Of Dragons and Owls: Rethinking Chinese and Western Narratives of Modernity

Abstract

In discussions in comparative philosophy, it is often assumed that Chinese and Western traditions are radical opposites: that, when one studies what Chinese and Western philosophers thought and taught on their own terms, one will find that they offer incommensurable views on the cosmos and humanity’s role therein. This assumption has decisive influence on the way in which such discussions are conducted – but is it sound? Are there good reasons to think of Chinese and Western traditions and worldviews as radical opposites? This dissertation reconstructs the narrative that informs much of the contemporary dialogue between China and the West, and examines its hermeneutic validity. I show that the root of the presumed opposition lies in the conjecture that Chinese and Western forms of thinking – the workings of Chinese and Western “minds” – display radical disparity. The Chinese mind, it is presumed, is characterized by an aesthetic form of thinking that grounds an immanent, holistically structured, and value-laden worldview. The Western mind, on the other hand, is presumably exemplified by a rational form of thought that gives rise to a transcendent, atomistic, and disenchanted world. Although such contrasting shines a critical light on certain dimensions of the modern lifeworld, I argue that it is hermeneutically untenable: thought, like subjectivity, is a self-reflexive concept, and this renders the thesis of radical opposition internally incoherent – it is impossible to think that there are incommensurable forms of thought without, in this very act of thinking, contradicting that such incommensurability can be possible. And that means that, although there may be many differences between East and West, there are limits to the kind of opposition we can presume if we are to meaningfully engage in cross-cultural dialogue at all. This does not mean that the entire attempt to criticize modernity through recourse to the aesthetic is misguided. On the contrary, the analysis gives clear indications of the paths we could travel if we are to take the aesthetic as guiding in developing a hermeneutic frame through which human beings may interpret the world and understand and orient themselves therein. The dissertation follows up on the directions thus disclosed, and in dialogue with the works of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Lu Xun examines the possibilities of thinking the aesthetic as a source of constructive criticism. This holds enormous potential, I suggest, but can only ground an internally coherent practical perspective to the extent that we accept that a commitment to aesthetic openness involves committing to openness in judgment in a broader sense: in a sense that considers the future as an assignment rather than a given, and affirms also history and culture merely to the extent that they contribute to man’s ability to see the world as something that he may change.