The Dao of Inter-Cultural Commensurability

I've been thinking more about the possibilities of inter-cultural commensurability since my last post on the topic.  A thought has come to me that I want to posit and explore here:

The entire topic of commensurability/incommensurability is, essentially, a Western problematique.  It is generally not an issue in pre-Qin Chinese thought and is premised on a kind of oppositional thinking that is largely alien to classical Chinese thinking.  If this is true - and I look forward to comments and critiqes from readers - a certain irony would follow, at least for those who want to argue that "Chinese culture" and "Western culture" are basically incommensurable, insofar as the very assertion, by using a Western concept, would undermine the claim.  But let's dig into the argument...

The first, best place to start is Zhuangzi.  I tend to read chapter one as a discourse on incommensurability - but one that ultimately sets up a further claim of a kind of commensurability within incommensurability (a classic Daoist reversal thing...).  At the opening of the chapter, the author draws a mental picture of fantastic creatures - a giant fish, an immense bird - beyond our comprehension.  And then a few passages later has a brief exchange of words between two more mundane creatures (Graham translation):

A cicada and a turtle-dove laughed at it, saying, 'We keep flying till we're bursting, stop when we get to an elm or sandalwood, and sometimes are dragged back to the ground before we're there.  What's all this about being ninety thousand miles up when he travels south'?

蜩與學鳩笑之曰：「我決起而飛，槍 榆、枋，時則不至而控於地而已矣，奚以之九萬里而南為？」

The cicada and the turtle-dove can simply not comprehend the vast and mysterious super-creatures.  The latter are outside the knowledge of the former.  And, to make this point plain, the author has a quail make the same kind of statement a bit further along, and then states (Hinton translation):

Such is the dispute between large and small.

此小大之辯也

It is not just that the small cannot understand the big, but that we cannot use the experience of the small to come to know the experience of the big.  A kind of incommensurability.  And this, as we will see in a moment, presumably runs in the other direction well: we cannot use the experience big to come to know the experience of the small.

Each thing has its own unique position in, and movement through, the totality of all things (which we will call dao - way).  That, at least, is how I have tended to read this passage from chapter two (Watson translation):

Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable.  There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable.  For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Xishi, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one.

物固有所然，物固有所可。無物不然，無物不可。故為是舉莛與楹，厲與西施，恢恑憰怪，道通為一。

All things in Way have their own unique presence and reality and sufficiency in Way.  We cannot use the quality of one thing as a standard to measure other things.  This could be taken as a radical incommensurability, operating not at the level of culture, but at the level of each individual thing in Way.  Gotta love that Zhuangzi: always tossing out some truly radical ideas...

But....but...notice that last line above.  "The Way makes them all into one."  There is a commonality to all things.  They are the same in their radical uniqueness.  And also in their coincidence in Way.  What is important for understanding is not hierarchical standards of certain qualities (i.e. "more" or "less" beautiful) but, rather, the synchronicity of of things in Way.  Indeed, it is the presence of each thing in and of itself, and all together, that defines any particular moment of Way.  Each thing has an equal importance in that definitional work.  No one thing can simply define the others.

And that is a kind of commensurability, to the extent that it suggests that, while we cannot use the quality or experience of one thing to judge another, we must be open to including each and everything in any understanding of our Way-context.  I am defined by all of the things around me right now: the computer screen in front of me; the tree outside my window; the student center off to the west; etc.  I can't really know my moment in Way without opening my perception to all of these other things.  They are, or should be, constitutive of my understanding.  They all relate to me in the moment. 

Or maybe not.  I am fairly confident in arguing that Zhuagzi puts forward a notion of radical incommensurability that operates at the level of each indiviudal thing in and of itself, and is not, obviously, limited in any meaningful way by something called "culture."  I think, but am somewhat less confident, that this could suggest a kind of commensurability within incommensurability.  But I will wait for comments and critiques before I try to make more of that contention....

Long story short: there is no reason to believe that "culture" is a meaningful concept for Zhuangzi.  He is arguing on an intra-cultural level, denying, in a sense, that the behavior and activities of individuals can meaningfully add up into a consistent and  replicable "culture."  "Culture" is, at once, too big - in that it suggests meaningful coincident relationships well beyond the lived experience of ziran: 自然 - the natural occurence of things; and too small, in that if fails to capture the fullness and complexity of Way. 

As to the too-bigness of "culture," we can think abou this line from Zhuangzi chapter 6, one of those great moments where Confucius is counselling Yan Hui to move in a most un-Confucian direction.  When Yan Hui tells him that has given up on the Confucian virues and is now just sitting and forgetting, Confucius "says" (Graham translation):

If you go along with it [i.e. just sitting and forgetting], you have no preferences; if you let yourself transform, you have no norms.  Has it really turned out that you are the better of us?  Oblige me by accepting me as your disciple.

同則無好也，化則無常也。而果其賢乎！丘也請從而後也。

It's that line: "if you let yourself transform, you have no norms" (化則無常也) that suggests a renunciation of "culture," which we might understand as a consistent articulation and reproduction of norms.  Zhuangzi does not want such things, such humanly-created concepts of "culture," to obstruct us from opening ourselves to, and following, Way.

As to the "too-littleness" of culture, we can think about these lines, from chapter 2 (Watson translation): 

The Way has never known boundaries; speech has no constancy.  But because of [the recognition of a] "this," there came to be boundaries.  Let me tell you what the boundaries are. There is left, there is right, there are theories, there are debates, there are divisions, there are discriminations, there are emulations, and there are contentions.  These are called the Eight Virtues.  As to what is beyond the Six Realms [i.e. the cosmos], the sage admits its existence but does not theorize.  As to what is within the Six Realms, he theorizes but does not debate.  In the case of the Spring and Autumn [Classic], the record of the former kings of the past age, the sage debates but does not discriminate.  So [I say,] those who divide fail to divide; those who discriminate fail to discriminate.  What does this mean, you ask?  The sage embraces all things.  Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others.  So I say, those who discriminate fail to see.

夫道未始有封，言未始有常，為是而有畛也。請言其畛：有左，有右，有倫，有義，有分，有辯，有競，有爭，此之謂八德。六合之外，聖人存而不論；六合之內， 聖人論而不議。春秋經世，先王之志，聖人議而不辯。故分也者，有不分也；辯也者，有不辯也。曰：何也？聖人懷之，眾人辯之以相示也。故曰：辯也者，有不見 也

For our purposes the message here is: those who divide the world into "cultures," and put forth discriminations and debates based on those divisions, fail to see. They fail to see the fullness of Way.  And there is no reason here to believe that the possibilities and constraints of human understanding advanced in Zhuangzi should be limited only to people in one "culture" and not others.

Bottom line: an assertion that "cultures" are a meaningful category of incommensurability makes no sense from a Zhuangzi-ian point of view.

I could go on but will stop there for now.  Perhaps later this week I will continue with some ideas about how Confucianism, in its early guises, would also, though from rather different perspective, press against the idea of inter-cultural incommensurability. 

 辯也者，有不見 也

Comments

[Matthew F Cooper]

Once again, a very insightful - and, I would say, very deep-reaching post; thank you, Mr Crane. I think you make a very successful argument that Zhuangzi radically deconstructs, at the very least, empirical experience to the point where views are not only incomparable (as you point out with the difference between the quail and the peng) but they also seem to be necessarily so ('非彼無我，非我無所取。'). Zhuangzi's celebration of such difference is practically absolute at points.

But to go back to the Daodejing, rather, one sees that the commonalities and the understandings between any two of the myriad things which make up the Daoist universe are only contingent and conditional. If one can name absolutely the commonalities which exist between any two 'things' (or people, or norms), one is not naming the Way: 道可道，非常道；名可名，非常名。 Laozi and Zhuangzi want to radicalise this insight, as you note, beyond the artificial category of mere 'culture'; but it is still not clear to me that they would reject 'norms' for the reason you cite (namely, that they are such a division).

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong; my understanding of Daoism is thoroughly undergraduate. But from what I have read and understood of the Zhuangzi and Laozi, they seem concerned with safeguarding each difference and each division as potentially a valid Way (they would not say a deer or a bird or a fish is any less 'seeing' for not perceiving Xishi as having the characteristic of beauty, for example).

[Porcupear]

This is another fascinating article, on a most interesting and important topic. But I am not sure how the fact that incommensurability/commensurability has historically been a Western problem undermines a claim of cultural incommensurability - rather I would argue that it supports one - depending on what one regards as 'culture'. What it demonstrates is an ontological incommensurability. Ultimately most strands of Western thought deny cultural incommensurability; the notion of multiculturalism is an excellent example, because it is only workable on the premise that all humans are fundamentally similar. Hence, when it encounters cultural systems with which it is ontologically incommensurable (for example radical Islam) it fails.

Culture as a concept should not, I believe, be so readily dismissed - and I wonder whether you are not denying the validity of one viewpoint based on its cultural particularity yet supporting another, equally particular, worldview without providing additional justification. However, I agree with you that a reified notion of culture is a fundamentally flawed concept. What must be understood is that in each case what constitutes 'culture' is ontologically, and therefore qualitatively, different. This is what you have demonstrated here with reference to Zhuangzi.

I am certainly no expert on Chinese philosophy, but it seems to me that the examples you give here demonstrate a cosmology with an ontological basis entirely other to that/those which exist in the West (which is not at all to say that there are no similarities - as I wrote about your and Eric Li's arguments here http://wp.me/p2ppxA-H). Please correct me if this is a poor interpretation, but Zhuangzi appears to be asserting the existence of a radical alterity which is only commensurable if one is willing to distance oneself from one's own unique position/nature/perspective and in so doing to become as close as possible to the Way in its essential form, a position from which all alterity is commensurable. However, if one assumes a position entirely at one with the Way, one has surely completely abandoned one's original perspective. As such, whilst one now looks upon a world in which all is commensurable, this perspective is incommensurable with that occupied before.

If my interpetation is at all accurate, then Zhuangzi's cosmology and its ontological principles bear a significant resemblance to current anthropological theories of difference - particularly those of Roy Wagner, Marylin Strathern and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, who draw heavily on the indigenous philosophy of Melanesian and Amerindian peoples. This is a position with which I very much agree; I would argue that 'cultures' are at once commensurable and incommensurable, and are best understood as ontologically distinct perspectives which express a particular cosmology. They are commensurable only if one is willing to abandon entirely one's original perspective (a near-impossible task) - the corollary of which is assuming an alternative perspective which is necessarily incommensurable with the first. As such, in mediating 'cultural' difference, one must attempt to occupy a liminal perspective of 'partial' commensurability (an issue on which the above three anthropologists have written extensively)...if any of that makes any sense at all...

Regardless, you have certainly inspired me to read Zhuangzi!! And sorry for such a long comment...

[Sam]

Thanks for the comments...

Yes, I am pushing hard against "culture." Too hard, I guess. I agree that there is some utility and value to the concept. But I push hard here because I too often see "culture" used in a political manner (I am a political scientist, after all) to defend particular groups of power holders.

I think another issue here for me is cultural interaction and change. I think it is true that, in ancient times, when there was much less interaction and much slower change, that "cultures" might be said to have been incommensurable. But now (let's just say since the 20th century), interaction and change have both significantly accelerated. And this has created more and more people who move between cultures and understand multiple cultures. The expansion of those interstices opens up more possibility for commensurability.

Let's look at China (we will put radical Islam aside - not my specialty - though I would not necessarily say it is somehow shielded from these same dynamics). In the 19th century we might say Chinese culture was incommensurable with "Western" cultures, for the kinds of reasons suggested by Zhuangzi. But now we have within "Chinese culture" the emergence and spread and embrace of practices like scientific rationality (rather averse to a Zhuangzi epistemology) and materialist behavioralism (I'm thinking expansion of market-driven decision making) which have fundamentally changed the culture. From inside "Chinese culture" we now have people, many people, embracing ontologies and epistemologies that were largely alien 150 years ago.
Does this mean that there is no longer a "Chinese culture" (or some complex of "Chinese cultures"?). No, it means that the culture has changed via interaction with others and that there is more ground for inter-cultural commensurability.

And I think this is a two-way street. "Western culture" also changes. Buddhism was once wholly alien. Now it is not. Moreover, the more that people move between China and the West, the more understanding emerges (yes, I know misunderstanding also happens...), and the more recognition of axes of similarity. Confucianism has never been completely inscrutable. Its focus on familial relationships resonates with Western ideals. My father-in-law is the most filial person I have ever know, and he's an Irish Roman Catholic working class guy from Brooklyn who dropped out of school in 10th grade. I don't have to explain to him what filiality is about. He has lived it his whole life. And with accelerated interaction and change more of that is possible...

Just some quick thoughts...

[Matthew F Cooper]

'Confucianism has never been completely inscrutable. Its focus on familial relationships resonates with Western ideals. My father-in-law is the most filial person I have ever know, and he's an Irish Roman Catholic working class guy from Brooklyn who dropped out of school in 10th grade. I don't have to explain to him what filiality is about. He has lived it his whole life. And with accelerated interaction and change more of that is possible...'

This is very true, Mr Crane - and it is a point which bears repeating as often as possible. The basic principles of Confucianism are truly not as alien to Western culture as first appears; as a humanistic philosophy, there are elements of it which of course apply to all humans. Of course, the converse is also true: classical, apostolic Christianity is not as alien to the Chinese experience as it might first appear, since it tends to share a the same key insights into community life, the dignity of human life, the need for cultivation of virtue through education (though of course the teacher and the orientation to the Absolute are somewhat divergent).

That said, though, it is worth noting the ironies in this position. Confucianism isn't about 'change', per se, rather it is about preserving what was worthwhile from the times of Yao and Shun, of Da Yu and Zhou Gong Dan.

The orientation of Confucius is inescapably conservative and constructs itself in ways incommensurate with the project of modernity: one builds on, models on, learns from the best features of the past, whilst studiously avoiding the mistakes of the past. Elders are respected and revered, rather than condescended to and sidelined as irrelevant or 'behind the times'. Love and justice rather than profit and power are emphasised. Statecraft is not a Weberian matter of filling generic, functionalist job descriptions with interchangeable cogs bearing the proper skillset, but is rather a matter of finding decent human beings (as defined by their relationships) to occupy the positions where their decency will be best displayed. Confucius and Mencius speak harshly against both (what we would now consider) policies of laissez-faire and étatisme - and thus against both schools of thought deriving from Locke and Rousseau.

My two cents, I guess, are that if Confucianism resonates with any school of thinking in modern Western philosophy, I have a strong hunch that it would probably be the radical virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre or, barring that, the critical communitarianism of Michael Sandel (not coincidentally a veritable rock star of popular philosophy in East Asia) or of Charles Taylor.

[Luke Lea]

I am an old man but a beginning student of Chinese history and literature. I see nothing incommensurable about the literature at least; China seems to have produced more good writers in the last fifty years than Europe and America combined.

Of course there a problems with the writings of the premodern period. But the same could be said with the writings of premodern Europe. Ancient Greece is a partial exception: they were the first culture to "sound" modern in their prose; though, seriously, some of those Socratic dialogues are incommensurable by modern standards. As is the Bible of course from beginning to end.