ―Ancient ruler (e.g., Chou
Kung), mistaken, mended it. Today‘s ruler, mistaken, not just goes on along but tries to make
excuses.‖ (Mencius 2B9)
Socratic heresy today urges orthodoxy to mend its mistakes.63 Orthodoxy resents it as
cries of ―Wolf! Wolf!‖ Orthodoxy has the divine right to be divinely right in ―preemptive
unilateralism.‖ This is its ―tiger‖64 to intimidate and bully people around. Soon orthodoxy
fears to dismount the tiger that gets hungry!
Mao Tse-tung perceived rotten traditionalism, initiated ―down with Confucius‖
movement in people‘s name called ―Chinese Communism,‖ and promoted the writer of
protest, Lu Hsün 魯迅. Soon enough, however, his ―Cultural Revolution‖ stiffened into
―orthodoxy‖ of the People‘s Republic of China that ruins democracy,65 and the heresy of
Socrates, Jesus, Confucius, and now students at the Tiananmen, is what had to offend
everyone to shake loose from their set mind.
Traditionalism dies hard, constantly fostered by people‘s irrepressible desire to be ―in the
right,‖ with no less strong desire to be comfortably nestled among the majority ―in the right.‖
It is a horde instinct; community is their secure correct home. Such ―orthodoxy‖ endangers

60 ―A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.‖ (The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, op.
cit., p. 138) Here ―consistency‖ is blind conformity to communal opinions; self-consistency is ―self-reliance,‖
―self-trust,‖ ―spontaneity‖ (pp. 137-141), which is the ―idios‖ of heretical independence.
61 Matthew 23:29-32!
62 This is why people badly need ―education.‖
63 What ―mistakes‖ did Bush make? See an objective analysis of just one disaster in ―What Went Wrong in Iraq?‖
(Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004, pp. 34-56) by Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at Stanford‘s Hoover
Institution and Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, January-April 2004 (so he is
Bush‘s man offering internal critiques to Bush-debacle).
64 We will meet this ―tiger‖ again soon enough.
65 See John Bryan Starr‘s devastating judgments in his Understanding China, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001,
16-17, 71, 204-219, 318-323, etc.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 309

security with a ―group think‖ that lulls its members into a comfortable ―no think.‖ Everyone
now just sits and follows the status quo for ―consistency‖ and ―moral rectitude,‖ which is
depraved rigidity/turpitude.
This is an ideal breeding ground of a dictator, a ―monarch called George‖ (Ted Kennedy)
under democratic Pax Americana.66 American people badly need a renewed jolt of the
heretics to shake America‘s foundation. The heretics are independents who truly love the
community to sting a gadfly warning, to risk being swatted to death, as the community had to
rise up to kill a Socrates-gadfly who so loves it as to sting it awake. Socrates did succeed, at
the price of his life, in arousing them to ―rise up‖! So did Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Biko, and
Martin Luther King, Jr.

D. Heresy prevents democracy from choosing dictatorship

Self-critical individual choices of unpopular heresy can dissolve another ―paradox of

democracy,‖ that democracy can indifferently choose dictatorship. Here is how. Heresy is
protest at the radical inner selves. Originating in protesting one‘s pet self and pet ideas, the
heretic comes to naturally protest one‘s beloved government that is one‘s own family
(China‘s ideal)67 if not oneself writ large (Plato‘s ideal).68 This view of government entirely
differs from the view of Paine and Thoreau, and justifies protest more inherently than from
Paine and Thoreau‘s viewpoint.
This is because here, originally, government is not imposed or contracted ad hoc but is
spontaneously extended from oneself of human self or human composition of family, where
each member is born/raised/nurtured to grow into oneself. And so, self protesting self is
impossible, and family-member‘s protest is innately telling to the family, inherently
immediately bearing on the government-as-family.
All this justifies the ―change of Mandate‖ (ke ming 革命) of rulership, people‘s
revolution, ―raising the Proper‖ (ch‟i i 起義) family-rulership, popular revolution, has been
horrendously effective in China‘s long bloody history. It is the Confucian basis/rationale
behind Lin Yutang‘s insistence on the radical effectiveness of China‘s public opinion and
―journalism.‖69
Strangely, Mencius shares with American Declaration of Independence a divine70
unconditional rationale for the principle of government for the people,71 and the inherent right

66 The extravaganza of GOP National Convention in NYC in September 2004 was a classic example of splashing
traditionalism, basking in all warm expensive Hollywood glitters and lavish festivities.
67 Mencius 1A7, 4B20, among others.
68 See Plato‘s Republic. Sadly Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke left this view, seeding later ―contractual government‖
in Paine and Thoreau. See The Politics of Aristotle, ed. and tr., Ernest Barker, London: Oxford University
Press, 1946, 1958, p. 404 (index on Plato). Locke: Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge
University Press, 1960, 2003, pp. 107-109. Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan, ed. C. B. Mcpherson, London:
Penguin Books, 1968, 1985. Ironically, Hobbes was well aware that he was a heretic rejected by the society.
69 Lin Yutang, A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China, University of Chicago Press, 1936, reprinted,
NY: Greenwood Press, 1968. The Poetry Classic 詩經 is China‘s earliest expression of public opinion, says
Lin. How impressive it is that poetry expresses public opinion!
70 I emailed to Rev. Chuck Chamberlayne, ―Just yesterday, my buddy Dr. Terry Weidner, a political scientist, e-
forwarded me a long essay on the religious feature of our politics (Christian-tinged deism?) since 1776,
validating Robert N. Bellah‘s ‗American civil religion.‘ Terry then worried about Americans being too
religious, as Bush is who violates the principle of church-state separation into a horrendous mess. All this
310 Kuang-ming Wu

to revolution when dictatorship challenges their human dignity,72 though America details
dictator‘s oppressions and China stresses people‘s right to independence.
Today, the Blacks—casually butchered and shot—joined many conscientious Whites,
turn mighty as raw waves of Nature and irresistible heavenly force, constantly welling up
from their soul-centers.73 They relentlessly push with nonviolent marches, boycotts, and gutsy
singing everywhere, until they forced the reluctant Congress to sign the Civil Rights Act in
1964. The rest is history, of the ―minority‘s‖ continuous protest.74
This spirit of normative protest takes on an historic seriousness in China. What Confucius
said (12/11) should be actually fulfilled, that ―the ruler (is to be) ruler, the minister, minister,
the father, father, the son, son‖; it is the necessary life-condition, the basic criterion of
historian‟s judgment of events; to wit, we must live out what we profess, on pain of disasters.
To be chief minister and fail to prosecute an assassin, as minister should, amounts to
colluding with the killer, no, same as the assassin; vassal behaving as king usurps the throne,
equivalent to regicide punishable by death.
Events must be recorded with dead accuracy. Three brother-historians, one after another,
braved executions by their lord who assassinated his own lord, to record, ―Ts‘ui Shu
assassinated his ruler.‖ These historians chose to die rather than falsify the record. Their
incredible bravery finally moved their lord to stop further execution of the third historian, to
75
let the record stand.

raises an important question. America seems to have a threefold split-mind—tendency to celebrate

‗Independence from God,‘ religious feature of American politics, and the principle of church-state separation.
I wondered about how to deal with this three-sided schizophrenia.‖ (I e-wrote this to Terry. ―Do you agree that
[a] the divine base of individual protest is one thing, and [b] separation of religion from politics is another?
These two are two legitimate factors in politics, yet they seem to be opposed. How do we reconcile them?‖)
71 Mencius (5A5) quoted the ancient T‘ai Shih saying, ―Heaven sees as ‗my‘ people see; heaven hears as ‗my‘
people hear.‖ (my translation) Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, saying, ―We hold these
truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent
and inalienable rights; . . . that to secure these rights, governments are instituted . . . deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed . . .‖ (Thomas Jefferson: Writings, selected by Merrill D. Peterson, NY: The
Library of America, 1984, p. 19).
72 King Hsüan of Ch‘i asked, ―Is regicide permissible?‖ Mencius said, ―One who mutilates humanness is a
mutilator, one who cripples rightness is a crippler; a mutilator and crippler is an ‗outcast.‘ I have heard of
assassination of ‗outcast Tchou,‘ but not regicide.‖ (Mencius 1B8, D. C. Lau, Mencius: Volume One, Hong
Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1984, p. 39, modified) This political sentiment of ―people supreme‖ runs
deep in all China‘s tradition of literary history, e.g., 師曠 advising 晉侯 in 襄公十四年 in 左傳
(臺北市三民書局2002, pp. 991-992), 邵公 remonstrating with 厲王 in 邵公諫厲王弭謗 in 國語
(臺北市三民書局2006, p. 7), and 鄒忌 advising 威王 in 鄒忌修八尺有餘 in 戰國策 (臺北市三民書局,
民87, pp. 366-370), etc. The Jefferson-drafted Declaration says, ―that whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new
government [such] as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.‖ (Thomas Jefferson,
op. cit., p. 19) Both opinions mutually tally. Cf. Linda R. Monk, The Words We Live By: Your Annotated
Guide to the Constitution, NY: Hyperion, 2003.
73 My heartfelt view happens to fit—translate almost literally—an ancient Chinese injunction that people‘s mouths
are irresistible river gushing, conducive only to channeling 導, never to dam up into disaster.
「防民之口甚於防川。川壅而潰，傷人必多，民亦如之。 是故為川者決之使導，為民者宣之使言。」
(―邵公諫厲王弭謗‖ in 國語, 臺北市三民書局, 2006, pp. 7-9).
74 See Reporting Civil Rights: Part One: American Journalism 1941-1963 and Reporting Civil Rights: Part Two:
American Journalism 1963-1973, (with captivating pictures) NY: The Library of America, 2003.
75 Ch‘un-ch‘iu, Duke Hsiang, Year Twenty-five (548 BCE). See 襄公二十五年 in 左傳, 臺北市三民書局, 2002,
p. 1097. Amazingly, the names of these brave grand historians were not recorded. See also The Tso chuan:
Selections from China‟s Oldest Narrative History, tr. Burton Watson, NY: Columbia University Press, 1989,
pp. 143-148.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 311

This lone historic protest to let history judge76 continues today when countless young
students, lone, nameless, and defenseless, stood erect against the tanks of their own
government to defend their own nation. People call it the Tiananmen Massacre of June 1989,
we call it, in tears, Democracy of Heretics against the tyranny of thoughtless orthodoxy.77
Are they any different from Socrates, a lone heretic, aged, ageless, and penniless, defying
his beloved government to defend his ―beloved Athenians‖ against their unwary self-
deception? The heretics, standing on their feet, never worship themselves but unceasingly
examine themselves to criticize their government, to create democracy in history. Their
idiosyncratic self-critical ―public awareness‖ even at the price of their own lives,
distinguishes ―being nosy‖ from being public-concerned. Self-examined protest prevents
democracy from choosing to abolish democracy.

E. Heresy against mob-rule of the majority

Six, what is ―democracy‖ to the heretic who ―takes‖ a town by royal military force
against others, turned one who ―takes‖ oneself by one‘s regal individual choice against
society? It is not a mob-rule, tyranny of the majority that blindly follow, but a rulership that
protects the minority of ―one‘s own,‖ the privacy of people to be left alone to make
―mistakes‖ of abortion, homosexuality, and treasonous protests against war even during the
war, and so on.
The heretics wish to live in the community under laws that protect the ―privacy of
individuals‖ that the ―royal force‖ of society so easily crushes, as it did Socrates and Jesus.
Social tyranny today keeps happening very subtly as the ―civilized‖ Superego dominates the
78
Ego (Freud) to lose the self in the ―lonely crowd‖ (Riesman ). Robert Reich and many others
79
are quite vocal on this danger.
Hobbes was intent on controlling the individuals that threaten others, but left the
collective acts uncontrolled. Besides, he completely bypassed the protection of individual
thoughts that the society often imperially suppresses. Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, and countless
writers and poets were persecuted. Many perished under social prosecutions, all for their
80
private ideas that were not socially destructive acts.

76 Lone heretical ―subjectivity‖ of protest to risk life was missing in Hegel‘s cool correct quip, ―World history is
world judgment.‖ Even Søren Kierkegaard‘s ―Truth is subjectivity‖ misses the life-hazard of such ―heretical‖
historical judgment over the ―orthodox‖ political situation in the royal court.
77 Cf. Julia Ching‘s dissent/protest, Probing China‟s Soul, Harper and Row, 1990.
78 The classics of Sigmund Freud‘s Civilization and Its Discontent (1930), and David Riesman, et al., The Lonely
Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, 1953,
are abiding warnings on this point.
79 In 2004 alone, luminaries B. R. Barber, D. Briody, Z. Brzezinski, T. Clancy/A. Zinni/A. Koltz, R. A. Clarke, H.
Caldicotte, I. H. Daalder/J. M. Lindsay, John W. Dean, P. H. Gordon/J.Shapiro, E. A. Hermen/M. Green, R.
Khalidi, J. Moore, M. Moore, MoveOn.org, B. Moyers, J. S. Nye, Jr., K. Phillips, R. B. Reich, G. Soros, C.
Unger, J. C. Wilson, B. Woodward, etc, had books out, all cogently/scathingly argued against the ―orthodox‖
Bush-hegemony.
80 Of course, the society suppresses heretical ideas to ―protect itself from destruction by harmful ideas.‖ The
society is unaware that heretical ideas ―destroy‖ only collective hegemony, tyranny of the majority that
destroys individual ideas, nothing else.
312 Kuang-ming Wu

Hobbes never bothered to control the society to cherish the individuals‘ ―heretical‖
81
sovereignty. His failure spells the story of a ghastly inhuman world. Mind you, the heretic
does not protest Hobbes‘ own freedom to express himself. The heretic does protest Hobbe‘s
self-expression that destroys his sovereign freedom of self-expression with all others‘
individual sovereign freedom.
To protest society‘s royal/collective takeover of individuality, the ―heretics‖ need not
give up an iota of their individual sovereignty for collective cohesion, as Hobbes erroneously
proposed. Instead, they protest by fully choosing themselves, taking to the common pact to
promote individual sovereignty of all. Here this ―social contract‖ nestles individuality; it does
not break but gently nourishes a single bruised reed of heretical idea.
Here is a loose coalition of heretics, a federation of sovereignties of individuals. We must
look into what ―loose‖ means. Let us first go a negative way. Biko the lone protestor of
apartheid said, ―The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed.‖82 We can point at him and say, ―The most powerful weapon of the oppressed is
also their mind—as yours!‖ So, the mind of the oppressed is the most powerful sociopolitical
weapon either way.
All depends on the decision of the oppressed on how to take their mind, either to let their
mind be controlled by the oppressor to conform to his ―orthodoxy,‖ or else use their mind to
become independent heretics. The key against the oppressor is thus the mind of heretics and
the spread of their heresy. This spread of heretical protest makes ―democracy.‖
So, as the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Gospel spread, so the oppressor‘s hand is
a catalyst to the democracy of the heretics. We must ever be ready to defend our nation
against our government, whose power is ready to corrupt to oppress us its people. This
defense is ―by‖ in the ―government by the people,‖ by their ever-vigilant protest and heretical
scrutiny to form the government of the people.
The journalists‘ undaunted editorials,83 elections of officials every few years, and
candidates‘ mutual attacks and debates, express this democratic spirit of vigilance. Prophetic
journalists such as Woodward and Bernstein, as well as George Orwell, H. L. Mencken, and
Bill Moyers,84 tirelessly, persistently, call attention to social injustice.
In democracy, plutocracy must be guarded against. Big money should not win election,
otherwise the wealthy would have won every term, to turn election a mockery; no wealthy
candidate would dare claim to win with big money, although sadly USA has more Republican
presidents than Democratic presidents. Only heresy that protests to spread to all, should win.
No orthodox conformity induced or intimidated with money makes democracy, but the spread
of protesting heresy instigated by journalism.
Let us now go a positive way. Although not related etymologically, we can easily surmise
how praiseworthy ―choosing oneself‖ came to be ―heresy‖ of social disapproval. The society
naturally demands ―sociality‖—conformity and docility—from its members, whose self-
choice often goes against sociality. ―How could the socially unpleasant heretics be sociable?‖

81 Alan M. Dershowitz, America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation, NY: Warner
Books, 2004, tackles legal aspects of collective imperialism over individual ―heresies‖ in democratic USA; it
is a tough issue.
82 This is Steve Biko‘s statement as witness, May 3, 1976 (Bartlett‟s Familiar Quotations, op. cit., p. 774).
83 The Arab world today has quite popular ―radio talks‖ to air popular discontent. Governments fear them.
84 Bill Moyers deplores plutocracy rampant in democratic America (Bill Moyers on America: A Journalist and His
Times, NY: The New Press, 2004). The quality of his sentences is beside the point here.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 313

Well, not ―charming heretic‖ but ―graceful and tasteful nonconformist‖ is feasible and
desirable for survival/efficacy of self-choice; self-choice must turn effective genially,
gracefully. Thus for social ―conformity‖ an individualist can offer geniality and for ―docility,‖
grace and tact. Civility, to wit, grace and genial tact, give to cordial coalition ―friendly foes‖
of the self-chosen in civil disobedience (not ―civil heretic‖), nonviolent protest (not
―revolutionary sedition‖); nonconformists agreeably disagree into ―democratic‖ community.

F. Plurality of democracies

―Democracy‖ thus comes spontaneously out of grassroots individualist coalition each

culturally coherent. Every democratic polity naturally differs from every other in form, air,
and sentiment, and an imposition of one form of democratic polity (US hard sell?) onto
another community (protesting Iraq?) is democratically impossible, for it is by definition
contradictory; it is an ―imposition of democracy,‖ dictatorship in the name of ―democracy.‖
Democracy means leaving people alone, to protect and promote their ―being alone together.‖
Here in ―democracy,‖ people together make a specific/distinctive musical unity different
from any other, and in each musical composition every individual note is special and
essential. Again, to shift a metaphor, this community is a specific/unified family distinct from
any other. Each family depends on each member to exist, and each member is enabled to live
on, each head up high, thanks to a specific unique protective ―togetherness of heretics.‖ This
―musical family‖ has been China‘s ideal of ―people supreme‖ government,85 albeit not in the
fashionable name of ―democracy‖ today.
Such democratic community dissolves a ―paradox of democracy,‖ to wit, indifferently
86
choosing dictatorship against it, obtainable in unthinking mob-rule; democracy of
individual self-critical choices cannot indifferently choose dictatorship, unless done by
popular ignorance not critical enough to see through the dictator-wolf under cover of
87
protecting people‘s privacy. In history no dictator has succeeded without this cover, to
88
successfully fool populace. Do we see George W. Bush here?

85 Both ―government by music‖ and ―government as family-economics‖ were in fashion in classical China. See
孔子, 孟子, 荀子: 樂論, 吉聯抗譯注, 北京音樂出版社, 1963, 兩漢論樂文字輯譯, 吉聯抗譯注,
北京音樂出版社, 1980, and 呂氏春秋中的音樂史料, 吉聯抗譯注, 上海文藝出版社, 1963. Sadly, such
ideals are preached, not practiced.
86 Section D considered heresy‘s dissolution of this paradox. Here we consider it from another angle.
87 See Arthur Waley‘s poignant description of it in China in Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, Stanford
University Press, 1982, pp. 191-196.
88 NPR (October 8, 2004) reported that FBI forcibly evicted people-with-tickets out of the Bush rally for wearing
―Kerry‖ buttons or ―Kerry‖ T-shirts, even after they took them off. If this is not dictatorship, what is? ―On
issue after issue, this [Bush] Administration tells the American people one thing and does another. They
repeatedly invent ‗facts‘ to support their ideological agenda—facts which they know are not true! . . . They
quietly and drastically under-fund the ‗No Child Left Behind‘ Act . . . while President Bush pretends to be the
‗Education President.‘ They pay lip service to full disclosure of the failures leading up to 9/11, while doing
everything possible to stonewall a genuine bipartisan investigation. They hand out blatant giveaways to oil,
gas, coal and timber companies while talking about ‗Healthy Forests‘ and ‗Clear Skies‘ initiatives . . . They‘re
putting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars directly into pharmaceutical company profits and calling it a
prescription drug benefit for seniors. This ‗Government by PR Campaign‘ is causing real and lasting damage
to our country, our future, and our standing in the world.‖ (Senator Edward M. Kennedy‘s public letter,
September 27, 2004) All this is appalling indeed.
314 Kuang-ming Wu

Of course, this heretics‘ Utopia literally has ―no place‖ in actual world, at least not yet,
but Hobbes‘ Utopia is nowhere, either. Utopia for Utopia, we would choose the heretics‘ over
Hobbes‘, for nothing should be more cherished than promotion of choosing one‘s own self. If
the society is so irritated by these ideas as to brand them ―heresies,‖ so much the worse for
the society, whose true mission it is to protect/promote such ―heretical‖ freedom of
individuals to think for themselves.
Four comments are in order. One, here is a paradox of humanity. The heretic is idios, an
idiosyncratic loner at the edge of a community, yet heretic‘s self-protest, lone and unpopular,
is dynamics to democracy. Marginalized individual recluses are the fountainhead of true
sociality. The secret code here is authenticity; one true to oneself consolidates social
democracy of individuality.
Two, Voltaire the heretic declared, ―I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the
death your right to say it‖; he expresses a dead-serious defense of anyone‟s expression of
opinions, and his rage at desecrating expression by casually throwing opinions around. No
89
wonder he added, ―Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.‖
90
This is the soul of humanity, the dignity of democracy. Voltaire‘s spirit applies to the
rights to bear arms, use tobacco/drug/liquor/car, practice abortion, and decide against world
opinions—so long as one is seriously responsible. The heretic would say, ―I detest owning
rifles and drugs that kill. I believe in the fetus‘ right to life and would carefully consult with
considered opinions before making my decisions. But I will fight for your rights to arms,
drugs, abortion, a car, and decide despite world‘s contrary opinions. Just exercise your rights
humanely, with extreme caution. They are risky rights; you are playing with fire.‖
The absolute principle here is ―Never hurt, never kill, oneself or others.‖ One‘s right to
do all above must be regulated by law. Drugs, tobacco, liquor, and abortion must be
prescribed and performed by doctors in consultation with patients, car driving must be
licensed, rifles must be ―legally controlled,‖ and the president must be checked on his
decisions by the Congress and the Supreme Court, with the ever-present threat of
impeachment. These are all ―common sense‖ in the democratic society, though they are more
preached than practiced.
This is true democracy deserving of ―forcing‖ on the society against the powerful groups
(NRA, tobacco/liquor industries, ―right to fetus‘ life‖ group, and the president) by
91
conscientious independent protesters risking mortal persecution under the name, ―heretics.‖
Nothing is more crucial in life than such liberty, and nothing is harder, as its practice often
carries the social reproach and persecution of ―heresy,‖ as well as individual risks of life.
Three, comments on heresy are at an autobiographical margin of community. The
heretic‘s sting has no rancor; its self-critical gadfly-sting calmly cleanses itself and thereby
others. The criticism of Bush and his GOP must itself be criticized against turning self-
righteous, turning anti-orthodoxy ―orthodoxy,‖ a Pharisaic monster. Bush‘s GOP is purposely
cited as a recent example to the Obama‘s democratic regime. Beware, Mr. President, whoever

89 The first sentence is attributed to Voltaire by Beatrice Hall who claims it was a paraphrase of Voltaire‘s words in
the Essay on Tolerance, ―Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.‖ The second
statement (in English) is in Voltaire‘s Essay on Epic Poetry. (Bartlett‟s Familiar Quotations, op. cit., p. 307.)
90 See my views on impeachment (588-596), bearing arms (641-643), and abortion (572, 575) in On Metaphoring,
Brill, 2001.
91 Many doctors who perform abortions have been shot to death, many abortion clinics are bombed.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 315

you are! Power so easily corrupts into orthodoxy so disastrous a monster, Leviathan, over
weak lone individuals.
Four, someone may ask, ―Are you sure Voltaire is correct? How can you be sure that
heresy is always correct?‖ Our response to this important question is as follows. First, let us
look again at orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in power would intimidate the populace with its ―tiger‖
92
of ―we are always right!,‖ only to be devoured by its own tiger, false security in false
93
―truths.‖ ―Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers
are getting hungry,‖ said Churchill wryly, echoing Chuang Tzu‘s assessment of tyrants as
94
tigers. Tiger-death is here.
All this originates in money involved with votes to produce a grave, thickly whitewashed
with ―democracy‖ to keep its stench in. It is money stench that erodes votes. My Mom used to
tell me not to touch money, or else wash my hands right after touching it. People never bother
to dig out such money-stench of death under the beloved whitewash of thick lies, and
95
people‘s ―not bother‖ itself smells, being in the grave of plutocracy.
History will either suddenly open up the grave with inner scandal, with outer debacle, or
let the grave dry out gradually, and it will be history. Sad it is—the grave of orthodoxy, the
96
stench of death. Let us pray for a sudden inside scandal and/or outside debacle to jolt people
into voting rightly. I am tired of the stench everywhere.
Now, let us look at heresy. Heresy is quite otherwise. Not accidentally, heretic of hairesis
as taker-of-oneself came from taker-of-others. ―One who takes others has force; one who
97
takes oneself is mighty,‖ said Lao Tzu. A heretic is one who habitually ―takes oneself as
others,‖ that is, takes on oneself, one‘s ideas, constantly examining them.
Self-examination takes oneself as another to self-critique. My son Peter said, ―Dad, I
have three names, me, myself, and I.‖ Three is an interactive company that is oneself. I take
on ―me,‖ to take me into ―myself‖ to make the ―I.‖ So I can afford to open to the opponent
who is both myself as another and myself in the other.
This is why Voltaire can defend his opponent‘s right to express ideas, open to them to
examine-criticize them. Criticism is invincible, for criticizing criticism joins criticism. ―I do
98
not at all resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it for a time parts company
99
with reality,‖ said Churchill wisely. In short, heretic criticizes even himself, criticism is

92 Maureen Dowd said, ―The Bushies‘ campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because we have failed
to make you safe, you should re-elect us to make you safer. Because we haven‘t caught Osama in three years,
you need us to catch Osama in the next four years. Because we didn‘t bother to secure explosives in Iraq, you
can count on us to make sure those explosives aren‘t used against you.‖ Her entire essay, ―Will Osama Help
W.?‖ in New York Times (10/31/04) is worth reading.
93 To be precise, a dictator invents his own paper tiger, mount it to scare people, until he himself so believes in his
own tiger/propaganda that he cannot afford to dismount; he falls victim to his own falsehoods.
94 Winston S. Churchill, While England Slept (1936), as quoted in Bartlett‟s Familiar Quotations, op. cit., p. 619.
See also Chuang Tzu, 4/60-62.
95 Bill Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times, NY: The New Press, 2004. Cf. Daniel Schorr‘s comment
in NPR, 10/17/04.
96 This is of course another rerun of Matthew 23:27; there is money to destroy the temple of people‘s piety. Jesus
will rebuild it (John 2:14-20) with piety without money.
97 Lao Tzu (33) parallels this saying with ―One who knows others is learned; one who knows oneself is
enlightened.‖ The heretic reinforces the might of self-taking with this penetration of self-knowledge.
98 Being always right, orthodoxy resents criticism, marginalizing it as ―heresy.‖ We remember deep defensive
resentment in Bush‘s face and tone in all three debates with Kerry. Churchill is remarkably out of this
orthodox resentment while in office that tends to claim orthodoxy.
99 This is from Winston S. Churchill‘s speech in the House of Commons, January 22, 1941.
316 Kuang-ming Wu

invincible in including the opponents, and inclusion of opponents is liberal-cordial, so heresy

is cordially liberal. Heretic‘s pan-critique conquers all. Thus heresy is always correct.

G. Heresy as liberal, opponent-accepting, independent of itself

Accepting opponents is ―liberal‖ with many opposing ideas, with opponents inside
100
oneself, fractured in the self, with thorns in the flesh. This act of accommodating the
opponents ensures being in the right. ―Being correct‖ is the dynamics of self-correction,
always on the reformative move. not tied to a fixed self, and this ―not‖ is the élan of heretical
protest.
Heretics are independent of even themselves. They are liberals liberated from set ideas,
from bigotry. Liberty of thought is the life of the soul (Voltaire); liberalism is the soul of
democracy. Modern dictatorship inevitably comes as liberalism-eviscerated ―democracy,‖ a
101
wolf roaming among the sheep under cover of the sheepskin of ―illiberal democracy.‖ This
odd ―democracy‖ is an historical variant of dictatorship that used to come ―in the name of the
people‖; it is sad to realize, this ―sheepskin‖ is the ―orthodoxy‖ of ―democracy.‖
―Orthodoxy‖ is already always correct and infallible; have we heard a cocksure Bush
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admit mistakes? He has no self-corrective critique; he does not need it. Such casual refusal
of self-examination spells self-satisfaction, stuffy, seamless, and crack-less smugness.
Orthodoxy is illiberal, conservative of itself. set in itself, shuts itself in, to spell bigotry.
Thus to practice orthodoxy gives the lie to its claim to orthodoxy—being correct—and
must lie to everyone, including itself, to hide its own faults. Any warning from outside so
103
irritates orthodoxy as to brand ―liberal heresy‖ deserving of stamping out as enemy.
Orthodoxy does not know that such ―heresy‖ brings ―orthodoxy‖ out of its own deadly rut of
unorthodoxy under cover of fashionable ―democracy.‖ How does all this come about? How
do we correct it?
Democracy among unwary dolts spells tyranny of mob-majority ruled/swayed by ―the
inalienable right to happiness‖ of greed, license to selfishness, dictatorship of demagoguery.
This idiotic ―democracy‖ is the worst form of government (Plato, Churchill) of ―group-think.‖
This democracy of the uneducated is a disaster (Jefferson), so education is its cure. Education

100 The so-called Democratic Party is forever fractured, united only in their protest. Obama backed by the
Democratic Congress is weaker than Bush backed by the Republican Congress.
101 Fareed Zakaria, ―The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,‖ Foreign Affairs, November/December 1997, pp. 22-43. Its
rise is here fully before our eyes in 2004 Election. ―Reckless and arrogant‖ (Senator Robert Byrd, Losing
America, NY. W. W. Norton, 2004) preemptive unilateralism bullies the world into one disaster after another,
and bullies America with watertight ad hominem propaganda. Bloody bad news keeps piling up, processed as
―good news.‖ Bush is ―resolute‖ and ―steady on course.‖ Kerry is a liberal flip-flopper unreliable and risky in
these times of ―war on terror.‖ The message is ―Be scared!‖ Spellbound, half of America is solid behind Bush.
Naked voter intimidation spreads far and wide even before Election. (Bob Herbert, ―For Bush, Bad News is
Bad News,‖ New York Times, 19/25/04) Here is classical dictatorship, Nixon‘s imperial presidency made more
serious at home and abroad.
102 ―One of the most defining moments of George W. Bush . . . was the press conference . . . when he was asked if
he knew of any mistakes he had made, and he said he couldn‘t think of any! Unbelievable! He couldn‘t
remember the quagmire [he] led us into in Iraq . . . or his cavalier neglect of an economy that has lost more
than a million jobs . . . the worst job record since Herbert Hoover.‖ (Senator Edward M. Kennedy‘s public
letter, September 27, 2004)
103 Look at the clean handsome volume by Russell Kirk, Redeeming the Time, Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate
Studies Institute, 1996.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 317

104
is the ―soft power‖ of persuasive attraction (Nye), Plato and Aristotle‘s ―psychagoge,‖
105
soul-winning-leading by allurement, as Confucius (9/11) was never tired of doing,
循循然善誘人.
Public education is soft heresy constantly applied to populace by conscientious
advertisement and courageous journalism; although preciously rare they do exist in history.
The tobacco industry was collapsed by TV ads, and Watergate debacle did occur by
journalism, as the Enron and Japanese bubbles did burst in free market economy also by
journalism.
106
The final social correction is by invisible historical hand of radical contingency, which
downed invincible Chinese emperors, Nero, Napoleon, and Hitler. History is often directed by
raw spontaneity of the common folks who know where the shoes pinch and how the hunger
hurts. Lin Yutang calls it ―journalism in China.‖ Schell sees ―hidden democracy‖ in China;
Zinn is today‘s born-again Chinese sage to harp on the people‘s power to shape their own
107
historic destiny.
So we have three sorts of heresy, the soft heresy of journalism and advertisement, the
hardcore heresy of education in publicity of TV advertisement, and the invisible heresy of
unpredictable history. They are the soft wind of ―democracy‖ that invincibly sways to correct
the greed for power and for money.
―The wind of the virtuous ruler blows, and the people the grass will bend,‖ said
Confucius (12/19). In democracy as people-power, the people are the ruler, and the situation
gets complex; they remain the grasses while required to be the virtuous ruler-wind. ―Virtue‖
is the power of being human; here it means the power to critically assess the situation, and
bend only to the considered wind of thoughtful journalists, officials, and scholars, not to the
108
wind of raw power, especially the power of their own undisciplined desires.
So, the terrible fact is that democracy is extremely fragile. The ―inalienable right to
pursue happiness‖ slips into license to pursue powers of irresponsible rifle, money, property,
109
abortion, noise, ecological disaster, etc. This monstrous license translates into bending to
the wind of powerful interest groups.
The terrible disaster peculiar to democracy is the people‘s right to rulership, i.e., to cast
110
vote, no matter how uncritical, ignorant, and easily sway-able they are, and the ill-designed

104 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, NY: Public Affairs, 2004. See also
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., ―Power and Interdependence in the Information Age,‖ Foreign
Affairs, September/October 1998, pp. 81-94. They mean the power to attract; we extend it to the alluring
power of education. Sadly, Nye recently diluted his ―soft power‖ in ―Get Smart: Combining Hard and Soft
Power,‖ Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009, pp. 160-163.
105 Plato, Phaedrus, 265d, 266b3-4; Aristotle, Poetics, 1450a33. Confucius (9/11) passionately practiced it.
106 ―A small input to such a [big complex] system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes—what the
scientists call ‗the amplifier effect.‘‖ (Niall Ferguson, ―Complexity and Collapse,‖ Foreign Affairs
March/April 2010, p. 25)
107 Orville Schell, ―China‘s Hidden Democratic Legacy,‖ Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004, pp. 116-124. Howard
Zinn is too well-known to cite his volumes extensively.
108 The majority of journalists/scholars in 2004 were anti-Bush, while fully half of US people were pro-Bush; the
US still totters after over 200 years of democratic polity.
109 This is not to say we must ban all rifles, properties, and abortions (it would be totalitarianism), but to urge us all
to be responsible to our right to rifles, property and abortion, never to abuse them. Such counsel is terribly
difficult, however, and the difficulty makes for extreme fragility of democracy.
110 These features go together to inter-exacerbate.
318 Kuang-ming Wu

Constitution compounds disaster by being used by the power group to manipulate the
―election.‖ How could all this happen?
111
I argued in 2000 that when two candidates are equally popular, the US Constitution
must be fixed to accommodate two presidents, not one. The Constitution being what it is, it
―allowed‖ the Supreme Court to declare Bush as president (after vote count), bypassing the
popular will. Incredibly, people complained yet obeyed for four years.
The problem in 2004 appears different. Only a few thoughtful people complain that shady
propaganda shapes/channels unwary uncritical people into a preset ―winner.‖ People seem not
to care; powerful established ―orthodoxy‖ resents these few complaints even before voting,
and tries its hardest to suppress them by propaganda. How propaganda differs from public
education is a tough issue beyond popular intelligence to decipher, though people must
decipher!
In the orthodox circle, person counts, not policy and performance; if a person is ―one of
us, he is a good guy,‖ and whatever he does is ―moral.‖ So, attacks on opponents are typically
ad hominem; ―he is untrustworthy flip-flopper, so whatever he proposes is untrustworthy.‖
The end to demolish such ―immoral liberals‖ justifies whatever means at hand.
Thus, amazingly, the foremost factor beyond Iraq and unemployment, responsible for
112
Bush‘s election, was the ―moral factor.‖ Many people regard Bush as ―one of us,‖ honestly
doing what he says; ―tripping over his own words‖ shows not low IQ but a man of ―moral
action, not of empty words.‖ Low IQ Bush could not have invented such ingenious lies; they
must have been concocted by his clever attendants. How those high IQ attendants could have
gone so low an abysmal length to such concoctions is part of the mystery of human
hypocrisy.
In any case, this is a crowning success of supreme ―orthodox‖ propaganda machine; with
fully effective propaganda, Orthodoxy advocates decency, perpetrates abomination, and gets
113
away with it. No wonder, conscientious ―heretics‖ are historically in the minority, such as
Socrates and Confucius, ever ready to be swatted dead and silent.
Thus complaints, before and after voting, must come in to save fragile democracy that is
ever ready to turn ―illiberal‖ liberty-robbed dictatorship, post-voting or pre-voting. People‘s
complaint is protest; individuals‘ complaint is ―heresy‖ crucial, for democracy to promote the
inalienable rights of individuals to their conscientious privacy, so fragile as to be stampeded
out any time by the majority under the spell of ―orthodoxy.‖ Majority votes are less crucial
than individual heresy in democracy.
To advance democracy to promote thoughtful idiosyncratic independence is the mission
of society, where we must courageously choose to take and take on, that is, criticize, our
respective selves, risking being branded ―heretic,‖ ―insane‖ and ―idiotic.‖ Such ―heresy‖ is
the only way to become human and democratic, individually, communally. ―Heresy‖ is the
signature of humanity, the life-story of democracy. Tyranny is finished if people dare to die
with a tyrant who despises their death.114 People dare not (yet) die against the US Tyrant, so
its devastating tyranny continues. To stop repetition, we end now our story of ―heresy.‖115

111 See my Nonsense as Sense in Religion: Cultural Meditations on the Beyond, pp. 316-323, yet to publish.
112 National Public Radio reported so upon announcing Bush‘s election on November 3, 2004.
113 Cf. sharply worded ―The Everlasting Gospel,‖ The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V.
Erdman, NY: Anchor Books, 1988, pp. 876-877.
114 Tao Te Ching 74, 75; Chuang Tzu 4/2.
115
Read further my ―Heresy, Tradition, History,‖ Journal of World Religions, forthcoming.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 319

HOW TO READ STORIES

It is time to take a turn. Storytelling without story-reading is no ―storytelling,‖ any more
than a husband without wife is ―husband.‖ We must undergo four levels of reading to be
judged having ―read‖ a story. To understand how, we must actually go through a story. Our
previous exposition on storytelling must be repeated here to match it as story-hearing. Here
are four, in the order of increasing difficulty.
Story One: A young lady said cheerfully, ―Hi, Charlie, we stay friends; here is my email.
Keep in touch, ok? Bye!‖ Now how do we read this short story? In no less than four ways and
levels, we must say.
(a) How the story went. This is a straight textual reception of a story. Textual criticism is
here; in this case, we see that it is my arbitrary invention just for fun, to see how many levels
a story involves; (b) what it amounts to. This is exegesis; we see that this story tells us about
polite greeting to Charlie; (c) what it means. This is exposition; we see this story describes a
dumping that is soft; (d) what it means for us. This is hermeneutic reflection; it tells us to be
kind unconditionally, even in dumping trash.
Story Two: (a) I once asked my granddaughter of three, ―Tessie, how come fish has no
umbrella?‖ ―‗Cause it has no hands!‖ Wow! Her mom was ecstatic, ―See, she is so logical!‖
That led me to thinking (b): how logical Tessi was, (c): what sort of ―logic‖ Tessie gave me
116
(for that was why I wowed), and (d): what Tessie taught me. And then I nod; I now
117
understand this story.
Story Three: (a) A Japanese scholar began his 1960 Wright Lecture at Yale with this
118
story. A company CEO strolled in a park on Sunday, and found several bums sleeping on
the grass. He tapped one on the shoulder and said, ―Friend, wake up. You look healthy and
intelligent. Why don‘t you report tomorrow at my office?‖
―What for?‖ ―I‘ll give you a job.‖ ―What for?‖ ―To make money, don‘t you know?‖
―What for?‖ ―Well, to buy a house and have a wonderful family.‖ ―What for?‖ ―O, come on,
to be happy! Don‘t you know?‖ ―To be happy, eh?‖ The bum slightly raised himself. ―Mister,
that‘s what I am. By the way, would you step aside? You are shading my sun.‖ Now, (b) what
does it amount to? (c) What does it mean? (d) We uncomfortably feel here a challenge to our
conventional ideals, but what is it that challenges us, precisely? It all eludes us.
Story Four: (a) Chuang Tzu (2/38-40) told us that an offer of ―morning three, evening,
four‖ to monkeys made them furious, so our Uncle Monkey changed to ―morning four,
evening, three,‖ and they applauded. This story is one of the ―simplest and dumbest‖ of all his
stories. He even appended its explanation so dumb, and everyone talks about it as if they
knew it all.

116 I did so before in the section, ―Kids‘ Logic, Our Logic, Storytelling Logic.‖
117 Jesus‘ parable of the sower is another example for our reading on four levels. [a] We note that all three Gospels
have similar descriptions of this parable (Mt 12, Mk 4, Lk 8; descriptions of ―good soil‖ is quite interesting)
but John‘s Gospel does not have it. [b] The same seed is sowed identically, and the four grounds are due to
four different life-situations. [c] The same seed of love yields different results in different hearts; this is
amazing. [d] The reason why this parable was told is that the listeners do have the choice; we can be any sort
of soil, and we had better constantly decide to be ―good soil‖! Jesus on his part is the sower and the seed in
one. The parable is an appeal, the sowing and the seed, appealing us to turn around and accept Jesus as his
―good soil‖ and ―good seed‖! This is Mark 1:15 all over again!
118 How did I come to know the story? I was a student in the audience at the time.
320 Kuang-ming Wu

I myself tried several times to see what it amounts to (b), what it means (c), and what it
119
means for us (d). Don‘t we see how Bush‘s violence of ―morning, four‖ replaces Saddam‘s
―morning, three‖? Chopping a tree chops the chopper? Bush, Saddam, and tree chopping may
be on level (b), but, so what? I had better keep quiet, for the more I search for its significance,
the more lost I get. Chuang Tzu gives us a lifetime challenge of ―reading‖ his story.
In any case, except for my fabricated Story One, all stories above are difficult on level
(d), as all life stories are ambiguous and open, as are all biographies and histories that reflect
life, for brute facts are stories stranger than fiction, ever bottomless. Thanks to four levels of
depth, stories are indefinitely various and limitless, pattern-less to overflow categories, yet
carry a coherence of its own. We now cite three simplest kid-stories to see story-coherence.
These kid-stories are so charming we cannot help citing them repeatedly in our pages
elsewhere.
Story One: ―Tessie, how come fish has no umbrella?‖ ―‗Cause fish has no hand.‖ Wow!
The answer is so logical yet quite surprising, precisely because it is so trite that we adults
would never have noticed it.
Story Two: ―I hate Charlie; I want to kill him, Mom.‖ ―You can kill him tomorrow; now
come eat your dinner.‖ And then Tommy forgets killing Charlie. Mom says OK, and fulfills
Tommy‘s immediate need, to lead him to naturally forget the whole matter.
Story Three: ―I don‘ wanna sleep!‖ ―Ok, don‘t, just sit here and hear your favorite story.‖
Tommy nods. ―Once upon a time . . .‖ and he hits the pillow. Mom ok‘s Tommy not wanting
to sleep, to give his favorite to disarm/nurture him naturally, all ―no-do‖ logically senseless.
We see in these stories five features, among many others. One, stories are natural, so trite
on things as they are, and logically indifferent. Two, stories are tact-full, discerning, and
attractive, not logically formulaic with set rules. Three, stories trail and follow along the
situation, not logically, absolutely. Four, stories move on in situation-dynamics, not logically
settled. Five, stories are concrete, unsuspected, surprising, not logically eternal, all-inclusive,
exception-less.
Stories have more features than above, of course. E.g., we could say on the fish-story
that, on an exegetical level (b), of course fish has no hand to hold an umbrella, so it has no
umbrella; what else is new? On an expository level (c), we could say that Tessie is so fresh,
for all her assertion of obvious fact, as to surprise us into laughter. On a hermeneutic level (d),
we could say that unless our logicizing is as fresh to surprise people into laughter as Tessie‘s
does, we are not yet really ―logical.‖ as Mom proudly says she is ―logical.‖ I said we ―could,‖
for this is only one of many other possible readings of this story.
In any case, all above tells us that story-thinking entirely differs from Western logical
thinking, and yet stories are inevitable in their own ways, never arbitrary, never to mock as
―illogical.‖ One wrong move, wrong interpretation, and failure of all sorts ensues at once. We
have thus told the story of the coherence alive of storytelling, the ―logic‖ of story-thinking.
In all this, stories have four levels. Without taking into account all of the four levels,
120
stories simply vanish in time‘s indifferent flow. Moyers‘ volume begins by bewailing that

119 I tried my interpretive hand on this story in ―Relativism and Storytelling‖ above, in Butterfly as Companion, op.
cit., pp. 178, 387, 419, and in Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play, NY: Crossroad and Atlanta, GA:
Scholars Press, 1982, pp. 73-74. I have now come to realize that the story has much deeper implications than
customarily suspected, and its unfathomable depths are revealed only as we plumb it step by step.
120 Bill Moyers, Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times, NY: The New Press, 2004, pp. ix-x. Actually, he
says that journalists connect the dots and disappear. He hopes that his volume lasts longer, but does not say
 From Oneself to the Music Together 321

the journalists often vanish as they report fleeting bits of events, and hopes that connecting
dots in his volume may enable him to survive transience. His connections are his judgment,
out of years of dots-connection, that US democracy is turning plutocracy, money-power, not
demos-power at all.
These connections and judgments are activities on levels (b) and (c), which make great
121
writers out of journalism, such as Lafcadio Hearn (b. 1850), H. L. Mencken (b. 1880), and
George Orwell (b. 1903). Legal proceedings are on levels (a) and (b). Dershowitz rises to
122
level (c), for which he is justly famous.
Why must we connect dots? Because life fractured into bits and pieces is ―sicker‖ than
fractured life called ―schizophrenia,‖ life split into bits, cut off from actuality. Such bits-cleft
life is senselessness that spells death; senselessness is nothing nowhere, no life whatever, as
words are split into letters and scattered around no longer words, no sense at all.
As we read no ―words‖ of meaning, just watching ―letters‖ of events scattered, life goes
schizophrenic. Dots-connection shapes jumbles of dots of letters, themselves not hot or cold,
scary or pleasant, silent or noisy, into sensible words. Stories told connect dots; stories read
complete the connecting into their meaning. Stories spell life‘s meaning. Lifeworld is history
123
of spelling-process, story-in-in-the-making, meaning making itself. But what is meaning?
Meaning is a milieu where bits and dots gather to fit inter-weaving a con-text. A context
is composed of dots cohered, that is, stuck together, to fit into a world where there are beings.
Conversely, dots appear as things, each as distinctly itself and no other, only in its context, in
the milieu of this context, to exist, to stand-out as itself. Things and their inter-woven context
thus inter-depend, and such inter-texture between things and their context they compose, is
―meaning.‖
―In other words, in order to be things at all, they must stand-together into a system,‖ says
an analytical mind. What is said here says less than the fact of the matter, however. It is rather
that things must cohere, stick-together, into a shape, blend and enter one another, inter-melt to
com-pose the ―music of meaning‖ to which we resonate to co-compose the Music, the world.
Existents co-resonate in music to live the world‘s ongoing sym-phony. To live on is for bits to
interweave into life‘s music of existence; all this is meaning beyond ―system‖ that does not
make music that is meaning.
124
A bit of autobiographical confession is in order. My close reading of Chuang Tzu
proved to be decisive in my journey in cultural hermeneutics. I found that Chuang Tzu is
China shouted aloud, distinctive of China, on five counts. One, a grain of sand in Chinese
history, Chuang Tzu, shows all world of China, as we read on.
Two, this is because a typical spot in writing shows how things are written, and the
―how‖-method shows the ―what‖-matter. Three, this in turn is because the Chinese writing
that Chuang Tzu exhibited mirrors life, how we live showing what life is. Four, all this

what his volume does to last long. I think he lumps together two types of connecting, story-telling [b] and
story-judgment [c]. To avoid confusion, I put storytelling as connecting-and-judging.
121 Breathtaking on [b]/[c] level is Frank Defoe‘s sports-reportage in ―All Things Considered.‖
122 Alan M. Dershowitz (Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard), America on Trial: Inside the Legal
Battles That Transformed Our Nation, NY: Warner Books, 2004.
123 I have meditated on ―meaning‖ at the basic level in Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 364-373. We continue our reflection
on ―meaning‖ here.
124 I refer to my two volumes, Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play, NY: Crossroads and Atlanta, GA: Scholars
Press, 1982, and The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
322 Kuang-ming Wu

amounts to a life-logic, life-reasoning, where every bit is inter-involved in every other in time,
looking forward to whatever will happen.
125
Five, I called life-reasoning the ―‗logic‘ of togetherness,‖ and then, now, ―story-
thinking,‖ i.e., historical thinking, participating, reenacting, re-living, in life-developing,
which is surprising yet later found as sensible. It is in the ―sensible‖ that the historical
thinking is ―logical,‖ and in the ―surprising‖ that the thinking is ―in time,‖ not spatial as with
symbolic logic.
I found all these five features as I wrote on Chuang Tzu‘s writings that present life-dots
as dots, with subtle indirect suggestions of how they could be connected. This dot-connection
is ―meaning of life.‖ In contrast, when we cannot read the scribbles on the wall of time, all
dots and bits scattered there redound to make us scatter-minded, schizophrenic, and we see
random things to randomize and depress us.
Actuality is wall of time, ever changing; we must be patient enough to wait out, to let
dots turn into scribbles that write out a sensible sequence-of-events, that is, a meaningful
story, a history to go by. ―If you don‘t like the weather, wait a minute,‖ says Mark Twain.
This waiting-out does an active patient reading on four levels mentioned above. Our waiting
is how we partake of time-process, we being time itself, so as to understand actuality as time-
dynamics, making its own musical meaning, its history.
Dots are events; their connections are literary stories in time, history. Chinese tradition is
made of literary history or historical literature, ―wen shih 文史.‖ Chinese thinking collages
the story-bits of events without rhyme or reason, and montages them into a meaning-
kaleidoscope. Reading it moves this kaleidoscope to see meaning, and all four levels of the
reading inter-involve, and the beauty of wen-shih, literary history, historical literature, results
to present meaning.
Sociopolitical events make impacts on us all, so history tends to be sociopolitical.
Chinese thinking tends to be dominated by a kaleidoscope of dynasties and social history,
although by no means exclusively so, as sociopolitical history blends with metaphysics,
culinary arts, literature, music, poetry, and so on. These blends compose the moving beauty of
four levels involving one with the others, into beautiful meaning.
In short, we have not read a story until we have been through all these four levels, textual,
exegetical, expository, and hermeneutic. Analytic-symbolic logic is an ―organon‖ (Aristotle),
a tool, at exegetical level (b), to clean and straighten the coherence of a story that is
journalism, to go to expository level (c) (as commentary) to perceive a thread that runs
through the story (in (b)) of events. Maureen Dowd, for example, bites wide and deep into the
trend of the times. And then we sit back to meditate on what all this means, in (d) level.
Why, however, do we have to bother reading a story on all four levels? Can‘t we just
learn how things happened in the 911 Incident ((a)) and just see that the Incident amounts to a
terrorist attack on the American soil, and Americans must retaliate in kind ((b))? The answer
126
is a somber serious No.
In fact, our interpretive exercises on all four levels are not idle armchair speculations but
127
absolutely essential for our survival, on pain of cosmic catastrophe. This point can be

125 See my On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1998.
126 The first somber story below shows that stopping at [a] and [b] worsens terrorism.
127 Confucius said (2/15), ―Study and not think, then blank-folly; think and not study, then at-the-brink-of-fall,‖ to
clearly assert the necessity of combining levels [a] + [b] (study) with levels [c] + [d ] (think).
 From Oneself to the Music Together 323

visibly borne out by three tragic story-examples below. The first two are close at hand,
another no less close but more patently pervasive. All these three stories ripple out world
tragedies in our failure to think through, with care and sensitivity, what the story-incidents
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((a)) that we see as such-and-such ((b)) mean ((c)), and mean for us now ((d)).
Here is the first somber ―story‖ (level (a)). During the Christmas and New Year of 2003-
4, several Europe-to-USA flights were cancelled; then the 1/7/2004 news-report said that
France and Germany were looking for passengers who booked the flights and failed to appear
at the airports. We at once understand the story at level (b); the West‘s alert system worked.
Tragically, however, no one in the West, much less Bush, cared to go to levels (c) and
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(d). The invisible ―terrorists‖ tried and failed this time, and will try again to use our
airplanes, a fruit of the West‘s money-terror, mixed with their blood, to spectacularly
advertise mass blood-terror—to tell us something. What is their message? This is level-(c).
What does their message mean to us? What should be our response besides trying to smash
them? This is level-(d).
Sadly, our interpretive failure, (c) and (d), contribute continuously to worsening world
terrorism, our money-terror and their blood-terror, each exacerbating the other. How do we
fail in interpretation levels (c) and (d)? Such terrors did worsen and did spread worldwide.
130
Here is a tragic hermeneutic failure worldwide.
Here is the second sad story. During the 2004 New Year season in Taiwan, a young man
proposed to marry a young lady, who begged off because she learned of his recent affair with
another girl. Enraged, he murdered his beloved lady‘s sister, her roommate and the
roommate‘s boyfriend, inflicted deep wounds on his beloved, and then jumped from the ninth
floor to his death. A note left behind claimed that he was determined not to let his beloved fall
in someone else‘s embrace. This is how the story went, on (a).
We could see on (b) the cause of the tragedy to be his private soul-dependence on his
beloved, whom he desperately needed to be himself; losing her loses him. So we see the
story, on (c); it is the story of the young man‘s self-poverty in other-need. In short, this story
describes a completely private affair ((b) and (c)).
The story blood-teaches us, on (d), further, that privacy is communal; his private decision
harvested several deaths beyond his and his beloved‘s. His self-poverty is not his alone but
pervasively social. ―No man is an Island‖ (John Donne). A baby gives smile all around; one
131
desperate other-need makes dire impacts of life and death on us all. Personal travail is
communal responsibility. Neglect this message of our responsibility, and we harvest deadly
tragedies all around. Staying in (b) and (c), we get individualism that is a deathtrap.

128 In the so-called ―news analysis‖ Eric Sevareid, Daniel Schorr, and Washington Post tell stories predominantly
on level [b] and just a bit of [c], if at all.
129 They indeed did on Christmas Eve, 2009, aborted by an astute passenger.
130 Similarly, the phrase ―crimes against humanity‖ we casually brandish about needs four levels of deliberation.
[a] We are surprised at seeing it everywhere, in USA (against the Indians), Germany (the holocaust), Spain,
Japan, Korea, China, India, Africa, Russia, Eastern Europe, etc. [b] We are horrifically saddened at the high
cultures coupled with the savagery of inhumanity. [c] We then think of what all this means. Is it a sin?
Akrasia? [d] We shudder at the mystery of our radical evil unspeakable. Until we sink into the fourth level, we
have not understood such crimes against humanity.
131 Similarly, [a] here is a ―birthday party.‖ [b] It is a joy together for someone‘s birth in the past. [c] Why? What
does it mean? Isn‘t it silly to giggle at birth in the distant past? [d] What is so important about someone‘s [a]
birthday and [b] rejoicing together over it? Why not rejoice at someone‘s funeral, celebrate a death-date? We
celebrate at a centenarian‘s funeral for life well lived; why don‘t we celebrate a funeral at any age for the same
reason? Why celebrate births at all? Or deaths?
324 Kuang-ming Wu

Here is the third final story to show how our individualism, translated into technological
corporate selfishness, is a deathtrap of cosmic catastrophe. We first tell ((a)) our sad story of
industrial pollution, now worldwide. Our natural environment is riddled with global warming,
extensive forest clearing, and chemical-infusion on land and sea, to radically change the
climate and decimate species in droves, including the human species.
This story is so sadly familiar that we now silently live with it, resigned under the
hegemony of our wealthy industrial employers. We see ((b)) how the whole trouble originates
in greedy individualism among the industrialists, and we advertise scientific technology to
clean up the environment to reverse the trend into an environment for all species to live
132
together; we scheme to make pan-profit by nature conservancy.
133
Marcel digs with surprising depth into level (c); we extrapolate. Pollution is a gigantic
―metaphysical error,‖ basically misdirected. Pollution originates in taking nature as ―a set of
technical possibilities‖ for human ―conquest of nature‖ to make profit. ―Technical conquest‖
takes nature as an object to exploit, indicating cosmic ―alienation,‖ our radical existential rift
from nature. The rift is pollution; so, we cannot technically un-pollute technical pollution, for
pollution cannot be un-polluted by pollution.
Techniques, polluting or un-polluting, all manipulate mechanically and can never go
beyond (a) and (b) of simply responding to problems piecemeal as they arise while cleverly
manicuring the trees of profit to miss the forest of nature. Manicuring mechanization shows
―machinating mind‖ to ruin humanness (Chuang Tzu); trapped in manipulation, we can never
134
rise to humanity (Heidegger). Species individualism in corporate selfishness mortally seals
itself in the prison of itself separate from nature, to devastate nature for all.
So, actually the situation is worse than physical pollution; technology-obsession is
already a universal species deathtrap; to use techniques alone against technical pollution
worsens it. Technology snaps us out of nature. No baby survives out of mother-milieu; no
spouse lives outside ―each other,‖ ceasing to breathe in their love-air. We dwell in Mother
135
Nature (Heidegger ) as water is no object to the fish swimming in it; treating nature-milieu
as object destroys it to destroy us all, human and non-human. We say on level (d), pan-
technology is metaphysical error to ―technicalize‖ nature into cosmic tragedy.
―Pollution in physical nature‖ shows our radical defect, our life-attitude, shown in turn in
136
―psychological techniques that work.‖ ―Treating‖ mental illness technicalizes a person,
tears a person out of a person; this attitude, even if not actually carried out, pollutes a person
to death. Technical attitude kills the person. We see a surgical operation going flawlessly in a
textbook way, to result in the patient‘s death; it‘s all the fault of the patient. Nature is

132 Cf. Kent Gilbreath, ed., Business and the Environment: Toward Common Ground, Washington, D. C.: The
conservation Foundation, 1984.
133 I here variously quoted from The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, op. cit., pp. 240-243.
134 Chuang Tzu 12/56, David Farrell Krell, ed., Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, HarperSanFrancisco, 1977, pp.
243-317. This is not to oppose technology but technical mindset, taking all problems to be machine-handle-
able. We will soon see the ―divine‖ ―heavenly‖ skills of those-in-nature, in Chuang Tzu (chapters 1, 3, 19), as
praised in Japan.
135 Heidegger‘s ―dwelling‖ is everywhere on his pages. His Being and Time is full of it (cf. Joan Stambaugh tr.,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 434, Index on ―dwelling‖), his later poetry revolves
around it (Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Albert Hofstadter, NY: Harper and Row, 1971). His dwelling
indicates my ―milieu‖ in sections above, ―Kids, Dawn, Milieu,‖ ―Storytelling Rhymes With the Situation, Our
Milieu,‖ and ―Self-ed and Self-less Milieus.‖
136 I shiver at A Guide to Treatments That Work, eds., P. E. Nathan and J. M. Gorman, Oxford, 1998.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 325

Motherly Milieu, as personal as our mothers. Technologically ―treating‖ nature as object

denatures it to kill nature, living species, and ourselves.
Fish cannot survive in polluted water, and fish polluting its water commits suicide. We
will be quite painfully surprised to feel how impossible it is to dwell in nature as we pollute it
with our technology, as technology ―deals with it‖ to kill it. We cannot technically deal with
nature to dwell in nature as home; we must dwell in nature to be at home there and in
ourselves. It requires more than technology to heal pollution done by technology; we need a
revolution of our own overall life-attitude to cure our ―metaphysical error‖ (Marcel).
―Ecology‖ is a revolution of attitude, from one of technical manipulation to proudly snip
ourselves out of nature to objectively deal with nature, toward dwelling in nature as dwelling
in our Mother-Milieu where we are at home to nourish our beings. We would now treasure
her and appreciate her while we adjust her as our motherly milieu our home with our lives-
with-technical-hands, as we adjust ourselves into being her children in reverential love of her.
Now, technology cannot un-pollute pollution, but our life-with-technical-hands can adjust
Mother Nature back pristine alive; thus, the situations and ways of using technics differ while
technics remains identical. ―What is going on here?‖ Well, the same composition results in
one sort of music when performed by one group of musicians, and entirely another sort by
another group. All physicians are not created equal, nor are all pharmacologists. Infants know
only too well that the ―same‖ feeding in a nursery is not at all their own Mom nursing them at
home. No feeding is alike by different feeders.
By the same token, mechanical technology is not quite our human technical hands
lovingly tending Mother Nature where all species thrive as members of one cosmic family.
We have learned how concretely we can do so as we observed Japan‘s agrarian science and
137
technology ; here technology is part of nature, to wit, part of ourselves and of physical
nature, thereby empowers us to be one of natural operations of Mother Nature, and then we
138
can do everything at will. Such performances are ―divine,‖ ―heavenly.‖ Nature now does
naturing itself through our hands.
139
A homograph of a Chinese character, ―ch‟ing 情,‖ elucidates this situation as it is
illuminated by it. We now know how it can mean objective reality (e.g., ch‟ing shih 情實)
and subjective feeling (e.g., ch‟ing kan 情感), as the bird-milieu has the birds there and the
birder here. The situation of ―heartfelt co-presence‖ aptly describes the milieu of subjectively
felt objective presence that nestles and nourishes; this character describes the reality of how
real heartfelt co-presence is an overall objective situation of inter-subjectivity, to nurture
subjective integrities.
This situational unity tells us that after all a ―situation‖ is shown by the character, ―ch‘ing
情,‖ unifying the objective fact of where we are with the subjective fact of how we feel.
When our heartfelt presence really presents this true situation, a miracle of inter-making

137 See our section above, ―Agriculture in Technology in Japan, China, and Beyond: The World‘s Post-Industrial
Revolution.‖ It‘s no accident that the Kyoto Accord, that initiates ecologically tangible proposals to industrial
nations, was drafted in Kyoto, Japan.
138 Chuang Tzu 1/28-34, 3/1-12, 19/6-26, etc.
139 Chad Hansen has an objective socio-cultural interpretation of ―qing or ch‘ing‖ (Encyclopedia of Chinese
Philosophy, ed., Antonio S. Cua, NY: Routledge, 2003, pp. 620-622), where he missed this character as the
unity of subjective feeling and objective reality of the situation. His careful documentation of various uses of
the character only deepens this impression. See my review of the volume in Dao: A Journal of Comparative
Philosophy, Summer 2003.
326 Kuang-ming Wu

everyone whole takes place. This subject-object unity is an invincible tonic, quite natural, and
storytelling just performed effects this heartfelt inter-mothering milieu that heals, for story
partakes of the situation ecological, and story-partaking is an initiation, a flowchart, of
technology as the loving hand of human children of Mother Nature.
The attitude-revolution is nowhere more apparent and radical than in psychology, our
science of our self. We now reflect on psychology in general in four levels of interpretation.
Psychology today so leans on empirical (a)/(b) levels as to exclude interpretive (c)/(d) ―what‖
and ―how related‖ problems, such as what psyche is. Is our psyche a behavior pattern, feeling,
knowing, or consciousness, or what else? How are feeling, knowing, behaving, and
consciousness related?
140
David Burns‘ ―cognitive behavioral therapy‖ toward ―feeling good‖ adjusts the
client‘s cognitive perspective to tune bad feelings good. Asked why it works, he would say
that feeling follows knowing, so adjusting knowing adjusts feeling. Has he reflected on this
assumption, though? Doesn‘t knowing also follow feeling, such that cold calculation—isn‘t it
also ―a mental disorder‖?—can/should be tempered/guided by humane feeling? Is this
tempering, ―cognitive behavioral therapy‖ or ―emotional behavioral therapy‖? What is
―emotional intelligence‖?
More basically, is Burns sure that knowing and feeling are related, and how is the relation
structured? Do we call this interactive unity the human ―psyche‖? What is psyche? Besides
the questions of why it works (if it does) and what it amounts to (adjustment of psyche?), he
must consider for what purpose he is doing this, what ―healing‖ means. Why is good feeling
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preferable to bad one that conduces to Van Gogh-creativity more than good feeling of
common folks achieving nothing?
All these are questions on (c)/(d) levels bypassed in the heat of immediate business of
―healing‖ people. Without such reflection on the (c)/(d) levels his therapy is just a hit-and-run
technique, a psychological engineering without interpretive roots, prospering branches and
leaves, if they prosper at all, without the trunk and root called ―psyche‖ and ―psychology‖ its
study; isn‘t ―psychology‖ the study of psyche more than ―healing,‖ whatever it means?
It is similar with Skinner who proposed that human psyche parallels pigeon‘s, both
subject to behavioral conditioning. All his experiments proceed on this assumption; is he sure
his assumption is accurate? Is ―parallel to pigeons‖ same as ―being identical to pigeons‖?
Skinner lacks reflections on the interpretive (c)/(d) levels on what being human means, and
missed the value-complexity of human life, as evinced by above critique of Burns‘ cognitive
142
behavioral therapy.

140 David D. Burns, Feeling Good: A New Mood Therapy, NY: A Plume Book, 1980, 1999.
141 How were ―mental disturbances‖ of John F. Nash (b. 1928) related to his Nobel Prize accomplishments, and
―personal instability‖ of Kurt Gödel to accomplishments that won his Albert Einstein Award? How did Dr.
William C. Minor, a graduate of Yale Medical School and a murderer confined in an ―insane asylum,‖ come to
be the most devoted contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary? (―Nash, John Forbes,‖ The Columbia
Encyclopedia, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 1952.) John W. Dawson, Jr., Logical Dilemmas: The
Life and Work of Kurt Gödel, Wellesley, MA: M. K. Peters, 1997. David Goldman, ―Shocking, Lurid, and
True: Doctor, Scholar, Murderer: The Strange Tale of Dr. Minor and the OED,‖ Biography, July 2003, pp. 22,
98.) And the list goes on.
142 Cf. An important debate between Brand Blanshard and B. F. Skinner in their essay, ―The Problem of
Consciousness: A Debate,‖ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, May 1967, reprinted in Philosophy
Today, No. 2, edited by Jerry H. Gill, NY: Macmillan, 1969, pp. 183-208.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 327

Freud is risky for opposite reasons; he (a) proposed our psyche to structured as Superego,
Ego, and Id, whose harmony is psychic health, and (b) the present psychic situation as
resulted from past one. Both gather to make ―psychoanalysis‖ to dig into past to get at where
psychic imbalance began, to begin there to restore harmony. All this may be at the
interpretive (c)/(d) levels. But is this view feasible or ―accurate‖? Is psychoanalysis practical,
practicable? He lacks these probes in the empirical (a)/(b) levels.
Today, psychology is popularly identified with counseling, which is identified with what
works. Both these identifications are questionable, for psychology as science—knowledge—
is not counseling as social work, nor is counseling just for what works, whatever ―what
works‖ means. Here is a telling example. A lady came to a counseling clinic desiring to be
desensitized to her husband‘s infidelity.
Her counselor does have several means to comply, such as cognitive behavioral therapy,
behavioral conditioning, and/or drugs (psychopharmacology). But should it be done? Do we
feel the specter of a dictator ―correcting‖ political dissidents in psychiatric ward? Why is it all
right to do it? Do we have a better alternative to simple desensitizing? What does ―better‖
mean here? Here is the core of human psyche for counseling; here we enter ethics that is part
and parcel of human culture and humanistic sciences, without which humanity ceases to be.
Someone protests, ―All right, if you are so smart at complaining, in quest of the true
mission of psychology, do it yourself.‖ OK, let me try. Psychology studies soul, thereby soul-
143
heals, but healing144 does not always make us ―feel good‖ singing, ―O, what a beautiful
145
morning, what a beautiful day! I‘ve got a beautiful feeling, everything going my way!‖
―Healing‖ should instead mean making-whole our existence. To ex-ist is to stand-out of
the surrounding as uniquely itself, and unique out-standing creates things fresh, novel, and
outstanding. All these points conspire to claim that ―healing‖ makes whole our existence for
its maximum creativity.
This description of healing allows geniuses to be eccentric to be creative, and far from
―repairing‖ them, facilitates all defects, injuries, and obstacles to become part and parcel of
maximum creativity of one‘s own. Psychology would free Van Gogh to feel however he feels
146
to enter his paintings, and let Beethoven be freely deaf toward his Ninth Symphony.
In all this, unique human creativity stands out against its humus, what is common, an
ordinary communal lifestyle, ―culture‖; psychology that makes-whole human creative soul is
intimately couched in culture our perspective, mind-frame, and behavior pattern.
Psychological counseling is intercultural, a cultural mutuality between counselor and client,
to yield their cultural inter-readjustments to maximize creativity of both parties in their
respective cultures of hang-ups and idiosyncrasies, as in culturally pluralistic USA where
counseling originated and prospers.

143 Psychology as psyche-study is related to psychotherapy, soul-healing; the latter visibly ciphers the former,
while they differ. The one is not the other.
144
Here I accommodate the prevalent view that psychology involves if not being equivalent to counseling and
healing, though I do not really agree. Psychology is the science (-ology), i.e., knowledge, of what psyche is.
145 Cf. Dan Greenburg with Marcia Jacobs, How to Make Yourself Miserable, NY: Random House, 1966.
146 How? Well, we often can see how a style of political performance shows a personal biography. If we can chart
how a specific musical excellence shows a specific personality and its biography, then we can, Freud-like,
relate Beethoven‘s biographical thrust to him to enhance his musical creativity, and design ―musical therapy‖
for Beethoven with Beethoven. Similarly with ―painterly therapy‖ for Van Gogh with Van Gogh,
―mathematical therapy‖ for Kurt Gödel with Kurt Gödel, etc.
328 Kuang-ming Wu

Now, in China ―thinking‖ ―reads stories,‖ understands their meanings ((c)) and their
significance ((d)), not just recites what they say ((b)), much less just check on their historical
accuracy ((a)). Story-thinking includes not just capturing what the stories say ((a)) and what
they amount to ((b)), but also what they mean ((c)) and what they mean for us ((d)). ―China‘s
story-thinking‖ includes all four levels of understanding the situation storytelling present,
with a stress on the latter two interpretive levels.
Further, the four levels interpenetrate into a hermeneutic circle as a mythological Snake
147
biting its own tail, to compose story-thinking. Discerning ((c) and (d)) a story‘s meaning is
substantiated by the solidity of its textual criticism ((a), (b)); accurate textual criticism ((a))
and exposition ((b)) of a story is directed and guided by how apt and discerning our
understanding of its meaning ((c)) and its significance ((d)) is. Such is to ―read a story,‖ to
148
―read‖ a situation told by story, to do story-thinking, to do Chinese philosophy.
We now see, in this light, that many who claim to be ―Chinese philosophers‖ are neither
Chinese nor philosophers-in-China. They are not Chinese because they do not take stories
seriously, but just check on their texts. They are not Chinese philosophers because they do
not ponder on stories and their life-significance; they just argue, and leave by the roadside
stories and what they point to, their meanings. They are no Chinese for they do not
understand stories; they are not philosophers for they do not understand stories but just
analyze them or argue without them.
Let us be specific. First, they stop at levels (a) and (b)—of plain textual and exegetical
149
scrutiny of historical documents on cultural ideas, or else, they skip (a) and (b) and
―logically parse‖ Chinese statements that pass as ―philosophical‖ in Western analytical,
anthropological way. Then, they do three sorts of philosophizing.
One, they end up unconsciously imposing their ready-to-hand thinking-mode onto China;
Western philosophers do so who claim to be ―cosmopolitan.‖ Two, they blindly tout
150
conventional Western thinking pattern ; as do China-enthusiasts in Asia and the West who

147 Professional historians of ideas excoriated Heidegger to have gone all-wrong in interpreting pre-Socratics,
Plato, Aristotle, and medieval thinkers. Heidegger could have retorted that it is they who need to examine their
assumptions as they spin out their ―orthodox‖ interpretations, and that Heidegger was simply keen to expose
and correct their wrong assumption, although Heidegger on his part should reveal the rationale of his
interpretation that looks so idiosyncratic.
148 Cut such inter-involvement of all four levels, and we harvest a disaster. With no [c] or [d], Wing-tsit Chan‘s
verbally correct translations, stuck on [a], are as coke de-zinged, and his explications of notions on [b] are as
insipid. Waley and the Ames-Rosemont team over-interpret and add/cut too much. Lau and Lin Yutang waver
between Chan and Waley, sometimes missing too much, sometimes adding too much. The fact is that Chinese
sentences mean with their rhythm and cadence; their sense ties in with their sound-resonance, and so a literal
translation mistranslates, and a literary one over-translates. See my ―Sound, Sight, Sense,‖ in History,
Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 125-174. Heidegger cannot be translated, they
say; Tao Te Ching and Analects are less capable.
149 No wonder many ivy-league universities in USA relegate ―Chinese philosophy‖ to departments of cultural
anthropology, cultural history, or Asian civilizations—separate from ―philosophy‖ department. Arthur Wright
was correct in saying (1959) that China has no philosophy (in the sense of Stanford logical analysis where he
dwelt). David S. Nivison in the same tradition agreed. Henry Rosemont, Jr. said (1983) that China has no
ethics of an Aristotelian systematic sort. H. G. Creel and Wing-tsit Chan criticized Wright-Nivison and
Rosemont, yet none said what ―Chinese philosophy‖ is, not just as convention or thought in China. I reacted to
them all in ―中國哲學的共相問題,‖ 哲學論評, 臺大哲學系印行, 八十年一月, pp. 1-23, On Chinese Body
Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp. 207-208, On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A
Cultural Hermeneutic, same press, 1998, pp. 304, 305, 435. Here I continue my reply.
150 Or they criticize it from Western conventional philosophical perspective. I was heartbroken at the otherwise
impressive scholarship in A. C. Graham‘s massive Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science, The Chinese
 From Oneself to the Music Together 329

claim to represent some revolutionary waves of new contemporary Confucianism or Taoism

151
in Asia and in the West. Three, they do both above; some ―Chinese philosophers‖ today—
both Chinese and non-Chinese—combine the two.
152
In all these activities, not only do they miss the Chinese forest for the textual trees ;
they take the trees as the forest. Worse, they misidentify the Chinese trees as belonging to a
forest in the West, which for them is the only ―philosophy‖-forest there is. All this is the
result of missing interpretation on all four levels, not just the former critical-exegetical two
((a), (b)) or just the latter expository-hermeneutic two ((c), (d)) in one‘s own way, Western.
Of course true exegesis—reading-out—of a text cannot be guaranteed even if we have
gone through all four levels of reading, but a lack of one or more of these four levels
153
guarantees ―eisegesis,‖ reading into the text our ideas. Scholarship in and on China and
Japan is consistently blind to this trap.
This truncated phenomenon is not confined to China. Any undertaking that claims to be a
―conscientious‖ historical scrutiny of the historical texts of any philosopher, Western or not,
154
can easily fall into this interpretive trap. Here there is no mythological -hermeneutic Snake
biting its own tail—or if there is, they take the Snake as of only their sort. The result is tragic.
To elucidate the above point, we tell two telling examples from the West, one on
Wolfson‘s ―reading‖ of Spinoza, another on Black‘s ―defense‖ of Wittgenstein. We cite
examples from the West because we usually take its exegetical scholarship to be so carefully,
lucidly, objective that it is free of prejudicial assumptions or omission of important matters.
Particularly tragic is that both Wolfson and Black are well-known scholars, well-known for
their scrupulous objectivity and care.
155
Our first sad story is Wolfson‘s celebrated ―reading‖ of Spinoza‘s thoughts ―behind‖
Ethics. Wolfson prefaced his almost 800 scrupulous pages of commentary on Spinoza‘s

University Press, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London, 1978. He simply ignores Mo Tzu‘s incorrigibly concrete terms and their poetic cadence, and
logically parses Mo Tzu‘s rhythmic sayings in a customary Western way. See his ―Chinese Logic‖ in The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, NY: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1967, IV: 523-525. All
this ruins the subtleties of ―Chinese logic.‖
151 Half of articles in Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, ed. Antonio S. Cua (NY: Routledge, 2003) are on
levels [a] and [b] alone, and the other half proceed on the assumption that ―philosophy‖ is of Western sort,
nothing else. See my review of it in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Summer 2003. I am yet to see
―Chinese philosophy‖-essays that criticize my volumes that try to include all four levels of this story-
philosophy of China, to strike out as distinctively Chinese. These ―Chinese philosophers‖ simply take
philosophy in China to consist only in the first two levels of [a] and [b], and identify [c] and [d] with Western
sort.
152 Bernard J. F. Lonergan stressed how crucial such a forest-missing is (Insight: A Study of Human Understanding
(1957), NY: Philosophical Library, 1970). He began his 784 pp. by saying that all clues in the world cannot
give us the criminal unless we use ―organizing intelligence that places the full set of clues in a unique
explanatory perspective.‖ (Preface) ―Insight‖ here means holistic perception or synthetic judgment. R. G.
Collingwood also uses a detective story to say the same point on ―historical reason‖ (The Idea of History,
Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 243, 266-268, 281-282, 320). Such is how organizing perception functions,
without which we can look but cannot see, as Jesus said (Matthew 13:14). This is the area of levels [c] and [d]
where our unique humanity is manifested, to cooperate with computers that excel in levels [a] and [b].
153 This word appears in Oxford English Dictionary, V.102.
154 ―Mythological‖ can of course mean ―storytelling‖-sort.
155 Wolfson‘s opinion is so weighty that it is placed as the beginning essay in Grene‘s anthology on Spinoza. See
Marjorie Grene, ed., Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, Anchor Books, 1973, pp. 3-24.
330 Kuang-ming Wu

slender volume by announcing what his ―systematic search‖ for its ―basic (and valid)‖
156
understanding consists of. He said,

The first step, the basic step, . . . is the determination by the method of historical criticism
of what the philosopher meant by what he said, how he came to say what he said, and why he
said it the manner in which he happened to say it. It is this threefold task that we have . . . in
the present study of Spinoza. Now, the historico-critical method really means the
presupposition that in any text . . . there is a . . . dual authorship—an explicit author
(Benedictus), who expresses himself in . . . conventional symbols . . . and an implicit author
(Baruch), whose unuttered thoughts furnish . . . the material for grasping the full significance
of those symbols . . . (W)e cannot get the full meaning of what Benedictus says unless we
know what has passed through the mind of Baruch. . . . (We) construct the arguments (and)
the criticism and . . . show how (they) underlie the statements . . . in the Ethics (which
thereby) emerges as (having) order and . . . continuity (to) assume meaning. . .

Wolfson‘s purpose in his commentary is to find Baruch-ideas hid ―behind‖ Benedictus of

geometrical proofs—by way of textual-historical criticism. Wolfson‘s comments well
elucidate the relation between level (a) of Benedictus that level (b) of hidden Baruch
supports.
Suppose however we ask him why he has to bother doing all that ((d)), and what basis he
has for claiming his interpretation to be ―the first step, the basic step‖ and bias-free ((c)). And
157
he would be unable to answer on levels (a) and (b), in which alone his reading operates.
The answer must come from levels (c) and (d). Staying at (a) and (b) makes a well-read
158
ignoramus, ―Analects-read, Analects-dumb.‖ This ignorance is what dictatorship wishes to
159
enforce and maintain in the name of pure scholarship. Guthrie‘s words recur:

A recent writer has remarked on the powerful impact which has always been made by
fresh and immediate contact with the great minds of ancient Greece. More than once it has
proved an inspiration to struggles for political freedom, so much so that the authorities of
Czarist Russia, unable to suppress classical studies entirely, sought to combat their
revolutionary effect by confining them to the harmless channel of the textual exegesis of a few
selected authors instead of allowing them the more dangerous outlet of education in ancient
political theory.

This description replicates the situation of textual critical studies imposed on the scholars
in China during the Ch‘ing Dynasty days.

156 Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning, (two
volumes in one), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934, 1983, pp. vii-viii.
157 Wolfson did cite four uses to which his volume can be put. It can be a systematic presentation of the philosophy
of Spinoza, a commentary to his Ethics, a companion volume with other standard works of studies of Spinoza,
and a study of development of basic problems in the history of philosophy (ibid., pp. viii-ix). But what is it
that links his ―fundamental‖ textual-critical studies to those uses? We need consideration on levels [c] and [d]
to supply the link.
158 ―論語讀みの論語知らず‖ is a Japanese saying, quite bitter and well-known.
159 W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophist, Cambridge at the University Press, 1971, p. 1. This point underlies the
importance of classical textual studies that refuse to be confined to textual scrutiny alone. The remark of ―a
recent writer‖ refers to H. G. Graham‘s ―The Classics in the Soviet Union,‖ Classical World, LIV (1960-61),
p. 107.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 331

In fact, any sensitive conscientious textual ((a)) exposition ((b)) cannot help but bleed
interpretation ((c), (d)). Fingarette (in Confucius: The Secular as Sacred) and Richards (in
160
Mencius on the Mind) rise to the sensitive level of (c). That‘s why they are justly famous,
strongly indicating the importance of levels (c) and (d). Max Black‘s commentary-labor on
Wittgenstein‘s Tractatus considered in our previous section, ―Relativism as Storytelling,‖
shrewdly mixes interpretive critiques with expositions, on level (c).
Alas, however, Black missed Wittgenstein‘s rise beyond mere logical analysis, for
Black‘s defense of Wittgenstein‘s last declaration, ―throw away the ladder,‖ remains at
elucidating the usefulness of the ladder of logic, not the what and the why of the throw-
161
away. This is a crucial mistake on level (d) because this is the grand conclusion of the
whole Tractatus and, in fact, all Wittgenstein‘s writings can be said to turn on this pivot.
162
Black is thus fixated on levels (a) and (b) to miss this pivot, however far Black goes on
(c). Or rather, unless gone all the way to (d), going to (c) is just a report of (a) and (b). To
miss this pivot, the throw-away of the ladder, misses Wittgenstein; missing (d) misses all (a),
(b), and (c). Why, then, did Wittgenstein throw away the ladder? What does the throw-away
mean? This questioning pursues ―reading‖ of Wittgenstein on level (d). The answer lies in
where he is now, after the throw-away. Where is he?
Confucius said (2/17), ―‗Know‘ as ‗know,‘ ‗not know‘ as ‗not know,‘ this is to know.‖
He gives us two sorts of knowing. Know-1 takes known as known, unknown as unknown;
know-2 knows about all this. Know-2 that knows know-1 goes beyond know-1, yet know-2
needs know-1 to go beyond it, and know-1 is known as know-1, only thanks to know-2. We
need know-1 to realize know-2, and need know-2 to realize that know-1 exists. Throwing-
away (know-2) needs a thing (know-1) to throw away; only after throwing-away (know-2) do
we know the thing as a thrown-away (know-1). Each needs the other.
Socrates goes negatively to warn us (know-2) against pretending to know the not-know
(know-1), against ignoring knowing ―not know as not know.‖ This is to warn against ignoring
know-2. Lao Tzu goes a positive way to say (know-2), ―Tao tao-able is not Always Tao‖; we
must know that only by negating tao-able Tao, can we attain the Always Tao. Then, warning
thus, Tao Te Ching expounds (know-1) on tao-able Tao, expounded (know-1) only after
disavowing tao-able Tao (know-2), as Wittgenstein climbs the logic-ladder (know-1) before
kicking it away (know-2).
We now know what Wittgenstein, Confucius, Socrates, and Lao Tzu have all been
pointing at. They want us to climb up on the ladder, realize the know-1, to avoid ignoring
know-2, and to scrupulously go through know-1, tao-able Tao, in order to throw it away to go
beyond to know-2, the Always Tao.
The ladder and the know-1 are levels (a) and (b); the throw-away and the know-2 are
levels (c) and (d). They all warn us against ignoring know-2 and affirm the importance of
levels (c) and (d). On (c) and (d) alone can we understand the importance of Wittgenstein‘s
throw-away, not just his ladder. Going this far, we can now say we have ―read‖ Wittgenstein;
we would have otherwise fixated on (a) and (b) to miss Wittgenstein.

160 Sadly, Richards and Fingarette did [c]/[d] in Western way, due to their neglect of Chinese [a]/[b].
161 For Black, the throw-away of logic is itself logical, so the throw-away amounts to just a rung of the ladder. It
amounts to Black leaving the throw-away undefended, or else Wittgenstein throwing away no ladder at all.
162 All logical analyses of Wittgenstein without this point are an exercise in futility, going nowhere. They are
fixated at the ladder and can neither climb up nor down, much less throw it away.
332 Kuang-ming Wu

―But why do we have to do all this? Any cash value in life to going to (c) and (d)?‖
Asking this question leads us further. Our three devastating stories above on terrorists, the
young man, and pollution, boil down to this basic answer, ―We all must grow up.‖
Wittgenstein must climb up on his ladder to throw it away, to go up further. Socrates in the
Meno must hermeneutically dig deep into the slave boy‘s recollection, to lead that boy to new
truths, for Plato in turn to soar up to the Heaven of the Forms beyond actuality here now.
Likewise, Confucius (7/5) must cease to dream of the tradition of the Duke Chou to go
beyond, for Neo-Confucians to go further beyond. Chuang Tzu‘s Wheelwright (13/68-74)
taught his Lord that the words of the great dead are scum, and this story itself was scum to
lead us beyond. The word-trap of Lao Tzu must be used to catch the intention of the rabbit of
life, the Always Tao alive in Chuang Tzu‘s free roaming (26/48).
163
Let us put it another way. Wittgenstein must play the game with the conventional
grammar. We freely use words as we invent new rules of word-game, to mean new sense. Our
free use of words breaks conventional rules, twisting them to the breaking point to hit the
point, and yet all of us with Wittgenstein must continue to use old words and old rules to
break them to hit the point.
As we grow up and climb up, we keep climbing up on the ladder as we keep throwing it
away. The ladder is ever with us as we throw it away. Words must be forever with us as we
keep discarding them. Words must be forgotten to be useful to go beyond them, and all this
while words are with us useful, as forgotten. Without forgetting and discarding words, words
are useless, and yet words are useful only while they are with us.
Now we can respond to Chuang Tzu‘s call (26/49), ―How can I find one word-forgotten
to word with?‖ How? Well, we cannot listen to music unless performed, yet performer who
calls our attention to her ―excellence‖ is no performer, for we want music, not her; as she buts
164
in, music vanishes. We cannot read an essay in foreign language unless translated, yet the
165
translator who buts in with her ―excellence‖ is no translator. Performer-translator must
vanish (ladder kicked away) to be of use. Their integrity is their not-existing.
The finger ((a)/(b)) points to the moon ((c)/(d)) to forget the finger itself, so as to attend
to the moon (attending to finger blocks moon), yet we need finger to attend to the moon (we

163 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1953, etc.,
1997, §§7, 81, 83, 182.
164 Many performers today use music to display their excellence, not use their excellence to make music. They
don‘t realize that only making music truly displays them; their self-display kills their excellence. Since the
loud tends to stand out, loud is a special challenge to music-making, and the soft comes naturally to it. No
wonder the display-supreme performers avoid soft ―dull‖ parts of the composition, and they perform the loud
so violently as to destroy music. In this regard, Lindsay String Quartet is a marvel in their subtle sensitive
blend of loud and soft to bring out Beethoven (Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets, 10 CD-set,
Academy Sound and Vision Recording, 1979, Musical Heritage Society, 1997), though they shaped Haydn too
much as to ruin him, The Lindsays: Haydn: String Quartets Op. 50, Nos. 1-3, ASV: Musical Heritage Society.
Sadly, we hear ―Xin Jiang Ming Ge‖ (BMG Hong Kong, Ltd., 2003), folksongs in the remote Xin Jiang region
of China, sing Western music set to Chinese tunes, so Westernized in structure and in singing style. Here is
Americanized Chinese musical cuisine, neither Chinese nor American.
165 Performers today display their cutting mechanical accuracy to loudly intrude into the music to erase it.
Likewise, Arthur Waley‘s literary excellence tends to get in the way of understanding the original. See
complaints he cited in Three Ways of Thoughts in Ancient China, op. cit., pp. vi-vii and Edward G.
Seidensticker, tr., Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, p. xiv.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 333

don‘t know where to look without the finger). The finger must be discarded without
166
discarding; it must be there without being there, must be there tacitly.
The finger is our ladder to climb up, our trap to catch rabbits, and our words to get what
is intended. We must ignore the finger to see the moon, kick the ladder to go beyond, discard
the trap to have the rabbits, and forget the words to see the intended. We need them as they
disappear, that is, discarded and forgotten. Thus we forget words to word with word-forgetter
167
without word-obstruction. Lao Tzu in self-wiping vanishes with Tao Te Ching, now a
168
finger pointing at the Tao-Moon beyond all, to illuminate all here now.
This tacit disappearance of storytelling-(a) in the story-(b), and of the story in its
169
understanding-(c, d), is performative ―silence,‖ twofold. First, story in levels (a)/(b)
vanishes into (c)/(d) to support them; expository hermeneutic (c)/(d) is based on critical
exegesis of (a)/(b) to understand the story‘s text. Then, critical-exegetical (a)/(b) text-scrutiny
needs direction-criterion in (c)/(d). What is a goal of textual scrutiny, what counts as a valid
harvest, and when/how is textual research ―achieved‖—these questions lead research in sure
steps to guide to a definite goal.
Thus (a) and (b) are the invisible basis of (c) and (d), as (c) and (d) are the ineffable guide
to (a) and (b). They gather into a storytelling Snake biting its own hermeneutic tail, a tacit
―hermeneutic circle‖ to understand a story, the story of life, a self-recursive hermeneutic to
rewrite ―history‖ and provoke ―science‖ into revolution. The process goes on170 as (c) and (d)
shift to change ranges of (a), vary vistas of (b), and, conversely, as these changes of (a) and
(b) redound to further multifaceted revisions of (c) and (d). Such is story-thinking self-
recursive to press ahead into history.
All this inter-involving process is a long story of human history stretching far back into
Socrates, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Chuang Tzu, and beyond. We have told their stories to
learn from them, to play with them, to climb up on them, and then throw them away as
―scum‖ to move on forward—with them now reenacted anew, again and again. Reenactment
is life‘s exercise in levels (c) and (d) built on them in (a) and (b), to freely engage (a)/(b)
based on (c)/(d).

166 Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) who devoted his whole life to elucidating the ―tacit dimension‖ of knowledge
may not have realized its intercultural-exegetical significance.
167 John the Baptist said, ―Behold, the Lamb of God!‖ His two disciples then left him to follow Jesus. John was
happy, saying, ―He must increase, and I must decrease.‖ Jesus needed John to take off, and then John
vanished. (John 1:19-37, 3:26-30) John was human words pointing to the Word of God. Prophets (forth-tellers
of God) point to God, while cult leaders point to themselves. This is why John was greater than the greatest of
cult leaders. (Matthew 11:11)
168 In The Tale of a Bamboo-Cutter, Taketori Monogatari 竹取物語, Lady Dazzling Night (Kaguya Hime 赫夜姬)
goes up to the moon, with her love of this world. The Lady belongs to the moon, beauty beyond here now. The
Tale is a ―cruel loveless‖ finger to the moon, love and beauty beyond this-worldly ―they lived happily ever
after,‖ to illuminate this world with love. We cannot help but remember human passionate tenderness in the
Song of Songs that expresses God‘s extreme love of humanity. Their connection is the conclusive phrase,
―love is as strong as death‖ (8:6); human love dies to revive in God‘s love deathly intense, shown on Jesus‘
cross. No commentary has touched on this crucial point; 8:6 does not appear in William G. Cole, Sex and Love
in the Bible, NY: Association Press, 1959. But read the matter-of-fact Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1977, pp. 671-672; I do not know how Pope could contain his feelings on such a matter.
169 Wording is fulfilled in its silence. This point concludes our entire essay on storytelling in story-thinking.
170 This process cannot be a smooth going, a straight ―progress,‖ because of repeated self-recursive revolutions,
back and forth, over and over again.
334 Kuang-ming Wu

We have surveyed above on the limits and prospects of research works on levels (a) and
171
(b). We now realize the reason why we must go further up to level (d), as we considered
Fingarette and Richards‘ labors on (c) in ―§ Writing China in English‖ above, where we tried
to reflect on
(α) how the way Westerners tackle Chinese texts differs from the way Chinese people do
them,
(α) what we all can inter-learn from these differences (logical/analytical vs.
literary/historical), and
(β) how indispensable such inter-culturalism is for our living now (to be sensible and
sensitive to living).
I have in my small way been trying to cover all these four levels of reading China‘s
―story-thinking philosophy‖; it is ―cultural hermeneutic.‖ All this is what ―reading‖ a story
entails/means. We would have not really read a story, if we stop and confine ourselves
anywhere short of all these four levels, ever inter-involving—textual, exegetical, expository,
and hermeneutic.
This fourfold circular hermeneutics of life-story typifies ―beauty‖ that tacitly, silently,
reigns supreme in the lifeworld to lead us beyond us. We see how beauty does so before
unifying the music of things and their storytelling in silence to round up our whole meditation
on storytelling in story-thinking.

BEAUTY SUPREME
Beauty is one of life‘s primal notions indefinable that self-evidently defines everything,
including itself. Beauty is profound and pervasive, a specific overall sensibility. We will go
straight to what/how beauty does, its universal impact in life, to obliquely see what it is, in
two points, (A) beauty co-throws things into their joining, their grand togetherness, and (B) it
is a basic dynamics, the vanguard, to promoting the true, the good, and the religious beyond.
(A) Beauty the joint: Beauty is often said to be symbolic. ―Symbol‖ is a tri-faceted
dynamics. It ―co-throws (sun-ballein)‖ disparate things into one pot, bridges things mutually
unrelated, into a unity of all in all. Symbol as verb co-throws things into one another; as a
bridge, symbol as co-throwing gathers all things into one; as a product, it is a unity of things
co-thrown-in without confusion.
Symbol is thus a cosmic gathering, unity of subject-in-object, object-in-subject, actual in real
and real in actual, to reign unobtrusively supreme in all. How does co-throwing and joining
go? By metaphoring ―as the familiar this, so the unfamiliar that,‖ ―warming up‖ the familiar
old to ―know‖ the unfamiliar novel (Confucius 2/11), only to go ―as the unfamiliar that, made

171 Sadly, Wolfson confidently took his levels of Benedictus and Baruch in ―the method of historical criticism‖ as
those ―upon which any subjective form of interpretation or any literary form of presentation must rest.‖ (ibid.,
p. vii) He in his pride was woefully blind to how much involved his own ―subjective‖ assumptions are in his
supposedly ―objective‖ textual critical methods. Subjective and objective aspects in interpretive probe make a
hermeneutic circle that he missed.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 335

newly familiar, with which to renovate the old familiar this.‖ Such is the joining modus
172
operandi, the symbolizing dynamics, of performative beauty.
(B) Beauty the vanguard of the true, the good, and the religious: Beauty is thus a cosmic
symbol-verb that co-throws all things to join without confusion, and the joining reveals
173
―truth.‖ No wonder later Heidegger had truth as revealment poetizing ; he saw, perhaps
unawares, how beauty reveals truth, and perhaps he stressed truth as the process of
revealment too much to explicate what it is. We can say for him that truth is dynamic beauty
that co-throws things into their unity in their diversity.
Such a unity-diversity is negatively revealed by defective falsehood, violence, as
desperate hunger after the joint of all in all. Its effect is swift and temporary; it repels us by
destroying things. In contrast, beauty-in-action penetrates and attracts us for long, to feed us
to grow. Moreover, we all feel in our bones such a lasting impact of beauty-gathered as
inevitable-necessary, coming from deep in existence itself.
Its necessity is concretely expressed as ―ethical imperative‖; Kant remotely sensed it in
174
the categorical imperative of absolute consistency. We feel the consistency by feeling that
we must join ourselves in ourselves with things to pull all things together in harmony—for we
feel harmony as happiness that lasts, and happily to gather as many enjoyers are possible is
much more enjoyable—beautiful—than being happy alone, as Mill announced without
rationale. Beauty-dynamics is thus the base of morality to fulfill it.
No less significant is beauty as human dynamics to religion the Beyond. Tillich simply
proclaimed that the reason why things must exist, not to be destroyed, is because all things
175
have their Ground of Being in God, and here lies the religious basis of morality. We agree,
but we must explain why it is so. We can take religion as our soaring-up to the Beyond-
human, which is more intelligible to us than God as the Ground of Being below existence. We
can then see how beauty enables us to soar beyond ourselves, on at least six counts.
One, the attraction of beauty lasts long in history beyond all humans living together.
Some beauties last only for a day, but that one day is eternal, thanks to their ―beauty.‖ In fact,
176
to live beautifully one day at a time is to live in eternity. Two, we enhance beauty-
enjoyment by going beyond selfish hoarding; the more people enjoy the beauty of a painting,
a sculpture, or a musical performance, the merrier enjoyment we harvest.
Three, as we transmute what we desire into beauty, be they sex or jewelry, and as we turn
what we dread into beauty, be they snake or war, their beauty goes beyond desire and dread

172 See my On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 1-2 and note 5 there. This entire
volume is on metaphor as explosive dynamics of togetherness, to explicate On the “Logic” of Togetherness,
Leiden: Brill, 1998.
173 Perhaps ―beauty‖ is also an assumptive framework of Chinese thinking. See, e.g., my On Metaphoring, op. cit.,
pp. 519-566, 方東美集, 唐君毅集, 北京: 群言出版社, 1993, and collections of other notable contemporary
thinkers in the same series, 當代新儒學八大家集.
174 This is because consistency is the sine qua non of existence. For anything to exist at all, it must be self-
consistent. Kant should not have abandoned this insight in existence to pursue pure logical consistency,
especially when he goes to the Critique of Judgment.
175 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume Three, University of Chicago Press, 1963, pp. 158-159.
176 Jesus bleeds eternity when he says, ―Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.‖ (Matthew 6:34) ―Today‖ is beyond
our pre-planning, and its ―beyond‖-ness bespeaks the weight of eternity. Thus, during the shortest time in
Buddhism, a kşaņa 一剎那, 90 or 100 are born and die. Both are and have inspired moments of eternal beauty,
as evinced in Zen arts (poetry, paintings) and in William Blake who held ―Eternity in an hour‖ (―Auguries of
Innocence‖).
336 Kuang-ming Wu

that vanish in their beauty. Four, anything turned beautiful confronts us as it is beyond
practical utility. Five, anything turned beautiful embraces us in its inherent being; we live in it
beyond our objective confrontation. Finally, all beauty leads us beyond daily ongoing to
177
provoke self-reflection here now. Thus beauty is the human dynamo that pushes us beyond
to religion.
In short, beauty in action is the vanguard to revealment of all to promote truth as beauty-
gathered, to moral necessity to promote our cosmic harmony and happiness gathered, and to
the religious beyond human limits to promote the joining of this world with the Beyond.
Beauty is the way, the life, and the gist of the true, the good, and the religious, to constitute a
specific overall cultural pattern, to fulfill our world and ourselves.
Let us now take a common concrete example. The vast expanse, ever up above us, we
came to call ―sky‖ and ―heaven‖; all humans are so much under the impact of the vast
Expanse Above that our expressions about It constitute our respective cultures, yet It
threatens to vanish from scientific vocabulary. Its disappearance indicates that It belongs less
to objective investigation than to beauty in deep pervasive impression, ever at the base of
science and of life.
Among the ancient Greeks, the sky was an empty expanse to be filled with Olympian
divines, who are projections of human inner turbulences; the sky was the pantheon arena of
Greek sky-gods, we humans writ large up there, inter-fighting. This fascinating sky-situation
was later transferred into arts (myths, paintings, sculptures, music, dance, etc.), education,
morality, and religions, until it so pervaded the entire Greek culture as to alarm Plato into
curbing them in the name of ―reason.‖
These Greek gods and goddesses were later renamed and enshrined as Romans‘, and
178
reappeared repeatedly in subsequent literature, arts, astrology, psychological complexes,
and heavenly bodies today. What their omnipresence—befitting divinity—in human culture
means is anyone‘s guess. The sky was filled from below often with the basest of human
sentiments among the Greeks and the Romans.
In contrast, the sky was held in awe in China; its unapproachable majesty descended from
above to lift the human world up to the moral heights of social and political decency,
patterned after heavenly law of loftiness. The sky-human relation was an awesome father-
children family, nurtured by Mother Earth; here was a unity of morality and religion in the
imperial Imperative, the Heavenly Mandate to set up a dynasty, for the Son of Heaven (ruler)
179
in absolute filial obedience to the fatherly to care for his Heaven-people (ruled), on pain of
180
inexorable dynastic destruction.
Heaven pervaded all things decent and praiseworthy, as expressed in great ―heavenly
181
music,‖ great ―heavenly skill,‖ and great ―heavenly accomplishments.‖ Chuang Tzu was

177 I irreverently rifled these six points from Tsai Yüan-p‘ei‘s voluptuous essay, ―On Replacing Religion with
Cultivation of Arts‖ Selective Historical Documents from Chinese Aesthetics, Volume Two, Taipei: Kuang-
mei Publisher, 1984, pp. 804-809. (蔡元培, ―以美育代宗教說,‖ 中國美學史資料選編, 下冊,
中國文史資料編輯委員會, 臺北輔新書局, 總經銷: 光美書局, 民國七十三年, pp. 804-809)
178 Cf. Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods: How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford
University Press, 2005.
179 This sentiment impressed Huston Smith so much that he put its classical saying in China as a frontispiece in his
popular volume, The World‟s Religions, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
180 History exhibits this unerring Law of Nature in time, and China is the world‘s most history-conscious culture.
181 Hsün Tzu (17/1ff.) said we must act in heavenly regularity 常, not do-nothing and just rely on Heaven.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 337

182
quite serious when he quipped, ―Heaven inside; human outside‖ (17/50), which makes
183
sense in view of the notion of our constitutive ―heaven nature‖ prevalent among people
and promoted by Confucian gentry.
Now, beauty pervading the good, the socio-political, and the religious makes culture;
beauty pervades all things in a specific way of a specific culture. When we began story-
meditating on religion vs. religions, we saw how naming something (a ―chair‖) names many
things of a specific named sort (―chairs‖). Then, as we story-meditate on beauty, we see how
naming something (vast expanse above as ―heaven‖) names a specific culture (Greek,
Chinese). Hsün Tzu said (Ch. 22), naming shapes and manifests things in a specific named
way, so be careful how we name anything.
Mind you, beauty is specific and concrete, as exemplified by ―sky/heaven.‖ We must then
leave general description of beauty and come back to storytelling itself that is a part of
beauty; here the concrete symbolizes—co-throws—all beauty, as a grain of sand concretizes
the whole universe for us to see (Blake). Storytelling is a sand-crystal, a symbol, of all
beauty. Hear this atom-poem. ―Often I imagine the earth/ through the eyes of the atoms we‘re
184
made of—/ atoms, peculiar/ atoms everywhere—/ . . . no end,/ soaring together like those.‖
Atoms all over mean I-everywhere. A poem made of all my atoms is a compressed story
often cosmic, comprehensive-significant, and, at the same time, as poem it expresses my heart
of being. A poem is thus my heartfelt story of the cosmos singing the universe of things. We
must then consider universals as the music of things.

UNIVERSALS THE MUSIC OF THINGS

Life-story sings with birds the music of things, another life-beauty in daily living, where
things remain silent. Thus the music of things is silent in their storytelling. Silence is
ultimately the music of life and actuality. Silence, things, and names are the primal
storytelling of things, the Music of the Spheres. The universe is silence in and of music,
things making their music together, listening to it together, and living it together. This is the
ultimate of things, things as music together in their storytelling, sung by our storytelling.
Music is related to the names of things. Think of our prejudice. Musician Menuhin said
that some tribes ask, ―How does it sound like?‖,185 while we usually ask, ―What does it look
like?‖, when we want to know about something. Our knowledge is predominantly visual since

182 That ―heaven 天‖ is ―self-so 自然‖ is a common sense in China; even Chuang Tzu, right after saying, ―heaven
is inside,‖ says that ―heaven‖ is ―cattle with four legs.‖ No one, however, shows how ―heaven‖ came to be
natural ―self so.‖ Taking ―heaven‖ in the way above, self-so 自然 naturally connects with heaven-so 天然, and
then heaven would be everywhere in nature. Thoreau cut ice and said, ―I look down in the quiet parlor of the
fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same
as amber twilight sky, . . . Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.‖ (Walden and Resistance to
Civil Government: Henry D. Thoreau, Second Edition, ed. William Rossi, NY: W. W. Norton and Co., 1992,
p. 188) This sentiment resonates with Chuang Tzu‘s, and is responsible in part for today‘s ecological
movement.
183 Does it mean ―heaven-endowed nature,‖ ―heavenly nature,‖ ―our nature as part of heaven,‖ or ―heaven-infused
nature‖? Does it matter?
184 Dan Gerber, ―Often I Imagine the Earth,‖ Poetry, March 2010, p. 446.
185 Yehudi Menuhin and Curtis W. Davis, The Music of Man, Toronto: Methuen, 1979, pp. 1-43.
338 Kuang-ming Wu

Plato,186 and knowing exclusively by vision is only part of our whole understanding—as
undergoing—of things; so we must mix our objective eyes with our musical ears.
―Kindness‖ is blank until applied to a situation, one at a time, one time in closing the
window, another time in opening it. Things are situation-sensitive, each uniquely distinct
from all others. As every artist sensitive to things is aware, this beautiful baby, this fresh
apple, cannot be known until actually shown.
Georgia O‘Keeffe said, ―Nobody sees a flower, really—it is so small—we haven‘t time,
and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.‖ 187 Her ―seeing‖ involves more than a
casual visual notice, as befriending things involves long years of personal interaction. Now,
―taking time‖ is not distinctive of instant vision but of hearing undergoing. We must listen
long to friendship-music to make friends.188
Things overflow with voluptuous differences one from another; each is specific as itself,
not the other, beside it. And yet each can mysteriously be named, rounded up, ―recognized‖
as belonging to a group of such-and-such, even the ―unnamed,‖ as ―unidentified flying
object.‖ Such nameability of things so charms Plato as to miscue him into proposing
―universals,‖ the ―Really Real‖ Forms and Ideas, which are names timelessly seen (idea
means see), in terms of which we grasp ―unreal‖ actual things.
His proposal aroused a suspicion of how things so fleeting can be related to such eternal
Ideas at all. Thus things remain hard to grasp, not because they are ―unreal‖ as Plato thought
but because they are too real for thought, too real to grasp by graspable names or unmovable
universals called Forms and Ideas. Actuality simply overflows our ideas, our vision.
Still, what Plato noted demands our attention. What sort of commonality does a group of
things named ―apples‖ display that differs from, say, the commonality of a group called
―stars‖? What is their difference that so manifests the distinction of each group as to enable its
distinct naming, i.e., its unmistakable identification? If the commonality of this group is not
its universal ―Form‖ or ―Idea,‖ what is it? It is, Marcel says, the specific music of things.
Marcel nudges us to open ears to hear to meet the musical presence of things. The tribes
who ask, ―How does it sound like?‖ are profoundly correct after all. He says,189

(I need only) three measures of a . . . melodic sequence . . . before I exclaim, ―That is

Fauré,‖ even if (they) are from some work by Fauré that I do not know. Here . . . we are in . . .
presence. The genius of Fauré takes form in a recognizable way of being . . . present. Can I
rightly say that I have an idea of this genius? . . . (Y)es and no: yes, in that I have a distinct
awareness of him . . . to identify him and to greet him as I (do) a beloved face; no, in that I
cannot establish the identity of this genius for strangers to whom I wish to transmit a certain
content (as) I transmit an idea of a philosopher and his system, or . . . an idea of a theory(,) a
scientific hypothesis . . . (I)t is inconceivable that by words I could give an idea of . . . a
musical order in its qualitative singularity. I could (give it) only by playing . . . a significant
melody— . . . by participating actively in this music—(hoping to) evoke (or . . . release) in the
listeners (an) inner movement by which (to) move toward an encounter with what I (want to)
have them hear.

186 China has no Plato, however, and its tradition of knowing is an instructive counterbalance to Western visuality.
See ―Sound, Sight, Sense,‖ my History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 125-173.
187 Her moving statement appears in the 1995 US Postal Issue of stamps featuring her ―Red Poppy, 1927.‖
188 It was the intent listening that made an obscure ferryman Vasudeva an important friend to Siddhartha and saved
him by listening to the river. ―Listening‖ is one crucial thread that binds the whole story of Herman Hesse‘s,
Siddhartha, NY: Bantam Books, 1971, pp. 104-106, 108f, 114, 117, 120, 127, 132, 133-137, 143, 145.
189 The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, edited by Schilpp and Hahn, op. cit., p. 273.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 339

To hear the ―music of a thing‖ is thus to meet its presence. Hearing ―melodic measures of
an apple,‖190 the ―music‖ of its flavor and aroma as we undergo it, we meet the ―apple‖-
presence, and then apply this experience to spot ―apples‖ from non-apples out there, as we
would distinguish Haydn‘s genre (e.g., in Mozart and Beethoven) from Wagner‘s.
The above last statement has two points. One, this experiential recognition of ―apple‖-
genre of its musical presence, in the name ―apple,‖ is yet hard to visually convey. The
recognition of a thing as of this name results from an audio-encounter with a presence, and
this encounter is inexpressible and indefinable by vision.191
Two, this audio-experiential recognition is applicable to wider recognition outside the
said specific experience. As this is recognized as an apple, so that is. I do so by referring back
to my encounter with the music of this apple, in terms of which I recognize that as also an
―apple.‖ This ―in terms of which‖-process is my ―metaphoring.‖192 This experiential
movement back and forth originates naming several things as ―apples.‖
Now we can generalize. A name is a universal in that it is a transversal193 traversing and
con-versing, back and forth to thread previous musical encounter into present. Joining
Marcel‘s musical encounter with musician Wittgenstein‘s thread of entwined fibers, we can
say that all this is to hear a measure, a fiber-note over another of a specific being-music,
―wavicle,‖ crisscrossing back and forth, to and fro, circularly in family resemblances and
family differences. Do we remember story-thinking-telling is a hermeneutical circle?
Socrates and Euthyphro conversed (Euthyphro 11b-e, 15c) that Euthyphro‘s definition of
―piety‖ goes around in a circle, Daedalus-like. This musical thread of note-fibers not only
threads forward but also backward. This is the ―hermeneutic circle‖ in stories, our way of
understanding things. The name of a thing expands and ripples out, ―as this is an apple, so is
that an apple, and so is that other one.‖ Then, to check on the naming, we just go back to
rehearse the audio-experience of the being-music of an apple. Our knowledge of apple-things
is a hermeneutic circle.
This circle describes what goes on between language and its grammar, each goes into the
other and check on the other. All rulers, even dictators, must bow to people ruled as

190 We can understand fresh apple-as-music of flavor and aroma from experiencing bird-as-music, that crisp cut,
that clean stop, that silence-chirp. Pastorale music has been popular since the 13th century, and it spills over to
―Pastoral Sonata‖ (Beethoven, Scarlatti), ―Pastoral Symphony‖ (Beethoven, Vaughn Williams), ―Lark
Ascending‖ (Vaughn Williams), ―La Mer‖ (Debussy). ―The Last Rose of Summer‖ (Irish folk song, lyric by
Thomas Moore). Delius has ―Sea Drift,‖ ―Over the Hills and Far Away,‖ ―Paris: the Song of a Great City,‖ ―In
a Summer Garden,‖ ―Summer Night on a River,‖ ―On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring,‖ ―North Country
Sketches,‖ ―A Song of the High Hills,‖ ―The Magic Fountain,‖ etc. Clearly, everything is music; composers
hear it.
191 My brother is a musician and an engineer at Corning. He said, ―Some of the sound attributes that we hear can
be scientifically analyzed and displayed visually. The obvious ones are pitch, timing, duration, loudness,
balance of frequencies, etc. By viewing these attributes, one can understand the interpretation better.‖ I
replied, ―You propose and practice visual manifestation if not manipulation of music, to enhance audio music
appreciation. Visual-investigation does enhance audio appreciation. It is the glory of science. Besides, your
science again confirms my view that visuality is at the heart of science today. I'm yet to see scientists use their
noses, ears, and fingers to measure things, for "measurement" is visual. Obviously you would not replace
hearing appreciation with visual investigation, that is, you would not say that seeing all those wonderful charts
and graphs is to hear the musical piece. You say that visually watching charts and graphs helps us understand
how one musical style of performance differs from the other, and so on.‖ He agreed.
192 See my On Metaphoring, op. cit., p. 671 (index on ―universals‖).
193 ―Transversal‖ is Calvin O. Schrag‘s coinage (The Resources of Rationality, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1992, the last chapter, and see my “Logic” of Togetherness, op. cit., p. 469, index on ―transversal‖). I
borrowed it here and expanded on it in my way. I would later replace it with ―inter-versal.‖
340 Kuang-ming Wu

merchants bow to buyers, as the present must learn from the past. Asked about serving spirits
and gods, Confucius said, ―Not able to serve people yet, how could you serve spirits?‖ Asked
about death, he said, ―Not knowing life yet, how could you know death?‖ (11/12) He
intimates the death-life interrelation (化), life birthing death that dies into life.
Life is rounds of transmigrating transversals conversing to inter-define (Buddha). It is the
circle as an auditory undergoing to understand the music of beings. It is as natural and direct
as it is ineffable beyond vision. It is caught, not taught but released by one total body-
encounter and then by one with another, by one person, and then by one person with another,
by experiencing and then by inter-experiencing.

MUSIC, POETRY, SYSTEM

Now we can connect poetry and system in/via music. I recently ―rediscovered‖ Johann
Sebastian Bach. Unlike Beethoven who is beautiful in his wide swings between the absolute
194
soft and the absolute stormy, I never felt as calm and balanced as in Bach‘s piano music, as
195 196
András Schiff, for example, performed it. I wondered why, and I think I got an answer.
It is this.
Bach infuses poetry into mathematics, the human into the mechanical, and quiet sanity
into blind bland regularity, as the Change Classic 易經 does in math-poetry of vicissitudes. It
has that steadiness of Oriental music, as reliable as ―day (after) day is a good day 日 日 是 好
日,‖ the rhythmic dripping of each drop of time going into me, going through me. It is thus
that Bach‘s patterned spread supports me unobtrusively.
Listening to his music thus calms me, bringing me into roomy balance. Thinking is as
rhythmical and musical. Perhaps then our passion for and pursuit of a balanced system of a
sort springs from such a Bach-like musical sanity, whose being systematic calms, balances,
and allows us to dwell in roomy composure.
197
Of course there are systems and there are systems. A system is known to be bad by,
Paul Tillich warns, how it imprisons the reader who dwells in it, and takes it as the final
198
answer, moving within itself, in its self-enclosed consistency, self-sealed coherence. It
199
thereby separates itself above the actuality it is supposed to describe. So a bad system can
hurt us badly. Tillich was aware of such dangers of a system and told us to ―go beyond it,‖
but he did not tell us how to go, much less what a good system is. We must go our own way,
taking ―music‖ as our cue.

194 Claudio Arrau said, ―In the 32 Sonatas Beethoven created a whole cosmos. . . Schnabel, uniquely, was man and
artist enough to meet all the demands of this staggering outpouring of genius.‖ (quoted by Max Harrisson,
1991, insert, p. 11, to Beethoven: Piano Sonatas played by Artur Schnabel, EMI, [CHS 7 63765 2], 8 CDs)
195 András Schiff, J. S. Bach: Solo Keyboard Works, Decca 4522792 (12 CDs).
196 So uncanny—music the time-art is timeless, in composition and performance. The Léner String Quartet‘s 1924-
1935 performances of Haydn‘s four Quartets stir our souls to tears today (The Léner String Quartet, Volume 1,
NY: Rockport Records, 1999). Their performances are carefully crafted yet so bouncy, natural, elegant, and
profound! They calm me and fill me with joy beyond this world! This is true of all historic performers
mentioned here.
197 See my further ideas on ―system,‖ Jay Goulding, ed., China-West Interculture: Toward the Philosophy of
World Integration: Essays on Wu Kuang-ming‟s Thinking, NY: Global Scholarly Pub., 2008, pp. 298-302.
198 Beware Bush and every dictator who refuse to listen to clamors outside!
199 Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, NY: Harper and Row, 1968, pp. xii-xiii.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 341

What is the difference between good and bad music? J. S. Bach‘s music in geometrical
tidiness is infinitely fresh every time it is listened to; his music sounded so fresh that I could
not pass beyond the first CD of Schiff performing it, and Schiff has 12 CDs of it! In contrast,
200
his children‘s music and Salieri‘s, who taught Beethoven and Schubert, are tiresome as can
be. Music is known to be inferior by how much it bores its listener.
―Why is J. S. Bach‘s music refreshing?‖ Because it is as natural as it is systematic.
Nature is so amazingly systematic as to be amenable to scientific investigation, yet nature is
also as spontaneous as children are unpredictable. ―The sun rises everyday in the east but the
wind blows as it listeth‖ (Whitehead), actually more unpredictable in its predictability. Every
sunrise differs from every other, and generally expected seasonal shift is totally unpredictable,
as the snow this year may be more or less, earlier or later, than the last.
Nature surprises us precisely because of its systematic reliability; J. S. Bach‘s music
seems to pattern itself after nature, and nature-patterning qualifies him as a refreshing master
composer. This is what makes for our indwelling trusting ourselves to breathe freely; this is
where we can breathe with regularity and snuggle ourselves to come alive as ourselves,
respectively. We are at home here as we undergo nature and its music.
―Naturally systematic‖ thus has two features. One, it is predictable, reliable, and so
201
casually supportive, to put me at ease. Two, it is unpredictably spontaneous, and so it is
202
forever fresh, so refreshing as to give me room freely to be myself. Nature is natural; it is
reliable and roomy, spontaneous and us-stretching.
This refreshing roominess makes us natural, in our grain our nature. This thought brings
me to another recent discovery of mine. I suddenly came to smell the rustic crisp air to dwell,
203
enjoy, and taste Robert Frost. My life blossoms in the metronome-regularity of heartbeat,
breathing, walking, and conversation.
In this rhythm, Frost chants out ―Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,‖ ―The Road
Not Taken,‖ ―The Death of the Hired Man,‖ ―Mending Wall,‖ in fact, all his poems of casual
surprising mysteries. Such a surprise in daily life is nothing surprising, however; after all, this
metronome-monotony is where diaries, journals, and our daily news spring. What is
surprising is how Frost exhibits this unsurprising surprise.
His unpretentious countryside lines are simple, and subtly rhymed, in sound and in sense.
Here sonority is part of the message, sense is part of sound; it is amazing how his
unintelligible lines come alive rhymed, in tone that soothes me into understanding as my
understanding melts into intoned peace.
These lines have depths in rustic ruggedness that deposits me deep at home, at ease. I
need not pretend to be someone else than my good old me; I read aloud in my clumsy pace

200 How the stodgy Salieri could have taught Beethoven and Schubert into their exquisite freshness is beyond me.
201 Tillich (ibid.) says that system promotes consistency against contradiction. I say, consistency makes for
reliability that supports us and puts us at ease, to be free to contradict what is gone if we want to, and yet
consistency can play the devil of choking us to death and/or boring us to death.
202 I suppose this is what Tillich means by ―going beyond‖ the system; ―going beyond‖ can be synonymous with
―do not dwell in it‖ but the latter expression can be misunderstood. For there is indwelling and there is
indwelling. I shiver to read him in praise of system as ―consistency,‖ ―the unity in which every statement is
under the critical control of every other statement.‖ Isn‘t this precisely a system he warns us against? This is
his ―concluding statement‖ in Philosophical Interrogations (1964), eds. Sydney and Beatrice Rome, NY:
Harper Torchbooks, 1970, pp. 408-409..
203 Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays, NY: The Library of America, 1995, his authoritative
comprehensive collection. Strangely, now, I find his poems more compelling and pregnant than his prose that I
used to admire much, and deeper and more straightly natural than Whitman on whom I used to ponder much.
342 Kuang-ming Wu

and accent. I chant and sing the lines, and they would come with all their faint plain smiles
and wrap me all over. Such casual naturalness is the soul of a system, the organic togetherness
of things as they are. This is where we live and have our being, coherently, naturally.
So, ideally, a system is a poem, music in nature. System nourishes and supports, to guide
and invigorate, to point and prosper. That‘s what system should be. System should flow as a
river, never to be pushed. So should we. By going through a system, we become ourselves; by
composing a system, we build ourselves, unbeknown to ourselves.
System is where I truly live without contrivance, for system is music of nature and its
poetry, and I am part of nature. Such a flow in nature is a flow in sense, that is, flow in
stories. Storytelling is a system of poetry and music that flows to feed and nourish, where we
grow into our natural selves.
―All this Platonism of heavenly harmony is well and good. But isn‘t it out of touch with
storms and torrents of life, ‗separate from reality‘ as Tillich says?‖ Well, I said Bach calms
me and Frost puts me at ease; it means that I was not at all calm and easy before meeting
them. It is in the encounter of unease with such a Platonic harmony within this world (Bach,
Frost) that such a healing takes place. Remember Frost‘s life was anything but balmy. His
204
poems were born amidst his storms of life.
Besides, the very telling of the story of sad ongoing heals. Homer‘s Odyssey tells the hero
whose name, Odysseus, is ―hated (όδύζομαι, ώδσζαο)‖ of the gods of our life. He was the
chronic sufferer par excellence, and in his telling, the suffering somehow makes sense and
makes for healing. Homer‘s sad storytelling is pervaded with therapeutic life-significance.
The noble swineherd Eumaios said thoughtfully, ―But we two, sitting here in the shelter,
eating and drinking, shall entertain each other remembering and retelling our sad sorrows. For
afterwards a man who has suffered much and wandered much has pleasure out of his
sorrows.‖ It is in the telling that the miracle of ―pleasure out of suffering sorrows‖ comes into
being. ―So he [Odysseus] spoke, and all of them stayed stricken to silence, held in thrall by
the story all through the shadowy chambers.‖
The alluring power of storytelling also captured the entire palace in Scheria, as Odysseus
finished telling his major adventures to the hospitable king Alkinoōs, the queen Arete, and the
beautiful princess Hausikaa. In fact, Scheria is a fabulously beautiful place, constructed out of
Alkinoōs‘s quiet withdrawal from Cyclopes‘ bullying. He ―yielded‖ silently and went on to
construct a calm land all by itself.
Yielding to intrusion is part of nature constantly practiced by animals and plants. Scheria
is beautiful naturally, where Odysseus told his story of adventures, naturally, and must have
205
been healed by his storytelling, naturally. Such Nature, both inner and outer, is happily
musical, as the music of nature is surprisingly silent, as life is, in all life‘s storms. Now,
naturally, calm and silence dwell together. Nature is music in silence. How so?

204 See his ―Chronology‖ in ibid., pp. 929-955, and his life summarized in Ian Ousby, The Cambridge Guide to
Literature in English, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 352. How his disastrous life-storms could have
produced such a mysterious haven of nature poetry for our souls is, again, as much beyond me as Salieri
producing Schubert. Cf. William H. Pritchard, Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered, Oxford University Press,
1984, among many biographies of Frost.
205 Richmond Lattimore, tr., The Odyssey of Homer, NY: HarperCollins, 1967, I.62 (―harsh with‖ p. 28), XVI.398-
401 (p. 235), XIII.1 (p. 198). Underlines added.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 343

SILENCE AS MUSIC
Here comes a bombshell of life—―but the very song of (as mountains/ feel and lovers)
singing is silence,‖206 imploding to ripple out in tsunamis of silence-music. Silence-tsunamis
sway in recurrent waves of our sentences in music, our life in silent music. Silence is music;
music is silence ex-pressed. We must explain this incredible fact of nature by noting silence
in music, and then silence as music.

A. Silence in Music

How could music sound forth soundless silence? Well, we take it for granted that a
musical composition has pauses here and there. Pauses are essential in music, punctuating it
to shape music into living rhythmic pulsation, the heartbeat of the beauty of life in nature. So
we think music is music and pauses are pauses, just to help music go livelier. We may not
realize that pauses are mere tips here and there that appear out of the vast iceberg of silence,
music. No pauses, no music. Music is the power of silence making whole. Let us go slower.
To begin with, music must have pauses, an eighth rest, a half rest, a whole rest; they are
dots of silence, essential for music to make music. Pauses insert themselves among sounds to
divide into a ―tick‖ and then a ―tock‖ to make a beat of ―tick, tock,‖207 then another beat, and
anther, and music is born.
Beats are the throbbing heartbeats of music, its life-pulses; beats come about through
silence of pauses. Beats gather to organize/compose a metre-flow, ―rhythm,‖ with ―melody‖
and ―harmony‖ as three ingredients of music. Rhythm is the melody of monotone as melody
is the rhythmic progress of tunes; it is Franz J. Haydn‘s ―Clock Symphony‖ (No. 101). All
music is ―symphony,‖ syn-phōnē, beautiful clockwork of tick-tocks sounding-together. In all,
silence penetrates sounds to build up the texture, timber, and trimming of music.208
So, the basic silent pauses turn audible in beats, and felt in rhythm to compose harmony
and melodies, to make music. Music breathes in beats and rhythms of silence. Beats are
silence at work; waltz and jazz ride on the accompanying beats of basses and drums. Music
swings to rhyme with its own specific beats of the rhythm, what is tone-silent. We have thus
shown how silence penetrates sounds to make music, to become its pauses, beats, rhythms,
and melodies.

B. Silence as Music

We have shown silence in music; now we realize music as in silence, to awaken to

―silence as music.‖ We must now tell the story of how silence in this way shows itself to be

206 These are two concluding lines of e. e. cumming‘s ―All Which Isn‘t Singing Is Mere Talking‖ (The Voice That
is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth century, ed. Hayden Carruth, NY: Bantam Books, 1970,
p. 186).
207 Staccato pronounces beats. Here silence separates a note from others to articulate an emphasis
208 I have freely rifled from Stanley Sadie, ed., Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, NY: W. W. Norton
and Company, 1988, and Rupert Hughes, compiler, The Music Lovers‟ Encyclopedia (1903)
, NY: Random House, 2001.
344 Kuang-ming Wu

music. Silence can penetrate sounds to make them into music because silence is Music, and
our music is an echo of silence the primal Music, to whose echo we must listen to return to its
origin, silence as music. To realize so, we must return to music and musicians who lead us to
nature that sings silence.
Silence dwells in rhythm, where the loud silently makes room for the soft that silently
makes room for the loud. The loud is thus the silent soft that is the silent loud, both
undulating into a melody to swing to another melody for this melody to sing out. In
undulation, these melodies sing silence as the sirens of the ocean waves singing with whales
that sing in the belly of the vast seas. Whales are sirens singing the world with waves. Waves
are moving silence of the seas of life.
Some say Sirens are mermaids; some say Sirens sing whale-songs. We are sailors of life-
ocean, forever enchanted. Our enchantment is not our doom, however; we are alive to the
extent that we are enchanted by nature-whales singing in the ocean of life. Or rather, perhaps
―doom‖ is dissonant ―silence‖ in the music of the ocean of life to give depths to life, as
graveyards are part of the pulsating life of temples and churches, season after season. Vaughn
Williams captures this seasonal sea-sentiment in ―A Sea Symphony (No. 1).‖209
In all this, the louder the music of whales of life goes, the louder silence sings life.
Yehudi Menuhin hugs silence to let stillness wax loud; he soars silence to soar high to tame
our inner storms and tune us calm and whole, never letting us go. Fritz Kreisler lets silence go
free, and roams to make room for silence with his relaxed violin playing quietude, to relax us.
Artur Schnabel sparkles silence in a cascade of pearls of fresh piano-water splashing over us,
cleansing us.
Pablo Casals‘ cello-silence is a big boom-room to nestle us and nurture us. Andrés
Segovia‘s warm vibrant silence shines through his transparent guitar, hugging us in
undulating stillness. Dennis Brain‘s ample silence waxes and wanes, naturally heaving in his
sincere horn to draw us in, and we begin to dance it unawares.
Life parallels silence with ―patience‖ described as ―Bear it a while, and winds calm,
waves balmy. Back off a step, and seas so wide, skies so vast. 忍一時, 風平浪靜; 退一步,
海闊天空.‖ Nature of springtime is matched by Taoist indifference. Taoist patient no-do in
doing, in wu wei 旡為, extends the day into the night. Do we forget the night during the day?
No matter, for forgetting is at home at night to unwind us.
Gertrude Stein said, ―It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much
doing nothing, really doing nothing.‖210 Genius is a simple infant lying there just to be
stroked by Mom‘s still tenderness, in genie warmth. Nothing can stop such motherly silence.
Silence is in the parents‘ grin as they listen to children insisting and singing, in the teachers‘
smile as they beam to pupils rehearsing their opinions.
Parents and teachers nod silently as they attend to their beloved. And that is what these
silence-musicians perform, performing silence. Performance with old ―authentic instruments‖
plays the silent ―faded glory‖ of deep stillness. Performing silence is tricky, though. Silence
cannot be performed but sound forth music that performs non-sound of silence.
In relaxing us, in the loud and the soft, in melodies undulating, making room in rhythm,
beats, and pauses, performative silence appears as the iceberg under and around the ocean of

209 Sir Adrian Boult has done it in CD1, in EMI Vaughn Williams: The Complete Symphonies, 8-CD set.
210 Gertrude Stein, Everybody‟s Autobiography, 1937, Ch. 2, quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern
Quotations, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 207.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 345

music we swim in. Eighth pauses and half pauses are tips of the whole rest that supports all
pauses that, in turn, support and enliven music.
If silence is an iceberg at the base of music, music is a tip of its silence-iceberg for us to
climb up, calm down, come home to unwind. In this way silence sings the world whole, and
its music faintly echoes its slow swinging cadence. In short, music sings silence that never
ceases to make its own music to sing the world. Silence can be noisy to signify nothing, and
can be musical to signify everything, and both signify life that is a tapestry of the two sorts of
silence. All this is the story of the world singing silence.
We have just let silence tell its own story of the world singing silence. If life is music,
then music is the life of silence as silence is the music of life. Religion comes to remind us to
come home to silence, to let it pervade life. Significantly, graveyards attend temples and
churches, and we regularly visit our beloved‘s graves to pay respect to them, thereby to
rejuvenate ourselves. Deathly silence is the vigor of life. Zen Buddhists call such silence-
living ―meditation,‖ to which they devote their whole lives; Christians call it ―prayer,‖ to urge
us to live a prayerful life.
Life is thus the silent Music of the Spheres. Silence is our realizing that things always
overflow the self, that things are its quiet milieu where the self can do nothing but tell of the
milieu that nestles, that the telling performs the music of stories in which the self moves and
has its being. Silence, music, and storytelling, these three abide, and the greatest of these is
silence, pulsating in both, enlivening both in life.211 Traditionally going together, music and
story reenact, present, and actualize silence. In all this, the secret of our growth is.
Let us now come back again to music and musicians, to let them lead us to nature singing
stillness. Measured Bach is loud in serenity. All musicians serve silence, as John Cage does
explicitly, as Mozart does in melodic pulses, Beethoven in violence and tenderness
alternating, and Schoenberg in rhythmical dissonance. We usually note silence by saying that
the performer ―takes time,‖ ―phrases it well,‖ or ―leans on the soft.‖ Phrasing is silence
pulsating, appearing in a performance that ―takes time,‖ not going slow,212 ―leaning on the
soft‖ to sing silence.
The performer thus spontaneously expresses throbbing stillness in melody alive,
bouncing prim, rhythm-breathing in undulating cadence.213 The music now excites people,
drawing tears, as their life prances, as they lustily sing this music of life, in winter or spring.
To perform music is to dance it out with the musical instruments of words and ideas
(literature and storytelling), as well as by singing-in-living called ―history.‖
―But music is sound, how could it be silence?‖ the question persists. Well, silence can be
in sounds, where silence is silent to bleed silence, as in idle endless chatters. Dr. Sacks told a
story of a Mr. Thompson‘s unbroken tale-telling to make up for his loss of inner memory and

211 This story of silence in life, music, and nature rhymes with The Annals of Spring and Autumn of Mr. Lü (241
BC) (呂氏春秋, 仲夏紀第五, 季夏紀第六, 臺北:三民書局, 1995, I.197-295). It unifies music, nature, life,
and politics; silence is silently there. Cf. also History Records, Shih Chi 史記, 卷二十四, 樂書第二, op. cit.,
II.144-207. Sadie (op. cit., p. 150) notes that China is aware of the cosmic power of music and so its
government regulates and controls music. Sadie does not see that the reverse is also true, that music is
everywhere revered to regulate governance under Heaven.
212 Schnabel goes faster than Annie Fischer or Walter Gieseking in the first movement of Beethoven‘s ―Moonlight
Sonata,‖ and Schnabel is more serene, silent, than either. Kreisler also goes fast to shape, as does Menuhin to
make room for ―slow.‖ Their speed sings silence to pulsate music.
213 I used to notice Schnabel‘s missed notes; they are now nowhere. His Beethoven Sonatas come alive so
spontaneously in all their taking of time, natural phrasing, and leaning on silence. Everything is now sinuously
alive, sparklingly warm and roomy.
346 Kuang-ming Wu

history. Sadly, his fictive sense keeps failing to bridge the abyss of senselessness beneath
him, and his verbosity has a final touch of deep indifference, for ―nothing really matters any
more.‖214 Here indifference joins silence, unbearable, nowhere-to-turn.215
Dr. Sacks seems not to have realized that we are all Messrs. Thompson. The only
difference is that Mr. Thompson knows his senselessness while we do not. After all, our
stories of the past history may well be as fictive as Mr. Thompson‘s, all indifferent sound and
fury. Are we then worse off than Mr. Thompson? Shakespeare told the story of Macbeth who
ruined his life by murdering his lord who loved him. Toward the end of his life, Macbeth had
to mumble an epitaph to himself, that all life is ―sound and fury, signifying nothing,‖ that is,
silence that settles nowhere.
Did Shakespeare tell us that we are all Macbeths leading a senseless life,216 except that
Macbeth knows that he does while we do not know so? Do we cut a more tragic figure than
Macbeth does, for he knows he is an idiot and we don‘t, so we are more idiotic than he?
Shakespeare was silent here; he simply kept telling us the story of Macbeth‘s sad senseless
life.217 Shakespeare gives us the sound of music signifying nothing, and his sense remains
silent, pregnant.
Our words should be so likewise; ―Saying is not blowing breath; it says something. But
what it says is never fixed. Do we really say something? Or have we really never said
anything? If you think it differs from fledglings‘ twitter, do they really differ, or do they
not?‖218 These hesitations of Chuang Tzu‘s betoken silence.
They tell without telling; they forget words in silence that tells. Silence can be soundless
or sounding. The soundless can be charged quiet or dead silent. The sounding can also be
noisy or quiet. It is quietude that makes silence alive, in stillness where sounds and
soundlessness join. Here fledgling birds and our hesitation join—in silence.
If sounds of life are silence, music that echoes life is not sound, either, but sound-silent.
Music silently ex-presses life as birds do, and sound-describes it as they do not. ―It‘s quiet
when birdies 鳥 sing 鳴,219 isn‘t it, Dad?‖ my son Mark whispered. Birds don‘t noisily
describe; they sing silence. Chuang Tzu (2/73-79, etc.) captures the singing silence, deepened
in the dialogues of chitchatting birdies with a tall silent tree. Are the dialogues silence or
sound? They are both, silently joined. So birds do sound-describe silence, after all.
So is music; Bach‘s sonorous beauty in Menuhin turns hushed beauty of silence in
Pinnock with period instruments.220 The whole music here is not sound; it sings silence for

214 Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, NY: The Summit Press, 1970, pp. 107-108. See my
History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 13-14, et passim.
215 This is my best though clumsy rendering of an incomparable Japanese phrase, ―yarusenai,‖ having nowhere to
put [my heart]. Jesus also said, ―Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has
nowhere to lay his head.‖ (Matthew 8:20=Luke 9:57) What an unbearable loneliness!
216 George Bush conducted war against Saddam who has no ―weapons of mass destruction‖—against the world
opinion. Bush killed masses of people with Bush‘s own weapons of mass destruction. Now American soldiers
and other non-combatants are constantly being killed with countless Iraqi people. Bush‘s war against terrorism
is worsening terrorism worldwide. Bush is yet to announce how he is as tragically silly as Macbeth, and worse.
Macbeth mumbled he was silly; Bush does not. But are we who elected and followed him (though some of us
kicked and screamed) too far behind him?
217 Shakespeare may after all be telling us all this in Macbeth‘s ―Life‘s but a walking shadow,‖ for Macbeth did
not say ―my life is a shadow.‖ People certainly quote this line in this general sense.
218 Chuang Tzu 2/23-24. This is A. C. Graham‘s translation, modified.
219 ―Birds‖ (鳥) and ―sing‖ (鳴) write alike; Chinese characters are often paired as they are captured here.
220 Listen to exquisite Bach by Yehudi Menuhin, ―J. S. Bach: Orchestral Suites, etc.,‖ (EMI, 7 CD set, 2001), and
Trevor Pinnock, ―Bach: The Harpsicord Concertos‖ (DG, 3CD set, 1981).
 From Oneself to the Music Together 347

what is there around to emerge softly. This is also why Bach‘s ―Well-Tempered Clavier‖ goes
well with birds singing, for both are sound-silent.

C. The World and Nature as Silent Music

People now dance with ancient Chinese poets, chanting, ―Poetry is where intention
arrives. The heart intends; worded, it is poem. Feelings well up inside into words. Wording is
not enough, so we sigh; sighing is not enough, so we chant, sing. Chanting, singing is not
enough, so our hands dance and feet stamp unawares. Feelings issue in voices, voices
interweave into music, to govern people into world concord.‖221
Silence sings to dance to the music of nature, as we perform life in the world. One who
hears no music thinks the dancers mad, strutting, fretting, signifying nothing. They don‘t hear
the music in nature-silence to which the dancers respond. No wonder, Chuang Tzu has stories
of ―mad people‖ as sages/saints whose virtues, the power of their beings, tarries with tarry-of-
beings 德充符.
Confucius met them. All this is in Chuang Tzu, Chapter Five. Deformed people are saints
confronting Confucius the supposed Sage, to show him what true saintliness is. Our ―young
man‖ in pain, ―Mr. Thompson‖ in vacuum, and ―Macbeth‖ in sound and fury are here. Even
here is music, in deformity of actuality, in silence intoning.
Silence pervades Beethoven‘s ―Moonlight Sonata.‖222 Calmly presented in the first
movement, moon-silence pulses all agitation of the rest. That first movement tries the
performer‘s mettle, as Jascha Heifetz confessed to balking at Mozart‘s ―easy‖ violin concerti;
they are simply too abandoned to craft. Contrivance on Mozart‘s music and Beethoven‘s
―Moonlight‖ is out of the question; they have nothing to contrive for.223
Sadly, performers today would love to skip ―easy‖ spots for others of dazzling technical
display. They show themselves off in clattery performance, off musical silence. Cut silence,
and the music is pesky noises of steely mechanical performers.224 Musicians missing silence
murder music. Played in silence, the music comes ―alive and kicking,‖ ever fresh as children
prancing and singing, for nothing, for life.

221 This is the celebrated Preface to the Classic of Poetry 詩序 in ancient China (my translation). Cf. ―詩言志辨‖ in
朱自清古典文學專集(上), 臺北市宏業書局，民72, pp. 183-355. 聞一多全集，步漢湖北人民出版社, 2004, Volumes 3 and 4
are particularly detailed on 詩經.
222 Beethoven, Piano Sonata, No. 14, Op. 27, No. 2. I have failed so far to find it more delicately performed than
by Schnabel, Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas: Artur Schnabel, Piano, 1932-35, EMI, 1991 (8 CD
Set). Walter Gieseking‘s tasteful performances (slightly stiff) of Beethoven: Piano Sonatas (1995), EMI, 1995,
have the ―‗Moonlight‘ Sonata‖; its third movement is dreadfully pounded.
223 For similar reasons, Mozart‘s quartets are hard to play well. The historic Léner Quartet was beautiful, elegant,
warm, and profound on Haydn and Dvorak, but not as well on Mozart (The Léner String Quartet, Volumes 1,
4, 5, NY: Rockport Records, 1999, 2000). Somehow Griller Quartet and Grumiaux-with-others did Mozart
marvelously (The Griller Quartet Play Mozart and Haydn [1946, 1947], Dutton, 2000; Mozart String Quintets
[1973; 3 CD-set], Philips, 1991, and Mozart: Complete String Trios and Duos [1967-1990; 2 CD-set], Philips,
1996).
224 A living outstanding exception is ―The Angeles String Quartet‖ led by Kathleen Lenski. Their superb Haydn:
The Complete String Quartets (21 CD Set; Philips, 1994-1999) combine sensitivity with accuracy to present
exquisite slow adagios juxtaposed with mellow prestos, and they are never brutal, even booming. The result is
bouncy roomy rhythms all over to nestle the listeners. Haydn comes alive silently.
348 Kuang-ming Wu

Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) has three wonders. He is (a) devilishly accurate, (b) casually
relaxed to make us relax, and (c) soars warmly above poor recordings of his day.225 He kept
telling young violinists not to practice; he must have meant, ―Be yourself to spontaneously
dwell in relaxed silence.‖
Weissenberg said226 that the pianists sound studied who apply their own work,
knowledge and capacity to the instrument, but those always sound vital who extract all its
possibilities, because music is brought to life.227 Spontaneity is here to charm us, as Kreisler
did who was quite serious about recording; he had 13 takes on a small piece of his
composition. He was serious about extracting spontaneously all possibilities of his instrument
without seriousness.228
How could seriousness join spontaneity? Going back to Nature, we can indeed be
seriously spontaneous and spontaneously serious. We can, perhaps because Nature is natural
where things inter-involve, where ―spontaneous‖ is natural, and where to be ―serious‖ is our
nature. No wonder Kreisler said he derived inspiration and strength from Nature; ―Let him
(young violinist Michael Tree of the Guarineri Quartet) know Nature, let him go to Nature, to
learn that the most wonderful song in the world is the song of the forest!‖ Forest songs
swoosh through us in silence.
Applebaum said that Kreisler found serious replenishment in a few hours in the woods.
He did not turn to his fine old books, his paintings, and not even his violin, to recoup calm
after stress. It was in silent Nature that Kreisler reclaimed his strength.229 He dwelt in lively
silence of nature to quietly put us at ease, as simply as Haydn‘s innocent symphonies do us.
By the same token, Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1998) hugs silence with his rich-timbered
violin. The warmer and higher his violin soars, the deeper ―tender silence‖ pervades the
melody. ―Silence as music‖ incarnates in these musicians. Similarly, Pablo Casals (1876-
1973) has four marvels. Silence enables him to be (a) vast, (b) slow, to (c) keep up his
integral thrust all the way, and (d) marvelously unify these three features into music, alive and
moving to compel us.

225 Listen to Fritz Kreisler: The Complete RCA Recordings (11 CD Set), NY: BMG Music, 1995, and Fritz
Kreisler: Radio Interview (WQXR) on Kreisler‟s 80th Birthday (with Abram Chasin), where he said,
―Simplicity cannot be learned,‖ just infected, and is synonymous with silence. (By simplicity he perhaps
meant simple silence to dwell in, wherever it occurs. In fact, Kreisler towered less in today‘s ―restored‖
versions that are less simple.) A dramatic example is a CD, Horowitz at Home (Deutsche Grammophon, D
125211, 1989), where Horowitz plays Mozart (Sonata, K 281, etc.) least well, then Schubert (Moment musical
D 780, no. 3) better, and finally Liszt (Ständchen, etc.) best. Why? All those compositions are technically no
problem for Horowitz. The reason must be that ―simplicity‖ is most evident in Mozart, less in Schubert, and
least in Liszt. Mozart is most difficult precisely because he is the simplest; there is nothing to hang on to, no
room to display oneself. Ingrid Haebler in contrast is young lass, prancing Mozart briskly, in her Mozart:
Complete Works for Piano (10-CD set) and Mozart: Complete Piano Concertos (10-CD set), both issued by
Philips. Both sets are my treasures.
226 I summed Alexis Weissenberg‘s words in Insert to Rachmaninoff Preludes: Complete (RCA, 1970, 1990, p. 4).
227 I would forget myself-tensed and come alive as I write, absorbed in things exciting as I am here now. I-the-
instrument is not studied; it releases all its possibilities here.
228 All descriptions of Kreisler apply to Georg Kulenkampff, this century‘s most underrated if not neglected
violinist. He is irresistible, adding his lusty singing riches to his depths of sonority in Beethoven and Dvorak.
He impishly hops and jumps on ―casual throwaway‖ pieces, turning them into sparkling gems. Kulenkampff is
as bouncy rich, meaty and alive, as Kreisler is softly abandoned. Kulenkampff is hard to describe because he
died young (at 50), praised by Hitler, and his few recordings are collectors‘ items. Not many musicologists
talk about him. I‘m so sad.
229 Samuel and Sada Applebaum, The Way They Play, Volume 1, Neptune City, NJ: Paganiniana, 1972, p. 99. This
point joins with our later point about Nature and music.
 From Oneself to the Music Together 349

Casals thus made the cello a major respectable instrument in its own right (not just as a
casual accompanying instrument). Dennis Brain (1921-1957) made the horn a major
instrument as Andrés Segovia (1893-1987) did the guitar; both shared Casals‘ four features of
active silence, vast, relaxed, and compelling.230
In fact, it may not be too much to claim this: All performers worth their salt must thus be
embraced by silence,231 for silence is music as true music expresses silence, and both tell
stories of life in the world in hushed pulses, in melodies of reticent rhythms. Living silence
keeps music and storytelling intimately joined to sing the world pulsing through history.
I was soaked in loud orchestral jumble while excitedly talked with a gaunt Arab-Egyptian
young musician—I had to pile exotic adjectives because I do not know who he was. I even
forget what we talked; I only remember we shouted over the music on how we are alike and
different. We laughed and hugged. A middle-aged lady was singing soothing tunes with a tin-
like small instrument, walking by. And I awoke.
I was so full and happy. An Encyclopedia of World Music232 was I. I am now filled with
this world-story. I am the lifeworld. The whole world is here now so loud a silence. This
silence sings its music so loud telling its story. This world story is now a music resounding
throughout me and my world. I and my world is vibrating in sync, in cosmic health. I am the
story that sings the music of the world.

230 Casals performed (1936-1939) Bach‟s Six Cello Suites that he discovered (EMI 2003). Andrés Segovia did
(1952-1962) Bach‘s various Suites that he transcribed (Deutsche Grammophon, 4 CD Set, CD4). Brain did
(1954-1955) Mozart‟s Horn Concertos Nos. 1-4 and Quintet, K. 452 (EMI 1997), and Richard Straus‟s and
Paul Hindemith‟s Horn Concertos (EMI 1986). All these are stunning masterly performances.
231 E.g., Artur Schnabel (1882-1951) owes his vast, lively, and vigorous rendering of Bach (Bach, EMI, 1999),
Brahms (Bach and Brahms, 1935, 1936, Pearl), and Beethoven (Beethoven Piano Concertos, Pearl, 3 CD Set,
1993) to calm immense silence pervading all over. His performances of Mozart and Schubert are strangely
stunted/stodgy; no silence is there. Jascha Heifetz (1001-1987) relies unsteadily on silence he is suspected of
using to manipulate the listener. He schemes so much that the listener cannot breathe. By the way, individual
performers were mentioned, not orchestras or conductors because it is harder to talk about many musicians
making music together, although what is said here about singular musicians holds for orchestral playing.
232 Cf. the multivolume Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, London: Routledge, 1999, etc.
 CONCLUSION
MUSIC AND STORYTELLING
We must now consider what musical storytelling should be and how it should proceed,
and how much silent music storytelling must perform on life that swings freely as wind.
Silence, music, and storytelling-hearing, they naturally join as the life of nature. When in
silence we hear music, dwelling in music we hear stories, and hearing stories we are fulfilled,
living out our lives integrally, melodiously, meaningfully,1 and happily as the world comes
alive in our living. In all this, with silence as basis, background, and atmosphere, music and
storytelling come unified naturally, silently alive.
Nothing is deader than dull silence going nowhere, while nothing spreads like
wordlessness alive and meaningful. Its rhythm spreads the heaven and earth that echoes to
2 3
make sense. We call it ―music.‖ Music is wordless story as story is worded music—ideally ;
both music and story are sensed silence, an art evolving timely and in time, an art that echoes
everywhere that responds. This is how the music in story and the story in music grow inside
4
and out, develop and spread.
5
The being-power naturally be-ings; it is ―virtue that stands itself 立德,‖ ―birthing,
unceasing 生生不息‖ in waves of primal vibration as ―wavicles,‖ particles in waves, beings
6
―breathing ch‘i 氣,‖ the exhaling, inhaling ―breath flooding 浩然之氣‖ Heaven and Earth.
Breathing is life rhythmic, as weather is literally seasonal ―breaths of the Heavens 天氣.‖
Nature is thus alive. Such nature-rhythm of being, the virtue-power of being, cannot help but
spread, to ―stand achieved 立功.‖
Watching all this, existence coming about in rhythmic vibration of being, in nature and in
society, we cannot help but jump in to chime in with its being-music, written to convey our
excitement, and notable ―words‖ come to ―stand 立言‖ out for rehearsal and reenactment in

1 I pondered on ―meaning‖ at this primordial life-level, toward the end of Butterfly, op. cit., pp. 364-373.
2 Painting is music in colors, drama is music in words and action, and both are poetry, worded music, in rhythmic
cadence, verbal or not.
3 When misfired, music goes nowhere, and the story stays senseless, bogged down ―nowhere.‖ This is why music is
an art, not to be taken lightly. Likewise is storytelling. All this is story-thinking eyond logic.
4 Intuitively Aristotle caught it and called the essence of art ―mímēsis, imitation‖; it is yet a rather clumsy
designation loaded with extraneous and irrelevant connotations, zestfully drawn out by admiring
commentators later.
5 Both ―virtue‖ and ―te 德‖ mean the manhood of a man, the existence-power of the human as such.
6 Oxford English Dictionary (1991) cites ―chhi [ch‘i]‖ in the entry of ―wavicle‖ (XX: 8). The quotations there are
worth pondering.
352 Kuang-ming Wu

history to result in world concord. ―Government by music‖ came to be a common notion in

7
China throughout its history.
These Three Incorruptibles 三不朽—virtued, achieved, worded 立德, 立功, 立言—in
8
China express nature in us and around us, celebrated since ancient days; it is the story-music
of the entire culture resounding through its history. The celebration is no less than about the
being-power rhythmically growing intoning from inside out, from the Virtue 德 of the
individuals vibrating to echo the Tao 道 of the society and Nature, as ―government by
9
music‖ everywhere every-when.
Chuang Tzu jumps up into this nature-music of heaven, earth, and humans, one in three,
three in one. He overhears all this strain of Nature, the heavenly piping, continually naturing
10
as earthly piping in wind blowing, in birds chirping. We humans echo in the music of our
11
beings and intone earthly piping, and nature sounds forth human piping. Lao Tzu would
have said that heavenly piping is Tao 道 in action, earthly piping is what is as it is, the Self-so
自然, and human piping is Te 德, our human being-power of virtue.
―People pattern after Earth, Earth patterns after Heaven, Heaven patterns after Tao, Tao
patterns after Self-So,‖ poetizes Lao Tzu (25). ―Rhythm‖ is at the center here flowing out
continuously, with patterns to compose a ―river‖; we are the river of beings. Confucius sighed
there at its continuous flow, and Mencius after Confucius, flowing from him, saw the river-
flow bubbling the Spring of the Being-River to make the sage.
Likewise, Lao Tzu took Tao to be as water, and Chuang Tzu wrote a whole chapter on
12
the flooding river spreading out to converge back into a single river of its story, ―rhetoric,‖
word-flow in being-flow, not as ―art of persuasion‖ word-trick, but as integral word-music.
―Music‖ is enjoyable; ―enjoyment‖ musical is natural inter-flow of senses in the homograph,
―樂‖ as music and enjoyment.

7 See, e.g., the famous Preface to the Shih Ching 詩序, and a very good ―On Music‖ 樂論篇, Hsün Tzu 荀子
(Burton Watson translated it well in Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings, NY: Columbia University Press, 1963, pp.
112-120. Ssu-ma Ch‘ien‘s (145-90 BC) History Records (史記 Shih Chi), has in Volume 24 ―On Music‖
(樂紀 Yüeh Chi). Liu Hsieh‘s 劉勰 (465-520) Literary Mind, Carving Dragons (文心雕龍 Wen-hsin Tiao-
lung) has Chapters 7 (music in poetry, 樂府 Yüeh Fu) and 48 (musical understanding, 知音 Chih Yin).
8 See Ch‟un-ch‟iu Tso Chuan, Duke Hsiang, 24th year 春秋左傳, 襄公二十四年, summed up in Wing-tsit Chan, A
Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 13, but its gist and thrust is flattened.
9 Lin Yutang has delightfully commented on this notion somewhere, but I have lost its reference. Actually this is a
popular common sense throughout Chinese history. See, among others, Ssu-ma Ch‘ien‘s, Shih Chi (史記,
臺北: 建宏出版社, 1995, 卷二十四, 樂書第二, 一段, II.146-147, et passim) and the long ―仲夏紀第五‖ in
呂氏春秋 (The Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lü), 臺北: 三民書局, 1995, I.195-243.
10 Chuang Tzu (2/3-9) overheard ―music‖ in the howling wind. Lang Elliott‘s beautiful Music of the Birds: A
Celebration of Bird Song, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999, makes us think. The title is so naturally
attractive, and yet do birds make ―music‖ as we do? Yes and No, we answer, and our excited puzzlement is
compounded by having word-music, poetry, accompany bird-―music‖ in the book. Earthly piping sings in this
ambiguity of the ―music‖ of the birds. Likewise, listening to Elliott‘s CD, ―Songbird Portraits,‖ Ithaca, NY:
NatureSound Studio, 1999, calms, cools, soothes, and puts us at home, as listening to human music does us—
and in fact, human music is mere faint echoes of the birds‘ real ―music.‖ Listening to birds‘ music evokes
birds‘ petit elegant shapes, and gazing at their colorful shapes (even pure black is so fresh, alive, and
glistening) enables us to hear their invincible twitters, chirps, and honks that put us at ease, at home in nature.
In birds‘ music, the birds‘ shapes and sounds are one, and one with human music of human shapes and sounds.
11 See my meditations on what the multifarious ―piping‖ means, sounding out of the hollows, in my Butterfly, op.
cit., pp. 495 (index on ―earthly piping‖), 497 (index on ―heavenly piping‖), 498 (index on ―human piping‖),
and 503 (index on ―piping‖).
12 Analects 9/17, Mencius 4A18, Tao Te Ching 8, 78, and Chuang Tzu, Chapter 17.
 Conclusion 353

Confucius (6/23) chanted, ―The humane enjoy 樂 hills; the wise enjoy 樂 water‖; the
humane and the wise enjoy nature. Water forms a steady river as hill is steady, flowing in
13
time as the river. Impressed with this existence-river, Hesse concludes his story of
Siddhartha with a story of a stone that is a ―river‖ flowing to be soil, to become plants and
animals, praised by Siddhartha‘s story of this stone-river.
Happy 樂 are those who rejoice 樂, singing with the flowing music 樂 of the hill and the
steady music 樂 of water. ―Nature‖ the ―self-so‖ (自然) is a being-homograph alive in
14
humans and in nature. We grow from listening to music to live well, to living well to listen
15
to music, happily homographic with hills and rivers, with heaven and earth, thanks to
symphonic being-music, rhythm-flowing self-so in things everywhere.
Let us retrace ourselves. Socrates‘ knowledge of ignorance says that ignorance may be
worthless but to realize my ignorance is not, for my realization turns my ignorance into
powerful self-knowledge, as Pascal‘s ―thinking reed‖ is no longer a simple bruised reed.
Likewise with Mr. Thompson‘s sad indifference and Macbeth‘s sad mumble, or rather, our
learning from them, for although their sad situations are sad, to realize so is infinitely
worthwhile, for they are wiser knowing so than we are who do not.
They say we try to ―find a needle in a haystack‖; here the very haystack of life we find is
the needle we want. Here Chuang Tzu‘s scum of the ancients‘ words, such as Socrates‘, turn
precious, their footprints on the sands of time stay, stay as erased. Here is the music of the
music of ancients, and the music of music is no longer music but silence. Here is no sound, no
silence; here is music ineffable.
We forget words to word with word-forgetter, making silent music together. Those hear
16
no music think us mad, as the happy pals, Han Shan and Shih Te 寒山拾得, were thought
mad. No wonder, Chuang Tzu (Chapter Five) pointed to ―mad people‖ as saints whose ―virtue
fills their tarries 德充符‖ their lives; sage Confucius met them. Macbeth, Mr. Thompson, and
that beloved young man of depression are all here. Thus we have just sounded and heard the
music-stories of mad happy sages.
Is all this ―silence‖? Music is wordless eloquence in nature and among humans—in
resonance with the rhythm of ―wavicles‖ of existence, primal particles as cosmic waves, and
who would prevent us from listening to these waves as the Music of the Spheres, Heavenly
Piping? Music is all things speechlessly storytelling, silently flowing, alive. We tell its story
as we listen to it, to the waves of the river of beings as Heraclitus, Confucius, and Siddhartha
did, to come alive ourselves, flowing without ceasing in gales of silence.
Here are speechless rhythms of wisdom of life pulsating in the skies and the fields, story-
resonating throughout the broad clouds, vast mountains, deep valleys, boundless oceans, and
endless rippling rivers. Our storytelling of Human Piping is its mumbling echo, rumbling
rivulets here and there, and at their utmost they are pregnant silence as we mature in silence.

13 Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (NY: Bantam Books, 1971), pp. 144-146.

14 Both Confucius (Analects 8/8, 9/15, 11/1, 13/3, and 16/5) and Plato (Republic 398c-400c) saw the educative
power of music to tune/tone/shape human character. Cf. 蔣義斌‘s instructive essays, ―<樂記>的禮樂合論,‖
(東方宗教研究, 1991-10) and ―朱熹的樂論‖ (中央研究院, 1993年五月). Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin,
eds., Music in the Western World: a History in documents, NY: Macmillan, 1984, pp. 6-10.
15 See my happy meditations on how living relates to music in Butterfly, op. cit., p. 186.
16 Both were legendary; they were happy good friends, quite poverty-stricken, during the T‘ang Dynasty. Both
lived in a T‘ien-t‘ai temple 天臺寺, and were believed to be the incarnations of Bodhisattva Manjusri
文珠菩薩, the ―god‖ of wisdom.
354 Kuang-ming Wu

Remember the growing baby, who sleeps all the time to coo, cry, and smile ceaselessly for no
reason; ―for no reason‖ is silence. The story of Tao is silent music, birthing, growing
unceasing, wordlessly.
Chuang Tzu quietly forgets himself, letting go of things naturally. Heavenly let-go
(天放), people in the Realm of Ultimate Virtues wiggle as insects to inter-help and don‘t
know human inter-giving, solid and don‘t know human loyalty, moving as deer and ―(people)
above‖ are just tree branches.17 All my words so far undulate, swing, and twirl to present
silent music; these words are waves hushed, musical.
There is naturalism and there is naturalism. Naturalism of Emerson and Thoreau is vocal,
vigorous, and masculine, with no mysterious nature-metaphysics of Lao Tzu, no calm self-
forgetting in nature of Chuang Tzu. In short, the West‘s nature is human and contrived, while
China‘s is nature pure and simple. The West is vociferous and clever; China sings quiet with
birds chirping.
The Cogito is Descartes‘ time-travel story of how he came to find, to realize, himself as
the pivot of his thinking. It is a highly self-conscious story self-centered. Curiously, he did
not continue to consider what this ―himself‖ is; his story tacitly shows that Cogito-
consciousness cannot probe oneself the bulwark of spontaneity. The Cogito is the haunts of
phenomenology that describes things only as appearing to consciousness; few
phenomenologists consider spontaneity.
Spontaneity as cognitive cul-de-sac also tells the story of the failure of phenomenology as
―pure description,‖ and also tells the story of the failure of direct elucidation of spontaneity,
and the necessity of its description to turn ―indirect.‖ Thinking as philosophical reflection is
expressed in discourse, discourse is description that is storytelling, and storytelling at its
basics expresses spontaneity in silence.
To redeem the above unkind treatment of Descartes, and show how universal spontaneity
is, let us consider it in a considered mode, as with artwork and religious meditation. What
personally pleases me as beautiful can be shared with others. People flock to concert halls and
art museums to enjoy beauty. The more, the merrier in the realm of spontaneous Beauty.
If spontaneity is taken as ―from the self,‖ Descartes‘ ―I think, therefore I am‖ amounts to
spontaneous thinking from the self to the self, to gain a solid base to his personal thinking,
and thereby gains for us all a universal base of all thinking. Spontaneity can thus be
universalized, however unwittingly, in the realm of Truth.
Spontaneity in Goodness is more complex. For Hume, what all people approve of as
goodness obtains when I personally feel something to be good or an act to be right. Mencius
wants personally felt unbearable sensitivity to people‘s pain to spread from my family to all
others. But how about Hitler‘s personally felt obligation to commit genocide? How about the
Golden Rule of ―Do to others what you want to be done by‖ that imposes my favorites on
people who dislike them?
Socrates could come in to help us out. His ―unexamined life‖ is not worth living, and the
lack of self-examination harvests the tragedies of Hitler and the Golden Rule. We condemn
Hitler18 in our spines; Confucius considered a negative Golden Rule; Mencius urged Duke
Hsüan to consider acting in line with his felt pain on others‘ pain. The spontaneity of self-so
(自然) combined with self-examination (自省) thus universalizes spontaneity in the realm of

17 Chuang Tzu 9/7, 12/80-84, cf. 9/9-12, 10/29-32, 16/5-17, and 20/9-28.
18 Whether Hitler relented before committing suicide is not clear, but we certainly feel revulsion.
 Conclusion 355

Goodness. The Cartesian Cogito is such combination in the realm of Truth, and an artwork is
such in the realm of Beauty. These combinations are human goodness so natural in Nature.
My little boy Mark whispered, ―It‘s quieter when birdies sing, isn‘t it, Dad?‖ His still
small voice opened my ears to how nature-silence goes. When distraught Elijah came out of
the cave of himself, he was enwrapped with a ―still small voice‖19 that was ―the call (phōnē)
of a gentle breeze,‖20 ―a sound of sheer silence‖21 announced by the mount-shattering wind,
earthquake, and fire. Then and there, Elijah came to himself refreshed, wrapped in divine
silence, and received a fresh mission.
For Chuang Tzu, the mysterious yet all-too-natural Heavenly Piping softly breezes
through the noisy Human Piping and Earthy Piping, natural sounds of wind, earthquake, and
fire, insects, frogs and birds, waves and waterfalls, brooks and breezes. Nature and
naturalness intone heavenly stillness.
Naturalness is quiet, attuned as a tuned-up machine softly whirling. We are natural when
attuned to nature; it is ―spontaneity.‖ Spontaneity is so peculiar that no Western philosopher
mentions it, for good reasons. On one hand, it is unthinkable, cannot even be mentioned, for
―mentioning‖ and ―thinking‖ are self-aware while spontaneity is not. On the other hand,
spontaneity is how we are, and so we cannot but mention/consider it. We are forced to
mention the unmentionable and think the unthinkable, somehow, and we fail, being pulled in
opposite directions.
Spontaneity is how we are situated as how and what we are, and can only be undergone
to understand. Wang Kuo-wei 王國維 distinguished ―self-ed realm 有我之境‖ from ―no-self
realm 無我之境,‖ but this self-ed realm of spontaneity is not self-conscious, i.e., has no-self.
Some examples may help.
Being ―cute‖ cannot be made aware without vanishing. We undergo being cute, to
express it spontaneously, caught by others; we ourselves do not realize it and cannot reflect
on it. The title ―princely man 君子‖ Confucius denied deserving of, and that is the reason
why he deserved it. We attain virtues unawares; ―Look at me, how humble I am!‖ dissipates
humility in obtrusive self-push.
―Time‖ is another example that Augustine and Chu Tzu-ch‘ing22 confessed they do not
know. Time can only be captured in its story called ―history,‖ and history is not the ―rabbit‖
of time but its ―trap.‖ These examples—being ―cute,‖ ―princely man,‖ and time—of
spontaneity can only be caught through words wordlessly; it is realized indescribably, via
description that must vanish.

19 1Kings 19:12 in the King James Version.

20 The same 1Kings 19:12 in the Septuagint Version.
21 The same 1Kings 19:12 in the New Revised Standard Version. This rendering takes this ―silence‖ as Chuang
Tzu‘s Heavenly Piping 天籟. This and the Septuagint interpretations are better than all others that I know of,
which sadly lean toward a sort of ―voice‖ or verbal revelation. Sadly, also, a commentator implicitly questions
this NRSV (The HarperCollins Study Bible, ed. Wayne A. Meeks, 1993, p. 551).
22 Ricoeur devoted the entire first Chapter to Augustine‘s query (only query!) on ―time‖ in Paul Ricoeur, Time and
Narrative, Volume One, (1983), The University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp. 5-30. Chu Tzu-ch‘ing 朱自清
expressed his deep puzzlement on time in his disarmingly unanswerable question, ―Dear Smart alec, tell me,
why our days, once gone, return no more?‖ explicitly (in ―Ts‘ung Ts‘ung 匆匆, Hurrying-by Unawares‖) and
implicitly (in many charming short essays) (朱自清全集, 臺南市文國書局, 1996, pp. 128-129, et al.) A Smart
alec, me, tried to answer him in Appendix: Mr. Chu on ―Our Days Not Returning‖ and History, in Part III of
my Chinese Wisdom Alive: Vignettes of Life-Thinking, Nova Science Publishers, 2010, pp. 415-420.
356 Kuang-ming Wu

The reason is simple. We must discourse on everything, however, and so indirect

description is how we capture spontaneity. Spontaneity is hit without hitting, and such strange
description is storytelling. Chuang Tzu the champion of spontaneity is a great storyteller, with
a wink. He always tells a story negatively, telling us something as he wipes it away.
He is a dragonfly whose tail dots without dotting the life-pond. He is serious when
hilarious, and hilarious when profound. ―Of course, I don‘t mean it,‖ says he, ―it is not this, it
is not not-this,‖ as he compresses what he means in ―wu wei 無為,‖ that is, ―(doing) no-do,‖
and often describes sensible-seeming nonsense23; he describes no-description. This is why
silly nursery rhymes are popular, for they evoke kids‘ spontaneity we all love to live. Chuang
Tzu as many thoughtful persons treasured kids.
Nature is not dead wordless so deafening, disturbing, and distracting. Nature sounds
variously in insect songs and frog drones, morning doves and night owls, gulls and geese,
waves and waterfalls, brooks and breezes. They are so irresistible that we make many
recordings of these ―nature songs,‖ in poetry and in literature and in history—as we do on
CDs and DVDs.
―Why are they irresistible?‖ All sounds in Nature blend into stillness, inviting us to blend
in, to calm us, to put us at ease, at home. Here sounds pave the grass singing still for singing
kids yelling, whining, hopping, skipping, and jumping for no reason, just to be there, in
themselves. Even when smile-less, or in sleep, they spread smiles all over, always, and all this
while grass is still, fresh.
Stillness of Nature breezes in sounds of things natural, and Heavenly Piping shows
through Earthly Piping that includes Human Piping. The Psalmist chants, ―The Heavens
declare; day unto day utters speech; there is no speech; their voice is gone out into all the
earth.‖ The heavens declare in wordless speech, in still sound, all around. This soundless
speech of Nature softly leads us to the Word that wordlessly shines forth life in all things.24
Music among people, the melodious Human Piping, can and should be tuned to natural
stillness of Nature to embrace us and tune us into it. Let‘s repeat. When exhausted, Kreisler
goes out into the forest. He is just there hearing and overhearing Nature, to be nourished and
filled, and his music is now as still as it is natural, nestling us.
Schubert‘s songs, vocal (―Der Wanderer,‖ ―Winterreise,‖ and over 600 songs) and
instrumental (―The Trout Quintet,‖ The ―Death and the Maiden‖ Quartet, and symphonies)
are all songs of Nature calmly singing the world, and those who try to shape them make a
fool of themselves.25 All great composers and performers hug silence, and surround us with
Nature-silence, whispering to us speechless stories, to enrich us into ourselves in Nature,
naturally. Stillness and storytelling blend here in nature. We are in paradise of Tao of Self-So.
When I look up at the whole bunch of trees, what do I look at? Nothing; I just want to be
in the green. What is the green? It is something that makes me. Green is my silence, me in
nature, and I do not know what I am saying, though I know what it is I am saying. I am in the
sun warmth, and I hear lawnmowers here and there, as I also mow me prim and trim. The
lawnmowers are noisy around me as my silent milieu of walking to self-trim.

23 Beginning with the opening story of an incredible Fish turned an incredible Phoenix, Chuang Tzu gives us all
sorts of stories that seem so profound as to make us scratch our heads on whatever they could mean at all! Zen
masters do so quite often. ―What is the essence of the Buddha?‖ ―This shit-wiping stick!‖
24 Psalm 19:1-4 (Septuagint, abbreviated), John 1:1, 5.
25 We remember the Emerson Quartet, struggling so sonorously, shaping so foolishly.
 Conclusion 357

I am walking but I really do no walk; I just inscribe me in silence on the road that could
not care less about me. Don‘t I walk day in and night out? I am silence in the rhythm of life in
nature. Silence is here. I am silent while eating; I am silent while eating chirping of the birds,
blossoming of so many flowers, all basking in the warm sun. My silence feeds me so full, full
of the Heaven and Earth.
―Tao Always‖ does not tao, talk, or lead, as ―Name Always‖ does not name a universal. It
no-does, it simply walks it and forms. Thousand-mile walk begins underfoot here now.
Universal is a transversal walking life out silently, and later generations tell it as the story of
history. Transversal inter-verses, walking to weave a heavenly net, vast, coarse-meshed,
26
leaking nothing; it is now silent Tao. Everything is morning-fresh, translucent, and Self-So.
All thinking begins at demonstratives—here, now, etc.—that in turn begin at the ―I.‖ I am
embodied active as thinking. ―I am thinking‖ means ―I am body-thinking.‖ Thinking is
situated as ―I‖ as I am body-active-as-thinking. All this thinking makes sense of/to things.
Now, what does I-think in the concrete mean? Isn‘t it I-as-body telling stories? Isn‘t
storytelling how the body is continually constituted, as ―I‖?
Thus I-as-body constantly developing and growing in storytelling makes a system-alive,
ever open to any things that come. Such an open system is/makes the lifeworld; the world is
thus sung and danced out—in story-thinking storytelling. Storytelling is the how of ―I‖; ―I‖ is
the what of storytelling. Words of mouth originate in the body wording its life-stories, in
story-thinking, as story-thinking.
I-as-body words forth via its silent ways of being-behaving. No word, no silence; it is
storytelling word-forgotten, it is the body-I joining the flow of Heaven and Earth. Thus
thanks to body-thinking actively story-thinking, the I composes many I‘s, single self develops
into the great Self of the lifeworld, and I am born with Heaven and Earth—singing silence of
myriad things.
The Africans are our primal forefathers from whom we learn much. Their lives tell us
that every object is a musical instrument performing the silence of music of that thing. And of
course all performers play their own respective silences. We are all performers of our lives
our own musical silences.
We perform silence of life-music in storytelling, story-thinking in our different ways.
Music in its silence infuses our story-thinking life. Silence sings in music celebrating it. In
musical story-thinking in silent storytelling—and hearing and adding—our living irresistibly
resounds the Heaven and Earth, intoning life-music, dancing silence unceasing, in tears and
laughs, and often between them, come what may, one day at a time.
Poetry is packed stories, inviting us to unpack into stories. This invitation is poetics.
Story-thinking tells of poetics. This volume tells the stories of poetics chanting aloud the
sound of the music of things‘ senses, chanting and telling it to the hills and the rivers,
shouting, ―the lifeworld is the ponds various, alive!‖
Story does metaphoring music into New Heaven and New Earth. Metaphor literally
ferries us over to the new, and we enter the new world anew again, with a new language and a
new climate of far-reaching connections unsuspected. Here is the same world yet different, to
surprise and fascinate us, positively and negatively. Music is here singing all over the world.
Thus music, storytelling, and poetry pervade to renovate the lifeworld. The world turns new
thanks to inter-metaphoring of storytelling with poetry and music.

26 Tao Te Ching 1, 37, Chuang Tzu 2/33, , 64, 73 天網, Chuang Tzu 6/41, 朝徹.
358 Kuang-ming Wu

Storytelling lets things random cohere into the sense of a world. ―Letting things cohere‖
consummates in story-hearing of the world of facts, and we become part of this fact-world,
part of its story, part of history. In this world, we storytellers and story-hearers enter silence
to become the sense of the world, for ―becoming fact‖ is silent. All this is shown in the story
of music suffusing silence singing nature, where things are as they are, fulfilled in natural
silence. After all, music is a singing fact of the Spheres, and so music sings world silence.
It is time to take stock. Here is a bombshell repeatedly presented in previous pages.
Logically impossible to parse yet routinely happening daily, such contingent actuality can be
captured only in stories and collected into history that makes some extra-logical sense. Two
examples quite concrete are here, the baby and the life‘s why.
ONE: Have we noticed it? Infantility infatuates us, as no one minds baby immaturity. We
are all pulled into the bare baby here, misshaped, clumsy, wobbly, helpless, in all her
imperfections refreshing, inviting. The baby so childish charms us into caring for her; we
keep serving her at the side, ever apologizing to her for not serving her enough.
We never mind baby imperfections in our eternal adoration of her, even of her asleep.
Logic cannot help but wonder, ―How could imperfection be adored?‖ Baby pulls off such
logical stunt on us. We can never win, we don‘t even want to win; we are completely won
over precisely by baby immaturity. In fact, a ―perfect baby‖ is a logical contradiction, yet she
is actually perfect in all her imperfections. To such ―perfect‖ baby belongs the Kingdom of
27
Perfection. Such illogical actuality is incarnate in a refreshing baby!
Logic is thus dissolved in the baby softly alive, with her irresistible imperfections. The
absence of their imperfections devastates all our logic, scholarship, and research. 李贄‘s
(1527-1602) ―童心說‖ says that ―童心 infant heart‖ is ―真心 true heart‖ at the base of all
28
scholarship. It says the infant-heart is the true heart, our sheer root authenticity that is the
dynamo of all sages and all scholarship. Without infant-authenticity all our life-activities
collapse into a farce. What is authenticity? It is baby-tautology exhibited in Example Two
here as follows.
TWO: ―Why do I write?‖ reflects back on itself. This is because ―why write?‖ is
answered by writing, and so the question forever stands unanswered. The question hushes all
answers; it is hushed unanswerable. Writing is thus a performative tautology. Writing is full
as life that also cannot be questioned, for asking life, ―Why live?,‖ asks life, not death.
Asking life on life asks itself, and life answering life answers no life. The question is its
answer; the question echoes itself. The echo expresses a tautology; writing, talking, and
thinking are life expressing life, and so questioning them—Why write? Why talk? Why
think?—echoes itself, reflects itself, reenacts itself, and re-incarnates itself. Asking them hits
itself, to bounce back to answer itself.
All this amounts to saying, writing is present as absent, in absence of craft, of time;
writing is just there stretching itself, silent so loud writing on, absent so fully present. It
expresses me absent to myself so fully present that I cannot say, ―I am normal,‖ or

27 Jesus‘ declaration, ―To such as these [immature, imperfect] children—kids of all ages—belongs the Kingdom of
God,‖ is so stunning as to ring through all three Gospels to begin the New Testament. Matthew 19:14 is Mark
10:14 that repeats Luke 18:16. ―To such as these children‖ stresses the child by inviting us all ―such as these‖
in, kids of all ages gather to ha-ha together in the Kingdom of Perfection that is theirs.
28 ―童心說,‖ in 李贄文集，北京社會科學文獻出版社，2000, I:91-93. He missed the fact that the child‘s root-
authenticity lies precisely in her imperfections, so as to confront this fact head on, as we are doing now.
 Conclusion 359

29
―abnormal.‖ The joy of self-presence is so full in joy-absence, a joy no-joy. It is an ultimate
joy overflowing joy. Writing is joy of expressing my presence absent to myself, as I cannot
write writing. I just write and writing appears of itself, as I just am, and I am present as absent
to myself appearing to others.
Whatever I do is supported by my rock-bottom spontaneity unawares. It is shown by my
30
inability to complete self-description; I am self-elusive. Even Socrates‘ self-examination
stays itself unexamined, supported by his Daimon unexamined. To be aware of this rock-
bottom spontaneity unawares is life‘s bliss, the baby tells us, at home in this rock support.
Aristotle‘s wonder as dynamo of metaphysics glances sideways at this baby. This is why the
child is the ideal of us adults.
In all, ―I am‖ is my baby wobbly irresistible, unawares; ―I am‖ is my existential tautology
expressed in ―I write, I talk, I think,‖ all self-reflective tautologies so meaningful a presence
self-absent. In logic, tautology is meaning-empty; tautology in existence, in self-existence, is
in contrast so sense-full as to express itself in self-contradictions in all self-engagements.
Baby in all her immaturity is irresistible because she is self-tautology fully present self-
absent. We adults, attracted to the baby, are babies (to us) after all. Three points wrap up our
relation to the child.
One: What about the child‘s immaturity? Baby immaturity (a) attracts us to (b) serve her,
to show (c) we are also immature, to show us (d) how to deal with immaturity, as they respect
someone more mature, playing fully in the now while disliking the now. We have said so in
the above paragraphs on the baby.
―But you said of our attitude to immaturity, not immaturity itself.‖ Well, then, we must
say not immaturity itself but our attitude to it is good or bad, and kids have the right attitude
to their immaturity. ―But how could baby immaturity be perfection?‖ Now, is it ―perfection‖
if it is so perfect that it needs nothing else? Such self-imprisoned perfection is no perfection,
which must be dynamic, and so the real perfection in real life is what grows, and that is kid-
immaturity. Real Perfection belongs to kid-imperfection, not any other imperfection.
Two: ―Why does the child grow to lose its precious kid‘s heart 童心 as true heart 真心?‖
Growth loses the sap of youth to go dry. We must replenish our baby-youth, as Mencius also
says, ―The Great Ones are those who lose none of their baby-heart‖ (4B12). Lao Tzu and
Chuang Tzu adore the child. Jesus even says that the Kingdom of God belongs to the children
31
of all ages. All this is why we adore the child.
Three: Our adult adoration of the child is not the child, our identification with the child
does not make the child of us, and child-incarnated adult is not the child. What does logic say
about this ―not‖? The answer is simple but slippery. This ―not‖ exists and does not exist. This
―not‖ exists, obviously because adults are not the child. For all this, though, this ―not‖ cannot
exist, for if it does, it destroys our identification with the child. Thus this ―not‖ is logical
(obviously exists) and beyond logic (cannot exist).

29 To confidently assert, ―I‘m normal,‖ shows I‘m abnormal; few would confidently assert, ―I‘m abnormal,‖ but if
it is asserted at all, no one would know what to do with that fellow. Thus Socrates‘ self-examination and Jesus‘
demand of repentance are problematic. All these oddities came from the fact that self-sayings split the self, and
self-split destroys the self that is self-full, self-identical, self-tautological, ―I am what I am,‖ unawares.
30 Gilbert Ryle, ―the systematic elusiveness of ‗I‘,‖ The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson, 1949, pp. 195-198.
31 To repeat, this declaration is so extraordinary that it was recorded in all three Gospels that begin the NT;
Matthew 19:14 is the same as Mark 10:14 that repeats Luke 18:16.
360 Kuang-ming Wu

In all, baby-tautology and writing-tautology perform ―living self‖ in living self-tautology.

All this is beyond logic; stories are just told to express it. Story-thinking is beyond logic-
thinking and uses logic to express itself, to express self-tautologies that are concrete thinking.
Story-thinking is concrete beyond logic-thinking, and uses logic to express itself as concrete
thinking on the concrete. Story-thinking is life-thinking, quite life-logical beyond logic-
thinking—in baby-existential self-tautology.

CODA: STORY-THINKING CHINA

Let us place this volume in the context of my publication to make sense of this Coda. My
Chinese Wisdom Alive was just out in June 2010, and this volume is its sequel on two counts.
Chinese Wisdom Alive shouts for China as China, on what China is, and this volume is its
methodology, its how. Chinese Wisdom Alive shouts for China-West interculture, and this
volume is its ―sneak preview.‖ To do all this, how China story-thinks must be portrayed. This
Coda is the portrayal.
Besides, lest people think that all the above pages are sheer fictive pieces of imagination,
we cannot overstress the importance of noting that there exists in the world today a culture
that has been living and thriving for millennia on this storytelling, this story-thinking. This
culture is China. It is not that other cultures have no elements of story-logic, for how could
they be without such root thinking basic to human nature? It is rather that there exists today
no civilized culture that lives centrally and explicitly on story-thinking, except China.
In primordial eras, everyone thought in storytelling. Today, some primordial cultures are
story-infused, and now many cultures, Indian, European, Latin American, and Japanese, have
gone on to mix storytelling, add to story-logic, with many other sorts of thinking, legal,
mathematical, religious, scientific, and objective.
China alone goes on, becomes sophisticated, progressed and civilized, within story-
thinking. No one dares say China is primitive, yet no one dares to deny China is without
story-thinking—in literature, history, sociopolitical living, and style of living. China is the
only culture in the world today that is not primitive, still vigorously thriving, and centrally
story-thinking. So, at the cost of slight repetition of the foregoing pages, here is a vignette of
China in story-thinking; repetition here links the pages above to show how story-thinking
validated in historical facts in/of China.32
Actually, in our cultural meditation on storytelling above, China has often been cited and
explained. This is quite justified, for China is one culture in our human world that actualizes
storytelling and story-reading in its entire history, as it practices story-thinking, story-logic,
and even story-writing (the writing system, characters as ideograms) in life. Chinese
characters are sense-portrayals on the move as things while their senses shift and move,
alive—as storytelling. Such is how China goes by story-thinking. ―Story‖ is actually a verb.
Story links elements irrelevant, even inter-opposed. We first sum up how China story-
thinks, then answer Dr. Ruth Chao‘s critique of my interpersonal reflections on psychology
our study of the human core. Story-thinking is related to relativism that links pragmatism; we

32
All my writings concern this fact. E.g., see my On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden:
Brill, 1997, pp. 22-79, 108-113, 441, et passim.
 Conclusion 361

see how easily China can relate to Rorty‘s ―pragmatism,‖ ―relativism‖-in-praxis, to sum-up
the world as ponds alive countless.
Then we see ―Chinese body-thinking‖ in Professor Gongsun‘s story about Wu Kuang-
ming, edited and added here. Finally, a small aside, revolutionary, on Taiwan as the gem of
the world rounds up our story-thinking. In all this, China in story-logic that naturally joins is a
natural matrix for interculturalism, its story-thinking in global interculture.
In all, this Coda has seven miscellaneous themes to show how fecund story-thinking in
China is: a. Chinese philosophy and story-thinking; b. outside looking in: a review of Starr‘s
Understanding China; c. Dr. Wu‘s intersubjective psychology (Ruth Chao) and Wu‘s
response; d. Rorty, China, and world relativism; e. various ponds alive; f. ―Chinese body
thinking‖: Dr. Wu‘s world interculture; and g. Taiwan the world‘s gem. These story-thinking
themes illuminate the world via China, as they illuminate China in the world.

A. CHINESE PHILOSOPHY AND STORY-THINKING33

At the risk of slight repetition, here is a summary of all that have gone before, with
silence as music. This section shows that storytelling and -reading as story-thinking has been
going on for ages in one of the world‘s longest cultures, China. We test a pie by tasting it, not
just looking at it. Story-thinking is not just a beautiful pie in the sky (for it is beautiful in the
heavens of ideals and enjoyment) but is also a solid, historic, and powerful antidote to
analytical thinking today, to save the world from over-logicizing.
We know that Chinese people think by stories, but not yet what such thinking is. They
think story-way by storytelling, by story-reading, and by both performing silence. One, China
thinks by storytelling. Logical analysis is coherent and self-closed, cannot ―move,‖ to miss
key-data, and tears a story into unintelligible bits. In contrast, storytelling is coherent and
open, trailing actual ongoing to move with it intelligibly.
Two, China thinks by story-reading on four levels, (a) textual, (b) exegetical, (c)
expository, and (d) hermeneutic. They form a hermeneutic circle to understand life events.
Missing (d), Fingarette missed Confucius, Richards did Mencius, Hansen did China, as Black
did Wittgenstein. They did not sensitively read the stories of those people and culture.
Three, telling and reading stories unite to perform silence, self-negating to tell life and
nature, as did Wittgenstein, Confucius, Socrates, Lao Tzu, and Chuang Tzu. We have told a
story of story-thinking. We are now to explain all this by telling its stories.
Chinese people reflect on life in chronicles, journals, analects, and literature; even
―logical terms‖ in Mo Pien, Hsün Tzu, Hui Shih, and Kung-sun Lung Tzu, and other Name
Scholars, are concrete names, notions, and mini-stories. ―Chinese philosophy‖ is ―story-
philosophy‖ that (i) thinks, argues, and understands affairs by telling and reading their stories,
and even (ii) extends itself to considering reading and thinking in stories, story-way.34

33 This section is refurbished from my article by the title in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Summer
2005, pp. 217-234.
34 This rough description of ―story-philosophy‖ will be tightened, pulling together these two senses of story-
philosophy, connecting it to philosophy, storytelling, and story-reading.
362 Kuang-ming Wu

Story-philosophy thus thinks story-way35 with life-reason. It story-thinks as it tells stories

of history, journals, or literature, and it story-thinks by story-considering storytelling and
story-reading. Or the stress can self-reverse to shift the sense-milieu with story-thinking itself.
Such freedom is distinctive of story-thinking, for it does not logicize, analyze, and prove
coercively, Western philosophy way.36
Plato/Aristotle proposed an interesting logical pair, collection (sunagoge) and division
(diairesis)37; both must join to make an assertion. We say, a division-collection of assertions
are made by a story. Storytelling has a grammar, syntax, or logic38 of story-thinking in four
levels, the first two (textual and exegetical 考證訓詁) belong to division, the latter two
(expository and hermeneutic 釋義闡釋) belong to collection. These levels describe two
desiderata of story-thinking in its morphology and its methodology.
Its morphology is that story-thinking has these four levels, textual, exegetical, expository,
and hermeneutic. Its methodology is that all these four levels must be engaged, and that these
four levels must mutually involve to maintain its self-recursive hermeneutic circle that is life-
thinking in story-thinking. The present essay engages such story-philosophy; it tells the story
by thinking it,39 reads it, for philosophy is thinking that ―reads‖ actuality. This amounts to
telling the story of not telling stories by logicizing them.
The present essay thinks thinking by telling and reading stories, and shows how essential
such engagement is to life, how missing it misses Chinese thinking.40 This showing is bitingly
relevant to today‘s ―Chinese philosophy‖ and philosophy in general. Philosophy ―reads‖ a
situation that appears in stories,41 so story-thinking intimately joins philosophy in ―story-
philosophy.‖ To philosophize is to ―read‖ the story of a situation manifest in historical
chronicle, daily news, biography, and journal. Storytelling and reading is more significant and
complex than we may assume.

35 Cf. my On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001, Indexes on Chinese characters (p. 662),
on story (p. 670-671), and on story-notions (p. 671). My Chinese Wisdom Alive, op. cit., elaborates on all this.
36 Arthur Wright denied (1959) that China has ―philosophy‖ (as logical analysis of Stanford where he dwelt).
David S. Nivison in Stanford agreed. H. G. Creel criticized them. Henry Rosemont, Jr. denied (1983) that
China has ―ethics‖ of Aristotle‘s systematic sort. Wing-tsit Chan criticized him. They all manifest the two
aspects of ―Chinese philosophy,‖ not ―philosophy‖ in the Western sense (as Wright, Nivison, Rosemont
asserted), ―philosophy‖ not in the sense unknown in the West (as Chan and perhaps Creel sensed). Sadly, in all
this wrangling, what ―Chinese philosophy‖ is (not just as convention or thought in China) remains unclear. I
reacted to them all in On Chinese Body Thinking, pp. 207-208 and On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A
Cultural Hermeneutic, same press, 1998, pp. 304, 305, 435. Here I continue my reply.
37 On ―collection‖ or ―conclusion‖ (sunagoge) see Aristotle‘s Metaphysics 1042a3, etc. On ―division‖ (diairesis)
see Plato‘s Phaedrus 266b and Airstotle‘s Analytica Priora 46a31.
38 Interestingly, all these words, grammar, syntax, and logic, connote systematic collection. ―Logic‖ originally
meant ―collecting logs‖ (see my On Metaphoring, op. cit., pp. 10 [note 23], 54-58). ―Grammar,‖ collected
letters, is methodological studies of literature, i.e., textual/historical criticism (level-a), aesthetic criticism
(level-b), and explanation of allusions (level-c). (cf. Oxford English Dictionary VI: 742); our ―grammar of
storytelling‖ must add one more hermeneutic level. ―Syntax‖ is orderly/systematic arrangement of elements, a
connected order/system of things; ―suntassō‖ means ―put together in order‖ (Liddell and Scott, Greek-English
Lexicon, Oxford, 1996, p. 1725). So ―syntax‖ is arrangement of words to show their relation to sentence; this
meaning is widened into the ―logic of formal syntax of language‖ (Oxford English Dictionary, XVII: 487), and
this is what we mean by the ―syntax of storytelling.‖
39 We will see that in so thinking we unwittingly tell a story of story-thinking, where to think is to tell stories.
40 All my ―culture hermeneutic‖-trilogy concern ―story-philosophy‖ (though the term is not used). E.g., On the
“Logic” of Togetherness, op. cit., pp. 294-385, describes how distinct story-philosophy is.
41 A ―story‖ presents a situation, actual or imagined; logical analysis tears a situation apart into unintelligible
pieces. We have no story without a situation, which remains unknown without a story. How a story presents a
situation by coherent open-ended synthesis is our story.
 Conclusion 363

It is all four-leveled story-thinking that makes the all-out pragmatic impact in life-
expression. To show how it is so, let us rehearse story-reading. Sensitive textual exposition
((a), (b)) would breed interpretation ((c)), which yet requires caution. Exposition (b) must
lead us out of the text (a) into what it means, as its exposition (c) must leads us into what the
saying peculiarly says (d) to make sense of (a), (b), and (c); (b) leads out of (a) as (c) leads
into (d), for (a) without (b) is dead as (c) without (d) is off the mark.
Now, after all has been considered about story-philosophy as story-thinking in
storytelling-reading, let us ask self-referentially, Where is this essay itself? It is a philosophy,
all right,42 but is it ―philosophy‖ in Western traditional mode, or is it ―story-thinking‖ in
China?43 What is it, then? It is neither, because it is both. Let us see first how it is neither.
This book-essay is neither quite Chinese philosophy nor quite Western. First, this essay is
not a part of Western traditional philosophy that argues and analyzes; this essay sensitively
describes, understands, and presents, but not argue, or it ―argues‖ only story-way. This essay
does not quite belong to Western philosophy.
This book-essay is not in a purely Chinese mode of thinking, either, for it considers
story-thinking in telling/hearing stories. Chinese thinkers do not tell and think of their
thinking; they think by telling stories. This essay describes story-thinking by considering how
distinctive it is of China. This essay is not quite a traditional thinking of Chinese thinkers. So
this essay is neither straightly Chinese nor Western.
At the same time, precisely in not belonging totally to China or the West, our essay
shares the ways of China and of the West, for the essay describes in Chinese way and
explicitly understands in Western manner. It story-understands story-thinking as China does,
and reasonably arranges and explicates story-philosophy in a manner palatable to Western
philosophers. It story-philosophizes beyond plain story-thinking.
This essay can then be said to be a meta-story-philosophy, a descriptive phenomenology
of story-thinking. It is a story-phenomenology, fully aware that ―phenomenology‖ is a fancy
name for story-thinking-philosophy. It is a story-thinking on story-thinking, a story-
philosophy on story-philosophy; it puts a story-spin on philosophy reflecting on
telling/reading stories, as it reflects on the significance of China‘s story-philosophy, on how
essential it is to life, socially, cosmically.
So it is a story of the phenomenon of story-thinking, telling a story of silent story-
reasoning in storytelling-reading—both to China and to the West—as we hear Theresa,
Dickens, Lao Tzu, and Mencius softly chime in one with another. It thus secretly hopes to
usher in a ―world philosophy of intercultural concord‖ in our small Global Village today.
Storytelling is one quite effective way toward world interculture.44
In sum, we humans have two sorts of reasoning. One is logical reasoning in mathematical
analysis. Another is story-reasoning of historical hermeneutics. One is clear, another is
concrete; both should gather. Here ―should‖ needs logical thinking, to ―gather‖ needs story
perception. Both sorts of reasoning make for an understanding and management of actuality

42 This is a philosophical consideration on story-philosophy, a sort of meta-philosophy that is also philosophy.

43 Leo Tolstoy‘s ―What is Art?‖ (1898), 王國維‘s 人間詞話, (Wang Kuo-wei, ―Comments on words among
people,‖ 1908-1909) and Brand Blanshard‘s On Philosophical Style (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1954) are literature, not philosophy. Philosophers Nietzsche, Whitehead, Russell, Santayana, Sartre, and Quine
are stylists, but they reflect on no style. Our intercultural reflection on Chinese story-philosophy in English
here is perhaps unique in the history of human thinking.
44 Another way is elaborated in my On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic (Leiden: Brill, 2001) that intimately
relates to storytelling this volume elaborates. A future volume could be written on the unity of both.
364 Kuang-ming Wu

from past to future of world togetherness.45 To do so, let us first look at China from outside
(now in Starr‘s book), and then look at China from inside (later in Dr. Gongsun‘s introduction
to Wu‘s thinking-exploration).

B. OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: A REVIEW OF STARR’S UNDERSTANDING

CHINA46
Starr‘s volume is coherent, informative, and absorbing. Its author, John Bryan Starr,
served as president of both the Yale-China Association and the China Institute in New York
City, and as managing director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in Providence,
Rhode Island. He is now Executive Director of the Tri-State Consortium. He also served as
Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Education in Brown University.
This is his succinct volume on China‘s background historical, geographical,
demographic, sociopolitical, and economic, and China‘s overwhelming crises today and
tomorrow. Starr attends to political complexities of China since Deng Xiaoping died, its
influence in American politics, its efforts to acquire advanced technology from foreign
powers, relations with Taiwan and Tibet, the transfer of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, nuclear
weapons program, and its environmental and human rights records. All this shows our
urgency to understand China.
This book came from 17 years of Yale seminar on ―issues in contemporary China.‖ It has
Introduction, 17 Tables, 8 Maps, Chapters on Geographical Inequalities; Patterns from the
Past; Political System; Economy; The Armed Forces; Sources of Rural Discontent; Cities;
The Centrifugal Forces of Regionalism; Han and Non-Han; Environmental Degradation; One
Billion Plus; Human Rights and the Rule of Law; Intellectual Freedom and Education;
Artistic Freedom; Hong Kong and Macao; Democratization in Taiwan; Foreign Relations,
Conclusion, Bibliography (20 pages) and Index.
The volume stresses that we must undergo a China-experience to understand China
radically different from the West. To undergo China today we must experience it in its
historical context; China must be understood by looking into its history as weight and guide.
Ancient history puts a stamp of distinctness; modern history shows how such features fare
today. China‘s history sets up a system of ―world family,‖ whose Head, ―Heavenly Son‖ the
―Parent of the People,‖ single-handedly ruled people ―within Four Seas,‖ to harvest
unspeakable miseries with a glorious culture, ―China.‖
China‘s time-honored autocratic system has collapsed under the weight of modern
incursions of the West, and its culture has been undergoing a series of profound ―cultural
revolutions‖ since Opium War and May Fourth Movement far beyond Mao‘s disastrous
―Cultural Revolution.‖ China‘s cultural revolutions unceasingly search for an alternative
sociopolitical economy system. What Mao tried in his private version and vision to demolish
Confucianism had failed, and the Confucian Renaissance is on the rise in new clothes as New
Neo-Confucianism.

45 The notion of togetherness is considered in my On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic

(Leiden: Brill, 1998). Do we need a volume unifying storytelling, metaphoring, and togetherness? Does this
volume perhaps fill the bill?
46 John Bryan Starr‘s Understanding China (1999) Revised and Expanded, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
 Conclusion 365

The West has also undergone a revolution of humanistic Renaissance, but China‘s is
more tragic and its impact felt no less worldwide, in its ongoing nationwide upheaval, still
trying to rise from the ashes. And, to think of it, why did people all over the world have to
begin with autocracy? China is an enigma, for it has no one-God religion to set up theocracy
with, as the West did, and so China is a strategic place to ponder on why people had to rally
to the autocratic ruler and, after beginning with autocracy, why people have to change it.
Starr did not answer such big questions but offered much on the turmoil in China today,
in the context of its history. His information may furnish suggestions on its future. The
importance of the past is underscored by Starr‘s observation that, in China, what has passed is
expressed as ―a long way in front of me 很久以前‖ (p. 40),47 not behind us. English language
also has ―forefathers,‖ not ―hind-fathers,‖ and ―what has gone before,‖ not ―gone behind.‖48
It takes Starr a sensitive Westerner to discern this fact while studying a foreign culture,
China. Interculturalism is needed to alert us to universal human conditions, and Starr‘s
volume is one instance of world interculturalism. Sadly, after noting this ―past‖ as ―before,‖
Starr then incoherently mumbled away into other issues; we must go our own way to discern
its significance. We think of it this way.
A Chinese expression on the past, ―the mirror of the cart in-front 前車之鑑‖ may give a
clue. Perhaps the past is in front of us now by continuing to alert us on (successes and)
failures (前車之覆!) of our forefathers‘, their project similar to ours, as an important
reference map to chart and pick our way now with care.
At the same time, the past has disappeared, to show we have no obstruction to free
decision; we are free to ignore it, even at our own risk. Still, the past does turn into our
weight, as in China today. To notice this fact is important to understanding China. In short,
the past is in front yet nowhere, as the best teacher is a dead one (Kierkegaard); it is important
to go back to the past before us in order to understand the present and chart the future.
It is time to take stock. We begin with praising Starr. Most history books tend to be so
long, loose, and tortuous to exhaust reader‘s patience. Starr‘s is in contrast concise and
precise, clear and apt, never lost in details; many eye-catching maps and skillfully designed
charts clinch at a glance the points explained. His slender volume covers the same amount as
do a massive one of, e.g., Jonathan Spence‘s. Starr‘s is stark, shrewd, and often surprising
guide to understanding China today in its historical context, as it ominously confronts the
world. His Introduction (3-18) is a gem.

Indeed, there are those who predict that at its current rate of growth, China will be the
world‘s largest economy by 2040, surpassing Japan‘s and the United States‘. . . . Economic
success has made the Chinese government . . . much less malleable and easy to deal with than
it once was. . . . It demands full membership in the world economy but balks at playing by the
rules(, evidencing) a new dangerous military expansionism.‖ (3-4) The purpose of this book is

47
Starr quoted, ―henduo yiqian,‖ and said it ―suggests a very different sense of the direction one faces to look at the
past from the one we are accustomed to. It calls to mind the image of a Chinese historian seated beside the
stream of events looking toward its source, while behind him the stream runs on into the future‖ (40). This
description, together with that of Chinese ―myth‖ of their history and their view of it as ―cyclical‖ (49), are
themselves woven with fact and fiction, and appear rather foreign to the Chinese people. His linguistic
observation still stands perceptive, however.
48
English has, however, ―it is now behind us‖ that is not Chinese; the Chinese language would have said, ―what is
gone, days gone by, what is passed and gone (已往, 往日, 過去).‖
366 Kuang-ming Wu

to look beyond the immediate situation and to explore three questions: What are the principal
problems confronting China today? What is the capacity of the Chinese political system to
deal with these problems successfully? And, how might the political system play itself out in
the near term? My answers (that) I will elaborate on in the chapters that follows, are, first, that
(China‘s many serious) problems would tax the capability of the strongest and most able of
governments. But, second, the capacity of the Chinese government is severely diminished and
. . . is weak. Hence, third, China‘s near-term future looks rather dark. (3-7)

Then a succinct penetrating story of 14 grave problems today follows, at home and
abroad. They are: state-owned enterprises in serious financial strait, banking system
collapsing, unemployment and underemployment severe, workers from rural to urban areas in
ex-urban shantytowns; workers needed who tend to violent crimes. Urban and rural income
gap is great. Excessive rural taxation simply supplies local officials with ostentatious
expenditures, no cash flow to farmers.
Lack of autonomy incites ethnic tensions in border regions. It is difficult to control
population growth. Grain production cannot be increased more. The environment in China is
extensively polluted. Administrative problems in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan gnaw
China at the root. Problems linger on in relations with USA and neighboring nations. Besides,
added to these grave issues, the Chinese government is itself thoroughly corrupt, and lacks the
desiderata of efficiency, grand vision, and popular credibility. Its future is bleak indeed.
Now, this scenario raises at once the following two puzzlements. First, in the face of
these well-nigh insurmountable challenges, why and how is China managing a spectacular
growth in economy? What are the factors responsible for the growth? Can these factors be
channeled to solve the problems mentioned here?
Secondly, China is a culture of long history, boasting many brilliant ideas to solve
problems, persuasive arguments for great humane governance, and effective measures to
prosper the nation. Besides, China today has unprecedented scientific-technological advances,
e.g., nuclear industry and space programs. Can‘t China use its vast cultural resources to
resolve its problems?
Starr is almost silent on both these, just stressing China‘s socio-politics and economy, not
its scientific and humanistic achievements, such as Kao Hsing-chien 高行健 the Nobel
laureate. We ask, ―Why is China still cumbered with these 14 problems, all familiar in
Chinese history? Why/how is it that so high and powerful a culture as China is so powerless
before these problems, historically so familiar?‖ Starr just describes, touching no today-past
relations on the problem.
Taiwan the geo-politically strategic island is simply assumed as part of China
49
(―nominally a province of China‖ (275)), culturally, politically. Starr‘s astute external
observation, his long story on Lee Teng-hui‘s achievements (279-294), lacks an equal amount
of sympathetic attention to both sides, Taiwan, the mainland, of controversies on the
explosive issue of ―One China.‖
Nor did his totally sociopolitical and economic description attend to Taiwan‘s complex
cultural mix, more than simple Chinese culture or Japanese, but can only be called

49 Starr did say, ―Only during the decade 1885-1895 and in the three years immediately after the end of World War
II was Taiwan governed as a province of China. At all other times, Taiwan has been largely independent of the
control of a mainland Chinese government.‖ (276). Then he rightly rehearsed the history of it being
―‗discovered‘ . . . by Portuguese explorers, who named it Formosa.‖ And so on.
 Conclusion 367

―Taiwanese‖ that is behind all bold political moves he approvingly told of. China‘s critical
role in international geopolitics is unsatisfactorily dealt with. Similar complaints can be
registered on Tibet. The book reads incredible to Chinese persons. ―Is this my China I know
in my bones?‖
Besides, the dynamics of history as weight vs. guide is not obvious in the book, but it is
50
central in China today. Starr‘s future prognostication of China is buried in a benign
exhortation to the West to pay close attention to China. He did dream of ―Taiwanization‖ of
China, as gradual ―democratization‖ of China as Taiwan has undergone (298-299), though he
51
admits it to be unlikely in China today (320). That is courageous of Starr among most
Sinologists and historians who tend to neglect Taiwan.
In all, this book is the best of external reportage on China. The uninitiated can be
introduced to a region with an objective explanation of its geography, population, history,
socio-politics, and demography. The region can also be presented with a personal experiential
story of its daily life and its peculiar air redolent all over, with an eye of a sensitive fiction-
writer. We yearn after a joining of the two, an indispensable ideal to be approximated
asymptotically. Starr‘s volume may well have furnished us with an impressive first step
toward fulfilling this historic ideal.

C. DR. WU’S INTER-SUBJECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY (RUTH CHAO) AND

WU’S RESPONSE52
Few people realize how much we can learn from Dr. Wu‘s novel incisive reflections on
psychology. His pages of various reflections on psychology can easily collect into a
substantial volume. As philosopher, Wu pays close attention to psychology. As with his deep
reflections on things religious, Wu has published no article on psychology, while his novel
reflections on things psychological are strewn throughout all his volumes.
His Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play (1982) has a long section on self, inter-self,
and friends. Butterfly (1990) critically mentions three psychologists, Freud, James, and
Merleau-Ponty. History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy (1991) begins with
comments and examples furnished by neuro-psychologist Oliver Sacks.
His ―body thinking‖ (1997) and ―logic‖ of togetherness (1998) are a twofold magnificent
philosophical psychology of thinking, where ―psychology‖ appears conspicuously. ―Blind
Spots in Brain Research‖ in Metaphoring (2001) shreds objective empiricism in psychology
to pieces. Nonsense (2003, 565 pp.) and Storytelling (2010, Nova, 686 pp.) often examine
psychology to reshape it as inter-cultural inter-mothering.

50 Starr did report that China sees ―history‖ as both enrichment and imprisonment (53). He did not elaborate, much
less sympathetically weave these contradictory views of history into his story of China that remains a naive
external reportage, though he is better and more intimate than most histories on China.
51 Starr envisions a more likely scenario of sudden or gradual collapse of the Chinese government system, for the
army to take over, however temporarily (320-323). His vague benign conclusion on the last page is a letdown,
but his admonition to learn from history, including the history of how the West has been viewing China, is a
wise counsel. The conclusion is thus full of miscellanies.
52 This section is refurbished from Dr. Ruth C. Chao‘s ―Counseling as Inter-culture: Another ‗Cultural
Hermeneutic‘‖ (110-126), and Wu‘s response (290-292) in China-West Interculture: Toward the Philosophy
of World Integration: Essays on Wu Kuang-ming‟s Thinking, ed. Jay Goulding, NY: Global Scholarly
Publications, 2008.
368 Kuang-ming Wu

The following themes are noteworthy, some insistently recurring: ―face as inter-facing‖
(1998, 2001), ―togetherness‖ (1998), the self as inter-self (1997), ―culture as internal‖ (all
volumes), ―story therapy‖ (1998, 2009), ―other‖ (all volumes), ―writing therapy‖ (2010),
―brain research‖ (2001), ‖inter-mothering‖ (2010), ―inter-personal interculturalism‖ (2010,
2009), and the list goes on. All this is not surprising because, for him, human reflection is that
of the human self, we always think from the perspective of the self (1998: 304), and
psychology studies the self.
Psychologists are spontaneous thinkers, and some have turned philosophers, such as
Freud, Jaspers, James, and Merleau-Ponty. Of course, Dr. Wu is aware of this fact, and would
wish that all psychologists be much more carefully self-reflective than they are now, never to
be trapped in scientism but serve as leaders of scientists.
Crucially, Wu is convinced that thinking must adopt the mode appropriate to things
thought about. We must consider inanimate objects objectively, and human subjects inter-
subjectively. Wu is thus (1) upset at today‘s psychology as predominantly objective,
quantitative, taking persons as stones, and (2) proposes an inter-subjective approach he calls
inter-mothering, to studying the human self, (3) with intercultural implications. Now I will
briefly sum up these three points that Dr. Wu raised, and conclude with Final critical Remarks
on ―precision‖ in the human science.

1. “Blind Spots in Brain Research” and Critique of Psychological bjectivism

Dr. Wu cited an unsuspected negative example with devastating critiques. He wryly cited
―brain research‖ because psychology goes after the brain, studying how brain functions as
central clues to human attitudes/behavior, in fact, as their real mechanism. Psychology tends
to brain physiology. Such ―biopsychology‖ is now the ―hard science‖ of psychology, more
respectable than counseling psychology a ―soft science.‖
This trend is shown in psychologists‘ writing style and their demand of statistical
confirmation, both patterned after physics and mathematics. Sadly, the ivy-league institutions
lead this trend. Wu pokes fun at a human brain studying a human brain, much as a confident
blind man leading another blind man to proudly fall into a ditch of no one knows what, while
they do not even know that they fall.
Experimental psychology studies pigeons and guinea pigs so as to study humans; it falls
under the same pitfall as taking the person as a physiological brain, as study of animals
assumes human persons as identical with objects to be objectively studied. So, demolishing
―brain research‖ demolishes all such experiments. Wu raised no less than five ―blind spots‖ in
such research, and then evaluates objectivism in the science called ―psychology‖ (2001).
Wu begins by citing five blind spots one by one. Blind-spot One is that researchers are
not aware that they use the unknown to study the unknown, for they use their brains to study
the brain-the-unknown. Such ―research‖ goes nowhere. Blind-spot Two is that they assume
that mind is brain as they assume ―yellow‖ as ―yellow-wavelengths,‖ unaware that ―yellow‖
means our experience, not wavelengths accompanying the experience. Likewise, brain
accompanies mind, and is not mind. They bark up the wrong tree.
Blind-spot Three is this. A damaged brain cannot think, while mind controls brain waves;
this parity of mind-brain mutuality is missed in brain-study. Blind-spot Four is this. The part-
whole relation is more than coherence; adherence to coherence cuts mind away, for behavior
 Conclusion 369

can be coherently explained by brain alone. ―Scientific objectivity‖ for coherence is not
objective enough to follow facts beyond coherence.
Blind-spot Five is this. Researchers are blind to materialism‘s need of non-matter such as
―difference,‖ ―perception,‖ ―assertion,‖ ―identification of electric sparks as brain‘s activities.‖
But these non-matter notions are needed to operate materialism. Being blind to these non-
material matters prevents materialism from being ―materialism‖ at all.
What do all these ―blind spots‖ amount to? On finding that a client‘s depression came
from midlife crisis, a health insurance company stopped paying for later counseling sessions
to enable him to find a truly satisfactory job, on the ground that the case was not a medical
disease but a matter of personal growth. Whereupon Dr. Wu rose to the occasion, saying that
this was a case of materialist myopia. Treating depression without treating its cause, midlife
crisis, is as disastrous as treating fever without treating its cause, tuberculosis.
Besides, counseling treats the growth theme, midlife crisis, as pediatrics treats growth
matters, for which these child-doctors are paid. We must attend to personal healing and
holistic growth, not pharmacology or ridding the clients of mere symptoms without healing
their causes. Here, in this case, themes on growth and causes of depression are one.
It is true scientific objectivity to follow the whole integrity of what is objectively there,
which is beyond our preset perspective of materialism. Materialism is wrong because it
claims, not that matter matters, but that only matter matters. What is objectively there is the
other facing us, ever beyond our materialism-perspective, and we must allow the other facing
us to shape us, our perspective beyond set materialism, objectivism.

2. “Inter-Mothering”

We said above, ―we must allow the other facing us to shape us.‖ The other person in
53
psychology is affected in counseling as she affects counselors. Counseling must allow the
other person to shape me, and the ―other person‖ is as much the client as it is the counselor.
Counseling is inter-allowing to inter-shape, says Dr. Wu.
He calls this inter-shaping ―inter-mothering‖ that is true counseling. Scientific objectivity
above on objects now spontaneously translates into inter-mothering counseling. We must see
how Wu‘s insight here functions in inter-personal interaction. How is interpersonal inter-
mothering ―objective‖ beyond objectivism?
Wu‘s Nonsense (2003: 296-307) portrays his ideal counselor this way. All psychologists
from Freud through Jung, Skinner, Fromm, and Burns have agendas, programs, and
techniques ―that work.‖ Even existentialist counselors have techniques, rock-climbing ropes
(Frankl) for the client to hang on to, to climb up to a preset mountaintop of healing.
The Taoist counselor in contrast has no ropes or techniques, but no-does (wu wei). He
just sits with the client, fully there fully accepting the client. Both mutually ask, talk, and
quest for no one knows what, in complete spontaneity. Spontaneity is the natural sign of life
and health, not of disease. Being mutually helped to become spontaneous, then, is true healing
in natural course.

53 ―Psychotherapy‖ may be a wider and more proper designation than ―counseling,‖ but as a layman, Dr. Wu wants
to put things in a stark light. For him, psychology culminates in psychotherapy; it is a controversial claim but
not without some basis, for otherwise what is the point of psychology?
370 Kuang-ming Wu

Thus the counselor need not be ―healthy‖ to be effective. Instead, counselors and clients
allow and accept ―being sick‖ by inter-mothering with empathic cooperation. Techniques of
empathy may be needed, of course, to slip into warm womb where one can be as one is,
however ―unhealthy,‖ to allow oneself to change, to grow. Relaxed motherly rooming heals.
Healing here is inscrutable, however, for geniuses are ―insane‖ to be creative. ―No risky
mischief, no creation,‖ although every insane person is not creative genius. After all, it takes
courage to stay sick suffering in ―my hole‖ alone; I don‘t like it. Here I dare to moan over my
spilled milk with someone I may resent being with, who tries to protect me from hurting
myself. Counselor as mother allows me to cry, resent, suffer; I am counselor to my
―counselor,‖ to let him cry, whine, and resent me, too. All this heals ―me‖ and him who is a
54
―me,‖ unawares.
His personal despair is our communal ill, so his healing occurs also by our being-with
him. We must show the person that he is not alone, and assure that his ―abyss-situation‖ is not
final, that his despair-milieu is embraced in our communal inter-motherly heartfelt co-
presence where he is at home in simple unspoken comfort. We are just here with him as his
―given,‖ with no pat conventional phrases. He is just here independent, as he is, with us, not
alone. This heartfelt co-presence, a mothering nursing ―home,‖ heals wordlessly, in inter-
mothering co-presence.
This situation is ―objective.‖ A Chinese character, ―ch‘ing 情,‖ portrays objective reality
(ch‘ing shih 情實) and subjective feeling (ch‘ing kan 情感), to describe the reality of
heartfelt co-presence as an objective integrity of inter-subjectivity, to nurture subjective
integrity all around. When our heartfelt presence really presents this objective situation, a
miracle of mutual healing, of making everyone whole, takes place.
Today, psychology is popularly identified with counseling, which in turn is identified
with what works. Both these identifications are questionable, for psychology is not
counseling, nor is counseling just for what works toward preset goals; it is pure objectivism,
not objectivity of intersubjectivity. For example, a female client came to ask to be
desensitized to her husband‘s infidelity.
Her counselor does have several techniques to comply, such as cognitive behavioral
therapy, behavioral conditioning, and/or drugs psychopharmacological. But should it be
done? Why is it all right to do it? Do we have a better alternative to simple desensitizing? Do
we feel the specter of the dictator who ―corrects‖ political dissidents in ―psychiatric ward‖?
Here is the realm of ethics that is part and parcel of human psychology, without which
humanity ceases to be human.
Psychotherapy as soul-healing does not make us ―feel good‖ but makes-whole our
existence. To ex-ist is to stand-out of the surrounding as uniquely itself and no other, and
such unique out-standing creates things fresh and outstanding. ―Healing‖ makes whole our
existence for its maximum creativity. This story of healing allows geniuses to be eccentric, to
facilitate all defects to be part of creativity. Psychologists would have freed Van Gogh‘s
moods to enter his fabulous paintings and let Beethoven be freely deaf toward his Ninth
Symphony and Moonlight Sonata.
How? Well, a style of performance relates to a personal biography. If we can chart how a
specific musical excellence is related to a specific personality, then we can relate Beethoven‘s

54 See Chao, R. (in press). ―Integrating Taoism and Western therapeutic approaches in the treatment of anxiety,‖ D.
S. Sandhu, ed., Alternative approaches to counseling and psychotherapy, Nova Science Publisher.
 Conclusion 371

biographical thrust to him to enhance his musical creativity, and design ―Beethoven-therapy‖
for Beethoven, similarly ―Van Gogh-therapy‖ for Van Gogh, ―philosophical therapy‖ for Kurt
Gödel, etc. Dr. Wu has more examples but these samples are enough to show his cherished
psychology and psychotherapy.

3. Psychological Counseling as “Intercultural”

Here, human creativity appreciates what is common, and what is common is an ordinary
communal lifestyle, ―culture,‖ our constant perspective, mind-frame, and behavior pattern, so
counseling is intercultural, mutuality of cultural adjustment between counselor and client.
Such cultural inter-adaptations maximize living; counseling is intercultural interaction that
inter-heals to inter-accomplish life. This fact is dramatically lived out in the multicultural
USA where counseling originated and prospers.
Culture cultivates character, ―good sense.‖ Culture educates via journalism and TV to
keep us mentally fit and forwarding, private and public inter-stimulating. Far from closing us
into a set mold, culture keeps various options ever open, by skeptical journalism, to choose
one appropriate to the ―situation now.‖ This is ―creativity,‖ mental health in counseling at its
natural social best.
Multicultural society such as USA gives an opportunity to inter-learning inter-counseling.
It should conduct drastic ―civil disobedience‖ when license, social, political, and private,
offends the ―good sense‖ cultivated by our inner sense and social history. Socio-cultural
psychotherapy takes place here. Which side is right, the status quo or the rebellious
conscience? Continuous gathering in respectful disagreement alone eventually ―judges,‖ as
history does. Again, it is creativity in cultural ―psychotherapy.‖
In this interpersonal intercultural psychology, scientific objective empiricism has no
place; or rather, it is only an assistant to understand the situation. Objectivism appropriate to
inanimate objects is inappropriate to soul-healing among persons in society. Individual
psychology is social psychology, executing interculturalism to make everyone whole, to
spread social healing all over.
This is Dr. Wu‘s Togetherness (1998), his favorite theme in all his later volumes of 2001,
2003, 2010. As his son Peter said, ―Dad, I have three names, me, myself, and I,‖ oneself is
more than ―another‖ (Ricoeur) but ―three in one,‖ a community of togetherness, as literally
everything is. Persons have faces invisible to themselves, to ―face‖ the other who alone can
see one‘s face to confirm and acknowledge it (1998, 2001); togetherness is radical
interdependence of respective independences.
This ubiquitous fact of inter-versal truth means that making oneself whole takes place
only in communal interaction, in oneself among communal selves, in intent ―listening‖ as a
slave swineherd did to Odysseus, as Hesse‘s boatman did to Siddhartha, who both did to the
vast ocean of beings. Psychology is an art of listening (Fromm); a counselor is a devoted
listener. Healing takes place as we inter-listen, intently, unconditionally, to inter-confess in
heartfelt self-pouring with all one‘s injuries. It is here that one is made whole, solid, intact,
and creative.
Such inter-self healing takes place when counselor urges counselee to write out her inner
self, to pour herself onto paper, counselor-to-counselee and counselee-to-herself, inter-
culturing. When one culture writes out another, as China written in English, both cultures
372 Kuang-ming Wu

inter-reveal to inter-enrich, to describe world concord (2010). Psychology as world

interculturalism has its cosmic metaphysical principle of oneself as community, as cosmic
togetherness concentrated.
Indeed, the body-self and its thinking (1997), its psychology, is one of the strange cosmic
circles with centers everywhere and circumferences nowhere, ever dotting the pond of the
world to inter-blend, dotting to inter-blend (2003: 459, 2010). It is a system (2001) that
rounds up four sorts of being systematic (2003), forever birthing, birthing, without ceasing.

Final Critical Remarks

Chao‘s query:
What can a psychologist say to all these fabulous overflows of inter-subjective reflections
on psychology? We are of course overwhelmed and enlightened—even ―counseled‖ on the
true meaning and goal of our vocation.
We wish to ask Wu what we should pursue as scientists of human consciousness and
behavior. He gives exhortation on our humanistic goal, but science is charged with mission to
predictable rigor and clear methods to ―listen‖ and to ―inter-mother.‖ Wu gave us a
philosophical psychology. We must pursue rigorous scientific methodology, with his cautions
on the crucial difference between objectivism and objectivity, humanistic sensitivity and
understanding, and aspiration to world interculturalism through inter-mothering.
To complain as above bespeaks difficulty of pursuing psychology as a ―rigorous
science‖; psychology is the most problematic of sciences (Nishida). Husserl the
mathematician worried about exactitude in humanistic sciences, but died before yielding a
tangible harvest. As the ―human science,‖ psychology must infuse mathematical rigor with
human sensitivity, predictable methodology with unpredictable trailing of interpersonal
empathy. Dr. Wu has given us a human side of this precious coin called ―psychology.‖ We
must pursue the other scientific side.
Wu‘s Response:
In deep gratitude to Dr. Chao, I make one point. Psychology is counseling that originally
means to ―deliberate together‖ in open interpersonal meeting to induce new directions, as
Confucius did (循循善誘 (9/11)), not behavioral chemical engineering, not pills and
injections. Psychic disorders express tensions between cultural stresses and personal
vulnerabilities; counseling releases our inner resources by sensitive delivery of personal-
cultural ideals.
I agree that psychology as science must heed rigorous methodology. I urge psychologists
to probe human rigor, sensitized methods, to pursue human inter-person sensitivity with
human rigor and methods. A lady requests to be desensitized to her husband‘s involvement
with another woman. Counselors can do as she requests, but should they? What humanistic
methods can guide us all on what to do here?
Rigor and sensitivity should not clash but inter-infuse. It seems difficult, but it is the most
natural and human. When Mom binds her baby‘s wound she is a human love and rigorous
scientist. Rigor should be humanized, as sensitivity should be made rigorous, in ―psychology‖
that is an inter-mothering science.
 Conclusion 373

The psychologists‘ mission is this joining to show all scientists that their mission is the
same. The scientists who forget their human base, milieu, and purpose are not humans,
animals, or even rocks; they are mechanical monsters. Such ―scientific objectivity‖ amounts
to a Platonic monster concocted by misguided objectivism. Psychology is the norm natural
and legitimate to all sciences as objective, fair, and human-cosmic.
My proposal, mind you, is so modest as to be tautological: ―Let services to human health
be human.‖ Less than such, commits suicide. As early as in 1975, a book titled, Humanizing
Health Care, (edited by Drs. Howard and Strauss) horrified me; for it proclaims that health
care is no longer human.
Sadder still is that we are yet to propose ―humanizing mental health care‖ since Pavlov
and Skinner. They say cleaning babies too much kills them. Turning soft psychology into as
hard a science as physics on hard stones stiffens psychology into a physics of stones and
water. No single person is here, for physical psychology has cleared away all soft sensitivity.
It is a mistake to think that rigor is a monopoly of stony physics. ―Rigor‖ is inevitable
sensitivity among human sentiments never to be mocked, as all literatures and poetry exhibit.
Human rigor is yet to be formalized because it is much more subtle and complex than stone-
rigor that is already quite complex in hard sciences. I am happy that Dr. Chao agrees on what
and what for of psychology; we all struggle together on how to achieve human rigor. It turns
out that the how is mired in situational relativism toward world interculture. We must
consider this big theme.

D. RORTY, CHINA, AND WORLD RELATIVISM55

It is claimed here that both Rorty and China are permeated with the spirit of relativism,
and these two versions of relativism do well to relate to compose world relativism. First (1)
we explain that relativism is not assertion of a definite view but unfinishable élan of thinking,
resolutely open to adapt/adjust to what comes from actuality in ideas, in conversation, and in
56
history. Relativism is thus a life-pulsation of thinking.
Then we explain (2) how both Rorty‘s thinking and China‘s fit such relativism, each in
its way. We elaborate (3) on how their relativism-thrusts proceed—one formally, analytically,
logically, and cumulatively, the other subtly, tacitly, perceptively, in storytelling way, so they
do well to relate. The result (4) is ―world relativism‖ that relates both versions of relativism
into world concord.

1. What Relativism is/does

Far from a heresy, relativism is a vital élan in pursuit of insights in open linkage; it is not
a noun, an assertion of a thesis, but a verb in life-process. Previous pages describe relativism
as a nisus that challenges assertive absolutism, to critically sifts through various views one by

55 This section is refurbished from my ―Rorty, Confucius, and Intercultural Relativism‖ in Rorty, Pragmatism, and
Confucianism, ed. Yong Huang, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009, pp. 21-44.
56 Cf. Paul Feyerabend‘s vigorous élan of relativism in philosophy of science in Against Method, Third Edition,
London: Verso, 1993 (tr. into Chinese). His view of relativism (pp. 268-272) slightly differs from mine.
374 Kuang-ming Wu

one. Goals of relativism grow as situations grow, as relativism describes actuality to show
matters in situ, to let facts argue. Nothing is more powerful than descriptive argument from
fact as relativism does.
Thus, relativism opposes absolutely asserting ―the truth.‖57 Opposing logical/analytical
necessity,58 relativism thinks in pragmatic coherence (Rorty) and story-description (China).
Opposing automatic ―mirroring,‖59 relativism facilitates friendly conversations. Opposing
fixation, relativism goes through ideas in contradiction. Opposing reason that tries to shape
history, relativism in story-description becomes history. Thus relativism revolutionizes
thinking to ruthlessly trail actual situations for which Rorty argues in his way.60

2. Rorty’s Relativism, China’s Relativism

Now let us see how three traits of relativism fit Rorty and China, to see how naturally
both do well to gather into inter-thriving world relativism. To begin, we said that relativism is
a threefold life-nisus. One, it challenges absolutist fixation. Two, in the challenge it resolutely
opens to shifting actuality of ideas, people, and situations. Three, both these points relate to
conversations and history. Such dynamic relativism shows Rorty and China that can naturally
61
relate as ―relativism of relativism,‖ world relativism. We consider Rorty, then China.
Richard Rorty fulfills all three traits of relativism. One, by historical description in his
first volume (1967) to link ideas, he challenges ―autonomous necessity‖ in analytical
language, then destroys (1979) the dogmatic assumption, naïve realism that takes
philosophical assertions to mirror ―nature,‖ i.e., what is the case. His deconstruction is
relativism negatively achieved.
Two, Rorty pleads for our thinking, ―philosophy,‖ to serve as ―a cultural . . . voice in the
62
conversation of mankind‖ (1979: 264), whose various ideas dovetail into a historical
montage. ―Conversation‖ among ideas, in history and in various fields, inter-learns to inter-
63
enrich. This is a radical openness to actuality in space and time. He even takes his own

57 An absolute assertion of the final truth plays god in thinking. This is anti-human, anti-life, and cuts thinking
from concrete life-actuality, as Plato did. Rorty may or may not have thought about this point.
58 Rorty may have opposed logical/analytical necessity for its being autonomous (1967), cut from actual necessity
that it assumes it mirrors (1979).
59 Rorty 1979, 1991.
60 Rorty 1979: 377-379.
61 Someone objects that having the thrust of relativism may not qualify someone as a ―relativist,‖ any more than
having idealist or pragmatist streaks would qualify one as an idealist or pragmatist. I agree. Still, Rorty and the
Chinese who are found to have all three traits of ―relativism‖ can be called ―relativists‖—even though their
tenors may differ. That is what will be claimed here.
62 Marcel confessed to observing ―the inner plurality‖ in his self-dialogue that is the root of both his dramas and his
philosophy (Schlipp 1984: 176), to echo Socrates (Theaetetus 189e) saying that thinking is a dialogue of the
self with the self. Thinking begins at self-self dialogue to spread to fellow thinkers in conversation.
63 ―Instead, [Rorty says,] philosophers should admit that they were involved not with a quest for truth . . . and
would be more illuminating if they attended to those conversations of a moral and literary sort that had more
surprises and—in Kuhnian terms—more revolutionary [than] natural scientists.‖ ―His [Rorty‘s] ability to bring
in so many philosophers into his own conversational development contributed to his striking influence among .
. . theorists, whether or not in the discipline of philosophy.‖ ―For him [Rorty] the literary critic had replaced
the philosopher in the ‗conversation of the west.‘‖ (Kuklick 2001: 278, 279, 280).
 Conclusion 375

thinking not as privileged but as ―just another of potential infinity of vocabularies‖ in history
64
―in relativist sense.‖
All this amounts to, three, Rorty persistently relating to history (1998: 247-273), to other
scholars in ―conversations,‖ and to the actual situation in his ―pragmatism‖ the centerpiece of
65
his writings. Denying noun-relativism, he affirms ―pragmatism‖ that is a positive task of
66
―relativism‖ to form history.
Significantly, he puts ―objectivity‖ and ―solidarity‖ together in the only volume that I
67 68
know of whose title has ―relativism‖ (1991). We can say that since we cannot jump out of
our skin (subjectivity), naïve realism of ―objectively‖ to mirror what is the case is a senseless
impossibility. The so-called ―objectivity‖ is actually a ―progress‖ in ―solidarity‖ of a
community of inquirers comparing notes to mutually ―correct‖ toward conscientious
69
consensus. ―Solidarity‖ is human linkage, social relativism; ―progress‖ is human time-
linkage, historical relativism.
All this solidarity-in-progress is relativism at work. That is ―science‖ Kuhn (1996),
70
Feyerabend (1993), and Polanyi (1946) expounded, and we are not surprised when critics
71 72
dubbed Kuhn a ―relativist.‖ Relativism is Kuhn‘s ―structure of scientific revolution.‖ It
can be claimed that Rorty shares with them the nisus of such relativism as their major thrust,
73 74
albeit few have admitted it, including Rorty himself.
Besides Rorty, USA today has many philosophers who are analytically cautious. Rorty
stands out for his daring vast ―linguistic turn‖ toward cultural ―pragmatism.‖ He can be said
to embody the thrust of relativism in all its three aspects described here, refusal to close off
pursuit, resolute openness to whatever comes from actuality, and commitment to ongoing
75
―free and open encounters of opinions‖ (Rorty 1991: 1) among conscientious inquirers.
We must now push Rorty‘s élan of relativism further in line with his thrust. He may not
have anticipated the radical result of his deconstructive challenge to the philosophy of the
West. After demolishing the ―spectatorial‖ account of knowledge as ―pointless‖ in his first
major volume, he proclaimed, ―the vocabulary in which they (essays in The Linguistic Turn)

64 Rorty 1979: 367.

65 All Rorty 1999a is ―pragmatism‖ in practice in USA; it describes relativism in our sense.
66 Rorty (1999a: xxiii-xxiv, xxv-xxvi, et passim) has more or less plausible piles-up that describe ―pragmatism.‖
67Rorty 1998: 43-83 has ―relativism‖ in its essay titles, but nowhere does 1998 (or 1991) explicitly discuss
―relativism‖ (nowhere in Indexes). Does this situation indicate again relativism‘s tacit ubiquitous influence?
68 Rorty 1991 explicitly explains no relativism (though see 1979, 1999a). He commented (1991: 203-210) on anti-
anti-ethnocentrism as self-reflective, a hallmark of relativism performatively uttered, as 1999a did.
(Fundamentalists is not liberals in that the latter self-reflect but the former do not, we claim.) Relativism
haunts Rorty‘s ―pragmatism.‖
69 Rorty says (1999a: xxv) ―the purpose of inquiry is to achieve consensus among human beings.‖ Cf. Wu 2001:
668 (index on ―objectivity‖). Cf. his interesting description of ―consensus‖ in 5/22/2002: p. 7.
70 Rorty 1979: 225, 227, 328 (n. 12).
71 Rorty said (1999a: 175), ―Kuhn was one of my idols,‖ a friend in thought/person, a conversant in resonance.
72 Rorty 1999a: xvi-xvii, 35, (105), 176. Kuklick 2001: 277, 278, 289 compared Kuhn to Rorty, and mentioned
―relativism‖ in connection with Rorty (278, et passim).
73 Kuklick 2001 is one of the very few.
74 Rorty (1999a: xv) says, ―relativism is a bugbear.‖ Among the vast number of publications by and on Rorty
(<amazon.com> lists 3336), I found only two slender volumes (each -80 pages, and expensive) that treat
―relativism‖ related to him. Van den House (1994) takes Rorty to avoid relativism, and Tolland (1991)
considers epistemological relativism, hardly Rorty‘s major concern. Few thinkers (including Rorty) take Rorty
as a glorious relativist with a persistent élan of open quest as this essay does.
75 ―Edifying philosophy‖ (1979: 377-379) is ―reactive,‖ refusing to close off discussion; it describes relativism.
376 Kuang-ming Wu

are written will be obsolete‖ (1967: 39). The ―linguistic turn‖ turns obsolete the vocabulary of
76 77
analytical philosophy! If so, why does Rorty still talk/think in such mode?
Can anyone complain that something is wrong and still stay in it? Rorty‘s ―irony‖ applies
to him. As using metaphysical language to extricate from it collapses into it, as Heidegger
did, so clinging to analytical language to make it obsolete collapses into it. Can we complain
an apple not sweet as melon and want an apple-that-is-melon-sweet? It would be a contorted
garble.
An apple is an apple, a melon, melon, and we must give this strange fruit a new name
other than ―apple.‖ No wonder Rorty turns turgid in ―analytical exactitude.‖ He should have
given his thinking against Western philosophy a new name, not analytical ―pragmatism‖
78
haunted by the ghosts of ―Western philosophy‖ he revolutionizes.
In fact, we can see how inevitably related the self-contained ―analytical necessity‖ is to
79
an objective spectator stance, to make for an assumption of mirroring correspondence in
traditional Western philosophy; the whole enterprise now floats in Platonic midair. It is well
80
that Rorty exposed ―necessity‖ in 1967 and ―mirroring‖ in 1979. But then, doesn‘t he later
81
contradict himself, after doing so, by continuing in the traditional mode of thinking?
How so? First, he said it is wrong of Western philosophy to mirror nature, but doesn‘t his
―pragmatism,‖ his ―antirepresentationalism,‖ also mirror nature ―as a matter of acquiring
habits of action to cope with reality‖ (1979: 319, 1991: 1)? Likewise, two, after
deconstructing the logical-analytical necessity of philosophical language, he continues to
argue in such language-mode.
All this is senseless if he stays in the linguistic-thinking mode he indicted as illegitimate.
82
It is senseless unless his ―mirroring‖ is not cognitive but pragmatic, and unless his saying is
83
not one that just analytically poses to pose to practice —but adopts another mode of saying
and thinking that aptly, sinuously, expresses thinking-in-practice.
Only after he thus pragmatically proclaims the ―end of philosophy‖ in the West, and
84
really goes ahead to ―transform‖ it, would his non-traditional philosophy pragmatically

76 Cf. Kuklick 2001: 276.

77 Rorty‘s essay on metaphor (1991: 162-172), e.g., analytically examines Davidson/Black‘s metaphysical
backbones, not considering metaphor itself. Rorty sticks to an analytical approach to everything.
78 The same criticism applies, mutatis mutandis, to Heidegger. I observed (Wu 1998: 313-342) that the West
arguing for pragmatism is as odd as Kierkegaard‘s example of a man with the sandwich-boards saying, ―I‘m
normal,‖ China‘s is simply pragmatic, silent, and not sufficiently reflective, and so the West and China need to
come together.
79 We suspect that Platonic dualism—attended with mirroring representationalism—Rorty opposed has much to do
with analytical thinking that divides. All thinkers Rorty finds congenial—Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger,
Sartre—are not analytical in sentiment as Rorty is. This is not to propose anti-analyticity but to urge freely
moving in and out of it.
80 For Rorty (1999a: 95), his new pragmatism differs from the old version in stressing language and lacking in
scientific method.
81 This ―contradiction‖ is actually Rorty‘s strength, as will be seen in 4. World Relativism.
82 In fact, to think is to reflect on the situation, to mirror the mirroring conversations between the self and the
milieu and among the con-versants that include oneself and ―coping.‖
83 This happens, e.g., when Rorty (1991: 2-17) vigorously argues that ―liberalism‖ can fall into ―ethnocentrism‖
but ―antirepresentationalism‖ can pull it out into the open to encounters with other actual or potential cultures,
and so on. All this may be a very good theoretical frame. How actually does such a frame work in actual
encounters with actual cultures other than USA, such as China? We wish he had some outlook at least in
outline. He did none when he visited China.
84 Rorty 11/10/1999b. Baynes, 1987.
 Conclusion 377

match the ―reality‖ of nature and be imbued with pragmatic necessity, not an analytical one.
85
And, in the end, doesn‘t such pragmatic match make relativism?
From here it is only a short step toward literary narration, the reasoning-mode suited to
86
human situation. Such actual story-thinking, not theoretical ―pragmatism‖ China practices
for millennia; it is the ―philosophy‖ that is not traditionally Western, and thoroughly
―relativistic‖ in its life-practice. Rorty who deconstructs Western philosophy toward
87
literature would do well to push himself into a new practical relativism (not just theoretical
88
pragmatism) that can benefit from relativism-thinking in China, and benefit China.
All this leads to considering thinking-in-China. First, we would call thinking in China
89
―story thinking,‖ that collects what is given (data, facts) to depict the situation. It is thinking
in storytelling, as with ―thinking‖ in Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables, not analytical one. Such
story-thinking is relativism-thinking with all its three features mentioned above.
One, analytical thinking is coherent and closed; story-thinking is coherent and, two, open
sinuously to whatever is in actuality. Story-thinking challenges analytical thinking by not
mirroring things but pointing tacitly to them as finger points to the moon beyond. Storytelling
has no dogma of analytical necessity but makes sense of things as they happen, ever ready to
revise the story to fit the shifting senses of things.
Three, storytelling thus relates things that come to us for us to narrate/relate them to
90
story-hearers and time-change; ―history‖ is by nature story-in-time. For all this, story-
thinking in China is not as clear, coherent, and explicit as Rorty‘s of the West. Story-thinking
in China has much to learn from Rorty.
We have thus told a story of relativism in Rorty of the West, and then a story of
relativism in China. They must come together in the ―conversation of mankind‖ (Rorty) to
compose world relativism. We have just considered why Western relativism and Chinese
should come together. How they can do so remains to be considered.

3. How the Two Versions of Relativism Come Together

To see how both versions of relativism can gather, we must first see how both
respectively operate; to do so, we must focus on what relativism does. Defying fixation in
assertive absolutism, relativism freely relates. ―Pragmatism‖ that describes both Rorty and

85Cf. Baynes 1987: 11, 22.

86 Baynes, 1987: 14.
87 For Rorty, ―The core area in which to look for wisdom was literature—‗plays, poems, and, especially, novels‘.‖
(Kuklick, 2001: 280).
88 Both ―Achievement of America‖ (1999) and ―Social Hope‖ (1999a) have been strictly within the frame/mode of
Western thinking. Despite his visit to South Africa and dialogues with an Indian scholar (Balslev, 1999), Rorty
has had no structural contact with Asian cultures toward foundational inter-transformation. It is now overdue
for such inter-beneficial contact, to which we look forward in 4. World Relativism.
89 Thinking is logicizing, the logos–activity that collects-the-logs of actuality, as we will see soon. Logicizing is
literally collection of actual things given us by actuality, for us to order them.
90 Rorty is interested in the history of philosophy more than most analytic philosophers; he wrote on its history
(1967, 1998: 247-273). But history is that in which we think; it is what we are. Thinking about history is not
thinking historically. His thinking-mode is mainly analytical but his pragmatic conversation approaches a
historical mode of thinking.
378 Kuang-ming Wu

Chinese thinkers relates to actuality, and relates among inquiries and inquirers of all times.
Such relating activity is relativism.
How does relativism concretely relate? Rorty relates inquiries by accumulating
arguments into a set that persuades, and relates inquirers in conversation of humankind, in
various fields and in history. China relates inquiries by accumulating words into one story
after another to freely move among noteworthy ideas and facts, and relates inquirers freely to
follow the situation to compose a history of various aspects of mankind. China thus learns
from storytellers and stories told in time past. Let‘s take Rorty first.
Rorty innocently describes to relate what happened in history of philosophy, then
subjects the description to unsuspected analysis, i.e., to re-describe, to lead the reader into an
unsuspected thesis, moving ―from technical argumentation to cultural commentary‖; it goes
so smoothly that ―Rorty‘s style leaves the reader . . . with a quirky feeling that one has been
91
seduced (and) talked into Rorty‘s perspective. . . .‖
92
Whitehead said, ―There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat
them as whole truths that plays the devil‖ of absolutism; instead, relativism relates many ―half
truths.‖ Rorty‘s historical description, in cumulative converging of narratives as arguments
relates various ideas to make his case.
How is this linking accumulation of ideas accomplished? Wittgenstein‘s understanding of
a ―universal‖ tells how.93 A ―universal‖ is a ―thread‖ woven out of many short idea-fibres. No
one fibre goes through the whole thread; each is entwined with the other, crisscrossing to
weave a ―universal‖-thread. A ―name‖ that covers many instances often has no single feature
among them, but has ―family resemblance‖ sometimes hard to see, as with ―game.‖94 This
insight applies to Socrates, as follows.
Socrates complained that Euthyphro‘s ―definition‖ of piety as ―what all gods love‖
amounts to a contradiction, ―what is loved by the gods and hated by them‖ (8a) in conflict.
Euthyphro could have responded that this is by the nature of the case. Socrates‘ complaint
holds only if a definition of ―piety‖ is set, identically universal, which is absurd. ―Piety‖ is an
offer to each divinity what is due to it.
There is no single ―generic gift‖ that pleases everyone; the same gift one loves, another
can hate. Gifting is person-specific and cannot be uniform, much less arbitrary; the definition
of piety could be amended as ―piety is what is loved by each god,‖ which rejects a universal
offering of an identical gift to many gods, a contradiction. All this is no ―definition‖ but a
relativistic description.
Euthyphro‘s definition thus turns out to be accurate as ―piety‖ is situation-sensitive,
milieu-relative as gifting is recipient-specific. Socrates‘ failed quest for a single universal, a
definition of ―piety‖ brings out the failure of a search for definitive universals, so much so
that Plato had to flee to the Never Land of Ideas/Forms beyond actuality. To Schrag,
universals are ―transversals‖95 traversing different ideas. This traversing move is relativism

91 West 1989: 197.

92 Whitehead 1954: Prologue.
93 Wittgenstein (1953: 32e) is cited because he has influenced Rorty.
94 I showed how a ―good person‖ family-relates to a ―good blow‖; the family name of ―good‖ covers both instances
whose family-connection seems unlikely (Wu 2001: 18-19).
95 See Wu 1998: 469 (index on ―transversals‖) and Wu, 2001: 671 (indexes on ―transversals‖ and ―universals‖).
They are important notions in the West, but alien to China that is situation-sensitive.
 Conclusion 379

linking ―half truths‖ (Whitehead) as threads of idea-fibers (Wittgenstein) in a ―conversation

of mankind‖ (Rorty).
After all, thinking is logos-―gathering‖96 Heidegger exploited. Logos takes account of
matters, and accounts for them; ―account‖ can be formal-analytically computing97 or
recounting-telling concrete stories. Both ways to gather relate things to correlate them by
logical-analytical accounting (the West) and/or narrating (China). Relativism is at work here.
Philosophy in the West typified in Rorty sets the necessity and frame of pragmatic relativism,
while thinking in China shows how actually it proceeds in storytelling relativism.
Thinking in China is story-thinking,98 thinking by telling one mini-story after another, as
stories link/relate life-matters, to relate our thinking to them. China ―story-argues‖ to refute
anti-life approaches, to rally to the pro-life posture, to compose history that tells the triumphs
of pro-life story-ideas (Confucianism, Taoism) as it confesses to the tragic anti-life practices
in time.99 We now tell the stories of China‘s pro-life arguments.100
Confucius‘ three story-infused sighs of joy begin his Analects. He first praises the joy of
learning and its daily practice to relate to life, then the joy of relating to friends in co-learning,
and finally the calm joy of remaining composed when ignored. These instances exemplify
how a person is to be rightly related to the actual world; being situation-appropriate (宜 yi2) is
being-right (義 yi4) in the world; any notion is a concrete mini-story of being situation-proper.
Story-notions are freely citable from life‘s ongoing. When Confucius told his disciple
Tseng Tzu to thread his Tao with ―one,‖ Tseng Tzu cited ―loyalty‖ and ―considerateness‖
(4/15), but ―filiality‖ and ―brotherliness‖ (1/2) could as well be cited as the ―root of
humanity‖ that Confucius would have favored, as well as ―humanity‖ itself.
Jullien (1999) cited the ―propensity of things‖ as a central notion in China, but many
other familiar notions could be cited as equally pivotal. Such is free relativism in Confucian
story-thinking. Confucian relativism is a circle of actuality with many centers freely floating
in time and space; it is a circle of history whose circumference expands everywhere.
Taoism fully agrees with this concrete story-sentiment, albeit approaching life in ways so
relaxed, roomy, and accommodating, that it is dubbed ―relativists in China.‖ Taoists live non-
interference with things that are ―self-so,‖ naturally as they are, now up, now down, going
their Tao-ways un-tao-able, no-joy as the ultimate joy. We must do without doing, be with it
without being with it; such is life truly lived.
Chuang Tzu is radical in such life-relativism. Cut away vast useless spaces that surround
the small space our soles occupy, and we would not even be able to stand, much less walk
(26/31-33). So, something useless is ―useful‖ in enabling something else to be useful, and so
use and useless are inter-relative. Life likewise goes with knowledge and ignorance, being
and nothing. We must dwell in their ―pivot‖ to gain both. The Pivot is at work in relativism. It
sounds spooky. Chuang Tzu‘s concrete story helps us here.
Chuang Tzu and his disciples met a useless gnarled tree that survived, immune from the
woodcutter‘s ax, and then met a goose butchered for meal because it could not cackle; useless
tree survives and useless goose is killed. So we must be at the midpoint between use and

96 Wu 1998: 162 (note 198) and 467 (index on ―logic‖); Wu 2001: 10 (note 23), 54-58, et passim.
97 Logical counting can be of two kinds, exclusive either-or logic and inductive fuzzy logic of more-or-less. The
latter kind is open-ended and closer to storytelling logic.
98 Wu 2005.
99 Cf. Wu 2003.
100 I treated pro-life and anti-life stories in a more balanced way, and pleaded for their coming together (Wu 2002).
380 Kuang-ming Wu

useless, the Pivot that gathers the opposites, now dragon-up soaring, now snake slithering-
down, matching the situational shift (Chuang Tzu 20/1-5, Wu 2001: 135, 148-149).
Be a transversal to traverse life‘s changing opposites in the dynamics of life-relativism.
Chuang Tzu‘s is not a selfish opportunism but a selfless relativism to co-thriving, trailing
closely in harmony with constant turns of the situation. Taoist relativism matches Rorty‘s
circle with centers freely expanding everywhere every-when, center-less selves socializing in
conversations to converge, to advancing history.
All these descriptions are logically unstable, that is, quite beyond our analytical mind to
pin down definitely, for all this amounts to being with the situation without being stuck in it,
being useful without being fixed as ―useful,‖ doing without doing. They describe how our
beloved toddlers behave. One moment they are perfect angels; the next moment we wonder,
and must return them to Mom who knows how to handle them, angelic or not. Mom is their
Pivot to naturally come home; Mom is our Pivot to return them home.
Thus, we all must rally to the Pivot of Mother Nature to nurture life. Our situation is the
toddling weather. If we don‘t like it, we wait a minute; if we do, we must prepare for the next
moment. We tarry as birds in this branch and that, not staying in any. We are not cynical or
selfish but simple, shrewd, and skillful at weathering life vicissitudes.
All thinking in Taoism and Confucianism is thus life-relativism, while Legalism is a
truncated relativism of brutal sociopolitical realism. All stories in China tell relativism as our
adept relatedness to life‘s ongoing in which to survive/thrive. All living should be
subtle/adaptive but not complex; it is ineffably natural and straight, adroit at living on
abundantly without mind-twisting.
Both Rorty and China tell stories. In storytelling, both dramatically meet as mutually
distinct. To see how distinct they are, we look at three functions of stories. We can use stories
as dispensable decoration, as dog‘s saliva at a bell sound illustrates Skinner‘s theory of
conditioning. This is Story1. We can also manipulate stories for Rorty‘s pre-designed
arguments. This is why Mr. West thought he was cheated. This is Story2. We can finally
follow story to think; argument goes as story goes, story as argument, Story3. China is here.
Story1 and Story2 are used for argument; if story is pulled out, argument still stands.
Story3 argues as it proceeds; pull the story out, and argument vanishes. Story3 is haunted by
thing‘s sense, going through things ambiguously; it is history in literature shimmering
thinking, not yet thinking-pure-and-proper, clarifying needed. Rorty can help here. Story2 and
Story1 have an armory of clear logic, neatly pretending praxis, shouting pragmatism while
trapped in it as ism. Its breakthrough comes from Sory3 that does not use stories but thinks
story-way. China can help here.
We have thus described two sorts of thinking. Western thinking typified in Rorty has
conceptual frames; Chinese thinking typified in Confucianism and Taoism has perceptual
contents. To borrow Kant, then, the West without China is as empty as China without the
West is blind.101 Both must gather, as ―logos‖-thinking gathers matters of life and of thinking.
Relativism is its modus operandi, inter-relating, inter-enriching.
Rorty can learn from China to be story-perceptive; China can learn from Rorty to be
clearer and lucid. Both continue to think in thought-experiments with concrete examples and
counter-examples from life. Both inter-learn, inter-transform, and inter-enrich, and these

101 I have considered similar differences in ―pragmatism‖ that both the West and China share. My conclusion was
similar but slightly different from the one reached here. See Wu 1998: 313-342.
 Conclusion 381

―inter‖-activities are relativism at work. This is relativism of relativism. All these West-China
interrelations result in ―world relativism,‖ another name for world concord.

4. World Relativism

a. Relativism
We saw how relativism is not an assertion of a definite thesis but being agilely,
perceptively life-relative, a verb, a dynamics of life-process with negative and positive
thrusts. Negatively, relativism challenges fixation, refusing closure of investigation, ever
defying definitive assertion of any view as the ―final whole truth.‖ Positively, relativism is
ever open to whatever actually comes, patiently sifting through each view in continuous
conversations of critical interchanges, to inter-learn among conscientious co-inquirers. These
two thrusts are our life-pulses to keep reasoning and letting rational sanity thrive worldwide.
Such interactive relativism is crucial in democracy today that celebrates individualism,
and who does not want individualism? Sadly, mere individualism asserts rights of many
individuals as inviolable truths, and these many ―final truths‖ pit against one other to seed
bloody confrontations, unless individualists somehow gather. This ―somehow‖ is relativism
cherishing all individuals as ―half truths‖ to collect into ―whole truths‖ of social togetherness,
on pain of tragic senseless combats. Some examples could elucidate this point.
Woman‘s right to abortion is one half of the interpersonal truth, the fetus‘ right to life is
another, and both must interrelate to fit a situation that comes differing from others.
Palestinians and Israelis are brethren sharing similar aspirations religious, political, and
territorial; there is no reason why they cannot negotiate for mutual benefits, on pain of inter-
butchery. National security is one half and individual freedom is another of ―national
sovereignty,‖ each supporting the other on pain of destroying both. Free trade pitted against
outsourcing contributes to economic tragedies.
These opposites breed insoluble disasters when one or the other arrogates itself to the
whole truth, inter-fighting into senseless bloodshed. These half-truths must join. Relativism is
here, for one to meet others, sometimes stressing one, sometimes another, ever keeping an eye
on the ―other‖ side, for diversity-love to balance off universality-justice (cf. Rorty 1991: 206).
Relativism joins ―what it is‖ to ―how it works,‖ correlating ideas in conflict as above. The
West says contradictions turn complements; China says Yin relates Yang, internecine, inter-
nascent. This agile relativism has two versions, Rorty‘s logical-analytical pragmatism and
China‘s concrete storytelling circle, ever expanding history.
China perceives to join various perceptions; Rorty argues for the necessity of joining,
forming frames, then treats themes formally, analytically. Mo Tzu, Hui Tzu, and Kung-sun
Lung treat logical themes, even tell their mini-stories. Here distinction is not of formal versus
concrete themes but of how they are thought. The two modes of relativism, logical-formal102
and perceptive-storytelling, must inter-relate into a ―relativism of relativism‖ worldwide.
Rorty‘s visit to China initiates this world-interrelation to compose ―world relativism.‖

102 ―Why would someone who spent most of his career cogitating over Quine, Sellars, and Heidegger, and who
wrote on social and political life as if it derived from this cogitation, be able to speak about this life? No matter
what philosophy claimed the importance of practice, it remained an enterprise that favored not the lived world
but the seminar room, yet still assumed that the latter could tell us of the former.‖ (Kuklick 2001: 281)
382 Kuang-ming Wu

b. World Relativism
Here is a ―sneak preview‖ of future world relativism. We remember ―relativism‖ refuses
to be final but keeps going to relate ideas into polyphonic transversals in a fugue-like
montage of bits of insights. Watch Pascal‘s ―Pensées,‖ Kierkegaard‘s fragments, Marcel‘s
journal, Weiss‘s philosophy in process, Wittgenstein‘s ―tractatus‖ or discussion, Rorty‘s
philosophical papers, and Confucius‘ analects, Lao Tzu‘s classic, and ―Mencius,‖ ―Chuang
Tzu,‖ etc.
In all this, relativism refuses to systematize, kicking the ladder it climbed up on
(Wittgenstein), denying to tao the Tao (Lao Tzu), the self forgetting the self (Chuang Tzu),
and not helping growth (Mencius). Relativism wipes itself away. Its critics laugh at self-
wiping as self-defeating; it vaunts it. Logically, denying a denial denies nothing to defeat
itself; in practice, anti-anti-Communism (anti-McCarthyism) endorses no Communism (Wu
2001: 343). See Rorty‘s anti-anti-ethnocentrism (1991: 203-210). Climbing the ladder to kick
it, again and again, is history.103
We have just told a story of world-conversation of relativism. On one hand, in thus
describing how relativism describes to demonstrate, we have described relativism as
storytelling. Isn‘t storytelling sinuously alive as relativism, as alert, empathetic, and judicious
to life, in a word, as realistic and formative as relativism?
On the other hand, doesn‘t relativism point to the story-way of story-formation, first
appearing in oral conversation, then written down, and then revised, rewritten?104 Isn‘t history
itself such a relativism-growth of storytelling? To be is to create and have our be-ing. It is
storytelling in relativism-way, the Tao of life. The Tao cannot be tao-ed, ―it is walked and
forms‖105; life is lived, formed, by narrating, relating, as it refutes itself.106
Now, doesn‘t this story of relativism ―self-defeat,‖ the feature so ridiculed by its
opponents? Doesn‘t ―self-refutation‖ now take on a new significance of going up from the
ground only to come down to the same ground as Whitehead said?107

The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground
of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it
again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

He may not have realized that this thinking-airplane can fly up because it takes off from
the ground down here and ―lands‖ back down here. The ground enables the flight up and
down, and it is the ground, the no-flight, that enables the odd flight where thinking thrives in
―inconsistency,‖ a word that appears right after the above quotation. It says, ―It (thinking) can
even play with inconsistency; and can thus throw light on the consistent, and persistent,
elements in experience by comparison with what in imagination is inconsistent with them.‖
As the ground is non-existent during the flight to enable the flight, so, being non-existent,
the influence of relativism is felt in thinking everywhere. This strange situation shows as self-

103 Rorty took the ladder climbing-kicking differently (5/22/2002: 7-8) but would agree that the activities make
history.
104 No wonder, Rorty came to opt for the priority of literature over philosophy.
105 Chuang Tzu 2/33.
106 Marcel has life-dramas of ―yes-but‖ without intellectual imperialism of a system as ―mine‖ (Schilpp 1984:
455). I wish Rorty did so oftener, since Rorty opposes such imperialism.
107 Whitehead 1978: 5. See Wu 2001: 254.
 Conclusion 383

effacing, self-defeating, so subtle, and so impressive. It appears in Wittgenstein, then in

Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, as follows.
Wittgenstein performed self-effacing inconsistency by concluding Tractatus, oracle-
like,108

6.54: My sentences are illuminating in the following way: to understand me you must
recognize my sentences—once you have climbed out through them, on them, over them—as
senseless. (You must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after you have climbed up on it.)
You must climb out through my sentences; then you will see the world correctly.

Philosophical thinking is ―senseless‖; we ―climb up on the ladder‖ of thinking only to

―throw it away,‖ to climb ―out through‖ their sentences to ―see the world correctly.‖ This is
the negative thrust of relativism, as Rorty practiced it in deconstructing Western philosophy.
Still, Wittgenstein and Rorty philosophized and wrote all this down, and we must
understand them before we can climb out through them, climb up on the ladder before we
kick it. Climbing the ladder follows its rungs, its rule, and kicking it also follows some rules
to avoid getting hurt. So, aren‘t the ladder-kicking rules the ladder-climbing rules (Max
Black109)? Thus the rules are the ladder. Where is the kicking, then? Wittgenstein and Rorty
defeat themselves,110 and we must senselessly live it, and this living is enabled by relativism‘s
refusal of the final say.
Wittgenstein‘s another saying puts it positively. ―Don‘t worry about what you have
already written. Just keep on beginning to think afresh as if nothing at all had happened
yet.‖111 So, Rorty continues to think logically after turning analytical necessity obsolete
(1967) and abolishing it (1979), then kicks the ethnocentrism-ladder to reach anti-anti-
ethnocentrism (1991: 203-210); his is neither culturally bigoted ethnocentrism nor culturally
bigoted anti-ethnocentrism.112
The ladder is now our past thought that is not here; the ladder now is to be kicked into
our past, our launch pad to tomorrow. Thinking is life‘s relentless process from past to
present; process ever begins. Relativism is kids ever beginning at the beginning, learning
from the past and from the now pushed into the past, to begin afresh on one‘s own. Learning
is an imitation that kicks the original, for ―imitation‖ is now creation, not copying.113
In this milieu, no neat packaging is possible. One must pick as many insights as one can,
insights big and small, relevant and irrelevant. These messy ―adventures of ideas‖
(Whitehead) describe the scattered character of seminal revolutionary writings. This is why
the dotted feature114 of the journal-making of Pascal, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Buber,

108 Kolak 1998: 49. I quoted from this most recent translation I know of. An earliest translation I know of is Ogden
1922: 189 that has a slightly different rendering, albeit with basically the same sentiment.
109 Significantly, Black (―Is the ‗Tractatus‘ self-defeating?‖ in 1966: 378-386) rehearses our process of
understanding mathematical ―infinity‖ and metaphysical concepts by extending ordinary notions, to defend
Wittgenstein against the criticism that Wittgenstein falls into total senselessness.
110 Sadly, Rorty did not say so.
111 Wittgenstein 1961: 30 (6), quoted by Black, 1966: 2.
112 Geertz‘ spirited ―anti anti-relativism‖ kicks noun-relativism to launch into verb-relativism of which he is
ignorant; his ―argument‖ is a mere collection of quotations. See Wu 2001: 342-344.
113 For Aristotle (Poetics, 48b4-14, Barnes, 1984), learning occurs via imitation that he never took as an exact
copying. Cf. Wu 1998a.
114 On ―dotted pragmatics‖ see Wu 2001: 387-395.
384 Kuang-ming Wu

and even Paul Weiss,115 among many others in the history of human thinking, such as
Chinese, is significant.116
This explains Rorty‘s almost journalistic style, how he talks us into his way of thinking,
for he is thinking aloud himself, ever inviting readers, even ―enticing‖ them to join in the
quest, albeit in his typical analytical wording. Rorty with his teacher Weiss117 and others
never yield to the temptation to universalize and conclude too quickly to seal themselves in a
splendid consistency of a system, as relativism keeps warning against it.118
Instead, Rorty‘s ―philosophical papers‖ are pouring out into the market119 as ―journals.‖
His notional bits are Wittgenstein‘s ―fibres‖—analysis, solidarity, democracy, irony (i.e., no
final vocabulary), social hope, and ―Dewey,‖ ―Heidegger,‖ ―Quine,‖ ―Wittgenstein,‖
―Sellars,‖ ―Putnam,‖ ―Davidson,‖ ―Derrida,‖ ―Geertz,‖ ―Lyotard,‖ ―Whitman,‖ etc.,
conversing with them.120 Each idea-fiber overlaps the other, inter-crisscrossing into a
journalistic collage of living thoughts Rorty-esque, faintly reflecting a web of contingencies,
of life vicissitudes.
Here an overlapping of familiar themes blunts no pleasure of savoring the resulted
journals that continue to make an ever fresh impact on our life-quest. These bits subtly merge
into a musical montage, whose leitmotifs spontaneously appear and reappear in fugue-
modulations. The whole show is impressively free, forceful, original, and organic, to
illuminate life-perplexities.
It is a ladder to climb up on and kick away, that is, to provoke our pondering on life-
perplexities so as to revolutionize life itself. If this does not make up relativism at its most
pungent and persuasive in world history, if this does not make for world relativism, what
does? Let us now look closer to savor its proceeding.
The history-ladder is to climb up on to kick away, only to come back for us to climb
again and kick again. Chuang Tzu kept insisting that the past is useless because it is irrelevant
to the present; to try to follow the past is to follow footprints, not the moving shoes, to revere
the scum of old, not its life, or to push a boat on land, not a cart.121 Then, Chuang Tzu‘s
insistence on the uselessness of the past itself turns into the past for us to kick away.
History does not repeat itself; it rhymes. Our kicking is the way toward re-freshening our
present as the past was the once present re-freshening the past at that time, but in the manner
of that time, not ours. The life of the present consists in this continual renewed kicking. Our
thought experiment keeps going that we will later throw away. Nietzsche told us to kill God;
our true God is in fact our past we have killed, consciously or no. For Kierkegaard, our true
teacher is the dead one; we add that she is our past who passes on in the hand of our present.

115 Cf. Weiss 1955-1989. Thinkers in the West are cited because all Chinese thinkers are journalistic.
116 This is why these writers are hard to summarize and their ―systematic progress‖ hard to chart. This
phenomenon is typified by Lao Tzu and Johanson 1991, a bewilderingly superb book on mental healing based
on Lao Tzu.
117 Rorty 1979: xiii; Kuklick 2001: 275; West 1989: 194.
118 ―But then are these thinkers ‗relativists‘?‖ Well, all thinkers are alive to the extent that they are ―relativistic.‖
This is less to say that all thinkers are relativists than that they are true thinkers so long as they sensitively heed
the warning of relativism and embody its ruthless life-following thrust.
119 After his Linguistic Turn (1967) and opposition to the Mirror (1979), that is.
120 See e.g., Rorty 1985, 1989, 1991, 1991a, 1995, 1998, 1999, 1999a. Significantly, these journalistic bits include
no China and its culture. Rorty‘s cultural conversations remain formally confined to the Western culture, as its
analytic tone insinuates, for it is foreign to China. This essay nudges him to extend his ―cultural conversations‖
to China to fulfill his aspiration of world conversation, in the relativism-élan.
121 Waley 1982: 14-19, has a convenient collection of these stories (Chuang Tzu 13/68-74, 14/35, 74-78, etc.).
 Conclusion 385

This is the only way our life advances, and this is the modus operandi of relativism, a
dynamic implosion of the past to explode forward, pulverizing the surrounding as it presses
ahead, building ladders to explode them—and those pieces are themselves bits of dynamite to
continue exploding. Innovation makes no boring system but provokes systems, as Socrates‘
early dialogues, Pascal‘s Pensées, Buber‘s I and Thou, Marcel‘s concentric expositions,
Rorty‘s ―philosophical papers,‖ Confucius‘ ―analects,‖ Mencius‘ conversations, Lao Tzu‘s
tantalizing sayings.
Wittgenstein‘s formalistic ―fibres‖—short, aphoristic, overlapping and crisscrossing—
match Lao Tzu‘s gnomic sayings, concrete, ambiguous and loosely piled. Both are less linear
continual expositions than evocative invitations to exploration together. We look forward to
Rorty in the spirit of Wittgenstein to turn perceptive as Lao Tzu; we look forward to a Lao
Tzu today to learn from Rorty to clarify China‘s bits, concrete, scattered, to make coherent
organic sense.
Rorty‘s own logical ―linguistic turn‖ must turn pragmatic toward Chinese life-
perspicacity, which in turn must have some ―logical turn‖ to clarify itself. The result is again
building, climbing, and kicking the ladder. The Tao Te Ching builds its own ladder, climbing
it as it kicks it, an exercise in significant futility; ―Tao tao-able is no Abiding Tao,‖ it begins
to go on ―tao-ing‖ out such an untao-able Tao to the end.
Lao Tzu‘s entire volume begins advertising its own senselessness, as Wittgenstein‘s
Tractatus ends with such announcement. Both self-destroy. ―Why bother to build a ladder and
kick it?‖ This exercise gives life and its vibrant history. Its self-inconsistency makes Tao Te
Ching and Tractatus alive, controversial, provoking re-interpretations by new generations to
live on afresh.122
Thus the story of relativism tells in its serpentine way, the way history tells our life-story
to shape us. We must live well to understand relativism, and must study relativism to
understand our life and its ―logic of history,‖ its story argument. In relativism, story and
history blend to cease to be irrational. Here life is not choked by a straightjacket of definitive
deductive logic and absolutist assertions. Thus relativism spreads to silently support and push
all sorts of thinking and writings. It is itself not a definitive topic in encyclopedias and
dictionaries in the West, nor is it considered in China.

c. Rorty Joining China

We have just told a story of relativism in Rorty joined to relativism in China, as befits
relativism that relates. All this amounts to delightful ―world relativism‖ synonymous with
world concord, and symphonic in the concord. It all begins at world-cultural relativism in
―conversation of mankind‖ of world cultures Rorty envisions, and fulfills China‘s ageless
aspiration that ―within the Four Seas we are all brethren.‖
World concord is the music of life relativism. Music is a verb; it cannot sit still.
Relativism is a process of co-making the music of life together, wherein the world composes
as it performs its life-symphony of ―inter-resonating music 交響曲,‖ as a Chinese translation
of ―symphony‖ aptly puts it.123 World inter-resonance keeps making this historical life-

122 ―Paradoxes‖ in religious scriptures also demand continual reinterpretations and re-translations. From our
human perspective, the scriptures appear relativistic.
123 Symphony sums up all reflections above. Drama could have done so, as will be mentioned soon. Drama tends
poetic as Shakespeare‘s dramas do to inspire so many composers. Here drama, symphony, and poetry unite, to
386 Kuang-ming Wu

symphony. It knows no finale as we in history know no end of history. Our ignorance is

Socratic, pushing China learning and living rightly. Socrates‘ ignorance echoes Confucius‘
calm when ignored by men (1/1).
This ignorance is deep and full. I once asked a little boy, ―How old are you?‖ he said, ―I
don‘t know.‖ ―What‘s your name?‖ ―I forget; Mom knows!‖ His brother then proudly
declared, ―He don‘t know nothin‘!‖ and then they joined hands, and ran away. I stood there,
awed. (Wu 1997: 20) ―Mom knows‖ indicated how full his ignorance was, forever in Mother
Nature. And that name-forgotten boy parents me awestruck.
Simplicity cannot be learned; it can only be unlearned by daily lessening (Lao Tzu 48).
An old shaman Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux played on all fours with toddlers, for ―They are
just from Great Mystery; I‘m soon to return to It.‖124 History‘s goal is philosophy‘s end, to
lessen complexity to begin as toddlers.
Rorty the ―informed dilettante‖ now manages a ―hermeneutic salon,‖ a complex apex
where complex Western philosophies converge and various transversals con-verse among
various discourses. Here the historic great gather,125 to enjoy respect of members of all
warring factions, Hundreds of Schools blossoming to thrive in ―multiple reflective equilibria‖
(Huang 2001).126
As later Heidegger turned to poetry, Rorty‘s ―salon‖ must have ―plays, poems, and
especially novels‖ and comparative literature,127 to dramatize the truth that logic is dialogical,
as humanity is inter-human. His analytical locution is about to turn literary-intercultural to
relate to China‘s story-thinking, and both are ripe to reduce to toddler‘s simplicity128 in Lao
Tzu. ―Great Ones are ones who lose none of their Baby-heart‖ (Mencius 4B12). The end of
philosophy is endless; it begins to begin to simplify into Socratic ignorance that begins and
begins as toddlers.
All this ignorance-process ends philosophy and ever transforms it afresh, kicking ladders
of thinking to fulfill Rorty‘s ―social hope,‖ the ―solidarity‖ of world ―democracy‖ in the
ongoing ―conversations of mankind,‖ in a sinuous logic of life-drama. Here Confucius threads
his Tao with so many bits, each as ―one.‖ Wittgenstein climbs and kicks the ladder. Lao Tzu
describes the indescribable Tao.
The old awesome shaman plays on all fours with toddlers. Later Heidegger self-effaces in
poetry; we see him in Marcel‘s music and drama. Rorty complains about analytical necessity
and stays in it, kicks mirror to mirror actuality. This sinuous drama unifies poetry and life into
the symphony of history.

present life that goes on to compose history. History is thus literally rhymed, danced, dramatized, and sung
forth together.
124 Smith 1991: 374.
125 ―More than most analysts, Rorty was interested in the history of philosophy‖ (Kuklick 2001: 276), to draw
thinkers of all persuasions.
126 Dr. Yong Huang is the only serious Chinese disciple of Rorty I know of. His neat morphology, in the spirit of
Rorty, of personal-interpersonal relations is my version of ―relativism‖ so elegant. Mine is a loose
convergence of conversing ideas à la Rorty, extended to China. Rorty‘s shadow is over us both, stretching
beyond his actual self.
127 His writings have been too analytical in tone to be classified as ―literary‖; English professors would hesitate to
adopt them as texts in class (although 1979 and 1999a are beautiful) despite his having been in the Humanities
and the Comparative Literature Departments.
128 Rorty (1999a: xxii) wants to unmake Platonic artificiality back to the simplicity of naturalism.
 Conclusion 387

Mr. West129 envisions ―prophetic pragmatism‖; Rorty is Hall‘s (1994) new pragmatic
―prophet and poet.‖ China‘s notional fibers weave-into (wen 文) a literary mirror of life-flow,
history (shih 史). It is wen-shih, interweaving literature (wen) as history (shih), reflected in
the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides reflected on by Aristotle (Jones, 1962),
and in Shakespeare‘s and Chinese tragedies. The weaving converses in space/time into the
drama of history, befriending the ancients and among world cultures today. Sinuous life-
drama is here.
―What drama is Rorty‘s?‖ Attending to locution (1967), he can attend to the locution-
mode of his attending.130 Having demolished the mirror-assumption with its own argument
for it and beat ―analyticity supreme‖ with analyticity (1979), he can now move freely in and
out of analyticity. His cultural conversation can expand beyond the West, can be out ―of the
West‖ (1979: 394), while staying in the West. If this is no relativism in situ, what is?
The relativism-élan in his pragmatic conversation with diverse partners can stretch
beyond the West. His pragmatism is yet to soften into literary warmth as the winter-sun smile
at trees. English professors may still hesitate to assign Rorty‘s philosophical papers as
required readings, but Rorty is working toward that stage.
His 1999, 1999a, and unpublished 9/18/2001, 5/22/2002, 4/21/2003131 are turning
persuasive, intercultural, and autobiographical in tone, not just in themes, and 4/12/2003a
approaches China‘s historical thinking. This trend augurs well for his structural linkage to
China. China, on its part, would benefit much from Rorty‘s careful clarifying and framing,
while China itself is fully conversant with risks of analytical formalism. Now Rorty‘s cultural
pragmatism begins to practice world relativism. Nothing more can be said. It must be done.

E. VARIOUS PONDS ALIVE

Primeval pond, in constant sounds of primal silence so profound so disorderly! Thick
vines are entwined with gnarled trees tall and short, each spreads to entwine the other, and
another, until they inter-involve everywhere to weave out an eternal twilight of thick shades
shimmering, flickering, dawns and dusks, imbibing rancid redolence of putrefied wet soil
teeming with life in death, death in life.
Nowhere is richer than the pond that is everywhere in the middle of nowhere. I am so
obsessed with this pond alive, one yet so varied, so many, that I continue to collect books
after books of their descriptions and photographs. Each volume is similar to any other, yet
132
how distinct each is, charming me without ceasing, without rhyme or reason! Wallace
133
Stevens says,

129 West 1989: 211-239.

130 ―We simply refuse to talk in a certain way, the Platonic way. The views we hope to persuade people to accept
cannot be stated in Platonic terminology. So our efforts at persuasion must take the form of gradual inculcation
of new ways of speaking, rather than straightforward argument within old ways of speaking.‖ (Rorty 1999a:
xix) Did he realize that his analytical argumentation is itself a ―straightforward argument within old ways of
speaking,‖ and its alternative is ―gradual inculcation‖ in, among others, storytelling-reading practiced for
millennia in China?
131
The last essay was his history of Western philosophy, not philosophy in story-way to which he now comes
close.
132 Les Line, ed., The National Audubon Society Speaking for Nature: A Century of Conservation, Hugh Lauter
Levin Associates, 1999. Stewart L. Udall, America‟s Natural Treasures: National Nature Monuments and
388 Kuang-ming Wu

The poet has his own meaning for reality, and the painter has, and the musician has; and
besides what it means to the intelligence and to the senses, it means something to everyone, so
to speak. Notwithstanding this, the word in its general sense, which is the sense in which I
have used it, adapts itself instantly. The subject-matter of poetry is not that ―collection of
solid, static objects extended in space‖ but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes;
and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. Reality is things as they
are. The general sense of the word proliferates its special senses. It is a jungle in itself.

The jungle of the ponds is where the sense is one jumping in and out of many, the general
in particulars, crisscrossing, joining in droves to disperse, over and over again, making
jungles of ponds, called ―alive‖ as kids hawk-soaring, fish-jumping, ever moving never
tamed. Things are topsy-turvy here, ever dying to live on.
Now, my friend, do not bewail over such primeval ponds vanishing, for they are all over
nowhere in particular, called ―urban sprawls,‖ thick with noises and smells, dirt and risks,
lives and deaths, highways and high-rises. Such urban sprawls jostle with stodgy rural
expansions, among the prairie homes.
These homes sprawl around ―Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the
men are good-looking, and all the children are above average,‖ as Garrison Keillor tirelessly
and timelessly tells us. Of course, the Lake and the prairie homes are nowhere everywhere;
they are so common we never notice them until someone like Keillor picks them up for radio
shows. The weekly shows have lasted for forty years, and the shows are still going strong.
So, the ponds so varied are all around for you to live and choose. You want it? You will
have it, poverty and profundity, histories and trinkets, economic boom and its bubble-bursts,
fetishes and decays, music and museums, global warming and bitter winters. You name it,
and it is there somewhere. Can we see any difference here from primeval ponds alive? They
are all ―sound and fury, signifying nothing‖! Shakespeare said so, and his ―so‖ is now
enshrined in literature signifying something we cherish, whatever ―so‖ or ―something‖ is.
134
Bergson wondered aloud why humanity with constant intelligence could have been
attended with stubborn superstitions so foul and constant. We can express the same wonder
about why humanity with constant intelligence could have constant dullards jostling with
Einstein, holy sages with hobos and hoodlums, Thomas Edison and Mother Teresa with Al
Capone and Adolf Hitler. Our lifeworld is the varied ponds alive, indeed, to take our breaths
away, while we keep on breathing.
Now, we do not realize. We are the ponds, and so the ponds never cease to exist. We are
everywhere nowhere in particular, so the ponds are everywhere nowhere all around, teeming
with life and death, profound and absurd, saintly insane. Here is the humus of humanity
where all hustle and bustle jostles into our lifeworld. Various ponds alive are the origin of

Seashores, Waukesha, WI: Country Beautiful Corp., 1971. Clay Anderson, et al., Life in Rural America
(1974), Thomas B. Allen, et al., America‟s Outdoor Wonders: State Parks and Sanctuaries (1987), Merrill
Windsor, America‟s Sunset Coast (1978), all published by National Geographic Society. Lynda DeWitt,
Ocean Wildlife, NY: W. H. Smith Publishers, 1990. François Leydet, Grand Canyon: Time and the River
Flowing, Sierra Club: Ballantine Books, 1964. Shifra Stein, selected, Speak to the Earth, Kansas City, MO:
Hallmark Cards, 1972. And the list goes on. These volumes, so many, are timelessly beautiful as Nature is. I
omit all volumes on the beauty of urban sprawls.
133 Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (Vintage, 1965), quoted in
Modern Poetics, ed. James Scully, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1965, p. 139.
134 Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1935), Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1954,
pp. 102-103.
 Conclusion 389

themselves, the harvest of themselves, inter-entwined as causes and effects, one to the other,
to and fro, back and forth.
Such ponds, we must remember, are many and varied. Plurality displays varieties of
riches. One culture and one language can keep scholars busy for life. Think of being
bicultural, bilingual, what riches that entails! How about thrilling multilingual
multiculturalism! They are so many countless ponds so variously alive, primeval and urban
and rural! The thrill of travel to many different lands and regions lies here. So many places
have so many worlds. ―Places change, things change,‖ says Japan.135
The world we live is bewilderingly pluralistic. Just watch any group of insects that never
come alone; they all come in groups, and in various groups. Any plant bespeaks its species,
cedar or oak or red maple. They are all beyond our tabulations, keeping us busy doing their
taxonomy. Seasons vary also; each season of each year is all distinct from all others. No
wonder, poems flourish beyond classification.
Similarly, each walk of life has its own swing and charm, with its own headaches and
thrills, as an infinite variety of journals and autobiographies constantly tell. Buddha proposed
a leitmotif of the music of life we all compose and perform, birth, senescence, sickness, and
death, and we all perform this life-music with infinite variations so distinct.
Moreover, the world is made of countless varieties of such walks and music of lives, with
countless fascinations and frustrations. The world is plural-single so rich, a collection of
zillion miscellanies. Our lifeworld is usually taken as singular, ―the world,‖ but our universe
is so rich as to better be taken as ―pluri-verse‖ as William James correctly intuited.
The Christian monotheism takes God as Three in One. Is its God one or three? Whatever
else it means, though, the description must mean that the Christian One is rich beyond our
human understanding and imagination. Still, ―pluri-verse‖ or ―Trinity‖ is too awesomely far
away to handle, and so we take the world as ―various ponds alive,‖ which is our theme here.
The rich plurality of various ponds is alive, intimated by three incredible images in
increasing complexity, the strange circles, the zillions of grains of sand, and inter-reflecting
kaleidoscopes. The world as various ponds is alive in these three ways, circular, sandy, and
kaleidoscopic, bewilderingly relativistic. Now, these features are entered one by one, quite
fascinatingly, as follows.

One: Circles Centers Everywhere, Circumferences Nowhere

The lifeworld ponds are circles whose centers are everywhere, whose circumferences
nowhere. A circle with a center and an edge stays put as a circle. A circle of everywhere-
center and nowhere-edge goes round and round, out and out. It cannot stay but swirls
stunning us, for ―everywhere‖ is ―here and elsewhere,‖ ―nowhere‖ is ―ever expanding
elsewhere from ‗here‘,‖ and ―elsewhere‖ moves somewhere ―else‖ not ―here‖-anywhere.
This circle is then a moving coherence, a circle of many circles blending one into the
other in waves, out and out. The world is made of such circles so many, bewilderingly inter-
involving. Each goes out to include others that include it, interchanging to inter-change. Thus
136
Emerson writes,

135
「所變れば品變る」; the saying has tons of overtones in connotations.
136 The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, NY: The Modern Library, 2000, p. 252.
390 Kuang-ming Wu

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature
this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher world. St.
Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its
circumference nowhere .... Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle
another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is
always another dawn risen on mid-noon . . . .

―Without end‖ ciphers the beyond as ―every end a beginning‖ does my self gazing at the
horizon, opening out. The circle‘s center everywhere is ―I‖ freely moving, as its
circumference nowhere is I beyond me moving out. I am the Beyond in me, living on to
accompany all things. No wonder, I am happy with flying birds above that hoard nothing, in
songs of inter-thriving life that pulsate this world, singing the lifeworld.
―Those who hear not the music think the dancer mad‖; I am madly dancing my own
music I hear to disappear into a community of beings beyond me, and the community keeps
expanding as it dances with me, out and out. I am happy beyond joy and sorrow! ―Ultimate
joy, no joy,‖ chimes in Chuang Tzu.
All this describes the world as lively ponds ever dynamic, inter-involved, inter-
expanding. We cite only five circles, all ordinary and stunning: my daily ongoing, my living,
my culture, interculture, and storytelling, and the list goes on; each describes a circle, a pond,
and a world in plural. Obviously, these circle-ponds are my self interacting with my worlds to
inter-dance our lifeworld. We are here dragonflies tail-dotting the pond without dotting it to
produce circles expanding their centers all over, edges vanishing out and out.
First, the ponds are ―my‖ daily ongoing combined into so many ―my‖ ongoings. Daily
ongoing is both coherent as one day, and at the same time continues to open out into another
day, for ―there is always a tomorrow,‖ as someone smiles and says when he has missed this
last train to go for an engagement.
My day is mine, centered as my day and myself, and yet my day is mine because it is not
just mine but connects inexorably to the next, and to another ―me‖ with another ―my day.‖
My day centered goes on and on into an open tomorrow, forever, every-when, and goes into
another person‘s day, influenced by that day to expand my day‘s circumference nowhere,
going far invisible. And then this my day inevitably connects to other ―my days‖ into many
―my days.‖ Many ponds are right here as my daily ongoing into other daily ongoing.
Secondly, the ponds are my living, combined with many ―my‖ livings. My living is a
pond dotted with raindrops of many inspirations, joys, and sorrows, as portrayed in my diary,
journal, and business portfolios. These raindrops of joys of inspiration and sorrows of
disappointment are meaningful—coherent, centered—everyday, everywhere-centered, and
keep expanding out and out.
These ripples are each centered and coherent, moving on to blend with my other drips of
today, then tomorrow, and blend with ripples of other people and ponds, and vanish, and even
my memories of them fade, joyous and sorrowful, as days go on; their edges fade as they
expand, into nowhere beyond.
Thirdly, the ponds are my cultures, for all my life‘s ongoing and my living are en-
cultured and culture-enfleshed, for without my culture no one, not even me, can understand
my day, much less my joys and sorrows. My ongoing and my living make sense only in terms
of my culture. My culture shapes me meaningful in my world.
 Conclusion 391

Mind you. My culture I do not make; it shapes me into myself. My culture is my center
that goes with me everywhere showing me as ―me.‖ At the same time, as my culture carries
me everywhere, I inadvertently change and reshape it, even while I speak my standard
cultural language in my own accent, conduct my daily engagement my way and not your way,
and my lifestyle I form and show a new culture, as it is fashioned by the fashion of the day.
Besides, my very reshaping of my culture is also subtly influenced and shaped unawares
by my neighbors‘ ways of shaping our common culture. In ―keeping up with the Jones‖ the
Jones shape me as I shape the Jones—ad infinitum, that is, the edge of my culture turns into
ours, and ―our culture‖ has the edge that goes vastly out and out, far out there nowhere. My
culture is the ponds with everywhere-centers and nowhere-edges.
Fourth, the ponds are interculture, for in today‘s small global village, no dog barking
here, no cock crowing at dawn anywhere, is not heard elsewhere. A ―butterfly flaps its wings
137
in the Amazon and brings about a hurricane in southeastern England.‖ No fashion created
in one culture is not carried over, blown up, modified, and reshaped, however unawares, by
instant communication media. The medium is the message, and both the medium and the
message here are cultural and interculture. In fact, the matter cuts much deeper and uncanny.
Words are etymologically alive, with stories of actual situations as we, each in our
specific cultural region, see them. The word ―nation‖ is so rigid that it has no ―inter-nation‖;
instead we have ―internationalization‖ that can ominously connote cultural control if not
conquest, in colonization, colonialism. Luckily we have ―culture‖ to ―interculture.‖
China-West interculture takes place in three dimensions. First, with Western logical
sensitivity (trained by its logic, not its logic itself) we are amazed to appreciate the concrete
subtlety of Chinese culture in historical depth. Then, conversely, with such Chinese life-
sensitivity, we appreciate the lucid clarity of Western culture in precise analysis. Finally, we
thereby catalyze both cultures to inter-acclimatize, to inter-enrich.
These logical stages are dimensions of frame-comparison that involves frame-shift to
inter-enrich, and frame-shift in turn involves breaking the original frame. Frame-breaking
typifies pain, as described in previous sections. So, interculture as a dynamic frame-
comparison involves pain of frame-breaking similar to culture-shock, but this pain of culture-
shock is the pain of growth comparable to baby‘s teething and teenager‘s hormone-change,
often an excruciating pain.
Intercultural pain involves shaking our basic frame of assumptions. Xenophobia is
natural, to shrink into viewing alien culture in ―our culture-frame,‖ or totally collapsing ―our
culture‖ into wholesale importation of alien culture-frame. The double risks attend all cultures
in contact, and both risks are already materializing. The present volume emerges in response,
to firmly insist on going through the growing pain of frame-breakage without shrinking or
capitulation. It is a brave frame-change in frame-comparison, to achieve the harvest of the
brave new riches of inter-culture.
All this happens in the climate of ―culture.‖ Etymologically, climate is a region of
138
weather that blows wind, an atmosphere that is a vapor-sphere. So, culture is our life-
climate, the way we live, our lifestyle-climate, the region of our weather where our sort of

137 This is a well-known adage freshly quoted by Niall Ferguson, ―Complexity and Collapse‖ (pp. 18-32), Foreign
Affairs, March/April 2010, p. 22. We use it here in a slightly different context.
138 See Oxford English Dictionary (1991), 2001, for ―atmosphere‖ as vapor ball or sphere (I: 750) (cf. ―air‖ as
affective atmosphere of a situation in I: 277, cf. 氣骨), ―climate‖ as slope, region, latitude, clime (III: 322),
and ―weather‖ as storm, flood, wind, to blow (XX: 55).
392 Kuang-ming Wu

wind blows. As we go from one climate of culture to another, we breathe a different

atmosphere, blown in a new sphere of vapor-wind. We must acclimatize against cultural
―hay-fever‖ to be a cultured cosmopolitan, not shrunk inside our original culture. Inter-
revolution in different climates inter-cultures to inter-enrich, inter-grow.
Here in different culture-weathers we are weathered and strengthened to become cultured
persons. Refusing to acclimatize in xenophobia against culture-shock, we will come to regard
other culture as part of our own, and cultural chauvinistic colonialism follows. We now take
culture-encounter as culture-war, and then our cultural colonialism destroys victim-culture,
and then victor-culture vanishes for lack of contrast and inter-learning inter-growth.
Interculture is actually deep in me. To be aware of my culture at all is already to go
outside the immediacies of my ongoing of my living, to look at it in terms of cultures other
than my own. Self-awareness is already intercultural. ―Myself‖ can appear to me as myself,
which is other than my spontaneous self, only by being mirrored in my other, as I can look at
my face only via another, and the more varied others I have to look at me, the better ideas I
would have of me.
Here, ―more varied others‖ describe others of more varied cultures other than mine.
Existence is inter-existence to the core, and so I am interculture to become really me in
Global Village. Interculture is inherently plural, many ponds. My pond appears as itself, only
as intercultural ponds, many and various. I am many cultural others.
Finally, the ponds are a various telling of many stories. All above is told in stories we
must realize. Stories are various as their telling is variously manner-ed. Each story has its
coherent center sensible, to enable understanding, and as such interblend with all others,
vanishing into them as they mutually expand to blend into one another.
All such storytelling begins at the basic simple level of words. Words are themselves
alive, to tell their own stories of etymologies and histories and connotations, and these word-
stories interblend to compose sentence-stories of my ongoing, my life, my culture, and my
interculture, with all other selves‘ life-ongoing, cultures, and interculture. Storytelling
facilitates and embodies various ponds alive interblending; storytelling is the structure of such
many varies ponds alive with daily ongoing of living in cultures intercultural, exploding
round and round, out and out.
All these inter-involvements cipher various interactions between my self and my ponds.
To begin, the world is a pond; we are a dragonfly hovering over it, the tail touching the water-
surface without touching it, constantly making one circle after another, each expanding and
vanishing into the others. Such freedom, so light and delightful, takes our breath away.
The dragonfly hovers, flies as it touches the pond-water, touching the pond as it flies
over, uniting the flying and the touching. ―Hills far/ mirrored/ in dragonfly‘s eyes,‖ Issa
139
―reported.‖ Flying around moves around the hills and perspectives, moving even the
canons of thinking, the thinking-style, and hovering and touching all over applies its shifting
perspectives and thinking-styles, expanding to vanish nowhere, as they vanish into other
circle-ripples of perspectives and thinking-styles. ―Do shifting styles and perspective really
make so many ponds unlimited?‖

139 Sam Hamill renders it as ―The distant mountains/ are reflected in the eye/ of the dragonfly,‖ in The Little Book
of Haiku (1995), NY: Barnes and Noble, 2002, tr. Sam Hamill, p. 83. Sadly, I could not find the original in
蕪村集一茶集，栗山理一等校注，譯，東京小學院, 1989.
 Conclusion 393

Let us watch again. Dragonfly flying is lived living thinking, expanding as it makes
circle-ripples edgeless and pan-centered, constantly life-dotting over the pond of the lifeworld
so many ponds. Flying expands moving to express thinking, never standing still on the solid
bank of staid logical canons to deal with all moving things, including the dragonfly flying life
hovering over the pond-waves constantly rippling, with breeze blowing wherever it wants.
Now, this dragonfly is not alone but joined by countless others flying over countless
ponds, hovering over countless lifeworlds. The touches move and fly to touch, and the ponds
then turn alive and various, thanks to the touches flying-moving. We would not be surprised,
then, if the ponds melt into the dragonflies, and both turn into one pond-dragonfly in its
throbbing plurality showing things quite alive, beyond naming. The situation is
breathtakingly beyond our imagination, stunning beyond our dreams! Ponds and dragonflies
gather to hover and dance, singing the world, so many, symphonic.

Two: Zillion Sand-Grains, Zillion Worlds

Zillions of grains of sand at the bottoms of various world-ponds also intimate ponds
alive; suspending bits of sand in ponds turn the ponds so dirty and alive. The sands disperse
and sway as waves stir the pond water, blown up and down by the wind. In each grain of sand
140
we see a world whole, as William Blake intones, as these zillions of sand-grains are alive,
swirling, gathering, and dispersing as waves sway and winds blow, season after season, in
rain and in snow, as breeze and as gale.
Thus, zillions of grains of sand alive in seasonal hues and shapes mirror the lifeworld, as
these sand-grains envision countless worlds of various ponds alive, as these sand-grains show
an incredible variety of appearances to show an incredible variety of world-ponds alive, in
four ways below, among many others. A grain of sand implies, one, to be one-ed is integrity;
two, to be pure is to focus; three, simplicity is specialty; thus four, the small is the vast. The
four points gather to describe how sand-grains mirror various ponds of the world alive, for
―alive‖ appears as variously varied in time and space.
One, a sand-grain implies that to be one-ed is integrity. The logical law of identity, P is P,
is concretized as the existential law of integrity, A is A. Truly one is one-ing one-ed, A A-ed,
to promote the integrity of a thing, and the smaller a thing is, the easier it is to solidify its
integrity; the smaller a thing is, the harder it is to penetrate it, much less pulverize it.
Thus the smallness of a thing consolidates the natural law of integrity. Not accidentally,
Jesus points us to the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed, what grows up the greatest of trees
141
for birds to come nest. Integrity is alive, and the small facilitates its life-integrity. It
follows that the tiniest grain of sand is the stalwart of living integrity, as the smallest
particles—sands of ―wavicles‖—wave to swing the vibration of the universe, the pond
continually alive.
Two, a sand-grain implies that to be pure is to focus, free of distraction, of dissipation
buried in the crowd. Integrity induces the purity of focusing, and is synonymous with it. Once

140 ―To see a World in a Grain of Sand‖ begins the long poem, ―Auguries of Innocence,‖ in The Complete Poetry
and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman, NY: Doubleday, 1988. pp. 490-496. What the poem‘s title
means may intimate what is tried here, i.e., what innocently appears in the world augurs how things destine in
irrevocable laws of nature, such as laws of retribution, laws of reaction to action, etc.
141 Matthew 13:31-32.
394 Kuang-ming Wu

having remembered a thing, a dunce never forgets, for he is pure enough to focus as no one
else can. This is why the dunce would get ahead in scholarship where the shrewd is too smart
142
to stick to the silly rut of research. The dunce is just a grain of sand, so pure and focused.
143
―Purity of heart is to will one thing.‖ Here what is crucial is ―one thing‖ that conduces
to the purity that is in turn the source of clarity of vision, and a grain of sand betokens ―one
thing‖ most clearly. Understanding this confirms that a grain of sand conduces most to seeing
the whole world pure and whole.
Three, a sand-grain implies that simplicity is specialty. A dullard mentioned above is
simple and so quite apt to specialize. No astuteness of a shrewd merchant can patiently stay
for long through a single track of research. In this light, we see that the simple digs the
deepest, and nothing is simpler than a grain of sand, so we can best see a whole world in a
tiniest grain of sand.
Kids are as nothing as grains of sand, their simple purity is the root of specialty and
scholarship, and they are the greatest in the kingdom of perfection that belongs to them. The
great ones are those who lose none of their baby-heart. Thus, in the smallest common such as
sand-grains, nothing joins everything and imperfection joins perfection; here things are let no-
do, and not a thing is not done.
What is no-do? Tommy shouts, ―I don‘ wanna‘ sleep!‖ He is ready for a nap he hates.
Mom knows, so she says, ―OK, don‘t sleep; just sit here beside your pillow. I‘ll read your
favorite story, OK?‖ Tommy nods. ―Once upon a time . . .‖ and he hits the pillow. Mom
achieves her love-goal, and lets Tommy satisfy his need; not a thing is not done. She did not
―do‖ (push him into bed), not ―not do‖ (let him go), but did no-do. Tommy slept himself;
people do their own ruling and the Mom-ruler wisely retires, as Lao Tzu ―reports‖ (2, 9, 17).
People are a Tommy; they know only pushing others and smashing others. They are not
144
aware, and don‘t want to be aware, of the soft power of motherly pull to draw our
opponents out to induce common humanity. Such soft power to gently draw other‘s human
potentials is an application of no-do. No-do is simply to listen and let myriad all be, all
listening to all, accepting all. Such a no-do does nothing but embracing things to encourage
proliferation of things, to produce the plurality of ponds.
Mom on her part, while caring for Tommy this no-do way, turns into Tommy‘s kid way
that is also a no-do. Tommy goes out after nap, full of pep, to play with kids. They spin tops,
one after another. Look how they yell and shout, as they twist their bodies and twirl up and
down, hand-clapping, foot-stamping, whirling with their tops; they are tops until the tops
stop, and they spin them with all their might all over again, and again!

142 One version of Strange Stories of Liao Studio begins with such a story of the community‘s laughing stock, a
―stupid‖ fellow winning the hand and heart of the most charming lady in town, ―A Pao,‖ and winning the First
Rank in Royal Examination, the story of 「阿寶」 that begins 聊齋誌異，臺北市三民書局, 2009, pp. 1-13.
143 Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, tr. Douglas V. Steere, NY: Harper and Row, 1948.
144 I am extending Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, NY: PublicAffairs,
2004. It has an awesome cosmic potential to ―no-do.‖ See also Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,
―Power and Interdependence in the Information Age,‖ Foreign Affairs, September/October 1998, pp. 81-94,
and Nye, ―Get Smart: Combining Hard and Soft Power,‖ Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009, pp. 160-163. Nye
is myopically obsessed with politics, without cultural basis of ―soft power,‖ and has to be forced by dominant
hard power to ―combine‖ soft power with hard power into ―smart power.‖ ―Isn‘t the combined ‗smart power‘ a
Yin-Yang Janus-faced approach?‖ Perhaps it is in abstract, but under the situation now of hard-power
dominance, the combination amounts to a copout.
 Conclusion 395

For what purpose to they do such a stupid thing? For nothing! That is the fun; it is for
nothing! Spinning tops is just fun! In their fun spinning tops they turn into tops spinning, for
nothing! In their nothing-doing—no-do—stamping and twirling, they fulfill their common
human selves that spin as tops with tops, spinning with the Heaven and Earth that spin as
tops. I cannot keep my eyes off them! Neither can Mother Nature! Much less can Mom!
Tommy is her boy, marvelously yelling, stamping, and twirling! He is spinning himself
because he cannot spin a top yet! He is the top spinning!
Such a ―child heart‖ unstoppable unconquerable is the fountain of true scholarship that is
true wisdom (Li Chih); the child is the greatest to whom the Kingdom of God, Perfection,
145
belongs (Jesus), where the Great Ones lose none of their baby-heart (Mencius). Nature
always top-natures, begins spinning at the beginning of creation as kids doing no-do, spinning
tops for nothing, never forcing myriad all, and thereby achieves the goal of their being
themselves. That is creation; that is creativity as kids, ever beginning to spin tops of the
world, spinning as tops!
Four, a sand-grain implies that the small is the vast. ―To see a world in a grain of sand,‖
chanted Blake instinctively. We cannot believe it on first hearing it, for how could a tiniest
grain of sand allow us to see the world the vastest? Yet we soon somehow instinctively nod to
it. We are now to see how it sounds incredible but that it is actually an inevitable truth. But
how could it be?
On first hearing ―to see a world in a grain of sand,‖ we simply cannot believe it because
―small‖ indicates a small range of vision of a frog in a well, and of a person confined to a
small room without TV, magazine, telephone, computer, or visitor, and nothing is smaller
than a grain of sand, much smaller than a well or a room, and so nothing is smaller in range of
vision than that from a grain of sand. The tiniest sand betokens the tiniest vision, of course,
we would say.
But No! Blake asserts precisely the contrary to our prevailing common sense. It is quite
incredible to say, ―In a grain of sand to see a world‖; it naturally piques our inquiry into what
the matter is here. I remember the eye doctor often gave me a sheet of paper to look through
one of its holes to improve on my vision at the vision test. A peep through a tiny hole
improves my vision, perhaps because the hole cuts distraction to help me focus.
Isn‘t the tiny sand the tiny hole through which to see the world clearly? ―Small‖ betokens
focus and clarity of vision. Besides, concentration facilitated by smallness is power. Atom-
fission and atom-fusion produce atom-power, thanks to atom being the tiniest in the world of
things we can handle. No wonder, powerful atomic microscopes and atomic telescopes are
designed, manufactured, and used. Sand-grain is ―a-tom‖ that can not-cut any further, the
smallest ever, and so the smallest sand is the vastest in clarity, in power, and in vision.
Now, if a sole simple grain of sand implies such riches of implications, we can imagine
what stunning riches zillions of grains of sand would yield. Such are the incredible riches of
various ponds alive that constitute our lifeworld. The ponds are alive because the riches of
implications of its zillion sand-grains cannot be definitively determined but sway and shift as

145 See Li Chih (1527-1602 李贄)‘s central thesis, 「童心說」, 李贄文集，北京社會科學文獻出版社, 2000,
I:91-93. The child as the greatest to whom the Kingdom of God belongs is said by Jesus in Matthew 18:4,
19:13. Mencius (4B12) said that the Great Ones lose no baby-heart. Lao Tzu said (37) that the Tao no-does,
and nothing is not done.
396 Kuang-ming Wu

the sand-grains gather to disperse, gather again to disperse again, in shapes and sizes beyond
imagination. Sand-grains mirror various ponds alive in swaying waves, in blowing gales.

Three: Inter-Kaleidoscopes, Vacuous, Being-Nothing Inter-Involved

Circles go out, sand looks out, but kaleidoscope inter-involves and inter-mirrors. The
word ―mirror‖ has emerged spontaneously. The lifeworld is an inter-mirror, inter-mirroring in
zillion manners beyond description. We cannot help but look into how such bewildering inter-
mirroring of the various world-ponds alive transpires. Fortunately, we would have lost in
words on how to describe it, were we to be devoid of the two age-old traditions, the Chinese
Hwa-Yen Buddhism, and the Taoist Chuang Tzu‘s superb storytelling.

Vacuous Kaleidoscopes
Here are the vacuous kaleidoscopes of lifeworld. Suppose I enter a huge room that has
two huge mirrors facing each other, and a small candle-light between them. Upon entering the
room, I am at once dizzied. The two mirrors are now zillion mirrors; the candle-light is now
zillion lights. Here is a huge kaleidoscope of infinite reflections making countless
kaleidoscopes, what we call the extraordinary ―various ponds.‖ These mirror-reflections are
146
usually described as ―causations‖ that are ―interdependent.‖
I am of course totally lost in all this huge brilliance. And then I realize. This brilliance is
my knowledge, for without me there would have been no brilliance reflected in no mirror, as a
falling tree in (faraway) no-man‘s-land is no tree, no falling. So I am lost here, while knowing
I am lost. I am that strange tiny candlelight that knows I am lost in the infinity of mirroring,
and so I am not lost while I am lost. This is more incredible than Pascal‘s ―thinking reed‖ that
is so incredible.
Besides, all is brilliant here because here is not a single speck of dust. In fact, nothing is
here; ―here‖ is nowhere. ―Vanity of vanity, all is vanity‖ I mumble, knowing that my
mumbling is also all-vacuous. The Judeo-Christian Bible said so in long face, utter and sober.
I am not following the Bible, though. I am sober, too, but my sobriety is a strange lucid joy, a
calm joy of no joy, ―joy‖ because I am lucidly in the know, ―no joy‖ because all is vacuous,
my joy included.
All this is of course a fool‘s paradise, giggling no giggle, where this fool knows he is a
fool, so this fool‘s paradise is also no-fool‘s paradise. This realization makes this paradise a
real paradise—of no-paradise, for all is vanity so vacuous, in all joy of vacuous joy. It is a no-
joy joy of a blow-off of all, Nirvana, where the blow-off is brilliance, the knowledge-
brilliance, of no-brilliance at all.
So, this is the glorious world of brilliant multi-mirrors of nothing, for the multi-
reflections are spotlessly brilliant because of spotlessness of all, complete vacuity, where even
―complete‖ and ―vacuity‖ are vacuous of meaning. I am so happy here nowhere, clean, rid
even of happiness. This is the glorious Hwa Yen, the Flowery Splendor of Chinese

146 ―A Big Ocean, countless waves‖ can also be said here. The ―ocean-waves‖ parallels the ―room-mirrors.‖ They
are identical, for they are both vacuous. Where are the sand, the waves, and the winds?
 Conclusion 397

Buddhism, the Buddhism peculiar to China alone, as seen in the Gandavyuha (Detailed
147
Description of Flowery Splendor).

Kaleidoscopes of the Common and of Life-Death

Now, here are the kaleidoscopes telling us of depths in the common, and of unity-in-
opposition of life-and-death and being-and-nothing. To begin, here are five brief stories about
the depths in the daily common (1) silence as deep, not silent, not wording, (2) Tao said as
unsayable, (3) bull-butchery of suffering that feeds us, (4) fit snug in the things to self-forget
that is ―right,‖ and (5) ancient words said to be scum by an ancient wheelwright.
(1) Silence as deep, not silent, not wording: Take my talk that speaks in words. Why do I
talk? I talk to capture what I intend, the meaning of the words I utter. So once my meaning is
conveyed, I must forget my words, in the same way as when I get a rabbit, I must forget and
discard the rabbit trap, lest I am trapped in the trap to lose the rabbit and the meaning.
So, should I forget words and just keep me silent? No, my silence will fail to convey
what I mean. Thus my words exist for my silent meaning, as my meaning needs my words to
exist. Words are meaningful, not mere empty chatter, thanks to their meaning, and meaning
must depend on words to convey, for without words meaning vanish. Words and silence
(meaning) are inter-opposed (words are not silence, silent meaning is not sounded words) and
interdependent (each must depend on the other to exist). I must thus live on, with words in
silence. It is a tough world.
Worse, I utter words to open out beyond me, to convey my message, my meaning silently
intended, to my friends. Meanwhile, my friends must understand the above complex
involvement between words and silence, before they can really understand me. Thus they
must ―forget words to word with me.‖ So I yearn after such a word-forgotten one to word
with. Are these involvements complex beyond us? Hey, it is just my talking, so common!
Actually, the matter cuts deeper. I do not know what I mean until I say things out,
articulate myself in words, while my words are shaped by what I mean. I mean through words
as words express my meaning to shape it. Meaning and saying, silence and sounds,
interpenetrate to inter-shape. Such awesome inter-creation of sound-existence and silence-no-
existence, between silence meant and words sounding forth meaning, is awesome indeed!
Thus we must mind our saying—no chatterbox—to utter our mind, again without
chatterbox. We must say (sound) what we mean to mean (silence) what we say. Silence then
speaks aloud as speech deepens silence, and the world shakes to shape up, by silent words
wording silence, and silence worded in silence. Here there is neither words nor silence, but
both interblending to inter-deepen, to inter-shape—to word with the one who forget words.
(2) Tao said as unsayable: Chuang Tzu declares (2/59), ―Great Tao declares not.‖ We see
five points here in this strange declaration. One, Tao does not declare but just goes on going,
for ―Tao walks it and forms‖ (2/33). Tao is the way things go, thereby also things‘ going
itself. How Tao goes is what Tao is; Tao-as-noun is Tao-as-verb.
Two, Tao is commonly taken and defined as the Principle of things, which has two
meanings. As the principle of things, Tao governs—―principle‖ governs—things beyond

147 Hwa Yen Buddhism is aptly and correctly, though dryly and insufficiently, summarized in Wing-tsit Chan, ed.
and tr., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963, pp. 406-424. I have tried to
put in verve and actuality to it.
398 Kuang-ming Wu

things, for Tao is over things. And yet, as principle of things, Tao belongs to things, and
depends on things to form its self as what goes through things.
Three, Tao declares as itself not-declaring. Declaration is worded; not-declaring is
wordless, so declaring not-declaring is worded as wordless. ―Does Tao declare, then?‖ Yes
and No. Four, Tao is this ―and,‖ all over things, all through sound and silence. Tao is an A-
whatever and a not-A whatever denied, both ioined. Tao is negative Yin and positive Yang,
Yin in Yang, Yin as Yang, and at the same time Yang in Yin, Yang as Yin, inter-involved.
Five, Tao is thus a dynamic noun-verb, principle over things through things, somewhat
similar to ―people-ruled as ruler.‖ Thus, ideally, people-rulership would not corrupt into
harming people, due to the paradox of ruled-as-ruler. Tao as principle over things and through
things would also not leave things for Platonic heavens, nor would it vanish in ups and downs
of thing-contingencies. All this is due to the paradox of Tao in and out of things, ruling things
and going through things.
(3) Bull-butchery of suffering that feeds us: Such going-through is far from placid and
eventless; it is full of the drama of paradox of mortal pain in creation, violence violating
things in eruption of existence. Look at a kitchen-fellow butchering a bull, Chuang Tzu says
148
in his Chapter Three with a significant title, ―The Lord-principle Cultivating Life 養生主.‖
We see seven points here.
One, the lowly kitchen fellow does not cut into the bull. His cleaver-knife just dances
with the bull into the bull. The bull-dance is far from casual; the kitchen-fellow dances with
the bull to the sacred music in the royal ritual. Two, the bull co-dancing is far from being
butchered; it just dancing into loosening itself and falls quivering to the ground, entrusting
itself to the ground of being, full of blood of life.
Three, such dancing bloody butchery feeds life. That is what the kitchen fellow is for,
after all; with his deathly knife he feeds the lives of royal family—that is all of us. Lowly
kitchen fellow thus teaches us that death feeds life. Four, the bull in China is big and
precious, and comes to signify a thing 物, as bull 牛 knifed out 刀 into a conspicuous bull-
thing 物. Thus the kitchen fellow knifes through the bull to show us the creation of myriad
things among us.
Five, still, knifing butchery remains bloody pain. Bull-butchery, danced out in the sacred
music of creation of things, is mortal pain that feeds us to fulfill us. Feeding fulfillment is
creation of existence attended with mortal pain. Six, bull-butchery thus unites an A opposing a
not-A, death feeding life, pain felling existence in fulfilling existence of a thing. Thus
violence dances to the sacred music of creation of existence. Such is the drama of existence
standing out of ambiguity. Seven, this story has powerful cash value. Life is fed and fulfilled
with life-killing; suffering is good, not evil.
(4) Being fit snug in things, to self-forget, that is ―right‖: We in mortal suffering of life
can go on happily by way of fitting ourselves in it, in fact, so fitting that we forget ourselves
in the fit-in-the-world. ―Fit 適‖ in China also means nonchalantly happy. For their incredible
connection, hear these beautiful chants of life-fitting Chuang Tzu (19/62-64) has produced for
us in Chapter Nineteen significantly titled, ―Attaining Living 達生.‖

148 See Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990, pp.
279-359.
 Conclusion 399

―Forgetting feet is the fit of the shoes. Forgetting waist is the fit of the belt. Forgetting
things‘ Yes and No, right and wrong, is the fit of the mind and heart. Not changing inside, not
following outside, is the fit with the events-meeting. Beginning at fitting, and now ever not
without the fit, is the fit of forgetting the fit.‖ So incredibly deep! So pungently penetrating!
Being fit and snug in things, beginning at my shoes and my belt, makes me feel so good
as to forget even myself. Now whether Yes or No, right or wrong, I fit into things to forget
my own mind now composed, in my heart now worry-free. I cease to change or follow, inside
or out, in the midst of events meeting and dispersing; it is my fit care-free into ups and downs
of all sorts of events in joy and in pain. Step by step, I come to so fit with myriad all, inside
and out, that I forget even the fit of the fit! That is the perfect fit, isn‘t it? Here forgetting
prevails, all things are let go, fit and happy.
Daring to fit and be snug in things of brutal butchery as above seen, we are now lost
ourselves lost in things. Things are part of us, we are part of them. We ―enter beasts, disturb
149
no lot; enter birds, disturb no line,‖ ―all living with birds, beasts, as family with myriads‖ ;
we come and go, free among them. We are fit and snug in them; they are now our home.
―Fit and snug‖ is how we become ourselves in things, becoming whole, fulfilled in them;
all things are full to climax us in them. In contrast, ―forgot and lost‖ tells of how we vanish,
self-lost. Self-full and self-loss thus inter-exclude, yet, thanks to ―fit and snug,‖ such
opposition melts into one so natural, for both vanish self-lost, and we are here lost and full in
things. This oneness is ―right‖ beyond words beyond morality, the way we should be. What is
right is the union and unity of matters mutually exclusive, all in the World of Ultimate Virtue.
All this, told as stories, tells us among others to relax and refrain from do-good-ism, to
impose ourselves into the way of what goes on by itself, bullying it. Do-good-ism is one of
the roads to hell paved by goodwill. Never be ―holier than thou.‖ Never give advise that is
worse than ―a dime a dozen.‖ These ―cash values‖—and there are more—originate in the
paradox of the fit as self-loss, self-fulfillment as self-disappearance. Self-fit self-forgets.
(5) The ancient words said to be scum by an ancient wheelwright: Ancient Chuang Tzu
told us all above stories to enhance us. Should we follow him? Incredibly, he at once alarms
us with another story, saying No! Hear this amazing story (13/68-74) to conclude Chapter
Thirteen significantly titled ―Heaven‘s Tao 天道.‖

Lord Huan was reading a book in the hall above; a wheelwright was cutting a wheel
down under. Setting aside his chisel, he went up to ask the lord, ‗Allow me, whose words
are in the book my lord is reading?‘ Lord Huan said, ‗They are words of the sages.‘ ‗Are
the sages here now?‘ ‗Already dead.‘ ‗If so, then, my lord is reading scum of ancient
people.‘ ‗I‘m reading a book; how could a wheelwright say this and say that? You are ok
if you have something to say; if you have none, you die.‘ Wheelwright said, ‗Your
subject looks at the matter with the subject‘s own concerns. In cutting the wheel, if slow,
then it catches and cannot go in, if fast, then it slips to skip over. Not slow, not fast, got in
hand, caught in heart, mouth cannot say, yet it has its knack, the subject cannot instruct
his own son, who cannot receive it from the subject. Thus I am 70 and still cutting
wheels. People of ancient have died with what they could not convey. If so, then, what
my lord is reading is scum of ancient people.‘

149 「入獸不亂群，入鳥不亂行」 and 「夫至德之世，同與禽獸居，族與萬物並」 (Chuang Tzu 20/36, 9/9-

10), both such fabulous poetic lines! My first line agrees with Akatzuka‘s take,
赤塚忠，莊子下，東京集英社，昭和五十二年，p. 175. Few note him.
400 Kuang-ming Wu

This is an incredible story, and is incoherent on six counts at least. First, a lowly
wheelwright, perhaps illiterate, here teaches his lord deep in scholarship, not the other usual
way around. Secondly, the lord ought to be wiser than the wheelwright, for the lord reads
ancient words of the sages, and yet the wheelwright downgrades those words as scum, dead
and useless.
Thirdly, of course the lord is extremely incensed, demanding from him the rationale on
pain of execution. Here the lord is quite unworthy of his scholarly wisdom. Fourth, the
wheelwright draws on his lived professional experience to respond, for the dead ancients
cannot transmit their experience, nor can they experience now. They are scum useless to
experience that is all-important.
The point is clear. Words must have the cash-value of experience that ancient words lack.
So far we are impressed with the wheelwright‘s astuteness. We even see him paralleling
Socrates (in Phaedrus 274-275) who downgrades writing for lively dialogue because written
words cannot respond. But there are more surprises, beyond Socrates, in this story.
Fifth, the wheelwright uses words to explain how dead and useless words as written are
to the living at this moment here now. Words (lived) are used to downgrade words (written).
Worse, he said, with words, he cannot even use his words-now to convey his professional
experience, wordlessly ―hand-got, heart-caught,‖ to his own son. So, he uses words to cut
down on words.
If so, is he sure he can word-convey word-uselessness to his lord? ―Words are useless‖
means ―words are useless to experience.‖ So, word-uselessness belongs to experience-realm;
he cannot word-convey word-uselessness as he cannot convey experience. Thus he cannot cut
down on the effectiveness of even his own words, much less on the lord‘s. Isn‘t all this word-
negation, with words of his, an exercise in self-defeating futility?
Sixth, this whole conversation is 2,400 years old, quite ancient. This story is part of those
―ancient words‖ that the wheelwright said are scum. Is this story ―scum‖ and useless, then?
The answer is a paradoxical Yes and No. This ancient story negates itself as ―All Cretans are
liars‖ said by a Cretan. So Yes, it is a paradox seemingly useless, and yet No, for this paradox
is strangely not useless but quite useful to our living now, different from Cretan‘s paradox.
This sort of scum is scum and no scum. ―What‘s going on here?‖
An A-whatever combined with a not-A its denial makes an unstable paradox, of course.
We must note, however: there is paradox and there is paradox; all paradoxes are not created
equal. Cretan‘s paradox is due to its self-reference, it goes nowhere, and we do not know
what to do with it. But this wheelwright‘s paradox, also self-recursive, has its bite into living
experience, for all responses of wheelwright‘s come from experience, based on experience,
nothing but experience, to sober us to glue us to experience, not play with empty dead words.
The Wheelwright is a Whitehead saying, ―There are no whole truths; all truths are half-
150
truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.‖ The saying is of
course a logical splash over our sober common sense, to wit, ―Nothing is perfect.‖ And of
course both these statements are a glorious self-contradiction; we are tempted to ask

150 Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), recorded by Lucien Price, Boston: David R. Godine, 2001,
Prologue, p. 14, where Mrs. Whitehead said, ―His thinking is a prism. It must be seen . . . from all sides, then
from underneath and overhead. To have seen it from one side only is not to have seen it,‖ as we have just
done. This explanation of Whitehead‘s self-defeating wisdom is also a wonderful description of our various
kaleidoscopic ponds as the lifeworld.
 Conclusion 401

Whitehead whether his saying is whole truth or half-truth, and either way he would be stuck
in a logical cul-de-sac.
Whitehead is a master logician in mathematics; he must have known the logical trouble,
and still went ahead and said it anyway. It is this ―anyway‖ that saves his day and our days,
for his saying so anyway forewarns us. To be forewarned is to be forearmed in our logical
steps. Thus, self-referentially self-defeating as it is, Whitehead‘s saying quite benefits us. It is
a useful paradox.
And so we have two sorts of paradoxes. All paradoxes self-refer to defeat themselves, but
one sort of paradoxes self-defeat uselessly, another sort self-defeat usefully. Paradox-1 is like
―All Cretans are liars‖ said by a Cretan, or ―What the other side says is true‖ written on one
side of paper, and ―What the other side is false‖ written on another side of the same paper.
They are all useless mind-teasers.
In contrast, Paradox-2 is like Whitehead‘s quip on half-truths, a wonderful guide to
rational experience. Another quip of his is also useful, ―The (logical) precision is a fake,‖ for
1+1=2 does not universally apply to actuality as logic demands—gunpowder and a spark do
not make 2; Whitehead is a master logician cherishing precision, yet his precise argument
trashes precision. It is his paradox, yet it is a useful exhortation to logic to advance to
accepting incoherence in actuality, as Wittgenstein climbs up on his ladder of sayings to kick
151
it away, to understand the actual world.
The Wheelwright‘s is Paradox-2 that guides our reading and saying. All Chuang Tzu‘s
stories belong to Paradox-2, an advance in logic precisely because of illogical self-
incoherence. Such ―paradox‖ expresses an unstable, and so dynamic, gathering (logic is a
gathering) of incompatibilities to portray the variety of many-ness of the ponds, expressed by
the bewildering kaleidoscopic circles centers-all-over, edge-nowhere, a paradoxical self-
defeating feature of a ―circle‖ to express its dynamics.
Let us repeat. Paradox is thus another name for the kaleidoscopic circles all-centers and
no-edge, both one and many, one in many, and many as one, composing various ponds alive.
China is one of such strange yet common lakes, whose bottoms we can see clearly yet the
bottoms withdraw from us, bottomless-ly. The various ponds are myriad things jostling,
mutually excluding and jointly exploding ahead forward.
Thus China is a Lake Wobegon whose bottom can clearly be seen, and yet as we go in to
plumb the bottom, the bottom recedes, revealing itself to be unreachable. The lake is the
heaven underneath where Thoreau sees calm wintry twilight of soft summer embracing the
152
fishes swimming in quiet composure. We marvel at his poetry of nature here:

I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window
under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes,
pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor
the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky,
corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet
as well as over our heads.

151 The quip appears in ―Immortality,‖ The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. P. A; Schilpp, La Salle, IL:
Open Court, 1951, pp. 682-700. Wittgenstein‘s famous quip concludes his Tractatus, 1922, to elucidate itself
by kicking itself.
152 Henry D. Thoreau: Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, NY: W. W. Norton, 1992, p. 188.
402 Kuang-ming Wu

This lake is actually our ―heaven inside‖ beyond human, said Chuang Tzu (17/50), as it is
actually beyond us in us. Such situation is quite ordinary, one kaleidoscope that is so many,
one in many, many in one, an A adding to a not-A into a composition of no composition,
intoning many kaleidoscopic ponds inter-shimmering, as our stories above describe,
timelessly in time, everywhere nowhere, as if nothing were the matter.
Let us just take one common example, an image of a person we entertain, say,
―Confucius.‖ ―Confucius‖ is identifiable as such yet is quite diverse,153 for my Confucius is
not yours, nor is it hers. Still, we can easily identify our different Confucius‘s as ―Confucius,‖
a composite identifiable as such, as if nothing were the matter. ―Confucius‖ is then one
kaleidoscope so many, for your Confucius is not mine or hers, and yet ―Confucius‖ is
Confucius we see. All above five stories are of kaleidoscopes describing such depths in the
common concrete.
Now, these kaleidoscopes also describe fabulous four ordinary stories below of the unity
154
of life-and-death and of being-and-nothing, told extraordinarily by the Taoist Chuang Tzu
(a) drumming lullaby to his wife‘s death, (b) a happy ending to the kidnapped Lady Beautiful,
(c) Chuang Tzu‘s butterfly dream enjoyed, and (d) Chuang Tzu‘s pillow-talk with a roadside
skull happily making seasons with Heaven and Earth.
(a) Chang Tzu drummed lullaby to his wife‘s death: Chuang Tzu‘s wife died, and his
friend the name-logician Hui Tzu went for condolence, who found him sitting cross-legged,
tapping on a big empty bowl upside down as drum, singing beside the coffin. Shocked, Hui
Tzu accused Chuang Tzu of such an outrageous indecency on an occasion of such ultimate
sad seriousness.
Chuang Tzu softly said that at first he was of course quite saddened at his beloved wife‘s
death—and then realized. When the time came, the natural elements naturally collected
themselves into his wife, for them both to live happily together. When the time came, the
natural elements naturally dispersed, and his wife disappeared back into nature. It would be
unnatural, indecent, and disturbing of his wife to wail; he should quietly sing lullaby to
accompany his wife‘s sleep.
(b) A happy ending to the kidnapped Lady Beautiful: In those rough days of fourth
century BCE, kidnapping was routine. A Lady Beautiful of noble family was kidnapped by a
barbarian chief. Her first long months were wrapped in her tear-drenched robe. But then, she
slowly came to her sense.
Daily entertained by sumptuous meals, nightly comforted in the square royal bed with
soft-spoken chief, she now wondered why she wailed over her ―misfortune,‖ and repented of
her tears. Now, we are all Lady Beautiful, one day to be kidnapped by a barbarian chief, Mr.
Death. We may resent it at first, but who knows, we may repent of our tears, happily dying
ever after.
(c) Chuang Tzu‘s butterfly dream enjoyed: Chuang Tzu said he dreamed to be a butterfly
happily fluttering from one flower to another, quite sure that he was a butterfly. Then he

153
Seven lives of Confucius in Chinese history are identified by Michael Nylan and Thomas Wilson, Lives of
Confucius, NY: Dubleday, 2010.
154 The first and last stories are taken from Chapter Eighteen, titled significantly ―至樂 Ultimate Happiness,‖ and
the middle two stories are taken from Chapter Two, also significantly titled ―齊物論 Taking All things Equal,‖
of the Book of Chuang Tzu. See Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion, Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1990.
 Conclusion 403

awoke, and found, quite surely, himself a man. On second thought, he was not sure. Was he a
man having dreamed to be a butterfly? Or is he a butterfly dreaming now to be a man?
Either situation makes sense, but any one would exclude the other, for both situations
cannot be true at once. Such is the world in distinction among things interchanging. Now,
―butterfly‖ is a universal symbol of fluttering between life and death. We must be awakened
to such ―dreams‖ happily fluttering between life and death.
(d) Chuang Tzu‘s pillow-talk with a roadside skull happily making seasons with Heaven
and Earth: Death without burial is a shame; dead, leaving just a skull, tossed on the roadside,
is an unspeakable misery, the worst of shame no death can wipe out. Sadly, such worst
misfortune was not uncommon in rough days of fourth century ancient China.
Traveling, Chuang Tzu saw a dry skull on the roadside. He touched it with his staff,
asking what wretched misfortune had befallen it to reduce it to such unspeakable
predicament, and then slept on it as his pillow. That night, the skull appeared in his dream,
laughing at his imbecility, for it has been enjoying joy unspeakable, making rounds of
seasons with Heaven and Earth.
Incredulous, Chuang Tzu asked if it wanted him to request the Things-Maker to restore it
to former life with its family. Knotting its brows, the skull replied how it could at all discard
such pure ultimate joy for the worldly cares of obsequiousness to boss and parents and
worrisome cares for subordinates. Dead on the roadside, no one bothers, is the ultimate of
happiness no one can rob of the dry skull.
155
Chuang Tzu would therefore smile in his stories as these.

―Messrs Oblation, Carriage, Plow and Come talked to one another, ‗Whoever takes
nothing as his head, life as his spine, and death as his buttocks, whoever knows dying, living,
existing, and perishing as one body? I will be friend with him.‘ The four mutually looked and
smiled. Nothing was against their hearts-of-being, so they became friends. All too soon, Mr.
Carriage fell ill. . . . Mr. Oblation asked, ‗Do you hate it?‘ He said, ‗No! Why should I? Soon
(it) changes my left arm into a rooster, and I will seek (during) night-hours (to crow). Soon (it)
changes my right arm into a pellet, and I will seek an owl to roast. Soon (it) changes my
buttocks into wheels, and with my spirit I will ride it; why (then) need I change a carriage?
Besides, to gain is timely, to lose is to follow; dwell in time, stay following, and no grief or
joy can enter. This is what the ancient called ‗bonds loosened.‘ . . . Why should I hate it?‘

All too soon, Mr. Come fell ill, gasping, dying. His wife and children circled him and
wept. Mr. Plow who went to visit him said, ‗Shoo! Out! Don‘t startle change!‘ Leaning on the
door, he talked to him, ‗Great! Change molds! What will you make next? Where are you
going? Will you make a rat liver? A bug‘s leg?‘ Mr. Come said, ‗A child under parents goes
anywhere, only at their bidding. The Yin and Yang to us are not less than our parents. If they
bring me near death and I do not listen, then I defy. What blame is there in them? Huge Clod
loads me with a figure, labors me with life, eases me with age, and rests me with death. So
what ‗goods‘ life is why it ‗goods‘ death. Now if as a great smith casts metal, it jumps and
says, ‗I must become an Excalibur!‘ then the smith must think the metal inauspicious. If one
who chanced to be shaped a man insists ‗Just a man, just a man!‘, then Change the Molder

155 Chuang Tzu 6/45-60; I tried to bring out the vigorous original. Apostle Paul also thought about not objecting to
our Creator in Romans 9:19-21. Paul (not Chuang Tzu) has God as Love, but did not think (as Chuang Tzu
did) on how we should behave—joyously—under the almighty Thing-Creator.
404 Kuang-ming Wu

must think him inauspicious. If the heaven and earth are a great forge, the Molder-Change a
great Smith, where could I go and not be all right?‘‖

How ebullient is such looking forward to self-journey after death under Heaven! Truly
156
this is ultimate happiness without happiness, ―wu wei,‖ doing nothing adverse to life under
Heaven. Storing all under heaven under all-under-heaven, and nothing gets lost (6/26), even
after my death. Such is Chuang Tzu‘s revolution, putting upside down our common view of
death and life.
Let us return to the four stories above. These four stories are in joy-crescendo to death,
from softly lullaby-ing the dead wife, through death-kidnap as perhaps a good fortune,
fluttering pleasantly between life and death, to the ultimate joy of casual undisturbed death on
the roadside. We are hopefully to be persuaded to love our death while casually living here
now! Chuang Tzu‘s deep joy goes far beyond Albert Camus‘ sober final judgment over the
157
absurdity of life, ―One must imagine Sisyphus happy.‖
Now, we must note two crucial features in all these stories. One, these stories are all quite
daily, common, and ordinary, and yet, staying ordinary as they are, they are quite surprising
and extraordinary. These stories show us how stunningly unusual the usual routines of life
and death are. All we need is just to open our eyes wide and watch and discern; there is no
need to go out of this world, whatever that means, to see this world as out of this world. This
last point deserves elaboration.
Two, these stories tell us that this world natural and mundane, as ordinary as they are,
always transcends this world. This-worldly is otherworldly. Is our lifeworld being or nothing?
Is it life or death? Or are they both? But does it matter? What matters is to see that this world
is uncanny in otherworldly way, and we constantly slither in and out of this world, unawares
or not, isn‘t it? All this tells us how alive our ―various ponds‖ are, hovering between life and
death, one day at a time.
Thus the circle-ponds are the countless kaleidoscopes of changing patterns and colors of
values, each interrelated with all others, interchanging, inter-changing. These countless
kaleidoscopes are of two sorts, the non-being sort of the Hwa Yen vacuity-mirrors that inter-
reflect, and the being-sort of Chuang Tzu the Taoist, ―nothing‖ interfusing with ―things,‖ to
delightfully slither back and forth between life and death, making Heaven and Earth, season
after season.

Four: Relativism Life-Worldly, Intercultural

So, nothing is usual in our usual lifeworld. What is usual is always unexpected. We must
expect all things as unexpected, so much so that even things we expect to be unexpected
could happen anytime as expected. This situation makes us realize that there is no single
ultimate truth anywhere, while so many things keep happening at once.
Someone naturally says, ―Aha, this is relativism bred in uncertain plurality of things.
Truth is certain, final, and single. Your view does not even show the path to truth; all this is
sheer relativism.‖ ―Relativism‖ here is an abusive term; anything we dislike as wishy-washy

156 Chuang Tzu 18/11.

157 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959, p. 91.
 Conclusion 405

we relegate to the wastebasket of ―relativism.‖ All right, then, let us probe what ―relativism‖
can really mean.
People often think that just to discuss relativism sides with a ―heresy.‖ Nothing is farther
from the truth. Relativism is really a vital élan in relentless pursuit of insights in their
relentlessly open linkage. We must realize. ―Relativism‖ has two meanings, as a noun, an
assertion of a thesis, and as a verb, describing life-process. This realization generates seven
crucial points, as follows.
(1) We often take relativism as an assertion of categorical terminal judgment to
absolutely deny all absolutes. Put this way, relativism defeats itself; doesn‘t it assert its own
denial? It is irresponsible; doesn‘t it take all views as equally valid depending on one‘s
perspectives, cultural, ethical, or otherwise? Thinkers since Socrates (contra sophists) such as
Kant (contra Hume), we thought, have fought and demolished relativism as we do heresies.
Many questions are thus asked to relativists, ―Is there an absolute truth at all?‖ ―Are all
views equally valid?‖ ―Is there a universal form of reasoning?‖ and ―Can we judge between
two views?‖158 They are insoluble conundrums requiring acrobatic ingenuity159 to respond;
relativism is cornered if we take it as an asserted view.
But, then, this ―dead issue‖ of relativism mysteriously persists. We say relativism is dead
wrong, but it is far from ―dead.‖ It keeps popping up everywhere in life, in thinking, and in
history. No separate article, ―Relativism,‖ exists,160 yet indexes have ―relation,‖
―situationism,‖ ―skepticism,‖ ―subjectivism,‖ ―anarchism,‖ all siblings to relativism if not its
synonyms. Ubiquitous yet non-existent, relativism is a mystery if taken as a set view against
absolutism, an asserted ism on an absolute par with absolutism.
(2) Such impossible maze alive that refuses to leave us signals that relativism attends life
and that it is wrong to take relativism as a noun, a static definitive view equal to absolutism.
Relativism must instead be a verb challenging the absolutist approach to life-issues.
Challenging an assertive approach, relativism cannot itself be as assertive and definitive as
absolutism161 but stubbornly ―reactive‖ to it.162
How relativism does indicates what it is. Relativism must sinuously describe an actual
situation, not judge, declare, and categorically assert a view but realistically points and

158 These are some of the typical questions raised in Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, eds., Rationality and
Relativism, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986.
159 A self-proclaimed relativist Joseph Margolis (Truth About Relativism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) tackles these
challenges head-on, rambunctiously stirring up turgid pages. We agree, relativism is as alive as he is spirited,
yet we wonder if it is as unapproachably complex as he makes it out to be. We would not be surprised if his
noisy turgidity came from his lack of appreciation of the pervasive élan of relativism, to miss relativism.
160 See, e.g., Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Eight Volumes, NY: The Macmillan, 1967 and
Philip P. Wiener, ed., Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Five Volumes, NY: Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1973,
two massive encyclopedias of thoughts.
161 Watch how risky A. N. Whitehead the mathematician‘s quip is, ―There are no whole truths; all truths are half
truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.‖ (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead
[1953], Prologue) Now, isn‘t this statement the ―devil‖ that treats a half truth it asserts as a whole truth?
Another of his quip comes to the rescue: ―The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won‘t keep. Something
must be done about them.‖ (Ibid., Chapter 12, April 28, 1938). ―There are no whole truths‖ does not assert but
urges ―adventures of ideas‖; asserting any idea (even ―no whole truths‖) as a ―whole truth‖ stops the
―adventure‖; the stoppage is ―the devil‖ that saps the ―vitality of thought.‖ The ―adventure‖ is Gotthold E.
Lessing‘s ―ever moving pursuit (immer regen Trieb) after Truth‖ chosen over ―all Truth (alle Wahrheit)‖
(Wolfenbüttler Fragmente, in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1966, p. 313). If this is not dynamic
relativism we do not know what it is.
162 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 377 describes his
―edifying philosophy‖ as ―reactive‖; its pp. 377-379 describes our relativism here.
406 Kuang-ming Wu

proposes, sifting, searching, ever on the go. Is this why Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu constantly
tell stories of common living, alerting us to its unsuspected implications, and egging us on to
reflect on them, yet proposing no definitive views?
Is this how the Taoists came to be accused of committing relativistic life-withdrawal,
vague, indecisive, and irresponsible? Relativism simply, unceasingly, tells stories of life, one
after another, so that we can live through various views and attitudes to learn one after
another to cultivate life.
(3) Its interesting offshoot is on words ―better‖ and ―best‖ usually taken as
mathematically exclusive ordinals; if A better than B, B is not good as A, if A is the best,
nothing is good as A. We yet understand parents proclaiming their children as ―the best in the
world,‖ spouses proud of their beloved as ―the world‘s greatest,‖ and children priding in their
mothers as ―the most beautiful in the world.‖ Are we ―more blessed than others‖ with foods,
free worship, and cash for rainy days? Yes, but those are ―blessed‖ also ―who weep.‖ (Jesus)
So we use ―better‖ and ―best‖ as stories of a happy situation, where ―better‖ and ―best‖
are non-exclusive blessedness. In life, things can be each the ―best‖ without excluding others,
ever changing as weather. Fuzzy and inductive logic try to capture such ―flukes‖ in actuality.
Logical non-exclusion is the warmth of human relativism.
(4) ―But relativism cannot blindly describe; it must describe how we should behave.‖
Yes, it does. Ever alert, empathic, and critical to events and views, relativism points to a
proper life-posture. Relativism tells us that we are ―on the way,‖ and so must be ever ―on the
way,‖ seeking, sifting, judiciously trailing the Tao of Nature forever naturing without ceasing.
No view is perfect yet none is totally wrong, and we must carefully and patiently go
through every view that comes, comparing, weighing, and integrating them, never pompously
pronounce the final judgment. Relativism is the story of life-normative quest, ever turning
anti-life postures toward pro-life ones.163
(5) ―But relativism cannot go aimless, it must have a goal.‖ Yes, but its goal is not fixed
eternally in the Platonic heaven. Aristotle told us164 that ―happiness‖ is our common goal but
differs as every life differs from every other, and differs as life grows. ―Is happiness one or
many?‖ The answer is, of course, it is both one and many, and the question of ―or‖ is a wrong
question of staid logic. Life differs as it grows; growth changes beyond definitive assertions to
fix; life‘s goal changes, growing stage by stage.
My son Johnny used to excitedly vow that he was going to be a garbage collector driving
a big loud truck! I said, ―All right! Good for you, John!‖ Later, he vowed that he was growing
up to be a milkman with a pencil on the ear! I said again, ―All right! Good for you, John!‖ He
is now a violinist, music historian, and medical technologist. Nothing is wrong with changing
interest as one grows and changes; ―all ends are endless‖ (Dewey) that is life-pragmatism. As
life‘s goal varies endlessly, so relativism‘s shifting goal is unpredictable yet non-arbitrary for
life—private or public.165

163 Here are Rorty‘s insistence on ―progress from‖ cruelty, and China‘s of pro-life posture.
164 Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Princeton University
Press, 1984, II: 1729 (beginning of Nicomachean Ethics). Sadly, prosaic descriptive Aristotle never bothered
to reflect on how problematic his report was, ―happiness‖ as a mix of one and many; he had no self-reflection,
no self-examination Socrates wanted.
165 Privacy and the public join here; Rorty‘s private-public difference is not needed.
 Conclusion 407

(6) ―But we cannot just wander around. What is relativism‘s method?‖ Its method is
careful discernment, going through each view from inside it, existentially.166 This is the truth
hid in its ―laughing stocks,‖ ―all views are equally true,‖ ―relativism indiscriminately tolerates
all things.‖
What relativism cannot tolerate is the intolerant finality of judgment that closes off life-
openness to things that come. All views are not equally valid, nor is relativism all-tolerant,
but its method of sifting them applies equally to all views, and cannot be canonized167; it has
to sinuously trail each specific view as it emerges daily.
(7) Here is a bombshell on argumentation. Relativism does not argue but simply story-
describes actuality, and thereby argues—as Socrates did powerfully when he described how
he came to be indicted as an atheist corrupter of youth. He then described how, on the
contrary, he improved their souls (no parents came to indict him) as he (not an atheist)
followed the Delphic Oracle in total disregard of his own living, and his own life.168 His life-
description demolished the indictment of ―impiety‖ and ―seducer and corrupter of youth.‖
Kierkegaard and Voltaire, Hugo and Tolstoy, kept telling stories, Western thinkers have
been conducting ―thought experiments,‖ arguing with ―examples‖ and ―counterexamples‖
from life, and all Chinese thinkers have been tirelessly telling stories from history, actual or
imagined. They in storytelling all ―argue.‖
―Story-argument‖ is persuasive because it ruthlessly follows life itself that persuades
living. They say facts are not opinions or value, nor are examples points, so relativism
confuses description with demonstration. Such assertion commits false dichotomies on the
high judgment seat of ―abstract thinking‖ (Marcel).
Thinking should be concrete as life, being part of living as human; far from being a
contradiction, ―concrete thinking‖ is the way of human life. Life forms history; it is an
ongoing ―story argument‖ to which Chinese thinkers constantly appeal. So should the West
with the rest of the world.
In all, relativism opposes absolutely asserting ―the truth,‖169 in thinking, to become life-
history among friends. Opposing logical/analytical necessity,170 relativism thinks in pragmatic
coherence (Rorty) and story-description (China). Opposing ―mirroring,‖171 relativism
facilitates friendly conversations. Opposing fixation, relativism goes through ideas in
contradiction. Opposing reason that tries to shape history, relativism in story-description
becomes history.
Thus relativism revolutionizes thinking as it ruthlessly trails actual situations. Relativism
spatially goes through various views, story-describing them, discerning what they
respectively are, thereby appropriately criticize their appropriateness. Going through these

166 See Kuang-ming Wu, ―Existential Relativism,‖ Ph.D. thesis 1965, Yale University Philosophy Department, that
elaborates on this point.
167 Rorty says that ―pragmatism‖ has no ―new philosophical method or strategy,‖ in Philosophy and Social Hope,
USA: Penguin 1999, pp. xx-xxi.
168 See The Apology, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Princeton
University Press, 1961, pp. 20-24 et passim, .
169 An absolute assertion of the final truth plays god-in-thinking. This is anti-human, anti-life, and cuts thinking
from concrete life-actuality, as Plato did. Rorty may or may not have thought about this point.
170 Rorty may have opposed logical/analytical necessity for its being autonomous (The Linguistic Turn: Recent
Essays in Philosophical Methods, The University of Chicago, 1967), cut from actual necessity that it assumes
it mirrors (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, 1979).
171 Rorty, ibid., 1979, and Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers, Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
408 Kuang-ming Wu

views critically, relativism makes history as it judiciously dialogues with the past views that
in turn shape, straighten, and enrich the present situation. Spatially and historically, relativism
goes through positions into so many kinds of world-ponds.
In such dynamic ways, relativism as an élan of going-through countless positions, as they
arise in space and in time, jibes with the dynamic circles all-centers and no-edge that go out
and out, constantly expanding. Relativism is this everywhere-nowhere circle that moves into
many circles, round and round, one into many going through many, making various ponds of
lifeworld, one at a time forward.
Everything is alive as such relativism-circles inter-depending, inter-reflecting, one
kaleidoscope as many kaleidoscopes with countless shades and perspectives, swirling and
waving, gathering and dispersing. All this describes the varied sorts of ponds alive in every
grain of sand gathering as river into countless diverse rivers of the lifeworld.
A pond is where a frog of life jumps in to make a sound, as a most famous Japanese
haiku intones, ―Ancient pond; frog jumps in; sound of water.‖ Nothing noteworthy is here at
the pond, and everything is here—pond-world, frog-life, activity-jumping, and sound that
excites a bird. And then we see so many ponds that sound so many sounds of so many frogs
jumping in.
These worldly sounds make us realize: The pond is the frog, for here the pond appears as
pond, thanks to the frog disturbing it. The pond-frog in turn is the sound made by the jumping
in of the frog, for the sound lets appear the pond-frog that otherwise would have remained
silent, nowhere, in the same way as a tree falling in no-man‘s-land is no tree, not falling.
All in all, the pond-frog appears by the frog jumping-in, and the frog-pond sound echoes
the cosmic silence all around, to spread the pond as many ponds of many circles everywhere-
centered and nowhere-edged. We go through everyday all these sounds of the do-nothing
good-for-nothing frogs, jumping into the countless silent ponds of this lifeworld.
The world is so many different ponds, each alive with fascinating details different
everyday everywhere. It is relativism dynamic, inter-dancing with the zillion grains of sand at
the bottoms of the ponds, each a fascinating kaleidoscope mirroring this whole world. In
short, the world is various ponds thus fascinatingly alive.

History, Mistakes, Alive Always

These ponds and lakes, varied and alive, exist everywhere nowhere in particular—
always. Why always? It is because history has no end, nor does Nature, always. Life simply
continues as history has no end. The goal of life is the goal of history. As life is always
unfinished,172 so its goal is never finished, and history continues, not without goal, not
without goal-less, always unfinished.
How does history continue? History does not repeat; it rhymes itself, and rhymes never
cease but spreads. History rhymes because people reenact the yesterday today, never repeat it,

172 Yehudi Menuhin has written down his unfinished life. Yehudi Menuhin: Unfinished Journey, NY: Alfred K.
Knopf, 1977, and Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later, NY: Fromm International, 1999. No one did
―unfinished journey‖ twice; Menuhin is a kid, indeed, who begins anew every minute, always unfinished. Cf.
Ruth St. Denis, An Unfinished Life: An Autobiography, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1939, as she danced her life
forever unfinished.
 Conclusion 409

to enable understanding to reenact life, again today and again tomorrow, as the days keep
coming anew afresh, again and again.
Days dawn continually, renewing today once more, unceasing. All this makes history, as
our days keep dawning and going by, as days come always to be made continually—as we
say, ―You made my day‖—no end in sight. Or rather, in history ends are endless, and goals
go beyond themselves, one replacing the other. History reenacts itself as we reenact
yesterdays today for tomorrow to arrive well and vigorous—all the time, for time has no end,
ever alive throbbing ahead, having no end in sight.
The common saying, ―All is well that ends well,‖ so enamored Shakespeare that he made
it into a comedy. The saying is fit to become a comedy because the endless history that we are
has the unending hope to end well any today that we are in. History is thus always well,
ending well without ending.
This is because, to put it another way, history always judges looking back, and this
process makes no mistakes, and so history makes no mistake. History keeps judging this way
to abolish mistakes always, for afterthought is always better than all others; don‘t ask me
why, it is just better, for otherwise history would criticize whatever is not better to make it
better, and the process of making things better is itself better than anything there is.
History thus always betters itself, continuing to correct mistakes judged mistaken. This
process of finding and correcting mistakes is history, and this process makes no mistake, and
so history makes no mistake, so that it makes ―all well that ends well‖ without ending.
History keeps going this way to abolish mistakes always. Going always is going alive,
―going continually this way‖ makes no mistake, and so countless ponds all alive make no
mistake by going ahead always as history. This is world-milieu in time in history to enable
mistakes to be freely made, and then to be corrected to go ahead. All this describes countless
ponds so various and alive, continuing to exist to go on variously as circles all-centers and no-
edge, going ahead bettering all, well-ending, well without end.
Now, pain comes when things are judged in want of fulfilling the goal, and so mistakes
betoken pain and poverty. The ponds and lakes are oceans of suffering, Buddhism says. It
does not matter, for the oceans themselves suffer no pain, no poverty, for they have no
mistake, i.e., no suffering, as history itself. So, history has no pain as it goes from yesterday
to today, no mistake, no suffering but sliding on ahead. All is well ending well unending
(Shakespeare), so day after day are good days (Zen Buddhism).
Every today just dawns no matter what; each day is goal-directed (it dawns) without a
goal (unending, for nothing), and judging is always goal-directed, and the judging fulfills the
goal of judging, and so judging is self-goaled, never in pain of want, even as lived time we
undergo is filled with pain. History has no pain as it has no mistake but is always judging
mistakes and pain.
The countless ponds alive full of pain cleanses itself of pain as their histories go on, and
on, in sound and fury in utter silence (no one cares), slithering from life to death, from death
to life, in pain in no pain. Alice in this Wonderland sees and undergoes things topsy-turvy and
they somehow straightening themselves in the end. All this confusion unscrambling itself is
portrayed by a mathematics professor in Oxford, Dr. Charles L. Dodgson, ―Lewis Carrol‖ for
410 Kuang-ming Wu

Alice. He chimes in with a great mathematician Whitehead quipping, ―The precision is a

fake,‖ for 1+1=2 applies not to gunpowder plus a spark.173
Wonderland always explodes into bits and pieces, and portraying them somehow makes
sense, for in each piece Alice sees a whole world, and so myriad pieces see myriad worlds,
exploding round and round, out and out. A world is orderly, and myriad worlds are disorderly
(myriad) orders (world), pain (full of mistakes) painless (as the whole world), and so making
mistakes without making a single mistake. Lifeworld is such a strange ―wild, wild world‖
because it is so alive, always going ahead without ceasing.
―Mistakes without mistakes‖ can also be portrayed another way, like this. Nozick says,
―The word philosophy means the love of wisdom, but what philosophers really love is
reasoning. They formulate theories and marshal reasons to support them, they consider
objections and try to meet these, they construct arguments against other views. Even
philosophers who proclaim the limitations of reason—the Greek skeptics, David Hume,
doubters of the objectivity of science—all adduce reasons for their views and present
difficulties for opposing ones.‖
The philosophers‘ love of reasoning and arguments comes from all Western philosophers
being obsessed with finding and correcting mistakes, for that is why they keep arguing among
themselves. Both Plato and Royce came to be interested in the problem of how mistake is
possible.174 They are thus obsessed with mistakes.
And so, we their observers can say, that what makes possible their arguments, judgments,
and corrections, what keep them going, are precisely ―mistakes,‖ and so they put the cart
before the horse, or rather, they mistake the bad cart for the good horse. Pain and suffering,
i.e., mistakes, are what make possible philosophers, sages, and religions to flourish. Thanks to
―mistakes‖ and pain, the countless ponds come alive variously in lively arguments, and what
is to be thanked for cannot be mistaken (no one thanks mistake, does he?), thus mistakes are
without mistakes.
This is another beautiful wild card that throws a monkey wrench (never mind mixed
metaphors here) into the orderly logic about this lifeworld orderly disorderly and alive. The
world is alive, thanks to death-making pain and mistakes. Oceans of suffering themselves do
not suffer mistakes in all their waves of mortal mistakes. Countless ponds are alive, thanks to
deadly mistakes continually erupting (disorder) for history to continually correct (order).
Remember, the world without mistakes is dull and dead. Admirable loyal subjects and
heroes thrive only in disastrous disorders; no shimmering crime, no shining police. This is
what originated Han Fei‘s no-nonsense Legalistic Realpolitik in China175; it has worked, at
least disastrously. Chuang Tzu blustered (10/16), ―Sage not decease, great thieves not cease,‖
to put ―sages‖ as mistaken. Mistakes it is that keep the lifeworld alive and exciting, in pain.
Mistakes and pain interdepend on pleasure and well-doing. Let us put it another way.
Countless various ponds alive are fountains of eternal youth whose elixir can be easily
snatched from every grain of sand scraped from any lake-floor. Can you imagine? Chuang

173 This quip concludes his last published essay, ―Immortality,‖ in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed.
Paul Arthur Schilpp, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1951, pp. 682-700.
174 With this observation, Robert Nozick begins his ambitious book, The Nature of Rationality, Princeton
University Press, 1993. The possibility of mistakes has fascinated Western thinkers since Plato (the
Theaetetus). Josiah Royce built his idealism on it (The World and the Individual, 1900-1901). Western
philosophy is a series of inter-pickings-apart of mistakes.
175 See 「難一」 in 韓非子，臺北市三民書局，民86，p. 547.
 Conclusion 411

Tzu (23/76-77) sees that the crippled people beyond praise and blame can throw away fancy
clothing, and convicted criminals beyond life and death can climb to any height, and so they
are ―men of heaven‖ so perfect, so heavenly. That is true humanity beyond all fear and
shame, authentic virtue authoritative beyond all morality.
It is thus that nothing is more precious and admirable than such, nothing more immortal,
more alive always, exhibited among the ugly crippled and the heinous criminals. All this
makes up the mad, wild world all over, its edge nowhere, always alive, no dull moment as
naughty Tommy shouting, ―I don‘ wanna‘ sleep!‖ The lifeworld is various countless ponds
profoundly alive, topsy-turvy, always going ahead of us, as if nothing were the matter, for all
this is routine world alive, thanks to mistakes and pain. The world is wild and routine, always.

Cash Value of Various Ponds Alive

―All this is quite far out, wild, rambunctious, and boisterously unreal, out of this sober
world. Does such incredible ‗insight‘ have any cash value to our real sober life?‖ Yes, of
course, tremendously, tragicomically, cosmically, and historically. This realization that our
lifeworld is stunningly varied, countless ponds topsy-turvy alive, gives the ultimate
justification to all kids singing the world and dancing their lives, growing quite naughty and
quite cosmic. These kids cannot be ridiculed as insane, thanks to our lifeworld being such
stunning zillions of ponds alive. Let us take a ―crazy‖ kid-example.
Andrew aged five wanted to change his birthday to get birthday gifts anytime he wants;
his dad said he cannot change it, but he disagreed. O, how refreshing his demand is! None but
kids alone can stunningly demand it! I his ―Gumpa Akong‖ was drawn in, and told him how
to do it. This is how. He can forget his birthday, to begin all over again.
Even if his Mom told him of his birthday (he whispered, ―February 26!‖), he can not-
believe it, and ask her to ―prove it!‖176 Mom is only a witness, albeit uniquely firsthand, to his
birthday, and so she would have hard time proving it, for a fact is proved when it is repeated,
and birthday is a fact only once-in-a-lifetime, incapable of repeating.
Forgetting as Taoist and asking Mom to prove her information as Hume demands, change
his birthday, you see. Now he can change his birthday, any day every time he demands it, if
he wants to, for his ―birthday‖ is as good as what Mom tells him. After all, this is his birthday
he is handling. He nodded in silence, in a strange sort of composure only he understands.
I was going to tell his Mom how he can change his birthday, when he shouted me down,
―Don‘t tell! It‘s a secret!‖ I asked, ―Do you have secrets?‖ ―No,‖ he said. So this is his secret
of no secret—his birthday change and how! Why is it a secret to Mom? The reason is simple;
kids always have reasons simple and straight.
Andrew‘s birthday-change is kid‘s magic, you see, and Mom must not know its secret,
for telling her his magic of how he changes his birthday would ruin his changing it, as the
magic is de-magicked by divulging the magic! O, how cute, how deep his secret Magic Land
is where he has no secret!

176 David Hume is the kid here; he dares to disbelieve in any birthday! His so-called ―skepticism‖ is really kid-
asking in wonder, refusing to settle anywhere; it is kin to relativism. This is where the world is born.
Skepticism, relativism, and birthday are sisters in the creation-family of kids, and ―this is a secret,‖ says
Andrew the five-year-old!
412 Kuang-ming Wu

In fact, Andrew may not realize this, much less do I, that ―today‖ unrepeatable begins the
rest of his life and mine, and his unique demand to change his birthday activates this truth, to
make me and make him realize this every today as every birthday of his and of mine. So, his
asking to change his birthday has already changed it; in the very asking, right now, his
birthday of everything comes about, for his demand makes his today sparkle with the
beginning of the rest of his life, for kid‘s demand sparkles things afresh, as he the kid is
forever fresh, making everything fresh.
He-asking-demanding is the delightful scandal of every particularity of ―birthday‖-
creation of everything, anything of the future. I cannot help but sing,177

Future comes
One day at a time.

My future is here,
I must walk out to it.

Morning fresh,
Evening calm;

Every day is a new day,

The first day of my life.

The squirrels are here

Hopping with me.

My future is my birthday today, one today at a time hopping with my Andrew hopping,
hopping with our squirrels. This is the morning where/when I can do anything, as kids can do
178
anything. Andrew is the first morning of creation of all! Now, doesn‘t this story give all of
us a smile? Even I laughed as I told you this stupendous story! Such open secret of Andrew‘s,
such breathtaking smile he releases in us! This is many ponds alive changing their birthdays!
This insight of kid‘s, unawares, into so ―many world ponds alive,‖ makes all of us kids,
always growing irresistibly, illicitly, illimitably. We are naughty kids dancing the world when
we are called ―poets‖ celebrating, and ―musicians‖ singing the romping mysteries of the
world. We are also called ―scientists‖ as we release our kid-curiosity, forever exploring how
the world of nature works.
We are then called ―technologists‖ when we apply our ―scientific knowledge,‖ fun-
knowledge, to manage the world as kids manage their games as they keep inventing new
games.179 We are kids playing the management of such fun-ponds alive. We are called
―merchants‖ when we trade our products to make our living to fun-prosper continually, up
and about, as kids make and trade their fun ―products‖ and fun things.

177 Kuang Wu, ―Future Comes One Day at a Time,‖ Timeless Voices, ed. Howard Ely, Owings Mills, MD: The
International Library of Poetry, 2006, p. 1. Apropos of its theme, this poem is the first one to begin all in this
book.
178 Andrew outshines Henry Bugbee‘s The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form, State
College, Penna.: Bald Eagle Press, 1958.
179
Remember Edison the kid-inventor? See Thomas Edison: The History Issue: Time, July 5, 2010.
 Conclusion 413

―Poets,‖ ―musicians,‖ ―scientists,‖ ―technologists,‖ and ―merchants‖—they are all

nicknames for being playing ―kids.‖ These nicknames are our excuses for our living and
acting as kids, singing the world and dancing the lifeworld as kids of all ages. Mind you. All
this is enabled and justified by our lifeworld being the countless varieties of ponds alive, so
that we ourselves melt into these ponds. Otherwise we would have been insanely boisterous,
―all in sound and fury, signifying nothing.‖
Now various ponds alive respond to Shakespeare‘s complaint on the senselessness of this
world. Various ponds alive are the significance of all our life-activities through all histories
and all cosmoses beyond imagination beyond all mistakes. It is the end of all that ends well,
so all is well, unending. Nothing is more stunning, and nothing is more sober, than this
enabling plurality of ponds alive that are our world and we our selves; all is well here, as kids
ever beginning their birthdays. Have you ever seen any kid not doing well playing life?
The whole point here is to go through to grow history-mature, ―sea worthy‖ of the
countless ponds, one after another, scorching sunshine and dark rain, living and dying, come
what may, always ready to dragon-fly one time in high honor, snake-slither another time in
low unjust pain, useful in making it through and then retire without complaining, with calm
composure as one cries quietly over spilled milk, and again retire as a good seasoned sailor
through thick and thin, on highways of the ocean or in hidden dark coves.
Such is to live in, and live through, countless ponds alive, losing ways and finding them
again, in zillions of sand-kaleidoscopes in them, gone-on, passed-on, alive through death, joy
in pain. Am I crazy mumbling all this? Of course I am crazy, sane in insane ponds alive, no-
do and nothing not-done, nothing said, no word, no silence, bouncy in many slashes of
wounds, surviving them all in silence without silence.
Realizing to be in various ponds alive, I am now composed adapt to shifts of waves and
winds to adapt them. I am a spinning top twirling calm, an agile dragonfly over ponds after
ponds alive, in twilight dawn of thickets in primeval ponds rancid and raucous, ever
beginning life through deaths as if nothing were the matter as Andrew. I am pain-proofed,
joy-immune, and insane in life-sanity. Such is the whole point of pointing at various ponds
alive so countless. Such is the cash value of this section delightfully insane, on stunning
ponds alive so countless everywhere nowhere.
Here I am, almost done, with something of interest to say remaining to say. I have been
splashing in the ponds where my thoughts collect, when my thoughts are things‘ ponds. There
is something of the pond to every person whose metaphor spews a new reality from the
original that turns unreal, as every life grows. Growing is life; no growing, no life. Growth is
metaphor that produces ponds after ponds proliferating in rancid air breathing death to
breathe life unimaginable.
Ponds are life in thoughts in metaphor growing more ponds, full of sound and fury,
signifying without signifying; such busy calm! Description is an element, air and water, frogs
in twilight pond, vanishing in daylight of ecological twilight. Lakes are crow-hooting frog-
splashing, lapping waves. Here I let myself go, and I turn into the ponds so countless so alive
for no rhyme, no reason.
Such poetry of the ponds responds to our daily necessity of getting the world right.
180
―Poetry is the gaiety (joy) of language‖ (Stevens ) in the ponds of life in death, death in life.

180 Wallace Stevens‘s ―Adagio‖ in Opus Posthumous, quoted in Modern Poetics, ed. James Scully, NY: McGraw-
Hill, 1965, p. 150.
414 Kuang-ming Wu

Language of ponds that includes death is the music of joy over death. I feel better bathing in
the ponds of life my poetry creates.
I splash in the twilight of imagination beyond reality, all too real beyond actuality
growing, turning ponds more numerous, moment by moment. This-world of ponds is out of
181
this world. Here I ―can never be born enough,‖ in ―embryonic omnipotence‖ (cummings )
of a naughty baby; each today comes, one at a time, as my birthday and my Andrew‘s, in
ponds various alive. ―Where is China?‖ Hasn‘t it been here all this while as such story-ponds?

F. “CHINESE BODY THINKING”: WORLD INTERCULTURE OF DR.

KUANG-MING WU BY GONGSUN CHOU182
Dr. Kuang-ming Wu issues a lone battle cry for China-independence in global
interdependence. Dr. Wu is a solitary prophetic voice of life-thinking in the wilderness of
stone-thinking, i.e., thinking all beings in an identical stone-perspective, a sterile scholarship
called scientific thinking so precise in meticulous analysis.
In contrast, Dr. Wu‘s ―life-thinking‖ thinks as life itself thinks as story-thinking
ubiquitously human. Life-thinking as story-thinking thinks both both-and and either-or;
logical thinking thinks either-or alone. Life-thinking is of course body-thinking in story-
thinking. China thinks life-thinking in body-thinking as story-thinking.
Dr. Wu, trained at Yale in French existentialism and German phenomenology, is one of
the world‘s very few cultural hermeneutists in systematic depth. He pursues world
interculture radical and revolutionary, lucid, vast, and bottomlessly complex. Noteworthy it is
that Wu does not play generalities with a ―world philosophy‖ but has as its focus, ―China-
West interculture,‖ shown clearly in the subtitle to his Brill trilogy, in the title of Professor
Jay Goulding‘s edited volume dedicated to him, and in all his volumes since 1982 and still
pouring out into academia today and tomorrow.
Wu‘s writing pulses life; his pen moves up and down as he breathes in and out. He lives
his writing as his writing ex-presses his heartbeat. Existence being inter-existence, writers
naturally want readers; human self being self-reflective, writing to ―my satisfaction‖ satisfies
me without reader, for I am my other, and ―I write to myself‖ as Thoreau did. So, Thoreau
says that ―those authors are successful who . . . make their own taste and judgment their
183
audience. . . . It is enough if I please myself with writing; I am then sure of an audience.‖

181 These are e e cummings‘ phrases in Poems 1923-1954, quoted in Modern Poetics, op. cit., pp. 121, 122.
182 With gratitude, this essay is edited-expanded, to conveniently sum up China as story-thinking as body thinking.
This section follows Professor Gongsun‘s pinyin system; please refer to pinyin-Wades-Giles conversion chart
in Kuang-ming Wu, Butterfly as Companion, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990, p. 512, and
Victor Mair, ed., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, NY: Columbia University Press,
1994, pp. 1321-1325. Wu agrees with Raymond Dawson saying, ―I have retained the more familiar Wade-
Giles system, which has been used for most English-language books on China, in preference to the new pinyin
system introduced by the Chinese, which gives even less idea how the words are actually pronounced.‖
(Confucius, Oxford University Press, 1981, p. viii)
183 See Wu, ―World Interculturalism: China Written in English,‖ Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, June 2005,
pp. 1-42. I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, ed. Jeffrey S. Cramer, Yale
University Press, 2007, p. 33.
 Conclusion 415

184
Wu thus keeps on writing, thinking of no reader or publisher, to suddenly get a
publisher. Only recently, his two massive volumes (500pp, 450pp) are scheduled to publish in
2010 from Nova Science Publishers, and at least two more volumes, equally substantial, are
awaiting their appearances. This fact constitutes despair to us readers, however, as we meet
Wu‘s ―China-West interculture‖ quite protein, profuse, and global.
Wu‘s themes under China-West interculture range from two Zhuangzi volumes (one is a
world bestseller, published in 1990, still in print), through a dialogue volume with Merleau-
Ponty, a volume on world togetherness, one on metaphoring as its methodology, one on
Chinese wisdom, one on story-thinking, one on nonsense, to reach one on the Beyond, all
with 469-672 printed pages each volume.
Wu‘s volumes and articles of ten thousand or so pages touch China, the West, Japan,
violence, milieu, music, the child, the Beyond (religion), etc.; his pages and themes cover
oceans of themes worldwide, and are themselves a vast ocean of pages with an awesome
variety of tight compelling arguments and fresh disarming descriptions. In view of such a
challenge to the reader, the present writer presumes to propose one methodological thread,
among many others, going through his vast numbers of themes to elucidate his complex ideas
so bewildering.
This thread is ―Chinese body thinking.‖ His volume with that title won the highest
185
academic award in Taiwan, 傑出獎, in 1996, demonstrating the recognition of that volume
as authentically Chinese, but in my opinion all Wu‘s volumes both before and after that
volume are devoted to elucidating Chinese body thinking and spreading it interculturally
worldwide, globally enriching.
The reason is simple. Wu writes breathing his lung, pulsing his heart. His writing pulses
in life-rhythm of life-logic. He writes as his body thinks, to tell of ―Chinese Body Thinking.‖
Of course, we see volumes on ―body thinking.‖ Taiwan had one out in 1996, The Confucian
View of the Body (not body thinking); Zhang published Traditional Chinese Philosophy as the
186
Philosophy of the Body in China in 2008. Still, none is deep, vast, persistent, complex,
heartfelt, and intercultural, as Wu‘s life-project of ―Chinese body thinking,‖ an alternative
thinking-mode to the Western.
Our body thinks, and body thinking is things dancing all over Heaven and Earth, thanks
to China‘s ideograph-characters. A thing makes its presence-impact in explosion alive. The
187
impact would have been raw and overwhelming but for the fact that the thing usually
comes steady and sensible, steadying the world to dance with us. Stones and trees, squirrels
and chickadees, all come to us as sense alive, captured in portrayals of Chinese characters.
Things are senses-of-presence to soar to sing together; they appear as tunes of sense dancing
in names sung by characters.

184 He is amazed to learn of two avid readers, Brien Kelley (NYU counselor with PhD from Columbia University)
and Jason Kuo (professor of Chinese paintings in University of Maryland).
185 Kuang-ming Wu, On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1997.
186 楊儒賓著，儒家身體觀，臺北市中研院文哲所，民85.
張再林著，作為身體哲學的中國古代哲學，北京中國社會科學出版社，2008. I omit Japan‘s body-
thinking research by Yuasa Yasuo 湯淺泰雄 who tends to sum up Jung more than interpreting him, and going
beyond him.
187 Things raw and stark (e.g., chestnut tree) make us nauseous, said Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, NY: New
Directions, 1964.
416 Kuang-ming Wu

Things thus dance together, in Nature naturing. Dance co-moves in tune in rhythm, in
rhyme with life pulse; with other things we co-dance and co-swirl to co-thrive, breath to
breath, step to step and in step, season after season. Dance here is joy-tapping beauty of
ecological concord, whose beats are kept in pan-tune by the sounds and sights of sense-
ideograms, Chinese characters. It is Chinese body-thinking dancing alive personal,
interpersonal, and cosmic.
We cannot help but gaze at this fascinating theme of Wu‘s, in the following pages. After
describing what ―Chinese body thinking‖ is, we looking into it as concrete thinking, as story
thinking, as logically and contingently ―necessary,‖ and as world intercultural and world-
indispensable. We presume to claim this thread as Wu‘s thread of Chinese body thinking.

What “Chinese Body Thinking” is

To begin, we must explicate what Wu means by ―body thinking‖ and ―body,‖ both quite
distinctive of China. ―Bodily thinking tells of an independent thinking with bodily qualities,
while ―body thinking‖ is human body itself engaged in thinking as body‘s inherent nature,
i.e., the person; here thinking manifests the body that itself thinks. Body thinking is not bodily
thinking as lips-talking are not lipstick of bodily quality decorating lip-thinking. Body
thinking concretely bites into actuality, quite beyond what logical thinking is capable of.
The ―logic‖ proudly developed in the West188 is fussy; it analyzes and cleanses only what
is analyzable, but things concrete cannot always be so analyzable, and so logic ends up
clearly and distinctly separating itself from the messy concrete world. Besides, logic cuts
necessity from contingency while trying to join them, and joins while cutting them, and of
course no one can join while separating. Logic thus proudly engages in impossibility, to
separate itself from messy actuality.
In contrast, ―Chinese body thinking‖ is thinking body-concrete, and thinks concretely
actuality that is its home. Storytelling is how Chinese body thinks on things concrete, to
makes sense of things concrete. Story thinking uses stories to think, and thinks story-way; it
tells of things as they happen without rhyme or reason, thereby understands the way things
go. Chinese body thinking is thus concrete thinking in story thinking that does justice to the
Way of things; it mirrors the Dao, the Way, of the world that coheres in Dao, where worldly
messiness vanishes.
189
Body thinking is milieu-thinking in this world and of this world. This millieu spreads
from me-in-body viewing things to melt into things viewing things. As my body does not
190
lie, things as they are do not lie, and so my body-milieu-thinking is ever true to this world,
true in this world. All this while, I am finding things surprising, to realize and wonder how far

188
Wu cannot help but remember proudly jubilant authors such as follows. Jacob Burckhardt, History of Greek
Culture (1958), NY: Dover, 2002. Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature
(1953), NY: Dover, 1982. Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way (1930), Chicago: Time Inc., 1963. C. M. Bowra, The
Greek Experience, Cleveland: The World Publishing, 1957. The list goes on.
189 See Wu‘s ―The I-Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (I: pp. 1-59, December 207), (II: pp. 1-68,
June 2008), Journal of World Religions. Wu‘s ―milieu-thinking‖ enables I-Thou thinking and I-It thinking as
part and parcel of Chinese body thinking.
190 Cf. John Diamond, M.D., Your Body Doesn‟t Lie, NY: Warner Books, 1979.
 Conclusion 417

out of this world this world is. Thus I as my body am born with Heaven and Earth, and I am
one with myriad things, thanks to my body-thinking as milieu-thinking.
All this means that logic is ingrained in bodily story thinking, for the purpose of logic is
to make sense, and so logic pulses and breathes concrete story body-thinking that makes
concrete sense; story thinking is logical, and Dao of the concrete is thoroughly logical beyond
fussy logic, even beyond fuzzy logic. Telling stories, we understand logic, and undergoing
logic, concrete storytelling reveals itself as logical as it is body thinking.
Even the ―body‖ in Chinese body thinking must be carefully elucidated. Differing from
191
Merleau-Ponty‘s ―flesh,‖ Chinese body thinking is the full integral body in its holistic act
of the person sensing the senses of things concrete. ―Body‖ here is not physiological but the
totality of a person that originates physiological bodies; such body is the integral and
embodied self thinking without ceasing.
Gender vs. sex exemplifies ―body‖ actual beyond empirical. Sex is physiological, while
192
gender is behavior-patterned comportment. They differ yet are intimately inter-involved,
and both arise out of originative sexuality that composes the person, as humanity. The same
holds for body physiological vs. body actual, both included in China‘s ―body‖ holistic.
―Body‖ is used here to signify holistic personhood because, influenced by Platonic
abstraction, the notion of ―person‖ tends to drop its inherent composition of the ―body.‖ The
whole matter, captured in China as Yin-Yang interaction in the Ultimate One, is logical
beyond logic, not because it is mysterious but it is starkly concrete beyond logicizing.
This natural personal ―body‖ thinks, entirely distinct from disembodied ratiocination that
dominates the appetitive and governs the voluntary parts of the self, whatever the ―self‖
means here; this is Plato‘s favorite imagery in Phaedrus and the Republic. In contrast, the
―originative body‖ naturally thinks as Chinese body thinking with three inherent aspects; it is
concrete thinking, in story thinking, toward thinking in the world interculturing.
First, being itself a body-act, Chinese thinking is thinking concrete in daily nitty-gritty of
pain and joy. Secondly, such concrete body thinking is coherent thinking rolled out in time
and space, making sense as stories to compose history. Finally, body thinking as concrete
story thinking crisscrosses to compose world interculture, not a ―world philosophy‖ as a pie
in a Platonic sky above worldly ideas, but thinking embodied intercultural in this concrete
world. Now, six sections below unpack these three aspects, plus some additional themes of
interest such as relativism, eternity, death, and necessity.

One: Chinese Body Thinking as Concrete Thinking193

The body does not lie, so body thinking is true and accurate; body is natural, so body

191 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (1968) and The Prose of the World (1973), both
published by Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Wu dialogues with him in Wu‘s On Chinese Body
Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1997.
192 Merleau-Ponty confuses the sex-gender distinction (without separation) as he explains ―the body in its sexual
being‖ in M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962, pp.
154-173.
193 This portion barely summarizes Wu‘s Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010.
418 Kuang-ming Wu

thinking is concrete thinking. ―Concrete thinking‖ is a scandal in the Western context of

logical analysis, though, where ―thinking‖ is by definition about the concrete, which then is
not thinking, and so ―concrete thinking‖ is ―not-thinking thinking.‖ a contradiction.
In contrast, ―concrete thinking‖ is the soul of Chinese body thinking. Since body concrete
thinks, body thinking is concrete thinking as body‘s core and pivot. The modus operandi of
concrete thinking goes from three concrete notions, to be considered soon, whose modus
vivendi to persuade is concrete thinking ―arguing.‖ China‘s notions are notables in actuality,
194
not Western concepts as forceps pinching abstract meanings out of things. Concepts argue,
while notions move with life, as life, to persuade people, and people say notions ―argue.‖
Of course, persuasion includes argument, and we can even play with argument to
persuade, yet playing with argument does not argue but persuade, as thinking, to move
people. Thinking moves freely as the body does to move people‘s minds and attitudes, but
195
instead of going into Wu‘s fascinating panorama of playing with argument in life, we only
note that the body alone ―plays‖; ―mind‖ plays as part of the body. This is why China the
home of body thinking has no analytical tradition of argument, but free play of argument to
persuade irresistibly.
To cleanse and stem the corruption of persuasion into demagoguery, we only need to
return to the body as the base of thinking. As the body does not lie, so body-persuasion does
not cheat. Such is the rationale of righting names 正名 of lived persuasion. This is the home
of authenticity-expressed 信. loyalty to oneself 忠, and being like-minded with others 恕;
they are all ―moral‖ notions. Morality and logic are supported and executed by body thinking
that ―argues‖ truly.
Thinking argues, and so concrete thinking ―argues‖ concretely, proceeding in two tiers,
196
(a) concrete notions in three ways, and (b) threefold concrete argumentation. Concrete
thinking begins at demonstratives, affirmatives, and negatives; and concrete argumentation is
built on such Chinese three ways of concrete notions, that is, the compact corresponds with
the concrete, the metaphorical with the affirmative, and the ironic with the negative.
The base of all these is the demonstratives whose meanings depend on specific situations,
and quite naturally derive from Chinese body thinking. Demonstratives are a Western
197
analytical headache, however; demonstratives such as ―here,‖ ―now,‖ ―this,‖ ―I,‖ etc., are
logically required to stay identical in meaning throughout all their uses, yet these words differ
in meaning as their different users differ. Such meaning-variation in situational sensitivity is a
logical scandal.
In contrast, China realizes that these words and all words derive from ―I‖ who use them,
and as ―I‖ differ, their meanings naturally differ. The well-known poetic conundrum, ―White
horse, no horse,‖ just innocently points to this natural shift of sense in names in eight

194 See Wu, On Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., p. 315, and his On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural
Hermeneutic, 1998, pp. 350-352, both from Leiden: Brill.
195 See ibid., pp. 150-215.
196 This is the present writer‘s compact description of Wu‘s On Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., pp. 22-79, and
Togetherness, op. cit., pp. 324-334. Regrettably, Wu‘s rich details of elucidation had to be bypassed to bring
out his solid supple lines of depiction of Chinese body thinking.
197 E.g., Palle Yourgrau, ed., Demonstratives, Oxford University Press, 1990, carries essays that greatly flex
logical muscles; they all proudly display their tremendous analytical calisthenics to connect shifting actuality
to staid logical universality, as if such connection were rare, exotic, and exceptional.
 Conclusion 419

198
ways. But this realization is not confined to Gongsun Long; shifting meanings alive in all
names and words fill the literature of China, making it alive as living routines. Names-can-
―name‖ staid are not actual names,199 for names shift in sense as their use-situations shift. All
words in China are demonstratives based on the arch-demonstrative, ―I.‖
This is not peculiar to China. All words are situation-sensitive demonstratives, for
everything moves, and motion is situation-dependent, as seen by where and how I am. The
scene seen moving is correct as seen from my car moving; geocentric view of the sun moving
is correct viewed from the heliocentrically viewed earth moving. Thus nothing moves without
200
me ; all are moving as seen by where and how I am, who am myself a situation-sensitive
demonstrative. All words are demonstratives because of I-demonstrative. China is just
particularly sensitive-truthful to the truth of actual expressive situations.
The only requirement here is, China says, that the name—word—used and its actuality
201
referred to, must inter-conform. As one professes such and such, one must practice such
and such; it ―corrects names 正名‖ to achieve the name-actuality conformity, after which
Confucianism (in sociopolitical praxis) and Name-logicians (in uses of words) strive. Now,
let us see how China‘s body-demonstratives can be understood in the light of the West.
In the West, Descartes says all thinking derives from the I-think; George Berkeley says,
to be is to be perceived; John Austin says, to say is to do. Thus, China would say that the I-
think perceives to do the sensing of things, and this I-thinking-act is a natural extension of the
I‘s body-thinking. Thinking extends my body (Descartes) to do (Austin) the perceiving to let
things be (Berkeley) as the situation concretely shifts (demonstratives), for all thinking is my
202
body-thinking in situations concrete.
Let us repeat. All demonstratives come from I-as-demonstrative. I-demonstrative has a
203
fascinating drama as in this story. Chuang Tzu said (2/94-96), ―Last night, Chuang Chou
dreamed to be a butterfly; quite happily he was a butterfly, not knowing Chou. Suddenly he
awoke, and then, surely, he was a man. Now he did not know. Was he a man dreamed to be a
butterfly? Or is he a butterfly dreaming to be a man? Chou and butterfly must have
difference有分; this is called things changing 物化.‖ Now, ―butterfly‖ symbolizes fluttering
between life and death.
Here life and death are revealed as quite peculiar. They are not simple demise and living
of the self, but the self itself self-differing 有分 to thing-change 物化. This complex
dynamics is unobtrusively exhibited—demonstrated—in the name ―Chuang Chou 莊周‖ of
the story told by Chuang Tzu 莊子 whose name is ―Chuang Chou.‖
―Chuang Chou‖ is the name of Chuang Tzu. Name 名 is what is called 謂 about an
identity to conform to actuality 實. The problem is that the very identity differs 有分 in itself

198 Gongsun Long‘s eight explanations of ―white horse, no horse‖ confirm this situation-sensitive demonstrative
character of names and words. See 公孫龍子 (臺北市三民書局, 2004, pp. 27-41). Cf. Wu‘s Chinese Wisdom
Alive, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010, pp. 172, 217-36, 376, et passim.
199
Lao Tzu (1) is quoted and explained here, 「名可名非常名; name can name, not Name Always。」.
200 This is perhaps the origin of Buddhist ―things not moving 物不遷論.‖
201 Hsün Tzu said, ―As we name things, so we see things‖ (荀子，正名篇). Things appear, to exist, as we name
them. It is expanded to humanistic cosmology of the family of heaven, earth, and humanity, as stressed in
Neo-Confucianism..
202 Such West-China contrast persists through the rest of concrete notions and concrete argumentation.
203 This is an elaboration of the formal point raised in the long Note 10 on p. 414 of Wu, The Butterfly as
Companion, op. cit. Cf. its pp. 461 (index on ―Chuang Chou‖) and 493 (index on ―butterfly‖).
420 Kuang-ming Wu

as dreaming and awakening differ, and interchange to mutually change between the self and
the thing (butterfly) 物化. What is more, it is to self-differ that is called thing-change. For the
self, to differ-in-itself is to change with the thing.
This is why when Chuang Tzu tells his dream-story, he did not say ―I dreamed‖ but uses
his name to say, ―Chuang Chou dreamed.‖ The storyteller differs dynamically from the story-
hero who is storyteller himself. Such dynamism is symbolized by the name of the dreamed
thing, ―butterfly‖ that flutters between life and death. Life-of-man is death-of-butterfly and
butterfly-life is man-death; as dream differs from awakening yet involves awakening, so
much so that we are awakened toward dreaming to tell and hear the story of dreaming to
awaken, awakening to dream, living to death that comes alive in a living-dream.
Thus when I-demonstrative differs in meaning as the I-users change, the I-users can be
the same singular ―I‖ who self-differs to thing-change, inter-changing with thing(s). ―I‖ is
204
many in one and one as many as I-demonstrative. The self is another who is the self, a
plurality single, a singular plurality, all packed in one simple word, ―I.‖
Chuang Tzu thus tells the story of himself with his name ―Chou‖ dreaming to be awake,
awakening toward dreaming, each time differing in self-identity, a man, a butterfly, mutually
inter-changing. Fabulous! Fascinating! Only story-thinking—storytelling, story-hearing—can
handle such a dizzying dazzling dynamics of a simple identity-name, ―I.‖ We have just told a
new story of Chuang Tzu‘s identity-story of his butterfly-dream. Now, three implications of I-
demonstrative follow.
First, we take identity as authenticity and cherish authenticity. We do not realize that
―authenticity‖ shifts internally (self-differs) and externally (thing-changes), breathing out of
itself as it breathes in things. Authenticity correlates and interrelates with thing-milieu in
which the self moves and lives. The self is the I-demonstrative that shifts as it affirms itself
authentically in its shifting thing-milieu.
Secondly, the affirmative comes by extending body-demonstrative. In contrast to the
West‘s indifferent affirmative proposition, in China, the I af-firms ―this‖ as this, to set this up
as not that. China‘s affirmation is how the self stands firm and what the self stands on to firm
thing up. Such is Chinese affirmative, a verb-noun of the self in acts of affirming things. A
story below explains this point.
A story has it that Kagawa Toyohiko 賀川豊彥 was a weakly young man good at writing.
He was writing for a newspaper company when a bully knocked on the door and wanted to
―borrow‖ money. He said he would give it to him tomorrow when he got ―money from a
newspaper company‖ to which he was writing. The bully whammed him and left.
Next evening, the bully heard a knock on his door; he opened it. The tiny Kagawa was
there, with one hand holding a wet towel over the bloated cheek whammed by the bully, with
another hand holding out a bag of money to the bully, saying, ―Here is the money I
promised.‖ Overwhelmed, the bully vowed to be his friend to ―protect‖ him. Kagawa af-
firmed his word and his identity; his affirmation spread to the bully to firm up friendship.
Authenticity of such trustworthiness 信 consists in a person staking the personhood 人
with asserted words 言; Confucius would not know what to do with the person who behaves
otherwise (2/22). The twofold thread through what Confucius affirms is being loyally true to

204 Thus this self-dynamics in China is more complex than Paul Ricoeur would have imagined in his Oneself as
Another, University of Chicago Press, 1990.
 Conclusion 421

the self 忠 and like-mindedly true to others 恕 (4/15). ―Being true‖ firms up the whole person
as affirmatives. I-demonstrative naturally self-affirms to other-affirm.
Finally, in contrast to the West‘s logical negation, China‘s negative is an affirmative
naturally extended, to serve as the ―not not-A‖ to clinch the affirmative ―A is A.‖ The
negative is the nodding admission, in self-emptied accommodation, to room an ―A as A,‖ as
hollows in bamboo strengthen the bamboo sinuous and unbreakable.
Confucius packs three sighs that begin his Analects with strong negatives, ―not rather
pleasant?‖ and ―not known, not vexed.‖ China loves ―no do, wuwei 無為,‖ that does ―no not-
does 無不為.‖ Tommy shouts, ―I don‘ wanna sleep!‖ Mom knows, saying, ―OK, don‘t sleep.
Just sit here beside your pillow; I‘ll read you a story, OK?‖ Tommy nods. ―Once upon a time
. . .‖ and he hits the pillow. Mom no-does (not pushing Tommy, not letting him go), and
205
nothing is not done; he fulfills sleep-need, and Mom satisfies her love of him. Zhuangzi
wants us to babysit the tyrant as Mom does, in wuwei-way.
Now, I-demonstrative developing I-affirmative into I-negative would vigorously move on
in three modes, compact, metaphoric, and ironic, the three moves that continue the three
notional activities to persuade people; such persuading activities are usually dubbed
―arguing.‖ Demonstratives in affirming negatives go on to actively argue.
Metaphor affirms ―that‖ with ―this,‖ with familiar this affirmed by I-demonstrative to
point at that unfamiliar novel, to posit and affirm that as part of our familiar repertoire of my
known this. China‘s metaphor is an existential affirmation of my self in my body-activity; it
206
is existentially more involved than Polanyi‘s mere cognitive ―tacit dimension.‖
The West since Aristotle takes metaphor as a dispensable adjunct to decorate straight
207
argument, while in China metaphor is the soul of concrete expression. Even the very
―logic‖ in China has metaphor as its modus operandi. It is this concrete-metaphoring that
208
makes name-logician Hui Shi powerfully persuasive. A guest proposed to King Liang
梁王 to forbid Hui Shi 惠施 to metaphor. When the King urged him to talk straight 直言, he
replied,

―Suppose someone ignorant of what spring-bow is. If I said ‗Spring-bow is spring-bow,‘

would he understand what it is?‖ The king said, ―No.‖ He then said, ―Would ‗it‘s shaped as a
bow, strung with bamboo‘ let him know?‖ ―Yes, it can let him know.‖ ―To persuade is of
course to explain the unknown with the known to let people know. If your majesty stops it,
then it cannot be done.‖ The king said, ―Fine.‖

Concrete logicizing must thus metaphor from a concrete case to another concrete case.
Moreover, their concrete demonstrations are for practical concerns, to ―right names
209
正名實‖ —to conform conceptualization and argumentation to actuality, so as to straighten

205 See Zhuangzi‘s Chapter Four, ―World among People.‖

206 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (1958) and The Study of Man (1959), University of Chicago Press.
207 See Wu‘s massive On Metaphoring: a Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 2001.
208 See 劉向, 說苑, 卷十一善說 (臺北三民書局, 民85, p. 381). See also Wu‘s Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova
Science Publishers, 2010, p. 217.
209 These words are in 跡府篇 to begin 公孫龍子, pp. 2, 4 in the version of 臺北三民書局, 2004. Cf. The
Analects 12/11, 13/3. Other Name-Scholars asserted likewise, such as 鄧析子 (民86, p. 7) and 尹文子 (民85,
p. 2, both published by 臺北三民書局).
422 Kuang-ming Wu

the world now messed up. Concrete demonstrations metaphoric are always applied to
practical affairs such as lawsuits and ―international politics.‖
Concrete demonstration is affirmations that metaphorically stretch to that from this, and
then compact themselves into simple elegance, with a connotative hierarchy of situational
implications. This is what makes Chinese lyrical beauty of all sentences. In the West,
argument aims to cover all aspects, cut all exceptions, and reply to all objections. Controversy
naturally originates in endless quibbles.
In contrast, Chinese pictograms (characters) dot some facts, as if asides, and omit all
210
others. Confucius‘ Analects collect these dots, as all historical documents do. Just read this
amazing story in the Tso Chuan 左傳,211 China‘s oldest narrative history:

Grand Historian wrote, ―Ts‘ui Chu assassinated his ruler 崔杼弒其君.‖ Ts‘ui killed him.
His younger-brother continued and wrote so, and the dead were two. His younger-brother
wrote (so) again. (Ts‘ui) then let it (stand as written). South Historian, having heard those
historians were dead, was on his way (there) with all his tablets, when (he) heard (it) was-
already written, and went back.

The story did not even mention the names of the three brave Grand Historians! Such
parsimony is so powerful that its aftershocks have been reverberating through all ages. We
see two realizations, among many others, of later generations.
One, we see how the three Grand Historians firmed up their truthful record with their
very lives—they affirmed existential affirmatives; their truthful history upheld with their
lives. Two, above all, we see how powerfully such reportage was made via its fewest possible
212
words. Wu says this is China‘s ―dot-pragmatics.‖ ―Few words‖ draw people; the less said,
the more said. Compactness is power in silence; compactness connotes richly to say loudly in
silence, through the readers who caught the compact punch.
All Chinese classics are compact, dotting silence to turn incorruptible for ever. This is
China‘s eternity that dwells in the felt situation, and becomes the situation of all time. Time is
213
an abode of eternity. In any case, metaphors so compact make stories, to make history
continuous and incorruptible that makes China.
Finally, negatives that confirm affirmatives make irony. Chinese sentences go ironic by
saying A to say not-B, as a complicated mode of expressing Chinese negatives. Mencius pulls
off a poignant irony in ―help grow‖ (2A2), two affirmatives composing his negative warning,
i.e., we should never interfere with growth. Irony is metaphor in a negative form, a ―not‖ hid
in metaphor to pique the hearer‘s curiosity into close attention, to realize ―never ‗help grow‘‖!
Do-good-ism is a road to hell. Metaphor tells of ―as this, so that‖; irony-story is ―as this, so
not-that,‖ with a wink omitting ―not that.‖
Such irony is all over China in likely and unlikely places, sometimes so subtly hidden
unnoticeable. Irony can be said to sum up and climax all modes of expression of body
214
thinking. No wonder, Wu devotes the most pages to irony, almost reveling in it, and irony

210 Cf. Wu‘s Chinese Body Thinking, p. 55.

211
See 左傳，襄公二十五年，臺北市三民書局, 2002, p.1097. This is Wu‘s translation.
212 See Wu, On Metaphoring, op. cit., p. 664, index on ―dot-pragmatics.‖
213 Ibid., pp. 192-194.
214 Ibid., pp. 60-79.
 Conclusion 423

seems to flow over these pages. Here we just cite Wu‘s five examples (with their stories), all
ordinary and quite unsuspected: (1) finger pointing, (2) self-cultivation, (3) hiding to appear,
and (4) Zhuangzi‘s ―supreme swindle.‖
One, finger pointing: The finger pointing beyond itself typifies irony. Finger-pointing
aims at calling attention to itself only to point away from itself. Finger-pointing fulfills itself
by negating itself. We need the finger to direct our gaze at the moon, and our gaze forgets the
finger. This is Zen‘s favorite simile but we wonder if Zen people fully realize the ironic
character of finger-pointing, for Zen noisily point at itself pointing. In contrast, all Chinese
writings are silently constantly aware of their self-negating function quite indispensable and
positive, i.e., being ironic.
Two, self-cultivation: I caution in-solitude 慎獨 to right my soul 正心, to cultivate myself
修身. I-cautioner cautions over I-cautioned, I-cultivator cultivates I-cultivated, and yet all this
while I am ―one‖ and the same myself, no caution, no cautioned. Such Confucian self-
reflection is an existential irony, self-subject dealing with self-object into self-unity (self-
affirming) that is after all oneself to begin with, in no need of cautious-affirmation at all.
I need such exercise in futility because of my self-split of me from myself that I am, to
unify into ―me in one body.‖ What an ironic contortion it is of the body-movement of the self!
The ―I‖ is a verb of self-movement, ironically straining to ―cultivate‖ what is already there. I
am an irony. This is a Chinese sort of irony of Socratic self-knowledge, which no one in the
West takes as irony.
Now, self-reflection reflects helping others. ―Mercy is not for the other,‖ says Japan. He
that gives lends; one good turn deserves another. Other-help mirrors self-help. Three Cups of
215
Tea describes how being helped originated helping others. This riveting story turns into
New York Time‘s bestseller, dramatically rehearsing our ubiquitous Golden Rule, to do to
others as you would wish to be done by.
This reciprocity-sentiment expresses Mencius‘ ―heartfelt pain in sensitivity to other‘s
216
pain 不忍人之心‖ and Jesus‘ visceral pain of mercy, spaggchnizomai. Jesus puts the
Golden Rule in positive love (Matthew 7:12), as Confucius did negatively (12/2, 15/24), ―Do
not to others what one does not wish,‖ i.e., against doing violence to others. Mencius
elaborates on it, saying (4A8), ―Cutting oneself invites others to cut oneself.‖
If self-love is love of others, self-violation invites self-violation by others, and then other-
violation turns violence all around, killing victor with victim. Violence boomerangs, Wu
217
says. Thus, as one‘s self is an irony, so my other is an irony. If existence is inter-existence,
all existents are ironic. Irony is inherent throughout Heaven and Earth.
Does this ironic unity originate honest learning from any three walking together (7.22),
joining my caution to choose friends not unworthy of me (1/8)? Does this irony join
instruction without discrimination (15/39) with refusing to deal with those unable to return
three when confronted with teacher proposing one (7/8)? Here Confucius‘ honesty joins his
prudential inconsistencies; the joining makes an irony.
Three, hiding to appear: Have we ever noticed someone absenting oneself from friends to
call attention to one‘s presence among them? Absence there is quite conspicuous. Besides,

215 Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea, NY: Penguin Books, 2006.
216 Mencius 1A7, 2A6. The term, ―pain in viscera,‖ is reserved for Jesus alone in the first three Gospels.
217 Wu, §Violence as Weakness—In China and Beyond, in Story-Thinking here, and ―Violence as Weakness—In
China and Beyond,‖ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Winter 2003, pp. 7-28.
424 Kuang-ming Wu

stark nakedness erases all personal distinctions. Only by hiding one‘s physiological body in
attire specifically chosen by oneself, as designed by fashionable designers, can one show
oneself as oneself. Thus hiding oneself shows oneself. Hiding something in the world secures
it never to lose. The world is made of such irony of hiding to appear!
Four, Zhuangzi‘s ―supreme swindle‖: Daoist Zhuangzi specifically chooses and taunts
what sensible people and logicians usually avoid, such as platitudes, non sequiturs, and self-
contradictions wholly senseless. Such display piques curiosity, provoking people to ponder on
the reasonableness of life beyond our tired common sense. He (2/84) calls it the strategies of
218
―supreme swindle 弔詭,‖ reveling in all that are avoided by ―decent folks.‖ In fact, all
Daoist writings enjoy ironically swindling people‘s reason.
Mind you. These four stories all have two crucial features that make up an even further
irony. One, these stories are all quite daily, common, and ordinary, and yet, staying ordinary
as they are, they are quite surprising. These stories show us how stunningly unusual the usual
routines of life are. All we need is just to open our eyes wide and watch and discern; there is
no need to go out of this world, whatever that means, to see this world as out of this world.
The world is an ironic wonder.
Now, two, the ultimate of all such irony is irony without irony. All things having been
said and expressed, my body thinks to return to my body saying beyond saying; here is no
saying, no silence. Body-silence says softly with breeze, and nothing opposes my heart-of-
being 心. Irony thus tells most for silence to say most, for silence culminates irony. We omit
219
Wu‘s seven fascinating story-ways to tell silence. We only stress that silence is the self
nodding at the self, my body-demonstrative affirming ―I am I‖ silently.
220
All this is shi 適, fit and comfort forgotten. Zhuangzi punches out the point: ―Feet
forgotten is the fit of sandals; waist forgotten is the fit of a belt; knowledge forgotten of Yes
and No is the fit of the heart; ‗in‘ not changed, ‗out‘ not followed, is the fit of events met; to
begin at fit and(-until) not without fit, is the fit of forgotten fit.‖
Life‘s fitting comfort lies in comfort forgetting the comfort, even forgetting myself
enjoying myself, as natural as my body. Love lives on; romance burns. The world I see is the
world things view; all are one in myriads, being with one another without being with one
another. This is irony (things and words inter-oppose to inter-express) beyond being ironic
(things inter-gaze to inter-unify), unity beyond unity, opposed beyond opposition, as my body
221
silent, in/as this lifeworld as countless ponds various, alive. But variety of the ponds has
more, even in the I.
I-demonstrative is already an irony, where it is expanded from ―same word, different
senses‖ to ―assumed, inexpressible.‖ On one hand, the I is always presupposed in all my acts
222
and sayings. On the other hand, the I is almost always understood, not asserted. ―I‘m
normal‖ is assumed in all my expressions, oral or behavioral, yet displaying the proposition,

218 See Wu‘s ―弔詭怡生：一比較哲學試釋‖ in 吳銳編，楊向奎先生百年誕辰記念文集 (吉林大學出版社,

2009), pp. 25-34.
219 See VIII: Selflessness, Silence, and § Silence as Music at its end, above.
220 Chuang Tzu 19/62-64. The whole punch here is magnificent crescendos into de-crescendos!
221 This point is explicated in Wu‘s ―Ponds Various Alive (41 pages),‖ NY: Nova Science Publishers, forthcoming,
and is refurbished above.
222 That is, except in taking an oath.
 Conclusion 425

―I‘m normal,‖ displays my abnormality. Spontaneity expresses I am as I am, yet to display it

self-aware displays uneasiness, no more spontaneous.
―It is raining, and I doubt it‖ is situationally odd because its latter part violates the hidden
223
assumption, ―I believe it is raining‖ (Nowell-Smith ). Still, touting ―It is raining, and I
believe so (or I say so)‖ is unusual if not also odd, reminiscent of touting ―I‘m normal.‖ The
assumption has to be hidden, unsaid.
―Six Classics do not claim ‗classic,‘ Three Histories do not claim ‗history,‘ as people
224
have their ‗self‘ and allow no ‗self‘ to ‗self.‘‖ (Chang ) It is as odd as if ―I‘m not here‖ is
225 226
said by ―I‖ here and my saying so is hushed, not said. Ryle innocently dubbed it—by
way of infinite regress of self-description—as the ―systematically elusive I.‖
Now, here are more ironies involved in Socrates advocating self-examination. He
flagrantly violates the above tacit irony of the I. He meant to improve on people, and his
227
violation is ironically called ―seduction/corruption of youth,‖ deserving of death penalty.
Irony-1 is here. Still, Socrates obeyed—without examination—his Daimon, the Guiding
Genius of his self. Irony-2 is here. And then, even Daimon nodded at his death (Apology 40a-
b), after issuing Delphic Oracle to lead him to advocate self-examination, to violate the tacit
irony of I-demonstrative. Irony-3 is here.
This story of Socrates thus tells of the I-irony as tacit, and its being tacit as itself ironic in
at least three layers, possibly more. I-demonstrative is a tacit irony, an irony in many ironies.
Such bewildering layers of irony in the simple ―I‖! No matter, for all this depicts I-as-irony.
Now, does this depiction itself violate tacit I-irony, as touting ―I‘m normal‖? We must stop
here as Socrates stopped examining his Daimon, to stop sucking into infinite regress in the
elusive I. Such tacit-ness of the tacit irony of ―I‖ must remain tacitly ironic, explained or not.
Let us look around. Here things are as they are, as my body is as it is so natural as my
self, nothing is the matter. As my body does not lie but silently tells me when to eat, when to
sleep, so things with my body silently tell me the truth of loving virtue as loving sex
(Analects 9/18, 15/8), following my desires to fulfill rules (2/4) of all things, as Confucius
says. This is the ultimate of natural ironies of no-irony, an inherent part of all in all in my
body thinking.
In the West, metaphor, compactness, and irony are dispensable rhetorical devices just to
decorate expressive punch, irrelevant to logical progress itwelf. In China, these three modes
grow out of the living body thinking, and so they are the constitutive modes of lived
persuasion, so much so that if we pull any one mode out, the whole body thinking collapses
into nonsense. These modes are those by and on which body thinking lives.
In conclusion, the modus vivendi of concrete thinking is thus organic and tightly
integrated as the body-self is alive, and so the ―concrete argument‖ of body thinking is

223 P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (1954), Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1965, pp. 83ff.
224―六經不言經，三傳不言傳，猶人各有我而不容我其我也。‖章學誠著，文史通義校注，經解上，北京中
華書局, 2005, p.93.
225 Wu, Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., pp. 81-82.
226 Gilbert Ryle, ―The Systematic Elusiveness of ‗I‘,‖ The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson and Co., 1949,
pp. 195-198.
227 Apology 23d ―diaphtheírei‖ is to ―seduce.‖ ―Perhaps there was a kind of justice in the allegation that Socrates,
the master of this method, ‗corrupted the young men,‘ where the word translated ‗corrupt‘ was the same word
which, when used of a girl, meant ‗seduce‘.‖ (R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, Oxford at the
Clarendon Press, 1940, p. 45) In contrast, Confucius (9/11) was not above ―step by step seducing people
toward good 循循然善誘人.‖
426 Kuang-ming Wu

irresistibly cogent. We must never forget that both these tiers of threefold activity, holistic
and vigorous, are the concrete living way of the lived body thinking alive, to compose
Chinese body thinking, entirely distinct from Western logical thinking.
Mind you. Demonstratives, affirmatives, negatives, metaphorics, compacts, and ironies
are the modus vivendi of the whole person flexing, uttering, and groaning, hand-waving, foot-
tapping the felt impact of actuality. Here, sounds and images express the whole persons in all
their respective density of denoting and connoting distinctness. Here are various colors, tones,
rhymes, and rhythms fused into one impact of the music of senses of things. In China, singing
says; how the speaker sings is what is said. To miss singing misses the said in the exultation
and agony of living day by day.
228
Sound and sight unite in each ideogram-audiogram, Chinese character. It is not a
straight photograph of a situation but a story-portrayal throbbing sense. Chinese characters
are mini-stories that gather—remember, logos gathers—into exempla, one after another, to
tell of stories of things happening as outside-events of history and inside-stirrings of fiction
and poetry. China is the only culture today thriving lustily in onomatopoetic ―hieroglyphic‖
much simpler than the Mesopotamian ones, to manage to ex-press the concrete life-sense in
all its jumping colors and rhyming sounds.
Call it argument, call it rhetoric, such intoned expression in China in all its writings is
missed by ―literal interpretation‖ that extracts denotative ―contents,‖ missing the Chinese
body thinking saying and writing itself alive. Literalism makes a false reading. We must take
in the totality of din and boom of the whole person‘s body-expression, body-language, to
understand any writing or saying in China, for they are persons expressing themselves.
This totality of body-expression in body-thinking is story-thinking. The West wants the
stuff, not the wrapping of the story. But stories are told of the turbulent water in the turbulent
the world, and so the medium is the message. If we want the message we must swallow the
medium as well. The wrapping is part and parcel of the stuff, and both are the story that is the
body of Chinese body-thinking alive and turbulent.

Two: Chinese Body Thinking as Story Thinking

Now, have we noticed that the above explanations are all stories? Concrete thinking goes
story-way as story-thinking. Whatever little amount of logical analysis above is absorbed as a
part of story explanation. Stories are told by me in my body, heard by me in my body, and
extend to others heard in their bodies. Body thinking concretely thinks in story-thinking.
Story thinking reveals that nothing is usual in our usual lifeworld, that what is usual is
always unexpected. We must expect all things as unexpected, so much so that even things we
expect to be unexpected could happen anytime as expected. Stories convey this situation, to
make us realize that there is no single ultimate truth staying put anywhere, while so many
partial insights keep emerging here and there. Story-thinking thus has two aspects, how it
goes (relativistic), and what it is (with four-levels).

228 Wu‘s ―Sound, Sight, Sense‖ in History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei: Academia
Sinica, 1991, pp. 125-173; Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010.
 Conclusion 427

Is Story-Thinking a Relativism?229
Someone would naturally say, ―Aha, this is relativism bred in uncertain plurality of
things. Truth is certain, final, and single. Your view does not even show the path to truth; all
this is sheer relativism.‖ ―Relativism‖ here is an abusive term; anything we dislike we
relegate to the wastebasket of ―relativism.‖ All right, then, let us probe what ―relativism‖ can
really mean, and we will be surprised to find that ―relativism‖ is one way to describe story-
thinking so dynamic in lifeworld.
Yes, all this is ―relativism,‖ not as a view set and settled, but as thinking thrust living on
as situations keep shifting. No view is totally right or wholly wrong, and we must carefully
sift through each view for each grain of truth, in whatever sense they happen to show at the
moment.230 All assertions are I-demonstratives, all words and wording are situation-sensitive,
and all senses are sensed apropos at each moment; ―That was that time, this is this time,‖ said
Mencius (2B13), responsibly discerning the situational sense each time. #
―This discord in the pact of things,/ this endless war ‘twixt truth and truth,‖ intoned
231
Boethius as he perished between truths. Chaotic are clashes of ―truths,‖ so jagged and
brutal. Our responses must be bodily and timely, now dragon-soaring, now snake-slithering,
232
ever apt ―here now,‖ never touching the situation‘s dragonish ―reverse scales‖ to ever look
forward to tomorrow, and another tomorrow, which today begins. Today always begins anew
as the weather now keeps changing, forecasting just one tomorrow each today.
Here is a concrete example. Johnny smiling with his favorite bottle is a precious sight to
behold. And then he drives his big car as a helmeted race-car driver. And then he is a fighter-
plane pilot, and then an astronaut in ―Star Trek.‖ He is strong to tease all tots, and then strong
to care for tots, and to feed small pets. Each ―today‖ is perfect itself so concrete, while forever
growing into each ―better tomorrow,‖ each in its own perfect way, forever afresh.
Remember, there can be no concrete caring, no growing into tomorrow, no warm
hospitality, in the body-less eternity of Platonic sky intangible, intractable, nowhere
anywhere. Body thinking alone is a growing thinking, never set eternal, ever elusive and
forever sure of itself, for Johnny always knows what he is doing today and hoping to do
tomorrow. Such is body thinking seemingly elusive but sure, as my body is vulnerable,
tangible, gripping, responsive, and more concrete than things around I touch and cultivate, to
grow together with things season after season.
To understand this protean body thinking, we just tell stories of the times in which we
move and live on, as we just did. Understanding the stories, we now sense the situation, and
nod at our milieu meaningfully, got at heart, hit with hand. We are confident as a seasoned

229 The theme of relativism is so critical that it appears three times at least in this volume, first in connection with
―Rorty,‖ then with ―Various Ponds Alive,‖ and now with ―story-thinking‖ here. Thus this portion is abridged
from ―Various Ponds Alive‖ above, and Wu‘s ―Rorty, Confucius, and Intercultural Relativism,‖ the first
chapter after Introduction in Rorty, Pragmatism, and Confucianism, ed. Yong Huang, Albany: State University
of New York Press, pp. 21-44. See also Wu‘s Story-Thinking: Cultural Meditations, NY: Nova Science
Publishers, 2010, sections ―relativism and storytelling‖ and ―relativism as storytelling.‖
230 See Wu, ―Existential Relativism,‖ Ph.D. thesis, Philosophy Department, Yale University, 1965.
231 Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, V: 13.
232 Dragon-snake responses are in Chuang Tzu 20/1-7. Han Fei caught rulers manifesting ―逆鱗,‖ touched it, and
perished, as Boethius also did. See ―逆鱗‖ in 韓非子，說難，臺北市三民書局，民86, p. 117. His entire
writing is on this mortal ―difficulty 難,‖ actually everywhere. 司馬遷 quoted ―逆鱗‖ in
史記，卷六十三，老子韓非列傳，臺北市三民書局, 2008, 6:2800. Cf. its translation in Arthur Waley,
Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (1939), CA: Stanford University Press, 1982, p. 188.
428 Kuang-ming Wu

fisherman who never dies, for he just smells that way, smiling to ever sense the clouds and
the breeze going this way and that, and steer himself accordingly, confidently.
His ocean is the world, and he is the ocean smelling, smiling, and forever shifting
233
confident. Have you read the story, ―The Old Man and the Sea‖ ? The ―and‖ here is
invisible; the sea and the fisherman grown seasoned old at sea tell us so by telling their
stories. Their persistent struggles for long, sea and seaman together, simply stir our souls; we
soar, breathtakingly risky. Now, haven‘t I told you concrete stories? Isn‘t story-thinking
body-thinking in season and out of season?
Storytelling body-thinking goes spatially to spread in time, through our free and brave
handling of our milieu ever brave and new. They say that ―Genes aren‘t Destiny: The new
field of epigenetics is showing how your environment and your choices can influence your
234
genetic code—and that of your kids.‖ If this is true, then, if DNA is one factor that decides
the age, then I can decide my DNA to decide my age. All deaths are then suicides. We control
our conclusions to our life and the lives of our beloved to come. Stoicism and Japan‘s bushido
are nodding in smile.
But then, natural science seems to forget that, as the old enrich the young even through
their genetic decisions for their beloved posterity, the young generations later also enrich the
former elderly generations by critically learning from them. Science in genetics forgets that, it
is the lesson of history that backward is forward growing, that time goes forward by going
backward. Our many gods above and at our backs are so young. Body thinking is inter-
growing time-thinking, history-thinking. China is smiling. If such body thinking is not
relativism alive, what is it?
Thinking should be concrete as life, being part of living as human body; far from being a
contradiction, ―concrete thinking‖ is the way of human life. Life forms history; it is an
ongoing ―story argument‖ to which Chinese thinkers constantly appeal. So should the West
with the rest of the world.
So we see how relativism relates to storytelling. We hear Tommy say to Mom, ―I hate
Charlie. I want to kill him!‖ Mom says, ―All right, you can kill him tomorrow. Now, come to
your dinner, ok?‖ Tommy says, ―OK, Mom.‖ He then forgets all about what he said to Mom.
A marvelous story of relativism in history is displayed here.
We spontaneously nod to this story. It shows an amicable accommodation to whatever
that comes. ―Whatever comes‖ is relativism; ―amicable accommodation‖ is its motherly
story-solution. No wonder, relativism appears as part of Wu‘s story-thinking, as part of world
235
interculture (in dialogue with Rorty), and now as part of Chinese body thinking.
Relativism is ubiquitous indeed, to cipher the body élan of the Grain-and-Principle 理 going
236
through myriad matters, always story-saying, ―That was that time, this is this time.‖
The beauty is that the solution of problems takes place so smoothly, so naturally, as if
nothing were done. Relativism is storytelling ―solving‖ and resolving potential bloodshed, as
Mom did to Tommy. Relativism describes the how, the élan of story-thinking. This is because
story-thinking is I-demonstrative, exhibiting body-thinking alive. Three points must be made
on how body thinking displays itself in our lifeworld.

233 Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, NY: Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1952.
234 See Time magazine, January 18, 2010, pp. 49-53.
235 Relativism appears in both places in Wu‘s Story-Thinking: Cultural Meditations, 2010.
236 That is Mencius‘ famous quip, ―彼一時也、此一時也‖ (2B13).
 Conclusion 429

237
One: Body-thinking displays milieu-thinking. Milieu is matrix, motherly environs
where things happen. Milieu is of three sorts, M-I of the I, M-T of things, and M-B of the
Beyond. M-I is the I-milieu that enables the I-relations, I-Thou and I-It, to take place. It is the
Cartesian Cogito reworked by Merleau-Ponty at the base of life-activities, but we add to it the
difference that this I is I-demonstrative, shifting as the I differs. This has much to do with
Wang Kuo-wei‘s Self-ed Milieu, where the I can even self-forget.
M-T is things-milieu such as stones, trees, animals, scenes, the place that enables
positioning of I, Thou, and It to take place. This has much to do with Wang Kuo-wei‘s Self-
238
less Milieu where things look at themselves as themselves. M-T can also be taken as an
extreme of M-I, for my self-less-ness in things is a form of being oneself.
Finally, M-B is God-milieu, the matrix and milieu enabling all milieus to be, move, and
have their being (Acts 17:28), the Milieu Ineffable for M-I and M-T. Mind you. all these M-I,
M-T, and M-B are thinkable (conceivable) only in body-thinking, as various exhibitions of I-
demonstrative, thinking as heartfelt bodily solicitude.
Two: ―What does heartfelt solicitude consist in?‖ Body thinking is human thinking quite
humane, carrying human warmth, body hospitality 體貼, a virtue peculiar to humanity; it is
possible only via human body thinking, expressed everywhere human, even by Eumaios a
239
lowly swineherd of Odysseus. This human warmth, when negated, turns human cruelty in
crimes against humanity. The inhuman bestiality is possible only among humans, non-
existent in animal kingdom; both human warmth and inhuman cruelty exist only in body
thinking all too human.
Three: Now, points One and Two are exhibitions of body thinking, non-existent in body-
less thinking. In fact, body-less thinking is humanly impossible, for this reason. As body
language, silent language, is the matrix-milieu of language, so body thinking as body in the
thinking act is the matrix-milieu of thinking, and even body-less thinking is actually
―disembodied‖ thinking, for as ―naked‖ means disrobed, so ―body-less‖ means disembodied.
Thus, we see that all Western philosophers engage in body-thinking despite themselves,
and then pull back to body-less thinking analytical. Plato saw body politic as human body
writ large (body-thinking), then saw reason controlling bodily thrust and appetite (body-less
thinking). But ―control‖ is no ―separation‖ to sever relation to sever control. Control
implicates relation, as Hegel saw the master depend on the servant. Aristotle‘s empiricism is
240
body-thinking; his metaphysics is body-less thinking. Jesus‘ visceral love on the cross of
enemies was later scholastically disembodied as ―theology.‖
Descartes found the indubitable base in ―I think, therefore I am,‖ and explained ―I think‖
as I desire, intend, perceive; that is body-thinking. Too bad, he split thinking-mind from
think-less-body; that is body-less thinking. Kant had ―7+5=12‖ as synthetic a priori; that is
body-thinking. Too bad, he then pursued what makes all thinking possible in transcendental

237 See Wu‘s ―The I-Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (I: pp. 1-59, December 2007), (II: pp. 1-68,
June 2008),‖ Journal of World Religions.
238 M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962, pp. 369-409.
有我之境 and 無我之境 in 王國維‘s 人間詞話, 臺北市三民書局, 民91, p. 4.
239 Read the moving story of warm hospitality, in The Odyssey of Homer, tr. Richmond Lattimore, NY:
HarperCollins, 1965, told of in Books XIV and XV, pp. 210-239.
240 ―Visceral pain, spagchnizomai‖ is reserved for Jesus alone in the first three Gospels; it is reminiscent of
Mencius‘ heartfelt pain of sensitivity to others 不忍人之心. Both phrases express the warm human core of
body-thinking.
430 Kuang-ming Wu

logic; that is body-less thinking. And the list goes on. China must gently bring the West back
to itself, where the body‘s integral activity, body-thinking, is its most natural thinking matrix.
We have just told the story of body thinking as milieu-thinking and humane warmth.
Now, let us come back to story-thinking. What is its modus vivendi, its actual modes of
operation? Story-thinking has four levels, all needed. As said before, to describe how story-
thinking goes describes what it is. Story-thinking cannot be logically defined; it has to be
described, told the story of how it operates.

Four Levels of Story-Thinking241

Story-thinking thinks as it tells and reads stories in four ways, and the thinking must
cover all these four ways. To begin, to de-scribe the situation is storytelling, in two aspects—
description here sets down coherently an actual situation, yet it is for those with ears to hear
to freely hear its sense behind words, not to listen to the explicit words; all this is open.
First we hear (a) how the story goes; this is a straight textual reception and criticism of a
story. Then we see (b) what it amounts to; this is its exegesis. And then we realize (c) what it
means; this is exposition. Finally, we realize (d) what this story means for us; this is
hermeneutic reflection of the significance of a story. Description is coherent, in textual level-
(a) and exegetical level-(b); hearing its sense is open, in expository level-(c) and hermeneutic-
level-(d).
What is important here is to ensure that we go through all the way to the final level-(d),
on pain of disaster. ―Why do we have to bother reading a story on all four levels? Can‘t we,
say, just learn how things happened in the 911 Incident ((a)) and just see that the Incident
amounts to a terrorist attack on the American soil, and Americans must retaliate in kind
((b))?‖ The answer is a somber serious No.
Here is a somber story (level (a)). During the Christmas and New Year of 2003-4, several
Europe-to-USA flights were cancelled; then the 1/7/2004 news-report said that France and
Germany were looking for passengers who booked the flights and failed to appear at the
airports. We at once understand the story at level (b); the West‘s alert system worked.
Tragically, however, no one in the West cared to go to levels (c) and (d). The invisible
242
―terrorists‖ tried and failed this time, and will try again to use our airplanes, a fruit of the
West‘s money-terror, mixed with their blood, to spectacularly advertise mass blood-terror—
to tell us something. What is their message? This is level-(c). What does their message mean
to us? What should be our response besides trying to smash them? This is level-(d).
Sadly, our interpretive failure, (c) and (d), contribute continuously to worsening world
terrorism, our money-terror and their blood-terror, each exacerbating the other. ―What
disaster do we harvest by failing in interpretation levels (c) and (d)?‖ Our failure did make
such terrors to worsen and spread worldwide. Here is a tragic hermeneutic failure harvesting
disasters worldwide. It is thus that story-thinking has an ominous pragmatic cash value to the
world today.
Now we further realize. It is stories that tell us that romance burns us dead, not love that
calmly gives life, and that pain is not always evil because pain can be noble while happiness

241 This portion barely summarizes Wu‘s ―Chinese Philosophy and Story-Thinking‖ (Dao: A Journal of
Comparative Philosophy, Summer 2005, pp. 217-234), ―Distinctive Features of Chinese Hermeneutics‖
(Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, June 2004, pp. 233-247), Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY: Nova Science
Publishers, 2010, Part IV, and many pages in various places above.
242 They indeed did on Christmas Eve, 2009, barely aborted only by their ineptitude and an astute passenger.
 Conclusion 431

can be despicable, and so seeking most happiness (Aristotle) for most people (utilitarianism)
243
barks up the wrong tree of morality. All these ―truths‖ are facts to guide facts, revealed by
stories of facts and stories of concrete imagery beyond facts.
All such enlightenments by story-in-time, history, are of quite grave significance. ―To
receive the historian‘s single word of praise is to be glorified beyond high emolument; to be
244
accused by his slightest word of blame is to be punished beyond hacking of axes.‖ Stories-
in-time describe to persuade and render judgments for all, to last for all time. Such is the
power of journalists and historians more persuasive, their authority more convincing, than all
lawyers of all nations and all arguments of all thinkers put together.

Three: Body Thinking on “Eternity” and “Death”

Such words of stories are eternal, not timeless but time-dwelt. Eternity in body-thinking
in China is being in the felt situation 情境, and becoming it. Eternity is the child taking abode
245
in time. Story-thinking gives norms concrete, solid, and incorruptible, to shape us for good,
i.e., for the good of all and for good always. Story-thinking is thus forever with us. Saying all
246
this is unintelligible, however; an explanation is in order.
Some watches are powered by the movement of our body. Likewise, time is powered by
the movement of the watch called body-thinking. Body thinking moves to stay in a situation,
and time then stays to cipher eternity. ―Eternal‖ is not out of time but depth of time; ―eternal‖
is always, ever at any time, time at its deepest where there is no ephemeral passage of time.
Now, what does all this mean, concretely?
I feel no motion while in a train ―moving.‖ While in the body-train, I feel no motion, as
when I gaze with my eyes at a tiny flower, absorbed in a pet, completely melted in the felt
situation where time passes no more. Bodily felt situation happens to my body alone. No
body, no body-situated that is my situation. In such felt situation, I feel no time passing by; I
am eternal.
Kids playing and kids playing with their pets feel no ―time.‖ That is why kids do not feel
time passing, for they are time, and so they are eternal; only we adults feel they grow so fast,
not they. Such is eternity abiding in time. Body is required to abide, so time-abiding ciphers
body-dynamics. As time never stays, so eternity in time never stays, ever going forward and
so eternity is time staying and time not-staying, ever forwarding. Such forwarding dynamics
of timely eternity includes death. The time-dynamics of eternity is surprisingly forwarded by
247
bodily death. It goes as follows.
Body-thinking thinks today, and today originates in yesterday now gone, dead. Today
grows into tomorrow, and my growth needs my parents who are the tradition my past
accumulated. I grow by metaphoring myself from my parents; as the old, so the new, to grow
on and on. Now yesterday, tradition, and parental old, all passed on, are death to me. My

243 See Chinese Wisdom Alive, pp. 194, 222, 279-280, 374-375, 380, 418, 426-433, 442-448, etc. Story-Thinking:
Cultural Meditations, VI. Pain.
244
Liu Xie 劉勰 famously said so in 文心雕龍, 史傳第十六, 臺北市三民書局, 民83, p. 156.
245
See Wu‘s On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp. 192-194.
246
The following is extrapolation from ibid.; they are pages that take our breaths away.
247
This is an extrapolation from ibid. pp. 190-192 quite subtle.
432 Kuang-ming Wu

body dynamics forwarding goes via death; death the negative pushes forward to affirm me
growing at my own speed, never to be ―helped grow.‖
Meanwhile, my body dies to continue into your body-birth. This is parent-child intimacy,
as pivot of history, composing the human family into socio-politics. Thus a good teacher my
father is a dead one, and the tradition—hand-me-downs—carries on bodily progress that is
education and history. Body-thinking lives on a dynamics of ―death‖ in education and history.
This process composes Chinese eternity, the incorruptibility of (1) integrity-virtue (2)
achieved via (3) wisdom-education as word-tradition. Here is China‘s threefold culture ever
abiding through history, as Chinese incorruptible eternity of body thinking.

Four: Body Thinking as “Necessary,” Logically and Contingently

Lest the above explanation sounds arbitrary, we must note how body thinking in all
above extending to eternity and death is based on bodily ―necessity‖ both logical and
contingent. This claim sounds far-fetched but it is actually quite a natural outgrowth of body
thinking. It goes as follows. We first look at the bodily base of logical necessity, and then of
248
contingency as necessary. All this is due to body thinking as ―thinking.‖
Kant famously claims that the logically necessary operation of ―7+5=12‖ is a synthetic a
priori. The computation is ―a priori‖ because it is logically necessary, but it is said to be
―synthetic‖ to deny that it is analytical, for 12 cannot be deduced from 7, 5, +, or =. The
computation must go through the operation of addition—synthesis—to necessarily reach the
conclusion of 12 (a priori). We on our part note that this synthetic-necessary addition is traced
249
out by concrete body thinking. Mathematical necessity obtains by body thinking.
250
Geometrical necessity also obtains by body thinking. Merleau-Ponty says, my body
traces a triangle geometrically necessary, its formation being directed by my body thinking. A
proof on this triangle is completed by my body drawing, e.g., a line parallel to the line drawn
through the apex. And so on. In all, logical proof, any formal proof, is thus formulated by my
body thinking out in space and time. I add and draw to think. My body adding and drawing is
my body thinking logical necessity.
251
Now, contingency has its own inevitability that cannot be mocked as logical necessity
cannot be. A ―person‖ requiring no food is as odd-in-meaning as a ―married bachelor‖ is
logically senseless. Pace Aristotle who claims both ―sea battle won‖ and ―sea battle lost‖ that
make equal logical sense, we see how each sea battle has its own cause to effect a specific
result, and so one situation results in a sea battle won and another situation in a sea battle lost;
there should be no confusion, and this ―should‖ is necessary and compelling.
―Cause and effect‖ is bodily experienced as necessary-in-fact as ―laws of nature‖ in
natural science, and as ―laws of nature of history‖ that causally rhymes, that never leaks albeit

248 This is an extrapolation from ibid. pp. 304-309 quite profound and natural.
249 Ibid., pp. 296-297, 300, and Wu‘s History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Taipei, Academia
Sinica, 1991, pp. 16-17.
250 Actually Merleau-Ponty did not use the phrase ―body thinking‖ but his whole description clearly describes
body-thinking. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1962, pp. 384-386. See Wu, Chinese Body Thinking, op. cit., pp. 300-301. China‘s mathematical writings
have something of the sort but its reference escapes Wu.
251 Ibid., pp. 302-306.
 Conclusion 433

coarse-meshed and free. History does not judge, to thereby judge, for mistakes would one by
252
one be criticized by later generations ; history is never to be mocked. All our free imageries
are concrete, contingent, and necessary. What must be noted here is that all this necessity,
both logical and contingent, is made by body thinking, and made intelligible as modus vivendi
of body thinking.

Five: Chinese Body Thinking as Concrete Thinking Intercultural253

We may have already noticed that the above elucidation of Chinese body thinking
proceeds by constantly contrasting Chinese mode of thinking with Western. Elucidation
enriches something-A by contrasting A with not-A. This is in line with the law of identity,
i.e., A is A as not not-A. Now, we must note that the law of identity is logical because it
derives from the ontological law of existence as inter-revealing of identities. Existence is
inherently inter-existence, often contrastive.
Enrichment of the integrity of an entity consists in two operations, to stress A as A, and
doing so in the context of A as not not-A. In our case, Chinese distinctness of body thinking
must be elucidated in the context of contrasting with the West, where China-West interculture
happens. Elucidation of Chinese body thinking is then for the sake both of elucidation of
China and of interculture with the West. All this while, elucidation of Chinese body thinking
as Chinese is vitalized by contrasting with the Western mode of logical thinking as logical.
On both counts, in elucidation of China and interculture with the West, contrasts with the
West are crucially, yet subordinately, at work. Let us go slower on this important theme.
Incredibly, a simple law of logical identity augurs an existential process of interculture,
thanks to the catalysis of Chinese body thinking in three points, as follows.
To begin with, every culture is a miscegenation, a mix, ―A is A‖ mixed negatively with
not-A‘s. Each culture is a unique synthesis of A plus not-A, and its uniqueness is
strengthened by such contrastive mixing into its integrity. This mix that makes a specific
culture portends well for interculture to inter-enrich.
Interculture is an outward extension of the internal mix of a culture‘s existential integrity.
As not-A strengthens A, so any one mix, (A plus not-A), strengthens another mix, (B plus
not-B). World interculture is an augury of diverse integrities; it is greater and richer than
individual cultures, to enrich individual cultures, progressing in three tiers.
First, concrete thinking notional is here. ―A‖ mentioned above is a self-demonstrative of
I-as-my-body. ―A is A‖ above is the self bodied forth affirming one whole personal self. ―A is
not not-A‖ is the self bodied forth self-stressing via contrasting with its negativities.
Negatives are affirmatives strengthening in contrast.
Secondly, such notional body thinking stretches to concrete thinking persuading. As one
(A plus not-A) is, so (B plus not-B) is also, and so understanding the B takes place through
metaphoring process out of the A. Such metaphorical stretch-forth manifests (A and not-A)
mirrored in (B and not-B), making for subtle compact expressions with many connotative

252 Story-Thinking: Cultural Meditations, op. cit..

253 This portion barely summarizes Wu‘s ―‗Let Chinese Thinking Be Chinese‘: sine Qua Non to World
Interculture‖ (Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2010, 9: 193-209), Chinese Wisdom Alive (NY:
Nova Science Publishers, 2010), Part IV, and many pages in various places in his Story-Thinking: Cultural
Meditations, here.
434 Kuang-ming Wu

layers. This compact manifestation strengthens the A by contrasting with not-A, i.e., B, and
the twisty irony takes place to further clinch the case.
Thirdly, such interaction among contrasts is structured in stories inter-told, heard,
changed, and added, as ―dialogue‖ among cultures. Dialogue dia-logicizes, inter-con-versing
to revolutionize assumptions of party-A as/in the conversation that revolutionizes
assumptions of party-B. Revolutions of assumptions redound to enrich and deepen A and B
beyond the original A and the original B, as stories are told back and forth to hear, change,
and add further.
Chinese body thinking is thus applied to the West beyond China. Here China
demonstrates itself, body-compact, to stretch itself to no-China in negatives, as familiar
affirmed to metaphor itself beyond China to the unfamiliar in ironies. Such is the concrete
body-story of interculture inter-enriching. Thus, Wu‘s ―Chinese body thinking‖ is alive, and
goes beyond Pascal‘s ―thinking reed.‖ As it is, the human body is a mere speck among myriad
things; as body thinking, it composes intercultural togetherness with Heaven and Earth.
Throughout this pan-intercultural process, we must watch out for double dangers; both
already exist today. One is Chinese chauvinism, looking down on the West to close and
embalm itself in Chinese traditionalism; another is Western colonialism, reinterpreting exotic
China to absorb it into the West as the West‘s inferior part.
Both dangers say that nothing is new under the sun, the Chinese sun or the Western. No
one is looking at the other beyond itself. Both isolations stem from xenophobia out of
Western ignorance of the not-West and Chinese ignorance of the not-China. Both eviscerate
themselves by turning themselves into proud isolation-sepulchers.
―Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shalt meet‖ sounds a death knell
to East and West, both at once, and demolishes the world-in-concord. Luckily, this line was
254
intoned in 1889 by the then quite popular Kipling, now hopefully buried in the dustbin of
the past. Dr. Wu‘s life-commitment is to fight this deadly pronouncement to its death.
Baldly to put it as above sounds so platitudinous that no one would seem to utter such
silly trite stuff, yet actually, we see both woes rampant in China and in the West. I. A.
Richards in his well-known Mencius on the Mind explores all possible logical meanings of
each of Mencius‘ sentences. No Chinese writer or reader would have dreamed of doing such
an ―outrageous‖ operation on the time-honored Mencius.
On his part, H. Fingarette‘s influential The Secular as Sacred on Confucius takes him as
a magician manipulating people‘s attitudes, and C. Hansen in his massive A Daoist Theory of
Chinese Thought takes Dao as ―analytical logic‖ of the West, and interprets all schools of
255
Chinese thought in its light, and confidently claims that that is China. They all look into
the exotic mysteries of China and see themselves mirrored back at them, and confidently take
that as China.
Meanwhile, Chinese scholars, at home in English, enthusiastically embrace these
Western interpretations as the unsuspected authentic Chinese thinking hidden behind moldy
age-old classics. This trend is a result of a previous period of deliberation in China‘s recent

254 ―The Ballad of East and West‖ in Rudyard Kipling‟s Verse: Definitive Edition, Garden City, NY: Doubleday
and Co., 1940, p. 233.
255 I. A. Richards, Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition (1932), Richmond, Surrey, England:
Curzon Press 1996. Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, HarperSanFrancisco, 1972. Chad
Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation, Oxford, 1992.
 Conclusion 435

history, when Chinese scholars had vigorously debated on how to deal with various cultural
encroachments of the powerful West.
Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 and Wang Xianqian 王先謙 wanted to ―embody China, use West
體中用西,‖ to pit against Kang Yuwei 康有為 and Liang Qichao‘s 梁啟超 wholesale
adoption of the West. The latter finally won the day, and a massive influx of translations of
256
Western literatures of every sort followed.
Now, the pan-West ethos pervades all China; every sort of thinking must follow Western
―scientific methodology‖ to claim orthodox decency. Wholesale absorption of China into the
West, by wholesale importation of the West, is thus busily initiated, and it still goes on today
as the unquestioned trend of China today.
The cure to this sad loss of China as China is to look beyond China to the other than
China and learn from the other, so as to enrich China as China and the West the no-China as
the other no-China. Concretely, it is to go through the fire of Western logic, to equip oneself
with logical sensitivity (not logic Western, raw) wherewith to discern the subtle riches of
257
Chinese wisdom unheard of in the West, the true China existing unawares in China, as
unearthed and described above, with—to repeat—logical sensitivity cultivated by going
through the West, not staying there.
The result is harvested above as ―Chinese body thinking‖ concrete, in the story-thinking
mode. It is thus alone can China interculture with the West to enlighten itself, and deepen the
West in return. It is easier said than done, though, and the situation today is understandably
quite otherwise, dire as just described, wholesale absorption into the West. Dr. Wu seems to
be the lone quixotic knight fighting at the inexorable turning of the windmill of the
Westernized world today. Wu‘s ideas are summed up above as ―Chinese body thinking.‖

Six: Body Thinking Elucidated above as Itself “Body Thinking” Intercultural

It is thus that we elucidated above such ―Chinese body thinking‖ that is, however, not
quite Chinese, nor is it quite Western. Instead, the above elucidation executes aspects of body
thinking, and exemplifies all above in story-thinking way, culminating in China-West
interculture, as it is executed as such an interculture; it is not known to China, nor has it been
ever thought about in the West. It is novel yet not exotic but faithful to China and to the West.
Our sentences above are thus exposition at a meta-level. ―Meta level‖ is of two sorts,
observing not-participating, and catalysis for things to happen. Exposition of Chinese body
thinking is a meta-level catalyst to China-West interculture in story-thinking milieu, toward
inter-enrichments among world cultures. Besides, this catalyst of body thinking is itself in the
mode of body thinking. Here, the meta-level blends in with the contents covered.
And such is Dr. Wu Kuang-ming‘s project heartfelt, body-executed, where China and the
West inter-involve to inter-support, ever on the go, one inter-whipping up the other, in all his

256 See 蘇輿撰，楊菁點校，翼教叢編，臺北市中研院文哲所，民94.

257 Among many other works of Wu‘s on this theme, see Wu‘s most recent Chinese Wisdom Alive (500 pp), NY:
Nova Science Publishers, 2010. Wu has been fighting a lone, continuous, quixotic fight for China, thereby for
the world interculture that does justice to both China and the West, to enrich both as respectively such and no
other.
436 Kuang-ming Wu

volumes so far and still going on unfinished. The following is just a partial list showing his
continuing vision he passionately struggles to share and spread.
Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play (NY: Crossroad, 1982) enters world interculture
with Zhuangzi‘s life-thinking as an alternative to Western logical thinking.
The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990) develops cultural-interaction, with
Zhuangzi‘s fascinating story-thinking bitingly concrete; it is the world‘s bestseller now.
History, Thinking, and Literature in Chinese Philosophy (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1991)
sees China‘s concrete thinking as China‘s panorama of literature and history.
On Chinese body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic (Leiden: Brill, 1997) dialogues with
the ―flesh‖ of Merleau-Ponty to explain Chinese body thinking; it won Taiwan‘s highest prize
to show its approval by Chinese culture.
On the “Logic” of Togetherness: A Cultural Hermeneutic (Leiden: Brill, 1998) explains
how world concord in interactions obtains in five aspects.
On Metaphoring: A Cultural Hermeneutic (Leiden: Brill, 2001) is an exposition of the
method of cultural interactions as ―metaphor‖ in active verb function.
<弔詭怡生：一比較哲學試釋> in 吳銳編，<<楊向奎先生百年誕辰記念文集>>
(2009) has Zhuangzi‘s ―supreme swindle‖ of logic to interact with world philosophies.
―‗Let Chinese Thinking Be Chinese‘: sine Qua Non to World Interculture,‖ Dao: A
Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2010, 9:193-209, explains the urgent necessity and
method of China-West interculture with China‘s concrete thinking.
China-West Interculture: Toward the Philosophy of World Integration: Essays on Wu
Kuang-ming‟s Thinking, ed. Jay Coulding, NY: Global Scholarly Publications, 2008, has Dr.
Wu‘s autobiography of how his China-West interculture came forth, 14 scholars in 14 fields
discussing global interculture, Dr. Wu joining dialogues, with his bibliography, 1982-2007.
―Rorty, Confucius, and Intercultural Relativism,‖ in Rorty, Pragmatism, and
Confucianism, ed. Yong Huang, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009, pp. 21-
44, tells of how Confucius‘ concrete thinking interacts American philosopher Richard Rorty.
―Chinese Philosophy and Story-Thinking,‖ Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy,
Summer 2005, pp. 217-234, explains China‘s story-thinking and its worldwide significance.
―Distinctive Features of Chinese Hermeneutics,‖ Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies,
June 2004, pp. 233-247, explicates China‘s story-thinking in another dimension.
Chinese Wisdom Alive: Vignettes of Life-Thinking, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2010,
500 pp., comprehensively describes China‘s Wisdom alive through millennia, in dialogues
among Western philosophies today.
Story-Thinking: Cultural Meditations, NY: Nova Science Publishers, forthcoming, 450
pp, executes interactions among world cultures with story-thinking.
―Various Ponds Alive,‖ Nova Science Publishers, forthcoming, 42 pp, story-describes
vivacious, various, and vast world-ponds diverse, noisily silent, moving not moving, active in
composure, life in death.
―The I-Milieu: Its Implications for Culture and Thinking (I: pp. 1-59, December 207), (II:
pp. 1-68, June 2008),‖ Journal of World Religions, depicts milieu-thinking in body-thinking.
―Heresy, Tradition, History,‖ Journal of World Religions, forthcoming, 56 pp, depicts the
power of dynamic ―interrelations‖ in life and in religion. These are just some handful among
many others of Wu‘s writings on world interculture based on Chinese body thinking.
 Conclusion 437

―Why must we do all this interculture?‖ The reason is simple but important. Interculture
is the way to manifest-deepen each culture as distinctly itself. China staying alone has been
imprisoned in the sepulcher of ―traditionalism,‖ as the West alone has fallen in a colonialism-
rut of logical analyticity in cultural and ecological disasters. China has already felt its danger
of asphyxiation in isolation, and is actively learning from the West. The West also must learn
from China learning, to learn from China to establish the West as Western, not universal.
China is now actively learning from the West, yet it is attended with another grave
danger, for it now falls into the temptation to elucidate Chinese culture purely in terms of the
West, to turn into a mere part of the West, and its inferior part at that. Thus, China owes it to
itself to learn from the West, so as to be amazed at China‘s own genius, as it guards against
absorption into the West to lose China‘s own peculiar soul.
The way out of these two traps—to avoid isolation-asphyxiation, and to avoid losing
China‘s identity in pan-Occidentalism—is to watch and gaze at China afresh with the West‘s
logical sensitivity (not logic per se) to find China‘s astonishing riches of vitality. The present
essay strides its first step, undergoing China with logical sensitivity to bring out China as
vigorously and distinctively Chinese, as above executed, following Dr. Wu‘s careful steps.
―But then how is China to learn from the West to turn clear in China‘s own way?‖ Let us
258
take a concrete example. Nowell-Smith‘s Ethics is more than on ethics; it sensitively
elucidates how we say, Ryle-like, even criticizing G. E. Moore, etc. Yet I hesitate at its being
too good, as if to analyze our exposed bones that ought to be hid invisible, as real bones‘
moves we can ―see‖ only hid in how our enfleshed body alive moves.
He is a sandwich-board man boasting ―I am normal!,‖ to show he is abnormal. He shocks
us to teach us clearly how to be clear-normal Hun-tun way, treating ―clarity‖ very well. Such
is how China is to learn from Norwell-Smith, i.e., how China is to learn from the West‘s
clarity, to turn itself clear subtly, alive, lucidly ambiguous, and be a live turtle dragging its
clarity-tail in ambiguity-mud, a lotus flower beautiful unsoiled, thanks to the soil its humus.
This operation goes in line with the curious fact of existence as inter-existence inter-
mirroring. Existence has its physiognomy, its face, and face is facing the other, to manifest its
face, its peculiar structure appearing via the other, for one is ignorant of oneself until
mirrored in the other, a mirror or a friend. China must thus face up to the West to manifest
itself as Chinese, in its body thinking, with its own unique story-thinking features as above
described, thanks to facing the West, in contrastive interculture.
China‘s body-story swings into history rhyming in symphonies of interculture, and body
thinking sings the music of the spheres beyond sound and silence, ancient and now inter-
chanting, far and near in polyphony, for the body to sense the senses of things. Sensing the
sense sings the music of things myriad, through all time and all over places.
Mind you. It is the body that sings music and dances it among concrete things. Not
accidentally, all Wu‘s writings lilt and wax musically, often concluding in music and in its
silence of world interculture. Chinese body thinking is music, and it is musical silence to
move peoples of various cultures, in human rhymes of world history.
This section has already initiated the first steps as such world interculture. The thousand-
mile double-walk of China inter-enriching with the West begins underfoot here now, at
elucidating China in body-thinking.

258
P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (1954), Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Book, 1965. It seems to be his
only book so far.
438 Kuang-ming Wu

Still, Western philosophy is persistently systematic and comprehensive, allowing no

exception. This is why, while advertising pragmatic ―edifying conversations‖ worldwide,
259
Rorty rejects Wu‘s proposal to inter-learn with Confucius. Rorty‘s thesis is just that, his
thesis comprehensive and exceptionless, no intrusion by Confucius allowed. Thus Wu
remains alone in the world scene of interculturism. We do well to follow a lone thinker
shouting in the wilderness, where no one cares to listen, Dr. Kuang-ming Wu the rare
intercultural hermeneutist.

Meta-Reflections on Above

So far, Wu‘s body thinking in China has been depicted; seven problems are found here.
ONE: Jade-grain Li 理 in things is hard to extrapolate from body thinking. TWO: We ask,
―Wherefrom are standards for cultivation (Mencius) or education (Xunzi)? How do they
know we even desire ‗good‘ if we are a hill laid waste (Mencius) or evil by nature (Xunzi)?‖
Mencius, Xunzi, or body thinking (one body, two opposites?) seems unable to answer.
260
THREE: Body thinking may be China‘s thread but propensity (Julien ), Dao, etc., are also
its threads; reducing them to body thinking thins ―body‖ into a pale universal.
FOUR: Body is inter-body as sex-gender duality. Wu needs to develop body-duality into
sociality. FIVE: Sex is not gender; China has one word, xing 性, for both, to mean human
nature. Can ―body‖ explain all this? SIX: Can ―body‖ bear all China‘s key notions and issues?
SEVEN: If ―body‖ can bear the weight, ―pan-body-ism‖ would destroy its contrast, ―not-
body,‖ and ―body‖ vanishes. Pan-body is no-body.
Thus this essay destroys itself, as Wittgenstein kicking his own ladder, Laozi‘s ―can dao,
no Dao,‖ and Zhuangzi‘s Swindle of logic—to make an ineffable sense. This essay‘s very
self-demise could also mean something not worded or silent. This sense beyond sense could
have three aspects, body thinking to expand out, body thinking limited, and Chinese body
thinking flowed over China.
One: Implications and connotations of Chinese body thinking could be worked out more
carefully, if not systematically, comprehensively. ―Body‖ is itself a system organic and
thoughtful, and systematically involved with all non-bodies around it. Wu said that body
thinking is milieu-thinking, but this saying is tantalizingly ambiguous, crying out for
elucidation and expansion.
Two: Still, body thinking itself must have some sort of limit to its applications. Pan-body
is no-body; pan-body-applications thin out into a pale universal. Body thickly concrete must
focalize, and focalization indicates limitation. ―Focalized universality‖ is a centripetal-
centrifugal, a contradiction. Here the very notion of concreteness is at stake. Can things
concrete be universalized? Can concreteness be a universal? Can the body be cosmic? ―Body‖
as an umbrella notion is quite risky.
Three: China amazes us. In its concrete naïveté, China is gleefully innocent of the above
comprehensive-limited dilemma. One way China can be thoughtfully concrete is this. Body

259 See Wu‘s ―Rorty, Confucius, and Intercultural Relativism‖ (pp. 21-44) and Rorty‘s response (pp. 279-280) in
Rorty, Pragmatism, and Confucianism, edited by Yong Huang, Albany: State University of New York Press,
2009.
260 François Julien, The Propensity of Things: Towards a History of Efficacy in China, NY: Zone Books, 1999.
 Conclusion 439

thinking is China‘s thread, but Dao is also its thread, Yin-Yang is also, etc., that is, any notion
that could serve as a key notion can serve as a thread of China‘s.
Whitehead famously quipped that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato.
Chan no less dramatically said, ―Confucius can truly be said to mold Chinese civilization
261
(and) philosophy.‖ Whitehead may or may not be correct; we see that Laozi and ―change
易 in Yin-Yang‖ also molded China, not just Confucius. China‘s many threads are beyond
footnoting on one alone.
These threads are of course related; everything is related to everything else in some way.
So, it is not impossible to relate all threads in some Chinese way. To rely on ―some relation‖
to make one ―big clod 大塊‖ (Zhuangzi), though, seems far-fetched, and to name this ―clod‖
as a ―body‖ seems even less seemly—forced and distorted, overrunning the distinctness of the
integrity of existents, notions, and other threads. We are not even sure if the pages above run
such risk.
Each thread is a ―Dao‖ that ―walks it and forms‖ (Zhuangzi), its ―thousand-mile walk
begins underfoot‖ (Laozi), and each entity walks at its ―underfoot.‖ Where is the universal,
the ―walk,‖ then? China is fabulously system-less and non-arbitrary; even Emperor Hundun
the ambiguous makes his own story so convincing and surprising.
In China, contingency is necessary, necessity is concrete; double walks 兩行 (Zhuangzi)
despair of thinking we can manage, and our thinking despairs of China untamable. China does
not care, though, but keeps blissfully writing out history 史 in wise literature 文. China is
wisdom alive overflowing its body thinking. Stevens said, ―Literature is the better part of life.
To this quip it seems inevitably necessary for us to add ―provided life is the better part of
262
literature‖ ; history fulfills all this, we would say. History in literature and literature as
history makes China sparkle in the world.

G. TAIWAN THE GEM OF THE WORLD263

Taiwan is the gem shining forth its brilliance as it is situated strategically, to be tossed
about, rubbed, and polished among piles of violence-dirt. We Taiwan-lovers must firmly keep
in mind this solid fact as we strive to polish this gem further. Our strivings are political,
ecological, and cultural, as follows in seven points, simple and revolutionary.
One: Unlike Switzerland quietly tucked away in an indifferent corner of Europe, Taiwan
has been in ceaseless turmoil in busy political, economic, and military traffics, quite brutal in
wave after wave of historic violence, first Chinese, then Japanese, and then Chinese,

261 Wing-tsit Chan said so in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 14.
Raymond Dawson (Confucius, Oxford University Press, 1981) also said, ―Has any individual ever shaped his
own country‘s civilisation more thoroughly than Confucius? Certainly no other world figure has ever been set
up as an example to more of his fellow countrymen.‖
262 Zhuangzi 2/4, 2/33, Daodejing 64, Wu, ―‗Emperor Hundun 渾沌‘: A Cultural Hermeneutic,‖ Dao: A Journal of
Comparative Philosophy, September 2007, pp. 263-278. Zhuangzi 2/40. Wu, Chinese Wisdom Alive, NY:
Nova Science Publishers, 2010. Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, quoted in Modern Poetics, ed. James
Scully, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1965, p. 147.
263 Later this tiny essay was shortened and sharpened into ―Taiwan the World‘s Gem‖ in its Chinese version,
―臺灣: 人世寶石.‖
440 Kuang-ming Wu

Japanese, and USA in rapid succession, all due to Taiwan‘s enviable strategic spot; anyone in
control of this small island commands Asia and in turn the world!
Two: Taiwan has in fact been already independent for half a century now, at least since
Taiwanese Li Teng-hui took office of presidency, if not earlier, when Chiang Ching-kuo
(Chiang Kai-shek‘s son) smilingly said he was a Taiwanese. Taiwan‘s independence is
proved precisely by China nervously bullying and interfering with its affairs domestic and
foreign. China would have no reason to bully Taiwan if it is not an independent entity.
It is thus silly to work for Taiwan independence already existing, as it is to try to heal
oneself when healthy. Of course, being healthy, one must watch for bullies from outside;
being independent, Taiwan must watch for China and others bullying it. Still, our central task
for our beloved Taiwan is not to oppose silly bullies around Taiwan to survive their pesky
interferences, though we must ever be alert against them.
We must instead tame and teach these bullies—that the hard power of violence and
coercion is futile. Hard power often rebounds to kill all, bully and bullied alike. Instead, what
supports and nourishes us all is the soft small power of human warmth that attracts those in
264
contact. ―Soft power‖ is Taiwan‘s message to big bullies.
Three: How does Taiwan teach and tame big bullies noisily roaming? By showing
Taiwan‘s own smallness—democracy in powerless Taiwan works to allow and nourish the
powerless majority—for all to see. Taiwan is exposed at its strategic international crossroads,
welcoming all visitors, staying or no, culturally, democratically, economically.
Here in Taiwan visitors see that acts of violently taking advantage of others soon dissolve
into inter-marriages, into mixing various languages of all those who come and live here.
Semitropical Taiwan has historically been violent in such tumultous transitions of political
tsunamis, economic earthquakes, and cultural typhoons.
Four: Swiss people freely speak three languages, French, German, and English.
Taiwanese people can freely speak at least five, Taiwanese, Mandarin, any aboriginal
language, Japanese, and English, and welcome German and French. Jostling together, these
tongues are on their way to linguistic miscegenation beyond Esperanto in Europe.
265
This is rich humus toward deep literature soon to emerge. The violent inter-coursing of
many nations and cultures catalyzes warm cosmopolitanism in Taiwan. This is shown already
in excellent foods available in excellent varieties, on casual roadsides and in plush
restaurants. Taiwan feeds many cultures.
Five: Taiwan cosmopolitanism democratic is not a melting pot dissolving integrities but a
266
rainbow coalition, a loose federation vibrantly individualistic. In such bustling air of all-
hospitality, Taiwan can show softly, often failing but trying time and again, to various big
cultures how to conduct themselves with warm hands and civilized hearts.

264 Although Joseph Nye, Jr. also uses this term, this term is Taoist, completely independent of his coinage.
265 Chen Li in Taiwan says that ―people or writers in Taiwan are likely to have a more profound understanding and
subtler perception of the ‗beauty of Chinese‘ than people or writers in mainland China . . . to form a more
flexible, energetic, hybridized, and colorful language.‖ Poetry, March 2010, p. 470.
266 ―Rainbow Coalition‖ is also used by Jessie Jackson in his 1984 campaign for US presidency. See David
Hackett Fischer, Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America‟s Founding Ideas, Oxford University
Press, 2005, pp. 690-691. Sadly, USA was and is still not ready for it yet. President Obama today is more
white than colored. With quite high IQ and high hopes, young Obama is achieving quite low and little. ―He
will be a mediocre president,‖ said Howard Zinn, as reported by his website obituary in January 2010. Obama
may be another Mr. Carter decorated with Nobel Peace Prize politically empty. Sad!
 Conclusion 441

Without a stable culture of its own, Taiwan can show China its rut of traditionalism, as
China has instinctively revolted against its own self-rot by wholesale import of foreign
cultures Western, Japanese, and Russian. Free-floating unattached among cultures, Taiwan
can show Japan its risk of wholesale import and imitation of outside cultures Chinese and
Western, forgetting its Shinto soul.
Small and powerless, Taiwan can show big USA its danger of being blinded by its might
military and cultural, to unilaterally bully world neighbors. Pax Romana lasted only two
centuries; Pax Americana has finished its second century. Watch out, USA! The time for your
267
revolution, soft, radical, to cosmopolitan concord, is now, or never!
Six: Robbed and rubbed repeatedly, Taiwan, now polished, shines at the strategic
crossroads international and intercultural, inviting us Taiwan-lovers to polish further and
toughen this gem. How? We must put our house in order. We must root out our corruption,
selfish and uneducated, from our bustling democracy that is the envy of China and Japan. We
must redress our own ecological disasters to cultivate our small plot of land fertile and green.
Seven: Am I dreaming? Well, no human life can survive—much less thrive—without
dreams. It is our dream that composes life to thrive in our struggles to actualize reality. Who
could have imagined metal to fly and float? Thanks to our lone inventors (inventors are
loners) defying constant ridicules, persisting through repeated failures often mortal, metal
now flies and floats routinely.
Now let us look at Taiwan. Is our dream for it ridiculous? Is Taiwan an ant precariously
surviving among bully elephants? Well, small is beautiful and tough as gem, and is powerful,
268
too. A single ant can go into an elephant biting its inner ear, and the elephant is helpless.
Or rather, remember Aesop‘s mouse saving a lion. Small Taiwan can work, precisely with its
shrewd caring warmth, to save the world-lion from its own brutality.
Best of all, no one is threatened by Taiwan so small and strategic. On the contrary, our
dream for our Taiwan is not at all unworthy of embracing by all, for our dream is the world‘s
most cherishable treasure. It is world concord of all with all, young and old, weak and strong!
Everybody is a winner here! Wholeheartedly I must appeal to all Taiwan-lovers to wake up
toward our shared dream such as this, to strive together to fulfill the common dream for
Taiwan and the world.
Taiwan is the world‘s gem shining the beacon of multicultural acceptance, to be an
intercultural democratic model to the big bullies of the world. It is crucial ever to work at this
dream of gem-polishing. Struggling for this beautiful dream of ours is itself good for us, for
Taiwan, and for the world, for this reason.
Taiwan is the intimate invisible self writ large, and the huge invisible world writ small, to
turn both visible. Thus to see Taiwan is to see me and to see the world. We now see all
interrelated breath to breath; polishing Taiwan the gem polishes you and me to polish the
world, for Taiwan is me the gem and world the gem. This is what ―Taiwan the gem of the
world‖ means. Taiwan the world-gem is our new vision and new task, good for us and for the
world. Now, isn‘t storytelling above what makes all this to appear? Doesn‘t such story-
thinking pioneer this world-task?

267 Niall Ferguson‘s beautiful scary portrait of quick collapse of USA must be attended to. ―Complexity and
Collapse,‖ Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010, pp. 18-32.
268 ―A small input to such a [big complex] system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes—what scientists
call ‗the amplifier effect.‘‖ Ibid., p. 25.
442 Kuang-ming Wu

O the sky of our semitropical Taiwan is so high, so vast, and so blue penetrating the
whole world, rural Colorado included, with its prairie homes and unhurried dreamy hills, and
with Debussy‘s distant tunes of dreamy rugged nature in France! We‘ve got just a few tiny
patches of clouds, inviting us all to soar up there! That is our Taiwan our world-sky! O what a
beautiful morning! O what a beautiful day! We‘ve got a beautiful dream, all through us
ahead—for our Taiwan the gem of the world!

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 INDEX

apples, 221, 340, 341

9 applications, 37, 85, 440
Arab world, 314
9/11, 99, 315, 319, 374, 427
Aristotle, 6, 18, 28, 65, 70, 73, 84, 104, 121, 136,
144, 149, 152, 153, 160, 168, 175, 182, 197, 199,
A 205, 208, 245, 259, 260, 271, 272, 277, 284, 290,
294, 296, 311, 319, 324, 330, 353, 361, 364, 385,
abstraction, 9, 419 389, 408, 423, 431, 433, 434, 444
abuse, 75, 102, 134, 253, 319 arousal, 203
accommodation, 147, 423, 430 Asia, 32, 103, 116, 330, 442
accounting, 381 aspiration, 181, 374, 386, 387
achievement, 245, 265, 267 assessment, 218, 317
acquaintance, 76 assumptions, 172, 179, 200, 227, 330, 331, 336, 393,
adaptation, 36 436
adaptations, 373 asylum, 265, 328
adjustment, 82, 328, 373 asymmetry, 276
adulthood, 32, 54, 257 atheists, 22, 31
advertising, 60, 387, 440 atmospheric pressure, 261
aesthetics, 102, 145 atoms, 22, 32, 126, 339
affirming, 275, 422, 423, 425, 426, 435 atrocities, 257, 260
Afghanistan, 235, 247 attachment, 95, 97, 104, 105, 120, 203, 244
Africa, 325 attacks, 239, 242, 249, 278, 314, 320
age, 57, 62, 98, 102, 104, 108, 165, 183, 211, 231, attitudes, 100, 105, 149, 179, 221, 227, 242, 271,
269, 294, 325, 398, 405, 430, 437 370, 408, 420, 436
ageing, 202 attribution, 255
aggression, 212 authenticity, 42, 96, 106, 115, 123, 130, 205, 252,
agriculture, 99, 100, 101, 246 304, 316, 360, 420, 422
airports, 325, 432 authoritarianism, 279
alienation, 132, 326 authorities, 173, 332
alternatives, 35, 225, 238, 240, 242, 249, 252 authority, 34, 100, 173, 210, 225, 253, 433
altruism, 212, 213 authors, 332, 416, 418
ambassadors, 215 awareness, 4, 6, 33, 34, 90, 97, 98, 104, 110, 120,
ambiguity, 62, 63, 162, 354, 400, 439 123, 124, 139, 187, 193, 200, 204, 240, 244, 271,
anarchism, 2, 148, 407 301, 340, 394
anger, 92, 210, 216, 217, 241
anthropology, 10, 17, 142, 330
B
anxiety, 372
appetite, 96, 108, 300, 431
background, 116, 287, 353, 366
446 Index

baggage, 266, 298 Buddhism, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 32, 36, 116, 129, 145,
balanced state, 276 182, 206, 223, 225, 227, 231, 254, 271, 272, 277,
banking, 368 284, 337, 398, 399, 411
bankruptcy, 41 budding, 258
beams, 199, 200 bullying, 74, 344, 401, 442
beauty, 3, 15, 89, 121, 130, 131, 147, 157, 158, 201, burn, 24, 95, 165, 220
216, 254, 259, 273, 274, 287, 324, 335, 336, 337, burning, 35, 52, 171, 245
338, 339, 345, 348, 356, 390, 418, 424, 430, 442 Butcher, 65, 182
behavior, 14, 17, 103, 150, 168, 191, 204, 205, 216,
244, 253, 328, 329, 370, 373, 374, 419
behaviorism, 84 C
behaviors, 25, 185, 204
Beijing, 3 campaigns, 18, 31, 255
beliefs, 36, 101, 304 Canada, 107, 279
belligerent plurality, 2 cancer, 264, 301
Bible, v, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 35, 38, 51, 52, candidates, 314, 320
62, 63, 106, 107, 126, 127, 141, 142, 153, 191, capital punishment, 11, 214, 218, 219, 220
196, 203, 206, 207, 209, 214, 217, 218, 222, 224, capitalism, 74
231, 238, 265, 267, 268, 335, 357, 398 cast, 230, 263, 306, 319
biography, 9, 30, 64, 89, 167, 255, 298, 329, 364, casting, 101, 197
372 castration, 192
biopsychology, 370 catalysis, 9, 435, 437
birding, 229 catalyst, 9, 249, 314, 437
birds, 6, 15, 50, 78, 97, 98, 99, 108, 128, 133, 159, catastrophes, 75
188, 229, 259, 290, 291, 292, 305, 327, 339, 348, cattle, 261, 339
349, 354, 356, 357, 359, 382, 392, 395, 401 Chad, 140, 171, 228, 327, 436
birth, 69, 72, 75, 85, 97, 157, 192, 199, 223, 225, chain of command, 253
271, 272, 273, 293, 325, 391, 434 challenges, 79, 148, 312, 321, 368, 375, 376, 379,
birth control, 225 383, 407
black hole, 85, 213, 227 channels, 309, 320
blame, 14, 18, 211, 294, 405, 413, 433 chaos, 16, 27, 36, 93, 106, 109, 110, 134, 196, 199,
blends, 79, 143, 324, 437 303
blind spot, 370, 371 character, 3, 9, 21, 28, 43, 57, 70, 133, 162, 191,
blindness, 91, 158, 171 208, 228, 236, 238, 244, 245, 250, 255, 259, 260,
blocks, 334 264, 265, 287, 327, 355, 372, 373, 385, 421, 425,
blood, 10, 24, 25, 37, 127, 190, 209, 218, 247, 314, 428
325, 400, 432 charm, 75, 303, 350, 391
bloodshed, 147, 236, 240, 248, 275, 383, 430 chicken, 40
bloodstream, 85, 120 childhood, 5, 14, 67, 77, 196, 202
bonds, 100, 101, 102, 210, 294, 405 children, 6, 25, 32, 33, 45, 51, 54, 64, 65, 66, 73, 79,
bones, 7, 106, 136, 142, 200, 337, 369, 439 126, 127, 130, 133, 143, 149, 196, 203, 207, 210,
borrowing, 142 214, 216, 217, 225, 226, 231, 242, 257, 258, 262,
boys, 160, 163, 241, 257 269, 270, 294, 327, 328, 338, 343, 346, 349, 360,
brain, 84, 93, 141, 370, 371 361, 390, 405, 408
brain functions, 370 Chinese medicine, 3, 94, 192
breakfast, 188 Chinese philosophy, 7, 113, 137, 175, 245, 299, 330,
breathing, 2, 7, 8, 37, 60, 90, 97, 161, 278, 286, 287, 331, 363, 364, 365
291, 301, 343, 347, 353, 390, 415, 417, 422 chopping, 24, 30, 250, 263, 322
breeding, 44, 311 Christianity, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33,
brothers, 214, 239 38, 39, 43, 77, 145, 182, 183, 196, 225, 226, 231,
brutality, 443 232, 233, 258
Christians, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37,
38, 43, 107, 225, 227, 231, 232, 347
 Index 447

City, 101, 107, 182, 191, 198, 225, 263, 335, 341, concrete thinking, 150, 362, 409, 418, 419, 420, 427,
350, 366, 390, 436 430, 435, 436, 438
civil rights, 252, 255 concreteness, 41, 80, 135, 440
civilization, 5, 180, 189, 238, 242, 248, 251, 273, conditioning, 164, 328, 329, 372, 382
441 conference, 318
clarity, 63, 76, 104, 154, 161, 164, 167, 174, 190, confession, 16, 37, 38, 39, 43, 50, 52, 108, 156, 267,
192, 254, 393, 396, 397, 439 323
classical conditioning, 164 confessions, 156
classification, 190, 391 confidence, 98
cleaning, 6, 375 conflict, 150, 225, 255, 259, 260, 301, 380, 383
cleavage, 68, 288 conformity, 303, 310, 314, 315, 421
clients, 213, 371, 372 confrontation, 338
climate, 60, 253, 326, 359, 394 Confucianism, 24, 37, 44, 145, 166, 171, 240, 244,
coercion, 442 246, 247, 254, 255, 331, 366, 375, 381, 382, 421,
cognition, 25, 32, 169 429, 438, 440
cognitive perspective, 328 confusion, 29, 30, 44, 62, 68, 91, 142, 184, 199, 323,
coherence, 3, 4, 5, 7, 16, 48, 59, 67, 88, 110, 111, 336, 337, 411, 435
116, 117, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 142, 180, 195, conjecture, 123
204, 209, 215, 322, 324, 342, 370, 376, 391, 409 conscientiousness, 83, 140
cohesion, 102, 314 conscious activity, 122
collective unconscious, 263 conscious awareness, 124
colonization, 393 consciousness, 123, 124, 186, 263, 264, 272, 301,
coma, 122 328, 356, 374
comedians, 65 consensus, 69, 102, 104, 309, 377
commerce, 296 consent, 73, 263, 312
commercials, 298 conservation, 326
common rule, 73 conspiracy, 99
common sense, 6, 23, 47, 72, 109, 110, 143, 144, Constitution, 70, 312, 320
155, 182, 212, 253, 303, 306, 308, 316, 339, 354, construction, 181, 246
397, 403, 426 consulting, 131, 309
communication, 1, 50, 93, 119, 143, 174, 185, 186, consumers, 102, 103, 125
393 consumption, 103, 240
Communist Party, 248 contingency, 22, 23, 77, 197, 198, 254, 319, 418,
community, 28, 48, 72, 99, 100, 104, 105, 118, 119, 434, 441
120, 121, 133, 143, 153, 159, 175, 186, 189, 252, continuity, 175, 179, 332
289, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 310, 311, 313, contradiction, 2, 73, 148, 215, 216, 217, 272, 290
315, 316, 373, 374, 377, 392, 396 control, 17, 52, 66, 102, 166, 224, 239, 254, 314,
compassion, 29, 31, 42, 74, 75, 141, 166, 204, 221, 343, 368, 393, 430, 431, 442
222, 228, 230, 308 controversies, 2, 169, 198, 368
competition, 74, 102, 309 convention, 7, 72, 169, 171, 182, 183, 330, 364
complexity, 61, 142, 162, 177, 185, 186, 187, 328, convergence, 228, 388
388, 391 conversion, 27, 31, 35, 167, 416
compliance, 156 conviction, 67, 76, 191, 249
components, 125 cooking, 107, 117, 132
composers, 257, 341, 358, 387 corporations, 103
composition, 47, 77, 152, 311, 315, 327, 334, 342, corruption, 420, 427, 443
345, 350, 404, 419 counseling, 13, 44, 141, 228, 263, 329, 370, 371,
comprehension, 206, 215 372, 373, 374
computation, 84, 434 counseling psychology, 370
concentration, 268, 397 counterbalance, 222, 340
conception, 228 coupling, 88
conceptualization, 89, 163, 423 covering, 17, 160, 187, 245
crack, 42, 99, 126, 127, 196, 259, 265, 288, 318
448 Index

craving, 240, 256 demography, 369

creative process, 52, 198 demonstrations, 423
creativity, 115, 116, 118, 179, 189, 202, 232, 266, denial, 56, 148, 248, 277, 384, 402, 407
301, 328, 329, 372, 373, 397 density, 428
credibility, 368 deposits, 343
crime, 30, 105, 177, 208, 210, 218, 219, 225, 241, depression, 11, 73, 128, 156, 204, 207, 235, 266,
242, 412 301, 355, 371
criminals, 24, 413 deprivation, 122
criticism, 7, 8, 53, 60, 68, 69, 134, 152, 304, 305, designers, 426
307, 308, 309, 316, 317, 321, 330, 332, 336, 364, destiny, 78, 79, 80, 81, 174, 188, 289, 319
378, 385, 432 destruction, 100, 221, 235, 242, 245, 249, 272, 313,
cross-fertilization, 307 338, 348
crown, 267 determinism, 228
crying, 40, 54, 245, 257, 440 deterrence, 219, 247
cues, 113 dialogues, 9, 31, 43, 47, 59, 69, 113, 153, 173, 299,
cultivation, 5, 7, 72, 99, 100, 105, 175, 246, 250, 348, 379, 387, 410, 419, 438
253, 425, 440 dichotomy, 94, 131
cultural differences, 84, 161 diet, 94
curiosity, 214, 296, 299, 414, 424, 426 dignity, 53, 205, 238, 316
cycles, 133 directives, 243
disappointment, 392
disaster, 29, 87, 88, 190, 208, 209, 211, 305, 309,
D 310, 312, 318, 319, 330, 432
discipline, 4, 180, 276, 376
daily living, 22, 114, 118, 137, 182, 339 discomfort, 16, 170, 301
dance, 3, 47, 128, 130, 144, 263, 338, 346, 347, 349, discordance, 136
392, 395, 400, 417, 418 discourse, 200, 288, 356, 358
dancers, 349 discrimination, 50, 425
dances, 48, 202, 263, 392, 400, 439 dissatisfaction, 102
danger, 95, 161, 238, 268, 309, 313, 439, 443 dissidents, 329, 372
data communication, 103 dissonance, 280, 347
death penalty, 218, 219, 220, 243, 427 distinctness, 366, 428, 435, 441
deaths, 219, 224, 237, 241, 253, 258, 267, 275, 325, distortions, 69
390, 415, 430 distributive justice, 205, 218
debtors, 107 divergence, 27, 187
decay, 254, 284 divergent thinking, 164
decisions, 101, 316, 430 diversity, 162, 227, 337, 383
deconstruction, 376 division, 160, 364
deduction, 140, 230 doctors, 39, 221, 261, 262, 316, 371
defects, 96, 329, 372 dot-pragmatics, 164, 167, 424
defense, 69, 102, 108, 191, 203, 243, 247, 250, 314, drawing, 32, 52, 55, 189, 238, 258, 347, 434
316, 331, 333 dream, 122, 123, 124, 129, 144, 145, 163, 164, 201,
deficiencies, 226 202, 203, 231, 232, 251, 284, 288, 334, 369, 404,
definition, 65, 88, 90, 109, 150, 161, 164, 235, 239, 405, 422, 443, 444
245, 315, 341, 380, 420 dreaming, 122, 124, 129, 163, 201, 405, 421, 422,
deforestation, 230 443
delivery, 7, 151, 374 dreams, 122, 201, 202, 247, 267, 270, 288, 395, 405,
demagoguery, 7, 252, 309, 310, 318, 420 443
democracy, 59, 73, 74, 75, 141, 146, 147, 174, 205, dynamics, 69, 71, 83, 118, 126, 127, 142, 229, 247,
242, 252, 253, 256, 275, 289, 303, 304, 305, 306, 254, 301, 307, 316, 318, 322, 324, 336, 337, 369,
307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 382, 383, 403, 421, 422, 433, 434
318, 319, 320, 323, 383, 386, 388, 442, 443 dynamism, 127, 128, 301, 422
Democratic Party, 318
democratization, 369
 Index 449

epistemology, 133, 184, 186, 187

E equality, 74, 255
equipment, 103
ears, 50, 128, 138, 188, 201, 246, 247, 283, 340, 341,
ethics, 4, 6, 11, 56, 84, 117, 142, 192, 195, 205, 214,
357, 432
224, 227, 230, 243, 251, 256, 271, 274, 296, 329,
earth, 18, 28, 54, 101, 169, 186, 190, 211, 214, 222,
330, 364, 372, 439
228, 261, 288, 289, 294, 339, 353, 354, 355, 358,
ethnocentrism, 377, 378, 384, 385
406, 421
etiquette, 108, 271
East Asia, 1, 61, 92, 139, 155, 416, 432, 438
Europe, 181, 325, 432, 442
Eastern Europe, 325
evening, 146, 147, 162, 163, 164, 267, 280, 291,
eating, 96, 120, 130, 131, 133, 344, 359
302, 321, 422
echoing, 2, 50, 51, 117, 158, 161, 289, 317
evil, 11, 20, 195, 203, 204, 206, 208, 209, 210, 219,
ecology, 104
222, 224, 226, 232, 235, 250, 251, 252, 259, 260,
economic boom, 390
261, 295, 306, 307, 325, 337, 400, 433, 440
economics, 72, 79, 85, 91, 138, 296, 297, 315
evolution, 71, 82, 126, 187, 197, 251
education, 7, 8, 47, 73, 74, 75, 101, 166, 168, 192,
examinations, 76
237, 238, 244, 249, 250, 253, 255, 274, 296, 310,
exclusion, 149, 226, 408
318, 319, 320, 332, 338, 434, 440
excuse, 310, 415
Education, 6, 8, 45, 65, 88, 152, 173, 192, 315, 318,
execution, 219, 220, 246, 267, 283, 286, 287, 298,
366, 446
312, 402
egalitarianism, 74
extrapolation, 177, 179, 433, 434
egg, 74, 144, 145, 226
Egypt, 107, 122
elaboration, 32, 131, 152, 181, 406, 421 F
elderly, 430
election, 87, 309, 314, 320 facial expression, 278
electricity, 103 factories, 103
elucidation, 9, 91, 92, 283, 356, 420, 435, 437, 440 failure, 123, 197, 248, 253, 254, 314, 322, 325, 356,
email, 267, 321 380, 432
embargo, 102 faith, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 38,
emotion, 90, 91, 92, 203, 219, 229, 300 130, 212, 226, 232, 256
emotional intelligence, 328 family, 33, 35, 45, 66, 72, 73, 89, 96, 99, 100, 101,
emotional reactions, 218 102, 104, 107, 135, 136, 157, 174, 187, 198, 199,
emotions, 33, 90, 92 200, 215, 219, 220, 228, 237, 243, 267, 294, 303,
empathy, 29, 92, 300, 372 305, 311, 315, 321, 327, 338, 341, 356, 366, 380,
employees, 102 400, 401, 404, 405, 413, 421, 434
employment, 102, 220 family members, 72, 102, 136
emptiness, 85, 227, 273 famine, 265
endangered species, 271 fanaticism, 4, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 267
endurance, 95 fantasy, 110
enemies, 11, 29, 38, 198, 199, 212, 214, 215, 216, farmers, 73, 99, 100, 102, 275, 368
217, 220, 240, 245, 249, 257, 262, 291, 431 fear, 171, 201, 207, 226, 236, 239, 240, 246, 258,
enemy combatants, 253, 261 270, 297, 314, 413
energy, 6, 89, 103 fears, 310
engagement, 99, 128, 191, 303, 364, 392, 393 feelings, 25, 54, 90, 91, 95, 228, 251, 328, 335
engineering, 296, 328, 374 feet, 54, 130, 164, 174, 241, 243, 268, 287, 313, 339,
England, 41, 97, 134, 150, 169, 284, 317, 393, 427, 349, 401, 403
436 fetus, 316, 383
entanglements, 41, 263 fever, 371, 394
enthusiasm, 29, 45, 298 fibers, 341, 381, 389
environment, 97, 98, 102, 104, 105, 262, 301, 326, fidelity, 28, 140, 157, 205, 208, 271
368, 430 field theory, 111
environmental impact, 103 Finland, 287
epigenetics, 430 fires, 174, 276, 279
450 Index

firms, 422, 423 genocide, 356

fish, 55, 56, 79, 88, 97, 132, 170, 183, 188, 238, 260, genre, 5, 230, 341
285, 321, 322, 326, 327, 390 genres, 62, 181, 300, 304
fishing, 106 geography, 94, 100, 369
fission, 397 geology, 91
fixation, 376, 379, 383, 409 George Berkeley, 421
flame, 34, 274 Georgia, 230, 340
flavor, 132, 142, 172, 341 Germany, 41, 134, 153, 325, 432
flight, 151, 165, 384 Gestalt, 25, 167, 168, 169
float, 22, 50, 443 Gestalt psychology, 25, 167
floating, 381, 443 gestures, 52
flood, 228, 394 gift, 147, 150, 256, 380
flooding, 142, 353, 354 girls, 160, 249, 257
food, 27, 80, 120, 130, 131, 132, 133, 151, 164, 222, global village, 393
285, 434 gold, 99, 100, 190
forecasting, 429 governance, 72, 166, 255, 309, 347, 368
foreign aid, 249 government, 47, 72, 73, 75, 100, 101, 103, 166, 244,
foreign language, 334 253, 255, 303, 306, 307, 308, 311, 312, 313, 314,
forgetting, 49, 94, 130, 158, 192, 205, 228, 243, 260, 315, 318, 347, 354, 367, 368, 369
269, 282, 334, 346, 356, 384, 401, 426, 443 grades, 261, 276
forgiveness, 217, 232 grammar, 2, 3, 6, 7, 132, 162, 174, 334, 341, 364
formula, 123, 124 grass, 51, 97, 108, 250, 259, 291, 319, 321, 358
fossil, 103, 187 grasses, 319
fragility, 319 grassroots, 315
fragments, 384 gravity, 5, 6, 110, 208
framing, 160, 161, 197, 303, 389 grazing, 250, 291
France, 147, 180, 325, 432, 444 Greece, 75, 208, 254, 332
free market economy, 319 greed, 240, 318, 319
freedom, 9, 18, 20, 39, 104, 127, 141, 161, 162, 207, Greeks, 125, 139, 233, 238, 244, 338
211, 261, 314, 316, 332, 364, 383, 394 green revolution, 225
freezing, 99, 183 grief, 210, 294, 405
friendship, 20, 97, 185, 186, 196, 230, 244, 340, 422 groups, 225, 316, 391
frustration, 209, 241, 242 growth, 17, 69, 70, 99, 106, 118, 126, 127, 151, 164,
fuel, 102, 103, 187 166, 168, 210, 215, 249, 264, 275, 293, 296, 299,
fugue, 384, 386 300, 302, 347, 367, 368, 371, 384, 393, 394, 408,
fulfillment, 36, 130, 196, 240, 267, 400, 401 424, 434
funding, 309 guidance, 72, 283
funds, 83, 106, 181 guilty, 224
gun control, 74
gunpowder, 403, 412
G gut, 120, 251, 309

Galileo, 199, 313

game theory, 79, 85 H
garbage, 105, 149, 408
garble, 114, 378 habitat, 5, 201, 302
gender, 161, 419, 440 habituation, 6, 260
generalization, 151, 164, 384 hands, 30, 43, 54, 74, 89, 130, 207, 212, 221, 240,
generation, 54, 62, 96, 153, 249 263, 281, 282, 283, 285, 287, 292, 314, 317, 321,
genes, 92, 93, 94 327, 349, 388, 443
genetic code, 430 happiness, 54, 136, 144, 149, 188, 205, 206, 208,
genetics, 92, 93, 430 210, 211, 224, 291, 306, 312, 318, 319, 337, 338,
genius, 5, 55, 96, 116, 140, 221, 240, 246, 265, 266, 399, 405, 406, 408, 433
301, 306, 340, 342, 346, 372, 439 harbors, 258
 Index 451

harm, 37, 47, 73, 100, 104, 120, 205, 244, 255, 259, hostility, 247
301, 329, 337, 338, 344, 345, 382 House, 22, 24, 32, 38, 43, 75, 111, 182, 207, 225,
harmony, 47, 73, 104, 120, 205, 244, 255, 301, 329, 253, 317, 329, 345, 377, 444, 445
337, 338, 344, 345, 382 hub, 85
harvesting, 242, 432 hue, 202
hate, 14, 20, 29, 132, 147, 150, 210, 214, 215, 216, Hui Tzu, 40, 55, 56, 106, 163, 186, 228, 383, 404
217, 266, 279, 293, 295, 322, 380, 405, 430 human behavior, 75
Hawaii, 171, 254 human brain, 93, 370
headache, 9, 263, 420 human condition, 367
healing, 16, 34, 39, 46, 79, 85, 97, 106, 107, 122, human dignity, 312
152, 159, 212, 217, 261, 262, 263, 264, 279, 328, human experience, 70, 72
329, 344, 371, 372, 373, 386 human nature, 72, 123, 142, 178, 205, 229, 237, 238,
health, 8, 31, 38, 73, 94, 97, 109, 128, 195, 205, 230, 243, 244, 248, 250, 297, 362, 440
254, 260, 261, 263, 329, 351, 371, 375 human psychology, 372
health care, 375 human reactions, 92
health insurance, 371 human reason, 79, 215
health problems, 260 human rights, 366
heat, 57, 95, 105, 106, 171, 198, 328 human subjects, 103, 370
hedonism, 239 humanism, 179
hegemony, 284, 313, 326 humanitarian aid, 247, 249
height, 107, 125, 413 humility, 226, 357
hermeneutics, 78, 168, 169, 170, 172, 323, 336, 365 humus, 36, 93, 329, 390, 439, 442
highways, 390, 415 husband, 26, 28, 36, 69, 260, 321, 329, 372, 374
historical reason, 331 hypothesis, 79, 110, 168, 340
history, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19,
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 33, 37, 42, 43, 44,
46, 47, 48, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, I
66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79,
80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 94, 100, 104, ideal, 19, 42, 43, 47, 68, 72, 104, 122, 129, 166, 197,
109,110, 113, 118, 119, 126, 128, 134, 137, 138, 198, 227, 244, 247, 252, 267, 280, 304, 306, 311,
139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 150, 151, 315, 361, 369, 371
152, 153, 155, 158, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, idealism, 76, 80, 249, 412
173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 186, 188, ideals, 22, 72, 166, 251, 256, 315, 321, 363, 374
189, 192, 200, 203, 207, 214, 230, 241, 242, 243, identification, 68, 100, 340, 361, 371
245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 255, 260, 264, identity, 76, 96, 124, 155, 188, 227, 240, 272, 296,
265, 267, 268, 276, 285, 288, 289, 291, 292, 294, 301, 303, 340, 395, 421, 422, 435, 439
295, 297, 298, 300, 305, 307, 308, 311, 312, 313, ideology, 6, 68, 72, 109, 303
315, 317, 319, 323, 324, 330, 332, 335, 337, 338, idiosyncratic, 92, 135, 305, 306, 313, 316, 320, 330
347, 348, 351, 354, 357, 358, 359, 360, 362, 364, illumination, 164
365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 373, 375, 376, 377, 379, illusion, 212, 247
380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 386, 387, 388, 389, 404, illusions, 173
407, 409, 410, 411, 412, 415, 419, 424, 427, 428, image, 24, 28, 51, 93, 226, 239, 367, 404
430, 433, 434, 435, 437, 438, 439, 441 imagery, 419, 433
holism, 105 images, 17, 51, 69, 303, 391, 428
homograph, 228, 229, 327, 354, 355 imagination, 5, 129, 186, 362, 384, 391, 395, 398,
homosexuality, 156, 313 415, 416
Hong Kong, 144, 165, 166, 168, 312, 331, 334, 366, imitation, 64, 65, 136, 152, 284, 353, 385, 443
368 immediate situation, 368
hopes, 322, 323, 365, 442 immigrants, 147
hormone, 393 immortality, 21, 25, 207
hospitality, 130, 147, 212, 274, 429, 431, 442 impeachment, 253, 310, 316
hospitals, 31, 242, 247 imperialism, 150, 151, 249, 314, 384
host, 13 imports, 141
imprisonment, 219, 263, 369
452 Index

impulses, 307 interdependence, 129, 134, 307, 373, 416

impulsive, 141, 236 interest groups, 319
incidence, 272, 276 interference, 38, 381
independence, 9, 104, 305, 307, 310, 312, 320, 416, internationalization, 393
442 interpersonal communication, 185
Independence, 311, 312 interpersonal empathy, 374
India, 41, 325 interpersonal relations, 388
Indians, 2, 24, 105, 325 interrelations, 94, 383, 439
indigenous, 31 interrogations, 286
indirection, 62, 67, 98, 160, 171 interval, 268
individualism, 9, 100, 104, 304, 325, 326, 383 interview, 178
individuality, 242, 304, 305, 314, 316 intimacy, 28, 43, 95, 103, 131, 132, 135, 186, 191,
individuation, 264 434
indolent, 106 intimidation, 318
induction, 140, 230 intuition, 76, 264
industrialization, 100 inventors, 443
industry, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 255, 319, investment, 105, 237
368 Iraq, 134, 242, 252, 261, 275, 310, 315, 317, 318,
inequality, 221 320
inevitability, 166, 434 iron, 107
infants, 32, 55, 257 irony, 115, 248, 274, 278, 378, 386, 424, 425, 426,
infinite, 81, 82, 125, 186, 187, 231, 297, 391, 398, 427, 436
427 irradiation, 140
inheritance, 53, 96, 180 Islam, 182, 225
initiation, 16, 115, 269, 279, 328 isolation, 436, 439
injections, 374 Israel, 27, 28, 33, 36, 38
injuries, 329, 373
inner ear, 443
inner world, 267 J
innocence, 32, 53, 55, 164, 183, 222, 232, 307
innovation, 179 Japan, v, 11, 51, 64, 76, 77, 86, 87, 99, 100, 101,
insane, 13, 22, 67, 257, 258, 265, 267, 305, 306, 320, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 133, 190,
328, 372, 390, 413, 415 191, 223, 230, 237, 242, 254, 281, 284, 306, 325,
insanity, 92, 264, 265, 266, 305, 306 326, 327, 331, 367, 391, 417, 425, 430, 443
insects, 291, 356, 357, 391 Jews, 23, 25, 30, 34, 43, 106, 139, 214, 257, 258
insecurity, 27, 252 jobs, 79, 100, 318
insight, 3, 20, 21, 25, 63, 65, 78, 141, 148, 167, 170, joints, 85, 142
179, 337, 371, 380, 413, 414 journalism, 94, 99, 150, 253, 311, 314, 319, 323,
inspiration, 22, 139, 225, 332, 350, 392 324, 373
instability, 266, 328 journalists, 65, 253, 314, 319, 322, 323, 433
instinct, 3, 73, 118, 157, 206, 310 judgment, 18, 19, 20, 24, 34, 53, 78, 83, 107, 149,
institutional change, 105 150, 185, 192, 203, 204, 208, 239, 245, 256, 263,
institutions, 100, 101, 370 272, 297, 298, 312, 313, 323, 331, 406, 407, 408,
instruction, 19, 244, 255, 425 409, 416
instruments, 247, 346, 347, 348 justice, 31, 34, 35, 43, 73, 89, 92, 116, 119, 205, 206,
integrity, 27, 34, 35, 92, 156, 169, 175, 179, 181, 209, 215, 218, 219, 220, 232, 242, 253, 255, 383,
221, 222, 226, 235, 238, 249, 250, 252, 253, 265, 418, 427, 437
267, 304, 334, 371, 372, 395, 434, 435, 441 justification, 181, 298, 413
intelligence, 253, 260, 263, 304, 320, 331, 390
intelligence quotient, 304 K
interaction, 70, 130, 133, 205, 273, 301, 303, 340,
371, 373, 419, 436, 438 killing, 35, 133, 136, 147, 217, 219, 238, 239, 241,
interactions, 72, 91, 394, 438 257, 267, 322, 400, 425
 Index 453

kindergarten, 54 loyalty, 102, 140, 192, 205, 241, 242, 252, 254, 255,
Korea, 325 256, 284, 309, 356, 381, 420
lying, 138, 346

L
M
labeling, 41, 151
labor, 59, 204, 220, 333 Machiavellianism, 246
labour, 288 magazines, 3, 56
lakes, 403, 410, 411 majority, 84, 205, 289, 303, 304, 305, 310, 313, 318,
land, 87, 99, 100, 107, 153, 154, 157, 247, 274, 306, 319, 320, 442
326, 344, 386, 398, 410, 443 management, 84, 88, 102, 130, 132, 279, 365, 414
language, 3, 6, 31, 38, 114, 118, 120, 128, 134, 141, Mandarin, 442
156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 169, 173, 174, 179, 198, manipulation, 104, 326, 327, 341
263, 264, 273, 274, 290, 291, 341, 359, 364, 367, manners, 191, 398
376, 378, 391, 393, 415, 416, 428, 431, 442 manufactured goods, 254
languages, 28, 142, 161, 173, 181, 442 manufacturing, 101, 295
Latin America, 362 market, 74, 103, 131, 142, 167, 218, 386
laughing, 149, 183, 396, 405, 409 market economy, 74
laws, 19, 36, 37, 87, 110, 111, 126, 195, 253, 308, Mars, 154, 267
313, 395, 435 Martin Heidegger, 17, 59, 113, 114, 124, 128, 161,
lawyers, 433 177, 326
leaks, 277, 435 Marx, 132
learning, 19, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 39, 43, 45, 59, 64, materialism, 371
65, 71, 74, 93, 94, 126, 130, 137, 142, 152, 154, mathematics, 11, 63, 70, 79, 84, 85, 87, 91, 134, 140,
155, 158, 166, 172, 226, 237, 277, 285, 297, 299, 142, 282, 294, 295, 342, 370, 403, 411
355, 373, 381, 385, 388, 394, 425, 430, 439 matrix, 4, 169, 363, 431, 432
Legalism, 166, 238, 245, 246, 247, 382 meals, 404
leisure, 109, 291 meanings, 55, 57, 61, 64, 77, 87, 114, 119, 124, 126,
leisure time, 109 130, 141, 143, 148, 161, 162, 164, 167, 168, 170,
lethargy, 169, 255 177, 229, 236, 247, 273, 330, 400, 407, 420, 436
liberalism, 307, 318, 378 measurement, 87, 93, 341
liberation, 263 measures, 246, 340, 341, 368
life changes, 163 meat, 200
life-milieu, 3, 11, 48, 97, 177, 188, 200 media, 94, 225, 393
life-patterns, 79, 100, 101 mediation, 6
lifestyle, 5, 63, 100, 104, 109, 329, 373, 393, 394 meditation, 5, 6, 44, 158, 200, 204, 232, 244, 253,
life-thinking, 2, 177, 362, 364, 416, 438 286, 287, 336, 347, 356, 362
lifetime, 102, 185, 322, 413 melody, 47, 48, 91, 281, 287, 302, 340, 345, 346,
limitation, 181, 440 347, 350
line, 26, 37, 76, 108, 110, 133, 161, 171, 221, 245, melon, 114, 378
249, 253, 254, 301, 310, 348, 356, 377, 401, 434, melt, 247, 281, 292, 323, 395, 415, 418
435, 436, 439 membership, 367
linen, 66, 67, 196 memorizing, 167
linkage, 375, 377, 389, 407 memory, 156, 169, 347
links, 16, 101, 296, 332, 362 men, 19, 24, 33, 34, 37, 40, 57, 65, 68, 108, 127,
liquidate, 246 139, 144, 168, 188, 198, 208, 261, 276, 289, 306,
listening, 14, 15, 16, 48, 98, 125, 128, 211, 226, 229, 309, 312, 388, 390, 413, 427
235, 262, 290, 291, 300, 339, 340, 354, 355, 373, Mencius, 37, 53, 60, 64, 68, 70, 71, 106, 130, 133,
396 144, 154, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170,
literacy, 31, 39 171, 174, 188, 190, 202, 204, 212, 213, 227, 228,
liver, 132, 211, 240, 294, 405 229, 236, 237, 238, 239, 243, 246, 250, 274, 275,
local authorities, 96 278, 285, 292, 310, 311, 312, 333, 354, 356, 361,
logical reasoning, 365
454 Index

363, 365, 384, 387, 388, 397, 424, 425, 429, 430, multimedia, 253, 255
431, 436, 440 murder, 122, 216, 218, 220, 224, 284, 349
mental disorder, 328 musicians, 54, 327, 346, 347, 350, 351, 414, 415
mental health, 109, 373, 375 Muslims, 85, 214
mental illness, 267, 326 mutuality, 31, 85, 132, 158, 160, 161, 228, 237, 297,
Mercury, 40 329, 370, 373
Merleau-Ponty, 51, 71, 89, 115, 130, 160, 181, 182, myopia, 236, 239, 241, 246, 249, 250, 371
200, 294, 295, 299, 300, 369, 370, 417, 419, 431, myth, 3, 64, 72, 134, 136, 137, 144, 145, 189, 200,
434, 438 258, 367
metaphor, 119, 134, 135, 167, 169, 198, 199, 200, mythology, 18, 22, 36, 109, 110, 130, 134, 191, 222
275, 299, 315, 337, 378, 415, 423, 424, 427, 436,
438
methodology, 91, 92, 114, 362, 364, 374, 417 N
Mexico, 221
microscope, 126 narratives, 4, 5, 380
military, 73, 74, 240, 246, 253, 255, 304, 313, 367, nation, 48, 105, 147, 242, 287, 308, 313, 314, 368,
442, 443 393
milk, 270, 302, 372, 415 National Public Radio, 320
millipede, 124 national security, 309
mimesis, 136 natural gas, 103
minority, 206, 303, 304, 307, 312, 313, 320 natural laws, 19, 195
miscarriage, 219, 220 natural sciences, 19
missions, 31 nausea, 91, 277
misunderstanding, 94, 142 needy, 26, 35, 212
mixing, 94, 103, 110, 114, 132, 435, 442 neglect, 61, 78, 170, 186, 243, 318, 333, 369
model, 220, 443 Netherlands, 245, 248, 293, 324
modernity, 102, 104 network, 99, 103, 117, 118, 182
modernization, 104 networking, 118
modulations, 152, 386 neutral stimulus, 164
modus operandi, 153, 277, 337, 382, 387, 420, 423 next generation, 187
mold, 125, 279, 373, 441 Nietzsche, 62, 77, 133, 137, 152, 153, 168, 169, 278,
molds, 101, 211, 294, 405 281, 291, 301, 365, 378, 385, 386
money, 74, 92, 101, 195, 223, 262, 277, 314, 317, nightmares, 122
319, 321, 323, 325, 422, 432 No Child Left Behind, 315
moral behavior, 215 no voice, 108
moral standards, 75 Nobel Prize, 110, 159, 328
morality, 124, 145, 215, 232, 238, 239, 245, 337, noise, 103, 284, 319
338, 401, 413, 433 nostalgia, 166
morning, 14, 46, 79, 97, 99, 115, 139, 146, 147, 162, novelty, 45, 79, 88, 109, 116, 119, 141, 167, 168,
163, 164, 188, 189, 267, 285, 298, 321, 322, 329, 179, 195, 257
358, 359, 414, 444 NPR, 267, 309, 315, 317
morphology, 364, 388 nuclear weapons, 366
Moses, 26, 30, 52, 231 nursing, 228, 257, 327, 372
mothers, 89, 97, 149, 185, 193, 259, 327, 408
motif, 230 O
motion, 51, 272, 273, 290, 421, 433
motivation, 188, 259 obedience, 338
motives, 259, 291 objective logic, 124
mountains, 52, 345, 355, 394 objective reality, 228, 327, 372
movement, 51, 83, 97, 105, 287, 310, 339, 340, 341, objectivism, 8, 124, 125, 370, 371, 372, 374, 375
347, 349, 425, 433 objectivity, 62, 69, 80, 91, 93, 94, 95, 104, 173, 191,
multiculturalism, 391 193, 229, 295, 303, 331, 371, 372, 374, 375, 377,
multidimensional, 203 412
 Index 455

obligation, 9, 215, 217, 221, 225, 226, 235, 356 performance, 48, 62, 64, 71, 72, 77, 82, 165, 187,
observations, 19, 164 222, 278, 287, 293, 294, 320, 329, 337, 341, 342,
obstruction, 66, 335, 367 347, 349, 372
oceans, 225, 355, 411, 417 performers, 302, 334, 342, 349, 351, 358, 359
offenders, 238 perpetration, 251, 259
oil, 102, 103, 273, 315 perpetrators, 223, 235, 236, 238, 241
Oklahoma, 4, 15, 47, 52, 138, 190 personal choice, 304
openness, 30, 32, 35, 88, 376, 377, 409 personal identity, 156
opportunism, 244, 382 personality, 169, 329, 372
oppression, 247, 308 personhood, 419, 422
oral tradition, 18, 145, 151 persuasion, 7, 166, 247, 266, 267, 354, 389, 420, 427
order, 7, 14, 37, 52, 59, 64, 75, 105, 109, 111, 118, Peru, 74
119, 124, 125, 126, 178, 180, 181, 186, 190, 197, pessimists, 201
227, 238, 239, 251, 259, 287, 316, 321, 323, 332, pharmaceuticals, 103
333, 340, 364, 367, 379, 412, 433, 443 pharmacology, 84, 371
organism, 24, 195 phenomenology, 29, 123, 185, 224, 295, 356, 365,
orientation, 99 416
originality, 54, 65 Philippines, 74
ossification, 155, 158 philosophers, 9, 41, 89, 118, 119, 122, 131, 137, 161,
otherness, 123, 130 299, 307, 310, 330, 331, 365, 370, 376, 377, 379,
ownership, 100, 219 412, 431
photographs, 160, 389
physical sciences, 91
P physicalism, 300
physics, 6, 17, 71, 84, 85, 91, 109, 110, 126, 182,
packaging, 152, 162, 163, 385 370, 375
pain, 4, 14, 26, 78, 128, 141, 157, 159, 166, 190, physiology, 17, 84, 91, 93, 141, 185, 370
195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, piano, 50, 124, 258, 342, 346
205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 216, 220, Picasso, 6, 116, 191, 266, 267
221, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 231, 232, 233, 235, plants, 49, 103, 344, 355
236, 243, 245, 253, 259, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, pleasure, 5, 11, 13, 81, 110, 146, 152, 157, 165, 195,
267, 268,312, 324, 338, 349, 356, 383, 393, 400, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 256, 344, 386, 412
401, 402, 411, 412, 413, 415, 419, 425, 431, 432, pluralism, 252
433 poetry, v, 2, 3, 4, 11, 27, 47, 51, 57, 77, 80, 84, 93,
paintings, 3, 47, 182, 185, 286, 329, 337, 338, 350, 94, 115, 117, 119, 128, 137, 144, 145, 161, 162,
372, 417 168, 253, 255, 267, 274, 280, 290, 311, 324, 326,
paints, 67, 191, 286 337, 342, 344, 353, 354, 358, 359, 375, 387, 388,
Pakistan, 249 390, 403, 415, 428
palindrome, 127 police, 205, 412
paradigm, 71, 197, 199 political parties, 101
paradigm shift, 71, 199 political power, 253
parallel, 37, 62, 204, 328, 434 politics, 4, 11, 59, 72, 73, 75, 117, 132, 140, 166,
parasite, 266 220, 240, 296, 297, 311, 347, 366, 368, 369, 396,
parental care, 72 424, 434
parenting, 77, 79, 127 pollution, 103, 105, 326, 327, 334
parents, 8, 29, 33, 54, 69, 149, 183, 187, 190, 202, poor, 20, 26, 74, 108, 118, 132, 147, 167, 206, 208,
203, 206, 207, 210, 211, 250, 263, 271, 275, 294, 211, 213, 221, 223, 250, 256, 262, 274, 284, 350
346, 388, 405, 408, 409, 434 population, 224, 249, 368, 369
parity, 370 population growth, 368
particles, 89, 353, 355, 396 portfolios, 392
patriotism, 255, 306, 309 portraits, 286
Pentagon, 256, 257 posture, 126, 128, 149, 381, 408
perceptions, 88, 143, 162, 383
456 Index

poverty, 68, 195, 221, 222, 226, 249, 325, 355, 390, rancid, 389, 415
411 range, 88, 141, 252, 397, 417
pragmatism, 8, 147, 244, 362, 377, 378, 379, 382, rash, 238
383, 389, 408, 409 rationality, 22, 203, 254
praxis, 6, 8, 26, 37, 38, 42, 44, 65, 168, 188, 363, reactions, 7, 52, 92
382, 421 reading, 1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 29, 48, 49, 52, 57, 63, 64, 70,
prayer, 217, 262, 347 90, 114, 152, 157, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 268,
predictability, 343 279, 281, 282, 287, 297, 317, 321, 322, 323, 324,
prediction, 79, 242 331, 332, 333, 336, 362, 363, 364, 365, 389, 401,
preference, 137, 416 403, 428, 432
prejudice, 53, 91, 339 realism, 41, 191, 376, 377, 382
pre-planning, 337 reality, 48, 123, 125, 129, 144, 182, 188, 229, 238,
presidency, 305, 318, 442 295, 317, 327, 344, 372, 378, 379, 390, 415, 416,
president, 73, 74, 316, 320, 366, 443 443
prisoners, 134, 253 reasoning, 18, 74, 87, 132, 148, 230, 243, 260, 299,
privacy, 252, 256, 313, 315, 320, 325 324, 365, 379, 383, 407, 412
production, 368 recall, 172, 184, 185, 186, 187
profit, 102, 246, 277, 326 recalling, 185
profits, 230, 245, 262, 315 reception, 7, 321, 432
program, 189, 247, 366 reciprocity, 141, 205, 235, 272, 425
proliferation, 396 recognition, 21, 25, 341, 417
promoter, 73 recollection, 185, 334
propaganda, 73, 309, 317, 318, 320 reconcile, 20, 312
properties, 89, 150, 289, 319 reconstruction, 242
proposition, 154, 422, 426 recycling, 103, 104
prosperity, 102, 210, 240 reductionism, 169
psychoanalysis, 77, 329 reflection, 16, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 57, 58, 69, 75, 78,
psychologist, 130, 156, 369, 374 83, 84, 91, 106, 117, 143, 151, 203, 236, 238,
psychology, 4, 11, 17, 84, 87, 88, 90, 91, 94, 121, 241, 300, 321, 323, 328, 356, 365, 370, 432
122, 141, 154, 185, 190, 296, 300, 328, 329, 362, reflexivity, 214
363, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375 regenerate, 169
psychopharmacology, 329 region, 175, 334, 369, 393, 394
psychosis, 157 regulations, 253
psychosomatic, 228 rehearsing, 66, 70, 99, 271, 346, 425
psychotherapy, 13, 14, 167, 212, 329, 371, 372, 373 rejection, 27, 30, 244, 272
public awareness, 313 relationship, 38, 162
public education, 255, 320 relatives, 240
public opinion, 173, 174, 311 relativism, 11, 45, 94, 109, 111, 113, 146, 147, 148,
pulse, 99, 418 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 362, 363, 375, 376, 377,
punishment, 63, 208, 218, 219, 220, 231, 232, 245 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388,
389, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 413, 419, 429, 430
relativity, 6, 117, 134, 276
Q relevance, 181, 272
reliability, 343
quantitative research, 92 relief, 101
query, 4, 20, 21, 31, 66, 106, 175, 200, 250, 357, 374 religion, 22, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 42, 43, 44, 57,
questioning, 209, 210, 211, 296, 333, 360 100, 121, 145, 153, 159, 182, 199, 207, 211, 225,
226, 227, 232, 233, 260, 261, 262, 264, 267, 284,
R 291, 304, 311, 337, 338, 339, 367, 417, 439
renewable energy, 103
race, 30, 429 repair, 104, 258
radio, 102, 279, 314, 390 repetitions, 79, 250, 291
rain, 18, 221, 395, 415 replication, 70, 72, 298
 Index 457

reprocessing, 82, 170 scores, 72, 183

Republican Party, 74 search, 14, 21, 29, 89, 207, 277, 308, 322, 332, 366,
resentment, 102, 317 380
reserves, 149 searching, 6, 29, 149, 226, 408
resilience, 238 security, 102, 242, 247, 252, 311, 317, 383
resolution, 23, 43, 226, 263 seed, 242, 314, 321, 383, 395
resonance, ix, 1, 61, 70, 133, 142, 167, 168, 186, seeding, 311
243, 330, 355, 377, 387 seedlings, 162, 164, 166, 275
resources, 100, 220, 368, 374 self-awareness, 125, 128
respect, 22, 39, 47, 99, 102, 103, 105, 169, 190, 191, self-consciousness, 123, 129, 156, 296, 301
256, 270, 271, 282, 307, 347, 361, 388 self-consistency, 310
retrospection, 82, 184 self-control, 238
returns, 274, 279 self-descriptions, 303
rhetoric, 7, 9, 76, 165, 278, 354, 428 self-destruction, 254
rhythm, 2, 47, 48, 65, 72, 79, 82, 91, 99, 118, 126, self-enhancement, 158
167, 168, 169, 255, 301, 302, 310, 330, 343, 345, self-expression, 44, 93, 124, 125, 157, 239, 240, 244,
346, 347, 353, 355, 359, 417, 418 255, 314
right to life, 252, 316, 383 self-fertilization, 303
risk, 35, 102, 161, 167, 238, 244, 304, 306, 308, 311, self-identity, 123, 124, 239, 240, 296, 297, 298, 303,
313, 363, 367, 441, 443 422
rolling, 82, 157, 221, 257 self-knowledge, 76, 185, 186, 190, 300, 317, 355,
routines, 44, 99, 167, 406, 421, 426 425
Russia, 41, 50, 325, 332 self-portrait, 298
self-reflection, 125, 155, 156, 184, 301, 338, 408,
425
S self-understanding, 35, 298
self-view, 190
safety, 103, 105, 149, 245, 252, 312 senescence, 72, 391
saliva, 382 senses, 24, 114, 119, 130, 131, 158, 177, 202, 213,
salt, 216, 351 275, 354, 359, 362, 363, 379, 390, 417, 419, 426,
Salvation Army, 108 428, 429, 439
sarcasm, 124, 278 sensing, 76, 161, 247, 302, 419, 421
satisfaction, 83, 133, 141, 146, 154, 205, 238, 240, sensitivity, 57, 99, 106, 124, 147, 154, 158, 160, 161,
286, 318, 416 165, 166, 167, 170, 172, 174, 203, 212, 227, 228,
scandal, 21, 22, 23, 24, 33, 43, 44, 45, 46, 223, 253, 243, 246, 255, 300, 309, 325, 349, 356, 374, 375,
317, 414, 420 393, 420, 425, 431, 437, 439
scatter, 138, 140, 324 separation, 98, 104, 169, 198, 311, 419, 431
scattering, 51 sex, 28, 29, 130, 138, 156, 226, 239, 337, 419, 427,
schema, 77, 294, 305 440
schizophrenia, 312, 323 sexism, 43, 131
scholarship, 32, 60, 92, 110, 181, 187, 199, 300, 330, sexual identity, 300
331, 332, 360, 396, 397, 402, 416 sexuality, 225, 226, 419
school, 32, 60, 74, 101, 168, 170, 171, 247, 249, 253, shame, 101, 242, 405, 413
305, 436 shaping, 52, 64, 74, 102, 105, 141, 155, 156, 158,
science, 2, 4, 11, 17, 18, 45, 70, 71, 74, 80, 84, 86, 169, 172, 174, 200, 211, 214, 237, 272, 358, 371,
87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 99, 100, 103, 104, 393
105, 109, 110, 111, 128, 130, 134, 137, 138, 140, shares, 224, 311, 365, 377
144, 145, 167, 180, 181, 188, 189, 190, 197, 199, sharing, 27, 100, 118, 158, 159, 169, 227, 383
257, 261, 270, 271, 274, 275, 296, 300, 302, 327, sheep, 29, 74, 204, 205, 207, 308, 318
328, 329, 335, 338, 341, 370, 374, 375, 377, 412, shelter, 13, 57, 344
430, 435 shock, 2, 32, 49, 97, 175, 207, 393, 394
scientific knowledge, 414 siblings, 5, 22, 407
scientific method, 90, 91, 374, 378, 437 signals, 148, 162, 407
scientific progress, 103
458 Index

signs, 130, 239, 253, 276 story-thinking, ix, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14,
silence, 2, 16, 31, 34, 38, 45, 50, 51, 56, 57, 99, 169, 16, 18, 22, 25, 29, 44, 53, 57, 77, 92, 117, 121,
183, 209, 257, 258, 259, 268, 269, 281, 282, 283, 133, 135, 140, 154, 159, 165, 171, 181, 183, 184,
284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 187, 246, 251, 281, 282, 292, 293, 295, 298, 322,
335, 336, 339, 341, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 324, 330, 335, 336, 341, 353, 359, 362, 363, 364,
350, 351, 353, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 363, 365, 379, 381, 388, 416, 417, 422, 428, 429, 430,
389, 399, 400, 410, 411, 413, 415, 424, 426, 439 432, 433, 437, 438, 439, 444
skills, 245, 326 strain, 108, 354
skin, 21, 93, 193, 200, 377 strategic position, 247
smiles, 185, 227, 256, 257, 258, 344, 358, 392 strategies, 244, 247, 256, 426
social contract, 314 strategy, 64, 245, 246, 409
social influence, 91 strength, 34, 108, 147, 233, 236, 239, 247, 249, 257,
social influences, 91 261, 264, 266, 267, 350, 378
social psychology, 373 stress, 74, 121, 139, 169, 212, 262, 276, 280, 330,
soil, 87, 100, 102, 104, 108, 190, 321, 324, 355, 389, 350, 364, 426, 435
432, 439 stretching, 182, 335, 343, 360, 388
solidarity, 102, 377, 386, 388 string theory, 71
solitude, 157, 425 stroke, 116, 221, 240, 260
South Africa, 379 students, 13, 45, 64, 164, 166, 168, 213, 280, 304,
sovereignty, 73, 261, 273, 314, 383 305, 310, 313
Soviet Union, 332 subjectivity, 69, 80, 93, 161, 193, 229, 300, 303,
space, 6, 11, 17, 60, 70, 71, 73, 85, 87, 103, 117, 313, 327, 372, 377
118, 124, 126, 140, 143, 162, 177, 183, 184, 185, succession, 442
186, 187, 276, 298, 368, 376, 381, 389, 390, 395, suicide, 92, 94, 192, 241, 254, 267, 277, 327, 356,
410, 419, 434 375
spacetime, 140 summer, 403
Spain, 41, 325 Sun, 107, 137, 144, 216, 236, 245, 246, 247, 249,
special relativity, 117 287
species, 57, 92, 94, 133, 212, 213, 228, 230, 251, supernatural, 64
252, 326, 327, 391 supply, 63, 179, 254, 332
specter, 297, 329, 372 Supreme Court, 316, 320
speculation, 32, 83, 229 survival, 57, 102, 190, 310, 315, 324
speech, 3, 119, 120, 160, 168, 289, 317, 358, 399 swelling, 81
speed, 22, 103, 270, 347, 434 switching, 98, 126
speed of light, 22 Switzerland, 442
spine, 210, 265, 293, 405 symbolism, 16
spontaneity, 118, 123, 124, 125, 130, 161, 166, 171, symbols, 165, 264, 332
243, 297, 310, 319, 350, 356, 357, 358, 361, 371 sympathy, 3, 227
sports, 101, 102, 296, 323 symptom, 121
standards, 19, 75, 241, 440 symptoms, 371
stars, 2, 154, 291, 340 synthesis, 168, 301, 303, 364, 434, 435
starvation, 225 syphilis, 258
state-owned enterprises, 368
statistics, 84, 88, 221
statutes, 37, 73, 282 T
sterile, 416
stimulus, 164, 276 tactics, 88, 244, 247, 249
stock, 40, 71, 149, 231, 360, 367, 396 Taiwan, v, 1, 3, 31, 61, 66, 92, 139, 155, 193, 325,
stomach, 187, 259, 264 363, 366, 368, 369, 416, 417, 432, 438, 441, 442,
storms, 261, 344, 346 443, 444
story-adding, 3, 4 tax incentive, 103
story-hearing, 1, 3, 4, 16, 52, 292, 321, 360, 422 taxation, 368
story-notions, 162, 164, 165, 215, 364 taxonomy, 391
teachers, 13, 74, 226, 237, 285, 290, 346
 Index 459

teaching, 8, 36, 141, 166, 274 twist, 49, 119, 221, 258, 260, 272, 278, 397
temperament, 216, 404
tension, 27, 187
tensions, 368, 374 U
territory, 56, 88, 90, 119, 246
terrorism, 68, 253, 271, 324, 325, 348, 432 UK, 51, 439
texture, 170, 323, 345 uncertainty, 163
therapeutic approaches, 372 unconditioned, 164
therapy, 13, 14, 64, 122, 266, 279, 301, 328, 329, unemployment, 320, 368
370, 372, 373 uniform, 150, 307, 380
Thomas Hobbes, 73, 250, 311 unilateralism, 74, 253, 309, 310, 318
Thomas Kuhn, 188, 199 United States, 120, 367, 445
thoughts, 52, 74, 78, 135, 156, 164, 170, 202, 262, universality, 4, 83, 135, 383, 420, 440
266, 267, 313, 331, 332, 386, 407, 415 universe, 6, 17, 79, 85, 104, 134, 139, 140, 182, 339,
threat, 198, 247, 316 391, 396
threats, 173, 256 universities, 330
threshold, 162 urban areas, 368
tin, 15, 16, 190, 351 urbanization, 100
tobacco, 255, 316, 319
toddlers, 54, 382, 388 V
tones, 278, 428
tonic, 264, 328 vacuum, 179, 349
tornadoes, 87 vapor, 89, 90, 284, 394
torture, 122 variations, 79, 249, 391
Toyota, 102, 103 vegetables, 94
trade, 138, 277, 383, 414 vehicles, 103
tradition, 18, 27, 28, 33, 35, 47, 52, 60, 83, 104, 106, vibration, ix, 1, 353, 396
108, 115, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 179, 180, victims, 218, 219, 240
187, 230, 242, 248, 261, 309, 310, 312, 324, 330, Vietnam, 134, 309
334, 340, 420, 434 village, 35, 38, 100, 101, 163, 204, 249, 275
traditionalism, 37, 52, 310, 311, 436, 439, 443 violence, 11, 73, 74, 75, 141, 221, 235, 236, 237,
training, 247, 255 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247,
traits, 100, 253, 280, 376 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 256, 257, 258, 259,
transcendence, 145, 184, 271, 281 262, 263, 283, 322, 337, 347, 400, 417, 425, 441,
transcription, 61 442
transference, 61 violent crime, 368
transformation, 272, 379 viscera, 425
transistor, 102 vision, 63, 66, 68, 121, 131, 157, 158, 198, 206, 340,
transitions, 442 341, 342, 366, 368, 396, 397, 438, 443
translation, 4, 10, 59, 60, 61, 63, 73, 93, 114, 118, vocabulary, 114, 177, 338, 377, 386
121, 131, 142, 151, 155, 160, 161, 165, 166, 174, voice, 34, 50, 189, 222, 277, 357, 358, 376, 416
177, 186, 204, 224, 228, 254, 276, 289, 312, 330,
348, 349, 385, 387, 424, 429
transparency, 279 W
transportation, 100, 103
trees, 15, 25, 52, 57, 76, 125, 128, 154, 284, 289, waking, 121, 123, 129, 130, 301
290, 291, 292, 326, 331, 358, 389, 395, 417, 431 walking, 26, 74, 99, 123, 124, 130, 168, 221, 273,
trends, 3, 77, 161, 168, 247 279, 280, 284, 343, 348, 351, 358, 359, 425
tribes, 220, 339, 340 war, 20, 68, 79, 85, 96, 134, 163, 235, 237, 241, 242,
trust, 203, 208, 231, 244, 283, 310 245, 246, 247, 249, 250, 252, 253, 271, 309, 313,
trustworthiness, 422 318, 337, 348, 394, 429
tuberculosis, 371 war years, 96
Turkey, 248 waste, 103, 105, 121, 246, 250, 302, 440
460 Index

watches, 433 worldview, 174, 188, 282

wavelengths, 370 worry, 152, 221, 258, 385, 401
weakness, 34, 233, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 244, writing, 1, 2, 8, 47, 48, 49, 52, 63, 64, 95, 97, 110,
245, 248, 250, 251, 256, 257, 258, 259 120, 138, 143, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158,
wealth, 42, 102, 107, 260, 261, 277 159, 160, 165, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175,
weapons, 74, 251, 252, 253, 348 183, 189, 191, 192, 258, 266, 279, 280, 295, 297,
weapons of mass destruction, 251, 253, 348 298, 299, 304, 323, 360, 362, 370, 402, 416, 417,
web, 77, 168, 195, 255, 297, 386 422, 428, 429, 441
weeping, 71, 206, 233
welfare, 73, 166, 240
Western philosophy, 7, 32, 76, 113, 114, 115, 131, X
282, 299, 364, 365, 378, 379, 385, 389, 412, 440,
441 xenophobia, 394, 436
wholesale, 21, 24, 179, 250, 251, 393, 437, 443
wild animals, 240 Y
wilderness, 29, 189, 222, 226, 230, 253, 273, 416,
440 yang, 286
wind, 32, 51, 56, 93, 121, 124, 126, 139, 142, 161, yarn, 22, 142, 222
197, 284, 286, 287, 290, 291, 292, 319, 343, 353, yeast, 103
354, 357, 394, 395 young women, 160
winning, 54, 247, 254, 256, 319, 396
winter, 97, 98, 99, 120, 347, 389
withdrawal, 146, 149, 344, 408 Z
women, 277, 309, 390
wood, 110, 191, 250 zoology, 110
workers, 102, 368
workplace, 101
World War I, 368